Let’s say it’s your job to improve the rankings of the sofa category page on your employer’s ecommerce website. Skip glib, superfluous intro >>

Your technical, onpage optimizations and DA are – miraculously – at parity with the top 10 competitors for “buy a sofa” and yet your page languishes deep on page 2. 

You check inbound links to the top 10 competitor pages and they all have more than yours. On average, across the top 10 pages, they have 127 MORE referring domains.

OK, So Build 128 Links to Your Sofa Category Page?

If you can rule out content, onpage optimizations, technical or algorithmic issues… then YES. You need more referring domains and 128 is a worthy goal if you want to rank on the first page for the most valuable keywords. But… HOW??!!!

Use the Buyer’s Journey to Discover Link Campaign Ideas

Our Buyer’s Journey questions below – and our worksheet – enable you, dear linkbuilder to build all the links you’ll need. And most importantly you’ll do it by thinking first about the CONTEXT of the page you’re building links to… and not TACTIC.

The Buyer’s Journey thing sounds great but what’s wrong with tactics?

NOTHING – but if you start with a tactic you know/love/feel comfortable with then you restrict yourself from all the other possible campaign directions (and completely ignore the Buyer’s Journey). To hit 128 links we’re going to need something more than a digital PR infographic about the history of sofas that gets 3 links and 50 organic visits a month from other digital PR folks looking for sofa infographics.

Building 128 Links to https://www.yourecommercesite.com/sofas/

Our Buyer’s Journey questions unpack the context of the offering for sale on your page so that we can learn exactly who might link to it. Further we’ll spell out the onpage content additions and highly-effective outreach that will incentivize authors, influencers, reporters, pundits and other various publishers to link!

To aid our contextual unpacking of sofas – and building 128+ links to the category page -we created a Buyer’s Journey framework that looks something like this:

Me whiteboarding linking context development

Got it? Great! See you next article. JK ok.

Link Context Mining with 17 Buyer’s Journey Questions>>

Here are the stages of consideration and work that you have ahead of you. Don’t worry – we built a worksheet as well so you can make notes and check off tasks as you go (whether you’re focused on sofas or not)! Please make a copy of the Google Sheet for your own use.

Here’s how to determine exactly what content elements you need to add to your sales page to make it linkable.

What you’ll need:

And here are the sections ahead:

Hang in there and feel free to ask questions as you proceed: Garrett@CitationLabs.com.

>> Buyer’s Journey Context Mining:

There’s a lot to be said for opening a notepad, reading slowly through your target page and answering the questions below, whether we’re talking about sofas or SaaS offerings.

If answers to these questions aren’t there on the page, then make some good guesses, move on to the next question and check in with your experts/key customers further on.

Note for Content Marketers and SEOs: in this phase of research we’re search volume agnostic. 

We’re also ignoring what publishers and audiences may or may not be interested in. We’ll get back to these further on in the exercise but for now we’re evoking customer experience, before, during and after purchase and implementation.

Lastly, we’re ignoring that the traditional Buyer’s Journey stops with the purchase. For full context mining we extend into roll out and maximization areas as well.

> Purchase Decisioning Questions:

  1. What problems drove people to begin their search for this solution?
  2. In what circumstances (location, setting, mood) will the solution be deployed?
  3. What are the solution’s quantifiable benefits, post deployment?
  4. What hopes/expectations will people have post-deployment (often non-quantifiable)?
  5. What is the monetary cost?
  6. What alternatives provide the same or similar outcomes?
  7. What frequently UN-ASKED questions exist (questions that SHOULD be asked but are unknown due to inexperience or ignorance)?

> Resource Planning Questions:

  1. What challenges are buyers likely to face during solution deployment?
  2. How much is this going to cost your buyers in terms of time, effort, workers and emotional toll?
  3. How do people “dial in” their experiences with the solution, if their expectations are not in line with their experience?
  4. What are the post-deployment maintenance requirements of the solution, if any?
  5. What frequently UN-ASKED questions exist (questions that SHOULD be asked but are unknown due to inexperience or ignorance)?

> Benefit Maximization Questions:

  1. What techniques or tasks are necessary to maximize solution benefit?
  2. What knowledge or skill sets enable the maximization of benefit?
  3. Are there other purchases that buyers will need to make in order to maximize benefit?
  4. How long will it take for the solution to provide desired benefit?
  5. What frequently UN-ASKED questions exist (questions that SHOULD be asked but are unknown due to inexperience or ignorance)?

Now that we’ve run through our question types, let’s look more closely at our sofa category page through the lens of a few of these questions so you get a sense of what we’re talking about they impact the buyer’s journey. We’ll start with the lens of “Purchase Decisioning Questions.”

Purchase Decisioning Factors Q1: What problems drove people to begin their search for this solution?

Fortunately, sofas being fairly widespread and familiar items, we can make some educated extrapolations:

  • Old sofa became unusable due to age, wear, tear, filth, etc…
  • Desire to accommodate and entertain more people.
  • Family size expanding, wanting a shared seat for a sense of connection.
  • Moving to a new home, wanting to “start over” with new furniture.
  • Upcoming event (celebration, sporting event, birthday) warrants the purchase of a new sofa.
  • Old sofa doesn’t fit the space, either aesthetically or physically.
  • Old sofa was never comfortable in the first place.
  • Need a sofa to function as both a seating AND sleeping solution for guests.
  • Tired of sitting in separate chairs in the same room while seeking entertainment.

Did we get everything? Of course not. But we did think thoroughly about the problems that people might be facing as they begin their sofa hunt, and we’ll have a great jumping off point once we begin mapping out link-benefitted (prone/beneficial/benefitted/advantageous) topic areas.

Now let’s look at question 2.

Purchase Decisioning Factors Q2: In what circumstances (location, setting, mood) will the solution be deployed?

Again, sofas are pretty simple to visualize and consider in their context of usage. This question gets far, far more complex for an ERP solution rollout for example. Though sofas can be plenty tricky if we put our minds to it. Let’s dig in to their locations/settings:

  • Living rooms
  • Basements
  • TV Rooms
  • Guest/bonus rooms
  • Gatherings and parties
  • Casual, evening entertainment with family and friends
  • Movie night
  • Guest sleeping spot
  • Taking a nap
  • Sporting event viewing party

There’s more, but again we’re just using this to get started with unpacking the simple sofa’s deceptively-complex context… and feed our topic ideation phase further on in this process.

Next let’s shift to the “Resource Planning Factors” portion of our analysis and check out some examples.

Resource Planning Factors Q1: What challenges are buyers likely to face during solution deployment?

Most people underestimate the difficulty of implementing any given solution. Whether it’s a sofa or CRM software. There’s far more work involved than anyone would like to acknowledge, much less actually do. Yet there it is: if we want to utilize the solution, we’ve got to put in some effort.

  • Physically moving the new sofa from outside the home to inside and then on to its proper location.
  • Finding a location – and movers – for the old sofa.
  • Scuffing and scraping walls and floors as you move massive furniture around.
  • Need a new carpet, pillows, throws, etc (sofa accessories).
  • Need a method for disposing of old carpet, pillows, throws etc.
  • A sofa is too big to fit through hallways/stairs/corners in home, etc.
  • A sofa is simply too heavy for the new owner to move safely.
  • A sofa would actually fit better and function better in a different position within the room.

This line of questioning often rightfully frightens the sales folks. Each one of these challenges – especially those that are unknown to the potential customer – serve as objections to the sale. Brave and or honest marketers know, however, that addressing these issues upfront builds trust. And makes for fantastic content that contributes to linkability.

Resource Planning Factors Q2: How much is this going to cost buyers in terms of time, effort, workers and emotional toll?

Monetary cost is just the beginning. How much does it REALLY cost to get usage out of this purchase? As with Q1 directly above, we’re asking questions that sales folks might like to leave unaddressed. By thinking this way though, we provide genuinely helpful guidance.

  • How long does it take to move a sofa up, say, 3 flights of stairs?
  • How many people will it take, safely?
  • How can I tell if I’m healthy or fit enough to safely help?
  • How do we communicate effectively while moving the sofa?
  • How do I keep from yelling at someone who’s pulling the sofa down when I JUST told them to push it up?
  • How do I apologize effectively to someone I’ve just snarled at, perhaps having aspersed their intellectual capability?
  • How do I keep it together when I realize the sofa actually FEELS too big in the room, or too small, or is otherwise slightly off?

If this line of inquiry sounds painful for sofas, just think how much worse it can get with a business function-spanning CRM solution. Yikes! But it’s a rich, rich place for linking-enabled content ideation.

Lastly, let’s check in on the “Benefit Maximization Techniques” portion of our exercise.

Benefit Maximization Techniques Q1: What techniques or tasks are necessary to maximize solution benefit? 

Just owning the sofa doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the most out of it. Thinking through benefit maximization helps to fill out our understanding of a key area of customer experience.

  • How often do I need to clean the sofa surfaces, and using what techniques?
  • How do I prevent stains and wear, like I had on my old sofa?
  • How do I position a sofa that’s in front of a window?
  • When should I position a sofa so that it can function as a room divider?
  • How close is too close to a door, a wall, a walkway?
  • How do I keep the rug from bunching up over time?
  • How do I relax in the same room with my brand new sofa and my kids/pets/family members?
  • How do I repair rips or stains once they inevitably happen?

From a customer perspective it’s wonderful to think your potential vendor has your best interests in mind as well – and has “lived” the customer experience.

Benefit Maximization Techniques Q2: What knowledge or skill sets enable the maximization of benefit?

Sometimes it takes deep and even academically-supported expertise to get things set up just right…

  • How do we get the sofa dialed in ergonomically – for ALL of its common inhabitants?
  • What if my back, shoulder or neck hurts – what should I do differently?
  • How close should the sofa be to the television, based on the screen size and healthy best practices?
  • How do I get the sofa “dialed in” to my aesthetic preference?
  • How do I approach decorating on, around, behind and underneath my sofa?

It’s in the benefit maximization techniques portion that authority-signaling opportunities arise – as well as cross-disciplinary opportunities for collaboration, possibly with influencers. 

Visit your target page and interrogate it with the 17 questions above. Skip questions that don’t make sense to you, or don’t fit. For example, this one may not yield much value for our sofa work: “How long will it take for the solution to provide desired benefit?” Ask any additional questions that occur to you (and please share questions I left out with Garrett@CitationLabs.com). Make note of any questions that could require expert input. Be thorough, especially if this is your first time.

Carefully note all your answers in the Buyer’s Journey Linking Context Development Worksheet and you’ll start to see patterns and consistencies emerge, along with ideas for citable elements on your sales pages and even the beginnings of a workable link building strategy. 

Let’s continue mining though, this time inching closer to “buyer-journey aligned linking context” via the use of commonly available link graph tools.

>> Tool-Based Context Mining

Tool-based context mining is much less mentally taxing, which is welcome relief after those 17 questions above. But it’s also woefully disconnected from the vast sweep of the users’ experience, most of which is invisible to tools that can only see what publishers HAVE done, not what they COULD possibly have done. Brainstorm first, think through the buyer’s journey and you’ll be better able to structure what you’re learning when you finally do pick up tools.

That said, we use two main tools for understanding the context of an offering and how it might align with the buyer’s journey:

  1. Query Auto-Complete Scrapers
  2. Backlink Graph Tools

> Query Auto-Complete Scrapers

These tools have come and gone over the years… so frequently in fact that we decided to build our own in which we can load 100s of suggest-stems and get 1000s of auto-complete suggestions back. But you don’t have to be that thorough – you can head over to Google now and type in things like:

  • sofa vs
  • sofa how
  • sofa how do
  • sofa how to
  • sofa for
  • sofa you
  • sofa in
  • sofa ideas for
  • sofa good for
  • sofa helps with

From here you can start to piece together context that should inform your link building approaches. These auto-completes will indicate some sort of consistent inquiry from searchers. They are not representations of search demand, but that’s not what we’re here for… 

We’re still seeking to understand use-case, context, and tangential concerns that our customers may have. We may have some ideas for the onsite content team from this research as well, but for now just capture any idea stubs in our worksheet. 

Here’s an excerpt of what we added in the worksheet, all generated with auto-complete:

  • how do i make my sofa firmer
  • how do you clean a fabric sofa
  • how do you get a sofa through a door
  • can you put a sofa in front of a radiator
  • is sleeping on the sofa bad for you
  • how to move a sofa by yourself

These are… fantastic. Each bullet point above could be its own article. We’re on the hunt for content elements that would fit neatly on a sofa category page though – so I’d go with the ones related to getting a sofa through a door and moving a sofa by yourself (yikes).

For now let’s put these aside – we’ll dig into campaign ideation further along. We’ve got to dig in with the link graph tools!

> Link Graph Tools

This is the most obvious place to start your analysis of linking context. 

We put graph tools last because it’s so easy to think you understand what to do after a 5 minute visit with your target URL. It’s also overly-tempting to assume you can take existing backlinkers and run a serp-impactful campaign – it’s rarely that simple. Here’s how we do it though.

We start with the main, most-competitive keyword for our link-targeted page and then gather the top 10 ranking URLs (that are most-similar to the page we want to rank). We then examine backlinks to these top ranking URLs.

For context mining, we primarily examine the TITLES of the linking pages. The titles of the linking pages provide the gist of linking context from the existing link graph. From the titles we can get a sense of publisher-targeted audiences as well as the problems that linking publishers address for these selected audiences.

For sofas, we see the following concepts:

  • Home decor style trends
  • Holiday-based deals on sofas

Both make valid directions for a campaign, and the brainstorming above would not have turned them up. These go straight into our worksheet.

While we’re at it, it’s worth visiting the linking pages too and asking the following questions: 

  • Are these scraped pages?
  • When editorial links occur, why are they occurring?
  • Are there any other audience or topical clues from these pages?
  • Are these frequently occurring publisher types? Can we get a sense of publisher volume?
  • Are these probably paid links?
  • Do any of the linking pages or domains co-cite any of the top 10 pages? Pay special attention to the titles of these pages as they’re more likely to be audience-aligned.

This gives us more of a sense of how publishers currently address the audience, and may stir up some ideas or directions for topics.

Wonderful.

We’ve now captured our answers to 17 questions, scraped and sorted 100s of auto-complete suggestions and examined the context of the link graph. It’s time to get started on some ideation!

>> Campaign-Ready, Context-Specific Topic Ideation

If you’ve glanced over at our pre-filled worksheet you’ve probably connected the dots by now. When we asked all those questions about purchase decisioning, resource planning and benefit maximization we were actually brainstorming concepts and topic-stubs we could use for link building campaigns. 

With some generated topics (Topical Linking Context we call it in the spreadsheet) we won’t need to add any new content to the sales page – we can just link as is. Some of the topics though will require us to add what we call a “citable element” or information cluster (think FAQ or other structured information) to the sales page in order to create optimal citation justification.

Let’s examine Purchase Decisioning Factors Q1: What problems drove people to begin their search for this solution? Remember that section way up above? 

We’ve copied each of those ideas and we’re going to add a sub-bullet to each one to represent a concept for additional sales-page content.

  • Old sofa became unusable due to age, wear, tear, filth, etc…
    • Signs that cleaning or repairing your sofa are useless exertions and you should simply get yourself a new one
  • Desire to accommodate and entertain more people
    • How sofas “fit” in our social settings – how they can be arranged to impact conversational flow
    • Circumstances when sharing a seat with someone on your sofa socially is NOT ideal
  • Family size expanding, wanting a shared seating space for a sense of connection
    • Sofa accessories and arrangements to ensure stress-free family movie nights
    • TV time with house guests – making sure everyone is comfortable and relaxed, especially YOU.
  • Moving to a new home, wanting to “start over” with new furniture
    • Planning your living room – at what stage do you select your sofa?
    • How do you choose a sofa when your room is a “blank slate”
    • What size sofa works best based on the room size?
  • Upcoming event (celebration, sporting event, birthday) warrants the purchase of a new sofa
    • Making it through your first party with your brand-new sofa
    • The right sofa for large groups of people who all want great positions from which to watch the big game
  • Old sofa doesn’t fit the space, either aesthetically or physically
    • Signs your sofa is too big for the room, or too small
    • Signs you really should have a loveseat, not a sofa
    • Understanding why you hate your sofa – so you can get one you actually love
  • Old sofa was never comfortable in the first place
    • Selecting sofas for ideal ergonomic outcomes – measuring the sofa, measuring yourselves
    • Positioning sofas for viewing or conversation to minimize neck strain. 
    • Sofas that reduce back or neck pain
    • Signs of a great napping sofa
  • Need a sofa to function as both seating AND sleeping solution for guests
    • How to select a comfortable sleeper sofa
  • Tired of sitting in separate chairs in the same room while enjoying entertainment
    • Items you’ll need for cozy snuggle time on the sofa
    • Making space for pets on the sofa
    • Perfect sofa set up for a relaxing family movie night

Fantastic! 

Now we’ve gone through and expanded each of our observations into full blown concepts that could live on a sofas category page as a jump-linked informational subsection. Possibly even as an FAQ.

To show the connection between the Topical Linking Context and an actual link, let’s focus on the very first one: 

  • Old sofa became unusable due to age, wear, tear, filth, etc…
    • Signs that cleaning or repairing your sofa is a useless exercise and you should simply get yourself a new one

Neat, so how do we actually get links with this concept?

  1. We begin by researching factors that relate to cleaning and repairing sofas… primarily the factors of cost and effort. We may have to dig into reupholstering costs and approaches, as well as costs for raw materials such as fabrics and cushions. What tools will they need? What skill levels, and how long will it take if this is your first time? Additionally we’d need to learn about substances that genuinely render a sofa’s cushions or structure unusable (feces, vomit, perfume, urine, skunk spray, etc…). Are insect infested sofas salvageable? How about fire-charred sofas?
  1. From this research we’d create a matrix for readers to determine at what point they need to ditch a “ruined” sofa… Including elements such as the time and money they have budgeted and any skill sets that may prove beneficial. Ideally, we’d fashion this element into an image or a graphic so that people can really determine if it’s going to be worth it to repair or overhaul a sofa vs buying a new one.
  1. We then publish this image to the sofa page, perhaps down at the bottom, along with 100 or so words that contextualize the image and give instructions that enable readers to effectively evaluate their personal circumstance. We’re sure to include a jump link to the repair vs buy new section of the page.
  1. Then we reach out to publishers who’ve published content on repairing or cleaning sofas and suggest that they add our image, along with a bit of copy that we provide them, so that they’re addressing the fullest-possible spectrum of sofa circumstances. We will ask of course that they provide a link back if they decide to better-inform their audience members.
  1. We could also guest post around this topic, as well as pitch bloggers/journalists in the DIY or Home Repair space. And what if we actually interviewed several experts for this section of our site? Shouldn’t we offer them a longer-form article celebrating their contribution that they could then publish on their site?

And that’s just one of the 20 concepts we generated, from the first of our 17 questions. And we skipped the tools-generated concepts completely. Not every concept is worth fleshing out though, based on things like branding, voice, target audience, and potential publisher volume. Not to mention the negotiations you’ll have with the UX and conversions teams about adding content to a sales page, even if it is buried at the end of a jump link.

To better inform your understanding of campaign design, let’s select another concept and develop it. For our next example we pull from Resource Planning Factors Q2: How much is this going to cost in terms of time, effort, workers and emotional toll? Again we’ll start with the list of responses we had to this question, and extend from our observations into concepts that could function as campaigns.

  • How long does it take to move a sofa up, say, 3 flights of stairs?
    • This seems like a fairly simple calculation, but we need to factor in things like the narrowness of hallways, the sharpness of curves in the stairs, the height of the building’s stories, the weight of the sofa, any railings we’ll be forced to hoist and hold the sofa above, the size of the sofa and how many people we have helping us. 
    • Perhaps we extend the concept into how much time, effort and split-second geo-spatial decisioning we expend while carrying a sofa.
  • How many people will it take, safely?
    • Moving heavy things safely, so that weight remains as evenly distributed as possible, should be of utmost concern (but often isn’t). Plus we have the potential for dropping a sofa on someone. How do we ensure safety for all movers?
  • How can I tell if I’m healthy or fit enough to safely help?
    • Based on the weight of the sofa, the number of people helping and the distances required for moving… How can I tell if I should “sit this one out” and let someone else help? 
    • If I’m determined to move the sofa, how can I prepare myself physically before, during and after?
  • How do we communicate effectively while moving the sofa?
    • Effective communication – in the deceptively simple context of moving an object through space – will determine whether or not it reaches its destination. How can we prepare for effectively directing each other in the midst of our exertions?
    • Leadership best practices for sofa movers.
    • Effective communication techniques that can prevent injury while moving heavy sofas.
  • How do I keep from yelling at someone who’s pulling the sofa down when I JUST told them to push it up?
    • Mindfulness exercises and meditations for those hauling enormous sofas.
    • Effective communication even when you’re angry and the other person is an idiot (from your perspective, in that moment)
  • How do I apologize effectively to someone I’ve just snarled at, perhaps having aspersed their intellectual capability?
    • Learning when and how to best apologize to people who were helping you for free
    • Humbling yourself and admitting when you were wrong – as quickly as possible so that they’ll keep helping you move.

So now we’ve gone through each answer and grown it into a stem or a start for an informative section on the sales page. Not every concept will fly, but we’ve thoroughly addressed what we brainstormed which could translate into articles for on or off your own site.

Let’s pick one and grow it into a campaign. I really liked the one on being fit enough to help move sofas – especially because there are a large number of fitness-related publishers who could become potential linkers.

How can I tell if I’m healthy or fit enough to safely help?

  • Based on the weight of the sofa, the number of people helping and the distances required for moving… How can I tell if I should “sit this one out” and let someone else help? 
  • If I’m determined to move the sofa, how can I prepare myself physically before, during and after?

OK – so how do we turn these into on-page citable elements and then promote them? Let’s dig in!

  1. We must begin with a basis of physical fitness guidance, perhaps from a physical therapist. Age will be a factor here too, as well as one’s basic fitness level. We’ll need real signs that people can look for such as – “can you easily lift the sofa up off of the ground on one side.” And it’s not just lifting – if you’re going up stairs or around corners you’ll be contorting and potentially overextending your body. We’d need guidance from a PT who can provide some yes/no criteria on whether or not someone can or should be involved in moving the sofa.
  1. If you’re determined to move the sofa, what can you be doing before, during and after the move in order to best protect the muscles in your back? Are there stretches you could do before hand? Run up and down the stairs a couple of times to warm up? Jumping jacks? What about during the move – how frequently should you rest? What are the best times and positions to rest while actively moving the sofa? How can you rest in such a way as to also protect your helper? Are there stretches you can do after the move that would help to soothe your muscles? What if you tweak something, how can you recover quickly? What tools or moving aids can you purchase or create a make-shift version of in order to help facilitate the move and take some of the burden off of your helpers who are being paid in pizza and beer (after the job is done of course)?
  1. Again we have more questions than answers – but that’s what we need in order to create a small infographic on “are you sofa-moving fit?” We’d include guidance from a PT on determining your capability to contribute to the move, as well as diagrams that show best practices before, during and after the sofa move. This small, simple diagram includes everything a potential sofa-mover needs to stay well and healthy.
  1. We publish the graphic to our sofa page, but also offer it for use to moving companies. Wouldn’t they love the first part about whether or not you should choose to move-it-yourself? We’d have to expand on the reasons why not to move it yourself, but it seems like some of them would be open to republishing your graphic on their blogs.
  2. How about pitching the graphic – and a write up – to physical therapists for their blogs? They will likely have first hand experience with folks who learned the hard way that they should not be moving sofas.
  1. What about a graphic and write up for yoga studios and gyms? Most folks don’t think about exercise routines prior to moving, but they should. Moving is a stressful time and fitness can help you manage stress as well as manage the literal heavy loads you’ve got to manage.
  1. I would imagine too that realtors, during the moving seasons, would be open to a guide to DIY moving-day wellness. You’d have to expand beyond just sofas, but the general guidance around moving sofas safely would extend to other objects as well.

There’s got to be more publisher types we could promote to, but the point here is that by starting with a core issue relating to the product for sale we were able to develop a concept that’s genuinely relevant to the page, the buyer’s journey, and remains highly linkable.

When do you stop though, and how many ideas are enough? In many ways it’s more fun to remain in the happy vacuum of ideation, where there’s no such thing as a bad idea. Ultimately though, you’ve got to let your ideas out into the wild and see if they can actually fend for themselves. It’s the only way to really learn your craft as a link builder. So you’ll know you can stop generating and TESTING ideas once you have built enough links to get your target page where it needs to be in order to generate revenue. And then it’s time to pick a new page and start all over.

At this stage, the process may seem time-consuming. I won’t sugar-coat it: it sometimes is. But it’s also worth it to develop clear context around the links you want to earn, and it will have a massive impact on the success of your link building endeavors.

And anecdotally, I will tell you it gets easier. You’ll find your groove, get the hang of it, and pick up the pace. And it’ll come together more quickly every time. Almost as fast as:

Almost. 

>> Linking Context Development FAQs:

Q: How many ideas should you put on any given page?

A: As many as you can slip past the UX/CRO team! Only kind of kidding.

You really do need to focus primarily on information that assists the purchase journey. That is, information that helps people make the best purchase decision, plan effectively for a roll out and/or maximize the benefits of their purchase.

You’re also adding content for publishing stakeholders – the folks who you hope will be linking. So there’s definitely a balance to strike here and more conversations with internal page-level stakeholders.

Q: Can citeable elements include an infographic AND an FAQ AND a how-to guide?

A: Absolutely, with the blessings of your page-level stakeholders of course.

Note that often the citable elements you’re adding are the tip of the iceberg for deeper pages, so you don’t have to tell the whole story on the sales page.

Further, since you followed our buyer-journey framework of questioning your content additions SHOULD serve to increase your brand’s perceived expertise.

Q: If you include all of those content types, would they be on the same sub-topic (like fitness and moving a couch) or would you cover multiple topics?

A: You’d ideally base this decision on topic-oriented publisher volume. Eg: are there more fitness-oriented publishers or moving-oriented publishers? This is also a good rule of thumb for determining which ideas to test. Forewarn your page-level stakeholders that you might have to change things up as you learn which ideas generated the most linking response.

Q: What makes for a successful test — just higher page ranking, or are PA, sales conversions, etc. more useful?

A: There are two things you can be testing. From a link operations standpoint you’re measuring response rates, interested responses, and actual links going live. From an impact perspective you’re definitely measuring higher rankings, the Page Authority of your target page and eventually conversions from that page.

Q: If the test of content idea doesn’t work for couches page but I still think it has potential overall, should I try a similar approach on my barstools page, or should I scrap it completely?

A: Scrap it. If an on-page campaign concept doesn’t generate responses or links from your outreach it’s probable that switching the same concept to a different page is unlikely to produce results.

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