How To Improve Your Backlink Portfolio

Pat Walls

•

Updated: October 8th, 2022

What Is A Backlink?

Backlinks refer to links from one website to a page on another website. Search engines consider backlinks as votes for a specific page.

Thus, pages with a high number of backlinks tend to have a high organic ranking on search engines. A recent study showed that backlinks remain a key ranking signal for Google.

Therefore, improving your backlink portfolio means your website will rank higher in Google and other search engines.

Backlinking Key Takeaways

Improving your backlinking portfolio improves website traffic, ranking, and reputation
The methods of getting high-quality backlinks keep changing overtime
You need quality content with valuable information to earn backlinks
Backlinks help searchers dig deeper into topics, learn and find new resources

Understanding How Backlinking Works

Backlinks are also referred to as incoming or inbound links. The backlinks make their connection through external websites. Whenever backlinks occur, it compares to receiving a vote

Therefore, the more votes you get from other websites with authority, the more positive your organic page ranking and search visibility are.

Website owners need to follow Google Webmaster guidelines on links to ensure they attract high-quality links.

List of Main Strategies For Getting Backlinks

Create click-worthy content: Write high-quality content that attracts bloggers and news reporters to link to your website.
Create skyscraper content: Find existing content, improve it and duplicate the backlinks
Guest blogging: Writing content for another company’s website
Create high-quality infographics: Infographics are graphical representations of information or data used to present knowledge quickly.
Blog commenting: Find high-quality blogs, post a comment that includes a link to your website.
Testimonials: offer to give company testimonials in exchange for a link to your website.
Resource page link building: building backlinks from pages that have a curated list of links to the external websites

Real-World Examples of Successful Link-Building Campaigns

Here are real examples of link-Building campaigns for your inspiration.

1. How Ahrefs Ranked Number One Through Link Building

Ahrefs built backlinks with a stats page, strategically to attract links from an outreach campaign.

During the campaign, they sent 515 emails and got 36 backlinks from 32 websites. The post ranked number one for SEO stats.

To rank high, they started with finding a winning topic using a keywords explorer and then found link prospects on SERP. Based on deliverable emails, the conversion rate stood at 5.71%, which meant 27 of the contacted websites linked to Ahrefs.

2. Sure Oak Link Building Campaign Achieved 161% increased Traffic

A client was looking to diversify the Backlink profile and improve off-page SEO. After an initial website review, the Sure Oak SEO team determined the pages that would be best for link building.

The team deployed the traditional outreach strategy to build links to the identified pages.

36 valuable EDU backlinks were created and 53 contextually relevant backlinks were created for the targeted pages. The campaign saw organic traffic growth of 161% from March 2018 to September 2018.

Strategies For Building A Successful Backlinking Portfolio

Focus on high-authority domains in the industry that command the respect and trust of their audiences
Ensure backlinks that are relevant to the website, niche, and topic
Ask for the do-follow attribute to enjoy the SEO benefits of the website
Stay on top of the latest SEO and market trends
Remember to promote your content in the digital realm on a regular basis.
Use link building tools

Examples of Link Building tools

Ahrefs: SEO software suite that contains tools for link building, keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, and site audits.
Raven SEO Tools: works by integrating with Backlink Explorer and Site Finder, with the purpose of providing its users with Backlink sources.
Majestic SEO: Used for evaluation of link profiles for your own sites.