Link building is an essential component of any SEO strategy; links are what a search engine uses to evaluate the authority of any given site.
The simplified version is that links pass a finite amount of “authority” (based on the authority of the hosting site), which can cumulatively improve your site’s authority and increase the likelihood that you rank for various queries related to your brand. Link building, then, is the process of establishing external links that get you the authority you need to rank.
(Image Source: Wordstream)
Unfortunately, this isn’t a straightforward or simple process. You need to consider not only the authoritative strength of your chosen link building targets but the type of content you write, the appropriateness of the link, its contextual relevance, and how you balance this source with all your other sources. Not to mention, when you first start out, you’ll be relegated to posting on low-authority sources, scraping by with minimal yield until you build up enough of a reputation to start posting on bigger, more prominent publishers.
So where’s the tipping point?
What areas might be holding you back from quality link building?
At what point do your skills, experience, and brand reputation become strong enough to start earning you a positive return?
Contents
Two Forms of Link Building
There are actually two types of modern link building efforts that can be effective:
- Earned links depend on the creation of link worthy content that has the potential to go viral. Essentially, the idea here is to create something awesome and rely on your audience to naturally link to it. This is an exceptional strategy for building links that are natural and diverse, but it’s hard to create content with this level of viral potential.
- Manual link building puts matters in your own hands. Here, you’ll work to establish relationships with offsite publishers, writing guest post content with embedded high quality links pointing to your web page. It’s a much more controllable and reliable strategy but requires more finesse.
The Complicated Nature of Link Building ROI
When I talk about how “effective” your link building strategy is, what I’m referring to is your overall ROI, or return on investment. This, in turn, is complicated because ROI can be manifested in a number of different areas:
- Increased rank potential, even though link building is only one of several ranking factors.
- Higher brand visibility, which is hard to measure.
- Higher brand authority, which is hard to measure.
- Direct referral traffic from click-throughs.
Overall, though, each of these benefits will scale along with your strategy, and there will be relatively few payoffs in each area when you first start out.
The Learning Curve
When you first start out, you’re going to be bad at link building. No matter how many posts (and links) you read or how much advice you get from people who have already done it, chances are you aren’t going to be effective until you get your hands dirty and start figuring things out for yourself. This is also true because every company is going to be different, and a link building strategy that works for one company won’t necessarily work the same way for another. For this reason alone, it will likely be months before you start settling into a reliable strategy.
Getting Set Up
Even assuming your strategy is flawless when you first start building authority, your return is going to be a pittance. You’ll first have to invest heavily in your onsite authority (to show you know what you’re talking about), which usually involves building up an archive of content posts and then establishing an ongoing rhythm for your blog. This alone can take weeks of intense work. From there, you’ll start working with low-level publishers or posting on social media with hardly any followers to pick up your content—accordingly, your ROI is going to be abysmally low for a while. Additionally, search engines take time to recognize your site’s authority and link quality, meaning it will be a gradual process to generate links that significantly improve your search rankings.
Scaling the Strategy
Once you start scaling your strategy, you should start to see better results. This means attracting and retaining new and more engaged followers, working with a greater quantity of high-authority publishers, and overall developing better content. Getting here takes a number of steps, and depending on your level of commitment and experience, it could take anywhere from months to years. Incorporating common link building strategies, such as guest posting on high authority websites or reaching out to relevant sites to link your blog post, can significantly enhance your backlink profile. Over time, a robust backlink profile will signal to search engines that your site is credible and authoritative, further driving your success.
When Will You See a Positive ROI?
It’s hard to say exactly when the crossover to positive ROI will be for your link building strategies, but if you’re starting from scratch, you can count on a few months—at a minimum—to develop your link building campaign. Though every campaign will be distinct, most link building campaigns will start to see this transition upon breaking into a secondary ring of publishers—ones that demand higher standards for their guest posts than the entry-level circle you’ll start with.
Effective keyword research and targeting relevant search engine results can help in identifying opportunities for building links on other sites. As you progress, your link building budget and the expertise of your link builder will become increasingly important in achieving higher search engine visibility and driving more traffic to your site.
The Shortcut
Link building campaign demands a heavy upfront investment before you start earning a suitable return on your ongoing efforts, but it’s definitely worth it once you understand the many types of returns you’ll see. Still, if you’re feeling intimidated by the steep and long learning curve or if you’re just eager to start seeing results quickly, there is one potential shortcut: working with an agency.
There are a lot of spammy agencies out there, promising fast results and using cheap overseas labor to build links, but there are also agencies dedicated to producing quality content and maintaining relationships with hundreds of high-profile publishers. A link building agency can help you skip the learning curve, skip the gradual transitions, and start earning the domain authority usually reserved until after your initial investment.
Want more information on link building? Head over to our comprehensive guide on link building here: SEO Link Building: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide.
Tim has spent more than two decades in organic online marketing, working with some of the most well-recognized online brands in scaling their content marketing campaigns.
Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.
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