21 Inbound Link Building Strategies For SEO

It was very easy to build backlinks in the past because at that time the quantity of links mattered, not the quality.

After fully rolling out of Google’s penguin algorithm update on September 16, 2016, the quality of links matters much more than the quantity and Google & other search engines started counting backlinks as votes. 

In this blog we are going to let you know about 21 link building strategies that can help you to build some useful backlinks. 

but before we go ahead we’d like to remind you…

What is link building?

When we talk about SEO then link building is aimed at increasing the number of inbound links to your website which helps your web page to rank high on SERP(Search Engine Result Page).

Link Building is One of the Most Important Google Ranking Factors.

What is the impact of link building in SEO?

Link Building helps in Increasing some metrics like DR (Domine rating), PR (Page ranking), PA (Page Authority),  DA (Domain Authority), Alexa ranking and more which helps in SEO. It also helps Search Engine’s Crawler to find your web pages.

Link building benefits your site but it can harm your site as well. After fully rolling out of Google’s Penguin algorithm update it was clear that the quality of the inbound link matters.  

What is a Quality Inbound Link?

Getting a backlink from an authoritative website which has a reputation for producing content that people trust is considered as a Quality Inbound Link.

But why ?

Let’s take an example, If a normal person tells you that the food of a place is good, then you will not have that much trust in his words, but if this thing is told by Sanjeev Kapoor (famous celebrity chef) to you, then you would easily believe his words because he has some authority and people trust in his field. In the same way when a crawler visits a site and finds a backlink of your site then the crawler will see the reputation of that site in this field and accordingly rank your site in SERP.

How to get Quality backlink? 

To get a quality backlink you have to build some reputation in your niche and have to build some content which is fresh and unique. 

There are many strategies to build links and here in Digital Marketing Recipes we are going to show you how.

21 link building strategies that helps you to gain quality backlinks

Here is the List of link Building Strategies

1. Guest Posting or Blogging 
2. Find Broken Links 
3. Q&A –  Best & Simple
4. Blog Commenting 
5. Redirect Expired Domain
6. Brain Dean’s Skyscraper Technique
7. Reclaim Links from Stolen Images 
8. Reclaim Link By Using Google Alerts 
9. Experts Roundup 
10. Interview an expert 
11. Create compelling Infographic
12. Press release
13. Support Charities And Get A Backlink
14. Create Useful Tools On Your Website
15. Competitor Backlink Analysis 
16. Reciprocal Link Building Strategy 
17. Find Broken Link On Wikipedia 
18. Event Link Building
19. Check Your Email Regularly
20. Web Directory 
21. Research Report And Case Studies

Let’s know a little about them. 

1. Guest Posting or Blogging

Writing a blog for another website in order to attract some traffic and get backlink is called guest posting. It is also called Guest Blogging. This was one of the best and effective link building strategies in SEO. Guest posting on the website of your niche can help you to get a quality backlink. 

How to Find sites of your niche?

Finding a website for guest posting might take your time. Here are some Google search terms that you can use to find one. 

1. “Your niche”+”Guest post”
2. “Your niche”+”write for us”
3. “Your niche”+”submit a guest post”
4. “Your niche”+”submit an article”
5. “Your niche”+”contribute guest post”
6. “Your niche”+”become a guest bloggers”
7. “Your niche”+”contributor guidelines”

You can search these teams on google by adding your niche. It may help you to find different websites in your niche. 

Pro Tip: To check the authority of the site you can use Moz extension. 

After finding some Good guest posting sites, the next step is to outreach the publisher of that website. 

How to outreach ?

Before outreaching the site you have to see what type of content that site needs. Then create the topics around that content and Email it to the editor of the site.

But this is not enough. Your outreach email should be eye catchy and to the point so that it does not take much time of the publisher and he can read it completely.

Here is a format which you can use for writing an outreach email.

Hey, {{name}}!

I’m a huge fan of {{their blog}}. I just wanted to reach out because I’ve really been enjoying your writing. In fact, I accomplished {{something cool}} from reading your blog post: {{link to their blog post}}.

I know you’re busy, so I won’t waste your time. I’m reaching out because I had some ideas I think the {{their blog name}} audience would positively love, and I was wondering if you’d be open to a guest blog post.

Here are the titles:

{{Title 1}}

{{Title 2}}

{{Title 3}}

To give you an idea of my writing style, here are two of my best posts:

{{Your post with the most shares}}

{{Your best-written post}}

Thanks for your time and consideration! I can’t wait to hear back from you.

Cheers,

{{Your name}}

Also remember, adding some links to your existing content can help publishers to understand your content quality.

2. Find Broken links 

When a hyperlink on a web page is empty or no longer exists then it is considered as the broken link. A broken link is also called dead link or a link rot. This is one of the best link building strategies. By making a content piece around the same topic which the broken links cover you can get a quality backlink.

How to find broken links?

Step1: Find a website in your niche.

Finding a page with broken links might be difficult, here are some steps to find broken links that can help you gain relevant and quality backlink. 

Step2: check whether the website is authoritative or not. Remember that  an authoritative website is necessary for quality link building. 

Step3: check if the webpage has any broken link. You can use tools like SEMRUSH, Ahref broken link checker to find the broken link on the page. 

Pro Tip: To find a website in your niche you can search for the term (blog +”Your niche”). It can help you to find blogs related to your niche.

After finding the broken link you have to make content around that broken link and have to outreach the publisher. 

With the help of an email you can outreach the publisher. 

Here is a format of Outreach email for Broken Link.

Hey (name of site owner or blogger),

I was looking for a few resources on (topic/keyword) and I came across your very instructive guide: (title of the post).

I noticed that one of the resources you mentioned on (topic/keyword) no longer exists. I recently created a comprehensively researched guide on (related topic) for you: (insert link).

It might make a good addition to your post.

Either way, keep up your informative articles.

Signoff

A short and to the point email is always a better option to write an email for outreach. 

3. Q&A – Best and Simple 

Answering on Q&A sites on the question around your niche can help you to gain quality backlinks. Because some Q&A sites like Quora allow you to use hyperlink in your answers.  This is one of the most popular link building strategies.

In this, all the time it takes is in finding the questions related to your niche.

Where to find questions related to your niche?

Interact with members who deliver content similar to yours and develop relationships with potential collaborators. To find more questions related to your niche you can type your keyword on quora. Quora shows every question related to your keyword where you can pick up any question to answer. 

Be sure to use high authority Q&A sites.

Here are a few of the most popular Q&A sites out there, currently: 

• Quora 
• Yahoo Answers 
• Answers 
• Stack Exchange

Now the second challenging part after finding the questions is writing the answer.

How to write answers ?

While writing an answer you have to keep in mind that your answer has to be relevant to the question and provides value to the user. 

The link which you provide in the answer has to be related to the question. 

4. Blog Commenting 

Blog Commenting is one of the most easy and popular link building strategies. It also comes in Beginners SEO link building strategies. It helps you to build your link popularity directly from the comments. 

Before commenting on any blog make sure that your comment will make sense to the reader. Don’t run behind the backlink. If your backlink is not relevant to the comment then leave it. By doing this you can gain some goodwill in the community. 

Most of the blogs provide only “no follow’ link in their comment. So before commenting on any blog please make sure that the blog is providing a ‘Do follow” link in comments.

When it comes to Blog Commenting, finding a blog is slightly difficult. But you can use some terms like…

• “your niche”+“Blog”
• “your niche” +“Blogspot”
• “your niche”+“article”
• “your niche”+“Guide”

These terms can help you to find some blogs around your niche. 

5. Redirect Expired Domain

Expired domains are those domains whose websites have gone defunct. Most sites create or get a certain number of backlinks from other websites over their life. When a site like this goes down or the domain is cancelled for any reason – such as non-payment, the domain is then available for purchase along with all of the inbound links it has accumulated over time. 

Redirecting these types of expired domains to your website can help you gain a huge amount of backlinks within a day. 

But, finding a perfect expired domain for your site can be hard. 

Here is how you can find the perfect expired domain for your Site.

Finding an expired domain is not easy but here are some sites that may help.

1. Expireddomains.net
2. Go Daddy
3. Dropcatch.com

These sites sell expired domains through auctions where you can find some domains that are relevant to your niche.

6. Brain Dean’s Skyscraper Technique

This technique was invented by Brain Dean (founder of backlinko) as a way to create engaging content. In this technique the objective is to create a piece of content that is so great that people actually want to link to it and be the best among all. 

How To Implement The Skyscraper Technique?

Implementation of this technique may take some time and effort but it is a very powerful link building tactic. 

There are 3 core principles of this strategy. 

1. Finding a Popular Topic: find a topic that interests people and that everyone wants to link to their content. find a topic that people need but there is less content on it.
2. Creating Content: See the content which is already written on the same topic you chose and create a piece of content which has to be the best among all, so that every person in your niche wants to link and then post it on your site. 
3. Promoting Your Content: Once you have launched your content then everyone must have to know about it, including those who may link to it. And before outreach you have to make sure you are promoting to people who have already linked to similar content to yours.

When you are working on these principles you will need some tools which make your work easy.

Here are some tools: 

1. SEMRUSH
2. Ahref
3. Google Trends(for Topics)

This tool will help you find topics and also help you to find out to whom you have to promote your content.

7. Reclaim Link from Stolen Images

This is one of the best and easy link building strategies. When you create and upload an image on your site and the other web platform uses your image without your permission then you can sue the website or you can ask the site owner to provide you with the backlinks against the images they have uploaded instead of taking them down. And this can be a great opportunity to get a quality backlink.

How to find your image ?

You don’t need to worry about finding your stolen images due to the availability of the Google image search. It can help you to easily find out where your image is being used.  

Here are some steps that can help you: 

Step1: Go to the Google Image search and then click on the camera icon in the search box. 

Step2: Then a box of Search By Image will appear. Here you can paste the URL of your image or you can upload the image which you want to search. 

Step3: Click on “All sizes” next to the image at the top of the page. This will show you all possible results, no matter how big or small your image is.

Now, Google will find out and show the images that look the same as yours. 

Now you have to manually see from which site you can contact because most sites don’t provide author’s name and email addresses.  But when you find it you have to send an outreach email to them. 

Outreach Email for image reclamation

While writing an outreach email for Image reclamation you have to keep in mind that you have to be nice with the author and don’t blame him for using your image, it can help you to build a business relationship. 

You just have to ask for a backlink for using your Image and have to write a convincing email. 

Here is a template for Image reclamation outreach email.

Hey {First Name},

My name is [Name] and I am the owner of {Your Website Name}—{Something about your website}.

I saw that, up until recently, you were using our image on {Page URL}. Thank you for that — we really appreciate it.

However, I notice that you did not link back to our website from our image.

Could I ask you a small favor?

I’d really appreciate it if you could give a backlink to our site from that image.

Here’s the page to which you can give the backlink: {Your Webpage URL}

Let me know what you think!

Thanks,

 [Your Name]

8. Reclaim Link By Using Google Alerts

Using Google alerts to find out a specific query is a time saving tactic because Google alerts send you an email every time your query is shown on the web. With the help of Google Alerts, you will know which person you have to send outreach emails to because it tells you who is using your targeted keywords, your product name, your brand name etc.

How to set up Google Alerts ?

Setting up Google alerts is very simple, 

Here are some steps that can help you 

Step1: Open Google Alerts and enter a search term for which you want to be alerted about. example – Your targeting keyword, brand name , website name, product name etc. 

(Use colons if you want to get alerted about the exact same query which you entered)

Step2: Click on the “Show options” below the search box.

Step3: Now fill up all the fields which were mentioned there. 

Step4: Choose an email address where Google will send you alerts. 

Now, you will get an Alert email every time your query is shown on the web. But keep in mind every time you get an email, someone could have already linked to your website which means not every alert will be a link building opportunity, but many will be.

Now it’s time to convert every opportunity into a quality backlink. 

How to outreach ?

While writing an outreach email to get a backlink, keep in mind that your email should be convincing and to the point.

Here is a template of outreach email.  

Subject: Some helpful suggestion for you

Hey [their first name],

Love your article on [insert the URL of their article with anchor text of article topic].

I just have one piece of feedback for you and I hope you don’t get offended. You mentioned [insert the keyword they mention], but you didn’t explain it deeply.

I think if you adjusted that it would provide a lot more value to your readers.

Or if you don’t have the time to, I already have an article on it here [insert the URL on your site where you go in-depth on that topic] that you could just link to.

Let me know your thoughts.

Have a great Day,

[Your Name]

9. Expert Roundups

Link Roundup is a list in which an expert blogger or a website puts links to their favorite or popular blogs. This work is done, weekly, monthly and yearly. If your link gets featured in any roundup of authority websites then it will give you SEO values and some traffic in bonus. 

To get featured in Expert Roundups your content has to be of high quality. If your blog posts are just stuffed with keywords and made for bots as opposed to the user, your content will get rejected by the expert.   

Long form content is the better option if you are writing content for roundups. 

How to find roundups ?

Using advanced search operators on Google will make it easier for you to find the best expert roundup websites.  

Suppose you want to find some roundups around Digital Marketing news then just type “digital marketing news”+”link roundup” on Google, it will show you all the websites who do link roundups around digital marketing news. 

But, not all the websites use the same name like “link roundup”. Therefore, Here are some terms that you can use to find the right roundup website for you. 

• “Keyword”+“link roundup”
• “Keyword”+“weekly roundup”
• “Keyword”+“weekly link”
• “Keyword”+inurl:roundup
• “Keyword”+intitle:roundup
• “Keyword”+best posts of the week
• “Keyword”+best blogs of the week

As you can see these terms can end up giving you different results which will help you to find out if the link roundup is worth pursuing. 

Before outreaching you have to make sure that the link roundup is active. To get to know about it you can simply go to the tools option and then narrow the result to “past month”.

10. Interview An Expert 

By publishing expert interviews on your site, you can also get some quality backlinks from social shares. You can not only leverage the existing following of reputable people in your industry, but also satisfy readers with useful and unique questions and answers.

To contact the experts of your niche you can use an emailing method.  Write a personalized email which has to show that you already know the person you’re outreaching for an interview.

How to Get ideas of Questions to ask ?

Before writing a question to ask from interviewee you may ask some questions like How much time they’ll be able to dedicate for the interview approximately. This will help you to let you know which type of questions you can ask.

You can also ask him what type of questions he was expecting and which types of topics he was interested in. By this you can know which types of questions they’ll be comfortable answering.

Before interviewing, read 4-5 previous interviews of that person, it will help you to find out which types of questions have already been asked to the person.

11. Create Compelling Infographic

Infographics have a higher chance to attract readers because we humans are more attracted to visuals than textual content. It is also easy to understand because a text is 323% better if it’s accompanied by an illustration and that is what we do in an infographic

How does it help in Link Building?

An Infographic can be shared on almost every platform like-  emails, websites, social media, and you can also print it like brochures and pamphlets. Here it helps you to get many quality backlinks by social shares, also when writers don’t have enough space to explain about something, they can refer to your content for a deeper take on the subject. 

How to Create an Infographic? 

Here are some tools that can help you to create Infographics 

• Canva
• Venngage
• Piktochart
• easel.ly
• Visme

But, here it is not done!

Even with these tools, you’ll still need to keep certain considerations in mind to prevent your infographic from flopping. Therefore , here are some principles to create a compelling copy.

1. Choose an evergreen or trending topic.
2. Be logical and focus on your content 
3. Remember length matters 
4. Keep balance in text and image ratio

12. Press Releases 

Press releases are one of the best link building strategies, and it also helps in building your brand reputation. Prior to the internet, this press coverage would often be in the form of a newspaper article, a TV news clip, or a radio segment. These are great strategies for building a company’s reputation. 

Before the internet, this press coverage would generally come in newspaper articles, a TV new clip, or a radio segment. At that time these were great strategies to build a brand reputation.  

But nowadays, press releases are done online and here we got the opportunity of building some quality backlinks. Because these links are coming from trustworthy sources, they are considered high quality. Earning high-quality links through press release SEO can help improve your website’s rankings There are many websites and popular bloggers who allow you to submit PR. 

While submitting a PR, make sure that your articles contain links to your website. But Keep in mind that this is not a free pass to fill an article with excessive links to your page. It’s important that your link should be relevant and provide some values. Link stuffing in your article can harm your website. 

13. Support Charities And Get A Backlink 

Charities are one of the best resources for link building. It is also one of the easiest link building strategies. All you need to do is find charity websites that actively accept donations for links, donate and then wait for your link to be shared.

After donation sometimes the website author will LIVE your link within an hour or sometimes it takes time. That’s it. 

The only time and efforts it takes when finding the right website to do charity. 

How to find sites for charity?

To find out whether the charity site is good for your link building or not. You have to get to know about site’s 

• External and Outbound links 
• DA (Domain Authority) 
• Spam Score. 
• Minimum Charity price
• Charity’s Aim (Niche)

14. Create Useful Tools on Your Website

I Know you are thinking about how it can help me in Link building, But i bet that this is the most effective link building strategy.

Have you ever seen the list of Tools on any website? If yes then you must have seen that in the name of every tool there is a link to the website of the tool. In most cases, the intent of a user appearing in a tool list is to use a tool. For that, he visits the website of the tools given there. With this, the website of the tools gets quality backlinks as well as high traffic. 

Now you know about why to create a tool on your website but, it is also necessary to identify what to create. 

Choosing a tool to create is very easy. You just have to see what type of tools are present on the web in your niche. And create one with high demanded. 

To create a tool, you can use any web developing platform or can hire a web developer. 

15. Competitor Backlinks Analysis 

Competitor backlink analysis is one of the old and effective link building strategies. It also helps you rank above your competitors in SERP(Search Engine Ranking Page). 

There are mainly 3 stages of Competitor backlink analysis strategy:

1. Finding Competitors 
2. Backlink analysis 
3. Link building 

1. Finding competitors: Finding your competitors and making a list of them can help you to do your work in an organized way. To find your competitor you can simply search for your targeted keyword on Google, then Google will show you the websites who are ranking above your website, and take out those websites in your list. 

Do the same with every targeted keyword of your website. You can also use Alexa’s Audience Overlap Tool to find out. 

2. Backlink Analysis: Now you have to use a paid tool to get the backlinks of your competitor. 

 Here are the names of some tools. 

• Ahref
• SEMRUSH 
• MOZ 

They can help you to find out all the External Links that your competitor’s site has. 

After getting the link, you have to find out which of those links are such that the competitor’s site is benefiting the most. When you get it, then the next stage comes. 

3. Link Building: Now you can see where your competitors are getting links from. To take down your competitor you have to build links on the same site they are getting backlink. You should do whatever necessary you find to build links. 

Suppose your competitor has made a guest posting on a site and is getting backlinks from there. So you should do guest posting on the same site by writing a post better than that.

This way you can steal the backlink of your competitor. 

16. Reciprocal Link Building Strategy

Reciprocal link building refers to when you give a backlink to a website and in return take a backlink from that website as well. It is also known as traded and exchanged links. 

Reciprocal links can harm your website if it is accomplished in the wrong way. 

How to use a reciprocal link to help my SEO?

you have to find out sites who…

• Are not your competitor 
• Share same information around your niche
• Have some authority and relevant traffic. 

 This can help you to build trust in your user and as well as in search engines.

Remember that, reciprocal links are against Google Webmaster’s Guidelines. So doing it in a spamming way can harm your website and can build a high risk of penalization. And make sure that your link’s anchor text has to be related to your content.

17. Find Broken Link on Wikipedia 

With an average of 1.4 billion visitors a month, Wikipedia is one of the world’s most visited websites. In fact, it’s the fourteenth most popular website in the world. Getting a link from wikipedia is a blessing because google considers wikipedia as a high authority information sharing site. To get a link from wikipedia, your website needs to be a reliable source for information that’s already been made on Wikipedia. There are a number of people on the web who rely on some combination of Google and Wikipedia to research a topic.

But, getting a backlink from wikipedia is not as simple. It requires some time, effort and resources.

Here are some steps that can help you to build backlinks on wikipedia. 

Step1: Find a broken link or an article on Wikipedia on which you can get a link. 

In this process you have to determine the appropriate topic page for your link. Getting a backlink from the page who has information related to your niche can help your website to build authority in your niche. To find a great article firstly you have to do some keyword research so that you can identify which keyword you can use in your anchor text.  

You can use Google keyword planner to find some low competitive and high traffic keywords. 

Step2: Create a unique and fresh topic.

You have to write content that provides value to the user and is useful for him. And if you are writing content to replace the broken link, then make sure that your content is better than the content that was on the broken link.

Step3: Outreach with your content and then wait for the revert. 

To outreach you simply have to contact the Wikipedia page or website editor or owner and let them know that one of their references leads to a dead page, but you are able to provide an alternative link with even better content. 

These steps will take a little bit of your time but even a Wikipedia backlink can get your site ranked.

18. Event Link Building   

Using local, national or international events to get links back to your website is known as event link building. This strategy also helps you get offline exposure to your target audience. To get a quality backlink from an event you have to host or sponsor an event. By sponsoring these events you can benefit from the link juice they create from their promotion and have a guaranteed backlink and advertising place on their website. 

By this google will consider your backlinks as Good links because you don’t pay for the link, you Earned the link

What type of event can I sponsor? 

Here are some types of events that you can sponsor according to your industry type. 

• Concerts
• Clubs 
• Meetups 
• Conferences 
• Workshops 
• Seminars 
• Sports 
• events 
• Lectures 
• Academic 
• Events

But where will you find an event to sponsor?

To find events you can use some Google search terms like. 

• “Your Niche”+”become a sponsor”
• “Your niche”+”sponsors”
• “Your niche”+”link to yours”
• “Your niche”+”link to yours website”

These terms will highlight all of the pages on the relevant website that contain events related to your industry in your Google search results.

But also there are some websites that can help you search local events in your area through Google.

• events.fb.com
• residentadvisor.net
• Meetup.com
• Patch.com

You can also use Google alerts to get an alert every time google got some new event around your niche. 

19. Check Your Email Regularly 

This is one of the simple tactics of link building. 

But how?

Sometimes what happens: that you have some content that is more useful to other websites than you. For which other websites try to contact you by email to get that content from you.

To get content they either offer money or a backlink from their website. And this is a good opportunity to get a quality backlink without any efforts.  

For this, now you just have to check your mail regularly. You will have to do this work daily or at least twice a week. Make sure you can revert the email as soon as possible

One more thing you have to keep in mind that any site you give to publish your content, that site must be audited once. You have to check a few things like. 

• The domain authority of the site is high.
• Site has a low spam score.
• Site is related to your industry or niche.  

If the site passes in these metrics then you are good to go to provide content and get a quality backlink. 

20. Web Directory

This is one of the beginner’s link building strategies. All you have to do is find a web directory site and list your website or business on it. 

Simple isn’t it? but not now as before. 

Some time ago, website owners used to list their website in any irrelevant and low DA web directory to rank it on SERP. But now Google has removed all the low quality web directories from their search results. And now there is no use of listing your website on those directories.

Now to get a link from a web directory site you have to find a directory that not only gives you the chance to post a link to your website, but also provides useful information for your potential customers is a directory you want to be listed on. 

There are some types of directories like Niche directories and directories that are attached to informative websites for a specific industry. These types of directories are good for lion building. 

Having your business listed with such directories makes it easier to get indexed in the major search engines and helps people find you online.

21. Research Reports & Case Studies 

You must have seen that some sites use it in their articles. They do this so that they can win the trust of the people because it is human nature that we believe in exact numbers rather than estimates. 

Although, when you yourself would be writing a blog, then you would definitely have given a link to that article, in which the details of your topic are studied:

Your personal opinion can be interesting and valuable, especially if you have been in a specific field for a long time.

You can create a piece of content in some types like..

• Research papers 
• Case studies 
• Reviews 
• Comparisons

Also keep in mind that you have to be the first to write about a certain topic. But if you are late then you have to be the best (Detailed and Fresh) among all the content which is already present. 

That All For Now

Please remember that your website’s link profile is one of the most crucial factors in ranking in search engine results and after the penguin update Google doesn’t care so much about how many links point to your pages, but rather about the experience you create for users.

We hope this blog provides some value to you and can help you create some best quality backlinks that can help your website or webpage to gain some relevant and quality traffic. 

If you have any questions about link building strategies, please feel free to get in touch.