“Start with; What will make them want to link to you? Think about THEIR interest. Sure, fantastic outreach can take you somewhere, but figuring out their interest is a different ball game. For example, provide interesting stats for them, that only you can take responsibility for.”
“Treat your link strategy in 3 steps:
1. What area of the site needs links to drive organic growth
2. What links do your competitors have that you don’t (use AHREFS for this)
3. What content do you need onsite to create that will land links
Once you’ve nailed the opportunity and the strategy – the best way to acquire links from high authority publications is to create stories using your own data or 3rd party research data, publish a report on site and promote to your target sites! Email outreach is the easiest”
“Start by thinking about what makes the website you’re working on link-worthy. If you’re struggling to think of things, you need to fix this before worrying loads about outreach etc.”
“1. Link gap analysis vs your competitors on key areas of your site to see if you actually need links
2. Fix 404 pages that have incoming links
3. Find a connection between what you talk about and what the press talks about to get your content out there”
“Make sure to step outside of ‘standard’ link building. Try to get the whole company onboard. The best links I’ve won are from partner programs, events, and product releases. An SEO in isolation can’t build those.”
“1. The easiest & fasters way to build links is to reach out to people who you’re somehow connected with.
2. Adding personalization to your email outreach campaign is an obligation.
3. Reconsider your LB quality standards on a monthly basis.”
“Don’t rely on link metrics to define whether a website is good value or not. Many link networks & brokers manipulate those metrics. Check a website manually, review recent posts to ensure not just a pay per post website. Does the website have a legitimate reason to exist?”
“1. Before you set any long term strategies or obsess over scalability & automation, try to build at least one link manually so you truly understand what goes into finding a suitable site + getting them on board with linking out to you.
2. Don’t overly rely on one approach. Just because a tactic is not sexy, it doesn’t mean it won’t render solid results and teach you something valuable along the way. Build all the links and you will gain perspective on what works when.
3. Don’t get so caught up with external links (whether it’s skyscraper, digital PR, guest posting, resource pages, scholarships, visual assets, statistics pages, you-name-it) that you forget about the links you can control: Your internal links.”
“Lots of ‘digital PR’ talk lately: Make sure to understand the differences of a digital PR campaign and a ‘targeted SEO link building campaign’. When you target special money phrases for product pages, you often need a scalpel, not a shotgun.”
“1. Be aware that affiliate links don’t carry link equity and many companies can replace your / editorially placed links with affiliate ones that aren’t trackable.
2. Social can be a good source great examples recently of what people have shared on social become resources covered in editorial whilst we don’t think these links count, it is a good way of reaching someone who might want also want to share, the same with your newsletter
3. Suppliers, customers and directories are often good sources of links if they are relevant. (directories were badly spammed a few years ago, but if you consider them a local resource which is editorially created, it is often worth it).”
“Always approach link building with a win/win mentality, making sure each of your prospects can benefit from linking to you as well as you benefit from getting a link from their sites. Focus on getting really good at prospecting from the beginning and you’ll have 80% of the job done before sending a single outreach email”
“Don’t just replicate the strategy of your best-performing competitor – you’ll never catchup. The internet is a big place. There will be lots of relevant communities/audiences that you’ll be able to tap into if you do your research right.”
"A link isn’t just a loose connector, it’s embedded within a context of problems, needs and wishes. If you view links in a broader perspective, you end up with way more angles for your campaigns. For instance:
When it feels like you’ve run out of link prospects, switch up your prospecting angles. Running out of prospects sometimes happens if you’re only prospecting based on keywords you want to rank on. You can ask: who is close to your customer’s journey, but not a competitor?
Example: your business sells insurance to homeowners, so you reach out to real estate businesses. Or: who targets an interest that is correlating with (part of) your audience? Example: you sell VPN packages, so you reach out to gaming sites.
It makes sense that you connect with these individuals or companies, because their audience overlaps with yours. So if you feel stuck when you’re link building, pull yourself out of it by thinking about the context of a link. Because context is EMPEROR.”
“Link building outcomes can depend on your ability to build relationships. Every site is run by a person (editor or owner etc) or group of people, and at some point your content needs to pass their test of quality. Understand your target audience, be professional & get results!”
“* Mend current Links for quick wins and often, an improved UX and increased Conversion Rate
* Disrupted Links & PR (404s, redirect chains/loops, botched migrations) = Mend Crawlability
* Illogical Link Destinations (all to homepage, orphan pages, poor Crawlpaths) = Mend Relevance
* Disrupted Entities (experts, publishers, authors, govt. regulatory & licensing agencies) = Mend Inbound & External Links to Authority
* Disrupted Credibility (press releases, events, fundraisers, new products/features, growth) = Mend Notoriety
* Disrupted Trust (highest-authority Referring Domains now undergo multiple redirects post-migration) = Link Reclamation”
“Keep Relevancy Intact:
If you working for a ‘sports shoe company’, then a link from someone like Pfizer won’t help you much. Instead, if your brand gets some recognition from a sports athletic, it can do wonders. Focus should not be DA/DR, but relevance.”
“The best organic link building opportunities come from aligning the brand in the right space. If the client is a market leader, it is often enough to feed content to the relevant influencer group. Process driven link building outperforms link bait when it comes to enterprise SEO.”
“Don’t forget the value of the traffic from the link – any interaction where someone is recommending you (a key reason for them link!) is a chance to make a sale. Consider where that traffic lands, make sure it’s great!”