a single source, nothing corroborates it

Reverse-engineer whoever is out-linking you

Rather than guessing what earns links now, follow the people whose profiles are growing and read their footprint. Expect the same five shapes to repeat: donation pages, guest posts, private networks, bought placements and sponsored software. Marketplace listings, big nofollow wikis and a competitor's phone number or address are all routes into the sites no backlink tool shows you.

The method

1. 01

   Do not run scholarship link building yourself, but do follow the people who do, because the rest of their link profile is a current map of what Google still rewards.

2. 02

   Expect an aggressive link builder's profile to repeat the same five shapes, so check for donation pages, guest posts, private influencer networks, bought placements and sponsored software before anything exotic.

3. 03

   Filter marketplace listings for sites whose traffic is mostly organic, then read their backlinks as a live record of what is ranking sites right now.

4. 04

   Find the standard heading a big nofollow wiki uses above its outbound links, then run that phrase as a site query with an industry word to list the link builders currently active in your niche.

5. 05

   Judge whether cheap automated links are survivable by the niche you are in rather than by the tactic itself.

What it returned

• 86

  Wikihow labels these blocks Sources and Citations and nofollows them, and SimilarWeb attributes about 86 percent of the site's visits to search, so Glen Allsopp mines it for whose other links are worth copying.

• From one coupons site that announced a scholarship in its opening month and collected .edu links, Glen Allsopp found a cheap donation target and two directories that link to anyone; a second webmaster running the same play had roughly four times the traffic.

• Glen Allsopp lists these as the recurring pattern behind scholarship link builders and says following them teaches more than Google's own webmaster blog.

• One Flippa listing Glen Allsopp examined had grown fast with over half its traffic from search and at least a third of that from the United States, and its links turned out to be almost all comment spam.

Sources

• 13 Advanced Link Building Strategies You (Probably) Haven't Used - Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · Reverse-Analyse Scholarship Link Builders · 2019-08-05
• Custom Prompt Tracking, and 9 Other New Ahrefs Features I Love - Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · 1. Find backlink opportunities and filter competitor rankings by Page Type and Category · 2026-01-13