Link building is hard to scale.
But not impossible.
In this ultimate guide, we’ve collected our personal top 8 steps to scale up your link building – whether you want to do it in-house, or outsource the process entirely.
Let’s get into it.
- Link Building Challenges
- Use Respona
- Hire an In-House Outreach Specialist
- Outsourcing Link Building to An Agency or Freelancer
- Tap Into Competitor Backlinks
- Use Guest Posts for ABC Link Exchanges
- Try Different Strategies
- Focus on Pages That Get Real Traffic
- Recruit Partners
- Now Over to You
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Link building cheat sheet
Link Building Challenges
Link building is viewed as a challenge for three simple reasons:
- It takes a lot of time and manpower
- It needs an understanding of SEO to be done effectively
- The SEO rules change every few months
Let’s break each of these down in more detail.
Takes a Lot of Time
First up, even with the best link building tools at your disposal, link building requires at least one dedicated team member to do it effectively and get at least 5-10 quality links per week.
This involves finding opportunities along with their contact information, personalizing emails, choosing an anchor text to add your link, tracking exchanges in your Google sheet, writing guest posts…
The list goes on.
In short, link building is a huge time sink and to scale it, you’ll need at least one dedicated team member.
Even better if you have the budget for several.
Requires Niche Knowledge
Of course, you can go at it as a solopreneur – link building is not “hard” from a technical standpoint – it’s only hard because it’s tedious and needs industry knowledge.
And as you already know, the SEO game changes every few months, so you need to be up-to-date with Google’s goings-on.
Or, at least, the person you hire needs to know what they’re talking about.
Requires Constant Tweaking
This one ties in directly into the previous point.
Even once you set up your team with experts, you haven’t made it yet.
Nobody knows when the next Google update comes around – and once it does, you’ll have to stay on your toes to keep up.
Your beloved strategy might get nerfed by the G-God and you’ll have to come up with a new one to avoid wasting resources on something that doesn’t work anymore.
The only area of search engine optimization that remains relatively unchanged is local SEO.
Use Respona
As the first strategy to scale link building, we recommend investing into a tailored link building tool like Respona.
Built specifically for the task of scaling link building for solo link builders and entire teams, Respona speeds up every single step of the link building way, including:
- Prospecting (finding potential link building opportunities along with their contact information)
- Creating and personalizing your outreach sequences – both with regular variables like “first name” and advanced AI personalizations at scale.
- Managing conversations and building relationships through its shared inbox
As an example, we’ll be running a guest posting outreach campaign with Respona.
Begin by logging into your Respona account.
Click on “Create a New Campaign” and select the option for a blogger outreach campaign.
You’ll need to fill in two fields: the topics you want to write about and a recent sample of your work.
The first field sets up your search strings, while the second goes straight into your outreach emails.
Respona’s AI keyword suggestions can broaden your search effectiveness.
After clicking “Use this template,” you’ll be taken to the campaign editor.
Here, Respona has already set up an email outreach sequence for you.
Customize it by adding your personal touch like spam checks, unsubscribe links, and fine-tuning your follow-up timing.
Respona offers default AI variables like Icebreaker and “P.S.” to give your emails a unique touch effortlessly.
We recommend creating your own AI variables tailored to your brand voice and experimenting with them.
Moving on to the next step – Find Opportunities.
Respona will use search operators like “intitle:” to find “write for us” pages and other guest blogging opportunities.
Click “Continue” to set your SEO filters, refining your search to get the best opportunities.
Respona automatically finds the right contacts for each opportunity and personalizes your emails using AI.
In the next window, you can change the email finder settings and provide additional instructions to your AI personalizations.
Make your search recurring so Respona automatically re-runs it, adding fresh opportunities to your link building campaign.
This ensures a continuous flow of prospects without extra manual effort.
After you click “Run automation”, Respona will start looking for relevant opportunities along with their contact information, and personalize them with AI – all at the same time.
Results will start popping up on the screen as soon as they’re found.
Moving on to the last step.
This is where you can review your AI personalizations and make any final manual edits.
Even with AI’s capabilities, a final human touch can make a big difference.
Respona also pulls LinkedIn profiles for additional connection points, which can enhance your outreach success.
Before launching the campaign, Respona will run some checks to make sure:
- That you’re not contacting anyone on your unsubscribe list.
- All emails are complete and correctly personalized.
Once the campaign is live, monitor responses and start writing your guest posts.
Respona’s shared inbox can consolidate multiple email accounts, making it easy to manage your outreach without toggling between tabs.
To maintain high email health while still reaching your targets, we recommend running campaigns from multiple sender emails with a low daily email limit (15-45/day).
Hire an In-House Outreach Specialist
Now that we have the SEO tool set covered, it’s time to scale your link building team.
We recommend recruiting an in-house outreach specialist because it allows for more control over your high quality
link building process.
According to Glassdoor, the average link building specialist salary in the USA is $60K/yr.
However, in reality, most link builder positions are fully remote and you can hire internationally for as little as $1000-$1500/month.
The absolute base-case scenario for hiring a link builder is when:
- The position is fully remote
- You possess enough SEO knowledge to tell who’s qualified for the position
- You hire a low-experience person for cheap, and teach them SEO yourself
This way, you’ll be able to save on office space, fully control your link building process, and potentially build rapport and loyalty with your employee by teaching them SEO skills that are cross-applicable in most marketing areas.
Now, let’s suppose you want to spare yourself the headache of teaching and managing entry-level specialists.
In that case, you may want to consider outsourcing to a fully managed link building service – either an agency or a freelancer.
Outsourcing Link Building to An Agency or Freelancer
A link building agency can help scale link building for your business and completely take the headache off you.
As long as you have a budget, of course.
We won’t dive too deep into picking an SEO service to help with link quality, but if you’re looking for a link building package, feel free to go through our list of the top link building services that you can trust.
Tap Into Competitor Backlinks
If you’re a new site looking to outrank already established competitors, this strategy is perfect for you – as it was for us!
A variant of this strategy is also called the skyscraper technique, in which in addition to just finding competitor backlinks, you will also be creating better SEO content than them to outrank.
Instead of spending hours on finding link building opportunities, you can just take a peek at your competitors’ backlinks profiles and try to snatch them.
All you need is a link analysis tool like Ahrefs or Semrush – which should be part of your marketing tech stack even if you’re not actively building links.
Use Guest Posts for ABC Link Exchanges
Guest posting is a solid link building strategy for everybody – that’s not new.
What may be new for you though, is the fact that guest posts are a great way to set up ABC link exchanges without actually giving a link from YOUR site.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Wait a minute, aren’t link exchanges considered black hat link building by Google?”
From a purely technical standpoint, you’d be right.
However, in reality, despite Google’s best efforts, these indirect exchanges are incredibly difficult to track.
This makes this link building tactic safe and widely used in the SEO community.
And even if Google does devalue some links, your biggest risk is wasting the little bit of time it took to build them for your quality backlink profile.
As opposed to how it used to be before – and a penalty meant your site disappearing from search results altogether.
Try Different Strategies
A well-oiled link building machine uses multiple white hat link building strategies – not just guest posting and ABC link exchanges.
Some other ways to build links include:
We won’t dissect each of them here, but if you’d like to learn more, we have an entire video link building course detailing the step-by-step processes for 15 different link building strategies.
Focus on Pages That Get Real Traffic
The average response rate for cold emails is only around 10% – and half of these will be negative.
Link building is a numbers game: the more emails you send, the more links you’ll get, right?
It’s easy to fall into that trap and start building lists with thousands of thousands of link opportunities.
Sure, a big prospect list is always good – but is it worth the time spent if you’ll get 0 referral traffic from 99% of the pages on it?
Probably not.
Also, keep in mind that it’ll take some personalization and genuine value to secure links from pages like these:
To land opportunities with substantial traffic flow, you’ll need to use every trick in the link building book – much more than just the standard cold email pitch.
Which leads us to the next section.
Recruit Partners
Cold email is the backbone of link building outreach.
But to really scale link building, you’ll have to get in touch with potential link building partners and build strategic partnerships as opposed to one-offs.
This way, you’ll be able to provide your partners with a constant stream of additions to their link profile – and they’ll do the same for you.
Now Over to You
So, to scale link building, you’ll need:
- Access to link building tools
- Dedicated link builders on your team or an agency/freelancer
- Knowledge of different link acquisition strategies
- A network of partners with whom you can regularly exchange links
Need help?
Don’t hesitate to start your 14-day free trial with Respona to see how we can help scale link building for you.
Link building cheat sheet
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How can I effectively scale my link building efforts?
To scale your link building, invest in specialized tools like Respona, hire dedicated outreach specialists, or consider outsourcing to experienced agencies or freelancers.
Utilize multiple strategies such as guest posting, broken link building, and resource pages to diversify your approach.
Is it better to build an in-house team or outsource link building?
Both options have their pros and cons. An in-house team provides more control and the opportunity to train staff according to your needs.
Outsourcing, on the other hand, can save you time and effort by leveraging experts who are already well-versed in link building tactics.
How often should I tweak my link building strategy?
Your strategy should be reviewed and adjusted regularly, especially after major Google algorithm updates.
Regular monitoring helps ensure that your techniques stay effective and compliant with the latest search engines guidelines.
What are the best tools for scaling link building?
Tools like Respona, Ahrefs, and Semrush are essential for scaling link building.
They automate research, outreach, and monitoring processes, saving you valuable time and increasing your efficiency.
How important is content quality for scaling link building?
Quality content and link building go hand in hand – for every linkable asset you have, you can build dozens of links to your site.
So, very important.
