Let us start with a quick introduction to what backlinks are, this is for those who are new to SEO and are learning. Backlinks in simplest terms are links to your page from outside sources.
These are “inbound” links which are counted as votes by the google algorithm. They not only bring you more traffic but also helps you increase your domain authority and ability to rank higher in search engine result pages (SERP).
While few people think they are not important it is proven that generating backlinks is a major strategy of SEO that should be adhered to.
So now that we know backlinks are important lets discuss how can we get them in 2020.
- Competitor backlinks – First thing you should be doing is looking for your competitors and from where they are getting their inbound links. Ahrefs makes this process very easy to follow and thus making this an easy task.
Look what your competitors are getting linked for, what content of theirs is getting the highest number of links. This will give you an insight of what people are reading and following. It will also give you an idea as to, whom to reach out to for your own content.
- Email outreach – Once you have figured out what kind of content you are going to curate, find sites that feature such content or have such content on their page. If your content matches your competitors, reach out to the sites that you discovered in the backlink research stage. Let the sites know what you are writing about and why linking to your page will be a good addition to their content and helpful to their readers.
- Guest blogging – This a very useful way of generating backlinks as this definitely guarantees good traffic if you manage to guest blog on a reputable site. What is guest blogging though? Simply put, you will be writing content for other websites which will be linking back to you. It’s a great way but not easy. Reputable sites while require guest blogs, they have a large waiting queue for such requests. You can at times be waiting for months to get a reply from they editorial departments.
- Link round ups – There are several pages that do roundup at the end or a week or a month or a quarter, even a year. These pages link out to the best content of a particular topic or genre. Getting into such lists is not easy but rewarding enough. As there is no new content creation just outreach efforts.
- Data content – If you are one of those websites who has primary and original data that can be shared, nothing better. Sites tend to link out more to pages with unique content and statistics. Make sure you have infographics which are easy to read and comprehensible for every individual. Infographics are a very unique plus point which can help you get links faster.
- Broken links – This is a very tedious process but once you hit gold, it is the easiest way to get a backlink. For this be on a constant look out for pages which have linked to sites or pages which are unavailable now. Make sure the sites which were linked match your content. If they do, reach out to the owners and let them now of their broken links and suggest linking out to you. There are several chrome extensions which can help you find broken links on a page.
Lastly, do not try and spam your link on other sites and comment section as this will do you more harm than good. Backlinks are only good if they are coming from a site which has more authority than you and also if your linking looks natural and not spammy.