Even if you had direct access to the top 50 websites in the world, and could get links form them all, you would still need to diversify your backlink profile.
Why?
Well, if the top 50 websites in the world were linking to your website and talking about you, then there would be about 20,000 lesser known websites and personal blogs that would also be talking about you and linking to your website. That’s just how it naturally works. Links are a way to mention and reference something of interest. So, if the major news outlets and major niche authority websites find something interesting, the thousands of smaller sites are sure to take note as well.
There are many ways you can attempt to attract a wide range of links and keep your link building not only steady, but also very natural looking. It’s important to space apart your diversification strategy, because you don’t want your link velocity to look unnatural. 1,000 links one day and 10 the next just looks odd.
So, use these strategies spread over the course of the month to keep your velocity staggered and natural looking.
1. Get Busy on Niche Related Forums
Being active on niche related forums can be a great way to get extra links, and I’m not talking about signature links. Those are more for attracting traffic. I would never suggest you direct link in a forum signature, because you will get hundreds or maybe even thousands of links. Since signature are for attracting traffic, I would suggest using a URL shortener to create a trackable link so you can keep track of clicks and also eliminate getting site wide links on a forum.
What you want to do is build up a solid reputation and age your forum account. Be active and communicate back and forth. Then, start to search out current and past posts that are related to whatever you want to link to. This is a great way to diversify your inner pages. Don’t worry about anchor text. Use random ones so it doesn’t appear that you are trying to get exact match keyword links. Links with “this post” or “what I found here” will slip under the radar easier than an exact match link would.
2. Allow Guest Posts on Your Blog
This is a great strategy to use, and while most website owners think of it as just allowing other people to get links on YOUR website, you actually make out great as well. Let me explain.
You need to be picky about who you allow to guest post. You need to make sure they write very well and can provide you with a quality article that matches the standard of your website. Then, you need to see how much influence they have. Do they have a blog and website with a lot of social shares and comments? Do they have a large social media following? If so, let them guest blog.
They will get a link on your website, so they will be happy. Where you make you is when they then link back to the post on your website to show their audience where they were featured on. So, it’s a link for a link type deal, but then when they share their guest post it also pushes it out to a new group of people that will also share it and maybe even link to it. This is as “white hat” as it gets. You get real social shares and real links. Even Rand at Moz would approve of this!
3. Post Q&A Blog Posts
This is a trick a lot of the big sites use, and it works like a charm. Want a dozen quality links? Invite a dozen “experts” to give you their input and opinion for a blog post. Every niche has experts. Every niche also has a bunch of people who THINK they are experts. Either way, there is a never ending supply of people that will give you’re their opinion about any topic you want to write about for your blog.
If you are a local plumber it’s possible to get links from other plumbing websites using this trick. No competitor is going to want to give advice to another fellow plumber, so this is why you would target plumbers across the country, or in a different market. A plumber in Detroit would be more than happy to give some advice for a blog appearing in San Antonio. Why? It allows them to present them as an expert. They can then make a mention of it on their site:
“Call us now for your local plumbing needs. Our CEO is the top plumbing authority in (insert city), and his expert opinion can be seen on blogs all over the country, such as this post.”
So, they get a nice mention they can then use for bragging rights and you get a niche related link. I’ve used this technique to get heaps of niche related links in almost every niche you can think of.
4. Put Out Regular Press Releases
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: press releases are going to make a strong come back in 2016. A lot of people steered away from press releases over the past couple of years when the majority of the links became no-follow. Guess what? REAL link profiles have no-follow links. A backlink profile that is 100% do-follow looks very unnatural. You need no-follow links and sending out a press release is a great way to keep those types of links coming in on a regular basis to dilute your no/do-follow ratio.
Another reason you should send out a press release every month it because it makes your website look more authentic. Think press releases are dead? They aren’t. Go to huge press release syndication outlets and look at their latest releases. There are thousands upon thousands of press releases that go out every single day. Real companies with real announcements. Press releases might have died for a moment in the SEO world, but in the real world they are going strong. Drop one every month and don’t use exact match keyword anchor text. Use company names and URL variations to keep your link profile watered down a tad.
5. Add Generic Anchor Text Links
I’m not the biggest fan of SEO packages as a main SEO option, but they do have one great use: link diversification. There are a lot of affordable options that can get you a few dozen quick links on blogs and random websites. This can be dangerous if used the wrong way, so it’s important that you don’t target keywords. This is just to get some random “here” or “click here” generic links.
This is helpful for websites that have most links pointing to their home page. You need inner page links, especially to blog posts. It makes it look natural. You can even take it a step further and hire a VA to post comments on niche related websites, linking to your inner pages. Most blog comments will be no-follow but that is fine for this. You can also get traffic from blog comment links if you do them in a way that looks real.
6. Post Monthly Infographics
This is another “white hat” strategy that works if you are willing to invest the time and money. Getting your blog content shared is a great way to get more people to learn about your website and if your content is really good people will link to it. Infographics are like cat nip. People love to share them. Include a sharing option at the bottom that allows people to copy and paste code to their site and share the infographic. Include a link back to the original post in the code, and then let every website in your niche know about it.
Over time, if you start posting them frequently there will be websites that will eagerly wait for them every month. This gets you nice links to help diversify your profile and also constant referral visitors. A lot of the custom SEO I do for high end clients includes multiple infographics because they work well. If you have it in your budget I would highly suggest it. You can even use one of the infographic template programs to make some if you are just starting out. There are a lot of free options out there, so don’t let the cost stop you.
If you don’t have the time to worry about diversifying your backlink profile, then click here to learn about the several different link diversification packages that we offer. This is a great option for those looking to make sure they maintain a link profile that appears to be 100% natural if it’s ever manually reviewed by a Google employee or a competitor. With all the time and money you invest on SEO, the investment to keep a natural looking link profile is a very small investment.
