No matter how big or small you are, at some point you’re going to need links to your website in order to compete for organic search traffic. Doing link building for small, local companies presents different challenges to doing link building for large, publicly listed companies. In this session, Paddy will talk through real examples of link building campaigns for different kinds of companies and how these principles can apply to your clients and businesses.

1. SMEs to Billion Dollar Companies – Link Building that
can work for all budgets

2. Link building isn’t easy

3. It’s risky and may not work

4. Even if it works, it may not work

5. The risk is tied to your budget

6. But NOT how you might think

7. Having more budget doesn’t reduce risk

8. Budget is relative

9. £20k for one client is a good investment

10. £140k was nothing to one client

12. It would bankrupt another

13. Big budget doesn’t mean more links

14. Unless you buy them

16. More budget = more time

17. More time doesn’t equal more links

18. Ideation Design Build Outreach
Content-driven link building process

19. It can work very well

21. It can also fail

22. But it rarely fails because
of budget

23. I’ll share why content really fails

24. First, a story where I screwed up

25. “I’ve got a random idea
for a client.”

26. “I’ve got a random idea
for a client.”
“It won’t work, but try
it anyway.”

27. Took a couple of hours

28. Launched on a Friday at 2pm

30. …by 5pm.

31. Lowest budget piece of content
we’ve ever launched

32. Why content really fails

33. It’s not because of this

34. It’s because of not having a story…

35. …or not adding value…

36. …or not executing well.

37. 6 ways to avoid these, regardless of budget

38. #1 Limit the scope of your execution

39. Restrictions help creativity

40. Imagine you don’t have dev resource – how
would you execute?

41. Don’t fall into the interactive
content trap

44. It’s just a GIF

45. #2 Cheat sheet for execution

46. “I have a great idea, I’m not sure how to
visualise it”

47. Send your team here

50. #3 Add some friendly stalking to
your digital PR efforts

51. “there are 1,500 stories that could appear
in a person’s News Feed each time they log
onto Facebook”
Source

52. Target journalists & writers with your
content via Facebook

54. #4 Think about content as mobile first

58. The way we read content is
changing to be mobile first

59. We think of it like this

60. It’s actually more like this

61. It’s about communicating your message in
the right format

62. Go read this amazing deck
Source

63. #5 Traditional, Digital PR

64. Traditional PR doesn’t need
visual content

65. You need some data, information or an
opinion that is different

66. You need relevance & timeliness

67. Relationships truly matter

68. You need one press release or a piece of
advisory copy
(tips, tactics, takeaways)

70. You can pitch this into several sites, letting
them take the bits most relevant to them

71. #6 Update old data sets

74. For yearly data, create the piece with old
data first

75. To wrap up…

76. Don’t see budget as
the key to success

77. Focus on the story, adding value and the
execution

78. Thank you!
paddy@aira.net