It’s no secret that link building is at the crux of every successful SEO strategy. At the surface, they enrich content and provide the reader with additional resources, but underneath—the strongest backlinks can transform a brand’s entire digital presence overnight.
However, not all backlinks are created equal. Whether it’s their DA/DR metrics, brand image or reputation, some links are considered better and more impactful than others. And it’s precisely these high-profile placements that most SEOs struggle to score consistently or at all.
That’s because they’re often afraid to dig deep and try unconventional approaches. Well, in this article, we aim to dispel the fog surrounding the strongest backlinks.
In addition to outlining the best strategies on how to get them, we’ll equip you with effective tips that helped us build $500,000 worth of links so far in 2024.
How Strong Backlinks Can Triple Your SEO Success
The most effective backlinks, also known as high authority backlinks, are the backbone of an effective SEO strategy, contributing significantly to a website’s search engine rankings, trust, credibility, and visibility.
Understanding the pivotal role these strong backlinks play can transform your approach to SEO, and once you acquire a couple, you’ll see how they’re able to transform your digital presence by:
Boosting Search Engine Rankings
Search engines like Google use backlinks as key indicators of a webpage’s quality and relevance. As a result, a link from a reputable and authoritative site acts as a vote of confidence, signaling to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy.
Getting a homepage link on Wikipedia is much more effective than a backlink on Marystravelblog123.com.
Consequently, websites with a robust backlink profile, filled with authority domains, often enjoy higher rankings in SERPs, making them more visible to potential visitors. This equals more leads, which equates to more customers and a direct avenue towards scaling up, the Holy Grail of all SaaS startups.
Building Trust and Credibility
The strongest backlinks, stemming from esteemed and relevant sources not only elevate a site’s position in search results but also enhance its credibility among users and within your industry.
25% of people opt for the first search result, resulting in a mind-boggling 28.5% average clickthrough rate (CTR).
According to Search Engine Journal, 25% of people opt for the first search result, resulting in a mind-boggling 28.5% average clickthrough rate (CTR).
Once you manage to achieve his perceived trustworthiness is crucial for attracting and retaining users, encouraging engagement, and converting visitors into loyal customers or followers.
But no matter how stellar you believe your brand is, no one will be able to see it if you’re buried on Page 3.
Enhancing Organic Traffic and Visibility
The direct correlation between strong backlinks and improved search engine rankings naturally leads to increased organic traffic.
Websites that rank higher in SERPs are more likely to be clicked on by users, driving a consistent flow of traffic.
Moreover, visibility in search results for a wider array of keywords and queries can be achieved through a diversified backlink profile, further expanding your site’s reach and potential audience.
Strategies for Acquiring Strongest Backlinks
The thing about the strongest backlinks is that acquiring them isn’t as straightforward as sending a “Hey, do you want to do a link exchange” email. Instead, brands have to create a personalized approach that’ll utilize their resources across the board.
Below, we’ll outline a winning combo of strategies for getting strong backlinks in 2024. Apply them together, and you’ll soon see your site on that rocket ship.
Create Exceptional Content as Link Bait
When asked “What are the most powerful backlinks?,” most SEOs would throw around names like Wikipedia, Github, and NYT—the usual suspects. In reality, however, the strongest backlinks are those organically earned.
While this sounds easy enough, people won’t actually link to your content out of the goodness of their hearts.
To get the best sites for SEO linking onboard, you need to create link-worthy content—also known as link bait. But what does this entail?
- Guides. People always search for ways to accomplish something, and with this informational search intent, you have the opportunity to earn strong links by having the best and most thorough guides. Don’t settle for AI-generated, cookie-cutter guides filled with fluff. Provide actionable advice that your competitors don’t.
- Statistics. While your educational content might not be gaining traction, a set of verifiable, sourced statistics will do the trick. Writers, researchers and journalists always want to back up their claims with concrete data. And if you provide the best, most easily readable statistics, you’ll start seeing organic links.
- Infographics. If you have research data or interesting findings, the truth is that not everyone will be willing to read multiple pages of text. Why not accompany the data with visualizations in the form of infographics? This will make the data memorable, in addition to landing links, when people credit your site as the source of the image.
- Case studies. For every brand, SaaS or otherwise, showcasing tangible proof of your accomplishments is important. Therefore, creating readable case studies with visuals will do the trick by providing a treasure trove of unique and proprietary data to your readers. And just as statistics, this type of content is invaluable as a resource, and will yield strong backlinks as a result.
- Clickbaity titles. While not applicable in every situation, choosing an engaging title might be the difference between people actually reading your content. The wording draws people in and helps with the traffic of your blog, which in turn sends a signal to Google to rank it higher, eventually resulting in more powerful backlinks.
Ideally, creating linkable content should be on top of your priority list. Aside from merely acquiring strong backlinks, you should also think about any future visitors.
Once they see your site filled with well-made, well-designed content, they’ll have a positive impression of your brand.
Outreach and Relationship Building
2024 is the year of personalized, highly targeted outreach. With so many AI tools for link building outreach, site editors and marketers are becoming increasingly wary of bland, almost perfectly-sounding emails. What’s the solution, then?
Instead of using the spray-and-pray method of reaching out to as many sites as possible, you should work on your research methods to find better sites more efficiently.
In addition, you have to keep in mind that you’re competing against SEOs that send thousands of emails an hour—there’s no other way to win other than to stand out. To do that, you should:
- Focus on building relationships. Too many marketers expend all their energy and creativity on nailing that first email or follow-up, only to find themselves clueless when it comes to maintaining a relationship. Thus, you need to be accommodating and polite, respond promptly and know how to provide the other side with what they need.
- Reach out for collaborations. This is where personalized, human-written messages truly shine. If you express interest in the site, provide comments to prove you’re informed about what they do, and clearly state what it’s in for them, you’re guaranteed to raise a few eyebrows. Everyone is looking to release content no one else has, and a collab with you just might be what they’re looking for.
- Leverage existing relationships. If you’ve reached out to a site and established a relationship with them, they’ll be more likely to connect you with other publications. Also, editors and content managers tend to change jobs frequently, so a stable contact might be able to get you into their new site.
Don’t make these guest blogging mistakes
The notion of guest blogging is pretty clear—you submit content to a with the hopes of them publishing it, resulting in a strong backlink for you.
Unfortunately, fewer and fewer site editors are open to the practice, whether it’s due to believing they can post solely AI-generated content or because they’re getting overrun by guest post pitches.
Just as with the last few strategies, the solution is to stand out. But to accomplish this, you need to avoid:
- Cookie-cutter pitches. Pitches such as “Hey [editor name], I really liked [site name]’s content and was wondering if you’re accepting guest posts” won’t work anymore. You need to address specific points, aspects and features of the site, even specific parts of content pieces, in order to stand out.
- Sites openly accepting guest posts. While it seems counter-intuitive, you should stay away from sites advertising their willingness to accept guest blogs—precisely because anyone can get in. This means these aren’t the strongest backlinks and you won’t see much impact on your ranking in SERPs.
- Topics everyone talks about. One possible reason why you aren’t getting the best links for SEO is that the topics you’re suggesting are too generic. Think less like “Best AI Tools to Use for Marketers” and more along the lines of “Secret AI-Aided Techniques for Improving Your Conversion Rate.” The goal is to be insightful, unique and specific, all at the same time.
Of course, these aren’t the only cardinal sins of guest blogging. Many SEOs still pitch sites outside of their niche, insist on overly spammy anchors and don’t know how to maintain relationships with publications.
Monitor and Analyze Backlink Opportunities
As surprising as it sounds, there’s still a belief that all it takes to secure strong backlinks is to whip up a nicely-sounding pitch and hope for the best.
In reality, every link-building campaign should start with thorough research and involve different types of links for a healthy backlink profile.
This involves not just pre-selecting sites for targeted pitching but also ensuring that you follow all the current trends. It can be the difference between pitching a hot topic and getting a rejection because your content isn’t relevant.
But most importantly, you must monitor your backlink profile, not just to check if you’ve landed any strong backlinks.
This is also useful for disavowing spammy backlinks, checking for broken or removed links, and even utilizing social listening tools to track brand mentions across different platforms.
Hire a Specialized Link Building Agency Like Blue Tree
While all the strategies we discussed are effective, they’re incredibly finicky, time-consuming and put a lot of pressure on in-house marketing teams.
That’s why BlueTree offers full-suite link building packages to those willing to outsource their link building efforts. Our entire suite of services features include:
- Digital PR
- Link building services
- High authority backlinks
- Custom blog outreach
- White label link building
What sets our team apart isn’t just our 7+ years of experience in the industry but our active relationships with 400+ highly reputable publications.
The content is handled in-house by our team of expert writers in the fields of cybersecurity, finance, B2B SaaS, software development, and more.
The biggest benefit is that your team will be relieved of the pressure that comes with building strong backlinks, as they will be able to focus on internal strategies while our experts land those hard-to-get links.
Final Thoughts
With the advent of AI tools and the ever-changing nature of Google’s algorithm, link building is much different in 2024 compared to what it was before.
Personalization and relationship-building reign supreme now, while spammy, cookie-cutter practices are riding off into the sunset.
To continue building the strongest backlinks, you must first ensure your content is up to par and a suitable target for organic linking.
The next step of the process involves refining the quality of your outreach emails and guest blogs, with pitching hard-to-get sites being a priority.
Nevertheless, all of this costs a lot of time, money and effort, which is perhaps the best reason why you should outsource your linkbuilding to BlueTree and $6,500 on average.
Get in touch with our sales team to start to start landing strong, high-authority backlinks today.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What are the most effective tools for analyzing backlink profiles?
Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, and Majestic offer comprehensive features for backlink analysis, including tracking new backlinks, evaluating the quality of linking domains, and even discovering how your competitors landed their strongest backlinks.
How can I recover from a Google penalty due to low-quality backlinks?
To recover from a Google penalty due to low-quality backlinks, you must conduct a thorough audit of your backlink profile, identifying and removing or disavowing spammy or low-quality backlinks, and submitting a reconsideration request to Google. Focusing on placements in high-quality publications moving forward is also essential.
Is it better to focus on quantity or quality when building backlinks?
Quality should always take precedence over quantity when building backlinks. A few high-quality backlinks from reputable, relevant sources are far more beneficial than numerous low-quality links, as they contribute more significantly to your site’s authority and search engine rankings.
What are some common misconceptions about backlink building?
The most common misconceptions about link building include the idea that any backlink is a good backlink, that backlink acquisition is a quick fix for SEO, and that large quantities of backlinks can guarantee SEO success. In reality, the relevance, quality, and strategic acquisition of backlinks are what truly matter.
How long does it typically take to see results from a backlink strategy?
The impact of a backlink strategy on SEO can vary, but typically, noticeable improvements can be seen within 3 to 6 months. SEO is a long-term investment, and the benefits of a well-executed backlink strategy accumulate over time.
