Building organic links

Links or backlinks to your website have been around since the dawn of search engines and they are still an important measure of your website's ranking. In its guidelines, Google labels any paid link as a violation of the rules, leaving you vulnerable to algorithm updates and dips in your rankings. In this blog post, we'll take a look at the tactics you can use to get links to your website naturally.

Active social media profiles

One tactic you can use to naturally build backlinks to your website is to regularly post updates on your social media profiles about your latest content and products. This way you show that you are also active externally (i.e. outside the hosting of your website), and posts on social media always have the chance to attract a lot of attention.

In this way, you make yourself and your website known not only to potential visitors and customers, but also to other parties and companies in your sector. Certainly a post about your latest blog, article or product, for example, can ensure that it receives the first visitors via the channels and can therefore already be picked up more quickly to also appear in the results on Google. The best scenario is, of course, when other websites pick up on your post immediately and respond to it or link to it. This often has the greatest success with interesting content. This can take many forms, let's discuss what you can use for this in the next heading.

Link building with content

Content on your website or social media can help you gain more exposure on your website. For example, publish interesting case studies in your industry where you stand out from the norm or show a new perspective.

This content alone is often not enough, you also need to prepare it professionally with images and other media that can also be shared quickly. This is where companies often use social media channels such as LinkedIn or X. However, which channels are best suited for this can vary depending on the industry. Stay active on various social media channels to keep up to date with trends or changes.

Approach and networking

The social aspect of managing your website and business can also help tremendously in building natural links to your content and website. Find out who is active in your industry and keep in touch with them. Networking via social media profiles and on a direct basis, for example by shaking hands at conferences and open days, can give you an edge over parties or companies that often operate more anonymously.

If you have reported on an interesting case study on your website, you can promote it to your network to raise awareness. You can also use websites such as Haro or Help a reporter out to submit information to news websites, e.g. you are then the source in the article, which often leads to a backlink to your website or company.

There are several sources and websites that use the same concept. It's up to you as a business to find out who or what website is active in your industry and get yourself on the radar.

This way, you can be at the forefront of some publications and publicize your expertise in the field. A well-known strategy that is often used is to send mass emails to almost every website that writes about your industry. In my opinion, this tactic has never had a long lifespan, but these days your email will almost always be thrown away immediately or go straight to the recipient's SPAM. Mass emails asking people to link to your article are impersonal and have little chance of success. It is often a better strategy to first make personal contact with such websites without expecting anything in return and then to build up this relationship for mutual benefit.

Also, link exchanges from years gone by are now often considered SPAM by Google and therefore won't help you in most cases. With the recent algorithm changes, it is no longer so easy to buy a few thousand backlinks for a tenner and expect results.

This is where you as a website owner need to rely on personal relationships and publishers to generate links organically. Have you already managed to generate backlinks for your website? Now apply the tactics from this article to generate backlinks too!