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7 Best B2B Link Building Strategies for SEO | RAHULOGY

Whether its B2C or B2B website, one of the common challenges for marketers is to rank higher on search result pages for relevant keywords or queries that prospects search for. The higher your website ranks the more visibility your brand gains and thus more traffic and then sales. 

Now, you’re not alone who wants your site to rank higher for relevant keywords – there are your known competitors in the industry and maybe thousands of other websites competing for the same keywords you want to rank for.

So, how can you win your desired position on search results? Well, there are tons of SEO strategies that you can leverage to boost your website ranking

However, Link building is one of the most effective SEO strategies that B2B marketers can implement to rank higher and drive more traffic to the website.

In this blog, I will share some of the proven link building strategies that you can use to grow your website. Before that, let me first tell you what Link building is and why it is essential for B2B marketing.

What is Link building?

Do you know that Google takes multiple ranking factors into consideration to rank a page on search result pages? 

Well, there are hundreds of ranking factors that search engines use in the ranking, and some of the ranking factors are as follows –

Among all, backlinks are arguably the most critical ranking factor for Google, i.e. the more links to your website from relevant and authority sites, the higher your page will rank. 

Now, the process of getting more and more quality backlinks from other websites to your own is what we call Link-building and Link building strategies enables you to track and attract high-quality inbound links to your websites.

Advantages of link-building in B2B Marketing?

In B2B, link-building is not just a means to acquire new links to your website but to build authority and establish brand credibility in the space as well.

Here are a few benefits of link-building for B2B brands –

7 Most Effective B2B Link-building Tactics

There are many ways to get backlinks, but when it comes to getting relevant and quality backlinks, then the options are quite limited. Going further, I will show you 7 best link-building strategies for B2B marketing.

If you’re ready, let’s get started.

1. Guest Blogging

There’s a big reason why I put guest blogging on top of the list – it creates the most impact on building authority and brand visibility. With guest blogging, you don’t just get backlinks but the opportunity to share your ideas and opinions among an already established audience base which helps you attract new eyeballs to your brand.

So, how to find guest blogging opportunities?

Step 1: Make a list of authority blogs in your niche.

First, you need to list out all the blogs in your space where you want to submit guests blogs. To create a list of such blogs, you can do a simple Google search with a keyword phrase you want to target and add the high authority websites in the list.

Or you can use SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool to find the most relevant websites easily. You just have to enter your main keyword in the search bar and hit the search button. Then, scroll down where you’ll see the list of all the keywords related to your searched term.

Now click on one of the keywords to find the list of web pages ranking for that specific keyword on Google search results. Export the list of URLs and add it in your Google Sheet.

Step 2: Determine if the sites in your list accept guest blogs.

Now you need to find how many of the blogs from your list accept guest posts. To determine this, you should start with visiting these sites and looking for pages like “Write For Us” or “Guest Posting”.

Usually, you will find the links to such pages in the footer or secondary menu of the site. You can also try the internal Searchbox to see if any page or article related to guest blogging exist on that website.

If this idea sounds difficult, you can use the following search queries to determine if the site accepts guest blogs –

For example, if you want to publish a guest blog on Inc42, you can use one of the above search queries, and this is how you’ll see the result. 

However, if you will see the result of your queries like this (image below) for a specific site, then the blog most likely doesn’t accept guest blogs.

Step 3: Access the blogs.

You don’t want to do all the hard work to get backlinks from a website that doesn’t benefit your website SEO. This is why, once you have determined the sites available for guest blogging, access the blogs to see if it is worth your time.

Now, you will have a shorter list of the highest quality websites in your niche where you can submit guest blogs.

Step 4: Prepare your pitch, write and submit your article.

Without any delay, go through some of their recent blog posts and figure out the topic of the article you would like to submit there.

Now, prepare your pitch to publish your guest blog and start reaching out to the website owner/admins with your ideas and once you get the approval, write your article and submit it as soon as possible.

2. Broken Link Building

It is a tactic in which you discover the broken backlinks on another website from where you want backlinks to your website and reach out to the site owner or manager with an alternative link to replace the broken links. That alternate link can be one of your pages.

This strategy is all about establishing a relationship with other website owners, content writers and bloggers from your niche and exchanging links and other resources to help each other grow. 

So, how to build broken links?

Step 1: Create a list of target websites

To create a list of websites you want backlinks from, you can start with a simple Google search with your keyword phrases and list out all the top ranking websites manually, or you can use SEMrush as described in the previous sections.

Step 2: Analyse the websites

Now analyse the websites thoroughly to find broken links. For this, you can use “Check My Links” Google chrome extension which highlights all the broken links on a webpage. However, going through each page of the site can be overwhelming and tiring. This is where you can use Ahref Broken Link Checker to find all the broken links on a site as shown below and export it.

Now, you have a list of all the broken links on the website. Analyse the list and see if you can offer alternative links from your website to replace those broken links.

Step 3: Reach out to blog owner/manager

Based on your assessment, start reaching out to the website owner or managers to notify them about the broken links on their site and suggest them alternative links to your site to replace it.

3. Replicate competitors Best Backlinks

If your competitors are ranking higher than you on search result pages, it means that they must be doing something better than you. You can replicate it too.

So, how can you replicate your competitors’ link building strategy?

Step 1: Identify your major competitors

You might already know all your competitors in your region (with whom you are competing in a specific locality, country or state). Still, when it comes to ranking on Google, you need to compete with global players in your niche. 

You can use the SEMrush keyword research tool to identify all the web pages that are ranking higher for the keywords you want to rank for. Go to semrush.com and enter your keyword. Then, hit the search button.

Now, you will see a list of all the webpages ranking for that keyword on Google search result. Export the report and add it to your excel sheet.

Step 2: Assess the backlinks of those websites

Once you have identified your major competitors, you need to analyze their backlink profile. To do so, click on the Backlink Analytics tab under the SEO Toolkit and add a link from your list in the search bar, and hit the button.

Next, scroll down, and you’ll see all the backlinks to that site (not the page). In the below image, you can see that I have checked the “New” option because I wanted to identify the most recent backlink sources of my competitor.

Similarly, you can add link type, No. of links per referring domain, and other advanced filters to narrow down the list for better analysis.

Now export the list of backlink source URLs and add it in your Google sheet. Then, analyse it to figure out why did they get those backlinks.

For example, if you see that the site has gained a lot of backlinks from industry blogs, then it means that your competitor is well-respected in the industry and the columnists love to mentions the brand name in their article. Similarly, if you see that they have gained most of their backlinks from newspapers and magazines, then your competitors must have invested in PR or sponsored articles.

By analyzing these links, you will gain a lot of insights about your competitors’ marketing strategy, and you can reverse engineer it for your business.

4. Get Interviewed on podcasts

Podcasts have been growing massively in the last couple of years, and there are over a million podcasts till April 2020, and I’m sure the number is growing every day.

So, how does getting interviewed on a podcast can help you in link-building? The answer lies in the podcast you choose to be interviewed on.

Many popular podcasts have their website where they publish articles or transcriptions of each episode of the podcast with the guest introduction. And that’s where you have the opportunity to get a backlink to your site.

Now, how to find the relevant podcasts to be featured on?

Step 1: Create a list of podcasts from your niche

While picking up the podcast to be featured on, you must choose the podcasts which are related to your niche and most importantly, those podcasts which your target audience is listening. 

The best way to list out such podcasts is to search for the keyword phrase related to your business on Apple Podcast (You can use other podcast directories like Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcast) and add the name of the top shows in your list of the target podcasts.

For example, I am a B2B marketer, and I want to get interviewed on podcasts related to it. So, I searched for “B2B marketing” on Apple Podcast.

Here you’ll see the top-ranking podcasts, and it may be tough to get a spot on most of these podcasts. So, you’ll need first to find easy targets for which to click on one of these podcasts and scroll down to view more podcasts under “You Might Also Like” section. 

Now, add all the podcasts you find relevant and want to be featured on in your list. 

Step 2: Find out how many of these podcasts have a website

Once you have a list of all the podcasts you want to be featured on, find out how many of them have their website. To find out, you need to search the podcast name on Google and see if any website comes up.

For example, when I searched for a B2B Growth Podcast, their official website appeared in the result page. Visit the site and see if they add backlinks to the guest or not. “The B2B growth show” is quite generous in this aspect.

If no such website appears, remove the podcast from your list.

Step 3: Compare the domain Authority of websites.

Now, you have the podcasts in your list from your niche, and you should try to get featured on the podcast. However, if you are doing this only to get quality backlinks to your website, then you need to compare the domain authority of these websites, and sort list the sites with DA score higher than your website.

You can use Moz Link Explorer to check the domain authority of these websites as shown below.

Step 4: Start reaching out to hosts

Finally, look through the website, LinkedIn, Instagram or any other medium to get in touch with the host of the podcast and pitch your idea and how you can bring value to the podcast by being a guest.

This is the toughest part of all to convince someone to allow you to interact with his/her audiences. So, try to establish a relationship with the host and show what you have for his/her audience. 

5. Create & Submit Infographics

Infographics can play a crucial role in your link building strategy. Designing compelling infographic can costs a lot to a business in terms of money and time and this can one of the possible reasons why you might not see infographics on most of the websites you listed out in earlier sections. 

This is where you can come into the picture by offering them a quality infographic based on one of their popular blog posts or something new related to your niche and in return, you can exchange for backlinks to your website. 

Since creating an infographic can cost your time and money, you can use this strategy to pitch the websites which don’t allow guest posts but are mighty in your industry.

6. Add your company on Business-listing websites

Business listing websites list is online listing places to promote companies or enterprises to the outside markets. These are the spots for your customers to learn about your business and compare other vendors for their requirements.

The profile on these sites are public, and a typical listing site contains the Name, email, website, address and contact number of your company. Most of the Business Listing websites add no-follow tags to the website link, but still, the backlinks from these platforms can be beneficial if their Domain Authority is high and is popular in your niche. 

Also, B2B customers use business listing websites for their research purposes to learn about your company and other vendors before signing up the deal. Thus, it is not only useful for link-building but can be vital for B2B customer journey mapping as well.

7. Claim links for your brand mentions

If your brand is a thought leader in the industry, then many columnists, bloggers, your partners, and competitors may mention your brand name in their articles. However, in many cases, the author forgets to add a link to your brand name so that readers can visit your website.

In such cases, you can reach out to the author or the website manager and ask them if they can link back to your website. Now to make sure you come to know about your brand mentions, you need to monitor the web constantly.

You can use Buzzsumo or Google Alerts to monitor your brand name on the web. Google Alerts is a free tool but is limited in features. However, it is an excellent tool to start with if you are operating on a low budget.

On Google Alerts, you need to create an alert with your brand name and it will keep you notified via email as soon as someone mentions your brand name on another website.

Once you get a brand alert, assess the website to see if they have added a link to your site or not. If not, compare their Domain Authority Score with yours and if you find the website relevant for link building, reach out to the writer or someone who manages the site to fix the issue.

Wrapping Up

Now you know the best 7 B2B link-building strategies that you can quickly implement in your SEO strategy. However, if you have a small team or working on a low marketing budget, I would highly recommend you to not try all the strategies at once.

Instead, pick any 2-3 of these strategies and implement it effectively and set the process in motion before applying another because no matter how easy these strategies sound, you will need to spend a lot of time and effort to ensure that the strategy works.

I hope that this article helped with the link building strategy for your website. You should also check out my comprehensive guide on B2B keyword research to discover right keywords for your business and drive quality traffic.

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