SEO Tips: How To Get Backlinks
One of the most essential parts of running a website is making sure that it’s optimised for search engines such as Google, and will show up in their results.
A relatively straightforward way that you can do this is by ensuring that search engines consider your website trustworthy and valuable for visitors.
What Is a Domain Authority?
The Internet is built as a hierarchical structure, which is called ‘domain authority’. The most trusted websites rank more highly in search engine results. This leads to more exposure for their websites, and, therefore, encourages more visitors - and potentially more sales of their products or services.
Domain authority is calculated by an algorithm, which takes into consideration a variety of factors and gives an overall score.
For example, google.com and YouTube.com both have DA (domain authority) rankings of 100, while apple.com and microsoft.com both have scores of 99.
One way that you can increase your score is by monitoring and managing your SEO. If you’re unsure about how to do this, we have plenty of Squarespace SEO tips for you to use.
However, another key method for building a better domain authority is utilising backlinks.
What Are Backlinks?
Backlinks are the name for when another website links back to yours.
This might happen if, for example, a business in the same industry mentions content from your website in a blog post on their own website. If they include a link to your original content, this would then create a backlink to your website.
This positively impacts your search engine optimisation (SEO), as trustworthy websites linking back to yours implies that your website offers value to visitors. This, therefore, improves your website’s ranking in search engine results and, as a result, your website’s visibility.
However, it’s important to note that if Google becomes aware that a website is linking to multiple sites for this purpose, it will be penalised - defeating the point of any backlinks that have been set up.
If you’re wondering how to get backlinks, there are a variety of different options. One way is to pay for backlinks, but we wouldn’t recommend this as it isn’t a trusted and safe method - and it may not even work, leaving you out of pocket!
Instead, we’ve put together some of the best ways that you can build backlinks safely and organically.
How to Get Backlinks
Post Engaging Content on Other Sites
Contributing meaningful blog posts or articles to community-led sites like Medium or Reddit and linking back to your own website can be a valuable way to build backlinks safely. These websites attract a wide range of visitors, both potential customers and industry professionals - and can be a great way to attract more traffic to your site.
Create Infographics
Designing infographics can be another way to get backlinks. By creating interesting, informative graphics in your industry or niche, you can appeal to other professionals who may go on to use the infographic that you’ve created in their own work. If they do, they’ll usually post a link to your website as a reference.
Use Help a Reporter Out
Help a Reporter out, or HARO, is an outlet which helps journalist to find sources for news stories. Journalists are always keen to interview or take quotes from experts, depending on the topic and the story - and there are lots of reporters out there covering a wide variety of niches!
Once you’ve signed up you can respond to any queries that you think are relevant to your business or industry, and if a reporter thinks you’re a good person to speak to they’ll get in contact. With any luck, this will lead to your business being backlinked on a news website. These are some of the most trusted sites in terms of domain authority, and could give your DA ranking a hefty boost!
Guest Blog
Another way that you can build backlinks safely is to utilise guest blogging. Lots of websites accept submissions from guest bloggers on a wide variety of topics. You can search for these websites using a search engine, by typing in the topic that you’d like to write about alongside a search term like ‘contributor’ or ‘write for us’.
The majority of these websites will allow contributors to link to their own business or website, either within the article itself or in a short biography or ‘about the author’ section.
Create Skyscraper Content
Skyscraper content is also an effective way of building backlinks safely. Skyscraper content pieces are effectively a long form piece of writing - often in excess of ten thousand words - which mention a variety of different topics and key words, usually around one main subject or industry. This is a good method for getting backlinks, as a skyscraper content piece is a comprehensive piece that is likely to be linked by other industry professionals or experts on their own websites as a reference.
It’s important to note that actually creating a skyscraper content piece can be a lot of work to take on, as both researching and writing the piece itself will be time intensive - but, if you want to learn how to get backlinks from trusted websites, we’re sure that the time and effort you put into this method will pay off!
Create Amazing Content
A final option to build a better domain authority is to focus on creating brilliant, original content. One of the best ways to get backlinks is to create content that’s worth linking. Focus on providing high value, engaging content, and you’re practically guaranteed to see an increase in backlinks from reliable websites.
The aim is to create the kind of content that others in your industry, as well as your audience, will want to share with their own audience - whether these are other professionals like yourself, experts in the same or a different industry, or topical bloggers.
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