Creative Link Building for Better SEO

The search engine landscape today is completely different compared to what it was three years ago. Among the significant changes are the roll-out of Google’s ranking algorithms like the Panda and the Google Penguin updates.

These two pets of the search engine giant have completely changed the landscape, as well as the way websites are ranked in the SERPs. Some SEO techniques that were used to be quite effective before are no longer effective today. The same is true to link building strategies.

So if your techniques in building backlinks are the same, then your methods are more likely ineffectual nowadays, unless you have made changes to make your methods well-suited to the present scenario. Nonetheless, listed here are 7 creative ways of building backlinks that work in today’s search engine landscape.

7 Creative Link Building Strategies

1. Use Infographics

Infographics are powerful tools that are not only beneficial to search engine optimization but also in attracting more backlinks and page views. By providing useful and fresh data and stats presented in colors via infographics, you will attract more people to link to your site as the source of information they shared in their posts.

Infographics greatly enhance the comprehension of the complex data by the viewers. This also saves people a lot of time understanding and analyzing the information. Above all, visuals filled with colors and attractive designs are effective in catching the attention of the viewers. If the information is good, people will be more than willing to share your infographics in their respective blog.

Aside from getting backlinks from those who referenced your infographics, you can get more backlinks if you will make your infographic public. This means, you have to allow your work to be published in other sites but with one condition, and that is to link back to your site. You can provide the HTML code for linking in order to make it easier for others to embed the infographic in their posts along with the link back to your own blog as the source.

2. Embed Videos

Videos can also help attract more backlinks. Make sure that the video is totally unique and fully loaded with a lot of useful information so that readers will share your post to others via links. The more attractive the videos the more backlinks you will also attract.

3. Hyperlink Photos

Just like videos, photos are powerful, too, in capturing more backlinks. Many bloggers are in dire need of photos to insert in their websites and to reinforce the message in their post. While there are abundant resources of high quality royalty-free images, most of them are paid. If you use a lot of articles in your website then it can be pretty expensive in the long run.

 

However, there are also places where you can get free photos for publishing at no cost at all. Just like those sites, you can take good quality pictures and offer them free for web publishing to your readers, provided that they will link back to your site.

Photos have different licenses when it comes to distribution and publishing. Some royalty-free images are usually free to use but with one restriction, and that is to provide a link to the source. You can use this license when distributing your photos.

To be successful in this method, you need to capture compelling, unique, and attractive photos that are also superior in quality. Choose photos that are highly in demand such as anything about making money, blogging, internet, shopping, and so on. Choosing the ideal photos for distribution can be quite challenging but this is fun, as well. The best part is, you are building backlinks at the same time.

4. Create Quizzes

A unique way of building links is to create quizzes in some of your posts and to encourage your readers to take the quiz, as well. If your quizzes are really good, they can go viral without so much promotion on your part. Use interesting stats and facts for your quizzes, but make sure that they are related to your website.

One good example of building backlinks through quiz question is to create a quiz about the number of bacteria that lives in your cellphone. People use mobile phones every day, and this question definitely attracted a lot of people to find out the answer. The answer intrigued those who took the quiz; consequently, they shared the quiz it to their friends to take the same quiz too. The sharing process created more backlinks, thereby increasing its visibility. This made the quiz quite popular, both among the online communities and among the search engines.

5. Run a Contest

Just like quizzes, contests will also attract more backlinks. Since this is a competition, then naturally you have to give rewards to the winners. While this may require investment from your end, you don’t have to spend a lot for the prizes as long as the rewards are attractive and something valuable.

6. Offer Scholarship

You have heard about edu backlinks that webmasters are scrambling for. Some are even paying hundreds to thousands of dollars just to get them because of their perceived value in SEO. The truth is, you don’t have to buy those links. You can get them naturally, which is even better and more beneficial to search engine optimization.

However, this may require bigger investment from your end. You will have to offer a scholarship to one student for a year and tell various schools about your scholarship program. These schools will help you look for the right candidates by posting ads along with links back to your site, thereby getting natural backlinks from them. Aside from scholarship, you can also offer free books of school supplies using the same principle.

7. Give Freebies and Perks

People love perks and free offers, and if they enjoy the rewards many of them will share your offers via links to their friends for them to enjoy, as well. The better the rewards and perks the more backlinks you will get.

The above tips are just a few creative ideas for building links. You can create your own strategies. Squeeze out your creative juices and innovate methods to get traffic and attract more links for better results from your search engine optimization.