Semalt Knows 5 Unique Ways To Build Links For SEO
Here's a situation: you are working on an SEO project for a website. You have the on-page and the backend optimization parts figured out. And now you want to build high-quality backlinks. You start with the usual activities: depending on web 2.0 sites, posting content on forums, syndicating content, publishing press releases, and so on. But are they enough?
The answer is usually in the negative, especially if you are competing with established sites on the SERPs. Link building for SEO is never enough; you have to do it continuously to stay relevant. It has always been about quality over quantity. This is why
Semalt has prepared this list of five unique ways to build high-quality links. You can use these tricks regardless of the niche of your online business.
Semalt's history of hundreds of satisfied customers is a testament to the success of our ways, even when it comes to link building. Here are our chief methods.
Unique Link-Building Methods
We'll start with the easy ones.
1. Using Reddit as a Marketing Platform
Everyone uses Quora to build backlinks. But only some marketers engage in Reddit communities.
Reddit is a popular discussion site but it is still a niche platform for SEO marketers. And posting there regularly can help you gain some of the most relevant backlinks for your site. How, you may ask? Here's a use case.
Let's take the example of gamermarkt.com, a website in the e-gaming niche and one of our repeat clients. The website can attract links by posting on hugely popular subreddits like r/gaming, r/IndieGaming, and r/gamingforgamers. And thanks to the high number of subscribers in these communities (in millions), the website also gets some traffic on the way.
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1 - Reddit can be used by both individuals and businesses
While Reddit can be brutal if you post directly and without context, learning the art of 'redditing' can help you with some of the most valuable links. You can start by engaging in small communities if you are a beginner and build your profile before moving to the popular subreddits mentioned above.
2. Comment on News Stories, Blog Articles, Forums
This is perhaps the easiest way to build links. Are food and recipes your niche? Target the top 1,000 blogs that are about food, recipes, and food tech and start commenting on individual stories, one at a time.
It can be an article on a food blog that talks about the benefits of kale or a high-authority news publisher reporting on a scientific study about foods that can help in weight loss. Any and every website that allows you to post a comment; visit and go ahead and post a well-structured, valuable comment.
Most websites that allow commenting without registration also let you add a name, email, and a URL. Make sure you use these columns appropriately. The URL is where you put your target link. But make sure you put a real name, a valid email ID, and a good, non-spammy comment for it to be moderated and approved.
Don't make it obvious that you are commenting to get a backlink. Talk only about the article's or story's topic and try to engage with the website/author. Doing so improves the chances of your comment getting published.
In Semalt's research, we have found that WordPress sites do very well this way. If you have a WordPress site, you have better chances of having a comment approved on another WordPress site without being zapped by Auttomatic's Akismet anti-spam tool.
3. Create Profiles on Promotional Sites
It doesn't matter if you are an individual or a business. Promotional sites such as About.me, Crunchbase, and several others allow everyone to create a profile. The good part? All of them have a very high domain authority (DA). Just one link from a website with DA more than 70 is good enough and you spend only about 20 minutes on creating a basic profile. And there are hundreds of such websites that you can target.
Figure 2 -
Examples of how such public profiles appear in SERPs
Semalt uses this approach to help our clients with their online reputation. When you create a profile for a business on such websites, you not only get a link back to your homepage but also create an additional asset for search engines to rank on SERPs. This will help you in the long run in case you ever have to fight negativity on organic search.
4. Add Links on UGC Sites
Sites that depend on user generated content (UGC) are not only authoritative but also allow anyone to add content. This makes a great opportunity for SEO marketers to upload valid information and relevant links. Some of the most famous such sites are Wikipedia, Wikidata, Metafilter (forum), IMDb, TMDb, and Stack Overflow.
Let's take the example of a business in the entertainment sector. We had a client, an American production house based in California, who wanted to improve their SEO. Semalt suggested building links via IMDb because the production house had a lot of films and TV shows produced over the past decade. This meant multiple links from multiple high-traction pages. So, what did we do?
Since our team is well-versed with several languages including French and Italian, we dug deeper into the company's entertainment efforts which were across languages and geographies. We found all the titles it had produced since the beginning and targeted their IMDb pages. We then started updating the information in them, and wherever required, added a relevant link. In most cases, this was a link about the film or TV show that the company had produced.
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3 - Example of a film's page on IMDb with external links
This way, we got a bunch of highly relevant links from the company's own assets (IMDb pages) to its own website.
Pro Tip - Most UGC sites like Wikipedia have high moderation and editorial standards. We request you to exercise caution and not spam the sites for backlinks. Add a link only if it's relevant and allowed.
5. Get Links via the HARO Program
We get it: you were recommended Help A Reporter Out (HARO) before, you tried it out, and it didn't work. We know it because many of our clients have tried HARO on their own and failed to gather any good-quality links. This is because they were all doing it wrong.
For the uninitiated, Help A Reporter Out is a sourcing tool by Cision that connects journalists, news reporters, publishers, and writers with news sources and references. It's a global platform and anyone can sign up as a reporter, as a new source, or as a sponsor. With HARO, a US-based NYT reporter doing a survey on the effect of coronavirus in Medellin can connect with local sources to build a stronger story. In SEO, it helps marketers provide information in return for a backlink, usually from established websites with high DA.
The Semalt way of using HARO is pretty simple and straightforward. We focus on two things: sending personalized and detailed pitches and responding to only those publications that are relevant to the website we are pitching for.
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4 - This is how a HARO email looks like
HARO sends out emails with reporter requests Mondays through Fridays. So, to increase the chances of high-quality links, you have to check each and every email from HARO that drops in your inbox and skim through all the requests in them. Go through topics like Business and Finance, Education, High Tech, Sports, Travel, Lifestyle and Fitness, and many more and shortlist requests that are relevant to your business.
Then comes pitching. Respond to all the questions that the reporter has asked and make it as detailed as possible. Don't forget to check the deadline, if any. In most cases, providing unique answers to the reporter's queries guarantees a backlink. Here is an example of an article created solely through HARO responses.
It is also a good idea to select appropriate sectors in your HARO's account settings for better requests.
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5 - Different spheres that HARO specializes in
These five are some of the unique link building activities that we at Semalt do for our clients. Link building is an essential part of both our premium packages - FullSEO and AutoSEO. Of course, the approach is different for every client, but we often find peculiar ways to build links depending upon the niche of our client's business.
If you are looking for a push in your website's SEO, consider using one of our services. Check out the starry reviews we have received over the years from our clients and make a decision today.