If you’ve ever worked in a technology company or a company that has some sort of digital strategy, you’ve probably heard the word ‘backlinks’ quite a lot.

If you’re part of a startup, then you’ve definitely heard the word and have reason to both hate and love it.

So what are backlinks?

“Backlinks,” refer to websites that link to your site, and what most search engines use as the main ranking factor. This helps with SEO and getting you more organic traffic.

The higher the website you’re backlinked on is ranked, the better the backlink quality is for your website. This is in very high demand and people try to capitalise on this, sometimes in unethical ways.

Here are some ways you can get more backlinks for your site without breaking the bank or resorting to unethical practises.

Backlinks can be free

Contribute guest articles

Contributed articles are a great way to improve brand awareness and also get that coveted backlink. However, the benefits from increased exposure and improved online reputation, are far-reaching.

There are quite a few options available in Southeast Asia, especially in the technology and business space. However, if you’re looking for specific industries or niche markets, you can Google “key search term + contribute article” and you should get a few options available.

We also accept contributed articles for our sections Voices, Tried and Tested and Tech for Business sections. You can contact us to find out how you can contribute.

Broken-links

This is probably the most effective way to get backlinks and it is actually mutually beneficial.

This is a simple technique of identifying broken links on a website and suggesting a relevant link that they can use as a substitute. Just drop the webmaster a note and let them know which of their links are broken. In our experience, it is best to be clear and transparent about how you’re trying to help.

To easily find broken links you can download Google Chrome plugin called Check my Links. This will help you identify broken links when you search for key terms relevant to your content.

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Broken links are way more common than you think with content being taken down regularly and changing URLs leaving you with the dreaded 404 screen.

Do some PR

Easier said than done, but not impossible. If you’ve got a story to tell, pitch it to some great online publications (ahem, guess where you’re reading this) and if they pitch up the story, they generally add a backlink.

Postive coverage also greatly helps your brand reputation and introduces a whole new audience to what you do.

This also includes getting your content as supporting research for articles, providing quotes and even getting your content onto weekly roundups that a lot of publications put together to showcase industry highlights over the week.

Write testimonials

This is a sneaky, but easy way to get some good backlinks on high-ranking websites. Contributing on Reddit is a simple way to get a backlink*.

Just register for an account on publicly discoverable websites, create a profile and include your company website. When you write testimonials or comment, it creates a backlink.

*Editor’s note: We have edited this to correct the article and replace Quora with Reddit. 

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There’s no simple, free and easy method to make this happen. However, these steps should help you improve your search rankings as well as generate organic inbound leads.

To find out more business tools you can use, check out our other articles here.