Chapter 5: Top 5 Opportunity Backlink Tactics Through Outreaching
This group of tactics requires you to find opportunities for backlinking via outreach. These target sites garner a certain amount of popularity and authority for a link too.
However, they have no reason to take an interest in your business or site unless they see a benefit for them, such as a free blog or article.
So make sure you give them an offer they can’t refuse.
Opportunity Backlink tactics usually require a couple of steps.
Two-Step Process
1. Identifying Opportunities
The first step is the identification of opportunities. Here, you have to make a list of websites where your backlinks should be present. Once we have the list ready, we will move on to our next step.
2. Requesting Backlinks
The second step revolves around reaching out to website owners, bloggers, or anyone who can help us with the list of opportunities we have already created.
Although emails are considered the most appropriate medium for such formal communication, people nowadays also use social media platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook.
But before we discuss the most essential tactics for Opportunity links, let’s see some general characteristics attached to this group
- They are considered ‘Follow Links’.
- They pass link juice.
- These links leave a positive impact on your overall SEO efforts.
- To acquire these links, you need excellent verbal and written communication.
Top 5 Reward Link Tactics
1. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging simply means publishing your content on other websites as a guest to gain a backlink.
However, as we stated earlier, you have to make them an offer they can’t refuse. This is the reason you should find sites relevant to your niche, as you can offer them an expert opinion to publish on their site.
Step 1. How to Find Relevant Sites
- List of Sites that Allow Guest Posting
Gather a list of all the websites that are accepting guest blogs. You may just do a quick Google search, and a great number of search results will pop up on your screen.
Since this is a very common tactic, there are many sites out there that have curated a list of all the websites that accept guest blogging and categorized them along the lines of niches or DA/DR. The aforementioned filters would help you identify the sites perfect for your business.
- Search with Keywords
This is the easiest way of finding the right guest blogging sites. All you have to do is search for the right keywords. The right keyword or phrase should have the name of your niche paired with the phrases like ‘guest post’, ‘guest blog’, ‘submit an article’, and so on.
For example, if you want to write a guest blog in the niche of ‘Digital Marketing, you can search ‘Digital Marketing guest blogging sites,’ and the search results will provide you with a number of websites with this opportunity.
- The Fame Game
Every industry has some shiny profiles that garner a huge number of followers and popularity for their work. Similarly, in the guest blogging industry, every niche has some famous bloggers who you would see blogging on every good site.
Now, there are two ways to look for opportunities with the help of these influencers.
- Find out the popular bloggers in your niche and search them on Google. You can then filter out the sites that work for you.
- Follow popular blogs and see what names are reoccurring every now and then. Start following them, and you will know your next target website.
- 4. Tools’ Clues
Tools like Buzzsumo may help you find guest blogging sites in your niche. Simply type in the keyword (topic/niche) + keyphrase like ‘guest blog’ and hit enter. You will find a list of sites that already have guest blogs and are ready for more too.
Step 2. Email Outreach
How to Write Winning Outreach Emails for Link Building (with templates)
2. Broken Links
A link that redirects you to an empty or non-existent external page is known as a ‘Broken Link.’ They are also known as ‘Dead links’ or ‘404 links’. Look out and find such links relevant to your niche on external websites.
You can contact these websites and offer them your own link to be placed there.
With this tactic, businesses can procure an impactful link. Moreover, it solves an unknown issue for the external website. Thus, it’s advantageous for both parties.
Let us now take you through a step-by-step process of finding broken links with the help of Ahrefs.
Step 1: Find Popular Websites
You can begin by gathering all the popular blogs in your niche.
Step 2: Look for the Broken Links
Then, you can start checking those websites for dead links via Ahrefs.
Simply open www.ahrefs.com and sign in. Then, paste the name of the site in the search bar. To demonstrate, we will use ‘www.meditation.com’ as an example.
Step 3: Evaluate the Broken Links
Hit the search bar and choose broken backlinks from the sidebar.
Step 4: Curate Better Content
Now you have a list of all the broken backlinks www.meditation.com has in its backlink profile. All you have to do is analyze what was the content on that broken link, curate similar but more valuable content, and then contact the website to offer your available link.
Step 5: Email Outreach
How to Write Winning Outreach Emails for Link Building (with templates)
3. Skyscraper Technique
This is a brainchild technique from Backlinko’s Brian Dean, where you have to find high-quality content with a good number of backlinks, find a weakness, leverage the weakness, and produce a much better draft.
To execute this technique, follow the steps below:
Step 1: Look for High-Quality Content
First of all, you need to search for high-quality content that garners a lot of backlinks and attention. To do so, you can search for keywords, keyphrases, or topics related to your niche and see which pages are ranking higher in the SERPs.
You may also use tools like Ahrefs to find popular blogs in your niche. Let me show you how.
- Visit www.ahrefs.com
- Then, open ‘Site Explorer’ and paste the link to a popular site in your niche. For Example
- Now, select ‘Best By Links’ and check which pages on this website are receiving a good number of backlinks
Here, you need to look for the pages that have 50 or 50+ referring domains and then probe deep into the content of that page.
Step 2: Create Valuable Content
Do your research and create content similar to that but more updated, meaningful, and engaging.
Step 3: Email Outreach
How to Write Winning Outreach Emails for Link Building (with templates)
4. Top List Articles
The blog posts or articles mention businesses that garner a reputation in a particular niche. For example, if you own a restaurant in Florida, you might want to search articles like ‘Top 10 restaurants in Orlando’ and then evaluate if your restaurant can fit in the list. If you think your restaurant fits in this blog then you should contact the owner/writer of it and request a mention.
To do so, these are the steps you can follow:
Step 1: List all the Listicles
Search for all the blog posts/listicles where you can see your brand getting the required limelight. You can simply make a list by Googling a variety of keywords.
For instance, ‘restaurants in Orlando’, ‘best places to dine out in Florida’, ‘Restaurants for dating in Orlando, ‘Best steaks near me’, and so on.
Step 2: Prioritize Your Options
Analyze, sort, and arrange the sites you want your business’s name on in order of priority.
Step 3: Email Outreach
How to Write Winning Outreach Emails for Link Building (with templates)
5. Unlinked Mentions
The mention of your brand’s name, website, or anything related to your business that doesn’t link back to your site is known as an unlinked mention.
How to find unlinked mention opportunities using Ahrefs?
Step 1: Visit Ahrefs.com
Visit www.ahrefs.com and log in to your account
Step 2: Content Explorer
Navigate to Content Explorer and then search for your brand’s name
Step 3: Search
You can also paste your website’s link along with the name of your brand
Step 4 Filter Results
You can also use filters if you want to set a specific time period, language, and so on.
Step 5: Results
Now scroll down to results and here you will find both linked and unlinked domains.
Step 6: Unlinked Mentions
Choose ‘Unlinked Domains’ from the bar above the results and view all the unlinked domains.
Step 7: Email Outreach
How to Write Winning Outreach Emails for Link Building (with templates)
While it’s a great way to get backlinks, a more advanced strategy is Reward Link Building. In other words, you create such unique and high-quality content that opportunities come to you.
This is exactly what we talk about in the next chapter, “Top 5 Reward Link Strategies”.
