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Link Building

The truth is that link development is sometimes the best strategy for every organization. Find out what to look out for and how to handle it if it happens to you.

Not all companies should invest time and energy into link development.
It seems strange coming from someone who has been engaged in link-building for almost twenty years and has even written a whole book on the topic.
Still, the fact remains.
Regarding budgeting for digital marketing, there may be better strategies than link-building for certain companies.
After all, it is our responsibility to expand our clients' operations and track the resulting increase in sales and profits. We owe it to our customers to be upfront and have an open discussion about the possibility of link building (or any activity) to achieve this.
Putting this aside, link building may help sales and money, but there is a more promising prospect elsewhere. Even if your agency or area of expertise isn't a good fit for this offer, we still owe it to our clients to discuss.
The practice of link building could not benefit your company for several reasons. We'll look at a couple of them today, so you can be sure you're keeping your development prospects open to link-building.

Problems with Internal Politics, Red Tape, and Getting the OK to Proceed

Getting the green light from several organizational stakeholders is usually required before you can begin a link-building campaign.
This is especially true if you use digital PR strategies, such as content-led link building and campaign launches, or responding to shifting news cycles and contacting journalists on their behalf.
Some personal barriers that might prevent you from accomplishing your goals are listed below.

PR and Communications

They have established (and wish to maintain) rapport with influential media outlets and journalists and may thus provide you with a blocklist of such outlets and individuals.
As a consequence, you will be unable to achieve as much. It may leave you with few appropriate journals to pursue in the worst-case scenario.

Creatives in the fields of Design, User Experience Design, and Copywriting

They may be from various groups, but I've grouped them since they're likely interested in your material if you're making any.
Each may desire the option to approve (or reject) final products.

On-page vs. off-page — what’s the difference?

Let's define off-page SEO first, then we can go on to talking about links and blogs.
And, to do that, let’s backtrack a little further.

A lot of articles out there remind us that Google awards higher SERP results to websites that EAT.
In other words, sites with content demonstrating their expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
When your website provides information that answers questions and provides solutions, Google rewards you with a higher search ranking.

That content is a vital aspect of your on-page SEO, helping you to go for the SERP brass ring.
But you need to get your audience to your website in the first place, which is where a well-thought-out off-page SEO strategy comes in.
Off-page SEO comprises all the background efforts essential to assist your on-page SEO.

Putting this another way:

You have an on-page SEO strategy in place to signal to search engines that your content addresses common user concerns.
Activities include content creation, complete with title tags, meta tags, keyword density, image optimization, and descriptive headers.

Your off-page SEO strategy consists of various methods you use to increase traffic to your site by demonstrating your expertise and credibility.
Adding information on social media platforms to encourage users to visit your site?
Off-page SEO strategy.
Posting in forums that are in your industry?
Showing up as an interview source on a popular podcast?
You guessed it – off-page SEO strategies.

While there are many paths to these off-page tactics, two of the most common are link building and guest blogging.

Link building:
The off-page SEO strategy foundation

Backlinks are defined as hyperlinks appearing in website content that direct users elsewhere.
“Elsewhere” can be on the same site.
Or, as is the case with off-page SEO efforts, that backlink should direct the user from another website to yours.
For example, this backlink will take you to a ClearVoice blog that, well, discusses backlinks.

Successful backlinks should appear as natural anchor text; highlighted by an underline and different text color.
This tells users that clicking on that anchor text will take them to other content.

It’s also important that those backlinks are on websites with a high domain authority (DA).
In other words, a website that is highly trusted by consumers, industry professionals, and even other websites.

Regulations and Laws

Companies may face strict restrictions regarding the kind of content they may release in certain fields of study. The likelihood of this happening increases in highly regulated sectors like banking and insurance, which are subject to oversight from outside organizations.
SEO Tools: Semrush vs. Everybody Else
For this test, we pitted Semrush against another popular SEO tool. Semrush prevailed. Incorporate additional context, keywords, and links. The winner that Semrush defeated was.

The effects of false or misleading information are especially felt in the medical and health fields.

Engineering and Product Improvement

Creating content means eventually transferring that material to the client's website.
For example, if this is only a blog article, the execution should be easy.
A developer's assistance is likely required, though, if you want to submit anything more complicated, such as an interactive infographic, a tool, or a substantial report. While this probably won't prevent you from doing anything, it may slow you down

Internal Obstacles to Successful Link-Building

There are other obstacles, but this gives you a decent idea of the most typical ones in your role as a link builder.

Link Building
This doesn't mean that nothing is feasible, but the presence of more than one of these barriers may result in
Major setbacks in launching campaigns and establishing linkages, resulting in annoyance and, more significantly, lost time and money.
Ad campaigns have undergone so many alterations that their initial intent has been forgotten or needs to be clarified to the audience.
Cutbacks in outreach efforts make meeting key performance indicators considerably more challenging.
The repercussions mentioned above become a reality if a company has such barriers. Given the persistence of these barriers, they won't benefit from content-led link development even after implementing changes to address them.
Both you and your customer should desire nothing more than for these roadblocks not to interfere with progress.
While the company may stand to gain from investing in link building, doing so at this time would be unwise due to the low likelihood of gaining traction and generating connections rapidly.

Administrative support for link building could be stronger.

This is a hard situation, but I've seen it occur a few times in my experience. The catch here is that you may still sell a link-building project to a customer, but by doing so, you may just be postponing the inevitable: your termination.
When a company approaches you about an SEO job that might entail link building, it's important to ask about success metrics.
Your primary point of contact can probably provide you with a response, which might be any of the following:
Connectivity standards.
The number of connections.
Traffic.
Conversions.
Leads.
That's a fantastic place to begin, particularly if they're referring to tangible business results like increased sales and income.
On the other hand, you need to go deeper to see how the rest of the company values SEO and link development.
The next step is learning the specific metrics and reporting standards for SEO and link development.
It's great to have goals and key performance indicators set up for things like links, traffic, sales, and income. Yet, when it comes to reporting, who does that information reach?
Who else except your present point of contact looks at these?
Most of all, you need proof that the larger corporation values your effort. Signs that upper management is engaged include their participation in activities like the sales presentation and the new employee orientation.
Budgets need to be approved before they can be implemented.
Preparing a plan of action and key performance indicators.
I will be asking you some difficult questions about your approach and metrics.
This might be frustrating, but it may also signify that your sales efforts will be treated seriously. As such, it serves as an integral component of the overall plan.
Ignoring these warnings simplifies your life in the short term, but it will likely cause issues if you do.
If the company needs help and people start looking more carefully at their actions, difficulties like these may arise.
Typically, upper-level management will evaluate ongoing projects and the allocation of funds to determine whether or not to continue them.
Do you want to be in a situation where you must try to convince a high-ranking CEO repeatedly that what you're doing is worthwhile?
Because I've been there before, I won't.
I'd rather be proactive and talk with the CEO when I know they already recognize my work's importance and only need some convincing that it's worthwhile to keep going.
Getting back to the main topic, it may hint that the activity is only suitable for the top brass if they are fully behind it (or interested in doing so).
The difficulty of getting things done also increases.
As far as possible, it would be best if you had the support and cooperation of other divisions and their heads to eliminate roadblocks.
Again, taking action on this sort of information might be challenging throughout the sales process, given that a project can be sold when these potential risks are known and understood. The potential for problems exists only in the far future.
However, it would be best if you investigated these spots to find out more and comprehend what may go wrong in the future.
Ultimately, it may not be appropriate for a firm to engage in link-building if top management does not comprehend or respect the concept.
Understanding the need for education and the possibility that education may occur via actual projects you provide means that you should regard each project as a test run from the beginning.

You Have Some Serious Bugs to Fix on the Website You're Developing

Another common situation I've seen over the years is a need for link development despite the poor technical implementation of the website in question.
A link's effectiveness cannot be maximized under these conditions. You will not realize the benefit of your contribution in short- to medium-term. However, this may change as technical concerns are fixed.
In the past, if you built up enough links, it wouldn't matter if your site had poor technical SEO or if your content needed to improve. These principles are now the very minimum necessary to participate.
Having links is helpful but will only rescue you if you have something else.
But it doesn't imply you should take on projects for flawlessly functioning websites (is that even possible?).
You and your customer must address any technical and on-page SEO concerns immediately. In your job description, you may be responsible for them, or an internal group may.
There may be little use in investing in link building if there are significant technical difficulties with a website and no one is taking responsibility for fixing them. Fixing this technical debt is likely more valuable in their eyes.
While it is possible to work on both technical SEO and link building simultaneously, it is recommended to prioritize the former.
Understanding who is accountable for technical and on-page SEO makes it easier to make predictions on what goals can be achieved.
Although technical SEO may significantly impact rankings, you should be held to objectives only if you're struggling to fix them.
It would be best if you focused on technical SEO or ensured that someone else is giving it the attention it deserves.

Their Link Profile Will Not Be Affected by Your Link Building Efforts.

Last but not least, this one is a little rarer but still worth noting.
An internationally recognized or nationally prominent brand may appear at your event.
They may require link building, but why?
No matter how well-known a domain may be, it almost always has room to improve its link profile. But will you be able to build links that make a difference to a domain if that domain already receives a large number of links naturally just because of who they are (think: Apple, Amazon, Coca-Cola, etc.)?
Every time Apple releases a new product, they get links. Not just that, they get links directly to their product and home pages, exactly where you want them to go.
In cases like this, content-led link building (and other techniques) will not likely move the needle for Apple.
If that's what they want from you, they should be interested in something other than link building.
The focus here would need to shift toward scalable techniques and enabling them to own SEO and link building internally and integrate it across departments.
It needs to become part of the work already being delivered so that more value is generated from it.
I've said no to working with a few large multinational brands over the last couple of years. They almost certainly could have benefitted from link building, but being who they were meant they generated many links anyway, so our approach needed to change.
Unfortunately, this change wasn't possible, so we had to let them know we couldn't pitch for their project.

In Summary

Saying no to working with someone is hard, and you're only sometimes in the position to be able to do this.
But it's a reality that more agencies need to recognize because you're only setting yourself up for failure later on if you ignore the signs of link building not being right for a business.
When a big focus is on ensuring that your team has the environment to thrive and succeed, we need to emphasize setting them up to win rather than fail as much as possible.
So only sometimes assume that link building is right for everyone. Look for the signs that it may not be. Please do what you can to overcome them early to keep them from becoming issues later on.