6 Incredibly Practical Link Building Methods For New Bloggers

Hi there, Are you a new blogger with a new website? Struggling to get by with the link building strategy for SEO benefits?

The key is not to focus on a load of strategies all at once. I have been through the initial days and I know how the mind tricks towards everything that we see. I’ve written this article by keeping beginner bloggers in mind and going to talk about only the 6 best ways that bring you quality backlinks.

I’ve got you covered. So sit back with a coffee and give good attention to this article or bookmark this page for your future reference.

Let’s get this started!

Alright, I have a quick question for you…

Do you think backlinks would increase the authority of a blog?

If you’re not sure yet, here is my 1st opinion ” Google never directly tells someone to build more backlinks so that it would give better organic rankings to them.”

My 2nd take –> Backlinks are one of the highest Google rankings’ signals and are important to increase the Page Rank (P.R) of a page (Source).

Still, confused? 

There is no ending for these frequent algorithm updates that we’ve been experiencing these days. With every update, Google is striving to improve its internal systems. And all those updates cuts down to one single reason – To deliver the best accurate results to the search query. So if you want to survive and rule the SERPs, you must play by the rules of Google.

It is 100% true that building trust with Google by having quality backlinks from authority sites is equally important as creating compelling content.

Quality backlinks are just like endorsements: The more you get the bigger you grow in the eyes of Google.

According to a Moz’s case study, 99.2% of all top 50 results had at least one backlink and this hints us how important a role backlink building plays in boosting the organic presence.

What is the right way to build backlinks?

As a new blogger, you can’t just walk into the authority blog’s contact form and write a crappy link exchange mail request. Moreover, it creates a negative impact and doesn’t work in the long run, if you want to be successful do it the right way. So I suggest you keep the patience (at least a year or even more) and trust the process.

There are two simple steps I recommend you do:

Step 1 – Start With You

What I really mean is to get the basics done before you think of getting backlinks from those high authority sites. There are a few crucial on-page SEO things you need to work on. Such as:

• Site Structure – Most new bloggers never give such importance to this. I say it is really important to help Google and readers to navigate your blog easily. Optimizing your blog with the right structure helps Google to crawl easily and not to forget helps in passing Page Rank (P.R) from one page to another as well. Add home, categories dropdown, about, and contact pages to your main menu. My bottom line is, to use your blog space effectively to get loved by search engines and readers both.
• Content Optimized – Without top-notch content, there is nothing for you to promote or build backlinks for. You must create content in the simplest form as you can so that people pay attention to stay, read, and think about your blog as a valuable resource. What’s the point of creating the routine content that everyone is creating? Not only Google but also readers don’t show interest in engaging with such a form of content.
• Make SEO optimized – It’s highly important to start loving the SEO process from the initial days of your blogging. Things like the right use of headings, titles, meta description, slug (URL), internal linking, blog structure, and keywords help to have better chances to rank well.
  • Optimize title and meta description with power words/numbers/emotional words/pain points of the users to catch the attention. Remember, not to trick Google by stuffing the keywords all over the content.
  • Make good use of the SEMrush tool to understand what kind of keywords people are searching on Google and produce the content accordingly in a natural way. Use Google trends as well for this.
  • Link to other articles from your blog (Internal linking) wherever you feel necessary, which will help to pass P.R. from the current page to the linking page.
  • Make sure your blog loads in good time, ideally within 3 – 5 seconds. Just go to GTmetrix or Google Page Insights, enter your URL, and find out how fast you can present the blog to the reader. FYI, the blogs that load slowly makes the user leave instantly and never come back. And, believe me, Google doesn’t like that.

Step 2 – Five ways to build backlinks

By this time, your blog would have been filled with a good amount of content in a well-structured way. Now, quickly move to the main topic. FYI, I’m going to talk only about something that I have known through the experts or learned on my own.

Before we move on, here are two types of links if you’re not aware yet:

• Do follow Link – The link that passes the juice from the source website to a destination website. By default, all the links are do-follow. If you are adding a do-follow link to XYZ website, it means you are telling Google and the reader to trust the XYZ website and it has valuable content on it.
• No-follow Link – It contains no-follow attribute in the link which means the link doesn’t pass any juice to the XYZ website (Example: <a href = “www.xyz.com” rel=”nofollow”>).

1. Blog Commenting

Wait…What?

Aren’t blog comments attributes the no-follow link?

Yes, blog comments are no-follow and they don’t follow a link juice. In such a case, should you not focus on blog commenting?

Not at all!

There are so many reasons you should be focusing on blog commenting – as long as you are a blogger.

A meaningful comment on a blog post makes a great impact. It develops the relationship between you, the blogger and the community. Plus, it brings you targeted traffic, conversions as well.

The more you focus on blog commenting, the more benefits you would get in the long run. It is free, easy to do, less time taking. One major benefit is it lands you with the guest posting opportunity which is an indirect form of building backlinks. Isn’t it? We shall discuss more details about guest blogging in the coming sections.

For the new bloggers, my biggest recommendation is to make a list of relevant niche blogs (at least 50) and try to drop 3 to 4 genuine comments on a daily basis as you don’t want to be a spammer.

Steps for blog commenting 

1. Create your Gravatar account by adding your real image, name and mail ID. After that, when you publish a comment with the gravatar email ID, you will see the comment published with your picture and name. Indeed, it creates a professional impression and says that you are to be trusted.
2. Make blogging friends on Twitter and Facebook and list their blogs. Create a schedule to comment. Eventually, you can also spy on your competitors using Ahrefs or SEMrush tool. Prepare the list of blogs that you would find out of them.
3. Drop 3 to 4 meaningful comments daily on various blogs instead of frequent ones.

How do you actually drop a good comment?

• Analyze the entire post or even a section and then move to drop your comment
• State your personal experience on the topic
• Ask a question if you don’t get anything related to the subject
• Thank the author for a briefing on that topic

Since the links are no-follow, don’t be disappointed to push yourself for the commenting. Think in the long term, have patience and do it smartly. Believe me, whatever blessings I have today as a blogger, all came through blog commenting.

2. Guest Posting

Guest blogging is one of the purest and right ways of building backlinks to your blog.

Never write guest posts for the sake of a backlink, if you do that, you would be limited to one or two backlinks. Write guest content as if you were writing for your own blog and that’s how you earn the trust of other bloggers and get yourself with the more writing opportunities and backlinks.

If you have observed, I’m following the same cheat now.

Go to my blog’s page as seen on and pick up the bottom articles from my contribution.

What do you find?

If you’re unable to get it, here is what I want you to understand…

My early guest posts were not highly detailed. Along with time and learning, I started writing researched and real content that helps the reader and eventually that brings me a sweet backlink. The bottom line is when you actually push yourself to deliver high-quality content, the links follow you automatically.

As I learned, bloggers and influencers invite you to write a guest post when you either

• Write a short and sweet content that solves a problem or
• Long-form, detailed and quality content that helps

How to start guest posting?

Tip 1 – Don’t rush to write on top blogs in the very beginning, they may not accept you. Instead, start approaching small and growing blogs. Moreover, growing bloggers would love to have someone beside them who tries to help them by producing quality content.

Tip 2 – Look for the relevancy factor. My blog is all about blogging tips and I would look for blogs that are in the same niche or similar to it, like SEO or WordPress. I would never approach a health or a finance niche blogger to guest post. Backlinks from relevant niche resemble trust and authority.

Tip 3 – Like most bloggers, don’t go advanced by searching terms like “Write for Us”, “Guest post blogging”, “Contribute,” etc to start your guest post strategy. You are not like them, you are a growth hacker and you need to be real and natural when it comes to building links. Create a Twitter profile, make blogging friends, engage, and share their content. Do not make friends for a backlink, just make friends. After some time, ask them for a mutual guest posting opportunity, see, it’s a win-win situation.

Yes, all these tactics take a good amount of time, but all worth it. This way of guest posting leads to hundreds of profitable opportunities but not just limited to one or two backlinks.

While writing this guest post I didn’t search for anything about this topic on Google. All that I have written here is from my experience and reality. When you shape yourself like that and start writing that way more opportunities pops-up at you.

Guest posting is all about researching and learning and mostly built on relationships. I never thought that I would get so much love and blogging profits from the community until Ryan Biddulph introduced me to it. So never reject the opportunity of giving the guest posting rights to the deserved ones. It helps as it helped me.

3. Feature Bloggers in the form of Interviews

Are you wondering how Interviews going to get you a backlink?

Not totally, at least, you would be having a decent chance to get a backlink from an authority blog. How?

By now, you would be following a list of people on social media. Think, who is highly passionate or promising bloggers and reach them for an Interview. Let them know your intentions to learn from them, grow and how their Interview is going to help your audience. I’m sure no one would deny such an opportunity.

When you Interview some blogger there is a high chance that the blogger would mention that Interview and URL on his/her blog, as I’ve been doing on my blog. In my case, I started featuring promising bloggers like Nikola Roza and already got an overwhelming response on the Interview and I’m enjoying the continuous love and support from him and everyone.

How to start Interviews?

As I said, successful blogging is all about doing the right things with patience.

Don’t be like a desperate blogger who would feature each and every blogger that he sees around with the concept of mutual backlinks. Look around, and find out who has been doing great, not in terms of earnings but the passion, consistency, and discipline towards his/her work.

And one important thing, don’t ask backlink directly without giving something, it won’t work that way, not at least these days. If you do well consistently and generously, you will start seeing the results.

Here’s the best example – Amit Garg has recently published my Interview on his blog. I find him as a talented, learning, and passionate blogger. I’m sure that he is going to be one of the most successful bloggers in the industry. Not to mention I thanked him a little in the form of a backlink. See, how righteously and easily he earned the backlink from me!

4. Mention others

Lately,  I’ve been observing that a few blog owners accept and publish guest content and give a no-follow link or no link at all to the others.

You don’t do that. Other bloggers appreciate you for mentioning them on your blog, but a no-follow link? Seriously?

I would call it a negative practice and is not going to make you successful. External links don’t weigh you down. Moreover, it builds credibility and both Google and readers think that your blog post is a hub of valuable resources. I learned this from Nikola Roza’s article Are outbound links good for SEO. If you read the article with an open mind you would understand the importance of external linking in the SEO aspect. You can also see my comment on that article from which you can understand that – earlier I wasn’t a big fan of linking to others. However, as I said, learning and practicing made me realize things.

So the next time whenever you publish content on your blog mention at least one blogger on a relevant subject. And let them know you have mentioned via email, Twitter or Facebook. They might not give you a backlink instantly, but sooner or later they will start noticing you. If your blog has got good content and relevant to their blog’s niche, they may link you as well. Do note the relevancy and necessity of the mention are must in the content.

Moreover, mentioning others with a follow-link resembles love and trust, which are essential ingredients in successful blogging.

One important point to note is ” Since you are a new blogger do not mention industry experts like Neil Patel, Zac Johnson, or some other, they might not notice you or keep in mind since you are not that level yet. Start mentioning entry, growing or a bit established bloggers.”

5. Content Syndication

You don’t get a do-follow link from this practice. However, you shall get a good amount of traffic, exposure and influence.

There are some platforms you must sign up and start using for blogging benefits and they are completely free.

• Quora
• LinkedIn
• Medium
• YourStory (approval required)
• e27.co (approval required)
• Slideshare

Create your user profile with the real picture, compelling short bio and start researching content related to your niche on the platforms. Ask questions to the experts, answer the questions that you know, link to your blog’s content and engage with the audience regularly.

And don’t rush to all those platforms at once: One-by-One is recommended and effective. My personal recommendation is to get started with Quora, it is an amazing platform for content creators and brands. You will get a lot of creative ideas to produce and develop content for your audience. If you are smart enough, by now, you might have landed on Quora.

Yes, you do not get a do-follow link but imagine the other long-run benefits that you would be getting through it.

6. Expert Round-up posts

Recently, I had the chance to get featured on Guest Crew with the help of Amar.

Amar and I know each other through his consistent blog comments and social media interaction. He approached me if I can state my opinion towards modern link building approaches.

It’s a great resource to read. 100+ bloggers & experts shared their opinion on backlink building. I took almost 3 days of flexible time to read it completely and planning to implement a few of those techniques as well.

Now, your question might be” How Expert roundups get you a backlink?”

It is similar to the Interviews and mentions but there is a higher chance of getting a backlink compared to Interviews and mentions.

Growing & established bloggers would love to share their opinion and get featured along with those experts. My excitement doubled when I saw myself next to all those experts. If you’ve gone through my blog’s “As seen” page I have mentioned that roundup post also. I’m sure the GuestCrew team had got decent no. of backlinks to their post from all those experts, plus, it’s a valuable resource for the whole blogging community.

Win-Win situation, Isn’t it?

How should you implement a round-up post on your blog?

Look at you…

• What are the blogging or SEO related difficulties you are facing currently?
• What are you confused about?
• What do you want to know more about and implement then?

Make a list of such questions, find the big pain points and one of them should be your topic for a round-up post.

For example, let’s say you are struggling to increase traffic to your blog and thus conversions. Then your topic title should be “50+ Bloggers Share Their Secrets To Increase Blog Traffic.”

See, how amazing and epic posts it would become and how many links you get back in return. Well, I haven’t implemented this strategy yet but soon it will be.

Conclusion

I haven’t mentioned a few other ways of link building, such as:

• Directory submissions
• Social bookmarking sites
• Writing testimonials for others (if you get the chance)
• Link exchange via outreach
• Paid guest posts, link farms, auto SEO, etc
• Article submission directories and so on…

Don’t take me wrong; Out of these, few are not whitehat strategies anymore, few violate Google’s link building policies and few are effective but are not to be focused in the early stages of your blogging. So I have discussed only 5 strategies that are easy, challenging, and ready-made to implement from the initial days of blogging.

Quick concluding tips

• Make lots of blogging friends and develop relationships
• Write something great so that people will link to you eventually
• What’s the point of building links when you don’t have good content that ranks? So produce SEO-optimized, preferably long-form and detailed guides
• Links don’t make sense when your blog is filled with technical errors, thin content. Fix ’em!
• Always repurpose your old content by updating interlinks, fixing
• Never shy to promote yourself, do it as much as you can.

SEO is tricky: if you fall for easy and comfortable ways, you fail. As per Google’s guidelines, buying links and involving in such schemes to improve your blog authority is a clear violation. So do it the right way!

Do you have any other hacks for new bloggers? I would love to know, Let’s have a talk in the comments section.