Best White Hat Link Building Techniques | Level up Your Link Building Strategy for SEO Success
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Having a thorough understanding of white-hat strategies and carefully utilizing them can have a big impact on the SEO success of your website, bringing in more organic traffic and enhancing its authority in the eyes of search engines like Google.
Stronger backlinks are the key to greater rankings on Google. But finding the strong links and using them correctly can be tricky. So if you too have been struggling with getting your website to the top of the search results, you have landed in the right place.
In this blog, we will share with you incredible white hat techniques that will level up your link-building strategy in 2023.
Let us start with the basics for you.
What Is Link Building?
Why Is Link Building Important for Your Website?
How Do You Choose Strong Links for Your Website?
Best White Hat Link Building Techniques
What to Avoid to Prevent Penalties
How to Measure Your Link Building Campaign
What Is Link Building?
The process of obtaining hyperlinks to your website from other authentic, reliable, and relevant websites is known as link building. A hyperlink, also simply referred to as a link, is the route through which an internet user can navigate directly from one webpage to another.
The history of hyperlinks dates back to the time when Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, invented PageRank. This method has been used by Google as part of their ranking algorithm ever since then as it helped them display more relevant search results by stipulating the quality of a webpage.
Using links from other authoritative websites is kind of a way to let Google treat your website as a responsible and trustworthy source of information.
The anatomy of a hyperlink is as follows:
“Start text ˗ Link referral location ˗ Anchor text ˗ Closure text”
Why Is Link Building Important for Your Website?
A search engine uses hyperlinks for two purposes. The first is to display a particular page in the search result, and the second is to determine the ranking of a page in the search result.
Basically, these pages are analyzed for the quality of content i.e. whether they have sufficient relevant keywords to be ranked well for a particular search result. Also, a search engine like Google would look for the number of authentic external websites pointing to that page i.e. using it as a hyperlink.
More authoritative websites pointing to your website will help you rank higher in Google search results. Hence, strong link building is an organic way to drive more traffic to your website by ranking well in the SERPs.
Link building can also help you develop and nurture relationships with the key influencers of your field. Also, a good link used by an authoritative website will help you receive plenty of traffic.
Furthermore, quality link-building is a great way to establish yourself as an authority in the field and increase your brand value.
But, how do you decide which links are of high quality?
How Do You Choose Strong Links for Your Website?
Not all links are equal hence, you should choose wisely. A strong link will help you improve your SEO several folds. Here are a few tips for choosing a quality link:
Choose an Authoritative Website
This is the ground rule to follow while choosing a link. A link from a well-recognized and trusted website will always impact your SEO better than any other lesser-known website.
You can easily understand this by the following example. If you have to validate certain news which one would you prefer, an unknown local newspaper or New York Times?
The answer is obviously clear and the reason is also simple, you know who has greater stakes and would not risk providing false information to its readers.
The same is the case with quality websites that have established themselves as an authority in a particular niche by providing relevant and authentic information and maintaining quality standards for a long time.
Therefore, using a link from a high authority page would make Google trust your page and thus, improve your ranking.
A number of tools are also available that will help you check the domain authority and domain rating of a particular page. They provide and compare the domain authority score for several leading websites and help you choose quality links.
Is It Relevant?
Asking this before you use a link is very important. Choose a webpage that is not just authoritative but relevant to your niche.
Remember, Google also checks the quality of your content. So, if you are using a Harvard link for your makeup tutorial page, it might not work well.
The key is to acquire links that are both authentic and fitting for your page.
Where Do You Place It?
This is also a major question posed by many people as it greatly impacts your SERPs. Where do you place your links?
Well, it has been observed that the links placed in the main text are read better by the search engines in comparison to those placed at other positions like in the footer, data source, or sidebars.
Hence, the contextual links i.e. the links embedded in the main body or text of your content will bring more traffic to your website while improving your Google rankings.
Anchor Text
These are also known as link texts or link labels. Basically, these are the clickable texts of your link. Usually, blue, underlined anchor texts are considered compliant with web standards.
The text used in your link label would help determine the ranking received by that page by search engines. This is why a relevant anchor text should be chosen that matches the content of your website.
Also, the sentence or phrase in which the anchor text is used should also be relevant to your content.
However, an anchor text too rich with keywords is not a good choice and is regarded as spammy by search engines.
Dofollow vs. Nofollow Links
These are the two ways in which a website can be linked to another. Although both types of hyperlinks are meant to link the origin site with the destination site they convey an entirely different meaning to the search engine.
A “dofollow” link is meant to pass the authority, also known as the “link juice”, of the origin site to the destination site. The more dofollow links a website acquires, the more its domain authority increases.
On the other hand, a “nofollow” link is not meant to pass the link juice. Hence, these links do not help in improving your SERPs.
Obviously, a higher number of dofollow links help you build a solid link profile as they pass the trust and authenticity of the original website to yours.
Rishabh Rathi
Best White Hat Link Building Techniques
In this section, we will tell you about the incredible white hat link-building techniques that will help you improve your search engine ranking. So let’s dig in:
Great Content
Some things never grow out of fashion and great content is essentially one of those. If you are looking forward to earning high-quality backlinks good content will definitely help you with that.
It might sound easier said than done so let us share with you a few secrets that will help make your content share-worthy.
Statistics always form a part of most authentic blogs and articles. The reason is obvious they help support what the author is trying to explain. This is why data curation is one of the best ways to earn backlinks.
There are a number of websites that are doing this, for example, Statista, Mediakix, etc. They publish reliable and authentic industry reports, surveys, and statistics that are useful for both author and the reader.
Creating your own visual assets such as infographics, charts, etc. is another way to get quoted. These help as aid and make it easier to understand complicated topics.
Therefore, these are mostly directly published by other websites thus, earning you several backlinks. You can also enclose an embed code along with the infographic making it easier for other publishers to share it on their websites.
If you are good with technology you may also earn backlinks easily by developing tools that may be useful for your industry. This is how websites like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, Semrush, etc. are earning them.
Providing these tools for free makes them even more attractive to users. If it is not possible to make the tool absolutely free you can provide a trial version or a few free features to attract their attention.
Another way is publishing listicles and in-depth guides. These are more appealing to the users as they make the information consumable.
The reader does not get overwhelmed by the great amount of information contained in an article rather the information is divided into small pieces for better understanding.
These are the long form of content that is capable of establishing you as an authority in the field. They help make your website a more reliable and trustworthy source of information.
Guest Blogging
It has always been a part of the SEO process however the strategy has changed a lot. Earlier the guest post published on any website may have helped you rank on the search engine but not anymore.
Today, it is important to choose what to write and where to write. If you are writing an okayish post on some unrelated website or maybe after paying the publisher, trust me this is not taking you anywhere.
The key to a successful guest post is finding a website much related to your niche that has high domain authority. Thereafter you will have to select a unique and interesting topic that is relevant to your audience. Make the guest post as informative and factual as possible by including original data and case studies.
When done strategically guest posting is one of the most effective white hat link-building techniques. It can help you earn high-quality backlinks and also increase organic traffic on your website.
Develop Contacts
There are several bloggers and publishers who are well-recognized and well-established in your niche. You can reach out to them through emails telling them you would like to connect and how your work is useful to them.
Developing a symbiotic relationship with these people will help you earn more quality backlinks thereby promoting your search engine rankings.
There are majorly two ways to find these authorities in your field. You can either use link-building tools to analyze the SERPs. These will help you find the linkers most suitable for your website.
Another way is to search for your relevant target keywords on Google and out of the top ranking sites search for the URLs in any link analysis tool finding the websites that are linking back to most of them.
Once you have found these sites reach out to their publishers telling them how much you enjoy reading their posts and how you can contribute by adding another great post to their site. This is a great white hat link-building technique.
Stay Active on Social Media
Social media is a great platform to boost engagement with your audience and enhance your visibility. Frequently posting relevant posts through your social media accounts such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. can help you improve your link profile several folds.
However, being active on social media does not just mean posting stuff on your account. You must also interact with other people in your niche, leave comments on their posts, reply to their stories, and also respond to their comments.
You can also share your infographics and other visual assets providing their links on your social media accounts. This will help draw more traffic to your original content.
Other than social media you must also interact with other writers by leaving comments on their websites. You can help them by adding meaningful insight, just appreciating their blog, or maybe asking a few relevant questions.
However, this interaction must not appear to be forced. Exchange a genuine gesture if you really look forward to developing contacts and building links.
Reach Out to Research Pages
Research pages are the most relied-on and authentic sources of information available across the web. They serve as the original information source and act as valuable pieces of content for their readers. More importantly, they contain several useful links, which is why they are often referred to as “Pillar pages”.
Find the research pages that are relevant to your niche and simultaneously act as an authority in the field. You can reach out to them requesting to add links to a few of your posts that may add more value to their content.
Later, if the publishers like your link you can also request them to publish some of your articles on their page. This can really take your link building game to next level.
Reclaim Lost Links
If you are too overwhelmed with the entire process of writing, publishing, link building, etc. you may want to reclaim some lost or broken links. Basically, these are the links that were added earlier but the page no longer exists.
Look for the websites under your niche that carry old, broken, or lost links and suggest to their publishers a few links from your website that can add value to their page. If they like your work they may replace the old and broken links with yours.
This way you are also kind of helping that page by fixing its non-reachable links. That is why it is considered a great technique for link-building as well as contact development.
For this purpose, you can screen the backlinks of your competitors while searching for broken links. If you find a broken link you can easily contact the editor or publisher of that website and recommend a suitable link from your website.
However, just like your competitors you too must have a few or maybe more broken or lost links. Act to reclaim those links before your competitors take advantage of the situation.
Find Unlinked Mentions
Many people mention a webpage without creating a backlink. This is quite common and it is very easy to use these pages for building links as they already rely on your content.
You can easily trace these pages using brand monitoring tools that notify you whenever any site mentions you in their post without linking.
Once you know about them you can politely request them to include a link. This may not always work as many people avoid such requests but even if you earn a few links, it is one of the easiest ways to do that.
Similarly, there can be a number of websites using the infographics created and published by you but not providing the link. You can conduct a reverse image search to find these websites on Google.
After you find them reach out to them through an email requesting to provide a backlink.
Podcasts
These are gaining huge popularity nowadays. They are available on almost every topic you can think of and a lot of people listen to them religiously. Getting an interview on a popular podcast is one of the easiest techniques for link-building.
Creating a great piece of content may take days or sometimes weeks. This requires a lot of time, energy, and effort. A podcast interview can save you from this strain while earning a quality backlink.
You can just create an outline about a topic while you already have the information in your head and contact a relevant and popular podcast host. During the interview, you get to explain a lot of things from different angles and also build your links.
Abinaya Arangarajan
Expert Roundups
There are a lot of websites that create expert roundup posts. You must have also come across a few posts under the headings like “10 experts share their opinion on XYZ topic”. These are known as expert roundup posts.
The idea is to understand and bring forward the views of different experts from a particular industry, on a certain topic. These are quite informative posts and are liked by people for their in-depth knowledge.
The website not only publishes the opinions of these experts in their post but also provide a backlink to each of them. Further, it also establishes you as an authority in the field.
In addition, this also helps you build contacts with other experts from your niche as well as interact with your target audience on a different level.
You can search for the roundup posts published by relevant websites on the topics of your expertise and approach the publishers to add your opinion as part of it. If you really have informative insights most publishers will agree to it.
Question Answer Platforms
Websites such as Reddit and Quora can also help you drive a lot of traffic toward your website. However, this does not mean adding a link just anywhere around.
Look for the questions that match your expertise and provide an authentic and informative answer for them. Add a link to the relevant source from your website within the answer.
This helps you diversify your audience and boost organic traffic on your website.
Another great platform for link building is HARO (Help A Reporter Out). This is a great link-building technique as you can actually help a reporter or journalist proceed with their story by answering their questions from your field of expertise.
These journalists usually include your answers in their stories and also provide valuable backlinks.
What to Avoid to Prevent Penalties
Till now, we have discussed a lot of techniques that help you build quality links for your page. However, we find it equally relevant to inform you about the links that must be avoided in order to prevent penalties.
Similar to white hat link-building techniques there are black hat link-building techniques that are strictly prohibited to use. If Google finds you using these techniques, be ready for severe penalties.
These include the following:
- Excessive sidebar links
- Extreme exchange of links
- Paid links
- Keyword-rich anchor texts
- Absolute match anchor text
- Private blog network
- Hacked website links
- Automated service-derived links
- Link farms
Other than these, there can be several other black hat techniques that will drop your ranking multiple places and thus, should be avoided. It is better to follow Google webmaster guidelines to have a clean page.
Sourav Dey
How to Measure Your Link Building Campaign
At last, when you have used all the techniques required for link building and have also refrained from links that might result in a penalty, here comes another important question. How do you know your link-building campaign is working well?
Well, one way is to look at your rankings if they are going up but that takes a lot of time. You might have to wait for a year to see the results this way.
However, there are other ways that can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your link-building strategies. You can perform backlink analysis and also check for the social shares and brand mentions that you have acquired recently. Moreover, you can also look for organic as well as referral traffic coming to your website.
Although when used correctly the above-mentioned techniques will certainly help you level up the link-building strategies you also have the option to automate them for yourself.
There are a number of tools available that would make it help you with the link-building process making it more effective and time efficient. Tools such as Backlink analysis tools, Content syndication tools, and Email marketing automation tools will make your strategy stronger as well as easier.
Conclusion
Link building is one of the most effective SEO aspects, which, when used strategically, will help you drive more organic traffic and rank your website much higher in the search results.
In this blog, we have listed for you the most incredible white hat techniques to level up your link-building strategy in 2023. If used consistently and efficiently, these techniques will build a strong link profile and bring maximum results.
FAQs
What is link building?
The process of obtaining hyperlinks to your website from other authentic, reliable, and relevant websites is known as link building.
What should you avoid when link building?
You should avoid using the following techniques when link building:
- Excessive sidebar links
- Extreme exchange of links
- Paid links
- Keyword-rich anchor texts
- Hacked website links
- Automated service-derived links
- Link farms
How do you measure a link-building campaign?
You can perform backlink analysis and also check for the social shares and brand mentions that you have acquired recently. Moreover, you can also look for organic as well as referral traffic coming to your website.
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