12 x Free Link Building Ideas

MICHAEL:
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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: Hello, welcome back. Welcome back to another episode of the SEO show. I am Michael Costin. You are Arthur Fabik. I am. Just in case you didn't know. I do now. You do. And we are talking link building, the number one topic in SEO. Your favorite topic. Not just my favorite, everybody's favorite topic when it comes to SEO. This week we're talking free link building ideas. Who wants to pay for links, right? It does suck.

ARTHUR: It's expensive.

MICHAEL: Yep, it's expensive. A lot of the time it's in USD or pounds and you've got to convert and lose on the conversion. It's the Aussie dollar at the moment. Jeez, it's not good. Lots of businesses just starting out don't have the money to spend on it. So with link building, you can pay with your time or you can pay with cashola, cold hard cash. Sometimes you pay with your time and cash But we're gonna try focus on some ideas that you could use to build links That aren't going to break the bank Okay, so we've got 12. That's a lot 12 ideas We've covered some of these on various episodes, but we're just putting them all into one action-packed actionable episode that you can go out and use to build links if you're not quite ready to pay for them and You ready? Born ready. You hyped? Hype up.

ARTHUR: So hyped. Let's go. Let's go. Number one. What's number one?

MICHAEL: Leverage your network. Oh, boring.

ARTHUR: No, it is a bit boring, but. It's true.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Everyone, like when you start a business. Industries have networks. You got to leverage your friends and family, try get leads, sort of do what you can to get, work. And if you are a business that specializes in wedding flowers, then you are in the wedding world. You might have a network of venues, uh, celebrants, um, photographers. What else is at weddings? MCs, food, catering, DJs, so on and so forth. There's a lot there. Little contacts that you can reach out to and say, Hey, do you mind just linking on my page? Maybe you've got a partner's page or a friends of the show page, friends of the show, friends, friends of the business page. That's an obvious place to start. It's just reaching out to people, you know, and seeing if you can get a link. Yeah. Simple, simple, simple, free people normally are willing to help their friends or colleagues in the space, especially if you link back to them. Yeah, do a bit of a reciprocal link.

ARTHUR: Put a little PBN.

MICHAEL: Little link exchange, which I think is one of the things I have on the list here. So that's an easy win, potentially. This next one though, those last links probably aren't going to move the needle that much, like they'll be relevant, but usually if you're getting a link from a wedding celebrant, they don't really have a strong domain.

ARTHUR: No, but it's a good start. It's a good start. And it's easy and it doesn't take a lot of time. So cost to benefit ratio is there.

MICHAEL: Next one. Cost to benefit ratio. Next one's a bit tougher. Next one's super hard. So we've gone from easy to probably as hard as it gets. You should have worked up to this one. Nah, just all over the place. People don't know what's going to happen next. Keep them on their toes. So digital PR. So we did an episode on digital PR with Gabrielle Kobe recently. What, what episode was that? Can't even remember. Not long ago. Episode 99. There you go. Um, digital PR is where you come up with a unique story or an angle and publish it, press it, like publish it to the press and hope that they pick it up and cover it. Now it relies on a really unique angle or story that you can tell with data normally. So you've got to do all the work to compile the data, put it in easy to follow press release with a catchy headline, catchy copy. And it makes the angle obvious and the story easy for the journos to publish. Send it out to the journos that cover similar topics. And then you'll receive links in some of the articles. Hopefully. Yes. You don't really control whether you get links. A lot of Australian sites don't always link.

ARTHUR: Well, yeah. And it relies a lot on relationships, I think. Like if you know journalists or people that publish on specific sites, then it's a lot easier to get that link back. Also, sorry, go, what were you going to say? No, no, go on. I was going to say it also involves a lot of work. Like a lot of the time you need to pull in data. Coming up with the angle, I think is quite tough.

MICHAEL: The ideas make or break it.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It has to be something I think topical, relevant and interesting.

MICHAEL: interesting or controversial where you take a side. Yeah, so it's the idea makes or breaks it and then you do have to do the work. You're sifting through ABS statistics and data to try and paint a story that's going to be interesting so these JNOs can just basically copy it and put it on their site.

ARTHUR: But I guess the benefit of it, the sites that you will get links from will be very strong.

MICHAEL: Very strong and impactful. Yeah. Going to boost your authority. So if you're in a unique business and you have an angle that makes sense in the context of your business and you've got time on your hands, go back and listen to episode 99 that goes in depth on how to do digital PR. Let's jump out of the fire and into the frying pan. I didn't even know if that saying makes sense in this context, but the next one is the opposite of digital PR cheap and easy, but not that impactful. And that is directories. Yep. Good old directories.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Really not much to say about this one, but. Finding directories, whether like, depending where you are in the world, local directories will be better. Or whatever niche you're in, niche specific directories. And then just building out the profiles. Some might be paid, but there's a lot of free ones out there.

MICHAEL: Yeah, the paid ones generally will maybe be a bit better quality.

ARTHUR: Yeah.

MICHAEL: But you want to be on all of them. Yeah. If you search top directories, local digital, we have an article with about 53 of them that you can submit to here in Australia.

ARTHUR: Yeah.

MICHAEL: All you got to do is put the time in. It's not going to cost you. You don't have to go on the paid ones. Painstaking work, but you're going to get links from it. They're not going to move the needle that much, but they build your anchor text profile, your branded links, all that sort of good stuff.

ARTHUR: Helps with local SEO.

MICHAEL: It does. All right. What was the next one? Number four is ego bait. I like this one. It's only going to work if you're the right sort of business. So the general gist of ego bait is that you create a list of the top X in your industry, like the, the top, um, construction leaders, for example, and you've created a nice page on your site that rounds up all of these winners and you profile them with, um, like their photo and maybe a link to their site and a little badge icon that they've won. Then you just reach out to the winners and let them know about it and hope that some of them link back to that in their, you know, let's say they have a PR or press or about page on their site and they want to link back to it because it's a bit of social proof.

ARTHUR: Featuring or whatever.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah. So if you're a plumber, you're not really going to do the top plumbers in Sydney roundup because that's a bit weird. But if you can think a bit laterally. complementary sort of angles to your business, it can work well for generating links and it will cost you precisely zero dollars to do. And image bait is very similar sort of tactic in that it's going to cost you nothing. We have actually done a whole episode about this, it was episode 27, where you use Creative Commons licensing for images to get free links. So the idea is you create an image on a topic that people that publish content in news sites or whatever need images all the time. They don't want to pay for them, so they go use free images with Creative Commons license. You can say, you can use my images, but you have to link back to me. You have to give attribution in the form of a link. And you'll build tons of links just by creating images around topics that journos are writing about. So AI would be an obvious one at the moment, if you're in a tech space.

ARTHUR: What do you reckon with AI now, though? It would be a bit tougher, because AI can generate images now. You'd have to come up with some good quality images. I remember when you did it for your site, it would be like, eight years ago? Probably. Yeah. There was no AI generating images. So no.

MICHAEL: Yeah. I reckon now you, cause the AI images look super AI most of the time. So the angle would be good photos or, you know, more real, more authentic.

ARTHUR: Like would that be, would Shutterstock be similar? Like if you were to create, I don't know where I'm going. I don't know. Sorry. So like if you were to go and take like photos yourself of like, say you're a sporting company that does sportswear and then you have like photos of people playing sport, like real photos, not AI generated. And then just publishing them, trying to get a link back. That would be a good way to do it. Cause you're creating real photos. Yes. Not AI, not cartoons, not stuff like that. Correct. That's what I was trying to get there. I don't know why it was hard to say, but… You got there in the end.

MICHAEL: Yeah. You know, we've done a couple of recordings today. There's been a little lull in between, so I forgive you.

ARTHUR: Yeah. My point was like, try to make it not AI.

MICHAEL: I'll replace you with an AI co-host if you're not careful.

ARTHUR: We'll probably both be replaced by AI soon.

MICHAEL: I get what you're saying. And yes, that's where it would be now. Because it's too easy to just go to like Dali and get random image generated. That does the job for some people.

ARTHUR: Could be like person playing soccer or generate an image or look AI. But if you have like real people playing soccer, you probably want to include that in your article over something that's very blatantly AI. Correct. Go take photos, basically, is what we're saying.

MICHAEL: Yeah. And listen to episode 27 for the real mechanics of how to make that work. They're stuffing up their wording now. Not me. I got it right. Um, scholarship bait.

ARTHUR: That's a good one. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. So basically finding scholarships in your niche. So one that we did recently, it was for a client in a finance company going through universities. A lot of them have scholarship pages and they will link back to specific scholarships. So if you're happy to, I guess there is a little bit of cost involved, but if you're happy to part with say a thousand dollars and create a scholarship where, you know, someone might have to write an a thousand word essay, why they should be, like qualifying for the scholarship or whatever, if you seed it out to different universities, they'll publish it on their scholarship pages and link back often with a do follow link to that page, which will ultimately, you know, strengthen the DR of that site. And then you can use internal links from that page to other pages in your site.

MICHAEL: And then, yeah. That's basically it. And those links at nicejuicy.edu. Well, yeah.

ARTHUR: Very, very strong. Very hard to get. So that moves the needle. And I know from experience, we had a site that went from DR5 to DR30. But one thing you need to do is you have to refresh that every year because the scholarships are only valid for a year. And then whenever the new year ticks over, they basically wipe it. So small price to pay, but yeah. Yeah, you get really strong links.

MICHAEL: And the key is to try and actually give the scholarship away. Don't just put it up there as a link building tactic.

ARTHUR: And I also want to say, surprisingly easy. All you need to do is just find the, there will be like an email address on the scholarship pages and just basically hit them up with your scholarship. Just create a page on your site, link to them, just say, hey, I've got this and they'll just publish it.

MICHAEL: Yep. Worked very well for us many times in the past and is technically not free, but as close to free as you're going to get.

ARTHUR: Well, I think for the price, it's well worth it. The quality and the authority of those links. Yeah. That would, like, if you're a business starting out with no links, if you do a bit of directory and that, and if you can get those links, that's going to really boost you.

MICHAEL: Let's move on to contest bait. It's the last in our run of baits. We've had ego bait, image bait, scholarship bait, now contest bait. This is basically creating a contest. It could be win a free air conditioning filter clean. Oh wow. If you're an air conditioning company. We always talk about air conditioning companies. Sign me up. And you then go out to all the contest sites. There's all these contest sites that just list contests, and then people that are into contests go on them and look for bargains. You can get a link from that, be a followed link. It's not going to be a super strong link, but again, all of this stuff together is going to start to add up. So yeah, create contests, promote it to the people that run the contest websites, you'll get some links. Testimonials and case studies is another one. If you are a customer of a service, and you can give them a testimonial, whether written or maybe even a video, often those services will link to the business that's left them the testimonial. So you could maybe look through the tools you use, the software tools, particularly smaller ones, like big established ones, not going to care usually, but smaller ones you could reach out to and say, hey, I'm happy to give you a testimonial if you see that other people have done it and there's links. Or if they have a case study section on their website where they do little articles on how their customers use them. So an example, we got a link from Kinsta, the host that we always bang on about, because we just did a case study on the way we'd used Kinsta. That's a big strong domain that we got a link from for free just for talking about our experience. And that sort of stuff, there's literally thousands of different angles that you could use to try and get links. So Kinstra is DR89. That's a great link right there. So think about the tools and services you use in your space. And can you reach out proactively and try and ask for a testimonial or case study? Very good. Very good. All right. I'll let you take sponsorships.

ARTHUR: Well, I don't know what you've put in here, so I'll let you take it.

MICHAEL: Oh, handball straight back to me. Okay. Sponsorships is what it says on the tin. Sponsoring something to get links. Usually it's going to be, like a sporting team, sport club, like a charity dinner, whatever.

ARTHUR: Air conditioning dealers did this one. They'll like sponsor like surf clubs, local charities, local sports clubs. And they always have like a section or they're very proud to promote it. And they'll always link back. So again, it won't be very strong. Well, it might be, but most of them won't be very strong, but it's still a free link. Good to leverage that, I think.

MICHAEL: Yeah. And it is that simple. So we don't need to dwell on sponsorships and associations is a similar sort of thing. Like in your industry, there might be industry bodies or groups that you can join. And there's usually a nominal fee, 300 bucks a year. And you can often get links in the member directory section of the site, followed link to your site, usually from a well relevant website. So pretty good. I wouldn't say that's free, but it's about as cheap as it's going to get for you. Broken link building, you can talk about that one. That's right up your wheelhouse.

ARTHUR: Well, broken link building requires a bit of technical knowledge, I think.

MICHAEL: Yeah, well, you can impart your wisdom onto someone as to how to do broken link building.

ARTHUR: I haven't done it in a while. But basically, it's just using different tools to, I guess you can find sites that were linking to sites that are relevant or in your niche or similar to you. And if you find that the link is broken, you can effectively reach out to the site and just say, hey, you've got this broken link here. I've got content that's similar or relevant. Can you link back? And effectively like stealing that link that once existed and you're benefiting from that existing link already that was there.

MICHAEL: Yeah, and it used to be more tricky, the use of various tools to do this. But I'm pretty sure with Ahrefs now, you could just run a site through it. So think of a big industry site or a big publisher in your space, and look, it will give you a broken links report. And then you can reach out and say, hey, this is broken.

ARTHUR: Why not link to this? Or write content there. So if you see that they've got an article that you don't have, replicate it. post it on your site and then just say, hey, you know, I've got this content here that is, you know, matching whatever you're missing in the link and you can link back here. That's it. You'll probably be ignored by the numbers game. I was going to say that. Yeah. You need to reach out to a lot of sites, but even if you get a handful and if they're strong, high DR sites, then well worth it. Agreed. And it also helps out if you don't have the content and it's content that's relevant. Yeah. Two birds, one stone.

MICHAEL: Yep. That brings me to the very last of the 12 free link building ideas, which is a simple link exchange, which is also referred to as reciprocal linking.

ARTHUR: I'll link to you if you link to me.

MICHAEL: Yes, I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine. Sometimes people will try and say, oh, this is bad, but it makes sense for certain businesses to link to each other. So if you're a plumber and you reach out to whoever provides your conduit or something, you're an electrician, and say, hey, I use your conduit. I've linked to you from my about page, my sponsors, my partners page. Can I have a link to you? That's not going to get you in trouble with Google, but it is going to get you links.

ARTHUR: It's funny, though, because that often comes up with some clients, and they often forward it to us. And it's often the site that's like new, has no authority, wanting to link back from one of our clients, which has a lot of authority. A lot of the times they say, ignore it. Like there's no benefit to you in doing it. It's only benefiting them. So I guess trying to find sites that are similar to you in terms of like DR or whatever, probably would increase your chances of getting that link back. But don't go hitting up the ADDR site when you've got DR 0.3 thinking that they're going to just I mean, shoot your shot, but I mean, I wouldn't, if I were to increase our success rate, strategically have a look at sites that are similar. In my opinion, you might disagree, but.

MICHAEL: No, no, I agree that you're going to get your most joy from that. But, um, when you're a noob with only free link building to do, you've got to like, you've got to hustle. You gotta, you gotta scrape, you gotta fight for your links. Unless you want to pay for them and you get a bit of budget.

ARTHUR: I mean, you could do both. You could pay for some and try to use some of these tactics.

MICHAEL: Yeah, really. But if you're dead set on free link building, this is really where it's going to come from. The only other thing would be trying to do free guest posts. But in this day and age, any website that takes guest posts that's valuable will charge you for it. Absolutely. Unless you're some massive well-known name in a space, in which case you're probably not needing free link building anyway.

ARTHUR: Yeah. This episode's not for you.

MICHAEL: This episode is not for you, but for the people that are just starting out with their link building, hopefully you got some ideas from this episode. That is everything for today's episode of the SEO show. We'll be back at some point soon with another episode. See you next time. See you later.

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