9 Ways To Get Backlinks To Your Site

Content, analytics and negotiation skills will help you get quality links to your website for free. There are several working methods in the material that you may not have tried yet.

Details of what external links are, what they affect and how to work with them, were described in the first and second parts of the article "External links: instructions for use".

There are a few more ways to get backlinks for your site.

1. Replace 404 page

Many inaccessible pages are still referenced by other resources that do not track the relevance of links. You can suggest replacing the broken links with your own related content.

1. Find pages with a lot of links, for example, with collections of materials, tools, articles.
2. Identify among them links to pages with a 404 code. Broken Links looks for the Site Analysis tool in the Internal Pages section. You need to configure filtering by the 404 server response code.
3. Tell the site owner about all broken links on the page, and suggest replacing them with your articles that are relevant to the topic.

Most likely, he will be grateful that you found the work done for him, and will put a link to the material. You will have a link, and he can make his content more useful and relevant by removing 404 pages.

2. Replace the outdated link

Some resources link to pages where information is out of date or no longer available. Such links are irrelevant, and your material on the topic may take their place.

You can search for collection pages and check links from the list as in the previous method. Alternatively, you can first find the page with outdated material, and then the resources that link to it.

1. Find pages on your topic that are out of date, having changed their name or have changed their domain.
2. Find sites that still link to outdated content.
3. This can be done using Ahrefs Backlinks report. The results are exported to a file.

Contact the owners of those sites, tell them they link to an outdated source, and suggest yours.

For example, you are running a content marketing website and find that the linking content strategy article is out of date.

How to get the link:

1. Post a quality article on this topic. Keep it up-to-date with helpful tips or tools for users.
2. Find those who linked to an outdated article.
3. Inform resource owners that the content is no longer available and can be replaced with a link to your post

If the editor thinks your material is of high quality, you will receive a free link, and he will make his page more useful and relevant.

3. Get back deleted links

In pursuit of new links, many do not pay attention to how many links from existing ones they are losing. You can balance the loss of links with a stream of new ones, but it's easier to return broken links.

How can you lose a link?

• The site owner has stopped linking to your content in their article;
• The page on which the link was ceased to exist.

You can find such links using Ahrefs' Broken Backlinks tool. The service signs the reason why the link no longer works.

If the link is missing, contact the site owner to find out the reason. Perhaps the entire page was accidentally deleted, the editor rewrote the article and the link became irrelevant, your material is outdated or has been replaced with a more detailed one. In this case, you can update your material and offer to refer to it, or choose a new suitable article.

When buying links or receiving them under other agreements, keep a record of them with dates, links to the pages where they should be, and the contacts of the people with whom you agreed.

4. Outperform the competition

This method is not very honest, but it works.

1. Analyze your competitors' content and find those that have a lot of inbound links.
2. Create your own articles that are more complete, detailed, and useful.
3. Suggest that those who link to competitors' materials change links to yours.
4. If possible, offer a return link or something else.

If your material is obviously better and larger, and the site owner is not burdened with agreements, most likely he will replace the link, because he himself is interested in quality content.

Look for links in your niche and evaluate your strengths: whether you can create material, really better, whether it will be valuable.

5. Get into the selection of materials

Some publications collect thematic collections of materials from other sources. These can be daily, weekly, or monthly blog posts with links to the best content on the topic. For example,"10 articles from experts on promotion”, “The best materials for site optimization in March" and others.

Getting into such a selection is a great way to get a quality link. In addition, they are eagerly shared on social networks by the authors of the remaining articles from the list, and by readers.

How to get into the thematic selection of materials:

1. Find people who make selections in your area.
2. Offer your material to the resource representatives.

If your post seems appropriate to the editor, he will add it to the list of articles, and you will receive a link.

This is usually free; some resources may ask you to share the selection on social media.

6. Write guest posts

Guest articles and interviews are a good way to get links to your resource and establish yourself as an expert. Choose several friendly resources that blog on a related topic, and write quality materials for them, share cases and opinions on topical issues.

Guest posts are usually free, unless they are advertising, and allow one or two links to the author and his site.

7. Design content in a new way

If there is no time to generate new content, use the old one by submitting it in a different format. Take notes from a training video, design an article infographic, record a podcast.

This will affect the part of the audience that has not seen the first draft of the article, and will be to the liking of users who are more comfortable listening by listening to a voice or looking at schemes. Building on old content is usually faster than writing new content.

New content can be posted on specialized sites: video hosting, infographic catalogs, social networks, getting additional traffic.

Existing content can be collected into thematic collections and digests. Content in the new format will also be referenced if it is relevant and meaningful, and you will receive more links without wasting time writing new articles.

8. Conduct research or experiment

Not the easiest way, but effective. Authors need statistics, research, and experimental results in order to substantiate the theses in their materials. Mentioning data from the study in the text, so as not to be unfounded, usually cite the source.

9. Agree with partners

Outreach is one of the methods of white promotion, cooperation with bloggers and website owners in order to get links. Usually such links are bought, but you can negotiate free reciprocal links to each other's blog posts, joint articles, videos and infographics with links to authors.

Find editors and website owners in your niche and make friends with them. These should not be competitors, but specialists in a related field, developers of tools that will complement your product.

How to find sites for outreach:

• among resources using keywords related to your or a related topic;
• Among sites that link to pages on topics relevant to you.

The tools will help you find resources that use the same keys. For example, using the Top Results Analysis tool, you can see the top 10, 20, 50 or 100 according to the list of keywords you are interested in. Enter the list of queries in a column, select the depth of the top, search engine, region and device, and see the results. The service will highlight the same website with one color.

Connect with the contact persons of the discovered sites and establish partnerships.

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