Digital PR can help rankings, organic traffic and more.

The term digital PR may differ slightly depending on who you ask.

We recently discussed the differences between US and UK digital PR with Rise at Seven’s Will Hobson on our podcast.

But ultimately, the goal is the same: to get high-authority links to boost rankings and brand awareness.

As digital PR continues to grow and refine worldwide, with new agencies and sites adopting the strategy daily, we thought it was worth exploring how brands use digital PR to support their SEO goals.

No two brands are the same, but there are some key strategies that you can use in digital PR to help support SEO.

How Does Digital PR Help SEO?

In short, studies show that getting high-authority links can improve rankings.

Most wield digital PR by getting links to a page directly and then internally linking to a secondary page that they want to get ranking.

Link building does not happen in a vacuum. We’ve all but confirmed that other factors, like clicks, may also impact rankings.

So, first, I’ll show you some studies showing a strong correlation between ranking and links. Later in this post, I’ll show you significant evidence of organic traffic boosts from digital PR to individual pages.

Last, I’ll discuss directional metrics that ultimately make up the digital PR mindset.

Links Impact Site Authority

Several flagship studies have shown a correlation between overall site authority metrics and backlinks.

One study from Backlinko analyzed over 1.18 million keywords and the top ten ranking URLs for each to identify correlations.

They found that the top-ranking result in Google has almost four times more backlinks than positions 2-10.

Another point found that Ahrefs Domain Rating correlates with higher rankings.

SEMRush’s Ranking Factors Study analyzed over 16,000 keywords and analyzed the top 20 positions and their performance.

As you can see in the image below, several backlink factors (in yellow), including domain authority, number of referring domains, and number of backlinks, are highly correlated with ranking.

A study from Internet Marketing Ninjas found that over 96% of websites ranking in the top 10 of Google had more than 1,000 unique referring domains.

However, not all links are equal. In our post about the number of backlinks you need, I showed how looking at the raw quantity of links is misleading.

Sites need quality, relevant backlinks to improve their domain’s authority and rank for keywords.

Another Moz study reached similar conclusions. In 2021, it examined the first 20 organic results for every MozCast keyword (10,000 keywords).

They, too, found that the number of links to a page was highly correlated with ranking.

They also found that Page Authority was highly correlated with ranking, meaning that links from authoritative sources play a bigger role.

After the 2024 Google leak, even more potential connections between ranking and links have come to light.

What the Google Leak Says

Many SEOs have found connections between links and ranking based on the leaked documentation from Google.

The documentation mentions a locality and bucket when referencing links and ranking:

A link’s quality is categorized as low, medium, and high:

Many believe this supports Google’s use of a link’s relevancy and quality for ranking purposes.

The documentation even supports evidence that Google can track links across pages even when not directly linked.

This supports the common digital PR practice of getting links to a page and then passing that link value internally via an internal link to a product or service page. (More on that later.)

There’s a lot of evidence to support how high-authority, relevant links can impact rankings. But let’s look deeper at where Google is headed with AI and LLMs.

AI Wants Unique Information

Google wants things they haven’t seen before.

After the Helpful Content Update, many sites were penalized for simply regurgitating the same information as everyone else. (Though Google does seem to show bias to news sites—more on this later.)

One of the central tenets of their self-assessment has been to provide “original information, reporting, research, or analysis,” as seen below.

But the future brings even more adjustments to Google, including AI.

LLMs Need Fresh Information

Campaigns that provide unique data are primed to succeed during AI.

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews need fresh information and data. When they cite information, you can be cited within that.

Check out the example below of how ZipRecruiter is getting mentioned in the AI Overview and then cited as a source below:

So, by providing unique data in your content, you put yourself in the best position to rank and get links and exposure over time.

But Are Links the Cause of the Rankings or the Result?

In some cases, they can go hand-in-hand. In the next section of this post, I will show you how many brands use content to build links and organic traffic over time.

Some might argue that you build links because a post is ranking, not vice versa.

This can be the case sometimes.

A well-known brand like Nike may not need to manually build links to help their pages rank because they naturally get mentioned in the press.

Some keywords have high link intent and are often searched for and cited within blog posts or news articles.

Sites focusing on these high-link intent keywords can gain more links over time (as we’ll see next.)

Let’s look at how to run a digital PR campaign that ticks SEO boxes.

Using Digital PR to Increase Rankings

In all cases, finding that happy ground between keyword-driven content and pitchable digital PR content is where you can make the most significant impact.

You can drive relevant organic traffic and bring in high-quality, relevant links.

The challenge is always how to make keyword-driven content link-worthy.

The answer is with unique content.

So, let’s look at some examples of how brands do this to improve their SEO.

Best Cities for X

In a “best cities” or “index” campaign, the goal is to create a ranking of cities, states, or countries, rank them, and then pitch the winners (or losers) to those regional news publications.

Most start by identifying keywords that are relevant to their industry. For instance, here is a snapshot of keywords with “best cities for”:

The question to ask is, can this get me relevant links? Can this get me coverage from a place that makes sense and supports my statements?

For example, when creating digital PR for a construction rental company, I knew I wanted to focus on construction industry publications.

However, it might not be that obvious. Sometimes, you must leave your primary service offering area to get links.

For example, WalletHub is a personal finance publication. They rank for hundreds of “best cities for X” queries tangentially related to personal finance.

Take a look at this snapshot from Ahrefs Site Explorer:

Digging into the backlink profiles for these posts, you’ll see a steady stream of backlinks and increasing organic traffic over time.

You can also see short surges of traffic right when the post is published, pitched, and subsequently updated and repitched.

For example, here are the best cities for families:

But, to make this work, you don’t have to be a high-authority site like WalletHub.

Here is a DR 63 site that did a post about the best cities for runners:

Here is a DR 42 site that looked at the best cities for biking:

Again, you can see the impact of the digital PR campaign on organic traffic at publishing and right at the time of the update.

One thing you may notice is that the traffic is waning between updates. This is due to a few factors, but “best cities” don’t always have much interest year-round. And if sites aren’t getting clicks or searches, the traffic can drop.

So, let’s look at a keyword type that can get more consistent traffic: statistics.

Statistics Posts

Statistics posts are any kind of post that rounds up relevant statistics about a current subject and presents them in a digestible, easily citable way in a post.

The way these work for digital PR and SEO is that they have both search volume and high link intent, meaning they are topics often searched for and cited.

For instance, here is the link profile for a customer service statistics post. You can see that it slowly gains links over time.

However, to truly make this digital PR, you must pitch them first. And to make something pitchable, you need to give something of value.

Value can be something like a pitchable asset, such as this construction statistics post, which includes an infographic that can be pitched for coverage:

But another way to create value is by using proprietary data for your statistics posts.

This is data that no one else has and can be extremely valuable when pitched correctly. (Check out how to pitch media.)

Hubspot’s Marketing Statistics report is an excellent example of this.

They survey and publish their data results each year. As you can see, their links grow along with the organic traffic (although it dips a bit yearly, it’s not nearly as drastic as the city studies mentioned above).

They rank for “marketing statistics” and get links over time.

However, statistics keywords aren’t the only ones with high link intent. Other general data queries can bring in passive links while still being pitchable.

Let’s look at these next.

Data-related queries

General data-related queries can also have high link intent. If you can make these pitchable, you can see gains across organic and links.

This study from Attentive is based on proprietary survey data, giving them something unique to pitch, while being also setting themselves up to rank.

It ranks for “millennial shopping habits,” which gives it high link intent but also a monthly search volume of 80.

Looking at the overview in Ahrefs, you can already see the traffic and link gains moving together.

Here’s another piece by Insurify that looks at the most ticketed cars. They used their proprietary data from thousands of insurance claims to determine the car models that get the most speeding tickets.

Then, they pitched it for coverage.

This piece ranks for “most ticketed cars in america”, which gets 250 searches per month, and has accrued over 400 links.

You also see a boost in links and rankings when they published and refreshed.

(There is slightly more than meets the eye to this post as it was updated after Insurify’s merger with Compare, which is most likely why you see that big boost with the publish date.)

But let’s look outside the data-related queries and into my favorite (and most underutilized) way to tie digital PR to SEO: informational queries. That’s up next.

Informational Queries

You can also get creative with how you tie digital PR campaigns to keywords.

If you can take any old question and provide proprietary data to make your content pitchable, you are uniquely set up to rank for the keyword and grow links over time.

Casper took the informational query “couples’ sleeping positions,” which gets 800 monthly searches, and made it pitchable by gathering their proprietary data.

They answered the query in the post by listing the different sleeping positions and what they meant, but then they supplemented the post with survey data to pitch to journalists.

You can see from the results that the piece gains organic traffic and links over time.

In all of these cases, digital PR directly impacts organic traffic.

Next, we’ll examine how brands use digital PR to build domain authority.

Using Digital PR to Increase Rankings Indirectly

Building links to a product page or money page can be challenging. So, the common practice is to create links to related content and then internally link to a money page or home page.

Most digital PR campaigns use the indirect approach to supporting rankings.

Because of this indirect relationship, you are more likely to find directional data supporting the campaigns.

Here are some signals you can look at with this tactic:

Money Page Traffic Increase

With this tactic, you can pass some of that link value to help your money page rank specifically.

I say “some” of that value because it is unclear how much passes through via an internal link. (It is safe to say that if it were 100%, then we’d see everyone’s money pages ranking all over the place.)

But if you remember this graphic from earlier, it is clear Google may track this kind of internal linking:

So, this is what we mean when discussing using digital PR to help SEO indirectly. You both boost the overall site domain authority, making it easier to rank overall, and you boost a specific page through internal linking.

The digital PR campaign below by ScrapCarComparison looked at how dirty car interiors are.

They got over 190 referring domains, and while it doesn’t rank for a keyword, you can see that they link to one of their money pages at the top of the piece.

This way, all the link value gained can be funneled to their money page. Then, if we look at the money page itself (which is a page about scrapping cars), we can perhaps see a brief boost.

Homepage Traffic Increase

You can also look at homepage traffic increases.

One of my favorite posts of all time is from Signs.com. They asked users to try to draw common logos from memory and plotted them on a graphic based on their proximity to the actual logo.

This has drawn over 500 referring domains over time.

And when you look at the impact, there is a boost in traffic to their homepage around the time that piece went live and began gaining links.

See that next bump in March 2020?

A very successful post about coronavirus signage went live then. In the below you can see a screenshot below of the burst of links right after March 2020 that coincides with the boost in the overall traffic:

These may not be the only cause behind the spike in traffic during those timeframes, but they play a part.

A Mix of Metrics

As you can tell, it’s virtually impossible to give a 1-to-1 attribution in this fashion.

Your money page or homepage traffic may increase based on numerous other factors, such as social or traditional PR.

Your digital PR campaigns can also increase brand awareness, increase interest in the brand, and send more traffic to your homepage.

So, this is where you start looking at directional gains rather than individual metrics. Sure, you can have a KPI of links per campaign, but connecting the dots to sitewide rankings becomes more difficult.

This makes sense because digital PR (and other tactics) should be part of the marketing mix, not your entire strategy.

Do You Want Homepage Links or Links to Content?

From an SEO perspective, if the content targets a keyword, get a link to the content.

If your brand isn’t well known or growing, getting links to your homepage may be more beneficial to establish some authority and awareness in the space.

But, for an established brand, linking to a blog might make more sense, though I’ve seen it go both ways.

Either way, if you are getting links to a homepage, ensure that it is optimized to pass value to your priority pages by linking to them prominently on the page.

What to Think About in the Pitch Process

Digital PR doesn’t end with a great piece of content. The pitch process is just as crucial to supporting your SEO goals.

Here are a few tips for ensuring your pitch gets you the best value.

1. Pitch to Quality, Relevant Sites

When building your target list, getting links from relevant sites is critical.

Google’s leaked documentation may show that links from highly clicked sections are worth more than those from low clicked sections.

Since most cannot access a website’s click data, you can lean on relevance and homepage.

Most sites highlight their homepage’s most important/relevant sections.

For instance, a site like Timeout, based on its homepage, mainly focuses on travel. You see it in the tagline.

And it’s one of the only categories they highlight on the homepage:

So, getting a link from them about a travel study would most likely hold more weight in Google’s eyes.

2. Pitch to Sites That Get Updated Frequently

The documentation also shows evidence that Google considers links from frequently updated sites.

What this primarily points to is news sites, aka digital PR.

3. Pitch to Sites That Provide Follow Links

Although new evidence shows that Google tracks unlinked and nofollow links, the most direct value is from followed, linked mentions.

So, to get the most SEO value out of a campaign, we should focus only on sites that provide follow-links.

You can easily tell if a link is a follow link using an SEO extension like Nofollow.

I cover this extensively in my post about building a media list from scratch.

4. Push Your Brand Keywords in Your Pitch

Anchor text and the surrounding text are essential for SEO. (Again, the new leaked documentation supports this.)

So, you want to ensure that your brand name is mentioned correctly.

Since many journalists copy exactly from a pitch, you can nudge them in the right direction by providing your brand name and a short description they will likely include in the article.

For example, if I were pitching a study to a journalist from our site, I’d say “a study by email outreach tool, BuzzStream.”

If you’re interested in learning more, we have some comprehensive articles on writing media pitches and email outreach templates.

5. Follow Up to Ask for a Link

Sometimes, journalists link incorrectly. They may forget to link, link to the wrong page, or sometimes even use a click-tracking link instead of your link.

Although journalists are incredibly busy, if your goal is to support SEO, it is always in your best interest to follow up and ask them to change the link.

The email draft would look something like this:

I wrote a whole guide about finding and claiming your unlinked mentions.

6. Maintain SEO Best Practices Sitewide

This might be obvious, but if your site doesn’t follow SEO best practices, you are hindering your digital PR performance.

You may get links, but to effectively support your core keywords or domain authority, you don’t want something like site speed or keyword cannibalization slowing you down.

SEO Doesn’t Equal Leads

To wrap up here, it’s worth mentioning that good SEO doesn’t always mean you are converting customers, generating leads, or turning a profit with a website.

SEO can support organic and some branding goals, but you need to consider the entire funnel for a customer.

Digital PR can be wielded for bottom-funnel keywords, but it is limited.

Think of digital PR as a supporting player in the entire marketing mix. You can integrate it into conversion goals, but if that’s the only thing you are leaning on for leads, you may be limited in what you can accomplish.

The post Digital PR and SEO: Getting The Most Value Out of Campaigns appeared first on BuzzStream.

Those shared Google Sheets lists seem too good to be true because they are.

I’m not against guest posting. I have an entire post on guest blogging and how to do it effectively.

We also have a guest post list post, for which I weeded out over 800 sites to create a custom list based on several quality factors.

I’m against those shared Google Sheets that get passed around the web selling backlinks at extraordinary rates, like these:

If you do it right, getting featured on a third-party site can help build links, especially for new sites.

But since I receive these kinds of lists daily, it was worth writing a post about their value (or lack thereof).

Helpful Content Crushed Most Guest Blogging Sites

The problem with a list is that it gets outdated quickly.

Take any chunk of pages on a list like the one pictured above. You’ll find traffic metrics have dropped in previous Helpful Content updates or the recent March 2024 ranking system update.

For example, here are the organic traffic metrics for the first five sites on the list.

See the trend?

Google is out to get low-quality sites whose only goal is to profit from selling links.

In 2022, Google announced that it was using an AI-based spam-prevention system called SpamBrain to detect sites buying and selling links.

Not Every Placement Is What It Seems

One site that I get guest-posting pitch emails about all the time is MSN.

This made me dig deeper into this because I’ve also seen it on various spreadsheets.

When you look into the kinds of placements you can get on MSN, you find that they are essentially sub-sections of a site.

MSN used to be a news site. Now, it is essentially just a syndication platform.

You can see that they dipped during some of the previous Helpful Content updates in 2023.

That said, they still bring over 40 Million Organic Visits per year.

So why is getting a link from them potentially worthless?

You’ll notice it’s broken up into profiles when you dig into MSN. Anyone can create a profile if they follow MSN’s guidelines.

Based on what SEOs have learned from the Google leak, Google may value links from highly clicked site sections.

Furthermore, Google penalizes verticals that make less sense on a site.

For example, Google penalized coupon sections from top-tier sites like Forbes as site reputation abuse.

So, if the profile is well-known, like Newsweek or The Hill, and posts relevant news, you probably get some value from the link.

But the link likely isn’t valuable if a spammy link builder sets up a random profile that only lists random guest posts.

It may even be subject to a penalty at some point.

Google Most Likely Manually Devalues Sites

Another reason to avoid these sites is that there is evidence that Google has taken action to devalue sites manually.

I saw it in action.

I once had a conversation thread on LinkedIn, and someone shared a link to a Google Sheet of Guest Post Sites.

Google rep John Mueller jumped in (he wasn’t tagged anywhere) and just said, “Thanks for the link.”

This tells me that he would devalue all the links from those sites.

Of course, there’s no real way to tell; he never responded when I asked him about it.

However, the evidence is backed up by Google’s link spam guidelines, and there is no reason they wouldn’t want to devalue links from sites that sell placements for ranking purposes.

You Don’t Need As Many Links As You Think

I wrote an entire post explaining why you may not need as many links as you think.

Many evaluate their link building needs based on competitors. However, an analysis of most sites revealed that they have far fewer quality links than what appears on the surface.

For example, if I am a mattress site and went into link building thinking that I needed to compete with Casper, on the surface, it would appear that I need over 35K links from referring domains to stay competitive.

But when I run a quality check and filter out low-DR and low-traffic sites using Ahrefs’ Best Links feature, that number drops to 2,632.

Shifting your focus from the quantity to the quality of links will help you avoid succumbing to lists like this one.

So Why Do So Many Guest Post Spreadsheets Exist?

Why are so many people using spreadsheets like this to purchase link placements if they don’t work? Why do so many lists exist?

Some of the sites on these lists may have worked sporadically in the past, so people kept running with it.

Others who don’t necessarily have the time or knowledge to research SEO more deeply were sold on the quick shortcut to links.

Either way, they are no longer reliable based on Google’s data and actions in the past months.

What’s the Better Strategy?

Here’s an entire video I did on the better guest blogging strategy. It involves providing keywords, traffic value, and competitor insights to convince a site to accept your guest post.

Essentially, you pitch like an SEO content writing agency or freelancer.

Here is the condensed version below:

1. Find Sites Where You Want to Appear

First, you find sites contextually relevant to your product and not a direct competitor.

What I like about the strategy is that you’re not only beholden to these sites that accept guest posts.

2. Identify Keywords That Benefit Your Target Site

You want to provide so much value to your target that it’s hard for them to say no.

You find keywords for which your target site should rank but don’t. Look at the SERPs and competitors.

If I were to pitch BuzzStream, I would look at keywords that are valuable to BuzzStream. Are there keywords around link building or digital PR that are lacking?

3. Pitch the Keyword Metrics and Value

Aside from pitching the post idea, clarify why the keyword is valuable. Use search volume, click metrics, and traffic value to support your claims.

Ahrefs has all of these metrics for keywords.

For example, here are some metrics for “digital marketing trends.”

As I said, you don’t need to contact sites that accept guest posts. If you could do this correctly and find some people who may be low in writers, they may be looking for quality work and don’t have the time to do it.

Then, you add your link to that post naturally.

Or Consider Digital PR

Digital PR is the best way to get high-authority links. As we saw previously with Casper, a few high-authority links can significantly impact a site’s authority.

It is something that Google itself has lauded as quality content.

I love some of the things I see from digital pr, it’s a shame it often gets bucketed with the spammy kind of link building. It’s just as critical as tech SEO, probably more so in many cases.

— John … (@JohnMu) January 23, 2021

Many of my recent takeaways from the Google leak have all pointed to Google valuing high-authority links from news sites over random guest post sites.

We’ve covered numerous successful digital PR examples that have proven to be repeatable strategies across various industries and the essential tools to run a successful campaign.

The post Stop Using Shared Google Sheet Guest Posting Lists appeared first on BuzzStream.

Numerous posts and analyses have been made about this information, and I’m sure more will follow. But for a primer, I highly recommend checking out Mike King’s post on IPullRank and Rand Fishkin’s post on SparkToro since they were the first to report on the matter.

With the help of the BuzzStream dev team, I’ve reviewed the documentation to extract important takeaways about backlinks. I plan on updating this as we dig more.

Backlinks aren’t the only piece of the ranking puzzle, but having more supportive documentation around link building is excellent.

For a bit of a spoiler, everything points to how powerful digital PR can be.

But, let me show you everything I can about what we can learn about link building (and digital PR) from the Google Algorithm leak.

1. Power of Internal Links

One piece of the documentation talks about how documents can link indirectly, which may have implications for internal linking and digital PR strategies.

This indicates that the indexing and ranking process may consider indirect document relationships.

For instance, if Document A has high authority and links to Document B, and then Document B links to Document C, the indirect link from A (through B) to C can contribute to the SEO value of Document C, even though A does not link directly to C.

So, in the digital PR realm, this suggests that you could get a high-authority link to a piece of content and then internally link that piece of content to your money page to pass that same authority through.

I posed this exact question to LinkedIn users, and most seem to agree with this sentiment.

It may be evident that internal links are essential, but I’m not sure people appreciate precisely how much.

Nate Matherson of Positional discusses the power of internal links in our podcast episode (and his thoughts are backed up by this documentation).

Cyrus Shepard’s study provides excellent advice on the exact number and types of internal links needed to really have an impact.

2. Quality and Authority Measurements

Quality and authority have always been discussed in link building, but seeing some of these in action is excellent.

Here’s a quick look at some of the mentions for both.

Quality

According to the documentation, an anchor’s quality is measured by its ‘locality’ and ‘bucket.’

These localities and buckets likely refer to a categorization system Google uses to identify anchors.

This indicates that backlinks from specific sources are valued differently based on the context (and relevancy) of the link source to the target domain.

Furthermore, they mention source quality for anchors, suggesting that backlinks from reputable and high-quality sites carry more SEO weight.

For example, anchors from high-quality base documents (TYPE_HIGH_QUALITY) are more valuable than those from medium or low-quality documents.

Authority

Lastly, a confidence and authority metric is mentioned, highlighting that a page can boost the authority of the linked site.

This should be nothing new for link builders and digital PRs.

We’ve covered this extensively in our link quality and relevancy posts, but it’s important to reiterate the importance of link builders and digital PRs.

For my money, digital PR is more effective today for building links naturally from high-quality, authoritative sites.

There are options for link builders, but these are mainly paid options, which isn’t reflected at all in the leaked documentation but is a potential risk.

3. Anchor Text Context

Google’s document mentions the significance of anchor text and its context.

The text, including capitalization and even punctuation, is considered.

Then, they mention the “hash of terms” near the anchor.

This amounts to the words surrounding the anchor. (Google has actually said this in their links documentation, but it’s great to see it backed up.)

You can quickly gauge this with Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, which gives you the anchor text of a link and the surrounding text.

So, a link to BuzzStream is much more effective if it includes relevant contextual terms like “email outreach software.”

If you can control the anchor text of a backlink, do your best to control it.

But this gets into the idea of branding your business or site.

4. Authorship Is Recognized

The concept of Authorship appears to be very important.

I even discuss it in my Helpful Content post and when evaluating guest posting sites.

Google considers and tracks authors. You can see many instances of authors mentioned in the documentation.

But again, just because an author is listed on a page doesn’t mean the site is worthwhile.

Instead, Google most likely looks at how the author is associated with the site or topics they are writing about on the site and web.

The more closely associated the author is with the topic they are writing about, the more it would make sense to value that page.

For example, I Googled Vince Nero and saw my name associated with keywords like “content marketing,” “SEO,” and BuzzStream.

So, if I wanted to write about baseball, I’d have to do a much better job associating myself with that terminology.

This could be done by guest blogging, podcasting, or other forms of social media.

5. Redundant Anchors Are Dropped

Based on the documentation, redundant anchors from the same domain are often dropped to avoid spam and ensure the uniqueness of backlinks.

So, is it a bad thing to get multiple links from the same domain?

No, but there appears to be a reasonable cutoff point at which additional links will not further impact ranking.

This also points to getting diverse backlinks from multiple high-quality sources to help with ranking rather than just repeatedly leaning on the same source.

That said, there’s nothing wrong with getting links from high-authority domains where your customers spend their time if ranking isn’t the goal. You can send quality direct traffic to your site.

SEOs can gauge the impact by looking at referral traffic from a specific source on Google Analytics.

For instance, here’s a look at a referral sources for BuzzStream:

You can see that some blog traffic came in from Ahrefs, for instance.

6. Links Impact PageRank Weight

The documentation references a “pagerankWeight” associated with links, seemingly connecting the two.

From Moz’s documentation, Domain Authority (DA) considers several metrics, including linking root domains. Similarly, Ahrefs uses Domain Rating (DR).

So, if you want to build links, metrics like DA or DR are a great way to gauge their impact.

When evaluating sites in BuzzStream, you can quickly look at a site’s Domain Authority or Domain Rating as pictured in the screenshot below:

This allows you to focus only on sites with a high impact.

7. Link Freshness and History

Google’s documentation shows a link’s first and last seen dates are recorded.

Not only that but they are also updated with timestamps for freshness tracking.

This suggests that newer and frequently updated backlinks, like high-end news sites, may be more valuable.

Or, as Mike King put it in his post: Look at that, I just made digital PR cool again!

(Mike, it was always cool .)

Strategically, this means that older posts — specifically those commonly offered on link-buying sites and some resource pages buried deep within a site — are not helpful for link building.

I discussed this extensively in our link insertions post, as it is one of the main ways users place links on older content.

8. Clicks on Links

If a link is placed but no one sees it, is it valuable?

According to the documentation, no, not really.

Pulling from Rand Fishkin’s SparkToro post, he shared a quote from his original source: “Google has three buckets/tiers for classifying their link indexes (low, medium, high quality). Click data is used to determine which link graph index tier a document belongs to. See SourceType here, and TotalClicks here.”

So, if a site section gets little to no clicks, it is considered lower quality and devalues the link.

All of this points to the fact that you can get a link placed somewhere, but it doesn’t matter if no one sees it.

News sites get higher visibility, leading to more potential clicks.

Conclusions From the Leak

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’ll repeat: everything from the above points to the fact that digital PR should be part of your link building strategy.

Relevant links gained from digital PR pretty much hit all of the things this documentation lays out as it relates to link building:

• Quality, authoritative sites
• Highly recognized authors
• Fresh content
• Highly visible content leading to more clicks

Many studies have shown for years that most of these are true, even if Google says otherwise.

So that brings me to my second conclusion: you should always test.

This leak has come out at a time of SEO uncertainty. The Helpful Content Update decimated many sites, for better or for worse. AI Overviews has just been sloppily launched, much to the chagrin of most Google users.

In times like this, instead of relying on what Google shows us, the best way to succeed is to test your own methods (or, like me, rely on the testing of much smarter people.)

As BuzzStream co-founder and CEO Paul May put it in his recent LinkedIn post:

“Google has shown repeatedly that you need to focus on what they do, not what they say.”

For example, sites like SearchPilot put out SEO-related A/B test case studies that I highly recommend checking out.

We have a whole section of research and data studies we’ve performed on the best ways to do digital PR.

Don’t let these necessarily inform your link building strategies; instead, consider them ways to support your thinking and make better decisions and cases to stakeholders or clients.

The post What the Google Leak Means for Link Builders and Digital PRs appeared first on BuzzStream.

I’ll be blunt: they are never good.

And yet, according to uSERP’s State of Backlinks for SEO report, guest posting is the third most popular link-building method behind content marketing and digital PR.

I’ve cited it as a useful link building strategy as well.

Some simply buy links on large guest posting directories, and others pitch quality content to get published on an external site.

Guess as to what’s working best these days?

Here’s an example of a guest posting site directory that was pitched to me via LinkedIn:

If you look at many of these sites on lists, you’ll see that Google’s Helpful Content Update has decimated most of their traffic.

As you can see, when you start to explore the waters of guest blogging for backlinks, things get very muddy quickly.

To succeed with guest blogging in 2024, you need to think of yourself as a content creator instead of a link builder. In this post, I’ll show you exactly how.

What is Guest Blogging?

Guest blogging is when you write a unique article to be published on an external website. You sometimes get a link to your site in an author byline.

For example, here’s a post I did for Ahrefs in 2021 that featured a link to Siege Media (where I worked at the time) in the author byline area.

In other cases, you can add a link within the post itself.

For example, here is a guest blogging placement I did years ago for Page One Power.

Rather than a link to the generic home page, I mentioned a post I wrote for Siege Media.

Since you can typically add a link within the content, guest blogging has become a common link building strategy for SEOs.

In the next section of this post, I’ll explain how to think about guest blogging as a content creator rather than a link builder.

Step 1: Find Guest Posting Targets

The most important thing to remember with guest blogging is relevancy. Building relevant links is a shortcut to building authority.

So, let’s start by finding relevant sites that have a blog.

The easiest place to start is by looking at the sites that want guest contributors.

1. Sites Who Want Guest Contributors

The best way to find these kinds of sites is via a Google search for your industry + the following terms:

• Write for us
• Contribute
• Guest article

For instance, say I owned a boat rental site and I wanted to find guest blogging sites in the fishing industry, you might search for:

“Fishing + write for us”

It’s worth mentioning that some risk is involved in sites that overtly mention they offer guest post placements if your goal is link building.

Risk 1: If anyone can contribute, the link will be worth less overall. Even with the very strict writer guidelines, the gates are still open to anyone, which makes it less likely to be very valuable, even if it’s a high-authority site.

In our podcast with Linkpitch.io’s Aaron Anderson, he recommends avoiding sites that blatantly advertise the links. Here’s his take:

“If they’re being very blatant, if it’s like from every page, you see the write for us page, generally speaking, I would say that that’s a bad sign… but having a contributor page or write for us page isn’t necessarily a negative.”

Risk 2: The more significant risk is that most sites offering guest posts exist only to make money. These sites carry a risk, which I’ll get into in Step 2.

If you want to avoid the risk altogether, you can try to find sites that don’t overtly offer guest bloggers or guest contributors.

2. Sites That Have Blogs In Your Industry

The cleanest way to get a link into a post through guest blogging is by avoiding the sites that openly advertise working with guest bloggers.

Instead, look for relevant sites that simply have blogs. So, you can do a Google search for something like industry + “blog,” articles,” or “resources.”

Based on our previous example of the fishing industry, I already found several new blogs.

Not all of these sites will be open to guest contributors, but if you jump down to step 3, I’ll show you how to drastically increase the value of your guest post offer and thus increase the potential of you getting a link placed.

Finding Sites Using BuzzStream

The benefit of using BuzzStream to find sites or prospects is that you can search multiple Google queries simultaneously.

First, I need to set up a new project and name it.

Then, I’ll scroll down to enable some Research Metrics.

Since I have Ahrefs synced to BuzzStream, I can pull in Domain Rating, Position Metrics, and backlinks.

All of these will be integral to helping me weed out low-quality sites in Step 2.

For instance, if I wanted to start a new Research List using BuzzStream, I’d start a New Project, name it, and then choose Search the Web.

Then, I add my search queries to pull in all target sites.

This will pull in hundreds of results that I’ll then narrow down for quality in Step 2.

Now we can start the evaluation process.

Step 2: Evaluate for Quality

If you want a shortcut to quality guest posting sites, I evaluated the top-ranking guest post sites’ lists of over 800 sites and ran a quality check.

Ultimately, I identified 165+ high-quality guest posting sites.

I already did a video and post on this, which you can find below.

But here are some of the quality checks you should do on your site.

Do They Advertise the Price for a Post?

Any buying and selling of link placements for ranking purposes (i.e., without nofollow, sponsored tags) is technically against Google’s guidelines and will be marked as spam.

So, while this isn’t a “quality” check, a site that accepts guest posts for money and clearly advertises this on their site is essentially a nonstarter for me.

Google has the technology to find patterns and signals determining whether a link is bought or sold. As recently as 2022, Google announced that it is using its AI-powered SpamBrain to detect and devalue sites participating in these link practices.

What clearer signal than publishing the cost of a link placement?

For example, I would stay away from a site like this:

(Thanks to Geoffrey Archer for his help finding this page example.)

Are sites that accept guest posts for money but don’t advertise them still at risk?

This is where it gets a little hazy.

I mentioned this in Step 1. It is risky to get a guest post published on a site that exists only to make money from guest posts and link insertions.

You’ll often reach out to a site that doesn’t advertise a price, and then you get a response like this:

But if the site isn’t advertising, how would Google even know?

Brian Dean discussed this problem in our podcast. He referred to these sites as ones that could get you into a “bad neighborhood.” (Check out the recording at around the 7-minute mark.)

“Also, if you can just buy a link from a site, then anyone can. So those domains tend to get degraded over time if they aren’t already.

So what happens is a lot of times they’re like, no gambling, crypto, CBD, blah, to make it seem kind of legit. And then they eventually allow like a borderline one and then it’s a free for all.

And then your link is all of a sudden goes from like, Oh, this is really nice link to like on a spammy site with bad neighborhoods as I used to call it.”

An obvious signal is when a site can be found on a list, like a Google Sheet, that someone offers you, you should avoid it.

I mentioned in the intro that I receive lists like the one below from agencies almost daily (note that this is a different list, yet equally as sketchy):

The sites truly doing this incognito may be less risky than others.

I haven’t seen any compelling study or data to tell me one way or another, but the evidence in favor of avoiding these kinds of sites is mounting.

Let’s move on to other checks like traffic or authority with that out of the way.

Traffic Above 5,000 Organic Searches Per Month

I set the bar at 5k monthly searches in my guest post site analysis. Essentially, the higher you set the bar, the fewer sites you’ll find. I might sometimes go even higher, like 10k, but for our purposes let’s stick with 5k.

Use a tool like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to see the actual organic traffic.

Enter the domain, and look below at the Traffic value under “Organic search.”

This isn’t foolproof because a site with overall traffic doesn’t mean the page you write will get any traffic. But it’s a good starting point.

Domain Authority or Domain Rating Above 50

Authority metrics like Domain Authority (DA from Moz) or Domain Rating (DR from Ahrefs) help give some directional sense for whether or not a page can rank for keywords in Google’s eyes.

So, getting a link from a higher authority site typically sends more value.

You can check DR using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer as well. You’ll find it under Backlink Profile.

Just because a site has a high Domain Rating doesn’t mean it’s necessarily high quality. You still need to evaluate some of the relevancy and content quality.

Content is Relevant To Your Site

Content relevancy is critical to a successful guest blogging campaign. Getting links from irrelevant sites will not help your case.

Think about it: even if your goal is just brand awareness or establishing yourself as a thought leader, if you are doing so in the wrong industry, you aren’t going to get much value out of it.

So why waste the time?

A quick way to determine if your target site overlaps your industry is to evaluate the top-ranking keywords to determine their topical authority.

For example, if I were evaluating the fishing blog, I’d head to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and, on the left navigation, choose Organic Keywords.

Many fishing-related keywords rank well, telling me they are an authority in fishing.

It would make sense for a boat rental site to get a link from a fishing site. (You use boats to catch fish, and they rank for fishing keywords.)

You always want to search keywords in the top 5 or 10 positions.

FishingBooker ranks in the top 10 for all of these keywords.

I realized that this example is relatively straightforward, so let’s examine a type of guest post site I see a lot on the web: general news sites.

For example, the site below, DailyGenius, covers education, tech, business, lifestyle, health, and “general” topics.

So, when evaluating these for topical authority and relevancy, I’d try to look more at the keywords on the vertical or category level vs the site overall.

Regarding our boating rental site, we can argue that travel is a relevant industry (you might rent a boat to travel).

So, let’s examine Daily Genius’ travel section to see if it has any topical authority.

I only see eight keywords with no discernible focus, and only one page ranks in the top 10.

So, to me, this page has no strong topical authority and isn’t relevant to boat rentals.

But, even if the site’s overall content is relevant, it’s essential to evaluate it based on Google’s Helpful Content recommendations.

Site Provides Helpful Content

In March 2024, Google rolled out a massive algorithm update, solidifying Helpful Content into their ranking systems.

They’ve provided a helpful checklist for content creators to use to evaluate their own content and determine whether it’s “helpful.”

We’ve summed this up in a helpful document:

To summarize, what you are looking for is truly quality content.

I like to look for proper sourcing of information, whether or not the author talks about doing the thing they are writing about, and original data.

For example, here is a post from Fishingbooker about getting a fishing license in Nebraska. It has abundant helpful information, such as the costs for permits.

And—one of the more accessible signals to discern— it clearly shows that the author knows about fishing:

For comparison, I found a low-ranking post about restaurant equipment:

The only external link is to a product page (clearly trying to rank for deep fryer.) I see a wall of text with no photos of the equipment.

Lastly, I don’t see an author, so I don’t know who wrote this or if they ever worked in a restaurant kitchen.

I can go on, but you get the picture.

Is this a time-consuming process?

Yes, but it gets faster as you do it.

Plus, it’s way more effective than brute-force link building. Google has even said that one link from a highly relevant, quality site can be worth more than hundreds of others —something I discuss a lot in our post about the quality of a link.)

Do They Have NoFollow Links?

This one is simple.

Google views purchased link placements as advertisements, requiring tagging with rel=nofollow, sponsored. Technically, Google doesn’t pass value from a nofollow link.

This prevents sites from scaling link building schemes.

I should note that nofollow links do provide indirect value. If you get a link or article from Forbes, there’s a good chance that people will see it. When people see it, they are likelier to click on it and visit your site.

Thus, nofollow links can provide direct traffic and general brand awareness. So, if that is your goal for guest blogging, then you don’t have to worry about nofollow vs follow links.

But if you want to build a link building campaign from nofollow links, you’ll find little to no value there.

Filtering For Quality With BuzzStream

Once a Research List is compiled in BuzzStream, it pulls in metrics and contact information.

I can filter the contacts relevant to my guest post outreach using these features.

Remember when I added Ahrefs’ Metrics.

Well, look at the list it pulled in for me.

Now, I can use BuzzStream to help me qualify the sites based on the two previous qualities: organic traffic (T) and domain rating (DR).

First, I click Filter, then find my Ahrefs metrics under “Metrics.”

Then, I can filter out the low-quality sites by choosing DR >=25 and Traffic >=5000.

I can further filter down to include only sites whose contact information BuzzStream has found (which will be super helpful in step 5).

Now, I can use BuzzStream to comb through my list and evaluate the content on the page with the Research flow.

I click the Research drop-down and choose “Review on the Web.”

Select the default settings to comb through the sites 5 tabs per time. Now, I’m taken to BuzzStream’s Research flow, where I can evaluate the site for quality on the left and Approve and Reject it from my guest blog target list on the right.

Once I choose Approve or Reject, BuzzStream opens up another tab in its place so that I can seamlessly move through my list without needing a thousand tabs open!

Now you know what to look for, let’s discuss how to find topics your targets want.

Step 3: Find Relevant Topics

Before we get started, here is a quick disclaimer: you must ensure you can provide experience and expertise for all your content choices below.

Ask yourself: Am I qualified to write a guest post on this topic? Am I bringing something new to the table?

These two qualities make and break writing these days—as evidenced by Google’s recent Helpful Content changes.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s find topics.

The other day, I received a guest post request that pitched 25 article ideas.

None were related to BuzzStream, digital PR, or link building. (I’m also pretty sure they were all AI-generated.)

The approach will not work. To succeed with guest blogging, you need to think like a marketer—or, better yet, like an agency.

You are trying to sell your idea. So, you need to provide value to the site you are contacting.

Luckily, I have two killer tactics for you.

If you don’t have the time, I did a quicker video walkthrough here:

Below I’ll walk you through both tactics in more detail:

Tactic 1 – Keyword-Driven Approach

When trying to find a topic to pitch, the best thing you can do to get a guest blog idea accepted is to provide quantifiable value to your target.

The most straightforward way to provide value for most sites is to choose a keyword they should rank for but do not and offer to write that content for them.

This offers a quantifiable value (search volume and traffic value), making it harder for them to say no.

This approach requires knowledge of the site and content area.

Head to Ahrefs Site Explorer for this approach and evaluate the site’s current Organic Keywords.

Then, let’s look at the keywords that aren’t ranking well. We can set the position to 30-100 and only examine lost or declined places.

Now, we will look for keywords with no relevant content ranking.

I’ve found two that might work:

“How to set up a fishing pole,” and “How to hold a catfish.”

I want to ensure they can rank for these keywords, so I will look at the SERP for “how to set up a fishing pole.”

If I click on the keyword, I will be taken to the Keyword Overview page in Ahrefs. Then, I can scroll down to see the SERP overview.

(Alternatively, you can just Google search “how to set up a fishing pole,” though you will get more localized results.)

In both cases, this SERP includes virtually all YouTube videos. So, this topic wouldn’t be a good fit for a guest post.

Let’s check “How to hold a catfish.” The SERP for this query has a little more variance (although it still has videos ranking in the top 2 spots.)

So, this could be a good keyword to choose and pitch to our target as a guest blog post.

When we pitch, we will focus on the organic traffic that this keyword could potentially bring in for them.

For this, you can look at the Traffic Potential metric.

So, in our case, this keyword has a potential of 600 monthly searches.

This may be enough to convince them to choose this keyword. If so, you can proceed to step 6: drafting your email.

However, to maximize this keyword approach and find super valuable keywords, let’s look at this tactic more thoroughly.

Tactic 2 – Advanced Keyword-Driven Approach (Using Content Gap)

After working at an agency for six years, one thing was sure: companies (and clients) are driven by competition.

I could make a case for any SEO improvement or content idea by saying these seven words: “Your competition is doing this and winning.”

You can use Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool to show how your target site compares to the competition.

Find competitors with Ahrefs

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool has an “Organic Competitors” tool on the left sidebar.

Click it, and you’ll see multiple sites whose keywords overlap with your target site. Focus on the sites whose DR is similar to your target site.

In the below, you can see sites like takemefishing.org, captainexperiences.com

Select the two using the check box, then click Open in Content Gap:

Now, you’ll see the Content Gap, which shows terms for which both sites rank but your target site does not.

Go to “All intersections” and select 2 (or if you have 3+ sites, select at least two intersections.)

Now, you’ll see keywords for which the two main competitors rank, but the target site is not.

You are now looking for keywords where both competitors rank on page 1. This will tell you that this keyword is relevant enough for the target site and provide that FOMO to convince your target site.

I found “types of fishing,” with a KD of 26 and a monthly organic search volume of 1,900.

I still like to spot-check the site to ensure they don’t have a piece of content written for the term. (They might, but it may just need some updating.)

So, I Googled site:fishingbooker.com “types of fishing,” and found that they have what amounts to a hub page:

This page does not have unique content and will not rank for anything. I can confirm this by putting it into Ahrefs Site Explorer.

This makes an excellent choice for a guest post.

(For the SEOs yelling at the computer that their current post is a navigational hub, I would challenge that this post can still have dual value with some unique copy. I would argue that a blog post can also serve as a navigational hub. Lastly, the SERP seems to favor blog posts for this query, as evidenced by the top-ranking post.)

The last thing you must do is confirm the traffic potential and value. You can click on the keyword within the Content Gap, or we can return to Keywords Explorer and plug in the keyword.

Let’s scroll down to see the SERP again. We are looking for the relevant post’s traffic potential and traffic value.

In this case, I will skip britannica.com because it’s not likely Fishingbooker.com can outrank them (their DR is much higher). So, I’ll look at the 2nd ranking post, which has a traffic potential of 519 monthly searches and a value of $123.

Now, I can jump down to Step 6 and draft my email.

If you have trouble finding potential keywords, you can use Google to attract more competitors, which I’ll outline next.

Find More SERP Competitors With Google

Typically, a simple Google search for a similar query can find more competitors than Ahrefs’ Organic Competitors tool.

I can start by Googling a keyword our target site already ranks for to uncover other competitors.

For example, looking at the top organic keywords for our target site, I see that they rank for “best catfish bait.”

So, let’s Google that and see if we find any new organic competitors.

Here, I see Wired2Fish and Angling Edge.

I can add them to my existing Content Gap search or start a new analysis.

Looking through the results, I see many “best” types of posts, which can be incredibly valuable if you are an expert in the field.

For example, I see “best fishing line.”

Let’s focus on this as our guest post idea because 2,000 monthly searches will make it valuable to them.

Jump down to Step 6 if you’re ready to draft the email.

What About Non-Keyword-Driven Guest Blogging?

A non-keyword-driven approach may work if you have something else to offer, such as an extensive social following or distribution network to bring traffic to your target site.

For example, we sometimes proactively find guest authors who are industry experts and well-known. We get valuable information from them to give to our readers and hope that BuzzStream reaches new audiences through their network.

But if you are at the point where you have a big enough audience or industry recognition, you probably don’t need guest posting to build your brand.

(I know what you are thinking, and we never accept unsolicited guest post pitches.)

Step 4: Identify the Correct Contact

Now that you have your list of sites and topics, you want to find the correct person to receive your guest blog pitch.

The sites that accept guest posts will tell you exactly who to address your email to.

But let’s continue pretending fishingbooker.com doesn’t overtly accept guest posts.

For the sites that do not overtly accept guest posts, you may have to dig to find the correct person. These are the kinds of roles you are looking for:

• Director of Content Marketing
• Marketing Director
• Communications Director

You can start by looking at the target site’s About or Contact page, which often lists the team members.

If you can’t find it there, you can move to LinkedIn. Search for the company and choose the “People” tab.

Then, look for similar roles. For FishingBooker.com, Jacqueline R. is the Head of Content Marketing & Communications.

Once you find the correct person, you’ll need their email.

Step 5: Find Their Email Address

To find contact info for your prospects, you can fall back on the tactics in our trusty guide for finding anyone’s email address.

Here are a few quick tips.

Finding Email Addresses with BuzzStream

As previously mentioned, BuzzStream will pull all email addresses it finds on the site.

For example, I looked at one of the sites on my list, Fishidy, and pulled in info@fishidy.com.

But sometimes, email addresses aren’t accessible.

For example, on FishingBooker.com, BuzzStream didn’t find any email contact information because there was none on the site.

In these cases, you might have to turn to Google.

Finding Email Addresses with Google

First, I can Google the person’s name + “email” or “contact.”

Unfortunately, we don’t know Jacqueline’s last name yet, which would make Googling a bit easier.

But we can find that out with Google as well!

Let’s start with Jacqueline R. Fishing Booker. Immediately, I found her last name, Rees, or rather Rees-Mikula.

So, I can now continue to search for Jacqueline Rees-Mikula Fishing Booker + email.

Unfortunately, nothing is popping out to me.

But wait, I know she’s on LinkedIn, so I can take a shortcut using a Chrome extension.

Finding Email Addresses with LinkedIn

Several Chrome extensions can help cross-check LinkedIn profiles with email addresses. For example, I can check Jacqueline’s email address if I use RocketReach (which allows for 5 free lookups).

I want to verify the email I found to be entirely sure before heading to Step 6 and drafting my email.

Email Verification with Hunter

You’d want to verify an email address for several reasons, but the biggest is that sending too many undeliverable emails can hurt your sender’s reputation.

Sender reputation is essential these days with Google’s new email requirements.

Hunter allows free email verifications, which also provide a confidence score.

Once you know that it’s valid, you can start drafting.

Updating Contacts in BuzzStream

Before I draft, I want to circle back to my list.

Now that I’ve found Jacqueline’s email, I’ll manually enter it into BuzzStream.

I’ll do this by clicking on FishingBooker in my Outreach List, then clicking Add under People.

I can now add Jacqueline’s name and email, which will help me in the next section.

Alternatively, instead of going through the BuzzStream Database, I could just navigate to FishingBooker.com and use the Buzzmarker Chrome Extension to add any new contact information to the page quickly.

Now, it’s time to email your targets.

Step 6: Draft Your Email

Your pitch for guest posting is very straightforward, which we cover in our email template post.

The pitch includes an introduction, previous guest posts you have written, and, most importantly, the value they will get from ranking for said keyword.

In our scenario, the focus should be that the target audience is missing out on a keyword their competitor is ranking for.

So your template would look something like this:

–

Not everyone will agree, but it’s important to be upfront and tell them you are looking for a link.

Most will get the game, and as long as your writing examples are good enough and your case is strong enough, you will be OK.

Also, note that this template calls out the target keyword, traffic potential, and traffic value. This is where we are going to stand out from the competition.

As mentioned, I receive 3-5 guest post pitches each day. None of them have ever used this tactic.

Why? Because it takes a little extra effort. But that’s how you can cut through the noise.

What if You Haven’t Written Any Guest Posts?

This is a common question, and it’s reasonable. Five or six years ago, I was in the same boat! (Fishing pun: engaged. And don’t worry, there’s more to come.)

If you haven’t written guest posts, that’s OK; you may have to start on smaller, newer, lower-authority sites.

You’ll need to provide writing examples 95% of the time. I recommend finding a site where I can get some writing published. The generic “write for us” sites are great for these purposes.

Without any previous guest posts, your pitch should call out anything you’ve written:

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can write an entire article for them without getting their approval and take your chances that they’ll want it.

That will really hook them (pun!).

Drafting and Sending Email in BuzzStream

In BuzzStream, I can use my previous list to begin drafting my emails.

If I toggle through to the Outreach List, I’ll see all the sites I approved during my prospecting/quality evaluation phase.

I can see all of the contact information that BuzzStream has found, making it less necessary for me to spend time in Step 5 digging for some emails.

When writing an email, I can select all the sites I want to contact and choose “Send Individually” from the Outreach dropdown.

Next, it will prompt me to choose a Sequence or Template. I choose Create New and paste my template.

Next, I’ll create a quick follow-up email by pressing Add Follow-up Email. This will automatically follow up if my contact doesn’t reach out.

Once the template is set, I’ll be taken to the Outreach flow. I see the email on the right, with all fields merged onto it.

Then, on the left, I see all of my team’s contact history with my target site.

Once I send my emails, I’ll see the status and any replies within BuzzStream. Then I can continue the conversation and hopefully start writing my posts.

Step 7: Write a Great Post

If your guest post idea is accepted, all that’s left is to write a fantastic post. This isn’t a post about writing great content, but I do have some integral tips:

Make Sure Your Content is Helpful

The golden rule for guest posting is this: your post should be the same quality as what you would want on your own site.

In Step 2, I previously linked to my Helpful Content evaluation checklist for evaluating your target site. The checklist was modeled after Google’s content self-assessment post.

So, when writing your post, follow the same guidelines if you want your backlink to provide value.

Include Your Link Naturally

Some sites will include your link in an author bio section. Remember that Ahrefs post?

Here’s where my link was included:

Others may not take this approach, so you must naturally weave your link into your site. Linking to a product page is rarely natural. Instead, I recommend linking to either a blog post or your homepage.

Either way, you do it naturally.

Avoid exact match keywords because those stick out like a sore thumb and could be seen as spammy.

You can get enough value from a backlink even if you don’t use exact match keywords. We chatted about internal linking with Positional’s CEO, Nate Matherson.

He essentially showed that with this approach, as long as your website’s internal linking is configured correctly, you could see gains of up to 20-30% in organic traffic.

Is Guest Blogging Risky?

According to Google, paid guest posts must have rel= “nofollow” and “sponsored” tags, which effectively render the links nonexistent for SEO purposes.

In fact, after a now-deleted conversation on X with John Mueller in 2020, it was clear that essentially devalues links from guest posts because they are “unnatural.”

“The part that’s problematic is the links — if you’re providing the content/the links, then those links shouldn’t be passing signals & should have the rel-sponsored / rel-nofollow attached. It’s fine to see it as a way of reaching a broader audience.”

He then confirmed that this even applies to links in the author contributor area.

(You can read the whole saga on Search Engine Journal.)

So, what most people did was remove author contributor links.

Is that enough to convince Google that it’s not a paid placement?

Google has also discussed how it uses its AI-based spam prevention tool, SpamBrain, to find sites that are buying and selling links.

So, chances are they are a little smarter than that.

With any link building strategy, it’s essential to diversify your tactics. Leaning into any one piece will get you into trouble.

If all your links are from guest post sites, that will get you into trouble—especially if you pay for them.

My approach helps to alleviate this risk in a big way, but you should still always want to diversify how and when you build your links.

Too many links in a short period is an unnatural signal to Google.

Google will continue to look for sites that buy and sell link placements, so as SEOs and content marketers, we must always be able to adjust our strategies.

If your goal is to scale and spray hundreds of emails to catch one site, that’s not the way to do it.

However, if you look at guest posting as if you are providing valuable information for your target sites, you will have success.

The post Guest Blogging: How You Should Be Doing It in 2024 appeared first on BuzzStream.

But what happens if they don’t link?

Is it even worth it?

At 46:27 in this Google Office Hours episode, John Mueller explains that unlinked brand mentions don’t pass any SEO value.

Unlinked mentions can bring direct traffic to your site, but they’re more like billboards or radio ads. You rely on someone seeing your name, typing in your URL or searching for your brand name, and clicking on your site.

So, to get the most value out of your brand mentions, you want them as backlinks.

I’ll walk you through how to turn your unlinked mentions into links.

What Is an Unlinked Mention?

When another site mentions your website or brand but does not include a link, this is called an unlinked mention.

According to uSERP’s 2024 State of Backlinks Report, unlinked mentions are the fourth most commonly used link building tactic (tied with link insertions and link exchanges).

Anyone might find unlinked mentions, but it’s much more common for prominent brands because more people will naturally mention them in a post.

For example, when I was with Siege Media, we could offer it as an ongoing service for some brands, like Shutterfly, because they received 5-10 weekly mentions.

Smaller brands might only get 2-3 unlinked mentions per year.

In either case, having your ducks in a row is crucial when someone mentions your brand or site.

At Siege, we noticed that our placement rate plummeted if we reached out to journalists more than 24-48 hours after an unlinked mention went live on a news site (bloggers are a little more lenient, though they are less likely to respond after about a week.)

Let’s get into the good stuff with that out of the way.

Here are the six steps to use to turn your unlinked brand mentions into backlinks:

1. Find Mentions

The obvious place to start is by finding mentions of your brand online. There are four ways to do that: Google, BuzzStream, Ahrefs, and alert tools.

Let’s first start with a passive approach.

Getting Mentions Using Talkwalker or Google Alerts

I recommend getting brand alerts up ASAP, no matter how long you’ve worked with your site.

While you may receive more emails in your inbox, trust me when I say that the upside of having visibility into your brand outweighs the potential influx of extra notifications.

So, let’s look into two ways to get alerts: Google or Talkwalker.

Option 1: How to Set Up Google Alerts

Go to Google Alerts and type in your domain name. You’ll quickly see a Preview List to understand the alerts you’ll receive.

Click on Show Options to display a list of alert parameters. Keep all of the default settings except for “How many.”

I’d recommend setting that to “All Results” instead of “Best Results”. We don’t want to leave anything to chance!

With this in place, you’ll receive notifications as they come in. As they do, click on the site mentioning you and see if it includes a link.

If not, jump to step 2 to evaluate the page/site quality.

Option 2: How to Set Up Talkwalker Alerts

I prefer Talkwalker to Google Alerts because it has more advanced filtering options. Talkwalker is an audience intelligence tool with a free alert tool that rivals Google Alerts.

Head over to Talkwalker Alerts and choose Create an Alert.

Under Search Query, type in your site name.

For the Result type, choose “News” and “Blogs.” This will ensure you won’t get a ping whenever someone mentions you in a forum (which you can’t get a link placed in anyway).

Under How Many, choose “All results.”

Then click “Create Alert”.

That’s it.

Now, you have a feed of potential websites that may or may not mention you.

Let’s move on to a more active way.

Actively Finding Brand Mentions on Google

To find brand mentions on Google, you simply need to perform a Google search for your brand name.

To remove any results from your website, simply go to Google and enter your brand name and the search modifier -site.com.

So for BuzzStream, it would say “buzzstream” -buzzstream.com

Then go to the Tools dropdown and set the date to the past 24 hours.

Now, you can click through a list of pages individually to check if they are linked to you and evaluate for quality in step 2.

You can also use BuzzStream to help speed up the process. Let’s see how.

Using BuzzStream

BuzzStream allows you to build outreach lists via Google Search. It will also pull in metrics and contact information and set you up for the subsequent steps in this post.

So, rather than performing a Google Search and clicking each page, it will pull them into a Research workflow that allows you to evaluate the results, check for backlinks, and eventually email.

Here’s what an unlinked mention list building looks like in BuzzStream:

Set Up Your Project

Choose to Start a New Project from the dropdown on the top left. Then, name the project.

In the same window, you’ll want to scroll down to the Link Monitoring section and enter the URL of your home page. (We’ll come back to this later.)

Create Research List

Once your project is set, choose Create a Research List.

BuzzStream lets you pull hundreds of search results from Google or Google News simultaneously.

When prompted to Choose a Prospect Source, choose “Search the Web.”

Then, you’ll get prompted to name your Research List and add search parameters.

This is where you’ll add the exact search from the previous section: “sitename” -sitename.com.

In the same window, under Search Filters, set the Post Date to “Past week.”

Filtering For Quality

Some may disagree with me, but not all mentions are worth your time. Although finding contact info and emailing is relatively quick, you don’t need your link added to every site.

In fact, you’d be better off not being associated with some sites. (For instance, associating yourself with a site that got hit during the Helpful Content algorithm update is not beneficial.)

BuzzStream’s filtering features will help you uncover only the best link targets.

Simply click the Filter button to see a toolbar of filtering options on the left.

In these options, you’ll be able to filter by metrics like Domain Authority from Moz, or, if you have your Ahrefs account synced with BuzzStream, you can pull in all of Ahref’s data like Domain Rating, Traffic Value, etc.

I recommend looking at pages that are DA >= 30.

This isn’t the only quality evaluation; it will give you a good starting point.

Now, we have a list of pages that have mentioned BuzzStream, but we still need to isolate the unlinked mentions.

Let’s use the Monitored Links tool.

Check For Links

First, you’ll want to export your list by clicking the export button.

Then, in the top nav, click Monitored Links.

Then click Add Links in the top left.

Choose to import from CSV, then click Upload File.

Now, BuzzStream will analyze all pages on your list for mentions of your link (for our example, BuzzStream.com).

We see that all 28 sites we imported that mentioned us don’t link!

If we feel good about this list, we can jump to step 2 and evaluate the pages more closely.

Let’s take a look at using Ahrefs for unlinked mentions.

Using Ahrefs

I saved Ahrefs’ for last because you can import your results directly into BuzzStream for ease of use.

Ahrefs’ Content Explorer works similarly to Google Search, but it’s a little more focused and provides some helpful metrics and filters.

So, head over to Content Explorer and type in your search term as it would appear in Google Search. Then, select “in content” from the drop-down menu.

In the filter area, click on “highlight unlinked.” Then, enter your site’s URL.

This will highlight the pages where your domain is unlinked.

Then, we can use Ahref’s filters to find quality sites.

You’ll find the filters under “More Filters” in the top right of the subnavigation.

Choose “Domain Rating” and “Website Traffic.”

I recommend setting it to above 30 DR and Site Traffic above 5,000.

You’ll notice our list went from 70k+ results to 2,254 quality pages.

Now, we can click Export. Ensure the box marked “Only pages with highlighted domains” is checked.

Now, we have a list of URLs that haven’t mentioned our site, which we can evaluate in step 2.

Or, we can import them into BuzzStream to speed things up.

Import a List of URLs into BuzzStream

If you already have a list of URLs from a tool like Ahrefs or Moz, it’s incredibly simple to import into BuzzStream.

First, if you haven’t already, you need to set up a project in BuzzStream.

Choose to Start a New Project from the dropdown on the top left. Then, name the project.

Create a Research List

Once your project is set, choose “Create a Research List”.

Choose “Import Existing” and follow the prompts based on your data type.

BuzzStream automatically matches columns for tools like Ahrefs, so importing is a breeze.

Then, once you have your lists in BuzzStream, check out the next section.

2. Evaluate the Page/Site

Even if you’ve filtered for quality, like traffic and site authority, it’s still crucial to make some evaluations on the page level.

Some are SEO-based, and others are more specific to the brand, industry, and type of site.

SEO considerations

These considerations will impact the page’s (and potential backlink’s) value, which you can then use to gauge whether or not it’s worth pursuing further.

Ask: Does the page link to anyone?

Some pages simply don’t have external links within their content.

For example, I received this alert from Talkwalker that a site called Digital Hill mentioned us.

I went into the page and saw that they did indeed mention us and it was unlinked.

However, they also didn’t link to any other brands.

The only outgoing link from the page was to an internal page.

I clicked through a few other pages to confirm, and it looks like Digital Hill doesn’t like to link externally when mentioning other brands.

Another example you might encounter is a site that appears to link to brand pages, but upon checking, the links are to an internal database.

Crunchbase is an excellent example of this.

There isn’t a great tool for doing this at scale. You must simply click through the pages to determine if and when the site links out.

Ask: Do they provide follow links?

I wavered about including anything like this in this post because it can be somewhat controversial.

Links with a nofollow tag do not directly provide SEO value. I have yet to find a convincing study that proves otherwise. (Search Engine Journal has a great breakdown of this topic.)

But are nofollow links worthless?

No!

As mentioned in the intro of this post, nofollow links can direct traffic to your site.

For example, a nofollow link from a high-trafficked site like Forbes.com may send visitors to your site. (If you can get links from relevant sites, you’ll send qualified traffic to your site.)

A Chrome Extension like Nofollow highlights the links on the page marked as nofollow, making it easy to see if a link is nofollow.

So, ultimately, it’s up to you whether or not you want to spend time emailing sites that provide nofollow links.

Content and Brand Considerations

Ask: Is the site relevant to my site?

I’ve discussed the importance of link relevancy in SEO so I won’t go into too much detail here. But essentially, you want to ensure you get links from areas that align with your focus.

The easiest way to check is to see if keywords overlap.

You can do this by putting the page into a tool like Ahrefs Site Explorer and then going to the Organic Keywords tab.

For example, here is what Sprinklr’s top keywords look like:

I see many social marketing-related terms, so this would generally be a good fit. I aim for no more than one step removed from your primary focus. Otherwise, the link becomes less valuable.

For instance, social media marketing is still digital marketing, a space we play in.

If I saw more link building or digital PR terms, this would be even better.

But I’d still keep this site on my list.

Ask: Does the page align with the views of my brand?

This is a qualitative assessment. There are no tools for this.

Think about this more from a branding point of view. It’s wise to align your brand with sites you like, agree with, and feel comfortable with.

For instance, I once built a link from a CBD blog. It was a high authority placement with solid traffic and was done well.

But, ultimately the CEO of the site didn’t want to associate with CBD sites.

Some SEOs or stakeholders don’t care; a link is a link.

I’m somewhere in the middle. You don’t want to overthink it too much, to the point where you are curating your backlink profile like an art collection, but remember, sites can go bad.

Sometimes, sites go bad by associating with other bad sites or getting hit by an algorithm, eventually becoming toxic to your backlink profile.

Ask: Does the page provide Helpful Content?

This is the most important aspect, as this is likely Google’s quality metric going forward. So far, we’ve seen Google take manual actions on thousands of sites, reducing what they call 40% of the web’s unhelpful content.

What does “helpful” content look like?

That’s hard to quantify exactly. But they give us a pretty good understanding of it in their documentation, even going as far as to provide us with self-assessment questions.

These boil down to:

• Provide original, insightful information or analysis beyond just summarizing what everyone else is saying
• Demonstrate experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) on the topic
• Create people-first content to help users, not just to gain search rankings
• Explain details like author expertise, how the content was created (including any AI assistance), and why it was produced
• Offer a satisfying, comprehensive experience where users don’t need to search again for better information

Usually, sites that lack one or two of these lack them all, so identifying sites with “helpful” content isn’t as hard as it sounds.

For example, here’s a post with a large chunk of text, no sources, no photos, no authors, no display of E-E-A-T or original insights.

This is easy to throw out from a Helpful Content perspective.

Evaluating the Page/Site in BuzzStream

As I mentioned, you can evaluate pages individually on BuzzStream.

It may seem time-consuming, but in our case, I’m happy I did it because most of the sites that I initially pulled in weren’t viable options.

They were either job search sites that happened to list “Buzzstream” or weren’t applicable mentions of our tool.

So, I re-ran the initial Google Search with a larger time window.

Then, I found more sites that mentioned BuzzStream but didn’t link.

Here’s how I evaluated them:

Once I had my extended timeframe and ran the sites through my Monitored Links tool, I could start evaluating my sites.

First, I made sure to filter my pages for >=30 DA. Then, I checked all pages by clicking the checkbox at the top left.

Last, I clicked the “Outreach” dropdown menu, which shows the option to “Review on the Web.”

Clicking this prompts me to set up my review flow. I chose the default option to display 5 tabs at a time.

Click “Continue,” and I’ll be taken to the review flow.

I see the webpage on the left, and I see the data about the site as well as the ability to Approve, Reject, or Blacklist on the right.

Now, I can evaluate the page for fit using the criteria mentioned above (e.g., does it provide Helpful Content, does it fit the values of my brand, etc.).

The first is an information database site, so I can reject that because it’s not a fit.

Once I click reject, it closes that page and the next one in the flow.

The next is a tools post on Ahrefs. They don’t link to BuzzStream, even though they mention us, but looking closely, it looks like they don’t link to any of the tools mentioned in the post.

So, I’ll reject this.

The next is a site called AIContentify. I did a quick CTR-F to find the BuzzStream mention; unfortunately, it’s another false alarm. They mention several other sites without linking.

I’ll click reject and move on to the next one.

Finally, I found an unlinked mention on Hubspot.

Our hard work has paid off! A nice, juicy, unlinked mention from a DA 93 site.

I’ll click Approve and move to the next one.

This process is repeated until the list is complete.

OK, now that you know what to look for, it’s time to figure out how to contact them to get your link!

3. Find Email Addresses

Once you’ve determined the sites you want to contact for unlinked mentions, you’ll likely need to find some email addresses.

I did an entire post on how to find email addresses online so I won’t go into all of them here.

Instead, I’ll highlight the best way: email lookup tools.

Finding Emails with Hunter

Hunter is an indispensable link-building tool that I’ve used from the very start of my career.

First, sign up for an account and get 25 free monthly searches.

In their app, you simply enter the domain for the emails you wish to find, and Hunter will uncover all the contact information it can.

There’s also a Chrome Extension version of this. If you are on a specific page, you can click on the extension to highlight the contacts it has found.

One of the features that I like about Hunter is that even if it cannot find the exact person I need, it will recommend an email pattern.

Then, you can make an educated guess about the person’s contact info.

The other feature I like about Hunter is integrating directly with BuzzStream.

So, let’s see how BuzzStream and Hunter can help you find contact information and integrate it directly into your existing workflow.

Finding Emails with BuzzStream

With BuzzStream, the tool pulls in contact information once you import any of your sites.

So, back in step 1, when we started a project to pull in Google Search data or import your list of URLs, you’ll notice that BuzzStream pulled in contact information wherever it could find it.

Using Hunter, we can extend this search even more.

In the same Research Lists tab, select all contacts using the checkbox at the top of the page. Then click on the Research dropdown menu.

You’ll see an option to “Search Hunter.io for Contact Info.”

Once you click this, you’ll see an option to toggle deliverability filters. I highly recommend turning these on.

Choose a deliverability score above 90%.

This way, you’ll remove any emails that aren’t deliverable, saving you time and credits.

Then, let the tool go to work.

By now, you should have a solid list of contacts for your unlinked mention campaign. So, let’s move on to the emailing stage.

4. Craft Your Email and Pitch

The email pitch for unlinked mentions is one of the more straightforward emails you can send. We’ve covered them all in our email outreach templates post, but I’ll recap this here.

The general structure is:

• THANKS FOR MENTIONING
• PLEASE ADD MY LINK
• THANKS AGAIN

You want to avoid coming off as too pushy. So, I always recommend thanking the writer or site owner for including us in their article.

You can also remind them that adding a link improves their post by giving their users (and Google) more context.

However, there are some cases where I wouldn’t even include this. Don’t include if:

• You are pitching in the SEO industry (SEOs know the value of a link)
• They are a very large site (they will most likely have knowledgeable SEO teams)
• They are news journalists (most journos don’t care about SEO)

With that out of the way, here is the recommended email design:

Subject Line: Thanks for including [Your Brand/Site] in your article

So, in my case, the draft for unlinked mention outreach for BuzzStream would look something like this:

Subject Line: Thanks for including BuzzStream in your article

Writing and Sending Outreach Emails in BuzzStream

In BuzzStream, I’ll go to the project I’ve created and choose Sequences. This allows me to create as many specific email templates as possible.

Craft Your Pitch

First, click on the Sequences tab in the top navigation bar. Then click the Templates tab.

Then, I choose “New Template.”

Enter the template name (be as specific as possible if you plan on creating multiple sequences.)

Then, fill out the template.

Use the Dynamic fields on the right for any terms or fields you want to pull in automatically.

For instance, we will pull in [First Name] and [Research Page Title].

If you don’t want to send any follow-up emails (I recommend sending them), click save and proceed to the next section.

If you want to send follow-ups, jump to step 5.

Sending Outreach Emails

Once your template has been created, several ways to send emails exist. The most straightforward is using the Outreach flow.

You can access the approved websites you built in Step 1 by clicking on “Outreach List” in the top navigation.

Then, I can send outreach in two ways: bulk or individual.

Bulk send is similar to a mail merge feature, allowing me to send the same email to multiple contacts with little personalization.

Send individually. Let me review each email before sending it and personalize where it makes sense.

Choose “Send Individually”.

Then, choose the template or sequence and click “Start Outreach.”

Now you’re taken to the outreach flow.

This will run through the complete list of URLs approved in the evaluation phase.

The first on our list is Hubspot.

On the left, I’d see any contact history (none), notes, and details associated with the site.

On the right is the email composer.

You’ll see it pre-populated Kelsey’s name.

I’ll remove the line about Google because I assume most Hubspot writers know this already.

Then, I can click send.

Once I do, BuzzStream moves to the next prospect on the list.

5. Follow Up

Follow-up emails are highly effective.

However, there is such a thing as too many emails. I recommend sticking to a maximum of 1-2 follow-ups.

The more you pester, the more likely your prospect will get annoyed, which can sour future relationships.

Remember, the name of the game is relationship building.

A standard follow-up email template for unlinked mentions would be something short and to the point:

That’s it.

How To Do It in BuzzStream

Adding follow-up emails to your templates is incredibly easy, creating a sequence of emails sent to your prospects.

First, go to Sequences in the top navigation.

In Step 4, I mentioned setting up Templates. You can use these templates in Sequences.

Click on “New Sequence”.

Don’t forget to name the Sequence.

Find the icon in the top right corner of the email composition box that says, “Copy from a template.” Then, choose your template.

Now, we’ll see the option to “Add Follow-up Email.”

You can set the number of days before the follow-up email is sent, but I recommend keeping the default setting at 4 days.

 

Then, fill in the text that you want as a follow-up email.

Tracking Unlinked Mentions

At this point, the hard part is finished. You’ve done the work, and now you can sit back and watch your links roll in.

We wrote a post on finding media mentions, so I won’t retread all that information.

The important thing to remember is that there is no guarantee that the journalist or blogger will respond.

You should use a tool like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to track your backlinks. They even have a helpful Calendar tool that shows you links as they are found.

With BuzzStream, once you start doing outreach, the pages that you’ve reached out to can be monitored on the Monitored Links tab

I see a lot of Nos right now, but I hope to turn those into Yesses!

Common Missed Opportunities For Unlinked Mentions

Stephanie Briggs, SEO Consultant with Briggsby, offered a few common missed opportunities for finding and claiming links:

Missed Opportunity #1: Only Searching for Your Content’s Title

Fix: Look for the titles other sites give you for your content.

When sites like Mashable and Huffington Post pick up your content, they’ll usually change the headline to suit their audiences. Then, when smaller sites pick up stories from those big players, they use the same wording.

Sometimes, the smaller sites do their homework and credit you by linking to your original content, but often, they credit sites like Mashable and HuffPo instead.

How to find these opportunities: Look at the big sites’ post titles and headings to describe your content and perform a Google search for those headlines.

How to reach out: Simply thank the site owner for sharing your content and ask if they’d credit the original with a link back. Use this outreach as an opportunity to build a relationship whenever you can. Share the post on your social media channels and offer to ping the blogger when you release similar content.

Missed Opportunity #2: Ignoring Sub-Sections and Data Points

Fix: Look for cropped versions and unique text, too.

If you have very large visual content, bloggers and journalists will likely take screenshots and create smaller versions that better fit their blogs’ layouts (or things like Twitter’s 2:1 aspect ratio). Look out for these smaller clips as you’re doing your reporting roundup.

How to find these opportunities: Do a reverse image search or set an Image Raider alert to find instances of bloggers using the cropped images. Hit the Buzzmarker to check for a link on those pages (or manually check using “View Page Source”).

If you have a lot of text content, look for instances of people sharing your data points and not crediting you.

If you created sub-content-like diagrams, run reverse image searches on those, too.

How to reach out: Again, a polite thank you and request for credit will serve you well.

Missed Opportunity #3: Forgetting about International

Fix: Get familiar with Google’s other TLDs.

Even content with a lot of English text can be picked up by non-English sites. Here, too, are many opportunities to earn high-authority links.

How to find these opportunities: Run reverse image searches on domains like Google.es and Google.de to find these sites. (If you’re using Chrome, you can hit the “translate” button to understand what the sites are about.)

How to reach out: Since this outreach is short and simple, translation tools work relatively well. However, investing a few dollars in a service like Gengo can give you a better template to work from (which you can save and use in the future).

Unlinked Mentions Are A Solid Part of Any Link Building or Digital PR Strategy

In my post about link building strategies, I discussed how unlinked mentions should be part of any link building or digital PR strategy.

You should look for unlinked mentions as long as you have an online presence.

I recommend offering this as a service for agencies whenever you create content for a client. As I mentioned before, the larger the client, the more opportunities. However, small clients can get some wins, too.

You should always run this unlinked mention flow for site owners and in-house teams, using alert tools to track real-time mentions.

Then, be ready to pounce on all opportunities that arise.

The post How to Turn Unlinked Brand Mentions into Backlinks appeared first on BuzzStream.

(In fact, most link building strategy posts technically list “tactics,” not strategies. Yet, I digress.)

I’m not going to list 175+ tactics that can get you links. I’m not even confident there are 175 these days.

As you have undoubtedly heard (or perhaps experienced firsthand), Google took a sledgehammer to a chunk of the most popular tactics and has been slowly draining others.

So, I want to outline the best link-building strategies, tactics, and tips based on the industry’s direction after Google’s Helpful Content update.

Let’s examine the data using real-life examples—not just theories—of the future of link-building strategies for 2024 and beyond.

How Has the Helpful Content Update Changed Link Building

Let’s start by setting the state of affairs.

The most recent Helpful Content Update was in March 2024, but there have been several others since Google first announced it in August 2022.

The TLDR version of each update is that Google wants to define and reward quality content.

However, since quality isn’t a qualitative metric, we need to dig deeper into their documentation for Helpful Content, which provides a self-assessment for building “helpful” content.

In essence, they want you to:

• Write for people, not search engines
• Display actual experience and expertise in the topic
• Properly source information
• Provide comprehensive topic coverage
• Originality (either in data or writing)

I wrote about that a bit in my post about Helpful Content.

However, because the extent to which they can quantify much of this is unclear, we have to look at the available data.

Cyrus Sheppard did a great analysis of the winners and losers from Google’s 2023 update.

With insights like these, we can connect the dots between what Google says and what/how they are implementing it.

For example, first-hand experience and first-person pronouns are at the top, showing how highly Google values experience. Google preaches the importance of displaying “experience” in their Helpful Content documentation.

In the March 2024 Core Update, Google doubled down and announced that it had incorporated its preexisting “helpful content system” into its core ranking systems.

Let’s look at some data to understand some of the more qualitative aspects of the helpful content system.

Lily Ray and Silvia Gituto of Amisive provided another great analysis of the winners/losers.

In the analysis, the losers are more of the same:

Sites taking shortcuts (and failing) to produce “helpful” content don’t display quality E-E-A-T. They only write for search rather than for humans.

Some examples:

• Travel blogs using stock photography vs actual photos from being there.
• Sites write short, unhelpful answers to ‘People Also Ask’ queries just to fulfill the search.
• Sites spin out AI-written content with no editorial oversight.

Google is trying to reward sites that write authentic, well-researched content. The sites that are failing are simply not doing it.

So, What Does That Mean For Link Building?

Many sites we thought were worth building links from are less likely to drive value because Google has raised the bar on quality.

You need to do deeper quality checks to see where you are getting your links. For example, if a site becomes lax with its guest posting requirements, it quickly becomes a low-quality link.

The site goes from getting a thumbs up from a good site to a thumbs up from one that Google thinks is spammy. Brian Dean calls it a “bad neighborhood” link in our podcast episode.

“So what happens is a lot of times they’re like, no gambling, crypto, CBD, blah, to make it seem kind of legit. And then they eventually allow like a borderline one and then it’s a free for all.

And then your link all of a sudden goes from like, Oh, this is a really nice link to like on a spammy site with bad neighborhoods as I used to call it.”

So, with all of that in mind, here are the best link building strategies going forward.

Creating and Pitching Helpful Content to Other Helpful Sites

You could have the greatest content in the world, but if no one sees it, it’s not worth much for SEO.

So, to get links, you need to pitch the content.

The most effective tactics that most take are:

• Mention Outreach
• Digital PR/News Outreach
• Press Releases
• Blogger Outreach
• Broken Link Content Creation

Let’s dig into each.

1. Ego Bait or Mention Outreach

TL:DR: Still useful. It is more challenging to find people willing to link back.

In this approach, you mention a brand, person, or website in your post and then email them to let them know you’ve mentioned them in the hope that they will add a link.

This is known as “ego bait” because you are appealing to their ego and mention outreach because you are reaching out to people mentioned in the piece.

Although there is some crossover between this and digital PR (mentioned next), the location-based data studies are prime examples of using ego bait and mention outreach as your link building strategy.

For instance, this post created for Homebuyer.com outlines the most affordable cities in the U.S. to buy a home.

The local news outlets in the cities mentioned on the list all became link building targets.

Does It Still Work?

Yes, definitely.

In fact, we just did it on our digital PR tools post (which came out mid-Helpful Content update and is ranking #1 at the time of this writing).

In this post, I referenced several great tools that I actually use. Then, I emailed those tools and let them know I mentioned them in our post.

And a few were flattered and gave us a link back:

How to Be Effective in 2024

It is becoming much harder to find willing participants. Users know this is an SEO play, so you will likely get ignored.

To be effective these days, try to find less common targets, people who will really be flattered when you include them.

To do this, include longer tail keywords and unique categories within your content.

For example, if I wanted to write a post about SEO Trends From X (aka Twitter), instead of including Tweets from well-known SEO mainstays like Rand Fishkin or Wil Reynolds.

Instead, I would look for newer voices in the community.

Or, if I were going to write (another post) about Digital PR tools, maybe I’d tweak the angle of the piece to be “New Digital PR Tools Released in 2024: Reviewed” or “Digital PR Tools You’ve Never Heard Of.”

Anything I can do to surface new, underserved markets.

However, it’s important not to be inauthentic. If you become too strategic about who you include or exclude, you may sacrifice the authenticity of your content.

For instance, if I decided only to include tools in my Digital PR Tools post with highly authoritative websites, great link profiles, solid organic traffic, and displayed Helpful Content, then I’m not writing authentic content.

2. Digital PR (aka News Outreach)

TL:DR: Works, although journalists have less time these days.

Digital PR is an incredibly appealing link-building tactic that hasn’t changed much over the years.

You create newsworthy content, like a survey or data study, and pitch it to high-end news to build high-authority links.

I also include content-led reactive and proactive pitching and newsjacking in this digital PR bucket. (This is not to be confused with the quote pitching mentioned in subsequent sections.)

You can pitch directly to journalists, or even use press releases to get the word out.

These high-authority links can help raise DA/DR and help you rank. They can also bring extra brand awareness, site traffic, and sometimes, even conversions.

Digital PR is even something that Google has said they like in a now-famous—in digital PR circles—tweet from John Mueller.

Does It Still Work?

Yes, digital PR is still thriving as a link building tactic.

Google has seemingly given even more preference to high-end news sites, so it won’t devalue these links anytime soon.

However, there may be challenges for link builders turning to digital PR.

There have been major layoffs in the space, leaving less opportunity to fit your stories into a writer’s workload.

Many publisher sites are dabbling in the review keyword game (pushing out many independent review sites) and have less time to write actual articles because their assignments are filled with search-driven, affiliate marketing articles.

For example, here’s one from CNET about the best toasters:

Check out WeEarnMedia’s podcast interview with journalist Miranda Marquit. She talks about this very problem around 15:34.

Both of these point to fewer journalists with less time being pitched by a growing number of link builders turning to digital PR as an outreach tactic.

But don’t worry. There is hope for us yet.

How to Be Effective in 2024

So, to remain effective with digital PR in a crowded space, here is some tactical advice:

Don’t go as big as you think. I recommend finding local angles or industries and beats that receive little exposure.

For example, instead of creating content about how AI will impact the fashion industry, write about how it will impact dog breeders or salmon hatcheries.

In the states, instead of looking nationally or even statewide, try local campaigns. Many local news sites don’t receive nearly as much love as their larger parent stations.

Catch trends before they peak. Mark Rofe from DigitalPRCourse.com shared a screenshot of what a journalist’s inbox looks like after the Bank of England announced new interest rates. (Thanks to Laura Purkess and Mark for the screenshot!)

You can use tools like Exploding Topics to track a trending topic weeks and sometimes months before it reaches its peak.

Pitch narrowly and highly targeted emails. The more broadly you pitch, the more likely your pitch will be ignored—sometimes even closing doors with journalists that you wished remained open in the future.

All it takes is one journalist to click SPAM on an email; you can never email them again.

I wrote a post about building a media list from scratch without buying from one of the major tools.

Instead of working blindly off of a media list, curate that list and make sure the journalist:

• Is still active
• Still writes for the same beat
• Hasn’t written about the same topic recently

I could go on and on with tips like these (and I do weekly in our BuzzStream newsletter: subscribe today.)

3. Content-led Blogger Outreach

TL:DR: It doesn’t work as much these days unless you want to pay.

Content-led blogger outreach was my go-to strategy with Siege Media around 7-8 years ago. We would create content with a shareable asset, like an infographic, and reach out to relevant bloggers interested in sharing it.

Blogger outreach worked at about a 60% placement rate during the years I was doing it.

You could pitch an infographic or beautifully designed printable and get free coverage.

For instance, years ago, we created this fun infographic about how wind turbines work, and it got placements with eco-minded bloggers.

The line between blogger and publisher became blurry sometime after 2017 as more bloggers switched to monetization.

Fast forward to 2023, and I was getting a 10~15% placement rate with blogger outreach for the same type of infographics if I didn’t pay for placements.

Does It Still Work?

In theory, the number of bloggers negatively impacted by Helpful Content should be low, given that it pushes writers to provide real experiences and original content.

So, a travel blogger showing photos of their trip to Japan and displaying their experience while giving trip advice should be rewarded.

This means that the audience for blogger outreach should still be there.

But as I mentioned, the blogger industry has become extremely monetized. Finding bloggers open to sharing any asset without wanting money is extremely difficult.

If you get placement after paying, bloggers are technically supposed to tag your links as rel=sponsored and nofollow, which won’t drive any SEO value.

The nofollow renders the backlink virtually useless for its SEO value, which is what any link vendor or guest post site is selling you on.

But, since virtually no one marks guest post link placements as advertising, they are all at risk of being devalued by Google at any time.

How to Be Effective in 2024

Many heavily monetized industries like the ones below will face an uphill battle when trying to do content-led blogger outreach:

• Fashion
• Beauty
• Travel
• Personal Finance
• Fitness
• Food
• Parenting

You may have to pay to play.

The important thing is to still assess the site for “helpful content.” The name of the game is quality links — don’t just assume that Google will like it because it is a blog.

If you pay for placement, remember that you are the company you keep. If you are paying for links, chances are anyone can buy them. The more unnatural links featured on a site, the more likely Google will recognize and devalue them.

4. Broken Link Creation and Outreach (Broken link building)

TL:DR: Still works, but can be time-consuming and you get lower value links on average

Broken link building is one of the best, purely strategic link building plays available.

The strategy has remained fairly unchanged since its inception.

The strategy is to find content with many broken links and create something similar but better. Then, contact all the pages where the broken link appears and ask them if they want to replace it.

For instance, if I used Ahrefs’ Content Explorer tool, I would find a broken post about “digital marketing tips.”

Some of the highlighted pages below would work:

Then, I would use Internet Archive to find screenshots of the pages (remember, since they are broken, we can’t see them live) to determine which I’d like to recreate and improve upon.

All the sites that linked to the original broken page would become my outreach list.

Broken link building can get links from high-DA sites like .edu or .org. Although less likely, you can get links within content, sometimes on high-DA sites, and even from news publications like the New York Times.

Does It Still Work?

Yes, this can still work, but finding opportunities that fit your niche can be much harder.

SEO-savvy sites will most likely have their broken links covered. So, many of your higher DA opportunities with valuable links are taken.

How to Be Effective in 2024

This approach benefits you because you can determine the quality of the backlinks before you create your content. If the quality is low, then it’s not worth the time.

At a macro level, broken link building is an opportunistic strategy that rarely accounts for more than 25% of the strategies I’ve built for clients.

Not every industry or site has valuable content with broken links worth building.

So, use it to support your link building strategy rather than fully rely on it for results.

5. Creating Content to Build Links Passively

TL:DR: Works well; SGE may take some opportunities away.

Working at an agency, I had to build monthly links for my clients. At some point, I realized that quality, relevant links to posts I created came from sites I had never pitched.

So, I achieved our monthly goals and then some without lifting a finger.

This beautiful feeling came from a construction statistics post.

To build links passively, find a topic with high link intent and search volume, and it can build links naturally over time. You need your post to rank well before it can gain links.

But once it does, it starts a nice flywheel: Your position increases as you generate more links, which helps you rank better, and so on. (Remember this; it will come up again.)

The most obvious examples of this approach are statistics posts.

Unfortunately, it felt like around 2018, everyone in the SEO world simultaneously found this out.

I started to see sites rolling out entire content marketing strategies comprised of only statistics posts.

Business Of Apps comes to mind. Check out the screenshot of some of their top posts, there are ten statistic posts in the top 20 posts alone.)

Back in the day, if you Googled a keyword + statistics, there used to be one or two ranking posts. Now, there are at least 5-6 on average.

This is still widely used in 2024. I’m getting emails from agencies offering statistics post link building services.

Not all link intent posts are statistics, but these are the most obvious, scalable approach.

The idea is to find topics researchers or journalists will search for when writing content. I saw this approach work firsthand with tools like Betterpet’s dog age calculator.

It’s a shareable tool that also has search volume for the keyword “dog age calculator”.

Or definitional queries. For instance, one of the first posts I wrote for BuzzStream on link relevancy recently gained its first link after ranking number one.

But wait, Vince. Why is this tactic in this post’s “creating and pitching” section?

Great question – I’ll get to that next.

Does It Still Work?

Yes, this approach works today. Helpful Content hasn’t impacted this approach at all. If anything, Google’s push for users to provide well-researched, well-cited information helps prove the need for this type of research.

But outreach may be needed.

Record scratch!

Let’s back up.

Three things are working against this approach:

1. Off-page research with AI – With the introduction of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other similar tools, researchers may go off-web to find sources. At the time of writing, none of these apps display proper sources.

So, if a blogger were to use ChatGPT to find “email marketing statistics,” they may not source their post, even if ChatGPT got its information from it.

2. Oversaturation and higher competition – As more users like BusinessofApps.com have gotten involved in the passive link building approach, the competition has increased.

Remember the flywheel? Competition makes it harder to rank for a keyword. The harder it is to rank, the less likely you will gain passive links from this approach.

This leads me to the last note.

3. Outreach may be needed – When I was with Siege Media, we found that brands could rank for these keywords based on the strength of their domain (DA or DR), and no outreach was necessary.

Fast-forward to now, and I’m finding it increasingly difficult for brands to do this without using some outreach.

How to Be Effective in 2024

You may need to get some links to jumpstart the process to remain effective.

Again, passive link building only works if you can get your post ranking. So, an effective approach would be to create a linkable angle to your post or linkable asset.

For instance, the construction statistics post I mentioned had an infographic we could use to pitch the post.

We didn’t realize it then, but we were jumpstarting the process of passive link building.

You can see the initial ~10 links we built in the link velocity. A few dropped off, and then the link gained steam itself.

Is outreach necessary for all passive link approaches? Not necessarily.

If you’re a new site, or the keyword you are going for has a lot of backlinks, then this is where you’d need to accelerate the process.

Even if there is little competition, promoting your content for links is never bad!

Pitching Yourself as a Thought Leader for Links

Any way you can position yourself, your site, or your client as a thought leader can get you links and exposure.

There are four main tactics for this strategy:

• Guest Posting
• Proactive and Reactive Quote Pitching
• Responding to HARO/Qwoted requests
• Podcast Outreach

6. Guest Posting

TL:DR: Works but heavily monetized. It’s very important to evaluate the quality (especially when paying)

Guest posting is one of the most widely used link building strategies. You find a relevant site in your industry and pitch yourself to be included as a guest author.

It helps build authority and visibility and can get backlinks.

However, guest posting has become one of the most exploited strategies.

Millions of sites have been created solely to sell link placements. We analyzed guest posting sites and found that of the 800+ top-ranking posts on their lists, only about 150 were quality sites.

Google has made many attempts and announcements to curb the practice of scaling link building using guest posts.

Today, do a Google search for “guest post,” and you’ll see sites offering guest post placements for as low as $4.99 per link. (Don’t ever buy these.)

Similar to what I mentioned with blogger outreach, the main risk is that paid placements are technically supposed to include a rel=nofollow and sponsored tag.

The nofollow makes these relatively useless for SEO, so many ignore them, putting them at risk of being devalued.

(Watch this SEO Office Hours episode with John Mueller for great insight into how Google views guest posting.)

Does It Still Work?

From a Google standpoint, there isn’t anything wrong with using it to promote your brand or establish yourself as a thought leader in the industry through guest posting.

However, as a pure link-building tactic, the risk factor increased tenfold after introducing Helpful Content.

One of the main kinds of sites that Google is trying to get rid of on the web is those that are lazily built to exploit SEO loopholes.

You’ll find that most sites appearing on “guest post” lists do just that.

They either advertise paid guest post placements, accept any and all guest posts, or make no effort to maintain the site’s quality.

Here’s a peek at a site whose traffic has tanked during the Helpful Content updates starting in 2023.

Chances are Google has devalued the links from most, if not all, of the sites that charge for guest post placement.

Since 2022, they announced they have been using machine learning (called SpamBrain) to weed out spammy sites that do buying and selling of links for ranking purposes.

Plus, those guest post Google Sheets you see out there? Google sees them and most likely takes action on those sites to devalue them, as it has in the past during Google Penguin.

Again, they aren’t penalizing the site. Instead, the links you acquire from them are not worth anything.

Barry Schwartz outlines how it worked after Google Penguin in 2016, so you can assume they have also become much more sophisticated.

How to Be Effective in 2024

Consider guest posting as a brand-building exercise to be successful with a link-building strategy after the Helpful Content updates.

Rather than asking and looking for brands to get a link from, think about what brands you want your brand name associated with.

The more you think about guest posting from a brand perspective, the more you will naturally associate yourself with quality, relevant sites and weed out the spammy guest post sites.

You’ll also spend a lot less time sending irrelevant emails because you’ll focus less on the quantity and more on the quality of your placements.

7. Proactive and Reactive Quote Pitching

TL:DR: Works great for links, though journalists are slammed these days.

Pitching quotes via HARO (something I’ll talk about in the next section) was one of the first things I learned about in link building.

However, proactive and reactive quotes pitching directly to journalists without platforms like HARO don’t get discussed outside of the digital PR landscape.

(I looked at the top 10 ranking posts for “link building strategies,” and none even mentioned it. )

Link builders with a pulse of the news and a solid workflow for producing and pitching quotes from thought leaders can consistently generate high-end news links.

A great example of proactive quote pitching is when you know a major calendar event, study, or data release will happen in your industry.

For example, the US Federal Reserve changes the Fed Funds Rate eight times per year based on a predetermined schedule.

Each time, there is a chance to prepare a quote to pitch.

Another example is that at the time of writing this article, a major Solar Eclipse was occurring worldwide.

Journalists covered the event constantly leading up to it and needed expert quotes to support their articles.

Reactive pitching is when you pitch a quote commenting on a major news event, like an earthquake, market crash, or celebrity death.

For example, after an earthquake near where I live on the east coast of the US, local reporters scrambled to tell stories and get expert opinions and insights.

You can see one below:

These types of stories require quick thinking and pitching but can yield great results.

Does It Still Work?

Everything about this tactic works well post-Helpful Content.

There is nothing inherently spammy about this tactic (unless you spam the journalist — something I’ll get to in a bit).

Quotes from experts strengthen articles and help display expertise (one of the E’s in Google’s E-E-A-T).

One downside with quote pitching is that the market is saturated with them. It can sometimes be hard to cut through the noise.

(Remember the image of journalist Laura Purkess’ inbox after a major news event?)

Plus, as I mentioned when talking about digital PR, journalists are experiencing massive layoffs around the world.

With fewer journalists and more PRs, you must ensure your pitch is laser-focused on the right journalists.

Also, make sure you are pitching the best opportunities.

One of our podcast guests, Mark Rofe, owner of DigitalPRCourse.com, explained a tactic he likes to use: he breaks down quote pitching into four quadrants: unplanned vs. planned pitching, low interest, and high interest.

Mark recommends focusing on high-interest, unplanned opportunities because they will have the least competition.

So, if you are an expert in the finance sector, wait until the perfect unplanned event instead of pitching quotes around all the finance events.

The perfect event is high-interest in your industry.

Do a Google News search to understand what events in your niche get coverage.

You can then set up some Google Alerts to ping you whenever something major occurs around those keywords.

Then, you can even pre-write quotes based on major events that may happen in the industry.

For example, in finance, markets will ebb and flow. Set up alerts for keywords like “recession” or “market crash.” (Dark, I know, but this is news!)

Have some quotes ready for the high highs and low lows.

If you can’t pre-write quotes, at least establish quick communication with the person who needs to prepare them.

Mark even recommended having the cell phone numbers of your stakeholders so that you can quickly text them in case of an emergency quote.

8. Responding to HARO/Qwoted Requests

TL:DR: Works but is noisy and crowded. I prefer HARO competitors like Qwoted.

When HARO (Help a Reporter Out)—now called Connectively—started years ago, it was a major link-building strategy. Today, many link-building and digital PR agencies offer this service because it still works.

A journalist or blogger uses the platform to request a specific quote from a thought leader or expert. Then, users (like link builders and PRs) submit quotes for the journalists to use in their articles.

Because many journalists use the platform, it yields high authority and, if used correctly, highly relevant links.

I used it with Homebuyer.com almost every day to help get links. Dan Green, the Founder and CEO, still gets placements.

Given the great need for this type of content among journalists and bloggers, many other copycat services have been launched since HARO first emerged.

Some are great, like Qwoted or Featured. They offer more customization for setting up the kinds and frequency of quote requests you can get.

Many in the UK use a popular #journorequest hashtag on X to reach journalists.

The fact that so many platforms exist for this purpose suggests that this is still a viable link building strategy.

Does It Still Work?

Responding to journalist requests via the platform works great post-Helpful Content, for the same reason the previous tactic of quote pitching directly to journalists works: providing expertise and authority.

If journalists or bloggers are looking for thought leaders, and you (or your client/site) can be that thought leader, it’s a win-win for both parties.

However, the major downside to these platforms comes from Gary Vaynerchuk: “Marketers ruin everything.”

Users spam journalist requests like you wouldn’t believe. (People have created AI-bots that auto-answer queries.)

So, the problem isn’t if the link opportunities are there; it’s if the journalist or blogger requesting the quote will read (or even see) your answer.

How to Be Effective in 2024

To stick out, Dan Green from Homebuyer.com recommends that you “Answer only what the journalist asks for. Keep your pitch short and sweet. Journalists are looking for a one or two-sentence quote, not an essay.”

Cision, the owner of HARO/Connectively, puts it this way: “write in soundbites”.

And remember, if you are not exactly what they are asking for, don’t pitch.

For example, if the request is for dog trainers and you are a site that sells pet products, you shouldn’t pitch.

Last, you need to respond as quickly as possible. Journalists are on deadlines.

One study from Redline found that the best conversion rates on HARO requests came when the response time was under 6 hours.

9. Podcast Outreach

TL:DR: Works for links, but there is a limited supply

Appearing as a guest on a podcast is one of the best ways to establish yourself or your client as a thought leader in the industry.

And with over 4 million podcasts out there, according to Podcast Index, that’s a lot of opportunity.

Most, if not all, have some sort of website or blog where they promote the podcast.

For example, when I got the job at BuzzStream, the first thing I did was start pitching myself on podcasts. This yielded appearances on podcasts like Optimize, We Earn Media, and Create Like the Greats.

(Fun fact: I wasn’t linked at first, so I contacted the podcaster and politely asked if they could add a link to their page. They obliged:)

So, pitching yourself as a guest on a podcast using “podcast outreach” for links is a no-brainer.

Does It Still Work?

Pitching yourself on podcasts still works as a link building strategy. The recent updates haven’t impacted this strategy at all.

The only potential downside is that it’s not as scalable — especially in an industry with few podcasts.

But podcasts can have a lot more upside than just links. Most are shared extensively on social media, which can bring direct traffic to your site.

They can also lead to bigger and better things, like guest posts or even speaking engagements.

How to Be Effective in 2024

To find podcasts in your niche that are looking for guests, you can use a tool like Podmatch.

However, I recommend really getting to know who the main podcasts are in your industry by searching for keywords on your favorite podcast platforms.

Then, strike up a conversation with the hosts before pitching yourself. Get on their radar, and let them know who you are.

After a while, you can ask if they have any guest openings. But make sure you have something unique to bring to the conversation because no one likes a boring guest

(If you are reading between the lines, yes, this is how you could pitch yourself to be on the BuzzStream podcast — and I’ll even give you a link!)

Placing Links in Existing Helpful Content

Any strategy that gives you control over your link placement allows you to control the link quality.

The tactics used as part of this link building strategy are:

• Link insertion
• Resource page link building
• Broken link building
• Unlinked mentions

10. Link Insertion

TL:DR: Works but is heavily spammed. The focus needs to be on quality sites.

Link insertion is one of the more traditional link building tactics and is still widely used today. It involves finding existing content and asking if they will add your link.

For instance, pretend I found an instance of someone saying “digital PR tool” somewhere on their blog, but it wasn’t linked.

(I could use the search operator intext: “digital pr tool”)

Then, I’d pitch them, asking if they’d be willing to add my link to their post to give their users more context.

Although it started as a clever strategy for generating links, link insertion has become highly spammed.

You probably notice a trend here, but the more something is spammed, the more users tune out unless money is involved.

So today, you’ll see hundreds of agencies offering their services and thousands of websites offering link insertions behind the scenes.

But watch out, link builders!

Some links can appear unnatural, and that’s where you’ll get into trouble.

Link insertion relies heavily on anchor text mentions. Google places a lot of value on the words used in the anchor text and the words surrounding your anchor text.

So, if the words surrounding the anchor text have nothing to do with it, then the link will be less valuable.

Does It Still Work?

It depends.

You must be very strategic about how and where you get your links. The recent Helpful Content Update has taken a big swing at low-quality content, removing 40% of the web’s spammy sites.

Plus, Google doesn’t like when users build links by “placing them.”

And it seems just to bug Google’s reps, which, to me, makes it even riskier. Look at this answer I got when asking about evaluating earned links:

And you might be asking, how would Google even know?

That’s a great question, and I’ll address it in the next section—it concerns anchor text.

How to Be Effective in 2024

First you need to evaluate your target page and site (something I talk about extensively in our helpful content post.)

But specifically for links, avoid excessive exact match keywords with your anchor text. You can get a lot of value out of surrounding words.

Also, you may want to consider avoiding excessive linking to product or service pages.

The main reason is because it’s just not natural.

For example, if you are looking to build a link to a link building services page, you don’t want the text to read, “link building services”.

It feels way more natural to link to a home page than a page deeper within your site.

Realistically, if someone mentions your brand naturally in a post, what are the odds that they will link to your product or service page rather than just your homepage?

So now you’re probably asking so, how do you get people to visit your product pages?

Another great question!

That is where UX and great SEO best practices come in. Ensure that users can flow to your products naturally from your homepage.

For instance, BuzzStream has a link that says “Get Started” in our navigation to get users to our pricing page — the most important part of our funnel.

We also have links to our “feature” pages where users can learn more about our link building tools.

11. Unlinked Mentions

TL:DR: It still works really well. However, if you are a smaller brand, you are less likely to have opportunities.

Unlinked mentions work for any brand in any capacity.

You listen for mentions of your brand online using a tool like Google Alerts, Talkwalker, or Buzzsumo, and then reach out if a website mentions you without linking.

I have several alerts set up for BuzzStream.

I just came across one when drafting this post and fired off a request:

Most new brands won’t see much out of this exercise if they aren’t doing any brand building, whereas well-known brands who have been around for a long time likely see several per day.

This strategy of leveraging unlinked mentions for links has stayed pretty much the same for years.

Yet again, the only difference I’ve seen is that site owners often ask for money.

Am I saying that a blogger or website might mention your name with the idea that you will come looking for a link?

I don’t know of any agencies doing this outright, but the strategy exists.

Any directory site or review like Yelp OR BBB.org counts on you coming to them to “claim” your profile. And most of the time, you need to pay for it.

So, this strategy is not too far off.

It’s essentially ego bait, except you’re the bait this time!

Does It Still Work?

Yes, this still works.

This tactic is not spammy since the user already mentions your site. If anything, Google would most likely prefer the link to your site because it helps users better understand what your page is about.

Also, regardless of any algorithm update, the fact that bigger brands get more unlinked mentions from smaller brands is still true.

There are some ways to jump-start this cycle for smaller brands, which I’ll outline next.

How to Be Effective in 2024

Nothing has changed about this tactic, so the strategy is to ensure you have a good flow for finding unlinked mentions and then emailing quickly.

When I was with Siege Media, we found that if we didn’t respond to journalists to add a link in 24 hours, we’d never hear from them again.

So, make sure you have your brand alerts set up using Talkwalker. I’ve found Talkwalker to be more reliable than Google Alerts.

Then, set up your email template ahead of time so that you can send an email whenever something comes in.

12. Resource Page Link Building

TL:DR: Works but limited supply. Don’t assume .edu = high-quality.

Resource page link building is great for getting links on pages from higher authority sites like .edu or .org.

This tactic relies on you having a piece of internal content (typically “ultimate guide” posts or tools) that could be added to a list of resources. Some even use a homepage or microsite if it is truly a good resource.

Then, you’d search for a page that would be interested in adding your content.

For instance, BuzzStream has a tool called Meta Tag Extractor, built years ago.

If I wanted to build resource page links, I’d search for pages titled “link building resources.” If I found a page with a list of URLs, I’d pitch the site, asking if they’d consider adding our tool.

This approach has also remained relatively unchanged for years. But, like most on this list, it is a sound strategy that SEOs have spammed to death.

2015, I’d have to send about 200 emails to get ~10 links. But my last campaign in 2023 was 500 emails for the same results. (These are all personalized emails, not bulk sends.)

Does It Still Work?

Helpful Content updates have hit many low-quality sites, and resource page link building sometimes gets you into the dregs of the internet.

So, the same challenges remain as any other quality-based assessment.

If you’re willing to put in the time to find quality sites, you can still make resource page link building an effective tactic.

Another thing to consider is that not all .edu links are valuable. This isn’t unique to Helpful Content but has been around for a while.

In a since-deleted Tweet from Google’s John Mueller, he said:

“Because of the misconception that .edu links are more valuable, these sites get link-spammed quite a bit, and because of that, we ignore a ton of the links on those sites. Ideally, they should just nofollow all of those links instead of us having to ignore them.”

Put differently, just because a site has high DA doesn’t automatically mean the content is valuable.

Furthermore, when a site has a high DA, it doesn’t mean that every link from that site is valuable.

So, again, to truly get value out of this tactic, you need to assess the quality of the page and site before doing outreach.

How to Be Effective in 2024

With resource page link building there are qualitative assessments to make, as well as technical ones.

I’ll walk you through the most common ones that occur with resource page link building.

Let’s use this University of South Florida page as an example to walk you through it.

I’ve found a page on their site that we could use to pitch a resource.

First, we have to make a qualitative assessment and ask: would Google think this page is Helpful based on their self-assessment questions?

Most likely, yes. The page does what it intended: list employee perks and discounts.

Then, a technical assessment. It is a DA 87.

That’s great quality!

Or is it?

Looking closer at the URL in question, we see it’s a subdomain.

The general consensus is that subdomains don’t pass the same value as the root domain. In fact, Google has even said it views subdomains as its own domain.

So, the DA 87 value doesn’t necessarily apply to the subdomain.

So, unless it is a relevant fit from a well-known brand, I tend to skip any subdomains when doing resource page link building.

Another common technical assessment in resource page link building looks at page depth.

Pages buried far within a site are less valuable from an SEO perspective because they are likely not crawled as frequently.

The easiest way to assess page depth is by clicking through.

For instance, the University of Florida page is four clicks from the home page.

Google does mention that click depth matters. If users can’t find a page, it will be less valuable.

Aim for no more than 3-4 clicks from the home page.

Another assessment is the number of external links on the page. It’s a page with 100+ external links, so whatever link value it has to pass on is extremely diluted.

As I explain in our post about quality links, avoid pages with many outbound links.

So, while the content looked OK, the authority itself isn’t as high as it seems.

Lastly, resource page owners have most likely been spammed many times in the past, so it’s important to distance yourself from them.

Most who send in bulk don’t personalize.

So, I recommend building a scalable approach for personalizing emails. Even if this is going to a webmaster who may not care at the end of the day, if he/she receives 10 emails and yours is the only one that says something specific, it may increase your chances of getting that link.

Using BuzzStream, you can add personalized messages while still hitting the volume you need to move the needle.

Personalizing with BuzzStream

BuzzStream allows me to set up templates and sequences to send for each campaign.

I’ll set up my template with standard mail merge fields like First Name and site Name, but I’ll also create custom fields to add personal line that I can write on the fly.

Using sequences, I’ll automate a follow-up to ping the blogger with a new, shorter message after 4 days.

Then, when it’s time to personalize the email, I’ll use the Chrome Extension BuzzMarker to view the page I’m on, extract any details I need to personalize, and then write the email—all without leaving the tab.

I’ll also create a backup recipient to ensure my email is sent.

Setting up outreach flows like this helps me scale my campaigns but still allows for the personalization needed to cut through the noise.

Exchanging Links With Other Sites

Link exchanges are a common way to build links in the SEO community. There are some risks involved with these approaches. But there are essentially two main tactics:

• Two-way link exchanges
• Three-way link exchanges

13. Two-Way Link Exchange

TL:DR: Use sparingly, only for brand building.

One-to-one link exchanges, or reciprocal links, aren’t the industry standard anymore. Before my time, SEOs used to use them all the time.

You ask someone to link to you if you link to them. Reciprocity. It seemed so easy.

Google eventually caught on and still maintains that excessive link exchanges are spam, which hasn’t changed.

So why do people do it?

Because reciprocal links can happen naturally, it’s harder for Google to determine.

Let me give you an example.

We often link to Ahrefs because it’s a commonly used SEO tool. Similarly, Ahrefs often links to us because we are a tool for link building.

So, should Google penalize us?

No. However, Google has put some safeguards in place so that we don’t get an authority boost each time we link to one another.

Does It Still Work?

Reciprocal linking was most likely not impacted by Helpful Content in any way.

You shouldn’t write content differently because you are worried about reciprocal links. If a link naturally exists in a piece of content, that’s great.

However, I wouldn’t rely on building your link building strategy around this tactic.

Remember, excessive link exchanges are what Google warns against. With all of their data, they can most likely connect the dots to see when sites’ backlink portfolios line up too closely.

How to Be Effective in 2024

Think of two-way link exchanges as brand-building and relationship-building.

In this way, it becomes more like ego bait or mention outreach rather than a scaled link building approach. If you mention a brand in your post or use some data from another post, reach out and let them know.

Don’t set out to say hey, I’ll link to you if you link to me. That’s the kind of thought process that can get you into trouble.

Most people’s thoughts at this point are: If Google can figure out one-to-one reciprocal linking so easily, why don’t we just add a middleman?

That brings us to the next tactic.

14. Three-Way Link Exchange

TL:DR: This tactic is highly-used, but it can be risky business depending on who you’re exchanging with.

Three-way link exchanges involve three sites instead of just two:

Site A links to Site B.

Site B links to Site C.

Site C links to Site A.

The whole purpose here is to obscure the visibility of the link exchange happening.

That said, this is an incredibly common link-building tactic that has spawned entire agencies over the years. Because of the technological overlap, you tend to see it more with SaaS link-building.

Honestly, I have never taken part in a three-way link exchange, and to explain why, let me get into a little bit of how they work on the back end.

To scale it, link builders and agencies need to amass many sites interested in participating in this approach.

You’ll see messages mentioning a network of sites or partners:

OR

When you start working within a network, the risk increases tenfold. At the start of this post, I mentioned Brian Dean’s podcast about how getting links in “bad neighborhoods” can hurt you.

The same risk exists here.

All it takes is for a few of the sites in the network to go sour, and you start souring the whole network.

Does it work?

Three-way link exchanges work, based on virtually everyone I’ve talked to who does them, with no adverse effects.

So, if you’re having success, there’s no real reason to stop after Helpful Content.

Again, the main thing to be wary of is the quality issue. Whenever you get into scaled link building, you run into sites that exist solely to build or sell links.

So, you are in trouble if a link exchange network is full of low-quality sites.

But if people do it and succeed, they do something right. So, let’s look at how.

How to Be Effective in 2024

To effectively use three-way link exchanges, you must be smart about who you partner with and how much you partner.

Choose partners that have healthy link profiles. You can do this by looking at the number of quality backlinks they have.

In my post about the quantity of backlinks you need, I run through using Ahref’s “Best Links” feature.

For instance, it’s much less when we compare the number of total backlinks that Mailchimp had to the number of quality backlinks.

The strength of a backlink profile can help determine whether a site has been involved in “bad neighborhoods.”

Second, this is a risky tactic, so use it carefully. Don’t rely solely on this for link building.

The Perfect Link Building Strategy is…

A tactical mix of content-led digital PR and passive link building. Support those with reactive and proactive quote pitching, podcast outreach, and guest posting for your brand. Look for unlinked mentions as you grow.

Obviously, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. Things change, and markets adapt.

That said, my above mix looks like a safe and highly effective bet. This is 100% the approach I personally use and advocate.

Here’s why:

These are all natural ways to build links. I mention each tactic in my white hat link-building post because each tactic is safe in Google’s eyes and effective based on my personal agency experience.

Google’s Helpful Content system is built to reward original research, which is your content-led digital PR and many passive link-building keywords.

Google likes expertise and experience – show this with your quote pitching, guest posts, and podcasts. This will also increase your brand awareness, bringing more people to your site over time, and help Google more closely associate your brand with your industry, helping you rank better.

Unlinked mentions are added bonus links, so why not?

Then, remember these three tips:

Stay Nimble

The best SEOs and link builders are the ones who can think on their feet and remain flexible. When Google changes, you must adapt rather than dig in your heels.

Google constantly tries to prevent people from gaming the system. If something sounds too good to be true (like buying links from a marketplace or creating a network of sites to link back and forth between), it probably is—or will be soon enough.

Avoid Sites That Appear on Lists

You can easily find lists of sites that accept guest posts, link insertions, or link exchanges.

I receive them via LinkedIn messages from sketchy folks pretty much daily. They look like this:

First, most of them ask for money, which is a direct violation of Google’s guidelines, something they’ve posted about again and again and again.

In 2022, they even announced using SpamBrain to fight against sites buying and selling links.

But, more importantly, the more users have access to such lists, the lower the quality of their links.

This is most likely because they are providing low-quality content and exist just to place third-party links.

To be successful with link placements going forward, you must evaluate the site for quality.

Evaluate the Content for Quality

I know I sound like a broken record, but Google is pushing everyone to judge their content for quality with the aforementioned self-assessment.

Don’t think Helpful Content makes a difference?

After the March 2024 Core update, I quickly analyzed some popular guest posting and link exchange sites that I found from a spreadsheet I shared online.

Several dropped traffic immediately after the algorithm update or consistently since the initial Helpful Content announcement in 2022.

So when you aim to place a link when building a resource page link, for example, evaluate the page itself.

Is the site quality quality if it’s just a list of links?

If you are doing broken link building, aim to get links from quality sites; don’t blindly reach out to all of them.

Will AI Impact Your Link Building Strategies?

Unfortunately, no one knows the answer to AI’s impact on link building. So I don’t have much to say that you haven’t read a million times before.

But I can’t write about link building in 2024 without mentioning AI, so I’ll leave you with this:

When I think of AI and link building, I don’t think of ChatGPT or Bard and links appearing in search. I think of LLM and its ability to work through data.

They have access to much more data than we ever will.

So, the more you get bogged down with dodging and obfuscating Google, remember that they are working with things like SpamBrain to find patterns you may not even know exist.

You can win by building links naturally through great content and sound outreach tactics.

The post Link Building Strategies and Tactics That Still Work in 2024 appeared first on BuzzStream.

I started my career as a content marketer 10 years ago, and no one in my family knew what that meant. My Dad thought I was a “contact” marketer. (Granted, he’s a professional musician who spends virtually no time online).

Years later, “content marketing” has taken on various forms, from blog posts, webinars, podcasts, TikTok posts, and spon-con.

The content marketing tools I want to discuss today fall into three neat categories: creation, analytics, and distribution.

I will also provide what I think is a “core” tool set.

Below, I’ve compiled my favorite content marketing tools to help you create compelling content that drives results efficiently and effectively.

10 Core Content Marketing Tools Everyone Should Have

There are hundreds of content marketing tools out there. We’ve covered specific tools for digital PR, link building, and blogger outreach.

I find myself returning to these 10 core tools for content marketers because they cover each marketing mix element.

Below are the core tools I use the most and consider must-haves for any content marketer.

1. WordPress for Content Management

Content marketing is virtually impossible without a content management system or CMS. This is where your content is housed and displayed (typically via a blog like our BuzzStream blog).

Although there are many options these days, WordPress still powers 62% of all websites and is the most common CMS.

Whenever I’m asked, WordPress is generally the best solution unless you are a large e-commerce company. (And if you are, you probably aren’t searching for an article like “content marketing tools.”)

Although we aren’t getting paid to say this, we use WordPress and multiple plugins for the blog you are reading.

There are countless tools, plugins, and themes that you can spend money on depending on your needs and goals, but it’s completely possible to have a great WordPress website for free.

Feature Highlight:

59,754 free plugins and 11,896 free themes make WordPress a customizable and easy way to build your website for next to nothing.

You can do lots of things with plugins right off the shelf that don’t require little to no coding knowledge.

(Given WordPress’s ubiquitous nature, many more freelancers with WordPress experience are available if you need developers.)

Later in this list, you’ll see a tool that allows you to upload a Google Doc directly to WordPress, saving content writers an enormous amount of time.

Price: As little as $4 per month, but ranges widely depending on usage and setup. See the pricing page.

Alternative: HubSpot is a complete marketing and sales platform many businesses use. HubSpot bundles the CMS, a sales customer relationship management tool (CRM), email marketing, analytics, and even customer service software.

I’ve found that sites/companies that need a sales CRM are best suited with HubSpot vs. WordPress. You can get by with WordPress plugins, but if you want to fully integrate your sales funnel into your content, HubSpot is ideal.

If you’re unfamiliar with sales CRM, check out their sales software page, which explains how it fits your needs.

Otherwise, the CMS isn’t as customizable as WordPress.

2. BuzzSumo for Content Trends

Once you have your CMS, you must determine what content to create.

Following trending topics is critical when brainstorming what kinds of content to create.

Then, when you publish content, you’ll want to track where it goes and who is talking about it.

BuzzSumo can do both and is, in my opinion, the top tool for tracking content engagement across the industry.

The lowest tier gives you access to their Content Analyzer, which I explain below; Trending Feeds, which can help you find viral topics; and the Question Analyzer, which shows you customer questions about topics from forum sites like Reddit or Quora.

For competitive and market analysis, it’s a must-have.

Feature Highlight:

Content Analyzer is great for identifying trending content. It shows the top-performing content across social platforms (Facebook, X (Twitter), Reddit, Pinterest) for a domain or specific topic.

The Content Analyzer makes it easy to dive into an industry and learn which domains, brands, journalists, and influencers matter.

Search for a topic, keyword, or domain; filter by publication timeline, country, language, domain, TLD, and journalist authors.

Price: The base package, Content Creation, costs $199 per month. Agencies can expect to pay closer to $499 per month.

Alternative: Exploding Topics is a less expensive option for finding trending topics. BuzzSumo (or Google Trends) will show you what’s currently trending.

Exploding Topics’ goal is to identify topics before they reach the pinnacle of their trend, which Brian Dean outlined the importance of on our podcast. 

3. Ahrefs for Keyword Research and SEO

When brainstorming content or optimizing your content for SEO—Ahrefs is a must-have tool for content marketers.

SEO, or search engine optimization, optimizes your site to appear on Google’s search results, leading to organic traffic. Google’s How Search Works explains this all very well.

Ahrefs is an industry-leading SEO tool freelancers, agencies, and in-house teams (like myself) use.

You can use it for optimization, ideation, analysis, auditing, etc.

Ahrefs also has some of the most creative content marketing practices, which is essential because they practice what they preach. (They even created a children’s book!) I recommend following their work.

Feature Highlight:

Content Explorer is the stand-out feature for content marketers. I reference Ahrefs a lot in posts like my survey ideation post.

When optimizing for Google, most of your work is done around keywords. Content Explorer identifies top-performing content based on a targeted keyword.

You can filter by helpful metrics like the number of backlinks (significant in the following tool), social shares, traffic, publish date, and many other filters.

For SEO, this helps you quickly identify ideas with organic traffic potential and content ideas that can generate relevant links and social shares.

It’s also so simple that beginners can pick it up without being overwhelmed.

Pricing: $99/month for the Lite version, scaling up with additional features and uses. Agencies can expect to pay closer to $999 per month.

Alternative: SEMrush shares many overlapping features and abilities with Ahrefs. Often used simultaneously by industry folks, the choice commonly comes down to personal preference, needs, and goals.

For more information, I recommend checking out this comparison from Brian Dean (though SEMRush did buy Backlinko, keep that in mind.)

You can also read Ahrefs’ comparison.

4. BuzzStream for Link Building and Content Promotion

Backlinks are one of the main ranking signals for Google’s Algorithm and a huge part of the abovementioned SEO.

So, if you want Google to find your content, you must build quality links. The more links you get, the better you rank.

Google “approves” various ways of building links, known in the industry as “white hat link building.”

Another term you might have heard of in the space is digital PR, essentially building links from high-authority sites like news.

Unfortunately, for most sites, creating great content is not enough; you also need to build links actively.

This is where a tool like BuzzStream comes in.

Think of BuzzStream as a CRM for link building.

BuzzStream has all the critical functionality – from prospecting to reporting – needed to manage link building and digital PR campaigns.

• Prospecting: BuzzStream aids in the creation of media lists and outreach lists by streamlining the research portion and automatically gathering addresses and contact info.

• Email Integration: BuzzStream integrates directly with your email and allows you to create personalized templates, schedule emails, automate sequences, and even assign fall-back contacts if your initial contact doesn’t respond.

• Contact Management and Relationship Tracking: BuzzStream tracks relationships and communication for all contacts through all projects.
• Reporting and Analytics: BuzzStream includes reports to analyze outreach success, response rates, types of responses, and more.

Feature Highlight:

The Chrome Extension Buzzmarker is my favorite BuzzStream feature.

It lets you track, vet, and email contacts within your browser tab without switching between multiple windows. (This is a game changer for someone who consistently has 10-20 tabs open.)

Buzzmarker also makes it easy to see your contacts at a given website, the last communication you had with them, whether or not anyone else on your team or company has contacted them, and even compose a new email. (I explain why this is so important in a post from my Siege Media days.)

Price: Free trial, $29 a month for the Starter Plan.

Alternative: Mailshake automates bulk outreach and integrates with CRMs. Its use case tends more toward sales teams but can be adapted for content promotion. Pricing starts at $59 per month.

5. ActiveCampaign for Email Marketing

Another way to distribute your content is through email marketing. For instance, we send an email newsletter weekly to help promote and distribute our content to subscribers. It is slowly becoming a solid, reliable traffic source for us.

Email marketing is crucial to any content marketing tool mix. And for this, we recommend ActiveCampaign.

According to a monthly report from EmailToolTester, ActiveCampaign consistently ranks among the best in deliverability, so it’s at the top of my list.

Feature Highlight:

One of the most useful features of ActiveCampaign for content marketers is the automation opportunity built into the platform. They have an extensive library of automation workflows or what they call “Recipes.”

This allows you to create conditional email marketing automation. For instance, when someone downloads a piece of gated content, you can build a personalized email automation sequence based on the downloaded content.

It makes email marketing, lead nurturing, and content promotion simpler.

Price: Pricing starts at $49 monthly, then multiple pay levels depend on features and needs. View the pricing page for more details.

Alternative: Mailchimp is another popular option for email marketing and third on the deliverability ranking from EmailToolTester.

6. Buffer for Social Media Sharing

Social media is another way to distribute your content and tools, making promotion 10x easier. Even if organic traffic is your goal, promoting your content on social platforms can send traffic to your site, which will help increase ranking potential.

Buffer will automate much of your social promotion, making social media distribution of your content that much easier.

You can sync your LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and many more and schedule everything out, then get metrics on performance. There are even some helpful AI features for writing.

Feature Highlight:

The best feature of Buffer is its Publishing Calendar, which lets you plan your social media shares.

It’s social media management’s “easy mode”: you get a full calendar to plan your content promotion across the week, an AI assistant to help you craft the right message and multiple features, all meant to make it easier to keep your feed active.

Price: Buffer offers a free version that is powerful enough for many content marketers. However, to see the analytics and engagement, you must pay a $6 per-month version. Teams will pay $12 monthly, and Agencies can expect to pay $120 monthly. More details are on their pricing page.

Alternative: Hootsuite is one of the most popular alternatives to Buffer. Check out this guide from Zapier to decide which is right for you.

7. Grammarly for Writing Assistance and Editing

Writing is another massive part of the content marketing mix. (When I was with the content marketing agency Siege Media, half of our time was spent writing posts, and the other half was building links to the posts.)

Grammarly makes writing great content easier.

Google is putting a premium on well-written, well-researched content these days with their Helpful Content Update. They are slashing and burning shoddily scaled, AI-generated content with their Spam Updates.

And while better writing doesn’t equal Helpful Content, you can’t have one without the other.

Whether you’ve been in content marketing for 10+ years or are just starting, Grammarly helps you improve your writing directly.

Scratch that…

Whether you’ve been in content marketing for years or are just starting, Grammarly can help you improve your content. (Thanks, Grammarly.)

Studies have shown that Grammarly does make you a better writer.

Feature Highlight:

My favorite feature of Grammarly is the Chrome Extension, which is like a virtual Grammar teacher sidekick.

Having Grammarly embedded into Chrome allows Grammarly to follow you as you work across the web: sending emails, writing drafts in Google Docs, uploading content into your CMS, responding to comments in Asana/Slack, etc.

Price: Free, although powerful features are available only in the premium and business plans, which cost $12-15 per month per user.

Alternative: The Hemingway app does a beautiful job identifying readability, passive voice, poor sentence structure, and wordiness. It doesn’t have all of Grammarly’s bells and whistles, but it gets the job done for free.

(And yes, I did write that paragraph in the Hemingway App.)

8. Canva for Image Creation

Once you’ve written your content, you need to add some visuals. Canva has become my go-to option for the custom imagery you see throughout our site.

In Google’s Helpful Content era, stock images won’t get you far enough.

One recent study from Cyrus Sheppard of Zyppy found that stock imagery was negatively correlated with “winning in Google Updates,” aka ranking/maintaining rankings in late 2023’s algorithm updates.

But Canva is more than just image creation; it has vast libraries of icons, photos, and other images.

Feature Highlight:

Canva has introduced AI photo edits into its design tool, aptly named “Magic Studio.” With it, I can remove backgrounds from photos, generate images similar to DALL-E or Midjourney, and perform photo touch-ups.

Can you tell what I removed from the image below?

(The wire.)

Price: A free version is available but lacks many key features. Pro and Teams are $119.99 per year.

Alternative: Pixlr is slightly closer to Photoshop than Canva’s more streamlined, novice-friendly approach.

9. Google Analytics for Website Analytics

Once you have your content marketing mix going, you must track results with an analytics platform.

The industry standard is Google Analytics (GA4), part of Google’s Marketing Platform.

Content marketers can use it to track who and where traffic is coming from on their sites (e.g., organic traffic from their SEO efforts or social traffic from their social posts).

You can look at things like time spent on the site or the rate at which users leave a page without reading anything (bounce rate). You can see which email campaigns are driving conversions.

Even real-time metrics can be used to see who is on your site.

GA4, which became mandatory on July 1, 2023, hasn’t been universally loved – but remains standard.

Feature Highlight:

The top feature for content marketers in GA4 is the ability to analyze which content pages drive the greatest impact.

The quickest and dirtiest method to analyze content performance across an entire subfolder is the “Pages and Screens” report under the Engagement tab.

To access the report, select “Page Path and Screen Class” as the dimension. In the search bar above, use your blog subfolder to filter down to the blog performance.

This will allow you to see performance stats over time, including views, users, engagement time, event count, conversions, and revenue—all broken down by individual page performance.

Price: Free

Alternative: Usermaven – I want to give Usermaven a shout-out specifically as an alternative for small businesses and sites.

Usermaven has designed an interface that works similarly to what I love about Universal Analytics.

If you can’t wrap your head around the new GA4, Usermaven is free (with limited features) and worth trying.

10. Asana for Project Management and Editorial Calendar

With blog posts, email, link building, and social media, content marketers have their hands full.

All marketers need a solid project management tool.

I’ve tried many project management tools, from free ones to paid ones, from startups that have since folded to brands that have been around forever, and I keep coming back to Asana.

Without project management software, creating content at scale is nearly impossible.

Tracking deadlines, goals, and coordination across teams, assets, and resources can quickly become (and has) overwhelming.

Asana is a top-rated and most-used project management tool because it’s excellent.

The only downside I ever felt was that it had too many features, but that’s not necessarily bad because it solves for whatever kind of project management style you have.

For instance, you can view projects with a timeline, list, kanban, and calendar view.

Feature Highlight:

Asana’s Content Calendar allows you to track and visualize your content marketing work better, assign work to teams or solo contributors, and more.

As a solo contributor, I could view my daily tasks even when working on multiple projects. And yet, as a manager, I could still track multiple team members’ progress across multiple projects. It was a game-changer.

They also have an ever-expanding list of integrations, like Google Docs or Jira, so teams can integrate more seamlessly.

Price: Free, scaling up to $24.99 per month per user. Price primarily depends on your needs and team size.

Alternative: Trello is another very strong pick for content marketing project management. For me, it was a difference in project management style.

If you’re having trouble picking, I recommend this breakdown post by Zapier.

The rest of the tools for content marketing are considered supplementary based on your specific needs.

Content Creation and Editing Tools

Content marketing has evolved beyond the written word to include graphic design, web development, video content, podcasts, etc.

Learning new mediums is necessary as I’ve grown my content marketing skills.

Below are some of the best tools to elevate my content beyond the written word.

11. Infogram for Data Visualization and Interactive Content

Data visualization has become a standard expectation in content marketing.

Infogram is one of the best solutions for embedding data visualization into my content marketing work.

A well-designed, shareable dataset can easily help you stand out from competitors and get coverage.

I used it here to create data tables when I was with Homebuyer.com for a post that continues to get links even while I’m gone.

Brands like Bankrate even use Infogram.

Third-party tools like this can often replace the time and monetary costs of hiring a developer or designer.

Feature Highlight:

Undoubtedly, the repository of templates Infogram offers is the top feature for content marketers.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel here—find a template that matches your needs, and you’ll be that much closer to publication.

They have in-depth templates for infographics, reports, slides, dashboards, posters, social media, charts, and my favorite: maps.

Price: A free version is offered, but to truly use the tool, you’ll need to pay at least $19 monthly. Agencies and businesses needing cross-team collaboration should expect to pay more than $149 monthly.

Alternative: Venngage also gets a lot of love from content marketing professionals. I’ve more experience in Infogram, but if you’re on the hunt for data visualization, Venngage is worth reviewing as well.

12. Descript for Video Content

Video has compelling statistics in online marketing – 87% of marketers currently use video.

Let’s be real: how many of us watch YouTube videos when making a product decision or researching a problem? (A study in 2021 over half of us.)

Google prioritizes search results features based on user interaction. So, the fact that YouTube videos show up in Google Search results tells us that people prefer it for some queries (try searching “how to tie a tie,” and the first result is a video!).

Descript is the best tool I’ve found to make video companions for the blog posts I create in my content marketing strategy.

Feature Highlight:

My favorite feature of Descript is the transcription built into the software – specifically, the ability to edit using just words.

Descript is user-friendly and intuitive if you’re completely new to editing video.

I just delete a word from the transcript, automatically removing it from the video – like magic.

There is also a very creepy beta feature that automatically makes it look like you are staring into the camera lens.

I never use it because it makes me look like a cartoon character (see below), but other users rave about it.

Maybe I need to have my eyes checked.

Price: Prices range from free for the most basic plan to custom quotes for enterprise businesses. The two most common plans, Creator and Pro, are $12 and $14 per monthly user, respectively.

Alternative: Loom is a good option for those looking mainly for a screen-recorder option. It doesn’t have editing features like Descript and isn’t made for that, but it’s great if you are creating explainer videos or screenshares!

Neither tool is great at in-depth editing or on-screen graphics. For that, I recommend a free tool like CapCut.

13. Riverside for Podcast Recording

Podcasts have grown to nearly 500 million listeners in 2024. If you’re adding podcasts to your content marketing strategy, Riverside is my best tool.

We’ve just started our podcast and recorded them all using Riverside.

Getting yourself featured on podcasts is one of the best white-hat ways to get links to your site.  However, Nate Matherson said that creating his podcast has been a good way for him to generate links to Positional.

Feature Highlight:

Riverside’s “Magic Clips” feature automatically breaks your podcast video into shareable clips.

The AI powering the feature picks the best moments from your recording and converts them into clips without any work.

Is it perfect?

It’s pretty close.

Since it’s all AI-based, it still takes some oversight, but it’s better than most tools I’ve seen with similar features.

Price: A free option is available, although the two most common plans, Standard and Pro, are $15 and $24 monthly.

Alternative: Squadcast is another great option for podcast recording, and it syncs with Descript.

Check out Jonathan Carson’s great post explaining the differences between the two.

14. Wordable for Uploading Google Docs to WordPress

Wordable lets you publish content from Google Docs to WordPress.

If you’re writing any amount of content in Google Docs – which most of us are – then Wordable can save you considerable time in every blog post you publish.

The beauty of Wordable is that it’s a streamlined tool meant for a clear use case: publishing your Google Doc drafts directly into your CMS.

Price: If you want to test-run Wordable, a free option is available, but you’ll likely need the $50 per month option.

15. ChatGPT for AI Assistance

All hail our AI overlords.

I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about the power of AI and ChatGPT as a content marketer and maybe even spent some late nights wondering about your writing skills and their future market value.

(Don’t worry—your skills are still needed. Google has been crushing purely AI-generated sites with its recent Spam Update.)

In all seriousness, there’s plenty of reason to use AI in content marketing, and given most tools today are made using ChatGPT, it’s helpful to learn it from the source.

Feature Highlight:

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, recently released custom versions of ChatGPT designed for specific purposes, which they’re simply calling GPT.

Essentially, you can create one GPT full of specific instructions and information, and then each time you use the GPT, you won’t need to input those same instructions.

For example, I have one that helps me craft social posts. I tell it to use emoji at the beginning of each bullet point.

I also created one that helps analyze content based on Google’s Helpful Content suggested self-assessment questions.

There’s even a GPT store where users share their own GPTs – and yes, many of the GPTs are specific to writing and content creation tasks.

If you want to see this in action, check out famous UX designer Luke Wroblewski’s Ask Luke feature he made with ChatGPT.

Luke based his Ask Luke version on all the blog posts, presentations, podcasts, etc. he’s created over the years – effectively meaning that anything Ask Luke responds with is based upon Luke’s actual opinions.

Eerie and effective.

Price: Free version available, $20 per month for GPT-4, and $25 per month for teams.

Alternative: Google’s Gemini is a close competitor to Chat GPT, although less viral. Recently, there has also been a great deal of controversy surrounding Gemini’s responses to questions.

Content Analytics Tools

There are a thousand ways to measure content marketing success, but none are possible without analytic tools.

No matter your goals in content marketing, here are some of the top analytic tools you’ll need to measure the success of your content.

16. Looker Studio for Reporting

Analytics platforms are great for in-depth analysis and even exporting data to dig deep into trends across your content.

However, your organization’s leaders will not be familiar with your content analytics—you need a method to turn analytics into a report to make performance data digestible.

Enter Looker Studio, Google’s data visualization tool.

Formerly Google Data Studio, Looker allows you to pull analytics from various sources and design dashboards that meet your needs.

Feature Highlight:

Looker Studio’s best feature is its ever-growing integration list. You can pull in data from over 900 sources (at the time of writing), including Google Analytics, Facebook ads, YouTube, Mailchimp, and more.

Price: The free version is available, although a Pro version costs $9 per user per project per month. Start with the free version.

Alternative: Power BI is Microsoft’s data visualization tool with reasonable pricing, a thriving community, and robust features worth learning if you have the time and ability. For a good comparison of the two tools, read this post from Catchr.

17. Crazy Egg for User Behavior Analytics

Crazy Egg is one of the most trusted sources of user behavior analytics. It is a must-have for any content marketer who wants to understand better how their audience engages with their content.

Predicting user behavior is hard, and measuring it can yield incredible results.

I once found that users on one of my posts clicked the most on a link to an external resource. So, I decided to create my content in place of that external resource, and voila, users stayed on our site!

Feature Highlight:

The top feature of Crazy Egg for content marketers is its heat map tool of their Snapshots feature.

Heat mapping analytics will help you better understand how your content is performing and, more importantly, why. You’ll see how far people scroll down the page, where they click, and generally where they spend time.

Just beware: people probably aren’t engaging with your content as you expect.

Price: Standard is $49 monthly, with Enterprise scaling up to $249 monthly.

Alternative: Microsoft Clarity is a free heat mapping tool that also works quite well. However, they do use your data (anonymized) to power machine learning models.

18. VWO for A/B Testing

Analytics will help you understand content performance, but A/B testing will help you improve it. A/B testing is used to compare two versions of something. For content marketers its typically words on the page or design elements.

A/B testing splits your users in two and delivers one version to one half and the other to another.

To me, VWO is a leader in the A/B testing space. It offers many different functions to help you A/B test all elements of your content. You can easily design and edit elements on the page and then run tests.

Feature Highlight:

VWO’s most useful feature for content marketers is the visual editor built into their A/B testing tool. This feature replaces my favorite Google tool, Google Optimize (which sadly closed its doors in 2022).

Usually, A/B testing requires the help of developers.

Although learning and manipulating code is helpful, most people do not have time to add developmental credentials to their already-packed responsibility list.

With VWO, you can edit and add text, images, forms, widgets, buttons, banners, and dynamic on-page variables without looking at the code!

Seriously!

This makes it an obvious choice to add to your content marketing tool kit.

Price: Price depends on usage, with less than 50,000 monthly tracked users (MTU) being free on the Starter plan. Price scales rapidly. For more detailed information, VWO has an impressive pricing page.

Alternative: Optimizely is a more in-depth, more expensive option. Read more about the two different tools here.

19. Google Tag Manager for Analytics Code Management

You’ll use many different tools, platforms, and analytics programs as a content marketer. This post alone recommends 23 different tools, all with different functionality.

For those tools that require installation on your website, you’ll have to add code to your website—a potentially daunting prospect for content marketers.

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is the most efficient solution for managing tags—the segments of code provided by analytics and marketing tools—without altering the page’s source code.

Feature Highlight:

One of Google Tag Manager’s most important functions is tracking clicks. Of course, GA4 has some of this functionality—tracking outbound link clicks and file downloads—but many clicks can be missed, such as button clicks, email address clicks, phone number clicks, etc.

An in-depth guide from Analytics Mania (my go-to source for GTM questions) is worth reading and understanding.

Price: free, although premium features based on usage and traffic rates are available for enterprise businesses.

Alternative: Bitly is not an alternative to GTM, given that GTM is much more powerful and tracks more than just clicks. But if you are looking for a less-involved option for click tracking, Bitly is great.

Content Distribution and Monitoring Tools

Content marketing isn’t marketing without distribution.

There are many options for distributing your content. Below are tools to help, no matter your distribution strategy.

20. Talkwalker for Monitoring Brand Mentions

Creating best-in-class content should generate buzz. Talkwalker is a complete monitoring tool for brand mentions, social trends, sentiment analysis, and competitive intelligence.

Talkwalker lets you monitor the web to track mentions of your brand, content, products, and other recognizable brand-related terms, leading to engagement, relationships, and links.

Feature Highlight:

Talkwalker offers an Alert feature to track your brand mentions across the web. They offer real-time, every day, or every week to make the mentions easier to track. Put in the keyword you want to track, and you’ll receive a text or email when mentions happen.

For content marketers, every brand mention creates an opportunity to build relationships, foster engagement, and secure links via unlinked mention outreach. Monitoring mentions is a must.

Price: The alert feature is free, but you must contact Talkwalker for pricing for the entire platform.

Alternative: Google Alerts is a completely free tool from Google with similar functionality to Talkwalker’s. I tend to get less noise with Talkwalker’s notifications.

21. Hunter for Finding Email Addresses

Distributing and promoting your content is the best way to get it seen.

For instance, a rule of thumb for content marketing is to email any person, brand, product, etc., I mention in a post. It’s an easy opportunity to build a connection, promote a piece of content, and start a relationship.

Some content is made primarily for distribution, like content for digital PR. The process involves creating content specifically for pitching to journalists and bloggers. So, a lot of email research is involved.

In all cases, I use BuzzStream in conjunction with Hunter.io to find email addresses. It’s the best combination for finding the address for a little cold outreach.

(I also wrote an entire article about finding someone’s email address.)

Feature Highlight:

Sometimes, sites don’t list any email addresses, or the specific person you are looking for isn’t listed.

Hunter has an email pattern feature built into the Chrome Extension that identifies the email pattern domains used for their email addresses. (For example, on BuzzStream, we use firstname@buzzstream.com.)

Once you have this format, you can make an educated guess as to the right email address for your contact. You can also verify the address, which you’ll see in the next tool.

Price: Free for 25 monthly searches, $34 per month starter tier.

Alternative: Get Prospect syncs with your LinkedIn to find and verify email addresses, making it easy to be sure you’re using the right email. (This is limited to LinkedIn so you won’t find everyone.)

22. Neverbounce for Email Verification

Email lists break down over time. Keeping an accurate, clean email list ensures your content marketing promotion works. It’s increasingly important as Google pushes new requirements to fight spammy email blasts.

NeverBounce cleans and verifies your email list, avoiding email bounces and bad emails within your list, protecting your email sender’s reputation, and ending up in spam filters.

Feature Highlight:

NeverBounce offers a complete dashboard to help manage large email lists, but it also has a one-off email address verifier built directly into its product page.

If you’re searching for a one-off email, this is a great resource to help verify an email before you send it.

NeverBounce has over 80+ integrations, increasing the odds of integrating directly into your CRM or email marketing tool.

Price: One-off email verification is free (limited use). The full feature set pricing depends on usage and the number of emails on your list. Check the pricing page for full details.

Alternative: Mailercheck is another well-known tool that can help verify your email address and reduce bounces.

The post 25+ Content Marketing Tools Used By Experts in 2024 appeared first on BuzzStream.

The post outlines several changes that could impact the future of link building, content creation, and upend strategies that many sites rely on.

I started my career in marketing right after the Google Penguin and Panda algorithms hit, and the repercussions could echo for years to come.

This Helpful Content System core update seems to be another earth-shaking move by Google.

So, if you are a casual link builder or a major agency, this update will impact everyone.

Don’t worry; we have some tips for staying ahead of the curve.

What is the Helpful Content System?

Before we get into it, let’s briefly cover the Helpful Content System and why Google stresses it so much.

The Helpful Content System isn’t new. Google launched this in August 2022.

The key aspects it looks at are:

• Does the content provide original information, reporting, or analysis?
• Creating content for users, not search engines.
• Demonstrating expertise and first-hand experience in the content shared on the page.

But wait a minute, is all of this new? Shouldn’t we always be writing content in this way?

Yes, but it seems too many sites have tried to game the system. (You may have heard about the now infamous SEO heist.)

The proliferation of tools and AI has made scaling content creation too easy, and the quality has continued to fall.

This March 2024 core update doubles down on its emphasis on user-centric content, prioritizing informative and valuable content that avoids clickbaity tactics.

So below are four things that link builders need to know based on this Helpful Content update.

1. Focus On Building Quality and Relevant Links

You can read at length about quality links and relevant links, and while this may not be new, it’s taken on a new level of urgency with this new algorithm update.

Google still hasn’t found a way to move away from links as a ranking signal as much as they may want to. Links are the primary way Google traverses the web.

But, by developing a new set of guidelines, Google can disrupt the years of scaled link building with minimal oversight that brands have become accustomed to relying on.

So, they will continue to put much more value on quality and relevancy.

The definition of link “quality” is that it’s on a page that provides Helpful Content.

So, let’s get into how you can determine what makes content “Helpful.”

2. Evaluate Links Based on Helpful Content

Unfortunately, just because a site has a high DA/DR doesn’t mean the content is Helpful. It is still likely that a high DR site has Helpful Content, but this is not always the case—and we are seeing this play out in the rankings.

Prominent, high-DA/DR publications have been penalized with lower rankings, while low-DA/DR sites rank well. (Lily Ray produces excellent yearly analyses of winners/losers.)

So, we need a new placeholder metric.

Google provides insightful documentation of what makes Helpful Content from a list of questions on their blog.

We can use this as our basis.

I’ve created a rating system GPT to evaluate a page and provide me with a final score. (I’ve even started using it to assess my content.)

You can see the GPT here.

With the GPT, the process is simple.

Paste the copy and let it do its evaluation. For example, here’s an assessment of a piece I’m currently writing:

If you want to set up your own GPT or ask a tool like Gemini to assess, you can use these steps:

1. Ask your AI tool to take Google’s Helpful Content self-assessment list and create a scoring system.
2. Cut and paste the contents of a page into the AI tool.
3. Ask it to evaluate based on the scoring system.

This isn’t foolproof, given that it’s a qualitative evaluation, but it should give you a sense of what is missing when evaluating whether or not a site is worth building a link from or the value of the link on the page itself.

If you’re looking for a visual checklist for helpful content, it would look something like this:

Tip: Helpful Content isn’t the only signal that a link or page is valuable. Also, be sure to look for relevancy.

3. Build Helpful Content That Generates Links Passively

Passive link generation isn’t anything new. Statistics posts are the most common version of posts that generate links passively.

The idea is that you create content around a keyword with high link intent.

Focus on keywords that users search for unique data or research to support their claims.

Other versions of this have included definitional queries and “types of” or “trends” keywords.

You can also get creative with this approach. For instance, consider the keyword “couples sleeping positions.”

This phrase is a relevant keyword for Casper. But instead of providing just an informational answer, they gathered unique data through a survey.

This term has search volume, and the unique data makes it something they can pitch but gains links passively over time.

A brand needs to be sufficiently authoritative to leverage this approach, so in most cases, it needs to build some links first to get the gears moving.

For instance, I helped publish a Women in Construction post years ago and did an initial outreach push to get it showing up in the SERPs, and now, every year, it acquires more links each March during Women in Construction Week.

You can see the boosts each month in the image above.

4. Focus on Sustainable Strategies, Not Shortcuts

Google also introduced new spam policies targeting specific practices often used for link manipulation and shortcuts.

I’ll briefly outline them here:

The main one is expired domain abuse. This is where someone buys an expired domain, fills it with low-quality content, and essentially deceives users by leveraging its existing reputation.

This practice is rife with malicious spam and phishing, but some also use it as a shortcut to rankings, links, and ad dollars.

Buying an existing domain is still OK if the site is maintained and properly cared for, but it won’t fly with Google if it spits out low-quality content.

The next is very similar; Google calls scaled content abuse, which refers to creating large amounts of unoriginal content with minimal value to users, regardless of the creation method (automated or manual).

Google has been careful with its wording about AI: “Our long-standing spam policy has been that use of automation, including generative AI, is spam if the primary purpose is manipulating ranking in Search results.”

But it echoes what you see in the Helpful Content guidelines.

Overall, building links through valuable content creation like digital PR and other white hat methods remains crucial.

The Future of Link Building in the Helpful Content Era

With all of these new developments, the future of link building is bright for those willing to adapt.

The aforementioned passive link building approach is one that many brands are beginning to adopt.

Tactics like broken link building, link insertions, and guest posting are still viable; we need to shift our qualification methods.

Any link building strategy where you have control over where your link appears will still work in this new era.

Happy building.

The post The Impact of Google’s Helpful Content System on Link Building appeared first on BuzzStream.

Most SEOs want to scale their processes, but it’s virtually impossible to scale link building while ensuring quality.

As brands constantly ask how many links they need to build, the question should be, how many quality links do I need to build?

Quality may differ depending on the site’s goal, but backlinks should always drive value. And value comes from quality.

Let’s dig deeper into quality backlinks, what to look for, and strategies you can employ to build them.

What Makes a Link “Quality”?

A quality link is a mid to high-authority link relevant to your business.

However, quality might mean many different things to different people at a company. Some stakeholders may want news mentions; others may need backlinks that lead to conversions.

In this post, we are talking about link quality from an SEO perspective.

The terms authority and relevancy deserve some specific consideration, however. In our post about relevant links, we shared a matrix about authority and relevancy, which is essential to understand when discussing quality.

Here are some simple ways to gauge link quality based on quantitative and qualitative factors. Base your overall link quality assessment on a mix of the following:

High Site Relevancy

A quality link is also from a site relevant to your niche. There are certainly degrees of relevancy, but the further away from a core offering you get, the less valuable the link becomes.

Remember, links serve as an authority signal. When other relevant sites in your niche signal that your site is an authority for a topic with a link, Google will perceive you as an authority.

The other reason is that a relevant link brings relevant traffic to your site, which could lead to sales or other positive customer interactions like comments or shares.

Read our post about relevant links to get a complete picture of what makes a site relevant.

Note: If you create off-topic content and get links from the same off-topic sites, this doesn’t help your case for SEO. If anything, it will confuse Google.

High Domain Authority or Domain Rating

Domain Authority (DA) is a proprietary metric from Moz based on signals like backlinks and site traffic. The metrics emulate Google’s PageRank system. Domain Rating (DR) is a similar metric from Ahrefs, though theirs comes from a site’s backlink profile. Both have a 100-point scale.

Look for sites at least above ~60 DA/DR.

Note: A brand new site may not have as high of a DA/DR because they’ve just launched. Don’t discount them immediately if the site is relevant and trustworthy. They may just need time to grow their authority.

High Estimated Sitewide Organic Traffic

You won’t be able to tell the actual monthly traffic with any tools, but most can give you estimated organic traffic.

Sites above 5K~10K monthly organic traffic are of average quality.

Use a tool like Ahrefs Site Explorer to see the organic site traffic.

In the example above, the monthly estimated organic traffic is 6,100 visits.

Above Average Page Authority or URL Rating

Page Authority (PA) is Moz’s measure of a page’s ability to rank based on several factors, and URL Rating (UR) is Ahref’s based again on the strength of the backlink profile. Both are on a 100-point scale.

When you get to the page level, metrics can drop. Some top-quality sites have pages with lower page authority or URL rating scores (as compared to their DA/DR).

For example, this page from Whitehouse.gov, which has a DR of 91, has a UR of just 37.

If you’re unsure what an average is in your niche, compare PA/UR to similar sites. For example, if the target link you are evaluating has a UR of 10, but the other similar sites have a UR of 30, then yours is fairly low quality compared. But if

Normal Link Acquisition Velocity

Another interesting concept to consider is the rate at which the site has gotten backlinks. Google doesn’t like when sites acquire sudden bursts of links because it can signal spammy tactics (even if the site got them naturally).

Using a tool like Ahrefs Site Explorer, you can see the progression of a link profile over time. Below is an example of a site with some abnormal link growth.

You want to see a linear movement up and to the right. This represents a natural link growth over time, which Google wants.

Note: Some unnatural spikes may be due to Ahrefs indexing changes. You can compare to other sites in the same niche to see if they saw similar growth simultaneously. Ahrefs is also good at noting these indexing updates.

Low Spam Score

Another way to judge quality would be to look at the backlink profile of the target site with a metric like Moz’s Spam Score, which is part of their Link Explorer.

Spam Score can tell you the likelihood of a site being penalized by Google for spammy tactics.

Another is Majestic’s Trust Flow metric from their Site Explorer Tool.

Lower Number of Outbound Links

Outbound links are crucial for SEO. They can help Google and users better understand what a page is about and help make your page more authoritative.

However, with too many outbound links, a page passes a lower link value to each external page.

Think about outbound links like slices of pie. The website’s total available link value is the whole pie. The more outbound links it has, the smaller the slices each person receives.

There is no magic number here, but Google once said a site should have fewer than 100 links on a page. Realistically, the number of links where link dilution becomes a problem is probably higher than 100, but keeping an eye on outbound linking practices is important.

It gets genuinely impactful when the outbound links aren’t relevant to the post. Non-relevant links are usually clear signals that a site might be selling links or part of a link farm.

Few Clicks From the Homepage

Aim for links up to ~2-3 clicks from the homepage.

The deeper a page is from the homepage, the less likely it is to get crawled frequently, which means the value may not reach your site.

For example, this post is two clicks from the homepage. A user clicks into our blog home and then the featured quality links post.

You can check the “click depth” with a tool like Screaming Frog or count the clicks yourself.

Displays E-E-A-T Practices and Helpful Content

While Google has insisted that E-E-A-T isn’t a ranking signal, the concept behind a website that displays expertise, experience, authority, and trust will still indirectly impact user engagement, affecting rankings.

Simply put, why would anyone read what a site says if they aren’t putting out authoritative content that people can trust?

Your Money Your Life (Y-M-Y-L) sites are critiqued even closer for proper E-E-A-T characteristics for Google’s search quality raters per their guidelines.

Evaluate the site in the same way that a quality rater would:

• Is the information on the page properly sourced from other authoritative sources?
• Is the person writing someone with experience in the topic?
• Can you trust what they are saying?

Google also asks sites to produce Helpful Content, which pushes creating quality, people-first content. They offer helpful questions to ask, such as:

• Does it provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?
• Is there a substantial, complete description of the topic?
• Does it offer insightful analysis or interesting information beyond the obvious?
• If using other sources, does it add substantial value and originality?
• Is the heading or title descriptive and helpful without being clickbait?
• Would you bookmark or share this content?
• Could you see this content in a printed magazine, encyclopedia, or book?

These are all qualitative assessments. So, take them as such.

Unobtrusive Ads

In short, ads that cover the content are frowned upon by Google. Does this impact link quality? If the site gets penalized, then yes, it will. However, significant publications rank well where ads are typically found all over the page, which can be somewhat confusing.

So, how should you evaluate ads?

Look to see if you can quickly tell the difference between ads and content on the page. For example, in the image below, the page is so riddled with ads that you can barely tell what is an image from the post and what is an ad.

Quality Link Checklist

So, the checklist for determining whether a link is high quality or not comes down to something like this:

• High DA/DR
• High PA/UR
• High Organic Traffic
• Low Spam Score
• High Site Relevancy
• Low Outbound Links
• Few Clicks from Homepage
• Normal Link Acquisition Velocity
• Display E-E-A-T & Helpful Content
• Unobtrusive Ads

Are there more checks you could do? With this, you can get deep into the weeds, but the list above represents something you can do relatively quickly while evaluating. But your time is better spent writing better content.

When in doubt, use your gut.

If you get a link from a site that doesn’t look great or isn’t writing great content, it’s probably not quality.

High Quality vs Low Quality Links

A low-quality link does not provide value to the user. Google lays out a long list of link spam policies. Essentially, these policies focus on buying or selling links to manipulate rankings, such as paying for links, exchanging products for links, or engaging in excessive link swaps.

Automated link creation and non-disclosed paid links in content also breach these rules. Practices like embedding low-quality or hidden links in widgets, distributing them across multiple sites, or using keyword-rich links in site footers or templates are all frowned upon.

If that’s too much for you, a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself, “Would I be happy with this linking site if it was my own?”

How to Get Quality Links Using These 8 Tactics

Building quality links doesn’t have to be complicated. It simply takes some strategic planning. You can build quality links once you’ve established your industry and niche.

Then it’s just a matter of getting your team together. You can build links with content-led approaches or without content.

Building and Pitching New Content

New, fresh content is one of the best ways to get quality links. But, unless you are a major brand or publication, you’ll need to promote your content to get it seen.

Why?

As the old saying goes, if a tree falls in the forest but there’s no one there to hear it, will it make a sound? The same goes for content. You can build the best content in the world, but it won’t get you any links if no one sees it.

Here are some ways to build new content for pitching.

Lean on Competitors for Inspiration

I always begin my ideation process by looking at what my competitors have done that has gotten them quality links and doing something better.

By leaning on your competitor’s successes, you can estimate ROI, which can get buy-in from clients or C-Suites.

You also have a built-in outreach market if you promote your content. Simply look at the people who have linked to your competitors and reach out with your new, better content.

Use a tool like Ahref’s Content Explorer to find posts with many links in your niche. For example, here’s a search around link-building-related content in BuzzStream’s industry.

Then you can take an idea that has worked well for your competition, iterate on it, and pitch it for coverage.

Or, if you know of a competitor already in your industry, use the Site Explorer and look at their Top Content.

In the image above, I see several posts with many referring domains. Those represent ideas that I know already work.

Create Surveys and Data Studies

Proprietary data is a game-changer for getting links. Creating surveys and data studies is one of the most effective white hat link building tactics today.

If you don’t have access to your own data, you can use a third-party tool like OnePoll or a cheaper option like Pollfish.

Then, it’s a matter of finding linkable angles for your data. Extreme emotions like surprise, anger, and joy all help make a post linkable.

For example, here’s a post from Preply that looked at the cities that swear the most.

This post yielded over 150 Linking root domains (LRD), including quality links from NYPost and TheHill.

Create Shareable Graphics

One way to make a post more shareable and linkable is by providing a graphic asset that others can refer to in their own posts. Maps, “re-imagined as” concepts, and traditional infographics all fall under that shareable graphic bucket.

Many tools, like Visme or Canva, help create graphics, but visual creativity is the best differentiating factor for graphics. We recommend getting a graphic designer to take your assets to the next level.

For example, Crossword-Solver shared the most-used emoji on Twitter with a highly intricate map:

The map post earned them coverage from a high-quality site like PCMag.

Create Interactives and Calculators

Interactives and calculators can be expensive assets to create, but they can yield many high-quality links over time — especially when tied to keywords.

For example, this Student Loan Repayment Calculator from Smart Asset has gained 740 links over time.

The calculator has gained links from the likes of NPR, Nasdaq, and Business Insider.

Write Guest Posts

Guest posting sites are a dime a dozen. So, it’s essential to use the same quality check mentioned above that you would on the link to evaluate your guest post target.

We identified 150 quality guest posting sites to help you better weed out the low-quality links.

There are some extra quality signals to be aware of when evaluating guest posts. Some signals include overt mentions of accepting guest posts for money.

If a guest post site accepts any/all content just to make money, it is likely not paying too much attention to the quality.

Link Insertion

Getting your link inserted into an existing external post is a great way to control precisely where and how you get a backlink. You can run quality checks on the sites before you attempt a link insertion.

Note: Some people lump link insertion into guest posting because you can “insert” a link into the post that you create. Either way works.

Link Reclamation

If you had a quality link but lost it, you can regain it with a quick email. Ensure the site is quality and send an email, which you can find on our email outreach templates post.

Use a tool like Ahrefs Site Explorer to see “lost” backlinks. Sort by DR to make sure you are looking at the quality sites.

Unlinked Mentions

Use a service like Google Alerts or TalkWalker to find unlinked mentions of your brand online from quality websites. If you still need to, you can email them to request they include you. (Use our email outreach templates for unlinked mention help.)

Brand Announcements

You can generate quality news links when something newsworthy occurs in your brand. First, ask yourself if your news is relevant to an external audience. If so, a press release is a great way to publicize your news.

Then, these press releases can yield links from high-quality, relevant industry news sites.

To determine if your news is worthy of a press release and coverage, look at some sites where you’d like coverage. Look at the kinds of news they share. If yours seems similar, you can probably get a quality link from them.

For example, say I was a construction-related brand and wanted to gain some links by reporting major company news. I’d look at a site like ForConstructionPros and see what kinds of news they share and try to tailor my pitch as such.

This example shows brand news about how IRONMARKETS has hired a new Social Media Specialist.

Reactive PR and Newsjacking

When news happens, you can position your brand/site as a thought leader, leading to quality backlinks.

Set up a reactive or newsjacking workflow by having a team member or members tap into your industry’s daily news. Use a platform like Google News and set up custom feeds.

If something comes up that a thought leader associated with your site can comment on, you can pitch that as a press release or directly to journalists in the space.

For example, if I were a health site, I might proactively provide a journalist a comment with tips or predictions about Alaskapox, given that several outlets have covered it in the past few hours, according to Google News.

Use examples of competitors’ success in reactive PR to convince the thought leaders at your site to open a line of communication for providing quotes to pitch.

Submitting Quotes on Request Platforms

Multiple platforms request quotes from thought leaders and experts in a field. Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is the most popular, but I also like Qwoted. It’s less crowded and provides more targetted requests.

In each, you sign up as a source and choose an industry. Then, you’ll receive quote requests from journalists and content writers. Usually, you’ll be able to assess a site’s overall quality.

Learn more about all of the link building strategies that you can use to build quality backlinks.

Frequently Asked Questions About Quality Links

Here are some frequently asked questions about quality links from our customers and around the web.

Can You Check if a Link Is Spammy?

There are multiple ways to check if a link is spammy. Always hover over links to preview the URL in your browser’s status bar before clicking. But if you want to evaluate the kinds of links you receive, you can use tools like the aforementioned Majestic’s Trust Flow or Moz’s Spam Score.

Google’s Safe Browsing Transparency Report is a free resource that will help identify individual pages that may be spammy. SpamHaus can also determine the status of IP addresses, domains, and senders.

If it looks spammy, it probably is.

What is the Best Type of Link?

The best type of link to help SEO and ranking is a high-quality, dofollow link from a reputable, relevant site within your industry.

However, it depends on your goals. The best type of link for a brand might be one built for brand exposure. These might not be dofollow, but they still offer great exposure for your brand from a reputable source.

For example, a link from Forbes.com is still incredibly valuable even though they are all nofollow.

How Do I Find Hidden Links?

To find hidden links on a webpage, use browser developer tools by right-clicking the page and selecting “Inspect” to view the HTML source code, where you can search for hidden link elements.

Chrome extensions like Link Klipper can extract all links on a page, helping identify ones that aren’t immediately visible. Additionally, running a site through Screaming Frog SEO Spider allows for a comprehensive crawl to detect hidden or cloaked links.

Chances are you won’t find hidden links unless you are dealing with gray or black hat methods of link building.

The post What Are Quality Links and How to Build Them appeared first on BuzzStream.

Usually, the more effort it takes, the more valuable the link. Google doesn’t like it when link builders try to game the system, and they regularly take steps to discourage this. So, if it looks too easy, it probably isn’t too valuable.

Building relevant, quality links naturally is always the best way to go. But far too many people reach over to the dark side of black hat and gray hat link building in hopes of scaling quickly.

Resist!

Link building strategies that use white hat tactics is the best way to ensure your site has a natural, quality backlink profile.

Below is a list of white hat link building tactics that won’t get you in trouble.

What is White Hat Link Building?

White hat link building is building links ethically and adhering to Google’s Link Spam policies.

Link building tactics that are against Google’s policies include:

• Buying or selling links for ranking purposes
• Excessive link exchanges
• Using automated programs or services to create links to your site

Gray Hat vs. Black Hat vs. White Hat Links

Since white hat links are acquired through completely ethical, Google-approved methods, black hat links are gained through manipulative practices.

Black hat link acquisition methods are some of the ones mentioned in the previous section, like buying links through link farms or using hidden links, all to boost a site’s ranking.

Gray hat links fall in between somewhere. Gray hat tactics aren’t explicitly banned by Google but are looked down upon. In short:

• White hat: completely safe
• Gray hat: moderately safe to risky
• Black hat: definite penalties

If you want to play it safe, stick with these white hat link building methods we list below. But. don’t rely too heavily on any tactic; spread it out.

Content-Led White Hat Link Building Tactics

Below are white hat link building tactics that require new or existing content.

1. Pitch Data Studies

Data studies have always proven to be great sources of high-quality backlinks, provided the data is interesting and packaged correctly.

Proprietary data is best because it is something no one else can access or recreate—especially AI.

You can get data from survey platforms like OnePoll, YouGov, Survey Monkey, and Pollfish if you don’t have user data.

You can also pull from third-party data sources, like government sites.

Once you find your data sources, develop a compelling story complete with findings and some graphics, and then pitch these to journalists via email and/or press release.

(Depending on how you visualize your data studies and survey results, you may choose to use an infographic, which is the next tactic on this list.)

Survey and data studies are typically part of the digital PR strategy, which Google said they liked as a white hat link building tactic in a now-famous (at least in the digital PR community) Tweet from John Mueller of Google.

I love some of the things I see from digital pr, it’s a shame it often gets bucketed with the spammy kind of link building. It’s just as critical as tech SEO, probably more so in many cases.

— John (@JohnMu) January 23, 2021

How to Pitch

To pitch surveys and data studies, identify journalists who have covered similar studies, and craft an email or press release highlighting the main takeaways. Link to media assets like graphs or charts and provide the data.

Learn how to write a media pitch or follow a template like this:

Successful Examples:

Credit Karma

This study from Credit Karma found nearly a third of Gen Z live at home while others struggle to afford rent, and it has garnered over 140 linking root domains (LRD).

Preply

This survey from Preply found the most popular grandparent nicknames in each US state, which currently has over 150 LRDs.

Tip: Learn what makes a successful, data-driven survey study.

2. Create Infographics

Infographics have worked so well in the past because they provide a “physical” asset for bloggers to share within their blog posts. (Journalists rarely share infographics, so this is more of a blogger outreach tactic.)

These infographics essentially make non-pitchable topics pitchable. For instance, this social media statistics post from Oberlo can sometimes be tough to build links to actively. But, with an infographic attached, they have a pitchable asset.

Over the years, creating infographics using tools like Canva or Visme has lowered the barrier to entry for bloggers to create their own infographics, so investing in true graphic design work for your infographic will make it incredibly linkable.

Take Visual Capitalist for an example. Their entire site and strategy revolves around visualizations of different data sources.

However, there is much more to infographics as a link building tactic than just visualizing data.

Think of infographics as supportive post images that recap the information on the page in a compelling way.

I’ve used infographics to pitch a list of science-backed tips, explain complex topics like how batteries work, and even visually list a collection of cars from a popular TV show.

How to Pitch:

Pitching infographics is all about the connection to the site. The strongest connection you can make is when the site has shared a similar infographic. Then you can start your email with, “I saw you shared X infographic, so I thought you might enjoy this one we created as well.”

Framing your email this way makes an immediate connection for your target (something I cover in the C.H.A.M.P. outreach method) and can help convince them to link to you.

Here’s a template:

Successful Examples:

Resume.io

This career advice from successful founders from Resume.io has over 50 LRD.

Joe Chernov

This is an old one, but this shark finning infographic was a must-include example because it’s one of my favorite examples of an infographic used to visualize a large number.

3. Generate Interactive Content

Calculators, quizzes, and other interactive content are great for building links and increasing organic traffic. Depending on your industry, you may be able to get press mentions as well.

I recommend a keyword-focused approach by finding a keyword that warrants an interactive approach. The keyword approach will give you the most value, given that interactive content typically requires a larger budget.

For instance, this large interactive microsite visualizes carbon emissions with a 3D game. This is a unique take and may get coverage initially. But, suppose the goal is long-term link growth.

In that case, it’s wiser to lean into something like a carbon emissions calculator (where the keyword has a total potential monthly search volume of 3,800 and the top three ranking posts average 4,000 linking root domains.)

You can search your industry + calculator for starters. Other key terms might be “generator” or even “quiz”.

Depending on the size and complexity of your interactive elements, this approach may require some development work.

How to Pitch

Pitching an interactive is very similar to pitching an infographic.

Successful Examples:

RentCafe

This RentCafe calculator shows how much rent you can afford. It brings in an estimated 28,600 organic monthly visits and has gained over 250 LRDs.

BetterPet

This BetterPet Dog Age Calculator has over 75 LRDs.

Don’t create an interactive post for these keywords unless you know yours is more helpful than Google’s.

4. Build Links to a Resource Page

Resource page link building is finding pages that list similar resources and pitching a resource to get a link back to your site.

This, of course, requires you first to create a resource that is worthy of pitching. The resource is typically a piece of informative content, like our HARO guide post. (Although you could also pitch an interactive or infographic to get added to a resource page.)

If you haven’t built a piece of content that you’re confident is better than what is out there, you can get ideas by looking at what your competitors are doing and creating something better (this is the basis of the skyscraper technique popularized by Backlinko).

Once you have your post, you can find resource pages by searching terms like “your industry” + intitle: or inurl:resources or inurl:recommended links.

For example, the below highlights resource pages in the student loan industry.

Then you are looking for pages or posts that have a list of links (aka resources). These pages are typically found on library sites, educational websites, and local government websites.

The main thing to look out for when performing resource page link building is the site quality you are targeting. The resource page’s site may even have a high DA or DR, but if the page is buried within the site, it will provide little link value.

Look at the Page Authority or URL Rating and your target resource page’s estimated organic traffic to better determine the quality.

The other thing to look out for is the number of outgoing links on a page. The more outgoing links a page has, the less value it brings to your site. Google has been quoted saying to avoid using more than ~100 outbound links on it (though this hasn’t been confirmed on any documentation recently.)

How to Pitch

To pitch your content for a resource page, the most important thing is to convince your target that your resource is a good fit for the site. You should move on if you aren’t confident it’s a fit.

Successful Examples:

LendEdu

This guide from Lendedu has over 75 LRDs, many from resource pages like these.

California Mobility

This guide of senior citizen exercises from California Mobility has gained over 270 LRD from resource pages like this.

5. Replace Broken Links

Broken link building is a link building tactic where you target broken links on a site and recommend a replacement link from your website. Your replacement link might be your home page or an existing piece of content, or something you create to replace the broken link.

There are two ways to perform broken link building. The first is using a tool like Ahrefs’ Content Explorer to strategically find a piece of popular content with many broken links, recreate it, and then pitch your replacement.

The second way is to find resource pages where broken links are typically found (because many resource pages are rarely updated) and then using that as an in-road to pitching your post.

You also need an extra tool to find the broken link on the page, like Check My Links (one of my favorite SEO Chrome extensions.)

Find a page where your resource would fit, check for broken links, alert them of the broken links, and then pitch your resource as an addition.

Use search terms like inurl: and intitle: and the words “resources” or “recommended links” to find resource pages where users list lots of links.

How to Pitch

Broken link outreach is very similar to resource page link building. You can find the template below:

6. Insert Links Into External Content (aka Link Insertion)

Link insertions are a type of link building where you ask a website to insert a link to your site on their page.

The link you ask to insert should be highly authoritative, helpful for a user, and overall worth inserting on the page, or this tactic will not work.

Search the web for similar topics to your link to find link insertion targets. You’ll have the best luck looking for tangentially related topics, not exact match topics.

For example, if I wanted to insert my guide to link insertions somewhere on the web, I would try to find posts about link building tips rather than a post about link insertion.

(This is because posts written about a topic are most likely trying to rank for that topic, so they will be less willing to link out to a competing topic.)

How to Pitch

Pitching a link insertion requires selling the target on why your link benefits their page. Stressing the SEO importance can sometimes seal the deal.

Note: There are no examples here since it’s hard to identify when a link has been inserted without knowing what is happening behind the scenes. (If it is obvious, the link insertion isn’t done correctly.)

7. Target Keywords With High Link Intent

Certain target keywords and phrases are searched and referenced more than others. Journalists, researchers, and publishers like to cite research within their articles.

So, by strategically writing posts that cover these keywords, you can be first in line when a researcher Googles the term. As the post ranks better, it naturally accrues links over time.

A link graph for a post targeting a keyword with link intent looks like the one below, where organic traffic and referring domains grow together over time.

Statistics posts are the clearest example of keywords with high link intent. Definitions, types, and trends are similarly highly referenced in articles.

This strategy doesn’t work for everyone and can take longer, but it builds links naturally over time, which Google prefers. Be sure to choose a relevant topic to build relevant links.

Note that the organic traffic you get from these keywords may be heavily impacted by the launch of Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE). You may see lower organic traffic if AI easily answers the term for users. But, journalists and bloggers will still need to link to these keywords as they cannot cite SGE as a source.

How to Pitch

Pitch your content in the same way that you would a data study or infographic. The idea is to highlight what makes your content great and why it fits their site.

Successful Examples:

HelpScout

HelpScout’s customer service statistics post is a comprehensive post that ranks for the key term and has accrued 3,800 LRD over time. This is clearly an effective link building tactic for SaaS businesses.

Salesforce

Salesforce’s What is CRM post has gained 1,900 LRD over time and ranks in the top position for the keyword.

8. Update Existing Backlinks (aka Link Moves)

Link moves should be called link updates because you ask a site linking to you to update the link and direct it to another page.

You’d want to do this mainly if the existing link to your site is irrelevant or inaccurate. For example, if someone linked to our link building tools post but was talking about contacting our Support Team (in which case I’d want them to link to our Help page.)

How to Pitch

When asking to move a link, always give them specific directions as to where the link is on their site now — both the page and the location of the URL.

Note: There are no examples here because it’s harder to tell exactly when a link was changed on someone’s site without doing some deep digging.

Content-Less White Hat Link Building Tactics

Below are the tactics you don’t need a specific post or asset to build links to. (And, since content isn’t used to pitch, no live examples exist.)

9. Find Unlinked Mentions

As the name implies, unlinked mentions are instances of your brand or website not being linked to your site. Link reclamation is reclaiming links that used to be linked to your site.

To find unlinked mentions, you can use a service like Google Alerts or Talkwalker, which will tell you when your brand has been mentioned. Then, you can visit the site and see if there has been a link.

How to Pitch

Always start your unlinked mentions by thanking users for mentioning your brand.

10. Reclaim Lost Links (Link Reclamation)

Link reclamation is when you reclaim a link to your website that has either been removed or, in some cases, newly tagged as noindex.

You can find lost links using a tool like Ahrefs. Simply go to the Calendar tool and toggle “Lost” links. You can also check the backlinks tool and toggle to “Lost”.

How to Pitch

Pitching link reclamation is relatively simple. Most brands will be fairly receptive unless there is a technical blocker (the site no longer allows links) or a business-related blocker (you are now a competitor).

11. Highlight Brand News

You can leverage big news about your brand for news coverage and white hat backlinks. This works best for start-ups or large companies with major news.

However, be selective about what you choose to lean into for your brand news outreach. Not everything is newsworthy.

Once you have your brand news, you can pitch it to journalists within the industry using a press release.

Search top news sites in your industry to find ideas for newsworthy brand stories. For example, TechCrunch covers everything in the startup tech world. A quick peek at their most recent stories shows us the kinds of news stories they cover.

Maybe I’d consider pitching them a press release about a new brand partnership of mine.

How to Pitch

Brand news comes best via a Press Release. The template below comes from our anatomy of a press release post:

[Headline: Attention-Grabbing title reflecting the company news]

[Date]

[Company Name], a [brief description of the company and its industry], is excited to announce [describe the news, such as a new partnership, milestone, executive hire, etc.]. The [announcement/news] is a testament to [Company Name]’s growth and commitment to [mention the goal or mission related to the news].

Key Highlights:

• Highlight 1: [Detail about the news and its significance]
• Highlight 2: [Another critical aspect of the announcement]
• Highlight 3: [Additional relevant information]

“[Quote from a key executive detailing the news and its impact on the company’s future],” stated [Name, Title] of [Company Name].

For further details, visit [website/landing page].

About [Company Name]: [A brief company overview, including its mission, market position, and achievements].

[Contact Information]

–

Once you’ve built the press release, you can pitch using an email found in our email templates.

12. Pitch Reactive PR Content

When news breaks, your site can become the go-to source for comment (or even a full piece of content.) This is sometimes called “newsjacking”.

This link building approach leans heavily on having a pulse on the news and agility to turn around quickly, which not many brands can do on their own without a supportive agency.

However, reactive PR is incredibly useful for landing high-quality news links. The potential downside, however, is that some news outlets use nofollow links, which don’t directly drive SEO value.

Quote Pitching

Once the news drops, you reach out to relevant journalists with a quote from a thought leader at your organization, like the CEO.

Reactive Content

Creating new content based on a news story by:

• Create a press release containing quotes and/or an analysis and pitch that.
• Create an actual piece of content on your website and pitch that.
• Or both.

How to Pitch

To pitch a quote, use a template like this:

To pitch a new piece of content related to the news, you can slightly tweak the above:

13. Use a Quote Request Platform (e.g. HARO)

Some journalists and writers request quotes from experts to help elevate their stories. These backlinks are typically high authority and highly relevant.

There are a few main platforms to use to find quote requests:

• Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
• Qwoted
• Sourcebottle
• Journorequest (on X).

The downside of most of these platforms is that many users spam these requests with responses. So, when responding to journalists, respond promptly and succinctly, and most importantly, make sure your pitch matches exactly what they ask for. I wrote about why I prefer Qwoted in our digital PR tools post.

How to Pitch

We have an entire guide on pitching HARO, but the main tips are to keep it short, stand out, and ensure you are highly relevant.

14. Get Featured on Podcasts

According to Edison Dial, 42% of Americans ages 12 and older have listened to a podcast in the past month, and the number has continued to grow each year since 2006.

Clearly in demand, Spotify alone has over 5 million podcast titles. That’s a lot of link opportunities.

Pitching yourself as a podcast guest can get you links on blog posts and websites, potentially leading to subsequent podcast appearances.

How to Pitch

Listen to their podcast first and warm up the relationship by reaching out on social media if possible. Then use a template like the one below:

15. Find Quality, Relevant Guest Post Opportunities

Many sites offer guest posting opportunities, but you should only consider high-quality guest posting sites. 

This is last on our list because Google looks at paid guest posts as advertising, meaning they should have “Nofollow” and “sponsored” links, which do not pass link value.

But, naturally appearing on other people’s sites as a guest post is not against any guidelines and, therefore, remains a viable white hat link building tactic. The impact on ranking is still up for debate.

You need to be careful about how you pitch your guest posts. Don’t pitch to sites that clearly list authors as “guest” or “admin” instead of using a name. Don’t pitch to sites that accept every guest poster. If anyone can do it with little to no guidelines, the link most likely isn’t valuable.

How to Pitch

I outline the whole process in this guest blogging post, but here’s how to pitch.

Most of the time, guest post sites will have specific guidelines for pitching, including what subject line to use.

Others may have a form that you need to fill out on their website, in which case you can modify the email template below to fit.

Frequently Asked Questions About White Hat Link Building

Here are some common questions about white hat link building from customers’ calls and our chat.

What Are Your Top 3 White Hat Link Building Methods?

First is content-led link building, where you create and promote high-quality, informative content that naturally attracts links from reputable sites. These can be guides, data studies, infographics, or interactive posts. Then, guest blogging, where you write valuable articles for other websites. Last is broken link building, where you identify broken links on external websites and then offer your content as a replacement to earn a backlink.

Is Link Building Illegal?

No, link building is not illegal. However, there are manipulative, spammy tactics that can violate search engine guidelines and will result in penalties. Stick to white hat link building and you’ll be fine.

How Do Beginners Get Backlinks?

Start by creating compelling content that provides value to your target audience and make it link-worthy. Then, reach out to bloggers and journalists to get links to your content.

What is the Difference Between Link Building and Backlinks?

Link building is the process of building backlinks. Backlinks can come actively through promotion or passively, where users link to your content because they come across it in research.

What is a Good Link Building Strategy?

A good link building strategy builds high-quality, relevant links naturally over time. A good strategy is also diverse enough that no one tactic makes up more than 30-40% of your strategy. This way, if, for whatever reason, Google comes after that type of strategy, you still have a nice cushion of backlinks.

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