Don’t Overthink It
Now, a word of advice: don’t overthink it. The way most search optimizers describe it, you’d think link building was some incredibly technical, volatile practice, but the reality is just the opposite; you can usually rely on your intuition. Additionally, you can monitor your competitors to see what they're up to and perform better.
In fact, because “natural” links are the ones getting rewarded, the less you think about your placement, the better. Read your articles before submitting them and pretend to be an outsider. Does your link stand out at all? Does it offer valuable information that supports the facts you listed in the article?
Establishing a Foundation
If you want to be selected as a potential guest blogger for external publications, you need something to prove you’re a high-quality writer. Plus, if you’re going to be building links, you need valuable material to link to in the first place.
To address both these needs simultaneously, you’ll need to establish a foundation of content on your blog or website. There are plenty of free ways to do this, even if you don’t have a website, but it will take you some time to develop. Make sure your posts are well-written and valuable to your key demographics or you won’t be as easily accepted as a contributor.
Pitching Your First Guest Post
To get started, you’ll want to identify an external publisher that accepts guest-submitted material. Because you won’t have much experience, you’ll probably need to check out some low-authority sources, or ones with highly specific niches, such as subsections of your industry or publishers exclusive to your region.
Figure out a topic that this audience would like to see, and send the editor a pitch on your idea. If it’s accepted, you can write your post, include a link pointing back to your domain, and submit for publication. If it’s not accepted, you’ll have to move onto the next opportunity until you find a publisher who bites.
Building Authority and Moving Forward
From here, it’s all about keeping your momentum moving forward. For a while, you’ll need to keep reaching out to low-authority sources, niche-specific sources, and other publishers where guest publication is a breeze. For example, if you have decided to start a podcast, you can rank your content with the help of niche websites and publishers. Then, once you’ve built up enough authority, you can start pitching to some bigger, more reputable names, using your publication history as a kind of resume. One high-authority link is worth multiple low-authority ones, so don’t procrastinate climbing this ladder if you’re trying to see results.
Link building isn’t a sexy strategy, but it’s a real workhorse in the realm of online marketing. If you follow best practices bit by bit, which is what most SEO and digital PR agencies do, and continue escalating your efforts over time, your domain authority will start to climb and you’ll have an easier and easier time ranking for your target keywords and keyword phrases. Try not to be intimidated by the threat of penalty or the uncertainty of inexperience; learn what you can, then plunge in. The rest you can learn from trial and error.

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