A highly recommended guide for all beginners to initiate Link Building for SEO that works)/(Link building for SEO

Nowadays, SEO is important to ensure that your site, pages, data and content are at high ranks in SERPs. For that purpose, you need to promote your site and pages on various online platforms. And for the purpose of promotions, at first, you need to set up your website in such a manner that more and more people visit your website regularly. 

Apart from designing an attractive website and implementing effective SEO strategy, you need to take care of internal and external links associated with the website and its pages. Also, to create a successful backlink policy, at first you need to create an advanced internal linking network in your site and pages. 

Internal Linking Network

You need to check the internal links of your website and pages frequently. You have to check the ranks of your sites and pages in SERPs more often. Try to keep important sections of your site in the Home Page along with their corresponding links, so that visitors can easily reach at the details of those sections by clicking on them after visiting the Homepage. A focused, well planned and perfect internal linking network can help your site and pages earning good ranks in SERPs. 

Example of a site’s internal linking structure 

Some essential techniques to manage internal linking of your site 

• You need to ensure that no important page’s link is not more than three clicks away from the Home Page. Also, you have to keep important sections near the “Home” button of the site. 

• You have to ensure that there is no broken link on your site or pages. Otherwise, your site and pages will go down in ranks in SERPs. 

• Make sure that the visitors do not face multiple redirects after visiting your site and pages. You have to regularly update the redirect links. If the number of redirects is kept low, then the load time will decrease and many people will feel the pleasure to visit your site and pages.

Now, you need to formulate and implement a perfect backlink strategy, so that people feel eagerness to visit your site and pages. If they frequently click your site’s links located in various other sites and pages, then your site and pages will earn good ranks in SERPs.  To recommend and suggest various techniques to create a proper backlink system, here I have created a guide for you. I hope that this guide will be helpful for you to make a proper backlink strategy that will give you results. 

Basics of Backlinks

Inbound or external links which redirect people to your site and pages are known as backlinks. If people feel ease to reach your site or pages through the backlinks, then search engines consider each effective backlink as a vote. And if, there are many such votes, then your site and pages will earn good ranks in SERPs.  

Google has created algorithms based on the behaviors and activities of backlinks. Among such algorithms, PageRank is the Google’s original algorithm.  Google regularly updates and modifies their algorithms, but the backlinks always remain a key foundation of all algorithms. Backlinks always remain a key ranking signal for all algorithms of Google. A recent study has confirmed it already. 

Google has confirmed that the link is one of the three most important factors responsible for search engine rankings. 

How to create effective backlinks for SEO?

Here, I have compiled few essential techniques to create effective backlinks are listed below- 

• Backlinks must come from trusted, respectful and authoritative websites. This is termed as “Domain Authority”. It means, if a site has more respect and authority, then backlinks on that site can pass respect and popularity to your site also, and this will be considered by search engines as positive for your site and your site’s ranks will be pushed at top positions in SERPs. 
• You should consider and select such links which must contain anchor texts along with such keywords which are important for SEO. Anchor text means the part of the text which is visible in a link. Links with keyword-rich anchor texts help to develop the ranks in SERPs. You will get an idea by going through the chart below- 

Below is an example of links embedded with anchor text. 

Don’t use too many keywords in anchor text of a link. At the same time, ensure that same anchor texts and the same keywords are not used in too many links. If these restrictions are not maintained, then Google will take steps against the misuse of backlinks. Google’s algorithm has a filter which is known as “Penguin”. This Penguin takes steps against a website, if all of the backlinks have same anchor texts and keywords, and due to this the website’s ranks in SERPs get affected. 

Don’t directly refer your site from any other site. You can’t use statements like – “For more information, visit my website”. Google considers such activities as spam and it will cause a negative effect on your website’s SEO. 

• You must choose such sites to create backlinks whose subjects are relevant to the subject of your site. This is highly preferred by Google and other search engines, and this will be helpful to achieve good ranks in SERPs. 
• There are two types of tags which can be found on various links, they are – dofollow tag and nofollow tag. Links from the sources like Paid Advertisements, Press releases, Blog comments, Profiles etc. are considered as nofollow links.  Search engines don’t rely on the links with nofollow tags, and they don’t give any value to those links in their ranking algorithms. Dofollow links are in maximum in the web, and only this type of links is preferred by search engines as backlinks. 
• Choose the links from the websites which have not been linked to your website previously. Backlinks of previously connected websites create bad effects on the rankings in SERPs. The below-mentioned chart will help you to understand that. 

• Try to use only one backlink from one site. This will be helpful to achieve better ranks in SERPs. A recent study has confirmed that the number of sites linked to your website has a direct effect on Google rankings. See the chart below. 

Create a LINK MAGNET 

You need to make your site worthy, by adding useful contents, relevant and useful images and videos, data etc. These useful contents and data for your site are known as “Link Magnets” because these are useful in attracting people from other sites to visit your site following the backlinks. 

How to create Link Magnet contents? 

• You need to create such content which can be associated with maximum backlinks from different sites. You have to take care about the quality of the content, so that it can become a Link Magnet. 
• Write skyscraper contents. That means you have to observe the contents of your competitors and have to find that how many backlinks are effective for each content and following the pattern of those contents and how keywords are used. You need to create contents following the style and structure of the contents of your competitors. But, make sure that your contents do not become duplicates of the contents of the competitors. 
• Take the help from social media, various blogs and other sources to understand that how various sites direct their visitors to other sites. Promote your site’s contents in social media and various other online platforms. Different On-page SEO activities on the contents of your site can attract more visitors also.

Turn your contents into Backlinks

To associate important and useful backlinks with your contents, you have to ensure that your contents are of high-quality and eye-catching. Use important keywords and useful writing patterns in your contents. 

Processes to turn your contents into Backlinks

Link Roundups-

Link Roundups are periodical blog posts which can generate backlinks from high-quality contents of respectful websites. Link Roundups must contain such keywords which can work as a nice connector of backlinks from other sites. If the interested people share your contents in social media channels, then the backlinks will be popularized more. 

Moving Man Method-

Some people may consider this Moving Man Method as unethical. But, you don’t worry. This method will not cause any harm to anyone’s interest in a broad sense.  This method is followed by three simple steps-

• Find such websites which are outdated, and whose contents and data are outdated and duplicates. 
• Then find the sites which are linked with these outdated websites. 
• Then reach the audience of these outdated sites and inform that they have linked themselves with outdated websites. 
• Publish your own SEO-based infographic and then look at the infographic of an outdated website. Then, see who are linked with that website. Then use the tool Ahref and copy all of their links. Then send E-mails to all of the users of these links and inform them that the website is outdated. The sample script of the E-mail message is mentioned below-

Broken Link Building-

Method of Broken Link Building is very much similar to Moving Man Method. Only here you have to keep track of broken links of competitor websites and have to inform their audiences about the broken links. Look for the 404 links, and for that, you have to emphasize on resource pages in your niche. Suppose, if you are in the fitness niche, then you have to use some strings to search in Google. Examples of search strings are mentioned below- 

Then, you can find pages like this – 

You can use the Nifty Chrome Extension Check My Links to find the broken links from the websites. Then Email each and every individual of the audience of the websites and inform them about the broken links. 

.edu Resource Backlinks-.

edu websites are very much respectful and authoritative. So, backlinks from such websites are very much helpful for SEO of your website. Try to create backlinks from resourceful pages of schools, universities, educational institutions etc. Keep in mind that only 5-10% of the .edu websites will actually provide you backlinks. So, you have to make sure that these few backlinks can work effectively to give good ranks to your website at SERPs. 

Guest Posting-

Guest posting is not so much popular nowadays. But actually, it is a very good way to generate backlinks from your preferred websites. You can collaborate with some companies and can write posts on their websites referring to your site and pages. 

Infographic Link Building –

Infographics are extremely popular to drive backlinks to your website. They have the ability to make the complex data easy to understand. Infographics apply various color combinations, graphs, charts etc. to explain the data. And these approaches attract more outside links to get connected with your website. You need to create, publish and promote your infographics, and these require a certain amount of money. 

Few other Link Building Techniques

Here we will discuss some other methods by which you can generate more backlinks for your website and pages. You should not consider these methods as less useful because, if you want to push your website at higher ranks in SERPs, you have to try each and every small process to generate huge amount of backlinks. 

Use Testimonials & Reviews-

Approach each and every customer and convince them to write testimonials and reviews in the proper places of your website. Highlight all positive testimonials and reviews on your website. This approach will be productive to get easy backlinks. At the same time, response properly to every negative testimonial and review as well. 

Approach to bloggers with various offers-

Offer your products or services to high-quality bloggers with various discounts and if possible, at free of cost. But don’t ask them to refer your website links at your site. If you ask so, then Google Webmaster will consider that as offensive and it will affect your site’s ranking in Google SERP. 

Initiate Link Reclamation-

If a company or a blogger uses your company’s name or product’s name in its website or pages, then ask that company to use the link of your website. You can do that by contacting the authority online or offline. This process is known as Link Reclamation. This can be done by the following steps- 

• You can use tools like BuzzSumo or mention.com to find where your company’s or product’s name has been mentioned. 
• Then find out the companies who have mentioned your company’s or products name, and see if they have used the link of your site or not. 
• If these companies have not used the link of your site, then contact them and ask them to do so. 

Arrange backlinks from News sites-

You can use some tools like HARO and entrepreneur.com. These tools will ensure that a certain number of reporters will send you Emails, asking for the source links or links of your web contents. Needless to say that, for this purpose, you have to upload important and high-quality contents on your website. 

Initiate reverse engineering from the best backlinks of your competitors –

Follow the backlink strategy of your competitors. Monitor which websites they follow to generate backlinks, how they source the backlinks and what type of contents they target in other sites to generate backlinks. 

Create perfect contents to attract maximum backlinks-

Not only creating simple and high-quality contents, but you also have to follow some rules when creating content. These rules are as follows- 

• Contents must be authoritative and should have expert-touch
• Contents should be based on updated information. And at the same time, the contents should have such information which are true and can’t be outdated, even after a long passage of time. 
• Contents should be unique.
• Contents should contain information about various offers, facilities, discounts etc. 

Find the opportunities of guest posting by Reverse Image Search-

You can get these opportunities by following these steps- 

• Search the names of those individuals of your preferred industry who write guest posts frequently.
• Then open a published guest post, and take the screenshot which must contain the headshot used in the author bio. See the example below- 
• Use the image of the screenshot in Google Reverse Image Search, and you will get a list of URLs as a search result which will show at which websites this author has written his guest posts. Now, you can try to write guest posts on these websites by contacting the owners. 

To wrap the whole discussion, I can say that I have tried my best to populate this article with various processes, techniques, tactics and important points so that you can easily create and implement a perfect backlink strategy for your website. A perfect backlink strategy is extremely essential for SEO of your website, and your website will gain better ranks in various SERPs.