Private Influencer Networks for Link Building (How to Join)

If you've tried to do outreach for high quality links with minimal success, joining or creating a private influencer network could be the answer.

Brands across all niches are leveraging this concept to blazing success.

Personally, I've used it to get links from Convince and Convert, Search Engine Watch, App Sumo, and dozens more high authority websites.

It's how SEO driven brands get insane growth with link building while avoiding the typical paid links penalties.

If you want to leave traffic-killing paid guest posts and sponsored links behind and learn how the most successful link builders are acquiring their backlinks, read on.

What are Private Influencer Networks?

A private influencer network is “A group of people looking to rank their websites in Google in similar industries (but not the same) who work together to help each other reach their objectives.”  

When it comes to guest posts, link builders from a similar niche collaborate with similar brands and share guest posts and link opportunities.

How to Join a Private Influencer Network

Exclusive private influencer networks that get you super high quality links are hard to find.

It took me a while to figure out how to find them but this step-by-step process will show you a simple way forward.

You need to learn two things:

1. How to pitch guest posts in a way that high value publishers will respond positively
2. How to find potential Rockstar PIN partners to invite to be a part of your guest post

Step 1: Secure one guest post

For this strategy, the guest post will serve as your foot in the door into exclusive PINs.

Your goal is to get a guest post opportunity that meets all the criteria for a high quality post:

• The post cannot be paid for,
• Website is well known and successful within your niche - either as a business or a magazine. 
• Has SEO metrics that other link builders covet like DR 50+, Organic Traffic 10,000+, and niche relevance.
• Has a history of allowing guest posters.

Once you've built a list of 20 websites that allow guest posts, your next step is to pitch them according to their contributor guidelines.

Templates will not work well for these types of sites so you'll need to take a unique and personalized approach for each one.

You can do the typical thing where you pitch a topic idea but I find more success pitching long tail keyword research.

For example, I will do a gap analysis on their content to find keywords that they don't rank for yet but could.

Then I send them a pitch about it. Here's an example:

Hi team,

I'd like to contribute an article to your blog.

I specialize in teaching newer business owners gain more traffic through search - a perfect match for your audience.

My content has been featured on Convince & Convert, Search Engine Watch, and Entrepreneur.

As for the topic, I noticed you don't have content optimized for the keyword "guest posting best practices" yet.

Two of your competitors rank well for this term and I believe an SEO-optimized article on your blog could do the same.

I've created an outline already: URL

It's 2500 words and contains unique guidelines on prospecting, writing and outreach.

Some things from the outline that might be of interest to your readers:

Guest posts strategy using Google Forms for link paybacks (in part 3).
Checking the quality of potential backlinks (in part 2).
Niche edits/link inserts (in part 6)
The value first outreach technique (in part 9).

Please let me know you'd be interested in having me develop a draft for your website.

I’ve read through your writer guidelines and can target a word count of 1500 words with copy that speaks to your aspiring entrepreneurs learning to start a business.

Cheers,

Ajay

This DR 70+ startup blog accepted the pitch so I got to work with writing it.

Once the draft was ready, I proceeded to Step 2.

Step 2: Find Rockstar PIN partners to invite to be a part of your guest post

Next, build a list of bloggers who are also frequently doing guest posts on quality websites.

It's easy to do this by finding big blogs in your niche and noting who the guest contributors are.

For example, I went through the most recent Jeff Bullas blog contributors and identified which ones were guest authors.

You can find their contact emails using a tool like Hunter.

Next, reach out to each of these authors with a simple pitch.

You should easily get a 15% positive response rate from this outreach because you are their dream cold email - someone who ended up in their inbox offering the exact thing they're trying to do.

Insert their links into your guest post and submit it to the publisher.

In return, each link partner will have something to offer you in return. Leverage those opportunities as they come.

If you complete steps 1 and 2 and everyone follows through on their promises, you've official just joined some private influencer networks.

It's that simple!

The next step is maintaining the list of the influencers you work with and emailing them when you have new opportunities.

Step 3: Rinse and repeat

Once you have built a strong list of link partners, you want to keep presenting them guest post opportunities so they will do the same.

A popular means of doing this is maintaining a BCC emails list and notifying your link partners when you secure a new guest post.

Here's a simple template that works and also gives your link partners some ground rules on how to request link inserts.