Often when we’re trying to build links for a client, we need to work pretty hard to create the opportunities. This is usually the case when a client hasn’t invested in any other marketing activities, so there’s not much buzz for us to latch on to.
But often, link building is just about connecting the dots.
If you’re working with a client from the Highlands in Scotland that is already making plenty of noise and generating lots of great coverage through other marketing activities, our job as a link-building agency becomes less about creating the opportunities themselves and more about maximising the opportunities created by the client.
Case in point is an interesting client we worked with previously. This client is consistently generating press coverage through a variety of fun ideas (and sometimes even controversies), making them an ideal link-building client.
Without revealing the exact details of who the client is, the client came up with a great idea which resulted in lots of press coverage relating to a notorious footballer.
The Limp Arm
Football publications jumped on this and proceeded to publish dozens of articles about the story. Many of the publications chose to include an image of what the client had done, taking the image from the client’s website. Although this clever idea generated plenty of news coverage for the client, most of the articles that
we found hadn’t included any links back to the client’s website. Based on this, a different (ahem, lesser 😉 ) link-building agency might have taken this route with the outreach:
“Hello X publication,
Thanks for mentioning (our client) in this piece you published recently –
We’d love if you could include a link to (our client’s) website where you mention the brand name so
readers know where to head if they want more information about what we do.
1
All the best,
Poor link builder who doesn’t stand a chance”
The Strong Arm
But that’s not very compelling, is it?
You’re basically asking politely for a link to be added, and you’re relying on a random act of kindness from a very busy editor. These publications are producing hundreds of articles per day, and won’t waste time editing older articles unless you give them a real reason to do so.
The great thing about when publications use images of yours is that really, they shouldn’t be doing this without permission, or at the very least they should only be doing it with some sort of proper attribution. And if a publication has grabbed an original image of yours without asking beforehand, you’re entitled to drop them a firm message requesting that proper attribution is added.
That’s why, in our outreach, we decided to focus more on the usage of the client’s imagery:
“Hello X publication,
This is Sam from ‘Client’s brand’, I’m writing regarding this article you published recently –
We’re delighted to be featured in this article, but we noticed that you used an image of ours without any attribution as to where the image originated from. We’re happy for the image to be used, but we’d ask that you please include the following attribution:
Image provided by Client (https://clientswebsite.com)
All the best,
LinkJump”
The email isn’t threatening by any means, but it’s a bit firmer. And throwing in words like ‘attribution’ makes sure that your email finds its way to the person in charge of such things, rather than the intern checking the emails who usually deletes most of what lands in the inbox.
This simple switch in focus resulted in a number of links back to the client’s website, which I’m certain we wouldn’t have acquired had we decided to use the first approach. It is the subtle things you do that make the most difference.
Also, do you know what’s crazy about this image link-building tactic?
Sometimes, it’s actually better if the client’s PR efforts haven’t resulted in any links, because when initially published, most publications will set all external links within their articles to nofollow as default. So if the publication has used a client’s image and added attribution in the first iteration of the article, it’s usually not great for us, because it’ll usually be a no-follow link that they’ve used.
However, if we’re getting a publication to update an old article, there’s a good chance it’ll be a do-follow link, meaning it actually passes PageRank (and actually influences your rankings). If we’re feeling really cheeky, we can actually request that it be a do-follow link as part of the attribution.
We got a little into the weeds there. But in short, if you want your PR efforts to tie up with link building results, drop us a message. To read something similar, check out this blog post – https://linkjump.co.uk/image-link-building/
