Get Your Team Involved in Linkbuilding

We were finishing up our Google Analytics training at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, celebrating the results we’d achieved and looking forward to more opportunities. Linkbuilding was a clear one — we could see that one of the goals we had set up gained conversions from a particular kind of referral traffic, so we certainly wanted more links of that kind.

The web developer was concerned. Clearly, the type of linkbuilding we’re talking about is time consuming. It involves research to identify the right websites and to find their webmasters. People have to reach out to these individuals. Sometimes there are advertising opportunities, but the strong editorial links take some work. “You have to build relationships,” he pointed out. Finding the time for this would be an issue.

I agreed. “That’s why people hire us to do this stuff.”

However, this particular organization has a couple hundred people on staff and many of those people would love to help. So we brainstormed some ways staff could support a linkbuilding effort — and ways to encourage them to do so.

Here’s a list that might work for your organization, too:

• Choose inner pages from your website that would make good landing pages and have staff members adopt a page. Add some fun to the process by creating a competition — see who can gain the most editorial links, or who can drive the most referral traffic to their page.
• Have each department identify a community with whom they have or could develop special rapport. Think about the personas your organization speaks to, and give one to each department or team member. Let one staff person reach out to parenting bloggers, for example, and another work on links that reach health-conscious young women.
• Set a team to work on a particular keyword. Track the effectiveness of the team’s efforts with Webmaster Tools and the Google Analytics SEO reports, and celebrate successes over time. If our group is competitive, this could also be a friendly competition.

If you decide to set your staff to work on linkbuilding, consider having us come in and do some training. If it’s not the best use of your time, consider hiring us to do it for you.

Some posts on linkbuilding that might help your in-house efforts:

• Basic Linkbuilding for Today
• Google Cracks Down on Poor Quality Linkbuilding
• 10 Quick Linkbuilding Ideas
• 5 Linkbuilding Pitfalls to Avoid
• Linkbuilding, Anchor Text, and Pearls