Welcome to my 4000+ word beast of a thing!

The natural backlink building strategies that I’m going to share with you are so unique, I bet you have never heard about these strategies.

I promise that after reading this, you feel like a BOSS. I

Let me tell you one thing. Simply publishing some quality content and sitting back tight won’t work. Google can’t just discover your content and rank them according to quality.

In order to get your content discovered by Google, content promotion and natural backlink building is necessary. You, yourself have to promote your content. No one gonna come to your blog and read your content.

When more and more sites link to you, Google concludes that your content is of high-quality. And visitors will follow your blog.

The fact is that many outdated SEO and search marketers are still BUYING backlinks. Buying backlinks temporarily spikes organic traffic for a week or a couple of months. But if you are looking for a long journey, it’s not something worthy.

Building manual backlinks aggressively is slowly dying. Perhaps you have smelt it.  Hence, you are on this post.

Below are the things that you  will learn in this post:

Let’s dive straight into the guide.

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7 things you need to know about link Building

  • The number of backlinks you have should be proportional to the amount of content on your site. If you have tons of backlinks with only a single blog post, it smells fishy, right? The rate at which you build backlinks should increase uniformly over time.
  • Maintain link velocity. Link velocity is something, which you may have or may not have heard of. It’s the speed at which at which your site’s link profile builds over time. Building tons of backlinks straight away after getting the domain name heads your site to Google’s hell.
  • Maintain the diversity in anchor texts. The anchor texts are nothing but the text that is present in your backlinks. The anchor texts should be diverse. Tons of exact keyword anchor texts may raise a red flag. If your homepage is targeting for the keyword- “SEO strategies”. Then the anchor texts…SEO strategies (10%), brand anchors (20%), author name anchors (30%) other anchor texts (40%). Many of the bloggers think that having the exact anchor text 100% percent will give them an immense boost in Google. It’s wrong.
  • Do not focus on quantity of backlinks; it is the quality that matters.
  • Build high-quality backlinks only if you have content. Having tons of backlinks (even high-quality) with only a single piece of content, may raise a red flag in Google.
  • Do not build backlinks from guest blogging sites and private link networks.
  • The sites that link to your blog should be relevant or should be of the same niche as yours. Those sort of backlinks appear natural.
  • Internal links count too. Having a perfect internal linking strategy helps a lot in boosting the overall ranking power of your blog. Link to the relevant pieces of content within your blog (look at Wikipedia).

These are some of the things, which you should know about natural link building before jumping into the mainstream.

How to build natural backlinks that won’t get broke?

Building high-quality backlinks is not an overnight process. Even if you do so, it will hurt your blog.

The strategies that I will explain in this blog post may allow you to build backlinks overnight.

Linking Undraw

If you have no content or less content on your blog, the below strategies will be a waste.

Many of the bloggers still don’t know about search modifiers. In this tutorial, I’m leveraging the full potential of a Google search using search modifiers. I recommend you to look at some of the Google search modifiers before diving into this.

Dive in!

Search for bloggers who link to others on a timely basis

Some bloggers have the habit of listing all the top commenters on their blog or listing all the awesome content that they come across in their niche. They do it timely, say weekly or monthly.

In order to find those sites that link to others on a timely basis, these are some of the Google search modifier queries that help you in the process.

  • “top commenters this month” {keyword}
  • “useful sites” {keyword}
  • “resources” {keyword}
  • intitle:”top OR best posts” intitle:”around the web” {keyword }
Google search

Build relations with authors of that blog. Get them to know about your newly published awesome posts.

Refer the below section on how to build relationships and build backlinks with the help of relationships.

Relationship building the right way in order to build links

Believe me or not. Building relationships is like building backlinks to your blog.

Building relationships help in making your blogging life more fun and enjoyable. Without relationships, it would be a lone blogging journey. It gives you a comforting feeling. It gives you a feeling that someone’s there to appreciate your hard work.

It is one of the most overlooked strategies. Trust me, really.

How to build relationships?

Alright, I said that you have to build relationships. But, how? Where to start?

Here are the ways that are often followed sequentially by me:

I make use of tools like BuzzSumo to know about the top influencers in my niche. List them according to their popularity. These influencers are certainly friendly in nature and believe in relationships.

Buzzsumo influencers

Once you have that list.

Follow these steps:

  • Visit their Twitter profiles. Notice whether they share other awesome content or only their own ones. I’m sure that they share other’s content as well, so they are considered as influencers by the above tools.
  • Visit their blogs and examine whether these people link to other awesome resources around the web. If that is true. You have got little to do.

Once you have the SOLID list of influences, how to start?

Always be the top one commenter on every blog post of authoritative blogs. Do this until, the webmasters of those blogs consider you strongly. You can sense it, right?

Bonus: Leaving insightful comments, builds relationships and also attracts targeted visitors to your blog.

Force them to reply via your reply triggering comments.

Sprinkle some personalistic approach to your comments. Feel them that you are close to them. Ask them like “Hey John, how’s the day going on? I hope you are hopping on a wonderful weekend!”. Be cool, direct.

Feel free to leave negative comments if you disagree with them. But don’t overdo it.

Do Interviews

Conduct Interviews with famous bloggers in your niche. Interviews return high value to your readers. Oh wait! I forgot to mention that it also helps in building strong relationships!

Here are some of the benefits of interviews:

  • It makes room for interaction
  • Can go viral
  • It grows your online reputation
  • Last but not the least, it helps to build strong relationships
Interview backlinks

It increases the chances of featuring your interview, in their ABOUT or even HOMEPAGE.

Share others’ content

Share content of others more than your own, follow 90:10 rule of sharing.

If you have trouble, if you are selfish, stubborn. Force yourself to say, “No problem, to share awesome content”.

While sharing do mention the creator of the content. Ping them that you shared their content.

  • Go to the Facebook profile of influencers, add them. Follow all the updates. Add them to your favorites list. Like and leave comments on their posts. Remember also to leave comments on their pics like, “looking nice”. If they shared a quote, leave an insightful comment about your view on that thought.
  • If you find that, Facebook is not the place they are hanging in most of the time, hunt for them on Google Plus, add them to circles. Follow their updates, post insightful comments on their G+ posts. Craft comments so that it forces them to reply.
  • Find out the favorite place they like to hang out online. Whether it is a particular forum, another social network? Get yourself in. Actively participate.

Ahead…

Get them to know about YOUR awesome content. I’m not saying you to do email outreach.

Here are the tips:

Find out the time when those influencers are active in which social site.

You can judge the time when they are active by taking a look at their last Tweet or post.

Schedule your social posts, accordingly. For this, I’m using Hootlet for Chrome. It seamlessly integrates with the majority of social networks and makes your job better.

Facebook hootlet

Find content that influencers have already published, related to one of your posts.

If you are a regular commenter on that blog, leave an insightful comment, along with a punch line- “I have also published an article on this”. You may set that related post of yours as a homepage URL in the comment. Append like “I have set that post as homepage in this comment”.

Find places where they shared that similar content. Head over and leave a comment like, “It reminded me of one of the previous blog posts, {URL}. After reading this post, I’m feeling about updating my old content on the same!”.

Alter the replies that I’ve shown you.

Like this, you’ll increase the traffic and strengthen the relations.

These above relationship strategies increase your chances of you featuring in their blog posts like Top commenters report, top content around the web this week/month or even year. Featuring means, you will get some high-quality backlinks.

Review their book, service or product

If you have released a product or published a book, and one of the bloggers has reviewed your book or service, how do you feel? It shoots up your serotonin levels, right?

You’ll surely link to them, in one of your future articles.

Reviewing the products of influencers in your niche increases the chances of them linking to your blog in the form of endorsements in their homepage.

Getting some .edu backlinks

EDU backlinks are considered as the most powerful sort of backlinks.Having 3 to 4 Edu backlinks to your site is essential.

Search operators for getting high quality .edu backlinks:

Edu backlinks

site:.edu {“keyword”} “post a comment”
site:.edu intitle:resources {“keyword”}

How to make your blog appear in resource section?

  • Offer or create scholarships.
  • Interview an important faculty in that educational Institute.
  • In-depth articles are the one that many of the educational sites like to link.
  • If you are studying at an educational institute that has a website, then let your faculty know more about your blog or site.

Broken links in an educational sites’ resource page, can also become a boon for bloggers.

At first, make use of the search query [site:.edu intitle:resources {“keyword”}]. Now find a relevant resource page.

Install, Check My Links extension for Google Chrome.

Head over to that resource page and check the links on that page. The extension will mark broken links in that page as red.Now it is time for you to contact the Webmaster of that.edu site, and notify him about that and offer your blog in that place.

Check your competitors’ backlinks

I hope this is the best strategy that ever a Blogger can hear.

However, in this section, I will teach you how to do it properly. How to get the most out of it?

How to find potential competitors for your site?

Competitors are the ones who have the same ranking power as that of your site. Your competitors have almost same domain authority as yours, and almost same trust metrics as yours.

One who are ranking above or below your keywords in SERPs.

Or you can make use  of SEMRush to know who your competitors are.

You can spy on your competitor backlinks with the help of tools like Ahrefs, Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer, SEMRush,Cognitive SEO, Raven tools, SEO Spyglass and Backlink Watch.

You can also make use of a tool called SERPWorx. This tool does a great job of displaying the metrics from all the different tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majetic, Moz, all in one place.

This comes with a browser extension and works similar to MozBar but insanely powerful with all the metrics that matter in one place. Along with that it also displays a dozen of onpage metrics right underneath the search results.

All the above tools, help you find out the total number of backlinks and as well as filter those backlinks as do follow or no follow. You can also export the backlink profile of your competitors’ blogs.

I am making use of Open Site Explorer as it is free for fair use. However, if you want a most effective tool, you can use Ahrefs. It has the largest database of backlinks.

Go to OSE; enter the URL of your competitor’s blog. It will return all the inbound links that your competitor has.

Ose dofollow backlinks

Now as you can see in the above screenshot, the main matter of interest is Dofollow links for us. Because nofollow links can be easily obtained by blog commenting.

Dofollow links are the most powerful links in the eyes of Google. So let us export all the dofollow links that your competitor has.

In Open Site Explorer itself, it displays page and domain authority for first 15-20 backlinks only.

So…

Export the data in CSV format using “Request CSV link” in OSE. The report will be emailed and also can be downloaded from the site in 2 minutes.

Now open the file. Here you want to arrange the backlinks in descending order of their domain authorities.

Target top 5 backlinks in the list.

Now you got the right list of backlinks of your competitor. Target those sites. Visit that link, analyze how your competitor got that backlink. Whether it’s from guest blogging, forum signatures or featured posts. Follow the same!

If your competitor can acquire a link, why can’t you acquire the link from the same domain? You certainly can.

You will surely get a couple of backlinks.

On the other hand, you can also build relationships with that webmaster and wait for the opportunity. Sounds cool huh?

Leveraging competitors’ broken links!

In the previous step, you have collected the list of your competitors.

It’s time for you find what are all the broken pages in your competitors’ blog.

Screaming frog client error

Make use of tools like Open Site Explorer or Screaming Frog.

After you make a list of all the broken links on your competitor’s blog, weed out all the unnecessary broken links like files, tag pages, etc. Now, it’s time for you to check who are all the people who link to that broken page.

You can use Backlink analysis tools like Ahrefs, Majestic SEO or Open Site Explorer.

Often there will be no or fewer backlinks to these pages.

So I recommend Ahrefs, as it has the largest database of backlinks, updated on a daily basis.

Now, if there are any potential sites linking to the broken page, it’s time for you. 😀

Naughty tip: Head over to WayBack Machine. Enter the broken page link. If the broken page has/had backlinks, then there is an increased chance of you getting the content that was on that page in WayBack machine.

Study and analyze the content on the page. How fresh was that content? Why that webmaster deleted the content? How can I improve the same? What are the implications?

Write an article on your own blog on the same, with more updated information.

Now, it’s time for you to ping the webmasters who are still linking to the outdated content.

Before pinging them, I advise you to build relationships with that webmaster via blog commenting and social interaction with them.

It increases the chances of your request being accepted.

Hey, John.

I am a regular reader of your blog {their blog}. I noticed that you are still linking to one of the blog posts at {dead link}. That was an awesome article. But it is now returning 404 error.

I have read that article, I’ve also published a blog post on the same, which is more enhanced and updated. Kindly look at my blog post on the same at {your post URL on the same}.

Link to me if you really like it. Let me know what you think.

Cheers,

{your name}

Like this, you have helped the webmaster of that blog and as well as procured a link back to your blog post.

The conversion rate, in this case, is very high. I’m sure that if you do the same 10 times, you’ll get 7 backlinks!

Competitor top pages analysis

In this process, you want to find out the blog posts of your competitors thathavegot high appreciation via backlinks and social shares.

You can make use of Open Site Explorer and BuzzSumo respectively.

Buzzsumo-top content

I am using BuzzSumo in this case.

After identifying the posts that have received more appreciation for them, create a similar content. I bet you will also get the same appreciation for your newly published content.

You can also check all the sites that link to the top pages of your competitor. Create a superior, fresh content and ping those linkers about your content.

Google Plus and other social media profile backlink strategy

Google Plus is one of the popular social networks. Although links from social media sites are not follow, they carry powerful value. Because social signals are one of the most powerful ranking factors in Google.

Your Google Plus profile page, like any other page, has also got page authority. The more the authority, the more value your Google Plus shares (backlinks) will carry. You can naturally increase your Google Plus profile page’s authority by building high-quality backlinks pointing to your profile page.

You can check your current Google Plus profile authority by entering your profile URL in Open Site Explorer search bar.

How to build backlinks to your social media profile?

Instead of linking to your own blog while commenting, you can include a link to your Google Plus profile page. By this, your comments appear more natural.

You can also make use of all the backlink building strategies that I have mentioned in this article to build backlinks to your Google Plus profile page.

You can follow the same process for all of your social media profiles including LinkedIn and Twitter.

Treat your LinkedIn and Google Plus profile like your own sites.

Create simple widgets or embeddable tools

The bloggers who have succeeded using this very strategy are numerous. You can do it yourself with little coding knowledge.

Like, create a simple Alexa rank check tool as a widget, publish your tool on your own blog, include a link to your blog in the code of the widget or tool. Offer your visitors to use the tools or widgets in their blog.

However, plenty of the bloggers remove your credit link .But, some of them leave it as it is. Guess what? A handful of natural backlinks.

Like this, you can create widgets that help other blogs to achieve simple tweaks in their blogs.

You can also create WordPress themes and plugins. Themes, especially, helps you get homepage footer links, which are somewhat powerful than other backlinks.

It is one of the most overlooked SEO strategies.

Finding good guest posting opportunities

Guest posting is undoubtedly one of the greatest high-quality link building strategies that many of the pro-bloggers are following.

Guest posting when done on highly authoritative sites, will drive you tons of laser-targeted traffic back to your site.By guest posting, you are easily capturing the attention of the audience.

By guest posting regularly on a single site, you will exponentially grow your audience.

Finding best guest blogging opportunities is a daunting task. You need a site that has high domain authority, loyal fan base.

How to find the best sites to blog?

As a first step, you need to install MozBar for Chrome or Firefox. What this extension will do is, it adds domain authority, page authority, the number of backlinks to all the results in SERPs. By this, you can easily search best sites to guest blog.

Now,You need to use these search modifiers and search.

inurl:”write for us” + {keyword}
intitle:guest blogging guidelines + {keyword}
{keyword} “guest blogger”
{keyword} “write for us”
{keyword} “become a contributor”

These search modifiers should return some of the effective results. Take a note of all blogs or sites, which have high domain authority that accept the guest posts in your niche. Sort out them in descending order of their domain authority.

Now, choose top five blogs that have high domain authority among them. Go to Advanced Keywords and Competitors Research Tool-SEMRush. Enter the domain name. It shows you the estimated organic traffic that the site is getting.

In order to get the amount of other referral or direct traffic, those sites are getting, head over to SimilarWeb. It returns the percentage of traffic that the site or blog is getting from various sources.

Merge SEMRush data and SimilarWeb data.

To get the nearly accurate estimate of overall traffic to those sites, do the following  things.

Now choose the site that is getting a high amount of traffic. Reach the owner of the site, mail him personally about your request for becoming a guest blogger.

Or you may also check Alexa ranks of those sites.

Like this reach out for about five sites, that have high traffic and domain authority.

Many bloggers offer guest bloggers to link out to their site in the author bio. As the link is dofollow, Google will count it as an effective backlink.You can also include one or two links in the main content. However, don’t overdo it.

Research a blog for a section where they can link to you

Let me take an example, straight away.

Suppose if you have a blog post about, “link velocity”. Hunt for other blog posts that have the keyword – “keyword proximity” in content.To make the task easier, make use of “allintext:” Google search operator.

In this case,allintext:”link velocity”

This returned all the blog articles that have the keyword “link velocity” in their body.

Reach out the author of the article. Like…

Hi Joe. Your article on {} is informative, I also noticed that you have  mentioned about {topic}. I have an in detailed post regarding the {topic}. If you link to my article{} in that section, I am sure that your readers find it useful.

Do read my article on {topic}. If you find it useful, then only, link to it.

Cheers,

{your name}

Link in a section

Image attribution links

Are you creating your own images for using them on your blog? Why not make the most of it and use those images as link building arsenals?

The point is to allow other users to use your images on their own blogs, but with attribution back to your site.

Sounds cool, huh?

However, no one will use your blog images unless you offer them to do so.

So create a copyright policy page on your site and inform your users that they can use your images freely on their blog.

You can also make use of Flickr to promote your images. You have to upload all of your created images under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons.

Many of the bloggers use “Flickr CC 2.0 search engine” for hunting blog images. Your images enjoy maximum exposure.

Crazily link out to other bloggers

Linking out to other blogs is effective in terms of both boosting SEO and getting backlinks.

Linking out to other bloggers, drives you backlinks? Crazy, huh?

There’s one thing to remember, always link out, preferably to those blogs who have more domain authority than yours.

After linking out to other blogs, it’s damn important to let that blog’s webmaster know that you’ve linked to them. Indirectly or directly, it’s all left to you.

What will happen if you link out to other blogs?

While you are linking out to other bloggers, WordPress and the majority of the platforms, push a trackback to the site you are linking to. If your site is of great value, then that webmaster will definitely approve the trackback. Trackback delivers you high-quality backlink to your blog post.

Frequent backlinking to a site encourages the webmaster of that site to link back to you in the future. Plenty of the bloggers have the mentality like – “Take and give”. They follow it.

Take an example of mine. If I came across someone who linked to my site, I will go to that site, analyze where that webmaster has linked to me on that page. If that page is valuable, I leave a comment. Then in the future, I will definitely link to them.

Comment for a backlink

Killer ways to promote infographics for backlinks

You all know that producing infographics is the great way to get backlinks to your blog. While, publishing infographics include an embed code. So that, readers who are interested in your Infographic, can embed the same with your link, on their blog.

That’s a fair old strategy.

Publishing your infographics on Pinterest, Visual.ly, Reddit andGoogle Plus Communities? That’s old.

How about reaching your newsletter subscribers?

Sounds great!

After writing the main content in your newsletter mail, include a punch line.

“I have a gift for you. I have produced an Infographic on {}. You can modify or use it on your blog freely, with a link back to my blog at {}.”

Or here is another strategy…

estimate of overall traffic

Wow, thank you! You have reached the end. All the above natural backlink building strategies have helped you a lot, I can feel that 😉

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