There are seemingly endless link building methods to help you increase your search engine rankings and generate more traffic. Few methods are more simple than the link insertion.
In this guide, we’re going to break down what a link insertion is and how you can get more of them quickly and easily.
What are Link Insertions?
A link insertion is a link on an existing website. These links are inserted into existing pieces of content usually for a price.
To get link insertions, you’ll reach out to relevant websites within your niche, find a page on their website that you think would be a good fit, and then you ask them if you can get a link to your website on that page.
They’ll usually respond with a price and you’ll either agree or negotiate with them and see if you can come to an agreement.
The main thing to understand is that a link insertion is different from guest posts. A guest post requires you to settle on a topic and create a piece of content that will go to the website owner in exchange for a link.
Usually with a link insertion, you’re not creating any new content to go on the website, you’re simply finding a place where you can insert external links pointing to your website within existing content.
Why Do Link Insertions Work?
Why build a link insertion campaign as opposed to other link building strategies? The main reason is because it’s easy. A link insertion is easy for a website owner because they don’t have to do anything.
You reach out to them asking for a link on a page, they give you a price, you pay them, next thing you know you have a link. They don’t need to go through multiple emails back and forth talking about content and deciding if your article topic for your guest posts are going to work.
It’s simple.
Another reason link insertions work is because there is a direct form of payment involved. You’ll almost always have to pay for a link insertion because that’s the only form of value you’re providing in this transaction. Since you’re not creating a piece of content, the only way the website owner will give you the link is if you pay.
On the flip side, a link insertion is simple for the link builder as well. You can get links on high domain authority websites without having to worry about guest posting, broken link building, or link exchanges.
All you need to do is pay the site owner X amount of dollars and you get yourself a link.
Potential Downsides of Link Insertion
This link building strategy is not always perfect for a few reasons. The main reason is because you have to search for topically relevant websites so you might not be able to find an existing article that is actually relevant on the site owners website.
You’re also not in complete control of the content on the site. If the content as a whole is awful, you won’t want to get a link on that site even though you just spent all this time compiling a prospect list, reaching out, and negotiating with the site owners.
Keep in mind that even if you find a page that you can work your link into, you still need to have relevant anchor text that will make sense within the article.
One thing you can do is offer to write a few paragraphs that you can insert into the article to make it more relevant.
You can work the new content in or simply add another section onto what is already there. This is one way to get relevant links and ensure that you’re not just tossing a link in where it doesn’t belong.
How to Get a Link Insertion on a Web Page
Getting a link insertion on a page is a lot like other link building strategies. Here are the steps involved.
Build a Prospect List
The first step is to build a prospect list of sites that you’ll reach out to and ask for link insertions. You want to start by finding websites in your niche that offer a lot of links. One way to do this is by heading over to Ahrefs and putting one of your biggest competitors into the site explorer.
This is a survival and homesteading website that has 578 backlinks from 316 referring domains. If this was one of our competitors, we could use this section of Ahrefs to see where they’re getting their links from.
Once we pull up the sites that link to them, we can start compiling a list of sites that provide this site with links and start building our outreach campaign.
Outreach to Relevant Websites on Your List
Once you have a list of sites, you want to start reaching out to them via email. You use hunter.io to find their contact information.
All you need to do is insert the website into the field and it will bring up the best emails and phone numbers that you can use to contact the site owner.
Once you reach out to them, they’ll respond with a price and then you can start researching more about the website to see if it’s a good fit.
Review the Quality of Your Target Website
If you’ve received an offer from a site, the next step is to take a look at the webpages to make sure it’s worth getting link insertions. We talk about many of the factors used to determine this in our quality framework.
Some of the things you want to look for on the target website are:
- Good quality content
- Their own organic traffic
- Making sure the site doesn’t link to a bunch of other low quality sites
- Relevant anchor text
- Topical relevance
Choose the Right Existing Page for Your Link Placement
Next, you’ll want to choose the page that you’d like the link insertions on. Make sure the page fits all of the above criteria. A quick and easy way to find the right page is by doing a site: search in the search engines.
If you’re trying to get link insertions for an article about off grid living, you can scour the search engines to find all the relevant articles on their website.
Send Back a Few Options and Negotiate Price
The final step involves sending them back a few options of web pages for the link insertion and negotiating the price.
We believe the best link building strategy for getting the lowest price is to low ball them and play dumb. If they want to charge $70 for link insertions, then you come back to them with $20 and act like you don’t know what it should cost.
While they won’t likely accept that offer, they might come back with an offer of $40 which you can then accept and get your link.
Final Thoughts on This Link Building Strategy
A link insertion is the simplest link building tactic out there. The value proposition is clear and it’s a great way to do link building at scale.
In fact, it’s one of the methods we use here at WeOutreach. If you’re considering hiring link building services for your company, consider reaching out to us to see how we can help!
