Strategies for ethical link-building in 2023

Link-building is the cornerstone of any SEO strategy. This practice helps you get more organic traffic, and improve visibility, eventually leading to a higher ranking in Search Engine Result Pages(SERPs). 

Businesses and companies across the globe want to rank their sites higher on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines. Getting as many backlinks as possible has remained a key SEO strategy for businesses. 

Some businesses began using black hat strategies like buying links from shady sites, paying other sites to link back, and posting links in forums. 

But over time, Google got exceptionally better at detecting artificial link-building. It has released Several guidelines for marketers to follow. 

Google released another update in June 2021 about targeting spammy links and penalizing the sites using them. 

Keep up with the link-building tactics to up your digital marketing game. But first, let’s understand what link-building is and how it benefits your business.

What is link-building? 

The practice of acquiring one-way hyperlinks (otherwise known as backlinks) to your website is referred to as link-building. 

The goal is to persuade Google that your website is a trustworthy source of information for other sites, eventually improving visibility in SERPs. 

Importance of link-building

USERP surveyed 800 experts from the SEO industry, of which 67.5% believe link-building greatly impacts search engine rankings. The number 1 result in Google SERPs has, on average, 3.8 times more backlinking than numbers 2-10. 

To rank higher, you need to build high-quality backlinks. Google might think of it as ‘votes,’ which will add to your website’s credibility. 

The higher the quality of backlinks, the better your site will rank on google. The best part is it will drive traffic to your site organically.

Ethical link-building strategies to follow in 2023 

Here are some key strategies for you to get quality backlinks. 

• Capitalizing on digital PR

A link-building strategy experts suggested for 2023 is digital PR. Establish good relations with the journalists in your industry. 

It is a great way to get backlinks to your website. But it would require you to have usable assets to offer them that they can use in their media stories and news articles. 

• Creating in-depth guides

Semrush content marketing study found that articles of over 7000 words generate 1.5 times more shares(links) than those with an average of 900-1200 words.

Also, In-depth guides and how-to articles generate 1.5 times more organic traffic. This is because long-form content gives readers all the relevant information, making it more desirable and go-to content.

• Great content on hot topics

Searching for hot/trending topics is one of the best strategies. All you have to do is to be up-to-date with the latest trends in your industry, and people will automatically backlink you.

You can use tools like Ahrefs, Google alerts, and Buzzsumo to explore hot and trending topics in the industry. 

• Guest posting

If you intend to create quality backlinks, then generate quality content for guest posting.  Low-quality content just for getting backlinks is a big NO in Google’s eyes.

A quality guest posting combined with great content can be sustainable in the long run for ethical link-building. Long-form, SEO-optimized, and well-researched content will be irresistible for a publisher. 

• Directory submissions

Submission in an online directory should be a part of your link-building strategy. When people need to search for a product or service, they are most likely to find it on Google. 

That’s why you should submit your businesses in an authoritative directory. That way, you can get backlinks and improve the online visibility of your business. You must keep one thing in mind; directories should be related to your niche.

• Expert round-up game

Have you ever come across posts like this? 20 Digital Marketing Experts Roundup

The publisher curates insights from several experts on a particular topic in such blogs. These blogs give a backlink to the expert’s site, making it a win-win scenario both for the expert and the round-up curator. 

If you want tons of backlinks in no time, you can share insights from experts in that industry. 

• Social media engagement

Although you can’t get any edge from social media directly, you can still leverage its power. You can share your best writing pieces and use content to build a reputation. For this purpose, you can share your content on Quora and Reddit on related queries. 

This way, you can increase your brand recognition and create a chance to attract reputable websites for white hat link-building.  

• Developing industry-related tools

If your agency has developed a tool or app related to your industry, it can organically drive traffic to your site without guest posting or any other kind of link-building strategies. 

Offering a tool or some features for free can get you hundreds of backlinks in no time. 

Example: How has Neil Patel increased the popularity of Ubersuggest providing users with more for free 

• Inspecting your competitor

Sounds like spying? Well, you have to. 

Inspect from where they are getting their backlinks. The backlinks from your rivals are associated with the same niche, so you can find it potentially helpful. 

In addition, it will save time skimming through the web and searching for websites willing to link you.

• Internal-linking

Internal linking is still an established way of link-building and is also supercritical to the SEO of your website. Following this, you can add value to less popular pages on your site. 

It will help you accrue multiple benefits, like improving ranking on SERPs, boosting page views, and increasing the average time on-site.

• Link insertion

Inserting links has been one of the most effective and easy-to-implement tactics. You can use a link-building tool to find potential sites related to your content. 

Where you find a stellar piece of writing that could get an edge from the additional resources, you can reach out and suggest to the owner of that site that your content be added.

Wrap-up

Link-building is considered a tedious and challenging SEO strategy; you can also hire a link-building specialist for the best results.  Backlinks matter a great deal. For better or worse, they always have, and they always will. 

So go, fetch them, and grow on Google.