Link Building That Gets Results: How to Find the Right Sites

What is the purpose of link building? Why is it so crucial for SEO? There must be a good reason for this difficult, time-consuming activity, right?

Indeed there is. More than one, in fact. Here’s what you get from creating new external links:

1. Increased site rankings. Top 3 search results get the majority of visits from Google and other search engines. The higher you rank, the more people will come to your site.
2. More visitors. A backlink placed in the right spot (bonus points if it’s made at the right time too) can bring to your site tons of people who are interested in what you have there.
3. Revenue increase. If you use your site to make money, then site visits directly translate to earnings – but only when it’s the right kind of site visits.

Build your links with these three goals in mind. If a prospective backlink doesn’t accomplish at least one of them, you might want to reconsider creating it.

Build links to where?

To your site, obviously. The question is: to which pages exactly?

Just like not every backlink can benefit you, the same is true for the pages receiving backlinks. For example, there’s little point in digging up some ancient post on your blog and trying to build links to it. If you want valuable user activity, then you should pick better candidates.

Like your homepage. That’s always a good candidate for link building. What makes it so good?

• Most of the time (if not always), it will have the most authority among your site pages – meaning it will be the most visible in search.
• Homepages lead visitors to your other important content. Make sure your homepage encourages exploring your site and makes it easy!

What other pages are good candidate for building links? That depends solely on what kind of website you have – and the user search intent it satisfies. For example, online shops will benefit from backlinks that lead to its product pages.

Of course, your pages must always have good content that justifies having backlinks in the first place. If you want another site’s visitors to click on a link and visit your site, it better not be a waste of their time.

Where should you build links?

This should be the next step of your link building plan.

The linking domain is what gives backlinks their power – authority that your site receives and accumulates. Not just any old website will serve this noble purpose.

How should you pick sites for link building? They need to meet the following criteria:

1. They have a high domain authority. The more they have, the more you receive from them through backlinks. When you see a potential backlink donor, be sure to check their DA first.
2. They rank high in Google. High ranking sites get more user traffic, meaning more people who can potentially see and click on your backlink.
3. Their userbase is likely to show interest in your website. Otherwise, they will ignore your backlink, diminishing its use to you.

How to find sites for link building

So where can you find those amazing websites?

Well, there are quite a few places where you can look.

1. Your direct online competitors

They are probably the best candidates for link building, because:

• They are thematically related to you, so no problems from Google.
• Their domain authority is higher than yours, so a backlink from them will pass you some of that authority.
• Their target audience is the same as yours, so it’s an opportunity to steal some of their clientele.

If you already know who your direct competitors are, that’s one part of the plan covered. If you don’t, then find them with WebCEO’s Dangerous Competitors tool.

2. Sites linking to your competitors

Your rivals build their own links, too – that’s how they got ahead of you to begin with. And if your site has anything in common with theirs, there’s a good chance you can build links in the same places as them.

So the question is, where are you competitors getting their backlinks? Find out using WebCEO’s Competitor Backlink Spy:

There should be at least a few sites in that list that will cooperate with you.

3. Sites that specialize in content like yours

Some websites have pages for recommending tools and resources to users. If those users are your target audience, then you have a solid chance of placing your own backlink there.

Those websites are easy to find. A simple Google search will do:

• (Your keyword) resources;
• (Your keyword) best pages;
• (Your keyword) links.

The only catch is, not all of those websites will be authoritative enough to be good backlink donors. Be sure to check their domain authority before trying to make your presence there known.

What are some ways to build links?

All right, now that we’ve fully established where, we can finally move on to how.

Here are some tried and tested ways to build high quality backlinks:

1. Find broken links on other sites and offer to replace them with a link to your content.
2. Find links to outdated content and offer to link to your up-to-date content.
3. Find unlinked mentions of your site or brand and offer to add a link to them.
4. Write guest articles on topically relevant sites.
5. Create rare or outright unique content (such as interesting data or games).
6. Create useful content (such as tools).
7. Create listings on review sites and business directories.
8. Collaborate with other sites and/or businesses (including your competitors).
9. Be a source of data for other sites.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg! Find many more (a whopping 24 in total) in our guide for link building.

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Track your progress in building links

Considering how hard it is to build links, at some point you might want to know if you are making any progress. Luckily, there are tools for that.

WebCEO’s My Backlinks reports come with a pretty good customizable summary that will let you see the overall state of things. More details can be found inside the reports themselves: new linking domains, new backlinks, lost backlinks, anchor texts.

And if there are any special backlinks that you want to keep an eye on, then you can add them in the Partner Links Watch tool. If they go missing, you will know at once.

But the best way to measure the success of your link building campaign is to check your site rankings. If they are going up and bringing you useful traffic, then you know your hard work is bearing fruit.

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