Why Should Quality Content and Links Always Go Hand In Hand by Alexandra Tachalova of DigitalOlympus.net
Bernard Huang
Alexandra Tachalova of Digital Olympus, joined the Clearscope webinar to answer “why you can or can't substitute poor-quality content with links”.
Here are our biggest takeaways from Alexandra’s talk:
Focus on the most valuable links for your website.
Strategies for getting your first links without sending thousands of emails.
Check out and download Alexandra’s slides here.
Watch the full webinar
About Alexandra Tachalova:
Alexandra is a frequent speaker and founder of the relationship-based link-building agency, DigitalOlympus.net. She also runs a digital marketing conference in Europe. Besides that, she regularly contributes to leading digital marketing blogs, including Moz, SEJ, Salesforce, SMExaminer, and many others.
Follow Alexandra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-tachalova/
About DigitalOlympus.net:
Digital Olympus is a relationship-based link-building agency that gets you links you can be proud to have.
Follow DigitalOlympus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-olympus/
Read the transcript
Bernard:
Alexandra here is a frequent speaker and founder of the relationship-based link-building agency, Digital Olympus. She also runs a digital marketing conference in Europe. Besides that, she's regularly contributing to leading digital marketing blogs, including Moz, Search Engine Journal, Salesforce, SM Examiner, and many more. Digital Olympics is a relationship-based link-building agency that gets you links that you can be proud of. Alexandra, the stage is all yours.
Alexandra:
Thank you very much for the warm introduction. So, guys, I'm really happy to be here today. So I want to let you know that if you have any questions during my presentation, please feel free just to let me know, and Bernard will pick them up and we are going to discuss them just in the middle of my presentation.
So my today's topic is why should quality content and links go hand in hand? And for sure, I prepared some case studies because we do a lot of link building, we have very different types of clients, and so on. So I tried my best to make it as informative as possible.
But first of all, I just want to make a quick intro. So you know that I'm the founder of a link-building agency. I contribute to various blogs. You can Google this out. I'm also a frequent speaker, I think I spoke more than six times at Brighton SEO, a very nice conference. It's here on our continent in the UK.
And also we have two things in common between me and Brighton SEO. I think besides that I'm a frequent speaker at most, right now I live in Cypress, and that is an island, and the United Kingdom is also an island. So basically that is very much it right now. Honestly, it's insanely hot in Cypress and I'm just melting.
And other than that, I think, in my life, I have two biggest passions. So that will link building for sure and I have two horses.
So anyway, going back to the main thing. I guess that is the main question here, whether there is a way to substitute the lack of quality content with links, for instance, because a lot of people question this and try to do this. But I want to hear your thought on this.
So if you can leave yes and no in the chat, then I can look through this. That will be cool. So do you think yes or no?
Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Donna. I think so as well, most probably, but we'll see.
Okay. So the short answer is actually yes, you can. Everything is possible, especially if you're dedicated to this, you want to try this, you have a lot of resources, and you know how to build quality links. Then we've seen that it was doable.
But the long answer is that in reality, it depends. I had some saying so, but it depends, too, on how competitive a particular search engine results. So is like when you... You must probably know how competitive your service is and whether you have an extremely high authority website there.
And if you see them, then most probably there is no way to substitute lack of quality content with links, just because that kinds of sites, they've already built their online presence, and as a result, Google will always pick up such websites and will kind of give them a priority, even though your content might be at the same quality. It might be poor quality or even high quality, doesn't matter, actually, in both situations. In the majority of cases, higher authority websites, have more priority.
But for sure, if you can also build enough links to your well-optimized content page, then you can always outrun them in a short period, most probably, but in the long term run, definitely yes.
Also, if you have kind of, let's imagine there are plenty of websites in your niche that are having some low-quality content, but then they're all really into link building.
It's not. I made a typo, I'm sorry, but they're all heavily into link-building activities. That's what I meant here. In that scenario, most probably you can try to do this if you have more resources and if you can build more meaningful links compared to what they can deliver.
For sure, well, what I'm trying to say here also, is that it might be possible to make things happen if the quality of your content is also at the same level as your competitors have. And then that way, most probably, links can play a significant role, and you can try to track your competitors, but at the end of the day, I think it's quite pointless, just because if your content is not really on point then you are losing a lot of hidden benefits that this actual content can bring back to your brand. For instance, I see content also, well-delivered content, as a part of your brand. And if you do really good content, the one that is well researched, answering the most burning questions of your audience, and bringing in some new perspective, fresh perspective, and some new angles, then that is also a way of building up your authority and becoming a true expert. Not only in the eyes of Google, but in the eyes of your audience, which is way more important.
And also for sure, you can try to ramp up some quite mediocre content pages with links, if you have a very well-established brand. But one more time, I don't see a lot of value in that type of exercise, just because the perfect formula will be always quality content and links. They should be together, and they're leading to organic traffic. And here is an example, that is a client. I have to know that we are a link-building candidate, which means we don't build content, but I always emphasize the importance of well-researched, well-delivered content, just because links, can help, they can't solve all your problems. So it's very important to do onsite SEO, including keyword research, and well-delivered SEO-optimized content.
And then if you do this, if you deliver the right type of content, definitely links are going to help you. And that is a perfect example. As I've already mentioned, we don't do content marketing, but we have a partner agency that is called Minutia, and they did a webinar sometime ago. And actually, they are amazing. I couldn't recommend them more. All the clients that we are running together, are having quite the same results in terms of their organic traffic performance, in terms of their conversion rates, and so on. So actually this type of website, it's a branded new one. And even though... I'll tell you some story about this brand. It was redesigned, but an initial brand PRG store was also actually... Minutia and our agency, we kind of started nearly from zero.
They had zero authority, no backlinks, and no content. So we kind of started working on these around one year ago, in fact, and then somewhere around February, they made a redesign. So they moved to a new website, and from what you can see basically, everything was migrated from PRG to Swag Drop. But as you can see, the traffic keeps growing. And in fact, what I love about this particular website is the number of referring domains that you can see versus domain rating, which is a very clean back link profile.
Yeah, for sure. We did this, I mean like we build this backlink profile, my agents in fact, but that is how the ratio of the number of referring domains versus domain rating.
So basically that is the number of referring domains that more or less you need in order to reach this number. For sure, some of them are less important because not all of them have a meaningful DR. And when I'm telling a meaningful DR, I mean here a DR of 30 and higher, that is the one that is bringing some SEO benefits. But it's okay to have in your back link profile, some websites that have low DR, just because it's quite natural if you have good content that is ranking well in Google, by certain types of queries, then people can find your content, and link back to it. So it's quite natural that you are going to get some links from low authority websites.
But other than that, most probably, I would say the biggest portion of those links are having... The biggest portion of these links has a DR of 30 and higher while on some very limited number, I would say most probably less than 20, 30% of them are having a DR of lower than 30.
Okay. What's important when it comes to reaching some certain progress in terms of your SEO performance? I keep telling my client that the main thing is consistency, and yes, on both links, and on both sides, links and content, and an example that I was sharing to you from Swag drop. That is the perfect case just because they've been working consistently with us, and our partner agency. And we've been delivering consistent results in terms of a predictable number of things that we agreed on, on a monthly basis, months over months.
And I have to say that... I am a big believer that sometimes, Google even looks more after the consistency of adding new pages, rather than acquiring new links. It's not proven, but a lot of experts are talking about this. At least the ones that I know, and they call it a hidden ranking factor. I want to add something here that I know some websites, I have some friends that were quite successful when it comes to actually substituting with content, some links, just because if you can really ramp up your content marketing game, and you can publish really tons of content, like let's say newspapers.
So you have to deliver tons of content. When I say tons of content, most probably I'm talking really about 100 pages, 100 newly published pages per month or something like that. And then it's going to work like a snowball effect. And technically it can substitute links. One more time, most probably you might face some problems at certain point, just because most probably you don't really want to write literally about everything because your business is too specific, right? You can't really be a newspaper in terms of writing about, I don't know, today about fashion tomorrow, it wants to be beneficial for your business. And as a result, this strategy can only be beneficial for those type of website that are trying to generate as much traffic as possible, and know, and then those website, they know how to monetize it. So for affiliate projects, let's imagine, it's beneficial. But for more specific businesses, let's take my business, link building agency, right?
Do I want to write about topics that are too far away from link building? Not really. And then if I want to solely write about link building, the number of topics it's quite limited. And then the niche itself is very competitive. So I can't really rank well. So I have a lot of limitations, right? I'm limited, a lot of walls are... I try to do this, but then I don't really want to do this because I don't really have my business needs, they limit me, right? So I'm in that type I have to basically, to survive by kind of using a combination of most probable links and content, just because I want to rank by a particular set of keyword. It's not really all possible set of keywords, but if you're into running affiliate projects or if you... Like some people, they run Amazon related projects, then that might be something that you want to give a try.
Okay. So I want to share with you a few examples, as I promised, that is real stories of my clients. So that is a website, oh, this is not really even a client's website. That is our own website. We run... It's digital marketing related. It's not really an affiliate website. At the moment it's kind of a content project. And we've recently acquired a community on Facebook, and we connected this website with this community. But one more time, it's not really a real brand. We don't really have a social media presence. We don't really have clients just because there is nothing to buy there. And so, as a result, Google must probably understand this by looking at our website, there is no, I don't know, basically service pages, right? There is no way to register there.
So Google understand this is not a real business. That is an informational project. And as a result, if you know, there was a Google update that happened at the end of May, if you're familiar with it. And that is what happened with us, right? Google was quite into our content because we were doing everything on point. And we were supporting this website with links, but not really doing it massively. And as a result, most probably the number of links that we were delivering wasn't really enough in order to substitute the lack of brand authority. So, as a result, we kind of got this decline in traffic. Right now, we are slowly recovering, but still you see what's happening hero obviously. And maybe next time, when Google decides to unleash a new update, most probably are going to have quite the same picture here. Okay. So what about great content, great brand, legit brand. That is our clients, that is a virtual font system we called tracking system.
And basically, as you can see, the organic traffic trend is very shaky. It's noreally... It was here growing, but then decreasing, growing. So there is no logic I would say. You don't really know what's happening next. And they've recently decided to start working with us, and we hope to see more positive results in terms of their performance. But I have to say that they decided only to go with 10 links per month. And I have to say that this niche is extremely competitive one. And we know actually a few brands, similar ones, they're direct competitors that are really, really into link building there. And they do a lot of links. They outsource, they do it in-house, which means most probably if they target the same scope of keywords, then those 10 links are not really going to change the dramatical situation.
One more time. It all comes down to your link building landscape, and some kind of niche they're extremely competitive. And as a result 10 links per month is nice, but I have some concerns about whether it's going to be enough links or net for them, especially seeing those. I would say that is not really a positive trend because Google keeps rare prioritizing them, which means that they, right now, they stabilized beat, but we don't really know whether it's going to be a positive dynamic after all or negative one. That is also the problem. And I have to add that when it comes to link building, and expecting some results from your link building campaign, when you see organic traffic trend like this, then I would say, it's going to take well longer for you to see results. And you have to go with bigger number of links in order to really see something in the next, I don't know, well I would say even six months just because dissertation is not really positive overall.
Bernard:
Alexandra, I'm going to pause you for a second here. I have some questions. There's a question...
Anonymous asks, does a strong social media presence help boost domain authority or domain rating, and if so, how?
Alexandra:
Yes, I think so. Just because that actually works as a social proof, right? That you really exist, and you have a community. And if you really have... When we are talking about a very solid social media presence, this means that you should have the right type of followers, not fake ones, but real users that are interacting with your content, and so on. So if you go to Clearscope, Twitter or LinkedIn, that is what I'm talking about. So basically they have real user that are interacting with their brand. And if you go to Digital Olympus, our own Twitter or LinkedIn, you will see the same. So we have some kind of community around our brand. And for sure it's happening, it's helping us quite a lot. It's sending a very strong signal to Google that look, those guys are real because they interact with the right type of users that are digital marketers.
In fact, they are talking about link building, which is actually showcasing that we know, and then link building agency, look, there is a connection. And then social media consent back to your website users. And that is also helping basically that is the same as with the referral traffic, right? Those users are quite meaningful just because they're coming to your website, they're interacting with your website, right? And if they spent enough time on your website, this also works as a social proof for a search engine that basically you are not only capable of doing something, of creating some engagement across your social media platform, capturing users, but also fulfilling their needs. That is their whole cycle.
And I think definitely. Yeah, I have to add that for some brands, especially commerce stores, the ones that are actually getting some reviews from users, right?
It's extremely important just because people are leaving their reviews on their Facebook. And also actually, since Google crowds all the social media platforms, if you have a solid social media presence that people are mentioning you, right? And that is creating a cloud of brand mentions, and the more people are mentioning you, the bigger is your brand. So I think it's extremely important. Yeah, for sure, circling back to our own website, most probably we want to do this. And actually we started doing this by... We acquired a Facebook group, and we want to do more, but there is also something behind this in our situation, because is it really going to change dramatically our story? Most probably not. Just because still we are a content project, right?
And even though we can start capturing users, creating some social media engagement, still that is not going to change the whole story dramatically, but that requires a solid investment then. And that is the reason why I'm a little bit postponing doing that. So that is my reason of not really going into that, which in fact, if I was really relying heavily on this website, I don't know, I was monetizing this website because right now I'm not doing anything. I am still trying to understand how we want to use it in reality, that is kind of my business experiment. So yeah, I guess that will be the right answer.
Bernard:
Cool. Yeah, no, makes sense. I have a question about this idea of quality versus quantity, right? You've mentioned in your previous slides, that consistency in link building is really important. And my question is, would getting 10 links from lower authority websites, we'll call them DA 20, DA 30, or DR 20 to 30, be better than one link from a website that's DR 70 plus. And then I have a follow up to that. So how much does website content relevancy matter when building links. You could imagine, I'm starting a personal finance blog, and I want to link for best credit cards, getting a link from Nerd Wallet, who's very relevant in terms of personal finance, how does that compare to a link from say the New York Times who has a strong authority, but maybe isn't as relevant in terms of the content that they're publishing?
Alexandra:
Great question Bernard, thanks for bringing this up. I really love this perspective, and how you spell this out. So in terms of... I have to say that I've recently, not recently, I think that was a few weeks ago, I had a very similar conversation on LinkedIn when someone was actually asking me whether it's way more important to have this one link, but from super relevant and authoritative website, or having some flow of links from less authority, and let's say like less relevant or still relevant, it doesn't matter, but the ones that are not really having the same authority. It seems that, I would say it's going to dissertation must probably might or might not affect your self performance. If only you can keep generating those mediocre quality, or low quality in terms of domain rating links consistently, just because Google always goes into numbers, even though a lot of things matter.
I mean, in terms of, Google understands that this website is more authoritative compared to the rest of other, but it seemed that the algorithms are still relying heavily on numbers, on the number of link that you are getting on the flow, which must probably might make sense just because one link is not really changing the whole story. It's a great one, right? You must probably, you can even print this out, and put on your wall, and that is a great achievement. I truly, I understand. And actually I understand how hard it's really to build these truly meaningful links, but most probably you have to go with try to find something between, because numbers still matter.
One link is not really going to change the whole story, sadly. But if you ask me what I would prefer, most probably I would prefer this one link from an authoritative website, just because, yes, it's not really going to change anything today, but that will be a small break in building up my brand. So I can use it later when I have enough resources. To start building more links and this one will really affect the future of my SEO journey, I would say. So I always try to think, okay, yes, today it's not really going to change anything, but if you start building, consider links as connections or consider links as your neighborhood. You move somewhere, in a new place, and you wanted this place be nice. Your neighbor should be friendly.
And you want to live in a friendly society, right? That is actually perfectly reflecting. You are kind of... What you feel is important to you, right? That are sharing the same perspective with you. And then let's imagine this kind of analogy, let's put it for your website, and you are basically building an absolutely wrong neighborhood around your website. So some kind of, I don't know, even though you want to live in a particular.
I mean, is it really a trustworthy website or you're from a ghetto? So that is the problem, right? And that is very hard actually to clean this mess. That is the problem. Once all those connections are built, once they are in place, you build your... You have some kind of basement, right? And then it's very hard to change it. So that is the problem for me. As for... But that is... I'm sorry for going so philosophical about this, but sometimes I kind of try to look at things from that perspective, from trying to build that kind of connections so people can better understand what's going on, because sometimes we don't really understand how hot we might be hurting our brand by bringing up those ugly links from those ugly spammy websites.
And even the most ironical thing for me that people are doing this on purpose. So they're saying, hey, I want to be associated with this. It's like, really? But that is something really ugly, not really reflecting who you are. And then I say, no, no, that is my neighborhood, that is my friends. It's like, okay, okay, most probably that is fine, that's what you want. So, yeah. And circling back to a question about a link from New York Times versus very topically relevant website. That is a hard one. Most probably, I will go with the link on a really authority newspaper, just because... I'll explain my perspective here, it's very hard to build up authority, even like those type of links. You more or less... But that is my perspective because I know some digital power agency that can easily build those link from newspapers.
I mean, they're really meaningful, not really spamming newspapers, but I'm talking about the version was New York times, and so on. And then I understand what kind of value such link will bring to my brand, and how it can lift my brand authority. So that is something that Google definitely takes into consideration if this link is placed into the right content. So, I mean, if... Let's imagine I'm a link building agency, and then I might do a charity program for cat and dog shelters. And then I pitch this to a newspaper, and then I will appear as a company that is supporting cat and dog shelters.
So most probably that is a great link, but does it really help me brand a topical authority as a link building agency? No, if only I'm really into running a charity organization and going up with this, which is great. I'm not really saying that that is not really great. That is an excellent idea. And I love actually supporting that type of organizations, but most probably, I don't really want to be featured on New York Times in that type of organization, or at least I just will ask can we please not mention my brand? So can you please just write down that is just me Alexandra doing that, just because it's very confusing. Google picks up this link, and then think, okay, but does it really have something with link building, must probably if only she's so good in link building, in that she was able to land this link, but that is too complex. So almost probably is not going to be beneficial in that way.
Bernard:
Got it. Yeah. No, that was awesome.
Alexandra:
Okay. I'm sorry for being so wordy.
Bernard:
No, no, it's okay. It's okay. There are some other ones, but I figure I'll let you continue, and then we can visit them near the end of your presentation.
Alexandra:
Yeah. I'll try to wrap this up very quickly because all questions are very interesting and I want to answer all of them. Okay. So this one is a great example of everything in place of poor content, and not enough links, but a very good solid brand. I removed their name on purpose because I don't really want to hurt anyone. So the main thing that actually... We have been working with them for quite some time, and we've been building enough links back to them, but they weren't really taking care of content, even though they have been updating their content, adding new content pages consistently, the quality of those content pages are quite questionable. The layouts of those pages around... the most promising ones are the ones that are reaching 1000 words, but there are some that even having less than 1000 words, and that is a digital marketing agency to be precise.
And the niche is extremely competitive. And the only thing that is actually helping them, and saving them, and still giving them some priority, that is Australia, and people in Australia are not really into link building. So basically that is their biggest competitive advantage dissertation. But one more time, I'm more than certain that we can reach way better results with them if they spend more time on producing meaningful content, that is kind of having enough words, sharing something new, and well optimized by Clearscope. The trend will be always like that, and not really doing like that. And so the recent update punished them quite harshly. So not always links are the best solution and basically the key to your success or something like that.
When it comes to relying too much on links, I would say that a lot of markets are, they tend to forget that links are way more expensive than content, and links are way harder to build consistently, and to scale them. So I would say that if you have an opportunity to rely more on content, and to put content as a backbone of your organic traffic, of your SEO strategy than you would never regret about this. That is how I see the right kind of... You put, first of all, the right type of content, then you support it with links, but not in an opposite way. Yeah, we can do that, but still, I don't see much kind of value in this type of exercise, because at the end of the day, most probably the results will be quite disappointing or inconsistent. And, so one more time, why not to build something that you are going to be truly proud of. And that's where you need to have great content.
Okay. I just want to touch this. I don't really want to talk about this a lot, but I just want to. And we have around this number, our average price per link is a little bit more than this to be precise, it's at 370 bucks, which is very close. And the date is quite outdated. So right now we are in 2022, which means most probably people reconsider their pricing models, especially those that are selling these.
I'm taking into consideration the current economical crisis, most probably they had considered it a few times more. Anyway, I wasn't really touching this, and I don't really see any kind of benefits for my agency to consider it.
And if you compare those two things for me, I would say that for sure, creating very well researched SEO optimized content, it's not really an easy task. You have to follow, and keep in mind a lot of things. You have to have a lot of expertise. And actually writing is also a skill that not everyone has, even though you think that you can write up anything, it's not like that. I used to work a lot with content marketers and operators, and I came to a realization that a good content marketer, and cooperator is the one that has a very solid technical background. I mean, like in terms of either education or doing something, just because logical connections, and how you educate your content, and how you can move from one topic to another, and actually affecting either in a very good way, how you can move through the things, and connect them in a logical way, or can make it awful, awful kind of content that no one would really want to read, just because no one can really browse through that.
And there is actually the... And that is the reason why people that can produce really meaningful content should have also right expertise in your niche, and should have a solid... They really know how to do analytical work. So that is not just a person that can write one more time. This will be horrible. Trust me, you can go to off work and give it a try, but that will be horrible. We've been there. I've been reading through those things and in this paragraph, you have this, and then they're switching to that, and you are like, how comes? They're like two different topics. And they are like put one by another. And you're like, oh my gosh, that is horrible.
But for sure, link building requires more specific skills. When people think about content marketing, and one more time, I kind of understand this, just because still finding a decent content marketer is a little bit, I would say, less hectic exercise, less hectic task, just because you can see and test results way faster, right? So you give a task, and it's going to be delivered in some certain timeframe. But let's imagine tomorrow, I'm not talking about outsourcing it to an agency because must probably getting a sense of the quality of links from an agency, you can get it within the next few weeks after you start your engagement.
And then only basically saying then, you know what links are not really coming. Yeah, sorry. But you know, in a more common scenario, you can see the quality of links more or less within that same month. And the same goes to content marketing, but then imagine you are hiring someone in-house, even in my agency where we have a very well established onboarding process, we have all processes in place.
We have a workflow, we know how to build links, tons of expertise, normally newly hired in place. And for sure, we try to find the right one profiles that have some experience, and blah, blah, blah, but we need to wait like around, from four to six months to start seeing some real results. For sure, we are going to disqualify a person that has zero positive signals and we have KPIs, and so on, but in order to become an effective link builder that is going to bring a stable flow of links, most probably it's like six months. And that is not really super effective. That is the one that can do something, I would say, something meaningful, but not super not really tons of links.
So I would kind of... One more time, delivering SEO optimized content in-house seems to be way easier for me, at least. For sure if you have an understanding of your niche, and if you have the right type of in place that really understand your product or your service or at least if you have... Let's imagine you don't really have anything right now, and you decide whether you want to, and you only want to basically choose one thing, content or links, and if you don't really have anything on your website, I would rather go with content. I will gradually build up some content. And then if it's start bringing some traction, and it should start actually, just because normally you are going to write about different topics, and targeting different keywords, not only the ones that are shooting stars in terms of their... Like very competitive ones, what I'm trying to say.
And then you can say, okay, it's working, right? I have a branded new website, and I wanted some links for, I don't know for what actually, I just wanted to some links because I just want to print them out, and put them on my wall somewhere in my office saying, look what I got, what I got, what a brilliant back link profile most probably. Well, that is very controversial. And I don't really understand for what honestly. Okay.
I don't really want to talk much about this. That is not what I do, but I want to recommend a few resources for you. And I think we are going to upload my presentation, and you can extract those links. So from my slides, so basically a great webinar was here and also on Clearscope from Georgios, how to recommend. Then we had our own conference, and I just added a link to also presentation. And then finally I recommend Kevin Indig, because he has his own perspective on everything. And I think he really has had the experience.
If you know who is Kevin Indig, he used to be at G2, and then he moved to Shopify and he's a quite well known speaker. So you can easily Google him out, but most probably you are familiar. I'll find him in my favorite. Don't really skip this. Yeah, use your own brain, and analytical skills, which mean that you need tools like Semrush, HFS, Clearscope that will be helping you showcase in some days, but then you need to make your own decisions. Because no one can really save your business besides you.
Why I think ClearScope is a must have tool, even though I don't really do tons of content marketing, but we do it for our own websites. I I already mentioned. So that is a page that is performing extremely well. And Google wasn't really picking this page up till the certain point, but then as always reconsider it the current SEMs, and finally we were eliminated, I would say. So the main thing here is that while you are doing this, it doesn't matter what kind of potential you have. Because you are not really performing, so it doesn't really matter by how many cures you could or would or should of run. Because you are kind of nowhere. But then if you are eliminated, then that's where every cure basically counts.
And so I want to talk about this because I prefer Semrush here because it showed this graph. So you can see in fact a hidden potential on this page, because before we were basically eliminated this page by Google, it was kind of not really performing at all. And then we started slowly to get there. And you see that the real potential, this page we are ranking by over 400 keywords. And if we actually boost a little bit, this page, then most probably we are going to rank, like boost their links for sure, we are going to have even more keywords, search terms. Why just because we use Clearscope in order to optimize each, and every page. And when Google picks up this page, finally, then we really have a very bright future in terms of its self performance, because we optimize this page by as many options, as many search terms as possible, based on Clearscope suggestions. And that is something that we always do.
And so what I want to add here, one more graph. That is just quick comparison. So you can take a look at what kind of websites are currently ranking along with our own website. We only have self-referring domains. And then you see that the page that we need to alter on, that have way more referring domains. But what I love about this is that you see that is basically keywords. Which is quite interesting by the way, because I just noticed actually there is most probably a glitch, oh, no, that is the same. It's 200, yeah, I was looking at traffic. Okay. So there is nothing bad here. I just wanted to report about Semrush glitch. Anyway, not today, not today, maybe tomorrow. Okay. So what I was talking about, okay.
You see, there is 200 keywords, those pages have been performing bad in terms of the number of keywords, but one more time, we just starting our journey, and we are doing way better than these pages. And then if you look at this page, it has way less keywords. This means that the potential, the future of this page is quite limited. And that is the problem when we start boosting this page, we have way more options. And that are the reason why you need Clearscope. Why Clearscope is such a great tool, because you need to produce way less pages, but you can rent, buy tons of cures basically that are complimentary ones I would say. Okay, I want to be very, very quick to go through this. So what kind of pages?
Oh, sorry, what kind of links are the most valuable ones from my side, if you want to go into link building, I would recommend choosing that type of website and focusing on their services, cloud solutions. And just because they really do care, and relying with quite a lot on organic traffic, and they receive a lot of back links organically just because people are linking back to them, and that is, and Google loves all those website that are growing quite fast, and service cloud solutions in fact, they're growing very fast compared to some other sites, for sure. So if you have a chance to go with links on such type of websites, you'll now prioritize such opportunities over the rest of others.
Yeah, for sure, it's very important as I already mentioned that the same, but if you can find any kind of trustworthy brand that are in the active phase of growth right now that is great, prioritize such opportunities over the rest of us. And finally that is hard, but if you are liked enough to get such links, then getting links on pages that have already gained some presence in search engine results, obviously such links have way more, they're going to bring back to your websites way more SEO benefits. So they're very influential. And also if... By then it's hard to implement, but sometimes you might be very lucky or you can do it on purpose. So you can try to find those pages that are actively growing in terms of their presence.
Like my page that I shared to you. So most probably we are going to actually to boost the real links. And if you are liked enough to spot such pages with the help of, for instance, Atrex, because you can look through they have a record that is called best pages by links in terms of growth, and you can open them. And you can see all those pages that are getting links right now. And then you can try to target such pages. I have to... A quick comment, most probably it's nearly impossible just because websites that are building links on purpose to those pages, they don't really want to share their link just with someone else. But maybe you can find your brand friends or something like that with which you can negotiate this or exchange for something.
So, yeah. Well, I'm just talking about the best scenarios, which are not always possible for sure to execute, but if you're liked enough, it has such an opportunity then for sure go with those options. Okay. I just want to be also very quick here, and just recommend a few groups. You can Google them. Like find them on Facebook, B2B, boost group, Link Building Collab and Exchange, Link Building World, that last one is a Slack group. Link Building Collab and Exchange Community, that is our group. All of them are great groups in terms of starting your link building, join, you find like-minded people asking around. And also a lot of people are sharing, they're looking for ways to partner up with someone doing some, I don't know, doing some round blog post or something like that.
So you can find some opportunity there, and start building your first links. And finally, you don't really need necessarily to reach out people that you don't know, what's the point of doing that? How about starting with those that actually quite loyal to you, and familiar with your brand, your partner, email subscribers, social media followers, they actually know you. So the chance is that they're in position of getting links back to your website, especially if you have some meaningful content quite high, so start with them.
And actually you can train your negotiation skills, and nail your email outreach features because the main problem with all those email outreach campaigns that people don't reply. So you don't really understand whether it's horrible or not. You're just sending emails, and you are kind of, okay, so at least you can have a chat with the real human, which is very... You are going to value this. Okay. So there is a few additional just links if you want, you can learn more. So a few of my videos, our own email outreach guide, my column on SAJ, and our own blog. Okay. So thank you very much for having me.
Bernard:
Roberto asks, how do you outreach the link opportunity you've identified, and how do you get them to accept the back link request?
Alexandra:
Rain and bacon okay. Joking aside, well, first of all, what do we do, we create hyper personalized features. When it comes to that type of personalization, it requires some extra hours of your work because you basically, besides just using the right name, which is great. You have to also, to do something beyond that, for instance, you have to basically feel like something on their blog instead of randomly saying, I love this and that is very much used. Which a lot of templates, and a lot of email outreach features is what they do, you have to specify what you really like. So basically what we do, we use PitchBox, and it's an email outreach tool, and they allow to it as many custom fields as you want to, in order to actually personalize those parts.
So for instance, if I say, okay, Bernard, I really enjoyed reading Claire's code blog. And I recently found this book that is talking about the importance of, I don't know, cured research. And I really love this paragraph where you are talking about this, and that, which is, in fact, perfectly aligned with my own, I don't know, journey or something like that. And I face similar situations. So you just add this field as a Merge tag, which is, you have a template in reality. Then most probably the win rates will be still like so so, because they're going to circle back to you, and say, hey, I really appreciate your effort. And everything like that, but we are not going to link back to you.
Okay, what can you do to avoid having those replies, which is kind of promising, but not really bringing links. You can say, okay, basically you can think, or what you can suggest in advance, instead of just suggesting let's exchange links, which goes against Google guidelines, obviously, and that is going to actually hurt you. I mean, like doing occasionally link exchanges is okay, but if you really go into this strategy, then the main problem that Google understands, okay, when you exchange links, you want a website with whom, with which you are exchanging links, set up a link nearly at the same time, as you are doing it on your website. And let's imagine you are kind of getting 200 links per month in that way, ah, strange one, right?
In that way, you are creating a pattern that Google understands. So the problem is not really an exchange in links. The problem is in creating a pattern that a search engine can easily understand, and say, ah, that is a link exchange. So a walk around, so either you can think of what can be not related to links. So something like, you can feature them in your newsletter. If you have really good social media channel, then social media platforms where you are very active, you can say, hey, we can do some shout out, and so on, and so forth. So basically something can return. Even like sending them back a branded swag, why not? But for sure, the easiest ways to kind of negotiate something link to link, but then you need to avoid a link exchange, and then what you can do.
Okay. If you are really in a position, you have enough resources, you can say, hey man, so what I can do for you in order to avoid a direct link exchange, reaches bad, obviously, I can feature you in my upcoming guest post. Okay, in that way, we are not going to do a direct exchange, which is not really ideal. I'll explain why, just because you still have a connection, your brand name, and your author name. So that is also still not so good. So either you need to basically find someone who is going to offer this, and you are going to be excluded from this logic, and basically Google can't really see those links, or you can think of what else you can do from a marketing standpoint, how can you please them? And how you can trade for links. But most probably the easiest way is always starting to think over in a long run.
If I wore a real brand. I mean, that I was looking for links. I would start doing it in a bit other way. I would invite people. I would, first of all, I will create some marketing activities, like webinars, something like that, inviting people to those webinars and doing that type of activities and not only webinars, something else, something else, something else.
And then I wouldn't expect those people to link back to me immediately. But if Bernard at some point come to me, and say like, hey Alex, can you please link back to Clearscope, and your guest post on your websites or something like that? I would say, yeah, definitely, why not? So you kind of need to create a pipeline of opportunities first to all, which will be most probably the best way instead of just outreaching people. So it's all about building some relationship, I guess, but I give different options right now. But if I was doing it for my personal brand, for Digital Olympus, I would be definitely trying to build some long lasting relationship, and then whenever it's possible asking for links.
Bernard:
Awesome. One last question. Do you have any experience with influencer content, and linking? Does having a link from an influencer who is super relevant in your space, the same as a regular high quality link?
Alexandra:
I'm just trying to understand whether really getting a link from an influencer website that has a domain rating of 40. Even though this influencer might be a big deal, like if you open Kevin Indig's website, his main rating was probably around 40. Is this link going to change the whole perspective or not, even though Kevin Indig is a big deal, so most probably. If it's going to be Brian Dean's website, I mean, back link don't come, then yeah. Yeah, for sure. Understandable. So I would say I would rather want to get link being featured in this influencer content, but some were on some other website, not really on his own website. So yeah, I guess that will be my point here.
But yeah. Yeah. But on a general note, definitely, yes. It's going to be super helpful, and still all those connections, they are making a lot of sense for Google, and as many connections, as many real connections you can create, implement, the more it's going to support your brand and building up your authority, and helping your SEO journey. So, yeah. But I'll be careful with those wishes because sometimes, I know a lot of people that have a lot of kind of online presence on LinkedIn for instance, but then they launch their website, and it has authority of zero. So be careful with your wishes.
