Link Building FAQ’s – A Twitter Chat

Thanks again to those of you who participated in our very first Twitter Chat.

What’s a Twitter Chat?

Oh, you remember the days of on-line chat rooms… similar to an on-line chat room, a Twitter Chat is when a group joins together at a specified time on Twitter.com and discusses a specific topic. The initiator (in this case our corporate Twitter account: @eminentseo) sets the date and time and invites you to join using a specific #hashtag (in this case we used #ESEOChat). Anyone on Twitter who wants to participate simply needs to search for #ESEOchat and in the results will be served a feed displaying all Tweets that include the specified #hashtag. Check it out here: #ESEOChat

In order to keep some structure, we believe there should be a series of questions presented, and an expert brought in to answer them. There are no rules or restrictions and anyone who chooses to follow along can simply search and stay on the search, refreshing as new Tweets are populated, or join in by using the #hashtag. If they want to also ask the question to the expert – they should @ the Twitter handle of the expert as well.

The great thing about the #hashtag becoming a search query is you can save it and return to it at your convenience, so if you miss a Tweet Chat or have to leave early, all you have to do is return to the search and you can still see all Tweets using that specific tag.

#ESEOChat Dec. 21^st 10-11AM MST, Topic: Link Building

Today, @eminentSEO asked me, @dayofjen, a series of questions related to Link Building. For those of you who missed it or found it hard to follow along, I promised a recap on the corporate blog. I was surprised at how few questions I actually got to answer (the hour flew by!), so below you will find additional questions that we didn’t get to today.

From the Twitter Chat:

Question 1 –“How much of SEO is link building?”

My Twitter answers:

• Google is looking for 2 things – content and links. So, you need fresh, up to date content and enough backlinks to outrank your competition.
• If you have a fully optimized, beautifully designed, content rich website and no links, you have no rankings.
• After you have optimized your website, in order to rank organically in the SERPS, you need one way, inbound links – and lots of them.
• SEO can be broken down into 2 parts: on-page and off. Links are the off page SEO that help your on-page SEO rank.
• Links increase your search engine visibility. Links help you gain authority. Links help the engines know what to rank you for.

Question 2 – “Why do I need Link Building?”

My Twitter answers:

• A website without links is like a store with no address. Sure, it’s there, but how is anyone going to find it?
• Link building is like a voting system, the more votes your site gets using a key term, the higher the engines will rank you for that term.
• Links increase your search engine visibility and ensure your website gains the authority it needs to rank.
• Your competition already has links – so, you need links too, otherwise they will continue to rank, you won’t.

Question 3 – “How does a new business/mom and pop shop compete with the big guys when it comes to link building?”

My Twitter answers:

• We can help a website rank with any budget. So, if you have a lower budget, we find your niche and we start there.
• There are still “low hanging fruit” opportunities in ANY vertical – it’s our job to find those terms and start there.
• Once a client has success in a smaller niche, we expand their keywords into tougher, higher searched terms.
• After a client has gained momentum on a smaller scale, they need to reinvest some of their ROI to see more growth.

More Link Building FAQ’s that didn’t make it in today’s chat:

Question – What are the most effective types of links?

• It’s not about link TYPE alone, it’s about creating a natural looking link trend that can be trusted.
• This generally includes a diverse strategy that integrates links from a variety of sources.
• The “perfect” link would be from a relevant, high PR authority site with tons of indexed backlinks & little to no other outbound links.
• But having “perfect” links only is actually bad. You want diversity; Google is looking for organic link trends.
• It’s easy for Google to detect a paid linking campaign – so you have to mix it up in order to see the best results.

More on my thoughts regarding link building here

Question – How can you be sure that your link building strategies won’t get my site banned or penalized?

• All link building comes with a risk. The key to outsourcing is to work with a reputable company who understands those risks.
• We have been building links for over 7 years, we know the algorithm and we know what the engines are looking for.
• When the algorithm changes, we adjust. Over the years we have never had a client banned or permanently penalized.
• Link building can be grey – but the results speak for themselves. Without links, you don’t have traffic anyways.
• We take care to ensure links are safe AND effective. We have strict criteria and we follow that strategy.

Question – Can you determine an estimated number of links and of what type of links is needed to get to the top of the rankings for any given niche?

• Yes. We do extensive backlink comparison reports to see what the ranking sites are already doing so we can suggest what you should do.
• Your competition isn’t always who you think it is. We need to discover what keywords you should rank for first.
• Once we know who your true online competitors are, we can see what they are doing to prepare a strategy to outdo them.
• This can be by link type, volume, keyword variation, pages linked to, etc

Question – What can I expect to spend on Link Building services?

• Small businesses spend anything from $250-$10K in links a month to achieve their website traffic goals.
• Link building budgets should be determined based off of the keywords you want to rank for.
• Difficult keywords are going to take bigger budgets to rank for. If you don’t have a large budget, you have to go for less difficult terms.
• As a general rule, we tell people you should be spending 20% of your goal revenue on marketing every month to reach your goals.
• You want to make $200K from your website? You need to spend at least $40K per month in marketing (more than just links).

Question – Are there any guarantees with Link Building services?

• No. There’s no telling how the engines or your competition will react. Anyone offering a guarantee is bogus, or works at Google. LOL…
• But seriously, links are powerful, but there are many other variables that need to be considered when looking for results.
• If your website is not optimized properly, if your strategy isn’t aggressive enough, etc, than the links aren’t going to be as effective.
• At the end of the day, you still need fresh quality content, properly optimized on page elements AND links (the right amount and type).
• We can make educated projections but we can’t say Yes, Mr. Client, I guarantee you will be #1 in Google if you spend X amount of $’s – it just doesn’t work that way.

Question – How do you measure ROI with Link Building? / How do I know what you’re doing is actually helping?

• Link building is all about targeting specific keywords. We benchmark those terms and then track your rankings month by month.
• We also gain access to the website analytics and track the click throughs, the time on site, conversions and other key performance metrics.
• Our efforts are all results based – so the plan is to start with a well thought out strategy and then modify it as we go according to the analytics.
• For call centric businesses, we can even install call tracking metrics and ensure the calls are quality AND they convert.
• When link building is part of a more comprehensive marketing strategy we offer custom reporting and goal setting.
• All of our services are results based. We want to see steady improvement in your organic rankings AND website traffic.
• Your increased website traffic should be converting into an increase in sales. If not, there’s a website problem that needs to be fixed.

The list of Link Building FAQ’s goes on and on – so look out for a Link Building FAQ blog part 2 coming soon. If you have a specific question you want answered, you can always send me an e-mail: Jenny@eminentseo.com and I will be sure to respond to you directly and/or include your question in a future blog post.

And, if you really want to chat about what links can do for your website, call me: 1.800.871.4130 (ext 1)

Jenny Weatherall

CEO, Business Consultant, Researcher and Marketing Strategist

Jenny Weatherall is the co-owner and CEO of Eminent SEO, a design and marketing agency founded in 2009. She has worked in the industry since 2005, when she fell in love with digital marketing… and her now husband and partner, Chris. Together they have 6 children and 3 granddaughters.

Jenny has a passion for learning and sharing what she learns. She has researched, written and published hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics, including: SEO, design, marketing, ethics, business management, sustainability, inclusion, behavioral health, wellness and work-life balance.

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