15 Tips to Building Quality Natural Backlinks

Business woman standing in office working on laptop building natural backlinks

Many critical factors go into developing a high-ranking website, from quality content to expertly crafted SEO strategies and more. One of the essential elements in developing a website loved by search engines is the presence of various link types, especially natural backlinks. 

But what are natural backlinks, and why are they so crucial for the success of your website?

Our experts at Content Dog are here to explain the basics you need to understand and provide some tail-wagging tips that can help you land some quality natural backlinks in no time!

Related: What is Local SEO?

What are Natural Backlinks, and What do They do For Your Website? 

Sadly, the definition of “natural” backlinks is relatively vague, but we’ll still do our best to explain it here. 

In short, a natural backlink is one that- as the name suggests- occurs naturally within a piece of website content without the website’s owner having to go out and generate them via other link-building methods. They occur when other website owners or bloggers link to your content because they think it’s valuable and will be useful for their readers. They’re an essential component of SEO and are among the best, fastest, safest, and most efficient ways to promote a website and increase traffic.

Additionally, natural backlinks;

  • Are presented in a natural context and connect to a related website
  • Offer specific value for readers
  • Have relevant anchor text within the article
  • Are completely free and don’t exist within paid or sponsored content
Woman working from home drinking coffee working on link building using laptop
Woman working from home drinking coffee working on link building using laptop

15 Best Tips for Building Natural Backlinks 

Natural link building can be a complicated process that’s tricky for many content creators to master. Thankfully, there are many strategies you can follow to increase your odds of landing the backlinks you need!

Related: What is Web Copywriting? 

1. Build Something Better Than Your Competitors

Websites naturally want to link their posts to other, top-quality articles that offer additional value to their readers. By creating better, more in-depth content than your competitors, websites become much more likely to link their content to yours, sometimes without you even needing to reach out to them! Online content creators typically use what’s known as the Skyscraper Technique to construct articles that attract natural backlinks.

2. Prioritize Value Over Asking for Links

If you create top-quality content that beats out competing articles and provides a lot of value to readers, you’re much more likely to receive natural backlinks without begging for them. This means that you need to focus on effective content creation over all else. If you do things right, you may be able to reach out to a relevant website to share your article, and they’ll choose to link to it because it will be beneficial for them. 

3. Craft Targeted and Purposeful Content

It’s better to write content with a targeted purpose and add something new to the conversation rather than recycle the same old topics and information. To do this, we recommend making a list of websites that gather your target audience and thinking about the kind of new content they might find interesting or worth linking to.

3. Diversify The Content You Provide

Natural backlinks come from various sources that operate in different ways, so you should explore and experiment with several content forms to attract attention from multiple sources. This tactic can involve creating ultimate guides, list and how-to posts, infographics, and even entire ebooks.

4. Leverage The Channels Your Audience Prefers

Different readers prefer different communication channels, including email, social media, and others. Websites should try to identify the ones most commonly used by their audience and then leverage those channels to encourage engagement more efficiently. This process could involve sending out messages through Facebook and using specific hashtags on Twitter.

Do you require the services of a top-quality writing agency to help nail your website’s SEO while pleasing search engine algorithms? Our team of expertly trained writers at Content Dog is eager to help so you can start ranking as soon as possible!

5. Invest in Videos, Infographics, and Other Visual Content

Humans are highly visual creatures, so there’s little wonder why visual content is often highly regarded and considered the most effective form of content out there. According to research, 54% of people want more video content from marketers. Videos were the #1 form of media used in content creation strategies in 2019. Video also brings in some of the highest ROI in the content creation world. 

If videos aren’t an option for you, consider investing in the development of quality infographics or other types of visuals.

6. Identify Quality Topics by Researching Q&A Websites

To write good content that gains quality backlinks, you need to select suitable topics to write about. Consider exploring Q&A websites or looking for hot-button issues that you can cover to attract the attention of readers and potential backlink sources alike. Websites like Quora and Reddit can be a great place to start! Additionally, these websites can be a great way to connect with influencers to leverage the point below.

7. Create In-Depth Guides

Another way to build quality natural backlinks is by creating in-depth guides—long-form content that’s packed with info about a particular topic. These 2,000+ word guides are a great way to help you rank for competitive keywords and related long-tail keywords.

And once they start ranking high on Google, they will help generate a ton of traffic to your blog—traffic that’s instrumental in driving more backlinks to your website. However, your content needs to be solid and in a presentable form to get social media shares, backlinks, etc.

8. Try Video Blogs and Podcasts

Making video blogs and recording podcasts are other strategies that can help you build quality natural backlinks and drive more organic traffic to your site. And they don’t have to be long—if you can provide quality information in a short time, you’ll attract a large audience.

No matter where you upload your podcasts or videos include a link to your site in the description, and you’ll get plenty of relevant visits—some of which may transform into natural backlinks.

9. Leverage Social Media

Using social media can help all of your backlink efforts come together. Whether it’s with an expert interview, you visiting an industry event, or a blog post, video, podcast, etc., you can share and promote almost anything on social media.

Pinterest is an often underused social media site for marketing and building quality natural backlinks—it allows you to host images that link directly back to your blogs and landing pages. However, any social media site can help drive quality traffic to your site; use as many as you can!

10. Experiment With Round-Up Blog Posts

Round-up blogs are collections of expert opinions about a particular topic. If you decide on a keyword to target, you can reach out to experts in the industry and trade a backlink to their website for a quote or thought from them.

Using their information on your blog post gives those experts a reason to share it within their network, too—this method not only helps you build backlinks but also helps grow your own network. And while this strategy relies on you doing a lot of outreach, it’s easier to ask for opinions and quotes than it is to ask for a backlink directly.

11. Participate In Industry Events

Every industry holds different events where experts gather together—participating in them can help build your network fast.

Even if you only do business online, human interaction is what sells. For example, the owner of a site with 90 domain authority (DA) wouldn’t typically bother with the owner of a site with a domain authority score of 30. But once they meet in person, the dynamics change, and small owners get a chance to share content with bigger players—and obtain quality backlinks throughout the process.

You can even invite people for interviews after meeting them at events. Then, when you publish those interviews and share them, the person you interview will share them, too—this will get you a lot of views, brand mentions, and backlinks.

12. Collaborate and Connect With Influencers

Collaborating with influential companies and people in your industry can be a great way to create amazing content that attracts many backlinks. This strategy- often called influencer marketing– has grown in popularity over the past several years and has produced excellent results for many websites.

Related: How to Do Keyword Research for SEO

13. Create Content with Original (Quality) Research 

Most blogs and website articles involve taking content from other articles and rewriting information to avoid plagiarism. While this is a good tactic for creating a lot of content to build out your site, search engines have a hard time telling the difference between one article and another, making it hard to rank. You can make yourself stand out from online competitors and make websites want to link to you by writing a blog that uses unique data and conducting original research. 

14. Consider Content Syndication

It can be useful to republish the content on your website onto other platforms, like Medium or Scoopit. By including a canonical tag that points the republished work to the original version, you can direct traffic from these platforms directly to your website. Because the traffic is relevant and organic, you’re more likely to earn some backlinks from the process.

15. Closing Factors to Keep in Mind

Creating compelling content that naturally generates quality backlinks can be challenging, especially for new writers and website owners who don’t yet know the intricacies of SEO. Thankfully, following the above tips can help make the process much easier, so you can stand a fighting chance at ranking with the top dogs! For more helpful information on improving your website content, consider reading through Content Dog’s list of expertly written resources.

Are you struggling to please Google’s algorithm? Our expertly trained content writers at Content Dog can help by designing a highly specified market strategy alongside a wide array of other stellar services!

Last Updated on November 13, 2022 by Hilda Wong

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