Hi there, and welcome to issue #13 of the Outranked SEO newsletter.
This issue tackles one of the most common questions I’ve been asked in the last ten years…
"Why aren't links having the impact on my brand's organic visibility that I expected?"
You’ll learn:
- The common reasons why links aren’t having the impact you expected
- How to identify what needs to change for you to see the right outcomes
- Why no links can compensate for other SEO issues
(In running a digital PR agency, I speak with lots of businesses and marketing teams who are looking to switch up the agency they're working with ... and this comes up as a frustration in lots of discussions)
I'm going to lay out the different ways I answer this when I'm asked.
There's no universal response here, but after I've spent ten minutes looking at the type of links being earned and at the site itself (mostly for tech issues and at content quality), I'm usually pretty confident I know which to give.
And I'll share each of these below.
Let’s get into it.
The reasons why you're not seeing an ROI from your investment in link building activity.
When I'm asked why link building isn't having a measurable impact on organic visibility, it's almost always because of one or more of these reasons:
1. The links are being ignored by Google because they're spammy / low quality
If you’re buying guest posts or link inserts from link marketplaces, you’re probably wasting your budget.
You can spot these links a mile off…
- exact match anchor text
- no real topical focus of the site
- every post is a similar length
- every post links out to commercial pages with exact match anchor text and a handful of ‘authority links’
- no or very low traffic to the site
If these spammy links are easy for humans to spot, they’re sure as hell easy for Google to spot.
Google’s been ignoring this type of spammy links for years. And if Google’s ignoring the links, you won’t see any impact.
Link building shouldn’t be about manipulating signals. Go do things to earn them instead…
2. The links are being ignored by Google because they're not relevant
Yes, Google can (and does) ignore some links from authoritative sites such as press publications.
I’ve written extensively on this, and given talks at multiple conferences about it.
In last years Google documentation leak, I discovered an attribute called ‘anchorMismatchDemotion.’ This is, without a doubt, a demotion based on relevance, or a lack of.
When a page that links doesn’t topically align with the site being linked to (this is measured with embeddings and the similarity of them), it’s being either devalued or ignored.
But here’s the thing…
This happens when links are from authoritative sources. And yes, that includes links earned with PR.
This is the one people often struggle to hear; they’ve invested into digital PR and have earned links from top-tier publications.
But if they’re not relevant, they’re not having the impact they could. And it’s maybe the most common reason I see for authoritative links having very little impact.
Relevance matters. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it matters more than any other link metric.
Focus your efforts on earning the type of links you’d still want if Google didn’t exist.
3. There's a link / authority gap to close with competitors and it still exists, despite making progress
You can’t ignore what competitors are doing.
It’s often the case that great links are being earned, and they’re closing the gap with competitors. But it looks like they’re having no impact.
And this is why I encourage you to bring data into link analysis.
If your competitors are ahead of you, you won’t see an impact until you’ve closed that gap. That doesn’t mean the links aren’t working.
They are, they’re just working to close that gap before they can work to get you ahead.
This is probably the most common reason why brands duck out of the right type of link acquisition work too soon.
Track the link gap and how it’s closing, giving trust in the process. You’ve gotta close that link gap first before you can power ahead.
4. Links aren't being earned to priority pages or internal linking is missing (or weak)
If you want to see an impact on SEO success from earned links, you’ve got two main options; earn links into the pages you’re trying to rank or earn links into other (relevant) pages then internally link to these priority pages.
Often, neither of these happen. And it’s frustrating because it’s such an easy win. If you’re only earning links to your homepage or aren’t using internal linking properly, you’re missing out on impact.
This is where strategy comes in, over tactics. You need a plan of which pages you need to earn links, directly or indirectly, to.
If you can earn links straight to those pages, great. If you can’t, you need to use internal linking.
It’s simple and it works.
5. Competitors are earning links at a faster velocity
Competitors don’t stand still.
Especially not when they see another brand ramping up their activity.
You can be earning great links, but if there’s a link gap and competitors are earning links at a faster velocity, you’ll struggle to catch up.
You need to know this information and use it to know how aggressive your link acquisition strategy needs to be. You can’t just work blind and hope for the best; it comes back to the fact that if there’s a link gap, it needs closing.
You can, of course, outrank competitors by earning fewer but more relevant links. It’s not just a numbers game; but often I see two or more brands all earning great links, meaning the way to outperform is to earn at a faster velocity.
Don’t just ‘earn links’ and hope for the best. You need a strategy that maps out how you’re going to win.
6. The site's content just isn't good enough to rank
You can earn relevant, authoritative links and still not see growth if your content just isn’t good enough to rank.
We’ve seen the bar raised over the last few years in terms of what Google, and users, expect from a page that ranks at the top of the SERPs.
Links aren’t a magic wand that compensates for low quality content or misaligned intent. They once were, but not anymore.
Your commercial page content strategy, at least, should be based on a continuous improvement model. Set your goal as creating the best page on the web for a topic, and maintaining that, and you’ll see a bigger impact from link acquisition activity.
Before assuming that links aren’t having an impact, take a critical view on your site’s content.
Is it better than what ranks at the top of the SERPs right now? If not, you’ve got work to do there, too.
7. There are critical tech SEO issues holding back the site's visibility
You can be earning great links and have great content, but if critical tech issues exist, they’re likely holding back your site’s visibility.
I’m talking crawling and indexing issues (hello millions of faceted navigation pages indexed or JavaScript issues, for example) over things like PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals.
If your site can’t be properly crawled and indexed, links won’t compensate for this either.
Links build authority and help Google to understand topicality. But they won’t have a measurable impact if fundamental tech issues exist.
The takeaway…
If the links you’re earning are relevant and authoritative, there’s probably some other reason why you’re not seeing the impact you expected.
Before you assume links don’t matter (they do), take the time to figure out what’s actually holding your site back.
It’s easy to take a view that links don’t work, but there’s way more to it than that.
Build a strategy, measure progress properly and trust the process. When you do it right, it works.
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If you learned something from this issue or it’s made you think about SEO a little differently, please consider forwarding it to someone else on your team.
I’m on a mission to make sure more SEO investment actually has an impact on real business metrics.
Appreciate you making it to the end; same time next week?
- James Brockbank
P.S. If you ever need expert support with SEO or digital PR and want to drive results that actually matter, I’d love to chat. Let’s talk.
📌 This week’s bookmarks:
I've been out of the office on annual leave this week so scheduled this issue in advance ... these bookmarks will return when I'm back from my holiday!
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👋 Hi, I'm James...
Managing Director & Founder at Digitaloft.
I've spent the last 10 years building an agency that's perfectly positioned to help ambitious brands to drive real business growth from SEO and digital PR.
You might have seen me speaking at events like BrightonSEO, SMX and the International Search Summit.
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