17 Techniques to Find a Link Building Opportunity and Link to Your Content

To improve your visibility on search engines, you must work on the three pillars of SEO: content, technical, and popularity. And to grow your website's reputation, the most effective way is to obtain quality backlinks. However, if you're new to SEO, it can be challenging to acquire them. That's why I've chosen to share with you my 17 tips for getting good inbound links.

🔎 Definition and importance of backlinks

A backlink is a link placed on a website that points to another site. Also called an inbound link, external link, backlink, or incoming link, the backlink is a crucial element for improving organic search rankings.

First, the hyperlink provided must add value to the content that the user is currently reading. It is often hidden behind a link anchor to make reading more fluid.

On the other hand, backlinks allow indexing robots of search engines to crawl the web more quickly. They follow each link provided, making it possible to discover new pages and verify the freshness of the content offered.

From an SEO perspective, external links are essential for developing the reputation of your website. Indeed, if a site links to another site, it's likely that the information provided is of high quality. This is true if the themes of the sites and content are similar.

If I take the example of a car dealer, a link from a car review site will have a lot of value. On the other hand, if the backlink comes from a home catering site, its impact will be less. This is logical for us and for search engines.

It is therefore essential to obtain quality backlinks to improve your ranking on Google. But before you start looking for backlinks, you must ensure that everything is in place for it to be effective.

🩺 Preliminary actions to obtain backlinks

To succeed in your SEO strategy, it is crucial to prepare your website in advance before starting your actions. Moreover, rushing into acquiring backlinks will lead nowhere. Here are the essential elements to set up before looking for incoming links.

Write high-quality content

Never forget that in SEO, content is king! You want to offer quality texts that fully address the search intent of the user. Covering the subject in its entirety and adding value to the information already available on the Internet is essential for your ranking in the SERP.

By offering quality content, you will have the opportunity to receive backlinks for free from sites that find your texts interesting. So take great care when writing your texts and remember to regularly update already published content.

To achieve this, you can base your content on the information provided by your SEO competitors and your own knowledge. You also have the option to ensure the relevance of your content by checking your text with SEOQuantum's semantic analysis tool.

The quality of your content is also essential when trying to obtain backlinks from partner sites. Indeed, you will offer the pages of your site that will bring value to their readers. During a direct approach, the quality of your text is therefore crucial!

But before going further in obtaining external links, you still have one element to work on...

Set up a link building strategy

Once you have taken care of the previously mentioned elements, you can set up a link building strategy. Here are the factors to consider to avoid rushing headlong in the wrong direction:

• Analyze the link building strategy of your SEO competition.
• Choose the right pages on your website (the ones that have been optimized!).
• Know your budget dedicated to link building.
• Define the number of links needed.
• Select varied link anchors.

🔗 17 tips for obtaining backlinks

Now that you have everything prepared, you can start looking for backlinks. Here are my 17 tips for finding free or paid links.

1. Acquire links through your private and professional network

Of course, if you have friends who have a website in the same theme as yours, there's nothing stopping you from asking them if you can place a link there. However, I advise against making a reciprocal exchange. Indeed, this technique is recognized by search engines and is no longer as effective as before. At best, these links bring nothing. At worst, your sites may be penalized (especially if you do it excessively).

In my opinion, the best way to get backlinks through your network is to ask your clients directly to put a link on their website. Even if the themes can sometimes be different, the recommendation of your clientele is a powerful element to improve the trust of your site, your services, or a particular product.

If you have an e-commerce site, another good strategy is to offer your suppliers the addition of a link on their site. It won't take you much time (you just need to ask directly), and if they accept, you will likely have successfully obtained a quality backlink that will help your SEO.

2. Get a backlink by writing a guest post

Here's a "win-win" method for finding powerful backlinks. The technique is to contact active bloggers in your field and offer them a free article. In exchange, you can then place a link to the page that seems to add the most value to the text you gave them.

To find the blogs that will be interesting for creating a backlink, you will list all the ones you already know and find others by doing a search on Google. I then recommend checking their SEO popularity using a tool like Majestic or Ahrefs. You can then prioritize the sites you want to contact based on their level of influence.

Although some sites clearly express their desire to do "guest blogging," you will need to approach most bloggers. To do this, you can, for example, respond to their posts on social media or under their blog articles. If you prefer to stay more discreet, don't hesitate to contact them by email.

3. Place links through interviews

If you already have some notoriety on the Internet, you can offer influencers to interview you. Whether on YouTube, in a podcast, or in writing, you will then have the opportunity to place a backlink. If you succeed, it will most likely boost your e-reputation, and you will have obtained a high-quality external link.

If you are not yet known in your field, you can try offering reciprocal interviews to other bloggers who also need to gain recognition. However, do this sparingly, as once again, this will likely lead to a direct link exchange.

To find partner sites, you can proceed in the same way as described in the previous point. However, this method is not as "win-win" as writing a guest post. It can, therefore, be more challenging to find.

4. Offer a service to get a backlink

You undoubtedly have skills that can be used as a bargaining chip to obtain a backlink! Whether it's a service, a performance, a discount, or a unique offer, you certainly have something to offer that may interest other website owners.

If you are a craftsman, photographer, designer, consultant, copywriter, or merchant, you will undoubtedly find an interesting offer to propose. The only limits to this approach are your skills and imagination!

This way of creating links pointing to your site is entirely legitimate and does not seem fundamentally contrary to Google's recommendations. At least, it will be done so discreetly that search engines will most likely not notice.

5. Exchange a backlink for a post on social networks

This link acquisition technique is interesting if you have previously developed a large community on social networks. Indeed, for this exchange to be worthwhile, you must guarantee significant visibility and bring substantial traffic.

Before proposing this idea, consider browsing the site you are targeting. You can then directly suggest an article or a page that you think is worth sharing with your audience.

Another essential preliminary action before contacting a potential partner site is to check its presence on social media. If you notice that your community is larger than theirs, go ahead with confidence. On the other hand, if the opposite is true, be prepared to argue the benefits you can bring.

6. Write news articles

If you have a blog, an excellent way to get backlinks is to write articles about current events. This is also a great strategy for hoping to receive links without searching for partners.

Additionally, you create an opportunity to appear in Google News. However, to achieve this, you must ensure that your site perfectly meets Google's SEO criteria. So check that the on-page and off-page settings are optimal and arm yourself with patience.

The best way to write texts about current events is to do a daily watch on sites that offer this type of content. You must also be extremely responsive and able to write your articles as quickly as possible.

7. Get links through contests

Contests are very popular on the web, and users love them. The benefits of such an action are multiple. You increase your visibility, grow your email list, and have a chance to get free backlinks.

To promote your contest, share it on social networks and in your newsletter. But to receive inbound links, you must contact sites in the targeted theme and offer them to relay the information. This technique works quite well, as this type of action is highly appreciated on the Internet.

Another advantage is that the preparation of a contest does not take much time. Get inspired by the presentation strategies of other games and carefully define the prize offered. Then make sure that registration is done automatically with the participant's email (on WordPress, you can use the OnePress Social Locker plugin), and you're done.

8. Use infographics to get backlinks

If you have design skills and can effectively convey information in an infographic, you have the opportunity to find backlinks without spending a lot of time. Moreover, this type of format is popular, and many sites will be happy to use it.

Don't despair if you don't have the skills to create infographics; you can still take advantage of this technique. All you have to do is outsource this work to a specialist. You can find them at a reasonable price on sites like 5Euros or Fiverr.

To place your link, you have two options:

• Use the image as a link anchor, which is perfect for varying your anchors and not over-optimizing your link building.
• Add the link as a caption for the image (use the site's URL directly or an anchor like: created by "your name" or "your site").

9. Find backlinks with the "Skyscraper" method

This innovative technique was invented by the famous SEO expert Brian Dean. Based on a rather simple idea, its effectiveness has proven to be formidable. Also called the "skyscraper technique," here's how to implement it:

1. Find an article with many backlinks in your theme.
2. Rewrite one of the linked articles and add value to it.
3. Contact the site owner and suggest replacing their initial link with yours.

To learn more about this link acquisition method, I suggest you read the article by its creator (in English): https://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique.

10. Replace broken links (404)

This time, you will search for broken links on the web. And there's no shortage of them! Indeed, there are so many pages that have been removed or sites that have closed that it's common to find blogs with links pointing to a 404 error page.

The argument for offering your links is simple and effective. Since having a broken link is bad for the user experience and harmful to SEO, you will have no trouble suggesting replacing this link with yours.

To find broken links, you can use a Google Chrome extension: Check my Links.

Moreover, by browsing the sites you target, you will certainly find a large number of them. You can then group them in a list before contacting the owner and suggesting yours as a replacement.

11. Look for sites that mention you without linking

Do sites mention you but haven't linked? What a great opportunity to quickly generate backlinks! The only thing to know is how to find them?

• Use Semrush (paid): in "Content Marketing," click on "Brand Monitoring." Enter your keywords and your site to discover mentions without links.

• Search in Google (free): type the following query in the search bar, and you will find the sites that mention you without adding a link: "mysite.com" -inanchor:"mysite.com" -site:"mysite.com".

Once this search is done, contact the sites one by one to propose adding a link to their mention. This technique is quite effective, as sites that mention you are already aware of the quality of your content and services.

12. Offer your articles to aggregation sites

When you do your watch to follow the news in your field of activity, do you go to sites that aggregate articles? If so, then you have already found potential partners for creating backlinks.

If not, you can try searching on Google for the following terms: "weekly news + keyword" or "top week + keyword." However, be sure to analyze the results page carefully to avoid wasting time during your outreach.

Make sure of the high quality of the content you will offer them and try to demonstrate the added value compared to other articles on this theme. Once trust is established, these sites can bring you many backlinks in the future.

13. Acquire links from directories

Here's an old-fashioned SEO technique! It was extremely effective more than ten years ago. But today, its influence on organic search is almost nil. I mention it, however, because it's a good way to get backlinks if you're starting or want to gain a little traffic on your site.

The other advantage of this technique is that it does not require much time to set up. You just need to contact the directories and wait for their response.

However, if you want to get a bit of SEO juice, I recommend checking the following data beforehand:

1. Make sure the links provided are in "dofollow."
2. Avoid directories that automatically validate indexing requests.
3. Check the trust index of the site (with Majestic SEO or Ahrefs).
4. Check if the directory requires a detailed description of your business.

If you notice that one of these elements is not conclusive, you'd better move on!

14. Receive backlinks by commenting on blogs and forums

Here's another free method for obtaining inbound links that don't have much influence on your SEO. Indeed, these links are most often in "nofollow," which means that search engines will not take them into account.

Tip: to know if a link is in "nofollow," you can install this extension on Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nofollow/dfogidghaigoomjdeacndafapdijmiid. All links outlined in red are in "nofollow."

However, this technique can bring traffic to your website. Even if it's not organic traffic, it's never negligible! There are, however, precautions to take before proceeding in this way. You must not spam your link at every opportunity, or you risk being penalized by Google.

If you reasonably insert your links and add value to the content, you will also have the opportunity to introduce your site to the owner of the blog or forum. It will then be much easier to approach them naturally to offer a link on one of their pages.

15. Share your articles on social networks

Although links on social media are not apparently taken into account by search engines, promoting your articles on them is essential. It is also a widely recommended technique in content marketing.

The advantage of using this method to obtain backlinks is indirect. Of course, each share will bring you a link on the same media (and therefore in "nofollow"). However, you have the opportunity to significantly increase your traffic with each of your publications, which can be a good indicator for your SEO.

Moreover, the chances of receiving a backlink thanks to your posts on social networks are not nil! If a user finds your article genuinely interesting and has a website, there's a good chance they will place a link in one of their content pieces.

16. Buy backlinks on link building platforms

Depending on the amount you are willing to invest, you also have the option to directly buy links on the web. This will undoubtedly save you time. The key is to find the right platform!

Indeed, the competition is so fierce in this field that you will find everything when doing your research. However, here is a list of platforms that I recommend.

• https://www.develink.com/
• https://www.semjuice.com/
• https://getfluence.com/
• https://www.linksgarden.com/
• https://www.vipseo.fr/
• https://soumettre.fr/
• https://www.nextlevel.link/

17. Hire an SEO expert to find backlinks

As you've undoubtedly understood from reading the previous 16 points, finding backlinks is no small task! It requires time and skills. If you have the budget, I recommend not hesitating to hire a professional.

An SEO consultant will set up an approved link building strategy based on their experience. They also have a good network of partner sites. You will then have the luxury of developing your SEO while being able to focus on your main activity.

To find a reliable SEO expert, you can search on LinkedIn and check their recommendations. If you have acquaintances with websites, don't hesitate to ask them if they have someone to recommend.

⚠ Beware of penalties related to buying backlinks

Creating backlinks is an element to manage perfectly if you don't want to risk a Google penalty. It is evident that in SEO, one cannot remain entirely natural to face the competition. However, if the technical settings and content creation do not present a significant risk (except if we still haven't understood that keyword stuffing no longer works!), forcing link building is always on the border between black hat and white hat.

That's why I recommend being very careful in your quest for backlinks. Here's what you absolutely must avoid doing to not openly reveal to Google that you are working directly on your backlinking.

• Make too many links at once.
• Use only keywords as link anchors.
• Spam your link at every opportunity.
• Receive backlinks from themes that do not match yours.

The only way to succeed in your link building campaign is to be patient and remain as respectful as possible to the user and search engines. If you think you don't have all the necessary skills to do this work properly, I strongly advise you to call on professionals. It's an investment you surely won't regret!