Better Backlinks for Boosting Web Traffic

​By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President​

How do you get quality backlinks to your web content?

As difficult as producing great content can be, it can be even more difficult to get quality backlinks to it to boost web traffic and SEO. But it's worth the extra effort involved.

​"Backlinks" are links back to your web content from other external websites. Despite the many changes announced by Google lately, backlinks are still considered one of the most important SEO ranking factors.

Keep in mind, not all backlinks are quality links that help your content. Some low-quality backlinks may actually hurt your website's page rankings*. 

The first step to quality backlinks is producing quality content.

The most important thing you can do to ensure you can garner quality backlinks to your web content is to produce high-quality, relevant content for your audience. Producing high-quality content ensures that you can offer content that is of value to other related websites and directories and that they will want to link back to your content. Simply put, your content has got to be worthy. 

It takes a lot of effort to continually produce quality content, but it really is the best way to sustainably create and maintain a successful content marketing strategy.  High-quality content is critical to gaining backlinks, shares, and engagement that help with search ranking, grow brand awareness and brand affinity, and ultimately help drive sales.

If you're struggling with creating high-quality content on the regular, find a writing resource with experience in your industry. Look to agencies and resources like JKM to help you. But improving your content marketing and SEO is the critical first step to take before pursuing quality backlinks. 

Q:  Once you've got great content, how do you get quality backlinks?
​
​A:  Follow these 14 tips...

There are a number of ways you can seek backlinks, but the folks at Kissmetrics really have come up with the best, easiest tactics in the handy infographic below. It's based on Neil Patel's blog post and it's a great reference list of low-cost backlink strategies to try.

​Be sure to check out the additional tips below the infographic as well.

Source: 14 Ways to Get Backlinks Without Begging (Infographic)

*A word of caution: Stay away from "blackhat" backlinking strategies.

Be sure to stay away from shady link-building schemes like "spamdexing." Also, unless it's a respected industry association or directory that charges for membership, you should not have to pay to have a website link to your content.

If you're asked to pay for a link in a blog or to "guest post,"  that's a good indication that the website will take all-comers willing to pay and is probably not a "high-quality" backlink. Take a pass on that and focus time and effort on better tactics like those listed here and on finding more relevant or complementary websites. ​

Focus on the good backlinking tactics outlined above.

Here are some additional tips for each of the above backlink strategies:

1. Original Research
This may sound intimidating but it may be easier than you think. Particularly if you have a healthy email list. If you have permission to send emails to your customers via MailChimp or Constant Contact or other ESP, you can conduct a survey and discover some interesting statistics and data points that you can use to create valuable insights that would be highly shareable. 

2. Create a Massive Long-form Guide
This also sounds intimidating! BUT if you did tip #1, and created a survey, you can use those survey results and put them in a report or guide along with an industry expert's comments and insights about the results. Get help from a freelance writer or agency like JKM if you need it, but creating this type of highly-shareable thought-leadership content will be worth the additional effort and cost. 

3. Interview an Influencer (or Industry Expert)
This is actually easier than it sounds. This can be a video, podcast, or traditional blog post. Although, podcasts are super popular right now and creating a simple podcast where you interview a key influencer in your industry is a great way to create really interesting and highly shareable content.

Bonus: this is a bit of a two-for-one as you can use the transcript from your podcast's audio recording as a long-form blog post as well. Look to tools like BlueJeans Meetings with Dolby Voice and  Eva from Voicera to set up the conference call, record the interview, and automatically generate a transcript which will be emailed to you after the conference call. 

4. Create an Infographic
This is probably our favorite tip. We're huge fans of infographic content at JKM. You can probably tell by the fact that each of our blog posts includes an infographic. Either one we've created or ones that we've shared (like the infographic above) because we believe they are of value to our small business clients. Look to free and low-cost online design tools like Canva, Design Wizard, or Visme to easily grab infographic templates and create your own. Just be sure to include shareable embed code when you're creating infographic content. 

​Also, we have a great blog post on creating infographics to complement presentations. Repurposing a presentation into an infographic is a great way to quickly create highly shareable blog content.

​But the important datapoint here is that according to the Wharton School of Business,  "people remember 80% of what they see but only 20% of what they read." 

5. Quizzes!
According to Wordpress.org, "Nothing is quite so shareable as a good quiz." and we agree. Do you have a Wordpress website? If you do, you're in luck! The WP Quiz Plugin is the easiest way to create viral quiz content that people are eager to share. Your visitors can take part in the quiz you create, and you'll find that fun, relevant quizzes will increase engagement by leaps and bounds.

6. Contact Websites that Link to Defunct Sites 
We're going to defer to an SEO expert on this one. Check out Brian Dean's video (below) on this backlink tactic, otherwise known as the Moving Man Method. But the important takeaway is: only reach out to high-quality websites.  

7. Testimonials
Probably the easiest tactic listed above. Offering up a testimonial to a relevant company website is a no-brainer. Only provide a testimonial for products and services you've actually used. Just be genuine and give more than you take. Remember, you're offering them a testimonial for their business so this isn't the place to self-promote beyond including a link to a relevant page on your website. For instance, if you've mentioned the company or their product in a blog post, that's a great relevant page to link to. 

8. Guest Blogging
Take a look at this JKM guest blog post by Visme Founder, Payman Taei. This is a great example of guest blogging. Mr. Taei reached out to us after noticing that we had mentioned a competitive service in one of our blog posts and offered to write a guest blog for our JKM website. We discussed what would be good, relevant content to both our audiences and Mr. Taei wrote the post and sent it over to us to review and edit. The result is a win-win. It's a high-quality backlink for Visme, and a great guest post for JKM to share as well. 

9. Find Unlinked Mentions
There may be sites that are already mentioning your company, products, or service but that have not included a link back to you. A little extra effort to locate these instances and you can reach out to these sites in a helpful way and suggest they add a link back to the most relevant page on your site. They're already mentioning you, so adding a link is only more helpful to their readship. 

10. Public Relations for Page Rank 
Proceed with caution. It's not a good idea to cold-call journalists and pitch your company, product or service without nurturing the relationship first. You'll need to make an concerted effort to build relationships with journalists and help them out when they need it. Kissmetrics and QuickSprout both recommend using Help a Reporter Out (HARO). Check out this helpful video tutorial on how to best use this service. 

11. Use Outreach Efforts When You Write a Post
If you've mentioned other partners, vendors, industry experts, researchers, companies, products, or services in your blog posts, reach out and let those companies know. Also tag them when sharing on social media when appropriate and relevant to your social post. But do not come right out and ask for a backlink. Trust that they will see your email, blog post, or social post and chose to link to your content if they feel it is of value. Also, don't load your blog posts with excessive links. Only link to what is relevant and helpful to your readers. Put your readers' interests first and good quality content and backlinks will follow. 

12. Quality Comments on Quality Blogs
Yup, the key word here is quality. Do not post comments everywhere on the web linking back to your site. You'll be seen as spammy if you do. Instead, seek out relevant blogs that complement your company, product, or service and subscribe to those that you feel are really valuable to your industry. Be sure to only comment on posts that you've actually read and and only comment when you have something of value to say. Take care to only post relevant, thoughtful comments that actually add to the discussion. 

13. Find Listicles and Resource Pages
Lots of websites have resource pages - you can check out ours as an example. We've only included products and services that we've used and endorse and no one has paid us to mention them on our website. We provide the links to these resources as a service to our customers and potential clients. And yes, we will turn requesters down if their product or service is not relevant or helpful to our audience. 

So the takeaway here is to look for relevant resource pages where you think your company belongs, but when you reach out, be sure to communicate why you think including your company would benefit the website owner and their customers and audience. Remember it's all about relevance and quality.

14. Create a List of Your Own
As with all of the tactics and tips here, think quality of quantity. List-type posts are popular and highly shareable, but only if they are of value to your customers and communities. Our advice here: don't take shortcuts. Whether it's a list of 5 items or 25, create high-quality lists backed by facts and information. Get creative and get assistance from a professional writer in your industry if you need help  - preferably one with SEO expertise. 

Hard work and persistence pays off. 

Garnering backlinks is mission critical when it comes to a successful content marketing strategy. But when it comes to content marketing, there is never such a thing as a "one-and-done." Successful content marketers are always looking for ways to improve their content, backlinks, SEO, and social engagement. Putting in that extra effort and following these 14 tips to boosting backlinks will pay off in the long run. Just keep at it!

Focus on relevancy and quality.

By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President​

Julee Klein is the President of Julee Klein Marketing LLC, a full-service digital marketing agency based in Morgan Hill, California. JKM is focused on serving small business owners in the greater Silicon Valley area. You can get in touch with Julee on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @JKMktg

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