Where and how to get free&safe backlinks
The backlink profile is the totality of links that lead to your site. Search engines are very fond of sites that are frequently and well cited on the Internet, and therefore link building is one of the most influential factors for any website promotion campaign.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what link building is, how and where to get quality backlinks, and which backlinks can help or harm your site.
Topics covered in this article:
- What is link-building;
- Types of backlinks;
- Popular ways to get or build backlinks;
- Conclusion;
What is link-building
Link building is the process of getting hyperlinks from other websites to your site, and it is the cornerstone of a high-quality and sustainable platform.
Properly applied, link building can improve your search rankings and generate relevant, voluminous, and consistent traffic.
Every SEO specialist will say with confidence that backlinks are essential if you want to get on the first page of Google.
Website rankings continue to be significantly affected by content and backlinks. Thus, you cannot ignore link building under any circumstances.
Of course, today, it would be a huge mistake to buy thousands of cheap backlinks without paying attention to the quality of the resources.
You have to choose those platforms that will guarantee you relevant traffic and potential customers. It is also important that your backlink profile looks natural and organic.
Getting backlinks appreciated by search engines is not a simple task, but it is doable if you stick to proven strategies.
Types of backlinks
- Natural backlinks:
Natural links are placed naturally by users who want to share useful and interesting content. There is no need to pay for their placement. - Purchased:
Purchased links are those that appear on other sites on a contractual basis. When buying backlinks, it is crucial to carefully analyse the donors. Low-quality donors can harm your website rankings. - Anchor links:
An anchor link is a clickable text within a hyperlink. Before clicking on an anchor, the user must understand which site he will be redirected to. The anchor reflects the essence of the recommended resource. It should be organically integrated into the text: the phrase must be correctly and naturally constructed.
By the anchor text, search robots judge the relevance of the posted link. If the search engine robots decide that the link is irrelevant to the topic, this will negatively affect the rankings.
Important! By placing an anchor link, do not give search engines a reason to suspect hidden ads. Work carefully with commercial anchors containing words such as “buy”, “sell”, “order”, etc.
- Non-anchor links:
Non-anchor links do not contain keywords and phrases. They simply indicate the address of the page to which they are referring – by type https://www.site.com .
The second option for non-anchor links is to put the general phrases “here”, “more details”, “check” to the URL.
Search engines are more loyal to non-anchor links.
Popular strategies to get or build backlinks - Do-follow and no-follow backlinks:
When one website links to another website, there are two ways to do that. The first way is being a do-follow link, and the second is being a no-follow link. While both types of links perform the same function of linking from a source site to a target site, they tell the search engine absolutely different things.
Let’s find out the difference between do-follow and no-follow backlinks.
A do-follow link is a link that helps from an SEO perspective, by conveying the authority and the “link juice” of the original site to the linked site. Getting dofollow backlinks will help increase a website’s domain authority or domain ranking, which will help improve your keyword rankings.
By default, links are dofollow.
A no-follow link or backlink is a link that does not delegate authority to the website to which it links. These links do not help from an SEO standpoint.
Still, we have to mention that acquiring no-follow backlinks is a good thing. Even though you won’t get the entire SEO benefits of do-follow backlinks, no-follow backlinks can bring traffic to your website, and diversify your backlink portfolio.
- Eternal and rented backlinks:
An eternal link is placed on the site for the entire period of its existence. Typically, these are natural links posted by resource owners.
However, there are special services where you can buy perpetual links.
The rented links are placed for money and will be on the site only during the rental period. They are usually published on the home page. The main risk of rented links is that they are unnatural, so you shouldn’t expect to gain link weight with them. The main advantage of this link acquisition method is its low cost. But since they bring little effect, there is no point to invest in rental links. - Other types of links: contextual, post, footer.
Contextual links are placed in the text of the page: in articles, blogs, news sections. These are the most natural backlinks that search engines like.
Sometimes links are placed above or below the article. In these cases, the links are often irrelevant to the content. Hence, they are less valuable than contextual backlinks.
The least useful for SEO are backlinks from the footer, sidebar, or header. Such links relate to different topics, they are rarely clicked on, and search robots realize the links may be placed for money.
Popular ways to get or build free backlinks
There are several link building strategies that can be divided into three major categories – black, grey, and white hat SEO link building methods:
We will focus on white hat SEO link building that assumes an organic increase in external references without using manipulations and deception of search engines. First, we want to mention that this is not a link-building guide or a difficult technical SEO strategy to fool search engines.
We have selected the simplest and most self-fulfilling link building options available.
So, you may start building backlinks through crowd marketing, outreach, submissions, and link reclamation.
Anyone can take advantage of all these strategies and apply them to any SEO campaign. We promise you, they work.
Very, VERY good!
Crowd Marketing is More Powerful Than You Think
Crowd Marketing is one of the most effective ways of building links. Actually, it’s more than getting a link. Through positive reviews, you gain customer trust and build your reputation.
You will earn appreciation, promotion, and quality backlinks that will help your website gain authority. Check our entire crowd marketing guide: here.
Crowd marketing is the safest link-building technique that guarantees a natural-looking backlink profile. Still, for a successful crowd marketing campaign, you must consider the following:
Research and carefully select forums and communities that are highly rated, have high traffic, and aren’t filled with spam.
You may check our guide on how to select forums for crowd marketing.
Make sure your comment fits well with the context of the forum thread, and you offer a real solution. Crowd marketing is not advertising. You must offer useful and valuable advice.
Forum link building is indeed extremely useful for SEO, but it also takes time for a correct application.
This is why people use services like CrowdMark- to get quality backlinks without spending decades (slightly exaggerated).
If you cannot afford to spend a lot of time managing your forum link-building campaign, learn more about our forum marketing services.
Write Good Guest Posts
It’s a slow process and results in fewer links, but these links can be much more valuable to your site – and it’s worth the extra effort!
The links from guest posts should be extremely relevant, authoritative, and include relevant keywords. Placing guest posts on high-authority sites will help you improve your backlink profile and increase the link juice.
Your primary goal is to create quality content and help your audience. Reach out to online media outlets, bloggers, and other websites related to your industry and ask them to post your articles.
In those articles, you will link to the relevant content of your site as a resource. Many platforms will accept to publish your articles.
Through guest posts, you can become a trusted source of information and gain authority in your industry.
Trading or paying for links is contrary to Google’s policy and puts your site at risk of penalties. But when we talk about guest posts, you can choose the platforms you want to post on, the type of link you want to attach, etc.
Directory Submission
Directory submission is the procedure of listing your blog or website on different web directories or business directories.
Submit your site under the correct category or subcategory to create the backlinks. There are several directory submission lists over the Internet, for both paid and free.
Before submitting your website, we recommend checking the DA (domain authority) and PA (page authority) of the directory website. DA/PA will help you ensure directories are of high quality.
There are many online directories that have lots of spam links and provide no value to other websites. Google Penguin Algorithm will penalize your website if you get backlinks from low-quality platforms.
Link Reclamation
Like directory submission, link reclamation doesn’t require creating new content. It’s an easy way to turn your unlinked brand mentions on other websites into backlinks, or fix your broken backlinks.
Using Google search queries or the platform “brandmentions”, you can find articles/blogs where your brand name is mentioned, but there is not a backlink to your site. Email those sites, thank them for mentioning your brand, and ask them to attach your link.
Use ahrefs to find your external broken links that should lead back to your site.
Email the site owners and let them know the links are broken, provide them with new links, and ask them to replace the broken link with the new one.
Conclusion:
At the end of the day, white hat link building (off-page SEO) is the only way to ensure your website gets high-quality backlinks and maintains its SERP rank over time.
Resist the temptation to use sloppy black hat tactics and link schemes, or your site will pay the price in the end. Follow Google’s guidelines and don’t try to cheat!
CrowdMark provides strategic, creative, and performance services to consumer-oriented businesses. We help companies increase brand awareness, raise sales, create community, drive interaction and improve site rankings through innovative SEO techniques.