Should you buy backlinks in 2022? A Quick Guide to Link Building the White Hat Way

Posted by Marvin Fathi on August 01, 2022

Should you buy backlinks in 2022? A Quick Guide to Link Building the White Hat Way

In order to improve their SEO and watch their website rise the ranks to the top of search engine results, some website managers do not hesitate to use Blackhat SEO techniques, which are in violation to search engines’ terms of service.

In 2022, you have to be extra vigilant in your search for backlinks. Google has eyes everywhere and heavily penalises those trying to foil its rules. Despite everything, netlinking remains a very useful practice for good positioning.

Barry Schwartz, CEO of RustyBrick, posted a Twitter poll a way back, asking

If you will pay money to get links in 2022? Based on the 771 results as of writing and disregarding the see results option, 42.5% answered they will not buy links, while 37.1% responded they will buy links this 2022.

Google's position on buying links (Black hat):

There are many strategies to gain backlinks, with one being not encouraged by Google because they abnormally modify the SERPs. When we buy backlinks, we are playing with fire. Indeed, whether backlinks are of quality or not, the purchase of backlinks does not follow Google's guidelines.

You will surely wonder why as long as you write high quality link articles and don't over-optimise the anchors. The answer is simple: Google derives its revenue from Adwords sponsored links. However, if you manage to obtain better positions in the search engines thanks to the purchase of backlinks, you will necessarily spend less on Ads. Unfortunately, It’s really difficult for Google to detect the purchase of backlinks.

Does Link Building Work for Everyone?

The short answer is no. If your site is poorly optimised or has bad content, links may not make any difference.

An on-site technical audit should be performed to ensure the website is a good candidate for link building. You should also know beforehand which keywords you want to rank for and ensure you have pages that truly deserve to rank.

All of the links in the world won’t help your website perform well if your pages don’t answer search intent or the reason why people did the search.

3 White Hat Link Building Techniques

Rule number 1 before embarking on a netlinking strategy: optimise your site's content! Make sure that the texts you write are relevant, original and qualitative.

If you publish interesting articles, chances are that visitors or bloggers will want to share them. Here you are already with completely free backlinks. When you've done that, remember to update your posts regularly to prevent them from becoming stale. Prioritise the production of evergreen content to drive more traffic to your site.

1 - Guest Blog Posting

Start by finding several blogs that deal with your topic. Identify those who generate the most traffic and who are considered authorities in the field. You can check their popularity through tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush. Then, contact them and offer them to write a qualitative and free article. In exchange for this, you insert a link to one of your pages which provides additional useful information to the reader.

2 - Swap one of your services/products for a backlink

There is definitely something you could offer website owners in exchange for a backlink to your page. Whether it is a product, a service, a reduction, there are plenty of solutions.

This technique is completely legitimate and is not contrary to the requirements of search engines. You will still make sure to keep these exchanges as discreet as possible, so as not to awaken their conscience.

3 - Broken Link Building

Under cover of doing a good deed, here is another method to place your backlinks. The idea is to replace broken links from a relevant site with an article of your own. This allows you to insert your link, and in return, the partner site "fixes" a 404 error easily.

You can propose an article that you already have, which could adapt to the missing subject.

Analyse different sites in your niche with the Ahrefs tool.
Find 404 errors
Drop them a polite email to let them know about the broken link.

Link building has many benefits to bring to the table to websites in terms of visibility and ranking position. Understand how link building works and how you can leverage it on your website. MindArc’s SEO team can do an on-site technical audit to determine areas that need to be changed and fixed within your website to make it a good candidate for link building. To find out more, contact our team at MindArc or see more about our SEO services on our page.