Advanced Techniques For B2B Link Building

If you’re a B2B marketer, the chances are you’re already familiar with basic link-building techniques.

I’m talking about:

• Guest posting

• HARO

• Skyscraper

• Linkable content

• Directory link building

• Broken link building

• Unlinked mentions

• PR backlinks

You’ve tried them all, you’ve had some success, and you know what works for your business.

This article is for pros like you.

It provides seven advanced B2B link-building techniques and strategies that you can use to build more high-quality links.

Let’s get started with the seven tactics you can use in your advanced b2b link building strategy.

A word of warning: most of these require additional resources or specialist tools.

Newsjacking

Newsjacking is a difficult but effective way to generate PR backlinks.

PR links involve proactively creating something newsworthy that journalists will want to print.

They are particularly valuable because:

• They tend to get placed by high-authority news websites

• The subject matter of the linking content is usually super-relevant to what you do

• Other people will likely link to your content too once they have read about it

Newsjacking is similar, but it entails reacting to an emerging story.

This could involve:

• Giving an opinion on the news

• Providing additional insight

• Offering a solution to the problem

• Saying something interesting or amusing on the same subject

Newsjacking is tough because:

• You have to constantly monitor the news

• You never know when an opportunity will arise

• You have to act fast before interest in the story dies down

A good example of a newsjacking campaign is our Trump Tax Fraud Campaign, which we collaborated on with our client, the Accounting Institute for Success (AIS).

U.S. President Donald Trump had been making headlines due to questions over nonpayment of taxes.

With their understanding of the U.S. tax system, AIS’s experts were perfectly placed to provide the media with extra detail on the subject.

We created an infographic, explaining each instance of tax fraud that the former President had committed throughout his life.

It earned over 150 backlinks that include a few from high-authority sites like Slashdot and Mashable.

How to newsjack

Successful newsjacking requires you to act fast, but also be sensitive to what makes a good opportunity.

• Have a team on hand: You need to have people available to come up with great ideas and then sell them to journalists at a moment’s notice. Avoid giving your newsjacking team other high-priority work that can’t be put aside. Paying for someone to do this is likely to be expensive.

• Use news alerts and aggregator tools: This will allow you to keep up-to-date with breaking stories.

• Know your audience: Focus on news items that your audience will find interesting, and target news publications that they read.

• Focus on your area of expertise: Only pursue opportunities where you can add value.

• Avoid controversial topics: If you try newsjacking a controversial topic, you risk getting embroiled in online arguments or even attracting negative press.

Tiered link building

Tiered link building isn’t actually a link-building technique. Instead, it’s a strategy that guides the types of links you build and which websites you build them with.

In other words, you’ll still need to use techniques like guest posting or newsjacking to build the actual links.

It involves improving your off-page SEO by building links in layers:

• You start off building links that point directly to your website—these are called tier one links.

• Next, you build links to the pages those tier one links to your website come from—these are tier two links.

• You then build links to the pages with tier two links—these are tier three links.

This gives you a broad network of links that will boost your rankings.

Why is that? Because tiered link building gives you a strong, diverse backlink profile consisting of links of varying quality.

When search engines see a varied link profile, they think it looks natural. When it comes to choosing which ones to rank higher in their results pages, search engines are more likely to favor relevant websites with natural backlink profiles.

How to implement tiered link building

Tiered links should be built in a pyramid shape. In other words, you’ll have about 10 tier two links pointing to every tier one link and about 30 tier three links pointing to every tier one link.

The quality of the links you place can be lower the further removed from your own website they are.

In other words:

• Tier one links should be the most relevant, high-authority links you can get. For example, editorial links in well-known industry publications.

• Tier two links also need to be relevant, but they can be less authoritative. For example, you might place a guest post on a relatively new website in your industry.

• Tier three links can be low-quality. Examples include directory links and no-follow links.

Here’s a good example of a tiered link structure:

Tier one:

App developer Wombo has its DreamAI software featured on tech blog TechCrunch.

TechCrunch is a high authority website and one of the leading titles in its industry.

Source: TechCrunch

Tier two:

A slightly less authoritative website, Mac World, has also covered DreamAI. However, it has linked to the TechCrunch article and not Wombo’s website.

Source: Mac World

Tier three:

Techilive.in, a lower quality, less authoritative website, has linked to the Mac World article. This time, the link is not in the body copy, and it’s a no-follow link.

Source: Techilive

⚠️ Note: We’re not saying that Wombo has purposely built this link structure. These backlinks could have been generated completely organically. However, it does exemplify the sort of link hierarchy that you need to aim for.

Link Reclamation

Link reclamation is when you identify links that you have lost and then ask the site owner to fix them.

Over time, you naturally lose links for various reasons. Reclaiming these links is a good way to maintain a healthy backlink profile.

This may sound similar to broken link building, but there’s a major difference:

• Broken link building: creating new links by fixing backlinks you never had.

• Link reclamation: when you fix links that you have built.

In other words, you can’t reclaim a link that you’ve never owned.

The main reasons that you might lose links are:

• 404 redirects: Users get a 404 error when they click the link because the URL is broken. This may be because you have changed your URL structure without setting up 301 redirects.

• 301 redirects: 301 redirects are when a site owner redirects traffic to another page. They usually reproduce the content—but sometimes they delete the page altogether.

• The link has been removed: Sometimes site owners update their content entirely and forget—or choose not to—include the previous links.

• The page has been deindexed: The link still exists, but the search engine has decided that the page is not worthy of its index and removed it, so the value of any links is nullified.

How to reclaim your links

To find lost backlinks, you’ll need a tool like Ahrefs.

1) Identify broken links

In Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, enter the domain you want to find lost links for and click “Lost links.”

You’ll be shown a calendar with the number of links lost each day highlighted in red.

Click a day or choose a period and click “Show Lost backlinks.”

Choose a backlink that you want to reclaim and visit the website.

Find the site owner’s contact details and write an outreach email asking them to reinstate the link.

Use Google Alerts

Google Alerts are great for letting you know when people mention your brand online. This is called unlinked mentions, and it's an effective way to build natural backlinks.

You can take this a step further by using it to boost your PR campaigns or applying it to your products and services.

Example: Backlinko

You can even use Google Alerts to build links to ideas that you contributed that have gained traction.

A good example of this is when Backlinko founder Brian Dean came up with the Skyscraper technique.

This link-building concept quickly gained traction, and people across the web began writing about it. Each time it was mentioned became an opportunity for Brian to contact the website owner and ask them to link back to his website.

As a result, the Backlinko website has more than 600 backlinks that refer to the skyscraper technique. Some of them are DR 90+!

People love an origin story, so there’s a good chance that site owners will want to link back to your website.

Example: MEDDIC

Another good example of this is the MEDDIC sales technique, which was created by employees at Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC).

This wasn’t done as a link-building exercise, but it still drew links from several DR 50+ websites.

How to set up Google Alerts:

1. Go to Google Alerts

2. Enter the topic you want to be alerted to

3. Set your options

4. Click “Create Alert”

You’ll now be emailed every time Google detects content that matches your alert.

Reverse image search

This is another approach that’s similar to unlinked mentions. Instead of searching for mentions, you search for places where people have used images that you own.

They may have credited you, but not linked to your website or they might have forgotten to credit you altogether. Either way, you can reach out to the site owner and ask them to link to your website.

This approach is particularly useful for site owners who:

• Create interesting infographics

• Publish high-quality original images

• Create amusing memes

How to perform a Google reverse image search

1. Go to Google Images.

2. Type keywords or the image file name into the search bar.

3. Click the camera on the right side of the search bar.

4. Next, you can either:

a. Paste the image URL

b. Upload your image

5. Google will now return a list of potential matches.

6. Visit the website that featured your image and find contact details for the website owner.

7. Write a polite email to the site owner explaining that you own the image. Tell them they are required to attribute it correctly by linking to your website.

Link Intersect

Link intersect is a tool rather than a link-building technique. But it’s a good way to find link-building opportunities.

It’s very simple, but we’ve included it as an advanced technique because you need to have an SEO tool to do it.

Essentially, the tool will scan your competitors’ websites to find domains that link to all of them.

If a website already links to several of your competitors, then they will probably be willing to link to your site, too.

You can even add your own site when performing a link intersect—this stops the tool from presenting other websites that already link to you.

Several SEO tools offer this ability, including:

• SEMRush (called Backlink Gap)

• Moz

• Ahrefs

As an example, we’re going to demonstrate how to do it with Ahrefs.

How to perform a link intersect

1. In the Ahrefs tool, click “Link intersect” in the toolbar.

2. Type your competitors’ websites where it asks, “Show me who is linking to these domains or URLs.”

3. Add your own website where it says, “But doesn’t link to.”

4. Click “Show link opportunities.”

5. You’ll be presented with a list of potential link-building targets.

6. Click on the numbers to see the individual backlinks.

Customer Testimonials

We recently started working with a new client. The company was relatively new, so we were surprised to find out that their website already had a decent domain rating (DR).

We investigated and discovered why. The company had written several testimonials, celebrating the success they’d had with clients. These included high-quality videos, pictures, and case studies.

The clients were flattered to have been featured and so had linked to the testimonials.

All these websites had a DR of over 50!

You can do the same with your clients: produce a high-quality testimonial and then reach out politely asking whether they would like to link to it.

Here are some tips for producing great testimonials:

💡 Use professional video producers, high-quality content writers, and designers.

💡 Market your customer’s business as well as your own.

💡 Share it on social media and tag anyone who appeared in the testimonial.

Get featured in a testimonial

This approach can also work the other way around. Most businesses are keen to feature testimonials, but struggle to find customers willing to give up their time to help them create one.

Choose some services that you like, get in touch with them, and offer to contribute a testimonial. If the company accepts your offer, then they are likely to include a link to your website.

Here’s a good example from the Ahrefs website. It features quotes from satisfied customers and a link to their website.

Use a Link Building Agency to do Advanced B2B Link Building for You

Advanced link-building techniques often require specialist expertise, expensive tools, or additional resources.

That’s why many businesses prefer to outsource them to a specialist link-building agency.

At Linkbuilder, we’ve helped hundreds of B2B companies build high-quality backlinks that boost their rankings and drive traffic to their website.

We employ a range of strategies and tactics to suit your business’ link building campaign. Contact us to find out how we can support your B2B link building efforts.