Advanced Link Building Strategies For National, International & Local via @sejournal, @rollerblader

Advanced link building is about attracting links to your sites, and ideally in mass.

There might be a little bit of outreach necessary, especially if you need to fan the flames, but the main goal is to get media outlets, niche websites, industry publications, and bloggers to link to you naturally.

With a bit of creativity, strategic marketing, and a hands-on approach, this can be achieved.

Below, you’ll find some of the methods we’ve recommended and tested, but with variations to maintain client confidentiality.

These strategies can be modified for just about any niche or industry, and can work effectively for publishers, ecommerce, service providers/lead gen, and apps.

It is all about proper execution. If you take shortcuts or use templates and mass emails, you’ll likely not succeed.

But before diving in, here are the things we do not recommend to clients. These either fail to deliver results or work until you get caught and then you get penalized if you cannot offset them with good links.

Guest posting for backlinks (absolutely okay for PR and customer acquisition). Scholarships and grants. Forum commenting. Social media profiles. Parasite SEO, where you give yourself backlinks. Instead, you can do this to rank the site for phrases, but the pages won’t pass authority. They can send you traffic, though. PBNs, Link Farms, Webrings, Link Rings, Roundups. Link exchanges or reciprocal links (with some exceptions). Paying for high DA sites that also link to “Payday, Porn, Pills, Poker” niches.

Hire Someone Or Offer Services For Publicity

Think about something your audience needs or loves directly related to your products or services.

Or, think about something your audience needs a solution for that you and your staff can provide.

One example of this can be a travel company that pays people to travel the world and blog about it (I share non-travel ideas afterward).

Yes, they get content for their sites, but the value of the copy diminishes once the person’s trip ends.

If the traveler builds a following and the following reads your blog, they might leave when the person does, especially if the next author cannot connect with them.

So, why use this as a link building strategy?

It plays into people’s aspirations and emotions. When you tap into emotions like laughter, anger, jealousy, ambition, empathy, sympathy, etc., you inspire action.

People dream of traveling the world. A chance to get paid to do it for simply writing about your journey – sign them up!

Bloggers, media companies, and others are likely to write about it and link to the campaign, but you need to do the work of getting the word out. Here’s how:

Email and SMS your customers to let them know about the opportunity. Run social media ads to the public using interests and demographics for targeting. Add a specific ad group for people who work in the media and contribute to get your content in front of the right eyes. Sponsor a booth at a tradeshow for the industry where you advertise your service and the job opportunity. In this case, it could be TBEX, which is for travel bloggers, and Taste Maker, for food bloggers. List it on the job boards and see if it gains interest and shares.

Once you find a platform that generates buzz, keep pushing it as you’re looking for the virality.

There is one catch: You will need to do more link building later, as this is a one-time acquisition campaign.

The good news: You can learn from this campaign and apply it to new ideas and strategies to keep the links coming in.

Now, let’s tweak this campaign for a local strategy while keeping the same theme.

Hosting Offline Events For Local SEO Backlinks

On my blog and at conferences, for people needing natural local backlinks, I’ve shared strategies for local businesses to host educational events or provide spaces.

The goal here is to keep something ongoing – whether weekly, monthly, or quarterly – so the existing links remain in place and new ones can develop.

It works for all types of local businesses, from retail stores and medspas to religious institutions and storage facilities.

Here are some examples:

Example 1: Medical practices can host a weekly or monthly closed event to teach parents and children how to administer injections for diabetes or allergy shots in emergencies, like anaphylactic shock.

It can also be community center volunteers who learn how to administer Narcan for overdoses and detect specific types of overdoses to apply the correct treatment.

Example 2: Anyone with space and a slow night each week can host meetups and groups like group therapy or Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), knitting or crafting circles for widows or people who just moved to the area and are lonely, or a safe space for studying after school when parents have to work.

Doing something good for a community or group with a need is rewarding on its own. As a bonus, it can be a media-worthy pitch when they need a feel-good story for PR.

Example 3: Organize pop-up events, including animal adoptions, local designers, crafters, or bakers, to display for a day or a week.

By hosting a new pop-up, even if it is the same repeating theme, your business becomes a go-to resource for community engagement.

These complementary brands send social media signals and traffic to your store, bring in new customers as they announce the pop-up, and get citations as people want to know how they can grow or discover new things in their cities.

Slow nights and extra space provide the perfect opportunity to get backlinks.

Once your event gains traction, you can reach out to other companies and non-profits whose audiences would benefit.

In the medical example above, reach out to pediatricians’ and physicians’ offices. For community meetings, collaborate with religious institutions or government websites that link to local community resources or schools for the same reasons.

Sponsorships

You should not buy sponsorships solely for backlinks, but backlinks can result from being a sponsor.

The goal is to create something media-worthy at the event, or an initiative that inspires people to mention your company over others.

This works for niche companies that can be local, national, or international, such as SEO tool providers and SaaS solutions.

It also works for mining and lumber companies or local restaurants and chains. For marketing agencies, performers like singers and actors, and even a veterinary practice.

Here are some examples:

Example 1: Every city has dog meetups or races. Here in DC, we have the annual Chihuahua races around Cinco de Mayo and the Drag Queen High Heel race around Halloween.

For the dog races or meetups, sponsor a couple of the pooches and dress them in costumes with your URL on them. Everyone loves a puppy in costume, and that URL makes its way around the images.

Same with sponsoring a drag queen. Give her a sash or title featuring your company name and/or URL. Take it a step further by sponsoring a drag queen at other events for photo ops, like a drag race, an eating competition, or something unexpected (as long as she is safe).

Example 2: Conferences have media companies, bloggers, and coverage like crazy. Think about your booth and the PR stunts you can do within your industry.

Some booths bring in celebrities, and everyone wants to take their photo with them. These booths also get mentioned in the conference roundups and you can ask for backlinks.

Other times, it’s being creative, like creating an arcade, setting up a beauty salon, or doing IV hydration drips.

The added bonus to the beauty salon and IV drip (I’ve seen this at shows, and it was awesome) is that you get a captive audience of potential customers.

Being Listed As A Service Provider

This applies mostly to brick-and-mortar businesses, but may work for some ecommerce sites and service providers as well.

Think about what your customers and potential users do, and where you fit into their lives.

For example, if you’re a restaurant in a city, you want locals, business people, and tourists. So, citation links are already on your radar, but what about usage and recommended service provider links?

I live in Washington, DC. If I’m planning on going to the theatre, I’ll probably want drinks or dinner beforehand.

If I’m from out of town and in DC to see a show, I’ll probably want a hotel nearby.

This is where you can get a lot of solid backlinks. Type “restaurants near National Theater,” “hotels near arena stage,” or “places for drinks near Kennedy Center.”

Each of these queries brings up the theater’s own website, things to do in DC results, and some directories.

These are easy backlinks to get and can bring customers through your door. Double bonus. It’s the exact type of link that can help grow your business.

Now, look for convention centers, conferences, annual pop culture events, and other things happening in your city or nationally.

There will be fan sites, reviews, guides on what to do, trade publications, and associations that all provide resources around these.

By getting on their radar, you can get backlinks from them, with potential customers spending money on your products and services.

Final Thoughts

The ultimate goal of advanced link building is to bring links to your site organically, minimizing the need for manual outreach while acquiring more quality links at scale.

The techniques outlined above tend to have a snowball effect when done well, or build enough authority that you become a recognized brand and entity related to your products and services.

Once this happens, your rankings begin to stabilize, and you should find that you attract more links naturally.

More Resources:

50 Types of Links You Want & How to Build Them Link Building Outreach Guide For Beginners The Dark Side Of Link Building

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