Before we move forward ask yourself these two questions, first do you love your website? If you don’t have a website that portrays your message and gets the job done then it doesn’t matter how much traffic you generate. Next is your website optimized for SEO, for more details on how to optimize your website click here.

Once you are happy with your website it’s time to build some backlinks. Backlinking can be a difficult and often expensive task. Most of us do not have a repertoire of media contacts we can go to for backlinks. Luckily there are a couple effective ways to build backlinks and all it will cost is your time.

Fill out business listings

There are tons of sites out there that do business listing many with very strong domain authority. Filling out these listings like hotfrog.ca, factual.com, and canadaone.com/business are great resources to start off with.

Ensure to also find listings in the same field as your business, Google’s algorithm automatically scans the page for content related to your keywords so posting on business listing related to your field can help SEO even more. Related business listing are also more likely to drive traffic to your website.

Do not neglect your NAP (name, address, phone number), on all business listings your name, address, and phone number should be written the same way as your google my business profile. Not doing this can have a detrimental effect on your local business ranking.

Guest posting

Guest posting can be a challenge but it is a great way to build links for free. On google search for your field of work followed by “write for us”. For example, if your company sells jewelry you can search jewelry “write for us”. This will help you find blogs about jewelry who accept guest posts. These blogs often have good domain authority as well as large user bases who can become potential customers. Writing for guest blogs and adding a link in your bio or in the article to your website is a great way to build effective backlinks.

Avoid spamming your link

Both guest posting and filling out business listings are a great way to build a reputable and strong backlink data base. One thing to avoid is link spamming, commenting your link on the related blog occasionally is okay and can even help drive traffic to your website, but going to every blog you can find and commenting your link will not help your backlink score rather it will build your spam score. Having a high spam score will drop your google ranking and can even get your website removed from the Google database.