Andrey Lipattsev – Partner Development Manager at Google – once revealed during a Q&A session that backlinks and content are two of the top ranking signals Google takes into consideration to determine search engine rankings.
On top of this, an Ahrefs study indicates that the number of referring domains to a web page correlate to the organic search traffic.
And here you have it – the secret to rank at the top of Google is out in the open.
Despite that, you’ll find 66.31% of the web pages on the internet to have no backlinks at all. At the same time, over 26.29% have no more than 1-3 backlinks.
You can have the best content marketing team in the world yet still struggle to rank at the top of the SERPs if you don’t have a brilliant link-building strategy in place.
Fortunately, at redfox visual, we have our brilliant SEO strategist Mary doing the heavy lifting for us.
As of this writing, our landing page has more than 10,836 backlinks with over 61 referring domains.
And that’s just brilliant.
This has resulted in our website ranking on the first page of Google SERPs for keywords like “digital marketing agency boise,” “social media marketing agency boise,” “web design agency boise” and many more.
That being said, getting high-quality backlinks to your website is no piece of cake.
We’ve witnessed entrepreneurs and marketing heads pay top dollars to well-known publications and other businesses in their industry – the ones with a high domain authority score – for high-quality backlinks.
In fact, you’ll be shocked to know that the average cost of purchasing a backlink is over $361.44.
And that’s just the average price I’ve mentioned above.
Businesses pay a lot more.
The price is dependent on the referring domain’s authority score.
However, we believe that you shouldn’t pay for backlinks at all.
Paying for backlinks is strictly against Google’s policy. And if you get caught doing so, your website will be blacklisted by the search engine giant.
At redfox visual, we want you to get the highest-quality backlinks the right way. That’s the reason we’ve put together this step-by-step guide that you can follow to get high-quality backlinks – without paying for them.
Excited?
Let’s dive straight into it.
How to Get High-Quality Backlinks to
Your Web Pages the Right Way?
This is how we help our clients win high-quality backlinks:
Step I: Pre-Requisites
Before we begin with building our backlinking strategy, there are a few prerequisites you need to know:
- You need to know who your target audience is.
- Also, it’s equally important to categorize your target audience based on their interests, hobbies, job titles, income, search intent, and other relevant factors.
- Conduct thorough market research and list down your goals, objectives, and USP.
- Conduct thorough competitors’ analysis – we use SimilarWeb for the purpose. Prepare a list of your top five competitors.
- Conduct serious keyword research and list down the top 10-20 keywords you’d like to rank at the top of the SERPs for.
Step II: Equip a Reliable & Feature-Packed SEO Tool Like SEMRush, Ahrefs or UberSuggest
(We Use Both SEMRush & Ahrefs)
The next step is to gain insights into the content pieces published by your competitors – the one with the most backlinks.
Usually, we use SEMRush & Ahrefs for different purposes like:
- Domain Overview
- Keywords Research
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
- Content Marketing
- Advertising Research
- And more!
For the sake of learning, let’s use SEMRush here.
To identify your competitors’ blog posts and other content pieces with the most backlinks, we’ll head over to SEMRush and under Link Building, we’ll select “Backlink Analytics.”
Upon doing so, you’ll be greeted with:
Step III: Type in Your Competitors’ URL &
Try to Gain Insights into their Backlinks
Now, in the search bar, add your competitor’s URL and click on “Analyze.”
While we have a lot of competitors ourselves, we don’t like pointing anyone out. Hence, we prefer to use top giants like Ahrefs, SEMRush, and many more as examples.
So, let’s try to gain insights into the blog posts with the highest quality backlinks published by Ahrefs.
Let’s type in www.ahrefs.com in the search bar and hit “Analyze.”
Here’s the result:
They have 66.3K referring domains with over 9.4 million backlinks.
That’s huge.
Step IV: Head Over to Their “Backlinks” Section
Now, next to “Overview,” you will find the “Backlinks” section. Here, you can have a detailed look at all their backlinks with their respective Page Authority Score, Anchor & Target URL, First Seen, Last Seen & more.
Step V: Switch to the “Indexed Pages” Section
Now, switch to the “Indexed Pages” section.
Here, you’ll be able to see all of Ahrefs’ indexed web pages along with their:
- Total Backlinks
- Referring Domains
- External Links
- Internal Links
- Last Seen
As of this writing, they have approximately 194,904 indexed pages.
Step VI: Identify the Blog Posts with the Most Backlinks
Now, the next step is to identify the blog posts, articles, case studies, or other content pieces published on their website with the most backlinks.
Upon thorough analysis, we found their “10 Free Keyword Research Tools (That Aren’t Google Keyword Planner)” to have about (as of this writing) 140,337 backlinks with 890 referring domains.
That’s huge.
Also, another blog post “301 Redirects for SEO: Everything You Need to Know” – this page is subject to 38,189 backlinks and 326 referring domains.
Let’s conduct our analysis for the “10 Keyword Research Tools (That Aren’t Google Keyword Planner)” blog post.
They have about 140,337 backlinks (as of this writing).
Click on the number – for example we’ll click on “140,337.”
Upon doing so, we’ll be presented in front of us all the backlinks that their “10 Keyword Research Tools (That Aren’t Google Keyword Planner)” post has.
Step VII: Build & Publish a Better Version of Their
High-Performing Blog Posts
Now, we’d advise you to build and publish a better version of their high-performing blog posts. If your competitors have covered 1,000 words, try to aim for 4,000 or 5,000
And while doing so, one important point you should keep at the top of your mind is not to build blog posts or other content pieces – just for the sake of it.
Instead, make sure that you are building the best version of the blog post or guide – way better than what your competitors have on their website.
Add images, videos, infographics, and anything that you can that’ll help you deliver value and position yourself as credible and authoritative.
Building high-quality content is the most important step – and if you really want to get high-quality backlinks – we’d advise you to nail it.
And once you have them published, it’s time to move to the next step.
Step VIII: Reach Out to the Top Publications Linking to the Competitors’ Article(s)
Let’s say you built a better version of Ahrefs’ “10 Keyword Research Tools (That Aren’t Google Keyword Planner).”
So, now – we want you to prepare a list of all the top publications or businesses with high domain authority scores linking to Ahrefs’ article.
Once you have the list, use a tool like Apollo.io to get your hands on the Email IDs of the employees of these publications.
So, let’s say a company namely “Top Publication” linked to Ahrefs’ “10 Keyword Research Tools (That Aren’t Google Keyword Planner)” post, then you can use Apollo.io to get your hands on the Email IDs of the people working in that company.
And once you have the list, you can build highly personalized cold email campaigns – something similar to this:
“Hi, Josh,
Did you know – {something related to the subject}?
{A Bit Introduction About You}
We see that you have linked to Ahrefs’ top-performing article titled “10 Keyword Research Tools (That Aren’t Google Keyword Planner).”
But what if we told you that we have a better version of the same article/guide offering way more information and truly value than any piece on the internet?
Feel free to check it out at {Article Link}
Best Regards,
Ankit – Content Marketing Head @ {Your Company Name}”
While not everyone will respond, I’d advise you to put in place an aggressive cold email marketing campaign to achieve the best possible results.
And when you do that, you’ll see these top publications responding to your thoroughly reviewing the article – and if they truly find the information valuable – they would love nothing more than linking to it.
Ladies & Gentlemen – that’s how you get high-quality backlinks. That’s our sweet secret.
Build Your Link Building Strategy Today!
Link building is not complicated. The thing is – you need to spend hours identifying your competitors, their top articles, building high-quality content pieces, reaching out to top publications, and more.
It’s not a 2–3-hour daily job.
To achieve the best possible results, you need dedicated experts who can do the heavy lifting for you.
And we’d love nothing more than to help you out.
From building a fool-proof backlinking strategy to thorough monitoring, our SEO experts would love nothing more than to nail your SEO and backlinking efforts out of the park.
Don’t wait around!
Partner with the #1 SEO Agency in Idaho today.
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