Building backlinks is one of the most important and necessary strategies that you have to adopt in order to snag and maintain a high position in the SERPs. But, as is the case with all other SEO strategies, you have to be careful about the approach you take.
Just as building quality do follow backlinks can have a positive effect on your website ranking, the opposite will be the case if the backlinks are not from authoritative websites.
In this post, we will be looking at how you can create useful and “fruitful” backlinks for your website in 2023.
What are Do-Follow Backlinks?
Backlinks are of different types, i.e., depending on the tags that are attached to them. For example, there are sponsored backlinks. The “sponsored” tags on these backlinks show that the site behind the link has paid for it.
In the same way, there is a “do-follow” backlink. Simply put, a “do-follow” tag tells the search engine crawler that they should point back to the linked website. A “do-follow” tag is considered to be a lot more authoritative and beneficial for the receiving websites.
That is why websites try to get dofollow backlinks from other webmasters whom they collaborate with.
Now that we’ve learned what these types of backlinks are, let’s move on to look at how you can build them.
How to Build Do Follow Backlinks?
When it comes to building backlinks, there are two main ways that we can describe. Mind you, different sources on the internet will categorize backlink-building methods elsewise, but the two ways we’re chalking out comprehensively cover it all.
The two methods include:
Collaborating with webmasters (i.e., guest posting articles, getting link insertions, etc.)
Creating link-worthy content to automatically attract backlinks from websites
Now let’s take a look at both of these processes in detail.
Collaborating with Webmasters
The first method using which you can build backlinks is to collaborate with webmasters. In SEO jargon, the process of contacting webmasters for the purpose of getting backlinks is colloquially referred to as “outreach.”
Here is how this process works:
First off, you have to contact a webmaster and let them know that you want to publish a guest post on their website. Alternatively, you can also ask them to place a link to your website on an existing blog post/article. This process is known as “link insertion,” and it involves using existing content on a website rather than publishing new one.
If the webmaster agrees to publish your guest post on their website, you need to simply write a blog post and place your link in it. Then you can send it to the webmaster.
To adumbrate, this is all the process is about. You reach out and then send your article for publishing. However, there is a lot of stuff between these two steps. For starters, you have to focus on the quality of the content you send. (We will discuss more on how to create quality content in the following heading.)
Other than that, you also have to make sure that the website you are reaching out to is reliable and authoritative. You don’t just want to reach out to any other website. Rather, you want to get a link from one that has a good standing in the eyes of the search engine.
There are a number of different metrics that you can check on any given site to see how authoritative it is.
To start off, you can check the traffic of the website you’re planning on reaching out to. For this, you can use tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush.
You can also check the DA (Domain Authority) of the website using tools such as DA PA Checker and Prepostseo DA PA Checker.
You should also look at the total number of backlinks a website has as well as the keywords that it is ranking for. Tools like Ubersuggest can be used for this purpose.
Creating Quality Content for Automatically Attracting Backlinks
The other method that you can try out, which is a little indirect, is to create such high-quality content that automatically induces writers to link back to it.
If you publish authoritative and valuable content, writers could come across it when doing research. And should they find some useful information and/or facts/figures, they could add it to their content while giving a link to your site as a source.
This can be difficult in the start, but once you manage to find a foothold, you will be able to get a lot of backlinks within a short span of time. Think about websites like Ahrefs and Hubspot. They probably get hundreds of backlinks daily since they have some really good (and popular) content published on their websites.
How Can You Create High-Quality Content That Act as a Link Magnet?
Here are some tips for creating link-worthy content for your website.
Do Some Solid Research: If you want people to link back to your website, you need to make sure that the content is structured on some heavy research. When you include up-to-date and valuable information in the content, it makes the same look authoritative.
Keep the Content Readable: Readability also plays a big role in the link-worthiness of your content. You can’t expect people to link back to the content if they can’t understand it. While you can get some information on how to write readable content from this source, here are a few basic steps to help you get started.
Keep all the sentences under 20 words.
Keep all the paragraphs under 3 – 4 lines.
Don’t use hard words where you can avoid them.
Structure your content properly to make it easily skim-able.
Add visual aids to make the content easy on the eyes of the readers.
Include Facts and Figures with Accreditation: Vague information and opinions aren’t exactly what people tend to link to. You have to include things like definitions and statistics, all the while citing their original sources. This will add value to the content and make it more likely to get links.
Don’t Plagiarize: If your readers somehow get wind of the fact that the content you’re touting as your own is actually plagiarized, never will they think of linking back to it. You should never plagiarize any content in any capacity. And if you happen to find some of it occurring due to coincidence/accident, you need to get rid of it before you publish the content.
Take Care of Grammar/Spelling Issues: Grammar and spelling issues can ruin the authoritativeness of your content. These types of rookie mistakes can put your readers off, which can deter them from linking back to your content. You have to ensure that there are no such errors in your content when you publish it.
Conclusion
Building backlinks is a simple – but at the same time, difficult – task. It can pay off well if you are scrupulous about the process, and it can harm your site’s ranking if you’re lax.
We hope you learned a thing or two about do-follow backlinks and how you can acquire them for your website.