Link building is crucial for online growth, and new research from B2B research, rating and reviews platform GoodFirms reveals effective link-building strategies that can be a great help for busy marketers and entrepreneurs to increase their productivity, referral traffic, brand visibility, brand authority, influencer marketing and more.
The firm performed a survey to unlock the outreach strategies, reaching out to 150+ digital marketing firms, SEO companies, SEO heads, content marketing managers, and CEOs who contributed their valuable knowledge, along with their favorite white-hat link-building tactic, including: skyscraper technique, guest blogging, press releases, link reclamation, high authority outlets, and influencer marketing.
According to this research, 18 percent of marketers believe the press release is the best tactic and a powerful way to build public relations, establish credibility, help customers find you online and get better in your search engine rankings. Around 23 percent of the participants also voted for skyscraper, and about 21 percent of marketers choose guest posts as highly effective techniques for link building to generate more traffic and be more visible.
Skyscraper technique favored by 23 percent of participants
Skyscraper technique is one of the most heard and highly practiced strategies applied by digital marketers, content heads, and SEO experts, and is the strategy that is seldom tricky to execute though transcendent in retrieving backlinks and growing ROI.
“Basically, the strategy is to Google industry related queries that are important to your website, find the top-ranking pages then create something that is undoubtedly much better,” said Dan Foland, SEO director at Postali, in the report. “Creating great content is only half the battle. People can’t link to your content unless they know it exists. You need to market the content and solve a problem or add value to sites you’re trying to get a backlink from. Pushing out 100 cookie cutter emails likely isn’t going to work.”
Guest blogging is popular among 21 percent of all respondents
Guest Blogging is a well-known and favored high-quality link-building strategy according to 21 percent of the inbound marketing experts in the study. The reasons why content marketers and SEO heads prefer guest blogging are evident—it’s a treasure trove for almost every troop that is complying for link building results.
“There are no real shortcuts to build an effective portfolio of links that will provide long-term impact,” said Bernard May, the CEO of National Positions, in the report. “Going this route can also help you build better relationships with content publishers and help you align as an industry leader, which can open the door for future opportunities.”
18 percent say the press release is key for earning backlinks
PR activities like the press release are popular in the digital world from long ago, and even digital marketers and SEO heads take it very seriously. These marketers added that when they actively work on executing planned PR campaigns, they not only elevate their brand name, but they also earn authoritative backlinks.
“A great way to build links is to proactively react to important news in your industry, create a press release, and distribute it to all reputable and relevant news sources,” said a participant from Wise Team, in the study. “If you are quick enough and your press release is of good quality, there is a good chance that your press release will be published, you will get a back-link and advertise yourself as an expert in your field.”
Link reclamation selected by 17 percent of SEO experts
Link reclamation requires constant eyes on new opportunities. Finding 404 pages and 301 redirects are challenging, yet the results are extremely productive. Experts implied that smart tools like SEO Spider Tool, Hunter.io, Mention, and Yext help them tackle issues like discovering broken links, dragging unbranded mentions, and fetching email addresses for outreaching the target businesses.
“With broken link-building tactics, you are finding broken links on someone’s site, highlighting them and offering a replacement piece of content in return,” said John Tucker, an SEO specialist at John Tucker SEO, in the study. “It offers much more value, and as a result, it brings a higher rate of success in terms of links acquired.”
Earning backlinks from authority outlets chosen by 12 percent of marketers
SEO marketers agree that changing algorithms needs new ideas for building white-hat links, and many prefer earning backlinks via different authority outlets. Moreover, in the research, 12 percent of the industry-experts also asserted that building organic links from reputed outlets have boosted the credibility of their websites.
HARO (Help A Researcher Out) is a free service platform that helps out journalists and bloggers in finding valuable sources for their upcoming articles. These reporters tend to pick the most relevant answers and in turn credit the source.
“We’ve had great success by setting email rules, so HARO digest emails containing strategic keywords go to our primary inbox,” said Eagan Heath, founder of Get Found Madison, in the report. “From there, we write detailed custom responses, answer all the questions the reporter is asking, and follow their exact directions, such as linking to our social media profiles and so forth.”
Influencer marketing is preferred by 6 percent of digital marketers
Influencers are the brand ambassadors of your brand. They play a major role in giving voice to your brand and recognition to your products/services. In the research, six percent of the total marketers stated that they use influencer marketing as a comprehensive source for link building.
“For effective results, target a few key influencers, companies, and organizations and build a relationship. Share the existing content published by your target influencers, like and share their social media posts, and then reach out with an email that starts with a specific compliment about their content,” said Mike D. O’Brien, the founder of JML Digital Marketing, in the study. “Now, they’ll recognize you and be more likely to respond positively.”
