The Art of Picky Link Building

One of Michael Jordan’s most famous quotes is, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” The kids these days sum it up to be, “Shoot your shot.”

In essence, all this means is that if you don’t even try, you can’t succeed.

On the surface, I can’t disagree with this.

You’re not going to, say, build a house if you don’t put a hammer to a nail. 

And particularly in the context of the professional basketball world, Jordan comes from, you’re never going to win if you’re too afraid to attempt your shot.

Confidence is key, and I don’t care what niche or professional sector we’re talking about – you’re not going to succeed if you don’t have confidence in your abilities.

That said, not every shot needs to be taken.

Playing confident is incredibly important. 

But an underrated factor that is equally, if not more important is the ability to play smart.

Today, I want to talk about “playing smart” in the context of link building, and why you will open yourself up to more success if you are a “picky” link builder.

Being Picky

First, let me explain what I mean by “picky” link builder.

Over the course of my SEO career, I naturally talk to a lot of other SEOs and link builders.

One thing I often come across when I peek into or inquire about their link building strategies is that they take a “spray and pray” approach.

They send out hundreds upon thousands of emails to any site with a proverbial pulse that seems somewhat relevant, to see what sticks.

I’ll be fair by saying that the instinct here isn’t wrong. 

As link builders, we live in the marketing sphere. 

And as marketers, our natural inclination is to automate as much as you can in the hopes of getting results.

But, in my opinion, link building is one of the few digital marketing strategies that require your personal attention and is irreplaceable through automation.

Being Picky With A Linkable Asset

There are different stages of the link building process which require you to be picky, so let me start off with the preparation phase. 

What page or linkable asset do you actually want people to link to? 

This is an important question to ask for multiple reasons.

But for our purposes, the reason you need to ask this question is so that you can build your outreach and link prospecting strategies around a particular linkable asset.

It’s important not to settle, however, and just pick any random blog post that ‘may’ be able to earn a couple of links.

No one wants to link to a half baked 500-word blog post that barely scratches the surface on any given topic.

They will, however, be far more inclined to link to you should you have something on your site that is thorough, visually appealing, and that helps to answer a question or solve a problem.

Otherwise known as a linkable asset.

Without such an asset living on your site, you are not giving yourself the best chance to get backlinks to your site.

Creating such a linkable asset during the preparation phase will likely take significant planning, time, and investment. 

When you skip out on carefully creating the right linkable assets, you will end up wasting time reaching out to sites that might have otherwise linked to you but for the mediocre piece of content you pitched to them.

You’re setting yourself up for endless frustration and failure.

So, when it comes to linkable assets, I say do it the right way and be picky.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve dedicated so much of this blog to this very topic.

Additional Resources
You’re Not Ready for Link Building Without Linkable Assets
Your Blueprint to Creating Linkable Assets
Creating Linkable Content (Without A Long-Term Commitment!)

Being Picky With Prospecting & Outreach

In order to execute a successful link building campaign, the goal shouldn’t be to build just any link.

The goal should be to build the right links and find the right sites to reach out to.

Unfortunately, the “right” links are not specifically defined, nor are they just laid out for you right from the start. 

You actually have to go find and identify them yourself.

And if you *don’t* take the time yourself, then who will?

A tool you didn’t design yourself? 

A virtual assistant in another continent?

As sophisticated as a lot of SEO tools are, there’s no replica for the human eye or human discretion. 

You understand your own link building campaign better than anyone, which means it is important for you to use your own judicious eye to separate the mediocre opportunities from the right opportunities.

My friend Eric Ward once told me that he would only reach out to a site if he had 100% confidence that he could build a link on that site. 

This, in my opinion, is the ideal approach to link building.

Let’s say you have a list of 2000 link prospects freshly downloaded from your prospecting tool of choice. 

Let’s also say that of those 2000 link prospects that only 10-20% of them are the ‘perfect fit’ for your content.

And finally, let’s say that going into the campaign, you have adopted this mindset:

You are going to go for anything and everything in front of you, issuing no distinction between different link prospects.

I can understand why this approach is appealing from a “playing the numbers game” perspective. 

However, this approach is inefficient and won’t end up with you getting the links you seek.

Here are a few reasons why:

Customization – Proper, effective link building isn’t one-size-fits-all. Every potential link prospect is going to require a different approach. 

If you’re trying to send out emails to as many sites as possible, you’re not allowing yourself time to design a custom approach for each valuable site.

Finding Contact Info – Finding contact information for a massive size list will likely require the help of a tool to scrape that information. Using a tool instead of manually searching for an email is never as reliable. 

There may be an email that is easy to find, had you just spent two minutes looking, but instead are now dealing with a whole host of emails generated by the tool forcing you to, essentially, guess which email is best.

Deliverability – With all the automation in the world you’re going to run into serious email deliverability issues when you’re shooting out thousands of emails. Sorry, but there are no two ways about it.

Documentation – If you’re not documenting all of your efforts during a link building campaign, you’re going to end up in a mess. Every site you reach out to and email you send should be properly documented. So, when you’re dealing with a large list of mediocre prospects to keep tabs on, you’ll quickly realize the enormous amount of clunky waste.

Email tracking – Tracking emails and following up with 2000 link prospects with equal vigor is a time suck, especially when you know ahead of time that many of these prospects are never going to respond. There’s a much better use of your time then scouring through your inbox to find dozens of bounced back emails from sites that really weren’t worth reaching out to in the first place.

So think about that hypothetical list of 2000 link prospects again. If only 10 – 20% of them are “the right” links, that means you have a chance to build a valuable link on 200 – 400 of those prospects (for the purpose of the rest of this hypothetical, we’ll average out to 300).

Which do you think would be the more effective use of your time?

1. Developing a custom outreach approaches that will all but ensure that you will get links from the 300 sites you *really* have a chance to get links from, or
2. Developing vanilla outreach templates to send to 2000 link prospects, many of which will never reach their inbox but you will have to track regardless, jettisoning any room for creative approaches to get the 300 links that are actually valuable?

It’s pretty simple to answer when it’s laid out like that, isn’t it?

Get Rid of the Clutter

Excellent link building requires due diligence. 

Another way to say that would be that excellent link building requires you to be picky. 

The right links are typically going to take much more dedication and cleverness to build than the ordinary links. There’s a reason for that. 

These sites are typically going to be higher authority, and they don’t want to potentially diminish that authority by linking to just anyone. 

Not only that, these higher authority sites tend to receive emails at a much higher volume, meaning the webmasters don’t have the time to pore over every single message.

But don’t let that dissuade you from pursuing these links. 

In fact, I am arguing that you should cast aside the mediocre opportunities in order to put greater effort, time, and consideration into targeting the better links.

Allow me to be Marie Kondo for a minute.

If you aren’t aware, Kondo’s is all about doing away with clutter or anything that doesn’t “spark joy.” 

She emphasizes getting rid of these items because hanging onto the past for no reason other than hanging onto the past can actually be toxic to the soul.

I honestly can’t speak to that emotional element, but I can speak to the idea that getting rid of clutter or anything that isn’t going to move you forward is a cornerstone for improving efficiency.

Instead of wasting time and energy on a bevy of link opportunities that likely won’t do much for you in the long run or even respond to you, focus on the can’t miss opportunities; the ones that are clearly relevant and of high authority. 

Create a linkable asset that will coincide for these highly valuable targets.

If you want to be a successful link builder, resist the lure of automation and instead, be picky, get rid of the clutter, and hone in on the truly valuable link opportunities.