The video below is an overview of this strategy, below the video I explain the exact steps and pricing.
Content audit
This is the first step to any link building campaign, content is the cornerstone and makes everything else a LOT easier if it is excellent.
Think of it like dominoes, a solid first dominoe can knock over a dominoe exactly twice it’s size, within a few dominoes, you can knock down a sky scraper sized dominoe, think of content as the first, and the best links on the entire internet as the sky scraper.
Industry research
Before I can implement this strategy, I need to know about your industry:
- What people are interested in
- What they already link to
- Their pain points
- Where they go to get information
- Is there a healthy blogging community
- and a whole lot more
Buy domains/exisiting sites
This strategy relies on working with 4 other sites, we’ll call them micro sites from this point. These sites will run completely stand alone and build their own audiences and communities. This means that they will build trust with the people that visit them.
We will then use these sites, to link back to your main site, where a naturally and contextually relevant possibility occurs.
I will find sites that will fit my criteria, these will either be unused domains or currently existing sites that have an active blogger (that we will hopefully be able to hire to continue with what they are doing).
Setup sites
I will then make any changes to the sites that is necessary, things such as removing any conflicting content, if I need to build the site from scratch I will install wordpress and select a nice theme that is SEO friendly.
Whatever needs to be done to make these sites usable, that’s what I do at this stage.
Linking strategy
This is where I decide whether or not these sites need their own individual linking strategy, I can handle this all in-house, but it is rarely needed. If required it does come at an additional cost.
You can see exactly how I do this over on my link building company page.
3 months content for each site
At this point I need to ensure that all of the content we need is being produced, and has a schedule, I like to do this for 3 months for each site to begin with and at the end of each month, add another month worth of scheduled content, this ensures that I always know what is going to be done and allows me to decide where links will be placed.
I allow the writers to fill in their own schedule, with their own content titles, which I then approve and decide which ones will link out.
Manage content creation, topics and suitability
Once they have their schedules, it is simply a case of making sure that things are going up as planned. This is all managed in my project management spreadsheet that everybody (including you) have access to.
It allows me to look and see what has been posted and if anything is overdue, this is all managed automatically with formulas that show a different coloured cell for any content that is overdue.
I will also check all of the content personally to ensure that the topics written about are suitable for our campaign.
Quality control
This is extremely important, the entire role of these sites is to build an audience and community and build trust within those people, that means that a certain level of quality needs to be maintained.
I personally ensure that each piece of content meets my very high standards.
“every piece of content that is published, should be the abslute best piece of content on that subject anywhere online”
Link only where appropriate
These sites, while they may be owned and operated by you (or by me on your behalf) are not to be confused with “your sites”, they are completely stand-alone, built with the intention of building their own traffic and building communities, they will do this slowly and gradually over time.
They will only link back where a natural and relevant opportunity arises, we will never force a link or have a piece written just to link back.
Audiences know when this type of thing is happening and it will turn them off. The exact opposite of what I am trying to do.
This means that sometimes, a few weeks or maybe a month will go by without a single link coming in. This is normal and should be expected. DO NOT WORRY, over the 2 year initial span of this project, you will get your links.
Site structure and plan for main site
So now that we have all of these sites and posts being published, and links coming in.
We need to focus on your site, by getting it into a position to take the most advantage of the work that is going on outside of it.
I will do this by:
- Making sure that your on-page SEO factors are in place
- Your content is up to a standard to take advantage of any new inbound traffic that is being generated
- That you have your own diversified links coming in to compliment this strategy, I do this by using outreach to inform relevant sites of your content and asking if they would like to share it with their audience
- Ensuring the structure of your site, the speed that your site loads etc is sound enough to take advantage of the inbound links
Weekly meeting with all writers
Communication is important here, while it isn’t overly important that the writers are extremely happy with what they are doing so long as they produce great content for the sites, I like to give them the opportunity to ask any questions or air any problems.
This also allows for a certain level of accountability which keeps them focused and motivated.
Any problems that I have with these people, will be taken care of on a one on one basis, I will not reprimand or air any difficulties with individual people in the weekly meeting.
Optional outreach to each individual site
Obviously, these sites will generate their own search traffic, mainly from longtail, low competition search phrases and various social shares etc however if they are truly producing the best content they can and following my quality guidelines, the it would be a shame if we didn’t drive additional links to them so that they can rank and bring in more traffic themselves.
Any work that I do to help these sites, helps your site. Think of it like a large hill, your site is at the bottom, these sites are built at various stages up the hill. Inbound links are rocks.
The more rocks that we have coming into these sites, will eventually roll down to hit your site.
Poor analogy but I think it makes sense.
Pricing
This is a premium and very very involved process for me, I can only take on 4 clients like this at any one time. So the pricing reflects that:
Setup (this is all done in month 1) £5,000
I then (from month 2 onwards) charge monthly at a rate £3,000 (remember this is a 2 year process, you are not obligated to pay me for the full 2 years but that is how long it takes for this process to be fully realised)
You will also need a content budget for the sites, I ask for £2,000 per month (£500 per site per month)
That brings your set up and monthly running cost to £5,000.