A Comprehensive Guide to Creating a Link Roundup

As a business owner, or digital marketer, you’re constantly striving to increase quality traffic to your website. One of the most effective ways to do this is through a link roundup SEO strategy. Whether you feature in a link roundup, or curate your own link roundup, it’s a great way to build traffic to your website. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to showcase and maximise your best content. All whilst increasing backlinks to your site.  

Link roundups need to be part of your overall link building strategy. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this tactic, we’re going to explain what a link roundup is, how to make them work for your business and how to build industry relationships to help you feature in as many relevant roundup posts as possible. 

What is a link roundup?

A link roundup is ultimately a blog post or article that features links to other people’s content. Generally, they are published on a weekly, or monthly, basis. They are themed around a topic related to the blog that’s hosting it. Usually they will consist of what is considered the best content for that particular industry, within that timeframe. For example, if we were to do a link roundup every two weeks, it might include the most valuable content to our audience on the subject of digital marketing.

No matter what industry you are in, it’s likely that you will be able to find at least one relevant link roundup. The idea behind them is to share content with your readers from other sources. Curating your own link roundup is an excellent way to connect with other people in your industry. It also provides quality content for your own website, that your audience will find valuable. 

How do I find a link roundup?

So, you know that you want to feature in a link roundup, but how exactly do you find the right round ups to participate in, that are relevant to your content? And, how often should you be appearing in round ups? The answer is, as often as possible without it affecting the quality of the content you produce. The more link round ups you can participate in, the better chance you have of qualified traffic to your website. However, this doesn’t mean that every piece of content you create needs to be featured. Ideally, you should save your best work for the link round ups. 

To get started with finding relevant link round ups (amend keyword), type the following into Google: 

• “Keyword” + “link roundup”
• “Keyword” + “weekly roundup”
• “Keyword” + “weekly link”
• “Keyword” + inurl:roundup
• “Keyword” + intitle:roundup
• “Keyword” + best posts of the week
• “Keyword” + best blogs of the week

Using the above phrases you will find a number of link roundups to get you on your way to increasing your website traffic. As you can see, all of these searches have slight variations that will serve up different results. If you still can’t find what you’re looking for, there are other phrases to search. For example, “best of” “Wednesday link up” (where you can substitute any day of the week) and so on. 

For example, if you were looking for marketing roundups, you’d find this resource, with a list of link ups that are hosted each week. Just be diligent and make sure they are still active. You will come across a lot of link roundups, that are no longer active.

You can easily check this by clicking on the link and checking their most recent post, you will hopefully see a recent date. Or, you can click on the “tools” button on the search page and narrow the results to the “past month.” 

As you’re on a digital marketing website, reading this guide, it can be assumed that you’re looking for marketing roundups to participate in. So here’s a couple for you to check out and hopefully get you started:

• Tips Tuesday
• blog.ahrefs.com 

How do I get featured in a link roundup?

Once you have your list of websites that have active link roundups, it’s time for you to reach out to them and pitch your content. There’s no quick formula to getting your content featured in link roundups. However, the results are worth the effort.

First and foremost, you need to ensure your content is high quality and share worthy. Content that is going to be featured in a link roundup needs to be engaging and valuable to the reader. Secondly, networking and interaction are key to building relationships with other businesses and bloggers who curate link roundups. Building genuine relationships and creating great content are the most effective ways to get featured. Another method is to simply ask, if you don’t ask you don’t get. It’s as easy as contacting the host, and asking them if they’d mind mentioning your posts. They can only say no, and you have nothing to lose.

It’s also important to make sure that your content is SEO friendly. You want as many eyes on it as possible, therefore, optimising your content is key. Bloggers or hosts who put together their own lists, that include content that they find interesting or valuable, have to be able to find your content in order to include it. 

Some link roundups will allow you to add the link yourself. It’s important to note that this type of roundup may not return as much quality traffic. However, it’s still a backlink to your website if nothing more. 

How do I approach the host of a link roundup?

So you’ve found a link roundup that you would like to be featured in, but what’s the best way to approach the host to ask for your content to be included? Here’s some sample text you can adapt and send through to the host. Just remember to send it with enough time for them to respond before the next roundup. 

Hi [Name of Host],

My name is [your name] and I create marketing content at [your site/domain name.] I came across your link roundups while I was searching for other valuable content. I was hoping I could submit some content for your consideration, to appear in your next roundup. Please see the links below, broken down by category, with a full title and description. You can include any of them that you think will be a good fit for next week’s (or whenever the next roundup will be) roundup.

If you are planning on curating your own link roundup you can also include the following text: 

I will be curating my own list of links that I find interesting and will offer value to my audience, and I would love to feature you in return.

Thank you for your consideration. 

Have a great week!

List of articles with title, description, and link to post.

A great way to boost your chances of success with the host to get your content featured is to spend some time on their website before sending the email. 

Creating Your Own Link Roundups

Creating your own weekly roundups, or monthly, is an effective way to build more traffic to your website. By mentioning other websites on yours, it will also encourage those people to return the favour and mention your links in their own link roundups. Mentioning other websites within the same industry may not seem like the best way to bring more traffic to your own website. However, it has been proven as a successful strategy. 

The websites that you link are also likely to visit your site and leave a comment to say thank you. They are also likely to share it with their own audience, as it looks good for them that they have been featured elsewhere. This alone will drive more traffic to your site, plus it is great exposure to a new audience. It also helps you develop meaningful relationships within your industry. It’s a win win situation, that at the same time offers your audience valuable and interesting content. 

When you’re starting out, you will probably have to find all the marketing blogs and content yourself. However, this could easily change if your roundup gains traction. There are some great tools available to help you source quality content if you want to curate your own link roundup. 

The following tools can help you find link worthy content:

• Google Alerts: This free notification service provided by Google sends emails to subscribers that summarise the search activity around search terms. Recent news articles, or other web content, containing a search term is included in a Google Alert. Users can set notifications to come daily, weekly, or monthly.
• Feedly: With Feedly, you can subscribe to multiple RSS feeds, and categorise however you prefer. Then, you can read through various blog posts from a single location. Finally, decide if you want to share it to your social media channels or keep it for your roundup post. There is also a pro version available that allows you to integrate it with automation services. However, if you’re not looking to spend any money, the free version is more than effective.  
• Pocket: This is like a digital filing cabinet for anything you see while you’re browsing the internet that you want to save, and go back to later. Whether it’s blogs, articles or videos you can put anything you want in your “pocket.” You can save directly from your browser, or using apps such as Twitter. Pocket is a free service and ideal for those who are just starting out searching for content. It’s great because you can simply go back to it when you’re ready to write your link roundup. Then, you can copy the links straight into your content, without having to manually save everything you come across. 
• ContentGems: The free version of this platform allows you to monitor two interests. Along with a single Twitter account, 20 custom RSS source, and gives you daily content suggestions. You can also opt for paid plans that allow you to have more interests, accounts and feeds. ContentGems monitors more than 200,000 news sources and it’s extremely easy to share your own comments. 

Gathering your content manually can be quite enjoyable. Afterall, you’re looking for quality content. But, after a while, once your roundup has gathered traction, you can also use the below tools to make your life a little easier: 

• SimplyLinked: Create a free account. Then create a linky and easily manage your participants. Copy and paste some code to insert the widget into your blog post, and everything is integrated without new windows, or requiring people to leave your site to add their links to your link up.
• LinkyTools: Create a free account. Create a linky. Put the linky on your blog. Others can add their links to it, gradually creating a roundup blog post for you.
• Linky: Similar to LinkyTools, you create a free account, and then create your linky. From there, you’ll insert the code into your blog post. Users will be able to add their own submissions.

A link roundup doesn’t have to be limited to just blogs. You can create roundups of tweets, Facebook posts, pins, Instagram photos or videos. If you were feeling really ambitious, you could even do a link roundup that includes several of the above. This would definitely help fill your editorial calendar with great content. Just make sure what whatever you decide to feature, or the content you submit to be featured, is valuable to your audience. 

Why are link roundups so beneficial?

Link roundups are an effective marketing medium because they increase traffic. They boost SEO with the help of backlinks from authority sites and build industry relationships. Whether you create your own link roundup, or get featured on other websites, it’s an extremely effective way to stay on top of your content. As well, you can ensure you’re always producing quality copy that’s engaging and interesting to your audience. 

The above is just a very brief guide on how to get started with link roundups. If you’d like more information on how to get featured in a link roundup or how to get started and curate your own link round up then get in touch today on 0870 062 8760. Alternatively, you can email us at [email protected]. Take a look at how working with an agency can help your business.