Niche Edits: a Niche SEO Practice That you Shouldn’t Overlook

SEO has a vast array of tools and practices that can work independently or in tandem with each other. General consensus is, the more different methods and approaches you use in your SEO strategy, the better the outcome. 

Today, let’s talk about niche edits.  Niche edits is a practice of having your link inserted in a page that already exists on another site. The idea behind it is the same as with any other link building strategy, you gain a backlink to your resource. The value of a niche edit for the host site is usually monetary, but a new link, especially to an authoritative resource can also freshen up a long-existing page and drive some new traffic to it.  

How do you Niche Edit? 

Like most SEO practices, niche edits can be done in several ways. White-hat niche editing is looking for posts where your link would be most relevant, blending in seamlessly and adding value. For example, linking to your baby food store from an article about cooking for toddlers and babies and kids’ diet would be absolutely relevant. Google will not even batter an eyelash at it. 

Blackhat niche editing, on the contrary, is buying link insertions in bulks from link building aggregators who do not care for relevance and often provide spammy backlinks. In most cases, they would already be targeted by Google, like SAPE, so purchasing link edits from them is not safe. 

Gray-hat niche edits is using niche edit tools that allow you to automate certain workflows in the process, but provide curated backlinks with a high degree of relevance and are not frowned upon by Google. 

Of course, white-had niche editing is the perfect scenario, but the effort behind it would be tremendous. It will reap you additional benefits of greatly increased outreach, so if building solid working partnerships is also part of your SEO campaigns, white-hat niche editing is the way to go. However, there’s only so many resources you will be able to handle manually. 

Are Niche Edits Actually Worth the Effort?

Of course, much depends on what you do, how you do it and whether your goals are realistic.  There are several things you should consider before putting your efforts in extensive niche editing. 

• Host pages are already indexed by Google

Yep, this is not going to be your fresh and shiny guest post that gets picked up by Google. The host page where your backlink is going to be inserted would be already indexed and it may take weeks or even months for Google crawlers to get back to it. If the negotiation to acquire the coveted backlink is tough, pricey and generally difficult, keep this fact in mind. 

• Finding Sites and Pitching is Difficult 

Speaking of tough negotiations, since there aren’t really direct advantages of hosting your link for your host sites in an existing piece of content, creating a pool of willing hosts and making a solid pitch is harder. So, usually you’ll just have to pay for the backlink. Top that with it being generally difficult to make a list of hosts that would be highly relevant to your link, especially if you are a niche business, pardon the pun. 

But there are upsides to it as well!

• You don’t have to create new content

We all know how time-consuming and exhausting content marketing can be. With curated links you don’t have to create new content and wreck your brain about how to keep it engaging and useful for the audience each time. More than that, you can pick the host page, analyze it and decide if it’s good enough. You can even look up traffic stats for the page and evaluate if placing a link there will be good for your own traffic, visibility and gaining new audience. 

• Usually you get to control anchor text

A nice perk since you don’t really get any control over the already existing content of the host page. Most niche edit hosts allow you to have your own anchor text. 

• Link to SEO-difficult pages

The niche edit process usually isn’t as picky as guest posts, so if you want to promote specific pages of your website which otherwise get little attention, niche edits are a way to go, especially if you manage to find a highly relevant host resource for your difficult page.

To Niche Edit or to Guest Post, That is the Question

Niche edits and guest posts are often mentioned together. Both tactics, aside from raising your domain authority, help you to increase your outreach, draw referral traffic, and gain new audiences. However, they are completely divorced from each other and require different approaches. 

Guest Post, if you:

1. Are good at creating engaging content, able to match different writer styles and willing to pitch the content. Oh, and are okay with doing it regularly and with the same level of quality.
2. Want a 100% white-hat backlink that will get picked up by Google quickly
3. Are keen on establishing industry relationships as well 
4. Focus more on brand awareness 
5. Willing to invest in content creation and placement
6. Are a niche small scale business and will have a hard time finding many relevant resources about your domain

Want to know more about guest posting? Check out our article here.

Niche Edit, if you:

1. Aim for a more cost-effective link insertion
2. Don’t want to invest in new content creation on a regular basis 
3. Are in a mainstream business domain and have a big pool of potential resources for link insertion
4. Aim more for higher link juice and domain authority increase
5. Are okay with long-shot results and are willing to wait for Google crawlers to do their thing
6. Are absolutely sure about your tools and know how to avoid spammy backlinks

Niche Edit Services: Is there Anything you Can Do to Ease the Process?

Niche editing is a practice that can easily be seen by Google as the violation of their Webmaster Guidelines, so when you source your niche edits, be very careful about tools you select and try to avoid black-hat link-building communities. 

Here are some good tools to help you with your niche edits:

1. Serpzilla

Guess what, this is us!  We are very proud of the niche editing opportunities we offer. As a user, you get to completely control where your link is placed, you can check out the page, select your anchor text and evaluate the relevance of the placement before you make your final decision. 

You also get a nice elegant dashboard to manage all your niche edits. Serpzilla is free to use, so you only pay for the niche edits themselves. The prices start as low as 0.01 and we have a huge selection of potential host pages for all budgets. The placement process is automated and it only takes 2 hours on average to have your link go live. You can use comprehensive search filter mechanics to find and save a selection of sites for niche editing that will suit your search request accurately. We offer host websites with a varying domain rating so that you can create a diverse niche edit backlink portfolio.

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3. WeOutreach

It focuses mainly on backlink analysis, locating toxic backlinks and avoiding spammy resources,  but has a good tool if you want to niche edit with sites that have the domain rating of 50 and up. This type of high authority will not be able to provide you with a large selection of websites, and most of such niche edits will have a hefty price tag.   If you are not in a mainstream business domain, it may be difficult to find more than a handful of prospective host sites. 

3. HARO

Not a niche edit resource per se, but great for journalist and mass media outreach. Helps you to build  relationships with writers and mainstream media of all sorts and scales which you can further use for niche editing opportunities. In any case, HARO is one of the most acclaimed link-building tools  in today’s SEO landscape. 

Niche Edits: Best Practices

Now, if you are set on trying niche editing as a SEO tool, here are some do’s and don’ts that will help you do it smoothly, successfully and stay on Google’s good side. 

1. Avoid PBNs

PBNs or private blog networks are toxic SEO tactics that capitalize on expired sites with a high domain authority. They purchase such sites and bloat them up with random backlinks and filler content. Purchasing niche edits from such sites will always end up to your detriment.

2. Don’t consider niche edits as a stand-alone goal of acquiring a backlink

It is possible to multitask when you edit a niche edit. When done right, niche editing also boosts your outreach, drives more traffic to your website and can even be beneficial for your host: updating content of aged pages always scores points with search engines.

3. Evaluate before you act

Check up everything. How relevant is your host page? What’s the best placement for your link? Can you pick the anchor text? Is the page there to stay or does the resource owner have a practice of removing pages often? If possible, check out the metrics for your prospective host page. Be sure to check it for spammy potential as well! If it already have two dozen backlinks to all sorts of resources, it may not be the best choice.

4. Monitor and maintain your niche edits

Gather traffic stats and any metrics you can to check on the performance of your niche edits. This will help you to plan your next steps in your SEO campaign accordingly and make quick corrections if necessary.

5. Diversify

It’s not always worth it to hunt for niche edits with highest authority sites only. A diversified backlink portfolio is much better for your DA rates and traffic and Google looks at it more favorably, if your links come from all walks of the Internet.

Key Takeaways

If done right, niche editing is worthy of taking up space in your SEO strategy. It is especially beneficial if combined with other link building methods and you aim at building partnerships and adding value to your host site with your additional content via a link. 

We at Serpzilla strive to provide you with excellent instruments for automating the menial tasks of niche editing, while giving you total control over where you place your link and how relevant it is to the original source content.