Building SEO backlinks is one of the most important things you can do as a new travel blog and it’s the first thing you should be doing after you design your site and publish your first 10 posts. But building backlinks isn’t just for new bloggers. A healthy backlink profile is vital to good SEO practice and it can be the difference between success and failure in this industry.
Even bloggers who have been blogging for 10+ years should still be building backlinks to their site. The scary thing is that it’s so easy to go about this practice the wrong way. There are websites that have had hundreds of thousands of organic visitors one month, and nearly zero the next, simply because they built their backlinks the wrong way and got penalized by Google.
In this article, I’m going to show you the best, white-hat and ethical ways to build SEO backlinks for your travel blog in 2022 and beyond.
What are SEO Backlinks?
A backlink is simply a hyperlink from one article to another. As Moz puts it in this article:
“Backlinks, also called “inbound links” or “incoming links,” are created when one website links to another. The link to an external website is called a backlink.”
Backlinks are one of the supreme ranking factors that search engines use in order to rank websites. The more backlinks you have to your site, the higher your Domain Authority (DA) will be. This means that you’ll have a much better chance of ranking in Google and thus, gaining the highly sought after “organic traffic” that you’ll need to grow a massive audience.
A backlink is basically a vote in the eyes of Google. The more SEO backlinks your website has, the more votes it has from other websites, meaning you’ll likely appear higher in search results. But unlike a democracy, in the SEO world, not all links are created equal. A backlink from a high Domain Authority website is far more valuable than one from a lower DA site.
Similarly, there are some backlinks that can actually hurt your website. If you get a link back from a site with a very high Spam Score, this may diminish Google’s trust in your own site. The key is to have a healthy backlink profile that includes a mix of high and low DA backlinks, and very few spammy backlinks.
SEO Backlink vs. Internal Link
A lot of travel bloggers and website owners focus solely on building backlinks, but they forget about the importance of building internal links. An internal link is when you link from one of your own blog posts or pages to another post or page on your own site.
While internal links don’t carry as much direct SEO juice as a link from an external domain, they are still extremely valuable for SEO, especially when there are multiple internal links from relevant posts to the main SEO post.
This is what I call a Pillar Web and it’s when you write one, long, in-depth guide of 3,500 – 10,000+ words and then write a bunch of shorter (1,500 – 2,000) word posts on the same topic and link to the main post.
By creating a web of internal links like this you can help the main SEO post rank for multiple keywords. It will also show Google that you have a complete resource on the topic and that you’re an expert with authority.
Internal links are easy to build because you don’t have to ask anyone to publish the links for you, you can simply add them yourself. Whenever you publish a new travel blog post on your site, you should search your site for 5 – 10 relevant posts that are already published, go into those posts and add internal links to your new post from those posts.
This will help search engine bots find and index your new article and the relevance of the other blog posts will help them understand what the new blog post is about.
Follow vs. No-Follow
Now that you understand that not all links are created equal, you need to also understand that some links are pretty much useless in the eyes of Google. These links are called no-follow links. When a no-follow tag is added to the HTML of a link, it looks like this:
<a href=”https://www.thedomain.com” rel=”nofollow”>Anchor Text</a>:
The rel=”nofollow” in the above link tells Google and other search engines to ignore this link and not count it as a vote to the site it’s linking to.
You may be asking yourself, why would any websites use the no-follow attribute?
There are two main reasons why you might add no-follow to your links.
The main reason is if you were paid to place the link. Google clearly states in its guidelines that webmasters should never accept payment for do-follow links on their site. This helps Google to stop larger companies from simply buying their way to the top of search results by paying hundreds of thousands of other websites to link to them.
Google’s goal is to have the best content possible at the top of their results and they ensure this by complex algorithms that analyze the content and the quality of the site it’s published on.
If companies with larger budgets were able to write sub-par blog posts and simply pay thousands of dollars to get SEO backlinks to those posts and have them rank #1 in search results, then the search engines would have a harder time keeping quality content at the top of their results. That’s why travel bloggers should always no-follow any links from paid sources as if Google finds out about it, they can penalize your website.
The second reason that you might want to no-follow links is to retain more link juice within the post itself. Every time you link out from a post, you’re essentially leaking some “SEO juice” from the post itself. But this doesn’t mean that it’s best to simply no-follow all of your links to keep all of the juice on your own site.
Google wants to see natural, useful linking between websites so even though you may link some juice by allowing Google to follow the link, it can actually help your SEO overall, as long as you’re linking to relevant, high authority websites.
UPDATE FOR 2022: Google has announced new link attributes that will be used in the same way as rel=”nofollow”. These will be rel=“sponsored” which identifies links that are part of advertising or sponsorship campaign, and rel=“ugc” which identifies links that appear within user-generated content, such as comments and forum posts. As of September 2019, rel=”nofollow” will be used as a hint to Google, rather than a rule.
The Power of Unique Domains
When I said “not all links are created equal” I meant it. One prime example of this is the difference between repeat backlinks and backlinks from unique domains. The first time you get a backlink from a domain, it’s worth exponentially more than the second backlink from the same domain.
This principle of diminishing returns continues as you get a third, fourth, and fifth link back from the same domain. While it’s perfectly okay to get multiple links back to your blog from the same domain, your ultimate goal when building SEO backlinks is to get as many links from unique domains as possible.
Pitching For Links
Since backlinking requires you to get links from other websites, it’s no surprise that one of the main factors in building backlinks will be pitching other travel bloggers and website owners and asking them to link to your site. Whether you’re writing guest posts for them, offering them an infographic or simply requesting that they mention your new resource and link to it, you’re going to have to do a lot of pitching when you’re building backlinks.
But don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds and the more you practice, the better pitcher you can become.
The key to having bloggers open your emails, read them and actually give you what you’re asking for is by offering something in return. Oftentimes it’s best to first do a favour for a blogger and build up a bit of a relationship before you ask them for anything.
One of the best ways to do this is by simply linking to them first. After you’ve linked to them, simply write them a quick email saying that you loved their article, why you loved it and why you decided to link to it from your article. Then go comment on the blog post and share it on your social media. Then share two more of their articles in the coming week and voila. You’ve got the blogger’s attention.
After you’ve done that, you can send a separate email and request a link to your site. But be careful here. You don’t want to sound generic because you could still get lost amongst the hundred other emails the travel blogger might get on a given day.
When you’re pitching a blogger and asking for a favour, you need to stand out from the crowd and you need to let the blogger know right off the bat that this is not just another automated email asking for links. Here’s a great guest post template that you can use for different types of pitches.
Guest Post Pitch
Subject Line: “Remember me? I’m the one who always shares your content, [INSERT BLOGGER’S NAME]”
Hey [BLOGGER’S NAME] it’s me again!
I’ve been reading your travel blog a lot lately and I have to say I’m loving the content. After linking to your resource from my post last week, I really started hanging around your feed a bit more and I love the post about [INSERT FIRST POST YOU SHARED] that you wrote on [INSERT PUBLICATION DATE] and the other one about [INSERT THE SECOND POST YOU SHARED] from [INSERT PUBLICATION DATE]. So much so that I shared them both on my social. Great stuff!
I noticed that you’ve covered this topic in such depth and you have a great resource for it on your site, but I haven’t seen anything about [INSERT RELEVANT TOPIC HERE]. I was wondering if you’d consider accepting a guest post from me?
I really do love your content and it would be awesome if I could get featured on your site! It would mean a lot and I’d make sure that the post was super long, in-depth and useful. I’m also really good at following writer’s guidelines so if you want to let me know what you expect from guest posters, I’d do everything I could to ensure that publishing my post is super easy for you.
Please let me know! Either way, I’ll be following your blog for more tips and advice myself.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Cheers,
[YOUR NAME]
As you can probably tell, the above pitch would work for more than just guest posts. By simply changing a few of the words in the pitch, you can easily scale it across all of your pitches. Just make sure if you’re pitching the same blogger over and over, you only use this template the first time.
Add a Link Pitch
Subject Line: “Remember me? I’m the one who always shares your content, [INSERT BLOGGER’S NAME]”
Hey [BLOGGER’S NAME] it’s me again!
I’ve been reading your blog a lot lately and I have to say I’m loving the content. After linking to your resource from my post last week, I really started hanging around your feed a bit more and I love the post about [INSERT FIRST POST YOU SHARED] that you wrote on [INSERT PUBLICATION DATE] and the other one about [INSERT THE SECOND POST YOU SHARED] from [INSERT PUBLICATION DATE]. So much so that I shared them both on my social. Great stuff!
You pretty much covered everything in the post and I have to say it’s definitely the most in-depth and useful article I’ve come across on the topic. I did notice that you linked to [INSERT WEBSITE LINKED TO FROM THE POST] and I agree, that’s a great resource. But I also just created a really useful post and it could also be a great resource for your readers within that post. I was wondering if you’d be willing to add a link for me?
I’ve already shared the post on my [INSERT SOCIAL PLATFORM] account, but I’d be happy to share it again on my [INSERT DIFFERENT SOCIAL PLATFORM] once my blog is mentioned in it. It would be great to see my post featured on your amazing site.
Please let me know! Either way, I’ll be following your blog for more tips and advice myself.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Cheers,
[YOUR NAME]
Testimonial Link Pitch
Subject Line: “Remember me? I’m the one who always shares your content, [INSERT BLOGGER’S NAME]”
Hey [BLOGGER’S NAME] it’s me again!
I’ve been reading your blog a lot lately and I have to say I’m loving the content. After linking to your resource from my post last week, I really started hanging around your feed a bit more and I love the post about [INSERT FIRST POST YOU SHARED] that you wrote on [INSERT PUBLICATION DATE] and the other one about [INSERT THE SECOND POST YOU SHARED] from [INSERT PUBLICATION DATE]. So much so that I shared them both on my social. Great stuff!
After reading and sharing a lot of your posts, I also saw that you had a [INSERT FREE OFFER] on the topic. I decided to jump in and I have to say that you’ve done a great job. I’m not in the market for buying the full course (yet) but I wanted to offer you a quick testimonial for the amazing offer you’ve given.
[INSERT TESTIMONIAL HERE]
I’ve already shared the free offer on my [INSERT SOCIAL PLATFORM] account, but I’d be happy to share it again on my [INSERT DIFFERENT SOCIAL PLATFORM] as well.
You’re free to use my testimonial anywhere you want. All I ask is that you link to my blog from somewhere on your blog. I’m trying to build up my relatively new blog so it would mean a lot. Plus, it would really be an honour to appear on your site.
Please let me know! Either way, I’ll be following your blog for more tips and advice myself.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Cheers,
[YOUR NAME]
The pitch template can be further rolled out into pitching for infographic use, cold backlinks and more, but I think you get the point. By simply changing the third paragraph a little bit, you can repurpose this pitch template for all sorts of email requests.
Understanding Anchor Text
Anchor text is literally the text used to link to another site. So in this example, the words “this example” in the link are the anchor text because it’s the words used to link to the site. In the HTML the anchor text looks like:
<a href=”https://www.thedomain.com”>Anchor Text</a>:
When backlinks were first introduced into Google’s algorithms, people were over-optimizing their anchor texts and getting massive results. If they wanted to rank for the term “SEO Tips” for example, they’d simply build a hundred backlinks linking back to that post with the exact-match anchor text of “SEO Tips”. Not surprisingly, Google and other search engines have wisened up to this spammy practice and these days, over-optimizing anchor text in backlinks will likely do more harm than good.
Instead of building lots of SEO backlinks with exactly the same anchor text, you should only build one or two backlinks with the exact match anchor text that you are trying to rank for, and the others should be naturally varied.
That means if you have control of the anchor text in the links your building (like when you’re guest posting), you should be using branded (ie: yourblog.com) or soft anchor text (ie: Click Here), as well as linking using the article title and numerous different words and phrases that explain what the post is about.
This is known as a healthy anchor text profile. If you have a blog post on your site that has over-optimized backlinks pointing to it, you should either build more links with random anchor texts, or you should contact the bloggers who have linked to you and request that they change the anchor text.
To track what anchor texts are pointing to your site, you can use Moz Link Explorer. Simply put the post you want to track in the URL search box and then under “Link Research” in the lefthand column, click “Anchor Text”.
The Danger of Building SEO Backlinks
Because backlinking can be such an easy way of gaming the system and driving massive amounts of traffic to a site, it’s no surprise that spammy SEOers have been taking advantage of this loophole for years. Ever since Google introduced backlinks and authority into it’s PageRank algorithm in 1996, SEOers have been exploiting it.
It didn’t take long for website owners to realize that if they could get more SEO backlinks, they would ultimately get more traffic. This lead to horribly spammy practices like creating hundreds of websites and simply linking them to each other. It also gave birth to the world of paid links, link triangles, link farming, weblinks and so many more black hat techniques.
These days, the algorithms and machine learning of Google and other search engines have become so intelligent that most of these strategies no longer work. This is a good thing because it means that when you Google something, most of the time you get the best possible answer, not the answer from a site that weaseled their way into the rankings with spammy link-building practices.
But Google is so smart that they can also pick up on the subtleties of bad backlinking, so as a travel blogger, you need to be very careful that you’re doing everything 100% legit.
Your goal should always be to write the best possible content and then market it in the most honest and natural way possible. That’s the only way you can ensure long-term traffic growth for your blog. This is not just a holistic approach. It’s been proven in search engine algorithms for years.
By gaming the system, you may find some short-term gains, but in the long run, Google will catch you, it will penalize you and you will lose all of your traffic.
How To Build SEO Backlinks The Right Way
I hope the last part of this post didn’t scare you off. Luckily there are still lots of ways that you can ethically and effectively build high-quality SEO backlinks to your travel blog. You can get massive sites to “vote” for you and the more of these links you build, the more the Google Gods will smile down upon you and bestow you with heaps of traffic.
How much traffic?
This blog you’re reading is currently one of the top trafficked blogs in the travel niche and we’ve done that by mastering SEO. Over the past 7 years of studying, testing and working hard on our SEO, we’ve been able to grow this site to nearly 400,000 users per month. We’ve spent over $20,000 on SEO audits, training and testing and we know exactly what works and what doesn’t work.
If you want to learn some of the most actionable and effective ways to not only build backlinks but also to find better keywords, to write better SEO content and to ultimately get more traffic and earn more money, then consider signing up for a Free SEO Training Video Session. I’ll walk you through a few of the key things that you can do with your blog to help grow your traffic in 30 days or less.
SEO has to be done the right way. I never recommend any shady or spammy practices because they don’t work. Using my SEO Blueprint, you can grow your traffic just as fast, but you can rest easy knowing that you did it all legitimately. This will help ensure that your traffic will grow and stay there. Google will love you and so will your readers.
Some of our students have already seen a 500% increase in traffic after just 30 days and I’m sure you can have success from the training as well.
Whether you decide to join a free SEO session with me or not, you should be focusing a lot of your time on building backlinks. But not just any backlinks. You need a healthy mix of high quality, high domain authority, low spam-score links from relevant sites and this is how you can do it:
Guest Posting (The Best Way To Build SEO Backlinks)
Still, the number 1 best way to build great backlinks is through guest posting. This is when you reach out to another travel blogger in your niche and write a post on their website. Within the post, you link back to a post on your own website and this will count as a backlink.
Not only is guest posting a great way to build backlinks, it’s also a great way to build a more loyal audience and to network with fellow bloggers in your niche. With guest posting, you will write the post yourself, so if the reader is enjoying the post and clicks the link to your site, you have a much higher chance of turning that casual visitor into a lifetime fan.
Each guest post will have to be 100% unique and never published anywhere else online. Google penalizes blogs for duplicating content, so you have to ensure that you are always writing fresh new content whenever your publishing online, whether on your site or on other people’s sites. Google can even pick up on the rewording of paragraphs, so be careful to not plagiarise or try to use the same sentences in multiple articles.
The key to successfully building a lot of SEO backlinks through guest posting is by becoming very good at pitching bloggers. By using my pitch template above, you can easily get accepted for dozens of guest posts per month.
Make sure that you link back to your blog from each guest post with a do-follow link. Try to place the link in the first 3 paragraphs and use a variation of anchor texts. If the blogger will allow, you can also try to link to your home page from the author’s bio.
To learn more about the best practices for guest posting, check out our Ultimate Guide To Guest Posting.
The Guest Post Bomb
Getting one guest post published is great, but having multiple guest posts going live with links back to your site on the same day or within the same week can do wonders for your site. Not only can it alert Google bots to a potential viral post, it can also help you create a buzz around your blog.
If a reader sees that you’ve written on one authority blog, and then they find that you’ve also published on another one of their favourite blogs, you’ll automatically get imprinted in their minds as an authority blogger yourself. The guest post bomb is one of the main strategies that we used to explode our blog traffic by 30% in 30 days and it works time and time again.
To successfully run a guest post bomb, you’re going to have to pitch a lot (and I mean a lot) of bloggers at once. A series of guest posts is only considered a “bomb” if you get 15 – 20 published within the same week, or better yet within the same couple of days.
Ideally, each of the guest posts links back to the same piece of content on your site to drive the most SEO juice possible, but this isn’t essential. As long as you get multiple posts published in rapid-fire, all linking back to your website, you’ll see the results. Just make sure that you’re linking back to your best post(s), because guaranteed you’re going to have a lot of eyes on that content, so if you want to convert casual readers into superfans, you’ll want to make sure you’re offering them something special.
As an added bonus, make sure you have an email opt-in with a super-relevant lead magnet to help ensure that those readers will come back to your site time and time again.
When pitching bloggers during a guest post bomb, you can still use my pitch template, but once you’re accepted and the article has been accepted, ask the blogger if it’s possible to publish the post on the specific day of your bomb. If that’s not possible, as long as it’s within the same week you should still be ok. If the blogger can’t publish it in your time frame, simply schedule a second bomb for a later date and add all of the guest posts that couldn’t make the first one into your next one.
One explosion of guest posts will increase your traffic massively, but by doing a bomb every month or two, you’ll start to see a snowball effect both with your inbound traffic and your organic traffic as Google starts to see you as an authority.
“Hot” SEO Backlinks
I consider building hot SEO backlinks any time you’re requesting links from posts that went live in the past week or two. When a blogger first publishes a post on their site, that post is still “hot” in their mind. They are likely still sharing it, still adding it to their newsletter and potentially even still going in and editing it and making it better. This is the optimal time to request a link from a blogger.
But how do you find hot backlink opportunities?
Easy. You Google it.
Using Google’s special tools, simply add in the topic you want to build links to, then under “Tools”, click “Past Week”.
This will populate all of the indexed posts on that topic that were published in the past week. Now you can simply contact those travel bloggers and website owners while they’re still “hot” and use my pitch template to request backlinks from those fresh posts. It works.
“Cold” SEO Backlinks
Now that I’ve explained hot backlinks, I’m pretty sure the term cold backlinks is self-explanatory. These are links from posts that have been live for a long time. It’s not nearly as easy to build cold backlinks, but it’s still possible and for the sake of a healthy backlinking profile for your SEO, you should have a variety of hot and cold backlinks.
Cold backlinks have a higher SEO potential than hot backlinks because they are on posts that have already been live for a long time, meaning they likely have some links built back to them and therefore have a higher Page Authority.
When building cold backlinks, make sure you use my pitch template and always (I mean always) do a favour for the blogger first before requesting the link. Share their content, message them on Facebook, comment on their blog posts, do everything you can to quickly build up a positive rapport with the blogger and then, once you have their attention, kindly ask for them to link to your epic resource from one of their relevant blog posts.
Offer Testimonials
One great way to get SEO backlinks from bloggers is to offer them a testimonial. A lot of bloggers have products and resources on their own site. In most cases, they will have testimonials on their sales pages and within their blog posts. If you offer a blogger a testimonial for their course or ebook, it’s likely that they will be happy to offer you a backlink in return, if you ask for it.
We have testimonials for our SEO Course as well.
To find testimonial backlink opportunities, simply Google “topic + course” or “topic + course + testimonials” and see the sites that have courses on the topic and also have testimonials.
I know what you’re thinking. You don’t want to buy a course every time you want to build a backlink.
Luckily, you don’t have to.
In most cases when a course creator sells a course, they also have a very specific free offer that they give first, in order to lead potential customers down the road towards a purchase. Look for the free offer, take it, and then email the travel blogger afterward with your pitch.
Using my testimonial pitch template above and I can guarantee you you’ll have a lot more success than you would with a normal cold backlink request.
Big Media Feature
This is one we’ve done time and time again and it’s worked for us a lot. As you can see from our “As Seen In” section on our home page, we’ve been featured on some pretty big media sites including CNN Money, Forbes, NBC and TIME.
The key to getting a big media feature is to search for a hot topic or series that the publication is running currently. If you see that CNN Money is running a series interviewing social media influencers about their lifestyle and you happen to have a lot of followers on Instagram… pitch them. If you see that Lonely Planet is publishing a lot of content about Africa and you’ve recently been there… pitch them.
To help you find such series’, I recommend subscribing to as many big media sites as you can. Join their mailing lists, follow them on social media and keep your eye out for patterns of content relevant to your blog topic. Once you see what appears to be series, reach out to the author of the series and request a feature. For this, you shouldn’t use a template because it’s going to be 100% personalized.
Remember, a backlink from a big media site with a high Domain Authority (Forbes is a 97 for example) is worth hundreds if not thousands of regular links, so all of the time you put into getting these backlinks is worth it. Big media features with backlinks to your site can explode your traffic overnight.
If you get a feature on a massive website, you may want to contact your hosting provider to pay for a higher bandwidth hosting plan before the post goes live because the sudden increase in traffic could crash your site. Literally.
Get Interviewed
Getting interviewed is one of the best ways to get backlinks and also to build your personal brand online. It’s actually quite easy to get backlinks this way as well. A quick Google search like “topic + interview” can bring up a lot of sites that have series’ of interviews with people just like you. Reach out to these bloggers and request an interview. Explain to them why you’re perfect for the interview and why you’re an expert on the topic.
We’ve done dozens of interviews, both for big media and for blogs in our niche and each of them has given us a nice big juicy backlink and has also introduced us to a much wider audience. Don’t pass up this opportunity to build SEO backlinks. Start Googling today and get your name out there and your SEO boosted at the same time.
The Podcast Linkback
Similar to getting interviewed in blog posts, you can also pitch to get interviewed in podcasts. While links back from the podcast platforms like Apple Podcast and Google Play will be no-follow, oftentimes people who run podcasts also have a website.
More times than not, these podcast hosts will also transcribe the interview or at least write a description about it on their blog. This is where you can get a nice juicy backlink.
Find podcast series’ in your niche, pitch the bloggers to interview you and you can start getting high-value backlinks for just a quick 30-60-minute interview on Skype. That’s a pretty good exchange!
Facebook Group Link Exchanges
There are some wonderful Facebook groups out there for advanced bloggers who are looking for SEO backlinks. There are entire groups dedicated to linking and you can find these groups in pretty much any niche.
To find these groups simply Google something like: “topic + blogger group Facebook”, “topic + blogger link exchange facebook community” or “topic + facebook group for pro bloggers” and something should turn up. Alternatively, you can ask some of your blogging colleagues if they’re already in a group that does occasional link sharing. Most of these groups are closed groups, meaning that you’ll have to request access. Be sure to explain your DA, your niche and why you’re the perfect fit for the group.
But be careful! This strategy is bordering on grey-hat, meaning if you don’t do it right, you could get penalized.
My recommendation is to never do direct link exchanges with bloggers. Even if the group allows it, you should request that your links are only done in a three-way format, meaning blogger A links to blogger B, blogger B links to blogger C, and blogger C links back to blogger A.
Simple, but effective and much more difficult for Google bots to catch.
To keep track of which domains have linked to you, keep a spreadsheet and only accept new links from blogs who you haven’t linked to yet, at least at first. Once your links have been live for a few months, it’s okay to link back to that same blogger, but be careful not to do direct link exchanges between two domains within the same few week period. It’s an easy way to get penalized by Google.
Infographics
People love infographics and believe it or not, they’re a great way to build SEO backlinks for your site. Simply create a super useful infographic using free tools like Canva, and then pitch bloggers to publish your infographic with a link back to your site.
Infographics can be a great addition to an already useful post, so many bloggers are happy to add them to their posts to add value for their readers. Once added, it’s expected that the infographic will be credited to the owner with a backlink.
Once you’ve created a great infographic, you can pitch bloggers using my pitch template and offer them your amazing infographic in exchange for a link. Bigger bloggers likely get dozens of emails for infographics every day, so make sure your infographic is super relevant and your email is very personalized.
Photo Offer
Bloggers need photos. Not everyone has signed up for and has photos of everything they want to write about. This is where you can come in. Offer a blogger a photo and in exchange, simply ask for a backlink credit in the caption.
Bloggers are less likely to accept this offer if the post is already published, so again it’s good to look for content patterns. If you see them running a series on Africa, consider pre-emptively offering photos on destinations that they haven’t written about yet. There’s a good chance that they’ll get to that piece of content eventually and if you can get a link, it’ll be worth your effort.
The Broken Link Method
This is an oldie, but a goodie. A broken link is a link that points to a dead page somewhere on the web. This can happen when a post is taken down or a website goes offline and the links pointing to that dead page remain across the web.
By finding websites that have broken links and telling the website owner about them, you can be doing them a big favour. Broken links are bad for SEO, so by pointing them out you may be helping the blogger to better their traffic and they may be willing to link to you.
To get started with the broken link approach, simply download and install the Google Chrome plugin called Check my Links extension to your browser. Once installed you can scan websites for broken links.
If you want a link back from a specific site, then scan it for broken links and then contact the blogger and point out that you’ve found a broken link on their site. Using my broken link pitch template above, you may find that this method works very well.
To Summarize Good Link Building
Just like not all links are created equal, not all backlinking strategies are created equal. Be careful when you implement your own SEO backlinking strategies and do your best to be as natural and as helpful as possible when building backlinks to your site.
Always start your pitches with a favour. Never cold call bloggers asking for SEO backlinks, it doesn’t work and it will hurt your online relationships in the long run.
As a new blogger, you should be utilizing every method in this article, but the most important ones will be guest posting, guest post bombs, and hot link building. You should spend 40% of your writing time writing for your own site and 60% of it writing for other sites. Do this until you have 100,000+ users per month on your blog and then once you have your own audience you can start publishing more for yourself and less for others.
Too many bloggers underutilize guest posting and backlinking and that’s why their sites take so long to grow. Backlinking is still one of the main ranking factors that search engines use to rank websites, so if you don’t have a good backlink profile, you’ll never have a lot of traffic.
Start writing more, start pitching more and start growing your Domain Authority through backlinking. If you want to learn about more important SEO strategies that you can implement to quickly grow your traffic, make sure you sign up for our Free SEO Training Session. You can also read more about how to build and grow a successful blog here.
How many SEO backlinks do you build to your site per month? What’s your favourite method for building backlinks? Please comment below.
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