30 Top Online Marketers Share their top SEO & Link Acquisition Tips.

Link building & SEO can be a tough topic for some business owners. On our blog Backlinks.com.au we have completed two different round up posts featuring some of the top online marketing experts in the world.

From the two roundups we picked the top 30 answers and decided it would be good to share these with my followers on Linkedin.

We asked them the following question – What is your most creative link building or traffic generation strategy?

This post is over 5,500+ words so please take your time reading over each tip.

Tip 1. Matthew Barby

Twitter: @matthewbarby

This method may be classed as a grey-hat SEO technique, so if this is Matt Cutts reading, look away now…

I thought I’d share a link building method that I’ve been using a lot to build links to websites that aren’t typically full of the most linkable content (i.e. what we would call a ‘boring’ industry).

This method involves utilising images within articles to build high quality, contextual links from a wide range of different sites. The way I do this is with image attribution.

Now, you may be thinking, “great, but what if I don’t have any good imagery?”

Well, the answer to that is that it is less about good imagery and more about relevant imagery. This doesn’t involve people organically picking up your images; it involves you placing them strategically within articles to gain backlinks to your website.

For example, if I have a client that has a ‘metal stamping’ business, I may find that guest posting about topics related to metal stamping could get a little dry after a while. Instead, I could place an image from the site within an article that may not even be that related to metal stamping, but the image can be attributed back to the client’s website (in some cases, you can get an exact match anchor link here).

In some cases, I will strategically place imagery within my client’s website so that we can gain an attribution link within a guest post.

Also, if you’re running SEO campaigns for multiple clients, this is a great way to scale link building across multiple clients. You can easily drive links through to more than one client via the same piece of content.

Tip 2: Steve Morgan

 Twitter: @steviephil

Taking Guest Blogging Further

I still love guest blogging, even with all the recent panic about it as a worthwhile tactic. If you’re doing it properly, you’re doing it right – that’s my stance.

Even so, I think that some people look too narrowly…

An insurance company that provides car insurance may only be looking at other finance/insurance sites. But why not contribute to things that are one step away? Ian Lurie did a great job explaining this, calling it Random Affinities: what is more loosely based (but still relevant to) your customer-base? What about guest blogging on sites about car maintenance, learning to drive and the legal side of things? They may have guest blog posts from other people in their circles, so they may appreciate an insurer’s perspective on how car insurance affect these things.

Other examples:

•  IT support company: A client of mine specialises in IT support for Apple products – there are countless Apple fan-blogs out there who’d probably appreciate a post about Apple maintenance and repair.
• IT recruitment agency: Another client of mine – they have a post coming up about how low broadband speeds may be negatively affecting candidate attraction to the area. It’ll probably be more suitable for a broadband blog.

I’m sure many people are already doing this, so why am I suggesting it as a tactic? Well, I think that Google is getting better at understanding semantics – something doesn’t have to be 100% on-topic to be relevant, so if you do things that are 80% or 90% relevant and still high-quality then it’s going to be beneficial. I think Hummingbird is a sign that Google is getting much better at understanding semantics and the relationship between words and keywords – so take advantage of it!

Tip 3. Brian Dean

 Twitter: @backlinko

My best link building tip is to get links to content before you’ve even published it.

Yes, you read that right.

I’ve noticed that since outreach has become the next big thing in SEO, people are becoming less receptive to email pitches.

What I’ve been doing lately is reaching out to people that I think would like my content before I publish it.

I use pretty much the same email outreach script that I do when showing people my content. The only difference is that instead of saying “I just published something you like” you say “I’m about to publish something you’d like. Want a heads up when I publish it?”. Then you obviously follow up with them when you publish your content.

You can apply this to any content you publish, like infographics, videos, guides and ebooks.

I’m not 100% sure about the psychology behind it, but I’ve gotten a significantly higher response rate using this approach than when I reaching out after the content has been published.

Tip 4. Adam Connell

 Twitter: @adamjayc

Create valuable resources through crowd sourced content

Ego bait is a powerful tactic for gaining traction for a piece of content but what if you didn’t have to write the content?

What if you could get influencers within your market to write the content for you and at the same time immediately make them more invested in sharing and link toy our content?

That would be pretty awesome and it really works.

I recently published a group interview where I asked a straight forward question to 46 experts within the social media and marketing sectors and the results were incredible:

You can find the post here: https://bloggingwizard.com/experts-top-social-media-tools/

In addition to the screenshots below I also acquired a link from the Hootsuite blog, which is PageRank 7. Hootsuite were voted the #1 social media tool by experts that took part. The incorporation of tools added an extra layer to the existing influencers that were already involved.

Here is the traffic that the individual blog post received on my site:

Here are the social shares it received as of November 25th:

This blog post has also produced other opportunities such as:

• 6 Influencers that are prepared to write content for my blog
• Opportunity to write for 4+ influencers on their personal blogs, blogs that are rarely opened up to contributors

Earned links

Another great example is a group interview published by Richard Marriott:

By publishing a detailed post that included all of the right people and all of the right tools along with a large number of experts sharing the blog post, it was able to rank #1 for link building tools in organic search.

Brian Dean wrote a detailed case study of exactly how this worked, which you can find here.

 Tip 5. Tad Chef

 Twitter: @onreact_com

It seems to me that online marketing is about becoming real.

•  Offer real value
•  attract real people
•  engage in real life.

Applied to link building it means: in case you do manual link building use your hands. After all Google loves manual action! No joke here, just a pun.

Use your hands to shake hands. Meet people for example.

Personally I met Brian Dean of Backlinko.com a couple of weeks ago because he happens to live nearby. So we hung out and chatted in a cafe one day. I made a real life link with a really cool guy. I’m not even sure he did link to me in hypertext as well but we have engaged a lot online ever since. He’s a really inspiring person and his writing style reminds me of my early days with SEO 2.0 when I was bursting with enthusiasm and conquering the world. For Brian it worked out for sure because I shared his work several times ever since.

 Tip 6: Jason Acidre

 Twitter: @jasonacidre

Aside from creating linkable content assets and promoting them, my other favorite link building tactic would be regular content contribution/columns on high traffic industry-specific sites.

There’s just so much value to get when this method is done right, such as:

• Reaching to a wider and targeted audience (for brand impressions and to demonstrate topic expertise).
• In continuously getting quality traffic and in absorbing readership (referred traffic).
• Stronger link signal, based on the multiple links coming from the same domain (relationship).
• In building better relationships (which actually can scale and automate your link building).

I’d definitely choose this method over guest blogging (particularly the one-time guest post/ link drop approach).

Like what I’ve mentioned many times before – getting read by your target readers on 3 – 5 authority publications regularly is way better than submitting content to hundreds of blogs that you have no certainty if your content will be consumed.

Bonus: For more actionable tips on link building, check out the slides here.

 Tip 7: Dennis Graham

 Twitter: @dennisgraham7

Sponsor relevant offline industry events. You can easily find these offline events on meetup.com and EventBrite.com.

When you sponsor relevant offline events, the back links are:

a) highly relevant

b) long lasting

c) build your brand

d) drive leads to your website

But these events don’t stop giving just there. These events are typically organized by businesses and organizations from a related industry. The businesses and organizations have websites on which they’ll promote the event, an email newsletter, a blog, etc. As a sponsor, ask to be featured across all the different mediums (meetup.com / eventbrite.com / company website / blog / eDM / social media).

If you have the opportunity to attend the event (highly recommended – to get the kudos from the audience), even more back link building opportunities present themselves. You can do a write-up/video/slide share/etc about the event on your blog, pass it on to all the attendees… and they’ll share it across their own networks. Win?

How much do the sponsorship’s cost? This depends on the event, where it’s held and what the event actually needs (i.e. alcohol, food, audio/visuals, presenters, etc). You can get everything mentioned above from as little as $100 (for beer + pizza) and some of your spare time.

Tip 8 - Nishanth Stephen

 Twitter: @nishanthstephen

 Guest Blogging

I consider guest blogging to be one of the most powerful link building tactics today. Guest blogging will not only get traffic towards your site from relevant websites but it is also a great way to get links and build relationships with your audience. It paves a way, for you to be seen as an expert in your field by your target audience. The key to guest blogging is that, high quality links can only be acquired by regularly submitting meaningful and engaging content to the best blogs in a particular niche.

I recommend checking out a tool called Zementa that recognises the main theme of your blog posts and places it in front of an audience who are reading similar posts on other sites. This is a contextual form of link building and acts to drive visits to your published content, and also increases the amount of links to your published content, thus improving the value of the tier 1 link back to your site.

Acquire Competitor Links

One of my favourite link building tricks is to acquire your competitor’s backlinks. Perform a backlink audit of competing sites and compare that with your own profile. Tools like clique hunter within Majestic, and the neighbourhood tool within Linkdex identify linking patterns between competitors and highlights sites where you have a valid reason to grab a link.

Look out for domains that link to more than one of your competitors as there is a good chance of them linking back to you as well. I recommend checking out an in depth tutorial by Mathew Woodward on how to steal your competitor’s links.

Turn Brand Mentions into Links

One of the link building tricks I love is turning unlinked brand mentions into links. This is because it’s the most immediate and actionable tactic out there. This method requires you to use advance search operators to find brand mentions without links however I like using Fresh Web Explorer to export a list of pages that have mentioned by client’s brand but have failed to link back.

Do check out Rand’s Whiteboard Friday “3 Methods Fueled by Data and Tools to Earn More (and Better) Links” and how to use Fresh Web Explorer & Open Site Explorer to find these awesome opportunities.

I sometimes use Google image reverse search to look for websites that have used my client’s images, logo or pictures on their websites but haven’t linked back to them.

Produce Evergreen Content and Link Baits

Focus on regularly creating content that never relies on current trends or topics, and can be used as a great informational or reference material that never goes stale. It’s one of the best scalable link building tactics as evergreen content topics are always searched, and most likely to be linked by people looking for that piece of content. Good solid content that lasts a lifetime always has better chance of getting good rankings on SERPs.

Good examples of link baits are:

• IGs
• Whitepapers
• How to Guides
• Interviews with SMEs within your industry

Local Link Building

If you are a small business targeting local audience the hosting local events in your community is a great way to build your brand, both offline and online. If you host a large number of events every year, then have a dedicated events page on your site that lists all upcoming and past events with a short description and then link to unique pages for each event.

Once setup, start out reaching to websites that would care about your event. Gather contact information and email the website owner with a request to see if your event is something their readers would be interested in.

 Tip 9: Peter Mead

 Twitter: @petermeadit

Premium software reviews for link building

Premium software reviews are fun to do and can be a great link building opportunity to get quality links to your site. It can be a good chance for you to get familiar with a new piece of software and also put your writing skills to the test. Producing an honest appraisal of a premium software, can be a good boost for you in more ways than one, including social profile building and networking. However, the main prize is a nice juicy link to your site within the context of the review you give.

This opportunity can come about when software vendors are on the lookout for people review their products. They may offer a free premium account and in return ask you to to write a review. They may ask you to write about how you found it useful, and how it improved your business in some way. The review will probably be placed on their blog, and may even be labeled as a guest post. Be open to and on the lookout for premium software reviews for link building.

 Tip 10: Giuseppe Pastore

 Twitter: @zen2seo

I think my answer has been a little influenced by my recent readings, but my idea is choosing your causes. One of the concept Marketing 3.0 theory stresses the most is that people care about your efforts to better the world somehow. Brands should have their values and if not they’ve to decide which they are in order to be loved by people. The same should be on the web, but you’ve not to go in Alaska and rescue polar bears to get attention from an online community. Just look at which themes people are sensible to, choose the ones you want to support, create landing/minisites, express what you’re going to do and let people (sites) know about it asking for some help (links) to spread the news. Caring is… a linkable asset.

 Tip 11: Joel Chudleigh

 Twitter: @deepfootprints

The toughest part of link building is making the right connections. The first email or telephone call is incredibly important. With one of our clients in a very competitive niche we wanted coverage from well known bloggers. We knew that they would be getting inundated with requests from brands so we needed to do something differently. We therefore contacted them with a survey and explained that we are keen to work with bloggers like them but wanted to hear form them about how we should go about it so that we do not waste their time. We offered a ￡20 Amazon voucher in return for completing the 10 question survey.

We emailed 100 bloggers and 30 of them completed the survey. Many of them thanked us for our approach and told us it was very refreshing and asked how they could work with us. Yes – each new relationship cost ￡20 to broker but now we are off to a good start and they are very passionate about working with our client so we have found that typical costs of sponsored posts have fallen and in some cases are being waivered.

The key things that we learned were to be respectful of other peoples time, ensure that you spend time on their site before contacting them so that you know what the likely win-win scenarios are, support bloggers with things that save them time – i.e. good image libraries and ideas for posts, bloggers like to collaborate so ask them for ideas and also present your own.

30% success rate is the best we have ever had for an outreach campaign with influential bloggers. We do not have links from all of them yet but things are falling into place nicely with all except 2 who felt that the brand was not a good match for them (lack of research on our part!).

 Tip 12 - Richard Marriott

Twitter: @clambr

 My link building tactic is to make broken link building 3x more efficient.

I usually land 15-30% of the links I want from a simple cold approach email like this:

Hey [Blogger Name],

Are you still updating [Website Name]? I noticed a broken link on your site.

Cheers,

Richard

Sure, a 30% conversion rate is pretty sweet, but what if you could get your link on 100% of the pages you want?!

To achieve this, rather than kicking off the link building process after publishing a new blog post, set things in motion before you even begin writing.

Hell, do it as soon as you decide on the target keywords(s) you’ll be crafting your new post around!

With your target keyword in hand, make a list of everyone linking to the top 10 results on Google with broken links on their page.

Once you have got a decent list, make it your new year’s resolution to build relationships with everyone on it 

You need not compete for friend (or stalker) of the year, just make sure to get on their radar by exchanging a few emails, blog comments and social shares.

Hopefully by the time your new blog post is published you’ll have built some rapport with them.

Then you can hit them up with a natural sounding email that appears like it was a complete coincidence you found a broken link on their site when combing through a competitor’s backlinks.

They’ll be far more likely to help out and give you a link because unlike the cold approach email you’re already in conversation, plus you’ve been avidly sharing their content the last few weeks. 

Tip 13 - Anthony D. Nelson

 Twitter: @anthonydnelson

I certainly don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m pretty sure that safe, long-term link building for brands will be the same as it always was. Link builders should continue to focus on topic relevancy and getting links that are placed on pages read by real people and get some social signals pointing at it. I don’t expect Google to attempt to devalue links the way Yandex is, but I do think they will continue to get smarter about which links to give real weight to and don’t think it would be a wise strategy to focus on links on non-trafficked pages. Push yourself to focus on a good marketing of your brand and get as many links as you can in the process. If you focus on the links before marketing, your job will actually end up being a lot harder and the resulting links will be less impressive.

Tip 14: Cory Collins

 Twitter: @Coryrcollins

Google is making it harder and harder to build links simply by cutting out the ‘easy options’. In my opinion great links have always been difficult to build, but totally worth the time.

My #1 link building tip is to always concentrate on links you wouldn’t mind showing your SEO friends – always work to build links you’re proud of. You should be excited to show your clients the links you’ve built.

As far as tactics, I recommend an 80/20 split.

80% of the time replicate successful strategies in whatever niche you’re pursuing. If ego bait seems particularly successful (hello SEO), lean on that. Same goes for guest posting, broken link building, infographics, resource building, etc. Try and go above and beyond what you’re seeing competitors do, if possible. And use a variety of strategies – don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

20% of the time should be left to creative – this is the time you’ll invest to find a new/winning strategy. This could mean slowly creating a piece of big content, experimenting with new ideas, or even doing what Rand calls ‘non-measurable serendipitous marketing’ (playing the long game). Regardless, give yourself time to experiment, learn, and grow as a link builder.

Tip 15:  Gisele Navarro

 Twitter: @ichbinGisele

Finding a link prospect is easy. Contacting them and receiving a positive response on their side is not. Outreach has been discussed over and over again lately, especially now that the borders between link building and digital PR are getting blurry. That is the reason why today I will be sharing three tips for reaching out to busy people (a.k.a. big dogs.)

One of my main focus was connecting with journalists and big publications, so after many trial/error experiments I’ve come up with the following quick tips:

1) Contact a person and not a publication

Find the right person inside the publication you should connect to based on the affinity they have with the content you’re promoting (E.g. Have they published anything on the same topic before? Would it be organic for them to mention your site/client and share your content? If you’re working with an infographic, have you seen them sharing or posting infographics in the past?)

If you truly recognise the value your content provides and find how it connects with the journalist/publication you’re contacting, you’ll be able to exploit the affinity between the two.

2) One email, one desired outcome

Do you want their feedback? Do you want them to check your content out? Do you want them to share it on social media? Do you want them to publish it on their site? Make up your mind, set one goal and aim at it. You can always move from one possible outcome to another once you’ve gotten a reply.

Play your cards wisely; it’s always better not to ask for anything in particular on your first email. Hint and ask for permission whenever possible: a simple “let me know if you’d like to check it out and I’ll send it over to you” is non-intrusive and more polite than sending a link within the first email.

3) Use your follow-up email for testing + improving your outreach

Don’t forward your unanswered email adding a short “Have you had the chance to read the email below?”

Do include your original email but change everything else. Write a new subject, rewrite the body, experiment with persuasive hooks and make sure you are tapping into the affinity between your content and their work.

Tip 16: Andy Crestodina

Twitter: @crestodina

Do original research on an important topic in your niche. Make sure it produces a specific datapoint that makes a good soundbite or shows a trend. Make a graphic that shows the datapoint.

Next, whenever you get the chance to discuss this topic (in a roundup, guest post, webinar, Quora answer, podcast, etc.) mention the research, add the visual and link back to the original piece. The link can be an image source link. Since the research (and image) are original, the editors should leave in the link. The datapoint becomes an image. The image gets an image source link, so the piece is now a link magnet.

Tip 17: Andrew James

Twitter: @brandbuildersio

My number one link building tip is to reverse engineer something that’s already working, make it interactive, and reach out to the people who already linked out to similar pieces. It’s like the Skyscraper technique on steroids.

If you have a specific search term you’d like to target and the term is informational in nature, most of the content that’s already ranking will be in a text + images (maybe infographic) format.

I collect all the data from the posts that are rankings, expand/make it better – more engaging, and transform the text into a quiz, flowchart… anything that’s interactive and engaging for the reader (more time on page, more clicks, less bounces).

Then simply reach out to the people and spread the word out 

Tip 18. Christoph Engelhardt

Twitter: @itengelhardt

In my humble opinion the most creative link building tactic is to actually create something of value.

Build a small tool that helps your target audience achieve a goal. There is an abundance of examples out there of this:

* Pablo by Buffer (link: Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.

* CSS inliner tool by Mailchimp (https://templates.mailchimp.com/resources/inline-css/)

* HTTPS SEO Check by LinksSpy (https://www.linksspy.com/seo-tools/free-seo-ssl-scan)

* Website Speed Test by WPEngine (https://wpengine.com/speed-tool/)

You can also offer a feature/usage-limited version of your full product. Good examples are Open Site Explorer by Moz (https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/)or kwfinder.com (https://kwfinder.com/), which both allow you to make a few searches each day for free.

What small tool could you build to improve the life of your target audience?

Tip 19. David Waring

Twitter - @davidwaring

My #1 creative link building tip for 2017 is to form relationships with SEO’s at complimentary non competitive companies. There are many opportunities that you come across when link building that are not right for your website, but would be right for another website. Same is true for most people when doing link building. By forming these types of relationships where you help other SEO’s by building links to their site and they help you build links for your website you can exponentially increase the power of your link building efforts.

Tip 20. Evgeniy Garkaviy

Twitter - @MrGarkaviy

The best creative link building tip I will recommend to anyone is quite simple and effective. You should research a segment of your niche where information gap exist, provide the information in the form of an infographic or an article. Let all the important players in your niche know about it about the content you produced to plug the information gap. The number of sites referencing or linking to your article or infographic will amaze you. The best way to inform people is using social media or email marketing. Of course many people will ignore your email but even if you can get 5 links from 30 emails it will be fantastic.

Another very productive link building tip is broken link building and especially Wikipedia broken link building. You should go to this section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:All_articles_with_broken_links_to_citations and see if you can find any interesting topic for yourself. Then find a broken citation and use Web Archive to see what was the content of the broken article. Recreate it on your website and change a link in original Wikipedia article.

Tip 21. Gabriella Sannino

Twitter - @SEOcopy

It’s hard to name just one, because two methods top my list.

The first is regaining lost backlinks, or requesting an updated link. For example, you update your site and redirect Page A to Page B. A linking site still links to Page A. Contact and ask for an updated link. Or you find a 404 and find that several websites are linking to this broken page. Offer an updated link.

At the same time, you can write an updated version of the page they’ve linked to and offer them the new link, or show them a different resource all-together. The point is you have already established a relationship with them. Much easier than building a brand new one.

The second is competitor link analysis. Who are they linking to? Who is linking to them and how? Review and decide whether you can match the offer – not necessarily to take the link away from the competitor, but to add your link in.

For example, let’s say Competitor ZYX has posted a blog on Site BC with a relevant linkback within the content. This is rare, and worth finding out if Site BC is accepting more blog posts.

As another example, if Competitor ZYX has broken inbound links, you can attempt to snatch them up with updated, relevant links.

Link building in 2017 takes ingenuity and resourcefulness, but it is still possible.

Tip 22. Jacob Cass

Twitter @justcreative

Freebies. Everyone loves something for free and other blogs love sharing freebies, especially in round up compilation posts so offer something valuable for free and the links will come in. To put this into perspective, for the past few years I’ve offered a free “logo design inspiration eBook“, in exchange for an email address. This has not only garnered thousands of email subscribers but it has been featured on many free eBook compilation posts.

Tip 23. James Reynolds

Twitter - @FollowJames

Give Testimonials

There’s not one company I know (big or small) that doesn’t love to show off the praise they’ve received from happy customers.

If there are products or services you use – and would be happy to endorse – consider giving them a testimonial.

Seriously, it’s one of the best ways I know to build your personal brand and win links from high authority pages. Hint – many websites put their testimonials right up front on the homepage.

Here’s how to find them:

First, make a list of all the products, services, books, courses etc. you’ve purchased in the last few years – take a look around your home and office and I promise you’ll find loads to add to your list.

Next, note down the websites for these products/services and use search operators to find the pages on their sites where testimonials are displayed. Here’s a few to try:

site:website.com “testimonials”

site:website.com “praise”

site:website.com “what our customers say”

Then using a browser add-on like “No Follow” you can check to see if the testimonials link to the customer’s site using a full follow link.

Those that do, should be your primary targets.

The last step is to write your testimonial and send it off to the site.

When you do, be sure to mention you’d be happy to have your write up displayed on their site with a link to you so that visitors can see the testimonial is real.

A simple, yet creative way to win powerful links.

Tip 24. Krystian Szastok

Twitter - @krystianszastok

My best creative link building tip is:

Analyse the best performing content in your niche – from last year and see if there is an opportunity for an update. Then outreach to people who shared/linked to that older content telling them there’s an updated version.

For example a guide that shows old version software screenshots, or a solution that doesn’t work anymore.

In your outreach explain exactly why this old resource isn’t viable anymore. Editors will thank you for doing their job for them.

Tip 25. Konrad Sanders

Twitter - @konradsanders

My number one link-building tip for 2017 would still be: creative super valuable, relevant, audience-focused content and pitch it to the top publications in your niche.

With backlinks it’s all about quality, not quantity. And to get a backlink from one of these high-authority industry giants, there is no sly trick.

You need to do something for them.

You need to create a piece of content so lazer-focused on THEIR readers (yet also heavily connected to your field of expertise) that their editors will jump at the chance to include it in their content calendar. An article so gripping and valuable, that it will go viral. With a title so intriguing and persuasive that their followers and subscribers will click that link in a heartbeat.

Then, of course, drop in a couple of links back to a) your main site or blog and b) a landing page with gated downloadable content.

If you really nail it, they’ll be asking you to submit again. And those other top publications will be glad to have you contribute.

Which means? More quality backlinks. More traffic. More subscribers. More authority. More brand exposure. More leads. More sales. More money. And bigger smiles.

Tip 26. Lexi Mills

Twitter @leximills

Remember at the end of the data point/email/ Twitter account is a real person just like you, it’s easy to see an email address and perceive “it” as a ‘link-building target’. If you get a photo of them up when writing them an email you will naturally shift from seeing them as a target to treating them in a more friendly manner and thus increase your likelihood of getting a response. It is equally important to consider the people their publications aims to please. All outreach should begin with these two factors in mind.

Tip 27. Marie Haynes

Twitter - @Marie_Haynes

I have found that the best way to get links that truly move the needle is to publish original research. Create something that gets people talking. If you’re an SEO, do some SEO experiments and publish them. Those will attract links naturally. If you’re doing SEO for a local business, find a question that people have in that vertical and find a way to test, research and answer that question. Then, if you have a good study you can reach out to local journalists and offer an interview. This usually results in good earned links as well.

Tip 28. Pavlos Giorkas

Twitter - @pavlosgiorkas

The number one Link building method that works for me is what I like to call ” Oprah Method”. Oprah Winfrey always talks about other people in her shows. I like to produce list articles that mention other bloggers or many products. After that, I always contact the people/product owners who’ve I mentioned in the list article and tell them that I have mentioned them in my article. 90% of the time people get excited, share that article to their audience just to show how popular they are. Many times, they’ve even send an email to their list about your article and also connect with you through their articles.

Tip 29. Rick Tramos

Twitter - @ricktramos

My number one link building tip is still making the best infographic you can make. A good infographic is really two things. First step is it must contain unique data that someone has never seen. It could be from a survey you’ve done to your users or one you sent out to a community. If you are in a specific niche, ask the people in that community something unique. Second step is to take that data and make it something visually beautiful. Make the data you have come alive. Take inspiration from other infographics you’ve seen and were compelled to share. Creating a great infographic takes a long time, 20-30 hours isn’t uncommon. The research and design part are labour intensive. You can make a quick and easy one based on someone else’s data but my experience is that it won’t perform nearly as well as a great infographic. I’ve seen a single infographic get over 1,000 links. Well worth the time and effort.

Tip 30. Sean Si

Twitter - @SEO_Hacker

The most creative tip that I can give for link building is providing relevant, updated and best of all, evergreen content. Famous techniques such as the Skyscraper Strategy and even Broken Link Building follow the same thought process: Providing current information to a specific audience that proves to be an extremely reliable resource tends to naturally attract links, even with minimum effort. Just always be vigilant with sharing it to the right audience at the right time. Another creative way of gaining links is by doing a round up (such as this one) – letting experts help you create your content while answering a common niche question is a smart way to attract readers. The experts who contribute to these roundups tend to share the article on their social pages, allowing their audiences to become your audience as well. Bottom-line, it’s best to remember: the better the content, the larger the possibility of gaining links

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About the Author James Norquay — Director at a High Performance SEO & Content Agency based in Sydney, Australia Prosperity Media – We work in competitive verticals such as Finance, Online Education & Travel. 10+ years experience in SEO and Digital for high growth startups and big business.