How To Do Local SEO for Businesses Without Physical Locations in 2021

Posted by MiriamEllis

“My business makes local deliveries, but doesn’t have a storefront. How do I handle listings management?”

“I work from home. How should I be doing local SEO?”

“Are there any tips for doing local SEO for clients like NerdWallet or Credit Karma that serve all customers virtually?”

Queries like these about doing local SEO for businesses with nuanced, hidden, or no physical locations and with varied models of customer fulfillment are AMA FAQs and perennial topics on marketing fora. Attendees at the recent Moz Webinar on The ROI of Local SEO repeatedly asked about this subject.

Business owners and marketers who haven’t serendipitously discovered Google’s various guidelines are left wondering how to promote non-brick-and-mortar brands. Even where there’s awareness that such guidance exists, Google is continually evolving its stance. It’s easy to make mistakes, overlook updates, and miss out on opportunities.

The great news is, there are local marketing possibilities for almost every business type, but you have to know which pathway to follow, based on how the brand you’re marketing operates. In today’s column, I’ll help you identify your model along with the best opportunities available to you for being discovered by the maximum number of local customers.

Identify your business model

If you’re asking about how to do local SEO for something other than a brick-and-mortar brand, chances are, the business you’re marketing falls into one of four categories:

1. Service Area Business (SAB)

Most home services (plumbing, landscaping, housekeeping, etc.) fall into this category. You may or may not have physical street addresses that serve as headquarters or offices, but the defining feature of your business is that you serve nearby customers face-to-face at their locations, not at yours.

2. Home-based business

Your home address is your physical location, and you may either serve nearby customers at your house (like a daycare center), or go to nearby customers to serve them (like a dog walker), or you might do a combination of both (like a yoga teacher who teaches some classes at their home studio and some as private appointments at clients homes). The defining feature of your business is that you’re working out of your house.

*If you work from home but don’t ever meet face-to-face with customers for delivery or fulfillment of any kind, then you don’t fall under this category; you fall under category 3.

3. Virtual business

You conduct all transactions virtually, via phone, computer, shipping, and other remote means. Your business may be e-commerce (like the Dollar Shave Club), or offer digital services (like Credit Karma), or sell via print catalogue or other remote methodology. You may be operating out of one or more physical addresses and want to get the attention of customers in various regions or cities, but no customers ever come to your locations. The defining feature of your business is that you never interact in-person with customers.

4. Hybrid business

This category is a sort of catch-all that covers many variations.

One classic example is a restaurant with on-site dining where customers pay in person, curbside pickup where customers come to the location but may pay online, and delivery where customers pay online and drivers come to their homes.

Another variant would be a home services company like a security specialist with walk-in key grinding at a physical premise, at-home appointments for installation of new locks on doors, and e-commerce sales of security products.

Yet another hybrid would be a model like the Vermont Country Store, with its brick-and-mortar shops, e-commerce shopping, and huge volume of print catalog-driven sales.

Hybrid business models became more common in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, and there is no single defining feature of them. They are only united when all of them are looking for ways to increase visibility to customers in a specific local region.

In most cases, if the business you’re marketing is a hybrid, then your best bet will be to find the relevant opportunities in models 1-3, pair them with any applicable brick-and-mortar opportunities if those also match your model, and move forward with a very broad, hybrid strategy that seeks geographic visibility by every means possible.

Never do these things, regardless of your model

Before we begin listing out your model-based local SEO opportunities, now is the time to protect the brand you’re marketing from unwanted outcomes by avoiding missteps. No matter whether you’re trying to earn local visibility for an SAB, a home-based business, a virtual brand, or a hybrid, scratch these from your playbook:

1. Don’t set up unstaffed virtual offices or P.O. boxes in an effort to fake locations for the sake of creating local business listings.
2. Don’t set up strings of locations via the houses of staff, friends, or family members in an effort to fake operating multiple locations.
3. Don’t set up listings for vacation homes, model homes, or empty properties. You can list the sales office of such businesses, but not the properties being rented or sold.
4. Never, as a marketer, silently engage in violations of Google’s Guidelines. If you and a client choose together to risk a penalty or suspension for some reason, you’re agreeing to share the risk of potential disaster, but never undertake a forbidden strategy without the client’s knowledge.
5. Be careful about over-promising results or agreeing to unrealistic goals when competing against brick-and-mortar businesses. Whether Google is genuinely biased towards locations that display their street address is a subject of long debate, myth, and speculation. What can be said with certainty is that it’s tough competing for local visibility with brick-and-mortar brands when you aren’t marketing a brick-and-mortar brand, so go into the work with informed expectations instead of unachievable aims, based on how Google appears to be handling results for your key search phrases.

Now we’re ready to talk strategy!

How to do local SEO for Service Area Businesses

Image Credit: Nacho

Abundant opportunities exist for service area businesses without public physical locations. In fact, updates to Google’s Guidelines in 2020 created a more favorable scenario for SABs. We’ll break your activities down into three sections: local, organic, and paid.

Local marketing for SABs

Your path to success begins in understanding Google’s requirements (which exist here and here) specific to SABs. You should read them in full, but I’ll excerpt the most salient points here:

In-person contact required

The guidelines state that SABs must make in-person contact of some kind with customers to be eligible for a Google My Business listing. However, during the pandemic, do not worry that your transition to contact-less services disqualifies you from inclusion. The business you're marketing is still an SAB if it’s painting a house or delivering a meal while observing social distancing. Google likely needs to update its guidelines to make this clearer.

Hiding your address required

You’ll be providing an address to Google in the creation of an SAB listing. Even if it’s a home address, warehouse location, or other facility you don’t want the public to visit, you must have some sort of address. Then, Google’s guidelines state that you should tell them to hide the address when creating the SAB’s listing.

Google will automatically hide the address if you answer “no” to the question “Do you want to add a location customers can visit, like a store or office?” when setting up a new listing.

There are many reasons businesses object to this requirement. As mentioned earlier, it’s long been debated whether hiding an address impacts a listing’s local rankings, but whether or not it does, listings with hidden address listings lack pins/markers on Google’s mapped displays, compared to their brick-and-mortar counterparts. It’s a definite disadvantage in terms of visual impact. The lack of a published address may also influence whether customers trust that a business is truly local to them, and this could adversely affect calls and leads.

Nevertheless, it’s Google’s position that this business model should hide its address, and clear its address from the GMB dashboard if it previously published one.

Setting a service area allowed

Older GMB listings had a feature that let you set a radius depicting the service area. On new listings, however, you must enter cities or postal codes to depict where your SAB serves. You can enter up to 20 such points. The boundaries of such areas shouldn’t exceed about two hours of driving distance from where the business is based.

No study has ever found that what you enter as your service area impacts your local rankings in any way. If you choose to depict them, it’s for the information of customers.

More than one listing allowed for some models

If the SAB you’re marketing has multiple, separately staffed locations about two hours apart from one another, and with non-overlapping service areas, you’re allowed more than one listing. I highly recommend having a unique phone number for each office, if possible.

Joy Hawkins has done a praiseworthy job summarizing the confusion that’s historically surrounded this topic, given that Google had previously stated that SABs could only have a single listing per state while not appearing to apply this rule to franchises. The latest addition of the two-hour context has made the guidelines better and clearer.

However, don’t create multiple listings for the different services the SAB offers. For example, an HVAC company may not have one listing for heater repair and another for air conditioner repair. Google sees this as just one brand, and it’s eligible for just one listing.

Other notes for SABs

A few last things to know:

• Google defines the large, emergent field of ghost kitchens as SABs, so all of the above guidelines apply to this model.
• It’s up to you whether you link from your SAB GMB listings to your website homepage or to local landing pages on your website. The former may provide a rankings boost due to homepages typically having the highest Page Authority. The latter may be better UX for your customers.
• Don’t overlook the chance to create service menus in your GMB dashboard, listing out all the different offerings the business you're marketing provides.
• Beyond Google, you’ll be glad to know that other local business listings platforms don’t make listing SABs so complicated in regards to hidden addresses. Unless a specific platform states otherwise, feel free to display your address on your other citations, if you like, and enjoy the opportunity to prove to searchers that you truly are local to them.
• Moz Local can help you get listed on directories that allow you to hide your address, if you prefer to keep that private.

Organic marketing for SABs

No surprise here that every service area business should strive to publish the best possible website it can. Just like a brick-and-mortar brand, you want a mobile-friendly, secure website that provides a great user experience, has a strong internal link structure, persuasive consumer-centric content, and steadily growing Domain Authority based on inbound links earned over time. You want to get this site ranking as highly as you can for as many of your important search phrases as possible.

Where things become confusing for SABs in the organic marketing scenario typically relates to the concept of landing pages. This topic is constantly being discussed at SEO fora, and so we’ll break it down here.

It’s a best practice for brick-and-mortar models to create a unique location landing page for each of their physical stores. The goal of these pages is to serve a specific local audience with content that’s been specially designed for their needs related to a particular store location. These pages can rank well organically and can be used as the landing page URLs for a multi-location model’s GMB listings. SABs with multiple physical offices can also create these types of pages as proofs of local-ness, even if customers don’t come to the offices.

But the big question is: what if the SAB serves a large area beyond its own physical location? Should location landing pages be created for the locales an SAB serves?

The answer is, yes, you should consider creating SAB service area landing pages if you have something unique to showcase in each service city, and if you limit coverage to a reasonable geographic area.

For example, a house painter in the San Francisco Bay Area could create some really beautiful, highly-converting landing pages featuring houses they’ve painted in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, San Mateo, and Mill Valley, even if they don’t have offices in each place. Each page could focus on different completed projects, historic information about design styles in each city, happy customers in each city, home maintenance tips based on the different microclimates of each city, etc. These pages could rank well and convert customers if developed with thought and care.

The two things I would recommend that SAB marketers avoid would be:

1. Creating duplicate or near-duplicate service area landing pages because there aren’t actually unique features about the services or customers in association with the different cities.
2. Creating vast numbers of these pages in an attempt to get a single location SAB to rank over a huge area, like a dozen counties or even a state.

Take an approach that makes sense for the customer, and focus on content that will answer their questions and meet their needs. Build a strong internal link structure to these pages, try to earn a few good inbound links to them, and track how they are ranking in the localized-organic results for desired keyword phrases.

Paid local marketing for SABs

Anyone who markets SABs knows that one of their key, historic pain points has been being unable to rank throughout their service area because of Google’s bias surrounding user-to-business proximity. Despite having a separate set of rules for SABs, Google continues to treat these models too much like brick-and-mortar storefronts, typically focusing their ranking opportunities around their given (but hidden) locations.

When your local and organic efforts are failing to earn the visibility you need throughout your focus service area, Google’s Local Services Ads program lets you pay to fill in the gaps. If the business you're marketing is in a qualifying industry and geographic region, you can run these ads for the job types you want to do in the service area you want to cover, and pay Google for the leads they send. SABs can also simultaneously run Google Ads for additional paid coverage.

The downside to LSAs and Google Ads is that they require an investment (as opposed to the “free” visibility of local pack and organic results) and they increase local brand dependence on Google for revenue. Be sure you’re working hard to turn each Google lead into a repeat customer outside of Google’s lead gen loop. The upside to paid Google advertising is that it lets you pay for visibility you just can’t earn any other way. If it creates positive ROI for the brand you’re marketing, then it’s a worthwhile investment.

How to do local SEO for home-based businesses

Service area businesses may feel at a disadvantage because Google requires most of them to hide their addresses. For home-based businesses, the scenario is often the opposite: many owners of these models want to be sure their address is kept private and that and they don’t have confused customers showing up at their door expecting public premises.

But not all-home based businesses are the same in their requirements and opportunities. When marketing a home-based brand, ask the owner to select which of these scenarios fits their model:

1. I serve customers in-person at my home and want my address to be public

This could be a daycare center, pet groomer, horse boarder, private instructor, or similar model. In this case, the business should invest in street-level signage and take every advantage of marketing themselves as a brick-and-mortar business. There’s nothing holding this business model back.

If the business is by appointment only, Google prefers that you set no hours of operation on your listing. Based on your chosen GMB categories, however, you may be eligible for Google’s booking features. And, you can choose to mention in the business description field that access is by appointment only.

2. I serve customers in-person at my home and want my address to be private

Google doesn’t have clear enough provisions for this specific model, but basically you will be handling it as you would an SAB that needs to hide its address. Google wants you to clear the address from the Info section of the Google My Business dashboard. You can choose to add a service area.

If privacy is a special concern for a particular business, it’s important to know that if Google has any record of your home address, bugs or policy changes could lead to it being visible at some point.

Beyond Google, you can choose to list the business only in those directories that support hidden addresses. You likely will not be creating location landing pages for this model, but may want to focus your website’s content on hyperlocal city and neighborhood terms to seek as much nearby organic visibility as you can without an address.

3. I work from home and serve customers at their locations

This could be a plumber, accountant, housekeeper, or similar model where the home base of the business is the owner’s house, but they travel throughout a service radius for work. This model is just like a typical SAB, in that Google wants the address hidden and a service area designated for the listing.

It’s important to emphasize here that home-based SABs are not allowed on the Google Maps product and that Google’s workaround for this is that they can be included in Google My Business by virtue of hiding their addresses. Failure to hide the address could risk suspension and removal of the listing.

Beyond Google, feel free to either show your address if you’d like to on your listings, or only list on directories that support hidden addresses if privacy is important to you. And, just like other SABs, review the above section about whether your operations lend themselves to developing high quality, interesting landing pages to represent various cities in your service area.

4. I work from home and don’t serve any customers face-to-face

These waters became somewhat muddy in 2020 due to the public health emergency causing so many people to work from home, and so many models to replace in-person service with tele-appointments and other forms of remote communication.

In the past, virtual business models have been strictly excluded from having Google My Business listings. But so much has changed in the world due to the pandemic, and so I went directly to a Google rep to see how they may have adjusted their stance on this.

I asked how a professional like a therapist who used to have an office and see clients in person, but who is now working from home and seeing clients via telemedicine appointments, should be listing themselves. Since their model is now virtual, have they become ineligible for a GMB listing, or can they still be listed as a home-based business would have been pre-COVID-19?

Here’s the answer I received:

So, according to this representative, if the business formerly served customers in person and intends to resume face-to-face appointments when it hopefully becomes safe to do so in the future, then eligibility isn’t harmed. List the business as you would any home-based business, following the guidance shared above in this section. It would be a good thing if Google would update their guidelines to share this timely information.

However, if the business is fully virtual and has never served customers in-person, move on to the next section.

How to do local SEO for virtual businesses

Image credit: Charles Rodstram

E-commerce-only companies, purveyors of strictly digital goods and services, and large, national or international manufacturers and providers without storefronts all fall under the heading of “virtual business”. Questions most commonly arise in this sector from virtual brands that are frustrated by limits of competing fully with local, physical brands for online visibility.

To avoid wasting time and resources on dead-end strategies, it’s best to clearly outline what virtual brands can and can’t do to compete. And, we should also highlight grey areas.

Can’t do

Without offering in-person service, the virtual brand you're marketing is ineligible for a Google My Business listing. Without having a physical address, it’s also ineligible. You may be able to list the business on some other directories, but in Google’s world, you cannot compete for local pack/local finder/maps rankings. Just cross it off the books.

Can do

You can compete for organic rankings with the content you publish and the links you earn to boost the Page Authority of that content.

You can compete for paid visibility via Google Ads with location targeting in regions that are important to you.

Grey areas

There are some cases in which a mainly-virtual business might qualify for a GMB listing, if they have a staffed headquarters that needs to be found, not by customers, but by associates like B2B partners. However, for virtual brands with national or international consumers, such a listing will not in any way help with competing for country-wide local pack rankings.

Localized organic visibility for virtual businesses

In recent times, Google reps have stated that 46% of searches have a local intent, and that it’s the location of the user that has a much greater impact on the search engine results they're shown than other forms of personalization. For fully virtual businesses, none of this is good news, and Google heavy localization of their organic SERPs leaves e-commerce and other digital-only brands struggling to compete.

In a recent Moz webinar, an attendee asked how companies like CarInsurance.com can rank for searches formulated like “car insurance near me” when Google is most likely to give precedence to truly local businesses + major brands. The reality is, virtual businesses have to build all of the organic authority they can and find a way to localize some specific content as much as possible for the cities that matter the most to the brand.

A common approach that I can’t recommend is the development of thin, duplicate city-level landing pages for every city across the country. You see footers all over the Internet laden with links to dozens of city-level pages of very little value.

Rather, brands competing for extremely tough terms have to continuously invest in building authority to rival a Farmers Insurance or a Geico if they want to be seen as relevant by Google for prime organic visibility for head terms. And, where possible, create landing pages for top cities with truly top-notch localized information on them, sometimes adjusting optimization to target fruitful longer-tail terms.

This is no easy task, and it’s why so many virtual brands simply end up paying for placement instead of struggling for organic rankings. But take heart. The company our webinar attendee asked about, CarInsurance.com, is doing extremely well with this landing page for the longer tail search of “best cheap car insurance in San Francisco” when I search from my locale in the SF Bay The Moz Pro On-Page Grader shows what a strong effort has been made, and that there’s even a bit of room to do better with a few tweaks:

So find your geographic market competitors and audit them to discover where competition may be possible with the right mix of authority + winnable search phrases. Designed especially to help you understand which search terms to target for organic rankings in different geographic markets around the country is the Moz Pro beta of Local Market Analytics:

Local Market Analytics breaks new ground in offering you a multi-sampled view of your competitors in your chosen regions for the search phrases you most need to support with your best content. Be part of the beta of this exciting product in your quest to help a virtual brand compete with physical local businesses.

Summing up

There’s a fairly straightforward local marketing path for each non-brick-and-mortar model, but I predict that 2021 is going to be a year in which we’ll see further blurring of traditional, well-trodden lanes.

Clearly, more brick-and-mortar brands will adopt digital sales in the coming months to meet the demand for contactless fulfillment, becoming hybrids. Physical retailers will implement sophisticated e-commerce solutions on their own websites and tiptoe into Google Shopping with it’s “available nearby” filter.

Meanwhile, digital-only brands will continue to experiment with the Warby Parker approach of transitioning from full DTC sales to having physical stores, making them eligible for local pack rankings. I’d say 2021 looks less promising for such tests than the environment of previous years because of the obvious need to limit in-person shopping due to the pandemic.

And, also because of COVID-19, entrepreneurs who spent 2020 researching opportunities to support themselves by working from home may begin to enjoy their first hard-won successes in the new year. They will run the gamut of brick-and-mortar, SAB, virtual, and hybrid models, all from their living rooms.

The onus will be on Google to remain relevant by absorbing all this change and continually reevaluating whether their guidelines reflect current commercial reality or need new updates. Be on sharp lookout for new opportunities that may arise from guideline revisions and new Google features over the next few months.

For brands and their marketers, the task at hand is to identify the easy, medium, and hard local and organic wins based on the business model, and then supplement with paid inclusion where wins can’t be had in any other way.

Having trouble finding your wins? Contact Moz to learn how our SEO software can help. We’re wishing you good fortune in the year ahead!

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The Correlation Between Authoritative Links and Ranking [SEO Study]

Posted by EricEnge

Over the past five years, our team at Perficient has conducted continuous studies to evaluate the lasting impact of links on rankings. These studies consistently show that links matter as a ranking factor, but they also show that Google is dialing up their emphasis on the quality/authority of those links. We can say this because of the strong correlation our most recent studies show between the Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) of linking pages and the rankings of pages receiving the links.

Each year, Moz has graciously provided us with access to their Link Explorer index, where we obtain the raw data to perform our analysis. In these studies, we perform Spearman Correlation analyses to show how the following variables correlate with ranking:

• Number of links to the ranking page
• DA of links to the ranking page
• PA of links to the ranking page

Please note that Moz has never compensated us for including, or asked us to include, the DA and PA calculations — we have chosen to do that of our own volition. In fact, Moz staff only learned that we had done so in early October of 2020, even though we published the post with our findings on April 16, 2020 (to be honest, I was too busy to catch up with the Moz team and let them know). In short, there is no quid pro quo here.

Study methodology

Go ahead and jump down to the study results section if you just want to see how things turned out!

We have been conducting this study on a nearly annual basis since May of 2016. In 2016, we started with an initial query set of 6K queries, but have expanded to 32K queries over time. The queries were obtained by pulling keyword ranking reports for web sites in three different target market sectors, and then manually reviewed to remove any queries that were poorly formed or not relevant to that sector. The market sectors we looked at were technology, healthcare, and finance.

Here is the breakout of the size of the query sets across the five studies we have done so far:

• May 2016: 6K queries
• Aug 2016: 16K queries
• May 2017: 16K queries
• August 2018: 27K queries
• December 2019: 32K queries

Each of the expanded query sets includes all of the queries from the prior studies, which allows us to track the results on a consistent basis all the way back to 2016.

In putting together this study, I also consulted with two experts in statistics: Paul Berger of Bentley University, and Per Enge, formerly of Stanford University. Because of the nature and structure of the data set, it was decided that the best approach was to calculate the quadratic mean of the Spearman Correlation for all the queries in the study.

I went with this approach because it uses the square of the correlation variables (where the correlation value is R, the quadratic mean uses R squared). This is important because the correlation variable R is useful to know, perhaps, but it does not allow you to make a specific statement about what it means in real world terms.

The R squared value, however, is more interesting. If you have an R squared value of 0.56, for example, we can say that 56% of the variability of the observed behavior Y (in our case, rankings) is caused by the test variable X (in our study, count of links, or DA/PA).

Here’s a visual on how this calculation process works:

Summary of the results

As part of the study, we pulled data on the growth of the Link Explorer index over time. Since we have data on the index size over three years for our 16K query set, we looked at this snapshot of the data to show how the Link Explorer index has expanded:

One of the core purposes of the study was finding the correlation between the number of links a page has and its ranking. Of course, the relevance and quality of the content are the most important factors in ranking — they have to be. That noted, here is the quadratic mean calculation result for how the quantity of links a page has correlates to its ranking:

This score is a bit down from past years (the August 2018 score was 0.293, but still indicates that the number of links to a page correlates in a meaningful way with the ranking of that page).

However, we also took a close look at the correlation of Moz DA and PA with the ranking of a page. Here are the results that we saw for that evaluation:



This shows that Moz DA and PA are both better predictors of ranking position than the total link count. The scores of 0.328 and 0.307 are both very strong correlation scores in an environment as complex as organic search.

This is an important finding, as it lines up with what many of us in the SEO community have believed for a long time: that the sites you get links from matters more than the sheer number of links. In addition, it's likely that most of the pages ranking in our query set that had a large number of links likely had a significant number of higher authority links as well.

Please note that the Moz team has let me know they are working on an update to the algorithm that powers PA, which will be released in the near future, and they believe that this will improve these results.

Conclusion

This data confirms that obtaining links from more authoritative sites has more value than obtaining a large quantity of links. Google's perspective of what makes better links is likely more nuanced than a simple metric like PageRank (the Google metric that DA and PA are most similar to). This may include evaluation of relevance to the topic, and the overall quality perception of the linking site.

As SEO professionals, increasing our own site quality and authority remains one of our core responsibilities in helping our sites, or our client's sites, grow.

You can see the full original Links as a Ranking Factor study here.

Important Note: Google does not have access to Moz's DA and PA metric data and Google does not use Moz DA or Moz PA as a ranking factor.

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An SEO's Experience in 2020: Opportunities and Challenges

Posted by desordi

It would be downplaying it to say that 2020 has been a whirlwind of a year.

Many digital marketing companies packed up their office spaces in February, and employees — from the C-Suite to entry-level — had to adopt a new working style many were not accustomed to.

While few digital workers were previously able to work from home, the industry — and the world as a whole— had to adjust to full-time remote working during the coronavirus pandemic. Luckily, as SEOs and digital marketers, we have great experience in pivoting and adjusting our working styles and strategies, regardless of what challenges are thrown our way. It comes with the job.

Throughout this blog post, I’ll discuss the various tactics I’ve seen work incredibly well for our clients and in the wider industry as a whole, in addition to advice for increasing productivity and overall happiness with the change of scenery to full-time working from home. I hope that this post provides ideas and potential projects SEOs can work on in-house or with clients, and that my tips for working from home also help you take a step back, unwind, and increase your productivity and work/life balance.

SEO tactics that worked extremely well this year

“Low hanging fruit” initiatives

With the influx of users sitting at home and spending more time online this year, a strategy we employed across our clients was to tackle pages that ranked in positions 5-9, or 11-14, and optimize existing content to increase visibility in the SERP.

These optimizations consisted of simple, yet effective changes that match and cater to the user’s search intent. As it's been proven that people scan as few as the first two words of a title tag, the importance of having an effective title tag that concisely describes the content on the page cannot be overlooked. Title tag tweaks, H1, and meta description updates are some of the ways that our clients’ rankings have improved on the first page, and also won Answers Box and People Also Ask results.

Above is an example of a keyword ranking increase for one of our clients in the data intelligence industry. Through metadata optimizations and targeting People Also Ask questions, we’ve seen rank increase from 13 to 6 within this year.

Targeting “People Also Ask” questions

We’ve found that with increased searches in 2020, users are asking more questions overall and are looking for in-depth and valuable answers. Google’s People Also Ask SERP feature is the most effective way for companies to answer regularly asked questions, and drive more traffic to their site.

PAA questions have been an effective strategy in 2020 to increase traffic and increase brand awareness to our clients’ sites. The main way we targeted landing in the People Also Ask section for clients was to tailor new and existing content around answering these user’s questions. Tools such as AlsoAsked.com were vital in identifying these questions, and creative writers were extremely beneficial in attacking this SERP feature.

New content creation plans + updating existing content

Similar to the success I’ve seen with a PAA-focused strategy in 2020, another initiative we’ve taken with clients that has had success this year is a holistic new content creation plan. These plans focus on a dedicated and consistent approach to creating content, based on content gaps our clients were missing out on and had an opportunity to attack.

This holistic approach covered the following:

1. Priority topics that should be written as soon as possible. These new page recommendations entail targeting valuable keywords that have the highest potential ranking opportunity, in addition to topics that competitors are covering.
2. Content topic groups that display the full list of related keywords for our clients and their competitors in the space. Every keyword is categorized by an overarching topic and bucketed into a broader topic. These keywords within each content topic group are targeted overall with newly created content.
3. Recommend posting frequency and competitive insights where we highlight how often a client should be publishing various types of content relative to their industry. The posting frequency is formulated by identifying a client’s top industry and search competitors, analyzing their posting frequency, and creating recommendations appropriately.
4. Content types where we think out of the traditional blog content box and recommend different formats, such as videos, infographics, and interviews (pending each client’s needs).
5. Keywords to avoid – while in SEO we understand that building out a primary keyword’s hub and spokes by targeting relevant secondary keywords is beneficial, we want to ensure that a client isn’t overusing mapped keywords on various blog or website pages. To prevent keyword cannibalization on these pages, we set guidelines that focus on which keywords to avoid in the beginning of title and H1 tags.
6. Placement guide – many different clients in various industries have multiple places where they can post content (blogs, resource libraries, press rooms, and so on). Through this guide, we assist clients in understanding where specific content should be posted on their site.

While the above tactics proved to be beneficial for our clients, the traffic gains and increased value we provided would not be possible if our working situations were subpar. So, next I’m going to dive into some work from home tips that have helped increase my productivity and helped me grow as a remote worker.

Full-time work from home: an SEO’s perspective and learnings

While many digital marketers were used to virtual meetings while working in the office, some were left feeling excited — and others overwhelmed — by the idea of unexpectedly working from home full-time for months on end.

Workers around the globe were unable to leave the house during lockdowns, and had all the time in the world to focus on a new working style. This led to growth and experimentation for myself and many others in the space, so I’d like to share the strategies I found valuable.

1. Setting boundaries for work/life balance

Wake up at 8:00 a.m. Shower. Eat breakfast. Read the news. Log in and get your day started. Work for eight hours. Clock out. Send emails after hours. Think about projects for the next day...

And so on. It’s easy to fall into the routine — or trap — of feeling “always clocked in” when you work from home full-time. As we aren’t leaving a physical location (and our work laptop) at the office, some of us feel the need to constantly check communications, emails, and other work that can really wait until the next day.

One strategy I found beneficial was to have a section in my home dedicated to work and nothing else. Personally, this is my homemade desk – I use my dual monitors for projects, meetings, and firing off emails throughout the day. After hours, I’ll leave my work items on my desk, and refrain from using them or checking emails and internal messages until the next day, setting a defined boundary between my personal time and my work time.

2. Productivity breaks

The aspect of work I struggle with the most is batching out my work strategically. If I’m conducting a technical audit for a client, I start a project and power through as much of it in one sitting as possible. Having a strong focus is always beneficial during your work hours — you can think more effectively, make strong decisions, and piece together problems to formulate a solution that helps your client or your company.

While you’re providing strategic insights for an incredible content recommendation, or have uncovered technical problems on your client’s site, your shoulders are aching from being hunched over, your eyes are strained from looking at a screen for over three hours, and you’ve forgotten to eat lunch.

I find it extremely beneficial to schedule breaks for myself throughout the day. Go for a walk. Read a book. Stare at a wall. Take 15 minutes of your day to stand up, stretch, move away from a screen and unwind. Your body and brain will thank you for the rest, and you’ll be able to regain focus on a project, and maybe even come up with an out-of-the-box solution you haven’t thought of before.

Summary

Overall, this year has forced us to get out of our comfort zones and try new things — both at home and within our work. And as SEOs, we’re constantly growing and evolving, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t along the way.

With the way we’ve adapted in 2020 to produce meaningful insights in the SEO realm, I’m confident that our industry and the professionals within it will remain ready to take on whatever the future brings. What strategies and tactics have worked for you this year? Let me know in the comments.

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How to Come Up With Tangential Content Ideas — Whiteboard Friday

Posted by amandamilligan

Your brand has probably used content marketing to generate awareness and engagement, but have you tried tangential content? 

In this brand new episode of Whiteboard Friday, Amanda Milligan of Fractl is here to walk you through what tangential content is, why it's useful, and how to create it. 



Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hi. My name is Amanda Milligan. I'm the Marketing Director at Fractl, an agency that helps brands build their organic growth. Today I'm going to talk to you about one of the strategies we use for our clients, and it's called tangential content. If you haven't heard of it, don't worry.

Odds are you might have already done it and not even known. Today we're going to talk about what it is, why you should include it in your strategy, and how to come up with content ideas that are tangential. 

What is tangential content?

So to start, what is tangential content? It's not used a ton, this phrase, but we and some others I think have kind of adopted it because there wasn't a ton of language around it.

So the word "tangential" means lightly touching or peripheral. So not really as related is basically what the word means. Tangential content then is content that is not directly related to your product or service offering. In other words, it's not very on brand. Maybe the opposite of tangential content is very topical content.

So we create both topical and tangential content at Fractl, but they each serve different purposes, which is what I'll get into. But just to give you an example of the difference between the two, down here I have two different articles you can create for let's say a dating website. So a topical article for a dating website might be here are seven profile red flags to watch out for.

So the reason that's topical is because we're actually talking about a dating site or a dating app, and so is this article talking directly about things to watch out for on a dating profile. So it's really relevant to the actual offering that you're making as a brand, and it's helping even users. So it's targeting your direct audience and then also some people who might use other apps.

Tangential content in this category might look like, "couples voted these seven places as the most romantic cities in America". So now we're not talking about dating apps anymore or any dating websites. We're talking about partners and relationships. It's still relevant in the grand scheme of this niche, but it's not directly related to the product or service.

So this is just an example of how topical and tangential can look a little different. Another example I like to use is for Porch.com. They are a home improvement website. We've done all kinds of content for them that fall in both buckets. So for topical content, we've done the cost of home improvement over the lifespan of living in a house, and we've done tangential content like how to cook with your family or backyard games or something.

So I'll explain a little bit more over here how to come up with ideas like that. But you see this all the time in marketing even if you haven't recognized it or known what to call it. We actually did a study very recently where we looked at the finalists for the Content Marketing Awards. We excluded agencies, but we looked at a bunch of brands, and we saw that, I think, at least 6 out of 10 of those brands that we examined had tangential content on their blogs.

So it's a pretty common practice, and whether people even recognize it or not, it can be really effective. 

Why create tangential content?

So why bother with content that isn't entirely on brand? A lot of people would hesitate and say, "I want to do stuff that only makes sense for our primary audience, that will convert users, or build a really relevant audience."

Link building

But there are some incredible benefits for tangential content. First of all, SEO people love the link building aspect. So if you're interested in getting some of the best links you've ever gotten, really high quality links from some of the best media publications, we haven't found a better way to do it than using tangential content. Why?

Because when you're doing something that's not directly related to your brand, you're able to reach a more general audience, really tap into compelling ideas that will appeal to more people and thus more publications. So it increases your chances of getting that media coverage. 

Brand awareness

The second is brand awareness. For similar reasons, if you're able to get that content out there and appeal to more people, that means more people are seeing your brand.

So what we do at Fractl is essentially come up with these types of ideas. We build an entire content project around a new dataset or we run a survey or we collect new information based on this tangential idea, and then we pitch it to the media. So when you have this new study or this new report done by your brand and you get it covered on some of the top national media sources, that's pretty incredible brand awareness, not to mention authority, because when your brand is mentioned as so-and-so study shows this, you're framed in a really authoritative way, usually toward the top of the article as the source of the information that this publication has deemed worthy of talking about.

It's pretty incredible. So that's kind of what I'm talking about here — national media coverage. Additionally, if you're doing tangential content on your blog and you're trying to get more organic traffic and more presence in the SERPs, that is another way that you can really build out the top of the funnel marketing efforts that you have.

So if you're kind of zooming out and thinking how can I reach people in this industry who might not already have decided that they want to purchase our product or service but still get our name out there, then you can target more tangential, top of the funnel keywords and start ranking in the SERPs to get more awareness. So these are really incredible benefits.

Social shares

Finally, social shares, because, as I'll get to, when you come up with tangential ideas, like I said, you have much more room to play around and be creative, which generally means you can come up with ideas that are much more compelling and emotionally resonant, and those are the types of ideas that get all kinds of social shares. People want to send it to their friends. They want to react to it on social, etc.

So really some great stuff here. Whether you're coming at it from a brand perspective or an SEO perspective, you can get a lot out of doing this type of content. 

How to create tangential content

So finally, how? The first thing I tell people is to zoom out. If you have typically only been creating topical content in the past, you're probably not used to thinking about your greater industry outside of your value proposition.

1. Zoom out



So I encourage people to start by literally just thinking, "What is our greater category?" So if you work as car insurance, then automobiles or transportation even. It's like, "What would the top category in a publication be that fits your brand?" So for this example, I put time management software.

So if you are a SaaS company and you are time management software, maybe your general topic would be work and productivity. So that would be the general zooming out. Once you've zoomed out, then you want to think laterally. This is how we describe it.

What I mean by that is: What are all of the subtopics that fall under the zoomed out category? What are all of the other things we can talk about that aren't directly related to our brand? So for work/productivity, I wrote down some examples of what that could be. Sorry, not work/productivity, but work and productivity. It could be either one. So just the workplace, that's the general gist.

So maybe it's about your salary, your salary aspirations, are salaries fair across different companies, within companies. Anything salary related, maybe that would get published on financial publications in addition to ones that cover the workplace or business publications. Office gossip, that's something a lot of people can relate to, and you can pitch publications that are more on the lifestyle side of things.

That's an example of getting very generally appealing. Anybody who's worked in an office, even if they haven't participated in office gossip themselves, probably knows that it has happened or that it's caused issues or what have you. So you can go that route. Work/life balance. We're recording this in the time of COVID. That's even more applicable now. You can get a really timeliness factor to it.

But when you talk about productivity, work/life balance becomes a question a lot of the time. It's how can you be more productive without sacrificing your personal life? Dating coworkers. Again, you're taking a totally different ... You're combining the work niche and relationship dating lifestyle niche. This could be something that even the dating site could even do.

They can talk about dating coworkers. It's a tangential idea that actually applies to multiple industries. Finally, I have up here job satisfaction. So this is more based on the work side of things, how good do you feel about your job, are you looking for another one. Just getting a sense of how people feel. All of these things qualify as tangential content ideas for a time management software company.

So I wanted to illustrate that because it shows how many things are now within the realm of possibility for you that you might not have realized before. When you can play around with this many types of ideas, you can get very creative with the methodologies and the things that you explore. It gets pretty fun I have to be honest.

2. Consider emotion

So down here, and honestly this section deserves its own whiteboard, after you've done this and maybe you've written down 70 ideas based on, oh wow, we're able to zoom out and think about all kinds of stuff, so much comes to mind, think about emotion. Most things that do well have an emotional impact on you.

Even if it's how-to content, you might be thinking that's usually pretty straightforward and dry. If you're helping somebody and they're getting value out of it and they're reading it like, "Oh, thank God, I was looking for an answer to this," that is an emotional reaction. So you have to be thinking about how emotionally resonant these ideas are.

So part of how we score our ideas or prioritize them or measure their likelihood of succeeding is to think about the emotional components. You can kind of see how these play into these ideas. Salary aspirations, people tie a lot of their worth at work to their salaries. That's a pretty emotional thing. Dating and gossip at work, obviously those social dynamics can get pretty intense.

Work/life balance, again now you're talking about your family and your relationships with people. Job satisfaction, similarly to salary aspirations, that can really impact your life. So then I actually recommend to people, when they have ideas, to literally write down all these emotions and see what is going to be part of like the essence of the actual idea.

Then, when you're able to say, "Okay, this idea is really going to emotionally resonate with people. They're going to see themselves in this. They're going to be really interested in the results. Then you can start honing in on: What are the different methodologies we can use? What kind of data is available or that we have internally or that we can find or collect that can illustrate this, get at some of those truths that we don't have access to right now?

So that's a great place to start if you have kind of questions. Like if you have office gossip and you're like, "I wonder how many people do feel like they participated in that? I wonder how many people have actually had some kind of ramification at work because of that or have suffered themselves?" I don't know the answer. So if you want to run a survey about that, that could be really interesting to people.

So zoom out. Think about all the different types of subtopics you can talk about now that you have zoomed out. Then consider the emotional factors of all those ideas and then start sorting based on that. See where you can collect data to kind of fulfill those types of ideas. Once you're onto something like that, a lot of the time your intuition will tell you.

If you find it interesting, if you want to know the answer, certainly give it a shot executing it. Then you can pitch it to publications. So that is the short version of how we do all this. I'm happy to answer any questions you have. You can find me on Twitter @millanda. But that is the gist of tangential content.

It is extremely effective. Give this a shot. Whether it's on your blog or if you do decide you want to pitch it to media publications and go for those links, I highly recommend it. Thank you so much for watching.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Local SEO for Nonprofit Organizations: 5 Tactics to Try Today

Posted by kellyjcoop

Many marketing channels are interruptive by nature, meant to divert attention away from a task, be it reading and replying to emails, perusing articles online, browsing social feeds, listening to the radio, watching TV — the list goes on. SEO is one of the only marketing channels (the only?) that serves to first deliver something, instead of asking before delivering. At its core, SEO is used to deliver helpful content to people actively searching for it. And, it can (and should!) be used to reach target audiences at the local and national level.

According to Google, searches for local places without the use of “near me” have grown 150% over the last two years — showing that, when people search, they’re increasingly expecting local results. This creates a powerful opportunity for those organizations primed to take advantage of it. Through the “search and deliver” dynamic of SEO, nonprofit marketers have the opportunity to reach local audiences that indicate their interest and engagement through their search behaviors. Nonprofit marketers can leverage this to engage supporters, drive donations, and share their nonprofit’s mission with the world.

So, how do you make the most of local SEO? Read on for local SEO tactics you can try today.

Before we dive in, it’s important to first understand what primary factors impact your nonprofit organization’s local search engine rankings. This can be distilled into four primary areas: relevance, distance, trust, and prominence.

Relevance: How well your website matches the search term a user searches for. If Google determines your business is an educational charity, then your website has a higher likelihood to rank for the term “education charity” in comparison to another business Google determines is a health nonprofit.

Distance: The proximity of your business to the searcher. As Google learns more about you and your whereabouts via the ever present homing beacon in your pocket — your smartphone — distance has become a top (if not the top) ranking factor. Essentially, the search engine result page (SERP) for “health nonprofit” in Portland, Oregon will be completely different from the result in Seattle, Washington. Heck, the SERP in the Portland ZIP code of 97219 will be different than the Portland ZIP code of 97209.



Trust: How trustworthy Google thinks your business is, based on its reputation. This could be determined by your review quantity and ratings, or the number of high-authority websites that link to your website. Quantity and quality of reviews, quality and quantity of linking domains, domain age, and quality of website content are a few ways that Google can determine trustworthiness.

Prominence: How often your business appears across the web. Examples could be a mention of your nonprofit online (by a local news outlet, for example) or a business listing on directory sites like Great Nonprofits or Charity Navigator.

Some of these are easier to impact than others — you can’t change the distance of your business to the searcher — so let’s dive in to five local SEO tactics you can implement today.

1. Create or claim a Google My Business page — it’s free!

Google accounts for 88% of all online searches, so making the most of Google is critical in developing a strong online presence for your nonprofit. Google has also reported that 46% of online searches have local intent, so doing what you can to amplify your nonprofit’s local search presence can have a big impact on your business.

Are you convinced? I hope so. Creating and/or claiming a Google My Business (GMB) page is a great first step in leveraging Google — and it's completely free. When you create a GMB page, your nonprofit is listed in Google Maps, your odds of getting listed in Google’s local 3-pack improve, and you’re more likely to improve your overall local search rankings, thereby ensuring that more people searching for your nonprofit (or nonprofits like yours) find you.

By creating a Google My Business(GMB) page, you tackle all four ranking factors outlined above, so if you can only do one of the tactics outlined in this blog post, do this one.

If you already have GMB pages claimed and completed for all your business locations, high-five! Go ahead and skip to #2.

Before you start claiming GMB pages, the first thing you’ll want to do is collect and organize accurate location data, or “NAP” (name, address, phone number), for all of your nonprofit locations. A few things to keep in mind when it comes to NAP:

• Always use your real-world business name. The name you list here should match the sign on your door, your marketing collateral, etc.
• Always use your real-world address. Don’t include information in the address line to describe the location; stick to your mailing address.
• Use a local phone number whenever possible vs. a call center helpline.

Bonus tip: Depending on how many locations you have, keeping track of location data can get unwieldy fast. If you have more than a few locations, I highly recommend you (or someone in your organization) create and manage a single source, like a spreadsheet, that has all your business’s location data centralized and organized in one place.

After you organize your location data, you’ll want to go through and claim and/or update the Google My Business pages for all your locations. Here are step-by step instructions from Google. Things to keep in mind when completing your GMB listing:

• Include a primary business category to describe what your business does to Google and to the people searching. If multiple categories describe your business, choose the category that most closely matches your ranking goals as your primary category. Then, you can add up to 9 additional categories for a total of 10. For help selecting categories, check out our blog post on How to Choose a Google My Business Category.
• Select attributes for your business. There are a variety of attributes available for you to share more about your business, such as accessibility attributes, whether your nonprofit identifies as Black-owned or women-led, LGTBQ+ friendly, etc. The list of available attributes is pretty extensive, but select only those that are applicable, relevant, and accurate.
• Write a thoughtful business description. You have 750 characters to describe what your nonprofit does and what makes it unique.
• Include keywords in the business description. Focus on 1-2 high-value keywords that are relevant to your nonprofit, and avoid keyword stuffing (the unnecessary repetition of keywords throughout on-page SEO elements).
• Add photos! According to Google, businesses with photos receive 42% more requests for directions and 35% more click-through to websites. When selecting photos, choose authentic, high-quality photos that showcase your nonprofit.
• Select a profile photo to note your preferred photo choice for search results. This isn’t foolproof — there is no guarantee that your profile photo will appear first — but it does indicate to Google which photo you prefer.

2. Claim your local business listings

The places you can create a business listing online are growing exponentially, from social networking sites to specialized, vertical-specific directory sites that allow people to research, compare, and share reviews of businesses, products and services. These online destinations present marketers with local citation opportunities — opportunities to get your nonprofit in front of more people.

In the past, amassing a large quantity of citations was a favored tactic when increasing local search rankings. Now, as factors impacting local search rankings evolve, the verdict is out on whether local citation quantity remains so important. Claiming and managing your online business listings may help your nonprofit rank higher for local search queries and it will help more people discover your nonprofit online. You will reach a larger audience by creating complete, accurate, and engaging experiences everywhere your target audience searches.

Not sure how you show up? You can use Moz’s free Check Presence tool to see how your nonprofit appears across the web.

3. Develop an online review strategy

Reputation is a valuable asset for any business, and that’s especially true for nonprofit organizations, where donations are given and sponsorships extended based on the organization's reputation for doing good.

As more people turn to digital to find, research, and evaluate charities that align with the causes they care about, your online reputation becomes increasingly important. Online reviews are a facet of your nonprofit’s overall brand reputation, and should be managed accordingly.

In addition to the brand benefits, an active review strategy has the added value of increasing your nonprofit’s online visibility. Review quantity, recency, and quality are factors that help Google determine how trustworthy your website is, which is one of the ranking factors we covered earlier. Google has said high-quality, positive reviews can improve your business visibility. A few things to keep in mind when it comes to reviews:

• Make it easy for people to leave reviews. You can create and share a short url for customers to share reviews of your nonprofit.
• Solicit honest reviews. Sometimes all you have to do is ask! According to a 2019 study, 76% of people who were asked to leave a review do so.
• Don’t solicit reviews in bulk — This is against Google’s policies. Google does not provide a definition of what they mean by “bulk”, but typically this refers to sending many requests at one time via an automated platform vs. a one-on-one request.
• Don’t pay for reviews. This practice is also against Google’s policies.
• Respond to reviews, even negative ones. When you reply to a review, it shows that you value the feedback, plus, conversion rates (clicks to call, clicks to directions, etc.) increase when companies engage with and reply to reviews.
• Don’t be deterred by negative reviews. 90% of people are open to changing negative reviews if the issue is addressed. Again, sometimes all you have to do is ask.

4. Choose the right keywords to target

Keyword research, or choosing the “right” keywords to target, is a foundational aspect of SEO because it provides a roadmap you can use to optimize existing content, and produce new content in the hopes of ranking higher in SERPs. It requires an understanding of your target audience and how they’re searching for content online. The end-goal is to determine:

• The specific terms your audience is using to search online.
• The number of searches for a specific keyword over a given time period, or search volume.
• What your target audience is expecting to find when they search for that term, or the searcher’s intent.

When targeting keywords, you want to focus on high-volume, high-intent keywords that are relevant to your nonprofit and that you could realistically rank for. This only begins to scratch the surface — keyword research is a BIG topic! — so if you’re ready to dive in to keyword research, I highly recommend that you check out The Keyword Research Master Guide.

Then, once you’ve identified your target keywords, remember to pick terms that best describe your nonprofit and include them in the business descriptions of your Google My Business and other local business listings.

5. Conduct on-page optimization

On-page optimization is the process of optimizing specific pages on a website for the keywords you want to rank for. This includes on-page SEO ranking factors like the content on the page itself, or the source code such as page title and meta description. Through on-page seo, you help Google accurately determine what your business is and what it does, and how relevant your website is to what people search for.

For example, if you have the term “global education” in a page URL, in the page title, description, and in the content of the page, Google is more likely to determine that the page is about global education and, your page will be more likely to rank for that term.

A few tips to keep in mind when it comes to on-page SEO:

• Develop E-A-T content. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google uses this framework to determine high-quality content, and high-quality correlates with higher search engine rankings. There are a variety of E-A-T tactics you can leverage — for a run-down I suggest you watch E-A-T and the Quality Raters’ Guidelines — but in the end, it adds up to demonstrating your business’s expertise and legitimacy to Google.
• Intentional keyword usage. It’s still important to include a target keyword in the title tag, description, headers, and through the content of the page, while avoiding keyword stuffing.
• Page titles and descriptions aren’t just for rankings. Crafting a compelling page title and description can lead to better SERP click-through rates — more people clicking on your website from the search engine result page. You’ll want to pair an attention-grabbing headline with a description that is specific, relevant, and (most importantly) helpful.
• Don’t forget about page load speed. Page speed is a search engine ranking factor and refers to how quickly your page loads for a user. You can use Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool to see how your web pages stack up.
• Avoid keyword cannibalization. Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on your website are all competing for the same keyword. You put yourself in the position where you’re competing with yourself for rankings! Not only is this inefficient, it can have negative impacts, such as making it difficult for Google to identify the “best” or most relevant page on your website for your target keyword, diluting backlinks, or decreasing page authority.

Conclusion

These are just some tips of many, many potential ways you can leverage SEO to help grow your nonprofit organization. It may seem daunting at first, but investing in SEO is well worth it. And, it’s okay if you need help along the way!

If you’re at the stage where you’re currently evaluating a partner or tool for your SEO needs, ask the following:

• Does the partner meet your value standards?
• Do they support programs for social good?
• Do they have special pricing for nonprofit organizations? For example, Moz offers discounted rates on Moz Pro and has a limited-time discount on Moz Local, available now through Dec 31, 2020.
• Will the partner make your life easier?

There’s no time like the present: dive in to SEO now to reach more people with your message, improve conversion rates, find more sponsors, volunteers, and donors, and connect with more people who need you most.

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When (and When Not) to Outsource Link Building

Posted by Alex-T

Have you ever outsourced link building? How did you like the experience?

To be honest, mine was terrible. Allow me to share my story.

When I had a typical 9-to-5 job as a marketing director at SEMrush, we made a decision to get more links from the top resources in our segment. We ended up hiring an agency to help us build these links. The agency was charging us an outrageous $13K a month, but, unfortunately, the high price didn’t equal quality. They weren’t capable of writing anything meaningful, not to mention publishing their content on trustworthy industry blogs. What made things worse was the fact that I brought them on board.

Needless to say, we stopped working with this agency. We decided to give another one a try, thinking that this time luck would be on our side.

Well, we were wrong. Although the second agency charged us nearly three times less and promised premium quality work with superb links and stellar results, the outcome was disappointing, to say the least. We ended up getting links from irrelevant content published on sites that wrote about everything, from the ten best sex positions to the ultimate guide on cleaning your toilet.

As ridiculous as it may sound right now, back then, I didn’t feel amused. These two failed attempts at outsourcing link building left me convinced in two things: getting high-quality links is a job to be done internally, and outsourcing is simply pouring money down the drain.

Fast forward to now, and I can honestly tell you that my opinion on outsourcing has changed. Since these two unfortunate scenarios with outsourcing, I went from working for SEMrush to being a freelancer, and, when the amount of work started to grow, I launched my own link building agency, Digital Olimpus. As I gained more experience in this field, I started to realize why our attempts at outsourcing failed so miserably.

At that time, I didn’t know the ropes of link acquisition. We weren’t thinking ahead to establish strict requirements to prevent us from getting links from low-quality sites. Thus, as I went through trial and error, I gathered some unique insights about the pros and cons of link building outsourcing. Today, I’d like to share these insights with you so you can better understand which option is the right one for you — to hire an agency or an in-house link builder.

When is outsourcing the right choice for you?

Here’s my perspective as the owner of a link building agency.

The majority of our clients come to us because they don’t have the time or resources to set up a decent link building process by themselves. Most of the time, their current focus is shifted towards some other business goals, but they still understand the value of links and have some pages that are trying to rank well on Google.

Usually, our ideal client knows what kinds of pages they want to boost via links, and they understand how SEO works. In most cases, they have an SEO team that has a lack of resources to step into link building, so they’re looking for someone who could help them get some juicy links.

So, at the end of the day, our clients pay for our knowledge and experience. But there are also other reasons why companies may choose to outsource link building to an agency as opposed to hiring an in-house specialist.

1. If hiring an experienced link builder is too expensive

The first reason to outsource link building is in the recruitment costs.

According to Glassdoor, the average salary of a junior-level link builder is about 30-40K, while those who are extremely experienced will be looking for an estimated yearly salary around 100K USD. As for the hourly rate, the lowest would be $13, while more experienced link building specialists expect you to pay them as high as $16 an hour.

Besides salaries, you also need to consider other points. For example, your in-house link building specialist would also need content developed specifically for link building purposes, which should have its own separate budget. Apart from that, to do the job properly, they need to have access to backlink analysis tools, like Ahrefs (costs $99/month), SEMrush (also $99/month), Moz (starting $99/month), and Pitchbox (starting from $300/month). All in all, you’ll have to pay for these tools, which alone will cost around 6K a year.

To put a long story short, hiring an in-house link builder will cost you a pretty penny. Moreover, it might take you quite a while to find the in-house link builder you’re looking for. So, while you’re searching for one, you could give an agency a try to get your link building strategy started.

2. If you need to get links straight away

The biggest difference between hiring an in-house link builder vs. an agency is the speed of acquiring links. Usually, an agency already has a tried-and-tested link building strategy, while an in-house link builder still has to develop one.

In my opinion, this is the biggest reason why our clients are choosing our fellow link building agencies and us. We have a well-established process of building links, but most importantly – we’ve already developed meaningful relationships across particular industries and niches. So, in some cases, it doesn’t take us longer than a few minutes to secure a link.

However, if you decide to do link building by yourself, you shouldn’t expect instant results. On average, it takes 3-4 months to start getting at least 10-20 links every month. Besides, it might take you a while to find the right and meaningful way to connect with other sites, and to learn how to pitch your ideas properly.

I should say that, even for my agency, it’s always a big issue to open a new niche and start building a decent number of links per month. The first few months are resulting in 2-4 links, and that for sure can’t be described as a decent flow of links.

3. If you need help educating your team on how to build links the right way

The exchange of knowledge and experience is another reason to outsource link building. It’s definitely why I outsource some tasks, and work closely with those who have substantial expertise in the areas where I don’t feel as confident.

Paying for knowledge is an excellent way to spend money, especially if you lack time. For example, I understand how long it would take me to learn before I could do technical SEO myself, so I’d rather hire someone to help me with that instead. And, while we’re working together, I’ll take this opportunity to enhance my knowledge as well.

For this exact reason, we have a few contractors on our team who are working on other projects, but gladly share their unique strategies and approaches with us. It’s like a breath of fresh air – their experience gives us new perspectives on building high-quality links.

By the way, if you decide to hire an in-house link builder, it might take them quite some time to learn how to work with such contractors, while a link building agency would already have well-established relationships with them.

So, with all that said, try to perceive outsourcing as a learning opportunity. If you already have some experience in link building, you don’t necessarily need to ask an agency to educate you. Instead, you can follow their strategy if you see that it’s working. We have a few clients who follow this logic, as they do link building in-house while still being under our guidance. Sure, one day, they might start building links independently, but it feels nice that we paved that path for them.

4. If you want links that would take you ages to acquire by yourself

Again, it’s all about the connections and how well you can build relationships with them. If you don’t have a tight circle of partners, you can’t expect quick results from your link building efforts.

Usually, the best link building agencies already have a great network of partners. However, it’s still very important to double-check that an agency operates within your niche and has some meaningful connections.

But even if the agency hasn’t worked in your niche before, don’t give up on it just yet. Most likely, the agency might still be able to network faster due to existing relationships with partners and word-of-mouth power.

Still, even for an experienced agency, developing the network of connections in a new and unexplored field will take some time. We’re always very transparent when it comes to telling a client that we haven’t yet worked within their industry, but some clients are ready to wait. However, your needs might be different, so always bring up this question to avoid misunderstandings.

5. If you need to scale your current link building efforts

Sometimes brands realize that link building can be a good strategy for them, but they might not fully understand how to approach it, considering the specifics of their industry and niche. If this is your case, the agency will help you select the right angle and review your current link building needs objectively.

Another pain point that makes our clients ask for our help is building links to problematic targets. Some pages — commercial ones, for example — are hard to build links to in an organic way. In my recent blog post, I talked more on the topic of building links to commercial pages and a few examples of how it can be done. But if you struggle with acquiring links to some pages, you can outsource this task to an agency, which will find the right way to address these difficulties and tackle them.

When outsourcing isn’t your best option

As someone who went through an unpleasant experience with outsourcing, I should say that you really have to know what you need when hiring an agency. This might be the first and most crucial reason not to outsource link building – you should know what to expect.

However, there are also other situations when outsourcing link building will be a waste of time and money. Let’s take a look.

1. You’re looking for digital PR and consider it link building

Over the years, I’ve met a lot of potential clients who ask for articles on leading sites in their industry just for the sake of having their brand mentioned by a popular resource. While getting links from such websites would be good for your brand image, this is a task for PR.

Here’s the thing: Links acquired from such resources are usually very weak from an SEO standpoint. Besides, there are cases when guest contributors sell links from these sites. In one of them, a well-known writer who worked for Forbes and Entrepreneur sold links under the radar, which is forbidden by Google’s guidelines.

As a result, links to such websites rarely bring any benefit, because they don’t carry the SEO value we are usually looking for.

From an SEO standpoint, the best links come from websites that are not involved in such suspicious activities. In addition, don’t be quick to trust influencers, since they often sell links on their websites as well.

Instead, try to find a website that doesn’t have guest posts. Google typically favors guest posting, while pushing the websites which are only used for link building to the bottom of search results.

2. You don’t have a solid SEO strategy and you just want to build some links

Many clients don’t understand that link building and SEO are interconnected. When it comes to link building, you need to remember that the results only come if you make links to the right pages from an SEO standpoint.

What does that mean? Such pages should target the right keywords relevant to your business, and that don’t have an insane level of competition. Also, content that is allocated on those pages should match user intent.

Just for context, it takes 10 times more time to get a page with commercial intent to the top of Google results, especially if the top 10 have informational intent.

Ideally, you should understand how many links you need in order to close the current link gap; otherwise, it might take ages for your page to rank well on Google. By analyzing what kind of links your rivals have already built, you can set up the right requirements for your link building agency.

3. You have very strict requirements and an agency can’t hit that mark

Sometimes, clients underestimate their link building needs. But other times, their expectations can be way too high, and it turns into a real problem. Let me give you some examples.

Once, we had a client that wanted us to implement a whole new link building approach just for his campaign. Everything should have gone great, except he forgot to tell us that he would need a unique approach, and what we were capable of providing at that time wasn’t what he was interested in.

Naturally, our partnership ended on that note. We decided to return the funds to this client and move forward. Now we do an in-depth interview with every client to give them a very detailed overview of our link building approach and our capabilities.

The same problem can occur in a few other cases:

• You want links that will be allocated only in particular content. Ask the agency if it gets links through guest blogging. If not, this is not the best option for you.
• You have a list of sites from which you want to get links. Contrary to what you might expect, link building isn’t an exact science, and it’s hard to predict or guarantee that a link will be secured on a particular site.
• You want links only on pages that have already built a solid number of links and are already ranking well on Google. That’s a smart strategy, but it should only be done internally, since getting a link on such a page might take ages.

So, as I mentioned before, ask the agency about its capabilities before you outsource link building. It would be fair for both sides if you and the agency have clear expectations of the final result.

4. You expect to receive referral traffic from links that an agency will be building for you

Unfortunately, there’s minimal chance that referral traffic will come. Digital marketing experts confirm that there’s a very slim chance that even guest blogging on leading sites will bring you a solid flow of referral visitors.

Nowadays, steady referral traffic only comes through sources of organic traffic. A good example is this article with a list of SEO tools by Brian Dean that receives over 7K organic visitors per month:

Certainly, tools listed in Brian’s post are all getting some traffic, too, as those visitors are browsing through them and would love to learn more about them.

In general, we rarely see that our clients are getting referral traffic. Getting a good link is one scenario, but getting a good link that will send referral traffic is a whole other story.

In my opinion, building the links that will most likely send you a solid flow of referral visitors requires an analysis of current sources of referral traffic to your competitors and industry leaders. Then, you must try to understand the reason behind this traffic, whether it’s an active audience, being featured in a newsletter, etc. But the entire process differs from the link building strategy we usually follow.

5. You’re too busy to communicate your feedback to the agency

If you expect the link building agency to deliver the results you expect, communication is key. Outsourcing is not about delegating the task and forgetting about it. It’s about close collaboration.

With that said, be prepared to have to go on a number of calls with an agency just to figure out the link building strategy you will follow, not to mention other related meetings that will occur in the process. It is especially important if your link building needs are very specific.

So, let me reiterate – ongoing communication is crucial for building juicy, high-quality links. If you don’t have time to talk with the agency and articulate your needs and expectations properly, outsourcing link building is not the right option for you.

6. You don’t have a sufficient budget

If you are planning to hire an agency to outsource link building, you should evaluate your financial situation first, because it will cost you a fair amount of money.

To give you some context, we only take long-term contracts starting from $10K because one-time partnerships don’t help bring permanent link building results. In general, the entire process of building links should be ongoing, and your website should continuously show a rising link growth graph:

So, no matter how hard you try, the lack of a systematic approach to link building means no tangible results, and the client won’t get any profit from these links. That’s what made me understand that single-time link building is a waste of time and money.

What’s the verdict?

All in all, I should say that hiring a link building agency is worth every penny, as long as it has the experience you’re looking for, of course. Just from the rational standpoint, it’s much harder and more cost-intensive to do link building by yourself, especially if you have little knowledge of it.

There are also other perks of outsourcing link building. First and foremost, when you’re hiring an agency to build links, you’re paying for the speed of acquiring links. An agency already has all the connections to get links faster, in addition to a well-established process of building links in general.

Nevertheless, evaluate your needs first. Outsourcing might not be the best option for you if you are more interested in PR, not link building. You might also want to check what the agency can offer, as your requirements might not fit its profile. And, of course, outsourcing is not an option if you don’t have time to communicate with an agency or you have insufficient funds for such partnership.

However, in general, if you ask me now if outsourcing is worth it, I would say yes, but only if you are committed. Remember, outsourcing link building to an agency shouldn’t be a one-time occasion. If you want ongoing results, you need to commit to a long-term, close cooperation.

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