It’s time to rethink how we approach backlinks.
In this article, I’ll explain what link earning is, why it’s essential, and the types of results you can generate.
Link Earning: What it is and how it differs from link building
I have been building links for over 20 years and I can tell you it has never been easier.
From shotgun outreach to writing guest posts.
As an industry, we’ve been repeating the same approaches and seeing diminishing returns, or worse, being asked to hand over some cash for “admin” fees to add your link.
The message is clear from those in the land of webmaster power.
Links = effective
Backlink marketers have sprung up in droves to take advantage of this trend, acting as the middle man, negotiator, and shipper.
How long before generative AI takes over the entire process of identifying link opportunities, writing blog posts, and even email sites?
Link building is the next big AI task, likely losing link value in the process.
Enter link earnings.
This old idea that your business and content earn you links based on merit, not money.
And fasten your seat belts because link gains are coming and you’re on board or you’re going to be left behind.
Link Earnings: You have to do it and you can’t fake it
In 2021, Sparktoro CEO Rand Fishkin suggested it inferred links would replace the link graph in the futuresaying:
“If you pay an SEO agency to get you 50 ‘high quality links’ per month for $5,000 and refuse to pay a digital PR agency to get you 10 mentions in relevant publications for the same price, I’d say you’re making a very unwise trade-off.”
The idea of inferred links is simple to understand.
If Google is good enough at understanding entities, it can crawl a page and understand when a business is being talked about online.
Of course, this turns the SEO game into the “upside-down” of Stranger Things.
Since the ethos should be what the subject mentions, the links can go through.
I can hear an old school SEO spitting out his coffee in anger.
Sure, we all like links, but what if they were nice, not essential?
Wouldn’t that change a company’s approach to link building?
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How to earn links today and beyond
If I had to push a slogan for SEO this year, it would be “Move fast, create stuff.”
Create content.
Create stories.
Create link opportunities.
When it comes to linking earnings, it’s these things that matter.
But first, let’s throw old hat methods under the bus.
Forget about creating content and promoting it to death
This is what the gurus teach, and it has some merit. If you spend hours creating great content, you should spend a lot more time promoting it.
And of course, this can work.
But it has some major drawbacks. Just because your “definitive guide” can be a beast of an article, it ignores one basic rule.
The article is completely based on your ranking goals.
Your promotion is based on the message “Hey, I wrote this, you might like it too” in hopes that they will share, mention, and even link to your content.
People are busy. People are interested.
The chances of your content being so good that they log on to their site and give you a backlink are very unlikely.
Your working theory should be that even the best content gets ignored.
Forget guest posting for links
I am a fan of guest posts. This is a guest post.
Guest posts help build brand fame.
But for links?
Come on. A long time ago we were told to fork this kind of link building because it was “done”.
Even so, guest posts are still the link method for most SEO agencies and websites.
The idea that a link from a post, buried in the deepest corners of a low-traffic website, has little value should come as no surprise.
But guest posting is easy.
“Okay, SEO Smart, tell us what’s better?”
The solution is a mindset that businesses can easily adapt to.
“How do we earn links?”
Link Earnings = Thought Leadership, Data & Stories
Link building is selfish. You go to the webmasters, interrupt their day and say in a Golum voice.
“Look at my precious content. Read it; you will. He wants you to. Links to him, you deluded little webmaster.”
It’s not uncommon for people to ask for money for link placements.
Link gains are different.
Adding to the conversation.
It is taking experience in a company and helping others with that experience.
It’s about creating stories from data that people will want to hear about, not forcing content down their throats.
Is this romantic? May be.
Is it effective for SEO? Heck, yes.
The benefits of earning links
I don’t need to explain the whole EEAT thing.
But too often, we don’t think about how this construction is done.
Create EEAT using the network effect.
Online Mentions. links Content on your site. Content on other people’s sites.
Create connections to other web properties.
But the quality and speed with which this happens is where the specialists come in.
Mentions in authorized web properties. Links from authorized websites. Quality content on your site. Quality content on other people’s sites that showcases your expertise.
The benefits are clear:
Faster rankings. Increased traffic. Traffic references. Brand growth. Exposure to a new audience. it arrives
But let’s look at an example of link gain in the wild.
Link earnings generate new traffic
To give this image some context, one of my agency’s clients is a discount code website.
Usually, these types of sites are not glamorous and difficult to build links, and you should rely on these traditional methods, as discussed above.
Here’s how Link Earnings handles this.
The team saw an interesting post on social media about the ban on using a supermarket loyalty card for under 18s.
When it comes to linking earnings, speed of action is important.
After seeing this post on social media, our team quickly leveraged our client’s brand and experience with a pitch to journalists.
The result: 50+ links, referral traffic to the client’s website and media mentions.
But are follow-ups important?
The disappearance of “do-follow” links.
“Do-follow” links (ie links without the nofollow attribute) were all the rage once upon a time. Nowadays, they are usually called “buying links”.
This does not mean that such links do not occur. They do, and of course they add value.
But any half-decent SEO can spot a paid link from a naturally occurring one, and if SEO can, so can Google.
In 2022, John Mueller of Google said:
“Well, it’s something where I imagine, over time, the weight of the links. At some point, it’s going to drop a little bit because we can’t figure out a little bit better how the content fits into the context of the whole web. And until point, links are always going to be something we care about because we have to find pages somehow. It’s like, how do you find a page on the web without referencing it?” But I guess time goes by. , will not be as important a factor as it sometimes is today. I already think that this is something that has changed a lot.”
It was 2022 and Google has moved on quickly with updates on everything from link spam to content.
Our data results show that tracking links are definitely nice and a must have. But no-follow links affect websites.
“Unfollow” leads to fame, fame leads to “follow”
There are many views of nofollow links that do not convey any ranking signal to websites.
Our internal data disagrees with this view, but we also need to remember that nofollow links on authority websites matter more than just links.
These sites are dedicated to generating traffic, and that means real humans (remember them?) visiting web pages.
This results in website clicks, searches, online conversations, forum conversations, group chats, emails, dark social and human conversations.
These nofollow links end up causing natural fame, which turns into organically created do-follows.
Earning links is a fame game
Fame makes everything easier.
Good news can sell out products in a day.
A social influencer can make you famous with just one post.
And links and mentions, whether they are or not, help build fame.
Earning links is the game of fame.
It’s driving traffic i links It gets people talking.
Of course, the other option is to send this outreach email. And yes, there is a time and a place for that.
But should this be your favor?
I do not think so. Choose fame.
Choose link earnings.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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