Mastering Link Building Strategy: Mapping Your Path to Success

Welcome to a comprehensive guide on how to create an effective link building strategy. In this article, we’ll explore the key elements of a “good strategy” and provide you with a method to map your situation analysis into a strategic link building framework. Our goal is to help you build a strong online reputation for your page, website, and content creators, while encouraging valuable backlinks and content sharing.

Understanding Strategy

Let’s begin by clarifying what we mean by “strategy.” At its core, a strategy is the art of organizing available resources to achieve a specific goal or objective in a given environment. According to author Richard Rumelt’s “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy,” an effective strategy comprises three fundamental ingredients:

1. Diagnosis: Understanding the nature of the challenge you face.
2. Guiding policy: A well-defined approach to overcome obstacles and achieve your goal.
3. Coherent actions: A set of coordinated steps that support your guiding policy.

In the context of link building, tactics like “guest posting” are not strategies in themselves but rather techniques to include within a broader strategy.

Creating a Great Link Building Strategy

To build a successful link building strategy, we’ll draw inspiration from Rand Fishkin’s advice on creating an effective marketing strategy and focus on the following elements:

1. Content creators: Identify the individuals, businesses, or organizations creating and sharing content in your niche.
2. Content consumers: Understand the audience consuming your content, including other content creators and search engine bots.
3. Platforms: Analyze the websites, social media networks, and online spaces where content is published and shared.
4. Content: Assess various content forms (e.g., blog posts, videos, infographics) based on quality, relevance, uniqueness, and creator authority.
5. Competition: Recognize the high level of competition in your niche due to the abundance of content being created and shared daily.
6. Trends: Stay informed about content format trends, platform preferences, consumer behavior, and SEO practices.

Applying the Strategy: The Skyscraper Technique

To illustrate the application of a link building strategy, let’s consider the Skyscraper Technique and its adaptation for an HR software’s link building campaign:

1. Diagnosis: Identify existing content that has generated significant backlinks, which can serve as a benchmark for creating your superior content.
2. Guiding Policy: Navigate the competitive landscape by creating content that surpasses existing pieces and attracts content creators seeking valuable content to share with their audience.
3. Coherent Actions: Find link-worthy content, create something even better, and reach out to the right people to secure backlinks.

The Collective Technique: A Unique Approach

In addition to the Skyscraper Technique, we propose “The Collective” strategy, a win-win approach that involves contributors, providing visibility and recognition while generating high-quality content and potential backlinks:

1. Diagnosis: Identify a relevant topic with a large community of interested individuals or businesses in your industry.
2. Guiding Policy: Create a collaborative content piece involving contributions from community members, such as expert insights, case studies, or personal experiences.
3. Coherent Actions: Identify contributors, compile the contributions, promote the content, and engage with the community to foster lasting relationships.

Developing Your Link Building Strategy

Once you’ve selected a technique and adapted it to your situation, follow these steps to develop and implement your link building strategy:

1. Analyze and diagnose issues: Identify your goals, objectives, and available resources, and analyze the content ecosystem in your targeted niche.
2. Map technique to table of elements: Select the type of strategy (blue ocean or red ocean) and create guiding policy options for each.
3. Develop steps: Determine the necessary resources and plan the general steps for implementing your strategy, documenting it in an SOP or process map.

Mastering link building strategy requires a solid understanding of your niche, your audience, and the competitive landscape. By differentiating between tactics and strategies and following our step-by-step guide, you can craft and execute an effective link building strategy that drives success in your online endeavors. Embrace the insights provided here, apply them to your unique context, and happy strategizing!