How to Do Link Building for My Website | 2 Insanely Effective Link Building Strategies

It seems like I run into an SEO link building blog post or webinar just about everyday that makes it seem like link building techniques in SEO are a breeze. My own experience has been a little bit different.

Trying to execute quality link building is far and away the BIGGEST pain in my ass when it comes to SEO.

If you hate all of these nonchalant experts, and their extremely vague “comprehensive guides” about how to build links, then you’re in the right place. Let’s break-down some actionable link building strategies together.

But first, let’s make sure your heart is in it. If you don’t absolutely think you need to start building backlinks, you won’t. It’s that simple.

Why even bother learning how to do link building?

High quality content, inbound links, and RankBrain are the top three ranking signals. You’ll need to master these if you want to lock down those page one, or even position one, rankings. But first, where did I get this (and what in the hell does it even mean)?

I didn’t just pull it out of my ass. No, this came straight from the ass of Google Ireland’s Search Quality Senior Strategist, Andrey Lipattsev back in 2016. Check out 30:26 of this Google Q&A to hear it from Andrey himself.

Inbound links made the list of top ranking signals, and rightfully so. After extensive Google algorithm updates that serve to sort out spammy links, inbound links are one of the hardest signals to “game” without being caught. In fact, one could argue that Google might not exist without the concept of inbound links to govern their search technology in the first place.

In this Backlinko study from September of 2016, it was determined that the number of domains linking to a web page had a higher correlation with that page’s ranking than any other factor. I’d venture to say that in an industry with strong SEO competition, effective link building strategies are what separate the wheat from the chaff.

There’s no such thing as guaranteed SEO results, but executing some tried and true link building techniques are a great way to put your site on the path to SERP domination. If you’re asking yourself – where does my website rank? – but you can’t find yourself in the search results, you may need to start building links to improve your organic presence.

Let’s take a look at a list of some tools that you’re going to need before you start any link building campaigns.

Advanced search operators for the win

Before I jump into the new link building techniques, we should take a moment to talk about advanced search operators.

These search operators are little logical operators that you can type into your Google search. They help sort through the billions and billions of pages that Google might return in the SERPs while you’re prospecting for places to build backlinks. Search operators are the starting point for any outreach used in the link building strategy by SEO companies in Cleveland.

This guide by the appropriately named “Google Guide” will help get you up to speed.

The most common advanced search operators

I’m going to walk you through some of the most common search operators using http://www.example.com as my example site.

Quotation Marks

It’s important to note that using quotation marks around words in a Google search will only return pages that have an exact match of your phrase somewhere on them. This could be in the title, the URL, or in the body.

Example: “guest post”

This would return only pages that have the exact phrase “guest post” on them. This example is frequently used by content marketers to find guest blogging opportunities (we’ll talk more about this later on).

Wildcard

The wildcard operator is indicated by the star * character. To be used as an advanced search operator, the wildcard has to be used in quotes. It represents one or more words, and is used as a type of fill-in-the-blank prompt.

Example: “how to build links *”

This might return pages that contain the exact match phrase “how to build links to my website.” or “how to build links for new website.” The important part is that the keyword match has to start with “how to build links,” but the wildcard can fill in the rest. Use this in the middle of a phrase to find weird variations.

Site:

This command is used to limit your searches to a single site. It can even be used to narrow down the search results to a subdomain, or even a sub-folder. Don’t include a space between the colon and the domain that you’re searching for.

Example: site:example.com

This would return only pages indexed by Google on example.com.

Example: site:www.example.com/blog/

This would return only pages indexed by Google that are on the www subdomain of example.com , the main blog page, and any blog posts beneath it.

Hyphen or Negative Sign

The negative sign can be placed before a keyword or another advanced search operator to indicate that you don’t want those terms included in the results. Don’t leave a space between the negative sign and your keyword or search operator when using this command.

Example: -site:example.com “example.com”

This would result in a list of web pages that mention Forbes, but won’t include any pages on forbes.com. This can be used to find external mentions of your brand.

Example: site:amazon.com movies -romance -drama

This will show you pages on Amazon’s site that are about movies, but don’t include the word “romance” or “drama.”

Inurl:

This command will only filter results by URL. So if you’re looking for web pages from any website that contain certain words in the URL, this is a great way to filter them out. Don’t include a space between the colon and the keyword string that you’re searching for.

Example: inurl:submission-guidelines

This will return any URL that includes the match submission-guidelines. This specific example can be used to find page URLs that outline guest blog submission guidelines.

Example: inurl:blog/what-is

This will return any URL that contains the exact match of “blog/what-is”. You’ll notice that I included the backslash in this example. You will need to use hyphens and backslashes in order to make a URL search work (unless you’re only searching for a single word).

Intitle:

Similar to inurl: searching only the URL, the intitle: search operator will only search the title tags of the web pages in Google’s index. You will use this command to search for keywords. Don’t include a space between the colon and the keyword string that you’re searching for.

Example: intitle:contributor

This would return any title tag that includes the word “contributor.” This could be useful while searching for contributor guidelines on a site that allows guest blogging.

This command will find sites similar to the domain that you enter. This can be used to search for other websites in your industry that you might not have known about. Don’t include a space between the colon and the domain that you’re searching for.

Example: related:forbes.com

This will return related news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and The Economist. If your site doesn’t have an established SEO footprint, this operator won’t return any results.

Link:

This will show you a sampling of links related to the site that you include after the link: search operator. However, on January 11th, 2017 John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google suggested that this operator was no longer fully functional. Despite its alleged performance issues, this can still be useful for finding a sample of links to your site of choice.

Example: link:forbes.com

This example returns every (depending on whether or not Google is keeping this advanced search operator in commission) web page linking to forbes.com. This also means other Forbes pages, which can cloud up the results.

Location:

The location operator can be paired with cities, states, countries, and even some country abbreviations to narrow your search down to a certain region. Don’t include a space between the advanced search operator and your location.

Example: location:boston inbound marketing

As you might have guessed, the results for this search returned multiple hubspot.com pages because the company is based in Boston and coined the term “Inbound Marketing.” You can use this to find local competitors, or guest blogging opportunities for the websites of companies that are located nearby.

One of the best search operators is missing

There are plenty of similar guides out there, but most of them are missing a very powerful search operator.

The AROUND(#) operator gives you some wiggle room in your searches. The around operator is similar to the wildcard search operator, but lets you control the proximity of your keywords. Be sure to type AROUND in all caps, otherwise it won’t work.

Example: “forbes AROUND(4) fake news”

This would search for examples of “forbes” and “fake news” that have a maximum of 4 words in between them. So you might get results for “forbes editor clarifies fake news,” or “forbes commentary about fake news.” If Google can’t find any results that meet this criteria, it will just display results to a search that doesn’t include the AROUND operator. This search could come in handy while searching for guest blogging or link building prospects.

2 of the best link building techniques for small businesses

I’ll walk you through some of the popular link building strategies for SEO, and how I’ve adjusted these types of link building so they work for me.

1 – Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is one of the most legitimate and least sketchy link building techniques in SEO (aside from doing no link building at all).

Granted, it’s not as easy as paying five dollars to have a bot build you hundreds of links from a spoiled private blog network (PBN). Many people do this without knowing better, then days later start asking themselves – why is my website not ranking?

Instead, you’re building relationships with other sites in your industry, or a complementary industry, that think your content is good enough that they will include it on their site. I call these sites, “content partners.”

Essentially, by offering another site’s audience great content, you get a vote of confidence from the site owner in the form of a link (or multiple links) back to your site.

Sometimes these take the form of editorial links in the body of your guest blog post, and sometimes they come in the form of a link back to your homepage in the author bio. Occasionally you’ll get both.

It’s important to be mindful of creating contextual backlinks while writing a guest blog post for one of your content partners. However, if backlinks are all you’re concerned about, you’re fighting a losing battle.

Guest blogging is also a great way to demonstrate thought leadership, and harvest valuable referral traffic from your content partners. Don’t be blinded by links, and forget the other marketing benefits that this link building strategy provides.

How to get started with guest blogging

This SEO link strategy is hard for a small business owner to scale. Guest blogging requires a significant amount of time if you’re going to do it well. Without adding content writers to your staff, you might struggle to sustain lasting content partnerships.

Despite the time investment, guest blogging should be one of your top priorities while figuring out how to start SEO for a website.

Of course, you can contract the writing work out. However, in my experience, freelance writers will never know the ins and outs of your business like a staff member. They typically cannot offer the unique insights that your content partners are hoping you’ll contribute. You may have to spend a significant amount of time editing, but you’re paying freelance writers to avoid this time investment in the first place, right?

To get started with this link building strategy, you’ll need to find some sites that are related to your industry or blogging niche. This is where the advanced search operators come into play.

Here are some potential combinations of advanced search operators that you can use to find potential content partners. Let’s imagine that the domain name of your site is mydomain.com in these examples:

related:mysite.com guest blog
related:mysite.com contributor
related:mysite.com submission guidelines
“guest * guidelines”
“guest AROUND(4) guidelines”
“contributor * guidelines”
“contributor AROUND(4) guidelines”
inurl:submission contributor guidelines
“write for us”

Now, this list of search operators has barely scratched the surface, but it should be enough to give you some good ideas. You can mix and match the advanced operators to unearth hundreds of guest blogging opportunities (depending on your niche).

The next step is outreach, and this is where other “SEO experts” constantly let me down with their so-called advanced link building techniques. They usually recommend that you simply reach out, and start forming those content partnerships.

In reality, you’ll get radio silence from most of the sites you contact. The well protected sites will force you to fill out a form, and that means that you can’t use any sort of email tracking to figure out if they’ve actually engaged with your message.

In addition to hiding behind an email form, some sites will list contributor guidelines and tell you to submit finished articles only. This can be a huge danger to a time-strapped entrepreneur who has no idea if their article will actually be accepted.

I found that reaching out to a unique company email address (johnsmith@example.com instead of info@example.com or a fillable form) will get you a higher response rate. Unfortunately, it can be tough to find the email address of the appropriate contact at the organization you’re trying to reach.

I recommend a combination of two tools to help you add some precision to your outreach.

The Hunter chrome extension
A free version of the Hubspot Sales CRM

Hunter is a fantastic tool that gives you access to a surprisingly large index of email addresses for almost any website. Once downloaded, you simply navigate to the website you want to find an email address for, and click the little orange hunter icon in the top right of your browser.

Sometimes Hunter will list a job title and an email address, and you can reach out immediately. Other times, it only gives you the company’s standard email format, and you have to look for the appropriate person on the company’s LinkedIn. Search for “content manager,” “content marketing manager,” “editor,” and any similar combination on their LinkedIn employee list to find the name of the employee who is most likely to handle guest blogging. Then apply the email format to their name, and you’re ready to reach out.

This is where the Hubspot CRM comes into play. The CRM will let you create up to five email templates that you can easily paste into your email subject line and body. I recommend creating a template with some bare bones greetings, and examples of your credibility. Leave the rest of your template empty so that you can customize it for each site.

I’m not proponent of mass templated outreach. Internet marketers have become desensitized to this type of outreach, and will more than likely write you off if they feel that you’ve put little thought or research into your email.

Learning a little bit about their audience, writing style, and their recent content will go a long way in your outreach. The Hubspot CRM has a checkbox at the bottom of your standard Gmail field that specifies whether you want to track your email or not. Turn this on for your outreach emails. This will allow you to track when one of your outreach contacts opens an email or clicks on a link within your article.

I always make a point to turn the tracking feature off when I’m not sending outreach emails. The free Hubspot CRM only allows up to 200 open notifications per month, so don’t waste them on emailing funny gifs to your boss or coworkers. Their “open notifications” should come in the form of audible laughter across the office… if your gifs are funny enough.

If you notice that nobody is opening your emails, try switching up your subject line. I like to use a subject line like “Name: I love your content, let’s chat.” It’s got a reasonable amount of personalization so your contact knows that you’ve done your homework. It has a small amount of flattery… which will get you everywhere in life. And lastly, it has a call to action – open the email and chat.

If your emails are being opened, but you’re not receiving any responses, try reaching back out in a day or two. Sometimes content marketers just need to know that you’re willing to put some effort into a content relationship, and a follow-up email is a great start.

When the receiver opens the email, they will immediately try to answer these four questions:

Who is this person?
What do they want?
Is this person credible?
Will their proposition work?

In response to this list of fundamental questions, here is an example outreach email that has been successful for me. Let’s pretend my name is Coach from searchenginecoach.com, and I’m reaching out to Marissa, the Content Marketing Manager at example.com.

Subject: Marissa: I love your content, let’s chat

Hi Marissa,

This is Coach from Search Engine Coach (https://www.searchenginecoach.com).

I just had the chance to read your article, How to Do Link Building for My Website (https://www.example.com/blog/how-do-i-build-links-to-my-website), and it offered some really great insights that other experts have failed to deliver.

My team here at Search Engine Coach consistently writes about similar topics, and I’d love to contribute an original guest blog post: 7 Advanced Link Building Strategies That You’ve Never Heard About.

Here are some examples of my previous writing:

https://www.searchenginecoach.com/seo-blog/why-is-my-website-not-ranking-showing-up-in-google/
https://www.example-site.com/blog-post-example-2/
https://www.my-example.com/blog-post-example-3/

If you agree that this would be an appropriate topic for your audience, please let me know and I’ll have it to you by next Friday. Also, if there are any contributor guidelines, don’t hesitate to send them my way.

Thank you,

Coach

You’ll notice that this example email promptly answers each of the questions.

Who is this person? – Coach at Search Engine Coach
What do they want? – I want to contribute an original guest blog post
Is this person credible? – I included examples of other sites that accepted my guest blogs
Will their proposition work? – I tried to lead them to an agreeable mindset, “If you agree that this would be an appropriate topic for your audience”

I make a point to include the full URLs in my emails. The cons are that this doesn’t look pretty, and adds to the email length. The pros are that the receiver knows exactly what they’re clicking on, and they won’t be afraid that it’s some type of malware from a spammer.

Hopefully, this will get you a response. If not, check the Hubspot CRM notifications to see if your email was opened. If it was opened, you can reach back out in couple of days, and offer three topics this time. This will help make it easy for the receiver to say yes.

2 – Outreach for recently published content

Every time you publish new content on your site, it should serve to answer a question or solve a problem for a member of your target audience. There is almost always overlap in the target audience of your site, and another site in your niche.

Outreach for newly published content is a way of letting those relevant sites know that you created a content asset that can answer a question for their audience. The struggle is figuring out how to do link building in SEO when these related sites don’t want to let their audience members leave their site.

If you suggest that another site link to your new content asset, what’s to keep them from creating a similar article? Well, in a word: nothing. They could very well craft something very similar, and host that content on their own site. This is why quality content is important. Every time you write a blog post or create a visual for your site, make sure it is so insightful and creative that it can’t be copied.

How to get started with outreach for recently published content

This is one of the best link building strategies if you have an infographic, or a piece of original research. Your outreach email will take on a sales approach. You need to highlight a unique selling proposition that makes it hard for the receiver to pass up.

But first, who do you reach out to?

You’ll want to start by downloading a free version of the Mozbar. By creating a community account, you can gain access to this insightful tool. Once you activate your Mozbar, it will appear in the top of your browser at all times. You can see Moz data for a variety of metrics such as page authority and domain authority.

Moz is far from perfect. Their index isn’t the most robust, and won’t identify backlinks that Ahrefs, Majestic, or Raventools will sometimes pick up. However, the mozbar makes it easy to prospect for sites that are likely to link to you.

The Mozbar will display data under every Google search result. This includes data about who is currently linking to each page in the results.

So, you’ve just created a great new piece of content. Copy the title, or even just your main target keyword, and paste it into a Google search. This will display content that is similar to your own. Our goal is to find who currently links to this content, and then reach out to those sites.

Click on the Mozbar link analysis under each page that appears to have a lot of backlinks. This will take you to Open Site Explorer where you can find a list of pages that are linking to a similar page. Put together a list of these sites, and now you know exactly who is most likely to link to your recently published page (because they have already linked to similar pages in the past).

Use the Hunter extension and Hubspot CRM tools from the guest blogging section to find email addresses, and track your results.

This type of link building in SEO will need a clear value proposition.

If you’re reaching out to a site with no visual, and you have an infographic on your new page, highlight that it will offer a visual component for their audience. You might want to make sure that you’ve created an embed box for your visual. This way, as a consolation, you can recommend that they just embed your visual on their site as long as they link back to your page as the source.

If you have original data on your page, you can mention the significance of that research, and how linking to it could add value to the outreach site’s audience. Just make sure you’ve actually looked into the outreach site’s audience, and that your research is actually relevant. People love linking to numbers and statistics. Owning those numbers will make it easy for sites to say yes, and link to your with little hesitation.

In Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he brings up an interesting sales tactic about reciprocity. If you propose something and get turned down, a second, smaller proposal (a concession) will have a high chance of being well received. In essence, when someone turns down your initial offer, they feel like you’re doing them a favor by letting them off the hook. They are then more likely to reciprocate by adhering to your second, less demanding proposal.

When it comes to our SEO link building techniques, your proposal is a backlink to your site. If you get a positive response, great! If you get a negative response, you can propose that the other site accept a guest blog instead. This is less demanding because you’re giving them free content that they would have had to create themselves eventually. You’re making their life easier by relieving a future burden, but you still get a backlink (or multiple) in the end.

Here is an example outreach script that you can use:

Subject: Marissa: I have a content suggestion

Hi Marissa,

This is Coach from Search Engine Coach (https://www.searchenginecoach.com).

My team here at Search Engine Coach just published a related blog post, 7 Advanced Link Building Strategies That You’ve Never Heard About (https://www.searchenginecoach.com/finished-blog-post/), that offers some types of link building that go beyond the scope of your article.

Linking to my article could prove helpful to your audience by adding a few more link building strategies to their SEO toolbox.

If you agree that this would be an appropriate resource for your audience, please let me know and I’ll be glad to share your article through my network of social media followers.

If you don’t think that linking to my page at this time is the best idea, would you be open to accepting a guest blog post, How Do I Build Links to My Website? I look forward to hearing back from you about this collaboration opportunity.

Thank you,

Coach

You’ll notice that this example email promptly answers each of the questions.

Who is this person? – Coach at Search Engine Coach
What do they want? – I want you to link to my new page
Is this person credible? – I linked to my site, and to my article to demonstrate the quality of my content
Will their proposition work? – I tried to lead them to an agreeable mindset – If you agree that this would be helpful for your audience, please link to me. And gave them a concession offer so that they could reciprocate by conceding to their first negative response.

Learning how to do link building for SEO doesn’t have to be a pain

Learning how to build backlinks was like pulling teeth for me. Don’t let that be your experience, or it will take you months to get in the habit of doing this regularly. Remember, links are the most highly correlated signal to good rankings.

If you were to focus on only one SEO strategy for the rest of your career, it would be SEO link building. Learning how to do SEO keyword research for free would be a close second. Get good at it early on. Use your tools to experiment, and shape your messaging. Over time, you’ll build quality relationships that will create an abundance of mutual benefit for you and your content partners.

How to Build Links to My Website