Editorial Backlinks: 6 Proven Methods for Acquiring Editorial Backlinks

Acquiring backlinks is the single most important aspect of your SEO strategy.

Backlinks are the foundation for ranking in the search engines.

There are plenty of ways to acquire backlinks, including through content marketing, guest blogging, and several other link building strategies.

However, the most valuable backlinks you can acquire are building editorial links

What are editorial links?

Editorial links are in-content and in-context. Their anchor text is typically a reference to a trustworthy statistic from your site.

The benefits of editorial links are generated naturally when bloggers or publishers decide to use your editorial link-building strategy  as a resource in a published article.

The most valuable editorial links come from high authority website’s, but those aren’t easy to acquire.

Owners of high authority sites know that external editorial link quality matters so they don’t link to random web page.

Instead, they carefully select external links and only editorial link building to the highest quality content they can find.

Want to gain ranking in the search engines? You need editorial links

If you’re already generating backlinks through content marketing, don’t stop your campaign. Content marketing is an essential long-term digital marketing strategy.

However, if you want to get backlinks from high authority websites, here’s how you can earn some benefits of editorial links.

1. Find out where your competitors have backlinks

Searching for your competitors’ backlinks is one of the easiest ways to find leads for obtaining editorial links.

First, use our backlink checker to find out where your competitors have backlinks.

Next, visit each website to determine whether or not you’d want to be associated with the content.

If the site gets your stamp of approval, find out how you can get a backlink published on the site. Contact the editor or have your PR department make contact to find out what’s possible.

2. Create irresistibly authoritative contents

Creating irresistibly authoritative contents is the most reliable way to generate natural backlinks on a long-term basis. Unlike seeking out backlinks individually, when you have irresistible content, people will find your content and editorial link it on a regular basis. At least, that’s the goal.

It is possible to create a website that gets natural backlinks from high authority websites. There are plenty of examples on the internet of sites that have achieved this level of popularity. For example, Social Media Examiner is one of the most-linked social media marketing websites on the internet next to Neil Patel’s website. Both sites produce high-quality content with useful information on a wide variety of topics.

When people are searching for information while writing an article, they’ll usually editorial link the first qualifying website found in the Google. That’s why it’s important to create authoritative contents. When people search for resources to cite, and your site shows up in their search, you don’t want to give them any reason to bounce and start looking for a better resource. You want to make sure that when people find your web page, they are impressed by the content enough to use it as a resource either now or later.

Getting ranked will increase how often you get linked

It takes time to get ranked in the Google, but once you start showing up in top search results, your site will start getting linked naturally more often. That, in turn, will help you rank higher in Google, which will continue to increase your site’s visibility, traffic, and backlinks.

Creating authoritative contents is just the step. Once you’ve created irresistibly authoritative contents, you’ll need to find a way to let potential publishers know about your content. Don’t rely solely on Google to get your content noticed. That brings up the next technique.

3. Hire a PR professional for outreach in your niche

If your business has a PR department, have your PR personnel reach out to the editors of major publications online. Have them ask what kind of content they’re currently looking to publish and how you can maximize your chances of getting content published on their site with a backlink to your website.

If your business doesn’t have a PR department or you’re an entrepreneur and freelancer, hire a PR professional to perform outreach services. Many professional marketing agencies provide outreach link building services for editorial links, but there are also independent outreach services you can find.

4. Dominate your niche

The ultimate method for getting high-quality editorial links is to publish content that dominates your niche. Not just one or two pieces of content, but as much high-quality, authoritative, in-depth content you can possibly create. Here’s how to create content to dominate your niche.

1. Produce genuinely authoritative contents

Let’s face it – if you want people to editorial link to your content naturally, you need authoritative contents. Your content needs to be seen as the ultimate reference for whatever topic you’re covering. For an example of this kind of content, check out WP Beginner’s guide to moving a WordPress installation from HTTP to HTTPS. MyThemeShop also produces exceptionally high-quality content as seen here in this WordPress security article.

These two websites dominate the search engine for tutorial-related searches for a reason. Both of these websites publish thorough, accurate, and extremely helpful content.

How to create authoritative contents

• Brainstorm. The first step to creating authoritative contents is brainstorming several topics and choosing one to start. Try to think of topics that are important to people. Topics that answer previously unanswered questions are a good place to start. However, you can cover a more general topic as long as you dive in deeper than any of your competitors.
• Research. Assume you don’t know everything there is to know about your topic. Even if you’ve been a professional in the field for 50 years, there will always be things you don’t know about your niche. Research as much as possible to discover what you don’t know.

Read what your competitors have to say about the topic and take notes when you learn something new. For example, say you run a website documenting the Maya civilization. In your research, you might discover that the Mayans developed the concept of ‘zero’ before India, around 350 AD. This single piece of information will give you more rabbit holes to chase and more information to present.

In your research, look for consumer comments and discussions about your topic to find out where people might be stuck, confused, or struggling. Look for problems to solve and questions to answer. The best questions are ones that don’t have satisfactory answers. Be willing to tackle those questions in-depth to find answers and solutions.

• Find answers to questions and solutions to problems. Regardless of your niche, people will have unanswered questions and struggles. Make it your mission to resolve as many questions and struggles as possible.

For example, if you run a homesteading website, you might discover that some people want to build raised garden beds without using any tools. In your research, say you discover several solutions like using cloth bags, 5-gallon buckets, plastic tubs, and planter blocks with boards. Now you have material to start writing the ultimate guide to creating garden beds without using any tools. Based on preliminary findings, you could easily come up with an additional 10-20 items people can use to grow a garden.

Whatever questions or struggles your market has, find answers and solutions you can share. Make sure to cover a variety of solutions and present answers objectively from as many angles as possible.

• Continually refine your content. Edit your content anytime you come up with another idea or have a small piece of information to add. Creating authoritative content requires covering all your bases and including as many details as possible. Your content will expand and become more in-depth over time.

2. Consult with experts to gain insider information

Are you running a website with content that extends beyond your area of expertise? If so, the best thing you can do is reach out to experts in the field to gain as much insider information as possible. This will give you an advantage over other people who simply research online and reiterate what they’ve read.

Consulting with an expert in order to produce top-notch, high-level content for your market is a necessary marketing expense. If you want content that people naturally share, discuss, and rave about within your niche, getting input from an expert will help you achieve that lofty goal.

3. Do what your competitors do – but better

In addition to creating thorough content, there are other ways to outperform your competitors. You need to do what your competitors do, but better. To get started, find all the small problems with other websites and work out better solutions.

For example, say you have a competitor with an enormous library of top-notch content, but their navigation menu is difficult and not user-friendly. If you can engineer a better navigation menu, you’ll start earning return visitors as you publish more information. Once your site is populated with top-notch content, people will start linking to your site instead of your competitor’s site because of its user-friendly nature.

Another way to do better than your competitors is to find out what people don’t like about their content or website. Find out what people complain about and then implement a solution that will make your website and content a breath of fresh air for your target market. For example, if your competitor uses a challenging payment system that frustrates consumers, work on smoothing out your payment system.

Hyper-focus on your payment system to identify all the flaws and points that might frustrate consumers. Then, resolve those issues. Give people every reason to recommend your website over your competitors.

4. Dive into every topic and sub-topic in-detail

The best way to create in-depth content is to dive into every topic in detail, follow every trail, and cover every aspect or perspective possible. For example, if you’re writing about how to take care of roses in a pot, you’ll cover things like pruning, feeding, watering, and choosing the right pot. You can easily expand on all of those topics in-depth in one article. In fact, you could also create a separate article for each point:

• How to Prune Roses Growing in a Pot
• The Best Way to Feed Your Potted Roses
• Methods for Watering Potted Roses
• Choosing the Right Pot for Your Potted Roses

You can link to each of these web page in your main articles about taking care of roses and once these individual pages make their way up the ranks in the search engine, other people will start linking to your pages.

5. Participate in discussion forums

Discussion forums are a great way to legitimately “bait” people into discovering your amazing content and acquiring natural editorial links. However, using discussion forums requires some finesse.

• Utilize your signature. Wherever possible, place your besteditorial link in your forum signature with anchor text and commentary that will entice people to click. Don’t link more than one web page or people might not click on either link; multiple links tend to look like spam.
• Create contents to answer questions. When there’s a hot debate happening on a forum, take notes. Pinpoint what the main arguments are and then create a piece of content that will act as an authoritative resource for solving the questions or arguments brought up in the debate.

Use the discussion or debate to format your content and be objective. Answer every question, every thought, and explore every possibility. Gather data, statistics, and scientific research to support your findings when possible.

This might require extensive research, but if the topic is commonly debated and your content is fantastic, people will save your editorial link and pass it around.

• Limit the number of links you provide to your website. Use your own web pages as authoritative sources in conversations sparingly. People will start to wonder why you’re posting links in every thread.
• Don’t credit yourself. When possible, don’t announce that you own or run the website you’re linking as a resource. Even when presenting outstanding resources in a discussion forum, sharing your own links is often perceived as self-promotion. Self-promotion has a bad reputation even though it’s often exceptionally helpful.

Don’t seek credit when sharing your links in a discussion forum. If people find out it’s your website, that’s perfectly okay. Don’t go out of your way to prevent people from finding out you run the site. Just don’t blatantly advertise that you own the links you’re sharing.

Keep in mind, the results of this strategy aren’t easily measured, so you may never know the exact results of your efforts. However, any tactics that will help your web pages get seen as an authority are worth the effort.

6. Create phenomenal infographics

Beautiful infographics get shared, linked, and embedded all over the internet. Infographics are essentially a form of “link bait” that will get you editorial links if you play your strategy right.

Like any other piece of content, your infographics need to be ranked in the Google for your keywords. However, you can’t rely on ranking your images alone. It’s best to embed your infographics into a web page, add content, and then work on ranking that page.

Keep in mind that some people will end up embedding your infographic rather than linking to your web page, so make sure to tag your image with your brand and website URL. When people embed your infographic, you won’t get any SEO benefit because it’s not a backlink.

While you can’t prevent people from using your image alone, you can improve the likelihood of getting your page linked. All you need to do is publish your infographic toward the top of a page containing in-depth information. Make your content irresistible so that people will choose to editorial link to your web page as a resource rather than extracting your infographic.

Need help acquiring editorial links? SEO.co can help!

If you need building editorial links but need help getting started, contact us to find out how we can help. Our SEO expert have extensive experience working with clients in a variety of industries.

When you work with SEO.co, our team will help you create and publish irresistible content that gets ranked in the Google and generates editorial links. Connect with us today and tell us about your needs.

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Timothy Carter

Chief Revenue Officer at SEO.co

Industry veteran Timothy Carter is SEO.co’s Chief Revenue Officer. Tim leads all revenue for the company and oversees all customer-facing teams - including sales, marketing & customer success. He has spent more than 20 years in the world of SEO & Digital Marketing leading, building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams. When he's not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach...preferably in Hawaii.

Over the years he's written for publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.

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