Backlinks: 10 Places To Get Them

It is now widely accepted within the search engine optimization (SEO) community that site owners need to build backlinks for SEO success. And not just any backlinks – the backlinks need to be high-caliber. If you’re new to this, you may be asking yourself – what are backlinks? Backlinks are links that point to your site. Most, if not all, search engines use the validation of other web sites pointing their users to other sites as a premium ranking factor for the sites receiving the traffic.  Backlinks also provide direct and organic traffic, so it’s a double win. It was once the case that you could flood the Internet with high volumes of low-caliber links and generate great results. Google put an end to this years ago, and while doing so might still generate some results briefly, the inevitable penalties are hardly worth the time and trouble.

Those involved in SEO now realize that a single high-caliber backlink is worth more than a thousand spam links or even more black hat links. In truth, high volumes of low-caliber links will backfire on you badly, sinking your page instead of promoting it, and possibly even getting you deindexed from search engines altogether.

Since modern traffic directly relates to the caliber of your website’s backlinks, you’ll be far more successful with more reputable websites linking to you. If you want these better rankings and traffic, then you need to know how to get high-caliber backlinks. What sites are places where the public can leave links and yet still see a high standard of quality maintained?

It’s a complicated subject. However, while high-caliber backlinks seem difficult to attain, they don’t have to be. There are many ways you can earn or build backlinks, especially from authoritative sources. Here are 10 you can use in your broader SEO campaign:

Learn 10 Places You Can Get High-Caliber Backlinks

1) Forums:

Forums are online message boards, and in some niches, they’re among the highest authorities of websites out there. The additional benefit they offer is that they are often highly themed around the topic that people are getting together to talk about. Given this, it’s rather simple to get your website backlinks from any forums matching your website’s niche, subject matter, or topic.

2) Broken Links:

This one sounds counterintuitive, but it’s actually great for one-way backlinks. This technique focuses on contacting webmasters of related niche sites to tell them about broken links on their site. While you do this, make replacement link recommendations. This is where you might mention your very own website. Given that you’re doing someone a blind favor, you’ve got a good shot of a backlink.

3) Guest Blog Posting:

When you look at the bloggers in your niche, see who is most influential. Can you leverage your relationship with them to do a high-caliber blog post that gives their readers something different, useful, and new? Can you get a good backlink in there somehow? Just make sure your content truly does bring quality to the other site, otherwise you’re going to make your own site look bad.

4) Infographics:

This is something of a recent craze. However, they’re effective given how easily understood and shared they are. Everybody loves a piece of visual data over reading an entire article, right? This has made the demand for infographics grow a lot. Keep in mind that Mashable and others publish many infographics across the Internet, but disregard the common misconception that they’re expensive, because they don’t have to be. In fact, you can get them for an average of $150 to $300 a piece. If each one gives you 10 backlinks, that’s only $15 for each link. That’s pretty good bang for the buck, any day of the week.

5) Online Video Sharing Directories:

Not every video sharing directory lets you do backlinks to your website, but many do. If they do, you get to put up some of the most widely clicked links anywhere online. Given how video content is often promoted above traditional SERPs for many queries, the visibility potential here is tremendous.

6) Internal Linking:

If you want to find a secret source of good links, look inside your own site. Anchor text with them and create a robust internal linking structure. At first, it just helps users have an easier time navigating through your site and helps them stay at your site longer. However, there are SEO benefits to boot. Having said that, Matt Cutts from Microsoft has recommended webmasters keep internal links per page under a hundred.

7) Testimonials:

One easy way to get great backlinks is by writing testimonials for sites you already use or enjoy. It only takes a few moments, and you can score yourself a link straight from the homepage of what should be a truly authoritative website. If you’re an actual customer of that particular product or service, then there’s a good chance you’ll get a link for your testimonial.

8) Article Directories:

Many in the SEO world widely dismiss article directories, but they can still be a potent source. The trick is making sure you don’t fall into the old trap of high volumes of low-caliber articles. Instead, you should focus on a handful of high-caliber directories and give them your own strong content.

9) Donate:

Donating to certain nonprofit organizations can earn you backlinks. It’s pretty simple, nor does it take too long. All you must do is find niche websites that take donations and put links back to sites that have donated to them. It does take some Google work to do this. Try combinations like “contributors page + donate + your keyword”, “contributors page + your keyword”, or “donation + contributors + your keyword”.

10) Viral Content In Social Media:

Your infographics might do double duty here. Anything you send out there that gets shared a lot builds both buzz and links, all of which improve your search engine optimization. If you can make something useful that also makes people laugh, you might have a winner.

When you focus your efforts on these 10 categories, you can start building a portfolio of great backlinks from high-caliber sites Google loves to see, moving your website up the SERPs. It’s sometimes challenging work, and the results aren’t always immediately obvious, but it’s well worth it in the long run. Just remember that keeping up your backlinks is as critical as building them in the first place. You can do this using a tool like Ahrefs, Majestic, or Monitor Backlinks.

Did you like this article? Well here’s another one we’re sure you’ll love: Create The Perfect Backlink Profile

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