Building backlinks is one of the best SEO strategies you can implement. Quality backlinks from authority sites is a fundamental building block of all good seo strategies. In this post I’ll share with you my best strategies for building backlinks even in 2020 and 2021.

Before we jump in, let’s briefly touch on what an Authority site is.

What is an Authority Site

An authority site is a very high quality website that is respected by knowledgeable people in its industry. It is a website that has content on it that is so good and makes the site so useful that people are actually glad they landed on it and want to share it with their friends.

This is usually attributed to a high domain and page authority as well as a lot of links back to the site.

But this kinda leaves us a bit in a chicken or egg standpoint. To become an authority site you must get backlinks, but to get backlinks you need to become an authority. So how do you go about doing this?

I’m going to use an example so we are all on the same page. Let’s build an authority site on Unicorns. Why Unicorns you ask? Well for one thing there isn’t really an authority on Unicorns. As they are made up creatures.

Second, because if I can create an authority site for Unicorns, you can certainly become an authority in your field.

Looking at the Domain and Page authority of the site I’m brand new.

This Unicorn Life Starting Domain And Page Authority.

What is content worthy of backlinks? A good metric I like to use is Google’s Rich Snippet content. Whenever you do a search in Google, the little drop down menu with questions or similar queries are rich snippets.

These are frequently asked questions for various search terms and a good place to start when creating content.

In our case, I took the keyword Unicorn Horn and created an article answering all the questions that pop up.

  • What is a Unicorn Horn Called?
  • What is a Unicorn Horn Made of?
  • Can A Unicorn Horn Regrow?
  • What Magical Powers Does it Have?

Writing direct answers for each of these questions means the likelihood of gaining a rich snippet is high. If I gain a Rich Snippet then I’m likely to get the traffic and as such, likely to get any backlinks when other articles are created and need a source.

The second way to create content worthy of backlinks is by investing in visual content.

My Infographic Strategy

Infographics make great shareable content, and if you add an embed code at the bottom you make it really easy for someone else to post the infographic on their site. That said, Infographics can be extremely expensive to design and create.

There are sites that allow you to build your own infographic such as Piktochart that I’ve used in the past. The problem with these tools is that you have to be somewhat competent and creative.

Personally I’m one of the worst graphic designers in the world. I just don’t have the eye for design.

What I did instead is I went onto Fiverr and for $15 had someone make me an infographic.

I gave him the name of the infographic, 10 Fun Facts About Winged Unicorns, and the 10 data points.

What I got back I posted at the bottom this article: https://thisunicornlife.com/what-is-a-unicorn-with-wings-called/

From there I created a list of every infographic submission site I could self submit too.

  1. https://infographicplaza.com/submit-infographics/
  2. https://lkrllc.com/submit-infographics/
  3. https://galleryr.org/submit-an-infographic/
  4. https://visual.ly/
  5. https://www.infographicreviews.com/review-my-infographic/
  6. http://www.infographicsshowcase.com/submit/
  7. https://www.infographicbee.com/
  8. http://www.infographaholic.com/
  9. https://www.dailyinfographic.com/
  10. https://coolinfographics.com/
  11. https://ilovecharts.tumblr.com/
  12. https://infographiclabs.com/
  13. https://www.newsilike.in/submit-infographic/
  14. https://infographicjournal.com/
  15. https://graphs.net/submit/

I’m sure this isn’t a complete list and if you know of more, leave a comment.

I submitted the infographics to those sites, and also posted it on Pinterest. Some of those sites started linking back to my website already. Which just goes to show infographics are a great way of building backlinks.

Becoming an Authority in a Space

How do you become an authority in your space? Press and lots of it. You can be the smartest person in your space but if no one knows about you, then it’s kinda useless. You can also be just kinda smart and have great press and get really far.

How do you get press?

Become an invaluable resource for reporters through HARO.

Haro is the secret weapon most press people don’t want you to know about because it’s how they get you featured. You pay them thousands of dollars and they get you in touch with potential press opportunities.

Yet, you can sign up to HARO for free and get all the same results. In addition to getting free press, this is an easy way to build backlinks from high authority sites.

All major authority sites create tons of content. For example The Washington Post publishes over 1200 pieces of content per day. That is an insane amount of content to create. The only way any one company can create that amount of content is if they have a team of paid and unpaid content creators.

Guest contributing is one way you can join that team and publish content. Typically guest contributing is a free endeavor but there are some paid guest contributing opportunities.

If you want to learn how to reach out and become a guest contributor check out this article on small business trends and steal my pitching template.

Reach out and start guest contributing to all the authority sites you can. There are so many benefits it’s insane.

What this all looks like in the end?

Building an authority site with lots of backlinks takes time. Search engine optimization isn’t something you do once, it is a process that takes months. That said, you can start seeing results relatively fast.

I’ve been working on growing This Unicorn Life for only four weeks. In that timeframe my domain and page authority are already starting to grow.

While not huge, this is a massive shift for just a few weeks of effort. Not only that, my Google Webmasters Tools is showcasing a lot more growth. When I started I had a few backlinks from Pinterest and that is about it.

To now:

Reddit Generating 4k+ backlinks and starting to rank in some of the places I guest contribute. Reddit backlinks aren’t typically dofollow, as most social media links are not. That said, having a lot of healthy links from an authority site are still helpful.

Overall, creating a high authority site and generating backlinks is a process that just about anyone can do. You need to have the right strategy in place and be patient with the results. That said there are plenty of ways to achieve these results and better. What are your top tips for generating backlinks to your authority site?