How to Get High Authority Backlinks in 2024

by Venchito Tampon Jr | Last Updated on April 3, 2024

Google obviously favors brands in search results. Given that consumers trust them more often than not, it is undeniable that you rank highly better by building your site’s authority. 

Authority building requires creating highly credible content and having other credible entities attest to you (links). 

In this guide, I’ll show you how to get authority backlinks to enhance your site’s authority, influence rankings, and climb your brand’s spot on Google’s SERPs. 

1. APPEAL TO CONTENT CREATORS WITH INFORMATION GAIN

The best way to scale the passive acquisition of authority links is by publishing linkable assets that niche publications editors and content creators would notice. 

It is not the same as having the “write your content and links will come” mentality. But in creating highly credible content, that gives no reason for other creators not to link to you. 

Certain elements make content appealing to other niche authority publishers. 

INFORMATION GAIN

“Information gain scores state how much more information one source may bring to a person who has seen other sources on the same topic.” – Bill Slawski. 

HOW DO YOU ACCUMULATE INFORMATION GAIN SCORE? 

Become linkable by publishing unique (and better) content assets they won’t find elsewhere. Think of ways you can differentiate what you post from others. 

TARGET OTHER LEVEL/S OF AUDIENCE THAT PUBLISHERS DON’T USUALLY APPEAL TO.

If most thought leaders focus on the basics, try to cover a more intermediate and advanced level of content. 

In this SEO blog, we cover many of the intermediate and advanced-level strategies in link acquisition, given that we are targeting more in-house SEOs and agency owners who have been building backlinks for a long time and want something new. 

Even if we cover the essential guides like anchor text optimization, top link building strategies, and link diversity, we add as many actionable tips to put principles into practice as possible. 

 

It is also much easier to rank for keywords by tackling more difficult ideas; other industry publishers don’t have much in-depth expertise and experience. 

PROVIDE FRESH PERSPECTIVES TO SATURATED TOPICS.

The challenging part for starting publishers is publishing content for topics with hundreds of pieces of content trying to compete for the same keywords. 

Pursuing mid to highly competitive keywords is still viable, given their high search volume, but adding new perspectives/angles sets your content apart from other competing pages. 

It also captures other content creators to distribute it across their social networks, which amplifies the natural link acquisition of your content assets.  

START WITH BETTER INTROS THAT RESONATE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE WELL.

For example, I’ve started this guide by emphasizing that Google favors brands and the importance and value of “authority building”.

It instantly differentiates from other SEO writers who start their blog posts with, “link building is the key to better rankings,” and so on.

IMMERSE YOURSELF IN THE INDUSTRY TO BETTER UNDERSTAND UNIQUE CONCEPTS.

One of the keys to standing out in the sea of content is understanding what your target readers are currently consuming and where their attention is. 

Having a pool of authority publications you religiously follow is best by subscribing to their latest posts. This way, you establish familiarity with their latest content and what content themes they’re focusing on. 

This would give you new insights and unique concepts to start diving into with your blog. 

For example, I’m publishing landing pages and informational content on “psychological safety” and DIBER (Diversity Inclusion Belongingness Equity Respect) in my corporate training blog. 

While other personality development and corporate trainers heavily publish on DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and leadership, I started diving into more new concepts readers in the Philippines don’t usually hear.

 

2. SNOWBALL EFFECT WITH CONTENT SEEDING

I heard about this concept from Jason Acidre years ago. 

Content seeding is creating content assets for other sites that exclusively cover the subtopics from your pillar content (and links to it). 

This differs from parasite SEO, which focuses mainly on acquiring a contextual link from a page that ranks for a highly competitive keyword. 

Content seeding emphasizes the thematic relevance between your content that covers exclusively a subtopic and your pillar page on your site that targets a keyword with a broader audience. 

Through linking between pages (pillar and content seeds), you increase relevance signals to both pages (from an off-page perspective). 

It creates leverage for both pillar content and content seed. The high authority backlink pushes ranking power to your pillar content while you improve the ranking capability of your seed content. 

And while these content seeds rank for their respective keywords (leveraging the site’s domain authority), they compoundedly drive more link equity to your pillar page. 

GETTING HIGH AUTHORITY BACKLINKS FROM CONTENT SEEDS

Create a list of authority sites you want to use for content seeds. 

These could be Google-trusted (seed sites) like the New York Times, Healthline, Forbes, or IBM, or industry-specific credible entities like Daily News Coffee or FreshCup. 

You can use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer to populate your list of high authority sites. Enter head terms. 

Metrics like Domain Rating can help you spot sites with potent backlink profiles. I usually export sites/domains with DR60 or higher. 

Ahrefs’ DR isn’t to be solely considered. Several factors make a site authoritative/credible (i.e., quality of readers, social media following, monthly organic traffic, number of root referring domains, etc..). But Ahrefs’ DR is a good starting metric for assessing a domain’s authoritativeness. 

Once you have a list, the next thing is to strategize what to offer in your outreach emails. The message will dictate the success of your link building campaign. Always answer “What’s in it for them?”. 

PUSH RANKINGS FOR LOWER POSITION PAGES.

Identify pillar pages on your site that need more boosting with backlinks. These are ones sitting on positions 6 to 10 and would require optimization and backlinks to climb their position to higher spots. 

Use content seeds to improve the rankings of these pillar pages. 

DISTRIBUTE SUBSETS OF DATA CONTENT.

Content seeds may also include non-text formats such as data visualization, infographics, PDFs, whitepapers, branded images, etc..).

You can cover and distribute one part/area of your internal data to other sites/publications.

Use the ” exclusivity ” angle to entice publishers to use your subset data as an additional resource/reference to their existing and/or future blog posts. 

TIER LINK BUILDING USING CONTENT SEEDS

When SEOs run their guest posting campaigns, it is a typical plain strategy where they distribute blog posts to different sites discussing different topics based on the approvals of their publications.

With content seeding, you can think of a topic cluster (from pillar topic on your site and all subcategory topics you can propose as topics for guest blogging).

Instead of having different topics for guest posts that aren’t aligned with each other, you’ll have a good relevance structure for all topics for your guest posts. 

WHY DOES THIS WORK?

• You can use content seeds (guest posts) to internally link to each other, creating a tier one or two link building strategy across these blog posts.
• It enhances all content seeds ability to rank for their target keywords (from each of their hosted domains). 
• It leverages the power of thematic relevance to easily include internal links highly relevant to the context of the destination link (another content seed).

 

3. REACTIVE DIGITAL PR

Many SEOs and marketers have started using digital PR to improve their organic search rankings, given its ability to generate branded mentions and backlinks, mostly from authoritative publications and news sites. 

These high authority backlinks can be strong enough to push rankings of pages targeting highly competitive keywords. 

No wonder you’ve seen SEO agencies having digital PR as one of their secondary services. 

The typical digital PR focuses on creating large-scale campaigns that could take weeks or months to produce, launch, and promote to journalists. It is a proactive approach to gaining brand exposure through data-driven content (data visualization, internal data, etc..) that speaks to current issues and trends in the industry.

Reactive Digital PR reacts quickly to current (and soon-to-be-trending) issues and events in its basic premise and by its term. 

Contrary to digital PR, leveraging current events likely to saturate the entire publication industry usually takes days and weeks. 

The planning stage can be more crucial as you need to speed up with research, content creation, and pitching relevant brand stories to journalists. 

Here are some ways to utilize reactive digital PR to acquire high authority backlinks to your brand. 

IDENTIFY AND MAP OUT NEWS CYCLE

There are recurring events in the form of news cycles that you can identify with your team to prepare ahead for sudden stories and news events. 

Here are some examples of event cycles:

• Inflation rates in countries/regions
• Seasonal information on gifts (e.g., Christmas gift guides)
• Changing workplace situations and employee engagement (e.g., the effect of hybrid work setup on employees). 
• Public life events of well-known celebrities
• Not all of the events in this news cycle would be relevant to your site, but think of ways to integrate those into your brand stories.

EXPERT COMMENTARY

If you have a pool of thought leaders and experts in your company, it would be best to tap into your client’s expertise and experience to share input for new events and stories. 

For example, if your client is into nutrition and fitness, you can use their client’s expertise when a notable celebrity reveals their diet plan. An example is when brands took advantage of the news about Chris Martin of Coldplay, revealing that he only eats one meal a day. 

Journalists may be looking for additional credibility from industry exports to include in existing stories they are writing. 

Look for these opportunities when they post tweets with the hashtag #journorequest. 

You can also use services like HARO or ResponseSource to monitor and spot opportunities for your in-house experts to comment on topical events. 

Tapping into reactive digital PR can generate branded mentions (and backlinks). This also results in gaining credibility and building relationships with journalists who can contact you for more input into their future stories. 

EASY TO PRODUCE CONTENT

The key to making reactive digital PR is your team’s capability to produce unique content that matches a developing news story. 

The longer time approval for stakeholders and decision-makers to craft stories and deliver thoughtful opinions as reactions to news stories, the fewer opportunities you can take advantage of. 

Before engaging in reactive digital PR, consider the timeframes for your team to produce expert comments for stories. 

The most effective way is to react to an opportunity within a few days (or hours, if possible). 

TREND ANALYSIS FOR INSIGHTS

Invest time monitoring upcoming trends on Google and TikTok to get new insights into current events. 

Some journalists voice their opinions on current issues that will generate new information with a high tendency to go viral.

 

4. CONTENT COLLABORATION AND PARTNERSHIPS

One key factor in getting high authority backlinks is familiarity. 

Familiarity results from having more robust relationships with publishers and content creators in the industry.

Compared to submission-based link building tactics (i.e., directories), where it doesn’t require a connection between the site owner and the one building the link, content collaboration and partnerships primarily need building bridges and influencing skills to get deserved attention and interest from potential link sources. 

Here are some methodologies to utilize content in making link prospects more familiar with your work: 

CONTENT REFRESH

By its term, content refresh is refreshing/upgrading old and outdated content on topic areas you want to focus on. 

Given that some publishers lack the resources to edit their old content (let alone produce the desired content quota for the year), it is an added value for anyone wanting to maximize their already published resources. 

Use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer to semi-automate the process of finding old and outdated content.

Enter topics you want to focus on.  

I usually filter the results only to show posts relevant to my client. Here are my qualifiers:

• In WordPress platforms
• English
• “Filter explicit results”
• DR 25 to 80
• Exclude homepages and subdomains 
• Not linked to my target site

Before you export results, skim through the prospects to see which ones are relevant to your prospecting topics. 

Filter out blog posts from domains competing with your client, low-quality sites, and high on-page optimization issues. 

Reach out to these publishers. You can use this email template: 

Subject: content refresh on [SiteName]

Hi [First Name],

I recently read your post on [topic] at [XXX] and appreciated the insights you shared. However, I noticed some sections might benefit from a refresh to align with the latest [industry] trends.

Understanding the effort involved in updating content, I’d like to offer my expertise. With a background in [industry] and experience in crafting engaging, up-to-date content, I can help revitalize your post.

If this sounds helpful, I’d be happy to discuss it further.

Best,

Venchito

Given that you’re dealing with high authority publishers, showing your credibility as an author is crucial. Include work samples as URLs or attachments to your email. 

Once you receive a response, send a brief outline of the updated version before creating the new content. Input new sections they haven’t included in their original copy. 

 

5. NON-CONTENT LINK BUILDING TECHNIQUES

There are also ways to build high authority backlinks by not solely relying on content.

Leveraging other resources that are content-intensive (i.e., email list, offerings, affiliate commissions, offline events, freebies, etc..) offers different kinds of value in exchange for backlinks. 

Utilizing resources can differentiate you from other publishers wanting to penetrate industry publications with content. 

GETTING FEATURED IN INDUSTRY NEWSLETTERS

Find blogs/sites related to your niche that you can partner with for newsletter contribution (they must have newsletters as well). 

Preferably ones that aren’t competing with yours but target the same audience. For example, if you’re running wedding coffee carts, you find photography and wedding food caterers. All of them are targeting soon-to-married couples. 

 

HOW SHARPROCKET CAN GET YOU HIGH-AUTHORITY BACKLINKS

Now, you have an inside look at our proven strategic strategies to get high authority backlinks for our clients. Using these tips can improve your online rankings, and although it will take some time, it’s worth it. 

Here at SharpRocket, we’ve been perfecting our link building processes for years, and we’d love to help you as well. If you want to leave your link building campaign to the pros, get in touch with us today.