10 Tips on How to Generate First Backlinks for Your Blog

Backlinks are still one of Google’s top ranking factors and have a significant impact on the success of your blog. Especially when starting a new blog good backlinks are essential in order to ultimately generate income from blogging! There are different ways to get these high quality backlinks for your blog – we are going to show you the 10 best tips for it here.

High Quality Backlinks: The Top Class of Search Engine Optimization

The main goal of search engine optimisation (SEO) is to align and adapt web content for Google’s analysis mechanisms. This improves positioning in search results for relevant search queries. Backlinks count as a ranking factor. In simple terms, these links lead users from relevant websites to your blog. Google examines these links to assess the quality of your content. Consequently, your content will appear higher in the rankings than similar content without backlinks.

However, you don’t need too many of these links and quality is what matters. For example, ten or more links from websites that are only remotely related to your blog’s theme can lead to a lower SEO ranking than a single optimised link for your specific topic. This link could come from a recognised institution in your specialist area. Just to be crystal clear: never simply buy a load of backlinks! This violates Google’s guidelines and you’ll probably tumble down the rankings or, in the worst case, disappear from the index.

So, the main goal is to create organic backlinks, i.e. through natural content such as links from reputable websites dealing with the same subject as your blog. Therefore we are now going to explain the best ways to create these links!

10 Ways to Ensure Your Backlinks Are High-Quality

1. Produce High Quality Content

Nowadays, consumers and business customers mainly search the Internet or Google for solutions to their issues. They also look for services to meet their needs. In fact, long before they even consider purchasing a specific product or service, they sift through a wealth of information. Only sites that meet a user’s request for information and skilfully match the relevant queries through original content can compete on the web today. Of course, this also applies to your blog posts.

If you want to convince (potential) customers about a product or service – whether you’re selling your own products or services or acting as an affiliate – you must offer just the right information. This must be specific to your target group and the relevant stage in the buying process. For example, a potential client just beginning to look for information needs different details to someone who may have already compared several products. The former will find basic information to be relevant, while the latter may not find it useful since they need content to help them make a decision.

If you manage to engage your audience on all levels, comprehensively meeting every need and offering real added value, they’re highly likely to share your content and, sooner or later, links back to your page or site will be created.

2. Create a WordPress Blog and Use Social Media

People are signing up to social networks in increasing numbers. In addition, online social activity is massive these days. Facebook is still at the top. In Germany, 23 million people engage here on a daily basis. So, it’s no surprise that this and other relevant channels like Instagram, Twitter and YouTube have developed into serious marketing platforms.

One of the reasons for this is the huge potential reach of the content. In addition, linking content with social media or sharing it (‘social signals’) has a positive effect on SEO. Google has yet to confirm this, but the very essence of social networks promotes backlinks!

If your blogs have ‘like’ or ‘share’ buttons, your readers can pass on content through their social media accounts. Naturally, your content must completely convince your audience. When this happens and your posts get ‘likes’, you benefit from the potentially enormous reach we’ve just described and the activity of people on social media. With the right targeting, your posts could go viral, i.e. passed on through social media. Then, you can reach many readers who recognise the quality and link your post to their website on the same topic. This will generate a backlink.

Of course, you shouldn’t necessarily wait until one of your readers clicks the ‘share’ button. You can accelerate this process by sharing blog posts on your social media accounts.

Source: NordWood Themes / Unsplash

3. Swapping Links

The procedures above are the basics for generating backlinks. Now, we’ll move on to more specialist techniques: You can strongly influence the creation of high-quality backlinks and exchanging links is a common method. However, Google doesn’t approve of this. If you’re subtle about it and stick to the rules (for example, not having reciprocal links on the home page), you shouldn’t suffer negative consequences.

Also, the procedure is very simple: Look for blogs with the same topic or other websites as close as possible to your area of expertise and ask those running the blogs to link a post to one of your articles. In return, you’ll do the same.

4. Post Comments in Other Blogs

Blog comments don’t have the same SEO strength for backlinks compared to the methods described above. Google tends to recognise any non-organic links and evaluate them accordingly. However, studies have shown that backlinks from comments are beneficial and don’t lead to any negative consequences when it comes to ranking the linked page (at least for the time being and if the procedure is correctly followed).

Once again, this is very simple: Look around for blogs with the same topic and comment about one or more posts under a different name. Include the backlink and with few subtleties, your ranking is likely to benefit.

One of the main requirements for effective backlinks in comments is to really read the articles you comment on and to be constructive in evoking answers. A phrase like “great text” with a link will be quickly exposed by Google and ultimately won’t do you any good.

5. Conduct Interviews

Interviews are one of the more complex methods of generating backlinks, but they also have great potential to actually become one. These question-and-answer sessions and the statements within are generally considered as highly authentic and credible. To get the most out of this, the interviewee should be someone who holds a position of authority in the relevant area. This way, you’ll offer readers, listeners or viewers some real added value. By meeting these prerequisites it’s highly likely that webmasters with sites on the same topic will refer to your interview, generating numerous quality backlinks for you.

6. Place Guest Articles on Other Blogs

Guest articles have mutual benefits. As the article’s author, you’ll receive an integrated backlink and the host blog will get some free content. Make sure you check out suitable blog topics for a guest article on your individual theme. Review these carefully – use analysis tools to assess whether generating a backlink will really benefit you. Only then should you request an interview. The higher the quality of your blog content or reputation in your specialist area, the greater the likelihood that the interview will be beneficial.

7. Create a Blog and Offer Downloads

Offering downloads, such as e-books, white papers or software (demo versions), works in a similar way to high-quality content. Downloads should be as specific as possible to your target audience and provided exactly when needed. Therefore, the downloaded files will draw attention to other blogs and websites, which can link these obviously high-quality downloads.

Source: Pixabay / Pexels

8. Organise Blog Parades/Reviews

To start a blog parade, call bloggers from your subject area to comment on a topic that interests all participants. Bloggers involved in your blog parade will write an article on the given topic, ultimately creating quality contributions where authors link to the organiser. In return, the organiser of the parade can write a summary with links back to the authors.

9. Use Round-Up Articles

Round-up contributions ask experts (in this case other bloggers) about specific specialist themes and are similar to interviews. You can simply turn the answers into a blog article and provide backlinks to answer your questions. Since well-designed round-up articles convince your readers just like interviews, they tend to receive frequent backlinks.

10. Create a WordPress Blog and Post Entries in Recognised Blog Lists

Actually, not all backlinks that are purchased or clearly non-organic are bad for your ranking. If you register with your blog in one or more recognised blog directories, the backlinks won’t be as beneficial as in organic content. However, they can certainly give you an edge over competitors who might not appear there. Google can see the added value and benefit to end users in directories where people can find blogs on a certain topic in a compact list.

Final Tip: Check and Regularly Monitor Your Backlinks

In addition to generating backlinks, it is also important that they are continuously added without your intervention. Your job is to simply check them regularly. This will allow you to discover sites that report on your blog and that you wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. This makes it much easier to establish contacts and possibly valuable cooperation. To check and control your backlinks, we recommend Linkminer. With the box below you can easily check your blog for backlinks for free.

Conclusion

There are multiple ways to create strong backlinks. The methods we’ve explained in this article aren’t an exhaustive list but could be the most beneficial. Of course, you can’t and shouldn’t use these all at once or you’ll quickly lose track. It is best to start with the basics, i.e. creating high-quality content and broadcasting it on social media. Once you’re initially successful, you can start to expand.

Tip: This article about backlinks is also available in German.