I read the results of a poll last year (I wish I could source it here, but I couldn’t find it – you’ll have to take my word for it) that said only somewhere around half of all SEOs do link building. 

I wasn’t surprised. For many, many years, I was one who didn’t do any link building. Not because I didn’t believe in it, but because:

• It is confusing
• It is time consuming
• It is hard to sell through to clients
• I can’t find a lot of specific tips to make it approachable
• It doesn’t seem entirely valuable compared to the on-page SEO I am doing

If you’re an SEO who was like me, or a new SEO who needs a place to start, let’s look at each of the above issues through a late-2011 (and personal) lens. My hope is it gives you a footing to make smart decisions around link building.  I remember my bug frustration was there was no manual to link building – I’m hoping this serves as a more valuable pseudo-manual for you. 

It Is Hard To Sell Through To Clients
 

It’s also hard to sell through to your boss (if you’re an in-house SEO).  Until they get into your link building, and see the real value, it’s really an obtuse idea.  They want to know all about it, but they need it presented in a digestible, concise document.  If link building were that cut and dry, everyone would succeed at it; everyone would be doing it.  

A client will want to see the ROI.  I’ve had clients ask how much money they’d make from a link I get them.  We laugh, but we shouldn’t – they just don’t understand, yet.  Since you’re pretty much not ethically capable of guaranteeing that negotiating or buying links will net a financial return in the short run, you may find yourself flailing with explanations.  You can gather and send as many blogs posts about the value of link building, but a busy client or boss won’t have much time to read it.  As a consultant, you need to educate, but more so, you need to show results.

It’s all on you.  Get a proof of concept.  Show them the results.

You know that link building can build your site’s authority and help you rank for your specific target keywords.  If you can’t secure a testing budget, I suggest you work it on your free time.  Pick one or two vital keywords and build some links.  Use your analytics or rank checkers to benchmark weekly (or in light of Google’s recent speedy algorithm updates, maybe benchmark them daily).  By showing ranking growth, you can usually tie the keyword lift to your specific link building, provided you’ve properly annotated your link building steps.  By conversion growth per keyword (via your analytics) you can prove that this was not a fluke (look at your month over month and year over year keyword data).

In my experience, once clients start to see that your link building is working, they begin to trust your “search engine mojo” and decide to go with the flow.

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