Seems like I get emails every day from people who are trying to figure how to get high quality backlinks to their websites. They want to increase their organic traffic but end up giving up because the whole process is so confusing and can get overwhelming.
Analysis paralysis, anyone?
After watching this happen over and over again, I decided to do a little research to find a quick and easy way to get white hat authority backlinks.
Once you use this strategy, you would start noticing an increase in your website’s organic ranking.
This is actually a 7-step strategy, but it’s so simply, just about any blogger can do it.
Really, it’s paint-by-numbers easy.
So even if you have spent a long time trying to increase your organic traffic, you can succeed this time and even if you do not know SEO, no problem – because once you try out this method, you would be able to increase your website’s traffic
What You Will Learn.
- What an Authority Link is
- Dofollow link
- Contextual link
- What you need them to increase your website’s rank
- The easiest and safest way to get them
- What a do-follow link is
You know the score…
Having really good on page SEO is great for ranking… but Google really doesn’t care about how optimized your website is if you don’t have backlinks.
Optimizing your website’s pages for the keywords you want to rank for is very important… but again, Google is quite indifferent if you do not have the right backlinks..
You might have the most beautiful website and Google still won’t care..
Ranking is all about BACKLINKS
In truth, there are over 200 signals Google uses to determine your SEO rank but we all know backlinks carry a lot of weight (this does not mean you should not pay attention to site speed, on page SEO, etc.)
Backlinks have always been a huge ranking factor since Google was invented but there has been a slight change over the years. Due to multiple algorithm changes, you can no longer blast links with automated link building tools like GSA, SENUke, XRummer, etc.
Google got fed up of our spammy link profile and started coming down on website’s with bad link profiles .
(Enters Penguin 1.0 – 4.0)
Now, Backlinks are all about quality.
You can’t spam the internet with numerous low quality backlinks and think your website would rank above authority websites.
So what is a good backlink?
Simply put, a good backlink is a Dofollow contextual link gotten from a relevant authority page.
Yep.
That’s is.
The holy grail of ranking.
For those who have no idea what a dofollow, contextual and relevant authority link is, I would briefly explain it
Dofollow Links
Basically, there are two types of backlinks – dofollow and nofollow.
A Dofollow link allows search engines to follow them and reach your website and pass link juice
This is what it looks like
<a href=”http://www.google.com/”>Google</a>
Nofollow Links
A nofollow link instructs the search engine bots that the link should not influence the link’s target ranking in the search engine index.
Simply put, it means that a nofollow link would give you zero link juice. Of course you might also get a trickle of traffic from it and it helps in diversifying your anchor text ratio but that’s a topic for another day.
This is what it looks like
<a href=”http://www.google.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Google</a>
The two types of links actually look the same so the only way you can know the difference is if you check the website’s source code.
Contextual Links
There are different types of links you can build. I would list some below.
Contextual – a link that appears in-content
Image – a clinkable image on a page
Sidebar/Footer (sitewide) – link that appears on all the pages of a website
Long story short, the most powerful link you can build is the contextual link provided it is from a website that is relevant to your niche.
Relevance is very important for ranking.
e.g. If you own a real estate website and you get a link from a finance website talking about the top 10 costliest houses in the world, that is a very relevant link from a relevant website and would definitely improve your ranking.
If on the other hand, you own a real estate website and then get a link from a fashion blog, obviously, google would find it suspicious and too much of this type of links would give you a penalty.
Authority Links
This brings me to the last thing I want to talk about before I move to the steps you need to follow to get authority links.
You need to know how to judge the power of a link gotten from a website. A link is only as powerful as the website it is on. So you need to know if the website you are getting the link from is powerful.
To do so, you need backlink checkers.
I currently use Ahref and Open Site Explorer (Moz).
They show you how powerful specific pages no a website are.
Here is why this is so important.
The more stronger a page is (SEOwise), the stronger a link gotten from the page is. So you want to get backlinks from pages/posts with good SEO rankings.
I can’t start covering how to measure the SEO rank of a page so I am just going to link to a better resource.
How to Get High Quality Backlinks to Your Website Easily
A lot of webmasters get dofollow contextual links to their website by building Private Blog Networks (PBNs)
They are the quick-fix ranking solution in the SEO world.
There is just one tiny issue…
It’s still grey hat and you would definitely get a penalty if you are caught using them.
On the other hand,
It’s gets really costly fast when you are managing a large PBN and it’s possible to loose it all in a day. If you want to pay someone to build it for you, you could pay as much as $100 to build just one…
So I was thinking,
What can be done that would make link building easy without having to buy numerous PBNS?
What do webmasters need most?
The answer is easy! Links!
This brings us to my new method.
This method uses a mix of expired domains and outreach.
It is just like building PBNs but has a clever twist to it.
If you do it the right way, you would end up with an endless supply of high authority backlinks.
The long and short of this method is this.
Instead of buying a lot of low quality PBNs, buy a single one and make a really good looking and active website.
You would then use this website as a leverage to get white hat links from other websites in your niche.
Figured it out yet?
It works as a simple link exchange.
So here’s how it works
1. Get an expired domain name that has good metrics.
- Make sure it is in your niche because you need it to be relevant.
- Don’t register the domain name with your details (Name, Address, etc)
- Use a different server to host it. You could also use a shared hosting account
- Make sure you don’t associate the domain with your website in any way
2. Build a good looking website on it
- We want the website to look enticing enough so you need to use a premium wordpress theme
- Write at least 10 – 15 pages of good content (the more the merrier) and make sure you backdate the posts.
- Use good graphics (add a logo, banner and even ads.) You need to make it look like a real website.
- Create social accounts and link them to the website
- Create a personalized email account i.e. damola@thenewsite.com
3. Choose the niche you want the links from.
- It just makes sense to choose relevant niche to your personal website and the new one. Remember.. relevancy is key..
4. Go to Google and search for Websites in the niche you chose
- Now, you want to get websites that are in the niche you are targeting. For example, if I am in the Fashion niche, I would go to google and search for websites that are in the Fashion niche and put their details in an excel sheet. This is your typical outreach method.
- You are looking for websites that have a blog or active social media accounts.
5. Create the Blog post you would use for your outreach.
- At this stage, you have already gotten your website, content and websites you want to contact. Next step is to create a list style post that would offer these websites a link on.
- Add between 3-5 websites to get you started and write compelling content around it.
- These types of blog posts are actually easy to create. Still using my Fashion blog example, I would write an article titled, “Top 10 Fashion Blogs to watch out for in 2016”
6. Send an Email to the websites offering links
- Using the email created, start sending mail to the websites you scrapped from google
- Use the template below but feel free to edit it to suit your taste as many people would be using this same script.
7. Ask for a Link to your own site
- Most of the people you contact would say yes in all manner of ways. Now that they have shown interest, it is time to ask for your link or a social share if they don’t have a blog.
- Before doing this, go check out their most powerful pages (I use Ahref for this) and look at their most powerful pages. Those are the pages you want to get links from.
- Once you have gotten one, add their website to the least post you created and send them an email telling them you have added their website and would like one back.
- If they do not have a blog, simply ask them to share your website on their social media account.
Benefits of this Method
- You get high quality backlinks from REAL relevant websites
- You get a higher response rate. The websites you are getting in touch with are already on the page 1 or 2 of google so they know the relevance of a good backlink
- You don’t need to build a PBN network and start managing 100’s of domains, hosting, etc.
- You can easily outsource it to your VA
What’s next
This is a method you can use again and again to increase your organic traffic.
But don’t take my word for it. Try it out yourself and see what it can do for you. I am sure you will like your results!
Excellent article as always.
Merci Beaucoup 🙂
Killer article Damola. I love that it’s not only in depth but doesn’t call for unethical tactics as well.
Personally I liked the section on building a new website but also making sure it has a clean profile. I feel if you can do both of those, the rest will take care of itself.
Hi James,
Thanks for stopping by!
Once you create a new website with an old domain with a clean profile, all you have to do is start your outreach for links 🙂
Heya Damola!
Awesome post, this is one topic that I have really been wanting to know more about since it plays a big part in mini sites and affiliate sites as well 🙂
Seriously thanks for writing these posts! I’m sure this one is going to get you a lot of links too!
Ciao!
M
You are welcome! Glad you found it useful 🙂
Thanks for this Damola. I’ve been looking for more information on how to build backlinks. Bookmarked
Awesome! Would be writing more in-depth articles on backlinks soon.
Wow, thanks for this Damola. Very useful method and will provide great power to your site. Stable power at that!
You are welcome Marcus! Thanks for stopping by
I am currently working on Increasing Ranking of my Website related to mobile advertising and I am working on Guest Blogging , I am getting backlinks from the websites but not as expected.
Hi Admalic, maybe you should try tweaking the content of the email you send while prospecting and also make sure your article is link wordy. Let me know if you have any question.
Interesting article.
I’ve been looking at expired domains recently so this may be something really worth trying. Thanks for this.
– Andrew
It’s a very awesome method! Let me know if it works out for you.
Thank you very much for the information.I really love it.You have solve my problem of backlinks and confusion as well.Love it.
Keep up the work.
Nice article. Thanks for sharing this article and keep up the good work
hi Damola,
awesome I am going to save this step. you provide a very easy and best backlink tips and also explain dofollow and nofollow link.
I did not know about all these links in the details. I just knew that whom you are calling do-follow link, I knew it by the name of the hyperlink. Such information has not been found anywhere before. Thanks for sharing a gratified knowledge with me and whole people.