Off-Page SEO

Off-page search engine optimization is not just about links.

It goes deeper than that. For example, brand mentions (your site URL or brand name
mentioned on another site without a hyperlink) are an integral aspect of off-page search
signals.

As smart bloggers and content marketers, we usually start with on-page SEO.

But we don’t stop there. Because, to a large extent, the things that matter to Google often
happen away from your web site.

Depending on your marketing goals, the time you spend on off-page search engine
optimization will vary. Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz observed that many web site owners
spend about 30% of their time on off-page factors, and 70% on on-page factors. For other
web site owners, those percentages are reversed.

Off-page SEO simply tells Google what others think about your site. For example, if
you’ve got a lot of valuable links pointing to your pages, search engines will assume that
you’ve got great content – the type that provides value for users.

Otherwise, why would people waste time linking to it?

People only cite, reference and share content they like. Even in a brick-and-mortar
business, if your product is helpful and affordable, you’ll get a lot of word of mouth
referrals from your current customers.

Search engine optimization can be scary, especially when you don’t know what steps to
take to rank your fresh content pages in Google top 10. But, if you can develop a basic
understanding of on-page and off-page optimization, you’ll be way ahead of your
competition.
What is Off-Page SEO?

“Off-Page SEO” refers to all of the activities that you and others do away from your
website to raise the ranking of a page with search engines.

Though many people associate off-page SEO with link building, it goes beyond that.
Many activities that don’t result in a standard link on other sites are important for off-
page optimization.

On-page search engine optimization happens within the site, while off-page SEO
happens outside the site. If you write a guest post for another blog or leave a comment,
you’re doing off-page site promotion.
Preparing a Site/Page for Link Building

Links are still very important to Google. In fact, it’s almost impossible for Google to
determine the value of any web page if there are no links pointing to it — no matter how
useful, fresh, or in-depth the page content might be.
Site owners are often tempted to skip initial preparations for link building. But it’s
important that you give this top priority, because preparing a site will ensure that you’re
mindful of the links you sent to them.

Dr. Peter J. Meyers reviewed some of the brands that won (and lost) at Google search in
2015. Sites that lost ground in organic search rankings didn’t have a strong foundation.

Sure, the majority of these sites have strong domains that have been around awhile, but
the basic elements that boost a page’s power aren’t there.

So how do you ensure that your web pages are ready for link building?

1. Laying out your internal pages

Optimized internal pages can make a huge difference in your overall rankings. This
includes interlinking your pages using random keywords (with more emphasis on your
brand name).
According to Brian Dean’s famous post, “Google’s 200 Ranking Factors,”

The number of internal links to a page indicates its importance relative to other pages on
the site.

More specifically, you should have silo pages that connect to your category pages and
supporting pages (posts). That way, when you send a link to the homepage, the juice flows
through your category and supporting pages, thus boosting your search performance.

Smart search engine optimization professionals don’t just throw links at a page. Instead,
they lay out the pages so that each link will pass SEO juice to other interconnected pages.

None of your internal pages should stand alone. Make each page an integral part of your
site and include seamless navigation. This is essential to your site users and your appeal
to search engines.

Ideally, pages addressing the same or related topics should be linked together in order to
provide a rich experience for the users.
In search engine optimization, internal pages are often overlooked. Most SEOs and site
owners don’t realize that much of a site’s “SEO value” flows from how the internal pages
are structured.

This is usually made possible when you have links from high-value pages on the same
site. Silo your pages properly if you want a healthy link equity between your internal
pages.

Ken Lyons shared 3 ways to ensure that your internal pages are well-structured and your
links evenly distributed, before going out to get inbound links from external sources:
Remember that it’s no longer only about the quantity of links you have. The quality of
links to your internal pages is as important as the structure of the pages themselves.

In fact, sometimes reducing the number of links pointing to your internal pages could
help your SEO efforts.

For example, CMS North America, a manufacturer of 5 axis CNC machines, had an
established website with 170 indexed pages. Yet, the site wasn’t generating substantial
search traffic.
By auditing their site using the Internal Link Juice Tool, they discovered that the site had
168 links pointing to the homepage.

This was more than best practices called for, which is especially a problem when the SEO
juice from those links doesn’t flow to internal pages.

They initiated a new navigation structure and removed some of the links pointing to silo
pages, while retaining the links that supported usability (such as “contact us” and support
pages). In all, 70 links were removed.

After 6 weeks of re-structuring the internal pages’ links and the homepage, most of the
fresh pages and links had been re-crawled by Google’s spider.

The company saw improved rankings for 18 of the 21 keyword phrases the site was
targeting. Keywords that were already ranking on page 2 improved an average of 3.7
ranking slots.
2. Do the basic on-page SEO:

On-page search engine optimization is important. After all, you don’t want Google to
view your site as a neglected portal.

I’m sure you’ve heard enough about meta tags and keyword density. Yet, there are other
important on-page SEO factors that matter and that are often overlooked. This on-page
SEO infographic from Backlinko lays many of them out for you:
One of the reasons why many authority sites no longer dominate the top organic listings
is because they’ve neglected basic on-page SEO.

You want to link to your internal pages using the keyword that best defines that page.

When you create a landing page that you would like Google to rank highly, you should
pass more SEO juice to that page from your important pages.

If the search engine giant is seeing a lot of pages on your site for a particular search term
and is unsure of which one to rank higher than the others, you’ll struggle to increase your
search engine rank no matter how much value you provide.

And that’s what the basic on-page search engine optimization process is all about. There’s
no magic secret formula. Just ensure that your pages are well structured, your keywords
specified, and signals are being sent to Google in the right manner. This will work
towards improving your search engine ranking.

Here’s an example: Daily Mail Online, a popular online magazine that ranks highly for
several keywords, failed to dominate the top listings during the 2014 World Cup. Other
brands took their spots:
The online magazine missed out on this opportunity to attract thousands, if not millions
of search users, given the sheer interest in the tournament (with a spike peak around June
18).

With several brands dominating Google’s first page rankings, Daily Mail Online missed
out for the term “World Cup.” Each new article published about the World Cup
overlapped with Daily Mail’s landing page, which they desperately wanted to rank better
than other pages (shown in pink).
What’s happening here is that the search engine giant is seeing lots of pages from Daily
Mail Online for this search term, and is unsure of which one should be ranked highest.

This has a lot to do with internal page linking — or the lack of it.

To capitalize on the trending search term at the time, Mail Online could have linked back
to the hub page from every internal page (especially those related to ‘Word Cup’).

This would have been a strong signal to Google that this page was significant and perhaps
useful to users.

Sadly, Daily Mail had lots of opportunities to link back to the hub from rele vant blog
posts and pages, but they didn’t do so.
3. Pick thematic keywords:

Although links are still the icing on the cake, the upshot to SEO that controls every other
factor is the keywords you choose.

Keywords are the fundamental building blocks for your content campaign. In the diagram
below, the more accurate view of on-page SEO shows that use of related keywords and
primary keywords accounts for 7.5% and 40% of on-page SEO, respectively.
In his book, Keyword Research: How To Find and Profit From Low Competition Long
Tail Keywords, author Nathan George said that to succeed in business, you have to help
a lot of people.

So the question becomes, how do you find people to help? The answer: Keyword
research.

But not all keywords are created equal. If you want to improve the odds of driving organic
traffic to your site, then you need to pick thematic keywords.

The word “thematic” simply means having or relating to a particular subject.

So when you’re picking keywords, focus on those that are related to a particular subject.
You can’t afford to spread your net too wide. Here’s an example:

Let’s assume that your business delivers WordPress theme customization services. It’s
important to find the right related keywords that you can create content around.

Simply plug your main keyword (wordpress theme customization) into

the Ubersuggest search bar. Click the “Search” button. Here are thematic keyword
phrases:
Remember that you’re in business to help others. By knowing the words, phrases, and
search terms they use in search, you can more easily tailor your content to meet their
needs.

You can supercharge the power of your keywords by switching towards branded
keywords. In other words, instead of targeting “SEO tips,” you could niche down and
include your brand or domain name (e.g., Moz SEO tips, Neil Patel SEO).

Domain or brand-oriented keywords usually bring up several results from the same site
in Google search results.
Of course, you have to create useful, high quality content. When you see several of your
pages ranking in Google search results, it doesn’t matter what positions those pages hold
– you can pass more link juice to them through any of the link building strategies below:
Branded thematic keywords will give you an edge over the competition and serves as a
leading SEO technique. No matter how many top brands are dominating the top 10 organic
listings, you can find yourself driving motivated visitors to your site.

When it comes to on-page search engine optimization, the title tag is the most important
factor. That’s why it’s important to use your keywords in the right manner in your titles.

Brian Dean did some experiments and found that when you start a title with keywords,
you rank better in the SERPs.

In general, the closer you place the keyword in the beginning of the title tag, the more
weight it’ll have with search engines.
So let’s assume you chose to target these 3 keyword phrases below:

1. web design strategy

2. WordPress theme developer

3. cost of website design

You can model these titles because they all place keywords at the beginning:

 Web Design Strategy: How to Finally Design a Website That Converts

 WordPress Theme Developer: 7 Factors You Should Consider First

 The Cost of Website Design for Small Business Owners

Starting your title tag with the targeted keyword is important. But, that only applies when
you truly want to improve the search performance of a given keyword. There are
situations when you create content without focusing on a keyword. Here’s how Brian puts
it:
When you’re targeting keywords in on-page optimization, don’t just keep reiterating
those primary keywords over and over.

Instead, use synonyms or latent semantic indexing (LSI) terms. LSI keywords have one
purpose – to help search engine spiders extract meaning from normal keywords
(especially those with more than one meaning). For example, Apple, the computer
company vs. apple, the fruit.

Ideally, if you were writing content on a subject related to Apple, the company, Google
expects you to mention relevant words and terms that are common to the organization.

In the same vein, if I were writing about Microsoft Windows 10, in order to help Google
spiders extract the exact meaning of your page and serve the right users, I’d mention
words and phrases such as Bill Gates, Operating System, OS, Windows 8.0, etc.

Stay away from mentioning your primary keyword (e.g., cheap airline tickets) over and
over in your content. Google will view that as over-optimization and may well penalize
you.
When you mention other synonyms, you can optimize your content the right way (at least
in the way Google and users want).

If I were to write an article targeting the keyword “how to get blog traffic,” here’s what
I’d do: replace the search term with these LSI keywords:

 How to get blog traffic

 how to generate traffic to blog

 drive web visitors to blog

 get online blog visitors

 Attract web traffic to his blog

 get web traffic to his blog by leveraging social media

At a glance, you can see that the above keywords are related to the primary keyword (how
to get blog traffic).

In your internal pages, you can use these LSI keywords in your title tags and you’ll be
just fine. But, imagine what it would seem like if all your pages were all targeting one
keyword – with no variations.

In Google’s ranking algorithm, the presence or absence of latent semantic indexing

keywords goes a long way towards determining where your web page ranks, because it’s
a strong quality signal to Google.

You might be wondering how you can find these synonymous words. The good news is
that there are several tools that you can use to research LSI search terms. Simply follow
these steps:

Step #1: Go to Ubersuggest and input your primary keyword (e.g., cheap airline tickets).
Click the “Search” Button:
Step #2: Click Keyword Ideas in the Left Sidebar

Step #3: Review the Keyword Ideas

Step #4: Choose Keywords
In the example above, I chose the keyword phrase “discount on airline tickets.” The
volume is respectable, with 8,100 monthly searches in Google. This is combined with a
relatively low SEO difficulty score of 34, which shows good promise for ranking on page
one.

The final step is getting a better idea of what you need to do to outrank your page one
competitors. In the results above, you see the following:

 Google SERP – top 100 pages when you search the keyword on Google

 Estimated Visits – estimated number of monthly visitors the page gets for the keyword
 Links – number of incoming backlinks from other domains

 Domain Score – overall strength of the website, with 1 the weakest and 100 the
strongest

 Social Shares – total number of times the URL was shared on social networks

On average, web pages in the top 10 have 1,681 backlinks and a domain score of 79.
However, you don’t necessarily have to equal or beat these numbers. For example,
position #5 is occupied by a web page with only 104 links and a DS of 67.

On-page keyword optimization all boils down to researching, choosing and integrating
keywords that you can easily rank for. You don’t want to compete with top brands with
higher and stronger domain authority.

That’s why you should also focus on long-tail keywords. You already know how to find
and use them to improve your search rankings. I generate over 20,000 organic visitors to
this blog, specifically from long-tail search.

With only 5 hours of work, Jamie Press turned Google Autocomplete ideas into traffic &
rankings. He helped his clients to create useful content that ranked #2 and #3 in search
results at the time.
How to Get Relevant, Authority and User-Friendly Backlinks

Almost 100 billion searches are made on Google every month for content, products, and
services. And that’s just a portion of the market.

This was announced recently at Re/code’s Code/Mobile conference by Amit Singhal,

senior vice president of Google Search.

He also explained that more than half of those searches are coming from mobile devices.

To the majority of SEOs, content marketers, and bloggers, backlinks are the most
important off-page SEO factor. And, they might be right.

That’s because natural links from authoritative and relevant websites act as an
independent “vote of confidence,” that helps search engines trust your website more.
When Google’s search spider crawls your site, looking for fresh content (sometimes
depending on your sitemap settings), it indexes your new pages and prepares them for
search users.

After your pages are added into its vast index to be returned in search results when
relevant search queries are triggered, Google uses several algorithm factors to determine
where those pages will rank.

In the SEO world, we refer to these as Google’s ranking factors. They’re the determining
factors for organic web page rankings. Fortunately, you don’t have to memorize all of the
ranking factors — good news, because according to Google, there are over 200 of them.

But the most important factor as far as SEO is concerned is links. Well, not the links per
se, but the impact of such links. Some other off-page factors are:
In the past, if I generated 100 links to his page, and you had only 20 links, Google would
view his web page as more authoritative and valuable than yours.

Link quality wasn’t all that important at the time.

But today, links are perceived differently. A lot of questions arise when Google sees a
link pointing to your web page. For example:

 Where does the link come from?

 What prompted the site owner to link to you?

 What is the link quality? (I.e., is it from an authority site?)

 How fresh is your link?

 How natural is your link profile?

 And so on…

When building links to your site or internal pages (which is more ideal in today’s SEO),
focus on relevant, authority and SEO-friendly links.

Let’s discuss some of the ways to get these valuable links:

1. Broken link building:

Most people still rely on guest blogging, which is still a great way to acquire the right
links. But, guest blogging can only take you far. Worse, it requires a lot of research for
the right topic. Then you have to find the right blogs, write the post, submit the post and
wait for it to be published.

On the other hand, broken link building is easy, faster than guest blogging and could
provide a substantial avenue to earn the right links.

The opportunities are just endless when you capitalize on dead links. Because in reality,
the internet is broken literally.
Lots of links that you see on authority blogs are actually dead. As hosting expires, sites
are messed up during file transfer or migration or typing mistakes happen and links are
bound to break. They lead to 404 error pages, which don’t appeal to users (more on this
later). All these broken links are to your advantage.

There is nothing new or fancy about fixing broken links. This link building tactic will
never become outdated or fizzle out, because the internet will always have new broken
links that need to be fixed.

If you have too many dead links on your blog, and are wondering whether your search
performance will be affected, you don’t have to worry. According to the Official Google
Webmaster Central blog, 404 error pages or broken pages won’t affect your site’s ranking.

404s are a perfectly normal part of the web; the Internet is always changing, new content
is born, old content dies, and when it dies it (ideally) returns a 404 HTTP response code.
Search engines are aware of this; we have 404 errors on our own sites, as you can see
above, and we find them all over the web. In fact, we actually prefer that, when you get
rid of a page on your site, you make sure that it returns a proper 404 or 410 response
code (rather than a “soft 404”).

Although Google likes to see a proper 404 error page, do you think it’s a good experience
for the user? Absolutely not.

When people click on your web page from an organic results page, they’re not expecting
to see a 404 error page, but rather want to see the exact content they searched for.
Imagine how frustrated people will be when they searched for “best digital wrist watch,”
only to click on the first result and see an error page.

A few of these searchers will likely mark the site address and vow never to visit again.
Obviously, the user experience was poor. And there’s nothing that drives people away
more than a poor user experience, which is a natural indication of your overall customer
service to the searcher.

The result of this can be disastrous. According to Sacramento Design Network, “85% of
your business could be lost due to poor customer service.”

In a nutshell, broken link building breaks down to four simple steps: conduct a backlink
analysis on a relevant website, find a broken link, contact the owner, and let them know
about their dead links.
Since you’re helping the site owner locate non-functional links, they might do you the
favour of including a link to your website. Ideally, offer a replacement link when
appropriate.

If I linked to a particular web page from his Neil Patel blog and found the links to be
dead, I could easily replace it with another relevant and high-value resource. If that high-
value page belongs to you, that’s both SEO juice and a valuable link.

Trust me, you can get it right the first time, and build the right links to your web pages
using this tactic. You’ll find these resources really helpful:

 How to Build 100 Quality Links Without Writing Fresh Content

 13 Efficient Link Building Strategies for Busy Marketers

 The Black Belt Broken Link Building

 How to Use the Broken Link Strategy to Get Links

2. Create and distribute compelling infographics:

There’s no doubt about it – infographics still work and will likely continue to work in the
future.

While infographics can still yield impressive results, you have to understand that not all
infographics will get the job done.

If you were reading QuickSprout in Q1 and Q2 of 2015, you’ll most likely agree that his
infographics are top notch. In fact, I spend up to $1,000 to have a single infographic
designed.

However, if you’re on a tight budget or just starting out, you may not be able to afford
$1000 infographics.

Alternatively, you can use Dribbble to find professional infographic designers for half
the price. If you decide to use Visual.ly, you’ll get a better design – but their service costs
more.
A lot of content marketers still use infographics to attract the right audience, acquire
authority links, and grow their email list.

For instance, Ken Lyons shared a case study recently of how WordStream created a useful
infographic that helped a lot of people. Interestingly, the infographic earned a link from
CNN, and drove loads of traffic to its site.

Ann Smarty, a prolific content marketer, created a useful infographic that generated 10
powerful links in just 2 days.

Right Casino Media also generated more than 10 quality links from strong domains with
its infographics.
Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, you can use visual marketing to drive
engagement with your target audience and earn editorial links from the right sites.

What’s more, your ideal customers will respond better to visual content than plain text.
Data from HubSpot found that the human brain processes visual information 60,000x
faster than plain text.

That might help explain the continuing demand for infographics, which has increased by
800%.

Here’s the current growth trend:

Like any compelling content, when you give it sufficient initial promotion, an infographic
has a greater chance of going viral.

The good news is that you’ll continually generate organic traffic to your blog when people
start to share your infographics.

Infographics generate 37.5% more backlinks than a typical blog post. This makes creating
infographics an irresistible link building tactic that you should definitely try.

If you’re ready to create and distribute infographics to improve your off-page SEO efforts,
the resources below will be helpful:

 How to Create and Promote Infographics to Drive 5,000 Visitors Per Week

 What I Learned About Content Marketing by Analyzing 614 Posts

 14 Tools to Create Engaging Infographics and Images for Your Social Media Posts

Of course, there are other ways to build quality links to your web pages. For example,
you can leverage blogger outreach to build relationships that will yield better links, and
use social media outreach to claim unlinked brand names from relevant blogs.
How to Avoid Google Penalties for Unnatural Links

Backlinks are really important, especially if you want to sustain your site’s ranking
position. But we can’t talk about off-page SEO without mentioning Google penalties and
unnatural links.

The truth is that links can significantly affect search performance – for better or worse.

If you ask pro bloggers which factor they think has the strongest impact on search
rankings, many of them will say “links.”

Top brands, small businesses and blog owners are also into link building. Data from
MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report found that 59% of
companies have done external link building.

You want to avoid Google’s penalty as much as possible, because recovering from a
penalty can be daunting and very difficult.

Many things that used to interest Google — such as links from high PR sites — no longer
have that strong impact.
Google is now more concerned about user optimization, user intent and valuable content.
The focus is no longer on the search phrases people use, but their purpose for using that
particular phrase.

A full backlink analysis can help you pinpoint which links are good or bad for your site
– and how to stay off Google’s penalty radar.

The search engine giant hasn’t yet clued the SEO community into any step-by-step
process for staying safe. However, there are things you can do to ensure that your site
isn’t penalized.

These best practices have helped me generate over 700,000 blog visitors to
QuickSprout without experiencing any penalty due to unnatural links and over-optimized
anchor text.

Create content and optimize for the users first:

You probably already know what this means. The question is, are you putting your users
first?

To truly put users first, forget about mentioning your keywords several times in the post,
especially if it doesn’t flow naturally.
Putting users first goes beyond keyword usage. Sometimes you may not outright target
any keyword, yet somehow your content looks too promotional.

Users don’t like to be sold. Instead, help them by creating valuable content. As much as
you can, integrate data into your blog posts, and use visuals to convey your message
clearer.

If you help them with great content, they’ll want to know more about you.

Diversify anchor texts:

After conducting a full backlink analysis and seeing where your links are coming from,
you should next work to diversify your anchor texts.

Diversifying your anchor texts simply means using different keyword phrases, brand
names, and generic terms so that Google will view your links as natural and not
manipulative.

After all, if you didn’t do anything fishy to get the links, then your links shouldn’t all
have exact match keywords in their anchor texts, right?

When diversifying your anchor texts, make relevance your top priority. Google will
analyse your link based on the topic of the referring page and how thematically consistent
it is with yours.

You know that it’s impossible to control where you get links from. Anyone can share
your content and link to it however they please.
Since you can’t control your anchor texts or where the links come from, you should use
your brand name as anchor text more often.

If you’re a social media expert and you’re interviewed by a car blog, you should use your
brand name as anchor text.

That’s because these topics — cars & social media — aren’t thematic or closely related
and Google uses the anchor text of external links to the page to judge the quality,
relevance and usefulness of any link gotten from there.

Last, but not least, make sure that you get links from high-quality sites, disavow low-
quality links from thin pages, blend nofollow links into your link profile to make it natural
and publish fresh content to increase brand mentions.

What is off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO includes any signals that tells Google and other search engin es that your
site is valuable to your audience. Inbound links are one example.

What are some off-page SEO elements?

Links, reviews, company information, video, social media profiles and audiences
How does on-page SEO relate to off-page SEO?

By optimizing your on-page SEO, you increase the value of the page, thus making it more
desirable to link to.

How do keywords affect off-page SEO linking?

There are many attributes that go into the value of keywords in off-page SEO links,
including user experience, use of the primary keyword, and value/depth of the content
surrounding related keywords and topics.

It’s high time to get off your site and to network with other industry bloggers and site
owners if you want to increase boost your search engine ranking.

Understand that Google Penguin and other algorithm updates weren’t primarily targeting
search results that didn’t have tons of incoming links.

You should always use white-hat link building strategies to improve your off-page
optimization.

However, you need to prepare your website to receive authority link juice as you work
hard to build and earn links. Make sure your site is easily navigable.

When it comes to creating a better content experience, it all boils down to answering
user’s questions. Start by identifying the questions asked by your ideal customers. You
can find these questions on Quora, Twitter, and other social networks. Creating high-
quality content is a top SEO technique that cannot be overemphasized.

Above all, search engine optimization is not a hit-and-run marketing approach. You
should approach it knowing that the efforts you put in today will pay off in the future,
ultimately increasing your search engine rank and leading you to the success you desire.

Most of all, be consistent and patient and you’ll gradually climb to the top of Google’s
results.
6 Off Page SEO Strategies That Will Rank You on Page One
of Google
Not all links are created equal.

That means that you can’t just focus on getting the most links possible.

Instead, you need the best links possible.

A link from Entrepreneur.com is going to dominate a link from

JohnsLinkBuildingFarm.com any day of the week.

A site with 100 high-quality backlinks can outperform other sites with more if they’ve
only been scraping the bottom of the link-building barrel.

The best links also have another hidden benefit.

Many times, they won’t just give you a little SEO boost. You’ll also get increased brand
awareness and credibility. You’ll get referral traffic back to your site. And you might
even get some new customers or clients, too.

So the ROI on an awesome link is definitely worth the extra effort.

Do you want to know how to find those links?

Here are six tactics that you can start replicating this week.

1. Start by finding pre-curated lists of blogs

What if I told you that someone, somewhere has already curated and developed a list of
the top industry sites and blogs for your niche?

That way, all you had to do was find those ‘lists of lists’ to instantly get hundreds of high -
quality backlink opportunities.

Would you believe it?

You should, because it’s actually a common practice.

Just do a simple Google search for “best XYZ blogs,” and you’ll see what I mean.
Here, I’ll show you how to tap into this potential gold mine of backlink opp ortunities to
skyrocket your rankings.

Let’s pick “best nutrition blogs 2017” to find the most recent possibilities in the health
field.
If you’re a health or nutrition blogger (or even if your product or service rem otely touches
on the nutrition sector), you can simply pull up ‘lists of lists’ like this to find that people
have already done the hard work for you.

Other bloggers have already curated the results. So all you have to do now is go through
them, pull out the ones with the best potential, and instantly gain access to hundreds of
targets for potential outreach.

That’s hundreds of new relationships waiting to be kindled and countless links waiting
for you to snag.

Next up, let’s click on one of the articles to see how you’d filter through all of these
results.
Immediately, you’ll see a treasure chest of data.

Here are 50 of the best blogs in your space with links to their sites and short descriptions.
Now you can assess whether they’d be a good fit (or not) for partnering in some way to
get a backlink.

It doesn’t even have to be formal or complex. You could simply offer the blogger a free
version of your product in exchange for a review. That way, it doesn’t even cost you
anything out of pocket!

Here’s how to analyse the website’s potential.

Pull up an SEO tool like website authority checker and plug in the domain to pull up the
site’s domain and page authority.

These two metrics are simple quality scores that tell you how ‘strong’ a website’s link
profile looks.

Ahrefs will even tell you how many backlinks the site has and how long it’s been around.

Now, create a spreadsheet with this data so that you can prioritize which ones to start
reaching out to. You’ll also use the spreadsheet to track your results.

Keep something in mind: Not all bloggers will respond back. That’s okay.
Don’t make the mistake of asking for a link during your first email outreach campaign.
The key to success lies in building a worthwhile, mutually-beneficial relationship with
these bloggers.

To avoid sounding needy or greedy, send a ‘warm-up’ email to encourage the blogger to
respond. You can then follow up over time with emails two, three, four, and so on to
eventually get what you want.

Don’t look at it as a one-way street, either. A blogger can help you gain access to a new
audience, but you can also help the blogger by promoting his or her site. Make it a give-
and-take relationship.

2. Give more testimonials to companies you like

This one is so easy it almost shouldn’t count.

Think about it for a second.

Almost every single person on the internet (92% of consumers) reads online reviews
before purchasing items they want or need.

Almost the same number (88% of consumers) will then trust those online reviews as much
as they would a referral from a relative or friend.

And testimonials from customers can help “generate 62% more revenue from every
customer, every visit,” according to BigCommerce.
Can you believe those numbers?!

Basically, every company with a website now has to have customer reviews and
testimonials.

That’s good news for you!

Because you can help companies whose products and services you already use and love
by leaving testimonials. In return, you gain access to one of the easiest ways to skyrocket
your high-quality backlinks.

For example, HubSpot’s known for having a huge case-study section on its website.
HubSpot’s always on the lookout for new customer testimonials to show off, like this
one:
That’s not a bad backlink for about five minutes of your time!

Are you not a HubSpot customer? No problem, because as I said, almost every single
company is on the constant lookout for more reviews.

Just look at HubSpot’s marketing automation competitor, Marketo, which has published
dozens of in-depth case studies:
Each of these case studies also features information about the company. So it’s like a
built-in sales pitch, too!

You get to include a video and details about how you help other people.

The backlink opportunity is awesome, but these case studies can even help you drive
leads.

Here’s one more example for the road on Slack’s website.

Go to the “Customer Stories” section of its site and scroll down to read the individual
case study for one of its customers. We’ll use “Ticketmaster” for the purposes of
demonstration.
This case study page gives Ticketmaster its own in-depth page on Slack’s site.

So sure, the company gets a backlink. But it’s also getting so much more (for free!) when
you think about it.

Let’s check out what it looks like now.

All three examples here (HubSpot, Marketo, and Slack) have extremely high domain
authority because they’re huge brands with millions of customers between them.

And we’ve barely scratched the surface on this tactic. You can leave testimonials on
almost any industry imaginable to get high-quality (and free!) backlinks.

3. Scholarship campaigns for .edu links

Some industries are notoriously difficult for generating meaningful backlinks.

For example, let’s say you’re an accountant.

(You’re not, but go with me here for a second.)

As an accountant, there are probably not thousands of big blogs out there for outreach
(like there was for the “nutrition blog” example).

You can probably give a few other companies a testimonial. But eventually, you’ll run
out of steam after five or ten good ones.

How, then, are you supposed to build strong links in a ‘boring’ niche like this?

That’s the same exact problem one of SharpRocket’s clients was dealing with. So it turned
to one of the tried-and-true backlinks methods for ‘boring’ companies: Scholarships!
Here’s how the plan works.

First, create a scholarship page on your website that lists some of the details (like how
much you’re giving away, how someone can enter the contest or giveaway, and how the
winners will be picked and notified).
But before you push the page live, make sure to create some official Terms and
Conditions.

There need to be some clear instructions for who’s eligible and who’s not so there are no
potential misunderstandings when the campaign goes live and there’s a lot of money at
stake.

Now you can look for potential colleges, schools, or universities that might express
interest in this new scholarship.

Although that sounds like it would be incredibly time consuming, there are a few tricks
you can use to drastically speed up the process.
For example, you can use search operators like “inurl” so that Google becomes your best
friend and instantly gives you what you need.

Let’s say we’re giving away a legal scholarship, so you want to get a list of colleges in
the state of California that already give away scholarships just like this (that way, it
should be a slam dunk to get the school on board).
Easy, right?

Using a few clever search operators can give you a list of countless colleges with .edu
domains in California.

Now let’s compile all of those results we’re getting in a simple spreadsheet so you can
start tracking results when you do outreach.

In this example, SharpRocket gave away a $500 scholarship and received 14 high -quality
.edu links in return.

That’s only $35 bucks each!

4. Monitor people using your brand name without linking

Has your company been around for awhile?

If so, chances are people out there are already talking about you.

That’s obviously great! Strangers are singing your praises without you having to initiate
the conversation or conduct any outreach.

There is one problem, however.

Many times, they’ll forget to link to you!

If they’re already writing a positive review about you or something you said, chances are
they’ll be more than willing to link to you, too.

You just need to spot it when it happens and follow up ASAP.

To make sure you don’t miss out on potential backlinks, head on over to Google Alerts.
Now you can type in your name or brand terms to get a list of everyone who’s r ecently
used the same.

Of course, not everyone will be you.

For example, the first two results have nothing to do with me. But the last one does!
Now you can click on all of these results to pull them up and see if they liked out to you
or not.

Mention is an even more powerful tool. You can create feeds to monitor your brand terms
over time so it will pull from all different sources across the Internet (including social
channels).

That way, you can get a daily update about who’s mentioning your brand and whether
they’ve linked out to you (or not).

For example, here’s another one that I found recently.

This person was kind enough to mention some of his content from a video but forgot to
link out to me.

So now you can go track them down and send a nice, friendly reminder that while you
appreciate them mentioning you, a link would really make you love them forever.

If you can’t find their email address, do the next best thing: Reach out to them through a
social channel like Twitter.

5. Give bloggers your product for free to get a review

I alluded to this one earlier, but it’s so powerful that it deserves its own space.

You can (and should) give away your product for free in exchange for a review.

The best part about this strategy (besides the awesome links) is there’s almost no limit or
cap on how many times you can do it.

And many times, these product reviews provide additional benefits.

For example, you’ll get a backlink. But more importantly, you’ll increase brand
awareness, traffic back to your site, and new customers.

These reviews can also help explain how your product works, too, so people can see what
it looks like without actually signing up themselves.

For example, we can take a software product like Kissmetrics

… and pitch it to a few bloggers or websites that already review similar products like it.
You can even create a link on your website that tells people that you’re more than willing
to trade a free copy of your product for an honest review.

That’s what proposal software company BidSketch does on its pricing page. Scroll down
under the pricing plans and look for the simple text link:

Once again, you can do this in almost any niche.

For example, Primally Pure makes organic skincare products. So it looks for organic
bloggers who want natural products as opposed to the ‘mainstream’ ones that are full of
harmful chemicals.

So they reached out to Clean Eating with a Dirty Mind to get a review:
You can also think of other similar sites that might include your product like this.

For example, subscription sites are popping up in fashion and retail that deliver free
samples of products to try (and later buy the full version if they like it).

Stitch Fix will act as your own personal stylist, while Birchbox will send you skin and
haircare product samples.

They even have these for dogs now, too, with sites like BarkBox that will send your pooch
free treats and toys.

Once again, here’s Primally Pure featured by an organic box company.

So the company got a nice link back to its site, but it’s also gained exposure to tons of
new potential customers at the same exact time.

Definitely worth a few free products.

6. Featured influencer strategy

Let’s go back to the B2B space to provide one more foolproof tactic to acquiring high -
DA backlinks.

Thought leadership is one of the best B2B strategies because it can provide several
benefits other than simply demonstrating your command over a subject.

You get increased brand awareness. You get referral traffic back to your site and some
potential sales. And of course, you also get the backlink.

Best of all, bloggers and journalists are always looking for quality content .

So you’re actually taking work off their plate if you can get in touch with them and
provide an actionable soundbite.

For example, Ahrefs recently wrote an article about 90 SEO experts on its site.

Obviously, that’s a ton of people! So they’re going to need all the help they can get.
Now, Neil Patel has been doing SEO for years. So he obviously wants to be featured in
here and get the added exposure (in addition to a sweet link).

Check out the lower right-hand corner of this list:

Clicking on his name or face would take you directly to his contribution:
Notice that he gets three things here:

1. His Twitter link

2. His domain link

3. And a related content link

Not bad for about five minutes worth of work on his part!

The ROI on that five minutes can be massive now with all the new people who are going
to find his related content.

There’s one trick with these roundups, though.

Take a look at this example — it involves over 90 other people!

That means you need to do whatever you can to stand out.

His favourite technique is to offer something unexpected or even contrarian. That gets
people’s attention by interrupting the normal pattern they’re expecting to see after reading
the responses from everyone else.

Conclusion

High-quality backlinks don’t grow on trees.

You can’t just swap links in some spammy forum with a bunch of random strangers.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.

Instead, it takes a little effort, creativity, and persistency to finally get what you’re after.

But the hard work is worth it because of the additional benefits it uncovers.

Good links from high-quality websites will get you traffic back to your site. Many of
these people will then learn about you for the first time, sign up for your email list, or
even purchase a basic product.

If you do it right, these backlinks can be scalable, too. That means you can run similar
campaigns again and again and again to drive more attention to your business.

So good backlinks give you an SEO lift, sure. But more importantly, good backlinks grow
your business to push you over the edge of the competition.