10 SEO Link Building Ideas You Can Do In a Day
SEO link building often appears to be a complex and time consuming process. But it’s not always as hard as it seems. In case you missed it, we are republishing this great piece featuring 10 simple SEO link building tactics that you can implement in a day.
A healthy backlink profile is key to your website’s overall search performance. Google and other search engines consider both the quantity and quality of your site’s backlinks in assessing its importance, credibility and authority. This, in turn, influences your site’s search ranking. So building and then using SEO backlinks effectively is crucial for SEO success.
Most SEO link building strategies for building up your site’s backlink profile tend to be either highly resource-intensive or complicated, if not both. With that in mind, we’ll outline 10 simple SEO link building ideas to build your backlink profile and thereby boost your site’s search performance and SEO management efforts.
With any of the tactics in this post, you’ll want to create a process for evaluating the sites you are thinking of obtaining SEO backlinks from. You also want to take care with the anchor text that you are requesting or using in your SEO link building – too much exact match anchor text can look spammy.
Leverage existing networks
There are a few ways you can leverage your existing network of online related businesses for links:
- For those businesses with which you already have a strong relationship, consider simply asking them for a link.
- For any businesses you’ve worked with, offer to write a testimonial in return for a link back to your site within the testimonial.
- For firms that you do a lot of business with, either as a partner or supplier, ask to be listed on their preferred partners or suppliers page (assuming they have one).
Engage with social media
Leverage social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to:
- Tell your company’s story
- Highlight your products and services
- Engage with followers
- Share career opportunities
- Drive word-of-mouth at scale
- And, get a backlink to your site
Network through professional associations
If you’re a member of a business organization or professional industry association, it is likely its website carries authority and credibility. If there is a list of members, check yours to see that it has a link back to your site.
Also, if it has a feature such as an “in the spotlight” listing, consider asking to have your business showcased. This would serve to increase the value of your backlink, as well as your brand visibility.
Remember, it’s important that you build links naturally and with integrity, or you could face penalties from Google (like those from the Penguin algorithm).
Optimize images for SEO link building
If you use a lot of your own copyrighted images on your website, chances are that other sites may have used them without your consent. This may be more or less of a concern to you, depending on your vertical.
Instead of sending notices of intent to prosecute the offending parties, why not ask for attribution in the way of a backlink instead?
To ascertain whether any of your images are being used on another website, go to Google Images and do a site search (for example, Site:yoursiteURL.com). Click each image, then click, “search by image.” This will show if your image has been used on another site.
Start by reviewing the sites that have used your images without your consent, and contact those which appear to be reputable - the sites you want to be associated with. If you can find the contact information for the site’s webmaster, send them a note politely asking for an attribution link in exchange for them continuing to use your image.
If you don’t have many unique images for your site, it’s a good practice to take some high-quality shots. Be sure the images are relevant to your content and optimized for SEO.
Create case studies
Another solid SEO link building tactic is asking clients to feature a solid case study on one (or more) of the products and/or services your business offers. Find out what has been most successful and made a genuine impact on their bottom line. Structure your case study with these three steps:
- Present the challenges or background
- Discuss the solution
- Show the results
Have the client feature the case study on their website and use a branded link back to your site and the Web page of your choosing.
Flaunt your logo
Most businesses have a logo that has been professionally designed. Why not showcase yours? People are interested in logos, whether they be prospective business owners, designers or just pure logo geeks. This means there are a lot of popular websites showcasing different logos with high domain authority.
Here is a list of logo gallery sites to investigate featuring your logo on:
- The Logo Mix
- Logo From Dreams
- Logo Design
- LogoMoose
- Logo Faves
- Logo Critiques
You can find more logo sites for your specific needs by searching for terms such as “submit my logo,” “logo showcase” and “logo designs.” An important point to remember is to check the sites are of good quality before you submit your own logo to them (one way to do a spot check is to look at PageRank and Alexa scores).
Upload your presentations to SlideShare
As the largest network on the Web for sharing presentations, SlideShare offers a number of online marketing benefits. For SEO link building purposes, there are just a few easy steps:
- When creating your presentation, be sure to add a hyperlink URL to it (for example, http://www.yoursite.com)
- Save your presentation as a PDF, then upload it to SlideShare
- Test if your link is working by running this query in search: site:example.com inurl:/slideshare/
Note: The presence of this link may be worth less than the actual traffic and branding potential that SlideShare could offer as part of a wider strategy.
Award a scholarship
Consider offering a scholarship to students enrolled in a program related to your business:
- Designate a page on your site explaining the scholarship offer, as well as terms and conditions.
- Notify the relevant accredited, reputable universities and colleges about your scholarship offer, and ask them to link back to your page for more information.
The .edu links typically carry high authority, but you’ll have to do your own analysis of each website, as not every .edu is authoritative. Case in point: in our latest research on the impact of Panda 4.1, some .edu sites did well, while others did not.
Further information on link building
Backlink building is important, but don't forget about internal links. Internal linking boosts your SEO results and also helps users discover more content on your site.
As your backlink profile grows bigger it is increasingly hard to keep track of all the SEO backlinks. Read our full guide to backlinking for more information on how to easily manage your site links.
Better assess your backlink profile with link audits or read our comprehensive guide to white hat backlink building.
