Eric Siu and Neil Patel argue link building matters less in 2019 than marketers think. They recommend focusing on video content, conversion optimization, and email instead, since high-quality links come naturally once a site gains authority. When you do pursue links, target relevant mid-size sites rather than chasing high domain authority outlets.
Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.
And I'm Neil Patel.
And today, we're going to talk about if you should focus on link building in 2019. Neil, I'm curious, what would you do if you're starting out, actually?
If I was starting out, I would spend some time on link building, but I wouldn't focus on it. If this was 2017, even 2018, what I found is as you build links, it takes longer for them to kick in, longer to see results. They do impact rankings, but they don't impact rankings as much as they used to. So I would still spend some time on links because it is a portion of the algorithm, but I would slow down on how much time I spend on links. I would focus on more things like, as Eric and I have mentioned in previous episodes, content creation, CRO, social media marketing, creating live videos. All of these things, taking omnichannel approach, will help you. Not just in marketing in general or digital marketing, but also in SEO. SEO has moved into a branding game. If you look at a lot of the sites that rank up top, they're, sorry about that, they're big brands. And they're not just like the Nikes or whatever. I'm talking about big brands within your space. So for example, in marketing, you know, Moz takes up a lot of listings, Search Engine Land takes up a lot of listings. The bigger brands are the ones who are dominating. And you need to look within your niche. You can see this in Google Trends by putting in your competitors' names to see who are the biggest ones, but you want to focus on building a brand. And link building is a portion of it, but it's more so you need an omnichannel approach. And Eric and I have mentioned this so many times, but very few people are actually doing it.
I think if I were starting from scratch, it's the same thing, but if I think about the approach, it's like, okay, what would I start with first?
Right?
So bare bones, what could I get going with? I have this phone in front of me. Maybe I can shoot a video that adds value. And then a couple episodes ago, I talked about how you can literally take a video and then drive traffic towards that video. You can literally just go live, drive traffic towards it, and then afterwards retarget people to an offer that you have, maybe build that email list up. So then you're not spending a lot of time and effort trying to build a blog from scratch or create the content from scratch. If you're looking for like a quick way to get going faster, I'm just trying to think like path of least resistance. That would be a way that you can start to generate sales faster, right? Because here's the thing, you're not going to be successful with your link building campaigns or your content campaigns immediately. Neither are you going to be super successful with your ads very quickly, right? In some cases, lightning might strike, you know, flash in the pan kind of thing. But in most cases, it takes time to optimize and figure it out. But what's going to be faster? It's probably going to be creating that content first, video, driving traffic to that video, and then sending them to, sending them to an offer, building that email list too. Then you start to build, you know, build some momentum. Then you can start to think about, okay, How do I start to build up content, SEO, and then link building goes into that.
And in 2019, focus on quality links when you do build some of those links. It's not about a numbers game anymore. It's about relevancy, where the link's being placed. And it's not just about getting the Entrepreneurs or the Huffington Post. Most of those links are nofollowed. Google knows those can easily be bought. Focus on getting smaller and medium sites to link to you. The content has to be relevant. That's what's really going to help your rankings climb. Just getting super high DA links isn't as effective. Like, come on, it's a— Google's like a $700 or $800 billion company. You don't think that they know people are trying to manipulate their algorithms by getting links from Entrepreneur or Huffington Post, Inc., and all the major sites? Heck, I bet you employees at Google get the same emails that we get. Hey, are you interested in buying a link? Here's all my inventory. Check it out here.
It's so easy for them to just blacklist. Exactly.
And Google's not in the game of like, hey, we want to penalize all the sites. Because if you're BMW and you get a few bad links and they penalize you, when people search BMW, then they won't show up. Google wants to show the most relevant site. So instead of trying to penalize sites, they're more so trying to take a stance on, hey, if people are doing all this spammy stuff, we're just not going to count those links. It means you're just going to waste time, energy, money.
Yeah. So if you're going to do it, look, do it right. Don't think of like the old ways that we've, we mentioned trying the old ways a long time ago. The old ways eventually get crushed. You're trying to do, take shortcuts, you know, buy links, all that kind of stuff. It's not going to work for you.
Yeah. And speaking of the old ways, you know, if you look at a lot of our podcast episodes from a year, a lot of people will be like, oh, Neil and Eric, you guys are telling us contradictory information. You know, a year ago you told us a different thing. It's because SEO is changing. And especially with link building, Google's stance changes over time, how they look at links. They don't have domain authority. It's a made-up metric by Moz. I'm not saying it's a bad metric, I'm just saying it's made up. And everyone has their own variations of it, from domain authority to domain ratings to domain score to trust flow, whatever you want to end up calling it. But what I'm getting at is you need to think, hey, what's working right now and be more long-term. And as strategies adapt, you have to adapt with them. If you don't, you're going to stop ranking.
I mean, there's one silver lining to all this. Once you get the link building going, you start to build some momentum, what's going to happen is a site is just going to continue to— you're going to build that flywheel, which we've talked about, right? Once the site gets to a certain, let's call it authority or some type of metric that you're using from SEO, whatever you publish is going to naturally start to create— it's going to start to rank. And whatever is ranking number 1, it's going to start to attract links. And then you're just, you're starting to build that flywheel, right? You're trying to get to that point. That's what you're aiming for. So we're not saying don't build a link building operation. Don't think about it. Definitely think about it, but do it the right way. And once you get to a certain point, it's going to pay dividends for you. And it's going to continue to pay dividends. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Neil, anything else?
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Goodbye.
