How I Built 5,660 Backlinks in 30 Days [New Strategy]

Or expand the People Also Ask boxes to reveal more commonly-asked questions.

Reverse Engineering

(Like “TikTok monthly users”, “How much time people spend on TikTok” and “TikTok downloads by country.)

In fact, this approach has helped my stat pages show up in dozens of Featured Snippets, like this:

They don’t scale.

Your first step is to find a “Journalist Keyword”.

My secret?

That way, YOU can be the go-to source for data on this emerging topic.

And they cite me as a source in their articles:

(In fact, that single page has 11.5K total backlinks. 95%+ of which came from Reverse Outreach.)

Now:

For example, this page about Tesla is quickly becoming one of Backlinko’s most linked-to pages.

Specifically, trending topics that don’t have a lot of easy-to-find data sources.

Which helps it rank higher in Google for its existing keyword. And rank for completely new terms.

Specifically, you want to answer the most interesting questions that journalists have around the topic.

This means most traditional keyword research tools are out.

It’s called “Reverse Outreach”.

That sounds great. Until you look at some of my competitors.

Business Insider:

And started to rank for dozens of other keywords too.

That’s not to say 100% of your stats need to be crunchy stats. For example, here’s a relatively complex stat from one of my pages:

But there’s one big problem with most link building strategies:

And this case study I’m going to show you exactly how I did it, step-by-step.

The Big Problem With Link Building: Scale

Just search for a topic…

But you can use your stats page to make the data easier to find and consume (and earn a ton of links along the way).

Google News

So when I did the math, I realized that I needed a different approach to link building.

Rinse and repeat for every stat on your page that you can.

Include Visuals and Charts

My stats post about DuckDuckGo covers pretty much everything a journalist would want to know.

But once it does, you sort of get into a link tornado situation:

Yes, this brought in some traffic.

A Journalist Keyword is just like it sounds:

For example, take my post about Tesla.

Next, look for a page on a competitor’s site with a lot of links.

Here’s how:

Snippet Bait

And that’s exactly what happened.

According to Semrush, I have 47.3K referring domains.

For example, here’s a crunchy stat from my TikTok stats page:

Note: Interest in trending topics (like Clubhouse) can fall off the map. But the upside still makes the approach worth it. Even though Clubhouse is no longer relevant, that single page (which took about 2 hours to write) still brought in 1.6K total backlinks!

Visuals help your stat pages get more backlinks for two reasons:

These are usually questions that bloggers and journalists want answers to.

So yeah, that’s Reverse Outreach: my go-to link building strategy right now.

The question is: how do you find Journalist Keywords?

People Also Ask Boxes

Examples of crunchy stats include:

• Industry size
• Company revenue
• The number of people doing a thing (eating keto, mediating, etc.)
• Time spent doing X
• % growth over time

I also like to review and update these pages AT LEAST once per quarter.

Let’s look at a real-life example.

That way, all of your data is up to date. And you keep getting that temporary freshness boost that comes from a legit content update.

Conclusion

This is a stat that ANYONE can understand in 3 seconds. And is easy to cite in an article.

Then, find the Journalist Keywords that the page ranks for.

Now I’d like to hear from you.

In fact, most of the links that I get to my stat pages are people citing crunchy stats.

Sure enough, that post eventually ranked #2 for “TikTok users”.

Obviously, Tesla isn’t super relevant to my niche (digital marketing). But Tesla is in tech (which IS somewhat relevant to Backlinko). So it’s not like I’m creating a stats page about the keto diet.

Step #2: Outline Your Content

Your next step is to outline your article.

Next, it’s time to gather all of the data that you’re going to include in your stats page.

Like Yoast (67.2K referring domains):

But you want to include as many crunchy stats as you can (especially towards the top of the page).

Step #5: Get Backlinks

But in general, here are some great places to find data for stats pages:

Statista

A new strategy called Reverse Outreach.

You can use tables to show growth or decline over time:

Or for rankings:

With that, let’s jump into the step-by-step process.

Step #1: Find “Journalist Keywords”

(Without sending a single outreach email.)

Inc:

Well, when Clubhouse was poised to become “The Next Big Thing”, everyone and their mom was writing articles about it.

Tables can help you rank as a table Featured Snippet.

Step #3: Collect Your Data

For example, take a look at Backlinko.

“Work for Us” Pages

If you’re writing about a brand, check out their job listings.

For example, remember Clubhouse?

Sure enough, I found plenty of stories with data I could use.

Statista is a curated database of stats on pretty much any industry under the sun.

By sharing that data on a stats page, you’re preserving compelling data that would be otherwise hard for journalists to find.

Step #4: Optimize Your Stats Page

And let’s assume that 5% of the outreach emails that I send result in a backlink.

Crunchy stats are bite site stats that are easy to understand at a glance.

I also made sure to optimize that post around keywords that bloggers and journalists search for.

I built 5,660 backlinks last month.

(When done right.)

This post was designed specifically to get backlinks from journalists.

But yeah, it can take 3-4 months for your page to start to rank and get passive links.

How about another example?

A few months ago I published this post on my site:

And the more crunchy stats you include, the more links you’ll get.

This is obviously HUGE if you want big-name publications to use your stats.

Add Lots of Tables

Why?

It was a huge pain to find useful data about Clubhouse!

But those problems are an opportunity for you.

If you get stuck, just search for a different keyword (it can take a few to get going).

Who searches for that keyword?

Specifically, each of that post’s subheadings covers a key subtopic about the search engine:

I like to check the page’s organic rankings periodically:

When they do, my page gets in front of them with the data they need.

(More on that later.)

The goal with this content was simple: get backlinks from authority sites.

First, they give bloggers a visual they can use in their content.

One that could scale. Big time.

Again, this data is usually sort of buried in a PDF.

You get links. Those links push your rankings higher. So you get more links. And the cycle continues.

What would a journalist writing about Tesla want to know about?

• Tesla’s revenue
• How many Teslas are sold each year
• What models are most popular
• Charging locations
• Vehicle sales by country

But that’s not really the point. The people searching for these terms aren’t really my target audience.

Reverse Outreach completely flips the script on outreach-based link building.

Or other huge brands in the marketing space, like HubSpot (341K referring domains):