Top 8 strategies for building backlinks and boosting Google ranking

External links are an extremely important factor in Google ranking. When another website puts up links to your content on their website, it speaks of your credibility, expertise, and authority on a particular subject. Google acknowledges that and rewards your website with a better ranking.

But link building takes time as it involves research, and results also take time to show. 49% of marketers⁽¹⁾ feel that it takes 1-3 months, and 30% feel that it can take 3-6 months for the links to have an impact on rankings.

Which means, begin now!

Here are our top 8 strategies for building backlinks

• Build high-quality, shareable content that everyone wants to link to - 

• Analyze competitor’s backlink profile –

It is easy to find out your competitors’ backlinks by simply pasting the URL in any backlink checker tool (e.g., SEMrush, Ahrefs, and many other free tools). Once you get a list, you could spend some time identifying websites that have high authority. Then, connect with the website owner to find out if they would like to link their page with your website. The next step would be to identify your competitor's broken backlinks and contact the host site, offering them your link instead. 

• Reclaiming your lost backlinks  –

Losing backlinks is common, but it must be addressed. Site audit tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs can help you get a list of lost backlinks. Next, you can connect with the site owner and ask them to either add your link on another page if the original page is deleted or restore the link if it has been deleted.

• Guest-blogging  –

If you have the expertise, share it on related platforms in the form of guest blogging. First, identify those platforms, with your focus on high-authority, credible sites only. To search for the website, type the keyword that is specific to your industry and type ‘write for us’ or ‘submit a guest post’ in the Google search field. This will give you results for the sites that are calling for guest posts.

Check the domain authority of these websites using free tools from Ahrefs or Moz. A bit of research is always good for understanding the format and focus of the content on such sites. Then, put up a proposal for your blogs, mentioning the uniqueness and value addition of your blog

• Listing your business on online directories  –

Listing your business in online directories is the simplest way to increase visibility and build backlinks. Look for directories that are specific to your industry. You should include essential details such as name, address, and phone number when creating the listing. Additionally, details like reviews, photos, and ratings are equally important.

• Turning unlinked mentions into backlinks  –

Often, blogs and posts may mention your brand name but not add a link. First, you will have to find out about those mentions using brand monitoring tools (such as Google Alerts, Mention, HubSpot, SproutSocial, and Hootsuite), which will give you an alert in such cases. Then, connect with the author to add a link to the mention, emphasizing that it will benefit the reader as well.

• Leveraging on membership of associations and communities –

Leverage associations in your field and communities on social media to share thought leadership and insights, along with relevant links. It also allows you to place your website link on their page (possibly on the Members page).

• Disavowing bad backlinks –

Over a period of time, you may end up with links for which you are penalized, and which lower your website ranking (these could be manipulative links or paid links). For finding these low-quality backlinks, first, check for any notifications from Google Search Console, or try to take a quick look at all backlinks and judge if they are worthy of keeping. Once you have identified these backlinks, use the Google disavow tool to disavow that link so that Google does not consider it when determining the ranking of your website.

5 Things to avoid when building backlinks, as they can directly or indirectly affect ranking

• Too many backlinks that don’t make sense or are not related to your business

• • Rampant posting of your links on discussion forums or comment boxes
  • Buying backlinks in bulk
  • Creating backlinks on low-authority websites
  • Creating only backlinks to your home page (rather, create backlinks to various services that will truly benefit a reader).

The crux of backlinks is that they must be built with the pure intention of increasing your brand’s visibility for the sake of benefiting readers. When done right, Google recognizes your website for the value it is offering, and that means better ranking.

Reference and Citation-

1. https://aira.net/state-of-link-building/the-impact-of-link-building/