Calculating the Right Budget for Link Building Success

The easy answer is, it depends.

Finding your link building budget isn’t straightforward. It’s a precise calculation considering industry size, website age, authority, current link profile, and your budget. There’s no magic formula, but typically, allocate 10-20% of your total SEO budget for link building.

To be clear: spending money on link building does not mean you are buying links. All of the following recommendations are allowed by Google. In fact, Google encourages website owners to focus on building high-quality links from authoritative websites:

• Google’s Webmaster Guidelines: Google’s Webmaster Guidelines state that “links from high-quality websites are a signal that your site is valuable.”
• Google Search Central documentation: Google’s Search Central documentation explains that “links are an important factor in Google’s search ranking algorithm.” The documentation also states that “links from high-quality websites are more valuable than links from low-quality websites.”
• Statements from Google employees: Google employees have made a number of statements over the years that emphasize the importance of high-quality links. For example, in a 2016 interview, Matt Cutts, a former Google employee, said that “links are still the most important factor in Google’s search ranking algorithm.”

So, let’s build a budget that will get you the backlinks your site needs.

Building a Modern Link Building Budget

In the world of link building, we can’t simply conjure links out of thin air, no Field of Dreams magic here, we have built it and they are not coming.

The return on your link building investment typically aligns with the effort invested. So, what does this investment entail? It combines human expertise with digital tools to shape strategies, generate content, and distribute it across the digital realm. A successful link building strategy relies on leveraging a variety of tools, fostering relationships, and diligently monitoring performance to eliminate undesirable elements.

Strategy Creation and Execution

Let’s illustrate this with a real-world scenario. Imagine your strategist presents an artboard detailing a whitepaper that explores the impact of a recession on the plumbing industry, highlighting your solution to empower plumbers for success. This whitepaper is a goldmine, featuring insights on job growth, showcasing compelling case studies with your product, and offering actionable steps for readers to maximize its benefits. After weeks of meticulous planning, the whitepaper is approved and live on your site. Yet, the traffic isn’t flowing as expected. Why? Simply publishing content isn’t enough; you must craft a strategic approach to draw people in.

A savvy strategist would present this artboard because it directly addresses a pressing need, identified through careful keyword research and audience analysis. This strategy doesn’t just tackle readers’ challenges with actionable steps; it prioritizes imparting essential knowledge, ensuring a user-centric approach, rather than a pushy product pitch.

Behind the scenes of an effective link building strategy, your SEO team is tirelessly researching various outlets such as media platforms, bloggers, and influencers who would find your content compelling. They create link bait and then set out to distribute it through advertising, social media boosts, and cold emails, ensuring your content reaches the right eyes. Additionally, they identify affiliates eager to promote fresh content and share the whitepaper with links leading back to your site.

This, my friends, is a tangible example of a tactical backlinking strategy, the kind of effort that fuels a successful campaign. Remember, this single tactic must operate alongside a scalable solution for all your content needs. If you’re hesitant to invest in both human expertise and indispensable tools, your campaign may end up as a solitary page on your website.

Assessing Link Quality

Links are not like wine, the more expensive it is, doesn’t always mean it’s better quality. So it is imperative that you pay attention to the quality of your current link profile and that of your competition.

When evaluating the quality of a backlink, there are a number of metrics that you can look at, depending on which SEO software you use, it may have a different name with the same measurement:

• Domain Authority: Called Domain Authority (DA) on Moz and measured by Trust Flow and Citation Flow on Majestic, across the most popular SEO analytics tools the quality of a site is measured using an algorithm of these factors:
  • The number and quality of backlinks to a website
  • The age and authority of the websites linking to a website
  • The relevance of the backlinks to a website
  • The anchor text used in the backlinks
  • The placement of the backlinks on the pages linking to a website

• Relevancy: The backlink should be from a website that is relevant to your own. This means that the website should be in the same industry or niche as your website, promote similar content on their social media, and use anchor text that is relevant to your target keywords.
• Anchor text: The anchor text is the text that is used to place the hyperlink to your website. Engines use that text to understand the linked page better. So use your target and related keywords to get a good, authoritative mix of backlink signals on the anchor text.
• Link placement: Link placement matters for backlinks because search engines consider the context in which a link is placed when evaluating its quality. Prominently placed links are seen more, and therefore given more weight, as compared to footer or sidebar links.

Building a Budget

Link building plays a vital role in any SEO strategy, but it’s crucial to invest wisely and prioritize high-quality links. To make the most of your link building budget, consider the following tips:

• Content Strategy: Develop top-notch content that naturally attracts links from others.
• Research: Concentrate on securing links from reputable websites while building relationships with bloggers, podcasters, and influencers.
• Execute: Diversify your link sources through email outreach, effective marketing tactics, and organic search methods.
• Marketing: Promote your content vigorously on social media and various online platforms.

As you plan your SEO budget for the upcoming year, remember that effective link building goes beyond randomly placing links on websites. It’s a comprehensive journey from strategic planning to flawless execution, tailored to your initial strategy.

For those eager to fill out their budget worksheets immediately, I’m providing my best estimates based on recent observations. However, keep in mind that each situation is unique, and these figures come without guaranteed accuracy:

• On the lower end, expect to invest between $50 and $300 per link.
• For a mid-range approach, budget anywhere from $300 to $700 per link.
• At the high-end, be prepared to allocate between $700 and $2,000 per link.