Have any suggestions for next steps in link building campaign?
-
We are conducting SEO and white-hat link building campaign for a client that is in the national (US) fertility/infertility niche.
So far we've done outreach to potential websites that we found to be a good fit for the campaign, although the conversion rate for getting Guest Posts, even Sponsored Posts is quite low. Furthermore, the number of these potential websites is close to running out and it's getting harder to find other websites with relevant metrics that are outreach-worthy.
Besides Guest Post/Sponsored Post outreach, we've done Link Reclamation, Resource Links and Broken Link Building. Also, we tried expanding the list of keywords to try and come up with some new leads (in sub-niches) but haven't had much success.
One peculiar thing that is happening when we do start a communication with the blog/website owners is that they get interested in the topic at first, up to the point of asking us to send them a Guest Post article and then.. silence, no response from them. We do a couple of follow-ups, but in most cases we don't hear back from them. We realize that there could be some editorial changes that they might want to be done, which we would be willing to do, but they just simply do not respond at all.
When talking to other people in the SEO business we get different opinions on how to proceed, ranging from creation of web 2.0 properties and linking them up with video content and the client website, to even creating SEO link wheels. We are quite committed to our client and would love to get their site ranking, but we're reluctant to use tactics that might yield only short term results and might end up hurting the rankings on the long run.
Other part of our strategy is creating quality content on our client's blog (within their website) and doing outreach to bloggers to get them interested in the topics that we are covering. So far these efforts have also not been very successful.
Basically, my question is when you are doing a link building campaign for a client, what is your next strategy when the link opportunities run out?
-
Link reclamation for the client as well as the top competing websites. This can be a lucrative way to build up natural link profile, and obtain "new" links on older domains. I usually run Cognitive SEO with top three competitors, view links that are shared and which are lost vs. live. This is an easy way to reach out to previously interested parties as well as build updated relationships.
-
Thanks Nick. It's not just that blogger outreach isn't working - just that we're running out of opportunities to reach out to in our niche!
I'm very curious what other SEOs do when they reach this point, which surely they must do, when the number of relevant opportunities that have already been tapped outstrips the number of new ones hitting the Web...
-
If blogger outreach is not working, I would consider re-focusing your efforts on the client's own blog and publishing high quality, compelling content and news that will naturally attract links. You should use charts, images, infographics or slideshows to make the post more authoritative and attractive to other content creators.
Hope this helps. Best of luck.
-
they get interested in the topic at first, up to the point of asking us to send them a Guest Post article and then.. silence, no response from them.
Lots of people sent me content to consider and don't hear back or I send them an honest response that they don't like. Why? I don't want their content on my website. It could be poorly written, well written but with no meat, well written but in a style that I don't like, well written but on a topic that does not fit into my website, loaded with links, linking to sites that I want nothing to do with, they send hardcore chest-thumping promotion. In most instances, I provide guidance for the writer. They ignore it.
So I give these suggestions....
A) Ask for guidance. Don't dare send anything that goes against it. They will reject the content and reject you for wasting their time.
B) Make sure that the content that you send is excellent. Better quality than what they already have on their website.
C) Make sure that the content matches the tone and style of their website with titles, headlines, subheads, paragraph length, reading level, photos, captions in the same style as their website. Make it easy to "drop into the site".
D) Send two or three pieces of content that are very different and allow them to pick.
Good luck.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the best way to start building links without paying for them?
I am starting new websites for my clients and want to know where to start. I understand that rich, engaging content gets links naturally, but how do we get links to rich content that noone has ever seen?
Link Building | | Prestonp0 -
Link building - where to start?
Okay - we have around 200 natural links pointing to our domain, some good, some not so good; today I've spent some time removing any bad, spammy links pointing to our business domain and we're just about there. Now I'd like to start a link building strategy. To be fair, I've assumed for the past year or so that link building is dead, unless you can get natural, really good links - which in the mobility and elderly products industry can be quite difficult. I have recently created a blog on our website - could RSS feeds be a benefit too?
Link Building | | LiamMcArthur0 -
Best Methods - Link Building
We are having more and more "new" customers coming to us who have been hit by various algorithms imposed by google. After we have run a site health check and corrected everything, we plan and come up with a link development plan which suits the clients needs. Much of out link development work is safe comprising of; 1. Guest Blog Posts - where we develop creative content with the customer to publish. 2. Industry blog posts - where bloggers write about i.e. "the company" 3. Social media - posting pictures, commenting on forums, etc 4. Paid directories with authority We don't develop links in any other way and it brings results in the long term. Is anyone out there doing something else? Link building can sometimes be like walking on a tight rope. Thanks and happy holidays Gary - Elite Group Marketing London
Link Building | | GaryVictory0 -
Link Building for extremely niche industry
I understand that when getting links into your site, they need to be good authority but, importantly, also relevant to the information on your own website. I've seen examples for people to find guest posting opportunities on many sites, but these have been for popular industries with mass amounts of people discussing it (travel blogs, fashion blogs), making guest post opportunities more readily available. The company I work for provide doc storage, scanning and paperless solutions. As you can guess, when following these guides to find blogs on our industry, I have come up short with places to ask to guest post on! So, how would SEOmozzers approach building quality, relevant links for a very niche industry such as ours? Also, we'll be building pages for extremely specific types of files (e.g. Microfiche Scanning, A0 Scanning....). For these pages, how will I be able to find relevant pages on these topics to get a link to, because these will obviously be even more niche than doc scanning? Thank you!
Link Building | | janc0 -
Press Relases as Link Building is valid?
Dear Mates, We are looking for increase our Domain Authority, so we was submitting our site to BOW, Yahoo Directory and we want to know if Press Releases sites (paid press) are too good to do the inversion. What sites are recommended, we think could be very usefull build a list of the real top PR sites (Paid and Free) Thank you for your time
Link Building | | SharewarePros0 -
Internal Link Building
How important is internal link building? What is the right way of doing it, and what is the wrong way of doing it?
Link Building | | sansonj0 -
Link to those that link to you? Worthwhile?
We have thousands and thousands of sites that link to a domain we are working on, many with low page authority and high domain (bloggers, forum posts, etc). Has anyone experimented with linking to the pages that link to you (not from your site) but from other means in an effort to boost their quality? I'm not sure what method we would use, maybe some relevant blog comments or social votes. But curious if this could be an effective method.
Link Building | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Clarification needed regarding link building
We are working on a SEO project for a client with a bilingual site. We have already started with the link building task for the English domain. However, for the Arabic domain the URLs for the inner pages are not yet finalized and it would take around 2 months to do so. I would like to know whether we could start with link building for the main Arabic domain although the inner pages URLs are not yet finalized?
Link Building | | Francis_GlobalMediaInsight0