So you found out that backlinks are important for SEO to rank high in SERPs, but don’t know how to get high-quality backlinks, the Rolls Royce of backlinks for your website?
Then you are reading the right article because you are going to learn the five important aspects that make high-quality backlinks as well as the best 11 link building strategies for high-quality backlinks!
What Makes a High-Quality Backlinks? 5 Important Aspects
The first thing you must understand if you want to build high-quality backlinks for your website is to understand what aspects make a high-quality backlink.
So, let me share with you the 5 most important aspects you want to check every time you want to build a backlink from a site to ensure it is high quality:
Aspect #1: Website Authority
It used to be that Google showed you the website authority by giving you the PageRank for each of the ranking websites, which made it easy to understand whether Google sees your page as authoritative or not.
But Google’s PageRank Toolbar was canceled in 2016 and ever since SEO tools like SE Ranking and others developed their own formula to show approximate website authority based on the number of referring domains and backlinks, from which sites they are coming from, and other aspects.
And obviously the higher the DT, the better influence it will have on your ranking, however, the harder it is to get a backlink from such an authoritative domain.
Therefore, if you are starting a new website and have a small DT yourself, then I recommend you to stay around your ballpark and start with websites with a domain trust of 20 to build high-quality backlinks and then walk your way up, as you are growing.
Aspect #2: Organic Traffic
The second important aspect to determine whether a backlink from a website is high quality is to look at the website’s organic traffic using an SEO tool.
Organic traffic is a great indicator of Google’s trust. If Google does not trust a website, then it will not send any organic traffic to the website.
Therefore, if you want to build a high-quality backlink from a website you should verify if that website is generating AT LEAST 500 organic traffic, preferably 1,000 according to your SEO tool.
Because these tools tend to underestimate organic traffic, especially for smaller websites, thus, their organic traffic might be around 5,000-10,000.
Aspect #3: Organic Traffic Location
The third important aspect of getting high-quality backlinks is to look at where the website is getting its organic traffic.
This is especially important to look at if you are targeting a certain country or location because your ranking will improve based on website organic traffic location.
For example, if my target locations are the main English-speaking countries such as UK, United States, Australia, and Canada, then websites that drive traffic mostly from India I would skip even if their website brings a ton of visitors.
And focus on those that drive mostly organic traffic from my targeted locations even if it is way less organic traffic in general.
Therefore, if your goal is to drive organic traffic from certain locations, then you want to build backlinks from those websites that mainly drive organic traffic from your targeted locations.
Aspect #4: Contextual Backlink
The fourth important aspect of building high-quality backlinks is to build contextual backlinks.
Contextual backlink means a link is included within the content of the page and not in the footer, banner, author box, slide bar, submenu, images, and other elements of the website.
These links are extremely important as Google sees them as a vote for your website from the linking website. Plus, Google uses the anchor text of the backlink to better understand your webpage, which can improve your ranking for the keyword and the related keywords.
However, you want to be extra careful, to make sure, that the link you get is “dofollow”. Because any link that is tagged as “nofollow” or “sponsored” will not pass any PageRank to your website even despite Google says they will use these as a hint.
It’s always important to build links with dofollow meta. To check you can simply look at the source code of the link.
Or you can use Backlink monitor tools like SE Ranking and it will tell you all the important information about your backlinks such as the status, indexed in Google, DT, anchor text, and target URL.
Aspect #5: Balanced Anchor text
And the very last important aspect of building high-quality backlinks for your website is to have balanced anchor text.
Unfortunately, many SEOs and website owners once they learn that backlinks and their anchor text are super important and can rapidly increase your SEO success, start over-optimizing every anchor text with keywords in it.
However, this is very dangerous as it can quickly raise the Google spam detector against your website and any of the links you have built can be devaluated and you would not get any PageRank from those, thus losing any benefits of backlinks.
Therefore, whenever you build backlinks make sure you don’t over-optimize your anchor text and try to don’t use the same anchor text twice.
For example, if I would be building backlinks for my web page that is targeting the keyword “best gaming laptops” I would never use the same anchor text twice.
So here you have the most important aspects you should know, when you are building high-quality backlinks for your website, so now, let’s have a look at how you can build them:
How to Get High-Quality Backlinks? (11 Strategies)
1. Create Partner Section
The first strategy to build high-quality backlinks is to create a partner section on your website and get your partners to do the same.
Your partners can be a great source of high-quality backlinks as well as you can be a great source for them. Google trust more businesses than individuals running a website, thus, getting backlinks from your partners makes this strategy extremely effective and super easy as well.
You just need to talk to your partners, whether it is implementation, suppliers, technical, delivery, or any other partners, and tell them you are planning to create a partner section on your website and link to them.
As like this you will help each other to improve ranking and visibility, thus driving more organic traffic and perhaps leads as well.
Definitely, one of the easiest ways to build backlinks and I recommend every business to create a partner section.
The second very effective way to build high-quality editorial backlinks is through HARO (HelpAReporterOut).
HARO link building is another great way to build high-quality backlinks even for beginners, in fact, I have got some nice juice backlinks responding to HARO questions.
So, you just need to sign up to HARO and you’ll receive three emails Monday-Friday based on your interest or your industry.
And each of these emails contains reporters’ queries from different outlets. These outlets can differ from local or niche-specific to the largest and most famous like Shopify, NTD Television, Forbes, and many other recognized high authority websites.
And based on this you select the ones that are relevant to you. For example, I am in the SEO and Content Marketing niche and query #2, is relevant to me. So, I click on it.
And here I can see the details of the query such as the deadline, media outlet, the query or the question, and the requirements.
Unfortunately, I don’t fit these criteria so I move on and won’t bother to respond.
3. Produce Industry Study and Research
Another great link building strategy for building high-quality backlinks is to produce industry study and research.
Industry study and research are one of the most expensive and resource-heavy out of all link building strategies, but they are also arguably the most effective and best ways to build a ton of high-quality backlinks for your website.
And a great example of using industry study and research is backlinko.com. When you look at the top pages by referring domains, you will see that most of his backlinks come from industry studies and research.
And if you look at what kind of domains link to Backlinko’s research study, you can see, he got links from some of the most authoritative domains like Microsoft and GoDaddy.
Or another great example is superoffice.com. Their top pages by referring domains are from industry researches as well and not even from their homepage.
Which again got them very nice backlinks from some of the most authoritative domains like Harvard and Recruitee.
But this doesn’t mean you have to pull out extensive study and answer many of the industry questions, getting hundreds or even thousands of responses, or spending thousands on research firms to make surveys for you.
Because in every industry, there are those little references that do not have data or research to back them up but are commonly known.
So, if you know or find something like this, then you can create a mini-study, that is often much cheaper to produce, but still can generate a lot of high-quality backlinks for your website and improve your SEO results.
4. Publish Blog Posts on Relevant Sites
Another great way to build high-quality backlinks and by far the most used is to publish blog posts on relevant sites, also known as guest posting.
Producing blog posts is arguably the most important part of your SEO strategy as you can barely drive any traffic without that. But publishing guest posts on relevant sites to your niche is a great way to earn high-quality backlinks and increase your website authority.
It is also one of the easiest link building strategies and even absolute beginners can start with guest blogging. You just need to find relevant sites to yours.
For example, one of my favorite way to find similar sites is to use SE Ranking Competitive Research tool, where I enter my domain and select my target location.
Then, I’ll go to the Competitors report, where I will get hundreds of close competitors based on my ranking keywords.
And here I have a perfect list of domains and I can start doing my blogger outreach.
Or if you don’t have an SEO tool, which I highly recommend you get, then you can just type your target keywords into Google and extract those results using a free Google extension tool like SEQuake. (Also, don’t forget to set to get 100 results per page)
And again do your blogger outreach.
However, you must be careful and know how to effectively do guest posting so Google does not catch you. Because Google does not like Guest posting as it results in unnatural links, thus they devalued them.
Therefore, I recommend you check out my video on how to do guest posting without Google devaluing your backlinks.
5. Produce Unique Graphics
Another great way and for me, one of the most important “passive” link building strategies is producing unique graphics on your website.
Images are an important part of SEO and storytelling and in many instances, one picture can provide a much better explanation, than thousands of words… Hmm, maybe that’s why they say one picture can be worth thousands of words.
Well, in SEO, custom graphics can be worth thousands of high-quality backlinks. For example, look at this picture on ERP modules from Wikipedia:
Have been used at least 200 times across the internet according to Google.
And according to SE Ranking, the Wikipedia page alone has generated over 1.5k referring domains and 6.2k backlinks.
Was it all because of the image? No. Did it help? Absolutely!
And you don’t have to be a massive site to get a few backlinks here and there from creating custom graphics on your blog posts.
And a great example of getting high-quality backlinks from a simple infographic is this picture:
According to SE Ranking, this low authoritative site manages to get nice 26 backlinks from 16 referring domains.
Image link building is definitely one of the most important strategies for every of my piece of blog. Because if you look at my latest blog posts, you can see I am always trying to create my own graphics, and know you know why.
6. Do Competitor Backlink Analysis
Another way to earn high-quality backlinks and one of the best ways to start your link building campaign is by doing competitor backlink analysis.
With competitor backlink analysis you can easily see how many backlinks and referring domains your competitors have, figure out what are the most important pages of your competitors, what link building strategies they are using and from where they are building links, and then replicate the most successful strategies for your website.
For example, I can use SE Ranking Competitors report to find competitors with similar website authority.
And then look at how and from where they build their backlinks. This can show me, where the guest post, which roundup posts they have participated in, what directories they used to get backlinks, and other information on how they built their backlinks.
Then you can also figure out how many backlinks you will need to build to rank for your target keyword by looking at the ranking pages/blog posts (not domains) backlink profile.
For example, let’s say I want to rank for the keyword “best left handed mouse”. So I look at the top organic results.
Then take the top 10 ranking results and put them in SE Ranking Backlink Checker to see how many backlinks each URL has, so I can plan out my link building campaign to rank for this keyword.
Of course, I can look at the overall Domain Trust for the top-ranking pages as that plays a big role in ranking as well to see if there are any sites with similar website authority like mine.
And there is so much more you can learn during competitor backlink analysis and it’s another great way to build high-quality backlinks for your website.
7. Start Doing Interviews
The next great way to build high-quality backlinks is to start doing interviews on podcasts, YouTube Channels, and on other channels.
Doing interviews for link building can be one of the easiest link building strategies to earn high-quality backlinks for SEOs, especially if you are in a niche where the subject matter expert is not from a marketing team.
Because you don’t have to do the interview, just find them and that’s not hard at all and then get your company subject matter expert to do the talking. I love that.
For example, let’s say you are in the manufacturing industry, then you can search for manufacturing podcasts.
As you can see, there are tons of those, or even about digital transformation, as manufacturing is taking a big leap to become digital.
And there are tons of other niche-related podcasts you can appear on.
Another great way to get interviews and super ultra mega high-quality backlinks is Universities. They often run workshops, day-in-profession, and other related activities where your subject matter expert can appear and talk about the industry and what it’s like to work in that industry.
Getting interviews for link building is one of my favorite ways to get tons of high-quality backlinks and grow website organic traffic.
8. Submit Your Page on Resource Pages
The eighth way how you can build high-quality backlinks for your website is by submitting your page on resource pages.
Resource link building is an extremely effective strategy if you spend a lot of your time and resources on creating content on your website and want to monetize on it in form of backlinks.
Resource pages are basically pages with a curated list of recommended outside resources for readers to learn more about certain industries, niches, technology, or basically about anything.
For example, I have been featured on blogging.org as one of the top content marketing blogs.
And often resource pages provide an easy way to submit or pitch your blog to be featured. As you can see here:
And the best thing, there are countless resource pages in every niche and industry and if you are creating some really great stuff, then you should do resource link building.
And resource pages are easy to find as well. For example, I can use SE Ranking Backlink Checker to analyze one of my competitor backlink profiles and put URL filters like “resources”, “best”, “blogs” and others words that frequently appear in the URL of resource pages.
And just look through the results to find anything that seems to be a resource page, like this one:
Or you can see Google Strings find resource pages as well:
- Keyword “best resources”
- Keyword “best blogs”
- Keyword inurl:resources
- Keyword” useful resources”
- Keyword intitle:links
- Keyword “helpful links”
- Keyword intitle:resources inurl:links.html
- Keyword inurl:.com/resources
- Keyword inurl:resources intitle:resources
- Keyword intitle:links inurl: resources.html
- Keyword inurl:.com/resources
For example like this:
Definitely resource link building is one of the best ways to get high-quality links if you are developing a lot of content on your website.
9. Create Linkable Assets
The ninth way to build high-quality backlinks is by creating content assets that naturally attract links.
I have already talked about producing industry studies and research and images like infographics are some of the best linkable assets for your website. However, there are even more content formats that attract links.
Linkable Asset Example #1: Free Tools
Free tools that are easily accessible are one of the best ways to attract high-quality backlinks to your website. For example, the free tool SE Ranking Location Changer has generated over 131 backlinks from 85 referring domains according to SE Ranking.
And they are even easier to create, just visit CodeCanyon and find some interesting tool, pop it on your website and start collecting links.
Linkable Asset Example #2: Personal Case Studies
Personal case studies are one of the best linkable assets to attract a lot of high-quality backlinks, as they are easy to create.
For example, Adam Enfroy is publishing his blog income statement along with operating expenses on regular basis. This works as a personal case study and it is a great way to generate high-quality backlinks.
I just throw a few of his blog income statements into Backlink Checker and just those few generated 146 backlinks from 95 referring domains.
Example #3: Curated list of Statistics
And the last example of linkable assets I want to share with you is to create a curated list of statistics.
For example, I have created a curated list of the best B2B SEO statistics on the internet.
And it has consistently generated high-quality backlinks for me ever since.
And is it just me? Of course, not.
And every industry and niche has statistics that you can collect and publish on your website, just don’t forget to reference your sources.
10. Write Testimonials
The next great way how to get great quality backlinks is by writing testimonials for products you are using.
Because most of the brands will have dedicated pages or places where they put reviews and their mentions and often they also include links to your website.
And even sometimes you can get a link from some of the most authoritative pages on a domain such as service and product pages or even homepage.
Therefore, if you are using tools and really love them, consider leaving a nice review for them and ask them if they also provide a backlink to a website.
11. Reverse Engineer Flippa Websites
Another great way to build high-quality backlinks is to find websites on Flippa with a lot of high-quality organic traffic and then see how they did get their backlinks.
Flippa is a great place to get inspired, learn new SEO techniques, research niches, and do backlink analysis because you can find some very successful websites that grew very fast and became worth thousands of dollars.
For example, I found a two years website that is already making almost $2,000 in ad revenue and $1,700 in profit, bringing over 300K unique visitors with 3.5M+ page views. So, this is definitely something I want to check out.
So I pop the URL into SE Ranking Backlink Checker to see what they did to get such high traffic.
Based on this I can see, that they have a lot of backlinks, but not such a high quality I would want to see, because their domain trust is low for the number of backlinks. However, on the other side, their Dofollow & Nofollow ratio is very good, which means most of their backlinks are dofollow, which is a good sign.
Also, their backlinks and referring domains have been growing over time, which is a good sign as well.
So now I can do competitor backlink analysis to see if I find any interesting backlinks.
After this, I can see a few backlinks obtain from sites with high DT, but still a lot of very low-quality sites. I definitely can see, they did some automated link building, which can be caught pretty soon by Google.
I suspect because they wanted to sell the website, so they quickly build some backlinks to make it more authoritative, flip the site for more money and go.
But, as I said, I found a few sites where I can do guest posting or link insertion and get a nice high-quality backlink.
Final Advice
When it comes to link building, relationships matter a lot, reputation in industry matter a lot, the quality of your outreach matter even more, and overall, link building is all about patience, heartbreak and never giving up. (Sounds like Korean drama…)
I gave you some of the best strategies to build high-quality backlinks that move the ranking needle for you. However, the more creative you become with your link building the more successful you become.
Also, please don’t forget to hit me up on my YouTube channel on one of my videos, ask my questions, let me know what I did wrong, forgot, or screwed up. Or what I did right.
Look forward to seeing you there, CAU!
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Also, check out our SEO hub page to find all our SEO resources.
Disclaimer
Some pictures are coming from Freepik and some of my links are affiliate links, which means if you purchase something, I might get some small commission as a reward for reference. Of course, I am actively using all these services and products, and I only affiliate products or services I have full trust in their quality!
