I recently took some time out to do a bit of travelling across East Asia (which was incredible!) and decided that I would, along with a group of friends, set up a travel blog. Knowing that I would be embarking on some amazing adventures, I thought it'd be a waste not to blog about them. Plus, the idea of bringing in a little extra cash to go into my travel fund helped in my decision.
After a month or so of development the site was finally ready and I wanted to start thinking about how to get some traffic going on the website. Whilst paid advertising and social media were a huge part of the strategy, I knew that appearing in the search engines for a wide selection of long-tail phrases was going to be instrumental to the blog's success. This is when I began developing my link building strategy and, after trialing out some very successful approaches, I've decided to now share my link building tactics with you all - you can thank me later :)
Identifying My Link Targets
As a brand new blog it can be really tough to gain links from high authority sites. Unless you have something particularly unique or special (and even then you might struggle), it's an uphill battle to get your content in front of anyone. With this in mind I decided to start off small. However, the general rule of thumb that I kept for any links that I was looking to build was this:
"The link must have a genuine potential to generate traffic back to the blog"
Resource/Links Pages
Many blogs and other websites have 'useful links' or ' useful resources' pages. These pages generally list partner websites, relevant blogs or other sites that they work with. Although these types of links aren't going to result in ground-breaking link building wins they could, if you prospect correctly, provide a link that will not just give you an SEO boost, but actually generate traffic to your site as well. These types of links are particularly relevant for the travel industry.
A lot of people write-off these types of links, classing them as 'spammy' or 'low quality links'. Now, whilst I agree that they aren't enormously powerful, I disagree that they are useless. To find the pages where I wanted to get a link placed back to my blog, I followed these quick steps:
- First, I ran this query through Google - intitle:travel blog inurl:"links" OR "resources".
- I then went into Google's search settings and selected to view 100 results per page instead of 10.
- Once I had 100 listings, I scraped all of the URLs using the 'Scrape Similar' plugin for Chrome and exported them to a .CSV file.
- I did a bit of manual work to remove irrelevant links and then grabbed the domain/page authority for each of the links using MozCheck.com and pasted this into the sheet. I could then sort the links by page authority and remove any that had a PA lower than ~25. This helped to find higher quality targets.
- After witling the list down to around 40 targets, I scanned the amount of outbound links on the pages using Niels Bosma's SEOtools plugin for Excel and sorted the list by pages with the lowest number of outbound links on them. This not only improved the power of the link by it also meant that there was more of a chance that I would get some traffic from the page.
- Finally, I got in touch with webmasters from the sites to see if they would list my site on theirs (using only branded anchor text) in exchange for their site appearing on the 'Our Friends' section of my blog.
The end result was that I managed to gain around 15 links to my blog that actually brought through some traffic as well. This took me around 3-4 hours in total (including outreach) and helped to create a nice bit of domain diversity to the site's link profile. On top of this, it also helped me to start building a few relationships with webmasters that turned out to be very useful later down the line.
Useful: within this article I explain how to sort through link targets in Excel in a bit more detail.
**BONUS: here is the outreach email template that I used when contacting webmasters...
Hi NAME HERE,
Just thought I would drop you a quick mail regarding your website, DOMAIN URL HERE. I really enjoy the stuff you write and it has been getting me excited for my travelling trip!
I am starting up a travel blog myself and it has just gone live a couple of days ago. The blog will follow our group as we travel across East Asia and Australia (we leave today!). I was just wondering if you would be kind enough to drop a link to the blog (https://www.meltedstories.com) on your links page (URL OF THEIR LINKS PAGE HERE) as it would be a big help. I've added you onto my 'Our Friends' page anyway because it will be a great resource for my readers.
Don't worry if you don't want to add our blog, but if you let me know your Twitter handle anyway then I will make sure we follow you and drop you some retweets! You can follow us at @melted_stories.
Feel free to get in touch at any time though!
Matthew Barby
Just an Honest Backpacker :)
www.meltedstories.com
@melted_stories
facebook.com/MeltedStories
Prospecting Through Competitive Research
The next stage of my link building strategy was to do some competitive research. For many SEOs this is a staple part of any link building campaign and can reveal some very interesting insights into what other websites related to your own are doing to acquire links.
My first port of call is always the amazing, and strangely under-rated, 'Competitive Link Finder' tool from SEOmoz. By simply plugging in the URLs of five other travel blogs, similar in style to mine, I was able to instantly get 20 solid link targets from a list of around 45. This took me 15 minutes to do and I just placed all of the links into an outreach spreadsheet that I created. Here are the types of links that I found:
- High authority travel blogs that my competitors have guest posted on.
- Blogs that run weekly 'photo of the week' competitions that will link to your photo if you win.
- Good quality travel-niche directories.
- 'Top travel blogger' lists and competitions.
- Content that my competitors have collaborated on in order to get a mention.
- Links to interview articles where my competitors have answered questions on a high authority blog and have received a link in return.
All this within 15 minutes - not bad, eh?
Every bit of information that I gathered I kept inside a link prospecting spreadsheet. This formed the basis of my link building strategy and allowed me to identify a list of targets that I could approach with a variety of content and propositions. My advice for any blog owner would be to do the same because it allows you to sustain your link building efforts in the long term. Then, every few months, I do some further research and add to the spreadsheet.
Acquiring Links from Your Targets
Now that I'd done some competitive link research, it was time to plan out the approaches that I would take to actually acquire links from my targets. This can often be the place where many people hit a brick wall. During the early stages of my time at Wow Internet, I found that I was overcomplicating the process of acquiring links. However, the reality is that it's often best to keep things simple. You don't necessarily have to spend a fortune on creating an amazing infographic, or bit of video content. More often than not, all you need to do is simply ask (I know, crazy, right?).
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging has taken some stick recently and I can, in some cases, see why. A recent post on the SEOmoz blog by James Finlayson outlined the slippery slope of poor guest post content and I completely agree. This brings me back to my initial link building rule:
"The link must have a genuine potential to generate traffic back to the blog"
Forget judging your guest blog opportunities based solely on the PA/DA of the site and start thinking more about site engagement. If I see a website with a domain authority score of 40 but there are no comments from readers and minimal social shares, then I would generally ignore this site, in favour of a site with lower DA but more comments/social shares. This is particularly important when building links to a blog, so as the old saying goes - don't judge a book by its cover!
Finding Guest Blogging Opportunities and Gaining Them
I had already found a handful of guest blogging opportunities from my competitive research, but I knew I would need a much greater sample size to work with in order to build a solid profile of high quality links. This, unfortunately, takes quite a bit of time. This is where I took a leaf out of Paddy Moogan's book.
I recently read Paddy's link building book (which was awesome) and he talked about outsourcing menial research tasks through oDesk in order to save time and increase productivity overall. One thing that Paddy stressed was to only outsource micro-tasks and leave as little obscurity to the task as possible. With this in mind I put together an extensive brief for the task of finding travel blogs that accepted guest posts and fit the following criteria:
- PR of at least 2.
- The blog must be English speaking and related to travel.
- Must have some form of interaction on the blog posts.
- Should have social shares on the recent articles.
- Must have posted new content within the last 2 months.
As you can see in the link research brief, I didn't just want to simply gather the URLs of the blogs but I tried to get as much information on them as possible. This was so that I could use this valuable data for other link building methods and also to connect with the blog owners through social media and build long-term relationships with them. The data that I asked the oDesk applicant to gather for me was:
- The website URL.
- The name of the website.
- A contact name.
- A contact email (if possible).
- The URL of the contact page.
- Twitter handle of the contact.
- The Facebook page URL of the website (if relevant).
- The title of the most recent article posted (this is so I can easily see if the website is relevant without having to visit each one and check).
One week and $30 later, I had a list of 50 different guest blog targets - amazing! Don't underestimate the power of giving a good brief to a freelancer; it really can make the world of difference.
Useful: the name of the freelancer I used for the link research project (who is now also doing some further research for me now, as well) is Michael Howells. Here's a link to his oDesk profile.
**DOUBLE BONUS!: as I'm feeling particularly generous, I'm going to give you the list of 50 awesome travel-related guest blog opportunities that Michael gathered for me. You're welcome :)
Once I had the list of guest blog targets, it was then time to identify which would be the best places to start reaching out to. This is an important and often over-looked stage of many outreach campaigns. Bearing in mind that I had only a little bit of content on my blog, I needed to try and find an angle to work on with my pitch. To do this I split up my guest blog targets into sub-sections based on their primary theme (i.e. if five of the websites all specialised in backpacking on a budget then they would go in the same group).
Once I'd categorised all of the websites in my list, I had to now decide what I would use in my pitch to the webmasters that would gain their trust and allow me to post on their site. In my armoury were a wealth of photos that I had taken during my time travelling and a whole host of first-hand experiences. From looking at many of the websites that I was targeting for links, it was clear that they were heavily focused around lots of good images and most of them preferred to have the author’s voice clearly present throughout most of their articles. Knowing this, I carried out the following steps:
- Highlighted blogs that talked about East Asia specifically in a few of their articles.
- Narrowed down the list to find which of them accepted guest authors more frequently.
- Picked ten initial targets and began to follow all of their social media accounts, comment on their articles and share their content through my blog's Twitter/FB/G+/Pinterest.
- Got in touch with the webmasters in a friendly, quick email that let them know who I was, my travel plans and a brief intro to my blog. I then mentioned that I was looking to write for some travel blogs about my adventures and wanted to see if they would consider letting me do this on their blog.
- If I received a reply, I made sure that I looked at the types of articles they posted on their blogs and then gave only relevant suggestions for possible article titles.
After I had a few articles published on different travel blogs it meant that I could reference these articles in my next flurry of outreach. This proved to be really effective as I progressed and gaining guest post opportunities seemed to get easier and easier. One tip that I would give to anyone doing any outreach is not to mention 'links' at all in your written communication as you risk losing your legitimacy as a genuine blogger. Travel blog owners particularly don't enjoy this.
**Bonus: Here's one of the outreach emails that I sent to a travel blog owner (as you can see, I keep it as personal as possible):
Hi Shannon,
I hope you're well. We spoke around a month ago simply about a link exchange for my travel blog, Melted Stories. I have something slightly different to ask about now!
Firstly I just want to say how much me and my girlfriend enjoy your blog (especially considering my girlfriend, Laura, is also a vegetarian).
I know that you don't really do this on your blog but my girlfriend and I have just finished 2 months of travelling around and experiencing Thailand and I wondered if you would consider letting us do a guest post on your blog?
It would be related to an experience that we had within Thailand and one that we feel would fit in with your audience. For example, we recently visited Chiang Mai and took a trip across to all the best places to see, including spending a day looking after ex-working elephants and visiting the tigers (that are most definitely not drugged!).
I won't babble on too much because I know you must be busy but you can take a look at some of both myself and Laura's writing at these links (below) and if you could let me know either way that would be great.
https://www.meltedstories.com/monkeys-muay-thai-and-magical-marine-life-in-ko-phi-phi/
https://www.meltedstories.com/sun-sea-and-snorkelling-in-koh-tao-3/
Also, we would love to have you write on our blog so if that's something that would interest you then you can have a free reign on what you talk about!
Matt
www.meltedstories.com
@melted_stories
Take Guest Blogging to the Next Level - Become a Columnist
I have to admit that this wasn't something that I necessarily planned from the outset but, as I moved forward with the guest blogging activities that I was doing, it became an obvious next step.
One of the first articles that I wrote was for the WildJunket Magazine, an online general travel publication. During my conversations with the magazine editor, Nellie Huang, I started to form a good relationship and she then asked me if I would consider becoming a regular columnist on the blog, specialising in 'travel tech'. I jumped at the chance, of course, and as a result of this I write 2-3 articles a month for the website and get some great links back to my blog. Not only this but WildJunket have a huge social following and loads of activity on their website. This was certainly something that I could use to my advantage.
After I had written a few articles for Nellie I got in touch with her to discuss any ways in which she could help me out, for example, with sharing my content, getting in touch with other bloggers and any other ways she could suggest. The response was really positive and Nellie allowed me to use the WildJunket press pack when contacting websites and she also said that if I wanted to write a sponsored post for companies on the blog then that is fine too (as long as it fit in with the editorial guidelines). On top of this she agreed to share anything I wished on the WildJunket social media accounts, which was great. I then added the following paragraph into my outreach emails:
As well as running Melted Stories, I am also a regular columnist for Wild Junket, which receives over 1.65 million pageviews a month and has a Twitter following of just under 30,000. Any article that I did write for you would be shared across all of my personal social media accounts, plus that of Wild Junket and Melted Stories, so it could be a win-win situation :)
This dramatically increased the number of replies that I received from webmasters. My advice would be to try and secure a similar type of setup on related blogs within your own industry. Look for blogs that have clear topic areas and, once you've built a relationship with the webmasters, suggest that you could become a regular columnist specialising in a specific topic on their blog.
Tip: Industry-relevant online magazines can be a particularly good target for this.
Sponsored Posts and Paid Tweets
This is likely to cause some controversy amongst a few readers, but in my opinion this can be a fantastic way of driving traffic through to your website and encouraging links back to your content.
Sponsored Posts
A sponsored post is, in essence, a guest post that you pay for. Many websites, especially within the travel industry, will allow you to write an article promoting your products/services in return for payment. Matt Cutts has voiced his opinion on this activity a few times and has said the following:
"Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines. If link in a paid post would affect search engines, that link should not pass PageRank (e.g. by using the nofollow attribute)."
My suggestion is not simply to find blogs that offer this and then place a link to your site within them. What I would suggest is using sponsored posts to increase your online community. To do this I found websites that had a particularly large social following, loads of interactivity on the website and a captive niche audience. I then wrote a post related to my travels and a little intro to my travel blog. What I found was that I was able to bring over some good levels of traffic from the post and capture some new readers for my blog - exactly what I wanted!
NOTE: If I ever pay for a sponsored post then I make sure that any links back to my site are 'nofollowed' because it's not worth the risk of having a Google penalty imposed.
Paid Tweets
These are similar, in a way, to sponsored posts and are pretty self-explanatory - you pay someone to tweet something from their twitter account.
Again, there are going to be a few people who say how wrong this is and that they would never do this for one of their clients, etc, etc. What I would say to those people is that if you would be prepared to pay for advertising space on someone's website then what's the difference in paying them to tweet your content on Twitter?
I must admit that I've only done this a couple of times and have had varying results, but in one case I managed to generate a few hundred visits to one of the articles on my blog, which is often more than I would get with a banner ad and for a fraction of the cost! There is also the advantage of being able to expand your own Twitter following in the process, which is another added bonus.
Useful: You can use BuySellAds.com to search for Twitter users that sell tweets within your niche.
Bringing it all Together
It's still early days for my travel blog but I've had some awesome initial results and hopefully this article has given you a few ideas of your own to help you go out and build some quality links to your blog. The key message that I'm trying to convey here is the importance of building relationships online and forming a solid community within your blog.
Simple things like blog commenting, which was traditionally a staple part of link building, has now become a fantastic way to build relationships with bloggers and actually drive traffic back to your own blog. A lot of link building can be quite indirect and it isn't always the quickest to do, but if you follow my one simple rule then you should be able to keep on the right track:
"The link must have a genuine potential to generate traffic back to the blog"
I'd love to hear your own link building triumphs, so be sure to let me know in the comments of the blog or get in touch with me on Twitter or Google+. Before you do that, here's an awesome photo of my partner and me with a tiger in Thailand...
The use of outsourcing is something that should be discussed more often! While not every one of us can code everything, some of us might be great task delegators! Great article Matt!
Thanks Victor! Yes, outsourcing small parts of your work can be so effective in terms of both time and cost. I think people tend to be scared of doing this because they don't want to be perceived as 'not doing the work in-house', when realistically you are planning and strategizing everything in-house then have an organised team to work on implementation.
Totally ! Great Article and thoughts Matt. Impressive insight!
Building relationships, earning user trust, engaging, informative and creative content are definitely the main ingredients of a main blog. Social media shares, likes, retweets, +1s are as important as a link from relevant, quality & authoritative source.
I like that you laid out your step-by-step process. For those of us struggling to find the diamond in the rough niche links this will be helpful. Much appreciated Matthew!
Glad you found it useful, Anita!
I agree. This post is most helpful. I do like the step-by-step approach and I might create my own request email modeled after yours. Thanks for your help.
I'm Nellie, editor-in-chief and co-founder of WildJunket Magazine, which Matthew mentioned in his article above. I'd like to point out that we invited Matthew to be a regular contributor simply because we like his writing and we think his articles add value to our site. We only accept guest posts from bloggers and not SEO marketing firms or commercial sites. That said, I don't think being SEO-focused is a good approach to making your blog a success. There should be more emphasis on writing quality content and building a community rather than mechanized tactics like SEO.
Hey Nellie,
Hope you didn't mind me mentioning you in the post. I don't think that SEO should be the sole-strategy for a blog and especially not for the content strategy. Having said that, once you create great content you need to get it in front of people. SEO can be used as a platform to achieve that. For example, one of the main reasons I love writing for WildJunket is because I can reach a huge audience with my content and get some great interaction on my posts - the goal there isn't really SEO related at all but when you have a smaller blog then SEO can help to build that kind of community that we're talking about.
a great resource for healthy link building. With all the penguin and panda hits, its good to see a great strategy towards link building. Thanks for the tips
You look very relaxed with that tiger! Is that a young or fully grown one? Think I would be a mile away! Great article - thanks.
Believe me, I wasn't calm on the inside!! It's not a fully grown tiger, this one was about a year or so old. We did manage to get in with the big cats and that was a whole other story!
FYI: https://www.meltedstories.com/up-close-and-personal-with-the-tigers-in-chiang-mai/
That was my question- Did the thought of a possible photo op-turned-attack cross your mind?!? ;-)
Great advice and it looks like you have fascinating stories to share from your travels. Cheers!
Exceptional post Matt - I definitely learned a few things here. You nailed home one valid point and I think it all comes back to building relationships. Getting a link is often a vouch for your awesome work, resulting in good link juice to your site AND traffic. I've seen some sites that don't necessarily do well in the organic results for their targeted keyword(s) in the short-term when building links, but when you head into the referral traffic of their analytics, the engagement level is high enough to justify the efforts put in to acquire that link.
I agree, Jackson. Sometimes people are too linear with their link building strategies and are almost too stuck in a process to realise the overlap with other marketing activities. Building relationships alongside your links can make the whole process a lot more scalable and effective, whilst also giving you a chance to increase your online community.
Great photo at the end. So friendly pets, these tigers :-)
What a lot of detail - thanks for sharing so much, Matt.
I've never paid for social media shares like tweets but you make a good point that is is not so different to paying for webspace on someone's site. Food for thought. Especially if you are offering real content rather than chasing traffic to flog ads or grabbing emails for spam.
I completely agre with outsourcing tasks - I already outsoruce a number of things and am currrently looking into what else I can get done for me. A clear brief makes life easier for everyone.
Great post and this will be very useful as I'm starting my own link building campaign for my new site! One question though, you said you got in touch with the webmasters to list each other as friends on your site and theirs. Couldn't this be dangerous and Google potentially think you are link swapping?
Hi Rowan,
Again, it all depends on traffic. If that link is bringing through a good level of traffic then you should be ok. As well as this, you need to diversify your link profile so that it's not just made up of these links.
Thank you! Definitely need more of these case study articles to see the method/strategies people mention in action!
Great post Matthew!
Good work on the outreach e-mails and it's really cool that you shared one of the e-mail templates and the list of 50 awesome travel related guest blog opportunities with us. It's good that you are actually doing relationship building instead of the 'Hey my name is ... and i would like you to place a link to my website' thing which i see way too many people do.
Really loved reading your post. There are valuable lessons to be learned from your post for anyone who is just starting their link-building career. Keep up the good work!
PS: The tiger picture is just plain awesome ;)
Hi, Matthew, Thanks for the awesome post, really helpful resource!
BTW, 'Competitive Link Finder' link is being shown broken, May be for SEOMoz domain migration. Please check it out and put the right link if possible.
I've been trying to get an answer on that myself. Can't seem to find it anywhere?
Can never replace good old fashioned elbow grease - no matter who is doing the greasing! Great work ethic Matthew, and great job on building out your blog!
Thanks a lot Laurean, hopefully this will give some other blog owners some inspiration!
This is a great news in the SEO field that Link Exchange is starting again and Matthew your article woke up us to sleep. But i have a question, "Is Link Exchange useful for all type of the website's. I mean to say, Entertainment websites are included in this or only business websites will get the benefits?"
Hi Rajni,
Link exchanges aren't the be-all-and-end-all of your link building campaign. It can be a quick way to get a bit of traffic through to your blog whilst also diversifying your anchor text profile. This will work across almost any sector but just remember to look for links that have a genuine potentional to bring traffic to your website.
Thanks Matthew for this wonderful answer...
Hello Matthew,
Thanks for this informative response but I want to know that If we will take links from blogroll section then will it better for my website or not???
Hi Matt :-) Mathew,
If website where you got link exchange have more than 50 other relevant l;inks and our links at position 51. Will it be beneficial for us. I read in Search Engine Land that, its not good to exchange link of those website which have more than 50 outbound links.
Some people say 50, some people say 100. so what when a site has 20 when u get the link and a week later the side has 300? And google makes the backlinkupdate when u are one of the 300?
I think it would not hurt you - but it doesnt help as much as a site with 15 links...
Dear Matthew,
It's simply an awesome post! You have answered the questions that I was looking for a couple of months. Your link building strategy is really something to be followed and it's not hypothesized. Obviously, I will use your methods to get some quality backlinks in my blog. Finally, again thank you for solving the puzzle of link exchange.........
Thanks for this outstanding post. I remain skeptical about the Tweets - paid or not actually... Can we really get traffic from them?
Hi Stephanie, if you talking about driving traffic through from tweets then absolutely. My blog brings through around 10% of it's traffic directly from Twitter so you can see the value in having a post tweeted from a high authority account.
From the day one, one starts a blog, how long do you think it needs to become a useful blog ? - I mean here useful to serve the main website.
Great and informative post. Thank you Matthew.
p.s. It's pity, but link to the "Competitive Link Finder" is broken.
We're working on bringing the tool back up, and it should be available again within a week or so. I'll be sure to post an update here and also fix the link in the post when it's available.
I couldn't be happier about that! Was gutted that the link finder tool wasn't accessible and thought that you might have ditched it with the new site. Thanks for clearing that up Keri :)
Great tactics! Your custom search + scraper + mozcheck routine will save me a lot of time.
Love the last quote Matt - if you focus on building quality links that are designed to bring real traffic, you can't go wrong. Very thorough post!
"I've decided to now share my link building tactics with you all - you can thank me later :)"
Informative post, great work. A lot of work put into getting those links, natural ways are far superior these days. Glad to see people going the extra mile to get things done.
The transparency on this post is awesome and goes above and beyond other posts, great work! I've never seen someone give away their linkbuilding research excel file like you did, nor give out the oDesk worker name. I wish both happened more often so we could learn from it!
I think one of these linkbuilding outreach case studies should be published every day on Moz, good or bad.
Mathew good stuff bud - a question though - when it comes to "paid" SEO tools etc - how many do you use if you don't mind me asking?
Your pal,
Chenzo
Hi Chenzo,
Regarding paid SEO tools, I use SEOmoz & MajesticSEO primarily. I also use some other social media paid tools (Followerwonk and Sprout Social), but aside from that - not much else.
Great post, Matthew. It gets a +1 for me for the MozCheck link alone - I can't believe I didn't realise that existed! Extremely handy tool!
However, when you say that "the link must have a genuine potential to generate traffic back to the blog" but then go on to say that you "remove[d] any that had a PA lower than ~25" and that they had to have "PR of at least 2," I feel like you're missing a big area of opportunity: new websites that may not be PA25+ or PR2+ yet, but could be very soon. I once wrote a guest blog post for a DA10 site, which was new at the time. While that sounds like it was a terrible move from an SEO point of view, I was thinking strategically and in the long term. It's now DA30-40. They also pushed the site a lot via social media, particularly in the early days as part of their 'launch' strategy, so the link from the guest post had a fair few click-throughs, which ticks the box of generating traffic back to the blog.
I'd also consider social media popularity, in addition to PA/PR. I once had to decide between a DA50 site with 100 Twitter followers and a DA40 site with 5,000 followers. Naturally, the latter was chosen. While it was a worse choice in terms of SEO, the number of RTs it earned as well as the traffic it pushed was more than worth it in comparison.
Hi Steve,
Some great points there. I think that the reason for my mentioning of higher PR/PA pages was from a scalability point of view. Completely agree that looking for blogs with potential in the future can be a great tactic, however, it can be a lot more time consuming from a research point of view. Thanks for the comment!
The techniques you wrote about above are all examples of low-hanging-fruit, and some would argue that these methods won't be as valuable in the future as search engines begin devaluing anything that we as webmasters/seos/bloggers have power over (ex. link exchanges, guest blogging, etc.).
I agree with you that these methods are valuable, and I like the way you worded the title of this article. These are good methods to build links (low value or otherwise), and drive some referral traffic to your site. Will they increase your search rankings? Probably not a ton - but organic search traffic should only be a portion of your site visitors.
For someone like me who has no experience in link building and is interested in doing so for my own blog. This post is incredibly insightful and I will be putting the practices described to the test myself. Thanks Matthew!
Hello MatthewBardy,
I also started the new website for guest blogging or guest news (A month ago) purpose and thinking "How can I promote it?"
But it's my good luck that I found a great idea of email marketing and link exchanging technique from your blog. I am looking for a regular author for the blog posting and I want to welcome you to post blogs...
Really It helps me lot!!
[link removed by staff]
Nice and useful post Matthew, I'd like to ask you if we're doing the link building for a commercial website then the strategy you defined here about links or resources section can work? I mean there are lot of sites who have separate page of links/ resource , So can we use this techniques to approach them also(Of-course in same niche). And in return we're not giving them link back.What you say in this case?
It all depends on the place where you're trying to get a link. If it's on a hidden away links/resource page that nobody will ever see then there's no point. It's unlikely that it will offer much value at all.
Make your decision based on the likelihood that good traffic will come from the link.
Well then, here I am, more educated thanks to this article. In fact, a linear strategy should be avoided when dealing with link reinforcement. In addition, your new "design" is simply MAGNIFICIENT. Congratulations to the whole team!
thx for sharing this case studies that will help lots if for me and for others. This is really worthwile and showing that how we need to change our approaches for getting links from sites those our targeted niches.
Awesome process here, Matthew! I like your method of prospecting through competitive research, and I'm going to try it out with a few of my personal sites.
I'm curious, though, how effective it is to use your particular email template for outreach? To be honest, it seems kinda "template-ey". Is that example something you use each time you contact a blogger?
Hi Andrew,
Thanks. Yes, I use this template (with some slight personalisation) whenever I contact bloggers within the travel niche. I have had almost a 75% success rate on my outreach using this so something must be appealing within it!
Matt
Cheers, Matthew.
This is one of the most valuable outreach posts I've come across in a while and you give away so much gold! I think your main man, Michael @ oDesk is about to get a whole lot busier, haha.
And yes, Paddy's book is a cracker, right?!
Thanks again, what a terrific share.
Thanks Jamie, really appreciate it. Yes, I think Michael will owe me a beer for this one haha! Also, definitely agree with your comment on Paddy's book - One of the best SEO books I have read.
Matt
Great post on taking it back to basics, your approach to find link opportunities that may acually result in traffic is great. I appreciate your generosity in sharing pretty much everything you discussed. I do however, feel a bit for the 50 sites listed in that excel spread sheet, which are about to get smashed with guest posting request!
Thanks David :) All the guys on the list are always looking for guest posts so it should probably help them to find some more content for their blogs :)
Hello Matthew, that's really inspiring educative post "especially for me" :). Your decision for travel blog, was absolutely right, decent blog. There are many travel blogs, as it is actually very much intricative to get good output and traffic on the common theme blogs. Your strategies to start off from small cabal and step by step implications of ethical actions are appreciable. Good guide!
Thank you for sharing your experience.
I'm glad I read this since my wife and I are starting a travel blog and launching it in a couple of months. I'm biased to guest posting, but some of these tips are great reminders!
Finding quality links sometimes means digging through a lot of junk! Like you mentioned in your first example, "resources" pages can be full of garbage but a few links on a few sites (good links on good sites, really) makes all the difference! Good links don't typically fall from the sky and if you can build a few links in a few hours I say that was time well spent.
Couldn't agree more, Nick. I think it's about understanding what type of links you want to build. Once you know this you can filter down through the data a lot quicker. Also, making judgements on traffic potential rather than just PA/DA will be a lot more effective.
Agreed, looking at traffic potential is the way forward, especially as G will continue to discount different link types.
My main niche is travel and spent years building my DB, but any decent travel site with good traffic will now want paying. If you are not comfortable with sponsored posts (with dofollow links), then you need to start getting creative or give the blogger something in return.
Dig this man! Good work, I have a few clients in the travel business too so that list might come in handy ;] I also have been thinking about creating a travel blog for myself.. or to just throw my travel content into the mash that is my personal blog.
I thought that the list might come in handy :) If any of your travel-related clients want to partner up on something then feel free to give me a shout!
I have to say, of all the link building campaigns that I've worked on, this has been the most fun so I would definitely recommend setting your own up.
Matt
+1 for great post and bravery!
I hope I can use this post to convince some of my clients that they need an blog.
I would also add that you should use Followerwonk to analyze seller's followers before paying for tweet.
Very good point, Bojan. Have you used paid tweets in the past? If so, what kind of success have you seen with them?
Matt
I've never used paid tweets and I really don't think that you can get big return from them.
It's very easy to gain lots of followers with automated software and you can spend your time smarter than spending days to analyze followers of every single seller.
Holy cow Matthew, that was a very thorough case study. Your tips are going to help us out greatly with our Travel client. I was mildly following your travels. Looked like quite the adventure.
Stay awesome!
Thanks Matt, really appreciate that.
Wow what a trip Matthew! I'm not ignoring this post but blown away by your tiger exploits! Ok, this is a great layout for how to do links right to a blog...given me lots to work on. thanks
It was a pretty amazing trip. Now planning my next adventure! Glad you found what I discussed useful as well :)
Would love to know more about what kind of return you got on those paid tweets? I see them in my stream from time to time and almost never click on them.
Nice post though Matthew, very thorough. I would say learning by doing is the best way to get better in this business, and it sounds like you're getting good!
If I'm completely honest, I didn't have huge return on the paid tweets; however, I've only tried it out a couple of times. I think this will work best when it coincides with promotions/competitions/etc. I may do some further testing a blog about it, so will let you know.
Thank you for this article! I had already started to do some of these same tasks for my family travel blog, by just using my common sense so it makes me feel better that I am on the right track! I love the detail in the article and plan on following it step by step to see if I can produce some decent backlinks that will boost my Page Rank.
Keep at it Tamala and if you follow some of the quick methods that I outlines above then you should start getting a few quick wins with your SEO.
Great Article Matthew, When I started SEO I thought SEO is just a common sense. After some time I come to know SEO is a research and promoting your business in Online. And Now, Ad campaigns and community development for branding and creating events and much more. Here I do most of things including Guest Blogging. But Paid Tweeting I never done. Is it really effective to get the traffic or those tweets will consider as valuable backlinks ?
HiSudheer,
The paid tweets won't do much at all in terms of actual backlinks but they can be effective in the long-term for building your online community. Like I said, it's all fair and well having great content, but if you can't get it in front of anyone then it's wasted.
Such an amazing and valuable post. Thank you so much for this.
Great Post MatthewYou have provided great building blocks for making a link building process template.
By the way, my girlfriend is teaching English near Chiang Mai and I have already forwarded your blog!
Thanks Vasso :)
If you want to drop me an email at [email protected] then we could arrange for your girlfriend to do some guest posting on my blog about her time in Chiang Mai (which would be awesome). Let me know if you think she would fancy it.
Matt
Great article and detailed process. I am an avid traveler myself. Will check out your blog :)
Great post and that pic of you with the tiger is mental!
Excellent case study Matthew! Like your approach. Special thanks for sharing your outreach emails:)
Really useful post, thank you sharing, Matt!
Will try oDesk for blog research now. So far have done it myself and always felt this is not the most productive use of time. And really hope Moz puts the competitive link intersect tool up again!
Nice article! When you are starting a new blog, you need to decide a solid strategy and you need to have passion to make it popular. Even biggest and best strategy fails without passion and fortitude.
Great read, but I think you are putting too much effort in Guest blogging. Of course, it probably brings you decent traffic and some nice links, but I have guts that guest posting is going to be devalued in the near future.
Oh, again, forgot you were from UK. That makes sense :)
Anyhow, nice read, good luck with your travel blog
Thanks so much for all this advices and information. I have just one question for example i have a tourism's websites by french, can i use the list of blogs wich you share it ? because i find a bunch english blogs , forums, directories more than franch.
thanks
I have a question about Finding Guest Blogging Opportunities and Gaining Them -
You mentioned PR but you didn't mention DA or PR - don't you think nowdays it's much more importsnt and profound?
Hello Mathew,
The article is amazing, especially the steps you have mentioned to get right blogs. I just have one question "Is this all affect on the page rank of your blog?" because I've seen your blog whose PR is 0.
Thanks,
Rounak
Hi Matt, nice article overall. Just curious, how are you planning to monetize the blog? You mention in the first paragraph that it could bring in some extra cash - are you planning to do affiliate links or something? Or use it as a lead to your services at Wow Internet?
PS. Thanks for the tip about the Scrape Similar plugin - that will definitely come in handy!!
Thanks for this post. I'm fairly new to SEO, link building, etc., so the case-study approach really clarified many of the techniques that you covered. It was also useful to see how link building can be targeted to a very specific topic (e.g. travel writing), something I'd like to apply to my own website and content (fiction & humor).
I also think it's great that you emphasized that content needs to be great (aka link-worthy ... not too dissimilar from Elaine's "sponge-worthy" on Seinfeld) by itself and not just a means to an end. As a writer, bad (or shady) content makes me cringe. When people reach out for links based upon poor content, I always feel like I'm talking to a used car dealer or an Amway salesperson.
Superb post, Matthew - I hadn't used Scrape Similar or MozCheck before and those recommendations alone made this a more than worthwhile read! Also, SeoTools for Excel... I have to kick myself for having installed but never got round to using it. I'm definitely getting more into that from now on. Thanks for the article, really excellent stuff!
I never thought the way that building links in blogs can have such type of significances. But i am still wondering that we can get such type of huge traffic from tweets. No doubt you have described your experience, i hope this will work for mine posts too.....
Good posting ,It's seems that linkbuilding not only for the search engine ,but the most it to Interaction with people. We should make great comment and service
Love the article. It is really important to know where and to whom your competitors link too in order to create a better strategy. It is not enough that you link to just anybody, it should be a genuine source. Good luck on your future travels.
You have some great tips here Matthew, and I can agree that link building can be a tedious effort, and we must make an effort to at least build up a starting presence on the internet somewhere, regardless of what type of site we are working with. But I've learned through experience that, while link building manually is important, if we focus on quality content then people will do all the link building for us. I was building links to my site last month, writing articles on various domains, only to discover days later that hundreds of people were already linking to me, and I now gain about 100 back links from high page rank sites every week, sometime even more. Anyone who wants to make it on the web shouldn't be focused so much on link building, but creating content, products, and services, that people actually want, like, or need for some reason. If people like your work they will naturally tell others about it, they will share it across social networks, and they will link to you on a large scale. Marketing and link building are pointless if no one likes the content you are pushing, something to keep in mind. I just woke up 10 minutes ago, checked my webmaster tools account, and 43 new back links are sitting right there plain as day. In the end we can link build all we want, but the content on the net that people truly like will be the content that wins out over all others.
Great Article and thoughts Matt. Impressive insight!!!
Sssooo many comments. Matt, do you use Link Prospector? I want to learn more link building strategies and that tool looks pretty resourceful once I figure out how to properly link build.
It's been days, weeks, months, heck even years I've been searching to find an informational, detailed, and knowledgeable source to refer to when detailing a link building strategy. Thank you very much!
Just a quick note, in the article above, the link through to 'Competitive Link Finder' 404s.
This is a very useful article, your experiences are overwhelming and the technique of building for blogs is spot on!
Thanks for sharing valuable tips, i'm going to use them in my newly blog. Another thing i'm doing about link building for my blog is contacting other webmasters and asking them to link to my articles (2000+ words each & high quality) and it's working very well!
Hi Matt nice article with lots of info,i agree that link sharing is one of the best way to drive links to website.
These days only brand or compbound links are safe and won't be marked as unnatural. I see the examples of my clients' penalized websites.
The content is alright. The picture at the end is a burner!
I really like this amazing post on which introduced me to some of the great features Moz has on offer.
book a hotel online
good research....the right procedure for blog posting
I was reading this article and found a broken link to (a guide I wanted to really read).
This is the place where it's broken:
https://imgur.com/jvVBFB8
It links here:
https://www.matthewbarby.com/goodies/link-research-project-melted-stories.pdf
I tried to find a replacement link but it looks like nothing is there:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.matthewbarby.com%2Fgoodies%2F&oq=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.matthewbarby.com%2Fgoodies%2F&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58j69i65l3j69i59.761j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=site:www.matthewbarby.com/goodies/&safe=off&filter=0
Hope this helps!
Andrew Wise
https://twitter.com/wisestartupblog
Beside the fact that the post is full of very useful facts and practical information, the thing that I like most about this post is that you are talking about what YOU have done and what have helped YOU. The post doesn't sound like an instruction (do this and this and you will succeed). I strongly believe that there is not one-fits-all solution. Everyone shall find her own solution to own problems.
Hi Matt,
I know that someone already asked you a little more about the "Our Friends" section, but I was hoping you could expand on it a little more. I checked out your blog, and the "Our Friends" page appears to be gone now. I've been using the "Broken Link" building approach of contacting people (where you "do them a favor" of mentioning broken links on their page), but like the idea of offering them a link on our "Friends" page. However, I haven't used that in the past because I don't want too many outgoing links on our site. I was considering making an "Our Friends" page with "no index", "no follow" tags on it so that I don't have too many indexed outgoing links on the site. Also, I don't want the search engines to think I have a bunch of reciprical links. What do you think about having a non-indexed friends page?
Thanks for sharing this informative post on blog case study.
Is the Competitive Link Finder not longer there? The link doesn't work and I can't find it when I search for it.
Guest blogging good but how you do it also needs to be good. Why do not we use our own tools to fine link prospects and open site explorer. We can find new link opportunities using fresh web explorer.
One question you have mentioned that link exchanges.Which is a big no no as far I think. Does link exchanges still works?
Here is another article "No Directories"... I think i should forget about directories now...
Hello Matthew! You got an exeptional post here Matthew! I find your article very useful. I really like the step-by-step approach. I will definitely share this to my friends. I really hope to read more of your great articles.
Awesome tricks... I'll definetly use them to promote my personal blog.
What has the success rate been for your email template?
I think nowadays, content marketing is effective and also fruitful for a company because if you want result over search engine then you provide quality content along with quality information then you get natural backlinks otherwise you do similar work like others doing.
99% good article, Kris Roadruck I agree with you, reciprocal link exchange has no benefits.
Thanks for sharing your approach for finding blogs to approach for guest posting opportunities. Great post!
Great post. I have a question: why should you concentrate on link building rather then page optimization?
You need a good mixture of both. Ensure your page is well optimised (without compromising user experience) and then build a quality backlink profile alongside this.
Very well thought out post Matthew, and I can't believe that tiger let you guys fondle him like that!
Thanks :) I was a lot more terrified than I look in the photo!
Matt
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experience here Matt. It's absolute gold! Can't wait to dig in and use some of these practices on my own. Keep rocking it out sir!
I very much enjoyed reading your post - very informative and thorough. I'm going to try a few of your tips/suggestions and see how I fare with them. I was wondering though, how do you find time to do all the writing while out traveling?
I have an iPad with a bluetooth keyboard on it so can blast out articles in under an hour - considering all of the time I spent on public transport, there was loads of time.
Recently started a blog site as a side project while i improve my SEO skills. Going to optimise it and build some links. Would you recommend these tools that you used to newer SEOs or should it be something that more senior SEOs use? What i'm meaning is, would you advise me to do practical work based on what i know already to link build or would it be worth investing the time into learning how to use the tools etc as i learn the trade
I would definitely advise using some of these tools. Where you can though, make Excel your best friend - keeping everything about your link building campaign organised in spreadsheets can make the world of difference.
My advice would be to scope out what you need. Don't just but subscriptions to every SEO tool around. Invest in a link analysis tool (SEOmoz/MajesticSEO/AHrefs) and then you can usually rely on free tools to supplement these.
Hey Matt,
Nice post, and it looks like you've put A LOT of work into link building for your blog.
Question: would you be willing to share the amount of referral traffic you're getting from the links you built based on your premise of "only build links that will drive traffic"? If you're not comfortable with sharing raw numbers that's fine; by what percentage has referral traffic grown since you started this campaign?
I'd also love to know how much your organic traffic has grown since you started link building as well.
I'm interested in implementing your tactics but I really need to understand better how much of a return I can expect before I start putting in all that work!!
Thanks!
The blog in itself is only a few months old so has still got a long way to go but if we take a look at this month then my referral traffic has equated to 40.5% of overall traffic - not bad! With around 20% of this coming from social networks and then the rest from the guest posts, etc.
Definitely not bad! Thanks for sharing, and congrats on a great post.
Great content, Matt! Just curious how did you manage to do #6 without it looking like you are exchanging links with the webmasters?
Matt,
Did you ever consider advertising your own tweets? Helps build a following and get your content out but there's one spectacular benefit of advertising with Twitter ... when you are an advertiser, Twitter provides back end analytics that tell you how many clicks each link you tweet receives. Not just the tweets you're advertising, but all your tweets. I was able to go to a client and tell him that I generated almost 400 visits to his content last month, with written proof from Twitter.
If people reading this like this tip, please thumb me up. I'm trying to build my Moz points ;)
Julie
I think it is important to ask "How to Build Authority Links to Your Blog" Than "How to Build Links to Your Blog"
Thanks, Mathew for sharing your own tactics and experience in seo. I found a lot new stuff from your post of called "new SEO" tactics which is all about creating readable content. I was doing lot of link building using old techniques and now I see that Google knows that also:}
Anyway, I wanted to thank you for sharing this
Thanks!
GuitarGuideEasy
Thanks for given this all information in simple steps and really social media is that kind of platform which will give you attractive result in your SEO performance.
Thanks for the study Matt! There are some classic and simple techniques you brought back to light in this write up, which still work well and are perfectly valid in a Post Penguin era, when relevancy is your first and foremost concern. One question: Is this tool still live? Getting an error when I attempt to load it. https://moz.com/labs/link-intersect
You lost me with your reciprocal link exchange email template. Reciprocal links have been a no-no for some time. If a site happens to cross link in editorial content so be it but what you are talking about is basically a barnacle link directory slapped on the side of a site. I would pretty much never want to appear on a "links page" nor host one on any site I ran. Its just asking for a swatting.
Excellent post Matt which introduced me to some of the great features Moz has on offer, which I'm now getting to grips with.
Not sure I would pay for promoted Tweets as I don't appreciate them popping up in my feed, and we already seem to get a lot of traffic through tweeter.
Hey Matt,
I've always wanted to go to the phi phi islands in Thailand. Is it just the the film "the beach" :)... Looks like you had an amazing time there anyway. Really great strategy as well.
Considering the the blog is only a few month's old, Your guest blogging and social media engagement is brilliant.
Cheers Matt,
Danny
Internal linking from blog pages with a good external link profile are really powerful, especially if the content is attractive and gets natural links.
Also that tiger looks ridiculously real.
Agreed Charles - Oh, and the tiger is real!
Matt
wow... that's AWESOME! :D
Hey, you live in Birmingham? :DWe should meet up sometime! I work in the Jewellery Quarter :)
Don't worry if you don't want to add our blog, but if you let me know your Twitter handle anyway then I will make sure we follow you and drop you some retweets! You can follow us at @melted_stories.
I like this ending. Infact I received a request for a link on our resources page which included this today (they must have read this post). I deleted their request though as their approach was wrong, WIIFM?
I noticed directories were omitted, understandably, but I think I still like Technorati. What are your thoughts on listing your blog on this site?
Great post Mett.
It will definitely help SEO workers working on link building and to know more details about their working strategy. Here is something I want to cite for better help. I use colibri tools as my best working friend. It's really a great tool. Inbound Internet marketers and SEO workers can try it.
Here are 4 simple tasks you can use Colibri for:
1. Checking your positions and SEO performance
Colibri analyses all your keyword positions in the selected search engine.
2. Analysing hundreds of your competitors
Revealing and analysing your business Competitors and their SEO activities.
3. Finding niches for your online business
Gathering suggested keyword phrases for your online busines and estimated
traffic and Adwords budget needed.
4. Searching for your backlinks and linking domains
Monitoring yours and your competitors' backlinks, including Ahrefs rating.
Thanks for a very clear and concise set of tasks to get my link building strategy going. Very clear and I will start using your tactics right.. now.
You article guide me step by step process for building links. Well researched and very crucial information descirbe here.
Nice post. Very important thing is identifying links to your blog. I tried many tools so that I may find the link strategy to my blog but didn't find the tools useful as always I find any problem in that. Before some days I start using the colibri tool from colibritool.com that not only helps to find the links but also provide me the complete details of where the website is getting traffic from.
Is Competitive Link Finder still around Matthew, it looks to me as though Moz is no longer offering it?
I can't seem to find it? Really hoping that they haven't ditched it :(
Hi! We will be bringing this back as an unsupported tool in our labs. I should be there within a week or so. I apologize for the bad timing of it being down while this post was promoted.
I'm glad I signed in to this Moz community. There's a lot of helpful articles here and this is the first article I landed into. Nice post! =)
Great blog. I always found that the most difficult part of seo is getting good inbound links. Unfortunately, many people still believe that tossing any article out there will attract links. It's researching/planning, executing and making relevant parties aware of the article that does the trick.
Thanks for the tips, i'm going to use them in my newly personal blog. Another thing i'm doing about link building for my blog is contacting other webmasters and asking them to link to my articles (2000+ words each & high quality) and it's working very well!
i was applying some of your steps and i found something awkward on my competitor's backlinks
he add it in a page rank 8 blog but it was hidden
<div id="twt-top-links-page-4" class="hidden">
how can i react on that ?
i can provide the full link if you need
but actually that will really hard to do.
Hey Matt!
Thanks for such a detailed post.
I absolutely agree with you on the guest blogging part. It's truly effective only when you remain relevant and add value, otherwise it can give your reputation a big punch
Jawad Khan @ WritingMyDestiny
Matt,
Although I think this is a great article I am a little confused. Could you provide us with some idea of quantitative figures on how these techniques have increased your traffic? I checked out the stats of the blog and was unable to obtain PR and other similar stats for it.
helpful article
Matt, one huge linking strategy you failed to mention is product recall press releases - they get picked up in all of the right places, without question. It is a little tricky to do and save face at the same time, but if you manufacture or carry recalled items you can use this to your advantage.
Thanks for sharing this really inspiring article. :)
I hope I can apply for my new blog:
https://www.renungan-katolik.com
hey matt itz great Article.. buddy i learnt lot frm dis blog.. keep on posting gud blog :) from https://www.xploreworld.net/
Amazing Post.Thanks Sharing for this blog. I really like your article....!
hey matt itz great Article.. buddy i learnt lot frm dis blog.. keep on posting gud blog :)
hello...i recently stumbled on your site and i must say,i love every piece of information. i would want you to do me a favour and go through my blog and make your analysis on what you think am not doing right. am a nigeria blogger and my niche is strictly shoes or rather i blog about shoes.
www.glowyshoe.blogspot.com . thanks
www.worldrandy.com :)
Matt, one huge linking strategy you failed to mention is product recall press releases - they get picked up in all of the right places, without question. It is a little tricky to do and save face at the same time, but if you manufacture or carry recalled items you can use this to your advantage.