Working in Link Building
The day-to-day for a good link builder usually involves creating content, following SEO news, researching link profiles, and networking as peripheral activities that support their goals. The direct acquisition of links, as mentioned above, can be a mixture of both organic and paid efforts.
Whether you just started learning the ropes of link building, or you’ve managed successful link building campaigns and have the numbers to prove it, Onward Search will match your skills and ambitions to opportunities that fit your personal experience and professional goals. Start working with Onward today to develop and fortify your Link Building career.
1. Email a webmaster, asking for a link to your site. Personalizing your emails is critical here (think about how many emails you get every day) so make sure you're actually emailing webmasters who have sites that are relevant to yours, and, even more importantly, make sure that your site is actually link-worthy. We're all busy people and no one wants to waste time so if it's not a good place for a link to you, don't waste anyone's time.
2. Find great sources for links by simply searching the web for your desired target keywords. Whereas even a year ago I would have said that sites appearing high in the SERPs would be good sites to contact, due to the truly amazing amount of spam and hacked sites that appear high up for certain search terms, I'd say you need to visit the sites with a very careful eye. Whereas we used to think that getting a link from any source was a good idea, after Google started notifying webmasters that they had bad links which should be removed, I'd say to be very, very critical.
3. Use social media to find great sources for links. There are loads of tools that can help with this (my favorite is Icerocket) but simply going to Twitter and searching for a keyword in the same way that you search through an engine's results can show you some fantastic link opportunities.
4. Make the link negotiation personal. Even if you've emailed to ask for a link, don't be opposed to speaking to this benevolent webmaster by phone, or in person if that works out. Sometimes this personal connection can be what secures your link.
5. Know what makes a site a good linking partner. If you've been building links for a long time, you can probably easily glance at a site and, in under a minute, determine whether it would be a beneficial linking partner. However, for the rest of the world, it's not so easy. Know what makes me like a site more than anything else? Social love. If I see a blog post that is relevant to my topic, has ongoing relevant comments, a decent amount of tweets/likes/shares, that's a good site to me because I'm thinking about traffic.
6. Sponsor something. Sponsor a charity, a contest, an afterschool club at your kid's school, anything.
7. Learn to love the nofollowed link. There's more to life than link juice. Nofollows can be amazing for traffic so if someone says yes, I'll link to you but I have to nofollow it, say thanks.
8. See who links to YouTube videos that relate to your industry and ask them for a link.
9. In that same line of thought, see who links to infographics in your niche. Ask them for a link.
Link Building Job Responsibilities
This is a list of responsibilities commonly associated with link building jobs. Tip: use the keywords and phrases you find in job descriptions when writing your resume to improve your chance of getting noticed.
- Manage link building and baiting
- Generate content for link acquisition
- Establish permanent one way links
- Execute link request email campaigns
- Acquire links from high PR sites