1.Competitors research via Ahrefs (backlinks links analysis)
Search for quality relevant competitors and research of their methods:
With the help of keyword explorer you can find a large number of competitors, you need to use different keys + city, it is better to start with smaller cities, explore as many local sites;
Subsequently, use link intersect to investigate backlinks; This strategy helps to find forums, directories, blogs for posting articles.
Also use GeoClever App or another VPN and adjust it to country and city where you want find link building opportunities.
The second step will be to check the results. Both, in Google Search and Ahrefs Keyword Explorer the result will be almost the same:
Now, we can go through the backlinks of each website, appeared in TOP10, by using Ahrefs Site Explorer
Paste the website of the chosen competitor in the search bar and press the button beside.
After that you will see this:
From the left bar, we need to click on “Backlinks” option
After that, you will see the screen:
Here is the list of all competitor’s backlinks. Now, our job is to look through the results and see how competitor managed to get the link from the website and try to get a link for our website.
At the top of the list, there is a filter bar where you can adjust certain filters to help with your research.
I recommend adjusting DR - From 30
And lower, adjust the “One link per domain” option
Those are the basic filters that will give you a significant amount of websites on which you can do your link-building opportunity research. If you are looking for something specific, you can add more filters:
And you will be able to sort the result upon the following criteria:
And you will be able to sort the result upon the following criteria:
P.S. Check what kinds of domains the website is linking to, and of course check anchors!
If you managed to register on a good resource, check which sites are linked to in the same way, so you can find sites that, just like us, are looking for quality platforms for hosting backlinks.
To simplify the search, note when the last link was posted - the newer the link - the more likely it is that the site is still building backlinks. Also note the tables Referring domains (dofollow) and Linked domains (dofollow), the first should be in times higher, and then you can look at DR.
Going through competitors' backlinks in Ahrefs. Use Site Explorer 2.0 to get the competitors backlinks.
- Sort out by One link per domain to avoid numerous amount of the same pages.
- Backlink type - choose In content option to see all the possible blogs, forums or articles the competitor posted or commented.
- In the example below you can see that the comment was created by Claus Berman, so you can continue searching for a similar name further in Ahrefs in order to easily find other comments and also create your own like this.
- While commenting under some article or blog post you can find a lot of other users' websites while clicking on the name and check them the same way. See example below:
- While using this method you can find a bunch of good blogs where you can also ask for an outreach opportunity both paid and free. In my case for DK it is always paid.
TIP
If you are confused about what to comment under the articles and you have no clue about what you can say, just google a topic of the article and find some useful info there. And of course do it in the local language, then use Google Translate to write and/or correct the sentences on your own. Usually it works pretty good.
1.
While going through competitors' backlinks in Ahrefs it is also useful to adjust a filter Backlink profile to get competitors backlinks.- Here you can narrow your search by choosing among different Platforms like Blogs etc.
- It is very convenient if you want to find local backlinks to use filter Language and choose the country you are working at. For example: Denmark.
2.
Link intersect is another great option. Here you can apply a filter for 3 different competitors' websites and get all competitors backlinks in one report.3. Backlinks: New, Lost and Broken.
New - I use to find new links in competitors that I constantly follow and to see my new links.
Lost - I look at what links were lost and try to restore them.
Broken - Instead of straight-up begging for links, with Broken Link Building, I can add value to someone’s website.
4. Best by links report - It shows what pages have accrued the
most links.
2. Outreach
Option 1
1.Let's try to find outreach opportunities at the example of one particular website. To do this, enter the domain name in Ahrefs and sort out links by the newest to see the relevant output.
2.To find outreach articles or comments easier in Backlink type choose In Content option.
3.On the left side I marked and highlighted the titles of the articles with arrows. When you work with a certain country you already roughly understand the language and keywords in the articles
On the right side you can notice the highlighted words in the square
boxes. These are competitors' keywords. Usually, in Ahrefs, keywords are
the main sign that a backlink is an article.It is also easy to recognize that this is an article when you see these highlighted words in blue color among the text.
.
4.I opened one of the websites to make sure it is an article. See the
example below:
As we can see, there is an anchor we previously saw in Ahrefs Backlinks.
So, that is one of the possibilities to find Outreach articles in Ahrefs faster.
Option 2
It can also be helpful to go to the website where we had previously published articles and find competitors who also published articles there.
For example:
I already have one article published here:
It is a sponsored article, which means - we paid money for publishing it. In danish I already know that ANNONCØRBETALT INDHOLD means
sponsored content or advertising paid content .
I look through the website’s categories with the ANNONCØRBETALT
INDHOLD to find a possible competitors and investigate their backlinks.
As we can see there is a big list of paid content. I have marked all the articles in red boxes. Now we have a lot of work to do :)
___________
So now you know the process: insert the competitors domain address in Ahrefs and go through the backlinks, as described in the Option 1 above.
Good luck! :)
Guest posts represent a good way to earn backlinks. Do website research, write outstanding content and try to publish it on an authoritative website. They usually have strict guest blogging guidelines and it sometimes takes a lot of time to accept your submission.
It’s a bit more time consuming, but it definitely works. You will find lists of websites accepting guest posts but if you plan to target relevant ones, use Google search operators. Start with the focus keyword and add “write for us”.
You can specify your query with the operators: allintitle, intitle, inurl to find even more
opportunities. Make sure to do a proper guest post outreach and focus on the quality of your email – it may be your only chance to get the attention and earn a backlink.
Search for guest post:
TIP
OUTREACH. If you´ve negotiated with a webmaster and agreed on publication it is time to create a topic that will be relevant for the website and our niche. Usually I look up at different forums like Quora etc or Keyword Explorer to see the trending search demand. Also you can
always google what is new in the commercial real estate world and maybe come up with good ideas as well.
3. Useful search operators
For finding link-building opportunities by using Google Search operators, first of all, adjust GeoClever and VPN to the proper country and city in order to receive local results. Then use some commands or combinations of them to find link-building opportunities straight in Google.
Let us return back to the “Coworking Berlin” keyword. For example:
● Coworking Berlin intext:Kommentar
● Coworking Berlin inurl:comment
This Google Search command will allow us to see in search results every URL page, regarding Coworking Berlin with mentioning the word “Kommentar” in text of the page, or URL with option of commenting an article which can be related to keyword “Coworking Berlin”.
P.S. Mentioning year next to keyword will provide you with more recent information.
If we are looking for directories, we can type the command like this:
● Berlin intext:Branchbook
● Berlin inurl:branchbook
All Google Search commands and variations of them are described in “Find linkbuilding opportunities” docs, most important is to know, if you are working with non-English speaking countries, all words in commands should be in native language.
Good article about search operators:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
Extensions that may be helpful
1) Similar Web To see traffic on the website.
2) Hunter
It’s for outreach - to find the correct email.
1) VPN - Browsec
2) Ahrefs Toolbar
To see DR / UR / ST etc
3) Moz Toolbar
To see Spam Score 4) Check MY Links:
This extension highlights all links.
5) Lightshot - a program for screenshots
6) Grammarly - an online service based on artificial intelligence to help write texts in English
7) SEOquake is a free plugin that provides data on the main indicators of the search engine
8) Google Translate:
Allows you to translate small pieces of text directly on the site
9) Email Extractor
Searches for all available emails on the site
10) Alexa Rank
Shows rank, similar sites and some keywords
11) Redirect Path Shows redirects
Link to the document and description of each plugin:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kL-
xz8oO3CrI8VPEMPnwwIfRzAIerDPkWH7idOr3j5M/edit
4. Other methods (forums, directories, blogs etc. )
1.
Looking up in Google for trending topics in the country you are creating links for can help you discover new sources for link building opportunities.2.
Search for the blogs:Come up with a relevant, extensive, relevant topic and search for it in Google search:
For example:
"Restaurants and cafes during the day turn into coworking"
Importantly:
● add the word "blog" after the title
● Turn on local search
● Look for new results
● We open results that have a high DR
● You can easily find results (is a search technique for outreach and commenting)
hints and tips:
specify the city in the name, so you can find more local sites;
also search in 2 languages, English and local.
Приклад;
https://blog.gigaset.com/vom-kuechentisch-zum-buero/
3.
Search forums about your country in other languages, for example Austrians in Switzerland, or Polish in Germany - here people often share experiences of living in a new country, here you can leave questions, and then comment on renting real estate business;4.
Look for sites for bloggers, freelancers .. Here you can make cool profiles and make links to articles that you have published before;https://www.torial.com/en/martha.richmond/disclosure
5. Broken Linkbuilding method
● Install Check My Links or LinkMiner (Both of these tools quickly find broken links on any page)
● Find Pages With Lots of Outbound Links. The more links a page has, the more likely one of them will be broken.
● Check For Broken Links. Here’s where you run the extension you installed in the first step.
They’ll reveal broken links on that page:
● Email The Site Owner About Their Broken Link. Finally, let the person that runs that page about their broken link and pitch content from your site as a replacement.
Here’s the script I recommend:
6. Non-linking Brand Mentions
It’s sometimes common and easy to find others writing about your site without linking to it. Often a simple email to the author is enough to secure a link. Tools like Google Alerts, Ahrefs Alerts and Fresh Web Explorer are great at digging up mentions.
OR
Using search operator “brand name” -site:brandname.com will help you to find mentions of your brand. You need to check whether each mention is linked to your site. If not, contact these people to do so or to adjust the anchor correctly.
7. Non-linking Images
It’s common to find websites that have posted your own images without attribution.
Use tools like TinEye and Google’s Image Search to find webmasters who publish your images, and politely ask for attribution.
8. Manual link building (via Google Search Operators)
● Blog commenting
In general, I think that comments with links don’t positively influence your SEO because they are deleted almost immediately. But if you select blog posts with high traffic, then
you write a comment which is super relevant and boosts the discussion, it may end up with providing a link that will add a value to the discussion.
F.e Try searching for “list of real estate blogs” which will give you results like this:
And try to leave a relevant comment on the fresh article.
9. Company Directory Submissions and Local Listings
Submit your site to local listings. You already know about the big ones (like Yelp). But there are literally thousands of these. Keep an eye out for sites that focus on your city or state.
10. Forum profiles / threads
If you do build links from profiles, make sure to focus on niche-relevant profiles. That way, your links don’t look spammy.
11. Q&A Sites
Join Quora, Reddit, StackExchange, and others to ask and answer related questions. Be careful, these forums usually have strict spam rules and are full of professionals, so you can suddenly get banned. It happened to me as well. I should have read this guide before.
