Despite PenguinLinks remain one of the main factors in ranking your website in organic results. SEO.
This is confirmed by the same Google through the mouth of Matt Cutts, who, while anticipating a gradual decrease in the weight of links in organic positioning, does not deny that they will remain an algorithmic factor.
At this point the situation is as follows: to position your site on Google you need quality links, but do link building with traditional old school techniques could cost you dearly for the leather, even more if you combine it with a profile of anchor text Wrong.
In this post we are going to discover together 7 advanced and at the same time unconventional techniques to get links to your website: often the opportunities to create quality links are in front of your eyes, you just need to discover them, let's see together how starting from the first technique.
Technique #1: Earn a link from those who copy your site's content
Did you know that, according to research by Tynt, 82% of content shared online is copied and pasted from other sites? As much as 4.5 times more than share buttons:
The plagiarism of one's own contents is a problem that afflicts many sites and that can lead to legal consequences for those who copy or simply to a danger of algorithmic penalization, in the case, as Google states in the page dedicated to the duplicate content, "the intent is not deceptive and intended to manipulate search engine results."
But for whom is it copied? You can Use the situation to your advantage, ensuring that those who copy your content without even inserting a link of attribution to the source both forced to do so.
How? This is supported by the plugins from WordPress and a script in Javascript. Let's see them together.
4 tools to make the copied content link automatically
CopyLink
Copylink is a plugin designed by DejanSEO, well-known SEO Australian, which allows you to place automatic links on content copied from your website.
This not only helps the person reading the copied content to find the original source, but also helps the person who wrote the original content to receive natural links and referral traffic.
Add Link to Copied Text
Add link to copied text is another plugin that allows you to add a link to a page that publishes copied content.
It also allows you to prevent copying the content and replace the text with a customized message.
Append Link on Copy
The plugin allows you to add a link to the content copied by a user, allowing you to customize the phrase that anticipates the link.
Copy-Magic-Paste
For those who do not use WordPress or do not want to use a plugin, a solution may be to use a Javascript code, Copy Magic Paste, a script that allows you to automatically place a link to the copied content, customizing it at will:
Technique #2: Fix (or redirect) broken inbound links
Every day an improbable number of documents are linked together: if you think about it, the web itself was born as hypertext, that is, as a plot of documents connected by hypertextual links.
But as hyperlinks are born every day, so in the same way pages die: sites are not renewed, urls are changed, all reasons that lead to generate broken links, which once clicked lead to a 404 page.
But what are broken links? And how can you exploit this flaw to generate new inbound links to your website?
Basically in 2 ways, which correspond to the next 2 advanced and unconventional techniques of getting links:
- the first method consists ofgo looking for broken inbound links to your sitei.e. make it so that instead of generating a 404 error it is Direct to a specific and relevant page of your sitein order to increase its weight in terms of link popularity;
- The second method consists ofsearch for broken links from other sitesrelevant to the site you want to position and request that the link be corrected by linking to your site instead of the original source.
Let's see them together starting with the first one.
How to find broken inbound links
We can define broken link building (also called dead link building) a technique that consists of identifying links pointing to a url of your site that no longer exists and have them replaced with a working link that goes to an existing page.
Despite generally 404 errors do not affect the ranking of the site on Google, restoring broken links can allow you to breathe new life into pages on your site, allowing for an improvement in their ranking.
Leveraging this link building technique requires 2 steps:
- The first step is find sites that link to you but whose link generates 404 page: maybe because they mistyped the url, or because in the meantime you have removed or changed the url of your pages without setting a 301 redirect;
- the second phase is to replace it with another destination.
Let's start with the first one.
How to do it? I propose you 2 tools, Google Search Console and Ahref.
Finding broken links with Google Search Console
Finding inbound links that generate 404 error with Google Webmaster Tools is simple: first you need to access the Scan / Crawl Errors section:
There you will find a list of urls of your site: clicking on one and going in the tab "with link from" you can find the sites that link to a page not found by Google.
Finding Incoming Broken Links with Ahrefs
Also Ahrefs, the well-known inbound link analysis software, allows you to identify broken inbound links.
Once you've identified the site you want to monitor, simply go to Inbound Links / Broken Backlinks:
And once we find the links pointing to our site and generating 404 page?
The possibilities are 2:
- or automatically redirect them to a relevant page or the home page;
- or contact the site administrator and ask him to correct the link.
In case you opt for the first solution, you can use wordpress plugins that allow you to effectively manage 404s: let's see some of them.
WordPress Ultimate 404 Plugin
WordPress Ultimate 404 Plugin is a plugin that allows you to effectively handle 404 errors on your site by giving you the ability to redirect users to a page of your choice.
WordPress Ultimate Redirect Plugin
If instead you want redirect your 404 link to the home page, you can use one of these 2 plugins:
You can find a full list of wordpress plugins to handle 404 errors here.
Technique #3: go looking for broken links on other people's sites and get linked to them
Let's recap the previous steps:
- we have seen how to take advantage of the copy of our content so that we can insert an attribution link to our articles automatically, thanks to simple plugins for wordpress or a script that you can use or create yourself;
- we've also started to see how to take advantage of broken inbound links to our site to direct them to a specific page that we care about being linked to, be it the home page and an internal page, instead of scattering them in a 404 error.
At this point we delve into the #2 technique by changing recipients: we will no longer go looking for broken inbound links to our site, but for broken links from other sites.
How does this technique work specifically?
Assume we want to build a link profile for a site of ours that talks about travel and look for themed pages that publish a list of links.
We could use a logical operator like
"travel" inurl:useful links
to generate a SERP of results similar to this one:
At this point we could insert the found urls in a tool that allows us to identify broken links such as Dead Link Checker:
To automate this work you can also use a tool such as BrokenLinkBuilder.
Once identified, we could contact the site admin asking:
- or to correct the broken link by inserting a link to our site: the prerequisite is, of course, that the topic is contextual;
- or directly to insert the link to a similar source on your site, since the site itself already has a page dedicated to this purpose.
Here's an example of how you can phrase the message:
Subject: problem of your site
Hi,
I was browsing your site today and noticed that there are broken links on this page: ............................................
If you need a replacement page, I can recommend this post: ......................................................
I hope I was helpful to you!
Good work,
Emanuele
Obviously you will ask that broken links be replaced with the resource you want linked.
Technique #4: Search for mentions and turn them into a link
Okay, so we've seen how searching for broken links on pages related to our site's topic can prove to be an effective method of acquiring inbound links to our site from pages of similar scope and potentially in TRUST (if you choose them to be).
We've also seen how you can simply redirect inbound links to our site that generate a 404 error to give new inbound links to specific pages on our site.
The technique we are going to see merges the 2 previous ones: sIt's about searching not for broken links inbound to our site but for mentions of it and replacing them with links.
But what are mentions?
They are all the mentions of our brand scattered around the network: however, as we saw in a previous post, Co Quotes & Co Occurrences: The Definitive GuideMentioning can have a bearing on your site's ranking, but simply sometimes a link can be more effective than a mention.
Okay, at this point we need to find out 2 things:
- how to find mentions of our website;
- How to turn them into links.
Let's start with the first aspect.
2 methods for finding mentions
You can find mentions of your brand online with 2 methods:
- Using a tool like Social Mention;
- with logical operators on Google.
Find mentions with Social Mention
Social Mention is a tool that allows you to find mentions of your brand in the blogosphere: once you're on the home page, type in the brand name and select "blog":
Social Mention will show you all the blogs that have mentioned the word you entered:
If you select one like the one shown in the arrow, you can see that within the text there is a mention of the brand but no link:
At this point you could contact the site and claim the link on that mention, which will become anchor text for your new link.
Finding mentions with logical operators
You can also search for mentions manually, using logical operators such as "brand name" -www.sitodelbrand.it, for example:
This way you will find all the sites that mention your brand except for your own site.
Technique #5: Create an infographic and have it embed with a cross-reference link
Do you remember the first technique? It consisted of automatically creating a link back to our site on pages that copied and pasted our content.
The technique we are going to see now allows us to create a cross-reference link, not with a copied content, but by proposing an image to embed in your site, in particular an infographic.
But what are infographics? They are images that render in visual form concepts, posts.
To use this technique you need 2 things:
- create an infographic;
- spread it to other sites.
Let's start with the first point.
How to create an infographic
To create an infographic you basically have 2 options:
- or assign the work to a graphic designer, which you can find on sites like Twago or Freelancer; if you want a good quality/price ratio you can look for one on Fiverr.com, in the section dedicated to infographics;
- Alternatively, you can create it yourself with services like Canva, Piktochart, Infogram: you can find a nice list of them with a simple Google search .
The important thing is to create a beautiful, eye-catching and useful image so that it can be shared and embedded easily: according to a BuzzSumo and OkDork study of 100 million pieces of content, infographics are one of the methods that generate the most shares:
But sharing doesn't imply links (at most social signals) you'll tell me: ok, as proof that infographics can be a good method of link earning, here are some case studies:
- Wordstream managed to get a link from a site in TRUST like CNN just by using an infographic;
- Ann Smarty was able to get 10 links in 2 days just from the spread of an infographic;
- likewise Rightcasino: 10 natural links from an infographic.
Once created, as well as shared, your infographic needs:
- of an embeddable link;
- Of a promotional "nudge."
To embed the link you can use a code like this (via QuickSprout):
<textarea rows="5" cols="70" onclick="select()" > <a href="/en/(URL dell'immagine/"> <img alt="" src="URL dell'immagine" /> </a> Immagine a cura di <a href="/en/(URL di destinazione /#1">Anchor Text #1</a> </textarea>
As for the "nudge," I suggest you directly and proactively contact the sites that might be interested in publishing it, with a message like this (via AdvancedWebRanking):
Basically: I created an infographic that may be of interest to readers of your site, would you embed it?
Technique #6: create a video and have it embed with a cross-reference link
Let's finish with a similar technique to the previous one, but one that uses a video instead of an infographic.
The technique involves creating a video (for other purposes too, not necessarily to take advantage of this technique!) and asking to have it embed into sites that might be interested in it.
How? First of all you need to create the embed code: you can do it by hosting your video in a service like Wistia, which has a function of video backlinks.
Thanks to this feature you can create a code that allows you to include a link to a nice site to those who embed your video in their site.
Here's how it works with a screenshot taken from Distilled.net:
Technique #7: The Skyscraper technique of Backlinko.com
The technique that closes this review of 7 advanced and unconventional link building techniques is a mixture of some of the strategies seen above.
It is due to Brian Dean, well-known American blogger and SEO author of the site Backlinko.com, who called it Skyscraper.
If with infographics and videos we created visual content and disseminated it to get embeds and then links, Here it is textual content that is being disseminated.
Not just a post, but a 90 piece of textual content.
But how? Don't you hear so much about link earning, content marketing, strategies like "now I make a cool post and I'll get lots of links"?
Perhaps the reality is quite different: not only will your content not get shared enough if you don't promote it, but it won't get linked to easily either.
It needs, as with infographics, a little push. And that nudge comes from the very PR, public relations work we've seen at work before.
But let's go in order:
- first of all it is identify a content That deserves to be linked;
- then it's about share it with the right people, who have an interest in linking it;
Step 1: Create content
A lot has been said about creating content that deserves to be linked to and this is not the right place to do it, however you can follow these 3 steps:
- identifies a theme;
- set a goal to write the best contribution on that topic, something so in-depth, new and juicy, juicy, that it could be sold;
- creates a long and graphically polished contribution that is also readable.
Step 2: Identify potential links
Once done, identify incoming links to the same topics as your competitors: you can do this with Ahrefs, as Brian Dean suggests, or any other link tracking tool (I use Webmeup.com's Backlink Tool).
Step 3: Contact potential links
At this point all you have to do is contact them, similar to what we saw earlier with the infographics.
A draft message can be this, as Brian Dean suggests:
To wit:
Hi,
I was looking for some articles on (topic) and ended up in your (page)
I notice you linked one of my favorite articles on the subject: (article title)
I just wanted to let you know that I created a similar one: (article name). It's similar, but more in-depth and up-to-date: (article url)
It might be worth mentioning on your page.
Okay, but does it work?
Here's what Brian Dean tells us:
Of 160 emails sent, he was able to get 17 links: a conversion rate of 11%.
More significantly, the request went to high-quality sites, leaving out directories and press releases.
Another application of the Skyscraper technique? We are provided by Tom McLoughlin in Moz, who has managed to obtain 100 links from promoting a travel-themed blog.
2 software to automate the process of contact and link insertion
We've seen how in producing a quality piece of content, infographic or video, it's essential to research and contact sites that might be interested in sharing and embedding it.
As you can imagine, this is a long and tiring process: but 2 softwares can give us a hand: BuzzStream and ContentMarketer.io.
Buzzstream
Buzzstream aims to save you time from finding contact information and sending multiple emails. Once you enter the domains of the people you want to contact, Buzzstream finds the relevant contact information for you, while also providing an update on the stage of the relationship (such as whether the link has been accepted):
ContentMarketer.io
Similar to the previous software, ContentMarketer.io allows you to:
- Look for content relevant to what you wrote;
- Look for the contact information of the person who wrote it;
- CONTACT.
Conclusions
Let's recap the path we've done so far: we've seen 7 techniques to get links to your website, increase the popularity and authority of your pages in the eyes of Google, improve your organic ranking for keywords of your interest, increase qualified traffic to your website.
In essence, the 7 techniques can be traced back to 2 operations:
- create quality content and share it: whether it's images, videos, text content, creating high quality content and proactively sharing it can be an effective link earning strategy;
- Use situations to your advantage: do they copy your content? You get a new link. Do you have broken links? You can make them into new links to a page you're ranking on. Find a site with broken links? Ask them to replace them with yours.
How will link building, or link earning or link baiting evolve? We don't know for sure: certainly, compared to the past, the role of quality content is very important, but similarly to the past it seems not enough: you have to put your own effort to promote it and proactively try to get links from it.
How about you? Have you used any of these link building techniques? Let's talk about it in the comments!
