I have already committed a terrible crime: I haven’t spelt out to you, my loyal readers, where you can find people to pitch your blog posts to, where to backlink your blog posts, and how to build backlinks in a simple, day-by-day kind of way.
Building backlinks isn’t hard.
It gets hard because nobody is talking about how to do it, because it can be kind of subjective.
Huge websites like CNN build backlinks just by the nature of other promotions they do -- like being a huge TV network. Following their model won’t work…
Large bloggers are often featured on their associated niche news sites, and people are begging to collaborate with them -- that’s not something you can emulate either.
So where do you build backlinks, get Google relevancy for your niche, and start to drive real, passive traffic?
Simple <> Easy
The answer is simple, but its not easy.
You need to become a master of sharing your information with people who will want to read it. It really is that simple. Let me be more clear.
When you look up something on Google, you very, very often start by typing in one of three things: a question, a product or service, or a topic.
Therefore, if you’re looking to build backlinks on a blog post, such as “How to grow big, red roses” You’ll want to appeal to Google for the topic (growing roses) the product (rose growing product) and the question (how do i grow red roses).
To do this, you want to find people that are interested in each, and answer their question with your blog post.
Permission Sharing Your Posts
Where do you answer questions online? Online forums are a great place to start, as well as sites like reddit.
Looking at niche pages, forums, and subreddits (gardening or roses as a topic to look for) and posting to the pages about your knowledgeable article will not only drive traffic to your site (these people are interested in your product, so why not?) but It will also create a backlink to your blog post. This means that Google may notice that people think that your blog post is useful, and are linking to it from other pages. Bloggers may pick up the link. This increases the validity of your blog.
Now I know that a lot of you have probably tried this before, just to drive traffic, and it looked a little something like this:
Random Guy Online: Hey all, I’m looking to get my roses to grow really big and red this year, I’m hoping that someone with experience growing red roses can offer some advice?
You: Oh, here’s a blog post I wrote about that (Link to your blg)
Random Guy Online: Get out of here spammer!
Site Moderator : YOU HAVE BEEN BANNED.
^ This doesn’t have to happen.
Use Permission Marketing. Here’s an example, using the same site and people
Random Guy Online: Hey all, I’m looking to get my roses to grow really big and red this year, I’m hoping that someone with experience growing red roses can offer some advice?
You: What kind of roses are you growing? Where are you in the country? There are many factors to growing roses well. I’ve actually written a piece about it if you’d like to read it.
Random Guy Online: Sure, I’d love to read that!
You: Great, here’s the link (link) if you want to join my email list, I’ll send you my how-to videos for planting bulbs early in the season!
Random Guy: Thanks!
Site Moderator: -_- I’ll allow it this time….. This time.
And It’s that simple.
You know that the guy wants your information, but because of the fear of spammers and virus filled sites, you need to prove you’re a person (ask permission) and offer a little value first (the general statement about roses) which gives the person a reason to ask you for more information.
If you set a goal for yourself to use permission marketing twice on each of 3 channels (forums, reddit, and social media) and do it every day, you will build a large list of backlinks, and a very nice organically grown email list that you’ve made with personal engagement -- the highest quality list you can build.
Guest Posts
That’s not all either. You also want to look to get guest posts, or cross links on other sites. This is far more powerful than a forum link in Google's eyes. There are quite a few ways to do this. All of them take a similar amount of work, but they take a little bit of pitching as well.
First, Use buzzsumo.com to look for some interesting articles written in your niche currently, and see where they’re being posted. Create a spreadsheet of these people, and their email addresses, and what their post submission process is. Look and see if you have any blog posts that match what they’re looking for. If not: write one. Then, craft a pitch to get the website administrator to post your blog post. You can use permission marketing for this as well.
Here’s an example
Dear Rosegarden website.com owner, (get their name please)
I love your website, and I’ve shared the article on fertilizing countless times to my customers who are having trouble with getting their roses to bloom earlier! Thanks for the great resource!
I’ve recently written an article that outlines 5 simple ways to get rose vines to grow on one side off the fence, such as pruning methods and using wire to bend them. If you’d like to take a look, let me know!
Wait for the response, and then send the link: now you have a dialogue. Repeat this process for each website you find, and repeat each day. You will build backlinks.
Conclusion
You’ll notice a common theme for each of these: They take time. SEO isn’t easy. It takes real initiative and a desire to build relevant content, and then share it effectively.
So build your backlinks through good, whitehat SEO, and you’ll also build relationships that turn into new business.
Consider your SEO a prospecting journey online, using information as the initial meeting. This way, the SEO is just a bonus, and you’re getting new business as well.