- Today you're gonna learn exactly how to build powerful
backlinks to your site. In fact, I've used the strategies
that I'm about to show you to get links from sites like
Forbes, TechCrunch, Inc., Entrepreneur, and more. I'm Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko. Today I'm gonna show you nine proven link building strategies and some advanced techniques I've never heard anyone else talk about. Keep watching. (light music) We have a lot to cover in today's video so let's get started. I started my first blog way back in 2010. Back then, spammy black hat
link building was all the rage. In fact, my go-to strategies were things like article directories
and link pyramids. Link pyramid? That sounds amazing. These black hat links worked okay until Google unleashed its Penguin update. This update wiped out 98% of my Google traffic
literally overnight. That's when I decided to
go all in on white hat SEO. Thanks to the white hat
link building strategies I'm about to share with you, my organic traffic shot
up like a rocket ship. I also started to rank
for competitive keywords like video SEO, keyword
research, on-page SEO, and more. Without further ado, let's kick things off with strategy number one, link roundups. Imagine if people publish blog posts for the sole purpose of
linking out to quality content, the type of quality content that you already publish on your site. That would be awesome, right? Fortunately for us, that's a real thing and they're called link roundups. Here is an example of a link roundup. What are link roundups exactly? Link roundups are daily,
weekly, or monthly blog posts that curate and link
to outstanding content. For example, this is a link that I recently built from a roundup. Now let's break down the
exact process that I used to get that link. First, you need to find link
roundups in your industry. Here are a few search strings
that work really well. Just pop these search strings into Google and you should find tons
of high-quality roundups. Once you find the link roundup
that seems like a good fit, it's time to pitch your content. Here is the email script
that I personally use. You want to send the script to the person that runs the roundup. As you can see, this script
isn't pushy or spammy. I just let the person know
that my content exists and gently suggest that they include it in their next roundup. If your post is a good fit
for that person's roundup, you'll get a sweet link. That's all there is to it. With that, it's time
for our second strategy, broken link building. Broken link building is
one of my all-time favorite link building strategies. Why? You see, when most people build links, they send generic pictures
that offer zero value. Can I have a link, please? Thank you. Send. Here is the step-by-step process. First, add Check My
Links to Google Chrome. Check My Links is a free
Google Chrome extension that finds broken links on any page. I'll show you how to use
this tool in a minute. But for now, let's move
on to step number two. Find a site that you
want to get a link from. You probably already
have a few sites in mind. If not, just Google keywords
related to your industry. The sites that show up
in the search results are great sites to get backlinks from. For example, last year
I wanted to build links to this list of SEO tools so I googled things like SEO
checklist and SEO tutorial. Next, it's time to check for broken links. To do this, just visit a few pages on the site you just found and run the Check My Links extension. This will reveal all the
broken links on that page. Finally, let the site owner
know about their broken link and offer your content as a replacement. For example, when I find a
broken link on someone's site, I send them this email. Note how personalized my email is. The more you personalize your email, the more links you'll get. Anyway when they reply to my message, I sent them the URL of the broken link, I also pitch my SEO tools
post as a replacement for the dead link. Because I added value first, then ask for something in return, people were happy to link to me. Now it's time for strategy number three, build links from podcasts. A few months ago, I was checking out where one of the sites in my
niche got their backlinks from and I noticed that a big
chunk of their backlinks came from going on podcasts. So I decided to become a guest on as many podcasts as I could. In fact, I appeared on over 50 podcasts over the next year and 1/2. Not only did these podcasts
send some serious traffic my way but they resulted in tons
of high-quality backlinks. Moving right along to our next technique, create branded strategies and methods. A few years ago, I was searching
for some productivity tips and I came across this
post by Merlin Mann. In this post, Merlin outlined
something called Inbox Zero, a productivity approach
where you use your inbox as your to-do list. But that wasn't what grabbed my attention. What shocked me was that this simple idea generated over 5,000 backlinks. When I looked over those
backlinks, I noticed a pattern. Most people link to the page because it outlined a strategy with a unique name, Inbox Zero. That's when I decided that I would try naming my strategies too. The next time I talked
about a strategy on my blog, I called it the skyscraper technique. How did it go? The post where I first mentioned
the skyscraper technique has been linked to over 9,000 times. If you look at those links, 90% of them are due to the fact that I gave my strategy
a unique branded name. Okay, moving right along
to strategy number five, become a source for
reporters and bloggers. Here is the deal. Fortunately this isn't as
hard as it probably sounds. In fact, it's very doable thanks to a free service called HARO. HARO is like a dating
site for public relations. HARO connects bloggers and
journalists that need sources to people that want
links and press mentions. I personally used HARO to build links for mega news sites like Entrepreneur.com. To be clear, this strategy takes work and it's not always easy. But in my experience,
it's one of the best ways to build quality backlinks at scale. With that, let's dive into
the step-by-step process. First, register as a source. Once you're signed up,
you'll get three emails a day from reporters looking
for sources like this. When you find a request
that seems like a good fit, send them your pitch. For example, a while
back, I saw a HARO request from someone that wanted to know what's the difference between
graphic design and web design. So I submitted this pitch and I got this sweet
link from rasmussen.edu, which is an authoritative edu domain. Not bad. Next up, we have strategy
number six, pre-outreach. A while back, one of my readers, Emil, was getting ready to publish
this epic piece of content. But for that to happen,
he'd need to build links. So Emil decided to promote his post before he even published it. This is known as pre-outreach. Here is how it went down. First, Emil found blogs that
wrote about employee wellness and he sent them this message. Because he didn't beg for a link, most of the people that Emil talked to were happy to hear from him. Then once Emil's post went live, he sent a link to everyone that responded to his first email. And that led to a bunch of social shares and a nice contextual backlink. With that, it's time for strategy seven, .edu resource page link building. It's no secret that
links from edu websites are super powerful. The question is, how do you
actually get university sites to link to you? .edu resource pages. Here is how it works. Most universities have resource pages where they link to content that could help their
students and faculty. Here is an example of a resource page that links to content about
nutrition and supplements. For example, let's say you
have a website about nutrition. First, you want to find resource pages like the one I just showed you. To do that, pop these
search strings into Google. Then look to see if a
piece of your content would be a good fit for that page. Finally, email the person
that runs that resource page this proven script. Now keep this in mind. That's the bad news. The good news is, even
one or two of these links can make a massive difference
in your Google rankings. For example, I recently used this strategy to get a link from this resource page on the University of Michigan website. That single link made a significant dent in my organic traffic. If you thought that was cool, wait until you see strategy number eight, the moving man method. The moving man method is simple. First, find webpages,
resources, or businesses that are outdated, just rebranded, or recently changed names. Then find sites that are still linking to these outdated resources. Finally, let people know that
they're linking to something that's out of date. Let me show you how this works
with a real-life example. A while back, I read that a website for a big SEO agency suddenly shut down. This meant they had tons
of pages on their site that weren't working anymore, pages that lots of people
were still linking to. Specifically I noticed that
an infographic about SEO on their site wasn't working anymore, which was perfect because
I had just published my own SEO-focused infographic. Nice. That was the first step. Next, I had to see who actually
linked to this infographic. So I fired up a hrefs and
pulled all their links. Finally, I emailed everyone that still link to that infographic. I let them know that the
image wasn't working anymore. I also let them know that my infographic will make a great replacement
for the BlueGlass one. As you can see, people were
more than happy to link to me. Speaking of infographics, it's time for our last link building
strategy, guestographics. Last year, Backlinko reader
Matt Lawry had a problem. Matt runs Yellow Octopus, an
e-commerce site in Australia that sells gifts and he
quickly realized something, it's really hard to build
links to e-commerce sites. After all, who would
want to link to a site that's made up of 100%
product and category pages? What did he do? First, Matt put together
an epic piece of content, an ultimate guide to Australian gin. This guide contained everything
someone would want to know about gin from Australia in one place. Now of course Matt didn't just sit back and wait for the links to roll in. He promoted his content
with email outreach. Because Matt reached
out to the right people and sent them personalized emails, some people even offered
to link to his guide. All these backlinks boosted
Matt's rankings for a keyword that his customers search for
every day, Australian gin. His content even shows up in the highly coveted
featured snippet spot. Now before we close out this video, let me show you a cool bonus tip, find guest posting opportunities
with Google Images. That's right. I said guest posting. Now a lot of people say that when it comes to building links, guest posting is dead. But is it true? Not really. In fact, when you're just starting out, guest posting is one of the best ways to build links to your site. For example, when I
first started Backlinko, I guest posted like a madman. I wrote over 50 guest posts
and interviews in about a year. And the links I got from guest posting gave my organic traffic
a nice early boost. That said, I was very
strategic about things. I made sure to only write guest posts for quality sites in my niche. So if you run a site about the paleo diet and write a guest post
for a site about iPhones, that's gonna look spammy. But when you write
mind-blowing guest posts for quality sites in your industry, those links do help. The question is, how do you
find sites to guest post on? Google Images. Here is the step-by-step process. First, find someone in your niche that writes a lot of guest posts. Second, grab the URL of
the headshot that they use in their author bio. Finally, pop that URL into
Google reverse image search. And boom, you get a list of places that guest posted presented
to you on a silver platter. Very cool. There you have it, nine of my all-time favorite
link building strategies. If you learned some cool new
stuff from today's video, make sure to subscribe to the Backlinko YouTube
channel right now. Just click in the subscribe
button below this video. If you want exclusive SEO techniques that I only share with subscribers, head over to Backlinko.com
and hop on the newsletter. It's free. Now it's your turn. Which technique from today's
video are you gonna try first? Are you gonna try broken link building? Or do you want to start
using Google Images to find sites to guest post on? Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now. Where were we? Wait. Link. That's like every word. You lucky bastard. So we have some funny moments? Then we can just do those all at the end. Supposedly funny moments. So what, oh. That's good. I might just take that up. Yeah, you got it rough over there.
