How to Get Backlinks: The Complete Guide

Source: Quick Sprout

21 ways to build links in 2019

Do you want to lean how to get backlinks? Here are 21 ways to get links in 2019. It takes hard work and persistence.

It’s always good to get more quality backlinks—the ones that are natural because you have content worth linking to. You can build these backlinks using a few tactics.

Some SEOs engage in risky blackhat tactics, but unless you can operate on a large scale and are fine with getting penalized later on, it’s not particularly profitable.

The other main strategy is to earn backlinks by creating great content and getting it in front of the right people.

Although there haven’t been any new tactics for link building in a while, some proved to more effective than others in 2019. Plus, you can always find ways to improve each of the tactics.

Respond to questions on Quora

Quora is filled with people looking for help. All you have to do is search for keywords related to your industry, and you’ll see hundreds, if not thousands, of questions.

For example, let’s look at the key phrase “content marketing.” With a quick search, I was able to find this question, asking if content marketing actually works.

Respond to the question, and if there is a specific blog post or article within your domain that helps reinforce your answer, you can link to it.

The screenshot above illustrates the idea. It has my answer with the link I provided to a blog post I wrote that covers a few data points relevant to the discussion.

When doing this, make sure you don’t link to your site just to gain a link. You don’t want to spam Quora as it will hurt your reputation. Instead, you want to focus on responding with a great answer and only add a link to your website when it makes sense.

Help a reporter out

You’ve heard of HARO, right? Of course you have, but are you actually on it?

In case you don’t know what HARO is, it is a website where journalist go when they need help.

They post questions, and if you can help them answer any of them, you can get some free press. You can get published on a news website or a magazine like Entrepreneur.com, which makes HARO a great place to pick up high quality backlinks.

You won’t get a ton of links from this site, but the links you do get will help drive traffic as this site links to authoritative sites.

To get these links, all you need to do is spend 30 minutes to an hour on HARO each week.

Find broken links going to resources or products

Broken link building is hard unless you focus on the right type of broken links. A lot of blogs and websites have them, but very few are willing to fix them.

Your best bet is to find resource pages related to your field and to look for broken links within those pages. I’ve found that web masters are more likely to fix broken links on resource pages as they tend to generate more traffic than general blog posts.

To find these broken links and resource pages, you can use a tool called Broken Link Finder.

The tool costs money…but it is worth it.

If you end up using the tool, make sure the keywords you input contain words like “resources” as it will help you find the right type of broken links.

Industry forums

Have you ever used forums to build links? If you haven’t, why not?

Chances are you are afraid of the Penguin penalty. Assuming you are participating only on relevant forums and aren’t spamming them, you shouldn’t have much to worry about.

For example, Warrior Forum and a few other marketing forums talk about Quick Sprout. Every time they do, I see an influx of 300 to 700 visitors. It’s not too shabby for just one link.

When responding to questions on forums, use the same principles as you do when responding to questions on Quora: respond to questions and link to your website when it makes sense.

Again, don’t spam these forums. Only respond when it makes sense, and make sure your answer is thorough.

When adding a link to your website, avoid using rich anchor text.

Link to relevant sites

I know this may sound crazy, but linking to other relevant sites within your own content is a great way to build links.

For example, I recently published a post on competitive auditing that linked to over 20 websites.

Before I published the post, I visited each of those websites and grabbed an email address of someone who works there. If I couldn’t find an email address of a specific employee in the marketing department, I looked for an email address on the contact pages of these sites.

I then sent out a personalized email to each of those websites:

Hey [person’s name],

I just wanted to let you know that I think [insert their website] is such a great resource that I had to mention it in my latest blog post [link to your blog post].

I know you are busy, so no need to reply. But if you get a spare moment, check out the post. If you like it, feel free to tweet it out.

Thanks,

[your name]

Don’t expect people to link back to your website. Some people will do it naturally, but that number will be less than 5%. Roughly 20%-25% of the people you email will tweet out your post. This action will bring more visitors to your website, and a portion of those visitors may end up linking back to you.

Round-up posts

Do you know what some of the most popular and linked to posts are on the Internet? It’s round-up posts.

If you aren’t familiar with round-up posts, read this one on link building, in which 50 experts share tips on how to build links.

That post generated over 383 social shares and 34 backlinks according to Ahrefs. That’s not bad for a round-up post.

How do you go about creating one of these posts? All you have to do is find a bunch of experts in your field and email them asking one question. You don’t want to ask them more than one question as it will drastically decrease your response rate.

You also want to find at least 30 experts as round-up posts that don’t contain a large number of experts don’t do very well.

I recommend making a post with at least 50 experts. When emailing these experts, make sure you give them a deadline to respond by. In addition, make sure you email at least twice the number of experts you need to complete your post as about half of them will not respond.

Once you publish your expert round-up, email each expert with an email like this one:

Hey [expert name],

I just wanted to thank you for participating in the expert round-up on [insert the topic of the round-up].

You can find the post at [insert url], and I’ve also included a link to your website.

Feel free to tweet it out and share it with your following.

Thanks for participating.

[insert your name]

Similarly to Backlink tip #5, this action will bring you more visitors from the social web. A portion of those visitors may end up linking back to you.

Track your competitors’ links

Any backlink tool can tell you who is linking to your competition, but very few of them sort these links by freshness.

Cognitive SEO has a tool that shows you the freshness of these links. In other words, it’ll show you who recently linked to your competition. All you have to do is select “Fresh Links” within its dashboard.

As you can see, the Cognitive SEO provides a list of the most recently found backlinks.

You can then take that list and manually hit up each of those sites with an email like this one:

Hey [insert their name],

I was just reading your blog post on [insert the post title and link to it] and noticed that you didn’t link to [insert your URL]. I’m not sure if you are familiar with it, but it can teach your readers about [insert the value their readers will get].

I just thought I would mention it to you because you linked to [insert competitor URL], but you forgot to mention [insert your URL].

Anyways, keep up the great work. I love your content.

Your fan,

[insert your name]

For every 100 such emails you send out, you’ll typically generate 7 to 10 links. It’s not a lot of links, but it adds up.

Invest in a gift for the community

Almost every new business has the same problem: no one knows you. Even if you have a lot to offer, again, no one knows you.

One of the main objectives of the link building tactics we’ll look at in this post is to get attention.

And there are many ways to get the attention of people you don’t know.

The best way, in most cases, is to offer something of value—as big of a value as you can provide.

Here are a few options.

Option #1 – create a photo gallery: Any good blogger knows the importance of having great images in posts.

While some bloggers hire a designer for the most important pictures, it’s inconvenient and not always affordable for less important pictures.

However, most bloggers would gladly exchange a link to a site for a free picture.

That’s why I propose hiring a designer (or taking pictures yourself) and creating a free image gallery. Then, send out the link to the gallery to medium-top bloggers in your niche, explaining that they are free to use them in exchange for a link back.

For example, in the fitness niche, you could take pictures like these:

Spending a few hundred dollars upfront here will not only open doors to other bloggers but get you several dozen really good links.

A final important note is that you should create images around common points in your niche.

For example, if you were in the content marketing niche, you could create custom images for things that are often mentioned such as:

• SEO tools
• SEO rankings
• Reader personas
• Inbound marketing
• The different marketing channels

And so on…

Option #2 – create a free tool: If you’re interested in getting a ton of traffic yourself, on top of links, you can create something for your community of users rather than just bloggers. And that something is a tool.

Tools can be a great way to grow your site and earn backlinks at the same time.

For example, the keyword research tool Keywordtool.io has been linked to by over 3,880 unique domains. Honestly, that’s a relatively simple tool to build or get built.

After a bit of time, you can get links (good ones) that work out to under $1 per link, which is amazing. Add all the traffic that you can also get on top of that, and you can see why tools can be a great thing to make.

The big drawback is that it will take some time to build the tool in the first place, especially if you can’t code it yourself.

Additionally, you’re going to have to promote the tool. Write posts about it in niche forums, subreddits, and on social media.

Option #3 – do original data analysis (or research): One option that I really love, yet almost no one does, is to do original analysis or research.

Look at any good data-driven post—for example, my post about how to win on Facebook.

someone else’s research.

It takes a lot of time and effort to do original research, which is why it’s much easier to link to someone else’s research than to do your own.

You can take advantage of this by providing the research that bloggers in your niche link to.

In that above post, the research was done by Buzzsumo, and I simply analyzed the data that they sent me. Of course, I’m going to give them a few links for that, and it also opens the door for a great relationship.

Find an interesting question always asked in your niche, dig in, and do the research. When you’re done, email the results to the top bloggers in your niche, and give them first dibs.

Guest-posting

Most link building strategies for new sites are fairly slow.

They take consistent effort and deliver consistent results.

But you rarely get thousands of readers and hundreds of links within months unless you do them exceptionally well.

I consider guest-posting an exception to the rule. Even though you have to do it really well to get results, most bloggers have the ability to succeed with it.

And guest-blogging works for you even if you’re brand new. If you have a good pitch, it doesn’t matter what your name is.

When I think of guest-blogging to build up a new site, I think of Danny Iny, who is often referred to as the “Freddy Krueger of guest-posting.”

He got this nickname because he seemed to be everywhere when Firepole Marketing (now Mirasee) first launched.

His main strategy for getting traffic and links was guest-posting. He wrote dozens of guest posts and quickly took Firepole Marketing to the top tier of marketing blogs.

I won’t go into guest-posting in detail here because I’ve done it multiple times before:

The one adaptation that you will have to make, since you’re brand new, is not to start at the top.

Don’t start by pitching to a site like Copyblogger or Forbes. Instead, find a few smaller sites that are more receptive to pitches.

Then, you need to wow them with your post and promote that post as well.

Once you can prove that your writing is great, then you can start pitching to bigger sites, citing your other successes as proof that you’re a serious blogger.

Interview experts

One of the easiest ways to build links is to interview experts. If you email your prospects telling them how great they are and how much you want to interview them, chances are they won’t say no.

I myself get asked to do around four interviews each week, and I never say no. I’ve also emailed dozens of other people with requests for interviews, and it’s also been rare that they said no… this even worked when my blog wasn’t popular.

So, how do you build links when you interview an expert? Well, most experts have a website. So, once you interview them, you can ask them to share the interview with their readers or even tweet and post it on Facebook.

I’ve found that over 90% of the time, people will at least share the interview on Twitter and Facebook, and over 40% of the time, people will link to it from their website. One trick to boosting your link percentage chance is to find out if people…

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