Inbound link building in just 30 minutes a day

Ever avoid tackling a job because it just seemed too big to finish in your lifetime??  Sure… we all have.

That’s one reason, we suspect, that online marketers avoid getting started with link building …despite the fact that everyone including the doorman has told them how absolutely vital it is to getting decent search-engine rankings for their website.

No question about it, it’s a big job that will require a lot of time …as you’ll soon realize, once you get past the handful of suspects you can identify via brainstorming.  But a more productive way to attack any such task – as we’ve all been taught, but seldom actually practice – is to break it up into numerous bite-size tasks, which can be chewed away at in small chunks of time.

And that’s exactly the approach recommended by Garrett French in a very worthwhile post over at iMedia Connection.  Well actually, the other necessary ingredient is some level of dedication:  Garrett suggests 30 minutes a day, which seems pretty reasonable;  if you can’t give it that degree of commitment for some finite period of time, then you’re probably just not giving it the level of priority it truly deserves.

Clearly, 30 minutes can vaporize pretty quickly without a well thought out, structured action plan …so Garrett helpfully provides one.

In your first day’s 30 minutes, create a spreadsheet containing every tangible and intangible “asset” …or aspect of your organization and website that might make others interested in linking.  These may include webinars, podcasts, job listing pages, white papers, blogs, forums, deals, news and free tools.  Make one column for the asset and another column for the corresponding URL from your website, if applicable.

On your second day, begin prospecting for link opportunities. Because you only have 30 minutes, it’s best to focus on a single linkable asset from your spreadsheet.  Open up a new tab and name it after the asset you’re focusing on.  Next, select a single keyword that best describes your market, and run this keyword through some link suggestion tools, such as:

• SEOBook’s Link Suggest Tool
• Link Search Tool by SoloSEO
• Ontolo’s Link Building Query Generator

When you find a link prospect in the SERPs, copy and paste its URL into your new sheet.  Also, record the queries that found you the most prospects in the top 10;  they’ll be worth coming back to later.

Open your sheet and visit the URLs you recorded yesterday.  Do they appear to be credible websites, making a real contribution to your industry and with real relevance to your company?  If not, delete them;  you don’t really have time for marginal ones.  If they do, then look for contact information and record it for tomorrow’s step.

Depending on your prospects, acquisition may be as simple as submitting PDFs to a directory or sending a quick email to tips@industrynewssite.com.  Spend some time working on your outreach email, keeping it humble, formal, and to the point.  Then start working down your list, recording the date and contact mode in your spreadsheet.

Day 5 is for writing thank-you notes and responding to any further-information requests you got from your outreach.  Note all the responses you received in your spreadsheet, and start building a new sheet with the newly-acquired links.  After that, you’ll need to choose your next step:  either look for more opportunities for this particular asset, or move on to the next asset on your list to start with next week.

Be sure to track your new inbound links in your analytics package, to see how much traffic they send and whether any of these become bona fide leads.  Beyond that, test your SERP ranking for a few common queries and see if it ticks upward over time as you add links.

Like many things in marketing (and in life), the most important step in this process may be simply getting started. You’ll learn a lot as you go along, including getting a better sense of which avenues may justify more time and resources, vs. the likely dead ends.