How to build a backlinking monopoly
If you don’t know anything about backlinks, you should consider a backlinking monopoly critical to the success of your SEO campaigns.
Backlinks are external websites that link directly back to yours. A large collection of backlinks indicates your website’s popularity and the relevance of its content. Building a backlinking monopoly is a proven SEO strategy.
However, not any old backlink can be accepted, they’ve got to be high-quality sites that also have a respected ranking on the web.
Search engines like Google use backlinks to rank the quality of your website and determine its position in the search results – so it’s really important to build a bunch of quality backlinks.
We have put together 3 realistic backlinking methods to help you build a monopoly of quality backlinks, quickly and easily, so you start ranking higher in the search results.
Competitor link building
Operating in a competitive market is challenging, and often hard to increase your online visibility.
The digital world is equally tough to keep up with, new trends and technology are emerging every day – so how are you expected to adjust?
By playing smart.
If you’ve tried everything and simply can’t outrank your competitors, its most likely down to backlinks – so just copy them, implement their hard work!
Doing so will allow you to identify what you are doing wrong, and how you can improve by adopting a new approach/tactics.
So how do you do this?
Well once you have made a list of all of your competitors, simply paste their URL’s into one of the following online SEO tools:
Each of these tools can supply you with a list of sites which link back to your competitor’s website, alongside every keyword they rank for, both paid and organic.
What should you do with competitor’s backlinks?
- Sus them out – Filter out your new backlink collection with URLs ending ‘/blog’. These sites most likely allow guest posts which your competitors have written content for
- Start writing – This is your opportunity to publish content on popular sites and link it back to yours. Producing content for your own website and linking to sites your competitors do, is a great way to boost your exposure and hopefully receive a link in return
- Keep up – Remaining active and consistently creating content on a range of sites is essential to your SEO performance. Analysing your competitor’s backlinks every few weeks and refreshing your own collection is recommended
This section is titled’ stealing’, but you are only accessing information that is readily available to you – so it’s technically optimizing your disposable resources.
Building your backlinks in a similar way to your competitors is a great way to earn an authoritative position in your industry, but make sure that you add a personalized element to the content you publish, so you can create a brand image that makes your business unique.
Directory link building
Backlink directories are sites that allow you to upload your website URL, to gain a backlink. These consist of directories that fall under niche, editorial, local, paid, business and general categories.
When it comes to choosing which sort of directory to build your backlinking monopoly, it should come down to relevance. For instance, having a large number of links in the wrong directory can be as effective as if you had never started.
The more relevant your backlinks, the more relevant website visitors you will receive.
For example, a local property maintenance company would build links in local and niche directories in order to get relevant, local customers. As you can imagine, targeting customers far away from your business is not going to see them convert.
How do you search for directories?
Searching for a directory by mentioning your industry or location can work, but it’s not that effective. Instead, searching ‘inurl: directory ‘ in the search bar will produce better results.
There are multiple ways to find directories, so use the method which feels most comfortable to you to build your backlinking monopoly.
How do you get listed in a directory?
- Submit your request – When you have chosen which directories you would like to be listed in, just sign up. This may involve mentioning details about your business, so it’s best to fill out everything for a better chance to be added
- Stay alert – Directories often receive a lot of requests, so keep a close eye on any notifications which may require you to provide any additional information or take further action before being listed is essential
Once you have been excepted you should:
- Stay up to date – Your business’ address, telephone number and all contact information should be updated as soon as its changed in the real world – otherwise, visitors won’t be able to find you
- Optimise directory features – Most directories are integrated with Google and other tools which allow customers to leave a review. Receiving good reviews is going to help your SEO performance dramatically and improve your ranking position
Broken link building
If it’s broken, fix it!
Broken backlink building is replacing 404 error pages with functioning links – it’s simple, effective and scalable.
However, these sad, broken links which you will be replacing, must see high-quality content that allows visitors to reinvest their engagement.
How do you find broken links?
- Keyword research – Don’t worry, this isn’t another job to add to your list! You can find broken backlinks from the keyword research you have already completed for your SEO campaign. Just like regular research, it is important to find broken links that coincide with your pre-existing customer interests, so the content you deliver via the fixed link is relevant
- Competitor link building – Remember earlier I mentioned how you could filter your competitor’s backlinks to reveal sites that accept blog posts? Well, now you can filter their links to reveal broken ones. These links will be regarded as ‘toxic'(meaning they are producing poor results and possibly broken), and it’s your job to fix them
- Direct contact – Before completing detailed competitor analysis, reviewing companies’ sites, known in your industry, for broken links is the perfect conversation starter. If you don’t ask, you won’t get!
After you have crawled the web and found the broken links you would like to replace, its time to create content that will bring them to life.
This content should be:
- Specific to the previous content shown on the link
- Relevant to your business and the industry it operates in
- Visually aesthetic and high quality
- Understandable to new visitors
Visitors who have access to the fixed link are going to expect content that matches their initial purpose and intentions for visiting the broken link, otherwise, they will leave and it will gain no more success than before.
Use the Wayback machine, recommended by Moz, to dive into the history of the link and reveal which content it previously showed.
Conclusion
Building a backlinking monopoly will optimize your SEO performance by an insane amount.
Whether your objective is to drive more traffic to your website, generate more leads, get more people to read your blog, or simply increase your online presence, high quality, relevant backlinks are your best friend.
Surprisingly, this article is not telling you anything new, it is just educating you on what is readily available online. Making use of information like your competitor’s backlinks, keywords, and strategies is not wrong, it’s smart.
SEO works closely with consistency and relevance. If either falls behind or fails to pull their weight, results won’t be achieved.
After reading this article I know you are fully equipped to build a backlinking monopoly, but if you are confronted with any challenges or barriers along the way, and need a helping hand, don’t hesitate to reach out to a digital marketing agency.
The Good Marketer is a marketing agency in London which drives more traffic, generates conversions and increases sales for small-to-medium sized businesses.
