Your Complete Guide to Creating a Link Roundup

Whether you’re a business owner or marketer, you know the value of traffic to your website. One of the best ways to build traffic and links is through a link roundup. And, if you choose to host your own, you’ll get a piece of curated content to post on your blog. In this guide, I’ll explain what a link round up is, and how to include them in your content strategy to build relationships with other bloggers.

 

What is a Link Roundup?

A link round up is basically a blog posts that features links to other people’s blog posts. Usually, you’ll find them on a weekly or monthly basis, and they are themed around a topic related to the blog that’s hosting it. You can find them in virtually any niche, too.

The idea behind them is to share content with your readers from other sources – which is what professional social media marketers call curating content for our social media channels. Chances are, if you’re blogging, you’re also taking the time to read other people’s blogs. (If you’re not, what’s with that? Read and connect!) This can help you find content from other sources your audience would enjoy.

 

Finding the Right Link Roundup to Participate In

So, you’re ready to participate in a link roundup, but where? When? How often? Well, obviously, you want to participate often, and consistently, but you don’t need to pimp out every single blog post you publish. Save it for the really good ones, the ones you’ve put a lot of effort into, and the ones you want some extra help promoting.

Now, turn to Google and start searching:

• Niche + link roundup
• Niche + best of roundup
• Niche + link up
• Niche + link love
• Niche + linky love

You can find a decent number of places to start with these phrases, but there are also other variants to try, like “best of” “Wednesday link up” (where you can sub any day of the week) and so on. Add the “intitle:” search operator and Google will only search for the words in the title, making it even easier to find the linkups you’re looking for.

For instance, if you were looking for recipe round ups, you’d find this resource, with a full list of link ups that are hosted every day of the week. The problem with some of them, however, is they may no longer be active, so you’ll have to do a bit more digging to make sure it’s still active.

Just click on the link and check to see the most recent post – usually you’ll be linked to the host blog, where you can see an archive of the link up posts. If there’s a recent date, then it’s a good sign it’s still active.

To make things a little easier for you, here’s a list of marketing related link round ups to check out.

• SpeedLink Weekly at iBlogZone
• Weekly Roundup at UpCity
• Tips Tuesday at BlogAid
• Roadside Roundup at Roadside Dental Marketing – this one is monthly, and January’s hasn’t been published yet.
• Inbound Ideas @ Northcutt – also a monthly roundup

Though the list is small, as of the time of this writing in January 2017, these are still active. Several others exist, but haven’t been updated since September 2016 or earlier.

 

Getting Featured in Roundups

There’s no secret magic formula for getting featured in a link round up. It helps to have a relationship with the host blogger, but if you don’t, that’s not an excuse to give up. You’ll of course, first need absolutely stellar content. If it’s just like the same old stuff that’s out there, or doesn’t provide anything of value, you can’t expect anyone to really mention it.

When you network with other bloggers, it’s critical to establish real relationships with them. One of the most effective ways to stay off their radar is to approach them for the first time and ask them if they’d mind mentioning your posts.

Some bloggers put together their own roundups of what they find interesting, so to increase your chances of getting featured, always make sure you’re putting your best foot forward, and working on your own to promote your work. People have to see it before it gets included, after all.

If you come across a roundup where it’s possible to add the link yourself, you can always do that. You’ll at least get the backlink to your website, if nothing else.

Do you want to pitch a blogger to include your work in their round up? Here’s a sample script you can adjust to your needs and use. Shoot the email over a week or so before the next roundup goes live.

Hi [Name of Blog Owner],

My name is [your name] and I’m a blogger at [your site/domain name.]

I was looking for some link round ups and I found yours. I was hoping I could submit some articles for your consideration. I’ve listed them below, broken down by category, with a full title and description so you can include any of them that you think will be a good fit for next week’s round up.

Only include this next part if it’s true…Because if you’re not actually going to write one of those posts and feature them, that’s not a nice thing to say. You want to build a rapport, and not following through on your words is a good way not to do that.

I’m going to be writing a post featuring all the blogs that host links ups, so I’d love to feature you, as well.

Thanks for your consideration. Have a great day!

List of articles with title, description, and link to post.

A word of advice, though – lurk on the blog for a while, reading various posts and leaving thoughtful comments before sending your pitch. You’ll likely have a better success rate that way.

 

Publishing Your Own Link Roundups

If you want to build more traffic to your website, consider publishing your own link roundup. If you’re generously mentioning other blogs in yours, it can pay off greatly. It may not make sense to link out to other blogs and expect it to bring traffic back to your website, but it can, and often does.

There’s a good chance the bloggers you link out to will stop by your post and leave a comment to thank you. Then, they’ll likely share it with their own audience because it helps them when they can show they were featured elsewhere. When they do, you get traffic and exposure.

You’ll get on these bloggers radars – they’ll know who you are, which translates to building relationships and networking. Plus, they may start including your blog posts in their own roundups – bringing you even more traffic and exposure – and an entirely new audience.

Your readers will get valuable content, and because you’re publishing a roundup, it’s one less blog topic you’ll have to worry about, whether it’s for the week, or for the month.

In the beginning, until your link roundup starts gaining traction and people know to look for it, you’ll likely have to do everything manually so there’s a decent amount of content for the post.

Use content curation tools to help you find link-worthy content:

• It: The free account limits you to curating content for a single topic with two keywords, and up to 10 scoops per day. Then you can share your scoops to your social media accounts. Managing your own scoops makes it easy for you to promote your own content and build your expertise in a niche. But, beyond this aspect, you can also find content from other scoopers to share in a roundup on or social media. The paid plan begins at $11/month (when paid annually) and allows you to curate content for up to five topic pages, with five keyword groups per topic page, and up to five social accounts with unlimited scoops per day.
• Feedly: With Feedly, you can subscribe to multiple RSS feeds, and categorize them however you want. Then, you can read through various blog posts from a single location, and decide if you want to share it to your social media channels or keep it for your roundup post. The pro version of Feedly allows it to integrate with automation services like Buffer and Zapier, and costs $5 and month, but you can make it work with the completely free version, too.,
• Pocket: This is like a digital filing cabinet for anything you see online that you want to save for later. You can place articles, videos, whatever you want in your “pocket.” You can save directly from your browser, or using apps like Flipboard and Twitter. It’s completely free, and great for beginners who are just getting started with content curation. When you’re ready to write your round up post, you can go back to everything you saved over the course of the week to decide what you want to include the most.
• ContentGems: The free version of this platform allows you to monitor two interests, along with a single Twitter account, 20 custom RSS source,, and gives you daily content suggestions. Paid plans start at $9/month, and include up to 10 interests, two twitter accounts, 100 custom RSS sources, real-time content suggestions, automated RSS feeds, and share to RSS feed. The platform, whether you’re on a free or paid plan, monitors more than 200,000 news sources and makes it easy to share your own commentary, should you decide to share the content on your social media networks, or use it with automation tools like Buffer and Hootsuite.

After you’ve gained some ground, you can choose to continue doing it manually, or you can turn to any of these tools to make it easier for you:

• SimplyLinked: Create a free account. Then create a linky and easily manage your participants. Copy and paste some code to insert the widget into your blog post, and everything is integrated without new windows, or requiring people to leave your site to add their links to your link up.
• LinkyTools: Create a free account. Create a linky. Put the linky on your blog. Others can add their links to it, gradually creating a roundup blog post for you.
• Linky: Similar to LinkyTools, you create a free account, then create your linky. From there, you’ll insert the code into your blog post. Users will be able to add their own submissions.

Of course, you don’t have to do a blog post round up – you could do your own variation of round up with your favorite tweets, Facebook posts, pins, or Instagram photos or videos. Or you could do a round up of each – curating content for each, and filling your editorial calendar with a number of posts for the month so it becomes less to worry about.

 

Great for Traffic, SEO, and Relationship Building

Whether you host your own link round up or not, submitting your content to roundups is a wonderful way to boost your traffic, get backlinks to help with SEO, and build relationships with other bloggers in your niche.

Have you ever submitted your content to a link round up? Have you ever hosted your own? Any tips to share with my audience? Throw ’em at me below.

Photo credit: iStock