A Quick & Easy Free Linkbuilding Tactic

MICHAEL:
Hi guys, Michael here. Do you want a second opinion on your SEO? Head to theseoshow.co and hit the link in the header. We'll take a look under the hood at your SEO, your competitors and your market and tell you how you can improve. All right, let's get into the show.

INTRO: It's time for the SEO show, where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now, here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

MICHAEL: Welcome back to another episode of the SEO show. I'm Michael and I'm joined by Arthur as always. How are you going Arthur?

ARTHUR: I'm good. I was about to do the intro and you interrupted me. No, you did the intro last week. I thought it was just, yeah, I thought I was doing the intros moving forward.

MICHAEL: We should probably have a team meeting before we go live on air to discuss these things. But, uh, anyway, probably a good idea. We're all good. We have a short and sweet episode this week, so it's okay. You'll be back doing the intro again soon. You can do next week's one. But, um, as promised in last week's episode, we wanted to talk about. a cool free link building tactic for the people out there that don't want to pay for links, even after our episode last week talking all about why you should pay for links. So look, it's a tough slog getting free links, but this tactic is pretty cool, pretty easy, well, relatively easy, and it gets you some juicy links. What am I talking about? Image link building? Image link building.

ARTHUR: Yeah.

MICHAEL: You're going to ask me some questions about it or you want to give me a brief synopsis of what it is.

ARTHUR: I'll let you do the brief synopsis because you you've done it successfully on your sites. So what, what is image link building?

MICHAEL: Well, for me, it's, um, it's making use of creative comments. So it's a licensing thing where if you are the original creator of an image.

ARTHUR: So you're talking like stock photos, for example.

MICHAEL: Yeah, just any image. So the way I do it is like, so if I run an affiliate website and I want to get links from, for argument's sake, businesses in the pet industry, I would go and create images of like dogs bounding through fields or like closeup shots of dog food or a bowl with water, and then put it up on a website. Imgur is the one I use. And you put a license on it called Creative Commons, which says anyone that comes across this image can use it free of charge. And the reason this is so good is because if you think about publications out there, like all these blogs or news websites and the like, they're constantly publishing articles and wanting images for it, but they don't want to pay for them. No. So they have their authors just go look for creative commons images. And so when you set the creative commons up, you can say, look, this image is free to use, but you have to have a link back to my site as like a reference or a credit.

ARTHUR: Yeah.

MICHAEL: So that's image link building in a nutshell.

ARTHUR: So essentially what you can do is reverse image search that image to see whether or not they've actually linked back. And if they haven't, then you can approach them and say, look, I've noticed that you're using one of the images I've uploaded. Can you please link back to my site as a reference? Yeah.

MICHAEL: Okay, cool. Well, there's different, there's upfront, like, so when, so I said imager, I M G U R.com, you go create your account on there. Upload the images and when you upload the images you can put your instructions into like the description So in every image, it says free for use. Just please give me a followed link back Yeah, and I use brand so it's good for building a bunch of brand links to your site sure you put that on every image, but yes, you can also then reverse image search yours and Also, you can put your imager listing into ah refs because you'll see that Heaps of people instead of linking back to your website will link back to the imager profile.

ARTHUR: Yeah

MICHAEL: So then you can reach out to them and say, hey, I asked to link back to my site. Can you please do that?

ARTHUR: Have you had to do that often or are they generally pretty good at following the instructions and linking back to your site?

MICHAEL: I would say it's probably 50-50.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It's something I probably wouldn't do. I'm just lazy.

MICHAEL: Yeah. I haven't been that bothered to follow up and chase people about it. Like I know I should, but well, it's a free free link.

ARTHUR: Yeah. But it's also time.

MICHAEL: So for me, it's easier to create all these images, put them up there and just know that every month people are doing the right thing to take it to the next level. You would, you'd get like maybe a assistant or something like a virtual assistant to spend their time reaching out and chasing down those links for you.

ARTHUR: Yeah. I guess the only cost associated with that would be creating the creative, which is hiring a graphic designer or someone like that to, I guess, create the images and graphics that you will upload to Imgur.

MICHAEL: You've got to try and think about it through the lens of like, what are people writing about? Like what topics will be interesting to them? So I've done one where I wanted links from like finance sites. Yeah. So I would do like images of the Amazon logo on like a share trading black background and stuff. So if people are doing an article about Amazon earnings call or something like that, they could just take that image and you get your branded link back to your site. But yeah, you're right. I use a sort of freelance graphic designer to create these things. You could use photos if you have cool photos.

ARTHUR: We did that for a client a while back. They did custom clothing apparel and they had a lot of images that they talk of people playing sports and just kind of generic looking uniforms. So I think that's when you first mentioned this tactic, we tried it with them and I think we got a few links back that way. Cause a lot of people are looking for stock photos of people playing, you know, soccer or tennis or whatever.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah. It's gotta be the right, it's gotta be the right angle.

ARTHUR: Like you couldn't, if you're just, it has to be a good image as well. Obviously it has to be high quality, high resolution. Like if it's junk, then no one's going to use it.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So you've got to put the effort into it. You've got to think of those creative angles. If you're in a really sort of niche, even if you're super niche, like let's say you're a subset of a subset of law, you can still go broad with law topic or even business, you know, or finance. Professional, anything. People in suits. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. But I've managed, like I've got links from Uber, for example, which is like epic. Like you cannot get a link from Uber by any other form of outreach really. But other, like all the massive publications like Yahoo's of the world, I've got links from them followed, branded. So it's like, it's not going to do heaps for moving organic rankings, I guess necessarily, but it's really good for building the authority and overall trust of your domain basically. Yeah. So that's it. If you want to spend time doing that, that is a way to build links for free without having to pay for them.

ARTHUR: But you know, you sort of pay for the, it's a small upfront cost. Yeah. I mean, if you can find someone on Fiverr or any one of those websites and if they have a portfolio of decent graphics, why not give it a crack? If it's going to cost you a couple of hundred bucks maybe to start off with and just let it sit there and see if you accumulate links, maybe even go, is there any way you can kind of advertise your images, like maybe Reddit or somewhere like a forum. Probably.

MICHAEL: I've never really looked into that, but like the imager alone is good because people search, people search. Yeah.

ARTHUR: And then like when your images start getting favorited and commented on and there's filters where you can obviously set where the copyright. Yep. Yep. Okay, cool.

MICHAEL: Yep. Um, so it's not like this is for me, like when I've done it with my affiliate sites, it's just one sort of, um, I guess Avenue that I'm using to get links. I'm also doing all sorts of other link building, paid link building, of course. Absolutely. But if you, if you relied on this as your only link building tactic, then It's not stuff that you can set your watch to, like they come in in dribs and drabs. But that being said, I have found that, you know, every month without fail, I'm picking up new links from big publications, DR 50, 60, 70, 80 type sites. Happy days. Happy days. If you're an SEO nerd or a tight ass that doesn't want to pay for links. So there you go. As we said, short and sweet, we're looking at like less than 10 minutes for this episode. Maybe we'll have to do another one and release two at once, but I don't know, Arthur's looking shocked at that idea. They've all got to think of something. We haven't planned that far ahead. We're still a bit rusty after our month and a half break, but why not give that a go? If it works for you, if you pick up some juicy links, send us a message on theseoshow.co. Yeah, give us some examples.

ARTHUR: We would love to hear it. Maybe you have an Instagram page.

MICHAEL: Nah, we should create one. At local digital co, I guess.

ARTHUR: We should create one for the SEO show. Just for you and I? Yeah. Okay. Well I'll do that. That's your project. Yeah. While you're thinking of the next topic, I'll create a Instagram page.

MICHAEL: Next episode, we'll give you the handle for our brand new Instagram page with awesome photos of us in this room chatting away. Sounds like exciting content.

ARTHUR: Can't wait.

MICHAEL: And on that note, happy SEOing. See you later. See ya.