Grumpy SEO Guy (0:00)

This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 106. There are four ways to get backlinks. Here they are. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because people are bewildered by the four ways to get backlinks. So in this episode, we're going to talk about them and we're going to give examples of how they work. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical and based on my experience, this podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. Okay, but before we do that, a little reminder. New episodes come out on Wednesdays at nine in the morning Central time. And that's for the podcast. If you're listening to this on YouTube, it's going to be a little bit later than that. And if you're listening to this on YouTube, I try to respond to comments on Wednesday, but sometimes I won't respond to them until Thursday. But I try to respond to all the comments anyway, so. One more thing before we continue. I have a question for you. These podcasts are sometimes a different amount of time. Okay. Some of them are like 10 to 20 minutes. Some of them are a half hour. Some of them are longer. Some of them are like an hour. Let me know if there's a specific length of podcast episode that you prefer. Okay. Or let me know if it just depends on the topic, because some might take longer to talk about than others. You can post in the comments or you can email me. Hello, Rumpy SEO Guy. Okay, let's get started. There are four ways to get backlinks we're going to talk about them. I'm going to go over them really quick right now, and then we're going to talk about them in more detail. Number one, do nothing and let people find your website and link to you. Number two, buy backlinks. Number three, link outreach and guest posting. Number four, build your own portfolio and use these sites. Okay, now let's talk about them a little bit more. But before we do that, I want to talk about something that we talked about in the previous episode. Really quickly. The previous episode, it's called there are four things you need to rank. These are what they are with examples. So I want to really quickly just talk about what those four things are. Just so we're all like thinking about the same thing right now. So number one, no penalties. Number two, you need content. Number three, you need relevancy. Number four, you need authority. If you remember, authority comes from backlinks. So now you understand why you need backlinks. Okay, now let's talk about the four ways to get backlinks. One, do nothing and wait for people to link to you. This is a good strategy. However, if you are not already ranking, nobody's going to find your website and nobody's going to be able to link to you because nobody can find you. So waiting for people to link to you will not help you unless you are already ranking. And if you do not have backlinks already, you probably are not ranking. Okay, that's really what there is to say about that one. Okay, next one, Two, buy backlinks. Now, sometimes there are listeners who have problems with this because buying backlinks is against the guidelines. Okay, I think it is, actually. But look, in order to rank, you need authority, and in order to have authority, you need backlinks. So if you do not want to buy backlinks, just wait a second because we're going to talk about some other ways to get backlinks, but first we're going to talk about buying backlinks. Most people who are doing SEO are buying backlinks because one of the other options is to just wait and let people find you, which if you're not ranking, won't help you at all. So a lot of people buy backlinks. A lot of the time when people learn that they need backlinks, they just immediately go out and buy them. That is a terrible idea. Most backlink sellers are not selling good quality backlinks because they are selling rubbish. Okay, if you see something, for example, that is like 20 backlinks for $20, do not buy them. That is a bad deal, okay? I don't even need to know anything else about them. I know that's a bad deal, okay? Good quality backlinks can be kind of pricey, but you have to understand what you are buying. Listen to episode 39 before you buy backlinks, okay? You need to be able to rationalize your purchase of backlinks and understand what you are looking for, okay? So listen to that episode before you buy backlinks, okay? Anyways, if you can find a good provider, buying backlinks might help. But let me just say I'm not telling you to not buy backlinks, and I'm also not telling you to buy backlinks, okay? I'm telling you how SEO works, okay? I want you to know there are a lot of people that sell backlinks. There are a lot of professionals and agencies and consultants and SEO companies that sell backlinks, okay? I just want you to be aware this transpires, okay? So you're gonna buy backlinks or you're not gonna buy backlinks? That's fine. It's up to you now. 3. Link outreach and guest posting. Let's talk about these, because these are pretty well known methods. Okay? So let's talk about these. Okay? Guest posting is when you find a website that you like and you email them and you say, hey, I will write a blog for you and in exchange, put a link at the bottom of that article back to my site. So they get free content. You get a free link. Okay, that's cool. Link outreach is very similar. Link outreach is when you find a website you like, you email them, you say, hey, I notice you have discussions on your site on certain topics. I have a website in a similar industry. Can you give me a link on that page? Okay, that's fine. Now, it sounds like you're not paying for it, so that's fine. However, quite often guest posting and link outreach will need money. Okay? Generally speaking, when you email somebody and say, hey, you know, can we have an article? Blah, blah, blah, whatever, can we write an article for you? Can we have a link? They will probably try to get you to spend money. Look, when people have authoritative websites, they usually realize what they have and they know that the reason you're contacting them is because you want a backlink, so they might make you pay for it. Just so you know. So those of you that are like, oh, I don't want to buy backlinks, just be aware that even though guest posting and link outreach look like, they don't require payment. They can. Okay. Anyway, there's other problems. Well, I think they're problems, but let me just tell you a couple more things about these. The people I know that do link outreach and guest posting say they have about a 5% success rate. So that means that if you email a thousand people, you will get about 50 replies. Okay. Or 50 links, maybe. So just, you know, consider that. And then there's other concerns you might want to clarify with those. Like, you know, maybe you get this article online, and then they decide to take it down for some reason, like when you're relying on other people to keep your link online, the link might not stay online. Okay, so that brings us to. To the next strategy. 4. Build your own websites and use those. Okay? Sometimes this is referred to as a private blog portfolio or a pbn, a private blog network. It's when you buy or run a lot of authoritative blogs, and you use those to build links to the sites that you want to rank. Okay? It's very similar to some of the other methods because. Well, it's actually not similar at all, but you're getting backlinks. So, like, it's similar in that point. But look, here's the thing. In this case, you are running everything, okay? You own the websites, you create the content, you create the links. You do not have to depend on someone else to do what they say they're gonna do to keep the websites online, to keep the links online, et cetera. It cost more in the beginning. And if you want to do this, listen to episodes 3, 4, and 5. Okay? Do not try to do this without listening to those episodes, because you might not do it successfully. Okay? So listen to those episodes first, as opposed to just going out and trying to build websites. Okay? But anyway, look, that's a way to do it. Some people don't like this. Some people say that it's against the terms of service because it is, you know, building links specifically for the purpose of improving SEO, which. Yes, but that's the reason you create links in SEO. Anyway, so. So anyway, look, I hope that these explanations and methods were clear. There was somebody on Reddit, and I can't remember exactly what they said, and I can't remember what their name was, but if this was you, please email me if you want me to mention your name. I will say. I will. I will tell people that you said it. Anyways, they said there's. They said there's three ways to get backlinks. You either have to beg, trade, or buy and it's like, yeah, look, beg is basically like link outreach. You have to find somebody who has a website that you want to link on and like, basically like request that they give you a link. Okay, Trade would be like link outreach. You're writing a post for somebody and then you will have a link at the bottom of that post. So you know, maybe that you know, similar to a trade and then buy. Obviously you're gonna buy them anyways. This explanation of how to get backlinks didn't include like waiting and just letting people find you and linking to you. But that doesn't even really work because like I said, when you're already ranking, people are not going to find your website to link to you. Anyway, I hope this episode explains the four ways to get backlinks and I hope it was useful. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is Grumpy SEOguy. You can visit the Grumpy SEO guy subreddit or or you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so@patreon.com grumpy SEO guy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday for another episode.