Link Building can be a slow and difficult process, but I’m sure you’ll agree that the payoff is well worth it. That payoff, of course, is juicy, nourishing new links that are the lifeblood of any successful SEO endeavour.

Link building is mostly done using great content assets in the form of link bait, but there are certain types of links you can get without needing to create any new content at all. Below are 6 safe ways to find and build these links content-free.

1) Testimonial Links

Testimonial links are a great natural way to get links back from sites where there is an existing relationship. It’s a tactic that benefits both parties and is completely above board in the eyes of Google.

To start building testimonial links you’ll need to create a list of any suppliers, local businesses, organisations and software vendors that your company uses (and actually likes).

Now get your compliments hat on and write them a happy, heartfelt testimonial that’s so nice they’ll want to publish it on their website. Make sure to sign your name and your business name at the end and include the link to your website.

Once you’re happy with what you’ve written, you can send it to them and see if they’ll publish it, complete with your website link.

2) Partners or Associate Links

This includes requesting links from your business’ partners, associates, distributors, beneficiaries. Basically, this can be any company or organisation that your business has a legitimate relationship with.

Once you’ve defined who they are, contact them and ask if they’ll include a link to your website from theirs. If there’s a direct, legitimate business relationship between your two companies they should be happy to link to you.

This is a pretty easy link to get, however, it’s important to avoid a reciprocal link relationship – (an ‘I link to you and you link to me’ situation), and site wide links – where they place the link in the website footer or on every page of their site (such as in a blog sidebar).

If you do go after partner or associate links just make sure to ‘nofollow’ any reciprocal links and site wide links that may jeopardise your SEO.

3) Competitor Reverse Engineering

Competitor Reverse Engineering involves analysing your competitors’ backlinks to find obvious or quick-win opportunities for your business. The logic is simple: if a website is linking to a very similar business, chances are they’d be interested in linking to you.

There are two ways you can go about this: you can play nice and ask them to add your link as well, or you can join the dark side and ask them to replace the link to your competitor with a link to you. Mwahaha.

If you have a better website/service/information/content then you’re only doing the users a favour, right? Right? Well, that’s what helps us sleep at night.

Some great tools for Competitor Reverse Engineering include Buzzsumo, Ahrefs and Open Site Explorer.

4) Resource Page Links

This tactic involves getting links on pages that provide ‘resources’ or ‘useful links’ on relevant and quality domains.

The best part about resource pages is that they exist for the sole purpose of linking out to other sites – so you don’t have to do a lot of schmoozing.

To find the best resource pages in your area and industry you can just use good old Google. A search hack is to search: “your keywords” inurl:links OR inurl:resource. Here’s a great video explaining the whole process.

5) Links from Government & Educational Institutions

These are not easy to obtain, but, like anything that seems out of your league, they are well worth having. Just one .edu or .gov link can have an impact on website trust and rankings. You’d be silly not to at least take a swing at it.

The goal is to seek out pages on government or educational websites that link out to sites relating to your industry. For example, if you’re a company that sells organic veggie boxes you could look for governmental pages that relate to sustainable farming in your area or a university that encourages environmental volunteering opportunities

Once you’ve found the appropriate pages you can contact the appropriate people and see if they’re willing to add your link.

6) Human Edited Directories

This link building tactic includes finding high quality and highly editorial directories and getting your link included on them.

Just a word of warning: you have to be careful here, because if you don’t only target high quality directories you’re putting your website at risk of a penalty.

You can use Google to search for the best, high quality directories in your industry (and area, if you’re a local business), for example https://www.yellowpages.com.au/.

Once you’ve found the best directories and checked that they’re high-quality you can submit your details and ask to be included.

These 6 link building options are easy and, most importantly, safe ways to build extra links without having to create any new content. Give them a go and you’re sure to get a few new wins. Good luck!

Tags: content, content marketing, content plan, content promotion, Landing Page Optimisation, link-bait, links, SEO