Best Link building strategies 2020: The Complete Guide

Are you looking for link building strategies that works? Have you tried building links to your site and it’s not working out as expected? Your worries are over, in this post I will be covering every aspect of link building, how to build quality links, monitor and master how effective your links are. Sit back and enjoy the read.

Link building is also understood as backlinks in blogging terms and is considered as an important area to focus on for better SEO and in terms of ranking your blog.

WHAT IS BACKLINKS

Backlink is an incoming link to a webpage, also a major factor for ranking a website/blog in Google, even if there are more than 200 ranking factors, the quality of backlinks wasn’t important back then when Google was just starting out, but now the quality of the links I highly recommended, you can think of each link as a vote for your blog where low-quality links don’t even count and high-quality links have huge impact.

WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN DOING LINK BUILDING FOR YOUR BLOG

1. Link juice
2. Nofollow links
3. Dofollow links
4. Referring domain
5. Internal links
6. White hat SEO
7. Gray hat SEO
8. Black hat SEO

LINK JUICE

this is also a concept more than a real thing, Pat Flynn has this analogy using juice box- a backlink sends juice to a webpage, the higher the quality of the link, the more juice that it passes along. The juice helps in ranking the page, link juice can also be prevented by making a link ‘Nofollow’.

NOFOLLOW

Backlinks with nofollow in HTML code prevents the link juice is passed. When marketers started abusing the ranking algorithm with low quality, bad backlinks, this makes Google introduce the nofollow tag. It looks like this <a href=”’https://samtutorias.com/’” rel=”’nofollow’”>samtutorials</a>. It is said that nofollow links won’t help you rank but I believe in link relevancy if there’s traffic coming to your site from that link. Let assume you were featured on a big website with a nofollow link that could only help your site rank in the eyes of Google and worse case is you get more traffic to your blog.

DOFOLLOW LINKS

This is considered to be links that pass juice. These are basically normal links, by default links are dofollow so there isn’t need you set the dofollow tag in HTML, to improve the site rankings you want to have dofollow links.

REFERRING DOMAIN

The number of domains linking to a website may have plenty (or dozens or even hundreds) backlinks to your site, but all the links are from a single referring domain. This idea is also good to apply since it gives a more accurate picture, it an effective number of links.

INTERNAL LINKS

These are links within a site, for example, links from one of URL on your site to another URL linking to an existing post. It’s really effective to have lots of internal links, you must have heard people calling this interlinks or interlinking.

ANCHOR TEXT

This is also known as the text of the hyperlink. The anchor text helps provide content to Google for ranking the page that’s linked to for certain terms, the anchor text distribution for the backlinks of a page is an art and complex topic.

WHITE HAT SEO

Strategies that don’t violate the google webmaster terms of service, this is what I favor because it’s less risky.

GRAY HAT SEO

These are strategies that don’t violate the google webmaster terms of service but aren’t illegal, link from private blog networks (PBN) or web 2.0 blogs, links that are created with the aim of improving search engine ranks. The gray hat can be effective but it’s riskier than not violating the rules Google wants you to follow.

BLACK HAT SEO

Strategies that are illegal, like hacking a site and inserting links.
There are lots of noise out there about link building, lots of internet snakes oil sale many will promise you #1 ranking in 24hrs then close up shop once they make the sales.

RANKING FAST

Guess what the approach I outlined doesn’t have any shortcut, you have to put in the work if you try to take any shortcut they might work but these tactics are of high risk.
It is hard if you are new to blogging, but with time things will get easier as you more experience. You can outsource link building but, it’s really important the process firsthand.

The big issue with outsourcing SEO is that people sell SEO service but don’t really have the experience, it possible for someone to know all the buzzwords and the process around it, but it doesn’t mean they’re effective practitioners.

You can read all about blogging, watch videos about internet marketing, study Dough Cunnington, Neil Patel, Zack Johnson, Brian Dean. But it doesn’t mean anything until you start your own project. There are a lot of people waiting to sell their services but they have no clue what they are doing.

BASIC LINK BUILDING CAMPAIGN

• Social profiles
• Blog commenting
• Guest posting

With this 3 things listed above, you will do fine, spend lots of time on blog commenting and guest post and you can basically rank for anything.

OTHER OPTIONAL STRATEGIES ARE:

• Answering Quora
• Press Release
• Wikipedia link Building
• Directories

Below are the main Gray hat strategies, but they are riskier so I won’t advice you use them.

• Web 2.0 blogs
• Private blog networks (PBNs)

If you are able to find your way around gray hat and you do it properly, the risk is lower but it’s easy to make mistakes.

SOCIAL PROFILES

A social profile is a page on a site like, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, that has a field where you can fill in your site information, mainly the one thing we care about is your website URL, this serves as a backlink to your site, which is great. However, it will be a nofollow link.

You must be thinking if its nofollow why then do you need this?

There are three main reasons.

1. The profiles can help you connect with other bloggers that may let you guest post on their blog.
2. It makes your site look like a real site, not s site with thin content, you must have seen many great sites that have social profiles.
3. Nofollow links can still be valuable, even though it is less valuable than a dofollow link.

FAST AND EASY TO SETUP

You should still set up these social profiles even if you don’t intend on using the social sites. You can use them later if you want. Take, for example, you might want to start publishing videos on YouTube, your profile will be ready for you to start publishing.

WHAT SITE SHOULD YOU SETUP PROFILES FOR?

• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Gravatar
• Google plus
• Pinterest
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter

If you know of other social sites, go for it, set up those profiles too. Remember, the main thing is to add your URL to the profile so you have a link on the profile page.

BLOG COMMENTING

After publishing 2 or more articles on your blog, it’s time to start blog commenting, these are genuine, real comments on real blogs must be related to the topic and niche, make sure the targeted blogs are highly relevant that’s very important.
Blog comments are usually nofollow and that’s fine, it’s normal for a website to maintain a healthy percentage of nofollow backlinks.
Make 5-10 or more comments every day for a month, not all comments will be approved so I recommend you make lots of comment.

The important thing to consider, to help you get the highest number of approved comments.

• Do not put a URL in the actual comment text since it is far less likely to be approved.
• Nice and warm comment: make sure to read a paragraph or 2 so you don’t leave a comment that is not relevant.
• Put a name in the NAME field, not your keyword phrase
• Put your URL in the WEBSITE field, it may be a link to your homepage or to a particular post you want to rank.

GUEST POSTING

These are the act of reaching out to other blog owners for the sole purpose of publishing an article on the site and getting a backlink from them. Check out my guest post on Techirons.

GUEST POSTING WITH HIGH TOUCH OUTREACH

Here are the 2 step process:

• Network within your niche or related niche.
• Ask for a guest post.

The more time you spend on step 1 the better you will do on step 2. It all about the network, and it will set you apart from your competitors.
The best part about step 1 of guest posting is that you already started if you do blog commenting.

HERE ARE SOME GREAT IDEAS FOR NETWORKING

• Email the blogger
• Comment on a blog
• Share the blog content on social media
• Be friendly
• Chat or direct message the blogger on social media

Link to or feature the blogger on your site. You can do any or all of the above steps, the main idea of this high touch outreaching is to make sure the person likes, knows and trust you, that way when you ask to guest post, you will be able to ask a friend rather than some random blogger.

DIRECTORY LINKS

I will advise you to avoid free directories and target the ones that make sense, free directories are not helpful for ranking since everyone can get these links, if a link is free or easy to get it probably not a very effective link depending on the site, you might be able to get links on a relevant directory,

A directory like Followlist gives dofollow to every link, so it’s considered relevant.

Provided here are 200+ directory submission site list

WIKIPEDIA BACKLINKS

When you search on google about any general term or phrase, it is saved to assume that you will see a Wikipedia page in top 10 results, Wikipedia is highly esteemed and highly trusted by Google.
Wikipedia links are nofollow, but I bet you can’t argue that these backlinks are not valuable.

Getting backlinks from Wikipedia is easy with this simple process.

• Create a valuable, epic level content for your niche
• Make sure the content has solid, true information that can be used as reference material on Wikipedia.
• Keep the content free of affiliate links or any kind of commercial content.
• Create a Wikipedia account
• Make some edit over 1 or 2 weeks by helping out on back lop
• Edit your targeted article in Wikipedia that’s related to your niche
• Add a reference to your article that is in your article.

WEB 2.0 BLOGS (GRAY HATS)

This consist of creating free blogs, publishing niche relevant content and adding links to your site.
The blogs are free platforms like blog.com, blogger.com or wordpress.com and many more.

Note: creating websites like this violates the google webmaster guidelines, but is no way illegal, this means Google frowns upon the approach. If you take web 2.0 seriously you could actually make it valuable to the niche, popular media companies do the same thing by creating a smaller website and pushing traffic back to the main site.

WHAT TO DO WHEN CREATING WEB 2.0

Create a blog on three platforms listed above.
Make sure to publish 3 to 6 originally written content on each on that are related to the niche of your site.
Add 1 or 2 links to your website from about half of the post on the web 2.0 blogs.
Include 2 or 3 links to another website in the niche that are non-competitive in each of the posts on the web 2.0 blogs (for example about.com, Wikipedia, CNN, NY Times or other big media outlets)
When you feel like taking your link building to the net next level, here are some advance Gray Hat strategies.

The advance approach includes:

• Tiered link building to the web 2.0 blogs
• Private blog network links

TIERED BACKLINKS

I don’t use automated link building tools, and I don’t recommend them for linking to your site, but most people prefer to build lots of links to the web 2.0 properties, some do this to increase their site DA (Domain Authority).

The web 2.0 blogs provide a layer of insulation fro the automated backlinks, you can outsource this part to Fiverr, most contractors at Fiverr can deliver you the backlinks in about a week or less. After penguin 4 rolled out in the fall of 2016, it is expected this kind of tired, spammy links to lose their effectiveness.

PRIVATE BLOG NETWORKS (PBNs)

Private blog networks are a collection of expired domains that you use for link building to your site.

WHAT IS AN EXPIRED DOMAIN?
An expired domain is a domain owned in the past and had content. But for some reason, the original owner decided not to use it after it got expired. Expired domains are hard to come by these days, a better way to get expired domains is through auction since the domain usually hasn’t expired it just been sold.
A PBN is highly powerful because you control the links within the domain, which means you can create or alter the content on it so it relates specifically to your niche.

In Addition: A PBN link is most likely to pass along a very good amount of link juice to any website with a link from it.

Link juice can be thought of as a ranking power.
According to Moz– A PBN can pass more ranking power than a brand new domain.

Setting up a PBN is not simple, I don’t recommend you build a PBN if you are just getting started, it’s too overwhelming so just buy or rent links.
However, ones you are established then a PBN can be a huge asset.

CONCLUSION

If you follow the strategies accordingly without violating the webmaster rules, there’s sure guarantee you would rank every post you desire. I can’t assure you 100% ranking power because the most site I listed to give dofollow backlinks might turn out to be nofollow, focus more on blog commenting and guest posting.

Do share with friends.