Category: Blogs page

Is Link Building Dead?

There was once a time when black hat SEO and spammy link building tactics reigned supreme. However, over the years Google has been slowly patching the loopholes in its algorithms. This has led many people to wonder whether link building is dead for good.

So, is link building really dead? The short answer is no. Link building may not be as straightforward as it used to be but it’s still instrumental to your website’s rankings and traffic. There may be a future devoid of link building but that’s not approaching anytime soon!

The next important question to ask is: How can you still make the most of link building in 2022? Read on to explore the merits of link building in the modern internet landscape and how you can stay on top of your linking game!

Is Link Building Dead For Good?

We’ve already established that link building isn’t quite dead and buried just yet. To elaborate on the ‘why’ and the ‘how’, let’s revisit the glory days of link building and what it has morphed into today.

Link Building Then: The Golden Age

At the turn of the century, links were more important than ever before. Paired with the right keywords, linking tricks worked like magic. Countless sites with highly irrelevant content popped up high on Google, ruining the search experience.

Seeing how unnatural links were used so successfully in the early 2000s, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that link building worked wonders. That was until 2012 when Google released a new Penguin update that dealt a massive blow to black hat link builders. This directly targeted low-quality linking strategies and rewarded websites with organic links and good content.

As sites that were solely propped up using black hat link building were devalued, Google pushed people to focus on what really mattered: quality.

Link Building Now: Quality Over Quantity

Today, content marketers have finally embraced a more consumer-friendly approach that prefers quality over quantity. That’s not to say that links hold no power anymore. It’s quite the opposite actually! Links are still a major ranking factor on Google.

To explain why it’s so difficult to decouple links from the ranking algorithm, let’s take a look at what link building actually implies. Google’s job is to list the most relevant resources for any given query. Links are essentially a vote in the website’s favor, making it easier for Google to find the most useful sites. The more high-quality links vote for your website’s relevance, the higher you will rank.

However, the definition of a high-quality link now includes the relevancy of the link. This means that there will be no one size fits all solution to your ranking problems. To rank higher, you need to target backlinks on outlets that your audience is invested in. Your links need to follow your goals, not the other way around!

Can You Improve your SEO with Link Building Alone?

When it comes to the visibility of your website, link building is still one of the most powerful SEO tactics available. In fact, according to a survey by Aira, 92% of marketers think that link building will remain a vital ranking factor in the next five years as well. But is a solid link building strategy the only thing you need to ensure success? The answer is no! Link building is simply one side of the coin.

The other side is high-quality content. When you’re focusing too much on your linking strategies, it can be easy to forget that the number one ranking factor for Google is useful, well-structured, and relevant content. Once you’ve tailored your content to perfection, the next thing to tackle is attaining high-quality links.

In short, keeping the quality over quantity rule in mind, link building pairs beautifully with amazing content to drive traffic and boost your rankings.

How to Channel the Power of Link Building in 2022

Is Link Building Dead?

Google has gotten insanely good at identifying the majority of unnatural links that indicate black hat or gray hat tactics so they aren’t a viable option anymore.

Let’s take a look at which areas you should focus on in 2022 and how you can utilize the current digital landscape for SEO and marketing.

1. Experiment with New Content Mediums

In the age of social media and influencers, creativity is heavily rewarded. Putting all your eggs in one basket is simply not good enough. You have to innovate continuously and experiment with different mediums to create brand new opportunities.

The goal is to find link-worthy content ideas that cannot be easily replicated. Some good ideas include infographics, statistics, and graphs that provide bite-sized information in fun ways.

2. Make Valuable Connections

Modern link building is all about making meaningful and personalized connections with authors and publishers in the field. The days of cold emailing and spamming are gone. Instead of investing in mass outreach, you can get much better results with a more targeted approach.

Today you can engage relevant professionals through social media platforms such as Twitter. A good strategy is to start liking, retweeting, and commenting on posts by journalists and key figures in the industry.  The more personalized your PR pitch is, the higher the chances of getting recognized.

3. Enter the World of Influencer Marketing

Believe it or not, influencer marketing isn’t only made for Instagram-worthy consumer brands. When it comes to link building, influencers carry a lot of untapped potential. Collaborating with these public figures can boost your visibility and get you the right kind of attention. The key is to target influencers whose audience might be interested in your content and services.

4. Leverage Popular Trends

In our digital world, trends and hot topics rise and fall at lightning-fast speeds. But if your timing is spot on, you can leverage trends to attract a lot of attention. This requires being up to date with trending topics across the web.

But tread with caution because trends can plummet as quickly as they skyrocket. You have to race against time to create campaigns before your content becomes irrelevant. If you’re too late, your idea might just be a big waste of investment.

5. Delegate to a Trustworthy Link Building Agency

With new trends popping up all the time, SEO can be a rocky landscape to navigate, especially if your agency isn’t well versed in the latest tactics. In such a scenario, delegating these important SEO tasks to a link building agency could be the way to go. With a link building agency taking care of your SEO needs, you can focus on what really matters: building your brand and accelerating growth.

If you’re looking for reliable link building services to take your website to the next level, you can find everything from blogger outreach to relevant guest posting and much more at Outreachmama. Check out Outreachmama’s services for a holistic link building experience.

The Future of Link Building

Future of Link Building

While those sneaky spam-filled links are no longer the norm, Google still uses links to determine the trustworthiness of a site.

In fact, Google’s strict policies have elevated link building to a more quality-focused and targeted approach. With so much competition and market saturation, content that sets itself apart and provides real value comes out on top.

As far as the future of link building goes, there are many diverging opinions. The bottom line is: Until Google finds an alternate source of determining authority, links are here to stay. Remember, quality over quantity is the motto for the decade and this applies to both your links and your content.

Links aren’t dead, they’ve just been given a new life!

Is Link Building Dead?

Posted by admin
There was once a time when black hat SEO and spammy link building tactics reigned supreme. However, over the years Google has been slowly patching the loopholes in its algorithms. This has led many people to wonder whether link building is dead for good. So, is link building really dead? The short answer is no. … Continue reading "Is Link Building Dead?"Read More

Link Prospecting Guide

Your Guide To Link Prospecting

A Complex Part of Link Building Process Explained in Simple Words

First of all, let’s explain what link prospecting is.

In short, this is a process of finding relevant websites you would like to link back to your resource. 

Why should you spend your time and efforts on it? 

Because you are dreaming about high Google ranking for your web page, aren’t you? 

So, you should strategically distribute your content and build backlinks raising the authority of your domain.

This article is aimed to help you with one of the first steps of your link building campaign, which is link prospecting. 

Here I’m going to tell you how to qualify a prospect, how to build a prospecting list, and finally how to find the emails of your prospects in order to start your email outreach campaign.

As a rule, link prospecting includes the following steps:   

  • Identifying keywords aka topics you are going to target.
  • Finding websites publishing content on the topics of your interest.
  • Excluding the irrelevant websites from the list.
  • Exploring deeper and prioritizing the relevant websites.   

After you finish to build the prospecting list, you may start to get in touch with them via email outreach.

How To Qualify a Prospect

To make your link building campaign efficient you should qualify your prospects during the link prospecting process. 

You can’t approach each and every person on your list the same. I advise dividing your targets into groups. 

Investigate how influential they are by looking at their audience and achievements.

1. Mega-Influencers

Here you are going to put people with tremendous audience and outstanding achievements like Seth Godin for instance. 

It’s really challenging to catch their attention, they never read messages from unknown people. 

Simply don’t have time for that. 

Your only chance to get in touch with them is personal introduction or doing something terrifically creative and notable. 

It’s up to you to decide whether you are ready to spend time and effort trying to reach the sharks in your business niche. 

If you want our advice, I would not recommend doing it. Save your energy for the next groups.

2. Influencers

People in the second group are not industry celebs like the ones in the first group, however, their audience is still big enough to make a positive impact on your business. 

Now we are talking about entrepreneurs like Noah Kagan for example.

Second group prospects can be reached with a friendly personal email. 

Please don’t try to use a generic template, you will waste your time and never get a reply. 

It’s a good move to ask second group prospects for comments on your ideas. 

Don’t ask them for links and tweets, if they like your work, they will link and tweet it without any request. 

This group of prospects is worth reaching out to because either a link or a tweet from them will bring value to your business.

3. Micro-Influencers

Prospects in the third group don’t have a big audience at the moment.

They are actively promoting their websites participating in niche communities, publishing guest posts, and taking part in all kinds of events. 

They will respond to your personalized, polite outreach email that adds value. The message may be template-based.

Are you wondering whether you should reach out to them?

Definitely. 

The third group of people is open to building relationships, which is good even though a link or tweet from a group representative won’t bring your business as much value as one from a second group.

4. Grinders

The fourth group are startups. They are newbies in the industry and don’t have a substantial audience yet.

They will reply even to a bulk templated outreach email. 

But we don’t advise you to reach out to them. 

A link or a tweet from one of the fourth group prospects won’t bring your business much value, so don’t bother.

Well, now you know how to qualify your prospects in order to reach out only to those who are powerful enough (yet accessible) to bring value to your business. 

You can save your time by removing the first and the fourth groups from your list. 

You can easily identify which group a person belongs to by analyzing their domains authority in your favourite marketing tool. 

Please note that people from the Influencer group are more valuable for your business, so reaching out to them must become a priority. 

Free and Paid Ways To Build a Prospecting List

The first step in building a prospecting list is finding prospects. Herein under we are going to cover four effective ways of doing it.

1. If you feature somebody in your article, let them know

When creating an awesome piece of content we frequently provide readers with links to other useful resources inside it. So, if you link to another blogger why not let them know about this mention? 

All you need to do is just look through your content and find all mentions of the bloggers in your niche. 

If you are not a fan of manual work, try to automate this process with the help of the tool that extracts all external links from a web page – URL Extractor. 

Please choose “External” from the drop-down as you don’t need internal links in your list and uncheck “Image” and “Meta tag” boxes. 

Then export the results you’ve got to CSV and sift them deleting the irrelevant prospects.

2. Search for people writing articles on similar topics 

If a person is writing articles on topics similar to yours, they are clearly interested in those topics. There are a couple of ways to find these people you are interested in.

Go to Google, type main keywords related to the topic of your content and study the results of the search (articles list).

Let’s imagine that we are looking for prospects for this post. We should put some keyword like “link prospecting” into Google. 

Do you agree that people care about the recent blog posts much more? 

They don’t miss the chance to update and improve them. Because of that you can filter for recently published content only. This is simple, just click the Tools tab > Any time dropdown > and choose recent dates.

If you want to get more relevant results, you can use advanced Google search operators. I.e.: “search term”, “or”, “and”, “-”, “*”, “()”, “$”, “define:”, “cache:”, “filetype:”, “site:”, “related:”, “intitle:”, “allintitle:”, “inurl:”, “allinurl:”, “intext:”, “allintext:”, “AROUND(X)”, “weather:”, “stocks:”, and others.

Here is an example for you. 

This guide on link prospecting contains a section about free and paid options to find people’s emails. 

This means that we can use search operators to find blog posts about link prospecting that don’t cover the techniques. 

It will be easy to compose a good outreach email as well. 

You can start like this – “Came across your article about link prospecting and noticed that it doesn’t tell anything about email lookup services, which I highlighted in my article…”

Please note that you can involve scraping tools (like Screaming Frog) if you have a basic knowledge of XPath/CSS/Regex to speed up extracting data from any web page.

Decent paid SEO and marketing tools provide data on keyword mentions on web pages across the Internet. 

They let you apply different filters (show websites that have never linked to you before, etc.) to make your results more specific. 

When you get the result you are happy with, you can export it to CSV.

3. Find people who already linked to articles dwelling on the same topic

Look for blog posts closely related to the topic of your article. 

You only need the ones with lots of backlinks. 

Please check the number of backlinks in the marketing tool you are using. 

Filter the articles you’ve got by referring domains putting the ones with the highest authority at the top of the list.

4. People who tweeted articles on the same topic

Frankly speaking, searching for people who tweeted articles on the topic similar to yours is not the best way to find prospects, however, you should know about the option. 

It’s easy to find people who tweeted this or that writing.

Put the article URL into a Twitter search and you are done. 

If you are making a default search, Twitter shows you the “Top” tweets, which is good for outreach prospecting. 

But you can go a little further and click the “Latest” tab.  

Why should you care only for the latest tweets? 

Because people tweet a lot. 

Sometimes they don’t even read the content they tweet. 

They just don’t remember what they tweeted a few months ago, so opt for the last 24 hours – last 7 days tweets.  

Is There Any Way To Automate the Process of Finding New Prospects?

Actually, there are a few ways to find new prospects on a regular basis without doing much.

1. You can monitor mentions of your keywords

Use Google Alerts or similar tools. 

They work like this – you insert a few keywords associated with your piece of content, then you are notified every time someone mentions these keywords on the net.

You take a look at the mentions and decide if you want to reach out to the author and show your content or not. 

2. Monitor new links to relevant articles

The top articles on Google get new backlinks consistently. 

So, if you monitor the top-ranking pages for your target keywords, you’ll get the prospects delivered straight to your email box. 

You can do this with your marketing tool if it has the functionality of generating new backlinks reports (to a certain URL) and sending them to your email.

3. Monitor new tweets of similar articles 

If you track the tweets that link to the articles written on the same topic as yours, you will get approximately one prospect from one article every few days. 

If you start practicing this technique, you will notice that your prospecting list increases by 50-100 new people every month. 

That’s not bad. 

Do you know how to monitor tweets? 

It’s not rocket science. 

Try the “New tweet from search” function for Twitter on IFTTT.

How To Find the Emails of Your Prospects - Free & Paid Methods + Best Practices

Paid Options

Do you like shortcuts and automation? 

Then you definitely should give email discovery tools a try. 

Below we have listed 8 of the handiest email lookup services.  

  • The first tool on our list is Clearbit Connect. You can access it for free and perform 100 searches per month. 
  • With Hunter you can perform 100 searches per month for free. If this is not enough, their paid accounts start at $49/month for 1,000 searches.
  • The next email discovery tool is toofr. You can make 30 free trial searches with it. Then you need to pay a minimum of $19/month for 2,500 searches.
  • Findanyemail 2.0 service provides 100 free searches per month. Their paid accounts start at $49/month for 5,000 searches.
  • Voila Norbert allows 50 free searches as a trial. If you like the service, you can buy an account with them starting at: $49/month for 1,000 searches.
  • You can use Emailmatcher for unlimited free searches.
  • Anymail finder lets you start with 20 free trial searches. Then, their most affordable account will cost you $18/month for 200 searches.
  • Find That Email allows 15 free searches per month. Their paid accounts start at: $29/month for 500 searches.

Unfortunately, sometimes the above listed as well as other email discovery tools available on the net don’t meet your needs. 

They turn out to be expensive or just unable to find some email addresses you need badly. 

Please read on to know some free ways to find the desired email address when email discovery tools don’t work. 

Free Options

1. Guess it 

You have surely noticed that there are several formulas most of email addresses follow. When you know First Name, Last Name, and Domain of your prospect, you can guess their email address.

Here is the list of these most common name@domain.com email address formulas. 

firstname_lastname@company.com

firstnameLastname@company.com

firstnameinitial_lastname@company.com

firstnameinitiallastname@company.com

firstnamelastnameinitial@company.com

lastname@company.com

firstnameinitialmiddlenameinitiallastname@company.com

firstname.lastname@company.com

If manual matching the emails seems too time-consuming to you, give a try to the tools like these – Email Permutator+ and Email Permutator spreadsheet. All you need to do is just fill in the necessary fields and get your list of email addresses. Not all of them will be real, so please make sure that you checked the suggestions in LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lite for Chrome.

Then you can click “Compose” in your Gmail box, copy and paste the email permutations you’ve got into the “To” field and move the mouse cursor through the email addresses to see if they are associated with a Google+ account. 

At the same time LinkedIn Sales Navigator extension will show if those email addresses belong to LinkedIn profiles.

In case neither Sales Navigator nor Gmail give you relevant information, you can just google for the exact match of your guesses and check if they were mentioned somewhere on the www.

2. Involve Bing search engine 

If you put “@domainname.com” in Google, the result will be disappointing because it uses “@” symbol for social tags. 

But if you try the same trick in Bing, it will be another ball game. 

The search engine will fetch all publicly available email addresses related to the domain you are interested in.

3. Look for email addresses in LinkedIn Connections

This is simple, an email is visible for your direct connections on LinkedIn. You can easily check this, view the profiles of your connections and see their email addresses in the ‘Contact Info’ section.

4. Hunt for email addresses on Twitter

You are collecting emails to deliver some important info to people, aren’t you? 

And your message will probably be longer than 280 characters. 

In this case you can find a person on Twitter and ask them for an email address. 

If you have a decent Twitter profile that clearly explains who you are, you are likely to get what you want.

5. Advanced Twitter Search is also worth a try

Sometimes people state their email addresses in tweets replacing “.” and “@” symbols with “dot” and “at” words. 

What you can do is go to Twitter Advanced Search and search for the words “at” and “dot” in tweets of a person you are interested in. 

Use words email, contact, reach and others to narrow down the search results.

6. It’s a good idea to subscribe to a prospect’s email list

Most of your prospects run personal blogs. 

You can find an email newsletter subscription form there and start to get newsletters that most likely will come from their personal email addresses. 

Please note that you can comment on one of the newsletters and start a conversation. 

Sometimes bloggers use addresses like newsletter@domainname.com, news@domainname.com or similar for their newsletters. But if you reply to one, you will get the answer from personal email address.

7. You can ask for a personal email via inquiry form

Every corporate website has a contact form or general email address stated in their contact information section. 

You can write via this inquiry form and ask for the contacts of the person you would like to get in touch with. 

8. Check WHOIS Data to See the Owner of a Domain

Sometimes you can find the domain owner’s contact email address in who.is data. 

The hack works well for one-owner websites who don’t hide their contact information, though, this info is available for bigger sites also. 

Over To You

You have just read a step-by-step guide on link prospecting. 

Hope the above info clarified many aspects that seemed confusing to you before. 

You know, we believe that the quickest way to get a deeper understanding of something is starting to do it. 

So, we wish you the best of luck in qualifying prospects, building your prospecting list, finding their emails, and outreach campaigns.

Have any questions/thoughts/suggestions on the topic? 

Please drop them in the comments section below. 

Found this guide helpful? 

Don’t forget to share it with your friends on social networks. 

Link Prospecting Guide

Posted by Ajay Paghdal
Your Guide To Link Prospecting A Complex Part of Link Building Process Explained in Simple Words First of all, let’s explain what link prospecting is. In short, this is a process of finding relevant websites you would like to link back to your resource.  Why should you spend your time and efforts on it?  Because … Continue reading "Link Prospecting Guide"Read More

SEO Affiliate Programs That Have Recurring Commissions

Today, I’m going to show you 15 of the top SEO affiliate programs.

If you have an audience or are building one in the SEO and digital marketing space, these are proven programs that will help grow your passive income. 

Here they are, broken down by types for your convenience.       

Services

OutreachMama – Yep, shameless plug. We provide link building services for agencies and brands. Our clients get high-quality links, premium content, and great project management from an easy to use dashboard. 

How much can I earn?

It’s 10% lifetime commissions on the blogger outreach service. In other words, you’ll keep getting commissions as long as your referrals need links.

How do I apply?

No application is required to join the program. Create your affiliate account for free here. 

180Fusion – The company is SEO services provider. On top of the common scope of SEO services, they offer digital marketing and advertising.

How much can I earn?

This information is undisclosed. But you will receive a commission for all sales that you have referred.

How do I apply?

You can sign up for their affiliate program through the affiliate page.

The HOTH – The company provides link building and content creation services along with SEO tools.

How much can I earn?

Everything depends on the program you choose. You can get from 25% to 70% commission. 

How do I apply?

Please go to the HOTH’s affiliate page for more information.

SEOReseller is a US-based digital marketing solutions provider, offering various SEO, content and marketing services.

How much can I earn?

You can get 6% per sale.

How do I apply?

If you are interested please join through the affiliate page.

Tools

Linkio – Another shameless plug here. Linkio is a SEO tool that monitors your backlinks and rankings and provides anchor text suggestions.

How much can I earn?

You can get a 40% recurring commission.

How do I apply?

You can visit affiliate page to learn more about their affiliate program. If you want to promote this SEO plugin you need to join the ClickBank network. 

SEOPressor – This is a powerful popular SEO plugin. It can boast cool features like semantic and machine readability analysis tools.

How much can I earn?

You can get a 50% recurring commission.

How do I apply?

You can visit the affiliate signup page to learn more about our affiliate program.

SEMRush is a worldwide known brand among SEO and marketing pros. The company started back in 2008. Today, they are one of the leading providers of SEO services like backlink analysis and keyword research. SEMRush offers advertising and marketing services as well.

How much can I earn?

You can get as much as 40% of the recurring commission.

How do I apply?

Click here, BeRush is the SEMRush affiliate program.

Traffic Travis – Traffic Travis is an awesome SEO tool that can help with keyword research and improving on-page SEO.

How much can I earn?

You will be paid $44.36 for each sale.

How do I apply?

Sign up through ClickBank or read more about the program on the Traffic Travis affiliate page. 

Twinword Ideas is a keyword tool that offers a great affiliate program. This smart keyword tool is powered by AI and has several nice features like user intent filter, popular topics filter, and search volume data directly from Google.

How much can I earn?

You can earn 30% recurring commission rate for each referral that subscribes to Pro or Agency Plans. You get paid each month they renew the subscription.

How do I apply?

Follow this link to register or activate your affiliate account and start earning money for talking about this decent tool. Find out more about the affiliate program.

Netpeak Software including Netpeak Spider (a desktop tool for fast and comprehensive technical audit of the entire website) and Netpeak Checker (a desktop tool for bulk URL analysis and comparison of websites based on a wide range of parameters) offers an Affiliate Program that is worth to check.

How much can I earn?

You can get up to 30% commission.  

How do I apply?

Click here to know more about the affiliate program and to create a free affiliate account.

Courses

Affiliate SEO Mastery is one of the most talked-about SEO training courses of 2018. This is a great affiliate program for every affiliate marketing/SEO websites that cater to beginners.

How much can I earn?

Affiliate commissions make 50% of the $97-course fee. 

How do I apply?

Here is an affiliate signup link for you. 

SEO Affiliate Domination  has more success stories, from real people all over the world than any other course that teaches you how to build a full-time income with affiliate marketing using SEO.

How much can I earn?

Your affiliate commissions on this fantastic SEO course will make 50%.

How do I apply?

Use this affiliate signup link to apply.

SEObook was launched in 2003. It is one of the oldest standing SEO sites that is still regularly updated. The site was originally designed as a blog that offered DIY SEO tips and helped sell the leading SEO ebook, which had sold well over $1,000,000 in volume.

How much can I earn?

Affiliate Commissions start at 20% and go up 10% after every 5 sales, offering the top tier affiliates a 50% commission rate. They offer a $20 signing bonus as well. 

How do I apply?

Please use this affiliate signup link to apply.

Hope my list of the best SEO affiliate programs was useful to you.

Do you know of some others or want to submit your own? Use this link to submit a new affiliate program (wait for the pop-up).

We’ll review and add it to the list below.

Create Your Own Affiliate Program

If you’ve thought about creating your own affiliate program, use a tool like OSI Affiliates to make it happen.

List of User Submitted Affiliate Programs

Search By:
Sort by:

Linkody


Votes: 5

Linkody is a backlink monitoring tool that helps you find, monitor and track backlinks 24/7.

How much can I earn?

30% monthly recurring commissions.

Want to be added to this list? Click here to bring up our submission form. We will be in touch shortly with feedback.

Over To You

Are you ready to try one of them?

Which one seems the most appealing to you and why?

Maybe you are ready to share your personal experience of getting passive income promoting one of the above services/tools/courses.

Please do it in the comments section.

 

SEO Affiliate Programs That Have Recurring Commissions

Posted by Ajay Paghdal

Today, I’m going to show you 15 of the top SEO affiliate programs. If you have an audience or are building one in the SEO and digital marketing space, these are proven programs that will help grow your passive income.  Here they are, broken down by types for your convenience.        Services OutreachMama – Yep, shameless … Continue reading “SEO Affiliate Programs That Have Recurring Commissions”

Read More

Link Builders Have Ruined Everything (Again)

So this just happened…

Gary Illyes of Google dropped a link building bomb on Twitter.

It looks like he received an unsolicited link building email and went nuclear on the guy – making sure Google’s algorithm considers his list of 700 sites worthless (allegedly).

Have you ever received an unsolicited email like the one Gary received?

Here’s an example:

“I will post your article in the world top level sites! This is (name). I will provide you the high quality contents and will post it in my high quality genuine blogs. I have more than 5,000 high quality sites.

Here I’m sending to you my some high quality sites please look at them choose the sites in my list and send a trail order.”

This sender is mass spamming 1000’s of people with his/her list of sites with all metrics, prices and domain names fully visible, like this:

I remember a time when link building vendors protected the identities of their blog partners at all costs simply to avoid giant fuck ups like the one above where the 700 blog partners are screwed and everyone who purchased a link from those 700 sites are screwed.

These days, vendors are more brazen and careless than ever, putting the ease of getting the initial sale over protecting their blog partners and clients who already paid them money.

This should definitely have your attention.

It’s 2019, and the SEO industry is changing again fast.

Just 5 years ago there was a massive change with Penguin where PBNs were much easier for Google to detect and penalize.

Since then, guest posting has become the new buzzword, because that was the easiest way to get a link on a site that you don’t own.

Just recently, guest post became a more popular term than pbn.

I think Gary V said it best: “Marketers Ruin Everything”.

At it’s core, guest posting is an incredibly viable and useful way to secure quality, niche relevant backlinks.

Then former PBN sellers joined the guest posting service train, gathered up a bunch of connections and started indiscriminately cold blasting everyone (even Gary Illyes, a VIP at Google).

If you get such an email, you can be sure that the sites fall into one of these 3 categories:

1. PBNs with a makeover masquerading as real sites you can guest post on

Random blog topics, no footer, no favicon, no real author and bloated DA/DR metrics without organic traffic numbers to back it up.

2. Websites that got started with good intentions but got seduced by the “Unmarked Sponsored Post with a Dofollow Link” money.

Building a profitable blog is hard, and many people start their blog with great intentions, great content and are super careful about protecting their brand.

Then a link builder comes along and offers $100 for the blogger to click the Publish button. No social media sharing or newsletter promoting necessary. About 10 minutes of work and $100 out of it is very enticing.

They may start off with just accepting the most relevant posts but fast forward several months, they are on “Site lists” for 15 different vendors, getting new articles to publish every day, and raking in the cash.

These type of sites could have easily been on that list of 700 that Google just devalued.

3. Writers for authority sites that can include your link

Vendors come to an agreement with third party writers of well known blogs and pimp out the connection in unsolicited cold emails for link building.

These are usually the safest, most valuable and expensive links but in some ways, it’s also become a short-term tactic as high-end publishers like Forbes and Huffington Post ended up no-following all links due to this type of abuse.

So that’s the landscape here in 2019.

– “guest post” has eclipsed “pbn” in search trends, and
– link builders are fully in “ruin everything” mode, and
– Gary from Google showed just how easy it is for them to make these sites worthless

It sounds like a really good time to review your own link building strategy and stay ahead of the game.

If you were to ask me, I’d say custom blogger outreach is the way forward.

In fact it’s always been the right way to do it, but real outreach is incredibly difficult so it’s remained far under the radar.

If you’re looking for a vendor that can help you with real blogger outreach and deliver links that won’t show up on site lists, check out our blogger outreach service.

It has all of the service ingredients necessary to avoid falling into the mess I covered above:

1. It’s a monthly service that delivers quality, niche relevant links from pure outreach

2. Each month, we devise a new pitch, prospect 300-500 bloggers, prepare email sequences and make contact

3. A certain percentage of bloggers respond positively and we work with them to publish content on their site or update an existing article with our client’s link

4. The cost per link ranges from $125 to $280 depending on the Domain Authority. All prospects are reviewed to make sure Ahrefs Traffic is healthy before pursing the link.

5. We work together with you on deciding the target pages, and even though we don’t like adding a content approval and website approval step into the workflow (slows things down so much), we work together with you to ensure deliverables are up to your standards.

6. We monitor rankings and report on links and changes frequently.

If you’re interesting in getting more links and our service sounds interesting to you, you can create a free account here and request sample links, book a strategy call with me, or make an order.

If you have any questions, just shoot us an email at orders@outreachmama.com.

Cheers,

Ajay

 

 

 

Link Builders Have Ruined Everything (Again)

Posted by Ajay Paghdal

So this just happened… Gary Illyes of Google dropped a link building bomb on Twitter. It looks like he received an unsolicited link building email and went nuclear on the guy – making sure Google’s algorithm considers his list of 700 sites worthless (allegedly). Have you ever received an unsolicited email like the one Gary … Continue reading “Link Builders Have Ruined Everything (Again)”

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20 Ways to Build Links Using Blogger Outreach

You probably know that an optimized website and great content are an important part of SEO and they can help you get found in the search engines.

At this point in 2019, you’re probably no stranger to the other massively important ranking factor either.

I’m talking about link building.

Why Link Building?

Link building, or gaining backlinks, is the process of getting other sites to link to your site.

Google loves quality links. The more credible sites you have linking to you, the better you look to Google, boosting your site in the search engine results.

But there’s a catch.

Building these links isn’t an overnight thing. Especially if you want to ensure only quality sites are linking to you.

So are you wondering how to do blogger outreach? Here are 20 blogger outreach strategies to build quality backlinks.

#1 Expert contributors. One topic, many experts. Get multiple experts to contribute their input and compile a blog post, ebook or physical book. Let all your experts know when and where your big piece of content is accessible; they’ll be thrilled to be featured as an expert and many of them will link to your blog or your website when sharing the good news.

Want more? Many of these bloggers will reciprocate, and ask you to contribute when they compile something similar, giving you more opportunities to have your link shared on other websites.

#2 Putting an embed code within an embed code. When you create a valuable infographic, others are going to want to use it. So you typically create an embed code to make it easy for them. But what if you tweak that embed code so that when anyone embeds it on their site, they are actually linking back to your website? Use this form to create your unique embed code.

#3 Add your link to shared photos. Do you have a photo that seems to be getting shared often? Do a Google search, or even set up a Google alert, and find out exactly who is using your photo. Reach out to them and ask if they can put the credit link in the photo’s meta field so any time the photo is clicked, people end up back at your site.

#4 Guest post on turbo. You already know that guest posting helps build backlinks. But here is another way to discover even more places to guest post. Start by finding a guest post done by one of your competitors. When businesses guest post, they typically use the same byline each time. So copy a piece of that byline and use it to search Google. You will find other places your competitor has guest posted, giving you lots of blogs you can pitch as well. Then you can even take it to the next level and scale your blogger outreach.

ahrefs

#5 Research competitor backlinks. Use Ahref’s Site explorer to find a competitor’s backlinks. Plug those links into an Excel sheet, upload it to Google Custom Search to help you find where they have guest posted or had sponsored posts written about their business. Use this data to find your own guest post or sponsored post opportunities. Even if it’s not guests posts,

 

#6 Find emails for outreach faster. The first thing you need to do when reaching out to bloggers is find those email addresses. There’s tons of email finding tools out there. We use Email Hunter a ton. You can also use ToutApp for Chrome or try Rapportive. It’s an add-on that gives you LinkedIn profiles right in your Gmail. So how are we going to use it to find e-mails? If you have a company name and a person’s name, you may be able to figure out their work email. Keep plugging in tentative emails until you find on that pops up with a real LinkedIn profile.

#7 Hack your blogger networking. If you have created a network around your business or your blog, create a badge for members to use on their site that shows they’re a member. Then Google reverse search the badge image and see who is using it. Reach out to those people and ask them to embed your link into the badge image.

#8 Create expert infographics. Similar to an expert blog post or book, you’re asking multiple bloggers to contribute to one infographic. Make the infographic using a tool like Venngage, quote the bloggers in the image, make sure your URL is embedded within the infographic embed code, and have the bloggers share it.

twitter#9 Reach out on Twitter. Follow writers and bloggers from your industry on Twitter using best practices. Start interacting and building a relationship with them, that will turn into something more. They may start including your link in their posts, or even agree to let you guest post.

 

#10 Go a step further on Twitter. Check your mentions to see who has tweeted your content. Now reach out to them, thank them for sharing, and let them know they can link to your post. Not everyone will, but you will find that some people will add your link to their posts, their newsletters or other content. Sometimes it just takes a little nudge to get them moving.

#11 Use IFTTT to find PR opportunities. IFTTT (If This Than That) is a site that lets you create “recipes” that trigger one thing when something else happens. So use it to find PR opportunities on Twitter. Set up a recipe from Twitter to email (or even text if you’d like) so that any time the journalist hashtag #pprequest and your niche is used, you get an email alert.

#12 Use HARO. On the same note, use HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to get more press and links to your site. Sign up for free alerts for your industry and search through them daily to see if any fit your niche and your business.

#13 Run a blogger competition. Bloggers like to one-up their fellow bloggers, but they’re also extremely helpful and cooperative. And they gladly share each others’ posts and blogs, because they know other bloggers will do the same. So make use of this sharing tendency. Create a blogger competition where bloggers must write on a certain topic to enter. But here’s the catch! They also need to spread the word and nominate other bloggers for the competition. It’s a great way to get other bloggers involved, and spread the word about your competition and your link. Leverage technology with a competition engine like Gleam.io to make the process easier.

#14 Remedy broken links. But on other sites. If you come across a broken link on a website, reach out to the blogger. Let them know they have a broken link, and suggest one of your similar posts to replace it with. Chances are they will be so grateful that you pointed out the error in their site, that they will gladly replace the broken one with yours. They have commercial grade tools available to scale this type of outreach but be prepared to kiss a lot of frogs before generating a decent amount of links.

#15 Broken links on turbo. Don’t just stop there with the broken links. Toss that broken link into Open Source Explorer and find other sites that have linked to it. Now reach out to those sites as well, suggesting one of your links to replace it. Make sure you pick one of your links that fits the website or blog post to really boost your chances that they will accept your link.

#16 Get your customers to link to your site. If you have an intake form for your business, include a spot for them to leave their website URL, if they have a site. Keep track of these customers, and create a separate mailing list for those with a website. Send this list links to your most valuable content, free stuff, useful infographics with your link embedded, etc. and let them know they are free to share or use it in their content. You already know they have website, so the more valuable the content you share, the more likely they are to use it on their own site.

#17 Find who is linking to your competitors. Use the Clique Hunter tool offered by Majestic SEO. Plug in competitor URLs to help you quickly and easily find who is linking to them. Use this information to reach out regarding adding your own link, guest posting opportunities, collaborations and more.

#18 Beat the competition. You have an idea of who is linking to your competition. Now, use a tool like BuzzSumo or Ahrefs to you find posts that have a lot of links. Your job is to create a piece of content that is similar but better! We call this the SkyScraper technique. If a post is a top 10 post, create a top 25 list. If a post states some facts but doesn’t back it up properly, create way that is packed full of researched statistics and case studies. Now reach out to the sites that are linking to those other posts and see if they would consider linking to your new article.

comment#19 Comments on other blogs. It may sound simple, it may even seem like an afterthought. But commenting on competitor blogs is a great way to not only gain backlinks but to gain traffic. Many blog commenting systems allow you to put your website URL into their fields, along with your name and e-mail address. So whenever you leave a comment it automatically links back to your website. Sure, it’s usually a No-Follow link, but this could lead to a more referral traffic, awareness about your product and potentially inclusion in a future article.

#20 Mention bloggers in your posts. When writing a blog post, mention other bloggers, or use their site as an example of something great. You may already do this, but the step you could be missing is letting them know. Reach out through email or Twitter with a simple message saying you mentioned them in your post and your link. They will do the rest. They may share it on social media, on their newsletter or even keep you in mind for future linking to return the favor.

Building quality backlinks via blogger outreach that actually raise your status with Google is no easy feat.

To help give you some more perspective, we posed this question to SEO agency experts:

How do you go about your blogger outreach? Please share any favorite tactics, tools or partners you use to attract quality links for your clients.

Here is how the experts weighed in.

Digital Agency Approach (Ecommerce Development / Website Development)

As far as blogger outreach is concerned, we would like to mention that over the years there has been a drastic change in the way bloggers outreach has been done. For us blogger outreach is not just another SEO activity rather we consider it an opportunity to get connected with your audience in a substantial way.

We do Blogger Outreach considering the number of SEO and Social factors and our major parameters are:

Understanding the Need of the Bloggers and users
Domain Authority of the Blogging Website
Exploring the most followed social influencers and opinion leaders of the industry
Setting Goals
Finding the Relevant Bloggers
Collaborate with the Top Bloggers

Though, there are now many tools available for doing Blogger Outreach however we mostly trust the following tools in order to get deeper into the Blogger Outreach:

BuzzSumo – For checking the most trending content topics
SEMRush/Moz – For knowing the domain authority and other SEO parameters
UbberSuggest – For finding the best keywords
Hashtagify – For finding the most trending and popular #Hashtags

by Blake Nolan, Chief Strategy Officer at Storm Brain

Don't Let A Mention Go Unlinked

Ahrefs has a great feature that will alert you to potential client brand mentions. We set this up for our sites as well as for our clients, and we check out the ones that look promising.

When you do get an unlinked mention – reach out politely to ask if they would consider turning it into a branded link back to your site.

by Chris Sloane, Owner at Heaviside Group

Unlinked Mentions

Unlinked mentions (AKA Link reclamation)

Using advanced searches to find online mentions (citations) of a specific brand—or anything directly related to it without links.  There are several ways to find these opportunities whether using Advacbed Google operators or using tools like Moz or Ahrefs. Once you’ve compiled a list of potential targets its time to do outreach. The key to success with this tactic is to keep at it and getting in front of the right person who can help.

by Ilan Shabad, Head of SEO at One Egg Digital

Simple and Effective Blog Outreach Tips

Create Truly Exceptional Content.

Identify Influencers and outreach website Using Search Operators, it should be industry-relevant.

Develop a Powerful Pitch and send a request.

Draft content according to their guidelines and include author details in every post with your brand link.

Try to mention your blog link related to the topic as a reference in the body content.

Be genuine and use your real profile for blog outreach.

by Matthew Fritschle, Content Strategist at Aumcore

Graphic Design Partnership

Creating custom graphics for posts and pages requires a lot of work and it’s often something bloggers either struggle to do or would happily have taken off their hands. There are a lot of different online graphic design agencies out there like Design Pickle or Flocksy that can create designs for you at scale. I use one of these services myself. It not only meets the design needs of my clients, but can also be leveraged as a resource for link building. I’ll offer a blog or business a certain number of graphic design deliverables a year in exchange for a partnership link. The unlimited graphic design service I use handles all of the work, so I don’t really have to do anything and I earn a link in return. This process is scalable and can be used with dozens of sites, because these graphic design services come with the bandwidth to increase production. This link building tactic is a great way to get local links, because local businesses and non-profits often have the greatest need for design help.

by David Kranker, Owner/Digital Marketer at David Kranker Creative

My 8 Rules for Outreach

1. Read the about me page.
2. Create a network instead of running a campaign.
3. Be specific.
4. Try reaching out to the little people.
5. Create linkable assets with the bloggers’ audiences in mind not yourself.
6. Create a multi-channel plan before reaching out.
7. Create audience personas.
8. Connect with your bloggers on a personal level.

by Kristen Matthews, Director of Digital Marketing at GroupHigh

Don't Be a Jerk

Personalized outreach is amazing outreach. Make sure your initial email contains these elements:

1. Evoke curiosity with your subject line
2. Show them you know them
3. Avoid fake flattery
4. Explain why you’re contacting them
5. End with a clear call to action
6. Only use your best work

by Joshua Hardwick, Head of Content at Ahrefs

Want to be added to this list? Click here to bring up our submission form. We will be in touch shortly with feedback.

 

There you have it.

Questions?

Comments?

Leave them below.

 

 

20 Ways to Build Links Using Blogger Outreach

Posted by Ajay Paghdal

You probably know that an optimized website and great content are an important part of SEO and they can help you get found in the search engines. At this point in 2019, you’re probably no stranger to the other massively important ranking factor either. I’m talking about link building. Why Link Building? Link building, or … Continue reading “20 Ways to Build Links Using Blogger Outreach”

Read More