Link builders should look at a website differently than other people.
However, through my years of training new link builders, I found that most struggle with this. If they are new, they have trouble letting go of their "consumer lenses," taking everything at face value and evaluating a site by arbitrary trustworthiness cues.
If it's SEO Consultants trying to do some link building, they are often looking at the architecture and diving deeply into site metrics.
Link builders, on the other hand, should be looking for cues that make a website a good potential partner. They look at metrics like a SEO, but also less tangible cues like engagement and trustworthiness.
I thought I'd share the work I'd already done through years of training and create the definitive guide to qualifying a potential link partner. Hopefully it can be used as both a refresher and a tool for training new hires.
What Am I Talking About Here
I think it's easiest to start with what I'm not talking about. I'm not going through the prospecting process - there are many a guide for that. I'm also not talking about sweet new hacks to scale this through the use of apps, spreadsheets, APIs, etc., though there are some pretty sweet ideas out there and I am all for speeding up the process. While I think efficiency is incredibly important, I think everyone needs to know how to do this stuff manually in order to truly understand how to evaluate a website.
What I am talking about is what to do with a list of prospects once you've found them; the steps to take when you click on the first possible site and need to determine whether or not you will contact them.
Going after every site willy nilly with an equal amount of effort is going to be a serious waste of time and resources. Here's a road map of where I'll be going with this article to help you improve efficiency:
- Link building metrics
- Less tangible metrics
- Bucketing qualified prospects
- Improving efficiency + a VIDEO DEMO
Link Building Metrics
Will this link pass value, and if so, how much? That's the question we're really trying to figure out with link building metrics. And let's be real, there are A LOT of different metrics that could make a data junkie OD. So how do you filter out the noise?
This is one of the main stumbling blocks for new or occasional link builders. Just the other day during our #AskDistilled video series, the very first question I came across was, "What metrics do you look at to validate potential link partners?"
While all this data is well and fun, it won't make you a great link builder if you spend all day analyzing it. Great link builder = being able to get shit done. If you really want to stand out you need to know how to scale, not spend 10 hours getting one link.
So really, there are only a very few metrics I'd say you need to look at to determine if a prospect is worth going after.
This is probably the #1 metric I look at because it will help me determine a prospective site's value for all types of projects. If I'm asking for a guest post or promoting an infographic, the new page this piece of content will be put on won't have metrics like page authority and # of linking root domains. But it will have domain authority.
Yes, there are other nifty metrics like domain MozRank and domain MozTrust, but to get a quick impression of the site's value directly on the SEOmoz toolbar, this is my go to metric. Obviously the higher the better, but if it's higher on a site I don't recognize I'll evaluate it against other less tangible metrics (below) to determine the accuracy of this.
This is one of the best-correlated Moz metrics because SEOmoz's analysis shows that ULD is well correlated with rankings, so you want to look at this.
Ideally, the site will have a good amount of ULDs to both the page in question and domain. You can get a general sense of how popular that page/domain is to external websites, and more ULDs could mean more. If the number is high, upon first look it may be safe to say that the DA and PA metrics are statistically significant, and thus more likely to stay consistent (if in doubt, I'll look at the backlink profile to see if these ULDs are manipulated).
What do I mean by this? If there are only a few ULDs, and 50% of them decide to remove the link, those metrics could drastically change over time.
I glance at this when I'm on the home page, but overall I'll ignore this if promoting something for placement on, say, a blog post, since it will be a new page without any PA value yet. For static pages, I'll be really excited if this is a high number and has a good number of ULDs.
Also, it's important to note that if I am doing outreach for placement on a subdomain – such as blog.DOMAIN.com, NAME.blogspot.com, NAME.wordpress.com, and so forth - I will look at the subdomain's PA, since the DA will be pretty irrelevant for these types of targets.
By this, I mean link attributes like nofollowed vs. followed. I make sure that all of the nofollowed links are highlighted in the browser I'm using, by doing this on my SEOmoz toolbar:
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That way I can spot if all the links on the page are nofollowed. If so, I walk, as the chances of convincing someone to do otherwise are slim. Plus, I think it gets a bit too shady talking about that kind of stuff with potential partners – especially when it is very easy to avoid it otherwise.
As I'm scrolling down the page, I always hover over the links and look at the URL in the bottom left of the browser (clicking through wastes time) to see 1) if the links are to external sites and 2) if so, are they clean URLs or are they redirected or have parameters attached to them (i.e. something that looks like this: https://www.domain.com/landing-page?affid=johndoe&sid=campaign1). Ideally, I'd like clean links in order to get the most out of that site's passable link juice.
If I really want to know, I'll look at the "Page Attributes" tab in the SEOmoz toolbar, but oftentimes I just do a quick visual skim to see how many links are on the page, looking for blog rolls or excessive lists of links on sidebars. The more links, the more any link juice on that page is going to be split among all of them (regardless if they are followed or nofollowed). Thus, I want pages that have less links.
However, a lot of links isn't necessarily a deal breaker, depending on the project goals. What those links say and what they are directing to come into play at that point, which moves us into the less tangible metrics (more below).
Those are pretty much the only hard metrics I look at when qualifying a potential link partner. There are other useful ones, like comparing PageRank vs MozRank to check if the site has been penalized (if PR is a lot lower than mR, this could be a sign of a problem). You can also compare MozRank to MozTrust, to see if the site chases PR (though know why PR isn't a great metric for qualifying a site).
Depending on the circumstances and my gut feeling, I'll start playing around with other metrics if needed, such as viewing the site code for potential iframes (which, when links reside in them, don't pass value), checking the HTTP status code of specific pages, and using OSE to decipher its top pages or analyze its backlinks.
However, like I said, you do not want to waste a ton of time evaluating a site the first time around, only to be ignored when you reach out, or worse, realize you were targeting the completely wrong niche in the first place. Save that type of effort for high value prospects.
Less Tangible Metrics
Will this site owner work with me, and if so, what would be the best-case scenario? Some of the tangible metrics above will help answer this question, but there are other less tangible hints that an epic link builder will learn to pick up on. Here are the ones I find the most important, all of which can really tell you a lot about the site.
This will be the first thing you notice, before you even click through to the site. Get in the habit of looking at URLs and what they tell you.
First, does the domain name tell you what the site is about or is it a brand name? Is it highly optimized? Is it so optimized that it doesn't even make sense? There is a difference between www.lawyers.com and www.injury-lawyers-malpractice-law.com. When dealing with highly optimized sites, be on the lookout for ranking manipulation.
I also look at the rest of the URL to see what else it says about the site. If it has any /index.html’s or /p=?’s, I may be dealing with a website that isn't completely SEO savvy, which could be great for outreach purposes. I also, do a quick check to see if the site is canonicalized. If it isn't, it might again mean the site isn't on the top of its architectural game (though note, some big brands have scary URL structure, so this isn't an end-all-be-all metric).
This is important for sites that produce consistent content, like blogs or publications. If I notice that the most recent post was six months ago, it most likely means the site was neglected and I can cross it off my list. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've tried reaching out to a dead site and heard back with a, "Sure, your content is so good it took me out of my writing slump, thanks!"
Pro Tip: If you notice a lot of linking root domains to that page, save it for a backlink analysis later. Reach out to the sites linking to that page and tell them they are linking to a dead site, but you have another resource they might be interested in linking to instead :)
Again, this is for projects targeting articles and blog posts. Get in the habit of looking for bylines. First, are there any? If so, are they made up of names or generic terms like "staff?" Is it consistently the same name(s)? If yes, then you know whom to contact about editorial content.
Also, if the articles are all hosted on the main page (aka not cut short with a more tag), as you scroll down the page look to see if there are bios. If so, these might very well be contributor pieces. If they are, it is very likely this site will work with you.
These are really important to answering the "what would be the best-case scenario" question. The best-case scenario would be that the website would cover your piece and not only give you a link, but also leverage its community to push your content viral. These types of sites are what I like to call "influencers" and they can really help scale your link building efforts by helping your content essentially generate its own links simply by being put in front of the right eyeballs.
So how do you know if you're looking at an influencer site? Look for clues that show the site has an engaged audience. These include things like:
- Number of comments
- Number of social shares
- Number of RSS feed and newsletter subscribers
- Number of social media followers
People might ask why I say these are intangible. Well, unless you look at those comments or followers, you don't really know if they are real. Was the subscriber list scraped? Does the site owner accept spam comments? So I bucket this in the intangibles because prospecting isn't about sitting around all day analyzing the nitty gritty, but rather seeing the big picture.
Another important part to answering the "will they link to me" question is determining if your company or the content you are pitching is relevant to the content the site hosts. Notice that I don’t look at a site’s content until later. This is because you could come across a site with amazing content, but if it has absolutely no valuable metrics you might not want to target it right away.
Looking at the content does not mean you need to spend a ton of time reading the website. Rather try:
- Reading titles – article titles can tell you not only what the content is about, but the "voice" of the website (are they news headlines or are they bold statements with sometimes vulgar language?).
- Using the search feature – If I'm really unsure or think it's a stretch, I'll do a quick keyword search across the site to see if there is any reference to the topic. If so, this gives me great positioning power when contacting them because it lets them know that I know they cover this type of content.
- About page – If I am still in doubt, I'll take a quick gander at the site's about page to figure out the mission statement and see if my content fits. But really, this is a last resort and if I have to work this hard to make it work, I need to determine if it's worth the effort.
Get in the habit of quickly glancing at navigation and footer links for clues like "contributors," "write for us," or "guest posts." If they have a page dedicated to getting content already, boom, there is my in for contacting them.
Also, while you're busy browsing links, look for any red flag keywords that look like sponsored links with questionable anchor text (loans, Viagra, poker, etc.). These aren't generally desirable, so if it's bad enough I'll walk away.
After looking at all of these metrics, I usually have a pretty good gut feeling of whether or not I should trust this site. If I'm still not sure and the site is of particular high value, I might use an outbound link checker to see if it's linking to any questionable sites. I may also look at its backlink profile to see if the majority of links coming in are from directories or pages titled "Free Link Exchange."
Note, design can be somewhat arbitrary of a spam test because, in my experience, there are a lot of websites out there run by old men just doing it for fun, so they use templates to get some visibility in the online world. So don't always judge a book by its cover.
If you're still stumped, here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Taking a cue from Panda, would I trust giving my credit card information to this site?
- Does this site offer good content? Is it of value to visitors?
- What percentage of its site is taken up by AdSense or external links?
- Does the content look like unique content, or is the site a syndication farm that scrapes articles from around the Internet?
- What types of content/links are on this site? Are there red flag keywords? Are the external links related to the site content?
- Does the content seem suspiciously optimized?
- Is the site transparent? Is there an about or contact section?
Transparency is a huge one for me. When there is no contact information and no about section, it can mean the site owner doesn’t really care about offering good content and connecting with readers, but rather is using this site for SEO or advertising purposes.
I do want to note that a lot of AdSense and external links aren’t necessarily bad. It is only a piece of the puzzle. I think the content and types of external links are more important, but sometimes a lot of AdSense can be an obvious indicator that a site owner is trying to drive traffic to the site in order to make money from click throughs.
Bucketing Qualified Prospects
As you're going through your prospects, you'll start making a long list of sites to contact. How do you prioritize these? If you think you don't need to, you are wrong. Bucketing your prospects is really important so you can determine how long you should spend on trying to convert them and in which order you should reach out. Not all prospects are created equally so you should not be treating them the same.
You don't need to be really formal about this, bucketing them into separate lists or labeling them obsessively. But you definitely can if it helps. I've found that I have a pretty good memory and just know with a few quick sorts in Excel, but if this isn't you find a system of organization that works best for you.
Here are the variables I tend to use for determining buckets:
- DA
- Influencer status
- Potential difficulty of getting a link
- Past relationship?
- First access play?
That's pretty much it. All of the other metrics told me that the site was worth being on the list, but these are the ones needed to organize them. These are the buckets I use and what defines them (I know, ingenious titles):
High Value
Sites with a high DA (anywhere from 65+ depending on the project), extreme influencer power (will help my content go viral), and likely difficult to get a link on. Why the last metric? Because sites that are high enough value are worth the chase, and this metric will help determine how long you should wait before letting go.
Medium Value
Sites with a DA around 50 – 65, has some influencer status (might get a handful of comments and shares), and probably reasonably easy to get a link.
Low Value
DA below 45, barely any influencer status, easy to get a link on – probably has cues like "write for us" on site.
So what do I do with these buckets? I prioritize using the last two metrics from the above list that I didn't mention yet. First access play helps figure out when to contact a prospect, and this is reserved for high value contacts. Why would you give a site with mediocre metrics first access to something? This is oftentimes effective on journalists, who are always hungry to break a story.
The past relationship point also helps determine when you will contact a prospect. I usually give my existing contacts the courtesy of first dibs once a piece goes live not only out of respect, but also because the turnaround time will probably be quick and allow me to start raking in the wins. Plus, these contact attempts will be easiest because you don't need to butter them up, so get these out of the way.
So what order do I do outreach in once I have my prospects in buckets?
Why the back and forth? Because I never do outreach in a linear fashion. You could reach out to all your prospects in a particular bucket only to find out your contact approach was a fail. Link builders need to think on their feet and do some informal A/B testing to figure out what will work, because you can never 100% guarantee what responses will be like for outreach. So my advice would be not to put all your eggs in one basket, but do outreach in chunks and adjust if the approach doesn't work.
Improving Efficiency
This was a long article. I know. But just because it was long does not mean this process needs to take forever – but it will at first. Every new link builder gets caught up qualifying sites, and they will keep doing it until they gain the confidence to breeze through it. This comes with practice, so whether you are new yourself or hiring, please keep this in mind and adjust your expectations accordingly.
Practice of course will improve speed. When looking at a site for all of the above metrics and clues, I take a minute or less. The only time it takes longer is when I am looking for a high value target's contact details. The qualifying process – being able to say "yes" or "no" to adding them to your list – should become second nature to you; so much that you no longer look at websites the same ever again, even as a consumer.
To review, let me give you a quick video of what I look at when I am qualifying a potential prospect, putting all of these metrics into practice.
My advice for becoming a speedier and more efficient link builder in general is:
- Be hyper organized – whether you use a tool like Buzzstream or spreadsheets, you need to stay on top of your game and be detailed so you don't have to keep going back to the site to remember why you put it on your list in the first place. You should be able to put it on your list and not have to go back to the website when you contact them. Here is an example of the information I collect about websites while prospecting. I developed it with my old boss at eLocal.com and it has been the most effective organization I've used so far:
You'll see I have a dropdown list in place to explain the relationship stage. I color code these so when I have a long list and sort them, I can quickly browse. Flag date refers to the next time I want to remember to contact them. Notes is where I like to keep detailed information so I do not have to go back to the site before contacting.
- Have an efficient workflow – I prospect, outreach, repeat in chunks. I rarely do all my prospecting and then all my outreach because you could be targeting a niche that will fail or burn yourself out. Similarly, I don't prospect one site, contact it, prospect, repeat. Reaching out one by one is difficult to scale and speed through, so focus on one task and ship it, rather than waffling back and forth.
After qualifying your prospects, you're ready to craft a pitch and contact the appropriate person for each site. Hopefully this will help qualifying become second nature, allowing you to speed through the process and focus on what really matters – building relationships and getting conversions.
Hi Adria, very interesting post. Gives me lots to think about. I have always just considered how much of a following the website blog had, mostly based on the amount of comments every article gets. Of course, many of my guest posts are made to gain reputation for myself and not necessarily a link to a money site.
I'm curious about your comment, "I'll start playing around with other metrics if needed, such as viewing the site code for potential iframes (which, when links reside in them, don't pass value)." In an article on Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz says that, according to Micheal Martinez, links in iFrames do pass value - www.seroundtable.com/google-iframe-link-14558.html
In a March 2010 interview with Eric Enge, Matt Cutts alluded to a pending change in how Google might handle iFrames (maybe that change has been implemented now) - www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml
This seems to be one of those things that are repeated so many times, they become SEO "facts." I believe if the URL in the iFrame is indexed, the link does pass value. This is hardly my area of expertise. I'd be curious to hear what others have to say about it, though.(I removed the http from the beginning of the links referenced above, incidentally, so that there would be no perception that I was trying to pass some juice along. You can add them back if you wish)
There still is a fair amount of debate. Michael Martinez ran an interesting experiment earlier in the year, which caused many people to proclaim that iFrames do pass value:
https://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php/topic/46890-confirmed-google-passed-value-from-an-iframed-link/
But even he said it's not conclusive:
"I'm not sure people fully understand what I was testing. The test only tries to determine if Google (or Bing) will follow the link in the IFRAME ELEMENT. Google apparently did, and Bing apparently did not. But as a consequence of following the IFRAME ELEMENT's link, Google also followed the link on the iFramed page -- and allowed anchor text from the link on the iFramed page to pass to the destination.
That MIGHT imply that some PageRank flowed down through the IFRAME ELEMENT to the iFramed page but I don't think this test is conclusive enough to show that. The algorithm may cut new pages some slack. This test was designed to be as simple and straight-forward as possible."
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-iframe-link-14558.html (comment section)
Thanks, Daniel, for jumping on this one for me. You took the words out of my mouth. Scott, I did come across that study and considering not including that part in here, but since it isn't very conclusive I always avoid iframes because it's not worth the risk of spending all the time only to get a link that doesn't pass juice. So I prefer to be safer than sorry. Really appreciate you bringing this up!
A checklist, infographic, and video! You really out did yourself on this one Adria!
When prospecting, do you look at social influence as much of a factor?
Ha, I suppose I DID put in an infographic - though if anyone tried to pitch that one too me I'd probably laugh in their face :)
I definitely look at social influence when prospecting, but it doesn't necessarily mean I won't contact them if they don't have any. It will just affect which bucket I put them in and how much effort I put into reaching out to them.
Over complicating an already complicated process. Let's face it, when you are performing a task thousands of times, shaving one task out can save hours if not weeks of work.
Also, here's another tip.. don't look at segmenting users until you have built up the rapport. Often times the PA 65+'s will be the ones most impossible to befriend and keep rapport going on a long-term relationship.
Agree that shaving tasks off can help scale, but it depends what tasks. Prospecting and qualifying is one of the things link builders struggle with most, and it's usually because they don't have the confidence to make the decision of contacting or not. So hopefully, though long, this checklist will help narrow the focus so you can shave those other tasks off your list.
I will have to disrespectfully disagree with the 65+ comment. I don't think DA is necessarily the best indicator of whether a site will be impossible to befriend. There are usually other cues, like a huge brand, ridiculously demanding editorial guidelines, and so forth. And I don't think you shouldn't make the effort to befriend these people, and if anything, when you do you should keep the rapport going - make the decision to do so. This is where organization comes in and can really help out with keeping on top of all your relationships.
Interesting post, but new linkbuilders shouldn't fall for the Domain Authority trap. For one, sites like Tumblr and Wordpress all have high DAs. As we know, linking to a random blog on those sites won't pass juice on the basis of DA.
Secondly, niche markets won't necessarily have pages with high DAs, either. But if you've targeted a site relevant enough to your target audience, your site can get more traffic from a smaller audience.
Linkbuilders need to go beyond the statistics and have the ability to act on their hunches. Domain Authority and # of linking domains can be illuminating, but a DA of 45, in my experience, can be just as successful as a link on a .edu.
Links are no longer just about the SERPs. As long as you're driving traffic to his site, the client won't give a damn about "nofollow" or "dofollow."
I agree, Ravi. DA isn't the only part of the picture, and I shout out the point about subdomains - good call. That could be true that some sites in niche markets might not have high DA, but there are a lot of sites out there. I'd be surprised if you couldn't find a relevant way to get coverage on a ton of different sites, but you are right - link building is at the end of the day only one way to improve conversions. If you can find a way with link building to increase traffic and make those people convert, then you've really succeeded. However, getting coverage on sites that have high traffic can be difficult, sometimes to the point that some businesses can't scale it to see good ROI, so that is where opening up the net and going after lower traffic sights to improve rankings might be more feasible. There's a lot that goes into business decisions like this and pure link building for SERP improvements is just part of the game.
Great post, Adria. I particularly like the mix of technical and marketing qualification criteria - I've spent too long hustling for links only to find out that the site puts their external links through some sort of 302 redirect that doesn't pass SEO value.
I'm curious to know how Google-based prospecting fits into your system - I've always thought "If Google thinks this page is relevant to a particular keyword I'm targeting and ranks the page highly for the keyword, a link on the page may pass value."
To be honest, I only use Google when I turn to the search engines for prospecting. Whoops to playing favorites :) What types of queries I use Google for varies drastically depending on the type of project, but searching for the keyword I'm targeting and looking for who ranks for that to try to get placement on their site is a good one. However, it definitely slows down the prospecting time if my keyword lends itself to commercial competitors, as they aren't going to give me coverage on their site most likely. Have you experienced this roadblock, or do you generally only use this tactic for non-competitive keywords (are there such a thing :)?
Interesting article!
These quality metrics can almost all be automated (put together to get one general figure). This might be interesting because there is quite a lot of work involved when working out the quality of a lot of prospects.
Very true Rick, there's a lot of interesting ways to automate this. However, I would never recommend not ever visiting a site that you reach out to, even if it does take some time. The key is building a relationship, and it's difficult to do that if you miss on those opportunities to connect with someone. So while you can definitely speed up the process, some of the manual shouldn't be taken out because the success rate of your efforts will most likely be low.
Great tips!
I really like how you stress being "hyper organized" and I cannot stress that enough. I've seen people go crazy and not track what they are doing. This makes it too hard to track the effectivness.
Completely agree! And finding an organization system that works for you can be difficult, as I went through many different systems before settling on one, and every time I migrated things over I'd curse myself out for not being detailed enough! It's better to have too much info than not enough, so organization and strong project management skills is essential!
Great post- thanks for giving the details.
No problem, Tejas, hope it helps!
Impressive work adria, I think if we work upon all the mentioned factors over here, No need to ever worry about any update in future. Now a days Link building is not at all treditional activity as we were doing before. 80% of analysis first and then link building on remaining 20% of process.
Hats off Adria. Great work.
Thank you, and yes, completely agree. Link building has changed and I think for the better because we're now looking at it as part of a larger inbound marketing strategy, rather than getting so caught up in the minutia of links and SERP rankings without even thinking about how that is affecting the bottom line.
Great Post Adria.I have been looking for this kind of information.. You have gone in lot of detail.thanks a ton for sharing.
Thank you :)
Great post about this subject, thank you!
Thank you Tommy!
Great post .. :)
Awesome Post Andria .
Thanks for sharing a knowledgable information about link Metrics. From when google launched Penguin, we have to beware form spamming link . Here you have posted a very informative tips alog with example. I like it.
Thanks. :)
Thank you Sam!
Agree with everyone here. Great post. It definitely kept me entertained during this drug out graduation ceremony I'm sitting at ha...
As a specialist I use most of this checklist daily. I did pick up some good pointers from your advice on prospecting. Thanks for your great work here.
Glad to provide the reading material :) Thanks for your kind words.
yes adria . .there are so many factors we need to focus on before taking link! Doamin Authority And Page Authority really are the top important factors to consider in finding link prospect!
Thanks! Though don't forget about the other intangible metrics that can really help you improve your conversion rate :)
thanks adria for replying to let me suggesting this !
Very good post Adria. You have gone in lot of detail. Do you think using Majestic SEO will help in Qualifying a Link Prospect?. Can you recommend some other tools as well.
I do not personally use Majestic on a daily basis because I find I'm comfortable with the routine of simply checking the moz bar when qualifying sites. However, I think tools like Majestic, OSE, and Citation Labs can really help when you're exporting and filtering through data based on hard metrics.
Awesome Post I was searching for this kind of explaination from many days Thanx Adria Saracino
Thanks Rohan!
Its the best effort , you have made to explain the task of obtaining Good Links. Many Webmasters have misconceptions after the Penguin Update that the worth of Link Building is no more and loking for other alternatives to beat the SEO Competition. Having a read at your article clearly says that Good Links are always in and we can judge the better links by the metrics that you have highlighted.
I am sure if taken into consideration the links value , certain metrics are providing , the myth of End of Link Building can be overcome. Getting good links always helps, just the appropriate definition of Good Links should be understood.
Thank you for your kind words. I agree that link building often gets a bad name, but I'd say it's more like relationship building. You're connecting with people to work together in a mutually beneficial way, and sometimes links just happen to be involved. It's a lot like PR, business development, and marketing meshed together, so when people start thinking of it that way, it will be for the better.
I agree, it is building relationship among niche relevant websites and placing links obviously means strongly recommended and trusted resources for the users. I can say a relavant theme link refers to a thumbs up.
So when we will make links with this approach in mind , it will be better rather than getting maximum links to succeed the link back count.
Its an old saying. As you sow, so shall you reap :)
The second most important thing I look at (after I glance over my mozbar) is the likeliness of getting a response. I've wasted SOOOO much time trying to contact people through generic comment boxes, and contact@blablabla emails. Now, I look for a twitter profile, or a guest author page.
You're much more likely to get a response from someone who gives you permission to write them. Inbound, aka, Permission based marketing has a higher ROI. If the blogger knows you're coming (or at least asked for guest authors through their website,) then they are MUCH more likely to give you a positive answer. This is the reason I love BLU.
I completely agree with you. I am always surprised at the number of people who just cold-email sites asking to guest post. There are so many resources out there like BLU that connects writers with sites looking for guest posts, so why WOULDN'T you use this? Definitely speeds up the process. Even using advances queries like TOPIC AND "write for us" will be a better strategy than cold emailing.
Great post - thanks for sharing! You have a shareable template for that spreadsheet you show at the end - that would be helpful and awesome! Thanks for sharing this with the community
Interesting view. I think that this one is a refreshing article. I especially like the paragraph "I think it's easiest to start with what I'm not talking about. I'm not going through the prospecting process - there are many a guide for that. I'm also not talking about sweet new hacks to scale this through the use of apps, spreadsheets, APIs, etc., though there are some pretty sweet ideas out there and I am all for speeding up the process. While I think efficiency is incredibly important, I think everyone needs to know how to do this stuff manually in order to truly understand how to evaluate a website.". Great job there. Thats one of the many reasons why SEOmoz is so popular.
Thank you for your kind words!
Apart from being a great hand-out and guide for link builders the video tutorial was a perfect final of that blog post. A real live example to visualize the quickness for that first site check (which seems to take more time after reading that rather long blog post :-).
Ha, Petra, that's exactly why I added it! I'm known for being a bit "wordy" and I was like "gosh, I'm saying this process is quick and this post is 4000 words long!" So it was intentional :) Glad you liked the addition!
Good Post Adria! I agree with the metrics you have mentioned in the post and I believe they all are important to consider while looking at the prospects especially when you are looking to post your researched content on other’s website (guest writing). One more thing that I strongly consider while publishing my content on 3rd party websites is the reputation/value of the blog/site owner.
I don’t mind writing a guest post for a blog which is owned by a reputable professional in the industry but have a low DA/PA (may be because the domain is relatively new) at the same time I always doubt about writing for a blog that contain good DA/PA but the owner of the blog does not contain much good reputation in the medium.
Overall I really enjoyed reading it!
I completely agree. Another important factor in outreach that I allude to but don't explictly say is taking note of who else that site is linking to. If it's a lot of reputable sources that you want your brand to be associated with, that could mean it's a valuable target to go after (value of association). I completely agree with the site owner's reputation being important, and I think how important depends not only on the type of project but the size of the project. For example, if I was doing outreach for my personal blog, I probably wouldn't guest post on site's unless I know the ROI would be worth it - and being associated with an influential site owner would really make that a valuable site to be contributing to. However, if it's a larger company that has the budget to scale guest posting, that might not be a make-it-or-break-it requirement.
Great article and def. a good read, Adria. Thumbs up for that. I'll use some of the points for linkbuilding workshop in July. :-)
In addition, would you say that a good linkbuilder should be able to produce content on his/her own? I know, that this depends on the job and the project, but for me, it helps, if I'll reach out with stuff, I wrote myself. Really like to hear everybody elses opinion on that. :-) Thanks in advance and cheers from Germany Sven
I think being able produce good content on your own definitely helps, as I always recommend doing outreach as a person, rather than hiding behind a brand. So being able to be transparent and connect your outreach style with the voice in your content is great. However, depending on the type of content that might not be feasible - for example, could everyone create their own infographic or interactive app? Probably not. So most likely when you are in a position to outreach you will be working with someone else's work at one point or another. But I think having the outreach team involved with the creative process is essential to making a piece that will work, as they know best what people's reactions will most likely be.
Also, outside of producing any content, I think being able to - whether or not you actually do - can be REALLY helpful to the outreach process because let's face it, email will be the #1 method most people use to reach out to people. That means you have to be an exquisite writer and really, really good at persuasion - so much that the other person doesn't even know they are being persuaded.
thats a great post, It is always vital to find niche website for effective link building. thanks for sharing the information.
Thank you Rathee!
"Great link builder = being able to get shit done. If you really want to stand out you need to know how to scale, not spend 10 hours getting one link."
So true.
If you can correctly classify a link quickly, you can set aside a specific amount of time and effort to pursue an outreach opportunity. That being said, I'd still throw out non-personalized emails for the lower level (but still high enough quality) links. You could then use BLB or SEO advice to build a quick connection before asking for placement. Just mark those in your spreadsheet/tracking program.
That's an interesting idea, Daniel. I'd love to hear more about how that works for you and what exactly it entails.
This is great stuff - well done! I liked your approach of grouping the contacts first, prioritizing, then reaching out. This seems to be a really efficient way to handle the task at hand.
Thank you! I've played around with a lot of different workflows, but find that outreaching in chunks with qualified buckets is the way to go.
Hi Adria, nice post! I go through this process almost every day! It's good to see some confirmation that I'm going through the right steps.
Ensuring that they have quality backlinks that are relevant (to their website) is really one of the best tips!
Thank you, Charles! Yes relevant backlinks are so important! Sometimes you can't help where your content gets placed (say if it goes viral), but only spending time outreaching to sites that are worth it is key.
I want to say you did a great job on this post Adria
I I am in agreement with you on everything pretty much. I think it's very important to bring up the fact that you must view website with the different hat on ( not talking about white, black or gray) especially when doing link building. Your emphasis on organization is something I try to drill into people I am teaching how to build links. Thank you for this post I'm actually going to use some of what you talk about in a meeting today.
Sincerely,
Thomas von Zickell
Blueprint Marketing
So happy to be of help! Would love to hear how it helps your meeting :)
Hi Adria,
I apologize for not getting back to you until just now. I really have to thank you because what you have laid out in this blog post did a much better job of explaining link building then I could. So much so that after the meeting I reached out to you guys that Distilled and plan on working with you in the next couple months when you guys have time. I also signed up for your new beta software it seems like a great learning tool I'm going to put the interns on it today. I think you guys are headed in a great direction. Thank you so much for all your help.
Sincerely,
Thomas Zickell
Nice post, I think when doing some prospecting on the fly for bloggers Page authority/ Domain authority are good metrics yet I also look at the PR of the page/ site where the posts are, old metric but I still feel it holds value in my eyes.
I agree with the comments about the site been heavy on ads, can be not a wise idea to move for sites like that if your blog post is just going to be surrounded by 20 ads.
Another important point is that you need to check out if the site is currently part of a exclusive blogger network where you can only deal via the blogger network company, I see some bloggers go this way in recent times, so it is important to build a list of your own contacts with prospects in your niches.
That's a really good point, James - about looking to see if the site is part of a blogger network. I remember during interviewing we were looking to see if applicants picked up on that when they came across blogs that were owned by a network. I've found that blogger networks can be either really awesome, or really hard to crack. On the plus side, you have the ability to get placement on a number of sites if you build up a good relationship with one of the owners. However, building up that relationship can be extremely diffcult.
If you watched my Screenr video, you saw that my Search Status bar is alive and working, displaying Alexa and PR :) While I don't always use PR to determine if I'll contact a site, I definitely note it because if a site knows anything about SEO, PR is probably the first (and most likely only) metric they will start referring to. So being able to speak their language can really help outreach.
Adria, thanks! It's very importank to check not only PA but DA too. I'm working same way as you ;)
Hi Adria, fantastic quick look guide before request a link.
I would like to add one more link building metrics, Alexa rank. Some time a new website of raputed brand or person doesn't have good DA, still its worth to get back-links because it will pass good value in future. The blue Alexa bar shows how much traffic the page is getting.
I have one doubt about relevancy. If a page has high PA and DA but not relevant to your content then is it worth to spend time to acquire a link? I have one contrasting example of Wordpress MU. They are getting good ranking because of the links those they are getting back from their users giving credit. Most of those links coming from non-relevant content. Though, they were penalized by Penguin update, but it was the case of exact match anchor text.
Hey Bri, thanks for suggesting Alexa. I do have the Search Status bar installed and will browse at Alexa ranking, but that metic isn't completely reliable as it tends to skew data. But for a ballpark estimate I think it could be an interesting metric to look at, however, traffic might not be a make-it-or-break-it metric for link building, some people might not care depending on the goals.
In terms of relevancy, I think it is extremely important only to cover topics that relate to your brand. It can be a synergistic topic, for example creating a piece of content that talks about the Olympics when you are a business that sells vacation packages (one of which includes sporting event packages). However, I think it's too risky to be actively seeking placement on completely irrelevant sites just to get numbers. So stick with relevancy, as the number of relevant sites you find shouldn't dwindle considering how big the Internet is.
Yes, it's really important that a website should consistently produce high quality contents. In other words, it should be updated always.