18 Proven Methods for Building Organic Backlinks

If you’re concerned about giving a big boost to your site’s traffic, then you need to invest in your link building efforts. I’m talking about building your backlink profile with high-quality links through white hat techniques.

This post contains a compilation of 18 methods for building backlinks to your site. But before we get right into it, it’s important that you adopt white hat techniques for your link building strategy.

That’s the only way to guarantee that the links will not turn out harmful to your site. Also, remember that when it comes to backlinks, quality tops quantity any day anytime.

Proven Backlink Building Methods to Boost Your Site’s Traffic

Here are the proven methods to increase your website traffic through link building:

1 – Optimize Internal Links

A lot of content creators are guilty of overlooking the effects of the internal linking of their web pages. Internal links could be used for connecting two different sections of the same page together. Or you could use it to connect two different web pages on the same site.

Internal links make it easier for web visitors to navigate around your content. It also helps to provide context for the contents of your posts and pages.

Internal links can also be used to transfer link juice from a particular page on your website to another page. A properly linked site makes it easier for Google to crawl and index your web pages appropriately.

However, when linking internally, you should avoid overstuffing your pages with too many links so it doesn’t look like a spammy effort.

The Benefits of Links to Your SEO

2 – Request for Credits

As a service provider having different clients, you can request credit from them each time you offer satisfactory services to them. This applies to web designers, developers, SEO agencies, or any other service provider.

All they have to do is include your site’s URL on their sites (preferably the footer section).

To make it easier for your link to be included, you can place it there yourself after you have been granted permission. Or you could create an embeddable HTML code that could be easily added.

3 – Through Directories

There are hundreds of online directories that you could submit your links to be added. These directories could be classified into general web directories and specific web directories. You can find directories that are specific to bloggers such as AllTop and GoldenPages.

You should, however, exercise caution when using this method as some directories may harm your site. You’ve got to avoid the ones that are ridden with spammy links which may turn out to be toxic to your site.

A good backlink analysis tool will help you discover the status of any directory links.

4 – Find Out About Competitors

You need to find out what your competitors are using, and then adopt the same for your site.

If your competitors outrank you on SERP (Search Engine Results Page), it means there’s something they are doing that you aren’t doing. So, you need to figure out what that “something” is, so you can improve your position on SERP.

Tools such as Moz, SEMrush, and Linkody can help you discover the backlinks on their websites. But before then, you need to find out those brands that outrank you on SERP.

The first step to take is to find them out through a basic Google search, after which you’ll use any of the above-mentioned tools to search for the backlinks to your competitors’ sites.

Armed with this information, all you’ve got to do is to reach out to the webmasters and request for your link to be added to their sites. A tool such as SEMRush is also useful for finding out inbound link data for your competitors’ websites.

5 – Find out Those Using Your Images

A Google reverse image search will help you discover websites that are using your pictures and graphic images. From the search results, you’ll be able to filter out those sites that are using your images without giving any credits.

All you have to do is reach out to the webmasters and request credit links for your images. Depending on your approach, it could turn out very effective for growing your backlinks.

To take full advantage of this method, you need to invest in creating quality images that others would want to use.

6 – Include Tweets in Your Blog Posts

Your visitors probably need a little nudge to get them sharing your blog posts on their networks. That little nudge could be through the use of Twitter tools that make it easier for them to tweet your posts.

These tools are used to highlight interesting sections or quotes from your posts. And with a single click, they will be able to tweet the message to their followers.

These tweets have the ability to drive more social shares as well as attract traffic and backlinks to your site.

8 Twitter Tactics to Boost Your Brand’s Engagement

7 – Ensure Your Links Point to the Right Pages

It is important to run a regular backlink audit to find out the stats of your link profile.

There are situations that can lead to you having 404 links, or the links pointing to the wrong pages. However, you will be able to spot these errors quite early through a regular link audit.

So when you discover that any of your links are out of place, you can contact the site owner or webmaster to repurpose the link back to the right page. You may need to provide the correct URL to be used for this purpose.

Another option is to 301-redirect the said link to the appropriate web page.

8 – Get Involved in Round-ups

There are two ways of using this method – creating round-ups or participating in round-ups.

If you decide to create round-ups, what you need to do is to reach out to the influencers in your niche or industry. It’s a great opportunity for them to showcase their knowledge while reaching out to a wider audience.

After you’ve been able to get their buy-ins, you will request that they all share the link to their audience. Also, participating in others’ round-ups is a great way to build credibility among industry peers.

This method is ideal if you are knowledgeable in your chosen field or industry. Through this opportunity, you will be able to project your brand to a bigger audience.

Who knows?

It may be the springboard to launch your blogging career to a much higher level. One thing for sure is that bloggers are going to write about you and, in the process, give you some backlinks.

9 – Publish and Promote Video Tutorials

Video tutorials are great content assets for imparting knowledge to your audience in a consumer-friendly format. You can offer learning resources for your viewers in different stages of learning – basic, intermediate, and advanced.

These videos can cover any topics in your niche; the important thing is that they meet the real needs of your audience.

You can create these tutorials, publish them on your site while promoting through other channels. Some of the best channels to promote your videos are blog directories, video streaming and sharing sites, social media networks, and forums.

Have your videos branded with your brand (yourself, website, or business) and include links to your site. Video tutorials are great for building quality backlinks and driving traffic to your site, that’s if you promote a part of the video, and not the whole.

Promoting the whole video tutorial removes the incentive that would otherwise cause people to visit your site. But if you offer just a part of the video, you could look forward to visitors coming around to view the complete video.

10 – Guest Blogging

This is an age-long tradition that is guaranteed to project your brand to a wider audience and earn you more backlinks. You can reach out to blog owners in the same or related niches and request for your blog post to be featured on their platform.

Ensure that you offer high-quality content when given the opportunity to guest blog. Through guest blogging, you will get the opportunity to include backlinks to your site.

11 – Blog Commenting

Through commenting on blogs, you will be able to distribute your links on niche blogs. Most links you will get through this way may be nofollow links. You can still find some comment sections that allow dofollow links in their comment sections.

Ensure that your comments are relevant to the post’s topic in order for it to be approved by the site owner.

12 – Participate in Niche Communities

There are different niche communities that can bring more traffic to your site or blog. By participating in them, you will be able to promote your content to a wider audience and attract more traffic to your website.

If done properly, this strategy can help you boost the backlink profile of your site or blog.

13 – Provide Answers to Questions

Got expert knowledge?

Use it to provide accurate answers to questions that are being asked on the internet. A good place to start with is the largest question and answer website on the internet – Quora.

You will find millions of questions that people are asking of any kind of topic, niche, or industry. Locate the questions that are relevant to your niche, provide accurate answers, and also include links to your site.

Quora – All You Need to know About the Forum

14 – Offer a Free Tool

If you are a product creator, then this is a suitable strategy to implement for building your backlinks. Offer a free, useful tool that your audience can use for solving real problems. This will give you the opportunity to include your site’s link in the tool.

One of the best ways to go about this is to create a free WordPress plugin or a free Chrome extension. One of the best examples of this strategy is the UberSuggest offered by Neil Patel.

15 – Publish Testimonials on Products or Services Used

This strategy involves the publishing of testimonials about a product or service that you recently consumed. If your testimonial is positive (try not to be patronizing), then the product will likely link to your content.

You can also create a how-to piece of content on using the product or service effectively. This should help you get the attention of the product maker and possibly earn you backlinks.

16 – Build Links on Wikipedia

The backlinks on Wikipedia are nofollow links, though this doesn’t prevent you from building some for your blog. There are three options to choose from when using this strategy:

• Create a page for your brand on Wikipedia and then include links to your site
• Edit an existing page on Wikipedia and include a resource link pointing to your site
• Find broken links on Wikipedia and replace them with links to your website.

17 – Create a Private Blog Network

Creating your private blog network is an SEO strategy that offers long-term benefits to you. It’s basically a network of independent sites that belong to your company or brand.

This network allows you to transfer link juice from one site to the other without getting penalized for black hat activities. Also, it gives you greater control over the SEO of all the blogs under your management.

It’s a suitable strategy for bloggers and internet marketers who have different blogs created that offer them multiple income streams.

18 – Mention Brands and Influencers in Your Content

This is a great strategy to attract the attention of those important stakeholders in your niche. Brands are always on the lookout for content and discussions about them.

If your content is interesting enough, you can earn backlinks from those mentioned.

Conclusion

An active backlink building plan is one of the greatest SEO strategies to earn you higher visibility and traffic.

To obtain long-term benefits from your link building efforts, you’ll need to adopt white hat techniques for building backlinks. This guide features 18 proven methods that you could adopt and adapt to building organic backlinks to your site.

To ensure that you build high-quality backlinks to your site, you must create high-quality content consistently. And if you want to learn the right content strategy, a platform like Wealthy Affiliate University offers digital marketing certification. Read my honest review.