Often when client arrives in need of links, it can be fairly daunting trying to figure out how the heck you’re going to get the link juice you need. Coming up with a structured plan that works is something I’ve been trying to improve over the last year or so, and I’m pretty sure it’s something I’ll be refining for many years to come. At the start of every campaign I’m involved with, I try to sit down and thrash out a load of ideas in an effort to come up with a link-building ‘road map’ to follow for the coming months.
I find having a solid plan useful in two ways. Firstly, for the client, I think it’s really good for them to understand what you are doing with the time they are paying for. In my experience, it really helps to sit down with them and say I’m going to be doing this much of ‘x’ and this much of ‘y’ because of ‘a, b, and c.' Being able to report back on this structured activity will definitely go down well with your clients. This open explanation of your plan creates a good transparent relationship with the client, and hopefully, one that will also stand the test of time.
Secondly, having a clear plan to follow is brilliant for me. Having a clear set of tasks allows me to manage my time much more effectively and ensures that I don’t fall behind on anything. Being freelance, I don’t have a boss to keep check on me so it’s vital that I keep track of what I’m working on and what I need to work on before the month is over. Sure, things are likely to change along the way, but it’s always useful to understand what you’re changing and why.
Here are some of the things I like to think about when coming up with a game plan.
1. Requirements – What Links Do I Need?
The first part of any solid link-building strategy should be trying to establish what links your client needs. Depending on the situation, you might either need to do a full backlink analysis or alternatively spend half-an-hour or so getting a quick ‘feel’ for things. Either way, it’s a step that shouldn’t be skipped.
For me, this falls into two stages:
Checking existing links – Using both Open Site Explorer (OSE) and Majestic SEO, I try to build up a good picture of what links are already coming into the website. How many linking root domains are there? What’s the anchor text balance like? How have they been building links in the past? All of these questions will go some way to determining what type of links I might want to prioritise.
For example, if your new client has a brand new domain with no links, then you will probably want to tread extremely carefully with your link-building. However, you might find out that your new client has gone way overboard with exact match anchor text, which will mean that balancing out the anchor text should become a focus for you.
Checking the competition – This is where things can start to get really interesting. Checking out the competition is a vital step in understanding what you might be going up against. Armed with that information, you can start to get an idea of what you might need to do in order to rank well, and how long it might take you to get there. Having some good insight into your competitor's link profile will also help you to track changes and understand shifts in the SERPS; all great information to be armed with!
I usually start this process off by tracking who’s ranking in the top ten for a variety of my main keywords. Once I’ve got a good idea of who’s hanging around, I’ll then download a full OSE report for the top ten results for each keyword. I can then look at numbers of linking root domains, anchor text spread, and many more things that will help determine what I might need to do. Justin Briggs wrote an amazing post on link analysis that goes into some great detail on the subject; I strongly suggest you read it!
Key Questions:
- How many linking root domains shall I aim for?
- What anchor text am I aiming for?
- How is the competition getting their links?
2. Timescales and Budgets
This is sadly one of the biggest factors that can affect your potential link-building strategy. It’s important to get a good idea of how much budget and time you will have available to you before you start thinking up a load of wonderful ways to build links. There’s no point in dreaming up ways to start promoting your amazing infographics and embeddable content if you don’t have any budget to create anything. That being said, there are always ways to build content and links for any budget (within reason of course!)
If the budget is tight, then it might be worth considering writing some great guides and resources to help establish your client as a trustworthy source of information. So long as you have the time to research and be creative, writing a good piece of link-worthy content shouldn’t have to cost the earth.
Key Questions:
- How much money do I have to spend on content?
- Do I have a budget for high-level directory submissions, press release distribution, etc?
- How much time can I give to this project?
3. Resources
By resources, I mean anything. Anything that you can draw on to help enhance what you’re doing. This is where being sociable, friendly, and a little bit persuasive can really help with your link-building. Do you have great designers you can call on? Do you know some fantastic writers? Does either you or the client have specialist knowledge that could be called on to create some useful resources? The word "resources" doesn’t just have to mean financial resources and number of staff; in my book, it means ANYTHING that could be useful in creating content, spreading the brand, and of course, gaining some juicy links.
Key Questions:
- Who do I know?
- Can the client get involved?
- How creative can we get?!
(Figuring out a plan getting to you? Just don’t end up like Crazy Harry... Photo credit)
4. Content – Post or Host?!
We all know that hosting great content on your website can help establish you as a great source of information, and hopefully start to bring in links naturally. So it’s definitely something you need to think about. But placing content on other websites is also a great way of building links, especially if you’re a new website trying to build a reputation from scratch.
Hosting content on your own site – Personally I see this as a must for any website. If your content and website sucks, then your success is going to be relatively limited. Writing great resources and promoting your own great content will help you build traffic, links, and social activity. However, can the website easily facilitate new content? Is your client willing to promote free content? These are a couple of things that could stand in your way, and working out how to get round them should definitely be planned for.
Posting content on other sites – If you’re working on a new website, then it might be some time until the links start to build up naturally. Going out and placing content on other websites is a fantastic way to build links and reputation. Using services like MyBlogGuest will help you to find some really good websites that are looking for content in your niche.
Key Questions:
- How much content can I/we create?
- Who’s going to be working on the content – me/client/third party?
- Where can I find a list of potential sites to post content on?
5. Specific Tasks
By now, you should be gathering a few pretty decent ideas together of where you might be headed with your link-building campaign. The real skill is turning all of this information into realistic tasks that can fit into the timescales the project allows. I think the key here is being ‘realistic.' Your strategy has to work for the project and give the client as much value as possible, but also not cause you to be overworked and underpaid.
I don’t think it’s very valuable to say ‘we’re going to make some link bait.' It’s far better to come up with specific tasks such as:
- Source a designer
- Gather a list of key industry figures/bloggers
- Release the content via your social network/paid discovery
- Track key metrics of the latest link bait
Going back to the point I made at the beginning, it’s always really useful to have a list of tasks to keep yourself in check and also to help feedback on progress to the client. Knowing what you need to do and when should help keep the wheels rolling. There are plenty of project management tools out there, but I tend to use a simple spreadsheet with a tab for ‘each task area.' Each tab can then contain specific month-by-month details of each task, with a detailed breakdown of the steps along the way:
Spending that little bit of extra time making some detailed plans should help you to work more efficiently and to keep focused throughout.
6. Don’t Fear Change
Whatever your plan includes, try not to worry about changing it along the way if you find that something isn’t working out as well as you might have hoped. It’s often the case that some things work out really well and produce more than what you expected, while other things simply never take off. Try to carry the mantra of ‘fail fast.' If something’s not working out, then tweak, change, and tweak again until you hit that magic balance.
Having a detailed plan will mean that you can track everything you’re doing, so any changes you make will hopefully be well-informed.
As a last note, I thought I’d mention a few of the best resources I’ve read recently (SEOmoz and others) that have definitely helped shape the way I plan and research link building strategies. If you haven’t read these then go and do it now!
- Clockwork Pirate – Free link building EBook from Kelvin Newman
- Guide to Competitive Backlink Analysis – Justin Briggs
- Actionable Link-Building Strategies – Paddy Moogan
- Competitive Backlink Analysis – Jane Copland
- Effective Link Building - Justin Briggs Webinar
About me: I run my own SEO consulting business Go Search Marketing and have worked with a large variety of clients in different industries. I also have the pleasure of running my own ecommerce site The Jewellery Boutique. Feel free to come say hi and pop me any questions on Twitter @jonquinton1.
Nice post Jon. Designing your strategy in advance also helps you to be more efficient and productive. It always reminds me the 7Ps Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
Ah... that could've made a good title! Thanks for commenting :)
Great post! I particularly liked your comment: "Try to carry the mantra of ‘fail fast.' If something’s not working out, then tweak, change, and tweak again until you hit that magic balance." This is something I continually tell the linkbuilders I train. I call it "personal CRO," as I think you constantly have to adapt and change your strategy if you see something is not working. I like "fail fast," too. I might be stealing that mantra...
Also, I wanted to comment on your recommendation to organize your linkbuilding strategy, in which you use Excel. I can't agree more, and am surprised when linkbuilding teams go willy nilly contacting random sites and not documenting what they are doing. I think it is so important to make meaningful connections that you continue to maintain, especially when your efforts result in a successful relationship. It makes linkbuilding down the road so much easier when you have relationships in place and can start your linkbuilding efforts off with a boom. I am a big fan of Excel, but I also use Buzzstream to manage contacts, which is fabulous for teams of linkbuilders. It makes sure that the team isn't contacting the same sites and it also keeps track of changes to your successful links, such as when they are removed. Have you ever explored Buzzstream or a similar CMS? I'd love to hear your thoughts and experience with it.
Hi Adria,
Thanks, really glad you liked it. I think that's really important like you say, because you never really know what's going to work until you try a bunch of stuff out. Every project is always different, so even with all the research; there's nothing like 'just doing it' to see what works.
I have used software like Raven etc to try and organise link building, but always end up pining for Excel. Really need to check out Buzzstream, everyone keeps mentioning it. Thanks again for your comments, really appreciated!
I especially like your point number 6"Don’t Fear Change"
With anything online, you can test faster and fail faster. Make a lot of small bets and when you see some winners try to exploit the winners more and more. At the same time, make more small bets and as you stated:"Don’t Fear Change"!
Thanks a lot for your post!
Exactly! Thanks for commenting!
Good article though. Does anyone has experience with blog posting exchange/sharing platform that can make the job more efficient? Myguestblog is a kind of ok but are there any other platforms out there?
i swear i saw some new fancy platform months ago and now i don't remember what it was...it was in beta and now i've gone braindead...it was fairly expensive, lime green...crap, why don't i bookmark these things?
Were you perhaps thinking of https://contently.com/? It's not lime green, but it is pricey and high quality.
Ring a bell?
i swear i saw some new fancy platform months ago and now i don't remember what it was...it was in beta and now i've gone braindead...it was fairly expensive, lime green...crap, why don't i bookmark these things?
Hi! I've found https://www.blogsynergy.com/ to be pretty good too. To be honest, I tend to mix everything up and use a lot of searching on Google, sometimes that tends to throw up the best opportunities.
Great article Jon, I like your excel layout but I'm also looking for the same thing but in a database/crm model. It seems that's the way to go once you pass a certain number of clients, do you agree?
what about google?
I usually spend an hour or so a day of my time reaching out to bloggers in my industry (or my clients), contacting the, connecting them, and etc, not only for link exchange but just to hi and establish a relationship with them. Once you know them and they know you, then guest posting comes naturally.
In fact I want to advise you to stay away from guest post networks becasue I have noticed many of the same peopel that go to those networks are the ones that also sell sponsored posts on paypepost or payperreview
I recently had a call with Group High, which is another blogger outreach platform. It's definitely something we plan on exploring at Distilled in the future, but if you or anyone else has experience with them I'd love to hear about it.
While it's nothing new, I want to mention I love HARO. It's not specifically a way to exchange guests posts with bloggers, but it's a great way to build relationships with journalists and website owners. I find that pitching your own queries results in more success than answering queries, but even answering queries can be an easy win and an easy link. I would suggest to not go into a lot of detail answering a query in the first email, because it's the worst when you spend all that time crafting a pitch not to hear back.
Yup, Google is one of the best places to look! I also love HARO, such a great website and a good way to find some pretty good opportunities.
Hi Mate, enjoyed the post some good insight for link builders =) just one thing but you use the excel sheet to detail what is going on, I think another idea worth saying is to use link management software such as Buzzstream, also on the prospecting end Ontolo is another great solution worth using.
Hi James, good points about the tools. I've found Raven to be pretty good at managing links and everything else you're doing too. However, I always tend to go back to Excel...maybe I'm old fashioned?!
Hi Jon,
Your post is really helpful for any Beginer. Competitor analysis is the first step to rach the goal. But I want to add some more points :
1.Links must be from different Class C IP.
2. No Drop Domain
3. If you target a particular geo location area , then you must check the TLD.
4. Unique content also important issue.
If you do link building scientifically you must get the maximum link juice.
Hi Jon,
Grt read !! about the online jewellery store, Do you think there is market for jwellery online ?
Hell yeh!
Hi Jon,
Great post. I think a lot of clients, SEOs, etc. don't realize the effort that goes into link building. Especially for a new domain. Link building is a long term process, which, done correctly can definitley show it's value over time.
Congrats on making it to SEOmoz blog!
And many thanks for mentioning MyBlogGuest!
Hi Ann, no worries...congrats on building such a great site :)
Great post. I am refining several of my processes with your easily laid out structure above. Want to hook us up with a link to your Google Doc template in Section 5 so we can build on that? :)
Cheers,
Casey
Very useful post and the links to the video and other sources added a great deal to the overall content. I was not aware of a couple of the methods used until I reviewd the linked material as well. Interesting that majestic SEO and OSE came back with different results on my site - probabley based on the most recent crawl fed into each?
Great post Jon! Breaking it down into an action plan is really helpful for a beginner SEO marketer like myself. I look forward to your next post.
Myblogguest did work well in the past but the quality of sites using the system now has gone down. Do you know of any other sites that provide the same service?
I still find it to be very useful, simply having a good old dig around Google is probably my favorite other method!
Love the article. I learned a ton. What I'm still trying to figure out though is when can I really turn up the heat. I have the budget to go after some really good backlinks. My Site is only 2 months old. I am on the 1st page of google for 2 or the 3 main targeted keywords I need to go after. But desperately want to get up to 1st or 2nd as the keywords in my niche only draw about 22,000 hits monthly. How long before I can really turn up the heat without getting penalized.
great post. Thanks!
Hi there,
Great article...I wrote down some really interresting thing from your article for my own future project. I am always looking for new ways to improve my linkbuilding skills and i think this will help a lot.
Also i wanna thank you for the links you provided they all are a good read.
remco
I just want to say that this post inspired & helped me a lot. I was looking for a very long time to find one article like this, that is going to tell me everything I wanted to know.
If you could tell me some tips about how to create a 'game plan' you would help'd me a lot :-)
Thanks again!
concepts are definitely great but bit outdated in 2014. Still very helpful!
Excellent Article, thanks
thanks......its a great post
It's such a nice post to draft campaign for link building which may help for new or ongoing website.
Great post, Jon!
This awesome lesson is a MUST READ. You've taken the spirit of any link-building strategy. I'm sure a lot of SEOs (me included) are going to come back here to refresh our minds every time we feel blocked about this issue.
Although I use to make an audit to my clients as a previous step to SEO strategy, questioning ourselves about some features as those said on this post help us to become better professionals.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks Sergio! :)
An insighful post and some useful resources. As always, getting the balance between creating compelling content and spending time posting and distributing it is hard; especially when budgets are tight and you don't have time to be too creative.
Well thought out post. I loved the additional articles for a reference as well. Thanks Jon for sharing your insights!
Hey Jonq, thanks for writing such nice & indepth article on brainstorming link building strategy. Those are some good & worthy tips provided by you. In case of link building I somewhat give up because I fear of getting no results after submitting links to directories, press release & others. I know link building is a steady process which one must not called off unless the client moved away. Link building is a process where you don't know whether the link you are submitting with proper anchor text might be the lucky keyword ranking on google. Sometimes people feel it as a tiresome or daunting work & left it in mid-way only.
Hi! I don't think there's ever a reason to give up on link building...it's a long haul and one that needs to be worked on constantly to get the best results. Maybe it's worth chasing some higher value link targets and seeing if they give you better results than the directories and press releases you mentioned?
I'm not sure I agree with your point about not knowing that the link you're getting will be worth it or not. If the site you're looking at seems trustworthy then it should be a good link for you. If you're sharing a page with tons of other links, then perhaps it won't work so well. It really is a case by case situation IMO!
Thanks a lot for commenting, much appreciated!
I always run a link audit on my client's competitors at the beginning of the link building strategy development. It gives me a good idea of the playing field I'm about to enter and how well my client is doing comparatively. It also gives me a good look "under the hood" of that particular industry and helps me discover potential link opportunites for my client.
Spot on, always really good to see what everyone else is up to! A great way to inspire some ideas and find out how much work you might be up against. Thanks for swinging by!
I agree Nick. I like to start out by running open site explorer on the competitor sites that are ranking for the keywords that I'm chasing. I filter the results to "followed" and then review the linking root domains. I download followed linking root domain list for each competitor into a master list, scrub for duplicates and start there.
Thanks for the post.
I've been employing a shotgun approach to links building w/varying degrees of success and I'm never sure how to measure success. If the client has 2K in-bound links and I can get it to 4K is that success? The client may be happy but I'd like to be able to deliver 100K in-bound, non-reciprical links but most of my clients don't have time or the $$$ for me to generate content that creates links.
So, how do you measure a successful link-building campaign? Maybe my expectations are too high.
Thanks again for a very useful post with some excellent strategies I can use now.
Paul
Hi Paul, whilst volume certainly counts I think a lot also depends on what type of links your competitor has. Personally I'd be looking at the anchor text distribution, quality of the links, number of linking root domains etc; trying to spot any opportunities to better them.
I feel your pain on budgeting. However, if you're looking at competing with a site that has such a large volume of links, I'm guessing that it's a pretty high value keyword? Maybe it's best to aim for something slightly less competitive if the budget isn't there?
Thanks for the comment mate!
I tend to focus on quality rather than numbers - not saying that's the best way or the only way, but that's my approach. One high-value link is worth a few hundred low quality/spammy/'penalised by Google' links. Relevancy of the link is also an important factor.
It's kind of similar to social media in that you may have 10,000 followers, but if they're all spammers or people who ignore you then they aren't going to provide as much value as 50 followers who interact and retweet you.
Hi Jenni, yup I'm with you on that. I still think it's worth trying to understand what links are helping your competitors to rank...and sometimes that means trawling through the links to find the really juicy ones. Sometimes though it can be pure volume...but that's not to say their rankings will stick!
Quality is far more important than quantity with about everything in life. I'd always aim for the links with the highest quality possible and start with the ones with the lowest effort :-) This of course takes a lot of trial and error!
Thanks for the detailed explanations of the Who,What,Why,How's of the linkbuilding strategy and it's execution! And I agree to your point that there should be always a transparent relationship between the client and the service provider/SEO person! Many times , I have seen people claiming that they should not tell the strategies to the clients(I don't understand why!).In my opinion we should explain our plans and strategies but in the form of blocks/Parts.. because many times Extra loaded information about the strategy, may lead the client to get confused!
I agree with you here. I think if someone is paying you for your time you have a duty to exlplain what you are doing. Even if the client doesn't want to know all the details it's so important that you have a plan to refer to. Being able to explain what has worked, and what could be improved is vital for a good ongoing working relationship in my opinion. Thanks for the comment!
Also, remember to build a NATURAL link graph, throw some nofollow's in to keep things looking A+
Shouldn't every site be getting natural links anyhow?
Natural linkbuilding can take very long period of time. That's why many webmasters buy links.
The key word is should....very few sites actually do.
Every website should build natural links and natural relationships. Treat link building prospects as real relationships and link building will get much easier.
Hi Mitch, many thanks for the comment. This is definitely a lesson learnt over time and hopefully something that will continue to improve. Well, that's the aim anyway!
Good job!
SEO efforts must be mensurable, at least the most of them!
Otherway, it becomes a magician stuff, just wondering what will happen. And how could you sell a service without knowing what you are going to do precisely?
Client wants income, not faith!
Cheers, glad you liked the post. I think you're right, a proper plan is great for the client but also really helps keep us as SEO's focused on what we're doing...
Yes, I undestand your thoughts.
I always try to think and make that every step or process that we make here at my agency must deliver value to the client.
Otherwise, if we don't think that way, we can become ourselves to just SEO lovers, with great formulas and fantastic strategies, but not helping the client.
Once this brainstorming process you posted gives more potencial quality links, so it's a great thing to do!
=]
I think innovation is the only way to see better visibility online. If you are not making innovation and not getting yourself up to date with the latest changes, you are sure to go into oblivion.
I've been brainstorming link building strategy for 2 new clients this week - I've been asking myself many of your key questions a lot! Good post :)
Thanks! Glad you found it useful :)
Nice post. I read your post on youmoz so congrats for it making it here on the main blog :)
I like to add that timeline of link building is very very imortant. As we know, "Rome wasn't built in a day" and in comeptative analysis, link builders should consider that it may have taken the competitors years to get those links and rankings and wanting to repliace those ranking and link building in short period of time is only recipe to short term sucess not a long term one!
Thanks very much, very pleased to see people have liked reading it! Agree with you here, having that realistic timeline is a great way to keep focused and on track.
Good stuff, Jon. I like your jewellery site as well. We just launched a jewelry site for a client, https://www.parrotmoon.com . They don't feature any British jewelry...yet!
Jay
Cool! We should talk :)
Nice post, sir. It's easy to see a link building goal go awry with no strategy. It's not enough to say "alright, I'm going to build some links" and just go at it. A developed and measurable plan/strategy is essential.
Great post! I definitely need to be better about tracking the links I go for and get for clients and I like how you layed out your spreadsheet for that. thanks!
Wonderful post. Organization is definitely key. I do enjoy reading how and what other SEO's are doing to keep themselves organized and productive.
Congratulations on getting it promoted as well!
Great post! I remember at SearchLove London, somebody mentioned keeping an Excel file open and listing what interactions you've had with potential link partners, they were such as "Tweet at them" and "Comment on Blog". This way you can keep on top of everything quite easily! Thanks, Ryan
Nice post, its so easy to get lost in your link building process. Organization can be so helpful. For both achieving the best results, and scalability. Again, nice post Jon. More link building tips are always appreciated!
@Jonathan Quinton
It's such a nice post to draft campaign for link building which may help for new or ongoing website. I want to add my additional comments & experience with link building which is associated to my eCommerce website.
You have mentioned to check backlinks with OSE and Majestic SEO that's pretty fine. But, I am also using Google webmaster tools to check my status. We can't check backlink value for competitors with Google webmaster tools but more value for our website will be good for us.
Here, I have one big question regarding content distribution. What is limitation and How can I define accurate projection to distribute content on external websites? I want to share my experience for my website.
I have submitted my content in too many article directories. But, I did not get that much benefit which I require. Then, I stop work on it and focus to modify current one. I have take help of few SEOmoz blog post, WBF and check each and every link.
I just realize that, If we will get good position in Google and create external links from bad website so it may create negative impact in ranking. Recovery of that ranking will take too much time. What you think about it?
Gain natural links:: This is really big question for all SEO guys. If we have brand, rock solid content, unique subject then we have wide chance to gain natural links. But, if you have content with repeted subject so work will be crutial.
I am focusing to draft unique content associated to my industry and what I know on specific subject. Guest blogging is best way to get do follow natural links.
I am going to remodify my old link building campaing and start new one for other website. This post wil help me lot to establish good performance compare to old one. I am eager to add one other comment with my experience. That may be positive or negative. Thanks for knowledge sharing!
Hi! Sorry it took me a while to reply! I'm not quite sure what you mean with regards to limitation on content distribution. Personally, I would focus on looking for decent websites relevant to your niche that can post your content, rather than just using loads of article sites.
I would try and stay away from bad sites like you've mentioned. It might be worth using majestic or OSE to check out a site before you chase the link if you're concerned. Or you could just have a browse looking at the other content they are publishing anc check the sidebar and footer etc for signs of bad linking habits.
Behalf of Hiren K Modi:
My limitation is highly concern for projection. In link building, I am focusing to achieve ranking with specific projection. I have checked that, there are many SEO companies which are giving guarantee for top 10 ranking in specific time. In my case, I am not able to go in that direction. How they achieve and calculate projection? That's my main concern.