You have a website and you want to get more traffic leads through the organic search engine listings on Google. You know you need to optimize your website both technically and for keyword relevancy through the content. The part that will positively impact your website for the better will be the link building activities. The strategic theory of link building is simple. Acquire links that pass authority from an authoritative site to your website. In practice, it is a challenge to firstly find these websites, as well as to successfully acquire the links from these websites while abiding to Google’s terms and conditions.
As an SEO agency, you need to leverage the productive processes and tools that will allow the website to acquire the links that will make your website rank well for your desired keywords. There are many different tactics that can be used to boost your SEO rankings. Below are a few strategic approaches that can be used and the tools that you can use to successfully implement them.
Broken link building (also known as the moving man method)
Websites on the web tend to have a lifespan. During their lifespan, they naturally acquire links and authority that allows them to rank well from different websites. Broken link building (or the moving man method) refers to finding websites that have broken link resources listed from an authoritative web page and website. The power from this page would have helped improve the SEO performance of the previously existing website. Finding these links and acquiring them can be challenging, as it is usually a 2% conversion rate for successfully acquiring these links. However, when these links are acquired, the SEO performance of the targeted website can improve dramatically. A website may only need as few as 10 of these links to drastically improve their SEO performance.
To find and acquire the links, you will need the following tools and to follow these processes.
Tools
- A web page analyser or scraper tool. You can use Xenu Link Sleuth, Screaming Frog or Scrapebox
- You will need to install the Moz Toolbar
- Google search date filter
- Microsoft Excel
- Conduct a search for a keyword and filter the results by a date range. (Ideally, before 2010).
- Collect a sample of URLs based on the Domain and Page Authority provided by Moz tools. Initially aim to collect a sample of 50.
- Run the domains through the scraper tools and look for broken external links that appear on the website.
- Collect a list of the external links and either match or develop content on your site to pitch to the website.
- Once ready, pitch the link to the new content to the website manager so that it will replace the broken link that is on their website.
Website outreach
Website outreach is essentially pitching for a feature on another website. In a way, it is a form of digital PR. When implemented well with the right pitch and follow-up, it can generate a steady flow of links for the website. If done incorrectly, it can also lead to a lot of wasted time and resources.
The tools you will need to use include:
- Moz Research Tools
- Buzzstream
- Majestic SEO
- Ahrefs
One of the most effective methods is to target websites of competitors that have already provided them with links to their website. By using tools such as Moz’s research tools, Majestic SEO and Ahrefs, you can scrape the banklink data of your competitors websites to see what links they have that are contributing to their website’s SEO success. Following the acquisition of this data, it will be up to the SEO to develop a link profile that will match and exceed that of their competitors. Majestic and Moz can provide metrics to measure the authority of the websites and web pages.
Once these have been identified, the pitch process needs to be implemented. This will usually be done by email. However, using cold calling and event networking can also work wonders.
Things to keep in mind when pitching include:
- Pitching relevant content to them and their audience
- Ensure that what you are pitching adds value to them and what their endeavours are
- Pitch the benefits of them linking to your content
Once done, you can review the live link to ensure that:
- The link isn’t broken.
- The link doesn’t have the ‘nofollow’ attribute.
- The link looks natural.
Link creation opportunities
This covers a wider range of SEO activities such as gaining authoritative posts, for example, interviews, reviews, guest blogs, testimonials and more. The tool you can use to help find and create these opportunities is Link Prospector from Citation labs. This tool will help you find content promoters and will also scrape data for websites that provide link and resource pages, provide giveaways, reviews, donations and guest posting. This tool automates the data collection process and can be filtered by country and language.
These are a few methods that can successfully be used to improve your website’s SEO performance. The tools provided are relatively inexpensive and will help you scale your link building activities to improve the SEO on your website.
