Which link building tactics do actually work?
I'll start first. I recently found this article which matches my experience and outlines link building tactics that:
a) Don't work (well)
- The "skyscraper technique" (reason: oversaturated)
- Broken backlink building (reason: lacking "what's in for me")
- Buying high DA domains (reason: "if it's too good to be true, it probably is")
a) Tactics that work
- Stats compilation (people who write articles often link to webpages providing stats that support their theory)
- Data-backed research report ( (I did this with Zero to Users and it worked well over the long run)
- Create a free tool (also known as "engineering as marketing" or "side-project marketing"). As indie founders, we can do this better than the rest
- Guest posting on sites that don't publicly say they accept guest posts
- Unlinked mentions (you monitor who mentions you on the web and ask for a link)
- HARO (Help a Reporter Out). This worked great for me in the travel niche.
Which link building tactics have worked for you?
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Skyscraper Technique
For one of my business we use the skyscraper technique with great success but there are some major notes of modification that we run, that i'll detail below.
Article
We pick a base article here that we think should be a good outline for the topic in question. We then google that topic, and similar phases around that topic. We compile 20/25 links that all rank in the top 5 of Google for the target terms. After doing this research we start to write the article ensuring that we use all articles and information to create total new content that encompasses all parts of the issue. This content is typically around 1500/2000 words and normally very detailed covering many keywords organically.
Video
We now create a YouTube video on this content that is normally around 4/5 min talking about the article and going more in depth on the topic. The key here is that we title the YouTube video the same thing as the article and the only thing in the description of the video is a link to the article.
Shorts
Break down your video into shorts, each item you discussed in the video now gets broken down into its own social media clip. These clips will be shared by your social media, ie Twitter, YouTube Shorts, TikToc, Facebook, etc... where your customers are, these shorts link back to the longer form video.
Closing Notes
Thanks for sharing!
HARO worked for me as well. For some industries better, for some worse (business/marketing seems to be saturated the most). Anyone knows other sites like HARO?
I find that creating infographics helps also with link building.
Instead of someone having to link to a whole article or report, one piece of information, presented visually, can be enough.
Sounds great! Do you have any example infographic you've created that brought you links? Curious to learn :)
My fave is engineering as marketing, being a dev.
Not only is it backlinking, but once its visible on search engines, it becomes another source of first-party keywords that show up in Google Search Console
re: backlinking, this is because you're putting the free tool up at its own domain and linking to your main site?
We've got a small JavaScript function writer as part of our product. I'm considering releasing as a standalone traffic generator, but hadn't considered the domain yet.
Hey James! for backlinking purposes, I put it on mainapp.com/side-project-name so if people link to it, it's to a subdirectory of my main website
You could make it so that your js function writer can live o na subdirectory to save you the trouble of managing another domain. the slug can even be a product defining keyword
Ah, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying, we’re going to have to try this.
Curious if you've tried this for some of your projects.
I have! I made a podcast search engine / finder for a project of mine. At the very least it brings in keywords such as "podcast finder" and rides the wave on the names of podcasts as well.
I love the skyscraper technique but you gotta be more creative nowadays!
Have you had any success with it?
yep I was ranked #2 on Google for the longest time - generated 1800 leads and it was on the keyword "streaming tips" (for twitch)
alas, now only 2nd if you type "tips for streamers 2022"
How's HARO For Tech Niche?