Have you ever read a blog post about link building strategies, tried a few tactics from it, but either received no response or responses asking to pay for links?
Link building has undoubtedly become a nearly impossible feat. But, it’s still an integral part of a successful SEO strategy.
The good news for you is that this blog post is not like other blogs you’ve read about link building strategies.
Being a highly-acclaimed Digital Marketing Consultant, I regularly utilize various link building strategies to see what currently works best for me as well as my clients in terms of rankings, traffic, and overall visibility.
Based on my findings, I’ve compiled a list of the best link building strategies that actually work in 2022.
In fact, I’ve been using these same exact strategies to help my clients build high-quality, relevant backlinks from authoritative sources in their niche.
And today, I’m going to share all my link building strategies that are working for me & my clients and helping me generate extraordinary results.
But for the sake of clarity, let’s quickly go through the basics & importance of link building in SEO first.
What is Link Building in SEO?
In technical terms, link building is the practice of earning backlinks (hyperlinks) from relevant, authoritative sites to your website.
For the uninitiated, backlinks are one of the most important Google ranking factors.
You can drastically improve your search engine visibility and rankings by simply acquiring a lot of quality backlinks to your website.
This, in turn, will help to increase traffic to your website and boost your conversions, sales, revenue, and so on.
The best part? — There are a plethora of ways to build backlinks to your website and bump up your rankings in the search results.
But before we get into that, let’s understand the importance of link building a little bit in detail.
Why Link Building is Important?
There are several reasons why link building is important, especially in 2022.
Links Serve as a Vote of Confidence
The main reason why link building is important for SEO is that links serve as a vote of confidence in the eyes of search engines.
High-quality backlinks tell search engine spiders that your content is valuable and trustworthy. They, in turn, reward your content by improving its ranking on the search results page.
Research by Matthew Barby, Ahrefs, and AccuRanker revealed that the more high-quality backlinks you acquire, the greater credibility it gives to your content & increases the chances of ranking above your competitors.
Links Help to Augment your Website Content
If you want to win at SEO and attain rankings on the first page of search results, writing compelling content is not going to be enough.
You need to get the word out about your content to get it read by your target audience. To do that, you need to build high-quality backlinks to your content. Doing so will help to increase your content visibility on search engines.
This is because when you create backlinks from relevant websites in your industry, you will increase its potential to reach more people.
In other words, backlinks ultimately help to augment your website content in the eyes of your target audience.
Links can Bring in Referral Traffic
Backlinks not only impact your search engine rankings but also drive instant referral traffic to your website.
For example, when you publish a guest post on a high-traffic website, you’ll get both, a backlink and referral traffic to your website.
Furthermore, when referral traffic comes from a relevant and authoritative website, it does not just bring additional traffic to your website. But, the probability of that referral traffic being converted into paying customers is significantly higher compared to referral traffic brought by other marketing tactics.
That said, let me help you get started by sharing with you my advanced link building strategies to achieve better SEO results in 2022.
Advanced Link Building Strategies that Work in 2022
Here are the 10 advanced link building strategies that will help to bump up search engine rankings of your website.
1 – Create Shareworthy Content
Creating great, shareworthy content is unquestionably the easiest way to earn high-quality backlinks to your website.
Now, you may have already read this probably a hundred times on other blogs. But not many bloggers actually tell you what type of content to create and make it shareworthy.
So, let me share with you what types of content can be considered shareworthy content that gets other bloggers, publishers, etc. to link back to your content.
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Industry Statistics
People often link back to industry statistics, research studies, and survey reports that curate industry-relevant data.
Mediakix, for example, regularly publishes survey reports related to influencer marketing and many marketers (including me) quote their findings in blog posts, guest posts, and other types of content pieces.
In return, Mediakix gains a backlink every time someone mentions their survey report in their content.
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Create Visual Assets
Visuals are highly “link-worthy” as they make it easier to consume complex concepts. Just think about how many times have you included a diagram, chart, or infographic to help your readers easily digest complicated subjects.
You see, when you create a powerful visual asset, it instantly increases your chances of acquiring new backlinks to your website.
The best part? — Most of the people who use your visual assets such as a diagram or infographic are highly likely to link back to your website. You won’t even have to ask them for it.
Besides, if some people have used your visual asset but did not link back to your website, you can always reclaim links on your visual assets (more on this later).
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Publish In-Depth Guides
SEMrush recently conducted a study titled The Anatomy of Top Performing Articles and discovered that articles over 7,000 words tend to generate 4 times more website traffic and 1.5 times more shares than articles between 900-1,200 word count.
This is mainly because such long-form content gives readers a massive amount of information in one place, making it the default content resource for that specific topic.
The same study also revealed that list posts generate 2 times more website traffic and earn 1.5 times more backlinks compared to other blog post formats.
This brings us to our next link building strategy…
2 – Publish More List Posts
List posts basically divide an article into small chunks of easily-digestible content that make it simpler for readers to consume information.
Buzzsumo recently analyzed over 1 million articles on the Internet and found that list posts generated more backlinks and even outperformed Video, Infographic, Quiz, Why post, and How-to post formats.
The point is that if you want to build high-quality backlinks to your website, consider publishing list posts like:
- 10 tips to increase [something]
- 12 tools to manage [something] more effectively
- 5 ways to turn [something] into [something better]
3 – Double Down on Guest Blogging
Guest posting is one of the oldest and the most popular link strategies of all time.
But as more and more people started implementing what everyone else was doing, some guest blogging practices have become obsolete.
In other words, guest blogging is still a highly-effective link building strategy, only the approach has changed.
Nowadays, if you want to generate the highest SEO value from guest blogging, you need to be more strategic and authentic with your approach.
Here are a couple of rules you need to keep in mind before executing your guest blogging strategy:
- Choose your guest posting websites wisely. Make sure the sites you’ve selected are highly-relevant to your niche and have strong Domain Ratings (DR).
- Write on topics that are relevant to the audience of guest blogging sites.
- Focus on delivering value. Provide a unique piece of content that genuinely helps the audience of your guest blogging site.
- Try to include a contextual backlink to your website within the content.
These rules have personally helped me get published on some of the major platforms & publications.
4 – Build Strategic Content Partnerships
Strategic content partnership is a solid link building strategy that can help to expand your reach and increase your website traffic.
The idea is to bank on other blogs’ authority and readership by reciprocally exchanging backlinks with relevant blogs in your industry.
I know link exchange is regarded as a bad link building strategy. But the fact is, many top industry blogs still exchange backlinks from each other with no manipulation involved.
They link to each other only when they know it would be best for their readers to learn more about a particular subject.
Similarly, you can also participate in strategic content partnerships by finding top industry blogs in your niche.
All you need to do is create a list of top industry blogs that have similar domain ratings, find a topical blog post where you want to link from to your own article, and offer to give a link back to any of their other relevant blog posts.
When done right, you can easily earn a significant amount of backlinks using this simple link building strategy.
5 – Recover Lost & Broken Links
Broken link building is one of the top link building strategies of all time. This is because instead of asking for backlinks, you’re helping someone fix non-working links on their blog posts.
The idea is to find relevant blog posts with a good domain rating in your industry, check if they have any broken links, and reach out to them to update the broken link by suggesting to a relevant blog post on your website.
Here’s an easy-to-use email template to help you get started.
Hey [Name of Blog Owner],
I was reading one of your blog posts titled [Title of the Blog Post] & discovered a few links that didn’t seem to be working:
[Broken link 1]
[Broken link 2]
I’ve recently published a blog post on the same topic, which may be a good replacement for the [broken link] on your [blog post xyz].
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
[Your name]
Besides taking advantage of top industry blogs’ broken links, you should also try reclaiming your own lost links.
To find out lost links, go to SEMrush’s Backlink Analytics tool and identify the lost backlinks.
Once you have the list of lost backlinks, you can simply reach out to the owners of those blogs and ask them to link it to your relevant blog post on your website.
6 – Reclaim Links on Your Visual Assets
If you have ever published any kind of shareable visual assets such as infographics, there are chances other blogs might have used it in their articles.
But did they credit your visual asset with a link back to your website?
Chances are a few of them might have credited with a link back but most of them might have not.
This is a great opportunity for you to earn some backlinks from top industry blogs in a short time.
All you need to do is, perform a reverse image search on Google Images and find out the websites using your visual assets.
Once you find blogs that have used your visual assets but did not credit you, reach out to them via email and ask them to credit your work with a link back to your original resource.
I’ve tried this tactic many times and most blog owners were more than happy to credit my original source with a link back to my website.
7 – Participate in Expert Roundup Posts
Expert roundup posts are a kind of blog post in which the publisher simply curates insights on a specific topic from top experts.
The best part about expert roundups is that most of the time publishers also give a link back to the website of every individual expert who participated in the post.
This, in turn, makes it a win-win for both the publisher as well as the experts.
I have personally published and participated in a lot of expert roundup posts on various digital marketing topics and I have experienced first-hand that this particular link building strategy helps to earn plenty of backlinks.
Check out the example of Expert Roundup Post on Rankwatch.
8 – Replicate Your Competitors’ High-Quality Links
This is one of the few smart link building strategies that can help to acquire high-quality backlinks, especially when you’re on a tight budget.
You see, many of your competitors might already be spending hundreds of hours acquiring backlinks from relevant, authoritative blogs within your industry.
The idea I’m suggesting is quite simple. — Spy on your top competitors and replicate their high-quality backlinks.
To do this, you need to make a list of your top competitors, analyze their top backlinks using SEMrush or any other tool, and reach out to the blogs linking to your competitors by offering to write a guest post or leveraging any other relevant link building strategy mentioned in this post.
9 – Turn Linkless Brand Mentions into Links
This link building strategy is quite similar to the one where you reclaim links on your visual assets.
You see, just like the visual assets, other industry blogs might mention your website/brand in their articles but may or may not link to you.
In this case, you can simply give them a light nudge to turn your unlinked brand mention into a backlink.
If you’re wondering how you can find linkless mentions of your brand across the Internet, I’ve good news for you.
There are certain social listening tools like Google Alerts, Buzzsumo, etc. which can help to track who has mentioned your brand by notifying you via email.
As soon as you receive an email notification where the publisher has mentioned your brand name but did not link back to your website, you can reach out to them and request to add a link back to your website.
10 – Leverage Triangle Backlink Exchange Strategy
If you’re concerned about the link building strategy and looking for a more creative & less risky approach to link exchange, the triangle backlink exchange strategy might be perfect for you.
To build high-quality backlinks using this strategy, you’ll need access to another website (besides your own website) that has a good domain rating.
The idea is to pitch top industry blogs offering to provide a backlink from the other high DR website if they give a backlink to your primary website.
What makes this link exchange strategy special is that the exchange of backlinks is not bi-directional. This drastically improves the chances of getting ‘yes’ on your link building outreach attempts.
Now It’s Your Turn!
While there are plenty of other ways to build backlinks to your website. But I’ve found the above link building strategies to be the most effective in 2022. These link building strategies are not only ethical but have proven to help me build a solid link profile for me and my clients.
So, which link building strategy are you going to try first? Let me know it worked out for you in the comments!
Q1. Is link building hard?
A1. Link building is not hard, it just requires plenty of time. But with these link building strategies, anyone can master link building skills.
Q2. Is link building still effective?
A2. Link building is unquestionably one of the most effective SEO tactics. By building backlinks from relevant, authoritative sites, you can drastically improve the rankings of your website in Google search results.
Q3. What is the best link building strategy?
A3. There are many link building strategies that work best for all kinds of websites. Personally, I love guest blogging and triangle link exchange strategies.
Q4. What are the advantages of link building?
A4. Link building not only improves your rankings on the search results page but also helps to build meaningful relationships within your niche and serves as a continuous source of referral traffic for your website.