There are dozens of guides online with theoretically “free” link locations. But is it actually possible to acquire links without any costs that will have a positive impact on your site’s position? Theoretically, yes, but…
Time is money . Just because you don’t pay an invoice for acquiring links doesn’t mean you got them for free. Often, you spend your own time or the time female database of your team to acquire such a free link. Time that could be spent on other tasks. In many cases, it may turn out that outsourcing link building is simply cheaper in the end.
Another issue is the specificity of the Polish market .
Owners of thematic portals, blogs and other non-commercial sites where you potentially want to acquire links are perfectly aware of how desirable links from thematically related, good quality sites have become. This market is very commercialized . In many cases, outreach attempts will end with the owner giving you a price list of sponsored articles.
The type of link you get for free is also very important. Without going into technical details, the most valuable are dofollow links . However, links from free sources are very often marked with the nofollow parameter . Such a link, in short, does not convey any power to the page it leads to. In theory, however, it can still provide traffic resulting from clicks.
Also answer the question of whether you are able to assess the degree to which a given link is valuable to you. Will acquiring it actually bring you benefits or, more importantly, will it harm your site? Such an assessment requires access to paid analytical tools and specialist knowledge.
How to Get Links?
However, if these arguments haven’t discouraged you and you still want to try acquiring links on your own and improve the link profile leading to your website, we have a few sample strategies.
Broken links
Broken link, dead link, broken link, dead link… these are a few terms for the same situation. These are links that lead to a website (or rather should lead), but for some reason they don’t work – clicking on them leads to a 404 error page. There are a few reasons for this situation:
- the link leads to a subpage that no longer exists, e.g. a product in a store that has been withdrawn from the offer;
- there is an error in the link, e.g. a typo, incorrect domain extension, etc.;
- the link URL has changed, e.g. due to a migration, but no redirect has been set (see:How to do a good migration?);
- the link leads to an old domain (used i find a way to communicate this information n the past) that does not have a properly configured redirect (see:301 Redirect – Everything You Need to Know About It).
After identifying the cause, you can attempt to recover/fix it. If the problem is an error in the URL itself, contact the site owner and ask for a correction. In many cases, you can also recover broken links at the level of appropriate redirects or, in the case of an online store, by using subpages with archived products. Instead of deleting such subpages, redirect them to other, thematically related sections of the site or create a system for presenting other, similar products that are still on offer.
How to find and identify “dead links”?
Full information on 404 errors and broken links is provided bySEO audit. You can also obtain data on them using paid analytical tools. However, their asia email list cost is so high that it is more profitable to order an SEO audit, which, in addition to a list of broken links, will also provide a lot of other practical information.
Google Search Console will also provide data on the 404 errors themselves within a website. However, this way you will only get a list of broken subpages, and not information about the existence of external links leading to them. Broken link building is a tedious process that requires regular monitoring of many websites.
However, thanks to it, you can acquire (or rather regain) valuable backlinks practically for free, and what’s more, at the same time contribute to improving the quality of content on the web by removing dead links.
Competitor Backlink Analysis
Carrying out an in-depth analysis of backlinks to your competitors’ sites is also a source of valuable information and tips on how to effectively acquire valuable links. However, the problem here is again access to tools.
Advanced analytical tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush or Moz allow for an in-depth analysis of the link profile of external websites leading to your competitors’ sites. This will help you identify pages and domains that could potentially be a source of valuable links for your site.
6 Link Building Strategies You Don’t Have to Pay for
If you prefer a ready-made solution, check out the reportCompetition analysis. We will adapt it to your requirements and the specifics of your business.
You can obtain some limited data thanks to the free versions of some tools, e.g. Ahrefs Backlink Checker. However, this way you will only get a small fragment of the whole image.
Competitive link analysis allows you to not only find new link building opportunities, but also examine the types of content and content marketing strategies that are yielding the best results for your competitors. It is worth paying attention to the types of pages for which your competitors are acquiring the most links. This is valuable information for building your own link building and content marketing strategy.
