Backlinks remain one of the most important ranking factors for SEO in 2023. While link-building strategies have evolved over the years, creating high-quality, relevant content and conducting strategic outreach are tried and true ways to earn powerful backlinks.
Why Backlinks Must Be High-Quality for Guest Posting
Backlinks remain one of the more important ranking signals for search engines because sites with fewer incoming links see far less organic traffic. However, low-quality and irrelevant backlinks can harm a site’s search performance. That’s why backlink sources need to be highly targeted.
Having contextual backlinks from websites in the same industry shows greater relevance to search engines, versus links from generic, unaffiliated websites. Highly targeted backlinks send positive signals that the linked content is authoritative, relevant, and reliable for searchers. Essentially, the more relevant the referring sites are to the subject matter, the more weight the search engines give those backlinks for that site’s rankings in search results.
Selecting the right sites is crucial for earning backlinks that will truly boost a site higher in the SERPs.
Create Compelling, Useful Content
As any good link building company UK knows, the foundation of any good link-building campaign is creating content that people want to read and share. This applies both to content you publish on your own website and blog, as well as content you publish on third-party sites.
The content should provide value to your target audience by educating, informing, entertaining, or inspiring them, as well as meeting the content guidelines for the placement site. This is another reason why if you are utilizing a guest post strategy, it is important to work with a site that fits your niche, as it will be very difficult to create content that’s a good fit for both you and the placement if the site is in a different industry.
Focus on topics and keywords that have high search volume and that align with your overall content and SEO strategies. Long-form content tends to attract more links, as there is more meaty content for sites to potentially reference. Infographics, research reports, ultimate guides, and interviews with industry experts are all excellent options for linkable assets.
Promote Your Content
Once you publish your content, the next step is to actively promote it to increase visibility and link-earning potential. Distribute links to the content through your social media channels, email lists, PR outreach, and any other available promotion avenues. If you are working with a third-party blogger, share the link to the content and ask them to do the same on their own social networks.
Look for relevant online communities and groups such as Reddit, Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups, forums, etc. where you can share your content to spark discussion. Engage with commenters and be an active community member to build interest. Pitch guest posting opportunities to build more links to your content. Consider paid promotions like social media ads or native advertising campaigns that can amplify content reach.
PR outreach is another impactful promotion tactic. Create a media kit with a press release to pitch your content and offer yourself commentary and interviews. Distribute your content to industry influencers and analysts who can share your data and stats with their audiences as well.
You can also promote your content by contributing quotes and statistics to other relevant articles and pitches. Reporters are always looking for expert perspectives to include. Become a valuable resource for writers in your niche by providing useful stats and expanding on relevant topics.
Conduct Outreach Campaigns
The most effective way to get high authority backlinks when guest posting or similar is to directly pitch websites and request links. But blanket outreach campaigns are unlikely to produce results. You need to be highly targeted.
Start by researching and identifying websites you want backlinks from. Group them into categories, like industry publications, bloggers/influencers, vendors/partners, etc. Look for sites that have linked to similar content as yours.
Craft personalized outreach emails for the site owners and editors. Communicate why you think their audience would benefit from your content and be clear about your link request, whether you want a link insertion or to publish content on their site that contains a link.
Follow up multiple times when necessary.
Relationship Building
The most valuable backlinks come from long-term relationships with site owners, not one-off outreach efforts. Use your initial content and link requests as a way to start an ongoing relationship.
Share their content, provide helpful information, promote their site/products if relevant, and recommend partners and affiliates when possible. This transforms you from a random contact into a trusted connection. In time, backlinks will flow more naturally.
Backlinks remain crucial for SEO, but getting powerful links takes work. By creating awesome content and conducting thoughtful, strategic outreach and relationship building, you can earn backlinks that truly impact search visibility and ranking.
