Link building is one of the most important things you can do in terms of off-site search engine optimization. Follow these 20 tactics that would help you build the right links. The original article is from semrush.com. The author, Navneet Kaushal is the Founder and CEO of India’s leading search marketing agency PageTraffic. A leading search engine strategist, Navneet helps clients maintain an edge in the digital world. He has helped value-conscious businesses build site traffic, increase the user base, boost web sales and bolster customer satisfaction. Navneet’s expertise has established PageTraffic as one of the most awarded and successful search marketing agencies in Asia. You can follow him at Twitter. Image courtesy of argus456 via Bigstockphoto.

The Internet is built on links.

Link building plays a vital role in achieving the good search engine rankings. Gone are the days when buying hundreds of links through spam methods would give better rank in the search results.

But, now in the present world of SEO, quality matters a lot over quantity. Thus, you have to follow some superior link building techniques to stay authoritative in the eyes of Google and other search engines.

In this post, we’ll look at 20 different SEO link building tactics that will help you to build the links a lot more naturally.

20 Different Ways to Perform Link Building as Part of Your SEO Strategy

1. Craft link worthy content

Before writing any post, ensure the content you’re going to produce will be useful and actionable for the readers. Yes, when you have the useful stuff that is worth linking, getting other websites to link your helpful content will become a simple process.

Most of the internet marketers and bloggers look for the references to adding value to their content. So, publishing pillar posts would help you in achieving SEO link building goals through contextual backlinks.

2. Create infographics

Infographics are the secret to super SEO link building.

Creating and publishing the nice-looking infographics is not only the great link-bait method but also a best marketing tactic that would increase your brand awareness. Visual content will grab eyeballs and has the potential to go viral as well.

So, if you come across a fascinating information but feel that it wouldn’t be good to craft as text content, you may create attractive infographics and get people to link to it.

You may also utilize the infographic submission sites to implement your link building plan.

3. Guest blog

Guest blogging is a genuine SEO link building method, but you have to be very careful with it. If you contribute a low-quality duplicate guest post, then Google would penalize you under spammy link building technique.

Seek out high-quality blogs or websites that have good traffic and engagement to perform guest blogging. Don’t use keyword rich anchor text to link to your site in the author bio.

4. Publish roundup posts

Gathering the experts’ opinions on various tools and services they use is a legitimate move towards SEO link building. Choose some influencers in your niche and prepare a common question to get the answer from them. Organize a short, personal outreach email to everyone and tell that you’ll link their site in the post.

There is no doubt that they will reveal some reliable services or tools, and thus you may link those applications as well. Finally, publish the post and mention those experts while promoting it on social networks.

You may make use of Followerwonk or BuzzSumo to find the niche influencers.

5. Invest time in broken link building

Broken link building is the white hat technique that can improve your search engine rankings. Just do a favor to the webmaster or blogger (related to your niche) by letting them know that they have broken links on their pages and posts.

Use the tools like CognitiveSEO, SEO tool that report backlinks or CheckMyLink, Chrome extension to discover the broken links of the authority websites associated with your niche. If you find any broken link, email to that webmaster about the bust link and suggest your own resource to replace it.

6. Write testimonials

If you love trying out tools and applications, you may testify the high-authority branded products and services and provide the testimonials where you could get the link back to your site.

However, don’t give testimonials solely for the sake of link building. As the prospective customers can view your testimonial and see who you are, it would be good to give your honest viewpoint on how that application helped you.

Besides, you may look at the other users featured on the testimonial page to analyze their backlinks.

7. Increase your internal linking

Internal link building is the top SEO approach that would increase your site usability to the readers by offering the most relevant content for them to read. Moreover, adding relevant internal links to the post from several posts/pages would inform the search engines that you already have correlated content that in turn increase the credibility of your site.

Link building with internal links will pass the link juice to your own blog and thus it is a very good SEO practice. But don’t overdo it. It would be good to link six or seven posts or pages to your every post of you site.

8. Repurpose old content

Content repurposing has the tendency to accelerate your SEO link building strategy. Yes, if you’re converting your content from one form into another without diminishing its quality so as to reach more people, it would turn into an effectual way of building links for your site.

Google and other search engines will not penalize you for publishing the same presentation on different websites. If you have a well-written content that missed an opportunity to go viral, you may convert it into infographics, SlideShare presentations, PDFs, podcasts or videos. Some of the multimedia sites allow a do-follow link in the description, and you may take advantage of that.

Adding new content to the old one would also be a clever idea where you could link some helpful resources to enhance the link building approach.

9. Utilize social media links

Social media is the great place to build natural backlinks for your site. So:

Connect your site to social media through the social profile link.
Build your networks on the popular social networks; you will get more people to share your content.
Stay active to intimate the new piece of content of your site and get more social cues for it.

10. Learn the skyscraper technique

Skyscraper technique is the trendy SEO link building method introduced by Brian Dean of Backlinko. Let me go over the main points of this powerful way of building links to your site.

Determine the well-performing content related to your field or niche. You may use Google Search, OpenSiteExplorer or Topsy to identify the hot topics in your niche.
Try to add value to the existing content and create a better one. It is somewhat a tough job, but you may create the in-depth data for the well-liked matters.
Now, reach the right people and request them to link your commendable content.

Here is the detailed post on using Skyscraper technique to build links by Brian Dean.

11. Reach out to bloggers and linkers

The blogger/linker outreach strategy is an on-going process of building backlinks to your site. You should have more patience to employ this link building method as you will need to reach and build a relationship with the influential bloggers in a systematic manner.

First, list some famous bloggers/internet marketers in your niche. Follow them on social media, spread their content on your network, and engage in their discussion. Often link their beneficial content to your site and send notification about the same. Whenever you craft the comprehensive materials, just email them to link your worthy stuff. If they like your efforts, they never hesitate to link your content.

12. Ask for backlinks

Asking for backlinks from your friends, clients and colleagues (in your same niche) is a smart SEO link building policy. Try to remain an active participant on dynamic blogs or company websites by leaving meaningful comments, engaging in discussion, responding to their call-to-action, and promoting their content in social media. This will help you make yourself known.

After some time, send a respectful email that you need a relevant backlink from any of their helpful content. If they accept your link request, offer them something in return.

13. Submit to site feedback sites

Submit your site to the website feedback sites like ConceptFeedback.com or Criticue.com to improve its performance and conversion rates is also a good link building method.

Most of the feedback sites allow a do-follow link to your site, and you just need to register your site with small description to execute your link building tactic and obtain the SEO benefit.

14. Monitor mentions for reclamation

How often you are mentioned can reveal your fame on the Internet.

You should track your brand mentions to appreciate the positive comments and consider the negative response as a good opportunity to progress your brand name.

If someone has mentioned about your brand, but they haven’t linked to your site, you may reach them to convert that mention into a backlink.

To find your mentions on the web, use the effective tool at Mention.com.

15. Curate content

Content curation is the process of collecting the best content on a certain topic and organizing them in a meaningful way for your audience. In simple words, you just need to blend the original top pieces of content to produce a selective channel.

As you’re linking the unsurpassed content, it certainly would improve your search engine rankings. To perform link building through content curation, you can use the tools like Scoop.it or List.ly

16. Participate on Q&A websites

Q&A websites help us to build links in an elegant way and do better SEO as well. Just pay attention to the discussing questions related to your niche on the sites like Yahoo Answers & Quora.

Try to write a detailed post on them and compose a summary to post on the Q&A site. It is not only an authentic SEO link building technique but will also give a steady stream of traffic to your site.

17. Build relationships

Building links through relationship is the most up-to-date and trouble-free process. You just need to care about other people in your niche by taking part in the meetup, survey, or hangouts and help them to spread their valuable content on social media. This relationship building would open up the chances to build links for your site in the future.

18. Refresh inactive backlinks

Sometimes, your backlink will return a 404 error if someone spelled your site name incorrectly, or you might change the location of your page. You will also get the 404 error if the site contains your link was re-launch or moved to other domain.

To locate these types of broken links, you may use an efficient SEO tool LinkResearchTools and get the .htaccess code for redirection.

19. Analyze your competitors’ well-built backlinks

Search for the important keywords of your site and find your competitors. You can narrow your search through “Related: keyword” to identify your future rivals. Then:

Use BuzzSumo to see their most shared pages across social media
If they have strong link profiles with high-quality links, you may try the same tactics.
Use the tool Majestic Site Explorer to identify their well-built backlinks.

20. Link out to authoritative sites

When you’re creating a new piece of content, go to Google Search, find a top ranking related post, and link it.Try linking out to websites that have high DA (Domain Authority). Also, using the Page Score (SEMrush Metric) can assist you with revealing the authority of a competitor’s landing pages in a natural way. This shows sites that have already established their influence in their niche.

Conclusion

Getting the top search engine rankings is becoming a difficult task as the Google and other search engines continue to refine its search algorithms.

SEO link building is an important activity but it needs some persistence in trying the different strategies, and you should find the ones that prove the success.

If you’re serious about creating the high-quality links to your site, you have to be very systematic on how you’re creating and promoting your content.