How to Build Backlinks for Your Blog (Easy Backlink Guide)
It’s important to build backlinks for your blog in order to do more business, get more readers, and rank higher on search engines.
A backlink is when a website links to your blog in a relevant and informative way. The links are typically set as “Do Follow” for search engines to be able to see that the website has linked to you.
Getting backlinks can be difficult. But if you don’t get them, you might have a lot of trouble growing your blog to its fullest potential. So, this is one blog strategy that you need to keep in mind.
In this article, I will show you easy ways to build backlinks for your blog, focusing on three main tactics. Those tactics are Content, Research, and Expertise. Keep reading to start building backlinks for your blog now.
Jump to Backlink Strategy:
Why is it Important to Build Backlinks for Your Blog?
Building backlinks is an essential part of SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s strategies you integrate in order to get your blog link higher in search results.
Page one on Google is often the primary goal.
The more genuine backlinks you get, the more “social proof” it will be for Google to understand that your blog is popular and trusted.
But there are definitely bad ways to build backlinks for your blog that can reverse the strategy are harm your SEO instead.
In this guide, I’ll focus on the best ways that don’t hurt your search ranking efforts.
Build Backlinks for Your Blog with Content Strategies
The best way to build backlinks for your blog is through the creation of content.
Your content needs to be relevant, original, and extremely helpful. What do I mean by extremely helpful? I mean, it needs to answer the toughest questions and solve the hardest challenges in your niche.
If you do that, the following backlink-building tactics will be very easy for you to accomplish.
Create Historically Awesome Content
As I said above, your content needs to answer the hardest questions and solve the toughest problems. People will link to that sort of content. It’ll make you an expert. You’ll have nothing but positive outcomes from doing that.
But you need to be strategic about it.
Look for two things involving content history. Look for topics or keywords that receive a lot of backlinks that belong to other blogs in your same niche. Secondly, look for posts you’ve written that have built a lot of backlinks.
This sort of content should then become your model for the type of awesome content you make in an effort to build backlinks for your blog.
Do the Skyscraper Tactic with Your Competition
Have you ever heard of the skyscraper strategy?
It’s cool. Basically, envision your competition as a little two-story building. Next to it is you, this 30-story skyscraper where everyone passes up your competition to get to. That’s the visualization of what the skyscraper strategy looks like.
But how does it happen?
Basically, you need to create posts that have the same beneficial information in them that your competition includes. That should be in your own words. But then, you should fill in the gaps and provide maximum amounts of additional useful information.
Your article should be 10, 20, 30, or more times better than the competition’s article. That’s how you do the skyscraper strategy.
Update Your Old Blog Content
If your content is over a year old, it’s time to give it a makeover.
Updating your old content is an easy way to build backlinks for your blog. This is because you’re updating great content with modern changes. This is especially efficient with posts that have done well when you first published them.
How should you update these older posts?
Simply update the information with changes that have happened. Try to make the post up-to-date. You can add to or even change the written content of the blog post. You should keep some of it intact, though, so that its original content is still present. Try to update all of your bigger posts that can be updated.
Create Useful Images and Infographics
Create useful images and infographics to build backlinks for your blog.
If you’re decent with graphics design, you should make images and infographics that relate to your niche. Make them useful, funny, or inspirational for the best results. Tell others that they can share them as long as they add credit to your blog.
You should be able to reverse-search your graphics and infographics to ensure that credit is being given where credit is due.
Create many of these and focus on trends to get more shares.
Create Free Apps and Tools
You can create free applications and tools to get a backlink.
This is especially effective if you make plugins or themes that can be used on other blogs. You can add a credit link to the plugin or theme to give credit to you as the creator and earn a backlink for your blog.
Use your imagination and creativity in this area if you’re good at programming.
If you’re not good at programming, consider designing themes for blogs instead or hiring freelancers to make you tools and apps.
Post Review and Testimonial Posts
Post reviews and testimonial posts about the products you love to get good backlinks.
If your niche has products, utilize your blog and create reviews and testimonials about the products. Make them the best review possible with a lot of details and information for those who are looking for feedback about the product.
In some cases, the company will find your review through social monitoring and may link back to you to show your testimonial to other customers and potential customers.
You might even consider emailing the company and thanking them for their product and saying you wrote a review for them in case it might be helpful to get more sales. Do the work for them.
Do Your Research to Build Backlinks for Your Blog
If you want to build backlinks for your blog the right way, you need to focus on research strategies.
Research is important for most aspects of blogging. It’s especially important in terms of building backlinks and other forms of search engine optimization.
By being a thorough researcher, you’ll be able to create the best possible outcomes for your tactics in building backlinks for your blog.
However, the best research results in success after time, patience, and fine-tuning have been done in relation to it.
Cold Call (Email) and Ask to Get Linked
Research websites where your link fits best and then reach out and ask them to link to you.
We call this “cold calling”. It’s where you contact the potential backlink provider first and ask them to add your blog link to their website.
They’ll either say yes and add your link, or they’ll say no, and you won’t get a link. Some might not even respond at all. If you don’t use the right words, paste a template, or are too commercial about it, you might be marked as spam.
You must research their needs, integrate that into your copy to them, and aim to win a backlink for your blog. Just don’t give up after being rejected (more than once) because we’ve all been through it.
Request to be a Guest Blogger
Become an awesome guest blogger to build backlinks for your blog.
Before you contact another blogger to request to be a guest blogger, you need to do a few things in advance.
You need to write the blog post first. You need to focus on writing the best content possible. Write it as if you were writing for your own blog, and you wanted it to be the best post you’ve ever written. Make sure it shines a light on the blog and makes people want to consume it.
Then, you offer the blog with your guest post and a simple link in the bio to your blog. If they say no, you still have a good article for your own blog, or you can save it for the next one.
Ask to be Linked on Resource Link Pages
Look for blog resource pages and ask if your blog can be added to them.
Many bloggers have resource pages and posts where they link to other blogs in their niche. Your niche likely has several blogs that do this.
Reach out and ask if they would add your blog to their resources page.
The worst that could happen is that they say no.
Reclaim Unlinked Mentions on Other Websites
Use a tool or look for mentions of your blog on other blogs.
Find these mentions and make sure that they are linking to your blog. If there are no links attached to the mentions, contact the site owner and ask if they would be willing to link to your blog on the text.
They’ve already mentioned you on their site, so what’s going to hurt is asking them to add a link to the text to help you out further.
If you can thank them in public, such as sharing their website on social media, you should do so and make sure they see that you did it. It will help make them be fine with linking to you.
Ask to be Listed on Listicle and Related Posts
Look for listicles and other related blog posts and ask if your blog can be added to them.
If you have a blog post or your main blog homepage can be appropriately added to listicle pages on other blogs, these are great ways to build backlinks for your blog.
This typically works better if you have a blog post that’s about a certain topic based on what the listicle is featuring.
You might even find these listicles and create new blog posts in hopes that they will be added to the listicle you’ve discovered.
Mine for Broken Links for Backlinks
Research or use a tool to build backlinks for your blog by finding missing links.
This is called mining for broken links. You find websites and other blogs around your industry and read through them. Look for links and click on them. When you find a broken link, contact them and suggest they add your link to fix it.
You need to make sure your link matches the anchor text that they had originally linked to. Otherwise, you’ll probably be marked as spam.
Try to keep this relevant to your niche, and don’t ask the same website more than once to add your link to their broken links.
Reach Out to Journalists for Backlinks
Contact the news and industry journalists for backlinks.
Many news anchors and journalists are looking for blog posts that can help add to their stories and news postings. You can reach out to them if your content is worthy enough to be used for the news.
Posts with a lot of facts, research, and statistics are best for this sort of thing.
You should also consider becoming a part of HARO to Help a Reporter Out and get more backlinks from them. Those backlinks are usually the best kind of backlinks aside from educational and government websites.
Build Backlinks for Your Blog with Your Expertise
Another way to build backlinks with your blog is by becoming an expert in your industry.
Building backlinks will be much easier when you’re seen as an expert. This is because you’ll have credibility and a reputation in your niche as being one of the leaders of your niche.
This is why it’s always important to focus most of your effort on creating the best content you can and a lot of it. In this competitive internet of today, it’s really important.
Research Competitor Links
Research your competitors and the websites that are linking to them.
How did your competitors land their backlinks? Find the website that links to them the most and research why that is occurring.
You can use that knowledge for many things. You can use it to potentially take over as the blog is being linked by the websites linking to them. You could also mimic their strategy to become a very linked blog by other websites in your niche.
The more you know about your competition, the better off your blog will be.
Local Business Associations and Directories
The day of building backlinks on directories is over…but not all the way.
There are still local business associations, Chamber of Commerce organizations, and business directories. Sure, getting links on general directories is a waste of time. But getting a link on a business directory that is relevant to your niche or your location is a very effective way of earning a backlink.
Most industries have directories available made for their niche.
Most local communities have business associations and organizations that want to list those in the area who are doing some kind of business. Industry and niche blogs are included in that. Just call your blog a media company to make it more legit.
Ask for Influencers to Link to You
If you can get an influencer to link to you, you should do what you have to do to make that happen.
Influencers will not only help you build backlinks for your blog by linking to you, but they’ll also share your content with their fans, and that could earn you even more backlinks, shares, and social proof.
It’s a win-win situation for you.
Some influencers will do business with you in exchange that you promoting them or their product, paying a fee, or getting something free out of supporting you.
Get Social and Get Active
Social media is one of the best ways to showcase your expertise to your industry.
If you’re not on social media to represent your blog, you’re making a mistake. You need to be on social media. You need to be on the platforms where your community is at. You need to be promoting yourself as an expert.
Don’t let imposter syndrome get in your way here, either.
Go for it and go all out. Get actively involved on social media by helping others and posting often about your niche. It’s one of the most effective ways to be seen in a niche. And it’s free!
Become the Expert in Your Niche
The only way to be seen as an expert in your niche is to become an expert.
But most people don’t really understand what an expert is and how to be seen as one.
Learn! Learn something new about your niche on a daily basis if you can help it. Keep up with industry news. Take every course you can find. Take notice of trends and what is working for the niche. Become a knowledge expert.
Then, take your knowledge and create content that solves problems. Be helpful every chance you get. Look for people who need help and go out of your way to help them. Use the same username, photo, and branding everywhere you go so people recognize you.
Comment on Industry Blog Posts
Be active on other blogs in your industry to build backlinks for your blog.
Most of the time, the link you add to the website box in your comment will be set to “No Follow,” but that doesn’t mean that someone else won’t read it and link to you on their blog. That should ultimately be the goal when making comments.
Make a comment that is worthy of a reply. Be genuine and try to post something that engages with both the blog author and those who are reading through the comments.
Any time you comment on a blog, social media, or your own post, you need to comment in a way that puts you in the spotlight as someone who knows what they’re talking about.
Link to Other Experts on Your Blog
Sometimes, you need to scratch the backs of others to get your back scratched!
The saying means that you need to help others in order for them to help you. Find an expert in your niche and link to them and their websites on your blog in some way that makes sense. If they’ve created an article or a service that you can appropriately link to, then do it.
This also should include the other blogs that you see as competition. The blogging community may have competitors, but we should all be trying to help each other so that we can keep blogs around for ages to come.
Link to the other experts in your niche in a meaningful way. You might have to do it more than once. They’ll typically take notice, and when they do, somehow in your favor, they’ll return the kind gesture.
And that sums up how to easily build backlinks for your blog. If you follow the advice above, you should have no problems getting more backlinks for your blog and improving its overall SEO ranking. If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it. Join my FREE online community all about blogging at the Blogging Collective. Follow me on X for more blogging tips and resources.
About the Author
Shawn Gossman has created content, blogged, ran online communities, and shared a passion for digital marketing for over twenty years. Shawn believes the best way to help content creators, businesses, brands, and marketers is to give away more than you sell. The same advice is recommended for the readers who follow this blog. Shawn also offers various services for extra help in content creation and blogging.
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