Quick links:
By month
Month 1
Link Profile Audit
What to look for?
- Type of link
- Anchor text
- Clusters of similar IPs
- Link position on the page
- Quality (defensibility) of the site link originates from
- Is the page where the link originates actually indexed?
- Asses internal link structure as well
Some of the above can be automated and that should help you to reduce the number of links that you need to audit by hand.
Action steps:
- Talk to the client – get previous reports, lists of links developed and understand what has been done up until now
- Listen to the client – to understand their goals and their current appetite for risk
- Fire up your favourite link analysis tool
Month 2
Link Removals & Updates
Tools for the job
- Link Management Tool from The Link Auditors – free software, makes it really easy to manage your progress, automatically checks the status of links so no need to send a chaser email to see if a link has been removed. All round fantastic tool and my favourite.
- SEOgadget – Data Gathering Tool
- Remove’em – self-service link removal
- rmoov – the backlink removal tool
Action steps
- Talk to the client to understand any content production they have done in the past
- Dig through the archives of the site (use site: search in Google)
- Look for pages on the site which have a fair number of links (and ask if it could perform better after a bit of TLC?)
- Try Social Crawlytics to uncover hidden assets
Month 3
At the half-way point in the plan, now it’s time to get on to the really fun stuff. It is going to be a busy four weeks…
Take control of social
Link Repossession This element can be broken down into three areas:
- Images
- Words
- Mentions
Get blogging
Month 4
As we pass the halfway point for this plan, month 4 involves fewer activities but they are often more involved and require more resources.
Guest blogging
Reading to consider
- Guest blogging as a future-proof link building strategy
- Are you missing out on these guest blogging opportunities?
- 20 resources for prospecting, organising and researching link opportunities
Month 5
Webmaster promotion to content asset 1
How to find opportunities
- Link Prospector from Citation Labs
- Analysis of links earned by other content assets
Month 6
Influencer outreach for new content asset
Repeat activities
- Webmaster Promotion to the new content asset
- Guest Blogging (to the new content asset) – target a portion of your guest blogging efforts towards building links and raising awareness for your new content asset. You can even rework some of the content and tailor to specific blogs to save time when it comes to writing the guest posts.
- Guest Blogging – as before, this time targeting a new niche from your opportunities map.
- Blogging – once again think ahead in terms of the content you produce, align with any plans you have on the horizon.
