As a business owner, you need to think of various methods to boost your business. While some methods are effective, many businesses have made them highly saturated.
This means that the competition is steeper than before. You must think of excellent alternatives that can boost your business's overall visibility. This is where a link-building campaign comes into the picture.
And contrary to popular belief, manual link building is still much more effective than before. Even though it’s slightly more time-consuming than the automated link building, the best manual link building strategies can still prove effective.
In this article, I will discuss some excellent link building techniques. Make sure you read this article to the end to know more.
Top Manual Link Building strategies
Knowing the strategies for manual link building is extremely important. I have seen many people fail to build links just because they forget to follow those effective tips. Let’s take a look at them.
1. Guest blogging on authority sites
For years, guest blogging has been one of the most trusted link building strategies; in 2024, it will be one of the core tactics for acquiring high-quality links. With the right contribution of high-value content on relevant websites, you can build links that are not only powerful but also drive targeted traffic to your site.
Getting guest posts off to a good start starts with selecting blogs. Resources such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz will help a company find authority blogs in a niche. Websites must have a domain authority of 50 or higher and possess a growing and involved audience.
However, after determining target sites, pitch unique, timely, and relevant topics to the host site's audience. Instead of choosing general or common topics, focus on pain points, trends, or questions that have not yet been further developed.
The content you produce should have a strong author profile. Chances are, the bio by the author contains the vast majority of the natural link back to your site. Ensure that your content in the bio has some form of clear call-to-action: “Be sure to check out my blog for more,” for example.
2. Broken link building
Broken link building is a genius strategy that involves helping website owners repair broken links on their pages. The hope is that you will suggest your content as an alternative, which will benefit both parties.
The most popular tools for identifying broken links include Ahrefs, Check My Links, and Screaming Frog. Look for 404 errors or links pointing at dead resources from higher authority sites in your niche.
Once you find a dead link, you must develop a suitable replacement. You must also send a good email to the website owner, letting them know that you've found a broken link and are offering your content as a replacement.
Your goal should be to build connections, not just link hoard. The more you see broken link building as a supportive, cooperative activity, the more you will help build lasting connections.
This strategy can easily scale into outreach across multiple sites. The more broken links you identify, the more outreach you have to do and the more targeted your efforts must be.
3. The skyscraper technique
The Skyscraper Technique essentially means adding more value to the content, which has already proven effective. This technique lets you gain the upper hand in getting more backlinks and improving things.
Use tools like BuzzSumo, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to determine what content performs best. Identify blog posts, guides, or infographics that help achieve many backlinks and social shares.
Now that you've found that commonly consumed content, it's time to improve it. New research, insights, case studies, or media, such as videos or infographics, make the resource more comprehensive.
Now that you have refined the content, publish it on your website. The most crucial points are SEO optimization, the right keywords, meta descriptions, and a compelling headline.
4. Resource page link building
Resource pages are collections of valuable resources on a particular subject, such as tools, articles, and guides. Getting some of your content featured on such pages is great because you will have fantastic backlinks from sites considered authorities in your niche.
Find relevant resource pages in your niche. You can do this with search results such as “[keyword] resources” or “best [industry] tools.”
Now, it’s time to create valuable content. Only if your content is of the highest value or utterly relevant to a topic on a resource page will you get it displayed there.
Having created something of value, which you hope will end up on some other resource page, it's time to contact the webmaster or owner of that page. Let them know why your content is valuable and how it would specifically benefit their target audience. Keep it friendly and helpful.
Remember, you have to give more value sometimes to get on that coveted resource page. If you do not receive a response from your initial outreach, it's not a problem. If they don't respond, visit them politely for the next week or two.
Once the contents go live on your resource page, start re-sharing their work and proposing further collaborations to the webmaster of that specific site so that your relationship with him doesn't sour.
5. HARO (help a reporter out)
The website connects journalists with experts. Responding to relevant questions can help you find featured in news articles, blogs, and other major publications while gathering high quality links.
Sign up with HARO and receive daily emails when journalists seek story sources. Since these are categorized under topics, finding the best opportunities most relevant to your niche will be easy.
If you encounter a question that is answerable and you are an expert in that subject, reply immediately with a thoughtful, well-researched answer.
When you leave your response, remember to add a relevant link back to your website. This can be a link to your homepage or an otherwise appropriate page, but it should flow naturally with your answer in context.
HARO is not just link building. It also builds your authority in the industry. The more you repeat this exercise, giving journalists important insight, the more reputation you will build as an expert.
We use Google Alerts or Ahrefs to identify where our answers are getting published. We track media mentions for traffic and SEO benefits accruing due to them and refine our approach based on that knowledge.
6. Unlinked brand mentions
Sometimes, people write about your brand or website in articles or blogs without sending them to your site. Find the authors of those mentions and ask them to turn that unlinked brand mention into a valuable backlink.
Using Ahrefs or Google Alerts, search for brand mentions around the web and identify those in which your brand was mentioned without a link. Unlinked mentions are a gold mine of easy backlink opportunities.
If you see an unlinked mention, you might want to send the author or webmaster a grateful email asking if he or she would be alright with adding the link to your site. Thank them for mentioning your brand.
Sometimes, you can also propose a return of favors that will increase your chances of receiving the link. This may involve sharing their posts on your social media pages, and you may even work with them to create other future projects together.
That is how most of the other manual outreach link building works – it is all about building relationships. Reach out to them, like their content, and then keep in touch for future link building.
Identify all the other possible opportunities once you have a backlink from an unlinked mention. You can also create alerts for your competitors and get other unlinked mentions about your industry.
7. Blogger outreach campaigns
You reach out to the influencers and the bloggers in your niche and attempt to build genuine relations with them for backlink generation. This is highly targeted and will increase site authority immensely if executed correctly.
Target the bloggers who produce content related to your industry. Using tools such as BuzzStream or NinjaOutreach, you can search for bloggers based on your target keywords.
When reaching out to a blogger, you should first provide value. For example, you can offer something to take advantage of by visiting their website as a guest blogger. You want to write towards a contextual link within a blog post when you have a contextual link.
You can track results using outreach tools like BuzzStream or Pitchbox to manage outreach. Identify who is linking to the site and with what amount of referral traffic that may generate.
8. Niche forum and community engagement
Niche forums and online communities are yet another manual outreach link building form. Participate in niche groups or forums in areas where your ideal customer interacts, and you can organically earn links from such forums and niche communities.
Reach out to active forums and online communities in your niche. To find them, search the local search for active forums, Quora and Reddit, specialized forums, or even LinkedIn groups.
Before you can link out, build your presence in these communities. Participate in discussions, answer questions, and give meaningful and relevant insights.
Do not promote your site. Instead, add value by providing meaningful depth in answers to questions and sharing insightful experiences. When linking to your self-site, you must ensure that the resource you are linking benefits the community.
But never spammy links to your website. Be strategic and discriminatory about where and how often you post links to your site.
9. Link roundup participation
Link roundups are blog posts, perhaps published weekly or monthly, in which the author aggregates the best content in a certain niche. For that reason, providing such content can yield highly sought-after links through landing onto these link roundups.
Google for websites in your niche with a regular post on a “weekly roundup” or “best articles”. Using terms like “weekly roundup” or “best articles” will make it much easier to find potential opportunities.
Your content should be of high quality and relevant enough to be featured on a round-up list. Be sure to create unique, in-depth content that stands out in the niche.
Once you find some potential roundups, contact the curator of that post. In your outreach, let them know you have been noticing their roundup series and would love for them to consider your latest post in one of your future editions.
If your content made it to the roundup, share it on your social media channels for easy access to a broader audience. Monitor the number of backlinks you get from link roundups and track the referral traffic.
10. Competitor backlink analysis
Analyzing other people's backlinks can be one of the best ways to discover new link building opportunities that are at least semi-manual. You can reverse-engineer their strategy and target the same sites, thus earning the same backlinks.
You can find your top competitors using Ahrefs or SEMrush.Identify competitors ahead of you in search engine rankings for your targeted keywords.
Use tools like Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush to analyze your competitors' backlinks and drill down to find out which websites link to them and which page of theirs earns the most links.
Do a link gap analysis to see what backlinks your competitors have that you don't. Target those linking to multiple competitors but not to yours. If your competitors are getting links to some kind of content, you'd better create or are better than them.
Once you've created your asset, contact sites that link to competitors to let them know you have a better alternative resource they might be able to use. Competitor backlink analysis should also continue. Periodically, at all times, search the competitors' link profiles to identify fresh opportunities and stay on top of the action.
11. Collaborative content creation
One win-win strategy for cooperating with other brands, influencers, or websites is co-creating content; both will benefit from their exposure to respective audiences, quality backlinks, and traffic.
Identify potential collaboration partners whose audience is either the same or additional. They are influencers, bloggers, or even businesses within your niche.
Work with content ideas that could be of similar value to both your audiences. There are many ways to do this, such as co-authored blog posts, interviews, podcasts, or even webinars.
You and your partner finalize an idea, then work out the quality content that will be of value to each audience, of course, with links to the other person's site.
Ready for Manual Link Building?
Manual link building is still one of the most influential and sustainable approaches to improve SEO in 2024. More than 40% of businesses spend around $2,000 monthly on their link building campaign. While automation accelerates some parts of the SEO process, no tool will substitute the human touch for more authentic, high-value backlinks.
Link building services by manual means will ensure your website is better ranked and you connect with other experts in the niche more permanently. Quality and relevance are the future regarding what search engines look for.
What are your thoughts on manual link building? Have you tried any of these strategies before? Let me know in the comments below.
