Today I’m going to give you 8 free ways to build backlinks to your website, ethically, and only using white hat methods.
This is a good idea because obviously the more high quality backlinks your website has, the higher in the search engine results pages you begin to climb – at least that’s the theory.
You don’t have to use all of these 8 strategies, if you master just one then are you gonna do really well.
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Newsjacking
The first strategy I’m going to give you is called Newsjacking.
And this is really effective – for not only link juice, but for overall branding.
Because there is news breaking around the world, across every industry, practically every second of the day, you just find something that will relate to your audience.
You make your brand relevant to the news item.
I’m going to dive into this in a lot more detail in a separate post because it’s an incredibly powerful strategy.
Essentially, you take a piece of breaking news and you attach your brand to it and make your brand relevant to it.
A good example of this; Kate Winslet was staying on Richard Branson’s Island during storm.
Lightning struck and set the house on fire, and Kate Winslet saved Richard Branson’s mother by carrying her out of the building.
As that news broke, the London Fire Brigade caught onto it.
They jumped on board and they offered Kate Winslet firefighter training.
That story went viral because it was shareable and had an emotional hook.
And that’s 2 essential components that you need to make newsjacking work.
Content that is shareable, or even controversial, but has some emotional hook attached is best.
Newsjacking is a very effective way to get your brand out there and get backlinks as a result.
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Quora and Yahoo Answers
The second strategy is to use Quora and Yahoo Answers.
Take the time to answer people’s questions on these websites and give as much detail as you can because people are asking questions here because Google has failed to find the accurate or relevant information for them.
That means you can step in and fill that gap by helping them to solve the problem.
And while you’re giving them the information that they need, also include a link to your website where they can get more information.
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Communities
The third way of building backlinks is through communities.
Get involved with places like Reddit and forums in your niche.
Start networking and make contacts, because these type of communities are full of people you have natural rapport with.
Also take advantage of the ability to put a link in your forum signature.
Contribute high quality posts, become an asset to the community and occasionally provide help with a link to your website.
Obviously don’t spam, outsource or automate this process.
When you contribute helpful information it will help you to establish yourself as an authority figure and someone that they can trust.
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HARO
Keeping with the authority theme, we can also use Help a Reporter Out (HARO).
This is a website that lets you connect with journalists, bloggers and influencers, people who want to interview knowledgeable authority figures experts and you can be one through that website.
It’s free to join and you will get twice daily email digests from reporters who need expert opinions.
If you’re selected they will quote you in their articles and with that comes a backlink to your website – or at the very least a mention of your website, which is almost just as good because it’s a notable mention.
And that helps your overall SEO, even if your blog is just mentioned in a news article.
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Repurposing
The fifth strategy that I’ve got for you is repurposing content.
I do this almost every day.
You can take one of your blog posts and turn that into other formats.
For example, you could turn it into a video, or you could turn it into a podcast, or into a PDF.
No matter what format you’re repurposing content to, you can link to your website or link to the original version.
This creates another level of white hat backlinks to your website.
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Guest Blogging
Then the sixth one that I’ve got for you is guest blogging.
You contribute original high-quality blog posts to other people’s websites.
Most sites will allow you to put a link to your own website either inside the article, which is what I would recommend, or in the author bio box at the bottom.
If you can get a link inside the actual body of the article and high up on the page, I would recommend you do that instead of inside the author box because it will get a higher Click Through Rate (CTR) and Google places more value on links that are higher on a page.
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Blog Commenting
The seventh method that I’ve got for you is blog commenting.
This is a very common and popular method of getting backlinks to a website.
And it works really well because you steadily increase the number of backlinks to your website overtime.
If you were going to comment on other people’s blog posts I would absolutely make sure that you contribute insightful and meaningful comment.
Do not spam, do not outsource, and not automate it in anyway. Keep it real and provide high value, original content and meaningful insights and opinion that are relevant to the blog post that you’re commenting on.
Add value to the discussion.
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Replace Broken Links
Now for number eight, this is the final one that I’ve got for you.
It is replace broken links.
You’re going to find broken links on other blogs that are relevant to your content.
How it works; you contact bloggers explaining that you’ve found a broken link on their website and you just happen to have a replacement.
That replacement will be a piece of your content.
To find broken links, use one of the many free backlink checkers to crawl through your favourite blogs.
It might be worth reminding the blogger that Google does not like broken links and neither will their readers, and your replacement fills that gap to keep Google and readers happy.
In a lot of instances bloggers and webmasters will be thankful to you because you’re helping them out with their SEO by delivering value.
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Final Thoughts
So there you go, that’s eight free ways to build more backlinks to your website.
Hopefully you can see just how easy this stuff is, because even if you just master one of these methods you can do well right.
Anyone can do this, no matter what level you are at and no matter what kind of experience you have.
You now have 8 strategies to easily build backlinks that steadily increases over time and get an increasingly higher position in the search engines as a result.