DEEP DIVE

How to build link magnets that work (with AI)

First off, a brief overview of the idea. It’s long been clear that tools created for your niche or industry can be a great way to attract backlinks. Especially passive backlinks, the ones you get without having to perform manual outreach. 

You create a tool so valuable that other websites naturally want to link to you. That said, this strategy is best suited for sites that already have domain authority and can rank for the keywords they’re targeting.

For instance, the most common and effective tools I’ve seen are always around calculators, e.g., calories calculator. However, if you’re a brand-new site in the fitness niche and try to build this with hopes of getting links, you’ll be highly disappointed. 

You need to be able rank on page one for the keyword calories calculator, and that’s just not going to happen if you’re new to the SEO game. You need authority before trying this strategy.

But once you have that authority, there is a TON of potential. Just take a look at Calculator.net. Looks like it was built in the early 2000s but has over 20,000 referring domains because the website is useful. 

Take a look at how many referring domains some of its top pages have:

Now, calculators are great, but they don’t make sense for every industry. A couple of other angles I like to use:

• templates (e.g., onboarding template)

• generators (e.g., business name generator)

• checklist (e.g., SEO checklist)

• tracker (e.g., layoff tracker)

• quiz/test (e.g., color personality quiz)

With all this in mind, let me show you how to find what works in your niche. 

Step 1: Find tool ideas that are already proven to work.

To get us started, we need to find tools that are already getting passive links each month. This requires a ton of searching in Google. But before going out and searching the web, do two things for me. 

• First, download the Ahrefs toolbar, so that whenever you Google “niche + generator” you can quickly see how many referring domains each tool has. You’re going to be performing a lot of searches, and this tool makes it easy to see, at a glance, if any of these tools are actually getting links to them.
  
  If the top 3–5 results only have 4–10 links, move on to the next idea.

• Next, create a simple spreadsheet where you can record all the URLs of the tools you find online. You'll want to take note of promising tools and do deeper analysis (in step two below) to make sure they’re worth building. 

Now that you have your setup complete, start by taking a few seed keywords for your brand and start searching. 

If I were working with a mattress company, here's what I would search:

• sleep calculator

• bedtime calculator

• bedtime checklist

• jet lag calculator

Notice how none of these are using the word mattress because a mattress calculator or mattress generator doesn’t make any sense. But sleep is a seed keyword relevant to the brand, and this is where there are some opportunities.

Again, just try a ton of different variations:

• keyword + calculator

• keyword + templates

• keyword + generators

• keyword + checklist

• keyword + tracker

• keyword + quiz/test

Note: You can speed up this topic ideation phase drastically with AI. Here is a link to a conversation I had with ChatGPT that helped me come up with the ideas above.

Now, as you Google these phrases, add the URL of any potential opportunities to your spreadsheet. 

“Sleep calculator” looks promising, since each of the top three results have more than 200 referring domains.

Rinse and repeat until you find 10–20 tools within your niche that are getting links. 

Step 2: Get ruthless with your research.

Now that you have 10–20 tools recorded in your spreadsheet, dive a bit deeper into their backlink profiles to make sure they're getting high-quality links AND they're coming in consistently.

To do this, open Ahrefs, input the exact URL of the tools, open up the backlinks report, and toggle the following filters: 

• domain rating > 40

• domain traffic > 10,000

Then check the "New" tab and analyze link acquisition over multiple time periods (30 days, 90 days, 6 months, and 12 months).

If I do this for a bedtime calculator I found, I’ll see it’s gotten 108 links over the past 30 days, all with DR 40 and domain traffic 10,000+. 

Now I want to check how many links it’s gotten over 30 days, 90 days, 6 months, and 12 months and input it into the spreadsheet.

Why? Because you want tools that are consistently earning new quality links month after month, not ones that got a bunch of links but have done nothing since.

And we can clearly see that with the example above. If we just looked at the links from the previous 30 days of this tool we’d say, “Damn! This is getting 108 links per month. Let’s build it!” 

But that’s far from true. Take a look at the links during each time period below.

Yes, it got 108 links over the past 30 days, but it’s not averaging that link growth over time. Based on the 12-month average, it only gets 11 links per month. 

And if we do some basic math, we find that out of the 137 links over the past 12 months, 108 of them came in the last 30 days. So in reality, I’d be looking at only getting 29 links per year to this page, or two links per month. 

This isn’t terrible, but it's not as sexy as we initially thought, and this is exactly why it’s so important to do this research! 

Do this for all 10–20 tools you’ve found and start building based on the highest link potential, overtime.

Step 3: Build your link magnet with AI (fast and cheap).

As I mentioned in the intro, it used to take a developer to build these sorts of tools, but thanks to Replit, ChatGPT, and ~vibecoding~ you can get a v1 up and running quickly.

Mike Friedman outlines this process well, so again, go give his article a read. Specifically the ending:

Note his last sentence. I don’t think AI can get you 100% of the way there. But it should be able to get you 80% of the way there, and then you can hand it off to a developer to finish the job.

My best advice is to produce your minimum viable product (the 80%), publish it on your site, and get the page indexed. Remember, you have to rank if you want this strategy to work, and sometimes it’ll take 1–3 months for your page to get there.

Don’t wait until you get it perfect. Ship the product, let the page rank, and have a developer improve it in the background.

Step 4: Don’t try to monetize initially.

Now, in the beginning, don’t try to monetize this page at all. No email gate, no ads, nada.

Just make this a super useful and friendly tool and then, once you’re ranking and have gotten oodles of links, you can monetize it.

No one wants to link to your business name generator that then asks for your email to send you the results. 🙄

Step 5: Promote strategically to jumpstart link acquisition.

I’ve said it five times, and I’ll say it again. You need to rank to get these passive links. It’s always a good idea to help push the page up in the beginning to help its rankings. 

If you can, do an outreach campaign to the tool or send 3–5 backlinks to it. If you can’t do that, add an internal link to it throughout your site:

• on your homepage

• on your menu nav

• on your footer

• on any high ranking pages

Once the page starts ranking, you can remove these internal links. Remember, if a page has the potential to get 20 links per month, why not give it some love in the beginning to help it? You’ll get the link equity back.

Step 6: Expand your tool empire.

Once you've got one successful tool, build more. Work down your research list from Step 2.

Your next steps

Reading articles and theory is cool, but you know what will actually move the needle for your business?

Action. Don't just read this.

Implement it or send it to a team member.

Here's what to do next:

1. Perform topic research and find 10–20 tools in your niche getting links.

2. Filter out tools based on the DR40+/traffic filtering method.

3. Use AI to build a minimal viable product.

4. Get it live ASAP, perfection can come later.

5. Build some links, internally or externally, to the tool.

6. Set a calendar reminder for 90 days to analyze results.

P.S. Thank you again Mike Friedman for inspiring this post. Everyone should subscribe to his newsletter The SEO Pub if you haven’t yet.