This presentation details the best practices for finding quality backlinks and citations for your business as it relates to SEO. Search Engine Optimization depends heavily on consistent citations and backlinks to your website.

1. How do we find quality
backlinks for our SEO
clients?
Exploring practical solutions for one of our most frustrating SEO
challenges.

2. So, what’s the deal with backlinks?
We know that backlinks are important. They build site trust, add
potential channels for people to discover our clients’ websites, and
they boost SEO. Unfortunately, they aren’t the easiest to acquire—
especially when you consider the quality of the links you pursue.
We do have access to tools that can help, particularly those found in
SEMrush. However, sage advice from experienced SEOs indicates that
the backlink problem is one better solved through higher-quality
content.

3. Using the Tools at Our Disposal
Let’s first dive in where SEMrush
tells us to begin – the Backlinks
Report tool. Here, you can look for
new backlinks to pursue for your
site. Here we are looking at
possible backlinks for Pennington
Creative.
Immediately, however, you may
notice a problem. The trust and
page scores for all of these links are
very low. Therefore, pursuing any
of them might do more harm than
good.*
*Not all backlinks are good links. If a site with low domain authority links to a client’s site, it can ding their SEO.
If most of their backlinks are from these sources, it can be devastating for SEO.

4. SEMrush can still offer some helpful backlink
insight. One way they do this is by showing
us data for competitors’ sites, including their
backlink portfolio. Here we can see top
competitors for Pennington Creative. If you
were to click on any one of the sites listed,
you would see which sites link to those
competitors. With a little luck, we might find
some ideas to pursue for our own site.
Sorting the page by authority score and
starting with the most relevant competitors
with the highest scores will likely yield the
best results.
However, this can still be a tedious and
uncertain process. You might get well into
researching a possible backlink before
hitting a paywall or learning that the link
isn’t a plausible one to pursue.

5. Creating our own link opportunities
At this point, we’ve probably all spent time poking around in the dark
for backlinks without much success. Certainly, it seems that there has
to be a better way.
In fact, there are several ways to create inbound links to our clients’
sites. Some are relatively simple, and others can require more work
(usually content-based).

6. Testimonials
Browse the web for products,
vendors, and other businesses
your clients may work with. If you
find opportunities to submit
testimonials for products or
services related to your client, do
so! Most websites provide a space
for a backlink along with the
testimonial, so this is a great
opportunity to feature your
client’s site.

7. Comment on Relevant Industry Blogs
The internet is saturated with blog content, so chances are, there are
tons of blogs out there talking about subjects relevant to your client’s
niche. Find those blogs and comment on relevant posts. Just like
testimonials, blog comments often include a place for you to link to the
client’s website. Just remember that blog comments are usually
moderated, so you should make sure you offer some helpful feedback
or insight with the comment so that it doesn’t just look like you’re
trying to get the backlink—even though that is ultimately the goal
here.

8. Add Blog Posts to Medium
Unfortunately, blogs we maintain on our client’s sites may not see a
ton of traffic. However, the same blog posts might fare better on a
larger publishing platform, such as Medium. And, of course, each blog
post creates a new backlink to the client’s site.
But won’t it be damaging to have duplicate content on a client’s blog
and on a Medium page? Not if you import content directly. Here’s
how: https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/217991468-SEO-
and-duplicate-content

9. Publish Content on Quora
Just like Medium, Quora offers yet
another place to publish content and build
backlinks. You can choose to answer
existing user questions on the site, which
will allow you to add a link for
supplemental information. Or, you can
simply use “Share Link” and add content
without an existing question looking for an
answer.
Note: For both Quora and Medium, you can set up accounts through an existing Google account. We can simply
make accounts for each client with the Gmail accounts we have already created for them, so we don’t have to
post on behalf of clients from our personal pages on these platforms.

10. Promote Content on Social Media
We know the value of social media, and we promote that throughout
our services. However, we are not using social media to promote all of
our SEO clients. Even for those who do not add monthly posts, we can
promote blogs, site content, and other updates with just 1-2 posts per
month. Not only are we creating backlinks through these channels, but
we are also promoting content to audiences who might then go and
share on their own blogs and social pages – and that means even more
link building.

11. Post to Industry Forums
Forums can be tricky, because many don’t allow blatant self-promotion. However, you can still
include backlinks and targeted keywords, if you simply pay attention to the forum’s posting
guidelines.
• Find relevant forums – Search Google for Forum + Niche or Niche + Forum to find relevant places
to start threads or join a conversation
• Create a profile – Take the time to add a catchy description, so the client’s profile isn’t just a
standalone link to their website.
• Read through the forum rules and etiquette guidelines – Self-promotion isn’t the goal here.
Participate in the conversation with the goal of being helpful, relevant, and interesting. The links
and shares will follow.
• Start interesting and unique threads – Work to build authority for the business and gain trust of
readers.

12. Find Relevant Directories
General directories aren’t great for link building, but industry niche
directories and geo-specific directories are a different story. Here’s
how to find the directories that will actually be worth pursuing a listing:
• Niche Directories: Search NICHE + Directory (Example: “fitness +
directory”), NICHE Directory, or NICHE + “Submit Site”
• Geographical Directories: Search City + Directory, Directory + City,
City + “Submit Site”, NICHE + City + Directory, City + Directories

13. Search for Guest Post Opportunities
Writing guest posts can get a client featured on other sites while offering some
helpful info and insight that can gain followers and customers for your client. To
find guest post venues, search for the following:
• NICHE + “guest post”
• NICHE + “contribute to”
• NICHE + “write for us”
• NICHE + “contributors”
• NICHE + “guest writer”
• NICHE + “guest post guidelines”
Do remember that guest blogs should feature unique content that will offer some
benefit to the site posting the article.

14. Maintain Existing Backlinks Pursuing new backlinks is only part of the
battle when it comes to building domain
authority for our clients. In many cases,
our clients’ sites will already have backlinks
that are low-quality or potentially toxic. So,
what can we do about them.
This is when it’s time to turn back to
SEMrush with the Backlink Audit tool. This
will allow you to see the toxicity score of
existing links and delete or disavow those
that could be potentially harmful.
When you disavow a link, the backlink still
exists, but Google is told to ignore it when
ranking your site. Deleting a link will
remove it permanently.
Note: Unlike page scores and domain scores, you’ll want to look for a
lower number aligning with the toxicity score of a given site. Scores of
60-100 are toxic, and scores from 46-59 are potentially toxic.

15. Things to Remember
Finding relevant backlinks is a unique process for each
client. What works for some may not be successful for
others. However, a strong content strategy is one of the
most reliable ways to score links. So, that might mean
creating more regular blog posts, finding alternative
venues to post content on behalf of our clients, and
spending time building and updating social media pages
for our clients. As we put in more work, our clients’ sites
will build more authority of their own, and pursuing new
link opportunities will only become easier.

16. Resources
• https://neilpatel.com/blog/build-high-quality-backlinks/
• https://www.semrush.com/blog/link-building-with-semrush/
• https://www.gotchseo.com/backlinks/
• https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247984