Not all links are made equal.

If they were, then everyone would still be building private link farms, flooding article websites and spamming forum links for some quick link juice.

Although these tactics worked in the past, they’ll give you a one-way ticket off of search results today.

Today, you need to build links the authentic way: by networking and reaching out, building relationships and sharing value, so that people naturally want to link to you.

But this takes a lot of time. And a lot of waiting around for your work to take effect.

So while this is all happening in the background, a great place to turn your attention is to the links you already have.

Give yourself a backlinks booster.

If you can improve those links, you can improve your backlink profile as a whole—and maybe even acquire some new links in the process!

Plus, you’re working with links you’ve already got, so the hardest part (actually getting the link) is already taken care of.

It’s the smartest way to make the most of your existing resources.

By optimizing the links you have, you can give your link profile the boost you’re looking for—without following the traditional link building route!

5 Backlinks Booster Tactics to Improve the Links You Already Have

1. Change Your Anchor Texts

Sometimes, the problem isn’t the lack of backlinks—it’s the optimization of your anchor text distribution.

First of all, the anchor text is the string of text in which the backlink itself is embedded. Its primary purpose is to give readers some context on what the linked content will be about.

In SEO, anchor texts are mostly seen as passages for link juice, and ones which determine the contextual relevance of a page.

If you have a sizeable blog, you may already have a fair share of naturally-generated backlinks from old posts.

Other bloggers may have cited your case study, referenced your data or used your brand as an example. Whatever their purpose, it’s probably not for the improvement of your backlink profile.

In other words, they most likely didn’t use an optimized anchor text—which could make you miss out on a potential SEO boost.

If you suspect this to be the case, you should run a backlink analysis with Monitor Backlinks.

This tool features a consolidated “Links Analysis” section that can give you a bird’s-eye view of your anchor text profile.

 

 

Take note that these are only your top anchor texts. If you want to see the full picture, click the “Export as CSV” button.

 

 

Once you verify the presence of unoptimized anchor texts, it should be easy to find them under the “Your Links” tab.

These anchor texts are highlighted in orange when you click on them, which means they’ve triggered a specific low-quality signal.

 

 

The next step is to simply request for the anchor text to be changed via email. Monitor Backlinks makes it easy to figure out who to contact—just follow the URL under the “Linking Page” column.

Of course, it’s important for you to pick your battles with your outreach.

What you need to focus on are natural links with contextual relevance between the source and your content. As a rule of thumb, prioritize links from authoritative sites and bloggers in the same industry as yours.

And if you don’t have a Monitor Backlinks account for this process? Grab a free trial by clicking here!

2. Link Recovery

Anchor text optimization for existing backlinks is only the tip of the iceberg.

You might also be leaking precious link juice through broken and lost links.

Put simply, broken links are backlinks that point to pages that no longer exist.

You may have deleted the post or changed its URL. The author of the linking post may have also misspelled the URL when embedding the link.

In any case, not only are broken links harmful to SEO, they also ruin user experience and negatively affect conversions. Eventually, the webmaster of the link’s source may discover and fix them—usually by removal.

The good news is, you can redirect broken links somewhere useful—like your homepage—in order to salvage them.

To check for broken links, launch Monitor Backlinks and navigate to the “Your Links” tab. Click on the “ New filter” button.

 

 

From there, select “Destination page with” and then “Page with errors/redirects” to start scanning your site for broken links.

 

 

Similar to anchor text requests, you need to contact the author or publisher of the post to fix the broken link.

Don’t worry—they’ll definitely appreciate the heads up, since broken links also affect them. Just remember to be polite and establish yourself as a credible brand in your niche.

3. Content Repurposing

Repurposing old content into something fresh and better overall is perhaps the most scalable strategy for link building. It’s the practice of converting an existing post into a different content format.

For example, any text-based post can be repurposed into an infographic or newsletter. On the other hand, long-form infographics can be turned into slideshow presentations.

The goals are simple: To make in-depth content more digestible and to match the content preferences of a specific audience. These will allow you to utilize the same content idea for multiple sites, which would exponentially boost your online reach.

As a result, you’ll get more opportunities to build backlinks and establish your brand authority.

To repurpose content, you can use a content research tool like BuzzSumo to find topics that garner interest. All you need to do is type in a relevant keyword to get started.

With a little creativity, it’s not really hard to come up with how to repurpose content. There’s now a slew of cloud-based tools that can help you create anything, be it an infographic or explainer video.

To give you some ideas, here are a handful of tools and platforms you can use for different content formats:

Infographics

• Canva
• Piktochart
• Venngage

Videos

• PowToon
• Animaker

Podcasts

• SoundCloud
• Buzzsprout

Slideshows

• SlideShare

4. Blogger Outreach

Content repurposing is a great way to build online reach and bolster your website’s backlink profile.

It is also a core component in more elaborate link building strategies, like the popular Skyscraper Technique. This involves three crucial steps:

1. Look for Popular Content
2. Create Something More Thorough
3. Connect with the Right People

You may notice that the first two steps are quite identical to content repurposing. To start, look for popular content and then refine it into something better.

However, it’s the third step that makes the Skyscraper Technique significantly more effective for link building.

Rather than pushing your new content to different websites, you publish it on your own site instead. And when it goes live, you’ll reach out to the influencers who linked to the original post.

Keep in mind that bloggers and popular publications have a reputation to keep. As much as possible, they only link to cream-of-the-crop content, and that’s how you’ll endorse the one you just made.

A blogger outreach strategy is essential for this goal. It’s the delicate process of finding the right targets, personalizing messages and planning follow-ups that can seal the deal.

Since you already know who to target, it all boils down to your emails. The email templates in this post will help you get the ball rolling for your blogger outreach campaign.

5. Social Signals

Finally, social media is still one of the most cost-effective channels for content distribution.

It doesn’t really matter if your goal is to gain traffic, build relationships or win more backlinks. You can always find a way to be in-tune with your market and spread your brand’s message with social media.

As far as link building goes, social media exposes your content to your ideal audience. It initiates a ripple effect that can fortify your website’s SEO over the long haul.

Suppose you successfully promoted your content and received a ton of engagement on Facebook.

By displaying the number of likes, shares and comments on the page, other users will assume that it’s valuable and credible. This, in turn, will squeeze more engagement and boost the linkability of your content.

To leverage social signals, the first step is to make it easier for your audience to share your content. A simple tool like Sumo easily integrates a floating social media bar into any page.

 

 

Furthermore, Sumo can also display the total number of shares across different networks. This is always a good start if you want future readers to follow suit.

 

In SEO, a relentless link building campaign is only the first step.

In order to maximize your results, pay attention to other factors that may already be impacting your existing backlink profile such as anchor texts and broken links.

You should also keep coming back to the content that’s already getting good links, and make it work for you in more ways than one.

Hopefully, the tactics above can help you boost your backlinks while you work on building a solid link profile piece by piece. It may take a while, but each step will bring you closer to that glorious top position in search results.