Link Building

Link Building Prospects Approval: Streamline Your Process for SEO Success

Link building prospects approval is one of the overlooked aspects of link building, yet it is the determining factor that separates a successful link development campaign from mediocre ones.

Assessing backlinks based on quality, trustworthiness, and potential impact on website traffic and business objectives empowers your SEO campaign to achieve both its quick wins and long-term goals. 

You could have thousands of link prospects, but without a strict quality control process, you’re likely to acquire irrelevant or low-value links that will not increase your site’s organic traffic.

Essential Criteria for Evaluating and Approving Link Building Prospects

The primary question, especially for SEO beginners, is, “What should I consider when evaluating backlink prospects?”

The quick answer to this: topical relevance, quality of the site’s backlink profile, engagement, and targeted traffic sources. 

James Norquay has shared a recent experience of one of the backlinks acquired by an SEO agency to a client. 

Those examples (and types of links) will not improve the client’s SEO rankings and could risk the site’s link profile. 

Our link building agency has a simplified yet strict backlink qualification process. We do it pretty much manually (with the help of a few link analysis tools to quickly determine either the page or site authority score). 

Link qualification will vary from industry to industry, the content assets available and their context. But essentially, these criteria are a solid list of control measures. 

Site Legitimacy and Branding 

When assessing backlink prospects, it is crucial to examine the site’s legitimacy and branding. A quick review of the website’s visible elements—such as its design, logo, social media profiles, About Us page, and Contact details—provides clues to whether an established entity genuinely owns the website.

Another way to confirm the site’s legitimacy is to check its blog author or contributors page, legal disclaimers, and history of consistent content production. These indicate a serious established presence in its niche. 

For some instances, you can run the main author picture in Google Reverse Image search to see if the images used have been downloaded from stock photo websites. 

Topical Relevance

Topical relevance in the scope of the target customer base is an essential factor in link building decisions. 

Make sure the site’s content aligns with the industry or niche to ensure that the links obtained will be contextually appropriate. 

Fact to tell that Google’s algorithms reward relevant links, so make it a top priority to choose sites whose topics closely relate to your own. Review their blog posts, product pages, and overall theme to verify that they consistently cover topics that naturally link to your website.

Quality of Website’s Backlink Profile

Evaluating the quality of the website’s backlink profile provides insights into its authority and trustworthiness. Link analysis tools like Ahrefs and Moz can help assess the strength and diversity of a site’s backlinks. 

Check for anchor text usage, especially if it is mostly natural or branded, to avoid sites involved in link farms. You can check 3 to 5 recent articles or blog posts and click on some internal and external links. 

Avoid sites that primarily link to spammy, unnatural, low-quality sources or from high-risk niches like casino (unless you operate in those verticals), as these can negatively impact your site’s SEO efforts. Instead, focus on prospects with a strong, reputable backlink profile that reflects credibility and authority within the domain.

You can filter links based on the default Ahrefs’ Best by Links feature—dofollow, in content, DR30+, and Traffic of 500+  (or customize based on your link benchmarks). 

Targeted Traffic Sources

Understanding where the site’s traffic comes from can help you determine whether you’re likely to get additional value in the form of referral traffic as you acquire the link. 

If you’re trying to rank for search results within the APAC region, evaluate domains if the traffic primarily comes from related countries such as Singapore or the Philippines. 

A well-targeted site will have a steady flow of traffic from search engines, and relevant sources are more likely to drive qualified visitors to your site when the link is placed.

See the traffic graph if pages dropped in traffic—it could indicate that the site got hit by penalties. While a few sites recovered in the recent Core Update, most domains didn’t have the expected light of the day, so double-check for any traffic drop.  

Prioritize sites with targeted traffic that aligns well with your audience, as it can boost the chances of gaining relevant referral traffic. 

Optimization Tips to Improve Link Building Prospects Approval

Having a diverse set of link building clients allows us to optimize our process to get more approved prospects. By working with different industries and brands, like our SaaS client with strict guidelines or an eCommerce brand targeting niche markets, we customize our approach to meet varying requirements. 

Our adaptability mindset as a team ensures a more efficient SEO outreach process. It helps increase the chances of approval for each prospect (especially when working with high-caliber in-house SEO teams). 

Create DNC (Do Not Contact) Database

Establishing a "Do Not Contact" (DNC) database is critical to optimizing link building efforts. This database should include websites that are either unresponsive multiple times or unsuitable for your link building goals.

For example, websites that require payment for links (if your strategy doesn’t resort to paid links), sites that lack direct contact with editors or webmasters, or those with no identifiable point of contact should be added to the DNC list. 

This prevents your team from wasting time and resources on low-potential prospects and keeps your outreach efforts more focused and efficient. 

Revisit and Re-Outreach Sites That Do Not Respond To Acquire More Links

Not all outreach attempts yield immediate results, but that doesn’t mean they should be forgotten. Revisiting and re-outreaching to sites that didn’t respond initially can help you acquire more backlinks over time. 

When working with in-house teams or agencies, it’s critically important to maintain a record of backlinks prospects who have been contacted by outreach specialists, marking them for follow-up after a set period (e.g., six months).

Ensure that key details, such as the date of the initial outreach and the name of the person contacted, are included in the sheet (or platform for inputs). This allows for a systematic re-outreach process, enabling you to capitalize on opportunities that may have been missed in the first attempt. 

Constantly Improve Link QA Process

The digital landscape is constantly evolving, and with frequent Google updates, developing your link building campaigns is crucial. 

Review and refine your Link Quality Assurance (QA) process regularly by discussing updates with your SEO team. Incorporate new criteria to ensure the backlinks you build to meet the latest standards.

One potential addition that I’ve seen with most in-house SEO teams is the consideration of EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) elements. 

Websites that demonstrate these qualities, such as those with reputable authors or recognized subject matter experts, should be prioritized in your outreach efforts. 

Given that the sites hosting their content contributions are seen as trustworthy by search engines, getting links from these sites can help maintain the long-term effectiveness and holistic approach of your link building strategy. 

Do Not Settle with Face-Visible Elements

While it may be tempting to approve link building prospects based on superficial factors like a well-designed website, author pages, or a polished “About Us” section, it’s crucial not to stop there. 

Investigate beyond surface-level elements to ensure long-term elements. Check the site’s backlink profile, as this provides a more accurate picture of its authority and trustworthiness.

Examine the site’s backlink history and identify potential red flags, such as many toxic or irrelevant backlinks. By taking this extra step, you can ensure that the links you acquire come from sites with solid reputations, thus improving the overall quality and impact of your link building campaign. 

This approach not only helps maintain the credibility of your backlink profile but also strengthens the overall SEO strategy, avoiding potential search engine penalties.

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by Venchito Tampon

Digital PR Tips: Key Practices for Successful Campaigns

With the majority of news stories and information consumed alone, it’s not surprising that PR has entered the search landscape. This allows the traditional public relations we know to be fully utilized in helping brands climb Google’s search results. 

Many still need clarification about whether digital PR is part of link building (or search engine optimization) as a whole or could be seen separately as a marketing discipline for enhancing brand reputation. 

By practice, Digital PR is a brand reputation concept that helps control the public perception of a particular brand. It prioritizes content that serves human interest, and as a result, it naturally accumulates backlinks from highly reputable publications and news sites. 

Some SEO agencies have long blended digital PR with their current SEO processes to improve their clients’ rankings. In many ways, digital PR is beneficial for SEO purposes, including: 

• Helping authors distribute content on A-list publications that don’t easily allow typical bloggers to publish content. 
• Introduce new strategies to focus on content that will link organically over time instead of content assets that heavily rely on manual outreach to succeed. 
• Build domain authority through homepage links from publications covering the brand stories. 
• Improve branded searches through mentions and links. 
• Increases both brand and non-brand traffic through mentions and links 
• Be seen as a topical authority, as users started to view your brand as an authoritative voice in the industry. 

Besides links as one of the products, digital PR also has many upsides to the entire branding approach, to name a few: 

• It enhances the brand reputation and visibility online. 
• It helps garner interest from startup founders looking for additional investments.
• It assists in creating a community that supports one’s agenda and interests.

In today’s guide, we’ll examine actionable tips for best approaching digital PR and leveraging its strength to acquire more links and authority for your brand. 

1. Get First-Mover Advantage For Holidays 

With the sea of emails journalists receive daily during holiday events (e.g., Christmas), your pitch will be drowned in their inbox during December. 

By being the first-mover in your industry to relate stories with Christmas, you’ll have more chances of getting noticed by journalists still preparing for their subsequent bulk of Christmas stories. 

It also helps to be more flexible when certain parts of stories have to change to match the journalists’ interest in exclusively covering them. 

You can also plan your follow-up email strategy weeks before to land more responses and digital PR opportunities for your brand stories. 

2. Use Google Trends’ Trending Now For Reactive PR 

In creating content that matters, you make the best or be the first to cover the story. 

By diving into the topic first, you have the opportunity to receive the early massive gains of exposure to content and potential links through link building from other publications covering the story. We call it reactive PR campaigns. 

Jumping on hot trends and tangentially on-brand relevant topics can help drive awareness of your site’s expertise and build brand authority. 

Google Trends has a new feature called “Trending Now” that highlights real-time popular search topics and queries. It helps provide insights into what’s currently capturing public interest.

This feature allows you to sort current trends by recency, title, search volume, and significant trends (relevancy), helping you find relevant trends in your industry more effectively. 

For instance, mpox is a current trend in the Philippines, and many locals wonder about its symptoms and current effect, including the number of people affected by this disease. If you’re into the healthcare industry, this is a topic that you can cover strategically backed up with deep data and the expertise of your internal healthcare professionals.

3. Use Corporate Logo in Email Signature

A subtle improvement in SEO outreach can help define its success. 

One proven way is by using a corporate logo in the email signature. Based on the study by Redsift, “when a brand’s emails had a logo, but competitors did not, opens increased by 21% in the US and 39% in the UK"​.

Having a corporate logo initially helps build trust with the recipient, as it depicts you as a real human being, not a fake/dummy account just being used for spammy email purposes. 

You should include a corporate email signature of the sender's position in the company and other relevant details to build outreach credibility. 

4. Create Author Pages

One of the by-products of Digital PR campaigns is having journalists and news writers link to your page. That itself helps bring link equity, which will help build your page’s authority and climb higher on Google’s SERPs for its target keywords. 

You may consider creating author pages for easy link attribution in digital PR campaigns. By having an author page, you help journalists find a relevant place to link to. It also increases brand awareness, as people can learn more about the author, thought leader, or personality being quoted in the story.

It also helps optimize and strengthen your authorship, which brings more positive off-page SEO signals to your website. 

Create author pages for internal experts in your team. Include publications that mention them and any relevant work history, achievements, and recognitions in the industry.

For some publications, it would be easier to ask to link to an author page instead of the homepage (if, by any chance, there’s no opportunity for a homepage link). So, having author pages could prepare you for the linking opportunity at hand. 

You can also utilize internal linking to include product or service pages in the author page to flow link equity to other pages that bring revenue to the brand. This helps other pages increase their page authority and rank for their respective keywords. 

5. Use #IFFT for #journorequest 

Social media has been a source of opportunities for any brand to be noticed through its stories, launches, and events.

By taking advantage of journalists who are actually looking for quotes and expertise on topics they’re currently or about to cover in their publications, you’ll have chances of landing brand exposure for A-list publications. 

Set up alerts using #IFFT to get notified of the latest tweets with the hashtag # journorequest that content creators and journalists use when looking for interview quotes. 

Be one of the early respondents to quote requests to increase the likelihood of landing a mention for your story or expertise on a given topic.

6. Discover More Publications with Linking Authors 

Authorship optimization has become part of the major SEO processes for many SEO practitioners today. Not only does it help increase authority and trust in websites as users perceive brands with more profound expertise and greater experience to create helpful content, but it also adds a layer to many link building campaigns for earning organic links for informational content.

Discovering authors in your space could help you find publications that haven’t covered your brand stories and expertise. 

You can use Ahrefs' new feature, ‘Linking Authors, ' to help semi-automate some of the link prospecting processes. It assists in comparing your brand’s link profile with your competitors' so you can easily see the authors who are writing about your competitors in one place. 

Plug in the URL to find out which publications have written about the brand and discover authors at those publications. 

It brings new contacts not only for a digital PR campaign but also for other link building strategies, such as guest posting, which demands new contacts of authors to partner with for content creation. 

7. Master AIDA in Email Outreach 

The AIDA principle is a common practice in marketing. It refers to Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Structuring a marketing campaign to capture attention and interest, increase desire, and establish a solid call to action are all essential to drive better outreach results.

The same principle can be applied to reaching out to journalists and publishers. They didn’t have days to consume your actual message. With seconds of skimming right through the email, it should speak of what you have to offer to the table.

Here’s an excellent example of an email outreach template from Siegemedia that incorporates AIDA principles. 

8. Align Pitches To Coverage Areas

According to the State of Journalism 2024 report by Muck Rack, one of the top reasons pitches are often rejected is that the PR emails are irrelevant to the coverage area. Nearly three-quarters of journalists decline pitches without clear relevance to their content theme. 

It’s essential to examine the journalist and his coverage area (and the subject matter of his columns) to identify whether the brand stories you’re sharing align with his content work. 

Organize a list of journalists and publishers along with their coverage areas (industry categories and sub-niches) so you can quickly glance at what they usually write about before sending any initial pitch. 

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by Venchito Tampon

SEO Outreach Best Practices

SEO outreach remains a vital part of any link acquisition campaign. In this phase, content publishers reach out to webmasters and persuade them with the right proposition to accumulate backlinks for their sites.

As we know, the practice has been abused, leading many editors and webmasters to significantly increase their editorial standards, making it more difficult for any outside contributor to place content on their blogs.

We still believe there’s a better way of doing SEO outreach as a link building agency. This belief has led us to where we are, as we constantly improve our outreach efforts to help our clients reach new audiences and improve their branding efforts for their products or services.

Beyond its objective to acquire links, SEO outreach takes many advantages for the brand, to name a few:

• It establishes your brand as an authority in your space, given the value you provide in the form of content assets that could prove your experience and expertise. 
• It helps informational content (with the intent to earn more natural links) get the top spots in Google’s SERPs (as you need a higher position for your target keyword for other content publishers to notice and provide you with links).
• It connects you to other content publishers, journalists, and industry influencers who are likely to help amplify your brand further through their content distribution and social media marketing initiatives. 

As we’ve established the importance of SEO outreach, let’s look at the best practices that separate successful outreach campaigns from mediocre ones. 

1. Reach Out to Prospects with Higher Link Obtainability 

Simply going through the motion of sending outreach emails with hopes of securing a single link isn’t a good idea. Assessing how easily a link could be obtained from a website or page is the key to ensuring you’ll have backlinks at the end of the email. 

Put enough effort into understanding whether or not you’ll get a backlink from a website. The way to know that is by aligning your current value proposition with the site’s needs and preferences. 

For instance, if you’re proposing a piece of content (blog post, infographic, data survey, brand stories, etc.) to a publisher, see if it taps into the needs of their audience (relevance). 

If you’re considering a link inclusion, see external links on the list and match them to the page you want included. If they only list links to suppliers and retailers, will your product/product category page be considered?

Another element of backlink obtainability is page updates, which refer to how frequently and recently the page is updated to satisfy its users. You can check using Archive.org to see its recent versions, or if you’re doing competitor analysis, Ahrefs has this feature for you to check page updates.

The more recently the page has been updated, the more active the webmaster is in managing that specific page, increasing the likelihood of getting a backlink from it through SEO outreach. 

2. Demonstrate Credibility 

SEO outreach campaigns include sending cold emails to publishers and editors you may not have known. Establishing credibility during your initial emails is critically important to differentiate yourself from others pitching the same editor. 

Start demonstrating credibility using credible email accounts - preferably corporate emails with your account signature. 

Editors can glance at your email signature and initially trust that your email is coming from a real author, not somebody just aiming to have a link on their site. It may sound simple, but thousands of outreach pitches fail to include a credible email signature in their emails. 

Another way to establish credibility up front is to provide social proof of work. For instance, if you’re proposing to get a link to your web product from an article they recently wrote, you may include companies that utilized the tool and a quick description of the results they achieved to establish product authority.

3. Write Shorter Emails

Contrary to what others have written, where they state that you literally have to personalize everything in your first-touch email, the truth is writing shorter emails for initial contact tends to get better response rates.

The reason is that emails that are concise (shorter) and demonstrate the unique value proposition using the first few lines help capture attention better and pique the curiosity of anyone who reads them. 

As you get a response from your link prospects, you can now send a more thorough email incorporating the needed details, i.e. specialized topics for content pieces. 

Writing shorter emails also saves time and improves the efficiency of your outreach, allowing you to send more qualified emails down the line. 

Essentially, your short email must include the name, website/brand you’re reaching out to, and a quick description of your value proposition (e.g., premium access to your tool, product review, digital PR story, etc..). 

4. Exchange Contacts with Reputable Publishers 

One investment you can make is building relationships with active content publishers in your industry who’ve written content for other related sites. 

From this relationship-building strategy, you can ask if they know of any industry-related publication you can propose content to. Pass on contacts with each other and increase both parties’ networks. 

The upside with referrals like this is they can make an introduction to you as an author, which initially builds trust (as it comes from someone the publishers are already familiar with) - allowing you to advance your content pitch opportunity further down the line. 

One of the best ways to widen your publishers’ networks is to get on the radar in online communities. Be active in answering questions on forums, Linkedin, and niche communities to increase familiarity about you as an author. This way, when you reach out as an outside contributor, there’s a brand recall of your personality. 

5. Leverage Reverse SEO Outreach

Reverse SEO outreach attracts potential link partners who are actively seeking content opportunities for their sites. It helps diversify your link building strategy beyond just doing manual outreach to get backlink opportunities. 

You utilize the power of ranking pages for other active content publishers to find you through queries such as: 

• Keyword + “write for us”
• Keyword + “become a contributor”
• Keyword + “guest post by”
• Keyword + “contribute to”
• Keyword + inurl:”contribute”
• Keyword + “submit a guest post”
• Keyword + “submit an article”

This strategy lets prospects come to you so you can assess their websites to see if it’s worth having a content partnership with them (both sites get reciprocal links or use other niche-relevant sites to exchange relevant links). 

As mentioned earlier, it also offers an opportunity to be introduced to their contacts, which helps expand your networks. 

6. Offer to Update Content 

Link bulding isn’t only confined to getting links from new content. Older pages could be great opportunities to provide robust link juice to your pages, given that these pages have significant page authority to power up your links. 

Identify outdated content in your list of blogs. You can quickly search for relevant published content on a specific domain (site search operator) or use Ahrefs to find best-performing content that needs updates to better satisfy users. 

7. Put Timing to Your Emails

Sending emails just at the right time helps increase open and link placement rates. 

Siegemedia created a study of over 85,000 personalized emails and found that the best time to send cold emails is between 6-9 a.m. PST on Monday, with Tuesday being a close second.

When people read your emails before they go about their day (or at least before they start getting busy), they’re more likely to respond quickly. 

Optimizing your link outreach campaigns based on the best day and time to send emails can help turn an average outreach result into a successful one. 

8. Always Follow Up On Your Pitch 

One of the most apparent yet underutilized outreach tactics is sending follow-ups. While it is the simplest thing to do, not doing so could prevent you from landing a backlink from a reputable publication. 

A good rule of thumb is to wait at least 72 hours (3 days) after sending the first email to follow up. This gives an allowance of time for your target prospect to respond before sending another. 

Too much aggressiveness in follow-up could be a nuisance. 

9. Use Variety in Outreach Angles and Email Accounts

Invest time sending emails using different outreach angles to test which best resonates with your audience. Other target groups may have different receptions for emails, so having two to three emails with varying outreach angles can significantly impact your SEO outreach’s performance. 

When doing A/B testing, it’s essential to make minor changes slowly to avoid inconsistent results that run away from the primary email. Aggressive changes will not help you see any improvement in modifying your email outreach copies. 

Try other outreach tactics besides the typical guest blogging and broken link building methods. Consider ways that lean toward building long-term relationships (e.g., content partnerships). You might not get links in the first conversation, but it can help bring awareness to your authorship and provide more long-term content opportunities. 

Contextualize Your Outreach Campaigns

While these best practices have proven effective for our team outreach efforts, it is best to test them with your brand’s campaign. Align your campaign’s activities with the context of your audience and the specific value you’re proposing to your potential link partners, as that would help you see improvements in your outreach campaigns.

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by Venchito Tampon

Using Authorship to Improve Link Building

The concept of authorship has long been regarded as a crucial ranking signal within Google's algorithms, a fact dramatically underscored by the May 2024 Google leak. It emphasizes that an author's byline can establish the credibility and trustworthiness of content, making it deserving of search engine rankings. 

With this, authorship profoundly impacts many facets of SEO, including link building.  

Credible authors, backed by decades of experience, expertise, and a proven track record in their industry, are perceived to be valuable contributors to helpful content. This helpful content created by these legitimate authors draws other content publishers looking for additional references for their work, resulting in natural backlinks. 

Strengthening authorship profiles certainly helps establish authority and build trust for audiences likely to provide relevant links to other websites. 

In today’s post, let’s explore some tips for leveraging authorship profiles to earn and acquire backlinks for your site, elevating your site’s SEO to the next level. 

1. Solidify Brand Equity with Authorships

In the past, many SEOs utilized outreach personas when pitching to relevant publications in hopes of distributing their third-party content (“guest posts”).

Different email accounts created for different outreach angles seem to be working fine until it turns out that many publishers were pissed (and totally ignored) these emails as submitted content pieces include mediocre author bios with over-optimized exact match anchors. 

Leveraging authorship for outreach is more advantageous in penetrating popular industry publications with strict editorials. The value proposition of the outreach isn’t solely based on the content but on the author entity’s expertise and their following (audiences). 

Given the helpfulness of their content, which contains real-life experiences and commentaries, they attract blogs and publications to accommodate those content assets. 

A-list publishers even incentivize these industry thought leaders for their content, given the quality of work and potential readers they’ll likely absorb once these authors promote their content pieces on social media and to their networks. 

Create and solidify author profiles. Add relevant achievements, educational background, and professional experience to establish trust and authority with your audience. 

Mention affiliations with professional organizations. For instance, I include in my corporate training bio that I am part of the Philippine Society for Talent Development, a local organization for learning development practitioners.  

When pitching to publishers, it is better to use corporate accounts to increase response and conversion (link placement) rates, given that the initial trust can be built just by seeing your profile name and designation. 

2. Differentiate Content Using New Angles and Perspectives

With hundreds of email pitches publishers receive weekly, getting noticed and standing a chance for content distribution is becoming more challenging. The same subject has been brought up many times (some are cliches in the industry) and won’t bother any big publishers to publish on their blogs. 

One way to differentiate your content is to develop new angles and perspectives on ideas that have yet to be published by other content creators. Mostly, these unique linkable ideas won’t come simply from someone without experience with the subject matter. This is where authorship comes in. 

Credible authors and thought leaders would have an edge in providing unique thoughts on subject matters to broaden and deepen the discourse. 

You can hire or get thought leaders within or outside your organization. Ask or interview them for unique thoughts on the matter, and use them as ideas for pitching publishers for content distribution. 

3. Be The First in Localized Publishing 

While we can assume that most topics in every vertical have been addressed, new subjects still need to be written about as every discourse grows in additional information. 

You can find missing content gaps in your industry that you can fill by thinking from a local perspective. For instance, if you try to write about local SEO for lawyers, it would be different as you would cite other examples when you write about local SEO for dentists. 

The same approach also applies when contextualizing topics based on your native language. 

There were a few topics when I started publishing guides focused on talent development and corporate training at Rainmakers. Much has been shared covered on local business topics, but not particulars on corporate training. So, there is a great opportunity to be the first (and probably the best) publisher in the local corporate training scene. 

Being the first to publish topics in the local context could impact your link building campaign. You will naturally earn local links from publishers looking for additional references. 

Since few content creators expound on tightly local niche topics, you’ll have the edge over competitors in getting natural links from researchers and journalists. 

4. Create a Roster of Thought Leaders to Be Your Authors

Optimizing authorship is also about gaining visibility in other places outside your website. This means you get to be mentioned on other notable sites where your expertise and experience as an author can be amplified.

You can incentivize authors in your industry through business collaborations and content partnerships. This approach is similar to hiring and engaging writers but focuses on getting high-level industry experts who can craft comprehensive content on topics you’d like your brand to be known for.

Use Ahrefs’ author feature to find credible authors in your industry. 

Start by looking at existing links of prominent publications  through the “Linking Authors” feature and see which have contributed much to other blogs.

Do a Google search for their names to validate other publications they’ve contributed to. 

Reach out to them, offer partnerships (or incentivize with offers), and let them write articles on your blog. You can hire them within a specific timeframe to be your regular contributors to build brand credibility based on their authorship. 

It’ll be more effective to ask these authors to amplify their contributed content on your blog by sharing it on their own networks and social media profiles. 

By leveraging key personalities and authors in your industry, you expand the reach of your brand to new audiences. 

5. Republish Evergreen Posts in Different Languages

Another strategy to get links using authorship is allowing your content to be translated into different languages. This can help you reach international audiences your brand isn’t primarily targeting. 

If you have credible authors, you can offer content partnerships to publications in your space and see if they’ll be interested in republishing your content in different languages. 

When necessary, link to the original source of the content (your site) with the rel=”canonical” tag. 

If your site currently speaks to non-English audiences, you can seek legitimate authors who want to republish their content on your blog in your native language under their authorship. 

Start by searching for evergreen posts they’ve written on their site. Finding evergreen content is important, so you’ll expect it to provide value to your audience for a long time without requiring frequent updates now and then. 

Translating content is a solid proposition for every author and content publisher who wants to tap the expertise of others—especially the ones with a global presence but who don’t primarily speak the language of their audience. 

6. Penetrate A-list Publishers/Associations’ Blogs 

It is not enough to create an author byline with available credentials. If you can invest in strengthening authorship by contributing to publications that other bloggers or content creators don’t easily penetrate, you’ll have a bigger advantage over your competitors in increasing brand awareness.

Some associations and entities have their online publications, which usually feature thought leaders in the industry who have contributed significantly to society through their works, charities, and knowledge sharing. 

If you are a member of any association and organization in your industry, take advantage of their brand authority by contributing content pieces along with your author byline. 

Mentions from this type of entity build the credibility of author names, as Google recognizes associations of certain words and phrases with specific nouns or names (entity association). 

In short, if your author names are frequently mentioned in publications and associations for topics and expertise you’d like to be known for, it will also positively impact the branding and rankings of your site (hosting the principal authorship). 

7. Outreach to Authors for Product Mentions

If you’re doing product-led link building, finding authors with established audiences is a great way to acquire new customers for your offers. 

Asking them to endorse your products naturally helps increase trust in your brand and solidifies the proposition of your offer (much like trusting personalities and celebrities when they endorse products to us). It also helps you tap other audiences different from your usual readers with your content publishing.

Recently, we’ve been getting emails from SaaS marketing tools that are very enticing because they offer premium lifetime accounts. 

If you are doing this outreach angle, offer something irresistible to credible authors. Otherwise, it won’t be convincing (or worth their time) to include your product in their existing content. 

One way to increase response rates is to showcase social proof of your products by sharing your client roster (portfolio) and how your product helped them achieve their results after they used it. 

A slight addition to your outreach like this gives you an advantage over other outreach accounts that are focused too much on just giving away free accounts. 

8. Invest in Co-authorship 

Collaborate with other industry experts by co-authoring articles, research papers, data-driven content, or other content formats. 

This is a scalable strategy to strengthen further authorship on both parties (the one reaching for co-authorship and the author being contacted). As a result, both of you will benefit from mentions and natural backlinks from authoritative sources. 

It is also helpful in reaching out to higher-level publications, as content written, validated, and even reviewed by multiple (two or more authors) is much more enticing for editors than content written by a single contributor. 

During the co-authorship stage, you can also start building up someone in your organization (a newcomer in the writing stage but with enough expertise to build their personal brand). As they provide solutions through their content, they’ll also have opportunities to represent your brand in a bigger scale. 

Get Natural Links and Mentions Through Authorship

Your link building campaign becomes more effective when it relies on credible authors and their expertise. This ensures your site gets natural links and mentions through helpful content. 

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by Venchito Tampon

Developing Link Building Strategy: Non-Boilerplate Techniques for Client Success

Developing link building strategy is a critical factor in link building. Not only does it give a headstart toward a higher likelihood of success for the link building campaign, but it also affects how the campaign could assist in achieving the necessary SEO and business goals. 

Without a proper strategy, SEO could go sideways. As a result, optimization for the website will see little greater results. 

That’s why having a customized strategy versus a template link building strategy could benefit your SEO campaign in many ways. Before we dive into some actionable tips, let’s look at what customized link building approaches offer versus boilerplate approaches. 

Customized VS Boilerplate Approach 

Many SEO professionals develop a boilerplate approach to link acquisition that spans different types of clients and verticals. After reading a couple of link building articles here and there, they create their own SOPs solely based on this public information. 

Boilerplate link building strategy has its cons. One drawback is it isn’t necessarily designed to cater to the individualized needs of the client’s off-page site optimization. 

For instance, instead of targeting highly relevant blogs and publications as link opportunities for the website, a boilerplate strategy mediocrely chooses generic blogs with multiple blog categories as long as the listed domains pass the required link metrics. 

This is contrary to creating a customized link building strategy that offers several advantages and benefits to the client’s branding and search ranking capabilities.  

Link strategy customizations focus on assessing the website’s link profile compared to its organic ranking competitors and spotting low-hanging fruit to get backlinks that will help the site’s targeted pages climb in Google search results. 

Below are some tips and examples on how you can develop customized link building strategies for SEO clients. 

Doing Reverse Engineering To Analyze What’s Out There

Reverse engineering other sites' success in acquiring relevant links proves effective in understanding the link ecosystem in a particular industry.

Seeing how others got their links and what could be their go-to source for link opportunities could provide insights into your current strategy (or a new one you’re about to develop).

One of the quick ways to reverse engineer other sites’ link profiles is through Ahrefs’ Link Intersect. It basically helps you find linking sites to sites you’ve entered - that aren’t linking to your client’s site. 

By doing link intersection, you’ll see exactly domains you may have missed as potential link opportunities. 

Another technique we’ve been using is diving into new websites that are currently gaining success in organic search. These websites may not have strong domain authority, but they have been ranking for multiple long-tail keywords, enabling them to earn links via rankings. 

One way to find these organic rising domains is through keyword research activity.

Enter a relevant keyword and filter results based on the Lowest DR: Up to 5. 

Click the SERP to find the keyword's low DR site ranking. You’ll come across low-authority domains that you could analyze to discover keywords for which you can easily rank. 

Invest time in analyzing the link profiles of different sites (both competitors and non-competitors) to discover new sources of link opportunities. 

The key is to know how new and established sites get links from industry-relevant places. 

Derive Tactics From Business Partnerships 

One robust way to generate ideas is through business partnerships. Relationships you’ve built over the years (or just recently) could help spark new link building ideas.

For instance, we’ve been building links for a top luxury travel brand, and as it turns out, they have been publishing a series of posts (listicles) on top X restaurants in different target cities. 

Given they’ve been featuring hundreds of local restaurants in their blog posts, they could ask these restaurants to include a relevant link to our travel client from one of their blogs. 

There are still other ways to generate link building ideas through partnerships, here are some strategies you can try: 

• Incentivize other businesses with free products/services for your premium offers. For instance, you can give them lifetime access to a Pro account in one of your SaaS products in exchange for a link in one of their blog posts. 
• Cross-promote each other’s content assets to new audiences. 
• Invite authors and thought leaders from other organizations to publish content on your blog, in exchange for exposure to their products or services. By creating high-caliber content through their expertise and experience (E-E-A-T), you increase the credibility and trustworthiness of your blog, as well as its reputation to your readers.
• Build alliances with entities and organizations that share your ideals (even with emerging influencers in your space). That way, it will be easier to expose your content to a wider audience, which can result in higher chances of getting natural links. 

Picking The Right Target Pages

One overlooked aspect of developing a link-building strategy is identifying the right destination pages. Choosing the right target pages for links is essential to maximizing link impact on your site. 

It could also drive early success to your SEO campaign, as those pages that get the initial links dominate Google’s SERPs for their respective keywords. Therefore, this elevates the entire domain’s authority to lift other pages with their rankings. 

Assess the current website’s ability to rank in Google’s SERPs through its current domain authority. 

Here are some tips to allocate links properly to your site. Let’s use eCommerce link building as an example:

• If your website is new, point links to the homepage and key category pages.
• If you have an established site with decent domain authority and significant link profile, point most links to category pages, a few to the homepage, and other links to higher categories. 
• If your site has a strong authority and link profile, focus your links on category pages and key product pages.

The same approach could also be applied to SaaS by assessing the current site authority and its backlink profile strength.

Apply Lead Generation in Link Building 

When developing link building ideas for clients, think of ways in which it could help drive leads to the brand. 

One way is to focus on core audience groups when prospecting relevant link opportunities. While the thematic relevance of the domain you’re trying to get links from is important, you should consider the readers’ intent and potential buying power of their audience.

Align your buyer persona with your link prospecting audience groups to prioritize publications and blogs that include your clients' go-to consumers. 

Instead of thinking “just-for-links,” be aware of the impact of links on the overall branding of the site. Links serve as brand associations that have a tremendous effect on how the site is perceived by search engines and users.

Here are some tips for applying lead generation in link building:

• Do active social and community listening. See if your brand gets positive sentiments on niche forums and community discussions. 
• Add value to discussions, if applicable, by answering community users' topical questions.
• Reach out to publishers with X list of products/services and be featured in their lists (“where to buy” Y pages).

Proper Anchor Text Distribution 

An effective link building strategy includes creating a diverse link profile through proper anchor text distribution. 

The safe strategy leans toward branded anchor texts over exact matches. Over-reliance on exact matches can be seen as spammy and could cause trouble to the backlink profile if it consumes a large portion of your links. 

Start by assessing your current backlink profile. If your site is new, you can invest in a few exact-match anchor links to establish the contextual relevance of your pages. 

As soon as the site matures, you can add more branded anchor texts. From there, you can create an anchor text distribution cycle where every month differs from the other. 

For instance, you can focus on branded anchor texts and a few exact matches in the first month. During the next month, your focus would then be on a partial match. Develop a strategy for a quarter period for the type of anchor texts you’re using to create a more diverse link profile. 

Non-Boilerplate Approach to Link Building 

Every website is unique in its context, situation, and needs. Therefore, it requires a customized strategy for each optimization process. Personalizing your link-building approach is crucial to SEO success, from audience targeting to generating link building ideas for clients. 

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by Venchito Tampon

Product-Led Link Building For SEO

We’ve built backlinks for clients and my web properties for over a decade (2013 to 2024). As the CEO of a link building agency, I’ve seen the ins and outs of link building—what works and what doesn’t.

Today, many SEO agencies and in-house SEOs rely solely on their link building strategies, which involve “creating linkable assets” to build and earn links. 

Some have been doing the old-age skyscraper content, expecting to increase their content's perceived value and credibility by writing long-form content (usually 5K+ word content that targets several subtopics on one page). 

Others have pushed toward creating data-driven content (statistics, interactive pages, etc.), which is on the rise these days. 

Our approaches to link acquisition have changed. We now move from creating “linkable assets” to product-led link building.

At its core, product-led link building utilizes the brand's offerings (its products/services) as leverage and a means of acquiring high-valued links for the site. 

Why Product-Led Link Building Works?

• Instantly feature your brand’s main products/services on pages from which you want to get links from, giving you a brand advantage over your competitors.
• Increases demand for your product as users tend to see more and more of your offers as part of “best X list of” pages (“brand recall”). 
• Gets higher buy-ins from company stakeholders when you pitch link building campaigns, as the results (links) are directly tied to promoting the product/service, compared to pushing content assets (mostly informational) that only bring awareness about the problems your SEOs want to solve.
• Builds brand authority in your space (in much less time), as you constantly associate your products/services with pages on publication sites that directly talk about what your brand offers (e.g. lists of X tools/suppliers). 

In this post, I’ll cover actionable takeaways for utilizing product-led link building to build high-powered links to your site's important pages.  

1. Acquire Links From Pages with Product Recommendations 

In the past, SEOs followed the formula of building links to informational content (mid-level to top-of-the-funnel content) and then internally linking from that page to core landing pages to push rankings of these pages for commercial keywords. 

While this can still work, building links directly to product pages would be more robust. 

For instance, if you’re doing link building for eCommerce, tons of “list of X”s “where to buy” pages list down products in industry categories. Getting links from these pages drives link juice and referral traffic to your pages and helps establish your brand identity through product recommendations. 

As users see your product listed among the top X products/services, you’ll increase brand awareness and help become a “top-of-mind” brand in the industry for Google searchers. 

Once you have occupied lists, LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini are likely to start presenting your products when users start searching for specific product recommendations.

More Actionable Tips:

• Use link intelligence tools like Ahrefs to find a “list of X” page or product recommendation lists corresponding to your products. You can find pages directly linking to your competitors (using Ahrefs) and see if there’s an opportunity to be listed by reaching out to publishers of those pages. 
• Consider different angles for list inclusion. You may only be the best in some features and directions, but at certain benefits, you can present your products as one deserving of the lists. See this example from SiegeMedia's “best of content writing services” post. 

2. Leverage Digital PR For Building Valuable Links 

Harnessing the power of digital PR can propel your brand’s authority in your space. 

Securing valuable links from industry publishers and seed sites (domains that are manually selected as trustworthy) not only drives ranking power to its destination pages but also creates more awareness for your product or services. 

How to do it:

• Identify stories about your products (customer reviews, testimonials, impact on your community) and how they resonate well with your targeted audience. By picking the right data and storytelling it effectively, you’ll have a bigger chance of getting attention from A-list news sites and publishers interested in covering your stories.
• Create something interesting and helpful content related to your product. When you create content, don’t neglect relevance to your core offerings. Ensure it’s still relevant to what your brand offers. Then, reach out to relevant, authoritative websites for them to link to it. 

3. Publish Product-led Surveys or Data Studies 

Aligning content ideas to products is truly a brand-building strategy. Given that information from content assets can be leveraged to generate more sales for the brand, it’s worth investing in this type of content that matters. 

Publish product-led content assets such as surveys or data studies that can naturally fit on sales pages. These content pieces are likely to drive long-term SEO value for the business, as they are tied directly to the potential conversions of the brand. 

More actionable tips: 

• Reference data points at the top of the sales page to emphasize the differentiation of products from its competitors.
• Repurpose first-party data into other content formats such as infographics and interactive pieces, for further amplification. 
• Invest in building these product-led assets across your site to provide users with value through information content and increase conversions by turning them into buyers. 

4. Invest in Social Listening

Keeping tabs on who’s talking about your brand and products can open up new brand-building and easy link building opportunities. 

By monitoring what customers say about your product online, you’ll gain valuable insights into customer sentiments and potential influencers in your industry with whom you can collaborate. 

Using this approach, you can better equip your in-house departments to handle significant public relations crises before they become unmanageable. 

You can use brand mention analytics tools or even link intelligence tools like Ahrefs to monitor pages and authors as to whom your brand is mentioned across the web. 

 

More actionable tips: 

• Assess customer sentiments and identify specific words and phrases they associate with your product/s. 
• Never miss opportunities to gain brand mentions - even if they’re unlinked. These unlinked brand mentions can drive more branded searches. Searches may include keywords that could associate with your brand - and could be picked up by Google easily, helping your website pages to rank higher for non-branded keywords. 
• Invest in viral marketing to build brand awareness. Leverage search-driven social media platforms like Youtube and Tiktok to increase product searches through audience-first marketing campaigns. 
• Create content assets that push your brand’s benefits and results (through customer testimonials) on social media to increase branded and organic searches on the platforms. 
• Invite niche influencers to review your products through their native content. See one series of campaigns we did for our coffee shop that drove several weekly store visits. 

5. Buy Publisher Websites with Relevant Targeted Communities  

If you can’t beat them, buy them. 

Interestingly, many publisher websites amass thousands, if not millions, of traffic from search. They have built a community of targeted audiences that’s been generating revenue only through ads and affiliates. 

If you’re a software, you could consider investing in the websites by buying them directly as part of your company’s web properties.

The leverage of this approach is you’ll eventually absorb targeted followers who could directly purchase the product you’re selling from the site itself. 

More actionable tips: 

• Attend industry conferences in digital marketing and start networking with people. Some may own publishers’ sites that align with your target audience, which you could invest in.
• If you have no budget for acquiring sites, you may look for the tools, templates, and community strategies the publisher site is currently using and try to replicate or even beat their content strategy. You want to gain bigger market share in your industry by ranking for multiple keywords, which skyrockets your entire site’s organic traffic. 

Wrapping Up 

Investing in link building campaigns is a no-brainer for industries with a competitive search landscape. The key to getting ROI from it is to utilize product-led link building campaigns that directly impact sales and branding of our clients’ offers. 

Following these tips will set you on a path to attracting more awareness and valuable links to your products and assist your site in getting its market search share.

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by Venchito Tampon

Key Insights From Google Documentation Leak: Implications For Link Building

The SEO landscape has been profoundly shaken by Google's core updates, further intensified by the recent leak of documentation for Google Search’s Content Warehouse API.

Consisting of 2,500 pages and detailing over 14,000 attributes, the leak provides us with underlying mechanisms of Google rankings that confirm some of our biases and personal best SEO practices. 

Many articles covered their own takeaways from the leaked Google’s internal algorithm documentation. In this article, I’d like to focus on my actionable tips, specifically on link building - most tactics haven’t changed much. It has only reaffirmed what we currently do as a link building agency. 

Actionable Link Building Takeaways From Google Documentation Leak 

1. Build Localized Backlinks 

The leak mentions “localCountryCodes,” signifying that backlinks from sites within the same country or region carry more weight and impact than those from other regions or countries.

This isn’t groundbreaking, but it only confirms what should be prioritized when handling local clients or even national brands that serve different regions in the country. 

What we have been doing:

• For clients targeting a national audience, we invest most of our time prospecting for country-specific link opportunities (i.e. .co.uk, .au.). Then, once we’ve exhausted all link opportunities within that country's industry, we could extend it to generic non-country-targeted domains (i.e. com). 
• We assess the impact of a few local links to a targeted page and see its immediate effect on rankings. Instead of bombarding dozens of links, we test out a few ones to know how easy it is to rank for the target keyword (with just a few links).
• Create more localized content as much as we build local links. Aside from link acquisition, it’s critically important to have a solid content strategy for a local audience. 

2. Add More Fresh New Links 

The leaked document explicitly states that “TYPE_FRESHDOCS” is similar in its type as TYPE_HIGH_QUALITY. 

This implies the significance of earning and building high-quality backlinks from new pages. 

What we have been doing:

• Look over the site’s current backlink profile and spot opportunities to earn or build new links from the exact referring domains. The approach could be providing new content pieces or identifying their existing networks within the space through external links they have on pages. 
• Set up alerts to monitor unlinked mentions of the brand, assets, product, or content. As such, it could sprout new links by reaching out and asking for credits in the form of links. 
• Continuously improve link building campaign to target existing relationships and new sets of publishers with strong appeal to a target audience. Balance out getting links from new publications and recurring links from existing connections. 

3. Invest in Author and Entity Authority 

As with the concept of E-E-A-T becoming part of SEO’s systems and practices, some still argue its validity regarding how Google uses it. 

Several times, it’s been discussed and proven that E-E-A-T is considered a quality signal instead of an absolute ranking factor.  

As a matter of fact, the leaked documentation indicates the value of authorship in its element, “author”. 

What we have been doing:

• Invest in hiring high-caliber niche authors rather than typical writers who can provide general advice. This not only increases the content quality, as these authoritative authors can provide more unique insights and experience on the given topic, but this also helps improve trust and authority in the eyes of its target readers and search engines. 
• Enhance our expertise and experience as personal authors of our own websites. Adding more credibility, such as accreditations, certifications, and formal education, to our author bio brings more value in bringing new helpful content that other authors haven’t covered yet on their blogs.
• Deep dive into the industry insights and trends, as this approach addresses the following levels or categories of the audience (i.e. intermediate, advanced level). Covering a wide range of topics but sitting within a similar niche builds the topical authority of the website.

4. Assess Based on Site Authority  

The leak confirms the existence of a “siteAuthority” score, a metric for Google to assess the site’s overall credibility, which profoundly affects how the webpages rank in Google’s SERPs.

This metric could be Google’s version of Domain Authority, a proprietary metric from Moz’s Site Explorer. 

What does it mean? Authority matters. 

Obviously, this isn’t the only metric to consider when qualifying potential link opportunities, but it’s a critical factor to see if a domain is worth getting a link from. Given that you’ll be investing resources for link acquisition, getting the most value out of every backlink is critical. 

What we have been doing:

• We use link intelligence tools such as Ahrefs to examine a website’s ability to drive potential link value to our destination pages, basing it on the site’s Domain Rating (Ahrefs’ DR). 
• Analyze competitors’ link profiles and see what authority sites are linked to them. This approach could give you more insights into how they attack their natural link acquisition campaign. Replicating their success, which means getting similar links from the domains that are linked to them, could also help boost your site’s authority.
• Prioritize the most essential pages to which you want to build more links. Invest in the ones with the highest yield in terms of conversions and potential business opportunities.  You want to build more authority links to pages that drive business revenue. 

5. Earn Hard-to-Replicate Links (“Concept of Seed Sites”)

Seed sites are websites manually reviewed and deemed legitimately reputable (i.e. New York Times, CNN, WHO). These sites only link to truly valuable pages, making it difficult for anyone to manipulate the rankings.

The leak confirms it with its term “NearestSeeds”, which underscores the value of acquiring links from these seed sites. 

Acquiring links from pages closer to these seed sites has extra weight in terms of trust and reputation. 

What we have been doing:

• You can use Majestic’s Trust Flow, a metric to measure a website’s quality based on how it is closely connected to the Majestic’s handpicked seed sites.
• Avoid getting links from private blog networks (PBNs) with the sole purpose of manipulating external link giving. Most of them are pure spam and are not deemed to be trusted by both users and search engines. 
• Invest in link building strategies that penetrate link opportunities from highly authoritative and trusted publications. While it would consume resources in terms of content asset creation, it would be a worthwhile investment as you would be getting links that other sites (your competitors) couldn’t easily replicate. 

6. Get Links From Pages With Relevant Traffic

Backlinks from pages that drive are more likely to impact rankings and search performance than those without. 

In the leak, there is a sourceType attribute, which records the quality of the source of a link, in correlation with the tier in which this content exists. The higher the indexing tier of a page, the higher the value of the links could bring to its destination pages. 

Google uses this information to determine the relative importance of a link from a sourced page to the page it links to. 

What we have been doing:

• Assess link opportunities if the site can bring relevant traffic to your site. Ensure that the domain has existing organic traffic that you can absorb through clicks on links.
• Strategically think of your link placements. In SharpRocket, we put links above the fold of the content, as it is more likely to get more clicks - as we know, most readers these days just skim for the content. Having links placed at the top has more chances to get clicks. While it’s not the only factor, you’ll have more advantages to drive referral traffic to your site. 
• Without constraints for a timeline of links, let’s say you’re not required to deliver a solid # of links per month and have the liberty to pursue the highest quality ones. It is best to prioritize websites with relevant traffic - your target audience. And for brands targeting a specific country, go for sites with similar audiences. 

7. Leverage Digital PR 

Today, most SEO agencies offer digital PR as a fundamental service. Utilizing digital PR to obtain high-quality, fresh links from news publications is essential for achieving optimal results.

While only some brands have the luxury of investing in digital PR, starting with low-hanging fruits is an excellent strategy. 

The leak has its encodeNewsAnchorData, which we can assume Google can tag links that come from news sources. The measurement and assessment aren’t indicated. It could be about the quality of the link from a news source or the quality (newsiness) of a backlink. 

However, we could assume that Google could be giving weight to links from news sources. 

What we have been doing:

• Invest in digital PR with a solid strategy from ideation to pitching. Seek news sources that could feature your unique stories and increase your brand's awareness. 
• Utilize content assets and promote them on social media platforms to enhance brand authority and increase branded searches. We’ve done these multiple times for our coffee shop and seen growth in branded searches on Google, which amplifies our pages’ rankings on organic search results. 

Ethical, Audience-Focused Link Building 

No matter how many changes we’ve seen in the SEO industry and what other takeaways we could get more from other industry SEO experts, it’s clear that ethical, audience-first link building is the key ingredient for SEO success. 

Don’t settle for any mediocre techniques that could lead to unsustainable results. 

If you need sustainable, ethical link buliding services, SharpRocket stands out from the competition by offering comprehensive and adaptable solutions to help SEO agencies and enterprise brands meet their SEO goals. Our team of skilled link builders and content writers can elevate your content strategy, freeing you to focus on business growth strategies. 

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by Venchito Tampon