Robbie Richards

Expert Digital Marketing Consultant

19 ACTIONABLE Link Building Strategies for 2019 (with Examples and Scripts)

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Robbie headshot

Note: My premium training program, The SEO Playbook, is now open for enrollment. Learn more about the training and see what current students are saying here.

Link building is one of the most challenging aspects of SEO.

But it also has a HUGE impact on where your site ranks in the SERPs.

(this has been shown time and time again in pretty much every ranking factors study)

Some people, however, still argue that Google’s reliance on backlinks is diminishing, but let’s be real here:

Backlinks aren’t going anywhere any time soon.

After studying 1 million SERP results, this study found the number of domains linking to a page correlated with rankings more than any other factor:

Number of referring domains

BUT:

Don’t take my (or the many, many studies) word for it. Type any keyword into Ahrefs Keyword Explorer and look at the top 10 ranking pages:

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer showing link count of top ranking pages

I guarantee the top ranking pages will have a ton of links (assuming the keywords have significant search volume, of course).

In this post, I’ll show you how to use 19 killer link building strategies to build a boat load of high quality links to your site…FAST 🙂

I've used each of these tactics to build white hat backlinks to client websites, and steadily grow the link profile of this blog:

Growth in backlink profile

Here's a taste of what you'll learn:
  • Actionable tactics to quickly build white hat backlinks
  • How to hack links to "money" product/service pages 
  • How to build channels you can tap for links over and over again
  • How to build links that actually drive targeted referral traffic

And much more. 

Because this post is a 13,000+ word beast, I’ve included a table of contents below for your quick reference below (feel free to jump around):

19 Killer Link Building Strategies

Here are 19 actionable link building strategies you can implement today:

  1. Build high-probability link channels with custom search engines
  2. The 3-step RLR framework
  3. DEEP broken link building (at scale)
  4. Reverse Engineer Mid-Tier Affiliate Link Prospects
  5. Building quality links with industry-specific tools
  6. Convert homepage links to deep "money" page links
  7. Mine Editorial Keyword Anchors and Turn Them Into Contextual Links
  8. Set a Link Velocity Target (and Stay Competitive in the SERPs)
  9. Landing authority links with "alternate content creation"
  10. Reclaim links from stolen images
  11. Tenant SEO (a powerful 1-2 Punch)
  12. The “ranking for links” technique
  13. Reclaim lost link equity in 404 pages
  14. Build links with blog comments (hint: this isn’t your usual spammy blog commenting strategy!)
  15. Quora hacking (and scaling referral traffic streams)
  16. Link reclamation (using Google Alerts)
  17. Mining roundups for quick link wins
  18. Drive Traffic (and Build Relationships) With “Targeted” Blog Commenting
  19. Video transcription

Let's get started.


19 Actionable Strategies to Build Quality Backlinks and Boost Rankings (Fast)


#1. Build High-Probability Link Channels with
Custom Search Engines

Let’s say I wanted to build links to my recently published on-page SEO checklist.

My (hypothetical) list of prospects includes Point Blank SEO (by Jon Cooper) and MatthewBarby.com.

Both of these are well-known SEO blogs, but who is more likely to link to me?

*drumroll*

It’s Matthew Barby.

Why? Because Matthew Barby has linked to me in the past whereas Jon Cooper hasn’t (c’mon Jon…gimme that link :D)

Backlink from Matthew Barby

In general, websites that have linked to you in the past are more likely to do so again.

Why? Because they’re already fans of your content and therefore, are more likely to be interested any new content your produce (perhaps even enough to link to it).

(pretty obvious, right?)

Now, imagine for a second that you had a fully searchable database of all the websites who’ve already linked to you and, therefore, are likely to be interested in your new content.

Wouldn’t that be crazy powerful!?

YES.

And here’s the good news: you can build this database using just two tools: Ahrefs Site Explorer and Google’s CSE.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Find all websites already linking to you (with ‘natural’ editorial links).
  2. Load them into a custom search engine.
  3. Use the search engine to find likely link prospects for future content.

Let me walk you through it from start-to-finish (note: you can read my complete Ahrefs review here).

First, use the “backlinks” tab in Ahrefs Site Explorer to export a list of all websites currently linking to you:

Use Ahrefs Site Explorer to find all sites linking to you

NOTE: I also recommend adding these filter settings before exporting (this will weed out the junk and make sure most of the remaining links “natural” editorial links from blogs):

Ahrefs backlink filters

Export this file as a csv.

Now, before you do anything else, make a copy of this spreadsheet and import the Ahrefs .csv export into the first tab (i.e. the tab appropriately labelled “IMPORT AHREFS EXPORT HERE”), by selecting cell A1 then going to:

File > Import > Upload > Select a file from your computer (note: choose the Ahrefs export csv file)

NOTE: Make sure your import settings are as follows:

Backlink export settings

Click “Import” and you should see all of the data from the csv imported into the tab.

IMPORTANT: Don’t close this spreadsheet; you’ll need it again in a sec.

Next, sign up for Google’s CSE tool and create a new search engine.

Create a Google Custom Search Engine

On this next screen, it’s going to ask you to enter at least one website you want to search + also name your custom search engine.

Go back to the spreadsheet and navigate to the next tab (note: this is labelled “1. First website”); you should see a value in cell A1 (hint: this should be formatted as “domain.com/*”).

Copy/paste this into the “Sites to search” box on your custom search engine; also give your search engine a name.

Set up Custom Search Engine

Click “create”.

You now have a custom search engine that will allow you to search one domain from your backlink profile. But that’s not much use, so we need to add the rest of the domains.

To do this, click “edit search engine” from the left-hand menu and select the search engine you just created.

Under the “sites to search” section, click the “add” button to add more sites.

Add sites to Custom Search Engine

Select the option to “include sites in bulk” then copy the list the big list of domains from the next tab of your spreadsheet into the box (note: this is the tab labelled “2. More websites”):

Bulk adding domains to Custom Search Engine

Click “save”.

That’s it – your custom search engine is now set up and ready to go 🙂

Now, whenever you have a new piece of content to promote (i.e. build links to), you can use your custom search engine to search for prospects who have written about that topic before.

For example, if I wanted to build links to my on-page SEO checklist, I could search enter the phrase “on page seo” into my custom search engine to search for sites that have written about on-page SEO before:

Custom Search Engine results

Tip: This link building tactic becomes more powerful as your link profile grows because you have a larger database of websites to search across.

If you only have a small number of sites linking to you, use semantic keywords to widen the pool of potential link pospects.

For example:

When I perform a keyword search for “seo checklist” there are several results showing for on-page SEO checklist, local SEO checklist, technical SEO checklist, and WordPress SEO checklist:

On page SEO semantic variations

Google is telling us it sees those variations as semantically similar to the main query, “on-page SEO checklist”.

Try entering some of those other keyword variations into your Google Custom Search Engine to see if any new link prospects surface:

CSE 2

There are a lot of different ways you can find semantic and related keywords. Here are a few:

  1. Google autosuggest
  2. Google related searches
  3. LSI Graph
LSI Graph

Make a list of any new related keywords and search across your custom search engine with those terms to uncover additional link prospects.

NOTE: All of these results are solely from the pool of sites entered into your custom search engine (i.e. those already linking to you). This will not search the entire web.

Now you know exactly who to promote your post to.

Prefer video? Watch the video walk-through below:

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#2. Steal Competitor Backlinks with the RLR Framework

I’ll let you in on a secret…

You’re not the only person in your niche actively trying to build backlinks.

In fact, I’d be willing to bet that most of your competitors are actively investing in link building, too. They may even have built a ton of links already.

And, believe it or not, this is actually a good thing.

Why? Because they’ve done all the hard work for you; all you need to do is to replicate their link profiles.

I use the RLR technique for this (learn why it’s called this and get access to the competitor link tracking show below, here).

Competitor link tracking template

Here’s the general process:

  1. Research the competition (i.e. find similar websites and/or pages in your niche with a bunch of links)
  2. Figure out how competitors are building links
  3. Replicate/steal their tactics

Simple, right!?

Let’s walk through the basics.

First, go to Google, enter a term you’re trying to rank for (e.g. “link building strategies”), then copy the URL of the no.1 ranking page:

Copy URL of top ranking article

Paste this into Ahrefs Site Explorer and go to the “backlinks” report (on the left-hand menu):

Ahrefs backlinks report

It’s now a case of sifting through these backlinks and trying to figure out how your competitor is attracting these links.

Here are a couple of common link acquisition strategies to look out for:

Guest posts — these can be found quite easily by checking out the page itself as it’ll probably state that it’s a guest post. Most guest posts will also have links with branded anchor text (e.g. “Robbie Richards”):

Competitor guest post placements

Simply hit Details >> Referring Domains to verify the source of the links:

Source of branded anchor links in Ahrefs

Make a note of the strategic guest post placements in this competitor link tracking template: 

Competitor-backlink-analysis-content-upgrade

Recurring backlink sources — if you see the same domain popping up time and time again, it’s likely that your competitor has built a relationship with that website. It’s also likely they’re happy to link to good content, so it may be worth forging a relationship and reaching out when you publish a quality content asset:

Finding recurring backlink sources in Ahrefs

NOTE: I dedicated an entire post to this link building strategy, where I go into much more detail regarding a number of tactics for finding and stealing competitor backlinks. I recommend giving it a read!

In essence, once you’ve identified the methods your competitors are using to acquire backlinks, it’s then a case of replicating their tactics.

For example, let’s assume your competitor was acquiring a lot of links from guest posts.

You could simply round up a list of prospects (using Ahrefs) then ask if they’d be interested in a guest post from you, too.

Here’s a sample outreach email:

Hey [NAME],

It’s Robbie here from RobbieRichards.com.

I was just reading a couple of posts on your website and noticed [COMPETITOR NAME] wrote a guest post for you a while back.

I loved his tip about [INSERT PERSONALISE CONTENT HERE TO PROVE YOU READ THE POST].

Are you still accepting guest posts?

If so, I’d love to write something for you, too. I have a ton of ideas, so just let me know and I’ll send them over.

Thanks,
Robbie

It’s as simple as that! 🙂

I used this exact strategy to find that one of my competitors was guest posting on Digital Marketer. So, I wrote one for them too:

Guest post conversions

The results:

866 referral visits and 68 new subscribers (7.85% conversion rate). 

I've since scaled this strategy, driving thousands of new visitors to the site. But, more on this later...

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#3. Build Hundreds of Links with DEEP Broken Link Building (at Scale)

Broken link building is nothing new.

It’s been around for years. And it’s a tried and tested link building strategy.

Here’s the basic process:

  1. Find broken links
  2. Replicate the content (that used to exist at that link) on your website
  3. Reach out to the person/website linking to the broken resource and suggest that they change the broken link to the working link (i.e. to the replicated content on your website)

Example:

CitationLabs has a huge list of link building resources here.

But, resource #19 on the list no longer exists—it’s a broken link.

Finding broken link opportunities

Note: You can use LinkMiner (free Chrome extension) to instantly find and highlight all broken links on any webpage. This is how I found this broken link.

If you plug the broken link into the Wayback Machine, you can see this used to be a resource about broken link building…

Wayback Machine


(yep, totally meta!)

So, how could you capitalize on this?

Simple...create a similar piece of content about broken link building, publish it on your website, then reach out to the folks at Citation Labs with an email like this:

“Hey Garrett,

It’s Robbie Richards here. How are things?

I’m reaching out because I just spotted a dead link on your list of 53 link building resources. It’s #19 on the list—basically, it just takes me to a 404 page 🙁

Just thought I’d give you a quick heads-up as you may want to fix it?

PS. If you’re not sure what to replace the link with, I have a huge list of link building strategies (which covers most of the stuff the broken resource used to cover, and more) here: https://www.robbierichards.com/seo/13-killer-link-building-strategies/

Cheers,
Robbie”


BOOM...you just landed a link (probably).

Now, I know what you’re thinking:

“Robbie, this seems like a CRAZY amount of work for just one measly link...”

I hear you.

So, here’s a simple trick you can use to (potentially) turn a single broken link into hundreds of link building opportunities:

Go to Ahrefs Site Explorer and paste in the broken link:

Ahrefs Site Explorer


Then, look at the number of backlinks and referring domains pointing to the page:

Number of Referring Domains in Ahrefs


JACKPOT!

Because this broken link has 9 referring domains, you can also contact those websites and suggest that they replace the broken link with a link to your website.

Note: Some broken links will have 100’s, sometimes 1000’s, of referring domains.

While this process does work, it is pretty damn slow and inefficient.

So here’s a scalable process:

  1. Gather a BIG list of resource/links pages in your industry (using Google advanced search operators)
  2. Find all broken links on those pages in bulk (using Screaming Frog)
  3. Find the broken links with the most inbound links (using Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool)
  4. Recreate the content (or create something similar) on your website
  5. Reach out to all the sites linking to the broken link

Example:

Let’s say you were trying to build links to my website, which is about SEO (obviously).

You would start by gathering a BIG list of resources/links pages in the SEO industry.

This can be done using Google search operators, such as:

  • SEO intitle:”resources”
  • SEO inurl:”resources”
  • SEO intitle:”links” inurl:”links”

Here’s an example of the types of results you should see:


You can then scrape these results using LinkClump or a similar extension.

Just remember to change the settings for LinkClump so that it copies the links to your clipboard, instead of opening all the links in new tabs (which can be annoying!)

This can be changed in the extension settings, like so:

Setting up Link Clump


I also recommend selecting “URLs only” under the advanced settings, too. Otherwise, it will copy both the URLs and titles.

Linkclump URL settings


Now, using LinkClump is as simple as dragging with your left mouse button + Z (or whatever shortcut you chose in the settings) over the links you want to copy.

Using Link Clump


This will get you a nice neat list of pages.

You can then simply paste them into a spreadsheet.

Pasting Link Clump results into spreadsheet


Note: I also recommend Citation Labs Link Prospector. It isn’t free (it costs around $5 for a scrape) but it is a great tool that makes scraping thousands of results from Google super easy.

Why are we looking for “resource” pages?

Because these types of pages usually link out to tons of external resources.

And, unless people make an effort to keep them up to date, they’re usually full of broken links about a particular topic!

Example of finding broken links


Next, you want to run all of the web pages (extracted from Google) through Screaming Frog, to find any external broken links on the pages.

Just remember to tick the “Check external links” box under Spider Configuration:

Screaming Frog setup


And set the crawl limit to 1:

Setting crawl depth


And tick the “Always follow Redirects” box, too!

Setting Screaming Frog crawl depth


Then, you can copy/paste your entire list of scraped URLs into Screaming Frog and it’ll work its magic…

Running screaming frog


Let it run until complete.

Next, go to Bulk Export > Response Codes > Client Error (4xx) Inlinks:

Finding 404 errors


This will export a CSV will all the broken links.

Export broken links


But, you still have no idea how many inbound links are pointing to these pages.

This is where Ahrefs comes in.

Copy/paste the broken links from your CSV file (200 at a time) into Ahrefs’ Batch Analysis tool. Sort by number of referring domains.

Number of referring domains in Batch Analysis tool


Now, it’s simply a case of looking through the list and finding a page that is relevant to your website (i.e. covers a similar topic).

Hint: Wayback Machine is your friend, here.

Once you’ve found a broken page that looks promising, recreate the content on your website.

IMPORTANT: For this technique to succeed, you NEED to be asking people to replace the link with a similar link. If you ask them to replace the link with a completely different link, it ain’t going to work!

When you have the content, export the list of backlinks pointing at the dead page from Ahrefs:

Export backlinks from Ahrefs


Work your way through the list, find the contact information for each website (here’s a great video on how to do this), and reach out to each site to suggest your broken link replacement.


Very simple, but very effective!

Bonus Tip #1:


You can also sometimes find broken links with a TON of inbound links using Ahrefs.

Just enter a competitors’ website (ideally quite a well-known/big website) into Ahrefs Site Explorer, then go to the “best by links” report and filter for 404s:

Ahrefs broken link report


Bonus Tip #2:

You can also use the Ahrefs Content Explorer to find broken backlink opportunities.


1. Enter your topic – e.g. “content marketing” – and select “In title” from the dropdown:


2. Filter for “Only broken” and at least 10 referring domains:

Filtering broken link targets in Ahrefs Content Explorer


3. Toggle the switch to “one page per domain” and then check results:


In this example, the results show sites that wrote about content marketing but now have broken pages with dozens of links pointing to them. 


This is a quick non-technical way to find loads of quality link prospects. And then reach out and pitch your content as a replacement. 

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#4: Reverse Engineer Mid-Tier Affiliate Link Prospects


Building links to affiliate content (similar to product pages) can be much harder than typical informational blog-type content. 

Why? Because sites are hesitate to link to promotional assets. (They’re actually helping you generate revenue.) Plus not all affiliate content is high quality.

One way to quickly identify prospects is to find low-mid tier sites that have a proven track record of linking to other affiliate type content in the past.

You can use typical promotional modifiers like “best X for Y”, “top 10 xxx”, “product X review”, and “X vs Y comparison” in the Keyword Explorer Tool.

Look at the pages with the highest number of referring domains and then check all the sites linking to the affiliate content. Start with low-mid tier sites (DR 15-30) because they’re going to be much easier to get in contact with, and more likely to link back to you. 

Example 1:

  1. Enter your search term in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer - e.g. “best keyword research tools”:
Entering keywords into the Ahrefs Keyword Tool


2. Check the SERP listing to see who has a high number of referring domains - e.g. Ahrefs has 169 referring domains and 16k backlinks:

Check for a high number of referring domains in Ahrefs


3. Click on the links to take you to Site Explorer. Add some filters and sort the list by ascending DR to find low-mid tier sites:

Adding filters in the Ahrefs Backlinks report

4. Scroll through the results to find a suitable site – e.g. “Marketing Nerd” has a DR 27:

Low-mid tier DR


Example 2:

Faveable has tons of linked affiliate content.

1. In Site Explorer, the “Best Pages by links” report shows their top article has 93 referring domains:

High number of referring domains pointing to affiliate content


2. Click on the referring domains, add some filters, and sort the list by ascending DR to find low-mid tier sites:

Sorting results in the Backlinks report


3. Scroll through the results to find a suitable DR 15-30 site – e.g. Chris Ryan Fitness has a DR 28:

Example of a mid-tier site in Ahrefs

Editor's Note:

Some sites may want a small fee for the link. It’s up to you if you pay it. But make sure they do NOT openly advertise the sale of links on their site as this is a big red flag for a manual action. These sites are on Google's radar in a lot of cases.

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#5: Create Free Industry-Related Tools to Attract LOADS of Quality Backlinks (in 3 Different Ways)


Most people stick to infographics, “ultimate guides”, and other similar kinds of content when trying to build backlinks.

BUT:

Did you know that free tools are just as effective, if not more effective, at attracting links?

And I’m not talking about anything particularly costly or magnificent here…

It could be something as simple as a visualisation of popular keyboard shortcuts:

Adobe Keyboard Shortcut Visualizer


Or a simple calorie calculator:

Calorie calculator example


Don’t believe me? Try throwing that calorie calculator into Ahrefs.

Links to calorie calculator


That’s 5K+ backlinks from 1,270 referring domains!

But, the question is, how do you actually build backlinks to free tools like these?

Here are 3 methods:

  1. Target resource/links pages (like this one)
  2. Target how-to guides (i.e. guides for which your tool provides a shortcut—more on this later!)
  3. Run “shotgun skyscraper” outreach for your tool

Let’s take a look at these one-by-one.

Resource pages

Resource/links pages are web pages that list—and link-out to—resources and tools in your niche. 

Koozai SEO resource list

They’re created with the sole purpose of providing links to useful resources around the web.

This makes them a great link target, as they’re usually responsive to pitches.

Here’s my process for doing this at scale:

  1. Use google search operators to find TONS of resource pages (e.g. “SEO intitle:resources”, “SEO inurl:”resources”, etc.)
  2. Scrape the results (using Linkclump)
  3. Find contact information and pitch your content

Example:

Let’s say you were trying to build links to the aforementioned calorie calculator.

It’s a fantastic guide and is well-deserving of a place on any fitness-related resources page.

To start, you would find a bunch of resource/links pages using Google search operators such as:

  • Fitness intitle:”resources” inurl:”resources”
  • Paleo intitle:”resources”
  • Health intitle:”useful links” inurl:”links”

Note: Basically, you just need to add a keyword related to your tool (e.g. health, fitness, paleo, etc.) to the search operators. You can find hundreds more search operators here.

Here’s what the results should look like: 

Results from Google search operators


You can then scrape these using LinkClump.

It’s then simply a case of sifting through the pages, plucking out the ones that you feel should add a link to your resource, then contacting the blogger/webmaster with an email like this:


“Hey [NAME],

It’s Robbie Richards here. How are things?

I’m reaching out because I recently created a free calorie calculator (here’s a link: http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html) and I was hoping you might add it to your list of paleo-related resources?

I think it would be super-useful for your visitors, as it’s a useful resource for anyone interested in aligning their caloric intake with personal fitness/diet goals 🙂

Let me know what you think!

Cheers,
Robbie”
​

How-to guides

Most tools make solving a problem easier.

For example, take a calorie calculator tool—this makes it super-easy to figure out how many calories you need to consume each day:


Without such a tool, you could have to do some pretty complex math yourself!

But...there are still plenty of posts talking about “how to count calories” the hard way.

Calorie counting article


These are a prime link targets.

Why? Because your tool is genuinely useful for the people reading these posts, as it saves them time and solves their problem.

So, here’s what to do:

  1. Find “how-to” articles related to the issue your tool solves (e.g. if you have a calorie counter tool, find articles about “how to count calories” or “how to lose weight”)
  2. See if they’re linking out to any similar tools
  3. If not, reach out and pitch your tool for inclusion

Ahrefs Content Explorer offers a great way of finding link prospects.

Just enter a “how-to” query in the search bar and select “in title” as the location:

Ahrefs Content Explorer


As you can see, there are over 12,000 articles with the phrase “how to lose weight” in the title!

That’s a LOT of link prospects!

I recommended filtering these down to only the best prospects. I usually do this by adding an organic traffic filter so only pages with 500+ organic visits/month are shown.

Filtering Content Explorer results


You can also filter by domain rating. For example, I like to set the filter for sites between 25-45 as this will return a lot mid tier blogs that might be a little more receptive to cold outreach efforts:

Filtering by domain rating


It’s then simply a case of sifting through the results and looking for solid link prospects.

This will usually be pages that talk about calorie counting (or whatever your tool is about) but don’t link to a tool that solves the problem.

If you find a page like this, simply reach out to them and saying something like:


“Hey [NAME],

It’s Robbie Richards here. How are things?

I’m reaching out because I just read your post about how to lose weight and, well, that is definitely one of the most in-depth guides I’ve ever come across. You really nailed the process!

Also, I noticed you talked about the importance of counting calories (which, I agree, is important). But, as you know, this can be quite difficult to do, as it involves some pretty complex math.

That’s why I wanted to quickly reach out and let you know about a free calorie counter tool that I’ve just created. Basically, you enter your details - height, weight, gender, fitness goals - and it spits out EXACTLY how many calories you should consume each day.

I would love to get your feedback on it and, if you think it’s useful, perhaps you could add it to your guide? I think it would be super-useful for anyone reading that post!

Cheers,
Robbie”
​

Outreach

No matter how great your free tool happens to be, it’s likely that similar tools already exist.

For example, a simple Google search for “calorie calculator tool” returns over 600K results!


That’s a LOT of calorie calculators!

But, luckily, competition is a good thing when it comes to link building, especially if your free tool knocks the competition out of the water.

Why? Because this makes it a prime candidate for shotgun skyscraper outreach.

Here’s how this works:

  1. Find tools that are similar to yours, yet not quite as good
  2. Reach out to anyone linking to those tools and explain WHY they should link to your tool instead (i.e. because it’s better!)

As mentioned above, I’ve used this strategy to quickly build hundreds of quality links to my client’s content:

Graph showing growth in referring domains


Here’s the basic process for doing this at scale:

  1. Use google to find similar tools (this is as simple as searching for “calorie calculator” or whatever you’re looking for)
  2. Scrape the results (again, use LinkClump)
  3. Extract the backlinks for inferior, yet highly linked-to tools (that are similar to yours)
  4. Reach out to those people with a “skyscraper” outreach email

Example:

Let’s go back to the 600K+ results for “calorie calculator tool”.

Most of these are, as you would expect, calorie calculators.

So, let’s use Linkclump to gather these into a nice neat list.

Using Linkclump to find link targets


Next, paste this entire list into Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool, then sort by number of referring domains.

This will reveal similar tools that also have a TON of backlinks.

Visit each of the links individually and note down links that are:

  1. Similar tools to yours
  2. Not quite as good as yours (note: you should also make a note of the reason—e.g. poor design).

For example, here’s a calorie calculator that is not only super UGLY, but also looks pretty confusing to use:

Bad calorie counter example


It also has 338 referring domains!


This is a GREAT shotgun skyscraper prospect!

When you have a list of similar tools that fit the bill (i.e. are not quite as good as your tool AND have a ton of backlinks), export the backlinks for all the links using Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Ahrefs referring domains

Reach out to these people with an email like this:


“Hey [NAME],

It’s Robbie Richards here. How are things?

I’m reaching out because I just read your post about [INSERT LINKING POST TOPIC] and noticed you were linking out to this calorie calculator: [INSERT INFERIOR TOOL LINK]

I just tried to use that tool and, honestly, it was pretty confusing to use. Also, it was very ugly and [INSERT REASON WHY IT’S AN INFERIOR TOOL HERE]

I just thought I’d let you know that this calorie calculator is much better: [INSERT LINK TO YOUR TOOL]... it looks a lot nicer and is generally easier to use.

Might be worth swapping the link out for that tool?

Cheers,
Robbie”
​

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#6. Boost Your Blog Posts (and “Money” Pages) By Converting Homepage Links into Deep Content Links

Let’s do a quick experiment.

Go to Ahrefs Site Explorer, paste in your root domain (e.g. robbierichards.com), then click the “best by links” filter from the left-hand menu.

Which page on your site appears at the top of the list?

Let me guess…

*drumroll*

The homepage.

Am I right?

If not, then apologies…my experiment backfired.

However, most websites receive the bulk of their links to their homepage. As you can see below, this is true for my blog:

Table showing majority of links pointing to the home page

But, for most websites, the homepage isn’t really the page you’ll want to attract visitors to.

It’s much more likely that you want people visit your blog posts, or perhaps your product pages; the homepage is usually just a gateway page for the real meat of the website.

(there are exceptions to this rule, of course)

If this is the case, this “link juice” is wasted pointing at your homepage. I mean, it would be much better if the links went directly to the pages you want to rank, right!?

100%.

Well, here’s the good news: it usually isn’t that difficult to get the link changed to a more appropriate page.

How? Just ask.

But first, you need to find out who is actually linking to your homepage.

To do this, go to Ahrefs Site Explorer and paste in your homepage (note: make sure to select “URL” from the drop-down):

Entering home page URL into Site Explorer

Go to the “backlinks” tab and you’ll see a list of all backlinks pointing to your homepage:

List of over 260 backlinks pointing to the home page

It’s only worth making the effort to convert the links to deep pages if the links are dofollow, so it’s worth adding a “dofollow” filter, too.

NOTE: I did this and it left me with 200 links.

It’s now a case of looking through the links and identifying those that make sense to change to deep links.

In general, you’re looking for links that are less than optimum (i.e. they’re linking to your homepage when it would make much more contextual sense to link to an actual blog post or product page).

For example, here’s a post about blog promotion that links to my homepage:

Example of article link pointing to the home page

However, right below this link, there’s a screenshot of my blog post about increasing website traffic.

I appreciate the link but personally, I think it would make much more sense to link directly to this post rather than my homepage, as this is clearly what the post is talking about.

Let’s ask if they’d be willing to change it, shall we!?

Here’s an example outreach message:

Hey [NAME],

It’s Robbie here from RobbieRichards.com.

I was just looking through my backlinks and noticed you mentioned me in this post:
http://vebblabbs.com/blog/content-marketing/promote-your-blog-post-strategies/

However, I noticed that although you mention a particular blog post of mine (the one about how increased website traffic by 272%), you actually linked to my homepage rather than the blog post itself.

Any chance it would be possible 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,
Robbie

Not everyone will change the link but hey, even if a few people do change it, it may be enough to give that post/page a significant rankings boost!

For anyone who has ever tried to scale link building efforts to a deep product page of any kind, it’s easy to see the potential upside here.

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#7. Mine "Unclaimed" Editorial Anchors and Turn Them Into Contextual Link Placements

Not all sites link to supporting resources in their content. Which means you have an opportunity to suggest your resource!

For example, if I want to reach out to sites that talk specifically about “keyword research tools” in their posts, but don’t link to a supporting resource, then I can mine hundreds of these sites fast and pitch my Keyword Research Tools post. 

Ahrefs Content Explorer has a useful search feature to find these types of opportunities. 

Here’s how:

1. Enter your search term – e.g. “keyword research tools” – and set the drop down filter to “In content”:

Using Ahrefs Content Explorer to find link opportunities


2. Next, set more filters – e.g. English Language, Only Live posts, Organic traffic from 10, and DR from 15-50:


3. Toggle the switch to “one page per domain” and then check results:

Link prospects in the Ahrefs Content Explorer


You’ll see these results are all topically relevant, mid-tier sites that get some traffic to their articles.

Editor's Note:

If your campaign is geared purely to getting authority links, then you’d set the DR filters higher and possibly remove the traffic filter.


Conversely, maybe you’re only interested in links that will drive referral traffic, then you’d set the organic traffic filters higher, and maybe reduce the maximum Domain Rating threshold.

#8. Establish a Link Velocity Target (and Stay  Competitive in the SERPs)

Your competitors are actively building new links to their most valuable content.

Therefore, you need to understand two things:

  1. The number of links needed to get first page rankings at a point in time
  2. The rate at which you need to acquire new links in order to stay on the first page

You can quickly get an answer to the first part of the equation by looking at the Ahrefs (affiliate) SERP Overview report:

Ahrefs SERP overview report

Here’s how to find a monthly Link Velocity target to remain competitive in the SERPs:

Enter your target keyword into the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer:

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer report

Scroll down to the SERP overview report again:

Link metrics in the SERP Overview report

Note: Beardbrand has the highest number of referring domains (96) pointing to it. It also has the highest UR in the top 10 results, which is driving the #1 ranking position.

But:

This is where they are now. We want to understand how quickly they are building new links to create more page-level authority and remain in the #1 position.

Next - click the green drop down arrow next to the competing page URL and select the Overview link:

Selecting the New Links report

This will generate an overview report for that specific URL. Click on the “New” link the Referring Domains header:

This report will show the number of links won and lost over different date ranges:

New links report in Ahrefs

Scroll to the bottom of the report to see the number of new links acquired over the last 7 days:

Report showing new links acquired in last 7 days

Two new links - only one looking topically relevant. But, this doesn’t tell us much.

Next - filter the report to the last 30 days:

30 day new link report

We can see 6 new referring domains in the past 30 days. Apart from the low DR link from beardshapeup, the quality and relevancy of the links look pretty low.

Important: Pay closer attention to the QUALITY and RELEVANCE of the referring domains. You can have 100 poor quality links pointing to your page and it won’t move the needle. But, if you have 5-10 med-high DR links from industry-specific sites, it’ll have a big impact.

For example:

Relevant backlink examples

Finally - filter the report to the last 60 days to gauge the consistency of link acquisition:

New links acquired over the last 60 days

Looking at the data broken out over the last 60 days, it looks as if beardbrand is only getting a couple new links a week to its beard oil product category page. And, only a small percentage of these are even relevant.

If I was setting up a link building campaign for a beard oil category page, I’d be trying to build 15-20 quality links to the page in the first 60 days, and then acquire new links at a rate of 2-3/month to remain competitive. 

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#9. Build Links from MASSIVELY Authoritative Resources by Catering to Multiple Learning Methods


People learn in different ways.

There are visual learners…

Auditory learners…

And so forth!

BUT:

Nearly all of the content on the web is the same…it’s written blog posts that are made-up of mostly text.

This means if you’re an auditory or visual learner, well, you’re flat out of luck!

There’s no video...

No audio version...

No instructographics…

Nope. It’s just written blog posts, and that’s it!

So, how can you get links from these high authority sites to “ultimate guides”?

Simple...convert that content into a different format (aimed at different types of learners) and give it away for free.

Here’s the process:

  1. Identify informational “how-to” articles and “ultimate guides” in your industry with a ton of links
  2. Create a video or audio version of that post (or at least part of it)
  3. Contact the website owner and give them the content for free

Example:

Let’s say you had an ecommerce website selling rice cookers.

And you wanted to build links to the rice cooker page.

(pretty difficult task, right?...it’s always SUPER HARD to build links to ecommerce pages!)

Here’s how you could do it:

Take a look at the SERPs for the term “how to cook rice”:

Example of ultimate guide


Straight away, you can see that the SERPs are showing video content—this shows that the people searching for this term really want to see a video.

And, in fact, a lot of the websites in the top 10 have realised this…

That’s why they have a video showing how to cook rice on their page.

Video example

But, some pages don’t have a video…

This means they’re not catering to different learning styles. And in this example, they’re not providing the content in the format that people really want to see!

Here’s how to take advantage of this:

  1. Identify the pages without videos
  2. Create a video showing how to cook rice (hint: bonus points if it’s uniquely created for them and features their branding etc.)
  3. Reach out and offer the video to the websites for free (to include in their content)

Most of them will probably give you a link without you even having to ask.

But, how do you do this at scale?

First, identify some informational terms (e.g. “how to X, ultimate guide to X, beginners guide to X, etc) related to the content/website you’re trying to build links to.

So, if it was the rice cooker page, it would be terms like:

  • “How to cook rice”
  • “Curry recipe”
  • “How to cook risotto”

Next, search Google for these terms and scrape the top 10-100 results (with Linkclump).

This will give you a nice neat list of results.

You can then paste into Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool and sort them by referring domains to find the most authoritative pages.

Referring domains in Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool


Next, you’ll want to check each of the pages manually to see if they’re catering to different learning methods—if they aren’t, note them down.

For example, this page IS catering to different learning methods, as it has an embedded video:


BUT, this page IS NOT catering to different learning methods, as there is no video or audio aspect to the post.

This is a GREAT prospect.

Note: There are plenty of other posts like this, too.

Keep running through the results from the batch analysis tool and continue to note down any pages that fit the bill.

Finally, create a video/audio version of each post (or simply create ONE video that would feel perfectly at home embedded in all of the posts) and send it over to the blogger/webmaster.

Here’s a sample outreach email:

“Hey [NAME],

It’s Robbie Richards here. How are things?

I’m reaching out as I was reading your “how to” guide for cooking rice (great guide, btw), but noticed that you didn’t include a video of the process 🙁

Like many people, I’m a visual learner so I have to admit, I did struggle to follow your guide. I did crack it eventually, though! 🙂

So, I decided to create a video version of your post. Here’s a link: [INSERT LINK TO VIDEO]

I’m 100% happy for you to add it to your post (if you would like?). I think it would make a really nice addition and help out folks like myself who are visual learners.

PS. Not asking for anything in return; just wanted to help 🙂

Cheers,
Robbie”


Usually, there’s no need to mention links at all. If they do choose to embed your video in their post, 90% of them will add a link without the need to ask.

Note: I did this recently for a client (in the blogging space) and our conversion rate was roughly 5%.

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#10. Reclaim Links from Stolen Images

Do you have a lot of high-quality imagery on your website?

I’m talking infographics, photography (that you own the copyright to), diagrams, screenshots, etc.

“Yes, Robbie…I do!”

In that case, I have bad news: you’re probably a target for image theft.

But here’s the good news: you can leverage image theft to quickly build quality links 🙂

Here’s how to do it (in 3 simple steps!):

  1. Roundup any high-quality images on your website (this will generally be infographics, photographs, diagrams, etc)
  2. Find websites using these images without permission
  3. Make sure these websites are giving you credit for those images (if not, reach out and reclaim the link)

Let’s go through this step-by-step.

Step #1 - Find high-quality images on your website

It’s important to note that you’re not really looking for any ol’ images here; you’re mainly looking for:

  • Infographics
  • Photographs
  • Illustrations
  • Diagrams

IMPORTANT: You MUST own the copyright to these images; this won’t work if you’re using an infographic/photograph/diagram that isn’t yours.

Let’s assume we were doing this on behalf of Brian Dean (i.e. Backlinko).

I know Brian’s content pretty well, so I know he has a really cool infographic about on-page SEO:

Brian Dean on page seo infographic

Most of the time, bloggers will link to the original source of the infographic when they embed it on their own website. But because some bloggers won’t remember to do this, there are probably a fair few links we can reclaim.

I’m going to add this link to a Google Sheet (make a copy here) along with any other images/graphics on Brian’s website that I feel are highly-stealable (note: this is just to keep track of the images for the next stage of the process).

Link tracking spreadsheet


Step #2 - Find websites using these images (without permission)

Next, we need to find websites that are embedding these images without giving us credit (i.e. without linking.

There are two tools you can use to do this:

They both work pretty much the same, but let’s use Google images for this example.

Go to Google images, click “search by image” and paste in a URL from your spreadsheet:

Google Image Search

Hit “search by image” to get a list of all the sites that have used your image:

List of all the websites using an image

Make a note of these pages (use the second tab of the spreadsheet):


Step #3 - Make sure these websites are giving you credit for those images

Finally, you need to sift through these links and check they’re giving you credit for using your image(s).

This can be done by searching for your domain within the source code of each page.

In this example, you can see that the site is, in fact, linking back to Brian:

Source code showing link attribution

All good!

But if you find a website that isn’t giving you credit, reach out to them and ask them to add a link.

Here’s an email template:

Hey [NAME],

It’s Robbie here from RobbieRichards.com.

I’m reaching out because I noticed you used one of my images in this post: [INSERT POST URL].

Unfortunately, however, you didn’t give me credit for the image.

I’d really appreciate it if you were able to add a source link below the image; could you do this?

Thanks,
Robbie

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#11. Strategic Guest Blogging (and Tenant SEO)

Guest blogging has been met with heavy skepticism recently.

However, when done properly, guest blogging can:

  • Generate backlinks from high authority sites in your industry
  • Build exposure and credibility for your brand
  • Deliver targeted traffic to your site
  • Create a powerful relationship-building platform
  • Provide a vehicle to rank for insanely competitive keywords (tenant SEO)

I’ve written several guest posts for high authority sites, including this one on Digital Marketer.

It sent 866 people to my site, and added 68 people to my email list:

Guest post conversions

And, this guest post for Sumo.

It sent 631 people to my site and added 87 subscribers to my email list:

Sumo conversion rate

That’s an insane 13.79% conversion rate!

Guest posting also forms the foundation of most tenant SEO strategies.

What am I talking about?

Basically – you use guest posts on high authority websites to rank for competitive keywords you couldn’t realistically target on your own site. 

This can be an extremely powerful SEO strategy for new websites, or companies trying to compete in insanely competitive industries.

Here are a couple examples from folks in the SEO space:

Steve Webb wrote this SEO audit article on Moz to rank for the highly competitive search term “SEO audit”.

This article has been king of SERP mountain for over 4 years!

SEO audit SERP

Steve used the Moz domain authority to rank for a keyword he would have otherwise had no chance ranking for on his own site, Web Gnomes.

I bet this guest post is a healthy meal ticket for Steve – drives a boat load of qualified leads to his agency.

Matt Barby used this strategy to get a client in the app development software niche ranking for a massive keyword “app makers” (22,000 monthly searches) by targeting it on the Business News Daily website.

The results were staggering: 74,000 referral visits and close to 4,300 user registrations!

Tenant SEO strategy

So, we know that guest blogging can be a powerful vehicle to build quality links and drive targeted referral traffic…

But, where do you start?

Basically, we need to find websites that (a) we want to write for, and (b) accept guest posts.

Here are 2 ways we can do this:

  1. Use Google search operators (this is more powerful than you might think!)
  2. Reverse engineer prolific guest bloggers (in your industry)

IMPORTANT: Any sites you target should meet the following criteria:

  • High domain authority
  • Related to your niche
  • Post high quality content
  • Receives lots of traffic (use Alexa)
  • Has an engaged audience
  • Provides contextual links
  • Active social presence

OK, let’s go over each of these tactics one by one.

How to find guest post opportunities using Google Search Operators

Head over to Google and start entering the following search queries (one by one):

  • Keyword “guest post”
  • Keyword intitle:“write for us”
  • Keyword inurl:”write for us”
  • Keyword “submit a guest post”
  • Keyword “submit” AROUND(4) “guest post”
  • Keyword “guest post by”
  • Keyword “accepting guest posts”
  • Keyword “guest post guidelines”
  • Keyword “submit blog post”
  • Keyword “contribute to our site”
  • Keyword “submit article”
  • Keyword “guest author”
  • Keyword inurl:“guest post”
  • Inpostauthor: “guest + post” Keyword
  • Inpostauthor: “guest + blog” Keyword

You can also use the wildcard operator (*) to expand your results. The previous search strings included quotation marks which returned phrase matches (all keywords had to appear in exactly that order):

Guest post search operator

The wildcard operator will help returned slightly different search results, without sacrificing relevancy. For example, if your write “submit * guest post”, search results will include:

  • “submit a guest post”
  • “submit your guest post”
  • “submit a new guest post”
Reverse engineering guest post placements

We can take this a step further using the tild (~) sign. This will help us return guest blog opportunities for sites using synonyms of of our target keywords.

For example, “~SEO” might return the following synonyms, “SEM”, “online marketing”, “link building”:

Search operator

Make a note of any websites that look good in a Google Sheet (here’s a template):

Track guest post opportunities

Bonus Tip #1:

Using the Ahrefs chrome extension you can quickly export up to 100 SERP results:


  1. Adjust your Google Chrome browser settings to get 100 results per page. 
  2. Install the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar chrome extension.
  3. Enter your search query – e.g. Kristi Hines “guest post by” – and then export the SERP results as a CSV file:
Export SERP results with the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar


Now you can use a VA to check the spreadsheet and vet the sites to:

  • Ensure they are topically relevant 
  • Publish regular related content
  • Maintain high-quality standards – i.e. they do NOT openly advertise the sale of links on the site as this is a big red flag to Google. 


BONUS TIP 2:

Not all sites advertise that they accept guest posts, so it’s difficult to find them with the tactic above.


But, there could be loads of quality untapped opportunities (sites that are not getting bombarded with pitches every day) that’ll be more responsive to your pitch and suggested topic.


So here’s another technique for finding loads of guest post targets using Ahrefs Content Explorer:


1. Enter a target topic – e.g. “sales techniques” – and select “In title” from the dropdown:


2. Filter the results: 

    a. First published in the last 12 months (for sites currently writing on the topic)
    b. Select language (e.g. English)
    c. Set DR 15-50 (as mid-tier sites are much more likely to link out and easier to contact):


3. Toggle the switch to “one page per domain” and then check results:

Toggling on one page per domain in the Content Explorer results


Repeat the process for 10-20 target topics related to your blog, or product/service, then export the results and reach out for guest posting opportunities.


Reverse engineer prolific guest bloggers

If you read popular blogs in your industry you will have a good idea who the prolific guest bloggers are.

For online marketing, these names include Brian Dean, Neil Patel, Kristi Hines, Marcus Sheridan, to name a few.

Head over to Google and enter NAME “guest post by”. This will show you all the sites where these influencers have written guest posts:

Finding guest post placements for industry influencers with search operators

Add these sites to your list of guest blog targets.

Another way to uncover where influencers are guest posting is by using this Google search operator:

link:COMPETITORWEBSITE.com “guest post by COMPETITOR NAME” -COMPETITORWEBSITE.com

This will show you pages that link to your competitors website + also contain the phrase “guest post” – these pages are usually places your competitor has submitted a guest contribution.

Using search operators to find Brian Dean;s guest posts

You can also search this term in Ahrefs Content Explorer to supercharge this tactic:

author:”COMPETITOR NAME” -COMPETITORWEBSITE.com

Example:

Using Ahrefs Content Explorer to find guest post opportunities

Add any worthwhile sites (like the one below) to your spreadsheet:

Ahrefs content explorer

Note: Pay attention to the keywords and topics your competitors are targeting in their guest posts. Are they using tenant SEO as part of their broader search strategy?

It’s time to pitch your targets

Now that you have an extensive list of guest post targets, it’s time to reach out and pitch to them.

Before you email the site, try to build a relationship with the guest post target. There are a number of ways to do this –

  • Engage them on Twitter
  • Connect on LinkedIn
  • Actively participate in forums and comment on their post
  • Email them and let them know how much you love a particular post they have written

After you have engaged the prospect it’s time to reach out and request a guest post opportunity.

Here’s a template:

Subject: You should blog about [insert your guest post topic]

Hey [NAME].

First, I just want to say I’m a big fan of [INSERT BLOG NAME].

Anyways, I’m writing to you today because I’d love the opportunity to contribute a guest post to [insert blog name].

I’ve been reading through some of the content on the blog and have put together a short list of topics that I think would provide a ton of value to your readers –

TOPIC #1

TOPIC #2

I have a personal SEM blog that will give you an idea of the style and quality of my writing. You can view some of my recent posts here [insert blog URL].

Let me know if you’re interested.

Keep up the great work!

Cheers,

Robbie

Instead of simply listing guest post ideas, you can take it a step further and include a link to the complete article you’ve written. Some bloggers prefer this because they don’t have the time to communicate back and forth with everyone pitching to them.

The definitive guide to guest blogging written by Brian Dean over Backlinko is one of the best posts I’ve read that covers this link building tactic, and has heavily influenced my guest posting strategy. 

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#12. Compounding Growth with the "Ranking for Links" Technique

According to Worldometers, millions of blog posts are published every single day:

Blog written today

In many of these blog posts, you’ll see bloggers/journalists referencing pieces of data from other sources in order to backup their point(s), like so:

Example of ranking for links

(if you look a couple of sentences back, you’ll see that I did this exact thing in this post when talking about how many blog posts are published each day :D)

But how do bloggers find these sources?

They Google them.

When I wanted to know how many blog posts are published each day, I did this Google search:

I looked at the first 2-3 results and decided that the Worldometers page was the best resource – this is the one I referenced (and linked to) above.

Here’s my point:

If you can rank for these kinds of “reference” terms, chances are that you’ll attract backlinks on a consistent basis from journalists and bloggers seeking references for their own content.

Smart, right!?

Here’s the basic process for doing this:

  1. Build a list of keywords/topics that are likely to get cited a lot
  2. Create a piece of content around that topic/keyword (and, hopefully, rank for it!)

In general, these kinds of topics/keywords will be informational terms and will predominantly be these kinds of queries:

  • “How to” / “What is” queries (e.g. “how to screenshot on a Mac”, “what is yeast”, etc.)
  • Definitions
  • Statistics
  • Lists

So, the first step is to build a list of these types of queries for your niche – I recommend doing this in a spreadsheet (or text doc) for simplicity.

If I was doing this for my website (i.e. an SEO blog), my keywords may look like this:

List of ranking for links terms

Next, throw your list of keywords into Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer.

In general, you’re looking for terms with high search volumes and a low KD score:

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer returning opportunities for link building

It’s then simply a case of putting together a piece of content around this topic and ranking for it.

Journalists/bloggers will then, hopefully, reference (and link to) your post on a regular basis without the need for any additional work.

Brian Dean’s list of Google ranking factors is the perfect example of this technique in action.

It currently has an insane 14,000+ backlinks from almost 2,750 referring domains!

Article with over 14000 backlinks

This is because bloggers/journalists are constantly referencing this page when writing about SEO:

Ranking for links

Note: This is a strategy/term was coined by Matthew Barby (he’s a super smart guy; I highly recommend following his blog!)

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#13. Reclaim Lost Link Equity from 404 Pages

When it comes to link building, a lot of businesses jump straight into creating new campaigns with the single goal of landing BIG wins. (i.e. backlinks from massive sites like Washington Post and NBC).

While these links are incredibly valuable, they require a lot of resources - time and hard work - and the success rate is very low.

So:

Before you go after the big fish, make sure you’ve first collected all the “quick-win” link opportunities. This will help generate faster results, and build trust with new clients.

One of the fastest ways to do this is recover lost link equity from 404 pages.

Think about it:

Websites change all the time. Products come and go. Information is pruned. URL structures get updated. Content is moved around.

All this movement can have a big impact on all the existing backlinks pointing to your website.

For example:

If you created a piece of content that acquired a bunch of quality links, and then made a minor update to the post/page URL without properly implementing a 301 redirect, you’d waste valuable link equity.

Therefore, one of the best ways to land quick link wins is to ensure you don’t have backlinks pointing to dead pages.

Here’s how to do it:

Head over to the Ahrefs “Best by Links” report. Filter by “404”, and sort referring domains (RD) in descending order:

Finding links to 404 pages in Ahrefs

The first 404 page in the list has 6 referring domains pointing to it.

Not a huge number. But, check out what happens when you click on the Referring Domains link:

List of referring domains pointing to 404 page

The 404 page has two solid links pointing to it:

Search Engine Watch (DR 71)
ReputationX (DR 48)

High authority backlinks like these are very hard to get even with great content and a dialed in outreach campaign. But, we managed to find them in a matter of seconds.

Important: Scan down the list and only attempt to reclaim links from quality sites relevant to your industry:

Examples of low DR sites

Only the first two opportunities in this report are worth looking at closer. The others are low DR, and look completely irrelevant. Redirecting these types of links into other important assets on your site would do more harm than good.

Action item:

Once you’ve gathered a shortlist of “safe” backlinks to reclaim, you can either:

  1. 301 redirect the 404 page into a relevant asset on your site. Ideally, a page/ post with some type of search traffic potential. 
  2. Reach out to the owner/ author of the site linking to your 404 page. Ask them to update the link.

Since 301 redirects leak little-to-no link equity, option #1 is my preferred course of action. 

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#14. Build Links with Blog Comments (Hint: This Isn’t Your Usual Spammy Blog Commenting Strategy!)

I know what you’re thinking…

“Building links with blog comments, Robbie!? You know it’s not 1995, right!?”

I feel you, but hear me out….

I’m absolutely not talking about spammy mass blog commenting here. In fact, this technique doesn’t involve leaving any blog comments at all, but rather utilising existing blog comments (on your own blog) to create a list of link prospects.

Let me explain…

Most blogging systems ask commenters for their name, email address, and website (if they have one) when submitting a comment. This is even true of my blog:

Website comment blox

And those who choose to enter their website URL in this box will see their name hyperlinked to their website when the comment goes live:

Example of blog comment link

“Where are you going with this, Robbie?”

Well, these people are clearly interested in what you have to say, meaning it’s highly likely that their blog (i.e. the site they linked to when commenting) is in the same niche.

Let’s click through to Jeff’s website to see if this is true…

BOOM. Jeff also runs an SEO-related website.

With this in mind, here’s my 3-step process for building links with blog comments:

  1. Scrape the websites of everyone who left a blog comment in the last 30 days.
  2. Check if they have any content on their website related to your niche (e.g. in my case, this would be SEO/marketing-related content).
  3. If so, reach out, thank them for the comment and ask if they’d consider linking to your post.

I’ll use this blog post of mine (with 220+ comments) to walk you through the process.

To get started, we need to scrape the websites for those who’ve left comments in (roughly) the past 30 days. This can be done manually but life is much easier with this Google Chrome add-on.

Simply right-click on commenter’s name (hint: make sure it’s a linked comment!) and select “scrape similar”:

Scraping blog comment names

This will “automagically” scrape a list commenters name + URLs from the page:

Results from blog comment scraping

Click “Export to Google Docs...”

You should now have a list of websites + names in a Google Sheet, like this:

Blog comment link prospects

It’s now a case of using the “site:” search operator (combined with a keyword related to the topic of your website/content) to find sites with content related to your niche.

Here’s an example (for the SEO niche):

No results for this site; let’s try another:

BINGO. Looks like these guys have a few SEO/marketing related posts, one of which is this post about generating more blog traffic:

Example of a website owned by a person commenting on the blog

Definitely a great post, but it doesn't even touch on many of the blog promotion strategies mentioned in my post. I’m, therefore, pretty sure his readers would also get a lot of value from my post.

Stuart clearly enjoyed my post (see his comment below) so let’s reach out and kindly ask if he’d be willing to add a link to my post in that article:

Example of blog comment link

Here’s our message:

Hey Stuart,

It’s Robbie (Richards) from RobbieRichards.com.

I was just reading through the comments on my blog and noticed you commented a while back (on this post) – thanks for that! It’s always good to know my posts are of value to other bloggers 🙂

Also, I ended up reading your blog promotion case study on your blog. Really cool stuff…loved the tip about not focusing on vanity metrics. I, too, see so many people doing that!

Don’t mean to sound cheeky, but is there any chance you’d consider adding a link to my post at the end of that article? I think it follows on nicely from what you had to say, so I’m pretty sure your visitors would find it interesting, too.

Either way, have a great weekend. Keep in touch!

Thanks,
Robbie

Do this for every prospect that fits the bill (note: make sure to personalise the email as much as possible first, of course!)

This is not only a great way to build links but also, a great way to forge relationships with other bloggers.

Pro tip: You can scale this strategy by creating a Custom Google Search engine similar to the one we created in the first link building strategy mentioned in this post. 

The only difference is instead of uploading the domains already linking to your site, you will add the domains of the people commenting on your site:

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#15. Quora Hacking (and Scaling Referral Traffic Streams)

Quora links may be nofollow, but that doesn’t mean they’re worthless.

In fact, Quora links can be an amazing source of referral traffic. They’re also great for diversifying your link profile (a link profile consisting solely of dofollow links won’t look natural at all!)

Here’s a three-step process for getting a ton of referral traffic (and links) from Quora:

  1. Plug Quora into Ahrefs (to find the highest traffic threads).
  2. Search for a keyword related to your content (this will filter out relevant threads that have rankings and ongoing passive traffic).
  3. Write a top notch answer on the threads with lots of traffic.

OK, so the first step is super simple; just paste “quora.com” into Ahrefs Site Explorer, then go to the “top pages” tab (under “organic search” on the left-hand menu).

This will list all URLs on the domain in order of search traffic:

Using Ahrefs Site Explorer to find highest organic traffic threads on Quora

Next, enter a keyword related to your niche in the search box (note: the aim here is to search quora for high-traffic threads related to your industry).

Let’s use “fitness” for this example:

Using Top Pages report in Ahrefs

We now see a list of URLs (i.e. threads) on the site related to fitness — some of them have a ton of traffic!

It’s now simply a case of combing through the threads for those with the following criteria:

  1. Niche-related (e.g. fitness related).
  2. Plenty of search traffic (note: the ones near the top of the list in Site Explorer have the most search traffic).
  3. No good answer currently (this is super important!)

If you find a thread that fits the bill, answer the question yourself (note: make sure to answer with a well-crafted, useful response – this will increase the chances of your answer being upvoted and, in turn, the chances of you receiving referral traffic from the thread).

Here’s a thread that fits the bill:

Example Quora thread

It has 500+ visitors per month from search (from the US alone), only has 2 answers (none of which are particularly in-depth), and is clearly niche-related.

Because Quora allows you to reference sources when writing your answer, it’s easy to link back to relevant websites when writing.

This means that should we have a page on our website listing some great fitness-related subreddits, we could simply answer with a condensed version of that list and quote our website as the source.

Here’s an example of this logic in action (from Rand Fishkin):

Example Quora thread answered by Rand Fishkin

The question was: “What are some simple things companies can do to create a stronger Internet presence?”

You can see that Rand’s answer is extremely thorough, useful and helpful, yet it isn’t overly promotional. He includes a link to a Moz blog post where appropriate, but also mentions other notable tools/sources, too.

I’d be willing to bet that this drives a couple hundred visits per month to that blog post (if not more).

He also gets a nice juicy link (albeit a nofollow one).

Quora is the second highest source of referral traffic for Wishpond:

Wishpond Quora referral traffic

Use the technique above to identify relevant high-traffic threads, engage in the conversation, and start driving targeted referral traffic to your site. 

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#16. Using Google Alerts for Link Reclamation

Google Alerts is one of the most powerful, and often overlooked, link building tools you have at your disposal.

If someone mentions your business name or website online, you likely want them to link to you.

Google Alerts allows you to keep track of brand mention across the web (the idea being that you can reach out to them and request they add a link if they haven’t already done so).

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Set up your Google Alerts
  2. Monitor them (and reach out to reclaim links, where appropriate)

I’ll show you how to do this below.

How to setup your Google Alerts

It’s pretty straightforward to set up Google Alerts; you simply enter phrases you want to be alerted about and, well, that’s it.

If I was doing this for my blog, some example queries might include:

  • www.robbierichards.com
  • robbierichards.com
  • robbierichards
  • robbie richards
  • [article name] “100 link building tactics from 50 SEO experts”

Anyway, here’s how to do it…

First, head over to Google Alerts and enter the term(s) you want to be alerted for:

Setting up Google Alerts

In the Result Type box, select to receive alerts for everything.

Next, choose how often you want to receive alerts. For me, the frequency depends on what I am monitoring.

I usually selec once a day in the how often box.

The Deliver To box lets you choose if you want alerts sent to you via email or RSS feed. For brand mentions, I prefer to have them delivered via email.

NOTE: Ahrefs Alerts can also help you with this – it gives a few extra options compared to Google Alerts, such as specifying alerts where the keyword must be in the title tag, etc.

Ahrefs link alerts


How to reclaim links from brand mentions

Each time you brand or website is mentioned on the web check the source and make sure the site is linking to you.

If they don’t provide a link reach with a friendly email to the webmaster requesting you link.

You can use this email template for you outreach:

Hello,

I was checking out your site today and noticed that you mentioned my brand/post in [insert post name].

I appreciate the call out and wanted to ask if you wouldn’t mind linking back to my site [insert URL].

Keep up the great work 🙂

Cheers,

Robbie

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#17. Mining Expert Roundups for Quick Link Wins 

Expert roundups are one of the easiest (and quickest) ways to build backlinks and generate serious traffic to your site.

Here’s the basic process:

  1. Think of a question to ask influencers/experts in your niche (e.g. “what are your top 3 keyword research tools?”)
  2. Gather a list of influencers/experts in your niche
  3. Consolidate responses into a blog post
  4. Tell the influencers about the live post (and ask them to link to it)

Because you are featuring insights of influencers in your industry, those people (and many of their followers) are very likely to link to, or at least share your blog post across their social channels.

Let’s walk through the process from start-to-finish.

First, think about a topic related to your industry that people will be interested in. For example, SEOs will likely be interested in the following topics:

  • Best link building tools?
  • Link building tactics to focus on 2014?
  • Are black hat link building tactics dead?
  • How do you measure the success of an SEO campaign?
  • If you could only use three link building tools, which three would you choose? (Richard Marriott put together a fantastic roundup for this topic)

These are all topics people in the SEO field would be interested in.

Once you have a solid topic, the next step is finding experts to pitch.

The easiest way to build a list of influencers is to identify the round ups already out there in your niche. Influencers that have already taken part in an expert round up will be more likely to respond to your pitch.

Go to Google and search for roundups in your niche:

“link building experts” + roundup

As you can see, the roundup “55 SEO Experts Reveal 3 Favorite Link Building Tools” attracted 155 backlinks from 77 domains:

Expert roundup backlinks

Now, scroll through the post and add all the featured influencers to a spreadsheet.

Check their Twitter profiles to see if they have a website listed:

Richard Marriott Twitter profile

Go to website and collect their email address or contact page URL:

Richard Marriott contact page

Tip: I use Voilanorbert to scale the gather of contact information. 

Add the name and domain of your roundup targets into a spreadsheet and save it as a .csv file.

Next, run a bulk upload inside Voilanorbert:

Voilanorbert

Let the tool run for 5-10 minutes and it'll go through and scrape the emails for you. Huge time saver!

Still short of influencers? Here are a few other tools/ways you can find them:

Pre-curated lists: Head over to Google and do a search for “top [kw] bloggers” and find pre-curated lists of influencers. 

Other bloggers have already done the heavy lifting for you:

Pre curated list

Ahrefs Content Explorer: enter a keyword, then click the “who tweeted” button. It’ll then show you everyone who tweeted that post and also, tell you exactly how many followers they have on Twitter.

Buzzsumo: Head over to Buzzsumo, select past year and the “influencers” tab. Enter a broad search term related to your niche or the topic of your question.

You’ll notice many of these people have tens of thousands of followers and a lot of authority. These are the type of people you want sharing and amplifying your content:

Buzzsumo influencers

I have put together a number of expert roundups for clients in different industries here and here. 

In a lot of these cases, I'm looking for specialists in very specific occupations. So, I'll use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to get laser focused with my roundup prospecting:

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

And extract contact information using the SellHack chrome extension:

SellHack

This process allows me to work faster and build a very specific list of outreach targets.

It’s then simply a case of reaching out to everyone on your list and ask them the question you decided upon.

The key here is to make sure that your outreach email is short, to the point and personal.

Here is a template you can use:

Hey [NAME],

Robbie Richards here, from robbierichards.com. I came across your LinkedIn profile today and thought I’d reach out regarding an expert roundup I’m putting together.

Here’s the question:

[INSERT QUESTION]

Please leave your response on this form: [URL]

I’ll include a link to your website and promote the article to my 35,000+ audience.

Deadline for contribution is [DATE].

Cheers!
Robbie

P.S. Here is an example of similar article I published (shared over 10,000 times).
https://www.robbierichards.com/seo/best-seo-tools/

Thanks to Richard Marriott for the advice in his expert roundup post.

In your spreadsheet, keep track of who you have reached out to and when you contacted them.

It’s always a good idea to send a follow up email 1-2 weeks after your initial outreach.

Follow up email

If there is still no response, reach out to them on Twitter.

When you have your list of responses, it’s time to create your roundup post.

This should include a short description about the topic being covered with a brief introduction to the featured experts:

Roundup leaderboard

Then, name the expert and include their response with a link back to their site:


IMPORTANT! When the post is published, follow this 1-2 punch strategy...

Part 1: reach out to contributors, let them know the post has gone live, and ask them to share/upvote.

Here’s a template you can use:

NOTE: Also, make sure you mention the experts when you are promoting the roundup on social media.

Part 2: after you do the initial outreach letting people know the article is live and ask them to share it, follow up again to all people who meet the following criteria:

  1. They respond to your email and engage with the content
  2. They have written a piece of content related to the topic of your roundup on their site

Say something like this:

Hey [blogger name],

Thanks for sharing the post 🙂

I noticed you also talk about [roundup topic] in this post [insert URL on their site]. Any chance you could drop a link to the roundup?

I’m trying to get it to rank so everyone gets more exposure 🙂

Cheers,

Robbie

Pro tip:

This is another tactic where you can use Custom Search Engines to quickly build a database of experts who contributed to your roundups, and search across their sites for related articles.

Here's how to do it:

First, grab the domains of all the people who contributed to your roundup. You should already have a list of these in a spreadsheet:

Roundup emails

Create a Custom Search Engine and upload the domains of the contributors:

Roundup CSE

Now, enter search terms related to the topic of the roundup to find any contributor sites that have already written about the post and reach out to them with the template above. 

This should give you a handful of quick link wins: 

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#18. Drive Traffic (and Build Relationships) With “Targeted” Blog Commenting

I can already hear the trolls coming out on this one 🙂

Blog commenting is a spam tactic.
Blog comments are no follow.
Blog comments don’t boost rankings.
Etc..

All of these arguments hold merit if you’re just dropping hundreds of blog comments to boost rankings.

But, that’s not the basis of what we’re doing here.

Instead:

We’re going to use blog commenting to accomplish the following objectives:

#1: Pillow your link profile to make it look more natural
#2: Get your content (and brand) in front of more people
#3: Drive targeted referral traffic to important content on your site
#4: Build relationships with influential content creators in your industry

The process is simple: Identify high-traffic blog posts, and leave value-add comments that drive people back to your most relevant content.

This is the exact strategy Twoodoo used to grow their user base without spending money on ads:

Example blog comment strategy

After two weeks the startup saw the following results:

Total blog comments: 40
Unique referral visitors: 452
Visitors Per Comment: 11.25
Number of sign ups: 72 (16% conversion rate!)
Total time invested: 6.5hrs
ROI: 11 sign ups/ hour spent

While this strategy might not open the traffic floodgates, it does provide a low-cost opportunity to get your content (and brand) in front of a very targeted audience.

Here’s how to scale finding relevant blogs with high traffic potential:

Open the Ahrefs Content Explorer (affiliate) and search for a relevant phrase. Filter out the pages that get a lot of organic traffic and are written in the same language as your site:

Ahrefs Content Explorer

Note: the volume threshold will depend on the niche you are in. For a larger topic like “content marketing”, we could ramp up the volume threshold to 1,000+ and still get a long list of blogs to look at:

Scan through the list of results and see which ones have an active comment thread. If it does, put together a comment that adds value and insert a link to a relevant piece of content on your site.

Tip: Focus more on the blog comment sections where the moderator is (1) actively responding to commenters, and (2) allows relevant link placements in the comments.

This will not only improve the chances of your link being approved, but will also provide an opportunity to form relationships with industry influencers. This opens the door to guest post opportunities, and an increased likelihood they drop an editorial link to your content in the future.

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#19. Transcribe Videos From Industry Influencers (and Outreach)

Video transcription can used as a scalable link building strategy.

Experts and influencers in virtually every industry used video as medium to communicate their expertise.

Today, video can be used in a number of formats:

  • Tutorials
  • Presentations
  • Webinars, Hangouts, Q&A’s
  • Vlogs (video blogs)
  • Industry updates

Transcribing the video content of influencers in your industry and publishing the content to your site is a great way to get links from authoritative sites that get a lot of traffic.

Here are some additional benefits of video transcription:

  • It is a fast way to build linkable content as it comes directly from influencer/ expert in your industry
  • You can get links through attribution (experts use transcription with their video)
  • It helps you get in front of influencers and stand out (you are helping them out). This makes it easier to build relationships.
  • You can leverage their large social audience. If they share your transcription, you get more (targeted) eyeballs on your site.

Here’s how to do it:

First, head over to YouTube and type the name of influencer in your industry. We’ll use Matt Cutts in this example.

Set the filter to the “this month”:

Searching for influencers in YouTube

This looks like a good topic:

Matt Cutts YouTube video

Make sure the video doesn’t already have a full transcription. This one doesn’t have one (bingo!).

Once you have transcribed the video, it’s just a matter of reaching out to the influencer and letting them know.

Here is an example from Ross Hudgens over at Siegemedia:

Ross Hudgens Twitter

Matt responds:

Matt Cutts Twitter response

Matt Cutts has 352,000 followers, so any link promoted in one of his posts has the potential to send a ton of traffic to your site.

Thanks again to Jason Acidre over at Kasier The Sage for introducing me to this tactic.

Final Thoughts

Link building is definitely one of the most challenging aspects of SEO, but it’s also one of the most crucial if you want your website to rank highly in the SERPs.

Each of the 17 link building techniques mentioned in this article will help you build quality links to your site. Let me know how it goes <img class=” 

If you have had success with any link building strategies not mentioned in this post, please leave a comment below so other readers can benefit from your feedback. 

Comments

    • Hey Jason,

      Thanks for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed the article.

      And, I just want to say, thanks for all the great content you’re publishing over there at Kaiser The Sage. Great stuff!

      Reply

    • Great article. I once spent like 10 hours per day to get every single link I could for my website.

      Not any more. I found that that 80/20 rule works for linkbuilding. Meaning 20% of highest quality links will give you 80% of ranking results.

      Since then, I am building links this way: http://bit.ly/1eFJz7y
      password to open pdf: rankanddrunk*978
      This should be mandatory reading.

      Reply

      • Hey Adrian,

        If possible, go after backlinks with 40+ DA….preferably 50+ DA.

        As you go up from there the authority passed on will increase exponentially.

        Cheers 😉

        Reply

    • Thanks Jack!

      Glad you liked it! I spent about 30 hours putting it together so it’s nice to see that people are getting value. I try to make everything I write 100% actionable – read it and do it 😉

      Subscribe to my email list if you want exclusive content that’s even more action-packed 😉

      Cheers!

      Reply

  4. Thanks for sharing these Robbie! These are all really useful ideas. I know I’ll be putting the Guest Post hack to work this afternoon.

    I especially like to see how you’re putting old tools to new uses (ie, Delicious) – very creative. Keep up the great work!

    Thanks!

    Reply

    • Hey Nate,

      Glad you liked the post. Always happy to hear the positive feedback. I’ve been using the guest post strategy lately, just landed an opportunity to reputable brand. I better get writing 🙂

      Also, feel free to sign up for my email list.

      Cheers 😉

      Reply

  5. Hey Robbie,

    This is INSANE! Great tips and I just voted this up on Inbound. Man, you really write some crazy juice here huh!

    Thanks for sharing this and keep it up!

    Reply

    • Awesome! Which ones are you implementing? Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you out.

      Feel free to join my email list as well. Plenty more actionable info coming that way 😉

      Reply

    • Hey Bonnie,

      Let me know how you go with the strategies listed in the post. Also, feel free to sign up for my email list. Plenty more where that came from 😉

      Cheers!

      Reply

  12. Hey Robbie!

    Great post! Really looking forward to use your strategies in work!
    Keep it up!

    PS: You got some bad hyperlinks in Infographics section, pointing to your site instead of the sites you wanted to.

    Reply

    • Thanks Jenda! Let me know how it goes 😉

      Thanks for the heads up on the outbound links, I’ll get those fixed up.

      If you liked this link building post, hop on my email list, I’ve got some great posts scheduled to go out in the near future 😉 Cheers!

      Reply

    • Hey Sonal, glad you found some actionable information in there. Feel free to join my email list, plenty more actionable content in the pipeline.

      Cheers!

      Reply

  14. Great round-up. I really like the first tip using Delicious. Thanks for sharing.

    P.S. – and yeah I’m the ‘Jeffrey’ whose Delicious profile you featured in this post. Small world 😉

    Reply

    • Haha hey what’s up Jeffrey! I thought I recognized that picture 😉 Super small world.

      The Delicious strategy is great for both link building and content promotion. After all, best prospects are those that haven already engaged with content similar to yours.

      I’ve got more actionable content in the pipeline, so feel free to hop my email list for first dibs 🙂

      Look forward to speaking more in the future.

      Cheers!

      Reply

  15. Hi,

    great article, very good insights. The Chrome addon for image search is very helpful, and i found another plugin for TinEye, too. It’s called “TinEye Reverse Image Search”.

    Reply

    • Hey Frank,

      Glad you found the article helpful. I haven’t tried the TinEye plugin yet. I’ll have to check it out 😉

      Feel free to jump on my email list too. I’ve got a few posts in the pipeline that will compliment this post nicely!

      Cheers mate!

      Reply

  16. Hey Robbie

    Just thought I’d ask – at the end you this (epic) post you have a call to action to subscribe to your email list… yet it is not linked to anything? That on purpose? Oversight?

    Keep em coming.

    Reply

    • Hey Aidan,

      Great point. I need to make my email subscription widget “sticky”. I am also going to embed a subscription box within the content as well.

      Thanks for highlighting though!

      Reply

  17. Good day! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with SEO?
    I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good results.
    If you know of any please share. Thank you!

    Reply

  18. Just Cntrl+F’d for my name – Look like the comment I dropped last week didn’t get approved/hit the spam folder OR (and most likely) I accidentally closed the tab.. derp.

    Awesome round-up, Robbie.

    Not nearly enough people have covered BuzzBundle, I did a tutorial on it last year but really didn’t serve the tool justice. It’s been one of the best tools to garner traffic from Forums I’ve ever had and has created a LOAD of new link opportunities for me and a number of my agency’s clients.

    Reply

    • Hey Charles,

      I went back through the comment log and didn’t see you in there. I’m guessing the accidental closed tab. All good.

      Appreciate the positive feedback. Put a ton of work into the post, so I’m happy to see so many people are getting value from it.

      BuzzBundle is fantastic! I’ve only been using the restricted free version and I’ve still managed to find both link building and content promotion opportunities. Really like the Rank Tracker tool in the SEO PowerSuite as well.

      Anyways mate, thanks for stopping by, talk to you soon!

      Reply

  19. What a great list! Can’t wait to get this translated to Spanish to show the Hispanic SEOs such multiple options Link building has. Too bad there’s not some of this services working in the Spanish language so I will have to take away some of your suggestions and adapt them to my markets. Thanks a lot again!

    Reply

    • Thanks Carlos! Glad you liked the post. Let me know how you go with the techniques 😉

      Also, feel free to hop on my email list. Plenty more to come!

      Cheers.

      Reply

  21. Spot on with this write-up, I actually believe that this amazing site needs a
    great deal more attention. I’ll probably be back
    again to read through more, thanks for the info!

    Reply

  23. Hi there, You have done a fantastic job. I’ll certainly digg it and personally recommend to my friends.
    I am sure they’ll be benefited from this web site.

    Reply

  25. First time on your blog, Robbie and I am really amazed with this in-depth article on a really important topic. Points are noted though I doubt whether directory links are still safe or not. But this article will be counted one of the best on this topic, that’ for sure. Bookmarked and shared. Keep on coming more like this. 🙂

    Reply

  26. I loved the idea of Buzzbundle. It opens up so many link building opportunities. It is very tough to track possible sites to build backlinks through footprints. A lot of them does not provide relevant results. I am going to get started with the free version of this one. 🙂

    Reply

  27. Great post. After doing only old school black hat SEO for the previous SEO company I worked for, I’v finally moved to a better place and need to plan an offsite strategy. You post was super helpful since I didn’t really knew where to begin and how to implement all those guidelines I’v been reading about in the past few years!

    Reply

    • Glad you enjoyed the post, Orly!

      Let me know if you have any questions along the way. I plan on launching another link building guide early next year 🙂

      Reply

  28. Hi Robbie,

    Some really insightful and useful stuff here.

    Is it me or have they stopped you from suggesting posts in Scoop.it now?

    Thanks,

    Richard

    Reply

  29. Excellent post Robbie, First of all i like to thanks for this post and secondly i like the info-graphic part..
    i am always trying to do some kind of in-graphics and your post helped me a lot..
    also i have bookmarked this page for future references..
    Thanks once again Robbie

    Reply

  30. Its a great article on this topic. I’ve bookmarked this website and will come back again in future for sure to read some more wonderful articles.

    Reply

  31. Read the whole blog post,This is best link building strategy i’ve came across,i have already started applying these strategies and waiting for the results.

    Reply

  32. Create a transcribe and get a link through it is really a great idea. I have never thought about it and never tried it. If you are in internet marketing industry, then you must have to find out leading people like rand fishkin, matt cutts, john muller and have to create transcribe of their video. It is a very unique technique to use.

    Reply

  33. Hi Matt, thanks for sharing this great post. Out of the 13 tips you shared, 12 of those tips were really new to my knowledge.I will surely use these tips in my future campaigns

    Reply

  36. Its really effective if you know your competitor’s backlinks. When you know why they have higher PR than your then you can try to imitate them. It’s playing to the same level.

    Reply

  37. Good god, Robbie. This article is incredible. I feel obliged to treat you to a fancy dinner after providing all that value. Seriously though, fantastic job and I’m coming back here constantly. Thank you!

    Reply

  38. wow.. such an intelligent link building strategy.. I’m amazed about your delicious strategy.haha Worth following. Will definitely subscribe. 🙂 I have already bookmarked this post! I just love it!

    Thanks for your contribution. Such a great help.

    Reply

  42. Hey great article, but one problem.

    When the page loads a pop-up comes up that blocks the entire screen and prevents scrolling. The top of the pop-up, including the close icon, was hidden. So I was unable to close this pop-up without zooming out the page significantly. I suspect most users would just close the tab.

    It’s a shame because you’ve got some great info here.

    Reply

  46. Great post,Robbie ! I love your innovative link building strategies…some of the best that I’ve seen on the Internet.

    Reply

  47. Nice post and very good link bait 🙂
    I have read enough about this link building strategy and now its time for me to start implementing it on my website.

    Reply

  48. Hey Robbie, you’re now in my favorite SEOs list man, BTW I get links from subreddits from the sidebar, it’s dofollow and pass juice n authority. Any other recommended directory for link building, tried Dmoz many times but they never approve any link.

    Reply

    • Hey Hammad, I always start with local and niche based directories.

      “keyword” + directory
      “industry” + directory

      If no luck, I’ll go for closely related shoulder niche directories.

      TBH..I’ve been doing a LOT of infographic link building campaigns this year. Built over 100 authority links for a client in the beahvioral health niche. It’s a bit of a grind, but it’s one of the easiest ways I’ve found to land bigger links consistently. Eg. AdWeek, Lifehacker, Social Media Today etc…

      Reply

  50. Hey Robbie,

    Wonderful post, loved it. Links are still important and links from good quality sites are winner so these link building techniques will help anyone grow. But it is also important to build links in natural manner otherwise you may never know you might be the next one loser.

    Reply

  56. Hi Robbie,

    This is pretty old article, but I discovered it today only.

    Your are awesome! I have become your fan.

    No BS, to the point with exact action steps…. you rock.

    I am still new to this SEO and link building stuffs.

    This is not one time read. I have bookmarked this article so that I can keep coming back.

    This article is a complete course in itself on “link building strategies”.

    Thanks again for the good post.

    Reply

  57. Thanks for the list of inforgraph submitting website. Though, this post has been written for long, but still very relevant for link building in present. I will work on inforgraph submission and see how that will help me.

    Reply

    • Thanks Saheed! I’m going to be writing a post in the near future showing the exact process I use to land links for clients on sites like Huffington Post and Lifehacker.

      Reply

  58. Thank you so, so much for the great content you’re providing! I know first-hand how much work goes into posts like these – A LOT! You are a gem! I’ll definitely be coming back for more!

    Reply

    • Cheers Melanie! Stoked to hear you like the content. I’ll be updating the link building guide in the near future to include newer tactics I’ve been having success with. Keep an eye out!

      Reply

  62. Do you mind if I quote a couple of your posts as long as I provide credit and
    sources back to your blog? My blog site is in the exact same niche as yours and my users would
    certainly benefit from a lot of the information you provide here.
    Please let me know if this alright with you. Appreciate it!

    Reply

  64. Hey Robbie,

    Its definitely a great article but i think little obsolete in 2017 as few links are not working like DMoz which is already closed in March 17 and #1 strategy in your list is “Delicious Link Prospecting” but that link is also not working.
    So a little time from your side will make this content revive again.

    Thanks again for strategies.

    Reply

  66. Hi Robbie,

    I came across your blog post and I wanna tell you that you did a great job !! Keep it up.

    I do really love helping people out and spread the knowledge so I do definitely love you blog now.

    Reply

  70. Great post, I really enjoy reading it.
    The only ‘problem’ is that’s too long 🙂

    But I bookmarked it and I’m going to return and visit it again!

    Reply

    • Hi Tal,

      Yeah – I’ve been getting feedback that some of my content is a bit long. I try to make it the #1 resource on a given topic, but maybe I go a little overboard 🙂 Appreciate the feedback!

      Reply

  72. I’ve just skim throw the text and found the custom search engine technique is best for finding prospects. I will implement the techniques in coming days and let you know the results.

    Reply

  76. Best till date, One of the Killer Link Building Strategies has been listed here.

    Robbie, I appreciate your hard work you did in this post.

    Also..

    Thanks for sharing these strategies. I am going to execute them and will tell the results here. 🙂

    Regards,
    Priyanshu

    Reply

  78. I really like the image search process to find sites using our infographics. A question in regards to that though. I’ve reached out to a person using our infographic which they embedded in a post they made on LinkedIn and they just ignore my requests for a back link. What does a person do in a case like that?

    Reply

    • Hey Stephen,

      I’ve run into this in past a couple times too. Generally, if I don’t get anything back via email, I’ll resort to asking on social media with an @mention. Some people will respond then as they now know the issue is in front of a larger public audience. At that point, I am still very friendly about it. If the link is from a potentially large authority site, and I still have no answer, I’ll pick up the phone 🙂

      Reply

  79. Hi Robbie,

    A great post and thanks for sharing, loved the way you explain the each and everything here.
    I will definitely try Video transcription and Reclaim links from stolen images.

    What are you views on Local Business Citations, Link Building with Social Bookmarking Sites and Personal Blog Networks?

    Reply

    • Hey Ashok,

      I use citations a lot for local SEO, in combination with other locally focused link building strategies. To be honest, I don’t really do much with bookmark or PBNs anymore.

      Reply

  81. It’s always Ahrefs or some other tool we need to pay for. Any free tools we can use or are all your posts well designed affiliae marketing schemes. Good Lord!

    Reply

    • Hey there! You can definitely sign up for free versions of most backlink analysis tools. However, you’ll have limited data access.

      To your point about “affiliate marketing schemes”. I write content featuring the tools I personally use to run campaigns for personal and client projects. While they are paid tools, I don’t promote anything on this site I don’t use myself. I’ll take your feedback thought, and look into adding a section on some free workarounds. Appreciate the candid feedback!

      Reply

  82. Hi Robbie,
    Great article on backlink. i have some query.
    1. Does google penalize the site who have nofollow spam backlink
    2. Does google consider nofollow backlink a ranking signal.

    Thanks in advance

    Reply

    • Hey Mamtesh,

      No following spam links is a start. But, I’d remove them altogether.

      No follow links don’t really pass authority. But, they help balance out a link profile. Also – if a link drives good traffic, I usually don’t care that much about the follow/no follow status.

      Reply

  83. Hi Robbie,

    Which is a better tool among ninja outreach, MailShake, Pitchbox, Buzzstream for our outreaching. Especially to employ methods like Skyscrapper Technique

    Reply

    • Aneesh –

      All work fine. I think it comes down a lot to the scale of the outreach.

      Mailshake and Pitchbox have a good rep.

      Buzzstream is great for scaling things up a lot. I use Buzzstream at my agency.

      Reply

  86. One of the best tutorial for learn link building methods. These kinds of stuff are fantastic to learn and work it out for our growth. Thanks a lot for sharing with and keep it up. Good job.

    Reply

    • Hey Ajay,

      I promote Ahrefs because it’s honestly the tool I use to run the bulk of my link building campaigns these days. There are some free tool out there that will give you some limited link data, but nothing close to what you can get with a tool like Ahrefs.

      Reply

  90. Well, I started to read this article earlier today. Now,I’ve noticed there are comments from 2014 and the first thing I said, why I didn’t read this blog before? I’ve missed tons of useful materials. Great tips! I really enjoyed each paragraph. A good work always require time and effort, and a smat mind as well! Thanks for sharing and I’m subscribing for upcoming great tips!

    Merry Christmas and kind regards,

    Dave

    Reply

  92. Thank you very much on this article. It is one of the most informational I’ve read in some time.
    I’ll definitely share/recommend it to all of my coworkers.

    One question, tough. When building links with Quora strategy, do you recommend to put several links into your answer (besides your own)?

    Reply

  95. Extreemly helpful! I read your article from the beginning to the end and I think, I learnt lot of stuff from this article. Thank you for sharing such a detailed information. Keep up with your good work.

    Reply

  96. This happens to be the best blog post I’ve ever read on link building strategies so far. I’m applying each and every strategy you’ve put up here and i hope to get wonderful results. Thank you Robbie.

    Reply

  98. Hi Robbie,

    thanks for this awesome guide for Link building . now I am using these tips for backlinking let see. I will share with you my success story :p.

    Thanks for the article

    Reply

  101. 🙂 Robbie, It was a one of the great in-depth post and thank you so much for sharing, You have explained everything here for backlink building.

    I was wondering if you could share a post for every link building strategies response rate?

    I hope you will include this point in the future post.

    Great work you did Robbie.

    Reply

  102. Hey Robbie,

    What an amazing post! I read it once sometime last year, and just read it again after I discovered you’ve updated the content.

    It still blows my mind how in-depth and valuable you went with this post – anybody can build amazing links NOW with the step-by-step instructions you’ve given them.

    Awesome work man!

    Keep doing what you’re doing!

    Reply

  106. Hello Robbie,

    That was a great list of link building techniques available currently. I really liked your explanation about Quora link building. Quora has 50 Million estimated visitors per month, so its definitely a great platform to get more exposure.

    Reply

  108. Hey,

    Excellent article with unique information. I agree with this information. I learn something new today and unique. Thank you for sharing.

    Cheers,
    Praveen Mishra

    Reply

  109. Your in-depth posts are some of the most helpful I’ve read in my many years of reading about SEO. I believe I need to hire an assistant to keep up with your suggestions! Thanks, Robbie. Much appreciated.

    Reply

  111. Thanks a lot for this article. I was considering The Hoth for our site as well. Lots of affiliate websites use their service and I think for some it provides value. However, building out an internal system for white hat link building is the best long-term.

    Reply

  112. Thanks for Sharing excellent Information about “link building strategies”, I love your article. I will definitely share your article on my social networks. Again thank you!
    Keep sharing this type of article!

    Reply

  113. All these tips are handy for me. I have personally used three or four of these methods. If I use all of these methods, then PA and DA increase so high and im sure of it. These link building methods are recommended from every SEO experts. All of your contents are very interesting and I gained a lot of good things from you.

    Reply

  115. Hello robbie, Thank you for share Wonderful post,

    I have a question.

    I’m a blogger, I write about Stock Market in Hindi Language. If i create backlinks from English Blogs & Website. than those backlinks that i created from English Websites helpful for Me?
    because i write articles in Hindi language.

    Reply

    • Thanks Abhishek! Like most things in the world of link building, it’s become more saturated and difficult. Just have to be smarter in your prospecting and find sites you know are accepting the external scholarships. We’re doing it for a few lawyer clients at the moment. We’ve built 22 .edu links for one of them. But, we’ve had to reach out to over 250 schools. Bit of a numbers game, but can definitely still work 🙂

      Reply

  118. Hey robbie,

    You looks the greatest digital marketer, better than others, i never read this kind of dept article about anything, you have written in extremely planned, systematic and Explained techiniques.

    Thank you so much for this article

    Reply

  119. Man!!! I am blown away with this really killer link building strategy. I really liked the last one “Video Transcribing”. Thanks for your valuable time to sharing this gold mine information.

    Reply

  120. Here is a tip I can say works every time. I look for schools looking for local discounts. If the business is close enough I pitch the student association and the employee HR discount page managers to see if I could get inclusions of that business. It because a 2 way link, A business citation and a link. I use this strategy for our uBreakiFix local stores and it always works

    Reply

  121. Hey Robbie,

    I searched for about 2 hours to find a post that focused on link building tactics that everyone else isn’t talking about, specifically deep link building tactics. I want to give you a sincere thank you for this post, it’s absolutely amazing and gave me ideas I never thought of before.

    Reply

  122. Great Post Robbie, I think this link building technique works well in 2018 and beyond. explain well keep sharing valuable information.I have a question after getting EDU links its remove after a couple of months any strategies that EDU link does not remove.

    Thanks again.

    Reply

  123. Man!!! I am blown away with this really killer link building strategy. I really liked the last one “Video Transcribing”. Thanks for your valuable time to sharing this gold mine information. really awesome man

    Reply

  124. It took around 10 hours to read this article. I read some points again and again to get clear views of concepts. I read thousands of articles on the Internet. This is the only blog where the number of words is extremely high. You are an awesome blogger and researcher. Thank you for writing such long and mind-blowing articles.

    Reply

  131. Great tips about the buliding strategies. Very well expalined with proper images. It clears all the small confusions very well, I can spend more hours for reading this article. i have spend many hours in searching and finally I got this site.

    Reply

  133. Hey Robbie,

    Phenomenal post and huge insights especially for the beginner in SEO like me. I was into paid marketing from years but never seen SEO the way I see after starting my blog.

    I am glad to see that quora strategies are listed here. Currently, I am only following that strategy for link building.

    Also, do these paid tools worth to subscribe to especially when you are a beginner and don’t have a lot of content on your blog?

    Reply

  134. This is by far the most useful article on link building strategies I read so far. I just spent an hour to find some practical link building strategies and techniques which I can use for my new site and also for my clients.

    But most of the articles from so-called Best Link Building Experts or SEO Gurus are explaining same things with a bit in a different way. I also find a lack of explanation i.e. how to do it exactly to get the best results.

    But here, I really find it very helpful and well organized. Now I am going to take a look at another post about link building audit to learn more important things.

    Great job Robbie!!

    Reply

  136. I have read all your blogs mainly which are focused on best website link building strategy and every time, somehow you manage to bring new things to learn. Thanks for your great post.

    Reply

  137. Amazing blog! Do you have any suggestions for aspiring writers?
    I’m hoping to start my own blog soon but I’m a little lost on everything.
    Would you propose starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid option? There are so many options out there
    that I’m completely confused .. Any suggestions? Cheers!

    Reply

    • I recommend starting with a free or low cost WordPress theme from Themeforest. Install it on a free WordPress.org instance. You can get a nice looking site up and running with relatively little cost. Worry about the more advanced configuration, design etc once you get things started.

      Reply

  138. “#8. Reclaim Links from Stolen Images”

    Robbie, I’ve got an even better way to do this – and I meant to write you months ago. I built my own stock photo library on Flickr with 700+ photos (and infographics) to be used freely online via a Creative Commons 4.0 license. And I needed a much more efficient way to track that volume of images so I automated it.

    Enter Pixsy.

    A free Pixsy account lets you upload 500 images—more than enough for most people—and the software will perform monthly scans and find matches out there on the web. It will list out the URL where your image was found and the exact address of the image itself. From here you can quickly build lists of people you need to contact to reclaim your links.

    I go into much greater detail about image link reclamation outreach here…

    https://massivekontent.com/build-your-own-free-stock-photo-library/#search

    Reply

  139. Man you’re good at this, I subscribed to your blog some days back hoping to get from fantastic content. Guess what you did it I enjoyed every bit of this post as it add to my knowledge of link building strategy.

    Reply

  140. Thanks, Robbie for this amazing article. I’ve been following your RLR link building tips from the past two months, and I am seeing good results.

    Thanks for putting this article together.

    Reply

    • Yep – in less competitive niches OR if you have a ton of Domain Authority. But, in most cases you some type of page-level authority driven by backlinks.

      Reply

  143. There are a lot link building techniques out there. Most of the quality links are hard earned links and can consume a lot of time, but is still worth it. Great list of tips you have here, Robbie. Cheers!

    Reply

  148. Hey Robbie,

    Great work man! You really had input everything in order to derive these killer link building strategies. To be very frank, I am following these strategies very closely. I am doing a marketing job so I am getting good appreciation from my seniors,

    I looking forward to more and more killing strategies like this.

    Thanks

    Reply

  151. You never cease to amaze me, Robbie!

    I am an amateur SEO and work for a company that utilizes major grey hat seo techniques (to say the least) but learning from your articles (especially the backlink articles) always gives me great information on how to generate quality backlinks for my side business.

    Reply

  153. Great reading and extremely comprehensive post. Thank you so much for all theses resources. Its funny how most haven’t changed over the years at all but fewer people seem to know or remember them.

    Reply

  155. Hello,

    Great post to read. I like the strategy of comment and guest post (template you used). I previously thought comment was risky, May I know is comment link building risk of penalizing? The way you explained is awesome. I can used it and think on it from now on.

    Thanks a lot Robbie

    Reply

  156. Thank you for sharing all techniques, as a beginner, I would like to know, is it ok If i will start with Bog comments and later try other strategies, I hope it will not be consider as spam, I am taking about comments on releveant and on quality sites.

    Reply

    • Hey Usman! I would not just use blog comments to start. Be strategic with this strategy, and think of it in terms of branding/ traffic potential over link equity. These are going to be nofollow links in most all cases, so the “link juice” is not really there. I’d first start with reverse engineering your competitors to see which content types and link building strategies are netting them the most links.

      Reply

  159. Hi Robbie,

    Indeed a “killer” blog post 🙂 it took me more than an hour to read it and I am an avid reader. For me you brought to light more than a thing or two I didn’t know about linkbuilding.
    Just one curiosity. In your experience which of these tactics brought the best results? If you would have to pick just one tactic, which one would be?

    Thanks

    Reply

    • Hi Lorraine – I always start with the low hanging fruit like 404 link reclamation and unlinked mentions. Then, I transition into competitor link replication.

      Reply

  163. Hi Robbie, Thank you for such a great article, I know link blinding is the most important part to improve the rank. Your article help me a lot in link building and there are many strategies in your post which are new for me. i am definitely going to bookmark this blog and share it with my SEO friends as well.

    Reply

  165. Hi Robbie, this is definitely the most details post about link building with the screenshot that will help a lot of people like me. Thanks for the effort to write this awesome tutorial.

    Reply

  167. Link building may be the weakest part of most SEO’s arsenal but it’s necessary. Thanks for the tips and wonderful advice. We can all do more of each tip you shared.

    Reply

  169. Extraordinary post, I truly appreciate understanding it.

    The main ‘issue’ is that is too long ?

    Be that as it may, I bookmarked it and I’m going to return and visit it once more!

    Reply

  172. HI Robbie,
    Thank you for the amazing post.
    I think that you could do it using free tools.
    It’s not easy to invest $100 in ahrefs for stater bloggers like me.

    Regards

    Reply

  173. I have been looking for this article for a very long time finally, I got it. This is one of the best articles I have ever read about creating a blog perfectly. ?
    Brother thanks for sharing with us.
    Keep up the good work.

    Reply

  174. Excellent tips! Can you please share the spreadsheet templates you use for guest posting? It would also be great if you can share the email template you use for outreach. Thanks a lot ! ?

    Reply

  175. Hey Robbie,
    I don’t know why my comments are not posting to your website. Couple of things I need to ask but seems your moderator keeps deleting my comments. But if you find this comment, then let me tell you that your post is very good in explaining things with good tips and tricks

    Reply

  177. This is outstanding research. Point #3 along with real-world examples are really useful. Especially finding broken links using screaming frog is made my day.

    Reply

  179. Stellar tips, as always Robbie!
    Link building can be so overwhelming especially for local businesses who don’t feel like they have good content to create nor the time to create it. Sometimes it’s just about taking a step back & focusing on relationship building.

    Reply

  182. Hii Robbie,
    This is my first time on your blog and i am your fan now.
    This giant post says everything about link building. I love all the strategies and i will definitely going to try all of these one by one.
    Thanks a Lot

    Reply

  185. Hi Robbie,

    I was looking for the best strategies for the link building on google and i ended up on your website. You have really explained it in the best way. Specially with the use of screenshots. It’s really helpful and will implement is straightaway. Thanks for the helpful post.

    Reply

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