How to Get Free Backlinks
Link building is an extremely important area of SEO but are you falling victim to high costs for placing links? You’re not the only one and here are 9 ways you can obtain free backlinks.
The aim of SEO is to gain organic traffic and avoid paying for ads on search engines. This indicates that SEO is about obtaining free traffic. However, the popularity of SEO techniques has lead to many websites charging for the privilege of a link. Making obtaining free links even more valuable.
Use these actionable tips and techniques to increase your SEO and create successful backlink building strategies.
Email outreach
Some websites do not charge for a do-follow backlink to your website. No-follow backlinks can also be valuable to show how active your brand is within your niche. But to find these free sites, you will need to do some research and email outreach for the details.
Here are some steps you can take to achieve this:
– Build a list of contacts
Research websites, brands and blogs in your niche. You want to ensure you are reaching out to relevant, authoritative and trusted websites in your email outreach. Check some SEO metrics as well as their websites to ensure they are not spammy and will positively contribute to your SEO metrics.
Some sites may specify that they do or do not take guest posts or sponsored links. Keep an eye out for these pages to avoid wasting your time on an instant rejection or no response at all.
– Compose personalised emails and not generic ones
Admins can receive hundreds of emails per day. How are you going to stand out against the crowd? Generic, basic emails are not going to cut it. Address them by name, include details of their website and make your email personal to connect with the contact better.
– What can you offer them?
Providing your contacts with something extremely valuable, such as an article you’ve published, that would help their audience. Or a guest post on a topic that they have not covered yet, as well as other below, can help significantly when trying to place links.
Be ready to receive lots of responses about charges. However, do not be discouraged as you will find some great websites offering links or guest posts for free.
Broken link building
Broken link building is another well-known technique for obtaining backlinks. Using a tool like Link MMiner or CheMck y Links, explore websites in your niche and check for any broken links.
Do you have a resource that could replace that link?
If you do, use your email outreach experience to offer your article in replacement of the broken link. This helps the website out by fixing a broken link and gives you the link juice you need.
Offer link exchanges
Link placement requests are usually met with, ‘what will I receive in return?’. A link exchange could be a great solution for this.
Looking through your competitors and other websites in your niche, is there really useful content that would help your audience? If yes, reach out to them and offer a link exchange to one of your articles that would benefit their audience and where it could be added in an existing post.
This also does not have to be a one time offer. Maintain and strengthen the relationship by requesting link exchanges regularly. Both of you will then benefit from a strong backlinking strategy.
Bonus point – Create outstanding content
Content is the key to building links using the above techniques. You want to request backlinks to your best, most valuable content. If you request a link exchange to a lacklustre piece of content, it is unlikely to be linked to. Therefore, not only is your outreach important, but the content also needs to stand on its own.
Additionally, creating high-quality guest posts are likely to improve your reputation for quality content and more likely to be approved in the future. You can include links to other guest posts you have published as proof to new contacts.
Social profiles
There are many social networks that allow you to place links in your profile. These include YouTube, Pinterest, Linkedin, Facebook and Reddit. you can often place links in your posts, comments and profile.
However, some links may be automatic no-follow links. But, with a little bit of work they can be converted to do-follow links. For example, SEO for Reddit shows that you need positive karma and upvotes for a link to be do-follow.
Be a guest on a podcast or an interviewee
Usually, podcasts will include a link to your website in the notes or accompanying blog as a resource for their audience. Similarly, blogs featuring an interview may also include a link to your website to back up your credentials.
You can pitch yourself to Podcasts and blogs for interviews. Start by researching relevant and well-performing podcasts in your niche. Listen to some episodes with guests to get a feel for the podcast, then check the website to see how you can become a guest or their contact details and pitch yourself!
Become the interviewer
As with being a guest obtains a link, having guests yourself will also attract links. The industry expert you interview is likely to promote and link to the interview to their audience. As well as attracting links from the fans of your guest sharing the interview too. Attracting a lot of potential links and social shares boosting your SEO.
Ensure you do your research on the guest you want to interview. Are they relevant to your audience, do they have unique perspectives, what will that contribute to your website? With interview questions in mind, its time to pitch yourself and your website again through blogger outreach to potential interviewees.
These two techniques both expand your network and can encourage new relationships on your niche.
Brand mentions
This is a backlinking technique that is best for established websites. After some time, your brand and website can receive some natural mentions online. You can easily search for terms and use Google alerts to detect brand mentions and include words such as your brand name, founders or personal names that are relevant to your brand.
Reach out to the websites that mention your brand but do not include a link. This can be a great way to obtain free backlinks as the website owner already recognises your brand and may love your products/service. Making it easier to request a link and build a relationship with them.
Create an affiliate program
If you’re a business selling a product or service, a great way to obtain deep links to product pages is through an affiliate program. You can also encourage your affiliates to promote certain products, and suggest ways to promote your products with unique referral links.
This can attract many relevant and authoritative sites to create free backlinks for your products. As well as, potentially increasing traffic as your links are available to your target audience.
Start benefiting from free backlinks today
Gaining free backlinks can be easy when approaching it in the right way and can greatly improve your SEO ranking. As link building is such an important part of SEO, you can utilise these tips for backlinks and help gain organic traffic for free.