Do you want to rank on the first page of Google? Of course, you do. Who wouldn’t? But to achieve that kind of success, you need to build backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites and blogs.
According to Moz, backlinks and other off-site signals account for 50% of a website’s ranking, and a site in a competitive niche needs at least 5,000 backlinks to make an impression in the SERPs.
Image source: https://backlinko.com/high-quality-backlinks
In other words, building a solid inbound link profile should be one of your top-3 priorities. But other than paying for more content or staying up until 3 am to write it yourself, what can you do to build backlinks?
In this article, we’ll cover 3 ways you can do it without writing any new content.
1. Promote Your Best Content
If you’re actively doing a lot of guest posting, chances are you already have some pretty awesome content on your site. This method is a take on The Skyscraper Technique, created by Backlinko’s Brian Dean. It will help you turn your existing content into high-quality and genuine backlinks, without having to write more content.
The idea is that you reach out to websites and blogs that link to similar content, e.g. ‘best WordPress themes’. You then provide them with a link to your content that’s better than what’s already out there and ask them to link to it instead.
A tool like Ahrefs will help you find your top-ranking content and sites to target in your outreach. However, it will make quite a large dent in your wallet. Thankfully, you can execute this technique for free, which is what I’m going to show you.
- Use Google to search for your keyword.
- Analyze existing content and locate a piece of content you’ve already written that’s better and more in-depth than what’s already out there.
- Promote your Skyscraper content by reaching out to source websites and asking them to link to your article.
If your piece of content is good enough, other websites will be more than happy to add your link.
2. Create Infographics
If I were to give you a 1000 word article to read, how much of it do you think you’d be able to remember in a day or two? Probably not much, and that’s okay, it just means you’re human.
What you (and most other people) need is visual content. People retain up to 65% of the information that’s presented visually compared to just 10% without visual content. Which is why infographics are a great way to build backlinks. They’re explicitly visual and impactful, so they’re naturally memorable – and memorable content gets shared.
In fact, infographics are 30x more likely to be read than a text-based article. The best part? You don’t have to write any new content to create an infographic. Just take a blog or article that’s already performing well and hand it over to a designer or, if you’re on a tight budget, create your own using a tool like Canva.
Image source: https://www.canva.com/learn/best-infographics/
It’s simple enough to upload infographics to your blog, even if it was built using a website builder. To make sure your infographic travels, you’ll need to generate and supply an embed code, which is a piece of web code that others use to embed your infographic into their websites.
3. Claim Unlinked Brand Mentions
Ever get the feeling someone’s talking about you but you don’t know who or where? In the online world, that’s almost certainly the case. Millions of brands get mentioned in blogs, forums, social media, and more every day, but don’t claim those brand mentions.
What do we mean by ‘claim’? Well, if those mentions are positive and they’re not accompanied by a link back to your site… you’re looking at a wasted opportunity my friend. Think about it, if you make a comment on a page’s Facebook post or in a forum discussion, are you going to spend the time to locate that brand’s website URL and link to it? Probably not.
There are plenty of online tools that can locate your brand mentions. But a simple Google search using the right commands can do the same.
Type the following:
- “brand name” –site:yourwebsite.com
- “employee name” “brand name” –site:yourwebsite.com –press –release
- “infographic” “title of the infographic” –site:yourwebsite.com
- “quoted” “brand name” –site:yourwebsite.com –press –release
- “history” “brand name” –site:yourwebsite.com
Once you’ve located unlinked brand mentions, email the site or social profile they appear on. Keep your email personalized and friendly – start by thanking them for mentioning your brand and politely request that they add an outbound link to it. Many will happily oblige… some will ask for compensation and it’s up to you whether you provide it.
Conclusion: 3 Ways to Build Backlinks Without Writing Content or Guest Posting
There’s absolutely no doubt that creating high-quality content can be time-consuming. It takes a lot of effort and unless you have a dedicated content writer or content team, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to churn out enough in-depth and relevant posts to build 5000+ backlinks.
However, using the tips in this article, you can put Google Docs to one side and build backlinks without writing new content.
For further reading, take a look at our article How to Optimize Your Business for Local SEO: Tips and Tricks. Also, Respona has written a great article on backlink building titled What is a Backlink and How to Get Them.
