Link building is still one of the most effective ways to improve your search engine rankings. In fact, a study by Moz and BuzzSumo found that links are more important than ever for SEO success. However, getting backlinks has changed in recent years thanks to Google’s ongoing efforts to penalize sites for link spammy tactics, and it’s never been harder to get quality backlinks without the best link building tools and strategies.
It’s more important than ever to be smart about acquiring links from authoritative sources if you want them to help boost your search ranking instead of hurting it. Read on for our take on some of the best link building tools and strategies.
Best Link Building SEO Practices
There is no one definitive answer when it comes to the best link building SEO practices. However, some general tips that may help include creating high-quality content that others will want to link to, actively engaging in social media and online communities, and reaching out to other websites to request links.
Additionally, focusing on building relationships with other websites and influencers in your industry can be beneficial. By taking a strategic and holistic approach to link building, you can increase your chances of success. Backlink analysis tools, like Ahrefs or Ubersuggest, will also tell you who owns a website and how to contact them.
Send outreach emails, use the right research tools, link to your content. Showing good link building efforts with the right tool lets you have a measure of control over where you rank.
Best Link Building Tools
These link-building tools will help you find opportunities to build links, track your progress and manage outreach. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here are a few of our favorites:
Ahrefs
This is one of the most powerful link building tools out there, and no list like this one would be complete without it. Ahrefs provides information on your competitor’s backlinks, including anchor text and ranking data. It also allows you to get an overview of the number of referring domains pointing to any site or domain name. You can see what sites are linking to yours and their total number of links as well as view stats on each individual link (such as link type and location).
The tool has a lot of other features as well, including rankings and domain authority.
You can set up alerts so that you get notified whenever a new link is discovered, monitor the backlinks of your competitors, find new link opportunities and see how your own site stacks up against the competition. These are just a few among way too many things to list in a single blog article. It’s a great tool for improving SEO.
SEMRush
This tool can help you find out what sites are linking to you and your competitors and how many links each site has pointing to it. It also gives insight into the keywords that are driving traffic to your website as well as those of your competitors by showing which keywords they’re ranking for organically (based on SEO data from Google).
This is a link building tool, because it can help you find out what kind of content is being shared on the web and what your competitors are doing well. You can then replicate that type of content on your own blog or website.
BuzzStream
This tool helps dig into your competitors’ blog posts by giving quick insight into their most popular content by topic or topic category (like “marketing” or “SEO”), which can help inform where you focus your content efforts for maximum impact with potential readers/customers in that niche area.
You can use BuzzStream to identify the right people to follow on Twitter, find relevant influencers in your niche and connect with them. This can help you build up an audience that’s interested in what you have to say. You can also use BuzzStream for outreach by using the simple email templates it provides for contacting bloggers/influencers or sharing your content—all without having to do any manual research beforehand.
Ninja Outreach (Link Building Software Outreach)
When talking about link building tools, one of the most often forgotten questions is “what do we use for outreach?” At least in the early stages of your backlink profile building days, you have to ask for backlinks. That means outreach. Tools like NinjaOutreach and Mailshake will make reaching out to content writers/website owners much easier.
This process is called “link prospecting,” which involves finding sites related to yours and then reaching out to them with an email asking if they’d include a link to some specific piece of your content (or maybe exchange links). This is a good way to find relevant sites and build relationships with them, but it can also be time-consuming and difficult to do manually. That’s where link prospecting software comes in—it automates the process so you don’t have to spend hours sifting through websites by hand!
Aside from using an SEO tool, you can pitch a deal specific to your prospect. You may offer a free trial to some of the services you offer, or anything else that will encourage them to link back to you–but make sure you are specific. There are many different ways to find new websites that might be willing to link back to you—some more effective than others.
Combine Each Link Building Tool With a Strategy:
Create Long Form Content
As I add this section into the blog article, it’s sitting at 2,284 words. A study between Backlinko and BuzzSumo found that longer blog posts get more backlinks than shorter ones, with 3,000 word articles getting almost twice as many as sub-1,000 word articles.
Does that mean I’m going to write rubbish to increase my word count? No, you should never do that. Ok, maybe just one more sentence.
OK.
Go to the next section.
Create Content That People Want to Share
None of the aforementioned link building tools would be terribly useful if no one wants to share and link to it anyway.
The most important factor in getting a link is that the content you create must be interesting, useful and unique. If you want people to link to your page, it has to provide value for them. If you can produce content that people will want to share with their friends then there is a much better chance of getting links from other websites.
Content should also be relevant to your target audience and the people who will be linking back to your site. This means that if possible, it should focus on a niche topic related specifically to what you do or sell. When on link building campaigns, you have to be at the top of your game. Use good link building tools, an even better link building strategy, and the best outreach tools on the market.
When writing content, tools like all-in-one SEO or Yoast can help you observe your SEO metrics and see the number of backlinks you have.
Find Link Profile and Link Building Opportunities
If you use Ahrefs as a link building tool, click on the SEO section of your dashboard and then click on “Link Profile.” This will bring you to a page with all of the links pointing to your site.
The first thing you should do is check for broken links, which are links that don’t work. You can do this by clicking on “Broken Backlinks” under “Internal Links” and then sorting by “Dangerous.” If there are any dangerous broken links (meaning they’re not just leading to 404 pages), that means that people were once able to reach these pages but now cannot. That’s bad for SEO! Also make sure there aren’t any broken internal links on any of your own websites, like if a blog post was supposed to have an image in it but didn’t work out because something went wrong when uploading it or something similar happened due to technical issues like server overloads being too common when trying new things online).
On the flip side of that coin, using this same tool on your competitors is one of your best link building opportunities. If a broken page on a competitor’s website has links pointing to it, simply re-create the content that used to be there, then reach out to the owners of the linking websites with something like, “I noticed you’re linking to a broken page. We have an article on that exact same topic. Maybe it would be worth switching the link out to our page.”
Find Guest-Posting opportunities.
Before you submit a guest post, make sure you’re pitching the right website. Consider the following:
- Domain authority (DA). You can use Ahrefs’ Domain Rating tool to see how much of an impact a website has on search engines.
- Reputation and audience size. Look at how many people visit the site every month (pageviews) as well as how many links they have pointing back to them (backlinks). The more popular and trusted these metrics are, the better!
- Content strategy. Does this site share similar content to yours? Does it regularly publish high-quality articles? If so, it might be worth reaching out; they could benefit from having someone else’s perspective added into their mix of content that already works well for them!
- Paying for guest posts versus unpaid ones–or no payment at all if you’re just trying something out first hand before pursuing paid options down low later on down the line towards the bottom line because everyone wants money more than anything else in life except maybe family love.
Get featured in niche directories like journalist industry lists, educational directories, business directories, etc.
As with other SEO strategies, it’s important that you’re always on the lookout for new ways to get your content featured in niche directories. Your goal should be to build links back to your website from sites that are related to your content and keywords.
Niche directories are a great place for doing this because they’re often poorly optimized, meaning Google will pay less attention to them than it does with general search results pages or news sites like The Huffington Post. As a result, you can use these sites as an opportunity for link building without worrying about getting penalized by Google.
They also provide a useful way of getting additional exposure on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn since many journalists are active users of these networks (and therefore spend more time reading through content there). This is valuable because while organic traffic generated through search engine optimization won’t directly lead someone directly onto your site (it takes them one step further down the page), link building via social media shares can provide direct traffic directly into its web pages.
Identify influencers who will share your content with their audience.
To get someone to share your content, you must first identify the right influencer. The best way to do this is by finding people who have similar audiences and will be interested in sharing your content with theirs. If you can find an influencer who is active in your industry or niche, then even better! The more active they are on social media, the better chance they’ll have of seeing what you’ve posted and being willing to share it with their audience (and give them a shout out at the same time). Finally, make sure that any influencers that you want as partners also share similar content to yours so as not to confuse anyone or risk diluting their message.
Ask for social shares and shoutouts.
Social media is one of the most important platforms for link building, because it allows you to reach a huge audience and build relationships with influencers.
If you want more traffic from social media, it’s important to ask for shares and shoutouts from other influencers. Asking someone else to share your content is a great strategy for getting more shares on social media, because people are more likely to share something if they see that others have already done so.
Content is still king but now you have to promote it as well to get backlinks
The process of making content and then promoting it can be time-consuming and stressful; there are many different ways that you can go about promoting your content, but one of the most effective methods is outreach. Outreach involves reaching out to other websites (both online and offline) to ask them if they would like a link or mention in exchange for some form of value—like a guest post on their blog or an interview with the owner or founder of their site.
Outreach requires a lot of research, time and effort; luckily there are tools available that make this task easier!
Conclusion
No matter what your goals are, if you want to build links to improve your SEO, there are plenty of options out there. You can contact us today for assistance, to help you find the right ones that will help you reach those goals and keep your readers engaged. We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below!