And if you are struggling to build links, here are the tactics you need to follow… even if your website, product, or content aren’t as good as your competition, these tactics will work. Some of these sites will have linked to you while others may have not. I spent a lot of time and money creating the images on my site, and I would appreciate it if people knew that it was originally created by me. Thanks [insert your name] Out of all of the link tactics mentioned in this post, this one has the highest success rate. If you email someone and they don’t link back, try them a few more times. So why not email all of these people and ask them to turn the mention into a link? I really appreciate you mentioning me on your site [insert link to the article that mentions you but doesn’t contain a link]. They don’t sell links, they aren’t familiar with link building, and they don’t leverage author accounts or guest posts. What’ll you’ll want to do is read that post and turn it into an infographic. Now you’ll want to email each of the sites that linked to the original article and mention how you have turned it into an infographic.
Are you frustrated that no one will link to you? Have you tried all of the basic link building methods like email outreach to find out that none of them are working for you?
Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.
Everyone says you need to write amazing content to build links. And although that helps, what if I told you it isn’t a requirement.
Yes, link building is hard, but not impossible.
And if you are struggling to build links, here are the tactics you need to follow… even if your website, product, or content aren’t as good as your competition, these tactics will work.
Tactic #1: Link Intersect
If you email a site asking for a link, the chances are they are going to ignore it. I get these requests all the time… and I ignore them too.
But on the flip side, if you emailed someone that linked to 3 or 4 of your competitors there is a good chance they will also link to you.
When someone links to a few of your competitors, this tells you that they don’t mind linking to sites within your industry and that they are more open to linking to more sites as they already link to 3 competitors.
So how do you find sites who link to at least 3 of your competitors?
The way you do this is by heading over to Ahrefs and selecting their “Link Intersect” feature (it is under the “more” navigation menu option).
You’ll want to enter your 3 closest competitors and then your domain at the bottom. This will generate a report of sites that link to your competition but not you.
From there you’ll want to drill down to specific pages to see what pages are linking to your competition.
As you find common sites that link to a few of your competitors, you’ll have to dig in to figure out in what context they are linking out.
For example, if someone is linking to your all of your competitors’ blogs in a resource page, you have to make sure you have a blog before hitting them up. Because if you don’t, why would they add you to the list?
Once you find a handful of sites that are a good fit, you should email the site owner, build a conversation, and then ask for a link.
Here’s an example that my team used for a site that I own:
And here was the response we got:
We use this tactic at scale. For every 100 websites that we emailed we picked up 9.7 links. We got this ratio for sites in a competitive niche and we aren’t using my name.
Tactic #2: Image link building
People love images… just look at social networks like Instagram. They’ve built a multi-billion-dollar company by encouraging people to take more photos.
As you’re blogging, you should consider using custom images on your site. If you aren’t a great designer, no worries, you can just use tools like Canva. Or if you have a bit of money to spend, you can always head to Fiverr and spend a few bucks paying someone to create custom images.
A good example of this is how I created a handful of custom graphs about Facebook for this blog post. The graphs look something like this:
Over time, you’ll notice that other sites will take your images without linking to you. This may sound bad, but in reality, it is great because you can reach out to each of those sites and tell them to give you credit and link back.
Note, I am not telling you to “ask,” I am telling you to enforce that they need to link back to you.
Here’s how you find all of the people who have taken your images.
First, head over to Google Image Search. Once you land there, click on the camera icon.
Once you click it, you’ll see a box that looks like this:
From there you will either want to paste in the URL with your custom image or upload it. And once you hit search you’ll see a list of sites who have taken your image.
Some of these sites will have linked to you while others may have not. For the ones that have not linked to you, email them something that goes like this…
Subject: Copyright infringement – [name of their site]
Hey [their first name],
I noticed on this url [insert the url on their site that has used your image without linking back] you used an image that I created, and the rights of that image are owned by me.
I don’t mind you using it, but please link to back to [URL on your site where the image could be found] and give me credit. I spent a lot of time and money creating the images on my site, and I would appreciate it if people knew that it was originally created by me.
Please make this change in the next 72 hours.
Thanks
[insert your name]
Out of all of the link tactics mentioned in this post, this one has the highest success rate. It’s close to 100%.
If you email someone and they don’t link back, try them a few more times.
As your site grows in popularity, more people will steal your images, which will make it easier to build backlinks.
Tactic #3: Link reclamation
As your website gets older, you’ll notice that people will naturally mention you and your company. But when they mention your company name they won’t always link to you.
So why not email all of these people and ask them to turn the mention into a link?
It’s a simple strategy, and it works really well.
Just think of it this way, if someone has mentioned you or your company without you having to convince them, it typically means they already like what they see.
So, when you email them, not only will they feel flattered, but there is a high probability they will respond as well.
This means it will be easy for you to convince them to link to you.
But when you shoot off the email, I highly recommend that you also share the content that mentions you on the social web and let them know that you did this.
Here’s an example email:
Subject: I’m honored, thanks [insert their first name]
Hey [insert their first name],
I’m flattered! I really appreciate you mentioning me on your site [insert link to the article that mentions you but doesn’t contain a link].
I just wanted to let you know that I shared your article on Twitter to show my appreciation.
On a side note, I would appreciate it if you adjusted the mention of my name, “[insert your name]” and turned it into a link that pointed people to [URL of your site].
Cheers,
[insert your name]
PS: Let me know if I can do anything for you
Your success rate should be well over 50%. For me, my rate is close to 83%, but again a lot of people in marketing know…
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