Using Linkbait to Gain Dozens of Targeted Links to Your Site

This is a guest post by Ryan. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Wouldn’t it be nice if dozens of bloggers in your niche gave you backlinks to a targeted post that could drive affiliate sales if you ranked well in Google? Well it is possible with a bit of creativity and by creating a linkbait post that boosts the egos of other bloggers in your niche.

I recently received dozens of backlinks and tweets on a post which was simply a list of personal finance books. The topic itself wasn’t anything special, but the way I created the post was beneficial because it drove enough attention that it now ranks on the first page of Google for my desired search term.

The idea is simple, poll the bloggers. I’ve seen it done before with several other blogs about blogging so I decided to try the same thing in the personal finance niche. Seeing as there are hundreds of blogs in my niche it wasn’t that hard to reach out to other blogs and ask them a quick question.

I created a list of about 100 personal finance bloggers and sent them all an email which said:

“Hi (bloggers name),

Ryan here from plantingdollars.com. I’m doing a post about the best personal finance books according to 100+ personal finance bloggers and I’m wondering if you could simply reply by telling me your favorite personal finance book. I’ll let you know when the post goes live and give you a backlink from it if you decide to participate.

Cheers,

Ryan

Granted I didn’t have a mailing list established beforehand so I literally emailed each one individually which took a good chunk of time, but following up was easy once the original email was set.

I waited about 2 weeks to see who responded. In total 38 bloggers did end up responding out of 100 which was more than I expected. I then created the post based on their responses and in the end gained an insightful post and a piece of linkbait simply by asking others questions.

After the post was written I also added affiliate links to amazon for each book that was mentioned and as promised gave each blogger a backlink to their site.

When the post went live I then emailed each one back with a personal message about their pick and let them know where the post was located so that they could easily link to it. This is what I sent the second time around:

Hey (bloggers name),

I Just wanted to send you a quick note to say thanks for taking the time to respond to my question about your favorite personal finance book. “Art of the Deal” was a book I also enjoyed quite a bit and was pretty inspiring.

I just posted the results from other bloggers here: (inserted link)

Hope you’re doing well and thanks again,

Ryan

In total I spent about five hours emailing the bloggers, compiling their answers, adding backlinks, and then following up with them, but the result was dozens of backlinks, and a post that ranks well for the term “best personal finance books” which should drive affiliate sales indefinitely.

I would consider the post a success considering it would take significantly longer to gain as many backlinks via guest posting. From this experience I hope to do a few more “poll the bloggers” type posts to gain a post that’s insightful for readers and provides a win win for backlinks for myself and the bloggers who participate.

Have you have any luck compiling information from other bloggers in your niche and turning it into a post?

About the author: Ryan is a personal finance blogger who writes about achieving financial freedom through smart money management at PlantingDollars.com.