How to Earn Backlinks that Comply with Google’s Guidelines

These quality guidelines discourage the use of any unfair means for acquiring links in order to manipulate the search engine rankings and availing the undue benefit. Some of the main points covered include:

• Not to buy or sell links
• Not to create dedicated pages for cross-linking
• Not to extensively promote articles
• Not to require compulsory backlinks in different CMS pages

The online presence and ranking of your website greatly depends upon quality backlinks if your goal is to attract search engine traffic, specifically from Google. Therefore, it is mandatory for you to comply with its guidelines and earn natural and organic backlinks. Following are some of the tips that can help you avoid spam techniques and find a way to build true and fair backlinks.

Ask employees and clients for endorsements

Search engines appreciate backlinks that are acquired naturally. However, there are people who are involved in your business but not contributing to your websites’ backlinking bank. These primarily include your employees and clients.

For example, your employees could be sharing their job experience and learning journey on a blog or social media. You can ask them to mention your website or your company, which is an honest share of your name and site. Similarly, you can enlist your product or services on your clients’ websites. Most websites proudly highlight their suppliers and service providers on their websites.

For example, blogs often suggest their web hosting, development, and designing service providers. Lawyers, accountants, and real estate agents often also get a mention on their clients’ websites.

Directory listing

Directories are useful IF they have an active user base –otherwise, the argument that business directories are spam is true to some extent. However, there are reliable directories out there that can help specific communities with relevant business suggestions.

For example, local directories for wedding planners, photographers, dress designers, and lots of other businesses are quite helpful for acquiring quality backlinks. They are natural in the sense that such directories have defined criteria for listing a business.

For these listings to work, you need to search for niche-specific directories that may bring you relevant traffic as well and find how your business can be listed over there.

Anchoring your brand mentions

Your clients, customers, or suppliers could mention your brand in a variety of content –for example, they might refer to the design, feature, or strategy you have in place. But mentioning your company without linking to your website provides little benefit.

If you find the name of your company mentioned somewhere, reach out to those websites and ask them to link to your website or a specific page URL. Keep a check on mentions with the help of different tools, or simply do a search on Google every month so that quality backlinks are earned in time, when the content is still fresh.

Be in the news

News agencies and story writers always need stories to cover. Of course, catching their attention is hard, as not everything’s a story and not everybody is interesting enough to make it into the spotlight. The easiest way to grab their attention is to join a social issue or cause that somehow matches the spirit of your business.

For example, a business can contribute to a tree-planting program, renewable energy, reducing pollution, solving unemployment issues, or doing something out of the box for the elderly, homeless, or an animal shelter. Start a charity campaign and journalists will gather to push your message. This can not only help you raise funds for a noble cause but also earn you quality backlinks.

Produce exceptionally useful content

Always follow the “10X content strategy” of writing outstanding content for your blog or website. The idea behind the technique is simple: always produce content that is ten times better in quality than anything else you can find online.

Writing about everything that your competitor is already writing about is no longer useful in earning backlinks. There is no need to cover the same topic, title, or issue. Instead, search for topics and queries relevant to your business or product that don’t have enough answers so you can be the one to provide a great source of information on that topic.

For example, people ask questions on Quora or Yahoo Answers when they fail to find its answer on the web. Additionally, you can join or create Facebook groups related to your business niche, and find what the users are looking for. Once you find the problem, devise an exceptional and comprehensive piece of content that is considered a final solution for it. Spread it across the channels and people of the same industry will link it naturally.

Contribute to or create list posts

Most online buyers spend time doing some research before they place an online order. They search for the best products or services in their chosen category. Or they do quick comparisons in terms of quality, quantity, price, location, and authority.

If you find blogs or websites that publishes those lists, send a quick email and introduce yourself and your product. If you manage to get a spot on those lists, you’ll gain visibility with the exact audience you cater to. You can even offer to provide a short and precise description with a link to your landing page.

If that doesn’t work, you can always curate a list on your own by reaching out to prospective businesses and asking for their suggestions. Publish the list on your blog and share the link with those businesses so they promote it on their own social media accounts.

With the same strategy, you can create expert roundup posts. Contact your niche experts and ask their opinion on a specific topic. Jot down them in a post, publish, and let the blogosphere cover you.

Final words

Getting free links from poor sources is easier but it can cost you severe penalties. Therefore, it is always recommended to pursue creative strategies to win backlinks rather than posting them for free or paying for them. Use some of these reliable and search-engine safe techniques to improve rankings and page rank without messing up with the Google guidelines.

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**About the Author: Muhammad Faheem manages SEO content writing at FMEextensions, which is committed to developing innovative solutions for its various eCommerce clients. The company has developed a number of SEO extensions to help companies acquire quality backlinks and pursue higher rankings. The company’s Magento 2 edit order also helps empower the store admins to edit and correct orders without nullifying or removing them from the store.

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