500 SEO Tips: Essential Strategies To Bulldoze Through Google's Rankings, Increase Traffic and Go Viral
Chapter 4: Linkbuilding
The more quality links your page gets, the higher your rankings will become. Once you have some content that's worthy of getting backlinks, you can start getting links by using the countless methods below. You'll learn practically every linkbuilding technique that exists or has existed. Also, don't worry – these linkbuilding techniques won't get your site penalized.
78. Linkbuilding Is Essential
Links are the currency of search engines. Linkbuilding is not dead. It never will be. Getting links show trust to Google, and give you a boost in PageRank. Aim for PR 2-4 links, as they provide the most value.
In short, links will raise your ranking in Google and get you to a higher spot for the keywords you are targeting.
Guest Posting Your Way To Fame And Success On The Web
79. What is guest posting?
Guest posting involves you writing a blog post for someone else who will publish this post on their blog. Instead of posting that content on your blog, it goes on someone else’s blog or website and you do it for free. So what’s the big deal? The positive with this tactic is that you can link to your site at least twice in the post. Guest posting is probably the easiest way to gain backlinks because it is simple to find blogs which are happy to publish your content.
The advantages of guest posting include the fact that:
· On high authority blogs, your site will get a ton of new readers who will get to know your brand/business/website or blog
· Your rankings on Google will increase
· More PageRank (especially from PR4-7 sites)
· Opportunities to work with bloggers in the future
80. There Are Two Types of Guest Posting, Watch Out
There are two kinds of guest posting which each make a huge impact on your blog. The first kind of guest posting is “guest posting for backlinks”. Your focus is to get at least two high PR backlinks from this post and you don’t care about actually getting any referral traffic from that site.
The second type is guest posting for promotion. Your aim here is not to get high PR backlinks but exposure. By writing on high power websites with huge audiences, your blog will get some exposure.
81. Find Blogs To Post On With Google Search
Believe it or not, you can actually search for blogs to write on without joining any guest blogging directories. It’s simple. Identify whatever niche your blog focuses on, but keep it broad. Eg: fitness, science, cooking, machinery, DIY, children etc.
Then, perform the following Google searches. Fill in the [niche] with your own one. So, if my niche was technology, a search I would enter into Google is “technology write for us”.
“[niche] write for us”
“[niche] guest posting”
“[niche] guest blog”
Alternatively, you can put in the name of a well-known person in your niche and find out where they have been guest posting.
“[person] guest post”
82. AllTop: Another Way To Find Blogs
Created by former Apple evangelist, Guy Kawasaki, this site showcases some of the best blogs in your niche. Simply go to www.alltop.com and select your niche from the dropdown menu. You will see a list of the most popular blogs in its category. Make note of these and search for all of them. Check whether or not these blogs allow guest posts or just contact them. See the template below for securing that guest post.
83. Find More Guest Posting Opportunities With MyBlogGuest
MyBlogGuest (www.myblogguest.com) allows you to find blogs that allow guest posting. You'll get all the specs and stats too, which is always handy. Sign up for an account and click into the category that your website belongs in. You will find multiple websites/blogs which allow guest posts. They will specify what PageRank their website is (most of the time) as well as good reasons why you should write for them. All kinds of specifications such as max. number of backlinks, word count, imagery and more are included along with the description.
This is a very useful resource for all website owners and bloggers because you get complete access to literally hundreds of domains that want guest posts. They are not only domains that accept guest posts but want them so they will be very grateful to have you!
It’s like the Facebook of blogs and websites.
84. Check The Blog You Want To Post On First
The biggest mistake you could make when guest posting is writing on a blog that just isn’t worth the time. There are millions out there to choose from so this means that you have all the leverage in this situation. When you start finding blogs to write on, remember to check the following factors:
· PageRank – A low PR (0-2) blog isn’t worth it. There are thousands of high PR blogs to choose from, so don’t go for the low PR blog.
· Two Links – How many links can you get? One link is too little, for all that effort. Two links is sufficient, and won’t overpromote your website. Check with the blog/website owner before you submit your post to see how many links are allowed. Make sure that the links allowed are “dofollow” (Google will take this link into consideration when ranking) instead of “nofollow” (Link will not be counted as a backlink to your site).
85. Find Blogs That Pay You To Write For Them
Some blogs even pay you to write for them. It's a great way to get some promotion for your website, write about what you love and earn some cash in the process. Prices start from about $15 per blog post and can range up to $300 in some cases. Some blogs may not allow you to place a link in the post since they've paid you and expect no "promotion" in the article. Others may allow you to post a link in the Author Bio of your blog post. Keep an eye out for blogs that pay, because most of the time, you'll find it very difficult to actually place a link in your post.
86. Send Bloggers An Email
When contacting a blog for a guest post opportunity, you can use the template below if you wish.
Dear [Blog Owner Name],
I am a blogger who writes on [website URL] in the [your niche] area and I am a great fan of your blog. What useful resources for [blog’s target audience]! I have written a blog post about [topic] and I would be thrilled if you could post it on your blog.
My blog post deals with [topic] and explores key ideas such as [topic]. As an online writer and social media expert, I think it will be a hit with your readers! Let me know if you are interested and I will send the post to you.
Thanks,
[Your Name]
87. How To Increase Your Chances Of Securing That Guest Post
There are several things you can do to make sure that you are accepted for a blog post. I've contacted tens of blogs every year for guest posts and found that the following strategies work:
· Personalize Your Email
· Have A Nice Sounding Email Address – Nothing signals spam more than a nonsensical email address filled with numbers, silly sounding words and other gibberish. If your email address is something like, 198gardeninginphoenix56@email.com you're going to have a hard time getting any replies back. For example, email such as phoenixgardencentre@email.com or tim@gardencenter.com is a lot more professional sounding than the one above.
· Have A Sample Of Your Writing Ready – The best way to show them that you can write is by having a sample of your writing ready. Attach it to the email.
· Be professional and witty at the same time
· Give an outline of what the post would cover
· Give a few reasons why your suited to the job
· Mention any social media profiles you have, any reports/books you've written or anything else that will help establish your credibility
88. Offer To Write Them A Sequel To One of Their Posts
Are there any blog posts which have done extremely well on their blog? Try and see if you can make a sequel to that blog post. Since the blog post was very successful, there is no reason why your sequel shouldn't be equally as successful, if not better. It's foolproof. By rejecting you, they just lost a boatload of traffic which they could have got for free. They're saying no to free traffic.
It can be difficult to think of a sequel, but get your creative juices flowing. For example, the sequel after "How To Make Drizzled Lemon Cake" could be "3 Lemon Cake Recipes With A Unique Twist". Basically, advance from the last post by coming with a USP/unique selling point (I know it's a business term, but it works for SEO too. Right?) and advancing the idea further on.
89. Use The "Blank Post" Technique – Rarely, it's better not to mention the titles you want to write about such as if you get a rejection from them or can't think of any titles. You can use the "blank post" technique instead. This means that in your email, you shouldask them if there is anything that they are thinking of writing, or any specific post they want written. If a blogger turns down your titles or ideas, try the blank post technique instead.
For example this snippet would be included in your email, "Before I start mentioning titles, I just wanted to know if there is any topics you'd like more content on or if there's any ideas you thought would work. Let me know, and I'll write those blog posts for you."
Who'd turn you down with a strong offer like that?
Getting Links On Resource/Sales Pages
90. Testimonials
Enjoy a product or service? Most companies offer you with the chance to provide a comment or personal experience on their “Testimonials” page. It’s even better when you have a website (which you do) so at least you have some authority. Companies love linking back to the person who gave the testimonial because it gives more “reality” or realism to the actual comments. A headshot of yourself should also be included, but that is optional.
91. Join The “What the Press Say” Page
You will see that on many company websites, they will have a “What the Press Say” page. This is different from a testimonials page because the reviews come from websites, review sites and the blogging community rather than everyday people who don’t have websites.
You can find out if there are any companies in your niche who have these pages by searching the following strings on Google:
“[niche] what the press say”
“[company] press”
You should find a couple of websites with these pages that are in your niche.
Write an in-depth and high quality review of your favorite product by this company and post it on your blog. Then, head over to the company’s contact page and send them an email saying that you have written a review about their products and you would appreciate if it was put on their press page.
Most companies are happy to put your review on their page since the more positive reviews they have, the more customers will buy. However, others can be a little strict on what they allow. They may only consider your website should it have an audience, search traffic and about fifty to one hundred posts. To avoid this, build up your blog with plenty of in-depth posts and make them social media friendly (more on this in coming chapters) before approaching high end companies.
Build up your brand by guest blogging in your niche and having an active social media profile.
92. Link Requests
Sounds desperate right?
Think about it: Your aim as a website or blog is to create content which people will enjoy. Let’s say a fellow writer says they read your article on X and they also wrote something related to X. You check out their content and it blew your socks off. You realize how much value it would provide to your reader. Wouldn’t you link to it?
Most bloggers receive countless link requests and by now, they are probably tired of anything to do with links. But send them a request and you might get lucky.
93. Library Resource Pages
Libraries have resource pages on their websites which link to all kinds of articles, guides, tools and apps. They are always on the lookout for new guides to list on their resource pages, so if you have a resource such as an ultimate guide, short ebook or a research article, contact the library and you could get lucky. The links from a library's resource page are worth a lot and are considered of a very high quality.
"library [local area] resources"
"resources [name of library in your area]"
94. How To Get .edu Links
One link from a university website (eg: www.harvard.edu) and your website is set for life. University or faculty websites have a PageRank of 7, 8 and 9. Getting onto Harvard’s homepage is pretty much impossible. Getting onto any of their pages is pretty much impossible, too.
However, most university websites have resource pages or “Further Links/References” pages which give internet links, documents and other kinds of goodies to students. They can read more about a topic, get more information on a certain aspect of the course or check out learning materials available on the web. These pages have a PR of 4, 5 and 6 so getting your content on it will prove life-changing in terms of link juice.
Getting links from university websites doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to write on “academic” subjects such as the sciences, literature or health. To find these resource pages, type the following search strings in to Google:
“site:.edu [your niche] resources”
“site:.edu [your niche] further reading”
“site:.edu [your niche] web links”
Take a look at some of the pages and see what kind of resources they link to. Are these pages high quality, with original imagery or are they mediocre? Can you do better?
If you can create a very useful resource page with at least 10 original images, personal experiences and some statistics, you can really appeal to a faculty.
Simply head over to the contact page of that specific department or get the contact email of the professor in that department. You can send them an email asking them to include your link on their page as it would greatly help students in their learning. If they are a local university and you live in their vicinity, your response rate will be even higher. Or, if you know a student going to university, you can ask them to recommend your resource (and that it greatly aided them in their studies!) to their professor who edits the department website.
Simple But Extremely Effective Tactics To Get High Value Links From Fellow Bloggers and Niche Influencers
95. Contact The Right Person For Outreach
Remember that when you are sending an outreach email (link requests, guest posts or broken link building), you need to send it to the right email. Many companies have a general email (eg: help@company.com) where you have to send an email to that address. However, make sure you contact the right person for outreach. Do some digging around the site before you just go and contact the general email. Look for the person's email that’s in charge of the blog, or a special email for guest post submissions. A simple thing like this could really speed up the time it takes to reach the right person, and make sure it actually gets read.
96. If You Have A Service/Online Course/Product/Ebook, Give To Bloggers For Free – Bloggers LOVE receiving a free product from a company, because it gives them some content to write about and also, they get a very valuable product for free. Many bloggers have a huge audience or email list and so, getting a review from them will result in a lot of exposure. Some bloggers focus on products only whilst others focus on specific niches such as cooking or technology.
97. Try Tomoson To Get Links From Bloggers
Tomoson (www.tomoson.com) is a service which connects bloggers with companies who offer products for free, in exchange for a review of their product (and a link). If you have any products you'd like to offer them, you can create a promotion on Tomoson. As soon as you post it, you'll get bloggers along with their stats all vying to review the product. You can check their blogs PageRank, DomainAuthority before you select them to receive the product. Since multiple bloggers will apply for the product, you'll get multiple links from credible sources at the same time.
98. Did Your Email Get Opened?
When you start contacting tens of people every day, for linkbuilding or PR or whatever, you need to be in the know on whether they opened your email or not. That way, you can see if your emails are working or are just getting sent into their Spam/Junk inbox. You need the power to know that, since you're sending emails at such a large scale. That's why you should use BananaTag (www.bananatag.com) , which is an email tracking system. It works for Gmail and Outlook, and is free for up to five emails a day that you want to track.
It also gives you the option to send emails at specific times automatically. If you write five emails in one go, and want them to be sent on a Tuesday in the afternoon (most likely time to be opened), you can schedule that with BananaTag.
99. Build Relationships With Your Niche's Key Influencers
Building and maintaining a great relationship with some of your niche's key influencers will give you a lot of leverage in the years to come. The best way to get key influencers to know you is to use social media and become an active commenter on their blog.
When they post a personal status update, comment back. For example, if they achieved something, congratulate them.
On Twitter, retweet some of their tweets and then, start commenting on their tweets too. Be smart in your comments and always add a personalized touch. You could also tweet something like, "My favourite blog is @SomeBlog'sHandle. I love the fact that it answers every question I have about #random_hashtag.". Make sure to use their Twitter handle (username, with the @ in front) so that they get notified of their mentioning.
Comment on a few of their blog posts and give praise. This lets them know that you are a great fan of theirs and enjoy reading about that niche. It shows that you are a real person with an interest (and a great website, may I add!), not just an anonymous 'botface'.
100. How To Find Influencers on Twitter
With a new tool called SocialBro (www.socialbro.com), you can identify influencers on Twitter who are following you. Because they are following you, you might find it easier to contact them since they have made some sort connection with you before.
Sign up for a free account and you can start finding people to both share your content and link to it, quickly and easily. This tool can also filter the number of followers people have, how long they were on the site, how influential they are and so on. This allows you to narrow down your list in a short time.
101. See Who Mentions You On Social Media, And Ask Them For A Link
If you or your brand gets mentioned on social media, you should approach that person and see if they've got a website. If they do, you can ask them for a link. But, make sure that their website is in the same niche as yours!
102. Monitor Your Social Media Mentioning At A Larger Scale
If your brand gets mentioned more than a few times a day on social media, you'll need to automate the process of recording the people who mentioned your brand.
For larger scale social media monitoring, you will need to use a free tool called RowFeeder (www.rowfeeder.com). This tracks and records all the social media posts from Twitter and Facebook which contains your name or username and your website's hashtag or keyword. All the reporting is done in Excel, allowing you to track who's talking about you, and what they're saying. This list in Excel will continue to grow, meaning that you will get a list of potential people for outreach. If they mentioned you on social media, they're more than likely going to mention you on their website!
103. Mention Key Influencers In A Blog Post, And They'll Link Back
If you mention some of the main key influencers in your niche, in a blog post, they are more than likely going to share your post on social media because of their ego. It's a quick way to get a lot of social media traffic to your site and in turn, a lot more exposure. Since these influencers have tens of thousands of social media followers, a lot of people will get to know your site and may even link back to it, if they like what the website or service has to offer.
To avail of this strategy, make a post called something like these; "5 [Your Niche] Rising Stars You Need To Watch" , "7 [Your Niche] Experts That Provide The Best Advice Every Time", "4 [Your Niche] [People] We Can't Help But Love" or "Top 5 [People] Making A Massive Stamp On [Niche]. Write about their life story, their achievements and their path to success.
Send them a quick email saying that you featured them in an article you've just written and give the link to the article.
Chances are, they'll probably share it on social media to the thousands and link to it on their own website.
Viral Linkbuilding With Infographics
104. Get Linkbuilding (and Go Viral) With Infographics
Infographics combine the best of graphic design and information, ie: displaying information such as statistics and facts using graphics, images and colour making it easy to digest. Infographics are all in the range right now, you see them on Pinterest, on Facebook and all over the most popular blogs and news websites. Infographics are quick to create, when you consider the amount of traffic that will be arriving to your website after seeing the infographic.
No one really knows why infographics rose to fame in the way that they did. But all I know is that if you want to have a chance of competing online, you need to start producing viral-worthy infographics.
And it's a lot easier than you think. Learn how to make infographics in Chapter 10.
105. Refresh An Old Infographic
For example, let’s say I have found an infographic about social media statistics for 2013. That year is in the past, it’s boring and it’s no longer relevant to us. An infographic on 2015 or 2016 is so much more appealing than one made a couple of years ago. Sound appetizing? Here’s how to give it a go.
Firstly, search for some real old infographics using the following search strings:
“infographic” [your niche]
“infographic” [your niche] 2013
“infographic” [your niche] stats 2013
“infographic” [your niche] facts 2013
You should find at least five minimum, all the way up to twenty. Check out some of the infographics which you suspect may be out of date. The best way to find out is to see if they have a year in their title, description or in the search result itself.
1) Select an infographic you think is ideal and copy its URL. This link will be used later on.
Since these are in your niche, I’m sure you can create an infographic of your own that covers the same topics as the out of date ones you saw in Google’s results. You don’t need to hire anyone, it is very easy to do it yourself.
2) Make the infographic by following the tips in Chapter 10, or else – hire a freelance designer on Elance to do it for you. Keep the statistics fresh and up to date. Make the design more appealing than the old infographic.
3) Get the URL of the infographic that is out of date.
Next, you will need to find out who exactly is linking to this particular infographic. Tapping into their backlinks is easy. Head over to www.ahrefs.com and create a free account by subscribing to their website. This web tool allows you to see how many backlinks a URL has – and where those backlinks are.
4) Input the link of the infographic you would like to check and the tool will track down how many backlinks that link has. Click on “Outgoing Links” in the horizontal bar and then “Links” which is in the dropdown menu. You will then be given a list of all the websites that link to that specific page.
Visit these linking pages and contact them saying that the infographic they were linking to is out of date and that you have a recent infographic with fresh and up to date facts and statistics.
106. Send This Template To The Blogger To Replace The Old Infographic Link
Here is a template you can use:
Hi [Blogger/Website Owner’s Name],
I recently came across your page on [whatever category]. Here is the URL, [URL of page]. Great stuff! I just want to let you know that there is a link to an infographic by [Company/Website]. Here is the URL: [link]
As you can see, this infographic is out of date and provides little value to your readers. I have produced a new and up to date infographic which provides the same purpose as the one you are currently linking to. If you are willing to check it out, here it is: [your infographic URL].
As suiting the needs of the reader, I think that an up to date infographic will keep readers coming back to your website! Well done on that article, by the way and keep up the great work!
Thanks a whole lot!
[Your Name]
With a pitch like this, I think you can garner some pretty high PR backlinks from one image. Again, it takes time, work and a whole heap of effort but a template like the above takes a minute to paste in and send.
107. Infographic Guest Posting
Bloggers love free stuff and anything they can post onto their website without any work is golden. That’s why you can write to bloggers telling them that you’ve created an infographic and that they can post it on their site free of charge.
This method is the same as guest posting only that instead of submitting an article to a blog, you submit an infographic instead. Create your infographic (or use the one you may have created from the last section) and make a list of all the blogs or websites that are similar to your website niche. Next, contact them with the following template which should give a pretty impressive response!
Hi [Blog Owner],
I recently came across your website on [topic]. What a fantastic place for [website’s target audience]! I am the website owner of [Your URL] and I recently created an infographic about [topic]. I usually charge $[Price] for this infographic but I would love to give it to you for free since I am such a fan of your website! All I ask is that you provide a link to my website (where the infographic was first published) at the bottom of the infographic.
Oh, I nearly forgot! I will also write a unique and original introduction for the infographic too.
Let me know if you are interested.
Thanks a bunch!
[Your Name]
Try this out with a few websites and you should get some positive responses. You don’t really charge anything for the infographic, but when they see that there is a price tag associated with it, that means value.
108. Make Sure You Have An Original Introduction To Your Infographic
Make sure that the introduction to each infographic is original and not used on the other websites you've submitted your infographic to. Always check that it is not published on other websites because Google will find out that you are not doing original backlinking and you will get caught out!
109. Submit To Infographic Submission Sites
As well as publishing on other websites, you can also submit your infographics to hundreds of infographic submission sites. Many of these sites have a high PageRank (we’re talking 5, 6 and 7) so getting links on these is super beneficial. They also promote your infographic to their readers and email subscribers, so that will result in a lot of promotion to your brand!
Look for infographic submission sites with the following search strings:
"submit your infographic"
"infographic submissions"
110. Submit Your Infographic To Visual.ly (PageRank 8)
If you sign up for an account, you can submit an infographic to the site. If it is very appealing and informative, your infographic could be promoted on the homepage. I’ve seen infographics on visual.ly that got 30,000 views and higher. Since you are allowed a link back to your site, imagine all THAT traffic clicking in! From a Google-minded, backlinking perspective…you should get a hefty amount of link juice from that page too.
111. More Infographic Sites Include…
Other infographic submission sites include:
www.infographick.com – Free – PR 1
www.nfogfx.com – Free – PR 2
www.submitinfographics.com – Free – DA 53
www.infographicsite.com – Free – DA 29
www.coolinfographics.com – Free – DA 68
www.infographicpost.com – Free – DA 31
112. Create HTML Snippets Of Your Infographics
Make it easy for people to embed your infographic on their blogs. With a simple HTML snippet, bloggers can simply paste the code into their website and have another great infographic ready to publish! To generate a HTML snippet for your infographic, simply use the generator at SiegeMedia. (http://www.siegemedia.com/embed-code-generator)
Linkbuilding With Content
113. Make A Web App
If you have or develop a nifty online tool that'll solve a common problem internet users face, you've just got yourself a winner both for linkbuilding and exposure. You'll also develop a lot of brand awareness as a result. Tools such as calculators and converters but with an extra twist can really kick off online and spark a lot of media attention. For example, I've seen a web app which converted the number of alcohol units into food. For two units, it would be five burgers or one unit, it would be three donuts. It became very popular on social media and even got a mention from some major news websites and tech blogs!
Another advantage of web apps is that people will constantly link to it. For example, I just mentioned an infographic HTML snippet generator in the tip above. It's simple but effective and results in a lot of direct traffic to the site.
114. Make It Super Easy To Link To You
If your audience is less tech savvy, they mightn't know how to link to your content or embed anchor text on their blog. You can make it super easy for them to link to your page by generating a HTML snippet.
This is completely dependent on your niche though. If you're in a less tech savvy niche such as construction, pet grooming or gardening, your audience might want to copy the HTML snippet rather than link to your page with anchor text also.
Even for your readers who are complete tech geeks, a HTML snippet would speed up things for them too.
115. Rewriting An Out of Date Article
You don’t need to use infographics for the “out of date” method. You need to find out of date articles in your niche. Try searching the following strings in Google:
[your niche] 2013
[your niche] 2012
Alternatively, try searching for old articles by websites such as Buzzfeed or Mashable.
These websites write articles on trending content and their information goes out of date very quickly. Today’s viral article is next week’s piece of internet history. You can take advantage of this. Try searching the following search strings into Google.
[your niche] Buzzfeed 2013
[your niche] Mashable 2012
The good thing is that these websites’ articles get a TON of backlinks because they go viral every time. That means more backlinks for you to utilize, and more quality places to change the backlink to your content.
You can write an article which has updated and fresh information that contains all the essential facts for your year. For example, let’s say you saw an article about the latest statistics on gender equality in the workplace. But that was written in 2012 and times have changed since then.
You can then see who is linking to this article through www.ahrefs.com and contact them saying your article contains statistics for 2015 or 2016.
Rinse and repeat as many times as you want, and collect your links!
116. SlideShare Links
This PR 8 website with over 140 million views is a fantastic place to add a backlink. This website allows you to upload PowerPoint presentations and gain readers for them. It’s basically a user generated content website for slide decks. You could repackage one of your blog posts into a SlideShare deck and upload it.
The advantage of using SlideShare is that you can gain thousands of readers, all to one deck! The audience on SlideShare is huge and provided you create a good thumbnail and title, you could be on the road to viral. A well placed backlink will bring back hundreds to your site.
The only downside of placing backlinks is that they are “nofollow” meaning Google don’t take any notice of them, and no PageRank will flow to your site. However, SlideShare is still perfect for bringing thousands of potential customers to your site, even if you get no PageRank flowing to your site.
117. Written A News Post? Submit It To Google News
News sites have received more than 1 billion clicks, thanks to being listed on Google News. Getting one of your articles listed on Google News is huge. It can drive thousands of visitors to your site each day, if not more.
However, getting listed is not for the faint hearted.
Unless you publish at least once a day, you have no chance of being listed. Since "news sites" publish more than a few times a day, it is already assumed that your blog is publishing content on a daily basis. Also, your blog posts have to be written more like news articles, which provide facts, the inverted pyramid and no opinion.
However, if you meet the criteria of publishing news articles more than once a day, you can be listed on Google News along with a few other criteria.
Build up a constant supply of news articles every day, and after a few months – it's time to submit your website to Google News! Submit it at http://bit.ly/1aqAde4
118. Scoop.it Links Are Golden
Scoop.it is a curated content website which allows you to paste your favorite links across the web into a “scrapbook”-like page. Similar to Pinterest (where you Pin images onto subject specific boards), it allows you to create a collage of links about specific topics, eg: internet security or Spanish cooking. You can use Scoop.it to not only create your own boards but to suggest your article links to owners of other Scoop.it pages.
The advantage of getting links on Scoop.it pages is that they have a high PR (3 and 4) and an extremely large audience. There are literally thousands of pages which have garnered more than 20,000 views. Even tapping into a little of that audience would result in hundreds of views and excellent good link juice!
Set up an account with Scoop.it and head over to the arrow on the dropdown menu. You will find tens of Scoop.it pages related to your niche. You can then hit the “Suggest” button on these pages to suggest your links.
You can also create your own boards too over time. Make sure that you provide variety and a good mix of all the tutorials, articles and content related to your niche. Include some of yours too, but keep it to a minimum. Only linking to helpful and five star content will establish trust with your audience on Scoop.it and will gain traction once people start enjoying the content you link to.
119. Create A Free Icon Set And Get Links From Design Blogs
Design blogs are always linking to pages that offer free giveaways such as icon sets, website backgrounds, buttons and public domain images. Go to Fiverr and ask a graphic designer to create about ten icons that are about your niche. For example, if you run a technology blog, you can create icons of laptops, mouse cursors, smartphones and so on. These icons need to be compiled into a "free giveaway" and then, you can contact design blogs about your free icon set.
120. Been Snapping? Compile Your Images Into A Giveaway
Take a scroll through your images either on your camera or mobile phone, and see if you have any non-personal images that could really brighten up a blog post or website. For example, if you have any city, nature, landscape, food, technology or clothes shots, those would be perfect to be packaged into an "image giveaway". Basically, you give away these images for free provided you get attribution back to them. This is super effective for two reasons:
1) If you contact design blogs, and let them know you have a free giveaway of images – they'll go pretty crazy over it and will link back to your giveaway page whilst also promoting it non-stop on social media. These design blogs have a lot of followers both on email lists and on social media. That means more traffic and more potential leads to your website.
2) The people that want to use your images will have to provide attribution back to your website, leading to more backlinks and more link juice pointing back to your website. Of course, if those bloggers are not linking back to your photo, you can use the Google Reverse Image search method to find those neglected images.
Get Links From Journalists and Famous Bloggers
121. Join Help A Reporter Out (HARO)
This is by far one of my favourite linkbuilding strategies because of the exposure your website can get and the quality of links in return (PR 5, 6, 7, you name it).
Help A Reporter Out (HARO) allows journalists, members of the media and online writers to search for people that can answer questions they have in relation to a subject they know little about. They simply post their query on the HARO website and this query gets sent to 85,000 “sources” (everyday people who may have a deep knowledge or experience of a particular subject) by email each day.
Major news channels such as CNN, Fox News and The Huffington Post use HARO every day and there is a good chance you will find something you can be featured on. Over 50 queries are sent as one big email and delivered to your inbox every day.
You can scroll through the queries and see which websites are querying. This allows you to check their PageRank (through www.prchecker.info) and see if it’s worth making a pitch to them. Most websites have a high PageRank and this allows you to get an extremely powerful backlink. Plus, your website will be featured on a website with an audience of thousands or millions.
To sign up, go to www.helpareporter.com and sign up for a free account. You can then fill in details about your brand such as your website URL or the name of your business (optional). Tick the boxes for the categories of HARO you would like to receive. The General HARO sums up what can be found in all the various HARO categories but if you want to be niche specific, you can sign up for Tech, Business or Lifestyle.
122. Use The "HARO Contributor Hack"
The dream of many: Gaining backlinks or referrals from industry experts...what could be better? Just imagine 50 experts/famous people in your field all linking to your content/website. You’d be famous)!
But how do you get people to share and link to your content?
The best way to do this is to do what I call the “Contributor Hack”. All you have to do is send a query on HARO asking experts what their #1 trick is for …. (you fill in the blank).
Mention that their pitch can be from 50 – 200 words and that they will receive a backlink to their website. Since the question is so straightforward and relatively simple, you will get tons of responses from experts in your niche all vying for a backlink on your website. You might even get some new ideas you haven't heard of before.
Once you collect your responses, you can compile all of these into an expert roundup with the title such as “50 [Niche] Experts Give Their #1 [Whatever] Trick For Success”. eg: “50 SEO Experts Give Their #1 Linkbuilding Strategy For Success”
When you publish your article, you can respond to all the pitches by saying that their contribution was included in the article and send them over the link.
Since each and every one of the contributors helped in some way, they want to make it a success. They want all their followers, friends and family to see their contribution. This means that they will share it on social media, generating hundreds of indirect backlinks and may link to it on their own articles.
The advantage is that you can multiply the effect by 50 and the more contributors you have, the merrier. This little hack should really bring a huge amount of exposure to your website and leave 50 people do all the backlinking and promotion for you (with virtually no cost required).
Doing even two to three of these a year can mega boost your backlinks and bring back a TON of exposure to your site.
123. Tips For Making A HARO Pitch
I've used HARO many times, receiving hundreds of pitches when you count them all up. I've went through enough pitches for a lifetime, but certain pitches got onto the accepted list whilst a lot of them were thrown in the thrash. Here are the things you should keep in mind when pitching a journalist.
· Be Personalized – Use flattery. Say that you've read their articles before. Do whatever you can to sweeten those 'dead serious' writers up a little.
· Don't Get Too Pushy – Do not start rambling on about your website or company and the great things it does in the middle of your pitch. You can add that at the end of the pitch, where the journalist can go for more information on your website/company if they need it. Also, don't list out requirements for the journalist to use your pitch. I received something like this at the end of a pitch before, "If you want to use my pitch, please include my name, what I do, my company, my website and a link to my website too (for SEO purposes)."
· Open and Close The Pitch – Open the pitch by introducing who you are and why you would like to be a part of their article. Close the pitch by wishing them good luck with their article, and say thanks for them giving you the opportunity. It's simple but can really make your pitch stand out from the crowd.
· Use Grammar and Correct Spelling – Poor grammar and wrong spelling kills any chance you might have straight away. Type your pitch into a word processor and get it spell checked before you send it.
124. Contact A Local Journalist
Yes, journalists may have extremely busy lives and the chances a journalist will cover your story is slim – but do it right and you have a solid chance.
I find that the best journalists to contact are the local journalists that write for your local newspaper (which is also online). Since there's less competition in your local area than in a national newspaper, you have a fairly good chance of getting a story done.
Also, since your local, you can also meet them in person for an interview which is always another incentive for journalists to write about your story.
If your company just launched, achieved an award or got a certain amount of sales – a journalist can easily turn this into an interesting story.
However, you need an interesting twist to make it a newsworthy story. It might be the fact that you're the only company in the country that sells that product or that you have the most customers in the region, within that niche.
125. Find Journalists With "Muck Rack"
Muck Rack (www.muckrack.com) allows you to find journalists related to your niche. By simply searching for your niche, you can find journalists which cover that topic. The free account gives you very limited access to search results, and you can only get a handful of journalists with each search. However, by purchasing a paid account (in the region of about $200 monthly), you can get full access to most of their features.
I have found this to be useful when trying to get "interesting" start up websites off the ground, and to get extremely high PR links back to a website. However, I wouldn't recommend using Mud Rack if you don't have a newsworthy story to share with them. Journalists are very choosey on what stories they want to cover, so the decision of contacting them is completely up to you.
126. Find British Journalists You Can Contact
If you're finding it difficult to locate niche specific journalists, you can find them all at www.journalisted.com. This site only covers journalists in the UK, and media outlets such as the Guardian and the BBC. There are over 30,000 British journalists at this site, so you are sure to find the perfect journalist to cover your story.
127. Sign Up To ProfNet, For More Media Opportunities
This is very similar to HARO, where you can sign up as an expert and receive queries from journalists or bloggers who want information or tips on a certain topic. Sign up to this, and you'll get queries to your inbox every day that are all related to your niche. You can sign up to both HARO and this, if you want to amplify your chances of receiving the perfect query.
It’s completely free, and you can sign up as an expert at www.prnewswire.com/profnet
128. Personalize Your Email
Get them seriously thinking about covering you. The only way to do that is to personalize your email. Ask them a question about their latest project or event, eg: how their latest journalists' conference in Denver went. Give them compliments such as how much you enjoyed reading their feature about whatever.
"The world revolves around me. Me, me, me. My favorite person: Me.
I don’t want email from you. I don’t want junk mail from you. I want me-mail."
— Seth Godin
You'll be surprised at how a little flattery can work.
When I asked SEO experts to send contributions, I got a lot which said "Hi there" or even worse, "Hi Sir". Ahem. #Facepalm
These emails were all about them, about their company, about their achievements and so on. It looked like their latest PR stunt. They were riding the gravy train, wanting to get a feature in a book.
Compare these with marketers who said "Hi Silvia", "Wow, I like the sound of your book!" and "I'm looking forward to reading your book, good luck with it!".
These contributions were featured (well, obviously the good ones were featured, I didn't pick them based on personalization, but as you can see – it still buttered me up), and now you can see why a little personalization will always guarantee success.
No matter what you do, always add some personalization. You'll be surprised at the results.
129. Common Outreach Email Mistakes
Here are a few things to never do when you're sending outreach emails to get links, guest posts or just for some plain simple promotion.
· Being Blunt Hurts – Don't make plans such as "I want to write a guest post for you. Please send me your response in 24 hours" or "I want two links to my blog in the guest post." Let them accept you first, and then you can start bargaining.
· Super Long Email Signatures – Avoid attaching a super long, ugly mess of an email signature including practically every little thing you've done in your life and every social media site you've ever joined. All you need is your name, company, personal website and a few social media channels. No more.
· Sending Late In The Week – Avoid sending your email on a Friday evening, or even on a Thursday. Chances are, it'll get drowned in an unfaltering mass of weekend email. Also, avoid sending emails on a Monday too. They'll be working on getting through all that weekend email, and your email could get ignored.
· Blathering On About Your Company – The email isn't a press release, always keep that in mind. Mention your company's/website's slogan or tell them what it does in a sentence.
130. Don't Email Multiple Journalists At Once
If you're trying to contact more than one journalist at a time just to "quicken things up", you're only wasting your time. It'll hit the trash pile quicker than you think. Always send a separate email to each journalist.
131. Give Journalists Everything They Need (Photos, Facts, Figures and a Press Release)
Don’t give them a couple of sentences about what your story is about. Instead, give them photos, facts, statistics and even a press release if you have one. Journalists lead busy lives and the easier it is to write a story without contacting you for further information, the more you increase your chance of getting written about.
Getting Links For Stolen Content
132. Build Links Through Getting Your Content Scraped/Copied
Your content is bound to be copied at some stage, and for some webmasters – they find that their content has been copied hundreds or even thousands of times.
Even if you get the content taken down, there will always be another site that'll resurrect the copied content once more. A common problem for many, but get creative and you'll see that getting content copied can become a linkbuilding strategy.
In your content, add links to other blog posts you've written and add a note at the end of your article, as described below.
133. Add A Note At The End Of Your Article
Include a note like this at the end of your article:
"This article was written by Susan Wells on BlogName.com, on the 17th December 2015."
Add a link to the note by hyperlinking one of the words, back to the original article. That way, if your content gets copied or scraped, the note with the link will get copied too.
134. Image Attribution Links
After a couple of months, your site should start receiving daily traffic. This means that more and more people will be viewing it and checking out your content and images. If you have some steal-worthy images, that will lead to jealous bloggers and they may use your image on their blogs without any attribution. You have two options; leave them alone or get a link back to your site as attribution.
The best way to find out if other people have been stealing your images is to use Google Images reverse search feature. You can upload your images that you want to check and search for them. Google will then show you all the places this image is used online.
If any blogs or websites show up that aren’t yours, your image has been stolen. However, this can be easily attended to. Since you caught out the person who did it (and using others’ images is an offence), they have no option but to do as you say. Otherwise, you could report them for copyright infringement.
The following image will explain exactly how to use Google’s Reverse Image Search to find stolen images. Professionals and stock image companies use this method all the time to find images that weren’t attributed or paid for.
If you have found any images that aren’t attributed or correctly following your license terms, it’s time to make justice done (and get a backlink)!
Contact the webmaster with the following template:
Dear [Name],
I recently came across your content, [URL].
Great stuff! However, I noticed that the [number, eg: third] image you used of the [object] is my own work and has been used without attribution. Could you please link back to my website as attribution for the image? You can either link the image to my website or provide the link at the end of your article in the image credits section. Otherwise, I will have to take further action.
Thank you,
[Your Name]
This email will scare the webmaster severely. Further action could mean losing an AdSense account, losing their indexing on Google, losing their website hosting or just the complete shutting down of their website. The response rate for getting that backlink is extremely high since they want to avoid any trouble.
135. Send A Follow Up Email If You Don't Hear Anything Back
Sometimes, the person you're trying to reach made a simple mistake by forgetting to reply to your email, or fix the broken link or give attribution to your images. If you don't hear back from them after two weeks, it's time to follow up. You can add a reminder to your email
Or, you can use Boomerang Email (www.boomerangemail.com) which is a free email app that sends a follow up to that person, if they don’t reply back within a certain time period. It also has a built-in function to give you reminders, such as if you need to contact someone later on or get a follow up. If outreach is a hefty part of your day, you will need this app for sure!
Broken Linkbuilding and Dead Content Linkbuilding
136. Broken Link Building
This tactic involves finding blogs that have broken links (links that point to pages that no longer exist, or content that was taken down) and then asking the webmaster if you can replace the broken link with your content. Follow these steps to find broken links on blogs in your niche:
1) Get a list of blogs in your niche. About five is plenty.
2) Input the links of these blogs into Buzzstream's list builder. This takes the links found on their blogroll and inserts them back into the list.
3) Download the results as a CSV and open it up in Excel. Copy and paste the links into the tool (which takes a max of 50 links) at www.seoautomatic.com/unique. This will check if any of the websites in the list show up as a 404 (no longer available). Make sure you the links include the HTTP header, ie: http://www.seoautomatic.com and not www.seoautomatic.com.
4) Copy the URLs of the websites which are no longer on the web, and enter them into www.ahrefs.com. This tool will show you which blogs and websites are linking to the website (which is a broken link for them).
5) Go to these websites and contact them with this template:
Hi [Name of Webmaster],
I'm a huge fan of your website/blog! I have noticed that you are linking to the website, www.disappeared-website.com and it is a broken link.
Since that website is no longer available, I was wondering if you wanted to link to this website [URL of your website] instead which focuses on [state aim of your website].
Thanks so much!
Kind Regards,
[Your Name]
137. Dead Content Broken Linkbuilding
That's quite a mouthful, isn't it? In reality, it's actually a simple strategy that you can use to build links.
1) Get the list of the 404 websites which are no longer available. Check the content on their blogs and make a list of their blog posts.
2) Plug these links into www.ahrefs.com and see which pages are linking to their content.
3) Take a visit to these websites and contact them with this template:
Hi [Name of Webmaster],
You've got some super helpful posts on your blog, and I'm an avid reader of them. I have noticed that you are linking to this piece of content which is a 404: www.disppeared.com/zero-nada and it is a broken link.
Since that page is no longer available, I was wondering if you wanted to link to my piece of content instead which is very similar to the old one. Let me know what you think.
Thanks so much!
Kind Regards,
[Your Name]
138. Find A Resource Page and Look For Broken Links
Get a resource page in your niche by entering the following search strings into Google:
"[your niche] + resources"
"[your niche] + best blog posts"
Download the "Check My Links" browser extension for Chrome and check the page for any broken links. Since it's a resource page and has tens of links, at least one or two of them should point to a no longer existing page.
139. Decide Which Websites To Get Broken Links From
When you notice that a website is linking to a 404 page that's gone off the web, you need to decide whether contacting that website is worth your time. Check for the following when you are deciding to get a broken link from that website:
· More Than Twenty Links? – Since the PageRank flows to all the links, you will get little PageRank (or link juice, as the experts like to call it) or barely any at all.
· Spam Links – If they are linking to spam sites such as "payday loan" sites, you don't exactly want your link beside theirs. It looks very dodgy and could get you penalized by Google.
· Poor Quality Content – If the content isn't of a high quality, you risk getting a low quality, spam link back to your site. Only get backlinks from websites that have high quality content which get a high PageRank as a result (from all the pages linking to them).
· A Poor Quality Website Overall – Use your own judgement on this. If the website has little or no authority in your niche, there's not much point in getting a backlink from them.
140. Don't Use Full URLs In Your Emails
If you have an extra-long link to a page of yours or theirs, you'd be better off hyperlinking a word instead. Super long links could trigger the spam filters of their email.
141. Give Them A Phone Call
I've tried this a few times, and it works. A full conversation converts so much better than an email. It’s quick, it's instant and it'll hopefully help develop a relationship with that webmaster who might link to your website in future content of theirs or share your blog posts on Twitter.
142. Found An Old Website? Send This Template Instead
When on the hunt for links and fixing broken links, send the following email to websites that look like they were last updated in the 90s. Since the owner probably isn't maintaining the website anymore, you need to write a very quick and short email just to see if they are still maintaining the website.
Hi there,
Are you still updating your website, [Website URL]? I found a broken link that I'd like to point out to you.
Thanks,
[Your Name]
143. Get Wikipedia Backlinks
Wikipedia offer you the chance to add references at the end of their articles, allowing you the chance to submit your link.
The links in the References box are "nofollow" (no PageRank will flow to your site), but you can get a huge amount of referral traffic from their articles, since millions of people land on Wikipedia every day. Also, when citing their sources, people will link to your page. That's two major benefits, and you know what's even better? It isn't too difficult to get a backlink from Wikipedia. Here's a step by step guide:
1. Sign up for a free account at www.wikipedia.org
2. Build up some history, showing you're a responsible person by editing a few articles and fixing some broken links by linking to other people's content.
3. Go to www.wikigrabber.com and search for your niche. This tool basically tells you which pages need citation or have "dead links" (Wikipedia's definition of a link that is no longer active).
4. Submit your link instead of the dead link
Make sure that your content looks authoritative by making it lengthy, full of images and include backed-up statistics. This will greatly improve your chance of getting your link included.
144. Recreate The Page Again, For More Wikipedia Backlinks
If you've done the work, you'll find that it shouldn't be too difficult to get your link accepted. However, if you've failed – don't feel too bad. Use this method instead.
Use www.wikigrabber.com to find Wikipedia pages which have dead links, in your niche.
Or else, type this query into Google, "site:wikipedia.org [niche] dead link”
Once you've landed on the page with the dead link, use CTRL+F to find the dead link. No one deserves to scroll through those links.
Copy the URL of the dead link and enter it into the Wayback Machine, which shows you what the page looked like before it disappeared (www.archive.org/web).
Get the main "essence" of the article, and try to recreate it on your own website. Don't copy it, but keep it similar enough, including the same statistics as the old article.
Submit your link to Wikipedia and watch it get accepted!
145. Get Even More Backlinks For Your Wikipedia Article
Once you have the backlink on Wikipedia, to replace the dead link, you can find out who else is linking to that page and reach out to them. The majority of Wikipedia references have tons of backlinks, so you'll have more than 50 backlinks all pointing to the dead link! That means, even more high quality links to your page.
Input the dead link into www.ahrefs.com and see who is linking to it. Reach out to them and let them know that they are linking to a no longer existing page.
Helping Another Webmaster Out, In Exchange For Links
146. Help Webmasters With Hacked Sites, And They'll Reward You
Hundreds of sites get hacked every day. Hacking a site usually involves adding spam pages to an established website. These spam pages usually are about "banned" topics. You'll find a lot of hacked websites sporting nasty words such as "payday loans" or other malicious words in the page's content, without even realizing it.
Getting these spam pages added to your website will become quite an ordeal because Google could deindex you permanently from their index or lower your ranking in the SERPS severely.
That's why, if you can spot that a website is hacked, they'll reward you wholeheartedly (a link to your website, or even two). To find hacked websites, simply enter this search string into Google. Type your niche in the string below to replace 'gardening'.
"[Inurl: gardening+payday loans]"
Once you have found it, contact the webmaster saying you found some hacked pages on their website and that they need to remove them fast. Because you've helped them tremendously, they'll reward you very generously for it.
147. Update An Old Piece of Content and Get A Link In Return
Help a fellow blogger out by updating any old pieces of content that they have. You have a good chance of getting a link in return for helping them.
Search for old blog posts by pasting the website URL into www.ahrefs.com and look at their top pages. Chances are, some of the pages have been written more than three years ago.
Send them an email asking if you can update their content. Tell them who you are and your experience in the area.
When updating the content, refresh statistics and provide research that was done in the last year. Take out terms that are no longer used anymore (blogosphere, yeah?) or introduce new ideas and technologies that have become popular today.
148. Update Their Contests
A lot of websites have started contests or handed out awards, a couple of years ago but never got round to doing it this year. You can get a very valuable backlink by offering to organize a new contest for them this year, for free.
Do a couple of searches like these:
"2010 blogger awards"
"2006 best photo awards"
"2013 upcycling contest"
Locate the websites that have these contests. Do an internal search on their website to see if they had a contest this year or last year. If they didn't, it means they never got round to doing another contest for this year. You can step in and help them organize a new contest, and get the whole show back on the road again.
It doesn't take that much time or effort. All you need to do is open it on social media, accept submissions, pick out the best and give them awards. The website hosting the contest will have all the resources you need such as prizes, badges and so on.
149. Transcribe A Video
Video creation is a very popular content strategy at the moment, with lots of bloggers taking part in the action. However, many bloggers either don't bother putting a video transcript along with the video or simply don't have the time to do so. Writing a video transcript can take quite a long time! Since Google prefers to have a lot of text on the page, rather than a sole (and very lonely) video – getting a video transcript on the page can really boost quality metrics and gain trust. It's also super handy for people with slow internet speed. Instead of trying to load up your video, they can read the video transcript instead.
Search for some videos related to your niche using these strings:
"[your niche] video"
"[hobby in your niche] video"
Once you have found some videos, check to see if they have transcripts underneath them. If they don't, send the following template to the blogger in charge of that video or page:
Hi [Blogger's Name],
Firstly, I'd like to say that I'm a huge fan of your blog! As a fellow [niche person, eg: scientist], I think that your blog is an essential for gaining more valuable tips on [niche]. I was recently watching your video [link to video page] on [whatever the video is about] and I really enjoyed it! I found your point on [something] very useful!
Since the video provides so much value to your viewers, I'd love to transcribe the video for you completely free of charge.
Let me know what you think,
[Your Name]
150. Translate Content
If you're lucky enough to know a second language, you can use your language skills and translate an English page into the language of your choice.
There's always someone who'll take a quick shortcut, and this tactic is no exception. Whatever you do, don't try to translate the page using Google Translate. That tool still has major grammar issues and it'll probably result in a lot of unhappy readers. So, unless you're a native speaker of the language and know it fluently – don't go near this strategy.
Contact a webmaster saying that you'd like to translate one of their pages and see what they say. If you comment regularly on their blog and follow them on Twitter, you might just have a better chance. Once you've translated the page, provide a link back to your website or ask them to link to your website for you by adding a note at the end of the transcription saying "This video was transcribed by [Your Name], blogger at [Your Website Domain]."
Other Magical Linkbuilding Techniques
151. Create A "Subscribe To Get Email" Landing Page And Link To It In Your Guest Posts –
If you want to build your email list or your newsletter list, the best way to do it is by following the steps below.
Create a landing page for your email. Offer something in return for their email address such as an eBook, short course or a "step by step blueprint". In one sentence, mention why they should join your email list. It could be "insanely actionable tips straight to your inbox" or "Join 35,000 smart folks who get our best strategies every week". Look at the way well-known companies phrase this, and you should get some interesting ideas.
Make sure to mention that their email address is safe, secure and will not be sold to third part companies. You know, the usual.
When you write a guest post, link to your landing page in the "About The Author" section of the guest post and have something like, "Rachel also writes tutorials on her design blog. Join Rachel's email list to get insanely useful design tips and templates to your inbox. Plus, you'll be sent the "Step By Step Blueprint To Designing Beautiful Websites" when you sign up."
152. Create Coupon Codes/Special Offers For Other Blogs' Readers
You should create a secret page on your website that has a special offer for a product/service that you provide. If you don't sell products or services, you can create an ebook about your niche instead. If you write blog posts, you can just repackage all of them into an ebook. Then, when you are guest blogging on various blogs – add a link to your coupon code/discount/product either in the middle of the post or at the end. It can be a great incentive for readers to join your email list or become a customer of your website.
153. Pay Guest Bloggers To Write On Your Site
This tip can be a little controversial to some but when used, even once or twice a year, it can produce fantastic results. It involves paying a well-known blogger to write a guest post on your site. Once the guest post is published, they will share it on their well-stocked social media channels (with potentially hundreds of thousands of followers), leading to hundreds or thousands of people arriving at your site, with a lot of them becoming customers.
Bloggers love getting paid to write, so it'll be very easy to get a blogger to write a guest post for you. They'll also link to your post in their future blog posts, and will share on social media – resulting in even more backlinks (if others pick up on your content, and link to it in their content).
Contact a well-known blogger or influencer in your field to write a guest post on your site (with more than five thousand followers on Twitter) and tell them that you will pay them to write a guest post on your site. Offer anything in the region of $50 to $200, depending on how many followers they have and other metrics. Say what you'd like them to write about. A general topic is fine, don't get too detailed.
Once they have it written, pay them (PayPal is usually the best option) and publish it! The writer will then share it on social media and you'll get a good influx of traffic to your site!
You don't need to do this more than twice a year, since it can be quite costly.
154. Sponsor An Event If You're A Local Business
If there are events or festivals or charity events being held in your local town or city, you can sponsor them and they are sure to give you a backlink on their website. It will give you not only a backlink but a lot of exposure in your local community that could lead to many more customers.
It is costly to sponsor even a small event so make sure to weigh up the potential benefit that it would have on your company. If you deal with mainly online sales from other countries or parts of the country, you will find it difficult to supplement your income from the local town too. But if your company deals with many local customers or clients, you should definitely take sponsorship into consideration.
155. Internal Links Work Wonders
You might find that upon entry to Buzzfeed, you start reading one article they've written but suddenly, another article title catches your eye in the "Popular On Buzfeed" section and you click on it, wanting to read more.
Apply the same technique as Buzzfeed, to your website and you'll draw more readers further into your site. Plus, the pages will give a lot of PageRank to each other too.
156. Link To Your Best Content On Your Homepage
Include a "Popular Posts" section which contains links to your best content. When you get a backlink to your homepage, all the juicy PageRank will flow to the other articles too.
157. Research Your Competitors With Ahrefs.com
Try out stealing your competitor's strategies and see where they have been linkbuilding. Since they are in the same niche as you, it's possible to see which websites gave them guest posts, where they submitted their infographics and so forth.
Get the link to your competitor's website and paste it into www.ahrefs.com. This handy tool shows you how many backlinks they have, what anchor text they are using, what pages have been linking to them and more. You'll need to sign up to a free account to use it more than once per day.
158. No Competition? Try Out Overseas Competitor Research
Some rare websites find that there are no websites or companies offering the same product/service as theirs or that there are no blogs writing on the same niche. This means that they find it difficult to do competitor research and find out where others have been linkbuilding.
You get more links back to your content, and you alert readers that the blog that they're reading are nothing more than content thieves.
All you have to do is search for your competition on a Google search engine from another country. Type the URL of the foreign Google search engine, and then follow it with "ncr" which stands for No Country Redirect, eg: www.google.es/ncr
159. Get Links From LinkProspector
It's often said that you shouldn't automate the process of link building and that software will never be able to change the fact that link automation equals web spam.
But LinkProspector is going to change that.
Developed by Citation Labs, this online tool allows you to find high quality links by searching for blogs that allow guest posts, influencers who will link to your content, bloggers that will repost your infographics, blogs that advertise giveaways for free and resource pages that will link to you.
Basically, it cuts out the tedious task of finding links manually, and gives you the opportunity of finding tons of high quality pages you can outreach. You still have to contact the webmaster manually, but it still cuts the work in half.
Obviously, the tool isn't completely perfect yet and you will still need to search for opportunities using all the tips in this chapter. But if you scan through the results, you'll find some very worthy opportunities.
It's free for one credit or one search, and after that, it costs $2.00 per search. This is great value considering each search will give you hundreds of link opportunities. Start now by signing up at www.linkprospector.citationlabs.com.
160. Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a neat tool that lets you know when certain "phrases" are mentioned on the web, such as new events or the mentioning of a company. Set up Google Alerts so that when your company (or your name) is mentioned on the web, you can ask the writer to provide a backlink to your site. Rather than just mentioning your company or website, they can also link back to it.
If you're lucky enough for your name to be featured in an article, you can also ask the writer to link back to either your personal site or company website.
161. Get Backlinking Opportunities From Flippa
Flippa (www.flippa.com) is a marketplace that allows you to buy and sell websites. A lot of the webmasters that are selling their websites, provide additional notes on their SEO efforts such as keywords and backlink sources. It’s like getting an entire blueprint to their SEO strategies and techniques.
Go to Flippa and search for your niche. You'll find hundreds of sites which are being sold, along with their SEO strategies outlined. This means you can tap into their backlinking and see where they got their backlinks. If they're in your niche, and can get backlinks – so can you.
162. Crowdfunding Backlinks
Whilst you shouldn't be paying for links, some websites offer a link back to your website from their website if you donate a certain amount to their company or startup. However, you should make sure that the website linking back to your website is related to your niche. You don't want a fitness blog linking back to your website on cars...talk about dodgy!
Also, you will develop a new contact with a website owner or blogger who wants to work with you in the future, since you helped them fund their company even if it was a small amount.
You kill two birds with the one stone.
You get a link back to your website from a popular website (in the future, depending on whether they become successful) and you are helping to fund exciting new innovations, technologies and projects.
163. Watch Out For Anchor Text, Keep It Varied
When you link to your website, you need to hyperlink a word in the form of anchor text. For example, if you wanted to link back to a post you've written, you would hyperlink the word in the guest post (in bold here) - "Linkbuilding is an essential strategy that every webmaster should continue to use even post Panda. Whilst guest posting is a common linkbuilding practice, it should be noted that there are tens of other ways to get backlinks!." The word "guest posting" is known as anchor text.
If you are linking back to the same webpage more than a few times, make sure to vary the anchor text, ie: hyperlink different words each time. For example, if you linked to the same post three times, the following words would be excellent as anchor text, "guest posting", "how to guest post effectively" or "guest posting for beginners".
This is also very beneficial for the Hummingbird update which tries to actually understand the content from a more human perspective and not just as a robot. When it sees various differentiations of the anchor text, it is able to "Understand" the words a lot more and thus, place more relevance on the article.
164. Is Your Anchor Text Over Optimized?
Having too much over optimized (keyword stuffed) anchor text can signal real alarm bells for Google. For example, let's say you kept linking back to your tomato growing article with the text, "how to grow tomatoes". You might have a few other variations of anchor text for other links, but over half of the anchor text pointing back to your tomato growing article page has the same anchor text. That would be a purely black hat SEO technique and it will get you penalized severely.
That's why you should check your anchor text from time to time. The best way to do this is by using the tool at, www.removeem.com/ratios.php. Simply input the link and you will get a word cloud showing all the anchor text that points back to that page.
165. If Your Brand Name Is Over Optimized, That's Fine
When you're building links and creating anchor text, don't get too worried if you want to leave your brand name as the anchor text. Similarly, if you used the tool above that checks over optimization of anchor text, don't get too worried if your brand name is over optimized. You should only get worried if you are over optimized for keywords.
166. Black Hat Linkbuilding Should Be Avoided
Never, ever resort to black hat linkbuilding such as link automation software or buying tacky links from link farms. Doing this will close down your site sooner or later (in the next Penguin update, you will be crushed) because Google will keep fighting to kill these black hat websites.
167. Don't Get Lured Into Black Hat Traps
I often get emails from SEOs saying that they will link to my website ten times if I pay them $10 or whatever. These people usually own websites with PageRank of 0 or even N/A (Not Available). Getting links from them would be extremely harmful to any website.
Google is one intelligent monster that's going to find out. If it knows you're age, interests, health condition, nationality, hobbies, location, family and favourite websites – it's certainly going to know if you've been exchanging links for money. Backlinks should be built through trust and certainly not money.
So no matter what you come across on the web, never get lured into black hat traps. It's fatal for your website and could undo all the work you've ever done on it.
168. Get Alerted When Someone Links To Your Site
It's always a cause for celebration when you get a valuable backlink from another site. With Linkstant (www.linkstant.com), you can get updates almost instantly when your website gets a backlink. The notification can be sent through email or SMS, and will give you all the useful details such as URL, website name, anchor text and much more. After you've done your outreach, broken linkbuilding and whatnot, you can finally get notified on whether the work is getting you somewhere!
169. Check To See If A Website Got A Penalty
Sometimes, you will need to check if a website got a penalty from Panda or Penguin. If they did, it's clear that perhaps you shouldn't get a link from their site. If Google distrusts them, they could value your link as being poor or even worse, spam.
Whilst this isn't necessary for all websites you hope to get links from, you should use it for those websites that you aren't quite sure about. Note that traffic estimates are very vague, so don't take them very accurately. The traffic data is only there to give you a general indicator. (www.feinternational.com/website-penalty-indicator/)