Link building guide – Generate backlinks for your website

When I started building and off-page optimization of my own websites many years ago, I had a problem:

I just didn’t know how to get backlinks for my websites

I didn’t even know what those damn backlinks were at the very beginning.

Why should I build this up? Why is everyone talking about it? And why do people keep writing to me and asking about it?

After doing some research in my city library , okay, it was just a joke, via the Google search, I found blogs that explained the meaning to me.

Generating backlinks can be extremely important to get ahead in Google searches.

But I still didn’t know how to generate them!

Fortunately that has changed. I’ve learned a lot about link building over the past few years and have been able to test a lot.

Therefore, today I present you my great article on the subject of link building. This guide should show you how you can generate backlinks so that your website can be found more easily on Google.

Definition of link building

First of all, let’s take a look at the definition of ” link building ” according to Wikipedia.org:

Link building (also known as link building) describes the intentional increase in the number and quality of backlinks, ie links that refer to a website. Link building is to be assigned to the area of search engine optimization (SEO) .

Since there are a multitude of ways to generate backlinks, I have put together some well-known and successful link building strategies in the following post.

Each strategy has advantages and disadvantages and in the end everyone has to know for themselves which strategy they prefer.

Backlinks should not only push the ranking in Google search, but also bring visitors to your website.

We have answered frequently asked questions about backlinks for you in this video:

Which link building strategies do you use to get ahead?

“I have to submit my website to a thousand different web directories to be ranked # 1 in search results, right?”

“I just have to generate at least 5,000 new backlinks every day for my small niche website?”

“If I buy 50x link packages from Russian websites at hassanbilal.net for € 19.99, I will definitely make it to the front, right?”

I really wonder how persistent some rumors persist with some website operators. Granted, the above examples are of course exaggerated, but there are still people who believe in link building strategies from 2004.

A lot of cheap spam methods really worked back then, but times have changed and search engines have evolved immensely to invalidate such simple methods of search engine manipulation.

For a successful search engine optimization nowadays much more is necessary and there are countless ranking factors that can lead to a good ranking.

Please note:

Any link building, however good, will be of no use if you do not optimize your website with regard to other important (on-page) factors. It is even worse, should your website have some bugs (e.g. spam keywords on your own site, thin or duplicate content , etc.), sooner or later your site will lose a lot of rankings . Find out here why OnPage optimization always comes before link building.

But what actually is a backlink?

Let us refer again to Wikipedia.org : “A back link (or backlink ) refers to an incoming link to a website that leads to it from another website.”

A link from page A to page B is thus a for side B backlink .

A link on the Internet can be seen as a kind of recommendation. Page A sets a link to Page B and thus makes a recommendation for Page B.

The more “recommendations” a page gets from other websites, the better it is in the eyes of Google. However, it is important from which website this “recommendation” comes. If your parents recommend you a good dentist, this recommendation is worth more than if a dubious money shark recommends you a finance loan.

The search engines proceed similarly and evaluate the quality of the linked pages.

In order to be able to evaluate whether a website is a high quality page, it is important to know what a good and natural backlink profile looks like. Pages that have a heavily manipulated link profile run the risk of being penalized by the search engine, and exactly such can be very harmful.

Of course, when evaluating the backlink profile of a website, pure key figures such as B. the domain authority of Moz.com can be used.

But in this report I would like to show you what a possible natural link profile can look like so that you can rate websites that you can link to even better.

What does a natural and high-quality backlink profile look like that you would like to have a link from?

Google now recognizes manipulated link profiles from websites very quickly and is punishing them more and more frequently.

If your website has links from pages that have been penalized by Google, your own website can also be pulled down. This is then referred to as a bad neighborhood.

You can analyze your website on Majestic.com . Note the graph in the following picture: There you can clearly see a website that has a lot of bad quality spam backlinks.

Example of a bad link profile. The links are shown in the picture as dots at the bottom right. Most of the points in this example are well below the graph, which means that a particularly large amount of spam was generated here. You should rather avoid a link from such a website (bad neighborhood).

The more evenly the points are on the graph, the more natural and theoretically better the backlink profile is.

Countless other factors determine whether a link profile is good or bad. The Trust Flow and Citation Flow on Majestic above a value of 20 are also a positive sign for a high-quality website. It is important that the two values ​​do not differ too much from one another. Has the website z. For example, a citation flow of 27, but only a trust flow of 1, can also be an indication of spam.

Note that you should never trust a single value. Pay attention to as many criteria as possible to find out how “natural” a link profile is. The more natural a profile is, the lower the chances of being punished by Google.

Other criteria that you should check when evaluating a link profile:

• Anchor texts
• Ratio DoFollow to NoFollow
• Origin (language, topic relevant, etc.)
• Quality
• Age of the domain
• Referring domains (see image above from Majestic.com)
• Visibility history to identify possible penalties (can be analyzed with Sistrix)

For further analysis of a backlink profile, I recommend the key figures Domain Authority and Page Authority from the Moz.com website. I will go into these two key figures in more detail later in the “Private Blog Networks” chapter .

The ability to analyze and understand link profiles of websites helps to better apply link building with all its facets.

So read the following “Ten Commandments” carefully for some useful tips

For more details on this topic, I wrote an article on evaluating backlinks .

The Ten Commandments in Link Building

A lot can go wrong with setup and there are a few rules to follow for a successful campaign

1. An abrupt stop of the link establishment is never recommended. If you ‘ve done a lot of link building activities for a website in the last few months and stop doing it overnight, the page will likely drop in the ranking again!
2. Pay attention to the naturalness of the backlink structure (many different, but topic-relevant sources!). For analysis, for. B. ahrefs.com, linkresearchtools.com or majestic.com can be used.
3. If you always place links with the same anchor text, this is often seen as manipulation by Google. Therefore, constantly vary the link names of the manually generated backlinks. Also look at the anchor texts of your competition for your desired search term. With which anchor texts were these websites able to storm the top ranks on Google?
4. How many backlinks you set and with what regularity also depends on your website itself. A small niche site shouldn’t get 100,000 new links a month. Always try to avoid spam.
5. Pay attention to where the link to your landing page goes. Left the z. B. in the footer are less weighted by Google than links from a topic-relevant body text.
6. Don’t just set DoFollow backlinks , but also a few NoFollow links. In order to find the right ratio, it is also worthwhile to analyze the competition here (e.g. with ahrefs.com). What are DoFollow and NoFollow links? As already described, backlinks pass on their link strength (also called link juice) to the linked website. If a link is now set to another target page with the “NoFollow” attribute, the linked target no longer receives any link juice. A normal backlink without the “NoFollow” attribute is therefore always more valuable. However, nofollow links are not always bad. A NoFollow backlink on a heavily visited website can bring you increased traffic and is therefore also valuable despite the NoFollow attribute.
7. Link building is and will remain an endurance sport. Don’t expect great results right away after a few days. It can take months before the first successes become apparent.
8. Pay attention to quality: You have already learned above how to analyze the quality of a website. Pages that z. For example, if you have many outbound links (e.g. web directories), very little of your link juice will be passed on.
9. Always try to establish a topic-relevant backlink structure. It is particularly important that the link is surrounded by content that thematically matches your target page.
10. Make sure that most of the links you get are from pages in the same language as your landing page.
11. Bonus tip: You should not only link to your main page, but also place deep links, i.e. links to sub-pages.

Link building strategies

Even if Google pays very close attention to the natural creation of hyperlinks, manual help can still be given to build a positive and strong backlink profile. Google is still “just” a machine.

In the following section you will learn some useful tips on how you can generate backlinks and thus improve your ranking on Google. However, do not use an inflationary strategy, as the domain could be penalized due to manipulation and thus ruin your entire SEO optimization

Blog comments

Comment meaningfully on topic-relevant blogs. Just enter your URL in the “URL to your website” field provided in the comment form. No keywords should be used as the “name” in the form, only your real name or a slightly changed (first) name. Also, write meaningful comments with several sentences. A simple “thank you for your contribution” is not enough.

An improvement in the ranking can only be achieved very slightly with blog comments.

In order to find blogs relevant to the topic faster, you can enter the following terms in the Google search (for “ Keyword ” you should enter the topic of your website):

• Your keyword + blog + comments
• Your keyword “powered by wordpress”
• Keyword “leave a comment”
• Keyword “reply to post”
• Keyword “blog”
• Keyword inurl: blog “Your email address will not be published”
• Keyword “You can use the following HTML tags:”
• Keyword “E-mail notification of further comments.”
• Keyword “Powered by WordPress”
• Keyword “add a site”
• Keyword “submit site”
• Keyword “post site”
• Keyword “add a url”
• Keyword “submit url”
• Keyword “post url”
• Keyword inurl: blog
• Keyword inurl: Category

Even more queries can be entered in the Google search to find suitable results:

• inurl: “Keyword“ Finds results with a specific word within the URL.
• allinurl: “Keyword“ Finds results with multiple words within the URL.
• intitle: “Keyword“ Finds results with a specific word in the website title.
• related: “Keyword” Finds similar websites – works especially with larger websites.
• intext: “Keyword“ Finds a term within a certain text.

Web / industry / article directories 

No website will rank well these days just through links from web directories. For that, the web directories have been used too often as spammers and the search engines no longer trust them. Directories can sometimes be used to attract a few new or more visitors and to establish a regional reference to a website (very important for local optimization!).

For Local SEO: Register your company page on the internet portal of your city. Many cities offer their own directories for regional companies.

“Normal” websites that have no regional reference should stay away from web directories. Directories like DMOZ and Co. hardly pass on link power. Note: DMOZ was closed on March 14, 2017.

Social bookmarking services

Using social bookmarking services, the user can link websites online as a kind of bookmark.

Unfortunately, such services have been misused by many SEOs as a link sling, which is why many of these services are no longer paid attention to by Google and have now disappeared into insignificance.

In America, “Delicious.com” is probably the best-known service of this type, here you can still “bookmark” websites.

The website “Stumble Upon” or “ Mix.com ” represents a special further development of social bookmarks . Here, every user can save their “favorite websites” online using bookmarks and assign them to specific categories.

However, the era of social bookmarking services is long gone.

Press releases

The service on pr-gateway normally costs around € 35 per publication and you have the option of publishing every press release on over 60 press portals. New customers can publish the first press release free of charge.

You are probably wondering now whether that will do anything?

If the same content (press release) for your website is published on more than 60 websites, then this is almost to be regarded as spam, since nothing of unique content can be seen here. Many of these press portals also link the sources with the “No Follow” attribute, which further weakens the value of press portals.

Press portals should therefore really only serve one purpose:

Get the press attention

Job boards

Are you looking for an intern, a temporary employee or even a full-time employee? Excellent! There are tons of job boards out there just waiting to get your job posting posted.

But what does this have to do with link building?

Very easily:

Many job boards also link to the company that is looking for the new employee. So you can get some interesting backlinks with relatively little effort. However, you shouldn’t expect much from this tactic, as job advertisements are often deleted after a short time.

Forums

Links can also be placed in topic-relevant forums. Write your URL in the forum signature and actively participate in the forum. So you not only get backlinks, but also new visitors.

If it fits, you should also set links to your landing page directly in posts (threads). The term “forum” also includes question and answer portals such as GuteFrage.net. An answer to a question can often be quickly placed on such portals.

To find a thematically appropriate forum, simply search Google as follows:

• Your keyword + “forum”
• Your keyword + “Top”
• Your keyword + “thread”
• Your keyword + “Showthread”
• Your keyword + “register forum”
• Your keyword + “powered by Vbulletin”
• Your keyword + “powered by phpBB”
• Your keyword + “powered by SMF”
• Your keyword + “powered by myBB”

In my experience, links from forums can easily influence the ranking. They can also be used as a traffic machine. It is important that the link comes from an active user and that it is really useful.

Free content (infographics for the win?)

Offer valuable content for free on the Internet.

Create e.g. B. beautiful WordPress themes or useful WordPress plugins and integrate your URL into them. Then offer them for free download. This will give you new backlinks depending on the added value.

Free tools, videos, podcasts etc. are also happy to be linked, but don’t forget to integrate your URL into your free products.

You can also make self-made photos or images available online free of charge, but only on the condition that you are linked when used as an author.

Infographics

Particularly beautiful infographics often get more attention than normal posts. Many readers love the graphic presentation of a topic, as it makes a topic easier to understand.

Offer your infographics for free, but only on the condition that you are mentioned with a backlink when using your graphic as an author.

When creating an infographic, the following points should be followed:

• Treat a current topic
• Be graphically appealing
• Explain the subject in an easy-to-understand way

Treat a current topi

In order to find a current topic for an infographic, it can be useful to find trends from news, magazines and other sources and process them graphically.

It can also be an advantage to use the Adwords Keyword Planner to check the number of search queries per month. Make sure there are no or hardly any other infographics on the topic of your infographic to increase your chances of success.

Be graphically appealing

The graphics should look good so as not to put off potential readers.

If you have no idea about Photoshop or other graphics programs and you can’t afford a graphic designer, you can try your luck with infogr.am or piktochart.com Graphics can be created on these pages for free. With the help of templates, everyone can create their own infographic that even looks neat. You have to invest some work to get an appealing result 😉

Explain the topic in an easily understandable way

The graphics should make it easier for the reader to understand the subject matter. Therefore, keep the graphic as simple as possible. Your readers will thank you.

An example of a nice infographic is available at the following link: affenblog / Infographic . The author has also thought of offering a suitable HTML code below the graphic for anyone who wants to publish this graphic on another page.

Support clubs and aid organizations with a donation

Cooperation partners are often linked on their page as a thank you. Search specifically for organizations / associations that do this, e.g. B .:

• allintitle: “sponsors” + “keyword”
• allintitle: “sponsor” + “keyword”
• allintitle: “donate” + “keyword”
• allintitle: “partner +” keyword “

In return for a donation to the association, you will often be linked to your website as a thank you. However, you should not overdo this strategy, otherwise you could face a penalty.

Blog parades

Blog parades, also known as blog carnivals, are blog events on a specific topic.

The blogger writes in a first post about a topic of his choice and then asks other bloggers to write about the topic as well.

All contributions are finally put together in the form of a link collection by the blog parade organizer. So everyone involved receives a backlink and you also get contacts to other bloggers, who knows what that might be good for.

Link exchange

If you have a large number of websites on different topics, you can get in touch with other webmasters and suggest a link exchange.

In most cases, the request is made in such a way that you ask the operator of the target website for a link. In return, you offer the operator a link from another page of you.

Make sure that you do not have a direct link exchange (from website to website – reciprocal link exchange), but that “across the corner” is linked. The whole thing is called non-reciprocal. Note, however, that many search engines prohibit this in their guidelines.

Use pingbacks / trackbacks

In most cases, pingbacks are only nofolllow, but they are still useful for building a few backlinks. This method was especially popular a few years ago. Nowadays there are fewer and fewer blogs that enable so-called trackbacks. But they still exist!

A trackback / pingback is a system (which is available at WordPress) to be informed about links from other WordPress blogs. This link building guide was linked from another blog and my blog was informed about it via pingback. As a thank you, I have activated this pingback. See photo:

This blog received a pingback (a clickable NoFollow backlink) from me.

If you also want to pursue this strategy for building backlinks, simply search Google for “pingback + your keyword”, e.g. B. “intext: pingback + heart rhythm”.

There you will then (hopefully) be shown blogs about your niche that have already activated so-called trackbacks in the past. So there is a chance that you will also receive a pingback when a link is created.

But do not overdo this technique, as Google does not like reciprocal linking in the long run!

Wikipedia.org

At Wikipedia.org you can also try to set a backlink on a suitable topic.

Even if links from Wikipedia are only set to NoFollow, Wikipedia can bring you traffic to your site and thus help your site to “trust”. This means that your website may be rated as more trustworthy than similar sources without a Wikipedia link (in theory).

Find a suitable post for your desired keyword and try to give this post an added value (further information on the topic that was not there before). If this information comes from you purely by chance, you can of course link accordingly in the sources.

Under the item “Discussion” of every article on Wikipedia.org you can simply ask whether your page can be included as an additional source of information.

Note for sensitive people:

The answers of the respective Wikipedia gods…. um … supervisor can be pretty rough …

In the discussion area of ​​each glossary article you can already (without prior approval) set a clickable link to your page.

It is only important that the discussion page can also be found in the Google index , otherwise the link will very likely not be taken into account by Google. To check whether the talk page is in the index, simply enter the URL on Google and check whether it appears there in the search results.

A request:

Don’t spam Wikipedia for no reason! Only post topics about your site in the discussions if you are convinced that your site delivers real added value. The admins on Wikipedia are already quite sensitive (and unfortunately very unfriendly) and you don’t want to annoy them even more …

Guest articles

Write to large blogs or online editorial offices whether you can publish a guest article with them.

If you can place a link to your target domain on a heavily visited website by means of a guest article, you should get some new readers and a valuable backlink on top.

Of course, you have to already have a certain level of awareness in your niche in order to get the chance of a guest post. How you can / should write to other bloggers can be found here in the article about blogger outreach .

Tip: Do you have a blog where you can e.g. For example, if you publish test reports about products or services, you can ask in forums or in special groups on Facebook whether someone is interested in publishing these test reports.

You can also search for websites that publish guest articles on Twitter or G +. Enter “guest post + keyword” in the search of the respective social media platform. Of course, you can also try this with the normal Google search.

This strategy can bring you some high quality backlinks and get your landing page up in the ranking. Exactly with this strategy I was able to generate backlinks from Ryte.com and many more.

Egobiting

Conduct an interview with a well-known personality

The best thing to do is to look for a webmaster from whom you would like to have a link, after all you want to generate a backlink with this tactic.

Publish the interview on your blog and then send the interview partner the link to the interview with a request for a link. Most of the people you talk to will link the interview. Who doesn’t want to point out an “important” interview in which they were the conversation partner !?

If you don’t want to do an interview, you can also just say positive things about an interesting person (who owns a website that you would like a link to) on your site. Then publish this article on your site and write to the person. Many will feel honored and report on the report on their own pages / social media channels.

Backlink building by means of competition analysis

Analyze your competition on your desired keyword and try to recreate these links. Analyze how many NoFollow / DoFollow links these pages have as well as which anchor texts are used and how often they are linked to which keyword text (anchor texts).

To carry out such an analysis, I recommend a tool such as Majestic.com.

But be careful!

You can never know whether some bad backlinks may have been devalued by the webmasters with Google’s Disavow Tool . You should therefore carefully consider which ones you are going to copy and which are better not

Content marketing

Content marketing is a technique that aims to attract a target group with informative or unique content.

This means that, for example, a post on a blog is read, shared and disseminated as often as possible. If the contribution offers a really high added value, it is often linked by others. ( What is informative content with added value ?)

Linkbait (bait) is often used here. A great contribution should encourage the contribution to have a high reach on the Internet.

But content marketing is more than just a simple bait! This is also about target groups and target measurement. For which audience are you writing the article? What is it supposed to achieve?

It’s not always easy to write a post with high added value. The effort for such an article can be enormous. Another disadvantage that should be mentioned here is that the number of links and origin cannot be controlled directly. If an article doesn’t go down well, it won’t attract attention and all the work will be in vain.

And despite the disadvantages, many SEOs swear by this strategy because this type of marketing can generate as many natural links as possible and Google particularly often lets pages with a high information content rise to the front in the search results.

There are many ways to attract attention with an article – for example through funny news, unique content, case studies, interviews, podcasts, videos, etc.

If you want to learn more about this topic, you should get the book “Think Content”.

How do I find topics?

A webmaster who wants to do content marketing can look at which topics are current and write about them. Of course, it is advisable that the article also fits your page thematically.

If you want to have backlinks from certain websites, it can also be an advantage to check the content on these pages first. Is it possible that important and interesting information is missing here?

Also check which subject areas they link to. You can then fill this gap with an interesting report on your own blog.

After your report is published, write to the webmaster of the page you want a backlink from. Many site operators are grateful for high-quality content and often like to link to new informative content.

Of course, you can also use a normal keyword analysis to find out the topics / questions / problems of your target group.

This online shop highlighted a not exactly spectacular product in an entertaining way. Instead of a super magnet , we are talking about a dangerous death magnet . The pictures speak for themselves and make you smile.

A high-quality article does not lead to success on its own. Backlinks can only be generated when the appropriate attention is given. Therefore, distribute your valuable content on as many platforms (forums, social media, etc.) as possible – seeding.

Create content that people like to link to. Put yourself in the shoes of the webmasters who are supposed to link to you.

• Which websites do they link to?
• Why should these link to you?
• Does your content offer a problem solution?

The great thing about content marketing is that it is unlikely to be penalized by Google only based on informative articles. Quite the opposite: the search engine wants to push those results that offer great added value for their visitors.

The best content wins

Take a look at the top 3 for your desired keyword, for which you want to come to first place.

• What kind of content do the competitors offer?
• How often is the keyword searched? (Find out search volume e.g. with Kwfinder.com)
• What exactly is being explained there?
• Can you offer more information on the subject?
• Are there e.g. B. Questions often asked in forums on the topic?

Clarify these questions and then write a really great article of at least 1,500 words (better more) about it, which in its detail would be almost an e-book. (Of course, the number of words is variable here – on some topics significantly more than 1,500 words can be written ;-)).

However, do not write pointless stuff just to come up with 1,500 words, but look for an interesting topic, point out problems if necessary and then write about the solution afterwards. Illustrate the solution with pictures, bullet points, interview and videos in your article. References are also an advantage, as no one can know everything on their own. On answerthepublic.com you can display open questions and problems of your target group on your keywords.

My approach

First of all, I look at current topics and trends that I would like to write about. Then I check how often the topics are searched for on Google and then see what the competition has written on this topic so far.

If I find too little information on a topic in forums, blogs, etc., I also go to the city library if necessary (okay, that has rarely happened so far: D) and research English texts there on the topic I am looking for fit.

Armed with this knowledge, I create texts between 1,000 and 7,000 words (depending on the topic). It is also important that you make the text legible. Use subheadings, write easily and understandably for your readers, create – if necessary – a presentation, pictures, videos or something similar to the article.

I don’t have to write now that this can really be a lot of work, does it? 😊

If you enter a search term on Google, according to the logic of the search engine, the best / most informative content should appear in first place. The lighthouse, so to speak, that stands above all others for this search term.

Why is Wikipedia on page 1 with so many terms and often even on number 1?

Because Wikipedia of course has a lot of trust from Google and also a lot of backlinks, but also because the content of Wikipedia is so unbeatably informative and of high quality. Therefore, also create such informative articles in order to come to a term with your website.

I tend to B. with the keyword “idea for website” in the TOP 3 in the Google search, because I have invested a lot of heart and soul in this article and have incorporated as much information as I have just found … and that’s where the article is times about 1,000 words long :).

• Here you can find out why content marketing and SEO go so well together.

Seeding

You can reach a large number of people on the Internet with very few resources. You just have to be a little more creative than the competition to stand out like a little white flag in the uniformity.

Therefore, think about formats for your website that are rarely found in your niche in order to stand out from the crowd. Be it a podcast , creative videos, PDFs to download, cool Powerpoint presentations, free SEO tools or other cool stuff that represents something special.

There are as many long text deserts on the Internet as there are bugs in Windows Vista.

Creativity is often rewarded with backlinks and many new visitors. All you have to do is raise the bar a bit and draw attention to your content.

So with a simple list post I was able to generate a large reach with just a little advertising over 250 free online tools and also build backlinks. You can find more about this here: How I got 1,600 visitors within two days through a blog post.

• Potential link sources can be found with the Scrapebox tool .

Buy / Rent links

Purchased links from very high-quality sources can, contrary to many opinions, give a website a considerable boost in the ranking even today (depending on the competition for the search term). How should Google know if the link was bought or was placed “voluntarily” by the webmaster?

Buying backlinks can be very dangerous: Always avoid link buying portals on the Internet. These platforms have often been penalized by Google in the past and some users who traded there were also penalized.

In the case of a link rental, you have to pay every month and as soon as the payment is stopped, the backlink to your site is deleted again. This very often means that you will lose your rankings again. Because the risk of getting caught is high, it is advisable to use other link building strategies.

Remember that buying – or renting – is often very expensive – is not sustainable with a pure rental and, as the past has shown, can very quickly lead to a penalty.

As already mentioned, z. B. Facebook groups very good for finding, buying or exchanging backlinks.

As with any link placement, it is particularly important here to analyze and evaluate the website on which a backlink is to be placed before buying .

Private Blog Network (PBN)

The strategy for a private blog network is to buy high quality expired domains and place links from those domains on your target website.

This approach is also not tolerated by many search engines and a lot of points have to be considered in order for a private blog network to work.

How do I find expired domains?

There are some sites on the internet that are sort of auction houses auctioning expired domains. The owners of the domains no longer want their domain and are offering it for sale.

The great thing is that there are also internal pages available for purchase that have a high domain authority (abbreviation “DA”) and a good backlink profile.

Such domains are exactly what you need for a successful private blog network. Because only links from high-quality websites will bring you to the front in Google search results.

I recommend GoDaddy.com as the auction platform for expired domains.

I’ll show you three ways how you can find such high quality sites.

But remember one thing: the higher the DA of a website, the more expensive it will be for you to buy it. Something cheaper is available for a DA from 15 to 20.

Variant 1: Expensive, but better variant

1. Register for a fee on the Registercompass.org website.

There you sort the search for expired domains according to the criteria Moz Filters (greater than 20), Trust and CitationFlow (greater than 10).

I recommend GoDaddy as an auction platform, so when searching on Registercompass you should also select the items Auction and GoDaddy .

Click on Search and then on the Excel button at the bottom and you will receive a list of expired domains according to your desired criteria, which you can bid on on GoDaddy .

• As a second step we download the Netpeakchecker : http://netpeak.us/soft/netpeak-checker/.

With this tool you can sort expired domains by Moz Domain Authority & Domain Moz Trust. Enter all domains from Registercompass’ Excel list and sort the domains by Moz Domain Authority (greater than 15).

All domains below this value can be deleted. Save the new Excel list with the newly sorted values.

• In the third step, we no longer just analyze mere key figures, but analyze the quality.

We register for this with a paid account on Majestic.com (approx. € 40–50) in order to gain access to the bulk checker (see tools on the Majestic.com homepage ).

Enter the URLs in the Excel list from Netpeakchecker there (remove http: // from all URLs beforehand) and use them to check how high the domain popularity (DomainPop) is.

Of course you can also do this manually, but with the Majestic Bulk Check this is much faster.

The bulk checker will offer you a new Excel list for download.

First sort the new Excel list by TrustFlow and delete all domains whose TrustFlow is below 10. The same procedure is done with the CitationFlow value.

Now sort the tab ” Ref IPS ” (number of different IPs from which a backlink is obtained) and also delete all those that have less than 20 different IP sources.

Finally, we divide the TrustFlow by the CitationFlow (TF / CF). The value here should be at least 0.8 or greater. In my experience, anything below 0.8 is often spam domains with a high proportion of bad backlinks and should therefore not be auctioned.

Then save all domains in a new Excel list that have met the previous criteria.

• In the fourth step, you check the remaining websites to see if they can be found in the Google index .

If a domain cannot be found in the index, this does not directly mean that it has been penalized. You then have to look at the link profile of the domain and decide whether there is a penalty or not. It is of course safer if the domain is still in the index.

I recommend the site http://www.bulkdachecker.com/bulkindex/ so that you can check all the data in the Excel list at once.

• Domains that have met all criteria so far will now be checked manually on Majestic.com or ahrefs.com.

Analyze every single page for quality: What is the relationship between DoFollow and NoFollow, do the anchor texts always have the same text or have they been chosen alternately, are there many different IP addresses for the link sources?

• If all criteria match, you can / should take part in the auction.

But never waste all your money on a single good domain, rather buy five slightly weaker domains than one strong domain. Many different backlinks from different websites are usually better.

Variant 2: free alternatives

If you don’t have the money for Majestic.com and Registarcompass.org, you can also use free alternatives.

In order to find a good PBN with it, however, a little more time and a little luck are required. Instead of choosing the paid offers, the website www.moonsy.com/expired_domains/ or www.expireddomains.net can also be used.

Backlink profiles can also be   examined on the website openlinkprofiler.org .

Variant 3: crawl for PBNs yourself

You can of course search the web for expired domains yourself. Many site operators don’t even know that their website can have a lot of value on the Internet and simply let it be phased out.

There are different providers on the net, such as B. the lazaruscrawler.com , which allows you to crawl for PBNs.

However, the effort here is very great. You have to let the tools run for weeks in places to find reasonably strong PBNs. You have to be careful not to accidentally register any SPAM domains. In some places a really big effort!

I bought a domain and now?

After you have bought an expired domain from GoDaddy, for example, it must be set up on a hoster.

Avoid any connection to your other websites with one another ( do not leave any footprints ), otherwise Google will become suspicious and could blow up your network.

You should therefore activate Whois protection for every domain (can be activated at GoDaddy for a fee) and set the imprint on each of your network websites to noindex and also block it in the Robots.txt file for search engine crawlers .

If you are discovered, your linked websites will be penalized. Some go so far and leave no imprint at all in order to completely avoid a clear “footprint” on the page.

In addition to the imprint, each individual auctioned page that you want to use for your private blog network should be hosted on a different server with different IPs. This prevents the network from being discovered.

Another thing to consider is which WordPress themes you are using. Use a different design and different plugins for each website.

Also, take a look at what items were on the site before the auction. If possible, try to restore part of it in order to make the page look as natural as possible (caution: you shouldn’t violate any copyrights!).

To see what the website looked like before, you can use the following URL www.archive.org.

Then write individual posts on topics related to the websites you want to link to. The contributions should always be varied with pictures and videos (approx. 500–800 words). Then place one or two links in the post with the appropriate anchor text (also vary this as often as possible – not too many keyword anchor texts!) To your target page, which should increase in the ranking.

When buying domains, be careful not to buy any with Russian or Chinese backlinks, as these are often of very poor quality and can pass on negative link juice.

If you want to delve deeper into this matter, I recommend the website authoritywebsiteincome.com or blog.easyblognetworks.com.

My opinion on private blog networks

This technique can have serious consequences with the smallest mistakes!

I personally advise against this tactic as it is too dangerous and has little effect. How quickly time flies : In 2014/2015 the PBNs celebrated their revival , although the tactic has been used since 2003. In my experience, Google has managed better to recognize revived PBN domains and initially ban them to a kind of sandbox. If the newly set up (expired) domain is regularly updated with new, high-quality content, it can escape from the sandbox, but the way there is often lengthy and difficult.

Many also revitalize their PBNs with new backlinks and social signals in order to rank halfway … an unbelievably large effort.

Not to forget also incurred costs when a network of ten or more PBN is and one of them about 100 US dollars cost to be here soon about $ 1,000 US spent on a network … .the quickly here, if the system uncovered becomes! The cost / benefit calculation is absolutely no longer (in my opinion)….

Enter in link lists

Some websites have “recommendations”, so to speak, link lists, on their pages. If your website is good enough and appropriate to the topic, you can ask the webmaster whether your website can also be put on his list (recommendations).

To find such lists, you can enter on Google:

• intitle: keyword inurl: “links”
• intitle: keyword inurl: “linklist”
• intitle: keyword inurl: “links keyword”
• Blogroll + “keyword”
• sponsored + “keyword”
• sponsored links + “keyword”
• useful links + “keyword”

In order for your URL to be recorded, the content on your site must of course be of a correspondingly high quality. Take a look at the websites that have already been added to the link list, and then see if your site can keep up with quality. If not, you should work on the quality of your content.

Broken link building

“Broken link building” is a link building technique that searches for broken or broken links.

With this technology, these “dead” links should, if possible, be replaced by a reference back to our target page. Of course, such broken links must first be found, the website operator must be written to and suitable content must be found on our URL, which can also be linked.

Broken link building is very popular with some SEOs as this technique can create unique backlinks and improve the internet at the same time.

How to find “Broken Links”

The easiest way to find broken links on other websites is to search for them with the Google Chrome add-on “Check My Links” ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/ ). Install this addon and then enter the following search queries in the Google search:

• Keyword + “links”
• Keyword + “resources”
• Keyword + intitle: resources

Of course there are many more different search queries. Be creative and try a lot.

As soon as you have found an interesting page using the search engines, you can use the Check-My-Links-Addon to scan for dead links. The add-on will then show you all broken links on this page and you can check whether you have suitable content that can be linked to.

Write the webmaster an e-mail and ask him about the dead links and ask if he would like to replace one or the other dead link with a link to your content.

Broken link building can be very time consuming, but luckily there are a lot of tools that can relieve you of a lot of work here.

 Be creative: generate backlinks from the competition

I admit, this strategy is a bit extraordinary, but it can work!

Conclusion – many paths lead to the goal

Backlinks are still considered by Google as a ranking factor.

If you get strong and thematically appropriate links for your target website, there is a high probability that this will also push your page in the rankings. Assuming you have a website with good content and no technical errors ( OnPage optimization ).

The only question is, how do you get those strong links?

In this post I have listed some link building strategies on how you can generate backlinks. Of course, each tactic has advantages and disadvantages.

So these strategies are divided into White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO or Gray Hat SEO.

With white hat SEO there is actually no or hardly any risk of being punished. This includes

such. B. Content Marketing, since good rankings are to be achieved here in a natural way.

With Black Hat SEO it looks very different. Forbidden methods are used here (e.g. link wheels) to bring a website forward contrary to webmaster guidelines . Breaking the Google guidelines can quickly lead to a penalty. Thousands of websites that have used illegal black hat strategies have already been removed from the search index in the past.

However, there are also methods that also violate the guidelines, but are usually not discovered as quickly or not at all by Google’s intelligent or cautious approach. Such an approach is often referred to as gray hat SEO. The technology is also punished by the search engines when it is discovered, but careful action can lead to flying under the radar.

Google is “just” a machine with different algorithms to calculate the rankings. If you make the backlink structure look natural and do not leave any footprints, manipulation will not be noticed or will not be noticed as quickly.

In order not to burn their fingers with such dangerous strategies, many webmasters now rely on natural link growth (white hat SEO).

Creating great content, infographics, guest articles, linkbaits, etc. is much safer than a link network. However, the disadvantage here is that with such techniques you cannot control the generation of backlinks so well and a lot of work has to be invested in great content and analyzes. In my experience, however, the hard work is worth it. Too often I have seen pages that were penalized for manipulating their own link profile too much.

Which strategy you ultimately use is up to you. Test a lot and expand your knowledge to find the perfect link building strategy for you.

One last tip: Always try to generate links from as many different sources as possible (guest posts, forums, link lists, sponsoring, etc.) in order to simulate a naturally growing link profile. Those who want to act overly cautious rely on pure content marketing + seeding of the new content on relevant platforms.

I hope you enjoyed this guide and you can learn something from my experiences. Good luck with the construction :).

What are your experiences on the topic? Let me know your opinion in the comment section now.