In the web publishing industry, it is a well-known fact that a better backlink profile will increase your website search ranking.

However, people who are new to web publishing and digital marketing probably never heard of terms like ‘Backlinks’, ‘link building’, or ‘link profile.

In this article, we are going to share with you everything you need to know about backlinks and how to get more backlinks on your site and improve its search performance.

What is a Backlink?

If site ‘A’ links to a page of site ‘B’, it is called a backlink.

Let’s suppose, if you are writing a blog post on your website about ‘Top 10 budget phones’ then you can link to a relevant phone model website.

When it comes to improving your site search performance you need to get those backlinks from other high authority and relevant websites.

Why are Backlinks important?

Many search engines including Google use algorithms to rank web pages in the search results. A web page which has more high authority backlinks will be counted as a more trustworthy page.

Google counts backlinks as a vote of confidence. If more high-quality websites are linking to your page, this page is seen as more trustworthy by Google and it will likely rank it higher in the search results.

Another benefit of backlinks is they give search crawlers a chance to crawl your page quickly. For example, if you publish a blog post and some well-established publication links to your blog post, Google first visits the publication page and when it finds a new link (your blog post), it will crawl and possibly index it quickly.

Of course, you will also get referral traffic from that particular link. If your post gets published in a higher traffic blog then when people are going to read that post they will also see your post linked. Some of the readers might click on your link.

Now you must be wondering, I don’t know anyone who runs a well-established website, who is going to link my articles and why? We have listed some smart ways to improve your site link profile.

We would also recommend checking our post on why are backlinks important for SEO.

How to Build or Earn Backlinks (The Smart Way)?

Let’s start with the basics. You can get backlinks from your social profiles on places like Quora, Twitter, Reddit, etc. There are many such online communities where you can leave a link inside your profile bio.

In the early days of Google, these backlinks could help your site’s search performance. However, the SEO community’s opinion is a little different now.

These backlinks hold little to no value. So, it might be a waste of time. But don’t worry, we have many ideas that we use to help our clients, and we are going to share them with you all one by one.

1. Contact Journalists and Top Bloggers in Your Niche

You need to find out top bloggers and journalists who write about the topics that you cover on your blog. To spread the word about your business, you have to email outreach to journalists and top blogs in your niche.

You can also contact them through social media, it doesn’t matter how you contact them. What matters is that your message gets received by them.

You can simply send them an email via the contact form on their website or you can use tools like Voilanorbert, Thrust.io or Emailfinder.io.

2. Write Testimonials

You can earn quick backlinks by writing testimonials for websites or products you are currently using. Some sites post testimonials on the homepage, a homepage backlink from an authoritative website holds more value than other links.

Every company does not provide a space for review submission directly on their site.

If you don’t find a review location on the site then check the company’s contact information to locate an email address or use a contact form.

After that write an honest review or testimonial about the product or service. They may also give you an input field to enter your website URL, if not then you can use an HTML hyperlink within the review.

If you are not sure about this website link back policy in the testimonial field then you can also confirm with the webmaster.

3. Publish Infographics

According to HubSpot, infographics are liked and shared on social media 3x more than any other type of content.

Infographics are the perfect combination of visuals and text. More importantly, good infographics have the ability to make your content go viral, and get you backlinks from high-authority websites which will boost your site’s overall SEO.

The question is how do you create interesting and visually appealing infographics?

You could use BuzzSumo to discover some of the infographics that have gone viral on social media.

Once you have an idea about what kind of infographic you want. You can hire designers through Dribble, Fiverr, or Upwork and show them the design and information you want to include in your infographics.

A well-designed infographic could cost you from $100 – $300. However, consider this, if you get 10 – 20 backlinks to your website, it won’t be a bad deal.

4. Broken Link Building

Broken Link Building is the practice of building backlinks by replacing links to 404 pages with a working link to a target website.

For example, if you visit a relevant website where you see a link which is linking a page which is no longer available then you will likely see a 404 error page.

This broken link-building method involves getting in touch with webmasters to report those broken links on their sites. When you contact them to report a dead link on their page, you can then show them your page as an alternative resource they can link to.

Of course, this link should be of higher relevance and quality.

You can use these queries on Google to find out relevant websites.

your keyword + links
your keywords + resources
keywords inurl:links

Once you have a list of relevant websites visit them one by one. You can use a Google Chrome extension Check My Links to find out dead links on the page.

If you find a dead link on the page then find the webmaster’s email through their contact page and report this dead link. You should then offer them a replacement link (your site).

5. Publish Articles as a Guest on other Blogs

As it is apparent from this heading, you have to contact other blogs in your niche and ask them for permission to write a guest post on their blog.

It sounds so simple but it takes a lot of testing to find out an approach that works best for you.

As a webmaster, I get these guest post requests on my email all the time. Do I even pay any attention to them? Rarely! However, if someone wants to publish an article that is genuinely helpful to my blog readers, I will be more than happy to give them permission to write a guest post.

First, let’s find relevant blogs that are willing to accept your blog post. You can use these queries on Google:

keyword + inurl:write-for-us
Keyword + guest-posts
Keyword + inurl:guest-post-guidelines
Keyword + become a contributor
Keyword + bloggers wanted
Keyword + submit an article
Keyword + want to write for
Keyword + contribute
Keyword + become an author
Keyword + guest post by
Keyword + now accepting guest posts

Once you find a blog then you should approach them individually and ask for a guest post permission. However, please don’t send them generic post ideas like “Top 10 Things”, “Best of” or such collection posts.

Instead pitch them a genuine idea such as a success story of a client you helped, a research-based article or a technical perspective on anything.

When you are reaching out to the webmaster, always be polite and talk more about them. Everyone likes to be praised, it’s just human nature. Be genuine, and talk to them like you would to a colleague.

If you need help with your own link-building strategy please get in touch with us.