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Posted by Paddy_Moogan

Link building campaigns shouldn’t have a start-and-stop date — they should be ongoing, continuing to earn you links over time. In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, please warmly welcome our guest host Paddy Moogan as he shares strategies to achieve sustainable link building, the kind that makes your content efforts lucrative far beyond your initial campaigns for them.

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Video Transcription

Hi, Moz fans. Welcome to Whiteboard Friday. I’m not Rand. I’m Paddy Moogan. I’m the cofounder of Aira. We’re an agency in the UK, focusing on SEO, link building, and content marketing. You may have seen me write on the Moz Blog before, usually about link building. You may have read my link building book. If you have, thank you. Today, I’m going to talk about link building again. It’s a topic I love, and I want to share some ideas around what I’m calling “sustainable link building.”

Problems

Now, there are a few problems with link building that make it quite risky, and I want to talk about some problems first before giving you some potential solutions that help make your link building less risky. So a few problems first:

I. Content-driven link building is risky.

The problem with content-driven link building is that you’re producing some content and you don’t really know if it’s going to work or not. It’s quite risky, and you don’t actually know for sure that you’re going to get links.

II. A great content idea may not be a great content idea that gets links.

There’s a massive difference between a great idea for content and a great idea that will get links. Knowing that difference is really, really important. So we’re going to talk a little bit about how we can work that out.

III. It’s a big investment of time and budget.

Producing content, particularly visual content, doing design and development takes time. It can take freelancers. It can take designers and developers. So it’s a big investment of time and budget. If you’re going to put time and budget into a marketing campaign, you want to know it’s probably going to work and not be too risky.

IV. Think of link building as campaign-led: it starts & stops.

So you do a link building campaign, and then you stop and start a new one. I want to get away from that idea. I want to talk about the idea of treating link building as the ongoing activity and not treating it as a campaign that has a start date and a finish date and you forget about it and move on to the next one. So I’m going to talk a little bit about that as well.

Solutions

So those are some of the problems that we’ve got with content-driven link-building. I want to talk about some solutions of how to offset the risk of content-driven link building and how to increase the chances that you’re actually going to get links and your campaign isn’t going to fail and not work out for you.

I. Don’t tie content to specific dates or events

So the first one, now, when you coming up with content ideas, it’s really easy to tie content ideas into events or days of the year. If there are things going on in your client’s industry that are quite important, current festivals and things like that, it’s a great way of hooking a piece of content into an event. Now, the problem with that is if you produce a piece of content around a certain date and then that date passes and the content hasn’t worked, then you’re kind of stuck with a piece of content that is no longer relevant.

So an example here of what we’ve done at Aira, there’s a client where they launch a piece of content around the Internet of Things Day. It turns out there’s a day celebrating the Internet of Things, which is actually April 9th this year. Now, we produced a piece of content for them around the Internet of Things and its growth in the world and the impact it’s having on the world. But importantly, we didn’t tie it exactly to that date. So the piece itself didn’t mention the date, but we launched it around that time and that outreach talked about Internet of Things Day. So the outreach focused on the date and the event, but the content piece itself didn’t. What that meant was, after July 9th, we could still promote that piece of content because it was still relevant. It wasn’t tied in with that exact date.

So it means that we’re not gambling on a specific event or a specific date. If we get to July 9th and we’ve got no links, it obviously matters, but we can keep going. We can keep pushing that piece of content. So, by all means, produce content tied into dates and events, but try not to include that too much in the content piece itself and tie yourself to it.

II. Look for datasets which give you multiple angles for outreach

Number two, lots of content ideas can lead from data. So you can get a dataset and produce content ideas off the back of the data, but produce angles and stories using data. Now, that can be quite risky because you don’t always know if data is going to give you a story or an angle until you’ve gone into it. So something we try and do at Aira when trying to produce content around data is from actually different angles you can use from that data.

So, for example:

• Locations. Can you pitch a piece of content into different locations throughout the US or the UK so you can go after the local newspapers, local magazines for different areas of the country using different data points?
• Demographics. Can you target different demographics? Can you target females, males, young people, old people? Can you slice the data in different ways to approach different demographics, which will give you multiple ways of actually outreaching that content?
• Years. Is it updated every year? So it’s 2018 at the moment. Is there a piece of data that will be updated in 2019? If there is and it’s like a recurring annual thing where the data is updated, you can redo the content next year. So you can launch a piece of content now. When the data gets updated next year, plug the new data into it and relaunch it. So you’re not having to rebuild a piece of a content every single time. You can use old content and then update the data afterwards.

III. Build up a bank of link-worthy content

Number three, now this is something which is working really, really well for us at the moment, something I wanted to share with you. This comes back to the idea of not treating link building as a start and stop campaign. You need to build up a bank of link-worthy content on your client websites or on your own websites. Try and build up content that’s link worthy and not just have content as a one-off piece of work. What you can do with that is outreach over and over and over again.

We tend to think of the content process as something like this. You come up with your ideas. You do the design, then you do the outreach, and then you stop. In reality, what you should be doing is actually going back to the start and redoing this over and over again for the same piece of content.

What you end up with is multiple pieces of content on your client’s website that are all getting links consistently. You’re not just focusing on one, then moving past it, and then working on the next one. You can have this nice big bank of content there getting links for you all the time, rather than forgetting about it and moving on to the next one.

IV. Learn what content formats work for you

Number four, again, this is something that’s worked really well for us recently. Because we’re an agency, we work with lots of different clients, different industries and produce lots and lots of content, what we’ve done recently is try to work out what content formats are working the best for us. Which formats get the best results for our clients? The way we did this was a very, very simple chart showing how easy something was versus how hard it was, and then wherever it was a fail in terms of the links and the coverage, or wherever it was a really big win in terms of links and coverage and traffic for the client.

Now, what you may find when you do this is certain content formats fit within this grid. So, for example, you may find that doing data viz is actually really, really hard, but it gets you lots and lots of links, whereas you might find that producing maps and visuals around that kind of data is actually really hard but isn’t very successful.

Identifying these content formats and knowing what works and doesn’t work can then feed into your future content campaign. So when you’re working for a client, you can confidently say, “Well, actually, we know that interactives aren’t too difficult for us to build because we’ve got a good dev team, and they really likely to get links because we’ve done loads of them before and actually seen lots of successes from them.” Whereas if you come up with an idea for a map that you know is actually really, really hard to do and actually might lead to a big fail, then that’s not going to be so good, but you can say to a client, “Look, from our experience, we can see maps don’t work very well. So let’s try and do something else.”

That’s it in terms of tips and solutions for trying to make your link building more sustainable. I’d love to hear your comments and your feedback below. So if you’ve got any questions, anything you’re not sure about, let me know. If you see it’s working for your clients or not working, I’d love to hear that as well. Thank you.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Like other search agencies, at Zazzle Media we’ve been banging the ‘site speed’ drum for a while with an aim to improve user experience (among other factors). When we first started to see AMP within the search engine results pages (SERPs) in February 2016, there was a real worry that preference would be given to sites that had shelled out and undertaken the work required, essentially creating a two-tier search environment; where sites could find a glass ceiling beyond which only those with funds (and patience) would be adequately rewarded.  

With a mobile-first index now a reality and a January 2018 announcement from Google about how page speed will be a stronger ranking factor on mobile searches from July 2018 – there has never been a better time to look at this and honestly ask yourself – do I need AMP?

Google’s speed scorecard may help you to immediately answer that question, but if not – have a quick read of this…

What is AMP?

These are pages created from the open-source website publishing technology provided by Google and a number of collaborators. It’s implemented in a similar manner to rel=alternate, however using rel=amphtml instead.

The pages themselves are effectively made from three components:

AMP HTML: Similar to the HTML we all know and love, AMP HTML has some custom tags, properties and a great many restrictions.

AMP JS: JavaScript has long been held up as a major culprit in slow loading sites. AMP JS does away with loading any third-party JS, manages the resource handling and ensures asynchronous loading (reducing total load time).

AMP Caching: Most pages are delivered by Google’s AMP Cache/CDN. However, depending on your hosting and CDN package, you may find that alternative providers will support your content. 

Why use AMP?

The key reason – and the only major consideration we’ll discuss – is speed. We often find that custom or outdated CMS’ struggle to fully implement major site speed improvements and, in many cases, the server specs aren’t fantastic either. With AMP you effectively sidestep those issues. The content is forced into being resource efficient and caching is provided once indexed. The only other requisite is that you can add a the rel=amphtml tag mentioned above. 

Some caveats:

It wouldn’t be Google without some caveats to any seemingly beneficial change:

• The page will need to be kept up to date (potentially outside of your CMS)
• As of February 2018, Google confirmed the content should match the desktop/canonical version

Sure, all you’ve done is improve things for your mobile users – and only on the few scant pages that you’ve implemented AMP on – but optimisation isn’t about making things perfect in an instant, it’s a gradual process that must adapt to the ever changing ‘techscape’ that is search.

“But…my site is already fast, am I being held back because I won’t conform?”

Yes…perhaps…but maybe not for long (also good work getting a fast site!). It’s unlikely to be as fast as a well-created AMP version but you’ve clearly shown a great commitment to UX and I’m guessing you’d like a reward – well you’ll probably be getting one, soon.

Straight from the horse’s mouth, the AMP Project provided a March 2018 update. 

Key points raised by Malte Ubl (Tech Lead for the AMP Project at Google) were as follows:

• AMP was designed to help Google understand how to build a user-first web experience.
• Based on learnings it is looking to support more instant-loading content that isn’t AMP based.
• A new set of web standards will still need to be fulfilled.
• Web packaging will be used to provide privacy-preserving pre-loading, which is great because the packaging isn’t AMP specific, allowing for the instant loading of all web packaged content.
• Current AMP specific search features such as ‘Top Stories’ will be opened up for packaged content, allowing for non-AMP content to appear here.
• Google restated its intention to learn as much as possible from AMP stories.
• AMP will remain Google’s pathway to creating great user experiences and will continue to receive investment.

Many developers and web professionals have deliberately shunned AMP, seeing it as a Google-owned project being implemented into an otherwise 100% open-source system of glorious (and flawed) HTML. This recent announcement suggests that Google intends to be slightly more open with the benefits, which is a welcome step in the right direction.

Not just for news

AMP is still trying to shrug off the perception that it only has worth within article/news based content, but when you look at one of the UK’s largest keywords (car insurance) the mobile SERP speaks for itself:

In addition to three out of the top four listings being AMP pages, position six is also occupied by a ‘latest stories’ section (shown below), followed by regular non-AMP pages.

Correlation doesn’t always equal causation – especially given that the first port of call for financial products are branded searches or comparison tools – but with the SERP being so dominated by the AMP symbol you do have to consider the impact these pages may be having on both the search results and how users perceive their expected experience on such pages (quick!). 

At the very least, I hope this post has reignited your interest in AMP for your business, and opened up a discussion about whether it’s right for you or if you’re happy to wait for Google to meet you in the middle.

Econsultancy also offers SEO training.