If you’re a typical small to medium-sized business, you’re spending at least half of your marketing budget on digital marketing. This is a pretty serious expenditure and you might have trouble determining whether or not you’re getting the returns you need.
That’s why you should try low-cost strategies with great ROI like high quality backlinks.
Getting a return on your investment is one way to track whether or not your marketing dollars are being well spent. If you’re not in the top few results for businesses like yours in your area, you need backlinks to improve your SEO.
Improving your SEO doesn’t mean spending hundreds of thousands to get a few more hits. It can also mean building connections across your web community to share knowledge as you grow your customer base.
Here are 8 tips for building high quality backlinks to your site.
1. Share Your Links
Most of the phrases typed into search engines are in the form of a question. Sites like Yahoo, Reddit, and Quora are devoted to being resources for people who have questions.
To start building backlinks from these sites, begin by creating an account for your brand on each site. Then look for questions related to common questions that you get from potential clients. If you can briefly answer a question, add it as a comment.
If you’ve started a blog for your site, you can start adding relevant links as an example of a way to approach the problem. If you haven’t started a blog on your site yet, it’s time to start one. Along with backlinks, great SEO strategies must offer fresh content to share.
2. Write Guest Posts
Being a guest poster will help you attract new clicks to your site through the implied endorsement of the site you’re posting on. If you’re not a professional writer, you may not be able to venture too far outside of your level of expertise.
Start by finding blogs that relevant to your niche and seem to have a strong domain authority. So long as the sites rank higher than you, you should see some improvement in traffic. Don’t waste your time posting for blogs that have less traffic that you do.
Build a relationship with the editor or owner of the blog. Ask if you can submit some writing every few weeks. Rather than just promote yourself, try to add value to their website by getting to know what their goal is.
3. Add Links To Comments On Related Articles
This is a bit of a tightrope to walk because some blog owners will accuse you of spamming if you do this one wrong. Spamming will not only get you blacklisted by blogs but will also penalize you in the eyes of search engines. Even their bots know spam when they see it.
Find some articles that are written on a subject you know a lot about. When you see that a point is missed or if someone has an important detail wrong, add a comment with a link directing them to your rebuttal.
Be constructive and add meaningful commentary to the conversation. Your opinions will be welcomed if you seem friendly and sincerely interested in dialogue, even when you disagree.
4. Replacing Broken Links
This tactic is a little more time consuming but can result in some high quality backlinks.
Go through your favorite sites related to your field. Search for links that might be broken. If you find one, email the site administrator and suggest one of your own links to replace it.
You’ll build trust and have the endorsement of the site administrator built into your links.
There are “broken link checker” tools available on the internet. Run the site you’ve targeted through that tool and see what kinds of results you can get. You’ll be doing the site administrator a favor and giving yourself some extra support in the process.
5. Join A Blogging Community
Inbound, GrowthHackers, and Bizsugar are just a few examples of blog communities made for bloggers, by bloggers. People who subscribe are the kind of people who like to read blogs, so you’ll already have gotten over that initial hurdle.
Take a look at a site before you submit. Having your links supported by a spammy or unpopular site is no use to you.
Start by registering and building a profile. Whenever you post a link, tell people why it’s a valuable link. No one wants to follow a random link down a rabbit hole to spammy nothingness.
6. Write Testimonials
Do you rely on a certain group of products for your business or brand? Build high quality backlinks by reviewing those products on Yelp, Amazon, or whatever marketplace you get them from.
You might even see a little bonus from the manufacturer as a thank you.
7. Turn Mentions Into Links
If there are some sites where you’ve noticed you’ve been mentioned in a post with no accompanying link, don’t just comment with a link.
Contact the site administrator or author and see if they can add a link to your site. They’ll likely be more than willing to oblige, hoping that if they need the same, you’ll also give them a link.
8. Press Releases
Do you spend a fair amount of time sending press releases out to companies and websites announcing new products or company changes? Use this as an opportunity to build high quality backlinks.
If someone is reading your press release, you can bet they’re interested in your company. Take advantage of their attention by giving them even more reasons to love you.
High Quality Backlinks Can Be Helpful and Profitable
The aim of your backlinks is to share helpful information with your reading public. While your overall goal with your brand is to build profit, commitment to a brand is built on trust. High quality backlinks build trust with a community of clients.
If you’re ready to take your backlinks up a notch, contact us today to get started.
