How to Create Backlinks: 20 Ways to Get Backlinks to Your Store

February 20, 2023
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Backlinks are an important part of a good SEO strategy and learning how to get them can help your website's traffic in many ways. Building backlinks is a necessary part of SEO and a task that every website owner must do if they want to get and keep organic traffic to their site over time. The hardest and most time-consuming part of getting backlinks is figuring out how to get them in a way that search engines will accept (AKA: Whitehat techniques). Backlinks must come from sites other than your own, so it can be hard to get other website owners to link back to your site in a way that is honest and good for both of you. In this post, we'll talk about how to build links and make more content that people will want to link to.

Backlink

A backlink is an incoming link from one website to another website. For instance: In the first sentence of one of our past articles, a Shopify Review, we said: “It’s been long overdue that we post a Shopify review on A Better Lemonade Stand.” In that sentence, we included a link to Shopify, the business we were talking about. This is a backlink for Shopify. A backlink to your site is any link from another website to yours. An internal link is a link on your website that goes to another page on your website. As a website, your goal is to get quality (we'll talk more about this soon) backlinks from other websites. This increases the value of your website, which boosts your search engine ranking.

Why it's Important to have Backlinks?

Backlinks are important because search engines see them as websites vouching for each other. This helps the linked site's rank and domain authority, which you can think of as its credibility. But these days, site owners build links with sites in related industries because relevance is a big deal. So, you can't just get links from any website. In the example given above, when we link from A Better Lemonade Stand to Shopify, Google sees that and figures out that:

Since A Better Lemonade Stand links to Shopify, it's likely that it's a good site, and;
Shopify and A Better Lemonade Stand are likely in the same business.

Backlinks are seen as a vote of confidence by search engines, and the more trustworthy websites that link back to your site, the more trustworthy it looks to search engines by association. To put it simply, a link from CNN is seen as more trustworthy and valuable than a link from Joe's random thoughts blog that he started two weeks ago. When other websites with high domain authority recommend your website, it helps your organic search engine ranking, you get indexed faster, and you get direct referral traffic from websites that are related to yours. This means you get more targeted traffic and your bounce rate will be lower.

How to Measure Backlinks?

That being said, different websites' reputations are ranked in different ways, and that, among other things, affects how backlinks are measured. No two backlinks are the same. They are based on a number of ranking factors, most of which are just guesses.

DOMAIN & PAGE STRENGTH

There are two ways to figure out a website's authority:

The overall strength of the domain
The strength of the URL

This means that, for example, cancode.io has its own rank of website authority as a whole domain, while cancode.io/blogs/ (or this particular blog post) has its own authority that is connected to the domain but still separate because it is its own page. BONUS: Check out this free site and page authority checker to learn more about domain and page authority. To use it, you just need to type in the URLs of some of your favorite websites to find out their domain and page scores.

NOFOLLOW & DOFOLLOW LINKS

Backlinks can also be measured by whether they are "dofollow" or "nofollow."

Nofollow links are when one website links to another, but it doesn't affect the page rank or search results placement of the other website. Websites often use nofollow links when they're linking to an unreliable source, don't want to be associated with the page they're linking to, or, in the case of paid sponsorships, when Google's advertising rules say that those links must be nofollow.
Dofollow links are used when one website links to another and wants search engines to see that link as a vote of confidence for the other website. Dofollow links are often used when a website or blog links to another website or blog and the search engine doesn't see any harm in being linked to that website.

NOTE: Most links are DoFollow by default, unless the author of a website, post, or page makes a link or set of links NoFollow. By adding the nofollow attribute to the link code, you can tell which links are NoFollow.

For example:

A DoFollow link will look like this: <a href=”https://www.shopify.com”>Shopify</a>
A NoFollow link will look like this: <a href=”https://www.shopify.com” rel=”nofollow”>Shopify</a>

Backlinks from self-posting sites, forums, and social networks (like Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and blog comment sections) are almost always NoFollow. This is an important exception to keep in mind. BONUS: Download the NoFollow for a Chrome extension to get a better idea of which links around the web are DoFollow and which are NoFollow. It will show you which links are DoFollow and which ones aren't by highlighting them all.

LINK PLACEMENT

People also think that where a link is on a page has something to do with how search engines rate its authority. If a link is part of the written content on a website page, it is thought that search engines give it more weight because it is more likely to be relevant to the content of the website as a whole and is more likely to be clicked on than links in the footers or sidebars.

ANCHOR TEXT

Anchor Text is the name for the words that the link points to on a page. Search engines may use this to figure out how relevant the link is. For example, the words that the link is attached to are called "anchor text." These words tell search engines that the content is related to them and that people are likely to click on them. As another example, we linked to a free website and page authority checker on purpose in the yellow bonus section above, and we chose the words that were linked. Google and other search engines read and record the words that are linked (anchor text). These words help search engines understand what the page or website you're linking to is about and how it should rank in search engine results. By specifically linking descriptive words like "free website and page authority checker," we gave that website a quality backlink that helps search engines better understand what they are and what they do. We also helped that website rank higher for some keywords that are important to them and to people finding them.

LINK RELEVANCY

Last but not least, a link's relevance is also a factor in how strong it is. Several things that search engines are well-equipped to measure, like anchor text, other outbound links, keywords, H-Tags, the context around the links, and more, help determine whether a link is relevant to the overall content of the page and, by extension, whether the backlink is relevant or not. Search engines put a lot of weight on rewarding authoritative websites with backlinks and measure the relevancy of links in a number of ways to make sure that the backlinks are real and not spammy. This is to encourage websites to have well-written content that is relevant and helpful to searchers so that they can find what they're looking for. Search engines give sites that meet their needs more relevant organic traffic and higher domain and URL authority.

Low-Quality Links & Spam

If you get links from websites or web pages that search engines have decided have low domain strength because they are spam, low-quality sources, or inappropriate, your own website could be penalized. It's important not to fall into the trap of thinking that more backlinks from more sources all pointing to your website will make search engines trust your website more. More important than the number of backlinks is how good they are. Try to get links from authoritative sites that are about the same things as yours, and search engines will give you more search traffic over time.

How to Get Backlinks?

Now that you know what backlinks are, why they're important, and how search engines measure them, let's talk about how you can make backlinks for your own website.

1. Reddit Social Proof Method

If you haven't used Reddit for your business yet, now is the perfect time to start. It's a very specific kind of forum with smart users, so if you don't know what "subreddits" are or what proper "Reddiquette" is, learn about those things before you use the next two ways to build backlinks. The goal of this method is to post something useful, get upvotes, and then replace the post's content with a link to your site. Here's what you need to do:

Make a piece of content that stands out.
Find the subreddit on Reddit that best fits the niche you're trying to reach. Make sure to search through all the different subs to find the right ones that are relevant to your content. Relevancy is important because Redditors don't like spam, and this method won't work if the post isn't interesting to the right kind of people.
Make a post to that subreddit, following the rules of that sub's community (this step is very important). You have to be very careful about how you post on the subreddit. You can't just post a link to your content and expect the people who subscribe to that sub to see the value in it. You have to give value first).
Include all the useful information you talk about in the post you're writing. This is a great piece of content, after all. Your goal is to tell people what your content is about, why it's interesting, and why it's important to them. After a few paragraphs of detailed information, if the community rules allow it, add a link to your content and let people know they can click on that link to read the full article.
When you're done writing that post, post it to the subreddit.
Once the post has been up for a few hours and has gotten a lot of upvotes and comments, edit the original message to just include the link to your piece of content. This way, users will have to click through to your website to see the content. This will only work if you have gotten a lot of comments and upvotes.

Links on Reddit start out as "nofollow" links, which, as we talked about earlier in this article, means that there is no link juice going from Reddit to any outgoing links unless, and this is the important part, those links get a certain number of "upvotes," at which point they become "dofollow." The actual number of upvotes is not known to the public, but this theory is widely thought to be true based on educational speculation and testing. Getting a backlink from Reddit that says "dofollow" is very helpful because their rank and domain authority is so high. Try this method for building backlinks, but don't be spammy on Reddit. Instead, follow the community's rules, give value, and get social proof first. Then, leave a link to your piece of content and hopefully get some high-quality link juice and referral traffic. Example: A screenshot of the /r/entrepreneur subreddit is shown below. You can tell which links are "DoFollow" (purple) and which ones are "NoFollow" (green) by the color of the highlight (Red).

2. Create Remarkable Content

If you consistently post great content that is interesting, engaging, useful, and helpful, high-quality websites will link to you on their own, without you having to ask. This is hard to do because it takes a lot of time to consistently make helpful and valuable content and keep it going for a long time. Even if you post high-quality content on your website from the start, it will take a while for people to notice, and in the meantime, it's easy to give up because no one is interested in what you have to say. The hard part is to consistently provide value over a long enough period of time to build an engaged audience that backs your work. Once you reach that point, backlinks from other high-quality sources will start to come in, and that's when you'll start to see the results of all the work you put into making great content from the start. Until then, you just have to make content that is interesting, helpful, and engaging, promote it in every way possible, and work on every other link-building method.

3. Create Linkbait Content

Building links works best when you don't have to do a lot of work to get them at first. A simple way to get good backlinks to your site is to make content that people will want to share. Statistics and studies, for example, are two of the most linked-to types of content. You can get more people to link to your content by writing about industry statistics for your niche. Depending on your industry, you can also work with a local university or college to do a study in your industry so that people will link to your content. You can also make custom images that can be linked, like infographics with statistics. So, if the research isn't your own, you can add it with a source section at the bottom of the page and still get good backlinks while giving credit to the source.

4. Get a Link from Your Manufacturer/Wholesaler/Supplier

Depending on your company, this could be a simple way to get a backlink. Basically, you want to contact the company that makes the products you sell and ask them to list you as a retailer of their products or a business they work with on their website. Search engines think that domains that have been around for a long time are a good indicator of how well a site ranks. The more authority a domain keeps, the longer it has been around. This method is in the middle of the difficulty scale because your manufacturer's website might not have a place for this kind of link, or they might not want to link out to you. If your company is open to the idea, it's easy to get a link, but if they aren't, you're out of luck. The value of this backlink is also in the middle of the range, just like how hard this method is. It won't be a spammy or low-quality backlink by any means, but you might not get as much link juice from it as you would from a high-authority domain. Still, if you can get your manufacturer to link to you, it's easy to get and gives you one more backlink than you had before. Before you contact your manufacturer, make sure you have a website that looks trustworthy and has some useful content on it, as we talked about in the last method, so that the manufacturer is more likely to link to you. They want to make sure they're linking to a good site, so make sure you look like a good site. Example: Here is an example of a list of online stores that sell Beardbrand products. When you sell other brands, it's usually in the supplier's or manufacturer's best interest to link to you, giving your store a valuable backlink.

5. Interview Authorities in Your Niche

Find and interview "authorities" in your niche, such as bloggers, influencers, speakers, entrepreneurs, creators, etc. Put the content on your website and get in touch with the person you interviewed to let them know about it. Most of the time, the person will share your content on social media or, if you're lucky, on their own website, giving you a backlink. People love to be noticed, even if it's by a smaller player in their niche, so you will probably be known. The key to this method is to keep going no matter what. Follow up with influencers when you want to interview them or share your content with them. They probably get a lot of emails at once, so keep in touch with them over and over again. The more interested you look, the more likely it is that they will talk to you. Always be polite and don't get angry or hurt if they don't respond, but keep trying. If they have a press page, ask to be featured there as well. You'll get a prominent backlink that is likely to have high authority. Build a relationship with the person you interview, make some good content, and then work on getting the backlink.

6. Republish Old Content

Don't throw away good content that you've made in the past. You can syndicate content on some websites, which means that articles you've posted on your own site can be re-posted on other sites in your niche that have a much larger and more varied audience than your own site. This lets you get your content in front of a bigger audience, and the original source of the content (your website) will get a link back to show where it was first published. Some well-known websites where your content can be shared are:

Business 2 Community
Huffington Post
Lifehacker
Medium
Social Media Today

People often think that search engines will punish sites that publish duplicate content through content syndication. This isn't true, though, because there will be a link back to the original piece of content to show where it came from. Most of the time, the person who made the content will also give it a new introduction or title to make it stand out from the original post, but that's not always the case. Look for high-quality sites like the ones we listed above where you can syndicate your content. This will give you valuable link juice from an authoritative domain. This method is also likely to get your content shared on social media and in front of people who are interested in your niche, so you'll also get valuable traffic from referrals.

7. Reach out to media sources

By getting in touch with the media, you can get a lot of high-quality backlinks. Keep in mind that media sites often aren't useful, even if they have high domain authority. So, don't only use this strategy to make sure that your backlink profile is well-rounded. Sites like Help A Reporter Out can be used to build links (HARO). This tool will send you emails in the morning, at noon, and in the evening from different reporters looking for sources for their articles. Not every pitch is accepted, so try to make your answer stand out. You can also try to get your blog, business, or app featured in niche magazines by getting in touch with them. This will not only help you get a backlink, but it could also lead to more sales.

8. Guest Posting

One of the most natural ways to get a backlink is to post on someone else's blog as a guest blogger and get a link back to your website in the byline or by adding relevant links to your website in the text. When you write a guest post on someone else's website, you can show off your knowledge to a new audience and choose which parts of your own site to link to. It's also a relationship that benefits both you and the website host since you give them useful content and they give them a good backlink. It's not always easy to get guest post assignments, and you may have to start small and build a portfolio before you can get guest posts on bigger blogs. Your best bet is to be persistent, kind, and eager, and to tell the website hosts what you can do for them. Always start with what you can offer them, not what you want to get out of it. They'll be much more open to your guest posting pitch if they can see that you really have something to offer and want to share it with their audience. If you want to ask other websites to let you write a guest post for them, make sure your own site already has some good content on it so they can see if you'd be a good fit for their audience. Make sure your website looks professional and like you belong in their niche market. Don't forget to look at their website to see if they have any guest post requirements, such as a certain number of words or a certain way to format the post.

9. Promote on social media

People who want to know how to get backlinks should promote their website on social media, even if some of the links back to their site are "no-follow." When you build links on social media, you're sure to get a link, and you might also get some good website traffic in return. Pinterest and Quora are two of the easiest social networks to use to share links to blog posts. Pinterest is cool because it lets you search for images and links. You can use a keyword research tool to find the site content that gets the most searches and then start sharing links to that content on Pinterest. Since it's no-follow, you won't get high-quality backlinks from it, but you can get a lot of traffic back to your site. Also, when something gets a lot of attention on Pinterest, it usually shows up higher in search results as well. So it's a win-win. As long as your answer is at least a few paragraphs long, Quora doesn't mind if you put outside links to your site on their platform. Strategies for building links that focus on social media tend to be good for traffic as well, so this is an extra benefit of building links.

10. Broken link outreach

Using SEO tools and keywords, you can find sites with broken links. For example, if you own a fitness app, you might look for articles that link to the "best fitness apps" and use a tool to find broken links in the articles. Then, you contact those sites and tell them that you found a broken link on their site and that your site could replace it. This is a great way to get links from cold emails that reach out to people. You can also use a target keyword for other pages in your article. For example, if someone links to a study that has a link that doesn't work, you could promote one of your statistics pages that has a newer link they can use instead. You don't have to do a Google search to find this information. You can also do it by hand if you can't find free tools that do this.

11. Product Reviews

If you want to promote a certain product to a certain audience, getting a blogger, influencer, or another website to write a review of your product is a great way to not only get your product in front of an audience that is interested in your niche but also to get a backlink that is relevant to your niche. Search engine ranking systems give product reviews high backlink authority because they meet many of the high-value ranking requirements, such as optimal link placement (within the post itself, not in a sidebar or footer) and link relevancy (within a relevant niche). If it's a sponsored product review, which some websites may only accept, the link will have to be a "nofollow" link instead of a "dofollow" link, which isn't ideal for a backlink but is still thought to help with rankings. Make sure you contact reputable websites for product reviews. As we suggested with guest posting, you may have to start out on smaller websites before you can get on more popular ones. Approach potential product reviewers with some factual information about your product, such as how many units you've sold, what your customer/market demographics are, or how much money you've made, so reviewers can get a sense of how popular your product is or who it would appeal to. Always start with what you can do for the reviewer, be persistent, polite, and eager, have a good product with good reviews or data to back it up, find reviewers who serve a similar niche to yours, and have your own website that looks professional. Product Review Sites:

Bless This Stuff
Cool Material
Firebox
Gear Moose
HiConsumption
Product Hunt
Uncrate
Werd

12. Try influencer marketing

Every company has people who could make a difference. It could be your content creator, your social media team, your founder, or even the person who makes your product. By having your company's spokespeople make statements and be included in expert round-ups, you can get backlinks. People who are active on social networks like LinkedIn or on your website's blog could easily be quoted by another website with a link to their personal website or workplace. You can get more links if you are active online and make content that people will want to share. If someone links to your social media instead of your website, you can look up mentions of your brand and ask them to link to your website.

13. Reach out to the “Resource” pages

There are resource pages on a lot of popular websites. People in the e-commerce world often call them "partner" pages. You can find a lot of resource pages by looking for listicles on popular blogs, websites, or even Shopify Apps. Then you can contact the companies that put them together and ask to be included. This is a simple way to get a backlink from a company that is willing to share them. Most of the time, resource pages show that a business is open to backlinks. You can find resource pages by hand by looking through lists of websites in your niche, browsing app stores, or doing a Google search. If you see that another site in the section is no longer active, you can also use the broken link method on these pages.

14. Request a Link

Find blogs or websites that have put together lists of products, businesses, or websites in your niche, and ask to be added to the list. For example, businesses that offer graphic design services sometimes ask us to add their website to our blog post, "200+ Free and Premium Graphic Design Resources." From our point of view, this is a request that helps both parties. It helps us keep our list up-to-date with the best resources out there, and the business gets a dofollow backlink without having to guest post, comment on our blog posts, pay for a product review, or republish their own content, and the link placement and relevance are perfect. It's also a simple request. You're just asking to be added to a post that's already there, so it's not hard for businesses to do. You don't want to rewrite the post, so look for ones where your website would be a simple addition. Look for posts with the word "roundup" or "numbers" in the title. Check out what your niche has to offer and get in touch. Make sure, though, that your website or product is useful. If it's not, there's no point.

15. Unlinked Mentions Method

The unlinked mentions method is one way to get links back to your site. As your website gets more popular, you'll start to hear people talk about it, your app, or your brand. Sometimes they link to another article about your website, and sometimes there are no links at all. If you want to build links, you can use tools that track online mentions and reach out to other websites to ask for a link. Using this method, you can get good backlinks to your site. If you find a link that wasn't added, you can add these sites to your list of referring domains.

16. Contact competitor’s backlinks

You can easily see all the backlinks your competitors get by using SEO tools. Any popular website on the internet will have a large number of referring domains. If you look up all of your competitors, you can sort through their referring domains to see which sites link to them the most. Then, you can get in touch with those sites and ask them to link to yours. If you look at the website before you send a message, you can make it more personal. You can also look at their site to see what the best-ranking content is and see if it has anything to do with your articles or business. Find out if there are any chances to build links by doing cold outreach or getting in touch with the SEO employee at that company.

17. Subreddit Moderator Method

This is a method for getting backlinks on Reddit that not many people know about. It is easier than the last method because you don't have to build social proof to make the backlink a dofollow link. Even if you have never used Reddit before, this is an easy way to get backlinks without having to participate in subreddit communities. Here's how to get Reddit to link to your site with dofollow links:

You can make your own subreddit, but your Reddit account needs to be at least 30 days old and you need a small amount of good karma.
Once you've made your own sub, you don't have to post anything to it even if you don't want to. The value comes from linking your content in the sidebar. As a subreddit owner or moderator, you can add links and information to the sidebar of your subreddit.
When you have a new piece of content or a page you want to link to, add it to the sidebar of your own subreddit. This will generate dofollow links to your website from Reddit.

As we've already said, Reddit is a good place to get link juice, so a dofollow backlink from Reddit is helpful, and this is one of the easiest ways to get them. Please note, though, that the authority of your subreddit's page will be much lower than that of Reddit's domain. You will still get link juice and a backlink from Reddit, though.

18. Create more webpages

This may seem obvious, but the more pages your site has, the easier it is to get backlinks. Backlinks will be much harder to get to a site with only one page than to a site with landing pages, a blog, or multiple product pages. Building links is mostly about getting people to link to your content. If you don't have a lot of content, it will be hard to get backlinks. So, if you want to know how to get backlinks, the secret is to start a blog. A quick Google search will show you that you can write about a lot of things that are related to your niche. You can get ideas by using a free keyword research tool. But if you write content that is relevant to your area, search engines will know what your website is about and give you a higher ranking in results for that industry. Relevant sites will be more likely to link to you. So write long-form content on a regular schedule and keep doing it for years, so people can trust you as an expert in your field.

19. Add your own internal links

Building links isn't always easy, but there is a simple way to get links to your site: build internal links. Even though an internal link won't give you the same boost in ranking, there are many reasons to link to other pages on your site, such as to lower your bounce rate and keep people on your site longer. It's easy to add internal links. The more content you have, the more likely it is that one of your keywords will be used in an article. Relevant websites usually have more than one topic in the same area, which makes it easier to link to other pages on the same site.

20. Rank higher in search

You can get links if you rank higher in search results. When linking to another website, most people don't do a thorough search. If building link campaigns and cold outreach scare you, you'll want to rank high in search results to get links naturally. Referring domains usually link to the best articles or articles that match what they're looking for when they search. Keep in mind that it's hard to rank high in searches without backlinks. So, if you play the organic game, you'll move up slowly. How many backlinks you get naturally depends on how many of your articles are in the top three search results. But you can get backlinks without doing outreach if you do it the right way.

Conclusion

Now you know the top 10 ways to build backlinks to your website. We want you to try each method out for yourself and see what happens. When you reach out to other sites, don't forget to be persistent, polite, and eager, and to offer something of value. Building backlinks is a marathon, not a sprint, so build a link here and there over time and they'll start to add up. First things first, though: if you haven't already, start making great content, a useful product, and a beautiful website so that you have something to point potential partners to. Remember that it's not how many backlinks you have, but how good they are that matters.

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CanCode.io Blog

How to Create Backlinks: 20 Ways to Get Backlinks to Your Store

Backlink

Why it's Important to have Backlinks?

How to Measure Backlinks?

DOMAIN & PAGE STRENGTH

NOFOLLOW & DOFOLLOW LINKS

LINK PLACEMENT

ANCHOR TEXT

LINK RELEVANCY

Low-Quality Links & Spam

How to Get Backlinks?

1. Reddit Social Proof Method

2. Create Remarkable Content

3. Create Linkbait Content

4. Get a Link from Your Manufacturer/Wholesaler/Supplier

5. Interview Authorities in Your Niche

6. Republish Old Content

7. Reach out to media sources

8. Guest Posting

9. Promote on social media

10. Broken link outreach

11. Product Reviews

12. Try influencer marketing

13. Reach out to the “Resource” pages

14. Request a Link

15. Unlinked Mentions Method

16. Contact competitor’s backlinks

17. Subreddit Moderator Method

18. Create more webpages

19. Add your own internal links

20. Rank higher in search

Conclusion

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