Guide to Backlinks: Chapter 7 – Backlinking Outside the Box

Now that we’ve covered all of the standard back linking strategies in some detail, it’s time to really think outside the box. In this chapter I’m going to tell you about creative tactics for back linking from all over the web.

Creative backlinking strategies

There are almost endless ways to build links once you start thinking creatively.

Really, it is all about creating something of value or something that builds buzz.

Let me give you an example.

The late, great Aaron Shear showed me this one time.

He did some consulting work for Zappos and they worked to create something called the “Product Showdown.” It has since been taken down. But the tool basically would let you click a button and it would generate random products and compare them against each other.

It was a really cool tool.

It was so cool, people like Neil Patel linked to it.

But there was another element to it as well, as Aaron explained to me. Each time the page refreshed it would serve another product. This made it so that Google crawled the page like crazy and it really helped indexing.

So that would be an example of a creative campaign and I am glad we get to remember some of Aaron’s work in this blog post.

Let’s jump into some more examples.

Pranks and hoaxes

If you create something funny or weird enough, people will link to it. It really works. Just be careful to walk the line between hilarious and offensive (or stupid) so you don’t get negative publicity or turn off customers.

In my earlier days I tried stuff like this. For example, this is me in front of my old house holding the biggest SEO in the world.

Sure I got a few links over April Fools, but it was basically a failure.

Prior and post this event, I have had many successes for the record.

There are lots of examples of this working in the form of fake funny products, parody websites, and real life practical jokes and hoaxes.

Here are a couple of great examples.

The first is generally known as “Ivar’s Billboard Hoax,” and it happened in 2009 when A Seattle seafood restaurant called Ivar’s installed billboards at the bottom of the Puget Sound. They said that the founder of the restaurant had put them there years back based on his faith in the future of submarine travel. In reality, they were just painted wood.

Clever marketing pranks can lead to good press and backlinks if done right.

The story was so funny, though, that it spread, and now it’s part of local history and Internet legend. The end result? A ton of great links and a huge spike in sales for the restaurant.

Another great example is the tactical duty kilt. What started out as an April Fool’s Day joke product became such a hot commodity that the people behind it decided to produce it. It’s still available today.

Testimonials

You want people and businesses that use your product or service to provide glowing testimonials for you, right? You should do the same for products or services that you really like. When you send them, let them know that they can use your testimonial on their site. To add credibility to your testimonial, they will often link back to your business.

This is more creative than viral, but worth mentioning.

Charity and philanthropic events

Trying to get back links—especially anchor text links—for your keywords?

Organize charity and philanthropic events that are on point.

For example, if you’re hoping to get back links for “kids roller skating helmets,” create a Kids Roller Skating Helmets Charity Giveaway in your area. Be tasteful about this and do it for the right reasons of course. I am a big charity guy so don’t do it just for links!

If there’s a safety week or event happening, make yours part of it; take advantage of related activities and groups. Include the sign up form for the event on your target site.

You can get other local businesses involved to keep costs low and interest high, and as part of standard news, blog, and non-profit coverage you’ll get great links with your keywords. You can also create some blogs leading up to the event, a photo gallery from the event, and blogs after the event to redirect traffic after the form is no longer needed.

Correct misinformation and build influence

You’re not just trying to build links—you’re trying to build influence in general, too. Watch for pieces in your niche area published by large media outlets. You may not have been their original go-to source for quotes, but if you spot places where you can correct misinformation or clarify points based on your expertise you can contact the authors and perhaps receive credit for your knowledge.

Create a Google Alert for your niche terms. When you see an article with misinformation in it, you can either just contact the writer directly, or better still, write your own post that clarifies the issue and corrects the errors. Once you write your own post, send it to the author. You stand a great chance of them creating an addendum to their article with your link.

Blogger reviews

You can’t ask bloggers to link to your site or review your product in exchange for free samples.

But you can send bloggers in your niche your product or service to use whether they review it or link to your site is up to them.

If you’ve done your homework on which bloggers to target, they’re going to be interested anyway, and your chances of getting a high-quality link from a review are good.

We have had some great success with this for our client Cucina & Amore. We send out a lot of product for them to influencers.

Blogger reviews are a great way to build backlinks and increase brand visibility.

Here’s an example of what your email could say:

Hey [blogger name],

I was looking for blog posts on the latest kitchen gadgets today when I came across your review on the Auroma One single serve coffee maker. Based on our shared love for coffee, I thought you might want to try out my new cold brew coffee maker. I’m dying to know what you think about it!

I am currently selling it for $X online, but I’m more than happy to send it to you on me. Let me know what you think of it, and if you happen to think it’s worth a mention on your blog, that would also be totally cool. 😉

Thanks,

[Your name]

Remember, don’t ask for a review or a link, because you don’t want to violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Just give them your product or service and let them make the call.

Collaborate with colleges and universities

We all know that .edu links are powerful; I’ve discussed this elsewhere. Here I’ll go into more detail about a few creative ways you can land these links.

Trade with student organizations

Most student organizations are totally student-run and hurting for funds. Can your business help out a student organization that’s related to your industry or niche? For example, can you donate a basic web page, a piece of office equipment, or basic catering for an event? If so, let them know you’d be happy to help if they credit your organization on their site.

Offer student, faculty, and staff discounts

If you can offer a product or service at a discount to students, faculty, and staff of the local college or university, do it. Your offer can be listed on the university’s website, on the bookstore’s website, and even on the pages for any relevant courses. You can even propose a time to speak at the college about how to use your product or service if it’s relevant.

Volunteer as a speaker

If you can offer students career advice, insight into your profession, or talk about the latest trends in a relevant field, offer to volunteer as a speaker for a course, career day, or other event. Look for courses that are relevant to your work, and develop relationships with the professors who teach them. Each such opportunity can mean a link back to your site.

I have spoken at some many UCSD events. I really need to ask them for a link. 🙂 Although, they do let me blog for them. So I guess I have gotten a few.

Offer scholarships

Identify academic departments or programs in your local college or university that are relevant to your product, service, or business and create a scholarship for students in the department or program you choose. Create a dedicated scholarships page on your site for this purpose. Contact the administration of the department with your proposal; they will almost certainly list it on their scholarships page and link back to your scholarships page.

Here is a sample email for contacting the department:

Dear [Administrator’s name/title],

I’m pleased to notify you of a new scholarship opportunity for students in the [program]. Our scholarship is called “[name of scholarship],” and it’s intended to help [brief description of target recipients].

Here is a brief list of our scholarship recipient requirements:

[Requirements]

If you would add this link to our scholarship information page to your department’s scholarship information page, we would be honored. In the meantime, I’m happy to answer any questions you might have.

Sincerely,
[Your name]

Vendors, manufacturers, suppliers, and web developers

As I mentioned above, you should offer testimonials to these kinds of professional partners anyway. You can also reach out to your vendors, manufacturers, and suppliers about connecting back to users like your business. You can create your own list of companies who use your product or service, too.

Web developers also usually place some mention of themselves on websites they build in the footer; it’s how they let people know about their work. First of all, make sure that if your developer has a footer link that it’s not overstuffed with keywords and it instead uses branded link text. Next, reach out to them to see that your website link is also listed in their online portfolio.

Link reclamation

Link reclamation means finding any unlinked mentions of you or your business that don’t link back to you and taking advantage of that missed opportunity. First find any unlinked mentions of your brand using a tool such as Mention.net or Open Site Explorer.

Unlinked Mentions

Next reach out to any mentions that don’t link back to you:

Hey [name of webmaster or author],

Thanks so much for mentioning [brand] in your article from [date]. I really appreciate the mention!

I wanted to reach out to ask if you would add a link back to our site so that your readers could refer back to us for more information while reading your post.

Whatever you decide, thanks so much for the mention!

Thanks,

[Your name]

Contests and challenges

Creating a fun contest or challenge is an excellent and creative link building strategy.

This is one of my favorite things to do. At this point, I have helped fun over 500 contests, quizzes, interactive campaigns, etc.

Every kind you can think of.

(Learn everything you need to know about this topic here)

There is nothing better than a contest or challenge to generate links and buzz. Here is an example one we did for Buy Auto Parts.

Meetup campaigns

Do you travel for work?

Look for niche-specific meetups where you’re traveling.

Better still, start your own local meetup and plan your own meetup campaign for when you’re on the road. Include reports on your meetup activities in your content strategy, and you’ll soon be interlinking with many others in your industry.

Neil Patel wrote about blogger Harsh Agarwal’s ShoutMeet campaign in India which was like a massive road trip for bloggers. Agarwal met up with local bloggers at each city on his stop—and not surprisingly, they all connected and blogged about the campaign. It wasn’t a link building scheme! It was just a fun, valuable activity for bloggers to enjoy, and that’s why it worked.

Innovative ideas that led to awesome backlinks

These are awesome examples of times when outside the box thinking led to amazing link building success (sometimes by accident).

Fruit and vegetable hamster gym

SEO firm Receptional created a miniature fruit and vegetable hamster gym for their client, Discount Supplements and took pictures of the hamsters “working out” in it. People love cute animal photos, and these pics of hamsters pumping radishes instead of iron was enough to land a Huffington Post link, for example. In total the hamster gym generated at least 429 new links for the business.

Virgin Mobile’s Dialing Under the Influence (D.U.I.).

This simple Virgin Mobile Australia feature (which is now discontinued) began as part of a creative link bait campaign. A single page of text on the Virgin Mobile Australia site explained to users that they simply needed to use the code to block certain numbers from their phone (such as an ex or a boss) before going out for the night. The phone would then unblock the numbers the next morning at 6:00am.

The gimmick was so popular that it went viral, and the feature itself persisted for years. The single basic text page on Virgin’s site had more than 226 backlinks from 71 sites.

Pasty tax

This one, described by Mark Porter of Screaming Frog, is a great example of capitalizing on a political moment. This happened when the government of the UK proposed what came to be called the controversial “Pasty Tax,” a tax on certain hot takeout foods. The public was angry about the proposed tax, and Chris Jones of Screaming Frog created a ‘Cameron With Pasties‘ tumblr after Prime Minister David Cameron was caught in a lie about how much he loved eating pasties regularly.

The tumblr blew up fast, prompting all kinds of people to add their own edited shots of Cameron “eating” pasties in different settings. It also got a lot of great links as the controversy swelled. The newsiness of the issue died down relatively quickly, but these kinds of viral “issue” sites can be a really useful link building tool.

Parody website Johncow.com

You certainly know who blogger John Chow is. But have you heard of John Cow? John Cow was a parodic creation of Bob Jones who created JohnCow.com. The site itself brought in $1,000 in its first month and garnered a buyout offer of $10,000. Why—what on Earth was he doing?

Well, this was before Google made the changes to its algorithms we all know about now, so one of the main things Bob did was launch hoaxes, giveaways, and linkbait campaigns including an actual ransom demand from his readers: give exact match anchor text links to their websites or John Cow gets it. Eventually, as you might guess, legal issues forced Bob to sell the site—and go on to write for John Chow.

I mention it here because as long as you stay within the bounds of the law (and Google Webmaster’s Guidelines) a parody site can be a huge link building win. JohnCow.com now redirects you to John Chow, but it still has thousands of live back links.

Conclusion

Back linking outside the box can reap serious dividends for your link building strategy. Keep these creative examples in mind as you plan your own strategy, and remember to use your own unique insights to come up with innovative link building plans.

Going Viral With Backlinks (Here’s How to Do it) – Chapter Seven