High quality link building is a large needle mover for any SEO campaign, like it or not. It is not technical SEO, it’s not on page SEO and it isn’t content either. Yet, link building is one of the hardest things to perform in SEO, especially at scale.
I remember starting link building by submitting articles to article directories to only get ONE irrelevant backlink from some shady directory. Either way, article submission as a link building technique has been widely abused and Google has devalued this technique. I eventually took link building into my own hands that resulted in 20k global organic traffic in my first site.
So… how do you get unlimited backlinks without going crazy with all the moving parts and ensure each and every link hitting your site is of quality, audited and doesn’t get you penalized?
You need systems.
How to Get Unlimited Backlinks?
SEO outreach and link building is just like any other funnel. It is similar to sales and lead generation funnels such as a cold email B2B email funnel.
You reach out to X number of prospects, you get Y replies and you get Z number of links built, whether it be an editorial link placed, a link swap or a guest post placement. The more you prospect, the higher the likelihood of getting good linking opportunities.
Yes, there are important factors of quality and quantity of links.
Today, with email spam filters, you don’t want to be spamming outreach messages to everyone. From your prospect’s perspective it can also be frustrating to receive spammy emails in your inbox. That’s why you’ve got to filter your link building prospects. I talk about how to automate this filtering process in another article.
For this article, our focus is on prospecting. Unlimited prospects, unlimited backlinks!
Link Building Outreach Method 1: Competitor Backlink Analysis
Competitor backlink analysis is simply studying your competitor’s backlink profiles. If they are linking to your competitor, they may be highly likely to link to you as well. First, you uncover linking opportunities and second, you gain insights into SEO strategies that drive results in your niche.
When you analyze competitor backlinks, you’re essentially identifying:
Outreach Targets: Sites that are already linking to your competitors and could link to you. Potential partners for collaboration or guest posting.
Successful Content Types: Topics or formats that attract backlinks in your niche. You can parse that into Skyscraper-styled outreach.
How to Do Competitor Backlink Analysis
Step 1: Identify Your Key Competitors. You can do this by searching Google for your target keywords to identify top-ranked sites.
Step 2: Extract Their Backlink Profiles. Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Majestic SEO to analyze their backlinks. Export the data for filtering.
Step 3: Evaluate the Backlinks. Filter using metrics like quantity, relevancy of traffic and source domain topical trust flow.
Then create a targeted prospecting list for outreach, and get your VAs to reach out to these sites.
In my experience, I find individual bloggers hugely more responsive. Or proper content sites. You can repurpose one relationship with a single site in multiple ways. You can pitch them a skyscraper piece, a guest article, a resource page placement, or an editorially placed link.
Link Building Outreach Method 2: Guest Blogging
Matt Cutts, former head of spam at Google once expressed that guest blogging is dead.
However, many SEO agencies and link brokers today use guest blogging as their primary manner of placing backlinks. I also used guest blogging effectively in my own SEO projects. In my view, guest blogging isn’t dead if it’s done ethically and is still an extremely relevant strategy to build high quality backlinks.
Ideally, you’ll want to build editorial links. Editorial links are links that are ‘in the middle’ of a piece of content. It’s said that editorial links are weighted by search engines more than, let’s say… links in the footer.
The HUGE advantage to guest blogging is that you’re able to control the anchor text on the editorial content. However, do note that linking in an uncommon “unnatural manner” may land you with a Google penalty.
You should use diversified anchor texts (or a semantically similar one) instead of merely being exact keyword focused.
In most cases, the site that you are guest blogging on is going to care about editorial value. Hence, you’re expected to ensure your article pitched is informative and of a qualitative standard. In my experience, most good quality sites CARE about what they link out to. Today, thin, slipshod content is also rarely accepted on high quality sites. They’re also likely to reject your guest post if you are ‘anchor text’ hacking.
Ultimately, I don’t see guest blogging as a one-way street. It’s also building relationships with other site owners so that you’ll have an opportunity to pitch another editorial placement or guest article.
Guest blogging is one of the most powerful ways to drive traffic and earn powerful backlinks to your site. It’s MY go-to. That’s because you are adding value to the person you are pitching to: you aren’t exactly begging for a free link.
How to Use Search Operators for Guest Blogging Prospecting
Search operators on Google allow you to refine results and find the perfect sites to target for backlink prospecting. These advanced search operators are commands you can use in Google searches to narrow down your results.
Here are some ways that you can find guest blogs, sites that you can pitch to:
Keyword in URL: “write for us”
Keyword + title: “write for us”
Keyword + title: “contribute to”
Keyword + title: “submit” + URL: blog
keyword “Guest post” / keyword “Write for us”“your niche” + guest post
“your niche” + guest author
“your niche” + write for us
“your niche” + guest articleintitle:”write for us” [your niche]
intitle:”guest posts” [your niche]
Sometimes, there may not be enough opportunities in your industry if it’s an obscure niche.
This is where you can research parallel niches: niches that are indirectly related to your niche. You can also get creative by looking at the backlink profiles of competitors.
How to Filter Prospects
I’ll scrape the top 100 Google results, filter them according to qualitative factors: topical relevancy, source domain trust flow and organic traffic.
Note, some sites do not accept guest posts at all. You’ll be wasting your time reaching out. They often state clearly on their guidelines. If they aren’t accepting guest bloggers, then they probably aren’t, and you’re wasting your time reaching out to them.
How to Never Run Out of Prospects: Find Niches Parallel to Your Niche
You can also reach out to other sites that are parallel to your niche.
For example, if you’re marketing running coaching on your website, you can include the health and fitness bloggers and influencers in your skyscraper research.
The entire internet is your playbook. You can reach out to international sites from other countries simply by adding a location qualifier in your search.
Guest Blogging Outreach Email Template
[Your Name]
I recently started X Website publishing high quality X advice.
I’d like to guest write for your site and I came up with multiple ideas that I think your readers will like a lot. Either that, if you’re not accepting guest posts at the moment, I will be comfortable with another form of format such as a podcast or an interview.
I believe I can contribute a unique perspective as an X.
Best,
Marcus
Link Building Outreach Method 3: The Shotgun Skyscraper Technique
The skyscraper strategy is popularized by Brian Dean. In the later years, it has evolved into the ‘Shotgun Skyscraper technique’, popularized by Authority Hackers. The skyscraper concept remains today one of the more widely known methods to build backlinks.
The main concept here is that you write super high quality, researched content that you know is one of the best pieces of content on the internet. You then go out and pitch your content to bloggers, influencers and authorities in your niche or related niche.
The theory is this: bloggers and site owners are always looking for great resources to help out their audience. If your content is truly OUTSTANDING, they will directly link to your content as a resource or a guide.
The Caveat for Skyscraper Technique in 2025 and Beyond
Today, site owners are over-pitched and usually will not give you an editorial link for free unless you give something in return. They’ll ask for link swaps and/or the usual placement fees. Then again, shotgun skyscraper prospecting is a way to get ‘unlimited’ prospects.
You’re simply putting more prospects in your funnel.
Skyscraper Link Building at Scale
Step 1: Gather a list of the top 10 to 20 SERP results of the topic you are publishing content about. For example: on-page SEO. Look at the ones with high amounts of referring domains pointing to their page.
Step 2: Pop these pages into Ahrefs’ open site explorer to analyze backlinks > export them out > create a list of prospects > filter according to qualitative factors > bulk search for emails using Hunter.io > Outreach using Mailshake
Skyscraper Outreach Email Template
Hi X!
I especially enjoyed your guide to *insert topic* here:
‘X Advice’ is GOLDEN advice even for *insert topic*. Being a *insert topic* nerd for half a decade, sometimes I can get too self-absorbed and not get any *Y result with topic.*
This is why I recently published this kickbutt article with tons of research behind it. It’s published on my own site.
Once again, thank you for your time to read this *insert topic*. I hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for making the world a better place by imparting your knowledge about *insert topic*.
Warm Regards,
Marcus
Link Building Outreach Mindset: Deliverability and Negotiating
Today everyone is spammed with sleazy SEO outreach messages. You ARE going to be charged a fee for an editorial link or even a guest article placement.
Hence, it is important to see an email outreach campaign akin to relationship building with an actual human being. This is especially true with higher quality sites.
You’ll also want to REALLY customize your outreach messages. I mean, pitch them a guest article that they may have a content gap in on their site!
For the ‘lesser’ quality sites, please don’t be completely robotic either. Yes, you don’t have to personalize every outreach email to all your prospects… but you want to personalize enough to help with email deliverability.
For increased email deliverability and getting by the spam filters… personalized copy is recommended. Outreach software has placeholders and Spintax. Use it! The more you stand out with your copy, the better your open rates, the higher your chances of getting a linking opportunity.
It pays to have personalized copy that a) gets past spam filters b) doesn’t annoy your prospect’s day when it lands in their inbox.
Other Link Building Outreach Strategies
Reach Out to Unlinked Mentions from Other Sites
Your site, content, or brand name from your site may be mentioned somewhere else on the internet without you being aware of it. This can be found out by doing a Google search on your brand name. You can then reach out and ask for a link back to your website.
Links from High Quality Business or Industry-Specific Directories
It is important to note that Google has devalued article directories since Penguin’s update.
“Links from relevant content in article directories — Seen as good or bad? eg. I link my beauty website from a cosmetic surgery article on say, Ezine? Would you do that?”
– Quote from Matt Cutts
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/matt-cutts-explains-use-article-directories-build-links/88093/
While article directories and low quality link farms have lost SEO value… high quality business directories and niche-specific directories still offer value. They primarily help with local SEO through citation signals and NAP consistency. They also help with “GEO”, optimizing for SEO in A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT etc.
In my view, consider these factors when selecting directories:
- Are there quality control measures to block spam?
- Is the directory proactive in sourcing, auditing and/or crafting quality listings rather than relying solely on business submissions?
- Other than listings, does the directory provide any genuine value to users through editorial standards?
- Is there a recurring fee for listings and why, how do they charge a fee?
Press Releases
It’s common for businesses to do a paid/organic press release as an SEO strategy. If your business is newsworthy and has a good story behind it, why not aim for the stars, go straight to the press and pitch a press release?
Getting a publication on the press not only increases brand visibility. Today, most press outlets have gone digital, so you can also earn a highly authoritative backlink!
Resource Page Link Building
Resource pages are lists of resources that sites curate to point people to other useful resources on the internet. Think of it like a compilation of a greatest hits page.
The process here is simple. Find a list of resource pages in your niche/niches that are parallel to yours. Outreach, and pitch for a link.
Promote Your Content to Your Subscribers
This is as simple as creating a newsletter campaign and then sending out newsletters notifying them of your latest blog post. Keeping your users updated on your latest content is a great way to build relationships with your audience and they may share your content on social media that’ll generate social shares and potentially backlinks.
How to Not Do Link Building in the 2020s
There are ways NOT to link build. Spam blog commenting is an obvious one. Old school strategies involved participating in forums and linking back in your post signature. Either way, many forums don’t like outbound links and many have disabled them entirely.
As for PBNs, I haven’t bought private blog network links or built one, so I can’t really comment on this.
Yes, parasitic SEO has caught on in the last couple of years. In March 2024, Google introduced its Site Reputation Abuse policy. This policy targeted high authority sites like Forbes. Gary Illyes, Google’s Search Engineer has publicly called out these sites for ranking for keywords completely unrelated to their expertise.
Parasitic SEO can also mean answering questions on platforms like Reddit and Quora that can drive traffic. I am limited in my understanding of parasitic SEO. In my view, the right way to do it is leave genuinely helpful answers first, then include your link as part of your response to relevant statistics or actual guides.
However, I’d rather build a sustainable link outreach process to earn editorial links than search for Quora/Reddit threads to hijack.
Conclusion
Google seems to signal a quietened weight of backlinks in the long run. Here on Google’s Search Off The Record, John Mueller from Google mentions:
“And to some extent, links will always be something that we care about because we have to find pages somehow. It’s like how do you find a page on the web without some reference to it?
But my guess is over time, it won’t be such a big factor as sometimes it is today. I think already, that’s something that’s been changing quite a bit.”
However, Mueller does mention that links will always somewhat matter. In conclusion, backlinks will remain a needle mover for your site’s traffic. Yes, make prospecting your superpower.
Every link building system can be systemized if you a) come up with a process for it b) train virtual assistants with link building and off-page SEO knowledge to handle the processes for you or c) train an agentic A.I.
You can use competitor backlink analysis to find high quality opportunities. Leverage advanced search operators for guest blogging opportunities. Look at skyscraper content to get prospects. Combining these strategies, there is no shortage of backlink targets.
Nonetheless, do not forget the other holistic factors of SEO involved such as keyword research, technical SEO and great, people-first content.
