Thread by @danielkcheung

How to do "white-hat" link building even @JohnMu can get behind.

SPOILER 🚨: it's not as easy as buying content with a 🔗 insert and this is what makes it so effective.

🧵 ..

@JohnMu FWIW, white-hat link building is a made-up term.
It means nothing.

One person's white hat is another person's grey/black.

In this context, #whitehat #linkbuilding = not paying for a placement or 'admin fee'.

Now we got that out of the way let's dive in.

@JohnMu This method gets called a few things:
• statistic pieces
• research reports
• "content marketing" 😏

💡 It involves collecting YOUR OWN data.

💡 It differs from the common approach of regurgitating the SAME data sources.

💡 This differentiation is HOW you will EARN links.

@JohnMu High-level process:

1️⃣ Find a topic of interest
2️⃣ Create questionnaire
3️⃣ Get survey completions
4️⃣ Analyse data
5️⃣ Find stories in data
6️⃣ Create visualisations
7️⃣ Write up findings + publish
8️⃣ Wait for it to rank
9️⃣ Pay for PPC while you wait
🔟 Collect links

@JohnMu 1️⃣ Find a topic of interest: choose a topic that aligns with your site or client's business

Eg, average wedding cost is a suitable topic for any wedding-related business or website.

@JohnMu 2️⃣ Create questionnaire using Jotform, Survey Monkey, Google Forms, Gravity Forms, Google Doc/Sheets or TypeForm.

Come up with a series of questions based on possible stories that you want to be able to tell.

Eg, X% of couples spent > $80k on their wedding.

@JohnMu 3️⃣ Get at least 1k+ survey completions by leveraging social media ads.

Why social media ads?

They tend to have the lowest CPMs.

Alternatively pay for Google Consumer Surveys, Pollfish, SurveyCircle, or PollPool to get a representative sample size.

@JohnMu 4️⃣ Analyse the data (eg, median, mean, range, standard deviation, variance)

This is required for step 5️⃣.

💡 There are talented data people available on Fiverr and Upwork who can turn your responses into clean and usable data.

@JohnMu 5️⃣ Find, extract and HIGHLIGHT stories from the data

These stories and facts is how you'll rank and get links.

Eg,
• x̄ engagement period
• x̄ number wedding guests
• x̄ age at time of marriage
• x̄ spend on photographer/cake/etc

@JohnMu 6️⃣ Create visualisations (optional)

Journalists tend NOT to use visualisations created by others. But other smaller websites may.

PLUS, it makes your data easier to understand which helps it getting linked to as a source of truth.

@JohnMu 7️⃣ Write up findings + publish and use exact match keyword as the anchor text to link to your money page

• do all the usual onpage stuff (headings + bullet points)
• insert your visualisations
• provide a download link to your raw data (journalists need to see this).

@JohnMu 8️⃣ Wait for it to rank

This will take some time .. but when it ranks, journalists, writers and bloggers can easily find your data and use it in their content in exchange for a backlink.

@JohnMu 9️⃣ Pay for PPC while you wait

Why wait when you can shoot to the top of the SERPs immediately?

💡 If you have the budget, display ads are a great shortcut while you wait for your stats piece to rank.

@JohnMu 🔟 Collect (more) links by doing manual outreach

Hit up publications (even COMPETITORS) who cover the topic.

Let them know they can use the data as long as they credit you.

💡 Links from competitors are very difficult to get so they're usually the best links.

@JohnMu Why does this method work?

You become a source where most skyscraper methods involve repurposing existing quotes and numbers.

By introducing your own unique data, your URL becomes its own reference point when others seek new/updated sources.

@JohnMu Recap:
1️⃣ Find a relevant topic to your money page
2️⃣ Create questionnaire
3️⃣ Get survey completions
4️⃣ Analyse data
5️⃣ Create stories from data
6️⃣ Create visualisations
7️⃣ Write up findings + publish
8️⃣ Wait for it to rank
9️⃣ Pay for PPC while you wait
🔟 Outreach to competitors

@JohnMu BONUS: people you should be following to help you think differently about link building.

• @justdebbb
• @staceycav
• @CarrieRosePR
• @BibiBuzzCom

And tune into We Earn Media podcast to understand what journos actually want. weearnmedia.com

If you found this helpful and think others might too, give it a share from the start of the thread:

https://twitter.com/danielkcheung/status/1535517819168706561?s=20&t=jP09Z64QQzchanUF2LmypQ