There are times when writing really good content is not enough when you are looking for people to link back to your site. Even if you have good content and you are appearing higher on search engine rankings, it may not be good enough in order to get people to use your site as a respected source.
There is however a way of getting the backlinks you want by proactively reaching out and sharing the link to your site in appropriate locations. Here we will take a look at the various ways in which you can proactively create backlinks for your site, and how they can really benefit you and your site in the future.
Use Your Site As A Source On Quora
Quora is a great website where you are able to answer questions visitors have asked that relate to your site’s area of expertise. To start with, you could try using keywords from your site to find questions that relate to you and the kind of content you write. Chances are, you will find hundreds or even thousands of questions that can in some way be answered by the content that you have on your website.
When you respond to a question with the correct answer, then you have the opportunity to include the relevant piece of content from your website as the source. This will encourage some people, including the person who has asked the question, to click on the link and go through to your website and find more information on the subject. The important thing to remember though is that you must always respond with a helpful answer, otherwise plaguing Quora with lots of brief and unhelpful answers with a link will look too much like spam, which can harm your site’s reputation. Make sure you answer the question properly, then include the link to your site as the source of information.
Answer Questions On HARO
If you are not familiar with HARO, it is essentially a website where journalists and other reporters go when they have a question that needs answering. By signing up for HARO, you can answer a reporter’s question and possibly get yourself and your site a little free press.
This is very similar to Quora, in that you should use your website as a source rather than the actual answer to a question. By just providing the link to your site, the journalists and reporters who ask the questions will think that you are just a spammer and will ignore you. If however, you prove yourself to be very helpful, then there is no reason why they will not mention you and your website as the source of their information.
Post On Relevant Forums
Many websites have been put off the idea of posting onto industry forums since the Penguin update to Google means that this kind of thing is considered to be spamming behavior. However, if it is done properly then posting on forums can be very helpful for creating backlinks.
The first thing you need to do is make sure that you are only posting on forums that are relevant to your website and its industry. You also need to make sure that what you post in the forum is of use to the people reading it. In other words, you need to do more than simply provide a link to your site and say that it has all the answers they need. You need to go into a little more detail and attempt to communicate with the other forum members in order to be considered a legitimate post. If you do these things, then you should be able to get around the Penguin updates to Google rankings.
Link To Other Sites
This may sound a little strange, but linking to other sites and providing them with a backlink is actually a good way of improving your own backlinks. That is if you approach it the right way.
Whenever you are writing a new piece of content and you are using a website as a source, head over to that site and find the contact details of someone who runs the site. Send them a quick email saying that you have included them in a post on your website, and then include the link to your site so they can read it. Tell them that if they like it, they are free to share it through their social media channels if they want to. If the source website likes your piece, then they may well send a tweet or a Facebook post out that includes a link to the piece that you wrote. It is a simple but very effective way of getting natural and effective backlinks.
This kind of proactive approach is starting to become more and more common. Getting natural backlinks without having to do anything is becoming harder and harder, so websites are now having to go out and try and get the backlinks they want. The simple steps that we have detailed above are a great way of taking control of your backlinks so then they can have the right impact you are looking for.
