I’ll be honest. It’s tough to do link building when you don’t have the luxury of working closely with SEO team who is actually optimizing the pages you are building links to. And I’ve had this experience where an internal team handles the optimization while we handle the link building.
I love the fact that I work in a search engine optimization firm with a full-fledged team of strategists, technical experts, and industry experts. But there are times that we are doing link building without having input into the keywords that are being selected, the pages that are being optimized, and the overall business strategy. Some lessons I have learned from this are:
1. Have a clear understanding of the pages you are building links for. When you jump from page to page on a monthly or bi-monthly basis, it’s hard to see true progress. Agree before the start of the project on which pages will be the primary focus of link building efforts.
2. Outline tactics that will be undertaken. Changing focus halfway through a project will not help the site nor your linking efforts. If a change of direction is requested, understand the goals that are driving the request.
3. Have keyword discussions. If your SEO-instinct kicks in that a keyword that has been selected is too competitive, too broad, or not as relevant as it could be, open the door for those discussions. Be prepared to have other options ready for the conversation, so do some keyword research before you begin to talk.
4. Have your strategy written out as best as you can along with a timeline. This will keep everyone on the same page as you work on the project.
5. Have open dialogues with the internal SEO team. Make sure that you are being kept updated on keyword changes, URL changes, or anything else that will affect your link building strategy.
6. Most importantly, define goals at the onset. This needs to be priority #1. Is it conversions? Traffic? Increased link popularity? Whatever the goals are, make sure that you are setting realistic expectations within the confines of the project and what you and your team can reasonably do.
There are lots of ways to do link building whether you are part of the actual optimization process or not, but having everything clearly spelled out is the biggest factor in not only a successful linking initiative, but in a successful relationship with your contacts for the site you are working on. It certainly presents its challenges when all you are doing is link building, but it can work and it will so long as you prioritize correctly and everyone involved is on the same page.
