SEO Link Building: How I built Over 2000 backlinks to my website

WANT TO BOOST YOUR SEO TRAFFIC, RANK #1 & Get More CUSTOMERS?

Get free, instant access to our SEO video course, 120 SEO Tips, ChatGPT SEO Course, 999+ make money online ideas and get a 30 minute SEO consultation!

Just Enter Your Email Address Below To Get FREE, Instant Access!

In this article, I’m gonna break down the SEO link building methods and general thinking that helped me build over 2000 backlinks to my site. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking…

…Did you just go to Fiverr and buy 2000 spammy links just so you could make this video? 

Well, while that’s definitely an option, I didn’t do that here — I mean what do you take me for! 

Nope, these were pretty much all high-quality links that I built manually. And I’ve got the numbers, and results, to back-up the quality of these links. 

For example, after building these links, I managed to 10x my traffic in 2021. 

I also managed to take my DR from basically single digits, to 49.

In fact, after using all of these techniques together, I actually secured a $5,000 per month client. And my website continues to generate amazing leads like this, thanks to my link building efforts. 

Now, you might be familiar with some of the methods I used to get results here. But some of them, such as the one I’m gonna cover in section 2, might be new to you. 

So, make sure you stick around or else you might just miss out on that one tactic that’ll help you get the same results as me. 

Let’s get started!

Tactic #1 – The HARO Method

Okay, so the first tactic we’re gonna cover here is known as the HARO method

If you didn’t know, HARO stands for “help a reporter out.” 

HARO is basically the name of a website that journalists use whenever they need a source. 

Now, keep in mind there are other websites that journalists use to get sources, such as Sourcebottle. 

However, if someone gets these kinds of links using a site like Sourcebottle, people will still say they used the HARO tactic. 

At this point, it’s kinda just become the blanket term for this approach. 

Anyway… How does HARO actually deliver links? 

Well, journalists will go to a website like HARO to find a credible source for an article that they’re writing.

If you become a member of HARO, you can see these journalist requests. And you can then put yourself forward as a source. 

If the journalist chooses you as a source, they might then link to your website when they’re writing their article. And that’s basically how you get your link. 

Now, you might have some doubts about this method, and whether it’s worth the effort. 

But here’s the thing you need to understand…

You see…A lot of these journalists work for massive websites that have a lot of authority. 

Therefore…if you manage to get a link from one of them, it can have a huge impact on your site. 

I mean, here are some of the links I managed to secure using this method. 

Here’s a link from the website cloudways.com. 

They have a DR of 89 — that’s amazing, right?

This method even helped me get a link from Yahoo finance! 

…and they’ve got a DR of 92!

It was these kinds of links that allowed me to achieve such a rapid increase in DR, as shown in this graphic ––

It’d be nearly impossible to get these links, and achieve these kinds of results, without this technique. 

I mean there’s the option of paying for them. But you’d have to put up a decent amount of money — I’m talking thousands. 

Now, if you want a super in-depth guide on how you can get results with this strategy. I really recommend this video of mine, where I basically go through this tactic from start to finish. 

However, for now, I’m just gonna cover a few things that you really need to be aware of when it comes to this tactic. 

For the most part, you really just wanna make things as easy as possible for the journalist. 

So, when you see a journalist request, you wanna answer their question as clearly as you can. 

It’s really important you hit all the points requested by the journalist. 

One of the unfortunate things about this approach is that lots of people know about this method. And so you’re sadly gonna have a lot of competition. 

But, if you can provide a stellar, standout response, you’re gonna increase the odds of the journalist going with your answer, over someone else’s. 

You should also include a headshot whenever you send in a response. 

Now, some journalists might request a headshot when they’re writing out their request. 

However, some journalists might not mention this, until they decide to go with your response. 

Either way, sending a headshot picture alongside your response is a good way to make life easier for the journalist. 

After all, if they see your response, and they see that it also comes with a headshot. It basically means less work for them in terms of having to request one.

All of which means that they’ll be more likely to go with your answer in the end. 

Tactic #2 – The Skyscraper Method

Okay, so the other technique I used to build links to my site, was the Skyscraper technique.  

This approach has become pretty popular, and you might’ve heard about it already. 

If you don’t know much about this technique, it basically revolves around the following steps — 

  • First, identify a keyword you’d like to rank for.
  • Then, you look at the top-ranking content for that keyword. 
  • Once you’ve done that, you look at the people that are linking to this content.
  • You then create something better than the existing competitor content. And you then ask the people linking to your “competitors,” to also consider linking to your content. 

And that’s pretty much it! — Of course, you’re probably thinking that this is all easier said than done.

I mean there’s quite a few steps here. And whether you’re an SEO newbie or pro, it’s fair to say that each step sounds kinda complicated and hard. 

And, in a way, this is sorta true. 

I mean, to be honest, the Skyscraper method isn’t the easiest link building tactic on offer.

But, it is one of the best approaches if you wanna build high-quality backlinks that don’t go against Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Plus, the fact that this tactic is sorta hard… Is actually kinda a good thing. 

That’s because the links you secure with this approach are gonna be hard to replicate

And that means it will be harder for competitors to overtake you, once you land these links!

Plus, all of this work is worth it, because each outreach campaign can actually bag you a huge number of links, in a short amount of time. 

I mean check out the number of sites that link to me —

Of course, all of these links don’t come from the Skyscraper method —  

But even still, it’d be kinda hard to bag this many links if I just focused on the other strategies mentioned in this article. 

Anyway, with all that said, let’s cover a few of the things you need to focus on if you wanna get results for this approach.

So, as mentioned, there are basically four things you need to focus on here:

  • Identifying a keyword
  • Creating better content 
  • Finding out who’s linking to your competitors 
  • Doing outreach. 

The identifying a keyword task is probably the easiest bit here. 

I mean, you probably already have a decent sense of the “keywords” that you should focus on in your niche. 

Of course, if you don’t know this, you can check out this video where I cover keyword research.

When it comes to creating better content, there are a few things you need to focus on. 

One way you can create better content is by making your content more in-depth than what is already ranking.

You might also wanna make it more current, so that it contains up-to-date information. 

On top of that, you might wanna include some graphics. So that it’s easier to interpret the information in the article. 

Now, if you wanna find out who’s linking to your competitors, you might wanna invest in a tool like Ahrefs

That’s because using Ahrefs, you can basically just put the URL of an article into Ahrefs, and it’ll then tell you who’s linking to this content. 

You can then identify the websites with a high DR, and put them into a spreadsheet so that you can focus on them later on.

When it comes to prospecting, and actually reaching out to people, there are a few things you need to focus on if you wanna get results. 

To begin with, you need to make sure you’re collecting accurate emails.

I mean, this method is gonna fall flat if you’re just sending prospecting emails to invalid email addresses.  

Luckily, if you use a tool like Hunter.io, it isn’t that hard to ID valid emails for the websites you wanna reach out to and get links from.

If you wanna learn how to use this tool, you can check out this video, where I go over how this tool works.

You also wanna make sure you’re sending engaging emails. 

These websites probably get tons of requests for links, and so you wanna make sure you stand out. 

Try to make your emails funny and concise. If your emails are entertaining, people will be more willing to give you a link. 

For example, here’s an outreach email I used for one of my other sites “relaxlikeaboss.com.” 

If you check it out, you’ll notice that it’s relatively light-hearted, and it doesn’t really feel like a spammy email.

You should try to do something similar when sending out your own outreach emails.

If you don’t think you can write emails like this, at least try to make your emails short and to the point. 

In fact, keep reading, you’ll see that in the next section I actually cover an outreach email that produced brilliant results. Even though it wasn’t that comedic/entertaining.

This email worked because it was short and to the point. So keep that in mind if you’re struggling with writing emails. 

  • And also, you should also make sure you send follow up emails too. 

If you don’t do this, you might end up missing out on a lot of really good opportunities to build links. 

Anyway, that’s basically how this technique works. 

It’s helped me build a ton of really good links. And if you can get your head around how this method works, I’m sure you’ll be able to achieve the same. 

If you wanna learn more about this strategy, you can check out this video.

Also, I just wanna say that if you wanna get results with this strategy, but you’re feeling a little bit intimidated by the whole process, consider reaching out to us. 

I’ve used this approach to build links for myself, but also for many of my clients.

  • If you book a free consultation call with me at juliangoldie.com, I can definitely help you figure out how you can get results with this approach. 

Tactic #3 – Video Outreach

Right, so the next method we’re gonna focus on is video outreach. 

This is a really cool technique, and I don’t see a lot of people using it. 

This might sound like a bad thing, but when it comes to link building, creativity is really important. 

After all, if you can be creative, it’s often easier for you to land links because you’re taking a different approach. 

This is key, because if you’re requesting a link from people, they might be more willing to engage with you, if you’re using a different angle than everyone else. 

Either way, I really like this approach, and it’s landed me some great links to some of my actual sales pages and my homepage too. 

This is actually kinda significant, because getting links to these kinds of pages is actually pretty hard, as they tend to be quite promotional. 

Of course, most people don’t wanna link to a page that’s purely promotional, and that’s why this method is so cool, because it actually helps me build links to these kinds of pages. 

For example, here’s one of the links I managed to secure using this tactic. 

This link actually goes to my homepage. 

Anyway, before I explain how you can use this approach, let me just give you a quick rundown of the strategy.

Right, so there are around 5 steps here.

  • First, I go to the content explorer section on Ahrefs, and find a relevant topic that’s getting a lot of attention, or a topic that’s relevant to the page I’m trying to build links to. 
  • ItThen look at the topics that come up in the content explorer of Ahrefs, and I see what’s attracting the most links. 
  • Afterwards, I then create a video around one of these topics. 
  • I then reach out to the websites that cover these topics, and ask them if they’d be willing to embed my video. 
  • Finally… I ask them if they’d be happy to credit my video, by adding a link underneath it. 

Confused? — don’t worry  — let’s go through a real example here that’s based on my site. Hopefully this example will make things easier to understand!

Right, so I wanted to build links to a page that was about link-building. 

Because of this, I went to the content explorer on Ahrefs, and typed in  “link building.”

By the way, a really important thing to note here is that I picked the “title” option. 

This just made it easier for me to identify content based on this topic. 

Anyway, once I did this, I then saw that the topic with the most links here was an article about “link-building strategies.” 

Therefore, I knew that if I created a video based on a similar topic, I would also be able to get a good number of links. 

So, once I figured this out, I then created a video based on the topic of guest posting for SEO — which is basically a video about one specific link-building strategy. 

It’s a pretty simple video, and if you want to, you can check it out here.

Anyhow, I then created a pretty basic outreach email, so that I could get people to actually use this video on their site. 

And then I sent this email out to relevant websites.

Of course, as with the Skyscraper tactic, this is all a bit of a numbers game. 

Some websites are happy to give you a link, and some don’t really take an interest. 

But, thanks to my simple outreach emails, and my fairly large cold email outreach list, I eventually managed to secure a good number of links using this strategy. 

And that’s pretty much it!

As you can see it’s not a particularly complicated method, but like the Skyscraper tactic, it does require a good bit of upfront work. 

I mean you need to create an engaging video, or else it’s gonna be difficult for you to secure links. 

Of course, once you’ve made a couple of videos, you should be comfortable with making video content, and you should then find that you can knock out high-quality videos pretty quickly. 

Conclusion

Hopefully, the tactics I’ve covered will help you also build some really good links to your site. 

PS, if you want some advice on how you can pull these methods off, book in a FREE SEO Strategy Session with us at juliangoldie.com.

Picture of Julian Goldie

Julian Goldie

Hey, I'm Julian Goldie! I'm an SEO link builder and founder of Goldie Agency. My mission is to help website owners like you grow your business with SEO!

WANT TO BOOST YOUR SEO TRAFFIC, RANK #1 & GET MORE CUSTOMERS?

Get free, instant access to our SEO video course, 120 SEO Tips, ChatGPT SEO Course, 999+ make money online ideas and get a 30 minute SEO consultation!

Just Enter Your Email Address Below To Get FREE, Instant Access!