Search engine optimization (SEO) is a well-known tactic for increasing your website’s visibility to your target audience. The process entails enhancing each element in your domain for easier crawling and indexing. With this, your pages are more likely to be displayed at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant queries.

Search engines, like Google and Bing, use keywords and links to determine the quality of a web page and its content. Optimizing for keywords is relatively straightforward since you just have to make sure that you seamlessly incorporate relevant words and phrases into your website. The latter, on the other hand, requires more time and resources.

One of the strategies that prioritize the optimization of links to your site’s advantage is link building. This practice involves acquiring backlinks, which are hyperlinks from other websites that direct users to your domain. What are backlinks?

Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are crucial to your SEO efforts. Here are the reasons why you should focus on getting more of them:

1. Rank High on Search Engines

As mentioned above, search engines continue to use links to assess the quality of a website and its pages. This is because inbound links are considered as votes of confidence in your content.

The premise is that your domain is a credible source of information if it has a lot of backlinks. If several websites refer to your content when publishing their own blog posts, you’ll gain a favorable position in Google and Bing.

2. Direct Traffic to Your Site

When looking for answers to their queries, web users are less inclined to look at the third or fourth, let alone the twentieth result page. The farthest most people would go to is the second page.

For instance, if you’re looking for different techniques used for cooking fish, you’ll immediately get a list of answers in the first few links presented to you. You may open around two or three links, skim through the content, and stick to the one that provides comprehensive information. You might not even consider the other results since you can find solutions just below the search box.

This is how most, if not all, people use search engines. To boost your site’s traffic, you should aim to acquire more backlinks and gain a spot on the coveted first page of the SERPs.

3. Improve Brand Awareness

The best thing about SEO is that it allows small businesses to level the marketing field. Unlike traditional methods that entail substantial capital and resources, SEO is more budget-friendly. With this, startups and budding enterprises can take advantage of the web’s global yet targeted reach.

Aside from helping your website rise up the SERPs, link building can help you grow your business by introducing potential customers to your brand. Remember, backlinks come from other websites. With this, the referring domain actually introduces your brand to their readers when they publish your link.

That’s why you should reach out to potential backlink sources that are related to your industry. This is because they’ve already established a following among people who are most likely to purchase the products and services you offer. These web users have expressed interest in the industry by subscribing to these blogs, so you increase the chances of conversions when they’re introduced to your company.

4. Acquire Referral Traffic

On top of getting a favorable spot in the SERPs, you can also gain referral traffic through backlinks. A referral pertains to the people who make their way into your website from other sites without using search engines.

For instance, promoting your content on social media can lead to an increase in referral traffic when your followers click on your link and reach your domain. Although your popularity on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest won’t affect your SEO rank directly, they can help you improve your brand’s visibility to your target audience and earn referrals.

5. Boost Brand Authority and Credibility

People perceive sites with a lot of backlinks and are featured on the first page of the SERPs as leaders in their niche. The implication is that these brands are the ones used as references by other websites, so they must be publishing accurate and relevant information.

Getting a high rank in search engines can help you establish your authority and credibility in your industry.

6. Establish Relationships in Your Niche

Link building involves reaching out to potential backlink sources and persuading them to publish your link. More than merely contacting these websites for the sake of an inbound link, though, you should aim to build a relationship with them.

This means that you ought to put them first and offer something valuable to their readers. Think of the referral traffic as a bonus. With this, you’re giving yourself a regular backlink source rather than just getting one chance and having to find another domain that’ll publish your link.

7. Build Links Easily

As with any other venture, the most challenging part of link building is the first few steps–where you have to reach out to prospects and get your backlink published. Nonetheless, once you’ve successfully gotten your content out there, you can keep the ball rolling and build links easily.

This is particularly true when you acquire an inbound link from a high-authority source since they can pass their link juice and credibility through their recommendation. Acquiring even just one backlink from a website that’s considered a leader in your industry can significantly boost your ranking on search engines.

Tips To Gain More Backlinks For Your Website

Now that you know the importance of acquiring backlinks for your website, you should plan out your link building campaign. Here are some tips to help you gain more links:

1. Craft Awesome Guest Posts

Guest posting is one of the well-known methods for increasing backlinks. The process entails creating content and incorporating your links since these articles will be published on another website.

With this, you have to make sure that every guest post you send out should be engaging, relevant, and entertaining. Think of these contributions as a sampler for the publishing domain’s readers on the type of content you produce as well as your writing style.

These are the steps to start your guest posting strategy:

• Find Sites That Accept Guest Posts - Do a quick search on websites that accept third-party contributions. You can type in your keyword + possible variations of the phrase “guest post” used by sites, such as “become a contributor,” “submit an article,” or “contribute.”
• Determine the Target Audience - Once you have a list of potential backlink sources, you should identify the type of readers that they have. Reading the domain’s blog posts and comments sections can provide insight into the audience that you’ll be writing for.
• List Relevant Blog Topics - You also have to create a list of blog topics that are relevant to the publishing domain. Make sure, though, that you can incorporate your link seamlessly into the content with the right context. For instance, if you sell kitchenware and you’re planning to reach out to a recipe blog, you can insert your backlink in one of the must-have appliances when preparing a dish.
• Create a Convincing Pitch - Before writing your guest post, you should contact the publishing domain and confirm that they’ll feature your article as well as your link. This way, you don’t waste time crafting a personalized blog post that’ll only end up in the recycle bin.

       When creating your pitch, you should focus on the value that your content can provide the publisher’s readers to increase the chances for approval.

• Write a Publish-Worthy Post - Once you get the go signal, you should give your best when writing the guest post. This might even mean that you should set high editorial standards for it compared to content that you publish on your own domain.

Make sure to still infuse the guest post with your personality and tone so that you can entice potential subscribers to your website.

Follow Up on Your Article’s Status - After submitting your guest post, you should ask for feedback on the things that need to be edited and other necessary improvements. If the publisher says that the content is approved, ask when it’ll be live on the blog. Don’t forget to thank the referring domain for the backlink after your article has been published.

2. Be a Source of Original Information

Another way to naturally acquire backlinks is to provide first-hand information about relevant topics in your industry. This way, you can be sure that your content is original and unique.

One of the best methods is to conduct research on your current consumer or reader base. While you may be thinking that your subscribers might not offer holistic insight into the habits of customers in your industry, they’re still considered a sample population of buyers.

Create a survey and have them share their opinions on significant subjects in your niche. Then, you can publish a comprehensive blog post about the data that you collected and the possibilities that it entails. You can also do a series on the research to stretch your content.

You can even publish the information using different media formats, such as infographics and videos. These visuals allow you to post extensive data while still enabling readers to easily digest the knowledge.

3. Check Your Competitor’s Backlink Profile

If you feel that you’re running out of link building ideas, you can turn to your competitors for inspiration. Chances are, they have backlink sources that don’t link to your website. You can take a look at their backlink profiles using specialized tools and see which sites you haven’t tapped yet.

Spy on your SEO rivals by subscribing to their email newsletters and following them on social media. This way, you can be one of the first to know about the type of content they’re publishing as well as the marketing tactics that are effective for them.

You can even check broken pages from your competitors and identify which websites are linking to them. Then, look for similar content that you can propose as a replacement for these missing pages. By doing this, you can provide value to the backlink source since they’ll be eager to avoid directing their readers to errors.

4. Build Links Internally

Link building isn’t just something that you do externally. You should also incorporate internal links in your blog posts to help web visitors navigate your website. Creating a solid internal linking structure can also boost user experience.

You can find SEO tools that can help you create links internally, but you should also conduct a manual audit just in case some hyperlinks are placed in the wrong context. Additionally, make sure that you don’t overdo this as search engines might consider it as link spamming, which may earn you a penalty, damaging your ranking.

5. Create A Testimonial

A testimonial is also an excellent and relatively straightforward source of backlink. You may already be using some tools that are helpful to businesses in your industry. You can write a review about your experience with the equipment or software, then reach out to the company to have it published along with your backlink.

Most of the time, these enterprises will be glad to have another brand support their products and services, especially business-to-business (B2B) firms. Also, you should be mindful of the feedback that you submit. Be sincere and specific about your experience to help others who are thinking about purchasing from the company.

If you didn’t enjoy the merchandise or it didn’t help your business, then you shouldn’t even attempt to write a testimonial. Don’t associate your brand with products and services that you don’t believe in as you’ll only damage other consumers’ perceptions of your enterprise.

Conclusion

Backlinks remain to be a crucial ranking factor used by search engines to gauge the quality of a website and its content. For your digital marketing strategy, you should focus on gaining more inbound links to acquire a favorable spot in the SERPs, boosting your visibility to your target audience.

Also, Read- Some effective ways to build backlinks