41 FREE Sources for Immediate Backlinks to Your Content material [With Real Examples] – MonetizeBetter
So you just published a new post to your blog and wait for the traffic to flood in..and wait…and wait. The sad news is that if you don’t already have an established blog with authority, you will not see many visitors unless you get backlinks to your content.
Think of a book writer who needs to pitch to editors and publishing houses until he gets his 1st book published and his first fans. It would help if you spent at least as much time promoting your content as you did writing it.
In this article, I share 41 places to add your blog post to grab backlinks and attract targeted traffic (i.e., readers).
1. Social Media Networks
Social Media Networks like Facebook, Twitter, and others are excellent sources of traffic and backlinks.
You can have your content seen by hundreds or even thousands with a little effort. All you have to do is share the article, add the relevant tags, and mention the persons you talk about in your article, if any.
Your Facebook Page [Join Facebook]
If you have a Facebook page for your blog, you should add your just-published post there and share it with your audience.
With all the recent changes to Facebook’s algorithms, your post’s reach will likely be only 3-5% of your followers. However, if it is a great post, you should pay to boost it so it reaches your audience.
Promote Your Blog Post on Your Facebook Page
We have written a Facebook page marketing guide to help you do Facebook marketing like a PRO.
If you have Jetpack installed on WordPress, your posts will be automatically sent to your Facebook page. Don’t forget to re-post it 2 or 3 times per month to reach a wider audience. Social Network Auto Poster (SNAP) WordPress plugin does this automatically for you.
We have had it here on monetizebetter.com for three years, and it works like a charm.
Your Facebook profile
Another good place on Facebook to add your newest blog post is your public profile. Facebook profiles tend to get better reach than posts on Pages, and you may have another audience there, so don’t forget to add your post to your Facebook public profile.
You will also get a link from Facebook if your post is set to be seen by the public.
Promote Your Blog Post on your Facebook public profile
Targeted Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups are an excellent way to get backlinks and, most importantly, traffic to your posts. However, there are some conditions you should follow. The first one is to join only targeted groups. Otherwise, the admin will delete your post; the second one is not spam.
Not only will your post be deleted, but you may trigger Facebook’s anti-spam filters, which will drastically reduce the exposure of your current and future posts.
The key here is to promote it moderately and use different headlines, descriptions, and links. To tweak your links, you may add HTTP and HTTPS versions, or add additional parameters to the end of the link, such as?cameFrom=Facebook, ?view=socialmedia, etc.
Tools like MissingLettr and others can do this automatically for you.
Btw, it may be a good idea to create a Facebook group to amplify your content. Also, check our list of the best affiliate marketing groups on Facebook.
X profile [Join X]
X is another good source of traffic, again, if used right. You should add your post here; don’t forget to mention everyone you talked about, and have a Twitter account. This will improve your exposure because the people you mentioned will retweet your post to their audiences.
Promote your blog post on Twitter
X Articles
Articles is a new way to share long-form written content on X. Publishing Articles is a feature limited to Premium subscribers. In addition to text, Articles can include images, videos, GIFs, posts, and links.
You can also format text with headings, subheadings, bold, italics, strikethrough, indentation, numerical, and bulleted lists. Once published, an Article can be read and shared by anyone on X, depending on the audience controls you’ve selected for the Article.
X Articles
LinkedIn profile [Join LinkedIn]
LinkedIn is not only your social media site for hiring or getting hired. It may also help you promote your articles and blog posts. Don’t forget to tag all the persons or brands you mentioned in the article, and have a LinkedIn account.
Linkedin Groups
Just like on Facebook, LinkedIn has different groups where you can promote your newest blog post. The main difference is that there is a tight limit of groups you can join – 100 compared to Facebook, where the limit is set at 6000.
I recommend you join several digital marketing LinkedIn groups: Digital Marketing, Digital Marketing – Social Media, Search, Mobile, and more; Social Media Marketing; Marketing Pros; and Digital Marketing Professionals.
Instagram profile [Join Instagram]
Instagram is famous for sharing pictures with your social media friends, so if you’re into niches like Fashion, Interior design, Travelling, or Cooking, you should get an account and build your followers base ASAP.
However, you can still use it in niche areas that aren’t as popular, such as Finance or Digital Marketing. Popular magazines are already doing it and have excellent followings.
We have a dedicated Instagram marketing guide you should check. Also, don’t forget to choose popular hashtags.
Pinterest Pin [Join Pinterest]
With 200 million monthly users, Pinterest may not be a social media behemoth like Facebook, but it’s an important social platform with deep penetration into valuable demographics. For instance, half of all U.S. millennials use Pinterest.
A Pin is any image or video someone chooses to save to Pinterest. For businesses, the link is more important than the image itself: Every pin links back to the source, making Pinterest a great source of referral traffic.
Rich Pins are enhanced Pins that use metadata pulled from your site to provide extra information about what Pinners will find when they click on a Pin.
Rich Pins for articles include a headline, the author’s name, the article’s date, and a story description. They also indicate that the link points to an article and includes a call-to-action button saying “Read it.”
Dotdash.com (previously About.com) experienced impressive results from Rich Pins when using them for their articles. After just one week of using Rich Pins, their Pinterest traffic jumped by 40%. Since then, their referral traffic from the social media platform has increased by 70%.
XING Post [Join Xing]
XING is a European career-oriented social networking site that enables a small-world network among professionals. Posting to XING profiles and groups is an excellent way to share news related to a specific business field and reach and engage target audiences.
Xing Social Network
Post on Reddit
As a social news aggregation platform, Reddit can be an excellent traffic source if your target audience frequents it. You’ll need to join relevant subreddits and then share content with their users. People will then upvote or downvote your content depending on how they like it. The more upvotes you get, the better your chances are of gaining visibility and website traffic.
JPs like Travis Levell have used the platform to generate relevant website traffic. Using only three posts to the right subreddits, he drove more than 1,000 sessions, out of which 96.2% were completely new.
2. Content Networks
There are two main ways to use the following content networks to gain views and backlinks for your content. You may syndicate the content as is or create a new version. Creating new content will take longer, but the benefits are worth it.
Google News
Google Publisher Center enables publishers to curate high-quality journalism, enhancing the news experience for readers and publishers alike. As a participating publisher, you can uniquely package stories that appear in Google’s news products, Current News, and Discover.
A major advantage is that you can create or use an existing content section to test significant changes to your publication. This enables you to preview and interact with it as readers do.
You can also submit new content labels to highlight specific types of content for users. However, your content must follow Google’s best practices for article pages and avoid violating its content, spam, and features search policies.
The Content Access tab helps you set up your access strategy, explore reader experiences, and customize calls to action. You can track your content’s performance based on how it appears in Google News. Use the HTTP referrer to distinguish traffic from Google News from other traffic sources. Additionally, utilize your on-page analytics to analyze your standard HTML and AMP articles.
You can also create customized email templates to foster deeper audience engagement and reinforce your value proposition. Of course, subscriber data can be exported directly from the Publisher Center.
Medium.com [Join Medium]
The medium allows you to republish your existing blog posts. If you use their import feature, they even add a rel=canonical link. You can also use this platform to increase traffic to the full blog posts on your site.
You may post snippets of full blog posts on Medium and then direct users to the full article on their website. If you don’t want to syndicate your blog posts’ entire text, this might be a tactic to try. If you’re getting good traction on Medium, you could mix it up by adding occasional exclusive Medium articles once you’ve built up your readership.
Substack
Substack offers targeted communication, as writers connect with their most enthusiastic readers who have already shown interest in their publications. The great thing about this platform is that you retain proprietary rights and can take your work with you if you decide to leave.
Readers can become your top promoters. They share emails and posts, helping your email list grow continuously. You don’t need any tech skills to set up a Substack; even the most tech-averse writer can do it.
You can also upload an existing mailing list and include links to your books. If you enable a paid subscription, Substack takes 10% of the revenue.
Quora [Join Quora]
Quora had close to 400 million visitors in May 2017, according to SimilarWeb. And 72.79% of that traffic came from searches. So if you want to increase traffic to your website, you can make the most of this platform by showcasing your expertise.
This will ensure high visibility in searches related to the topic, and you should be able to attract relevant searchers who might click your link after reading your answers.
Make a list of relevant keywords and then search for questions related to those words. Answer the related questions and use relevant links embedded in your answers. Make sure the answers are helpful and answer the question.
Otherwise, your answers could be hidden due to downvotes. Websites like Wishpond have been leveraging Quora to get 9000+ monthly visits.
SlideShare [Join SlideShare]
SlideShare is a platform for hosting professional content, including presentations, infographics, documents, and videos. Users can upload files privately or publicly in PowerPoint, Word, PDF, or OpenDocument format.
You can quickly transform your blog post into a presentation by keeping the article’s essential points, the intro, and the conclusion. Don’t forget to add the images and sources. You can also embed the presentation in the article itself as a takeaway.
This can make a huge difference to your traffic, since the website gets 80 million visitors, 80% of whom come through targeted searches. So people who happen upon your SlideShare content are likely there because they’re looking for that exact information. And then there’s the fact that SlideShare has a DA of 95. This means that your content on SlideShare has a good chance of ranking in the top results in relevant searches.
YouTube [Join YouTube]
YouTube has over 1 billion users, nearly one-third of all internet users. According to Wordstream, 59% of executives agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video.
That’s why you have to create a video after you write your article and upload it to YouTube. Don’t forget to include a link back to your article in the description.
Tumblr [Join Tumblr]
Tumblr supports several post formats, including quote posts, chat posts, video and photo posts, and audio posts, so you are never limited in the types of content you can share. Like Twitter, reblogging, which is more like retweeting, is quick and easy.
Share your content on Tumblr.
Scribd.com [Join Scribd]
Scribd is a great site to publish booklets and books. After you have written a comprehensive blog article, you should convert it into a PDF booklet and upload it to Scribd.com.
Don’t forget to add backlinks to the document you upload.
3. Social Bookmarks
HackerNews [Join HackerNews]
HackerNews is a tech community similar to Reddit and GrowthHacker. Founded by Y Combinator, HackerNews features different content focused on IT, computer science, and entrepreneurship. Still, I’ve also seen unrelated articles that got many votes. Does every hacker deserve a break, doesn’t he? 🙂
ManageWP.org [Needs Replacement]
If you write about blogging, marketing, or programming, especially WordPress, you should bookmark your blog posts on ManageWP.org. After registration, fill in your profile details and ask for posting privileges to the admin’s email address.
manageWP.org
Flipboard [Join Flipboard]
Flipboard is another traffic machine that can crash your site. You create related boards and submit your articles. Other users will see them while flipping around. Users can add your content to their boards and vice versa.
One thing to note about Flipboard is the strict guidelines. One of my accounts has been blocked since I repeatedly shared my content. It’s suggested to keep a proper balance and share others’ content before sharing your own or following the popular 80:20 rule.
3.6 SlashDot.org [Join SlashDot]
4. Other People’s Sites
Blog Commenting
I’ve recently written an extensive guide on finding blogs to comment on and what to do to ensure admins approve your comments and secure a backlink.
Would you please give it a read here: How to earn backlinks through blog commenting?
If you’re planning to leave a blog comment, thoroughly read and understand the post. Then thank the writer for the tips and insights. Follow this up with a brief mention of what you think regarding the topic, and then talk about a relevant article from your blog or mention your tool/service when appropriate. In other words, your comment should add value to the conversation instead of blatantly promoting yourself.
You can start by picking out a few relevant keywords and reading the top blog posts in the search results. And then, follow the tip above to write valuable and insightful comments while linking to a relevant page of your website.
That’s how Tomas Fransson from Flaunt My Design managed to drive more than 2200 visits to his website through 26 blog comments with backlinks to his website’s pages.
Guest Posting
You’re probably familiar with guest posting and may have even written a few guest posts before. But if you want to drive more traffic to your site, you must take your guest posting strategy to the next level. It should become a vital part of your content marketing strategy. Not only should you submit guest posts to other websites, but you should also start accepting guest posts on yours.
When you submit guest posts to relevant and reputable websites, you’re building high-quality backlinks for your website. Since a good link profile can improve your ranking, you will increase your site’s visibility and drive more traffic.
Plus, you’re proving your credibility to the website’s audience, who might decide to visit your site after reading your guest post.
In other words, submitting guest posts can help you garner traffic in more ways than one. A case study on The HOTH found that guest post links drove significant traffic to the Ninja Outreach website. In two years’ worth of referral traffic, 5.47% came from websites on which they submitted guest posts.
Resources that will help you submit guest posts:
Forums
Forum Marketing is an effective way to get high-quality traffic and backlinks to your site. Unfortunately, very few marketers use forum marketing effectively.
If you do it properly, you can leverage a method that marketers have neglected nowadays to bring you both visitors and backlinks.
Check our tutorial on how to get targeted traffic and backlinks to your newly published blog post from forums.
Conclusion
There you have it. Forty-one websites where you can send your blog post and get an instant backlink and, of course, readers. It can take up to 3 hours to publish everywhere, and you should do it only when you have stellar blog posts. But you will get visitors for years to come.
As you can see, there is a wide variety of options for startups, small businesses, and large organizations.
Among these options, you’ll find ones that require a bit of financial investment. But most require just a bit of effort with little to no additional finances.
Remember to invest in content promotion for at least as long as you spent writing it, if not more. Your job is not done after hitting the publish button, especially if you build an authority website and expect to make nice profits.
Did you find these tips helpful? What other places do you send your content to?
Share them with us in the comments, and I will add them to the list.