Creating a website is only the beginning. The only way to be successful online is to have people find you. This is where backlinks are useful. It works like a catalyst that sends Google signals about your website. As a result, your site’s credibility and visibility improve. There is, however, a challenge in finding those valuable backlinks. Therefore, link prospecting is essential.
Getting other websites to link to you all comes down to finding hidden opportunities. Our aim in this article is to describe the steps involved in effective link prospecting and the challenges that it entails. Let us dive in and learn more.
What Is Link Prospecting?
In simple words, link prospecting is all about finding and evaluating potential sites for acquiring links. To accomplish this, you will need to identify potential sites, evaluate their quality, and identify who to contact for your outreach campaign, based on the type of link-building strategies you are using.
The first step towards building a solid link strategy is link prospecting. In the absence of it, everything else will likely crumble. Here are the three main aspects of link prospecting:
- Prospecting: Searching for websites and web pages that may link to your content is this process.
- Qualification: Having gathered a list of potential websites, you will need to qualify them for link-building purposes.
- Outreach: Contacting editors and website owners to ask them to link to your content is what this is all about.
Why Is Link Prospecting Important for SEO?
Identifying which sites to acquire links from and which sites to avoid is the purpose of link prospecting. Due to Google’s emphasis on neutralizing unnatural links in its search results, you do not want to attract link spam purposefully.
No doubt that every website can naturally accumulate some spam links. You may find links to your site on coupon sites and auto-generated blogs. When you use link prospecting, however, you can ensure that every link you build is valuable and adds value, increasing your site’s relevance and authority.
How to Do Effective Link Prospecting: 5 Easy Steps to Follow
The goal of link prospecting is not just to send emails to every website you find. It is a planned, careful effort that pays off. Therefore, let us plan how to build links successfully.
1. Develop a Strategy for Link Building
As we know, there are several methods for building quality backlinks. The most common of these are guest posting, broken link building, linking assets and linking the resource page. Choosing what is best for your niche and that provides value can greatly benefit your business.
The following are the details about different link-building strategies that you can use:
Guest Posting
Whether you call it guest posting or guest blogging, this is writing an article or post for another person’s website. In exchange for creating content for another site, usually in your field of expertise:
- The new audience gets to know you.
- By connecting with other blogs and influencers, you build relationships.
- By earning backlinks, you improve your website’s search engine visibility.
Broken Link Building
This technique involves replacing broken links on other websites to increase your website’s search engine ranking. Building broken links has some benefits, including:
- Boosts your website’s authority and ranking.
- Increases the number of relevant backlinks.
- Improves other websites’ user experience.
- Connects other websites with yours.
Resource Page Link Building
The goal of resource page link building is to get your website listed on other websites’ ‘useful links’ or ‘resources’ pages. By doing this, you can earn backlinks and help people find your website.
2. Choosing the Right Prospect
The key to a successful link-building campaign is to look for high-quality websites. Look for websites with a good backlink profile that are well-known and niche-relevant. To find the right link prospects for your website, follow these strategies.
Using Google Search Operators
If you search for guest posting websites using specific search terms like “write for us” and “submission guidelines” in quotation marks, you will be able to find them.
If you want to refine your search, try Google operators like intitle: or inurl: and phrases like “contribute” or “category/guest” for more specific results.
A resource page is another excellent option for building links. Look for them by searching “resources” and your niche, like “WordPress plugin resources” or “WordPress plugin building resources.”
Identifying Competitors’ Backlinks by Reverse Engineering
Discovering where your competitors receive backlinks can be very time-saving. If your competitors are getting links from the sources, you can secure backlinks from them too.
So look at your competitors’ backlink profiles to learn which sites they are trying to find. Here is how you can do it with Semrush:
i. When you log into your Semrush account, click on the ‘Backlink Analytics’ button.
ii. Now, click on ‘Analyze’ after entering the competitor’s URL. Upon viewing the results, click ‘Referring Domains.’
In this section, you will see your competitors’ referring domains and can adjust the filters as you see fit.
This will enable you to compile a list of relevant websites that you can contact for link-building purposes.
3. Analyzing And Evaluating Link Prospects
All right. Having found potential websites, you can now proceed to their websites. However, hold on! Getting to know a website’s key metrics is crucial before sending outreach emails. For your site to be successful, you have to make sure you are targeting high-quality, relevant websites.
Which metrics should you pay attention to? To help you, here are some key indicators:
DA (Domain Authority) And Spam Score
It is like a popularity contest for websites, developed by Moz. In search engines, high DA is an indication of a website’s influence and trustworthiness. For best results, you should aim for websites with DAs of at least 30. The higher the DA, the better.
However, do not forget to diversify your backlink profile. To help your backlink profile seem natural, get links from websites that have DAs lower than 30.
Using Moz’s browser extension, you can find out a website’s DA and spam score. Here is how it will look:
Both search engines and people dislike spammers. Moz’s Spam Score provides an indication of how likely it is that a website will be penalized for black hat practices by search engines. If a website has a high spam score, you should stay away from it.
DR (Domain Rating)
A metric developed by Ahrefs is like a credit score for websites. Based on a website’s backlink profile, it predicts how well it will rank in search engine results. A higher DR indicates a more powerful site in the eyes of search engines.
Relevance of Niches
You should make sure the content on your website is relevant to the niche and audience you are targeting. If your website is about dog training, a backlink from a website about knitting will not work. You should consider getting a backlink from a high-authority lifestyle website if you are a lifestyle website.
Your ideal match should be a website with a similar audience to your own. This will ensure that your content is of genuine interest to their visitors.
Traffic to Your Website
Is there any traffic to the website? It might not be worth your time to advertise on a low-traffic website, since you will not get much exposure for your link. Traffic checkers like SimilarWeb and Ahrefs can give you an estimate of the traffic of a website. Using Ahrefs’ traffic checker, you can see organic traffic and traffic value for your website.
Qualitative Content
Does the website’s content provide information that is helpful, interesting and engaging to visitors? What if you find typos, grammatical errors and thin content?
Content that is high-quality and provides value to your readers is what you want for your website. Whenever choosing a website, make sure it is regularly updated and offers readers insightful content.
Engagement of the Audience
Do people read and interact with the content on the website? Check for comments and social sharing, as well as backlinks from reputable websites, to determine whether your audience is engaged.
You can measure the readership of your website by how active the community is and how passionate your contributors are.
4. Contact Your Prospects
Identify the person who is most likely to be responsive to your request and get in touch with them. With this personalized approach, you demonstrate that you have done your homework and truly value their time.
To find the right contacts, follow these strategies:
Visit our “Contact” or “About Us” Pages
Most websites have a contact page where key personnel are listed or a contact form is available. This is often the easiest and most direct way to get in touch.
If you want to target a specific blog post or article, look at the author’s biography. Authors are most likely to include contact information, such as an email address or a link to their social media accounts, in their bios.
Search on Social Media
Finding professional contacts on LinkedIn is one of the best things you can do. Also, you can try searching on other social media platforms to see if the site or its authors are active there.
Thousands of individuals and companies are on social media platforms, providing valuable insight into their interests and expertise. Often, the profiles or posts of these people include links to their websites or contact information.
5. Prospect Outreach
When you find the right websites and contact the right people, you have everything you need. You should think of outreach as a conversation starter: be authentic, engaging and leave a good impression.
The following tips will help you craft outreach emails that get results:
- Make it personal: You should show them that you have done your homework. Give a specific example of something you liked about their site or work.
- Keep it simple: Be respectful of their time. Make sure your request is clear and to the point.
- Highlight the value: Give them reasons as to why linking to your content would be beneficial to them, whether it is their audience or their website.
- Clear call to action: Tell them exactly what you would like them to do (e.g., ‘Would you be willing to add a link to my article on your resource page?’).
- Proofread: Typos and grammar errors are a no-no.
- Follow up: A gentle nudge after a week or so is okay, but do not be pushy.
- Professional signature: Include your name, title, website, and social media links.
- Track your results: Monitor your outreach to see what works and what does not.
Common Challenges in Link Prospecting And How to Overcome Them
Link prospecting can be challenging and time-intensive, with a few obstacles along the way. But do not worry, we are here to guide you through the most common issues and how to overcome them:
Time-Consuming Process
Finding and evaluating the right websites takes effort. You need to assess their content, audience, and metrics to ensure they are a good match.
How to overcome it:
- Use powerful tools like Ahrefs and Moz to speed up your research.
- Focus on high-quality websites first.
- Stay organized to maximize your efficiency.
Spammy Outreach Emails
Generic, impersonal emails often get ignored or sent to spam folders and website owners do not appreciate spam any more than anyone else.
How to overcome it:
- Personalize your emails by referencing something unique about their site or content.
- Clearly explain how linking to your content benefits them.
- Build genuine relationships rather than just chasing links.
Facing Rejection
Not everyone will agree to your link request and that is completely normal in link building. Do not get discouraged.
How to overcome it:
- Accept rejection as part of the process and keep reaching out.
- Refine your email approach to make it more compelling.
- Try different link-building strategies to find what works best.
By recognizing these challenges and applying the right tactics, you can master link prospecting and earn valuable backlinks.
Invest Time in Link Prospecting Following the Right Way
Effective link prospecting lays the foundation for every successful link-building strategy, which helps you avoid wasting time on low-quality links that could damage your SEO efforts. By carefully selecting prospects, you can customize your outreach to maximize the impact of your campaign.
Although thorough research requires effort, it is a valuable investment that delivers long-term benefits such as higher rankings, increased website traffic and a stronger online presence. With the right approach and commitment, link prospecting sets the stage for lasting SEO success.
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