Link building: tactics with the purpose to increase the amount of websites linking to a certain website in order to improve it’s ranking for specific search queries.
Since the beginning of the internet, links to a website (backlinks) have been an important ranking factor for search engines. Search engines (SE) use algorithms to determine the order of search results and try to put the most valuable on top. The most valuable would be the URL that has the most relevant content to solve the search intent of the searcher.
You want to be found? Than you want to be on top! Hence the desire to manipulate the algorithm was created and with it the job of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
In the beginning, pre 2012, just having a lot of links would help ranking. The topic of the website or the content the link was placed in didn’t really matter. But SE have become smarter and learned to understand what the website and the content is about. Since Google Penguin update in 2012, things have changed a lot. (here a good post on Google Penguin for more background info)
In 2021, link building is far from what it used to be and it keeps evolving as the search engines get smarter. Currently we have reached the point where quality has become more important than quantity. John Mueller (senior webmaster analyst at Google) has said it before and we will say it again: “creating large amounts of backlinks in poorly written content on irrelevant websites doesn’t do anything good for SEO“.
“Creating large amounts of backlinks from poorly written content on irrelevant websites doesn’t do anything good for SEO“
Floris Assies
Link building is, and has been, a popular black hat SEO technique with which lots of people earn their money. But its effectiveness has become less and less over the last years and since 2020 many still offer the old school link building techniques even though it is pretty much a waste of budget.
“Our advice: stop wasting budget on lots of bad links and try our digital PR service instead”
5+ years experience in SEO and link building has shown that only links in very well written content with relevant topics on a website with authority will move the ranking needle.
Therefore we don’t “just build links” from an excel sheet with URLs and anchors, but instead we offer our own tested digital PR service which actually sets the stage for other organic links being created as well.
How we work in a nutshell:
- We research our clients website, industry and audience
- Create one piece of amazing content with deliberately chosen internal links to the target pages that we want to improve ranking for.
- Build X amount of backlinks to that new post that actually relates and refers to it. How many links is based on available budget.
- Have a plan to promote the content with the backlink in a way that it actually gets read and invites others to link to it as well.
- Have clear measurable parameters to determine if a campaign has been successful.
For all the content we create we have clear criteria:
- Unique, well written and fact-checked content – written by reputable authors from our own network. We only use our own authors that we have selected very carefully and have a long term relationship with.
- Articles should be based on, and contain references to (fact checked) information from reputable sources that are recent (preferably no more than a year old) and freely accessible (not behind paywalls).
- Backlinks from relevant and authoritative domains where our client’s brand and the link to it actually make sense.
- Proper tie-in of the brand or product – people will know what to expect and actually want to click on the link.
- No use of stock images or media – good content deserves to look good as well. And infographics make content much more appealing.
The difference between Digital PR, Content Marketing and link building
Now above might sound to some as link building or a content marketing strategy and indeed, there is overlap between these disciplines. However we believe there is a clear distinction to be made and a clear answer to “What is the difference between our Digital PR service, content marketing and link building?”.
Link building
Link building is aimed on manipulating search engines to improve ranking. It is purely a SEO technique. It is never white hat, almost always black hat, and some people would argue that it’s a grey hat SEO technique for which something can be said, but that is something for a different post. But the bottom line is, there are risks and when done wrongly, the consequences (a penalty from a search engine) can take months to recover from.
Content marketing
Content marketing is a very broad concept within marketing. It can make use of any type of media (text, images, video, etc) and target any step in the marketing funnel. The content always targets the customer and has an commercial objective. Let’s say that Digital PR is a type of content marketing, but not all content marketing is Digital PR.
Digital PR
Our Digital PR strategy focuses purely on establishing and improving the digital reputation of a company or organization’s website with as result it being recognized as an authority by search engines on certain topics. Consequently this will improve ranking of related search queries (keywords). And possible side effects could be that it aids to brand exposure and brand recognition. In contrast to content marketing, digital PR can target any stakeholder, not only the potential customer.
What does our digital PR service cost?
We can’t give a fixed price for our digital PR service because there are several factors that determine the costs. The main factors being the level of EAT (expertise, authoritativeness and trust) of the used domains and language/region the client is targeting.
But to give an indication, a digital PR project focussing on an English audience and meeting our minimum quality standards, starts from €1000. This includes two high quality articles, one on your domain that is being linked to, and another published on a quality domain that will include the backlink.
As we want links and content to match the quality of the domains used, this means that our price is directly related to the cost of hosting an article on such a domain.
In general domains that meet our minimum standards, and target an English speaking audience, the minimum price for an extra backlink with your digital PR campaign will be € 600. If you chose to go for the best possible domains, the price can go up one order of magnitude.
We do however offer bulk discounts starting at the third link within a project, or the third consecutive project within a campaign..
For example a campaign consists of three projects with three backlinks each, we can offer with a 10% discount and starts at € 6000.
Are you ready to for our service? If you have been spending budget on classic link building and haven’t seen any significant result in the last year, then you know you are.
So reach out to us on digitalPR@coherentes.com and we’d be happy to talk to you and answer any questions.
( NOTE: we’re often asked to provide examples but unfortunately we can’t due to the fact that our clients like to remain unknown. We can however upon request provide examples of content. )
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