Killer Off-Site SEO: Find Quality Backlinks Like A Pro

As mentioned in our intro blog post, we are featuring articles that have been written by the writers here at iNeedArticles.com. You should note that this article, “Killer Off-Site SEO: Find Quality Backlinks Like A Pro,” was either purchased on the iNeedArticles.com marketplace and thus this article was previously available to anyone, or we ordered the article through the iNeedArticles.com ordering platform. If you would like to learn more about off-site SEO strategies, please see our previous post Create The Perfect Backlink Profile.

Killer Off-Site SEO: Find Quality Backlinks Like A Pro

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of any digital marketing campaign, and no matter how popular certain social media websites get it’s hard to beat the benefits of natural organic traffic that comes in non-stop day after day from ranking near or at the top of page one for all your major keywords in the search engines. SEO is the one way webmasters have of tilting the scale in their favor and making their websites attractive in the eyes of the major search engines. While most websites can take advantage of on-site optimization (see our post 2018 On-Page SEO Report: What Marketers Need to Know for tips on on-site SEO), use this article (and this article) to help you find quality backlinks, which is often the difference between a trickle of traffic and a flood.

The Biggest Off-Site SEO Factor

While there are many different factors that go into moving a website up to the top of the rankings, there is nothing that quite has the same effect as high quality backlinks. However knowing you need good links from trustworthy, authority, and related websites and actually getting them are two entirely different ball games. Skipping over the basics like Comment Luv, blog comments, and directories that get you some weak base links, we’re going to jump to answering the question of how you can go about getting the good backlinks that can really move the needle on where your website is found.

Guest Post Pitch Like A Champ

You hear about guest posting a lot (including from us, which you can read here), and it remains the best overall way to get high quality backlinks, but most blogs just say that and then go light on the details. The truth is that most people are terrible at pitching for a guest post and they’re not seeing even a sliver of the success they should be. If you’re pitching 20 times for 1 post, and mostly hearing back from low authority sites with small followings, then you’re doing it wrong.

There are several steps you can take to separate yourself from the majority of bloggers out there requesting a guest post.

1) Read their “About Us” page, any recent guest posts, as well as their most recent posts. This will help you understand the tone they use, their writing voice, and the style that they are most likely to respond to. This is useful not only in the guest post you will be submitting but also in how you put together your request e-mail.

2) Don’t go with a “I’m helping you out with free content,” template. Bloggers in every niche understand SEO, and they understand the value of good backlinks. Don’t insult the intelligence of blog owners by talking like you’re doing them a huge favor. Great content is important, but everyone is profiting here and everyone knows what’s going on in a guest post relationship. Acting otherwise comes across as condescending. You want a backlink, they may or may not want content. By being straight forward, you’ll get better results.

3) Pitch 3 ideas & don’t send the e-mail until you have really good titles for each one. Three quick pitches give you a very good chance of creating one that will really hit home. This also lets you put out three different ideas, and have three headlines that each have the chance to catch the attention of who you’re pitching.

4) Once you have a few guest posts (and you want to make sure to rock out the quality on every single guest post) include a couple links to the ones you like the most. This will intrigue many website owners, and if they see your guest posts are outstanding, they are much more likely to take a chance on you.

5) Always thank them ahead of time. While this can be hard to measure, “I look forward to hearing from you and thank you so much for your time,” sounds a lot better than an assumptive, “I look forward to hearing from you.” If they’re 50/50 on taking a chance, having them like you is only going to help the cause.

Follow these five tips to pitch guest posts like a champ instead of being just another e-mail on the slush pile. Getting this down alone will open up an entirely new world of guest posting opportunities for new backlinks.

Take Advantage Of Testimonials Pages

There are many companies, blogs, and major websites that have a high trust with Google, high authority, and a testimonials page that mentions the person giving a testimonial and links to any website or blog they associate with. The vast majority of SEO specialists don’t think about testimonials pages, but for many highly rated websites this might be the only way to actually get a link if they don’t have a frequently updated blog.

This won’t work for every niche, but if you spend time looking for major websites in your niche (learn about special searches via search commands on Google) you will be able to find a list of websites that are listing testimonials. Look for ones that offer a link with the testimonial and if you have the ability to give a review then do it. This can be a source of some serious backlinks that all your competition has overlooked.

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Don’t Overlook “Top X” Posts

Sometimes referred to as link baiting posts because of their ability to pull links from the many websites that are in a list. Don’t go top 10 – look at top 25, top 50, or even top 100 if you really want to pull in the links. This type of content takes a lot of time and effort to compose, but it’s worth it when you see the links start pouring in.

However, the key to getting the most out of it is to add just a little something extra. Don’t just list “My top 50,” and hope that’s enough, but why not spend the money to create a graphic like a trophy or ribbon? A great looking web badge that every website owner on the list gets sent will really make the list look legitimate and definitely increase the response rate of people mentioning the award, your blog, or linking back to your article.

This way when you e-mail every single “winner” you can give a graphic award to for them to display. This increases the response you get and definitely makes it much more likely you’ll get a link from them bragging about it, not to mention the brand exposure from other popular niche blogs displaying an award from your website.

Tying It All Together

There are many different things to keep in mind when attempting to find quality backlinks to improve your search engine rankings, but there’s no denying a few good strategies used together like the ones in this article will give you much better results. Many times it doesn’t take that many quality backlinks to shoot your website up the search engine rankings, and if you’re using these strategies from this article you should get more than just a few. If you feel like doing this on your own is too much to handle right now, consider reading our posts regarding working with SEO companies (10 Tips For Choosing the Right SEO Company and How to Find a Great SEO Firm For Your Small Business) to help you supercharge your marketing efforts.