Buying Editorial Links for SEO

No link building campaign is complete without considering editorial links. Editorial links are some of the best links you can obtain for your website. They help create a strong and diverse link profile.

These white hat links are sought-after by SEO professionals because they convey authority and legitimacy due to coming from highly respected news publications and niche-focused sites.

It’s no surprise that marketers try to obtain these coveted links to boost the SEO value of their sites and generate more referral traffic.

This article is going to shed some light on editorial links and how to go about buying or earning them on your own.

Or if you want to get straight to buying links, just click the button below!

What is an Editorial Link?

Editorial links are contextual authority links. They have a few interpretations. The most common understanding of editorial links is that they’re high quality backlinks associated with authoritative news publishing websites like Forbes or Entrepreneur.

Think online publications with high domain authority or legitimate news sources like newspapers, business editorials, news aggregators, trade journals, and even niche blogs.

Sites like these don’t make a habit of linking out to anyone, although niche-related blogs may have a higher tendency to do so. Sometimes you have to establish relationships with key people to get an article posted on one of these sites. This makes editorial links rare, hard to obtain, and carry a lot of weight.

The more general interpretation of editorial links is that they’re essentially backlinks from article publications (e.g. guest posts) on trustworthy sites (very high authority) which were earned naturally.

The link is earned naturally, as opposed to being purchased (acquired), because a piece of editorial content was commissioned for a site and delivered by the entity receiving the link. The link is derived from writing and publishing great content that is relevant and informative to readers.

You earn the link naturally by delivering relevant content, not by simply paying for them (but you can certainly buy them if you want from an SEO or link building agency).

You don’t even have to be commissioned to write an article for an authoritative site to gain a natural editorial link. Sometimes an authoritative site picks up on your content and decides to link to you anyway. Having someone link to your site without making a prior business arrangement is the most natural way to gain a link (and really conveys value).

You can also think of editorial articles as similar to guest blog posts. Guest posts are a common way to obtain links. However, editorial links can be expensive and much harder to obtain than your run-of-the-mill backlink from a low-quality blog article. We will discuss guest posts later in the article.

Let’s go over the benefits of editorial links now that you have a complete picture of what they are.

Benefits of Editorial Links

Remember, editorial links are contextual authority links. That means they provide authority, relevance, and raw ranking power.

High quality editorial links can really boost a site in the SERPs because they pass valuable link juice from an authoritative site, contribute to link diversity, and help build a strong link profile. So obtaining these links is quite beneficial to SEO and improving site performance.

A great editorial content piece that is creative, informative, unique, or timely will naturally attract readers. This engagement means good business for your website that’s receiving a backlink because:

• More authority is passed from the publisher’s site to yours (making you seem trustworthy)
• Higher referral traffic is generated by readers who are interested in learning more
• Increased ranking power from the link juice

Gaining an editorial link conveys value and tells readers that your site is a trustworthy source of information that’s worth visiting to read more about a particular topic.

Procuring editorial links often involves establishing meaningful relationships with key people like publishers, editors, webmasters, journalists, blog owners, and even SEO professionals. These people operate authoritative sites and need to vouch for your content before sharing it with their visitors. These relationships are beneficial to both parties involved and can lead to new opportunities.

One of the biggest benefits of editorial links is the positive effect they have on your backlink profile. Some of the most high quality links found in strong link profiles are editorial. They confer all the benefits that characterize a strong and diverse link profile. You want your site to be seen as a natural and trusted source of good relevant information (see: benefits of link building).

By now you’re probably wondering how to get editorial links for your website to improve its performance.

We’ve explained thus far that you can produce great content for specific sites or blogs and probably receive an editorial link in return. Or you can get lucky and someone will discover your content and link to you (it’s not guaranteed unless you make an arrangement beforehand).

Or you can buy them because you don’t have the time to manually procure them yourself.

Can You Purchase Editorial Links?

Yes, you can also purchase editorial links. It’s not uncommon to get them from a link building agency that already establishes real relationships with authoritative sites and is also responsible for delivering relevant content for publication. This is why buying editorial links can be expensive (read more: buying backlinks).

Another avenue is to establish relationships with the top contributors to editorial sites. Again, a link building specialist can work out deals with contributors to include outgoing links in their blog articles (such as a link pointing to your site).

We are link building specialists who can broker these deals on your behalf. We specialize in selling editorial links from guest posts and niche edits. We make sure to get links from niche sites of your interest to save you time and effort.

We believe guest posts and niche edits are authority links that contribute to link diversity.

A guest post is basically an agreement to publish a quality article on a webmaster’s blog in exchange for a link. Guest posts are popular because they are relevant and contextual. You can reach your audience by targeting niche sites with guest posts.

You can provide high-quality content to the website or we can get contributors to write up specific articles for you.

A niche edit, or curated link, is a contextual link that’s included in preexisting articles. A niche edit is applied to an aged article with a preexisting link profile. The benefit is that the aged article and its domain have been around long enough to grow ranking power with a quality link profile, as opposed to brand new articles or domains. Sometimes a little update to an old article will provide a boost in search engines.

Maybe you don’t want to buy editorial links from a third-party source (e.g. a link building agency). Instead, you’d rather produce the content from scratch and sell yourself to websites to develop contacts. More power to you. Let’s briefly discuss how you can earn the links on your own.

Note: Please be careful of any service that advertises editorial links for sale. Sometimes they will scam you with low-quality garbage links.

How to Earn Editorial Links On Your Own

The key to publishing an editorial guest post is to establish good relationships with the people who will vouch or edit your content to make sure it’s relevant (see: link relevance) and high quality for their website. These people include webmasters, editors, publishers, writers, public relations, or an SEO professional.

Get public relations involved, if applicable, because they’ll be able to reach out to key people like editors and publishers.

But first, you have to discover the right content to produce and where to publish it. You’ll want to spend time with the usual SEO analysis like content discovery, keyword research, and competitor analysis as you develop a link building strategy.

Studying the competition is actually a great way to get an idea of where to obtain guest posts. Find out where your competitors are landing guest posts and go after those websites.

You’ll need to sell your content if you haven’t established credibility and relationships with curators, writers, and publishers on authoritative sites. So try to get noticed by these individuals and develop relationships with them.

Do your discovery research to find relevant content on the most authoritative website and get the contact info of its editor and contributing writers.

You’ll probably have to start an outreach campaign to pitch your work that includes contacting key people. Consider all the steps necessary for selling any kind of work. Things like having a solid “About Me” page, sharing quality examples, personalizing emails, conveying relevance and value, being unique, etc.

Just make sure you’re pitching to the right people for the right website. You’ll get an editorial link if you put the time into selling yourself and delivering relevant content that helps readers.

To read more about this, see our finding guest post opportunities article.

Buying Editorial Links Wrap-Up

Great content doesn’t automatically deliver editorial links. It has to be promoted to the right people and published on the right sites. This is why obtaining editorial links naturally is challenging and time-consuming.

Sure, with effort and diligence you can probably get an editorial link from an authoritative site. But you need to ask yourself how much time and effort you’re willing to spend. Although it’s definitely possible to obtain an editorial link on your own, just realize that the market for editorial links is competitive and you’ll need to pitch yourself constantly.

To be honest, it’s much easier to buy editorial links than obtain them on your own.

Everyone wants editorial links because they provide a boost in the search engines and enhance your credibility. Link building specialists realize the value in these authority links and that’s why they sell them.

Contributing Author: Brian Kihneman

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