How to Get Powerful Backlinks

Understanding why you should build links is fairly simple. The stronger and safer your links are, the higher your search rankings will be. In fact, Google agrees. Links are one of the top ways for Google to rank your website or blog.

Building links might seem difficult, but it’s easier than you think. With over 10 years of experience as a digital marketer, I’ve compiled a list of different ways to get powerful links based on my experience. 

How to Earn Strong Backlinks to Your Website

1. Turn Mentions into Backlinks
2. Create Linkable Assets
3. Write Content in a List Format
4. Create Infographics
5. Create Content About Relevant Topics
6. Pitch Content to Round-Up Blog Posts
7. Pitch Links to Resource Pages
8. Link Internally to Your Pages
9. Look for Broken Links on Relevant Sites
10. Submit a Testimonial With a Link
11. Get Listed on Directories
12. Analyze Competitor Backlinks

1. Turn Mentions Into Backlinks

Let’s start with the simplest trick to in the book. Remember that one time someone wrote about you or your product but didn’t link your website? You can convert that mention into a more effective backlink by simply contacting that site’s webmaster to do it for you. 

Find websites that mention your brand by using any of the following tools: 

• Search engine results page (SERP) research tool 
• Link research tools
• Backlink Profiler (BLP)
• Google Alerts

Steps for this Technique:

• Find the mentions using the above tools
• Email the webmasters to add a link on your brand name

While mentions are useful, backlinks provide a more effective way to boost your search rankings. Reaching out via email will also help you build a relationship with a relevant webmaster, and you’ll likely be able to earn more links down the line.

2. Create Linkable Assets

Data-driven blog posts and resource pages are examples of linkable assets that people want to reference. It’s extremely easy to get links for linkable assets if the content is useful for a reader. 

Once published, you can continue to keep earning backlinks indefinitely. Creating linkable assets is also a more scalable process, so it’s not a bad idea to focus on producing informative content.

Here are a few types of linkable assets you can create: 

• Online tools
• Research articles and studies
• Ranking lists
• Awards
• Tutorials
• Infographics

Linkable assets are evergreen content that will gather backlinks to your website over time.

Steps for this Technique:

• Create linkable asset (e.g., guide, infographic, tutorial, study with in-depth information)
• Create a list of publications who could link to your content (link reactors)
• Reach out to these link reactors to share your content

By creating relevant content that people want to link to, people will potentially link back time and time again.

3. Write Content in a List Format

This one’s probably the simplest of all the tips so far. Readers are attracted to lists because they’re easy to read and comprehend. 

Creating lists will increase the odds of people checking it out and hopefully linking back to it.

4. Create Infographics

Let’s get one thing straight, infographics are cool! 

For a lot of people, it is easy to grasp information when it isn’t in long paragraphs, and webmasters add them to make their pages more interesting. 

So, to attract a wider audience, you’ll have to cater to their needs. Create an infographic and pitch it. Just ask the webmaster to add a link to the infographic so that it leads back to your page. 

Steps for this Technique:

• Find a hot topic in your niche and create an engaging and interactive infographic.
• Promote this infographic with bloggers in your niche and industry
• Find backlinks of blogs having similar content to your infographic and reach out to them for backlinks

Infographics add a visual flair while still delivering the content that people want to link to.

5. Create Content About Relevant Topics 

We all know how important great content is for link building. But trying to guess what readers want is a challenge on its own.

Rather than doing that, you could write about something that’s already a hot topic and gets tons of attention. News jacking is just that: taking content from the news and promoting your views on it.

Steps for this Technique:

• Find a hot topic in your niche and industry
• Create more engaging content than what’s already published
• Find the backlinks on that page using Ahrefs or other tools for similar topics
• Reach out to them to update the page to include your link

You’ll never have to guess about what’s trending when you research current buzz around certain topics.

6. Pitch Content to Round-Up Blog Posts

Link round-ups are posts that gather facts sourced from different sites. These are usually lists published by daily, weekly, or monthly blogs and can be a great place to pitch your content. 

The process is simple:

• Find websites that regularly post round-ups
• Pitch your content to them
• See if they publish it

Steps for this Technique:

Search for link round-ups through Google or Twitter. In the screenshot below, you can see the second and third results are link round-ups.

You can tell that these are resource collections based on their title and description in the search engine results page.

Once you've identified the resources, find the author or blog curator’s contact information. Then, send personalized emails to add your content to their round-up.

Round-ups are great places to pitch your linkable assets, and you’ll likely get more eyes on your content.

7.    Pitch Links to Resource Pages

Similar to link round-ups, some websites have a resource page for their readers. Here, they list all of the guides, tools, and articles they’ve found to be useful.

To get resource page backlink, follow the same steps you followed for a link roundup.

Steps for this Technique:

• Find Resource pages using “Keyword inurl:resources”, “Keyword “best resources””, or “Keyword intitle:links” as seen below.

Searching this way can help you streamline your efforts. Once you have found the search results, you should:

• Find the relevant contact details for these resource pages
• Reach out to them with a personalized email to add your content on their resource page

Being recognized as a resource will also help strengthen your brand’s authority.

8. Link Internally to Your Pages

You have complete control where you place your links on your own website. It’s a good idea to link to other web pages within that domain.

Take a look at this screenshot from The Manifest.

In the above image, The Manifest has linked very well to other articles they’ve published. The links are identified with purple boxes.

Internal linking helps Google discover new content on your site. It’s able to understand your content better and ranks it accordingly. On top of that, you can use them to direct traffic by leveraging high-converting pages.

9. Look for Broken Links on Relevant Sites

Every website will have multiple links, internally and externally. At times, these links break and stop working. 

When webmasters don’t realize something like this has happened, it breaks their user experience, SEO, and reputation all at once. But this poses an opportunity for you to pitch your own content.

If you wish, you could write some awesome content related to the topic at hand and pitch your idea to the webmaster. If all goes well, you’ll receive a backlink to your domain! 

Steps for this Technique:

• Find broken links in your niche and industry blogs using Ahrefs or other tools
• Check what the broken links used to be using Wayback Machine. If this doesn’t work, use Ahrefs to find backlinks of the broken link and read the anchor text to get an idea of the subject.
• Check the backlinks of the broken links to see which pages have linked to the broken page
• Reach out to those pages, too, to suggest that they replace the link with your content.

It can be an arduous process, but finding broken links is a great way to know exactly what kind of content that site is looking for.

10. Submit a Testimonial With a Link

Creating home page links is easy with the testimonial link building technique. 

Offer to give positive testimonials on tools and services that you’ve used. In your testimonial, push to publish it with links to your own website. 

Just make sure that the site is relevant to your niche and that you’ve actually used the product or service.

11. Get Listed on Directories 

Industries often have specific directories where companies want to be featured. By targeting specialized directories that are related to your niche and feature other informative sites, you’ll earn more business.

Look for websites that allow you to post a link of your website along with any necessary information for potential clients.

12. Analyze Competitor Backlinks

Keep an eye out for the backlinks that your competitors have that you don’t. Chances are those sources would be willing to publish your content, too. 

By using a tool called Common Backlinks Tool (CBT), you can easily find common backlinks, their sources, and their techniques. Analyze these links and try to get them, as well.

Getting Powerful Backlinks Is Worth the Investment

Now that you have all the tools you need, all you have to do is start working on them.

Let’s summarize what we’ve learned in this post. You’ll need to stay vigilant for backlinking opportunities and build a strong rapport with webmasters that will post your links. Maintaining those relationships with webmasters can be a great way to secure backlinks.

From there, it’s all about creating and pitching relevant content that they can’t resist. When we look at it that way, earning backlinks don’t look so hard anymore, right?

So go get some great backlinks for your website!