🔗How to Create & Pitch Content

Occasionally, I come across or learn of an outstanding company and I like to mention them and relay how important their offer or business is. And I’ve discovered one that’s notable.

I attended their online seminar this afternoon and enjoyed not only the insights into how they do their work but more so in how they enjoy that work. Because this topic is about link building and the art/science of building links.

The webinar hosted by Michael Johnson of Resolve a bespoke link-building company, and was entitled Winning The Link Game: How To Create & Pitch Content That Attracts Incredible Links.

In previous posts, I introduced you to how link building is essential to high rankings and large traffic flows from Google.

Here’s the thing, there are still only a few hundred searches every month for the phrase “link building expert.”  That tells us that business owners and marketing managers still don’t respect link-building.  Or, they find the cost too painful. In fact, one outstanding link-building company charges $30,000 or more for a serious, success-building campaign. It’s a valuable skill and service. $30,000 might be a bargain for many large companies. A much smaller amount is appropriate, to allow these providers a chance to prove their merit. We’ll find the best provider for your travel company or real estate firm or SaaS software firm.

Briefly, let’s review why link building is so vital today:

• people aren’t writing blogs or creating articles as much (they do social media), thus their are fewer outbound links
• AI overviews are eating up traffic so fewer readers visit your website from Google/Bing
• Google trusts major publishers, edu, gov, business and association websites making links from them essential
• spam links simply don’t work anymore
• links generate trust and ranking power
• pro link builders build a better strategy for acquiring links and creating powerful new ones
• they create the specific and ideal content/ideas for the publisher
• they can strategically acquire links from sites that link to your competitors
• they really enjoy link building

Link Building in the Travel Industry

As a business owner in real estate, travel, software etc., you might not realize that link building is easily the most important task in advanced travel SEO. But not everyone has the skills, resources, creativity, and energy to do it well. Some link builders have the right personality and skillset to do this at a professional level. For the rest of us digital marketers, we don’t seem to have this amazing talent for finding and working with journalists, influencers, bloggers, and creating conversations with website managers on eductional, government and association sites.

Just because you have fantastic travel content doesn’t mean the right people will find it. And those “right people” include journalists, influencers, industry leaders, celebrities and more whom Google considers highly authoritative. These people are important in your sector and getting them to create and post content on the very best travel websites is valuable.

Don’t get me wrong, I do the same process of creating the right content and connecting with influential people, but pro link builders do this solely as their business. They’re not distracted by other tasks — they’re fully focused on the business of link building and the systems, people and resources required to do a professional job. I’m looking forward to hiring them to take my site to the level it should be performing at, and doing more than capturing Adsense income.

So when you find someone who has these wonderful capabilities, it does get your attention.

What’s my takeaway from this webinar with Michael Johnson?

It’s that link building has evolved where companies such as Resolve use software and AI tools to create the exact linkable assets to get good results.

Michael covered the big picture of quality link building and went into the nuts and bolts of the process.

Here’s a few tips I picked up in the webinar:

• build assets to attract links – resource guides (best for attracting .gov and .edu links)
• explanation of link gap analysis with the quickaid.com case study
• using Chatgpt to fish out link-building concepts
• Find page owners and admins on high pr websites – most relevant person and why would they link to your resource
• long-form content, niche audience-focused for maximum emotional reasons to link to it
• aink to external resources – add value, catch additional addition
• answer current, vital timely questions and challenges
• create a useful guide and promote it strongly
• it’s about helping journalists who need great ideas along with visual assets and quotes
• digital PR is essential now, which is why so many of these firms are being created (which are legit?)
• good backlink profiles lead to visibility on AI search engines and Google overviews.
• create interesting compelling stories/events which journalists can’t find when they use ChatGPT
• digital PR magnets attract links – data-driven insights, original research, exclusive reports, expert commentary, interactive visuals, relevant stories
• create more spheres of relevance within your content
• do personalized outreach – be authentic and sincere and relevant to their publication – engage with journalists and pitch new ideas after they publish the first one
• contact at the right times: Mondays and mornings
• follow up with your pitch
• test different emails and analyze their successes
• get better buy-in from clients to invest in link building/PR – case studies show what competitors are doing (link gap analysis identifies competitors good work) – focus on the need to create a high-value content asset
• start off with discussing with smaller projects assets until you develop a relationship
• it requires well over a month to research the opportunity — to determine the task, the assets, and find all the websites that you might acquire links on.

Pro link building is a time-consuming process that requires time, strategy, techniques, tactics, social skills and creativity. Knowing what real people want and are influenced by, and how to build conversations effectively and being persuasive is a key skill in these roles. I could see Michael has these characteristics, perhaps better than other link builders who are less comfortable and engaging.

Hopefully, when I’m working with you, we’ll be able to work with one of these pro link builders. In working with some of them, I’ve learned you can’t just hand over everything to them. There must be a good conversation.

See more on unique, affordable travel marketing services that features expert advanced level SEO.

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