Mastering the Art of Link Building (Part 3) Ep. 601

Ep. 60143 min2024-03-181,918 plays

Creative, value-driven link building campaigns earn higher ROI than paid links; top tactics include the double survey technique, monthly roundups, scholarship pages, and podcast transcription outreach.

Cover art for Mastering the Art of Link Building (Part 3) Ep. 601
Key takeaways
the best link building campaigns are ones that are not overly obvious. They're completely organic and you truly do something to earn that link by providing some type of value

About this episode

Join Matthew Bertram, a top SEO Consultant as he conversationally delves deep into the intricacies of link-building strategies and how others in the industry are doing it with success. Many specific examples are provided!

Questions this episode answers

What is the double survey technique for link building?

The double survey technique combines two post formats: a roundup post and original research. You pick a topic lacking statistics, conduct a survey, then add quotes from industry experts. The resulting data-rich post attracts links from writers who need fresh statistics to cite in their own articles.

How does scholarship link building work for SEO?

You create a legitimate biannual scholarship page on your site, then email career counselors at high schools and colleges to notify them. They share it internally, generating EDU backlinks that diversify your link portfolio and drive additional web traffic to your site.

How can offering podcast transcriptions earn backlinks?

Find podcasts in your industry that lack transcripts, then offer to create one for free using a service like Rev.com, which costs about $1 per minute. In the transcript, add a line crediting your company. The podcast host posts the transcript and links back to your site.

Why should you avoid buying links according to this episode?

Paid links offer no ROI guarantee. If Google identifies a site selling or buying links, sites linked to it can also be penalized, dampening the link's value or triggering algorithmic penalties. Organically earned links provide more lasting link equity than purchased ones.

In their words

the best link building campaigns are ones that are not overly obvious. They're completely organic and you truly do something to earn that link by providing some type of value to have people link to you, not just maybe having it be a link building scheme.

Matt Bertram

Creating low spammy backlinks is just a waste of energy. Use that energy to do something better.

Matt Bertram

every link you get, it takes about 60 days from the data I've seen to come to full fruition. That's why SEO takes long time.

Matt Bertram
Terms defined in this episode
Link equity
The ranking value or link juice passed from one site to another through a backlink, influenced by the linking site's authority and the anchor text used.
EDU backlinks
Backlinks from educational institution domains, earned through strategies like scholarship pages, that diversify a site's link portfolio.
Broken link building
A tactic where you find broken or dead links pointing to defunct sites, then contact those linking pages and offer your relevant content as a replacement.
HARO
Help a Reporter Out, a service where sources respond to journalist queries to earn high-quality backlinks, rewarding the first respondent who provides a usable quote.
Read the full transcript (7,578 words · 38 min read)

Howdy. Welcome back to another fun-filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. This is the Best SEO Podcast. My name is Matt Bertram. Today is part three of mastering the art of link building. So for those of you that have not listened to the first two episodes, I'd encourage you to go back. This episode is about getting into some examples, try to get your juices flowing, and give you really that foundation of understanding of going out there and creating creative link building campaigns. Because the one thing I can tell you is organically earned links will provide link equity, link juice. When you're purchasing links, there's no guarantee they're going to work. For those of you that do coaching with me or have done consulting, no, I'm not a big fan of buying links. Not to say that it hasn't happened in the past. I would like to believe that I'm reformed in that regard. And I believe that the effort that you put into to generate links is going to produce X amount ROI more than going the short route. So I encourage you to put the effort into getting these links. There's a lot of technology, even like SEM Rush kind of shows you your link neighborhood. And if you're getting links from across the galaxy of the web of a random link to you, it's very easy to see with machine learning and kind of pattern recognition that that's an unnatural link. Also, I'll tell you, if you're building links that are just junk that you don't think have true value, or if you're SEO and you don't believe you can provide it to your client, there's probably not value in it. So really focusing on generating high quality, relevant, geographically local links is what we're talking about. So we're going to be going through some different examples of that. Also last episode, I talked about this, the Entrepreneur Ultimate Guide to Link Building, one of the best books I've ever read to give you a lot of ideas on that. I

will put an affiliate link in the show notes if you'd like to pick up that book and support me at the same time. I picked up another copy of it for like five bucks. It's not like a huge investment, but I think the value far exceeds that. So I would certainly endorse that book. I have not read yet, but I also bought Entrepreneur Voices on Growth Hacking. So I do write for the entrepreneur. I think some of the content they put out has been absolutely fantastic, not a huge fan. Forbes so much anymore. They do have some good podcasts and content, but I think they're lacking in their articles. That's my personal opinion. All right, let's move on. So the article we're going to get into today is by another SEO company called SEO Brainiac. And their article came up as I was searching. It's called the most creative link building tactics, 33 examples. This is a roundup page. This is a hub page. This is a link building strategy in itself because you're getting a bunch of links or you're linking out as a hub. Like if you're linking out, it's a hub. If you're linking to it, it's kind of a roundup. You want to kind of get, you know, reciprocal links in this regard and hopefully to get the people that you're rounding up to post it on social media. And those are additional links. And so this is kind of a compilation of link building tactics. I would tell you the entrepreneur book is more of this style. So providing who provided the link building tactics and then kind of going into what they're doing. What I want you to understand is the best link building campaigns are ones that are not, um, overly obvious. They're, uh, completely organic and you truly do something to earn that link, uh, by providing some type of value to have people linked to you, not just maybe, uh, having it be a link building scheme. So like link wheels and stuff like that, uh,

I just, I don't see a ton of value in it. I think the AI is getting better. Um, not to say that, you know, PBNs and stuff like that don't work. I think if you're providing value or it's like a new site or something like that, um, I, I think I view that in a little bit different light, but, um, you know, link building is still a huge portion of, uh, the, uh, algorithm. And certainly, uh, as you do a lot of the on page and technical work, which you can rank sites by doing that, uh, when you want to get more juice, uh, out of that lemon or, uh, not say the website's lemon, but you know what I mean? Uh, you, you, you need more link equity and, and there's a couple of different strategies to go do that and getting, uh, high quality links in your industry, uh, or in your geographic area, uh, preferably both, uh, where you're doing business is ideal. If your e-commerce, uh, a little bit different, but, um, I will tell you that all these strategies, hopefully you'll start to, uh, get ideas on what might speak to you and you could, uh, try to implement. And this is by Ollie Bays, founder of Ollie Bays digital, uh, one creative link building strategy that I employ for clients with local businesses involve providing a video, uh, for their find us page in return for a link. This video shows the, uh, walk that customers will need to take from the nearest public transport stop or park to their premises. We make these videos for other local brick and mortar businesses who then host the video on their find us page. The text that accompanies the video contains a backlink to the client. Usually with text, this video was created by XYZ. Um, this is something I haven't heard before. I think it's really unique. Now I would tell you the anchor text of the link, uh, makes a difference too on how much link equity it pushes.

So, um, if you are a photographer and you're providing this video, you wanted to say photography, uh, or something along those lines, local photographer. If you're a marketing agency, you want to say, um, maybe video marketing done, but know that, uh, you're going to be sending the signals of video marketing. If that's not something you do, um, maybe it's just, uh, video provided by maybe marketing agency. So Ollie Bays digital marketing agency, getting that, uh, in the anchor text, I think is quite important. All right, here are the steps to do it. Build a list of local companies that have a find us page or exact location using Google search operations or operators, you know, the, uh, Boolean search, get the contact details. There's about 20%, 20% acceptance rate. So build your list, assuming a 10% acceptance rates, email them explaining, Hey, we have this video. I think I had kind of explained it's pretty self-explanatory, but this is saying, um, you know, you can easily do it, uh, with your, your iPhone and iMovie film the video, uh, add a time-lapse and then go back, uh, back down into iMovie and add instructions, get the local businesses to publish the video, add the link, getting links, increase your search. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Uh, other businesses improve their website or their content. This is by Errico Franco in bell marketing manager at agency, uh, Della marketing marketing digital. So this is like, I think probably, uh, caters to Spanish speaking. If it's agency at Dow marketing digital. All right. We have a very interesting case about link building. Once we were desperate to get back links for a client who was a cryptocurrency wallet. I have a cryptocurrency wallet client. Uh, so this is interesting at the time, the only domains that had a good domain authority were precisely the biggest, the company competitors. So we came up with the interesting plan to try to discover security flaws in the competitors and ask for backlinks as a reward, which was very difficult

since we were experts in digital marketing and not digital security. So we did the following. We started to scan the cryptocurrency sites. Uh, we knew from our, we used, uh, a variety of APIs, uh, in the end, we scanned thousands of sites, found eight that contained some relevant marijuana, immediately notified them by email and phone, and then asked for backlink to get an average of six good backlinks that increased our clients traffic by 30%. Now, I don't think that this has to be applied specifically to like cryptocurrency space or cryptocurrency wall and also going after competitors. I think that this could be a broader strategy. Um, you can use even tools like built with to find, uh, different, uh, tech stacks and, uh, you know, what may be software they're using that might have a common security flaw that might not might've been upgraded. Uh, I can tell you there's a lot more security hacks going on. I am also side note, very excited about a number of the interviews that I have coming up that I'm going to be publishing. Uh, we are going to be interviewing a cybersecurity, cybersecurity specialist. There's been a lot of cybersecurity attacks, uh, on phone companies. Um, I think there's additional probing going on, uh, from potentially foreign actors. We've had, um, our servers, uh, attacked. Um, we've had our websites, uh, probed and attacked constantly. Um, and, and I think that it's just ticking up and increasing, uh, what that means. I don't know, but I would tell you, um, cybersecurity is, uh, on the rise and, and a lot more companies are spending money on it. Even like United healthcare, United healthcare, which I I'm actually getting affected by that. We have kids that have surgery and, uh, the sites not working properly. Uh, I think it came from a bunch of mergers and they didn't, um, you know, uh, link everything, block everything, patch everything properly. Um, but causing a big issue, causing a lot of, um, economic issues. All right, let's keep going. Uh,

I can't say this guy's name, right? Uh, B U R a K O Z D E M I R. He's a web developer. All right. So if you're a web developer, I know there's a lot of web developers that listen to this lately. Many developers created COVID 19 trackers. So this is a little bit dated reporting live statistics about Corona. However, some of those websites, uh, are harmful and contain malware. A week ago, the Turkish government banned some of those scammy sites after seeing the government has blocked those sites. We found a report published by a government agency and listed those scammy websites. Then I reached out to people who were linking to those sites and told them that they are linking to sites that contain malware. Moreover, I offered my dashboard as replacement. Finally, I received a backlink, uh, out of my five outreach emails. I think that this is fantastic seeing an opportunity in the market. Certainly, uh, I believe somebody else shares this later and this is something that we've done, uh, for clients. If there's a competitor, uh, let's go back to the crypto space. There's a bunch of stuff that blew up, uh, and they did a lot of marketing and there's a lot of people linking to, to sites that are no longer functional, uh, to any stretch of imagination. You can reach out to them, let them know that and swap that out. Um, there's a number of companies in multiple industries that have gone bust. Maybe there's companies, you know, in your local area, that would be a great strategy, uh, go scrape, uh, the site for, uh, those links, uh, and then reach out to the people and say, Hey, you're linking to a company that's no longer in business. I think that's a fantastic way to get links. I think that I would say that that is probably, uh, a little bit more thoughtful, but way better than just, uh, broken backlink building, um, because you'll get a treasure trove of links and, um, you

know, the effort to find, uh, the, the site might take more work, but I think your hit rate, once you, you find that you're going to get a lot of conversions. Okay. Uh, next one, Jean Mal, and this is from statistic jobs. One link that we got from a old open source library that Google knows really well about because we're software developers. We love the program. We emailed the project maintainer offering to write a sample program that would demonstrate a certain feature of that library. We implemented the simple program in less than a day. And after about a week and several emails, our source code appeared on the library's website, along with the link to our own website as a token appreciation, this source code to contain our company name tagline website. That that's pretty much it. That was, that's pretty fantastic. I would tell you, um, if you do have programming capabilities, uh, uh, another thing that I see is getting stuff listed in, um, Google or, uh, Google or, uh, Apple stores. Um, and, and that app produces a link. I know a lot of people create, uh, apps just to get the link. I would encourage you to create something of value that people actually use. Um, but that is a way to get a diversified link. All right. This is from next one from Adam carbon new carbon, and then a N a a U managing director at take the stairs LLC. The most creative backlink strategy that I've ever used was trading podcast transcriptions. So for you that, uh, listen to this, that maybe podcast yourself, um, or listen to podcasts. I know you do. If you're listening to this one. Okay. So, uh, trading podcast transcriptions for a link, uh, in today's world. Um, there's a lot of people podcasting, there's endless opportunities. Some people I'm, I'm paraphrasing. This are not, uh, posting, uh, podcast transcriptions or show notes, uh, about what was said. There's a lot of easy tools that create that. You could create that form, offer

that back, offer that to them for a link. So, uh, for this strategy, you need to look up podcasts that are related to your industry or related or related industry links that are important to your backlink portfolio and determine if they embedded a player for their podcast on their website. Finally, you need to make sure that they aren't currently posting the transcripts of their podcast. Um, when you have developed your campaign list for a month, you need to start finding contacts information in these companies through either calling or those are asking the best person to talk to via LinkedIn. When you have the POC that can help, uh, let them know that you would provide a free transcription of a popular episode so they can increase their online traffic by naturally adding relevant keywords to their page. For those who agree, all you need to do is upload their transcription to rev.com for $1 per minute at on the high end, you'll pay $80, 80 minutes for industry related link. I would tell you there are other tools that are out there. I know this article is a little bit dated. Even Google does a great job transcribing stuff. Um, you know, there might be some independent podcasters that might just not have the bandwidth to do this. Um, but I, I rather think it's an interesting strategy. Again, you're providing something specifically of value, uh, within the transcript, make sure to add at the bottom transcript provided by name of your company. When you send the podcast in question in this way, you're adding value to a growing industry with minimal cost and work. Okay. Uh, this from Nathan Rodriguez, account manager at liftoff digital. The most creative thing I've ever done in order to get a backlink was installing a webcam overlooking the beach. It was for a hotel. And once we had the webcam feed up on the page on the site, we started doing link building and got so many links. It was great. All right. That's interesting. Quincy Smith, VP

of SEO and analytics at amp jar. We once found a competitor being acquired for their technology. Yep. Okay. We already talked about that. This wasn't a big company, maybe only 50 opportunities, but we landed two or three links, but that was quite easy to do. It was only possible because we were monitoring online mentions of our competitors. Good. All right. Scholarships, scholarship strategies. Um, this is something that's been used for a long time. I've actually seen people charge crazy amounts for this. Um, uh, we had a client we had just picked up this couple of years ago. Prior to that, he spent $15,000 to, uh, pay for a scholarship link bonus strategy. All right. So I think you can really do this yourself. This is from Joseph, um, P I N E I R O SEO manager at 360 training. The most creative link building strategy we've ever implemented is the scholarship link building, uh, link building. We're currently in the process of it. This is a white hat link building strategy where we're creating a legitimate biannual scholarship and making, uh, and marketing it to high schools and colleges around the country via marketing email campaigns. We simply email, notify them, our scholarship, include the link to the scholarship page and request that, uh, it be added to Alex got scholarships, um, earn 52 fall links for each. Okay. This absolutely does work. Uh, we do have a couple of clients that, uh, have asked us to do this for them. And, um, you know, it's something that we've, we've done successfully. You basically build a page, uh, talking about your scholarship. Uh, you have maybe, uh, people that will apply for it and maybe it's, uh, you know, 500 bucks, a thousand bucks, something like that a year. And, and then you get a list of a bunch of, uh, like career, uh, counselors out of school, uh, maybe in your state, in your city, uh, in email them about it. And then they'll start to pass it around internally. And then all

of a sudden you have a bunch of links that are EDU links that diversify your link portfolio and, uh, you have additional web traffic. And, you know, I think that this, uh, makes a lot of sense if you even build it into more of like a resource page or your sites more, um, you know, uh, you, you, you do a lot of blog posts or in the news, press releases, uh, where it's part of your current strategy. It's not a specific strategy on its own to get EDU backlinks and that's it. Right. Um, I think even speaking at, uh, schools and, um, getting links that way and getting mentions and, um, press releases and all that is a great, um, add on to this strategy. All right. Creating interesting contracts, uh, with rich statistics and resources. This is from Freda K U K I owner of a personal finance blog collecting sense. I love the double survey technique by Kyle bears, uh, which it comes to creating posts that are backlink magnets. The double strategy technique includes two of the best post formats, roundup posts, which we talked about previously in original research. You select a top that is lacking in the original research or statistic, create one of the most detailed posts possible for it. The first step is to conduct a survey with relevant questions. Once you get a reasonable number of participants to take a look, uh, you move to the second part, getting quotes from industry experts to include in your article, this back, this is backlink gold who doesn't link to original statistics within their article. You research, it will be used by tons of writers who need the classic start line to start up their article and get a backlink in return. I would tell you, this is one of the most highest value like link building opportunities I've read so far. Uh, it adds true value. It generates real links. It engages real people, builds real relationships. It checks a lot of boxes for me. So I really

like that one. So good job. Freya. I'm sorry. Uh, F R E Y A. I really liked that one. And that was by, uh, collecting sense, personal finance blog. I liked that one a lot. All right. Bernice Q E Q U E K. Uh, SEO writer at pet lovers central, um, featuring quotes and tips from industry experts. Yep. So I think that that's great. Um, you know, quotes from bloggers, uh, Lincoln, uh, after I quote these experts in my article, I reach out to them, let them know about it. And then hopefully the link to you or share it on social media. Yep. Mason colleague K or sorry, C U L L I G A N. So Mason C U L I G N founder and CEO of mattress battle Inc. Hmm. One of my strategies in gaining backlinks is through infographics. And I think a lot of you heard that any infographic is easy to digest visual content. Resharing an infographic is easy to share. Uh, it makes it ideal. Um, you know, focus on trending keywords. Um, infographics can easily be incorporated in an article visually appealing. Yeah. I think also what I would tell you is, um, these infographics added to blogs or page, uh, hopefully will get you well, one, the page to rank if it doesn't currently rank, cause you're adding unique content to the page. So if you're creating for yourself, um, the infographic part is great. I'll tell you, you could post it on slide share on, well, used to be owned by LinkedIn. I don't know if it still is, uh, but slide share is a great way to post it where people can find it. Um, ultimately what you want to do, in my opinion, is to get it indexed. If you can get it indexed, Google will push you a link equity from that. And then if you get any additional links to it, that's just absolute bonus gold, right? All right. Uh, Christian Anton off a N T O N off content writer at,

oh my gosh, Excel template.net. Um, there's no space or hyphen in between there. So kind of hard to read, but Excel template.net. Um, we can't at my previous company, we came up with idea to round up all the popular articles in a selected industry every month. My task was to find the most relevant and shared articles and write a short resume about each of them. Roundup had five to 10 linked articles with a bit of description and the links to a social media account of the respective offers. After that, I outreached to the roundup and all mentioned the companies and professionals. This result was pretty much, uh, all involved. Carvey's liked and shared my roundup. Some of the, uh, of them even included in their website or a link, a link to our site. Best of all, they started contacting me with suggestions for future editions of the roundup. This was a clear win-win situation because I not only got backlinks, but free content as well. This tactic works quite well for me in the past. I think this is one of the best strategies right now that takes some effort. I would even put this as number two of, uh, the best strategies I heard. I see a lot of people doing it. I should probably do it more myself. Um, if you would like to, uh, include me in a roundup or, uh, have a roundup idea for me, just, uh, email me. Uh, you can reach me at Matt at EWR digital.com. Please do not spam me. I don't like responding to spam. Um, and, uh, hopefully, uh, my email doesn't get out there, but we'll see when this, uh, podcast gets transcribed, right? All right. Uh, the tactic works quite well from the past. All right. So this is Matt saddle sat tell S A T E L L. This is an SEO growth manager at mechanism. Hmm. I ran a company, a, I ran a campaign at a drone photography company where we took aerial photos of 50 local golf

courses, showed them all in an article on Philadelphia's 50 most beautiful golf courses. We then reached out to each golf course that was featured to let them know that a number of them, uh, were more than happy to provide a link to the article. It took a fair amount of work to capture the aerial pictures, but it was worth it in the end as we attracted links from 12 domains. Yeah. You're adding value. I think it's great. Here's another one. This is from Mo Mo Macha. I can't even say this. I'm so sorry. Uh, M O M C H I L last name. K A Y C H E V marketing manager at code giant. Here's how I managed to generate quite an impressive amount of backlinks. Study one of your direct competitors, go through the competitor articles, use the tool, check my links, love that tool in order to find if there are any broken links in their articles. Once you find a section where there are broken links position, you craft a whole new section about your website and include about links, this message broken link building, right? And going specifically after competitor, convert the link. Um, I think that this is a great strategy. All right. I think we're getting down to the end of them here. The next section is talking about build relationships and partnerships. Okay. So this is from Ron Rato, CMO and content director at Ron repeat. I have two thoughts on this topic. First, the most creative tactic I've utilized is to generate unique data by running surveys on our site. It's not that crazy of a tactic, but almost no one does it because it takes work instead of many SEOs rely on roundups guides, how to articles and horror to get back links from top tier out. So I agree requires fresh insight and data on topics. The readers are finding interesting. Likely we find we have enough traffic to gather data quickly, but I find collecting our own data is a creative Avenue that

content creators should consider. I think creating your own unique content or using your own unique content makes you a thought leader. It provides a absolute new content into Google. That's what Google's hungry for. It's not looking for rehashed AI generated content. It even Google just came out with a new update saying they're going after sites that are doing that. You want to feed the system unique content. I think that's a lot of why Elon Musk bought Twitter too, to get rid of all the bots and he's using it to train his, his general artificial intelligence, his AI, and he needs to drain it with real human data and new inputs and humans can create unique content. So I think this is great. Second, this is maybe more of what you are looking for, but I sign up for industry trade shows and fly across the country to network and meet people within our industry. I'm not our company sales representative. I'm the CMO. So I don't conduct normal business at the trade shows, but getting face-to-face with people within my industry helps build relationships that can eventually lead to working together on content and building quality backlinks. It's a lot of money to fly somewhere for three days, but I think it's a hundred percent worth it. And the relationships you build are real, which in the end is one of the key tactics to link spawn. Okay. So my opinion, side note real quick on conferences is they're absolutely critical. Um, I was so sad to miss a South by Southwest this year. Um, there was a lot of fun things. There was some of my friends, uh, that did the AI house. Um, I really wish I could have been there. I think it was a missed opportunity. I think that also going to conferences, you put you on a trajectory to run into people you would never run into before it gets people out from behind their desk. Um, you're connecting with them. You make real relationships. Uh, I go to a

lot of oil and gas conferences easy here in Houston, especially right now with young kids. Um, but I super encourage it. If you can go to conferences, uh, there's a lot of free conferences out there. There's a lot of specific industry conferences. I actually like smaller conferences. I actually like going to, um, like being there absolutely before it starts, maybe sticking around after it ends. Uh, I just went to an innovation conference in Denver. There was, uh, every year they do a ski retreat at the end. So a lot of people stay, that's where you really meet people and connect over the longterm. Um, one of the goals of podcasting of, of writing content of blogging of sales is to get people to know, like, and trust you. I know I have content and books out there about this sort of thing, but what you're trying to do is get, get, build a connection with somebody where they're, you're engaging with them on some level, or they're consuming your content for average of seven hours that, uh, from the data that I've seen, I also support it. And what we have, if, uh, people engage with your content or get to know you for seven hours, you kind of cross that threat threshold with them. And they're more likely to do business with you and think about that at a conference. Uh, that's one of the absolute best ways, uh, to, to tick towards that timeframe to, to build those relationships. They might not do business right now because only roughly like 3% of people are looking to do something right now. You can do, uh, business with them in the future. There could be partnerships. Um, there could be all sorts of things. Also, uh, I would encourage you all to listen to, um, you know, the, the, this podcast, um, uh, mastering the art of link building, uh, uh, you know, part one, part two, that'll get you maybe close to three hours. And then the rest of the content that we have,

if there's any topics you like binge, listen to it. We've been doing this for 13 years. Um, and, and then, uh, you know, set up a free consultation. If you like what we're saying, uh, also have some paid consultation doing a lot more of those these days. All right, back to it. There was a little plug in there. So, uh, thank you for listening and sticking around. All right. Um, all right. This is by Eli Wilson, digital marketing manager at trend trends with a Z at the end of plus we look for brand mentions from our competitors and influencers and bloggers on social media, especially LinkedIn and Twitter. Uh, you know, you can use Google alerts. There's other tools out there, um, that you can use by Sumo. Uh, we can reach out to these influencers, bloggers on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, uh, from, and sometimes get a link from their website. Now this comes the tedious part. We keep them suggesting about topics and ideas, new ideas, suggesting to write new content on their old articles, help them out on Quora. We try to create a good rapport with them. And finally, when it has been established, we do right for them and get backlinks on our site. So all about building relationships, but this is not the end of the story. We don't do link exchanges. Google has started identifying such link exchanges and have been putting them in their spam list. I would tell you if you do, uh, uh, exact link exchange on, uh, GNB, right? So you're like, Hey, I'll post on yours. You post on mine. If you do that, like in the same kind of window or time period before any other reviews, Google sees it and it immediately deletes both of them. I have seen that. Um, clients have, uh, all right. We simply, uh, cross them. We have happened to know that blogger A, B, and C, uh, we get a backlink from a, a, uh, gets a backlink from B, B gets a backlink from C.

So around Robin, not around, around, but kind of a, you know, circle, I guess we write the articles and post on Quora articles and other social media. This is important. So this is, you know, you're, you're crafting, um, your, your, your backlink profile. Um, you know, what is it called? Link sculpting, right? Um, because Google, uh, might in a few months understand the trick as well. Okay. So it's just saying mix it up, but I see, you know, just do whatever's natural. I think Google doesn't come after you for link exchanges. If they're natural, if they make sense, uh, Google's gotten really good at identifying this stuff. I estimate time to get backlinks 30, 45 days. I would even tell you a pro tip, uh, every link you get, it takes about 60 days from the data I've seen to come to full fruition. That's why, well, SEO takes long time. I would tell you also the Google database turns over about every two months. All right. Uh, main Robin or sorry, Brian Robin. I don't know. Uh, CEO at Robin R O B B E N media. Imagine this. I shut up my computer, got in my car, met a guy at a restaurant. We had a few beers, soft pretzels, burgers. We talked about business and straight up asked him for a backlink to which he said, no problem. Of course, I'm happy to do that. That's the strangest way I've received a backlink. Uh, the week before dinner, I messaged him how to be, uh, I messaged him saying how it'd be good for us to both share what we're seeing in the industry and the different opportunities to partner. Then I made the ask the worst he can do is say no. And it worked out and we received 61 authority backlinks. This isn't a recommended strategy. If you're going for quality, quantity, quantity, though, if you want to secure high domain authority, backlink, spending time and making, uh, uh, spending time and making the ask for individual each week, we'll

do wonders, you know, never eat alone. What is that book? Right. Um, meeting people in person, I think since COVID, absolutely. Uh, it's suggesting you can do video hangouts, uh, having a portion of your time each week or each month, uh, to, to build your, uh, personal knowledge, like listening to podcasts or outreaching people. I think it's absolutely good. He's also talking about 61 backlinks, 61 authority backlinks. If it's a good backlink, it could be a hundred like low quality links, like one, authority backlink, like depending on how you define that. So I think that's great. All right. Helping charities next section. Uh, we're almost done. Uh, Gabrielle Bert, uh, O L O B E R T O L O owner of radiant elephant. I did a very simple free website for a local charity. Once completed, I created a press lease that introduced the charity and added that I designed their website. Uh, we ended up creating 30 great backlinks using the power of your brand and social media influences for Matt Smith, CEO of diabetes life solutions. The most creative technique that we used is a pretty simple one. We reached out to a website for a guest post with the same audience as us. We dangled a little care in front of them. I offer a right, uh, thank both guests posts on your site. Give us a backlink in my author section of the post in exchange for promoting this to our monthly newsletter that goes over to a hundred thousand people by offering something that was beneficial to the others. We have great success in obtaining a blog post with a backlink. It's a true, true win for everyone. I think this is really, really common. I would put this in my category as top three. Um, so far, uh, as one of the most effective ways to do that, uh, Google has kind of looked down upon, um, uh, guest posts, but if you're getting an author by link, so they have to make the extra effort to creating

a author profile for you, uh, it does build your authorship, which is starting to come back. Um, and it, it qualifies, uh, that you're writing. So I think that's the best way to absolutely do it. Sayad Hassan, H A S A N digital content head at film jackets. I'd like to share a tip on how we created and receive backlinks through subscribers. Getting backlinks is a tricky part of SEO and it's the only way to boost your website ranking. If other strategies don't work, right? You don't have enough link equity you've done. Uh, you've optimized your size as much as you can. You, you, you moved off page. What I do was contacting influencers on our subscriber list and asking them if any one of them is a blogger or a YouTuber after receiving so many responses, I send a second email to ask if they'd be interested in reviewing or promoting one of our jackets. I received many responses and also a few of them gave backlinks to our website. Uh, this is Nicola R O Z A owner of Nicola R O Z A S E O for poor and determined. I got a backlink from a very recent expert roundup. So when I first saw it on social media, the roundup was promoted as 14 experts explain how to do X and SEO X is something I know a lot about. So I reached out to the author and asked to be included. So yeah, getting yourself added to stuff. I agree with this. Uh, in return, I promised to tweet my 1000 strong engaged Twitter audience backlinks from the post from my future guest posts. And finally a tip that none other 14 experts talk about. Okay. I think this is great. I think this is a really great one. So there's already a roundup post. You want to get added in it. You want to be included shoulder to shoulder with some of the other experts. Um, say, Hey, if you'll add me to this, I'll do this and promote

it. I'll tell you a lot of these algorithms. If you start sharing them again on social media, uh, they'll start to get a lot more visibility. So if you're saying, Hey, if you'll add me to this, here's what you can add. And then this is what I'll do for you. Um, I think that's, that's fantastic. Um, uh, you need to be creative and convincing. You get the idea. All right. Using alternative outreach methods. This is, uh, helping reporters out and journalists. Okay. Where are we on time here? All right. Um, I'm going to skim these and I'm going to give it, give the best one. Cause I think you're starting to get the idea and get the juices flowing. Um, this is just saying, uh, emailing hundreds of emails to get backlinks. So, um, started picking up the phone, cold calling. Um, let's see, this guy's talking about cracking a joke, being real with people, connecting with people. Um, let's see. I research and follow specific tactics offered by experts, but the problem is that type, uh, uh, with that, this type is of approach is everyone who falls to experts is doing the same thing. I would tell you very few people take action, but, uh, same email template, same tools. So, uh, being genuine is basically what they're saying, uh, being creative. Um, let's see what else. Yeah. So this is a lot of like, uh, email outreach and kind of how to use the templates, uh, suggesting using Hunter IO. I agree. I've used that in the past. What else? So last section here promise, uh, offer, uh, help to reporters, journalists, and bloggers. So of course, Haro, uh, is something where we've acquired some high quality backlinks ourself. I would tell you that the problem with Haro is that it's the first person that responds. So you've got to have somebody active on at all times and, um, you can get articles placed, but it's not always about your specific narrow niche. Uh, you have to broaden the niche a little

bit, but it, it does work very, very well. And so, uh, the rest of these, um, are basically talking about, uh, how to use Haro. I will link to the article in the show notes if you want to check it out, but that's basically the, the gist of Haro. And then last one, create useful online tools. Uh, so little widgets and stuff like that. Um, so really the goal of this was to get your juices flowing to think about what you can do, what, what capabilities you have, what speaks to you to start generating high quality backlinks. Um, you know, creating low spammy backlinks is just a waste of energy, use that energy to do something better. Um, paying for links is not good. I would tell you if Google identifies a site that is selling links or buying links, and you have a link from that website, I think it's one or two jumps away. Your site can get tainted too. And what it will do is it will dampen the effect of the link. So it might not provide any value and even worse, uh, it could lead to algorithmic penalties, probably not a manual penalty. Um, but again, if you're dealing, uh, in a bad neighborhood, uh, and, and you're doing something that Google tells you specifically not to do, and you do it anyway, it's a cat and mouse game. You're going to get caught. I don't think that there's enough time or energy to do that. I think all these examples are ways that you can legitimately generate links. And again, the, the best strategies are, well, the, the ones that produce the most value, the best high quality links about are following all the guidelines, but are the, are really the most creative. I would tell you the most creative ways to generate links, um, that, uh, not everybody's doing or not everybody's seen. Um, it is fantastic. I think links also are the icing on the cake. I don't think it should be your primary focus. I think

it should be something additionally that you do. Um, and, and I provided, my top, those were my top four. I think I listed in there that I liked the best. Um, and I would encourage you to do them. So even though maybe a lot of people are doing them, very few people actually take action. So I would just challenge you to take action. And, uh, if you would like to grow your business, uh, or have a third party, someone like my team, do it. We're great at outreach. Uh, we're great at learning your business. Um, getting very creative and, uh, helping you grow. We're looking for longtime partners, uh, reach out to us on our website. That's the best way to do it. Set up a free consultation, uh, and talk to one of our, uh, strategy representatives to see if the discovery call, see if we're right fit. And, uh, we'd love to connect with you. If you like this, um, podcast, please leave us a review where you're listening to, please share it. I'll also leave you, uh, places to leave a review. We're trying to get reviews on Yelp right now. Um, uh, and Trustpilot. So, uh, EWR digital at Trustpilot or Yelp really would appreciate it. Uh, until the next time, my name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now.

This episode answers

Matthew Bertram, host of The Best SEO Podcast
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint

Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG® (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.

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