3 Simple Ideas that will get backlinks, even if you don’t ask

Building backlinks to your site isn’t easy, but not impossible. Lets discuss some quick and easy ways to source links to your site, without having to go through the tedious and boring link exchange/request process (which in my opinion is a wasteful exercise).

When looking for building backlinks to your site, I always suggest to make it a practice to put on your “users hat”. Being the webmaster will blind you from other perspectives and make you focus too much on the numbers/number of backlinks and most of the time, make you un-impressive, which unfortunately, you wouldn’t realize at the time of sourcing links. The only possible way out is to be genuinely interesting and charming, so that even if you didn’t ask, compel people to link to you. So what are the ways ? Let’s see.

1. Build compelling content, that others can’t possibly avoid sharing.

Remember, you have your users hat on. So what are the things that you will look for in a story to make it worth sharing ? Exclusive content, or content that isn’t seen anywhere else. Content that’s fresh and new.

When I say exclusive content, people tend to get negative. Comments come up like – “How can a normal website like mine deliver exclusive content ? We are no news agency! ”

The answer is that you needn’t be a news agency to deliver exclusive content. As I’ve repeated many times earlier, a lot depends on how you “package the content”. Any normal story can be made exclusive if you bring out an unexplored perspective to it.

Well, normal sites will remain normal, people will only notice you if you try being different.

A personally favourite example is Tremendous News. Which is a hilarious website for its content is fun, engaging and compelling. There is nothing new they deliver there but the way they write it is amazing. And there is no way you’re not sharing stories from there, its so compelling.

2. Be a News Breaker or the next best thing.

If you can afford it, do it. These days you get information from all sides and its only those who use it well who benefit, others are simply overwhelmed an drift away without making a difference. Again, you don’t have to be a news agency to deliver news. After all, we all know there’s only one BBC, CNN and TC. Be the next best thing. Be the best reviewer. When a new product is launched, be the next best reviewer, bring some “awesomeness” into it and write about it before others do. Act quickly, and even if you’re not a new agency, you can be the next best thing to it.

3. Be surprisingly and deliberately negative.

What does it mean ? Just listen to the crowd. If everyone says “Yes!” you say “Yes and No”..when everyone says “No” you say “No and Yes” !

Well, its not simple as it sounds but the crux is that, you try and be deliberately different from the rest, just to get the mileage from it. This has to be dealt with carefully, because being blunt against everything will give you negative aura. Instead try and package your content to balance it out. May be the title of your content can be very “different” while the real content is not. Balance it out.

A favorite example of mine is this one – TED India – Waste of time and money

So, there you have it, three simple yet effective ways to be fetching backlinks strategically without the mundane outdated methods of link exchanges and link requests.

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