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Link building is an SEO strategy that involves acquiring links from other websites to your own.

Search engines, including Google, may see these links as signals of authority. This perception can result in higher rankings in organic search results.

Google treats certain backlinks (links from other sites) as endorsements. If many high-quality domains link to your site, Google may view your site as trustworthy.

Source: Semrush Blog

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Link Building for SEO: The Definitive Guide (2025)

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Link Building for SEO: The Definitive Guide (2022)

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In-depth guide to link building in 2022, complete with strategies and case studies.

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11 SEO Link Building Techniques That Work in 2025

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11 SEO Link Building Techniques That Work in 2023

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The trick to receiving backlinks is to rank well. But to rank high on search engines, you need to have a lot of quality backlinks.

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Strategy #1: Resource Page Link Building

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Strategy #1: Resource Page Link Building

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11 Actionable Link Building Strategies For 2025 and Beyond

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Social Media & Influencer Marketing Speaker, Consultant & Author

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Based on recent SEO statistics, 55.24% of pages on the Internet lack any backlinks at all. This only shows the need for more SEO campaigns to focus on getting more backlinks for websites.

Link building helps in two ways. First, in improving the site's search performance by ranking their important pages targeted for industry keywords.

Second, backlinks can help build your brand authority. Given that it associates you with topically relevant and authoritative websites, it brings signals to search engines that your site is authoritative as well.

Now, those benefits of link building are astounding, but how can you build the right types of links in this day and forward?

This guide covers 11 link-building strategies to improve your website's ranking well into the future.

1. Audience-First Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is nothing new. Most marketers and SEOs back in the day use this link building technique to quickly add more links to their website, with given keyword-rich anchor texts.

As more people are inclined to follow what everyone else is doing, the effectiveness of some guest blogging practices has declined.

Though guest blogging is still an effective link building strategy, the execution of its processes must not remain the same.

Audience-first guest blogging is geared towards getting external content published on relevant blogs where your audience resides.

Compared to conventional guest blogging, where it often starts with metrics itself - i.e., collecting blogs with Moz' Domain Authority of 30 and above, audience-first guest blogging begins by creating your target persona.

Define your audience persona. Ask yourself (or with your SEO team) this question: who are the right people who'll benefit from our messaging, stories, and content?

You want to make sure that you only place guest posts on websites that your site can benefit from to drive potential customers.

Another way to know your target audience for guest blogging is to reverse engineer your competitor's site and see the topics they cover on their top pages. From topics, you'll know exactly who are their target audience.

You can use Ahrefs to plug in a competitor's site. Then, go over to Top Pages or Best By Links pages. Click on each top page and quickly identify their topics.

In our given example, we can list down the audience targeted by Tuck based on its site's top pages:

Eco-friendly enthusiasts (from "Mattress Disposal Guide")

People living with PTSD (from "PTSD and Sleeping Guide")

Once you identify your audience persona, it's time to prospect for target guest blogs in your industry.

You can either do Google searches and grab any relevant blogs from search results. Here are some search queries for guest blog prospecting:

"write for us" "TOPIC/AUDIENCE"

"become a contributor" "TOPIC/AUDIENCE"

inurl:"write for us" "TOPIC/AUDIENCE"

intitle:"write for us" "TOPIC/AUDIENCE"

Another method to populate your list of guest blogs is to discover a relevant blog's past and recent guest posts.

For example, I've checked Grit PH for any recent guest posts they did for the site. Through Ahrefs' Backlinks feature, I was able to gather this list of business and career blogs.

Pro Tip: Check anchor texts and left surrounding texts to determine if a backlink is a guest post type. Usually, you'll find similar phrasing of co-citation and/ anchor texts along the lines of "is the [Position] of [Brand]".

After making a list of target guest blogs and qualifying them based on your preferred metrics (e.g., Ahrefs Domain Rating of 50 and above), your next phase is email outreach.

Pitch to each of the guest blogs with your list of topics, preferably three content ideas.

It is best to submit guest blog topics that are useful for their audience. One way to identify suitable content ideas is by using Ahrefs' Content Gap feature. This allows you to find keywords your competitors are currently ranking for (with their pages), but your site hasn't ranked yet.

As you submit this type of topic (target keywords), you are allowing the publisher to publish an article that can rank for a keyword their site isn't gaining search traffic yet. This is a solid value proposition compared to just sending random content ideas to them.

For more tips on guest blogging, you can check out this helpful guide on how to get backlinks to your website.
Editor's Note: If you have digital / content / influencer / social media marketing content to share, please reach out to me regarding guest blogging on this website. Further Reading: How To Invite Influencers To Guest Post On Your Blog
2. Resource Page Link Building

Another scalable and effective link building strategy is resource page link building.

The process for this strategy starts by aligning your topics with linkable audiences.

Linkable audiences are groups of curators with the intent of linking to recommended academic (informative) resources.

Linkable audiences include:

You can also find linkable audiences that match your site's topics by doing a quick Google search for: "TOPIC" "for" inurl:links.html.

This will show you topical resource pages targeted to a specific linkable audience.

The next phase of resource page link building is to create the content itself. The content must be an industry guide (long-form) to provide the best information for its target audience.

It is best to make your resource guide more comprehensive than its similar content assets - so you can increase the likelihood of link placements when you start to do content promotion.

Create a list of all resource or links pages. You can find them by reverse engineering all linking pages to a similar content asset using Ahrefs.

You can also use Google search to find available topical resource pages. Use variations of these search queries:

inurl:links "TOPIC"

inurl:resources "TOPIC"

inurl:links.html "TOPIC"

intitle:TOPIC "resources"

Reach out to owners and curators of these resource pages. Let them know you have an additional resource that will serve the needs of their target audience.

3. Broken Link Building

On top of the resource page link building strategy, you can also apply the broken link building technique.

When looking for resource pages, you'll often see that some of the links listed here aren't working well - which means it's a broken page (404).

Now that is an opportunity to take advantage of.

First, you add notes to your spreadsheet (or to your outreach platform) of any broken links you find on the links page. You can use LinkMiner to check resource pages for defunct links quickly.

Then, let the curator (or webmaster) know of these broken links when you reach out to them. Give them replacements for those broken links, wherein one good replacement is your resource guide.

Given that you're also helping curators or webmasters fix technical errors on their sites, you can expect an increase in response and link placement rates using broken link building strategy.

You can check out this useful guide on broken link building to get more tips from link prospecting to email outreach.
Further Reading: 11 SEO Best Practices to Follow in 2023
4. Local Linkbait Strategy

Local link building is crucial for small business owners to help their local business rank for industry keywords within their city or location.

Local links are easy to find but hard to replicate for an SEO campaign.

One scalable local link building technique is writing a content piece featuring the top non-competing brands in your city.

This is a form of linkbait as you help those local brands to get more exposure - add new customers for their businesses. While at the same time, you allow them to promote your content piece across their networks - which helps you absorb new followers and visitors to your website.

For example, if you're building backlinks to a hotel website in New York, you can check out top local cafes you can feature in a listicle content (e.g., "Best New York Cafes").

If you're more into niche targeting, you can be more specific with your link bait piece. For example, if you're doing SEO for a veterinarian site, one content example is an article about "Top Pet-Friendly Coffee Shops in New York").

It is best to get buy-in first from local businesses you'll feature in your article. This means that you initially reach out to them and ask if they want to be part of your content. Usually, they'll respond positively to your request, as it adds benefits to their branding.

From that, you know they'll be promoting your local content if you get them to respond first to your participation request.

Publish the local linkbait content and let your featured local businesses know about it.
Further Reading: 7 Local SEO Tips For Small Business Owners
5. Strategic Content Partnerships

Co-marketing is a solid marketing style to get more reach, visitors and build your brand authority faster than anyone else.

Given that you'll be banking on other people's authority and following, you can quickly gain the authority you need to hit your business' bottom line figures (i.e., leads and sales).

One of the ways you can apply co-marketing is by reciprocally exchanging backlinks with like-minded industry blogs.

Link exchange is often perceived as a negative link building strategy. But the truth is, top industry blogs naturally exchange backlinks from each other's articles with no manipulation involved. They externally link to each other, given that they know it would be best for their readers to learn more references through links on their articles.

Make a list of all industry blogs with similar domain authority. You can use Moz or Ahrefs to check the website's overall authority (Moz' Domain Authority or Ahrefs' Domain Rating).

For example, if your site has Domain Rating 63, find industry blogs with 60 or 70 Domain Rating.

The reason for having this standard for prospecting is to gain mutual benefits when you start exchanging links to each other's articles.

It is best to find a topical article where you want to link from to your blog post and offer to link back to any of their relevant articles.

If done right, you can get more backlinks with this strategy by simply partnering with industry blogs.

6. Link Reclamation

Link reclamation is the process of getting backlinks from websites that mention your product, brand, or any content, without linking to your page.

You reach out to them and request to credit their mentions with links. Any brand, especially enterprise sites, can benefit a lot from this link building strategy.

The more your website gains popularity, the more publishers and bloggers will mention you across their articles. And the more your product gains more word-of-mouth marketing; you can expect several months coming up month over month.

To get started, use SEO tools like BrandMentions or Ahrefs' Alerts feature to send you email alerts whenever there is a new mention about your brand.

You can set up alerts for any keywords you want. Make sure your keyword refers only to your content or brand. Otherwise, you have to filter web mentions that only speak about your website.

Send emails to publishers and ask them to credit you with links-a subtle message in your email pitch best works, as they are already familiar with your website.

7. Infographic Promotion

For more than a decade, we've seen publishers and brands investing in infographics as a content type to generate traffic, links, and social shares to their website.

While there are many visual assets that have been successful, there are some that flopped.

One way to overcome failures in promoting infographics is to have a ready list of people who will do the early promotion.

You start by knowing who'll be your partner publishers who can exclusively republish your infographics. This is a good way to guarantee eyeballs for your content, as well as initial backlinks to get the ball rolling for content promotion.

You can use Buzzsumo or quick Google searches for industry blogs that have recently published infographics about simlar topics.

Pro Tip: The key to a successful infographic promotion is by adding exclusivity factor to your email pitch. When publishers see that they are the ones to publish a good content piece, they will likely buy in to your offer.
Further Reading: The Essential Parts of a Winning Infographic (And How to Create Them)
8. Referential Content Asset Strategy

Manual outreach to promote a content asset is one way to get backlinks to your website. But there's another way to acquire new links - that is passively getting them by ranking for referential keywords.

Referential keywords are basically phrases people use when they're looking for resources to cite on their own content (during the writing phase).

Examples include phrases with "templates", "statistics", "tools' or question-like searches such as "how many startups fail in [INSERT YEAR]".

If you create a content piece that gets referenced by other publishers and content creators, you get the benefits of passive link building. This means that as you rank for these keywords and when other people find it useful to add to their content piece, you acquire new links from their sites.

Add referential content asset strategy to your list of link building strategies today. As you build new links through manual content promotion, you get natural passive links to your content as well.

9. Image Library Linkbait

Another type of linkbait is image libraries. These are collections of images that couldn't be easily pulled from top stock photos available on the web.

Non-stock image libraries have high in-demand, as content publishers want to make their blog posts uniquely stand out - by inserting images people haven't used yet on their blogs.

If you're into photography or your business staff has taken many photos recently, create an image library on your blog.

The offer is exclusive to publishers in your industry. This will help them produce content pieces with visually appealing images their audience hasn't seen yet.

10. Where To Buy eCommerce Link Building

You know how difficult it is to build backlinks to product and product category pages if you're doing eCommerce SEO.

If your products get much attention from publishers (as the one being useful for the community), you won't get many mentions from other sites.

One way to overcome this link building challenge is to look for where to buy pages.

This is a page type that you often see on vendors' sites (suppliers, retailers, manufacturers, or other types of business partners). On this page, you see the list of stores and online places to purchase the product.

Go through your inventory list. Determine who are your partner retailers or suppliers, if you're a manufacturer. See if these partners have their own websites and dedicated "where to buy" pages.

Reach out to them and get your product or product category page to be added to their pages.
Further Reading: The Ultimate Guide to SEO for eCommerce Websites
11. Podcast Guesting

More and more businesses and individuals take advantage of podcasts to reach a wider audience and build their authority online.

In link building, a podcast is an excellent way to gain new links to your website. There are two link building techniques using podcasts:

First, by hosting your own podcast and interviewing industry influencers and practitioners. And when these people start promoting the audio content to their networks, you get the benefits of more exposure and new natural links from their blogs (or their audiences' sites).

A second way to leverage podcasts is to get interview opportunities from podcast hosts in your industry.

Make a list of podcasts in your niche. See which one of them has episodes that interviews industry practitioners. Reach out to them and ask them to become part of their show.

The value proposition in your email pitch must include your credibility as a business person and a list of topics or ideas you can share with their audience.
Editor's Note: If you have digital / content / influencer / social media marketing content to share, please reach out to me regarding guesting on my Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.
Conclusion

There are many ways to build backlinks to your website these days. In addition, you can opt to execute scalable link building strategies that will stand the test of time and give you the right way to rank your website.

In this guide, you've seen 11 actionable strategies to help you get new backlinks to your important pages. If you apply them step-by-step, you'll see progress in your SEO campaign.
Further Reading: Backlink Building Hacks & Secrets Revealed: How We Got 12,000 Backlinks in One Year Author Bio
Venchito Tampon is the CEO and Co-Founder of SharpRocket, an SEO company providing link building services to SEO agencies, eCommerce, and Enterprise brands. He has delivered over 200 hundred speaking engagements, including digital marketing events such as Affiliate Summit Asia Pacific, SEO Zraz, and Search Marketing Summit Australia.
Hero photo by Karine Avetisyan on Unsplash

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11 Actionable Link Building Strategies For 2023 and Beyond

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Based on recent SEO statistics, 55.24% of pages on the Internet lack any backlinks at all. This only shows the need for more SEO campaigns to focus on getting more backlinks for websites. Link building helps in two ways. First, in improving the site's search performance by ranking their important pages targeted for industry keywords.

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Google search for: “TOPIC” “for” inurl:links.html.

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Checking your browser before accessing www.semrush.com…

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In 2015, Brian Dean revealed a brand-new link building strategy. He called it the Skyscraper Technique.

With over 10,000 backlinks since the post was published, it's fair to say that the Skyscraper Technique took the world by storm in 2015. But what is it exactly, how can you implement it, and can you still get results with this technique in 2023?

Let's get started.

The Skyscraper Technique is a link building strategy where you improve existing popular content and replicate the backlinks.

Brian named it so because in his words, "It's human nature to be attracted to the best. And what you're doing here is finding the tallest 'skyscraper' in your space... and slapping 20 stories to the top of it."

Here's how the technique works:

Follow these three steps to execute the Skyscraper Technique.

1. Find relevant content with lots of backlinks

There are three methods to find relevant pages with plenty of links:

Use Site Explorer

Enter a popular site into Ahrefs' Site Explorer. Next, go to the Best by backlinks report.

This report shows you a list of pages from the site with the highest number of referring domains. If there are content pieces with more than 50 referring domains, they're likely to be good potential targets.

Sidenote.

Ignore homepages and other irrelevant content when eyeballing this report.

Use Content Explorer

Ahrefs' Content Explorer is a searchable database of 10 billion pages. You can use it to find mentions of any word or phrase.

Let's start by entering a broad topic related to your niche into Content Explorer. Next, set a Referring domains filter to a minimum of 50.

We can also add:

Language filter to get only pages in our target language.

Exclude homepages to remove homepages from the results.

Eyeball the results to see if there are any potential pieces of content you could beat.

Use Keywords Explorer

Enter a broad keyword into Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer. Next, go to the Matching terms report and set a Keyword Difficulty (KD) filter to a minimum of 40.

Why filter for KD?

The reason is due to the method we use at Ahrefs to calculate KD. Our KD score is calculated from a trimmed mean of referring domains (RDs) to the top 10 ranking pages.

In other words, the top-ranking pages for keywords with high KD scores have lots of backlinks on average.

From here, you'll want to go through the report to find potential topics you could build a better piece of content around.

2. Make it better

The core idea (or assumption) behind the Skyscraper Technique is that people want to see the best.

Once you've found the content you want to beat, the next step is to make something even better.

According to Brian, there are four aspects worth improving:

1. Length - If the post has 25 tips, list more.

2. Freshness - Update any outdated parts of the original article with new images, screenshots, information, stats, etc.

3. Design - Make it stand out with a custom design. You could even make it interactive.

4. Depth - Don't just list things. Fill in the details and make them actionable.

3. Reach out to the right people

The key to successfully executing the Skyscraper Technique is email outreach. But instead of spamming everyone you know, you reach out to those who have already linked to the specific content you have improved.

The assumption: Since they've already linked to a similar article, they're more likely to link to one that's better.

You can find these people by pasting the URL of the original piece into Ahrefs' Site Explorer and then going to the Backlinks report.

This report shows all the backlinks to the page. In this case, there are 441 groups of links.

But not all of these links will make good prospects. So you'll likely need to add some filters to clean them up. For example, you can:

Add a Language filter for the language you're targeting (e.g., English).

Switch the tab to Dofollow for equity-passing links.

It's been roughly eight years since Brian shared this link building strategy. Honestly speaking, the technique has been oversaturated. Given its widespread use, its effectiveness may even be limited.

Some SEOs even say they wouldn't recommend it.

🛑 #1 Skyscraper technique 🏙

This is when you copy a backlink campaign that a competitor did, except you "one up" them and make it "10x better".

3 reasons why I wouldn't highly recommend this... pic.twitter.com/oGPBkFQfNg
- Debbie Chew 🔗 (@justdebbb) January 6, 2022

So we asked our Twitter and LinkedIn following this question and received 1,242 votes. Here are the results:

Clearly, many SEOs and marketers still believe the technique works.

Sidenote.

According to Aira's annual State of Link Building report, only 18% of SEOs still use the Skyscraper Technique. It's not a go-to for many SEOs, as it ranks #20 among the list of tactics. I suspect its popularity has waned because (1) it's old and SEOs are looking for newer stuff and (2) SEOs believe that content is more important than links these days.

Fundamentally, it makes sense that the Skyscraper Technique still works. After all, the principles are the same behind (almost) any link building strategy:

1. Create great content

2. Reach out to people and promote it

But why do people think it's no longer effective? There are a few reasons why and knowing them will help you improve your chances of success with the Skyscraper Technique.

Let's start with:

1. Sending only Brian's email template

In Brian's original post, he suggested an email template for his readers to use:

Hey, I found your post: http://post1

<generic compliment>

It links to this post: http://post2

I made something better: http://post3

Please swap out the link for mine.

Unfortunately, many SEOs decided to use this exact template word for word.

Link building doesn't exist in a vacuum. If everyone in your niche decides to send this exact template to every possible website, it'll burn out real fast. And that's exactly what happened.

Now, if a website owner sees this template, chances are they'll delete it right away.

Sidenote.

Judging by my inbox, there are still people using this exact template. And, like everyone else, I delete the email immediately.

I'm not saying this to disparage templated emails. If you're sending something at scale, templating is necessary. But move away from this template. Write your own, personalize it as much as possible, and follow the outreach principles here.

Even better, ask yourself:
"What makes my content unique and link-worthy?"
2. Not segmenting your prospects

People link for different reasons, so you shouldn't send everyone the same pitch.

Consider dividing your list of prospects into segments according to the context in which they linked. You can do this by checking the Anchors report in Site Explorer.

You can clearly see people are linking to different statistics from our SEO statistics post. So, for example, if we were doing outreach for a hypothetical post, we might want to mention to the first group that we have a new statistic for "Over 90% of content gets no traffic from Google."

Then, to the second group, we'll mention that we have new statistics for "68% of online experiences." And so on.

In fact, that's exactly what we did when we built links to this post. Check out the case study here:

3. Not reaching out to enough people

Ultimately, link building is still a numbers game. If you don't reach out to enough people, you won't get enough links.

Simply put: You need to curate a larger list of link prospects.

So rather than limiting yourself to only replicating the backlinks of the original content, you should replicate the backlinks from other top-ranking pages covering the same topic too.

To find these pages, enter the target keyword into Keywords Explorer and scroll down to the SERP overview.

In this example, most top-ranking pages have tons of links, and all of them (after filtering, of course) could be potential link prospects.

4. Thinking bigger equals better

Someone creates a list with 15 tools. The next person ups it to 30. Another "skyscrapers" it to 50, and the next increases it to 100.

Not only is it a never-ending arms race, there's also no value for the reader.

No one wants to skim through 5,000 words or hundreds of items just to find what they need. Curation is where the value is.

When considering the four aspects mentioned by Brian, don't improve things for the sake of improving them. Adding 25 mediocre tips to an existing list of 25 doesn't make it "better." Likewise for changing the publish date or adding a few low-quality illustrations.

Example: My colleague, Chris Haines, recently published a post on the best niche site ideas. Even though he only included 10, he has already outperformed the other "skyscraper" articles:

He differentiated himself through his knowledge and expertise. After all, Chris has 10 years of experience in SEO.

So when you're creating your article, always look at any improvement through the lens of value:
Are you giving more value to the reader?
5. Not considering brand

As Ross Hudgens says, "Better does not occur in a branding vacuum."

Most of the time, content isn't judged solely on its quality. It's also judged by who it comes from. We discovered this ourselves too when we tried to build links to our keyword research guide.

Most of the time, people didn't read the article. They linked to us because of our brand and reputation-they knew we were publishing great content consistently, and they had confidence that the article we were pitching was great too.

In other words, there are times where no matter how hard you "skyscraper" your content, people just won't link to it because they don't know who you are.

Having your own personal brand is important these days. But think about it: What is a "strong brand" if not a consistent output of high-quality work that people enjoy? One lone skyscraper doesn't make a city; many of them together do.

What I'm saying is this: Don't be discouraged if your "skyscraper" article gets no results. And don't be discouraged just because you don't have a brand right now-you can work on that over time.

Keep on making great content-skyscraper or not-and results will come if you trust the process.

"Rome wasn't built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour."

Final thoughts

The Skyscraper Technique is a legitimate link building tactic that works. But that can only happen if you:

Yes, but ONLY IF you have:
- 5-star content with a strong USP
- Good, established brand
- Unique template that doesn't look like what everyone else is using
- Alan Silvestri (@AlanGGorilla) January 20, 2023

Any questions or comments? Let me know on Twitter.

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How to Execute the Skyscraper Technique (And Get Results)

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In 2015, Brian Dean revealed a brand-new link building strategy. He called it the Skyscraper Technique. With over 10,000 backlinks since the post was published, it's fair to say that the Skyscraper Technique took the world by storm in 2015.

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What Is Resource Page Link Building?

Resource page link building is the practice of building backlinks from pages that have curated lists of links to external websites (resource pages).

Why Does Resource Page Link Building Work So Well?

It's simple:

When someone adds your link to their resource page, your link makes their page better.

That's because resource pages are designed to link to awesome content on other websites.

Here's an example:

So if you have a resource that's a good fit for a resource page, you don't need to twist anyone's arm to get a link.

(As you'll see in a minute, a simple outreach email usually does the trick.)

In fact, some resource pages even have a "Suggest a resource" link:

These pages are literally ASKING you to pitch them.

Which makes your conversion rate super high. In fact, this strategy works so well that it's become my go-to link building strategy in 2020.

As you can see from this reply, it works GREAT:

I'm not alone...

Search Engine Land found that building links from resource pages was the 2nd most popular link building strategy among SEO professionals:

With that, here's how to get backlinks with resource page link building:

Best Practices

Find Resource Pages With Search Strings

Your first step is to find resource pages in your industry.

Fortunately, most resource pages use the same terms... which makes them easy to find using search strings.

For example, check out this resource page:

As you can see, they call their page a "links" page.

Well, "links" is a word you'll find in LOTS of resource page titles. So when you search for your keyword and "links", you can find dozens of resource pages in seconds.

With that, here are a handful of search strings you can use to find resource pages:

Keyword inurl:resources

Keyword "best resources"

Keyword" useful resources"

Keyword intitle:links

Keyword "helpful links"

For example, I happen to run an SEO blog.

So when I need to get links to my site, I usually use "SEO" as my keyword in these resource page search strings.

Then, I sift through the search results to find pages that are actually resource pages:

And I usually come across lots of high-quality resource pages, like this one:

Simple.

Uncover Different Types of Resource Pages

There are lots of "resource pages" that aren't your typical list of links.

Yes, they curate content just like a normal resource page.

But they don't use terms like "resources" on their page. This means they DON'T show up with the search strings I just showed you.

For example, I actually published a guide to learning SEO some time ago.

My guide is basically a resource page. After all, it's a list of hand-curated resources organized by topic:

But you'd never find it with a search string like: keyword + "helpful links".

So to increase your link opportunities, use these search strings to find non-obvious resource pages:

Keyword "best sites"

Keyword "best blogs"

Keyword "blog awards"

Keyword "places to learn"

For example, let's say you run a site in the coding niche.

Well, when you search for PHP "places to learn" Google will hook you up with a ton of link opportunities from non-traditional resource pages, like this:

Reverse Engineer Your Competitor's Resource Page Links

This is a black belt link building strategy that I recently discovered.

Here's how it works:

First, pop a competing website into Semrush.

And look at their backlinks:

Then, search for terms that resource pages use (like "resources").

And Semrush will show you their links that came from pages that used that term somewhere on the page.

Like this one:

And because they link to your competitor there's a GREAT chance they'll link to you too.

Look for Broken Links

Let's say you find a resource page in your niche.

And you have the PERFECT content for that page.

Well, you could email the person that runs that resource page and ask for a link.

(Which does work.)

OR you could add one simple step and 2-10x your conversion rate.

What's the simple step?

Look for broken links on that resource page BEFORE reaching out.

(Also known as Broken Link Building.)

For example, a while back I wanted to get a link from this page:

Well, I could have just asked for a link.

But I decided to scan the page for broken links first.

I also sent that person that runs the page a list of all of their dead links.

And because I was super helpful, they happily added my link to their resource page.

Don't Forget "Mini Resource Pages"

"Mini Resource Pages" are links to external resources that are embedded in a blog post or article.

For example, check out this post about Pinterest.

This page isn't 100% dedicated to linking out like a normal resource page.

But it DOES have a section dedicated specifically to helpful content on other websites:

The downside of this approach is that Mini Resource Pages are tricky to find. Unlike normal resource pages, there aren't any terms that tie them all together.

That said, you can sometimes uncover a few of Mini Resource pages with this search strings:

Keyword "learn more"

Keyword "other resources"

Keyword "learn online"

Focus On Realistic Targets

This is a big time saver.

The vast majority of resource pages happily link out to any site that's worth linking to.

But that's not always the case.

For example, this resource page ONLY links to .edu and .gov sites:

Are they likely to make an exception for your site? Probably not. So you're better off moving onto the next site on your list.

You'll probably also come across resource pages that only link to their own stuff:

Again, resource pages like this aren't worth your time. As soon as you see that a page isn't likely to link to you, I recommend deleting it from your prospects so you can focus on more realistic targets.

Use a Mix of Broad and Specific Searches

That way, you can find lots of resource pages that might want to add your link.

For example, let's say you run a Paleo diet blog.

Search strings like "Paleo" inurl:links will bring up a decent chunk of pages:

But don't stop there.

You also want to mix in some BROAD keywords (like "nutrition", "health" and "fitness") that also describe your content:

That way, you cast a wide net.

Email The Person That Manages The Page

This is a biggie.

Whenever someone tells me: "I emailed a site but never heard back" I always ask WHO they emailed.

It makes a big difference.

For example, check out this resource page on the Rutgers University website:

Well, if you want someone to add your link to that page, you need to contact the right person.

Specifically, the person that runs and manages that page.

In this case, there's no "Submit resource" link.

So you need to do some digging.

Voila!

I went to the site's directory page, and found that department's "Business Librarian/Information Literacy Coordinator".

That's the person you want to get in touch with.

Otherwise, if you send your message through the dreaded contact form, you're toast.

Make It Easy to Add Your Link

Don't make the person think about where your link makes sense on their page.

Instead, give them a specific area of the page where your link should go.

For example, take a look at this resource page.

Well, my site would be perfect for this section of the page:

To be clear: not every resource page is broken up into little sections like this one.

But if you do see a section where your link would be a slam dunk addition, don't be afraid to point that out.

Personalize Your Outreach Emails

The more you personalize your outreach emails, the better your conversion rate will be.

And this DEFINITELY applies to resource page link building.

For example, here's an outreach email I sent a while ago:

See how personalized that is?

That's one of the reasons that I got a link.

That said:

Even though I always send super personalized outreach emails, I usually start with a template. And I make that template as personal as I possibly can.

With that, here are two resource page link building templates that you can start with:

Template #1: Standard Resource Page

Subject: Quick question

Hi [First Name],

I was looking for some information on [Topic] today, when I came across your excellent [Name of Page].

It was super helpful! Thank you.

I especially liked [Personalized Sentence or two].

Anyway, I realized that I recently published a page about [Related Topic]: [URL].

It's [Brief Description].

It might make a nice addition under the [Section Name] of your page.

Anyway, thanks again for all of the excellent resources. And have an awesome week!

Template #2: Resource Page With Broken Link

Subject: Found a broken link

Hi [First Name],

I wanted to let you know that I found a few broken links on your [Resource Page Title].

Your page was super helpful for me when I was recently learning about [Topic], so I wanted to return the favor.

Also, I wanted to let you know that I published a piece of content that might make a nice replacement for [URL].

Here's the link: [URL]

Either way, I hope this helps and keep up the awesome work!

Blogger Outreach: The Definitive Guide: A super detailed guide to blogger outreach with a TON of real life examples and tips from the trenches.

Link Building: How to Get Powerful Backlinks: Resource pages are just one of many places that I get backlinks from. Learn about 7 other proven strategies in this video.

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Resource page link building is the practice of building backlinks from pages that have curated lists of links to external websites (resource pages). It's simple: When someone adds your link to their resource page, your link makes their page better. That's because resource pages are designed to link to awesome content on other websites.

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Find an Influencer to Write a Guest Post 

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Find an Influencer to Write a Guest Post 

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by Venchito Tampon Jr | Last Updated on June 27, 2023

Broken link building has been around since 2010. From that time on, a lot of things had happened that changed how we approach this link building tactic. Nuances in methodologies, additional best practices, and questions of whether the said technique is still working now, are just a few things we will cover in this post.

Table of Contents

WHAT IS BROKEN LINK BUILDING?
WHY BROKEN LINK BUILDING?
WHY BLB ISN'T WORKING FOR ME?
STEP BY STEP BLB GUIDE
1. FIND A TOPIC THAT SERVES A SPECIFIC GROUP OF LINKS PAGE CURATORS
2. CREATE CONTENT ABOUT THE LINKABLE TOPIC
3. PROSPECT FOR LINK OPPORTUNITIES AND QUALIFY THEM
4. FIND BROKEN LINKS, CONTACT PERSONS AND EMAILS
5. CONDUCT OUTREACH
6. MONITOR LINKS

Before we get too far though, you might want to know how we define broken link building.

Broken link building is a link building tactic where a person contacts a webmaster who has a broken link in his or her website and recommends a replacement of link/s that include his/her target page.

That seems a very simple thing by definition but actually, the work to execute all steps behind that takes a lot of effort.

Though it may be time-consuming, if you understand the value that broken link building can provide to webmasters, it'll give you the confidence of its effectiveness as a link building tactic and that it can also be implemented to many websites if found to be fitting to use.

Broken link building helps fix the web by letting webmasters know of their broken links and their best replacements.

Broken links (or as some refer to it) happens when a web page becomes permanently unavailable, due to one of many reasons:

Expired links; temporarily created for a short-term purpose (for example sponsorship page)

Content is intentionally removed by the webmaster.

A website where the broken link is hosted may be closed or taken down by the owner.

A website changed its domain name (some links are not redirected to their corresponding pages in the new website).

No one wants to have broken links in their websites which users would find to be of no value because they don't see the exact resources they are looking for.

If you have helped someone fix his/her links, you will be reciprocated by adding your recommended resource on his/her page (which most of you will recommend a link to your target page).

Reciprocity matters in link building. Value to value. If you help someone, you will be helped. That's why broken link building works.

This question has been raised several times. From a perspective of a link builder who practices broken link building, there are some common misapplications I see of this technique.

First is tying any content type to links pages curators.
Who is a link page curator?

A links page curator is a type of linkable audience (from the term itself) curates links in a specific page about a particular topic for the sole purpose of giving its intended website visitors references and resources that they can use either for personal consumption or business research.

A link page curator is attracted mostly to educational guides or academic-driven content.

Suggesting to them an infographic to be added as a resource to their links pages is less likely to accomplish its linking purpose unless it has a text section ( beneath the image) that has comprehensive information about the topic.

The best way to increase the likelihood of acquiring resource links is to produce an educational or academic-driven type of content that is more comprehensive than what other publishers create (more on that later in this post).

Second reason why people think broken link building doesn't work for them is the difficulty to find a linkable topic that fits your brand.

There are cases wherein you wouldn't find a topic that is highly linkable (i.e. there are a lot of links page curators linking to content on the topic) and that also fits directly to your brand.

The solution here is to think of a specific linkable audience and brainstorm ideas on how you can best serve them. Check if it's tangentially relevant to your site. (I'll show you exactly how you can execute that part later).

For now, let's dive into how you can implement broken link building tactics to your website.

There are a lot of published resources on executing the exact process of broken link building. But one thing I noticed is that these don't give you the exact picture of implementation from different role perspectives.

So as you go through each step below, you'll see some tips on how to do the exact process based on your current role.

if you are an agency marketer/SEO

if you are an In-house SEO

if you are a business owner

If any of these phrases is not included, the tip applies to all.

That avoids you saying, "I can't do this because I'm not ___."

Note: If you have any questions about how you can do that yourself or with the help of someone, feel free to contact me.

Let's start with the process.

You don't have to go too far. Start first with your informational keywords.

If you have keyword excel sheets in place. Begin with that. Go through your list and find top-of-the-funnel keywords.

Use the i nurl:links.html as your litmus test to check if a topic is serving a number of links curators.

Why links.html? Because most links pages are in their HTML page, not adding .html may leave off some good numbers.

So what's a good number of indexed links pages to find?

Anywhere from ~300 to ~500 is feasible. More than that is highly linkable.

For example, if you searched for inurl:links.html "sleep apnea", you'll find that there are 552 available links pages indexed in Google (as of the time of this writing).

For the topic, "bruxism", the number of indexed links pages is 272 (as of the time of this writing).

WHY LINKS CURATORS LITMUS TESTING IS IMPORTANT?

If you find there are enough links curators who are waiting to link to your content asset from their links pages, you can ensure that the topic you'll be creating is worth your investment to create.

No waste of time and money. That doesn't mean it always attain success, but at least there's a confidence of results when you pursue a topic that is linkable because it has an existing audience giving you links. You are proving linkability in your content.

WHAT IF THERE ARE ~300 LESS LINKS CURATORS AVAILABLE ON MY TOPIC?

This question may arise, and there are two answers for that.

One is doing a Google search for the topic. This is to ensure that there are still links page curators that are available who couldn't easily be discovered through Google search and could only be found through reverse engineering - more on this later.

Going back, if you use Moz, you can see immediately the number of referring domains each page on SERPs is getting.

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Broken Link Building [FREE Templates, Tools, Processes, and More]

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This is a complete guide to broken link building in 2021. So if you want to build authority backlinks to your website, you'll enjoy the actionable tips in this new guide.

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Creating Ultimate Guides and Using Them to Build Your Marketing List

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Ultimate guides are a great way to get traffic, build links, and increase reputation. Here’s how to create the best ultimate guide possible.