By rjonesx.

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn’t a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn’t some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn’t the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building.

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don’t have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the “Pareto Principle”. Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won’t see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

The goal of this “Webslog” is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin’ love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It’s the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It’s likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results.

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track …read more

Source:: Moz Blog

Author: Aaron