In English-speaking markets and many other foreign markets, Google reigns supreme. One of the key ranking factors in this search engine is backlinks. Whether you get the top or not largely depends on their quality and quantity.
This article continues my series of publications on website promotion abroad. Now that you know the main differences between link building for English-speaking markets and link building in Runet , it’s time to figure out where to get these same links. After all, exchanges like Miralinks and Gogetlinks, which are familiar to many, are not available abroad as a class.
Let’s look at the main sources of links for English-language sites, which you should look towards if you have to promote a project in the West.
Quality Content Is a Link Magnet
The best strategy is to create quality content. Good unique content is a source of traffic in itself and a magnet that attracts organic links to the page.
For information sites, high-quality content meets three criteria, which work equally in both Runet and the Burzhunet:
- Novelty. Retelling and rewriting what is already known is unlikely to bring many links.
- Importance. Content must matter to people.
- Interest. Even new and important content needs interesting presentation, storytelling, and formatting.
In the screenshot we see an example of an article where 90% of the links are organic.
The author of the Backlinko blog and the developers of the Buzzsumo platform did a lot of research . They analyzed millions of articles and blog posts and found that certain content formats were more likely to generate backlinks than others:
- Answers to the question “why?” – explanations of the reasons for events and actions.
- Answers to the question “what?” – informing about events and actions.
- Infographics.
- Video.
- Publications of general interest addressed to a large number of people.
- Answers to the question “how?” — Do It Yourself publications, guides.
- Lists.
In other words, if you want to get natural backlinks, focus on building these formats.
Brian Dean from Backlinco talked about a case where the company, located in Illinois, conducted a study of pollution in American cities. The study was cited by newspapers in San Francisco, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and many other cities because the information was relevant to them.
Content is king, but without link promotion, a worthy publication may wait too long to reach an audience. White-hat link building methods help to increase the link mass of sites in the Google zone.
Crowd marketing
Getting links on forums, in discussions and comments on websites, on UGC resources is a practice that has an effect all over the world. In SEO of English-language sites, crowd marketing is a rewarding area of work, since there are a huge number of suitable resources.
The difficulty is that you need fluent English to fit seamlessly into online discussions. Otherwise, neither comments nor links will be trusted. The solution is to hire native speakers for the job.
Some exchanges that offer crowding services on the RuNet post links on English-language sites. There are also those who specialize in burgh crowding.
The cost of one such link is from $3 to $7, depending on the quality of the donor. On the Kwork and Fiverr exchanges you can find relevant offers in the price range of $5-$10 per link.
Thematic and regional catalogs
We are not talking about spam databases, after running through which you can only get a few hundred junk links and a tough filter from Google to boot.
There are reputable company directories in many niches abroad. Links from them will be useful for promotion. From catalogs you can receive user transitions that are converted into leads.
Such directories are often monetized by selling sponsorship placements. The owners work on the development of catalogs, moderate them, and make sure that the resource looks attractive to a potential advertiser.
Readers
To promote websites in a number of topics, for example, “Business and Information Technologies,” you can use a little-known type of resource in Russia—readers—as a source of links.
Readers are platforms where authors publish article announcements. An algorithm based on user voting shows announcements to readers.
Examples of readers:
The main problem is finding such sites. Readers are comprehensive, but it’s not entirely clear what queries to search for them by. Therefore, most often the reader database is collected by analyzing the link profile of competitors.
Guest Posts
Guest blogging refers to the publication of an original article on an external resource. The goal is to get a mention and a backlink.
Guest posts are of interest to website owners who receive high-quality, unique content for free.
Google considers guest posts to be advertising and recommends closing the outgoing link with the nofollow attribute. Therefore, you need to write a guest post so that it resembles one as little as possible.
The obvious difficulty is the large amount of time and labor required to obtain one link, because the work consists of a number of steps:
- searching for a suitable site;
- negotiations with the administration;
- selection and approval of the topic for the article;
- researching a topic, writing a text;
- selection or creation of illustrations (video);
- approval and making edits before publication.
You can outsource everything, but such work, by definition, will not be cheap.
Outreach
The peculiarity of this link building method is in establishing personal contacts with site owners (bloggers, journalists, admins) and agreements with them. The goal is the same – getting links.
Outreach can be free when you receive a link in exchange for useful content. Or the site owner puts a link to your site for a fee.
Outreach differs from guest blogging in that the link is placed in already published material – a company rating, a selection of products, a relevant article.
Outreach is one of the most popular link building methods in English-speaking markets.
Services for working with journalists
There are platforms that connect experts with journalists. The principle is simple: a journalist posts a topic for which he needs an expert opinion. Experts respond, give interviews or comments. The journalist selects the most valuable ones. The expert receives a mention in the media and a link to his website.
Popular services in the West:
- Buzzstream
- Gorkana
- Muck Rack
- HARO
All services have a demo period. You will have to pay for advanced features. However, a link from a reputable media site in monetary terms will cost much more than the service fee. And there is no other way to get it except to act as an expert in journalistic material.
Services for distributing press releases
Journalists, in search of new topics, turn to services where companies publish press releases about their news. Among these services:
- PR Newswire
- NewsWire
- eReleases
- PRWeb
A press release about company news is much easier to write than an article or research. But there is one peculiarity: links from press releases on these services are closed from indexing. That is, they are useless for SEO. This is done to ensure that services do not turn into a link dump.
Therefore, in a press release you need to leave detailed contacts and demonstrate your readiness to immediately respond to a journalist’s request to tell you more about the topic or share an exclusive. The link will appear in a unique journalistic material in the media.
Blogging platforms and sites with a UGC section
In addition to popular platforms like Reddit and Medium where you can share links, many large niche sites have functionality for creating user-generated content.
You can publish an article there with a link to your website, and if it is of sufficient quality and relevance to the site, it will pass moderation without any problems.
Social media
Social media accounts cannot be classified as authoritative sources of links, but they are worth considering at the start of promotion.
It is valuable that an active public page ranks in the top search results for branded queries. This brings in buyers and clients and becomes an asset in search brand reputation management (SERM) .
Along with the popular global platforms Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube in Russia, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and LinkedIn have a mass audience in the English-speaking world.
Content platforms
Content is created not only in the form of articles, but also in various other formats. Content marketers advise repackaging an article once written into a checklist, presentation, or video. The efficiency of work increases, and the material finds a larger audience.
In the interests of link building, it is permissible to transform a blog post into an infographic or PDF file. These new pieces of content can be used as a link building tool by uploading them to sites that aggregate this type of content.
Examples:
- Slideshare – storing and sharing presentations;
- Infographic Journal – catalog of infographics;
- Issuu is a PDF publishing platform.
Lists of such sites can be found by queries like “pdf submission sites list” and similar.
PBN meshes
PBN is an abbreviation for Private Blog Network. This refers to a network of satellites created to promote one site or a group of sites. The scheme may seem quite expensive, but you need to keep in mind that several hundred dollars for a link from an English-language site is the norm. At these price tags, the cost of PBN is worth it.
Building a PBN is a science. Google has a negative attitude towards this method of link building. There is always a risk that the search engine will ban the entire network, on which a lot of time and money have been spent. In most cases, customers buy links from other people’s PBNs.
I don’t recommend this method of link building, but the truth is that it exists and a number of SEOs use it.
Links from educational sites
On the contrary, the Scholarship strategy or getting links from educational sites is a completely white technology. Moreover, it can be called noble, since it is a form of support for talented youth.
The idea is that a commercial enterprise establishes a grant for the best students. The grant size is small – it can be 200-300 dollars. The message about the grant and the conditions for receiving it are published on the websites of a number of universities with a link to the founder of the grant.
It should be taken into account that it is difficult for a commercial enterprise to obtain a link from the website of an educational institution (.edu zone) and from the website of a government organization (.gov zone), and such links are highly valued by Google. Therefore, Scholarship as a link building method easily pays for itself.
Instead of a conclusion
Above I have listed the most effective ways to get links for English-language sites. The methods can be scaled.
Dozens of other link building methods are known. But the result is not always worth the effort. The work doesn’t always scale. Sometimes you need to wait too long for links, or they are weak.
The listed link sources are suitable for almost any type of site. Provided you work systematically, the results of link building will not take long to arrive.
You need to follow a few simple rules that are the same for both the bourgeoisie and Russia:
- You need to get links gradually. No link explosions!
- You should receive it constantly. If the work is stopped after a year of placement, the achievements will go down the drain.
- We need to choose trust donors.
- You need to choose donors where the target traffic will come from. TA will improve behavioral factors.
Link building all over the world is no longer about purchasing any links, but about systematic work with the link profile.
The main thing is not to stop studying your competitors, because it is competitive analysis that often allows you to discover valuable sources of links that, after creative processing, you can use to promote your site.
If you have anything to add to the list of link building methods, write in the comments!
