5 SEO Cheats That Will Give You Results by the End of the Week

5 SEO Cheats That Will Give You Results by the End of the Week

If you’ve ever gone looking for SEO advice, then you’re probably familiar with the basics. By now, you know that a good SEO strategy starts with quality content and strong, relevant links.

If you want to get SEO results fast, than you can’t simply copy what everyone else is doing. You need tactics that go outside the box — what we call “SEO Cheats”.

Here are 5 SEO Cheats to stand out from your competitors and start ranking quickly.

1. To build links, build a connection first.

A properly targeted SEO outreach campaign has the ability to make or break a marketing campaign.

But before we jump into a discussion of the best SEO cheats to get results, let’s get clear on exactly what results we’re trying to achieve. By clearly defining the target, we’ll be able to measure the effectiveness of the campaign (and avoid mindless “busy work”).

There are hundreds of SEO tools designed to automate and scale your efforts. But keep in mind that taking right action once is better than scaling the wrong thing a million times.

The best SEO “cheat” I can offer to new marketers is this: do things that don’t scale.

In other words, do the things that most SEOs won’t do.

This means moving slowly at first, building relationships to earn links.

In terms of outreach, this may mean emailing or calling a potential link partner 4, 5 or even 6 times before making a pitch. Instead of a “cold email campaign”, you’re focusing on a small group of people with whom you want to build lasting relationships.

The first step in getting to know someone is contacting them through the proper email address. I use a tool called Voila Norbert to identify’s someone’s true email address, and ensure that my message doesn’t get lost in their SPAM folder.

2. Blog comment like a pro.

Blog commenting has gotten a bad rap over the years, now carrying a negative connotation and associated with black and gray hat SEO.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I’m not a black hat SEO. But I use commenting as a major revenue builder. Yes, revenue.

Matt Cutts himself has publicly stated that links in blog comments are totally okay. Rather than avoid the practice, he claims to use it frequently.

In the book of SEO cheat codes, natural blog comments are like God Mode. Why? No one is using them.

When done right, blog comments are incredibly effective at promoting a new piece of content and building connections with others in your niche.

Just remember, to be effective, keep it 100% white hat. As soon as blog comments are automated, they do more harm than good.

Here’s how to do blog comments the right way:

First, write a list of all the quality blogs in your niche.

Since you want to comment on quality blog posts, start by finding quality blogs that are similar to your site (or your client’s site). If you need help finding relevant blogs, a simple Google search is a good place to start.

Filter your list by checking Moz Domain Authority, keeping those blogs that are are roughly the same DA as yous, or 20 higher. Any lower DA wouldn’t be worth the link.

Second, get your comment approved.

Keep in mind, almost every high quality website has some kind of comments filter.

This means that in order to get your comment approved, it has to add value and look natural.

Using this strategy takes time, intention, and effort — but it works!

3. Wikipedia broken link building.

Link building is one of the toughest and most controversial areas of SEO today.

However, broken link building is an incredibly powerful SEO cheat (and one that most SEOs don’t use properly).

One of the greatest things about broken link building is that you are not only getting juicy, contextual links, you’re also “fixing” the web by combatting link rot.

For all its benefits, broken link building is much easier said than done. The process of finding and curating broken links takes hours, sometimes days, just to find a short list of opportunities.

However, there is a shortcut – an SEO cheat if you will – to finding thousands of broken links on one of the most authoritative sites on the internet: Wikipedia.

As part of Wikipedia’s built in algorithm, whenever a link is broken, it is automatically appended with the superscript: [deadlink].

The purpose of this annotation is not to let SEOs flood the site in the hopes of finding link opportunities, but rather to notify other editors of the broken link so that they may fix it.

Here’s how to find broken links on Wikipedia:

1. Go to Google
2. Search using site:wikipedia.org “[YOUR KEYWORD]” + “dead link”
3. Copy all the results and then look through them one by one

4. Use Google Adwords for targeted outreach.

One of my favorite SEO cheats for finding hidden keyword opportunities: using the Google Keyword Planner.

Wait, what? Isn’t that for Adwords? Yes, but it’s more than that.

We all know that the Google Adwords Keyword Planner is one of the best keyword research tools on the web, great for finding keywords to include in your content.

However, it’s also an awesome tool for finding outreach opportunities.

Here’s how:

When investing time and energy reaching out to news outlets and bloggers, it’s important to select those that are talking about your exact product or service. In other words, finding the sites that are already talking about your long tail.

To find these “long tail” bloggers, do the following:

1. Plug your main keywords into the Keyword Planner
2. Filter for low search volume keywords (less than or equal to 800)
3. Export this list

Then, one by one, search Google for your long tail keywords and look for topical blogs or news articles.

Now, you have a list of blogs and news outlets who are already talking about your niche. This is an excellent way get hyper-targeted with your outreach campaign, and it tends to get a very high response rate.

5. Get on the phone.

If you’ve been reading closely, you may have noticed that all of these “SEO cheats” have one thing in common.

They work well because most SEOs aren’t doing them.

This last one is no different…

When was the last time you got on the phone and asked for a link? If you’re like 90% or more SEOs, the answer is probably “never”.

I am a firm believer that relationships are and will always be your greatest asset as an SEO. And there’s no better way to build a relationship than getting on the phone.

It’s time we started making real connections (with people, not with SEO tools).

CRM tools like BuzzStream are great to keep track of your relationships, they are not a replacement for the real, person-to-person phone time.

If you really want to level up your SEO game, there is simply no better way to do it than to connect with other influencers in your niche.

Once you start connecting with people, it makes sharing their content, commenting on it, and adding value to their lives a natural side effect.

More often than not, they’ll link to you over and over because they know you well. A link is a natural consequence of the relationship you’ve already built over the phone.

Sound intimidating? Start small.

Next time you read a blog post you like, pick up the phone and call the author, thanking them and sharing your feedback.

Conclusion

Using these SEO cheats will give your current tactics a boost and help you rank quickly in search engines. So, what are you waiting for? Go out and give them a try. They are actually pretty easy to implement.

If 5 feels like too much, just pick one and roll with it. If you take one good SEO tactic away from this post, then you’re already better off than you were before.

What other SEO cheats are you using?