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Power link building, hm … what is it exactly?
It’s getting links that matter the most, that help the most.
It’s acquiring links where, if you get just one, it counts as if you’ve got a hundred.
It’s a way for you to cut short your path to rankings, traffic, and profit!
Don’t you believe it’s possible to do that, but curious to learn more?
Keep reading …
What’s the deal with link building nowadays?
So you noticed it too?
Webmasters have become link savvy.
What I mean is, it was much easier to get links 10 years ago.
Back then most people didn’t know that links matter for SEO. Some didn’t know what SEO is, and they linked out left and right like they were giving candy.
Now things are different, which is why you’re reading about power link building.
Everyone knows backlinks are extremely valuable for ranking higher in Google and want some kind of compensation from you, be it a link from your blog, or from another site where you’re going to guest post on.
Yes, money opens all doors, but what if you don’t have any to spare on links?
The answer is to get them yourself, but in a way so as to not drain yourself and still get the most bang for your meager buck (don’t worry, that’s just an expression and these links are free)
Let’s shed some light on link types and which to pick for your next campaign. Not all links are equal, and some you should avoid at all cost, and other you should chase till the end of the earth.
Link types are:
a) Spammy links
These often fall under the grey hat SEO spectrum. Links that often work, sometimes exceedingly well, but attached to a significant risk of being penalized by Google in the future.
Think:
- PBN’s
- exact match guest posting
- buying links at scale
- Web 2.0
I advise you to skip these completely as they’re more trouble than they’re worth and no link is worth even one of your sleepless nights.
You agree?
Great.
b) Good but weak (relevant profile links and irrelevant links)
These links are good in a sense that they won’t get you penalized, and will help with rankings, albeit only a little.
#1: Profile links
Your site’s link on your profile forum page is a weak link that will help you a tiny amount. That is because the link will be branded anchor text and it’ll be just one tiny page amongst thousands indexed in Google.
Here’s an example of a good profile link, the one I got from Moz.
Ironically it is the strongest link my site has, but that’s because Moz is an incredibly authoritative website in the same niche as my site.
#2: Topically irrelevant links:
These are good links, white hat, and editorial links. So they do pass PR and help you rank better.
But, since they’re completely off-topic to your site, they don’t pass relevancy along with PR, and this makes them significantly less powerful.
Here’s what Rand has to say about off-topic links (starts at 9.54s).
#3: Good and decent links
- guest posts
- link roundups
- expert interviews
- outreach links
- directories
All great link sources and you want to have as many backlinks as possible. Later in the article, I’ll show you a shortcut to getting these.
#4: Power links (Links from seed sites)
This is crème de la crème of link building.
Each link like a cup of gold; each link’s juice like heavenly nectar, ambrosia Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo and the whole of Ancient Greek pantheon used to drink to be:
- forever young
- forever strong
- forever handsome
- forever beautiful
Especially Venus whose beauty caused godly strife.
But, by getting GREAT links, your site can cause a heavenly stir too.
Before we continue, what are seed sites exactly?
These are trusted sites that are hand-picked by Google.
They practice insanely strict editorial scrutiny to make sure no outbound link from their site points to a crappy site of any kind.
In other words, websites that are graced with a link from a true seed site get in Google’s grace, fast.
Seed sites could be:
General sites: These sites are popular authority news sites, for example, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New Yorker CNN, BBC … you got the picture.
Niche-specific site: Each niche has its own set of trusted sites. For mine as well as Hassaan‘s niche, those are Moz and Maybe SEMRush and Content Marketing Institute.
Are these links powerful?
You tell me.
In 2015, Matthew Barby was working with a brand new startup called Build Fire.
They existed 6 months as a website site and startup had roughly 50 incoming links from random sites,, and some paltry traffic to their name (3 000 visitors per month)
Then, on the 6 months mark, they somehow managed to score got 2 links from Entrepreneur.com
What do you think happened next?
Yes, they experienced growth, but what kind of growth was it?
MASSIVE! Huge rise in the SERPS!
In Matt’s words, their traffic increased 6x in a two-week time frame.
And it snowballed from there as more people seeing their content meant more people linking to them which further increased their rankings, which got them new links…
It’s the old principle “rich get richer” applied to SEO.
Here’s a quote from Matthew:
“One link from Entrepreneur literally may be better than 1,000 links from other random websites. Because if volume mattered, we’d just build new websites every day and not care about them. They wouldn’t get any links. They’d be nothing. But it’d just be a volume game. That’s how Google used to work.”
Now I want to show you how to get similar links for yourself.
An entrepreneur is out of reach for now, but there is perfect low hanging fruit just waiting for you to pick it.
Ready?
I present to you Business2Community.com
This is a huge beast of a website that talks about all things business across various categories, from site design to SEO to affiliate marketing.
The site grew to be so large and so authoritative because it relies on thousands of contributor publishing and syndicating their work there.
This is good news because they accept contributors on a regular basis and getting in is a cinch. I was able to do it in my first try.
However, that doesn’t mean they accept anyone.
How to get accepted as Business2Comunity contributor
You don’t have to have a connection (I didn’t) but you do need to write decently and above all follow their content guidelines.
I suggest you study it carefully and adhere to the tee because that’s only what it takes to be published.
After you’ve read and absorbed the submitting etiquette — it’s time to submit your application.
Go here and fill out the form.
Be bold, but decent, and tell them why you’re there. You want to write for Business2Community and ain’t nothing gonna stop you
Then you just need to wait. It took them two weeks to process my application but I sent it on new year’s eve, so the holidays delayed it a bit.
Your answer will probably come much faster.
Here are some tips to make sure your work is accepted from the start:
- Follow the rules and don’t try to stray even a bit – you’re new here so you need to behave.
- Give credit to every image you use.
- Don’t try to link building. Because they’re sensitive to that stuff and can recognize it. This includes building links for others.
- Once you submit your article, check in periodically to see if there are any suggestions left for you by the editor. You need to honor those or your post won’t be published.
- Before, writing a word, read some other articles to get a feel for the style you can use
And that is pretty much it. I promise you, their guidelines only look intimidating, but they’re actually really easy to follow and implement.
Don’t lose your chance to be featured on Business2Community!
Finally, how valuable are these links really?
Take a look at my contributor profile:
You can see I get two links to my site.
- nofollow
- dofollow
But, the followed link is hidden behind the “site” icon. However, when you go to the source code you can see that it is a valuable link.
Are these links really that strong?
You betcha they are!
I remember when my first article got published on 19 of January 2019.
I remember it well because at that time I was deeply depressed with my site not ranking for absolutely anything.
I had 7 keywords in the first 100, according to Ahrefs.
Then, after the article got published, that started to change, and fast too.
Out of the blue, I started ranking for more and more keywords and by the end of January (so in just 12 days) I was ranking for 207 keywords!
Now that number is much higher, and you should know that I only have a grand total of 8 posts published on my site.
It all happened for me after that post and the link to my site got indexed in Google.
That was the effect of that single link or as I like to call it- Power link.
Some other examples of sites
a) The Odyssey.
The Odyssey is a huge publication where you can read articles on a broad range of different topics.
What’s more, they actively encourage individual contributors to come and write for them.
This means it won’t be that hard to get accepted as a contributor.
As per link building, you can only build one branded profile link.
Like this:
Better than nothing for sure, but definitely not as good as in the content link.
But there’s a workaround (in fact there are two workarounds)
#1: Fiverr gigs
In this Fiver gig, this person is selling a link to your site from an Odyssey article.
This would be your article that you’d submit to this person, pay them a fee and then they’d submit the article in their name as if the link is editorially given.
This is a grey hat and though it would probably work, if done sporadically enough, there’s a much better way to get that precious link.
#2: Job boards
You can go to job boards like Problogger or Efaah and simply search for freelance writers. There you can contact them and ask them to write for the Odyssey and drop a link to your site.
For this to work you need to:
- Find a writer that’ll agree to do this,
- Have decent content so it gets approved by the Odyssey staff.
- Pay the writer a fee
b) The Entrepreneur
This is a dream come true of a power link.
I don’t have it in my site’s link profile, but only because currently I’m focused on getting quick links to boost my rank as fast as possible, and Entrepreneur doesn’t fit in because it takes 90 days to be accepted IF you get accepted.
However, it is high on my links-to-get list- because it’s worth it (you read the Matthew Barby story, right?)
But I hear you say:
Entrepreneur recently made all outgoing links nofollow, in an effort to fight spam, so all potential SEO benefit is void, right?
Wrong!
Because of 3 reasons:
- nofollow links from Entrepreneur are worth more than some do follow links
- you can still get traffic flowing through the link
- there is a way for you to get a dofollow link from Entrepreneur
Here’s Eric Sui’s profile on Entrepreneur.com
Similar to B2C the followed link to his site is hidden behind the “site” icon.
So when you check the source code you can see that it is indeed a followed link.
Turn on the Moz bar and see that the link is indeed followed
also, since every blog post is uniquely indexed in Google, it basically means that Eric’s site has over a hundred followed links from Entrepeneur.com
(Because he’s a regular contributor)
Now that’s freaking power!
But for you, even one link will do wonders, and once you get accepted and contribute once, it’s a cinch to get featured again and again…
How to pitch and get accepted on Entrepreneur.com?
I won’t tell you here. I can’t tell you because I haven’t even tried it yet.
But I will give you two resources you should check out.
- https://www.entrepreneur.com/page/276150
- https://guestpost.com/blog/2017/06/become-contributor-entrepreneur-com/
How to make your Entrepreneur links super powerful (Page Rank Funneling)
Take a look at Eric’s profile overlay-ed with the awesome Moz bar.
See the number of followed links that point to Erc’s profile page?
I’m willing to bet Eric has been building links to his profile, but why?
Because, the more links the page gets the stronger it becomes in Google’s eyes, and more powerful links on that page become, including the outbound link to Eric’s site.
And since Entrepreneur is already one of the strongest site’s online, I think that one link is must be worth like hundreds of others, perhaps thousands.
Think it’s crazy- no it’s PR funneling at it’s finest.
Making the choice pages extremely strong so you reap ranking benefits.
Now:
How you can use this knowledge?
Build links to your profile pages on sites where you’ve contributed.
For example, earlier in this article, I linked to my B2C profile. That link will strengthen my page and some of that extra ranking power will flow to my site and help my money site rank.
And the more links I build in the future, the result will be even better.
Crafting a realistic link building strategy
Here’s the thing:
Your site can not live off these links alone.
They are too rare of flowers for you to make a wreath of. It isn’t sustainable, and it isn’t natural for any site, especially a new one, to have all baller links.
You need average but still good links.
Here are my favorite sources for some quality links.
a) Directories
Let’s be honest- most directories are pure crap and their links will tank your site before you can say “link spam”
But few are gems in the rough, and those are the ones you should target.
Value of directory links is two-fold.
Firstly, most of them have extreme authority and trust flow.
Secondly, almost no one uses them nowadays. This means easy advantage for you over your clueless competitors.
Ok now that you know here a list of directories where your quality site belongs
- Aviva.com
- JasmineDirectory.com
- Abilogic.com
- DirJournal
- AliveDirectory
- Best of the Web
- JoeAnt
Finally, since those are all paid directories, it makes sense to opt for those that bring you the most bang for your buck.
Because not all directories are equal.
Some give you followed links to your home page AND several followed deep links.
Like Abilogic here:
Others give you just a link to your homepage.
Like Aviva directory:
b) Guest posts
Guest posting is both effective and frictionless tactic for building links and relationships with your fellow bloggers.
You simply provide the blogger with excellent content, and they in return vouch for your site by linking to you.
Caution
Don’t use guest posting purely link building. Because that is both slow and potentially dangerous.
Instead, use it to gently funnel authority to posts that are almost ranking for stuff and desperately need a boost to “get there”
Also, focus on other methods so you keep your link profile natural and diversified.
Guest post links on their own are not dangerous, but having a link profile that is 100% guest links is a link scheme, according to Google.
But hey, what do they know, right? J
c) Interviews
If you’re present at all in your niche; if you connect and help others and you have had some success, or anything worthwhile to share-you will get invited to interviews.
This is a chance for you to contribute value by sharing your knowledge, but it’s also a way to build some high-quality links
For example, here’s the interview of yours truly that came out a few days ago.
My friend Nirvana Guha asked me to respond to 10 questions he sent me.
I did and he published it along with no less than 4 dofollow links to my site
Can you see the value here?
It’s your interview and you’re allowed to reference stuff that proves your point.
In my case I talk about how Wealthy Affiliate (https://nikolaroza.com/wealthy-affiliate-review/) helped me start my first online business; and also how I like to focus on a micro niche when starting out, because being laser targeted with your SEO allows you to quickly reach your target audience.
Anyway, since Nirvana’s site is relatively new, the links to my site are pretty weak.
That doesn’t matter because, as his site improves his standing with Google, so will my links become stronger and stronger.
Until they become a true asset for my site and backlinks my competitors will be hard-pressed to replicate.
So- advantage Nikola!
d) Expert roundups
In every niche under the sun, there are roundups happening, and you can participate in most, even as a newbie blogger.
The best way to get invited is simply to rank. And once people see you ranking, they’re going to assume you know your stuff, and they’ll invite you on your own.
But it’s a waste to just wait when you could be proactive. So go and join Ann Smarty’s MyBlogU. They’re a free platform where bloggers can connect and collaborate to produce epic content pieces…
In fact, it is through MyBlogU, that I was able to score my first dofollow link ever (yes- it was a roundup);
And I also connected with several influencers who all later invited me to guest post on their sites.
So the benefits just compound and you have nothing to lose.
Conclusion: Effective link building is all about having the right strategy
Here’s a simple truth,
Links matter a lot and that’s not going to change anytime soon. So it pays in spades to take the SMART approach and pursue quality only, and eschew quantity.
Because
when you get the links from the most trusted site’s online, it reflects on your website and suddenly you start to rank and beat the little guys who only have links from no-name bloggers.
You’ll still be small, don’t get me wrong;
but you will appear big and will have results to match, and you’ll confound everyone but yourself;
for you know that true growth lies ahead:)
So go for it!
But not before you leave me a comment.