Link Building Strategies: How to Build Safe Backlinks in 2024

On-page optimization is done on the website whereas Off-page optimization is done outside the website. The only thing that can be done outside the website is to build backlinks for it in order to optimize it for search engines. In this article, we will focus on how to build safe backlinks that actually work.

Backlinks are like trust. The more and quality backlinks your website will have, the better ranking it will attain in various search engines. Although, it is not Sureshot that you will have a great ranking just because of having quality backlinks. Over time, Google has been upgrading the search mechanism a lot which gives more weightage to content quality, site usability, user experience, and all. So, it is of utmost importance that you have to make your content the best first, then go out and build links.

About the content, and whole on-page optimization we have already discussed in our blog post about On-Page optimization so you can check that out. In this post, we will focus on backlinks.

That is the reason, you need more trust to perform better in search engines.

What is Link Building?

Link building is the process of getting links back to your site from some other sites.

The basics of building links are still the same but the way of doing has been upgraded. Let’s talk more about this and discuss the strategies that you can apply to build links in the current SEO scenario to climb up in the search pages.

How to Build Safe Backlinks?

There are many link-building strategies that you can use to build links for your site.  Few are complete spam and not working anymore in the long run and few are the good ones that work in the longer run.

Spam link building tactics do work sometimes as well but for shorter term. That means spam link building can be done for event sites but not for regular websites or blogs.

In this blog post, I am mentioning only those link-building tactics that are good for long-term blogs and websites. No Spam!!

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Factors to Consider While Link Building

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Before we go ahead to actual link-building tactics, let’s find out how actually we need to find high-quality links. For, that we need to know the factors to consider while building links to get high-quality ones:

Authority of Page

Authority of the page that you are getting links from is the best factor you should always consider because linking from a non-authoritative page won’t help much. When we say good authority, it means that the page is having quality backlinks, quality content, and ranking well in SERPs.

So, the first work is to find our high authority pages in your niche. Finding manually might be tough, so you can make use of Ahrefs to find any page’s URL Rating (UR). The more is better.

For example,

In the below screenshot, you can see the URL’s rating is low. However, the Domain Rating is great. That means, the domain is good to get the link from but, not this page because the page doesn’t have quite a good rating which means low authority.

On the other hand, if you see the below screenshot, you can the both the DR and UR are nice. That means the domain is good, and that particular link is also good to get a link from.

This way, you can try finding out the pages in your niche with a good URL Rating, and then try to get the link.

Authority of  Domain

Not just the page authority but domain authority is also a good factor. But, as discussed above, you should look at both the domain authority and page authority. First, you should make a list of high authority domains in your niche, and then dig deeper to find their pages with high authority, and then try getting links from.

For example, getting a backlink from Forbes.com is much better than getting a link from techtricksworld.com because Forbes is a very high authority website whereas Techtricksworld is a medium authority site. So, the Website’s authority does matter too.

Be informed that, I am using Ahrefs for such calculation but you can use other respected tools as well such as Moz DA/PA checker, SEMRush, as such.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text which is hyperlinked. Google uses anchor text as a ranking signal. But, lately, anchor text has been spammed a lot so Google started considering those links as spam which use the same anchor text for a link from so many pages. That means, it is good if you can get links using your anchor text but if you abuse it by using the same anchor text again and again for your link-building campaign, it would do more bad than good.

So, the good practice is, you can avoid exact match anchor text while building the links. You can make use of some long-tail keywords combined with few other words to link, and also, don’t use the repeat the same anchor again for the same link.

For example, if I am building 20 links for this post https://www.techtricksworld.com/basics-of-on-page-optimization/

and, I use On-Page SEO as anchor text in all 20 links, it would be considered spammy, and Google may hit it badly.

On the other hand, if for the same link, I use 20 different Anchor texts which is somehow related to the On- page SEO such as Techniques for On-site SEO, How to beat the competition with best On-site SEO, SEO strategies to follow in 2021, and so on, then it would be a better practice because I am not using the same anchor text again and again but every time I am using different ones.

So, it is better to use it that way. However, getting 1,2 links using a little bit similar to the exact match won’t be bad though.

Relevancy

Relevancy is another great factor that you should consider. It simply means that getting links from relevant sites is good. If you are having a website that is related to tech, and you are getting links from a health site, that backlink won’t have much weightage in Google’s eyes.

In the early years of SEO, just getting links from high authority sites worked but now, it is more of relevancy. So, make sure to get links from relevant pages/sites.

Link Position

Many people don’t much think about the link position. But, it is likely to help much if your link is either in the first fold of the article or from the main body content.

In the below screenshot, you can see the links are in the beginning. It is better if your link is placed there.

In the second screenshot, the links are at the end of the body content which is a bit less effective but still fine as they are in the body content at least.

In the third screenshot, the link is buried at the bottom which is not worthy than the links placed in the main body content. So, be sure where you want to get your link placed.

Dofollow/Nofollow

If you are into SEO, you know what a dofollow and a nofollow link mean. The link juice pass to the linking site if the link is dofollow. but, if it is nofollow, there won’t be no link juice pass because when rel=”nofollow” is added to any link, it means that search engines must not follow the link.

So, for SEO purposes, dofollow links are worthy. However, a mix of dofollow and nofollow links are great to have.

Below are a Few Ways to Build Safe Backlinks

1. Create Content that Everyone Likes to Link

Although this is not a direct method to build links, it does help you earn links. Write the blog posts that are so informative that other bloggers would like to link them in their blog posts as references. This works great. Let me share an example,

If you are into blogging and SEO, you might have heard the blog backlinko.com, where Brian produces killer content with a lot of research. This is the reason; you might find him being mentioned in most of the SEO, blogging blogs. That is why one of the best ways to get quality backlinks is to create great content. No matter how much time it takes to complete one article, just be sure that you write a masterpiece every single time.

2. Directory Submissions {Not a Safe Link Building Tactics}

Google has de-indexed some of the web directories and still deindexing them which means that the links from the directories do work! Otherwise, why would Google bother about them?

But, to be on the safer side, I would advise you not to go with directory submissions rather go for blog directories and business directories to submit your sites. Click here to get the list of such blog directories. Although I have put this on my list as somehow it works, but this might not be a safe link-building tactic.

Note: Don’t use spammed directories because they will do more bad than good. Don’t submit links in bulk.

3. Guest Posting

Though Matt Cutts has said that guest posting for SEO is unethical and will be considered an unnatural link-building practice, but you can still do some guest posts and get editorial backlinks.

Just be sure that the content you provide for the guest post must be a masterpiece that adds more value to the host blog. If you can do this, then getting an editorial link from that article to your blog won’t harm rather do more good to your site.

Lately, I have few done guest posts on SEO topics, and I made sure that they are of high quality because the high-quality content is what Google loves, and if you get links from the content that Google loves, you must be benefitted. One such guest post example is this: Long Tail Keyword Research Tools.

Alert!!

The real big problem about guest posting is many bloggers either make your link nofollow or completely remove the post after a long time. I had a few cases where I wrote few guest posts and they ranked well. Later, the blog owner edited the article and added his own content which is good, but completely removed my author bio/name. So, basically, you should be vigilant about the blogs where you have done guest posting. More importantly, try guest posting on the blogs that you trust. But, still, guest posting is a great way to get quality links. You may not face such a problem as I faced.

Additional Resources:

4. Google Webstore

You can also get a link to your site from Google’s other product, Google WebStore by either creating a Chrome Extension or App.

I thought it is a good opportunity of getting links from there, and I created both extension and app. 🙂

You can try this too. To publish a chrome extension, you just need to spend $5 as a registration fee while registering on Google Webstore.

Additional Resource:

5. Infographics

You all know already that visual content performs better than textual content. Thus, bloggers love to add them to their blog to increase traffic, lowering the bounce rates, and increasing the Avg. Time spent on their blog.

So what you can do is to either create a beautiful infographic using free tools like Piktochart or get one designed by any professional designer and then host it on some infographic sharing sites like Visual.ly.

Now, reach out to bloggers, and let them know about the infographic. You may ask them to use it on their blog along with a credit link to your site, or you can offer them a guest post in which you will write a good description for the infographic, and publish it on their blog.

You will notice that many bloggers will accept your offer because they love to use visual content on their blogs. Make sure that your Infographic must be unique and designed professionally.

Additional Resources:

6. Broken Link Building

Broken link building is a time-consuming task, but it can be very effective. You need to find out broken links on the blogs or sites in your niche, and then reach out to the owner to let them know that they are having broken links on their site, and also suggest them to replace them with some good working links.

Now, what you need to do is to suggest one of your blog posts or site’s content as reference. So, that they will just replace that broken link with your link.

In most cases, you will notice positive results because who would like to keep broken links on their site?

You may use the Check My Links Chrome Extension for finding the broken links on a web page. I ran a test on a Wikipedia page, and see what I found:

The red link is the broken one, and the green ones are working. So, you may make use of this Chrome extension to quickly find out the broken links on any web page. And, then start writing the email to the blogger to let him know about the broken link and suggest relevant replacement link.

Additional Resources:

7. Blogger Outreach

Blogger outreach is a tough job because most of the time, you don’t get replies to your emails.

In this strategy, you need to find out the blogs in your niche and ask the bloggers to mention one of your blog posts that are relevant to their content.

Unless you are an authority, it’s tough to get replies to your emails but if you have the killer content, you may expect some positive replies. I would recommend using this strategy only if you have awesome content.

8. Participate in roundups

If you have a good presence online, you may be asked by many bloggers to participate in their round-ups. You must take part in them because this might help you get backlinks as well as more personal branding.

I have shared my views on the topic: Content Amplification technique for Amplifyblog.com, there I have got a link back to my blog as well. Though I have taken part in many roundups, few give Nofollow, few dofollow which is fine. But don’t ever miss the opportunity to participate in such round-ups.

Just to show you how many links you can get from different blogs, do check my Featured-on page where I have listed all the roundups, interviews, and lists. They all got me good backlinks for my blog.

9. Help Others and Earn Links

Since the beginning of my blogging career, I have been helping the needy ones. I helped them just because I love helping everyone. And what I noticed in recent years that helping others earned me a lot of natural links to my blog as well.

I won’t suggest helping just because of getting links but do it to feel good, and after all, it is a noble job. You might get links from many.

10. .edu and .gov Link Building

Every SEO person knows the value of backlinks from Edu and Gov sites. It’s tough to get links from such sites, but if you have some great content, then you can reach out to relevant Edu sites to let them know about your content. If they like, they may add your link there.

Apart from this, you can search Edu, Gov sites on Google, and then find out the way to get link opportunities such as via comments or outreach.

You may perform these search queries in Google to find them out:

For .edu sites:

site:.edu inurl:blog

site:.edu “keyword” “blog posts”

site:.edu “keyword” “post comment”

For .gov sites:

site:.gov inurl:blog

site:. gov “keyword” “blog posts”

site:. gov “keyword” “post comment”

11. Profile Links

There are many websites that when you join, give you the option to fill your profile. In many of them, you may find a website field where you can input your site’s link, and get a free backlinks from the authority sites.

Even in a few sites, you will get space to write about yourself where you can include a backlink to your site as well.

These types of profile links can be strong and do boost your site’s SEO. However, it is not very easy to find out such high authority profile link opportunities.

12. Interlinking

Interlinking can be a great way to build backlinks to your new pages or blog posts. Yes, if you have a website or blog, you might have so many pages, and possibly many of those pages are old and have some backlinks pointing to them which add value to the page. So, whenever you publish new content on your site, you can go find out similar subjects or anchor texts on your site, and add links to the new content in them.

I have been doing this, and I would say that in many cases just adding 3-4 internal links from old blog posts, my new posts’ ranking improved. I would recommend doing interlinking manually and refrain from using some plugins because they may not select the right anchor texts for links every time. That may ruin the link structure throughout the site. However, Link Whisper plugin seems to be a good one, but still, when it shows you recommendations for linking, you should do check the links, and then add the links using the plugin. The one benefit of this plugin is it does the work faster. So, if you want to use it, go about it.

Additional Resource:

13. HARO (Help a Reporter Out)

HARO is a great way to get high-quality backlinks from high-authority websites. You can get backlinks from even DA 80-90 websites for free but let me tell you that it is not quite easy as it seems.

For one of my niche sites, I have responded to 50 questions and got 1 link that is from DA 85 site. So, it was worth the time I spent writing those answers for 50 various questions.

All you need to do is to go to the website https://www.helpareporter.com/, and register yourself as a source, and select the preferences. Select related to your niche as I selected tech.

And, you will start getting questions, in your email. You just have to respond to them with your answer, and send that the reporter along with your name and website.

If you are pitch gets selected, it is highly likely that the reporter gives you credit by mentioning your name and link.

The thing is, you have to respond to a lot of questions to get a few approved. but, it is all worth, if you get even 1-2 backlinks from high authority websites.

Additional Resources:

Conclusion

Backlinks are very important factors for search rankings. So you must not ignore it. Above-mentioned are the few good link-building strategies that still work well. While building links, you must avoid link-building mistakes because one mistake can put your site in danger as Google is very strict when it comes to links.

Share your views and ideas about link building. How you build links for your site?