[Build Backlinks Online] The World of Link Opportunities Beyond Bloggers

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The World of Link Opportunities
Beyond Bloggers'

Posted by JamesAgate
There is an awful lot of controversygoing around for things like guest posts,
with techniques being proclaimed dead and blogs being decreed toxic, but the
fact remains thatif you handle blogger outreach in the right way, you canget a
tremendous amount of value from blogs.
Targeted audiences, run by passionate and receptive bloggers; these types of
opportunities shouldn't be discounted.If you take a step back from your link
profile, it is very likely to be heavily weighted towards blogs, whether that be
as a result of guest posts, editorial mentions, competitions, or just about
anything else.

However, while all of the above add value (broadly speaking), they point to a
link profile that looks skewed toward just one type of website. Links from
blogscan be overcooked, and the reality of being an SEO in 2014 is that itis
always wise to diversify the ways in whichyou get linksirrespective of which
colorhat you think you wear. You need to be proactive about what your link
profile looks like.
We've probably all recentlyseen instances of overlyharsh penalties, websites
that looked
whiter than white (especially in relation to competitors) getting spanked. I've
seen instances of sites getting hit that didn't even look like they cared all
that much about SEO, and yet someone at Google arbitrarilydecided they had
fallen afoul of guidelines.
Do I think Google is crazy? Sometimes, yes. But I'm not here to complain,
because frankly it's their playground, so I guess we all need to learn to live
in it and determine ways to make the most of itor face the consequences.
My point is we all have to think carefully about the things we do (even if they
don't at first appear to impact SEO) and what knock-on effect that is likely to
have.
This especially applies when it comes to content generation and building links.
It is easier to get bogged down in the day-to-day and think you are diversifying
your link profile because you have a variety of blogs or because you are using
different means to connect with bloggers, but from a bot's point of view those
links probably all look quite similar.
Here are just some of the wealth of link opportunities that are out there in
almost every market:Resource pages
Forums
Directories
Professional organizations
Events
Submission-based
Press
The sad thing is that at least one person reading this can probably find one
instance of each of the above links being mentioned by someone at Google as
"unnatural." That being said, all of the above, if done right, are highly
defensible and would pass the litmus test of "would I still want this if Google
didn't exist?"Targeted acquisition
The problem (actually, the opportunity, because it means fewer people will
bother) is that there isn't usually a surefire step-by-step to finding these
types of opportunities; the process can be quite serendipitous. I know that
sounds like fluffy nonsensebut there is no substitute for really getting to know
a client and their market. This is why we often save this kind of activity for
several months into an engagement: That is when some of the really golden
opportunities seem to appearafter a few conversations with your contact, some
research for a content piece, etc.
It is also likely that opportunities are limited in certainmarkets. There's
nearly always another link opportunity out there, but to be brutally truthful
this process isn't going to be easy, and it isn't going to be one of those
things where you can suddenly
make it rain links.
In most cases we have found markets to be a series of rabbit holes with niches,
sub-niches, sub-sub-niches,etc.the internet is HUGE, and if you are just
focusing on "Keyword" + "Write for us" in your link prospecting, then you are
leaving a world of opportunities on the table.Resource pages

This type of opportunity is likely to form the foundation of any proactive
"blogless" link building campaign because there are so many resource page
opportunities out there.
You can really shoot for the stars with this technique, though and we've
secured placements on government, academic, and top-tier websites like
About.com. I must stress that this isn't always an easy sell, because these
types of websites don't link to just anyone so you'll need to adjust your
expectations accordingly particularly if your business or client has only a
small amount of value to offer outside of its usual commercial enterprise. It
probably doesn't surprise you that these types of websites care very little for
link-baity stuff. :-)
A common mistake is to adopt the mindset of "I have made this guide on
{keyword}, it is really {useful | interesting | identical to everything else on
your resource list} and so should be included on your page because it will be
good for {your audience | me}". You either need something completely new that
brings diversity to that resource page, or you need to sell the webmaster on the
asset you are asking them to link to.
A common approach we adopt is to utilize an existing client asset and then look
for multiple angles depending on the type of resource page you are targeting. If
you think about, a governmental website, they want to help local citizens, so
content about things likepublic safety is of interest to them. However,there is
no incentive for them to link if they've already got three guides to the issue
you are talking about. If you can find one governmental site that has a section
on a specific public issue, though,you can use that in your pitch to another
website, offering them a reason to link (because it rounds out their offering to
their local citizens).
In terms of finding these kinds of opportunities, there are two main ways we do
this:Digging through an existing link profile (the client's or a competitor's)
and extrapolating the tactic from there
Surfacing (often) hundreds of opportunities using a combination of prospecting
phrases that include a variation of resource, help, further reading, and the
keywordForums


Who would have thought a type of link usually reserved for the spammer could be
valuable?
Well, a number of our clients enjoy mountains of traffic from targeted forums;
in fact, in some cases they are the biggest referrers.
Naturally I am talking about the client adding value to the forum, or in most
cases (this is easier if you don't have the client industry expertise and the
client doesn't have the inclination) encouraging conversations about the client
within the forum. Tread carefully, as most forums don't take all that kindly to
marketers poking their noses in, but with a modicum of client participation you
may be able to join a conversation andhighlight a piece of content on the
client's site. By doing so, you might just"turn on" the forum to the wealth of
useful content you probably already have there.
Our participation in forums is often content-led, and it is a very low-volume
tactic, asthere are oftenonly ahandful of worthwhile forums in the industry you
are looking at.Directories

A recent study found most
web directories are dead, and I wouldn't disagree that most are simply live so
they can charge for removal of links. Leaving this type of directory aside,
there are a wealth of industry directories and localized business directories
that real people actually use. These arethe types of listings where you can get
phone calls. Regardless of what you think of directories as a link type, that to
me is a defensible link that is worthwhile irrespective of whether it is going
to have an impact on your rankings.
The US is a goldmine of link opportunities like this, with directories for
cities that are relatively easy to get listed on and can actually generate calls
and new business. If you are in the travel industry, for example, where people
who don't know the area need to book a car service from the airport, they might
use a site like
SantaMonica.com to find a provider. There is that perceived credibility of
being listed in what is an authoritative site in the area.
How do we go about finding them? The
Link Prospector tool from Citation Labs is very useful in surfacing these types
of opportunities if you use a combination of local and niche-specific phrases.
If you don't want to subscribe to the Link Prospector tool, then it is easy
enough (albeit less automated) to do generic searches that include a combination
of keywords or geographical locations and the directories themselves often show
up. I actually prefer the manual method, as it allows for more serendipitous
opportunities to present themselves.Professional organizations
There won't be all that many, but as with directories you want to be thinking
in terms of niche and location as well as a combination of the two. Especially
in the US, there are a wealth of opportunities with local chapters of
organizations that you or your client could join.
There is often a cost involved with joining these professional organizations
(at least the worthwhile ones), but the credibility associated with it and often
the other business benefits for the client hugely outweigh the cost.
We've been frequently surprised at how often a client is already paying a
subscription fee for a membership that entitles them to a listing but they've
simply never claimed it! These are very quick and easy wins, granted the impact
isn't necessarily going to be life-changing.

To find these kinds of organizations, again the
Link Prospector tool is very useful if you need a quick and easy way to find
these opportunities. You might find this list useful (albeit a little user
unfriendly to navigate) as many trade publications have a corresponding
association. Not always, but hey, it is still a useful resource if you want to
find out about trade press.Events
I strongly suggest you read this blog post on
Link Building with Local Events by Kane Jamison from 2012. There is very little
I can add to this specific topic that Kane hasn't already covered, but a few
specific points are worth repeating:
First, why would we want these links? Well, you are likely to be getting links
on domains that are otherwise hard to get even a citation from, let alone a
link, websites like well-respected news outlets. Similarly the links are
geographically specific, there is nothing more difficult than obtaining links
from blogs within a certain geographical area, because the pool is oftenreally
small. So when it comes to "blogless" link building, it is nice to add that
local element to your profile, and event-based link building can really help
with that.
Secondly, think about the whole process when it comes to event-based link
building, because there is more to it than just the "submission to the event
section." You need to consider how you structure the event pages on your website
as well as selecting the right ticketing provider (e.g.
Eventbrite) for maximum SEO-related benefits (and frankly to ensure a seamless
experience for any attendees).
Finally, consider all the angles for leveraging your event for link building
goodness, from typical search queries that uncover submission opportunities to
looking for footprints within event widgets.Submission-based
This is an excellent way to maximize the reach of content either through
finding or repurposing fora new audience.
This guide, whilst painfully cringe-worthy in its analogy to food, is a mostly
useful guide to repurposing your content.
I am talking about worthwhile submission-based link opportunities here, though,
whether that be making a presentation from a guide to go onto Slideshare or just
submitting a podcast to the relevant directory. This is less about the resulting
link (Google knows these aren't exactly tightly editorially controlled), but you
can effectively plug into an audience that you didn't already have access to.
I still get milestone notifications of a guide I wrote for eHow nearly five
years ago. I'm actually a little embarrassed about the content so really must
get around to updating it but that has had over 10,000 pageviews since it
launched. I accept that's not viral traffic, but it was an extract of a longer
piece on my site, and I linked my guide in the section beneath. My guide has
subsequently had just over 4,000 visits since the eHow extract was published,
which is almost certainly a lot more eyeballs than it would have gotten just
sitting on one of my websites.
Eric Ward is a big proponent of submitting content to different places; many of
the Link Opportunity Alerts that you find in his
LinkMoses newsletter service are submission-based, but often niche-specific and
have a large audience or carry some real credibility.
Press coverage

Is doing PRa challenge as an SEO? Absolutely. It isn't always an option,
because if your client has a PR department or existing agency you might just end
up crunching toes. On the flipside, however,we as SEOs are oftenfar better at
actually getting the link than a PR exec might be. We've achieved coverage for
clients on TV networks, offline magazines, radio interviewslots of great things
that any PR agency would be proud of,and that started as a way for us to build
some links!
The thing we have found is that most press opportunities present themselves and
you have to be a bit reactive (or real-time) rather than proactively seeking
coverage. We have also found some success in looking at how and why clients (and
their competitors)have been covered in the past. Go into this with an openmindI
couldn't believe when we found one of our clients had receivedcoverage for the
release of a product brochure; my initial thought would have been "who actually
cares besides the owner of the business that our client has released a new
product brochure??!"... turns out the trade press cared, and would happily cover
it. In situations like that you find an asset which even the best of us would
have dismissed as little more than sales fodder that can actually be used
effectively to garner links.
Incidentally, I would be interested to hear your experience gaining press
coverage with services like
HARO.We've probably had 4 successful pieces of coverage from HARO pitches, and
while you could argue our targeting was off, our pitch was poor, or the client
wasn't a good fit, we've got coverage for those exact same clients through all
sorts of other means so it truly baffles me when I see other people cite HARO as
though it's a push-button way of getting publicity. Maybe we're doing it wrong,
or maybe it's just inundated since all SEOs on planet Earth started using it.
Who knows?A walkthrough
It is often easy to illustrate a point with an example, so I wanted to do a
quick runthrough of what we might do if we were to handle link building for
Ontraport,a small business CRM provider. These guys aren't a client, and were
selected at random after going through a list of a few of our providers (we use
them for email auto-responders among many other things) I thoroughly recommend
their software, but I digress.

Let's look at the assets they already have that we might be able to work
with...http://ontraport.com/ The software itself is likely to appeal to
smallbusiness owners, seeing as it has been designed with them in mind. From a
link building point of view, we might struggle given thatthere isn't a free
version of the tool, but as a "suggested tool" on a small business website we
might have an angle. The better angle here is that the company is itself a
"small business" success story (or at least sort of small; they've featured on
the INC500 list and Forbes Most Promising Companies).
http://ontraport.com/women/ This one is buried in their footer, I actually found
it digging through their link profile, but it is a sign-up page to join an
online community for women in business.Ontraport's COO is a woman named Lena
Requist and she wanted to create "The Professionistas" to be a community within
the widerOntraport community. It is such a great idea, and is likely to be a
valuable asset for any link building campaign.
http://ontraport.com/community-meetups/ This provides details on all their
forthcoming in-person meetups. Loads of potential link building angles here.
http://ontrapalooza.com Their annual event which seems to work a bit like
MozCon. I saw details of the event last year but didn't actually attend,
andthere are opportunities aplenty with a large-scale event like this.
Here are just some of the opportunities I came up with after little more than
10 minutes of research:The founder of Ontraport did an interview on Mixergy a
while back, how about reaching out to BusinessInterviews.com?
SBA.gov helped me find an office that supports female business owners that is
local to Ontraport and that office has a resource page.
The National Association for Female Executives has setup a page to help guide
female executives in their career here.Perhaps Ontraport's Professionista
community for women would be a good addition for any women looking to strike out
on their own as a means of furthering their career?
Their forthcoming in-person meetup in Santa Monica is likely to be of interest
to the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce in their business event
listings:http://members.smchamber.com/events/
The Annual Ontrapalooza event I mentioned was held in Santa Barbara last year,
so how about telling local residents about it and getting a link in the process?
You can submit event details to the Santa Barbara Independent events section
(granted most listings are aimed at general public but there are some specialist
events in the calendar).Conclusion
Ultimately you need diversity in the link building that you do. Many of the
tactics described above are low-volume, high-value so are worth investing a bit
more time in. Can you build a process around them? Yes, but it is likely to be
more of a framework or alternatively very industry-specific because there are so
many nuances hence why I haven't provided a step-by-step.
I don't think that you should consider blogger outreach or links from blogs to
be dead, but as with anything in SEO, there is such a thing as too much of
something good. Hammering away at one tactic because that's what's cheap or in
your comfort zone is only going to get you so far.
I'd love to hear thoughts in the comments below, particularly success stories
with "less common" types of links.Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly
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