22 Link Building Strategies For Small Businesses

A website is overrated and just a waste of time without traffic, Websites are already expensive, image buying ads weekly just to save face, Link building is exactly what you need to double your traffic, get more exposure and make conversions

Prepare A Link building + Content Plan

Link building wont work without good content, don't even start this journey if you are not ready to commit to content creativity. With this method, you will have to read through the link building strategies, choose the one you will want to work with and also read the tips on content writing. Now let’s begin.

Link Building Strategies

The first step is to know what kind of websites to target by checking their DA score with the SEMrush account you opened. Note; Google rewards old but still relevant websites with domain authority and because they've been relevant in that niche space for a long time, they tend to have a really good number of reputable backlinks that overall gives them a good domain authority e.g. Old educational websites (college forum or website) and old associations.

Strategy 1

Get A Wikipedia Backlink: What better social proof can exist? Wikipedia is more like a trusted listing for business profiles and people, getting your profile on their website will increase the trust people have in your brand and will be an incredible backlink home run. Did I also mention that it is one of the few DA90 sites that will give you that kind of opportunity? 

But be careful though, your content must be top-notch, it is a closely monitored website, and originality must be your focus when writing for Wikipedia.

Strategy 2

Ego Bait: This is yet another popular method, This is when you make a "hype or "positive brand" content about a particular person, company or website, share it with them through emails, hashtags, private messages and they take the bait by sharing it with their fan base to boost their ego or reputation. Now that's called ego bait. They will happily direct their audience to your site and can get a new audience and an important backlink.

• You can write a positive review of a company.
• Make a positive testimonial video about a product

• Interview an important person who has the connections to share the link to that interview to a site with domain authority (an admin, the owner, a moderator)

Strategy 3

Collaborations: Not guest posting, that's not even an easy deal to break for a beginner. Many websites will only give that opportunity to a website they can gain from and that's why this strategy will be about exchanging backlinks for backlinks. This method is a very good one, they might be willing to set up a follow tag on their website for your link that will improve your rank and you'll gain an audience through the power of referral. Reach out to a website in your niche and don't ask but make a proposal about 

• Doing a shout out on each other's page or video 
• Doing an article or video about a niche you are both involved in with a part two on your website and a part two on theirs?
• Recommending a particular video, article or product on each other's page 

Strategy 4

Offer A Discount To An Audience: This is another backlink strategy that works like crazy, find a site with good domain authority and offer their audience a course or tool discount, they will happily announce the good news to their audience and encourage their users to visit your site to claim the discount. You'll get a good backlink, traffic and conversion. 

 You can also use this as a marketing strategy to get more customers by giving this discount to not just a site with good domain authority but also an influencer's fan base. 

Strategy 5

Offer a free tool: Everybody wants a free tool or course. If you can offer it; they can take it. Offer a free tool that adds value to your niche. This works like magic, the increase in traffic a free tool can give is never-ending, as long as your tool exists, backlinks will keep flowing in and so will a new audience and potential conversion. The number of backlinks, traffic and conversions you will get will depend on

• How many tools like your tool exist. I will advise you to go for a tool that is not yet saturated in the market by free versions. But if you do, check out these other points
• The features on the tool will mostly be responsible for the rise in traffic. If you offer features on your tool that everybody offers in that same type of tool then the big dogs of that industry will surely swallow you up, but if you unlock more potentials by offering something extra and important that is mostly sold as a premium feature, then you just unlocked a true traffic source that will last for a long time and keep giving you backlinks
• Be careful!! If you offer a very important tool that is known in the market to be expensive or never free, the big dogs of that industry will come for you and you will make enemies that aren't worth the traffic. So add "some" sold or premium features only not all of them
• A tool can be many things, think deeply about the best tool and how it will lead people back to your site and also bring you targeted traffic. 
• You can market it by searching for articles that have a list post discussing all the free tools in that niche and reaching out to all their moderators to add your tool as one of them

 

Strategy 6 

Controversial content: starting a controversial topic that has people in your industry talking is another way to get backlinks. This is yet another popular marketing strategy used by industry influencers to raise awareness of their content. The key is having another perspective and seeing that topic from a different angle.

Strategy 7  

Be a Source for Reporters and Bloggers: There is a free service called HARO (help a reporter out) It connects reporters and bloggers to people that need exposure and backlinks. This is one of the best ways to get quality white hate SEO backlinks from big news websites. I saw this method on a website called backlinko.com and they swear by this method. 

• Register for an account with the free plan.
• Keep an eye on the requests you can contribute to
• When you find one, submit a valuable pitch not an opinion, you have to make sure you are 100% sure of what you're saying, why? If your info turns out to be not so true and is published, this will only hurt your brand.

Strategy 8  

Creating A Branded Technique: Another good way to generate backlinks is to make a unique strategy and come up with a name for it. People will always refer to your website and your brand as the originator when using that strategy. Some examples are The Moving Man Strategy coined by Brian Dean. This method has been discussed and accredited to him resulting in quality backlinks 

Strategy 9

Resource Pages: Some blogs either have a dedicated resource page for linking their users to other pages or have a blog post with helpful resources.

• Search for those blogs using the keyword helpful resources +your niche
• Reach out to them and suggest they add your link too.

Strategy 10

Send Emails: This is a popular method and one that is top-notch at that too; this might not get you backlinks from authority sites but from normal people, the right way. The strategy is about sending a friendly message to targeted emails (people who are already interested in your niche) containing your content and asking softly for a review on that content and possibly a share. With this strategy, the more targeted emails you have, the better. This strategy ends in victory when they share your post and their friends share it too. Now that's massive link building.

Strategy 11

Turn Brand Mention To Backlinks: If an article gives your brand a mention on their site since they already have a soft spot for you, you can 

• Email them privately 
• Thank them for their patriotic mention
• Suggest softly that they add your link to the mention,
• Picture of a mention without a link

Strategy 12

Product Review: If you sell a product and have been wondering how to get another website to do a review then let's kill four birds with one stone; another backlink, product review, possible traffic and possible conversion.

 This hits two ways, if you are the one with a review site then contact them, tell them about doing a review for them in exchange for backlinks and social shares. If it's the other way around:

• Reach out to a product review blog or the product (find them on google using a popular topic in your niche + product review e.g. Microsoft review)
• Send a message about your proposal. In the proposal, introduce yourself, introduce the product, and offer to give them the product for free in exchange for a product review 
• It must be short, easy to understand and friendly.

If they accept, boom! You just gained another backlink 

Strategy 13

Get Listed On Directories: This is one of the oldest backlink methods, but it still works, many of these sites are high authority sites and can give you traffic too. 

 But there is a better approach than just trying out every directive you see, look for directives that are more into your niche, that way you can present yourself to a more targeted audience. If you are a business that serves customers in specific areas then look for local directives that serve people in that locality. 

Strategy 14

Transcribe Videos of Industry Influencers: This is another way to climb that social ladder, influencers make content in different formats that include, tutorials, presentations, webinars, hangouts, Q&A's and vlogs. If you transcribe one of these formats on their behalf by turning their video into words, their articles to videos (for Youtubers), turning their webinars to articles and put this content on your site, the influencer will be happy to send his audience to your site.

• Target an influencer in your niche and find content owned by them you think will be best to transcribe, new contents are always best.
• Transcribe their content and post it on your site, make sure to give them full credit for the post, try the ego bait by even adding their picture or logo, name and website link. If you are a Youtuber, do the ego baiting in the description box and at the introduction after introducing yourself of course. 
•  At the end of the post you advertise what you do and if you have content that could be a good follow-up after the influencer's content, then post the link too.
• Contact the influencer and tell them about your "free" deed. Most of them will be happy to send their audience to check out the transcribed content on your site
  

Strategy 15

Reclaim Links From Stolen Images: If you make really good images, I am talking diagrams, infographics, photography, illustrations then the possibility of your images getting stolen is so high, yes it's sad but not as bad as you think. These shared images are supposed to get you quality backlinks but you aren't given the credit for them; there is a strategy that can help you benefit from these stolen images.

• Do a reverse image search using google image search or TinEye
• Check all the websites and make sure they are giving you credit using your link

• If you find a website that isn't giving you credit, reach out to them and politely ask them to give you credit for your image. Don't threaten anyone with a lawsuit. This can be the beginning of a good relationship between your site and theirs if you handle the situation appropriately. 
  

Strategy 16

Quora Hack: This strategy is the true meaning of "expertise" many marketers will claim to help you by posting about 6-10 answers on your niche every day and also add your links to those answers, you might even get excited about their so-called strategy but guess what? That strategy will get you banned! But this method will post few answers in a week but get you massive targeted traffic.

• Go to SEMrush, and find your way to organic research pages report, click on pages in the menu
• Input quora.com, click on advanced filters and choose containing, put your keyword and click apply
• You will see all the pages in that niche that gets a lot of traffic, go to each page and some of these pages might not have up to five answers, the lesser the answers on that question the better it is for the next step.
• Read the most upvoted answer and create a better answer by adding more to it using the most upvoted answer as a guide.
• You have to take your time with this strategy, answer two questions like that with your link. Answer a total of 5 answers a week; you can try one answer with you link a day, five times a week.

This is important!!! You should never answer only those two questions with links, you will have to answer like three other questions in your niche without links every time you post answers with a link or else, quora might ban you or start taking down your answers.

Strategy 17

Use Google Alert: This is a rare but a powerful way to stay on top of the article mentions on google. When you use google alert, you can set a parameter that alerts you anytime a person mentions your name or brand. That way you can reach out to them and make business connections that can lead to even more future backlinks. 

• Go to google alert and set up an alert using your brand name e.g. If your brand name is; Gorock.com and gorock. This works more effectively if you have a special and uncommon brand name.
• When you get an alert about a mention, check the website to know what is about.
• You can contact the website, thank them for the mention and kindly suggest they add your link to your mention.
• Google alert setting parameter 4 in 1 picture

Strategy 18

Roundup post: Some websites specialize in making round-up posts every month or week, the difference between them and resource pages is time, resources can be timeless so anybody’s post no matter the time it was posted can bet linked but with round-ups, you need to make the post at that particular space of time to be featured in that particular round-up article.

• Go to google and search for your niche + roundups e.g. Weekly News Round-Up, New Ai Technology monthly Round-Up or Round-Up :Quarterly New Best moisturizers.
• When you find a website that specializes in this type of content, send them a message requesting to be featured in a future round up, this is best done two weeks to the time they usually publish the post but nevertheless, you can do this anytime.

Strategy 19

Your Own Expert Round-Up: What if you decide to be the one doing the round-ups, won't that be great? This is another way to get so many backlinks at once. 

• Choose whom you'll love to feature before even making the article
• Send them an email about your brilliant idea of making a round up that will feature a lot of influencers in your niche who would all share this round-up on their pages or websites. Get straight to the point and tell them about how it would benefit everyone through backlinks and more exposure.

Strategy 20

The Ultimate/Complete guide Technique: This is a masterpiece and a very unique way of getting backlinks. An ultimate guide is a 3000-4000 words article talking about everything that topic can talk about. 

There are so many times as a writer, you want to talk about a topic and then a tool or a product comes up that will help you sort of gives your readers a good understanding of what you are talking about and also isn't really in your niche so you can't write about it or just don't want to, what you do is refer your readers to an ultimate or complete guide that will tell them all they need to know about.

This is usually how it plays out, and as an ultimate or complete guide writer, this is an advantage that will give you many quality backlinks. 

Do Not! Choose to have an ultimate or complete guide in topics that have too many ultimate or complete guides already, yours will get swallowed up by the big dogs of your industry.

•  Go to google and search for a topic or tool
• Check the first 3 pages to find out if there are any ultimate guides already made. If there are two or three guides that aren't that "ultimate" you can make a better one more befitting of an ultimate or complete guide, if there is none; then this is the perfect topic, if there are too many; then it's not the right topic for you.  

Strategy 21

Share Your Success Story: If you follow an influencer's advice and it works for you, make an article sharing your success story with the influencer and they might be happy to share your story on their website and also link your website's article section talking about this strategy in their post as social proof (proof you exist)

Strategy 22

Build Links From Outdated Resources: This takes time but it works and is effective when it comes to getting high quality sites. You need to:

 Use the SEMrush tool to check for articles in your niche with high domain authority that has; changed names, moved to a new URL, stopped offering a service, stopped updating a resource and have old irrelevant news on that article for that reason or a website that shutdown

Now you know them, input the outdated website link on SEMrush backlink checker and you should find some articles with links leading to the broken website link.

2 in one picture of the 404 search + the backlink search

Reach out to their admins, inform them about the recent change and also softly suggest they change it to your link if you wrote a similar article. Most of the time, because you have been helpful to them, they happily do so.

Content Preparation

Backlinks are cool but what type of articles get backlinks? You can only request a backlink or share, if you don't have a content masterpiece, all these strategies will count for nothing.

  The first step to ranking number one on Google is to have the kind of article people are proud to share. There are elements in an article that have shown to help improve ranking and shares. If used correctly, you stand a better chance of having quality backlinks and organic traffic.

1.  Do not ever engage in clickbait: I don't understand why you'll have another title and discuss another topic; it increases your bounce rate and tells google your topic is not relevant. If this continues to happen in most of your articles, your google rank will fall, bloggers and reader will notice your incompetence and won't take your article serious whenever you post, you will hardly get any backlinks especially not from the bloggers who found you out when they were researching on google.
2. Do not choose oversaturated topics: Some topics are worn out. They have been talked about and published too much, this decreases your chances of getting shares and backlinks before you even write that article.
3. Do an intensive keyword research: Sometimes, it is better to go for a less competitive keyword, use the LSI keyword tool to look for these keywords. If you do all your homework and end up being on the first page of google because of this keyword, it might give you more exposure than being on the 10th on Google's search engine result page with a competitive keyword. Think about it…
4. Make a statistics content: This type of content always gets you traffic, sometimes some topics need actual facts that come with numbers and not your advice. Find a topic that will need full statistics and cover it. Backlinks and shares will flood in, in no time. But most importantly, Google doesn't have many of these statistics articles so it would be easier to rank.
5. Make videos: Some people do not fully understand a conversation till they see it in a video, your habit of making videos will attract these kinds of people not just once but make them loyal to your brand. "How to" Guides are the best kinds of articles for a video, if you have a written and a visual representation of what you are explaining to the reader, the chances of getting shares and backlinks are more. Visualizers for articles is another rare type of content the attracts people
6. Use Instructive Photos: You don't need to fill the whole article with photos (that might slow down the page) but if you are explaining or giving instructions in detail, like the ultimate guide kind of content, you will need to have photos for every milestone, meaning? Some steps might be confusing when practicing, if there is no visual representation, have a screenshot with arrows indicating what you need them to know.
7. Use Gifs: If you ever want to lighten the mood, a gif or a meme will help you do that and keep your readers engaged so it seems more like a conversation. This method decreases your bounce rate (they would click off your article too soon). Do not use this method too often for business articles, most of the people reading your articles came for business and no jokes, so it is best to avoid humor entirely.
8. Use pictures in general: If your mind tells you that this part of my article needs my readers to visualize it for better understanding then find any image you think will help your viewers understand, screenshots, gifs, infographics, illustration etc. Do not forget to use an image tag on your website so it can be indexed by google image.
9. Listicle articles: This is one of the most successful articles in the department of social shares, why? All it has is an intro, the list and a closing remark. The straight forward, let's get to it energy around this type of post makes it easy to share and loveable.
10. Use Infographics: This is becoming popular, why? This aids visual learners to understand better and guess what? Most people are can either understand both written and visual content or just visual, but humans are better visual learners in general, if you have a habit of making infographics. You'll get tons of traffic, a higher chance to be index by google, new followers loyal to your format or way of posting, shares, probably get your infographic stolen and recover them by using the 15th link building strategy to get quality backlinks through the stolen images. 

Know That:

With all these methods, your probability of failing at your niche is almost impossible, but it requires a lot of to become good at these strategies. 

Thanks for stopping by, if you want to know more on link building check out these articles. 

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Link Building: Working Method + The good, The Bad And The Ugly Facts

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