How to find link opportunities using the Snowball Method

How to find link opportunities using the Snowball Method

Building quality links takes time and patience. However, it can be difficult to find the right link opportunities for your business if your product/service is in a less popular niche. You might find yourself in a situation where you run out of link prospects very fast. Let’s face it, that’s the worst feeling ever. The best way to increase your chances of success is to always have a pipeline of link opportunities. What’s the secret to never running out of link opportunities?

The answer is simple: The Snowball Method

In this post, we’ll take you through The Snowball Method. This method will make it super easy for you to find an infinite amount of link prospects in a matter of seconds. Let’s dive right in!

What is the Snowball Method?

The Snowball Method is a link prospecting strategy on steroids that will help you find link opportunities for your business. How did it come about? Well, in 2022 while working on a particularly tricky link-building campaign, we found ourselves at a dead end. It was hard for us to find link opportunities because our client wanted to build links in a niche that wasn’t very popular. We had no other option but to be creative with our approach. With this approach, we were able to secure their links on high authority sites with DR 90+ and page traffic of over 1,000 visits per month.

Let’s be honest, finding link opportunities is easy when you’re in a popular niche such as marketing or sales. For example, if you’re looking to build links to a page about web hosting it’s not a niche that’s covered a lot, so you’ll run out of potential link prospects fast. You might find link prospects through listicles such as “Top 10 Best Web Hosting Providers 2023” which are a great starting point for link building but you will run out of these opportunities due to the nature of the niche.

The Snowball Method consists of three simple steps.

Step 1: Identify Shoulder Niches

With the Snowball Method, you need to identify shoulder niches in the industry you are in. This will increase your chances of finding link prospects.

What does that mean?

If you’re looking to build links to a page about SSL encryption, for example, your shoulder niches could be sites that talk about: 

• How to start a business
• How to sell online 
• How to make more money online

Why?

Well if you want to start a business you have to have an online presence. Customers need to be able to find you online, so having a website is crucial. To sell your products/services online safely you will need SSL encryption. SSL protects online transactions and ensures that sensitive data is encrypted and transmitted securely. Jackpot…here lie your link opportunities!

Let’s explore another example…

If you want to build links to a page about web hosting your shoulder niches could be sites that talk about:

• How to start a blog
• How to create a brand
• Affiliate marketing

Again all of these examples require a web hosting solution. You can’t publish a blog if you don’t have a web hosting provider. As with affiliate marketing, if you want to earn a commission by promoting a product or service, you need a place for people to find your links long-term, and having your website will boost your brand even further.

Always try to make your product/service as relevant as possible to the content already on the page. By doing this, you won’t need to go back and forth with the other person to find a suitable place for your link.

So how do you find these sites?

Go to Ahrefs > Keyword Explorer > Type in keyword/phrase > Export SERP overview

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and there you will find a ton of websites you can reach out to for a link-building collaboration. Export all of these sites into an Excel spreadsheet to make it easier for you to sieve out any irrelevant websites before you start your outreach.

It’s important to only reach out to relevant sites. If your link doesn’t fit naturally into their current content, it’s not a good fit. Make sure that you analyse the page you want to add your link to and specify where it should go. 

Once you have compiled your sites from your SERP overview we can dive even deeper to find more link prospects.

Step 2: Identify Keyword Variations for your Shoulder Niche

It’s important to have keyword variations for your shoulder niche. As this will increase your chances of finding link opportunities. If you’re stuck and can’t think of any keyword variations there are two ways to go about it.

• Use Keyword Ideas in Ahrefs

Go to Ahrefs > Keyword Explorer > Type in keyword/phrase > Keyword ideas

The beauty of this trick is that you’ll never have to worry about running out of ideas. From this keyword example alone as you can see there are 32,339 results already. 

When you click View All you can also explore the monthly number of searches for this keyword. Getting your links seen by the right people can be achieved by optimizing your link-building strategy based on keyword search volume.

• Use Top Pages in Ahrefs

Another great way to find keyword variations is through Top Pages in Ahrefs.

How does it work?

Analyse the shoulder niches you have found in Step 1 through the SERP overview as seen below.

Choose a website from your SERP overview let’s say for this example, we will choose the website ryrob.com

Go to Ahrefs > Site Explorer > Input your Website > Top Pages >Top Keyword

Look at the website’s top keywords based on their top pages. One of the website’s top keywords is “business ideas”. If we are to use this keyword in the context of trying to build links to a page about web hosting. There is a high chance that if you want to start a business you will need a website and that will require a web hosting solution to publish your website content on the internet.

Again once you have your new keyword put it into keyword explorer and export the SERP overview for your chosen keyword. As you can see below for the keyword “business ideas” there are infinite websites you can start reaching out to. Your outreach should emphasize how your site is relevant and how it adds value to the existing content.

Step 3: Identify the Competitor’s Website for more Link Opportunities

The Snowball Method quickly finds competitors’ websites you can use to build out your link prospect list.

How does that work?

As mentioned previously once you have your chosen keyword from your SERP overview pick any website from that list and insert that website into site explorer in Ahrefs.

For this example, let’s go with the website we used above ryrob.com to keep things consistent.

Go to Ahrefs > Site Explorer > Input your site > Organic Competitors

In the organic competitor’s section, you will find sites that ryrob.com is competing with and you can use these websites to analyse their keywords. This will help you find more keyword ideas you can use to find even more sites that might link to your web hosting page for example.

This is a great way to find top-performing pages that are ranking for your chosen keyword and further build out your link prospect list. This is the magic of the Snowball Method you can just continue snowballing and snowballing these link opportunities until oblivion. No matter what industry you find yourself in with the Snowball Method you can easily build links that will skyrocket your content up the Google charts.

A quick tip when you’re trying to get your link on any site make sure you reach out to:

• The author of that specific page 

AND

• The marketing manager/content manager

These people will be your best bet at increasing your chances of getting a link on your desired page.

Happy Snowballing!

If you’re interested in taking your link-building to the next level in 2023, get in touch with our amazing Search team who will work with you to move your business up the rankings and help you find link opportunities.