Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'How to Build Links to Your Blog -
A Case Study'
Posted by Matthew Barby
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it
provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are
entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.
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 (http://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.
**BONUS: you can take a look at the full brief that I used for the link
research project here.
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 authors 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.
http://www.meltedstories.com/monkeys-muay-thai-and-magical-marine-life-in-ko-phi-phi/http://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!
Mattwww.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...
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/e4JjWMnTmQQ/how-to-build-links-to-your-blog-a-case-study
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment