Content marketing as a strategy centers around the idea that providing value to readers will eventually convert them to customers. But, content creation isn’t just about the direct funnel from Google to your site to sales. Your content can and should help your peers, too – even those who might be seen as your competition. 

A more collaborative attitude can lead to ‘authority links’ – where a piece of content from an organization with a certain amount of clout links to your content for supporting evidence or further information. 

Authority links are great for boosting your search engine optimization (SEO) and improving your brand awareness, which in turn helps grow your email list and the return on your lead generation – and the good news is you have more control than it might seem over whether you acquiring backlinks target or not. 

It might feel like you’re just blogging into the ether and nobody is sharing your content, but fear not: there are ways to get other sites – great, popular, well-ranked sites – to link to your site, and it’s not as hard as it might seem.

Why You Want Authority Backlinks

Any link to your content will improve your SEO – boosting your content up the ranks of a Google search, for example – but the ‘authority’ part isn’t an empty qualifier. The more highly-ranked the linker is, the more that link means for your ranking, because according to the logic of search engines, quality sources only link to other quality sources. 

Authority links are also one of the best types of traffic generators, something akin to everyone’s favorite sales and marketing tool: word of mouth. While they may not drive traffic back to your site in the same volume as advertising or social media, they carry the weight – or authority – of a recommendation.

When a customer sees a link to your content on another business’s page, that tells them that A) you have something important and relevant to add to the conversation and B) you’re a reliable source of information, according to someone whose content they already trust. They arrive at your page ready to hear what you have to say.

Of course, for this to work, you’ll want to make sure that the links you receive are coming from an equally reliable and relevant source, which leads us to the next point – figuring out where to aim when seeking authority links to your blog posts.

Where to Get Backlinks

As with so many elements of life, your first port of call in seeking authority links will be Google. Just like you’d use it to find relevant, reliable sources when creating your own content, you can also reverse that process and use it to search for similar, applicable content on other sites. This is a great way to get a sense of who might be interested in adding a link back to your site.

When you have a long list of potential link sources, it’s time to do some deeper research to see which businesses align best with your messaging – high authority backlinks are a partnership of sorts, so think about what brands you’d want to partner with. Of course, culture and brand values will come into play, but there are more concrete considerations as well.

Here are a few things you should take into account when deciding whether or not to reach out to another business and request a linkback:

• Audience: You’ll want to seek out brands and businesses that have a similar target audience to yours so the traffic they drive your way will already be receptive to your message. This can include companies in your same industry, but it can also include brands that share a demographic with yours – say, other millennial women-owned businesses.
• Industry and Service: A more formulaic way to figure out where to aim for links is to look at the industry you’re targeting and then narrow the search even further by service. For example, if you’re looking at the beauty industry, both big names like Sephora and smaller companies like Thrive Causemetics will fit the industry bill, but if you offer a particular service – like cuticle rescue or specialty manicures – you’ll want to narrow further to the nail care sector.
• SEO: Before you do the legwork to try to get authority links from another brand, make sure it’ll be worth your while. Use SEO tools like SEMrush to check details like their site’s authority score, organic and paid search traffic, and backlinks. This will give you a sense of how great their online authority is, which will tell you whether you want to try and absorb some of that authority for your site. 

With those three elements in mind, it’s time to get started on your approach!

How to Secure Backlinks

Now that you have a list of other brands and companies you’d like to link back to your content, there are a few ways to convince them that it’s worth their time. 

1. Publish Valuable Content

The number one rule of content marketing is always to publish high-quality content. Your posts should add clear value to the conversation, no matter their subject. They should be interesting, educate readers, and ideally fill a need with the information they provide.

If your content isn’t high quality, with compelling imagery and graphics, other sites won’t want to link to it – and even if they did, the people who clicked those links wouldn’t stick around to read it, let alone convert to sales.

2. Implement an Outreach Plan 

Send an email to the company’s support channel or, if you can find individual contact info, to their content manager. It’s always good to start with a compliment or two, but make sure to be specific by referencing a particular piece of their content and pointing out what you admired about it and why. This not only butters them up but also shows that this is a thoughtful message, not an indiscriminate email blast.

Next, share a link to and a summary of your own content – the piece you’re hoping they’ll link to – and explain why you think it will add value to their site. Maybe it digs deeper on one angle of a subject they’ve covered more broadly or serves as a unique, well-executed example of something they’re teaching their readers how to do. Make your case!

Lastly, if the brand is one of your top choices, you can offer them something concrete in exchange for a link back. Some ideas include: offering to write a blog post on a subject that benefits them; suggesting a link exchange, where you link to the content of their choice in one of your blog posts; or giving them a chance to publish one of their articles on your blog.

You can also offer to interview one of their subject matter experts (SMEs) for an article, which gives them even more authority and also incentivizes them to promote on social media.

Remember how we said this is a partnership of sorts? The ‘of sorts’ part is up to you: it can be as transactional as a simple link exchange or as involved as a co-produced webinar or co-branded resource. How deep you want the relationship to be will likely depend on the company’s relevance and status in the three areas mentioned above: audience, industry, and SEO. 

You probably won’t hear back from everyone, but you definitely won’t hear back if you don’t reach out, so give it a go! You might even find you’re able to establish a longer-term relationship with one or two brands, one that benefits you both.

3. Use Backlinks Tools or Services

There’s a tool or service for just about everything, and that includes accumulating high-quality, relevant backlinks. Look for tools out there that will help you get in touch with other content managers so you can get access to more backlink opportunities. Look for agencies or Slack groups that make the process easy and that are transparent about their terms. You want to make sure that you aren’t involved in anything that encourages link stuffing or too much promotion because those efforts could negatively impact your SEO. 

Authority links to your content from relevant businesses are great for improving your brand awareness, boosting your SEO, and bolstering your lead generation efforts – and you don’t just have to hope and pray for them to happen! With a little thought and research, a willingness to reciprocate, and some proactive engagement, you can increase your authority links significantly and start seeing the rewards of a collaborative mindset.