7 Link Prospecting Tips for Getting More Quality Backlinks Faster

Getting quality backlinks is no simple task, so any practice that will speed things up is always welcome.

Many businesses struggle to improve their link prospecting techniques. 

Fortunately, you’ve got us in your corner.

In this post, we’re bringing you seven bonafide tips for getting quality backlinks faster. 

These tips are fantastic by themselves or as supporting practices for your link prospecting, so let’s start things off.

1. Choose a Link-Building Strategy First

As we said, there are many link-building strategies out there. 

However, if you try to implement them all off at once, none of them will work—because successful link-building demands your complete dedication. 

And that can’t happen if you’re doing five things at the same time.

So before you supercharge your link prospecting, it’s best to pick one strategy to start with. 

From there on, you can fine-tune it as things develop. 

We’ll give you an example. Let’s look at three different link-building strategies:

• Creating infographics others will want to link to
• Guest blogging
• Fixing broken links

Each of these is a viable strategy for earning backlinks. However, every one of them requires a specific approach. 

If you’re keen on creating infographics that other sites will link to, focus on getting the right data and designing excellent, jaw-dropping visual posts.

If you take guest blogging as your primary strategy, you’ll reach out to other blogs, cover topics in their niche, and subtly link to your website in the text. 

Finally, if you chose to fix broken links as your prime link-building strategy, your job will be to find broken links on high-profile websites and create your own data points that you could offer them to link to instead.

See where we’re going with this?

Instead of trying to be at two or three places at once, it’s best to pick one strategy. 

Now that we’ve covered this basic principle, we can talk about some more top tips. 

2. Start Building a List of Prospects Before You Create Content

Here’s the kicker: the link-building process doesn’t start after you have written and published your blog post. 

It starts before, with your list of prospects.

Hear us out. 

If you’ve prepared everything you need for link building before you write your content, it’s going to be easier to earn backlinks after it’s published. 

That way, you’re already sticking to a plan instead of coming up with tactics on the go. 

Preparing things in advance often has a tremendous impact on the success of an action, and link building is no different. 

Besides that, as you’re creating a list of prospects, you’re learning so much about them. 

It’s important to note that every prospect has different criteria for backlinking.

They could prefer infographics, case studies, or lists. 

You can’t tell unless you study them.

That way, by the time you’ve completed your list, you’ll already know what kind of content your prospects like to link to, which means you’ll do a better job creating blog posts for them.

So, not only do you have a ready-to-use prospect list, but you’re also familiar with the content type they’re interested in. It’s a double win. 

As your blog posts pile up, you’ll find out that your list of prospects is one of the most critical link-building assets at your disposal. 

3. Set Backlink Criteria

Not every backlink is worth the same. 

A backlink from one high-authority site will help your rank more than five backlinks from low-quality sites. 

Without being selective about your backlinks, you risk wasting your time on getting low-quality websites. 

It’s safe to say that’s a poor decision. 

The one thing that will keep you from doing this is defining your backlinking criteria.

No business can achieve content success by wasting its resources. And time is one of the most important ones you have. 

Therefore, by setting your standards, you’re helping yourself later on since you’ll be able to spot poor-quality prospects faster and improve your vetting process.

To help you out, we’ve got some top-class advice.

The first thing to look for is domain authority. The domain authority tells how trustworthy a site is for a specific niche in the industry. 

The higher the DA, the more valuable its backlinks are. 

Of course, you’re not aiming for a specific authority number but a range of authority. 

Getting backlinks from sites with DA over 50 is hard, and sites with DA less than 25 are low-quality sites that don’t benefit you.

It would be best if you aimed for the DA range of 30-50. 

Next, check how relevant the site you’re prospecting is to your industry. If the site is highly relevant and reputable, its backlink is valuable. 

But if a lifestyle website is linking your blog post about SEO optimization, their backlink isn’t worth much. 

Make sure your prospect websites are relevant to your niche.

If the prospects you are looking at meet these criteria, you know they’re worth your time and effort. 

4. Leverage Reverse Image Search for Additional Opportunities

As we said, images are golden opportunities for link building. 

First off, it’s called reverse image search because you’re not using words to find the image you’re looking for, but the other way around, you’re using images to find the website that linked it. 

If you have terrific supporting images or infographics, chances are there are websites that have linked to them in the past without adequately crediting you as the source. 

If you think about it, those sites are backlinks waiting for you. 

Since they’ve already used your content in their posts, they are obliged to credit you as the source. Otherwise, they are using your content without your permission. 

Think about it.

You could have an image that 30 websites have used in the past. That’s 30 potential backlinks for your blog or website. 

If they don’t link you as the source, they’re obliged to remove your content. 

It’s safe to assume that most of them would link to your site instead. 

So how do you use reverse image search? 

First, pick an image you created for your blog to check if another website used it for their blog.

Start with the most popular supporting images you created, such as infographics or how-to screenshots. 

Pick the image types other websites are most likely to use. 

Then, go to Google Images. 

Once you click on the camera image, you can select to search your images.

Either paste your image URL or drag it into the search box. 

We searched for an image we posted in our recent blog, and here are the results we got:

We can clearly see which sites used this image for their posts, as well as some visually similar images.

As soon as you see which websites have used your images, follow the links below to see if they have adequately credited you as the source. If not, contact them for a backlink. 

This is a fantastic supplemental strategy that goes hand-in-hand with creating linkable images. 

5. Check the Backlink Profile of Your Direct Competitors

If your direct competitors are gaining lots of backlinks, understanding their backlink profile is a brilliant link prospecting move.

Think of it this way: to win the backlink race you have to study your opponents. 

After all, you’re competing for the same audience—it makes sense that they’ll be interested in the same type of content.

Therefore, without understanding what types of posts work best for your competitors, you might end up publishing content that gets minimal backlinks. 

Your competitors will then get most of the backlinks while your blog lags behind. 

This happens all the time.

The most successful websites out there get the overwhelming majority of all backlinks. 

Therefore, to improve their odds, marketers look at the top-performing businesses to understand what the competition is doing right. 

Checking the backlink profile of your direct competitors lets you know what changes you have to make to gain more backlinks. 

You can do it with the help of online tools. For example, we use the Link Prospector. 

When you enter a competitor’s domain, you can check how many backlinks they are getting and from what websites. 

This allows you to study their content, draw insights and apply them to your content creation process. 

Following this advice will help you create more linkable content that will outperform your past posts.

You’ll have a better understanding of your competitors’ content, and you can create better content pieces that will eventually outperform theirs. 

That’s how you study your competition and win the backlink race. 

6. Find Prospects Faster With a Link Prospector Tool

You can find prospects by hand, or you can use a link prospecting tool.

As we said earlier, time is a limited resource. Doing things manually always takes more time than automation, and there’s always the possibility of errors. 

Imagine how much time it would take you to Google every potential prospect manually. 

You’d have to go through every website, study their content and check their relevance—and then repeat that process for dozens of websites. 

That isn’t very time-efficient, is it?

Using a link prospecting tool is much more effective. When you use link prospecting tools, you can search for hundreds of prospects in a couple of clicks. 

Tools save your precious time and give you a data-rich analysis of a website. If you want to improve your link prospecting, you’ll use a tool. 

That’s probably one of the best decisions you can make for the sake of your link building. 

Here’s how it works.

First, you pick a tool that suits you best. 

As mentioned earlier, we rely on SERPtimizer’s Link Prospector.

The tool finds the websites that rank for the keyword you’ve entered. 

After that, you pick a site from the list.

Once you’ve selected your target website, you can discover how many sites have linked to that one or go for more detailed info, like if they have broken links. 

For instance, websites with broken links are your ideal link-building targets.

Once you offer them links with supporting content that can replace the broken links, that backlink is practically in the bag.

Imagine how much time it would take if you had to go through every post separately and find broken links manually!

As an additional bonus, in the tool we’re using, you can label the links that you contacted before or mark them if they’re a poor prospect.

Told you link prospecting tools are a game changer!

7. Get Listed in Round-up Posts in Your Niche

Round-up posts are a gold mine of links. 

When websites and blogs publish round-up posts, they essentially list the leading names or products in a niche. 

If your website lands on a round-up post, you know you’re doing something right for your traffic.

Users that engage with round-up posts are interested in the names that pop up. 

Most importantly, when other websites or blogs write such posts on their own, their creators look at other round-up posts and often mirror their advice. 

Therefore, if you get listed in one top-ranking round-up post, chances are other round-up posts will include your name as well. 

See how this benefits you?

It sure worked for us.

This mention supercharged our link building. 

Don’t worry—of course we’re going to share our advice on how your blog can get listed in round-up posts. 

Start by initiating a search with modifiers that round-up posts typically use + your niche keyword. 

Some examples of round-up post title modifiers are:

• Best 
• Alternatives for
• Top
• Affordable

For instance, let’s say you googled Best Keyword Tools.

The second step would be to list as many of the websites with round-ups as possible and then finally reach out to them to include you in a round-up or try up your product. 

It’s that simple. 

Not every site will do that, but getting a backlink from as many round-up posts as you can help you secure more quality backlinks, and it doesn’t take too much time. 

Conclusion 

Like we said, securing backlinks is usually complex and highly time-consuming.

If you don’t adopt a time-efficient approach, you’re going to spend lots of time securing minimal backlinks with possible low-quality. But not on our watch! 

Thankfully, there are healthy link prospecting practices that are natural time-savers, and we shared seven of them with you. 

Keep in mind that link building is a process that takes time, and what supporting practices you use will speed things up.

We hope to see a link leading to your website soon. Until then, stand by for our next post.