The Link Building Book
3 minute read

Identifying the techniques you plan to use

3 minute read

Now that you’ve spent some time checking out the competitive landscape, as well as your own link profile, you need to start figuring out which techniques you can use to help achieve your goals.

You need to keep a few things in mind when choosing your techniques. By this point in the process, these should not all be new to you:

  • The goals of the business
  • The assets and resources you have available to you (e.g. design)
  • The types of links you need based on your own link profile
  • The types of links you need in order to compete based on the link profile of your competitors
  • The amount of time you have

In a later chapter, you’ll find a huge list of link building techniques, along with the process for each one. I encourage you to carefully read that section and pick out techniques that you feel you can do and will help you achieve your goals.

At this point, just go through the link building techniques and pull out the ones that you think are applicable to you and are achievable. So you end up with a nice big list of techniques to filter down and prioritize.

Prioritizing your techniques based on time and resources

By this point, you should have a big list of link building techniques that you feel you can use. However, it probably isn’t practical or sensible to try and implement them all at once. So you need to spend some time prioritizing so that you give yourself adequate time to focus on each technique and stand a good chance of making it successful.

But how do you prioritize lots of ideas that could work?

Simply put, I try and pick the easiest ones! If you already have experience with a particular technique, or a particular technique is easier because of certain resources you have access to (i.e., a designer or developer), then I’d tend to go with those.

Remember the list we used when choosing our techniques:

  • The goals of the business
  • The assets and resources you have available to you (i.e., design)
  • The types of links you need based on your own link profile
  • The types of links you need in order to compete based on the link profile of your competitors
  • The amount of time you have

You can use the exact same points to narrow down and prioritize your list. As you do this, bear this in mind:

Link building isn’t always about reinventing the wheel; it is about prioritizing and doing

Unfortunately, I speak to too many SEO professionals who over-think link building. I admit I’ve been guilty of this myself and still find myself doing it sometimes. But the truth is that my most successful link building campaigns have been simple.

Ask yourself these questions when choosing the techniques:

  • Am I capable of implementing this on my own?
  • Will I need extra help to implement this (i.e., designers, writers, or developers)?
  • Will this technique deliver links that help me hit business goals?
  • Can I implement this technique in the time that I have?
  • Will the client be happy with me using this technique?
  • Do I need to collaborate with other client teams on this technique? Such as the PR or brand team?
  • Do I feel confident about this technique?

These questions should help you filter out techniques that you can’t use and will help you end up with a list of techniques that are prioritized.

Getting started is as easy as having a conversation.

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