I've executed a lot of failed link building strategies.
Some of these strategies I created. Others were handed to me. Over the years, I've discovered that the same reasons for failure kept cropping up. Thus, I thought it'd be helpful to outline the mistakes I've made and seen. Hopefully this helps you avoid the stress and headaches I've experienced along the way.
Here are the ways in which I've seen link building strategies fail and how you can make sure you don't get duped by these common pitfalls.
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Content Strategy which Link Bait
Let me break it down...
The content strategy is the road map designed to create epic pieces of content. The link building strategy is how you plan on getting links. Sometimes you use content from your content strategy to get links, but sometimes you don't. Sometimes the content from your content strategy helps generate links all by itself, such as when people find it easily in search engines and start sharing it on their own sites. This process is not part of the link building strategy.
Producing a piece of link bait isn't a content strategy, either. Link bait is a piece of content that is created with the hopes of attracting a load of links. Link bait creators hope their content will go viral, and let me tell you, it is really difficult to churn out link bait after you produce a piece that goes viral. You're lucky if one goes viral, let alone multiple. Thus, link bait isn't a content strategy as it's not really sustainable.
In addition, link bait can create a bad user experience, say in the case that you are churning out infographic after infographic all hosted on your company blog. Frequent visitors to that blog might become alienated, especially in "boring" or small niches where you often need to think of tangential topics and audiences to make a successful piece of link bait.
Why should you know (and care about) the difference? Because getting link bait and content strategy confused can set your team up for failure. It often results in expectations not being met, as they will be unrealistic from the start. Plus, each of these strategies answers different questions as they are being created — such as the target market, goals, and metrics — all of which are vital to success. Miss one part and you could be missing an important piece of the big picture.
How to Win:
Create a content strategy that includes link bait (isn't all link bait) and figure out where you can leverage the content for link building. Simultaneously, create a link building strategy that drives additional links above and beyond what your content can do. For even more win, consider how you can coordinate with your social strategy to really leverage both your content and link building efforts.
The key here is collaboration and integration, which will ensure you don't miss opportunities for a win. Think you only have the resources to pursue one strategy (which I will call BS on)? I love this controversial article on content marketing being better than link building. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, I just love when authors take an aggressive stance :)
The "Strategy" Part is Left Out
Trusty old Wikipedia defines a strategy as, "A plan of action designed to achieve a vision." Unfortunately, a lot of times the planning and designing parts are left out, leaving a grandiose vision but no real road map for getting there. I see this a lot with companies who pride themselves in being agile. Sometimes they are just too agile, too shotgun and reckless, saying "let's go, go, go" and hoping to see some wins later on.
How to Win:
No brainer here: create a strategy. Know that executing one campaign after another with no connecting thread is not a strategy. Here are the top-level pieces both a winning content and link building strategy should have.
- What - What is the purpose? What are the goals?
- Who - This is two part, 1) Who will be accountable for the project? 2) Who is the target audience?
- How - Again two part, 1) How will you reach this goal(s)? 2) How will you track it?
- Why - Why is this piece of the strategy being pursued? This should be answered from both the business and user perspective.
- When - When will this be executed? Create timelines and deadlines to execute each piece of the strategy.
- Where - Where does this fit in? Knowing how it integrates with other efforts and where it fits into the grand scheme of things is essential.
Rather than re-invent the wheel, here are some useful resources for how to create link building and content strategies:
- The Noob Guide to Link Building - helps see where planning fits into the grand scheme of things, top-level planning tips
- Brainstorming your Link Building Strategy - pretty good guide outlining the important questions you need to ask yourself
- Link Building Management - detailed workflow from a management perspective
- Content Strategy Roadmap (slideshow) - Ignore the useless photos and promotion, the meat of this is good stuff
No Defined Goals
Part of a strategy is having a vision, but to achieve that vision you need to set goals. Typically, the best strategies have a number of goals, broken into both short term and long term. Some will argue that "ranking #1 for [insert highly competitive short tail keyword here]" is a goal, but since it is pretty lofty you need to ask yourself what short term goals can your team action in order to be number one.
How to Win:
Set up both long-term and short-term goals. Generally, the short-term goals will be stepping stones for reaching long-term goals, creating a tree of goals with actionable milestones. I found an acronym from a UK government agency that I thought was wonderful. It says that all goals are SMART:
No Urgency or Tracking in Place
In my experience, in-house link building teams tend to fall victim to this more often than agencies. Just as a link building strategy should have goals, there should be some urgency in reaching them. This is where tracking comes into play. I see a lack of urgency is often correlated with not having a system in place for inspiring that urgency. To be clear, what I mean when I say "urgency" is a timeline for reaching goals - essentially deadlines.
Every link builder is going to find a way to track how many links he/she is getting. It's human nature - we're out trying to get something and we want to see if we won or not. While I still find that the market struggles with developing a completely automated and instant way of tracking incoming links, there are manual processes that can aid in tracking how many links are received. However, this isn't the only tracking that's important.
Knowing the number of links is great, but what are those links doing for rankings? How have those incoming links fluctuated over the duration of the project? What does the anchor text spread look like? These are bigger picture questions that some teams fail to answer in tracking. It makes it very difficult to measure the effectiveness and ROI of your link building team if you aren't looking at tracking data over time. And what is more important is making sure you share these results with everyone on the team. The first set of people who should know the results should be the ones doing the work. Too often the link builders are left out of the loop and given indirect feedback like "we need to get more links."
How to Win:
Here is a top-level road map for implementing tracking procedures:
- After defining the goals, determine KPIs for measuring if those goals have been reached.
- Create a system for monitoring these KPIs, such as through Analytics or third-party tracking tools.
- Regularly analyze the data. Aggregate it into digestible visualizations to help make sense of it all.
- Draw conclusions.
- Share these conclusions with the whole team.
- As more data is collected, compare new data with historical results. Be sure to share these with the team as well.
- Reassess strategy and determine where changes need to be made if applicable.
Expectations Aren't Managed
Everyone is going to have his/her own opinion, from the bosses to the link builders themselves. Those who own the project need to set a realistic bar and constantly communicate what everyone can expect. Keep in mind that some people won't be as forthcoming with their expectations, so the key is to ask, and preferably have their expectations documented somewhere for reference to hold everyone accountable.
How to Win:
It's safe to set the bar low so you can exceed expectations, but the key in that is just generally setting the bar. If you want to go even further, epmphasize constant and clear communication. A good workflow includes:
- Learning what is expected from each party.
- Negotiating those expectations.
- Consistently reporting on where your team is at in meeting those expectations.
- Reporting on the final results - were those expectations met or exceeded?
Resources Spread too Thin
I see this all the time. Let's put it in perspective with a hypothetical story.
The boss decides the company should try it's hand at some link building, so he designates one person to give it a go. Let's say it's Susy the copy writer. Off the cuff, the boss decides he wants Susy to start getting 30-50 links a week, and of course to complete all the other copy writing tasks required of her. With a pat on the back he tells new link builder Susy good luck.
It's not difficult to guess that Susy the link builder comes back with less than stellar results. Not only is the boss disappointed, but he also decides link building isn't good for the company. Susy is left feeling like she failed, disappointed in herself, and aggravated at her boss.
Link building isn't a get rich quick scheme..or at least it shouldn't be viewed as one.
How to Win:
Devote ample resources to your link building project. This can be easier said than done, especially when you operate a small business. A good start is to hire one person whose sole job function is link building. Susy the copy writer shouldn't also be dabbling in link building as nobody simply dabbles in link building.
Make sure to monitor everything he/she does in order to make a case study for obtaining more people and resources for link building. Especially when just starting out, companies can see a lot of big wins so make sure to track before and after progress to prove your case.
Depending on which strategy(ies) you pursue, the ideal team consists of:
- Link builder(s) - Remember, results are determined by time x cost = # of wins. For more wins, you need to amp up the variables.
- Content person(s) - A lot of link building strategies require content, so a strong team of writers and editors can help scale link building.
- Creative person(s) - Designers and developers can really help amp up the content you produce.
- Researcher(s) - Having someone who is an expert in data can make sure your resources are credible and your content is solid.
- PR person(s) - This person has his/her finger on the pulse of media, knowing what is trending and what journalists are interested in.
- Project manager - Sometimes this role isn't as explicit as this title suggests, but someone in charge of tracking and keeping an eye on the big picture can give your link builders more time to execute, rather than get caught up in monitoring.
- Social media person(s) - Not essential, but it's great to have a dedicated person to leverage the link building opportunities social media presents.
Content is Consistently Crappy
This feels like it should be a no-brainer, but plenty of companies fail to make epic content. Sometimes this caused by looking for quick wins, resulting in not enough effort or resources devoted to content creation. However, a more common reason is not due to lack of experience, but falls on the fact that people just don't know. People tend to fall in love with their own ideas (often which are too promotional) and have trouble seeing whether or not the idea will really speak to anyone.
How to Win:
First, know that the content creation process is not a sweatshop. Content should be made with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. A case study from Salon.com illustrates this concept well. Essentially, the webiste was able to increase traffic to the site by 40% by creating 33% less content. This supports the idea that content isn't a numbers game; it's a quality game.
Second, your content strategy should define accountabilities and create a workflow that implements a checks and balances system to ensure that you are creating epic content. If your content strategy is lacking, make sure you really understand how people are using the Internet and get the link builders involved with brainstorming, even if it's just to ask them. If you have minimal content building experience, it's important to have the people in the trenches involved in the discussion.
To make content creation even easier, I've created this checklist for what I believe all epic content should have. If you can't say "yes" or provide a compelling answer for each, you might need to go back to the drawing board. Print it out and put it next to your desk right now (high res version available up request).
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Link Building Isn't Integrated with Other Marketing Channels
This section might be a bit misleading as link building can still be successful without being integrated into other channels. However, a lack of integration can be a serious glass roof on the ladder to link building awesomeness. There is only so much traditional link building can do. Big wins often encompass other divisions, such as PR, social media, the product team, and more. This is acknowledged well in Jon's link building strategy list - in the top filter notice the checkboxes under "Dependencies on Other Resources." The bigger your ideas, more departments will need to be involved. Without a seamless plan for integration and collaboration, working together is going to be one big mess (if it's even possible at all).
Besides being able to work harmoniously, another big reason you want integration is because you can capitalize on what everybody else is doing and make sure you capture all the wins possible from a particular campaign. A lot of the initiatives your PR team is running can be easily tweaked to fit into the SEO team's agenda as well. It's called "looking for low-hanging fruit", and it is impossible to implement this idea if you don't know what the other teams are doing.
How to Win:
Communicate, communicate, communicate. Especially at first, you are going to have to stay relevant by constantly communicating with the different marketing teams. I've found that taking the initiative and including these teams' interests in your link building initiatives shows them a clear example of how you can work together.
For example, if you are running contests with bloggers, looking out for the social media team's interests can help you make a case for why your teams should work together. It's the "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" philosophy, and you are initiating the "scratching". By laying out a work flow through example, you will inspire these teams to get you involved with their projects.
To do this, include them in every step from inception to execution and make it clear how you are addressing their goals. Ask questions and ask for input. Consider it internal egobait. Pretty soon, you'll have an open line of communication and your requests for regular cross-team meetings will be taken seriously. Before you know it, you will all be in the loop of what other teams are doing and collaborating on your different project calendars. Tread lightly so as not to step on any toes, and encourage hosting these calendars on a collaborative platform, such as a simple Google Doc. In the end, communication turns into collaboration, and that is where you will gain the most wins from your marketing efforts.
Link Building Team Members are Siloed
Just as marketing channels can be siloed, so can the different teams involved with link building. I mentioned above the different concentrations that should be represented in a complete link building team. Smaller teams tend to have no trouble including everyone in the strategy, as they all typically sit in the same room. But what if you have a large team? Maybe with offices in different locations?
It's easy to leave people out of the link building funnel; people figure the process will ship quicker if there are less chefs in the kitchen. However, this is the easiest way for a link building campaign to fail. Not every person on your team can be an expert in everything, so drawing from the experience and know-how that all team members have to offer will help you succeed.
How to Win:
Know each person(s) or teams core competencies. By knowing what each person/team can bring to the table, you'll be able to figure out where they fit into a particular link building campaign. The skills that each team member can bring to the table include:
- Link builder - This person spends all day trolling the Internet and trying to promote content, dealing with rejections, and taking part in observational learning along the way. He/she can tell you if the idea is promotable, as well as insights into how to reach different target niches.
- Content person - This person spends all day writing. He/she will know how to use the written word to represent the data on your infographic in a comprehensible way, while capturing your brand's voice and style to ensure consistency.
- Creative person - This person knows how to represent complex data in a beautiful, visual way. He/she will be able to tell you possible roadblocks of the infographic idea from a design perspective, or suggest better ways to represent the information.
- Researcher - This person crunches data all day. He/she will be able to collect credible sources for your piece, ensuring that the information is statistically sound and that your link builders don't get eaten alive by critics.
- PR person - This person speaks to the media all day. He/she knows what journalists look for and will be able to tell you if your piece will be promotable to high-value publications.
- Project manager - This person is the glue that holds the process together. He/she should be responsible for making sure the teams communicate and collaborate.
- Social media person - This person knows what is trending in the social sphere. He/she can help promote the piece and tell you if the idea will be shared. He/she can help push your piece viral.
Without the help from all of these people, you are much more likely to create a piece that:
- Doesn't target a specific audience.
- Targets an audience that is difficult to infiltrate.
- Targets an audience that is too small, making the likelihood of success small.
- Isn't statistically sound, making it likely that it will be ripped apart during outreach.
- Is visually limited because your design team was incapable of executing the grand vision.
- Doesn't take off in the social space.
Ensure your teams work collaboratively and communicate to create an inherent checks and balances system for creating winning link building campaigns.
Relationships are Left Out
I'm a big proponent of link building being renamed relationship building. The lines between traditional PR and link building are being blurred, and to get a link you need to bring it back to basics: networking. People do things for people they know. Bloggers and journalists get solicited to build links all the time, and you need to make sure you are among the people they come to know if you want that link.
The "relationship" part is left out because link builders are constantly pressured by numbers. Those who aren't in the trenches don't understand how much goes into link building. I would argue that with some link building campaigns, the back and forth with a prospect takes up to 75% of the time. That number is often lost when looking at metrics like number of hours worked versus number of successful link placements.
How to Win:
First, educate your team and manage expectations. If you are the boss, understand that link building should take time. iAcquire wrote an article on the effort required to build links and I don't think it's far off.
As far as measurement, make sure that the time spent negotiating is taken into account. If you have a large team and sense a problem among your link builders of not knowing when to let go (which I think is a big beginner pitfall), sit down with them and role play. Have them fill out a time log to capture back and forth if you have to. Host a link building hack day and get in the trenches to see for yourself just how much back and forth you'll do. No matter the method, make sure that this is taken into account and encourage relationship building. It's what makes link building scalable — as you can go back to the same people and be introduced to new contacts — so don't give up. Pretty soon they'll get to a place where they can manage a relationship quicker and more efficiently.
Everyone Forgets the End Goal
Disclaimer: this is a #tellmehowyoureallyfeel moment and is my #1 gripe with link building. I think the term has been bastardized - it is so overused that people forget where it came from in the first place. It's not about the number of links. Link building was a means created to increase conversions. Conversions should be what you care about. Not the number of links. Not even how well your SERP positioning improves. If you are increasing the number of links, improving your SERP positioning, and seeing more traffic, absolutely NONE of this matters if that traffic isn't converting.
Because of this misconception, I think a lot of SEOs will say a big part of their job is educating their clients/bosses. It's quite easy to get caught up in the minutiae; counting the number of links and watching rank changes are easy to hold onto because they are the easiest to see. These are great short-term goals, but they are not the end goal.
My co-worker Carson Ward said this well:
How to Win:
Constantly remind yourself/your team of the end goal. Do this by measuring changes in conversions that are a result of the smaller wins. Especially while educating your clients/bosses, if they aren't constantly reminded of conversions, they will easily forget. This is where defining goals and managing expectations are super important.
Second, remember that link building — and SEO as a whole — is only part of the inbound marketing puzzle. The only reason people have an online business is to capture new customers on the web. SEO is only one way to do this, and link building is only one way SEO makes this happen. Know the big picture and understand how your efforts contribute to the grand vision.
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Create separate (and seamless) link building and content strategies. Sprinkle in link bait.
I think the most important thing to understand about link building success is this: "I'm a big proponent of link building being renamed relationship building."
I have started completely avoid the term link building some months ago. It makes everyone think the wrong way. Way too shortsighted. Regular link building might be able to generate some links, but so much value is left out when relations are left out.
It can be very hard for outreach people to build relations as it takes months before the links start to show up. But with these relationship based links come tweets, shares, traffic and real value.
Thanks for making this point - and great post!
I don’t know if i agree with the point that link building is a short-sighted word... to me people have wrong perception about it and its not only with link building but people also think that SEO is an alternative name of SPAM! I might still call it link building but I strongly agree with the point that relationship building goes long way... links though it may takes time but it goes a long way from links to tweets and shares which bring more traffic and links...
I agree that it is easy to become short sighted with the term link building, happy you agree Thomas. I also agree it can be difficult outreaching to people if there's no intent of relationship building, and I think you highlight one of the main reasons when you say it can take months for links to actually go live. I've had this happen, and in my experience the longer it takes to go live, the more likely the site owner will "forget" if you aren't constantly at the forefront of their mind to remind them. If you just accept "great this will go live in a few months" without any intent of following up and staying relevant, chances are that link won't ever go live.
And Moosahemani, agree that SEO gets a bad rep in being synonymous with SPAM. That's another point when educating clients/bosses come into play because we're not all on Team SPAM :)
+1, I'm tired of SEO being ruined by the people who want to do lazy link building for quick wins. Great post Adria!
Win is: learning->analyzing->action ;) Good luck!
Completely agree all the best links I've been building recently all come from having the right relationships in place - to be honest many of the best link in the recent years have come from businesses that my clients work, especially the education and government ones that they can potentially get if they work in those sectors.
I feel that the more SEO is being integrated to so many other aspects of online marketing (social, conversion, content marketing, etc..) the more the process as well as the reporting will get complicated, especially when it comes to link building.
Basing the campaign's metrics on the business' end goals could be something that be used by both parties to manage expectations and to set implementations/results based on a timeframe.
Also, I just want to add something (if in case some might find this post useful) --- I recently wrote a post on how to develop conversion-oriented link building strategies that might be somehow useful in setting new metrics for link building campaigns.
Thanks for the great article Adriana :)
Loved that detailed article, Kaiser, particularly how you walk through the steps of setting up goals in Analytics with screen shots. It's mind boggling when site owners aren't using goals...
And agreed that SEO is being integrated more and more. I'm curious if SEO is going to still be relevant in 50 years, or if it will become something more....
I know it's already been said, but thanks for not just including why the strategies fail but also adding a "How To Win" sub-heading in each topic.
Also, with the "Is Your Content Epic" checklist, I wouldn't say going back to the drawing board is always the answer if all the boxes aren't checked. Sometimes all you need is a little tweaking.
I think I was speaking a bit too off the cuff with "back to the drawing board". I mean exactly what you're saying, tweaks are possible. I interpreted "drawing board" as the "editing board," and using judgement of whether you need to redo completely or tweak. Good spot and thanks for pointing it out.
Glad the "How to Win" was helpful!
Excellent post Adria!
For a long time, I think the reason why link building strategies fail is because many perceived 'links' as the golden nugget to getting high rankings. When a CEO or an executive hears about SEO, they automatically think that they need more links, and they've been conditioned to that saying for a long time.
Our job description as an SEO is so much more complex. Going back to what @kaiserthesage mentioned earlier, it's true; SEOs need to know about content marketing, social, conversions, etc. So our job then should be to educate our prospects that SEO is not what it used to be, and that in order to succeed, they will need a holistic strategy and execute it properly.
Eloquently said. I agree, we spend a lot of time educating clients/bosses, which I think makes the managing expectations portion of this probably one of the most important. Where do you think this came from? I think it might be because there is a deep division in our industry, on one side it's the people trying to integrate SEO with other marketing channels to create a holistic strategy. On the other are those that sell promises of links to unknowing business owners. People want the quickest way to cross the finish line, so they hope the latter side is right. I think it's given our side a lot of retraining to do, which can be demoralizing sometimes! But something I think is definitely important.
The most important reason why a link building strategy fails is that the client rarely implements it. I've just reread one I've written one year ago and 70% of things in it still haven't been implemented. Most clients still assume link building is done by some SEO magic and they have nothing to do with it.
Even when they understand that they have to contribute they struggle with the resources and the know-how.
Also link building is just the goal, what you actually do is everything else, creating content, doing outreach, establishing connections and blogger relations. There is no single task called link building, it's always something else you do to get the links. Unless of course you practice SEO from before 2005.
That is definitely something Consultants struggle with, getting the client to actually implement what you suggest. I think affecting change is the #1 skill Consultants can benefit from, and if you think about it, it's part sales. You're just selling something different than the traditional "give us money." You're selling an idea...which can be said for link building as a whole. And agree that link building as a term doesn't even begin to encapsulate all that we do. We're more so project managers, when given the freedom directing the who process of content creation, from brainstorm to execution. Very eloquently said.
I guess Link Building is not an isolated and individualistic approach. Even after Google Penguin update it has been reiterated that Link building works most when it is based on Content Strategy and is complemented by other strategies like Social media, Blogger outreach, Infographic marketing and Video marketing.
it's bit hard to convince those clients that are newbie in the arena of business and that too get more pity when they don't have much knowledge of Search Engine optimization and algorithms that various search engines are using.
That is one heck of an amazing win. Fantastic advice. I'm probably going to revisit this article quite often. Thanks!
Great post Adria, first one I've read since returning from vacation and a worthwhile read indeed :-)
The End Goal; you're right, is so often forgotten about and is arguably the most important element, otherwise what's the point of any of it, right!
Conversions, whether that be a lead, a sale... that's the point for sure. Link Building, or more importantly these days, Relationship Building as Thomas Høgenhaven mentions above, is one of many tools (an important one) that can be utilised to help achieve that end goal. The actual links are a valuable sustainable resulting asset of relationship building (well that's the intention anyway).
Great post again :-)
Thanks, Simon! Hope it made for a good vacation read :)
I think you're right in that links are the sustainable asset that results from relationship building, but when it is used as the sole metric to determine a team's success, that's where we get caught up in the minutiae.
Sure did :-)
I agree, when used as a sole metric, it's virtually meaningless. There would be no context and no clear indication as to the effect of the links obtained.
Too many people get caught up in the mis-understood glory of 'purely rankings' or 'purely link numbers'. Correlation and Causation have to be factored in, by analyzing many metrics together.
Nice information and link bait's are three types 1. Critic. 2. News. 3. Comparison. and most important is content. all most use a unique content.
thank you sharing for blog.
Thanks for the great post Adria.
A great article thanks
Great PostAdria !!
link building play a very crucible role in SEO and here you have explained with an easy way.
I really appreciate you work!
thumb up to you !!
Over here i found something new stuff about the improving link building, but somewhere i have read that link building is totally unnatural. so what would you think about this statement is it true??
Very helpful post... I like it.
link building is very important, more places we have our site, more visitors will be exposed to our business information, but as you mentioned it should be done smart, because the most important in SEO are the goals. For example if we optimise hotels portal the end goal is hotel reservation...
Thanks for the post :)
Nice article. I am working as an SEO expert many years but still this article will help me to train peoples for new SEO success.
There i found great information. Thanks for sharing information with us.
Like your post. It covers all important elements and gives simple and easy answer of what to do in order to cope. The quote about SEOs reporting is nice. :)
Some really great resources in here. Thanks for sharing.
Happy to help!
I find the Salon experience with content quality telling. Less is so often more - an important tenet when resources are scarce.
the carson ward quote is spot on. 5 good links are better than 500 bad ones.
Exactly, thank you. :) The analogy came in response to a question on Quora:
https://www.quora.com/SEO-Tools/Do-you-think-Open-Site-Explorer-is-relevant-baclink-analysis-tool/answer/Carson-Ward
Great analogy in your Quora answer between number of nails required to build a house and link building for SEO.
Great detail!
You hit on the most important thing, which is that link building must be integrated into the larger SEO & marketing strategy.
Too often it is done in isolation as a standalone "link building strategy." I don't really even like the term "link building strategy" as it implies this completeness. In reality, link building is better seen as a collection of tactics that support a greater strategy.
Of course, many link building programs simply fail because they are about a decade outdated.
Ha, I've seen those outdated strategies, they worked at some point didn't they? :)
It seems like a lot of us are in agreement that link building and link building strategy are two terms that need to be rethought, as they do not do a good job of managing expectations. Why do you think we get caught up in these kind of terms?
To be honest, I think it might be because it has become such a buzz word, a life of it's own, that you need to use the terminology to stay relevant, so that people engage with what you are writing/selling and don't move onto the next person talking about the topic they are interested in. It's a vicious circle, hopefully one we'll break out of soon enough.
Right. It's part of a common language that is needed to provide some kind of common framework for communicating. I think the rub though is that it is so often treated as a one-off and/or there are still so many negative and/or empty value methods in play.
Industry language will evolve and of course we need a common language to help bridge the gap between agencies/in-house practitioners and clients/rest of the company. But it's important for people to understand that it's a very broad area that is made of many different tactics, some good and some not so good.
In the end, it's merely a head term...the real value is when you get to the specific long-tail variations.
That was really nice to point with. Keep writing. I am still reading the last part of it. :) Thanks for sharing by the way.
Yeah it just because most of the in-house companies didn't understand the worth and work of link builder they just treat them like waste part of the company so as link builder strategies were not worked well and most of the time Link builders are usually less in experience so as they are unable to make successful strategies...
That can definitely be the case in some instances. I also think this lack of understanding is the reason there is no urgency or tracking in place, and I think this sets link builders up to potentially not get credit for how well they are doing. So in reality those that think these new link builders aren't able to make successful strategies might be wrong. They might be able to offer up more than is being shown simply because no one is keeping on top of what they are doing. If you are a link builder and you notice this, I'd suggest taking ownership and implement your own tracking metrics. It can really help boost your positioning on the team, and if it provides less than optimal results, it will help you learn to be better and make your boss appreciate your transparency and dedication to the business' success.
Great article Adria. :-) Well, I guess the main point of putting the link building process and its strategies into a wider context is, that it helps the client to understand that a good link's value is based on a lot of factors. And it takes time to build them. And yeah, 5 good links are way better than 500 bad ones. It's all about quality. Cheers from Germany Sven
I love the nails analogy! That'll be getting used in client meetings for sure.
Lol, Carson will be very happy to hear that :) Glad you found it useful!
i have 50 post in my website and every post is unique, no copy paste. i have already done my on-page optimization but i do not have any off-page optimization. but the problem is my website post are not in google/yahoo/bing search result. not even in 300 search result. what i have to do? my website link is techstalks
Great post Adria! Really appreciated the "How to Win" sections that will definitely help us with organizing successful future link building campaigns.
Hi everyone,
I am a newbie to SEO having just finished setting up my site, which I have done as there is not much employment here where I live in the Philippines. I have read quite a lot about SEO, especially on your blog and to be honest I am getting more and more confused with contradictory information. My site is a local community resource site, with classified ads and business listings. What is the best way to improve the page rank for a site with low keyword competition? If anyone will be so kind as to offer some free advice, I will be glad to receive it. My site address is https://www.tacloban-ads.com if you have time to take a look and offer some advice. thank you.
Hi Adria,
Maybe you can help me. I have a product I'm trying to put all my focus on (domain.com/product.php). I've been building links & all my attention to that one page. My competitors that are already ranked have entire sites for this same kind of product and their homepage is ranked. My question is when it comes to rankings, does it matter if you have a whole site related to what you are trying to get ranked, different pages about this one product (like my competitors), many pages of the site with your targeted keywords, etc? The rest of my site is related in the sense that they go together but not when it comes to words & such. Example, I may be selling peanuts, the page I'm trying to rank has peanuts for sell. The rest of the site is about Jelly. My competitors have an entire site about peanuts with related keywords, copy & content on many pages of their site and I just have one.
Curtis
Great post, Adria! A lot of good points to think about. One I especially agree with is the need to share the results immediately with the people that are doing the linkbuilding. It's amazing how many companies don't realize the value of feedback.
And Carson's nail analogy was brilliant. :)
Great post! You are definitely right to point out that link building is often detached from the general marketing strategy. Unfortunately, that strategy can only negatively impact a company's SEO. Again great advice and look forward to more of your articles!
Thanks, James! I'm not sure that I agree that keeping link building separate from other marketing strategies will cause a negative impact, but I do think there is only so much a link building campaign can do when siloed from the other marketing channels. Do you have a specific reason for thinking it can cause a negative impact?
Great post. Really enjoy the use of graphics here. Quality over quantity!
Thank you, Nick! I can't say that Dilbert graphic was incredibly useful, but I giggled when I stumbled across it so figured someone else might have a "heh" moment. :)
because most of links made in bulk but after penguine update google banned on bulk links and give the priority only natural links. but now it is very difficult to get natural links.
Hi,
I am recently start SEO of my website and this all stuff is really very helpful for me to doing best link-building for my site.
I agree with you. But most of companies are not paying enough money for quality link building...
I know this is a relatively old article, but I stumbled upon it after visiting your portfolio page (https://adriasaracino.com/portfolio).
Best opening hook ever:
"I've executed a lot of failed link building strategies.
Some of these strategies I created. Others were handed to me. Over the years, I've discovered that the same reasons for failure kept cropping up. Thus, I thought it'd be helpful to outline the mistakes I've made and seen. Hopefully this helps you avoid the stress and headaches I've experienced along the way."
My heart is one after your own. I have been there, done that, and now had the opportunity to provide constructive feedback on how to re organize our strategies and business model. Rather than offering blind link building, we start at the base now - researching our client's site, the competition currently ranking for our targeted keywords, backlink audits, etc. The next step is that our guest posting (and other link building campaigns) mirror the same guidelines used for content marketing strategy development.
Thank you for the write up :)
Wow, what an excellent article! You've really done a wonderful job on this. We have a lot to learn in our marketing team, but you have just made that journey a whole lot easier!Now to just get our whole team onto the same page...
Hi Adria! I believe that producing a piece of link bait is not a content strategy. Link bait is actually a part of content that is created with a dream of attracting tons of links. I think link bait creators hope their content will go viral. Kudos to this superb post!
Thanks for the checklists, I have taken your advice and printed them out and have them next to the computer, I have also sent this link to my content writers
Thanks
Sean
From my perspective, link building is sometimes too overrated. With great content strategy, comes natural backlinks. Sometimes it can take a long time for good content to be shared and getting the best out of natural backlinks pointing back to you, but SEOs need to embrace the social knowledge graph to leverage the power of social media platforms to drive awareness and traffic.
With Google's authorship becoming even more prominent in future, branding and content has to start somewhere. Furthermore, measuring the traffic and performance of the website can also ensure we make the most out of our traffic such as tracking bounce rates, average time spent and general crawlability of pages.
And yesh, I loved reading your article, Adria. Good job!
Great advise, really liked the 'is your content epic?' checklist. There's always a danger of settling for another mediocre article, hopefully this can help counter that and get people thinking in terms of results.
Also, I thought your 'ideal team' should have been called the 'dream team' because in reality most teams are made up of just a few wearing a number of those different hats. Nice to dream though ;)
Realizing how important setting the goal for link building is. I always get lazy doing that.
I think link building is a major part of SEO world and everyone wants to make it to get better results. But the problem is that how to make then i think it's simple answer is as we are dealing is our real life and we make relation with people to whom we don't know and we want to get touch with them and we are doing these all the things very carefully because there is too much risk and same thing is here. we just need to think about it what kind of relation we want for our SEO industry if we are doing genuine work then it will go for a long period and will give us more and good benefits to fulfill our targets.
Thanks for such a good and informative article and such kind of posts increase our knowledge day by day so thanks again
No problem, Shashi!
WoW Adria, it's been great to read this whole informative article on Why Our Link Building Strategies Fail. I must be sure this will be going to help me and my team a lot in order to refine our link building strategies more effective and organized. And also I am going to show this all of my team members to observe what important points they should really focus on to work harder and better to earn quality links. How to win is your best syntax to tell us to follow.
Thank you, hope your team finds it useful. If you think you need to inspire your team, I recently wrote a post on Distilled's blog on the characteristics of a great link builder: https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/link-building-seo/hiring-help-characteristics-of-a-winning-link-builder/
thanks adria for suggesting me your another interesting post!
To be honest with you I don't even know what SEO is other than a buzz word that a lot of online marketers use. It has become so many different things to so many different people and everyone thinks they have the right answer. The fact is, everyone is guessing... Some people guess correctly and some incorrectly but its still a guess.
I can't say I completely agree. I think SEO has a place. However, what a lot of people don't realize is that it's a combination of tasks from other areas of concentration in marketing/the Internet. We take the essential jobs of a designer, developer, CMO, editor, PR, social media, and project manager and bundle them into one job function with the same end goal: improving search rankings for a brand and improving conversions. If we weren't here, these actions wouldn't get done, and sites wouldn't be getting as much business as they could. I think the acronym speaks for itself, we're the "optimizers," some could even argue the glue that holds online marketing teams together.
But I do agree in that I am not sure SEO as an industry will look the same in 50 years. Maybe we'll be the catalyst that encourages these departments to work together better, meaning we will be phased out and have affected big developmental changes in our sister divisions.
Admirable Post Adria!
Agree with the text, "Content Strategy is far more better than Link Building". In my concern that As far as Link Building is concern that it's really tough to develop without proper management as per post. But However content strategy is the best where we can server unique content to attract web userss and Ultimately, it will be winning condition for all online marketers...!
Thank you, Jim! I think link building that doesn't revolve around content still has its place, as developing a content strategy seems like a lofty goal and resource drain for smaller and new businesses. While I don't think this should deter them, this is why other types of offsite link building attracts them, because they perceive less resources are required.
Really nice advices. I'm young in building a correct website altought a try. I have put my site in a lot of directories. A didn't understand if you min and directories too! Although https://scoremycareer.com/ this directory is a good choice if you want to promote your site .
Great article, if your content is strong and descriptive on related topic then every one would like that.
Thanks for the great post Adria. I really like how you spell out the ideal team - as you say, link building isn't a stand alone discipline, but requires input and effort from right across the content production and promotion spectrum.
No problem, Alice. I think working in an agency model definitely helped me realize what pieces were missing from my team when I worked in-house. You can get so siloed in-house so getting that outside perspective really helped me realize the winning recipe :)
Awesome Post! Infact I believe that after Google Penguin update things have changed a lot in the arena of Search Engine optimization. SEO or link building is no longer a number game rather it's a quality game. An appealing and informative content complemented with Link building and Social Media campaigns could do wonders for your business.
Second thing i liked about this post was defining short term and long-term goal. Some link Building strategies gives results instantly however webmasters need to put in place some long term strategies too so that even if your major search engine tweaks it's algorithm your ranking remains intact. For example those who have relied on "Link-building with appealing contents" have survived Penguin-updates but companies those relied on quick and short term results were hit hard.
I also agree that it is better to call Link-Building as "Relationship Building" because this philosophy will change your whole approach towards link building.
Glad you liked the article. I loved hearing your insights on the subject, particularly the long vs short term. I completely agree. Short term goals make teams susceptible to to forgetting the big picture of link building strategy, which is one of my biggest gripes. So having both will help appease expectations but also work toward a bigger win down the road.
I agree with you Syed Noman.. Most of these companies are not paying enough money for the job so, most of us link builders don't take it seriously.
First of all thanks and congrats Adria for this case study and sharing your work with us.
Another thing, I really liked the way you described "How to Win" portion where each team member has their own responsibilities. And usually this is how your link building campaign works. Apart from various factors, content has to play the major role in link building where its quality and relationship with niche writes its future.
As far as link bait is concerned then its very tricky task, and sometimes if not done properly then can backfire on you.
Thank you for your kind words, Praveen. Agree link bait can very easily backfire, so imagine how that can destroy a "content strategy" if every single piece planned is link bait. Content definitely does play a major role in link building, but it can quickly set every team up for failure if a business is just churning out failed-from-the-start link bait.
This is a great article. we've had a constant internal debate about link building. the bottom line is paid links just don't feel right. you need to go with your gut like most things in business in life. it comes down to a good linking strategy, valuable content and recognizing where to effectively spend your marketing dollars.
Happy to be of help, what are you guys struggling with internally? Would be happy to be a sounding board for the different arguments.
LOVE the Epic Content graphic. Too many SEOs fail to give copywriters the information that can produce the best content: the core audience and the piece's purpose. Give the writers these items and they can do amazing things for you. Without them, you get the same-old same-old that everyone else has.
Glad you found the graphic useful! I encourage you to pass it onto your writers and have them print it to put next to their desk. A few of our clients have already done this and we've been passing around desk photos internally for a bit now :)
I Think Link Building Strategy is dead by google updates. Now Content is King, add good content to your website/blog. and you will get +ve response.
I don't necessarily agree, but probably because I don't consider link building and content independent of each other. I think you need to know how to leverage content to get links, and you need to know what people want to link to to make great content. But I agree that great content can make manual link building more scalable.
Awesomesauce! Just out of curiosityhow many people were involved in the making of this post? Also, how long did it take to put this together?
I wrote the whole article over about 10 hours. My lovely coworker Steph Chang made the "Epic Content" checklist with the information I gave her, which I think she spent about 2-3 hours on. And of course I always think I should have spent longer and done more :) Thanks for your kind words!
Thank you for great post. Yea I agree with you..The backlinks was killed by penguin :)
Awesomely thorough post, Adria. I knew this would be an interesting piece the moment i read the first line -- Not many start off by accepting their failures (kudos to that!). More importantly, the "how to win" section is where you killed it!
Also read your post on hiring tips over at distilled blog, some incredible insights you shared over there as well. Look forward to more of your awesomeness.
-Ashish
Thank you so much Ashish for your kind words. I'm glad you were able to see both my posts, 2 in 2 days was definitely a doozey! I am happy the How to Win made it better, I wanted to make sure my post was actionable and not too high level.
Your hypothetical story isn't all that hypothetical. I have seen it happen more than once. Part of the reason many in-house SEO campaigns (with not outside guidance) have a hard time getting off the ground is because all the link building/blog writing/video marketing/etc. responsibilities fall on one person. However, that person still has to get their normal day job done so SEO gets pushed to the back burner. Three months from now no real progress has been made so the boss decides SEO just isn't for them.
I was being nice when I said it was "hypothetical"...I may have been drawing from experience :) Agree completely, Nick. Glad to see you've noticed a similar problem with link building implementation. I definitely think it's something that needs to be addressed.
I have found that one problem with setting targets for link building is that they are usually based on the number of links. Setting the target as a number or as a function of page rank may be self defeating when what we really want is quality.
I think we'll unfortunately always be talking in number of links to some degree. However, our team always reports on things like really high DAs or coverage that results in a lot of epic comments or social shares. I think the numbers are as important as the strength of those links, so I'd include those in your reporting too. And really, setting yourself up to report on fluctuations in rankings for the keywords your targeting is what will really show how well your link building campaign did. Some keywords will invariably take more wins than others, so monitoring this movement, as well as anchor text distribution, will help keep it big picture.
And don't forget to set conversion goals in Analytics so you know what the benefits of those ranking improvements are :)
I agree with you Syed Noman.. Most of these companies are not paying enough money for the job so, most of us link builders don't take it seriously.
Unfortunately feeling undervalued is something a lot of link builders deal with. Unfortunately link building is still looked at as a numbers game, so if a supervisor thinks the ROI isn't worth it, you won't get the credit you feel you deserve. I'd suggest keeping a written document of all the benefit you've added to your team, the more metric driven examples you can give, the better. This will help you show your worth, not just tell - which can help get a raise and more recognition internally.
How to win?
Just read this blog you definitely will win :)
Thank you, Syed! Very nice of you.
Agreed.
It can be very hard for outreach, i was confused, because newbie., i sleep better, we all friend.
Bye Bye.
-_- :\