Monitoring the Google ranking of your pages occasionally is nearly mandatory to track your SEO progress. So, how exactly to do it? What tools to use? You will find that out here.

When we start our SEO project, one of the first tasks is setting a realistic goal. If your site is not in the top ten of the SERP, reaching that can be your initial aim, followed by the top three.

Afterward, you must check your site’s ranking as you improve your site’s content, structure, and backlink profile. Luckily, it is not as complex as many think.

This blog assembled some of the top tools to find out the ranking of any keyword. We also explained how to use them alongside their pricing, so kindly stick to the end.

The Unreliability of Simple Google Searches to Check Your Google Ranking

When we think about checking our pages’ Google ranking, one of the very first cost-effective methods that comes to our mind is searching with its keywords on Google.

Each of your pages may contain several keywords that can help it rank in SERP. So, does this method work? Yes and no.

Suppose you searched with the appropriate keywords on Google. Low and Behold! There’s your page within the first ten rankings!

Before you start celebrating, we should break it down that this result is not always as reliable as you think. We can think of two major reasons behind that.

Personalization

Google and many other small and big online platforms utilize a personalization system to show results relevant to your recent activities. Here, the results can be biased and influenced by you.

For example, if your activity makes it seem like you own a cat, you will get results related to felines rather than canines when you search for pets.

Similarly, your constant visit to your own site may make Google recommend it more. Another example will be to find your pages rank higher in your current location but not your targeted one.

You can solve this by using a different account for your searches. This way, your personal activities won’t affect your search results. Sadly, a little influence is still inevitable.

So, turning off Google personalization on your work account is an effective method.

Search Volume

As we mentioned, there can be more than one keyword that is helping your page rank. So, you search with one of them, and your page ranks pretty high.

Now, there can be an issue here. This keyword may not have much search volume. Search volume refers to the number of visitors that enter a keyword query into their search bar.

That means that while ranked high, your site may still not get much search traffic through that keyword.

Here, you will need to check with other keywords to ensure they also aid the page rank.

Searching with Each Keyword Is Also Time-Consuming

It will take several Google searches with different keywords to check the ranking of one of your pages. Imagine doing that for many of your pages, especially if your site is big.

It will take so much time and effort, which is a total waste, given how you can use even some free tools to get better results.

5 Tools to Use to Check Your Google Ranking

Here are five of the best tools to check your Google ranking. Some of them are free, and others are subscription-based. Some also have both options, with the latter giving better features.

1. Google Search Console

The Google Search Console is one of the most standard tools for various SEO-related tasks. As a tool by Google itself, its results are highly reliable. It is also fairly easy to use.

Some features of Google Search Console include-

• Knowing how well a keyword may perform to generate some potential keywords for your next content.
• Checking the ranking of your site with various useful details.
• Comparing earlier results to find out the fruit of your SEO efforts.
• Getting tips from the tool to improve your SEO and ranking.

Here is how you can use it-

• Enter Google Search Console
• Verify your website or page that you want to check
• Select the ‘Performance Report Dashboard’. It will show you data related to your site or page in question.

• You can see all the necessary information from here, including Average Position, Click-Through Rate (CTR), Total Clicks, etc.

Price: Free

Link: https://search.google.com/search-console/about

2. Ahrefs

While most use Ahrefs primarily for link-building projects, this powerful tool offers much for your SEO journey. You can track the average position of your site using it as well.

The tool is arguably the most used in the SEO industry by professionals and beginners.

Aside from your ranking, you can also check the keyword metrics to know the keywords that help your site rank. Here is how you can do it-

• Go to Ahrefs, sign in, and enter its ‘Organic Keywords’ section.
• Search with your website URL.
• The tool will show you a list of all your pages with a detailed description of the number of keywords that are helping your pages rank in the top 100 of SERP. It will also show the top keywords.

• Use the filters above to show results within specific timeframes, locations, etc.

Next, let’s show you how you can check your site’s Google ranking-

• Click on the ‘Rank Tracker Tool’ in the Ahrefs dashboard
• Search with URL or add keywords to track.

• You can now check the different graphs representing the average positions, traffic, and SERP features on the resulting dashboard. It will also show the top keywords for your site.

There is a ‘competitor’ function besides the ‘overview’ where you can find your competitors that are ranking with the same keyword as yours.

Price: Standard Plan = $179/month

Link: https://ahrefs.com/rank-tracker

3. SEMRush

If you are managing a small business or something on a small scale, SEMRush will be one of your most handy tools. It has so many premium features and services at a fairly low cost.

When checking your site’s ranking, the tool shows you the top keywords and divides them by their performance.

So, you can see how many keywords are helping your site reach the top 100th position and how many are doing so for the 20th, followed by the 10th and 3rd. It also shows the visibility for each keyword.

Let’s see how to use SEMRush-

• Visit SEMRush and select their ‘Position Tracking’ tool.
• Search with your site’s URL to track it. Add the specific keywords. You can add up to 10 keywords with the free version.
• If necessary, filter the results.
• Explore the ranking overview containing the visibility and top keywords.

• If you hover your cursor on the SERP feature, it displays the keywords that are working the best.

Price: $120 per month.

Link: https://www.semrush.com/position-tracking/

4. AccuRanker

Accuranker is a free SEO tool with a subscription plan that can clear some restrictions you would face on the free version. This tool is one of the simplest yet most useful tools with a user-friendly interface.

Normally, the tool will limit you to five searches per day on the free plan. You also will have a limit to the number of keywords you can search.

However, the premium version will cost $109 per 1000 keywords monthly.

AccuRanker offers a detailed view of your SERP ranking based on the keyword you chose. We recommend using the filters.

You can also switch between desktop or mobile to see the ranking for each device. Here’s how to use AccuRanker-

• Visit the site and go to its SERP Checker section.
• Fill the bars with your desired keyword, select the country and location, and search.
• You will be required to register to see the result. Note that the site doesn’t accept Gmail accounts, so you need to use a different type of email address.
• Afterward, you can check the result. It will include the search result for that keyword, similar to how you can see it on your regular Google searches.

How is it different from a regular Google search? Well, it removes one of the inevitable issues you have with searching a keyword on Google: to have personalized results.

The result you will see on AccuRanker is not personalized and completely accurate.

Price: Free or $109 monthly per 1000 keywords.

Link: https://www.accuranker.com/rank-tracker/

5. SERanker

While SERanker is a paid tool, its low-cost services attract countless SEO experts worldwide. This tool offers the following services-

• Rank Tracking
• On-page SEO Checking
• Backlink Checking
• Keyword Distribution and Tips
• SERP Competitor Analysis
• Website Audit
• Project Overview
• Content Marketing

If you want to check your site’s ranking using SERanking, follow the instructions-

• Visit the tool’s site and select the Rank Tracker tool.
• Select a plat, whether the free one or the subscription.
• Afterwards, you will need to sign in.
• Once you do, the tool will let you enter your site’s URL, let you enter keywords manually, and select locations. They may also add some keywords by themselves.
• Afterward, you can check your site’s average position and the number of keywords helping it rank from the ones you manually entered.
• You can also recheck your ranking later and compare the results.

This picture only holds the SEO ranking for one day. Hence, it couldn’t show many details.

Price: $18.70 monthly. You will get a 14-day free trial with no card needed.

Link: https://seranking.com/

Tips to Check Keyword Position Correctly

Here are some tips that can help you check your keyword position accurately-

• If you are searching on Google for a keyword to know the top pages with it, turn off your personalization first.
• Use a separate work account to prevent your personal activities from affecting your search results.
• When using an SEO tool to know keyword ranking, use the filters to pinpoint your results.
• You will get an average position from all the SEO tools but not the exact location. You will need to select a timeframe to see where your site ranked over a specific period.
• When adding keywords manually, add as many as possible since it can give you a better result. It can also give you ideas on which keywords to focus more on.

The process of growing a website’s organic search traffic is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Link building is hard and you will need any help you can get.

To explore the top five link building extensions for browsers, we need to discuss the influence of the extensions on SEO.

Top 5 Extensions For Browsers

Here are the best available extensions that can help you climb SEO rankings.

1. Ahrefs SEO Toolbar

Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is a free-to-download extension for Chrome and Firefox, used by 200k+ SEO professionals across the world.

Free Features

1. Concise on-page SEO report:

Ahrefs SEO Toolbar lets you analyze the on-page elements for any page with one simple click.

The “Content” section of the report contains: title and description of the page, published and update dates, and word count.

The “Indexability” section is composed of: canonical URL check, sitemaps, directives for crawlers and Hreflang tags.

The “Social” section shows Open Graph tags and Twitter cards.

The “Images” section covers alternate texts and titles.

2. Checks redirects and HTTP headers: The Ahrefs SEO Toolbar enables the ability to check HTTP status codes and full redirect chains in a single click, as well as HTTP headers for indexability and crawlability.

3. Highlights various types of links: The toolbar presents you with the option to highlight external links (including broken links) on a page, making it easier to evaluate link opportunities.

4. SERP country changer: The toolbar lets you change the location of search engine result pages without a VPN or proxy to see how search results look in different countries.

Paid Features

1. Checks SEO metrics: With a paid subscription to Ahrefs, the toolbar lets you check crucial SEO metrics of each page or website you visit. The metrics include:

• Domain Rating (DR)
• URL Rating (UR)
• Ahrefs rank (AR)
• Numbers of backlinks
• Numbers of referring domains
• Estimated organic search traffic
• Number of keyword rankings

2. Analyze top-ranking search results: Analyze the competition by instantly checking the aforementioned metrics for top search results.

2. MozBar

Mozbar is one of the leading browser extensions in the SEO industry, which helps improve SEO rankings with multiple free and premium useful features.

Free Features

1. Custom Searches: The MozBar toolbar lets you create custom searches by country, engine, region, or city to give you the competitive edge with the knowledge of what your region-based audience wants.

2. Page Analysis: Similar to Ahrefs SEO Toolbar, MozBar also lets you check the metrics like Page Authority(PA) and DA of any website you visit. It can also display on-page elements like titles, meta descriptions, or alt texts.

3. Authority Scores: MozBar lets you quickly assess ranking probability with PA and DA. This feature lets you know when your content needs more attention.

4. Data Export: MozBar lets you export your Dashboard, Insights, Rankings, Page Optimizations, Site Crawl, Performance Metrics, Links, Site Traffic, and Custom Reports as PDF and occasionally as CSV.

Paid Features

With a Moz Pro subscription, you can gain access to Mozbar Premium:

1. Keyword Difficulty score: MozBar Premium lets you view keyword difficulty scores for any search term on any SERP in real time.

2. Page Optimisation: MozBar Premium scores pages on a scale of 100 for keyword optimization; provides detailed suggestions on how to optimize the target keyword; breaks down the score by fixes needed and positive factors already in place.

3. Semrush SEO Toolkit

The Semrush SEO Toolkit provides multiple instruments in their Dashboard to help you with link building:

Backlink Analytics

Backlink Analytics presents you the ability to examine your own and your competitors’ backlink profiles and compare multiple domains side by side with the help of the Quick Comparison feature.

Backlink Audit

Backlink Audit lets you audit your domain’s profile to take an analytical look at which links positively or negatively affect your rankings with the help of integration with Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Majestic.

Price

While Semrush allows you to use certain tools for free, the ones mentioned above are locked behind a paywall. Click here to find out how much their subscription-based service costs.

4. Hunter.io

Hunter.io is a powerful SEO tool for streamlining the process of finding and contacting potential link partners. Here are the key link building features that Hunter.io hoists:

Email Finder

The Hunter extension allows you to find the email addresses of people associated with the visited website or domain with one simple click, letting you effortlessly contact fellow site owners and plan mutual features. Building such relationships is a crucial part of link building.

Domain Search

Hunter extension offers a search tool that allows you to find email addresses associated with the domain. This feature is useful for finding contact information for websites relevant to your exact niche.

Bulk Email Management

Hunter.io has a bulk email management feature that allows you to find and verify multiple emails and send personalized emails to multiple contacts at once without wasting your precious time.

Price

The extension is available to download for free on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; however, some of the features, such as link tracking and prioritized customer service, are locked behind a paywall.

5. Grammarly

While Grammarly is primarily a writing enhancement tool, it is just as important for link-building as the other options here. The quality of your content is directly proportional to the authority of your site. Here are the key features their browser extension offers:

Grammar Check

 The Grammarly extension can identify and correct over 150 types of grammar and punctuation errors before your content reaches the reader. A pleasant consumer experience is one of the building blocks for gaining brand recognition.

Plagiarism Detection

Plagiarism can not only invite unwanted lawsuits but also leave you unwanted for potential backlinks. The Premium version of the extension comes with the “Plagiarism Checker” feature. 

Price

The extension is free to download on Chrome, but features like “Use Inclusive Language,” “Plagiarism Detection,” and “Adjust Writing Tone” are only available to Premium and Business users.

Conclusion

Browser extensions have become an indispensable tool for SEO professionals looking to streamline their link building efforts. By providing real-time insights and metrics, extensions like Ahrefs SEO Toolbar, MozBar, and SEMrush SEO Toolkit make it easier than ever to analyze competitor backlink profiles and improve the overall quality of your website’s link profile.

Extensions like Hunter.io simplify the outreach process by helping you find and verify email addresses associated with target websites, while Grammarly ensures your outreach emails and content are free of grammar and spelling errors.

Conclusively, leveraging the power of these browser extensions can give you a significant advantage in the competitive world of link building. By providing insights at your fingertips, they enable you to make informed decisions, optimize your link-building strategy, and ultimately drive more organic traffic for your website. So, go ahead; try one out and make your own life easier.

Let’s be real: Having an in-house team for link building is always better than freelanced options. You can control the quality of the links and can have better results in less time. 

However, it can be way too expensive, especially for a startup, to have several people working in an in-house environment for SEO. 

Our link building pricing article estimated that it would take at least $14,987 per month to run a team of people for link building, $8,424 if you’re hiring from overseas.

That’s why sometimes hiring freelancers can be the only option. 

There are tons, and I mean tons, of freelancers looking for the next link building client. If you put out a LinkedIn post right now, you’ll get a lot of CVs in your mail.

However, what’s the best way to get a perfect link building candidate? 

Here at RankPa, we work with some of the best marketing experts in the city. As a result, we do have a bit of knowledge when it comes to hiring the right people.

With that being said, here’s your ultimate guide to hiring freelance link builders. 

The Issues with Hiring Freelancers for Links

To better explain the most common issue with hiring freelancers for link building, have a look at the screenshot below –

This screenshot, fetched from Fiverr, shows a freelancer offering a staggering number of “high authority” backlinks at the lowest possible price. 

On top of a cheap rate, they are also offering “super fast delivery.”

With one look, we can easily say that this is the big red flag you will come across when trying to hire link builders. 

Anyone offering hundreds of links in a short time is just going to give you a bunch of spam links. Those links will do more harm than good!

With that example out of the way, here are some more pointers about the issues with freelancers working on getting you links: 

1. Quality Control

When you hire freelancers for link building, ensuring the quality of the links they acquire can be a big challenge. 

Unlike in-house teams or reputable agencies that follow strict guidelines and quality checks, freelancers may not always adhere to the same standards. 

This becomes an even bigger issue when you don’t have sufficient knowledge of the SEO world or just a beginner. 

This can lead to:

• Low-Quality Links: Freelancers might acquire links by using low-quality websites or private blog networks (PBNs), which can harm your site’s credibility and rankings.
• Irrelevant Links: The links may come from sites irrelevant to your niche, reducing their effectiveness and potentially raising red flags with search engines.

2. Lack of Accountability

Freelancers are independent contractors. Unlike a member of an in-house team, they may not always be available to provide updates or address issues promptly. 

Misunderstandings and delays in communication can slow down your link-building efforts and lead to missed opportunities.

Without a dedicated team to monitor progress, the results can be inconsistent, making it difficult to gauge the effectiveness of your link-building strategy.

3. Risk of Penalties

Google and other search engines are continually updating their algorithms to crack down on manipulative link-building practices. 

Freelancers, particularly those offering low-cost services, may engage in tactics that can result in penalties, such as:

• Link Schemes: Participating in link schemes or buying links can lead to severe penalties, including deindexing.
• Over-Optimization: Using exact-match anchor text excessively can trigger algorithmic penalties, harming your site’s rankings.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t hire freelance link builders.

Just like there are many people selling cheap, low-quality links for money, there are also respected freelancers who put a lot of effort and work with you to ensure you reach your SEO goals. 

And you can differentiate between them during the hiring process. Let’s get down to the tactics of it!

Find Link Building ExpertsWhere to Find Link Building Experts

Freelance link builders are easily available on various online platforms. There, you can get outsourced talents from many countries who work on projects at a much cheaper rate.

If you’re trying to look offline, then there are some limited options as well. 

Here are the places you will find link building experts: 

Upwork

Arguably the best platform for outsourcing, Upwork can be your first choice to hire link building experts. 

You can either post your job offer with the project budget/hourly rate you have in mind or hire from one of their experts. 

The best part of using Upwork is that you will, most of the time, find excellent candidates.

However, most of these experts are looking for good pay. Therefore, you will need a good budget to hire people from Upwork. 

Fiverr

Fiverr is another well-known freelance platform. However, its services are structured slightly differently than Upwork’s.

Instead of posting a job ad, you will have to select from people advertising themselves. 

You will often encounter many “experts” who offer a large number of links with a short turnaround time – as we showed in the example before.

That’s why Upwork is usually better. But it does not mean you can’t find good prospects on Fiverr.

Freelancer

Similar to Upwork, Freelancer allows you to post job ads or offer to hire people directly based on their profile. 

However, there are slight differences.

Freelancer’s barrier to entry is not as restricted as Upwork. As a result, you will find a lot more low-quality candidates on Freelancer.

However, compared to Upwork, you will find link builders who will charge a lot less for their work on Freelancer, which isn’t always a good thing, as we described before. 

LinkedIn

Of course, the biggest network of employed people will have experts who can help with your link projects!

With LinkedIn, you have a detailed view of the profiles of potential candidates. 

You can also see how connected they are in the industry, as those connections can be really helpful for securing high quality backlinks. 

Forums & Communities

People who are invested in the world of SEO will often engage in online forums and communities. 

The advantage of looking here is that you will usually find people who are proven experts and also help newcomers to the industry. 

Here are some of the options:

1. Slack Communities

Slack is a communication platform for professionals and could be your next stop for finding link building experts.

Check out our link building Slack communities article for some great selections. 

2. Forums

A lot of top link building websites have forums where experts answer questions and provide insights.

While it is easy to find such forums with a simple Google search, the hard part is contacting them and waiting for their response.

3. Reddit

Reddit, while not the best platform on this list for finding freelancers, can still be your choice for connecting with potential hires. 

Here are the subreddits you should look into: 

• r/seoandbacklinks
• r/linkbuilding
• r/linkaggregators
• r/seo
• r/bigseo
• r/seolinkbuilding

Conferences

If you want a more offline or IRL approach, then the best place to look is at conferences. 

SEO conferences take place all over the world, uniting marketing experts and creating opportunities to network and grow. 

These conferences can connect you with the brightest minds of the SEO community. 

Here are 8 SEO conferences that you should not avoid this year! 

Process of Hiring Freelance Link Builders

Now, let’s get into the details. 

If you have read through the earlier parts of this article, you already have a good idea of what to look for and where. 

In this section, we will explain as thoroughly as possible the process of hiring freelancer link builders in five steps.

1. Write Ad

The first step is deciding on what you are looking for in a candidate and putting them into words. 

Here is a job post example that you can use by customizing it a little bit:

Job Title: Link Building Specialist Job Description: We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Link Building Specialist. As a Link Building Specialist, you will be responsible for developing and implementing effective link building strategies to improve our website’s authority and search engine rankings. Responsibilities: Develop and execute link building strategies to acquire high-quality backlinks.Conduct thorough research to identify potential link building opportunities.Outreach to relevant websites, bloggers, and influencers to establish partnerships and secure backlinks.Create engaging and persuasive outreach content tailored to different audiencesMonitor and analyze the effectiveness of link building campaigns, making necessary adjustments to improve results.Stay up-to-date with industry trends and algorithm updates to ensure best practices in link building.Collaborate with the content team to create link-worthy content and optimize existing content for link building purposes.Maintain accurate records of link building activities and report progress to the team. Requirements: Proven experience as a Link Building Specialist or similar roleStrong understanding of SEO principles and search engine algorithmsExcellent research, analytical, and organizational skillsExceptional communication and outreach skillsAbility to create compelling and tailored outreach contentFamiliarity with link building tools and software (e.g., Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush)Knowledge of different link building techniques and best practicesAbility to work independently and manage multiple projects simultaneouslyAttention to detail and a results-oriented mindset Preferred Qualifications: Experience in digital marketing or content marketingUnderstanding of Google Analytics and other SEO toolsFamiliarity website managementStrong network of industry contacts for potential link building opportunities How to Apply: If you are passionate about link building and have a proven track record of successful link building campaigns, we would love to hear from you. Please submit your resume, along with a cover letter detailing your relevant experience and examples of successful link building projects you have worked on.

Make sure your job post clearly states what your company/website needs. 

For example, if you only want someone to perform outreach and guest posts, then you should have a more unique job post.

Usually, a link building specialist will handle more responsibilities on top of guest posting. 

2. Post Ad

After making your job ad, it’s time to post it.

You can post the ad on platforms like the ones we mentioned above, including freelance platforms like Upwork or Fiverr. 

You can even post the job offer on LinkedIn and get interested candidates within days. 

It’s not unusual to get hundreds of candidates if you post your offer on several platforms. You will have to narrow it down through the vetting process.

3. Vetting

You can’t possibly interview hundreds of candidates without sufficient manpower.

That’s why it’s important to vet potential candidates by reviewing their CVs and profile. 

Here are the things to look for: 

Experience

Anyone can say they have 5+ years of experience. That’s why you should look for proven track records with past projects they have worked on.

Reviews

Via Upwork

Sites like Freelancer and Upwork have a review system. Check out how well clients have received their work in the past. Too many recent bad reviews can be a red flag.

Case Studies

Many excellent freelancers invest in making portfolios. The quality of the portfolio can tell a lot about the person’s commitment to work.

Case studies are excellent as they can show you how well a candidate’s effort has brought success in the past. 

What to Avoid

• Past examples showing poorly written articles
• Candidates proposing a list of websites they can get links from
• Asking for overtly low payment 
• Way too fast of a turnaround time
• Any absolute guarantees of securing ## of links in ## weeks

4. Interview

Hopefully, you will be able to narrow down the list of candidates through the vetting process we described. 

After that, it’s time to interview the lucky few caught by the net of your thorough search. 

Here are some of the questions you should ask your potential link builder:

• Can you secure 50 links for me in 30 days?

This is a trick question. If they answer yes, then you know that they are likely going to get your website tangled with link farms.

Good candidates will explain how it’s not probable to generate that many links while also caring about the quality of the backlinks.

• What tools and software do you use for link building?

Experienced link builders usually use tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz. 

• What is your most successful strategy for link building?

If they claim that private blog networks (PBNs) are their best strategy, it’s safe to avoid working with the candidate.

While PBNs can sometimes improve your site’s ranking by generating links, they are usually not a good practice.

If outreach and guest posts are their speciality, then it’s a green flag.

• Which industry have you worked in in the past?

Link building can differ in industries. 

Securing backlinks for SaaS or similar industries is very hard, and you will need someone experienced in that field if your website is in the same criteria.

• What is your approach to outreach for link building?

This is also an important question. 

You don’t want the candidate to send out spam emails. It’s mostly wasted hours.

A more focused approach is always better in this regard.

• How do you measure the success of your link building efforts?

It’s better if the candidate does not measure the success of their efforts via the number of links they secured.

Instead, it should be how their backlinks have brought meaningful improvement to the website’s growth. 

5. Trial

Once you get good answers, it’s time to test the candidates.

You can go forward with just one freelancer or put several to work in this step. 

The trial period can be a single project or two weeks of work. 

In this case, you may ask the freelancer to secure two backlinks for you. 

After they have done it, you can check the quality of the links by: 

• Checking the domain rating of the websites they got the link from
• Looking at the anchor texts and their placement
• Testing if you are getting any link equity from the backlinks

If you get positive results, it’s safe to say that you’ve found your perfect candidate!

Despite being one of the crucial aspects of a website’s SEO strategy, you shouldn’t rush into link building. There are a few obligatory steps to complete before delving into it.

When it comes to SEO, early birds get the worms. Starting in a niche where the competition has yet to build up is a nice way to build up your backlink profile quickly.

However, just because you have a website with little to no content doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time to start link-building.

In fact, as the process is continuous, your site should be totally ready before initiating that project. Overall, the readying-up process may take three to five months.

In this guide, we will show you the necessary activities to improve your website before you start getting backlinks from other domains.

Plans to Make Before Link Building

Before you even start with anything on your website, it is ideal to make some plans regarding the site. They can be on a wide range of topics. Some notable examples are:

Focusing on a Niche

After building a website and adding content, we usually have a particular niche in mind. However, this niche is often not as focused as it needs to be.

A focused topic usually attracts more traffic. Let’s say a website is on all things automotive, and another is about vehicle headlights. Now, you have an issue with your headlamps.

When searching online, you will likely prioritize the content specific to headlights as your guide to solving your issue. As such, focusing on your niche is often very important.

Alternatively, you can divide different topics in your preferred industry into multiple sections.

If your website has some content that isn’t focused yet, it is time to choose any particular topic unless the whole niche has low competition.

Making Your Aims

Aside from your niche, there are other goals you need to set regarding your SEO strategy. Some examples are-

• How much traffic are you looking for within a specific amount of time?
• What type of audience or community are you trying to attract?
• Your budget and the amount you can spend on various parts and processes of the site.
• How much money are you willing to make from your website?
• How will you monetize your website’s traffic? It can be through commercials, purchases, getting your service, or other means.

If you have these goals set, it will be easier to stay on track once you start getting a steady number of backlinks and traffic.

Learning Link Building

Whether you build your links yourself or have someone do it for you, it is always best to know the nooks and crannies of link building beforehand.

Information about backlinks can help you determine your goal and learn more about your competitors. It also tells you what to avoid when building links.

Knowing Your Audience

Researching your target community is a task that you must complete even before you start creating content for your site. It will give you insight into the people’s needs and wants.

Many website owners are experts in their niche but detached from their audience. Hence, what they deliver doesn’t often align with what the public wants.

It is better to go into community forums, groups, and channels specific to your niche to investigate your target audience thoroughly. Additionally, you can do the following-

• Research the market and find trendy stuff or products.
• Check your competitors for ideas or inspirations.
• Take expert suggestions.
• Reading the comments or threads under online blogs related to your niche.

This step is especially necessary when your industry deals with trendy products or services (like fashion or electronic gadgets).

Here, the public’s queries change constantly. So, getting in touch with the crowd is mandatory.

Processes to Complete Before Building Links

Knowing when you are ready to build links will prevent your site from facing unexpected challenges later on. After all, you need strong ground before building anything on it.

Let’s discuss the mandatory steps to finish to make your site ready for backlinks-

Having a Well-Rounded Website

A poorly built website is not suitable for link building for several reasons, such as:

• It won’t appear alluring to the people who would send backlinks your way.
• It may look uninteresting to the audience that comes to your site using the links.
• A poor user experience is very bad for your site’s SEO.

Before link-building, it is crucial to develop your website in a quality manner that works smoothly without any bugs. It should also have a nice interface and user-friendliness.

So, what makes a website’s display more appealing to visitors? Let’s find out below.

A Good User Experience

Certain aspects of websites are preferred by the general public. For example, some sites need a sticky notification bar, while others require it on the side.

Once someone enters your website, they may frequent it if they love the experience. A part of this falls on the appearance. Other notable factors are-

• Proper intractability
• Suitable color combination for the site, depending on your niche or industry (some color combinations look very bad)
• A visually appealing front page that showcases what your site has to offer
• A detailed ‘About’ and ‘Author’ page with information about yourself, your goal, and other important information
• Different sections for different parts to make it easier for the audience to navigate
• Quick operation and loading after the user interacts with anything
• Right placement of advertisements and links on the pages

Website Responsiveness

The responsiveness of a site means how well it appears and works on different devices and screen sizes. For a site to be well-developed and ready for link-building, it must be responsive.

A poorly built website may look astounding on a desktop screen but not nearly as good on a mobile device. Meanwhile, a good site will look striking, regardless of device or screen size.

You can see how a website works in different screen sizes by reducing the size of your tab or opening it on your mobile or tablet.

Having Indexed Pages

Your pages are unlikely to appear on SERPs if Google or other search engines have not indexed them. So, how do you get them indexed?

Most of it is possible simply by following our previous point, i.e., making a well-structured website with good navigation, structure, responsiveness, and content placement.

Additionally, there need to be some keywords related to your niche. While keywords are not very useful in SEO now, they still have pros, especially in getting your pages to appear in search results.

Making Quality Content

Quality content doesn’t necessarily mean only factually correct content. Your audience doesn’t necessarily come to read an essay but an engaging article.

So, while the content needs to contain accurate information, it must also be attractive, engaging, and, if possible, interactive. Of course, it should be helpful and solve the readers’ queries.

Remember our earlier section when we advised you about knowing your target audience? That task will come in handy here. Since you understand what your community wants, you can give them that.

Other attributes that you should consider when making your content are-

Better Than Your Competitors

During your link-building process, you will want to take some high-quality backlinking websites from your competitors to your site. It is called the Skyscraper Technique.

That will be possible if your content is better than that of your competitors. You can thoroughly observe their blogs, videos, etc. Then make yours more informative, add more pointers, etc.

You will have to get their attention in order to shift those linking sites to your domain. This can be done through guest blog posts, comments, or forum posts.

Emailing the website owners is another less effective method.

Aside from high-quality websites finding your content more linkable, Google may also notice your better content, which can raise your rank in SERPs.

Crawlable Content

Google uses crawler bots to analyze pages throughout the web and rank them properly. Since these bots follow the robots.txt policies, your content must also be according to them.

A non-crawlable content may not appear on the SERPs. Crawlers are what index your pages on the search engine. If you are wondering how to make your site crawlable, follow these points-

• Keep internal links between your pages, but make them look natural rather than artificial or forced.
• Make an XML sitemap and give it to Google.
• Last but not least, arrange your robots.txt files in the correct order.

Videos and Pictures

If words can’t describe something, visuals and infographics can. When creating content for your site, don’t stay fixated on blogs. Add other types of content and maybe nestle them together.

For example, if you explain something complex, like a DIY tutorial, a video of the whole process will attract more audience than blogs without it.

Natural Anchor Texts

A well-made piece of content or blog should have internal and external links. The former shares link equity throughout the domain, while the latter is also important for Google’s SERP.

The anchor texts must also seem natural for these links to appear natural. So, generic ones like ‘click here’ or ‘read more’ will only make the content look poor.

You can check some of the anchor texts we used in this article as examples.

Improving Your Content

You may already have content that is years old and not up to date. Some of this content may also not be suitable for your site’s current structure.

In that case, updating and improving these blogs and making them suitable for your site is necessary. You can-

• Update them according to recent times.
• Add more information, if possible.
• If you are offering new services or products that you didn’t offer before, you can include those in your content, too.
• Add more engaging and cohesive writing with better outlines.

Sometimes, you may even have to remove some content if it doesn’t align with your current goal or if you already have better versions.

Gathering Necessary Resources and Manpower

Link building is hard for various reasons. One of them is the cost of link building. There are multiple steps during the process that will require you to spend a good sum. The following are some-

• Buying Backlinks: The cost will depend on the linking site’s Domain Rating (DR) or Domain Authority (DA). There may also be subscription-based offers.
• Hiring Content Writers and Creators: Hiring writers for your site will cost a significant amount. However, the expense is well worth it.
• Hiring Link-Building Experts: Professionals such as link-building managers and assistants usually cost a lot to hire.
• SEO Tools: Before you start building links, competitor analysis is necessary. Tools like Ahrefs or Semrush will help here. If you get premium versions, each of these may cost over $590.

Of course, once you see the fruit of your link-building efforts, you will need to manage those backlinks and extra traffic, which may require additional manpower.

We should remind you that after all these expenses, you may still need resources to focus on your industry or business. So, assess your budget correctly before starting link building.

Checking Your Current Audience

Chances are that you are already getting some audience even before your backlinking campaign. These audiences may come from a wide range of places.

It will be good if you manage to find out where they are coming from. Many sites and apps do this in the form of surveys. 

Once you have this information, you can check the places that are sending the most crowds your way.

It will greatly help you later during your marketing and link-building process.

Setting Some Goals

We have already mentioned the aims of your link-building projects and website. However, while these aims are about results and budgets, there are other goals to set here. For example-

• You need to analyze and target some high-profile websites for backlinks as your goals. Using the skyscraper technique, you can get them from your competitors.
• You can use Ahrefs or Semrush to analyze your competitors’ backlinks. Of course, you will need to find your competitors first. Not all of them are worth researching.
• In that regard, keyword research related to your niche is imperative. Look at the keywords helping your websites rank, then check the top websites on SERP for those keywords.

Those are the competitors you should pay attention to and analyze.

Another goal to set is a predicted timeline for the entire process. You may plan to drastically improve your backlink profile within a few months. However, there is a catch.

The time it may take for your website to develop a good backlink profile and rank high may depend on your current position on SERPs.

If a site is already on the first few pages of SERP, it won’t take long since convincing reputable websites to send links won’t be difficult.

However, if the site’s ranking is much lower, it will take more time and effort. You may ask your SEO experts for an idea of the time it may take.

Steps to Take at the Beginning of Link Building

Okay, you have developed a well-structured website, made it easy to navigate, and filled it with high-quality content. So, what’s next?

We have already talked about keyword and competitor analysis. So, we won’t repeat those. Let’s say you have done these and found your target sites from which to get links.

It is the appropriate time to get their attention through various means. These methods are also part of your link-building scheme. Let us explain some factors here.

Creating Guest Posts

Guest posts are blogs you can post on other websites as a guest after getting their permission. Of course, you have to pitch in your idea of the article first and wait for their reply.

If they accept it, you can start writing a quality guest post to post it on their site. Making it engaging and high quality is crucial as audiences from that high-authority website will read it.

Make sure that the blog’s content is attractive to readers and suitable for generating leads. Nestle a backlink to your website inside the blog, but don’t add it repetitively.

The anchor text for this backlink also needs to be convincing for the readers to click on it, yet it should come off as natural.

Remember that not all websites will want to have guest posts. Some of them may even be very picky about them. These websites often set strict rules about guest posts.

Getting your ideas rejected can be common, and you may have to try several ideas on various websites before one accepts them.

Manually Reaching the Website Owners

Another way to get their attention is to reach out to website owners using personalized emails, letters, and other means. However, note that not all website owners may check their emails.

If you don’t receive any response, you can follow up. Don’t overdo it, though, and try other methods instead.

Of course, if you manage to build a collaboration, maintain it and stick to any set terms and conditions by the website owner.

Remember that you should start linking buildings as soon as possible. However, that doesn’t mean that you should ignore the necessary steps before that.

Readying everything before starting the link-building will be a clever move that increases the chance of success.

Outbound links are arguably as important as inbound links or backlinks since the former directly affects the quality of a page’s content. Blogs without authoritative sources often lack value.

Luckily, linking to a website is easier than getting one from a site. Here, the most complex task is to find the site to send a link to.

The linking process may vary slightly depending on which platform you use to create and post content on your site. However, the overall setting is the same.

In this article, we have explained the procedure of linking to a website and creating a clickable link when necessary.

What Is an Outbound Link?

An outbound link is a link that you put on your content that leads the audience to a different website. When you link content to a different site, it is an external link.

Meanwhile, when the link takes one to another page of the same website, it is an internal link.

External links are necessary to improve the quality of the content, while internal links can improve your site’s SEO by leading the audience to other pages of the domain.

What Is a Hyperlink?

A hyperlink or clickable link is text on a page that you can click on, allowing it to lead you to a different page or generate a pop-up.

Here, the text has a link connected to it. For example, this is a hyperlink that leads to our home page.

You can usually spot a hyperlink simply by looking at the different shades of the text. However, sometimes, it may not be easy to notice until you tap it or hover your mouse over it.

A hyperlink can lead to an image, video, PDF file, HTML file, or other file format in addition to another page.

What Is an Anchor Text?

The piece of text that holds the hyperlink is called an anchor text. Clicking on it will take the user somewhere.

The site owner or content maker must utilize appropriate and engaging anchor text that entices the audience to click on it.

Okay, now that we have explained the related terms, let’s proceed to the linking process step by step in the next section.

Finding the Right Website to Link to

First, you need to find a suitable website to send your backlink to. There are various points behind choosing a site. For example-

• It can hold more resources on the topic you are covering in your article
• You may have taken some inspiration or ideas from it and now want to credit them
• It can be a highly authoritative website (like a government site, official site, or famous news portal) that can back up your claim. Consider it like citing your source when writing an essay.
• The website owner may have requested you to send a backlink to them, especially if your own site is one with a high domain authority (DA).
• You may simply want to create some internal links on your pages.

Considering the above factors, we can surmise that you need to link to a website that contributes to the overall value of your content.

So, it must be relevant to your niche. It is better if it is also on the same topic as the content.

After finding the website, you must also determine which page you want to link to. Again, choose the most relevant one for your blog.

Creating a Proper Anchor Text

Once you have found a suitable website and page, your next task is to add an anchor text to your blog. This text is where the link will be inserted.

Avoid very generic ones like ‘read more’ or ‘click here for more info’. Instead, go for natural and interesting anchor texts.

Note that John Mueller from Google tweeted about the importance of anchor texts. According to him, they help Google understand a link’s context.

Copying the Targeted Site’s Address

Next, you need to copy the address of the page you are about to link to. Doing so is very straightforward and can be done in multiple ways.

Copying the URL from the Search Bar

Firstly, you can copy the page’s URL from the search bar. Check the top of your screen, and you will find the search bar.

• If you are using a desktop or laptop, you can click on the search bar above the link and right-click. This will show a menu from which you can click on ‘copy.’
• If you are using mobile devices, press and hold the link text in the search bar. You will then have the option to copy the text.

Using the Share Option

Sharing the page is also another option to get its linking address.

• Go to the page first.
• If you are using Chrome browser, select the three dots on the top right of the screen.
• Click on ‘Save and Share.’
• Select ‘Copy Link.’

• If you are using Microsoft Edge, then select the share button near the top right corner of the screen.
• From the pop-up window, select ‘copy link’ as shown in the image below.

Inserting the Link to Your Anchor Text

Creating a hyperlink in your content may vary based on the platform you are using to create it. Here, we have given some examples-

Creating Hyperlinks in Google Docs

Inserting links to an anchor text in Google Docs is as simple as it can go. You don’t need browser extensions or anything for that.

• Select the anchor text.
• Right-click on the mouse.
• Click on ‘Insert Link’.

You can shorten this process by highlighting the anchor text and using the keyboard command ctrl+k. This command should also work in many other places besides Google Docs.

• Paste your copied link in the empty bar in the pop-up window.
• Select ‘Apply.’

And voila! You have successfully linked your content to the targeted page.

Creating Hyperlinks in WordPress

You may be surprised to know that adding a link to a text or content is even easier on WordPress than on Docs. Let’s give you the rundown of the process-

• Go to the visual editor and highlight your anchor text.
• Right-click on the mouse.
• Select the linking symbol (🔗) from the menu.

Once you click on it, you will get a new menu with a text bar on the top.

• First, type or paste the copied URL (the target page’s link) on the text bar.
• Then, select one of the options from below.

• We recommend the first option, ‘Open in New Tab,’ for most links. This option causes the targeted page to open in a new window once someone clicks on the hyperlink.
• The second option allows you to use the ‘nofollow’ command. This command makes Google crawlers ignore the link, which is necessary for links that are irrelevant to your content.
• The third option is for sponsored links. It comes in handy when you are making a list of the best products from some affiliated platform.

Creating Hyperlinks to WordPress HTML

Adding a hyperlink using WordPress HTML is not really necessary since you can do it far more easily with the normal editor. However, if you still want to do it, here is how-

Type in the following: <a href=”URL”>link text</a>

Here, you replace the URL with the link (with the quotation marks still there) and replace the ‘link text’ with your anchor text.

However, if you want the targeted page to open in a new window, you may need to use the target=”_blank” attribute. So, the code will look like this-

<a href=”URL” target=”_blank”>link text</a>

Creating Hyperlinks in Microsoft 365

If you are using Microsoft 365 Word and want to add a hyperlink, follow the steps-

• Select your anchor text.
• Go to ‘Insert’ from the navigation b bar at the top.
• Click on ‘Link’.
• Select ‘Insert Link’.

Once you select it, you will get a new pop-up where you can type in or paste the link.

• Afterward, click on ‘Insert’, and you have successfully made the hyperlink.

How to Avoid Pushing Link Juice with Links

‘Link juice’ or link equity is the value or authority that a link transfers from one page to another. When a site adds a hyperlink to one of its content that leads to another site, the link can pass link equity.

It is one of the reasons why website owners want backlinks. However, you may not always want the audience to stop reading your blog and start focusing on the linked page.

If you want to avoid that, add the hyperlink in a way that will open the linked page in a new window.

Otherwise, if it opens on the same window, most of the audience will end up on the linked page rather than returning to your content.

If you want the hyperlinks to open in a new window, you need to set it up while uploading the content on your website. We already explained how you do it.

You just have to add the ‘target=”_blank” attribute in the code when adding the link address in the HTML.

Are Other Sites Linking to My Website Important?

Linking to other sites improves your content and contributes to your on-page SEO. Meanwhile, other sites linking to your domain help with your off-page SEO.

When another page links to your site, it is an inbound link or a backlink. Backlinks are crucial in ranking higher in SEO.

So, ample research and efforts on link-building are necessary for your site’s development. You need a proper link-building checklist for that.

Links are one of the top two ranking factors.

Without quality backlinks, it’s impossible to survive in the present competitive landscape. 

Here’s the deal: link building is one of the hardest aspects of SEO and nearly impossible without a clear roadmap.

That’s why the first part of your campaign should include creating a link-building checklist. 

Here’s what has worked for us and millions of webmasters:

Before You Start Link Building

Let’s say you’ve managed to get several high-quality links from authoritative sites. But your website takes ages to load. 

In this case, generating backlinks won’t be very fruitful when you have a bigger problem to solve. 

Load time is essential. A site that can load in under 1 second can get 3X more conversion than a site that takes 5 seconds to load. 

Therefore, before starting your link-building campaign, you must ensure your site is fully ready.

This means your website should be: 

• Fast-loading
• User-friendly 

Set Clear Goals 

You will feel lost in the ocean of link building if you don’t have clear goals. 

Your targets should be highly specific, but the gist of them could be:

• Increasing domain authority
• Driving targeted traffic
• Improving rankings for specific keywords
• Enhancing brand visibility and reputation

For example, if you aim to improve rankings for specific keywords, set a target number of high-quality backlinks you want to acquire within a certain timeframe.

Step 1: Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is the first step in any successful link-building strategy. 

Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush are invaluable for this task. 

They allow you to analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles, identify their top-performing content, and discover which websites are linking to them.

Why Competitor Analysis is Crucial

Competitor analysis helps you:

1. Identify Link Opportunities: Discover websites that are likely to link to your content.
2. Understand Content Trends: Recognize which types of content are performing well in your industry.
3. Benchmark Your Performance: Compare your backlink profile with your competitors to identify gaps and opportunities.

Using Ahrefs and SEMrush for Competitor Analysis

Here is how you can use two of the biggest SEO tools for competitor backlink analysis:

1. Identify Your Competitors: Use Ahrefs’ “Organic competitors” or SEMrush’s “Competitors” report to identify your main competitors. These tools list websites that are competing for the same keywords as you.

2. Analyze Competitor Backlink Profiles: Use Ahrefs’ “Site Explorer” or SEMrush’s “Backlink Analytics” to analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles. Look at:

• Total Backlinks: The total number of backlinks pointing to their site.
• Referring Domains: The number of unique domains linking to their site. A higher number of referring domains generally indicates a stronger backlink profile.
• Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (DR): A metric that indicates the overall strength of a website’s backlink profile.

3. Identify Top-Performing Content:

• Use Ahrefs’ or SEMrush’s “Top Pages” report to identify which pages on your competitors’ sites are attracting the most backlinks. This will help you understand which types of content are most valuable.
• Pay attention to content formats that perform well, such as blog posts, infographics, research studies, or guides.

4. Discover Linking Websites:

• Examine the list of websites linking to your competitors. These are potential targets for your own link building efforts. Use the “Referring Domains” report in Ahrefs or SEMrush to find these sites.
• Identify patterns in the types of websites linking to your competitors. Are they industry blogs, news sites, resource pages, or directories?

Identifying Patterns and Opportunities

Now, the purpose of doing competitor analysis is to find patterns that work.

 This will help you discover link building opportunities as well. 

1. Content Types That Attract Links: Determine which content formats attract the most backlinks. For example, if you notice that your competitors are getting a lot of links to in-depth guides or research studies, consider creating similar high-quality content.
2. Popular Topics: Identify popular topics within your niche. If certain topics are consistently attracting backlinks, creating content around these subjects can improve your chances of earning links.
3. Outreach Targets: Compile a list of websites that frequently link to your competitors. We will get more into finding outreach targets in the next section. 

Step 2: Finding Outreach Targets

Don’t just start randomly sending emails to anyone for links. 

First, you have to find high-quality websites. 

Why Do Quality Outreach Targets Matter?

High-quality backlinks from reputable websites significantly boost your site’s authority and improve search engine rankings. 

Targeting the right websites ensures that the links you acquire are valuable and beneficial for your SEO efforts.

Tools for Identifying Outreach Targets

1. Moz’s Link Explorer

Moz’s Link Explorer is a powerful tool for discovering potential link opportunities. Use it to find websites linking to your competitors and analyze their backlink profiles.

2. Ahrefs:

Ahrefs’ “Site Explorer” and “Content Explorer” are invaluable for finding relevant sites. 

“Site Explorer” helps you analyze competitors’ backlinks, while “Content Explorer” allows you to find popular content in your niche, revealing who’s linking to it.

3. SEMrush

SEMrush’s “Backlink Analytics” and “Organic Research” tools help you discover top referring domains and analyze competitor strategies. 

The “Backlink Gap” tool allows you to compare backlink profiles with competitors and find websites that link to them but not to you.

Finding High-Quality Outreach Targets

The first step to finding high-quality outreach targets is to determine relevance.

If you are running a website about shoes, there is no point in getting backlinks from a site that’s about computers. 

The website you are getting backlinks from should be relevant to your industry. 

Then, you need to assess domain authority. 

Domain authority (DA) is a metric that indicates the overall strength of a website’s backlink profile. Higher DA sites typically offer more SEO value.

Use Moz’s Link Explorer, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to check the DA of potential outreach targets. 

Aim for websites with a DA higher than your own, as links from these sites will likely have a greater impact on your rankings.

Lastly, analyze the backlink profiles of potential outreach targets. 

Look for sites with healthy backlink profiles and links from reputable, high-authority domains.

Avoid sites with many spammy or low-quality backlinks, as these can negatively impact your SEO efforts.

Step 3: Create Linkable Assets

You can either spend thousands to buy links or create linkable assets that naturally attract backlinks. 

To be realistic, you might have to do both. 

However, Google’s guidelines are against buying links.

Also, others will be more likely to link to you when you can offer value to their readers. 

What are Linkable Assets?

Linkable assets are content types designed to attract links from other websites. 

They provide significant value to the target audience and are often shared widely across the web. 

Let’s look at some examples: 

• Blog Posts: In-depth articles, how-to guides, listicles, and opinion pieces.
• Infographics: Visual representations of data or processes that are easy to understand and share.
• Research Studies: Original research, surveys, and reports that provide new insights or data.
• eBooks and Whitepapers: Comprehensive documents that cover a topic in great detail.
• Tools and Resources: Free tools, templates, calculators, or checklists.
• Videos and Webinars: Informative or entertaining video content that engages the audience.

The Importance of Creating Linkable Assets

High-quality linkable assets help you:

1. Attract Organic Backlinks: Compelling content naturally attracts links from other websites.
2. Drive Traffic: Valuable content can generate significant traffic to your website.
3. Build Authority: High-quality content positions you as an expert in your industry.
4. Increase Shareability: Shareable content enhances your reach through social media and other platforms.

How to Create Effective Linkable Assets

Start by researching your audience; understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. 

Identify trending topics and commonly asked questions in your industry. 

Use tools like BuzzSumo, Google Trends, and AnswerThePublic to find popular topics and content ideas.

Then, find out what kind of content is the most successful in your niches using the competitor analysis tools mentioned earlier. 

Step 4: Outreach

Effective outreach is the linchpin of a successful link building campaign. 

It involves: 

1. Strategically reaching out to potential link sources
2. Convincing them of the value your content brings to their audience and 
3. Persuading them to link back to your site

Why Personalized Outreach Matters

Personalized emails stand out in the crowded inboxes of webmasters, bloggers, and influencers. 

Generic, mass-sent emails are often ignored or deleted, while personalized messages demonstrate genuine interest and effort. 

Personalization shows that you’ve done your research and believe that your content provides real value to the recipient.

Steps for Effective Outreach

Here is how you can do outreach the right way: 

1. Research and Identify Targets

Use tools like Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush to identify high-quality websites relevant to your niche. 

Look for sites that have linked to similar content or those that you identified during your competitor analysis.

Create a list of potential outreach targets with their contact information. Tools like Hunter.io or Snov.io can help find email addresses.

2. Craft Personalized Emails

Personalize each email with the recipient’s name, website, and specific references to their content. This shows you’ve done your homework and are genuinely interested in their work.

Mention a specific article or post on their site that relates to your content. Explain how your content complements or adds value to their existing work.

3. Be Concise and to the Point:

Keep your emails short and focused. Busy webmasters appreciate clear, concise messages that get straight to the point.

Use a compelling subject line that grabs attention. Make it relevant to the recipient and hint at the value your content offers.

4. Highlight the Benefits:

Clearly explain the benefits of linking to your content. 

How does it add value to their readers? Will it provide additional insights, complement their existing articles, or offer a unique perspective?

Include a brief summary of your content and why it’s relevant to their audience. Highlight any unique data, research, or valuable insights.

5. Provide Easy Access:

Make it easy for recipients to link to your content. Provide the exact URL and suggest specific anchor text.

If appropriate, offer to reciprocate by sharing their content or providing a guest post in return.

6. Follow Up

If you don’t receive a response initially, follow up after a week or two. A polite reminder can often prompt a reply.

Keep your follow-up emails short and polite. Express understanding if they’re busy, but reiterate the value of your content.

Step 5: Broken Link Building

Broken links are links that point to a page that does not exist.

Broken link building is when you find broken links on other websites and offer a page of your own site as a replacement. 

Why Broken Link Building Works

Broken link building is advantageous because:

1. Mutual Benefit: Website owners are motivated to fix broken links to maintain user experience and SEO health, making them more likely to accept your replacement suggestion.
2. Value Addition: By offering a solution to the problem (the broken link), you provide immediate value to the website owner.
3. Improves SEO: Acquiring high-quality backlinks through this method enhances your website’s authority and search engine rankings.

Effective Broken Link Building Technique

Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to find potential target websites. 

Focus on sites that regularly update their content and have a good backlink profile.

Tools like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer or Screaming Frog SEO Spider can identify broken links on your target websites.

Review the broken links to ensure they are relevant to your content. 

The replacement content you offer should match the context and value of the original linked content.

Prioritize broken links on high-authority pages and those that have multiple backlinks pointing to them, as these are more valuable.

If you already have relevant content that can replace the broken link, you’re ready to proceed. 

When everything is ready, create a personalized outreach email and hit the send button!

Step 6: Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Technique, popularized by Brian Dean of Backlinko, is a powerful method for building high-quality backlinks by creating superior content and promoting it effectively. 

This technique involves three main steps: 

1. Identifying popular content with many backlinks
2. Creating a more comprehensive or visually appealing version and 
3. Reaching out to websites that linked to the original content to suggest your improved version

Here’s a detailed guide on how to execute the Skyscraper Technique successfully.

Why the Skyscraper Technique Works

The Skyscraper Technique leverages existing high-performing content to create an even better version that naturally attracts backlinks. 

The key reasons it works are:

1. Proven Demand: The original content’s popularity indicates a clear demand for information on that topic.
2. Enhanced Value: By improving upon the original, you provide even more value to readers, making your content more link-worthy.
3. Receptive Audience: Websites that have linked to the original content are likely to be interested in linking to a superior version.

Steps for the Skyscraper Technique

1. Identify Popular Content with Many Backlinks

Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or BuzzSumo to find content in your niche that has garnered a significant number of backlinks. Focus on topics relevant to your industry and audience.

Look for content types that naturally attract links, such as comprehensive guides, detailed lists, in-depth case studies, and data-driven research.

2. Analyze and Plan Your Content

Evaluate the original content’s strengths and weaknesses. 

Identify areas where you can provide additional value, such as updated information, more in-depth analysis, better visuals, or more engaging writing.

Plan your content to ensure it covers all the key points of the original but adds significant improvements. 

Consider including expert opinions, infographics, videos, or interactive elements.

3. Create Superior Content

Ensure your content is more detailed and covers the topic more comprehensively than the original. Aim to answer every possible question a reader might have.

Provide the latest data, trends, and insights that the original content may have missed or that have changed since it was published.

Use high-quality images, infographics, charts, and videos to make your content more engaging and visually appealing. 

Well-designed visuals can make complex information easier to understand and more shareable.

Focus on readability and user experience. 

Break up text with subheadings, bullet points, and short paragraphs. Ensure your content is mobile-friendly and loads quickly.

4. Reach Out to Websites Linking to the Original Content:

Use backlink analysis tools like Ahrefs or Moz to identify websites that have linked to the original content. Export the list of these websites for your outreach campaign.

Craft personalized outreach emails to the webmasters or editors of these sites. 

Explain how your content improves upon the original and why it would be valuable for their audience.

Step 7: Tracking Progress

After you have followed all of the steps above, you still have more work. 

Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz offer comprehensive features to help you keep track of your backlinks, keyword rankings, and overall website performance. 

Importance of Tracking Progress

1. Measure Effectiveness: Assess the success of your link building campaigns and determine which strategies yield the best results.
2. Identify Areas for Improvement: Recognize underperforming tactics and areas that need refinement.
3. Optimize Strategies: Use data insights to refine and enhance your link building methods.
4. Demonstrate ROI: Provide tangible evidence of your efforts and results to stakeholders or clients.

Key Metrics to Track

These are the metrics you should mostly care about:

1. Number of Backlinks Acquired

The quantity of backlinks indicates the reach and acceptance of your content. More backlinks generally correlate with higher search engine rankings.

Track both the total number of backlinks and the number of referring domains (unique websites linking to your content).

2. Domain Authority of Linking Websites:

The authority of the linking websites impacts the quality and value of the backlinks. High-authority links are more beneficial for SEO.

3. Changes in Keyword Rankings:

Improved keyword rankings indicate that your link building efforts are positively influencing your search engine visibility.

Observe changes in rankings before and after implementing your link building strategies to assess their impact.

4. Increase in Organic Traffic:

Organic traffic growth signifies improved search engine visibility and the overall success of your SEO efforts.

Google Analytics is an excellent tool for tracking organic traffic. Monitor the changes in organic traffic to your site over time, especially following link building campaigns.

Conclusion

Link building is a multifaceted process that requires careful planning, execution, and monitoring. 

By following this comprehensive checklist, you can build a robust backlink profile that enhances your website’s authority, drives targeted traffic, and improves your search engine rankings. 

Remember, the key to successful link building lies in creating valuable content, targeting the right websites, and maintaining consistent outreach efforts.

The process of growing a website’s organic search traffic is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Link building is hard and you will need any help you can get.

To explore the top five link building extensions for browsers, we need to discuss the influence of the extensions on SEO.

Top 5 Extensions For Browsers

Here are the best available extensions that can help you climb SEO rankings.

1. Ahrefs SEO Toolbar

Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is a free-to-download extension for Chrome and Firefox, used by 200k+ SEO professionals across the world.

Free Features

1. Concise on-page SEO report:

Ahrefs SEO Toolbar lets you analyze the on-page elements for any page with one simple click.

The “Content” section of the report contains: title and description of the page, published and update dates, and word count.

The “Indexability” section is composed of: canonical URL check, sitemaps, directives for crawlers and Hreflang tags.

The “Social” section shows Open Graph tags and Twitter cards.

The “Images” section covers alternate texts and titles.

2. Checks redirects and HTTP headers: The Ahrefs SEO Toolbar enables the ability to check HTTP status codes and full redirect chains in a single click, as well as HTTP headers for indexability and crawlability.

3. Highlights various types of links: The toolbar presents you with the option to highlight external links (including broken links) on a page, making it easier to evaluate link opportunities.

4. SERP country changer: The toolbar lets you change the location of search engine result pages without a VPN or proxy to see how search results look in different countries.

Paid Features

1. Checks SEO metrics: With a paid subscription to Ahrefs, the toolbar lets you check crucial SEO metrics of each page or website you visit. The metrics include:

• Domain Rating (DR)
• URL Rating (UR)
• Ahrefs rank (AR)
• Numbers of backlinks
• Numbers of referring domains
• Estimated organic search traffic
• Number of keyword rankings

2. Analyze top-ranking search results: Analyze the competition by instantly checking the aforementioned metrics for top search results.

2. MozBar

Mozbar is one of the leading browser extensions in the SEO industry, which helps improve SEO rankings with multiple free and premium useful features.

Free Features

1. Custom Searches: The MozBar toolbar lets you create custom searches by country, engine, region, or city to give you the competitive edge with the knowledge of what your region-based audience wants.

2. Page Analysis: Similar to Ahrefs SEO Toolbar, MozBar also lets you check the metrics like Page Authority(PA) and DA of any website you visit. It can also display on-page elements like titles, meta descriptions, or alt texts.

3. Authority Scores: MozBar lets you quickly assess ranking probability with PA and DA. This feature lets you know when your content needs more attention.

4. Data Export: MozBar lets you export your Dashboard, Insights, Rankings, Page Optimizations, Site Crawl, Performance Metrics, Links, Site Traffic, and Custom Reports as PDF and occasionally as CSV.

Paid Features

With a Moz Pro subscription, you can gain access to Mozbar Premium:

1. Keyword Difficulty score: MozBar Premium lets you view keyword difficulty scores for any search term on any SERP in real time.

2. Page Optimisation: MozBar Premium scores pages on a scale of 100 for keyword optimization; provides detailed suggestions on how to optimize the target keyword; breaks down the score by fixes needed and positive factors already in place.

3. Semrush SEO Toolkit

The Semrush SEO Toolkit provides multiple instruments in their Dashboard to help you with link building:

Backlink Analytics

Backlink Analytics presents you the ability to examine your own and your competitors’ backlink profiles and compare multiple domains side by side with the help of the Quick Comparison feature.

Backlink Audit

Backlink Audit lets you audit your domain’s profile to take an analytical look at which links positively or negatively affect your rankings with the help of integration with Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Majestic.

Price

While Semrush allows you to use certain tools for free, the ones mentioned above are locked behind a paywall. Click here to find out how much their subscription-based service costs.

4. Hunter.io

Hunter.io is a powerful SEO tool for streamlining the process of finding and contacting potential link partners. Here are the key link building features that Hunter.io hoists:

Email Finder

The Hunter extension allows you to find the email addresses of people associated with the visited website or domain with one simple click, letting you effortlessly contact fellow site owners and plan mutual features. Building such relationships is a crucial part of link building.

Domain Search

Hunter extension offers a search tool that allows you to find email addresses associated with the domain. This feature is useful for finding contact information for websites relevant to your exact niche.

Bulk Email Management

Hunter.io has a bulk email management feature that allows you to find and verify multiple emails and send personalized emails to multiple contacts at once without wasting your precious time.

Price

The extension is available to download for free on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; however, some of the features, such as link tracking and prioritized customer service, are locked behind a paywall.

5. Grammarly

While Grammarly is primarily a writing enhancement tool, it is just as important for link-building as the other options here. The quality of your content is directly proportional to the authority of your site. Here are the key features their browser extension offers:

Grammar Check

 The Grammarly extension can identify and correct over 150 types of grammar and punctuation errors before your content reaches the reader. A pleasant consumer experience is one of the building blocks for gaining brand recognition.

Plagiarism Detection

Plagiarism can not only invite unwanted lawsuits but also leave you unwanted for potential backlinks. The Premium version of the extension comes with the “Plagiarism Checker” feature. 

Price

The extension is free to download on Chrome, but features like “Use Inclusive Language,” “Plagiarism Detection,” and “Adjust Writing Tone” are only available to Premium and Business users.

Conclusion

Browser extensions have become an indispensable tool for SEO professionals looking to streamline their link building efforts. By providing real-time insights and metrics, extensions like Ahrefs SEO Toolbar, MozBar, and SEMrush SEO Toolkit make it easier than ever to analyze competitor backlink profiles and improve the overall quality of your website’s link profile.

Extensions like Hunter.io simplify the outreach process by helping you find and verify email addresses associated with target websites, while Grammarly ensures your outreach emails and content are free of grammar and spelling errors.

Conclusively, leveraging the power of these browser extensions can give you a significant advantage in the competitive world of link building. By providing insights at your fingertips, they enable you to make informed decisions, optimize your link-building strategy, and ultimately drive more organic traffic for your website. So, go ahead; try one out and make your own life easier.

An excellent link-building outreach campaign starts with link prospecting. Knowing the dos and don’ts of link prospecting will set you higher in the SEO game.

As you may already know, link prospecting refers to searching for websites with authority and relevance for link-building.

The quality of websites sending backlinks your way determines the strength of your backlink profile. Hence, going for the top sites for your niche is not something to trifle with.

If you want your link prospecting to yield results, you need a clear strategy. It can prevent everything from getting messy.

This blog should help you develop practical, straightforward, and quick plans for your link prospecting project.

What Is Link Prospecting?

Image Credit: Ahrefs

Link prospecting means finding websites for link-building. Yes, it involves only the searching part, so there is no reaching out or collaboration.

Listing top sites for link-building is an inevitable and inseparable part of link-building. Whether you are getting fresh new backlinks or want to replace broken links, it is vital to identify the suitable sites first.

Note that the websites you seek here must be within your industry. There are indeed some benefits from getting backlinks from irrelevant sites, but it’s nearly not enough.

While your page and domain’s link equity will still rise after getting an inbound link from an irrelevant site, you can’t expect many leads.

It loses one of the primary purposes of link-building per se. So, always try to aim for relevant sites. How do you find them, you ask? We will discuss that in-depth later in the blog.

For now, let’s show you some advantages of link prospecting strategies-

• Time Efficient: With a proper strategy, you can directly go for the right sites to reach out to without wasting time.
• Backlink Opportunities: Not all websites with high domain authority (DA) will want to send backlinks. However, finding the ones that do with a laid-out plan will save you some hassles.
• High-Quality Links: The links you are getting are sure to do some magic since the site is carefully selected from an array of options.
• Cost-Effective: Since you are less likely to make any mistake with a strategy, your link prospecting should cost less.

What Are the Usual Steps in Link Prospecting Strategies?

You can divide link prospecting into three stages. They are-

1. Creating or choosing a link-building strategy
2. Determining your target domains (which niche and DA should you go for)
3. Sorting out a list of websites to reach out to for links and collaboration

Let’s start with the first step on this list in the next section without further ado.

Choosing a Link-Prospecting Strategy

A full-fledged link-prospecting strategy goes a long way, as it will help you throughout your link-building endeavor. So, where to start?

First things first, you need to decide what you are prospecting for. You are probably looking for a suitable site to –

• Let you guest blog on their site
• Link insertion
• Use the skyscraper technique (linkable asset strategy)
• Get backlinks
• Replace any broken link

Each of these may take an entirely different link-prospecting campaign. Let’s go over them one by one.

Link Insertion

Link insertion is the act of placing a backlink on existing content on a website to a specific page on your site, usually for a fee.

As its name suggests, the site won’t add links to your site when creating new content but inserts them into already existing ones. Since this requires extra cost, it is better to only target quality sites.

How to Prospect for Link Insertion

A website that charges sky-high for a link may not be worth the expense. On the other hand, you may not easily get links from a website with DA over 70.

So, it is better to stick within DA 30 to DA 70 when looking for websites for link insertion and backlinks.

Why Link Insertion Is Essential for Link-Building

Link insertion can help you with-

• Improve your SEO ranking
• Driving traffic
• Less waiting to get the links
• Certainty of getting a link
• Easy and straightforward, with no requests needed

Cost of Link Insertion

Depending on your niche, the DA of the other website, and other factors, the cost of link insertion can be anywhere from $50 to $500 per link.

So, if you want 3-10 high-quality links with link insertion, you may need to prepare a budget of $1,500 to $5000.

What to Avoid During Link-Insertion

When prospecting for sites for link insertion, avoid link farms, as they are dangerous for your SEO. Remember that they will also sell links at a low cost, but Google will deem them link spamming.

Many such link farms may even have a high DA or domain rating (DR) through underhanded means, making those metrics somewhat unreliable.

You can check their organic traffic using tools like Ahrefs’s ‘Site Explorer’ to get a better idea of whether they are a legitimate website or a link farm.

Skyscraper Technique or Linkable Asset

Linkable assets are content that is worthy of linking. The linkable asset strategy is to ask a website to send links to high-quality content you just created. It increases the chance of getting a backlink.

A linkable asset campaign in which you try to replace a website’s backlink to one of your competitors with your own by creating better content is called a skyscraper technique.

Here, you check which pages of your competitor got a backlink from a high-DA website. (We have discussed competitor backlink profile analysis later in this blog).

Then, you create similar content with more value.

Afterward, you ask the authoritative website owner to replace their backlinks to your content.

How Can Linkable Asset Campaign Help You

Linkable asset campaigns can aid you in the following ways-

• Backlink Opportunities: Since your content is high quality, the websites will likely send a backlink.
• Backlink Control: It helps you control the backlinks you receive by telling website owners where to send them instead of to any random page on your site.
• Allows Skyscraper Technique: The skyscraper technique is proven to work wonders in SEO ranking and competition.

How Do You Prospect for a Linkable Asset Campaign?

When prospecting or searching for websites for your linkable assets, you can-

• First, find suitable websites with a topic or niche like yours.
• Then, find specific pages on that site with content that may benefit by linking to your asset. For instance, if your content is a case study, other pages that require that information may gain value from linking to it.
• Finally, ask the site owner to send backlinks, mentioning why your asset is suitable content for a link from that page on their domain.

What Not to Do During a Linkable Asset Campaign Prospecting?

When looking for sites to send links to your linkable assets, avoid the following-

• Don’t go for irrelevant sites or pages.
• Avoid using low-quality content as your asset. While it may be worthy of linking, remember that others may try to build skyscrapers on your content.
• If the website charges an amount, ensure that the site has a high DA to avoid any ROI loss.

Getting Backlinks

The most common reason people run a link prospecting campaign is to get backlinks from a website. To do this, you simply ask a site to send backlinks to your domain without specifying anything.

As always, you have to prospect for websites within the same niche and of high quality for the backlinks to hold high value. Otherwise, you can’t expect much link equity to pass.

Remember that many link farms will try to sell backlinks. Since this is black hat SEO, be sure to avoid them at all costs. Prioritize the quality of the link rather than the quantity.

If you are wondering how to find high-DA websites for links, you can use different SEO tools. There are free tools like Linkody or paid tools like Ahrefs or Semrush.

Guest Posting

Guest blogging is fun when you do it right. It is the process of writing blogs for another website that they will publish on theirs. You can add a backlink to this piece on your own site.

An effective guest posting strategy requires multiple steps done right-

• First, you need to prospect for the right websites suitable for a guest post. Obviously, not all of them will accept blogs from guests.
• Next, you need to study that site and generate ideas for guest post topics. The topics must be relevant to the group’s audience so that you can contribute value to them.
• Then, pitch the ideas to the website owner in a requesting and sincere tone. The pitching must be personalized. If it is made from scratch, that is all the better.
• If the site owner accepts your request, you write the article following their guest post guidelines and submit it. The site owners then publish it on their site.

Why Do You Need Guest Posting for Your SEO?

Guest posting can impact the SEO of your site positively in the following ways-

• Generate Traffic: After reading your guest post, audiences from another site may become interested in what you have to offer, which can drive organic traffic to your site.
• SEO Improvement: Having a backlink from a high-DA website (be it your own blog) contributes greatly to your SEO ranking.
• Potential Collaboration: Helps build relationships with high DA sites, making a future-proof backlink source for you.

How to Find High DA Websites That Accept Guest Posting?

Prospecting for a specific site within your niche that takes guest posting can be tricky. However, you can try the following methods-

• Some of these sites will promote the fact that they accept guest postings (which helps them too). Look out for them and reach out.
• Check a site’s ‘author’ or ‘about’ page for people working there. Then, check the names of the people who wrote the blogs or content there.

If they don’t match, the site probably accepts guest posts from outside people.

• You can use tools like ‘Guest Post Tracker’ to find sites with specific DA. Usually, a rule of thumb is to stick within sites with 30-70 DA for starters.

Anything below 30 DA will not contribute much to guest blogging, and anything over 70 DA will likely have too strict rules or be picky.

• Use Google’s search operator to specify “Guest Post,” “Add Article,” or “Write for Us,” etc. in your search, and Google should show you results that contain these keywords.

We have explained Google search operators in more detail later in this article.

• Analyze the backlink profiles of your competitors using Ahrefs or SEMrush. Check each competitor’s top linking sites. See which of their backlinks came from blog posts.

This way, you can find several guest posting sites quickly without having to spend so much.

• Check the author’s info under articles and see if it mentions the author to be a ‘guest blogger.’ If it does, then that article can be a guest post as well.
• Notice a website’s forums and comments and search with ‘guest blog’ on the site. You may find topics related to guest blogging.

Moreover, you can also visit Slack Communities and other online forums with topics related to SEO and guest posting and get ideas from people there.

• Search for names of guest bloggers on Google. Then, search with each name on Google.

Chances are that you will find some of their published articles on various websites that accept guest posts.

• You can use AllTop to get a list of blogs in your particular niche. Then, research some of these sites, and sure enough, you will find some that accept guest posts.

Use Ahrefs ‘Website Traffic Checker’ to estimate a website’s search traffic. Aim for ones with at least 1000 organic visitors.

Guest Post Farms and How to Avoid Them

There are websites that only post blogs from guests and charge a fee for them. These websites hardly provide any value to their audience and typically have low organic traffic.

A site can be a guest post farm if you notice the following-

• No content on it is published by the name of any worker (from its author/about page) of the site.
• The website has no payment option for guest posts or charges a fee during outreach.
• Its posts are on topics that aren’t often within the same topic, niche, or industry.

Determining Your Target Domains for Prospecting

Now that you have chosen what you are prospecting for, you need to make some aims about your target domains. You usually have to look at the site’s niche and authority or rating.

Niches You Should Aim for

Deciding which niche to target for link prospecting is more complex than it may sound. Yes, you may want to go for the ones that focus mainly on your own niche.

However, you may not always find high-authority sites within your niche. Sometimes, you must broaden your search and check out sites with a related niche.

You may even have to choose a much broader niche if the site is highly authoritative. For example, suppose your niche is in gazebo building DIY. You can either-

• Stick to a similar niche by prospecting other sites that discuss DIY gazebo building. Or,
• Go for related niches, like sites that focus on different types of DIY buildings, like houses, sheds, piers, boats, etc. Or,
• Target websites with an even wider niche, like housing content, different DIY sectors, bigger structures, construction sites, interior designing, landscape designing, gardening, etc.

The more relevant the website content is to your site’s content, the better to target them.

Target Metrics and How Much or Less to Aim for

As we said, you can’t aim for too low or too high when prospecting websites. However, before that, you should understand the SEO metrics well. There are-

• Domain Authority (DA): From 0 to 100, you can quickly check a website’s DA with any SEO tool. We advise you to prospects for sites within 30 to 70 DA.
• Domain Rating (DR): Also ranging from 0-100, you can check the DR of a website using various SEO tools. There is hardly any difference between DA and DR.
• Organic Visitors: The traffic count of a website in one month. Sites with an organic traffic of over 1,000 are worth prospecting for.
• Traffic Value: The value of a site’s visitor. Simply put, it refers to the amount the site can profit from the traffic it gets.

The lowest you should aim for is sites with at least a $1,000 traffic value or higher.

How much DA, traffic, and traffic value you should aim for depends on your own site’s condition. If you are totally new, aiming for the lower end of the spectrum we mentioned above is suitable.

If your site’s ranking is decent now, look for sites with at least equal DA and traffic as you, if not higher.

Deciding on a Prospecting Method

So far, we have been making strategies and creating aims for link prospecting. Next, it is time to find some websites that fall within your criteria and list them out.

Afterward, you can try them one by one.

Finding websites to make a list is not as difficult as it may seem. There are various methods to perform this, and you can try all of them. They are as follows-

• Google Prospecting
• Ahrefs Prospecting
• Competitor Link Analysis
• Generative AI Prospecting

Google Prospecting

One of the most straightforward links prospecting methods is using Google’s search option for websites. However, it is not as simple as you will be using search operators here.

What are search operators, you ask? Have you ever noticed that Google often shows search results where some part of your search keyword is missing?

When that happens, Google asks whether you want your result to contain those keywords. If you click it, Google search again, but with quotation marks around those keywords.

This is an example of a search operator. For example, check the difference between the search results in the image below-

On the left side, you got results that literally excluded a significant part of your keyword, ‘headlight.’ However, on the right side, you used Google’s search operator.

So, you got more focused results. Google added these operators to allow deep searching. Some other such search operators you may need during your link-prospecting are-

• Excluding Certain Terms from the Search Results: Add the term at the end and add a minus symbol ‘-’ before it with a space before the minus.
• Get Alternative Results: Add an uppercase ‘OR’ between two keywords, and Google will show pages that include either the keyword before the ‘OR’ operator or the one after it.
• Including Certain Keywords: If you only want search result pages that include a particular keyword, add quotation marks around it, as we did in the image above.

If you are prospecting for websites within a particular niche and for specific reasons, you can use the search operators to deep-search them.

For example, if you are searching for sites with headlight content, you can try prompts like-

• Headlight “blog”
• Headlights “information”
• Headlights “websites”

Listing the Google Prospects

Adding your findings to a list may be time-consuming, considering you must insert many. Tools like LinkPitch can help you add your search results directly to a spreadsheet.

Ahrefs Prospecting

One of the biggest reasons to use Ahrefs or other paid SEO tools to prospect over Google is that you get to filter many things easily. Some filters you may use here are-

• Selecting a specific DA or DR range
• Choosing a specific type of content
• Choosing site language
• Choosing a time range, allowing you to see recently published content

How to use Ashrefs Prospecting

Here is how you can use the Ahrefs SEO tool to prospect for your preferred website types-

• Go to Ashrefs and sign in
• Go to their ‘Content Explorer’ page
• Search with your preferred content title
• Use the filters to sort the results within your criteria
• Add the results to a Google sheet to list them out

Competitor Link Analysis

You can see what websites your competitors are getting links from to aim for those sites. It is a widespread tactic that many SEO experts use, known as competitor analysis.

Here is the process of Competitor Link Analysis-

Find your competitors first.

You can do it with a simple keyword analysis (keywords that help your site rank within the top ten pages of SERPs) using Ahrefs’ “SERP Overview” tool.

You first search with the keyword here. Then, check the top ten ranking sites with that keyword and a DA or DR similar to yours. Make a list of three. These are your competitors for that keyword.

Remember to use the filter to only ‘Dofollow.’

Next, check your competitor’s backlink profile using Ahrefs’ free ‘Backlink Checker’ tool or its paid ‘Site Explorer’ tool. The latter shows more than just your competitors’ backlinks.

Now, you can see which authoritative sites are sending backlinks to your competitors. You can also check the specific pages that are getting the inbound links.

These pages can help you find several referring domains. Use the ‘Referring Domains’ tool by Ahrefs for any given page.

So, go to your competitors’ top pages and find their referring domains (i.e., domains that are linking to that page).

Among these referring domains, you can use your previously made prospect target criteria to sort out some websites, adding them to your prospect list.

Generative AI Prospecting

You may already be aware of various generative AIs that may help with prospecting. Some of them, whether free or paid, have promising results.

In fact, many suspect they will replace search engines in the future. Of course, these generative AIs will improve much as time passes. So, should you use them for prospecting?

Well, as alluring as the idea may sound, the accuracy of even top AI models is still unclear. There have been instances where they showed irrelevant results.

We don’t think the casual generative AIs are ready to take on complex SEO tasks yet unless you have found or developed a top-notch one.

However, you can always use AIs for various reasons when developing link-building strategies. According to Forbes, many are already using them.

A simple search is all it takes for you to create a list. You may need some prompt engineering skills to make the results more focused according to your prospecting needs.

Depending on the necessity, you may need to use brand keywords or non-brand keywords in different prompts.

What’s Next with the Prospect List?

Your link prospecting campaign should be followed by the outreach campaign. Here, you will reach out to the site owners from the list of websites for backlinks, guest posts, link insertion, etc.

You can either create personalized outreach methods, like writing bespoke emails for each site, or create automated outreach to a high number of sites.

The latter may be better for your ROI. However, it is best to leave some of the best websites on your prospect from the mass outreach and use manual outreach for them instead.

Some Outreaching Methods

If you are confused about what outreach method you should choose for the prospected websites, any of the following may help you-

• Guest post outreach
• Email outreach
• Link insertion outreach, where you are paying for the link.

Which method you select depends on the reason for your prospect. If you want to guest post on a site, a guest post outreach with some blog ideas in the pitching is mandatory.

Meanwhile, if you simply want some backlinks, you can write personalized emails to the website owner about your posts worth sending links to.

Trying to find the best Slack communities manually can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Thankfully, there are some reputable ones that can help you greatly in link-building.

Aside from the excitement of joining a group of like-minded people, communities can be very helpful when you encounter a hurdle in your career or projects.

The difficulty of the link-building or SEO processes calls for as much external help as possible. In addition to other online groups and forums, Slack communities can provide that.

You can expect professional advice, ideas, information, and other help from a Slack community.

We have listed seven of the best free and paid Slack communities, which are popular for their quality of environment, helping mindset, and other benefits.

We have also added some alternatives to Slack communities.

Brief Introduction to Slack Communities

Slack is a platform where people can connect with their colleagues, classmates, etc., to discuss various topics, share information, give ideas, join group video meetings, and more.

You can interact with others through various means in Slack, including-

• Direct messages
• Group chats
• Voice calls
• Video calls

If a Slack group only includes members of one particular organization, it is called a Slack Workspace.

Meanwhile, if a Slack group includes people from all over the world, it can be called a Slack community.

Both a Slack workspace and community can have multiple channels through which people can converse about different topics related to the same industry or niche. However, there is a difference.

A Slack workspace is run by the organization’s owner, managers, or higher-ups.

Meanwhile, a community can be hosted and organized by any individual from anywhere who created it. Others just found it later and decided to join.

One of the best features of Slack is that you can add various work-related apps to it. It is an easy way to integrate all your work stuff in one place and share it quickly.

As you can expect, you can find Slack communities related to almost anything, from cooking to SEO. Of course, you will find ones about link-building.

In fact, there are some highly popular ones that we will get to in a while. However, before that, let us introduce different types of Slack Communities that may help you identify them better.

Different Types of Slack Communities

A Slack community can be one of four types. You may need to choose one that fits your needs. Let’s discuss them below-

Public Communities

A public Slack community is free and open to anyone who has the link to it. Since it is practically open to anyone, it is common to find people of different backgrounds.

We should mention that public communities are often less professional than other types. Unless someone organizes them well, people may even talk about totally unrelated topics.

Nonetheless, they are a good option if you don’t have an invite or don’t want to pay anything to join a community. You can also find public communities in the public directories.

Private Communities

Private Slack communities are only accessible via invitation. Even after that, you may only be able to enter once the community’s authority accepts your joining request.

The strictness of private communities often limits them to certain groups. For example, some may only accept your request if you have certain skill sets.

Meanwhile, some use private communities similar to Slack Workspace, where they are all from one organization.

Invite-Only Communities

Similar to private communities, invite-only ones also require you to join only with an invitation from a member. However, you won’t need to be accepted by the organizer to join here.

As such, it is often the favorite of many professionals who want a specific community without much irrelevance.

You can find many quality link-building invite-only communities that are free to join and accept.

Paid Communities

Last but not least, there are the paid communities. As the name suggests, you may have to pay a fee to the organizer or specific people to join.

Some of them often have subscription-based payments. The payment amount will vary based on the topic of the community and what the organizers charge.

Since it is a paid community, ordinary folks usually don’t come here. Here, you can expect to meet skilled professionals or people who want to learn or need help.

Additionally, the content you can find here is usually of high quality and professionally made, be it a video, infographic, article, etc.

They also give you chances to connect to high-profile personalities, potentially to help with your link-building project.

How to Join a Slack Community

For most Slack communities, you can join if any member in the community sends you one of these-

• An email invitation. Or,
• Invitation link.

These methods allow you to join a public or invite-only community. To join a private or paid one, you will need to complete additional steps.

Why Take Help from Slack Communities for Link-Building?

Slack communities specific to a niche or group are often filled with professionals, experts, and enthusiasts of that topic. The same is true for the ones about link-building.

When you are in a link-building Slack community, you can get various help from it. Here are some examples-

• Get tips, ideas, information, the latest trends and news, and insights about link-building from big-name professionals who can help you immensely.
• Make connections with people or websites that may send or exchange backlinks with your website.
• Find professional link-building managers or assistant link-builders to hire.
• Find content writers and guest post writers to hire. You can also write guest posts in the community.
• Get ideas of content specific to your niche or industry.
• Get feedback and criticisms from SEO experts to correct any flaw in your strategy and make intelligent moves.
• Join real-time conferences, formal debates, or courses related to SEO, digital marketing, or link-building. You can gain unique experiences in these ways.
• Find job postings related to your specific SEO skills if you are looking for work.

Best Free Link-Building Slack Communities

For your convenience, we have divided our list into two sections: free Slack communities and paid ones. Let’s start with the former.

1. Backlink Masterminds

As an invite-only Slack community, you can join with the help of any member. However, there are easier methods to join set by the organizers.

Vikas Kalwani, from New Delhi, founded Backlink Mastermind to collaborate with hundreds of professionals worldwide.

The community’s primary focus is building backlinks for SaaS brands. However, you can also use the information and other help from here for any other brands you have.

You can find individuals from Monday or Cloudways here. This is a great place to quickly get backlinks from high-profile people or SaaS organizations.

If you join Backlink Masterminds, you may get the following benefits-

• Have backlinks to your site from guest posts on world-class authoritative websites. You can also get them directly from high-profile sites you usually can’t reach.
• Build up your backlink profile very fast with the help of authoritative SaaS brand websites.
• Collaborate with outreach specialists, journalists, SEO executives, and other professionals from some of the best organizations.

Joining Method: Fill out the form on their website to join the community.

2. Backlink Slack Group

If you are looking for a Slack community that is open to both beginners and industry experts, the Backlink Slack Group is your go-to.

With a total membership exceeding 13,000, Backlinks is one of the most focused Slack communities on backlinks.

It brings together people from various backgrounds, where there can be SEO specialists, social media marketers, business or website owners, backlink builders, etc.

Brainspin, a digital marketing studio in Utah, is the founder and organizer of this community. They organized the whole thing well, dividing specific topics into multiple channels.

You will find regular discussions about various things related to backlinks and questions answered by world-leading brands and experts.

The #guestposts channel is for guest posting and getting backlinks from them. Then there is #traffic-boost, which is mainly for backlinks. There are two more channels.

One of the best benefits of this community is its #guestposts channel, which offers excellent guest posting offers and has a Google sheet where they post them.

You can select any of those opportunities on the Google sheet. Moreover, it is possible to use the same document to apply as a guest writer.

Joining Backlink Slack Group can give you the following advantages over other similar ones-

• There are specific channels for various topics. You can set your notification preferences for each, and you won’t get notifications from channels you don’t want to follow.
• The community is focused on marketing and link-building discussions, and the topics are hardly digressed.
• If your site or industry is related to marketing, this community can help you find connections and build easy links.

Joining Method: No payment or invitation is needed to join this community. You can visit their website and fill out their form to get inside.

Website: https://www.brainspin.com/backlinks-slack-group/

3. Online Geniuses

Online Geniuses is a Slack Community for digital marketing and SEO. Link-building is also obviously a part of it.

The main appeal of this community is that it has more than 49 thousand members, each manually vetted.

This means you will only find industry professionals or aspirant learners within the community. You can join the different channels specifically for various purposes.

For example, there is the #socialmediamarketing and #seo to focus on those topics in their respective channel. Meanwhile, there is a #hiring channel with job offers from good places.

As we mentioned before, Slack Communities occasionally run different events. ‘Ask Me Anything’ in Online Geniuses is one example. It is hosted very fluently, too.

Here, people like Christi Olson or Guy Kawasaki can get your questions answered here.

Joining Method: Fill out the form on their website to apply.

Website: https://onlinegeniuses.com/

4. Buffer

For people who want to feel at home in a link-building Slack community, Buffer is a great place to be. Its description says that the channels are very friendly, supportive, and positive-minded.

Moreover, as a fairly old community that started in 2015, it has over six thousand members. However, the air of over-seriousness or formality is absent here.

Instead, the members converse in more of a friendly and casual manner. Buffer has the following in store for you-

• Challenge sessions where you can solve different problems added by other members about SEO and other stuff.
• This is a Weekly Community Mastermind event where people talk about the challenges they are facing on their projects, and others try to help them out.
• Over 20 channels on specific topics.
• The #meet-someone-new is a suitable place to find like-minded individuals within your industry or professionals and experts from various parts of the world.

Joining Method: Join Buffer from their website.

Website: https://buffer.com/community

Best Paid Link-Building Slack Communities

The paid link-building Slack communities can be private, too. The organizers will only accept you if you pay the amount. However, the expense is worth it.

Here are some paid Slack communities about link-Building that you should check out –

1. Traffic Think Tank

Unlike many others on this list, Traffic Think Tank, or TTT, is an academy in the form of a Slack community.

Anyone can join it to boost their SEO skills and connect to like-minded people and professionals. It is helping many enter the world of SEO and make their careers around it.

So, why join an academic-type Slack community? There are various reasons for that. For example-

• Aspirant, skilled, and talented people worldwide are in TTT.
• This community is highly active, with thousands of members.
• You can connect to professionals with years of experience working for top-level websites and degrees.
• If you want to increase your skill, you can find mentors specific to different wants and needs and get more than hundreds of hours of tutoring.
• You can find the latest news about SEO, link-building, digital marketing, etc. It will help you greatly in staying ahead of your competitors.
• There are Q&A sessions occasionally.

Joining Method: To join Traffic Think Tank Academy, you need to buy one of their monthly packages, which are currently between $99 and $119. Visit their website for this.

They will then let you in the Slack community.

Website: https://trafficthinktank.com/

2. Creative Tribes

The founder of Creative Tribe is a digital marketing company with the same name- CreativeTribes.co. At first glance, this may seem like a community for all creative fields.

However, the two professions—digital marketing and SEO—are the main reasons behind its existence. So, you can find plenty of link-building talks, opportunities, and knowledge from here.

With over 2000 members, Creative Tribes includes a wide range of experts, from web developers to writers.

Joining Method: You must pay a one-time entry fee of $27 from their site.

Website: https://creativetribes.co/#join

3. Marketing Lad

Once you join Marketing Lad, you can start to see a wide range of different advice, insights, and perspectives on link-building from market-leading brands like ContentStudio or Wordable.

You can also find out your level and how to improve your backlink profile further. This profession is solely focused on marketing and link-building, so there will be many people within it.

One thing that makes this community stand out is how active the members are. They frequently organize discussions and projects to work on together.

Marketing Lad will also give you the opportunity to see industry experts at work and connect with them to help optimize your backlink profile.

Here are some reasons to join Marketing Lad-

• Get advice and assistance, and even have many professionals or enthusiasts answer your questions.
• Get news about SEO and stay up-to-date. With these, besting your competitors won’t be a challenging factor at all.
• The website says that one of the group’s purposes is to help you get backlinks from highly authoritative websites, like SocialPilot. These are impossible to obtain in standard ways.

Joining Method: You must make a $20 PayPal payment to enter. Afterward, visit their website and complete the form. You can get a refund within 24 hours of paying.

Once Marketing Lad has reviewed your joining request, they will send you the invitation link.

Website: https://marketinglad.io/link-building-slack-community/

Alternatives to Slack Communities

While Slack is an excellent platform for linking and building communities, there are many other options that you can try. Some of them may not be as good quality as the others, though.

The following are some Slack alternatives that you can try for your link-building help-

Social Media Platforms Like Facebook or LinkedIn Groups

While the Facebook and LinkedIn groups may not always be as active as expected, you may still find some with many experienced people. They are also always free to join.

Discord Servers

Discord’s interface may feel similar to Slack’s. Instead of a community, it has servers. Each server has categories, channels, and threads to divide the topics.

Discord is a trendy place for any community, just like Slack. You can find many servers that rival some of the top Slack link-building communities.

It is also possible to implement many bots, set your notification preferences, and many more in your preferred link-building server in Discord.

Moz Community

Almost everyone in the SEO industry knows about the SEO tool Moz. They also have a community. Its popularity helps it gather SEO-interested people from around the world.

Subreddits

Among various platforms dedicated to threads and forums, Reddit is one of the most popular. Its forums are called subreddits. You can find link-building subreddits like-

• r/linkbuilding
• r/SEOandBacklinks
• r/SEOLinkBuilding

Online Communities

You can find various online communities and forums created solely for link-building topics. For example, GrowthHackers has a collection of articles, resources, etc., for many professions.

Have you ever wondered why some websites consistently rank higher on search engines than others? 

Websites with a strong backlink profile have 55% higher chances of ranking on the first page of Google search results. 

In this guide, we will delve into the intricacies of backlink profiles, exploring their components, importance, and best practices for optimization.

What Is a Backlink Profile?

A backlink profile is the collection of all the links, or backlinks, from other websites that point to your site. These links serve as digital endorsements, signaling to search engines that your website is a credible and valuable resource.

A backlink profile is composed of various elements, including the number of links, the quality and authority of the linking sites, and the anchor texts used in these links.

The significance of a backlink profile lies in its impact on search engine rankings. Google’s algorithms assess the quantity and quality of these backlinks to determine a website’s authority and relevance. 

A robust backlink profile indicates that a website is well-regarded across the internet, which can significantly enhance its position in search results. Conversely, a weak or poor-quality backlink profile can hinder a site’s visibility, pushing it down the rankings.

Characteristics of a Healthy Backlink Profile

A healthy backlink profile is characterized by a variety of high-quality links from authoritative and relevant websites. These links should appear natural and be well-distributed across different types of anchor texts and sources. 

• Relevance: Links from websites that are relevant to your niche or industry are more valuable than those from unrelated sites. For example, a gardening blog receiving backlinks from other gardening or home improvement sites will have a stronger backlink profile than one receiving links from unrelated tech blogs.

• Authority: Backlinks from well-known, high-authority sites carry more weight and can significantly boost your site’s credibility and search engine rankings. 

• Diversity: A mix of links from different sources, helps create a natural and balanced profile. This diversity reduces the risk of penalties from search engines and enhances the overall strength of your backlink profile.

• Anchor text variety: Anchor texts are clickable texts in hyperlinks, and using a variety of anchor texts helps create a natural and balanced backlink profile. Common types of anchor texts include naked URLs, branded anchors, and keyword anchors.

• Quality over quantity:  A few high-quality backlinks are more beneficial than numerous low-quality ones. High-quality links are typically from reputable, well-established websites that are relevant to your industry.

Identifying and Avoiding Bad Backlink Practices

Recognizing and avoiding bad backlink practices is essential to maintaining a healthy backlink profile.

• Irrelevant links: Links from sites unrelated to your niche can dilute your profile and harm your SEO. For instance, a tech website linking to a fashion blog would be considered irrelevant and could negatively impact the linked site’s authority.

• Low-quality websites: Links from sites that are spammy, have poor content or are filled with ads can damage your backlink profile. These sites often have low domain authority and are not trusted by search engines.

• Overuse of exact-match anchor texts: While it’s important to use relevant keywords, relying too heavily on exact-match keywords can appear manipulative. Diversifying anchor texts helps create a more natural and balanced profile.

• Link farms and private blog networks (PBNs): These are manipulative tactics that involve creating a network of sites solely to link to each other and boost rankings. Search engines have become adept at detecting these schemes, and using such tactics can result in severe penalties.

• Rapid acquisition of links:  A sudden influx of new backlinks may look suspicious to search engines and could lead to penalties. It’s important to aim for gradual and organic growth in backlinks.

Tools for Analyzing Backlink Profiles

Several tools are available to help analyze and monitor your backlink profile. 

1. Google Search Console is a free tool that provides insights into who is linking to your site and the nature of these links. It’s an excellent starting point for understanding your backlink profile.

2. Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool that offers detailed backlink analysis, including the number of backlinks, referring domains, and anchor text distribution. It also provides insights into the quality and authority of the linking sites.

3. SEMrush offers features such as backlink audits, monitoring, and competitive analysis, helping you identify opportunities for improvement and areas of concern.

4. Majestic provides an in-depth analysis of your backlink profile, including metrics like Trust Flow and Citation Flow, which help assess the quality and influence of your backlinks.

5. Moz’s Link Explorer allows you to explore your backlink profile, analyze linking domains, and assess link quality. It’s a useful tool for monitoring and optimizing your backlink strategy.

6. Ubersuggest offers a summary of your backlink profile, including the number of backlinks, referring domains, and top pages with the most backlinks. It’s a user-friendly tool for quick insights into your backlink profile.

Steps to Analyze and Improve Your Backlink Profile

Analyzing and improving your backlink profile is a systematic process that enhances your website’s SEO performance and authority. 

It involves evaluating the quality and diversity of your backlinks, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing strategies to strengthen your profile.

Step 1: Check the number of backlinks

While a higher number of backlinks can indicate better performance, it’s essential to focus on the quality of these links. 

Look at the total number of backlinks from each referring domain to get a comprehensive view of your profile.

You can analyse your referring domains using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush. Identify the URLs that make up your incoming links and assess their quality and relevance.

Step 2: Review anchor text distribution

Ensure a natural distribution with a mix of branded, keyword-rich, and generic anchor texts. Avoid over-reliance on exact-match keywords to prevent penalties.

You can effortlessly examine your anchor texts, both for backlinks and outgoing links, using Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Step 3: Monitor backlink velocity

Track the rate at which you gain new backlinks and aim for a gradual and consistent growth pattern. 

Spotting sudden drops in backlinks can alert you to potential problems such as link removals, penalties, or negative SEO attacks.

Step 4: Evaluate backlink quality 

Assess the authority and relevance of the linking websites. Focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable sites in your industry.

Backlinks from high Domain Authority (DA)  sites are more valuable and can significantly enhance your site’s credibility and ranking potential.

Step 5: Identify and disavow toxic links

Use tools to detect harmful backlinks from spammy or penalized sites and disavow them. 

Toxic backlinks can adversely affect your website’s search engine rankings, making it crucial to identify and eliminate them promptly. Ahrefs can swiftly identify and analyze these backlinks.

Best Practices for Maintaining a Strong Backlink Profile

Maintaining a strong backlink profile requires ongoing effort and attention to best practices. 

• Create high-quality content: create content that naturally attracts backlinks from authoritative and relevant sites. Focus on producing valuable, informative, and engaging content that others will want to link to.

• Build relationships with relevant websites: Networking and outreach can help you secure valuable backlinks and enhance your site’s authority. Consider guest posting on reputable blogs and collaborating with other content creators.

• Avoid buying links: While purchasing backlinks may offer a quick boost, it’s risky and can lead to penalties from search engines. Instead, focus on organic growth and genuine link-building strategies.

• Diversify your links:  by acquiring backlinks from a variety of sources. A diverse backlink profile appears more natural and reduces the risk of penalties.

• Regularly monitor your backlink profile:  using tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush. Stay vigilant for any changes or issues, such as toxic links or broken links, and take corrective action as needed.

• Disavow harmful backlinks:  to protect your site from penalties. Use Google’s disavow tool to reject links from spammy or penalized sites that could harm your SEO.

Conclusion 

Imagine backlinks as your website’s popularity rating; the more high-quality links you have, the more attractive your site appears to search engines.

However, not all links are beneficial—some can be detrimental. It’s crucial to avoid these and focus on links from sites that are relevant to your niche, akin to associating with the right crowd.

Regularly check your backlink profile using tools like Ahrefs or Google Search Console. These tools can help you identify who is linking to you and spot any problematic links.

Ultimately, a strong backlink profile can significantly boost your website’s search engine ranking. So, invest in it and watch your site’s performance improve!

Are businesses getting their money’s worth from pricey backlinks? With so much investment at stake, showing real results is crucial.

Did you know that businesses see an average ROI (Return on investment) of 300% from effective link building? It’s more than just counting links; it’s about boosting key business metrics!

As one of the region’s leading link-building agencies with a proven track record, we understand that patience and persistence are key. The cumulative effect of sustained link building can significantly enhance website authority and search engine visibility over time.

In this article, we will explore how to effectively calculate the ROI of link building efforts. 

Why Is Link Building Important?

The primary objectives of link building focus on two key goals.

1.  Boost website visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs):  Enter your keyword in a search engine like Google. If your site appears in the top 10 results, it indicates success.
2.  Increase revenue: This is more challenging since link building doesn’t directly drive revenue. Measuring its financial impact can be complex.

The Essence of Link Building ROI

ROI, commonly calculated as (Net Return on Investment / Total Cost of Investment) x 100%, helps quantify the financial benefits relative to the costs involved in your link-building activities.

It’s important to clarify a couple of common misconceptions: Firstly, link building doesn’t deliver overnight success—it’s a process that unfolds over months.

Secondly, a variety of external factors, including SEO practices and user experience, also play roles in influencing SERP rankings.

Techniques to Evaluate Link Building ROI

Higher metric values suggest more successful strategies, allowing you to transform backlinks into traffic and, ultimately, sales.

If there’s no clear metric for the business value of link building, how can you demonstrate its worth to superiors or clients? How can you be sure your efforts are yielding positive results?

The best approach is to link your link-building activities directly to your objectives. Quality links significantly boost Google rankings, domain authority, and traffic, as mentioned earlier.

Let’s look at some ways you can measure the return on investment of your link-building campaigns. 

Short Term Method 

Effective link building requires patience, but when executed correctly, results can be seen within three to four months.

If you’re starting a link building campaign, here’s a short-term method for how to measure your ROI:

Organic Traffic

Gaining traffic provides a base of potential customers for your business. By effectively funneling sales, you can turn this audience into consumers.

Lumen and Forge, a top player in immersive tech, tasked us with boosting their online presence. In just three years, we increased their organic traffic by over 5000%.

You can track changes in your organic traffic using SEO tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs. 

For precise ranking tracking on Google, use Google Analytics to monitor metrics like visits and page views to gauge organic traffic gains. 

Google Analytics offers critical insights into your site’s performance, including user numbers and conversion rates. Analyzing these metrics helps determine the impact of your organic traffic strategies.

Set specific conversion goals in Google Analytics to quantitatively assess the ROI from organic traffic. Analyze referral traffic sources and backlinks in your reports to check their alignment with your link-building campaign.

With the data from Google Analytics, evaluate how your link-building efforts are enhancing your brand and converting prospects. If you regularly use SEMRush, you’re familiar with its capabilities to monitor various SEO aspects, including backlinks.

By reviewing the top pages and domain authority of your backlinks, you can assess the quality of your referral traffic. SEMrush also highlights how backlinks boost your visibility, benefiting e-commerce by improving conversion rates from referral traffic.

Domain Rating (DR)

Boosting Domain Rating (DR) enhances a website’s authority and ranking potential on search engines. This metric, developed by Ahrefs, measures the strength of a site’s backlink profile.

A higher DR indicates a more robust link profile, which can lead to improved search engine rankings. It reflects the quality and quantity of websites linking to a domain.

To evaluate ROI through Domain Rating (DR), compare your site’s previous DR with its current DR. A higher DR indicates improved site authority and effectiveness of your link-building efforts.

Tracking DR changes over time helps gauge the impact of your strategies. Ahrefs provides detailed insights, allowing you to measure progress and adjust tactics as needed.

Long-term Method 

Persist with link building for about six months to witness its cumulative benefits. As links multiply, each new link enhances your visibility, attracting even more backlinks.

As your website accumulates more links, its authority grows. With sustained effort over the years, your site earns a reputation for credibility, often ranking new content on Google’s first page quickly.

This illustrates a key advantage of long-term link building. Here’s how you can track these gains:

Target Keyword Ranking

Keyword rankings depend on factors like content quality and landing page usability. Building long-term links with keyword-optimized anchors on key pages can significantly boost their rankings.

Use Ahrefs’ Keyword Rank Checker to monitor your keyword rankings. Alternatively, set up keyword tracking in Google Analytics.

As these pages rank higher, they attract more organic traffic, increasing the likelihood of more conversions and thus turning links into leads and revenue.

Domain Authority (DA)

To gauge the long-term success of your link-building strategies, use Moz Link Explorer to check your website’s Domain Authority (DA). Although Google does not use DA to rank websites, it helps predict search engine performance.

Moz Link Explorer provides analytics critical for assessing your website’s efficacy in link building. The tool displays your top pages, main backlinks, and key competitive keywords, which are essential for improving search engine rankings and increasing traffic and revenue.

Domain Authority predicts your website’s potential Google ranking on a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the top position. A higher DA enhances your industry credibility, boosting both visibility and revenue.

The “Top Pages” feature in Moz Link Explorer identifies your most trafficked and engaged web pages. It helps determine if your key pages are reaching the intended audience, making it valuable for measuring your link-building ROI by tracking search ranking improvements.

Monte Carlo Simulation Method

The Monte Carlo Simulation Method is a statistical tool used to forecast events influenced by unpredictable variables. It allows for making educated estimates, like calculating the teacher-to-student ratio in an area without actual headcount data.

Named after Monaco’s casino-rich city, this method is adept at handling outcomes akin to statistical anomalies. It can also simulate link-building efforts and predict the return on investment for strategies, whether short or long term.

To perform your own Monte Carlo Simulation, gather the following data: your main keyword’s top competitor, their organic traffic, monthly or yearly revenue, Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (aDR), and their backlink profile, along with your website’s corresponding data.

First, assume other external factors are insignificant for a realistic outcome, creating a level playing field where your top competitor ranks above you. The aim is to bridge the gap between your and their rankings through targeted link-building.

Analyze the differences in link-building efforts between you and your competitor to establish concrete values for improving your ranking. Bridging this gap involves enhancing your link-building strategy to surpass your competitors.

Finally, calculate the revenue difference between your competitor and yourself to gauge the effectiveness of your link-building efforts. Remember, these are preliminary estimates and may not account for all variables, making them somewhat unreliable.

Tips To Enhance Your Link Building Efforts

Here are some quick tips to boost the ROI of your in-house link-building efforts:

• Invest in creating linkable content: Generate content so compelling that it naturally attracts backlinks, like detailed blog posts or infographics. Good initial distribution can lead to automatic link generation.
• Prioritize link quality over quantity: One high-quality link from a reputable site is more valuable than numerous low-quality ones. Aim for links that are relevant and come from high DA websites.
• Optimize other SEO elements: Ensure your SaaS website is user-friendly and fast, as effective link building needs strong technical SEO to reach Google’s first page.

Conclusion 

Measuring the ROI of link building is complex, given the many factors influencing a website’s success. It’s incorrect to attribute all of a website’s achievements solely to link building.

Nevertheless, link building can significantly boost revenue over time. By understanding your audience through data, you can tailor your campaigns to improve link quality and efficiency, further enhancing revenue.

We all know how important backlinks are for a site’s authority boost. 

In that case, how about creating a number of websites that link to each other?

Shouldn’t that be an easy way to gain lots of backlinks? 

Well, it is, but creating websites only to receive backlinks is a form of black hat SEO, known as link farming, which can negatively affect your site.

Ever since Google’s SERP was introduced, there have been many instances where Google has had to update its policies regarding how it ranks or penalizes websites. 

While many SEO techniques have been prevalent and effective in the past, some of them are highly dangerous for a site now.

Link farming is one of them. You may have already heard that it negatively impacts websites.

In this article, we have elaborated in depth on link farming, its characteristics, purpose, dangers, and how to avoid it.

Definition of Link Farming

Before we get to link farming, we should describe backlinks first. They are hyperlinks placed on one website that lead to another. Their primary purpose is to recommend another site to the audience.

Meanwhile, link farming is a method of link building in which the owners create multiple websites for the sole purpose of gaining backlinks from them.

As you can understand, when a high-profile or quality website recommends its audience to your site, it benefits the latter by increasing its authority. Google also deems it a good SEO practice and may rank your site higher.

The issue is that some misuse this process by using websites mainly created to send backlinks to one main website. In this practice, the owner of the sites uses the quantity rather than the quality of the links to increase the page or domain authority of their main website.

How Does Link Farming Work?

In order to understand the working process of link farming, let us explain with an analogy.

You need backlinks for your website from other sites, and there are two ways you can do it-

• Either get high-quality backlinks from reputable and quality websites. Or,
• Get lots of backlinks from various sites created only to provide the links.

Now, you may not get nearly as many backlinks from the first method as you would get from the second. However, the ones you get will actually hold high value.

Meanwhile, on the second method, you would get tons of backlinks with little to no value.

Here, the second case is how link farming works. In the past, link farming actually worked as Google looked at the quantity of the backlinks to a site rather than their quality or relevance.

As such, many were attracted to this strategy. However, Google updated its algorithm later, deeming link farming a Black Hat SEO technique.

Spamming backlinks to a website from random, low-quality sites without much relevance now negatively affects the main site’s SERP ranking.

The Structure of a Typical Link Farm

Link farm owners usually get bots or AI to create a link farm automatically. These bots will make multiple websites for the farm in a very short time without putting much effort into making the site worth visiting.

Since the site’s only goal is to send backlinks to different websites, you shouldn’t expect anything worth your time. The bots will only add enough useless content to help them place the hyperlinks.

In most cases, the sites in the link farm will have irrelevant content from the sites they are sending backlinks to. As they are not human-made, this further guarantees that the site is irrelevant, as the AIs will only do as their programs and won’t put anything worthwhile on their own.

This lack of quality content makes link farm sites highly low-value ones. Hence, links from them hold little to no value in increasing a site’s link equity.

Now, a link farm holds not just one website but many of them. They sometimes link to each other in an attempt to increase each other’s value. Meanwhile, they can also send outbound links to other websites or one site in particular that is not part of the farm.

Why Did Link Farming Get So Popular?

If you didn’t know, link farming is almost as old as Google itself. However, the practice didn’t start with this search engine. It became relevant in 1999 when the major search engine was Inktomi.

As you can expect, Inktomi’s algorithms weren’t nearly as developed as those of modern-day search engines like Google. It ranked websites according to their backlink volumes. Of course, there are other ranking factors, but this one was among the most important.

The popularity of link farming skyrocketed because of its effectiveness in ranking. You see, Inktomi had a rule of only having a limit of 100 million listings. As such, only sites with many backlinks would stay in the rank.

Because of this limited listing rule, many websites with few backlinks (despite having quality ones) dropped out of the search engine.

Another factor made link farming even more attractive to website owners. Inktomi wasn’t obviously the only relevant web search engine at the time. There was also Yahoo! Apparently, link farming was also working in it, along with many other search engines.

As you can understand, link farming was one of the best SEO strategies at the time, if not the best. People hardly put effort into building high-value backlinks, as quantity easily outweighed quality at the time.

Even after Google became the most popular online search engine, link farming lingered for a good while.

This black hat SEO method also changed over the years, mostly to adapt to search engine changes and find ways around Google’s different policies.

Over time, Google found ways to detect the weight of backlinks and started using this method to determine a page or domain’s authority. It can also detect link farms fairly easily nowadays, except maybe in some cases.

In the next section, we have explained the negative aspects of link farming to your site and how using this method is almost useless nowadays.

Negative Impacts of Link Farming

Before 2011, link farming was frequent on Google. However, that year and the following year, Google released two of its most popular updates, the Google Panda and Penguin.

The former between them was to remove any low-quality site from the high ranks by prioritizing the quality of the website’s content. This helped domains with actual helpful content rank higher.

Google Penguin came a bit later, and Google penalized many websites due to link farming and other black hat SEO techniques. It was a dark period for link farmers, as their years of efforts became useless in a matter of time.

This update duo impacted 3% of Google’s search results right after its release. Later, Google Penguin also received ten upgrades. At first, it was only an algorithm extension. After frequent updates, it became part of Google’s PageRank algorithm in 2016.

As you can guess, these employed rules are still there. What does that mean for any website owner? Well, let’s list them down below-

If you, as a site owner, use link farming to spam backlinks to your website, be ready to get penalized by Google. Google will flag and punish not only the link farm but also any site trying to benefit from using its backlinks.

Since link farms only hold low-quality websites, inbound links from them don’t contain much authority. Since the quality of the links is more valid now, you can’t expect your website to gain much value from link farming now.

Audiences who visit your site through a link farm may not be interested in your content. A good backlink should be relevant, which most link farms won’t be.

Moreover, if an audience accidentally comes across a link farm and then uses the link to your site, they may deem the latter as low quality as the former.

Websites in a link farm don’t rank that high or generate leads, so you can’t expect much traffic to come your way using these spammy links, either.

The JCPenny Incident

Unless you have been active in the SEO community in the last decade, you probably haven’t heard of the JCPenny website case.

As one of the biggest retailing companies in the world for fashion and similar products, it got the attention of big-name organizations, including the New York Times.

In 2011, they published an article describing how JCPenny.com had been using backlinks from various low-quality and irrelevant websites. These sites were in many different niches and organizations, some utterly unrelated to each other.

It was especially on the dress section of the site.

Thanks to that article, Google penalized the website not long after. It was one of the first big blows that Google Penguin dealt on a popular and big-profile site.

Source: The New York Times, SEJ, Search Engine Watch

This incident caught the attention of many in the SEO community at the time, and it acted as a warning for everyone. Nowadays, no SEO expert will recommend any method that even closely resembles link farming due to its danger.

How to Avoid Link Farms

There are various means to stay away from link farms successfully. Let us discuss some of them below.

Checking the Structure and Content of the Websites

Avoiding link farms starts with identifying them. You can tell them apart from actual good websites by checking some details. For example-

• Link farm content can be low quality, backdated, AI-generated, plagiarized, repetitive, or not user-friendly enough. While none of these guarantee that the site is a part of a link farm, they still raise the chance.
• Link farms may usually have broken links.
• The sites may not look professionally built, and they often have only one or a few pages.
• There will likely be too many hyperlinks nestled in each piece of content on the link farm sites. You can also check their Linked Domain report using Ahrefs’ outgoing links tool.
• If you don’t find an ‘about’ page or find it but there isn’t much information about the author, it increases the chance of it being a bot-created link farm.

Ignoring Their PageRank or Domain Authority

There are many SEO metrics that showcase a website’s value. Ones such as Domain Authority (DA) or PageRank are trendy. However, there are ways to increase them using different underhanded means.

Link farms often use these tactics to boost their SEO metric values. So, don’t take these values as a standard to determine a website’s legitimacy. Instead, check the site manually to find out whether it is the real thing.

Looking at the Anchor Texts

Whether AI or human-made, link farm content may contain many generic or casual texts. The anchor texts will usually be like ‘read more’ or ‘click here.’

Checking Their Backlink Profile

Use Ahrefs Site Explorer tool to check the backlink profile of the site you are suspicious about. If you see it having a really low Domain Authority despite being at least a few years old, then it is a low quality site.

[If possible, add an image like this (backlink profile of a poor quality website or a link farm site]

Going for Proper Competitor Backlink Analysis

• You can use Ahrefs or Semrush to help you analyze your competitors and the backlinks they are receiving.
• Further research can help you find their best backlink sites.

• You can then request them to send backlinks to your site using blogs, forum posts, comments, etc. Creating better content than your competitor will increase your chance of getting quality backlinks.
• You can also mimic the procedures that your competitors followed to get backlinks from high-profile domains.

Getting links naturally like this is an ideal way to improve the link equity and value of your pages and domains.

Conclusion

While backlinks are one of the best keys to SEO ranking, using link farms isn’t the right way to do it. As a black hat technique, it will be very bad for your website. Inspecting a site’s various details can reveal many ways to know if it is a link farm.

The best way to get links organically is to write helpful and informative content that naturally attracts backlinks from quality websites. Of course, you will need to spend a significant amount of resources, time, and effort on getting backlinks manually, too.