Learning to get backlinks can significantly improve your brand’s online presence, with no significant investment or requirements to spend big on advertising. However, it can sometimes be difficult to get the backlink, or at least, it requires planning. In the ideal world, you could just ask a site for a backlink; however, people receive multiple emails every day with different requests, so your request may not be a priority to the target website.
The key is to create a backlink strategy where requests benefit both parties and are good business opportunities.
Below, we go through some of the techniques to help you along the way:
The Skyscraper Link Building Technique (and The Reverse Skyscraper Technique)
The Skyscraper Technique is a link building strategy where you find high-ranking content with many backlinks, look for areas where there is room for improvement, and develop a much better or more comprehensive piece of content, then send a request to those linking to the content you enhanced to link to your page instead.
The first step is to find pages that have lots of backlinks. Many paid tools can support you in this process, such as Ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush. These services have many features that may benefit your brand, though if you are looking for a free service (paid options available) with more basic functions, you can try Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest.
Once you have the data from your preferred tool, you will need to analyze the content and consider how to improve it.
Here are some tips on how you could go about improving the content:
Correct inaccurate or misleading information. This is a quick win and is a great way to enhance a wide range of content types, as, universally, it would not be popular to link to a page with misleading information.
Consider how to go into more detail. Perhaps you have observed that the article only touches the tip of the topic’s subject matter, which is your opportunity to position yourself as a thought leader in this area and add more details.
Sometimes, it may just need a better explanation. You may have noticed that the message wasn’t clear or concise or could benefit from using graphics, videos, or other features to assist the reader to understand the subject matter more simply.
You may be wondering what the Reverse Skyscraper Technique is? This is where you select a top piece of content on your site, source lower-quality pages on external domains that have lots of backlinks and ask sites linking to those pages to consider linking to you instead. This is a potential quick win, as it means you don’t have to create new content, just be careful that you are linking to websites that will benefit your brand.
Look for broken links or outdated resources
The first thing to do is to find sites in the same industry as you that have:
· Changed names
· Transferred to a new URL
· No longer offering a particular service
· The page owner hasn’t kept the resource or page up-to-date
· The business has closed
Once you have the list of these sites, you need to find all of the links referring to that page using your preferred backlink checking tool, as detailed above. Another tip is to focus on websites with the highest Domain Authority (DA) since these are more likely to be valuable to your business.
The final step is to contact the sites that are still linking to the outdated resource with a polite message notifying them that the information is out of date and offering them a kind solution (your site!)
Focus on creating content that generates links
This last tip may sound obvious, but it’s something people often forget or do not focus on. There are proven ways to improve your chance of getting a backlink, such as content formats. The best part about this technique is that it allows you to focus on the content.
At the core of generating high-quality backlinks is creating great content to compete with other content in your industry so people can link to it. For example, people love to link to guides or “how-to” articles.
To compete with the best, you should consider optimizing the below and making them better than the competition:
· Include better quality or more attractive images
· Make your blog post more detailed to offer more value
· Write a more persuasive title
· Use an attractive featured image
· Include title tags and meta descriptions that are focused on the topic
To succeed in content creation for SEO, you must understand the competition, then do everything better than them.
Conclusion
You do not need to invest or have an existing reputation for learning how to get backlinks and start building; it’s about doing the hard work and planning. Backlinks are an essential part of any SEO strategy, and even though you may get some backlinks organically, you will benefit and grow your backlinks more by taking a proactive approach.
If you have any questions related to SEO or backlinks, do not hesitate to contact us at info@relevantaudience.com
