- Today you will learn exactly how to build powerful links to your website. In fact, I have used the strategies I am about to show you to get links from sites like Forbes, TechCrunch, Inc., Entrepreneur, and much more. I'm Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko.
Today I'm going to show you nine proven link building strategies and some advanced techniques I've never talked about before. Keep watching. (light music) We have a lot to cover in today's video so let's get started. I started my first blog back in 2010. Back then, building a black hat link was all the rage. My go-to strategies were actually things like article directories and link pyramids. Skakelpiramide? That sounds incredible. These black hat links worked well until Google unleashed its Penguin update. This update wiped out 98% of my Google traffic literally overnight. That's when I decided to do everything on white hat SEO. Thanks to White Hat Link Building Strategies I'm about to share with you, my organic traffic has come up like a rocket ship. I also started ranking for competitive keywords like video SEO, keyword research, on-page SEO and more. Let's kick things off without talking further about strategy number one, switch finishes. Imagine people publishing blog posts for the sole purpose of linking to quality content, the type of quality content you already publish on your website. That would be great, wouldn't it? Fortunately for us, this is a real thing and they are called link finishes. Here is an example of a link rounding. What exactly are the link summaries? Linking summaries are daily, weekly or monthly blog posts that summarize and link to outstanding content. This is, for example, a link I recently built from a finishing touch. Now let us outline the exact process I used to get the link. First of all, you need to find link summaries in your industry. Here are some search strings that work very well. Just put these search strings in Google and you need to find tons of high quality finishes. Once you've found the link rounding that looks like a good match, it's time to show off your content. Here is the email script I personally use. You want to send the script to the person doing the finishing. As you can see, this script is not intrusive or spammy. I just let the person know that my content exists and carefully suggest that they include it in their next round. If your post is suitable for that person's merger, you get a lovely 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 favorites of all time link building strategies. Why? You see that most people build links, they send generic photos that have no value. Can I please have a link? Thank you. Send. Here is the step-by-step process. First, add 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 soon. But let's go to step number two now. Find a website from which you want to get a link. You probably already have a few sites in mind. If not, only Google keywords are related to your industry. The sites that appear in the search results are great websites for getting backlinks. Last year, for example, I wanted to build links to this list of SEO tools so I tested things like SEO Checklist and SEO Tutorial. Next, it's time to look at broken links. Just visit a few pages to do so on the site you just found and run the Check My Links extension. This will reveal all the broken links on that page. Lastly, let the website owner know about their broken link and offer you content as a replacement. For example, if I find a broken link on someone's website, I send this email to them. Notice how personal my email is. The more you personalize your email, the more links you get. However, if they reply to my message, I sent them the broken link URL, I also replace my SEO tool post for the dead link. Because I have added value first, then ask for something in return, people like to contact me. Now it's time for strategy number three, build links from podcast. A few months ago I went to see where one of the sites in my niche got their backlinks and I noticed that a large part of their backlinks came from the podcasts. That's why I decided to guest on as many podcasts as I could. In fact, I appeared on more than 50 podcasts over the next year and 1/2. Not only have these podcasts brought me serious traffic but it has resulted in tons of high quality links. Moving on to our next technique creates branding strategies and methods. A few years ago, I was looking for some productivity tips and I came across this post from Merlin Mann. In this post, Merlin mentioned something called Inbox Zero, a productivity approach where you use your inbox as your to-do list. But that was not what caught my attention. What shocked me was that this simple idea generated over 5,000 backlinks. When I looked at the back links, 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 to try and name my strategies as well. The next time I talk 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 more than 9,000 times. If you look at the links, 90% of that is due to the fact that I gave my strategy a unique brand. Okay, go right to strategy number five, become a source for reporters and bloggers. Here's the deal. Fortunately, it's not as difficult as it probably sounds. In fact, it is very feasible thanks to a free service called HARO. HARO is like an appointment website for public relations. HARO connects bloggers and journalists who need resources to people who want links and press releases. I personally used HARO to build links for mega-news sites like Entrepreneur.com. To be clear, this strategy requires work and it is not always easy. But in my experience, this is one of the best ways to build quality links at scale. Let us undertake the step-by-step process. First register as a source. Once signed in, you will receive three emails a day from reporters looking for sources like this. If you find a request that fits well, send them your pitch. A while back, for example, I saw a HARO request from someone who wanted to know 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, we have strategy number six, ahead. A while back, one of my readers, Emil, was publishing the epic piece of content. But to do that, he will need to build links. Emil therefore decided to promote his post before even publishing it. This is known as pre-outreach. That's how it went down. First, Emil finds blogs that have written about employee wellbeing and he has sent this message to them. Because he didn't ask for a link, most of the people Emil spoke to were happy to hear from him. Once Emil left the post, he sent a link to everyone who responded to his first email. And this has resulted in a lot of social shares and a nice contextual feedback. With that, it's time for strategy seven, .edu resource page link building. It's no secret that linking from edu sites is super powerful. The question is: how do you get university websites? to contact you? .edu resource pages. This is how it works. Most universities have resource pages where it links to content that can help their students and faculty. Here is an example of a resource page related to nutrition and supplement content. 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 this, pop these search strings into Google. Then see if there is a piece of your content would fit the page well. Email an email to the person with the resource page this proven script. Keep that in mind. This is the bad news. The good news is, even one or two of these links can make a huge difference in your Google rankings. For example, I recently used this strategy to get a link from this resources page on the University of Michigan website. That single link made a significant dent in my organic traffic. If you thought it was cool, wait until you see strategy number eight, the moving man method. The moving man method is simple. First, look for websites, sources or businesses that are outdated, just re-named, or recently changed names. Then look for sites that still link to these outdated resources. Finally, let people know that they are linking to something that is outdated. Let me show you how it works with a real life example. A while back I read that a website for a major SEO agency was suddenly shut down. This meant that they had tons of pages on their website that were no longer working, pages that many people still linked to. Specifically, I noticed that an infographic about SEO on their website was no longer working, 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 a hrefs and pulled all their links. In the end, I emailed everyone still related to that infographic. I let them know that the image is no longer working. I also let them know that my infographic will make a wonderful replacement for the BlueGlass one. As you can see, people were more than happy to connect with me. Speaking of infographics, it's time for our last link building strategy, gastography. 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 wants to link to a website? consisting of 100% product and category pages? What did he do? First, Matt compiles an epic piece of content, an eventual guide to Australian gin. This guide contains everything anyone wants to know about gin from Australia in one place. Now, of course, Matt doesn'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 directory. All of these backlinks have boosted Matt's keyword ranking that his customers are looking for every day, Australian gin. Its content even appears in the highly sought after article. Now before we close this video, let me show you a nice bonus tip, find opportunities for guest posts with Google Images. That's right. I posted guests. Now, many people say that when it comes to building links, guest posting is dead. But is that true? Not really. In fact, if you're just getting started, guest posting is one of the best ways to build links to your website. For example, when I first started Backlinko, I posted guests like a lunatic. I have written over 50 guest posts and interviews in about a year. And the links I received from the guest post gave my organic traffic a nice early boost. That said, I was very strategic about things. I made sure I 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, it will look spammy. But if you write a great guest post for quality sites in your industry, those links help. The question is: how do you find sites that guests can post on? Google images. Here is the step-by-step process. First, look for someone in your niche who posts a lot of guests. Second, grab the URL of the head shot they use in their author bio. Lastly, load the URL into Google's reverse search. And boom, you get a list of places that guest posted is presented to you on a silver tray. Very cool. There you have it, nine of my favorite link building strategies of all time. If you've learned some fun new things from today's video, be sure to subscribe to the Backlinko YouTube channel right now. Click the subscribe button below this video. If you want exclusive SEO techniques that I only share with subscribers, go to Backlinko.com and jump on the newsletter. It's free. Now it's your turn. Which technique from today's video are you going to try first? Are you going to try to build a broken link? Or do you want to use Google Images? to find sites you can host? Anyway, let me know by leaving a comment below at the moment. Where were we? Wait. Link. It's like every word. Your lucky hybrid. So we have some funny moments? Then we can just do it all at the end. So-called funny moments. So what, oh. That's good. I might just record it. Yes, you have it opposite.
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