Netlinking is essential for a site’s natural SEO — it provides votes for your site and its pages.
These “votes” are called in technical jargon PageRank or “juice”. If blogs talk about your site as the best in your field, you gain juice and become relevant to Google. It then reconsiders your position in search results at your next crawl.
To date, in any minimally competitive niche, it will be impossible to place yourself in search results without these “votes” — knowing that those in 1st position continue to gain them naturally and increasingly dominate their #1 spot.
What is netlinking?
Link building or netlinking is a backlink generation strategy. A backlink is simply a link contained in a page that redirects to a page on your site (dofollow).
Link building or netlinking falls under off-page SEO optimisation.
Netlinking platforms
Many netlinking platforms offer to help your natural SEO by paying for links. They generally take care of creating the article and placing a link in it that redirects to your site, in partnership with blogs.
Do I recommend using a link purchasing platform? A combination of natural and non-natural link strategy is in my opinion the best approach.
Let us be honest: if you do not optimise one of the most important SEO criteria and expect it to happen naturally in a minimally competitive niche, you will wait forever — so invest in netlinking.
If you want to use a paid link building platform, I recommend consulting the article on the 5 best netlinking platforms.
Link strategies in Google’s eyes
Google does not like being deceived, which is why they implemented the Google Penguin algorithm since 24 April 2012 to detect any abuse and misuse of what should be “natural” regarding backlinks and their anchors.
Google is clear on this:
Buying links is prohibited. This prohibition is clearly stated in Google’s guidelines.
Backlinks are closely monitored, both by the algorithm and by humans. And if you are caught red-handed, you will be penalised by Google.
If it is a manual action, you will find the problem in your Search Console under “manual actions”.
What you really must not do
Should you place your link whenever you can on a forum, directory or comment? No.
However, it could be worthwhile to offer your services if appropriate in your city’s directory.
Should you do link exchanges? If you use a dedicated platform for link exchanges with people you do not even know — even if it covers your theme — it is the last thing you should do.
Moreover, link exchanges also violate Google’s webmaster guidelines (this should be sufficient proof it is a bad idea, especially since it is the easiest method for Google to detect).
In truth, the answer largely depends on your understanding of “link exchange or reciprocal link building”. There is a difference between those who constantly send emails like “Would you link to me if I link to you?”, and a friend who recommends you without even asking on an article because it is highly relevant — and you later return the favour because you genuinely find it appropriate to mention them when talking about design.
Now that everything is clear, let us move on to optimisation!
If you want control over your off-page SEO, we have written an article on PBNs (Private Blog Networks).
Backlink generation checklist:
- Basic rules in netlinking
- Create a blog for linkbaiting
- Blogs that link to your competitors
- Create external links to resource pages
- Guest post creation, also called guest blogging
- The skyscraper technique
- Images
- Turn your mentions into backlinks
- Find obsolete backlinks
- Share your articles
- Automate — the key to getting external links
- Link building also means optimising internal linking
1. Basic rules in netlinking
The first thing to do to make your netlinking meaningful is to start by applying and knowing best practices in SEO.
Backlinks must be natural.
To optimise link power and avoid Google penalising you:
- The site sending you a backlink must match your area of activity. → If it is a site like the New York Times covering multiple themes, it is still relevant to get a link from this type of site. To assess this power, you can use Babbar’s induced strength.
- Semantic consistency → If Google does not perfectly understand the meaning of your text, it will not be able to understand the meaning of the link. → If possible, use the same keywords between your page and the page sending you juice.
- The site must not be spammy (TrustFlow & Citation Flow) → Majestic
- The site must have authority (Domain Authority) but must also be in an authoritative directory (Domain Rating “DR” & URL Rating “UR”). If the domain is strong but the backlink is on a low-quality “partners” page buried deep in the site, it will not be worth much. → Ahrefs
- Check that the link is set to dofollow: our complete article on link attributes
- Nothing stops you from having multiple backlinks from the same site, but they will be progressively less powerful (SEO jargon: referring domain).
- If possible, your site’s link should be placed in the middle or beginning of the page rather than at the end (reasonable surfer model).
Backlink anchors
The anchor you use is very important for increasing a link’s power — here is a list to optimise it:
- Exact anchor → Your page is titled “Complete guide to SEO content” and on the external article the link is titled “Complete guide to SEO content”: the link is more effective but must be used sparingly as it is the most monitored by Google.
- Broad anchor → In our example, the link title would be “Discover how this article could increase your SEO”: this anchor is much more natural and should be prioritised.
- Branded anchor → The link title is your site’s/brand’s name “createur2site.fr”: ideal for the overall popularity of a domain name.
- Plain URL anchor → Your page’s URL is “optimise-your-seo” and the backlink title is “optimise your seo” (good to vary anchors).
- Generic anchor → “Click here to learn more”, “this article”, etc.: strongly discouraged.
- Image link → This involves placing a link on your image’s ALT tag: discouraged, but if the context is natural and relevant, why not.
Discover everything you need to know about link anchors in SEO.
Basic principle when sending emails:
There is no hack — almost all these techniques are based on sending emails. You must, like your content, send epic emails. Do not neglect sending follow-up emails — an absent response can be due to many factors. However, sending one follow-up email is sufficient: they will have seen it and think about responding to you. If you still get no response, do not insist. In general, sending an email in the afternoon performs better.
As a rule, suggesting a link is a poor approach — let them want to change or add your link without explicitly asking. If your content is epic, they will change their supplementary links to make their content better.
Flattery is widely used, even in spam emails — so using “I loved your advice on X” is much better than “I love your site!”.
You must also contact the right email address. If the site has an email address like quote@thesite.com or contact@thesite.com, favour the contact address. If you only find email addresses that seem incorrect, use search tools to find the right email address.
Tools:
2. Create a blog for linkbaiting
Links can be obtained “naturally” without prior request — mainly if your site has a blog, but only if your blog is relevant and epic. Hiring a writer to create 10 articles for €200 is pointless — save your money in that case. Moreover, “each to their own domain” — you know what you offer on your site, you are the expert, so I also recommend writing your own articles.
If your articles are very good, your readers will earn you backlinks and share your content on social media, their blogs, and return to your site. It is a strategy with all-round benefits — there is no secret: if your readers do not like your site, Google will not like it either.
3. Blogs that link to your competitors
Your competitors receive backlinks from websites that could also link to you. Why? Because if a site links to your competitor, they are interested in your theme and would likely be interested in your content too — especially if it is better.
To do this, use Ahrefs: Site Explorer → Backlinks → enter your competitor’s URL → filter by dofollow and sort by domain rating. You will then have a list of sites that link to your competitor. Contact them and explain why your content could be a valuable addition.
4. Creating external links to resource pages
Resource pages are pages that list the best links/content on a given topic. These pages exist precisely to link out to helpful resources — so they will not hesitate to add yours if it is good enough.
To find these pages, use search operators:
[your_theme] “useful resources”
[your_theme] “helpful links”
[your_theme] inurl:resources
[your_theme] intitle:resources
Once you find a relevant resource page, contact the owner and suggest your content as an addition to their list.
5. Creating guest posts, also called guest blogging
A guest post consists of writing an article for a blog and suggesting they integrate it into their site. Generally the goal is to get a mention somewhere saying “Author bio: createur2site.fr, SEO expert”.
Like all backlink acquisition techniques, the ideal is to write a guest post on an influential blog.
To find a blog, use search operators and vary between English and French:
[your_theme] “write for us”
[your_theme] “become an author”
[your_theme] “guest post”
[your_theme] “guest article”
[your_theme] inurl:contribute
However, it is not always relevant today to search for blogs that clearly specify you can write for them. Not only will you not be the only one finding the same blogs, but most blogs also remove their mentions to avoid being too spammed.
Do not limit yourself only to blogs that clearly specify they would accept guest posts.
- You must invest in the quality of your content (you know, that “epic” content)
- Contact more blogs than you can handle to get more positive responses
This can take an enormous amount of time, so here are productivity tips:
1. Robin Hood:
“Steal” excellent content ideas from the best blogs and offer them to less well-known blogs.
Stealing is for the Robin Hood metaphor of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor — simply draw inspiration from several excellent pieces of content and develop your own until it becomes “unique”. Smaller blogs are even more open to high-quality guest post ideas.
2. Split your knowledge
If you write long, epic articles (a bit like this one), that naturally means you have the experience and have spent many hours experimenting, reading, re-reading, verifying, etc. What follows from this? The work is done — divide it into “fragments” and submit each one as a guest post on another blog.
3. The perspective technique
Change the perspective, for example:
“The importance of SEO:
- For e-commerce sites
- For startups
- For local businesses
- etc.”
(yes, the subject is a bit sensitive…)
Optimising backlinks from guest posts
To further increase the power of the link pointing to your site through the guest post, you can give juice to the guest post yourself. You then increase the power of the level 1 link to your site through level 2 link power.
Let me guide you:
The blue lines represent SEO juice flow. You can therefore understand from this diagram that when you mention your guest post in another guest post, you increase the power of the original link redirecting to your site. (The green text in the 2nd guest post sends juice to the 1st guest post — so the top article gives x2 juice instead of x1 to my site.)
But the pleasure does not stop there!
Then contact the blog owner and explain that you have obtained a juicy backlink from another quality blog to their article. It will be music to their ears — they will undoubtedly be happy to return the favour in the future, for good reason.
Did you think it was over? Let me leave you to discover this complementary diagram.
(multipliers are not representative of reality but help visualise)
Indeed, the power of a backlink for your site depends among other things on the power of the parent page’s backlinks.
Note: To avoid Google unfairly penalising you, nothing stops you from rewriting your “author bio” from time to time.
Blogs to target for guest posts
Do not necessarily limit yourself to blogs covering only your theme — talking about SEO on a blog dedicated to SEO is not always the best practice. For example, talking about SEO on a marketing blog can work just as well. You are also not obliged to contact only very influential blogs. If you think a blog has a promising future and it is run by motivated and legitimate people, writing an article for them could prove beneficial over time.
6. The skyscraper technique
The “skyscraper” technique consists of offering better content than an existing link already present in an article.
- Find relevant content with many backlinks.
- Create something significantly better.
- Ask those who link to the page to link to your superior content instead.
The article creator naturally wants to show what is most relevant to their visitors, since human nature is attracted by the best things. You would not want to visit the 9th tallest building in the world — you would want to see the 1st. The skyscraper strategy is exactly that: you increase the content’s relevance by 20 additional floors then suggest your article.
- Length: If the post lists 10 tips, beat it by listing more.
- Freshness: Check whether the article is outdated. Update it with more recent images, screenshots, information, etc.
- Design: Content is not just about words — its visual appeal matters too. Make sure the design stands out and is more illustrative.
- Depth: Do not just list things. Fill in the details and make them actionable.
Obviously, if your content adds nothing more with your images — if they are simply prettier but use the same graphics — or if you list additional things that are not relevant when the recommended article only proposes the best things to do in the list, it is pointless. They will not bother changing the URL if your content is of little benefit.
You could send this type of email to the author:
- Hello, I was reading your article and found it super interesting ( http: // post1 )
- I also noticed it linked to a complementary article: http: // post2
- It has many good tips, however there are many additional things to say that are equally relevant.
- If you are interested, I just wrote this article: http: // post3
- It contains more advice — I invite you to read it if you are interested, feel free to tell me what you thought! Thank you!
To find these articles:
Choose a well-known blog → Ahrefs → Site Explorer → Best by links → sort the list by “referring domains”.
Or use Content Explorer and type a keyword then sort by referring domain (>50).
7. Images
1. Create amazing images
If they say a picture is worth a thousand words, your image can also be worth more than a thousand backlinks. Images are a major source of sharing — greatly appreciated. It is therefore likely that if your image is beautiful and relevant, it will travel around the web — whether in blog articles or on social media. To create your images, use these tools:
2. Optimise backlinks from your images:
In general, your image will be published with its source — thus generating a backlink to your page. However, the author may link the image to the URL of your image itself rather than the article it comes from. They may also simply not include the source. The goal is therefore to email these people and ask them to add the source or change the link.
Example: “I just saw that you included one of our illustrations in your article (the URL). Is there any chance you could link to the article it came from instead of the image file itself? Thank you very much!”
3. Find the sites that use your images:
You can use Google’s free reverse image search tool: upload your image and Google will search for all pages that display your image. All you have to do then is contact those people.
8. Turn mentions into backlinks
It is very likely that people are talking about you without placing your URL that redirects to your site.
1. To find these sites, use Ahrefs: Content Explorer > search for your site name (and exclude your domain) using this operator: -site:yoursite.com. However, you only get a list that mentions your site with or without your URL → export the URLs.
Add filters to narrow the results, such as a domain rating (DR) of 30 for example. Add a filter for sites with fewer than 50 organic visits per month. Etc.
2. Now that you have your list, export it to the Screaming Frog tool (you can also use ). To get the “Upload” button you must change the mode:
Now, upload your list, then select Configuration → Custom → Search.
All you need to do is add this Regex to find the URLs that do not link to you while mentioning you: <a [^>]*hrefs*=s*”([^”]*yoursite.com[^”]*). Choose the “Does Not Contain” filter.
Done! You have the full list of sites that mentioned you without including your site’s link. All you have to do is contact them to kindly ask if they can add your site’s link when they talk about you.
9. Finding obsolete backlinks
This method consists of finding pages with broken URLs (404 error) on the best sites in your niche.
Method 1:
To find pages with URLs that no longer work, you can use Ahrefs: Site Explorer → Best by links → enter the blog you want to target → Filter: 404 not found.
You can then write an article to replace the current URL (on the same original topic) and suggest it as a solution to this broken link. Everyone is happy! You can use to find out what the original content was about.
Tip: click Export in the top right to improve your productivity.
Method 2:
Use to find broken links in another way. Expired Domains lets you find domains with many backlinks that have expired. Then analyse the expired domain using Ahrefs and find all the sources of these backlinks. Since the domain has expired, it is a goldmine of broken URLs — you can therefore help a multitude of blogs and generate a heap of backlinks.
Then type the domain in Ahrefs → Site Explorer → Backlinks to find linked sites.
You can also paste your biggest competitor into Site Explorer, then go to Outgoing links → Broken links → Filter for ONLY dofollow links.
10. Share your articles
I think paid advertising should not be neglected for your backlinks if you have a blog. Ads allow people to discover you — like Facebook Ads, which allows you to create a “negative audience” of people who have already visited your website and only pay for clicks from people who have never heard of you. Please do not tell me you do not have the budget for content promotion. If you do not pay with money, you pay with time. No method is free because of what is called opportunity cost (your time is money). Even at a very very low rate of €10/hour, all these strategies take a lot of time — and it is likely that a guest post earns you an “average” backlink for, say, 48 hours of work — that is €480. This sum is equivalent to over 1,500 guaranteed clicks to your site with Facebook Ads. If you master marketing tools well, it is very likely someone among those 1,500 people will have talked about you afterwards.
The tools that work best are:
- Google Ads
- Facebook Ads
However, I recommend calling on an expert before spending money on your campaigns: these tools unfortunately appear very accessible while they absolutely are not, and they are very subtle when it comes to getting genuine “return on investment”. Paying someone for your campaigns is undoubtedly more cost-effective than doing it manually if you do not have the experience.
11. Automate — the key to getting external links
Automation is essential. Use SEO tools to know what is happening with your site, and use alerts to notify you of the use of one of your images, a nofollow link, a mention of you without a link, and much more.
For this I recommend:
12. Link building also means optimising internal linking
The techniques we have seen provide juice to your site and pages through external links, but internal links between your pages also give power to all your other pages.
You already do this by placing your links in your menu or footer. But as seen in section 1, you should if possible place your internal links at the beginning or middle of your page, since Google has filed a patent defining the “reasonable surfer” model that modifies their PageRank behaviour based on your link’s position.
You must therefore create an ideal internal link architecture to transfer juice across all your pages in order to improve the overall ranking of all your pages.
If you have a blog, renovate and improve your old articles by adding internal links from your new articles — but in an optimised way.
Summary of link building & netlinking strategies
Have you ever heard that to succeed you need to build relationships? That is true — and it is also true for your netlinking.
I hope this article has helped you — do not hesitate to share it if that is the case.