In order to be at the top of your niche, it’s necessary to acquire and maintain authority and credibility by accumulating backlinks. When content is the driving force that motivates people to link to your site it becomes a valuable asset to every business to be able to produce well-written content.
As it turns out the best links are built by publishing high-quality, shareable content. First page appearances on Google will continue to rely on top-notch writing in order to improve the authority and overall ranking of your website through content-focused link building methods.
#1. Quality Blogging vs Quantity Blogging
It has been known for some time that blogging has a positive effect on the search visibility of your site.
At one point in time blogging was about publishing as many blog posts as you could to artificially inflate the size of your site and gain favor with the search engines.
The day has come where short blog posts are obsolete and meaningful, insightful, resourceful and actionable posts are what counts towards building traffic to your site.
For the record, it doesn’t matter how high your word count is but how well your content satisfies the search intent of the user. In most cases creating a piece of content that adequately covers a topic in its entirety typically does not happen in a short article. It doesn’t mean that a short post can’t answer search intent, it simply means it depends on the search query.
The truth is that the average word count has increased overall across all websites and it’s mainly due to the fact that publishers are putting in an effort to provide readers with more information.
There is no magical number of words that suddenly lift your site to the first page, but in order to provide enough relevant information surrounding your topic, you might find your word count on the higher side of 1000 and in good company with most pages that appear in the number one position of search results.
#2. Publish Evergreen Content
Photo Credit: bloggingx.com
The fact is that in order for people to link to your site there needs to be shareable content that provides value that people WANT to tell other people about because they know it will add value to their lives. The trend for providing value through blog posting has been to publish content that never expires and continues to provide value long after it’s published, making it evergreen.
All types of evergreen posts center around one major idea and delve into that topic to provide deeper insight to the reader.
These pages often become used as resources for visitors to return to and are shared because of the amount of information offered.
It happens quite often that one evergreen article can put a website on the first page of Google for a number of keywords.
#3. How-To Guides
Posts written as guides have become popular methods for link building because they can be used in every niche whether the goal is to sell a product or service.
Example link: How to create a Website with WordPress?
They teach people how to accomplish a specific task, goal or skill which is what most people really enjoy reading about.
If you can show someone how to overcome a problem that affects their every day lives you’re providing them with a high-value article.
#4. Case Studies
It may take a lot longer than simply writing an article, but case studies tend to generate a lot of traffic and a good source of backlinks.
Original data is a commodity in many industries because when you are the source of information on a specific topic, all links point to you.
The content created by performing a case study is also compelling because it involves solving a problem with real firsthand results. Writing your case study as a long-form post is definitely an evergreen topic that has no expiration date.
#5. Interviews
You can pack in a lot of information by interviewing a known expert in your industry. It doesn’t have to be on anything complex but if you get someone that is well-known there is a good chance they have a very extensive network of followers in their social media as well as a website with good authority.
You won’t have a problem asking the interview candidate to link back to your site because the entire post is about them! Of course, they’ll link to it.
What better way to promote your own business than to show how important you are by participating in interviews about yourself.
The link from their site will be a boost in authority as well as the referral traffic. If they post to their social network you will be receiving a spike in traffic from their network as well.
#6. Create Linkbait
The same general principles can be applied to industries that provide information or services. In the SEO industry, almost every form of evergreen content is used to generate backlinks.
Articles that house a large number of statistics are a popular form of linkbait.
When other writers are looking for statistics to back up an opinion and provide proof of a point they will look for statistics to reference and cite the webpage that can provide the stats they need.
Two examples of top performers in the SEO industry that have used quality writing as a way to generate 1000’s of backlinks are Neil Patel and Brian Dean. Both provide large numbers of statistics in their blog posts that are referenced and linked to by most people working in the industry. Their content serves as perfect examples of a combination of evergreen elements since they combine long-form content, infographics, video, statistics, lists in all of their blog posts.
#7. Get Involved in Guest Posting
Guest posting is considered a safe method of link building that can provide quality backlinks to your website. This form of link building depends on the acceptance of your article by another blog site which means the quality of your writing needs to be up to a certain standard that is specific to the blog accepting submissions.
The process is simple. Search for a list of blogs in your niche that accept guest posts. Read through each website guest posting guidelines in order to comply with any specifications to the type of article they will accept. Many sites will want specific topics written, minimum word counts, minimum images, links, etc.
Most sites will respond to your submission within a few days if they like your article. It’s best practice to give a website two weeks to let you know if they will be publishing your article but it isn’t uncommon for sites to take longer to accept your post. After two weeks you should be safe to resubmit your article to another blog site, which makes the process more efficient.
You should submit to a few sites at a time because there’s no guarantee your article will be accepted. Depending on how many links you need should determine how many daily submissions you make.
Spend a lot of time on your headline and subtitles as many editors will skim those parts of your article first and determine whether they like it or not. Getting on a couple of high-authority sites that offer regular links (make sure they are not nofollow links) can make a huge difference in your authority and credibility.
#8. Be the Solution to Broken Links
There are some ways around writing good content but for the most part, the broken link method still relies on you being able to provide quality content as an option for replacing a broken link.
If you’re not familiar with this method of link building, the process starts by making a list of your ideal links.
Many will target the backlink profile of their competition by running a report using a tool such as Ahrefs that shows all of the backlinks of a website by simply typing in a URL.
You can choose your competitor’s best links and run a report on the websites that link to theirs to identify any broken links. Broken links will negatively affect the performance of a website in the rankings so most people will appreciate the heads up to being notified of any broken links so they can improve their site.
Once you have a list of all the broken links you will need to see what content those pages linked to previously, and then write content to replace it. You can use Wayback Machine to see what the actual page looked like before it was deleted and build content to replace it.
The next step is to write an email notifying the owner of the broken links you’ve found. You’re helping them out by not only bringing an issue to their attention that will improve their site but at the same time offering a solution to correct the broken link buy offering the page you’ve created to replace it.
The owner doesn’t need to do any more research other than reading the content on the page you’ve built which makes this method of link building a win-win situation.
#9. Outreach Campaigns
Any outreach ??campaign you endeavor in will require content that is written well in order for other people to be willing to represent it on their blogs. It’s not only quality writing that will give you the best chance of acquiring a backlink, but how you approach the blog site owners for a link to your site.
Make a list of authors of blogs that publish similar content to yours and that would benefit your site the most with a link. You will need to read through their articles to get an idea of the type of content they link to the most as well as any outdated content in which you could provide a better version.
When you have written an article that is link-worthy and can be used to replace the content they’ve linked to or as a standalone resource, reach out via email and let them know about it. If your content is truly amazing then the chances of you getting a link are pretty good.
Your email should definitely be flattering and complimentary about previous articles they’ve written. You can casually mention that you’ve written an article that is an updated version of the content they linked to and they might want to replace it. Even if they don’t replace the link with yours, you will have made the connection and an awareness of your content which will open the possibility of future links to come your way.
#10. Journalist Requests
There are a few websites that reporters and content writers will often reach out for expert opinions on topics that they aren’t familiar with or comfortable writing. You can become a member of these sites and receive an email every day on the topics of your choice in which information is being requested.
Here is how HARO helped me to get featured on Fundera DA-65 and few other high authority websites.
Most requests ask for a paragraph answer and if your response is selected, it’s published along with a link to your website. There are sites that would otherwise be very difficult if not next to impossible to get a link from that you can capitalize from by being part of an authors article.
There are a few websites that provide this service-the most well-known site being Help A Reporter Out and SourceBottle.
A strategy for getting your answer selected is to respond quickly so you’re response is one of the first answers the reporter receives. Of course, there is no strategy better than simply providing the most comprehensive, well-written solution to the query. This method of link building can take persistence since your answers won’t always be selected but again it’s another testament to how quality writing is a huge asset to link building.
Conclusion
The best methods for link building are closely intertwined with content writing and it’s no surprise why we have witnessed a surge in demand for high-quality content writers. Consider the ability of search engines to extract meaning from web pages and the rise in expectations from readers and it’s clear that the demand for the highest level of quality content has reached an all-time high.