7 Link Building Ideas To Increase Your Dofollow Backlinks
Brainstorming link building ideas can provide fruitful outcomes in your SEO performance. As every SEO expert would suggest, backlinks and keywords are the backbone of Search Engine Optimization. In this piece of content, we will discuss ideas to implement in your link building strategy to get quality backlinks and increase your organic traffic.
Before we begin, it is worth clarifying the term “link building ideas” since it can be often mistaken with “strategies”. In this article, we refer to the supporting tasks that can benefit your link building strategy. Therefore, these ideas are tips to pave the path of your current strategy in terms of SEO.
In general, such tips may help you by:
- Unveiling errors and issues in your link building strategy
- Uncovering link building opportunities
- Increasing the performance of your current link building strategy
By implementing the ideas presented below to your SEO strategy, you may increase your chances of getting quality backlinks. After all, backlinks are vital for the SEO performance of your business.
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Why Are Backlinks Important For Your SEO Performance?
If we could divide Search Engine Optimization into two elements, one of them would definitely be backlinks. Search engines take into account backlinks when ranking your website for a search query. In general, backlinks work like vouchers for the content you provide. For instance, when a website with relevant content to yours links to your page, it vouches for the quality of your content.
Speaking of quality, we should state that quality wins over quantity in link building. Quality backlinks can affect positively your ranking performance by increasing your domain rating. Meanwhile, bad quality backlinks can even decrease your overall SEO performance by damaging your Domain Rating.
How can you tell the difference between good- and bad-quality backlinks? Well, the simplest way is to check the website they derive from. The higher the Domain Rating the website has, the better the quality of the backlink. On the opposite side, bad-quality backlinks can be either backlinks deriving from websites with low Domain Rating or spam backlinks meant to hurt your SEO performance.
In short, backlinks help your SEO performance by:
- Increasing your Domain Rating.
- Supporting your keyword ranking with the use of the right anchor text.
- Driving referral organic traffic from another website.
The key takeaway from this section is that backlinks can play a leading role in your SEO marketing. Make sure that you implement a link building strategy that aims to acquire top-quality links which will increase your Domain Rating, ranking performance, and, eventually, your organic traffic as well!
Link Building Ideas To Get More Backlinks
Crafting a link building plan is unique for each business. That is because every plan should align with the characteristics, industry, and goals of different businesses. However, there are several rules of thumb out there that can assist your SEO journey. The link building ideas presented below are helpful initiatives that do not substitute your strategy but instead aim to accompany and maximize its potential.
1. Check Your Current Backlink State
As a general rule, to achieve your goals, first you need to have your feet on the ground and know where you are. In SEO terms, acknowledging your current backlink state means that you know how your links are performing for your website so far. Moreover, this type of information helps you understand which types of links perform best in your industry and the content marketing tactics to achieve them.
You can gather this useful information with a proper link building report. By performing a link building report on your website, you can get a complete analysis of your backlink profile. Furthermore, this analysis will uncover potential opportunities and spot upcoming or current errors that block the fruitful outcome of SEO performance. In simple terms, this report will provide you with the knowledge of what performs well and what underperforms in your link building strategy. At the end of the day, we all know the value of a proper prediction in business success.
2. Perform A Competition Report
An industry often shares common values and goals that outline the competition in it. That being said, it can be useful to know how your competitors are performing with their SEO strategy. More often than not, you will find yourself aiming for the same goal as your competitors and using similar tactics to achieve it. Therefore, any information available on the strategy of your opponent can provide a fruitful outcome for your content marketing performance.
Among the link building ideas to help you acquire this valuable information, you need to perform an SEO competition analysis report. In detail, a competition analysis will present you with the link building profile of your competition. By analyzing the profile of your competitors, you may uncover tactics that would work for your strategy as well and implement them. Meanwhile, you can get information on which initiatives underperform for your competitors and avoid using them in the future.
In a nutshell, an SEO competition analysis can help you uncover:
Keywords in which both you and your competition are currently ranking. By ranking on many common keywords with your competition, it means that you target the right ones for your industry.
Unlike common keywords, the keyword gap informs you about keywords in which your competition ranks but you do not. This can uncover opportunities in keywords that can potentially increase your organic traffic.
The backlink gap provides you with a list of domains from which your competitors are getting backlinks. In this list, you might find domains that can work for your strategy as well. Since these domains have already provided your competitors with backlinks, that means that they might be willing to provide your website with one as well!
3. Look For Relevant Content Online
We all know the struggles of acquiring backlinks to our content. Waiting for the fulfilling email that asks you for a backlink on your blog post might be satisfying, but it hardly happens unless your Domain Rating is high or your content is exceptional and already ranking.
Therefore, one of the link building ideas is to start looking for relevant content online and get in the process of asking for a backlink. The more backlinks your content gathers, the more likely it is to have your email address filled with emails asking you for a link.
You can follow this approach when searching for interesting content online:
- Find an article that suits the needs of your audience.
- Create content that adds value to the article you found.
- Get the contact information of the author.
- Create a personalized pitch introducing yourself and the content you created, and ask whether the author can link to yours.
Needless to say, there is a variety of approaches to finding content and getting a backlink. Start by trying out the common ones and figure out which benefits your business with more links.
4. Perform A Broken Link Audit
Maintaining a healthy backlink profile can be a challenging process, and it often requires useful link building ideas. Not only is it relatively difficult to acquire quality backlinks, but it can be hard to keep them as well. That can be due to many different reasons that may lead to lost links.
In general, broken links can occur because of:
The fear of every SEO expert answers to the name “Google Update.” More often than not, Google updates can change the shape of SEO performance on many websites. Meanwhile, rankings on keywords are also changing and some URLs might be left out. These major changes may lead to lost links and orphan pages. By performing a lost link audit, you can fix any issues that occur due to updates and still use the SEO juice of important pages.
Another possible issue that brings broken links is rebranding. After rebranding, several URLs might change entirely to follow the new brand name. This incident may end up having the previous links leading to a 404 page.
If the website you got a link from has deleted the page, then it is again a broken link scenario. Finding the deleted pages or 404 pages on time will provide you with the opportunity to substitute them with fresh ones and benefit from backlinks.
5. Remove Harmful Backlinks
We previously stated the importance of quality in backlinks. Having said that, there are backlinks that can eventually have a harmful effect on your SEO performance. This might be because it happened on purpose or by accident.
One common type is the SEO attack. This can be done by a competitor who uses spammy links and fake reviews to lower your keyword rankings and your domain authority. Finding these links on time and blocking the sources can have a tremendous effect on your SEO initiatives.
The other type of harmful link is the bad-quality backlinks. Unlike an SEO attack, bad-quality links usually hurt your website by accident. For instance, you might accept a link without checking the Domain Rating on the website that offers it. In this case, if the website has a really low Domain Rating, it indicates to Google that it cannot be trusted. Therefore, a link from that website might decrease your own rankings and Domain Rating as well.
6. Align Your Anchor Texts With The Right Keywords
A solid link building plan requires extensive keyword research. These keywords should align with your industry and the audience you are addressing. By creating a proper list of keywords you aim to target in your link building campaign, you enhance the potential of both links and keyword rankings.
To align the keywords you want to rank on with the link building ideas, you have to focus on the anchor texts. To illustrate, when you contact an author for a link to your website, make sure you suggest as the anchor text for your link a keyword from the list you target. If your page manages to acquire quality backlinks with the proper anchor text, then keyword rankings will be increased and it will generate more organic traffic.
Please take a look at my recent article if you want to learn more about the importance of anchor texts and contextual link building for SEO.
7. Optimize Your Site For SEO
From a more technical perspective, fixing minor issues on your website might eventually lead to better SEO performance. That is because Google crawlers take into account multiple technical aspects when they analyze your pages. Such aspects include images, logo, load speed, text, and other options that affect user experience. You can spot such issues and act timely by performing an in-depth technical SEO audit.
In a nutshell, you might want to optimize the following for SEO:
Make sure that your images are website-friendly. By that we mean that images should generally be small to load fast. Make sure to also add alternative text to your images to help both the crawlers and your traffic.
Spot and fix any load-related issues on your website to increase the site speed. The faster the crawlers analyze your website, the better the rankings.
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Delete Or Fix Orphan Pages
Your website should be like an open map when it comes to links. Utilize internal links to guide the users on the pages you want. Also, make sure to not leave any orphan pages on your website because it might lead to confusion and decreased ranking potential.
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Key Takeaway
There is nothing more satisfying than seeing the fruitful outcome of your link building initiatives. That is why the above-mentioned ideas should be taken into consideration when crafting your SEO marketing plan or addressing a link building service. Some of them might seem generic, but they are equally important in contributing to the main goal: increased organic traffic.
It is worth mentioning that these link building tips are crucial to your main link building strategy. That said, following these steps alone is not going to lead to thriving SEO performance on its own but should be accompanied by a solid link building plan.
At the end of the day, link building is not rocket science. You simply have to view your website from your audience’s point of view. Does it fulfill their needs and answer their questions? Does it guide them appropriately? These questions are based on the steps we provided in this article. Therefore, build a solid link building strategy and combine it with these tips to make your SEO performance thrive!
