lemlist and its partners use cookies (or similar technology) to measure and analyse how our platform is used and to show ads based on your interests. By clicking "Accept", you agree to the above. You can change your preferences at any time in the Cookie Settings from the footer. For more info, check our Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy.
Deny
Manage
Accept
Manage cookies
Analytics
We need to measure events on this website. Why? Kinda like counting calories to have a good line.
Advertisement
No boring ads chasing you all over the internet. Interesting and relevant stuff, we promise.
Social
If you’re interested in the content of this website, we would love to stay connected on your social networks.
Done
Cold Emailing
How to get backlinks [8 link building strategies & email templates]
lemlist team
June 11, 2023
October 1, 2021
|
7 min. read
lemlist team
LAST UPDATED
September 6, 2024
READING TIME
7 min.
Backlinks are one of the best assets in your SEO strategy. Plus it's one of the most important factors in the Google algorithm to discover your content and rank it high.
On the other hand, backlink outreach is also one of the most difficult topics in outreach campaigns.
In this article, you'll learn how to facilitate links with 8 different backlink strategies and link building email templates to inspire your next backlink outreach.
What is a backlink?
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. For example, this blog article mentions one of lemlist blog articles with the anchor text "follow-up".
Why are backlinks important?
First, if you place your backlinks on relevant websites in your industry, you build credibility and bring qualified traffic to your website.
On top of that, each backlink sends a positive signal to Google that your content is credible and useful. Think of it as other people putting in a good word for you.
Down the road, each backlink helps you improve your rankings and drive more traffic.
To truly understand the dynamics of backlinks, you need to understand what types exist out there. Starting with...
Do-follow & no-follow backlinks
Do-follow are the ones that will get you the SEO juice you're looking for.
No-follow links won't bring SEO benefits, but they can still bring qualified traffic. If placed strategically, of course.
From an SEO standpoint, you should always go for do-follow backlinks. However, bear in mind that you need both types of backlinks to win in the long run.
So if somebody can offer a no-follow backlink only, take it. They're still meaningful for traffic and reputation.
To verify the type of backlink, you can inspect the element directly on your browser with a right-click.
If you see a rel=”nofollow” attribute in the HTML, that link is a no-follow. Otherwise, you got yourself a do-follow link.
Also, bear in mind that not all backlinks are positive. The ones coming from untrusted and questionable sources can impact your SEO negatively. Especially if they've been penalized by Google (or other search engines) in the past.
The best way to defend and keep your website healthy is to run a quick backlink audit from time to time, filter new ones and keep an eye on who's linking to your real estate.
If you identify these, and they will come like winter does, don't sweat it. Delete them by following Google's Disavow Process.
Internal linking strategy
Internal backlinks are links from one page on your website to another. In other words, both pages belong to your domain.
Do they have an impact on SEO?
Yes! And they are quite important as Google discovers new content thanks to them when they crawl pages which are already known.
Internal linking also assists in putting a hierarchical structure of a website, thus allowing the spread of link equity around websites.
Like for any other backlinks, anchor matters, so choose them wisely.
Pages without any internal links are called orphan pages. To identify them you can use an SEO tool, but you also have a free option in Google Search Console.
Just go to the Links section in the left menu and choose internal links list. Then, organize the list to show the pages with the lowest number of internal links first.
Here are the high-quality backlink characteristics you want to pay attention to:
High domain authority
Decent website traffic
They've given do-follow or no-follow backlinks in the past
Domain authority is pretty straightforward. As for website traffic, you want to watch out for organic traffic trends. What's their traffic volume and are there any significant drops in traffic?
Besides that, analyze the specific page you want to get a backlink from. How that page is performing on Google and how much traffic it's generating.
Another suggestion is to also assess the types of backlinks they're giving and how many outbound links there are on a page. If the target website is giving no-follow backlinks, it would be extremely hard to avoid the same faith.
On top of that, too many outbound links on a page mean less authority is transferred via each external link.
Get backlinks through guest posts
When it comes to backlinks, a good way to facilitate them is by writing guest posts.
Use the quotation marks to indicate which exact word you want and get more accurate results from Google.
For instance, you can type YOUR KEYWORD + "guest posts", or "write for us" + advertising.
Next, it's a good idea to use filters and list recent ones.
You'll get freshly baked stuff. 😎
You also want to assess how authoritative and strong a website is.
People hate seeing 404 links on their website. It's a bad experience for the visitors.
So, once you've identified interesting websites for your business, see if they have 404s on their domain. I know, I know, it's an already seen SEO tactic.
It still works if you do it in a cool way and don't send generic emails. We'll come to the templates later. ;)
Then, get in touch with the owner of the website, tell them that they have 404 pages, and suggest one of your links to replace it.
Create backlinks with high-quality content
Quality content drives organic backlinks and shares. It makes other people want to get links from you.
To make your content stronger, promote it like your life depends on it. Share it on Social Media and send it to people from your network who might be interested.
Also, you can contact people or companies who are mentioned in your content. For example, if you're mentioning a tool, you can notify them as:
"Hey, I just published this article about [topic], and since I love your tool, I mentioned it in the part X. Thanks for being awesome!"
To me, the content that gets shared the most, are guides, tutorials, or checklists.
First, he knows that "copywriting guide" is the main keyword he wants to address. So he puts it clearly in the URL, in the first title, and also in the first paragraph.
He also uses top related keywords for his headlines, such as "what is copywriting", "how to become a copywriter".
Moreover, there's a very clear structure so that anyone could find his specific need when checking the article. This makes content writers more willing to share this article with their audience because they'll find clear answers.
Also, when a question is asked in a title, he answers at once before going into more details. This is great for 2 things: the reader doesn't get lost, but also, it can give SEO snippet opportunities (great SEO tips here 😎).
Overall, with a hot topic with high search intent, a clear structure, smart use of keywords, you have good materials in your hand to create content that'll be highly shareable, hence receive a lot of organic backlinks.
Leverage your competitors' backlinks
Many SEO tools can help you nail this process. I prefer Ahrefs. After lemlist, it's one of my favorite tools.
Go to "Best by links" option under "Pages" in the menu on the left. You'll be provided with a list of best-performing pages and all the backlinks linking to them.
Click on dofollow or nofollow numbers and analyze EVERYTHING and you're golden. Here is an article to help you to find email addresses.
Check groups and communities to find backlinks
There are hundreds of groups filled with content and SEO people. It can be on Slack, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, anywhere. You just have to find them and start the conversation.
Here are my favorites when it comes to backlink building:
FirstSiteGuide this is not a community, but a good website with resources about backlink building
Identify the mood of the community and then you can either
Publish an announcement to say you're open for backlink discussion
Identify interesting profiles and contact them directly
Find previous posts mentioning backlink exchange proposition and identify those who were willing to participate.
Find backlinks on Twitter
Rarely do I turn to Twitter, but in some scenarios, it might come handy. The trick here is to type a query in the search bar, like "link roundups". Switch to the latest tweets and let Twitter know you wanna see everyone's updates.
Ok, here comes the moment you were all waiting for... Daria's story about using LinkedIn as her lead magnet to do some link building.
Here is her email:
She sent this email a few days after her post was published.
People will see Daria's face. Since they already engaged and indicated they are interested in the collaboration, they might read the mail until the end.
And she did it well since she had an 86% open rate.
You could also go one step further and add a personalized video to a landing page.
How to get backlinks to your website with unlinked mentions
Depending on how strong your brand is, various people will inevitably mention your brand or company from time to time.
The game plan is straightforward. As soon as you receive an update that somebody has mentioned your company, you reach out to them to turn it into a high-quality backlink.
How to know when somebody mentions your name? Check Mention or a similar tool.
Here's the email template we like to use:
If you end up knowing the author or you can be referred to them, it's even easier.
Create backlinks with broken backlink opportunities
Here's the process for this broken backlink opportunities strategy:
find a certain page and run it through Check My Links to see broken links
alternatively, run a backlink report on Ahrefs to locate them
track down your piece of content that would fit in there instead
pitch
The broken link strategy relies on you telling a website owner that there's a non-working link on their page. Not only will you make them aware of an SEO issue, but you'd also do the work for them by recommending a link that fits in instead.
It's assumed they'll be grateful for it and replace the broken link with yours. In other words, the difficulty and the prospect's mindset are a bit easier here.
How to create backlinks with guest posts
The process consists of five phases, more or less.
Find guest post opportunities (discussed earlier)
Set up a .csv file and gather emails/form inquiries
Send a pitch
Write the article
Make sure it gets published
However your process ends up looking, I'll at least help you out with the email template. I've been guest posting a few years ago, after which I hit the pause button.
If you want to have all the eggs in your basket, you need to do your homework and do your research on your prospects.
Because the more you'll show them that you understand their goal and top priorities for their content, you'll assure them and they will be more willing to discover what you're suggesting.
Getting featured on podcasts to get backlinks
Although most of these don't bring any SEO value, they are still gold. Remember, it's about generating quality traffic too.
Whatever the word "conversion" means for your business, it's always a good idea to have whatever links in places where your audience spends time.
Here's my pitch in my backlink outreach...
A bunch of videos and interviews were recorded in both English and French up until this day... you can check it out with a simple YouTube search for Guillaume or myself.
I've already published a case study on how to get featured in podcasts. Just head over there and you'll see everything, including my high-performing email template.
Basically, you segment out all the articles that list specific tools under different categories. You probably know how popular posts such as "Best X tools for Y" or "Z tools every sales team needs" are.
Have a spreadsheet with these contacts ready, scrape down their emails and send them your pitch. My advice is to have a blurb and a screenshot ready for them to include it asap, with your backlink and anchor text. This way, there's no heavy push on their end to make it happen.
You've done it for them.
Here's the template...
This image will be automatically updated with the website of my prospect.
If you need more details on how to proceed, Charlie created a tutorial video to help you out.
Result?
Bottom line
If you've reached the end with me, you now have more keys to get backlinks and bring more traffic to your content.
Create great content, promote it, find opportunities, launch our email outreach campaign, and - don't forget - if someone asks you how to get backlinks, you can always begin with "it's all about creating relationships 😉".
lemlist team
Your source of actionable outreach tips and strategies that will help you get replies and grow your business.
Thanks! You've successfully subscribed to lemlist newsletter
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
You need your perfect leads, but you want to plan your monthly budget. We get it. Here's a full breakdown to understand how much leads cost when you're using lemlist.
Find out what an IMAP server is, how they synchronize your emails across multiple devices, and why they play a vital role in modern email communication.
.avif)
