5 Link Building Methods That Actually Work (Ranked + Real Examples)

Most link building advice sounds good until you actually try to use it. Then you realize the hard part isn't building back links. It's finding links that make sense, getting real responses if you're doing reachout, and avoiding tactics that waste time. There's so many of these tactics that waste time. So, on this episode of the show, I'm sharing this awesome post, five link building methods ranked by how well they work on the link building subreddit. And this list is great. It cuts through the usual vague SEO advice and ranks [music] methods by what's working in the real world. So, if you're trying to grow organic traffic, improve authority, and build links without wasting time, this is a practical breakdown that is worth paying [music] attention to. This is from Grouchy Delivery 558 on Reddit. This Redditor wrote, "No intro, just what actually works." Method number one, adjacent niche outreach. This is the strongest method on this list. I've talked about this one a bunch. It's a really good one. This is how you do it. You find businesses in complimentary industries serving the same audience in the same location. Then you propose a link swap. There's a section why it works. A conservatory builder and blinds installer serve the same homeowner, not competitors. Natural fit. Response rates are higher because the ask makes logical sense to both sides. And then the watch out is it takes time to find the right adjacent businesses at scale, but it's worth it. So another example would be you're a roofing company and then you swap links with a gutter installer because you're serving the same homeowner and you don't compete. Basically, you have relationships with adjacent businesses where you're not competing and then you take their links and you call them partners and you put them in your footer. And you can't do this for so many adjacent partners. Like you don't want to have 20 gutter partners, though practically speaking, you could have a few. And these are real ones that you trust and that you would refer. And then these partners refer you as well, giving you links. Method two, competitor backlink gap. Super simple one. Pull your client's backlink profile against their top three competitors. Find directories and sites linking to them but not to your client. And you can do this for yourself. The logic is if they link to a competitor, they'll likely link to you, too. Warm audiences are easier. And the watch out is this list runs out fast. It's a good starting point, but not a long-term strategy. Directories especially, it might be harder to get partners, but yeah, find the directories that your direct competitors are in and make sure you're in those directories, too. Look at your competitor's backlink profiles. Method number three is niche blog outreach. Search your service or niche, then the word blog, and then contact the top results about publishing an article mentioning your client. Or just do this for your own business. It works because it's contextual, relevant, and editors are already publishing in your niche. But the watch out is before agreeing, check the site that you would publish a guest post on. You want to see real traffic, organic clicks on the page, not a link farm. Most won't reply, but the ones that do are worth it. That last bit, finding ones that are not a link farm, and that is huge. Also, look for ones where the traffic is either steady or going up, the organic traffic, but not ones where organic traffic is going down. And Google is pretty good at detecting spammy guest blogs used for link building. I made an episode about that, episode 1001 of this podcast. Guest blogging is dead for SEO according to Google. You can learn more on that episode. But a good example would be something like a local dentist contributes an article to an oral health blog with a contextual link back to the local dentist and the oral health blog has steady organic traffic or organic traffic that is going up and all their articles aren't different guest blogs. That'd be a good example. A few other things here. You can try searching your industry, searching on Google your industry and then in quotes write for us. You might find some blogs that actually want credible guest authors. Personally, I'm more in favor of thinking of interesting relevant stories to pitch to people whose jobs it is to share relevant stories on websites. Meaning journalists. I like pitching journalists and then creating relationships with journalists so that they will cover me on a bunch of the websites that they write for because one journalist could write for several different websites. So having a relationship with that journalist will be really valuable. I have an article the AI system to find relevant journalists land coverage and earn ongoing high authority backlinks. This works especially well for local, but it's working great for any type of business. And it's a series of ChachiPT prompts to think of stories to pitch journalists, find journalist contact info, and then write the pitches all with chatpt. It's a guide on how to do this. You can also use feature.com, which just rebranded to connectively US. and you can use their AI to find journalists in your niche and then questions that these journalists have recently asked. So you can pitch the journalist things that they are already interested in. So many different things to try here. Method four, and this one is very similar to method one. Ask your client who they work with, suppliers, subcontractors, partners, trade associations. Reach out and ask for a feature or mention. These links are genuinely natural. Google treats them that way because they are they are natural but less than half will say yes and clients usually have a short list. This is limited but high quality. So an example would be a payroll SAS a payroll software asks its accounting partners to add the software to their recommended payroll tools page. Super simple. or in local, a commercial HVAC company asks the building management software vendor that they use to feature them in a customer story. It would be how this HVAC company uses our software to manage maintenance across 40 commercial properties. The businesses already have a real relationship. The story is useful to the vendor and the backlink is natural rather than forced. This is a really cool tactic. There's probably actually a lot more opportunities to do this than one might think. And it's a one-way link. You don't have to link back to the vendor. Now, this last one is rare, and this one really is for agencies. Still a cool one. This is method five, agencyto agency link swaps. Connect with other SEO agencies and swap links between each other's clients. Really simple. It's mutually beneficial, completely natural, and everybody wins. The problem with it is it doesn't come up often unless you actively look for it. You have to build relationships with other agencies and then this can happen naturally from there. But honestly, a lot of SEOs who have real active SEO agencies know other people with SEO agencies. So, if you have an SEO agency, there's a good chance that you have a buddy where you can swap links between each other's clients. This post concludes, "The hardest part of all of these isn't knowing the strategy. It's finding the right prospects at scale and managing the outreach without drowning in spreadsheets. Such a great writeup. There's a comment here that I really like, too. This commenter, SEO Academy, said, "One thing to add is relevance usually beats raw authority. I've seen a contextual link from a smaller but super relevant industry site move the needle more than a random high domain rating placement with zero audience overlap. The winning combo is relevant partnerships plus linkable assets plus outreach that actually makes sense. Basically, would this link still make sense if Google didn't exist? If yes, it's usually a good sign. That is a great question to ask. Would this link still make sense if Google didn't exist? Oh my gosh, yes. And oh, this person mentioned linkable assets. If you want to learn more about linkable assets, I have a really excellent podcast on this with a ChachiPT prompt that you can use to come up with great linkable assets. Episode 137 of this podcast, how one simple website got 384,000 backlinks, linkable assets explained. That's for web app linkable assets. Really good episode. Thank you again to Grouchy Delivery 558 for this write up. five link building methods ranked by how well they actually work and to the link building subreddit for having some awesome content. If you want to save years learning SEO that gets paying customers, users, warm leads calling you up, literally people who are searching for exactly what your brand offers, but they don't know that your brand exists and so they are doing a search or they are asking chatt or they are asking perplexity and then your brand gets recommended. If you want to save years of learning how to do that, I have a 13 and a half hour course on it at compactkeywords.com. It's about how to find the searches, these highintense searches that people do, how to create conversion-based SEO landing pages for these searches, not blog posts, not how, what, why blog posts, notformational blog posts, but actual SEO landing pages made for conversions. How to structure your site for these pages, my methods for building links. So much is in this course. I spent a year making it. I update it several times a month. I updated it just today. If you haven't checked it out yet, you are going to love it. That is at compactkeywords.com. And I hope you will check it out. This is episode 1,62 of the Edward Show. 1,062 days in a row doing this podcast. I started [music] this thing 1,62 days ago. I have not missed a single day since starting. [music] It's absolutely crazy. This coffee is my lifeblood. It [music] keeps me going. I need this. And and you know what else is my lifeblood? Awesome posts like five link building methods ranked by how well they actually work. Cuz this is a really good post. And I'm [music] actually sharing this with my operator for a company that I'm funding that is growing off of my method of SEO. I'm funding a company that is operating off my method of SEO because the method works so well and I'm funding it myself entirely. That's how good the method is. The method at compactkeywords.com. But this list I'm sending this to the operator and I'm saying there's a lot on here. Pay attention. This is a great list. If you watch this episode on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you again [music] tomorrow. Bye now.