What Are Niche Relevant Backlinks & How To Build It?
Back in the very distant past, all backlinks were treated equally. Whether you got a link from a hugely well-known blog or one from a site created only yesterday, you’d get the same amount of link juice. This meant link building strategy was the easiest job in the world.
However, things have certainly moved on since then. Now, the most effective links are those from relevant sources – websites that move in the same spheres as your site. In fact, getting links from websites with no relevance to your niche can actually harm your SEO, not enhance it.
Relevant backlinks are, of course, much tougher to find than irrelevant ones, as the pool of available referring pages is that much smaller. This means that the job of link building is now much harder and something that only experienced professionals can manage.
Why Are Niche Relevant Backlinks Important?
Niche relevant backlinks are exceptionally important for two reasons. Firstly, they show that a webpage is specifically relevant to a certain search term. After all, why would another website link to that page and use incorrect anchor text? So, if 10 websites all link to a page using ‘cheap t-shirts’ then the search engines will have a pretty good inkling that the page is indeed about cheap t-shirts.
Secondly, niche targeted backlinks are vital as the more of them you have, the more link juice will flow to your page. The power of the links will only be enhanced if you manage to get high quality niche backlinks coming in from major websites with high authority.
How Do You Find the Most Relevant Sites?
Perhaps the biggest challenge is finding niche specific backlinks in the first place. The key is research, both in your target audience and in your competitors.
Research the Niche and Target Audience
It’s very important that you understand your customer base, as knowing them will make finding niche specific backlinks that much easier. You need to understand where else your customers visit online, as they’re likely to visit other sites within your niche.
For example, if you own a hardware store, do your customers visit blogs about home improvement? Or do they visit review sites when trying to decide what to buy? You can then find sites of these types and attempt to get niche specific backlinks from them.
Research the Competitors
An even more effective way to locate places for niche specific backlinks is to analyse your competitors. There are plenty of tools available that show all incoming links to a webpage, so use one and identify where competitors are getting their links.
Once you know where competitors’ links are coming from, you can approach these websites and see if you can also negotiate a link with them. You’ll find that many site owners will be amenable to this, especially if your page will provide real value to their readers.
However, don’t set your expectations too high, as you won’t be able to get links from every website linking to your competitor. This is because competitor links might be from friends or family or might have taken months to negotiate. They might have even paid for a link from a site.
10 Proven Techniques for Getting Niche Relevant Backlinks
There are plenty of ways to head online and find niche related backlinks, so you should never rely on one specific tactic for link building. We’ve listed a few of the best techniques below.
Broken Link Building in Your Niche
This is a great way to gain high quality backlinks. Just find links to competitor websites that are not working, contact the site owner, and suggest that they alter the link, so it points to your page. Use your Monitor Backlinks dashboard to track all links pointing to competitors and get updates when one breaks. You can then jump in quickly when you see a link has broken and claim it for yourself.
Unlinked Brand Mentions
This technique for link building sees you looking for mentions of your business or website that don’t link back to you. If you find one, you can contact the site owner and request they link back to your site – something that would help their page to be more useful in the process. You can also do this for major products and even senior staff members.
Join Niche Communities
Niche communities exist for nearly every topic, and those who participate are generally incredible advocates for high-quality products. While links from places of this type might not have large amounts of link juice, there will be many members who go away and then link to your website from their own sites, and these links could be exceptional ones.
Content Syndication
Content syndication is another effective way to gain multiple niche specific links. All you need to do is take a piece of content, such as a blog post, and then republish it online several times. Each time you do, you’ll gain another relevant backlink to your website.
Guest Posts & Niche Edits
Despite what many people say, guest posting is still an exceptionally effective way of obtaining backlinks. However, these posts must be at websites that are relevant – so, no more posting DIY guest posts on websites about video games, for example.
It’s also worth investing time in creating niche edits. Instead of writing a guest post, simply look on relevant websites and identify where a link to your site might be possible. You then get a niche specific link from an established page, without much effort at all.
Participate in Interviews and Roundups, Conference and Webinar Talks
Essentially, this subheader means that you should be active within your niche’s community, by being interviewed, speaking at events, and making your content available for news roundups. It’s often the case that interviews and events are conducted by websites with high DA, and providing the links are relevant, they can carry a huge amount of weight.
Getting out there and becoming a member of your community will also make you better known among potential customers and those associated with your niche. This means that they might link to you without any prompting – the best kind of links, as they require no effort on your part!
Create Link-Worthy Content
This is perhaps the most effective of all methods. Make sure the content you create for your website is genuinely useful and entertaining. If a reader gets value from your page, they’re more likely to link to you from their website.
Also, try to create something original. A great way to do this is by carrying out original research. Other websites can then use your research when compiling their articles, and they should link to you when they do.
Answer Questions on Q&A platforms
These are platforms where members of the public ask questions, in the hope of having their query answered by experts. They are often niche specific and answering a question on them gives you a fantastic opportunity to gain a backlink on a site with many interested users. This form of niche link building can be time consuming but also could yield great results.
Get Links from Top Discussion Forums
Forums are collections of people with similar interests, who come together online for discussions. You should definitely take part in forums associated with your niche, especially if they’re large and well-regarded.
By posting on forums, you’ll be highlighting your website, which should help drive traffic to you. What’s more, you’ll be getting your website’s name out there, and the more people who know about you, the more people could link back to your website from their own sites.
PBN (Black Hat SEO)
Finally, there’s using private blog networks, which are networks of blogs specifically used for creating links. This is not encouraged by search engines and could cause as many problems as it solves, so we’d recommend leaving this tactic alone.
Link building is the process of getting other websites to link back to your site. The most effective form of link building is niche link building. This means that links come from relevant websites within the same niche as yours, and not from random sites with no relevance.
Yes, backlinks should be relevant, as niche specific backlinks are far more powerful than backlinks from sites not within your niche. Getting niche relevant backlinks can be tough work, but it’s definitely worth it.
Niche relevance is how relevant another website is to your website. Websites with more relevance to your site will be better places to get links from. For example, if you own a surf shop, a link from a blog about surfing would be great, but a link from a gardening blog would be irrelevant and therefore not of much use.
Knowing whether a link is relevant can be tough. While some sites are very obviously in the same niche as your site, it’s not so black and white for all sites. In this case, get the link and then monitor your rankings. If the rankings are negatively affected, remove the link quickly.