Link Building In The Hardest Markets & Verticals - outREACH 2019

Getting the Biggest Linking Coverage
In the Hardest Markets
@JamesFinlayson

In the past year we’ve built 5k links

Greenpeace
WWF
NASA
Our work has been featured by some awesome organizations

…and shared by well known celebrities

Washington PostThe Mirror
Daily MailThe Mirror
Detroit Free Press
The Herald
out The National Post
We regularly achieve coverage in newspapers

TV3 (Denmark) NBC (US) ITV (UK)
TV2 (Denmark)
…and sometimes TV

In the past, we’ve shown campaigns, like this one,
where we created the world’s first gigapixel interactive timelapse

And this, a virtual-reality tour of the world’s steepest train journey

And this piece, in which we ‘proved’ that
Emilio Estevez is one of the best actors of all time

Wouldn’t work in my industry
“ ”
Yet, the most consistent feedback we receive is:
The four most common reasons given are

It wouldn’t work in my industry because
I work in a boring industry

It wouldn’t work in my
industry because we’re
so tightly regulated

It wouldn’t work in my
industry because we’re
B2B

It wouldn’t work in my industry because
my industry’s so competitive

We’re not calling bullshit,
these each make it harder

We’re just saying
that it’s still possible

…and not in an inspirational poster anything-is-possible way

We’re saying it because we got Newsweek to link to an online casino,

we got the BBC to link to an online pharmacy… with this headline

and we got Wired to link to a company that sells UPVC doors

In the past we’ve talked about the
importance of grit.
It’s one of the most important factors
that we interview for.

…and we could end there
But, I suspect, as you’re reading this, you’re
probably quite gritty to start with

So let’s talk through each pain-point in turn

Unless you sell premium products, or are a media company,
your products are likely boring to the majority of people

People buy solutions, not products

People buy because it makes them look or feel good

People care about looking and feeling good
…so identify that and base your campaign around it

It gained traction; 250 Linking sites including The BBC, Forbes,The Telegraph,
Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur.com, Inc and Business Insider.

It generated 250 links including
The BBC, Forbes,The Telegraph,Wall Street Journal,
entrepreneur.com, Inc and Business Insider

For GoCompare’s Home Insurance comparison, instead of talking about the
product, we created a simple yet beautiful piece showcasing modernism.

People didn’t share it because they care about modernism, though, they shared it
because it made them look cultured and intelligent.

It generated 201 links including
The Guardian,The Independent The Telegraph,Wall Street Journal,
entrepreneur.com, Inc and Business Insider

Base your research on customers’ motives,
not their declared needs.

This most often comes up in
finance, medicine, gambling

The ASA rules are extremely strict, and they’re enforced.
Two healthcare companies have been found in breach in the last three
months alone.

That means companies in these niches have internal compliance people
who are, rightly, petrified of breaching the rules.
Those officers, rather than the ASA,
are what really stop a campaign in its tracks

We work with BabylonHealth, a
healthcare provider that gives you
access to a doctor, from your phone,
24/7, within a couple of hours.
They’ve been described by the BBC as
“a game changer in the world of on-
demand healthcare”

Let’s talk through the real slides we
used to successfully sell in a creative
concept.

Rush hour in any city in the UK. People jostle each other as they rush not to be
late, even the smallest delay can spiral. In summer its hot and sweaty, in winter
wet and slippery.We all know quite how stressful modern cities can be.

Wouldn’t it be better to be outside, in the serene quiet of the countryside?

but, at at the end of the day, most of us head back into not out of town.
So, maybe stress is really more a function of time than location?

So,
What time of day are we most stressed?
What day of the week is the most stressful?
WHERE are we most – and least- stressed?
Does living in the countryside actually lead to a less stressed life?

How do we prove any of that, though?

We could do a survey
Wont’ give us local angles unless it’s huge

We could mine the patient data
Even in a world with no bad ideas, this is a bad idea

We could use government data
Unlikely to have all the angles we want and
will be old data

We could use government data
or…

We could mine millions of tweets
If we’re just pulling out references to emotions, this wont exactly be scientific though

Introducing…
Professor Mike Thelwall
Professor of Information Science
Wolverhampton University
Inventor of TensiStrength
TensiStrength is an algorithm that
takes short snippets of text and
estimates the stress level of the
person that wrote it

and so, it got made.What made this possible, though?

It uses public data, completely anonymized. (so no PID concern)

We’re not making any claims, Mike is.

Mike’s quite credible.

We’re not talking about the app or healthcare provision.

We’re not talking about the app or healthcare provision.
We’re not saying ‘if you feel stressed you should speak to a doctor easily, on your
phone, through this radical new service that’s so easy and quick it’ll change your life’

Build your strategy around customer, rather than product, insights

It went on to achieve over100 links from sites including:

December January February
March April May
Because we were able to get campaigns out, we were able to generate links consistently: over 200
from sites including:
In industries where people are struggling to launch anything and you’re able to consistently get
links each month, remarkable things can happen.

0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
7,000
8,000
9,000
08/06/2017 08/09/2017 08/12/2017 08/03/2018 08/06/2018 08/09/2018 08/12/2018 08/03/2019
SearchmetricsVisibility
8x increase in 10 months

A further tip on this…
Annual Reports are a goldmine

We’re going to build a site that shows users how insecure their computer is
by showing semi-private data that their browser’s leaking
and checking to see if their computer is secure to common, already patched, hacks.
Imagine you want to pitch Microsoft this:
Pretty unlikely to get agreed, right?

But if you check the recent earnings call, you’ll find these quotes:

So let’s add that context:
Because your CEO recently said that ‘cybersecurity is a central challenge’ we plan to help you tackle it head on.
We’re going to build a site that shows users how insecure their computer is
Not in a generic sense, but in a very personalized way because, as your CEO says ‘personalization is increasingly key to
every… marketing strategy’
so we’ll show each user the semi-private data that their browser’s leaking
and check to see if their computer is secure to common, already patched, hacks.
We’ll then tell them exactly what to do to have best-in-class security.
By doing so, much like Microsoft 365, we’ll empower everyone to take control of their security.
Way less scary now, right?

This man really loves Inventory Management Software

and so he visits leading B2B site SupplyChain247

Inventory Management Software
It’s these kind of sites that people traditionally think of when they think about B2B

Gera
(one of our developers)
(he’s awesome)
But even the staunchest inventory management software lover
must take a tea break eventually

…and, SimilarWeb tells us, when he does, he visits these sites:

…and, Searchmetrics tells us that often, when he searches,
he goes to these sites instead:

…so if I want my brand to be in front of him, I should probably concentrate on Inc,
Bloomberg and Forbes instead.

Especially considering that, if I get coverage there,
all the B2B sites will likely see it on the them and report on it in any case

And I’m unlikely to get meaningful social traction without the big hitters

When the BBC asked us to make a campaign for them…

We were sure to ask for credit on the page because the big sites also provide
a ton of credibility

B2B isn’t real, it’s all still human-to-human

B2B is a C-level challenge
B2B is an audience targeting justification challenge

Use Similarweb to show what other sites your audience read

Use Searchmetrics to show who those sites compete for traffic with

Use Buzzsumo to show where content related to your industry actually gets shared

An industry is only competitive if you let it be.

The travel industry is home to some of the world’s best listicles

…truly amazing photo journals

And the occasional, highly practical travel guide

20172016 2018
A street-view tour, with audio guide, of Malmo Castle
A playlist generator of the best songs, by the most loved artists, at any festival in the last 30 years.

20172016 2018
Adding motion, to bring life, to Edward Hoppers art
A 360-degree virtual ride on the world’s steepest railway

20172016 2018
The fastest way (as proven by an algorithm) to visit the all the best restaurants in America
Mined from an amazing data source, the most memorable movie locations from all around the world

None of those pieces compete with the other travel content we showed you.
They’re so radically different that they’re non-competitive

Why compete on who can have the best survey?

Is it really important that your photoshopped images
are 10% better than your competition?

If an industry is competitive, use it as an opportunity to change the game

It wouldn’t work in my country

Many ideas simply don’t translate well

In the UK, this achieved 1 million views in the first 15 days of launch

It almost certainly wouldn’t have gained traction in Germany

We know this, because last year we built over 100 links in Germany

That’s way less links than we’d expect to build for a UK client though.

0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
17/02/2018 17/05/2018 17/08/2018 17/11/2018 17/02/2019
SearchmetricsVisibility
It still moved them from not ranking, to the first page, for their target term with 74k monthly searches, in 9 months

You simply don’t need as many links, as you need in the UK, to rank in most countries.

115,661
67,699
44,330
27,465
5,589
0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000
UK
DE
FR
IT
FI
Median Linking Domains
Median Linking Root Domains For Top 20 Ranking Sites In Each Country
Understanding this is important in setting expectations for how many links you’ll be able to build each month

There’s something else going on in the background

Anyone can have one successful campaign
But we’ve seen almost nobody see rankings increases as a result

Last year, for GoCompare’s car insurance comparison product, we took a look at
how different countries around the world are embracing the electric car revolution

Including countries where the people are embracing the tech (by buying the cars),
but their governments aren’t (by not installing charge points)

It was covered on Australia’s largest news site

And led to a Senate committee to investigate why Australia was so far behind.

195 sites 182 sites 176 sites
170 sites 168 sites
Whilst this may seem impressive, what we’re prouder of is that the next five
campaigns, in a row, all achieved over 150 linking root domains:
…because that’s hard.

Anyone can have one successful campaign

We could talk all day about how amazing Gera’s coding skills are, or how Barnes can
achieve almost any link anywhere, but the truth is…

We’re an agency of 50 people now and…

I know that sounds like a cheesy card… it
is.
It’s also true – there’s something very
tangible about being able to speak to
someone who’s had real-life experience
around the topic you’re discussing, being
able to bounce ideas around a whole
group of people, to swapping that perfect
contact for your campaign and to a whole
group of people getting stuck in when a
journo says they’ll cover your piece today
if you can get them a piece of data that
doesn’t yet exist.

Telling you to hire 50 people is not good advice.

So here are some ways you can stay inspired

BigSEO: http://bit.ly/bigseoslack

outREACH Community: http://bit.ly/outreach-community

We’d love for you to share where and what
inspires you in the Slack channel.
Let’s all be better, together.

So, in addition to being your grittiest self,
remember to…

Set expectations and understand
what success means in your industry

Almost all products are boring.
Understand, better, the problems the purchase solves

Repeatedly quote C-Level staff to achieve buy-in

Compete on your own terms
or just
don’t compete at all

Join the community to continue the conversation
http://bit.ly/outreach-community

Link Building In The Hardest Markets & Verticals - outREACH 2019

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