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Ask anyone in SEO what the biggest hurdle to getting (and maintaining) rankings right now and 99% of them will say link building.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a local business, a blogger or affiliate site builder, the ongoing battle is how to get links to help your site rank, without spamming, whilst doing it in a way that doesn’t open you up to a link-based Google penalty.
The thing with link building is that it can either be super-efficient, but risky OR super-safe, but not time efficient. Finding the middle ground is tough.
There is a tactic that is quite efficient and has a very high success rate as a link building tactic that is very much “white hat”. That tactic?…
Blogger Top Lists!
What are Blogger Top Lists? These are lists that you compile on your website where you feature other bloggers in your niche or industry.
Here are a few examples:
- WealthyGorilla.com Top 40 Blogs for Entrepreneurs
- EveryHomeRemedy.com Top 50 Home Remedy Blogs
- Cnanursing.net Top 15 health and Career Bloggers
^ keep those in mind because I’m going to talk about how each of them have resulted in links to the top list publisher shortly.
So as you can see, the concept is quite simple:
- Come up with a theme for your top list (e.g. top 40 blogs for entrepreneurs)
- Research for bloggers that fit the theme (if you are familiar with the niche, this part is easy because you probably visits many of the sites frequently)
- Finalize your list to fit the specific top number you settled on (e.g. 15, 40, 50 etc, which can be tough when there are a lot to choose from)
- Compile the article referencing each blog or blogger, what they blog about, a nice image and a link to their blog and/or social media profiles.
- Send them bloggers you featured an email to let them know you had featured them (this is where you can generate some links)!
Let’s look at a real-life example of exactly how powerful these can be from a link building perspective.
3 Ways Blogger Top Lists Can Land You Links:
1. Let’s look at the WealthyGorilla.com example above. I reference this one because I manage the content on an entrepreneurship blog called Blogtrepreneur.com and noticed that Dan Western, founder of Wealthy Gorilla, had actually featured Blogtrepreneur.com in his top list.
You know one thing nearly every blogger in your niche likes even more than you featuring their work and linking to them? Well, there isn’t one! Bloggers LOVE being linked to!
And you’ll be very, very surprised at what can come of these lists by way of easy links.
Upon seeing that Dan had featured Blogtrepreneur.com in his list I emailed him to say thank you for the inclusion and invited him to do a guest post on our site. Boom, easy high-authority link for Dan’s blog.
2. The EveryHomeRemedy.com example is one of a blogging buddy of mine, Olivia. She has a really cool little blog and I know her motivation for top lists is primarily to provide her readers with a great resource.
Outside of serving her audience, Olivia is also pretty clever with how she follows up. Olivia actually gets a little feature badge made up and send that to bloggers that she features. As you can see, the tactic works. Nice, ey?:
3. Jeff who runs Cnanursing.net has a systemized approach for creating and promoting his top lists. He also emails the bloggers who he features in his top lists and when doing so, he proposes a guest post exchange.
Given that top lists feature the top bloggers, this strategy means Jeff gets a high quality piece of content from bloggers that accept the offer, along with a nice link to his blog in the guest post he provides in return. It works, look at the email extract below!
One key I have found when personally doing these top lists is to keep them short. I’ve done lists as large as 100, but have found 15-25 to be the sweet spot, particular for your first time. Compiling a list of 50-100 takes ages! But in terms of an efficient way to create a cool piece of content for your site, build some connections in your niche and land some nice and relevant links, Top Lists are right up there with the most efficient ways to generate links in 2015.
Give it a shot!
Greg Nunan is the former co-owner of one of Australia’s leading health club franchise chains, four times recognized inside Australia’s top 30 fastest growing franchise groups. He is a digital marketing consultant and Founder of Winning Edge Digital and runs free monthly training courses for aspiring internet marketers and business owners, teaching the latest SEO and traffic generation tactics. Connect with Greg on Twitter.
