Link building sucks.

It’s time consuming and hard.

But as an SEO, you have no choice but to build links… assuming you want to rank on Google.

So, today I am announcing a new Ubersuggest feature, that makes link building faster and easier.

Here’s how…

What is the easiest way to get links?

What if you could only focus your link building efforts on sites that are highly likely to link to you?

Sounds great right…

Well, you can.

Just think of it this way… what are the sites that are most likely to link back to you?

It’s actually the ones that link to your competitors.

For example, if there were 300 sites that linked to 4 of your competitors, but they don’t link to you yet, reaching out to those 300 sites should create a large chunk of new backlinks for you. Because if they are willing to link to your competition, they usually won’t mind linking to you as well.

On the flip side if there are sites that don’t link to you or any of your competitors, if you hit them up, the chances are, they will ignore you and not link to you.

So how do find these easy link opportunities?

Introducing Backlink Opportunities by Ubersuggest

I want you to first go here. Then type in your URL and click on “search”.

In the left-hand navigation click on “Backlink Opportunity”.

In this report make sure you put your URL at the top and enter in a few of your popular competitors. As you can see, I put in Moz and Search Engine Journal.

Make sure you click the “+” button when adding each of your competitors and then hit “search”.

Within seconds you’ll see a report of who links to your competitors, but not you.

You’ll then want to drill down on each domain to see the exact URL that links to your competitors.

Some of the links may not be a good fit, such as the Google Maps page linking to Moz… unless you have a physical office location.

But others, such as the W3.org site, could be a great opportunity.

Wait, it gets better

The example above shows you all of the people that link to your competitors but not you.

But it is on a domain level.

With link building, it’s easier to get links when you have a similar blog post to your competition.

For example, let’s say I Google the term “SEO”. Here’s what I see on Google.

Both Moz and Search Engine Land rank above me.

I can take the exact URLs that rank above me and put them into the Backlink Opportunity report.

When adding competing URLs to the Backlink Opportunity report, you’ll want to select “URL” instead of “Domain” so you can see who links that specific URL.

This is important because Moz and Search Engine Land may have articles around topics that I don’t cover. But their articles on SEO that rank above me are about SEO basics. And the article I have that ranks below them is on SEO basics.

For that reason, it is highly relevant to see who links to the pages that rank above me because there is a good shot, I can convince one of those sites to link to me.

Sending out the email

Once you have a list of sites you want to outreach to, you are probably wondering… “how do I figure out who to email”, right?

Using Hunter.io you can get the email address for any site for free.

Once you have a person’s email, send them a custom email.

For example, for the people who link to Moz’s SEO beginner guide and Search Engine Land’s beginner’s article, I may send something like this…

Hey John,

You already know SEO is changing fast, hence you wrote an article on up-and-coming SEO trends.

But one thing I noticed is you didn’t talk much about AI and how it is going to impact SEO.

And the articles you linked to on Moz and Search Engine Land don’t cover that either. Yet at conferences, it’s one of the buzzing topics that everyone is curious about.

I actually have a few examples of the use of AI in SEO here [insert link].

If you think it’s valuable feel free and add it to your site. 🙂

Thought it would help your readers.

Cheers,

Neil Patel

PS: By the way, I just shared one of your articles on Twitter… you can check it out here.

My outreach emails are very custom. Using generic outreach emails don’t work too well with link building.

When I send out 100 emails based on opportunities from the Backlink Opportunity report, I aim for at least 15% of the sites to link back to me.

Keep in mind I am specifically using the report to see who links to similar competing articles that rank higher than me on Google. It’s very specific, but that is why it works.

Conclusion

If you haven’t, go here and put in your URL. Try out the Backlink Opportunity report and tell me what you think.

Start off by seeing who links to your competition and hit up those sites one by one to see if they are willing to link to you.

It works… just reach out to 10 sites and day and do it for a month. You will see results.

So, what do you think about this new report?