GM, and welcome back to Marketing Qualified! Here are the topics we’ve got for you today:

• The backlink strategy no one talks about. How to use proprietary data to win free backlinks.

•  3 quick website tips. Give these a try on your site.

🤐 The backlink strategy no one talks about.

SEO is hard.

There are the content and technical sides, and marketers are expected to understand both.

Add in all the subtopics underneath, like keyword research, meta descriptions, image best practices, copywriting skills, etc., plus a constantly changing Google algorithm, and it’s no wonder so many marketers feel completely overwhelmed by SEO!

And in our experience, there’s one area of SEO in particular that many B2B marketers struggle with the most… backlinks.

Backlinks are links on an external website that lead to a page on your website. Sometimes, they’re also called inbound links.

Most marketers know backlinks are important. But how important? How many backlinks do you need? Does it matter which sites the backlinks come from? And most commonly, how do you even get backlinks?

Common ways companies get backlinks.

A lot of companies gain backlinks by paying for them. There are agencies that offer this service. You probably get cold emails from a few of them each week. 😉

However, this method can get expensive quickly, and the quality of the backlinks is often an issue.

Another method brands use to get backlinks is pitching guest blog posts to other companies. This can work well, but it’s very time-consuming. You have to find sites you’d like to partner with, develop topic ideas, draft a pitch, and then cold email them your pitch. Assuming they actually answer you (which is rare), you have to go back and forth on an outline and drafts and then wait for them to publish your post on their site.

All in all, this process can take months and only results in a single backlink.

The other issue is that, oftentimes, companies willing to accept guest posts tend to be on the smaller side, meaning their site authority is probably lower, and the backlink isn’t as valuable as that of larger companies.

But there’s another way.

These two methods aren’t the only way.

There is another option that we rarely see used: publishing proprietary data.

Large companies that publish a lot of content (think HubSpot, Fast Company, Zendesk, Entrepreneur, Buffer, Hootsuite, etc.) are constantly on the lookout for statistics and data that they can use as proof points in their writing.

A hack to getting backlinks from these extremely high authority sites is to collect and publish the type of data they need.

If you survey people in your industry and publish your findings in a report, writers for these publications can find your report and cite it as a source in their content piece. Free backlinks for you!

This is why you see so many reports titled something like “The State of XXX in 2024.”

Companies publish these reports in the hope that other writers will use their insights and hyperlink citations to their websites.

In this case, one piece of content can win dozens or maybe even hundreds of backlinks from high-value sites. A huge ROI.

Now, we’re not here to pretend that surveying people and creating reports with proprietary findings is easy. But if you’re willing to put in the effort, this is a tried and true strategy. When done right, it works. And because there’s a high barrier to entry, there’s not much competition.

If you have the resources, it’s worth trying.

📰  In the news this week.

💰  Maximizing your 'return on creative.'

🏢  LinkedIn launches premium company pages.

🎥  Why video is key to building brand identity and engagement.

📉  Reasons why your content isn’t ranking on Google.

🧠  Study shows marketers are less focused on effectiveness.

💭 3 quick website tips.

1) Delay your chatbot.

If you think your site benefits from having a chatbot, only have it appear once your visitor has scrolled to the high-intent parts of the homepage, such as FAQs, a pricing table, or a demo request section.

A chat notification appearing just as someone lands on the site is distracting. It’s a lousy strategy to break a visitor’s concentration while they’re busy trying to understand what you do.

2) Include a support email on error messages.

If your site includes error messages on actions like form submission or payment processing, include a support email address. This way, visitors can immediately ask for help when problems persist instead of abandoning the page.

3) Remove navigation from landing pages.

Hiding your default navigation bar on landing pages prevents visitors from wandering. Your landing page should only have one objective: winning a conversion, not sending people to other pages.

😂 Marketing meme of the week.

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