The successful link-building strategy is built on painstaking
research and methodical strategizing. You can put together a link-building
campaign in many ways, and making the wrong choices can lead to a poor
return on your link-building investment. You should also consider which
tactic will bring the best long-term value.Another consideration is the available resources and how easily the
link-building process will scale. If you have a site with 10,000 inbound
links and your campaign is going to net you 100 new ones, that is not
going to move the needle for you (unless all of those links are pointing
to an individual page targeting a single keyword search term/phrase, or a
smaller number of pages). This is a key point to consider when deciding
what type of link-building campaign to pursue.
1. Outline of a Process
The process for choosing the right link-building strategy is
complex because of the number of choices available to you. Nonetheless,
a methodical approach can help you determine what the best few choices
are for your site. Here is an outline of how to approach it.
1.1. Identify types of sites that might link to a site like
yours
Some example types of target sites include:
Noncompeting sites in your market space
Major media sites
Bloggers
Universities and colleges
Government sites
Sites that link to your competitors
Related hobbyist sites
Make sure you take the time to answer the question “why would
these sites link to us?” Think broadly here, and don’t limit the
possible answers based on your current site. In other words, perhaps
you can create some new content that would be compelling to one or
more of your target groups.
1.2. Find out where your competitors get links
Getting detailed information on who links to your competitors is
easy. Simply use tools such as Yahoo! Site
Explorer, Linkscape, Majestic-SEO, or Link Diagnosis, each of
which will give you a list of the sites that link to your
competitors.
Although Yahoo! Site Explorer is a search-engine-provided tool,
the data it supplies is much more limited than that of the other
tools, so consider using one of the other tools to get a better look
at your competitors’ links. The data will be more comprehensive, and
it will include highly relevant information on PageRank (and mozRank
and mozTrust, in the case of Linkscape).
Once you have that data, look at the most powerful links they
have (as measured by PageRank or mozRank/mozTrust) to identify
opportunities for your site. Perhaps they have received great links
from national media or a set of government sites. By seeing what has
worked for them, you can get ideas on what may work for you.
Of course, planning to contact people who link to your
competitors is a good idea, but do not limit your link-building
strategy to that alone. Contacting websites that link to your
competitors may result in your getting links from 10% (in a good
campaign) of the people you contact. Chances are that your goal is to
beat your competitors, not follow them.
The key focus is to extract data from the competitors’ backlinks
that helps you decide on your overall link-building strategy. Use this
to enhance the list of sites that might possibly link to you.
You can also expand on this concept by looking at “similar
pages” to top ranked sites (look for the “Similar” link in the search
result for the site) in your keyword markets. Similar pages that keep
showing up for different keywords are squarely in the topical link
neighborhood. Look at who is linking to them too.
1.3. Review your website assets
Now that you have a refined list of targets and a sense of why
each group may potentially link to you, review what you have on your
site and what you could reasonably add to it. This should include any
existing content, new content you could create, tools, or even special
promotions (provided that these are truly unique enough and you have
enough presence for people to notice and care).
One key aspect of this is that the content needs to be unique
and differentiated. Content that can be found on 100 other sites is
not going to attract many links. Even if the content is non-duplicate
and original, it should have something to offer or say that is
differentiated from other content, rather than simply being a rewrite
of someone else’s article.
The highest-value potential linkers probably know their business
and will recognize such simple rewrites, and in any event are going to
want to focus their links on unique new content and tools. Content
that leverages the publisher’s unique expertise and presents a new
take on things, or new data, will be far more successful in the
link-building process.
Think of your content plan in a business case format. If you
were able to create some new block of content at a cost of
x dollars, and you think it would provide you
with some set of links, how does that compare to another link-building
opportunity and the cost of the content (or tools or promotions)
required to chase that one?
Ultimately, you will want to build a road map that provides you
with a sense of what it would cost to chase a potential group of
linkers and the value of each group of linkers. Your chart might look
like Table 1.
Table 1. Prioritizing among link-building projects
| Cost to pursue | Value |
|---|
| $15,000 | High |
| $30,000 | Medium |
| $10,000 | Low |
| $30,000 | Very high |
| $4,000 | Low |
Once you have this in hand, you can quickly narrow down the
list. You’ll probably pursue the high-value campaign, and should
continue to consider the very-high-value campaign and the low-value
campaign that costs only $4,000 to pursue. The other campaigns just
don’t seem to have comparable cost versus return.
1.4. Identify any strategic limitations
The next step is to outline any limitations you may need to
place on the campaigns. For example, if you have a very conservative
brand, you may not want to engage in social media campaigns through
Digg (which is not a conservative audience).
1.5. Identify methods for contacting potential linkers
You must undertake some activities to let potential linkers know
about your site. There are two major categories of methods: direct and
indirect. Some examples of direct contact methods include:
Email
Social media sites, using the messaging features of a social
media property to make contact with potential linkers
Content syndication (contacting people and offering them
great article content for placement on their site)
Blogger networking (building relationships by commenting on
others’ blogs, writing content intended to be of interest to them,
and letting them know about it)
Some examples of indirect methods include:
Social media campaigns (including Digg, Propeller,
Delicious, StumbleUpon, and others)
PR
News feeds (through Yahoo! News and Google News)
2. Link-Building Process Summary
Sorting out where to start can be a difficult process, but it is a
very high-return one. Don’t just launch into the first campaign that
comes to mind, as it can hurt your overall results if you spend six
months chasing a link-building plan that does not bring you the right
results.
In addition, link building is a form of marketing, and other
marketing considerations come into play. Looking at it from the other
point of view, cleverly devised link building and marketing campaigns
can provide both branding and link-building campaigns. Consider the
famous video campaign by Blendtec of blended iPhones, golf
clubs, and so forth, available on YouTube and on its Will It Blend website.
The Will It Blend site has more than 29,000 links to it from other
sites, all entirely natural and earned through editorial
recommendations. Not bad!
3. Putting It All Together
The final step is to consider all these things together to come up
with an integrated strategy. You can think of this as having the
complete strategic picture in mind as you approach link building. At
this point, final decisions are made about the content strategy and
which link-building targets to focus on.
3.1. Execute aggressively
A world-class link-building campaign is always a large effort.
The resources need to be lined up and focused on the goal. Publishers
nearly always experience bumps in the road and difficulties. But it is
critical to line up the resources and go for it. It is also critical
to be persistent.
It is amazing how poorly many companies execute their
strategies. Publishers that execute aggressively inevitably gain an
edge over many of their competitors. Of course, if other competitors
also focus heavily on link building, it becomes even more important to
push hard.
3.2. Conduct regular strategic reviews
Link-building strategies should evolve in the normal course of
business. As the implementation moves forward, lessons are learned,
and this information can be fed back into the process.
New strategies are also conceived over time, and some of these
are great ones to pursue. Also, sometimes the initial strategy goes
great for a while, but it begins to run out of steam. Publishers
should have a constant stream of ideas that they are feeding into
their link-building plans.
3.3. Create a link-building culture
Publishers should also train many people within the organization
about their link-building plan, its goals, and how it will help the
business. The purpose of this is to engage the creativity of multiple
team members in feeding the stream of link-building ideas.
The more ideas you have, the better off you’ll be. The quality
of a link-building campaign is directly proportional to the quality of
the ideas that are driving it.
3.4. Never stop
Link building is not something you do once, or once in a while.
In today’s culture, the search engine plays an increasingly large role
in the well-being of a business, and at least for the moment, linking
relationships greatly determine the fate of sites on the Internet.
Consider the business that implements a great link-building campaign,
gets to where it wants to be, and then stops.
What happens to the business when its competitors just keep on
going? It gets passed and left behind. Publishers who are lucky enough
to get in front need to be prepared to fight to stay there. Publishers
who are not out in front should fight to get there. 
