Link Building in 2023: New Phase of SEO
What to Avoid in Your Link-Building Strategy
The problem: a LOT of the link-building guides on the internet are outdated or just impractical.
The skyscraper technique (hey, you linked to resource A, I have resource B, pls link to me) doesn’t work anymore.
I’ve built over 1,000 links in the past year for several client websites and learned a TON in the process.
In this post, I’ll go through the state of link building in 2023 and explain what works.
This is going to be a lengthy one, so get a cup of coffee and settle in!
Let’s go!
Is Link building really so Important?
Starting with the most important question here: do you need Link building in 2023?
You should ONLY do link-building once you have:
A strong SEO strategy is in place.
A good quantity of blog posts and resources
Otherwise, you'll have to work more to establish links, and the returns won't be good enough to make it worthwhile.
SEO is a long-term strategy, so it’s not for everyone. While you can certainly see results in as little as 1–3 months (or even sooner), those are exceptions to the rule rather than expectations.
If you need immediate revenue and want to avoid bankruptcy, try content marketing, pay-per-click advertising (PPC), direct sales or e-mail marketing.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way…
The BS
There is a TON of outdated info about link building on the net.
They just changed their old SEO Link Building Strategy blog Title to "Link Building in 2023".
Here’s what DOESN’T work these days:
Forum link-building. Most forums no-follow all outgoing backlinks.
Web 2.0 links. People spamming their links on Reddit are 100% wasting their time. Google can tell a user-generated content site apart from all other sites. Hence, links from Reddit, Medium, etc. are devalued big-time.
Blog comment links. Most blogs no-follow blog comment links, so that’s a waste of time too.
PBNs (ish). Well-built PBNs work just fine. The PBNs you bought from some sketchy forum, though, will crash your site big time.
Link farm backlinks. Links from sites built just to sell backlinks.
And before some of you go:
“But Sumit, I build Web 2 links and rank just fine!”
Of course, you can! But if your strategy has focused on building links through comments or low-quality content, then you’re probably not seeing the results that would come with a well-thought-out link-building campaign.
Another common misconception is that paying for links is going to get you penalized or it just doesn’t work.
The reality: Unless you're buying links that are obviously paid for, or building them in a way that's clearly unethical (e.g., by creating 20 links to one page exclusively over a short timeframe), Google can't tell whether your backlinks were paid for.
A lot of industries are just pay-to-play and nothing else. If you’re in CBD, forex, gambling, etc. you’ll 100% have to pay for backlinks or your competitors are going to outrank you big-time.
So what DOES work?
Real links from real, topically related websites.
E.g. if you run a fitness site, you’d benefit from getting links from the following sites:
Authoritative fitness blog/media
Small-time yoga blog
Weight loss blog/media/site
You get the drift. As long as the site publishes topically related content to yours, then that’s a good link prospect.
Media backlinks also work even if they’re not topically related. E.g. Mashable, Forbes, etc.
Some green flags that a backlink is a high quality are:
Their site is driving 1,000+ traffic from Google
Site publishes genuine, high-quality content
Site does NOT publish dozens of guest posts per month or sell backlinks en masse
Site has NOT been penalized lately (i.e. they didn’t lose a big chunk of their traffic)
Site does NOT publish backlinks/guest posts from gambling sites
They have an “about us” page & there’s a real person behind the blog
Link building in SEO is niche-dependant
Before we dive into the actual process, thought this was important to cover.
What kind of link building in SEO works best for you depends on your Niche.
#1. If you're blogging about yoga, it will be much easier to find bloggers who can link back to your site. There are a TON of blogs that are topically related and have enough authority to give boosts:
Fitness blogs
Yoga blogs
Weight loss blogs
These sites are also a lot more approachable. They’re usually run by amateurs and w/ a good personalized email, they’ll be happy to link to you.
#2. If you’re blogging in B2B, on the other hand, things are a bit more give-and-take.
Websites will want something from you for a backlink. Usually, that’s:
A high-quality guest post
Partnership in some way
Direct or indirect backlink exchange
So tl;dr, link-building in B2B is mostly relationship-building.
#3. If you’re in a competitive niche (CBD, VPN, etc.) then it’s pay-to-play. A good outreach game will definitely help, but you’ll have to pay a good $ for them to place your backlinks.
The link-building process
Now let’s talk practice!
The typical link-building process, from a top-down perspective, looks like this:
You come up with a link-building campaign type. Once you have decided what you are pitching or promoting, it is time to determine the content of your campaign. For campaigns to be successful, they should consist primarily of links and resources rather than product pages, people are more likely to share a link containing useful information about their niche audience's interests. And Also, Building links without content or an SEO strategy is a quick way to get penalized by Google.
VA collects link-building prospects based on certain criteria. E.g. blogs about, say, scrapbooking, tech reviews, whatever. Lots of ways to do this, but I’ll cover it in detail below.
VA finds the right point of contact for each prospect. They extract their email / contact info using some tool.
Copywriter creates a personalized outreach template for the campaign. You DO NOT want to copy-paste something from the internet.
Link-building specialist starts the outreach campaign. They keep track of responses and do what they need to do to secure link placements.
Let’s go through each step of this process one by one:
#1. Campaign type
The most common types of link-building campaigns are:
Link insertions
Guest posts
Broken link-building
Unlinked mentions
#3 and #4 are very situational and require their own approach, so we’ll skip that entirely.
Same with guest posts. Those require a bit more manual emailing and pitching, so let’s push that off for another time.
But tl;dr here is this: In this post, we'll focus on link insertion—one of the most scalable tactics to build backlinks and improve search rankings.
You won't need a fresh guest post written for every site you want to target; one pitch should do it!
Once you've done that, you want to create a resource or blog post that's so compelling and helpful, it will be worth people linking back to.
Some good examples:
Infographic they can insert into an existing blog. e.g. Top 21 Benefits of Weight-Lifting As Proven by Science
Long-form content. E.g. Top 101 Productivity Tips from Top Professionals
Fresh research. E.g. We surveyed 1,000 of our users about their dating preferences. Here are our findings.
Unique tool. E.g. Free tool to analyze your competitor’s backlink profile in a click.
Not sure what’s a good link magnet for your niche?
Analyze your competitors’ Top-performing pages using Ahrefs. This will reveal the types of content they produce that gets shared on social media or get the most Backlinks to them.
Once you’ve got your link magnet down, time for step 2:
#2. Link prospecting
Your Virtual Assistant gathers hundreds of possible prospects that meet your requirements.
So step 1 — You should Hire a VA (virtual assistant) to do this work. The process is extremely time-consuming, and if you are spending your own time on it, you won’t have much left for other important tasks.
You can use many different approaches when you try to get new customers.
The tactics:
Pick several blog categories that you’d benefit from getting backlinks from. E.g. fitness => yoga, weight loss, dieting niches, and so on. Prospect for such blogs w/ basic Google queries. E.g. “yoga blog,” “diet blog,” etc.
Pick out articles that would benefit from a long to your resource. E.g. if you’re promoting, say, a bachelor party checklist infographic, you can look up keywords about organizing bachelor parties and extract those prospects. “Organize bachelor party,” “bachelor party ideas,” “bachelor party examples,” etc. Pro-tip: you’re more likely to get backlinks from articles ranking on page 2+ VS ones ranking on page 1.
Pick out articles that can organically mention your product(s). For E.g. find articles about “top X gifts for year Y anniversary”
Run your competitors through Ahrefs and extract their backlink profiles. If they are linked to a competitor, chances are good that they will link to you as well (assuming that your email copy is great).
Check the backlink profile of competitors you found through Ahrefs or semrush, and reach out to bloggers who have linked to them but have not yet included you in their posts.
Most of these can be done either manually by a VA, or more quickly via automation using tools like ScrapeBox or Link Assistant.
#3. Finding The POC (Point of Contact)
This one’s pretty straightforward: if the site is large, you contact them; if it's smaller, they'll contact you.
Big media => you want to contact the author of the post specifically
Company of any size => you want to contact the head of content, editor-in-chief, or head of digital marketing
Personal or small-time blog => owner of the blog
Make sure your VA knows how to contact the right POC at each company.
Note: if you’re reaching out to small blogs, general emails like info @ company dot com can still work.
If you’re reaching out to a company, though, or a media, general email basically means that no one’s going to read your outreach.
#4. Creating personalized email copy
Many people who are new to link-building make a common mistake:
They copy and paste a template from an article on some top blog like Ahrefs or Backlinko, send it out to 200 people - and wonder why it didn't work out.
Here’s why:
Literally, everyone does the same exact thing.
It goes a little something like this:
(All Too Common) Outreach Email
Hey [Name],
I just stumbled on your blog while looking for articles about [topic].
I (totally for real for real) read your article and it’s like, really really cool!
But you know what it’s lacking?
A link to my site, eyyy.
Pls, link?
Bloggers and website owners are bombarded with these emails.
It’s SO DAMN GENERIC that even if you’re pitching the best resource ever created, you’ll get ignored.
So, if you want to run a successful campaign, make your own template.
Here are some suggestions for How to create high-impact outreach copy.
For your email subject line:
Include the name of the person or website you're reaching out to. For example, "[Name], you'll love the delicious recipes on [site]!"
Customize it to fit their specific interests. For instance, "[Name], need help climbing out of the beginner's level?"
Make it sound like a personal email. Use phrases like "Question, [name]?" or start with a friendly greeting like "[Name], it's great to connect with you!"
And here's the body of your email:
Begin with a genuine compliment about their website or content that applies to most of your prospects. For example, "I must say, your recipes are absolutely mouthwatering! I'm planning to try out your latest recipe for dinner with my [wife/husband]."
Include jokes or references that would resonate with someone in their niche. For instance, if they're into gardening, you could say, "As a budding green thumb enthusiast, I wanted to drop you a message and plant a few seeds of inspiration."
Refer to something they mentioned in their post. Get a virtual assistant to create a personalized column and add specific details from their post. For example, "Your article on 10th-anniversary gifts really came to my rescue! I've decided to get my wife a [gift from a recommended list]."
Keep the tone conversational and avoid corporate jargon. Your outreach emails should feel like you're writing to your best friend.
Lastly, it's best not to include images or links in your outreach emails as they can affect deliverability. If you need to include a resource, you can make an exception or add a call-to-action like "Let me know if you're interested, and I'll send you the post."
Optionally, you can offer something in return for the backlink. Here are some examples I've seen work:
We'll feature your site with a backlink in a future guest post on a different website.
We'll share your content with our Twitter followers, who number in the thousands.
We're even willing to offer financial compensation for the backlink.
Let's exchange backlinks to mutually benefit our websites.
You'll receive free access to our software for X months in exchange for the backlink.
We'll provide you with X free credits to use our SaaS tool.
#5. And launch!
Once you’ve got your prospects and email copy ready to go, launch your campaign.
Some info on the technical stuff regarding the outreach process:
Use a dedicated outreach domain. DO NOT use your main domain. Some peeps on the internet WILL report you for spam just because they had a bad day. If this happens, your email deliverability for your main domain will suffer.
Instead, use a dedicated outreach domain. E.g. if your brand is “brand dot com”, you can do “brand PR dot com”
Use either Google Workspace, private email, Office 365, or Zoho to create those private emails.
Use a tool to warm up the email. Such tools automatically send/open/reply to emails from new domains to “warm them up.” This helps improve the deliverability rates of your fresh emails. Warm up for around 2 weeks per inbox.
Don’t send more than 60 emails per day per email. Yes, this includes follow-ups. The more you go over this limit, the more likely it is for the inbox to get “burned” and your deliverability to the tank.
Speaking of follow-ups, do NOT do more than 2 follow-ups per email. If the prospect doesn’t reply after 2 emails, they’re probably not interested at this time.
Finally, don’t include links in your outreach emails. This helps improve deliverability. If you’re pitching a resource, you can make an exception there (or you can add a CTA like, “Just drop me a thumbs-up and I’ll send you a link”).
How to build backlinks when you’re broke
Many people have asked me about this before, so I thought it would be best to address their concerns here.
In a niche where links cost money, and you don’t have any?
Fortunately, there are ways to sidestep the pay-for-backlinks requirement.
Value-based guest posting is a must. The majority of pitches are low quality—short, spammy pieces with little or no benefit to the reader. Pitch your expertise and experience rather than just asking for a link back to your site. A Good example is picking out a keyword they want to target and writing a guest post targeting that. That’s value!
Use HARO, Terkel, or similar platforms. Basically, these are platforms that match journalists with sources. They can be a great way to sometimes land very high authority backlinks, or build up some homepage backlinks without too much hassle.
Follow other bloggers on Twitter or LinkedIn. Engage with their content, then shoot them a message offering to exchange links. For example, you could exchange links with bloggers whose work is relevant to yours. Friendship is magic! While this approach can be time-consuming if you're trying to build a niche site with no existing backlinks, it's ideal for that scenario.
Best tools for building backlinks
Now, let’s talk tools. You ain’t doing all this manually:
Semrush/Ahrefs as a general SEO tool. Both tools can be used to extract competitor backlink profiles. Either tool could also be used evaluate whether a certain site is a good backlink prospect.
Outreach tool. Snov is the most value deal there is (comes with email warmup, email finder credits, outreach tool—as well as a bunch of other features that are great for beginners). Pitchbox is the best-in-class link-building software if you’re looking to build links at scale or run an agency.
Hunter.io is great for finding prospect emails.
Link Assistant or Scrapebox for help with prospecting.
Warmup Inbox for email warmup.
MailGenius to check email health.
You can also use ChatGPT to write your email's first lines if you’re feeling spicy. There was a dedicated tool for this too, though I think it might've been discontinued now.
FAQ
I’ve answered many questions in this FAQ section, but if you still have questions I haven’t covered here, feel free to Follow for more.
#1. How many emails should I send per day?
This depends on the niche. Estimate your win rate per 100 emails and then count backwards from 400. If you've won 5 links for every 100 emails you send, but want to get 20 links a month in that same market—you'll need to email at least 400 people monthly!
#2. How long does it take for backlinks to kick in?
Links impact your site 1–3 months after being built (usually).
#3. How can I calculate the ROI of my link-building?
It can be really difficult to figure out how much money a particular link is worth, which makes it hard to know how much you'll get back from building links.
But here's the thing: if those links can help you move up from the second page to the top 3 Search Results when people search for your main Keywords, then there's a really good chance that you'll see a positive return on your investment.
Of course, this is only if you're focusing on the right Keywords that people are searching for.
This is literally why the catchphrase of SEO is “well, maybe, yes, but sometimes no, it depends…”
#4. Can I rank without backlinks?
It all depends on the specific category or topic you're talking about.
If there aren't many other people doing the same thing, then it's definitely possible to achieve that.
Otherwise, link quality/quantity will determine if you rank top 3, or page 2. Links also determine how fast you’ll rank.
#5. Will I get penalized for exchanging links?
According to a study by Ahrefs, most top websites have reciprocal links.
That’s just how the internet works. Unless all you have is direct link exchanges with hundreds of sites, you should be good/safe.
#6. Google said paying for links is bad, what do? 🙁
Paying for links is extremely common and most link-builders do it. If you’re doing it smart, you won’t get penalized / affected negatively in any way.
#7. How do I get backlinks from big media sites / authority sites?
Either through connections or digital PR, but that’s a completely different topic VS conventional link building in SEO.
#8. Who Am I?
Hey, Thanks for making it to the end. I love to share such Content that people are searching for.
My Name Doesn't matter, Cause my work talks a lot, My Name is Sumit Saxena and I am a content creator and SEO Services Provider as Freelancer.
#9 How to Choose a Trustable SEO Freelancer for Link Building?
You can find SEO freelancers on Linkedin, Upwork and Fiverr. And Also can Contact Me to Plan Your Content Marketing with Link Building Strategy.