Have you been trying relentlessly to build more backlinks to your website? This can be such an exhausting task and a bit like banging your head against a brick wall sometimes. I know the feeling!

Perhaps you feel like you have been spending hours and hours on blogger outreach, and writing engaging guest posts, and now you are getting all OCD checking your analytics every five minutes to see if Google’s recognised your hard work?

I bet you wish that someone would just give you a break and come up with an easy to implement link building tactic – there has to be a better way right?

I fully understand where you are coming from – link building can be a serious drain on time and resources, even if the end results can be transformational for your business. It is slow and it’s hard.

The bad news is that there really isn’t a huge secret or magic trick you can perform to catapult you here – it is hard work and time that bring this. However, don’t totally despair because there are strategies you can deploy that are proven to attract high-quality links quickly and easily, and I’m going to tell you a bit more about one of those here/

Testimonial link building can earn you links from some of the most respected, established, and authoritative sites in your niche, and when you know the exact step to follow to make it work for you, it can take less than ten minutes to secure your link. Want to know more? Read on!

So what exactly is testimonial link building?

All brands and businesses want to see customers raving about their products and services, it’s only natural. Social proof is a huge element of successful marketing, so they’re delighted to receive real accounts from real people who heartily recommend what they have to offer. Think about it, when you are considering buying something, you look at the reviews don’t you? I know that I want to hear from real people about products, rather than what the brand says about their own product – because of course THEY will love it!

By providing testimonials for products and services that you use and love, you can get your blurb featured on their websites, complete with a link back to your own site.

Simple, right – but also massively effective. This is a win-win scenario for you and the business in question, and an added benefit here is that you can also build some powerful relationships with other players in your niche.

Sounds great. How do I do it?

The process for achieving this can be broken down into four steps:

Step 1: Identify your potential targets

You want to be targeting products and services that you’re more than happy to vouch for, so keep that in mind whilst you’re doing your planning. Don’t write fake reviews or vouch for things you would never use.

Brainstorm a big list of potential targets, then check to make sure they meet the additional criteria:

Is the business relevant to your own niche?

Is the business already displaying testimonials on their site?

Do the testimonials include a backlink?

Ticking these boxes ensure that your link is relevant and that you’re not wasting any unnecessary time.

Step 2: Establish who you need to contact

You want to make sure that you’re reaching out to the right person, so your pitch email is more likely to be read and actioned.

Here, the answer is largely going to depend on the kind of business that we’re looking at. If it’s a one-man band or micro business that you’ve worked with in the past, you probably already know who to contact.

Larger organisations might even have a dedicated page on their site for submitting testimonials. If you’re unsure, reach out via social media or through the contact page. Ideally, you want to get a hold of a name so you can make your email a little more personal.

Step 3: Pitch the idea of a testimonial

We’re all about saving time here where we can, so we aren’t going to just fire over a testimonial before we know they’re keen and they give us the go-ahead. Keep it short and simple, and cut out any waffle – no one has time to read a long drawn-out email these days.

Step 4: Write an awesome testimonial

There’s a good and a bad way to write a testimonial. Remember that the purpose of a testimonial is to persuade a potential buyer that this thing is worth them parting with their hard earned money.

A really great way to do this is to identify a potential objection that a prospect would have (and one that you also had before you bought), and bust it. So for example, maybe you bought a WordPress theme but you were worried that you didn’t have the technical know-how to install it.

Final thoughts on testimonial link building

So that is pretty much that for the testimonial link building method. It’s often much faster than writing a guest post, although you do need to do a bit of prep work initially.

Of course, all in all you are best not to rely on one method of link building, so just pop this one into your bag of tricks!