Link building is not a new concept as far as SEO is concerned.
And what you’re about to read is not entirely a new invention. However, it’s a combination of several methods used by experts in building direct follow links to their blog.
I have considered several methods used by experts in creating a backlink for their blog, and I discovered that a larger percentage of the prescribed link-building method would eventually backfire when the Google algorithm is upgraded.
This is so because Google and other search engines are working tirelessly to make their search engines more intelligent. And as a result of this, adequate resources are being put in place to ensure users only access the best of articles on the first page.
I have read about PBN (Private Blog Network), Silo Link Building, and Link Purchase. All these methods require some amount of capital besides the danger of being penalized by Google for black hat SEO.
Link Building Basis
Often bloggers and internet marketers do assume the position of search engines when building backlinks for their blogs. The assumption is necessary because it takes a monkey to catch another monkey.
For this reason, I think it is important that I write a little bit about the basis of link building before I move on to show you the strategy of building links to your blog using Buzzsumo.
When an authority site points to your blog, the search engine believes you have something important to say, so it crawls your blog and “checks out” your content.
When the crawling bot lands on your blog, it accesses every link and proceeds to crawl other links embedded in your site as well.
Now, it’s important to mention that crawling is different from indexing. When the bot crawls your blog, it checks out the new content and keeps it on the queue for possible indexing to the result page.
The algorithm would then analyze your content and the keywords used and sort your blog post in the right position based on several other ranking factors beyond the scope of this blog post.
With that simple explanation, it should be clear to you that for a new blog to get positioned among the top results on the search page, it would need a whole lot of “recommendations” (linking) from authority websites or blogs.
The confusing part of the basis of link building at this point is;
- What defines an authority blog?
- Domain age?
- Amount of links?
- Length of contents?
- Popularity?
- Amount of shares across social networks? Etc.
The definition of authority as far as blogging and link building is concerned is quite simple.
When you search for a particular topic on Google, for instance; the first (ten) pages that come up represent the authority page on that particular topic.
These pages may contain videos, podcasts, or articles. If it’s a page containing video, then it defeats the assumption that an authority blog is known by the length of the articles on it.
Domain age plays little to no role in determining what is being displayed on the search result front page.
It is evident in the fact that an aged domain with no content would not show up on any search result because the site is literally empty.
An exception to this is when a domain has an exact match keyword; something like weightloss.com.
However, Google no longer pushes such domains up the search page since the update of its algorithm about a year ago. This means, even when domains with exact match keyword lacks quality content, they would not be featured on the search result page.
Now that the basis on how linking works on the search engines has been established and the topic of authority page has been established as well. It’s only normal to look into what makes an authority site; which is.
Quality Content
The Buzzsumo method I am about to share with you relies solely on the quality of the blog post.
This strategy is a genuine way of soliciting quality backlinks. It’s like inviting a security officer to conduct a raid on your apartment.
You can only do such things after ensuring that your house does not contain illegal or contraband goods.
Why many blogs get penalized by Google is simply because, in the literal sense of it, the owner invited security officers to conduct a raid on their house even when they have illegal items in their house.
There are numerous blog posts about creating quality content for a blog, and I wouldn’t waste your time writing about it all over again in this post; it will only make my blog post unnecessarily long and boring.
But I would share a little bit of information on what I consider the standard for writing quality content for your blog.
Topic Research
A larger percentage of bloggers are concerned with keyword research rather than topic research.
Gone are the days when you can rank well on search engines with 4-5 paragraphs of ill-researched content. Those days are gone for good.
To make it to the top, your topic must not only provide the necessary information in detail, but it should also be well written in such a way that readers would be willing to share it on social networks with their friends.
Comprehensive topic research for a blog post includes data acquisition, creation of graphs, illustrations, pictures, videos, animation, interviews, etc.
It’s not only harmful to your blog when you write an article that is not well furnished with good information; it is equally insulting to your readers.
Do you have a relationship blog? Then cultivate the habit of reading a book on relationships every month.
Subscribe to other authority blogs on relationships and read what they have to say about different topics. It’s so amazing the amount of information our brain can accommodate when we put it to work.
I met Richard Marriot of clambering about a year ago when he was working on this $9500 income blog per month.
In his effort to set things in place for the blog, he bought dozens of books from amazon and went to a solitary place to crack the books open and educate himself on the topic he’s about venturing into.
That’s what every blogger should do. We should do more reading than writing. But sadly, the reverse is the case here.
We are consumed with the number of times we hit the publish button per month without giving consideration to the amount or value of information a reader gets from the blog post being published.
Experts Opinion
A quality blog post should contain an expert opinion on the topic of discussion. You blog about weight loss, and you don’t have a degree in nutrition, yet you feel comfortable telling people to do this or that. That is not what blogging is about.
Don’t get me wrong, you can have a blog on health and not be a doctor. But when you write about something, it’s very important that you reference experts in your blog post.
While the search engine algorithms do not really care about the expert opinion and all that. It’s equally important to remember that the posts are not being read by a robot but by human beings.
Referencing experts in your write-up will go a long way in establishing long-term trust and confidence from your readers.
Take Wikipedia for example, all the pages on Wikipedia would always have a reference section where expert’s opinions are extracted into the post.
Lastly, before I move on from the content creation issue, I would like to point out that creating a quality blog post takes time.
Don’t jump the rope, don’t be too hasty to click the publish button until the necessary things are put in place.
When it comes to content creation, I have a few people I look up to; Neil Patel and Darren Rowse.
Neil will show you how to write quality content, while Darren will show you how to put the words together in a way that keeps the reader on his or her toe.
How To Build Backlinks Using BuzzSumo
I know this is the part you’ve been waiting for, I had to write about the basis before diving here because if you fail to understand the basis on link building, and how important quality blog post is to this strategy, then it would not work for you because you wouldn’t get a reply from authority bloggers to talk less of moving on to solicit their advice or help.
BuzzSumo is a web app that analysis data. The web interface does look simple, but it does very complex behind-the-screen activities.
The app would sort out data and provide the necessary information needed in ranking your website on top search engines.
Let’s get started by getting to know the buzz sumo interface and the function of each tab.
Point your browser to buzzsumo.com then sign up for the trial account to get started. Once you’re done with the account setup process, you can then proceed to know the interface.
For the purpose of this guide, we will be using the MOST SHARED option for our research. By default, the page would select the Most Shared tab, so you don’t have to tamper with that area.
Check the options on the left pane of the page and select the filter as appropriate. Normally, I would advise that you unmark all content types EXCEPT for articles, guest posts, and infographics. Select your preferred language and don’t tamper with the Country TLD
On the center of the page, enter the keywords that best describe the blog post you’re trying to create backlinks to.
For the purpose of this guide, I have decided to use the term “Link Building strategy.” You can use a single keyword or phrase, it all boils down to what actually describes that category of articles you’re scouting for.
Once you enter the keyword into the box, hit the word search and allow the page to come up with the most shared articles with the entered keyword.
For the purpose of this article, I have decided to use Neil Patel’s post on 13 Efficient Link Building Strategies for Busy Marketers as an example.
My choice is based on two main reasons; it’s freshly written (August 2015), and It did well on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. What this means is that the article went viral across all platforms, so it’s a good sample for the project.
On the right side of your preferred article, there are three basic options listed there, right before the share count button. You would see “View Backlinks,” “View Sharer,” and “Share.”
Click on the “View Backlinks” and allow the article to load. The next page will then show you the number of root domains that links to that article and the total number of link.
For Neil Patel’s post, you can see that it only has four (4) backlink pointing back to it.
In the list of the websites linking to the article, open each of the links in a new table and go through the content of the post.
The sweetest thing about this page is that it makes it easy to discover roundups where the article was mentioned. Roundups are a goldmine for link building, so look out for them.
After landing on the page that linked to the article, the next thing you should do is investigate the authority of the page.
It’s a total waste of time to solicit for linking from the blogs that are of lower authority to your blog.
To investigate the authority of the blog, you can make use of seoreviewtools, enter the root URL of the blog and allow the page to load the domain information and Google Page Rank.
Email Outreach
I am not an expert when it comes to getting people’s attention, but I have been putting some tips to the test, and it works perfectly well.
Having read several epic articles on getting top bloggers’ and influencers’ attention, I have found some of the tips very valuable, and I will share the valuable tips explicitly in this section of the article.
Brian Dean on Blogger Outreach and How to Get Influencers Attention.
Establishing a relationship with your prospective “link giver” is very crucial, and the only way to achieve this is by visiting their blog, leaving one or two insightful comments, and sharing the articles you find valuable across social platforms tagging the author of the article.
It’s almost impossible to do all that without looking like a “link digger” who is only seeking attention because of the linking opportunity.
This might piss some people off because it’s seen as taking advantage, so it’s important that you really establish a relationship before asking them for links.
Adrienne Smith is an expert blogger when it comes to establishing and maintaining a relationship in the internet business world.
You might want to head over to her blog to see more of her blogging relationship post.
I personally find tools link BuzzStream very valuable when it comes to conducting email outreach and contacting influencers, it’s not a free application, but they have a trial version that would get you going provided you’re low on budget.
Since this article is not about the buzz stream, I won’t write much about how it can be used in reaching out to influencers.
However, I will share the little tips that are needed to get you going.
Let’s assume you’re trying to create backlinks for one of your epic blog posts, following the instruction above. You need to scout for about ten (10) or more quality articles that you would love to get a link from them.
Then you would create a spreadsheet document with the following column; S/N, Name, Email, URL of the article, and Domain name.
Once you’ve created the spreadsheet file, the next thing is to upload the document to your buzz stream account and create a project for that Article.
Bookmark each of the websites and check out their most recent article, read through the article, and leave an insightful opinion.
The idea is to get the blogger to notice your presence on their blog. Do this for each of the blogs you intend to get a link from. It’s advisable that you take a mental note of how frequently they post on their blog.
Give them a break of a week and visit the blog again to check another blog post. Provided they’ve posted another article, repeat the procedure and post another insightful comment on the blog.
After leaving two insightful comments within a period of two weeks, you can then move forward to the next phase by sending them an email.
The tone of your email depends on who you’re reaching out to.
If the person were to be a popular expert; let’s say, Brian Dean or Neil Patel or Pat Flynn, I would send something like this:
SUBJECT
[First Name], I Really Need Your Opinion on This.
MESSAGE
Hi [First Name]
I recently wrote a post on link building strategy, fortunately, I stumbled upon your post [His Post link] while researching for the blog post.
I discovered that you didn’t lay much emphasis on [Something important under the topic] and that is the exact angle I explored in my latest blog post [link].
I believe this article is what you’d like to read yourself, and I would love to read your opinion on this topic.
Kind Regards.
[Your Name]
Now you would notice that I did not say anything about them linking to the post or sharing it across the social platforms, this is so because they are experts; they know what you’re trying to do.
Naturally, they would head over to your post and read it. Provided they find it resourceful; they would send a mail back to you, telling you what they think about the post.
Most of them would even share it across social networks and willingly link back to the blog post from their previous article or mention the post in any of their future posts. It all boils down to how quality your blog post is.
Let’s assume you’re reaching trying to get a backlink from an authority page run by an individual that is not necessarily a blogger, then the tone of your email would change significantly. You would do well by sending something like this:
SUBJECT
[First Name], About Your Post On [His Post Title]
MESSAGE
Hi [First Name]
I recently posted a comprehensive article on link building strategy (about 3,000words) on my blog, and I was searching the internet for articles that relates to the same topic, luckily for me, your post on [His Post title] came up and I enjoyed the write-up.
I discovered that you referenced [competitor url] in the post, and I am of the opinion that this newly published post [Your Post Link] is more comprehensive, recent and would be of much help to your readers.
You might want to check it out and let me know what you think and probably link it to your resource on your post.
Kind Regards.
[Your Name]
Another method that may be valuable is to pretend you’re not the writer of the blog post.
This is highly effective when the website is an educational forum or an organization website.
You can pose as an ordinary user searching for information online, and you found another article that is much better than what they referenced.
You can always adjust the tone of your email to suit your purpose.
The central idea here is to write something worth linking to. Else, the whole effort would be fruitless.
When conducting email reach out for linking, the objective is two-fold, the first of which is to get the authorized person to check out your post on the same topic and hopefully link back to your blog because it’s much more resourceful or shares it across their social platform. Either way, it’s a win-win situation for you.
With this strategy, you’d realize that your content must be of top quality before you send out any email requesting experts to check your blog and link it back to your post.
Once the quality is top-notch, you would be amazed at the number of responses you would get from the email.
If you desire to do this on a larger scale, I would suggest that you create a spreadsheet file for the contact details of the bloggers you intend to send out outreach emails to, upload it on buzz stream and read another guide on how to use buzz stream for email outreach.
Quick Recap
- Write Great Content,
- Promote the content,
- Make a list of previously published posts on the same topic and check their backlinks using buzzsumo,
- Reach out to the backlink givers using email outreach.
In conclusion, I hope you would try this and get back to me on how you’ve made progress with the link-building strategy over the course of time.
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