Despite numerous algorithm updates, link building still remains one of the strongest ranking signals used by search engines.
Yet our link building efforts mostly extend to commenting on blogs in the same niche (“nofollow” backlinks with no link juice) or contributing guest posts to simply brag about where we’ve got our content published (under strict scrutiny by Google).
But if you’d like to increase your site’s authority and rank higher than your competitors in search engine result pages (SERPs), you need to build authority backlinks on a consistent basis. In other words, you need to follow effective link building strategies that deliver results.
In this article, we’ll reveal 25 proven techniques to get high-quality backlinks that will help you stay ahead of the competition and rank higher in SERPs.
Table of Contents
1. Publish Evergreen Content
2. Steal Your Competitors’ Backlinks
3. Build Backlinks with Infographics
4. Use Reverse Image Search to Build Backlinks
5. Create Interactive Content
6. Start Your Own Podcast
7. Get Active on Product Hunt
8. Submit Your Site to Startup Directories
9. Build Profile Links
10. Find Backlinks from “Best of” Blog Posts
Conclusion
1. Publish Evergreen Content
Natural links (also called editorial links) are the kind of links Google wants you to build.
Want to know the best way to build links naturally? Publish evergreen content.
Evergreen content is content that stays relevant in the long run. Unlike news articles and posts on trending topics (posts on Fortnite, Pokemon Go, etc.), evergreen posts provide value to the readers a long time after the post was originally published.
Evergreen posts don’t just tend to rank higher on Google, but they also attract a high number of backlinks. In order words, evergreen content is link-worthy content. It’s the type of content that attracts editorial links.
So how do you create evergreen content? Follow these three steps:
- Find keywords with a decent search volume – Use Semrush’s Keyword Magic tool (or any other keyword research tool of your choice) to find keywords with a decent search volume. Make sure the shortlisted keywords are not seasonal and have maintained a good search volume consistently in the last few months.
- Create 10x content – Once you’ve identified the keywords you’d like to target in your post, you need to make sure your content is actually 10 times better than the highest ranking search result for the keywords. This type of content is referred to as 10x content in the SEO community. If your post is only slightly better (1x or 2x better) than the top-ranking post, the chances of it getting outranked are quite high. But when you publish content that is 10x better, like in the case of Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO, it’s tough for your competition to beat you in the SERPs.
- Refresh and relaunch – Just because the post is evergreen and ranking in the top 3 search results, there’s no guarantee it will maintain that status in the long run. Over time, the organic traffic may drop and it may lose its ability to generate links naturally. This is when you need to audit your content and update it with fresh insights to stay relevant. I keep updating and relaunching top-ranking posts on my blog whenever I notice a declining trend in organic traffic. And you should do the same to your evergreen posts in order to maintain their top-ranking status in SERPs.
Bottom line? In order to attract high-quality natural links, publish evergreen blog posts that stay relevant long after you’ve published them.
Evergreen posts are also tough to outrank in SERPs.
Ahrefs published an in-depth post on “evergreen content” in which they explain how difficult it is to outrank Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO for beginner SEO queries because of the insane amount of backlinks the guide has acquired over a period of time.
2. Steal Your Competitors’ Backlinks
In some cases, your evergreen content may not be able to generate authoritative links naturally, or even if it does, it may take a long time to do so.
Without backlinks, you may be able to rank on page 1 for your target keywords, but you’ll find it tough to reach the coveted top 3 spots on Google. As a result, in order to beat your competitors in SERPs, you need to steal their best backlinks.
You can do this with a combination of competitor analysis and blogger outreach. Here’s a quick outline of how you should proceed:
First, check out the top 3 search results for your target keyword terms. You can do this by performing a quick Google search, but since Google rankings fluctuate often, I’d suggest you use an SEO tool like Semrush or Ahrefs to see if these pages have been ranking on top consistently, at least for the last 4-6 months.
Second, you need to publish content that’s just as in-depth and comprehensive, if not more, than that of your organic competitors. As explained previously, create content that is 10 times better than the top-ranking post for your target keyword terms. Add your own unique insights and perspective to make it as link-worthy as possible. Aim at making the post a go-to resource for your audience for that specific topic.
Third, identify your competitors’ backlinks i.e., the backlinks that point to the top-3 ranking pages for your target keywords. You can get this data with Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool.
You’ll view the total number of referring domains and backlinks that point to your competitor URL. Click on the number of backlinks to view the URLs that are linking to your competitor’s page. You can narrow this list down by selecting only “dofollow” and “text” links, and then sorting the domains based on Authority Score (Semrush’s version of domain authority score):
Prepare a spreadsheet of all the URLs that can be potential backlinks for your post. Ignore the URLs where the Authority Score is too low. Repeat the same process for the remaining two competitor URLs.
Once your spreadsheet of link prospects is ready, the final step is to perform an email outreach campaign by sending personalized emails to each publication/blogger who has linked to your competitors. You can find their email addresses by using a tool like FindThatLead or NinjaOutreach.
In your email, make sure you highlight the things that make your content unique and provide reasons as to why you believe your post deserves a link back.
For this specific task, you can use any of these blogger outreach tools.
Not all sites you’ve reached out to will respond positively to your email. But don’t be disheartened. As long as your content is link-worthy and you’ve provided compelling reasons in your email to link back to your content, you should soon be rewarded for your efforts with some high-quality backlinks.
3. Build Backlinks with Infographics
Infographics are not just popular on social media sites such as Pinterest and Reddit. They can also improve your SEO significantly and increase web traffic.
Case in point: Websites that publish infographics see their traffic grow an average of 12% more than sites that don’t.
Yet most people ignore infographics because they wrongly assume that it requires a lot of time and effort to design one or consider it to be an expensive task to outsource.
Here’s the truth: Infographics are remarkably effective in generating high-quality backlinks for free.
You don’t need to be a professional designer either. With free online design tools like Canva, Venngage, and Piktochart, you can create fancy infographics in a matter of minutes.
Another way to create beautiful infographics is to outsource it by hiring professional designers on sites such as Fiverr, Upwork, or if you have a bigger budget, Design Pickle.
Once your infographic is up and ready, it’s time to promote it. Follow these steps:
1. Submit your infographic to infographic submission sites
Here’s a list of sites that allow you to submit your infographics (both free and paid). I’ve also mentioned the domain authority of each of these sites to signify the value of each backlink that you’ll get, so you can prioritize your efforts accordingly:
- Graphs.net (DA – 54)
- Visual.ly (DA – 78)
- InfographicBee (DA – 27)
- Cool Infographics (DA – 60)
- Infographic Journal (DA – 55)
- Submit Infographics (DA – 46)
For more infographic submission sites, check out 40 Infographic Submission Sites to Promote Your Infographic (and Get Backlinks).
2. Reach out to bloggers in your niche and offer them the infographic for free as a guest post
The next step is to identify bloggers and influencers in your niche. You can do this by using a tool like Buzzsumo or any of the blogger outreach tools featured here. Once you’ve identified the bloggers, send them an email informing them about your new infographic and how it can add value to the content they have created on the same topic. If need be, offer to write a unique summary for the infographic.
Everyone loves well-designed, informative infographics and half of the sites you reach out to will gladly accept to include your infographic in one of their articles.
3. Use Siege Media’s Embed Code Generator to generate an embed code for your infographic
Siege Media’s Embed Code Generator allows you to generate embed codes for your infographic. Once the code is generated, all you need to do is copy and paste the code below your infographic.
By generating an embed code for your infographic, you make it easier for others to share and embed your infographic onto their own site. Here’s the best part: every time someone includes your infographic in their content, you get an attribution. Yet another easy way to fetch a contextual backlink.
4. Use Reverse Image Search to Build Backlinks
If you have a decent amount of visual content on your blog (infographics, screenshots, charts, etc.), there is a high possibility that someone on the Internet is using your images without giving proper link attribution.
Luckily, there is an easy way to resolve this issue and get a backlink in return. Just follow these steps:
Step 1: Open a new Google Sheet and list down the URLs of all the important visual assets on your site.
Step 2: Use Google Image Search to find websites that are using your images without attribution. Enter the Image URL in the Google search box and then click on ‘Search by Image’ to find all the websites which are using your image in the “Pages that include matching images” section of the search.
Find out which of these sites are not giving you credit for the image.
Step 3: Send an email to the site owner requesting a link attribution for using your image on their site. You can use the email template below:
Hi [Name],
I’m [Your Name] from [Your Blog].
I noticed that you’ve used one of my images in your post: [insert link to the article].
However, you haven’t included a link back to my website.
I’d really appreciate if you could add a link to my website below the image.
Here’s the link where the image is taken from: [insert your post URL]
Thanks,
[Your Name]
In most cases, you’ll get a quick positive response from the site owners. And just like that, you’ve earned yourself a contextual backlink.
5. Create Interactive Content
Interactive content such as quizzes, polls, and calculators generate a lot of buzz on the Internet these days. No other publication exemplifies this trend more than Buzzfeed. On average, the team at Buzzfeed creates 7.8 quizzes a day and 96% of users who start Buzzfeed quizzes finish them.
Quizzes are not just popular with users, but they also tend to generate a ton of authority backlinks. For example, Buzzfeed’s most popular quiz “What City Should You Actually Live In?” till date has generated over 1,500 backlinks, including links from publications such as Washington Post, TechCrunch, Forbes, Fast Company, and many more.
There are several tools on the web that can help you create your own quizzes and calculators. I’d recommend Outgrow since I’ve used them to create interactive content on my blog, but you can also try Uberflip and ion interactive.
6. Start Your Own Podcast
You can build your link profile by being invited as a special guest on any of the popular podcasts in your niche. That definitely works. But an even better link building strategy is to launch your very own podcast.
Think about it! By having your own podcast, you’ll have more creative control on your content, you don’t need to waste time sending outreach emails to podcasters in your niche and waiting for their response, and more important, podcasting is fun and provides you with an opportunity to build your own personal brand and showcase your expertise.
With free apps like Anchor, it’s now easier than ever to launch your own podcast. In fact, you can start recording an episode using just your smartphone. That said, I do recommend you invest in a good microphone if you’re serious about podcasting.
7. Get Active on Product Hunt
Product Hunt is a place to discover the latest technology creations, websites, mobile apps, and tools that everyone is geeking about. I love spending time on Product Hunt not just to discover cool new products, but also because it’s a great place to have thoughtful discussions with product-loving enthusiasts.
To get a backlink from Product Hunt, you need to create an account on Product Hunt, link to your website, and then be active on the site. You can do this by writing reviews for products you’ve used, leaving your comments on newly launched products, and of course, by upvoting and downvoting products on a regular basis.
Product Hunt has a domain authority of 86 (and it keeps increasing), so it’s worth having an active account.
8. Submit Your Site to Startup Directories
If you’ve just launched your startup, there are tons of startup directories you could submit your site to. Perhaps the most popular startup directory is BetaList, a directory which is focused specifically on early-stage internet startups. The submission is free, but if you’d like to expedite the process and ensure that your startup is listed, then you’ll need to pay a small fee. You can check out their submission criteria here to see how they review the startups.
Even if your startup is not eligible for submission at BetaList, there are lots of other startup directories with high DA which will accept your submission. Here’s a list of 100 startup directories compiled by Ninja Outreach.
9. Build Profile Links
Profile link building is a process where users sign up on sites where they can create a public profile and provide a link to their website.
Several websites which thrive on having an active community allow you to create a public profile where you can feature links to your website and social channels. A few examples are websites such as Kickstarter, Moz, Semrush, and Triberr.
10. Find Backlinks from “Best of” Blog Posts
This particular method of getting backlinks is borrowed from Brian Dean at Backlinko and it’s insanely effective.
Here’s what you need to do:
Step 1: Use these following search strings on Google
- “Best (TOPIC) Blog Year”
- “(TOPIC) blogs to read”
- “My Favorite (TOPIC) blogs”
Any of these above searches will show you a list of “best of” blogs in your selected topic.
Step 2: Create a new Google Doc and add links to any quality blog that you’d like to get a backlink from. Also note down the email addresses of the bloggers you’d be reaching out to. In most cases, you can find them in the contact section. If not, use Ninja Outreach Chrome Extension to find their contact details.
Step 3: Reach out to these blogs via email and present them with a link to your article and ask them if they can include it in one of their weekly/monthly roundup posts.
You can use the below email template to reach out to the bloggers:
Hi [Name],
I’m a digital marketer and regular reader of your blog posts.
I also run the blog at [Your Blog] and today, we published a pretty massive guide on [Subject of Your Blog Post]. I think it might be a good fit for your roundup posts and thought I’d reach out.
Here’s the link to the guide: [Your Post URL]
No worries if it’s not a good fit – I’ll be a regular reader regardless!
Thanks,
[Your Name]
Many of these blogs will also allow you to post a comment along with a link to your website.
One of the easiest and quickest ways to get a backlink is to post thoughtful comments on any of the articles on these blogs that you deem worthy to get a link from. Make sure your comment is THOUGHTFUL. Instead of posting “Great article,” think of creative ways to appreciate the kind of information the author has provided in the article. You may even ask a question.
But you may be thinking that there are blogs which simply don’t allow you to provide a link to your website. They may be using Facebook comment system or Disqus to manage and moderate their comments.
In such cases, the best way to get backlinks would to be use the email outreach method. Though it involves some work, the backlink you’ll eventually generate for your site would be worth the time and effort.
Conclusion
Now that you’ve learned these powerful link building strategies, it’s time to get started and test these techniques out.
I’d also urge you to use a reliable SEO tool to help you in your link building efforts. I recommend Semrush, one of the most popular SEO and competitor analysis tools on the market. With Semrush’s Backlink Analytics feature, you can analyze the backlink profiles of your competitors, identify new link building opportunities, and even identify toxic backlinks and disavow them.
