The Art of Effective Link Building
Ranking on search results pages is almost a dream for most website owners, simply because just having a website it’s not enough, waiting for visitors to discover your website on their own is not realistic and knowing precisely where to begin can be challenging. Assuming that you have already taken care of your website’s content, a simple starting point to enhance your SEO efforts could be through link building.
This hands-on guide will cover everything from identifying prospective link sites to successfully securing those valuable backlinks. We got you covered!
🕵️♂️ Step 1: Site Scouting 🕵️♂️
Start your quest for backlinks by searching your niche keywords on Google. Click open every promising SERP, avoiding the spammy-looking ones. Default WordPress sites can be a better choice over 'magazine' style ones. Keep in mind that it's all about speed, not perfection.
The next step is to check the content on those sites. You can use AI detection for a quick review. Beware of guest post farms that only exist to churn out AI-generated content and give priority to those sites that exude expertise within your specific niche, for this we use kazanseo.com/detector and from there you can get the chrome extension which is a lifesaver. However, it's not necessary for these sites to be completely centered around your niche; they could also have a related section or discuss topics that are somehow connected to your field. For example, if you're running a fitness website, a nutrition-focused site might not be directly within your niche but it's closely related, and a backlink from such a site would still be valuable.
📊 Step 2: Checking the Metrics 📊
Here, we're looking for "link juice," not traffic. You want quality backlinks, not just a high quantity. So, how do you determine this "link juice"? Ahrefs or Majestic can help you analyze the referring domains and pages linking to the site you're scouting. Generally, a quick examination of the domain names and URLs of the referring pages should give you a good sense of the quality of their links.
Prioritize clean, uncomplicated URLs over the auto-generated, confusing ones bloated with file extensions and query parameters. Open a handful of these in separate tabs and give them a visual scan.
📧 Step 3: Reach Out 📧
Time for the outreach phase. Crafting a compelling and personalized email can significantly increase your chances of landing a backlink. It's generally easier to ask for a link in an existing post than to craft an entirely new guest post. Start with a batch of about 50 sites, reach out and move on to the next batch. For this we also use kazanseo but this time we use the kazanseo.com/emailsniper tool, it's just convenient and you can input the template of your email and just click the "mail" icon and it will auto populate your emailing tool, in our case we use google workspace and the default mail system is done through chrome.
There isn't a one-size-fits-all script as each communication should be uniquely crafted. When asking for a link, be upfront but also be realistic, the chances of you obtaining a backlink for free are very low. Ask if they'd be open to including a link to your website for a fee. A figure around $50 per link is often agreeable - it's a reasonable starting point and not so low that it seems insulting. They can then counteroffer, and you can make a decision based on their response.
When crafting the email don’t include links at all in the email itself, only the titles of the posts/pages where you want a link from. Don’t include links in your email because they can get flagged as spam by servers and it severely reduces the deliverability.
Give them a choice of at least 4 posts/pages for the link placement. Avoid requesting links from their highest-performing pages—they're unlikely to agree, don't waste your time attempting to persuade them otherwise.
🔗 Step 4: Secure the Link and Plan for the Future 🔗
If you get a positive response, add that site to your list of reliable websites. Over time, you'll build a valuable database of contacts to reach out to for future link-building. Just remember, nothing's set in stone—links can get lost, sites can disappear, and relationships can change. It's all part of the SEO game. Keep reaching out and building those connections!
Link building is definitely not an easy task but this guide should set you on the right path towards efficient link building practices. Moreover, our highly experienced team can handle the entire process for you, we've streamlined the link-building process, turning it into an exact science. We’ve done this hundreds of thousands of times, we know where to look, who to connect with, and how to secure backlinks that will make a difference to your site's SEO.