How to Build High-Quality Backlinks in the Health Niche (That Actually Work)

I came across this thread, how to build backlinks for health niche website. This is on the link building subreddit. This person said, "I'm currently working on a health niche website and the backlinks are like 15 to 30. My competitors from the same niche have 15,000 backlinks, but they've used low-quality websites to get the backlinks. I'm new in this, so please suggest accordingly." And there's just this great list of how to get backlinks for health websites. If you understand this, you can apply it to even if you are not doing a company in health, you can still apply what you learn from this to get really high-quality backlinks. So, top comment, "The health niche is tough because Google holds it to a higher trust standard. So, low-quality links can actually do more harm than good. Focus on getting a few strong, relevant links, like guest posts on legit health blogs or expert quotes and building topical authority with solid content. Have you tried targeting long-tail keywords first to get some traction before competing with those big sites?" This is a great This is a great comment. I made a podcast about how guest blogging doesn't work as well anymore. That was episode 1001, "Guest Blogging Is Dead for SEO, According to Google." The nuance is, if you have a guest blog that is ranking, that is still valuable. If you have a guest blog that is ranking and bringing you traffic, that is super valuable. If you do a guest blog where maybe even it's not ranking, but it's on an impressive publication and you can still social proof yourself with that, not valuable for SEO, but valuable for your brand. But valuable for SEO, if you can put up a guest post that will rank, that is indexed and will rank, that's still great. The other part of this comment I like is try targeting long-tail keywords first to get some traction before competing with big sites. People don't realize this. I have a lot of guests who come on the show. This has been my experience as well, and we all see just ranking for keywords when you are not getting pogo sticking, so you are satisfying search intent. You're ranking for keywords, satisfying search intent, people are not going back to the search results to click into other results. If you are doing that, you can literally build authority without links from ranking and not having pogo sticking. And so, try some long-tail The reason that this person suggests long-tail keywords is because long-tail keywords tend to be easier, there tend to be less people targeting these keywords, and if you target them properly and just do your best to satisfy search intent right away, you will build up the authority of your site. You will increase your site-wide quality and build authority. You literally get authority by ranking and not having pogo sticking. So, this is a really good comment. Second comment, "There is no other method. You have to do outreach and ask for a free guest post or have to set a monthly budget of 1,000 to 1,500, and then you get some quality websites which help you rank on top on a low-hanging fruit keyword. I did outreach for my friend my friend's client and we got a solid result in 6 months. We reached zero to 50 domain rating and traffic above 10,000." This guy says there is no other method. Here's actually another method. On my site, I have an article, "The AI System to Find Relevant Journalists, Land Coverage, and Earn Ongoing High-Authority Backlinks." Here's the other method. Go to ChatGPT, say, "This is my business." Then paste all of your landing page text in. Then say, "I want to message hyper-relevant journalists who cover news in my niche. What are all of the angles they might report on that would be relevant to me?" ChatGPT will give a bunch of angles. Then you say, "Give me a complete, customized prompt to give to ChatGPT agent mode so that I can find journalists to message." ChatGPT agent mode will create a virtual browser and do the research for you. It will spend 20-plus minutes doing the research. I had it spend 25 minutes doing this. Then with ChatGPT agent mode still enabled, follow up with, "Now analyze these people's last five articles and suggest a customized pitch angle for each journalist that would align with their writing style and coverage focus." Then you'll get a bunch of pitch angles. Then you say, "Write the pitches." And then you'll get all of the pitches. And so, then you edit them for your personal voice, you remove AI giveaways like m dashes and buzzwords, and then you send the pitches through publicly listed emails or DMs on social channels. And then, this is something that a lot of people don't know to do, once you get covered, and you will get covered, you It might also be with Help a Reporter Out, or Sources or Featured. Once you get covered, follow up every month or two and say, "Hey, you covered me in this article. Is there anything that I could comment on that you're writing on? Anything that you need?" That's the part I mean, all of this is something that a lot of people don't do. But if you do that, you will be so far ahead of your competitors who are not following up with journalists, seeing if they need anything. And journalists oftentimes write for multiple publications. So, it's not just you're getting links from the same publication, you are getting links from multiple domains that the journalists are writing for. Somebody else, "I'm writing pillar articles and creating linkbaits in hopes that it will generate some backlinks and improve my domain rating." So, this person is going the tons of content approach, putting up skyscraper technique articles which link to many long-tail keywords, and then I guess the person is hoping that these pillar articles will attract backlinks. Interesting approach. I'll say that is not what I would do. I would focus on bottom of funnel keywords which are easier, and then a lot of the backlinks that we've been talking about so far, but also like Help a Reporter Out, directories, I'd go on podcasts. Another commenter, "Focus on quality over quantity in the health niche. A few authoritative backlinks matter more than thousands of low-quality ones." And that is very true. "Use strategies like guest posting, Help a Reporter Out, and niche edits, and build research-based content naturally earns links. Avoid spammy backlinks. Google prioritizes E-A-T, Trust, and Experience, especially for health sites." I'll say that one of the best backlinks I ever got was actually from using Help a Reporter Out, and it was a backlink from Healthline. And when I got that, my rankings literally spiked. They literally spiked a week later. I got that from just responding to journalist queries every single day, one time a day on Help a Reporter Out. But you don't want to do just one link building strategy. If you do one link building strategy, that looks suspicious. We also did a Product Hunt launch, we did a beta list launch. We were getting listed in other publications. We were submitting to different directories. Another commenter, "Don't worry too much about matching your competitors' backlink numbers. Instead, focus on relevant sites, real traffic, and content that solves specific problems." That's a go. Great comment. "Even a few strong links from trusted health-related sites can outperform thousands of low-quality ones." This This person, Kathleen Joseph, is a real one. Somebody else, "As per my experience, HARO is best for health if you think long-term. Otherwise, there are sellers who give you links only at $5." That sounds kind of risky, getting these $5 links for YMYL. But HARO, yeah, HARO you can also use Sources of Sources, you can use Featured.com. Really targeted journalist outreach though works well, too. And I mean, you are doing your research into the journalist, this is exactly what they like to cover. When people pitch me who listen to this show, and they kind of know my opinions, and they're like, "Yeah, actually I want to share this. It's very in line with what you're always talking about." I'm like, "All right, let's do it." My concluding comment, just chunk it out, do a little bit each day. Don't try to do everything at once. And when you can, personalize what you are doing. If you are If you are talking to journalists, if you are doing outreach, trying to get guest posts, whatever it is, use directories, again, I like going on podcasts. You can do linkable assets as well, though it is more challenging with big reports because you you really need to be trusted. A lot of people in YMYL are using Replet, they're using Claude Code, and they are vibe coding linkable assets as well. Anyway, enjoyed this thread. Hope you enjoyed it, too. This episode 1005 of The Edward Show, 1005 days in a row doing this podcast. If you want to get my exact method of doing search engine optimization that is specifically optimizing to get paying customers, to get users, to get warm leads calling you up, that is at compactkeywords.com. You're going to love it. Check out the testimonials on the landing page. Lots of people in YMYL are getting great results with compact keywords. 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 tomorrow. Bye now.