In this article we cover the most common FAQs relating to ‘backlinks’.
9 Practical Tips For Acquiring Backlinks
- There are lots of ways to get backlinks. Don’t rely on just a few methods because a varied link profile looks more natural and is less likely to be negatively effected by future algorithm updates.
- Email is the standard way to contact someone about linking to your site, but try contacting people through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc. first if they have links to their social media profiles on their site.
- When contacting someone about linking to your site, make the communication as personal as possible. Reference the name of their site/business, and use their first name if you can find it.
- When emailing people, avoid mentioning ‘link’ or ‘backlink’ in the subject field, don’t include any URLs in the first email, and leave out any SEO terminology, like rankings, algorithms, dofollow/nofollow, etc.
- Be persistent when contacting people – a social media message, then an email, then a follow-up email, then a phone call. Only give up when they give you a definite ‘no’.
- There are basically 5 reasons that someone will link to your site: they think your site is unique/interesting/engaging; they know you and/or owe you a favour; you link to their site in return; you give them content to publish on their site; you provide them with a financial incentive.
- Acquiring good quality backlinks becomes much easier if the content on your website is worthy of being linked to. If your site is essentially just a collection of sales pages, then you’ll struggle to persuade others to link to it. Attach some kind of offer/value to your link requests that makes it worthwhile for the other person to respond, as if there’s nothing in it for them, 99% of the time they won’t respond.
- It’s best if you can get someone to link to your site without you also having to link to theirs, but exchanging links is better than no link at all, so if it’s a relevant, good quality website, and they want to exchange links, then do it.
- If you’re exchanging links with another site, try do so from within an article or blog post (existing or newly created) on your respective websites, rather than from partner/links/friends style pages.