Link building in boring niches makes SEO more challenging. There are less active blogs, the sharing culture is not common, webmasters take advantage and ask money for links or they rarely respond to emails.
If you are in a boring industry, don’t get discouraged. No matter if you are doing SEO for an event website or a carpet cleaning company, there are lots of backlinks opportunities waiting for you.
So how do you do it? How do you build backlinks in complicated niches?
Well, that’s exactly what I’m going to show you in this article.
1. Create link worthy content with a viral potential
Good content will always attract social media shares and backlinks, no matter the popularity of the industry. Even if there’s not much demand in your niche, there are always online magazines and blogs dedicated to it, and all of them are opportunities for your business.
Before planning your link building strategies, you have to make your website stands out as the best in the business. Your content has to impress your readers and screams that it needs to be shared.
Try to learn from the comments of your current users and cover the trending topics. What are your readers concerns and how you and your business can help them. Make your posts truly helpful and then promote your content as hard as you can.
These are several ways to give your latest posts a promotion boost:
- Share on all your social media accounts several times, not just once. Use hashtags. Interact with those that engage with your posts.
- Find similar posts by typing your keywords into Google and choose to view only the results from the past week or month.
- Share your posts with your email subscribers and ask them to share the content with their friends. Don’t be afraid to ask them a favor. If you are using WordPress, consider using a mailing list plugin such as Optin Forms or Thrive Leads (our review).
- Find influencers willing to share your content. You can use BuzzSumo to find the influencers that have shared articles that are similar to yours on social media. Simply add your keyword, choose the timeframe and click on “view influencers”.
- Share your posts on communities and social groups. The more people see your post, the higher the chances to go viral and earn backlinks.
2. Research your competition
Analyzing your competition gives you access to untapped backlink sources.
The easiest and the best way to find new opportunities to build backlinks is to look at the links of your competitors.
Here’s how to find potential backlinks, by spying competitors:
1. Use Google to run searches for your most important keywords. Create a spreadsheet and add your five most important competitors that are ranking higher than you. In this document, create an initial report with their current SEO metrics and how they stand up against your website.
What I usually add is the Domain Authority, Page Authority, Number of Backlinks from Unique Domains, Number of Indexed Pages and Social Media Followers count.
If the competitors are currently ranking higher than you in Google, it’s either because they have backlinks from more authoritative websites, or they have better content. Most of the time, the quality of the links will make the difference.
2. Next, you have to copy the best backlinks of your competitors. It will be impossible to replicate all of them, but if you can get the majority of these backlinks, you are on the right track.
To get a list of all your competitors backlinks and also spy on their latest links, use the Monitor Backlinks SEO Tool.
After adding your competitors, you’ll see highlighted in green the domains from where you already have a backlink. This shows you that there’s no need to spend time replicating that link.
3. Needless to say, just because your competitors are ranking higher than you, it doesn’t automatically mean that all their backlinks are good. Therefore, before copying a link, you have to analyze its value and if it’s worthy.
For each website, you can analyze the Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Ahrefs Rank. You can also do a manual review.
These are some of the things to look for when analyzing the quality of a website:
- What type of website is it? A blog, directory, forum or a news magazine?
- How often they update their content?
- How many followers they have on social media and more importantly, do they engage with their posts?
- How good and long their content is? How many comments do their posts get on average?
If the answers to all the above are telling you the website is good, it’s time to replicate the backlinks.
4. Copying competitors backlinks.
There’s no magic wand or button that can automatically replicate backlinks.
You have to understand how the competitor has earned or built that link and do a similar approach to get a backlink to your website.
If the competitor has built backlinks using guest posts, it would be wise to become a contributor on the same websites.
You can share some useful content with the readers of that blog, and earn a link in the author bio or maybe inside the content. Nevertheless, like any link building method, this should be taken seriously and first think about how you can provide value to that website’s audience.
It can also be the case that your competitor is very active on forums and participates in discussions. Or a blogger wrote a review about his product or service. Whatever the method they have used to get the backlink, you should do your best to replicate it, as long as it’s from an authoritative and related website.
3. Encourage clients to write about your site
You can build backlinks by asking your clients to write about your product and services.
Maybe not all of your clients own a website, but some do. It surely doesn’t hurt to get a good review from a happy customer, whether it’s on a website or social media.
To get the most out of this technique, you have to give your clients a motivation.
Think what would make them spend the time to write a review on their website about your product. Here are some of the things you can offer your clients to convince them promote your website.
- Offer them a discount
- Give away a one-month subscription for free
- Cross promote their services. They help you, and you help them
- Offer a free ebook in exchange for a review
Yes, you can apply this technique whether you are a lawyer or have a cleaning company.
4. Write testimonials
When you buy an ebook or subscribe to a service online, you can leave a testimonial and earn a backlink. Most testimonials, also come with a link to your website, to prove that you are a real person. This way, you get a backlink for free, and they get a testimonial that will help them build more trust.
The more honest and real the testimonial is, the higher the chances to be featured on the homepage and also send traffic your way. Here’s an example:
Think about all the online products you are currently using or have purchased, and ask the owners if they are interested in publishing your testimonial.
5. Create infographics
No matter the niche, infographics have a high demand, and they are very popular. To increase the chances to get backlinks, you can create infographics for all your most popular posts. If someone likes your article, they can publish it on their website by sharing the infographic, and you earn a link.
6. Look for niche-specific opportunities (and partners)
There are marketing agencies that specialize in one particular niche. These should be your top-choice service providers if you are looking for high-quality approach.
There are different approached, different ways partnerships form, different competitive landscape, even different social media platforms that work. If you are looking for marketing partners and providers, start with those that focus on your industry.
7. Sponsor events
From time to time, you can be a sponsor for the local events from your region. When the event starts, your company’s logo will be everywhere. This includes the event planner’s website, with a link pointing back to your business.
8. Fix broken links to your website
It sometimes happens that websites accidentally link to broken pages of your website, because of a typo. When this happens, all the link juice is wasted because it’s sent to a page that doesn’t exist. You can find links leading to broken pages of your site, or to pages that no longer exist, with Monitor Backlinks.
Use the filters and choose to see the backlinks to “pages with errors/redirects”.
If you find such links pointing to your website, send an email to the webmasters and tell them that they are linking to an incorrect page of your site. Ask them nicely to fix the link and show them the correct URL where they should have link.
Using this technique you can fix broken links and turn them into good backlinks that will help you with SEO.
Conclusion
When there are fewer opportunities to build backlinks, you have to be everywhere and do your best to promote your website. Only build backlinks from reputable websites.
The harder it is to get a backlink from a site, the more SEO value it will have, and the more complicated it will be for your competitors to replicate it.
Related Reading: How to Make Money Blogging: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide