See, there are 3 primary reasons why one website links to another:
- It has high domain authority
- It posts high-quality content
- It doesn’t follow any black hat SEO techniques
If your website checks all these, people will link to it blindly (unless you are a competition).
But, what about a website that launched yesterday?
It wouldn’t have much content, let alone a high authority that grows over time.
When it comes to backlinking strategies for a new website, you need to be extremely thorough as a single mistake can be harmful for the site’s online reputation.
Moreover, building backlinks is easier for established websites as compared to newer ones, because people trust an expert than a new player in the field.
So, how to create a proper backlink strategy for your website then?
Well, that’s what you will learn in this article:
- What are backlinks?
- What are the types of backlinks?
- 8 ways of building backlinks for your website.
However, before we start, allow me to clarify one thing…
Do NOT Buy Backlinks
People who’ve just started a website tend to pay for backlinks hoping that their domain would quickly rank in the top SERPs.
This is called link buying, and it is frowned upon by Google since it falls under black hat SEO techniques.
If Google finds out you’ve bought links for your website, it will get penalized. That means Google will remove your domain from its index and SERPs.
So, if you have bought backlinks or are thinking about it, we would suggest you stop and remove them right now. Instead, we would highly suggest you to build backlinks from scratch, using ethical methods.
All the 9 ways to create backlinks that we’ve included in this article are 100% ethical, won’t get your website penalized, and are absolutely free.
Now that we got this out of the way, let’s begin.
What Are Backlinks?
A backlink is a hyperlink created when one website links to another.
If Website A links to Website B, it will be a backlink or incoming link for Website B.
Search engines count backlinks as votes of confidence, thus making them valuable from an SEO perspective.
In other words, backlinks indicate to the search engines that others trust your content, and it is worth displaying on a SERP.
So, building backlinks enhances your search visibility and positively impacts your rankings.
But, you must ensure they are relevant, have high quality, and increase naturally.
Backlink Relevance
Backlinks should be closely connected to or appropriate for your site or pages. If the linking is irrelevant, it is not going to provide value or authority.
For example, you link a page about fixing a car to an article about baking a cake. By intuition, you know that the linking is not suitable. Hence, irrelevant.
Such backlinks strategies will not be as effective as they should be. So, you must keep backlink relevance in perspective when designing a backlink strategy for your site.
Backlink Count Over Time
Google also monitors the number of backlinks a site receives over time. It ensures people are not paying for backlinks but are building them naturally.
For instance, Website A gets 3 backlinks per month, and Website B gets 10 backlinks per month (on average).
After some time, Website A gets 3 to 5 backlinks per month while Website B receives 30 to 50.
As soon as Google notices this abnormal rise, it puts Website B under scrutiny. If it finds that the backlinks are unnaturally acquired, it can penalize Website B.
Therefore, you should build links naturally and gradually increase their count over time.
How Many Types Of Backlinks Are There?
There are two types of backlinks:
- Do-follow
- No-follow
Do-follow is the default state of a link between one site and another. Search bots crawl the internet with the help of do-follow links and pass no-follow links.
SEO experts prefer creating backlinks that are do-follow over no-follow links.
But, they should be quality do-follow links. If you get do-follow links from spammy sites, they won’t help your search rankings.
Also, you should not completely dismiss no-follow links. They help you build your natural backlink profile and drive more traffic to your site.
How To Get Backlinks For New Websites: Tips On Building Backlinks Without Spending A Penny
Though there are several ways of building backlinks, not all of them are legal. Due to this, we have jotted down the most successful and ethical backlinks strategies to get quality and relevant backlinks.
1.) State Benefits While Outreaching
Outreaching to different websites is one of the most effective backlinking strategies that you must take as an owner of a new website.
Since new websites usually do not have many backlinks, you must state some benefits that the referring websites can get if they link to your web pages.
Here are some tips on how you can convert your website’s metrics into benefits while pitching to other domains:
- Provide the organic traffic that you have been getting after your website was launched
- Mention the dwell rates, bounce rates, clicks, and impressions to the websites for them to understand whether the users are converting as your clients, and finding the content useful or not.
- Send ahead the SERP rankings of your website content to state how they can also get a good traffic percentage through your web pages.
- Do not forget to attach your best quality content and client testimonials along with the pitch for them to understand your credibility and expertise.
- Mention your domain authority score while pitching for backlinks so that they do not hesitate before collaborating with your website.
These tips will help demonstrate your website in a positive aspect, which will further strengthen your pitch.
You can access all the above-mentioned data by using our RankWatch Analytics feature. Since the tool directly integrates with Google Analytics, you will be able to get all important metrics in one dashboard.
When it comes to SERP rankings, our Ranking Overview can help you get accurate data on your web page rankings. You can export this data and use it further in your pitch as well.
Moreover, our SERP Snippets section in Ranking Overview also discloses whether your web content is ranking in Google zeroth position or not. Remember, if any of your web pages appear on the “Featured Snippets” section, it increases your chances of getting quality backlinks. So, do not forget to flex that as well in your pitch.
Besides, make sure to keep your pitch to the point, short, and crisp. Do not add any unnecessary data, that will unnecessarily increase the length of the pitch.
2.) Create Quality Content
Another backlink strategy that will help you get quality backlinks is by developing quality content. If your content is not up to mark, then websites will not refer to them at all.
Besides, websites nowadays are looking for content that is factually correct, has proper knowledge on the topic, and has been designed by experts in the field. The above-mentioned requirements are especially important in the matters of finance and health, where one wrong information can cause severe damage to the user.
That’s why, once you create content, make sure to proofread it, and include all the essential keywords to help it gain visibility.
RankWatch’s SEO IQ can help you in the last point by suggesting pointers for accurate on-page optimization.
The feature discloses all the pain points of on-page optimization that your website content is lacking and provides solutions for the same. All you need to do is incorporate those comments into your content, and the SEO IQ score will automatically increase.
Besides, the “Content Editor” section of SEO IQ provides content-based suggestions like approximate word count in each paragraph, readability score, questions that you can include in headings or FAQs, etc. These suggestions will improve the content quality, and make it readable by users.
3.) Acquiring Backlinks By Analyzing Competitors
When you start with backlinks building for your brand new website, analyzing your competitor’s link profile and their backlink strategies is extremely important.
RankWatch’s Backlink Audit can be of great help in this scenario. Once you enter your competitor’s website URL, the tool analyzes and presents their complete link profile before you.
Not only that, our Backlink Analyzer tool also gives you a detailed analysis based on the referring backlinks of the competitors, their referring domains, Anchor texts used, referring IPs, and various other metrics, through which you can extract useful information.
Once you export all the data, start outreaching to these referring domains and website owners with your content, and present them with your quality content to link to.
Proper competitor backlink analysis can result in getting quality links within no time. Moreover, with a tool like RankWatch Backlink Audit, the manual process of extracting information from a competitor’s link profile, becomes a cakewalk.
And the best thing is that our Backlink Audit is completely FREE to use!
4) Finding Unlinked Mentions & Linking To Them
Unlinked mentions are direct mentions of your brand on another website that do not link back to it.
Transforming unlinked mentions into backlinks is another widely used backlinks-building practice.
It’s a 3 step process:
- Locate sites with your brand’s unlinked mentions
- Select sites with higher authority
- Target them to link back to your site
Here’s an example of an unlinked mention of RankWatch:
There are several ways you can use Google to find unlinked brand mentions. But, it is less convenient.
Here’s what you should keep in mind while finding unlinked mentions:
- List out all the historical mentions
- Check all the websites that are not linking properly
- Target the websites with higher authority
- Persuade and not push the websites to link back
The conversion rate to get backlinks from unlinked mentions is high, due to which it is widely accepted as one of the best backlink strategies out there.
But since you have a brand new website, you won’t have many unlinked mentions.
As your website grows over time, you will find more unlinked mentions. Hence, more backlinks building opportunities.
5) Giving An Interview To Another Website
Another backlink strategy that you must include in your list is giving interviews.
When you have a new website, you can build backlinks by giving interviews to reputed websites.
In the interview, you generally share expert views on a given topic. Your thoughts add value to the content on the interviewing website and help you get a backlink.
Here’s how this backlinking strategy will work:
- The published interview will have a short introduction about you initially or in the end. You can request the interviewer to add a link to your site there.
- There can be places in the published interview where you have talked about your website. You can also get backlinks wherever the website name is present.
Sounds good? Add it to your backlinking strategy!
6) Informing Web Admins About Broken Links
Broken backlinks building is one of the most effective backlinks strategies for your brand-new site.
It is the practice of building backlinks by replacing links to 404 pages with working links (that belong to your website).
RankWatch Backlink Audit can help you discover these broken links within seconds. Once you enter your competitor’s domain URL in the tool, it will display their entire link profile within seconds.
Now, all you need to do is click on the “Referring Backlinks” section and then select the “Deleted Link” tab.
After clicking on the above-mentioned tabs, you will get a list of all the deleted backlinks from the referring web pages. These broken or deleted links will be your chance for getting quality links.
Now that you have the list, you can easily verify the content of your competitors to which the webpages had previously linked to, and create better content to pitch it forward to the referring webpages.
Ensure that the pitch states the broken link that you found on the web page, and then propose the idea of replacing it with your website content’s link.
7) Contributing To The Write-Ups Of Journalists
Journalists and reporters have access to news websites and magazines. And they often look for resources and stories to quote in their publications. This, in turn, can be a great backlinks-building opportunity.
You can ALWAYS use your knowledge and expertise to contribute to the writings of a journalist or reporter.
Besides, platforms like HARO and Source Bottle can help you share your thoughts and connect with renowned journalists and reporters.
When they pick and publish your content in their writings, they mention you in the source and link back.
8) Publishing Backlink-Attracting Content Formats
You must have already created a blog on your newly launched website. But how will you create backlinks using your blog?
It’s simple. You have to publish content formats on your blog that other websites want to share and link back.
The popular content formats that will get you backlinks are:
- Infographics & Images
- E-books, Whitepapers & Documents
- List posts, Why posts & How-to posts
You can naturally build backlinks if you put in a little extra effort and create content in these formats.
Link Building Using Images & Infographics
When a site uses an image or infographic from another site, it links back to the source to credit the creator. In this way, the creator (site) earns a backlink.
You can approach websites that might use your image or infographic to have a look at it.
If they are interested, convince them to use it and credit you in return. As a result, you get a backlink.
Link Building Using Documents
Documents like whitepapers, e-books, PDFs, and case studies can help you build backlinks.
If they are detailed and valuable, other sites would want to share them. And while they do so, they mention and link back to its source.
Optimize all file elements when you publish case studies, surveys, e-books, pdfs, etc., on your site.
Give it a relevant filename, title, and description, which contain keywords. Don’t forget to include your logo and colors to make sure it stays associated with you.
Link-Building Using Why Posts, How-To Posts, & List Posts
People on the internet are in search of answers and lists (s) of things. So, most websites want to link to valuable content.
You can start creating valuable content in the form of why posts and how-to posts on your site, increasing your chances of getting backlinks.
Here is an example of a how-to post from RankWatch:
Similarly, you can publish list posts on your website and earn backlinks.
Here is an example of a list post from RankWatch:
9) Convincing An Influencer Or Blogger To Talk About Your Brand
Another famous backlinking strategy is collaborating with social media stars.
Influencers and bloggers in any industry have a huge fan following. Besides, their social media handles and blogs have high authority and trust value.
When you convince one of them to talk about your brand, they get content to share. Besides, influencer collaboration is one of the major aspects of social media marketing which, if done right, can bring forward tons of backlinks, conversions, and potential leads as well.
However, there are certain things that you must keep in mind while connecting to bloggers or influencers for creating backlinks:
- Know them thoroughly
- Make an initial contact
- Propose an appropriate offer
- Communicate your needs
- Measure the results
As you have a new website, it might not be easy to convince bloggers and influencers to talk about you. But you shouldn’t give up trying.
Sooner or later, you will be able to convince them and build backlinks.
Last Notes
Backlink building is not easy. And when you have a brand new website in hand, it becomes more exhausting.
You never know how many backlinks you will build over time and if they will impact your search visibility or not.
But it shouldn’t demoralize you. Great things take time.
Which of the above backlinking strategies will you adopt, and which ones worked for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below. We would be happy to help.