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In earlier times, a standard WordPress blog theme usually showed the main article on the left and a section of popular blogs on the right side of the page. This layout was simple and easy to follow. Readers could read the main post while quickly checking what content was trending. Today, those kinds of clean, two-column themes are rarely seen, as modern designs now focus on flexible layouts, sliders, grids, and dynamic content blocks.
But what if there were a method to discover and arrange blogs based on their popularity and number of comments? What if we could study the top-linked content on a major blog, see which topics attract the most attention, and understand why they perform well? What if we could then pull out their basic details, patterns, and structure? Then you would have a clear, data-backed blueprint for success that could guide any content marketing campaign.
It was long ago when Backlinko published the list of 200 Google ranking factors. From that list, it became clear that Content and Backlinks are the two most important ranking factors. The key point, however, is that great content naturally brings in great backlinks.
So, how can you identify content that is worthy of links? That is exactly what we will discuss first in this guide to an advanced link-building strategy.
The Secret To Discovering Link-Worthy Content
When you search for link-worthy content, most people usually look at posts with the highest social shares. While this can help you find popular content, it does not always mean that the content is earning many links.
There is a basic difference between content that becomes popular on social media and content that attracts backlinks.
To understand this, think about why people link to a piece of content. They link to it when they are writing about similar or related topics, or when it includes important stats they want to reference. If many people are writing about related topics, that topic must be in demand and widely discussed.
So, what really leads to links? Making people talk about your content.
So, it becomes clear that we are looking for blogs that receive a high number of comments, whether On-Page or Off-Page, and this is very easy to track using Screaming Frog. Here is the secret method to finding more Link Worthy Content.
- Visit a specific blog on a niche website (here, I went to copyblogger.com and chose one article).
- Choose the data you want to copy (in this case, we want to extract the comments each blog receives).
- Right-click > Inspect > copy the Xpath, and save it somewhere safe.
- Open Screaming Frog and set the following options by going to Configuration > Spider > Crawl.
Now Screaming Frog is ready to crawl the main HTML pages of the target website and collect useful details like Titles, meta description, word count, and more.
To also capture the Comments data field, we need to set up a custom extractionGo to Configuration > Custom > Extraction and add a new entry.
Set the field name as Comments and paste the Xpath into the matching field as shown earlier. Also choose “Extract inner html” from the last dropdown.
Now you can click Start and let Screaming Frog crawl the full website. If you are using the free version of Screaming Frog, your crawl will be limited to 500 URLs. However, the settings used above will make sure you capture the most relevant URLs.
- After the crawl is complete, export the URLs from the Internal tab. You can also apply the HTML filter if needed.
- After doing some cleaning, you should be left with the following data set. You can then sort the blogs based on the number of comments they have.
This data is a real gold mine for any content marketer. It not only provides all the details of link-worthy content, but also gives a clear blueprint for earning links through great content.
Point to Note
This kind of data extraction is usually not allowed under the terms of service of most websites or even Screaming Frog itself. Still, I have done it on thousands of websites and never faced any backlash. If you are someone who does not worry much about software rules and terms and conditions, then this method might suit you.
This is probably why I described these tactics as advanced.
Analyze Links of Successful Flippa Listing
Everyone knows the old SEO tactic of Competitor Backlink Analysis. Even though we can study many competitor backlinks using different backlink tools, we often ignore whether those competitors get most of their traffic from search or from other platforms, or whether they actually grew mainly through SEO.
This is where Flippa becomes useful. Flippa is a website for buying and selling sites, and it also shows traffic data and key SEO stats like authority and links for every site listed there.
From the listing on Flippa.com, you can quickly get an idea of the SEO stats of the listed websites and how they have been growing.
This helps you understand how those sites are performing in search, and shows why analyzing their backlinks can be useful for finding more backlink opportunities.
You can discover websites in any niche by using Flippa’s filtering system.
Build A Private List Of Proven Promoters
This is a very strong method to encourage user-generated content and possibly gain some mini-influencer marketing for free. Basically, it means connecting with and studying people who have regularly shared your content before.
This approach works best if you already have good content and share it often through social updates and other communities. It includes checking the profiles of people who have shared your posts. You can also search your own brand name on social media to find users who are using your hashtags.
If you find profiles with a large enough following, it is smart to contact them and talk about how they liked your post. After that, you can save their emails or get their private DMs. Then, whenever you publish a new blog post, you can easily share those relevant articles with them.
What happens is often these people may like your post enough to share it with their social updates and depending upon their popularity it might earn you more additional shares.
This is what happened when I earlier shared one of my old personal posts, “16 Companies Dominating Google,” with someone I had built a personal connection with through social media.
That person instantly tweeted the blog, and it received an extra 98 retweets. Not bad at all, considering it was free.
Analyze Backlinks of Scholarship and Coupon Sites
This is one of the less-known link-building secrets in the SEO world, and I feel a bit hesitant to share it, but there is no doubt that it is a highly effective link-building strategy.
You may have seen many coupon sites online promoting different deals along with scholarship offers.
These types of offers usually attract a large number of links from many review sites and blogs, and even some .edu links.
Although I do not suggest using this method if you are not offering anything real, the true strategy is to study the backlinks of these coupon sites.
Here is what I found by analyzing one of these sites:
Right away, I was able to uncover a treasure of SEO knowledge that even Google Webmasters could not teach me.
As you can see, out of the five links above, two are scholarship links, two are directory links, and one is a donation link. I can quickly get three backlinks, two from the directories and one by donating to these donation sites (trust me, they are cheap).
By studying this one website, I was able to uncover their entire link-building strategy, which I can now copy at scale.
Even though I do not fully support the methods used by these coupon sites, it is hard to deny that they usually focus on what actually works.
To sum it up, here are the types of links these sites usually go after:
- Use donation links
- Guest post
- Participate in PINs
- Buy links on websites
- ‘Sponsor’ software in return for a link
How to Find Useful SubReddits that Your Competitors Are Building Links From
There is a feature on Reddit that many people are not aware of. It lets you easily see where your domain has been shared on Reddit.
This feature can be used not only to review Reddit shares for your own domain, but also for your competitors.
Since we are an SEO company, I searched the Reddit listings of one of our competitors, highervisibility.com, using the following query:https://www.reddit.com/domain/highervisibility.com/
Here’s the result:
Right away, we get a list of Subreddits that we can use to promote our content for free.
One of these subreddits has a good number of followers, and people are actively sharing links there.
It is a very useful tactic, especially if you struggle with building Reddit links.
Rank for Terms Link Builders Search For
This tactic is very powerful, in my opinion. It does not target websites with link-building chances. Instead, it targets the link builders themselves, often called linkeratti, a term created by the well-known SEO influencer Rand Fishkin from Moz.
Before going into the details, let’s see what Ken Lyons from PointBlankSEO said:
“We optimize and link to the ‘become an author’ pages on each site we run this on so the doc will rank for search operators in specific keyword verticals. This brings us a steady flow of guest posting requests. We offer to ‘swap content’ with bloggers who want to guest post on our sites. If you are not willing to swap, or cannot do it, we will not publish your article.”
With the many sites we manage, we exchange around 100 articles per month on average. What makes this tactic great is its efficiency. Instead of us searching for link opportunities, the opportunities come to us. This puts us fully in control and means:
- We can choose to swap only with sites that meet or exceed certain quality standards.
- We have full control over link placement inside the article and are not limited to just one author bio link.
- We have built long-term relationships with others who manage multiple sites and regularly exchange content with them.
So the strategy is straightforward. Create a “submit a post” or “Become an author” page and carefully build links to that page. Over time, you will receive many guest post requests, which you can easily turn into links.
This is a powerful method because you can not only swap links, but you also control who you partner with. That control makes it more effective and longer lasting than most link-building strategies.
You can even take this further. For example, if you are in the real estate niche, you can build a real estate blog, grow some authority, and then open it to guest posts. This will act as a gateway where you can find strong link-building partners who add value to your main website for a long time.
Analyze Link Builders Who Managed to Get A Wikihow Link
WikiHow is a website that publishes informational content on many topics and gets around 86% of its traffic from organic search.
Even though most of its external source links are no-follow, it is still a great place to find active link builders in your niche.Whenever WikiHow links to an external source, it uses the heading “Sources and Citations.” So, by using an advanced Google search, we can find these kinds of websites like this:
If we slightly change the search query, we can find articles related to our niche. Then you can check the reference section to see the relevant sources they have linked to:
Now you can study the backlinks these domains have earned to discover more link-building opportunities.
Just Ask Websites if they Sell Links
This is probably my final tip in this advanced link-building guide, mainly because of how simple it is. It is almost purely transactional. Many high-authority websites do sell links if you approach them the right way.
The process is simple. Look for big blogs or review sites in your niche, run a Google search, and create a list of possible websites.
Then go deeper and check if these sites have a “become an author” page and whether they have accepted sponsored links before. You can find this by using Google with intitle and intext operators.
After you shortlist your target websites, contact them or send them an email asking for a sponsored post with backlinks.
This method has worked very well for many brands, and even though Google does not support paid backlinks, that rule is mainly against spam-like methods.
There is nothing wrong with a paid partnership.You can create a list of these domains and give it to a link builder, who can then reach out to these sites and build real relationships with them.
Final Thoughts
This complete guide to advanced link building comes from many years of experience in SEO, especially in link building. It is made for people who struggle to begin their link-building journey and for those who want to push their current SEO campaigns to a higher level. If you are interested in getting high-quality links for your business as well, you can visit our page on Advanced Link Building Services.
