Posted by In our series of top strategies for a successful & sustainable SEO campaign, we will discuss how to develop solid high quality backlinks to build credibility in your website and get it to rank higher.
The Importance of Backlinks in 2024 and Beyond
Backlinks from other websites that are relevant to your niche work as a vote of confidence in your website and Google and other search engines take this into consideration while evaluating the authority and relevance of your website in their search engine ranking algorithms.
Backlink building has always been critical in building a successful SEO campaign and it remains so even in 2024. However, the types of backlinks and the strategies for creation of these backlinks have evolved and businesses that rely on the old strategies will begin to see setbacks in the age of generative search. With rapid deployment of search generative experiences (SGE), search engines will use real-time information and Large Language Model-led AI analysis to provide search results so “you’ll be able to understand a topic faster, uncover new viewpoints and insights, and get things done more easily.”
So what should your backlink strategy look like to be considered authoritative in your field?
Identifying High-Authority, Relevant Websites for Link Prospecting
Let’s start with the best strategy for ‘earning’ high-quality and relevant backlinks for your website.
First, identify high-authority, relevant websites for effective link prospecting. A tool that we link to use is SEMrush backlink gap tool, which allows you to conduct your backlink audit along with three of your competitors to identify websites you can prospect for link building.
Keep in mind that there is a wide variety of backlink opportunities this tool will provide you with, ranging from local citations to forum interactions to paid lists to guest blogs.
At Webtage, a premier SEO Agency in Naperville that provides digital marketing services, we strongly believe in a high-quality content led backlink strategy. Approach authoritative websites that hold sway with your target audience. Look for established, trusted publications, industry blogs, and influential thought leaders. Their endorsement through a backlink can lend significant weight to your content.
And yes, this is not an easy task as it involves a foundation of solid, high-quality content along with a portfolio of articles published on authoritative sites. With a portfolio to showcase your authorship and expertise in your field, you will start forming a community of bloggers, influencers and thought leaders who would be willing to publish your content on their websites.
Remember that content published on a high value not only boosts your search engine’s rankings and credibility, it can also drive traffic from third party sources.
Local Citations
The next rung of high quality links are those you can get by creating profiles on niche & local directories, especially if you are a local business.
Local citations should be an integral part of any link building strategy. By establishing your business’s presence across a variety of online directories and platforms, you can not only improve your local SEO, but also build implicit endorsements of your business by sites, such as Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Yelp and thousands of other valuable sites that search engines consider highly valuable.
There are plenty of tools and platforms that automate submission of Name, Address, Phone (conveniently abbreviated to NAP), that ensure consistent business information across hundreds of local, general and niche directories and platforms.
The more consistent and widespread your information (that’s why consistency of NAP is critically important here), the more legitimate and trustworthy your website is to search engines.
It’s for these reasons that building of local citations should be an integral part of any link building strategy.
Generation of UGC
User Generated Content (UGC) should also be a part of your natural backlink profile creation. When users mention your brand across platforms, that acts as a natural endorsement of your brand.
Asking for reviews and references is an excellent way to build user-generated content. Users can be asked to share their opinion on review sites, social media sites or forums. Offer incentives like contests, discounts, or shoutouts for users who create and share content. However, make sure you follow all guidelines around acceptable UGC that govern your industry and the sites that publish UGC to ensure compliance.
As with most link building efforts, the more natural the UGC backlinks, the better your chances of getting value from them.
Are Paid Links Worth It?
Paid backlinks can be a valuable part of a well-rounded SEO strategy, but they must be approached with caution. Never opt for ‘link-farms’ or mass link buying scheme. Those almost always get flagged as a ‘potential link network’ or ‘money/sponsored’ links.
When should you pay for a link? The only time we recommend paying for links is when you have identified a natural fit for your website, in terms of a relevant and high-quality site with a high domain authority and a large organic traffic that charges a service fee for placing your content on their site. Ensure that your backlink is not tagged as a sponsored link.
Remember, the key is to focus on building genuine, high-authority backlinks through outreach, guest posting, and other white-hat link building tactics. Paid links should be used sparingly and only to support your broader link building efforts, not as a primary strategy.
How to Leverage Broken Links to Boost Your SEO Backlinks Campaign
Leveraging broken links is a win-win strategy. By identifying broken links on your potential publisher sites and offering content to help replace the broken links, you can offer high quality content to publishers and acquire solid backlinks in return.
How do you identify such broken links? A good place to start is to study your competitors backlink profile. Visit their publishing sites and look for broken links or 404 errors. Reach out to webmasters and offer content that might get you a valuable link.
You can also look out for industry-relevant sites that curate lists of helpful links. You can reach out to the site owners and propose your own valuable content for inclusion, thereby earning high-quality backlinks to enhance your site’s credibility and visibility in search results.
In the age of SGE, High-quality, Natural Backlinks Are Your Best Friend
Repetitive, unimaginative & spammy ways to build backlinks through link farms, mass placements and spammy forum commenting are not a good strategy in the age of search generative experiences where search engines are using highly advanced LLMs to identify truly authoritative websites that exhibit credibility, expertise and experience through high quality content, user experience and natural endorsements of third party but relevant sites.
By using a strategy built on identifying good, reliable publishing sites and naturally acquiring backlinks from them is your best in running a successful SEO campaign. Remember that this may take some time but this is the only fool-proof and sustainable way to get your website higher on search engines.