The importance of preparation for link building

Posted by Ken McGaffin on 14 April 2011

Quality link building needs great ideas for content that others will want to link to. But ‘build it and they will come’ is not enough. You need to first find the sites you want to link to you and build relationships with them. Ken McGaffin shows us how to prepare for link building.

A great link building idea without preparation … is not a good idea.

I have a friend who’s got a fantastically creative brain and ideas just keep spilling out. And those ideas have spawned a lot of real businesses.

One of those ventures had a perfect tie-in with a movie premiere in London. He got himself invited (yep, that type of guy!) and when his entourage arrived he took some fantastic photographs and had a great blog post written.

He was rightly proud of his efforts and the finished blog post. A few days later, I bumped into him in a very nice London pub and he told me what he’d done. “Ken,” he said, “can you tell me how to get links to this post?”

“Well, yes, we could do that, but now it’s probably not worth the effort - we’d be playing catch-up with others. It's a great story, and it will get some links, but it won't get nearly as many links as it would if you'd done your preparation in advance.”

He looked at me as if I'd stolen the last and most delicious mouthfuls from his now empty pint of Guinness.

But the story was a news event and it only had a limited shelf life. And there is nothing as stale as yesterday’s news. Trying to build links after the story is out is going to take a lot of effort and it would probably be better to put that effort into a future project.

To prove my point, I did a search on Google, I saw that a number of people who had written on the film premier had taken a similar approach. Not only was it old news, it was no longer unique.

My friend had scored high on his creativity in realizing the opportunity, his chutzpah in getting invited to the premier and on his execution, in taking great photographs and writing a great post.

Where he had slipped up was not doing his preparation BEFORE the event.

If he had identified and primed his targets in advance, then his potential for getting links and coverage would have been so much higher.

This means researching your targets, priming them in advance, delivering a great story and following up.

Here’s how I’d prepare for such an event:

1) It sounds blindingly obvious, but the first thing to do is to check out who is already linking to you. They've shown an interest in your site and so they should be prime candidates for writing about you again.

2) Find out who links to the sites that link to you. Blogs, news and other sites frequently comment upon and link to each other’s stories – this makes up an online community of sites that are interested in your topic. So by starting with a small number of blogs and looking at who links to them, you’ll uncover the major players in this community.

3) Research London blogs and sites that report on the social scene – in other words, find out who’s already written on the type of stories you’re proposing. The story had a stong fashion angle so do a few Google searches on ‘top fashion blogs’:

Once, you’ve got those go on to look at ‘London nightlife blogs’ or even ‘movie premier blogs’ and you’ll find even more link prospects.

4) Now we should have a good list of target sites. We should be keeping an eye on these and building some relationships. However, in this case, we do need to work quickly and our approach has to be around the news event.

So why would these sites be interested?

Can we really approach them all or should we cherry-pick the best?

If it’s a really good story, then it’s worth approaching the top blogs exclusively and building an approach for them.

If it’s not a spectacular story, then the less popular blogs might be our prime target.

5) Get a name wherever you can. It’s people who make links, not websites, so find a name, check out their social media profile, find out their email address and phone number so that you can make direct contact.

6) Prime your targets before the event. That means getting them interested, or even better, looking forward to your story being released.

So how do you prime them?

Well, there are many ways - here are a few:

• As a minimum, tell them something about your story - some interesting detail, a teaser that is likely to pique their interest.

• If it’s a product, invite them as a recognized expert to try it out in advance. Invite their comments and feedback.

• Introduce an incentive, for example a prize for their readers.

7) Get your story out immediately – even during the event is good. You want to be first so drag yourself away from that free bar and get posting.

8) Follow up. Contact and thank anyone who gave you coverage and add them to your lists of people to be contacted in the future. Follow-up of some kind is nearly always required, so don’t be shy or skimp on time to do this.

Final thoughts

Some people can come up with fantastic ideas – that’s a rare and precious talent. But those ideas need to be prepared, polished and channeled in the right direction. Learn those skills and the return you get from your link building efforts will be so much better.

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