Are you struggling to build high-authority backlinks for your website? If so, I will tell you how to build them in 4 steps using Semrush.
Backlinks are one of the main Google ranking factors to place links higher in SERPs. A link from an aged or authoritative domain is more valuable than other backlinks. Contextual and competitive site links can create the same effect in influencing page rankings and organic visits.
MOZ, the popular SEO tool, also states the importance of building links. According to them, high DA backlinks continue to play a vital role in the Google algorithm. They help you to dominate ranking positions despite frequent algorithm changes with qualitative content and updates.
Make efforts to create viral blog posts and get mentions from leading websites. Even though it is not easy.
Monitor Google Trends and compare top-ranking pages to collect ideas. Create a comprehensive guide on the selected topic, so others will consider mentioning it on their pages.
Competitive research is another powerful method for building links from top authority domains.
Let us check how it works,
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What is Semrush?
Semrush is an all-in-one software for SEO, digital marketing, competitor analysis, and backlink audit. It helps you to detect profitable keywords, create compelling content, identify new link-building opportunities, and much more.
If you are serious about building money-making websites, Semrush is an inevitable tool for you. They have the world’s largest database of 26.1B keywords, 43T backlinks, and 808M domain profiles. 25B URLs are crawled every day to deliver the most recent and accurate data to users.
From keyword research to content marketing, SEO audit to social media posting, Semrush is a great platform to manage all tasks from one place. It can uncover low-competition niche keywords that can increase your traffic and earnings, uncover new link-building opportunities, and remove your toxic backlinks to strengthen your SEO efforts.
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Click here to activate a 7-day free trial on Semrush and build high DA backlinks like a pro
4 Steps to Earn Free Backlinks with Semrush
Semrush is an all-around SEO tool for businesses and bloggers. It can strengthen your link building campaigns and increase traffic in multiple ways. Follow these steps to generate free SEO backlinks using Semrush,
Step 1: Analyze competitor’s backlinks
Stealing competitors’ backlinks is the best method to boost your ranking and win in the competition. For that, you should use an SEO tool like Semrush.
Semrush lets you spy on competitors’ link-building strategies in two ways—Backlink Gap and Backlink Analysis.
Backlink Gap is a great tool to compare your domain with similar websites to find missing backlink opportunities. It analyzes the quality of all links and displays them in multiple sections like this,
It reveals what backlinks will work best for you and what are your strong and weak links. The best and weakest sections contain your competitor’s best backlinks, but you miss them.
Either open them in a new tab or visit Backlink Analytics to check all links pointing to a domain.
Semrush allows you to filter backlinks by referring domain, IP address, and anchor texts. Click on the first field to sort links in the order of Authority Score. Thus, you can detect a domain’s most powerful backlinks easily.
The backlink list comes with the referring page’s authority score, source page title, anchor text, target URL, and link type.
Click the Follow button at the top to display only dofollow backlinks. The first link in the screenshot above is related to the Elementor page builder.
Open the source page URL in a new tab and search for the anchor text. It gives you an idea about the situation to link to an external source. Open the link (competitor’s page) to read the content.
If you have similar content, you win. Just update it to add more information and make it a detailed guide on the topic. Otherwise, create fresh content covering all related keywords and questions to divert maximum page visits from organic searches.
In both cases, Semrush helps you to craft SEO-friendly blog posts easily.
Step 2: Analyze the target page
Next, analyze your target page to find its ranking keywords and backlinks. It helps you create better content and rank higher in SERPs.
Head to Semrush and enter the target page URL in the search box. Choose ‘Exact URL’ from the drop-down list to view individual page metrics.
The page has a reasonable monthly search traffic and 2 SEO backlinks. Scroll down to locate the organic keywords this page ranks for. Click on View all to collect and export all ranking keywords.
Step 3: Create high-quality content
Prepare an SEO friendly article using the keywords you collected in the last step. For that, open the SEO Content template from the left pane of your Semrush dashboard.
Enter keywords in the search box and set a target location for your blog post. Tap the Create SEO Template button to get suggestions.
Semrush will analyze the top 10 ranking pages in Google search and suggest related keywords, backlink sources, readability score, average text length, etc.
Open each SERP link from the bottom panel to read and analyze the content. Save important ideas in a Google Sheet or a project management tool like Evernote. It helps you to make sure that you won’t miss any major topic.
Switch to the Real-time Content Check tab at the top. It is a simple post editor. Start writing your content, and Semrush automatically runs SEO, readability, and plagiarism checks to ensure that it is SEO-friendly. This feature also works with Google Docs and WordPress through plugins.
When finished, publish the content with optimized images and at least 1-2 external dofollow links. Outbound links will improve your page authority and ranking chances in Google SERPs. So it is essential to include a top-authority link in each content.
Create a few internal links for your new blog post. Submit it to webmaster accounts, social bookmarking sites, and communities to acquire some links. Share it on social sites and influencer marketing channels to boost exposure.
Step 4: Contact referring domains
Next, you should reach out to referring domains that mentioned your competitor’s link on their content. Tell them that you have better content on the same topic. Ask them politely to replace their current link with yours, as it is more relevant and up-to-date.
Take further steps to build a relationship with them. Follow their official social media pages and retweet or share some of their posts on your pages. If this strategy continues for a while, then you are likely to get a free backlink from one or another page.
Bonus: Semrush Link Building Tool
Semrush has designed a unique link building tool to discover backlink opportunities based on your target keywords and competitors. It also allows you to contact domain owners through built-in, customizable email templates without leaving the dashboard.
Follow these steps to set up a link building project on Semrush,
1. Sign in to Semrush and expand your SEO toolkit. Open the Link Building Tool from the menu.
Click on Add New Project to create a new domain project. To set up link building for an existing project, tap the set up button that appears next to the domain name.
A pop-up window will appear. Enter up to 10 keywords and competitors to configure the project. Then, it will search for suitable backlink opportunities matching your criteria.
2. When finished, you will be directed to a screen like this,
Open Prospects to view your backlink options.
Source URLs come with an Authority Score, quality rating, and website type. Click the ‘To In Progress’ button to view outreach strategies. Choose one of the options, and Semrush automatically moves the selected URL to the In Progress tab.
3. Visit the In Progress tab to view all URLs selected for outreach.
Click on the Contact button to send an email to the domain owners. Semrush collects their email addresses and serves them with a predefined message template. Customize it as per your requirements and send it.
Semrush also tracks your communications to find when an email is delivered, read, and receives a response. It helps you to get a clear idea about the progress of the link building campaign.
If you got a backlink from a prospect, click on the tick icon. Then, Semrush will start monitoring its status and let you know if it is broken or lost. Contact the domain owners immediately to fix them.
Conclusion
Semrush is an amazing SEO tool for keyword research, competitive analysis, and link building. It can help you to monitor competitor’s entire activities to uncover their content creation and link building strategies.
Compare your site with similar domains to identify missing opportunities. Take necessary steps to create detailed guides and build backlinks to them.
A link from competitive sites adds more mileage to your traffic generation efforts. Semrush’s Link Building Tool is a good choice to find relevant prospects and acquire links in a systematic manner. It enables you to send inquiries and follow-up emails with customized email templates to maximize your chances of getting mentions from top-level domains.
Click here to activate a 7-day free trial on Semrush and spice up your link building efforts
