SEO is like courting someone you like.

You can try every trick in the book: flowers, chocolates, long walks home, serenades—you name it.

But at the end of the day, you can’t know what’ll work on that other person until you’ve tried it.

Just like the way you would approach your SEO, your dating strategy involves trying different tactics and measuring the results to see what works.

And like in SEO, you also need to dig deeper to determine what tactic works and what doesn’t.

You need to push emotions aside, think clearly and develop a strategic approach.

After all, nothing feels more frustrating than giving something (or someone) your all—only to find out that it’ll never work out anyway.

Unfortunately, there’s no magic trick to winning over the person of your dreams.

Fortunately for you however, when it comes to your SEO, methods that consistently produce results are quite well-telegraphed.

The first rule is simple: Make sure you only get the best backlinks from authoritative sources.

For this purpose, you need a well-developed backlink campaign that’s focused on cream-of-the-crop backlinks and guided by data.

Want to push your website over the line?

I’m going to show you how the right backlink campaign can send you skyrocketing up the SERPs.

5 Steps to Building a Powerful Backlink Campaign That Wins the SERPs

Developing a successful link building campaign isn’t something you can do alone.

This is where Monitor Backlinks steps in.

This all-in-one backlink profile management platform has everything you need to maintain a healthy backlink profile that search engines love. More importantly, it can help you develop a repeatable link building system that can boost your rankings.

Here’s how to use Monitor Backlinks to develop your most powerful backlink campaign yet:

1. Determine Keywords You Already Rank For

One of the fastest ways to attain high rankings in search is to focus on keywords you already rank for.

It may sound unlikely, but ranking for keywords without an active link building campaign is more plausible than you think.

Keep in mind that search engines love quality content. If you offer valuable, relevant and insightful posts, you’ll naturally receive backlinks from people who enjoy them.

This, in turn, will improve your chances of faster indexation and ranking in SERPs.

Monitor Backlinks can help you spot these valuable opportunities for higher rankings. In the “Rank Tracker” section, scroll down to find the list of keywords that you’ve added and are currently ranking for:

 

 

If your website has been active for a while, you could already be ranking for hundreds or even thousands of keywords.

But don’t worry—you don’t have to sift through all of them to determine the most lucrative for link building. Monitor Backlinks is more than equipped to help you find keyword opportunities that require immediate attention.

2. Prioritize the Most Profitable Keywords

In Monitor Backlinks, you can also view important metrics regarding the keywords you already rank for.

This includes the CPC, keyword competitiveness level and average monthly search volume.

 

 

ROI-wise, keywords with a decent amount of monthly search volume generally have the most value.

To display keywords with higher search volumes first, click on the “Volume” column label twice.

 

 

Simple, right? It should now be easier for you to scan the list for high-traffic keywords.

The next step is to look at the pages that rank for these profitable keywords.

Under the “Page” column, you can identify the content that ranks for the keyword as well as their SERP placement.

 

At this point, it’s a good idea to review your content’s on-page optimization. If it ranked naturally with little to no SEO, imagine how it’ll do if you actually put in some work!

Here are some of the basic on-page optimization techniques you might’ve missed:

• Use the keyword as a subheading in the post
• Insert the keyword near the beginning of the permalink
• Insert the keyword in the post title
• Make sure the keyword appears at least once throughout the post
• Mention your focus keywords in the meta description

In the screenshot above, you can see that one of our pages ranks for the keyword “Clickbank review.”

You could then target this page’s URL in your link building campaign. You just need a content strategy that’s tailored to the target keyword and authoritative websites for the actual links.

This begs the question: Where can you find authoritative websites for your link building content?

To answer this, we turn to one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to marketing—competitor research.

3. Find Websites Ranking Ahead of You

What’s brilliant about Monitor Backlinks is that it not only monitors your own backlink profile. Once you identify your top competitors, you can also monitor and analyze theirs as well.

First, you need to look for pages that rank ahead of you for your major keywords. The most straightforward approach is, of course, to perform a quick Google search.

For example, suppose we want to rank an in-depth post about social media marketing on the keyword: “optimal posting time.”

 

 

From this SERP, we can verify that the CoSchedule blog is one of the biggest competitors for this keyword.

To understand how they build their links, let’s boot Monitor Backlinks right back up.

4. Plug Your Competitor’s Domain into Monitor Backlinks

Now that you’ve identified a competitor, it’s time to put them under the microscope. In the “Competitor Links” tab of Monitor Backlinks, click “Add new competitor.”

 

 

This will bring up the “Add a competitor” window where you can enter your competitor’s domain. For the sake of this guide, let’s consider CoSchedule as our competitor.

Take note that it may take a while before the full backlink data of your competitor can be extracted. But once that’s done (usually immediately), you’ll have a clear view of their entire backlink profile.

 

 

In the previous step, we found out that a certain CoSchedule post ranks for the keyword “optimal posting time.” We can assume that this particular phrase is used at least once as an anchor text in their backlink strategy.

Using Monitor Backlink’s competitive research features, we can confirm this theory:

 

 

However, notice that the linking domain—21handshake.com—doesn’t look promising at all. It doesn’t offer much in terms of trust flow and citation flow, which are crucial when determining link value.

This could mean that CoSchedule’s number one ranking for our desired keyword is due to the link value obtained from other domains. That’s why we need to look for other backlinks that point to the same page.

Here’s an example:

 

 

Sure, the linking domain’s trust flow still isn’t stellar, but it’s a better start than 21handshake.com. Upon visiting this site, we can see that they openly accept guest posts, which is a good sign for our link building campaign.

 

 

Take note that this is merely an example. In an actual link building campaign, you need to carefully analyze each linking domain and be a bit more selective when it comes to your target domains.

What’s important is that you learn how to dissect the strategy of competitors and adopt some aspects as your own.

5. Stay on Top of the Game

Finally, Monitor Backlinks can be used to make sure you’re never left behind in the competition. The good news is, adding a competitor’s domain automatically schedules email alerts whenever new backlinks are found.

Whenever new backlinks are found, conduct your own investigation. Identify what your competitor did and where they built or earned the links from.

Most importantly, plan how you can take advantage of the same strategy in the same domain. It may sound tedious, but it’ll definitely help you stay relevant as you focus on other link building activities.

 

The steps above have probably significantly increased the amount of work you need to do in your backlink campaign.

You now have a longer target keywords list, new link building strategies to execute and more competitors to worry about.

But if you pull it off, you’re guaranteed to see results.

To experience firsthand the power of Monitor Backlinks for building a winning link building campaign, take it for a spin with a free trial!