If you’ve completed our free SEO course, you already know how important backlinks are for growing your online business.

But knowing about backlinks and actually acquiring them are two very different things.

That’s where this guide comes in.

In it, we’ll walk you through the ins and outs of building quality backlinks so you can establish yourself as an expert in your field, monetize your content, and grow your audience.

Guest Posting Opportunities — How to Find Great Ones

Guest posting is a tried-and-true strategy for building high-quality backlinks. But how do you find the right opportunities?

Try doing a Google search like “inurl:write-for-us + your niche” or “your niche + intitle:write for us” to discover niche-specific websites that accept guest posts.

Pro Tip:
These sites get propositioned a lot. Spend some time crafting a pitch that helps you stand out by emphasizing how your article will benefit their audience specifically. If you play your cards right, you might be able to develop a relationship with these site owners, inevitably being useful later down the road.

To maximize your impact, focus on high-authority websites in your niche. Use tools like Moz’s Domain Authority Checker or Ahrefs’ Domain Rating to assess their authority.

It’s important to target sites in a related niche for better SEO results, as a backlink from an unrelated site won’t carry as much weight.

For example, if you’re a tech blogger, a backlink from a woodworking site won’t be very useful.

SUPER Pro Tip: A lot of people don’t realize this but many sites will actually pay you to write for them as a contributing author. This kills two birds with one stone. You get your backlink AND get paid for it? It’s a double whammy.

Find opportunities like this by searching “inurl:write-for-us + your niche + “paid” (in quotes)”

Outreach and Collaboration Strategies — How to Be Sure You’re Not Wasting Your Time

Reaching out to other creators and businesses can be a goldmine for backlinks. But it’s important to ensure you’re spending your time wisely.

There’s nothing worse than spending 3 hours on a pitch only to not hear anything back (let alone on multiple pitches).

When pitching a collaboration, be genuine and offer value upfront. Show that you’ve taken the time to research their work and explain how your collaboration will benefit them and their audience.

Here’s a few collaboration strategies to consider, and how they’ll turn into backlinks:

• Co-creating content (e.g., interviews, guest posts, podcasts) that both parties can link to and promote.
• Hosting webinars or live events together and linking to each other’s websites
• Offering exclusive discounts or promotions to each other’s audiences, with backlinks on the promotional pages

Identifying and Leveraging Resource Pages

A website’s resource pages are a treasure trove of backlink opportunities.

These pages often curate valuable resources for their readers, and if your content fits the bill, you can score a quality backlink. You’ll often find these types of pages on website’s for non-profits, universities, guidance counselors, etc.

To find resource pages, use Google search operators such as:

• “keyword” + “inurl:resources”
• “keyword” + “intitle:resources”

Pro Tip: Before reaching out, make sure your content is genuinely helpful and relevant to the resource page’s audience. Personalize your outreach email, explaining why your content would be a valuable addition to their resources.

Broken Link Building — Capitalizing on Missed Opportunities

Broken links are hyperlinks that no longer work, usually because the linked page has been removed or the URL has changed.

They happen when site owners update or restructure their content, or when external resources become unavailable. Broken links are bad for a site’s SEO, as they result in poor user experience and can harm search engine rankings.

Broken link building is an ingenious way to build backlinks.

By finding broken links on websites in your niche and reaching out to the site owner, suggesting your relevant content as a replacement, you’re doing them a favor — they avoid SEO penalties for having broken links, and you get a backlink in return. 💪

Use tools like Ahrefs’ Broken Link Checker or Screaming Frog to streamline the process.

When reaching out about broken links, be polite and helpful. Offer your content as a valuable alternative, and make it easy for the site owner to swap out the link.

The Skyscraper Technique — Learning from a Fading Trend

The Skyscraper Technique was a common practice a few years ago that focused on finding popular content in your niche, creating an even better version of it, and then reaching out to the sites that linked to the original piece for a backlink.

The reason it’s fading in popularity is that it became immensely popular, and for the last 5 years, everyone and their uncle have been writing “ultimate guides” left and right (ourselves included).

Eventually site owners caught on at how valuable backlinks were and started expecting payment for their placement. Either that, or they strategically were linking to freinds and partners, so regardless of how good your article was, they wouldn’t link to you.

While this strategy is fading in popularity, the principles behind it are still worth understanding.

Focusing on user experience and shareability is hugely important. When creating content, consider how you can make it more engaging, visually appealing, and easy to share.

Tips for Creating Link-Worthy Content

Investing in high-quality, link-worthy content is a FANTASTIC long-term strategy for building backlinks (albeit oftentimes labor intensive).

The reason? Put yourself in the shoes of a content writer. To give your writing credibility, you need to cite sources. This is your chance to produce a statistic that can be that definitive resources by putting your data to work for you.

Now put yourself in the shoes of a creator with an audience. To help them out, you want to share things they’ll find helpful and useful. This is your chance to create the things people will find useful enough to want to tell their friends about.

Here are a few examples:

Infographics

Infographics are visually appealing and easy to understand, making them highly shareable. They can simplify complex information and present it in an engaging way, increasing the likelihood of earning backlinks.

Example: If you ever find yourself comparing products pros and cons (a few different softwares maybe?), an infographic comparing their different features, pricing, and performance is sure to get shared and linked to.

Interactive Tools

Interactive tools offer practical value and can keep users engaged on your site. They often solve a specific problem or answer a question, making them more likely to be shared and linked to.

Example: This silly Benedict Cumberbatch name generator has 1,100 backlinks and gets 1,800 traffic without any other content on the site at all.

As the ancient proverb goes, “to receive a backlink you need to either be useful or be entertaining.”

Original Research + Data

Original research and data can position you as an authority in your field and provide valuable insights to your audience.

By offering unique information, you increase the chances of other sites linking back to you as a source. Writers often link to source statistics they used to make a claim, which makes original research and data so attractive to link to.

And it doesn’t have to be hard, either! Just be transparent about how you collected the data, how many people responded, and do your best to make it useful.

For example, you could simply use a free tool like Google Forms or Typeform to create a survey.

Share the survey on social media and relevant online communities to gather responses.

Once you have enough data, analyze it and use it to create an original research report and corresponding infographic of the results.

By sharing the report on your website and social media, and pitching it to relevant publications in your industry, you can establish yourself as an authority and attract backlinks from other websites.

Conclusion

I hope you found this guide helpful in learning various strategies to build quality backlinks for your unique business.

Did I miss anything? Remember, you can always reach out if you have any questions or tips you think I ought to include.

Happy link building!

-Justin
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