Over the past several months I’ve been compiling my list of my most effective link building strategies. Some are just general article directories, blog commenting, guest blogging, etc. However, others involve getting creative leveraging your network and video platforms. This next strategy is simply generating high authority back links from influential people in your niche. Why does this work so well? There are a few reasons,
First, influential people have authority and a link back from their blog will generate enormous juice often increasing your ranks quickly. Next, it leads to your content getting in front of other authority people because influential people network with other influential people. Next, they have an enormous social following often above 10,000 followers with a majority of them being relevant to you. This can lead to new links from other bloggers that provide value to your blog. However, here’s the problem…
Many people don’t know how to leverage this opportunity correctly. They don’t know how to setup an expert post and ask the right questions. Next, they forget the fundamentals of outreach and that’s where you lose the chance of generating a serious buzz. Let’s jump into the fundamentals and look over setting up the right expert posts, etc.
Strategy #11 – Expert Posts
An expert post is gathering information from influential people within your niche and creating an ultimate post. For example, in my expert posts I asked 14 influential bloggers: What is the most effective link building technique? I then gathered all the answers and created an expert link building post. This content is very powerful because you’ve compressed all the value information into a single post. Not to mention, the content is based on the answers provided by the big players in the industry. My post to date has: 25 authority links, 78 FB Shares, 47 Tweets, 64 Google+ and 247 others. It’s important to note that I only reached out to the experts to promote and didn’t do any additional marketing.
So, how to you put together the most effective expert posts?
Research Your Niche –
This is the most important factor because you have to find a topic that’s engaging and people want a solution to. I know in my niche – SEO, many people are often looking for the best link building methods especially after the recent Google Panda and Penguin updates. You need to find a major problem within your niche because the bigger the problem, the higher buzz it will create once published. Here are some ways to find common problems…
- Visit other blogs and skim through their content. Look for a trend in their content and read comments for additional questions.
- Do a quick search in Google trends using a keyword and look for an increasing pattern. However, search words that are questions based.
- Ask “1†expert what questions they get asked most and then send this question to the rest of them.
- If you have a large email subscribers lists then shoot them a message asking them what questions they want answered.
Compile Experts List –
If you’ve been blogging for years then you know what other bloggers have an impact in your niche. However, if you’ve just gotten started then you need to do some serious research. Doing a quick search in Google and you’ll find a list of top bloggers within your niche. Once you’ve gathered your list it’s important to visit each blog and look for a pattern. For example,
- Look at their content frequency
- Few their social profiles
- Search their names in niche targeted forums. Influential bloggers will have their name mentioned by others in forums. For example, John Chow was mention in forums like WarriorForum.com, TrafficPlanet.com, etc.
- Read their content and look for engagement. Read comments and check how often their content get’s shared.
There is NO limit to how many experts you should contact and the more the better. In the end, if you have 50 compared to 14, it will be better when it comes time to promote your content.
Contact Experts –
Many experts are more than happy to provide their knowledge to an industry they love. They all have been in the same position as you needing advice so will offer it with no hesitation. However, you have to be genuine in your approach. Here’s a quick example of my email to my list of experts. Each was sent separately with slight tweaks made along the way…
“Dear John,
I have been following your tutorials for some time and consider you one of my mentors. I also want to take advice from some big players in the SEO blogging field to put together a little tutorial. I hope that you can provide your feedback on this question so I can write a post and reference you as my mentor with a link back of course.
Out of everything you have learned over the years especially in search engine optimization and link building …which is the most effective link building technique you would recommend for beginners?
Thanks in advance!
Regards,
Rizvan Ullahâ€
And,
Within a few minutes I received a reply back.
“Write great content that people want to link to. If your content sucks, no one is going to link to you. But if you take your time to write really great and compelling content, not only will other sites link to it, you’ll get a ton of social media activities as well.â€
Once you get all the answers gathered you can simply add them and include a picture of the expert next to their feedback. Just create a post the way you would formatting it correctly, etc.
The Outreach –
Here’s where you’ll reach out to the experts to share your content. This is where you’ll obtain a majority of your links either directly from the expert or from others who read your content. Remember, you’ve just answered a common question in your niche and people will be more than happy to link to it because it provides a solid solution. Be genuine in your approach when asking for them to check it out and provide their feedback again. Next, let them knowing sharing your content on their social profiles will definitely help you providing you with a jump start in the industry. Remember,
Some of these authority bloggers have a lot of pull in the industry with 100,000+ followers and a single tweet will create a buzz quickly. Here’s something I did to give it that extra push…
I added a special email opt in form to my expert post offering a FREE eBook on link building and was able to collect 100 subscribers on the day my content launched. Be creative and genuine.