Get backlinks faster

  In this video, I’m going to show you howto turn your backlink analysis into actionable link building strategies… fast. Stay tuned. [Music] Hey everyone, Sam Oh here with Ahrefs. This is the last video in our 3 part serieson backlink analysis and link building using just Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool. Now, in the first two videos, we went prettydeep into link prospecting and competitor analysis. But today, you and I we're going to be focusingon link building efficiency and cover 5 tactics that you can execute quicklyfrom just a single site analysis. If you haven’t watched the first two videos,then I highly recommend going back to those right now so that you can get the most outof this baller tutorial. Some of these strategies that I’ll be covering may be very familiar while others may be completely new. And I’ve got some cool link building tacticsin here for everyone, no matter what stage you’re at. I am absolutely pumped, so let’s jump right in. First, I want to set some context. So throughout this tutorial, let’s imaginethat I have a new and upcoming content marketing blog called Content Marketing Hackers andI’m looking to build links to it. So with that said, let’s get started withlink building strategy #1: Piggyback off of your competitors’ homepage links. Here’s the skinny: When you’re analyzing a home page’s backlinks,you’re going to find that the majority of links will have an anchor text to the company’sbrand name, the domain name, or the founder’s name, even. And with branded anchors like this, it’susually a general mention of the company. So by looking through these ‘general mentions’,your job is going to be two-fold: First, we need to find out why your competitorwas mentioned and you weren’t. And the second thing we need to do is, weneed to find out how to squeeze your way into that post. So let me show you a few examples: So I’ll go to Site Explorer and enter incontentmarketinginstitute.com here and I’ll set this setting to the exact URL. Now, if we scroll down to the bottom of theoverview page, you’ll see that over 80% of their backlinks have branded anchor phrases. Now, let’s scroll back up and look at thebacklinks report for CMI’s homepage to see where these links are coming from. First, I’ll set one filter here for nowto just the dofollow links. Now, if you look at the first batch of links,you’ll notice that some of these sites have linked to CMI’s homepage thousands of times. This to me, looks like site wide links, sowe’ll skip over these for now. And as we scroll down, we’ll come down tothis post from Social Media Examiner: "20 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros." In the referring page column, you can seethat it was an expert roundup from the title. Then looking to the anchors and surroundingtext column, you can see that the anchor text is on Joe Pulizzi, the founder of CMI. Just a little bit below that, you’ll seethis link that CMI got from Top Rank Blog’s “BIGLIST of Marketing Blogs.” Now the question boils down to this: Why did they link to Content Marketing Institute,but not Content Marketing Hackers, which again is my imaginary blog that I need to build links to? So, in many cases, it’s because they don’tknow that my awesome and imaginary blog exists. So as an example, I could reach out to TopRank Blog and be like… "Hey! Noticed your big list of marketing sites doesn’tinclude Content Marketing Hackers, but we seem to fit all of your requirements. Mind vetting our blog and adding us to your list?" Now, as you continue to filter through thislist, you’re going to find all sorts of other opportunities that could be easy andbig wins for you. So check out this example. You can see from the anchor and surroundingtext that they interviewed Joe where he spoke about generating revenue with content. So I could reach out to this site and askto be interviewed in a future podcast episode, assuming I have somethingunique and valuable to offer. To help narrow down your search, you couldscroll back to the top and then look for specific keywords. So if I wanted to get interviewed more, Icould look for keywords like “podcast” or “interview” in the search bar here. A few other common types of links that youmight find by analyzing a competitor’s home page are testimonials, quotes, and guest postingopportunities, since the author box almost always has a link pointing to the writer’s home page. Once you’ve filtered through the list, youcould start sending your own pitches to these site owners to have your brandmentioned alongside your competitor’s. Okay! Onto the second link building strategy: build links to your existing pagesthat need the extra boost. Now, there’s a good chance that both youand your competitors have pages with similar content, products or services. And that’s probably what makes thema competitor in the first place, right? So here’s the skinny on this tactic. This is a simple 3-step process. Step 1: pick a page on your site that youwant to build backlinks to. Step 2: Find a competing page and analyzethe backlink profile to find relevant link prospects. And step 3: send a unique pitch that showshow your content, product, or service is different than the one mentioned. So let’s say that I have a great post onmy blog about link building, but it’s not getting the attention it needs. First, I would change this URLsearch to a full domain search. Next, I’ll click on the “best by linksreport” in the sidebar to see the most linked to pages across the domain. Lastly, I’ll use the search bar and lookfor a relevant keyword. So I’ll type in “link” and then run the search. Right away, you’ll see some hyper-relevantposts that have a solid number of unique linking domains. And if we were to add up these referring domains,you could potentially find hundreds of link prospects almost instantaneously from justthis single competitor. Next, we can click on the corresponding numberunder the “dofollow” column and open up the individual backlink reports. Now, we would perform a backlink analysis,exactly the same way we did in the second video in this series and send our pitch tothe various site owners. It’s important to note that when you’repitching these sites, you should provide some kind of unique value in your pitch. So in this case with link building, are yousharing new tactics that no one’s talking about? Do you have a unique case study with yourresults or a creative process that you follow? Do you have unique data or insights you canprovide that the page that they’re currently linking to doesn’t? Basically, you need to ask yourself this question: Why should they take their time,just to add your link to their post? And if your only answer is, “out of thegoodness of their hearts,” then you may want to rework your pitch. One thing to note is that when you’re lookingthrough your competitor’s best by links report, you can look for older outdated posts. In general, it’s easier to steal your competitor’sbacklinks when you have brand new content with information that’s relevant today. In our example, CMI happens to include thedates in their URL, so it’s really easy to identify outdated posts with a quick scan. There are a couple other ways that you canfind competing pages. The first is to go to Google and type in akeyword phrase that you want to rank for. So in this case, if it was “link building”,then I could go through the top 10 results, copy and paste each URL into Site Explorerand analyze the individual backlink profiles to create an even bigger list of prospects. Now, the great thing about this tactic isthat it’s not limited to just blog posts. The exact same logic and principles applyfor product and service pages. For example, if we were to create a marketingautomation software, then I could simply take one of my competitors’, so let’s say Mailchimp’sfeature page and then paste the URL into Site Explorer. And from here, you can see that this URL has615 referring domains linking to this page. Now, I can click on the backlinks profilehere in the left sidebar, and then look through the list of people who are linking to this product page. Looking at this result here, the anchor andsurrounding text tells us a lot. It says, "tools such as Mailchimp’s marketingautomation software can help with personalization." So the question that comes to mind, is why aren’tthey mentioning my marketing automation software? And the most probable answer again? Is that they don’t know it exists. So in my outreach email, I could offer thema free account and show them unique value in how my tool is superior, easier,and better than Mailchimp’s. Alright, onto one of my favorite tactics andthat’s because it is one that is easily scaleable. Seriously! Easily scaleable. Tactic #3 is broken link building. Here’s the skinny on broken link building. You find a dead 404 page from a competitor’s website that has backlinks. Next, you recreate that page with your own twist. And then you email everyone who is still linkingto the broken page and ask them to replace the dead link with yours. There are a few ways to find broken pageswith backlinks using Site Explorer. The quickest way to do it from a domain levelsearch is again in the “best by links” report. The only thing we need to change here is thisone filter to find only the 404 - not found pages. And boom! We now have a list of over 23,000 broken pagesfrom our competitor’s site that has backlinks. From here, you can click on the referring domains column to sort the list in descending order. You can see right here that their .aspx versionof the site was never redirected properly. And this broken link here on “what is contentmarketing” has earned over 400 Dofollow backlinks from 188 unique websites! The one below, seems to be a list post ofthe top 42 content marketing blogs which has 91 referring domains! And the one below that... drum roll please... [Drum roll] Is the same post without a proper redirect,so that 91 referring domains, now turns into 157 unique linking websites. A.K.A. 157 new link prospects! Now, if you already have a solid replacement,then it’s just a matter of pitching the owners, editors, and webmasters with your piece. And you can use the search filter here againto look for topics that are similar to ones that you’ve already published. So let’s say that I have a great post oncontent marketing tools. I can search for the keyword “tool”, andyou’ll see all of the relevant broken pages with the keyword in the URL. But if you haven’t created the post yet,then you can do something cool right here within this report. First, I’ll clear the search filter. And now, let’s look at one of these pagesthat seems to lack context. This one here has a URL permalink that reads:“repurpose one video” and has 32 unique linking websites. What you can do is click on the caret hereand if there are any records inside of Archive.org, which is a free service that lets you seewhat pages looked like in the past, then you’ll see a shortcut link here. Click on the link and it will load up thepage and show you what the page looked like when it was live. Now we know that this post is a case studydone on their podcast where they repurposed one video and got X results. So if you have a similar case study on repurposingcontent, then it might be worth creating. After your content is pitch-ready, you canclick on the number in the dofollow column, which will open up the backlinksreport with the dofollow filter set. Now, you can see all of the pages that havelinked to this broken page. Now, it’s just a matter of reaching outto each site owner, editor, or webmaster to let them know about the broken link and topitch your post as a replacement. One side note that I want to make is regarding outreach. When you’re pitching the different siteowners, you want to make sure that your replacement article is actually relevant to the contextof why they linked to the broken link. For example, if we look at this broken page’sbacklink profile, which is on content marketing spend, then you can see from the anchors/surroundingtext column that the context of these links is largely because of stats. So if you were recreating a similar page tothis one, you should be prepared to use your new and up to date data as part of your pitch. And if you don’t have the data,then don’t recreate the post. Alright, on to link building strategy #4,which I don’t think many people are using. And that’s link building from irrelevant 301 redirects. Here’s the skinny: When a website decides that they want to consolidatecontent, meaning, they're going to take some of their less popular posts and then redirectto ones they want to rank for. And the result is going to be completely irrelevantredirects that you can capitalize on. Within this same report, which is the bestby links report, we can change the 404 filter to “301 moved permanently.” And you can see that they have over 6,700articles that have been permanently redirected. The one that stands out to me is the blog post here. It looks like they’ve redirected a poston headline click through rate to their headline tips and tools post. This might seem like they’re completelyrelevant, but if we click through to the tips and tools article and then search for theword “click”, you’ll see that there are only 3 occurrences. The first shows "cheesy click-bait headlines". The second reads, “The winner gets the clicks”. And the third says “most clicks.” Looking at the archive.org page, you can seethat the original topic was on tips to improve your headline click-through rate, which thenew article clearly doesn’t help with. From here, you would go to the backlinks report,skim through the anchors and surrounding text column to see the context of the backlink. And here, we can see that the majority oflinks are coming from a stat that was mentioned related to click-through rate. And if you look at this one here, it saysthat the stat comes from “the folks at Outbrain” which you could also link to in your postso that your article is relevant when you’re pitching these sites. Pretty neat twist to 404 link building, right? Alrighty, link building strategy #5: Guest blogging on sites where your competitors are posting (with a twist). And the method that I’m about to show youis a pretty creative one that I haven’t seen anyone talk about. But first, the skinny on guest posting. First, you find a website you want to writefor, you pitch them with some topic ideas, and if accepted, write a post that will mostlikely lead to a link back to your site. And I’ve covered a lot of effective waysto find guest posting sites in my Content Explorer video. So if you’re using or plan to use guestposting as a promotion strategy, then I highly recommend watching that video. Now, before I teach you this new tactic, letme start with a story. [Dreamy music] It was a dark and stormy night and I was justsitting at home reading through some of my favorite blogs, minding my own business. And for whatever reason, blogafter blog after blog after blog... This guy’s name and face keptpopping up on my screen. Ryan Stewart. He seemed to be on some kind of relentlessguest posting blitz. So I followed him on Twitter and literallybinge read everything he had written. [Slow clap] Well done Ryan...well done. Here’s the thing: if I was noticing himeverywhere, so were others. And when it comes to anythingonline, there are always footprints. The main one footprint for guest posts is the author bio. And in it, you’ll normally get a link to your website and some links to your social profiles. So what you can do to find guest posting opportunitiesis to open up Site Explorer and search for a popular guest blogger’s Twitter profile URL. I’ll put in Ryan’s twitter URL and click submit. And you’ll see that 128 unique domains havelinked to his twitter profile. Let’s look at the backlink profile. If you skim through the referring page aswell as the “anchor and backlink” column, then you can almost instantlysee why they got a backlink. For example, this one from an amazing blogthat I absolutely adore was an expert roundup which you can see from the title. Then you’ll see this one here on local-seothat looks like a naked URL. And if we click through to that article, you’llsee that Ryan was the guest author. Now where does this link come from? Right here. So you could skim through this column andlook for naked urls, empty anchors, or even links from images, which oftensuggests that it was a guest post. By using these 5 link building tactics thatI just showed you, you should be able to build a large enough list of prospects and get backlinksto get your pages ranking with the big boys. And that’s it for this SEO tutorial andactually this entire backlink analysis and link building series! If you haven’t watched the other videos,then I highly recommend going back and working through these videos at your own pace. Make sure to hit the thumbs up button andsubscribe for more actionable SEO tutorials. In fact, let me know in the comments if there’sanything that we haven’t covered that you would like to see in action right here on YouTube. Now, I’ve got some links that need to bebuilt and I’m sure you do too. So until the next video, keep grinding awaySEO friends and I’ll see you soon. [Music]