Hey guys, what’s up? Brian Dean here and welcome to the 4th lesson of Module 3. In the last lesson you learned all about Renovation Link Building. That’s where you find broken or outdated links and use those dead links to provide value. And because you’re adding value before pitching anything, many of your Linkreators will be happy to link to you.
And in this lesson we’re going to build on that theme. Specifically, you’re going to learn how to use Roundup Link Building to build links from authority sites in your industry. So without further ado, let’s dive right in. So what is Roundup Link Building?
Well, Roundup Link Building is similar to many of the other link building strategies that I showed you so far. First, you find a page where a link to your site will make that page better. Then, you send the person who runs that page one of my proven email scripts. And you’re set. With that, you might be wondering: what makes Roundup Link Building different?
It’s very simple. With Roundup Link Building you find blogs that curate or “roundup” the best content over the last day, week, month or year and put your content in front of them. If it sounds simple to you, you’re right. It kinda is. But like any link building strategy, the devil’s in the details. And the specific process that you follow will ultimately make or break your efforts.
Fortunately, over the years I’ve developed a streamlined system for getting links from roundups. And that’s exactly what I’m going to share with you in this lesson. Before we dive into the nitty gritty, let me show you a quick example of this process in action. One of the first pieces of content I published at Backlinko this post. At the time, I had maybe 10 followers on Twitter.
And despite my blog being brand new, as you can see here, I got a link from this roundup. My secret? A link to my Power Page made their roundup page better. So they happily included and linked to my content. And the best part is, roundups aren’t limited to the SEO and marketing world. In fact, there are roundups in almost every niche, like Nutrition and Health, fashion and just about any topic under the sun. So no matter what industry you’re in, chances are there are a number of roundups that you can get links from.
With that, it’s time to break down the entire process, step-by-step. Starting with setp number one, list topics your Power Page falls under, including “Shoulder Niches”. Your first step is to list out all of the topics that your Power Page covers.
That way, you can find roundups that link to content about those topics. And as you go through this step, make sure to keep an eye out for topics that are on the periphery of your Power Page’s main topic, aka “Shoulder Niches”. Why is this important?
Well, unless you actively seek out these “shoulder niches”, you may overlook a boatload of roundups that would want to feature your content. I’ll explain more about this in a minute. But for now, here’s the process you can use to identify all of the topics that your Power Page covers.
First, grab your live Power Page. Starting at the top, work your way down. Whenever you mention or allude to a related topic, add it to your list of topics in the worksheet. Continue this process until you reach the end of the page. For example, look at this guide in the health and fitness space.
At first glance, this epic guide looks like it would only be a fit for diet-focused roundups. But as you go through the post, you realize that there are a handful of roundups in related shoulder niches that they could go after, like the gluten free community, low-carb diet blogs and recipe sites, weight loss blogs and more. How about another example.
Here’s a Power Page from Backlinko that I promoted using link roundups. As you might expect, like any Power Page, my Power Page was created specifically for Linkreators in the SEO space. That’s why my page was on a topic that they loved talking about. That said, if I considered my Power Page strictly about SEO, I’d miss out on A LOT of other link roundup opportunities.
So I scanned my post to see if there were any other topics or categories that my Power Page fell under. And sure enough, my content covered, or at least touched on, a number of different opics: like blogging, social media, outreach, and content marketing. Which meant that I could reach out to roundups that covered those topics in addition to SEO-focused roundups.
And I did. For example, I reached out to roundups in lots of related niches. Even though my post focused on SEO, these Linkreators enjoyed it and included it in their roundups. The thing is, unless you purposely re-read your Power Page with this in mind, you’ll probably miss them. So don’t skip this step. Step two is to find link roundups. Once you have a list of topics that your Power Page touches on, it’s time to find roundups on those topics.
And there are two methods to finding roundups. The first method is to use the search strings I’ll give you in the worksheet. These tested search strings are specifically designed to bring up link roundups. That said, as you go through potential roundups, there’s something I should point out. You want to weed out roundups that seem dead. Sometimes a blogger will try a roundup for a few months and then abandon it.
So it doesn’t make any sense to reach out to those blogs because they’re not doing roundups anymore. Fortunately, you can use the “Search tools” feature in Google and limit results to those from the last year. That way you’ll only see roundups that are still active. With that out of the way, I want to give you one more pro tip as you search for link roundups.
Whenever possible, use broad keywords in your search strings. For example, let’s say you have a Power Page about organic dog food. You probably won’t be able to find roundups that only share content about organic dog food. But you can find plenty of roundups that link to content about dogs or pets. To find them, you’d want to use search strings like: “dogs” + “link roundup” and “pets” + “best articles of the week” etc. The second method for finding roundups is to reverse engineer links that point to recent content from popular blogs.
Why? When a popular blog publishes a post, they tend to get most of their early links from link roundups. Over time, the page will start to accumulate links from blog posts, articles and resource pages. But in the early days, most of their links come from roundups. So if you only reverse engineer older content, you’re going have a tough time finding links that came specifically from roundups. Here’s the specific process First, head over to a popular blog in your industry.
Your Linkreator list from Module 1 will come in handy here. Then, grab the URLs of all of the posts that they’ve published over the last few weeks and pop them into a backlink analysis tool like Ahrefs. I’m going to use this site as an example. You’ll notice that these posts don’t have a lot of backlinks. Yet. That’s because they’re brand new.
But a fair share of those links will come from link roundups, like this. Add those roundups to your list and move onto our last step. Step is to reach out and get your links. At this point you’ve identified a number of topics that your Power Page covers. You then found link roundups that link out to high-quality content about that topic. Most of the hard work is done. The last step is to email the person that runs the roundup using my tested email script.
And of course, like any email script, you do want to personalize it for each person that you send it to. I’ll have the exactn script for you in the worksheet, but for now, here’s a real-life example of the script in action. Let me quickly break this script down because it has 2 optional elements that you may or may not want to include. First, the “yes, I’m a nerd like that” line. I find that it makes this outreach email more personable and a little funny, but it’s not 100% required.
Next, I like to mention a piece of content that I found from their last roundup. This shows that I actually read it. As I’ve mentioned a few times, the more personalized your outreach emails, the better results you’ll get. So I highly recommend mentioning a cool piece of content that you discovered thanks to their roundup. And when they get back to you, send them a link to your content. But don’t pitch your content or ask for a link. There’s no need.
Remember, you’re reaching out to them within the frame of their roundup. And a link to your content makes their roundup better. So in most cases, the person that runs the roundup will add your link without you needing to ask. Now, depending on how their roundup works, they’ll either go back and add your link to their last roundup, like this or, what happens most often, they’ll add your link to their next roundup. Either way, you get a link. Rinse and repeat this process.
To quickly recap, you learned that roundup link building is a great way to get links to a new Power Page. That’s because people that run link roundups are always looking for excellent content to feature in their roundups. Like the Power Page that you just published. And, again, like all of the strategies in this Module adding a link to your content makes their page better.
And with that, Module 3 is complete. Nice work. Looking ahead to the next module, Module 4, you’ll learn all about UX Signals. Specifically, how to optimize your content for CTR, Dwell Time, Search Intent and more. But for now it’s time to download the worksheet so you can get started with Roundup Link Building. And I’ll see you in Module 4.
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