I wish link building is that easy these days as same as in old golden days before April 2012, those days just going to directories, social bookmarking website and putting website URL works wonders for many of websites and many of SEO guys like me.

But that’s just is one of a wishlist of many like me, anyway I don’t think that wishlist can ever become into reality, so I think it’s better to focus on the present as well as future of SEO and link building.

As everybody knows that Google (I am taking Google as our target search engine, as most of the traffic comes from there and don’t worry my techniques will work on other search engines too) is changing SEO several times a year with their own algorithm updates.

So it’s always better to create and manage backlinks which will work well and should be more robust, and spam-free, so new updates won’t hurt our rankings or website SEO badly.

So now I am coming to the point from which you came here, there are several lists of backlinks which we can follow, but I am taking my favourites and which I think still works in 2019 and will work in 2020 as well.

So here is my list of link building strategies which will work in 2019 and beyond, Here you go..

 

1) Testimonial link building

2) Internal link building

3) Guest posting

4) Broken link building

5) Competitor link building

 

1) Testimonial or Review Link Building

 

There is a reason behind why I put this link building technique on the first position, to me, testimonial link building technique is one of the easy and actually useful techniques.

Every website, blog or company wants its product or service gets some kind of recognition or approval so they can show to other users.

But do we need or want to get these reviews links from any other website on the internet? will that worth? Umm!! Maybe on some occasions but I recommend to find a website related to your niche and then write a review for a testimonial for them

So that’s why this technique is easy to implement, so how we can use this strategy to get links?

Here is an example of www.wpbeginner.com getting a link from www.siteground.com

 

 

Just think which product you are using, from where you can get that testimonial link, or maybe website or colleague’s website, from where you can get a link from it.

 

2) Internal Link Building

 

In SEO world I think every blogger, SEO expert or even SEO starter uses this technique.

But for those, who are starting new in the SEO world, internal link building happens, when we link one post to another post or one page to another page on the same website.

Simple? yeah!, but still very powerful, I still use this technique and whenever I do this for any website old or new, it always gives me a positive impact on ranking.

Small or big it depends on other factors as well, but it does work somehow, so how do this work?

Basic use of internal building always is to tell google about the hierarchy and structure of the website, as its easier for Google to crawl your website and know about the important pages and content of the website.

So in simple words, we are making life easier for google!! Ok, whatever!!

So how I use this technique?

 

When I use this technique, firstly, if I am posting new blog post or content of website I always link other relatable page or post in the content.

I never induct a page which should not be there, or not forcefully add the link which is not needed there.

And if I am editing any of my old posts and want one of my other page or post to rank higher, then I first go to google console and find out the pages which are ranking on the first page.

Then I try to get link from those pages to the post I want to get higher rank(here we need to make sure that we are not forcing a link, if there is no possibility of getting link from that page, don’t force it, just find another higher-ranking page, if you don’t have any first page ranking page, then find 2nd page, 3rd page, whatever best you have).

Don’t just link one page on all over the website, as you are desperate to get your website, I know but don’t overdo it, keep it calm and easy.

 

3) Guest Posting

 

So will it be working strategy in 2019 or 2020? Some say yes others say no, they have their own reasons.

I think yes, it still works and will be working in the next years as well, but it has to be done in the right way.

 

 

It’s not about just go or reach out the blogging website or blog, and ask them to publish your content and get back with backlinks.

There are many layers to it, for me when I do guest posting I take some points consideration which is very important, those points are:

A) So first questions everyone asks how they can find a blog which accepts guest posting? The answers are, there are many proven ways, but I am mentioning some of those here like:

 

Google Search Strings

 

First and easiest way to get guest posting opportunities is with Google itself.

Just go to the google and search for terms like “keyword” + “write for us” ”.

The keyword here is the niche of your blog, like weight loss + write for us, there are many other kinds of strings you can use.

I cannot write all here but I can say some of the popular keywords like

 

Your Keyword “submit news”
Your Keyword “become a guest blogger“
Your Keyword “guest blogger”
Your Keyword “guest posts wanted”
Your Keyword “looking for guest posts”
Your Keyword “guest posts wanted”
Your Keyword “guest poster wanted”

 

Guest Posting Through Competitors Backlinks

 

Competitors backlink itself is a very good backlinking technique, but we can use this technique to find out the guest posting opportunities as well.

 

 

Just go to Ahrefs or Moz or any other tool, who can tell you about the backlinks of your competitors have, and then list out the blogs or articles they posted on different websites, and find out which backlink you can acquire, or maybe all.

 

Through Famous Guest Blogger

 

If you are following any of famous bloggers like Neil Patel, Leo widrich etc. then you can search their name with your target keywords on google, and then google will tell you where they posted there own blog posts or guest posts.

 

 

There should be a place where you can post your guest posts as well.

 

Guest Posting Opportunities Through Social Searching

 

We can also use social websites to find out opportunities for guest posting.

 

 

We can just search the word or keyphrases like guest post and other key terms with a hashtag on facebook, twitter, and you will see that guest post related content.

 

MyBlogGuest

 

 

MyBlogGuest, This is another way of finding guest posting blog or if you have a blogging website and want anyone to write a guest post for you.

You will find lots of bloggers there, who can write a guest posting for you, it’s free and simple to use, give it a try.

B) Find out the niche you want to publish, if you have a website related to weight loss, and you want to get a link from an electronic gadgets review website, that won’t work.

Maybe that backlink or guest post may harm your website too, so find out the related website to your niche and the approach it.

C) After finding a website or blog for whom you want to write, we need to contact them, maybe with email or with the contact form on their website.

Some of website or blogs charge for posting the article, but lots of the blogs do it for free, so choose it accordingly.

Also, make sure the website you are posting has a good reputation and good da so the link you are getting from the website work in a good way for your website.

D) After doing all of these steps, the most important step from all of this to write good content.

If your content is not right and good for the website or community or the topic, this guest posting won’t work for you.

Content is the king and will always be a king, whether we are posting content on our own website or any other website.

So always make sure you are writing good content for the community, who adds value to the readers, then only this strategy will work wonder for you.

 

4) Broken Link Building

 

Broken link building is a process of finding broken links on other websites, and recreating that content on own website.

After that, we can contact website/blog owner by letting them know that this is the page where this link is broken, and ask them to add your piece of content, which has to be better option somehow from old content.

In this way, somehow we are helping the website or blog owner, as a broken link is bad user experience for website or blog, so sounds good?

Now the question is, is this strategy still works in 2019? And will that work in the coming years? as some people say that it’s not that scalable as it sounds.

But I think, still, it will work in 2019 or whether it’s 2022, It will work, because, no website wants to have broken links on their website.

As broken links are bad User experience for any website, so how we can do this link building technique?

Here is a glimpse of how we can do it, its basically 3 step process:

1)  Find a broken link
2)  Contact the website owner or webmaster and offer a URL or content suggestion they can link to

 

1) Find a broken link

So to start this process, you have to find a broken link in your niche, right?

The thing needs to consider here, try to get a link from your niche always, as it will help you to get more juice from the link and will be more effective as well.

so how we can find a website which has broken a link? For this we simply google using one of these key terms:

keyword + “resources”
keyword + intitle:resources
keyword + intitle:blogroll
keyword + “blogroll”
site:.gov keyword + “links”
site:.edu keyword + “recommended sites”
keyword + “related links”
“favorite sites”
“favorite websites”
List of links
List of resources

These are just some examples of how you can find some of the websites, you can find more key terms or Prospecting Phrases on google.

Now after finding a website, the next step is to find broken links on those websites, so there are some ways to do it,

Firstly you can install this extension on your google chrome extension called broken link checker

 

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/broken-link-checker/nibppfobembgfmejpjaaeocbogeonhch

This is the easiest ways to find a broken link on any website, just open that page, and this extension will scan and find broken links for you, easy!!

But what in case if you want to do this at a larger scale?

In other words, if you have a database or list of website where you want to get those links from and want to try if they have any broken links, then what you will do?

We cannot just crawl those pages one by one, so what to do here?

Here we can use broken link builder from brokenlinkbuilding.com.

 

 

This is not a free tool but if you can find the website by just typing keywords and it will find opportunities based on links and relevance.

 

2) Contact the website owner or webmaster

After finding links which you want to target for link building, we need to write an email to the website owner or in other words, we have to contact website owner or webmaster in some way to tell them that this is the page which has a missing link or broken link.

So they can fix it, and you can also offer them a link or URL to the related article or webpage.

If you have already written content about it, and if you want to see what was written there, maybe you can use waybackmachine website, which works well in this step.

 

 

Most of the people say why they will link our page to there own blog or article?

In this cruel world, you are helping them by letting them know about the broken link, maybe they don’t reply or link your article but if they replied and you get your link, that would work wonders for your SEO campaign.

Make sure you are writing them a right email with the right choice of words, don’t sound like a desperate person who is always after backlinks.

So keep it simple and start the email with normal hi and tell them exactly where the link is and maybe you can offer a link which they can use to replace the old broken link.

Here is a good example of an email template:

SL: quick note – dead resource on your site

Hello,

I am blogger, content writer and digital expert, I was checking your website and reading some of the blogs on your website, and I have to say content quality or writing quality of your blog is very good, so congratulations on that,

While reading some of the blogs on your site I found one dead link here, so I thought to let you know about as it is not good usability for your readers, here is the page I am talking about

It’s on this page: http://www.theirsite.gov/linksandresources

You may remove the link, or you can this link to your blog as it is similar blog or content for your readers, will be helpful to your readers

Compelling Content Title
http://www.clientsite.org/compellingcontent

Compelling Content Title 2
http://www.clientsothersite.com/compellingcontent

Thanks for your help and for providing great resources!

Best,
First Name Last Name
Industry Credentials
clientsite.org

You may don’t have a reply from 80% of users or maybe more but when somebody replies it will worth it for sure, as it will be surely a good backlink, as you don’t search for unwanted backlinks at first step, so try it will help surely.

 

5) Competitor Link Building

 

This is one of the great ways to overcome your competition in SEO or link building.

This is arguably the most famous way of SEO link building as almost every SEO person or who is performing SEO or trying to get links in some industry

They go and search their competitors and find out the link which those competitors are having and helping them to rank on top somehow.

So how can we do this link building?

There are so many ways to know your competitors, but the most simple way is to just go to google and type the keyword you want to rank and get the URL for top 5 competitors or website which are ranking for that keyword.

Get those URL and go to any of tool, my favorite these days is ubersuggest, just go to ubersuggest and put any of the URLs into it and it will show you all the backlinks which that website having.

 

 

You can gather all the links or download CSV file from the software, and start generating links for your website.