How I Built 826 Backlinks to a Single Article in 8 Weeks

No matter how much SEO evolves, backlinks remain the primary “currency” for Google when ranking websites.

In fact, a November 2016 study from First Page Sage found that backlinks are still the number one overall ranking factor in Google’s algorithm:

And I seriously doubt this will change any time soon.

Of course, there are other critical ranking factors, but building backlinks should still be your top priority.

When you break it all down, the more high quality, relevant backlinks you have pointing to your site, the better your rankings will be.

And that’s great and all, but how exactly do you go about quickly sending a high volume of backlinks to your website?

More specifically, how do you send them to a single article?

I’m about to show you.

I’m going to use a particular guide I created on Quick Sprout a while back as an example.

It’s The Advanced Guide to SEO I wrote with Sujan Patel.

I managed to build a grand total of 826 backlinks in just eight weeks to the guide.

SEMrush stats

First, let me give you a quick overview of the article’s stats.

I’ll use SEMrush to show you the details.

Now, that’s just a drop in the bucket when compared with the total number of backlinks for Quick Sprout.

The particular article I’m referencing accounts only for 1% of Quick Sprout’s overall backlinks.

But when you beef up the backlink volume for multiple articles, it all comes together to create a very powerful link profile for your site.

How did I do it?

It all starts with epic content

If you look through the Quick Sprout archives, you’ll see a massive body of content.

Some articles are better than others, but I always strive to maintain quality.

One content format that’s really helped bring in backlinks is the in-depth guides.

There’s a guide for general online marketing, content marketing, landing page optimization and so on.

Here’s a list of 12 guides and two courses offered.

And, of course, there’s The Advanced Guide to SEO I’m using as an example for this post.

If you browse through it, you’ll quickly see it’s not your average guide.

It’s incredibly comprehensive and detailed.

There are nine exhaustive chapters, covering everything from indexation and accessibility to link-building techniques and search verticals.

The various techniques are also broken down step-by-step so beginners can understand the specifics and ultimately gain a deeper perspective on the underlying theory.

In other words, it’s not something you’ll find on your average SEO blog.

My point here is you need to begin with epic content.

It needs to deliver value the bulk of your competitors aren’t currently offering.

As I’ve pointed out before, this doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel.

In fact, you can take an existing topic, improve upon it and still completely crush it.

This is known as the skyscraper technique.

If the quality level is there, the backlinks will come.

But if it’s not, it’s going to be an uphill battle.

Target multiple keywords

I’m sure you know by now that long-form content ranks consistently higher than your average, run of the mill, 500-700-word post.

One of the more recent studies on word count from Backlinko found that “the average word count of a Google first page result is 1,890 words.”

There are multiple theories as to why this correlation exists, but regardless of the reasoning, it’s undeniable.

One reason why I really love long-form content is because it gives me the opportunity to rank for several different keywords at once.

Just think about.

If you’re writing a 500-word post, you’re essentially limited to targeting two or three keywords (unless you’re obnoxiously stuffing keywords).

But if you go significantly longer and hit upwards of 2,000 words, you can target several different keywords.

This approach allows you to cater to multiple segments of your demographic, increasing the number of times people link to your article.

Longtail keywords in particular are great for maximizing your organic traffic and attracting a larger percentage of your audience.

An example

Let’s say you’re a web developer writing an article on the topic of coding/web development.

You’re looking to showcase your expertise, build backlinks, bring in organic traffic, etc.

Just a little keyword research on The Google Keyword Planner will supply you with a handful of potential keywords to target.

Here are some keywords that look pretty good to me:

From there, you could include different sections in your article to cover PHP, RWD and mobile web development.

As long as your content hits its mark, it’s reasonable to expect that a sizable number of people will link to you.

Answer a relevant Quora question

I’ve mentioned before that Quora can be an incredibly powerful resource for generating referral traffic.

But it’s also a great place to build backlinks.

Here’s what you do.

First, do a search that relates to the article you’re trying to build backlinks to.

I’ll stick with web development as an example.

Just type in “web development” into the search box to find a relevant topic.

Then click on the topic you’re interested in.

This particular topic looks good because there are over 163,000 questions and 1.5 million followers.

Now, scroll down until you find a question relevant to your article.

This one might work:

It’s got plenty of upvotes and comments, which is good.

Now, leave a detailed, quality answer, and link to your article.

The idea here is that people will be impressed with your answer and click on the link you provide.

From there, a portion will be even more impressed with your article and link to it.

That way, you’re instantly gaining a solid link from Quora and potentially more from people who land on your content.

But here’s the thing.

You never want to be spammy about it.

This is only going to hurt your credibility on Quora.

That’s why it’s essential that your link is highly relevant to the question asked.

Spy on competitors for backlink opportunities

Sometimes, the best way to build backlinks is to simply ask for them.

But how do you know whom to ask?

One technique I’ve found useful involves first seeing where your main competitors are getting their backlinks from.

Since you’re in the same niche, there’s a good chance the sites that link to your competitors will link to you too.

Here’s what you do.

Start by searching for a competitor’s backlink profile on Cognitive SEO’s Site Explorer.

I’ll just use Backlinko as an example.

Scroll down a bit, and you’ll see who’s been linking to their site.

From here, I can see exactly where those links are coming from.

Next, reach out to those relevant sites with an email like this:

This is a great way to get on the radar of some of the more influential sites in your niche, and it can help you quickly gain some valuable backlinks.

It can be a bit of a numbers game, so you may need to send out a high volume of emails to get the results you’re looking for.

Create a round-up post

Okay, this last technique is a little different.

It doesn’t involved building backlinks to an existing article.

Instead, it revolves around strategically creating a “round-up post” with the specific purpose of gaining massive backlinks.

If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, it works like this.

You come up with an interesting question a lot of people have.

Then you contact a large list of experts and ask them for a response to the question.

Here’s a really good example from Clambr:

In it, Richard Marriot asks 55 experts what their three favorite SEO tools are.

A quick search on SEMrush lets me know he got 56 backlinks, which isn’t too shabby.

But there’s no reason you couldn’t get a lot more than that.

And the process is fairly straightforward.

You identify at least 30 relevant experts to answer your question and contact them.

HubSpot provides a template for your email:

You then compile the answers you receive into an easy-to-digest article.

The logic behind a round-up post

You may be wondering what the point of creating this type of article is.

Well, it’s simple.

After you’ve published it, you send all the participating experts a quick email that includes the URL to the post.

Like this:

You can expect a fair number of those experts to link to the article or share it on social media.

In some cases, your article might even go viral.

Just think of the implications of a big name expert, with a massive following, linking to it.

At the very least, you should be able to generate a good number of backlinks.

For more on the topic of round-up posts, I recommend reading this guide from HubSpot.

It will fill you in on the details.

Conclusion

Google looks at numerous factors when deciding where to rank your site.

But backlinks have been and will continue to be one of the primary ranking factors.

You need to come up with a viable strategy for generating backlinks—and plenty of them.

I find that creating top-shelf, long-form content and targeting a handful of relevant keywords is a good starting point.

That’s half the battle.

Beyond that, there are several strategies you can implement that will increase the visibility of your article and encourage others to link to it.

The ones I mentioned here can be a tremendous help and net you as many as 826 backlinks in just eight weeks.

What’s your number one go-to backlinking strategy?

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The Digital Marketer’s Guide to Programmatic Marketing

The evolution taken in place in digital marketing over the last decade is amazing.

We’ve gone from horrendous keyword stuffing and “spray and pray” campaigns to incredibly smart and efficient strategies that maximize ROI.

This evolution has largely been fueled by data and predictive analytics.

And what I love is the power that small-scale marketers now have.

The tyranny of traditional gatekeepers in marketing has been drastically diminished, which to me is a beautiful thing.

You don’t have to have a massive marketing budget to get results anymore.

It’s more about being savvy and staying ahead of the game.

One particular technique beginning to pick up steam is programmatic marketing.

If you’ve never heard of it, it can seem a little complicated at first—especially when you examine it on a granular level.

But when you look at the big picture, it’s pretty straightforward.

In this post, I’m going to explain the fundamentals of programmatic marketing, its outlook over the next few years, best practices and how to get started.

Let’s start from the top.

What is programmatic marketing?

State of Digital offers a basic explanation:

Programmatic marketing is a way to target what types of audience you wish to show your advertising to. Which can encompass segments across demographics such as age, gender, social standing, to geographic in certain areas of the country.

Here’s another definition of it from Kenneth Kulbok of LinkedIn:

At its core, programmatic marketing involves advertisers competing in an automated, real-time auction, where the highest bidder wins the impression.

From there, the visitor will see an ad from the winning advertiser.

Everything happens within milliseconds, so there’s no lag or disruption in the user experience.

It’s all seamless.

If you’re still a little unclear, this graphic breaks the process down step by step:

As you can see, it’s very streamlined.

Rather than relying upon humans to manually complete the process, programmatic marketing uses an algorithm to handle it automatically.

An example

I find having a concrete example to look at helps me connect the dots and fully grasp a concept.

So, here you go.

Here’s an example provided by Decisive, which involves Words with Friends, a word game:

In this case, Words with Friends is the publisher.

Words with Friends gives its ad inventory to an ad exchange.

The ad exchange then has an auction, where advertisers get information about a person using Words with Friends, which is called a bid request.

This information could include their IP address, operating system, type of device and so on.

From there, advertisers examine the bid request and send in their bid price.

Once the ad exchange gets in all the bids, the highest bidder is the winner, and their ad is shown to the user.

The amazing thing is it all takes place in milliseconds.

Within an instant, the user is shown a highly relevant ad from the winning bidder.

The benefits

Besides the inherent efficiency, the primary advantage of programmatic marketing is the quality of leads it generates.

The extent to which you can target your ads is pretty amazing.

An algorithm examines a vast amount of data to instantly identify visitors that match your demographic.

As I mentioned earlier, this technology can look at factors like age, gender, geographical location, etc. as well as the context of the website being viewed to find highly-qualified visitors.

That way you know for a fact your leads are highly qualified.

As State of Digital also points out,

you are only paying for highly effective ads, delivered to the right people at the right time.

You also have plenty of control over your budget and can have your ads featured across several different publishers with a high degree of flexibility.

This means you have way more opportunities to reach your demographic with this method than with a more conventional, like a traditional PPC platform, method.

The bottom line is:

• programmatic marketing is quick and efficient;
• it allows you to get your ads in front of a highly targeted audience;
• it offers a lot of flexibility.

Projected growth

Now, you’re probably thinking that programmatic marketing seems legit enough.

But is it really a viable marketing technique that’s here for the long run?

Or is it just some fad that will quickly fade away?

Well, there’s a solid body of data that suggests it’s here to stay.

For starters, here’s the rise in interest in programmatic marketing between 2012 and 2016, according to Google Trends:

There’s no denying interest has grown considerably.

Here’s a chart that shows how programmatic spending has risen over the past six years:

As you can see, there has been a dramatic rise in spending.

According to MAGNA GLOBAL,

programmatic marketing is experiencing an average annual growth rate of 31%.

They even predict that ad spend will reach $37 billion by 2019.

Clearly, programmatic marketing is growing by leaps and bounds.

The US in particular is spending money like crazy.

Just look at how the US compares with other countries:

It’s safe to say this is something that digital marketers will want to know more about and at least consider implementing and experimenting with.

Best practices

Let’s say you’re interested and are looking to get your feet wet.

What are some of the most important things to keep in mind?

The way I look at it, there are four key factors you’ll want to pay attention to.

Factor #1: ROI

First, you need to have a clear understanding of how much you’re willing to pay in order to get your ads in front of visitors.

Your ROI isn’t something to be taken lightly.

Set some specific ROI goals to ensure you’re spending wisely and getting the most bang for your buck.

Factor #2: Data

Data is vital to making programmatic marketing work.

The more data you have at your disposal and the smarter it is, the better the likelihood of success.

Use your existing customer data to gain a thorough understanding of how to best reach your demographic.

This should enable you to approach your campaign with greater confidence and minimize waste spending.

It will also help ensure that only highly qualified leads are seeing your ads.

In other words, you won’t waste money on crappy leads unlikely to buy.

Factor #3: Mobile

It’s safe to say that having mobile-friendly ad content is a big deal.

Just look at data from a recent Hootsuite study:

Considering nearly half of all Internet users are on mobile, make sure your ads are compatible with all screen sizes and devices.

Otherwise, it’s like flushing money down the toilet.

Factor #4: Preventing ad fraud

Finally, you’ll want to understand the dangers of ad fraud.

Not to freak you out, but there are definitely cases where ad buyers were left with bogus impressions and visits.

Make sure you don’t become a victim.

The best way to do this is to check out how an ad exchange buys ad inventory and the types of vendors they work with.

If they partner with any questionable vendors, this should be a red flag.

I also suggest you inquire about the policies they have to prevent ad fraud from taking place.

I would imagine programmatic marketing will become more and more regulated over time, but you’ll want to take proper precaution to prevent ad fraud.

For in-depth information on this topic, I recommend checking out The Programmatic Marketing Guide from Smart Insights.

It covers everything from developing a strategy to understanding the criteria for choosing a platform.

Ad exchange platforms

By this point, you’re probably wondering about actual providers.

What are some ad exchange platforms you can use for your programmatic marketing campaign?

There are numerous platforms on the market, but I suggest these three:

• Acuity – You can check out their demo here
• DataXu – They offer in-house programmatic ad buying
• Bench – This allows you to create actionable personas and audience groups

Conclusion

As technology continues to advance, digital marketing becomes increasingly sophisticated.

To me, programmatic marketing is the natural next step in the evolution of digital marketing.

It’s extremely cutting-edge and is the perfect way to use big data to your advantage.

This way you can do more with your marketing budget and ensure your ads are being shown only to highly qualified leads.

I also love it because your ads can be distributed across a variety of platforms.

You’re not limited to a single network such as Google AdWords or Facebook Ads.

It still remains to be seen what the full impact of programmatic marketing will be.

But it looks very promising and could be a real game-changer in the digital marketing realm.

Have you ever experimented with programmatic marketing?

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16 Essentials to Creating a Trust-Boosting Twitter Profile

I don’t need to tell you how big trust in business and marketing is.

Trust is everything.

You can pull every clever trick in the book, invest thousands of dollars in slick, sexy advertising and work tirelessly on conversion optimization tactics.

But at the end of the day, it’s trust that leads to sales.

That’s probably why word-of-mouth marketing is just as important as it’s ever been.

A new study from Ogilvy, Google and TNS found,

word of mouth is the most powerful factor when it comes to consumers’ relationships with brands.

According to that study, 74% of consumers cite word of mouth as being the most powerful factor.

And this totally makes sense.

I’ll trust the input of a friend or family member over some hotshot salesman any day of the week.

So, when it comes to your Twitter profile, trust-building should be given top priority.

You obviously want to grow your following.

But more importantly, you want your followers to trust you and take your opinion seriously.

Which elements should you focus on to build trust?

In this post, I share 16 essentials mandatory for creating a trust-boosting Twitter profile.

1. Use a branded background image

What’s the first thing Twitter users see when landing on your profile?

For most, it’s your background image.

Of course, it needs to look great and have the right pixel dimensions.

But it also needs to incorporate the same branding elements you use in your logo, on your website, other social accounts and so on.

Here’s a good example from Burt’s Bees:

Here’s another from Mashable:

Both incorporate a color scheme, style and message congruent with their overall brand.

This is important because it typically takes being exposed to your brand five to seven times before customers will buy.

2. Add an appropriate profile picture

Equally important is your profile picture.

Again, it needs to be appealing and be in line with the rest of your branding.

Here’s the image I use for my Neil Patel Twitter profile:

It’s simple yet professional, and visitors can instantly recognize me.

Here’s the profile picture for The Art of Manliness:

It’s matches the central theme of the Art of Manliness website.

3. Get verified

I’ve mentioned before that adding a trust seal to your checkout page can increase conversions.

Twitter has its own version of a trust seal, which is a blue check mark.

It looks like this:

Although it’s just a small, simple icon, it can pump up your trustworthiness considerably because Twitter users instantly know your account is authentic.

I know I always look for the blue verified badge when I’m searching for a celebrity or major brand.

To get verified, you’ll need to submit a request, which you can learn about here.

And here are some of the basic elements you must have in order to be approved:

4. Highlight your credentials (without being obnoxious about it)

Twitter allows you to include some brief biographical information on your profile.

This is the perfect place to explain your credentials and what you bring to the table.

Use this space wisely.

Here’s the info I include on my profile:

Here’s the info Chris Ducker includes:

Just don’t go overboard tooting your own horn to the point of being annoying.

5. Connect your website

Twitter also allows you to include a link to a website in your profile.

This is great for driving referral traffic and can also serve as a trust-booster.

6. Pin your best content to the top

Just like Facebook, Twitter gives you the option of pinning a top tweet to the top of your profile.

At the moment, I’m using this feature to promote my podcast.

See?

Pinning a top tweet is a simple way to maximize the visibility of a particular post and is great for increasing trust.

Pick what you feel is your absolute best tweet, and pin it to the top of your profile.

Ideally, it would have already received plenty of engagement (e.g., retweets, likes, etc.) because this will make you seem more legit to first-time visitors.

Keep in mind this is the first post they will see.

Pinning a top tweet is simple.

Click on the downward arrow on the top right-hand corner of your favorite tweet.

Then click “Pin to your profile page:”

That’s all there is to it.

7. Stay away from garbage content

This is a no brainer but definitely worth mentioning.

At the end of the day, you’re only as credible as the content you tweet.

If you post genuinely insightful, relevant content, people will trust you more.

If you post garbage content that’s worthless, spammy and overtly self-serving, it’s going to kill your trustworthiness.

That’s why I always try to make sure my content hits its mark and matches the interests of my audience, which fall under the umbrella of digital marketing.

8. Retweet credible sources

Retweets are a big part of Twitter’s appeal.

With just a couple of clicks (or taps) you can retweet interesting content and share it with your audience.

But here’s the thing.

People will assess your legitimacy based on the type of content you retweet.

If you’re retweeting epic content from a credible source, you’re good to go.

This is going to enhance your image and increase your followers’ sense of trust toward you.

But if it’s crap, it’s going to diminish that sense of trust.

In other words, don’t retweet posts from spammy, irrelevant sources.

9. Link to major sites

Again, the content you associate yourself with can help or hurt your brand.

Sprinkle in a few articles each week from major publications such as The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, The New Yorker, etc.—whatever matches your industry or niche.

It needs to be relevant to your audience and cover a topic of genuine interest to them.

And here’s another thing.

It’s best to include the URL of the publication so that people can instantly recognize it.

Like this:

The idea here is you can inform/entertain your audience while benefiting from the trust people have in an established, trusted site.

10. Stick with a consistent theme

A big component of gaining trust is being seen as an expert or an authority on a particular subject.

To achieve this status, you have to be selective about the type of content you post.

For instance, you won’t catch me tweeting about interior design or cooking.

You’ll find me posting content strictly about digital marketing.

That’s my MO.

Be clear about what your niche is by sticking with a consistent theme.

11. Maintain a steady posting schedule

Of all the social networks, people tend to post the most frequently on Twitter.

According to a recent study from CoSchedule, “15 tweets per day is recommended.”

Don’t be afraid of going a little crazy with your tweets.

The most important thing is to be consistent and not have any major gaps between posts.

12. Pepper in some videos

I’m sure you know how huge video marketing is right now.

Brands that use video report more traffic, more leads and a higher ROI.

I also find video to be perfect for breaking down walls and making deeper connections.

Why not throw in a few videos on your Twitter page?

I’ve been doing this recently and am seeing some great results.

Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income does the same.

Just link content from your YouTube channel or website.

13. Don’t flood your tweets with hashtags

Hashtags are an effective way to increase the visibility of your tweets.

Their overuse, however, can backfire, especially on Twitter.

While it’s fine and even encouraged to use 10 or more hashtags on other networks, like Instagram, it’s considered best practice to use a maximum of three hashtags on Twitter.

However, two hashtags is ideal and is the number I typically aim for.

Recent research shows that

engagement drops significantly once any more than two hashtags are used, on average.

“Loading the box” with hashtags looks spammy and can be a trust killer.

14. Strive to hit the perfect ratio of followers

Let’s say someone has 100k followers.

That’s great.

But what if they’re following 500k people?

All of a sudden, they don’t seem as legit and trustworthy.

But let’s say someone who has 100k followers is following only 50k people.

You’re probably more likely to take them seriously because their number of followers outweighs the number of people they’re following.

It may seem like a popularity contest, but you should try to reach a favorable ratio of followers.

I would like to think I’ve got a nice ratio:

According to Kred Stories,

it is essential that you get at least 20% of the users you follow to follow you back before you move on to the next group of followers.

In other words, don’t follow a ridiculous number of accounts unless you’ve got a sizable following.

It just looks bad if you’re following thousands of people and you have only a handful of followers yourself.

15. Be a stickler for spelling and grammar

There’s evidence that indicates poor spelling and grammar costs businesses millions each year in sales.

Just like you should double-check your blog posts and emails, you should always look over your tweets before publishing anything.

Otherwise, blatant errors will make you look amateurish.

16. Reply to (valid) complaints

More and more businesses are using Twitter as a platform for handling customer service these days.

You’re likely to receive some complaints at some point along the way.

The worst thing you can do is ignore them.

Your followers will see them, and you’ll look bad.

The best approach is to respond as quickly as possible and try to resolve the situation.

Here’s a good example of Domino’s pulling this off perfectly:

Conclusion

Psychological studies have found that we have an innate desire to connect with others.

Researchers found,

based on perceptions of trust, people reported positive interactions with a ‘close friend’ to be more rewarding than interactions with a stranger or a machine.

They also found that two specific brain regions—the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex—were actively engaged when someone thought they were trusting a close friend.

Your goal on Twitter is to maximize your trustworthiness and create more positive interactions.

You want to bridge the gap and make people feel a sense of camaraderie with you.

The essentials I listed in this post should help you accomplish this in a variety of ways.

This should make first-time visitors more willing to follow you and help you strengthen your rapport with your existing followers.

How do you decide whether or not you trust a person or brand on Twitter?

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