1. Guest posts
You've most likely heard of guest blogging, which is probably one of the most common forms of creating backlinks right now. The concept of guest posting is simple, and it's generally easier to know which sites to talk about.
But if you've never heard of it, guest posting is pretty self-explanatory: it's about finding other relevant websites and writing an article for them (or in collaboration with them). You will often be entitled to at least one return link, either in the content or in the “bio” section at the bottom of the article.
When I say “the right way,” I mean focusing on relevance.
Yes, authority measures like DA (Domain Authority) are useful. But the key is to write for sites that are relevant to your website — or that can be made consistent by an article that bridges the gap between their niche and yours.
So there are a few steps to take.
Prospecting.
Brainstorm keywords that are related to your niche or topics you would like to talk about. For each of these keywords, use advanced operators (Google Dorks) to try to find suitable websites on Google:
- Keyword + “Guest article.”
- Keyword + “Now accepting invited articles.”
- Keyword + “Submission Guidelines.”
- Keyword + “Submit a guest post.”
- Keyword + “Submit an article.”
- Keyword + “Submit a blog post.”
- Keyword+ “Submit Guest Post.”
- Keyword + “Suggest a guest post.”
- Keyword + “The next guest post.”
- Keyword + “guest posting.”
- Keyword + “This post has been written.”
- Keyword + “Write for us.”
- Keyword + inurl:article-invite
- Keyword + inurl:guest-posts
- Keyword + inurl:write-for-us
- Keyword + inurl:write-for-us
- Keyword + inurl:guest-blogging
Example:
In reality, there are probably lots of other operators you could add, but that should give you a good starting point.
You'll also need to collect an appropriate contact email address for each site.
Often, it can be found on the contact page or the “about us” page. But it may not be as obvious as that. In this case, you can use tools like Hunter.io to quickly extract emails associated with the site.
Just make sure you're contacting the right person (often the site owner or a designated writer).
Qualify these prospects.
Exactly how to qualify them depends on your preferences, but my advice is to look at at least one authority metric and a quick traffic assessment to determine if it's worth the effort.
After all, there's no point in putting all of your effort into writing articles for sites that only get a handful of visitors - unless, of course, it's a new site and you think it has the potential to become a big site in the near future.
A fairly weak backlink from a new site like this could become much stronger over time, provided the site grows and gains authority.
You can use tools like Moz, or if you prefer Domain Rating, you can use Ahrefs. You can read my complete guide to best SEO tools and my comparison between Moz, Ahrefs and SEMrush for more information.
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Here is one of the choices offered by Google search: The Hubspot site with excellent traffic and very good authority. An excellent choice for example for my niche around digital marketing.
Communicate with your prospects.
I am not a fan of rewriting articles and sending them out.
After all, your guest posts need to be unique, and you can't afford to have multiple sites publish exactly the same post.
There are lots of invitation letter templates out there, but they're all pretty similar. However, you will get the best results by developing your own model and customizing it appropriately.
The more personalized and different your emails are, the more responses you'll get and the higher your success rate will be.
But in general, that's what you want:
- Show them your previous work (other invited posts or articles you've written).
- Suggest a few titles that you think are appropriate (you can do this during the initial presentation, but I recommend doing this later in the conversation).
- Write the article and have it published (obviously).
Once you've agreed on a title, word range, and their guidelines, be sure to stick to them and write a unique, well-researched article. Make sure the grammar and spelling are correct so they don't have to make corrections.
And if you can, try to get an indication of when it was published. Sometimes you may find that you need to relaunch 1 or 2 times to get the content across.
2. Retrieving links.
This is a useful tip, especially for big brands that have multiple mentions of their brand or products.
One way to retrieve them is to search on Google with this operator:
“your brand name” -site: yourwebsite.com
You can replace the first keyword with the name of your brand or the name of a specific product that you offer. You will thus obtain all the occurrences of this product on the net, but obviously eliminating the results from your own website.
You can even use Ahrefs Content Explorer (or Scrapebox) to do it. This is useful if you want to extract it into a report or add certain filters to your search.
Then, send a simple email thanking them for mentioning you, while noting that creating a link to you makes it easier for users to click to learn more about your brand.
And if it's a product, that makes even more sense. Just be sure to offer the product page as a link.
3. Your network of contacts.
- Are you or your company part of a professional, industrial or local association or organization?
- Have you spoken or sponsored industry events or conferences?
- Do you have essential suppliers for your products or services?
- Or longtime customers?
All of these areas can be potential sources of links to your brand.
And the links will, of course, have some degree of relevance. You may be more hesitant to ask your customers for a link, but it doesn't cost anything.
However, your product suppliers may have an appropriate “Useful Links” page, as may the associations or organizations you belong to.
Let's see that right away;
4. Links to resource pages.
There are many websites that have “Useful Resources” or “Useful Links” pages.
And if you can find them in your industry or in common niches, it can be a very easy way to create connections.
2 examples of resource pages:
Finding yourself in useful links from niche sites or institutions is very relevant: it is a potential source of traffic that will turn into sales.
It's about finding keyword ideas for your niche or related to your niche and, again, using advanced operators.
Let's go back to the example above:
You have a business that sells woodworking machines. You think of keywords like “woodworking,” “woodworking courses,” “woodworking tips.”
Then, you can use advanced operators like these:
- Keyword + “resource pages.”
- Keyword + + “useful links”.
- Keyword + + “useful links
- Keyword + + useful resources
- Keyword + favorite links
- Keyword + favorite sites
- Keyword + title:resources
- Keyword + title:resources
- Keyword + inurl:links
- Keyword + inurl:links
Then review the results and choose the ones that are right for you. The closer your keyword association is to your own business, the more likely you are to run into competitors.
However, they are unlikely to link to you. However, once you've exhausted your initial keywords, you head to adjacent or complementary niches and get resource pages from there.
5. “Link bait” content.
This is where you need to start being creative with your content strategy.
When it comes to “click-to-click” or “Linkbait” strategies, you're essentially creating content to attract or be more likely to create links.
When executed to perfection, the content brought by the links can go viral.
It can be directly linked to your business and the type of service/product you offer. But it may not be. However, make sure that it is logically linked to your brand in some way or another.
This content could focus on one or more of the following:
- It's a hot topic
- It is funny, sad, inspiring, or evokes another emotion.
- It is extremely valuable (or a tool that can be used)
- A very visual way of displaying content or data (beautiful infographics for example from your blog posts)
I found a good example of this in another article, the one that took advantage of the success of the movie Inception:
It sets out and explains the plot of the movie - which, as some of you may know, is considered to be one of the most thought-provoking storylines in movie history.
It's not entirely related to the brand that developed it (Together - which has now disappeared). However, the brand was an application that allowed people to share photo albums privately.
Sharing memories, the movie is about penetrating into people's memories and dreams.
6. Research your competitors.
This can be very useful if you have a very successful competitor who has been building relationships for a while, and you want to reverse engineer what they did.
Good tools for this are SEMrush or Ahrefs.
Let's take the Ahrefs example of the method:
- Make a list of the top 5 competitors (10 competitors if they have relatively small backlinking profiles).
- Add each site in Ahrefs
- Go to the “Backlinks” section.
- Filter for “Dofollow” links.
- And extract a report into a spreadsheet from these links
Where some people make a mistake is contacting each site and asking them to publish an article for them.
However, you should evaluate each of your competitors' links on a case-by-case basis. What did they do to get this link? What “type of link” is this? etc...
It's often an opportunity to get an idea of what type of content is considered valuable enough to link to another site: which will also be useful for your content strategy in the future.
7. Pay attention to recent trends and news.
Are there important “trends” or current topics that you can rely on to create content?
Google Trends can be a good indicator to see “what's hot”, as well as social networks. This is where you need to think less like an SEO and more like a PR.
Think about what's on the news, or something that people are going to talk about very soon—and create ideas that connect your niche to that topic
Another interesting tool may be BuzzSumo : it shows you the most shared content in your niche and therefore Virals. Pay attention to everything that has led to users sharing this or these contents on the web or social networks.
READ MORE: Find out on the page of Growth Hacks, lots of tips for finding viral content.
8. Overview of the experts.
Have you ever seen articles like “50 experts (from the sector) share their ideas on XXXX”?
It's an expert roundup and is often a great way to attract links, engagement, and traffic. And that's mostly done by caressing people's egos.
Here is a crash course on how to do this.
- Create a content idea for your industry or sector that can be defined as a single question. Make sure this is a question where you could gather enough “influencers” (people with expert opinions) in your industry to provide a comment or a paragraph.
- Make a list of these influencers and contact them by asking them to give their “advice” on a comment or their response to a question.
- Gather all of everyone's data and combine it into one piece. Make sure it's well-built and that it flows like a real item. You will need to create a link to each of the experts.
- Let them know when the article will be published and ask them to help you promote it. It is in their interest, as they are mentioned in the article.
Some of them will probably link to you. And at a minimum, they'll share it on social media, which will only increase its reach.
9. Links to testimonies.
Do you use a variety of tools, products, or services? Especially if they are very relevant to your business, you might be looking for a potential link source.
A few things to note:
- Don't lie. Make sure these are tools that you actually use.
- Make sure they have space for testimonials/success stories and that they are actively providing links.
- In the outreach process, mention specifically how the tool or product has helped you, and what specific results you have achieved with it or how it has helped your business.
The benefit goes both ways, of course, and that's why it works. You benefit from a bit of fame and a certain number of links, while they get a real testimonial about their product from a real user.
Conclusion
Now, this is by no means a comprehensive list of all the strategies you can use to build links. The reality is that there are probably dozens of strategies other than these.
What you need to remember from all of this is that most of these techniques have one essential thing in common: leverage. If you have leverage, something that the other person at the end of the email recognizes, that makes them think and makes it more likely that they will give you a link.
Building backlinks is one of the best SEO strategies. With the good SEO tools and the right blogging strategies, you'll be building your domain authority in no time.
