Google is a fickle friend. Throughout the years, its search algorithm has gone through a variety of version changes, with each new change having the potential to decide the fate of websites all over the world.
Some websites might get rewarded and rise upwards in SERPs’ (search engine results pages) rankings, while others will get the short end of the stick and see themselves wallow in obscurity when their rank dip further and further downwards in Google searches.
However, there’s one thing that Google has been consistent at: the company’s search algorithm places a high value on websites with lots of evergreen content that also have (organically) high traffic. Those that try to game the system through non-organic means (like using link spam, private blog networks, and other black hat techniques) usually get penalized hard.
And currently, Google is loving organically-placed niche edits.
What are Niche Edits?
Niche edits, to put it simply, is a link that you “edited” (or inserted) into an already-existing article- ideally, an article that is related to your specific niche.
But this kind of backlinking has been around forever, right?
Yes, you’re also right on that account, but it’s only within the last couple of years or so that this practice of inserting related or contextual links onto other people’s content has been given a name. This is a link building strategy that has been around for a long time, and as such, speaks to its longevity and effectiveness.
How do you acquire niche edit backlinks?
It’s as simple as asking a website owner if they’re willing to add a link to your page from one of their pages.
For example, say “Hey, I’ve noticed that you’ve touched this particular topic on one of your posts, and as luck would have it, I also have a blog post written that discusses this topic in detail. Would you like to add a link to this post of mine?”
Website owners are more likely to add links than accept guest postings, so you might have higher chances of success if you go the niche edit route.
The practice ventures into gray hat territory if money is involved (i.e. you try to pay the website owner, or the website owner asks for money in exchange for inserting your links).
How is niche edit backlinks different from PBN links?
Private blog networks are, for the most part, networks of websites and blogs whose primary purpose is to link to each other, thereby artificially inflating each other’s traffic and authority. Some even go so far as to buy expired domain names that have high domain authority and then use this as the backlink generator for the rest of the other sites in the network.
While there are some people who swear by this technique, it’s inevitable that Google will find out that the same websites are just posting the same links within their group. It’s best to use niche edits to build organic backlinks from sites that you do not own, but dabble in the same kinds of topics (niche) as you do.
So why would you want to dabble in niche edits?
As an online content marketer, you probably already have lots of evergreen content lying around that can enjoy a boost in traffic and visibility. One way to get these content out there is to have another related website (ideally one that enjoys high traffic, and has a lot of authority and relevancy within your niche) link to content that you already have on your site. It also saves you a lot of time, as compared to writing a guest post wherein you would need to write content from scratch.