You’ve likely heard that backlinks are what helps your website to rank higher in search engines like Google. And you need to learn how to do link building for SEO.
Backlinks, or links from other websites to yours, are a significant ranking factor. They’re sometimes referred to as “off-page SEO.”
Backlinks are #1 key to your SEO success. The number of quality backlinks can impact
- Website search traffic
- Your search rankings
- Overall sales
Well…we’ve done a lot of research on the best link building strategies for SEO.
So it would be fair to say that we know a thing or two about link building.
In this blog post, we’ve tried to explain everything about link building in simple terms so that you could easily put my advice to action.
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Let’s get started!
But before we dive in, here are just a few quick link building insights to get things going:
- Backlinks from relevant web pages on authoritative websites have the most influence on your rankings in search engines like Google.
- Link building helps tremendously to have a prior relationship with a website owner before you ask for a link from them.
- If you have a brand-new site, it’s best to kick things off by building a few dozen foundational backlinks.
- People link to web pages that are highly valuable and relevant. So if your web page is not interesting and useful, you’ll have a very hard time building links to it.
The Basics Of Link Building
You can think of backlinks as votes. Search engines like Google consider backlinks as “votes of confidence” for the website getting the backlinks.
Each vote suggests your content is valuable, and useful.
So, when other websites are linking to your web page, it tells Google that your page content is valuable, credible, and useful.
The more high-quality backlinks a web page has, the higher it tends to rank in Google.
Backlinks are one of Google’s most important ranking factors.
And if you want to outrank your competitor’s web page, you’ll likely need to get more backlinks than your competitor’s page has.
Backlinks help web pages rank higher in Google’s search results.
So, what is link building?
Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to your web pages.
In SEO, its purpose is to boost the “authority” of your pages in the eyes of Google and other major search engines so that these pages rank higher and bring more search traffic.
Below are some of the most popular link building strategies:
- Email outreach
- Unlinked brand mentions
- Content marketing
- Broken link building
Let’s get into the details.
How To Build Backlinks
Most link building strategies and tactics fall into one of the four following buckets:
- Asking for links – This’s when you send emails to owners of relevant websites and ask them to link to your web page.
- Buying links – Same as asking for links, but you offer them money or some other form of compensation.
- Adding links – This’s when you go to another website and manually add your link there.
- Earning links – This refers to creating high-quality content that people would link to it naturally.
You can also hire the SEO expert or a link building agency to do it all for you.
And that’s what a lot of digital marketers and business owners eventually end up doing because no matter which tactics and strategies you choose, building links is a lot of work.
But even if you decide to outsource link building, it would be immensely useful to have some basic knowledge of how it’s done.
This way, you would be able to see if the person or a link building agency you hired is doing a good job or not.
So let’s take a closer look at each of the four buckets.
Asking for Links
Asking for links is when you actively contact a site and ask them to link to your website, which SEOs often refer to as “link outreach.”
For example, you can ask them to link to:
- Blog posts
- Case studies
- Visual assets (like infographics, charts, diagrams, etc.)
- In-depth guides
- Original research and data
And so on.
Here’s a brief list of link outreach tactics:
- Skyscraper technique – You can find an outdated web page that lots of websites are linking to. Create a much better one on your own site. Then show it to all the linkers.
- Image link building – You can find websites that have used your images without proper attribution and ask them for a backlink.
- Unlinked mentions – Ask to turn the mention of your brand into a backlink.
- Guest posting – Write an awesome blog post for their site, from which you can link to yourself.
- Resource page link building – You can find pages that list resources similar to yours and request to be added there.
- Broken link building – You can find a dead page that has lots of backlinks. Create an alternative on your own site and ping all the linkers about it. That’s broken link building in a nutshell.
Buying links
This is the easiest way to build backlinks.
A lot of website owners would be happy to link to you if you pay them for it.
But exchanging money or some other form of compensation for backlinks is quite risky.
Google considers it a manipulation of its algorithm.
And it might punish you for it by kicking your site out of the search results.
Another risk of buying backlinks comes from simply wasting your money on bad backlinks that won’t even work in the first place.
That being said, I don’t want to teach you any tactics that might put your business at risk.
So there would be no tips on “how to buy links the right way” in this blog post.
And yet, you should be well aware that many people in the SEO industry do buy backlinks to achieve their ranking goals.
Once you start researching your competitors’ backlinks and reaching out to the same sites, you’ll soon find out if they paid for any of their backlinks.
Adding Links
Adding links refers to going to another site and manually adding your link there.
You can manually add links to:
- Forums, communities, and Q&A sites like Quora
- Review website listings.
- Social media profiles
- Blog comments
- Business directories
And so forth.
These types of SEO links often come from low-quality websites.
The kind that Google doesn’t want to give too much weight to.
And since these SEO links aren’t editorially given, they carry less weight than other types of links.
While these links won’t actively help your website, they also won’t hurt it.
Your best bet is to earn your links.
And the best way to find some quality websites to add your link to is to study the backlinks of your competitors.
Earning Links
When you earn links, other websites link to your website without you asking them to.
And the best way to earn links is by creating and promoting valuable, credible, and useful content people want to link to.
Links happen naturally when someone wants to link to something as a resource for further reading.
Below are a few different types of great content people tend to link to:
- Visual assets (infographics, charts, etc.)
- In-depth guides and tutorials
- Online tools
- Unique ideas and strong opinions
- Original research and data (industry studies, surveys, etc.)
And so forth.
To find more content ideas, look at your competitors’ backlink profiles.
What Makes a Good Backlink?
Knowing what makes a good (or bad) link is important.
Because then you can focus on building links that will improve your Google rankings.
Here’s how to identify links that are actually worth building:
Authority
“Authority” is an SEO concept that refers to the overall quality of a webpage or a website.
The higher the score, the more weight its backlinks may have.
So, a backlink from a high-authority website is often more valuable.
Which means it can help your page rank higher.
Relevance
When it comes to backlinks, the website’s relevance also matters. A lot.
Strive to get backlinks from websites that are relevant to yours.
Instead of pursuing every backlink opportunity that pops up.
Let’s say you run a website about SEO marketing.
And you get a link from an authoritative website about makeup.
That’s great! But it may not impact your rankings.
It would be much better if you received a backlink from an authoritative website about SEO, SEO consulting, or SEO marketing.
The more relevant, the better for your SEO success.
Placement
A backlink’s position on a page is important.
A good backlink appears within the main body of a webpage.
This means that links in footers and sidebars and low in a web page’s content may not be worth as much as those higher in the web page’s body.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the clickable text that appears in a hyperlink.
Anchor text is important because both search engines and readers use it to determine what a linked web page is about.
So, the more relevant and descriptive the anchor text, the better.
For example, this anchor text, “how to create a website,” tells Google that the web page that follows is about how to create a website.
While generic anchor text like “its website” gives little context and isn’t helpful.
In simple terms, good backlinks also have anchor text that is descriptive and relevant.
Nofollow vs. Follow
“Nofollow” is a link attribute that tells search engines like Google not to follow the outbound link.
They’re typically used when website owners want to link to another website but don’t want to imply any type of endorsement.
The nofollow tag is used in your web page’s source code. And it looks like this:
rel=”nofollow”
And here’s a link with the “nofollow” attribute:
<a href=”https://example.com” rel=”nofollow”>Anchor Text</a>
Note: Google says nofollow links don’t pass authority. But they can still provide brand recognition and referral traffic.
Follow links, on the other hand, are regular links without attributes.
And can imply endorsement and pass along ranking credit.
Here’s a follow link with no attribute:
<a href=”https://example.com”>Anchor Text</a>
In addition to nofollow, there are two additional attributes website owners can use:
- rel=”sponsored” to identify links that were created as part of sponsorships, ads, or other agreements.
- rel=”ugc” to identify links within user-generated content, like comments and forum posts.
All link attributes are treated as hints about how Google should interpret links.
Best Backlink Building Strategies
There are many strategies for building links for SEO.
But here are some of the most effective ones.
Outreach
Outreach for link building is when you reach out to other website owners and ask for a backlink.
It’s important because people can’t link to your content without discovering it.
Even the best assets need to be promoted to attract backlinks.
Become a Source
A great way to build high-quality backlinks is to become a source (writer) for bloggers, reporters and journalists.
One of the most popular services you can use is Help a Reporter Out (HARO).
Services like HARO connect people who need sources to people who want backlinks and exposure.
You’ll get daily emails with a list of writers and businesses that need expert writers.
Plus, big media outlets like Mashable, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Business Insider, use these types of services.
To sign up, go to HARO and register as a source.
They’ll send a confirmation email. Once you confirm, sign in and head over to “My Account.”
Then, under “HARO PREFERENCES” choose the type of emails you want to receive.
You’ll be automatically signed up for the Master HARO.
But you can choose to sign up for specific industry emails instead.
Now, all you have to do is keep an eye out for requests you can contribute to.
If you find an interesting query, click the link for more information.
You’ll see the media outlet, deadline, and detailed query.
If you have something valuable to contribute, send the writer a brief and valuable pitch.
It takes just a bit of work every day, but it’s one of the best ways to build backlinks at scale.
Broken Link Building
Broken link building is the process of finding broken external links on other sites in your topic/niche.
Then, reaching out and recommending they link to your content instead.
It works really well because no one wants to send visitors to broken web pages.
And you’re offering a helpful alternative.
An easy way to start broken link building is to look for broken web pages on your competitors’ websites.
Create Linkable Assets
A linkable asset is a type of website content that tends to earn backlinks naturally.
These often include resources like in-depth guides, original research and infographics.
But before you create any asset, you must understand what people in your topic/niche are linking to.
To do that, check out your competitors’ backlink profiles.
You’ll uncover plenty of content ideas.
Find Unlinked Brand Mentions
An unlinked brand mention is when a website mentions you or your business without actually linking to your website.
This link building strategy works great because, with a gentle nudge, most website owners are happy to turn your unlinked mention into a backlink.
For every unlinked mention you find, reach out to the web page’s owner or author and kindly request a backlink.
Examine Competitor Backlinks
This link building strategy is about adopting and replicating the same link building strategies as your competitors.
Reverse engineering your competitors’ backlink techniques can tell you:
- Which types of content tend to earn the most backlinks
- Who is linking to leaders in your topic/niche
Reclaim Lost Backlinks
Just as you can gain backlinks, you can lose them. It happens all the time.
You can lose a backlink for several reasons:
- The backlink gets removed from the linking web page
- The linking web page gets redirected
- The linking web page ceases to exist
And so on.
Regardless, your job now is to reclaim lost backlink.
Reclaiming lost backlinks is often much easier than building new backlinks from scratch.
Backlink Gap Analysis
A backlink gap analysis reveals websites linking to your competitors but not to your website.
It’s a great strategy because if they’re happy linking to your competitors, they’ll likely be happy to link to your website, too.
This is especially true if you create even better blog content than your competitors.
Keep Track of Your Link Building Efforts
Link building takes time, effort, and patience.
To avoid having it all go to waste, I recommend running monthly backlink audits.
That will help you keep track of earned backlinks, lost backlinks, and overall backlink quality.
It’s even better if you automate these backlink audits.
Top 15 Link Building Mistakes To Avoid In 2024
Most people still do a ton of link building mistakes that are costing them money and hurting their search rankings unknowingly.
So in this section, we’re going to discuss some of the link building mistakes most people make, so try to avoid them if you’re making any of them to get better results.
Buying links
Both buying and selling links can be bad and hurt your website in search engine results.
Search engine crawlers are getting smarter and they’ve algorithms that can sense if you buy paid links from other sources.
Google even have insider systems where people can report for bad links sold by directories or PBN networks, so make sure to avoid mistake of buying links.
Your search engine rankings plummet when Google sense that you’re buying backlinks from bad sources.
But there are still thousands of people who buy links safely.
Building links from no-index web pages or websites
There are people who build links from no-index web pages or websites.
If a website or page is not indexed on Google and if you’re trying to get links from those pages, your website will have a high chance of getting penalized because of Google search algorithms.
Whether you’re doing it knowingly or unknowingly, make sure to avoid such link building mistakes to play safe in Google search results.
Not taking any action to remove toxic links
Toxic backlinks are usually unnatural and irrelevant backlinks that harm the search engine rankings of a website.
Did you know about Google’s Penguin update? If not, I’ll explain it to you in simple terms.
Penguin update was designed to enhance Google’s search results by removing the web pages with toxic backlinks.
So, Penguin update was introduced to mainly focus on penalizing the websites with a ton of toxic links along with a bad backlink profile.
So, how do you get rid of bad toxic links to get better rankings on Google?
You can use tools like Semrush to carefully analyze your backlinks.
Building ONLY dofollow links
One of the biggest list building mistakes most people can make is building only one kind of backlinks i.e. either dofollow links or nofollow links.
Building only one type of backlinks is a bad SEO practice and Google might start penalizing your website for such link building practice.
Yes, nofollow links don’t give any value to your search engine results as they don’t pass any link juice to your pages or websites but they give your website a great boost in terms of SEO especially when you get nofollow links from various domains (example: when you comment on various websites).
Irrelevant link building
If you own a blog on cloud computing, building a backlink on some portal based on beauty remedies is certainly not a great idea.
People often tend to make backlinks on high ranking websites without considering the matching of niches.
Before you make a backlink, ensure that the host blog has a similar type of niche as your own blog.
Using optimized anchor text
This is another common mistake most bloggers make even in this year. Are you also thinking that you can get better search rankings by getting links with keyword stuffed anchor texts within them?
If yes, you’re wrong. Google treats optimized anchor text links as a black hat SEO strategy and your website might get penalized if you’re overdoing it.
If you are using the same anchor text while link building on different blogs, you are bound to face a penalty instead of a promotion.
These links would soon be marked as spam by Google.
You should avoid using the same anchor text too much and use several combinations to make it more natural to Google bots.
Getting website-wide links or footer section links
Getting links from website-wide and building footer links of other websites was used to be the most effective link building strategy few years ago.
But Google started taking it seriously and if you want to be on the safe side while link building, stay away from links that come from
- Website-wide links
- Footer
- Sidebar
Sticking to one type of link building practice
There are two major types of sources which you can gain links namely guest blogging and commenting.
If you are going to get stuck to only one type of link building, you would not receive the desired results within the set time period.
Building links too quickly
If you’re trying to build too many backlinks too quickly, get prepared to be penalized for the same by search engines like Google.
As most SEO experts say, getting a high DA backlink (DA with 75+) is way better than getting backlinks from low DA websites (DA with 20 or even less).
So when it comes to link building, quality plays an important role than quantity.
Instead of aiming for 20+ backlinks from low quality websites, try to get 2 backlinks from authority and relevant websites to start getting more SEO benefits from search engines like Google.
Getting backlinks from pages with weak social shares
To determine the quality of the blog content posted, Google algorithms today try to rate the overall social circle performance of that particular blog post.
If a blog post gets 522 tweets, 3000 likes, 500 Pinterest shares, then it is bound to perform better than any other competitive blog post with low social impact.
On the other hand, if you’re trying to get backlinks from web pages with 0 or very less social shares, they don’t add any SEO benefit and it can only waste your time and money.
Linking from website with thousands of outgoing links
If a blogger posts a good blog post, he/she is bound to receive appreciation for it in the comments section.
But this surely does not mean that this section would be filled with thousands of comments with links to their own websites.
If you encounter such a web page, it is always recommended to ignore it rather than commenting and having your comment lost in the flood.
PBN links are mostly harmful
Public Blog Networks (PBN) links are mostly bad and still bloggers are trying to build backlinks from such directories even in this year.
If you’re also one among them who’s making this deadliest link building mistakes, stay away from them as soon as possible if you don’t want to get penalized by search engine algorithms.
PBN websites and public blog networks generally try to fool Google algorithms to some extent but often end up doing worse to your website’s SEO.
These networks comprise of unrelated categories and we would personally recommend you to remove these backlinks if you are availing them using Google’s Disavow tool.
Link exchange
Link exchange emerged as one of the fastest and easiest methods to generate links and improve the collaboration between the bloggers.
Google lately identified this link exchange strategy, and does not appreciate it anymore.
There’s little SEO worth provided by this technique in today’s era.
Building links exclusively for home page
This has been quite a good trend especially among the newbie bloggers to build up backlinks exclusively for the home page.
If you build up all your links for one page only, this would look artificial to Google.
This is the reason you must also keep in mind your other web pages while doing link building.
This will not only help in better linking, but also help you in getting these blog posts rank high in the search results.
Not creating content that’s worth linking
This is one of the main reasons why most bloggers don’t get any backlinks naturally.
If you’re not writing content that’s worth linking to, how can you expect to get better rankings for your website in search engines like Google?
So, start putting more time and resources on creating high quality content that attracts a ton of social shares, and backlinks naturally from other websites.
The 10 Best Link Building Tools
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a link building software designed to help you improve your search engine rankings.
Much like Semrush, it also has a lot of SEO features that have nothing to do with link building, like:
- Keyword research tool
- Technical SEO website audit
- Position tracking
- Content Explorer
Ahrefs Pricing: $99-$999 per month
Semrush
Semrush is the best software for all things SEO.
What makes Semrush unique is the quality of its backlinks data.
Apart from link building, Semrush also has a TON of other SEO features like:
- Content optimization tool
- Keyword research tool
- Rank tracking
- On-page SEO checker
Their interface is clean and easy to navigate through all their SEO tools.
Semrush Pricing: $119.95-$449.95 per month
Moz Link Explorer
Moz Link Explorer is the third-best backlink analysis tool on the market.
Moz Link Explorer is the flagship feature of Moz Pro.
Moz Pricing: $99-$599 per month
Respona
Respona is a powerful link building outreach platform for agencies and in-house teams.
There are LOTS of pre-built outreach campaigns to choose from.
They include:
- Skyscraper Technique – you input competitor blog posts, they give you a list of URLs linking to them.
- Podcast Outreach – you input a person in your industry, they give you all the podcasts they’ve been featured on.
- Resource pages – you input keywords, they give you top resource listicles on those topics.
- Product Review – you input competitor domain names, they give you a list of blogs that recently reviewed them.
- Guest Post – you input topics, they give you a list of sites accepting guest blog posts.
Once you choose a template, it walks you through the entire process – from finding high-quality opportunities and getting contact information to sending personalized emails.
Respona Pricing
It offers a free 14-day trial you can use to test out their backlinks software. Paid plans include:
- Starter: $99 per month
- Unlimited: $399 per month
Help A Reporter Out (HARO)
HARO isn’t a traditional link building software.
It’s a platform that connects journalists with sources who can share their expertise on a particular topic.
You can connect with bloggers and journalists who need sources while getting high-authority backlinks and exposure for yourself.
Both big and small media outlets use the platform. Some of the most popular ones are Fox News, The New York Times, and Mashable.
Sources receive three HARO emails every day, Monday to Friday. And each HARO email contains a list of requests from journalists looking for sources who can share insights for an article.
All you need to do to respond to a source request is send a reply (called a pitch) to the provided email address.
If a journalist decides to use your response, they’ll include it in their article as a quote (or quotes).
And they’ll typically include a backlink to your site.
HARO Pricing
It offers their Basic plan for free. Paid plans include:
- Standard: $19 per month
- Advanced: $49 per month
- Premium: $149 per month
Pitchbox
Pitchbox is an all-in-one backlink tool for both agencies and in-house SEOs.
It offers 20 ways to find prospects and grab contact info.
Built-in templates for popular link building techniques such as broken link building and resource page outreach help you launch campaigns quickly.
Pitchbox stores details about your link building prospects. Including emails, tasks, and more.
You can use it to set up email outreach sequences for link building and automate follow-ups.
The platform also offers an inbox for you to review and respond to all the replies you get.
Finally, you can take advantage of Pitchbox’s detailed reports.
To get insights into campaign performance and identify which link building strategies perform better than others.
Pitchbox Pricing
It offers two paid plans:
- Professional: $550 per month
- Enterprise: $1,500 per month
Hunter
Hunter is an all-in-one email outreach platform you can use to set up and manage your link building outreach campaigns.
Its core products include:
- Email Verifier: Prevents email bounces by checking whether the email addresses on your list are valid.
- Email Finder: Helps you find the email address of any prospect. All you need to do is enter their name and website domain name.
- Campaigns: Handles cold email outreach with automated follow-ups, personalization, custom sending schedules, and more.
- Domain Search: Reveals the email addresses associated with any website. This can be helpful if you’re not exactly sure who you should be contacting at a target site.
Hunter also offers a Chrome extension you can use to find email addresses behind the websites you’re browsing.
And there’s a Google Sheets add-on that can be quite handy if you typically build prospect lists in Google Sheets.
Hunter Pricing
It offers a limited free plan. And the following paid plans:
- Starter: $49 per month
- Growth: $149 per month
- Business: $499 per month
BuzzStream
BuzzStream is an outreach CRM that helps you stay organized with link building.
You can use BuzzStream to identify link building prospects. And find their contact details.
It can even build a list of prospects for you. All you need to do is input a list of search queries.
BuzzStream will then find relevant sites and identify the right people to contact at each site.
Once you have a list of prospects you’d like to contact about backlink opportunities, you can use the email outreach feature to send personalized emails to each prospect.
Plus, an option to set up automated follow-up emails to increase the chances of getting a response.
It also offers detailed reporting to help you review team performance, understand which emails and subject lines are performing the best, and see campaign progress at a glance.
BuzzStream Pricing
It offers a free 14-day trial you can use to see if the software is the right fit for your needs. Pricing plans include:
- Starter: $24 per month
- Growth: $124 per month
- Professional: $299 per month
- Custom: $999 per month
BuzzSumo
Even though BuzzSumo is designed for content marketing, many SEO experts use it too.
It is a brand monitoring and content discovery tool that includes a number of handy features for link builders.
First, you can use BuzzSumo to uncover and track domain names in your niche that link to your competitor’s content.
It lets you export these domain names to a spreadsheet to use in your own link building outreach campaigns.
Finally, you can use BuzzSumo to track your own backlinks and get alerted when you get a new backlink.
BuzzSumo Pricing
It has a number of paid plans:
- Basic: $119 per month
- Content Creation: $249 per month
- PR & Comms: $249 per month
- Suite: $499 per month
- Enterprise: $999 per month
All paid plans come with a free 30-day trial.
BacklinkGap
It is a backlink monitoring tool that helps you track new and lost backlinks.
You can also use BacklinkGap to analyze your backlink profile. To learn which websites link to you, what kind of anchor text they’re using, and more.
With BacklinkGap, you can quickly identify broken links.
It can also help you uncover potentially toxic backlinks.
And you have the option to add tags and notes to backlink opportunities to associate them with specific campaigns.
BacklinkGap also lets you generate and share reports through a link.
BacklinkGap Pricing
The software offers a limited free plan. Paid plans include:
- Starter: $19 per month
- Pro: $39 per month
- Business: $199 per month
Bonus: Google
Google search operators are the easiest way to find link building opportunities.
Here are the most useful operators for link building:
- “inurl:” – only returns results with specific words or phrases in the URL.
- “intext:” – specifies keywords or phrases mentioned in the content.
- “intitle:” – same as intext, but only applies to the results’ titles.
Google Pricing: Free
How do you choose the best link building tool for you?
Here’s a quick checklist to help you decide:
- “How important is reporting?” – Are you reporting to clients? If so, detailed and nice-looking reporting features can be massively helpful.
- “What budget do I have to work with?” – If you’re so shoestring that you can’t afford shoestrings, Google searches are always free. That said, outreach tools usually make the process faster and more efficient.
- “How many backlinks can I see?” – Backlink analysis tools like Moz, Semrush, and Ahrefs give you the most competitor backlink data. Others might be cheaper… but you get what you pay for.
- “How many people need to use the tool?” – If you’re the only one who builds backlinks, then you don’t need to worry about user accounts and features designed for teams. But if you do outreach with a team, tools like Semrush or Respona are a must.