To build backlinks that improve your rankings, start by focusing on earning links from reputable websites. You can do this by creating valuable content, promoting it strategically, and building genuine relationships in your industry.
The tricky part here is that not all backlinks actually help. Some do nothing at all, and others can hurt your rankings if they come from the wrong sources. At Click2Rank, we’ve spent years building backlinks for clients across dozens of industries, so we know what works and what wastes time.
And in this guide, we’ll break down the strategies that work, including how to use blog posts, broken link building, guest posting, and competitor research to grow your site’s authority.
Let’s start by looking into what backlinks are and how they can help your business.
Why Are Backlinks Important for Your Rankings?
Backlinks are one of the top ranking factors in Google’s algorithm because they show search engines that other websites trust your content. When another site links to your page, it acts like a vote of confidence, telling Google your website has authority on that particular topic.
At its core, this comes down to one thing. The more quality backlinks pointing to your site, the more authority you build in Google’s eyes. And that authority helps your page rank higher in search results over time.
You can see this play out across almost any industry. Sites with strong backlink profiles consistently outrank competitors who have thin or low-quality links. Beyond SEO, backlinks also drive referral traffic directly to your website, bringing in visitors who already trust the source page that linked to you.
Are All Backlinks Created Equal?
Simply put, no. Backlinks vary greatly in value. A single link from a trusted, authoritative website can be far more powerful than dozens of low-quality links from irrelevant or spammy sources.
Google evaluates backlinks based on authority, relevance, and trust, not sheer volume. So, let’s break it down.
Authority Carries More Weight Than Quantity
A single link from a trusted, highly relevant website can outperform dozens of links from low domain authority sources. Google looks at the linking page and checks whether that site has real authority in its niche. If it does, your page gets more link equity passed to it.
Bad Links Can Drag You Down
Spammy or irrelevant inbound links can lead to penalties that hurt your rankings instead of helping them (and yes, Google does notice). Avoiding link spam and bad practices protects your site from losing the organic traffic you’ve worked hard to build.
Relevance Weighs Just as Much
Not all backlinks are created equal when it comes to relevance. A link from a site covering related topics in your niche carries more value than a random high-DA domain with no connection to what you do.
Now, let’s look at one of the easiest ways to start building backlinks
How Do You Start Building Backlinks With Blog Posts?
Blog posts give you something valuable to share, which makes them a natural magnet for links from other websites. Here’s how to make your blog content work harder for your link-building strategy.
- Original Content: Publishing helpful, original blog posts gives other sites a reason to link back to you because they want to reference your ideas or data.
- Data-driven Articles: Frankly, some content types just attract more links than others. For instance, posts with original research, statistics, or industry insights tend to earn more backlinks because other websites want to cite your findings.
- Outreach and Promotion: Once you create content worth linking to, promoting it through email outreach and social sharing puts it in front of people who can actually link to your site.
Ultimately, you need to focus on quality content that solves a problem or answers a question. When your blog posts offer real value, other websites will want to link to them without you having to ask.
What Is Broken Link Building and How Does It Work?
Broken link building is one of the easiest ways to earn backlinks while helping other site owners at the same time. This strategy involves finding broken links on other websites and reaching out to suggest your content as a good replacement.
The process breaks down into three simple steps.
| Step | What You Do |
| 1 | Find broken links on relevant sites in your niche using free tools or browser extensions |
| 2 | Create content that fits as a replacement, or identify an existing page on your site that works |
| 3 | Reach out to the site owner with a friendly email pointing out the dead link |
We’ve pitched hundreds of these emails, and site owners almost always respond well because broken links hurt their user experience and can drag down their domain authority. When you help them fix the problem, you earn a quality backlink while they get a working page again (a win-win if there ever was one).
This approach works especially well for resource pages, where site owners link out to dozens of external links on a single page.
Can Guest Posting Still Build High Quality Backlinks?
Yes, guest posting still works for building high-quality backlinks, but only when you approach it the right way. After years of doing this for clients, one thing is clear: guest blogging pays off when you write genuinely useful content for reputable sites in your niche, not when you chase volume.
There’s no way around this next part. If you pitch low-quality guest post farms that exist only for links, you risk hurting your website’s authority instead of building it. Google has gotten much better at spotting these bad link-building practices, and the resulting links often do more harm than good.
The smarter approach is to focus on fewer, better opportunities, because one well-placed article on an authoritative domain can pass more link equity to your site than ten posts scattered across spammy, no-traffic websites.
Bottom Line: When you treat guest posting as a way to build relationships and reach new audiences, the links you earn carry real SEO authority.
Now that you have a few link-building tactics under your belt, the next step is learning from your competition.
How Do You Use Competitors’ Backlinks to Your Advantage?
Your competitors have already done the hard work of finding sites that link out, so you can use their backlink profile as a shortcut to discover new link-building opportunities. Here’s how to turn their backlinks into your advantage.
- Free and Paid Tools: Believe it or not, tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Search Engine Land’s free backlink checker let you see exactly which domains are linking to your competitors, along with details like page authority and anchor text.
- Filtering for Quality: Once you have a list of referring domains, focus on the ones with real authority and relevance to your niche, rather than copying every link they have.
- Outreach Strategy: If a site is linked to your competitor’s content, there’s a good chance they would link to yours too, especially if your page offers more depth or covers the topic more thoroughly.
The goal is to find link-building opportunities your competitors have already validated, then reach out with something even better.
Does Anchor Text Affect Your Domain Authority?
Anchor text plays a bigger role than most people realize, so getting it wrong can hurt your rankings just as much as getting it right can help.
From our experience, there are a couple of ways you can use it effectively.
Anchor Text Sends Ranking Signals
The words in your anchor text tell search engines what the linked page is about, which is why relevance between the anchor and the destination page helps your SEO.
Because of this, when other websites link to your site using descriptive anchor text, Google uses that information to understand your content better.
Over-Optimization Backfires
Using keyword-rich anchor text too often can look spammy and cause Google penalties (we’ve seen sites tank overnight from this). If every incoming link uses the exact same phrase, Google’s algorithm flags it as unnatural, and your domain authority can take a serious hit.
A Natural Mix Builds Trust
The safest approach is to keep your anchor text varied. A healthy mix of branded anchors, generic phrases, and a few keyword-rich anchor text links signals to Google that your backlink profile grew organically.
Link Building Starts With Content Marketing
Every tactic in this guide works better when you have quality content worth linking to. Content marketing is the foundation of any successful link-building strategy because it gives other websites a reason to send links to your website in the first place.
If you focus on creating valuable content first, tactics like guest posting, broken link building, and competitor research become much easier to execute. The sites you reach out to are far more likely to link back when your page offers something genuinely useful.
Building high-quality links takes time, but the payoff is worth it. With the right approach, you can earn valuable links that drive real SEO success for years to come.