8 Killer link building techniques for 2021

February 10, 2021February 18, 2021 Lally Hale

While link building is not as powerful as it used to be, it’s still one of the most practiced tactics in SEO. Since backlinks remain arguably the most powerful ranking signal for Google, utilizing certain strategies becomes almost mandatory if you want to keep up with your competition. The value you can get with link building is enormous, especially if you’re building relevant, high-quality backlinks. Here are some of the best techniques of acquiring the best links.

HARO

HARO or Help A Reporter Out is a large platform that associates tens of thousands of journalists, as well as their sources. See, editors often need additional expert comments for their articles to back up their statements. HARO facilitates the process of acquiring such commentary by allowing the editors to post queries that are then sent out to the emails of registered users, says Andrew Martins, senior associate at Lvbet.com

Such queries come three times a day: 5:40 AM, 12:40 PM, and 5:40 PM EST. Most often, there are about 80 of them to look through, daily.

Now, if you want to answer a query, you need to choose which one is the most suitable for you. You should only pick ones that offer quality backlinks since that’s what you’re after. The variety of topics includes lifestyle and travel, high-tech, business & finance, and general queries. I opt for the business & finance category, as the queries often regard B2B, entrepreneurship, marketing, small business, etc. That’s where the majority of queries land.

As for writing a pitch, be concise, straight-to-the-point, and make sure that you follow the editors’ requirements. Most of the time, they’d like a response that isn’t longer than 200 words, unless they ask for more. Seeing that they get a lot of pitches, going through that much text becomes almost impossible.

This is a query with the potential of landing you a link on Information Week, which is quite a recognizable magazine.

Outreach

Outreach involves the acquisition of editor emails and then simply pitching them something. This can involve partnering up for reciprocal links, guest posting, or providing them with a press release. Ideally, you want blogs that are in your niche and would be willing to cooperate with you. Besides acquiring powerful links, you get to build a network of contacts, which you can then use to your advantage.

Skyscraper technique

First introduced by Brian Dean of Backlinko, this technique involves looking for a post that topically matches your industry and ranks number one for a specific, high difficulty keyword. Now, your goal here is to write something that will surpass the number one post. While this is one of the hardest methods out there, it can bring you incredible results. Ranking for such high-volume queries can land you tons and tons of new backlinks, as a lot of people will deem your resource as valuable.

Gabriel Slowik also says from bonaccord control“If you manage to write something comprehensive, insightful, and, most importantly, properly optimized, chances are that you’ll take the top spot. Additionally, you might become an expert in a given topic, further improving your recognisability and credibility. Possibly, you’ll interest some of your industry’s influencers to share your post”

Guest posting

While some of Google’s employees such as Matt Cutts deemed guest posting as dead, it still is one of the most viable techniques. It consists of looking for specific blogs that accept guest posts and then, simply, pitching them ideas. If you get selected, you write a post, insert your links and you’re all set. To find such blogs, you can use a search command
keyword + “write for us”, “contribute”.

This allows you to see websites that are related to your industry and are accepting guest posts. When pitching stories, you could use sentiment analysis to find out the emotions that stand behind a given topic to give you additional insight.

Roundups

There are plenty of expert roundups out there to contribute to. Websites like Databox Blog allow you to respond to a survey with a chance of getting your comment included in their next article, along with a link. To find such websites, you want to use a similar command in search: keyword + “roundup”, “expert round-up”, etc.

This method doesn’t take much time and can land really good results if you want quick, valuable links.

Broken link building

Broken link building requires some kind of software such as SEMrush to do. You want to find any broken links in your niche’s blogs, and then, contact the webmaster or editor. If you have a resource that fits in there nicely, chances are that your proposition will get accepted and your link will be inserted, instead of a 404. You can create content based on those 404 links to prepare the best fit for the spot.

Link reclamation

Link reclamation involves looking for any unlinked mentions of your business and then asking nicely if the editor could link back to our site. For this, you can set up Google Alerts to monitor any mentions, or use software such as Brand24 for more powerful analytics. Tracking logos and infographics you’ve made is another possibility. If somebody chooses to use your material, they should be obliged to link back to you if you ask them to.

Studies, whitepapers, ebooks

Long-form, valuable content is another thing that you could try. If you have the capability to conduct an extensive study, write a whitepaper or prepare an ebook, you should go for it. Such things often get appreciated by your industry’s community and might be recognized as great resources worthy of linking to them. On top of that, you could hide these behind a gate to get the visitors to leave their email addresses, hence increasing your email database.