Backlinks are like gold coins in the world of SEO. Looking at the sheer amount of backlinks on some first page results on Google, it is easy to get disheartened.
After all, if you are taking the ethical way, building three thousand backlinks will take years.
Thankfully, while the number of backlinks influence a webpage’s rankings, they are not the sole deciding factor. Besides the number, the relevance and quality of backlinks also matters.
Since it isn’t difficult to understand relevance, and since there is no dearth of websites when you look at any sort of niche, the only realistic thing that you can compete on is the quality of links.
You can work to get links from exclusive, high-quality websites that your competitors haven’t been able to reach. Each link from a high authority website is worth several links from small websites that are still secretly selling links.
So how do you secure links from high authority websites?
Looking at their repute and the ocean of traffic that some of these websites attract, approaching them for a backlink may seem like a futile effort. However, this doesn’t mean that getting links from these websites is absolutely impossible. It just means that if you want a high authority backlink, you need to get creative.
In this article, we will be discussing a few simple yet clever ways that you can use to secure links from high authority websites in your niche.
Let’s begin:
Steal Competitor Links
Regardless of which industry you operate within, there is a good chance that you have a handful of competitors (usually the big players in your industry) that attract links from high authority publications.
Once you have identified these competitors and put them in a list, use a SEO checker to get an overview of their backlink profile.
Here, filter out all the links from the high authority websites.
Now, you know the kind of content that these websites like to link to. You can now create your own unique piece of content, or improve upon the content of your competitors. However, doing the latter is usually more beneficial in cases where a competitor has a lot of backlinks pointing to the same piece of content.
Simply create a better piece of content, or one with a unique point of view, and reach out to the high authority publications to tell them about it.
Yes, you will still ask them to link to your content, but in a subtle manner. Your email should look something like this:
“Hey website owner
I saw that you are linking to <competitor page>. In fact, that’s how I discovered this amazing piece of content.
Since you clearly find such content interesting, I wanted to bring your attention to another similar article I recently published:
<link>
What do you think about it?
Best”
If you have truly outdone your competitor’s content, you should get at least a few positive replies that you can build upon to ask for a backlink to your content.
Get Featured In The News
One of the easiest ways to get several high authority backlinks is to get featured in the news.
Thankfully, now that most news publication houses have their own websites, getting coverage has become much easier than a few years ago.
With that said, in order to get featured, you still have to do something news-worthy.
However, if you have just launched a new website, you can reach out to new publication websites with a PR announcement.
When you are reaching out to specific journalists, it also helps to try to build a relationship with them. Maybe share the results of an original research on a subject of their interest. Maybe tell them about something your company is doing that will help them write a story.
Most journalists aren’t digital marketers and don’t care much about backlinks. As long as you are adding some value to their lives, they would be happy to provide you with a backlink.
Another popular way to get backlinks from news publications is to list yourself as a source of HARO. HARO connects reporters with sources. Whenever a journalist requires an expert resource, they list it on the HARO website.
The sources (you) receive periodical emails that contain the details of the various requirements posted by journalists. Whenever you spot a requirement relevant to you, apply to be featured in that story and work with the journalist.
This will not just help you secure a link, it will also give you a chance to forge a relationship with the journalists. This relationship can potentially help you secure more high authority links in the future.
Guest Posting
Guest posting might not be the most innovative and path breaking strategy on this list but it is surely one of the most effective ways to get a consistent stream of backlinks pointing to your websites.
I personally love guest posting as a link building strategy and appear as a contributor on several websites. Even this article is a guest contribution!
The best part about guest posting is that you not only get a backlink to your website, but also get a chance to present yourself as an authority in front of the audience of another authority in your niche.
However, guest posting is a challenging process. Right from the pitch to the content itself, you will have to ensure multiple aspects of the process are executed with absolute perfection.
Thankfully, I’ve already written an exhaustive guide on the subject. Here it is!
Alternatively, if you find that the process is too time consuming or challenging, you can always opt for professionally managed blogger outreach services that reach out to and secure links from authority blogs in your niche on your behalf.
Contribute To Articles On Authority Websites
This one is very similar to guest posting. The only difference is that instead of targeting blogs owned by bloggers, you are going to target blogs that feature other renowned bloggers as contributors.
In the marketing niche, one example of such a website is Marketingsherpa.com. The website features several marketing experts that regularly contribute to it. In fact, in order to be featured as a blogger on such websites, bloggers often have to commit to a fixed frequency of articles.
Knowing that, after you have identified a few such websites, look for bloggers that write about topics that fall under your area of expertise. Next, reach out to them on a relevant social media platform. In most cases, such conversations happen decisively on LinkedIn.
So find them on a social media platform and reach out to them about contributing your expertise to one of their future articles.
Since you are reaching out on social media instead of email like everyone else, your chances of getting a response should be higher. Moreover, since you are not asking for a link and instead talking about giving value, there is also a good chance that your pitch will be accepted.
Broken Link Building
Most authority websites have to consistently publish a lot of content in order to build and maintain their authority. As a result, a lot of times, the old and already-published content is not updated. Over time, as facts evolve and new facts come to light, even evergreen pieces of content become obsolete if not updated with the latest information.
With broken link building, we help authority websites update such pieces of content while also getting backlinks to our own website. Here’s the step-by-step process:
Step 1: Use an SEO checker to find a resource page that is linking to a lot of websites in your niche.
Step 2: Next, look through the resources to find a ‘dead’ resource. This can be a page that has been taken down, or that is part of a website that is no longer live.
Step 3: Next, use your SEO checker to find all the websites linking to the dead resource.
Step 4: Build your own content resource that is worthy of replacing the dead resource with similarly relevant information.
Step 5: Reach out to the website owners of all the websites linking to the dead resource informing them about the same. Don’t forget to mention your own replacement resource that they can instead link to.
Taking down a link may involve changing the text or removing an entire point in an article, or even removing an entire article. Changing the link destination, however, takes very little effort so you can expect a very high success rate with this strategy.
Conclusion
Getting backlinks is only difficult when you don’t know where to begin. Once you find your first few backlinks, you will find a strategy that suits you best. I hope that the strategies, tips, and tactics shared in this article will help you find your first few backlinks and move your website’s SEO needle in the correct direction.