This article is an introduction to an old but effective link building strategy. This is called the Suggest a Link campaign. This is a 101 link building strategy that can form the basis of a long term link building strategy.
The link suggestion method can be as simple as telling others about your site. In my experience, this is an effective way to build links and rank a site. Suggesting a link is easy for beginners to understand.
What is Suggest a Link?
Suggest a Link Link building is a way to build inbound links for a website by requesting a link. Some people call it begging link. But it can be more than begging once you learn how to increase conversion rates.
Suggest a Link Link building is finding websites that link to pages like yours and asking publishers to link to your page. This type of link building works best with websites that have resource or link pages.
A resources or links page is a page dedicated to links to useful sites. To earn a link, you have to offer a relevant and useful web page.
Relevance is important for link building
If you want to get a link, you must suggest a relevant webpage. This means taking the time to review each link listed on the Links or Resources page that you want a link from.
The word exclusive means restricted or limited, that something is excluded. If the link page links exclusively to educational or government pages, ignore it, don’t waste your time asking for a link. They exclude all sites on this page from educational or government pages.
If your site is commercial, the ideal links page is one that links to other commercial web pages, even if there is only one. Very important, visit this sponsored link and try to identify why this page is linked. Is the link to a specific product? Is the link to an informational article?
If the link is to an article, you may have a higher success rate by requesting a link to an article that publishers may find useful.
You can add a link to your product page from the article, which might be considered the next best thing to a direct link to the product page. But that’s not as useful as a direct link to your product page.
If your site is commercial, getting natural links to a specific product is ideal. But it’s difficult because many sites are not always directly related to products.
So set your expectations accordingly. Getting links takes a lot of effort.
Tips for Submitting a Link Successfully
1. Review the linked pages and suggest a useful similar web page.
2. Suggest more than your page. Also suggest other pages. Read: 1 link building tip will increase success rate
3. Ask for links from sites whose readers will find your site useful
4. If they don’t already exist, create pages relevant to the site you want a link from
5. Don’t worry about metrics like domain authority. As long as it’s not a spammy site and it’s relevant, the link is fine.
6. Do not worry if the link is redirected or not followed. A link is always useful if it lets people know that you have a useful website.
Can the Suggest a Link method help your rankings?
From my experience building links for myself and for clients, yes.
But I would advise you not to worry about whether a link will help you rank or not. The ranking effect on Google is not the goal. Becoming a destination users expect to see is the ultimate goal.
Promoting your site helps you become a sought-after destination for users. Once enough people know about your site, the popularity and usefulness signals that Google seeks will happen on their own.
The Suggest a Link method is to create a useful website and tell others about it. It’s a simple link building strategy, there’s nothing space cadet about it.