How To Create High Da, DR Backlink In Few Steps

Go to any SEO forum and you'll find the obligatory post from a confused, link-building noob wondering, “How do I build awesome backlinks?

In the post, the frustrated linker claims that they've tried everything to build quality backlinks: free directories, profile links, article submissions, comment spamming, etc. But nothing works. Despite all their low-value efforts, they can't leapfrog their competitors in the SERPs, so they're begging others to share their secrets to building awesome, awesome, super-fantastic backlinks.

The problem is that these secrets don't exist.

There are no magic shortcuts, no highly rated insider hacks to get quality links to your website. Building awesome backlinks takes work. But that's the last thing forum bums want to hear. They want a quick fix, and creating something of value is much harder than slapping a forum signature on a thread post. So this message often falls on deaf ears.

However, if you're willing to bust your ass, then I'll share my process for building awesome backlinks. It's not easy. It is not easy. In fact, it requires creativity, tenacity, dedication and hard work. But unlike low value spam, if you follow these steps you can build amazing backlinks.

Step 1: Find what people are linking to

The first step to getting awesome backlinks is to research sites that already have fantastic backlinks and examine their link profiles. The logic is that good content attracts links because site owners feel compelled to share with their audience. So in this first step, you are looking for sites with "lotsa links" because they have already been proven to have link-worthy content.

To find out which blog posts have attracted the most inbound links, follow this process. Note: For this entire blog post, we'll use the hypothetical example of Jim's Pet Shop, an online pet store looking to drive links, traffic, and attention for its line of dog toys.

Install the SEO for Firefox Toolbar (it's free!)

Run a Google search (I'm using "dog toys" for this example), select the "show options" button (below the search box on the left) and click on "blogs" in the categories

Click on the "100" option (just below the search box on the right) to get the top 100 search results

Once you've solved this, click on the "CSV" link (just below the search box on the right) and export the results file Firefox for SEO will give you a lot of great information, but for this exercise we only need the data for the column "Y! Site Links' so you can delete the rest.

Sort the list by “Y! Site Links' from 'largest to smallest'. Your CSV results should look like this:

We now have a collection of all the "dog toys" blog posts that have attracted the most links. The next step in the process of building quality backlinks is to find out which pages are linking to these posts.

Step 2: Find out who is connecting

Now that we know which pieces of content are link magnets, let's find out who is doing the linking. Why is "who" important? This is because these website owners have already pre-qualified themselves as potential customers by demonstrating their willingness to link to a specific type of content, which in this example is 'dog toys' content. So there is a good chance that they can link to our dog toys content.

Step Three: Find out why people connect

To create linkable content, you need to determine why certain pieces of content attract links. Let's take a look at the blog posts in the example above and see if we can figure out why these five blog posts about dog toys attracted over 11k links. Is there some shared element, some common thread that makes them so worthy of reference?

It just so happens that in this case, the clues are pretty clear: the main links are articles about weird, weird, strange, or silly dog toys.

Step 3: Create the Bait

To attract links like toplink worthy posts, you need to create something of similar value. Now, I'm not saying that I'm going to copy it directly, and I'm also not saying that you need to reinvent the wheel. You can do something similar, but make it your own. If it's a useful widget, create a widget. If it's a whacky list, make a whacky list. The point is that the content you create must be valuable and interesting to your target market.

For example, take the assumption above that people love content about weird dog toys. Now there are many different ways you can turn this intelligence into an effective content strategy. I've collected some article ideas that I'm rating by effort and difficulty:

Easy: Create a blog post about a weird dog toy: It's not exactly original, but I bet it attracts a stray link or two.

Harder: Create an article about "10 Weird Dog Toys Your Dog Will Love". This requires more work, but there are more opportunities for links.

Wicked Hard!!: Fire up your big brain, get super creative, and run a contest on your pet store's website where people submit and vote on pictures of their dogs with bizarre dog toys, with all the best pictures winning a prize. You'll create a contest page (with contest details, photo galleries, and a voting folder), write a blog post announcing the contest, and one announcing the winners with winning pictures, the names of the dogs and their owners.