The Secret Formula For Creating A Link Building Strategy That Works

 So Many Strategies – So Little Time

With online marketing there are a ton of strategies that you can do for a client. If you need some strategy inspiration check out Point Blank SEO’s Link Building Strategies list.

With so many options it can be difficult to prioritize what strategies to do in order to best help your clients.

 

How To  Decide What To Do

In order to pick the best strategies for a client you first need to know what their goals are! You could be doing what you think is an amazing job, but if it isn’t hitting the clients goals for success you’ll still get fired.

Examples of some goals could be:

• Higher  domain authority & page authority for the site
• Increase online traffic
• Increase in social shares and followers
• More sales of product
• Brand recognition

* Tip: If clients give you several goals have them prioritize them and check to see if they have specific goals they are required striving to hit.

What Assets Do They Have?

It is easier to leverage resources and assets that a client already has instead of creating new ones.

Work with clients to make a list of assets they have. This could range from being people, data, product, or content.

If the client doesn’t have anything that is linkable, which is pretty rare, then you can brainstorm strategies to see what they can & can not do.

Who Is The Target?

Now it is time to find who we are going to target these assets with. It does not always have to be the companies target market. Go through each asset and ask “who would be interested in this?. When you are thinking of your targets try to put together some basic information such as:

• Gender
• Age
• Interests
• Occupation

If you have the time to create personas  it is the best way to understand and segment different demographics a company is targeting. Check out Mike King’s post on Moz about this.

 

Where Does Your Market Hangout Online?

Once we have an idea of who we are targeting we need to find out where they are online.

Every industry has an online community, you just need to find it. Search the following areas by the industry or keyword to find your clients online community.

• Forums
• Social Networks (Twitter, Linkedin, G+)
• Industry Websites
• Industry Blogs
• Podcasts
• Influencers

* Tip: Usually someone has already aggregated a list for your target market. Do a Google search for “List of [keyword] blogs”

Do not forget about the clients goals!

Make sure that your strategy is  still in line with your clients goals.

If their goal is to increase domain authority your strategy might involve getting links from .edu, .org, and .gov websites.

If their goal is to increase sales you might focus on the target markets of potential buyers.

Prove The Idea

I can not stress the importance of this step enough!

I’ve come up with “good ideas”, or so I thought, in the past where I had a good asset targeted for a specific market online, but when it came to executing it failed.

Now there are several different reasons why it didn’t work out, but I noticed a trend that the strategy I was trying to do in that market hadn’t been done or had not worked in the past.

So lesson learned, if you are able to find  a strategy or asset that has been successful in the past the more likely it will work for your client.

Go & Do It!

After all of this research you now have a strategy, a target, an online location, and prove that it’s worked in the past.  Now all you have to do is go and do it!

Putting It All Together

Following this formula with each client will help streamline your process of prioritizing strategies that will work.

Before you “Do” anything be sure to go through the rest of the steps first!

I’ve  created a Google Doc so you can make a copy of the process for yourself.

Save Time With BuzzStream

I do not know what I would do without BuzzStream! Really it helps speed up this process considerably.

Once I have my clients goal, I use the BuzzStream to find new and old opportunities to gain links to assets.

If you want me to make a tutorial walking through the BuzzStream process please let me know in the comments. 

Business Example

To show you how this would look for a possible client I used Golden Valley Natural Beef Jerky as an example of what I would do if I were to do a link building campaign for some of their assets.  You can also check it out

(Link To The Google Doc)

 

Your Turn – What’s Your Process For Prioritizing Strategies For Clients?

I know this is not the only way to do this, but it works for me. Would love to hear what you use.

PS. If you would like me to show how I use BuzzStream to find link opportunities let me know in the comments.

PPS. If you want to find more ways to build links efficiently – Check out my Free Link Building Class!