SEMrush, one of the leading Search analytics and Competitor insights platform published a survey of Link Building Strategies that Professionals use in SEO. The survey identified 14 strategies that professionals used to assist with their backlink efforts to assist with SEO authority.
In the SEMrush survey, it breakdown of the professional’s choice of backlink building and it’s outlined in the second column labelled SEMrush in the table below. Guest posting remains the most popular choice, while replicating competitor’s backlinks came in as the respectable second and the list goes on.
What we did is to go one step further and added two additional dimensions that what should be considered critical in any organization. The 14 strategies of backlink building were not weighted equally as some will yield better Results and also Effort (Resources) to implement it. These dimension were listed and stacked racked in the table below :
EFFORT: Resources and complexity to accomplish it (“difficulty”)
RESULTS: Anticipated yield from implementing those initiatives (“Impact”).
| SEO Link Building Strategy | SEMrush | Difficulty | Impact |
| Guest Posting | 53.0% | High | High |
| Replicating Competitor’s backlinks | 46.7% | Medium | High |
| Resources and Links List Pages | 38.7% | Medium | Medium |
| Business Directories and Local Listings | 38.7% | Medium | Low |
| Broken backlinks | 38.7% | Medium | High |
| Adding URL to a post | 38.7% | Low | Low |
| Social Media backlinks | 38.7% | Low | Low |
| Public Release and Content Submission | 35.5% | Low | High |
| Unlinked mentions | 35.5% | Medium | Medium |
| Collaboration with opinion leaders | 22.6% | High | Medium |
| Forum and blogs comments | 25.6% | Low | Low |
Going through the table above, we are going to elaborate on the initiative that drives high impact and recommend way to implement it.
- Guest Posting / Editorial Submission (High Difficulty, High Impact)
Identify respectable industry web publication that will allow contributors to share knowledge, or newsworthy info. It is sometimes known as guest editorial submission on different publications. It usually requires a long term commitment from the contributor / editor, and the getting accepted as a contributor by the publication might seem challenging as they might specific requirements. For example, an entrepreneur might want to consider publications such Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com and FastCompany.com.
Recommendation: Build a profile and authority online in your industry, and once you sustain a halo – it is much easier for a publication to accept you as a guest editor. It requires a plan and commitment to write a set number of articles within a set duration as the publication is looking to create sustainable and engaging contend with their readers. Lastly, do not blatantly sell your company like a used car salesman and drop a dozen backlinks to your site as it is slimy. - Replicating competitor’s backlinks (Medium difficulty, High Impact)
This concept of mimicking your competitor’s backlinks to help build your authority straight forward, and there are a few ways to go around doing this. However, it requires some elbow grease and being persistent to accomplish this.
Recommendation: The process is broken down to three processes and requires attention for these procedures.
1) Discovery: Finding a way to identify what site is linking to your competitor’s website. Professional tools like SEMrush can greatly help in identifying your competitor’s backlinks.
2) Outreach: Devise a communication strategy along with an effective channel to reach out to those sites owners to link to your website. Look for the “Contact Us” on the footer, or Domain WhoIs.
3) Follow up: Establish a Follow up schedule as it will often require a multiple outreach initiatives to achieve your goal and that is where being persistent comes in. - Broken backlinks (Difficulty: Medium, Impact: High)
The goal of this strategy is to detect a broken link on the internet, then report it to the webmasters, and try to get it replaced with a link of yours to the same sort of content. The easiest way to do this is to look for the broken links of your rivals and send them the updated information. - Press Release and Content Submission (Difficulty: Low, Impact: High)
One of the most effective link building method is the creation and then submission of press releases, news, research, opinions, guides, and other sorts of content on dedicated platforms.These platforms imply the following websites on which you can submit paid or free info on your services. These platform would often syndicate the Release on a network of websites and that
Recommendation: Identify content that is news worthy about your organization, research, projects, etc and then have an article professionally written that should vary from 400-800 words, have images and link(s) to your website. Following that, reach out to press release distribution companies such as PR Newswire, or Newswire to have your article syndicated.
Conclusion
Building a backlink is a critical component of your SEO strategy and these 14 most commonly used tactics should help supports that goal, but knowing the Difficulty and Impact would often help a SEO marketer prioritize some of these tactics.