16 Ethical Link Building Strategies in 2023

Businesses and agencies who want to rank for keywords cannot afford to ignore building backlinks in 2023 through various ethical strategies. 

According to Google, quality backlinks remain one of the top three ranking factors, along with content and mobile optimisation.

If you want to move up your search rankings, the best way is to focus on organic link building and acquire a lot of high authority links to your website.

This is pretty much clear now!

SEOs are always looking to find new and innovative ways (apart from the set best practices) to build backlinks. Everyone has a new take on what they feel will work or not. However, one thing is certain, using Black Hat strategies to build links is something, which might get brands, agencies, and SEOs into trouble. 

Remember Google is smart and it is not 2011 anymore when SEOs used to get use black hat link-building strategies like spamming, unnecessary blog commenting and so on.

In this article, we are going to look at 16 ethical or organic link building best practices in 2023. Before we get to the list, let us first look at why link building is important. 

The Benefits and Importance of Link Building in 2023.

We have already mentioned how backlinks building in 2023 is important for ranking on Google search for specific keywords. However, if done right, organic link building best practices can benefit in the following ways also:

• Driving traffic from a high-volume site (where your link is placed) to your own website, landing page, or social media profiles. 
• Having your brand building backlinks in high-authority platforms also helps in raising your own brand credibility and exposure. 
• It is also important to note that building backlinks in the right manner can help in effective lead generation for a brand campaign. 
• According to many experts, successful link building practices can automatically boost organic visibility.
• At the end of the day, all the above combine to help a brand improve sales and generate revenues. In other words, set up a profitable business online. 

Here Are The List of 16 Ethical Link Building Strategies in 2023

For many SEOs, Content and Link Building is what comprises the entire discipline. While this may be a narrow understanding, if done right, it can be successful in garnering the maximum results.

1. Building Backlinks through Reclamation- 

There are many times when people are going to list your website on a ‘best type article. They might be writing the article on behalf of their client, but would want to list down the competitors. 

This is a great opportunity to use a social listening tool and reach out to the publisher or platform. Connect with them, build relationships, and ask them to give you a link back to your website.

2. Create Stats-

This is one of the best ways to create organic links if you don’t want to spend money on link building. Creating stats makes the information more valuable. Businesses love linking to accurate stats as it helps in credibility. For example, Marketing Lad is a new brand and recently got 8 do-follow backlinks. Now, you may keep the stats like this:

According to Marketing Lad, For every new website if you get 8 good authority do-follow links then your Domain Rating could go up to 15 out of 100 in 7 days. ( Now anyone who finds this stats useful might link to their site for reference.)
This is an example of creating stats and you could do it in your niche while stressing more on research.

3. High Quality Guest Posting- 

High-quality guest posting powered by quality content can go a long way in building backlinks. However, brands and SEOs need to remember that poor quality content, just for the sake of building backlinks is a strict no-no in Google’s eyes. 

If the intent is to create quality backlinks, the aim should be to create long-format, SEO-optimized, and well-researched articles. This will make it very difficult for any publisher to say no.

4. Link Insertions- 

Link insertion is a great link building strategy. It’s one of the most effective, valuable and easy to implement link building tactics out there.

Link insertion is where you find an existing piece of content that could benefit from additional resources, and then you reach out to the site owner to suggest your content be added to the page.

Link insertion has a high success rate because the benefits are clear for both sides. Site owners are always looking for ways to make their pages better and more helpful for their users. And if your content is relevant and good enough, site owners will want to link to it.

Link insertion works best when you provide a solution that helps someone else achieve their goals. When you start a campaign with this mindset, it’s easier to find opportunities to create value for other sites, which in turn makes them more likely to accept your request.

We have written a complete article on Link Insertions – An Ultimate Link Building Strategy

5. Journalistic Content Creation- 

According to experts, one of the most innovative new strategies for building contextual backlinks has become creating journalistic content. This means that you take up a trending issue and use the online resources available to create a stellar piece of content. 

Take quotes from industry authority figures. Promote the content on social media. Once people find you have published something, they will be interested in giving you the link and sharing the same on platforms. 

6. Quora, Medium, and Reddit Link Building- 

Many of you might get up from your seats and start shouting ‘No-Follow Links’. You will be right, but there are some things, you need to consider. Google is very ambiguous when it comes to building no-follow backlinks on high-quality industry authority sites. 

Many SEOs follow a well-defined strategy to place backlinks and drive traffic from such platforms to their desired pages. This means you should actively pursue a content strategy on Quora, Medium, Reddit, and other similar review platforms. 

We have written a complete article on Why Reddit Backlinks Impact Your SEO.

7. Creating Infographics- 

Many SEOs have started experimenting with quality infographics in recent years. They point out that many people prefer to go through a well explained and informative infographic rather than read through two or three thousand words. You can download free infographic templates to scale up your link building efforts.

An infographic driven backlink building strategy has to be complemented by a proper email marketing strategy. You need to identify publishers who are creating content on the same lines and request them to use the infographic by giving you a backlink. 

8. Roundup Game-

It is one of the proven strategies and many SMEs have built tons of backlinks by creating round-up posts. You can simply interview an influencer and people will start linking to your interview page. Isn’t it a cool strategy to build some quick links?

9. Create Useful Guides-

Start creating long-form content, Google prefers long-form content as compared to short articles. You can create a guide that has complete information about the topic and people will start linking to that guide

Example: DIGITAL MARKETING GUIDE FOR BEGINNERS IN 2023: SIMPLE & EXTENSIVE

10. Claim Broken Links-

A broken link strategy can effectively increase your link count if done properly and consistently. Simply audit your competitors’ sites and then find the broken link opportunities. There are many SEO tools that could help in finding broken link opportunities such as Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush and so on. Reach out to their site admins and suggest some resources and ask for a link.

Here is the simple and effective email template-

See the response below-

Usually, it requires some effort to find the opportunities and reach out to the site admins. It is worth spending the time on this.

11. Hot Topics-

Creating content on the current trends in your similar niche can get you organic links. Writing about trending topics, offer new data or news that can additionally contribute to your website. You can use the tools like Google Alerts, Ahrefs – Content Explorer, and Buzzsumo to understand the new trends in your niche.

12. Join Marketing Communities-

Another crazy deal in link building best practices is that you should find the best communities where you could collaborate or partner with other brands. There are many online communities that can help you to start building some great links for your website. You can join them on Slack, Facebook, Telegram and so on. Some famous communities are CRO Growth Hacks, and Link Building – ML try them and bring the links for your focus pages.

13. Review Other Websites-

You hear me right! Creating testimonials or reviews of other brands can help you in building backlinks. When you write a review for a brand, they can showcase your review to their customers and build trust with their users. They win the users and you win a backlink. It is a win-win for both sides.

14. Inspect Your Competitors-

Another ethical link building move to gain backlinks is inspecting your competitors. You can use the tools like Ubbersuggest, Ahrefs, Moz, and Semrush to check up on your competitors, and find out where are they getting some new links. Reach out to those sites and possibly give a good resource, request for a link back to your website.

15. Internal Link Building-

Internal linking can help your less popular pages gain some value and authority. It has been always helping users to stay on the website and access many other links. You can have multiple benefits from linking internally the pages like distributing the link juice, boosting page views, improving the page rank and improving avg time on site.

16. HARO

HARO is a great way to get in front of journalists, influencers and bloggers. It’s a search engine that allows you to submit content and search for stories from people who are looking for information on any topic. Once your content is approved you will get a link to either your profile or a web page.

You can submit your story to HARO without having to create an account, but if you want access to the tools that help you manage your submissions, it’s worth creating an account.

HARO puts you in touch with journalists who are looking for information on your topic. You can get their contact details and start building relationships with them right away.

Once you have submitted your request, an editor will review it and contact you if they think they can help you out. This could mean giving you expert advice on a topic or giving you some tips on how to write an article.

If the editor decides that they cannot help you out, they will pass on your request and explain why they cannot help.

It is important to note that HARO does not offer any guarantees about getting responses from sources or about what kind of information might be revealed during interviews.

Conclusion

There are literally tons of other ways and it depends on how could you think of being a creative link builder. It is true that organic and ethical link building best practices are evolving. While being innovative, you need to ensure that your content is original (not plagiarised), and SEO optimized. At Marketing Lad, we have experience in SEO and If you find ethical link building practices overwhelming, our experts will help you conduct link profile analysis and build backlinks to strengthen your domain rating.

Are you an SEO who wants to add to the list of ethical link building strategies? Share them with us in the comments section below and help improve the community.