Defining link building strategies

/ The difference between strategy and tactics

One of the key requirements for defining a proper strategy when it comes to link building is knowing how to tell a strategy apart from the tactics that will be used to carry it out.

While a strategy is the overall plan of action used to reach a goal, tactics are the specific procedures used to carry out a strategy and achieve that goal.

Although this might sound obvious, the reality is that I come across countless agencies and companies that dive straight into their link building and digital PR campaigns without having defined a strategy beforehand. Just the other day, a Link Affinity client in the "florist" sector told me they didn't know how to get organic collaborations with media outlets.

I asked whether they had a communication plan or a defined strategy, and their answer was:

"No. We just want to get links. That's our plan."

My reply was: a tool is useless without a strategy. Link Affinity has great features to execute your strategies, but it's like opening Photoshop without knowing what you actually want to design.

Unfortunately, this is one of the most common mistakes in link building. It's not just about thinking exclusively about getting links, but about going after those links with no plan in place. I asked a few experts about this, and Bárbara Rodrigues López, SEO specialist at Ilerna, says:

"Planning is essential. Before jumping into action, it's crucial to have a well-developed roadmap that covers every step of the strategy. This ensures a consistent, effective execution." — Bárbara Rodrigues López, SEO specialist at Ilerna

Another very useful piece of advice comes from Emanuele Ricciotti, CEO of the agency ClickAge, on defining a strategy:

"The main thing is not to think of getting links as the end goal, but to deeply understand the client, how the industry works, and what competitors are doing. Nowadays it's essential to see link building as a means of building brand recognition, not just links." — Emanuele Ricciotti, CEO of the agency ClickAge

There's a whole debate in the industry about this. In my view, and it's something I've been pushing for years, link building has evolved a lot, and thinking exclusively about links can be a fatal mistake. This natural evolution pushes us to work much harder on real relationships and media coverage that gives us topical authority. To put it very simply: what we need now isn't a mathematical Pagerank, DR or DA score, but to send signals to search engines and our audience that we're relevant to a given topic. I really like some of the points Search Engine Land makes in this article about digital PR, which highlights as one of the key ideas:

• Digital PR for SEO isn't just links and brand mentions. Links and mentions are part of your reputation.

Link building focused on gaining mathematical authority purely through links (even if some deny it) works less and less, and I'd even say that in certain cases, it's stopped working altogether. Digital PR and link building have gradually converged until each has become part of the other, and vice versa. Digital PR needs to align with our SEO strategy, and link acquisition needs to align with our PR and communications strategy.

/ Is a prior audit always necessary?

This is another important point I wanted to cover in this article. A situation we often run into is a client who wants to hire link building and digital PR services, and when you propose an initial phase where we audit their link profile, get to know the project, its goals, communication strategy and content plan, they tell us what they want is links, and that the budget they've had approved needs to include links from day one. Some even tell us that with link-selling platforms, they're one click away from buying hundreds of links with no prior audit. As David Ayala said at the Caffinity talk on link building strategies, if you took this approach into any other field, everyone would see it as insane. Imagine walking up to a doctor and telling them you want heart surgery. No, right?

Without a prior analysis and its resulting diagnosis, no one's going to operate on you.

So whether you offer link building services or hire them, the answer is YES. You need a prior audit before you start going after links.

/ Essential steps for defining a link building strategy

Some professionals think defining goals for link building and digital PR doesn't make sense, arguing that it's all about getting links and boosting brand visibility. However, if you do a deep analysis of your objectives, going into real detail, you'll see that every project has its own quirks and specific goals. I'd also recommend staying aligned with the communications department. You shouldn't come in like a "bull in a china shop" working on media visibility without coordinating with that department. Here are some tasks you can carry out to define your strategy. Of course, apply whichever ones you find useful.

Analyse your link profile

If we don't understand a project's past and present, it's impossible to work on improving its future. That's why one of the actions you absolutely must take when defining a link building and digital PR strategy is analysing the link profile before you start. This isn't about pulling a simple domain authority report, but about digging deep to understand the strategies used previously and determine any clean-up actions needed.

So the first point of a link building strategy comes from this analysis, from which you need to work out:

Artificial links. I call "artificial links" those links obtained through strategies that don't comply with Google's guidelines. Links bought on sites purely to boost rankings, or any other technique that makes it obvious a link was built exclusively for SEO gain.

If you detect this type of technique has been used, it's worth doing a thorough analysis to either disavow certain domains, try to remove those links, or, if the volume isn't significant, simply factor it into a strategy that adds real value and cancels out the possible negative effect of these kinds of links. Check the "Naturalness" score of your link profile, because it'll give you plenty of clues.

Spam. Although this type of link is generated automatically and doesn't come from deliberate artificial linking strategies, it's important to keep it under control in case you need to submit a disavow file to Google. In that case, I'd recommend reading my article on the impact of the disavow file on rankings and how to detect whether you need to disavow links. With Link Affinity you can keep a recurring check on the spam entering your link profile.

Broken links. One of the great forgotten factors in link profile analysis is links lost due to changes on your own website. Sometimes we spend dozens of hours closing a collaboration with a media outlet and then forget to regularly monitor whether that link has been lost because our URL disappeared, the product was discontinued, or for any other reason. Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, Sistrix or Majestic SEO can help you monitor broken links in your profile. Remember not every link needs the same amount of effort — just like you would with a new link, gauge its importance to decide how much effort to put in.

High-affinity links. Knowing which links add the most value in terms of semantic affinity is important for defining the type of media you'll work with in your strategy. You're surely familiar with a "buyer persona" — well, it's the same idea. Except in this case what you're defining is the perfect profile of a media outlet you should be appearing in, so your strategy can focus on that type of outlet. With Link Affinity you can pull a report of semantically related media outlets to build this target-media profile.

Spot opportunities

Opportunity terms. This is about identifying the areas with the best ranking opportunities. You can use various tools for this, such as Sistrix, Semrush or Ahrefs. If you know of any other tool that provides similar information, feel free to use it.

These tools give you detailed reports on the search terms and URLs that are ranking, according to their database. Most of these platforms let you select a specific country, which is useful if you're planning link building strategies aimed at a particular market. Personally, I find the Sistrix tool very handy for this kind of task. Just head to the "Keywords" section to access the raw data. Sistrix also has a feature called "Opportunities", whose main function is finding terms your competitors rank for and you don't.

If you prefer, you can look for terms ranking between positions 11 and 50 using the keywords option in Sistrix, or organic search in Semrush or Ahrefs. Any of these three tools will give you this data. Export it to a spreadsheet to spot the URLs with the most opportunity and potential traffic.

Competitor links. This isn't about reaching out to every outlet linking to our competitors just to get a link, but about identifying strategies built by those competitors so you can fold them into your own strategy if you see fit. David Ayala gives us this tip:

"It's really important not just to look at what's positive in their link profile, but also at what they're not doing quite right. If we copy the competition exactly, we'll also be copying their mistakes." — David Ayala, SEOluciones

Content strategy

Cluster definition. Define in your strategy the clusters you're going to work with, or which ones you'll prioritise. Always aligned with the business and communications side.

Think of the typical clustering diagram with "Pillar Hubs," "Clusters" and "Topics." Let's say one of the strategy's goals is to promote the "Bikes" category, under which hang the "Mountain bikes" and "Road bikes" clusters. Look at whether the project already has content that fits those topics, and put together, with the client, a plan for your own publications and media coverage related to the target clusters, such as "Types of mountain bikes."

With the help of OpenAI you can get some really interesting ideas to help with your strategy. Like anything AI-generated, you need to review it carefully and fine-tune it.

Here's an example prompt you could use. It's just an example — I don't need to tell you that you can tweak it however you like (I'm no prompt engineer, haha).

The goal is to become a go-to source within a topic, both through your own content and content published in media outlets, via ideas/topics related to your target clusters. If you also back up this content with experts who are part of the project and can lend their knowledge and experience, the effectiveness multiplies. If you don't have experienced professionals in-house, you can look for collaborations with outside experts to review, contribute data to, and add credibility to these publications. One of the tips Víctor Benéitez gives us is:

"The post or piece of content has to give the reader as much as possible (something new, high content quality...) to encourage reading, engagement, and possible clicks on the link." — Víctor Benéitez Panizo, SEO Manager at Marketing Paradise

Internal linking

We often see agencies and clients pour all their effort into getting external links while neglecting their internal linking strategy. If you want to make the most of the value the links coming into your project are bringing you, you need to manage how that value is distributed internally across your own website.

Make the most of your content clustering strategy to link related URLs together. This won't just help search engines — it'll be very useful for your users too.

The Link Affinity Caffinity

Here's a video recap of the Caffinity session on link building strategies with:

• Lucía Rico
• David Ayala
• Kini Calderón
• Rafa Villaplana