Backlinks are links from one website to another. When your site is referenced on other high-quality websites, search engines like Google consider your content valuable, trustworthy, and authoritative. This means your pages will likely rank higher in search results. Without backlinks, you’re missing out on opportunities to increase your brand’s visibility and reach.

Read on to learn more about link building to strengthen your site’s search engine optimization (SEO).

How to build backlinks: 10 best practices

Building high-quality backlinks goes beyond acquiring links and optimizing anchor text. It requires a strategic approach to create valuable content and foster meaningful industry relationships.

Here are 10 link-building strategies to strengthen your backlink profile and improve SEO performance.

1. Create shareworthy content

Creating content that naturally attracts clicks and shares is one of the most organic ways to build backlinks. Shareworthy content — be it blog posts, statistics-backed infographics, or interactive tools — offers unique value to your audience that competitors might not provide. The more engaging and original your content is, the more likely others will link to it.

Focus on trending industry topics or address common pain points with practical solutions to encourage industry peers to link back to your website as a valuable resource.

2. Leverage guest posting

Guest posting is when a creator produces content for someone else’s site. This tactic lets your team contribute content and share your expertise with other reputable websites while securing backlinks. It also helps you tap into a broader audience and improves your site’s ranking through referral traffic.

To start, find sites relevant to your niche and nurture positive relationships with their creators. Create content for them that naturally includes a link to your website using relevant anchor text. A successful guest post adds value to the host’s site and positions you as a thought leader, which will help you build future backlinks.

3. Provide expert quotes

To secure backlinks, offer expert, research-backed quotes to reliable bloggers, journalists, and influencers. Content creators often seek expert opinions to support their own credibility.

Reach out to industry publications or respond to queries on platforms like HARO (Help A Reporter Out). Optimize the anchor text linking to your site so it adequately reflects the linked content. Each expert mention can lead to a new backlink and help position your site as an authoritative, go-to source in your industry.

4. Tell stories with first-party data

Data-driven content can attract backlinks by offering original insights that others may reference. First-party data, such as surveys, customer insights, and case studies, is highly valuable because it provides proprietary insights that aren’t available elsewhere. Publishing these insights in a visually compelling format, like a downloadable report or infographic, encourages backlinks from sites looking for original data.

Ask your analytics team to present unique data points, trends, and patterns that appeal to industry leaders and try to be first to market. For example, a whitepaper demonstrating how implementing a new automation system increased operational efficiency by 25% can lead to industry reports and enterprise blogs citing your research with backlinks.

5. Partner with other industry experts

Collaborating with industry leaders to cocreate content can boost backlink opportunities. When you partner with a respected name and both share collaborative content across your platforms, it leads to cross-linking and exposure to new audiences.

Reach out to experts for interviews, co-authored blogs, and podcasts to create material. These individuals add credibility to your content, encouraging people familiar with their reputation to link to your site.

6. Conduct online events and webinars

Hosting online events and webinars generates interest and brings awareness to your brand while creating backlinking opportunities. Industry websites and participants often link to the event site or recap when promoting these events.

You can maximize the buzz by organizing events on trending topics, inviting influential speakers, and creating a dedicated landing page for each event. After the event, publish key takeaways and recording summaries to generate more backlinks as people share them with their own audiences.

7. Analyze competitors’ link-building strategies

Studying your competitors’ backlinks is a clever approach to identifying new linking possibilities. SEO tools can help you find websites that link to competitors and target the same pages and keywords.

By understanding what content types attract backlinks within your industry, you can refine your link-building strategy to improve site outreach. Replicating successful strategies with your brand’s unique spin can also help your website gain similar or higher-quality backlinks to improve your SEO ranking.

For example, if you notice that competitor case studies on supply chain improvements are attracting backlinks from major industry publications, you could create a detailed report on how your company optimized its logistics process. By adding unique insights or data, you can attract high-quality backlinks from similar sources.

8. Engage in broken link building

Broken link building is the process of finding broken links on external sites and offering your content as a replacement. You can use Ahrefs’ broken link checker to identify broken links. After finding one, contact the site owner and suggest your content and relevant anchor text as an updated alternative. It’s a win-win: They fix a content gap and SEO error, and you gain a valuable backlink to your site.

9. Use effective email outreach

Instead of sending generic messages, personalize your outreach by emailing site owners directly. Explain how your content aligns with their specific style and audience, and foster relationships by offering valuable resources, guest posts, and linkable assets.

For example, you could reach out to the editor of an industry-leading technology publication and highlight how your whitepaper on enterprise cloud migration aligns with their recent focus on digital transformation. You can then request a feature or a backlink to your study.

In your email, provide a clear value proposition to gain a head start over others vying for the same opportunities. Ask other creators to link on descriptive anchor text and keywords that provide value to readers and search engines.

10. Partner with local charities and organizations

Working with local charities and organizations boosts your SEO and community presence. Support local causes through events, donations, and sponsorships, and advertise your company on the ground and online. Ask the charity to mention your name on their website, where they can add backlinks.

These backlinks are valuable because they come from trusted, authoritative sources that work for good causes. By actively promoting these partnerships, you also encourage other businesses and news outlets relevant to your collaborators to link to your site.

How to evaluate publisher quality before reaching out

When building backlinks, you want to target credible, high-quality publishers that will genuinely improve your SEO. Evaluating a website before contacting the creators saves time and effort and helps you identify the best backlinking opportunities.

Here are a few factors to consider.

Look for nofollow tags on external links

A nofollow tag is an HTML attribute that tells search engines not to pass authority to the linked site, meaning it doesn’t directly impact SEO. Passing authority is a website’s capacity to rank highly in search engine results and distribute its backlink influence to other sites.

Nofollow links can still drive valuable traffic to your site and increase brand exposure, but for the best results, focus on securing follow links that pass authority to your site. Use browser extensions or SEO integrations to differentiate between follow and nofollow links.

Worth noting: A site that uses many nofollow links may still be worth pursuing if it’s a high-traffic page or an industry leader.

Check the site’s domain authority

Domain authority (DA) is a metric that gauges how well a website will rank in search results. DA scores range from 1 to 100, and sites with high DA offer more SEO value when they link back to you.

Prioritize publishers with a DA score of 40 or higher, but don’t ignore mid-range sites in the 20–40 range because they can still provide valuable niche backlinks. Mix high and mid-level DA sites for a more diverse and natural backlink profile.

Consider publishing frequency and content quality

Publishing frequency is how often a site releases new content. Websites that publish consistently tend to have more active audiences and a healthier SEO performance. A site with regular updates indicates that it’s well-maintained and is more likely to provide valuable backlinks.

It’s also important to assess the quality of the new content. A site that posts low-quality content frequently may add little value, even if it publishes often. Ideally, the content should also align with your industry to attract relevant readership.

Evaluate traffic volume

Traffic volume is a strong indicator of a site’s reach and authority. A website with higher traffic can bring SEO value and referral traffic to yours. Use tools like Ahrefs to estimate a site’s traffic volume and find engagement metrics like bounce rates and time on page to gauge the traffic quality.

High traffic is a positive sign but doesn’t always guarantee quality. Check where the traffic comes from and whether the site’s audience aligns with your target audience. For example, a niche website with lower traffic but a dedicated and engaged audience could benefit your SEO strategy more than a larger, general site with disengaged visitors.

Approach websites within your niche

A backlink from a niche or industry-relevant site carries more weight with search engines because it’s contextually relevant. When search engines see a reputable site in your industry linking to your content, they view it as an endorsement of your content’s credibility. Publishing a link on a niche site also makes the traffic you receive more targeted.

Look for opportunities to engage with niche forums, industry-specific blogs, and professional associations that regularly share resources and content relevant to your field.

3 common link-building mistakes to avoid

Gaining high-quality backlinks is crucial for improving SEO, but certain practices can negatively impact your efforts. Here are three common link-building mistakes to avoid.

1. Paying for backlinks

While paying for backlinks is a quick way to climb search engine results, web crawlers can detect unnatural link-building patterns. Paid backlinks are often low quality, irrelevant to your industry, or associated with spammy sites.

Buying links can also result in penalties that hurt your website’s ranking. Instead of undermining your credibility, focus on earning backlinks organically by creating content others want to link to.

2. Linking from irrelevant, plagiarized, or duplicate content

Search engines prioritize links from high-quality, original content. But backlinks from poor-quality content or irrelevant sites outside your industry can harm your SEO efforts. Google might ignore these links or even flag your site for questionable link-building practices. Plus, plagiarized content negatively impacts your brand’s reputation as an authoritative and innovative content creator in your domain.

Instead, always ensure your backlinks come from credible, relevant sources that improve your status.

3. Not tracking or analyzing backlink data

Without monitoring which sites link to you and how those backlinks impact your search engine rankings, you can’t measure how effective your link-building is. Use tools like Google Search Console to regularly analyze backlink data and identify which strategies are working. You can also use the data for finding broken link opportunities.

Support your SEO efforts with Webflow

A strong backlink profile offers countless SEO and visibility benefits, improving your traffic and search rankings. It also drives long-term relationships with industry leaders and establishes your brand as a trustworthy name for valuable content.

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