Advanced link building techniques are techniques that extend beyond basic strategies like guest posting, manual outreach, and directory submissions. We cover 15 sophisticated techniques that help you build a diverse, high-quality backlink profile.
What Are Advanced Link Building Techniques?
Advanced link building techniques are techniques that extend beyond basic strategies like guest posting, manual outreach, and directory submissions. These link building techniques are more sophisticated and require a deeper understanding of SEO, your niche, your competitors, and digital PR.
What Are the Advantages of Advanced Link Building Techniques?
We list the main advantages of advanced link building techniques below.
- More Diverse Backlink Profile. Advanced techniques create links from various source types and industries, which strengthens your overall link portfolio because search engines favor natural link diversity.
- Increased Site Authority. These sophisticated methods earn high-quality backlinks from authoritative domains, which boost your site authority.
- Building Industry Connections. Advanced link building establishes relationships with industry leaders, journalists, and influencers who provide ongoing collaboration opportunities.
- Increased Traffic. Quality backlinks from relevant websites drive targeted visitors to your site who actively seek your products or services.
- Improved Brand Visibility. Strategic link placement exposes your brand to new audiences across multiple platforms and publications, which expands your market reach.
Advanced Link Building Techniques
We list and explain advanced link building techniques in more detail below.
1. Broken Link Building
Broken link building finds dead links on relevant websites and suggests your content as a replacement. This strategy helps site owners fix broken links while securing backlinks for your site.
The process involves identifying websites in your niche, finding broken links using tools, creating suitable replacement content, and reaching out to website owners with your suggestion.
This approach works because it provides a win-win solution. Website owners improve user experience by fixing broken links, and you gain relevant backlinks. Success requires ensuring your replacement content offers high relevance and substantial value.
The Search Atlas Site Auditor makes finding broken links efficient. The tool shows external broken links in the Issues section after completing website audits. You review affected pages and their health scores to prioritize outreach targets. Email templates within the platform streamline the outreach process for contacting website owners.
2. Tiered Link Building
Tiered link building creates multiple layers of backlinks that support each other in a pyramid structure. This strategy builds links to your website and then creates additional links pointing to those referring pages.
First-tier links point directly to your website from high-quality, authoritative sources like major news outlets and respected industry blogs. These represent the most important links in your profile.
Second-tier links point to pages that already link to your website. These links enhance the authority of your first-tier links. You need approximately 10 second-tier links for every first-tier link. Sources include guest posts on smaller blogs and relevant directories.
Third-tier links support second-tier links and include lower-authority sources like forums, blog comments, and lesser-known blogs. These links come from sites with domain ratings between 0 and 30. You need around 100 third-tier links for every second-tier link. The number of backlinks you need is easier to reach with the latest link building tools.
3. Competitor Backlink Analysis
Competitive backlink monitoring analyzes your competitors’ new backlinks to identify missed opportunities. This technique treats competitors as research partners who reveal valuable link sources in your shared niche.
The strategy delivers key benefits, which are listed below.
- Discovering new link opportunities with proven industry relevance.
- Identifying which content types attract links in your space.
- Understanding relationship networks within your niche.
Best practices include setting regular monitoring schedules, focusing on new links rather than historical profiles, analyzing link acquisition patterns, and prioritizing opportunities based on relevance and authority.
The Backlink Gap Analysis Tool automates this process by comparing your backlink profile against multiple competitors simultaneously. The tool highlights domains that link to competitors but not to you, sorting opportunities by authority and relevance to prioritize outreach efforts.
4. Digital PR & Linkable Assets
Digital PR and linkable assets create valuable content that naturally attracts backlinks from other websites. Linkable assets provide significant value to your niche audience, which increases the likelihood that other sites will reference and link to them. We list common types of linkable assets below.
- Resource guides
- Checklists
- Instructional videos
- Informational articles
- Free tools
- Free templates
- Case studies
- Interactive calculators
For example, a marketing agency creates a “Social Media Content Calendar Template” for professionals to share. Another example is a fitness website developing an interactive “Workout Progress Tracker” that is further recommended by trainers.
Use digital PR to promote linkable assets after you create them. The Search Atlas Digital PR Tool supports relationship building through contact management, tracking interactions, setting follow-up reminders, and noting individual preferences for consistent, personalized communication.
5. Link Reclamation
Link reclamation reclaims lost or unlinked organic mentions to your site. This strategy works best for bigger brands that receive frequent press coverage, but smaller websites still see positive results.
There are two main tactics for link reclamation.
- First, you reclaim lost links when websites previously linked to your site but removed the links later. You reach out to resecure that coverage.
- Second, you correct unlinked organic mentions when websites mention your brand name without linking to it. You email them and request proper credit to a relevant page.
Understanding why you lost links determines your reclamation approach. You analyze the specific reason for each lost link and take appropriate action to restore the connection.
7. Skyscraper Technique
The skyscraper technique creates content that improves upon existing top-performing content in your industry, then reaches out to sites that link to the original content to suggest your enhanced version. This strategy works because you offer genuine value through content that demonstrably surpasses what sites currently link to. Success requires ensuring your content truly surpasses the original in every aspect that matters to your target audience.
The skyscraper technique consists of 3 main steps, which are listed below.
- Find popular, link-worthy content in your niche. Search for high-performing articles that have attracted significant backlinks from relevant websites.
- Create something significantly better. Develop more comprehensive, up-to-date, better-designed content that surpasses the original in quality, depth, and usefulness.
- Reach out to websites that link to the original content. Contact sites linking to the original piece and suggest your improved version as a superior resource.
Search Atlas tools streamline the skyscraper technique link building process. The Search Atlas Backlink Research Tool identifies link magnets in your niche and reveals which content attracts the most backlinks.
8. Niche Edits
Niche edits (or link inserts) are an advanced link building technique that places your backlink into an existing article on a relevant website. This technique differs from guest posting because you insert the link into an older blog post instead of creating new content.
A benefit of niche edist is that you do not need to create original content to acquire links. At the same time, niche edit backlinks benefit website owners because adding new outbound links helps freshen older content. This creates a mutually beneficial arrangement where both parties gain value from the link insertion.
The strategy works effectively because older, established content often has accumulated authority over time, which makes the backlinks more valuable for your website rankings.
9. Influencer Link Building
Influencer link building is a strategy that involves collaborating with influencers to acquire backlinks to your website. This strategy improves search engine rankings and increases online visibility by leveraging the influencer audience and platform to obtain high-quality backlinks.
We list key influencer link building tactics below.
- Guest posts on influencer websites
- Product reviews that include links to your business
- Social media mentions with website links
- Collaborative content creation that features your brand
- Sponsored posts that drive traffic back to your site
The process involves identifying relevant influencers in your industry, reaching out through email, blogger outreach tools, or social media platforms, and establishing mutually beneficial partnerships. You provide value to their audience through quality content or products while gaining valuable backlinks.
10. Thought Leadership Content
Thought leadership content presents information from experts who have demonstrated measurable experience in a specific industry or topic. This content shares original ideas, unique perspectives, or firsthand experience drawn from real-world situations.
Thought leadership content attracts backlinks organically because it establishes authors as authoritative sources for valuable information. Other content creators link to thought leadership pieces when they need credible sources to support their articles. This natural linking pattern builds high-quality backlinks.
11. Newsjacking
Newsjacking, coined by David Meerman Scott, is leveraging breaking news stories to gain brand visibility by adding your thoughts and opinions to trending topics. The steps for successful newsjacking are listed below.
- Monitor news sources actively
- Use Google Trends to identify hot topics
- Respond quickly with proper timing
- Add genuine value and unique insights
- Maintain authenticity aligned with brand values
- Remain ethical
Newsjacking sometimes has link building benefits. It is rffective when positioning yourself as an expert source on trending topics. Journalists seek authoritative voices for developing stories, increasing chances of citations from news outlets and publications when you provide valuable commentary within your expertise.
12. Automated Link Building
Automated link building within a publisher exchange system is an advanced technique because it moves beyond basic manual outreach. The system uses smart AI tools that check domain strength, topic match, and site quality automatically. Search Atlas WILDFIRE shows this advanced approach through its 2:1 trade model, which gives two links to get one link back.
This technique needs deep knowledge of how link value spreads across websites. Publishers must keep high content standards because the system runs strict quality checks. The method grows your link profile fast while keeping links strong and relevant.
Expert SEO professionals use these systems because they build relationships between strong websites automatically. The technique cuts down manual research time while keeping control over where links go and what anchor text you use across publisher groups.
13. Cloud Stacking
Cloud stacking creates high-authority backlinks through cloud storage platforms like Amazon, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. The technique builds numerous cloud properties, which include websites, VMs, wikis, and blogs, all hosted on these platforms. Practitioners upload HTML pages to cloud services, which creates powerful websites because they inherit the domain authority of hosting services.
The method connects these interlinked properties to boost a target website’s relevance and search ranking. URLs become stronger than fresh websites because they adopt the cloud platform domain names. Cloud stacking proves effective as part of tiered link-building strategies, where these cloud properties support higher-tier links. Search Atlas automates this process, which makes implementation easier for SEO professionals.
Cloud stacking delivers results even though SEO circles sometimes view the technique as controversial.
14. Event Link Building
Event link building earns backlinks through offline events. The strategy works in 3 stages (before, during, and after events). We explain the stages below.
- Before Events. Create event landing pages and list them on event sites like Meetup. Contact industry bloggers to share your event details with their audiences.
- During Events. Write daily blogs about key takeaways and share content on social media. Network with other attendees and speakers to build long-term relationships.
- After Events. Follow up with contacts through email and create downloadable resources like presentation slides. Track your backlinks and reach out to sites for future partnerships.
There are 2 main approaches to building links with offline events. These 2 approaches are hosting your own events or sponsoring existing ones. Both methods earn legitimate links because they require real effort and relationship building, which Google accepts as quality link building practices.
15. Podcast Link Building
The core concept of podcast link building revolves around creating a mutually beneficial relationship. You launch a podcast in your industry and invite experts and thought leaders as guests. These guests have their own websites, blogs, social media followings, and professional networks.
The technique builds high-quality, relevant backlinks as guests naturally share content across their platforms and profiles. Links align with Google guidelines because they come from authentic relationships and valuable content rather than artificial link schemes. The approach also expands brand reach through guest networks and establishes industry authority.
Build a Diverse Profile Faster With AI Tools
AI-powered tools like Search Atlas OTTO automate advanced link building techniques, from competitor analysis to press release distribution. These platforms accelerate backlink acquisition while maintaining quality standards, helping SEO professionals build diverse, authoritative link profiles and scale their strategies.
See how easy it is to build relevant backlinks and sign up for our free trial today!
