“I don’t want to grow my network,” said no one ever. Building relationships can seem like a burden for many but it’s the keystone to growing exposure for your blog. Whether it’s a relationship with your readers or with a fellow blogger, it’s extremely important to leverage those relationships. This blog post will show you how to grow your network with backlinks.
What is a backlink you may ask? A backlink is a hyperlink that links from a webpage, back to your own webpage or website. It can be considered as a vote of confidence for your webpage by a fellow blogger or editor. It’s pretty much saying, “Hey, I like your site and want to share it with my readers by linking to it.” However, there is no magic warning that sounds every time someone links to your site so you may never know who is sharing your stuff unless you check your backlinks.
How to Check your Backlinks
There are a number of tools you can use to check your backlinks, some free and some paid. The main difference between free and paid tools is the amount of information you will be able to pull out of the system. For example, you might have 300 links pointing to your site and while a paid tool will give you all 300, a free tool will only show you around 100. For the purpose of this blog post, it’s recommended that you use the free tools because it’ll give you enough information to start building relationships.
Free
- backlinkwatch.com
- openlinkprofiler.org
Both free tools work the same. Type in your URL on the home screen. Once the page is completely loaded, you will be able to find a list of websites that are linking to you.
Paid w/ free trial
- ahrefs.com (7-day money back guarantee)
- opensiteexplorer.com (Free 30-day trial)
- majestic.com (7-day money back guarantee)
- semrush.com (7-day money back guarantee)
Opportunities for the Picking
Now that you know how to find your backlinks, it’s time to start building relationships! Here’s the scenario: you dig around your backlinks and find that an author from the New York Times linked to a baller article that you recently wrote. Here are a few relationship building opportunities that are ripe for the picking:
Opportunity #1
You can reach out to the author that linked to your article and thank them for sharing your piece. Within your message, include other pieces that they might be interested in reading. To increase your chances of getting another link or social share, we recommend taking into consideration what the author has written about in the past and what they like to share on social media networks.
Opportunity #2
Again, you can reach out to the author thanking them for sharing your piece, but we’re going to take a slightly different approach and suggest that you offer to write a post for their site. Who doesn’t love free content? Do your research and think of a topic that they would love to see on their site and suggest it to the author. Since they’ve shared your content, they obviously like what you have to say and this is a great opportunity for you to leverage their following and get your name out there on the internet even more.
These are just a few opportunities that can be had through building relationships via backlinks. The moral of this blog post is to check your backlinks every now and then to see who’s sharing your content. Reach out to them to thank them and begin nurturing your relationship. Connections are everything in this day and age.
