How To Generate Backlinks On A Small Budget

Backlinks are really the backbone of your SEO strategy. All too often, SEO packages are sold without any backlink strategy. Now, this is often due to budget, because generating backlinks is time consuming, and (although Google would tell you otherwise) often expensive. Unfortunately, without any, you’ll be struggling to compete for bottom of the barrel terms with other websites that have ignored them too.

Look at any high ranking site, and behind the scenes you’ll see a lot of links from other trustworthy, authoritative websites. This is because relevant links from other sites and brands in the same industry signals trust, especially if those websites also have a lot of links, and therefore authority.

This is because links improve your pagerank with search engines, especially Google. If they can see that you’re trusted and referenced across the web from other brands and businesses, they can see you’re also reputable, trustworthy, and therefore your pages and content are worth putting in front of searchers.

So, the question remains, how do you do it with no budget?

Well, it’s tough, but not impossible, and we’ll go into this in more detail below.

Personally, we provide linkbuilding (outside of standard citations) as an additional service, not as part of a package. It’s difficult and expensive. When we take on a client, we make it very clear that this is not a part of any standard package, but emphasise its importance.

Now, a lot of technicians will scoff at this.

‘What kind of SEO agency doesn’t offer linkbuilding as part of an SEO package?’

Well, it’s because a lot of small businesses can’t afford it, and that’s primarily who we work with. We’re not going to promise backlinks for a small budget, flood the site with poor quality, irrelevant backlinks that provide no value but fulfill a contract. 

Sure, we could get 500 cheap links from spammy, irrelevant websites and technically we’ve done our job, but does that provide any ROI or performance boost?

No, it doesn’t.

We do, however, provide guidance. It is possible for clients to generate their own. Especially as local, small businesses often have their own network of suppliers, businesses and owners, and will therefore have more insight straight off the bat as to who they may be able to partner with for backlinks.

We can do this for a client, of course, and do it for those that have the money, but not the time. However, if it’s outside of budget, there’s nothing stopping a customer from working on it themselves.

Links at the fundamental level are just website references. They tell crawlers and search engines that this site recommends and trusts your website. As a result, you can treat it as such. We’ll go into detail on the three main ways you can generate yourself some organic, relevant backlinks to bolster your SEO efforts:

Your biggest source of backlinks is your network. If you really dig deep, you probably have a dozen people or businesses within your industry that you work with. 

Now, although high authority websites are the best links, if they’re not relevant to your industry, they are often less effective than half a dozen low authority, local websites that are directly related to your business and the queries you’re targeting.

Our best advice is look at who you know in your industry, that isn’t a direct competitor. For example, if you own a construction company, maybe bricklaying. You’ll likely have a variety of builder’s merchants that you get supplies from. These companies usually don’t offer construction services, but they do sell to them. You won’t ever directly compete, but you work together constantly.

Discussing a partnership with them means you could both reference each other on your website. You may write an article on what you look for in quality materials, and within it, link to your most trusted merchants. In return, the merchant may have an article on trusted contractors in the area – and this is where they could reference you as a bricklayer.

This is just one of many examples. Think hard about these types of relationships and I’m sure there’s at least a handful of opportunities lying in wait.

If you’re a local business, or even nationwide, there’s always niche media out there interested in what you do. Reach out to magazines, online news outlets, forums for enthusiasts or any media in your industry to discuss links and partnerships. 

Even social media like instagram. If you do something unique, then likelihood is, there’s someone that will want to write about it, or your story.

The real trick to quality links, and successful SEO in general, is being good at what you do. If you offer something unique, high quality and are generally a successful business, then getting links and gathering trust/brand recognition online becomes infinitely easier. 

SEO will not improve a bad business. If you’re looking at improving your SEO performance, look within first, and ensure your business works, and is worth advertising.

Another easy win for backlinks is your local chamber of commerce. You can become a member, and it often is accompanied by a backlink. Not only this, but it opens up a network of people to potentially explore partnerships and link opportunities with.

This is a great way to gain unique links from reporters and media outlets. Simply sign up as a source and choose your category and your inbox will be flooded with individuals and businesses looking for experts on areas of your industry. 

If you can provide insight and genuinely helpful information to these requests, it will often generate a link to you as an authoritative source and expert in the subject.

You can find the link below:

https://www.helpareporter.com/

There are two important aspects of a valuable backlink. These are:

This may seem a bit technical. But rest assured, it’s fairly simple, and we’ll go into move detail on this below:

A ‘dofollow’ link is a normal, standard link that passes SEO value (often called link equity or PageRank) from one website to another.

When Google crawls a ‘dofollow’ link, it:

<a href=”https://example.com”>Example</a>
(If no attribute is added, it is automatically ‘dofollow’.)

‘Dofollow’ links are extremely valuable for SEO. A ‘nofollow’ link tells search engines not to pass ranking authority or PageRank to the target page.

This attribute was originally created to reduce spam and prevent manipulation of search rankings.

<a href=”https://example.com” rel=”nofollow”>Example</a>

When Google sees a ‘nofollow’ link, it will:

Anchor text is important to add relevance to your link, and improve specific keywords. For example, if you have a link in the following sentence:

‘We promote this business as trustworthy’

If the link is just in the word ‘business’, then it provides no relevance to crawlers following it. Sure, it will be better than nothing, but it could be much better. An alternative for a construction company looking to improve their ‘bricklaying’ keyword, would be this:

‘We supply a range of products to professional bricklayers throughout London’

Having the link nested within the ‘professional bricklayers throughout London’ means that any crawlers will see that keyword and location, and therefore see trust for that search term.

It’s also worth noting that the link you obtain goes to the relevant page. A lot of the time, you’ll just provide a top level homepage link – and although if your internal linking is good, this will trickle down pagerank to other pages, it would be better to link to the specific page you’re trying to improve.

If you have a bricklaying page, and you’re based in London, try to ensure the backlink directs to this specific page.