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Posted by Moosa Hemani
August 30, 2016
If you are one of those, who believe that SEO is all about filling some Metadata with keywords and maybe building some links to directories and forums here and there. Let me tell you; you are wrong! Today, SEO is much more than just that, in fact, if you continue building links via directories and forums, it might hurt your rankings badly in search engines.
Today the job of SEO is everything from writing quality copy on the website that allows visitors to continue their journey on the website to building high-quality, conversion-centric links that drive referral traffic on the website as well as increase organic rankings in search engines and everything in between.
If you are a link builder, you are not limited to finding quality link placements, but you also have to build a relationship with other webmasters and bloggers and sometimes write for their website to get the link.
Let’s face it! Quality link building is difficult, and there is a lot, a link builder needs to do to become successful.
So, the real question is how come few link builders, work on several clients, get quality links for them and moreover, get the time to run their blog, write and potentially get quality links for their blog as well?
The answer lies in time management.
It’s critical for one to understand that if they manage their time the right way, they probably will be able to do more in less time.
“My advice to site owners that get overwhelmed by their link building strategy is to aim for at least one link a day (that way it doesn’t get pushed to the back burner) but set a time limit. Give yourself an hour or two first thing in the morning to hunt for links. If you find one (or five) that’s great and go for it! But if you don’t find anything worthwhile once your time is up then moving onto something else.”
If you are a webmaster or a blogger who is dealing with everything yourself, then this above-given advice by Nick on Search Engine Journal sounds perfect for you. But, if you are a full flash link builder by day, here are the few tips/ideas you need to follow to become better at time management and get more quality links for yourself and your clients.
Reading is crucial for a successful and quality link builder. If you are not going to read, you will never be able to find the hidden link opportunities that only a subject expert can find. Also, your reading material should be related to your industry as well as other industries where your client are involved in. This way you will get different flavours in your reading as well as more information on your client’s niche.
As a link builder, here are the four books you should be reading without giving it a second thought.
The Link Building Book: Paddy Moogan wrote this ‘must read’ book for any link builder. If you want to be a successful link builder, this should be your first choice. Don’t trust my words only but read what other big names in the industry have to say about this book.
SEO All-in-One for Dummies 3rd Edition: This book is by none other than the most respectable Bruce Clay. This book covers everything from basics to advance. Like how a search engine works, what are the best practices, how keyword research works and more.
SEO Expert Strategies: This book is an Amazon bestseller. Read this book and you will get a clear idea of how the algorithm works and how you can implement SEO and link building strategies without being penalised in search engines. If you want to learn more about how to build popularity and authority, this is the book for you!
Marketing Strategies to dominate the first page: This book provides all the details about SEO, PPC, Analytics, Webmaster and more that can potentially help you dominate the first page of Google against your queries. If you want to be a smart link builder, this book should be on your reading list for 2016.
Pro Tip: Do not invest more than an hour a day. And try to read major industry blogs within your and your client’s industry so that you can stay up-to-date with all the latest trends.
Link Builder is incomplete without its secrete tools. There are dozens of tools available on the market, but every link builder has its favourite. These tools not only allow link builders to work efficiently they also save tons of hours a day that they would have spent otherwise if worked manually.
Again, for site analysis, there are around 5 to 6 major tools available, but everyone has their favourite. If you ask me my top 4 link building tools will be:
Ahrefs.com: Tool allows me to do competitor link research in a more detailed fashion as compared to any other tool in the market. Plus, the link index is bigger than most so you get more opportunities to tap into it.
SERPstats: This is the number one tool for keyword research. If you want to know what keywords your competitor is ranking for, and how valuable those keywords are, this is the tool that can save your hours of time and give you that information in seconds.
PitchBox: Outreaching is important for every link builder. Pitchbox.com is an influencer outreach and content marketing platform that you can use to send tons of emails to promote your content and potentially get link opportunities.
Wholinkstome.com: It’s a reporting service that provides analytics reports detailing all of a given site’s existing backlinks. So, provide your site’s URL to track all your links or give your competitor’s URL to keep a complete track of whom they are linking to.
Pro Tip: Tools are here to save your time. So, if you think any tool is taking a long time to set up or too confusing to handle, just eliminate it from your list so that you can save time in a day.
As discussed earlier, link building is not limited to finding prospects but sometimes to build the relationship you need to get your hands into things that are not your primary job. This is one reason why you should take some time out for writing.
If you are a link builder and a good writer, you are a double edge sword. I mean imagine if a blogger liked your infographics, and asked you to write the intro and extro paragraph around that infographic within few hours. Are you going to go back to the writer? Or it will be best for you to do it yourself and get a link that points back to your website?
If you are going to give yourself a time limit when it comes to writing tasks you will be able to do better writing and learn time management at the same time.
Pro Tip: Writing is important so that you can save time that the writer might take to get the thing done that you can do within minutes and win the link accordingly.
We are prone to working in an environment that is noisy and full of distractions and when our environments are chaotic, so is our workflow.
After taking a call with a blogger for 15 mins, you go out to smoke, then you write for 20 minutes and eat something. Change these habits. I talked about setting out a writing schedule, right?
Now be a little strict with yourself by limiting the number of times you leave your desk. Instead of setting up the time at which you take a break, set the number of breaks that are acceptable.
So keep your focus on work by keeping your breaks in check and you will start seeing a drastic change in how quickly you finish your work. Considering how quickly I got this piece done, it worked wonders for me.
Pro Tip: Set a stopwatch that starts a buzzer when the break time starts or stops. This sounds funny at the outset, but it works!
You must have many different tasks in a day on your basecamp or Trello or whatever project management tool you are using. The idea is to give an hourly deadline to each of your tasks that you are going to do in a day and connect the project management tool to a time tracking tool that will give you accurate results of what tasks has been completed at what time.
Pro Tip: Give yourself a deadline that does not hurt your quality as quality is the only thing that matters in this business.
There are tons of more ideas that you can use to become a better time manager and a link builder at the same time, but the above-given ideas are the ones that I used myself and had seen remarkable results in quality as well as productivity. You could hire an expert agency for your help.
