Hey what’s up everybody? Welcome to the second lesson of Module 5. In the last lesson you learned how to scale your content production. Specifically, you documented your content process. Assigned people to each task. And used a content calendar to keep everything super smooth and organized. And in this lesson, Lesson 2, I’m going to show you how to scale up your link building efforts.
Let’s dive right in. In the early days of Backlinko, I’d send each and every outreach email myself. Then, when that became too much, I started to outsource outreach to other people.Specifically, I’d hire and train people using the strategies that you learned about in Module 3. I’d also train them to personalize each and every email that they send out, which I also covered extensively in Module 3.
And for a while, that worked great. I built some amazing backlinks from hundreds of different sites, from authoritative .edus to niche blogs. Thanks largely to these powerful backlinks, my rankings and organic traffic climbed. All good right? Well, kinda. Yes, it was great to build up my site’s authority. Not only did that help my existing page rank higher in the search results. But it also meant that new pages that I published would rank faster. Again, all good so far. So, what was the problem? The issue was that, as my site grew, I started bumping against bigger and bigger sites.
Sites with lots of backlinks. So many backlinks that no amount of outreach emails would ever fill in the gap. More on that later. For example, in the early days of Backlinko my main competitors were other niche SEO and link building blogs. These sites launched before I did. So they had a decent head start when it came to their link profile. But thanks to my concerted outreach efforts, I quickly caught up with them.
For example, this site was one of my main SEO competitors in the early days of Backlinko. At the time, that site had links from about 400 referring domains. It took hard work. A bunch of outreach emails. And it didn’t happen overnight. But I eventually blew past that site in terms of backlinks. But over time, I found myself going against sites that were way bigger than I was, like Moz, Ahrefs and HubSpot. Some of these sites, like Moz, have links from over 100k domains.
And I quickly realized that I’d never catch up with them. No matter how many outreach emails that I sent. It’s simple math. Let’s say that I have 50k referring domains. And Moz has 100k. So I’d need 50k referring domains to match them. And let’s also say that my outreach has a typical conversion rate of 10%. That means that I’d need to send 500k outreach emails to make up the difference. In practice that means sending out 40 thousand outreach emails per month.
Which is basically impossible. So with outreach not an option, what was left? Well, around that same time I started publishing lots of Industry Studies, which I talked about in Module 2. And I noticed that a lot of these got backlinks essentially on autopilot. At first, I thought this was because of my audience. In other words, I’d publish a post and get a spike in links because I was able to get that content in front of tens of thousands of people on day 1. But that wasn’t it.
Most of my Power Pages got a spike in links early on. Largely due to Roundup Link Building, which you learned all about in Module 3. But after that, I’d still get some links. But it would tend to drop off. But that wasn’t happening with Industry Study Power Pages. These would continue to get links as time went on. Lots of links. And I eventually figured out why.
These Power Pages were ranking for keywords that my Linkreators search for. For example, here’s an industry study Power Page that I published a while back. As you can see, this page has continued to rack up links months after it first came out. And that’s largely because it ranks for terms, like this and this, that Linkreators search for when they’re looking for a source.
My content got in front of them at this critical time. So they cited my Power Page in their articles. That’s when it hit me. What if I started publishing content just for this purpose? In other words create content for my Linkreators that was designed to rank for terms that they search for during their research? That way, I could get links without having to send a billion outreach emails. Well, that’s what I tried. And it worked great.
Thanks to the strategy that I’m about to share with you in this lesson, Backlinko has racked up thousands of high-quality backlinks all without needing to send a single outreach email. And this experience taught me an important lesson about link building. Outreach is great. And it’s important to do. Especially at first. But at some point you’ll need to use link building strategies that can truly scale. So without further ado, let’s dive right into the step-by-step process.
So your first step is to find a “Stat Keyword”. Which is exactly like it sounds, a keyword that people use when they’re looking for a stat on something. For example, let’s say that you’re about to write a post about chatbots. Well, you might want to mention a stat in the intro that shows how popular they are. And you’d search for something like “chatbot stats” or “chatbot statistics”. Those are exactly the type of keywords that you want to find here. For example, this page at Backlinko is optimized around the keywords “SEO stats” and “SEO statistics”.
I know that Linkreators that want to round out a post with stats on SEO will often search for SEO stats. And my page gets in front of them during that crucial time. As you can see, I rank on the first page for that term. Now, if your site is relatively new, you definitely don’t want to target a broad keyword like “SEO stats”. That’s probably too competitive to rank. Instead, target a more niche stat keyword. Or a stat keyword that’s on a relatively new topic.
For example, this small blog in the UK went after a very niche stat keyword. Even though this site has relatively little link authority, it still ranked for that stat keyword. Which, as you can see here, has led to a decent number of links. So if your site is new. Or doesn’t have a ton of link authority yet. This is definitely the approach that you want to take. Once you’ve found a stats keyword, it’s time for step number two. The next step is to collect your stats.
And list them on one page. Now you might be wondering how do you make this original? After all, most, if not all, of these stats are going to come from other places. Plus, there are already other Stats Pages out there. This is a great question. And one that I wrestled with for a while. Here are a few ways to make your Stats Page truly original. First, rewrite each stat in your own words.
That way, your page doesn’t end up as 90% duplicate content. For example, this Stats Page sources stats from several different sites. But I made sure to rewrite each one of them. This takes a little bit of extra work. But it’s totally worth it as it gives your page a much better chance of ranking compared to just copying and pasting stats. Second, make your Stats Page super up to date. A lot of Stats Pages that I come across have stats that are old. Broken links.
And images that look super dated. So just by sourcing updated stats, and keeping the page up-to-date, you have a Stats Page that can really stand out. Finally, include some intro content for each section of your page. This is completely optional. Depending on your stat keyword, you may not even have sections. But if you do, I recommend adding a little bit of original intro content before each section. This tends to bulk up the page a little bit. And add some original content to it. Next, it’s time to add charts, visuals, graphs and other visual content to your Stats Page.
Why do this in the first place? Two reasons. First off, it makes your Stats Page look unique. And helps it stand out from other stat pages on that topic. In my case, I go with a more involved custom design. But you don’t need to go that far. Just adding a few charts can have a similar effect. Second, sometimes people will embed your chart on their page.
Which increases the likelihood that they’ll link back to you when they use your stat. So yeah, I recommend tossing in a handful of charts and graphs. For example, the Stats Page from that smaller blog that I mentioned earlier uses quite a few charts and other visuals.Finally, you want to optimize your Stats Page around a specific keyword.
This isn’t really any different than optimizing a piece of content around a keyword. But I wanted to mention it here because I’ve found that doing the little things, like adding your keyword a few times on the page boosts the odds that the page ranks for your target stat keyword.
And with that, this strategy is complete. To quickly recap, you learned that email outreach is a great way to build links at first. But it’s tough to scale up. Especially if you want to personalize the emails that you send. Which you should. That’s where Stats Pages come into play. They’re pages designed specifically to rank for keywords that Linkreators use when they’re searching for stats to include in their content. When you do, they’re super likely to reference your stat and link back to you.
Like I said, this single strategy has already led to thousands of backlinks. And they work so well that I plan on doubling down on Stats Pages this year. By now you definitely know what time it is, it’s worksheet time. So go ahead and download the worksheet so you can get started on your first stat page today.
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