How to Ethically Build Links to Your Site for Greater Ranking

The internet is an interconnected virtual world. It’s all about exposure out there. The more you make your presence known, the more visitors you get. And there are lots of ways to do that. Embarking on a social media campaign or email marketing are some of the best ways.

Those are effective. But they’ll be useless if your site doesn’t rank high. So what to do? Well, build links! Not only does this give you more traffic, but this also improves your site’s authority and reputation. Here we’ll show you how link building can get you a higher ranking.

Table of Contents

1. Searching For The Latest Trend

You might have seen news articles featuring quoted statements from another source. When you do, you’ve most likely clicked and opened it. That’s proof of how effective this strategy is. Search for trending topics and write an article about them. The latest news is a good example.

You can share your thoughts and merge it with reliable facts from the internet. When you’re done writing, you can then reach out to reputable news sites to have them published. Journalists are always on the lookout for resources and opinions from “experts.” You can be one if you want to.

2. Doing Guest Blogging

Back in the day, guest blogging is like letting a famous author commend your book. Back then, it was all about getting as many “commendable” links as possible. But Google’s recent algorithm changes made it more complicated than that.

You now need to make sure your guest posts are on a high-authority site. And don’t spam the articles with unrelated links. Everything should be relevant to your topic. Think of it as a give-and-take relationship.

Offer value to the website that has a bigger audience than yours. Don’t look at it as an advertisement to drive readers to your site immediately. It’s about going slowly but surely. When you do, there’s no doubt you’ll be getting those people to your site ASAP.

3. Repurposing Your Content

The online landscape ups its standards through time. High-quality content is needed more than ever. And it takes more time and effort to produce one. To avoid the hassle, it would be great if you’d juice out a piece of content as much as possible.

Turn your blog post into a podcast. Or perhaps take quotes from your article and create graphics out of it. You can then share this on social media. Not only does this make your content more useful, but this also improves your reach.

4. Do Thorough Competitor Research

Link building isn’t a one-stage process. It’s like a funnel having different phases, with research as its first phase. This means that you won’t have to deal with future problems if you do this first step correctly.

Search for competitors in your same niche. These competitors are likely to target the same audience you’re reaching out to. You can do this by using tools like Ahrefs. This helps you know your competitors and their backlinking strategy. It also gives you recommendations on the best backlink targets to link to.

5. Engage With The Community

You might have heard this over and over again. But as much as we’d like to dismiss it as a “given,” it’s still an efficient way to get a ranking boost. Make your site’s presence known in social media. Create an account on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can also do video marketing on YouTube.

Constantly put up posts and interact with your followers. Also, join forums and active communities like Reddit. These can drive massive traffic to your site. Just be sure not be too aggressive as this can turn the entire community against you. Offer real value instead of always dropping links.

Conclusion

Studies prove that link building can boost your site’s traffic by up to 190%. This means you’re most likely to raise your ranking by building links. And not only that, as your domain authority also goes up while your audience keeps coming back for more.

White hat backlinking assures that you’ll see a dramatic improvement in your site in no time. It’s also a risk-free way to get more traffic. For sure, your site will be soaring to greater heights when you follow these.

Comments

Freddy G. Cabrera says

February 5, 2018 at 10:07 pm

Hey Christopher!

Good to see you here man!

Great tips you are giving. I’m becoming a big fan of guest blogging. I gotta admit that I have not been doing it much and very frequently. But, I am getting ready to attack this marketing strategy full force. 😉

I’d also like to add the most powerful type of backlinks, Natural Backlinks. This comes from the quality of your blog post. When your blog post is super great, I mean it’s just so EPIC, people would actually want to link to it. When people are linking to your blog post, that is when you know you are doing it right. I find this to be the best way to gain authority backlinks!

Thank you for sharing this!

Best regards! 😀
- Christopher Jan says
  
  February 7, 2018 at 7:53 am
  
  Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Freddy! Agree 100% with everything you said. While hiring a link builder is a good way to strengthen your link profile, nothing beats good, old linkbait content where people natural link back to your content due to the usefulness and value it offers.
Jan Steen says

February 6, 2018 at 7:43 am

Hi Christopher,

Great written article!

Love the tips. The Guest Blogging is for us still a challenge due to the nature of our website that is actually a big professional blog with links to related business templates. Here you can see it: https://www.bizzlibrary.com

What would be the best way to write guest blogs for a template website like this? Should we just write an expert blog item for each article we have on the website or refer to the main-page?

Thank you for sharing.
- Christopher Jan says
  
  February 7, 2018 at 7:56 am
  
  Hello, Jan!
  
  You can link out to the homepage on the author bio. Normally, most sites that accept guest post permit this, although there are some who are stingy when it comes to links included by the guest blogger. IF you want to link to the body of your content, it’s best to link to specific pages on your blog as long as it is contextually relevant to what you’re discussing on your blog.
Akanshi says

February 6, 2018 at 2:31 pm

Nice article!

What is your opinion about the comment backlinks? Do you think comment backlinks can work in 2018 and beyond or you think they only increase the spam score?
- Christopher Jan says
  
  February 8, 2018 at 12:50 pm
  
  Comment backlinks work but not in the way you’d expect. Backlinks in comments no longer move the needle like it used to back in the day – there’s still value to it, but there are other types of backlinks that will make an impact on your search rankings. If anything, comment backlinking is a good source of referral traffic, especially if your comments are extremely useful to the readers of the post and the backlinks are contextually relevant to your comment.
Jane says

February 6, 2018 at 4:54 pm

Hey Chris,

Awesome tips! Personally, I find blog commenting and guest blogging to be very effective ways to build links ethically.

In fact with those two methods links are a sweet by=product – I get to build a lot of genuine relationships with other bloggers and potential customers.

Social media is powerful too! So repurposing content to share in social media is a wonderful idea 🙂

Thanks for putting this up.

Cheers,
Jane.
- Christopher Jan says
  
  February 8, 2018 at 12:51 pm
  
  You pretty much explained why people still employ comment backlinks as part of their SEO strategy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Jane!
Julia Mia says

February 8, 2018 at 8:25 am

Hey Christopher,

I recently started blog commenting and guest blogging what I find it helps a lot in link building and competitors research helps me a lot to know where they are getting the powerful backlinks.

About re-purposing content .. It’s a great idea. Definitely I am going to use it.

Very informative article!!!
- Christopher Jan says
  
  February 8, 2018 at 12:53 pm
  
  Guest posting is an awesome way to generate backlinks to your site, Mia! Think of it as an “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” tactic where you provide great content to bloggers in exchange for a backlink on your author bio. Repurposing content is definitely something you should try and invest in doing for a long time. I’ve detailed further how you can repurpose old blog posts into something new here: https://christopherjanb.com/blog/content-repurposing
Marc says

February 14, 2018 at 5:47 pm

Like you mentioned, I find the competitive link reports from Ahrefs to be really helpful. You can often find some links that are easy to get, and you can get a good feel for how aggressive your competitors are with their own link building.
Display Solution says

September 6, 2023 at 1:07 pm

Hey Christopher,

I recently started blog commenting and guest blogging which I find it helps a lot in link building and competitors’ research helps me a lot to know where they are getting the powerful backlinks.

About re-purposing content. It’s a great idea. Definitely, I am going to use it.

Very informative article!!!