Link building is one of the most commonly discussed topics in the world of digital marketing and SEO. Yet despite all of the conversation on the topic, very few brands experience positive results that are sustainable over the course of many months and years. This has led many to view link building as a crapshoot, but this would be an unfair assessment.
The failure of most SEO campaigns can be tied back to a few common, often related factors. By avoiding these shortcomings and instead focusing on the right techniques, you can alter your outcome and maximize your link building ROI.
Speak with any SEO agency with experience in white hat link building, and they’ll harp on the importance of being engaged with every single aspect of the process. It’s the businesses that try to put everything on autopilot that run into trouble. Specifically, if you were to study the obituaries of hundreds of failed link building strategies, you’d discover that they almost all share some of these common culprits:
The first mistake is not having any goals. While this may seem basic, it’s astonishing how many businesses embark on full-fledged campaigns – spending tens of thousands of dollars – without having specific and measurable objectives to serve as signposts. Goals bring clarity to ideas.
They give you something to reach for and allow you to work backwards in a linear fashion until you find yourself in a place where you’re ready to execute with purpose. Think about what it is you want your link building strategy to achieve and then attach specific outcomes that can be measured. You’ll find that you approach the matter with far greater focus and intensity.
There is no substitute for quality content in a link building strategy. Gone is the days when you could write 250-word blurbs with spammy keywords and see an immediate boost to your SEO rankings. In order to thrive in today’s environment, you need quality, reader-centric content.
Quality content is content that’s in-depth, lengthy (at least 700 words), and focused on the specific needs, wants, or desires of your target audience. Overly-optimized keywords are no longer effective. Instead, you should be focused on long-tail contextual phrases that signal relevance to Google.
If someone were to ask you to describe your brand voice in two or three sentences, could you do it? If you were to study failed link building campaigns, you’d find that most of the brands behind these campaigns had very little clarity around brand voice.
You can’t afford to fall into this same trap. Take the time to develop a brand voice that reflects your brand’s personality and allows you to communicate in a consistent and relatable fashion with your readers.
“The identity that you create is significantly shaped by the words that you write and how you write them,” brand strategist Kate Bourque explains. “Rather than throwing a bunch of copy out into the world without really putting any thought into it, a cultivated, well-thought-out brand voice has a purpose. It knows who it wants to listen and how it should make them feel.” After fleshing out your brand voice, take the time to develop a style guide that your content team can use to ensure all branded content is consistent with your brand’s identity.
It’s amazing how many brands launch link building strategies into orbit and then never check back to see how things are going. In fact, a failure to track progress and optimize the approach may be the biggest missed opportunity.
With as many data as you have available at your fingertips through free tools like Google Analytics, as well as dozens of other paid tools, there’s no excuse to not track and optimize. A few minutes per day can make a huge difference in your outcome.
There’s no perfect template for developing an SEO link building strategy and achieving immediate success. But if you want to increase your chances of generating positive results, you’d do well to avoid the mistakes outlined in this article.
At the very least, turning away from these errors and turning toward industry best practices will increase your likelihood of enjoying long-term results. And at the end of the day, that’s what we’re all seeking!
If you are interested in even more business-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
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