Venchito Tampon Jr

Off-Page SEO: The Definitive Guide

What is off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO refers to link building and all related activities & actions focused on growing our Website popularity, happening outside of it, and therefore the name.

Aleyda Solis, Founder of Orainti

 

Off-page SEO to me is any kind of optimisation that takes place away from the site itself. Generation of signals from third party websites to tell Google that the thing you are optimising deserves to rank. The main part of this is obviously link building but increasingly can incorporate other things like social.

James Agate, Founder of Skyrocket Digital

 

Off-page SEO means doing anything from an external point of view to assist with SEO efforts. This could mean link acquisition, building mentions, using a digital PR agency, building your brand off site to have a positive impact on your websites SEO.

James Norquay, Founder of Prosperity Media

 

Using these principles as solid foundation, let me walk you through the 21 off-page SEO techniques you can immediately use right now for your website.

 

21 Off-Page SEO Best Practices

1. EXPAND LINK LISTS WITH A SIMILAR CONTENT PROSPECTING TOOL

 

Websites that are linked to content or resource similar to an asset page published on your site are more receptive to outreach than any other link prospects primarily because of their linking history.

When they had linked to a particular page, they are likely to be interested in its similar resource and consider it for a possible linking opportunity.

Topical relevancy and higher link acquisition rates are a few notable advantages when you reached out to said link prospects.

Given this, here is how you can find these high-quality backlink sources:

STEP 1: Enter niche-specific keywords (related to your content) in Skyrocket’s Similar Content. This link building tool will automatically generate high-quality prospects that are linking to the top-ranking pages for searched keywords.

 

STEP 2: Export domains and list them in a Spreadsheet or you can plug them into your favorite outreach tool.

 

STEP 3: Reach out to webmasters and publishers of those potential linking sites and ask if they’ll be interested to look at your content piece. Here is one example of an email template that you can use, which is actually for follow-up purposes.

Hello [ NAME ],

I contacted you a few weeks ago to share a resource that I thought you may
find of interest, and you informed me about your upcoming blog/site
update. I was wondering if you’ve been successful in the update and had a
chance to review my message; a copy of which is provided below for
reference.

We’ve launched a really detailed guide to [ TOPIC ] and I
thought you might be interested in seeing it - [ URL ]

If you are still updating this page -
[ URL ] then perhaps our guide might
make a useful addition.

Please let me know if you have any questions. And if this isn’t for you or
you’d rather I didn’t get in touch in future please let me know and I’ll
be sure not to send you any other messages.

- [Your Name]

2. LEVERAGE CONTENT TEMPLATES WITH BUZZSUMO

 

The ability to scale content assets without sacrificing qualify differentiates average content marketers from excellent ones. A year ago, Ross Hudgens shared one strategy on how to create incredible content assets at a low cost. It is with the use of content templates.

Content templates are simple formats of successful content assets from other verticals or other brands that can potentially be replicated to your own content marketing campaigns.

Two good examples of these content templates are these posts by Hubspot about habits for hyper-productive people and habits for content marketers.

Hubspot’s content marketing team found this “habit-type” content template to be a good blog post framework. People simply want to emulate habits that make other people successful in whatever field they belong to.

Thus when you publish content like this, it easily gets traction from many people – acquiring multiple social shares and earning referential links from publishers.

How to find content templates that are likely to earn links naturally?

 

STEP 1: Find popular content-producing sites in your industry and use Buzzsumo to look for their most-shared content pieces.

 

STEP 2: Take note of all possible content formats and list them down in a Spreadsheet.

 

STEP 3: Create content pillars based on your preferred content formats. This would require testing but when you see results from first published content, you can replicate this to every sub-niches in your vertical (check out my definitive guide on blogger outreach).

3. LINK TO INFLUENCERS WITHIN CONTENT

Though Google doesn’t count outbound links as a direct ranking factor, knowing how to properly link to relevant sources externally is still a best practice in the search industry. External linking to credible resources and useful content produced by influencers helps an initial boost of promotion to your content piece.

Maximizing this strategy is a sure way to put more eyeballs on your asset.

How to execute this properly?

 

STEP 1: Search for influencers in your niche whom you can easily connect with. You can use Buzzstream or a simple Google search to discover this kind of people.

 

STEP 2: When starting to create content, try to find relevant blog posts of influencers. You can use the search phrase, site:domain.com “keyword” or site:domain.com intitle:”keyword”. The latter search strings are more useful because it provides the most targeted results - finding pages that discuss the whole topic, not just including your keyword in one paragraph.

 

STEP 3: Once you publish your content, reach out to these influencers using direct email outreach. Results from this are either social shares or contextual links from publishers. Even if you got one social share from an influencer, this can be worth a hundred of traffic to your site.

Hi [ NAME ],

I saw your website and found that you linked to one blog post about [ TOPIC ].

Just thought that you might find my definitive guide on [ TOPIC ] also useful. It is a rich content that contains an [ DESCRIBE YOUR CONTENT ].
[ URL ]

Kind regards,
[ YOUR NAME ]

4. BUILD HIGHLY-CONVERTING MICROSITES

If you’re aiming to capture small segments of your target market, one way you need to invest in is creating microsites. This method can enable your brand to build high-quality links your competitors can’t easily copy, as well as give your site more opportunities to attract potential clients/customers.

One good example of this branding strategy is how Aleyda created two microsites that provide a lot of value to the SEO community – All SEO Guidelines and The Marketer Toolbox.

Both of these sites target segmented audiences, the first one helps SEO practitioners (both in-house and agency-level) while the second one focuses more on marketers and tool creators.

Now, how can you identify your specific market segment and create a microsite out of it? Below are a few steps to get you started, but if you want to take the whole process, you can check out these posts and this guide by.

 

STEP 1: Go to your Google Analytics data. Look at the top-performing posts with high conversion rates.

 

STEP 2: Determine what market segments you can tap that aren’t going too far from your main content theme. For example, in my case, I can create microsites for link building tools and templates/checklists for link acquisition given that I’m currently offering link building services.

 

STEP 3: Once you choose an overall theme for your micro-site, buy your own domain name and hosting. In terms of the site’s content development, you can produce scalable content pillars like round-ups on an actionable topic, interview series, and user-generated content.

5. USE INTERVIEWS AS GUEST ENTRIES

Guest blogging has been an effective off-page SEO technique for many startup marketers building their own brands from scratch. What makes this more effective is the ability to craft solid content that isn’t a carbon copy of another piece or a revision of a blog post published on one popular blog.

The challenge in guest blogging is really writing expertly-written content that won’t just acquire a single link but will potentially get second-tier links from blogs linking to the contributed piece.

One way to be able to do this is by using interviews as guest entries for other websites. Given that answers from industry experts are most likely to be actionable, helpful, and experience-based, they can be considered as solid content for guest blogging. Here is how you can execute this process:

 

STEP 1: Find publishers and book authors using Google search or influencer prospecting tools.

 

STEP 2: Reach out to these niche experts and do an interview with them. Below is an email copy you can use:

Hey [ NAME ],

I hope you're doing well.

Just want to tell you that, [ WEBMASTER NAME ] who manages the [ SITE NAME ], gave me an opportunity to guest post at [ URL ] and am planning to do a short written interview with some of the below bloggers and I was requesting if you can be one of them.

• INTERVIEWEE’S NAME 1
• INTERVIEWEE’S NAME 2
• INTERVIEWEE’S NAME 3
• INTERVIEWEE’S NAME 4

If so, I’ve attached a short written interview that you can use to share your tips or ideas.

If you’re interested in including screenshots as part of real life example, you’re welcome to do so.

The topic of discussion is [ TOPIC ]

Cheers

[ YOUR NAME ]

 

STEP 3: Use their answers as guest content for your target blog. Check out these examples of interview-based guest posts.

6. COLLECT LINK PROSPECTS FROM LISTPEDIA

Using social media platforms like Twitter for link prospecting is a strategic approach for link builders to find new bloggers and publishers that aren’t yet found through Google search. With this, you can expand your list of outreach targets without actually depending on search engines as your primary source of target domains.

Besides getting additional backlink sources, you’ll also be able to tap influencers that have a strong massive reach both in web publishing and social if you try using social media as your main link prospecting tool.

In other words, you get more benefits when you do outreach to them since they won’t only be linking to your content, but they’ll also share your content with their existing followers. This can allow your brand to acquiring more backlinks from their followers’ blogs as well.

You can start this by using simple Twitter searches to find bloggers in your industry. However, if you are doing bulk prospecting, you can scale the process by using Listpedia.

Listpedia is a new self-made search and creation Twitter tool that can generate massive Twitter lists relevant to a particular keyword.

Here are three steps on how to use Listpedia for link prospecting:

 

STEP 1: Go to Listpedia and search for a particular audience you are aiming to reach out to (e.g. personal finance, finance, or insurance).

 

STEP 2: Check each individual Twitter profile in the search results to see if they have their own blogs or websites.

 

STEP 3: Once you think a particular website passes your link metrics (Ahrefs rank, DA, or Trustflow), you can include it to your outreach list, find his email address and send a pitch via email. Below is an email copy you can use:

Hey [ NAME ],

I saw your profile on Twitter while doing my research, and also saw that you are part of this Twitter list [ URL ]. 

Just thought that you might find my post about [ DESCRIBE YOUR CONTENT ] really useful.  [ YOUR CONTENT URL ]

Have a great weekend!

All the best, 

[ YOUR NAME ]

7. INCLUDE POST-PREVIEW AS ADDITIONAL PROPOSITION TO CONTENT

Creating remarkable content may require experiences and case studies from your own brand that gets people into action - after they consume the content. Case studies that take days, weeks, or even months are really time-consuming for content creators.

However, there is one way to easily add a data-based experience that won’t cost you money. That is, including data from an influencer/expert you’ve had a relationship with. Since there is a connection involved, the influencer won’t look at it like stealing his ideas as you initiate asking for permission to use his data.

I did this strategy when I wrote my old post on increasing blog traffic where I included an experience-based tip from Roel Manarang – a local-based social media marketing expert. He backed up his claim with a case study of a Facebook strategy, not even shared on his blog, at the time I inserted his technique into my blog post.

Here is how you can use post-preview in your content creation phase:

 

STEP 1: Identify influencers you had relationships with (grab your list from off-page SEO technique 3). Filter the influencer list by expertise these influencers have been known for (i.e. link building, off-page SEO, conversion rate optimization, etc..) and choose those you think can collaborate with you once you create your next content.

 

STEP 2: Reach out to influencers and ask if they’ll be interested to add some insights to your upcoming post. You can try this email outreach copy below:

Hello [ NAME ],

I know you're quite busy today. But just a quick heads-up if you're interested to contribute insights to my upcoming post about [ TOPIC ].

I would like to know if you have any experiences and tips regarding [TELL MORE ABOUT YOUR UPCOMING POST]. 

Let me know your thoughts. 

All the best, 

[ YOUR NAME ]

 

STEP 3: Include the influencer’s tip to your content and start to promote it to people who might like your link to your post.

8. IMPROVE RELEVANCE WITH BRAND KEYWORD INTEGRATION

Google understands the relevance of a brand towards its connected domains in the industry sphere based on the keywords and context of each content produced in the website. Knowing this, you will create additional content based not only on the industry terms you want to rank for but on keywords you could potentially rank.

This is doable in three steps.

 

STEP 1: Go to Google Keyword Planner and plug in your homepage in the landing page search. You will then see a list of keywords Google considers to be relevant industry terms of your brand

 

STEP 2: Choose among the list of keywords which of them you will likely target for your next content.

 

STEP 3: Include industry terms when writing your content in order to improve the LSI relevance of your website.

9. GIFT GIVING TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS

Engagement marketing involves two sets of groups: those who are part of your networks and those you still need to reach out to – commonly referred to as “direct outreach”.

The good thing with direct outreach is that you don’t need to invest a huge amount of money and chunks of hours to start with. There is actually a less-costly way to effectively build relationships with influencers and authors who are part of your direct outreach.

James Norquay from Prosperity Media showed how a set of cupcakes from his client can strengthen relationships built with their brand partners.

Another example of this link relationship-building technique is when Larry Kim of Wordstream sent letters of appreciation to customers and to people who became a great part of building his brand.

Want to know how to execute a strategic approach in engagement marketing? Here are actionable tips to start an effective community engagement.

 

STEP 1: Identify one valuable thing you can offer to your brand followers or potential brand ambassadors.

STEP 2: Think of ways on how to deliver your gift to your list of recipients. It could be through international or local shipping and/or an online transfer system if your gift is a virtual product.

STEP 3: Once the gift is released, you can track web and social mentions from influencers using BrandMentions.

For more ways to build high-quality backlinks to your website, check out this list of actionable link building strategies.

 

10. INVEST IN GETTING REFERENCES FROM Q&A SITES FROM REAL PEOPLE

The nature of searchers in this age of web usage is leading towards search activities in very niche-targeted search engine sites and community sites, where people would look for answers to their frequent questions from niche community sites instead of going straight to their favorite search engine tool.

Identifying these websites where a portion of your target market hangs out can allow you to acquire referential links that your competitors haven’t thought of building for their own sites.

The community-based backlink below is a good example of how powerful branding could help you semi-automate your brand’s link acquisition process. If you look closely at the answer, it is not a result of our marketing work, but from a person who trusted our expertise – Anton Shulke.

We actually did a webinar for his website and the benefit becomes mutual in the form of a link pointing to our brand.

How can you leverage branded link acquisition (off-page SEO) in community sites?

 

STEP 1: Create a list of outreach prospects that include your current brand followers, customers, and clients. Your brand followers could be any person you’ve built relationships with in the past either through content distribution, exchange of business ideas, or as simple as being your co-member in an offline/online niche group.

STEP 2: Look for relevant discussions that can potentially drive highly converting visitors to your site. In my above example, the keyword that I used is best SEO agency in Manila. The trick here is to use the site: search operator plus the keyword – e.g. site:quora.com “best X in Y” to generate targeted discussion pages.

STEP 3: Reach out to your outreach prospects and ask if they can participate in the discussion. If they are your loyal customers/clients, they’ll likely give a recommendation to your brand.

OTHER USEFUL RESOURCES:

• Google’s New Review Search Option And Sentiment Analysis
• Why You Need to Find All Your NAP Variations Before Building Local Citations

11. TRACK MENTIONS FROM RELATED COINED TERMS

Link reclamation is probably one of the first initiatives when doing a strategic off-page SEO campaign for a website that has established authority in its vertical. It is because there is a higher probability of getting your first set of in-content links simply when you reach out to people who are familiar with your brand and have used your resources in their content works.

In addition to tracking mentions of your content assets, you can also do the same strategy to your competitors’ resources. There are many types of content assets you can actually track to see if there are publishers or bloggers who used your competitor’s content in bloggers’ websites but not credit their original sources.

A few examples are images created by the brand (infographics), mentions of your products, embedded Youtube videos, and other content that deserve credit in a form of links.

How to use competitor-based link reclamation strategy to your own advantage?

 

STEP 1: Identify the top-performing pages of your competitor’s site by using CognitiveSEO and using the number of referring domains and page authority as your performance metrics.

 

STEP 2: Track upcoming mentions of chosen resource/content of your competitor using BrandMentions. The tool will automatically notify you if there are new mentions, whether they are linked or unlinked on other content distributing sites.

 

STEP 3: Find a resource of yours that is similar to your competitor’s content. Reach out to the blogger and pitch him showing your related content. You don’t need to ask for a link, it will be automatically given once they perceive your content as valuable.

12. REVERSE IMAGE SEARCH FOR LINK PROSPECTING

Reverse image search is an effective off-page SEO practice that helps link building practitioners to find out blogs where the image has been embedded. If the blog is linked to a wrong image source, it is best to ask him for the proper credit.

Though this off-page SEO technique is mainly used for link reclamation, you actually apply this same strategy to your link prospecting process. How?

STEP 1: Find a competing visual asset in your industry. It could be the infographic you tried to post on your blog that gained massive social shares or a generic image created by an expert in your field. You can use a simple Google image search like “infographic” “industry” to find these popular visual content assets.

 

STEP 2: Grab URLs of these visual assets and plug in your favorite reverse image tool to find websites that embedded them.

 

STEP 3: Add those websites in your spreadsheet as your additional backlink prospects. Reach out to them with a unique proposition, not necessarily for the purpose of image link reclamation.

13. COLLABORATE WITH INFLUENCERS/AUTHORS

Aligning brand strategy with your off-page SEO process enables you to strongly build relationships not only with like-minded bloggers but with entities in the same vertical.

This helps your brand to position itself on the web and on its specific field by being perceived as a credible and trustworthy website by search engines and by target searchers – because links coming from trusted websites are good indicators of a site’s trustworthiness.

One simple branding approach is collaborating with niche influencers and authors for content creation. Given that they had industry experience in web publishing and a massive audience following, touching base with them assures the quality of a content asset and a more effective content promotion than doing it alone.

How does influencer outreach start?

STEP 1: Find influencers and authors in your niche who’ll be interested in a content partnership. Do a Google search for “guest post by” [ industry ] to search for this kind of personality.

 

STEP 2: Identity what kind of mutual benefit you can offer to your outreach prospects. It could be asking them to answer a set of interview questions, to be compiled and published on your blog, or cross-publishing content pieces – i.e. embedding your infographic to his blog in exchange for a guest article on your site.

One pro tip here is to actually look at your prospect’s latest articles and see what type of content they usually publish and in conjunction with your content publishing – what type of asset do you want to test out on your website.

 

STEP 3: Send straightforward pitches with strong value propositions to capture their interests

Useful Resource: 50+ Ways To Increase Website Traffic (Roundup)

14. FIND HIGHLY CONVERTING OUTREACH PROSPECTS IN MOMENT QUERIES

Targeting high-profile bloggers who are likely to convert into linkers is one main objective of a blogger outreach campaign. But that’s going to be really tough if you don’t know how to find them.

Searching the web for potential linkers is one initiative you can start in your link prospecting process. However, your search phrase (keywords plus search operators) should be as very specific as possible to get the most refined results from search engines.

One off-page SEO technique to be very specific with search pages as well as to increase response and link acquisition rates in your outreach is to actually use in-moment options in Google search.

This means that pages that will appear in search results are assured to be published within the past hour or past 24 hours from the moment of search.

 

How to start with this link prospecting technique:

STEP 1: Do a Google search for your preferred search phrases.

 

STEP 2: Filter the results by date of publishing (Search – Date – hour or 24 hours).

 

STEP 3: Gather those pages that are relevant to your niche and put them down in a list. Qualify them based on your link metrics and reach out to them afterward.

15. USE LONGER STRINGS FOR HIGHER CLICKS FROM LINKS

Links have been a top-ranking signal in search today and this has been proven many times - see these posts at SEOAuv about link importance and this experiment on Moz on how long links can influence rankings).

Links help websites rank in organic search. This is unarguably true. However, many marketers forget other objectives of links like driving visitors to a linked page. If it does generate visits, acquiring links can also become a very strategic approach to increase followers, subscribers, and brand advocates.

If you are distributing content to other blogs – i.e. contributing a guest article or providing answers to interview questions, make sure you only add niche-specific resources to your contributed piece. If the topic is email list building, don’t add any pure on-page article to content unless it is contextually relevant.

State the value of a referenced resource by giving readers a preview of the information the content includes. The best way is to actually use longer strings to describe what the content is all about.

16. ACQUIRE NEWSLETTER LINKS

 

Email newsletters are good sources of information from publishers. This information could either be a curated list of links from top articles of the week or a preview of a new blog post posted on the hosted blog.

Getting featured in these newsletters is a very powerful branding/marketing strategy, as it allows your brand to distribute its own content massively to a different audience which will also help you increase your existing followers if you absorb active social sharers from other blogs.

Eventually, when these followers are fascinated with your blog content, they will eventually be your brand advocates who might be interested in linking to your content assets from their own websites and social profiles.

That’s why identifying newsletters that allow external linking to other relevant sources is a huge advantage for marketers. Exclusive feature in newsletters becomes a profitable off-page technique nowadays.

 

Follow this simple step-by-step guide to get featured in topical newsletters:

STEP 1: Create a list of blogs that feature top resources in newsletters on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis. You can also check out your current list of outreach prospects to find newsletter-featuring websites.

Once you’re done with the list, take note of how periodically these blogs send emails to their subscribers by looking at some obvious statements on their available opt-in or landing pages on their websites.

 

STEP 2: Subscribe to these blogs’ email lists and know what kind of resources these newsletters usually link out to (identify similarities in form, length, and theme).

 

STEP 3: Constantly provide actionable and useful content on your blog to build a strong readership following and to get recommendations to be featured in other blogs’ newsletters. If you are not getting any exclusive email feature after months of content publishing, you can try reaching out to publishers in your earlier contact list and ask if they are interested to see a new user guide or resource.

17. ADJUST REFERRAL COMMISSION RATE FOR AUTHORITY BLOGGERS

 

Relationship building matters in online marketing as it helps you build a strong following base that is capable of introducing your content to new readers, who might actually be your potential linkers.

Bloggers, especially those who are professionals, are part of a market segment that has the highest response rate among all online users simply because of their availability and full-time access to the web.

Building relationships with these bloggers allow you to dominate a particular part of your market segment, given that their followers could also connect with you for different forms of partnership. This is a compounding effect to your branding campaign since you will get a double portion of the market – your target bloggers and their followers as well.

 

The best way to initiate this off-page SEO technique is to offer an affiliate program or a referral commission system to attract bloggers in reviewing your products or services. Here are some steps you can follow through:

STEP 1: Create a list of bloggers who might be interested to write a review about your product/service or might share some stories and insights with your offering.

STEP 2: Segment your list of bloggers based on their social following base (Twitter followers), authority, and their websites’ factors (i.e. referring domains, domain authority, estimated organic traffic in SEMRush).

You can also add the format of content they usually produce on their website. If they can produce more than one – i.e. articles and webinars/videos/podcasts, it’s a good sign that they can engage their audience with different content types, which is very important in retaining the interests of your target visitors while consuming your product/service review.

STEP 3: Prioritize reaching out to authority bloggers. Offer them a higher commission rate so you can easily entice them to write a review about your offering. You can also make cross-publishing an additional value proposition in your outreach. The idea here is to make the off-page SEO strategy beneficial for both the blogger and your brand.

For example, your brand will get an additional following base and potential customers from the product/service review and the blogger will also have the advantage of co-branding himself by publishing an article to your brand’s blog and adding it to his portfolio or about page (as featured in….).

18. GET OUTREACH DETAILS FROM CLEARBIT

Finding a person’s name and email address is the initial phase in link building outreach. This is where most of your outreach initiatives will depend on given that if you find wrong contact details, obviously your pitches won’t be taken to the right place.

When finding outreach prospect’s personal details, it’s very important to use effective web-based tools such as Clearbit. I personally use Clearbit as an alternative tool for Rapportive because the product is capable of giving you the free email address of the person you’re contacting, not only validating it if it’s actually working.

 

How to use Clearbit for initial pitch:

STEP 1: Install Clearbit to your Gmail Chrome Extension.

 

STEP 2: Click “Connect” link at the upper right side of Gmail and choose “find an email”.

 

STEP 3:  Type in the homepage URL of the site you’re extracting the email address from. The tool will automatically provide names of people working for the company and/or are included in the website. Choose the person you’d like to connect with.

19. COMMENT-BASED LINK PROSPECTING

Link prospecting is the initial phase in link building where you’ll start to find possible link targets from verticals that are relevant to your website. This is also where your entire link acquisition campaign will depend on, as this initiates the process and helps you identify what particular methods you’ll be performing to acquire links from your target backlink prospects.

Creativity matters in link prospecting since you have to choose the right keywords that will be able to generate refined page results in search engines.

One off-page SEO tactic we’ve been using for our link research campaigns for our clients that are very effective in providing high-quality blogs is adding the number of comments to a specific link prospecting phrase. Here is how you can exactly do it:

 

STEP 1: Add comment plus number to your prospect keywords (“comments(8)” “keyword”) and generate results on search.

STEP 2: Qualify results based on your brand’s link metrics. Discover new backlink opportunities by checking links inserted in blog’s comments.

 

STEP 3:  Try using the following comment-based search phrases to collect more backlink targets:

• “disqus” “keyword”
• “commentluv” “keyword”
• “notify me of follow up comments” “keyword”

20. CREATE LOCAL NICHE PROFILES

The ability to dominate a market segment, particularly if you are a local brand, highly depends on the brand awareness you build in your local community, whether offline or online.

Local link building nowadays is leading towards partnerships with local organizations and institutions as well as really getting into the minds of your customers (mindshare), which is a solid combination of an off-page SEO strategy that can certainly impact your lead generation process.

One easy way, but mostly overlooked off-page SEO technique in building local links is creating niche profiles.

I’ve noticed this recently when we had a vacation last month that instead of searching in Google for the best restaurants located near our vacation place, we go straight to a popular local website that features nearby restaurants and food stores – Zomato (which is actually a recommendation of one of our friends).

 

Having said that, creating local brand profiles that are targeted to an industry you’re trying to promote your products/services to, is a handy technique you’ll generate high returns from your marketing efforts.

Other Useful Resources:

• The Nifty Guide to Local Content Strategy and Marketing
• Local Marketing for Brands

21. STRONG BRAND MESSAGING

Brand building is the new link building and off-page SEO strategy in digital marketing today, given that when brands become true to their core values, messaging and personalities, it becomes easy for them to penetrate and dominate their target audiences.

There are many ways to send a strong brand messaging without actually hard-selling your products/services, below are some steps you can apply:

• Identify your brand’s core competence, to be able to know where you would put most of your efforts.
• Invest in creating comprehensive resources that will give the best answers to commonly-asked questions in your industry.
• Provides satisfaction and excellence to existing customers or clients so you'll acquire hard-to-built links that your competitors can't easily copy (see this link we've earned recently).

 

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by Venchito Tampon Jr

Brand Building Strategies for Modern Day Link Building

Brand building is the new link building.

Keyword-centric link building is long gone. Focusing on a large percentage of exact match anchor text usage on inbound links will do more harm than good for your website.

The way to win in search nowadays is to start thinking brand-first.

Over the years, search engines and users favor brands that have a strong presence online. Think of a product you need right now and remember a brand that sells a kind of it.

The long-term effects of building your brand through links are overwhelming. It's not instantaneous but can illustrate a slow yet gradual increase of benefits as soon as the leverage starts kicking in (think link building flywheel).

 

For small websites with inadequate size, budget, and resources to win over their competitors, the only way to strengthen their brands is to build the right types of links.

Below are four strategies to effectively help you with your link building campaigns that aim to build your brand.

[toc]

1. Invest In Big Content Assets

Publishing content assets that are big enough to cut through the noise requires both resources and creativity. If you don't have the former requirement, double down on the latter - creativity.

Start by identifying topics that are frequently searched by people in your industry.

 

Ensure that there's a substantial amount of pages linking to the pages ranking in your target keyword. This guarantees that there's an audience of publishers that might possibly link to your content asset when you reach out to them.

 

Pro-tip: Observe niche websites that are focused on a particular topic and are targeted to a specific audience.

For example, this website is particularly centered on providing information to parents and teachers on the importance of sleep for kids and how to get them to sleep better

 

A couple of pages have been published on the site as well that may seem to be better to consume if they are on a single page (on a big content piece).

 

So, we've created comprehensive content on the topic - encompassing all big points covered on the website as well as topics we may have to incorporate that are not included yet in the original source.

 

It's also important to identify how to position your content asset as a differentiator in your industry by including content types your competitors haven't built yet.

For example, the sleep sheet page I've found can be best turned into an infographic - making it easily consumable by the audience.

We've created one for that.

 

And we gave credit to where it is due.

Add table:

 

Embed videos:

 

Always remember in creating big content assets:

Treat your content as a product.

Like a product, before your content asset goes out to the world, you tested it for quality assurance. You may want to check out this content quality checklist from Siegemedia to guide you with the post-content creation phase.

Start reaching out to websites linking to the niche website and get high-quality contextual links:

 

Other Useful Resource:

10X Content Ideation and Creation Process

2. Be Missional In Your Outreach

In their latest content trends study, Buzzsumo shows that majority of content published online gets zero backlinks and no social shares.

That's a harsh reality, but it's true.

It's easy to create content. But the hardest part is acquiring links and social shares to it.

Just like a product, the market decides if your content is good enough or not.

To break that content promotion anxiety, one has to come up with an effective approach.

Years ago, I stumbled upon the idea of mission-based marketing at CitationLabs. It speaks about identifying a mission in content creation and outreach.

Primarily, a mission can impact your content marketing campaign in so many ways:

• It creates a genuine purpose.
• It enables buy-in from influencers and experts in a meaningful way.
• It justifies sudden existence in someone's inbox.

When that happens, it's easier to execute parts of your outreach campaign, such as:

• Identifying potential linkers to your content (linkeratis)
• Crafting email templates that get an above-average email open rate
• Engaging publishers/webmasters/link-curators that reciprocate your actions in the end.

Let's dive in a little bit and see how the mission plays a vital role in each one above.

Identify Potential Linkers 

There is no actual mission if there is no target people to whom a special purpose is catered.

With my earlier example, our main target audience is parents who're having a hard time getting their kids' sleep. We could target both parents and teachers (on how to teach the importance of sleep), which of course could expand our reach - more link opportunities!) but that would deviate from our focus mission from the very start.

By having a clear target audience, we were able to populate our initial list of link opportunities by reverse engineering similar content assets.

 

Searching deeper, we've found out pages linking to those who've linked to competitors' assets.

Crafting Email Templates

By putting mission upfront in your outreach, it brings excitement and passion in crafting your email messages given that you're thinking of how to get buy-in from outreach prospects to your purpose.

Clearly define ways on how other people (webmasters, link curators, bloggers, publishers), can contribute to the cause on your initial pitch. Your subject line and the first sentence of the email should encourage collaboration.

Through this, they (publishers) can help you in so many ways, such as:

• Providing suggestions and feedback to your content asset
• Connecting you with any of the influencers/experts within their organizations
• Sharing your content piece through other channels (social media, email, etc..) that are aside from linking to your page
• Contributing data insights that can improve your existing content piece (e.g. calendar, graph, directory, list)

Getting your outreach prospects to buy into your mission is one of the best ways to naturally attract links to your website.

Engaging Outreach Prospects 

Bringing value upfront differentiates you from the pack of people sending off link requests all the time.

For example, if you practice broken link building, when you elicit responses from webmasters after you've told about their link errors on their resource pages, you immediately suggest pages (including yours) as replacements to their defunct links.

One approach we've found to be highly effective in helping webmasters fix their links is to look for the best replacements for each broken link.

There are three things that we normally suggest to them as replacements.

A. New page (redirected page)

By using the advanced search operator "site:domain", we look for the new page where the old information is now placed - which is published on the same website.

 

In some cases, the new page is a redirected new website where the webmaster has transferred all details of the original information.

B. Homepage

If the old information isn't published anywhere on the website (i.e. a new page) or it couldn't be seen on other sites (or new website), the next best replacement is their homepage.

 

C. Remove the link

There are broken links that are non-evergreen (i.e. news, article, pdf), of which the homepage is not a good replacement - the best suggestion to the webmaster is to actually remove the link.

For a more detailed guide on how to find the best replacements for broken links, you can check out my older post on broken link replacements.

3. Collaborate With Influencers For Guest Publishing 

Relationships are vital in acquiring high-value links from top industry publications.

It would be easier for your pitch to stand out amongst hundreds (if not thousands) of guest contributor emails bloggers are receiving daily in their inbox if they are aware of your brand (you) and the kind of value you can contribute to their website's audience and followers (through your content).

Easier said than done, but bloggers who're still starting to build their own brand may not have the popularity and authority needed to generate interest from target publishers.

One approach that you can use to capture the attention of your prospect publishers is to associate yourself with influencers or experts in your field.

The process can begin by Identifying influencers whom you can help out by getting them more exposure on bigger sites/brands.

You can start with popular bloggers who host interviews on their blogs (use Google search - ex. "interview series" + "industry" or "podcast" + "industry").

 

Check the list of experts being interviewed on the hosted website. Pick those who have their own blogs given that high-value links to their websites will be the main value proposition of your pitch to them (more on this later).

 

From there, you can find and collect their email address. List them all in a spreadsheet to have an easier process once you start reaching out to them.

The second part of this process is to pitch industry publications with content topics that haven't been covered yet on their blogs.

What you should be offering for them is content that can rank on keywords that they haven't ranked yet and that includes high-value information based on your expert's (interviewee's) answers to your niche-specific questions.

 

The only answer you'll expect from your initial pitch is their chosen topics for your guest content.

 

The next part of the method is to reach out to influencers or personalities (from the first part of the process) and try to do an interview with them.

 

Come up with questions that are related to the chosen topic of your target publication so it'll be easily integrated into the draft piece you'll be creating (given your guest content is also about the chosen topic).

Once you've received their answers to your questionnaire, you'll then create highly informative content that you can use as a guest entry for your prospect publication sites.

 

The great thing about this approach is that it's very easy to generate this type of content and definitely a win/win situation for all parties: the blog hosting the content will publish content that includes experts' insights (and potentially can rank for informative keywords), the interviewee (expert) acquires a quality for his/her blog (and gets more exposure) and you, as the contributor, build a brand presence and authority on other blogs (which can translate to additional traffic and more potentially linking opportunities).

4. Have A Long-Term Perspective

When doing link acquisition, it's imperative that you think long-term. You avoid shady link building tactics that lead to short-term behaviors and benefits.

Instead, you target the right types of links that will have a lasting impact on your website.

By providing useful content (industry guides, cheatsheets, data infographics) that gets visibility over time through its ability to rank for secondary/primary keywords, you increase the possibility of attracting links even without doing manual outreach.

Ross Hudgens shared their repeatable blog promotion strategy at SiegeMedia that allows them to increase their client's monthly visitors by hundreds of thousands (month over month).

 

By targeting keywords where your website has the ability to rank (by creating comprehensive content and manually building links to it), you'll soon be able to level up to more difficult topics/keywords.

Repeatedly doing so can slowly build your brand as an authority publisher of useful information in your industry.

For further reading, you can check out these two guides on building authority links and content writing tips. 

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by Venchito Tampon Jr

Content Marketing Ideas & Strategies For Small Business

Content sits at the core of most discussions by marketers and business owners today.

The reason why content is king is that it ties every area in digital marketing together. This simple image below from Jason Acidre's content marketing at Moz is still relevant up to this date.

"Does content marketing work for small businesses?" This is a question I received multiple times. And the answer is an astounding yes.

It works for big brands and it works for a small business owned by you.

However, it works more effectively if you are clear about your goals.

You'll receive different responses when people are asked, why are they doing content marketing?

You hear words like, "because it's trending now". Others say, "my business friend does it, I'll invest in it too".

[toc]

 

Why Do Small Businesses Need Content Marketing?

Why use content marketing? How can content marketing help a business? What does content mean in business? What does content marketing include?

These are the questions people asked as to why small business owners need content marketing?

In the recent B2B content marketing research by Content Marketing Institute, these are the top three most-cited content marketing goals achieved in the last 12 months — giving us a preview of the main reasons why people need to invest in content marketing:

• Creating brand awareness (86%)
• Educating audience(s) (79%)
• Building credibility/trust (75%

Let's quickly discuss them one by one.

Creating brand awareness

Content is deemed to bring awareness about your brand, regardless of type, industry, and size.

And in this day and age, the competition is in branding. People buy products because they've known it, repeatedly seen on different social places — and therefore, they've made buying decisions based on which products get more branded.

Building awareness through content marketing is a huge thing.

This is where small business owners like you can leverage and can compete over your contemporaries.

You may not have a billion-dollar marketing budget, but if you can purposefully implement a solid content strategy with a good amount of investment and build a strong brand out of it, you'll be better off dominate a good share in your market.

Educating the audience

To educate is the best way to sell

Content marketing takes a long process to get people to move through your business' customer journey. In content, you are not always selling your products and services.

Most of your content assets, whether those that are written-word (like blog posts), videos, audio, and other formats, are designed to inform your audience with topics they'll be interested to consume.

 

Through content, you show your expertise as a brand. Your potential customers get to trust you as they are helped with the content serving their specific needs.

There is a high return on investment in content marketing. If properly planned and executed, content marketing can be a powerful channel of new leads for your small business.

Building credibility and trust

Word-of-mouth marketing today isn't only acquired through best works of services or products--while that, of course, is a huge advantage for entrepreneurs who are looking to scale their small businesses.

Through content marketing, you can build credibility and trust of your potential customers to your brand.

Word-of-mouth marketing can also happen when they've found your content valuable to be shared and used as a reference for their content works.

See more resources:

• Digital Marketing Funnel
• Porch Guide to Starting a Business

 

Content Marketing Myths Of Small Business Owners

There are certain mindsets small business owners, including the ones who owned a content marketing business, must break to start investing in content marketing and reap its benefits. Here are a few you should watch yourself if you're a small business owner.

"I don't have time for content marketing"

If you're an entrepreneur, you wear many hats to let your business thrive. You are putting out fires in sales, operations, hiring, admin, and finance.

Doing all these things makes you think you don't have time for content marketing.

 

That may be true, but if you look at the benefits of content marketing to your business (which I've shared earlier), you'll find ways to invest in it.

The best way to start is to do it yourself. Content requires some kind of expertise that outsourced generic writers (low-cost outsourcing) may not afford to do.

You can create one asset for less than an hour (e.g. producing a video and repurpose it into other content formats — to efficiently and instantly generate multiple content pieces for your brand.

"I don't have enough budget for content marketing"

Besides lack of time, another excuse small business owners voice out is their lack of resources, particularly finances to invest in content marketing.

 

Today, the online web has offered several opportunities to market your brand with small investment using strategies through organic channels.

For example, you can answer 3 to 5 questions on Quora on topics you are interested in (and have the expertise to bring value). This Quora marketing doesn't cost any buck from your end.

So not having enough budget to execute a content marketing campaign can't be used as an excuse today — knowing there are so many opportunities this core channel can bring to your site.

"Content marketing is SEO"

This is where most people get confused: mixing content marketing and SEO.

Here's the truth: content marketing is not SEO, but it is part of it.

Content marketing is tied into your other SEO efforts such as link acquisition, and keyword research. Links are a by-product (and considered as one goal) in starting a content marketing campaign.

Researching and choosing content ideas is tied into content asset creation to target topics (or keyphrases) that have a tendency to rank in search results.

There are many other myths small business owners come up with on a daily basis.

But the thing is you have to be sold enough to the idea of content marketing.

If you're still not convinced, here are some more benefits of starting a content marketing campaign:

• Drive potential customers from organic rankings (when content assets start to rank for their targeted keywords) and from distribution channels (when content assets are promoted).
• Establish a personal brand (besides the company itself) as an expert in your industry.
• Engage with your leads and let them go through a slow process of a customer journey.

Now, let's dive into some content marketing ideas you can start brainstorming with your team, fill in the gap with your competitors' content, and execute as much as possible to reap the benefits listed above.

 

Content Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

Execution starts with ideas.

In this section, we are going to answer this question, "how do I market my small business?"

If you're looking for ways to come up with content assets as early as possible, here are some that can get you out there and do the work.

Leverage the GaryVee Content Model

Gary Vaynerchuck, CEO of VaynerMedia has closed the gap between content ideas and their distribution with his content model.

 

His content model basically follows this process:

• Document pillar content
• Repurpose into micro-content
• Distribute across social media

 

Let's discuss each step.

Document pillar content

What is pillar content?

Pillar content is a long form piece of content that can be chopped into micro content pieces. Examples of pillar content are daily vlogs, Q&A shows, interviews, keynotes or podcast.

If you are not comfortable in documenting your brand videos — with you like the frontier, you may find videos where your brand has been part of (it could be a story of your company from its setup to its growth today).

Discover these long-form pieces in your archives or create one for yourself.

Repurpose into micro-content

From your pillar content, you can create short-form pieces of content. These are video clips from your long-form video, videos transcribed for articles, short clips turned into memes, images, quotes, remixes, GIFs, and other micro content useful for your audience.

Imagine if you have 1 or 2 pillar content and turn them into 30 micro-content pieces each. That's 60 content assets in total that you can distribute both on your internal blog, and to external distribution channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Youtube.

Distribute across social media

This last phase is the tedious part of the process because you have to ensure you know the context and behavior of each social platform.

Facebook is over-indexed today with videos as well as images with long-form captions.

Instagram is full of high-quality images, quotes, and IGTV comes with minutes of video content.

Every social platform requires different visitor interactions and consumption of content.

Ross Hudgens of SiegeMedia has done this model incredibly for their weekly videos on their content marketing blog. They have Content Conversations series where they interview top-notch SEOs and marketers to talk about the different facets of content marketing, techniques, and link building strategies to better improve the execution of content marketing.

 

They also have weekly tips where they simply share their insider content strategies for their clients.

This is where your "no time" and "no resource" excuses will be eliminated. As you produce more pillar content pieces, you double it, or multiply the number of pieces you have. This allows you to get a flywheel effect on your content marketing results.

Produce 10x, 5x, and 2x content

The idea of skyscraper content produces a movement of marketers producing long-form content — increasing now the benchmark of word count per content piece.

Even that itself gives a solid motivation for publishers, Brian Dean's skyscraper principle was misunderstood by many publishers, leading them to sacrifice the quality of information over quantity.

The reality is producing 10x content requires both: quantity and quantity.

Not only that, there is a misconception going around that all content pieces should be done 10x. This means that if your content piece is not 4000 or 5000 words in length, your page will not stand out in organic search results.

For small business owners, 10x content creation is not the only pathway to go.

There are information and topics that need 5x, and even just 2x needed to perform better in search engine results pages.

You don't have to write long-form to satisfy users.

Sometimes, you need 2x content, not 10x content. Here's why:

• Consistently producing 2x content pieces multiple times a month can outperform a one-time 10x content asset every month.
• The number of 2x content produced on a blog that targets different topics has a faster impact on the site's overall domain authority.

My recommendation for you as a small business owner is to produce 2x content, 5x content, and 10x content. 10x content isn't only the way to go.

To get the maximum results in the least possible time, you can consistently produce 2x content on a monthly basis.

While doing so, make sure you consider delivering other formats of content to better satisfy your users.

Here are some formats for different learning styles you may consider to add to your content:

• Surveys
• Podcasts
• Video content
• Ebooks
• Case studies (of your customers or other people)
• Checklists, a list of additional references/resources, and tools

You can't produce all the content types. There are only ones that fit into your strengths — your technical expertise, your resources, your set of writers, and your blog architecture.

Identify those aforementioned factors before diving right into content creation.

Use low-cost entry channels for content distribution

Your content marketing campaign will not succeed without any promotion of your brand assets.

If you're a small business owner, you don't want to invest money in content creation without even promoting it to get more results in terms of traffic, shares, links, or referred conversions.

Remove the mindset that in order to distribute content to different channels, you have to pay huge bucks for advertising.

There are, in fact, entry channels where the cost of entry for distribution is low, and even free. It doesn't necessarily require a team of content marketers to promote your content. You can actually do it yourself.

Quora

Every industry has questions to answer. This is where your expertise can play with.

Use Quora to market your content assets. And I don't mean you insert links inappropriately.

What you need to do is to find any discussion pages that need more attention to answers.

Prioritize the ones that are already ranking on search engine results. Given that those are pages that get recurring visitors from search.

Use SEMRush or Ahrefs to find what pages Quora is already dominating on search results.

 

Answer those questions if they seem relevant to the content assets you've already published.

For example, I recently published a guide on how to use HARO. I then looked for any HARO-related queries on Quora and used takeaways or bullet points from my HARO guide as answers to questions.

 

7 Content Marketing Tools for Small Business

"How do you create business content?"

You can't create business content assets without using proprietary tools.

Not just for content ideation, but for content formatting, topic research, and even outreach promotion — tools can speed up output in a content marketing campaign.

Here are some web-based products you can utilize for your small business content marketing campaign:

Pixlr

It doesn't hurt much to edit photos yourself. If you can't afford to hire a full-time graphic designer, you can DIY photo editing.

Pixlr can help you with photo-editing tasks.

 

What I liked about this online photo editor is that it is easy to use — very quick even for professional edits. You can make adjustments to your image, draw anything on it, remove spots, and add more filters to enhance the photo.

Whatever quality of photo you desire, you can achieve it perfectly with Pixlr.

Remove BG

Oftentimes, if you want to remove the background of an image, you have to learn how to do Photoshop.

You don't always have to.

 

Within 5 seconds, RemoveBG can remove the backgrounds of images. It slashes your time editing the entire visual.

Snappa

Another amazing content marketing tool you can repeatedly use is Snappa.

For every text-based content, i.e. blog posts, there is a need to create featured images to appear in the blog section.

 

Snappa allows you to create an eye-catching image even if you're not a graphic designer.

Starting from the perfect image dimension and with their pre-made templates, you can create a high-resolution stock photo right inside Snappa. Add texts, and effects to the image wherever you want.

In 5 minutes, you can do the work you pay for designers. Have it very quickly for blog posts and for social media posts.

Recordit

If you are creating how-to on-screen guides in a text or video format, you spend most of your time creating screenshots.

 

RecordIt gives you the luxury of generating fast screenshots. You'll save much of your time doing so, therefore, producing more how-to content assets for your blog.

Esummarizer

You know one of the most consuming parts of a content creation process. Specific to blog writing, — It's writing the summary of the entire article.

 

Another tool to supercharge your productivity is Esummarizer. It does only one thing — to summarize any text online in a few seconds. Now, you don't have to worry about the summary, the tool does it for you.

Keywords Everywhere

Keyword research tools are great. But one tool that's most fascinating, easily integrated as an extension to your browser is Keywords Everywhere.

 

Whatever keyword you are searching for on Google, it will give you related keywords and phrases people also search for. These words can be included in your content piece either add it straight to the page and/or create new sections to target those topics.

Furthermore, Keywords Everywhere allows you to check important metrics of keywords — search volume, CPC & competition data.

Straight from search results, you can export and download any list of keywords in Excel, CSV, or PDF file formats.

Google Trends

Using trending topics in your content is a good way to get early traction from readers who are looking for industry updates.

Google Trends is a great tool to see any trending topics as well as check the demands of a keyphrase month over month.

 

Here are some advantages of using Google Trends in your content marketing toolset:

• Find entities associated with the term — by adding brands, institutions, and any particular names to your content, search engines can easily identify and match them and know what your content is all about.
• Look at whether the interest in that topic is increasing or decreasing over time.
• Compare up to 5 different things against each other to resolve an argument about which topic to focus on.

3 Content Marketing Examples for Small Business

All content marketing ideas are good if they are executed properly. And everyone needs content marketing help for some inspiration.

Here are three small businesses that are doing extremely well with content marketing (from John Doherty's observations at Credo).

Ecommerce: Frank and Oak’s Handbook

You see usual blogs from eCommerce sites - nothing too special. But Frank and Oak have a top-notch blog architecture that gives you a soothing feeling in consuming its content.

This clothing retailer brand makes their handbook (their blog) like an online magazine filled with stories and advice on good living. It also has categories for culture-centric content pieces that perfectly fit its target market - millennials. 

If you're an eCommerce small business brand, check out their blog and be inspired by how they use content to get brand advocates.

SaaS: Wix’s website-building tutorials

If you're a SaaS small business owner, Wix's content execution can be an inspiration for you. They published tutorial-style content in video format and publish it on their Youtube channel.

 

From basic topics to more advanced areas of website building, Wix does well in making its channel a one-stop information channel in the industry. They also have interview-type content where they feature prominent personalities and influencers.

B2B: MindSea’s original research

For B2B small businesses, ensuring that content is fact-based and/or credible is the top-most considered concept when creating content.

There are no other brands we can think of that does solid data-driven content creation other than Mindsea. They take a different approach to sharing data interestingly through visual content.

 

Further Reading:

• The guide to building your business with content
• Case studies on out-of-the-box content marketing
• 2020 B2B content marketing

Final words on small business content marketing

There is no small business, only small business owners. The same is true with your investment in content marketing.

It's not only how much money you invest in content marketing. Consider as well all non-financial resources you can put all into execution — time, attention, and networks to help you propel the results that you're looking for.

Share with us in the comments what else you need to get started with content marketing.

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by Venchito Tampon Jr

Ecommerce Link Building: 21 New Strategies [With Examples & Email Templates]

In this post, I’m going to show you 21 new link building strategies for eCommerce websites.

And these tips actually work in ranking product pages for competitive keywords.

In fact, the 21 strategies I'm going to share with you have helped us ranked one of our eCommerce clients (Fiddlershop) for highly searchable competitive keywords like viola, violin, and cello.

 

Now it's time to show you each of these strategies.

 

[toc]

 

1. Get Listed on What's On My [Season] Wishlist

You're probably familiar with wishlists.

There are counterparts of it online, in a form of a blog post.

 

Industry bloggers publish this type of content during seasonal events (e.g. Christmas) to help their readers discover new products online.

And if you, an eCommerce marketer, give these bloggers a product that's interesting to use, you get link opportunities right off the bat.

But where can you find this type of backlink opportunities?

You begin by finding bloggers who just recently published "wishlist" blog posts.

Use this search query when you do a Google search: "what's on my" [SEASON] "wishlist"

 

Make a list of bloggers who published wishlist articles on their blog.

It is best to check if they only post one-time or if they do regularly publish wishlists during seasonal events.

Because they're more receptive to your product endorsements/reviews if it is part of their content ritual.

Approach them through email and offer to give away your product for free.

 

2. Build Product Page Links From “Where to Buy” Pages

Here's the #1 struggle in eCommerce link building:

Building links to product pages…

Even more difficult if your product and category pages don't have much information worthy of reference by publishers.

But here's the thing:

You can get backlinks to your product and category pages.

How?

Start by contacting your complementary businesses and suppliers.

Typically, they have "where to buy" or "stockists" pages where they list down all sources where people can buy their products.

List down your manufacturers, retailers, or suppliers of your products.

See if they have websites and dedicated "where to buy" or "stockists" pages.

Use a quick Google search, "site:domain.com "where to buy" OR "stockists"

Or you can also reverse engineer your competitors.

You can use Ahrefs for this.

Site Explorer > enter a competitor’s domain > Backlinks

Then search for "where to buy" or "stockists" in the search field.

Reach out to them and request to be added to their pages.

 

3. Use The "Product Alternative" Technique

There is always a better option for products.

And people want alternatives to see which one fits their purchasing needs.

The only question is:

What makes your product a better alternative for your competitors?

Are you serving a different market? Do you target a different type of customer?

If your competitor serves the US market, you serve the UK — you're a good alternative for the same offer.

If your competitor targets a different type of audience (high-end customers), you sell affordable products - you're a good alternative for the same product.

How can you take advantage of this "product alternative technique"?

First, you find it in different markets, locations, or audiences.

Prospect blog posts recommending or mentioning this competitor. Ahrefs can easily help you with this.

 

Request these publishers to link to you, stating that your product might be useful for their market.

 

4. Convert Unlinked Mentions Into Links

Whether your online store is new or established, you'll experience some of these changes:

New product launches.

New partnerships and acquisitions.

Location openings and closures.

Interviews about your leadership team

Whether you do digital PR or just bloggers catching up with your new product events, you get mentions from elsewhere.

But there's the thing:

Not all brand and product mentions credit you with links.

 

So what you want to do is to capture all of these unlinked mentions and turn them into links.

First, find them through intitle Google search.

 

Or use Ahrefs to get more of these linkless mentions.

 

Then go and reach out to each publisher and ask them to credit their mentions with links.

Subject: Thanks for mentioning [ SITE/BRAND NAME]

Hi [ NAME ],

Hope you’re doing great day.

I would like to drop a quick message to say thank you for mentioning [ BRAND NAME ] in your post – [URL].

I noticed that you hadn’t included details of our brand and was wondering if you would be kind to include a link pointing to our website, so your visitors would see more information about your reference.

Thanks again

Kind regards,

[ YOUR NAME ]

 

For a more detailed step by step process, you can check out this link reclamation guide.

 

5. Publish "X City" Content Assets

Publish great content.

But what's great really mean?

Simple answer:

Blog post formats that work.

You know you create great content if you publish content formats that really work.

There is one content type that works for eCommerce blogs. And that is:

"X City" content asset.

Just as normal people wonder which city/location has the oldest home or hottest in the state, content creators want to feature interesting content that is based on facts.

Take a look at this eCommerce brand: FilterBuy.

They create different resources in the "X City" format.

The Hottest City in Every State

 

Cities Most Prepared to Work From Home

 

The Most Affordable Cities to Size Up for a Home Office

 

Think about your online store.

What topics would resonate most with your customers?

What topics they would find interesting to consume?

What topics would local publishers and industry bloggers feature on their websites?

Find an intersection among all your answers to the above questions.

Get inspiration from Reddit:

 

And from niche communities:

Publish your own version of the "X City" content piece.

 

6. Use "Gone Out Of Business" As Source Of Link Opportunities

There are businesses that have recently gone out of business.

In many cases, their domain name actually expires.

When that happens, you'll find that the entire site gets replaced with parked pages, just like this:

 

These gone-out-of-business websites are still technically working.

But broken link checkers (like Ahrefs) can't find them.

The good thing is:

You'll find a lot of link building opportunities (hundreds or thousands depending on the site) that your competition doesn't know about.

Here's the question:

How can you find these gone-out-of-business websites?

Start with big domain auction sites like GoDaddy Auctions, Flippa, or NameJet.

Look for outdated websites that are related to your brand.

Identify how many referring domains are linking to each of the websites.

The higher number of referring domains, the more link opportunities are available to you.

Next thing to do:

Grab these domains linking to the outdated resource and check their backlinks.

You can use Ahrefs for this one.

Ahrefs - Enter the domain - Backlinks

 

Let people know about their outdated backlinks and offer your online store site as a replacement.

 

7. Solicit Links From Topical Resource Pages

You are probably familiar with resource pages.

They're basically a page that lists down links to different resources, references, and content on the same topic area.

Either this resource page is informational or salesly — just in the case with "where to buy" pages, where it lists down suppliers or resellers.

For example, if you see this page:

 

This is a general resource page that linked out to BMW events, BMW automobile parts sellers, maintenance services, and anything related to BMW.

Whereas, this page covers a more specific vehicle part: batteries.

 

So you'll see manufacturers, resellers, and suppliers on this page.

In your market, there are topical resource pages you can find.

Start with discovering pages linking to your competitor.

Use Ahrefs to find them.

Ahrefs - Enter your competitor's domain - Backlinks.

Then, filter the list with keywords on titles like, "links" OR "recommended" OR "best" to only see resources/links pages.

 

Reach out to them and request your product/category page to be added.

 

8. Hire Industry Authors For Your eCommerce Blog

One of the best ways to get links is to put out high-quality content.

Creating it is simple and is manageable if you have resources.

But promotion?

It needs efforts to get more eyeballs to your content.

Here's what I noticed:

High-quality content creation requires expertise to fly.

So, hiring an experienced writer to create content for your blog matters.

Start with authors who've written articles on other blogs.

You can use Ahrefs' Content Explorer to find them.

Search for the topic or blog theme you want them to write about.

Click "Published: Last 12 months".

Then, go to the "Authors" tab.

 

Reach out to them individually and offer to pay them to write for your blog.

It is best to also add your blog's traffic numbers, social media numbers, and any website number in your outreach email to help them see added exposure for them as authors.

 

9. Target "Going Green" Market For Links

One of the untapped linkable audiences in the eCommerce space is:

"Going Green" market

These are enthusiasts, organizations, and entities who are into recycling and nature sustainability.

If you happen to sell recyclable products or you could create a page about recycling related to what you're selling, there's a bank of opportunities available to you in this market.

How can you start?

Reverse engineer pages that are likely to give you backlinks.

Start by looking at your competitors' backlink profiles.

Using Ahrefs, you can see if they have linking pages about recycling.

 

Another way, to begin with, is to check general "recycling" resource pages.

Then see what types of content they usually linked to.

 

Then you reverse engineer by creating content that matches what these "recycling" resource pages want to link to.

Collect more link opportunities by doing advance Google searches:

And discovering more recycling resource pages using Ahrefs"

 

 

10. Invest In Sponsoring Local Events

If you're into local eCommerce, you should be looking for more geographical-based links (e.g. links from "New York" targeted websites).

And one way to do have those local links is to sponsor local events.

You've heard of sponsorship links.

Well, you may have some arguments or doubts as to whether or not you should buy links.

The truth is:

For the most part, you are buying links.

It may not be in the form of paying a blogger to explicitly give you a link from his blog.

But you're paying staff members (i.e. freelancer or link building agency) to build links for you — that itself is a form of link buying.

Going back:

When sponsoring local events, what you should be aiming mostly are homepage links from event websites.

Like this one:

 

Search for any big or small local organizations such as non-profit organizations.

Examples are outdoor sports and military for possible collaborations.

You can join a few Facebook groups in your niche. Then check the "events" tab inside the group.

 

Look for any upcoming events or contact the event organizer directly to see where your products might be a good fit.

Some events may explicitly say they're actually looking for vendors.

Be the first to reach out to them to get yourself updated.

Keep in touch with the event organizer.

You'll find that either:

They will write a post about the event.

Or have a dedicated page for sponsors with image or text links pointing to each of the sponsors’ websites.

 

Make sure you get credited with a link when the event goes live.

 

11. Set Up Landing Pages For "Big Retail Days"

Black Friday, Cyber Monday…

Single's Day, International Women's Day…

These are all big online retail days you shouldn't miss out on.

Not only that you'll get an increase in product sales.

But you often find your website gets occasional links.

So, set up a landing page for each big retail day.

Like this one:

 

It doesn't have to be fancy, just a page showing your offers and what your customers might expect from your brand during the product offer period.

Look for blogs that showcase new products during retail days.

Reach out to them and ask if they're willing to feature your product in one of the "feature retail days" articles.

That way, you get more upfront instead of simply waiting for bloggers and publishers to cover your "big days" product offer.

 

12. Get Conversion-Oriented Links From Old School Marketing Strategy

Old school is cool.

Only if the strategy still works.

One of the link building strategies eCommerce SEOs overlooked is forums.

Yes, you can get links from guest posts, "where to buy" pages.

But still:

People are on niche forums.

They are there to engage with other like-minded users to get help when seeking information or asking for possible solutions to their needs.

Instead of you, chasing them. And persuading them to buy your products.

Users in forums are introspecting about what products to purchase during the moment.

Take a look at this:

 

It's a niche forum for Ducati owners and enthusiasts.

With 78.3K members, you're open to needs, motivations, and specific questions and information people like you (or your customers) are looking for.

Engage. Get involved in discussions.

Another example is this string instruments forum.

 

You see threads from people searching for specific products to purchase.

This one:

 

Spend a few minutes answering questions on industry forums.

Whether or not you get links from it, it's a plus for you.

You get visibility for your brand. You get sales opportunities.

 

13. Avoid "Link Building Block" Using This Strategy

Some SEOs don't know where to start in eCommerce link building.

The simplest way is:

Check what websites are linking to your competitors.

And not just any website.

Look for sites that have linked to 3 or more competing domains.

Because chances are:

If they linked to your competitors (who offer similar products), they're also likely to link to your online store.

So, how you can find these websites?

Use Ahrefs' Link Intersect. Enter your competitors' homepages.

 

Make sure you choose "URL" for each site so it would only show you homepage links.

Add at least three competitors.

Now, Link Intersect will show you which sites are linking to those competitors.

What you only have to do.

Filter referring pages based on link types.

It could be forums.

Resource pages.

Directories.

The next time you reached "link building block" (you don't know where to start in link prospecting), try this strategy of checking which websites are linking to your competitors.

 

14. Publish Linkbait To Get Organic Links

You're probably familiar with linkbait.

You create a linkable content asset — an infographic, a guide, a piece that gets attention from linkers.

And because the content asset provides high-value information, publishers, bloggers, or any of these types would link to your page.

In the eCommerce space, I've seen one strategy that's been effective to get initial links.

Good if you're still new in doing SEO for online stores.

Or even if you've been for a while thinking what link building strategy to use for eCommerce.

The process goes like this:

First, choose a specific niche where you’ll feature top XY blogs.

X means the industry (e.g. medical).

Y means number of blogs (e.g. 50).

Here is one example:

 

And another one:

 

The next thing you'll do is to make a list of all blogs in the industry you've chosen.

What you want to do is to make sure you get enough links from this strategy.

So you first reach out to them and let them know you'll feature them on your top X blogs page.

This way, you don't get any random blogs to be featured.

But you're making sure that once you published the post, you have these people ready to share it to their networks (and at most, link to your page from their blogs).

Here's an email template that you can use:

Subject Line: question OR inquiry

Hi %Name,

I'm %YourName%. I manage the blog %Brand%. I'm looking to feature your brand in our upcoming exclusive %XYTopList% (share more information about your upcoming XY list). 

We get "X amount of visitors" every month, and we have "X amount of email subscribers" and "X amount of social media followers" to share our new content with. 

Let me know if you're interested to participate. 

Thanks,

%Yourname%

 

The value proposition in the email is your feature opportunity:

The responses from your target prospects will vary.

Some will be honored to get featured on your blogs.

Others won’t care.

Nonetheless, you prioritize people who've shown interest in promoting the "linkbait" piece once it gets published.

 

15. Use Product Discounts As Linkable Value Proposition

Discount programs get the benefit of added sales once executed properly.

But you can also use it as a way to get recurring links from discount pages.

Here's one example:

 

Universities have "discount pages" for students who're looking to save bucks every month.

They partner with brands potentially looking for collaborations.

Universities provide value to students in terms of discounts on products.

eCommerce brands get direct links to discount pages (or product pages).

It's a win-win situation.

The process using this link building strategy doesn't have to be fancy.

Simply reach out to them and show them what type of discounts students of prospective universities will be getting.

Subject Line: Discount program for %XUniversity%

Hi %Name%,

I'm %YourName% from %Brand%. I'd like to offer discounts to your readers and followers at %University%. 

Here are the details of the discount program:

(Share details about your discount program)

I'm sure your students and readers of your page would love to know any new product discounts.

Let me know your feedback.

Thanks,

%YourName%

 

Then, you'll reap the benefits of links once you get featured on their pages.

As you know, these universities bring high-level link juice or authority links to any linked-to website.

 

16. Create Research-Based Infographics

Infographic marketing is not dead.

Some marketers and SEOs don't just know how to create infographics that stand out and get promoted over and over again.

Here are some examples of linkable infographics from online stores:

Parent's Guide to Childhood Asthma: Symptoms & Treatments

 

Carbon Fiber Cars, Parts, & Care - Infographic

 

You see:

Nothing luxurious, but you'll find that the creators of these infographics well research about the topic.

And the most part, topics are not random.

These topics are within the boundaries of their brand themes.

So you can start by getting inspiration from top online stores that create infographics in their markets.

 

See which of them you can model to your eCommerce blog.

 

17. Get Recurring Links From Roundup Blogs

It's easy to get a link one-time.

But doing it repetitively is another story.

That is why:

There is one way to get recurring links to your online store.

And that's through roundup blogs.

These are bloggers who regularly publish "roundup" articles every week or month.

Some prefer to call it "weekly products".

Others have it as "link party".

Where they feature informational content or straight products on their articles.

Now:

How can you find these easy link opportunities?

Start with your competitors.

Reverse engineer if there are websites linking to them with titles such as:

"links" pages

"Best of" articles

 

"Round up" posts

 

Or your second option is:

You find these roundup link opportunities on Google.

Use any of these search queries below:

• “KEYWORD” “best blog posts”
• “KEYWORD” “monthly round up”
• “KEYWORD” “notable posts”
• “KEYWORD” “notable updates”
• “KEYWORD” favorite posts of the week
• “KEYWORD” friday link round up
• “KEYWORD” friday round up
• “KEYWORD” monday link round up

Assess the bloggers' roundup page.

Understand how, why and what types of posts they link out to brands.

Reach out to these bloggers. Build relationships with them. And offer a free product, a feature on your blog, or any value that gets them to link to you regularly.

 

18. Offer Discounts To Employees

We've covered discounts earlier.

But that's only for students.

You can add one more to earn more backlinks to your online store.

Offer some discounts specific to employees.

Employees of non-profit organizations, university staff, and high-authority brands.

See this example:

 

And this one:

 

Reach out to them and offer employee discounts.

The better your discounts, the higher is your likelihood of getting links from these employee discount pages.

Webmasters have different requests for information — send them over what you need. And you get featured and links on their webpages.

 

19. Monitor New Links Of Other Online Stores

New links to your competitors are opportunities for you.

Why?

Because webmasters and publishers who freshly link to a website:

Are more likely to respond to requests.

They're still in the mode of updating their pages.

So where do you start?

Make a list of domains you'll monitor fresh links regularly.

First, it could be a list of your direct competitors.

And it could be a list of top publications in your industry that also target the same market as yours (e.g. car enthusiasts).

And any local businesses picking up new local links.

Then:

Start monitoring new links pointing to each website.

 

Assess each new link to see if it's worth reaching out to.

Check if the link is replicable.

Can you request a link from the page and let your website be added as well?

Is it a new guest post they recently published? And is it a blog you could also contribute an article into?

The key is to understand why the publisher gave the link to your target domain. And assess it based on your resources if you could also acquire the same type of link.

 

20. Use "Book Crowdsourcing" Technique

Are you familiar with "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill?

 

If you are reading personal development books, you're probably familiar with how the book is created.

It was basically Napoleon Hill interviewing top entrepreneurs on how to get rich and putting all their insights into one book.

To date, Think and Grow Rich has sold 15 million copies.

Let me ask you one question:

What if you could do the same?

Interview industry experts, practitioners, and thought-leaders in your space.

And curate all their insights into one book.

If you've heard "round-up" posts, you know it's the same as this.

But this "book crowdsourcing" technique is quite different.

It's a lot higher value than a simple "round-up" post article.

Because it is packaged in a well-crafted book.

Take a look at this:

 

It's not the type of round-up post you see elsewhere.

The book is also available on Amazon and Lulu — which increases its perceived value in the market.

 

Use this "Book Crowdsourcing" Technique for your eCommerce blog.

Find thought leaders in your industry.

Reach out to them and offer "being featured on a book" as the value proposition of your email outreach.

That way, it stands out among all "interview pitches" they receive.

Then collect all their insights.

Curate, format, design, and publish a book.

 

21. Add FAQs On Your Blog

People want quick results.

Case in point:

Featured snippets.

Most featured snippets that you see on Google search results are quick answers to frequently asked questions.

And when they rank and get referenced by other publishers, pages with FAQs get backlinks.

How you can start with this?

Discover keywords with featured snippets on search results.

Ahrefs can help you with this.

Check "featured snippets box" to only see keywords with featured snippets on results.

 

Find what's relevant to your brand. And publish FAQs, included in an article or page.

You can use SEO Booster to help optimize any of your important pages.

Conclusion

I'd like to hear from you.

Which link building strategy you'd like to execute for your eCommerce website?

Would you like to get featured on "where to buy" pages?

How about tapping the "going green" market with your content?

Leave your insights in the comment section below.

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by Venchito Tampon Jr