Strategy

What is Link Equity? and How Does It Work? [+Examples] 

It's 2022 and link building has become more complex than ever before. In order to rank, you need not only great content, but also be strategical about the links you're building to that content.

It's no longer enough to create great content and hope people will link to it; you need to actively seek out links, and ensure that they're of the highest quality. With these backlinks, you need to make sure that you are maximizing your link equity.

Link equity is the term used to describe the value that a backlink passes on to your website. This value is directly related to the quality of the linking website, as well as a few other factors.

In this post, we'll explain everything you need to know about link equity: what it is, how to calculate it, and how to use it to improve your link building strategy.

 

What is link equity in SEO?

Link equity or mostly referred to as "link juice" is the value that a website passes on to another site through a link. This value is then used by search engines as a ranking factor when determining where a website should rank in search results.

Link equity is determined by many factors, but the most important factor is the quality of the linking website. A high-quality website will pass more link equity than a low-quality website.

The purpose of link equity is to help search engines determine the quality of websites. By looking at the link equity that a website has, search engines can tell if a website is worth ranking highly in search results.

 

How does link equity work? 

Link equity can be calculated using many different methods. The most common method is to use the PageRank algorithm.

The PageRank algorithm was created by Google and is used to determine the quality of a website. The algorithm looks at the number and quality of links pointing to a website to determine its PageRank score.

The higher the PageRank score, the more link equity a website has.

Another method for calculating link equity is Moz's Domain Authority (DA) metric. Domain Authority is similar to PageRank in that it looks at the number and quality of links pointing to a website.

However, Domain Authority also takes into account other factors, such as the age of the domain and the quality of the linking websites.

Domain Authority is a good metric to use when comparing the link equity of two websites.

 

How do you increase link equity?

There are a few ways to increase the link equity of your website:

1. Publish high-quality content.

This is the most important way to increase the link equity of your website. By publishing great content, you will naturally attract links from other websites. Remember, external links provide more ranking value compared to internal links. With that being said, focus on publishing great content that other websites will want to link to.

2. Determine the quality of the linking website.

Not all links are created equal. A link from a high-quality website will pass more link equity than a link from a low-quality website.

Therefore, it's important to determine the quality of the linking website before you build a link. You can do this by looking at the PageRank or Domain Authority score of the website.

3. Don't forget your internal links.

Internal links are also important for passing link equity. Make sure to include internal links in your content to other pages on your website. This will help increase the link equity of those pages.

Conduct a google site search of your website by using the following query on google: site:[yourdomain.com] + "keyword" to see what pages are being linked to the most, or to find content relevant to your target keyword that you can add internal links to.

4. Reclaim your broken links.

A broken link is a link that points to a page that no longer exists. These links are often the result of a change in website structure or a URL change.

If you find broken links on other websites, you can contact the website owner and ask them to replace the link with a link to your website. This is an easy way to get high-quality links from websites.

5. Delete or disavow low-quality links.

Low-quality links are links from spammy or low-quality websites. These links can hurt your website's ranking in search results.

If you find low-quality links pointing to your website, you can either contact the website owner and ask them to remove the link or use Google's disavow tool to disavow the link.

 

How do I get link juice?

In the past, getting link juice could simply be done by buying links from other websites. However, this is no longer the case.

Today, the best way to get link juice is to publish great content and build high-quality links naturally. By doing this, you will increase the link equity of your website, which will help improve your website's ranking in search results.

There are a few things to keep in mind when trying to get link juice:

1. Quality over quantity: It's better to have a few high-quality links than a bunch of low-quality links.
2. Avoid link farms: Link farms are websites that exist solely for the purpose of selling links. These websites often sell links for very low prices, which can hurt your website's ranking.
3. Publish great content: As mentioned before, the best way to get link juice is to publish high-quality content that other websites will want to link to.
4. Monitor your links: It's important to monitor the links pointing to your website. This will help you identify any low-quality links that could be hurting your website's ranking.
5. Use different types of content: In addition to writing great blog posts, you can also get link juice by creating infographics, videos, podcasts, or other types of content that other websites will want to link to.
6. Reach out to unlinked brand mentions: If you find that other websites are mentioning your brand but not linking to your website, you can reach out to them and ask them to link to your website. Check out this link reclamation guide.
7. Broken link building: If you found a good page that is no longer available, you can reach out to the website owner and ask them to link to your website or content instead. Further reading on broken link building.
8. Guest blogging: One of the best ways to get high-quality links is to guest blog on other websites. This is a great way to build relationships with other bloggers in your industry while also getting your name and website in front of a new audience. Learn more about guest post service.
9. Infographics: People love visual content, and infographics are a great way to get link juice. Not only do they get shared a lot on social media, but they also tend to be linked to from other websites.
10. The Skyscraper Technique: The Skyscraper Technique is a method of link building that involves finding content that is already popular and creating something even better. This is a great way to get links from other websites because you are offering something new and valuable.
11. Resource Page Link Building: Resource pages are pages on a website that lists all of the resources related to a certain topic. If you have a piece of content that would be a good fit for a resource page, you can reach out to the website owner and ask them to link to your content.
12. Wikipedia link building: Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world, and it's also a great way to get high-quality links. If you have a piece of content that would be a good fit for Wikipedia, you can submit it to the site. Wikipedia will add links in the footnotes and references section, which will help improve your website's ranking.
13. Local link building: If you have a local business, you can get links from other local businesses in your area. This is a great way to build relationships with other businesses while also getting your website in front of a new audience.
14. Profile link building: Profile link building is a great way to get links from other websites. You can create profiles on social media sites, directory sites, and forums, and include a link to your website in your profile.
15. Directory link building: Directory link building is a great way to get links from other websites. You can submit your website to online directories, and include a link to your website in your profile.
16. Forum link building: Forum link building is a great way to get links from other websites. You can participate in forums related to your industry, and include a link to your website in your signature.
17. Reach out to links will no-follow tags: If you find a link to your website that has a no-follow tag, you can reach out to the website owner and ask them to remove the tag and make a follow attribute.

Generally, website owners are happy to do this if you provide them with value such as a link back to their website from an equally good website.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take link equity to affect a site? 

There is no definitive answer to this question, as it can vary depending on a number of factors. However, it is generally agreed that it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for link equity to have an impact on a website's ranking.

 

How to find out which blog posts have the most link equity? 

There are a number of ways to find out which blog posts have the most link equity. One way is to use a tool like Moz's Open Site Explorer, which allows you to see how many links each page on your website has.

Another way is to use a tool like BuzzSumo, which allows you to see how popular each piece of content on your website is.

Finally, you can also ask Google which pages on your website have the most link equity by using the "link:" operator.

 

How to maintain link equity when updating taxonomy? 

When updating your website's taxonomy, it is important to maintain the link equity of your existing pages. One way to do this is to use a tool like Screaming Frog, which allows you to find all of the links on your website and redirect them to the new pages.

Another way to maintain link equity is to use a 301 redirect, which permanently redirects visitors from one page to another.

Finally, you can also use a rel="canonical" tag, which tells search engines that a certain page is the preferred version of a page with duplicate content.

 

How do links to your site help you?

 Links to your website can help improve your website's ranking in search engines, as well as increase traffic to your website.

Links can also help build relationships with other websites, which can lead to opportunities for guest posting, joint ventures, and other partnerships.

 

How is link equity determined?

Link equity is determined by a number of factors, including the number of links pointing to a page, the quality of the links, and the anchor text of the links.

Here's a quick checklist on determining the value of a link:

1) Is it relevant?

2) Is it coming from a high-quality, authoritative website?

3) Is the link a follow link?

4) Is the link surrounded by other links?

5) Does the status code of the page return a 200 OK?

6) Is the link an exact match to the keyword you're targeting?

7) Is the link surrounded by other links with the same anchor text?

8) Is the link from a website that is in the same country as your target audience?

9) Is the link from a website that is in the same language as your target audience?

10) Does the website linking to you have a similar theme as your website?

If you answered "yes" to all of these questions, then the link is likely to be valuable.

 

Which types of links are the most valuable?

The most valuable links are those that come from high-quality websites that are relevant to your website.

Links from directories and forums are also valuable, as they can help increase the visibility of your website.

 

Can I lose link equity if a linking website goes down or removes the link?

Yes, if a linking website goes down or removes the link to your website, you may lose some of the link equity that you gained from that link. Link equity is a measure of the strength or value of a webpage based on the number and quality of the links pointing to it. When a linking website goes down or removes the link, it can negatively impact the link equity of the linked webpage.

This is because the inbound link is no longer available to pass value to the webpage. It is important to monitor the health and quality of your inbound links to ensure that they are helping rather than hindering your search rankings.

 

Can I transfer link equity from one webpage to another on my website?

Yes, you can transfer link equity from one webpage to another within your website through the use of internal linking. Internal linking is the process of linking from one webpage on your website to another webpage on the same website. This can help to distribute link equity and authority throughout your website, and can also help search engines to better understand the structure and content of your website.

To transfer link equity through internal linking, you can use hyperlinks to link from one webpage to another within your website. The link equity of the linking webpage will be passed to the linked webpage, helping to improve its ranking in search results. It is important to use relevant and high-quality internal links to ensure that the link equity is being passed effectively and to avoid diluting the link equity of your website.

In addition to transferring link equity, internal linking can also help to improve the user experience by making it easier for visitors to navigate your website and find the content they are looking for. It can also help to increase the crawlability of your website by providing search engines with more pathways to discover and index your content.

 

Can I lose link equity if I change the URL of a webpage?

Yes, if you change the URL of a webpage, you may lose some of the link equity that the page had previously accumulated. Link equity is a measure of the strength or value of a webpage based on the number and quality of the links pointing to it. When you change the URL of a webpage, the inbound links that were pointing to the old URL will no longer be pointing to the page, and the page will need to start building link equity from scratch.

To minimize the loss of link equity when changing the URL of a webpage, it is important to use a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that tells search engines that the old URL has been permanently moved to the new URL. This helps to preserve the link equity of the page by transferring the value of the inbound links from the old URL to the new URL.

It is important to note that changing the URL of a webpage can also have an impact on the ranking of the page in search results. This is because search engines use the URL of a webpage as one of the factors in determining its ranking. As a result, it is important to carefully consider the impact of changing the URL on both the link equity and the ranking of the page.

 

Can I gain link equity from a nofollow link?

A nofollow link is a type of hyperlink that tells search engines not to follow or count the link as a vote of endorsement for the linked webpage. While nofollow links do not pass link equity in the same way as dofollow links, they can still be valuable for a number of reasons.

One reason is that nofollow links can help to drive traffic to your website. When a user clicks on a nofollow link, they will be directed to your website, which can help to increase your traffic and visibility.

Another reason is that nofollow links can indicate to search engines that your website is being mentioned or referenced by other websites. This can help to improve the credibility and authority of your website, which can in turn help to improve its ranking in search results.

It is important to note that while nofollow links may not directly contribute to link equity, they can still be valuable for other aspects of search engine optimization. As a result, it is important to consider the value of nofollow links in the context of your overall SEO strategy.

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by Venchito Tampon Jr

Link Exchange: The Proper Way To Do Reciprocal Linking

What is a link exchange?

Link exchange is a process where two websites agree to place each other's links on their respective websites in order to improve their search engine rankings and drive more traffic to their sites.

Though this practice has been abused for many years, e.g. a webmaster tries to rank for terms like “car insurance Australia” will find other webmasters in the same/different industry who would be interested in doing link exchanges.

The approach is to link to another website with exact match anchor text (another webmaster is trying to rank for) and get a link from that other website (for a target keyword he is trying to rank for as well).

Google itself instructed SEOs and webmasters about this approach of trying to manipulate Google search rankings.

“ Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking. “

Does that mean, link exchange isn’t effective anymore these days?

 

The Rise Of Thematic Link Exchange

I’m sure many SEOs and bloggers will disagree with me that thematic link exchange still works up to this date.

Thematic link exchange is a relationship-based link building strategy that involves intentional or unintentional linking and getting a link to and from another webmaster in the same industry who isn’t a direct competitor of the business.

Here are four thematic link exchange methods that work pretty well in most industries, especially those that are sitting in very competitive ones.

 

1. Relationship-based Link Acquisition

Link exchange often occurs in an unintentional way. For example, I’ve been blogging for many years now with my first blog and here at SharpRocket.

I’ve built relationships with industry friends who also blog about SEO and link building.

By acknowledging their work through linking to their content assets that serve as additional references or resources in my existing posts, it’s an added value initiated to build trust which strengthens the open relationship with them.

For instance, I linked to Rohit Palit’s post on tiered link building. After a few months, he gave me a backlink pointing to my content creation and promotion guide in his article about increasing the domain authority of a website.

We’re not direct competitors, as he is not accepting sole link building services as his website client offering.

But here’s another case where one of my direct competitors linked to me.

PageOnePower is a link building company that has been in the industry since 2010, they blog about the same topic I’m passionate about.

Here are a few backlinks I gave to PageOnePower.

 

 

Relationships take time to get some returns. Guys from PageOnePower have give contextual backlinks to DigitalPhilippines many times.

These are backlinks not built through manual outreach, but simply because they’ve known our brand, we have already given them and have established an authority in the link building scene. These backlinks are naturally earned.

 

 

Here is another example of how relationships can be effective for link exchanges. It is a conversation between Rohit Palit and Patrick Coombe.

 

 

Both have provided value to each other, as they’ve been commenting on each other’s blogs many times (see image above).

If you’re wondering how you can start building relationships with other industry bloggers, here are a few tips you can apply:

• Start showing yourself in the blogosphere. Comment on other people’s blogs. It’d only take you 3 to 5 minutes for each comment per post (only look for relevant content you can give valuable insights to). If each blogger posts once every week, it won’t consume much of your time.
• Send a “thank you” email for sharing his actionable tips on his blog or find a similar interest both of you can relate with. For example, I often receive responses that they’ve visited Manila or some other parts of the country, so I asked them how’s their vacation experience here. It starts a smooth flow of conversation.
• Share other bloggers’ content on other blogs. Don’t use the default Twitter share: TITLE OF POST by TWITTER HANDLE. Add descriptive call-to-actions to let your followers click on the page and start reading it – it’s way to add more value than the simply doing a default Twitter share.

 

2. Content Swap

Guest posting is still one of the mainstream link building method these days because it’s pretty scalable and can really help skyrocket one website’s traffic even in just a short period. Combined with other link building tactics, it is a robust link building strategy one can ever wish to implement and see results for themselves.

However, there’s one problem I’ve seen with many guest posting inquiries these days -- they aren’t giving any value. Even if the content they intend to provide is relevant to my blog, I won’t see that as high value.

Content swap is the solution. It is a link acquisition process where both bloggers will provide high-value content to each other, with the goal of bringing exposure to a new reading audience for both sides.

This is very helpful when building links to websites in difficult industries like legal.

You can actualize this process by prospecting for a list of local opportunities, where most legal industries focus on local marketing/branding.

You can try Google searches for “Miami” “legal” for example, then find any company websites that have recent blog updates so you’ll know if they are publishing content on a regular basis. Make sure that you don’t include link prospects that are not in direct competition with you – it’ll be close to impossible to get links from them.

 

 

Once you have a list of local industry bloggers, it’s time to reach out to them.

Here’s a template that I used for content swap outreach.

Subject: Content swap for your legal blog, %Name%

Hi %Name%,

My name is Tiffanny Chappels, an immigration lawyer and legal blogger based in Miami.

I came across your website and really like what you recently published. I would like both of our blogs to grow website traffic and would like to know if you'd be interested for a content exchange - I write for your blog, you write for mine.

I'd love to write a post for your blog related to child custody or family law.

If it needs to be in a conversational tone, I'd be happy to do that.

Let me know if your thoughts.

All the best,

Tiffany

A few things why this pitch works:

• Industry-to-industry-based outreach emails is much more effective as they become more relevant to the recipient of the email.
• Adding where you’re located as a company adds a quick connection, with that, you can use a corporate email of your client.
• Propose added value by sharing customized content for your guest post – conversational tone. This helps you get a higher conversion rate.

 

3. Content Partnership

Another ethical backlink exchange strategy that works is a content partnership, originally discussed by Jason Acidre on his SEO blog.

I’ve found that this is not scalable to all industries, especially in niches where there are no active bloggers.

But the key to making this link building method work is making yourself familiar with the brand you’re reaching out to. After all, you want a partnership that can generate consistent results for both ends.

The difference with this link building technique compared to content swap is that you can offer different types/formats of content based on each party’s needs, options such as:

Conducting a back-to-back interview. See this example at SEO Hacker and Kaiserthesage.

 

 

 

Inviting your content partner to write a guest blog on your site and writing content for them as well (see this guest post at GotchSEO and Webris).

 

 

Offering an exclusive write-up or promotion/sponsored post on his site and in exchange, making him as your media partner. I wrote a promotional post for my previous startup workshop for Tycoon, in return, I added him as my media partner for my book.

 

 

For the outreach phase, here is an example pitch Jason sent to one of his content partners. You can make variations of it based on the value proposition you’d like to provide to your targeted content partners.

 

 

The value of this thematic link exchange strategy is far more beneficial than a single link you’ll get from the typical link exchange, because this content partnership can help generate leads for both parties (of course they shouldn’t be competing with each other), referral traffic, expanded branded exposure/influence and additional following for both social accounts.

 

Now It’s Your Turn…

Do you have a thematic link exchange strategy that works for you?

Or maybe you have a question about implementing any of the tactics in our above list?

Either way, leave a quick comment below.

I'll be more than happy to reply to comments and answer questions.

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Link Exchange

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by Venchito Tampon Jr

22 Actionable Content Marketing Tips For 2023

This is a list of the most actionable content marketing tips for 2023.

In this post, you'll discover:

• how to find content ideas without using expensive tools
• how to write content that gets hundreds of shares and comments
• tips to optimize content to rank in search and get organic traffic 
• effective content promotion techniques for more traffic and links 

Let's dive in. 

 

 

1. Start with Topical Research.

Keyword research is not dead. 

The good thing in SEO is you can rank for multiple keywords, not just for one keyword — only if you know how to practice topical research.

Topical research is discovering the primary key topics your content can rank for, while determining semantically-related keywords to optimize content for topic coverage. 

 

How to start with topical research?

A. Begin with an industry head term. 

You can use any keyword discovery tools for this one (e.g., Ahrefs' Keyword Explorer). 

 

B. Go to the parent topic.

With Ahrefs, you can see exactly what the keyword's parent topic is. 

Either you write content just for the keyword you typed in or cover the parent topic.

 

C. Find semantically-related keywords and common questions.

This is useful for topic coverage. It builds more authority when you can cover as much information by answering related questions and including topically-related keywords.

This leads us to our next tip. 

You can check out our link building services and SEO services. 

2. Discover Commonly Asked Questions 

Search users want quick answers to questions.

And if you know what type of question they search and provide them with quick answers in your content, you'll get more ranking opportunities.

AlsoAsked is an excellent tool to find dozens of questions you usually see in the "People Also Asked Questions" section. 

The good thing with this is you don't have to manually find all related questions for the topic you're writing about. Type in a keyphrase and the tool will provide you with topical questions.

You can also export the list for later use. 

 

Another way to find commonly asked questions is through Ahrefs' Keyword Explorer.

Search for your topic.

Go to the Questions section. 

 

Two things you can do with these questions:

First, add a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) at the end of your article. List down all questions with your answers.

Second, you can include these questions as H2s of your article. 

Your readers don't have to check other similar content to find what they're looking for by answering it immediately. 

 

3. Write Content on Topics with Search Traffic Potential. 

SEO and content marketing, when combined, is powerful.

You provide what your readers are looking for while ranking the content for searchers who are looking for it. 

More traffic. More sales.

Use any tools to help you find search traffic potential. 

 

Here are some of my recommended topic or keyword discovery tools:

SEMrush:

 

Ahrefs:

 

Keyword Everywhere: 

Sidenote: Not all keywords with low search traffic are not feasible topics to write about — most of which are potential topics people are still asking. In aggregate, when you publish articles targeting long-tail keywords (even with lower search volume), the strategy can drive solid traffic to your site. 

 

4. Brainstorm Topics with Audience's Pain Points. 

Your audience's challenges, issues, and pain points are good content ideas (hat tip to @abbyreimermpls). 

It also puts emotions in your content, making it more shareable and linkable. 

So, how to find your audience's pain points?

Search for "[your audience]" "issues" "challenges". And see what comes up.

 

For example, if you're looking for paint points of most salespeople, you'll get ideas like:

• Consistent follow ups
• Self-management
• Personality styles

Tackle each of these pain points as your blog post idea. 

 

5. Rank for Competitors' Keywords. 

Here's a gold mine opportunity. 

Your competitors may be ranking (or aren't ranking yet) for their branded keyphrases.

This could give you some organic traffic that can turn into sales if taken advantage of.

Let's say you want to rank for branded keywords of Monday (a project management software).

Simply enter the domain (monday.com) to Ahrefs Site Explorer and see what they're currently ranking for their own terms.

 

Filter the results by position 3 & up to see keywords your competitors don't rank in the top 3. 

 

Check each term and think of any pages or content you can create on your website.

One example is "how to use monday com". 

You can create an ultimate guide on how to use Monday and mention its competing products.

Or for any "alternatives" or "product A VS other products" keyphrases, you create a comparison page and add your product. 

Think of how you can leverage competitors' keywords with new micro-content or a totally new page. 

 

6. Speak About Your Audience's Interests

Never run out of ideas if you think of your customers' interests.

If you tackle what they need, your content becomes relatable and valuable.

 

How can you find your audience's other interests?

You can use audience research tools like Sparktoro. 

Let's say you're looking for more content ideas for life coaches. 

 

Simply do Sparktoro search: My audience uses these word(s) in their profile "______". 

 

The tool shows you their other interests, aside from nutrition. 

 

Create content on public speaking and wellness. 

Replicate this content marketing technique to your brand and never run out of ideas. 

 

7. Use Proven and Tested Blog Post Introduction 

Content is king, but first, you have to grab the reader's attention.

You do that by using a blog post introduction that works.

When you consistently grab your readers' attention, you retain them on site. And thus, it indirectly improves your rankings and conversions.

The success of Backlinko (now acquired by SEMRush) is anchored to Brian's copywriting skills.

Backlinko has its PBB copywriting formula on content's introduction:

• P - Preview
• P - Proof 
• B - Benefit

Tell exactly "what's in it for them?". Show results to build credibility. Give them more by showcasing the benefit of your information.

 

8. Generate Outlines Using Frase Blog Outline Generator

Writing about the topic flawlessly is much easier when you structure content.

Your writing flows. You cover the essential information.

One way to generate an outline quickly is using Frase's new tool - Blog Outline Generator.

 

Input your title and description and wait for the AI tool to generate outline suggestions based on the ranking pages for the keyword.

It gives you insights into your outline quickly—no more hassle when starting. 

 

9. Optimize On-Page With Surfer SEO 

Competitive advantage is when you build proper on-page for your content.

It's not that easy. Add semantic keywords and entities to your content for more topic coverage and topical authority. Include headlines that target topically related keyphrases. 

This takes a lot of work. 

But with SEO tools like SurferSEO bring out the exact terms and instructions you need to optimize your content better.

With exact frequency.

And some other entities you can include.

Build your topical authority by providing the quickest answer and most comprehensive information about the topic. 

 

10. Demonstrate E-A-T By Hiring Industry Practitioners.

The bar for content quality increases as more and more brands invest in content marketing.

It's now a competition of expertise.

E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trust) matter in SEO. 

Experts and industry practitioners can provide better and new information than average writers.

They know exactly what to include in the "How-to" section and provide accurate and quick answers for the "FAQ" section. 

 

Recently, I've started my affiliate health blog that covers everything about sleeping. 

I could find any writers from different content writer sourcing platforms, or spend time finding the right fit — which in this case, are medical practitioners. 

Through Upwork, I was able to find a doctor who writes for health blogs. 

The content provides the highest quality of information with concrete instructions because of the writer's expertise.

 

Key takeaway:  Hire industry practitioners to write for your blog. It makes your content credible and valuable — and helps you rank quickly. 

 

11. Improve E-A-T by Adding Author Bios of Reviewers and Co-Authors  

Besides the quality of information you get from industry experts, you also benefit from added "author bio". 

If you ask industry writers to include their author profiles on your content, they won't hesitate to say "yes" to you.

Simply because it's an added credibility on their part and more opportunities to market their content writing projects. Easy.

 

What benefits this to you?

Topical authority. Your content is much more reliable as you showcase reviewers of your content (and who they are). Their experiences, educational background — all these improve E-A-T of your content. 

Check out this Mobile Monkey's guide on how to become a content creator.

 

12. Apply "First Mover Advantage" When Writing Content 

What is the first-mover advantage?

It is your ability to better off than your competitors as a result of being first in the market. 

Being first is way easier than being the "best".

 

In content marketing, that translates to providing new information you won't see from your competitors' content.

You can do it by finding resources not easily sourced out elsewhere. However, that does take enough work for research.

 

For example, you can search for filetype:pdf "keyword" to discover file attachments of documents, presentations, and other resource formats from the internal data team and practitioners. 

 

Most often than not, those files contain information that gives you a "first-mover advantage" when included in your content. 

 

13. Create Shareable Images

Shareability is vital for content to get additional links. Thus, it helps improve your website's rankings.  

Ahrefs, for example, create different shareable images that include workflows, templates, data, and other internal information that often gets citations.

 

Another brand doing well in creating shareable images is The Zebra, an insurance comparison website.

They publish statistics content with citable, shareable images of checklists, surveys, and internal data.

Both these brands understand the power of shareable images and how it positively impacts the perceived value of their content.

Think of how you can add more value to your audience by creating shareable images. 

 

14. Add Descriptive Conclusion (Not Just "Key Takeaways"). 

One of the most overlooked parts of a content piece is the conclusion.

Most often, writers would simply put a header, "Conclusion" or "Key Takeaways” and summarize the entire article into one or two paragraphs.

 

A good content marketer knows how to grab his readers' attention from beginning to end of the article. 

One creative tip is to emphasize a call to action or any challenge to readers. 

 

Look at SiegeMedia's ability to persuade his readers to act on the information.

And other notable brands that do this well.

 

 

15. Upgrade and Upgrade Content 

One best practice in SEO and content marketing is always to make content relevant to its audience.

That means you update the content from time to time to ensure the timeliness and usefulness of the information to current times and industry trends. 

While having the ability to upgrade the content to make it the most comprehensive content on the topic, year by year.

One SEO technique is to add information for keyphrases your content has impressions yet is not currently ranking for. 

 

You can use tools like Search Console and Ahrefs to find key phrases to optimize your content further.

In Ahrefs, simply enter URL of your page that's ranking well and go to its Organic Keywords report.

Scroll down. Discover and check keyphrases you can eventually turn into headings and sections of your article.

By doing so, you improve topic coverage of content and help improve its rankings for those topically related terms. 

 

16. Do Conversion-Oriented Internal Linking

Internal linking is often an overlooked SEO strategy yet provides high returns on ranking improvements. 

If you have middle-of-the-funnel content tied to your landing pages, it would be helpful to link to your conversion pages.

It is a strategic move to get more conversions simply through internal links.

 

Take a look at Gusto. They did a great job internally linking to their product pages from "how to buy" and other middle-of-the-funnel content.

It's much easier to get conversions this way, as potential customers have a semi-intent of purchasing products. 

Go through your pages and see which pages you link internally to your conversion pages.

 

17. Create a Content Calendar 

Organization of content ideas is critical to producing highly useful content assets consistently. 

It is easier to be consistent if you plot those topics in a calendar.

There are many ways to create a content calendar. 

Here are some valuable resources to help you jump-start with that.

• Content Calendar Template by Backlinko
• The Best Content Calendar Template to Organize The Year 2023 by CoSchedule
• How to Build a Content Calendar (Plus a Free Template) by Convince & Convert

 

18. Use TweetHunter to Grow Your Audience

Twitter is becoming more and more of a content platform these days.

As more influencers and brands leverage the power of Twitter threads to showcase their expertise and build a strong following, the use of the platform is more of a necessity than a luxury.

However, using Twitter may seem time-consuming for most busy entrepreneurs and marketers. It eats up their time — as they say. 

 

The key is to do it in a single hour (or a few hours every week) and let it run for you.

How?

Publish tweets quickly using TweetHunter.

The tool allows you to write and schedule tweets through built-in AI suggested ideas. 

You don't have to consume all your mental energy to flesh out content. All you have is to swipe all trending tweets in your industry and/or based on niche keywords.

 

Another cool feature here is to engage with like-minded influencers on the platform itself.

All you have to do is to find tweets from profiles with a certain number of follower counts (>2000). And straight from the platform, engage these followers by replying to their tweets. 

 

19. Repurpose Web Assets For Content Promotion 

Content writing is 50% of the battle. The other half should be spent on content promotion.

The key here is not to overdo the "thinking process" of content promotion but to leverage some assets you've published on your site and distribute them across your marketing channels. 

You can repurpose web assets by turning them into other content formats that are better contextualized to be promoted in a particular marketing platform.

 

For instance, instead of creating another new Youtube video to be posted on Tiktok, you may instruct your graphic artist to produce several short reels (videos). Contextualize it to the platform you're marketing to, either by adding texts, sounds, images that are popular or useful to your target audience.

Another way is to turn industry guides into several shareable images, which you'll then use as bait for guest posts. 

Simply upload images as part of your email outreach campaign to get more attention right at the start of the pitch.

 

20. Do Omni-Channel Marketing With Your Content 

If you hit the right audience with content on specific platforms where they engage, you get followers consistently and build your brand.

Omnichannel does that.

Look at different customer touchpoints. And see which marketing platform can help you further your content.

 

21. Leverage Blogger Outreach To Get Backlinks

Blogger outreach is a solid strategy to get in front of your potential customers, acquire backlinks and improve your website's rankings.

Given that readers are likely to follow personalities (bloggers) if your brand has been linked to one of their content pieces, you'll have chances of getting more clicks from those inbound links.

Do strategic link placements on industry blogs.

Either leverage content-driven link exchange or other link building strategies on blogs. 

 

Content Marketing in Action

You'll find many ideas on how to create and promote your content. But these ideas will come into reality if apply them. 

Best practices are based on different contexts and scenarios. Test them out and see results yourself. 

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

Local Link Building For Any Business On A Budget [27 Strategies For 2023]

This is the most actionable guide to local link building.

You'll learn here how to build backlinks for any local business on a shoestring budget.

Also, you'll discover some advanced strategies for 2023 (and beyond) that I never shared anywhere before.

Let's get started.

 

1. Use Job Portals For Quick Backlink Wins

 

When building links for our clients, one of the first few questions we ask is, “what's the existing content asset in the client’s website we can use as USP for linker outreach?”.

This question breaks the “content mental block” that is often experienced when strategizing what link acquisition tactics that require content to create in order to acquire high-quality links.

Interestingly, we’ve discovered that there are existing under-utilized pages published on client’s sites that we can use to show/provide to publishers and content creators to get them to link to the client’s page.

A great example of this content is “jobs portal”.

A “jobs portal” is a directory/curation of all job positions available in a local area.

Your brand can even curate available positions available for a specific industry  (e.g. “tech startup jobs in New York”).

 

For some local brands that I’ve audited, the jobs portal is inherently the first few pages published on their sites which serve as a content hub for their local partners like local professional organizations who are looking for new hires for their teams.

Jobs portal caters specifically to the “job seekers” linkable market which has a lucrative number of links pages.

Link prospecting for this strategy is pretty much the same as how you’ll normally do it for a resource page link building or broken link building strategy, but the difference is just that you are only looking for a local linkable market - “jobs links/resources pages in Boston” for example.

You can start prospecting using Google search with any of the following search queries to collect your initial set of local link opportunities:

• “job search” “resources” “CITY”
• employment” inurl:resources “CITY”
• “job hunting” resources “CITY”
• inurl:careers “CITY”

Expand your list by reverse engineering other local job portals or other local job board sites.

By checking which pages link to local-relevant job board sites on this page, I was able to collect a few more tens of local links pages.

Once you have generated your list of prospects along with their contact details, you can then start engaging them through your outreach campaign.

Spend a few extra minutes to check if there are broken links on a prospect page.

If all links are working, simply request to be included as an additional resource on their links page.

I’ve found it helpful to add subtle changes to email copies to emphasize the local relevance of the jobs portal or any other local content pieces I’m building links to. I usually add lines for:

• The best section on the resource page to add the client’s local content
• Who is the target audience of the content?
• A few recommendations for the content that serves as a social proof

 

With proper execution, we were able to acquire links:

2. Create Localized Visual Data

 

Visual data link building (infographic-based link building) is getting more saturated, as more brands try to pick up on it. But with the right audience targeting along with accurate data and impressive design, visual data can still prove its effectiveness in getting high-value links especially if it’s been massively promoted through different content distribution channels.

One way to get started with this approach is to find a local piece of content created by other publishers who had extensive research on a particular subject matter and transform it into a visual asset.

To give you an example, recently we’ve been looking for a piece of content that we could well turn into an infographic.

By searching for available public data on different trusted sites, we’ve found a research study on teen dating, abuse & bullying with respondents based in  New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

 

Side note: here are a few public data sites you can source information from for your visual assets:

• https://www.data.gov/
• https://socrata.com/resources/
• https://datahub.io/
• http://data.worldbank.org/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/

We’ve checked if the public data is still relevant in the current year, as we want to get the most recent study as much as possible (the latest we consider is 2016).

One way that helped us assess the relevance and credibility of a public data piece is by looking at the version history section. For example, the research study we considered was initially published in 2012 but it has been updated for 2016 (indicated in the version history section).

Then we strategize how the public data content can be turned into an infographic without cursing the target audience with knowledge.

Given that the research study has two sections: teen dating & abuse and teen bullying, we’ve decided to choose teen dating & abuse and keep the latter for future content references.

 

The hardest part of visual data link building is content creation.

As an agency, there are two ways to attack this: outsource to a freelancer or hire an in-house graphic designer.

We chose the latter simply because it’s time and cost-efficient.

Produced the visual data (partial image below):

 

Then we’ve spent most of our hours looking for potential link partners or content publishers who’ll be interested in the content piece we produced.

We begin prospecting using the following local-centric queries in Google search:

You can also use Reverse Image Search or Tineye to find and track any local-based infographics for local bloggers and publishers who distributed these pieces on their blogs.

If in case you’ve been running out of prospects, you can tap other industries and look for local publishers who still cater to the targeted audience of your content.

In our case, we tapped local legal publishers with the injury/sexual harassment categories on their sections.

 

As for the outreach, make it easier for your local prospects to know the interesting fact on your visual data. It is best to state some numbers and your target audience to build the context relevance and credibility of your content piece.

 

You can test the two-blogger outreach process to initially capture your prospects’ interests then eventually send the link pointing to your visual data (or attaching it in your email conversation) if they’ve positively responded to your initial pitch.

Useful Resource: The State of Backlinks for SEO in 2021: What 800+ SEOs Think About Link Building

 

3. Realize Opportunity In "New To An Area" Pages

For local link building, what I’ve found to be most quantitative (high amount) in links/resource pages are those that cater to audiences who are relocating/living to a new area or city.

Typically, these are pages that provide lists of resources/references that a person who’s new to an area would definitely find.

Here are some examples of local “new to an area” topics:

• Quality schools in [City] or finding the right schools
• Local laws in [City]
• Tourist information, local attractions, or things to do in [City]
• How to get here
• Volunteer listings in [City]
• Moving and relocation in [City]
• internet & cable
• my neighborhood

If you are marketing a brick and mortar business, a local attraction, a local professional organization, or a utility company (i.e. internet cable), it’s best to get your initial set of links from this type of resource page.

 

You can start prospecting by using “page-level” qualifier queries (which I highly recommend if you’re looking for “new to an area” topical pages) through Google search.

If you're prospecting for "things to do in [City]" pages, here are the following search queries that you can use:

• inurl:"things to do" [City]
• intitle:"things to do" [City]
• inurl:links activities in [City]

An above approach is an alternate option to the basic link prospecting queries for resource page link building (i.e. using inurl:resources OR inurl:links “keyword”).  It expands your search for link opportunities that don’t necessarily have the title tag or URL qualifiers (intitle and inurl).

The next step is to reach out to webmasters of these links pages and offer your website to be included as an additional resource on the page.

I’ve found it helpful to prepare short lines/descriptions to be added to the links page along with your link. It can help take away webmasters’ burden of thinking about what texts to add, that describe your brand/website (e.g. best description of your local attraction).

 

If you’ve executed it properly, you’ll definitely get a link.

4. Get Resource Links From Summer/Off-Campus Housing [City] Pages

 

Summer housing/off-campus housing pages are resource lists of available housing options for both students and interns in a local area.

This type of webpages can positively generate exposure to brands they’re linking out to as well as provide possible leads for brands’ services since the purpose of the page is focused on recommending rental offerings currently available in the area.

The closest vertical that can benefit from generating high-quality links from summer housing [city] pages, obviously, is real estate, particularly local apartments brands, housing, and rental services companies.

National brands with apartment rentals in different cities can also take advantage of this link acquisition technique by acquiring links from summer housing resource pages available in cities they cater offerings to. The more cities they’re marketing to, the better they could take advantage of this local link building tactic.

 

You can start this link approach by creating a list of targeted link prospects from Google search results - using any of the following search terms:

• “Off-campus” housing [city] “resources”
• “Student housing” [city] “resources”
• “Internship housing” [city] “resources”

Populate your list by checking broken domains for any inbound links from summer housing pages. A simple plug to your favorite link checker tool can help quickly assess the number of unique referring domains pointing to these dead websites.

For example, this extinct site that is used to be an apartment rental site has 75+ unique referring domains that include solid .edu sites links pages. A quick look at it can reveal tens of potential summer housing pages that can be added to a link list.

 

Then craft email copies you can use for your local outreach that is straightforward and easy to personalize.

Finally, acquire the link:

5. Serve FSQ With Local Content

 

Creating content that’s really hard to do and that is better than its competitors is definitely one of the best ways, not just to stand out as an authority publisher in the industry but also to acquire high-quality in-content links from other content publishers on the web.

In addition to that, making sure that the content piece has well-served its audience by providing their needs through the useful information found on the page can increase the chances of building as well as earning backlinks from highly relevant sites.

For local content creation, here are topics that are frequently searched (FSQ or frequently search queries) by a local audience and linked to by local publishers:

• Street occupancy and moving permits
• [city] neighborhoods
• Helpful moving tips or things to do before you move
• Resources for landlords & tenants
• Homeowner resources
• Voter registration
• Address change

The main key to success in creating local content is to be succinct while being so much helpful in providing the details that the local audience needs.

Coming up with a guide that sums up all of the items mentioned above for people who’re looking for direct information is an extremely useful content asset that has a high chance of earning links from local content creators.

 

6. Seed Answers To Long Tail Online Discussions

 

Conversation marketing is a highly effective brand-building tool for local business owners, marketers, and/or those who’re an agency that markets local clients - who don’t have a huge budget to spend to build a strong brand presence online.

While it’s certainly time-consuming, the amount of effort put into value-added conversations can invaluably bring momentum and exponential growth of links as well as drive referral traffic and potential leads for the business.

One of the best ways to start this approach is by joining online communities where your local target audience is participating and looking for direct information.

For example, if you’re promoting a local attraction site, answering questions on StreetAdvisor can be an initial jump to your conversation marketing efforts.

 

Below are some ways that you can do to leverage and scale conversation marketing for your local business:

• Do Google searches for direct questions that people are seeking to find local businesses and/or attractions (e.g. best [product/service] in [city/area]) and spot-on local and niche-specific forums that are currently ranking in the first two or three pages in search results  - these online pages still receive a few tens/hundreds of organic traffic and may bring valuable traffic to your website.
• Choose an in-house team member who has a strong knowledge of the product/service you’re offering and let him/her spend 20 to 30 minutes daily, participating in local online discussions.

 

7. Promote Your Local Content Using Reddit

 

Reddit is a community news aggregator site that has its own ranking algorithm to decide which referring link deserves to be placed on the front page for a specific subreddit.

If you’re launching local content that contains a compelling story/data and design-driven images, such as infographics, then Reddit is definitely a place that you can utilize to put more eyeballs on your content (increasing the amount of traffic you’re getting).

You can start by identifying specific subreddits that are relevant to your local brand. Do a Google search for site:reddit.com “keyword” OR “city,” manually check each subreddit and see if they cater to the audience with the same demographics you’re targeting.

Create a list of relevant subreddits along with their current number of subscribers and online users (photo credit: Siegemedia).

 

It is best to take a few minutes checking referring links placed on the front page of each subreddit to assess content types (images/videos/data) that best resonate with the subreddit audience. You can add a column for Notes or Remarks in your spreadsheet to mark content formats/types.

Once you have the Reddit data to base your content upon, you can now produce niche-specific content pieces that are context fit to those local subreddits.

You may want to check out this comprehensive post on creating content by building traffic sources backward from Reddit.

The next step is to customize social buttons on your content by adding a Reddit button, for example, to make it easier for Reddit users to upvote your content.

Another approach that you can make to increase the likelihood of ranking your story on the front Reddit pages is by reaching out to like-minded individuals in your industry or sharing your subreddit link in an online group of marketers to get more upvotes for your client’s content piece.

 

8. Use Affinity Categories For Local Sponsorships 

 

Sponsorships are big in local SEO.

It's nothing new.

But what makes local sponsorships successful?

Answer: proper targeting of audience.

I'm not referring to types of entities: car clubs, event organizers, town clubs, charities, and forums.

But I'm referring to your:

Potential customers.

Most local sponsorships target any local audience, but not those who'll purchase their offerings — products/ or services.

One way to know the right market segment for local sponsorships is:

Through identifying affinity categories.

Affinity categories are users likely to be ready to purchase your products or services in the specified categories.

You can find these categories in Google Analytics:

Audience > Interests > Affinity Categories

 

These are specified categories your potential customers are also interested in.

You see, you're not just getting any sponsorship link from a local website.

But you get the benefit of directly putting your local sponsorship to potential customers.

Pro Tip: Zipsprout has reliable link building services that directly target local sponsorships.

 

9. Publish Review-Type Guest Posts For Local Vendors

 

Guest posts are everywhere.

But instead of doing it the traditional way for local link building.

Why not try this one?

Modified shoulder guest post.

You may not be familiar with this, but it's so simple.

Here's the process:

Identify local vendors.

 

These are brands you may be partnering with as part of your operations and marketing.

In other words, you've used their products or services to grow your business.

Pitch to them, not guest posts.

But a case study or a review.

The first section of the article shares about your brand — a topic, and this is you include the link back to your website.

Then in the second part, you showcase how that local vendor has helped grow your business.

Simple.

 

10. Build Vendor Partner Links

 

Your vendor partners are the best sources of links.

Why?

Because they know you, they're likely to make your requests. And that includes — links.

So think about who is your vendor partners.

If you run a restaurant, you may source bread from a local bakery, or your ice cream could come from the homemade mom-and-pop shop.

 

Have a list of all products you sell as a brand. Then check your vendor partners for each food (for example).

Then see if they have local stores.

Do eCommerce link building by going through their "vendors list" pages.

Reach out to them and ask for links.

 

11. Get Low Hanging Fruits From Competitors 

 

Competitor link analysis is nothing new.

You check who links to your competitors. Make a list of them and try to get backlinks from those pages.

In local link building, you start your search with your target keywords in Google Maps and organic search.

Then, it's time to discover some low-hanging fruits.

Use Ahrefs' Link Intersect.

 

Put in your competitors' domains. And include your website as well — but it doesn't link to you.

You'll now see a list of websites that link to your competitor but not to your site.

 

Another good thing here:

You'll find link opportunities that are linked to a 404 page.

What you could do here is to create a better piece of content.

And reach out to all websites that linked to the broken page.

One more creative thing to do:

Get information on what link building tactics your competitors are doing.

This opens up new ideas and backlink opportunities for your local business.

 

12. Offer Free Content To Local Business Groups 

 

Guest posting is nothing new in SEO.

The typical approach to prospecting industry blogs is through Google search.

Use advanced search operators (i.g. inurl) plus topic, then you'll see possible websites for content.

But what if you almost run out of guest post targets?

What is an alternative way to find new niche blogs?

A NEW guest post prospecting strategy:

Facebook groups.

Not just generic Facebook groups that explicitly buy/sell or accept guest posts.

But I'm referring to local Facebook groups.

 

One way to get guest post prospects is to offer an exclusive service to any content writer or SEO person of a local business.

By posting on specific local business groups, you open an opportunity for anyone interested in free content in their niche.

You can start with specific niche local businesses to make your content offer appeal to members of the group.

Then once you get comments and personal messages from local business content creators, you can check the quality of the blogs.

See if it passes your blog standards. Then, write and publish an article to their blogs with editorial links.

 

13. Pitch Statistics Content To Local and Regional Publishers 

 

Getting attention from local media isn't that difficult.

Create content with a story that's appealing to local publishers, and you pick up great backlinks.

How can you do that?

Think of statistics content.

 

Local publishers often cite this type of content as they have information that isn't usually found elsewhere.

Especially if points and stories are interesting or unique.

One angle you can look at is state by state local data.

For example, "During Covid, Rental Rates in X States were % more expensive than in Y States".

While you can pitch this content directly to national publishers, make sure to pack some data points for local media attention.

 

14. Get Strategy Inspiration From Other Markets

 

Running out of link prospects is normal.

It often happens for local link-building campaigns where only a few websites are discovered in a specific city.

How do you come up with new targets for links?

The answer:

Outside your market, take the time to look at any other markets.

Maybe, you've been thinking:

What sense would it make to see your websites in different marketers when they don't work directly with your website?

The answer is pretty simple:

You get inspiration for new link building ideas.

So if you're in a smaller metro area, try to find other similar businesses from a large metro — to see what's working for them.

If you're in a large metro area, analyze backlink profiles from other larger metro areas.

You can also explore other niches, not just local businesses from other metro areas.

Let's say you're building backlinks for attorneys. Maybe you can see what's working for other industries like pest control?

 

One tactic in a niche can be used differently in your local business niche.

If everyone in the legal market is doing scholarship link building, you won't see it being effective if it's adopted by many, including your competition.

When you're able to discover a link building technique that's not being abused yet by many…

You stay ahead of the competition.

Different markets have different search landscapes, so every backlink profile from ranking websites opens up other link building techniques.

 

15. Build Backlinks From Alumni Directories 

 

One common type of local backlink is alumni links.

They are easy to spot and acquire for your local business.

How?

You start by looking for local schools.

Then see if they have alumni directory pages with links.

 

From there, you use either two of these creative ways:

Provide discounts to community members to get links from their sites' member benefits page.

 

 

Or offer a free event space for org meetings.

If you're an eCommerce, the first one perfectly works well for you.

If you have extra office space (or events hall), the second idea gives you links.

 

16. Acquire Gov Links Using "Bait and Switch Strategy" 

 

Gov links aren't easy to acquire.

Especially for local businesses, but you’ll have a competitive advantage if you can get those authority links.

Bait and switch strategy.

This is a budgeted local link building campaign to land gov links.

Here is a seven-step process to execute this creative link building strategy.

Step 1: Find 30 to 50 local councils.

 

Step 2: Think about what to offer to council members. It could be a yoga class or giving away gym equipment.

Step 3: Purchase and create a .org domain. Then create a website based on your offer. For example, make a community yoga class website with a council finder if it’s a yoga class. It has no commercial intent but purely includes community information.

Step 4: Create a landing page related to the value offer (e.g., yoga class landing page on your website).

Step 5: Reach out to all local councils and other websites to promote your new .org site.

Step 6: Create a landing page related to the value offer (e.g., yoga class landing page on your website).

Step 7: Redirect the .org to your landing page with links to your money pages.

Win.

 

17. Find Local Businesses That Feature Non-Competing Brands

 

Strategic partnership is an excellent way to think about local link building.

There are great link opportunities when two or more non-competing brands collaborate.

For example, if you're doing SEO for a photography website, you can find ways to get featured on wedding and event organizers sites.

 

May it be from their blog section or their page dedicated to listing local partner brands.

Vice versa, if you're a wedding organizer, one of the best links that you might get come from wedding photography sites. They might feature weddings shot at their venue.

Think of your brand.

Identify your non-competing brands.

Reach out and ask to get featured on specific pages or articles.

 

18. Find Local Government Programs For Certifications 

 

Certifications help build up the credibility of an individual or business.

But did you know it's also an excellent way to earn some good local links?

Here is how to get started with this:

Find resources or programs that your business would need to enroll or get certified in.

If you've been certified in a few places, check those certification websites and see if they linked to people or businesses they certified in.

Invest your resources in these certification programs for additional credibility or brand exposure, especially if your local business needs them.

 

19. Offer Unique Testimonials To Local Businesses

 

One of the best social proofs is testimonials.

If a customer gave you a testimonial, whether in written or video format, it increases the perceived value of your products/services.

Potential customers are likely to see the results they'll get from using your offer.

Think testimonials not only for conversions but also for local backlinks.

Local businesses won't ignore an honest testimonial from a customer.

Significantly if it adds proof of results for potential customers.

So, how can you use testimonials for link building?

Step 1: Find local vendors your local business/client uses, likes, and shares.

Step 2: Offer a long-form testimonial on their website. It includes how the local vendor helped your local business.

 

Pro tip: You can format the testimonial in a basic block of HTML, so your contact person can forward it straight to the web developer to implement the changes.

Testimonial link building is helping other local businesses grow through your words.

Then links become a by-product.

 

20. Publish Relevant Top X City Posts With Lead Generation In Mind 

 

You see local content in most local business blogs.

It's for traffic — they say.

So, for example, publishing a "Top X city" article helps drive people from your target location.

Nothing bad here.

But what if you want as a local business is not just traffic, but also potential customers.

Here's the thing:

You can get both.

Traffic and leads.

So whenever you publish local content, think lead generation.

Is this content I'm going to create will drive traffic and potential customers to my local business?

So instead of just creating content like:

• Top 10 things you should know about in [city]
• Best [cuisine] spots in [city]
• 5 things to do in [city]

 

You create content that ties into your products or services.

Let's use local vets as our example.

People interested in pet care services would usually read content like:

• 10 pet-friendly restaurants in [city]
• Pet laws in [city] you don't know, but you should
• Dog-friendly hikes in [city] rated by a veterinarian

 

Did you get the idea?

So regardless of whether you publish it on your blog or distribute it elsewhere (i.e., guest posts), you're also thinking about how that local content can drive conversions to your local business.

 

21. Discover Local HOAs & Neighborhoods Using This One Search Operator 

 

HOA - Homeowner's association.

And neighborhoods.

You won't find much of this in every city.

But consider this as one of your link building techniques.

If your local business is engaging physically with local town members of associations, you can benefit from this.

How can you find link opportunities from HOAs and neighborhoods?

You need to use a search function that gives you the results of a specific page.

Take a look at this search query.

"homeowners association" "florida" inurl:links.html

 

At the time of this writing, it will show links pages (in other terms, resource pages) for homeowners in New York.

You’ll have to look for links/resource pages and not just any type of page because you want to know if they have a history of linking to external resources or businesses.

So try it out for your target location.

See if there are any HOAs and neighborhoods sites you can discover.

Then check if they have links/resources pages you can get listed in. Or better yet, start the search using "[city]" "homeowners" links.html

 

22. Build A Useful Tool For Local and Niche-Targeted Entities 

 

One way to drive high authority links is by creating a helpful tool for your audience.

For example, Shopify created a business name generator that generated 1.9K+ in referring domains and $500K+ in traffic value.

 

The cost of creating tools depends on the complexity of the functions.

But what about local businesses?

Brainstorm an idea where a tool is needed.

It doesn't have to be specific to the niche you're in.

We are looking at the relevance of local links for this matter — as this is what we're aiming for.

Are there any tasks or projects other businesses in your location need that you can create and generate links from it?

 

23. Approach Journalists With Local Angle Of Content 

 

Could you get journalists to cover your local business story?

The answer is yes.

But what makes journalists tick when accepting stories from businesses?

It's the angle and hook of your stories.

If you've published a content piece (news, story, data, etc..) that has worked for the national press, start thinking about how you can tweak it local media attention.

Perhaps, you can add rankings (top 5 cities or any location thereof) to your interactive world map to get that local business angle.

So if you're looking for excellent links from local publications, always think about how to pitch local journalists with a local angle of your story, data, or any content piece.

 

24. Acquire Donation Links From Decent Authoritative Local Organizations 

 

Donation isn't a new thing in local link building.

Most local businesses with enough resources invest in donations to scale links quickly in the first months of a link building campaign.

How to start with donation link building?

Check your resources and determine your estimated budget for this link building project.

Typically, a decent donation link can cost around $500~. Some links from orgs can have lower pricing for the $200 range — but you'd have to check if it's worth the site’s quality.

Find local organizations using two metrics:

Relevance.

The sites should be locally relevant and might potentially drive potential customers to your website.

So if you're a veterinarian in Philadelphia, try to find local pet clubs, local health orgs, etc.

 

You can also go far from niche-targeting and check from just a local standpoint.

From a recent vet example, donating to small software projects isn't bad (as long as it's still in Philadelphia).

The second metric is decent authority.

You can use Ahrefs' DR (Domain Rating) as an essential measurement of the website’s authority.

Try to look for sites with DR40+.

If you don't have time for this type of link building strategy, you can hire agencies that do solely — local sponsorship marketing.

One good example is Zipsprout, founded by Garett French.

So, you can get sponsor links DIY or hire a sponsorship service like Zipsprout.

 

25. Use Local Linkbait Strategy To Get More Targeted Traffic 

 

Linkbait is a type of content that gets natural links.

It's beneficial for your local business, as you're creating a 'flywheel' effect.

Where you publish a few comprehensive linkbait content and these handfuls of posts repeatedly hand you over new backlinks over time, it becomes a natural link acquisition system for your brand.

In local link building:

There is one local linkbait strategy that you can use.

Here is how it works:

Step 1: Think of a topic that will bait local businesses to be featured on a list.

For example, if you pitch "Best 15 Coffee Shops in Philadelphia" to an owner of a local coffee shop, it's a no-brainer the person would help with the content promotion.

Step 2: List down all potential local businesses you'll partner with for the blog post.

Step 3: Reach out to these people and let them know that you are about to publish an article.

The pitch value here is that they'll be featured in an article that will attract new leads for their local business.

Plus, it would also have some more visibility for their brand and possible links for their websites.

Pro tip: If you've got a solid base of social media followers, include it as part of your value pitch, "We could share the blog article across XXX followers.”

Step 4: Publish your "Top/Best X in [City]" post.

Step 5: Send the link to the blog post to your partner local businesses.

Expect local backlinks from those business blogs and other websites.

 

26. Write New Segment For Link Insertions 

 

Outreach is one of the crucial phases of a link building campaign.

You connect to your target linkers with your email pitch.

That's the reason why:

If you write an email that speaks to your linkers' needs, you can persuade them to link to you.

How will that happen?

You encourage the outcome that you want in your initial email.

For example:

In most link insertions, outreach campaigns, where you reach out to bloggers or publishers to include a link to your content from one of their existing articles.

This is commonly known as "niche edits.”

The way to encourage the outcome here is to write the passage with the link in the same format, existing voice, and style of the article.

This offloads the work on the part of the blogger.

The good thing here:

You help these publishers to copy-paste the new segment out of your email simply.

What's the added value?

The easier it is for them to place your link somewhere on their articles, the more likely you'll get the link.

 

27. Create Your Own Link Building Playbook 

 

Here's one thing about scaling backlinks:

You need processes to do that.

One tip here is to create your link building playbook.

This is where you'll input all the necessary details about your link building campaign.

The playbook includes:

Backlink profile data:

Questionnaire:

Order of priorities (for link building strategies):

Procedure documents:

Reports:

Link building playbook helps you scale your link building team.

Got a new hire?

You hand it over to the playbook. Let them learn what's inside.

The more you develop your playbook, the more you increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your campaign.

 

Here’s The Next Step…

 

Which of the 27 local link building tactics you're going to execute for your campaign?

Will you build backlinks from alumni directories? How about publishing relevant top X city posts to generate leads for local businesses in local link building?

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Local Link Building 

Is it important to have a balance of local and non-local links?

Yes, having a balance of local and non-local links can be beneficial for your website's overall link profile and can help to improve your search visibility.

A diverse link profile, which includes links from a variety of sources and locations, can signal to search engines that your website is authoritative and trustworthy, which can help to improve your ranking in search results.

However, it's also important to focus on acquiring high-quality links from authoritative websites, regardless of their location. The quality of the links you acquire is more important than the quantity, and low-quality links can actually harm your search ranking.

It's also worth noting that the importance of local links may vary depending on your business and industry. For example, if you are a local business that serves a specific geographic area, local links may be more valuable than non-local links.

On the other hand, if your business serves a wider audience or operates nationally or internationally, non-local links may be more important.

 

Can local link building be done manually or do I need to use a tool?

Local link building can be done manually or with the use of tools. Some tactics, such as networking and building relationships with local organizations, will likely require a more manual approach. This may involve reaching out to local businesses and organizations directly, participating in local events and sponsored activities, and creating local content that is relevant and valuable to your target audience.

There are also tools available that can help you to identify local link building opportunities, track your local link profile, and monitor your local search visibility. Some examples of tools that can be useful for local link building include:

Local directories and citation sources: Local directories and citation sources, such as Yelp, Google My Business, and Yellow Pages, can be valuable sources of local links. These platforms allow you to list your business and provide information about your products and services, which can help to attract local customers and improve your local search visibility.

Link building tools: Link building tools, such as Ahrefs and Majestic, can help you to track your local link profile and identify local link building opportunities. These tools allow you to analyze your link profile, view the links pointing to your website, and see where your competitors are getting their links from.

Local SEO tools: Local SEO tools, such as Yext and BrightLocal, can help you to optimize your local search visibility and track your performance in local search results. These tools allow you to manage your online presence on local directories and citation sources, as well as monitor your local search ranking and track your local search traffic.

Ultimately, the decision of whether to use tools or rely on manual efforts will depend on your specific needs and resources. Some businesses may find that a combination of manual efforts and tools is the most effective approach for their local link building strategy.

 

What are some common mistakes to avoid in local link building?

Some common mistakes to avoid in local link building include:

• Focusing too much on the quantity of links: It's important to focus on the quality of your links rather than the quantity. A few high-quality local links can be more valuable than a large number of low-quality links.
• Neglecting local directories and citation sources: Local directories and citation sources, such as Yelp, Google My Business, and Yellow Pages, can be valuable sources of local links. It's important to make sure that your business is listed on these platforms and that your information is accurate and up-to-date.
• Neglecting local content and outreach: Local content and outreach are key components of local link building. Neglecting these elements can make it more difficult to attract local links.
• Overlooking the importance of relationship building: Building relationships with local organizations and businesses can be an effective way to acquire local links. Neglecting this aspect of local link building can make it more difficult to secure valuable local links.
• Not tracking and measuring your local link building efforts: It's important to track and measure your local link building efforts so that you can identify what is working and what is not. Use tools like Ahrefs or Majestic to track your local link profile, and use Google Analytics or a similar tool to track the traffic and engagement on your website.
• Using spammy or unethical tactics: It's important to avoid using spammy or unethical tactics to acquire local links. This can include buying links, participating in link schemes, or using automated tools to generate links. These tactics can harm your search ranking and damage your reputation.

 

How can I use local events and sponsored activities to acquire local links?

Participating in local events and sponsored activities can be an effective way to acquire local links. Here are some tips for using local events and sponsored activities to acquire local links:

Ask if you can include a link to your website on their event page or in their promotional materials. Many organizations that host events or sponsored activities will have a website or social media presence where they promote the event.

By asking if you can include a link to your website on their event page or in their promotional materials, you can secure a valuable local link.

Create content related to the event. Another way to use local events and sponsored activities to acquire local links is to create content related to the event and share it on your website and social media channels.

This could include blog posts, articles, infographics, or other types of content that provide value to your audience and showcase your expertise. By sharing this content, you can attract local links from other local websites and organizations.

Engage with other local businesses and organizations. Participating in local events and sponsored activities can also provide an opportunity to network and build relationships with other local businesses and organizations. By engaging with these businesses and organizations and offering value, you can increase the chances of securing local links.

Monitor and track your local link building efforts. It's important to monitor and track your local link building efforts so that you can identify what is working and what is not. Use tools like Ahrefs or Majestic to track your local link profile, and use Google Analytics or a similar tool to track the traffic and engagement on your website.

This can help you to fine-tune your local link building strategy and identify new opportunities for acquiring local links.

 

How can I use social media to promote my local content and attract local links?

Social media can be a powerful tool for promoting your local content and attracting local links. Here are some tips for using social media to promote your local content and attract local links:

1. Share your local content on relevant social media groups and communities. By sharing your local content on relevant social media groups and communities, you can expose it to a wider audience and increase the chances of attracting local links. For example, if you have a local blog post about a community event, you could share it on a local social media group or community page related to that event.
2. Engage with other local businesses and organizations. Participating in social media groups and communities can also provide an opportunity to engage with other local businesses and organizations. By commenting, liking, and sharing their content, you can build relationships and increase the chances of securing local links.
3. Use hashtags to make your content more discoverable. Using relevant hashtags can help to make your content more discoverable on social media. This can include local hashtags, such as #localbusiness or #supportsmallbusiness, as well as hashtags related to your industry or niche.
4. Monitor and track your social media efforts. It's important to monitor and track your social media efforts so that you can identify what is working and what is not. Use tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to track your social media engagement and identify opportunities for attracting local links.

 

How can I use local directories and citation sources to acquire local links?

Local directories and citation sources, such as Yelp, Google My Business, and Yellow Pages, can be valuable sources of local links. Here are some tips for using local directories and citation sources to acquire local links:

List your business on local directories and citation sources. By listing your business on local directories and citation sources, you can make it easier for local customers to find your business and improve your local search visibility.

It's important to make sure that your business is listed on these platforms and that your information is accurate and up-to-date.

Include a link to your website in your business listing. Many local directories and citation sources allow you to include a link to your website in your business listing. This can provide a valuable local link and help to drive traffic to your website.

Monitor and track your local listings. It's important to monitor and track your local listings to make sure that your information is accurate and up-to-date.

You can use tools like Yext or BrightLocal to manage your online presence on local directories and citation sources and track your local search ranking.

Respond to reviews and ratings. Many local directories and citation sources also allow customers to leave reviews and ratings for your business. Responding to these reviews and ratings can help to improve your reputation and increase the chances of attracting local links.

 

How can I use local content to attract local links?

Creating high-quality, local content that is relevant and valuable to your target audience can be a powerful way to attract local links. Here are some tips for using local content to attract local links:

Create content that is relevant and valuable to your target audience. The key to attracting local links with your content is to create content that is relevant and valuable to your target audience. This could include blog posts, articles, infographics, or other types of content that showcase your expertise and provide value to your audience.

Share your local content on your website and social media channels. Once you have created your local content, it's important to share it on your website and social media channels. This will help to expose it to a wider audience and increase the chances of attracting local links.

Engage with other local businesses and organizations. Participating in local social media groups and communities, commenting on local blogs and websites, and sharing your local content with other local businesses and organizations can help to increase the chances of attracting local links.

Monitor and track your local content efforts. It's important to monitor and track your local content efforts so that you can identify what is working and what is not. Use tools like Google Analytics or a similar tool to track the traffic and engagement on your website, and use social media analytics tools to track the engagement on your social media channels.

This can help you to fine-tune your local content strategy and identify new opportunities for attracting local links.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

19 Actionable SaaS Link Building Strategies For 2023 [Free Checklist & Templates]

This is the most detailed guide to SaaS link building online.

So if you want to:

• Build scalable backlinks to your SaaS blog and landing pages
• See examples of the world's best SaaS link building campaigns
• Increase new demos and trials from new customers

You'll love detailed strategies in today's guide.

Click on any link below to jump to a section. 

 

Let's get started.

 

Steal Your Competitors Best Keywords Using Capterra

Capterra has the most number of software reviews on the web.

As of now, their "Software Categories" contain 850+ different categories.

That's a lot!

And you can take advantage of what they're currently doing.

How?

First, if you don't know who your competitors are, or if you're looking for additional ones to do research on, go through the list of SaaS companies in Capterra.

 

Once you find these related software businesses, you can check their backlink profiles using Ahrefs.

 

This can give you an idea of what types of backlinks they get for their SaaS website. And what niche-specific link building strategies they're using to get more targeted backlinks.

Secondly, get keyword insights from Capterra.

Most SaaS companies have the challenge of determining what best keywords to target for their landing pages.

Take EnsoData for example. They offer artificial intelligence (AI) scoring and analysis for sleep technicians. They have clear service offerings, but they're not targeting any specific niche keywords for their pages.

This happens mostly for SaaS with very specific core offerings.

The way to solve them is to let Capterra do the keyword research for you.

By looking at their Capterra page, you can easily find some core keywords.

 

By doing these two things: finding competitors on Capterra's software categories and discovering the best keywords on Capterra pages, you can publish content assets that are likely to rank and earn links along the way.

 

Use Help Center To Earn Fresh Links

You build trust from new customers when you help people with their problems.

That increases demos and trials for your SaaS.

One way to achieve that is to use the Help Center of Knowledge Base.

Take a look at Hubspot and Uber. Both these two SaaS companies effectively use Help Centers for many purposes:

Show their existing customers how to use their products and their features to solve their problems.

 

Provide tips from certified experts and industry practitioners.

 

You earn fresh links from people you've helped. They will talk about it on forums and on blogs.

The reason is simple:

They found your guides, tips, and product features helpful for them for their communities. 

See the number of links Hubspot and Uber earned with their Help Centers.

 

You can check out our link building services and SEO services for SaaS. 

Discover Untapped Link Opportunities From Google Play

If you have created an app for your SaaS, this is for you.

Take a look at the people who linked to your app in Google Play.

 

Then see if it makes sense to have another opportunity to get backlinks from them.

 

If they mention and link to you, they are familiar with your SaaS brand.

It makes sense to reach out again and offer another value in terms of content.

Make a list of all people who linked to your app — who can be your backlink prospects for another link building campaign - i.e. guest posting.

Execute another link building campaign for your new list of backlink opportunities.

 

 

Use Product Hunt To Earn Branded Links

Product Hunt is your go-to website when finding the best new software in the market.

It's also a great way to get feedback from SaaS founders, marketers, and the tech community.

If you want more new customers for your software, launch it on Product Hunt.

As you get traction, you earn eyeballs from publishers, tech content creators, and linkers on different websites.

That way, you earn new links to your SaaS brand.

Take LeadForms for example:

After launching their software product to Product Hunt, here's what they got:

• Generated over $10,000 ARR in the pipeline (some super highly qualified leads)
• Close to 2,000 unique page views
• A couple of backlink opportunities

 

If you want to get more demos and trials, and increase your MRR, submit your SaaS strategically on Product Hunt.

You don't spam people. You don't force them to upvote and support your product launches.

Product Launch is a community. So, contributing value first should be your utmost priority.

You build your own community long before the launch. So when you start launching your software, you'll already have a bunch of people to support you.

Here are some examples of successful Product Hunt launches:

Flawless 

 

Quokka

 

Weblium

 

 

Optimize Your SaaS Landing Pages To Increase Linkability

Not all landing pages of SaaS are linkable. People don't normally link to sales pages unless it is worth citing.

If you have SaaS landing pages, you have to make them linkable.

How is that possible?

You include citable elements to your SaaS sales pages.

Add any of these micro content to your landing pages:

• Data or “findings.”
• Direct quotation of a source.
• Defining jargon and industry terminology for the layperson (aka definitions).
• Pricing Guides or Generalized Pricing Information.
• Images, Videos, Widgets, Downloadables.
• Detailed, Multi-Faceted Metrics-Based Reviews.
• Tips/Advice Directly Related to Products/Services on the Page.
• The Origin Story.
• Supplemental Outbound Resource Links

These are content pieces to increase the linkability of your sales pages. The more you have them, the easier for you to persuade publishers, bloggers, and industry content creators to link to your page because your content is worth referencing.

For example, Proposify added new free templates to their website for potential customers. These have been branded assets that generated hundreds of links.

 

Another example is Quickbooks Sales Tax:

 

You see that they have "sales tax calculator", "how to calculate sales tax", and "sales tax survey".

These are all citable elements that will give publishers a reason to link to your sales page.

The next part is:

Reach out to people who might be interested to link to your sales pages. And expect to increase backlinks to your SaaS website.

 

Make Your CEO A Hero In Stories

Every software as a service brand has a story to tell to the world. And that's a huge advantage.

Journalists and reporters are hungry for interesting stories. They're looking for success stories of tech founders who've grown their startups to thousands of customers.

They also ask for quotes, tips, and advice from industry practitioners.

Here's the thing:

if you have stories, you can get more visibility and links for your SaaS website.

Plus, you'll get new customers by being featured on top publications — if these publishers bring referral traffic to your website.

Does your SaaS have any interesting founding story?

What about unique problems your tech product was able to solve on its own?

If you want to get great coverage on major publications, think about stories as your product.

Here is one example.

 

If you don't have a partnered PR agency, you can get your stories known using HARO.

You can check out this step-by-step guide on how to use HARO.

 

 

Create A WordPress Plugin

Most webmasters use WordPress as their CMS.

For ease, most content managers and publishers want to use plugins to integrate tech products useful for their websites.

The best thing?

Create a WordPress plugin.

If your SaaS has logical benefits for ease of integration with WordPress, that's a big plus for your customers.

The next big thing is you get backlinks from WordPress users and tech publishers.

One more: you get new customers searching when your plugin is featured in the WordPress directory.

Take Hubspot again as an example.

They've created a WordPress plugin to integrate their software products inside the WordPress website.

 

Built natively into WordPress, their customers can do meaningful tasks in CRM, email marketing, and analytics.

As of now, their Hubspot WordPress page earned over 1800 links.

 

 

Use Your Affiliate Program To Increase More Links

Affiliate programs are one of the best ways to grow your customers.

And the best part: you increase your backlinks by creating an affiliate program.

If you already have one, you just need to find bloggers and content creators who publish reviews and articles about niche products on their websites.

These are industry publishers who can write reviews about your product.

Of course, you get links from those product reviews.

 

Here's how you do it:

Try to search for "your competitor" + "review" on Google.

 

You'll surface a bunch of review articles of your competitors. 

Leave the review websites like Capterra, G2, PCmag, etc..

For bloggers and publishers who write product reviews for your competitors? Reach out to them.

 

Publish Learn Hubs To Increase More (Targeted) Traffic

Read these statistics:

85% of large Saas businesses own a blog.

36% of SaaS companies use their blog to share content that educates. (SaaSX)

More and more software companies understand the power of content marketing in generating new customers, trials, and demos.

That said, how can you make sure your blog stands out?

Instead of doing what everyone is doing.

You do this:

You create what we call, "Learn Hub".

Learn Hubs are basically resource or knowledge centers.

Basically, you create an online library wherein you publish different pages that systematically target keywords within a topic.

The catch here?

You keep readers engaged on your site because each content piece lives closer together.

And because the entire "learn hubs" consists fully of highly valuable content assets, it's much more linkable than other competing individual pages.

For example, Canva's Learn Hub on design has generated over 3,000 backlinks and is currently ranking #1 for the key phrase: "free design".

 

Another example is from Freshbooks. Its Small Business Resource Hub is one of the top resource centers on accounting and invoicing for small businesses.

Freshhooks' "Learn Hub" ranks for over 355,000 keywords, with 3,200+ backlinks pointed to it.

Use High-Quality Custom Tools To Generate Links

Here's the good thing with tools:

It helps in automation and simplicity of work.

And for the most part, generating high-quality backlinks to your website.

For example, Gusto has a full library of different payroll and HR tools that currently generates over 2,000 backlinks and over 40,000 monthly sessions, according to Ahrefs.

 

Software companies like you, won't have a hard time creating custom tools.

You do this as a product team.

Are there any estimated calculations your potential customers must make to arrive at a decision to purchase your SaaS product?

Do you have in-house spreadsheets that you can share with your audience to increase their efficiency on certain tasks?

Start with one tool. Then promote it massively to your target audience.

Add another tool to your /tools section. Promote it again to your audience.

You build a momentum of link earning as you build sets of custom tools for your audience.

 

Submit Your Website To Software Directories

You can't ignore the basic stuff:

Submitting your SaaS website to software directories.

You simply have to submit details about your brand, and some other information needed for submission.

Here is a free list of software directories.

 

 

Discover Content Patterns In Your Industry

The #1 mistake content marketers make is:

Not doing enough research before creating the content…

The reason why they don't get enough results when they start to promote their content assets.

One content strategy that gets you backlinks is discovering content patterns.

These are patterns — types and formats of content that already have worked in your industry.

How can you do that?

Start to reverse engineer top publications in your target industry.

 

And see what types of content they consistently publish on their blog.

Model the same format in your SaaS blog and have a higher success rate in backlinks.

 

Use Tangential Topics To Discover Guest Post Prospects

Guest posting is one of the scalable link building strategies online.

But what's more interesting is:

Guest posting drives more traffic and more potential trials and demos to your software website.

Think about it:

If you write an article for an industry blog, and one of its readers read your content. You build trust among these readers.

They like you, and they'll buy from you.

But how can you know what industry blogs to target for guest posts?

The answer is to think about the specific problems your SaaS solves in your market.

We call as "tangential topics".

These are not the main core topics in your software blog.

But they're related to the solutions your SaaS is trying to solve.

Examples are:

Project management software helping freelancers do remote work.

Workflow software helping HR departments grow their businesses.

Productivity software helping small business owners manage their remote workers.

You see:

So you don't just limit your guest posting strategy with your main target audience.

But you're thinking about who are other audiences who might benefit from the solutions you're trying to solve in your space.

How?

Start with Google search

Use intitle search operator to find blogs with your target tangential topics.

See the example below:

 

Make a list of all these industry blogs and target them as your guest post prospects.

Do this again after a couple of months. And you'll never run of your target guest blogs.

 

Publish Industries Pages

Do you want more trials and demos?

I'm sure you do.

It's only possible if:

You're not just niche-targeting, but also widening opportunities in targeting industries.

That's the best thing for software companies.

You can target different audiences.

For example, SimpleTexting created several "Industries" pages for their SaaS.

Text messaging for Car Dealerships:

 

Text messaging for Property Management and Landlords:

 

Text messaging for Fitness Centers and Gyms:

 

Industry pages work well in helping you drive audience-specific links.

In our given example, Simple Texting can reach out to car dealership blogs, property management blogs, and fitness blogs.

That translates to tons of links rather than just focusing on one niche.

 

Build Easy Links From List Posts & Comparison Guides

What's the common buying pattern of your potential customers?

Simple: They look through different solutions, choose which product they think that they can solve their needs, and decide for a trial or demo.

The reason why:

There are a lot of list posts (sometimes called, "listicles") and comparison guides in the software industry.

Bloggers, publishers, and content creators have "top 10 for [insert solution" articles.

You know what?

You can take advantage of these listicles and comparison guides to get links.

But you first have to start discovering them. How?

Plug in your competitor's website in Ahrefs to see who linked to them.

 

Go to the Backlinks section.

Add filter keywords such as:

• Best
• Top
• Tools
• Software

These will give you results of pages with any of these keywords in page titles.

Reach out to them and request your SaaS to get featured.

Pro Tip: Offer basic or premium account access to your online software to increase your link placement rate.

 

 

Turn Brand Mentions Into Product Page Links

Most SaaS websites have lots of homepage links.

It's a good thing but:

If you want to maximize results in link building, you need more relevant more targeted links. 

What can you do?

Turn your brand mentions of products into product page links.

Step 1: Look for brand mentions.

You can use Ahrefs to track them easily.

 

Or use Google Alerts to find these blogs that mentioned your SaaS.

Step 2: Reach out and ask to update their links to a more relevant page.

Given they have mentioned your online software in their articles, a simple request for change of links to a more specific page (your product or template page) is doable. for webmasters.

Here is a simple email outreach script that you can use:

Subject Line: Quick question for your [Name]

Hey [Name],

It’s [Your Name] here from [Their Website].

I was just looking through my backlinks and noticed you mentioned me in this post: [Link of the page where you got the link]

However, I noticed that although you mention a particular blog post of mine [Topic of the page that mentioned your
website], you actually linked to my homepage rather than the blog post itself.

Any chance it would be possible to swap the link out for a link directly to the blog post instead?

No worries if not, I just think it’d make more sense in the overall context of the post (as people may be interested to
read that post).

Either way, have a great week!

Thanks,
[Your Name]

 

Publish Statistics Page In Your Industry

People want to know different things.

They do Google search for "how many people are X", "what is the number of people in X", how many users are using X".

These are numbers. Some pages have statistics to show off.

It's good for users. It's also good for link building.

Your software brand has data and numbers that might be valuable to your audience.

And is a powerful asset for backlinks from authority sites.

Many SaaS websites publish "statistics" pages.

Tidio's Chatbot Statistics:

 

Hubspot Content Marketing Statistics:

 

Simple Texting Remote Work Statistics:

 

Publish your own statistics page.

Get information from your internal data in your company.

Or get data from top statistical sources such as:

• Statistica
• Data.gov
• Data.worldbank.org
• Reddit Datasets

Once publish, you reach out to people who might be interested in linking to the page.

Start with people who have previously linked to statistics related to yours.

Use Ahrefs to discover blogs, publishers, and websites that linked to your similar statistics page.

Go to the Backlinks section. Make a list of these backlink targets.

 

Reach out to them and promote your statistics content.

 

Hunt How-To Tutorials On Youtube

You should probably know that publishing Youtube videos is a great way to generate brand awareness and drive new customers to your SaaS website.

But there's one more thing with Youtube videos:

It helps software companies to bring new inbound links to their websites.

How?

By publishing tutorials on how to use your product for meaningful tasks.

For example, Trello has tons of videos on how to be productive using their tools.

 

Instead of putting out an article on how to use Trello, a better demonstration of their SaaS features is through how-to videos.

Another example is putting out videos of app integration with your software.

 

This helps your brand get in front of people using those integrated apps.

Those are link opportunities at hand.

You can track blogs that mentioned your SaaS along with the integrated app.

 

And even reach out to content publishers who've written a post on a topic of your Youtube video.

By sharing that it adds more value to their readers, if there's a how-to video that showcases the exact way of doing the task, you're likely to increase the chances of getting backlinks to your website.

 

Appeal To Sales People With Your Software

Audience-first link building.

It is your ability to think first of your audience, as it dictates what link building strategy to use for your software website.

Besides your main audience for your SaaS blog:

HR people, CIOs, small business owners…

…you can also target salespeople

Salespeople have high intent in social sharing and referencing valuable resources.

For what reason?

Simple: They get more money by doing so.

If they want more sales, they have to educate more their audience, especially if their offers have a longer sales cycle (e.g. 3 to 6 months before a person purchases their offers).

Trigger the emotions of salespeople by appealing to them with your SaaS content.

Think of ways on how to appeal to salespeople. 

Use Google to find titles and topics that go near to your brand's solutions.

 

 

Here's The Next Step…

I want to turn it over to you.

Which one of the 19 SaaS link building strategies you're going to apply right now?

Will you optimize your SaaS landing pages to increase their linkability? How about publishing "learn hubs" to earn more links and targeted traffic to your website?

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

How to Get High Quality Backlinks in 2023 [21 New Strategies]

Looking for new ways to get backlinks and boost your site's Google ranking?

Great! 

This post contains 21 new link building tips and strategies that are working in 2022. 

Let's dive in.

 

 

1. Create An Image Library 

When people use your images, you can ask them to credit you with links.

The more images you produce, the more links you can reclaim for your website. 

How can you start with this?

First, analyze what images are linkable. 

Start with any of these sources to know what images get the most links: 

• Unsplash
• Shutterstock
• Getty Images
• Alamy

You want to look for images that are likely to be used by publications and blogs.

The reasons why bloggers would use it is very simple:

They want to show how a person behaves the way they mentioned in their articles or how things are used. 

And if you can give them images that portray that, then you're hitting their needs.

It must be any of these themes: 

Places:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Objects:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Events:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actions:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emotions:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go look for them on a photo source website by typing your niche keywords. 

For example, "work from home":

 

 

Or go to the Popular section to get a sense of what photos individuals and businesses are paying for.

Grab any image and plug it into Tineye to see how many sites have used it.

Once you analyze what images are often used by bloggers and publishers, go to your blog and start publishing an image library.

Create an image library that you can license under "creative commons distribute". 

Get these images uploaded on Flickr and other websites mentioned above. 

What you input in Flickr as title and description will be your page title and meta description box.

Make sure you add your attribution request in your description. 

Start with 30 images. 

Then as you get results, add 5 to 10 more each month. 

Monitor who uses your images using Tineye Reverse Image Search.

 

Or using Copytrack.

Or Picmatch.

Spot use of your images without links. 

Reach out to them and ask for attribution. 

Another effective strategy is this: 

If you have a big library of images, maximize it to the fullest. 

How?

Besides uploading these photos on photo sourcing sites:

You can offer it exclusively to publishers. 

Here is an email outreach template that you can use:

 

Subject Line: Save [Website]'s time and money on images you use

Hi [Name],

For [Website]'s editorial team, a crucial part of work is to find images, relevant to the content. 

What do you think of an alternative source of images in the form of a free subscription to more than [number of] images: [link to your page]?

We can give you [number of] images per month for a [X]-month period (with a possibility of extension). In return, we would like you to credit our images with clickable links.

Please let me know what do you think of our offer.

Thanks,

[Your Name] 

 

2. Apply 'Linkedin Reclamation' Technique 

One of the easiest types of backlinks you can get is:

From people who mentioned you on their sites but without attribution of links.

Well, you can simply reach out to them and ask to get credited with links. 

And you're probably familiar with this technique: 

Link reclamation.

The good thing is you can do it with any type of page you own.

Including your Linkedin page.

If you have someone in your organization who is getting attention from the press, either they are an authority on a technical topic. 

Sharing tips, quotes, or any value-added advice to the community.

Or because they have a remarkable story worth sharing.

Do a quick backlink check on their Linkedin profile page.

Find some potential link opportunities in there.

Reach out to blogs and ask them to link to their profile page on your website. 

If you don't have a dedicated page for that person, create one for this strategy.

Then, get links. 

 

3. Initiate Reciprocal Linking 

You're probably familiar with link exchange.

That's the activity of two websites linking to each other webpages. 

There is a heavy discussion in the SEO community about whether link exchange is good or bad. 

But think about it:

Two websites can link to each other reciprocally without even the intention of manipulating search result rankings.

For example:

If I'm a manufacturer of a product and you're a reseller, would it be logical to link to your page because I want my potential customers to know where they can purchase the product?

Or vice versa. 

Another example:

Two niche bloggers were attending a conference. They grabbed some coffee and talked.

 

They are in different niches. But happen to find each other's new articles useful for their readers. 

One linked to his friend’s blog post. And vice versa.

You see:

These two examples are natural reciprocal linking.

Link exchange is okay.

As long as it is done in a manageable manner.

Not scalable. But if initiated for targeted people you've built relationships with, then it becomes more effective. 

 

4. Use "Bank For Buck" Guest Posting Strategy 

Not all guest posting campaigns are effective.

Why?

When people send guest posting ideas, they come from the lines of:

"Here are my guest posting ideas, choose one that fits your blog."

 

Or:

"topics I'm thinking about and hoping to include a link in your article pointing to my website" 

It is a one-sided benefit on the part of the guest blogger.

Sad truth: 

But this is the reason why a guest posting campaign doesn't work for many businesses. 

So how can you stand out among them? 

Instead of thinking about just “links”, why not ask these questions: 

What do they want?

What do they care about?

Some answers you can arrive at may be: 

They want to rank for their target keywords to get new readers for their blogs.

They want to monetize their blogs. 

And so, if all these are beneficial to your target publication, what you want is a new level of guest posting strategy. 

Insert: 

"Bank For Buck" strategy. 

It's a guest posting strategy that is simple to apply. 

The idea is: 

You submit guest posting topics that your target guest publication/blog would benefit from:

Either because they can monetize from it.

Or they can potentially gain new search visitors by ranking your content for target keywords. 

Now:

Here's how you can do it. 

First is to find affiliate programs in your industry. 

And the reason is:

These affiliate programs may help your target niche bloggers earn a commission whenever someone clicks on their affiliate links and buy the products they're selling.

It’s a win for them! 

How can you find these affiliate programs? 

You can do a Google search for "[INDUSTRY] affiliate programme" OR "[INDUSTRY] affiliate program".

 

Here you'll see different brands looking for affiliate partners. 

 

Make a list of these affiliate programs. 

Next step:

Look for bloggers who are likely to participate in the program.

And the easy way is to find people who've done it before.

These are bloggers who've written product reviews. 

And because they're into affiliate marketing, they will be more receptive to email pitches that would give them more affiliate commissions.

How to find them?

Use Ahrefs to check blogs linking to the affiliate programs you listed earlier.

 

Another way:

Look for authoritative blogs you can reach out to for guest posting.

In other words, these are your prospective guest blogs. 

Then the next step:

Research for their best-performing content.

And find what topics you can write for them that can help them rank for some industry keywords.

You can use Ahrefs for this:

Either you use Top Pages to get a good sense of their top-performing content. 

 

Or Content Gap Analysis to discover keywords they don't rank for yet (but their competitors are currently ranking). 

 

Now, as you assess, these are the topics you can suggest to write for the blog.

Two things:

You write the content and link to one of the affiliate programs you found related to their niche.

And you write the content that gets to rank for some keywords they haven't targeted yet. 

So, in summary, here's how to apply the "Bank for Buck" strategy: 

1. Find affiliate programs in your industry.
2. Look for niche bloggers who are linked to affiliate programs.
3. Find authoritative blogs in your list. 
4. Send a list of guest posting ideas (with target keywords to rank and related affiliate programs to target).
5. Write the content for them and get links to your site. 

 

5. Get Infographics Inspiration From Visual Capitalist 

It's challenging to make infographics stand out in your industry.

Not only:

There are thousands (if not hundreds) of businesses publishing various visual content assets every day. 

But there is nothing new with most infographics.

So how can you make your infographics stand out in your industry?

The key is to model what already works.

That is to get inspiration from proven and tested infographics that have gotten links from authoritative blogs and publications.

One website producing solid visual content assets is:

Visual Capitalist. 

 

If you experience creative block when thinking of what infographics to create for your brand, check out what Visual Capitalist do. 

Some examples are:

 

Now, you don't have to worry about where to start with infographics. 

Check out our other link building strategies.

 

6. Use Thought Leadership For Content Collaboration 

It's not that easy to create content.

But let's say you're working with other industry practitioners, you can produce more and higher quality content assets. 

That's co-marketing. 

How can you apply this?

Simple.

Find any thought leaders in your company. 

 

And get them to be involved in your content distribution strategy. 

The idea is that the more authoritative a person is in an industry, the easier it is for you to secure opportunities with online publications.

Now:

Do you have any subject matter experts in your company?

How about professors who've done any solid research at school? 

The great thing here is:

You can partner with other institutions and entities where you each guest post on each other's website. 

 

7. Apply Advanced Stats Round-up Strategy 

You're probably familiar with round-up posts.

A round-up post is an article containing insider tips from industry experts on a specific topic.

Most content marketers abused this technique.

And it affects how the marketing industry perceives the value of a round-up post. 

The thing is:

Round-up posts still work.

But instead of just asking thought leaders to share their "most actionable tip", you can go deep with data. 

For example: 

You can survey at least 30 people.

Or try to get statistics about the topic.

Let's say you're targeting business owners. 

You can research on:

"Percentage of business owners who would create the same business (industry) VS other business owners who prefer to venture into a different niche"

"The average number of employees, team size, or revenue VS the years in business" 

These are just some examples.

The thing is:

Statistics are referential topics.

Publishers, bloggers, and content creators often link to statistics to validate their points and make their content more comprehensive than others.

 

This means that you have a high chance of getting links when you rank for target keywords (e.g. "small business owners statistics"). 

So do not just publish a 'best tips' round-up article. Go beyond that. 

 

8. Do "Reduce, Re-use & Recycle" For Links 

You can do wonders out of garbage.

if you know how to recycle properly…

What if recycling is also applicable for link building on your site? 

How? 

With old, seemingly not useful content, you can create an entire content distribution program without even the need to create new content.

What are the steps? 

First, find old content that you can prune.

These are pages that bring heaviness to your website (in terms of wordcount), but doesn't gain or contain any of the following:

Not generating backlinks (0 referring domains).

 

Receiving <100 organic visits per month (lower relative to your site's overall search traffic). 

 

Not related to your blog's overall topic theme. 

The next thing you'll do is:

Offer the content as guest posts to third-party industry publications.

Or you can rewrite the content first to fit the blog's content guidelines.

Then submit it once you see "green signals" from blog editors. 

While doing this strategy, you'll find that not all of your pruned content are worth submitting as guest posts…

And that's okay.

If there's a huge volume of well-written content, those are good articles still relevant for other sites. 

The last step is to serve 410 response codes on the old URLs.

Or no-index via Search Console for those articles to no longer be indexed. 

So if you're having a hard time creating content for link building, recycle what you already have by turning old content into guest posts. 

 

9. Reverse Engineer Author Footprints Of Competitors 

You know competitor research.

Basically, finding patterns, behaviors, and people connected to your competitors.

In link building, it's understanding who linked to your competitors.

Why did they link to their sites...

And what specific patterns you can model for your own site. 

If you know competitors who are heavily involved in link building with authors or bio names. 

One link building technique you can do is:

Crawl their domain in a link building analysis tool like Ahrefs.

Outgoing links - Anchors

Scan through anchors and check names. Some of which are contributors to the publications.

 

Locate the websites and social media profiles of those authors. 

Collaborate.

Either:

Offer content partnerships (pay-per-content partnership).

Where they'll create the content and submit it to an industry publication.

And because they are already contributors to these industry blogs, it would be easy for them to publish the content.

 

10. Approach eCommerce or Shopping Editors 

Ecommerce link building isn't that easy. 

Webmasters must have a good reason to link to your product pages. 

Many reasons, but one is:

Niche bloggers write "The best gifts for X" articles. 

And if your product is relevant to their topics, you can get direct links to your product/category pages. 

Besides bloggers:

You can also reach out to Shopping editors.

These are newswriters, content creators, and editors from top eCommerce publications.

Let me give you a few names.

Lara Tumer

 

Leah Stodart

 

Then go from here. Prospect for more opportunities by discovering other publications that they're writing for.

Through Google search.

Through Ahrefs. 

 

 

11. Use Non-Competing Websites As A Source Of Link Opps

What if you have exhausted the link opportunities of your competitors?

The next best option is to find non-competing websites to reverse engineer with.

These are brands that don't offer the same product as yours.

But they're in the same industry.

For example:

If you are a veterinarian, your first option is to find pages linking to other veterinarians in your market. 

If you've prospected enough link targets from other vets’ sites, your next best is to use non-competing websites as your source of link opportunities.

Now, some resources pages link out to different needs of an audience. 

Take a look at this page:

 

If you're a pet lover, you'd love this page as it covers pet resources in San Diego.

So you can think of pet stores.

Pet groomers.

Animal hospitals.

How can you apply this to your niche?

First, find niche resources pages (just like what I shared above) that cover different resources (not just for one niche offering - e.g. vets). 

Then, look for pages linked to each of the non-competing sites in every niche category you can find.

Then be amazed by the number of link opportunities available to you. 

 

12. Get Links From Eco-Friendly Product Listings

Green environment is a big chunk market of links.

Resource pages.

Guest posts.

Sponsorships.

Niche publications.

If you're selling physical products, one type of links you can take advantage of is:

Eco-friendly product listings.

There are tons of this type online.

For example:

An eco-friendly product listings page. 

 

If you're a pet store selling eco-friendly products, then this one would open opportunities for you.

How?

Find other similar types of pages.

Using Google search:

Then reach out to them and pitch to be featured on their following articles. 

 

13. Reach Out To Freelance Journalists To Cover Your Story 

Digital PR is huge.

And publication editors receive hundreds of email pitches from brands and marketers looking to cover their stories.

The thing is:

It is saturated.

Instead of going directly into publications.

Try reaching out to freelance journalists.

They get paid by pitching stories and news into publications.

And that itself is an advantage, as they work with different publications.

One freelance journalist can open up many relationships. 

And if you're an agency working with different content campaigns, this one is for you.

So, how can you discover these freelance journalists? 

Use Twitter.

With their advanced searches, you can find Twitter profiles with "keywords" on their bio. 

 

If you're into local SEO, you can focus your search on a specific location.

Find local freelance journalists that you can engage with during a coffee chat or simply hop on a call.

Another way is to incentivize these freelance journalists to write content for you or your client.

As you build relationships with them, you get to expose your brand to several external publications you'd otherwise prospect or think of when you reach out to a cold list of "any kind" of journalists. 

 

14. Use "3-Step Podcast Outreach Strategy" 

It's undoubtedly that podcasts can offer you great links to your site.

But how?

Here are the 3 step process you can use to maximize podcasts for link building in your industry.

First, use podcast search websites to discover active podcasts in your industry.

Either through:

Podsearch

 

Or Wondery

 

Or Blog Talk Radio:

 

The next step is:

Pitch to these podcast hosts and offer great value in return for brand exposure. 

If you're pitching for your client, here is a good email template that you can use for outreach:

 

Subject Line: Guest suggestion for [Podcast]

Hi [Name],

[Briefly introduce yourself/your client]

Here are some key discussion points that your listeners would find interesting to hear:

• [Topic 1]
• [Topic 2]
• [Topic 3]

I'm not sure if you're open for new guests but in any case, [me/my client - state you/your clients' credentials as to why you/your client would fit their podcast, what's in it for them]. 

Do you think my client could be a potential guest on [Podcast]? 

Let me know so I can connect you to [You/client's name]. I'll send any info you may need. 

I'll offer to transcribe the podcast episode for you - free of charge. :) 

Thanks,

[Your Name] 

 

The last step is getting in touch with the podcast hosts.

Other hosts would give you sponsorship requirements. 

So you need to invest money for that.

Others would let you come in for free.

Either way, you get brand exposure.

Plus, links from their transcript podcast articles. 

Or even from their "press" pages on their personal websites. 

 

15. Write Like A Normal Person 

Why does outreach fail?

One reason.

Generic non-personalized email templates. 

Public email templates are overrated.

Those email copies that you see included in SEO articles don't always work effectively.

And the reason is that:

Different markets have different needs of an audience.

Different styles. And different levels of personalization your email must adjust to. 

Do not say words to over impress people with lines like: 

"I'm a long-time reader/big fan of your blog."

"I liked what you shared in this article…" (without you even reading the article) 

 

One best practice in email outreach:

Write like you're writing to a friend.

The key is to check your inbox and see the latest emails from your friends.

How does it look like?

In what tone or style of conversation?

The next time you craft email outreach templates, think of your recent 1-on-1 conversation with your friend. 

Like you're writing to an average person. 

 

16. Find Websites Getting Natural Links 

The best link building strategy is going for a mix of natural/organic links and manually-built links.

Natural links are links you get without pursuing bloggers/publishers to link to your content.

You get backlinks because of your authority. 

Because of the information of your content.

One actionable link building tip is to spot competitors getting natural links.

That means they don't get it manually. They earned it organically.

But how can you know if what they picked up are natural links?

This is where you need a skill to separate manual and natural links.

When you get crawl a domain in Ahrefs, you'll then see a list of backlinks.

And by the type of links, you get to know if a link is earned or built manually by the kind of links.

You only need to know here that if a link is potentially built through manual outreach, you can collect it as part of your list of link opportunities you can reach out to for links.

Some types of links to be seen as manually-built:

Local sponsorship links:

 

Resource page links:

 

Round-up posts:

 

The logic is simple here.

Monitor your competitors getting natural links using Ahrefs' New Links feature.

 

This could open up low-hanging fruits for your site. 

17. Create A "Link Prospecting and Outreach Cheatsheet" 

If you want to scale link building, you need processes. 

Processes help your team achieve predictable results.

If you're investing heavily in link building, you're probably not working alone.

You work with teams of SEOs or link builders.

Or have a small team of virtual assistants helping you with small tasks like finding email addresses. 

One thing to add to your process is creating a 'link prospecting and outreach cheatsheet'. 

An easy-to-follow document that your team can follow every time you're launching a new link building campaign.

Or have a new website to start doing link building with.

Create your documents, such as:

Broken link finding for broken link building strategy:

 

Outreach for broken link building strategy:

 

The more you scale links, the more you should be creating documentation for your link building processes. 

18. Use Phone For Reaching Out To Resource Page Curators

The most default way of connecting to potential linkers is email.

No doubt.

Write a personalized email. Hit send. 

But not every email is read by the recipients. 

Sometimes, they missed reading it. 

That’s a loss link opportunity. 

One way that you'll found to be effective in outreach is:

Using the phone to request links.

This is especially true for resource page curators.

For example:

Links pages from .edu websites.

Typically, webmasters working in colleges and universities receive calls from people searching about the website.

So a potential error about one of their pages is something they care about. 

And they don't ignore it.

So do some A/B tests calling with resource page curators on the phone.

 

Or if you're writing outreach emails, you put something along the lines of:

"If I don't hear back from you, I'll just give you a quick call regarding this."

With this additional simple sentence, you can increase your responses from people who don't want to talk on the phone. 

19. Get Backlinks From Expired Domains 

Here is one reality in online marketing: 

Domains expire.

And when this happens, you can either:

Buy them.

Rebuild them.

Or redirect them to your site. 

Many SEOs get easy backlinks through buying expired domains that are relevant to their site.

But you instead of buying them.