Lazy Link Building: Get Links Without Sending Emails

No matter what Google says, your content needs backlinks to rank. 

And with all the updates that have happened lately, I only believe in the power of links even more now. 

Especially big DR links. Those links your competitors wish they could get.

Without these, it’s damn near impossible to rank for any keyword that’s remotely competitive.

But link building is hard and expensive. 

Most agencies charge $300+ per link and building out an entire outreach process is time intensive af.

And while digital PR works great, again, that shit is expensive.

So instead, let’s create content that gets links naturally.

And this isn’t some buzzword post that says, “If you write good content, you will get links.” 🙄

You need to be more strategic than that. 

Yes, your content should be amazing, but not every content piece is link bait, no matter how sexy it is.

You need to write high-link-intent articles. Articles that journalists (read: high DR websites) love linking to over and over. 

Note: Before we get into this, it’s important that you have at least some authority to make this work. If you’re a brand-new site and don’t already have a link profile, focus on manual outreach and come back to this once you can actually rank for some keywords.

Step 1: Find Topics

First, you need to find articles within your niche that are getting links naturally. What you’re looking for here is a slow growth of referring domains, not a spike.

A spike tells you that the website is building backlinks to the article. That’s not what you want.

I love looking at nonprofit websites within my niche and seeing what pages of theirs are getting links. 

It’s safe to assume that nonprofits aren’t doing link building, so if you see one getting links, they’re coming naturally.

Step 2: Content Brief and Writing

Once you find pages that are naturally getting links, it’s now time to do some reverse engineering so you can structure your page for success.

First, you want to find the keywords these pages are ranking for and target them accordingly.

Do this by reviewing the pages keywords in ahrefs and noting which keywords have the highest search volume.

Next, sort the keywords by search volume and then apply a filter to only show you keywords in the top 1–5 positions.

Once you find the parent keyword, make sure to include it in the usual places:

• URL

• H1

• Title tag

From here, review the anchor texts that point to these pages. 

This will tell you exactly what information journalists are grabbing whenever they link to them.

Note down all the anchor texts and surrounding text and you’ll start to see patterns. You’ll see what number, phrase, or info journalists repeatedly quote.

As you can see in the image below, it looks like journalists in Iowa and Kentucky are linking to this article, so I would make sure to cover these states and put them at the top of the article.

Now use Clearscope, Surfer, or whatever content optimization tool of your choice is and input other headings and information that the top ranking results have.

Note: Make sure to look at images as well. Journalists love a good graphic. See what images the top pages have and recreate them. 

Ideally these images will display the important info you have identified. 

In addition, open up all the articles that link back to the page you’re trying to recreate. See if the articles copied and pasted any images over.

If yes, recreate the images that journalists are using.

Step 3: Post Publishing

Now that you’ve produced an A+ piece of content that targets keywords with high link intent, you need to make sure it ranks.

A couple of quick tips:

• Link to these articles from your homepage. Your homepage typically has the most link juice and you want to push a ton of this juice to these pages so they’ll rank.

• Link to these articles from any other page on your website that has a ton of link juice (referring domains).

• Link to these articles from the header and footer of your website to help them get crawled frequently. 

You might be timid pointing so much link juice to these articles but don’t be. You will get the link equity back.

If you can rank for a keyword that naturally gets 10+ links per month, it’s worth adding a bit of link juice to it in the beginning so it can rank. 

Once the page ranks and starts getting links naturally, you can start to remove it from the places I mentioned above.

Remember, if you can’t rank for these keywords, then all the work you just did is a waste of time.

Your Next Steps

Reading articles and theory are cool but you know what will actually move the needle for you?

Action. Don’t just read this. 

Implement or send to a team member.

Here’s what to do next:

1. Go out and find 10–20 articles that are getting links naturally.

2. Find the keywords the articles are ranking for and create a page targeting the same.
   

3. Review anchor texts pointing to these articles and note down any patterns.
   

4. Structure your page with relevant headings to match the top-ranking results.
   

5. Recreate images that journalists are linking to or using.
   

6. Publish the page and link to it throughout your site so it gets a ton of link equity in the beginning. This will help it rank.
   

7. Monitor your rankings and links each week. Once you have enough links to these articles, feel free to remove them from your homepage, header, footer, and elsewhere. 

If you hate cold outreach as much as me and the above resonates with you, stay tuned.

I’m launching a cohort later this month to teach people this exact strategy, over the shoulder. I will personally coach you through this process. 

I’m limiting the workshop to 5–10 people to guarantee a high-quality experience for everyone who signs up.

That’s it for now. 

See you next week and, as always, hit me with any questions you may have.

Much love ✌️