Free link inspiration: How to get backlinks through testimonials

A good and trustworthy way to get free backlinks is through your customers and business partners. A natural part of doing business together is that you rating each other and recommend those you are happy with. You can use this to your advantage! Through testimonials, you have the opportunity to create a credible and free link back to your website.

If you want to achieve good results with SEO, linkbuilding is one of the most important tools in your toolbox. Linkbuilding is a strategic way of working with backlinks, where you get a link to your website from an external website. It can be a difficult discipline because you can’t control what other websites share and write. You can often pay for a website to write about you, but as this method is obviously not free, we’ll leave it at that for now. There are methods where you can create backlinks for free — and one of them is through referrals from business partners.

How to build free backlinks through testimonials

There are two methods we will cover related to building free links through customer referrals and collaborations. There are many more methods that will be covered in other posts.

Through Google reviews

One way to optimise your off-page SEO and create brand awareness is through Google reviews. They give you the opportunity to link to your website – although it is not a direct backlink.

1) Log in to Google and type the name of your business partner or customer into the search bar.
2) Scroll down the page and click ‘Add a review’.

3) You will then see a pop-up where you can write your review.

It is important that you mention your own company, including the domain, and provide context about how you collaborated with the company the review is for.

4) Press ‘Post’, and your review will be published.

By submitting the review, you haven’t necessarily received a direct backlink, but you have mentioned your brand in a relevant and credible context. This signals to Google that your brand and business exist and are worth following. In addition to creating value for yourself, you are also creating value for your business partner, who has received a useful review.

You can now do the same for some of your best partners or suppliers.

This will also encourage your partners to review your company. You can even contact them and arrange a mutual review exchange.

Testimonial through blogpost

Another, more strategic way to get a free backlink from a relevant, credible, and authoritative website is through your partners/suppliers. You contact a partner and ask if they would like a review from you – in return for linking to your website. Your partner gets a customer story to share on their website or blog and you get a backlink.

Most companies love a good customer story as part of their narrative about how they create value. Your business partners will love it too! So this is a great opportunity for you to help each other and gain a free backlink from a relevant and trustworthy website.

At Morninscore, we have used this method to create free backlinks ourselves. Below is an example of how Oxylabs, one of our affiliates, linked back to our site. We wrote a review for them to use on their website as one of their customer stories. It’s a win-win situation. You can read the review here.

We also use it the other way around, where we create backlinks to other companies (for us, it’s called external links). We’ve approached some of our users whom we think have done really well and asked them if they’d like to write a review about us. We have a whole page dedicated to customer stories, which we believe should help show where we add value for our customers.

From the customers’ side, we link to them and they get a backlink that is relevant to them. This can be seen in the Nordicbar-story where we give them a free link. You can read the story here.

Contacting your customers, suppliers or business partners and writing a review for them is, first and foremost, a great way to get a free backlink. It’s also a great way to promote your brand or company, as it becomes a showcase for you.

How do you check for backlinks?

At Morningscore we have a backlink checker tool. You can view your current backlinks and see how strong the website the link comes from is. You can also check for dead links, new and lost links, and see your competitors’ backlinks.

More free link ideas & inspiration

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