The Inspiring Story of Earned Inbound Links (+3 Ways to Earn Them)
Money doesn’t possess people, people possess money.
Hence to attract money, or the revenue to keep your business afloat, you must attract people to your business.
So when people started turning to the Internet, using the search engines to find and solve their problems through websites, businesses had no other option than to turn to the search engines to attract people to themselves too.
Therefore, what started out as an easy to enter space has become a crowded global community where everyone is trying to win people’s attention.
Hence with an overload of website options to choose from and present her mutual customers, gain trust, and stay ahead of competition, the search engines are left with no other option than to filter the weed from the wheat.
How (I Think) It All Started
In the past, the search engines used keywords as its major ranking factor and was easily outsmarted, and deceived by many cunning digital marketers.
The search engines actually got deceived, and outsmarted on many fronts too numerous to mention.
But it kept pushing on…
Until it found ‘Earned Inbound Links.’
Here the search engines used the people it fought against to win her battle.
And the measure was quite simple: ‘if your website earns links from other websites, then I’d take it that you’re worthy to be displayed to our mutual customers.’
To take it even further, this time making it more difficult to earn those cherished links, search engines assigned values of different scores to earned links.
The instant search engines got smart enough to assign values to links, it became a clear indication to digital marketers that it wasn’t easy to fool those robots again.
And so the tables turned.
Websites withdrew links coming from link farms, and even now disavow their websites from links that looks suspicious, all in an attempt to avoid the search engine’s wrath.
Earned Inbound Links Became Precious Links
Today, earning links has proven to be a hard nut to crack because truly, acquiring any link the search engines would recognize to your website isn’t easy.
If acquiring only the links the search engines would recognize is hard, then earning the ones that’d help you appear on the first page of the SERP’s, outranking your competitors in the process, is even tougher.
To put it into simple perspective, without links pointing to your web contents, your website would not rank on the search engines.
Links are so precious to any SEO success, they easily qualify to be called the search engines’ golden proof signals.
I’d not waste your time stressing the importance of earning links to your website.
Because even if I did, I’d still arrive at the same inevitable destination: you simply cannot smell the front page of Google organically for profitable search queries without them.
It is however not surprising why link building is fast becoming a full fledged industry in its own right.
While you may have heard of, or read of some overblown success stories achieved with link building strategies, that thing is really difficult and not completely scalable.
Worst of, people mostly honor link building requests to maintain relationships. Because in most cases, they envisage a return of the favor in the future.
So is there any way to earn links without having to beg for them in disguise using link building strategies?
Well, yes!
Luckily for you, there are more ways than one to earn links to your website.
However, I’d not expose you to all in this article, I’d only reveal the ways that have been proven to work over and again.
The best part?
I’d not stop at only revealing them to you, you’d get a full walk-through on how to use any of these methods to earn quality links the search engines would instantly acknowledge, rank your website, and attract customers to your business.
But first, look closely at the foregoing paragraph and you’d notice that one word, which hasn’t been used in this article, has quietly made its way in.
Did you notice it?
Quality! Yes, quality has stepped in.
Link Quality
All links are not born equal, some links are more valuable and profitable than others.
Those links, which easily qualify as valuable and profitable to your business are what you can call ‘quality links.’
Before you can earn them, you must have quality too.
Do you remember the popular saying that ‘birds of the same feathers flock together?’
If you don’t have quality, forget it, you’d not earn quality links to your website.
And quite frankly, everything you’d learn here would be useless if delivered without a touch of quality.
Anyway, you don’t have to become another person, the quality I refer to here is not yourself, or your lifestyle, but the contents you publish on your website.
The 3 Proven Ways to Earn Quality Links
I have not invented the ways of earning links you’d be exposed to here.
But like you’d find out, I’ve researched what established digital marketers have used to earn (and still earning) tons of quality links to their websites.
If you apply your own bit of creativity to any of these methods, I’m definitive you’d be amazed at the amount of quality links you’d earn for yourself.
1 Have a B2B Content Creation Mindset
This is one of the ways I think Google and other search engines work.
When a search query is made by a researcher looking to solve a problem, their robots or webcrawlers ignites with lightening speed into finding the webpage most likely to solve such problem.
Now when they find a probable list of webpages to display for this researcher, they then rank them according to the quality of links each of them have earned.
So let’s say the search query made was “onpage seo checklist.
In a twinkle of a second, Google returned results as shown in the image below.
If you’re having doubts if the featured webpage from backlinko.com earned both the first and second position, take a look below at the amount of links pointing to that webpage.
This webpage earns links from giants like MOZ, Entreprenuer, Buffer, and whole lot more (you can see the domain authorities for yourself).
You may be wondering, where does the B2B mindset come in, and how would it help me to rank my website?
I’d tell you how…
When you produce engaging content, you do so for normal researchers to understand the topic you’re trying to cover.
But when you produce content that is beneficial for other businesses in, or relative to your industry, you earn links from real businesses publishing contents the search engines recognizes too.
Put simply, that is producing a B2B content.
This content by Brian Dean was produced to help other top marketers succeed with On-page SEO.
It made marketers life so easy on the topic, one would rather just link to it than start attempting to go over the topic again.
The only content I’ve seen to rival this content from Brian Dean is this recent On-Page SEO content from Udit Goenka.
Proof For This Method
If you’re in the digital marketing space, you must, or may have heard of Neil Patel.
Personally, I’ve learnt so much from this man, I even documented his 5 blogs that made me (and can make you) a better content marketer.
I was expecting him to top the search engines when I did this research for On-page SEO. I remember even adding his name to further influence the search.
However, the webpage from backlinko.com topped him.
See the images below, and you’d understand why.
Neil’s article on the topic is very engaging. It actually earns some links, like you can see in the image above, but it doesn’t come close to Brian’s.
And the difference and position it lands is simple, I think it wasn’t created with a complete B2B mindset.
To further explain, if you were Google, would you rank a webpage earning 1.6k links over one with 168 links?
Your Lesson?
When you create contents, with which you need to earn links, and rank high for a profitable keyword, do it to help other marketers, or publishers in your industry.
Do it to help other businesses succeed in a way they’d not bother covering that topic again, or if they do, they’d be obliged to give you some credits.
Do it with a B2B mindset.
And the logic is simple.
If websites, who should be competing with you on the same topic link to your content instead, the search engines scores so much quality value to that content, and would have no choice than to rank your website for that search query.
2 Invent Something (Even if you think it’s stupid)
Okay, it shouldn’t be stupid anyway.
But here’s the thing.
If you invent something, and hold on to prove it’s importance, or why it should be considered relevant, other websites (including competitors) would link to you when re-explaining it in their own words.
Seriously, this is a quality link earning magnet method not fully exploited.
This method wouldn’t only earn you links, it can automatically skyrocket your importance in your industry to an extent you’d never imagined.
Two people who’ve done this, profited immensely, and earned ‘expert’ status are Avinash Kaushik and Mark Schaefer
I. I’d start with Avinash.
Referred to as a Google Evangelist (I’m still finding the real meaning for that), inventing and expertly defending the STDC marketing framework relevance is one thing I believe further made this man the ‘expert’ he is today.
See below the links his invention earned his website (a far cry from the sexy websites we have today).
And if you heard of the STDC framework for the first time, and carried out a research of it on Google, below is what you’d likely to displayed with.
As you can see from the above image, even Google’s owned website (circled) mentions the STDC framework.
Taking a look at the top websites linking to the webpage where Avinash published the content for his invented STDC framework, you can find huge digital marketing websites (SEMrush, Searchengineland, etc) linking to it.
II. Secondly, Mark Schaefer.
Talking about not being scared of inventing something even if you think it could sound stupid, this example would help you see why.
If you consider how the word ‘shocked’ is normally used, especially when it has to do with electricity, would it be possible to say something like a written content would get shocked?
Sounds stupid right?
Well, it depends on the explanation for claiming a content would get shocked.
Mark Schaefer invented the phrase ‘content shock.’
Whether it was a conscious and creative effort to sell the eBook he produced as remedy for the explanation he gave for that phrase, or for any other reason, how it concerns us here is that it earned his website so much links, and further established him as a marketing ‘expert.’
See the snapshot below.
Trust me, you don’t earn 3 Inbound links from Medium.com, or the highest known Inbound preachers, HubSpot, everyday.
The phrase “Content Shock” would’ve sounded stupid, and not given any attention (or earned links in this case) if Mark didn’t match his invention with relevance.
But since he did, and did it awesomely, you can see the results for yourself.
Your Lesson?
If you want to rank your website, or establish yourself as an expert, invent something in your industry, and preach the relevance of it to the extent people can’t help but accept it is relevant.
And when you set out to do so, don’t be scared of criticism or think you’d appear stupid.
You may not be listened to the first time you announce your invention, but overtime, as you continue to preach and promote your invention, people would start taking note of it, and ultimately, you.
And when they do, quality links would be yours for the earning.
Plus the rare recognition as an ‘expert’ in your industry.
This is a superb quality link earning strategy.
Go ahead, think deeply, re-interpret what you know, explain things in way people haven’t heard it before, go insanely creative, and most importantly, don’t be scared of bearing the name ‘stupid.’
Do this right and earned links to your website, together with the crown of ‘expert’ status could be yours for keeps.
3 Dive Deeper Into Data
Today, success or failure can be determined by the quality and depth of data at your disposal.
Every industry is sourcing for past, present, and projected data to make smarter decisions.
Google’s entire business is built on the vision of gathering the world’s data, and making it accessible for anybody.
So, if you’re yet to know the importance and value of data, you can measure it against the successful business story, which Google commands.
If you want to earn links, find valuable data that other people would need to make decisions.
In the digital marketing space, almost, if not every decision is considered useful if it is made with a backing from confirmed and reliable data.
You may not be an expert wordsmith, or the very innovative inventor, but you can make surveys, ask normal interactive questions and find useful data you and other businesses in your industry (or relative industry) would need.
Even yourself need data to make decisions irrespective of your industry.
Often times, the data you’d need is also sought after by others in your industry.
So what if you were the one who gathered and published such data on your website?
The answer to that is simple, you’d earn links to your website.
Proof For This Method
There are tons of proof for this link earning strategy.
I. HubSpot’s yearly State of Inbound Research.
Every year, HubSpot carries out the inbound marketing research and presents fellow Inbound Marketers, and even other marketers with invaluable data to help them make smarter decisions.
As shown on the snapshot above, the webpage this data is published currently earns 255 links.
Considering that this is done every year, they should be expecting to earn another round of such precious links again (and every single year).
Personally, I cannot wait for them to publish the next one. And I’d definitely link to it too.
II. WordStreams Video Marketing Statistics
WordStream earned a whooping 848 links for the data it published on it’s 2017 video marketing statistics data research content.
In my article, ‘Eye-Opening Video Marketing Secrets, Why, How To Use Them (from Kissmetrics Webinar), I also linked to this content.
There are countless other examples to use as proof for this method of earning inbound links.
Just swipe to Google and type anything in the search box and add ‘statistics.’
Your Lesson?
People are continuously in search of data to make better decisions, and produce more credible contents.
If you provide them with such needed data, you’d earn links to your website.
And if you publish the researched data along with keywords you hope to rank for, that would be a good way to get yourself, and your website on top of the rankings.
So find data. Arrange them and publish them for your use and for the use of others.
Conclusion
There are many other ways to earn links to your website, but the three I’ve highlighted above are sure ways of earning quality inbound links.
They’re not easy to achieve, but if you take the pains and meet the requirement of any of the above methods, you’d definitely earn links toyour website.
And finally when you earn those precious links, you’d rank high on the search engines, attract customers, sell more, boost your revenue, and ultimately earn a profitable business.
Before you set out to give any of these methods a try, be reminded that you must present a quality packaging of any of them.
Goodluck.
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Thanks.
