List of Advanced Link Building Techniques
No matter how advanced you are in your link building career,
there’s always room to take things to the next level. So if you feel like
you’re stuck in a blog commenting rut or you’ve hit an article submission wall,
try out any of the following advanced link building techniques to improve your
site’s performance:
On-Site Promotions
1. Fix your internal links – If you aren’t yet
maximizing your internal link structure, address these elements before seeking
inbound links. Clean up your own house first before you start inviting
guests over!
2. Host “best of” contests – People love to be
recognized for their efforts, so creating your own “Best of the Web”
competition should help you procure at least a handful of links back from your
winners.
3. Uncover your site’s 404 links – If inbound links
pointing at your website result in 404 pages due to moved or deleted content,
set up 301 redirects to point these links (and their corresponding link juice)
to a current page on your site.
4. Curate the web’s content – Becoming known
for providing the best weekly link roundups in your industry is an easy way to
generate both valuable web content and plenty of inbound links.
5. Start a petition – If you feel
strongly about a chosen issue within your field, starting a petition that’s
linked to by others in your field can have a positive effect on your site’s
SEO.
6. Use the TYNT plugin – The TYNT plugin automatically
appends a link back to your site onto content that’s been copied and pasted
from your pages to another website. It’s an easy way to secure links from
those who would have otherwise stolen your content.
1. Conduct competitive research – If you’re running
out of ideas for link prospects, take a look at your competitors’ link profiles
using tools like Majestic SEO or the Open Site Explorer to identify more
options.
2. Monitor backlinking partners – Most link building tools give you
the opportunity to monitor the sites that are linking in to your pages.
If you see changes in this list, contact former link partners to determine why
your site was dropped and how to get the link reactivated.
3. Build links to links – At Single Grain, we call this “Linkception.” Basically, the idea is that by building
second and third tier links to your primary backlinks, you’ll strengthen their
impact on your site’s overall performance.
4. Use blogroll lookups to find expired sites with link juice
– Take a look at Jon Cooper’s tutorial on identifying link
building opportunities from expired blogroll linking sites in his post on
SEOBook titled, “Creative Broken Link
Building Tips.”
5. Offer to update content on external sites for links – Monitor the SERPs
for your target keywords regularly, looking for high ranking results that
contain out-of-date information. In these instances, contact the
webmasters attached to the sites and offer to update the content free of charge
in exchange for a backlink.
6. Offer to remove malware for links – Similarly, if you
notice sites in your target SERPs that carry the message “This site may have
been compromised,” contact the associated webmasters an offer to fix the
infections in exchange for backlinks (assuming you have enough technical skill
to do so).
7. Build deep links – As you’re building links, look for
opportunities to link directly to the deep pages on your website. Doing
so will increase the odds of having your more relevant internal pages (versus
your generic home page) ranked well in the natural SERPs.
8. Use advanced Google queries to find link partners – Expand your
search for potential link building partners using any of the queries found in
Single Grain’s blog article, “25 Search Queries to
Help You Find Link Building Prospects.”
9. Ask for backlinks on sites with link lists – As you’re surfing
the web, make a note of websites in your industry that have lists of links,
recommended partners or recommended resources. Get in the habit of firing
off a quick email asking for your site’s inclusion any time you encounter one
of these lists.
Social Media
1. Connect with power users on social networking websites – Building your
social networks occurs much faster when you leverage the existing followings of
power users by forming relationships with these authority figures.
2. Use Twitter’s “Twitter Cards” – Twitter’s recently
released “Twitter Cards” system allows you
to attach media experiences to tweets that link back to your content, making
them more appealing – and thus, more likely to be shared – compared to standard
messages.
3. Update wikis in your industry – Contributing to
any group-managed wikis in your industry won’t just score you links.
They’ll help to enhance your perceived authority within your field as well.
4. Ask readers to share your web content – Plenty of
webmasters are afraid to “ask for the close” (in this case, asking for a social
media share of your blog content), but this is a mistake. Readers are
often happy to help you out, but they often need the motivation of being asked
before they’ll take action.
Content Marketing
1. Experiment with instructographics – Infographics (that is, expanded image that visualize data in
an interesting way) are hot right now, but the next big thing in the digital
marketing world will be instructographics (which seek to teach, rather than
simply inform).
2. Reverse engineer viral content – If you see a content marketing piece that’s performing well, try
to isolate the factors that have made it successful. Applying these
lessons to your own campaigns should help to increase the number of inbound links
you receive.
3. Secure regular guest author columns – Don’t just look
for one-off guest posting opportunities. Try to secure regular columns on
top industry news sites that will increase the amount of inbound links and
referral traffic you’re able to secure.
4. Publish content pieces in multiple formats – If you write a
great article, why not publish it as a PDF, audio interview and video as
well? The more formats you release, the wider the audience you’ll reach –
and, consequently, the more links you’ll acquire.
5. Publish Creative Commons photos – Bloggers these days are desperate for high quality, Creative
Commons licensed images. If you’re handy with a camera, publishing these
files in exchange for links back to your site can significantly improve your off-site
SEO.
6. Try “ego baiting” – Writing posts that flatter leaders
within your industry will help you to develop relationships with these
potential mentors, while at the same time earning you backlinks from the
leaders’ existing followers.
Expanding Your Web Presence
1. Search the web for unlinked brand mentions – Every so often,
run a Google search for your name, your company’s name, your branded keywords
and your website URL. If you come across brand mentions that aren’t
linked back to your site, contact the webmasters in question to request a
backlink.
2. Use Google alerts to track unlinked brand mentions – At the same time,
set up Google Alerts for these keyword phrases so that you’ll be notified
whenever they’re used on other websites.
3. Submit testimonials – If you’ve used products or services
that are popular in your industry, offer to provide testimonials to their sales
pages in exchange for a link back to your website.
4. Submit your site for consideration in contests – Plenty of
industries have their own existing “best of the web” type competitions.
If you know of any, submit your site for consideration as often as possible.
5. Do something newsworthy – If you want to secure press
attention, try actually doing something newsworthy! Make a large donation
to charity, set an audacious goal or undertake some other action that’s unusual
enough to earn your interest and backlinks from your audience.
What techniques am
I missing? If you have any other unusual or advanced link building
techniques that have made a difference in your site’s performance, share your
recommendations in the comments section below:
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