to create an effective link building strategy

Understanding link building is essential to a successful strategy.

• Your content assets
• People who create and consume your content.
• Share your content in a way that is most appropriate for you.

This information can be used to create a policy that guides your actions and adds value to content creators, encouraging them to share the content you have created.

Your ultimate goal should be to improve the reputation of both your website, and its content creators.

This article explains what makes up a good strategy and how to translate a situational analysis into a strategic framework.

Discover how to apply helpful strategies and planning insights in your own situation, and then turn them into practical steps for your next campaign.

What is a strategic plan?

Let’s define “strategy” before we get into link building.

A strategy is the way one organizes resources in order to achieve a goal.

Richard Rumelt, the author of ” Good Strategy vs. Bad Strategy” argues that a successful strategy is based on three basic ingredients.

• Diagnosis : Understanding the nature and scope of the problem.
• Guidance policy: The overall approach chosen to overcome all obstacles.
• Coordinated actions: Steps coordinated to support the policy.

Imagine skiing or snowboarding down a mountain.

You can use the line to reach the base of the mountain quickly or for another goal.

It’s not uncommon to call a tactic a strategy.

Guest posting is not a strategy for link building. Guest posting is a tactic, or technique that can be included in a strategy.

Blue ocean concept shows that the guiding policy could either be to explore new paths or to follow the competitors and do something better.

• Blue Ocean Strategy: Stimulate demand in an unexplored, new market segment.
• Red Ocean Strategy: Differentiate your business from competitors in a market already crowded.

Understanding these areas will help you evaluate whether to make adjustments, enhance or completely rework your policy.

• Budget : How much money is spent on the product. What is the cost to the consumer?
• Value Creation: What problems does the product or software solve? What’s that worth?
• Internal workflows: Create an advantage through efficiency.
• Enhancement of knowledge and growth : Are you more intelligent than your competition in one particular area?
• Ethical Considerations: Do ethical considerations limit what can be built or designed?

How to build a successful link building strategy

Take a page from Rand Fishkin’s advice for creating a fantastic marketing strategy and look at the following:

• Content Creators : Individuals or businesses that create content and publish it with different goals.
• Consumers of content: These are individuals or entities who consume content. This includes other content creators, search engine bots, and others.
• Platforms : Websites and social media networks. Forums and other online spaces are also included.
• Content : Different forms of content are evaluated based on their quality, relevance and uniqueness. Owned assets or independent assets.
• High Level of Competition: Due to the large amount of content that is created and shared every day, there is a high level of competition.
• Trends : Influences like content format trends , platform preferences, customer behavior, and SEO techniques.
• Link Building: Secure the link to allow users to click and navigate.

Let’s use the Skyscraper Technique to illustrate how a link building strategy for an HR software can be adapted.

Diagnosis

Skyscraper technique

• Assess the current status of content assets owned by the company, its consumers and the creators who share it.
• Identify content that is already generating a large number of links. Creators of this content who have linked back to it are likely potential customers for your content.
• Understanding the online asset sharing marketplace is important because it’s highly competitive and saturated.

Specific Application

• Google’s top ranking for HR software does not mention generative AI. It’s still a technology that has a significant impact on the role of HR managers.
• All of this information about HR and generative AI can be consolidated into one page, creating more value.
• It is also difficult to scan the top content to find useful content quickly.

Guidance policy

Skyscraper technique

• Create superior content to help you navigate the online asset sharing marketplace.
• Create content that is better than existing content. The superior content will attract content creators looking for new content to share.

Specific Application

• 
  Blue Ocean
  
  • Study the unique processes of HR professionals.
  • Test 3 AI tools per time-consuming task.
  • Find 5+ AI (minimum-viable product) tools that can improve employee reviews and improve quality.
• 
  Red Ocean
  
  • AI can be used to create a guide on the best HR recruitment software.
  • Create engaging content by leveraging the unique ChatGPT application in the company’s HR recruitment process.

Coherent action

Find links-worthy content

• Skyscraper Technique:Identify content that has generated many links. This is the standard for your own content.
• Specific Application: High-ranking content which generates links but does not cover the topic in depth, excluding generative artificial intelligence.

Improve on something

• Skyscraper Technique: Create superior content to existing content, by creating a piece that is more comprehensive, current, and well-designed , orcreating a completely new unique.
• Specific Application: Create an article based on data for “technology which will eliminate HR jobs in five years”.

Contact the right people

• Skyscraper Technique: Find people who already link to similar content and contact them via email in order to convince them to link to superior content.
• Specific Application: Contact the sites linking to the top HR technology blogs and content to discuss the future AI in HR technology.

With the basic elements of a sound strategy, you can create a unique approach.

I developed a new technique for a hypothetical HR software scenario.

The Collective is a strategy that benefits everyone. Contributors gain visibility and recognition while you receive high-quality content as well as potential backlinks.

The collaborative nature of content increases its likelihood of being shared and linked, since it represents the collective wisdom and insights of a community.

Diagnosis

Collective technique

• Find a topic that is relevant to your industry and attracts a lot of people or businesses.

Specific Application

• AI-driven HR software for B2B audiences reduces the time spent on recruiting by reducing the number of recruiters.
• Many articles are being written about generative AI. Reddit has a small group of people discussing the impact AI could have on HR managers and job loss.

Guidance policy

Collective technique

• Create a collaborative content piece that includes contributions from different community members. It could be personal stories, expert opinions, case studies or any other valuable contribution.

Specific Application

• 
  Blue Ocean
  
  • Ask the Reddit Community what questions are not being asked by internal experts.
  • List the top experts and then ask SMEs to write an article explaining the discussion topic, using the Reddit comments.
• 
  Red Ocean
  
  :
  • Create a listicle based on the comments of community experts.
  • For a valuable quote or insight, ask them to elaborate on their comments in an article or more detailed contribution.

Coherent action

Identify contributors

• 
  Collective technique
  
  • Choose a topic that is trending and contact potential contributors in the community. (i.e. industry experts, key influencers, or other individuals with valuable insights).
  • Invite them to participate in your project by explaining it.
• 
  
  Specific Application
  
  
  • On YouTube, a certain HR influencer has followers who are HR professionals and they discuss the impact of generative AI on their jobs. Influencer and followers discuss the risk of losing their job due to AI. However, there are no examples that show how AI creates this risk.

Create collaborative content

• 
  Collective technique
  
  • Compose the contributions into an integrated piece of content, such as a blog, ebook, or video.
  • Be sure to credit all contributors.
• 
  
  Specific Application
  
  
  • Create blog posts, listicles, or screenshots of conversations from the internal SMEs community.
  • Compile unique insights to be discussed.

Promote content

• 
  Collective technique
  
  • Encourage contributors to share content with their audiences and influencers.
• 
  
  Specific Application
  
  
  • Share the content directly with community members and in the original threads, stating that the insight has been shared in blog posts.

Participate in the community

• 
  Collective technique
  
  • Engage with the community even after the content is published.
  • Show appreciation for links and shares by responding to comments. This helps to build relationships which can lead to future link opportunities.
• 
  
  Specific Application
  
  
  • Discussions can be started around the new insights and critical points that were brought up by the article or community members.

Once the strategy framework has been designed, you can apply it to your specific situation.

Any link building strategy can be used with this method.

The Search Engine Land article I wrote on methods to build links on any website covers some of the more popular techniques.

Guest Posting for Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

• A company expert contributes an original piece of content, with a link back to your website to another site.

Broken link building

• You can find broken links by searching other websites. Then, you can suggest your own content that is relevant as a substitute and ask the website owner to link your content.

Podcast Guest

• In the show notes of a podcast or in its description, a representative from your business appears as a special guest. A link to your site is also included.

Unlinked Brand Mentions

• You can find instances online where your brand has been mentioned but there is no link to it. Then you contact the website owner and ask for a link.

Resource Page Link Building

• Create valuable, high-quality content on a particular topic and contact websites that have resource pages for the topic. Ask them to link to your content.

Linkable content (no sharing)

• Create high-quality, unique content for your website. Other websites will naturally link to it.

Linkable content (sharing)

• Promote your content on other websites and social media.

Listicle roundups

• Listicle: Create a listicle, a list-based piece, that features the top resources, influencers or trends of your industry. Encourage those who are featured to link to it.

Competitor link building

• You can use this information to find out where your competitors’ backlinks are coming from and contact them to ask for a link to your website.

Processes for developing and planning strategies

Link building is a process that can be simplified into:

• Choosing the right technique
• Mapping the strategy framework.
• Mapping the framework with specific analyses, policies, and steps.

The first step is to determine SEO objectives and goals. Use this direction to guide your policy.

Step 1: Analyze the issue and diagnose it

• 
  Prep work
  
  :
  • Identify specific goals, resources, and objectives.
  • Analyze the content eco-system in the niche or keyword cluster targeted.
• Select a broad technique: Choose the strategy or technique which aligns best with your goals and constraints.
• Specific Application: Take advantage of your knowledge about the ecosystem and tailor the technique to suit your situation.

Step 2: Table of elements and mapping technique

• Select ocean : Select a strategy that is either disruptive, or completely new.
• Create options : Create policy options for each ocean.
• Choose the ocean according to the likelihood of success and risk tolerances.

Step 3: Develop your steps

• Identify the people, processes and technologies. Determine what is needed to support your strategic plan.
• Plan Development: Describe the steps you will take to implement your strategy.
• Documentation : Document strategy with a SOP or process maps.

Take Action

You now have the tools and knowledge to create and implement successful link building strategies.

You can achieve the following by understanding the difference between tactics and strategy and following this step-by-step guide:

• What is your current situation?
• Create a policy that guides your work.
• Take coherent action.

These insights will help you stand out in a crowded market, achieve your marketing goals, and create value for customers.

Now it’s up to you to use these insights in your own context. Happy strategizing!

The post Create a Link Building Strategy first appeared on Search Engine Land.