When I started building and off-paging my websites many years ago, I had a problem:
I just did not know how to get backlinks for my websites!
In the beginning, I did not even know what those damn backlinks are.
Why should I build these? Why is everyone talking about it? And why do people keep writing to me and asking for it?
After some research on Google, I found blogs that have explained to me the meaning.
Generating backlinks can be hugely important to get ahead in Google search.
But I still did not know how to generate them!
Luckily that has changed. I’ve learned a lot about link building in the last few years and have been able to test a lot.
That’s why I present to you today my contribution to the subject of link building. This guide is designed to show you how to generate backlinks so that your website is better located on Google.
Definition link building
Let’s look first at the definition of ” link building ” according to Wikipedia.org:
Link building (also called link building) describes the intentional increase in the number and quality of backlinks, i.e. links that refer to a web page. Link building belongs to the field of search engine optimization (SEO).
Since there are a variety of ways to generate backlinks, I have collected in the following post, some well-known and successful link building strategies.
Each strategy has advantages and disadvantages, and in the end, everyone has to know for themselves which approach they prefer.
Backlinks should not only push the ranking in Google search but also bring visitors to your website.
With which link building strategies, are you coming forward?
“I have to register my website with a thousand different web directories to get rank 1 in the search results, right?”
“I just have to generate at least 5,000 new backlinks every day for my little niche website?”
I’m really surprised how persistent some rumors persist with some website operators. Granted, the above examples are exaggerated, of course, but there are still people who believe in link building strategies.
Back then, there were really a lot of cheap spam methods working, but times have changed, and the search engines have developed immensely to refute such simple ways of search engine manipulation.
Nowadays, much more is needed for successful search engine optimization, and countless ranking factors can lead to a good ranking.
Please note:
No amount of link building will work unless you optimize your website for other important (OnPage) factors. Even worse, if your site has some bugs (e.g. keywords spam on your site, thin or duplicate content, etc.), your website will sooner or later lose a lot of rankings. Learn here why OnPage optimization is always about link building.
But what is a backlink?
Here’s Wikipedia.org again: “A backlink (or backlink ) is an incoming link to a web page that leads to it from another web page.”
A link from page A to page B is a backlink for page B.
A link on the Internet can be considered as a kind of recommendation. Page A puts a link on page B and makes a recommendation for page B.
The more “recommendations” a page gets from other websites, the better this is in the eyes of Google. However, it is important from which website this “recommendation” comes. If your parents recommend a right dentist, this recommendation is worth more than recommending a financing loan to a dubious money-shark.
The search engines are similar and evaluate the quality of the links.
To assess whether a website is a high-quality site, it is important to know what a good and natural backlink profile looks like. Pages that have a heavily manipulated link profile run the risk of being penalized by the search engine, and such can be very damaging.
Of course, in the evaluation of the backlink profile of a website also pure metrics such. For example, the domain authority of Moz.com can be used.
But in this review, I’d like to show you what a possible natural link profile can look like so you can better evaluate websites that you can link to.
What does a natural and high-quality backlink profile look like that you would like to have a link from?
Google recognizes very quickly manipulated link profiles of websites and punishes them more and more often.
If your website has links from sites that have been punished by Google, this can also drag down your website. Here one speaks then of a bath Neighborhood.
At SEMrush.com, you can analyze your website.
Note that you should never trust just one value. Look for as many criteria as possible to find out how “natural” a link profile is. The more natural a profile, the lower the chances of being punished by Google.
Other criteria that you should check when evaluating a link profile:
- anchor texts
- Ratio DoFollow to NoFollow
- Origin (language, topic relevant etc.)
- quality
- Age of the domain
- Referring domains
- History of the visibility to detect any punishments
For further analysis of a backlink profile, I recommend the codes Domain Authority and Page Authority from the website Moz.com. But I’ll talk more about these two key figures later in the chapter “Private Blog Networks”.
The ability to analyze and understand link profiles of web pages helps to use link building in all its facets better.
Therefore, read the following “Ten Commandments” carefully for some useful tips.
The Ten Commandments in Link Building
A lot of things can go awry in building, and a few rules should be followed for a successful campaign:
- An abrupt stop of link building is never recommended. If you ‘ve been doing a lot of link building activities for a website in the last few months and you stop it overnight, it’s likely to be back in the ranking!
- Pay attention to the naturalness of the backlink structure (many different, but topic relevant sources!). For analysis z. Ahrefs.com, linkresearchtools.com or majestic.com.
- If you place links always with the same anchor text, Google often rates that as manipulation. Therefore always vary the link names of the manually generated backlinks. Also, look at the anchor texts of your competition to your desired search term. With which anchor texts could these websites storm the leading ranks at Google?
- How many backlinks you set and in which regularity depends on your website. A small niche site should not get 100,000 new links per month. Always try to avoid spam.
- Pay attention to where the link to your landing page is placed. Links the z. As in the footer, are weighted by Google rather less than links from a relevant topic text.
- Do not just set DoFollow backlinks, but also some NoFollow links. To find the right ratio, it is also worthwhile to analyze the competition here (e.g. with ahrefs.com). What are DoFollow and NoFollow links? As already described backlinks give their link power (also called link juice) to the linked website. If a link with the attribute “NoFollow” is set to another landing page, the linked target no longer receives a link juice. A normal backlink without the attribute “NoFollow” is therefore always more valuable. NoFollow links are not fundamentally bad. A NoFollow backlink on a heavily visited website can increase your traffic and thus be valuable despite the NoFollow attribute.
- Linkbuilding is and remains an endurance sport. Do not expect great results immediately after a few days. It can take months for the first successes to become visible.
- Note Quality: Earlier, you already learned how to analyze the quality of a website. Pages that For example, if you have many outbound links (for example, web directories), very little will inherit your link juice.
- Always try to operate a theme-relevant backlink structure. Most importantly, the link is surrounded by content that fits thematically to your landing page.
- Make sure most of the links you receive come from pages that are in the same language as your landing page.
- Bonus tip: You should not only link to your main page but also place deep links, i.e. links to subpages.
Linkbuilding strategies
Although Google pays close attention to the natural emergence of hyperlinks, it can still help manually to build a positive and strong backlink profile. Google is still “just” a machine.
In the following section, you will learn some useful tips on how to generate backlinks and thus improve your ranking on Google. But do not use a strategy inflationary, because the domain could be punished due to manipulation and thus ruin your entire SEO optimization.
blog comments
Make useful comments on relevant blogs. Add your URL only in the designated field “URL to your website” of the comment form. As a “name” in the form should not be used keywords, but only your real name or a slightly changed (first). Write meaningful comments with multiple sentences. A simple “thank you for the contribution” is not enough.
An improvement in the ranking is very little to do with blog comments.
To find more relevant blogs faster, you can enter the following terms in Google Search (for “keyword” you should enter the theme of your website):
- Your keyword + blog + comments
- Your keyword “powered by wordpress.”
- Keyword “leave a comment.”
- Keyword “reply to a post.”
- Keyword “blog.”
- Keyword inurl: blog “Your email address will not be published”
- Keyword “You can use the following HTML tags:”
- Keyword “E-mail notification for further comments.”
- Keyword “Powered by WordPress”
- Keyword “add a site”
- Keyword “submit site”
- Keyword “post site”
- Keyword “add a url”
- Keyword “submit url”
- Keyword “post url”
- Keyword inurl: Blog
- Keyword inurl: category
More requests can be entered in Google Search to find matching results:
- inurl: “keyword” Finds results with a specific word within the URL.
- allinurl: “keyword” Finds results with multiple words within the URL.
- intitle: “Keyword” Finds results with a specific word in the title of the site.
- Related: “keyword” Find similar website – works especially with larger sites.
- intext: “keyword” Finds a term within a particular text.
Web / branch / article directories
Only through links from web directories, no website will rank well today. The web directories have too often been used as a spam sling and the search engines are no longer confident in this. Directories can sometimes be used to attract a few new or more visitors and to make a regional reference to a website (very important for Local Optimization!).
For Local SEO: Register your company page on the Internet portal of your city. Many cities offer their directories for regional companies.
“Normal” non-regional sites should keep their fingers off-web directories. Directories like DMOZ and Co. barely pass on Linkkraft. Note: DMOZ closed on March 14, 2017.
Social bookmarking services
Using social bookmarking services, the user can link websites online as a kind of bookmark.
Unfortunately, such services have been abused by many SEOs as link slingers, which is why many of these services are no longer paid by Google and have now disappeared into insignificance.
One of the most popular social bookmarking services in the American area, “Delicious.com” is probably the best-known service of this kind, here you can still set “bookmarks” for websites.
Further special development of social bookmarks is the website ” Stumble Upon “. Every user can save their “favourite websites” via bookmarks online and assign them to certain categories.
The time of social bookmarking services has long expired.
Press releases
In addition to article and web directories, there are press directories where companies can publish their press releases. To be able to publish such a message you can, for example, log on to the website “https://www.prnewsonline.com/ ” and deposit your data there.
You’re probably wondering if that will work?
If the same content (press release) is posted to your website on more than 60 websites, then this is almost considered to be spam because nothing of unique/unique content can be seen here. Many of these press portals also link the sources with the “NoFollow” attribute, which additionally weakens the value of press portals.
Therefore, press portals should serve only one purpose:
To attract the attention of the press!
Job board
Are you looking for an intern, a temporary worker or even a full-time employee? Excellent! There are countless job boards out there waiting to post your job ad.
But what does that have to do with link building?
Very easily:
Many job boards also link to the company that is looking for the new employee. Thus, you can dust off a few interesting backlinks with relatively little effort. However, you should not expect much from this tactic, since the job posting is often deleted after a short time.
Forums
Links can also be placed in topic-relevant forums. Write your URL in the forum signature and actively participate in the forum. So you get not only backlinks but also new visitors.
If it fits, you should also put links to your landing page directly in posts (threads). The term “forum” also includes a question and answer portals, such as GuteFrage.net. On such portals, a response can often be quickly placed to a question.
To find a themed forum, just search Google as follows:
- Your keyword + “forum”
- Your keyword + “Top”
- Your keyword + “thread”
- Your keyword + “showthread”
- Your keyword + “sign up for forum”
- Your keyword + “powered by Vbulletin”
- Your keyword + “powered by phpBB”
- Your keyword + “powered by SMF”
- Your keyword + “powered by myBB”
In my experience, links from forums can easily influence the ranking. They can also be used as a traffic machine. It is important that the link comes from an active user and has a real benefit.
Free Content (Infographics for the win?)
Offer valuable content for free on the Internet.
Create beautiful WordPress themes or useful WordPress plugins and integrate your URL in it. Offer these for free download. This will give you new backlinks depending on the added value.
But also like to link to free tools, videos, podcasts, etc. But do not forget to integrate your URL into your free products.
Make self-made photos or pictures online for free, but only with the condition that you will be linked when using as an author.
Infographics
Especially beautiful infographics often get more attention than normal posts. Many readers love the graphic editing of a topic because it makes a topic easier to understand.
Offer your infographics for free, but only on the condition that you are mentioned in the use of your graphic as an author with a backlink.
When creating an infographic, the following points should be followed:
- To discuss a current topic
- Be graphically appealing
- Explain the subject easily understandably
To 1.) A current topic
In order to find a current topic for an infographic, it may be useful to find trends from news, magazines and other sources and to process them graphically.
It may also be an advantage to check the number of searches per month using the Adwords Keyword Planner. Make sure that there is little or no other infographics about your infographic to improve your chances of success.
To 2.) Be graphically appealing
The graphics should look good, so as not to deter potential readers.
If you have no idea about Photoshop or other graphics programs and you just can not afford a graphic designer, you can try your luck with infogr.am or piktochart.com. On these pages, graphics can be created free of charge. Using templates, anyone can create their own infographic, which looks even neat. You have to invest some work to get an appealing result ????
To 3.) explain the topic easily understandably
The graphics should make it easier for the reader to understand factual content. Keep the graphics as simple as possible. Your readers will thank you.
Link exchange
If you have a variety of sites on different topics, you can connect with other webmasters and suggest a link exchange.
The request will, in most cases be such that you ask the operator of the destination website for a link. In return, you offer the operator a link from another side of you.
Make sure that there is no direct link exchange (from website to website – reciprocal link exchange), but that “hyperlink” is linked. The whole thing is called non-reciprocal. Note, however, that many search engines prohibit this in their policies.
Use pingbacks / trackbacks
Pingbacks are in most cases only nofolllow, but still useful to build a few backlinks. Especially a few years ago, this method was very popular. Today there are fewer and fewer blogs that unlock so-called trackbacks. But they still exist!
A trackback/pingback is a system (which exists on WordPress) to be informed about links from other WordPress blogs. So this link building guide was linked by another blog, and my blog was informed via pingback.
So this blog has a pingback (a clickable NoFollow backlink) received from me.
If you also want to follow this backlink buildup strategy, you can simply search Google for “Pingback + your keyword”, such as Eg “intext: pingback + heart rhythm”.
There you will then (hopefully) see blogs about your niche that have already unlocked so-called trackbacks in the past. The chance exists so that you also get a pingback when linking.
But do not exaggerate this technique, as a mutual link from Google, in the long run, is not welcome!
Wikipedia.org
At Wikipedia.org, you can also try to set a backlink to a suitable topic.
Even if links from Wikipedia are only set to NoFollow, Wikipedia can bring traffic to your page and thus help your site to “Trust”. This means that your website may be considered more trustworthy than similar sources without a Wikipedia link (theoretically).
Search for a suitable post to your desired keyword and try to give this post added value (more information on the topic that was not there before). If this information comes purely by chance from you, you can naturally also link accordingly in the sources.
Under “Discussion” of any article on Wikipedia.org, you can easily ask if your page can be included as an additional source of information.
Note for sensitive people:
The answers of the respective Wikipedia gods… Um … a caregiver can also be quite rough …
In the discussion area of each Wikipedia article, you can already (without prior approval) set a clickable link to your page.
The only important thing is that the discussion page can also be found in the Google index, as the link will most likely be ignored by Google. To check if the discussion page is in the index, simply enter the URL on Google and see if it appears there in the search results.
A request:
Some Wikipedia not groundless too! Post only topics to your page in the discussions, if you are convinced that your site provides real added value. The admins on Wikipedia are already quite sensitive (and unfortunately very rude) and you do not want to annoy them anymore …
Guest Article
Write large blogs or online editors to post a guest article with them.
If you can place a link to your target domain via guest articles on a heavily visited website, you may get some new readers and a valuable backlink on top.
Of course, you already have to have a certain notoriety in your niche in order to get the chance of a guest contribution.
Tip: Do you have a blog on which you For example, if you publish test reports about products or services, you can ask in forums or on Facebook in special groups if anyone is interested in publishing these test reports.
You can also search on Twitter for internal sites that publish guest articles. Enter “guest post + keyword” or keyword + “write for us”in search of the respective social media platform. Of course, you can also try this through the normal Google search.
This strategy can bring you some quality backlinks and get your landing page up in the ranking. Exactly with this strategy, I was able to generate backlinks.
Ego baiting
Conduct an interview with a known personality.
The best way to find a webmaster you’d like to have a link to is to create a backlink with that tactic eventually.
Publish the interview on your blog and then send the interviewee the link to the interview with a request for a link. Most of your conversation partners will link to the interview. Who does not want to point out an “important” interview in which he was a conversation partner?
If you do not want to interview, you can also positively report on an interesting person (who has a website you would like to link to) on your page. Then publish this article on your page and write the person. Many will feel honoured and report on the report on their own pages / social media channels.
Through Competitor Analysis
Analyze your competition to your desired keyword and try to recreate those links. Analyze how many NoFollow / DoFollow links these pages have, as well as which anchor texts are used and how often is linked to which keyword text (anchor texts).
- To perform such an analysis, I recommend you a tool, such as Ahref.com.
But beware!
You can never know if the webmasters have devalued some bad backlinks with Google’s Disavow Tool.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a technique that aims to attract a targeted audience with informative and unique content.
This means that, for example, a post on a blog is read, shared and distributed as often as possible. If the contribution offers a high added value, it is often linked by others.
This is also often referred to as a linkbait (bait). A great contribution should encourage that the contribution has a long reach in the network.
But content marketing is more than just a simple bait! This is also about target groups and target measurement. For which audience do you write the article? What should be achieved with it?
It is not always easy to write a post with high added value. The cost of such an article can be enormous. Other drawbacks to mention here are that the number of links and origins can not be controlled directly. If an article does not arrive well, the attention will be missing, and the whole work was free.
And despite the disadvantages, many SEOs now swear by this strategy, because with this type of marketing, as many natural links as possible can be generated and Google especially often allows pages with a high information content to rise in the search results.
There are many ways to attract attention with an article – for example, through funny news, unique content, case studies, interviews, podcasts, videos, etc.
How do I find topics?
A webmaster who wants to do content marketing can see what topics are currently up to and write about them. Of course, it is advisable that the post also fits thematically to his page.
If you want to have backlinks from certain websites, it may also be an advantage to check the content on these pages first. Possibly. Are important and interesting information missing here?
Also, check to which topics these link. Then you can close this gap with an interesting report on your own blog.
After publishing your report, post the webmaster of the page you’d like to have a backlink from. Many site owners are grateful for quality content and often like to link to new informative content.
Of course, you can also find out about a normal keyword analysis the topics/questions/problems of your target group.
An example of content marketing …
This online store has highlighted a not-so-spectacular product in a fun way. Instead of a super magnet is spoken of a dangerous death magnet. The pictures speak for themselves and make you smile.
However, a high-quality article does not alone lead to success. Only when the appropriate attention is there, backlinks can be generated. Spread your valuable content on as many platforms as possible (forums, social media, etc.) – Seeding.
Create content that you like to link to. Put yourself in the webmasters who should link to you.
- Which websites link to these?
- Why should they link to you?
- Does your content offer a problem solution?
The great thing about content marketing is that punishment by Google is only likely not to happen on the basis of informative articles. On the contrary, the search engine is about to push results that offer great value for its visitors.
The best content wins
Check out the top 3 of your favorite keyword you’d like to come in for first place.
- What kind of content do competitors offer?
- How often is the keyword searched? (Find out search volume e.g. with Kwfinder.com)
- What exactly is explained there?
- Can you offer more information on the subject?
- Is there in forums on the topic often asked questions?
Solve these questions and then write a really great article with at least 1,500 words (better more) about it, which would be almost an e-book of its verbosity. (Of course, the number of words here is variable – over some topics can also be written clearly more than 1,500 words ;-)).
But do not write any meaningless stuff, just to get to 1,500 words, but looking for you an interesting topic, show any problems and then write about the solution. Clarify the solution with pictures, bullets, interview and videos in your article. Also beneficial source, as no one can know everything alone. At answerthepublic.com, you can view open questions and issues related to your keywords.
Seeding
You can reach a large number of people on the Internet with very few resources. You just have to use a little more creativity than the competition to stand out like a little white flag in the uniform porridge.
So think of formats for your website that are otherwise rare in your niche to stand out from the crowd. Be it a podcast, creative videos, PDFs to download, cool PowerPoint presentations, free SEO tools or other great stuff that is special.
Long text deserts are on the Internet as many as bugs in Windows Vista.
Creativity is often rewarded with backlinks and many new visitors. You just have to do something about advertising and get your content noticed.
Buy/rent links
Purchased links from very high-quality sources can, contrary to many opinions, even today, give a website a considerable boost in the ranking (depending on the competition with the search term). How should Google know if the link was purchased or “voluntarily” placed by the webmaster?
Buying backlinks can be very dangerous: Always avoid link buying portals on the internet. Google has often penalized these platforms in the past, and some users who traded there were also punished.
With a link rent, you even have to pay every month, and as soon as the payment is stopped, the backlink to your page will be deleted. This often causes you to lose your rankings again. Because the risk of getting caught is high, it is wise to rely on other link building strategies.
Remember that buying or renting is often very expensive, is not sustainable for a pure rent and as the past has shown can very quickly lead to a penalty.
As already mentioned, For example, Facebook groups are very good at finding, buying or trading backlinks.
As with any link placement, it is particularly important to analyze and evaluate the website on which a backlink is to be placed prior to purchase.
Automatic link building tools (SPAM!)
Probably the worst thing you can do to your website.
With automatic link building tools, you can randomly post lots of links on different pages (e.g. blog comments). You have a blog and may wonder why strange, mostly English-language comments are posted? That’s 90% of the tools “GSA Search Engine Ranker”, “Scrapebox”.
With such a tool, thousands of backlinks can be generated within a few hours. The tools try to post on as many pages as possible (for example, in a forum, comment section, etc.). Many of them do not work (thanks to anti-spam protection), but there are inexperienced webmasters who automatically approve each comment.
Thus, with such tools, countless spam links can be generated. I do not need to say that the type of link building is extremely dangerous. Websites that link to this way are always close to being removed from the Google index due to spam.
Do not get it wrong: the tool “Scrapebox” can be used much more and even for link profile and keyword research. But also for safe strategies such. For example, the Broken link building tool is useful.
Private Blog Network (PBN)
The strategy for a private blog network is to buy high quality expired domains and place links from those domains on your target website.
This approach is also not tolerated by many search engines, and a lot of points have to be considered for a private blog network to work.
How do I find expired domains?
There are some sites on the internet that auction off expired domains like some kind of auction house. Domain owners no longer want their domain and offer it for sale.
The great thing about it is that there are also internal pages available for purchase, which have a high domain authority (abbreviation “DA”) and a good backlink profile.
Exactly such domains you need for a successful private blog network. Because only links from high-quality Internet sites bring you forward in the Google search results.
As an auction platform for expired domains, I recommend GoDaddy.com.
My opinion on private blog networks
This technique can cause serious consequences for the smallest errors!
I personally advise against this tactic, as it is too dangerous and has little effect. How fast time passes: The PBNs celebrated their revival in 2014/2015 , although the tactics have been used since 2003. In my experience, Google has better managed to detect revived PBN domains and initially banish them into a kind of sandbox. If the newly expired domain is regularly updated with new, high-quality content, it can escape from the sandbox, but getting there is often tedious and difficult.
Many also liven up your PBNs with new backlinks and social signals, to give them a touch of tenderness … an unbelievable amount of effort.
Not to mention the costs incurred, if there is a network of ten or more PBNs and one of them costs about $100, it will quickly spend over $1,000 on a network … that will go down fast when the system is uncovered becomes! The cost/benefit calculation goes here (in my opinion) absolutely not on ….
link Wheel
A link wheel creates several free 2.0 web pages and links them to a specific landing page (Moneysite).
By linking these websites together, you bundle the entire link juice and pass it on to the landing page. The link creates a bicycle tire with many different spokes, all pointing to the middle.
- 2.0 blogs are. For example, free blogs like tumblr.com, WordPress.com, hubpages.com, medium.com, svbtle.com, quora.com, skyrock.com and posthaven.com.
The advantage of such websites is that you can generate free backlinks for your website, and the 2.0 blogs of well-known providers have a very high Google trust.
In addition, we can make Google believe in these pages that the pages are not from us (we leave no footprints, as the 2.0 websites always have different IPs).
For the link wheel, you can also use Wikispaces and similar platforms, which also link to the Moneysite.
If you want to proceed more cautiously, you can omit the entire or individual links between the 2.0 blogs and wiki spaces, resulting in a broken link chain or link star from the link wheel. The link wheel will then have very little link power, but it will remove a unique footprint. This should make it harder for search engines to discover your link wheel.
Do not forget to make your “footprints” unique on each page (different imprints, avoid duplicate content, etc.).
Every 2.0 website should not just link to a single website. Post articles that link to major well-known websites like Facebook, Wikipedia, and more.
Such link wheels have worked very well in the past (2010). But Google has come to grips with this technique by now. Pure link wheels with 2.0 blogs and wiki spaces, therefore, have little power left. Those who still want to rank well with this tactic should take a look at the next section “Linkwheel +” and “Tiered Link Building”.
Google does not allow the creation of a link wheel and will be penalized if discovered. So beware of this elaborate and dangerous link building tactic!
Broken link building
“Broken Linkbuilding” is a link building technique that searches for non-functioning or broken links.
These “dead” links should be replaced with this technique if possible by a backlink to our target page. Of course, such broken links must first be found, the website operator must be contacted and on our URL must be found matching content to which can also be linked.
Broken link building is very popular with some SEOs as it can create unique backlinks while improving the Internet.
How to find broken links
The easiest way to find Broken links on other websites is to search with the Google Chrome Add-On “Check My Links” ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/ ). Install this addon, then search on Google Search for the following:
- Keyword + “left”
- Keyword + “resources”
- Keyword + intitle: resources
Of course, there are many more different search queries. Be creative and try out a lot.
Once you’ve found an interesting page on the search engines, you can use the Check-My-Links addon to scan for dead links. The add-on will then show you all broken links on this page, and you can check if you have matching content that can be linked to.
Write an e-mail to the webmaster and talk to him on the dead links and ask if he would like to replace one or the other dead link by linking to your content.
Broken link building can be time consuming, but luckily there are a lot of tools that can do a lot of work for you.
Conclusion – Many paths lead to the goal
Google still considers backlinks as a ranking factor.
If you get strong and thematically appropriate links for your target website, this will also push your page in the rankings with high probability. Assuming you have a website with good content and no technical bugs (OnPage optimization).
The only question is how do you get these strong links?
I have listed in this post some link building strategies on how to generate backlinks. Of course, every tactic has advantages and disadvantages.
So these strategies are divided into White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO or Gray Hat SEO.
With White Hat SEO, there is virtually no risk of being punished. This includes
Content Marketing, as it should be achieved naturally, good rankings.
It looks quite different with Black Hat SEO. Here are prohibited methods used (eg link wheels) to bring a web page forward contrary to the Webmaster Guidelines. Due to the break with the Google guidelines, it can come here, therefore fast to a punishment. Thousands of web pages have been removed from the search index in the past, which have used black hat strategies without permission.
However, some methods also violate the guidelines, but are not discovered so quickly or not at all through intelligent or careful action by Google. Such a procedure is often referred to as Gray Hat SEO. The technology is also punished by the search engines while discovering, but by careful action, it can succeed to fly under the radar.
Google is “only” a machine with different algorithms for calculating the rankings. If you leave the backlink structure looking natural and do not leave any footprints, a manipulation will not be noticeable.
In the meantime, many webmasters rely on natural link growth (White Hat SEO) so as not to burn their fingers with such dangerous strategies.
So, creating great content, infographics, guest articles, link baits, etc. is far safer than a link network. However, here is the disadvantage that you can not control the generation of backlinks so well with such techniques, and a lot of work in great content and analysis must be invested. The hard work is worthwhile, however, after my experience. Too many times, I have seen pages that were punished due to excessive manipulation of their own link profile.
Which strategy you use in the end is up to you. Test a lot and expand your knowledge to find the perfect link building strategy for you.
One last tip: Always try to generate links from as many different sources as possible (guest posts, forums, link list, sponsorship, etc.) to simulate a naturally growing link profile. Those who want to act over-cautious rely on pure content marketing + seeding of new content on relevant platforms.
I hope you enjoyed this guide, and you can learn something from my experiences. Good luck building :).
What are your experiences on the topic? Tell me now your opinion in the comment section.
