There are countless strategies to match the visitor's intent better and earn links from other websites. At Hatless we can think of more than 150 ways to acquire backlinks. Below we line up nine evergreen linkbuilding strategies that are valuable for any company.
1. Be helpful: improve another site
Where people work, mistakes are made. Think of spelling errors, a missing element or a broken reference. Pointing out a mistake leaves a positive impression: after all, you're emailing to improve their website. At the same time, you can make one more suggestion for improvement: pitching your link.
2. Write useful content that adds to a topic
Valuable and relevant are the keys to good content. They draw the right visitors to your website, looking for more information about the topics they care about. Because your content genuinely adds to an existing topic, your site becomes all the more interesting for other websites to link to. And that's exactly how the most beautiful backlinks come about!
3. Replace a dead link
Most webmasters will do anything to fix broken links. Sending a visitor to a dead page makes for a bad experience, and you can put that to good use. Broken link building is a four-step process:
- Find industry-specific web pages with one or more broken links
- Contact the webmaster and let them know about the problem
- Suggest replacing the broken link with a link to your site
- Check whether other pages link to the broken URL, and repeat the steps above
4. Track unlinked mentions
Every day, big brands like Starbucks, McDonald's, Apple and Toyota are mentioned thousands, if not millions, of times on the web. Yet not everyone who writes about these brands links to them. Editors forget, are too lazy to add a link, or simply slip up during publication.
By monitoring when people mention your brand, you can act on the opportunity quickly. Contact the person who wrote the blog or manages the website and kindly point out that a link might be useful for the visitor. Backlinks can be earned relatively easily this way.
5. Tell something about yourself
A personal page with unique content about someone in the organisation who frequently appears in publications is a link opportunity. That way, every interview, presentation, training or event becomes a chance to earn a link. Extra tip: add a contact form, so people who want to know something about you, or want a quote for their article, can reach out easily. In exchange for a link, of course.
6. Create a (free) tool
This may sound like a big investment, but it doesn't have to be. Think of a tool that lets visitors calculate something with a (simple) formula. By building it and making it freely available, you are genuinely valuable to people who need it. And that happens to be a great argument for another site to link to your tool.
7. Build your own glossary
Most industries have their own jargon. The definitions of these terms are very linkable, because many people don't know what certain words mean. By creating and sharing a glossary you help everyone looking for a definition. Building an industry glossary is fairly simple, but enormously time-consuming.
Once the glossary is published, it needs promotion. The easiest way: contact someone who uses one or more of your terms somewhere on their site and suggest linking to your definition.
8. Do original research
Research can produce striking results, and those findings make for link-worthy content. Thanks to its informative nature, the willingness to share and link to research is usually much higher than for, say, a commercial product page. Research is also good PR, which can produce beautiful links of its own.
9. Use the skyscraper technique
The tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, welcomes around two million visitors a year. The skyscraper technique is a content technique designed to attract more links. How?
- Find a proven "linkable asset" that already has many links in your industry
- Create an improved version
- Tell the right people about it, so they can link to your content