Link building is a must if you want to improve your website’s SEO visibility & rankings and be on the first page of search engines! Whatever your industry is, the only key to improving your website’s visibility in the search engines is Link Building.

But how do you find the right technique?

Some practical ways to rank well in search engines are discussed below.

Link building cover image
Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash

Link building can be difficult to keep up with, and the rules and techniques are changing every month. On March 2016, Google Senior Search Quality Strategist Andrey Lipattsev confirmed that content and links are the first and second most important ranking factors. The full quote is:

“Yes; I can tell you what they are. It’s content, and links pointing to your site.” (Search Engine Watch)

Everyone loves to see their sites being ranked on the first page of Google. Once your website is active and running smoothly for a few months, you may be in shock when you analyze its performance. You will usually find you’re not getting any valid clicks and visitors, and notice that you’re still not ranking for the search terms you’re targeting.

“When it comes to search engine rankings, backlinks always play a vital role.”

Link building is one of the keys of success to websites being ranked at the top of search engines. There is a lot of useless information regarding link building which might be a waste of time and money and could get your site banned and blacklisted from search engines.

If you’re tired of using the old traditional link building tactics and you’re looking for free link building strategies, the processes and approach below will be of great help. I have been using these link building strategies to achieve and maintain top 10 rankings for thousands of keywords!

Start Dominating the Search Engines Today with These!

These are links that go from one page to another within the website. Internal linking is often ignored and is actually a great way to help people dig deeper within your site. For internal links, always look for a good keyword phrase on any of your any pages and link it to an inner page or home page with more information so the user stays longer and explores the website further.

Benefits of internal linking:

  • It improves page authority and helps to pass link juice equally to other pages.
  • Helps to decrease the overall bounce rate of the website.
  • Smart internal linking improves overall crawl ability and indexation of the website.
  • Improves older blog posts by sending some traffic and exposure. The Blog Starter has all the information needed on how to start a blog and manage it.
  • Helps with keyword rankings if your page has relevant content and strategic internal links.
  • You can go to your site right now and find good keyword phrases where you can link relevant page content with some other content.

2. “2022” Jacking

Users always prefer to click on the latest and updated posts, so by adding the current year or some call to action to the headline, you can maximize the potential to get initial backlinks. That can help get your site on first page spots.

Suppose we have 2 posts:

“Link Building Strategies“

and

“Link Building Strategies for 2022″

It is obvious  the user will click on the link building strategies for 2022. You can also add the following phrases to your headline (don’t forget to add the current year to increase curiosity).

  • Top
  • Discover
  • Free
  • Get
  • Try
  • Greatest
  • Fastest
  • Newest
  • Oldest
  • Strangest
  • Cheapest
  • Most
  • Expensive
  • Easiest
  • Unbelievable
  • Best

3. Local Business Citations

If you have a local business, then local link building is an ideal back-linking opportunity for you. You can get great links and you can draw additional traffic from the many people who routinely use local searches to find businesses near them.

Local Business Citations are key factors if you want to improve your positions in local search results. Local citations have the three terms named “NAP” i.e. Name, Address and Phone number.

While creating your local business citation, make sure to add the same address you feature on the website. These citation links are important for local rankings and help search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing) to verify your business location.

Links from Yelp, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, Bing Local etc. create authority for your website, build trust and can help improve your rankings in local search results.

How to find citations sources

There are multiple ways you can easily use to find citation sites. Here are some of them:

  • You can start with Whitespark’s List of Top Citation Sources and you can also head over to this comprehensive list of niche citation sites for 41 business categories including Automotive, Accounting, Marketing, Real estate, Health & Medical, and more.
  • You can also find city-specific and keyword-specific citation sources by using the following:
    • (city) business listings
    • (city) business directory
    • (city) directory
  • For keyword-specific citations:
    • (keyword) business listings
    • (keyword) business directory
    • (keyword) directory

Do take advantage of these sites and feel free to search for more sites as well.

The internet has a ton of spam sites and Google has committed itself to weeding them out and only showing trusted sites within their search results pages.

Building links from trusted sites is one of the most important steps to establishing your site’s authority and elevating it to the top spot of search results. When a website has backlinks from a trusted site, it tells search engines that they are an authority on that subject.

For instance, there are many websites and blogs that mention Wikipedia within their content. A mention from these websites to Wikipedia increases its backlink count and site authority. Search engines consider Wikipedia a highly relevant source and it shows up high within search engine results.

On the other hand, search engines also take into consideration links from spammy sites. These do not benefit websites and mark them as untrustworthy, leading to adverse effects on your search rankings.

Search engine algorithms do not provide recognition to a website that has links on sites that have nothing to do with their products or business. A car parts website doesn’t want a link on a cooking website. The two have no relation and will not get any benefit from the link.

Building too many links too quickly will be considered spam by search engines. If a business has too many poor links pointing to it, then the performance of that website will go down in results rather than moving up. Therefore, always pay attention to how you build your links.

5. Scoop.it

Scoop.it is a content curation website where users can select a favorite topic to curate, publish and share to any social networks they prefer.

There are many other content curation sites available but, Scoop.it is undoubtedly the best site available right now. Some other sites include:

To start using  Scoop.it, you first need to create an account and then choose a desired topic.

Screenshot from the Scoop.it platform

Next, search inside the Scoop.it pages for content which is related to your topic. There, you have 3 categories: Scoops, Topics and Users.

You can choose any topic with a large number of views and which has been updated recently. If they have a good number of views you can easily share your content – this opens up indirect link building opportunities for you.

Screenshot with Scoop.it search results

Once you choose your topic, add the URL and hit the suggest button; this will notify the creator of the Scoop.it topic that someone has suggested content for their topic. If the creator likes your post, they will add it to the page and you get a backlink.

Don’t forget to add valid tags when sharing via scoop.it!

Scoop.it topic search

You can also check the Users tab and share your content by following them on Twitter and other social channels. This can get you dozens of authority backlinks.

Scoop.it users

6. List.ly

According to co-founder Nick Kellet, Listly is “true social curation with lists as a metaphor”. Listly is a free service where you can easily create lists and share them with industry peers.

How to start with Listly

People love lists and like to see content in list view. With this platform you can easily create a list of tips, a list of popular 100 songs, or a list of anything that the audience would be interested in.

To start, just go to list.ly and sign up for a free account; you can also sign up using your Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn accounts. Now you are ready to create your first list by clicking the “Make a List” button at the top.

Listly screenshot

With Listly you allow others to like, react with Emoji, share to social media, and comment on your list. You can also make your lists private, embed them into your WordPress blogs, Tumblr or on websites.

List rank is very important on Listly, and a rank of 20 is required for your list to be indexed by search engines or be recommended by Listly to the community.

Here is an example of a list with poor list rank:

Listly rank

A few tips to score a high list rank for your lists:

  • Create lists that others will find useful. Avoid creating lists only to get backlinks.
  • Write a proper headline and description for your list.
  • Always add a headline image to your list.
  • Invite friends (via social share buttons and via email) to contribute to your lists.
  • Improve your profile on Listly by connecting multiple social accounts.

7. Infographics

Creating infographics is another great way to promote links. It is a cool and creative way to increase your reach.

Before starting to think about making one of your own, consider the following points to create successful infographics.

  1. Build your infographic for your audience and keep it simple and relevant.
  2. Limit the size – try to limit your infographic to 1500–2000 pixels to help it load quickly.
  3. Add facts, figures and give credit to other sources in your infographic.
  4. Create a story that maintains curiosity to the end.
  5. Always focus on the flow, as it plays an important role in the success of any infographic.
  6. Stick to maximum three colors and use no more than two fonts.
  7. Impress your audience with graphs and charts.
  8. Create a killer headline for your infographic and limit the number of characters to maximum 70.
  9. Make sure to add a 200-300 word unique description and include a few variations of your targeted keywords.

Once the infographic is done, it’s time to submit it to infographic sites to build links. You should be able to find the latest infographic sites by using the following commands in Google:

  • allintext: submit infographic
  • submit infographic
  • inurl: submit infographic
  • intitle: submit infographic

You can use the following sites for easy-to-make infographic templates, to hire professionals to create them for you, or to submit your own:

Social bookmarking sites where users can easily add, edit, and share content across the web help you get high quality backlinks that drive traffic to your website.

In order to learn how to build links with social bookmarking sites that help you get quality linkage to the next level, I have put together some of the bookmarking sites that you can consider:

Reddit

Reddit is a social news bookmarking, web content rating and discussion website that can be used to drive huge traffic to your website within a few weeks.

It is one of most popular websites in the social bookmarking category and it is divided into different subreddits where registered users can post links, add infographics, post text, and users can vote up or down for their favorite submissions.

To get the most out of the platform, first you need to create a free account and subscribe to the subreddits in your niche.

Once you’re done with the above steps, you can easily post the links. Before posting anything to Reddit, be sure to check the quality of the link that you are submitting and do read all the rules on the right-hand sidebar of each subreddit.

Some of the popular subreddits:

  • /r/news/ (14,438,507 readers)
  • /r/Entrepreneur/ (278,560 readers)
  • /r/SEO/ (39,817 readers)
  • /r/videos/ (16,212,000 viewers)
  • /r/business (249,957 readers)
  • /r/startups/ (160,038 readers)
subreddit submit

The basic idea for Reddit success and a few tips:

  • Make your titles eye-catching and be descriptive by choosing subreddits that are relevant to your website or audience.
  • Create your very own “front page” by subscribing to various subreddits.
  • Read up on the Reddit Content Policy or Reddiquette.
  • You must be an active user and contributor.
  • Build up your Reddit Karma quickly by adding the new links or comments to your own submissions and to others posts.
  • Build your brand by adding links or comments to /r/AMA/. Find relevant posts to comment on like “I Am the Blogger at _. AMA.”
  • Follow some people by clicking on “preferences” and then click on friends.
reddit preferences

Sharing on Medium.com

Medium is an online publishing platform where users can read, write, and share long-form content. Getting started with Medium is easy.

You can create an account in less than a minute by using the different sign-up options available: Twitter, Facebook, Google and Sign-up with email. Personally, I like to sign up using Twitter.

By signing up using Twitter, your existing connections from Twitter who are on Medium will automatically follow you.

Medium signup

Here are a few tips to using Medium:

  1. You must go for short headlines instead of long headlines to convey the best message. Here are some examples that work well on Medium:
    • Use negative words like stop, never, and don’t ever.
    • Create emotional headlines.
    • Use numbers, since people like seeing numbered lists. Use digits rather than words: 9 Strategic Tips for Beating Out Your Big Competitors.
  2. You can easily repost your blog content to Medium and this will help you get additional visits with little effort.
  3. When you repost or write new content, you have the option to tag your content. So always choose proper tags because on Medium tags are like topics.
  4. Track your visits by adding UTM parameters on the URLs that link back to your blog content.
  5. Mention people within the post; this will send them a notification message and your content will get more attention.
  6. It is recommended to upload only high quality photos that should be at least 900 pixels wide. Add only horizontal images.
  7. Interact with Medium content by recommending, sharing & bookmarking. It’s a great way to engage with your followers on this platform.

To check more tips and tricks follow this link.

How are the above tips working out for you? Let me know and if you find these worthy, please share them with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ or email them to someone who might find them useful!

Sharing on GrowthHackers

GrowthHackers is basically a group where you can share and learn more about online ethical marketing techniques. This allows you drive effective growth of your organization. The main objective of GrowthHackers is that marketers can easily share their stories and drive customer acquisition growth across all levels.

Benefits of GrowthHackers:

  • Use your data to improve customer engagement.
  • Have valuable discussions with industry experts.
  • Easily find lots of useful, actionable content.

Designer News

Designer News is basically a group of people in design and technology. It allows open participation for those who are interested in the related topics.

Interesting features:

  • Easy to make thoughtful comments and join discussions.
  • You can support a story or update it by commenting.
  • Replies are respectful and professional.

Slashdot

Slashdot is the equivalent of a Socially Curated Website. The site publishes news items for its members which are related to technology and allows peers to share their point of view about the topic.

This helps marketers by increasing the traffic to content that can spark such engagement and conversations.

Slashdot features:

  • Allows professional insights and analysis.
  • Covers a huge range of IT topics.

Flipboard

Are you looking for a website to publish your valuable content? Flipboard is a platform where you can create and publish your own magazine and subscribe to other users’ or brands’ magazines.

You can start engaging with the content that you want to see on your board and if you like any of the magazines, then you can republish their content on one of your magazines.

Key features:

  • Aggregate and curate content from several sources.
  • Create a social network and expand your business relationships.
  • Easily read Twitter or Facebook posts of people or brands with whom you interact more.

HubPages

HubPages is an open platform for those who are passionate about their work – like writers, artists, designers, and other conversation starters who want to share visual and infotainment content. It makes it easier for passionate people to get a valuable audience that appreciates their creativity.

Pro advantages of HubPages:

  • You can publish your content anytime and can retain a copy of it.
  • It allows you to make money from your published content.

eLearning Tags

The first eLearning social bookmarking site where you can find, share, vote and discuss notable eLearning content. Submit your favorite eLearning links such as articles, video, infographics etc.

Here you can also easily share your links with your colleagues or friends via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest etc.

Key features:

  • Completely spam free.
  • Share, vote and discuss interesting content related to eLearning.

Question-based sites are certainly a good way to drive traffic to your site, build brand awareness and increase authority if done right.

Millions of people want to ask questions and find relevant answers with correct information and the latest facts and statistics. Websites such as Quora, Yahoo Answers and WikiAnswers are good places to find answers to your questions.

A few other popular Q&A sites:

There may be other sites available, so do let me know if any other works best for you.

This is an easy and wonderful way to acquire backlinks from industry blog sites if you have the time and expertise to participate. Always include your URL while commenting.

Commenting on a quality blogs can be time consuming, yet for those who are focused on long-term results there are many benefits besides gaining links:

  • You can easily increase traffic to your site.
  • Blog commenting gives you the opportunity to build relationships with blog owners and other people in your niche.
  • Build credibility and branding – by participating with blog comments regularly you increase the odds of being noticed by blog owners and to have your online business appreciated.

In short, posting comments is a good strategy as it benefits not only you but also the blog owner. It is recommended that you should do it frequently and do it properly.

Here’s how to do it the right way:

Step 1: Find quality blogs

You can use the following advanced Google operators to find relevant sites:

  • “Add new comment” + “your keyword here”
  • “Leave a comment” + “your keyword here”
  • “Leave a reply” + “your keyword here”
  • “Post a comment” + “your keyword here”
  • “your keyword here” “Leave a comment”
  • “your keyword here” “Comment here”
  • “your keyword here” “Add comment”
  • “Powered by WordPress” + “your keyword here”
  • “your keyword here” “You may use these HTML tags and attributes”
  • “your keyword here” “Post a comment”
  • “Notify me of follow-up comments ”
  • “your keyword here” “Notify me of new posts”
  • “Comments on this entry:”
  • “Sign in to comment on this entry.”
  • “Login or register to post comments”
  • “You must be registered and logged in to leave comments”
  • “This blog uses premium CommentLuv”

You can also build your list by spying on your competitors. First find out your top 5 competitors and by using a link explorer tool (you can use Ahrefs), you can easily get the details of all your competitors’ backlinks.

Step 2: Create a list of all the blogs in a spreadsheet

Identify which sites have trustworthy information and are thus a good choice for your blog commenting. You can check which these are via Open Site Explorer.

Open Site Explorer

Step 3: Adding your comments and how to get approved

While commenting on any blog, you will find 4 basics fields – Name, Email address, URL and Comments.

  • In the name field, always add your name only and do not stuff it with your keywords.
  • In Email, you can use your real email or any fake email ID.
  • In the URL field, you can add your website link or leave it empty. But leaving the URL field empty can arouse suspicion that you might be spamming.
  • Before commenting, read the blog thoroughly and pick some interesting points from the post you can expand on. You can add the URL in the comment box (avoid making URL comments irrelevant by just adding the URL).

I also recommend this post for some great pointers on link building through commenting.

blog commenting

Profitable tips for blog commenting:

  • Take the time to read the whole blog post and leave a genuine response. Don’t post junk comments.
  • Make your comments short and sweet. Long comments can irritate the author and other readers or commentators.
  • Check the grammar and spelling of your comments and avoid rude language.
  • Focus on the topic; your comments should always relate to the blog content. Don’t deviate from the subject.
  • Always add your real photo and details in your profile. This can help you build strong and long-term relationships with other bloggers.

Link roundups are monthly, weekly or daily summaries of the industry’s best content. These roundups are a good way to build links and get a decent amount of referral traffic.

Here’s how to do it in right way and get featured in Link Roundups:

1. Write a share-worthy post

For link roundups the content should be exceptional, so that it entices users to engage and read through. While writing any piece of content, make sure to create a catchy headline.

You can easily find bloggers who publish link roundups by using Twitter search. Head over to Twitter search, and type something like ‘keyword + link roundup’ using your target keywords.

3. Google Advanced Search Operator

From Google, you can easily find tons of link roundup articles by using the following search formulas:

  • link roundup + your keyword
  • inurl: roundup + your keyword
  • intitle: roundup + your keyword
  • your keyword “top updates”
  • your keyword “link roundups”
  • your keyword weekly link round up
  • your keyword weekly roundup
  • your keyword best posts of the week
  • your keyword friday round up

Grab more roundup search operators from this spreadsheet shared by Webris. The next step is pitching to link roundup bloggers.

Find the email addresses of bloggers by using the above search operators and send them an email like the one I show below and to which I received a reply on the same day.

Ashok outreach email

Overall this is a great and effective technique, though a little time consuming. Give it a try and do share your experience here.

Bonus Strategies

The term guest blogging: when a writer/blogger writes and publishes content for other blogs or websites.

Guest blogging is also a great way to build relationships with other bloggers and experts within your field and establish yourself as a writer.

From Google, you can easily find guest blogging sites by using the following search formulas:

  • [your keywords] “become a contributor”
  • [your keywords] “contribute to this site”
  • [your keywords] “submit a guest post”
  • [your keywords] “submit a blog post”
  • [your keywords] “submit an article”
  • [your keywords] “send a guest post”
  • [your keywords] “write for us”
  • [your keywords] “become an author”
  • [your keywords] “guest bloggers wanted”
  • [your keywords] “contribute to our site”
  • [your keywords] “become a contributor”
  • [your keywords] “submit a guest post”
  • [your keywords] inurl:contributors
  • [your keywords] inurl:guest-post
  • [your keywords] inurl:guest*post
  • [your keywords] inurl:guest-posts
  • [your keywords] inurl:guest*posts
  • [your keywords] inurl:guest-blogger

Head over to here for 150+ Sites to Guest Post and this list of 300+ Websites/Blogs That Accept Guest Posts.

Key features:

  • Guest blogging helps you build authority/ awareness (for yourself + your website)
  • It increases your reach with the industry people
  • It has a knock-on effect on other aspects of SEO
  • You can easily generate a ton of quality referral traffic
  • You can easily get quality, powerful backlinks

Dos and Don’ts of guest blogging:

Dos:

  • Always check the guidelines first before writing for any website
  • Always write for the audience, not for the search engine
  • Only write unique and in-depth content

Don’ts:

  • Do not spin your content
  • Don’t stuff your post with links
  • Avoid posting on low-quality sites. Always check Domain Authority first

There are many good ways of building links to improve search engine optimization and there are also bad ways of building links that might hurt your website ranking and get you a penalization that’s difficult to recover from.

Here are some methods to avoid when you build links for SEO:

  • Buying and selling  links.
  • Using an automated link building system.
  • Excessive link exchange.
  • Building a network of sites with the purpose of interlinking them.
  • Irrelevant links posted that are not related to the topic.
  • Using low quality links.
  • Using web-rings and link farms.
  • Low quality directory submissions.
  • Article submission spam.
  • Web 2.0 spamming-free blog on websites like Weebly, Tumblr, Blogger and add low quality content with links.
  • Anchor text over-optimization
  • PBN & link networks

2. Videos

Google always looks for a lot of indicators when it is ranking your page. The indicators include keywords, relevance, page quality, and multimedia.

Hence, videos are a great way to increase your user’s Time on your page. This, because nowadays people are more likely to choose a video than text.

And it has also been surveyed, 66% of SEOs found link building with videos to be effective. Additionally, many SEO experts have noticed that webinars and self-hosting videos on their website have driven significant engagement. So in case you also want to create such backlinks follow these steps:

  1. Because most of the YouTube links are nofollow there are certain ways to avoid nofollow and spam. So, if you want legitimate backlinks, the first step is to create your own YouTube channel. Your own YouTube channel will be a valuable source to create great backlinks. Additionally, it can be a great way to connect with your audience and brand your business.
  2. Next step is to place your URL in the description or in the custom links. The description is an easy way to add a dofollow link and in the custom link section you can add as many links as you want, but make sure to keep the main URL in the first box.

Or, you can add your dofollow link in the Associated Website.

After creating your YouTube channel go to http://youtube.com/verify and switch to http://youtube.com/features to access your Channel settings. Now scroll down to advanced menu, then to the Associated Website and add your website link there.

Screenshot with Youtube channel settings
Source: Youtube

Now, even if you have created good backlinks it is also important to monitor those valuable backlinks. This can be done with the help of various tools that track backlinks from getting a new YouTube link, or even losing one and that helps you continue improving your YouTube SEO strategy.

3. High Value Testimonials

Testimonials are a great way of creating high value links for your website. It helps building authority for your website, finding strong relationships, and leading to strong homepage links. 

The simple way to do this is by creating testimonials for a good website from where you have taken services or bought products from. 

Next, get featured on their website with an active link to your website. This is not a difficult task to accomplish, and both parties will be happy with the result. 

Testimonial link building technique can be done for any good product based website. For this you have to follow these steps:

  1. Create a target list with the websites that have good DR and enable dofollow links. 
  2. Find the contact person for those websites.
  3. Send an email saying you want to pitch a testimonial for their product. 
  4. Create the testimonial, be it text or a video. 
  5. Get a powerful backlink for your website.

Broken link building is a process that stops your user from visiting a page or a website that does not exist anymore. Instead, finding a relevant website with dead links. 

So, how do you do it in an easy way? 

  • Look for the best opportunity – Make use of the search operator for the relevant website. This step can drain your mind, but there is an alternative to it – Automating this step. Tools like Scrapebox can scrape thousands of links with top VPNs with a single click. Then you simply input your list and export the resulting URL.
Screenshot from the Proxy Manager app.
Source: Scrapebox

Checking for dead links on a website can be done through browser plugins. 

Now you will have a relevant URL that contains broken links. 

  • Next is outreach – Contact the website owner, tell them they have a broken link and suggest them to replace it with your link. 
  • Make sure to find a relevant broken link that you can replace and the website owner doesn’t have a problem with it. 
  • Do not outreach for a link that has the same source URL and is on the same domain, as it is an internal link and that wont be our target. 
  • If the source link is to a high authoritative website then again they wont replace your link.
  • And do not contact if they are linking to Google, no one can compete with that. 

Using some of these methods might falsely boost your website rankings, but there is a great chance that your site will be penalized by Google in the future and it can take several months or more to recover. Google is always looking for quality web links and adding low quality website links is not the way to go.

5. Create Content Others Find Helpful

Are you aware of Editorial links? They’re the most valuable links as they’re given by websites that aren’t looking for anything in return.

However, earning them is not easy. You only get editorial links when you provide value and create content so compelling that people would want to link to it. This image better explains the nature of editorial links:

Pie chart with types of editorial links.

Creating valuable content is one of the best ways to get editorial links. All you need is to create content in which other people see the value. They themselves will be willing to link to it.

Bloggers like Neil Patel and Brian Dean are some of the most prominent examples of this approach. Their content is so valuable that almost everyone in the industry links to their blogs because they find them insightful.

In case you don’t know how to get started,  here are a few tips that can help:

  • Start with things you specialize in. Write case studies, whitepapers, and most importantly start blogging. According to a report from HubSpot, Businesses that blog have 55% more visitors and 97% more inbound linking opportunities.  
  • Create content that makes people’s lives better, solves their problems, and offers  valuable insights.
  • Make sure the stats you share in the blog are correct and you are linking to sources that provide value.
  • Create tutorials and how-to guides.

6. Content repurposing & syndication for link building

Content repurposing and syndication is one of the growth marketing strategies that can be used to achieve many goals. This technique allows you to take an existing piece of content from your website, blog or any other online channel such as YouTube video and republish them  on other websites. Using this strategy you have the potential to get thousands of links, drive tons of traffic/leads and increase your search engine rankings and social signals.

Here are 10 great content syndication sites:

You can try some paid platforms such as Outbrain, Taboola and many more.

7. Sponsor Real World Events

Hosting an event allows you to mix your link building strategy with a way to drive traffic and build relationships. The key here is to make sure that the event is something that people will want to come to or join online.

How To Find Events To Sponsor

You can try these below sites: 

You can use these Google searches for each of the hosting sites:

site:[website URL] inurl:events +“sponsors”
site:[website URL] inurl:events +“link to your”
site:[website URL] inurl:registration +“sponsors”
site:[website URL] +“sponsors”
site:[website URL] + “donation”
site:[website URL] + “become a sponsor”site:[website URL] -inurl:support -inurl:blog +“link to your website”

Conclusion

A proper link building strategy with a link earning approach will always give you better results in terms of SERP position and traffic.

Put all these techniques to action and you’ll get the results you want for your website or blog.

The above listed techniques are based on my personal experience. Please do share with us if there are any other techniques that you’ve used and recommend.

Note: The opinions expressed in this article are the views of the author, and not necessarily the views of Caphyon, its staff, or its partners.

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Ashok Sharma is a writer, blogger, Digital marketer and social media enthusiast. He helped businesses gain more traffic and online visibility through technical, strategic SEO and targeted PPC campaigns. Connect him on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter for a quick chat.

152 comments

  1. I am not sure if the techniques shared in the post brings any results or not.

    Some of the techniques are super niche dependent. For example, I have tried Scoopit for almost 2 – 3 different niches, reached out to 50 odd scoopit channels and asked them to share. Result: Only 1 shared it.

    About Web 2.0: Are we in 2017? Seriously this feels like 2012 again.

    Apologies for coming across a little harsh, but I hope AWR has checked the results the author has achieved by this activity.

    1. Hey Boni,

      No worries, thanks a lot for jumping in the discussion.

      As you said, whether a technique brings results depends on a whole lot of factors and it’s very likely that success would be achieved in completely different ways for different businesses.

      That’s why we feel that in link building, just as in any other aspect of SEO, it’s best to test as much as you can and find your own recipe for progress. This article is nothing more than a collection of ideas, intended to inspire you in your link building endeavors 🙂

    2. Hey Boni,
      Scoop It is one of my favorite places to build quick buzz and create backlinks(nofollow) with a few minutes of work. More importantly it doesn’t take a long to build links. I’d still use Scoop.It no follow links as nofollow links still pass some juice. Few of the link building techniques are great to go like: “2017” Jacking and Listly are new to me.

      1. I fully agree with you Daniel. Scoop.it is also one of mine favorite place for link building. It is a very sophisticated platform which allows to become publishers, brand their topic and track performance.

        In this post I also aware me with lot of other technical terms too, e.g., Link Roundups & Jacking. I was quite unaware with these two terms but now this blog has updated me with unlimited number of ideas.

  2. Awesome post . I get some good information from your content. I have followed your guide about “Jacking” method and it’s been working out well. Need to tryout the other methods mentioned in this post. I have read/heard about them before elsewhere but never put together like this on how to do it step-by-step.

  3. Great list of resources and ideas for link building.
    Sometimes it will be easier to apply some of these techniques, while sometimes it will be harder, depending on the website.
    I think you should also include PPT-power point presentation as a way of getting back-links. A great presentation can easily become viral and get you hundreds hits, if not thousands of links from the social shares.

  4. Extremely helpful!!!
    Thanks for sharing these link building techniques. I had no idea with some of the options which are mentioned here and have been marketing with other old ways from last 2-3 years. Now, I am definitely going to start implementing these ways to get great results for my brands.

    Thanks Ashok and keep sharing such informative blogs!!!

  5. This is really useful.I plan to launch a niche blog, and
    this step-by-step guide is really useful to me. Thank you so much.

  6. Thanks for sharing this content. I have been using many of these techniques and having success with them. There are a few you mentioned that I will test out also. I’m looking forward to implementing these.

    The key to SEO these days is consistency and realizing that it takes time to build a strong foundation, then continue to build upon it. Proper SEO takes having a strategic plan and implementing it.

  8. Hi Ashok,

    I truly appreciate the warning with the methods to avoid when it comes to creating backlinks. It definitely makes sense not to use automated systems to “save time” if the work can end up being detrimental to the entire SEO process.

    A really big tip I am walking away with is what you said at the top about setting up internal links that interconnect the different pages of my website (for better indexation and lower bounce rate).

    Daniel Z
    Value Visibility

  9. I can say a great piece of article on Link building strategies. I am a beginner in this industries so usually continuously keep searching about SEO and link building techniques, but now I can say, you have shared some thing that is different from hundreds of posts, which I have read.

    For the future reference, I have bookmarked the post, because too many things are helpful for me to learn the strategies.

    Thanks for your great post.

    cheers…

  12. I’m a link-builder myself and have found your post very informative! Thanks for this! I’ll definitely save this for my future reference. Keep up the great work!

  13. Thanks for sharing! If I may add 2 cents worth of suggestion – Making videos for YouTube and DailyMotion is another great source for backlinks. Granted, it is not so straightforward to make videos, but for powerful backlinks from YouTube? It is well worth the effort to make simple slideshow videos.

  14. Thanks for this cool list of link building techniques. I focus on local SEO, so building links for local clients is very interesting to me because you have to get a little creative when building links. Sure you can put together a high quality PBN and call it a day, but we all want long term rankings. I have heard of using Q&A sites, but I might have to try building links with those platforms. I like what W.S Toh said about video link building. Video link building is an awesome way to build quality links too, plus you can rank the video. Thanks for this article, Cheers!!

    1. W.S Toh, Glad you like the post. Your are absolutely right both are good way to earn good backlink.
      Thanks

  20. Thank You very much for the list. You have covered almost every aspect of link building. I’was aware of most of the things mentioned here but you have provided some social bookmarking and curating website which i was not aware of. You have done extensive research on the subject.
    Thank you once again.

  21. Outstanding post, thanks for the hard work. I’m quite familiar with many of the methods under discussion and particularly like you mentioning sites like Medium, Hub-Pages and Slashdot. Allow me to add a similar site (To Medium in Particular) I also use called Quora, very high level of engagement with close to a hundred million visitors per month. In the end it’s all about compelling content right?

  22. Ashok, I appreciate the “2017 Jacking” suggestion. It’s frustrating when a search result has the exact title you’re looking for, but the date is listed is in the last decade! At that point, I add ‘2017’ to my search text and search again to try to limit results to current year. Your suggestion would help someone like me.

  23. Nice post. Social media skills and online marketing is a part I struggle with but I’m working on improving on that.

  25. Hey Ashok! Thanks for sharing such a detailed article. I’ve added few more techniques to my link building list from your suggestions.
    Keep sharing information like this one.

  26. Voat is a site I have not heard of and thanks for sharing. Flipboard worked well for me however you need to be adding content regularly for best results.

  29. Solid list Ashok! I feel number 4 is one of the most important factors that most link builders fail to follow. Google likes to see quality over quantity as far as links go but many SEO’ers still feel the need to link out from the spammiest sites possible just to drop a link.

    1. Thanks for reading the post and I really appreciate your comment. ?
      Building Links from Trusted Sites is most important one.

  30. Of all these link building techniques, I can say that blog commenting has been my fortress for a long time now. Not that I only depend on blog commenting alone in my link building campaign, I’ve found that it is the fastest way of driving traffic, building relationship while building your linking at the same time. Aside from this specific point, I think all the techniques in this article are great way of putting a blog forward in the search engine land.

  31. Great work on the article, Ashok! I would like to add to the part about Local Citations. There are many websites that people are able to put in their business addresses and serving as a Citation. However, not many people know that you can essentially make any website you have the possibility to add or edit content into a citation website. All you need to do is simply type in your NAP, or name address and phone number anywhere on a website, where a Google Bot can find it and read it. It is that simple. Adding your NAP to a website that has high Authority already will give a lot more positive effect on that citation, than a brand new citation listing on common citation websites.

  32. Great tips Ashok!
    Two things which I would add:
    1. Make sure your on page SEO is fully optimized, before link building. You mentioned internal linking which is a good start.
    2. Ensure you don’t over-optimize your anchor text when linking.

    1. Thanks Pete, glad you loved the post. You are right on-page is more important and avoid over optimized anchor text. Good luck 🙂

  33. Thank you very much for this very useful post. I loved Scoop.it already, but I never realized the tool would help me to get more backlinks. Also the 11th strategy was new for me. So many thanks from the Netherlands!

  35. This post is awesome!
    I currently use 2 of the methods you listed for link building. I focus on Infographics and List.ly as my primary methods. They’ve proven to give me the best results for my website.

    Once again I appreciate the content and I look forward to reading more.

  37. Solid list Ashok! I feel number 4 is one of the most important factors that most link builders fail to follow. Google likes to see quality over quantity as far as links go but many SEO’ers still feel the need to link out from the spammiest sites possible just to drop a link..

    1. Thank you. Yes, building links from trusted sites are important one. While doing building just focus on quality rather than quantity 🙂

  38. I had been avoiding link building since a long time and wasn’t able to get success up till recently when I started to pay extensive attention towards it. Thank you so much for keeping us updated on all the latest techniques and how to avoid all the wrong ways of link building and getting banned. Great Read once again. Keep up the good work.

  39. Great list of resources and ideas for creating backlinks. Absolutely loved it. Many new resources i didnt know about!

  41. Outstanding post Ashok, thanks for the hard work. Link building is indeed crucial to ranking, and also the reason many blogs are just “Sitting There”. Going nowhere and visitors seldom to never visit more than one page deep. Internal links is indeed a great way to improve bounce rate. But also equally important not to link to similar target keywords. Although it can be quite challenging coming up with relevant target keywords while avoiding any duplication.

    I only recently started looking into info graphics. But it sure is quite popular, especially with Pinterest and tumbler I have noticed. I too find Medium quite interesting, great site with Millions of unique hits per month (As per Similarweb). Over 100 Million per month if I recall correctly. Quora is also another favorite, but more of an answers site. But also Millions of unique searches per month.

  42. Deon, Thank you for sharing your views. Glad you find the post helpful. 🙂
    This is really important not to link to similar target keywords – Great point.
    I love medium and yes infographics are popular (you can also looking at gifographics (Animated infographics) Dive in this post as well: http://growmap.com/link-building-strategies-2018

    1. Thanks Ashok. Quick Question, perhaps slightly off topic. I have been publishing videos on YouTube that show up as high as position 1 – 3 for really high volume search phrases with low competition. Jumped through all the hoops. From target keyword placement to video tags.

      However, a few hours later the video no longer show in search results. Perhaps you can help?

  43. Interesting to see Voat mentioned here. Underrated platform for marketing. Very specialized.

  44. I didn’t know about list.ly and about Voat. Thanks for sharing this! I’m currently using Medium and StumbleUpon and they are good for traffics 🙂

    1. Karen, Glad you loved the post. Yes Medium and StumbleUpon are good source for links and traffic.

  46. Hey Ashok, what do you think of creating expert roundups for links?
    I know it sounds unethical if expert roundups are created solely for backlinks and that isn’t what I am suggesting.
    Expert roundups are great posts but I have seen again and again that they assure the content creator of backlinks and that’s what I just love about them.
    What do you think?

    1. expert roundup is a great way to build relationships with other influencers and we can earn more Engagement and More traffic because when we do an expert roundup in which experts are participating, then all the experts are also sharing roundup post on their social media profiles and we can get lot of social share and hence traffic.

      Recently i have published the expert roundup post on Organic Search Ranking Factors, have a look https://www.graycelltech.com/top-organic-search-ranking-factors/

  47. Joining forums website is one of the easiest and fastest ways to get high-quality dofollow backlinks . There are plenty of forums on the internet that give dofollow backlinks that will surprisingly boost your site. But these forums have some rules you have to obey their rules.

    1. Yes, every forums have some rules and we must obey these rules and try to avoid the spam things. Forums are great source to build relationships with your audience.

  48. It’s good to see some powerful link building techniques here. Though most of the techniques are already used previously but something I got from here those are quite effective. Thanks

  50. Hey Ashok
    Well Written!! I really like this post. I really like how you describe Powerful link building Technique to gain engagement. I used Medium in past few days but there is no result Can you suggest me pls

    1. Hi Priyanshu,
      Glad you liked the post. 🙂

      While using medium we need to make sure for the followings points:
      1. Always include a powerful image
      2. Work on your followers in medium
      3. If your article is not doing well means your article didn’t get readers and hearts for whatever reason, you should delete it and republish it.
      4. If you want a real traction then post on a regular basis ( and post only longer content 1500 words minimum)

    1. Yes, Blog commenting works but when done in the right way. Many people in SEO misused the blog comments and don’t use them correctly.

      my personal suggestion on blog comments:

      1. Always try to find high-quality websites to add comments ( check DA and prefer 60+ DA)
      2. Always acknowledge the author by name and add a compliment ( great piece of work, nice write-up)
      3. While adding the link make sure your link needs to be relevant and add value to the discussion or post.

      Hope this helps 🙂

  57. Hi Ashok,

    Thank you for this wonderful article and taking your time to explain everything in detail. I learned about a few new ways to build links, such as Scoop.it and List.ly, which look like a quite useful link building techniques.

    I completely agree with you on what you said about internal links, “2018” Jacking, and Building links from trusted sites. These are the techniques I often go for as they have proved themselves effective. While writing an article, I always try to redirect my readers to the previous articles, in case they would like to know more about a certain topic I had already written about. Keeping your articles up to date is also important, so a majority of my articles uses the headline phrases you suggested. For example, we have an article about The Easiest Link Building Techniques on our website where we discuss some uncomplicated but useful link building tactics. Lastly, trusted sites are everything I look for since I prefer quality over quantity, meaning that I would never go to shady websites just to build many useless backlinks.

    To wrap things up, you mentioned that this list was based on your personal experience, so I would like to know which one of these techniques is your personal favorite and why? Keep up the good work.

    1. Katarina

      Glad you loved the post. My personal favorites are “2018” Jacking, guest post, internal linking, and link roundup post because all these techniques work for me always. 🙂

  58. When I do link building, I am not only after the links that I get through it but I am also after the engagement that comes with it. You need to engage with prospective partners and clients so that you will have a strong relationship. Thanks for sharing this, really insightful.

  60. Great list of sources and ideas for link building. There are some of the methods that I didn’t even know about like: “scoop it.”, “list.ly”; so thank u for sharing these ideas because I am definitely going to try these techniques and hopefully will get the positive results.

  62. This is a good list but only a few methods are available which will provide links from relevance pages or sites. Guest Posting and Blog Commenting on relevant pages or sites, I like the most. But other link building methods are just like submissions, no?

  63. This is an amazing resource!! Link building is crucial to establishing authority, but just how to go about that can be a bit of a mystery. Thanks for the long list of great ways (and actionable steps) to go about it.

    Question: On Scoop.it, does the content posted have to be totally original content or can it be a summary of my previously published content?

    Thanks for the great resource!

    Steve

  64. Among these are some of my favorite techniques. These techniques really helped me in my case. Do share it with others too. Thanks sharing 🙂

  66. Hey, thanks for this, awesome post!

    The section on niche citation links is great, found a few in there, I didn’t have on my list.

    Thanks for that 🙂

  67. Link building is a good idea but it takes so much time. Needs time and effort but its worthy. Thanks for sharing this amazing piece of information with us.

  68. Link building will remain as the best way to gain authority in long term. Many link building techniques are not working these days. In that case, these are an awesome way to start in 2019. Thank you for sharing this useful guide.

  69. Link building is a good idea but it takes so much time. Needs time and effort but its worthy. Thanks for sharing this amazing piece of information with us.

  70. Thank you for this explanatory blog and to interesting too and got a clear idea about backlinks. The best and most natural way to get links is to post good content on your website (just like you have done with yours). Search engines crave a natural link acquisition, so by having a website that is popular, the links will many times take care of themselves! 🙂

    1. Martha, thanks for your comment. Yes, the most natural way to get backlink is posting a good content ( In-depth content with creative and live examples) 🙂

  71. Congratulations for your great post about link building. I am a big fan of the broken link building strategy and have had good success with it. My favorite tool is the “Check my links” Google Chrome extension to check web pages for broken links. If I find a broken link, I email the webmaster and ask him/her if they would like to replace it with my link.

    I think the broken link building strategy is a great way to obtain new backlinks because you actually help fellow webmasters fix their websites and you establish a healthy relationship with them in the same time.

    With this one strategy, you get more backlinks, your website ranks higher on Google, and you help the Internet be a better place ?

    1. Thanks James. Yes Broken link building is also a great technique. These days I am also working on this technique.

  74. What an outstanding link building post Ashok. And thanks for pointing out that it does require maximum effort to build high quality back links. I cannot agree more with the statement from the Google Senior Search Quality Strategist, Andrey Lipattsev. Because it always has been and always will be about the content. And compelling content requires a lot of research to gain sufficient knowledge to produce that kind of content. As this particular article so elegantly demonstrate.

    I have to admit that I do enjoy using plugins to simplify SEO. I haven’t tried the “Jacking” tactic though, but I do prefer back links from trusted sites. Medium and HubPages are indeed great sites to share and inspire high quality audiences. But I also find Quora a great referrer and receive quite a bit of my blog traffic from there.

    But judging from this awesome content, I have quite a bit to learn about back link building. So thanks again for your hard work.

  77. thanks for sharing the back link opportunity. Now a days Internal Link architecture plays the major role in SERP Ranking.

  78. Wow! this is brilliant! Another comprehensive and clear guide for linkbuilding! I like the Contributes to Brand Marketing section which aims to have a recall from your visitors.

    For me, Linkbaiting works best for traffic generation and may result to quality links! Cheers Sean!

  81. Great tips Ashok !
    I just created an account @List.ly 🙂

    Cheers and thanks a lot.

  82. hello,
    Thanks for sharing! If I may add 2 cents worth of suggestion – Making videos for YouTube and DailyMotion is another great source for backlinks. Granted, it is not so straightforward to make videos, but for powerful backlinks from YouTube? It is well worth the effort to make simple slideshow videos.

  83. Thanks a lot for the blog post. Really looking forward to reading more.

  84. The tips you share for powerful link building techniques in the article is very advantageous to me.
    Before reading your article, I did not know the importance of these backlinks. Now I will consider these link building techniques for my blog.

    Thank you very much for sharing such helpful tips

  86. This is certainly a great article for me personally as I’m a newbie in this field. Anyway, thank you so much for such a detailed article. it is really helpful

  87. I have to admit that I do enjoy using plugins to simplify SEO. I haven’t tried the “Jacking” tactic though, but I do prefer back links from trusted sites. Great! A comprehensive read.

  89. Great techniques for link building, i have written down some points and i would surely consider them. Thank you for sharing helpful information. Keep sharing. Thank you again.

  90. I had been avoiding link building since a long time and wasn’t able to get success up till recently when I started to pay extensive attention towards it. Thank you so much for keeping us updated on all the latest techniques and how to avoid all the wrong ways of link building and getting banned. Great Read once again. Keep up the good work.

  91. I had been avoiding link building since a long time and wasn’t able to get success up till recently when I started to pay extensive attention towards it. Thank you so much for keeping us updated on all the latest techniques and how to avoid all the wrong ways of link building and getting banned. Great Read once again. Keep up the good work.

  93. Stellar tips, as always Ashok!
    Link building can be so overwhelming especially for local businesses who don’t feel like they have good content to create nor the time to create it. Sometimes it’s just about taking a step back & focusing on relationship building.

  94. I ignored link building when creating my site and now I have this great site but zero visitors.
    So a big surge from me to try and get more links.
    So some great topics for me to deal with.
    I will let you know how I get on

    Mike

  95. Hello Ashok,
    This indeed more than a definitive guide to link building. Oh my God, this article is enough to turn into a course and sell it.

    You really gave out a lot here. Honestly, link building is still very important as far as SEO is concerned in 2017 and beyond. Anyone who still neglecting is only making a grave mistake because, without it, there’s certainly no SEO (Maybe that’s my own opinion).

    I’ve read a lot of guides in the past about SEO, but this is the more comprehensive and I will start implementing the strategies right away as I’m currently trying to rank a new Amazon review site I started and I hope the strategies you share will work for me.

    Thanks a bunch for sharing.

  96. SEO is changing with the increasing popularity of voice search using Google Voice Search, Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon Alexa. While doing keywords research, you need to keep this in mind and concentrate on keyword phrases that give a direct answer to such questions.

  97. The techniques you specified in your article are not only limited to 2018 but I think these are basics of link building, a beginner should start it’s link building process from here only.
    So, great job you shown every technique with proper depth and detailing.
    Kudos to your work.

  98. Link building will remain as the best way to gain authority in long term. Many link building techniques are not working these days. In that case, these are an awesome way to start in 2019. Thank you for sharing this useful guide.

  99. We’ve seen Google confirming that links are a very important ranking factor and that ranking without links is nearly impossible on other occasions as well.
    Hello Ashok,thank u ;keep sharing such informative guide.

    1. Glad you liked the content. Yes Links are one of the important factor any website seo

  100. Awesome post, you made it really easy to understand this pretty hard topic for beginners. You helped me a lot so I just wanna say thank to you.

  101. When I do link building, I am not only after the links that I get through it but I am also after the engagement that comes with it. Thank you, Ashok for this great Article!

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