Difficulty getting relevant backlinks
-
I run a very niche blog on getting section 8 housing. I've had the blog for about 6 years and have paid attention to it on and off. For the past few months, I've been ON again. What's appealing to me is the amount of potential traffic the keywords have and small competition. I have knowledge on the subject. I've read Moz seo guides, etc...
The problem is government sites rank high (understandably) or other sites that are nonsense / scams when you search 'section 8 application'. It's very hard to find active bloggers to do link exchange is with as the sites that rank high are trying to scam people and obviously I can't get government back links. I've tried reaching out to people with no avail. I think I have good informative content. All of my adsense goes to charity but at this point it's not much. I'd like to get it out there, white-hat style, but I'm having difficulty. Any suggestions (please be specific), on how I can target sites that would be relevant to this topic and not do generic back-linking (unless you think news submissions, etc will work)?
Thanks!
-
Thank you very much for the thoughtful answer and the helpful advice!
-
Oh boy this is a fun one! Full disclosure: I used to run marketing/growth on HotPads.com for about 18 months and we targeted some Section 8 queries, though as you say the space is very opaque and full of spam. It's also a hard space to monetize because Section 8 is low-income and most of these landlords are not making much money from their properties, so they in turn don't have much to spend on marketing etc.
Tough space, as I said.
A few things I take exception to in your original post that I'd like to clear up first:
- Don't be looking for "link exchanges". That tactic died in 2010. Instead you could look to establish relationships with other bloggers talking about low-income ways of living and exchange posts on each other's sites. This is a totally whitehat way to do it.
- You can absolutely get .gov links. Why not? They link to good resources as much as anybody else.
- Look at local chambers of commerce and places that have low-income housing pages and reach out to them asking them to link to some of your articles, or share via social media, or in their email newsletters. It's much easier to get links once you've established yourself as an authority, but of course it's an old chicken-and-egg problem.
If I were you, I'd take your main competitors and see where they are getting links from then figure out how you a) get those links and b) where the gaps are. If you identify, for example, that .edu sites are awesome link acquisition then go crazy getting a big old list of them and doing your outreach. Sure you'll get some of the same links, but I bet you'll get a bunch that your competitors don't also have.
Hope that helps!
John
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How much time does it takes for a backlink to get registered in Google? My basketball anime website has been live since start of this week and Google has not registered any backlink.
So my website https://www.animedhfa.com/basketball-anime/ about basketball Anime has shown no changes in DA or backlinks. It has been 5 days perhaps since it went live.
Link Building | | ahmad74750 -
My Backlinks are indexed in Ahrefs But Not Indexed in MOZ. Why?
I Create backlinks for my website to Increase DA But Backlinks are indexed and Ahrefs Show that backlinks but MOZ is showing backlinks. I am confuse Can you explain?
Link Building | | Seogamesokay1a1 -
Backlink Building - is it worth it?
I've got a UK-based site with about 10,000 backlinks, according to majestic, and just 4 according to Open Site Explorer? Confusing! Rivals tend to have more - 28,000 in the case of our nearest competitors. So I'm not sure the best way to go about building backlinks? Or if it's worth actively seeking to build them? The index page of the site has a Moz PA of 45 (DA = 35) and I'm looking for any ways to increase these - need to get the DA up to 73 to compete with largest rivals. One of our main rivals has about 60 .edu links - would be great to emulate that, but I'm also not sure how you go about this? i.e. when you spot a good backlink someone else has, how would you begin the process of also getting that link?
Link Building | | abisti20 -
Backlink redirects and resulting SEO impact
Hi, Please see the target URLs on the links in this article: http://www.nextgov.com/technology-news/tech-insider/2015/07/government-hacked-yet-again-its-time-make-government-cybersecurity-national-issue/118561/ As you can see, there is a redirect in place, presumably for tracking purposes. Do these links carry full SEO value?
Link Building | | mikekeeper0 -
What are your favorite tactics for getting links to money-pages?
We've got content marketing and other great tactics for getting links to content pages, but what are your favorite tactics for getting links to your money pages (i.e. product pages, landing pages, devices pages, sales letters, etc.) For example: For certain sites (especially some ecommerce sites), one can get a few backlinks by doing giveaways, contests, or events Some sites can give their product to bloggers to review If you're selling an exciting product and/or a product that appeals to a passionate user base, such tactics can work great. There are some sites that such tactics won't work very well for, though. For example, if you sell a boring or highly specialized product that bloggers won't want to review or giveaway as a contest prize - such as valves used in a specific commercial application, or an expensive B2B product that you can't really giveaway. Creativity is of course important, but sometimes it can only take you so far. What are your favorite strategies for getting quality backlinks to your "money pages" especially for sites that don't fit into the "ecommerce site selling cool stuff" category?
Link Building | | AdamThompson0 -
Backlinks on an older domain which is now 301
Hi What is the best way to see what backlinks one of my domains has pointing at it? It is an older domain and is no longer being used for marketing purposes and has a 301 redirect on it. However when looking at this older domain in opensiteexplorer it does not show what the links are because it redirects to the newer domain name
Link Building | | ocelot0 -
How do websites get links here...
Does anyone know how people get into the "Top Links on This Topic" section of the Huffington Post? I can see that the "Around the Web" section is curated by someone, in this case "Jeff Muskus" but there is no indication how the Top Links on This Topic appear on a page. The only thing I noticed is that the original article appearing in HP is almost a year older than any of the referenced links. Image: http://epicscripts.com/HuffPo.jpg Original link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/23/abuse-victim-lawsuit-trea_n_549542.html
Link Building | | cgman0 -
How to get a plain text instead of csv output for backlink analyzer?
The link analyzer looks really great, I'm using it now to do some reverse engineering and it is seemingly able to give me far more than just the 1k limit we can get from yahoo site. But it spits out the results to a csv file which just has everything bunched up into a bunch of gibberish. Is there a way to get a plain text file so its readable/usable? Or how to convert or view the csv file properly? Thanks
Link Building | | googlealchemist0