Link building campaigns shouldn't have a start-and-stop date — they should be ongoing, continuing to earn you links over time. In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, please warmly welcome our guest host Paddy Moogan as he shares strategies to achieve sustainable link building, the kind that makes your content efforts lucrative far beyond your initial campaigns for them.
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Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans. Welcome to Whiteboard Friday. I'm not Rand. I'm Paddy Moogan. I'm the cofounder of Aira. We're an agency in the UK, focusing on SEO, link building, and content marketing. You may have seen me write on the Moz Blog before, usually about link building. You may have read my link building book. If you have, thank you. Today, I'm going to talk about link building again. It's a topic I love, and I want to share some ideas around what I'm calling "sustainable link building."
Problems
Now, there are a few problems with link building that make it quite risky, and I want to talk about some problems first before giving you some potential solutions that help make your link building less risky. So a few problems first:
I. Content-driven link building is risky.
The problem with content-driven link building is that you're producing some content and you don't really know if it's going to work or not. It's quite risky, and you don't actually know for sure that you're going to get links.
II. A great content idea may not be a great content idea that gets links.
There's a massive difference between a great idea for content and a great idea that will get links. Knowing that difference is really, really important. So we're going to talk a little bit about how we can work that out.
III. It's a big investment of time and budget.
Producing content, particularly visual content, doing design and development takes time. It can take freelancers. It can take designers and developers. So it's a big investment of time and budget. If you're going to put time and budget into a marketing campaign, you want to know it's probably going to work and not be too risky.
IV. Think of link building as campaign-led: it starts & stops.
So you do a link building campaign, and then you stop and start a new one. I want to get away from that idea. I want to talk about the idea of treating link building as the ongoing activity and not treating it as a campaign that has a start date and a finish date and you forget about it and move on to the next one. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that as well.
Solutions
So those are some of the problems that we've got with content-driven link-building. I want to talk about some solutions of how to offset the risk of content-driven link building and how to increase the chances that you're actually going to get links and your campaign isn't going to fail and not work out for you.
I. Don't tie content to specific dates or events
So the first one, now, when you coming up with content ideas, it's really easy to tie content ideas into events or days of the year. If there are things going on in your client's industry that are quite important, current festivals and things like that, it's a great way of hooking a piece of content into an event. Now, the problem with that is if you produce a piece of content around a certain date and then that date passes and the content hasn't worked, then you're kind of stuck with a piece of content that is no longer relevant.
So an example here of what we've done at Aira, there's a client where they launch a piece of content around the Internet of Things Day. It turns out there's a day celebrating the Internet of Things, which is actually April 9th this year. Now, we produced a piece of content for them around the Internet of Things and its growth in the world and the impact it's having on the world. But importantly, we didn't tie it exactly to that date. So the piece itself didn't mention the date, but we launched it around that time and that outreach talked about Internet of Things Day. So the outreach focused on the date and the event, but the content piece itself didn't. What that meant was, after July 9th, we could still promote that piece of content because it was still relevant. It wasn't tied in with that exact date.
So it means that we're not gambling on a specific event or a specific date. If we get to July 9th and we've got no links, it obviously matters, but we can keep going. We can keep pushing that piece of content. So, by all means, produce content tied into dates and events, but try not to include that too much in the content piece itself and tie yourself to it.
II. Look for datasets which give you multiple angles for outreach
Number two, lots of content ideas can lead from data. So you can get a dataset and produce content ideas off the back of the data, but produce angles and stories using data. Now, that can be quite risky because you don't always know if data is going to give you a story or an angle until you've gone into it. So something we try and do at Aira when trying to produce content around data is from actually different angles you can use from that data.
So, for example:
- Locations. Can you pitch a piece of content into different locations throughout the US or the UK so you can go after the local newspapers, local magazines for different areas of the country using different data points?
- Demographics. Can you target different demographics? Can you target females, males, young people, old people? Can you slice the data in different ways to approach different demographics, which will give you multiple ways of actually outreaching that content?
- Years. Is it updated every year? So it's 2018 at the moment. Is there a piece of data that will be updated in 2019? If there is and it's like a recurring annual thing where the data is updated, you can redo the content next year. So you can launch a piece of content now. When the data gets updated next year, plug the new data into it and relaunch it. So you're not having to rebuild a piece of a content every single time. You can use old content and then update the data afterwards.
III. Build up a bank of link-worthy content
Number three, now this is something which is working really, really well for us at the moment, something I wanted to share with you. This comes back to the idea of not treating link building as a start and stop campaign. You need to build up a bank of link-worthy content on your client websites or on your own websites. Try and build up content that's link worthy and not just have content as a one-off piece of work. What you can do with that is outreach over and over and over again.
We tend to think of the content process as something like this. You come up with your ideas. You do the design, then you do the outreach, and then you stop. In reality, what you should be doing is actually going back to the start and redoing this over and over again for the same piece of content.
What you end up with is multiple pieces of content on your client's website that are all getting links consistently. You're not just focusing on one, then moving past it, and then working on the next one. You can have this nice big bank of content there getting links for you all the time, rather than forgetting about it and moving on to the next one.
IV. Learn what content formats work for you
Number four, again, this is something that's worked really well for us recently. Because we're an agency, we work with lots of different clients, different industries and produce lots and lots of content, what we've done recently is try to work out what content formats are working the best for us. Which formats get the best results for our clients? The way we did this was a very, very simple chart showing how easy something was versus how hard it was, and then wherever it was a fail in terms of the links and the coverage, or wherever it was a really big win in terms of links and coverage and traffic for the client.
Now, what you may find when you do this is certain content formats fit within this grid. So, for example, you may find that doing data viz is actually really, really hard, but it gets you lots and lots of links, whereas you might find that producing maps and visuals around that kind of data is actually really hard but isn't very successful.
Identifying these content formats and knowing what works and doesn't work can then feed into your future content campaign. So when you're working for a client, you can confidently say, "Well, actually, we know that interactives aren't too difficult for us to build because we've got a good dev team, and they really likely to get links because we've done loads of them before and actually seen lots of successes from them." Whereas if you come up with an idea for a map that you know is actually really, really hard to do and actually might lead to a big fail, then that's not going to be so good, but you can say to a client, "Look, from our experience, we can see maps don't work very well. So let's try and do something else."
That's it in terms of tips and solutions for trying to make your link building more sustainable. I'd love to hear your comments and your feedback below. So if you've got any questions, anything you're not sure about, let me know. If you see it's working for your clients or not working, I'd love to hear that as well. Thank you.
"Don't tie content to specific dates or events" - a big sub-point of this is to leave dates (days, months, years) out of URLs! Keeping URLs "evergreen" allows you to use the same page w/ updated content at any point in the future. For example, a seasonal sale, an annual report, etc.
Benefits being 1. building page authority, 2. preventing duplicate/competing pages, and 3. avoiding unnecessary redirects.
Great video, Paddy!
Hi Zack!
I agree with what you've said about keeping url's evergreen. I
also want to add that cleaner, shorter url's are better for SEO, and their average CTR is higher compared to their long-winded counterparts.
So it's a win, win, win, win... :)
That's a great point Zack and yes, I totally agree :)
Great tip! I cannot believe the number of sites that seem to use the default Wordpress style of URLs with dates in them. Not to mention, but excluding the category from the url, you've missed another pit of potential SEO goodness
A good point well made. Thank you, Zack (and completely agree)
I like your fourth point Paddy - learn what content formats work for you. I think there would also be tremendous value in mapping the forms of content promotion that produce the best results for the least amount of effort and expense.
We have been working on this for some time, but it is really complicated for two reasons. first it takes a lot of time, as it says in the post, and then a high budget.
Although you can also get good links with some time and researching. But this is a big problem for small companies like us with fewer resources and it is difficult to keep up with the large number of backlinks. But we always fight to make it possible.
Thank you Paddy
Definitely agree. We actually had to focus on bigger clients recently because we found that too many small businesses either didn't understand search or didn't have the budget to actually move rankings.
We gave up trying to use backlinking because of the two reasons you told. I think is more productive to work on contents and on page seo.
It is hard when you have less budget than your competitors, but that doesn't always mean that they will spend budget in the right way. I've seen lots of big companies spend huge amounts on SEO but without the right strategy or the right execution.
If you're a smaller business, sustainable link building is even more important which is why I talk about a few techniques where you can generate links over time and not have to reinvent content constantly. The idea that you have to produce campaign after campaign to get links is wrong and something that smaller businesses shouldn't rely upon.
Exactly, there are companies with very high budgets but they do not have a good strategy, in this case we with the lowest budget, we have a strategy with better positioning than some of these.
We work the content and seo above everything, but in the end it's all like a puzzle, everything helps; customer service, linkbuilding, social networks ...
Thank Paddy, Luis and Aaron!!
Agree Jonathan! Some large companies can easily surpass the smaller ones in terms of quantity of good content, simply because their budget allow them to hire more writers than the smaller companies. However, being smart and using every single edge we can to optimize the content impact is hard to do for every company, since you need high qualified professionals. If you can do it at your small company, you will easily match or even surpass what some big companies can do in this aspect.
Well if you ask me I think you shouldn't depend only on getting links by luck. You can make great articles that are technical, depending on the nice and then link to your money keywords from them. Then some people may link to these technical articles and it all builds up. Or you can do info-graphics or other useful stuff that people would link to as a resource. But then again its all about luck and praying that other people link to you. Best thing is to just build great content, and do outreach and get links that way. Because if you provide value lots of people are going to share and accept your blog posts. Also competition research is crucial when doing SEO and especially local SEO. Let me know what you guys think about that? Great post Paddy!
I think that looking at what competitors are doing is important, but I wouldn't base my strategy around them 100%. It has to be a balance between understanding your competitors enough to know what you need to do to win, and playing to your own strengths.
Agreed, you can do more, but as Paddy says, it takes resources. You could do outreach and info-graphics all day long.
In terms of checking your competition, I usually don't care too much.
Hi Paddy,
Nice Whiteboard Friday, thank you for the good advice on making this a process which can become part of your regular workflow.
Do you have any advice on what would make the content more link-able?
Is it the content subject or a type of technique / approach your need to search for?
Hi Steven,
I should really write a blog post about that aspect because a few people have asked about it :)
In terms of making content more linkable, there are plenty of resource out there to help with this, but I tend to point people towards this slide deck by Mark Johnstone who is an ex-colleague of mine. It talks about the aspects of a good content idea in a clear way and may be useful.
Cheers.
Paddy
Building Back-links has been a great challenge for me in recent times. "A great content idea may not be a great content idea that gets links", I have never thought of it this way. Though, I am still trying to figure out what exactly is a great content idea that actually gets links.
Thank you for the tips though, Will be trying them out for sure.
That's the challenge! I sometimes feel like coming up with a link-worthy content idea is harder than the outreach itself. But a good content idea is one that makes the outreach easier, so it's all a balance really. A great content idea that gets links can have lots of different aspects such as provoking an emotion, resonating with your target audience and showing something that hasn't been shown in the same way before. Sometimes though, something will work and you have no idea why :)
Thanks Paddy for such great article with such great info. Companies like us have been struggling with quality backlinks and google is very strict with paid links and still all of my competitors who are ranking in top 5 on more than 100 keywords have more than 80% paid links. How can we handle this situation ? Please guide. We are Q2 Serves Infotech. Thanks
Thanks for the comment. Unfortunately, paid links are still very effective when done correctly. However, they are still quite easy to spot for the majority of people who use them, so I wouldn't recommend the approach for most people. In terms of how to handle the situation, you could use the same approach but I probably wouldn't advise it because of the risks involved if you get caught. If you have a legitimate business (and not a throwaway website) then it's definitely not worth the risk. My view is that you need to play the long game and invest in doing link building the right way and using techniques which your competitors may not be doing and really focusing on making your website link worthy.
This is hard and takes time, but given the choice, I'd choose this route over risking my business and copying competitors!
Thank you for writing such an amazing article.
But I believe that those strategies you shared are for those people who're already getting traffic and have worth in market (even a little).
I want to know that what do you suggest for people who started blog recently and they want organic link building rather then marketing their products/projects/blogs by themselves.
For example, I am good at writing content and I love spending more time on it.! But I Suck at link building, sometime I can't figure out the strategy for link building. I don't want tons of links pointing to my blog and even the one I think are of quality are mostly useless and doesn't help me in ranking.
What should I do? I usually go for 1500 to 2000 words articles with proper images an ON-Page SEO. Yet I am failed to get organic Links.
Thanks for the comment and glad that you liked the article.
I don't think I'd fully agree that the techniques I've mentioned are not useful for new sites. I can see how they'd be a bit harder because you need a bit of momentum to get going, but we've used these ideas ourselves on new sites and they can still work well. They are certainly more effective if you have some existing authority and an audience, but you can still use them if you don't have these.
Regarding what you can do on link building and writing content - this sounds like it comes down to one of my points around the difference between a good content idea and a good content idea that gets links. You may well be writing good content and 1500+ words per article is plenty, but they may not have an angle for link building. I'd suggest a couple of things when writing your next content piece:
1 - Think about the angle of the content ask yourself why someone would link to it - go and find at least five websites that you think would link to it.
2 - Ask yourself how your content is different to what has already been produced by others.
3 - Check to see if anyone else has done similar content before and see if anyone has linked to it
I hope that helps!
This is a great article on what to do to attract links. But honestly, my problem is WHERE to place content for the sake of links.
Naturally, I can do it on my own websites, which like everyone else is getting more intense competition every year. That competition is cutting into my potential for attracting links.
Outside of my sites, I have seen many sites either decline or come and go, and those links either diminish in value or vanish altogether. It also seems as if external websites with backlink value are getting more stingy about offering them.
Sorry to be a downer, but like other small operations, I'm having a tough time getting enough value from the effort. I welcome any therapy on this issue.
Hi Scott,
In terms of where to place the content, we try and find the intersection between a few things:
- Websites where our target customers read - this helps increase the chances that we're getting in front of people who may actually be interested in our client's products
- Broader newspaper/magazine websites which have good authority and high traffic levels
- Niche websites that are specific to our content ideas
I guess it comes down to not thinking about doing this for the sake of links. The content you create should add value beyond this. Such as attracting traffic from search or helping establish you as an expert in your field or building brand awareness for a new audience. The links are of course important, but thinking about these elements too can help you find the right kinds of websites to place your content on.
I hope that helps!
Paddy
Incredible Post,
All these tips help a lot to understand how to improve the performance of the Backlinks.
Excellent contribution to the community.
Thanks.
I believe that the success of a strategy is to combine that generation of stable quality content and then also get traffic for it through promotion in social networks, which increase interaction and also in other websites, which in turn generates links. In other words, the investment must be double: both in the quality content and in that this content is promoted and has "friendly" seo links. Only with this is sufficient momentum achieved
Hey Paddy.
Thank you for this Whiteboard Friday. I didn't watch the video but I read the transcript (it's faster like that and I like to read).
And I learned a lot, thanks!
I especially like the idea of the building up a reserve of several high-quality, link-worthy posts on a website.
Because over time, these posts become a huge reservoir (pun intended) of link equity that can then be strategically flown to newer posts that need it.
And of course:
More links= higher DA=More total rankings
This is a two-pronged assault at the SERP's that no algorithm can ignore.
Thanks again Paddy!
Thanks Nikola!
Añadir la fecha del año actual a publicaciones hace ganar posiciones en las búsquedas si bien nos obliga a la actualización y publicación periódica de contenidos
I think you had some really great advice and covered some key points in this video, thanks for that. My only question is really about your fourth point. You said that it helped to know what content is easy/hard to make and whether it has worked or failed. Now, considering you work with different clients do you change this depending on the client or do you just use the same format every time? E.g we've created maps before with one client so we won't use them with any of our clients. Could it not also be that some content pieces work better for some clients than others. As an example: perhaps one client would get success from long-form blog posts whereas another would see more success from an interactive piece? Wouldn't mind your thoughts on this. Thanks!
Thanks for the comment Catie. You're absolutely right in that it can change depending on the client and their industry, so that does need to be taken into account. At the same time, there are going to be some elements of a content piece that span multiple clients and these are the ones that you need to use to assess what's working vs. not working.
For example, I think the format actually can span multiple industries. It doesn't of course mean that a particular format will work in every industry, but that's fine. All you're trying to do here is find patterns across the work you do. I don't think it's possible to find elements of content that are guaranteed to work for all industries - unfortunately!
Really great tips to help us to squeeze all the effort we put in our posts!
Thanks Paddy
Thanks Toni!
Great post, I'm also in love with the link building. In such a saturated internet, inbound marketing is the present and future.
Thank you!
Hay también varias formar de generar un contenido relevante para el usuario, o recompensable. Compartir el artículo en RRSS para desbloquear trucos o consejos, ofrecer descuentos por compartir... Da mucho más resultado que cualquier contenido poco/medio relevante.
Excellent post.....explained in great way. Link building and content writing is very important in seo and both information were well explained.
Hi I am trying to rank my website to higher in google.
It has been now nearly 2 years trying to build links and and enhance seo , and still no results.
A great way to explain it, the links were asking for weight in the algorithm of Google and also gave many problems with excess anchor text, but the reality is that they still represent a fundamental element of SEO work and this is a good way to raise it
congratulations for the post
Well, I expected a little more... but this was thought provoking nevertheless
Great article Paddy. Organic ranking is absolutely fundamental to the success of any website. But appearing at the top of any search engine is not a piece of cake. Thus you need to implement sustainable marketing strategies such as link building and continuously update your techniques in this rapidly changing industry. Thanks for the post.
Link building can be a very chancy strategy in 2018, and one that I would avoid until you have (at least) first allocated with the predictable quality issues on your website. If your business or website content is not enticing organic links or social shares you may have a big problem on your hands, and unnatural links will not benefit you in the long run.
Anyway, thanks for an amazing post Paddy!!
Regards,
Thanks Zohaib. I agree that you should spend time focusing on the quality aspects of your site and that this plays a part in your website being link worthy. I'm not sure I'd avoid link building 100% until these issues are correct, but I agree that both need to be taken seriously at the same time, otherwise link building won't be as effective as it could be.
The trust flow I think is more important today than your domain score. It seems to me that there is a direct correlation between follow / no follow ration and trust score.
Awesome article, Thanks Paddy!
Hi,link building has become very crucial part in seo.iam a seo analyst and got learning new things from your article
Hello Paddy Moogan, thanks for the tips and congratulations for the excellent post!
Here at our agency we periodically re-optimize our content, work on-page SEO, off-page SEO and copywriting, this has given us a lot of results.
Great video! One of the best recent ones I've seen on link building.
Those 4 tips are pure fire!
maybe you need a part two, very good article. Thanks!
Link building is one of the most important things to be aware of when we talk about SEO. In fact, link building it's a culmination of several different skills: you need to master your content, your sales, some programming, even psychology and a good marketing if you want other people to link or refer to your site.
In my opinion, If we want more search engine traffic, link building is a must.
Thank you for sharing this amazing information. To learn more about this topics is what we need if we want to get a good score to position our website without paying anything.
Thanks again
:)
Good post. BTW, press releases are still a good option. We were shocked to see how no-follow links still affect rankings. Also don't forget about social media posts.
Link building is one of my favorite things to do. Relevant links of course.
I have searched out many relevant links for my clients.
Excellent content so as not to confuse an element with specific events. They are the best techniques for links. I think this is a great idea. PD: sorry my bad English my native language is Spanish
Great video, Paddy! I like your method of assessing how worthy of investment the various content types are. This will help to give the commitment and focus to what works, instead of skimming over many different content types and ideas that may or may not provide real benefit.
I'll defintely be checking out your articles here on Moz for some more insight on link building strategy.
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uma característica é um bom trabalho, assim igual a este. com simplicidade e sabedoria. do jeito simples que todos entendem. tudo o que faz se torna uma arte. muito obrigado por me fornecer este aprendizado. e meus parabéns pelos seus artigos e pelos seus ensinamentos.
Great post Paddy !!
It was very helpful to me. I'm sure I'll improve on my projects from now on with your advice!
Great article, thanks. I've launched my personal LEGO inspired blog recently and I'm in the process of creating content across my various channels with a view to this exact thing. Will definitely be digesting as much of this as I can in hopes it gives me the link boost I'm after. It's a really great community to be in, and amazes me how much people share with each other!
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I have tried almost everything talked about in this post on my Blog but I am still not seeing any considerable improvement. Is there anything more to be done?
Thanks for the tips, Paddy! Really useful as always.
To add to your final point about knowing which content formats work for you, for us here at Impression, we see value in applying that information to help you to mitigate risk. By that, I mean we like to use a layered approach to our link campaigns, where rather than putting all our eggs in one campaign basket, we run multiple campaigns at once, where those on the lower level are typically much easier and tend to get a decent amount of links, and at the higher level are those campaigns which require more work and are in essence more risky because we are investing a lot prior to the outreach.
I think, as link building an PR become ever more synonymous, we're actually seeing clients' expectations changing, too. For us, that's something we manage through client comms but the bottom line is that clients are no longer satisfied with just how many links you get, but they want to see where those links come from - and in some cases, they don't value the links as much as they do the placement. In this way, their goals are increasingly 'traditional PR' in style, which means even as link builders, we have to be willing to try innovative and different approaches, as well as those things which we know have always reaped rewards.
I've been using a theory I've called 'circles of focus' lately, where I try to provide some focus to the type of content we might produce, and its propensity to convert - I'd love to know your thoughts: https://www.impression.co.uk/blog/9923/circles-foc...
Laura
Excellent post!
Paying attention to brand mentions, and capitalizing on them, can be a highly effective strategy for building backlinks. Your fourth point “Learn what content formats work for you” It’s really very helpful.
I have learned a lot that, how to improve the performance of the Backlinks.
Thanks.
Very good pos. I usually never put the links in my post. That allows me to update the post when necessary
Excellent post!
The first problem and the last solution (4) keep a close relation, as it says “the content-driven is risky” since not all kind of formats work for us. Sometimes our strategy of contents is well-done but maybe it couldn´t be correctly optimized to catch links (to the content).
In our case, we considered it a waste of time, until now we have decided to devote a little importance to it to be able to prosper. Anyway it is very complicated for a small start to get into the competitive sector
Creating content that don't expire (not related to recent events or dates) is key to keep your backlink profile growing. Thanks for the tip!
Great information to do not tie a content with the specific events.. Best techniques for link building. Thanks for the post Paddy.
The trust flow I think is more important today than your domain score. It seems to me that there is a direct correlation between follow / no follow ration and trust score.
Awesome article, Thanks Paddy!
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There are still so many SEO/content agencies out there who simply burn and churn content out with very little disregard on how to promote and amplify the content. Which is sad because the content is not bringing much value to the content.
I love your point about continually repeating the process Paddy and that a piece of content should be reviewed regularly to ensure it’s helping bring results. This strategy has worked very well for me