Here’s how to ‘expertly’ hit a link-building home run

We all know the importance of great content, and we also know that without relevant, authoritative links in sufficient quantities, even great content won’t perform well in search.

What most people don’t know, however, is how to efficiently build — or rather, earn —those relevant, authoritative links.

Sure, everyone understands the basic concept of link outreach, and some search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners even get decent results from it, but very few have truly optimized their approach. And considering our entire job revolves around optimization, our own processes should be optimized as well.

The more efficient and effective you can make your link-building efforts, the more impressive and profitable your results will be. Just because you build it, it doesn’t mean the links will come.

So, let’s take a minute to dissect the wrong approach, and then I’ll share an approach we use at Spartan Media (my company) that’s always a home run.

The wrong approach

If you’re like most SEOs, you create an amazing piece of content and then go on an epic quest to pitch websites to link to it.

I think this is the wrong approach. It may seem like a good way to go about link building, but I feel it’s a backward approach.

You’ve created a piece of content first and then gone out trying to convince people it’s worthwhile to link to. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but you’re essentially performing the online equivalent of door-to-door sales.