Do you still use such SEO strategies as keyword stuffing, cloaking, link farming, PBNs, or buying links from low-quality sites?

Please stop it. Because today you’re not able to make your online project successful using dishonest methods.

But how could you make your site visible and popular on the Internet in a safe way? How do you lead the audience and get to the TOP?

We have the answer.

White hat link building is the best decision for organic website promotion. It includes using ethical and search engine-approved methods of increasing the number of high-authority links to a website to improve search engine rankings. These strategies focus on creating genuinely valuable content that attracts links from reliable sites.

Let’s come to the point and consider the best white hat link building approaches.

7 Proven White Hat Link Building Strategies To Apply

1. Link bait

Link bait refers to content on your website designed to attract attention and encourage others to link to it naturally. This white hat link building strategy hinges on creating high-quality, engaging, or valuable content that people can’t help but share or reference. 

Here are some effective link bait ideas:

• Create content around trending topics or evergreen subjects.
• Conduct and publish original research, surveys, or studies that provide new insights.
• Design infographics.
• Provide comprehensive and authoritative guides.
• Write articles on niche topics that provide value to readers.
• Craft funny takes on industry news or satirical content that resonates with your audience’s sense of humor.
• Offer valuable tools for example Link Type Classifier by Editorial Link, templates, or resources for free that users find worth sharing.

Let’s say you have an environmental blog. You can create an engaging, interactive map showing real-time data on deforestation rates worldwide. The map provides unique, user-friendly insights and includes in-depth articles discussing the causes, implications, and ways to combat deforestation.

This becomes a reference point for educators, activists, and even policymakers, who link to it from their platforms, thus earning the blog high-quality, natural backlinks that can be monitored with SEO PowerSuite backlinks API or other similar solutions.

2. Competitor analysis

It’s time to make your competitors useful for you. Choose the most successful players in your niche and use their experience to promote your site.

Competitor analysis involves examining where your competitors are getting their backlinks from and understanding how you can also obtain similar or better links. This approach reveals potential link opportunities and offers insights into industry trends and effective outreach methods.

We have a helpful tool for you here – Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. It can help you to shape your link building strategy, craft content that addresses gaps, target higher quality domains for backlinks, and ultimately climb the SEO rankings by understanding and outmaneuvering your competition’s tactics.

For example, you can start with discovering your competitors’ most popular pages, keywords, and referring domains.

3. Guest posting

“With guest posting, you should absolutely try your hardest to write something where people demand you come back,” – Tommy Walker

We are now going to talk about one of the most effective strategies. Guest posting, a cornerstone of white hat link building, involves writing content for another website in your industry. It creates a win-win scenario for both the guest author and the host site.

Guest posting key advantages:

• Enhancing brand visibility.
• Driving targeted traffic.
• Expanding your network.
• Establishing authority.
• Improving search engine rankings.
• Providing feedback opportunities and so on.

Where can you find websites for publishing your guest content? You can start by compiling a list of blogs and publications within your industry. Platforms like LinkedIn can be excellent for finding guest post opportunities. Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz can reveal where your competitors have been published.

Websites that aggregate content for specific industries can be a helpful starting point for identifying where to submit guest posts.

All listed above methods involve manual search, which is quite time-consuming. We recommend a Collaborator service to speed up your research. This platform will put you in touch directly with the owners of sites where you can publish your guest post.

Collaborator main features:

• Over 25 000 websites in the catalog.
• Convenient filter by topic, geo, etc.
• Protection against article deletion.
• User-friendly interface.
• Low commissions.
• Thorough checking of sites.
• Feedback from advertisers.
• Official integration with Ahrefs and 40+ other parameters.
• Audience data confirmed by Google Analytics

Suppose you run an organic skincare line. You write a guest post, “5 Natural Ingredients for Healthier Skin,” where you share valuable tips and insights. Within the content, you link to a page on your website that showcases your best-selling organic moisturizer made with some of the ingredients mentioned in the article.

You can publish your article on beauty blogs that accept guest posts. The results could be fantastic. You can drive interested readers to your product page and strengthen your reputation as a knowledgeable source of natural skincare.

4. Social media presence

Maintaining a social media presence is a crucial white hat link building strategy. It’s not a direct means to acquire backlinks, as most social media platforms implement nofollow tags on links, which don’t pass link equity.

However, a robust social media strategy can foster brand recognition, trust, and audience engagement, indirectly leading to link building opportunities.

Let’s say you produce chocolates. You share captivating photos of handmade creations on Instagram, along with stories about sourcing ingredients and the care that goes into each batch. Over time, you cultivate a dedicated following. Followers look forward to these posts and share them across their networks.

When food bloggers discover these posts, they’re so impressed that they decide to feature the brand in an article about top artisanal chocolates. They include a link to your company’s website for their readers. This organic mention directly results from the company’s social media presence, highlighting how fostering relationships and sharing compelling content can lead to natural link building from authoritative sources.

5. Broken link building

Broken link building involves identifying defunct URLs on other websites (again, you can use Ahrefs for this purpose) and suggesting alternatives to the site owner—often your current and relevant content.

This strategy hinges on the principle of web maintenance and mutual benefit.

Main broken link building advantages:

• Better user experience on the hosting website.
• Establishing positive relationships with other website owners and web admins.
• Improved your site’s search engine rankings due to the additional link equity.
• More traffic from visitors who click through the updated links.
• Building your credibility and trust with both users and search engines.

It’s generally a cost-effective link building method because it leverages existing opportunities rather than creating new ones from scratch.

Imagine you have a website about healthy eating, and you find a broken link on a reputable nutrition blog that once led to an article about the benefits of organic fruits. You’ve recently published an updated, comprehensive guide on the same topic. You reach out to the blog owner, highlighting the issue and suggesting your guide as a suitable and valuable replacement for the broken link. If they update the link, their readers can access quality content, and you receive a relevant backlink supporting your site’s authority.

6. Brand mentions

Leveraging brand mentions for white hat link building is a strategy that involves identifying instances where your brand is mentioned on external content platforms without a corresponding hyperlink. The objective is to transform these passive mentions into active links to your relevant web page, enhancing visibility and search engine authority.

Imagine a scenario where an online magazine discusses the impact of emerging technologies and casually references your tech firm’s innovations. They’ve acknowledged your brand’s contribution to the industry but haven’t linked to your website. In this case, reaching out to the magazine’s editorial team with a cordial request to hyperlink the mention can be beneficial.

It’s a respectful way to connect your brand’s online presence with organic discussions, fostering natural growth in your site’s link profile. 

To identify unlinked brand mentions, consider using such tools as Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Brand24.

7. Brand news

Leveraging brand news as a link building strategy revolves around harnessing your company’s updates and announcements to earn backlinks from reputable sources. This technique is predicated on the idea that the news generated by your brand is inherently exciting and valuable to others in your field or to the public, prompting them to link back to your original content.

• Pinpoint developments, achievements, or launches that intrigue your target audience or industry.
• Develop valuable content around these news items, such as press releases, blog posts, or videos, ensuring they tell a compelling story.
• Share your content on platforms where it is likely to be seen by content creators, such as PR distribution services, social media, or industry forums.
• Reach out directly to industry influencers, bloggers, and journalists.
• Track where your brand news is mentioned online and reach out to any platforms that mention your news without a link, requesting the addition of a backlink to the original source.
• Utilize images, videos, or infographics within your news content to increase its shareability and the likelihood of earning links.

Where can you publish your brand news? First, discover free press release submission sites list allowing you to publish news releases, which can then be indexed by search engines and potentially picked up by journalists and bloggers.

Or consider using paid press release distribution services like EIN Presswire, Collaborator,  Newswire, etc. 

Conclusion

White hat link building strategies will likely remain essential to a comprehensive SEO approach for many years. As search engines continue to refine their algorithms, prioritizing the user experience and content value, white hat methods will help build a strong backlink profile and contribute to a website’s overall credibility and authority. Such strategies are designed for sustainability; they minimize the risk of penalties from search engines and assemble user trust.

Moreover, as the digital space becomes more competitive, the importance of ethical SEO practices will increase. Companies using white hat link building will benefit from longer-lasting SEO results and improved online reputation. The digital community’s growing emphasis on transparency and authenticity means that white hat strategies could also positively influence consumer perception and brand loyalty.

Contact us today to get started with impactful white hat link building services to achieve long-term success and visibility in search engine results!