How would you like to learn just one link building strategy that streamlines all of your content creation and online efforts?
If you run a business, you’ve probably heard about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and the importance of a link building strategy and link building tactics to improve your search visibility.
Unfortunately there are 100’s of ways to build links, not all of which align with the Google Guidelines. People talk about tactics, strategies, white hat, black hat and a whole range of SEO jargon that gets confusing very quickly!
So in this article, I’m going to simplify everything. I’ll teach you the best link building strategy and share a link building tactic that isn’t risky AF.
Table of Contents:
– What is Link Building?
– Why is Link Building Important?
– Link Building Strategy
– Link Building Tactics
– Link Building Software
– Link Building Course
What is Link Building?
Link building is the practice of increasing the number of websites linking to yours.
More technically, it’s increasing the number of hyperlinks (aka backlinks) that take people from one location to another. i.e. from one website to another or from one webpage to another.
Why is Link Building Important?
To improve your search visibility and drive more traffic to your website, you should be doing two things. Firstly you should be creating keyword driven content on a consistent basis. If you’re not doing this yet, start doing it. Secondly, you should be building links to your newly published blog content.
But why is link building important? Well, the very first algorithm that Google used to rank webpages was based on the number and quality of links to a website. This was called PageRank.
Google’s algorithm is much more complex now but it still uses links to a website as the underlying factor to determine its authority and rankings. But not just any links. You have to have quality links that are gained naturally. i.e. from people that actually want to share your content not by participating in Link Schemes.
CAUTION: Don’t Participate In Link Schemes
Do not participate in link schemes. If you do, your website might get blacklisted by Google and disappear completely. This is known as Black Hat SEO and should be avoided at all costs. Also, If you plan on hiring an agency or freelancer to do your link building, I’d highly recommend making sure they aren’t using link schemes. If they say all of their methods are ‘White Hat’, kindly ask them to detail the actual methods they’ll be using. This way you can check for yourself against the Google Guidelines.
Link Building Strategy
What is Link Building Strategy?
Your Link Building Strategy is your overall plan of action to naturally gain backlinks to your keyword driven website content.
The Best Link Building Strategy
The best link building strategy and the ONLY strategy that you need is to create and share valuable content that actually helps your target audience.
Don’t just create content for the sake of creating content because everyone else is doing it. Research your competitors and see how they are providing value. Aim to create content that is 10x better than theirs. If you create and share valuable content, people will naturally share and link to it.
Link Building Tactics
There are 100s of link building tactics aka off page seo techniques that you can use. However, many of them go against Google’s Guidelines so you need to be careful. I won’t bother listing out the never ending list of tactics. Instead, check out this awesome article from Backlinko. It is the most complete list of off page SEO techniques that I’ve found!
However, I strongly believe that your tactics should revolve around building relationships with your audience and influencers within your niche.
One of the best ways to do this is by simply reaching out to people and helping them. By helping others and providing massive value, you will increase the chances of people naturally linking to your content.
One of the best ways to do this is through Email Outreach.
Gaining Backlinks Through Email Outreach
When it comes to email outreach, it’s all about personalising your emails and providing value where possible. You could reach out to a website owner letting them know how much you enjoyed one of their recent articles. Or perhaps let them know about a problem you found on their website.
Here’s a script I wrote to give you an idea. Please don’t use it word for word otherwise everyone’s email outreach campaigns will end up being the same! Try to personalise it as much as you can. Season to taste. i.e. re-write so that it matches your own style of writing and communication.
Hi [insert name],
Your article about [insert article link] was really interesting!
I especially liked how you [insert something specific to their article].
While I was reading it I noticed you linked to another site talking about [insert topic].
So I thought I’d reach out and let you know that I recently wrote a detailed guide to [insert link to your improved article].
Do you think this might be of interest to your audience?
I believe it could be a nice addition to your page and something that could really benefit your audience.
Would love to know your thoughts…
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Talk soon,
Max
Link Building Software
Backlink building can take a LOOOONG time and a lot of effort. Thankfully, there are awesome tools that will make your life MUCH easier. They don’t build links for you (stay away from tools that do this) but they will speed up the whole process. Below are tools I use and highly recommend.
SEMrush
This tool can be used to find link building opportunities (it’s actually an all-in-one marketing toolkit!). Instead of manually finding each website that has linked to similar content to yours, you can use SEMrush instead to find potentially 1000’s of potential websites to contact.
Here is how to find 1000s of backlink opportunities. I’ve used this article as an example.
1. Sign up to a SEMrush 7 day trial.
2. Type your topic or keyword phrase into Google to see the top result.
3. Copy paste the top Google result’s URL into SEMrush.
4. Go to the ‘Backlinks’ tab and view ‘Referring Domains’. These are all of the websites currently linking to the article.
5. Export CSV list of all referring domains. This is now your list of websites to contact using the aforementioned script.
Hunter.io
Hunter.io can literally save you 1000’s of hours. Instead of manually visiting the websites from your SEMrush CSV list and writing down their contact details, you can upload your list to Hunter’s Bulk Email Finder, which automatically finds email addresses associated to each website. Pretty cool aye!?
1. Start using hunter.io for free.
2. Use the Bulk Email finder. Click ‘New Bulk’ and upload your CSV file list. Hunter.io outputs a list of email addresses for you to contact 🙂
Active Campaign
Once you’ve got your list of emails, you’re finally ready to do email outreach. For those who prefer to automate their email outreach and don’t mind giving up some degree of personalisation, I recommend using ActiveCampaign.
I recommend using this tool for all of your email marketing efforts (not just email outreach for link building).
a. Sign up to ActiveCampaign.
b. Create a ‘List’ and import your CSV list of email addresses.
c. ‘Create a Campaign’
d. Make sure to include a couple follow-up emails.
Link Building Course
Need more help? There is an amazing online course called ‘The Authority Site System‘ that has taught me everything I know about link building, keyword research and content creation.
They even have a free training video that guides you step by step on how to do all of the above (+ much more).
Highly recommend if you are looking to learn!
Final Thoughts
Increasing the number of websites linking to yours is something that will happen organically if you focus on creating and sharing content that is valuable to your target audience.
The best link building strategy is simply creating valuable content.
There are 100’s of link building tactics you can potentially use but the tried and true tactic is email outreach.
I hope this article simplified this topic for you. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below.