So you already know that the secret to gettinglots and lots of search engine traffic today is to build high-quality links to your sitefrom relevant sites.
But the question is how do you do it.
Well you're in luck, because today I'm goingto walk you through something I like to call 'the moving man method', which is one of myall-time favorite link building strategies.
I'm Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko, the place where marketers turn for higher rankings and more traffic.
And keep watching this video to learn howyou can use the moving man method to get high quality links and traffic to your site.
So, before I get into the nitty gritty ofexactly how the moving man method works I want to walk you through a little case studyof how I recently used this strategy to get awesome links to Backlinko, like a link froma .
edu site, a page ranked five resource page, just basically a lot of really high qualitylinks using this method.
So I don't know if you heard about this, buta couple years ago, some big names in the SEO space came together to form an agencycalled BlueGlass.
And because they had so many brilliant mindsworking on the site and on the business, they produced some amazing content on their sitelike blog posts and ultimate guides and infographics and basically had a really great site thatprovided a ton of value to the SEO community.
And as you might imagine, because they hadbig names working on the site and they produced great content, they generated a lot of highquality links to that site.
Now, unfortunately, for reasons that we don�treally understand, the agency suddenly shut down.
Basically they went out of business one daywithout any warning.
Now, people say it had to do with the internalpolitics of the business, it doesn't really matter, but basically the site suddenly shutdown.
And instead of shutting down in the sensethat the site wasn't up anymore, it had 404 pages, all the pages were essentially blank.
So all the people that were linking to thecontent, when they ran broken link checks on their site, the links showed up as working.
So what I did was, I used a program calledA-Hrefs to download all the links that were pointing to BlueGlass and let the people knowabout the links that weren't working on their site.
And obviously I didn�t just let them knowabout the dead link, I also pitched a resource on Backlinko as a replacement.
And because I was helping them, making theirsite better by removing a link that wasn't working anymore _and_ pitching them a highquality piece of content, it was a no-brainer, and the campaign converted really well, andas I mentioned earlier, I got a lot of really high quality links using this strategy.
Okay, so let's take it step by step and showyou how you can use this strategy for your site and your business.
So your first step is to find resources inyour industry that have either shut down or changed names or moved urls or are no longerbeing updated.
So how do you find these resources that areno longer up? Well, you can use something like Google Newsand type in your keyword that describes your industry plus 'out of business' plus 'shutdown' plus 'rebranded', right? That's a great way to find them.
You can also type Google, just put a keywordplus 'service no longer available' or + 'this resource no longer updated' or basically anythingto help you find resources in your industry that are shut down and not providing valueand even though they used to and generated links.
So how about a couple of examples from reallife.
Well you probably heard that Borders, a massivenational chain bookstore went out of business.
And even though there's no such thing as Bordersanymore, Borders.
com still has over 180, 000 links pointing to it.
So if you ran a site about book publishingor writing or becoming a fiction author, this would be a great opportunity for you.
Because a vast majority of sites that arelinking to Borders are about that.
So if you reached out to those people andsaid 'Hey, I noticed that you linked to Borders, as you may have heard, there's no such thingas Borders.
com anymore, I have something similar on my site that Borders used to have, maybeyou want to consider replacing the Borders link with my link.
' Okay, so another example – Blockbuster.
Another huge national chain that went outof business somewhat suddenly and has all sorts of links pointing to it.
So if you had a site about video production, or movies, or video editing, this would be a great opportunity for you, because justlike with Borders, Blockbuster tends to get links from sites that are about those things.
So you could find very easily using a programlike MajesticSEO or OpenSite Explore and A-Hrefs whether or not the pages that are relevanton Blockbuster to your site have a lot of links pointing to them.
And if they did, reach out to those peopleand say hey, you have a link that's not working pointing to Blockbuster, I have somethingreally similar on my site, you might want to consider replacing the Blockbuster linkwith a link to my content.
Okay, so once you've found these resourcesor entire sites that aren�t up anymore and you notice that they have a lot of links pointingto them, it's time to dig in and find out who exactly is linking to them, and that'swhere you can use a program like I mentioned before like A-Hrefs, MajesticSEO or OpenSiteExplore to find specifically what pages on the web are pointing to these out of dateresources.
And then you want to download those into anExcel spreadsheet and find the contact information for all the people that run high quality sitesthat are linking to these out of date resources.
Now, the last step is to reach out to thesepeople, and as I mentioned before let them know about the link that is pointing to aresource that is no longer there or outdated or whatever, and then pitching your resourceas a replacement.
Here's the exact word-for-word script thatyou can use.
“Hey there, I found your page about [whatever]today, and noticed that you had a link to [whatever outdated resource there is, likeBlockbuster], so as you may have heard, Blockbuster shut down and went out of business, you mightwant to remove that link.
Also, I recently published a resource aboutthe same thing.
Might make a nice addition to your page.
Either way, love the article, keep up thegood work.
” Now that's really all there is to it.
You're just basically giving them a heads-upabout the outdated resource and then offering something similar or better on your site asa replacement.
So, that's all there is to the moving manmethod.
As you can see, it's a great way to get highquality links at scale that your competitors probably aren't using.
Now if you want more awesome marketing andSEO videos like this, subscribe to the Backlinko YouTube channel right now.
And if you want insider tips that I _only_share with subscribers, head over to Backlinko.
com and sign up for free updates.
Okay, so now I want to turn it over to you- How do you plan on using the moving man method to get high quality links and trafficto your site? Or, maybe you have a question about how itworks.
Either way, leave a comment below right now.
I want to hear from you.
.
