My colleagues and I have a running joke that we all strive towards getting to a point where the client does the link building for us. Now obviously, I don’t mean that literally, because our team prides itself on pounding out secured one-way links.
Still, there is some validity to this claim, but you’ll have to work with me for a moment.
I think we can all agree that your client knows more about their given market vertical than you and/or your SEO team ever could. So theoretically, if you can get your client to completely buy into your link-building philosophy so much so that they’d be willing to make moves on your behalf to ensure that certain high-profile links are secured, you’d be on easy street from a link-building point of view.
Sounds easy enough, but how can you get from here to there?
Well for starters, let me preface the following statements by pointing out that the clients my team deals with are all Fortune 1000 and therefore have a much larger and longer reach in terms of helping secure links. Now I’m not saying that to gloat or aggrandize myself or my company, rather I wanted to point out that the larger the company, the more ties and/or influence it can wield in terms of securing inbound links. Moreover, companies of that stature often have pre-existing ties to various media, advertising, marketing, and industry entities that can be leveraged for the purpose of securing inbound links.
Anyhow, back to my original point. In order to get from here to there, you must first set out to indoctrinate your client into link building mode by laying out the business case and value proposition. For me, it usually requires a few drinks and the story of how a Stanford thesis on citation ranking morphed into the most powerful entity on the face of the web.
Once you’ve got the client on board, the key is to engage in ongoing discovery sessions. What I mean by that is that your client likely has ties to all sorts of business entities that have corresponding web entities that can, in turn, be leveraged for link building.
In laymen’s terms, your client can flex his muscle to secure inbound links.
And when your client is willing to get his or her hands dirty to help secure relevant and authoritative links you’re in a pretty good place. Not just because they can make headway much quicker than you will with a random email or phone call, but because you can rest assured that you laid down the building blocks for a true partnership between the vendor and the client.
Isn’t that what we’re all after in the end?
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I often do that. I don’t have time for link building, so I educate them as to what needs to be done, and how to do it. At the same time, they also get to see that most of the link requests they receive, as spam in their email, should be ignored.
Good insight, g1smd, although I must say, you should always find time for link building.
It’s arguably the most important and fruitful of all SEO endeavors.
Exactly, that the client need to know about link building, for easy managing their work in linking, no need to hire tutor or what ever.
And, at the same time he/she lessen the expenses.
Thanks for the feedback, virtual assistan!
Sometime tutoring the client on how link building works, and why it’s so important, is what leads to client getting involved in the process ; )
I’m actually putting together a presentation right now on just this topic! Leveraging client creativity and resource is definitely one of the education processes I try to provide for my clients!
Great stuff, Gary! And thanks for the feedback.
Great post, Hugo.
I deal on a daily basis with small business clients – with decidedly less reach than Zeta’s clients in almost every case. Many of them are so busy running their shows that they can’t fathom the idea of being bothered with their own link building. Part of the problem is that many people look to SEO as some kind of magic bullet for their business online. They often come in thinking that SEO firms have some secret sauce, and all the client needs to do is pay for it and the traffic and new business will come pouring in. It’s been my goal to educate my clients as to the benefits of their being involved, and the clients who have taken the advice have seen much better results. Simply put: I couldn’t agree more.
Well put, Mike!
Keep on keepin’ on. You’re definitely on the right track.
I agree with you Hugo…client’s participation is really important because that way agents will be able to know what the client really wants and s\doesn’t have to repeat it over and over.
I’ve always believe in encouraging clients to contribute in some manner. A lot of link building can really be reputation management if you have the wrong person doing it, or someone who doesn’t understand the language it reflects poorly on the company. But if they can supply relevant information for link building, or say forum post then they may even get more brand recognition from their presence and more link juice
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