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The Link-Earning Stack Every SEO Should Strive For

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The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Being an SEO, you can’t go a day without hearing about links: “Links are crucial!” or “Prioritize links!” or “Links are the nourishing lifeblood of the almighty algorithm!”

But for those of us who’ve taken the next step to actually figure out how to earn said links, we realize it’s not that straightforward.

It’s hard to sum up all of that in the tweets and LinkedIn posts that get shared about link earning, because the truth is, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all link earning approach or vendor. You need a link earning “stack” that appropriately reflects the complexity of your marketing and content goals.

In an ideal world, here’s what that stack would look like. (Hat tip to Paul Zalewski, SVP of Marketing at Verblio, who gave me the idea for this breakdown!)

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Passive link earning

Objective: Set up a foundation for link earning with lower effort over time

Content needed: A “linkable content” asset (this is key)

Promotion needed: Manual outreach and promotion to acquire the first one or two links, to help the page initially rank

Passive link earning is any content you can create that will naturally earn links over time without having to actively promote it on an ongoing basis. These pieces are designed to carry their weight in earning links without much active promotion (which is what separates it from the next category, post-specific link earning). They’re often not directly tied to your product or service, though if they are, that’s certainly a bonus.

When SEO teams can collaborate with content teams on creating “linkable content,” passive link earning magic can happen.

Some common examples of linkable content include:

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  • Statistics-based or definition-focused posts: People are always looking for stats to cite or definitions to link to.

  • Tools or other interactive resources: If they’re useful, folks love to share them!

  • “Best”/”Top” posts or annual reports: People like to reference lists they’re on or share lists that are interesting, valuable compilations.

Andy Crestodina at Orbit Media Studios is excellent at this strategy.

This post presents new data points around blogging, and it’s earned 2,761 linking domains! How? Because there are so many blog posts about blogging (meta) that want to include statistics relevant to the point they’re trying to make — and Andy is providing them.

Here’s an example of an Alexa blog post citing a data point from the Orbit Media piece:

1652191314 269 The Link Earning Stack Every SEO Should Strive For

If you want to dive into this link-earning type more, I recommend reaching out to either Andy or Alex Heinz, who I just saw give an awesome presentation on this very topic.

Targeted link earning

Objective: Help elevate a particular, valuable post in the SERPs

Content needed: N/A — the post you want to boost already exists

Promotion needed: Manual outreach and promotion to more niche sites

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You write a piece of content and you know it’s killer, but you want an initial boost to elevate it on page one.

You probably want to build credibility to that page by earning a link or two that will help demonstrate its value.

This is post-specific link earning. It usually involves highly tailored outreach in which you pitch sites to link back to your post. While it’s often a pretty manual effort, even a couple of links can make a huge difference.

I’m going to use Golden Thread Tarot as an example. I do not work with or for them, so I can’t confirm they did any manual outreach. But this example still illustrates my point. Also, tarot reading is my newest obsession.

Their page on how to read tarot ranks in positions 1-3 for highly relevant terms:

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This is a great example of a page that should be prioritized for targeted link earning so they can continue to maintain their positions. Why? Because people searching to learn more about reading tarot are the perfect potential customers for their tarot deck and app. Notice how the page has plenty of calls-to-action.

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Obviously ranking for “money pages” won’t always be easy, especially for higher-volume terms with greater competition. But if you’re truly creating the best content in response to the searcher’s intent, a couple of links can give you a boost.

There is some overlap between targeted link earning and passive link earning, but the primary difference is that in the former, you’re designing a piece of content from scratch with the sole purpose of building links. The latter is link outreach you conduct in order to boost a page that’s important to your audience acquisition and conversions.

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Site authority link earning

Objective: Improve the overall authority of your site/brand

Content Needed: Original reporting and/or newsworthy data

Promotion Needed: Pitching journalists or setting up syndication relationships

A rising tide lifts all boats. In this case, the boats are your specific pages of content, and the rising tide is your site’s domain authority.

If your site and brand are deemed authoritative, it increases the chances that your individual pieces of content will be considered authoritative, as well.

I’ll use one of our brand partners, Sidecar Health, as an example. We’ve been creating newsworthy stories on their behalf and distributing them through the Stacker newswire since December, and Sidecar Health’s domain authority has increased by four in a few months.

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The strategy is to create top-of-the-funnel, newsworthy content that authoritative news publications would be interested in running. That way we can earn links/canonicals that demonstrate that the brand is producing valuable content.

Our first story for them was about rural hospital closures across the country. It earned 300+ pickups on sites like MSN, SFGate, The Houston Chronicle, and more.

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When you earn this type of link equity to your site, you can then leverage internal linking to distribute that equity to pages that are important to your SEO goals. In using this strategy for just a few months, Sidecar Health has seen a 77% increase in keywords in positions 1-3 in the SERPs.

This type of link earning is often the missing piece for brands who have found that their on-site content is top-notch, but their traffic is plateauing anyway.

Niche link earning

Objective: Earn more relevant authority in your specific niche

Content Needed: Original reporting and/or newsworthy data

Promotion Needed: Pitching journalists or setting up syndication relationships

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You can view niche link earning as a spinoff of site authority link earning. Niche link earning just focuses on a lower DA and higher relevance.

I’ve been talking a lot about authority in this piece, and for good reason: it’s one of the most important aspects and benefits of earning links.

But relevance is a piece of the puzzle as well. You don’t want to be earning links that have nothing to do with your brand, even if you’re taking a tangential approach mentioned in the previous section.

It’s good to supplement your general link earning strategy by ensuring you’re earning links from more relevant sites, that are specifically aligned with your brand offering.

To continue the Sidecar Health example, in addition to the links we’ve earned for them, their backlink profile includes links from sites like Verywell Health and Healthline as well as even more niche sites like Health Care Business Today and Electronic Health Reporter.

If you’re finding that you’re not naturally earning links from respected sites in your industry, it’s certainly worth trying to pitch them on your content or build syndication partnerships with them.

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A well-rounded link earning strategy

Any one of these link-earning strategies can help move the needle for your organic growth, especially if you’re just getting started.

However, as you mature your program, you’ll need all of these strategies in order to grow sustainably and consistently. The trick becomes understanding how to implement these strategies — whether in-house or outsourcing. A common approach I see is having an internal team that focuses on post-specific and niche link earning while hiring outside help with passive and brand authority linking.

Whatever you try, remember to consistently check that you have your bases covered so you achieve the organic traffic growth you’re aiming for.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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