This is a guest post by Cory Collins from PageOnePower.com
Anyone who’s spent anytime blogging can readily relate to tales of bad SEO. Blog comments that hardly seem to be English, guest post request spam, and a constant stream of content solely designed to build backlinks.
And it’s unfortunate. Because I believe link building, done properly, is more about personal human interaction than anything to do with a search engine—crazy, right? Let me explain.
First you need to understand the reason most people start a blog, is because they’re passionate about something. They want to share their passion with the world. But, maintaining a blog is a lot of work. Often for little or no money.
So, some blogs start looking for content contribution from outside sources, such as guest posts. Or maybe they are just looking to build more of a community. Either way, they want their blog to stay passionate, on point, and high quality. Generically written, bland, vanilla posts written only for a backlink is the last thing they want.
But link building is a difficult process. Because of this, people are tempted to cut corners continually. Many hope that it’s a number game, thinking that if they send out enough emails, write enough articles, or comment on enough blogs they’ll be able to get a link somewhere. But this isn’t how quality backlinks are made.
But how do you build quality backlinks then? Is it worth the time? My answer is yes, it is definitely worth the time, but the only way to build quality backlinks is through hard work and personalizing the process, in order to build relationships with blog owners.
Outreach Success
The first—and most obvious—way in which personalizing your link building strategies will help is in your outreach success. Believe me when I say blog owners, especially of highly successful blogs, receive an overwhelming amount of emails per day pertaining to SEO and link building. So it’s only natural that they end up ignoring a large percentage of those, especially if they lack any kind of personalization or professionalism.
So, when reaching out to a potential blog owner for link building opportunities—including guest posting, product review/giveaway, or general contacting—make sure to:
- Introduce yourself
- Remark upon their blog – they’ve worked hard on it, so show them you’ve actually looked at it!
- Explain why you’re contacting them, succinctly
- Thank them for their time and include a call to action (hope to hear from you soon, please let me know if you’d be interested in a product giveaway, etc.)
- Proof read for any possible grammar/spelling mistakes
But most of all, don’t use this to create a new template! Every email you send out should be personalized. After reading a hundred template emails blog owners quickly get a sense for which emails were actually written and which ones are just generic outreach. And believe me, it makes a difference.
Guest Posting – More Views
Making your article personalized to the blog improves it in the following ways:
- It better matches the blog’s tone, content, and overall theme and is therefore more likely to get promoted and viewed.
- Makes the post a lot more readable. Think about the difference between including a personal touch—such as previous experience, a sense of humor, or even just your personality— compared to just another generic one off link building article.
- Makes the article easier to write—no one enjoys a generic article, including the writer, since writing it is often boring and mundane. So spice it up and include a little personalization!
- Increases the likelihood of being asked to post again by the blog owner, making it easier to build links in the future.
There’s simply no comparison when it comes to writing a generic post solely for the link at the end as opposed to writing an enjoyable, educational, fun piece that is custom tailored for a specific blog. You can’t build great links without first building relationships.
Increased Link Building Opportunities
At the end of the day, the real reason all link building exercises should be a personalized, human to human interaction, is because it increases your further link building opportunities. How you say? Well, by helping you build real relationships with blog owners!
When you reach out to a blog owner, looking to have an actual conversation and truly contribute to their blog, they’re often grateful. And this gratefulness leads to:
- Another chance to contribute in the future
- Increased network within the blogging community
- Possible increased social presence – the blogger shows their gratitude by going above and beyond in promoting your article
- Possible new link building opportunities—maybe they recommend you to another blog owner, have another blog themselves, or invite you to contribute in different ways (sponsored post, giveaway, etc.)
Even if you don’t get anything extra out of it, the feeling of actually contributing should be enough. And, if you continually practice solid, honest, personalized link building activities, blog owners will notice, and appreciate.
So quit with the template mass emails.
Because let’s be honest: even if you get links out of it, it’s a losing strategy.
Starting a blog for passion will last 2 or 3 months, we need to have a clear vision with proper planning is indeed for serious bloggers. So link building is ultimately needed for every website that either we can do it or can ire qualified professionals in the industry.
Link building is really a long process but if you can build relationship to the owner of the blog, you are basically taking the shortcut route. Thanks for the tips. 🙂
Hi Cory,
Sensational advice!
Business success flows in easily if you build a network of friends around you.
You make friends by being personable, sociable and accessible.
Add a personal touch to all you do. Forget using mass templates. People tune you out immediately if you fail to write a personal email…at least people of influence do.
Reach out across social networks. Promote people. Leave value-packed comments on blogs.
Most of all, write good content! Creating helpful, usable blog posts is the best link-building method I know of.
Simply make a ton of friends by promoting other people. By leaving helpful, valuable comments on blog posts. By inspiring and supporting others.
You will never lack for everything with a powerful army of supportive and caring friends around you.
Thanks!
RB
Hey Ryan,
I’m glad you enjoyed the post, thanks for the kind words!
Building personal relationships online is so important for businesses. It leads to community engagement, increased social presence, improved web presence, and overall just a more interactive business.
Hi Cory
I agree with you, links should be for the reader first and not for search engines.
I guess this is also one of penguin objectives
but sometimes it’s tempting to go the easy way, that’s human nature 🙂
True thing is white hat always work great it may take time but gives you what result you want and that is always genuine and if you are planning for long run then white hat seo is always recommend.
True. If you don’t want to have problems in the future, use white hat methods. We should not be greedy in earning money because sometimes it is still best to wait for the success to come. We just need to do our thing and it will soon come.
Fantastic advice.
I think that too many businesses look at the mathematics of SEO without looking at the human factors.
Whenever I’m asked for a link, a personalized request for some sort of connection always wins out over some mass-emailed attempt to cut corners.
Hey Alex,
Thanks for the comment! I completely agree that businesses have a tendency to approach SEO – and link building – from a mathematical perspective. Which, to a degree, is understandable. But sometimes it’s the human elements and relationships built that have the most payoff in the end.
I always appreciate when someone contacts me with a personalized email. I also take notice when they mention that they’ve actually perused my guest posting policy page and understand my guest posting rules and intend to abide by the rules.
Building a quality link is not a tough task if one is getting work done according to the standards or we can say rules which comes under white hat SEO techniques.Providing the readers what they want will surely bring some links back to a site.
i will recommend to all bloggers to Reach out across social networks. Promote people. Leave value-packed comments on blogs.Most of all, write good content! Creating helpful, usable blog posts is the best link-building method I know of…these are my tips to others….
Would you still recommend two way link building..?? BEcause since the panda and penguin update has come in I believe this is not appreciated..?
Hey Ashish, good question. I wouldn’t recommend reciprocal links right now. These links have always been somewhat questionable and right now strict white hat practices are truly the only way to go.
Sensing the mood from Google, between Panda and Penguin, I think it would be sheer folly to think questionable link practices would go unnoticed.
However, it’s not always easy to build relationships without offering something in return. This is why providing strong, quality content is so important.
However down the road, as you continue to build your relationship, you might offer to link to their content if they have a relevant article or quality content.
Hope that helps!