Here’s a very powerful whitehat backlinks from an SEO method I learnt (video below) that will allow you to acquire contextual backlinks from sites in your niche.
You will basically be helping people first and then rely on the power of reciprocity for them to return your favor back by giving you a backlink (that you ask for later in the communication with them).
By helping people first – a very high percentage of them will be obliged to help you back, and give you the backlink within the relevant page.
If you’re familiar with Robert Cialdini’s Principles of Persuasion (there are 6 of them) – this is the first one, and it relies on the power of reciprocity.
In this SEO method You will be creating a piece of content for a site that has super high value for the site you are targeting – so the owner will be surprised and will be obliged to give you credit back (a backlink in this case).
A Quick Overview of the Method
- Find your target site that has fresh content in your niche and that you can contribute to (using a clever piece of content that has high value)
- Reach out to the owner over email and offer then high value upfront
- Go ahead deliver the high value content to them for their site.
- Sit back and wait for the power of reciprocation to kick-in for your small request of the backlink!
An important note while looking for sites to target above…
When you go out looking out for the sites you wish to target you need to make sure that you only target sites that have fresh content.
This is important because you don’t want to go out and help sites that have old content and that are not updated often or active enough – because then the owner is not serious enough about the site and they wont return your favor.
Using The Power of Podcast Sites in Your Niche
To execute this SEO method, we will be looking for podcast sites and podcast content creators with this method.
There are podcasts for every niche and the podcast content creators on these podcasts generally have sites with good authority.
The trick is that… majority of these podcasts do NOT have transcriptions!
And, that is our trick to get our foot in the door.
In a nutshell…
We will be adding relevant and high value to their podcast by delivering them a transcription of their podcast (that wont be costing us much money to get done through a third party service provider).
And so, we will be able to quickly add high value to an active site that is highly relevant for the content creator, for almost no investment to us and is totally free for them!
Since we do them a favor (and they will be surprised) they will return it with a very high probability by giving us the backlink we softly ask them for!
I do realize that Youtube has auto-transcriptions, should they have posted their podcast on Youtube, but our method gives them manually done transcriptions that are fully accurate and get posted on their website.
Here’s the video by Eric Lancheres from where I learnt this method.
Here is the link if you want to download the Free PDF email templates and a starter set of example niche sites that you can use to jump start your project!
The Method Explained in Simple Steps
Step 1 – Finding Podcasts in Your Niche
Find podcasts in your niche (the more popular, the better). The Google Search to find these podcasts is –
[your niche] podcast play in new window download
So, an example search would be…
travel podcast play in new window download
Step 2 – Filter Search Results
You then need to go to Google and set the search results to filter and only show you the podcasts in the last month.
Step 3 – Visit Podcast Sites
Visit the search results and go to the podcast sites to check to see if they have been transcribed already.
If not – then it is a possible target and you should download the podcast by clicking the download button on the podcast player or copy the download link that we can submit later to our transcription service that we will use.
Note that, some podcasts may have summaries of the podcast published below on the page – but not the full transcription – which also works for us.
As long as they don’t have the entire podcast transcribed and inserted into the page which you will be able to see by the way the page content looks below the podcast – we can use this podcast as a target site for the method.
If the page happens to have a ton of content that talks about the podcast in detail – we will avoid approaching them because they probably will not be interested in adding a word for word transcription having already given a detailed write up of the podcast.
Step 4 – Transcription Service
We need to keep in mind that, as a later step – we will have to get the podcast transcribed using a cheap and reliable service.
For this we head over to Rev.com which costs us a dollar or two per minute to transcribe. It is one of the largest transcription sites online.
We need to use the automated transcription option which will cost a dollar or two per minute. They also have more expensive human manual transcriptions – but that is not really needed for this method to work and will only cost us more.
Note – we don’t need to do the transcriptions upfront. We first get the podcast creator to agree to publish the transcription and then we do our email outreach!
Step 5 – Don’t Invest in the Podcast Transcriptions Upfront
To execute this method you don’t need to invest in transcribing the target podcasts upfront.
So, if you’re targeting say 20 sites – this could work out to be a decent chunk of change (that is worth it!)
When you invest upfront in the podcast transcription (even though its a small amount per transcription) you still need to wait for two things to happen before you realize your ROI.
- The podcaster has to say yes to publishing the transcription you send them, (this will happen at a high rate since it is of high value to them), and…
- They then need to agree to insert your link back to your site ( this will happen at a high rate once above takes place due to reciprocation)
There is a quick trick that you can use so you don’t have to spend any money at all in doing the transcription for them and in fact it will not cost you a penny before you reach out to them.
We first reach out to the podcast publisher without really saying or implying that the podcast is not ready yet!
We simply reach out to the owner / publisher and tell them you have transcribed their podcast and we can send them the file if they want.
Step 6 – Get The Transcriptions Done Only After They Reply
If they reply in agreement – only then do we head over to Rev.com to get the transcription done!
Once you have the delivery from Rev.com – you then email it over to them, and request them softly that you would be happy if they could drop in a link to your site in the transcribed content when the post it. Just say something like… I’d be very happy if you could credit my site at www.site.com .
That’s it!
As you can see from the above steps, you will need to invest a few dollars for each transcription that you outsource – only AFTER you are sure that the content will get published on the target site – AND that there is a VERY HIGH probability that you will get credit as a backlink in the page its published on because of the power of reciprocity!
Because we are helping first and providing massive value – the chances of us getting our request met (which does not cost the person we are communicating with anything) is extremely high!
This transaction has massive value for all participants!
We get a high authority, contextual and relevant whitehat backlink. And, it will take us about 15 minutes to get with just a few dollars of investment!
Additional Benefit from this method
As a side benefit that has massive value for you (and the podcaster) – you get to network with quality content creators in your niche… whom you can always invite for future high value collaborations like guest posts, opinions etc. This is another high value result that is a side effect that you can apply for later!
Wow this is a really clever idea. Have done something similar in the past, but never thought about doing transcriptions.