In the first part of our guide about link building strategies, we have covered the very basics to allow you to get a basic understanding of link building, its benefits, link exchanges, and key link building strategies.
The second part of our guide will focus on essential link building strategies like link building outreach, competitor backlink analysis, essential link building tools, backlink monitoring, and link building outsourcing.
In case you are a newbie in the SEO world and want to learn more about the industry, we have also put together some helpful resources, which you will find at the end of this comprehensive guide about link building strategies.
So, stay tuned as we are about to dive even deeper into link building strategies!
Link Building Outreach in 4 Steps
Link building outreach is one of the most important aspects of your link building strategies. It is about reaching out to other domains to request them to link to your website.
Your email should be good enough to attract the attention of your link partners. Otherwise, your messages will get ignored.
But it is not rocket science either. But it is not rocket science either. If you want to make the process easier you can use outreach tools to streamline and automate your efforts. So, don’t be scared.
Let’s break down the backlink outreach process into easy steps to help you get the most out of it.
Make a list of domains
To gather the target domains, follow these tips.
- Find a list of potential companies you’d like to collaborate with.
- Before reaching out to particular domains, check their DR (domain rating) with Ahrefs․ Remember? The higher it is, the better.
- Once you have the list of target companies, search for the employees’ LinkedIn profiles.
To make your job more organized, we recommend using Google Sheets. An ideal spreadsheet includes information about domains, essential metrics like domain rating and traffic, as well as a “status” column to check which stage your SEO outreach is.
It’s also highly advised to use tools for link building outreach to automate different parts of this tedious process. For instance, use Ahrefs for checking a target domain’s DR and traffic and Mailmeteor for sending mass emails and automating the follow-up process, and more.
Now, let’s turn our attention to email tools and jump into the next step, which will show how to find and verify email addresses for effective and seamless link outreach.
Find and Verify email addresses
The success of any email campaign depends on how accurate your email list is.
Contacting the wrong people is the least thing you want, because it can only hurt your link building strategies and outreach and slower possible link building collaboration processes.
The ideal target for backlink outreach is the SEO link building specialist of a particular company. However, sometimes you will need to contact other employees, like content managers or client success managers, too, for some reasons, for instance, when you get no response from the person you reached out to.
So, how to find email addresses?
- Open the company’s LinkedIn page → X employees on LinkedIn who have the position you need for outreach→ scrap the LinkedIn profile like this “name”, “surname”, “position”, “Profile URL”→ ta da da dam, you are ready to collect the information.
- Once you have all the necessary information about employees, it’s time to pretend that you are Nostradamus to make guesses and come up with different variations with the most common email formats, like “[email protected].” Leave the rest of the job to an email verifier.
- Alternatively, you can use email finder tools to find the email list of a particular domain.
Wait, don’t rush to hit the send button. We know, you can’t wait to start your link building collaboration, but a perfect outreach starts with verified addresses.
Luckily, there are diverse email verification tools that can assist you in that job. Do your research to find a tool that best suits your needs.
Create a Good Email Template
If you think that email outreach is over with finding email addresses and verifying them, you are mistaken.
The next challenge to overcome is convincing people to care about your offer, which is possible only with a personalized and thoroughly-crafted email template that attracts the attention of your target audience.
No link building strategies are complete without this critical element of direct engagement and personalized communication, which forms the foundation for building trust and interest in your offer.
So, let’s find out how to craft a link building outreach email that converts.
- Use the target’s name in the subject line to make it personalized.
- Introduce yourself so you don’t appear a scammer.
- Be as clear as it is possible. Whether your email is about link exchanges or guest posting opportunities, explain the reason why you are reaching out in a clear way.
- Explain what the recipient gains from your collaboration. When you highlight the benefits, they are more likely to agree to work with you.
- Add an email signature to add a professional touch to your email. It also proves that you are a real person.
- Use social proof whenever it’s possible. For example, this could be a few popular websites that have linked to your content.
By following these tips, you can ensure that your emails achieve their intended impact.
Follow Up
As people might get really busy and overwhelmed, it can be difficult sometimes to make them open your email on the first try.
Sending a short follow-up email can solve this issue, but make sure not to spam their inboxes.
If they are not interested, they are not interested. Let it go and seek other opportunities.
Competitor Backlink Analysis
When it comes to a successful SEO link management, keeping an eye on your competitors is essential, as as it helps you identify new opportunities and stay ahead in the rankings.
In other words, it’s a must if you want to be one step ahead of your competitors, regardless of what link building strategies you use.
Yes, you are right. We have reached the competitor backlink analysis part, which is very important and interesting.
Competitor backlink analysis is the process of tracking the backlink profiles of your competitors’ websites.
Why does it matter?
Let’s discover the benefits of analyzing competitor links together!
Exploring new link building opportunities
Performing competitor links analysis provides valuable information about which reputable websites link to your competitors.
Having this information in your fingerprints allows you to reach out to these websites for a link building collaboration.
The more websites you explore, in your competitors’ backlink profiles, the more opportunities you have to build relevant backlinks. It is crucial to focus on white hat backlinks when pursuing these opportunities, as they will make sure you are compliant with search engine guidelines, protecting you from penalties.
However, you will need to use the right link building strategies to effectively leverage these opportunities and achieve all your SEO goals.
Identifying trending content ideas
Apart from identifying where your competitors have backlinks but you don’t, you can also identify their content marketing secrets, which you can later use in your link building strategies.
You can find out what type of content they publish and which one resonates with your target audience. Then, you can use these insights while developing your content strategy.
Keeping up with industry trends
Competitor links analysis allows you to stay aware of industry trends.
If you are not keeping up with industry trends, you won’t be able to refine your link building strategies.
You might come across a tactic that you have not used before, but it actually works.
Cool, right?
Again, this information can help you refine your link building strategies and stay competitive.
So, all in all, learning how to analyze backlink profiles of competitors is highly beneficial, and can reveal a lot about their link building strategies.
Copying your competitors’ strategies exactly isn’t something we recommend and encourage. Instead, we advise you to get some inspiration from their link building strategies and adapt them to suit link building approaches.
3 Best Link Building Tools
Link building strategies cannot be successful without proper tools in place.
Link building tools help you automate different processes and focus on tasks that are more important.
Let’s explore three essential link building tools, their benefits, drawbacks, and pricing.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool that provides various tools for optimizing your website for search engines, and if you are a beginner, it should definitely be in your toolkit.
Pros:
- Competitor research
- Keyword Research
- Website Audit
- Content Research
- Rank Tracking
- Mentions Monitoring
- Free SEO tools like SERP checker, Website Traffic Checker, Keyword Generator, and more.
Cons:
- Pricey
- Doesn’t offer a free trial
- Offers limited integrations
- With so many features, it can be difficult and overwhelming sometimes for beginners to get started
Pricing:
- Ahrefs offers four plans – Lite (starts at $99 monthly), Standart (starts at $199 monthly), Advanced (starts at $399 monthly), and Enterprise (starts at $999 monthly).
Google Sheets
Google Sheets is a spreadsheet application that is part of the web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google.
If you are a link builder and feel you are disorganized and messy, then Google Sheets is a must-have tool for you.
Pros:
- Link builders use Google Sheets for different purposes, such as finding backlink exchange opportunities, outreach, and tracking, which is a good and structured approach to link building tasks.
- Integration with Google Workspace tools, like Gmail and Google Drive, as well as other third-party applications.
- Link building requires collaboration with other team members, and Google Sheets offers a real-time collaboration where multiple users can work on the same document at the same time.
Cons:
- Limited storage
- Depends on internet connection
- Can be complicated for new users
Pricing:
- It’s totally free for individuals
- If you are a business looking for more advanced features, there are three monthly packages worth trying – Business Starter $6, Business Standard $1, and Business Plus $18.
Mailmeteor
Mailmeteor is a powerful email marketing solution that helps you send personalized mass emails with Gmail.
For link building outreach, Mailmeteor serves as an excellent email tool, as it simplifies the process of reaching out to people for link building collaboration.
Pros:
- Real-time email tracking
- Contact segmentation and follow-up
- Scheduled mail merges
- Automated email sending
- Mail merge with attachments
- Spam checker
- Sending emails from different aliases
- Adding Cc or Bcc recipients
- Unsubscribe management
Source: https://support.mailmeteor.com/dashboard/campaigns/how-to-preview-emails-before-sending-a-campaign
Cons:
- No drag and drop builder
- Mailmeteor follows the Gmail sending restrictions, so you’re limited to sending a maximum of 2,000 emails per day.
- Works only with Gmail.
- It is not suitable for transactional emails, like account creation emails or shipping confirmations.
Pricing:
- Free plan – Sending 50 free emails per day.
- Mailmeteor Premium – Sending up to 500 emails per day for $9.99 a month.
- Mailmeteor Pro – Sending up to 1,000 emails per day for $24.99 a month.
- Mailmeteor Business – Sending up to 2,000 emails per day for $49.99 a month.
Backlink Monitoring
You have got a backlink from a website? Cool, but did you check if the link is good enough to keep?
This is when backlink monitoring comes in handy.
Backlink monitoring refers to tracking all existing backlinks and evaluating their quality. If there are any bad links pointing to your site, you can easily find, fix or remove them, as keeping them won’t do good for your SEO.
In fact, it is one of the tasks of a link building specialist. But, don’t think it’s a one-time task. It is an ongoing task which should be taken seriously.
Why Should I Monitor Backlinks?
We can’t stress enough that backlinks are very important. Regardless of what link building strategies you use, the end goal should be building valuable backlinks.
Good links benefit you, whereas irrelevant and spammy links make your website seem untrustworthy in the eyes of Google.
However, regular monitoring can help you track all the backlinks you get, the quality and credibility of the websites they come from, and make sure your backlink profile is healthy.
Plus, you have a chance to identify issues in a timely manner. Broken, lost, and other toxic or spammy links are a real pain, you will admit this. But when you do all the backlink checkups, you have a chance to identify such links and get rid of them before they become a problem.
Finally, when you monitor backlinks, you can assess how effective your link building campaign is and what steps you can take further to make it even better.
Five Link Building Metrics to Keep Track Of
Whatever link building strategies you use, it’s essential to keep track of your backlinks, to make sure your backlink profile is free from toxic or spammy backlinks.
When monitoring your backlinks, it’s important to focus on a few key link building metrics for efficient backlink profile assessment.
Let’s explore four metrics for evaluating your link building efforts.
Number of Referring Domains and Backlinks
The backlinks metric shows the total number of links directing to a target domain, while referring domains shows the number of unique websites pointing at a target.
For instance, if your page has a backlink from HubSpot, then it has one referring domain. If you have backlinks from HubSpot and SEMrush, then you have two referring domains. But if you have three backlinks from HubSpot, then you still have one referring domain.
To check referring domains, type your domain name into Ahrefs Site Explorer and open the Referring domains report:
To check backlinks, head to the Backlinks report.
Domain Rating
Domain Rating is a metric from Ahrefs that shows the overall strength of a website’s backlink profile. DR is measured on a logarithmic scale from 0-100. The higher it is, the better.
To check your website DR, head to Site Explorer, type your domain, and voila!
While DR is an important metric, you should not assess the website quality relying solely on this metric.
Instead, consider these questions when assessing the quality of websites:
Do they have good backlinks?
Do the websites have lots of pages? (the fewer, the better)
Do they link out to a lot of websites? (again, fewer is much better)
Do these websites publish useful content?
How much organic traffic does this website get?
Are these websites thematically related to yours?
URL Rating
URL rating is another Ahrefs metric that shows the overall strength of a page’s backlink profile. It is measured on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100.
Search your domain name using Ahrefs Site Explorer, and you will see your URL rating, along with other metrics, such as DR, traffic, and so on.
Note:
- UR is a page-level metric, but DR is a domain-level metric. They are not the same.
- Both internal and external links are taken into consideration. So, having a great internal linking strategy can boost your website’s URL rating and ensure better website performance.
Ahrefs Rank
Ahrefs Rank (AR) ranks all the websites based on the size and quality of their dofollow referring domains — in other words, by their DR.
By putting your domain name into Site Explorer, you will be able to check a certain website’s Ahrefs Rank.
The more relevant do follow referring domains a website has, the higher its DR is, and the closer its Ahrefs rank is to #1.
According to Ahrefs data, right now, Ahrefs Rank #1 belongs to YouTube, #2 belongs to en.wikipedia.org, and #3 belongs to Facebook.com.
Organic traffic
This is an estimated number showing how much organic search traffic your target website gets each month.
To check any website’s organic traffic, put the domain into Ahrefs Site Explorer and you will see how much organic traffic a particular website receives per month.
So, if you have a list of target websites for link exchanges, make sure to check the organic traffic of these domains, as it gives you an idea of how much online visibility they have.
Link Building Outsourcing
Link building outsourcing is when you hire another company to build a link building campaign for you and implement it.
Many companies are outsourcing different aspects of their business, including link building campaigns, and here’s why:
It’s more cost-efficient
Believe it or not, outsourcing is much cheaper than hiring in-house link builders.
Why? It’s because you will need to hire several link builders, invest in their training, and equip them with SEO tools to help them work more efficiently. Paying for office space, utilities, and equipment are other expenses to cover,
So, why outsourcing? You won’t pay anything for SEO tools. Besides, the company you decide to work with has a professional team of link builders working on different link building projects. Last but not least, most link building agencies charge clients per backlink.
Outsourcing gets better results much faster
This is perhaps one of the best benefits you can gain from link building outsourcing.
Every business wants to rank higher, and the faster it happens the better.
As link building agencies are experienced and aware of all the stages and processes of link building, as well as the best link building strategies, they can build backlinks for your website as well. Also, they have more connections and resources, which allows them to improve your website’s backlink profile much faster.
So, when outsourcing link building, you don’t have to go through the whole process of communication, building good relationships with partners, and improving your website’s online reputation.
This saves you a lot of time, which you can invest in other important business activities.
You get access to a huge network
We have already mentioned this, but link building is all about building trustworthy relationships, regardless of the link building strategies you use.
And, believe us, link building agencies have already invested time, resources, and effort to build such relationships.
It would be much harder for your in-house link building specialists to handle all their tasks while also networking. We believe that you probably don’t want your employees to burn out, as it can only lead to reduced productivity.
This is when you should outsource link building, as you can take advantage of all the good connections these people have made.
How to choose a reliable link building agency?
This is an essential question we want to address, as there are so many companies, you might find it difficult to differentiate between scammers and link building agencies that actually get results.
Doing a quick Google search is a great point to start. You can type “best link building agencies” and many review websites will pop up that thoroughly discuss the advantages/disadvantages, pricing, and other details you might need.
You can also use LinkedIn to find a good link building agency. But make sure to research them to make sure they are a good fit for your business.
Finally, consider how reputable websites with strong backlinks profiles have built their links and work with the same link building agency.
If you are a SaaS business, it’s better to work with a specialized link building agency for SaaS.
Look no further, because we offer SaaS link building services.
Further Learning Resources For Link Building Strategies
If you are into link building or want to build a career in SEO in the future, we suggest you check out some useful resources that can help you learn more about the industry.
Industry Blogs
- Ahrefs blog – Aside from being a cool SEO tool, it also has a blog that includes tutorials, case studies, and guides about SEO, link building, and marketing.
- Google Webmaster Blog – If you want to stay updated about news related to Google crawling, indexing and search, then follow this blog.
- Moz blog – An informative blog that offers useful articles about SEO, link building, and current trends in the industry.
- SEMrush blog – If you are curious about content strategy, content marketing, SEO, SEM, PPC, social media, and digital marketing, SEMrush’s blog should be your favorite.
- SayNine blog – We have a blog where we consistently publish useful articles and guides about SEO and link building.
Putting It All Together
It’s time to wrap up and see what we’ve learned so far!
- Link building tools like Ahrefs help you find and remove spammy backlinks pointing to your site.
- Link exchanges, guest posting, broken link building, and brand mentions are all white-hat link-building strategies that can help you build relevant and natural backlinks.
- Link building outreach is about reaching out to relevant websites for link building collaboration.
- Making a list of potential domains, finding and verifying email addresses, compelling email templates, and timely follow-ups can help you succeed in your link outreach efforts.
- Competitor backlink analysis is about tracking your competitors’ backlink profiles to learn how they are performing, what keywords they are ranking for, and discovering new link building strategies.
- Successful link building is possible with the right link building tools like Ahrefs, Google Sheets, and Mailmeteor.
- Monitoring backlinks regularly will allow you to ensure your backlink profile is healthy and free of any spammy or toxic backlinks that can hurt your SEO.
- Outsourcing link building is all you need if you are looking for a cost-effective solution that also drives faster results.
Thanks for reading! Hope this guide about link building strategies was helpful!
Good luck!
