What is Link Prospecting and how can it help your SEO efforts?

                                  [Guest post by Emma Miller]

Did you know that over 3.5 billion searches take place on Google every day? This simply means that to get a piece of traffic and boost conversions, you need to appear on the first page of Google. And, to do so, you need to have an SEO strategy. Well, link prospecting certainly can help identify relevant opportunities for your website.

When implemented properly, SEO can double your site’s visibility in the SERPs, drive more traffic to it, help you address the right customers, boost their conversions and, above all, give you a chance to build a solid brand name.

After all, it’s 2018, and no one trusts businesses that are not online. In other words, SEO has become an obligatory investment for any business that wants to stay relevant.

Now, you don’t have to be a seasoned marketer to know that guest blogging is one of the most significant SEO practices. It’s a powerful way to build links and is basically synonymous with doing off-site SEO.

However, many digital marketing experts claim that this technique is dead. Just remember Google’s Matt Cutts, who claimed that “guest blogging has gotten too spammy” in 2014.

However, his judgment could have been wrong. Maybe guest blogging is still alive and kicking. You just need to know how to implement it properly.

So, what is the idea behind Link Prospecting?

Finding quality guest blogging opportunities may seem simple at the beginning. You run a couple of Google searches and make a list of content-rich sites in your niche, where you can publish your guest articles.

But, this sounds too good to be true. Namely, when you take a closer look at your list, you will understand the challenge you’re facing. Not all the sites on your list are worth connecting with, for instance. No matter if it’s a bad content strategy or low PA or DA, once you spot a poor-quality blog, you should run away screaming.

So, you need to do a more complex, advanced analysis and separate the wheat from the chaff. This is what link prospecting is about – finding quality and relevant sites in your niche that will give your SEO efforts an actual boost.

Why is Finding Quality Link Building Opportunities Important?

The idea behind writing awesome content and publishing it on quality sites is earning quality backlinks. Your backlink portfolio is the decisive factor for Google when assessing your site’s value. If it notices that there are numerous highly authoritative and quality links pointing back to your domain, it will consider it relevant and boost its rankings in the SERPs.

Generating exceptional backlinks can also boost your overall domain authority, expand your target audience, prove your expertise, and help you establish a recognizable brand. This is also an opportunity to build relationships with the influencers in your niche and boost your exposure. Namely, once they see that the top players in your industry share or link to your posts organically, your target audience will trust you more.

How to Know which Sites are Valuable Enough?

To make sure you find the right prospects, you first need to set your objectives clearly. For instance, if you want to boost your authority in your niche via guest posting, you need to become a regular contributor on all major sites in that industry – so, just make an actionable list and go!

On the other hand, if you just want to earn some organic and high-quality links, guest posting will be much simpler for you. Of course, you will have a much longer list of prospects to connect with and publish your work. All you have to do is check the site’s DA, see if they published guest posts before, and reach out to them.

Once you select the right targets, you need to see who their target audience is and what their niche is. You should also check traffic and see if people visit their site, as well as pay attention to their backlink portfolio, the quality of their articles, and engagement metrics like the number of shares, likes, comments. These are all some key performance indicators that tell you whether the site is worth your attention.

Finding Quality Link Prospects

Once you set your goals, understand the metric you need to track, and what sort of sites you should be looking for, you can start your search. Here are a few most effective link prospecting ideas you should keep in mind:

• Start with basic Google search strings
• To narrow down your searches, use advanced search operators, such as the intitle search, the inurl search, the exact match search, etc.
• Automate your link prospecting efforts using link building tools. These tools will analyze and choose only quality link building opportunities for you, give you invaluable data about your prospects, show their contact emails, helping you find the right sites and connect with them much faster.
• Conduct competitor analysis to monitor and replicate their most effective link building strategies.
• Take the time to produce original images and include them in your piece – that can become an effective SEO strategy to bring traffic back to your site!
• Search for broken links on a site you’re interested in, offering a link to your similar post as a replacement for a broken link.
• Look for influencers to boost your authority. To do so effectively, you can use Twitter search or its advanced options or simply use a link prospecting tool.

Back to Us

Link prospecting is an immensely important part of building valuable backlinks. It helps you publish your content on quality sites that will really bring value to your SEO. Most importantly, it helps you improve your visibility, expand your target audience, and position yourself as authoritative. And, these are just some of a myriad of practices you may use to find relevant link building opportunities.