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Do you remember that feeling when you finally negotiate all the details with the client and start a link-building campaign, especially for a new site without many existing links? You’re full of energy and have a lot of opportunities to build links😀. But after 4 years, you feel exhausted and struggle with how to prospect new sites to obtain backlinks😔.
What are the main reasons for the lack of suitable websites?
- You’ve already checked thousands of sites and tagged them as ‘not interested’.
- A lot of sites are out of budget to publish sponsored content or invest money in guest-posted content.
- You found quality sites, but they are not relevant to your client’s niche.
- Sites with a tendency to decrease traffic.
- “fresh” sites that look suspicious.
Why are sites filtered out in the outreach process?
Not relevant sites
It’s not a good idea to publish irrelevant articles with a link to the client’s site. For example, when you publish a logistics-related article on a food receipt blog. That’s why when you manage a niche outreach campaign, you find a lot of quality sites, but not related to your client’s business.
Another example: Is the Lifestyle site relevant to publishing Plumbing Business topics?
💡What to do?
At the beginning of the campaign, you can skip such sites, but then get back to them. You can review the tendency of the traffic change, check for prohibited content, and other checks. If you find the site quality, you can submit a topic related to your client industry.
📝For instance, the topic “How to Stay Healthy on the Road: Tips for Owner Operators” with the link to the client’s truck driver career page is suitable for the Lifestyle blog with good traffic.
💁I recommend submitting 10% of your posts to not exactly match the client’s category sites.
Expensive sites
There are a lot of sites that offer sponsored post options with dofollow links. Sometimes you can skip them because owners offer a bundle that includes:
- sponsored post,
- home page promotion,
- sending emails.
When you focus on the post with the link, it’s not a suitable option. Also, the price for the post can be equal to your monthly budget😲.
💡What to do?
You can ask about the dedicated service to publish only sponsored posts, because you are interested in link building.
Also, a great option is to offer the link exchange option. Nevertheless, be ready to explain this service to the editorial/advertising team.
Suspicious sites
When you feel that the site looks spammy, or when the editor can’t share with you a sample of a guest post or sponsored post (🤨 I don’t understand why a sample of the post, so secret information). Moreover, when you noticed the traffic drop trend.
💡What to do?
Add this site to the wait list and get back to them after a few months.
‘New’ link farm sites
Finally found a site with desired metrics and perfect niche alignment☺️?
Check if this site is a “link farm”😓
It’s a type of business:
1. Register a domain
2. Generate AI content
3. pump DR
📤 As a result, you have a website to publish a casino or other grey niche links.
The lifetime of such sites between Google Core updates😅, it’s highly chance that the site will be penalized by Google less than 6 months after launching.
A lot of PR Distribution Marketplaces require that the site be at least 6 months age to avoid such sites and further complaints.
💡What to do?
Don’t rush to submit guest posts or buy sponsored posts on such sites. Add to the waiting list and monitor metrics. You can see a traffic drop after a few months or significant metric changes after the Google Core Update.
How to find new sites for a link-building campaign?
As I previously mentioned at the beginning of the campaign, you have a lot of sites to obtain links. But after years, you can feel a shortage of them. Whether to continue using old search methods or try new and trendy ways to build links?
Analyze competitors
It’s a basic approach for a link-building campaign. You can analyze them on a monthly basis and find sites that receive a lot of new backlinks. It allows you to form a poll of sites and receive a list of prospects every month.
Every time, extend your “competitor” list. You can analyze not only your direct competitors, but also review sites that generate a lot of links:
– B2B marketplaces;
– photostocks;
– lawyer sites;
– essay services (a lot of spam backlinks, but you can find relevant ones as well).
💡 How to find new “competitors” to analyze their backlink profiles?
I call it “reverse analysis”. When you publish a guest post, carefully review other articles on the site and form a list of sites that also publish guest posts. After that, select sites similar to your client’s niche and analyze their backlink profiles.
Guest post campaign
Long-term approach, you can submit the text and receive the link 2-3-4 months later. The main idea is to form a list of sites that accept guest posts. After that, check if the site published at least 1-2 guest post articles last month and send pitches every month.
Form a waiting list
I would recommend forming a “hold” list and every time go back to check sites. You can check suspicious sites after a few months. Also, wait metrics for sites that don’t meet criteria right now.
Summary
After years of work, veteran SEOs face a link-building plateau, exhausting obvious high-value sources. Key challenges include sites being irrelevant to the niche, too expensive for sponsored content, or being suspicious new “link farms.”
To sustain growth, the strategy must evolve: expand the competitor analysis list to include B2B or legal sites, revisit filtered prospects to check for positive traffic changes, and allocate a small budget (e.g., 10%) for high-quality, partially relevant placements via creative topic pitching.