Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a vast and ever-changing field. In fact, as cliché as it may sound, it has drastically evolved so much so that it’s no longer what it used to be. Although, in spite of the twists and turns in SEO trends, one thing remains true: the end goal is to rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive more traffic to the website. Unfortunately, however, zooming past the competition and ranking higher doesn’t happen overnight—it takes time, planning, and effective execution.
Like most things in today’s rapidly shifting digital landscape, SEO tactics can go out of fashion in a blink of an eye—making it tricky to be on top of your strategies. With its swift growth, SEO specialists have shifted their focus from merely stuffing content with relevant keywords to gaining links as nowadays, every website must include link building on its list of priorities regardless of the nature of the business.
Experts are leveraging a myriad of link building tactics, including guest posting, content duplication, link reclamation, and broken link building. As much as these tactics are proven to be effective, some require more work than others. Also, some have yet to adapt to the algorithm updates and modern user trends. Thankfully—while there is no set-in-stone, one-size-fits-all turnkey strategy—there are various techniques that are equally or more effective. Refresh or complement your current SEO efforts with these nine underrated link building tactics worth exploring:
You can choose to publish the content in various formats, from videos to podcasts. However, you must create written content as well to help earn valuable backlinks.
In creating content based on interviews, it is vital to note that to reap more of its benefits, it must be rich with attention-grabbing information. Rather than simply producing an expert roundup, throw in some personal ideas, interpretations, and insights that readers may find useful—or better yet, deem original and innovative.
In this way, you can set a specific site as a budding thought leader, ultimately boosting online presence and potentially grow your business globally. Remember to promote your content on various platforms for maximum reach.
At its core, resource page link building is where you reach out and get backlinks from established resource pages that evaluate, curate, and link out to valuable industry-relevant content. So, if you’ve recently created high-value content such as educational articles, informative white papers, and factual infographics that you believe are worth sharing, you must make use of resource building opportunities.
The process of building backlinks with this tactic is pretty much straightforward: identify high-value content, vet resource pages within your industry or niche, and reach out to your prospects and suggest linking out to your content.
To successfully make use of this tactic, find relevant websites to partner with. Their content should be of value to the kind of user traffic you want to attract to your site and vice versa, or else you run the risk of attracting a poor quality audience. Once you’ve chosen partner websites, make sure to set clear guidelines—landing pages, content topics, and anchor text are some of the things that need to be discussed to maximize traffic and protect your brand.
HARO is a platform that essentially connects journalists from media outlets like Time, The New York Times, and Fox News, to content sources that want to get featured on these websites.
As opposed to having to reach out to these media outlets individually, unsure of the sources they need, you can join HARO to receive three emails a day outlining topics you can contribute. If there is a source request relevant to your website, the next step is to pitch for a spot in their article by providing answers to their queries—these should be insightful responses that they can easily use in their content. If your pitch is accepted, your insight, and more importantly, your website, will be featured in their article.
By harnessing a reliable image search tool, you can track down infographics, illustrations, and other original images that you own that are now being used by other people or posted on other websites without your knowledge.
It’s awful when you find out other websites have republished your copyrighted images without your consent, but it’s worse when you learn that they didn’t even link the image back to you. Protect your content while boosting your backlinks by finding and contacting webmasters—politely ask them to give credit to your website as the original source of the image in question.
Sounds elementary, right? While it can be reasonably manageable, it is imperative to carefully assess the sites where you create your profiles to ensure high-quality backlinks—the key is to focus on niche-relevant platforms.
As the saying goes, it takes years to build a reputation and mere minutes to destroy it. Associating your brand with irrelevant or dubious pages can instantly smear your reputation, which in turn, may cause your integrity and authority to plummet.
With the ego bait technique, you can attract high-yielding links, drive website traffic, and generate quality leads. Aside from producing content aimed at a specific influencer, brand, or thought leader, the trick is to create content that will stand out and get their attention.
In creating guest blogs, it is common to insert your website either by adding a hyperlink within your content or mentioning your website in the author bio. Once your guest post is published, you can then promote it on your social media accounts by including the link to the article where they will inevitably stumble upon the link to your website.
According to a study, 89% of attendees search about the event online before deciding whether or not to take part in it. Using SEO in your event promotion can turn casual browsers into paying customers.
Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed by the swarm of information presented above? For a quick refresher, have a look at Spiralytic’s infographic about Underrated Link Building Tactics that Work Surprisingly Well.
Read next: Study Reveals The Most Effective Way To Market Products On Social Media
Like most things in today’s rapidly shifting digital landscape, SEO tactics can go out of fashion in a blink of an eye—making it tricky to be on top of your strategies. With its swift growth, SEO specialists have shifted their focus from merely stuffing content with relevant keywords to gaining links as nowadays, every website must include link building on its list of priorities regardless of the nature of the business.
Experts are leveraging a myriad of link building tactics, including guest posting, content duplication, link reclamation, and broken link building. As much as these tactics are proven to be effective, some require more work than others. Also, some have yet to adapt to the algorithm updates and modern user trends. Thankfully—while there is no set-in-stone, one-size-fits-all turnkey strategy—there are various techniques that are equally or more effective. Refresh or complement your current SEO efforts with these nine underrated link building tactics worth exploring:
1. Interviews
Interacting and building relationships with relevant industry professionals, thought-leaders, and content creators can benefit your SEO strategy in many ways—but since we’re on the topic of link building, the main idea behind conducting industry-specific interviews and publishing them is to gain beneficial links that add value to your overall approach to SEO.You can choose to publish the content in various formats, from videos to podcasts. However, you must create written content as well to help earn valuable backlinks.
In creating content based on interviews, it is vital to note that to reap more of its benefits, it must be rich with attention-grabbing information. Rather than simply producing an expert roundup, throw in some personal ideas, interpretations, and insights that readers may find useful—or better yet, deem original and innovative.
In this way, you can set a specific site as a budding thought leader, ultimately boosting online presence and potentially grow your business globally. Remember to promote your content on various platforms for maximum reach.
2. Resource Pages
This SEO technique is nothing new. In recent years, people have taken notice of its merits, gaining the mileage it deserves in the SEO scene. As a matter of fact, according to a study conducted by Moz, it is the second most used tactic by SEO professionals, next to content publication.At its core, resource page link building is where you reach out and get backlinks from established resource pages that evaluate, curate, and link out to valuable industry-relevant content. So, if you’ve recently created high-value content such as educational articles, informative white papers, and factual infographics that you believe are worth sharing, you must make use of resource building opportunities.
The process of building backlinks with this tactic is pretty much straightforward: identify high-value content, vet resource pages within your industry or niche, and reach out to your prospects and suggest linking out to your content.
3. Partner Links
As the name suggests, this technique is about forging long-term link sharing partnerships with other websites. Rather than a one-time link building effort, this creates a steady stream of inbound links to your site from partner brands’ content pieces.To successfully make use of this tactic, find relevant websites to partner with. Their content should be of value to the kind of user traffic you want to attract to your site and vice versa, or else you run the risk of attracting a poor quality audience. Once you’ve chosen partner websites, make sure to set clear guidelines—landing pages, content topics, and anchor text are some of the things that need to be discussed to maximize traffic and protect your brand.
4. HARO
We’ve established that authority links are crucial to SEO since a referral from an established site effectively passes on a certain amount of that authority to a smaller site. These are extremely valuable, but they can also be extremely challenging to secure. This is where HARO, short for Help A Reporter Out, comes in handy.HARO is a platform that essentially connects journalists from media outlets like Time, The New York Times, and Fox News, to content sources that want to get featured on these websites.
As opposed to having to reach out to these media outlets individually, unsure of the sources they need, you can join HARO to receive three emails a day outlining topics you can contribute. If there is a source request relevant to your website, the next step is to pitch for a spot in their article by providing answers to their queries—these should be insightful responses that they can easily use in their content. If your pitch is accepted, your insight, and more importantly, your website, will be featured in their article.
5. Image Reclamation
A beginner-friendly tactic, image reclamation demands relatively less technical know-how than most SEO techniques. Although it is a fairly simple strategy, its ability to turn uncredited images into beneficial backlinks is incredibly compelling. In leveraging image reclamation, you can successfully increase backlinks by 26%. So, how does it work? Instead of searching by typing out specific keywords and phrases on Google, you can now search using images.By harnessing a reliable image search tool, you can track down infographics, illustrations, and other original images that you own that are now being used by other people or posted on other websites without your knowledge.
It’s awful when you find out other websites have republished your copyrighted images without your consent, but it’s worse when you learn that they didn’t even link the image back to you. Protect your content while boosting your backlinks by finding and contacting webmasters—politely ask them to give credit to your website as the original source of the image in question.
6. Profile Links
Having credible online profiles is essential in developing a sound link building strategy and creating a recognizable identity across the digital space. In a nutshell, profile linking is a tactic that allows you to direct the audience to your website through your public profiles on a wide range of sites and platforms.Sounds elementary, right? While it can be reasonably manageable, it is imperative to carefully assess the sites where you create your profiles to ensure high-quality backlinks—the key is to focus on niche-relevant platforms.
As the saying goes, it takes years to build a reputation and mere minutes to destroy it. Associating your brand with irrelevant or dubious pages can instantly smear your reputation, which in turn, may cause your integrity and authority to plummet.
7. Linking Out / Ego Bait
Who doesn’t appreciate an ego boost every once in a while? Rooted in human psychology, ego bait—as the name implies—involves stroking an influencer’s ego by mentioning or tagging them in an industry-related article you have created. This will encourage relevant content creators to visit your page, check out your content, share it with their audience, and even link back to your website if they find it fitting to do so.- Also read: Main Reason Revealed behind Blogs not Ranking in Search Engines Despite Being Rich in Quality
With the ego bait technique, you can attract high-yielding links, drive website traffic, and generate quality leads. Aside from producing content aimed at a specific influencer, brand, or thought leader, the trick is to create content that will stand out and get their attention.
8. Second-tier Link Building
First-tier link building is a technique that allows you to directly link your page from an external, high-authority website. The second-tier link building is relatively more complicated as you’ll be adding an extra layer by featuring your content that already links to your website on another page or platform. Since the idea is inherently confusing, here’s an example:In creating guest blogs, it is common to insert your website either by adding a hyperlink within your content or mentioning your website in the author bio. Once your guest post is published, you can then promote it on your social media accounts by including the link to the article where they will inevitably stumble upon the link to your website.
9. Media Events
In promoting an upcoming event, be it a social event, a concert, or a job fair, it is necessary to leverage the power of social media while linking your website at the same time. By employing SEO tactics throughout your promotion, you can surely get the most out of every event.According to a study, 89% of attendees search about the event online before deciding whether or not to take part in it. Using SEO in your event promotion can turn casual browsers into paying customers.
Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed by the swarm of information presented above? For a quick refresher, have a look at Spiralytic’s infographic about Underrated Link Building Tactics that Work Surprisingly Well.
Read next: Study Reveals The Most Effective Way To Market Products On Social Media