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SEO has become a buzzword in business and chances are that any business you come across has engaged with this practice at some point or another. But an area of SEO that is often neglected - and that holds a whole lot of potential when it comes to establishing a website as an authority in its field - is link building. As this specific process isn’t as well-known as the umbrella term “SEO”, it can often prove difficult to sell link building, in particular, to clients. The good news is that it is possible to show clients the sheer potential of link building for their brand (and consequently their profits) and to encourage them to engage with this brilliant process. Here are a few techniques that can help you to achieve this.   Secure the Budget When it comes to encouraging a business to invest in anything, you’re going to find yourself coming face to face with a pretty large brick wall: the company’s budget. Now, every company will have a budget for each department operating within it. Link building is likely to fall into the hands of the marketing department and will consequently need to draw from the marketing department’s budget. Of course, you’re going to be up against a lot of competition here. Marketing have a whole host of different areas vying for their attention and looking to use up a certain percentage of their overall budget. When selling link building, you’re going to have to ensure that your client sees an investment in link building as more profitable for the business than an investment in print advertising, PPC marketing, collaboration with social media influencers, and a whole host of other brilliant marketing tools.   Make Sure You Can Explain Link Building Not everyone will have heard of link building before. It’s still a relatively new form of marketing and many business will have never engaged with it themselves. This means that you are often going to find yourself having to explain the entire concept of link building to your client before you can even begin to get into selling the service to them. You may not necessarily be able to walk straight in with a sales pitch. After all, even the strongest sales pitch is going to prove futile if the person you’re addressing doesn’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Make sure you have a good, clear explanation of what link building is, how link building works, and why so many companies are engaging with it. It may be good to have some sort of powerpoint presentation to accompany your explanations. Many people learn visually and will be able to understand a little better this way.   Know Your Client and How Link Building Will Benefit Them If your client isn’t entirely new to link building, they may already know the basics. Going through the basics might not entice them. To sell link building to these professionals, you’re going to have to understand their business and how link building will benefit them in particular. Before meeting with any potential client, ensure that you have their business name and their website address. Also ask how much work they’ve put into their SEO in the past. Look to see how their site is currently performing. When you search their name, where do they appear in rankings? Are they on the first page? When you search keywords to do with their brand, products, and services, how do they fare? If you can see how they’re currently performing, you’ll be able to show them the potential that link building can have for them in particular.   Show How Link Building Complements Current SEO Campaigns Some clients will dismiss the value of link building, claiming that they have “already taken care of” their SEO through their on-site content. Of course, on-site content can help to improve search engine rankings. But why do half the job? Emphasise that link building complements current SEO campaigns. Show that the company have already done part of the work it requires to climb the pages in Google, so why stop the job before they’ve reached their end goal? Highlight that to simply optimise on-site SEO could prove to be a wasted investment if the company then drops SEO from its agenda. SEO is an ongoing process that needs to be kept in motion rather than being seen as a one-off project that can be ticked off a list, and link building is the best way to keep their business on track in this field.   Have Statistics Ready Statistics sell. They can provide solid evidence of what link building can offer to a client. You need to remember that almost any business person is going to revolve their notions of success around numbers and figures. If you’re dealing with a business owner directly, statistics that exemplify increased overall profits thanks to link building will often be favourable. They have the end goal of actually making money in mind. If you’re dealing with a manager or other employed individual within an organisation, you may be better off showing more specific statistics that emphasise link building’s potential for them to hit their targets - ie. more traffic going through the site, or increased ranking in search engine results.   Set Your Prices It’s absolutely essential that you have some set prices before meeting with a client. This will help to give them an idea of what they can achieve with their budget. Sure, you may find that the client ends up spending a little less or a little more with you according to their needs, their budget, and what you are willing to work for. But it’s good to have a basic price list to approach clients with, so they have a rough idea of how much link building will cost.   Think Beyond Securing the Sale Sure, your main goal overall may be actually selling link building services. But you need to think further ahead in order to actually secure a sale. If you’ve followed the steps above, you’re likely to have piqued your client’s interest. But this is when they will start asking more questions about what will happen if they move forward in a link building project with you.   They may want to know:     - The number of links being distributed     - The relevance of links being distributed     - The quality of sites that links are being distributed on     - When they can expect to start seeing results   Being able to provide answers to these questions is essential. Your best approach is to come up with a strategy for any client you’re interested in working with that will let them know exactly what you are going to be doing and when you are going to be doing it. This will give the client comfort in knowing that their budget is being spent strategically. It will also give them a sense of security in that they can monitor and track progress - ensuring that everything is running to plan and schedule. Sure, link building might not be the easiest sale you ever engage with. But it is a brilliant SEO tool that the majority of businesses could significantly benefit from engaging with. Hopefully, the above information can help you to do link building justice and really sell its value to your next client!

What is a guest post? In an increasingly (and sometimes overwhelmingly) digital world, web traffic is at the heart of business and content is key. One of the best ways to reach the audience you want and need for your business is guest posting. Essentially, guest posting means inviting others to contribute posts to your website and/or making posts for others. In addition to helping to build exposure for both parties, guest posts can massively increase Search Engine Optimisation by increasing links within your post and putting links to your site all across the internet. This is called link building. Statistics from https://seotribunal.com have shown that 39% of global e commerce traffic comes from Google alone, so getting high up in search rankings is vital if you want your site (and in turn your business) to be seen. If you go down this route, you’ll mostly get guest posts by reaching out to bloggers, who want to increase their business and digital footfall just as much as you want to increase yours. At the same time, if you want to contribute guest posts to another site, reaching out to those businesses in the correct way is of vital importance. How Do They Help You Rank Better? A brief guide to SEO, rankings and how this all connects to guest posts  You most likely will have seen the phrase ‘search engine optimisation’ or SEO, floating past on your journey through digital marketing and depending on your level of experience you may or may not know what it means. The job of a search engine is to scour the internet to provide the most relevant results to its users, scanning every piece of content uploaded in a system known as ranking. There isn’t really a secret formula that will instantly get your site to the top of the list, but there are things you can include in your posts to optimise your chances. They determine relevancy based on a number of things, including: Keywords – how many words relevant to the person’s search are on the page? Design – design features such as single, comprehensive pages can also help with SEO And the thing we really care about here: guest posts. The first way that guest posts can improve your SEO rankings is through links. Backlinks link to relevant sites and increase the relevancy of your posts to search engines, so when your collaborations result in contextual links, it then increases both your chances of moving up, especially if you’re working with a high authority site, blogger or company. They also give your site exposure, which also increases your site’s authority in the eyes of search engines. What makes a good guest post? Guest posts will of course vary depending on the subject matter, but there are a couple of important ingredients that will make it the best it can be: Page content The core content of your post is the most important factor. It’s vital that your posts are entertaining enough to keep readers interested in your business, whilst being informative at the same time. Generally posts that are easier to read are also better for SEO, as they’re easier for the bots search engines use to find and understand. Keywords are also important, but don’t shove key words in where they don’t fit, as search engines can pick up on it! Titles Like the title of any post you make to your site, the title of your guest post needs to catch the reader’s attention, as it’s the first thing they’ll see – the words put into this part of the post and into the title tag are going to be what draws the reader into both your guest post and your business as a whole. Headings Headings help to keep your readers engaged, as they allow them to sift through the content of your post. How To Find Guest Posts There are numerous techniques for sourcing guest posts and there are multiple locations that guest posts can be sourced from too. One of the biggest is, of course, social media. Social media sites can often be a gold mine if you’re searching for writers. Simply searching for the hashtags ‘blogger’, or ‘bloggers wanted’ can give you a range of potential collaborators at the press of a button. You can of course also make posts on your own social media pages advertising for writers and given the vast nature of many sites, you should be able to find people pretty easily. Posts on sites built for professionals to find work and connect with others such as LinkedIn can also help massively, especially if you’re searching for reliable, regular contributors. Social media can also give you an insight into the sites of your competitors, meaning you can get an inside look into the best writers in your niche. Another technique promoted by blogger Brian Dean in his article ‘Guest blogging: the Definitive Guide’, is to use something called a reverse image search to identify key writers with good experience. To do this, simply find any guest post that fits in with your business, then take the images that are often in writer’s bios and put the image’s url into a search engine. You can then see all the other places that that image has been used, meaning you’ll be able to get all of their guest posts in one list. Best ways to build a relationship with bloggers Reaching out to bloggers is one of the most important parts of the process  and the best way to build a good relationship with bloggers is to emphasise and use the fact that guest posting is mutually beneficial! A friendly message or email is the best way to start off and featuring blogger’s content on your site can also help massively. Openly connecting with bloggers over social media and promoting their content on your site are both fantastic ways of building a connection with potential collaborators. After people have posted for you, you can also utilise emails and social media to keep up a continuous contact with bloggers and build a network of potential contributors to your site. Soon, you’ll have strong connections to people within your niche and you won’t need to look far if you want to feature guest posts on your site! How to ensure you get the most benefit from your guest post Guest posts are incredibly important for boosting your brand on their own – but there are also ways you can optimise their content to make the most of the opportunity that they present. As we’ve previously seen, you can adapt the content for SEO by, for example, adding organic keywords and ensuring that the text stays relevant to your audience throughout. Spreading the word on social media whilst ensuring you use high trending hashtags will also allow you to get the most out of your guest post. Don’t just post your content and then leave it – spread the word and then others will spread it too! Outside of the initial benefits once the post is up, you can also use to build relationships within your niche, by getting to know various content creators within your industry. In conclusion… Guest posts can be a massive benefit to your business, in more ways than you might think and they’re actually pretty easy to source! There are also many ways to maximise the benefits of guest posts – so why not start using them on your site?