Gathering links

[jorisbrabants]

There are numerous "Ultimate Guides" to linkbuilding, outreach, etc., and they are all written to teach you the art of linkbuilding.

The only thing these guides don't tell you is that following them takes a massive amount of time and doesn't guarantee to get good links at all.

We're all in online marketing, and maybe we online marketeers are familiar with linking to other websites, posts that we like, etc. and maybe that's why we can write these guides but in other niches it really doesn't work that way

I'm wondering what techniques/tactics/strategies you guys are using in less straightforward niches to get quality links to your blogposts.

To give you an idea, we launched an article a couple of weeks ago targeting a very competitive keyword. The article got shared over 100 times on LinkedIn/Twitter/etc. and already ranking pretty good, but REAL backlinks are still missing. How to get people to link to that article?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Get the low down from 90 experts here

https://blog.ahrefs.com/white-hat-link-building-expert-roundup/

-Andy

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I have some suggestions...

• Do some research

• What information is missing in your industry?

• What are users actively searching for?

• Where are they currently participating in conversation?

• What language do they use in search and those discussions?

• How do they digest their content?

• Here's a quick resource on content gap analysis from Edge Multimedia

• Take advantage of great tools like Open Site Explorer and SEMRush to get a handle on your competition and what's working / not working for them

• Build out content on the site based on your research

• Mind your obvious onsite SEO fundamentals (titles / meta descriptions / schema / content length and language / etc.) (resource)

• Lay your site architecture out in an easy to use / understand fashion (Information Architecture for SEO)

• Repurpose content through video / images / guides / e-books / how-tos / etc

• Take advantage of internal site search functionality

• What are users searching for on your site?

• Ask for feedback or input to include from other industry authors or sites

• If you ask others to participate, they might share your content or include a link on their site

• Distribute that content through social platforms / industry blogs / email marketing / distribution networks (resource)

• Reach out to various industry outlets and influencers to let them know you wrote a piece they may find valuable

• Offer your articles as data points for future content created on other sites

• Offer your articles or pieces as solutions to problems

• Offer your articles or pieces as updates to other sites content

• Participate in the discussions that are happening in your industry

• Social

• You could take advantage of features like Twitter's Advanced Search and start fielding questions

• Use Advanced Search to answer questions with your content

• News sites

• Industry forums

• Q&As

All of the above will help with not only the ideation of content, but it will also establish you as an accessible authority in your industry. When you develop that trust with your audience and peers, they trust what you share and create, thus they are more likely to not only share your content, but link to it as well.

If your content has a clear audience and goal, you will be surprised to find how easy it is to find link building opportunities and who to reach out to to obtain them. Offer value and the links will come, it's just a matter of research and building relationships with your audience and other industry outlets/peers.

Link building is a slow burn process, but once it gets going, it's easier and easier and easier.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Andy

I have never seen this before! Thanks for sharing!

Patrick

[Andy.Drinkwater]

No worries - only been out a week or so I think

-Andy

[jorisbrabants]

Thanks for the well documented answer. Didn't go through all the resources mentioned yet, but I know what I'm doing tonight I think