Consider a tourist arriving in a city who is unfamiliar with the historical, cultural, and sightseeing spots. However, this city boasts famous landmarks that attract visitors from all over. The tourist wants to see these attractions but lacks proper information. Therefore, they start asking locals for directions, and they are pointed to a famous location. The tourist believes that the location must be worth visiting.

The strategy of external link building works in the same way for search engines! Google collects opinions about your site and content from other websites, and based on the backlinks they provide, determines your site’s ranking.

Would you like to learn more? As always, stay with us.

What is External Link Building Strategy?

Previously, we discussed the importance of link-building in improving SEO for websites and optimizing them for both search engines and users in articles like “How to Do Internal Link Building” and “Internal Link Building in WordPress.”

But what exactly is an external link building strategy and how can it help improve your website’s SEO? To better understand external links, let’s clarify the difference between them and internal links: An internal link connects content from your website to other content within your website, essentially providing value and authority from one content piece to another.

[External links], on the other hand, involve creating a connection from content on your site to content on a different website with a distinct domain name. It’s also not always the case that you provide links to other websites. Sometimes, a website with a different domain might link back to content on your website.

But why are external links important, and why should we create a strategy for them? We discussed that internal links improve user experience and help search engines better understand the content’s topic. This also applies to external links; they help Google trust your content more.

The difference is that external links, because they come from other active websites, are even more valuable to Google and other search engines. In fact, Google is exactly like us humans! Google values the opinions of others more than our own praise! That’s why when other websites link to our content and we receive external links, it improves our ranking in search engines.

Building an External Link Strategy

Now that we understand the importance of external link building, we need to explore methods for acquiring backlinks that will enhance SEO. Since SEO experts consider acquiring backlinks to be one of the most important ranking factors for search engines, developing a strategy for acquiring external links is crucial.

However, remember to approach this the right way to achieve lasting results. Here are four methods to acquire external links that may take time but are undoubtedly effective:

1- Create Unique and Original Content

The more time you spend creating rich, high-quality, and unique content, the higher your chances of earning links naturally from your industry peers. When you produce unique content that attracts a wide audience, other content creators will link to it to reference a credible source for their own articles.

Therefore, you must be able to organically attract audiences and other business owners to your content. You can use evergreen and long-form content, like the skyscraper technique, to increase your chances of earning backlinks.

2- Network

Building relationships with individuals, whether in physical business spaces or online, is vital. It doesn’t matter if you are working on your personal brand or have a team or company; connecting with successful businesses in your field can be very beneficial.

In this way, people may naturally want to link to your content, and you can even ask them to link to you to support each other’s growth.

3- Write Guest Posts

One way to implement this strategy is by writing guest posts on other people’s websites. To do this, you need to network and connect with prominent businesses in your field.

You can write quality and engaging posts on others’ websites that promote your business and, in return, give you the opportunity to link back to your own blog, receiving a natural backlink.

4- Publish a Sponsored Post

In this article, I mentioned 4 strategies that help you naturally receive external links, but the fourth one is actually a combination of both natural methods and paid costs. However, unlike unprincipled methods, this approach is organized and structured.

Publishing a sponsored post is an effective external link-building strategy. However, you need to pay for it. Nevertheless, if done correctly, it has the same effect as receiving a natural link. The way a sponsored post works is that you write content about yourself, which is then published on a reputable website relevant to your field in exchange for payment.

An important point here is that the sponsored post should be produced naturally, and the tone of the message should not contain direct advertising. Otherwise, it will have the opposite effect.