Some link building thoughts, please

[talksalot81]

Evening Guys,

I wonder if anyone might be able to give me some rough pointers. Before anyone says, yes, I am a paid member and we are going to do the freshbananas course over the coming weeks (as you understand, it isn't something a lively business can do in the blink of an eye).

Our scenario is that we are totally B2B (in fact it is a selling point). We manufacture and sell chemicals to 3rd party brands, who subsequently put them onto the market to consumers. As such, targeting is a bit difficult. As far as I can see, we struggle to target exactly the right people on social media as the reality is that such outlets are very predominantly consumer. Now we do have a new site coming in the next quarter but I'd like to try to build a few links in to get things moving.

My thought is to start doing a bunch of blog type posts, relevant to both my actual customers and the end consumers. Since the we don't have a brand identity that consumers recognise, the thought was to give them information that they might want - how dos/explanations/etc. The idea is that we can start getting people clicking on these on social media and potentially getting people to recognise the usefulness and relevance of the information, such that they might feel inclined to repost elsewhere, thus creating our links. I appreciate we will be building links into a blog area and not directly to sales, but some of the info I have read would lead me to believe that this will get google seeing our content (and it will be good solid content), which might then help boost the general presence of the website, beyond simply boosting the blog.

Can anyone comment on this approach? In effect we are going to create a sales website but with all manner of industry specific news and information - what I would probably describe as exactly the content one would hope to find on a technical business website and that, I understand, is ultimately what google claim to value. Am I anywhere close on this or is this a waste of time?

Thanks

 

[Darren C]

In effect we are going to create a sales website but with all manner of industry specific news and information - what I would probably describe as exactly the content one would hope to find on a technical business website and that, I understand, is ultimately what google claim to value. Am I anywhere close on this or is this a waste of time?

It is a common approach and one that obviously works, so long as the information is accurate and informative. It is a long term strategy though and one you have to keep slogging away at.

Your mention of social media makes me wonder about your motives though and how committed you are to doing this for the right reasons, not just rankings?

This isn't a moral judgement as such, we all want high-rankings, more a question as to how determined you are to do it right and to keep doing it even though you are not getting immediate feedback?

 

[fisicx]

How did your existing customers find you? If you know this then you could keep doing the same.

Creating a knowledge base of data is good but this doesn't establish you as a supplier, it just tells everyone you are a good source of information (safety data sheets for example).

So why not just do what potential customers what and create a set of product pages that can searched for and find on Google.

Use your blog or any other means of publication to provide supporting information about the products. For example how X can be used in Y process to create Z. Case studies always go down well with Google.

I'd also hold off on the new site until you have done the freshbananas course as a lot of what you need to do is structural.

 

[seohoist]

Start from the place you have initiated the campaign and grow outwards gradually. Try getting some local customers at first and later try to get your visibility in related forums.

 

[Joe Robinson]

The problem with the process you mention is that just writing a few blog posts and hoping they'll be republished is unlikely to be very successful, and the links you'll get will often be on low quality sites that get all their content from elsewhere.

Do the people that you're writing for actually own websites? If not, you won't get (many) backlinks. If you want people to link to your content, you have to find out what they're likely to link to. What questions are they asking? what are they discussing on social? what are they missing in their blog posts? Who else is asking those questions?

Basically - How can you make content that appeals to the people who can actually link to your posts?

It takes a lot of research to make good content for linkbuilding, simply spending a couple of hours writing a blog post doesn't cut it - what's so special about yours that people are going to link to it?

This is purely from a linkbuilding perspective, obviously there are other reasons to make blog

 

[talksalot81]

Thanks for the replies.

Your mention of social media makes me wonder about your motives though and how committed you are to doing this for the right reasons, not just rankings?

You are quite right. The motivation is to get google to rank us better. Keeping at it is not difficult, our business is fundamentally based around growing our customers and growing with them, so we are used to slow burn projects!

How did your existing customers find you? If you know this then you could keep doing the same.

Creating a knowledge base of data is good but this doesn't establish you as a supplier, it just tells everyone you are a good source of information (safety data sheets for example).

So why not just do what potential customers what and create a set of product pages that can searched for and find on Google.

Use your blog or any other means of publication to provide supporting information about the products. For example how X can be used in Y process to create Z. Case studies always go down well with Google.

I'd also hold off on the new site until you have done the freshbananas course as a lot of what you need to do is structural.

The website is being done by a third party with the absolute key being integration to our ERP system. The SEO element has been discussed and the structural elements should all be sorted for us.

Our existing customers, almost 100%, found us through google. We will have our product pages, that goes as a certainty. The 'blog' is very much in support. It won't necessarily highlight specific products (but no reason not to, I guess) but it will be background info on product types, ingredients, trends (etc). To my mind the difficulty is that there are, relatively, very few target customers but there are 10s of thousands of end users. It would be problematic if our content actually ended up in the end users contacting us directly - we would not be willing to sell to them and they would just take up time and resources trying to filter who is a genuine lead from someone otherwise.

Start from the place you have initiated the campaign and grow outwards gradually. Try getting some local customers at first and later try to get your visibility in related forums.

Again, the nature of the business means that we cannot hope or expect to pick up large numbers of customers. We have a small number of large customers. Bringing on a new, mid sized, customer every quarter would be considered to be successful. Locally, we probably have as much market share as we want - anything further and we actually are just pitting one customer against another. It is trying to extend the national and international contacts

The problem with the process you mention is that just writing a few blog posts and hoping they'll be republished is unlikely to be very successful, and the links you'll get will often be on low quality sites that get all their content from elsewhere.

Do the people that you're writing for actually own websites? If not, you won't get (many) backlinks. If you want people to link to your content, you have to find out what they're likely to link to. What questions are they asking? what are they discussing on social? what are they missing in their blog posts? Who else is asking those questions?

Basically - How can you make content that appeals to the people who can actually link to your posts?

It takes a lot of research to make good content for linkbuilding, simply spending a couple of hours writing a blog post doesn't cut it - what's so special about yours that people are going to link to it?

This is purely from a linkbuilding perspective, obviously there are other reasons to make blog

Our most fundamental problem is the our customers want to be totally confidential. They do not want other people to identify their supply chain - this is intellectual property for them, so is not for sharing. So we cannot have the slightest hope of our customers linking directly to us. Likewise, we have to be really careful where and what we say so that we don't potentially trod on the toes of our customers. Ultimately we do not want to be visible to the public, we want to be visible to a very select group of people. But I don't understand there to be a method to do that. In order that I can be visible to the people I want (who will not willingly make public associations with us), I need to try to be visible to everyone. So I am trying to create an element of the website that has general interest, to drive traffic and thus (slowly) build the rankings to hit the mark for the people I actually want to target.

We have talked to some SEO companies but they are suggesting budgets like £20k per year and many are not even willing to talk unless they did the website design. Moreover, I must admit some discomfort with the info I have - google says you cannot buy links yet my 20k per year will predominantly be to buy links...

 

[Joe Robinson]

You're right, you shouldn't buy links.

You don't need links from your customers, just from sites related to your business in some way.

You don't need to mention your customers in any way. Without knowing a lot more about business it's hard to say what would work, but you could potentially get links from chemistry departments in schools and universities etc. as well as industry blogs,

Could you get some interesting statistics from your manufacturing process that aren't published elsewhere? I'm sure you have some incredibly valuable insights that, when presented in the right way, could get loads of high quality backlinks from people in your industry who aren't your customers.

 

[Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake]

Why not get there and actually put yourself in front of your potential customers (trade shows etc)?

Or consider well targeted, well researched and personalised direct mail campaign to your target decision makers followed up by calls to get an appointment with them.

Both of these are tried and tested methods that work really well for many B2B businesses.

Without knowing what your business is, from what I read, your target audience is so small, I don't know why you're bothering investing so much into SEO when your current customers are finding you via the web. Your search presence can't be that bad, so if you do want to improve it it shouldn't be that expensive (you can probably do it yourself).

 

[fisicx]

To my mind the difficulty is that there are, relatively, very few target customers but there are 10s of thousands of end users. It would be problematic if our content actually ended up in the end users contacting us directly - we would not be willing to sell to them and they would just take up time and resources trying to filter who is a genuine lead from someone otherwise...
...the nature of the business means that we cannot hope or expect to pick up large numbers of customers. We have a small number of large customers....
....Our most fundamental problem is the our customers want to be totally confidential...Ultimately we do not want to be visible to the public, we want to be visible to a very select group of people.

All of this suggests SEO is not a useful marketing tool. You will be far better off marketing directly to potential clients. As long as you rank well for you business name and primary products/services that all you need.

I wouldn't even bother with a blog. Gets the sales team out on the road and start arranging meetings with loads. You can use site likeLinkedin to find the leads, emails and letters to introduce yourself and trade shows to show off.

 

[FelixSilver]

This looks like very targeted marketing.

You mentioned your target market is 3rd party brands. Find out what sites they hang out. One options is to create quality content relevant for those sites and get links.

As mentioned above, if it's B2B, LinkedIn marketing is a good approach.

Another is very targeted Facebook Ads.

 

[searchangel]

B2B link building doesn't mean your blog posts have to be aimed at your target market. You write posts to get links which in turn increases your site authority.

I'd write posts about interesting mixtures of chemicals and maybe have a video on there. Do one or two a week and push it out to the science blogs.

 

[StevePoster]

Creating the information that needs your target users is not enough, but instead these audiences will seek for more so that make a content that makes a twist in terms of benefits in which differentiates from others.

 

[BhaveshK]

Blog commenting and guest post is the best link building technique for any business.

 

[fisicx]

Blog commenting and guest post is the best link building technique for any business.

No it's not. It's a stupid suggestion.

 

[fisicx]

For a site to drive traffic to its content needs a ton of content to begin with, and many under estimate the workload involved, in other words they don't have a clue. I can tell you it takes years to do this and a fair amount of cashflow for the site itself, as you'll need a proper website, great idea and a thorough understanding of how the web works, oh and what people do on it.

Except he doesn't need all this. His post says it's a very niche market with a high degree of confidentiality so blasting the site all over Google isn't the way to go.