Backlinks — your strategy for getting them?
Would love to hear of your strategies for getting backlinks. I’ve listed my site on all the easy startup/business directories. Other ideas on places to get a backlink?
Would love to hear of your strategies for getting backlinks. I’ve listed my site on all the easy startup/business directories. Other ideas on places to get a backlink?
Little secret: Integrations. This might not work for all type of products but if you integrate with other products they might list you in their partner directory.
Beside that: Legwork. The easiest way to create relevant high quality backlinks is writing guest posts. This takes a lot of time and effort and usually won't result in a lot of visitors, but it can be way worth it because of the links.
Unfortunately building quality backlinks that really make a difference is not easy. Links from directories can be useful to start but won't make a difference.
The backlinks you should be chasing are editorial backlinks on high DA (domain authority) websites.
Start by reading this guide: https://backlinko.com/link-building
Like to echo the idea that just submitting to directories is rarely worth it and might even have the opposite effect.
It might seem like “doing something” is better than doing nothing, but this “passive marketing” does not bring you much.
On this note - SEMRush is a great tool for auditing your backlinks, discovering toxic domains/URLS, and helping you build a list that can be used to submit to Google via Google Search Console to disavow
Guest blogging + guest blogging + guest blogging. And guest podcasting.
When I launched my previous product (a chatbots builder platform) I embarked in a pretty extensive guest blogging campaign, contacting up to 10/15 blogs per day pitching my post or idea.
Was it time consuming, boring and exhausting? You betcha, as I did (mostly) everything myself (could outreach + post copywriting)
Was it worth? Well I still get over 50 visitors per day from SEO and I stopped doing this almost a year ago - and today I got a lead from an article I wrote 18 months ago. So, yeah.
:)
I know this is from a long time ago but when you reached out to guest blog, was it small sites in your niche or more general websites?
Both. I started with smaller blogs and as I built a bit of personal branding, I targeted larger magazines.
Great - thank you for the quick response!!
Here's a couple of tips:
Spy on your competitors backlinks using tools like Ahrefs. Then identify links to content on your competitors website that you could improve or make more in-depth. Reach out to the website owners and ask them to link to your new and more up-to-date article.
Post articles with links to your site on sites like Behance. There are plenty of sites that allows user generated articles with do-follow links.
Create your own Subreddit and put your link in the sidebar (You need an account with good karma)
Pay a freelancer to design an awesome infographic about a subject in your niche and reach out to bloggers and promote it.
This should be helpful to you: https://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-link-building/
I most often use ahrefs free backlinkchecker and check where competitors got them from. In case you're looking for a good tool to draft the outreach messsages, check out backlinkgpt.com.
Build backlinks from high-authority websites.
If you have no idea where to start then check out RankdSEO.com backlink database. There are step-by-step guides with screenshots on how to build backlinks on hundreds of high-authority websites.
Unlinked brand mentions. Someone else writes about your business and uses the name or a name of an employee? Reach out and ask them to link back to your site; it makes sense with little explanation (if your users want to find more info on my company, just link to it with my name that you already used) and in my experience has a higher success rate than cold pitching.
It only works if you're getting written about though. I have to agree with the rest of the folks on here and say guest blogging or creating content on your site that you can pitch to relevant industry sites (an infographic about a pertinent industry issue that you then pitch to industry specific sites).
Just remember the golden rule of content creation; make quality content, not crap!
A couple things I have been doing not mentioned yet:
Communities in your niche that allow follow links. For instance, a site like growthhackers.com gives quality follow links for submissions to their community. There are others out there and even Reddit, if you tip a certain popularity, can trigger a follow link.
Reputable email newsletters that post archives to their website. If they accept third-party content, such as a "recommended reading" section, then getting an article you wrote in their newsletter will not only drive traffic but result in a follow link on a page within their site.
Having a Blog on the same domain helps a lot. Lot of opportunities to build / trade backlinks.
That said, trading backlinks with other bloggers or sites which are in the same niche or write about the same topic / keywords.
Commenting on relevant Blog posts with a relevant opinion.
Guest posting on partner Blogs
Job Boards of all kinds, local ones, small, big, niche, etc.
Forums posts and signatures
General social sites profiles which allow links
If your topic allows for PR - you can push a PR article in niche and local news
build a great product. If it's really great people will write on it.
How will they find it in the first place?
Who defines great?
This advice leaves a lot to be desired.
Proactive link building can bridge the gap between when you’re a trusted provider and just starting out.
she said she already listed it on startup directories, all it takes is a small group of early adopters and a great product (you know great when you see it) to spread the links in blogs / facebok groups etc
@oronoa That's an overly simplistic way of looking at things. The last startup I worked at had a great product but it was late to the market.
Even though customers loved it and I did plenty of customer interviews to find out why, customers have other things to worry about rather than posting your product on a facebook group.
Statistics say that customers are actually more likely to write a bad review than a positive one.
So either way, as @dndukwu mentioned, you need to be proactive.
What's the best way? Reach out to your customers. They'll appreciate it and think better of you.
well product distribution is a giant task on itself!
@dndukwu said it right, be proactive!
Such a big misconception, which leaves many (developer) makers wondering why no-one is buying their product and thinking their product is not good.
Only in really rare (let's say 0.1%) cases does a product sell itself.
Yeah - help people and ask if they could post a link to you on their site in return.
The most common one is badges.