43 working ways to earn backlinks
Having a good domain name, a perfect on-page optimization, an eye-catching design, and a website filled with useful content is just not enough these days to drive more traffic to your site.
You can promote your website and generate more traffic to your site by getting backlinks from third-party resources.
In this article, we will talk about the most effective proven methods for obtaining backlinks, which will allow you to promote your resource on the internet, either at no cost or with a minimal cost.
1. Сompetitors research
This is a low-effective tactic that is used by many SEOs. Here you just have to study your competitors, find out where they receive links to their websites and do the same.
To find out what those websites are, you can use some special services, the most convenient of which are:
- Moz
- Majestic
- Serpstat
- Ahref
But auditing competitors is an ineffective tactic because you can’t know which links work for your competitors. In fact, just because your competitor is doing it doesn’t mean it’s working for them. Also, any SEO tool can’t help you because search engines use their own algorithms to evaluate links.
2. Business directories
On the Internet, there is a huge number of websites that bring companies together on various grounds, and they can be a good source of quality links. You can register on those sites and post information about your company with a link to your website to increase the number of external links to your site and attract more visitors. For example, F5 Studio registered on Clutch, Designrush, TopDevelopers, World of WordPress and others. These sources generate relevant referral traffic.
To find some company directories online, just write “Catalog of Companies” in the Google search bar and the search engine will select the most popular of those that are related to your company.
It is important to remember that the automatic run-on directories, which is often offered by unscrupulous optimizers, is strictly prohibited, in this case, you risk to fall under the sanctions of search engines.
3. Article Directories
These are specific websites where you can post your articles on the internet. Even though some of them are paid, many are free. All you need is to prepare a well written article. It does not have to be 100% unique or even complex, just make sure it answers one of the popular questions regarding your field. Study some commonly asked questions about your domain to find the best answers to include in your article.
Once your text is placed in article directories, the source link, which in this case is your website, will be indicated
Be informed that not all the sites will display your article, so try to add it to as many directories as you can.
4. Site Directories
The same principles used for company directories are also applied here except for the company’s data. Here are some links to various sites that are collected according to a variety of criteria.
For instance:
- Botw
- Aboutus
- Business.foursquare
There is one important nuance: you can place a link to your site only to those directories that you found in search engines, and not use the ready-made lists of site directories that may already be under the sanctions of search engines.
5. Registration Profiles
We all constantly fill out registration profiles on various sites. It can be:
- social networks
- online stores
- forums
- catalogs
- portals
- press release sites
Virtually all profiles have a “Site Address” or “Link” field . When filling in your profile, be sure to insert a link to your website and mention your brand. Your Profile information is not always indexed by search engines, but still do not neglect this method, as it can be an additional source of high-quality free links to your site.
6. Press Release
Another source of quality links to your website are specialized websites, where you can post your press release for free. There are many sites that cannot generate a large amount of content. Some of the articles on such portals are posted by their owners, but often to fill the resource, some additional articles are required, which they are willing to post using third-party sources, including external correspondents.
You can find several reasons why PR Agency must collaborate with content marketers and digital agencies.
7. Forums
On the Web you can find many forums on various topics which is a great method of getting external links to your site. In some forums it is forbidden to post links or there are conditions to fulfill when posting links, such as, being registered on the site for at least a year, or being moderated. But you don’t need to be afraid of any bans, even if you don’t manage to place an active link, you’ll get just a mention of your company, which is also taken into account by search engines.
In addition, you can always think of a way to unobtrusively insert a link to any page of your site in the discussion board.
You can search for suitable forums in the following sequence:
- general subjects
- business forums
- city forums
8. Social Networks
This might surprise you, but there are a large amount of different social networks other than the largest and best known ones. You can find them by searching “social networks list” in Google. You can post a link on your profile, make some posts and comments about your company. The links from social networks are not indexed and only perceived like social signals, therefore you cannot see them in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
9. Guest Posting
The method consists of sending a request to other companies, mainly working in your niche, to place your advertisement or publication on their website. Requests of this nature are not uncommon today. The percentage of failures is great, however, there is a chance that some companies accept your request.
Now we recommend to use this tactic to get a mention (your brand, product, keywords that create your query space) instead of asking backlinks.
10. Blog Comments
Skeptics argue that leaving your link in the comments of other people’s articles is unrealistic, but far from it. You can always think of a way to place a link that will not be deleted later by the author. For example, you can ask the author to place the text of such an interesting article on your website and attach its address. It is likely that such a post will not be deleted.
11. Review sites
Reviews are a great free tool for promoting any company. It is very important to motivate your customers and partners to leave feedback about you on the Internet. Here are two ways to get the free links:
1.You need to register your site or company on the site where users write reviews on various topics. (about companies, about goods, about websites, about cars, etc.) And as a signature leave a link to your website.
2.Write a review about another company by organically fitting the link to your website in this review.
12. Recommend useful books
There are numerous websites that sell books online. You can search some topics that people are often interested in, find a great book, describe each of the topics you looked for, and recommend them to the audience with a link to your website.
In the commentary, it is enough to indicate that you have studied the book and applied its methods in practice with the link to the site. Such a comment is unlikely to be removed, and your link will remain there forever.
13. Video and resources (description below the video)
Whatever business you do, try to share your knowledge, experiences, and thoughts. The more you give, the more you get. You might have some negative comments at times, but don’t worry about them. They will not really affect your result. Just make sure that the majority of your audience is interested in your content and everything will be fine.
No need to buy expensive cameras, look for a special photo studio, or hire an operator. A good smartphone will be enough to get your the job done. The more videos with links in titles and captions that you place on Youtube or any other platform, the more people will know about you and come to your site.
The same video can be placed on at least 10 hosting sites, making it an incredibly effective promotion tool.
14. Video Comments
Go to any video and leave comments with links to your site. Pay special attention to the most popular videos that are watched by hundreds of thousands of users. In this case, few people will see your link due to the turbulent flow of discussions, therefore not many will have time to take a close look at your comment. This decreases the chance of your comment being removed.
Choose the maximum number of videos on the Internet on your subject and post a prepared text with a link in the comments to each of them. This is an excellent source of free external links to the site.
15. Podcast
Of all the videos you shoot, you can easily cut out the audio content and upload it to SoundCloud and other similar audio websites. To do this, you can also use any audio file containing a record of your product, news, or other useful information. When uploading audio files to a podcast hosting website, specify the link to your website.
16. File Sharing (Word and PDF Documents)
The method is to upload text documents or pdf files that contain a link to your resource onto content sharing sites. Search engines perfectly index pdf files and their links.
- Scribd
- Issuu
17. Using a competitor’s brand
Competition is always good because it is an incentive for development and improvement.
Therefore, even if an article or comment is dedicated to a particular brand of a competitor, we can always add information about our product or service. There may be a debate about which is better, and the user might somehow be interested in our brand and our services, which is our goal.
18. Partner or Sponsor
This method gives the maximum effect in terms of both user transition to the site and data transference to the site. The results of its use are incredible. Becoming a partner or sponsor of an event that is not even very popular. For example, by presenting a certificate for your products as a prize, you can receive a ton of additional links when publishing information about the upcoming and past events.
It is very useful to participate in any events that you can directly or indirectly benefit from. It can be:
- conferences
- courses
- useful tools
- events
Please note it is better to use the link attribution “sponsored”.
19. Infographics
Infographics are a way to convey information in the form of a graphic image : graphics, diagrams, illustrations. Using this method allows you to achieve great results:
- it increases website conversion
- it makes it easier to assimilate and memorize information
- it facilitates communication
- it helps increase sales
- its helps increase interest in the site from customers, partners, and the public
- its increases profits.
Infographics, in fact, keep emerging. This method is not used by a great number of people, as very few people can create high-quality graphic images that convey a particular topic. However, if you can create a high quality graphic image, that clearly illustrates an aspect of your topic of discussion, you will definitely be able to attract more customers to your website.
20. Creating a free service
This method is suitable for people who are familiar with programming and can create an enticing social network. SiteHeart is an example of websites that provided free services to generate leads. SiteHeart started by providing free services to their clients. Then, after collecting the wanted number of links, they would end the free service in exchange for paid ones. It is worth considering this method because it helps generate an incredible number of links.
21. Join a network
You can join a network of companies in your community and take part in competitions that you might win and thus, promote your brand. Moreover, even if you are not the winner, a link to your website will be placed on the website that organized the competition.
Ratings can be on anything: category, product, profession, employees, etc.
22. Google Alerts
Google alert is a convenient and useful service, that allows you to regularly receive notifications about specific words requested and used in the system.
The service will notify you of all articles, texts and generally any mention containing a request of interest, after which you simply click on the link and place a link to your site in the comments to this article. You could also contact a potential buyer interested in the group to which you are interested.
23. Reputation Management Services
Every day, discussions about companies or brands happen on the internet and there are two websites on which you can actually see information about specific brands or companies:
- mention.com
- udemy.com
You can use the services provided by these two websites and post a quality link to your websites.
24. Link exchange
This consists of exchanging links with work colleagues or business partners. Here you basically ask your partners to suggest your website or add a link to it on their websites or social networking platforms. This is a reciprocal action, so be prepared to do something for them in turn.
25. Positive feedback
Using a service or purchasing a product, you can write detailed positive feedback, a case study about your experience, which, among other things, will contain unobtrusive information about your company, and send it to the seller, who will most likely be happy to place it on their website with reference to you.
Such cases and reviews can be placed anywhere, not just directly to a specific seller or partner but also in social networks, on your own website, on forums, etc. In exchange, you will receive hundreds of links to your post and, as a result, your website.
This is another example of how through giving, you can receive great benefits for yourself.
26. Product review blogs
The difficulty of this method lies only in correctly finding a suitable blogger; they must be a prolific professional author who understands your product or service. The rest is quite simple. You send them a sample of your product or service with an offer to try it out,and ask them to describe their impressions with the product, service or company.
It is not necessary to send an expensive product to review. It is important that it is high quality and its value is high for this particular person. In this case, you will get a positive review at no extra cost. As a rule, such links to your brand are very effective.
27. Site builders (creating a free site)
Now there are a huge number of services for creating free sites; these are small templates that can be a good source of external links. By creating such a unique, simple site, you have the opportunity to leave a link to your main site, which will remain on the Web.
28. Blog Platforms
Another source of getting quality links to the site is the blogging platform. One of the best known of these is Medium (see F5 Studio’s profile). Having created your own blog on it, which is very easy to do, you can post any kind of article. The uniqueness of the text on many resources is not checked, so there is no need to rewrite your articles that have long been indexed. Below the text you indicate the source, i.e. leave a link to your own site.
You can see it in the image above. This is the screenshot of the Google Analytics report that shows referral traffic to the F5 Studio’s site
29. Marketplaces
Marketplaces are large sites where you can place your products. For example, a large open platform for sales is the Internet market. Many people underestimate the benefits of using them, but in vain: without spending money, you get an additional “point of sale” on the Web, while having a free opportunity to leave an external link to your site.
If your company does not sell goods, but provides services, you should also not ignore marketplaces, because you can register your company here and get a link to your own website, and, therefore, an additional mention of your brand on the web.
30. Broken Link Building
The method is to search and use broken links on other sites.
There are special programs that allow you to find these links for free. One of them is “Netpeak Spider,” which allows you to detect broken links for free during the first 14 days in test mode. You could make a link to any site that is close to you, after which you will receive a list of links to articles that were posted earlier, but for some reason are broken. After examining the link, it is often possible to understand what information is contained in the text and propose to help the owner but in return a link to your website should be added to the link you will provide them with.
31. Publicity
Publicly, telling and showing what you know and know well, highlighting the topic you specialize in, posting video lessons, informational articles and other data for a wide range of viewers, readers and listeners, you can get a ton of quality effective external links with reposts. Try to be as public and open as possible. Take an active part in various mass events, which could be:
- conferences
- online marathons
- profile reports and more
Fame helps to create a certain dependence on your brand. It is not surprising that successful businessmen make every effort to become famous, and to be seen and heard in the public as much as possible. One of the advantages of such publicity is the possibility of obtaining a large number of links and site traffic.
32. Wikipedia or any encyclopedia
Everyone knows that Wikipedia is a very popular source of external links, but it’s not easy to get your link on the site. Therefore, you can turn to a person who has already done this before and knows exactly how to write texts for Wikipedia. To do this, you can contact any author or editor of an article on a topic similar to the one you want your link to be posted on. Be resourceful by asking them to write an article for you and leave a link to your site. But this option is likely to require financial costs.
Another option to use Wikipedia is to do some research in your area, place it on your website and leave a link to it on the page of a relevant topic of an existing article.
Do not forget that, besides Wikipedia, on the Internet there are a huge number of online encyclopedias, on which posting is much easier. On some of them, you can simply add your link to any posted article on your topic.
But it doesn’t guarantee that the rank of your website will be improved. Google evaluate links from Wikipedia in the specific way. F5 Studio’s SEO specialists track trends in the search engine optimization industry to use a relevant tactics for web development agency’s clients.
33. Expert
If you are a professional in your field and have some share of fame, you can be contacted for advice or your expert opinion, which then appears on the Web with a link to you. Yes, this method will begin to work only after you achieve a special attitude towards yourself and trust in your own experience and knowledge.
If you have not yet achieved such an attitude and achieved the necessary level of popularity in your subject, you can and should independently seek the opportunity to share your knowledge, acting as an expert on any issue encountered on the Internet – you should never neglect the opportunity to get high-quality links to your site.
34. Interview
Finding an interviewer these days is not a difficult task. Ask them to conduct and record interviews with you in a video and/or text format. By spending a small amount of time and answering simple questions related to your professional field. You can then post the recorded videos on social platforms with a link to your website.
35. Point on maps (Google My Business)
Another example of getting quality links to a site is to register with Google My Business. Here you can place any information about your company, from contacts to products, however, you must leave your contact coordinates, indicating the point of your actual location.
36. Educational institutions .edu
Links from educational sites give no weight. But you should use any opportunity to get them, if your target audience can see these links. There can be several ways:
- sponsorship or partnership (of which we spoke above)
- information exchange
- performances
- admission of students for internships
- tuition for N-students for free
Choose for yourself the most suitable educational organizations in terms of topics and offer cooperation with the benefit for them and with the possibility of placing links for yourself. Consider how to get as many links to your site as possible: organize the selection of students for an internship or training for a test posted on your website, write down an appeal to the contestants and ask them to put it on the university website, etc.
Of course, many SEOs might say that it doesn’t work. In fact, it depends on your industry, marketing strategy, and link relevancy.
37. Question-Answer Service
Currently, there is an incredible number of “question-answer services” (the most popular is Quora), which are collected questions from different areas. They can significantly increase the number of external links. All you have to do is to find the questions that relate to your subject and give an answer with a link to your website and brand.
38. Job Search Sites
A very simple and effective method that will increase the number of links to your site. Register your company on all available job search sites . There is no need to post vacancies, just enter the maximum information about the company with a link to your site. These pages are quickly indexed, adding considerable weight to your site.
With each new site you register on, you additionally receive another link .
39. Placement on partner sites
Ask your partners (customers or suppliers) to provide a link to you. So you can get:
- a link on the customer’s website to which you provide the product or service as a supplier;
- link to the website of the supplier who provides the product or service to you, as the buyer.
40. Slideshow Catalog
Another source where you can get quality links is a special service for placing slides and presentations, for example, slideshare.net as well as others. Under each slide laid out you leave a link to your site and gain additional weight. Given that the number of such services is quite large, you can easily gain a large number of free links.
41. Run a contest
There are many options for contests that companies come up with in order to get as many external links as possible, usually in exchange for offering their products for free, or at a discounted price, to a limited number of participants.
For example, some time ago, one jewelry store held a very interesting contest among bloggers. To participate in it, it was required to describe a wedding ceremony in short, and leave a link to the contest in the text . The authors of the three most romantic stories received a cash reward that could be spent on the products of this store.
42. Ratings and awards
This method consists of looking for websites that give awards online and express your desire to receive one. If your request is accepted, the link to your website will be placed on their website. A more effective method is to start distributing a free award yourself to the best companies in your business area, and in return ask the nominee to place a link to your website on their own websites.
43. Content is King!
Any source of free links are somehow related to the quality of the content that people share. The best option for getting links is when users share the information provided on your site.
The first type of great content is the one that solves people’s problems and clearly answers their questions. The second type of content is unique content. It could be from your research papers, tests, or a variety of other things. In other words, it is exclusive information that is hard to find elsewhere.
It is by displaying quality content that you promote your site and get more views.
Summing up
All of the above methods for obtaining external links to the site are connected with the use of a number of tricks: we have to perform certain actions designed to artificially encourage competitors, partners, or users to place a link.
You have to follow the first main rule “If this link useful for your audience, it will be useful for your business”. The second main rule of real SEO is don’t focus on backlinks because it is a bad idea to build links for SEO.
It should be remembered that it is always necessary to put your maximum effort into ensuring that satisfied partners and customers share information about you, put links to your website, and mention your brand or product. This is what your goal should be.
The methods discussed above do not require significant investment, besides your time. Some are simpler and are tasks that everyone will be able to do, such as apply them, while others are more difficult and require some knowledge and experience. With that being said, all the techniques shared here can help your business grow a great deal, so you should try them!
Of course, if you have a marketing budget, you better order professional SEO services. There are many factors that can affect your site visibility and ranking, like UI/UX design, technical SEO, content quality, etc. Also, experienced SEO specialists have improved skills to implement a SEO marketing strategy properly. So, you will avoid many risks, save money and improve your brand reputation.
If you have already tried some of the methods discussed here, which ones seemed to you the most effective, and why? Please share your experiences in the comments section under the article, and thanks for reading.
