Venchito Tampon Jr

How to Set Up Google Alerts

What is Google Alerts?

Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service, offered by the search engine company Google. The service sends emails to the user when it finds new results—such as web pages, newspaper articles, blogs, or scientific research—that match the user's search term. Source: Wikipedia

 

Maximizing tools that can monitor your brand, websites, and people within your industry is essential to growing your business.

Why is this necessary?

You get to benefit from monitoring mentions of your brand and other industry websites/people in ways such as:

• Understanding how your brand, your product/service, even the staff working for you are being perceived by netizens (this includes checking if there are negative reviews/mentions you need to be aware of).
• Discovering opportunities to network with bloggers, publishers, and non-competing organizations who can help partner for producing well-crafted content in your space.
• Engaging in niche-specific online communities where you can deliver so much value with your expertise by answering tough questions.
• Find out upcoming content creators in your vertical who can be part of your publishing team.

There are a lot more opportunities you'll be missing out on if you don't monitor web mentions.

There are several tools out there that will assist you in this web monitoring. In this post, we'll only cover one free web monitoring tool - Google Alerts.

[toc]

 

How to Set Up Google Alerts

Here are four steps to setting up your own Google alerts.

1. Go to google.com/alerts in your browser.
2. Enter a search term that you want to track.
3. Click Show Options to narrow the alert to a particular source, language, region, frequency of alerts, types of results, and which email alerts will be delivered to.
4. Select Create alert.

That's how easy it is. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to apply those four steps.

The next question is, where can you apply monitoring web mentions?

How to Use Google Alerts For Business

Seven ways aren't that all to maximize Google Alerts. We couldn't cover ALL methodologies, but these 7 approaches are enough to get you started with monitoring important mentions, websites, and other web elements.

1. Monitoring your brand

By monitoring who mentions your brand, you could possibly find all sorts of things you can maximize for further link acquisition and other content promotion initiatives. Here are examples of what you can find out:

• Publication websites from your industry and from other niches you could possibly tap for guest blogging.
• Up and coming bloggers whom you can connect with for promotion of your content and/or of your offerings.
• Academic organizations that have quoted content of your brand (which can help you generate unique opportunities or strategies to tap this kind of market).

 

What are the things you should keep monitoring regularly about your brand?

A. Brand Name or Website Name

First, you start by monitoring websites that mention your company but are not linking to you. You get these mentions primarily because you have your offerings (products/services) reviewed, cited, or one of your staff members has been interviewed for a publication feature.

Set up a Google alert to find mentions of your company name. Enter your company name as the term you want to track. You can also add variations of misspellings that you think people can make when mentioning your company name.

 

For example, in my former link building blog, Digital Philippines, I often see unlinked mentions of a misspelled brand name - Digital Philipines (missing one letter P).

To look for potential misspelled words or phrases, you may use this Keyword Typo Generator to get a list of likely human misspellings of your brand name.

 

B. Website Name

You would notice that I separate brand name from the website name, as there may be subtleties here.

For example, I"m From The Future is the brand name of a company while its website is FTF.agency (not the website that most would create, e.g. imfromthefuture.com).

 

Set up a Google alert for the website name.

 

You may also add misspellings of the website and variations of TLDs - in case you don't have a .com website. There are cases when people are linked to a .com version of your site (e.g. digitalphilippines.com or ftf.com) instead of the right versions (e.g. digitalphilippines.net or ftf.agency).

 

C. Team Members

You'll be surprised that not only people would mention your brand name or website name, but also names of people who are working with or for you.

 

Here are some guiding questions to let you identify who are these people:

• Who are your brand ambassadors? These are people who are paid to represent your brand.
• Who are your staff writers, marketers, or publishers contributing content outside your website?
• Who is the face of your brand online? You may not have a brand ambassador from other entities, but have someone who frequently asked for media interviews or press exposures.
• Who do you send out for conferences to speak or organize events?

Identify these people and list down their names. It's very important to know them first so it would be easy for you set up Google alerts for each one of them.

 

You'll be wondering now what kind of mentions that those brand personas would receive.

These are just handful types of mentions your staff members could possibly get:

1. Dedicated pages of industry conferences and events where one of your staff members highly participated in - these include speakership, sponsorship or community works.
2. Crowdsourced content like group-sized interviews (listicle type of interviews) where your CEO, a marketer, or a writer of your team has been asked to answer one specific question.
3. Your CEO or top executive's popular quotes or statements, which were highlighted in an online magazine or column.
4. A praise statement for a well-deserved award or recognition in the industry that typically mentions the President of your company.

Once you have the list, you can set up individual Google Alerts for each of them.

 

D. Company products

If you have several products, it wouldn't make sense to create individual Google alerts.

 

First, there will just be clutter in your alerts, as you will probably get alerts for mentions of products that are not yours.

Second, if you have thousands of products, not all of them are getting mentioned on the web - we'll get into this a little bit later.

 

Here are some recommendations if you want to set up alerts for company products.

Start with products that are attached to your company or brand. There are products where your company has created in the first place. One example is USANA (I'm not affiliated with them), but they have products where their brand is attached to it (e.g. USANA Essentials).

 

Go over your popular products or highly sellable products. Chances are, if they are popular, they'll get some mentions one way or the other on the web. List down your popular products or those ones that get positive reviews.

 

Setup another alert for each of your company products - both for products attached to your brand (so you can be very specific with alerts) and highly sellable products.

One good note to consider is when you're a retailer of products. If you have an eCommerce site and you're reselling products of other companies, this kind of alert monitoring may not be a recommended option for you.

Even if you find all mentions of a popular product, when you reach out to people and ask for links of unlinked mentions, you won't get any, since you're not the manufacturer of the product.

2. Monitoring Your Competitors

There are more reasons to track your competitors than just knowing their popularity level and how good their products are as far as positive reviews and customer engagement are concerned.

Here’s why you should monitor competitors for online mentions.

• Direct link opportunities
• Potential publication websites for interviews
• New distribution websites for content

 

Let's tackle each of this one by one.

Direct link opportunities

By monitoring your competitors, you'll find a website with a dedicated listing page that linked out to two or three of your competitors.

If the page is in context with you and is currently being updated, it's an opportunity for you to reach out and ask for a link.

 

You'll find all sorts of mentions that are linked to your competitors, but not you. If you could figure out why they get mentioned by checking and understanding page titles, section titles, and descriptions before link placements, you'll get a felt sense if you have a chance of getting a link as well.

 

Potential publication websites for interviews

Your competitors may be getting media exposure through interviews - both group, brand or brand persona. By tracking which publications have mentioned them, you may have a list of websites to collect and qualify based on the probability of getting featured.

 

New distribution websites for content

What monitoring your competitors allows you is that you'll find new content distribution websites that are sometimes unique to your vertical. You would often find out that there are websites not included in the list of "top [industry] forums"  or "top [industry] submit content" articles.

 

By setting up alerts, you will discover new distribution websites that are very unique to your industry.

Setting Alerts for Competitors

For competitors, here are some search terms you can track regularly. Customize these alerts on the basis of your competitors' brands:

• "YourCompetitorsBrandName"
• "YourCompetitorsWebsiteName"
• "YourCompetitorsProductName"
• "YourCompetitorsBrandAmbassador"

 

Recommended Tip in Finding New Competitors

In web monitoring, you don't just stick looking for who mentioned your current competitors or competitors you would consider relevant to your business.

But it's also critically important to seek out new competitors in your field.

There are three reasons why I think it's good to discover new competitors in your space:

• You will see their current strategies that allowed massive results in a short period of time (rare as it should be, but it is possible to grow a brand quickly).
• You will notice what these new competitors are trying to do to differentiate from you and from the competition (are they focusing on unique opportunities you may have missed?)
• You will seek out news publication and content distributions websites that are receptive to new or startup brands or websites.

 

If you wish to find new competitors, you can set up Google alerts to discover them.

• "YOURPRODUCTNAME VS"
• "COMPETITORPRODUCT VS"

 

What this particular Google alert does is that it gives you mentions that compare your product or your competitors' product over a new competitor. Though the newfound competitor may not be as new as you think, if it's not on your list (or you haven't checked it out), you can take a look and see if they're a relevant competitor.

3. Monitoring Coined Terms

Whether you're a solo writer or part of an editorial team, you have may have coined some terms in your industry that have been frequently used by other publishers or content creators.

If you can find who uses the coined term but haven't linked to the original blog post on the topic, then that may be a good opportunity to earn more links in the process if you do some outreach.

For example, Brian Dean of Backlinko coined the term, "Skyscraper Technique" . Since he has published and popularized that SEO strategy, a lot of SEO and internet marketing bloggers have started applying it on their own SEO campaigns and have shared results in a form of case studies.

 

By setting up a Google alert, you'll be able to receive notification alerts of blogs that mentioned or used the exact term on their blog content. You could enter any of these variations of terms to get the most of the alerts.

 

Below are some examples only.

• skyscraper technique
• skyscraper strategy
• brian dean skyscraper
• skyscraper backlink

 

Of course, you'll be thinking how this would be possible for your industry or for the industries of your clients if they have coined one term or at most, just planning to do so.

 

Here are some things you need to consider if a coined term is worth monitoring.

Does your coined term affect other people's performance both professionally or business?

Your coined term should literally get people to take action, assuming it provides a unique value that when practiced or applied to business and life can make a significant difference.

The reason is that if the coined term affects results, it would later be referenced on blog posts and case studies of publishers in your space.

 

Can your coined term be categorized under a specific section in your industry?

If a coined term has been placed under a category of a blog or publishing website, it increases its visibility of getting found by people who may refer to it in their works.

Every time you have coined a term and people are starting to use them, do not neglect setting up a Google alert, even if the coined term is not yet too popular.

By waiting for months or years to get traction, you'll have missed out on early mentions of your coined term, which were supposed to be converted into initial links by then.

4. Monitoring New Guest Publications of Publishers

One of the best practices in executing a guest blogging campaign is finding where's the next blogs or websites top industry guest publishers publish their content.

Monitoring new guest publications of writers is like semi-automating the process of finding new blogs to submit content to. Not only does it speed up blog prospecting, but also actually helps filter those blogs that really accept guest contributions (from those who don't) and blogs that are of high quality and with probably good engagement (from those blogs that are not).

Before setting up a Google alert for that purpose, it's important to first have a list of top guest bloggers in your space. One important note is not to restrict yourself to bloggers, but also look for industry practitioners who are publishing their works online.

 

Once you find them, you can create different Google alerts that track a variety of mentions. Here are examples of these varied terms:

• "BLOGGERNAME" guest post
• "This is a guest post from BLOGGERNAME"
• "guest post from BLOGGERNAME"
• BLOGGERNAME "new post"
• "guest author" BLOGGERNAME
• "guest contributor" BLOGGERNAME

5. Monitoring Niche Questions

One way to build up your branding is to answer as many niche-specific questions as possibly can - but where your expertise really lies.

The first in many effective methods of finding industry questions is to subscribe to industry forum newsletters, subscriptions or alerts where you'll receive daily or regular filtered questions.

What I've found with the aforementioned approach is the vulnerability of distributing content on only one platform or website. Vulnerable given if the niche forum or Q&A website has been turned down, your distributed content in the form of answers may be wasted.

As an alternative, you can set up Google alerts for forums or Q&A sites.

What you would like to monitor are the following:

• Niche-specific questions in the top forum and Q&A websites (e.g. Quora)
• Newly added categories and sub-categories in the top forum and Q&A websites (e.g. SEO tools section in Quora)
• New industry and general forums and Q&A sites

 

Let's go over each of the above opportunities.

Niche-specific questions in the top forum and Q&A websites

Apparently, the top-most opportunity you'll get by setting a specific alert for this is you'll find the exact industry questions you can answer.

 

If you have regulated your alerts to real-time updates, you can set the alert to real-time. The earlier Google gives the notification, the earlier you can answer the question.

Be prompt in answering questions as they tend to stay a little longer and often have the benefit of receiving more views and engagements from both people who are looking for answers and people who intend to answer those questions too.

 

Newly added categories and sub-categories in the top forum and Q&A websites

I often see this happening in top Q&A websites given the similarity and demand of answers from community users, and it would be more helpful for users to create a separate specific section on the topic.

By being the first one to dominate a targeted question market, you'll be able to capture more audience from the answers you provide.

 

New industry and general forums and Q&A sites

New different forums arise from the need to engage with very targeted audiences.

You'll not be able to find these new forum websites by just searching, as they may not be listed yet in top niche forums articles.

 

However, you may discover them by monitoring on Google Alerts. Start by tracking these search terms:

• YourNiche "forum"
• "Quora" "topic"
• "LongTailQuestion" "forum"

6. Discovering New Freelance Writers

The demand for freelance writers has grown over the years, whether its purpose is to create a series of articles for a company blog or write content fairly distributed on other relevant websites.

However, the problem I often see is finding freelance writers who are highly skilled and have a good track record.

More than that, if you can look for freelance writers who have connections with other publishers in the field, it would be a big plus for your link building campaign. You need not worry about an additional list of prospect blogs and you'll be able to spend more time in other phases of the link building campaign (i.e. making customized strategies).

To discover new freelance writers in your field, you can utilize Google Alerts.

It is best if you have specific job board sites in mind (e.g. jobs.problogger.net), where you can create a custom Google alert for them and be able to get a supply of alerts for technical writers.

 

Here are some phrases you can use as tracking phrases in Google Alerts:

• “Jobs.problogger.net” + “Travel”
• “Buffer” Design
• “SEO Tools” Freelance Programmer
• “Looking for a freelance” Pixar

7. Generating Content Ideas

Google alerts aren't only useful for monitoring mentions of your website and of your competitors, it's also a great tool for generating topics for your content.

There are many content marketing tools out there that can help you with discovering new industry topics. Buzzsumo and Ahrefs' Content Explorer are some of these examples for scaling content ideation.

As far as the receiving method is concerned - receiving email notifications on what's popular out there in terms industry data, and newest reports - you can use Google Alerts.

To set this up well, I would start by using the filetype advanced search operator along with the topic of choice.

This is the exact search term you'll track using Google Alerts.

 

Once you have created the alert, you'll be receiving email notifications of new pdf published. Examples of these are:

• Fact sheets of top industry organizations
• Data survey and reports for relevant and timely topics
• Evergreen academic resources

These niche resources can help you craft better content with supported data and powerful insights from authoritative entities in your space.

How to Manage Google Alerts

It's one thing to set up Google Alerts. It's a different thing to manage them.

Of course, you'll receive thousands of email alerts, and that's where the problem lies.

You have to be able to manage Google Alerts in its most simplistic way.

One tool that I think can effectively help you manage alerts is Google Inbox.

 

When you sign in, you'll see a section called, "Bundled in the Inbox". This is where all your inbox filters will be placed.

Start by creating an inbox bundle. Insert the email googlealerts-noreply@google.com - this email is the exact automated email from Google Alerts.

You can also filter alerts based on the campaign type or purpose. For example, for alerts that give you new blogs to target for content distribution, you can create an inbox bundle for Guest Blogging. To track unlinked mentions, you can make another folder for Link Reclamation. 

By doing so, you refine the process of managing Google alerts and let you focus on the current campaign type. One by one, you deal with each email alert.

Maximize What's Free

It's easy to be overwhelmed with new premium content marketing and mention tracking tools. But if you can get your hands on free tools like Google Alerts and get the most out of it, you'll never know how much it can help you semi-automate some of your link building and content-promotion practices.

If you have additional tips in using Google Alerts more effectively, let me know in the comments.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

How to Use Twitter Effectively For Link Building

Social media platforms have been useful places to promote the brand's content.

Certainly, this includes the idea of using Twitter effectively to build connections with like-minded people, to get more eyeballs to content, and to acquire natural links in the process.

You don't use Twitter to spam people with links to your content, all the time. There is a proper way of sharing your content on the platform, and be mindful of being too aggressive just for the sake of links. That 2009 strategy doesn't work anymore.

[toc]

 

How to Use Twitter Effectively For Link Building

Here are four useful tips on how to use Twitter for link building and content marketing campaigns:

1. Experiment with Tweetstorms
2. Look for Interview Requests
3. Take advantage of Twitter chats
4. Build Stronger Networks

 

1. Experiment with Tweetstorms

If you're a marketer or business person, you may have seen threads of tweets of famous founders — these are tweetstorms.

Tweetstorm is a thread of tweets conveying messages, principles, ideas, stories, or trends. In any topic area, a tweetstorm can be a powerful way to drive more followers to your brand.

Specific to link building, you can gain new connections you can eventually reach out to for potential content contributions or content collaborations.

It's a subtle approach of building your influence around a platform that sticks.

 

Here are some examples of the best tweetstorms.

Ben Collins on Google Sheets Productivity

Mega thread of #GoogleSheets #productivity tips & tricks coming up...

Starting with this humdinger

Type “https://t.co/AowcjCD40h” or "https://t.co/kOOFaQOOov" into your browser to instantly create a new Google Sheet

(1/n) pic.twitter.com/TvB5cUk15D

— Ben Collins (@benlcollins) January 14, 2020

 

Why it worked:

• It starts with a topic idea "mega-thread of Google sheets productivity". This sets the foundation and know-how to people who'd likely follow all tweets in that thread. This gives people the general context of the tweetstorm.
• It includes hashtags to gain more visibility searching for it (#GoogleSheets and #Productivity).
• It contains visual formats (e.g. gifs).
• It provides actionable takeaways for each tweet in the tweetstorm.

 

Jensen Harris on Loving Startup

Leaving a big company job for a startup can rejuvenate your career and make you love work again.?

But landing a startup job requires relearning some things, especially if (like me) you logged years and years at Microgoogfaceforceazon.

Here are six things I wish I'd known:

— Jensen Harris (@jensenharris) April 12, 2018

Why it worked:

• His career tips are based on his experiences (things I wish I'd known).
• It gives straight a context to which audience the tweetstorm is for.
• He answers to every reply to tweets in the tweetstorm — giving more visibility to the entire tweetstorm; attracting more replies and retweets.

 

How to use tweetstorms in gaining traction for links:

• Brainstorm on what topic idea works best in a tweetstorm — it should be something interesting, either it is a story, concept, or how-to steps (quickly be narrated in a tweetstorm).
• Be subtle in adding links to your content. Link to your page as long as the tweet or a reply to tweet replies make sense in the context.
• Hooks the people to see your other tweets by making your first tweet cuts the deepest. Your first tweet should also work as a singular message.
• Share relevant links to your content as separate tweets after a tweetstorm. New followers from tweetstorms would likely see and consume your content — which results in more social shares and links to your page.

2. Look for Interview Requests

There are many methodologies for getting more exposure to high-end industry publications.

You can get your articles published in major niche websites, use HARO effectively for interview or story requests, or approach journalists using Twitter.

For months, I've been tracking requests from bloggers, content creators, journalists, and other publishers who are looking for stories and guests for their show (e.g. podcasts).

Here's what it looks like in my inbox:

 

I keep track of all these emails from IFTTT, which is a setup that I've created to easily automate looking to interview tweets from publishers.

 

IFTTT allows you to create applets or recipes that trigger whenever there are tweets with (#prrequest OR #journorequest OR #haro). These tweets are sent to your inbox, which is often frequent so you need to have a filtering process to remove irrelevant tweets (looking to interview tweets not relevant to your niche).

 

Additional tips to use Twitter effectively in gaining new interview invitations (for links):

• Share your content pieces regularly on Twitter. It helps in gaining visibility for your brand to attract publishers and other media creators, such as podcasters, to invite you to their shows.
• Promote your latest interviews (media interviews, podcast guestings, round-up articles where you share your best inputs).
• Create private Twitter lists of major and minor publishers in your industry. Keep track of what they do by monitoring their tweets — you may never know moments they'd post tweets looking for interviewees.

3. Take advantage of Twitter chats

Twitter chats are scheduled group discussions on a particular topic, normally with guest experts to answer a series of questions.

In the digital marketing field, you'll see a good share of these Twitter chats every week.

SEMRush does this well.

Q1. You created content that didn’t meet goals. How do you explain this to clients or the c-suite? Next steps? @CTrappe #SEMrushChat pic.twitter.com/Pql6Ipz2CM

— SEMrush (@semrush) January 22, 2020

Why it worked:

• Scheduled activities are likely to be included in someone's calendar. This allows people to regularly attend to your Twitter chats — and even share it with their own networks if they find it worthy of their time.
• Invite guests to your Twitter chats to get a ripple effect in social sharing. Interviewees will normally promote their scheduled Twitter chat to their followers — this gives chances of gaining new traction to your show.
• Have a list of questions ready to answer. Invited guests will then know what to do during Twitter shows, as opposed to randomly asking them with anything.

4. Build Stronger Networks

Be very subtle in your approach to Twitter marketing.

Use Twitter to expand your networks.

One recommended approach is to customize your tweets when sharing useful content in your niche.

Analysis of 700,000 articles:

While long-form content may not be a ranking factor, it sure gets shared/linked-to at a higher rate (& anecdotally, tends to rank for more terms)

Anatomy of Top Performing Articles https://t.co/unfsnpzwyO

thx @Kevin_Indig for the tip. via @semrush pic.twitter.com/gwZAG8NOzX

— Cyrus (@CyrusShepard) January 15, 2020

 

Instead of following paths of basic tweet lines to content.

When you've actually read the content piece, you know its best points. So start sharing what you learned from the content and highlight them in your tweets.

This initiative helps you to stand out among people who shared tweets, which increases your chances to be on the radar for your brand to be noticed by the original content creator.

 

How to build stronger networks using Twitter:

• Regularly share the best content pieces in your industry. It only takes 3 to 5 minutes to do this when scheduling posts — you can use Buffer for Twitter scheduling.
• Start participating in threads where you think you can add value with your inputs. Engage people with your expertise.
• Create your own Twitter list to follow influencers in your industry. This method also allows you to generate ideas for your content, as you're able to see what types and topics of content your influencers (who are likely to link to your site) are actively sharing on Twitter.

Learning How to Use Twitter Effectively

Follow the basic principles and tips I've shared above then experiment on new ways on how you can maximize Twitter in marketing your business. Let me know in the comment section below if you have any questions.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

How to Build Relevant and Authority Blog Links

A blog is a place of content.

Creating a blog with brand design, proper architecture, preferred taxonomy, and unique style that differentiates it from its contemporaries  — is all there is for setup.

The container needs things in it and this is where your content assets play at most.

Produce your content pieces, and promote them to proper places.

How to Build Blog Links

Here are five ways to build blog links to your website: 

1. Rank content for “quotes” keywords
2. Ego-bait list of top niche websites
3. Targeted outreach for tool reviews
4. Resource assets for linkable markets
5. Create local guide resource links

[toc]

 

1. Rank content for "quotes" keywords

Quotes are shareable in nature. It is shared on social networks and can be included in blog posts — which opens opportunities for blog links.

 

While the opportunities for blog links is higher when the content itself (that lists all quotes) starts to rank for "quote" keywords as it can organically acquire links from content creators as they research for new ideas, the initial sharing on social platforms already has a gross effect on new links.

How to build content and rank for "quotes" keywords

Identify any quotes keyword opportunities in your industry. You can look for Ahrefs with this.

 

Search specifically about topics close to your brand. List them down in a spreadsheet.

Then, start checking the top pages ranking for your target quotes keyword. Assess any gaps you can fill in — can you make more appealing visuals for quotes?

The shareability of "quotes" content depends on visual design, quality of quotes, and its sources.

Start scheduling posts that include your quotes and/or link to your entire quote content on your own social profiles.

You can increase its visibility by reaching out to bloggers and publishers that have linked to you in the past — they're likely to be receptive to any new content that's worth linking to.

In addition, you can discover any existing posts that need visual content and offer your quotes content as an additional content format to their posts — that would be its value proposition.

2. Ego-bait list of top niche websites

Every publisher wants to get featured on a list worthy of following (e.g. top [niche] websites for 2020).

It's a privilege yet a good opportunity for brands like you to start creating ego bait content that features those niche publishers and practitioners who have their own blogs.

To increase the chances of acquiring blog links, start prospecting, and outreach initiatives before content creation.

 

How to create ego-bait content and build blog links to it

Discover bloggers you want to feature in your ego bait content.

Collect their contact information and reach out to them with personalized emails. Reach out with the intent of knowing if they want to get featured in your top list content, and subtly ask for a blog link to the list you've created.

Chances are you get yeses from this approach. Who wants not to get featured in a top list of X websites? This link building method has high chances to very specific verticals that only have a handful of bloggers interacting with each other.

Then publish your ego-bait content.

 

Reach out to people (publishers, bloggers, or any content creators) you've listed in your roundup content.

Let them know about your latest content. You'll primarily get blog links from people you've mentioned and asked for feedback from.

3. Targeted outreach for tool reviews

This next link building technique is applicable to the following people:

• independent bloggers who are not associated with any product and service brands
• brands who can write reviews for their non-competitor brands
• news sites or publishers with blogs fitted for product reviews or a content piece that includes a short or long walkthrough process of using a tool
• non-profit organizations with the freedom to publish tool reviews

I've recently created a quick guide on how to use HARO (Help a Reporter Out). It's simple content that walks you through the benefits of using HARO, how it works, how to use it in simple steps, how to write a HARO pitch, and how to monitor links from HARO pitches.

Basically a good comprehensive guide on using the tool.

Then I simply reach out to any bloggers with existing posts that mentioned HARO in their blog posts, referencing it with screenshots of the tool, or plainly link to it as it is one of the recommended link building tools.

 

With that, I've sent a quick personalized email sharing the guide. It is a basic linker outreach process most of you are familiar with.

 

But the value proposition here is that if publishers would want to add more value to their readers because they've mentioned and reference the tool (and don't have the editorial space to expound on it), they'd simply reference a good guide with a blog link.

 

That is where your brand can take advantage of.

 

How to create product reviews and build blog links to it

Check any tools you can include in your blog posts (at least give a quick step-by-step process in using it) or entirely create a new post about the tool.

Make an entire review of the tool or include a shortlist of steps in using the tool in your prepared content.

When prospecting for possible blog opportunities, ensure that bloggers must have existing articles that mentioned the tool itself. Otherwise, your pitch won't be relevant to them — you lose the opportunity for that reason.

You also want to make sure existing articles should have mentioned the tool descriptively. A good spot even if the blogger emphasized the tool in its blog post (apart from writing a review about it).

This gives you a hint that the blogger used the tool and would be more interested in any relevant further guides.

4. Resource assets for linkable markets

The friction to build blog links for niche blogs is higher, but not resource assets for linkable markets.

A few reminders when tapping these audiences for your resource guides:

• Ensure that the audience you choose matches your brand's audience — you're likely to get residual benefits, such as converting your readers to consumers if it's an actual fit.
• There isn't any conflict with your potential customers. For example, when you're writing a sleeping guide for veterans, do you have any ideas and products that promote sleep well-being?

 

How to build resource assets and build links to them

Tap one linkable audience at a time. Produce the most comprehensive targeted resource guide for that market.

Then focus your prospect and outreach efforts to promote the resource guide.

You can use Citation Labs Link Prospector to scale link prospecting.

 

Once you've collected the backlink targets, it's time to get the best ones.

Here is a tool from Granit Doshlaku that can help you qualify sites that are relevant and have good authority for your resource guide.

 

The tool is free and allows you to check resource pages of different websites on the same tab.

You can even include notes on each qualified page.

Later on, you can export the list of qualified blogs.

Once you've got qualified blog prospects, reach out to them and simply share your resource guide.

You don't have to push linkable markets to link to you. If your content asset is worth linking to, you can expect a blog editorial backlink to your page.

5. Create local guide resource links

The earlier link building technique is for linkable markets that have the capacity and willingness to provide blog links to your site.

This time, it's for any local niche blogs and resource curators that are topically interested in your content.

 

If you're a local brand, you can search for any topics that are listed in the form.

Start developing those lists' content and build links to them through manual outreach.

 

On editorial links

Editorial links are the type of links we, as a link building company focus on building for our clients of different industries. And we've been seeing results all over the place.

 

What makes editorial links the most powerful type of links, in my opinion, is they cause other effects beneficial for the site's entire branding:

• Drives qualified traffic through descriptive link texts on linking pages
• Established relationships with publishers and industry experts through guest blog invites
• Gives new opportunities for upcoming bloggers with the potential to make their own names in the industry
• Helps the strategy team (or any who conducts planning or strategy for link development) to assess the required estimated number of links for a specific page based on new links' current impact on the page performance (comparatively looking at its other competitor's similar content performance).
• Adds more contextual relevance to the linking page based on determining phrases surrounding editorial links

Whether editorial links are acquired through social sharing from people who initially shared your content, or through a reciprocal method in a form of a free tool, badge, or any other incentives. Send your incentive with a sweet spot personalized email.

Strive to get as much of that type of link with the highest quality in mind.

On relevance and authority

When pursuing editorial links, it's important to seek the highest quality.

But what does quality mean in links?

Quality means relevance and authority.

Relevance is two things: domain relevance and URL relevance.

Most of your efforts should be placed in the highest URL relevance and highest authority of links (HADR). That means getting a link from a snoring article to your article about snoring.

With these things in mind, here are some scalable link acquisition tactics to build blog links to your site.

Remember that any of the techniques below would require existing content or a new content asset to be published on your blog.

Key Takeaways

Indeed, there are many innovative ways to build quality blog links.

The aforementioned tactics above have been tested on our own sites and for our clients. If you wish to have a dedicated link building campaign for your site and/or for your clients' websites, you can check out our link building services and we'll help you out in any valuable way.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

What is Micro Content and How to Use It to Build Links

What is micro content?

As defined by user experience expert Jakob Nielsen, "micro content" is a small group of words which can be skimmed by the reader to understand the wider message of the article.”

Using it perfectly to fill in your editorial content calendar will help you solve your content shortage.

That's not to say that micro-content is just for quantity alone, but you can also make their quality better with a good strategy and execution.

[toc]

 

Why Micro Content Works Today?

Here are some reasons why brands take micro-content pieces into consideration — which speaks also for its advantages over other forms of content.

Easy to consume

A micro-content piece has the ability to show a clear message or point in just a few seconds.

Whether it is a 30-second or minute video or a short story comic, it has the advantage of drawing the attention of customers to get to know about the brand.

Instead of bombarding potential customers with long-form guides, which not all people can consume well, why not produce easy-to-consume content that gives people easy to digest information — one at a time?

Develops creativity for content creators

Given that you have to think of ways on how to turn large pieces of content into micro web assets, you develop your creativity over time.

You discover methodologies to scale content creation as fast and as better quality as you can.

Produce in small budgets

Nowadays, the barrier to entry in content marketing is low.

You can start creating micro content pieces with a small budget. By putting a few bucks into creating visuals, writing short-form texts, and publishing them on your blog, plus distributing all of these assets on social media, everything can be started as soon as you want it.

Highly distributable

Content marketers start with creation, but it doesn't stop there. Content like micro assets has to be distributed well to places where consumers engage in.

How to Use Micro Content to Build Links

Link building requires content to effectively share value proposition to prospect linkers. Without it, it won't be easy to find people giving you backlinks without any value provided by your brand.

Micro content gives opportunities for small to medium-sized business owners to scale link building. Even big brands can do it to build momentum with their content promotion, as they can easily develop hundreds of assets ready to be distributed in many targeted web places.

 

On leveraging repurposed pillar content

I've shared this methodology popularized by Gary Vaynerchuk in my guide about content marketing strategies for small businesses.

It is a simple methodology of efficiently producing micro content pieces.

Start with a document pillar content, repurpose it into micro assets, and distribute them across social media. Here is a flow image of how it looks like.

 

The original purpose of the model is for social branding, but we can replicate this exact model to build authority organic backlinks to our websites.

1. Turn sales-driven assets into distributable micro content

Every company has sales teams. Depending on its architecture, type, and processes, they use a document assembly that allows them to get a good flow of sales process, deliver things to prospective clients or customers, and/or satisfy them with enough inputs for buy-ins to offerings.

These documents include the following:

• Request for Information or Proposal (RFI / RFP)
• Statement of Work (SOW), Contracts and Invoices
• Customer Project Plans
• Sourcing channel partners with relevant vendor inputs partners need for each of their document categories above

If your brand can request any of these assets to be publicly distributed for brand building and content marketing purposes, you now have an opportunity to massively produce micro content.

 

How to build links to sales-driven micro content:

• Appeal your micro content to salespeople who are likely to share your content on blog posts or social channels. For example, financial advisors, if touched well by finance brands, can bring a good amount of mentions on industry blogs these FAs belong to.
• Spend a couple of bucks for social advertising to get initial eyeballs distribution for micro content.
• Target the most vocal people in your industry for social sharing. More social proof of micro content increases its connectivity factor to people likely to give links to your site.

2. Recover published assets

After content launch, it's easy to forget high-quality assets that have performed well in terms of links and social shares but were not revisited and updated to gain even more results.

Start going through some of your best assets. You can use Ahrefs to find high-performing linkable assets (Top Linking Assets).

 

Assess which ones can be cut into pieces of short-form texts, or small visuals, or even turn content type into another content type (e.g. texts into visuals).

Here are some published assets you can recover, update, and/or turn into valuable micro content pieces:

• Frequently-asked questions
• Full webinar recordings
• Video recordings of presentations, speaking engagements, and any form of public appearances (e.g. media interviews)
• Long-form informational content (definitive guides on your subject matters)

 

How to build links to recovered published assets:

• When turning huge assets into micro pieces, assess if those micro content can stand alone its message. Otherwise, it won't be perceived as much as valuable as compared to being tied into a large one.
• Find similar bloggers, publishers, and content creators who have linked to your big assets in the past. Reach out to them and share your content.

3. Reclaim branded short-form texts

Branded short-form texts are the content of your site you've originally started or cited. These can be your own coined terms or your own definitions of terms.

In the likelihood that those branded short forms were distributed, there were publishers who included your piece but didn't credit your site as the source.

To find these people, you can use Google search and search for your exact definition of the term or whatever short-form text you have (e.g. a descriptive technical survey points).

 

If it's a coined term you've popularized, you can use BrandMentions or Ahrefs Alerts to track any mentions of a particular word or phrase.

 

How to reclaim links from branded short-form texts:

• Monitor regularly publishers who included your short-form texts in their own content. Build relationships by sharing their content on your own social profiles.
• Reach out to those publishers for brand link reclamation — don't force them to link to you (as some are in the habit of doing so). Simply ask to credit you as the source.

4. Invest in comics

One of the interesting content trends today is scaling comic creation.

 

You see most of this micro content type on LinkedIn. Gary Vaynerchuk, for example, massively produced comic series that tell about his messages across his audience.

You'll see comics as shareable content all over social media places because it quickly conveys stories of people, ideas, and concepts.

Apply that to your own industry and be the first one to produce short-style comics.

 

How to build links to comics:

• Work with influencers in your industry who have a substantial social following — so you can expect a faster distribution of your comics once it is published.
• Reach out to independent bloggers that allow a variety of content formats in their blog posts. Offer the content of your comic as a way to add value to their current readers — a new style of learning consumption.

5. Rank for "memes" keywords

Memes are another great easy-to-produce micro content.

 

There are many ways to start with this one — either to do it yourself using meme generator tools or hire or get your graphic design to produce sets of memes for your brand.

You can start with popular Facebook memes that have been rolling around contextually about your niche. Then go beyond that once you have some visibility with your published memes.

 

How to build links to memes:

• Get visibility on social platforms to make it go viral or have some social users with a good following to start sharing your memes.
• Rank for meme keywords (e.g. finance memes) by creating a page on your website dedicated to niche memes.

 

There are other types of micro content you can test for yourself and produce a series of it this year. Here are a few more examples:

• Custom illustrations or photos that convey some sort of quick tip or fun fact
• GIFs
• Shareable one-liners
• Interesting statistic
• Videos

Be creative with micro content

Establish credibility through the production of different micro content mentioned above. Start sharing them on your own distribution channels and gain new organic backlinks month over month.

If you're looking for link building services, partner with us and start your campaign today.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

How to Use Quora For Marketing

If you are marketing a product or service, educating your audience is the best way to sell.

One of the best ways to elevate your authority online is to answer questions your target people care about. By helping them solve problems, gain new insights and ideas, and learn to do a thing, gives you the leverage to gain their trust — leading to more followers for your personal brand.

[toc]

How to Use Quora For Marketing

Here are four ways you can use Quora for marketing: 

1. Prioritize most visible questions
2. Re-answer questions you’ve answered in your blog
3. Invest in adding higher value with your answers
4. Include other content formats in your answers
5. Discover new headline topics from questions

 

Prioritize most visible questions

Like any other content marketing strategy, you want to start by looking at the highest yield of your resources once you allocate them to an initiative.

In Quora marketing, this means you identify questions that have the highest visibility. You want to get the most out of your efforts by ensuring the questions you've answered are ones receiving the highest views from people.

One way to do that is to reverse engineer questions that are currently ranking in search results. You can use Ahrefs to find ranking pages in Quora. Filter pages based on your topics of choice. Now, you have questions that are likely to receive continuous traffic.

 

Another technique to discover the most visible questions in Quora is to check the "Most Viewed Writers" on topics you're interested in.

 

Simply choose the topics of your choice. Then view the "Most Viewed Writers" for those topics. Check the top profiles in the section. On their profiles, you'll see a bunch of questions they've answered.

 

Add those questions to your list. Then later, decide if they're worth giving attention to answers.

Re-answer questions you've answered in your blog

Content distribution is a must after you've published your content piece. Many content creators start hitting the publish button without any plans to promote their web assets. They celebrate but don't take the time to let their audience know about their piece.

Start looking for evergreen content assets on your blog - ones you've published before but remain relevant to your audience.

Match it to Quora questions by searching for any relevant questions you can answer using your inputs from your content asset. This will take some time to dissect your page to see any connected insights to questions you see in Quora.

Invest in adding higher value with your answers

If you are targeting the most visible questions, you're likely to end up seeing multiple answers for each of them. Quora content creators produce different answers — a few of which are value-adding to the target readers.

Now, this is the time where you think of ways to add more value to the question itself. Here are some tips to help you craft a better answer:

• Read other answers to the question. Look at how other Quora writers deliver their insights. Ask yourself, are they missing some important inputs here? Do they directly answer the question?
• Share experiences, case studies, and stories to prove your points — not just to make your answer look appealing. The goal is to provide value. This means you check how your experience can help the person solve a need (an answer to a question).
• Don't sell your product or service, if it's not connected to your answer. Make up your mind that you solve the answer with the best insights you've got not with spam links to your money pages.

Include other content formats in your answers

Relevant content marketing is putting enough effort into making your content consumed by the majority of your target readers.

In Quora marketing, you include other content formats to your answers for other learning styles (besides reading).

You may add videos and images (i.e. infographics and illustrations) to your inputs. One tip is that if you know your answers might be quite long, insert images or videos in between paragraphs to get readers engaged.

Discover new headline topics from questions

If you are looking for content strategies for organic growth, you can try getting inspiration from Quora questions.

One beautiful way to make your content cut through the noise of so many other topics is to know which headline topic would you choose.

Part of that is discovering the top questions in Quora related to the subject you're writing about. Tweak your headline based on what most people are querying in.

Here are some useful guides on using community topics for copywriting your content's headlines:

• How to Write Better Blog Headlines
• 55 Actionable Content Writing Tips

 

Benefits of Using Quora For Marketing

Brand Exposure

Quora gives you the opportunity to expose your brand to audiences you never had a chance to interact with. That is a good chance to add more people to your customer base.

Brand recall happens when your brand is exposed continuously to the right audience. As they always see your brand bringing value through expertly-crafted content, it brings the impression of what your brand is about and what it purposefully delivers to its audience.

Quora's exceptional reach is without a doubt. Either you want to try to tap a new audience with topics still aligned to your brand,

Thought Leadership

It takes a while to build thought leadership online. People have to know who you are and what makes you different from other similar personalities.

However, content distribution through Quora helps you get started with thought leadership. Over time, people will naturally come to you for media and blog interviews, advice for their brand activities, and company partnerships.

Audience Insights

You can't market effectively to your audience without knowing their changing behaviors. That includes what topics and trends they're looking at, their current situations through questions they ask, and what forms of content they mostly consume.

Link Acquisition

Constantly getting links to your website isn't easy. It requires the discovery of new ways to provide value to a potential linker with hopes of links.

Quora helps you do link building to your website from answers to the audience's questions. Make sure that your linking page serves as a reference for more information to your answered query. It should be relevant and must be of use to readers with more insights about the topic.

Referral Traffic

Given that will be an insertion of blog links to your content, you're likely to receive traffic from Quora. That's the reason why it's important to place links properly where it is normally seen for more references.

Search Visibility

Quora has an increasing demand for searches as it ranks for several keywords in many industries. Given its engagement and low search competition for questions (keyphrases that have search volume), pages of Quora get most of the search visibility.

 

In cases when questions you've answered rank for niche phrases on search results, you get the benefit of more exposure for your answers.

 

On Maximizing Community Websites

With an abundance of time, marketers must be willing to put more hours into bringing value to their audience. That includes providing solutions to problems, and thought-provoking answers to questions.

Quora is a good community place to start engaging your audience, provide answers to product-related questions, and establish thought leadership in your space.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

More Than The Common Factors In Link Diversity

When people discuss link diversity, they basically refer to a methodology of getting links from various kinds of pages of different websites. 

Such link diversity includes a ratio of homepage links to deep page links, a mix of do-follow links and no-follow links, anchor text variation, links on different page locations (link placement), links from websites with different Domain Authority (DA), and links from websites with different TLDs.

These common factors of link diversity are critically important, but a newbie SEO professional wouldn't have much time to check each one of these factors while they are executing every facet of a link building campaign.

It's hard to diversify if you're into the execution stage. The best that I recommend is to go all-in with the strategy - i.e. understanding what kind of pages need to acquire so you can concentrate your efforts on work alone when it's execution time. 

 

How to Diversify Your Link Profile 

Here are four useful tips to help diversity your link profile in the strategy phase: 

1. Employ different methods.
2. Have different link building groups working on different tactics
3. Tap different linkable audiences
4. Leverage latest and recent link opportunities

[toc]

 

1. Employ different methods

Every link building tactic is normally targeted to a specific type of page--for example, broken link building for links pages, scholarship link building for scholarship pages, and blogger outreach for guest blogs/articles. 

By applying different link acquisition methods, you are able to target different types of links from different pages — allowing you to diversify your link profile. 

Of course, each link building tactic will require more than one person to execute all phases of the campaign. If you want better results, your link prospectors and outreach specialists should be well-trained to execute their tasks.

This idea may be turned down by solo link building consultants given that they don't have a huge team to facilitate all of these methods. While that's true in a sense, they could still employ these methods one at a time. 

For instance, it's possible to conduct a blogger outreach for one solid content piece for two months, and then work on a scholarship campaign when all you're doing is waiting for links to live in your blogger outreach campaign. You can then switch your resources to another link building method 

If you discovered one type of link that demands huge opportunities in your space (i.e. summer housing pages on .edu sites).

By doing so, you're not limiting yourself to one or two types of links; you vary your link type through a variety of methods. 

 

2. Have different link building groups working on different tactics

This is an effective strategy that I've found to be true to a few of the clients we're working with. We are not the only outsourced link building provider, they got another one or two link building agencies or teams working with them.

Not only are we working for different pages (dedicated pages to build links to), we also employ link building tactics. 

That allows them to diversify the types of links they're getting on a month-to-month basis. 

So if you've got a huge budget on your plate, you may assign different pages and work towards different tactics with the help of your outsourced teams. 

 

3. Tap different linkable audiences

In a white-hat style link asking approach, where we prospect for resource pages, the basic idea to scale things up is to tap different linkable audiences for each content you create. 

So let's say, you will create a piece about bullying, another piece for kids and teenagers, and there may be content assets dedicated to veterans and PSTD sufferers.

These are linkable audiences you can target for each of your content assets. So it's not just a variety of methods you're applying, you're also targeting resource links from different topically relevant pages.

 

4. Leverage latest and recent link opportunities

When SEOs talk about link diversity, they focus more on anchor text variation and other common factors I mentioned earlier. While these are all part of our topic today, link diversity is also about finding and pursuing recent or latest and credible link opportunities.

If you can build real links that translate to real business value like getting coverage for a story on a top industry news outlet, it'll be worth your time receiving additional business exposure and assisted conversions.

Start with the recent links of your competitors. Plug in your competitors' domains in a link analysis tool like Ahrefs. See their recent links for the past few months and identify what they've produced or covered on their blog to assess if these are replicable or could be turned into a unique angle of yours.

 

By getting a more systematized approach in pursuing authoritative links, you're likely to diversify your link profile — with both organic and manually-built backlinks. 

You can check out this anchor text optimization guide by OutreachMama. 

 

BUILDING LINKS THE NATURAL WAY

When a natural backlink profile is forcefully done and isn't done really naturally, there's a chance that what has been aimed won't be achieved — a natural backlink profile indeed. 

Employing a variety of white-hat link building techniques, customizing campaigns to suit different linkable audiences, pursuing a variety of links to different web pages, and pursuing credible links at your own best are ways to really diverse your backlinks. 

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

How to Report on Links

Reports depending on the type of arrangements you have with your client or brand.

If you're doing it in-house, the report on links may be part of your overall search performance reports. It means it is geared towards the impact of links that have on your organic search.

Of course, there are so many factors that can get your site's to rank (besides links) and you couldn't simply separate the link factor itself as the sole indicator of success — increase in organic traffic for a specific month - let's say.

However, if you have a page solely investing your resources and efforts into building and earning links, you could have a report for the improvement of the performance of that page.

If you're working in an agency (or you own one), the same thing may be applied if you're offering full-suite SEO. What you want to do is to ensure those links you've built have helped the website attain its desired organic rankings and traffic.

 

How to Report on Links

Here are three simple steps to help you make reports on links:

• Make your reports easy to digest with emphasis on the business value of links
• Assess the progress and small wins
• Discuss next plans of actions

1. Make your reports easy to digest with emphasis on the business value of links

There are many samples of link reports available out there, but one thing you should deeply understand is the idea of simplicity.

The moment your client/in-house team/CMO looks at your report, could they easily digest the information?

Bar graphs, pie charts would only make sense if there is a proper orientation on the value of links for the brand — especially if you're dealing with business owners who desire more revenue from their online businesses.

2. Assess the progress and small wins

Link building is an ongoing campaign and doesn't stop after you rank that one content guide or landing page.

As long as you need more revenue from your business and drive more traffic through search, you've got to strategically invest in link building.

Assess the progress of the campaign. If you're dealing with clients, don't let them second-guess your work. They need proof that what you're doing has a business impact on their brand. Check again the BI approach to link building to give you more insights on the topic.

3. Discuss next plans of actions

Progress requires planning. Whether you do it internally with your SEO team or collaborate with content teams of your clients or the business owner itself, you want to make sure you make plans.

Whether it's planning for more targeted links to a specific landing page or creating linkable assets, do it in a concise and organized manner.

 

Let me walk you through some of the link reports you can generate to show the performance of links.

What Types of Reports to Generate?

1. Prospecting and Outreach Inputs

For big brands (or enterprise link building), normally have reviews of every prospect list. This helps them ensure that your agency follows guidelines in terms of metrics you've set beforehand.

That's the reason why it's extremely important to manage expectations at the start of the campaign. Specifically on what link metrics both you (agency) and your client/brand will agree upon.

 

Those reviews of clients require a prospecting list, which includes:

A. Total qualified sites

Based on agreed metrics, the report shows the list of websites (or just the total number of prospects you've vetted on) and have passed the benchmarks (relevance & authority) through proprietary metrics and a keen eye on quality.

 

B. Total contacted sites and responses

In most cases, this particular list isn't included in the report anymore. In-house managers or contact persons for link building assume different contact rates and response rates for each link development campaign.

However, some managers are granular in their approach that they tend to look at those contact lists, and even ask response rates from time to time.

2. Basic Link Deliverables

Common link reports are deliverables.

These reports may typically just be in a spreadsheet or pdf form.

 

Details include:

A. List of live link URLs

This is a no-brainer. You want to show the exact pages where you got links from.

B. Proprietary metrics

Alongside link URLs, you should be including other metrics such as the Site's DA/DR and the Site's estimated organic traffic (using Ahrefs/SEMRush).

These are handy reports you can easily outsource link building or hand over to your junior SEOs. As simple as it sounds, the organization of all these live links, when done for years, will be time-consuming.

So you want to make sure you have a spreadsheet or a data collector to organize this for yourself or your team.

C. Number of acquired links per month

For large-scale campaigns or for agencies with multiple clients, you want to have handy reports for all campaigns showing the number of acquired links. It could be automated as possible to easily generate it when you need it the most.

 

3. Impacts of Links

More than lists, what you should focus more on when generating reports is the value of links it has for the brand.

Regardless of the types of links, is the site bringing value to the overall site performance?

We've covered lead and lag measures before, but let's reiterate it again here.

When you're just asked to generate links, you're not just trying to hit as a leading indicator. Links could hit a lagging indicator of search traffic.

The defining value of links that you're acquiring is the rankings of the content piece you're creating (a specific page) you're building links to. That makes a lot of sense for business owners as this creates and manages expectations from a search traffic perspective.

A Business Intelligence Approach To Link Building

Cody West covered a comprehensive BI approach to link building which gives you more details on different factors to add to your reports.

Tactical

This answers the questions of how many links do you have to build next month or quarter of the year.

Based on the backlink gap between your site and your competitors, you'll then strategize how to position yourself in the market by targeting a certain number of links with a good benchmarking of link metrics.

 

You could add this section to give your client a more detailed view of what to expect from a link building perspective.

Tip: Make sure you balance it with the notion that links aren't only the moving indicator of success for rankings. They should consider other aspects of SEO to better expect more results from the overall search campaign.

 

Resources

Based on the resources you have, how much will cost you to generate a link? And long does it take you to hit your acquired number of links per month?

If you're an agency, the resource section of reports should be reserved for you. This will help you and your junior SEOs to start conversations around the following:

• Price of links — given you can calculate your cost per link per client, you can assess if you'd like to increase your price per link — assuming you're offering link building as your stand-alone service.
• Outsourcing link development projects — is it worth your time to do it in-house or should you hire an agency to do white label link building for your clients? 

 

Answers to questions may not be part of your reports for clients, but only for internal use (in-house). This gives you a well-meaning approach to how you will attack your internal link building management.

Value and Cost

Link building budget may just be part of another expense report of your client or your company (if you're in-house).

Nonetheless, if you focus, emphasize, and lean more towards the business value of links, you're likely to get more buy-in, approvals for more business investments on this crucial and vital aspect of SEO.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr