Backlinks, baby
As AI search continues to creep up on SEO, this week's Startup Marketing Challenge will help you triumph in both. 💪🏼
Backlinks.
As the name suggests, backlinks are just links from other websites to yours, like little endorsements all across the internet.
💪🏼 In SEO, they boost your site ranking.
💪🏼 In AEO (AI Engine Optimisation), they boost your visibility since AI assistants often surface sources they “trust.”
So this week's challenge is to get as many backlinks as you can. Here are some startup-friendly ideas:
💫 Listings
List your startup (name, description and URL) on directories or ecosystem roundups, networks, industry organisations, etc. Even your co-working space's website if you can.
💫 Partners
Think through your partners - suppliers, investors, industry groups. Do any of them have a natural spot (e.g. a partners/members page or an About page with those sections) where they could include your startup name and link?
Even better, offer to write them a testimonial (and ask them to link it to your Home page).
💫 Customers
Less likely but worth considering. Do your customers have a partners page or section where they'd consider naming and linking you?
💫 Bigger lifts
- Write an article for your site with data or insights that others will quote or reference, and send it to 3-5 people who you think will do that (ask!).
- PR: Pitch your founder story to startup or industry newsletters, media, pods. Every link counts.
- Content collabs: Organise a joint webinar, article or guide with 1-2 partners and make sure you promote it on your sites, linking to each other.
🚫 Watch outs
Low quality backlinks can do your site more harm than good so jog on from junk sites promising free or cheap links.
Give me more (okay!)
There are, of course, a heap of other ways to build backlinks and tools to help you do it, including finding your own broken links (so you can fix them), finding sites that link to your competitors (so you can ask them to link to you too) and building a strategy to out-link your competitors.
But whatever you do, don't get overwhelmed with all the options. Start with the lower lift options above and set aside 30-60 mins a month to chip away at this back-link building business.
