There’s no arguing that search engine optimization (SEO) is still one of the most effective marketing tactics to grow your online business.
Of course, due to its ever-changing nature, SEO techniques have drastically evolved over the past decade. For instance, in 2023, you can’t expect to get away with low-quality backlinks and drive traffic to your website.
Today, if your website has a poor backlink profile, it’ll most likely struggle to climb the search engine ladder and secure top positions in SERP. Link building in 2023 is hard but equally rewarding. If you get high-quality backlinks, you’ll be able to improve the website’s domain authority and improve search engine rankings.
It’s worth noting that strategic link-building practices can also help you drive targeted traffic and create multiple traffic channels. Simply put, prioritizing link building is still important to yield the desired results from your SEO efforts.
To make your job easier, we have compiled a comprehensive guide on how to build a strong backlink profile by exploring modern-day link-building opportunities.
So, without any further ado, let’s get started.
Understanding the Basics of Link Building
Before we go any further, let’s quickly overview the basics of link building. Even in 2023, link-building characteristics have remained the same, with a few changes, including:
- While building new backlinks, it’s essential to focus on website authority. The general thumb rule says that you should acquire links from high-authority domains. It’ll automatically boost your website’s domain authority.
- With link building, it’s necessary to build as many do-follow links as possible, but you should maintain the desired 60:40 ratio to adhere to Google’s guidelines.
- Black-hat link-building strategies will not yield positive results in 2023. In fact, if you rely on black-hat SEO practices, they’ll damage your website’s authority and may lead to Google penalizing it.
Best Link-Building Strategies to Strengthen Your Backlink Profile in 2023
1. Utilize Your Competitor’s Backlink Profile
Here’s the deal; it’s quite possible that your competitors have been putting in the effort to get quality backlinks.
You can analyze their backlink profiles, look for new backlink opportunities, and start working on acquiring backlinks from these quality domains. If these websites have provided links to your competitors, they are most likely to do the same for you.
But, there’s a catch. While scrutinizing competitors’ backlink profiles, you must look for websites that’ll add value to your online reputation and may bring in some traffic. Here are some key factors that’ll help you analyze your competitors to build a strong backlink profile.
- To find the most potential competitors, start by doing a Google search using your target keywords. Then, go through the search results to evaluate websites that are directly your competitors.
- Once you have a list of the most potential competitors, use a dedicated SEO tool like Ahrefs or SEMRush to evaluate their backlink profiles one by one.
- As we mentioned earlier, look for websites that are most likely to link back to your domain.
- Then, start reaching out to these businesses one by one with your link-building proposal to get an authority backlink.
2. Broken Link Building
Yes, broken link-building can be turned into an effective link-generation opportunity. How? You can simply offer to replace broken links for other websites with content pieces you’ve created on your own website. It’s natural for website owners and even SEO experts to overlook broken links while trying to generate new quality links.
So, once you have a list of a few websites that might link back to you, simply go through their links and look for the ones that point to broken web pages. Keep in mind your goal is to look for broken links that would want to link back to your content pieces.
Again, tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush will help you evaluate these broken pages. Once you have a list of these broken pages, go ahead and contact these website owners with their broken link stats and offer to replace them with working links.
3. Use Infographics
Infographics are a content format that has gained immense popularity among digital creators. We are living in an era where visual content has become more prominent in driving users’ attention.
Yes, you can write an informative blog and optimize it using your target keywords, but it’ll be time-consuming and equally challenging to convince people to link to it.
Infographics, on the other hand, have a visual appeal that instantly draws anyone’s attention. If you can design high-quality, information-driven, and captivating infographics, more and more people will want to link to it.
If it’s your first time designing an infographic, you can use online tools such as Canva and use its built-in features to craft a visually appealing infographic for the end users. You can also share these infographics across different social media handles to gain instant exposure and ensure better promotions.
4. Use the Skyscraper Technique
Creating skyscraper content has proven to be one of the most effective content marketing strategies in the SEO community. Although you may come across statements trying to convince everyone that ‘skyscraper is dead’, that’s not true at all. You can still create the skyscraper content and use it to generate new link-building opportunities.
For readers who don’t know, the skyscraper technique involves discovering high-quality content and creating a better version of it. The goal is to look for content already performing well in your industry with enough quality backlinks.
Once you have found such a content piece, the next step would be to do thorough research and pen down content that outperforms it. People who have linked to this existing content piece will most likely link to your content piece as well.
5. Publish Well-Researched and In-depth Guides
While performing a Google search, the majority of users look for quality guides that could provide complete insight into the topic they’re searching for. That’s why all the big brands are always focused on creating comprehensive guides to engage their potential customers more effectively.
But, there’s another advantage to creating such comprehensive guides. They automatically become a link magnet and instantly attract website owners to link to them. Why? Because they provide quality to the readers, thus getting ranked by the search engine in the top positions of SERP.
It’s worth noting that creating these in-depth guides is a hassle-free task. All you have to do is find a topic (around your keyword) that most people are searching for and pen down an informative guide accordingly.
Conclusion
Link building is an essential part of designing an SEO campaign. It improves domain authority, establishes the desired link juice, and pushes the website’s rankings in Google SERP. However, link building is not the same as it was a decade ago. Today, you need to be extra cautious with your link-building practices to prevent Google penalties and build a strong backlink profile. If you don’t have the necessary technical expertise, you can also hire a team of SEO experts and let them implement the best link-building practices to improve your backlink profile. At NetSpark Solutions, we have an in-house team of experienced SEO and marketing experts who specialize in acquiring high-authority backlinks from relevant websites. Get in touch with our experts today!
