Have you ever wondered how brands gain a competitive edge in their market or niche? How are some brands able to establish themselves as authorities and corner the market, while others seem to linger in obscurity?

One of the biggest reasons so websites and brands grow online is because they are getting attention from other websites. Their content is getting mentioned and linked to, and that recognition is helping them grow. 

Is there a way to take charge of building more links to your website? Can you actually help to increase your domain authority? 

The answer is yes, you can. Link building is a somewhat confusing process, and there are many people out there who profess to have mastered it. But the truth is that even without professional help, there are ways to grow links to your site and boost your brands visibility.

While some specialists swear by new school teachings, others claim traditional SEO tactics are the only way. It’s hard to really say whether one method of SEO is truly effective. However, the most important SEO goal for any online website is all about generating page traffic and drawing users to your website.

What is Link Building? Why Is It So Important?

Link building is the practice of creating high-quality backlinks to your website. It is based on the original inspiration for the Google search engine, which used university citations as a way of giving credit to websites. The more links a website has from other sites, the more authority it begins to accrue.

Today, many people want to get links (also known as backlinks) for the sole purpose of enhancing their websites online visibility. This focus has changed the dynamics of search engine optimization (SEO) from just being about creating valuable content, to building relationships and connections with other sites.

Today, Google algorithms are extremely intricate and continuously evolving, but the one constant is always the importance of links. This is why link building tactics must be a big part of your

Backlinks are still the most consistent determining factor for how sites rank for keywords. Furthermore, the more quality links you have, the more authoritative your site is seen by Google. 

Here are our five favorite link building tactics to help you grow visibility for your brand.

1) Create High-Quality Content

When it comes to white-hat link building, creating useful or entertaining content is the best organic way to obtain links. The great thing is that creative content will never go out of style with your target audience.

Content gives people a reason to share your link. We suggest starting by creating a blog post on an industry-related topic that will bring in eyeballs. Regular content creation is an excellent link building method. Great content can lead to a brand mention on another persons site and can accelerate your link building effort.

If your writing is useful and topical, it should eventually gain traffic and result in backlinks. Luckily, most people are lazy and would rather link to content than create their own. 

Make sure to keep SEO in mind when drafting your posts because even the best writing in the world won’t make any difference if nobody sees it.  

Before publishing, ask yourself would I actually want to read this? If the answer is no, go back to the drawing board because the internet is too saturated for subpar content to make any difference. 

Our experience shows the longer the post is the more traction it will gain. 

But longer doesn’t mean lower quality. Absolutely do not throw in boring filler content, but rather elaborate on important points. According to MarketingProfs, the ideal post length is 1,142 words.

2) Reclaim Broken Links (404 error)

Reclaiming broken links (sometimes known as a 404 error) is a surefire way to build up your site’s Domain Authority (DA). 

Better yet, it’s completely white-hat and for the most part pretty simple. 

Broken links are basically links that no longer work anymore due to one of five reasons: 

1. An incorrect URL entered for the link by the website manager.
2. The website containing the link removed the linked web page (creating what is known as a 404 error).
3. The website with the link doesn’t exist anymore. 
4. There is a software or firewall that blocks access to the destination website.
5. The website manager linked to a site that is stuck beyond a firewall that does not give outside access.

Broken link building is a simple and effective way to find new link opportunities. At Brandastic we utilize Ahrefs in order to identify the dead links and come up with a fix using one of five methods.

1. Contact the linking website and ask for a fix.
2. Redirect (301) broken page to the new location
3. Replace the content on a broken URL 
4. Redirect (301) any broken pages to relevant pages on your site. 
5. Keep it as a 404

3) Publish Guest Posts

Guest posting is another tried and true white-hat SEO way of building up your site’s link profile. 

As an added bonus, they are great ways of generating traffic. 

Guest Posts are posts you write on websites with a similar niche to your own. Think SEO marketers publishing posts on MOZ Blog. This also works the other way around and you can ask others to post on your site in return. 

Sites will often promote a guest post on their own social channels, which means even more engagement from you. Just make sure the site will link back to your own content from the guest post before publishing.

4) Use The Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Technique, coined by backlink guru Brian Dean, takes some effort, but the rewards in terms of inbound links can be massive. 

The concept itself is simple and there are only three straightforward steps to follow:

1. Discover a keyword you want to rank for. 
2. Dig through the content in the top 10 positions on Google.
3. Curate a piece of content that’s 10x better than anything on the SERP. 

That’s it. No, really it’s that simple. Now the hard part is figuring out how to create content that blows everyone else out of the water. 

5) Reverse Engineering Competitors Links

All the competitive spirits out there will love this one. With tools like Ahrefs and Spyfu, it’s easy to view every single one of a competitor’s backlinks. Now all you have to figure out how they got them and copy the technique. 

This is also a great way to find low hanging fruit you might be missing out on like directory submission sites and listing sites. 

Link Building Takes Effort and Time

Gone are the days when you can buy sketchy backlinks without any punishment to your site from Google. The link building tactics explained in this article are all very straightforward, but that doesn’t mean they don’t take considerable time and effort. 

Building a substantial backlink profile is an extremely important part of any SEO campaign and it’s something you should invest energy into.

If you need help with technical SEO, site structure, or growing your reach, you can always depend on Brandastic. We are a digital marketing agency based in Orange County, with offices in Austin and Los Angeles. We offer SEO, digital marketing, and advertising services for brands to increase their Google rankings. Contact us today to get started.