Niche edits help you establish a robust backlink profile. It’s easier to do compared to guest posts. And all you need is to find a great article and ask for your link to be inserted.
Here lies the issue—How do you present value? Unlike a guest post, all niche edits do is insert your link to an anchor text of an existing high-quality article.
We’re here to help you get those valuable niche edit links. By the end of this guide, you’ll be able to learn what niche edits are, how to get them, and the best practices to follow.
What are Niche Edits?
Niche edits are a relatively new approach to SEO and backlink building. It can also be called link insertions since all you do is link to an anchor text. Doing this requires two steps:
- Finding articles for link insertions
- Asking website admins for a niche edit
Sounds easy enough, right? It would be easy since niche edits kind of fall into the realm of black-hat SEO. All it takes is a transaction with a website admin, and you have a link.
That’s an incredibly risky approach. Google penalizes black-hat practices like buying links. But there are white-hat SEO strategies specifically tailored for getting niche edits as well.
How to Get Niche Edit Links
If you want to do niche edits, white-hat SEO strategies are the way to go. It protects your site from manual penalties, presents your articles as valuable link assets, and improves overall authority.
Link Prospecting
With a solid link prospecting strategy, you can consistently find websites to pitch your niche edits. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush significantly streamline this process.
Use Google to search for relevant websites if you want this done manually. Audit your content and see the best-performing ones. Then, look for sites that could benefit from your content.
Create a list of 10-20 of these sites daily and then find their contact info. The last step is sending your pitch to website admins. If you want this automated, here’s a link prospecting guide using Ahrefs.
Link Velocity
Link velocity is a metric that measures how quickly your site is building backlinks. The higher the link velocity, the more quickly search engines will view the site as authoritative and valuable.
Although it’s a metric and not a strategy for building links, following best practices for scaling link velocity ensures that your site consistently gets new healthy links from quality sources.
To measure link velocity, divide the number of links you’ve earned by time (in days). With a high link velocity, your likelihood of getting links significantly improves.
Broken Link Building
Fixing broken links is one of the best ways to get niche edits. That’s because you’re giving website admins immediate value.
Broken link building starts by finding them on websites using your preferred SEO software and offering website admins your link as a replacement. Broken links can negatively affect both the user experience and their SEO efforts.
This essentially makes this strategy a win-win situation. But how do you find these broken links? Check out our in-depth guide using Ahrefs.
Unlinked Brand Mentions
If you’ve built up high-value content like ultimate guides, original resources or data from case studies, there’s a high chance somebody mentioned them in their content.
There will almost always be cases when you’re mentioned within their content, but they don’t link to the original source material. It’s a relatively easy way to get quality niche edits.
You can set up a Google Alert for your brand name and URL to find these unlinked brand mentions.
High-Quality Resource Page
Resource pages can earn you quality niche edit links. All it takes is for your content to be featured as a “resource” on an external website.
Resource pages include the products, services, or tools bloggers or influencers use to sustain their businesses. Next, find the website admin’s email and send your pitch to get a feature.
To find these resource pages, use Google to look for [niche] + “resources.” Google will give you a list of sites you can use as potential prospects. You could also look for resource documents by searching for [niche] + filetype:pdf.
Be sure to filter them out and only include relevant sites with high authority that can gain value from your link. Now for the tricky part, sending your pitch.
How to Pitch Your Niche Edits
Every strategy we listed to get niche edits has a common theme—contacting website admins and sending them your pitch. This more often than not means sending a cold email. Here are some best practices to consider:
- Personalize your email copy
- Make a unique subject line (have fun with it)
- Provide immediate value
If the website admin sees you bring tons of value, you might get a free backlink. But the reality is most website admins want $$$. So, try out an email pitch like this:
Hey {{FirstName}}
I’m {{YourName}}, {{Position}} at {{Company}}. I loved your {{BlogTitle}} on {{Topic}}! It really helped our team be more productive with our work.
I noticed that you mentioned {{AnchorText}}. We actually published an in-depth guide {{AddLink}} on it that I believe can bring a lot of value to your audience.
I’d love for our guide to be used as a source for your article. But I’d totally understand if you’re charging a fee for it. I’m willing to pay $ for a link.
Let me know if this is something you’re interested in.
Kind regards,
{{YourName}}
We’ve mentioned earlier that paying for links is against Google Guidelines and may result in a manual penalty if abused. While this is true, most of these penalties happen when you buy from link farms specifically designed to sell links. Most well-trusted publications will accept payment for backlinks, including major websites like Forbes, Business Insider and more.
What you want to do is contact reputable sites that are relevant to yours. Chances are they’d be willing to give you a niche edit link. But keep in mind that most website admins do charge a fee.
Key Takeaways
Niche edits are a great way to leverage your valuable content in exchange for a backlink. If you want to start a niche edit outreach campaign, remember:
- Niche edits don’t require you to do a guest post. All you need is to link to an anchor text.
- You can find niche edit prospects through prospecting, broken link building, and finding unlinked brand mentions.
- The best way to contact website admins is through cold email outreach.
- Never buy niche edit links from link farms.
