Content creation and link building usually go hand in hand with each other. They are pillars of every serious SEO strategy and can make wonders for your marketing. Content creation is all about relevancy and smart implementation of various SEO elements. On the other hand, link building is about finding relevant sites and links to and from them. In general, you create worthy content, find websites that might show interest in it, and convince them to link. But, it’s not always mandatory and even necessary to do it this way. In essence, you can build quality links without creating fresh content and still get marvelous results.
Several ways to build quality links without creating fresh content
Don’t get it wrong, content creation is absolutely important for any online marketing strategy. But creating fresh content is not always necessary to build links. In fact, there are situations where it won’t make any sense to create fresh content. For example, if you are not using the full potential of your already existing content. Or, you need to change the course of the link building strategy and make some corrections. If you plan to build links without creating fresh content, here are a few suggestions on how to do it:
- Hunt for broken links
- Make use of mentions
- Browse relevant directories
- Engage in community
- Leaving testimonials
Hunt for broken links
Broken links are one of the easiest methods in the book, and you don’t necessarily need fresh content for this. Of course, you can search for old or dead links and create content for it. But, SEO professionals can advise you about how to use your existing content and focus on finding better link opportunities for them. For example, if your competitor is out of business. In this situation, you hunt for all the links that point to their nonworking website. Then, you check for any opportunity to place your links instead.
Once you find them, you need to get in touch with website owners and ask to replace them with yours. Generally, broken links should be easy to acquire because they serve both your and webmasters’ interests. Not only you are pointing them to broken links but you are immediately providing them with replacement. Thus, making them their job much easier.
The process of finding broken links is easy:
- Select the keywords that interest you (consider the content you already possess)
- Search Google for top results
- Make a list of those URLs
- Use some of the tools like Ahref to check URLs for the presence of broken links
After this, all that you need to do is to find alternative content you already have and reach out to website owners.
Make use of mentions
This is another easy way to get links without making fresh content. This is actually quite a productive method of link building if you are in business for a couple of years already. In that case, there are probably some online mentions of your company you are not aware of. And more importantly, the mentions that are not linked to your website. The good aspect of mentions is that they are not hard to find. Also, you don’t necessarily need tools to find them. Even so, they have a high response rate, which is excellent. Usually, Google search is all you need to start.
The basic query you will use to start your search is next:
“Company Name” -site:yourwebsite.com.
The next step is to expand your search with a few parameters:
- -press, -release, -event
- -site:facebook.com, -site:twitter.com, -site:instagram.com, -site:yelp.com
- “event name”, “employee name”, “announced”, “launched”, “quoted”, “services”
- and many more.
You can also use tools like BuzzSumo, Mention, Trackur, and similar, to speed up and make your mentions hunting easier. Finally, reach out and hope for a positive response.
Browse relevant directories for opportunities to build quality links
Directories are an excellent way to increase the visibility of your entire website. And the best thing is you don’t have to make new content to get listed. Even though some of the directories had a reputation as being the spamming nests, today is a bit different. They still have the potential to increase the traffic to your website. However, there is no need to list in every directory. Like with everything else, should only list on those relevant to your industry, or location of your business. Also, check their traffic, authority, and listed competitors, to see if they actually matter.
The process of finding such directories is simple. All you need to do is to type the relevant keyword in Google search and add the search operator “inurl:directory” to it.
Engage in communities
To goal here is to use your offline activities as an opportunity to build quality links. If you own a company that actively participates in community activities and contributes, it opens you a new door. Google highly values these types of links because they show the credibility of your business. Here is a couple of examples of community engagement:
- Charity events
- Sponsorship of local events
- Interviews
- Conferences
- Donating
On the other side, you can join online communities to expand your reach and increase the chance of obtaining quality links. For this reason, there are various groups on social media, forums where your audience is active, popular blogs, industry-related platforms, etc.
Leaving testimonials
Broadly speaking, everything around you that you may have an opinion about, represent a link building opportunity. To be more precise, everything in connection to your business. From the tools that you use to other services, everything can hold potential for links. The thing is, you can reach others whose services or products you are using, and see if they have linked testimonials on their websites. If they do, you can ask if you can leave yours as a sign of appreciation. By doing this, not only do you get the link, but you become the one with a relevant opinion. However, this should be used only for situations when you honestly appreciate the other side.
You see, even though fresh content is highly valuable and in great connection to your SEO strategy, it’s not always necessary. It’s possible to build quality links without creating fresh content by using what you already have. Normally, it requires some research, but it can give great results.