Relationship Building for Links

Hi, guys. Ruth here, and today we're going to talk about relationship building for links.

One thing I think we as an industry need to move away from is this idea of link building and move towards more of an idea of link earning. How are you creating content and then promoting that content in ways people want to link to and share it? That can be really difficult because a lot of times you're in this relationship with your client or your boss, where they want X links every month. They want 25 links a month. They don't care where they come from. They've heard that they need links, and that's how they want to do it.

It's important that we move away from that expectation, both in business and as marketers, because that's how you get crummy links. That's how you get spammy links. What we really want to think about is: How can we build a program where, over time, our links will build themselves? Because then you're not having to spend all this time scrambling for links that don't matter anyway. You're actually focusing on, you know, marketing.

So one of the ways that I like to do that is think about building relationships with people who will share and link to your content. The first place you can look for relationships is the stuff that I'm sure you're all already doing with awesome social media, where you're building a community, you're engaging with your users. In addition to doing all of that, you can also think about, "How can I turn this into links?"

One of the ways you can do that is to use social measurement tools, like Moz's, to look at how what you do affects how much people share. Can you change your message? Can you change your content? Can you make little tweaks to increase the likelihood that somebody will share your content? That teaches you so much about what it is that you're doing that people are really responding to, and a share is very similar to a link in terms of the actions that it requires somebody to take. So it's a really good indicator for how you can build content to build more links. And some of those people who are interacting with you on social have their websites, and they might link to you. So much the better.

Once you're doing that, you're kind of figuring that out, then you can start actually being more active in building relationships, and there a bunch of different ways that you can do that and meet people. You can be kind of old school and send them an email. Find the people who you want links from. Go into you Open Site Explorer backlinks, look at your competitors' backlinks, look at the people who link to the sites that you want links from, collect a collection of sites that you know you want to link from and that you think that you could get a link from.

So if they don't have a blog, if they don't talk about other websites, if they never link to anybody, they're not linking to you. But if they do, start figuring out how you can build a relationship, a friendship with that site. You can email them and say, "Hey, I liked your site, X comment about your site. I thought it was really cool. Just wanted to reach out and say hi." Or, "Maybe I could at some point send you something and you could take a look at it. If you wanted to share it with your readers, you could." Or, "I'd like to do a guest blog post for you. Would you like to do a guest blog post for me?" These are all sorts of ways to start a relationship without just being like, "Link to me," and they're like, "I don't know you." That's not good.

You can also, this might sound a little crazy, meet people in person, you know, face-to-face. There are so many industry events, conferences, meet-ups, networking groups. If there isn't one in your area, start one. Start meeting the people, in your industry or in related industries, who do what you do and talk to them. Become friends with them. Keep in touch with them on social media. And then it's so easy, when you have a really great piece of content to be like, "Hey, Joe, it was great grabbing drinks with you the other day. Would you mind sharing my infographic?" And because Joe already knows you, he'll probably be like, "Sure." Or even if he's like, "No, sorry I can't," he doesn't feel weird about it because you're friends.

What's nice about those relationships is they turn into multiple links over time, because they know you. You can go back to those people again and again, not every day, but again and again and say, "Hey, I thought you might like this. Check it out."

You can do the exact same thing on social media. I actually did a Whiteboard Friday on using Twitter and Followerwonk to build relationships for links. It's one of my favorite strategies. I've done it for a couple of different companies now, and it works really well.

But in general, the idea is you're finding people on social. It's so much easier to interact with a stranger on social media than it is via email. You can just be like, "Hi." Start to build a relationship. Start to build a friendship. Not just about the link. Don't be like, "I'm going to talk to you three times, and if there's no link, I'm never talking to you again." Start sharing their stuff. Start responding to their questions. You might just make a friend, a real friend in addition to a business connection. And what's nice about all of these things is these people are having positive interactions with you. Then when you're asking them to do you a favor, like link to your stuff, they're so much more willing to do it.

Over time that's going to result in more and more of the kind of links Google wants, and you're not going to have to resort to shady link building techniques. It also means that over time you're going to have to spend less and less time building and finding these new link relationships, because you've gotten into a groove with them. Your connections are introducing you to new connections. You feel more comfortable talking to people. So you have to spend less and less time just grinding out that those links, and more time doing the stuff that you like to do best – marketing.

So that's my tips for building relationships for links, and get out there and make some friends.