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5 Ways to Use Your Clients to Build Links

Quick link building tips. How to use clients to build links to their site. How to use clients as a link building asset. SEO link building tips.

5 Ways to Use Your Clients to Build Links

So, I am going to guess that you know this already – link building is tough.

Unlike in the old days, where you could build almost any kind of link and as long as you had plenty of them, you could rank a site really high (OK, I am simplifying things a little here but you get the idea), today the number of factors constituting a good link increase almost every day.

What’s worse, the more popular and scalable a particular link building technique becomes, the more certain you can be that it will get devalued pretty soon.

Yet, in spite of all this, you still need to build those links, right? Regardless of how hard and time consuming it might be, that’s what your clients have booked you for. And, that’s what they expect to get, fast.

Luckily in every challenge there is an opportunity. You need to get links to a clients website and you need them fast. Then why not use them to get those. Naturally I don’t mean that your client will do the work for you. However, they can be a very good link opportunities source, even though they don’t know about it.

5 Ways to Use Your Clients to Build Links

  • Get Them Interviewed

Interviews are a great way to build links. They are easy to get, difficult to replicate by your competitors (not impossible though), offer some good PR opportunities and most importantly, links from them are 100% natural in the eyes of a particular search engine.

So, get your clients interviewed, simply. They don’t really have to talk about their business. Perhaps they have recently rebranded, or won an award? These are good enough reasons to be interviewed about.

SEJ Interview

  • Run a PR Campaign

Submitting press releases to syndication sites might not be the most valuable link building strategy. Links you gain from it are either ignored by Google or at best of a very low quality.

However, that doesn’t mean that press releases are bad. Instead of just syndicating them, why don’t you do it properly and distribute them directly to journalists and editors in your clients industry magazines, blogs and other online publications? If your story is good, there is a chance it will get picked up and published giving you a very high quality link.

TIP: If you are struggling to find out names of journalists and media people in your country, consider investing in your local media list. I bet there is one published in every country and includes a list of current contact details of every journalist working in the media. Even though it might be a bit pricey, such publication can be a valuable asset when it comes to running link building PR campaigns for clients.

  • Open Up Their Address Book

Very often your clients’ address book might prove to be a valuable resource for link building opportunities. Their customers and suppliers’ websites might be an easy way to obtain good quality links for them.

It might require some effort to convince the client to open up their contacts list to you. But with some clever argumentation you can gain a lot of links, fast.

apple address book

  • Check Their Sales People’s Online Profiles

Sales people are notorious for setting up various personal profiles on the web. However, they are also notorious in not filling in those profiles in full. Quite often they leave out such things as website out and here lies a great link building opportunity.

Contact your clients sales team and ask them to supply you with a list of every profile page they have ever created. Or research every sales person in the team yourself to see what profiles they have online. Check which ones are missing a link in a bio and there you have a new set of links at your fingertips.

  • Check Associations They Are Members Of

Similarly, clients often sign up for various associations. Sometimes they do it just to get a recognition or accreditation, other times they want to be seen as part of a particular community.

In spite of their reasons, similarly to the sales people’s profiles, they often leave out website field blank in the profile. Or else, they use only the standard field for it (which quite often might give only a nofollow link) but there is an opportunity to include a better quality link in the bio.

Again, ask your client for a list of associations they are members of and check their profiles for a link. Also, check if those associations allow members to submit press releases or other content, which might generate even more quality links and exposure.

Lastly, ask your client for a list of any other association in their industry they might not be members of yet. There might be some nice link building opportunities in there too.

Conclusion

Getting natural, original and good quality links is a key for any successful SEO campaign. Quite often though many of those opportunities lie right at your fingertips, with your client. And if you are not availing of them yet, now is the time to start using your clients to build links, fast.

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VIP CONTRIBUTOR Pawel Grabowski Smashing Copy

Pawel Grabowski is a content writer and founder of a content marketing agency for SaaS. He specializes in helping SaaS ...