Gathering links
-
There are numerous "Ultimate Guides" to linkbuilding, outreach, etc., and they are all written to teach you the art of linkbuilding.
The only thing these guides don't tell you is that following them takes a massive amount of time and doesn't guarantee to get good links at all.
We're all in online marketing, and maybe we online marketeers are familiar with linking to other websites, posts that we like, etc. and maybe that's why we can write these guides but in other niches it really doesn't work that way
I'm wondering what techniques/tactics/strategies you guys are using in less straightforward niches to get quality links to your blogposts.
To give you an idea, we launched an article a couple of weeks ago targeting a very competitive keyword. The article got shared over 100 times on LinkedIn/Twitter/etc. and already ranking pretty good, but REAL backlinks are still missing. How to get people to link to that article?
-
Thanks for the well documented answer. Didn't go through all the resources mentioned yet, but I know what I'm doing tonight I think
-
No worries - only been out a week or so I think
-Andy
-
Hi Andy
I have never seen this before! Thanks for sharing!
Patrick
-
Hi there
I have some suggestions...
-
Do some research
-
What information is missing in your industry?
-
What are users actively searching for?
-
Where are they currently participating in conversation?
-
What language do they use in search and those discussions?
-
How do they digest their content?
-
Here's a quick resource on content gap analysis from Edge Multimedia
-
Take advantage of great tools like Open Site Explorer and SEMRush to get a handle on your competition and what's working / not working for them
-
Build out content on the site based on your research
-
Mind your obvious onsite SEO fundamentals (titles / meta descriptions / schema / content length and language / etc.) (resource)
-
Lay your site architecture out in an easy to use / understand fashion (Information Architecture for SEO)
-
Repurpose content through video / images / guides / e-books / how-tos / etc
-
Take advantage of internal site search functionality
-
What are users searching for on your site?
-
Ask for feedback or input to include from other industry authors or sites
-
If you ask others to participate, they might share your content or include a link on their site
-
Distribute that content through social platforms / industry blogs / email marketing / distribution networks (resource)
-
Reach out to various industry outlets and influencers to let them know you wrote a piece they may find valuable
-
Offer your articles as data points for future content created on other sites
-
Offer your articles or pieces as solutions to problems
-
Offer your articles or pieces as updates to other sites content
-
Participate in the discussions that are happening in your industry
-
Social
-
You could take advantage of features like Twitter's Advanced Search and start fielding questions
-
Use Advanced Search to answer questions with your content
-
News sites
-
Industry forums
-
Q&As
All of the above will help with not only the ideation of content, but it will also establish you as an accessible authority in your industry. When you develop that trust with your audience and peers, they trust what you share and create, thus they are more likely to not only share your content, but link to it as well.
If your content has a clear audience and goal, you will be surprised to find how easy it is to find link building opportunities and who to reach out to to obtain them. Offer value and the links will come, it's just a matter of research and building relationships with your audience and other industry outlets/peers.
Link building is a slow burn process, but once it gets going, it's easier and easier and easier.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
-
Get the low down from 90 experts here
https://blog.ahrefs.com/white-hat-link-building-expert-roundup/
-Andy
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
-
Am I better off with ten links from one site or one link from ten sites?
I am writing a series of linked-back articles for a highly-ranked web publisher, but wonder if I'd be better off sharing the articles across different sites. My goal is to grow our domain authority and SEO rankings.
Link Building | | Lysarden0 -
Link Value
My question is how valuable is getting a link from a PA 71 with roughly 20 links on it. I guess I am saying how many links from a PA of 30 would be a comparable indicator. I understand there is an almost exponential value of authority as they go higher, but I am looking for a good explanation from a technical aspect. Hypothetical Scenario Would a person be better off pursing 20 links from PA25 pages, or would you be better only getting 1 from the PA71 all things equal.
Link Building | | mbarden260 -
Using sitewide links to improve link profile?
Hi Guys... When I look at my competitor's link profile, they often have thousands of backlinks. For example, one of our main competitor, he got 3,400 backlinks in total but only 80 referring domains. When I look at my link profile, I have around 50-60 referring domains, but hardly 80 backlinks. My question is, is it okay to get a few sitewide links (no-follow of course!) to get to the thousands backlinks? Or I will be able to achieve top rankings with my current link profile? Thanks!!
Link Building | | TheSEOGuy10 -
Root Domain Link for Affiliate's Link
It seems my affiliate link: http://www.hrmsplugins.com?partners=21 is not being considered as a "root domain" backlink when this link is used on their website. Is there a reason for this?
Link Building | | delphia0 -
Is it worth it to link to sites that link to you in guest posts?
Suppose you published a guest post on a quality site and you link to a previous guest post you have written for another site (which links to you). In theory you could send link juice to the page that links to you for a second order effect. Has anyone seen results from this tactic?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Keeping our old links
Hello Forum I just worked on redoing an eCommerce website and part of the revisions were to change the site's URL structure. What I'm curious about is how to maintain the external links we had prior to redoing the website so that these external links continue to point to their respective product pages on the new website. From what I understand, you need remap the old links to the new links in your CMS and set up 301 redirects. What's the easiest way to find the all the old link URLs and remap them? Or is there a different, easier way?
Link Building | | pano0 -
Reciprocal links
Hi SEOmoz Pros, We have vendors from whom I was hoping to get links. To make it more enticing to them I was planning to select a small number of vendors (with good site metrics-PA, DA, PR) and create a "Featured Vendor" module on some pages that would link back to the vendor's site as well--thereby created reciprocal links. I was planning to only have one vendor to a page and only for the pages that we are targeting locally. My hope is to help boost the ranking of those pages. Is it okay to offer our vendors to link back to their site or should I ask for a one-way link back to our page and pitch it as exposure for their brand?? Lastly, does Google penalize for these types of links? Thanks!
Link Building | | AC_Pro1 -
Reciprocal Linking Strategy
Hello All, I wanted to ask something regarding a link-building tactic that I was thinking about trying. Many sites have what seem to be automated systems for adding a URL to a page in a site, but first require a reciprocal link to be posted from a page on your own. I was thinking about starting up a separate small blog/information site that related to subjects in my industry, and posting links to related resources on other sites as well. Could I use this as a vehicle for acquiring links that point to my main domain, while reciprocating links from the separate domain where the blog/informational site was located? Has anyone tried this before? Do these automated systems only accept a reciprocal link request if a link is verified from the same domain that you request your link to be pointed at? I realize that some webmasters who verify links manually may have an issue with this, however I feel I can overcome that concern more often than not by delivering quality, relevant content on the informational site (as well as promoting that site separately). I think any savy webmaster would prefer it this way as well. I'm certain this has been tried before, but would like to find out what kind of results I might expect. Any experience or advice that may be given here will be much appreciated. Mike
Link Building | | mreisbeck0