Link Building Industry Insights

A collection of our findings from surveys, interviews with the experts, blog post roundups and more. We discuss industry insights through posts and webinars with Garrett French, and posts from our team and industry guests.

Link Building Services
in an AI World

By Garrett French

February 6, 2023

Topics: Citation Labs News, Content Planning, Content Strategy, Link Building Industry Insights

Google’s scared of OpenAI’s significant release of ChatGPT (as are Facebook and Microsoft, but let’s stay focused on search for this article). From what I’ve gathered, Google’s fears AI primarily because its answer context doesn’t provide clickable advertising opportunities. This lack of advertising opportunity (and a troubling, persistent bias problem) is what led to Google ... Read more

Wait – only 40% of SEOs think backlinks are less effective compared to years ago?

By James Wirth

December 30, 2022

Topics: Link Building Industry Insights

Recently, @marie_haynes put out a Twitter poll. The poll asked respondents whether they ‘believe link building is less effective now compared to a few years ago’. According to this write-up on Search Engine Roundtable: Over 40% of respondents indicated they think link building has become less effective, vs. Almost 30% indicated no, it’s not less ... Read more

Link Building with Stories – Webinar Recording

Introduction to our new online video course, The Story Approach

By Ken McGaffin

September 11, 2017

Topics: Enterprise Link Building Tips, Link Building Industry Insights, The Story Approach

Great stories engage your audience, attract links from authority sites and make your pitches for guest post placements or PR coverage so much more compelling. In this free webinar, Garrett French, Kristina Welch and Ken McGaffin will show you how anyone can find great stories and turn them into terrific content. Here’s the full recording of ... Read more

New ideas for link building [Podcast]

Garrett shares his toughts on what's working at the moment, where he's looking for creative ideas and how enterprise link building is so different from small business strategies and tactics.

By Ken McGaffin

April 21, 2017

Topics: Campaign Creation, Enterprise Link Building Tips, Link Building Industry Insights, The Link Builder's Podcast

So where can you get new ideas to drive your link building campaigns? In this episode, Garrett tells us what is working for him at the moment, what he’s experimenting with and why there is still great value in tactics that have gone out of fashion.

How To Love The One You’re With

Assessing Client Relationships from a Dating Perspective

By Valerie French

February 11, 2016

Topics: Agency Hacks, Link Building Industry Insights

It’s time for that mid-February Hallmark Holiday – a holiday when we celebrate, or re-consider, romantic relationships. But how many of us take the time and care to assess potential client-based relationships? We’ve all been there: you get an interesting inquiry, you schedule the first meeting, you quietly anticipate your future together, and, at long last, ... Read more

VIDEO: Finding Links and Resource Pages with the Link Prospector

with Ken McGaffin & Megan Hannay

By Ken McGaffin

January 19, 2016

Topics: Agency Hacks, CL Tools: Link Prospector, Link Building Industry Insights

In our 2nd video in the Link Prospector series, Megan Hannay and Ken McGaffin explain the best strategies for links and resource pages finding with the Link Prospector. Check it out, or if you’re more of a reader, we’ve got a transcript below. Megan: I’m Megan Hannay, and we’re today going to be talking about ... Read more

Webinar: Website Navigation For Link-Worthy Content Assets

Get your assets in a row...

By Megan Hannay

December 31, 2015

Topics: Agency Hacks, Link Building Industry Insights, Understanding & Serving Audiences, Webinar

For our final webinar of 2015, we rounded up Shari Thurow and Eric Ward to discuss an often neglected topic among link-builders – where in the heck do you put link-worthy assets? A gap exists between the asset and site usability. Watch the entire webinar, or click on the links in the summary below to hear your ... Read more

Webinar: Citation Labs’s 2nd Annual Live Brainstorm

Eric Ward, Shari Thurow and Garrett French on Link Building and Site Usability

By Garrett French

December 16, 2015

Topics: Content Planning, Expert Interviews, Link Building Industry Insights, Webinar

We had way too much fun live brainstorming with Eric Ward last year, so this holiday season, we did it again. And this time we invited site usability expert (and Citation Labs friend), Shari Thurow. We gathered site suggestions from webinar participants before the session and chose four to analyze off-the-cuff during the webinar: At ... Read more

Plan for Spontaneity

Developing An Annual PR Promotion Plan

By Ken McGaffin

September 30, 2015

Topics: Campaign Creation, Content Planning, Link Building Industry Insights, Public Relations

Sign up for our 10/7 webinar more insights & tips on PR thinking for link building & content teams. Your promotion doesn’t happen in isolation. You have to compete for attention and links with competitor activity, industry events, new product launches, research reports and breaking news stories. If you launch a piece of content at ... Read more

Link Builders and SEOs Desire PR Skills

Results from our Survey: Online PR in Link Building

By Megan Hannay

April 29, 2015

Topics: Citation Labs News, Link Building Industry Insights, Public Relations

At Citation Labs, we see PR as an essential component of any link building campaign, and we wanted to know if our clients and customers felt the same way. So earlier this year, we surveyed Citation Labs newsletter readers and customers with two questions in mind: How much is PR a factor in your link building efforts? How well qualified do you feel to develop your own PR campaigns? Here are our key findings.

55 of the Best Link Building & SEO Posts of 2015

(So Far)

By Megan Hannay

March 30, 2015

Topics: Link Building Industry Insights, Link Building Roundup

Pollen Spring is in the air, link builders, meaning we have another season's worth of great SEO, link building and content marketing posts from some of our favorite influencers in the space.

Live Link Building Speed Consultations

A Video with Eric Ward & Garrett French

By Garrett French

December 18, 2014

Topics: Expert Interviews, Link Building Industry Insights, Webinar

We brainstormed link-building, content creation, PR opportunities and business growth ideas for ten businesses, randomly selected from 101 newsletter respondents.

See how even companies that describe their product as "very boring" have great content waiting to be found, and hopefully, you'll gain an idea or two for your business.

How Online PR is a Powerful Link Building Tool

A Post from our new Director of PR Services, Ken McGaffin

By Ken McGaffin

November 6, 2014

Topics: Link Building Industry Insights, Public Relations

Every day businesses of every size get media coverage and valuable editorial links - but many SEOs and link builders don’t quite know how to approach the media to get this type of coverage. It takes much more than just sending out a press release - it takes effort and hard work. But the opportunity is very real and the good news is that link builders will already have many of the skills they need.

11/20 Webinar with Ken McGaffin & Garrett French

A Live PR Brainstorm Workshop

By Megan Hannay

November 3, 2014

Topics: Citation Labs News, Link Building Industry Insights, Public Relations

Ken McGaffin and Garrett French will use your business PR concerns to fuel the discussion on PR Strategy from a link-builder's perspective. From our first webinar, we learned that participants join with questions and ideas already brewing. This time, we're making viewer participation a key component of the Webinar. In other words, WE NEED YOUR INPUT to make this FREE WORKSHOP a success!

Broken Link Building Tips

An Interview with Melanie Nathan

By Garrett French

August 16, 2011

Topics: Enterprise Link Building Tips, Expert Interviews, Link Building Industry Insights

In preparation for my upcoming webinar - The Content Marketer's Guide to Broken Link Building (August 25th 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM PDT) I sent some "best-practices" questions over to Edmonton SEO Melanie Nathan, creator of a formalized broken link building process.

Read her broken link building tips here.

5 Key Units of Expertise

On the Classification of Expertise Structures for Content Marketers

By Garrett French

June 29, 2011

Topics: Content Planning, Content Strategy, Link Building Industry Insights

Through marketing with tips and tip inventory creation I came to think of tips as the smallest expressible unit of expertise. From a research query perspective, tips are quite easy to extract from a market's community of practice.

But what about larger and more complex units of expertise?