Link Prospecting How to Find Quality Backlinks for Your Website

Link Prospecting How to Find Quality Backlinks for Your Website. We all know that getting good links for your website is really important for SEO. But it’s not about getting lots of links; it’s about getting the right ones.

So, how do you find those right links?

That’s where link prospecting comes in. It’s like searching for hidden treasure on the internet. You’re trying to find websites that are a good fit for your link-building plan.

Here’s why it’s important: Imagine you’re trying to make a delicious sandwich. If you use bad ingredients, like stale bread or spoiled meat, your sandwich will taste terrible. In the same way, if you get bad links from low-quality websites, it can hurt your website’s ranking on Google.

Link prospecting helps you find the good websites to get links from and also helps you avoid the bad ones. Google doesn’t like it when websites try to cheat by getting bad links. So, doing link prospecting helps keep your website in Google’s good books.

Sure, let’s break this down for you!

Why Link Prospecting Matters:

So, every website can accidentally end up with some spammy links. These can come from places like coupon websites or auto-generated blogs – not great for your site’s reputation.

Link prospecting is like a filter for your links. It helps you make sure that every link you get is intentional and actually helpful. This makes your website more important and trustworthy in the eyes of search engines like Google.

How to Do Link Prospecting in 5 Steps:

Step 1. Plan Your Link Building Strategy:

Think about how you want to get links for your website. There are different ways to do it, like guest blogging or getting mentioned in articles. Each way needs a different plan. So, decide which strategy you want to use.

For example, if you want to write guest blog posts, you need to find websites that accept guest authors and are related to your topic. If you want to get mentioned in articles, you might need to study what your competitors are doing.

Step 2. Decide What Makes a Good Prospect:

You need to know what kind of websites you want to get links from. This is your “evaluation criteria.” It’s like having a checklist to find the right websites. Here are some things to consider:

• Relevance: Does the website match what your business is about? If you want to be seen as an expert, you need links from websites that are related to your field. If you’re a local business, you want links from other local businesses.
• Domain Rating (DR): This is like a score for how strong a website’s links are. If a website has a high DR, it means it has strong links, which can help your site.
• Organic Traffic: Check how many real people visit the website. If it has a lot of visitors, it’s a good sign. But watch out for websites with high DR but no traffic – they might not be trustworthy.

You can easily check these things using a tool called Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

These are the first two steps in finding the right websites to get links from. Doing this well can boost your website’s reputation and help it show up higher on Google. 🚀

Time for step 3! Let’s find some awesome websites to get links from.

Step 3. Discover Great Link Opportunities:

Now that you know your plan and what makes a good website for links, it’s time to find these websites. I’ll show you four cool ways to do this.

1. Spy on Your Competition:

Ever heard the saying “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”? Well, in the world of SEO, it means checking out what your competitors are up to. Here’s why:

Your competition might already have found some amazing websites to get links from. So, if they linked to those sites, there’s a good chance they might link to you too. It’s like following in their footsteps.

For example, if your competitors are writing guest blog posts or using other link strategies, you can do the same. This can help you catch up with them in search results.

To do this, you can use a tool called “Organic Competitors Report” in Site Explorer.

2. Look for Blogs and Websites:

Another way to find good websites is to simply search the internet. Look for blogs, websites, and forums related to your topic. These places can be hidden treasure chests of link opportunities.

3. Use Social Media:

Check out social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. Sometimes, people share interesting articles or websites related to your field. These can be potential link sources too.

4. Join Communities:

Online communities and forums can be gold mines. People often share useful resources there. Just make sure to follow their rules and not be spammy.

So, step 3 is all about finding websites that could be your link buddies. Keep your eyes open, and you might uncover some real gems! 💎✨

Now, let’s move on to the next step. Pick out the competitors that matter the most to you and choose the “Open in Link Intersect” option.

When you do this, you’ll see a list of websites that link to your competitors. It will also tell you how many of your competitors are getting links from these same websites.

If you’re curious about the kinds of links your competitors are getting and what kind of stuff people are linking to, here’s a trick: take a competitor’s website address and put it into Site Explorer. Then, check out the “Best by links” report.

In there, you can see what content on their site is getting lots of links and which websites are doing the linking. This is super useful if you’re planning to create your own awesome content or build links.

And the cool part? You can filter the results to match your checklist of what makes a good website for links. So, it’s like picking the juiciest fruits from a tree! 🍎🌳

Here’s another tip, especially if you’re planning to create a really popular article (kind of like a skyscraper).

Step 1: Type in the keyword for your big article idea into Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.

Step 2: Check out the SERP overview. This shows you all the articles competing for that keyword on Google. Plus, you can see who’s linking to those articles. It’s like spying on your competition to see what’s working for them! 🕵️‍♂️📊

If you click on the number of backlinks for a result, you’ll see a report that shows all the websites linking to that page. You can make this list fit your checklist of what makes a good website for links, and you can even download it if you want. It’s like having a menu of websites to choose from! 📝🌐

Here’s an easy way to find websites that might want to link to your content. You can use Google, but with a few tricks.

1. Choose the Right Words: Think about what words are related to your business or what you’re writing about. Add words like “guest post” or “write for us” to narrow down the results.
2. Use a Handy Tool: If you have Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar, it’s like having a secret weapon. It shows you how strong a website’s links are right there in the search results. So, you can quickly decide if a site is worth considering.
3. Magic Search Words: There are some special search words that help you find good websites for certain things. For example, if you want to write guest blog posts, you can use words like “Contribute,” “Guest blogging spot,” or “Guest contributor.”

Here’s an example of how it works:

You can make a list of websites that might be interested in your content using special search tricks. It’s like putting all these websites in a spreadsheet.

And guess what? You can even make a computer do it for you using a free tool called LinkPitch. It’s like having a helper to do the boring stuff for you! 🤖📊

Here’s a cool way to find websites that might want to link to your stuff. It’s called Ahrefs’ Content Explorer, and it’s like a treasure map for finding awesome content.

What’s great about this is that it works for different ways of getting links. Let me break it down:

1. For Niche Edits: You can use the “Pages” tab to find content that’s related to your topic. It’s like finding pages where you can make small edits to add your link.
2. For Fixing Broken Links: When you visit a page, you can use Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar to spot links that don’t work. This can be your chance to swoop in and offer a working link, just like a hero!
3. For Digital PR: Check out the “Authors” tab. You can find cool people who write about stuff similar to yours. These are the folks you can connect with when you’re doing digital PR. It’s like finding your team of influencers! 🌟📚

The coolest part about using Content Explorer for finding websites to get links from is that you can make it super specific. It’s like using fancy filters to find the perfect match.

You can tell it to only show you pages or websites that:

• Have a certain strength (DR range), like how strong their links are.
• Get a specific amount of visitors.
• Are worth a certain amount in terms of traffic.

So, you’re not just fishing in the sea; you’re catching exactly the type of fish you want. 🎣🐟

And here’s another awesome thing you can do! After you’ve used those filters, you can easily save all the results in a spreadsheet. It’s like collecting all the gems you found in one place.

Now, let’s talk about the Web Explorer tool. It’s like a superhero for link building! This tool makes finding websites to get links from super fast and simple.

With it, you can do cool stuff like:

• Find pages that are getting links with specific keywords or topics.
• Discover blogs that are into the same stuff you are and let you write guest posts.
• And my personal favorite (because I do a lot of digital PR), you can find pages that mention your brand but haven’t linked to your site. It’s like finding hidden treasure!

You can save all these findings and then reach out to these websites to ask them to add a link to your site. It’s like saying, “Hey, you talked about us, can you give us a shout-out with a link?” 🦸‍♂️🌐📢

Now, it’s time for step 4! We’ve got a bunch of websites on our list, and now we need to figure out which ones are the best.

Here’s the plan:

1. Check for Relevance: See if these websites are a good fit for what you’re doing. Are they related to your topic or what your audience likes? That’s what we mean by relevance.
2. Look at Domain Rating: This is like a score for how strong a website’s links are. We’re aiming for websites with a Domain Rating (DR) between 40 and 80. It means they have good links.
3. Count Organic Traffic: Check how many people visit these websites every month. We’re looking for at least 1000 visitors. More visitors mean the site is popular.
4. Check Traffic Value: This is about how much these websites are worth in terms of traffic. We’re aiming for at least $1000.

These are the numbers we use at first to see if the websites are worth considering. But wait, there’s more!

Watch out for tricks:

Some websites play sneaky games. They try to look better than they are. So, don’t just trust the numbers. Look at the websites closely.

Spotting spammy websites:

Here are some signs to watch for:

• Not much or low-quality content.
• The website looks bad or messy.
• More ads than actual content.
• No “about” or “author” pages.
• Articles without specific authors listed (just “Editorial team”).
• Articles with lots of links going out.

Keep an eye out for these things to make sure you’re not getting fooled.

Google Gemini: What We Know So Far. So, that’s step 4. We’re like detectives checking out these websites to see if they’re good enough to link to.

But here’s the catch: When you actually go to the website, it’s a mess. The design looks bad, and the content isn’t great quality. Plus, there are so many ads on the page that it’s hard to even find the real content.

Read More: Google PageSpeed Insights For SEOs & Developers