Having backlinks pointing to your website is probably one of the biggest ranking factors of all time. ( SOURCE )
Yes, relevancy and overall content quality are getting more and more important each year.
But links still matter a lot. That’s why we still make a ton of them for content creators in 2021.
Tactics and strategies have changed a lot in recent years, so I would like to present you with this list of the best ways to create links right now.
1. HARO – Help a Reporter Out
HARO ( Help a Reporter Out ) is a platform that connects reporters to sources. If you are opt-in for the HARO’s daily emails, you’ll get two of them each day with at least 40-50 articles that reporters are writing right now.
Simply speaking, this strategy is a numbers game. The more you reply to reporters, the more likely you to get a backlink from a big newspaper or authority website.
HARO is one of my favorite link-building strategies since the beginning of 2020 for a reason. It’s scalable, provides a decent amount of backlinks regularly, and most importantly – you get high-quality links.
I started with HARO for one of my personal websites and created tens of links for a month. The best link I’ve got was DR85!
The problem is that right now, many SEOs use HARO for link-building, and it’s becoming more crowded and competitive. You’ll need to reply to much more emails to get a backlink. That’s why many website owners outsource the HARO link building to agencies.
2. Guest Posting on Relevant Websites
Guest posting is one of the oldest SEO strategies out there, but it still works like a charm in 2021. Generally speaking, guest posting or guest blogging contributes content to another website for free.
The idea is that as a contributor writer, you’ll have the freedom to link to other resources on the topic, which might be on your own website.
You can have different goals with this strategy. From increasing brand awareness and build industry authority to boosting your SEO and increasing traffic and sales/leads.
Whatever your goal is, guest posting is a great opportunity for most marketers to stand out.
But there’s a catch! There are thousands of low quality link farms selling harmful backlinks for $20 each.
You should have a perfect link vetting process to filter out those bad links and find only the best premium blogs to help you rank on Google.
3. Link Exchange
According to Google, excessive link exchanges may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
You see the word “excessive” there in the wording. This means you can make a few link exchanges here and there. And those would be some of the easiest backlinks you can make.
The secret here is to be very selective and do it only occasionally. Link exchange can’t be your main link-building strategy. Choose only websites in your niche and with traffic from Google ( at least 1000 pageviews as per Ahrefs ),
4. Publish high quality list posts
List posts are among the most linkable assets on the web. ( SOURCE ) But just writing a ton of list posts won’t help you create a ton of backlinks.
The secret is to target really low competition keywords and rank instantly on the top 5 of Google. Once ranked, those articles tend to get many free backlinks just because someone else will link to them.
If list posts don’t work in your niche, you can write “Why,” “How” to posts, or publish quizzes. Those might work really well in some particular niches.
5.List your website on resource pages
You might say that this tactic is as old as the internet, but the truth is it’s still working great. You can find a ton of high-quality .EDU and .COM websites that still maintain a nice resource page in their niche.
Those pages are difficult to find, but you can use some great Google strings for the purpose.
- Keyword inurl:resources
- Keyword “best resources”
- Keyword” useful resources”
- Keyword intitle:links
- Keyword “helpful links”
The good news is most webmasters will eagerly list your website if they find it useful.