Whether you’re a start-up SEO agency or a large marketing firm, link building is an essential element for search engine optimization. When it comes to link building, often larger firms have an unfair advantage compared to startups due to their budget, resources and time.
If you are a smaller agency or you are just looking to save costs on your blogger outreach efforts in 2020, look no further. This fundamental guide provides you with some of the key ways you can compete with difficult keywords, build authority backlinks and outrank your competitors all at a lower cost.
This blog is suitable for a small business owner, start-up marketing agency or anyone looking to save costs on delivering high-quality backlinks from sites with legitimate traffic and high metrics all through an inexpensive process. This process will cost you one thing only… TIME, but if you’re lucky you won’t need much time to do it!
What does Budget Link Building Mean?
The link building process can be a journey, so the question is how can we automate this process, include essential elements of a link and save costs at the same time?
Budget link building is the process of an “outreacher” acquiring high-quality backlinks through an a/b tested, automated, cost-efficient process.
This guide is going to support the idea that link building to get you on the first page of Google can be done with a budget of $300 – $900 AUD per month that covers the following costs.
- Outsourcing – the key to scalability.
- Statistic Tools – the key to performance and checking mechanisms.
- Automation Tools – the key to efficiency & speed.
The Typical “Link Building” Journey:
- Creating a list of blogger websites.
- Record their email & SEO Metrics.
- Contact them & receive a positive response.
- Agree on a blog topic that fits the website and your niche.
- Settling the “publishing” cost or compensation fee.
- Waiting for the article to go “live”
- Ensuring the anchor text and onsite basics have been optimised
- Maintaining the “live link” and managing any adjustments.
Take a breath after reading that, this next part is going to take you to the next level!
The 3 Step Outreach Guide, On a Budget!
When considering the process of blogger outreach on a budget, the first essential thing you’ll need is the hierarchy of resources. What do we actually need, compared to what would make life easier?
With a budget of $600 per month, here is the hierarchy of essential outreach resources:
1. Outsourcing/ Virtual Assistance. ($500 AUD full time per month)
An essential element of any business is human resources, this can either be yourself or a virtual assistant which provides power to the campaign. Firstly consider the versatility of your VA’s. Whether you opt-in for South East Asia, India or Eastern Europe, they will give you a bang for your US buck!
With $500 AUD you can find someone in one of these countries to work around 4 – 6 hours on a daily basis, and if you provide them with initial training they will do an awesome job! You can find these virtual assistants through sources like Online Jobs, Fivver or Upwork to name a few.
The best way to use a virtual assistant in this scenario is by providing them with the task of sourcing legitimate websites or businesses that post blogs and gathering emails off the contact page. The key here is to keep all websites that suggest “mommy blogs”, “guest post accepted”, “editorials” or anything alike that suggests “paid” to 30% of the total that you find.
Meaning that 70% of the list will be local business websites that display a blog page and the remaining 30% will be websites that display “guest posts accepted”- that hopefully won’t require any financial compensation.
If you are considering outsourcing, it is highly recommended that you read “The 4 Hour Work Week”, a summary video embedded below:
2. Link Analysis Using Free Tools (Free)
As search engine optimisation on google has well progressed since calling their updates cute animal names, like “panda and penguin” so have the tools of the trade!
As Donald Trump would say, no longer do you have to spend “billions & billions & billions” (we mean thousands) on SEO tools. There is a plethora of free to use tools like DA Checker by WebsiteSeo and many many more!
By using some of these tools to assess your prospects, you (or your virtual assistant) can then manually go check the domain authority of the websites and analyze the referring domains using the suggested tools above. Anything above DA 10 with 20+ quality referring domains will be acceptable and provide enough link juice to your website!
3. Thirdly and Finally – Email Automation! ($80AUD – $200AUD)
You’re almost there, you now have a list of websites & email addresses! You have also checked the domain authority and any potential spam and confirmed the websites are clean.
The last step in the process is to contact these webmasters (website owners) and propose an article or collaboration, basically trying to persuade them to publish your blog.
How hard could it be, right? Well, that’s where you’re wrong!
This initial part of the email process is the most tedious, time-wasting and un-motivating part of it all. But don’t worry, if enough emails are sent to the right people you will see results very fast! You should expect all sorts of replies, random questions, off-topic suggestions. What’s key here is to create a relationship with these people so you can use them on an on-going basis.
If you are not sure where to start with email automation, you should check out “Authority Hackers” website with a range of free blogs and paid courses. They will also suggest using “Mail Shake”, the middle tier plan provides you with the most flexibility and best chances for success.
The first email to your prospects should come across very natural and sincere. Imagine this like the first time you’re meeting someone you’d like to impress you’re not going to spill the beans and ask for something straight away, right?
Your initial email should go something like this (DOWNLOAD PDF) and once you get a reply, consider the conversation as a friendly chat with someone you just met!
What Are the Pros & Cons of Budget Link Building?
When considering the pros & cons of budget link building, we need to figure out what we are actually budgeting or sacrificing to make the process more cost-effective.
The article has suggested sacrificing all budgets going to “publishing fees” and only consider websites or blogs that could be seen as a “legitimate” business, rather than typical blogger websites (like a mommy blog).
In suggesting this, here are some pros and cons of the process above:
PROS:
- A competitive advantage when it comes to your backlink profile with links that will be more difficult to get.
- Unique backlink profile – your competitors most likely won’t have a similar backlink profile as you.
- Geographically relevant links, the opportunity to “blog” on your surrounding local business websites.
- Avoid being algorithmically penalised from google; in Google’s eyes, any link exchange for money is against the rules – this entire process is clean and won’t set you back!
- Cleaner websites – most local business websites will have a cleaner backlink profile, being less of a “link farm”.
CONS:
- Timely process, when it comes to the actual process, you’re going to see results over time. If your lucky things will happen fast, but it’s unlikely.
- A wide variety of link metrics, some high in DA some a little lower.
- Difficult scaling process – If you are considering providing clients with “organic links” with this process, you will struggle to scale this and schedule orders.
- Inconsistent orders, your relationship may be unreliable meaning that your client orders also.
Building links has always been a critical element of almost every successful campaign but creating a commercially viable process has often been one of the more the more dio
The main thing to consider when building links in 2020 is whether you are a small or large business/agency. How much time and money can you afford to spend in link-building and how much will it benefit your business? Once you have outlined the commercials it’s important to make sure that you not only follow a process like the one above and stick to it.