It has become very hard to get good SEO backlinks! What if you tried to get links with content that is a little less "mainstream"? What if you were going to look for quality links different from those of your competitors?

Contents

How to get good links in a nutshell!

This article is mainly inspired by Laurent Peyrat's conference during the 2017 SEO Camp.

March 11th update : Update: you can access all the details of the conference on Laurent's website .

Predict Google's crawl in order to optimize it

There are some prerequisites for a website:

  • Technical: crawl budget, loading speed...
  • Editorial: existing quality content? Correct on-site metrics? Time spent per page, bounce rate, etc.
  • Brand awareness (the real one, not the one on Google): you need to be already existing enough in order to promote new content, otherwise nobody will want to relay your content :(.

To rank in Google, of course you want to get links. And this type of link:

  1. Not penalizable

  2. Bringing popularity and authority, in the sense of "page rank" (or Trust Flow) 😊

  3. Differentiating: difficult to obtain by the competition

The first two types of links are an SEO's job, we know how to “technically” get them. But the 3rd one is touchier! And it’s these links that we will focus on.

Spontaneous links: miracles happen!

Example: students who wrote a long article on HIV testing. They sent an email to all public & para-public screening organizations to suggest that they relay this content. After all, they just want to help, don't they? And here it is! The link nicely appeared on these famous .gouv and other domains.

Spontaneous? Not quite, but we're still not far away!

Well okay, but not everything lends itself to it... How can you reproduce this case scenario every time?

1st shift: the target: influencers

influencer-seo-content-decal

Let’s forget about internet users, the market, etc. Look for an identified opinion leader:

  • Sir X, renowned journalist in the field of "...",
  • Madam X, blogger in another sector.

Basically, you’ve only got one prerequisite: that this person can link back to your site.

2nd shift: content

Better not to talk about yourselves: nobody cares, no one will want to link to your site and least of all to your homepage. You have to post content that is interesting to the influencer because he/she values it in his/her audience’s eyes, whether in the form of:

  • advisory
  • advise
  • studies
  • interview

Let’s go! You start by saying good things about him/her for example 😊. And if it’s an interview, you ask him/her for his/her expert opinion. If it’s a study that you have carried out, you ask his/her opinion, etc. In short, you make him/her interact with your content!

And this content, where do you post it? On the blog, on the website?

  • Hot topic/information: reaction to the news, expert opinion... -> on the company blog and social media relay.
  • Cold topic/information: an infographic, a tip. In short, a file that has a lifespan that goes beyond a few weeks, and which is a long quality article -> the website! It won't necessarily bring a lot of traffic (it's probably a very long tail search query), but since it's a feature article, if you've done a little semantics on the website, it's going to be beneficial!

And then: come on, let’s contact this influencer or this journalist, let him/her relay the content! Isn't that his/her job? ;)

There you go! You’ve had a great link that no one else has, and that will only be beneficial for your branding. It's not only SEO, it's pure marketing/press relations!

Conclusion

Content is king! Create content that you want, and SEO results should follow.

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   Article written by Louis Chevant

Further reading

The complete guide to Internal Meshing

The step-by-step method to build your semantic cocoons, your mesh and the optimal tree structure of your website.