Link building strategies: Blogs

Posted by Ken McGaffin on 21 March 2012

No matter what industry you’re in there will be bloggers that write about it. They’ll usually have a well-established audience and a good presence on search engines.

Blogs contain lots of fresh content and links and are therefore popular in search engine results. They’re usually written by a single individual who makes themselves easy to contact.

But those people can’t just create fresh content out of thin air, they’ve got to find or be fed with new stories. They’re hungry for stories and content, and that makes them prime link prospects.

If you approach them in the right way, you stand a very good chance of a positive response.

Let’s start by looking at a few examples:

• Blogs that are part of larger media.
• Blogs that are independent.
• Opportunities highlighted in a story.

1) Blogs that are part of larger media

Many of the largest media outlets publish blogs. These blogs may be authored by a specific journalist or they may be subject specific.

Here’s an example of a blog from the Los Angeles Times. It appeared in the Blog strategy within Wordtracker’s Link Builder tool when I was investigating the fashion market:

As always, the ‘Top Links’ column on the right hand side lets us go direct to the page, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/alltherage/2009/09/page/3/

We can see in this case, it’s an LATimes.com blog that focuses on image and fashion:

So we can see that the blog linked to Bonobos.com because they were donating to a breast cancer charity.

It’s also easy to see how to get in touch with the blogger - contact details are clearly given:

So now I know of the blog's existence, I can see what sort of stories they cover, and I can see how to get in touch. So for my fashion project, I’d target that blog.

Large media websites can sometimes be hard to contact. But the blogs on media sites are usually more accessible. They make it easy to get in touch. You can find many more examples by browsing through the Blog strategy.

2) Blogs that are independent

To add some variety, we’ll switch industries now and I’ll share some research I was doing into the barbecue market. As always, building a campaign in Link Builder can show some unusual and interesting link prospects. Here’s an example:

The site promises that it “features new and unusual gadgets, gizmos, video games and other tech toys from around the globe. We try to offer something a little different from all of the other tech news blogs out there … and always with a bit of wit and whimsy thrown in.”

And how did a cooking item end up on such a site?

Easy really, it had a space invaders design:

And like most blogs, they make it really easy to get in touch - here’s their ‘About us’ page at http://technabob.com/blog/about/:

3) Opportunities highlighted in a story

The Blog strategy can highlight interesting opportunities, as a project I was doing on woodworking uncovered.

Here, as well as identifying a solid link prospect in Etsy.com, the tool also uncovers a story focusing on handmade products:

And when I arrive at the page I see details of a campaign that I could become part of: http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2008/video-project-tell-us-your-handmade-story/

So the Blog strategy throws up some interesting link prospects.

And as we’ve seen, chasing down the contact details for each link prospect is an important step.

Doing that work by hand takes a lot of time. But Link Builder can grab those details for you automatically, 100 blogs at a time.

Just go to contact view, select up to 100 blogs and simply click ‘Find contact data’:

In the tool, you’ll also find a short video that takes you through the process.

Try Link Builder free for 7 days

So it can be done. There really is a tool for link builders that will help you research and find your best blog prospects, plan your campaigns, and monitor targets.

It’s called Link Builder. You can register now for a free 7 day trial