How to Get Backlinks - Definition, Purpose + 9 Relevant Strategies

The most time-consuming and challenging part of getting backlinks is figuring out how to build them in a way that's acceptable for search engine standards.

As they come from external sources, convincing other website owners to link back to your site in a way that's honest and mutually beneficial can be challenging.

What is Backlink?

The backlink is a link from an outside domain that points to pages on your domain, literarily linking back from their domain to yours.

To a larger scale, your backlink profile is made up of backlinks from external sites (referring domains) that influence the overall strength, relevance, and variety of your domain's backlink profile.

The total number of back links includes many links from the same external site or multiple external sites. Referring domains will link back to your content if it's relevant, authoritative, or helpful in some degree to their own domain.

Why is Backlinking Important?

Backlinks are essential both for search engines and users. From a user's view, they deliver a way for people to find other sources from info on the same or related topics.

For example, if the user is visiting a page about the "best cell phones," he/she may find links out to other carriers, cell phone providers, or user-generated review pages. Links produce a good consumer experience since they send the user directly to additionally desirable information if needed.

For search engines, backlinks determine the page's importance and value. In the past, the number of back links was a sign of a page's popularity.

Today, since the links are evaluated based on different industry-related ranking factors, it's less quantity 'concentrated' and more on the quality of sites from which the links are coming.

Therefore, too many backlinks from many unreliable domains can break the authoritative waves of your domain.

How to Get Backlinks

There are dozens of ranking factors, but back links represent the most important metric for SEO. And there're many proven ways how to create backlinks, to get authoritative websites to link to your webpage.

Here are 9 smart free backlinks strategies on how to create them successfully.

To find broken links on those pages, install the Google Chrome plugin called Check my Links. Using this plugin, you'll quickly discover all 404 pages from this page.

Try to provide some alternatives to replace those links, including your website. Often, this technique will work, but there will be cases when the webmaster refuses to link back to your webpage.

2. Create High-Quality Content

The reliable and consistent on-page SEO method to get plenty of backlinks is to make relevant content on your website that others organically want to link to. You won't be able to get long term, sustainable, and valuable back links if you have nothing valuable for the users.

It's a difficult method since it takes a lot of time to produce useful and interesting content systematically and to sustain it over a long period of time.

Even if you publish high-value content on your website from day one, it's going to take a while for others to notice it and in the meantime, it's easy to get discouraged due to lack of an engaged audience.

The tricky part is providing benefits on a consistent basis over a long enough time to 'earn' an engaged audience that supports your content.

Once you reach that level, you'll see backlinks from other high-value sources start to come in. That's the time when you'll reap the benefits of the work you put in content management.

Until then, you should make content that's interesting, engaging, and helpful, promote it via every possible technique (including social media), and work on every other way to get backlinks

3. Re-publish Old Content

Don't let remarkable content that you created in the past go to history. There're some websites where you can post content which means that articles that you've published on your website can be republished on other sites relevant to your topic with a much larger and diverse following than you.

It allows you to get your content out in front of a larger audience, and the original source of the content will get a link back to acknowledge where it was originally posted.

Authoritative websites where you can republish your content include:

Remember, content syndication can lead to penalization from search engines, but that isn't the case here due to the link back to the original piece of content, acknowledging its origin.

This strategy will also generate social shares and place your content in front of an audience that's interested in your topic, so you'll be gaining valuable external links as well.

4. Guest Blogging

One of best approaches to build a backlink is to guest blog on other website and earn a link back to your webpage in the by-line or add some relevant contextual links to your website by the piece of content.

When you post on someone else's website, you're able to highlight your expertise in front of a new audience and maintain which pieces of your own context you link out to. It's a mutually beneficial relationship since you provide a website with useful content, and they provide you with a high-quality backlink.

Securing guest posting isn't always easy, and you'll likely need to start small and upgrade a portfolio before you 'deserve' guest posts on larger blogs. You need to be persistent, polite, eager, and let the website hosts know what value you have to offer.

RELATED CONTENT:

• On-Page SEO Guide for 2020: Revealed

• What's Digital Marketing: The #1 Guide

• 10 Unique Ways on How to Write Best Meta Description

• SEO Cracked: The Definite Guide

• 13 Killer Online Marketing Tips for SMBs

• Top 17 Free Advertising Strategies of 2020

• 11 Powerful Tricks on How to Skyrocket Etsy Marketing

The more eager you're, the more likely they will be to engage with you. Be courteous, don't get upset or offended if they aren't getting back to you, but be persistent.

At worst they won't respond at all, try another influencer in your niche. If they respond, you'll create some great content from it, they share it on social media, you get some valuable referral traffic from them.

Build a relationship with the influencer, generate some great content, and then work on getting the backlink.

6. Internal Links

Internal linking is pivotal in on-page SEO since it enables you to retain visitors - instead of typing in search query to find additional, relevant info, you provide a means for them to find it on your site.

With a proper internal linking structure, you can help users easily navigate through your website and improve the overall user experience.

There're tools that can automatically build internal links on your blog, especially if you're running WordPress, but you should do it manually. Avoid overloading your pages with internal links, though.

7. HARO

HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a great online resource for generating back links on authoritative news sites. You'll need to sign up as a source, which takes less than a minute, and you'll get three e-mails a day every Monday to Friday. These are the source requests - a list of articles that reporters need information for.

Each one includes a summary, the topic category, and the e-mail address of the journalist. It includes the name of the site where the article will be published, the reporter's deadline, and a description detailing what type of information they need.

For one topic, there can be over a hundred queries by e-mail you receive, and not all of them are relevant to your niche. All you need to do is scan through the list to find ones covering your industry and send a contribution pitch to the reporter's masked e-mail.

In a pitch, you'll include your answer to the journalist's query and your contact info—which includes a link to your site.

There's no guarantee that you'll get a backlink from every single HARO query you answer since the journalist may not use the info you deliver. After all, the journalist receives many responses, and some could be more relevant than others. Still, more often than not, you'll be rewarded with a backlink on a high-ranking website.

8. Infographics

Infographics are the new trend in SEO, and they're a fruitful addition to your content generally. They display information in a visually aesthetic manner that will generate shares online. So, you need a good idea, write short, concise blocks of information, and a good designer to bring it to the audience.

If you want, you can even do it yourself with many available online tools. Next, you want to share your infographic on your social media, and more importantly on sites such as

Visual.ly;

DailyInfoGraphic.com;

AmazingInfoGraphics.com.

Also, you should offer your infographic as a guest post to established bloggers in your niche. When marketed properly, a single infographic has the potential to generate over 100 backlinks.

9. Build Relationships

For good link building, you should build 'strong' relationships. There're bulk of opportunities to build new contacts. You need to begin with niche-related communities: blogs, forums, and social networks such as Facebook or Twitter.

Start contributing with interesting and relevant posts and comments, delivering contextual value to each discussion.

By actively participating in these online communities, you'll not only gain some quality backlinks, but you'll always get access to the newest industry news and be able to connect to some interesting folks that share your content.

Backlinks to Avoid

There're certain links that you should avoid having on your backlink profile.Here're some examples of bad backlinks: