8 Smart Link Earning Strategies Ranktracker

Intro

In this post, we will be discussing multiple smart link-earning strategies you can start using today.

But first, You can rank without links, but ranking with links is so much easier.

Why are backlinks important?

Backlinks are the most important factor in ranking on Google search. The other important aspect is content.

A link to another site is more than a link. It acts as a recommendation, a way for other people to say that they trust your site and that’s why link-building is crucial for success online. Links help you rank for crucial money keywords and that helps you add more people to the sales funnel.

It’s difficult to get that endorsement but is a way for you to boost SEO performance and consistently land great links. Also, links help you get search engine traffic which means your dependence on advertising campaigns, email campaigns, or Facebook ads reduces. This way you can sell more of your digital marketing courses, drive traffic to your eCommerce site, and sell more.

A link-building strategy shows your brand is in context to other brands. It reminds other people you exist as a brand. Backlinks show the relationship between two sites and how the other site helps the second site grow.

How to smartly get links today in 2022?

1. Reclaim Unlinked Mentions

Reclaiming unlinked brand mentions is the simplest and quickest way to build quality backlinks.

Keep an eye out on who mentions your brand or blogs. Google Alerts is a free and simple tool that allows you to do this.

If you want more insights into mentions like the shares or domain authority of the site, use tools like Ahrefs Content Explorer, or Mention or Ranktracker’s very own tool. Conduct a thorough SERP analysis.

More often than not, you’ll see that the author hasn’t included a link back to your site, when they mention your brand or service. That’s why sending them a quick note where they mention your brand, product or service asking for link attribution often works. This allows the site to create a better user experience for its readers and allows them to click through and learn more about the brand.

You can rinse and repeat the same strategy endless times. You can get links from events you organize, from employees’ names, and research reports by your company.

Keep an eye out for interviews that feature your company’s employees and ask for a link back to their profile page on your site. Look for mentions of reports or stats you published, asking for link attribution. You can always automate these processes through automation tools. ContactOut’s email finder tool is one of the best tools you can use to research email addresses of relevant people at a company.

To sum up;

1. Find brand mentions of your business online
2. Compile a list
3. Research the author and their email
4. Reach out and ask them to include your link

2. Start Getting Contextual Links

Some articles that feature additional resources do so in the read more section.

These links appearing inside the text of an article are called contextual links.

The key to getting more of these depends on reaching out to the right prospects. Find them by researching articles relevant to the content you’re creating and on ones that already feature a read more section.

When you reach out to the author to pitch the study don’t forget to talk about why your content is worth getting featured. A persuasive and personalized approach will go miles rather than a strict single-use reminder that asks prospects to forcibly link to the page whether they want to or not.

Once you start earning links, you will notice that people come to them naturally. With light direct relationship building, publishers will make a beeline for you. You can also add contextual links through guest blogging.

Relationship-based links are critical to success as opposed to link exchanges. You can use Ranktracker’s backlink research tool to find these mentions.

3. Feature on X Best List Mentions

The customers of today research things online well before they make a purchase decision. They go through multiple comparison articles to understand what others recommend.

Use a keyword research tool to develop an idea of the search volumes around best of keywords. If there are more than a few thousand searches per month for the said keyword then getting mentioned on the list is a good way to reinforce the brand and earn quality backlinks as well.

Here’s an example of the same:

If you look at search engine page results from the perspective of CTR, there’s a limit on the amount of traffic you can generate. If your product offers free trials like Grammarly, there’s a greater chance of getting mentioned on these lists.

You can also give away coupons to bloggers to make this possible.

Don’t try to rank #1 for the term but rather multiply the click-through rate for your site and down the line you get higher sales volumes.

Go beyond link building to create brand awareness for your product. Collect the most relevant prospects and prioritize them based on domain authority, their link profile and drive traffic. Once the list is ready, pitch the authors of the post to show them why your product needs to be on the list.

4. Become a Source of Original Information

Use your expertise and uniquely sourced data to be quoted as a source for other bloggers. Every time someone quotes you, you become a source for them and earn a link.

Being a trusted source means you can increase brand awareness and drive referral traffic to your site.

For example, if your product is a time tracking software, share expertise on managing time, productivity, and resource planning.

You can start with HARO, short for Help A Reporter Out. It connects expert sources with bloggers or journalists who want sources.

Every day HARO sends you an email with queries from writers in your industry. Pick ones that resonate well with your business and respond via email.

It takes approximately four weeks for the article to get published after you mail your response.

HARO isn’t the only way to score these links. You can always publish high-quality statistics you researched on your own and build links to them.

5. Start by Revisiting and Updating Old Content

If you find an article or research report that hasn’t been updated in a long time, first check how many links the said piece has.

If you find an article or a research report that hasn't been updated in a while, check how many backlinks the piece has. If there are many sites referencing that content, then you have a valuable piece of content with you. Go ahead and create a better fresher piece of content with even more relevant data.

Once the content goes live, reach out to bloggers who linked to the old content to let them know about the updated piece.

You will get the results of outreach in days in the form of backlinks, social shares, or even raw mentions. This helps you build your online presence.

You can add tables with relevant information and ensure that your post is full of useful information.

6. Build Free Tools

When you create free-to-use tools like calculators, templates, or even template generators, that is a good method for you to earn links or even become an effective strategy for lead gen.

1. Start with basic keyword research in your industry and pair that up with templates, tools or generators

Check out the tools that appear on the top 10 results for those keywords 2. Figure out which tool or generator receives the most links 3. Building something similar with better design and more functionality

Deisgnhill has its free logo creator tool that has earned thousands of links by allowing businesses to create simple logos. HubSpot has a free email signature generator that tool has earned thousands of free links.

7. Start by Publishing Ultimate Guides

An Ultimate Guide is a stellar piece of content that is best, most comprehensive, and most detailed on a topic.

It covers information so that you don’t need to go to any other place to learn more about it.

The reason such guides attract inbound links is that bloggers and journalists use that as a point of reference.

An example of this would be Jobber’s Electrician Salary Guide, which gives a detailed breakdown of electrician West Pennant Hills salaries by years of experience, state, role, etc. for both business owners and prospective employees.

If someone wants to explain a concept in much more detail they can link to this particular guide rather than starting with the basics of what SEO is and who it’s for.

Here’s an example:

(Image Source)

An ultimate guide need not explicitly tell you it is an ultimate guide. It only goes beyond what’s been published so far to present a unique perceived value.

It’s an article you can easily bookmark and refer to later.

8. Earn Links with Images

Infographics are sometimes the least used assets to earn backlinks.

If you see that infographics don’t work well with your brand you can create more visuals like:

1. Charts and graphs with original data
2. Diagrams that visually explain complex topics
3. One-page templates
4. Free photo galleries for others to use

However, you should always put your customers first, so make sure you remove duplicate photos to keep your visual content fresh and unique. To give you more idea of how brands use photo galleries check out this campaign on LinkedIn called: The Real Face of Sales.

It’s a downloadable free-to-use library of photos of salespeople that features non-cliche salespersons in action.

The photos are free to download on Unsplash and Pexels.

Those sites helped with distribution too.

Conclusion

What do you think of these smart strategies to build links? Some of these strategies don’t require a great deal of effort from your end for success.