How to Build SEO Backlinks for AEC Companies

There’s a lot to learn when it comes to SEO. If you allow yourself to go down a rabbit hole of ideas and opinions on this topic, you’ll be left with plenty of confusion and an endlessly long list of SEO to-dos.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. By focusing on authority-building tactics, like building backlinks, you can put together a solid SEO strategy that will lead to traffic gains and long-term increases in authority. This article will take a closer look at how you can effectively build backlinks to your AEC company’s website.

What is a Backlink?

Before we put the cart in front of the horse, let’s stop briefly to highlight what a backlink is and why they matter. A backlink is nothing more than a link somewhere on the web that points to your site. So, for example, if a past client adds a link to your website on their site, that counts as a backlink. This is different than an internal link, which is a link on your site that goes to another page on your own site.

Backlinks are useful because they are seen as a “vote of confidence” by search engines. In other words, when a site has a lot of backlinks pointing to its pages, search engines see that as a sign that many people find the site useful and authoritative. While backlinks are not the only factor in determining where your site will rank, they are important, and collecting as many quality backlinks as possible is very beneficial to SEO.

Also, by gaining a backlink from a third-party source, you’ll likely see an increase in referral traffic to your website. People will see your link, click on it, and visit your website. This in itself can be a great source of traffic to your homepage, blog, services pages, and even lead to newsletter subscribers and new AEC business prospects.

Building Backlinks for an AEC Company

There’s nothing magical about building backlinks for an AEC company website as compared to doing link building for any other type of site. While the methods in this field are many, the goal remains constant – to acquire links through legitimate, respectable means.

There are plenty of SEO companies out there who will seek links for you in a questionable manner, but you don’t want to have anything to do with that approach. In the best case, you’ll be wasting money on links that don’t do anything to move you up the rankings. Worse still, you could see your site penalized for “dirty” link-building tactics. In SEO, and especially link building, you get what you pay for.

So, how do you approach the challenge of building links to your website? Here are some basic starting points:

• Create quality content. One of the core concepts in the world of backlinks is that you need to create something that people will want to link to. That sounds simple, but it’s easy to overlook. For example, if all you have on your site is service pages, why would anyone link to those pages? On the other hand, if you have a blog full of informative, authoritative articles, those pages could easily earn some quality links because they add value for the audience. Spending time on content creation that is relevant to your niche could pay off in the form of backlinks over time.
• Write guest posts. This is a tactic that has been around for many years, and it continues to be a useful strategy for many website owners. The idea here is simple – you create a piece of content for another website (not your own) and the owner of that site includes a link back to your site as part of posting the content. This method is time-consuming to execute properly. Not only will you need to create the content, but you’ll also need to track down sites that are willing to accept a post from you. Most likely, your competition won’t want to link to you, so it’s better to target companies in adjacent industries. For example, if you’re a structural engineering company, you could place an article on an architectural website.
• Leverage vendor relationships. This is a relatively quick and easy way to gain backlinks to your website. For this link-building strategy, you will need to reach out to people you work with such as suppliers, sub-contractors, etc. If you have used their product or service, you can offer to leave them a testimonial in exchange for a link back to your site. This method allows you to help someone you respect (by giving them a positive testimonial), and you get a link at the same time.
• Ask for links. You aren’t going to have much success just randomly emailing site owners to ask them to place a link on their pages for your site. However, reaching out to sites that already mention your company – but don’t link to it – could be helpful. If your company earned a mention on another site, that’s a golden opportunity to get a link just by asking. Simply search the name of your business and browse the web to see if any of these opportunities are waiting. Or you could set up a Google Alert for your brand name so that you’re notified every time you’re mentioned on the web.
• Help a reporter out. Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a website that automatically emails you industry-specific topics that journalists need some info about. For example, if you’re an architecture firm, it might be a journalist from ArchDaily that needs some info for an article they’re writing about architectural design trends in 2023. If you’re a commercial construction company, it could be a journalist from Forbes that needs a quote about how the industry is changing due to COVID-19. The topics are typically relevant to what’s currently happening in the industry – trends, news, commentary, statistics, etc. Often, in return for providing some of your industry expertise, the journalist will reciprocate with a link back to your website. This can be a fantastic source of quality backlinks from top-tier publications!
• Use SEMRush to find link opportunities. SEMRush is an excellent all-in-one SEO tool. One of its core functions is its Link Building Tool. This tool will automatically source up-to-date blogs, forums, directories, and websites related to your industry that could be great backlink opportunities. They also offer an easy-to-use interface to track your outreach efforts and monitor the links that you build, and even provide templates for backlink outreach emails.

Link building is usually a slow process. This isn’t the kind of thing that you put on your to-do list this week and it’s finished up by Friday. You need to be committed to deploying the strategies above and be diligent about acquiring new quality backlinks to build your site’s authority on the web.

We’ll Do the Hard Work for You

Building backlinks is a big challenge – perhaps the biggest one in the entire SEO landscape. You may not have the time or knowledge to take on this task by yourself, which is why we are here to help. We understand how to properly build links and we’ll work hard to earn your site the links it deserves. Reach out today to learn more.