Google is now getting a lot smarter these days in terms of identifying which websites/webpages deserve higher rankings on search results based on the quality of content, links attached to each website and other important search ranking factors.

For link building, it is evident that the approach used and the behaviors of link builders have changed. The days that search professionals and webmasters can still use automated tools, fast-paced link building process and campaigns that execute beyond the rules of Google are long gone. With another Penguin update that is coming, the key to prevent or protect a website from any link-based penalties is the combination of the natural link building approach and creative/targeted/high quality content creation.

As a solid fan of link building for almost one year and a half, I’ve seen many link building firms starting to brand their own websites by creating a lot of landing pages and including testimonials, which seems like guaranteeing business owners that link building can get them higher rankings.

This is possible, to improve your rankings by getting several linking root domains for your website. But there are a lot of factors that a link builder must consider to get his client’s site earn the top spots of search results – i.e. usability, on site (foundational elements), crawlability/indexing, etc.

In short, some business owners still don’t know how link building works and how link building agencies spend their budget/investment (the behind-the-scenes of their work).

In this post, I’d like to share a few realities that our link building agency has been doing for the past several months (which hopefully should change the way you think about links).

Let’s get started.

Analyzing the site’s content inventory before creating content

Content is essential. Content can help you build links.

The reality, however, is that, writing new blog posts every week, publishing three or four infographics a month and reaching out to a lot of interested people to share your content is a waste of time if you don’t first identify pieces that the website has already published in the past.

There are a lot of link opportunities that you will miss out if you always create new assets for your website (or for your client’s site).

What we usually do in our team is to set priorities in link building. One of our first priorities in our to-do list is to determine which content asset of the website could still be used for link building. To start this activity, we create a spreadsheet that has columns for URLs, type, content format and Notes. The type is the page, post or category and content format could be in the form of infographic, article or video.

This spreadsheet will help us track which content pieces need some boost in promotion to earn a few more high quality backlinks for the website. By doing this, we can maximize our resources (money, time) to better yield some results on the first week of our campaign.

Natural link building is not really natural

When we first think of natural link building, what pops up on our mind is that every content piece that we published on our blogs could automatically give us links.

The reality, however, is you have to devote time and effort to get the word out of your content. Whether it is through paid or organic advertising, the point is natural links will come if you actually build links to your content/page/site.

The earlier you understand it, the more likely you will promote your content twice the effort and time you devote in creating it.

Links are not the only output

The first misconception about link building is that specifically and generally the concept is all about links. In some cases like directory submission and social bookmarking, that misconception is true.

However, if you dig deeper into ROI (investment) of your clients/business owners, you’ll see that links should not only be the output of your work. What you should focus on is the impact of the links to the sales/leads/conversions of the brand/website.

This is not really complicated. You have to create a link building strategy that is targeted to the audience that your client or your brand wants to engage with. The more targeted your strategy and tactics are, the more conversions you can get.

Tactics rather than the Strategy

Creating a solid strategy is the first initiative in every marketing plan. It includes all the plans and possible outcomes of the whole project. But the real battle starts with setting tactics in place.

Tactics as being defined in Wikipedia is a conceptual action, implemented as one or more specific tasks. In link building, these are the actions that must be taken to build links for the site.

To get started with listing down your link building tactics, you must identify the resources that are capable of using when the link building campaign is executed. It may be the number of content creators that are available, budget size and the flow of communication within the whole online marketing department. This is important since you need to coordinate yourself with other marketers in the brand (whether it is your company or your clients) to get them support what you will be doing for the website (in terms of getting links).

Tactics should vary depending on the client’s industry, available resources, communication flow and the competition in the niche. It should be well planned, managed and executed properly by the link building/SEO team involved so as to see better results for the campaign.

Final Thoughts

Handling a link building company is not an easy job but it pays off when the business owners who invested on the services are earning more than what they had expected.