3 strategies for acquiring authoritative backlinks for your website

The Google search algorithm loves a website with a mix of authoritative backlinks. Backlinks are the cornerstone of SEO. They help Google understand which websites are trustworthy, useful, and provide valuable to searchers, and that impacts where on Google your content indexes for.

Unfortunately, though, 55 percent of web pages have no backlinks at all! I know. Shocking. Just imagine how much better your website would fare if you had sure-fire strategies for building high-quality backlinks.

To help remedy the plight of backlink-less web pages, we’ve assembled three of the best strategies. These strategies can mean the difference between building trust and increasing visibility on Google, or falling behind and finding yourself indexing on page eight, nine or, worse still, page ten.

Let’s take a closer look.

1.      Write reviews and testimonials

We love this one because it’s so straightforward, ethical, and doesn’t take long to do.

Here’s what you do: First, think of all the products and services that your business uses. Now, think of all the places that those products and services are reviewed or talked about. The list will probably be quite long now – that's perfect.

Now, write a quick review of the product or service you use on the corresponding website and link back to your website. Simple.

This strategy is a great way to acquire some ‘quick-win’ backlinks. Our sister company, Turbine, for example, has reviews on software aggregator sites like Capterra. Each link on Capterra counts as a backlink to Turbine, and that’s a win. (Here’s a long list from HubSpot to get you started.)

But, if you want to get those really high-quality back links, this task could be taken to the next level. For instance: to gain authoritative backlinks on partner sites, reach out to them directly and ask if you can leave a testimonial on their website.

You could even ask them if it’s okay to feature the review prominently on their website. A link to your site in a testimonial on the homepage, for example, will have the most authoritative power when it links back to your website, so aim for that if you can.

This is a great offer that many businesses will accept if you do it well. Think of it this way – if one of your customers recorded a professional two-minute testimonial about how much they love your business, wouldn’t you be happy to publish it on your website (with a wee link to their website)? Of course you would.

2.      Create guest content

Writing guest content and then linking back to your website is another great way to get more backlinks. Indeed, it’s an age-old strategy that, unless you’re an SEO greenhorn, you might have tried before.

The problem is that the process of reaching out to businesses can be time-consuming, and you don’t want to be that guy just blanketing every inbox on the internet with what’s clearly a templated email.

So, how do you make guest writing a success? Here's some ideas:

• Think ‘content’ as much as writing. If your business has a strength for video or audio, suggest that you create this kind of content for them. Ideally, fill a hole in their content mix – if they’ve done no podcasts, offer to let them guest appear on yours.
• Create pre-written / pre-recorded content that is ready to go when someone agrees to let you guest-post. This makes it easier on your end to get things out the door.
• Make your outreach as unique as possible. Include their name, something you like about their business, and an offer that’s hard for them to refuse, like ‘here’s a 500-word article that’s ready to go and perfect for your blog’.
• Build relationships with other content creators. This makes it easy and natural to create guest content for each other. Reach out over LinkedIn and connect with businesses you’d like to partner up with, and then, offer to bring value to their platform in your own unique way.

Follow these tips and you’ll find it easier to get guest writing opportunities (and those precious, precious backlinks). But what about leveraging your own content?

3.      Improve your content and how you promote it

If your business isn’t creating its own high-value content, then you’re missing a trick. We’ve got a lot to say about this and consider ourselves the experts in creating killer content that gets results.

Ultimately, the better the content, the more backlinks it will naturally get as people share it on social media channels and link back to your website.

But, how do you improve your content and how it’s promoted? Try this:

• Re-publish your content to platforms like LinkedIn and Medium to expand its reach. Also, remember to optimise it for the platform and add some unique value to it whenever possible.
• Re-purpose content into different mediums. For example, transcribe your videos into blog articles and take the audio and put it into a podcast format.
• Provide answers to your customers biggest problems and provide the kind of content that people value so much they’d usually pay for it. For example, if your competitors are charging for a two-hour video course, create your own one and give it away for free.

Use these tips to improve your content and how you promote it, and you’ll naturally get more backlinks to your website. But getting backlinks is only one piece of the SEO puzzle...

Your SEO journey has only just begun

Applying these tips will dramatically accelerate your link building efforts – by writing reviews, creating guest content, and improving your own content, you’ll get the authoritative backlinks you need to improve your website authority and search visibility.

But there are other important steps for creating an SEO strategy that ranks your website highly. Improving page loading speed, handling keywords in the right way – there are a lot of moving parts to a winning SEO strategy.

For more on how to improve your SEO. download our SEO checklist below