What is a Backlink Strategy?

A backlink strategy, also known as a link-building or inbound link strategy, is part of a broader marketing strategy and involves placing hyperlinks on external websites to drive traffic to your site. These links act as indicators of credibility and reliability, positioning your organization as an authority on your desired topic, and are crucial to improving SEO performance.

Benefits of a Backlink Strategy

Implementing a backlink strategy offers various benefits for businesses, including:

• Improved SERP Ranking: High-quality backlinks from authoritative sites signal to search engines, such as Google, that a website is trustworthy and relevant, resulting in better search engine result page (SERP) rankings and higher domain authority (DA).
• Increased Organic Traffic: The higher a website ranks on a SERP, the more likely people are to view it. Direct referral traffic from linked sites can also improve organic traffic.
• Broader Audience Reach: Placing backlinks on trusted websites will expose an organization’s content to new audiences, improving brand awareness and engagement.
• Bolstered Credibility and Trust: Users are more likely to trust websites referenced by credible sources. Quality backlinks are essentially endorsements, proving to visitors that a website’s content is worth their time.

Ultimately, backlinks strategies are a great way to improve a website’s visibility, reach, and credibility and attract potential customers.

Implementing a Backlink Strategy

To implement a backlink strategy, careful research and planning are important. Marketing teams need to decide what pages they want to link back to, what keywords they want to rank for, and what their goals are. Competitor and keyword analysis are an important part of this process.

Content creationWhat is Content Creation? Content creation refers to generating material, such as text, images, videos, or audio for online or offline platforms. Organizations typically create content to engage an audience,… is the most important part of a backlink strategy. Authoritative sites will only accept high-quality content, so marketing teams must develop diverse, search-engine-optimized content relevant to their own and third-party sites. The better the content, the more successful the backlink strategy.

Marketers must then conduct outreach, contacting and building relationships with popular, trusted, and relevant publications. The goal of outreach is to get guest posts published on third-party sites. If your content contains original research, reach out to journalists, too.

Finally, marketing teams must evaluate their backlink strategy. Measuring key metrics like DA, keyword rankings, the number of referring domains and backlinks, and referral traffic helps organizations determine whether their efforts are successful and identify areas for improvement.

Backlink Strategies Best Practices

Backlink strategies work best when employed as a continuous effort rather than a one-time project – the more backlinks you place, the better your results will be. That said, it’s important to prioritize quality over quantity, as poor-quality content is difficult to place and can even harm SEO performance. Similarly, a few strong, well-placed links are more valuable than numerous low-quality links.

It’s also helpful to leverage tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush when evaluating the performance of a backlink strategy. These tools help audit backlinks to ensure they are contributing positively to your strategy and determine its success.

For more essential marketing definitions, check out our glossary pages.