Link Building
Three Methods for Getting Working Links
In this article, I will talk about three methods for getting working links:
- submits: posting information about your business on external sites with a link to the site;
- articles: placement of guest posts on external resources;
- crowd marketing — interaction with the target audience on third-party Internet resources in order to attract attention to the product / service.
The purpose of this article is to give directions for work and methods for selecting sites for links, as well as to point to specific sites that can be used.
Submits
Submits are the placement of information about your website or business on external sites with a link to it. Submits include:
- directories;
- review sites;
- mapping services.
Submits are good for promoting local business:
- hairdressing;
- beauty salons;
- legal offices;
- car services, etc.
Since they can indicate location data, thereby giving a georeferencing and citing all legal information. Search engines understand this very well and take it into account.
Let’s take a closer look at each of them.
Directory
There are directories in almost every business area where you can register, add a description and a backlink.
It is important to take into account the following points:
- unique description for each directory;
- using only anchorless links;
- maximum filling of all information.
How to find niche directories?
To do this, just enter the following queries into Google:
- niche directories;
- list of niche directories.
You can stay in them both on a paid and free basis.
To search directories in a specific topic, use the construction:
«niche» + directories.
It is advisable to create your own list of directories, check them for spamming, and only then proceed with placement.
This way you will select only suitable directories according to your criteria, and the quality of backlinks will be higher.
Maps
Thanks to online maps, you can not only get links, but also significantly increase traffic. Most often, commercial information is indicated in the cards, such as an address, phone number, which is taken into account by search engines. Therefore, do not be lazy to fill it out.
Search for map services with the following queries:
- online maps;
- list of map services.
User Review Sites
The principle of operation of review sites is similar to map services, but at the same time they have significant differences.
An important point: if you managed to take the top positions on such sites, then you can completely forget about SEO promotion. It will be enough customers from reviewers if you have a small or medium-sized business.
One of the most famous reviewers is yelp, whose traffic is 180 million/month.
A few other popular review sites:
- Foursquare;
- Google Places;
- Insider Pages;
- Bing Local;
- Yahoo Local.
You can use the following queries to search for reviews:
- customer review;
- customer review sites list.
Due to high positions in search engines, such review sites usually have a lot of both external and internal traffic.
If your business is a good fit for review sites, be sure to do so.
Articles
In essence, article marketing is the placement of publications on third-party sites with links to the site being promoted.
It can be done in 2 ways: paid and free.
Buying
In essence, article marketing is the placement of publications on third-party sites with links to the site being promoted.
It can be done in 2 ways: paid and free.
Buying an article is the easiest option if you don’t want to create high-quality interesting content. Just agree to buy an article with a link to your site and then post it on an authoritative resource. It is possible to implement this both independently and through intermediaries.
Some sites have a special section «Advertising». Write to the editors and, for a certain amount, agree on the placement of the material with a link to your company.
However, this is not always the case, so you have to find contacts for editors, blog owners and seek their attention through outreach. We will discuss this in detail below.
Intermediaries can be either specialized agencies or just contributors who have a database of ready-made contacts.
Advantages:
- save time;
- get access to sites that you yourself could not reach;
- save yourself the trouble of writing text.
Disadvantages:
- There are many unscrupulous intermediaries who may disappear and fail to fulfill their obligations. This is the main disadvantage.
- Finding contributors also takes time.
- Higher price, 2-3 times more expensive than directly with the owner or site editor.
Agencies, as a rule, are more reliable as partners and more likely to fulfill their obligations, but the price tag for their services will also be high.
Outreach
Let’s return to outreach, let’s figure out what it is and how it can reduce the cost of our work.
Outreach is a method of link building, the essence of which is to establish communication, relationships with editors, site administrators, bloggers, and journalists.
The purpose of communication is the same — to get a link cheaper than through intermediaries. Outreach can also be divided into paid and shareware.
With paid outreach, the webmaster is supposed to be rewarded for posting an article with a link.
If you can offer good quality content that will be of interest to site readers, then it is quite possible to post material with a link to your site for free.
Important: the more well-known brand of your site, the better its design, layout and packaging in general, the more responses and free links you can get. A good product is always easier to promote.
Why is this type of outreach called conditionally free?
The fact is that preparing high-quality content on your own is quite time-consuming. And if you also plan to accommodate at a large number of sites, then you will definitely have to hire at least one specialist who will be outreach. In doing so, you bear the following costs:
- outreacher’s salary;
- content preparation;
- payment for outreach services.
If you need a small number of links to your website per month and you are unsure if you can build an effective outreach process, then it may be more beneficial to simply contact an agency.
Outreach by email chains
To increase the effectiveness of outreach, we recommend using chain emails.
Outreach process:
- Collect email database + name + position.
- Prepare email.
- Start sending emails.
- Discuss terms.
- Prepare content.
- Submit.
What is email chain outreach?
It often happens that you send one letter, do not receive a response, and simply stop communicating with the person. However, as practice shows, a chain of 5-7 letters works best, increases the response rate by up to 40%.
How to prepare email chains correctly? You should make a plan for sending emails, after what period of time you will send repeated emails. It can be 2, 3, 5 days — there is no universal answer, you need to test. It is important not to take long breaks and not stretch the chain for more than 1 month.
Email content:
- addressee’s name;
- examples of good guest posts;
- the topic on which you want to prepare the material, or the plan of the article.
Email should be concise.
A person must immediately understand what exactly they want from him.
After receiving the answer, it is necessary to discuss all the conditions for posting the article in as much detail as possible:
- dofollow/nofollow;
- paid / free;
- prepaid / postpaid;
- in which section it will be placed;
- when it will be posted.
How to outreach even more effectively?
There are services that will help make the distribution of a chain of emails automatic. This option is suitable for companies that do not have a marketer on staff who could take on this job.
Examples of services that support chains:
- MailChimp;
- eSputnik;
- Sendsay;
- Replyup.
Segment the database immediately at the stage of its collection.
The most important criterion for division is whether there is a chance to get a free post or only a paid one. The whole further chain of letters will depend on this.
Send a chain through the database first, focused on getting free links, if it doesn’t work, then make it paid again. This will help you get the most out of your base.
If everything is done correctly, you can get an Open Rate of up to 80%. Most recipients answer at 1-2 steps, but if there was no answer even after the fifth, then it would be more rational not to annoy the person and stop communicating.
Important: at 4-5 steps, it is recommended to duplicate the information from the first letter so that the person sees what exactly you want from him.
Crowd Marketing
Crowd marketing is interaction with the target audience on thematic platforms (forums, comments, Q&A sites) in order to draw attention to the product/service. This is a great way to get backlinks.
Important: give really expert content that will be useful to people and only then attach a link.
There are very popular Q&A sites on the net, where people ask questions on a variety of topics, get answers, and develop heated discussions. If you manage to organically join the discussion, then the flow of interested users is guaranteed.
With active work, even only with this site, you can achieve a large influx of traffic.
- quora.com
The service presents a huge number of topics that are suitable for each project. Compared to Reddit, traffic is significantly less, but also impressive — more than 450 million.
But there are two nuances:
- strict moderation of links;
- support for English only.
In addition to question / answer sites, we recommend using:
- forums;
- blog comments;
- comments in the media.
You can implement a crowd marketing campaign both independently and by contacting specialized services.
The result of crowd marketing is a dynamic link profile, referral traffic and growing positions.
Conclusion
Most of the ways to get links are shareware, but they require a lot of time to build processes in the link building department.
- Submits (catalogues, reviews, online maps) are great for promoting a local business. You can specify location data in them, thereby giving a georeferencing and placing a link to the site. Search engines understand this very well and take it into account.
- Article marketing is the placement of publications on third-party resources with a link to the site being promoted. It can be implemented both for a fee (purchase of an article) and for free (preparation of high-quality content + outreach). To increase efficiency, it is recommended to use outreach chains of emails.
- Crowd marketing is interaction with the target audience on thematic platforms (forums, comments, Q&A sites) in order to draw attention to the product/service. The results of crowd marketing are: a dynamic link profile, receiving targeted traffic, bringing it to the top of search engine results, creating a positive tone around the brand/site.
