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Posted by sammiranda

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

During 2012, Google clamped down on poor link building tactics, eliminating directories, article submission sites and adjusting the criteria for natural links. Consequently, the gambling industry has been facing the daunting task of restructuring its content marketing and SEO initiatives. Abusing article directories and paying for guest posts with keyword rich anchor text no longer cut the mustard.

Alongside brand building through social media and delivering value-added content, white-hat link building is high on the agenda to restore rankings. But it’s often dubbed mission impossible by gambling marketers.

Traditionally, gambling websites are short of linkable assets. First-party games often constitute a casino’s most valuable content, but they’re developed infrequently and reputable websites are hesitant to link to gambling-related content because of the social stigma attached to the industry.

White-hat link building (an admittedly contentious term) is possible. In this post I’m going to outline four strategies that I have obtained from my experiences of content marketing—specifically ‘guest posting’ for want of a better term—for a gambling affiliate website.

To conclude, I’ll also provide three examples of the valuable backlinks I’ve managed to obtain through using these tactics.

1. Lead generation

Gambling is a multi-faceted entity, incorporating psychology, legislation and social issues. It features heavily in sports, discourse surrounding marketing and advertising techniques, and even celebrity culture. Contrary to popular belief, the scope for gambling related content is massive—it stretches far beyond the roulette guides and blackjack strategies found on poorly constructed, niche gambling websites.

Content marketers let the stigma attached to gambling dictate their initiatives, saying “There’s no way awesomedomain.com will link to a gambling website.” But this blinkered outlook represents a wasted opportunity. Providing there’s no explicit material, a website should link to any credible source that enhances reader understanding.

The kind of headline that demoralises gambling industry marketers

Start to build a diverse list of online publications that can be approached for guest posting. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do they accept freelancer contributions or guest posts?
• Do they accept organic links in the article body?
• If not, do they at least offer a promotional link in the author byline?
• Are outbound links restricted to trusted contributors? In this case, you’ll need to build up your credibility before benefiting from links.

Note: I dislike the term guest posting as it’s often (now) associated with systematic efforts to produce mediocre articles and place them on any website in a similar niche. I do not endorse, nor follow this churned approach to content production. However, we’ll use the term to keep it simple!

Finish by categorising your leads based on the subject (i.e. business, education, entertainment etc) and the website’s SEO metrics (page rank, citation flow, trust flow, PA etc).

Top takeaways

1. Don’t let the stigma attached to your niche cloud your thought process.
2. Think of guest posting as feature writing, not copywriting. Avoid the churn!
3. It is not always about getting a link straight away. Sometimes you’ll need to prove your worth with valuable posts to build up trust and credibility.

2: Topic generation

My topic generation tends to fit into three subject categories.

Gambling

The first is gambling itself. You should aim to cover the full emotional spectrum, from negative articles surrounding consumer gambling addiction to more imaginative, uplifting pieces covering novelty bets and celebrity gamblers. You don’t have to glorify gambling. For instance, you might want to take a critical standpoint towards PaddyPower’s agreement with Facebook to launch a sports-betting app, highlighting the perils of social gambling. This would interest any gambling B2B website.

Marketing and business

Ironically, the second subject area is exactly what I’m doing now. When you’re discussing anything business or marketing related, you can write objectively about the gambling sector. Gambling websites are known for audacious advertising, flashy design and clever conversion optimisation, making them perfect case studies for marketing and UX-related articles.

Though valuable, deep-links to your gambling website’s core landing pages are hard to embed as organic links within an article body. Rarely is it ever organic to link to a page full of gambling bonuses, but it is possible. If you’re discussing website design and innovation, you can specify an excellent landing page, which gives you ammunition for an organic link in a user experience post.

You can also look within for an engaging business story. Does your company have a colourful history? Is your CEO a budding Richard Branson? Entrepreneur websites love to feature original case studies, and should be happy linking to your website if it underlines an intriguing corporate venture.

Shareable content

The third area is shareable, viral content. The internet is awash with trend websites that disseminate funny and digestible content. You should be looking to jump in with a snappy, “Top 10 Amazing Bets” kind of list that incorporates a mix of images, videos and memes.

I’ve hijacked a quirky “question asking” formula from viral scientist Jonah Berger to drill out facts and generate interesting ideas. Using ‘roulette’ for example…

Who chooses to play roulette?
What types of roulette are there?
What can we learn about the type of person who plays X version of roulette?

Now to mix it up a bit…

Where do those people come from?
What is the majority gender?

Now make it controversial…

Are people from region X more prone to gambling? Are men playing the “live” version more? Is this because they are physically attracted to the croupier?

As you can see, questioning your own topic triggers a web of interesting and contentious content – the kind of material which a much wider audience can relate to, enjoy and share. Another creative formula I use for topic generation is ‘subject + random category or buzzword ‘. For instance:

Roulette + films (which brings me to the iconic Russian roulette scene from The Deer Hunter).

Roulette + social (which brings me to the webcam-based phenomenon Chat Roulette).

Roulette + travel (which in the case of Heineken, brought them to a video whereby holiday makers were offered to play ‘Departure Roulette’ and board a flight to a random destination).

Roulette + magic (which brings me to popular British mentalist Derren Brown’s ‘Russian Roulette’ trick).

Writing

Once you’ve seeded a topic and an angle, you should be looking to delegate the writing of an article to a crack in-house writer—someone with a passion for journalism and developing their online presence. In my experience, outsourcing to freelancers or an agency comprises quality and article authenticity. The work is thin on research, low on personality and possesses a ‘churned’ feel to it, which brings me back to my stereotypical guest post gripe. Make sure you leverage the knowledge of your internal team—i.e. your designer for design-related material—to cover all potential article bases.

Top takeaways

1. Explore your niche. It is sure to bring up topics that bear wider social significance.
2. Have you successfully implemented a marketing campaign? Is your business doing great? Tell your own company story.
3. Brainstorm and generate shareable content. Use the “question asking” formula above to come up with interesting topics.

3: Original and convincing outreach

Here’s a fantastic post entitled “Revealed: Outreach Campaigns from some of the Biggest SEO firms.” It underlines just how useless some SEO agencies are at establishing credibility and building rapport with editors and webmasters. They have to resort to manufactured guest-post outreach.

My outreach is far more tailored and elaborate. I throw in a bio, examples of my published work and a brief employment history. There really is no substitute for published work, and I’m fortunate enough to have articles on websites like Buzzfeed and The Bleacher Report. My emails will be personalised, complimentary and explain why my content is suitable for the website’s target demographic. Email outreach—summarised perfectly by this infographic—is a science in its own right.

I sugar-coat my job role (senior editor at a gaming information portal) and justify my outreach on the grounds of a writer wanting to broaden his horizons and bolster his portfolio. For the most covert infiltrations, I pose as a journalist looking for an actual job as a remote freelancer. Though I’m approaching these websites for a link to my company website, it’s not always at the forefront of my agenda. I want to diversify my writing portfolio and elevate my own online presence to establish regular writing gigs in the future.

For first time contact with an editor, I always include an article attachment. I’ve enjoyed a lot more traction with this tactic. Editors receive and reject an inordinate number of pitches, but are far more likely to respond if you’ve gone to the effort of constructing an original article.

Another top tip is when I’ve linked to a business or website in a previous article, I’ll approach them for a guest post later down the line so they can return the favour. This is a great way to break the ice simply by letting them know you mentioned their insightful article.

Top takeaways

1. Personalise your outreach. Research the editor, the website and its target audience, and explain why your content is suitable.
2. Ask yourself: Are you emailing a webmaster, or an editor? The former will be familiar with SEO, and will scrutinise your outreach more heavily. An editor with a journalistic background should be more receptive to content proposals.
3. Be yourself—an ambitious, talented freelance writer. By mentioning your company, you run the risk of being ignored on the basis of seeking commercial gain.
4. Where possible, include an original article for the target website as part of your email outreach.

4: Build your website’s linkable assets

Successful link building means working with the internal content team to develop linkable assets. This can be a mix of ephemeral news content, infotainment articles and more academic, educational resources. Across our websites, we’ve covered the whole spectrum—from a Vegas-themed HTML5 puzzle game that amassed 1,000 shares, to a serious investigation into casino design.

One of my company’s more ambitious projects was the creation of an infographic documenting the probability of stumbling upon any given piece of image-based web content. The luck factor prevalent in gambling was a springboard for our tagline, “How Lucky Are You To be Reading This Infographic?” The outreach campaign went far beyond standard infographic “directories,” earning us links from the likes of Cheezburger.com (the heart of many viral pieces), Shortlist.com (known for their magazines in the UK), and even a Mashable.com editor’s personal blog.

Top takeaways

1. Focus on all media types. If you’re conducting a video interview with a key industry figure, get it transcribed and make it into a podcast to maximise your outreach.
2. Formalise a comprehensive outreach plan: Find relevant twitter influencers through Followerwonk, track down key bloggers through Google blog search and contact industry journalists through Journalisted to cover your story.

Three “guest post” examples

Here are three examples of the aforementioned tactics being put into practice. Naturally, I can’t divulge too many leads!

1: The Bleacher Report: “Should Gambling Be Given The Boot From English Football?”

The Bleacher Report is the world’s fourth largest sports website. It thrives on user engagement, and its article base is growing rapidly courtesy of an advanced contributor program. Anyone can apply to write for Bleacher Report, and after a two stage screening process, you’re awarded admin rights to publish an internal article. I was accepted into contributor program after providing examples of my sports writing. The Bleacher Report prides itself on attributing relevant resources, so I decided to produce an op-ed piece about gambling in football with a link to Roulette.co.uk’s internal blog posts; “Footballers in Vegas.”

2: Growth Business: “Five Reasons To Start An Affiliate Business”

Growth Business is a highly respectable business news and advice website. It doesn’t advertise guest posting opportunities, but I noticed that a range of entrepreneurs supplied content in the comments and analysis section. On the back of my experience in affiliate marketing, I pitched an original article “Five Reasons To Start An Affiliate Business.” Lists are an integral part of content marketing: they’re tangible, digestible and make for convenient reference points. Since I was referencing my own websites as case studies, I was able to embed organic links, and my contribution was duly accepted. I linked to other affiliate marketing resources within the article body to aid reader understanding and avoid any suspicions of commercial gain.

3: Grads Blog: “Gibraltar: An Opportunity For Graduates?”

The Grads.co.uk blog welcomes student and career-related content. It’s a growing, multipurpose website offering career advice, job listings and interactive student engagement, so I expect the metrics to increase significantly over time. Having graduated a little over two years ago and moved to gambling operator hub Gibraltar, I offered a featured article on the merits of relocating and finding employment abroad. I embedded a link to my company’s Gibraltar infographic, which included a vexel replica of the peninsula and important stats about its economy and lifestyle. I want to cement a long-term relationship with the editor and avoid the ‘one-off’ guest posting tactic so I offer monthly contributions.

Conclusion

It’s worth noting that the aforementioned tips shouldn’t necessarily be followed in order. Topic generation might be the last thing I do if I’ve forged an editorial contact and secured a regular writing gig. I might publish an internal article on a whim to establish a relevant backlink, or build a whole guest posting campaign around a static, linkable asset.

I’ve written this post with reference to the gambling industry. However, it can be applied to any difficult niche. Left-field topic generation, skilled feature writing and tailored outreach can generate sterling results.

Finally, I want to stress that these guest posting tactics are more than a link building exercise. They’re something we tie into an overall, content marketing strategy to drive referral traffic and social shares. After a three-month implementation period, we recorded an overall referral traffic increase of 45.54% on the previous three months. The majority of this came from social websites, with overall social referral traffic increasing 247.98% in the same period.

Do you agree with these tactics? Have you devised your own, unique outreach plan?

I’d love to hear the Moz community’s thoughts on link building for difficult niches!

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Boil any social, content, marketing, CRM or PR programme down to its bare bones and it has all the hallmarks of cultism, as all efforts point towards a desire to convince others that the message is one worth following.

Human beings are naturally inquisitive and mentally programmed to want to join groups due to the companionship and affiliation needs they fulfil.

With this in mind, getting an individual to join you should be a relatively simple thing to do. They want to be a part of what you’re putting together, they just need a little coaxing.

Danny Wallace encapsulated this brilliantly in the book Join Me, the true story of a man who started a cult by accident.

Before you set out on your quest to grow your fanbase, there are four stages of cultism that you should factor into your plans:

1. Proclaim your vision

Nobody’s going to follow you unless they know what you’re all about. Being personal and enigmatic is essential here. Jim Jones, Jesus and José Mourinho (is there something about the letter ‘J’?) are individuals who gained an utter devotion in their audience.

They spoke from the heart, promised a utopia, and people resonated with what was being communicated. Ask yourself, exactly why would someone want to become an active advocate of your company?

2. Define behaviour rules

So you want to be part of that vision? Here’s what we’re going to do.

You’ll join our Facebook group, you’ll want to contribute to discussions on the topics we put out there, and you’ll enter our competitions and spread our message to all your friends and family. That’s generally what brand social channels are asking people to do, but they often skirt around the subject.

Be honest with your followers, but also respect and react to their input, and they’ll be far more receptive to your demands – those who don’t want to join in can pop off elsewhere…you don’t need them anyway.

3. Ensure your followers want to stay around

It’s obviously not just a one-way deal. The act of your followers’ meeting these demands is worthy of some kind of reward.

Let your group know that you value them, you love them, and that their continued attention is going to bring them recognition. The occasional voucher or discount code is a nice virtual hug; a way of saying “thanks for being there”.

This in turn will give your greater sway and influence over their actions. Many cults are built on fear and intimidation, but that’s unlikely to transfer to the digital realm where anyone can unlike or unsubscribe at the click of a button.

4. Make the group rely on you

This is where your power as a content producer gives you an unrivalled advantage – bring people in by offering them an exclusive view on the thing they’ve shown interest in, then fuel that desire with an ever-evolving narrative that brings them in deeper to your brand bosom.

If you get the balance and the approach right, you’ll get people beating down your virtual door, clamouring for their next content fix.

Where anyone outside the company would need to jump through hoops to get hold of the people and places associated with your business, you can instantly call people for comment, arrange behind the scenes access and dip into your archives, all with the intent of offering a view that only your followers will get to see.

Turning the camera around the other way is a sure-fire way of attracting eyeballs. This Is It was probably more interesting than the reality of a Michael Jackson tour ever would have been.

One of the things that marks out a cult, and often one of the things that makes followers want to be a part, is its detachment from the mainstream.

Undoubtedly the quickest way for a parent to steer their child away from a band or artist is to start bopping along with them when they come onto the stereo.

Some businesses tip over into full-blown religion. Customers of One Direction, Grand Theft Auto and Manchester United show avidity and devotion (not to mention a willingness to spend) that many companies, and probably many churches, are envious of.

But they could be classed as victims of their own success. Don’t forget those who have been there with you from the beginning. Those who helped you when social follower numbers were in the double digits.

Your core cult following needs to be understood and nurtured, so involve them and respect them, and they will start to hold you in high esteem as their unrivalled patriarch…then you can make them drink the Kool-Aid.

T-shirt image credit: Threadless

Releasing the value of programmatic media

Attribution will provide programmatic media with a new ally in establishing its impact on other channels.

For example, we have a number of clients using our own proprietary attribution technology for all their media planning. Within their Business Intelligence dashboard we have two perspectives of the channel activity, one as last click data and the other as attributes data.

The last click will typically boost the role of SEO and PPC to indicate that more people selected a last click from these channels before converting on a sale or other conversion page.

The attributed data, on the other hand, will typically increase the role of display by looking at the converting and non-converting paths of users who have been exposed to multiple channels.

Display, in a number of cases, will have a direct role in influencing search later down the funnel which will be indicated by ’re apportioned’ clicks from last click to attributed clicks in the client reports.

We can then use this insight to re-weight the channel mix and further optimise performance. 

From pull to push marketing

This attribution technology has been widely used in direct performance channels but will be even more prevalent as VOD, brand display and content move into the sphere of programmatic media.

It is always difficult to understand the role of content within earned or non paid channels alongside the more established paid channels. Many paid channels are now effectively acquisition channels and I suspect content and more push based content channels will become the new frontier of digital marketing.

Attribution will also provide a huge value for measuring cross device influence and help define the role of social and CRM data within programmatic planning. 

Working closer with data partners

Given Facebook’s announcement of a number of offline data initiatives, looping in loyalty card data to substantiate their effect on high street purchases and even testing offline creatives within their digital platform to create more compelling traditional advertising, I suspect attribution will become a key part of their offering.

Nielsen and tech vendors are also tackling this area which will culminate in a true cost per view, engagement or sale by specific audience type.

Consumers will always win

I suspect the end result will be that creative, content, social endorsement, personalised content and device agnostic delivery will dominate the market.

Users will increasingly pull content, which will re-orientate programmatic technology away from consolidating paid channels to un-converting the effect of the ‘other half’ of media spend. 

Client based trading desks

Nowhere will this be more clearly demonstrated than within the client based trading desks that are starting to appear. This phenomenon has been spearheaded by the large FMCG and high reach advertisers that feel there is more value to managing the agency trading desk facilities within their own marketing team.

Effectively this relationship is a quasi partnership where agency and/or a tech provider support the platform and data consolidation that sits behind the programmatic desks.

The value of this approach is clear where high reach metrics are easy to achieve without constant redesigning by the agency.

However, as content and unpaid channels start to move within programmatic, agencies and their creative teams will be required and the model will flip flop back and forth. 

In summary

I hope this series has been useful. I appreciate all the comments and emails. Programmatic media is still in its infancy in terms of real application across all paid, owned and earned media channels.

It is a very effective way of valuing inventory against campaign objectives rather than publisher rate cards. As publishers mobilise consumer data into inventory management solutions and clients integrate CRM into marketing channels, there will be increasing parity in the pricing of paid programmatic media.

The real value of programmatic will be when it is underpinned by attribution technology and can deliver across richer and more interactive media formats.

Once this has been reached the industry will effectively have a new marketing platform that integrates both push and pull channels alongside an algorithmic attribution technology that will optimise against the new audience interaction KPIs that are being established; I suspect these will be dominated by the consumer centric measures championed by our friends in the econometric department. 

Other posts in this series: 

• Four years on: the growing pains of programmatic media
• Programmatic media unpacked (part two)
• The nuts and bolts of programmatic marketing (part three)