The SEO world changes fast.
Every week, Google releases new changes into its search algorithm.
For this reason, the link building strategies that work today stop working as time goes by.
In 2017 alone Google made at least 4 major updates to the algorithm along with many many many more small adjustments
To adapt to the new changes, you will need to rethink your link building strategies.
In this article, I will show you 10 algorithm-proof link building strategies you can safely use in 2018 to grow your website and attract more organic traffic.
What You Will Learn
- 10x link building strategies that deliver high quality links
- How to use news to attract dozens of high-quality links fast
- Why taking advantage of peoples egos is a key link building strategy
- And most importantly… how to increase your search traffic in 2018
10 Link Building Strategies For 2018
….but you should only use 3.
Why?
Because it’s easy to get overwhelemd and this tutorial is quite detailed.
So I recommend you read through it all and pick your favourite 3 link building strategies.
Then from those 3 pick the one that is the easiest and quickest for you to execute and do that first.
That will stop you from getting distracted and help you to fast track your results!
#1 – Guest Blogging – Yawn!
Boring right?
But guest blogging is one of the most popular, simplest, and most effective link building strategies there is.
The idea behind guest blogging is simple:
- You create a high-quality piece of content
- You add a few links in the content piece pointing to your site
- You get the piece published in another site, preferably one with a high DA
I won’t lie to you;
Guest blogging isn’t what it’s used to be a few years ago.
Back then, you could use guest blogging as a link exchange without adding much value to the readers.
More recently, however, Google learned the way some people used guest blogging with the intention of “hacking” their algorithm, leading to Matt Cutts (Google’s former Web spam team leader) to say guest blogging was dead.
That statement, nonetheless, ended up being nothing but a threat. Guest blogging, when done with good intentions, still works.
Most websites–both large and small–generally accept links within the content and in the author bio, and these links still provide good value.
The former is very effective, as it can be used with a more natural and better-targeted anchor text, but sometimes is forbidden. The latter is widely accepted, despite not being as effective as the former.
Alex Turnbull, the founder of Groove, used guest blogging as his main link building and content marketing promotion tactic to grow his business to reach over 1 million people.
After publishing in sites like OnStartups, Shopify, KISSmetrics, Buffer, AngelHack, and Copyblogger, Alex ended up attracting more than 10,000 subscribers to Groove’s blog, which drove revenue and growth up.
Another company that was able to drive significant growth thanks to their guest blogging efforts was Buffer.
Leo Wildrich, co-founder and former COO, published 150 guest posts in the first 9 months of the company’s existence, driving over 100,000 signups.
To get started with guest blogging, there are 5 steps you need to follow:
- Find your prospects
- Qualify the right blogs
- Outreach
- Create the content
- Build relationships
The really easy way to do that is with NinjaOutreach that makes the entire process really easy (In fact: I highly suggest you take advantage of the 14 day free trial for your first campaign)
But you can also do it the “good ole fashioned” way-
Find Your Prospects
The first step to getting started with guest blogging is to find your prospects. These are the websites where you are going to publish your piece of content.
Ideally, you want to publish in sites with high DA (domain authority) and high traffic.
To find sites that let you publish your guest posts, use some of the following footprints:
- Keyword + “guest blogger”
- Keyword + “guest post“
- Keyword + “guest article”
- Keyword + “Add Guest Post”
- Keyword + “Submit Guest Post”
- Keyword + “Submit a Guest Article”
- Keyword + “Guest Post Guidelines”
- Keyword + “become a contributor”
- Keyword + “contribute to this site”
- Keyword + “Add Content”
- Keyword + “write for us”
- Keyword + “write for me”
- Keyword + “submit your writing”
- Keyword + “submit article”
- keyword + “inurl:category/guest”
For example, let’s say you wanted like to publish a piece of content about tourism in London.
This is how the results on Google would look like:
Open Excel, and make a list of all the sites you find.
Qualify The Blogs
With the list you have created, run each site through Ahrefs, my favorite backlink analyser, to check their domain authority.
Take the first website in your list, and go to the Site Explorer.
Once you are there, add the website you want to analyze and click on the orange loop icon.
In the menu, take the number that you see in the center of the screen, under the DR sign.
Add these numbers to your list and repeat the process until you have the DA of every site.
If you want to get an approximation of the traffic the websites get, you can also run the sites in SimilarWeb.
In there, add each prospect to the top search bar.
Scroll down, and under “Traffic Overview”, copy the number that shows in “Total Visits” and paste it into your Excel sheet.
Of course all of that takes a lot of time:
Which is why you should use the NinjaOutreach trial for your first campaign that won’t cost you a penny and does all of that in a couple of clicks-
Much much easier!
Reaching Out
With the list of websites, go to each site and contact the manager to check if they are interested in your pitch.
To contact each blog you can use the following template:
Subject: Writing for SITE
Hi [NAME],I was checking out [SITE] today and found the guest post you published from [GUEST POSTER’S NAME].
I loved that article, I just shared it with my audience.
I’d love to be your next guest author. Here are some topics that I think would do really well with [SITE] readers:
- Topic #1
- Topic #2
- Topic #3
Do any of these ideas look good? Let me know your thoughts.
Best,
[YOUR NAME]
I highly recommend that you customise that a little bit and also take a peak at any specific guest post guidelines they may have.
Creating Incredible Guest Post Content
Once you get accepted, start creating the content.
As always, write with the blog’s audience in mind. If you need to dig into the site’s audience, read the comments from previous articles and check the posts that got the most shares and comments.
Don’t hold anything back, write everything you know about the subject.
Add quotes, links to other relevant articles from the site, add images and anything you have to make the article great.
Once you finish writing it, send it their way.
Build Relationships
A great thing about guest blogging is that it helps you build relationships with the blog managers.
Creating a network is important if you ever need help promoting a specific piece of content from your site and you want to publish often in a high-authority site.
Even though the whole guest blogging process can be quite tiring, you can use automation to guest post faster.
BONUS TIP: Engage Their Audience
One of the most overlooked benefits of guest blogging is the ability to open direct conversation with someone elses audience.
What does that mean?
Well it means that you should-
- Respond to all of the comments on your guest post personally
- Monitor shares on social media then reply to say thanks
- Setup Google Alerts for the URL to engage anywhere it gets shared
If you do those 3 things alongside your guest post, you will accelerate your results.
This Section In Short
Guest blogging can take some time, and due to the amount of content you have to create, it can get messy.
- Find your prospects with the help of the Google footprints I previously shared
- Then, qualify every blog you found to make sure you are pitching to the right place.
- Reach out to the right people using the template I shared as a basis.
- Send your guest post and get it published.
- Engage with their audience as much as possible.
It can be a pretty long winded process, but it is an effective one.
To save time and money you should use the 14 day free NinjaOutreach trial to execute your first campaign.
It will cost you precisely nothing and allow you to find, qualify and reach out to hundreds of blogs in just a few clicks.
#2 – Broken Link Building
Most websites have hundreds, if not thousands, of links. Many of them link internally, while others do it externally.
For whatever reason, these links can easily break and stop working.
Most website owners don’t realize this when it happens, and it can break their user experience, reputation, and SEO.
Finding broken links represent a magnificent opportunity for you to build a relationship with the website owner, add value, and most importantly, get a high-quality link.
All of that makes this one of my favorite types of link building.
Broken link building is the tactic Nikolay Stoyanov used to acquire 15 links in 1 day with a 15% conversion rate.
The people of Your Outreach also used broken link building to help one of their clients in the drug rehab niche (a very competitive one) quadruple their organic traffic in under a month.
It really is one of the most under utilized link building strategies in my opinion.
The process of finding and fixing broken links is straightforward:
Define A Target Website
The first step is to define the website where you want to get a link from.
You can pick any website you want, but I’d recommend you be realistic about your expectations.
The chances of getting a link from Inc or The New York Times after you find a broken link are slim to none.
The best websites where you can get a link from are personal blogs and small companies’ blogs.
The owners and managers will be grateful for your help, and they will likely thank you with a link.
Finding The Broken Links
Once you have created the list of the websites you want to get a link from, you need to start searching for the broken links.
To do so, you can use two tools: Check My Links and Ahrefs.
Check My Links is a useful Chrome Extension that finds for links within a specific page.
This tool works great if you have a page with lots of links, like an article with a list of recommendations or a resource page.
For example, let’s say you sold cooking tools. This page features a long list of tools they recommend.
In this page, you’d click on the Check My Links extension and wait until the tool analyzes the whole page.
Unfortunately, on this page, the tool didn’t find any broken links.
It’s a good habit to search for broken links on every website you usually visit, so you become aware of the opportunities available.
In every page you do find a broken link, you need to create a list where you add each link from each page you search. You will use this later on.
If you find this process too time-consuming and prefer to search for broken links within a site, regardless of where the link is located, you can use Ahrefs.
Ahrefs will analyze the site thoroughly and will make a list of all the broken links it has.
To do so, go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and add the website you want to analyze in the main search bar in the middle of the page.
Then, go to Backlinks > Broken.
In this page, you can see all the broken inbound links the website you are analyzing got.
This represents a massive opportunity to pitch the site that linked to the one you are analyzing to get a link from them.
Export this list and save it to a separate Excel sheet.
After you are done with this, go back to the left-side menu, and click on Outgoing links > Broken links.
There, you will find all the broken outbound links from the site you are analyzing.
You can use this list of links to let the website owner know about them.
If the page they linked to still exists, let them know about it.
After you do so, you can also recommend a similar page on your site that’s similar. Later I will show you a template you can use for this purpose.
Just as you did before, export this list.
Finally, you are going to find all the internal broken links. To do so, click in the search menu bar under Pages > Best by links.
There, click on the third button from the left, and click on “404 not found.”
In here, you will find the list of all the internal broken links organized by its URL rating.
This means, the higher a page is on the list, the more link authority it carries. Therefore, if you can get a link from a top page, you will get an important link boost.
As you did before, export the list of links and save it on your sheet.
Repeat the process for every site you want to get a link from.
Contacting The Blog Manager
Once you finished analyzing all the sites and pages, it’s time to contact the blog owner or manager to let them know about the broken link.
Your first goal should be to create a relationship and build some trust.
If you have a page that’s relevant to the page where you find the broken link, then let them know about it.
Don’t do it to get a link; do it to help them have a great page for their readers.
If you don’t have something relevant to offer, focus on fixing the broken link at hand. It’s likely you will find more opportunities later on to ask for a link.
You can use the following template to contact the blog manager:
Hi [MANAGER NAME],
I was searching for some information on [INSERT TOPIC] today when I found your [PAGE TITLE].
I liked it a lot, I already shared it with my Twitter following.
Unfortunately, I came across a few broken links in that page:
BROKEN LINK URL 1 (Add replacement URL–yours or not–if available)
BROKEN LINK URL 2 (Same as before)
BROKEN LINK URL 3 (Same as before)
By the way, I recently published something relevant to your [INSERT TOPIC with URL].
It could be a nice addition to your page.
Anyway, I hope this helps.
Best,
[YOUR NAME]
Send this template to every owner or manager you have found on every site on your list.
You’ll be amazed at the types of responses you receive from people!
This Section In Short
The key to broken link building is finding the right sites to pitch, so to begin, start by picking websites that you’d want to get a link from.
You can find the sites with the most amount of broken links with the help of a tool like Ahrefs, or you can just check case-by-case with the help of Check My Links.
I prefer to use Ahrefs as it’s more scalable.
- Once you have defined the website you want to analyze, add it to Site Explorer.
- Start the analysis by clicking on Backlinks > Broken.
- The links you find in this page are former pages of the website you are analysing that don’t exist anymore, but that still get a link.
- You can use these links to pitch the linking website to replace it to one that points to your site.
- Then, go back to the left-side menu, and click on Outgoing links > Broken links. In here, you will find all the broken links the site is linking to.
- These links represent a great opportunity to ask for a link, as the website is basically linking to another site; this could easily be your own.
- Finally, go to Pages > Best by links. Then, click on the third button from the left, and click on “404 not found.”
The pages you find here are all the most important internal broken pages which the website you are analysing has.
Another great opportunity for pitching.
Once you are done with this process, use the template I gave you to reach out to the site.
#3 – Reverse Engineering Competitor Backlinks
Your competitors probably spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours developing their link building strategies to and acquire high-quality links.
If you have a small budget, why would you try to compete with those companies? You’d most likely fail to get the same quality of links your competitors get.
Instead of hitting your head against your wall in anger and decide to work harder, you should work smarter.
The idea I’m suggesting is simple:
Spy on your competitors and get the links they get.
You are basically drafting with your competitors; they work hard to get links, you follow them and get the same ones.
For example, Brian Dean likes to analyse his competitors’ backlinks to come up with similar but better pieces of content.
Then, he creates a new and improved article which he then uses to pitch to the sites which linked to his competitors so he can also get a link.
That simple tactic has helped him increase his site’s traffic and make it one of the world’s leading SEO sites.
Of course, this is easier said than done, but if you do it right, you can get great results with little effort.
This is how you do it:
Make A List Of Your Competitors
Start by making a list of all your competitors.
It doesn’t matter if they are bigger or smaller than you.
They will all teach you some valuable lessons.
However, it will be harder for you to replicate the links from the bigger sites as they likely get the links thanks to their brand (i.e., the perceived authority they have within a given industry).
If a site has a similar level of domain and brand authority than yours, it will be easier to copy them.
Most importantly, you will see what you could do to acquire more links within a similar budget.
Analyse Their Backlinks
Once you have your list of competitors, you will need to analyse their backlinks profile.
As you already know, my favorite tool for this is Ahrefs.
The analysis is simple: go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, add the link from one of your competitors, and click the orange loop button.
In the left-side menu, click on the link that says Backlinks.
In here you can see all the inbound links my competitor (in this case, a paleo blog) got.
To make your analysis more interesting, click on the Link type button in the bar above the results.
Here you can organize the links by those that are “follow”, governmental, educational, and editorial (i.e., those that are linked naturally within a piece of content).
Let’s say I wanted to see the educational links my competitor got.
These links show this competitor is respected within its industry. Also, you can see some educational sites linked to recipes, which shows interest in that type of content.
Export the list of URLs you find for every competitor.
Once you have found a list of inbound links, start by opening in a separate tab each link one at a time.
From here, you need to start thinking. What did your competitor do to get that link?
As you work through the list replicating links you’ll get a good feel for this process.
You will be able to uncover new opportunities, get a feel for what people like in your industry, and see what type of content gets the most links.
This Section In Short
Reverse engineering is simple, yet it takes some creativity from your end.
You want to know why your competitor got its links; your analysis will try to uncover just that.
- Start by making a list of your competitors in the top 10 search results.
- Ignore those that have few links as well as those that have a strong brand and get links exclusively due to their fame.
- Then analyse the backlinks with the help of Ahrefs or Serped.
- In Ahrefs, go to the Site Explorer, add your competitor, and once you have the results, click on the link that says Backlinks.
- There, click on the Link type button, and export the whole list of URLs you get.
- With this list, you want to open each link and figure out how and why they got the link.
Ask yourself, is it because of the quality of their content? Is it because they offer something unique and valuable?
You want to know the why behind the link.
#4 – Newsjacking
One of the key elements of any effective link building campaign is creating great content that stands out and commands attention.
Creating content that has a higher likelihood of going viral, however, isn’t easy.
Instead of wasting time trying to figure out what people may like, you can take what people are already talking about and use that as inspiration for your next piece of content.
This tactic is known as “newsjacking” because you are taking advantage of a popular topic from the news and use it to create and promote your own content.
A classic case of newsjacking is what Oreo did in the Superbowl 2013.
After the energy shut down in the stadium, they tweeted the following:
This Oreo tweet got more than 15,880 retweets and 6,200 favorites in just a few hours. They also got a lot of press (and the links that come with it), including mentions in The Huffington Post, Wired, and CNET.
You can use this same press to get links to your site.
Here’s how you do it:
Find Popular Topics
Research what people talk about with the help of Google Trends.
You can put your own ideas in the top search bar and see their popularity, or write down the list of topics that show up on the homepage.
The royal wedding, for example, represents a great idea for many articles, especially if you are in the design, beauty, and fashion industry.
If you want to get a deeper look at the current trends, click on the All categories button in the right.
Select the category closer to your industry.
If you click on the Business category, you will find many interesting topics:
Go broad with your list of ideas; later you will analyse them in more detail.
Brainstorm content ideas
With your initial list of popular topics, brainstorm a list of content articles. You want both to have some relationship with one another.
For example, if you have a blog that talks about leadership, you could write something related to Tim Cook’s leadership style-
- 5 Things Sales Managers Can Learn From Tim Cook
- How Tim Cook’s Leadership Style Will Accelerate Your Success
- The 3 Leadership Mistakes Tim Cook Made That You Must Avoid At All Costs
Define And Create The Content
With your list of content ideas, define one that suits you best, and start creating the content fast.
Time is your friend in here. The popularity of some topics lasts only a few weeks, if not days.
Make sure to have the article done no longer than a week after you found it.
Publish And Promote
Talking about a popular topic makes promotion easier, but it’s not a fool-proof way of creating viral content.
As it always happens with content, focus on the promotion. Don’t promote it on social media alone; use it as a way to call the attention of people both within and outside your industry.
Reach outside your industry. Using the previous example, you may want to reach blogs that talk about technology, business, Apple, and Uber.
This Section In Short
Newsworthy content always attract attention (and links).
It’s really easy to do and there are new opportunities every single week!
- To find newsjacking opportunities, get to know what people are searching for with Google Trends.
- You can go deeper with the help of the categories section.
- With the results, brainstorm potential ideas that tie your expertise with the news.
- Create the content fast, and aggressively promote it.
Remember, people like sharing content that’s new and unique; newsjacking can help you achieve just that.
#5 – Influencer Marketing (ego bait)
Dale Carnegie said once “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
Similarly, if you play on famous people’s ego, the chances of getting links from high-authority sites increases significantly.
First, you build relationships with people that manage high-traffic, high-authority sites.
As you know, relationships are one of the key ways to get anything in life, including links.
If you get influencers interested in your article, they will feel invested. Once you publish it, they will feel “pushed” to share and link to it, even if you don’t tell them.
This is the basis of influencer marketing.
Creating ego bait list posts (ELP for short) has helped get 2000 views to a blog that wasn’t even getting 50 visits per month.
In the image above you can see the sessions went up 482%, while the pageviews increased 1382% and the users 624%.
If you want to get started with ego bait, follow these steps:
Pick Your Headline
As I recommend on the ego bait list article, start with the headline, which sums up the idea of the article.
You can use the following structure:
Number + (industry) blogs/experts + promise/keyword
Pick a list of influencers from your industry, and define the promise that your article will fulfill.
You can pick as little or as many as you want, depending on how much in depth you want to go with each influencer.
For example you might want to ask what everyone’s favorite link building tools are.
That makes it easy for the influencers to know exactly what they are expected to write about. The audience will also appreciate a specific piece of advice they can use on their own.
Define the Question
Even though you have already specified the main promise of the article, you want to define the question you will ask the influencers.
Be specific and focus on one question only.
Influencers are busy people, that’s why you want them to answer your question with the greatest level of detail possible.
When defining the question, remember what people would want to read about.
Pick a unique angle for the question.
For example, if I were to do another SEO ego bait article like the one I showed you before, I’d focus on something like the best local SEO strategy or favorite 30 minute SEO quick win.
It still focuses on SEO, but has a new angle that brings a good answer to people’s problems.
Find The Experts
Create a list of all the experts you want to contact.
You can brainstorm the experts or search on Google.
Make sure to define experts that have sites with high domain authority as well as social following. This will make the sharing as well as the linking more powerful.
After you define the list of experts, find their contact information.
Look in their personal websites, use LinkedIn, or simply ask them on Twitter.
Again I recommend you take advantage of the Ninja Outreach trial to do this, just enter your keyword and it’s all ready for you-
Then in just a couple of clicks you can send them all an email with your question otherwise you have to do it manually which can take some time.
Outreach
Finally, send the influencers an email with your question.
If they don’t answer right away, wait a few days.
Follow up two times more, and if they don’t answer, ask a different influencer.
NinjaOutreach can automate this process end to end including all of the followups.
You should get a response rate around 10-25%, maybe more if you already have a relationship with some of the influencers or if you are one yourself.
This Section In Short
Creating egobait articles is simple.
The key to success is to structure your article for success and be organized with the pitching.
- Start by defining your headline.
- It must convey the value right away so people want to click on it.
- You can use the structure I recommend which is: Number + (industry) blogs/experts + promise/keyword
- Then, define the question (or questions) you want to ask to the influencers.
- Make sure to make it super concise and actionable.
- Then, define the experts you want to contact.
- Finally, contact the experts with the question you previously defined.
- Once you publish your content, make sure you contact the experts so they help you promote it.
Also, remember it’s all about the relationships; once an expert knows about your site, it will be easier for them to link to your site in the future (assuming they like your site).
BONUS EGO BAIT STRATEGY: Take a look at this awesome link building tutorial that you can use to ego bait people in a different way.
#6 – Data Driven Content For Link Building
Creating content that drives attention has become harder and harder as time goes by.
To create relevant and useful content, it needs to stand out.
Using unique data to develop and enrich your content can help it stand out, command the attention it deserves, and attract the link your website needs.
People like knowing why something is true; if you state a fact without backing it up, it will be hard for you to be taken seriously.
In 2013, Alex Turnbull and the rest of the Groove team started publishing about everything they did to hit that goal.
Being transparent about the amount of money they were making in their journey to hit the $100k in MRR helped them attract a lot of traffic and attention.
That’s also related to what I do with my monthly income reports; people like learning from successful people, by showing them how I do it others follow me and respect me.
To get started, here are a few ideas you can implement to make your content more data-driven:
- Do an in-depth research on your industry
- Find unique data and use it on your content
- Survey your email list subscribers, industry peers, or customers
- Create attractive and unique graphics from your own or someone else’s data
There is no step-by-step plan for this. Rather, it’s a process you need to follow.
Before you hit the “Publish” button, ask yourself: does this article has any unique data? If not, try to add some so you give it more substance.
Here are some examples that have been published here-
#7 – Reddit Link Building
Reddit is an online community with over 1.5 billion monthly visitors and 36 million users.
Unfortunately, doing marketing on Reddit can be a real pain.
Redditors (as they are known) are famous for being super protective and sensitive to anything that’s remotely promotional.
The slightest insinuation of a commercial intent behind a post can end up in downvotes, aggressive comments, and even ban you from a subreddit.
Despite this challenges, the key to doing marketing is to win over the hearts of the Redditors.
How you do it? You become one of them.
You can do that in less than 5 minutes a day, if you know how to do it.
The key lies in your karma.
Karma is what you get when you post links, or comments, that add value to a given subreddit.
The more Karma you have, the more people will trust you and your links.
If people trust your links, they will click them.
The end result? Traffic, lots of it.
Eddy Azar, saw a 10,404% increase in his blog’s traffic thanks to one reddit post. He also grew a brand-new Medium blog from 0 readers to 14,040 in 30 days thanks to reddit.
Plus Reddit is a great website and often my first point of call for information when researching anything.
To increase your Karma, here’s what you need to do:
Create A New Account
Go to Reddit homepage and click on the button that says “Become a Redditor.”
Add your information and create your account as you would on any other site.
Note 1: Skip this step if you already have a good rep with your Reddit account.
Note 2: You can also buy an established account with lots of Karma.
Find Your Subreddits (sub-categories)
Make a list of subreddits that are related to your site’s category and that you also find interesting.
You want to add only the subreddits that have at least 5k followers, if possible 10k and above.
You can check that information out in the right sidebar:
Find Useful Links
Make a list of useful websites, articles, tutorials and videos in your niche that you will share in the subreddits to gain Karma.
Don’t start from scratch; check your bookmarks and the links you shared on your Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Make sure to have at least 30, so you can use them for at least an entire month.
You can also add images, infographics, documents and books.
What’s important is that they all add value to the redditors and are relevant to the sub-reddits you are working in.
Share Your Links
Add the first link from your list to the most popular subreddit.
To maximize your chances of success, make sure to use attractive titles that command attention.
If you want to know what redditors like in a specific subreddit, click on the “Top” tab and in “Links from” click on “All time.”
You can also add a custom description with your own thoughts on it, which redditors will appreciate.
If you follow the 4 steps shown above for five minutes a day every day, after one week you will have earned a good amount of Karma.
Repeat that every week for a few months, and you will become an authority in the subreddits you’ve chosen.
After you start to gain Karma, you can start to publish your own content.
Assuming the quality is high and your intention isn’t spammy, redditors will appreciate your content, upvoting it, and driving traffic to your site.
This Section In Short
Reddit link building is more of an art than a science. Redditors can be a hard audience, so what I recommend is you build karma before publishing your content.
- To build karma, create an account.
- Pick content that hasn’t been published before and that you find interesting and useful, and publish it on the subreddit of your choice.
- Repeat this process for some time (a few weeks to 2-3 months), and once you have built enough karma in your account, publish your content.
Make sure to keep publishing other people’s content so redditors don’t think you are spamming them.
#8 – Mention Link Building (Link Reclamation)
If you have a respected brand in your industry or location, people likely write about you online.
When someone mentions you online, an opportunity to get a link appears.
Unfortunately, many times people forget to link to your site when they mention you.
Therefore, reclaiming your links is one of the easiest and most effective strategies you can use.
Here’s how you get started:
Look For Your Company Online
In a moment I am going to show you an easy and free way to automate this but for now I want you to understand the process.
First, search your site on Google.
You can use your name, some of your employee’s name (especially if they are known in the industry or location), your products (if they are unique), your company’s name, and a combination of those.
But this is an easy search you can run-
“matthewwoodward.co.uk” -inurl:matthewwoodward.co.uk
This returns a list of results that mention my domain name but excludes all the pages from my own blog.
Be creative with your keywords; people may misspell your company’s name more often than you think.
Find your mentions
Make a list of all the sites you find where you have gotten a mention.
Check for-
- mentions without a link
- with broken links
- or with incorrect links that lead to a 404
Outreach
Once you have created the list of websites, find the person who’s responsible for managing it.
If you are in doubt, use the “Contact” page, but it’s better to go straight to the person who can actually fix the mention.
Ninja Outreach also has a great email finding tool that can find the email addresses for any domain name-
Once you have the email addresses you can just use this template-
But don’t forget to customise it first!
Hey [NAME],
I’ve seen you mentioned us on [PAGE].
Thanks a lot!
By the way, I’ve seen you haven’t linked to our site. It’d be of great use for your readers if you added a link, so they can learn more about us.
Here’s the link you can use: .
Thanks a lot,
[YOUR NAME]
Setting Up Automatic Alerts
Many people won’t answer you because it’s been a long time since they published the page where they mentioned you.
That’s why it’s so important to respond fast whenever you get a mention without a link.
To do this, set up Google Alerts so you’re always ready.
My detailed tutorial will teach you all of the in’s and out’s of this.
But in essence – every time you see you get a new mention alert, make sure to check there’s a link.
Otherwise, contact the writer or editor of the website and ask for the link, using the template shown before.
This way, you’ll be able to bring high-quality links to your site with no effort from your end.
This Section In Short
Link reclamation is one of the easiest link building techniques there is.
You are basically getting links from people who already like you, so your pitching will be more effective than usual.
- To get started, look for mentions your company or site has gotten via Google.
- Whenever you find a mention without a link, contact the site owner asking for a link with my template.
- Finally, set up alerts with the help of Google Alerts to make sure never to miss any future mentions.
This is a quick win link building strategy that nearly anyone can apply instantly!
#9 – Content Syndication
Imagine if you could get your content in front of thousands of hungry eyes without having to write a single word.
That’d be great, wouldn’t it?
No extra work, more traffic, more money.
That’s not fantasy; there’s a simple tactic that can help you put your existing content in sites with lots of traffic with almost no effort from your end (except to pitch it).
I’m talking about content syndication.
Content syndication is the process of placing a piece of content in other third-parties sites which will then republish it and promote to their own audiences.
The SearchEngineJournal team were able to increase pageviews by 34% with content syndication.
And they did all of that just by republishing existing content!
Checkout these 2 tutorials to get started-
But all great syndication starts with…
Create A Great Piece of Content
It goes without saying, but to have any chances of getting your content syndicated, your content must be top-notch.
Once you are known, it’s easy to get the attention of other bigger sites just by using your fame.
But when you are getting started, the only way to get republished is to have something that people love. And when I say “love,” I mean people are sharing and linking to that piece of content.
The only reason why another high-authority site will republish your content is if it already has gotten good results.
In other words, the republisher wants to know that if they put your content on their site, it will get more of the traffic that you got on your own site.
That’s why your content must be the best there is about the topic at hand.
If you are stuck with that you can take a look at these content creation tools or learn how to steal your competitors content.
Make Sure Your Content Gets Traffic, Shares, and Links
Re-publihsing your content on sites like Medium or LinkedIn Pulse is easy because anyone can do it.
But if you want to get republishing in a bigger site in your industry or even in a magazine you need to prove your worth-
As you can see above I was able to get a placement in a magazine – in fact I have now had multiple placements in that magazine over the past years.
So when pitching bigger sites/opportunities for syndication you need to be serious.
Knowing the number of unique visits, social shares, inbound links, and even leads generated and revenue can help you prove that your content works and that it makes sense getting it republished.
You might want to consider your top 10 performing content pieces of the past year for syndication.
Outreach
If you have created a successful piece of content (which is the hardest and most important thing you have to do), then what’s next is relatively easy.
Make a list of sites you want to pitch. These sites can be huge, like Inc or Business Insider, which are known for syndicating content.
BONUS List of over 500 sites to syndicate your content
You can also contact sites that accept guest posts and ask them if they are willing to republish your piece of content.
Go to the contact page of each site, and get the contact information for each editor or manager.
Then send them a pitch like this:
Hi [NAME],
I was checking out [SITE] today and found the great guest post you published about [TOPIC AND LINK].
I loved that article.
I’ve recently published a similar article where I explain [BRIEFLY MENTION MAIN POINT]. So far, it got me:
- X unique visits
- X social shares
- X inbound links
- [MORE METRICS]
I think your audience will find it useful this piece of content as mine did, and I’m sure if you republish it, you’ll also get similar results like the ones I got.
If you are interested, I’ll send the article over!
Best,
[YOUR NAME]
When sending the article, make sure to add a few editorial links within it, so you can not only get the link when the republisher mentions where the article comes from (i.e., your site), you will also get high-quality links with great anchor.
This Section In Short
Content syndication is probably the most overlooked yet powerful link building tactic there is.
- The hardest part is creating an amazing piece of content that gets shares, traffic, and links.
- In the meantime, search for sites that accept guest posts and syndicated content.
- Contact these sites letting them know about your successful piece of content.
Most likely, they will be motivated by the great results you’ve gotten to republish it, giving you more links and traffic.
I’ve used this strategy to get published in multiple magazines, websites and e-letters but you can use LinkedIn or Medium to get your feet wet.
#10 – Local Citations
Local SEO link building is often overlooked when doing national or global SEO campaigns – but it’s a great way to go after some links your competitors might be ignoring.
Doing link building for local companies is similar but not the same as doing it for an international business.
While getting links is the key element to rank a site (whether that’s an e-commerce store, a blog, or a software website), local sites need citations.
Citations are what makes Local SEO so different.
The more citations you get, the higher you’ll rank your local site.
Citations are any online mention of the name, address, and phone number (also known as NAP) for a local business – but you’ll also be getting some great backlinks at the same time.
The best way to get them is to add your website to local directories.
To give you one simple example of the power of citations for local sites and how they work:
A small accountancy firm from Milton Keynes increased its keyword visibility 900% thanks to citation building.
The key wasn’t that they built citations once; they kept building them month after month.
Over the years, the 3,000+ citations they created a compound effect on the overall site traffic, helping it acquire massive amount of local-focused traffic, as you can see below:
However, creating local citations takes a lot of time and money (citation building can cost between $0.5 to $4, or even more).
Fortunately, I’ve found a way to build 100 citations for $16.
Here’s how you get started:
Sign Up For Whitespark
This is easy; go to Whitespark and sign up for an account.
You can choose the free plan, which can help you give a test of the site’s capabilities, or you can choose one of the paid plans.
Make A List Of Keywords
As it always happens with SEO, before you can do any kind of link building, you need to know the keywords you want to rank for.
Make a list of all the keywords that are directly related to your local business.
Play with your neighborhood, city, and region to make sure you are exploring all the possible options.
Still, focus on the regions where your business is located.
For example, if you are a dentist from Manchester, you don’t want to be ranking for “dentist london,” as it wouldn’t make any sense.
Add Your Target Keywords
Insert your main target keywords into Whitespark.
After a few minutes, the tool will return a list of a few hundred results-
Each result will recommend a place to build a citation given the keywords you entered.
Export the results and make it ready to outsource.
You want the VAs to take this list and start creating citations fast.
Outsource The Citation Building
Here’s where most people would start creating citations manually, which could end up wasting them dozens of hours which could be cheaply outsourced.
That’s why I recommend heading to a marketplace like Upwork, Fiverr, or PeoplePerHour and get help from cheap virtual assistants.
Start searching for people that specialize in “data entry,” “web research,” or “link building.”
Put your budget not more than $5 an hour, even less if you want.
Contact the possible people you want to hire and sent them the document explaining to them what you want them to do.
Make sure to test a few different VAs; make them create a few citations and see what results they bring.
You want a VA who can build 10-15 citations per hour. You also want the citations to be well-built (i.e., no errors in the NAP).
With the results, pick the one that brought the best results in the least amount of time.
If you can make the VA create a few dozen citations in one hour, you will end up spending less than $1 on each one, which will make your citation building process greatly scalable and effective.
This Section In Short
Creating citations is one of the most important elements of a successful local SEO campaign but is often overlooked by SEO’s as a way to get links as well.
To create citations cheaply and on scale, follow the advice I laid out:
- Start by opening up a Whitespark account.
- Make a list of your most important keywords and add it to the tool.
- Once you get the results, you will have a long list of local directories and sites where you can add your company.
- Instead of creating each citation manually, get a cheap VA from Upwork, Fiverr, or PeoplePerHour, and make them do it themselves.
In a few weeks, you will be able to create dozens, if not hundreds, of cheap citations.
Which also means a ton of high quality backlinks at the same time!
Wrapping It Up
The new year brings lots of new opportunities to your table.
Today, you’ve seen 10 link building strategies you can implement in 2018 for maximum results:
- Guest blogging
- Broken link building
- Reverse engineering
- Newsjacking
- Influencer marketing
- Data-driven content
- Reddit marketing
- Link reclamation
- Content syndication
- Citation building for local SEO
Now it’s time to get started.
Pick 3 link building strategies you want to use this year.
Then, put on your calendar the first step of the first tactic you’ve chosen to be done this week.
Spread the following steps in the next few weeks, and repeat the process with the other 2 strategies of your choosing.
Before long, your website will have gotten dozens of high-quality links that will drive lots of traffic to your site.
And before you go:
Please tell me-
Which 3 link building strategies are you going to be focusing on this year?