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Link building is important.
But what's more important is having a Link Building Strategy!
Here's a STEP BY STEP guide on how to create a Link Building Strategy and stick with it. (+ a FREE template and detailed video explainer at the end)
If you want to get REAL results from link building, keep reading 👇
(it's a long post, and packed with value, so bookmark it to read later)
What you'll learn:
- How to understand what pages to build backlinks to
- How to find out exactly how many backlinks each page will need
- How to plan your link building for 12 months in advance
Step1️⃣Determine How Many Links You Can Afford to Build Per Month
Regardless of what some people on Twitter say, 99% of webmasters will ask for a compensation ($$$) to link to you. Depending on your niche, a dofollow backlink can cost anywhere from $100-$300 a pop. But you don't want to guess the price.
Reach out to 10 websites that you'd want a link from and find out their prices, then calculate the average cost.
What a lot of people don't account for are the other costs associated with building links: content and human resources. Let's quickly see how you can calculate each.
Content: The most popular type of linkbuilding is Guest Posting, so you'll need to write the content to be posted on 3rd party websites. The average Guest Post is 500-1000 words. For content costs, you need to know how much you're paying your copywriters, then multiply it by the number of backlinks you plan to get every month (I'll give you an example below)
Human Resources: You'll need someone to do the prospecting, outreach, communicate with webmasters, make the payments, etc. The best way to do it is to hire a VA and train them to do it for you. (@Charles_SEO recently tweeted a full guide on how to do this, so feel free to use that as training material). If it's you doing the work, calculate your hourly rate.
Depending on how many links you'll build every month, you can either hire a VA per hour, or hire them part-time or even full-time.
Now that we've gone through the three main costs associated with building links, let's see how you can calculate your linkbuilding budget.
Example:
- Your average cost per link is $130 ($100 for the link itself + $30 for the copywriter to write the content)
- You pay a VA $10/hr
- You have a total link building budget of $1000
Let's say you'll use the VA for at least 20 hours/month (especially in the beginning stages). So that's $200 fixed costs. That leaves you $800 for actual links, so about 6 backlinks every month.
Now that we know EXACTLY how many links you can build every month, let's get to the next step.
Step 2️⃣Plan Your Target Pages
Since you have a limited budget, you can't focus on all the pages on your site at the same time - it would take you YEARS to see results.
Instead, identify a couple of pages with the highest ROI. Ideally, you want:
* Low competition
* Decent search volume
* High commercial intent
Once you've identified the pages that you want to focus on, you need to understand how many links it will take you to rank #1. Throw your main keyword in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer (or any other tool), and see how many valuable links your competitors have. I emphasize - VALUABLE - we don't care about links from blogspot or random forums. To find valuable backlinks, filter by: DR>20, Dofollow, Domain Traffic > 500. Also take into account your competitors' DR (if they have a high DR, you'll need more links to compete with them).
Important! You're not going to build all 6 backlinks to your target pages. To keep your link profile natural, you'll need to build some to your Homepage, other pages, and Blogs. A safe split for most niches is: 30% - Homepage | 30% - Target Pages | 40% - Blogs. Continuing with our example, that leaves you with 2 backlinks/mo going directly to your target pages.
[read through to the end to get the free template + an explainer video]
Example:
- You have two target pages (A and B)
- Based on your research, you'll need 10 backlinks to rank with page A, and 10 backlinks to rank with page B
- You're building 2 backlinks to your target pages every month, so you'll need ~10 months to be able to compete with both pages
Step 3️⃣ Build the Anchor Text List
You can't build 100% of your backlinks with the exact keyword in the anchor text. Create a list with the following:
- Your exact main keyword
- Secondary keywords
- Brand name variations
- URL variations
- Generic variations
Let's use an example:
- Main keyword: electric lawn mower
- Secondary keywords: electric mower; lawn mower electric; electric lawn equipment
- Brand name variations: StanMowers; Stanmowersdotcom, Stan Mowers;
- URL variations: the exact URL of your target page
- Generic variations: this site; this page; here; this shop
Now that you've got a list of varied anchors to use for your backlinks, split them evenly so that the backlinks look organic. I don't like the generic split advice like: 10% exact, 20% secondary, etc. as that's highly dependant on a lot of other factors. Just use your common sense and don't spam the exact match keyword for 80% of your backlinks. Keep it looking natural.
Last Step 4️⃣ Put The Strategy Together
If you followed this step-by-step guide, you should now have:
- the exact number of backlinks you can build every month
- the exact pages that you want to focus on
- a list of diversified anchors
In this last step, you're going to put all the information together to build your Linkbuilding Strategy for the next 12 months.
There's two ways you can go about it:
1. Hard way.
Create a document yourself. The doc should have the following columns:
Month
Target Page
Anchor
Use all the data you gathered to plan your monthly link building activities. Continuing with our example, you know you'll build a total of 6 backlinks/mo. So create 6 rows for every month, then add the Target Pages you want to target + the anchors.
2. Easy way.
Comment "Strategy" and I'll send you the template that I personally use along with an explainer video to follow along. Must follow so that I can DM (I'm not selling links, so got nothing to sell you)
💥Done, now you have an actual Link Building Strategy for yourself and your team to follow. If you liked this post, retweet it so that other can see it, and bookmark it to come back to it later.
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