Can you link build without adding any content to the website?

[kevinmorley]

I am an agency-side SEO who has a few different SEO clients. A couple of them absolutely refuse to add any content to their site - no blog, no articles, no link bait, nothing.

They have resisted efforts for any content to be placed on their site - whether it is written by us, them, or a third party. They just don't see the value in it, despite my attempts to persuade them.

As a result, these websites are just brochure websites.

What are your options for link building in this situation? If content is the foundation of white hat link building, what do you do if the client refuses to add content to their site?

All help gratefully received!

Thanks

[emediaSEO]

Without any content you're also setting yourself up to get hit by the next monster Google update.  I would make sure you lay out all of these reasons to add content and the risks of not having any and make sure they are aware of it.  If they still won't budge, then just do the best you can and when the day comes when they realize they aren't seeing results they'll already know why.

[JordanGodbey]

wise words of advice!

[samfiora]

The biz in question sounds like they are shooting themselves in the foot and I'd have to agree that I would not want to work with them.

If the education of the client has been done correctly the decision to create content should be a no brainer as long as that content is intelligently thought out by the consultant.

[DigitalDiameter]

You can always get some benefit out of building links, but without content it can be an uphill battle. Will they do any on page optimization at all? If not, then this will be very difficult.

I hate to say this because it is not an SEO comment, but on the business side, some clients cost more than they bring in. It is up to you, but politely ending a relationship with an uncooperative client can be better than saying you can do it and not producing results.

[SaforwebDesign]

I think the best option to be linked is write relevant content. If your client doesn´t want to create content on his web, you can create a subdomain, an external blog or another domain to do a SEO job. A place to create landing pages to pull traffic to your site.

Nobody is going to link you if you exhibit a little piece of nothing.

I'm sorry.

[RyanKent]

I have always been able to overcome client objections on this topic. If you can work with clients to produce a single, high quality article and then demonstrate the traffic it generates, that would help them to understand the value of content.

If the above suggestion is not workable, the next step is to find sources who would sincerely be interested in the site's existing content.

Another possibility, the client may not be willing to add content to their site but might consider guest blogging on another site which could raise the level of awareness about their site.

In the end, there are two sides to this coin. On the one side, people are free to choose what is best for them. On the other side, as a professional it is your job to help clients understand the benefit on adding quality content to their site. If you fail to do such, you have not done your job well. It's the same idea as a sick patient who visits a doctor but wont take their medicine. It's the doctor's role to present options and the patient to make the choice. On the other hand, a better doctor (think Dr. House) is able to push the patient into doing the right thing.

[JustinTaylor88]

You can link build and it will yield some benefits, make sure you go for the yelp, yahoo directories etc at the very least.

Naturally the better the content, the more opportunities for social sharing, links, mentions etc

I assume you have already done the on-page seo?

What is the customers reason for refusing it, is it cost? If so you are prob banging you head against a brick wall and may be worth focusing your efforts on new receptive clients as opposed to those that don't want to know... as they say, you can lead a horse to water....

Maybe not the answer you wanted, but hope it helps!

One footnote to the link building post penguin, make sure that the quality of the back links are good and legitimate and be careful with the link anchor text, make sure you don't try and link for the same phrase/keywords