For a website to get high volumes of relevant traffic and convert them, it needs a successful search engine optimization campaign. Quite a few factors go into SEO, but backlinks are probably the most important individual component among them all. Building backlinks is crucial to your SEO effectiveness, but you also have to do it safely. High-caliber backlinks enhance your website’s reputation and authority in the eyes of Google, but spammy or toxic backlinks can actually lower you in search engine ranking positions.

Building Backlinks Safely

If you want to build backlinks that won’t incur the wrath of Google, then do so using techniques recommended by Entrepreneur:

1. Contact Influencers: Journalists might need someone to interview for an article, podcasters always need someone to talk to, and influencers want things to share with their followers. Feed them, and get backlinks and attention in exchange.
2. Content Promotion: Email outreach still works. Google “your keyword + roundup” to find webmasters doing weekly reports on your niche or sector. They might include you.
3. Infographics: Internet users love infographics because they pack a lot of information in a quick visual bit. Some investment is required, but the more they get shared, the cheaper your backlinks get on average.
4. Internal Links: These are crucial to an effective blog. Good internal links help users navigate your various pages and stay on your website longer.
5. Guest Articles: Guest blogging helps you reach new audiences. Search “your keyword + guest blog post” or other such terms to find places that might welcome your content, which is always a chance to sneak in a backlink.
6. Make Donations: Find nonprofit organizations in your niche that take donations and provide backlinks to websites that have donated to them.
7. Reporting Broken Links: Other webmasters love it when someone lets them know about a broken link on their site. If you suggest a replacement link, they might just use it.
8. Spy on the Competition: If you want more organic traffic, find out what your competitors are doing so you can mimic or even improve on it. Keep an eye out for their newest content to find their freshest links.
9. Testimonials: Write testimonials for any website you actually use as a customer. You’ll often get a chance to have your backlink featured on their homepage.

Do It Right

Your link-building efforts can go one of two ways. You can do white-hat link-building, or you can do black-hat link building. Black hat techniques might work for a while, but they’re an attempt to game the system. Once Google catches on, they will penalize you.

White-hat link-building techniques are the best way to go. The growth might be slower in terms of your rise up the SERPs and the traffic you see. However, slow also means steady. You’ll keep enjoying your gains for months and possibly years, especially if you get links from older sites already known to be authorities of their own.

You Might Not Be The Only One Making Links

As your website grows in stature, you might not be the only one making backlinks pointing to it. Jealous and unscrupulous competitors might quietly create toxic backlinks for your site in an attempt to sink you, pass you, and take your place in the SERPs.

Run a regular analysis of all your backlinks to identify toxic websites and spammy sources of backlinks that might cost you a good standing with Google. Contact those webmasters and ask them to remove the links. Reach out to their hosting providers if you have to. You can always create a disavow list to submit directly to Google.

Of course, you can always focus on building great backlinks of your own to drown out the bad ones and expand your portfolio.

Your Link Portfolio Is Your Website Reputation

Google relies on backlinks to not just determine the popularity of your site but also its relevance and its authority status within your niche. Great links help you move up the SERPs, but bad links can actually trigger penalties, both manual and algorithmic. Make sure you have a diverse portfolio of the best links you can get.