Unlinked Mentions SEO – How to Get Backlinks You’ve ALREADY Earned
Welcome back to Smash Digitalâs weekly content series, where we give you actionable SEO strategies and tips that you can implement today and start seeing results.
One of the main things that makes link building so difficult is the fact that we donât have a reason to do things for strangers.
Yet thatâs the approach that most link building strategies require…
Try walking up to a stranger, asking for $20 and saying âyouâd really be helping me outâ.
Just like with link building, youâll have some success but itâs going to take a whole lot of time and youâll see a bunch of rejection.
Today Iâm going to show you how to score links from people that already know you.
Time to learn:Â 10 minutes
Impact (1-10):Â 7
Tools required:Â Ahrefs
Tools suggested:Â None
Now, letâs get to itâŠ
Whoâs Already Talking About You?
As an SEO geek I probably pay more attention to links on pages than the content itself.
But not everyone is like us. Â ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ
Thereâs a ton of website owners and content creators who will write articles about your company, mention you or your products, and never include a link back to your site.
What gives?!
We call these unlinked mentions. And because these companies trust/like you enough to mention your company, this is one of the highest converting link building strategies you can use.
All youâve got to do is find the contact information of who wrote that article or someone who will be able to edit it, and politely ask them to include a link.
This strategy definitely isnât for everyone – if youâre just starting out and havenât done much marketing, there wonât be a ton of content out there about your company.
But for those who have been around for a while, this strategy is one of the most effective ones out there.
If your company is new(ish)Â – donât panic!
Iâm going to show you a different spin on this strategy that ANYONE can implement and I think youâre going to like it.
How to Find Unlinked Mentions
If youâve ready any of our previous guides, it wonât surprise you that weâre going to need Ahrefs for this.
Weâre going to start off by heading to the Content Explorer, searching for your brand in quotes, and excluding your own domain.
Iâm going to use MailChimp as an example so I would type in:Â âMailChimpâ -site:mailchimp.com
Weâre also going to set a few filters to limit the amount of search results:
- Only show sites in English
- Live sites only
- DR25+ (exclude spam sites)
- Highlight unlinked domains for MailChimp.com
Immediately, weâre presented with over 800 pages that mention MailChimp and the ones that havenât linked to the site are conveniently highlighted for us.
While thatâs plenty to keep you busy, help you score some Smashing links, and boost your rankings – you can take it up a notch.
People donât exclusively talk about your company and refer to it by name.
You can repeat this search with :
- Variations of your brand name –Â (Smash Digital, SmashDigital. SmashDigital.com)
- Different products/features you have –Â (Macbook, /iPhone. iPod, Airpods)
- Your various team members –Â (founder, CEO, marketing/PR people, engineers, etc)
- Terms youâve coined in the industry –Â (SmashLinks, skyscraper strategy, bucket brigades, etc)
I know you guys are creative as hell so if you have any other angles that come to mind, shoot me an email and share đ
If you donât have Ahrefs, you can also use this strategy by using Google to search for:
intext:âSmash Digitalâ -site:smashdigital.com
The issue here is that youâre going to get an insane amount of results and have very little context on them in terms of SEO value and whether they already link to you or not.
What Should I Be Emailing to Them?
I know, I know. You want a template to copy and paste.
Well, Iâm not going to give you one as thatâs a fast-track for both of us to end up in the spam folders.
But luckily for you, this approach literally doesnât have any kind of magic formula to it.
You can still follow the best practices from our outreach link building guide but…
In the vast majority of cases youâll find that it actually would make sense to link to your site in these mentions, simply because itâd make the content more useful for the readers.
Keep it simple, be honest, and be friendly.
The only real tip I can give you beyond that is to try and add some value to the article or the site owner.
You could correct a fact that they got wrong about the article, provide some additional context or a quote, mention something else that may be incorrect or outdated on their page, etc.
Piggybacking Off Your Competitors
Stealing competitors backlinks should already be a part of your link building strategy but you can take advantage of the strategy above as well.
Do a search for unlinked mentions of all of your competitors, their products, team members, and coined terms.
Iâm confident that youâve got a better product than many of your competitors so if they are getting mentioned, why wouldnât the author also add a superior product to the page when asked? đ
Because these people probably wonât be familiar with you, youâll want to refer back to our outreach link building guide when it comes to crafting your pitch.
What makes this strategy slightly more effective than just stealing your competitors backlinks is that there is less competition.
If youâre in a competitive market, your competitors are also trying to steal each-others links, which means the editors have already seen at least a few of these pitches.
Unlinked mentions tend to fly under the radar and get a little bit less spam đ
Start Tracking Mentions Real-Time
Iâm sure youâve already got your hands full with all of the opportunities youâve found from the methods outlined aboveâŠ
To avoid these massive campaigns in the future and increase your chances even further, you want to start tracking mentions of your company, products, and competitors ongoingly.
This means that any time someone mentions you or your competitors on the web, youâll hear about it.
Why does this make things more efficient? Two reasons.
Firstly, Iâm going to care a whole lot more about an article I published last week than something that I wrote years ago. Iâm more likely to know exactly what youâre talking about, I know Iâm going to keep promoting that article as itâs still in early stages, and thus Iâm more likely to make your edit.
Secondly, if you hear about my article right after I publish it, Iâm going to assume youâre a regular reader or subscriber and give you a little bit more credit.
So how do you do this?
We use a combination of two tools to get the best overview of whatâs going on.
Ahrefs Alerts is by far the most effective tool for this task and they handle it from two angles.
Youâll want to set up âMentionâ tracking for all of your brand variations, product names, and team. Then you can configure them to send you an email with the overview either daily or weekly.
Secondly, you can set up alerts on all of the new backlinks your own site as well as your competitors have gained.
This is an amazing way to keep track of various marketing and SEO campaigns that have been a success for you, while also gathering intel on what your competitors are doing.
Google Alerts used to be the go-to for this, many many years ago, but theyâve slipped hard. Itâs similar to using Google to find unlinked mentions in the first place⊠It works but youâll have a lot of crap to filter through.
I like to set them up anyway as sometimes we find things Ahrefs doesnât catch and it doesnât take all that much time to go through the garbage.
Bonus Tip: Reverse Image Search
While unlinked mentions in content are quite common for a number of reasons, image plagiarism is even more rampant.
As an SEO youâve probably created a ton of amazing content for your brand and hopefully created custom illustrations and images to go along with that.
Using Googleâs image search or even better, the TinEye Reverse Image Search tool, you can find every single instance of an image on the web.
In the click of a button, you get a full list of everyone whoâs ever used any of your images – whether your logo, a photo, illustration, or infographic.
Copyright laws are strict and getting an email from someone saying youâve used their intellectual property tends to give people a scare.
In spite of that, Iâd encourage you to keep your emails friendly and simple when getting these links.
âHey Mike,
I stumbled on your post about on-page SEO and am honored that youâve decided to include our infographic in there.
I wanted to reach out and see if you could please add a link to our original post with the infographic as credit?
Thanks ahead!
Best regards,
Travisâ
Simple, yet highly effective.
Wrapping Up
This is probably one of the most casual link building strategies out there. Itâs nice not to have to hard-sell anything or beg for attention.
Beyond the links attained, itâs also a great way to deepen some industry relationships.
Give it a try and Iâm sure youâll be pleasantly surprised with the results.
Thatâs all from me. Iâll see you next week with yet another actionable SEO tip.
Letâs Smash it!