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Are Proactive Backlinking Strategies Even Worth the Time?
Posted by on January 16, 2023 at 12:06 amI see so much advice floating around about stuff like identifying competitor backlink sources and then contacting them to let them know that you’ve got an article that covers the topic more in a more in-depth / up to date way, and I’m just curious if anyone here actually find that approach useful, or if it’s better to just focus on organic backlinks that come with creating valuable content.
I’m just having a hard time believing the juice is worth the squeeze in most niches – the number of people who read your emails and then act on them has got to be incredibly small, and all of the time spent researching + reaching out to them seems like it would be better spent creating more content instead.
Thoughts?
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1 Reply
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The juice is only worth the squeeze for the key terms with buying intent if the product price is high enough. Otherwise, no, probably not.
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a waste of time
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SEO Software Companies: Yes, absolutely! Our tool is the best at it.
SEO Consultants: Yes, it’s a **must**. We can do it better than anyone else.
People who get results with their websites: Put out good content, backlinks happen on their own.
TL;DR – no.
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Just begging for links pretty rarely works. Offer cash and the response and success rates go up drastically.
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If everything else is good and you’re still not ranking it’s time to think about links.
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I focus primarily on quality links
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I’ve been ranking websites without backlinking strategies.
I know backlinks do something but it’s never been worth my time or money to do so.
I believe there’s not much point chasing after backlinks in most industries today because most quality backlinks you’ll *want to* get are from huge conglomerate websites… and even if you do something, there’s no guarantee they’ll keep that link forever for you anyway.
Better focus on PR and good content & potential social presence.
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Yo, what’s up? Backlink strategies can be a real pain in the ass, but if done right, they can be totally worth the effort. Guest blogging, directory submissions, forum commenting, and social media shares are all good ways to get links pointing to your site. Just make sure you’re not breaking any rules or buying sketchy links, ’cause that can get you in trouble with the search engines. Overall, it’s important to remember that backlinks are just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to SEO. You also gotta have killer content and a good user experience on your site. But, if you’re gonna put in the work, might as well do it right and get those backlinks.
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No one cares that your article is better than what they already have. No one cares that there are broken backlinks on their website. All those approaches are dried out and just not worth the time.
Bet ROI is just to reach out, negotiate on a good price for publishing and write content for their website that fits both of your niches.
Begging a random stranger to do something for you for free is pointless. And honestly disrespectful as well for what they’ve put into their website and you just go there and beg for a free piece of it.
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Yeah. A new client was only ranking (first place, too!) for one of the keywords I was monitoring for, despite me improving website content. I set them up on a bunch of Yelp-tier websites, plus a couple of sub-Yelp tier ones that only take a few seconds to submit and seem to get reliably indexed, over the course of about 2 hours. A day or two afterwards, they started to rank for more than one.
I also feel like mapping websites help the Google Maps listing and local listings. And that local directories are also good for local SEO. And the more challenging or expensive links, like guest posts, press mentions, etc, seem to turn the needle too. And they give you something impressive to show the client, and let you work with the client a little bit, improving relationships.
However, for websites that are already ranking, content does seem to be very useful. When I’ve not been getting the results I expect, focusing on expansive content seems to work better than focusing on linkbuilding.
Most clients get a mix.
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From *my experience* as a freelance link builder, a lot of clients in highly competitive niches *that are doing well* have a well-defined process to build links at scale efficiently. They have teams of VAs, the best outreach tools and a team of writers to write *quality* content. At the moment my win rate is 4% meaning for every 100 emails I send 4 become links, it’s a lot of work, unfortunately.
**Link building as you described it is possible as a one man band** however it only is worth your time if you need to build a small number of backlinks to compete. If your competitors have 50+ more links than you then it’s wise outsourcing your link building to a service who has these processes in place.
Hope this helps 🙂
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We often get emails asking for back links or some similar kind of contributions. And they are always annoying and are declined.
So don’t do this. I don’t think it works anymore. Just build good content and share with people in your network. Links will come naturally.
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We use outreach specifically to get our product added to relevant list posts. This is partially about SEO and also about acquiring new users. Since we offer a backlink in exchange from another high authority site we own, our conversion rate is very good (sometimes we pay). As of now, 23% of the sites we’ve emailed resulted in a link (27/116). This outreach is now repeated regularly as new relevant list posts are published, getting us a few new links every month.
If you stick to highly relevant outreach targets and offer them something of real value in return, you’ll have success. You also don’t have to email thousands of people or worry about too many people marking you as spam. The only downside is that this approach isn’t as scalable. You probably can’t get 100 links/month like this, and it would be a lot of work if you did.
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You must market your stuff. And if your stuff is content, then you need ’em backlinks. Reaching out is like building your online brand in SEO ranking terms. Backlinks is one side of the story though.
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waste of time depending on the competitiveness in your niche
buying would be a more efficient option
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