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50 Simple Ways To Build Quality Backlinks

By allysa on November 24, 2015

Top 50 ways to build quality backlinks

A month ago, I’ve written and shared — 7 Great Ways To Build High Quality Backlinks. But as you know, there are more than just 7 ways to build backlinks, some link building tactics work better than others, what works for me might not work for you. Hence, I’ve compiled this huge list of ways to build backlinks.

First, I’ll admit that 50 ways to build backlinks is an overkill. Nobody would spend so much time and resource doing everything in this list, I wouldn’t suggest you do so either because you’d have a better chance of achieving better results spending your time to create newer, bigger, and better content.

What this list does is give you a general idea on how you could build backlinks. You can’t be guest posting all the time since guest posting requires a lot of effort and also a suitable blog that allows you to guest post. You can’t be submitting your links to the same outlet all the time because you’ll run out of links to submit. You can’t be fixing broken links all the time because eventually all the broken links will be fixed. You can’t be dropping links on other people’s blog all the time because both the owner of the blog and search engine might consider it spammy.

Just like investment, you’ll need to diversify your portfolio of backlink building strategies.

Here are 50 different ways to build backlinks to your blog.

Before proceeding with these link building tactics, please note that some of these tactics are considered risky and might get you penalized by Google if not done correctly. Therefore, I have labeled these tactics with their risk level.

A tactic labeled “Safe” mean you could use them without concern. Tactics labeled “Proceed with caution” mean you’ll need to have the adequate knowledge and make sure you follow the best practices in using the tactic. Tactics labeled “Risky” mean you should avoid doing them unless you’re 100% sure what you’re doing and could afford taking the risk.

Top 50 Ways To Build Quality Backlinks:

1. Guest Posting

Risk Rating: Proceed with caution

guest posting

You’ll see this in almost every list of backlink building article and there are plenty of reasons why.

Submitting guest posts to other blogs in your niche have plenty of benefits. You could include a few links that direct the readers back to your own blog in your guest post and in your author’s bio. This will provide your blog with some SEO juice and also expose your blog to a new set of audience. By being a guest author, you’ll also be seen as an expert or an influencer in your field.

2. Blogging Communities

Risk Rating: Safe

Blogging communities are a great place to meet other bloggers and experts in your niche and share knowledge. You can also share your blog posts there and get backlinks. Being actively involved in discussions in the community will help tremendously. Inbound, BlogEngage, and GrowthHackers are great places to start.

3. Trade Article Links

Risk Rating: Proceed with caution

You can also trade article links with other bloggers in your niche. This is best done in a discussion. So if a blogger takes on an issue, and you have a different opinion, you can add a link to the other blogger and he can respond to your position and include a link to your post. This is the kind of natural dialog that search engines want to reward.

4. HARO

Risk Rating: Safe

HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out. This is a great way to get high-quality backlinks from authority news sites. Just register yourself at HARO and you’ll receive three emails from reporters daily asking for sources.

HARO

This is how the email from HARO look like.

Then, all you need to do is state your credentials and provide some useful tips. Help a reporter out and get a high-quality backlink.

5. Influencer Outreach

Risk Rating: Safe

Identify top influencers in your niche. Connect with them through various social platforms to make sure they know who you are first. Then email them and ask them to check out the content on your blog. You could even ask them to share it on social media. One well-written email that get an influencer interested in your content can make a world of difference.

For example, we had Dharmesh Shah, the founder and CTO of HubSpot sharing one of our post on his Twitter, LinkedIn and Inbound.org account. Needless to say, the traffic and social share count for that article skyrocketed.

dharmesh inbound

Influencers like Dharmesh have a huge following in social networks, the have a Halo effect so anything they endorse or share will get tremendous exposure.

6. Network With Other Bloggers

Risk Rating: Safe

networking


Nothing beats personal connection. Network with other bloggers in your niche. Connect with them online and offline. Attending a seminar/conference/meetup event is a great way to do this. Create personal connections and the links will follow.

The more friends you have, the more links you’ll get.

7. Interview Top Bloggers

Risk Rating: Safe

Interview top bloggers in your field and post the interviews on your own blog. Ask the bloggers you interview to share the post with their audience.

8. Be Interviewed

Risk Rating: Safe

Offer to be interviewed by other bloggers. You can promote their site and they can promote yours.

9. Leave Relevant Comment On Blogs

Risk Rating: Risky

Find blogs that allow DoFollow links in the comments. When you comment on these blogs include a link back to a post on your own blog. Individually, these links will not add much value to your SEO, but it will still be beneficial to the overall link profile of your blog.

As long as your comment is relevant to the content and is organic, Google will not treat them as spam. Just make sure you do not spam and drop links on other blogs without providing context.

10. Leave Backlinks On Forums

Risk Rating: Proceed with caution

Forums that are relevant to your niche are another good place to create backlinks. You can look for threads on the topic that you’ve written about in these forums and add the link to the article on your blog.

11. Signatures

Risk Rating: Proceed with caution

Include a link to your blog in all your digital signatures. Signatures could be found in emails, forum, or any of your social media profile. Every time you sign off, there will be a link to your blog.

forumsignaturelinks

12. Website Review Threads

Risk Rating: Proceed with caution

Many forums have website review threads. You can post a review of your blog there. Better yet, have a friend or fan of your blog write the review and post it.

13. Broken Link Building

Risk Rating: Safe

brokenlink

This is an old school trick but it works. Websites change URLs and domain names all the time so there are plenty of broken links out there. If you stumble upon any of them, or actively hunt and found any of them, you could contact the blog owner and let them know. Ask them to replace the broken link with a link to your blog post instead.

14. Social Bookmarking Sites

Risk Rating: Safe

social bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking sites can also yield backlinks. Target the following networks: Digg, Favoor, SiteJot and Kinja. Add your blog to them. Submitting your post to these sites can be a little tedious but there are many tools to automate this process.

15. Social Networking Sites

Risk Rating: Safe

Social networking sites are huge. You want to maintain a presence for your blog on the top social networking sites like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. You can create an audience and share your posts on social media. Read about how we increased our organic traffic by 655% here and learn when are the best times to post on these social networks here.

16. Promote In Social Networking Groups

Risk Rating: Safe

Promoting your posts on your own social networking profile only works if you already have a huge following. But for most companies, their follower count will not match the amount of people in popular groups in these social networks.

Make use of groups to promote your blog. Groups include like-minded people who will appreciate the content of your blog. By adding your posts to the group, you can build backlinks and drive traffic. Use the groups on Google+, LinkedIn or Facebook.

17. Discussion Boards

Risk Rating: Safe

Quora_logo.svg

Engage in discussions on high-quality discussion boards like Quora or in LinkedIn discussions. You want to make sure that you provide insightful and valuable feedback to these discussion rather than just dropping your links because people won’t click on it if you do that. You could also get flagged as spam if you do so.

18. Ask Questions

Risk Rating: Proceed with caution

Ask questions related to your blog’s niche on Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers. Link to your blog in your post.

19. Answer Questions

Risk Rating: Proceed with caution

While you are on Yahoo Answers, you could answer some questions and cite posts from your blog as the source for your answer.

Unlock Your Free Step-by-Step Link Building Tutorial Now!

    Now that you know how important links are in SEO, discover 7 of the most effective link building strategies that even experts use!
    We have also inluded detailed step-by-step guides so you can replicate success for your own website, you do not want to miss this.

20. Internal Linking

Risk Rating: Safe

Build a solid internal link structure for your blog. Link related posts together and create category pages where you showcase the posts you have made on a certain topic.

21. Conduct Or Sponsor Surveys

Risk Rating: Safe

Conduct or sponsor a survey on your blog for issues related to your niche. Publish your results in a blog post. Others will want your valuable information and will link back to it.

22. Podcasts And Slideshare

Risk Rating: Safe

podcasts

Converting your articles into different formats for your readers to consume is a great way to gain backlinks. You can convert your article into a podcast and get it on iTunes, or you could convert it to a Slideshare presentation and get backlinks whenever people share it.

23. DMOZ

Risk Rating: Proceed with caution

DMOZ is the largest and most comprehensive human-edited directory of websites. Make sure your blog is listed there. Many other directories use this directory as a basis for their content.

24. Create Infographics

Risk Rating: Safe

Create infographics. People love infographics and love sharing them. Based on our own experience, all the posts we’ve written in the past that have an infographic have a significantly higher social share count and generated much more backlinks. Infographics are easily shared on Pinterest and Google+ so make sure your website have these social sharing buttons to make it easy for your readers to share.

If you do not have a designer to create an infographic for you, you could always hire one from Dribbble or any of those freelance websites.

25. StumbleUpon

Risk Rating: Safe

stumbleupon
StumbleUpon is a site that recommends content to its users. You should submit your content there to create backlinks and drive traffic.

26. Create Viral Content

Risk Rating: Safe

Create viral content on your blog. This content will be spread around social media sites. As it spread, it will bring you links and drive massive amounts of traffic.

27. Press Releases

Risk Rating: Safe

press release

Writing press releases about your blog is another way to create backlinks. Backlinks from press releases have a higher importance in the eyes of Google since they are posted on credible news outlets. Write a release about any important updates or news about your blog. Post it to a press release site to create a backlink.

28. Document Sharing Sites

Risk Rating: Risky

Document sharing sites allow users to upload PDF files to share with others. You can convert your blog posts to a PDF and upload it to a document sharing site with a link back to your blog. Here is a list of some of the best document sharing sites.

29. Review Top Companies And Products

Risk Rating: Safe

Create posts that review top companies and products in your niche. These companies might link to your posts in order to direct their customers’ attention to a third-party review.

30. Create Ranking Posts

Risk Rating: Safe

Create a post ranking the best companies in different categories of your niche. These companies will link back to your post if they are happy with their ranking.

31. Create Comparison Posts

Risk Rating: Safe

Write side-by-side comparison posts about different subjects or products in your niche. For example, a marketing agency would compare various marketing tools like Buffer and a Hootsuite. People like these comparisons and will likely link back to them.

comparison post

By comparing the two biggest social media marketing tool, LinkHuman is able to appeal to the audiences of both Buffer and Hootsuite, which is not a small set of people.

32. Create Link-love Posts

Risk Rating: Safe

Link-love posts are lists of your favorite posts from other blogs for the week. When you link to other bloggers, they will be inclined to return the favor and highlight your posts.

33. Create Tutorials

Risk Rating: Safe

Create in-depth tutorials for the basic elements of your niche. People will like, share and link back to your tutorials if they are really useful. You will not only get links, but you will make a valuable contribution to the community.

34. Create Free Tools

Risk Rating: Safe

blog title generator

Blog Title Generator is a free tool that we’ve created for bloggers.

Create a useful tool that is free for the people in your niche. Tools will generate a lot of backlinks if they are useful. For example, SEOPressor’s Blog Title Generator is a useful tool for bloggers and have generated plenty of backlinks for us.

35. Create White Papers

Risk Rating: Safe

Author a white paper offering valuable advice in your field. Ask friends and supporters to share your white paper. Include a link back to your blog in the white paper.

36. Give Out Free Stuff

Risk Rating: Safe

people love free stuff

Generally, just give out free stuff. People can’t resist free stuff because they’re FREE! Everybody loves free stuff.

You might think that this is cliche, but the numbers and stats have it, any offer that has the word FREE will increase the conversion rate significantly. The word “FREE” is magical in the marketing world. So offer lots of free downloads on your site. People will spread the word about them.

37. Beta-Test Products

Risk Rating: Safe

Get involved in beta-testing products and provide helpful feedback. The owner will appreciate your input and link to your posted review.

38. Provide Testimonials

Risk Rating: Safe

Marketers are always looking for testimonials. Think about your favorite products that would be of interest to your audience. Contact the company and offer to give a testimonial. Include a link to your blog when you identify yourself. If they use your testimonial, they will most likely link to your site to provide proof that your endorsement is authentic.

testimonial

LessAccounting got a link on GrooveHQ by giving them a great testimonial.

39. Be An Editor On Wikipedia

Risk Rating: Safe

Wikipedia is highly appreciated by Google, in fact, Wikipedia appears on page one of Google in 99% of searches. Instead of trying to beat Wikipedia, try becoming an editor on Wikipedia. Then you can insert links to your content in articles and even create an article about yourself or your business. Make sure you understand Wikipedia etiquette before you start.

40. Host A Social Media Contest

Risk Rating: Safe

Create a social media contest for the best blog post on a subject in your niche. Entry requires a link to your blog. You choose the winner. Read more on hosting social media contests here.

41. Sponsor A Blogging Contest

Risk Rating: Safe

Become a sponsor for someone else’s blogging contest. The posts from the contest will link back to your site as a sponsor.

42. Participate in Blogging Contests

Risk Rating: Safe

blogging contest

Participating in blogging contests such as this one is a great way to gain fame and backlinks.

Enter a blogging contest. If you win or place high, then this will generate backlinks for your blog. Even if you don’t win, you’ll still get plenty of exposure and experience.

43. Link Reclamation

Risk Rating: Safe

link reclamation

Doing this is similar to doing broken link building. Look for websites that have mentioned you but did not link to you. Contact them and request them to add a link to your website. You can use Google Alerts to notify you whenever your name or your website is mentioned.

44. Provide Services

Risk Rating: Safe

Provide services to people in your niche. If you design a website theme or a logo for another blog, then you can receive credit with a link in the footer.

45. Theme Designers Portfolio

Risk Rating: Safe

Theme designers have portfolios of websites using their themes. Contact the designer of your theme and allow them to use your website in their portfolio. Of course, having your website beautifully designed will help you much in this cause.

46. Share Your Images

Risk Rating: Safe

If you have taken any photos or created any images, you could upload them to Flickr or other images directories. In the description, include a link to your blog.

image sharing websites

Here are some of the image sharing websites you can upload your images to.

47. Get Credit For Your Images

Risk Rating: Safe

In addition, when others use the images that you’ve uploaded to the image directory, you can ask that they credit you with a link to your blog when using the image.

48. Ask Your Readers For Links

Risk Rating: Safe

Ask your readers link to you. If your blog posts have provided them with value, they are likely to oblige this small request. Make it easy for them by providing clear instructions for using HTML code on a “Link to Us” or “Spread the Word” page on your site.

49. Blog Directories

Risk Rating: Risky

Blog directories are also a good place to get backlinks. Submit your blog to a high-quality blog directory. Check out these 23 blog directories for a start.

50. Local Business Directories

Risk Rating: Risky

If your blog or business is based on a particular local or region, you can submit it to local business directories. Even though the traffic for these directories will be lower, visitors that reach you through these directories are most probably your customers as they are looking for services nearby them.

Are your efforts working? Track your rankings to know!

The main purpose of building backlinks other than gaining visitors is most probably to build on your backlink profile, so you can rank better right?

What’s a better way to keep track on that no other than using a rank tracking tool? Here at SEOPressor we use the built in rank tracking tool of BiQ.

This is an amazing tool with tons of features to explore.

Such rank tracking tools will give you a day to day view on your rankings so you can know if your link building effort is working, and if yes, how many days to took to be reflected on your rankings. So you an build a realistic expectation for link building projetcs.

Okay! Time for a breath!

This list shows that there are plenty of ways to build quality backlinks, and while you can’t do everything in the list, it’s better to know as many link building tactics as you could.

The more options you have in your link building armory, the easier it is for you to build link.

You’ll need to have a variety of link building strategies because doing too much of the same thing can easily be seen as unnatural and might get you punished by Google. So good luck building your vast network of backlinks and let us know if you have any great backlink building strategies in the comment section.


Other articles you might like:

Unlock Your Free Step-by-Step Link Building Tutorial Now!

    Now that you know how important links are in SEO, discover 7 of the most effective link building strategies that even experts use!
    We have also inluded detailed step-by-step guides so you can replicate success for your own website, you do not want to miss this.

Updated: 3 December 2024

Allysa

About Allysa

Allysa is always eager to learn something new whenever she got some free time and that includes SEO and inbound marketing. She also has a passion for traveling and discovering the unknowns.

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