Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a practice of website optimization (also called On Page SEO) and link building which comes under Off Page SEO. The hardest part is not optimizing the website for search engines by taking care of technical aspects of On Page SEO, but it’s the phase of obtaining quality, authoritative and relevant backlinks. A few years ago, the link building was quite different, however, since 2012 when Google Penguin was rolled out for the first time, the whole scenario of link building has changed.
Google Penguin is an over-optimization penalty that penalizes websites having low quality, irrelevant and anchor-text optimized backlinks. Since 2012, there have been 6 Penguin updates. You can check out the history of Penguin update in Google Algorithm Change History shared by Moz.
In today’s blog post, we are going to talk about latest link building trends for the current and upcoming year i.e. 2016. Take a look at what all we have in a basket for you which can help you building better backlinks for your website.
Content Syndication for Building Quality Backlinks
Everyone has the content, but only a few know how to use it in the best way. If you are using your content in limited ways, then this is the time when you have to broaden your strategy for content syndication and start using content in multiple ways. When it comes to B2C, the best ways to get backlinks are blogs. On the other hand, if you have a B2B audience, eBooks would be more prominent. Deciding what kind of content you need is subject to the type of audience and what kind of content is going to attract them.
eBooks
eBooks are great for those businesses that focus on lead generation. It is not very much suitable for product based businesses as they look for sales. You can promote your free eBook on following channels:
- Addicted To Ebooks
- BookFreebies
- Digital Book End
- Author Marketing Club
- eBooks Habit
- Free e-Books
- MBG eBooks Gallery
- Books On The Knob
HubSpot has shared 13 Free Customizable eBook Templates, which you can use for creating the eBook.
In addition to this, you can create a dedicated landing page where users can come and request the eBook by putting their name and email address. With this, you can capture new subscribers and build your email lists. HubSpot is a great tool that helps in creating awesome looking landing pages. Here is a sample landing page:
Blog Posts
Blog posts are the best ways to build two-tier backlinks. You can make blogs on free blogging platforms such as WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, etc. Publish your quality content on these portals and create backlinks pointing to your website.
Infographics
Visual content should not be overlooked. A properly used visual content can yield great results for your website. Infographics are trending link building strategy these days. Compared to an article, a well-researched and designed Infographic can add great value as they grab the attention of users quickly. Once you have created one infographic, you can submit it to different portals like Visual.ly, Pinterest, Imgur, InfographicJournal, etc.
Merely creation of infographic won’t help. You should have the right strategy in place to promote and distribute your infographics.
Videos
As mentioned above, people react quickly to visual content. Video content can help you get quality backlinks and wider reach. A well prepared and relevant video can help you get effective results. The description section on video portals like YouTube, Vimeo can be used to provide a link back to your website.
Other Traditional Ways to Build Backlinks
- Dmoz Directory Listing
- Business Listings like Yelp.com
- Social Bookmarks
- Business Directories like Manta.com, Thumbtack
- Classifieds such as Craiglist
Get Some Inspiration from Competitors
Competitors can give you great link building ideas. The only thing you have to do is choose right competitor and check their backlinks. By doing this, you can find the unexplored link building opportunities that helped your competitors to be on top.
To check the backlinks of your competitors, here are some great tools you can use:
Freemium Backlinks Checker Tools 
Free Backlinks Checker Tool
- Backlinkwatch (its free but not so accurate)
- OpenLinkProfiler
By using above mentioned tools, you can use the websites from which your competitors are getting the backlinks, to build backlinks for your website. However, it doesn’t mean that you should blindly follow the competitors. Take only those websites to create backlinks that have good Page Rank, Domain Authority, and relevancy.
So this was all for link building tips that you can adopt in current as well as in the next year. Share your queries or feedback in comments with us!