What Are Niche Edits? (+ Should You Buy Them?)
Hand off the toughest tasks in SEO, PPC, and content without compromising quality
Explore ServicesGetting links from relevant websites pointing back to your own site is a fundamental component of SEO.
Known as link-building, the process of acquiring backlinks is essential for any website owner who wants to improve their search engine results page rankings (SERPs), organic traffic, and website authority.
One of these best ways to get links from other sites in your niche is through niche edits, which is what this article is all about.
We’ll discuss:
- What niche edits are
- The benefits of link building with niche edits
- How niche edits compare to guest posting
- How you can get niche edits
We’ll also answer some of the more frequently asked questions about niche edits, so you leave this article with a comprehensive understanding of how niche edits can help you achieve your SEO goals.
What Are Niche Edits?
Niche edits are a type of backlink.
There are various different types of backlinks with various link-building metrics to consider, such as guest post backlinks, press release backlinks, blog comment backlinks, press editorials, contextual backlinks – and niche edits.
Niche edits occur when an already published article or piece of content is edited to include a backlink.
As such, when you acquire a niche edit, you are getting a backlink from an already established webpage.
Website owners can acquire niche edits by doing manual outreach to bloggers, editors, or webmasters and directly requesting they place a link in one of their existing articles. When they do so, they have edited that article and inserted a backlink, which is the niche edit.
Niche Edit Examples
Inserting niche edits into existing content involves:
- The website owner or editor goes to their website content management system platform
- Opens the relevant content or the article they wish to insert a niche edit into
- Highlight the desired anchor text
- Inserting a link to the destination webpage
The process itself is very simple. However, the difficulty of getting niche edits arises in the outreach and in convincing these website owners and editors to give you a niche edit backlink.
Some successful examples of niche edit outreach look like this:
The above examples show web pages initially published without the link in the highlighted anchor text. Then, after the articles went live, someone from an associated niche reached out to the website owners and requested they place a link to their website.
This means the article wasn’t published with the link included – it was added after the content was published, and likely after the page was crawled and indexed by Google.
5 Benefits of Niche Edits
As you’ve probably realized, some of the most significant benefits to niche edits are:
- The control you have over the anchor text
- The fact that you guarantee your backlinks come from real websites that are aged sites with established content
- There is a short turnaround time
- You don’t need to worry about creating new content
- You can select high-quality content with various metrics, so you can optimize the link juice you get from your backlinks and niche edits
By contacting site owners directly and requesting niche edits, you can get a good idea of the precise quality of backlinks you’re acquiring in your SEO campaign. You can also select websites with high relevance to your own website.
If done correctly, niche edit backlink building doesn’t bring that many drawbacks. It is considered a white hat link-building technique, and Google is well aware that it goes on. However, problems can occur when site owners purchase high volumes of low-quality niche edits, from websites that either have low relevancy to their niche or from websites flagged as spammy by Google and its rankings algorithm.
As such, when buying links, or if you plan to outsource link building to acquire niche edits, its imperative you select a provider who will only secure niche edits with high backlink quality and link relevance. Do so will ensure the niche edits pointing back to your website boost your organic traffic, SEO rankings, and website profitability.
However, failing to do so, as with all backlink outreach, could result in your website being penalized for spammy link building, which can severely damage the future profitability and rankings of a site.
Guest Posts vs. Niche Edits
One of the most well-known link-building strategies is guest posting.
Guest posting is a link-building strategy whereby site owners contact other site owners and offer the write a blog article for them, which includes a backlink directing back to their own website.
By guest posting, website owners have the opportunity to establish themselves as industry thought leaders, by offering valuable information and insight into various related topics, then getting this material in front of a wider segment of their target audience.
The process involves:
- Contacting a site owner and asking if they will accept a guest post
- Agreeing on a title with the site owner
- Creating the article
- Getting the article checked and cleared by the site owner who is to publish the article
- Waiting for the article to be published
- Checking that the site owner has indeed included the agreed-upon backlink
As you can see, guest posting is a lengthy process. And unfortunately, there is plenty of opportunity during the process for site owners to decline an article, meaning you need to start the whole process again and start connecting with other site owners to see if they’ll publish your article.
And also, guest posting means publishing a new piece of content, a new post. This means the page your guest post backlink is on is new, isn’t established, and probably will take some time before Google’s crawlers index the site and your backlink.
Niche edits, as we’ve explained, cut through all of this.
How Niche Edits are Different From Guest Post Backlinks
As we’ve said, getting a niche edit backlink is done by contacting an editor of a site and asking them to insert a link to your website in a pre-existing article.
There is no new content creation, no verification process of deciding upon a suitable article title, no writing or editing back and forth – simply an agreement between you and the target website owner as to whether or not they’ll insert a backlink to your site.
Often, it can even be in the best interest of site owners to offer niche edit backlinks, as they can replace broken links on their site. This is known as broken link building, where you do the website owner a favor by bringing their broken links to their attention and then giving them an easy solution on the spot.
How To Get Niche Edits (3 Methods)
We’ve been talking a lot about “contacting site owners” to get your niche edits. After all, they are the decision-makers who will give the red or green light for their content to be edited to include a link back to your website.
But how can you convincingly approach these site owners? What can you offer in return for a niche edit?
1. Manual Outreach
The cheapest, and most labor-intensive way, of getting niche edit backlinks is to find the emails of website administrators and send them a convincing email asking them nicely to give you an editorial backlink.
With this approach, you really depend on the kindness of the site owner and how fantastic or not your own website it. The effectiveness of this approach will certainly depend on the niche you’re in, the size of your website and the size of the website you’re asking for a niche edit, and how good or day of a day the person who opens your email is having.
You’ll likely get very frustrated with manual outreach for niche edit link building because the amount of time you put into writing curated, personalized emails will be more than the number of quality backlinks you get out of it.
However, if you’re able to offer something in return, such as a backlink of your own, then you’ll likely have far greater success.
2. Bartering (With Template E-mail)
Bartering for niche edits is one of the best ways to acquire them.
If you’ve got a relatively established website, perhaps one with an ahrefs domain rating of 20+, then you can contact websites saying something like:
“Hi …..,
You and I both run a website in the …… niche. It can be expensive getting relevant backlinks, so I wonder if you’d be open to a niche edit link exchange? I have this article (insert a link to relevant article), and can place a niche edit link to your site there.
In return, I’d request a niche edit in this article of yours (insert a link to an article on their website).
It’d be great to both mutually benefit from cooperation, looking forward to hearing from you,
Regards,
……”
An approach such as this significantly improves your chances of getting a response and a niche edit, because you’re offering value in return. However, if your website is new, there might not be so much incentive for the other site owners to engage in a link swap.
3. Buying Links
For some site owners, buying links with a well-planned link-building plan is the best way to secure high-quality niche edit backlinks.
If your site is new, or you don’t have the time nor capacity to do manual link building outreach yourself, then engaging the services of a link building agency that has verified proof of past results is the best way to do niche edit link building.
Using a link-building service, such as Loganix, can help guarantee results based on past performance and the agency’s reviews.
Niche Edits FAQs
Do niche edits work?
Niche edits are an effective way to gain new backlinks for your website from sites closely related to your topic. If you need quality backlinks with minimal manual intervention from the webmaster of the targeted site, then this is a viable strategy for you.
What is a niche link?
A niche link is simply a website that has been edited to include your brand’s name or other relevant information. Niche links are backlinks that come from a website in the same or highly similar niche to your own.
Are niche edits Safe?
They aren’t as safe for your site as other types of links. However, if your niche edits are done correctly and appear natural, they don’t pose a threat to your domain authority or web ranking.
What is link placement?
Link placement refers to where you place your links on the page and affects their visibility and relevance. Links should have a stable link placement to have the best impact on how your content is perceived.
Why should I do niche edits?
Niche edits are an effective way to gain new backlinks for your website from sites closely related to your topic. If you need quality backlinks with minimal manual intervention from the webmaster of the targeted site, then this is a viable strategy for you.
How do I find niche links?
Many companies sell lists of potential links that can be used in niche edits. You should always use a specialized agency while doing this to ensure that the site is truly relevant to your niche.
What is anchor text?
Anchor text is used to link one web page to another web page, via hyperlink. Anchor text can be a word or phrase that you expect visitors to click on. Most anchor texts are keyword-laden phrases that describe the destination site or product.
SUMMARY
So, in summary, and to answer the title of this article, yes, if you have the budget, and you want to improve your website’s performance, then you should buy niche edits in 2021.
They are a sure-fire way of securing relevant links with link juice that will boost your SEO rankings and get more traffic to your website.
But like anything SEO-related, niche edit link building must be approached with caution, and you should only trust well-established, knowledgeable agencies to do your niche edit link building.
Hand off the toughest tasks in SEO, PPC, and content without compromising quality
Explore ServicesWritten by Adam Steele on February 24, 2022
COO and Product Director at Loganix. Recovering SEO, now focused on the understanding how Loganix can make the work-lives of SEO and agency folks more enjoyable, and profitable. Writing from beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia.