Backlinks are like gold in the online marketing world. All whole bunch of backlinks from quality sites can do big things for your SERP performance. They create relevance, they improve your site’s reputation, they drive traffic, and they most certainly get Google’s attention.
One of the best ways to take advantage of high-quality backlinks is by implementing a strategy known as resource page link building. It is a strategy that the most successful online marketers utilize on behalf of their clients. They use it because, quite frankly, it works extremely well.
What It Is
Let us start by discussing what resource page link building is. We begin with the resource page itself. A resource page is a website that curates links to other sites offering quality content on a given topic. For example, consider a resource page for music teachers.
That site would curate links most music teachers would find useful. One section of links might pertain to free sheet music while another section provides quality links to instructional videos. A third section might list links to websites where music teachers can direct their students needing to purchase instruments and supplies.
At the end of the day, a good resource page is little more than a page featuring high-quality links that offer real value to visitors. Therein is the key. Resource page link building works because the value of the resources on that page is directly related to the sites they link to.
Why It Works
Resource page link building works thanks to a single word intrinsically tied to Google’s Panda update from many years ago. The primary focus of that update was to begin sorting out quality results from junk for the purposes of ridding the internet of said junk. That single word is ‘relevance’.
Ever since Panda, Google has been developing a variety of techniques for determining content relevance. They want content that is relevant to whatever a user is searching for. Content needs to be relevant to current standards and norms. It needs to be relevant to its title, keywords, and so forth.
Resource pages increase relevance because the links listed on such pages are relevant to the topic at hand. All of those links on our fictional music teachers page are relevant to the subject of teaching music. Google algorithms will recognize this as they scan and analyze the resource page. All the links on that page will get a bit of a boost as a result.
How to Find Niche Relevant Resource Page
One of the best ways to find niche relevant resource pages is through using advanced search queries or search operators in Google.
Here is a list of search queries that you can use to find keyword specific resource pages:
- keyword + inurl:links
- keyword + inurl:resource
- keyword + inurl:resources
- keyword + intitle:resource
- keyword + intitle:resources
- keyword + “resources”
- keyword + “top resources”
- keyword + “online resources”
- keyword + “useful links”
- keyword + “interesting links”
- keyword + “suggested links”
- keyword + “favorite links”
From here you can manually scrap a list of the best domains based on domain metrics and relevancy. You can also use browser bookmarketlet to speed this process up, like SERP scraper bookmarklet, or Scrapebox one of the most powerful and popular SEO tools for scraping data.
Next audit the list of pages that you have scraped, sort via domain metrics and relevancy, then manually check each page to make sure the outgoing links are dofollow and everything on-page looks good.
Then proceed rolling a out reach campaign to the webmaster. Nine times out of ten you will be able to connect them via their contact us page, or by emailing info@domain.com. You can also check Whois for contact data, or use an email contact service site like RocketReach.co or Hunter.io to obtain details.
Maintaining Resource Page Quality
The kicker in all of this is that authors of resource pages want their sites to do well too. In order for that to happen, they have to be diligent about maintaining the quality of their pages. They cannot afford to have irrelevant links, dead links, or links to pages that are nothing more than junk.
Thus, resource pages are known for soliciting user feedback. They want to know about dead and useless links so these can be removed. Sites also solicit suggestions for new links. This is where you, as an SEO expert, can shine. Your job is to search the internet for relevant resource pages. Once you find them, do a little research to make sure they are quality sites. Those that pass the test are good candidates for your link suggestions.
Building links on resource pages is a terrific way to improve SERP performance in a relatively short amount of time. It is by no means a magic pill, but it is a useful tool that every online marketer should be using.
