Goals for link building campaigns

To carry out link building, there are three factors that play a crucial part: creativity, budget, and hustle. Always remember that no two link building campaigns will be the same. There may well be some basic similarities, but they will never be identical. The type of links being chosen reflects the web owner's ideologies and vision. Link acquisition can be of three basic types: natural, manual, and self-created.

Natural links are offered naturally by those sites that have an intention to link to your company/business website. Remember, no particular action is received by SEO from these links apart from the creation of unique and worthy content and to take the necessary steps to promote it.

Manual links are created by SEO while sending a request to the blogger via email for the links, paying for listings, or submitting sites to different directories. It is the duty of the SEO professional to develop a value proposition that will explain the link target about the importance of such a link creation.

Self-created links can be found on numerous websites for free. These websites ask for free guest-book signups, blog comment postings, forum signatures, etc that allow for free link creation. Although these links offer the lowest value, they can still have some sort of impact for some specific sites. However, notable search engines usually devalue most of these types of links. These days, self-created links are often considered as spam by search engines.

Strategy

To achieve success in link building, the most important part to focus on is the strategy. Unfortunately, in most cases, the strategy part is left out completely. Having the right vision is one of the major aspects of having a good strategy. To achieve the right vision, a list of goals needs to be set. STRATEGY -> VISION -> GOALS. Always remember, the winning strategies always feature a list of goals. Some of these goals are short-term while some are long-term.

Goals for link building campaigns can be defined in a SMART way:

'S' - Specific (concise and tangible having clear outlook)
'M' - Measurable (Those that can be measured like volume, time, dollar, experiences, etc)
'A' - Actionable (The right steps taken to make the goals happen)
'R' - Realistic (Should not be totally fictitious; 50% realistic is acceptable)
'T' - Timed (There should be a specific deadline to adhere to)

After the goals have been defined, it is necessary to determine the KPIs that will measure what percentage of the total goals have been reached. A system needs to be created for monitoring the KPIs. It can be through some third party tracking tool or even via expert analytics. The data needs to be analysed on a regular basis. Try to aggregate the data into very meaningful and easily understandable visualisations that can explain the entire proceedings. Finally, aim for a suitable conclusion. It is necessary to draw the right conclusion that will leave a mark in the overall proceedings. The conclusion needs to be shared with the whole team. With the gathering of more and more data, responsibility of comparing it with historical facts becomes more obvious. Reassess all the strategies being used and try to sort out the necessary changes to be made, if applicable.

In the team, each member will have his/her own opinion, right from the team leader, to managing committee members, to those who have built the links. It must be understood that the project owners need to set a very realistic bar while trying to communicate on a constant basis. Not every member's expectation limit will be matched. However, it can be matched in the best possible way while implementing the right set of strategies.

It is always safer to set the bar at a low level. This will lead to exceeding the expectations. Emphasising on clear and constant communication can help in achieving higher positive results.