Did you know that the United States alone spends a lot in search engine optimization (SEO)?
After all, it’s expected for the country’s businesses to spend $80 billion within the next year. It will grow from here, as businesses become more competitive with their online presence.
Expect to spend money too, especially if you want to beat the competition. Fortunately, you don’t need to resort to black hat SEO techniques to gain an edge. We’ve got a great list below showcasing effective white-hat techniques, from proper backlinking to video tutorials.
1. Internal Linking
This method is big but often overlooked by most businesses. It helps you transfer links through your pages while maintaining link control. It makes a natural profile of links that Google can use to crawl your website faster.
2. Ask for Credit
Regardless of what you do, ask credit from both your clients and partners. The best time to do this is when your clients are happy with your service. Make the whole process easier by putting the link on their website or make a snippet they can embed using HTML.
3. Ask Suppliers and Distributors
Do you buy products or services from a supplier? If so, you can ask them to spare a link to your website. Your suppliers will want you to succeed, meaning they’re more likely to oblige to your requests.
4. Make Message Board Signatures
When using the forums, make sure to put a link to your website in your signature. Most of it are “no-follow”, but it can still bring a decent amount of visitors to your website. That will helps ensure you keep up your site’s natural link profile.
5. Use Directories
You can submit your website’s link to niche directories or local business directories. Be wary of general web directories since they’re often filled with low-quality links. You don’t want to get associated with these since it will lower your Google rankings.
6. Make Video Tutorials
Did you know that a lot of people say that product videos help them decide what to buy? In a recent study, it’s shown that about 90% of viewers’ buying habits get influenced by videos they watch online. Once you make your tutorial video, you can share it on forums where people get a link back to your website for more information.
7. Guest Blogging
You can connect with popular bloggers and pitch them an idea for a blog post. If you aren’t a big firm, use guest blogging networks as a starting point. With guest blog posts, you can get some backlinks from high-quality sources.
8. Write Testimonials
Businesses are at their happiest when seeing clients use their products or services. You can endorse the suppliers you use and write great reviews about them. Once you’re done, you can ask them to share this testimonial on their website, linking back to you.
9. Comment on Blogs
This tactic won’t earn you backlinks in most cases. Most blog comments will only net you some no-follow links, but it still helps people check you out at least. Also, you might find that some blogs will allow do-follow comments.
10. Join Communities
There is no limit to the communities you can, whether it’s a subreddit or a business hub. It’s still a great way for you to drive more people to your website and get some good links. It’s important to remember that these links are usually no-follow.
11. Answer Online Questions
You can go to websites like Quora and Yahoo Answers to answer questions related to your field. This will help you garner more website traffic from people impressed by your expertise. With that, you can build your own credibility as a thought leader in your sphere of interest.
12. Do Some Giveaways
One of the easiest ways to earn white hat backlinks is to give something away. A good way to start is to give influencers some incentives in exchange for a product review. But it’s important not to go overboard with the charity, or you’ll find yourself losing money faster than you like.
13. Convert Unhappy Customers
No matter what industry you’re in, there is a chance that you’ll get some negative comments. You’ll find some reviews or articles lambasting your brand, regardless of your service excellence. But that isn’t the end—do what you can to convert them by helping them solve their problems with your business.
14. Make Sure the Links Point to the Right Page
You can try using tools to track if your links are pointing to the right page in your website. Don’t wait until you get too many 404 errors since that will damage your link profile. The good thing is that you have some easy approaches when this happens, such as:
- Inform site owners to repurpose the link
- Use 301 redirections to another page
This will ensure that your link integrity holds up no matter how much you change your website.
15. Get Your Competitors’ Backlinking Profile
Do you have a competitor with a higher ranking in the Google results page? If so, you can use tools to find their links using their website URL. That way, you’ll get inbound link data like the number of links, referring domains, and more.
Start Backlinking Today!
If you want to get easy backlinks, you can use these tips to build a legitimate link profile. Black hat SEO tactics might tempt you since they offer immediate results, but it’s a disaster waiting to happen. Remember, Google often updates its algorithm, and it’s gotten better at detecting illegitimate ways of growing link profiles.
Stick to white hat link building tactics, and you will have a sustainable means of growing your online presence. If you need more means of becoming noticeable online, you can read our guide here. It’s a complete beginners’ guide to on-site SEO—perfect if you don’t have prior experience.
