Can you link build without adding any content to the website?
-
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
-
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.
-
wise words of advice!
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Writing <200 word pieces of content in a 7.5 hour day
My employer has a content writer who is currently working on writing unique descriptions for many pages, on the order of around 150-200 words per piece of content. A recurring theme in this content is to write a list of features such as "it does X, X, X, X, X and X", which can sometimes happen a couple of times during the content and takes up a decent chunk of wording. This content does not require in-depth research over and above reading the about us page of some sites and looking at what services they provide, as well as some quick details like their payment and delivery methods etc. As well as that the writer also writes the Meta Description and then uploads these to a CMS. There are no other tasks. Considering the writer is doing this 5 days a week, 7.5 hours a day, and isn't getting paid a poor or trainee-type wage, what would you say would be an acceptable amount to achieve on the average day? The current average works out to around, or slightly less than 8 of these pieces of content each day. Thoughts?
Content Development | | crystal.fde1 -
How to Submit a Sponsored Content Submission?
Hi, I have some content related to our services and I want to know how to submit or post this content to some online publishers like yahoo, business insiders, etc.. I would appreciate your suggestion on this. Thank you.
Content Development | | Lry880 -
Images & Duplicate Content Issues
Here's a scenario for you: The site is running WordPress and the images are uploaded to the media section. You can set image attributes there such as the Description & Alt Tag. Let's say you'd like to reuse the same image in two different blog posts. The image keeps the same Description & Alt Tag associated with it in the media section. Would this be considered duplicate content? What would be the best practice in this case to reuse the same image in multiple posts?
Content Development | | VicMarcusNWI0 -
Should I Be Concerned about Too Many Links in Interview?
I was contacted recently from a small online magazine (DA 17) who wanted to interview me about my area of expertise. Although it's not a high authority site, I gladly accepted, conducted the interview, and he posted it on his site today. Throughout the course of the final interview article, he linked to my website 5 times. Once in the intro, and 4 times in reference to different answers I gave. At this point, I'm wondering if it looks like a spammy guest post, even though it was legitimately conducted. Should I ask him to remove some of the links so it doesn't look spammy? I feel kinda bad because he's not trying to do anything fishy. If you want to see the referenced article, you can check it out here: http://mensmagdaily.com/counting-cards-colin-of-blackjackapprentice-com-shows-us-the-ropes/
Content Development | | cojo0 -
Typepad.com blog migration & duplicate content
I've migrated a typepad.com blog with a bunch of content (but little traffic) onto a hosted WordPress site under my own domain name (the way I should've done it in the first place). Now I don't want to confuse Google that the new site is duplicating content from the other site, so would I be better off with: 1) meta-refresh redirecting each typepad.com post to the same post on the new blog, or 2) just killing the typepad.com blog entirely so Google will not find duplicate posts anywhere. In favor of #2 is the fact that these posts get very little traffic today. I figure I will lose more traffic from duplicate content ranking penalties than from losing the posts themselves in the original blog. What do you think?
Content Development | | chriscrabtree0 -
Should I put the date on a new content page to show users when it was written or updated?
I've been asked this question at work and not certain of the answer. Personally if I see an 'old' date in a meta description on Google I often scan for more recent articles. In other words it can act as a deterrent. We are a very big social networking site with a large content section. For some of our content the date might be relevant, such as legal information, but often it isn't. Are there any SEO factors in dating content?
Content Development | | CecilyP0 -
RSS feeds with dup content and titles
Hi, For my Buddypress site I use a tool to create sites with RSS feeds. Each site is for a different feed, but the number of dup tiles and content is running in the thousands. I've been trying to reduce the dups, but have begun to think there is more trouble from such content than benefit. Should I dump the content or ignore the errors flagged by SEOMOZ? Any ideas if thes RSS feed dups are hurting my BuddyPress site? Any suggestions in general about how to eliminate such dupe for a Buddypress Site, eg. the activity log. Larry
Content Development | | tishimself0 -
What is the Best Practice for External Links?
We are currently in the process of reviewing our site on a number of fronts, and part of that involves adding quality content to our product category pages where necessary. Our practice so far has been to add relevant content, and in this content externally link to a couple of relevant, related sites for that category (avoiding the use of keywords we are trying to rank for). Should we be doing this (externally linking)? And, if so, should these external links be NoFollow? So far, we have seen mixed results for our efforts.
Content Development | | Robdps0