- Today you're gonna learn
exactly how to build powerful backlinks to your site.
In fact, I've used the strategies that I'm about to show you
to get links from sites like Forbes, TechCrunch, Inc.,
Entrepreneur, and more.
I'm Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko.
Today I'm gonna show you
nine proven link building strategies
and some advanced techniques
I've never heard anyone else talk about.
Keep watching.
(light music)
We have a lot to cover in today's video
so let's get started.
I started my first blog way back in 2010.
Back then, spammy black hat link building was all the rage.
In fact, my go-to strategies were things
like article directories and link pyramids.
Link pyramid?
That sounds amazing.
These black hat links worked okay
until Google unleashed its Penguin update.
This update wiped out
98% of my Google traffic literally overnight.
That's when I decided to go all in on white hat SEO.
Thanks to the white hat link building strategies
I'm about to share with you,
my organic traffic shot up like a rocket ship.
I also started to rank for competitive keywords
like video SEO, keyword research, on-page SEO, and more.
Without further ado, let's kick things off
with strategy number one, link roundups.
Imagine if people publish blog posts
for the sole purpose of linking out to quality content,
the type of quality content
that you already publish on your site.
That would be awesome, right?
Fortunately for us, that's a real thing
and they're called link roundups.
Here is an example of a link roundup.
What are link roundups exactly?
Link roundups are daily, weekly, or monthly blog posts
that curate and link to outstanding content.
For example, this is a link
that I recently built from a roundup.
Now let's break down the exact process that I used
to get that link.
First, you need to find link roundups in your industry.
Here are a few search strings that work really well.
Just pop these search strings into Google
and you should find tons of high-quality roundups.
Once you find the link roundup that seems like a good fit,
it's time to pitch your content.
Here is the email script that I personally use.
You want to send the script to the person
that runs the roundup.
As you can see, this script isn't pushy or spammy.
I just let the person know that my content exists
and gently suggest that they include it
in their next roundup.
If your post is a good fit for that person's roundup,
you'll get a sweet link.
That's all there is to it.
With that, it's time for our second strategy,
broken link building.
Broken link building is one of my all-time favorite
link building strategies.
Why?
You see, when most people build links,
they send generic pictures that offer zero value.
Can I have a link, please?
Thank you.
Send.
Here is the step-by-step process.
First, add Check My Links to Google Chrome.
Check My Links is a free Google Chrome extension
that finds broken links on any page.
I'll show you how to use this tool in a minute.
But for now, let's move on to step number two.
Find a site that you want to get a link from.
You probably already have a few sites in mind.
If not, just Google keywords related to your industry.
The sites that show up in the search results
are great sites to get backlinks from.
For example, last year I wanted to build links
to this list of SEO tools
so I googled things like SEO checklist and SEO tutorial.
Next, it's time to check for broken links.
To do this, just visit a few pages
on the site you just found
and run the Check My Links extension.
This will reveal all the broken links on that page.
Finally, let the site owner know about their broken link
and offer your content as a replacement.
For example, when I find a broken link on someone's site,
I send them this email.
Note how personalized my email is.
The more you personalize your email,
the more links you'll get.
Anyway when they reply to my message,
I sent them the URL of the broken link,
I also pitch my SEO tools post as a replacement
for the dead link.
Because I added value first,
then ask for something in return,
people were happy to link to me.
Now it's time for strategy number three,
build links from podcasts.
A few months ago, I was checking out
where one of the sites in my niche got their backlinks from
and I noticed that a big chunk of their backlinks
came from going on podcasts.
So I decided to become a guest
on as many podcasts as I could.
In fact, I appeared on over 50 podcasts
over the next year and 1/2.
Not only did these podcasts send some serious traffic my way
but they resulted in tons of high-quality backlinks.
Moving right along to our next technique,
create branded strategies and methods.
A few years ago, I was searching for some productivity tips
and I came across this post by Merlin Mann.
In this post, Merlin outlined something called Inbox Zero,
a productivity approach where you use your inbox
as your to-do list.
But that wasn't what grabbed my attention.
What shocked me was that this simple idea
generated over 5,000 backlinks.
When I looked over those backlinks, I noticed a pattern.
Most people link to the page
because it outlined a strategy
with a unique name, Inbox Zero.
That's when I decided that I would try
naming my strategies too.
The next time I talked about a strategy on my blog,
I called it the skyscraper technique.
How did it go?
The post where I first mentioned the skyscraper technique
has been linked to over 9,000 times.
If you look at those links,
90% of them are due to the fact
that I gave my strategy a unique branded name.
Okay, moving right along to strategy number five,
become a source for reporters and bloggers.
Here is the deal.
Fortunately this isn't as hard as it probably sounds.
In fact, it's very doable
thanks to a free service called HARO.
HARO is like a dating site for public relations.
HARO connects bloggers and journalists that need sources
to people that want links and press mentions.
I personally used HARO to build links
for mega news sites like Entrepreneur.com.
To be clear, this strategy takes work
and it's not always easy.
But in my experience, it's one of the best ways
to build quality backlinks at scale.
With that, let's dive into the step-by-step process.
First, register as a source.
Once you're signed up, you'll get three emails a day
from reporters looking for sources like this.
When you find a request that seems like a good fit,
send them your pitch.
For example, a while back, I saw a HARO request
from someone that wanted to know
what's the difference between graphic design and web design.
So I submitted this pitch
and I got this sweet link from rasmussen.edu,
which is an authoritative edu domain.
Not bad.
Next up, we have strategy number six, pre-outreach.
A while back, one of my readers, Emil,
was getting ready to publish this epic piece of content.
But for that to happen, he'd need to build links.
So Emil decided to promote his post
before he even published it.
This is known as pre-outreach.
Here is how it went down.
First, Emil found blogs that wrote about employee wellness
and he sent them this message.
Because he didn't beg for a link,
most of the people that Emil talked to
were happy to hear from him.
Then once Emil's post went live,
he sent a link to everyone
that responded to his first email.
And that led to a bunch of social shares
and a nice contextual backlink.
With that, it's time for strategy seven,
.edu resource page link building.
It's no secret that links from edu websites
are super powerful.
The question is, how do you actually get university sites
to link to you?
.edu resource pages.
Here is how it works.
Most universities have resource pages
where they link to content
that could help their students and faculty.
Here is an example of a resource page
that links to content about nutrition and supplements.
For example, let's say you have a website about nutrition.
First, you want to find resource pages
like the one I just showed you.
To do that, pop these search strings into Google.
Then look to see if a piece of your content
would be a good fit for that page.
Finally, email the person that runs that resource page
this proven script.
Now keep this in mind.
That's the bad news.
The good news is, even one or two of these links
can make a massive difference in your Google rankings.
For example, I recently used this strategy
to get a link from this resource page
on the University of Michigan website.
That single link made a significant dent
in my organic traffic.
If you thought that was cool,
wait until you see strategy number eight,
the moving man method.
The moving man method is simple.
First, find webpages, resources, or businesses
that are outdated, just rebranded,
or recently changed names.
Then find sites that are still linking
to these outdated resources.
Finally, let people know that they're linking to something
that's out of date.
Let me show you how this works with a real-life example.
A while back, I read that a website
for a big SEO agency suddenly shut down.
This meant they had tons of pages on their site
that weren't working anymore,
pages that lots of people were still linking to.
Specifically I noticed that an infographic about SEO
on their site wasn't working anymore,
which was perfect because I had just published
my own SEO-focused infographic.
Nice.
That was the first step.
Next, I had to see who actually linked to this infographic.
So I fired up a hrefs and pulled all their links.
Finally, I emailed everyone
that still link to that infographic.
I let them know that the image wasn't working anymore.
I also let them know that my infographic
will make a great replacement for the BlueGlass one.
As you can see, people were more than happy to link to me.
Speaking of infographics, it's time
for our last link building strategy, guestographics.
Last year, Backlinko reader Matt Lawry had a problem.
Matt runs Yellow Octopus, an e-commerce site in Australia
that sells gifts and he quickly realized something,
it's really hard to build links to e-commerce sites.
After all, who would want to link to a site
that's made up of 100% product and category pages?
What did he do?
First, Matt put together an epic piece of content,
an ultimate guide to Australian gin.
This guide contained everything someone would want to know
about gin from Australia in one place.
Now of course Matt didn't just sit back
and wait for the links to roll in.
He promoted his content with email outreach.
Because Matt reached out to the right people
and sent them personalized emails,
some people even offered to link to his guide.
All these backlinks boosted Matt's rankings for a keyword
that his customers search for every day, Australian gin.
His content even shows up
in the highly coveted featured snippet spot.
Now before we close out this video,
let me show you a cool bonus tip,
find guest posting opportunities with Google Images.
That's right.
I said guest posting.
Now a lot of people say
that when it comes to building links,
guest posting is dead.
But is it true?
Not really.
In fact, when you're just starting out,
guest posting is one of the best ways
to build links to your site.
For example, when I first started Backlinko,
I guest posted like a madman.
I wrote over 50 guest posts and interviews in about a year.
And the links I got from guest posting
gave my organic traffic a nice early boost.
That said, I was very strategic about things.
I made sure to only write guest posts
for quality sites in my niche.
So if you run a site about the paleo diet
and write a guest post for a site about iPhones,
that's gonna look spammy.
But when you write mind-blowing guest posts
for quality sites in your industry,
those links do help.
The question is, how do you find sites to guest post on?
Google Images.
Here is the step-by-step process.
First, find someone in your niche
that writes a lot of guest posts.
Second, grab the URL of the headshot that they use
in their author bio.
Finally, pop that URL into Google reverse image search.
And boom, you get a list of places
that guest posted presented to you on a silver platter.
Very cool.
There you have it,
nine of my all-time favorite link building strategies.
If you learned some cool new stuff from today's video,
make sure to subscribe
to the Backlinko YouTube channel right now.
Just click in the subscribe button below this video.
If you want exclusive SEO techniques
that I only share with subscribers,
head over to Backlinko.com and hop on the newsletter.
It's free.
Now it's your turn.
Which technique from today's video are you gonna try first?
Are you gonna try broken link building?
Or do you want to start using Google Images
to find sites to guest post on?
Either way, let me know
by leaving a comment below right now.
Where were we?
Wait.
Link.
That's like every word.
You lucky bastard.
So we have some funny moments?
Then we can just do those all at the end.
Supposedly funny moments.
So what, oh.
That's good.
I might just take that up.
Yeah, you got it rough over there.