The 3 Easiest Link Building Tactics Any Website Can Use to Acquire Their First 50 Links - Whiteboard Friday. But you've got to have a base of links. Step One: Search Google for the names in quotes. It's very often that Moz gets mentioned along with SEO, and so I can combine those to search for it. My LinkedIn has a link to Moz. So if it's here's whiteboard pen brands, Expo, PandaBoard, Quartet, and your site, which should now link to YourSite.com. You can usually almost always get 20 or 30 different sites that are listing people in your field and get on those lists. This is sites that list people or organizations in a particular field, a particular region, with particular attributes, or some combination of those three. Step Two: Search Google for lists of businesses or websites or organizations that have some of these attributes in your region or with your focus. Or the EU-based manufacturing companies started by women, and I could get on that list with my whiteboard pen company based there.
Without a solid base of links, your site won’t be competitive in the SERPs — even if you do everything else right. But building your first few links can be difficult and discouraging, especially for new websites. Never fear — Rand is here to share three relatively quick, easy, and tool-free (read: actually free) methods to build that solid base and earn yourself links.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat about how to get those first few links that every website needs to be able to compete. Many folks I know when you get started with link building, it can seem daunting and overwhelming.
So let me walk you through what is essentially a half a day of work, maybe three or four hours of work to try these three tactics that will almost certainly get your business or your organization the first handful, let’s say 50 links that you need to start being able to compete. Content can you take you a long way. Keywords can take you a long way. Engagement and interaction can take you a long way. But you’ve got to have a base of links. So let’s get started here.
#1. Your brand name, domain name, and founder’s/execs names
The first one is basically looking for links that come from your own name, your brand name, your domain name potentially, and the names of the founders or people who run your company.
Step One: Search Google for the names in quotes.
So if it was me and Moz, you’d be searching for “Rand Fishkin” or “Moz.com” in quotes, not the domain name in the URL field. But in the Google search bar, I’d be searching for “Moz.com” in quotes or “Moz + SEO.” Moz also has other meanings, including the singer Morrissey, which makes for confusing types of things. If you have that, you’ll need to use your brand name plus some sort of signifier or identifier. It’s very rare that Morrissey gets mentioned along with search engine optimization. It’s very often that Moz gets mentioned along with SEO, and so I can combine those to search for it. So any of these searches will result in a big list of tons of Google results.
Step Two: Manually check the top let’s say 50 to 100 results to confirm that…
- They link to the right place, and if they don’t, if there are mentions of Rand Fishkin that don’t link to Moz, we should fix that. We’re going to contact those people.
- If you can control the anchor text and where the link location points, you can update it. For example, I can go to my LinkedIn. My LinkedIn has a link to Moz. I could update that if I were at a different company or if Moz’s domain name changed, for example when it did change from SEOmoz to just Moz.
- If it’s missing or wrong, I find the right people, I email them, and I fix it. As a result, I should have something like this. Every single mention in Google has a link on the page to my website. I can get that from brand name, from…
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