- [Neil] I completely stopped doing link building
and it's been almost three years since I did that.
Funny thing is my traffic has only grown
during this time period and if you ask me,
I think I'm never going to build links again.
Do you want to learn why?
Hey everyone, I'm Neil Patel,
and today I'm going to break down
why I stopped doing link building,
and why you should potentially, too.
(relaxing music)
Before we get started make sure you subscribe
to this channel and if you're on YouTube,
click the alert notification.
The main reason why I stopped doing link building
is that I no longer need to.
My website gets Backlinks every day
and I don't even have to lift a finger,
literally I don't!
It hasn't always been that way though,
for approximately the first two or three years
when I first started the website,
I was hitting the pavement hard.
Every time I wrote a blog post
and I linked out to someone, I would let them know.
Being like, "Hey I linked out,
"please share it on the social web"
and I was hoping that one of those people
who found the article on the social web,
would then come back and link to it.
I would hit up every single person
who linked out to competitor articles,
beg them for links.
So you're probably wondering,
"Neil used to do this, what's changed?
"Is it Google's algorithm?"
Well it isn't Google's algorithm.
Here are the main reasons why I stopped link building.
The first reason is, I built a brand.
See, once you build and brand and people know who you are,
you don't have to beg for links.
Eventually you'll start naturally gaining
more and more links.
And I'm a big believer in the Omnichannel approach.
In marketing, when someone sees and interacts
with your brand seven times,
they're much more likely to bond,
convert, build that rapport with you,
build that rapport with your company,
and they're much more open to linking to you.
So with brand building you want to go out there
and be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube,
all the social channels.
As well as SEO, Content marketing, E-mail marketing,
Push Notifications, Chatbots, like the ManyChats,
or MobileMonkeys, text messaging.
By having all these channels
it's going to get your brand out there,
which then makes it easier
for you to gain links in the long run.
And when you're building up your brand
whether it's a corporate or personal brand,
the first few years you won't really
see the results you're looking for,
but if you keep pushing hard for two,
three, four, five years,
in the long run it will work out.
The second reason I don't build links is,
I have valuable content that people want to link back to
because it helps them grow their traffic, right?
Now, your content doesn't have to help people
grow their traffic, but it has to help them in whatever way.
If you have a Home Decor website
and it helps people save on decorations, and products,
and figures out how to make their home
look like a billion dollar house
when they're on a shoestring budget.
People link to it because that's amazing and that's awesome.
If you provide a lot of value,
and when you're providing value
it's not just one or two content pieces,
but you build up hundreds and hundreds of articles
if not thousands over time,
and then you do it in a way where it's Evergreen.
In which that content keeps providing value
even two, three, four, or five years from now.
That doesn't mean you won't ever have to update the content,
but because that content is always valuable
people will continually get value from it,
and over the years that gives you more and more time,
and more opportunities to build more organic links.
The third reason I stopped is,
I built an invaluable free tool in my mind, Ubersuggest.
Ubersuggest gets more than 25000 backlinks
from over 3400 referring dominions.
That's a lot.
In essence it's become a household name in the SEO community
because I offer what people charge for, for free.
You can either pay $1,200 a year,
or $100 a month, or save the money.
Now with your website you can build up tools as well
and that's very helpful.
You may not have the budget that I have and that's okay.
If you're a big company your budget is probably
a hundred times bigger than mine and that's amazing as well,
but for you small mom and pop business owners.
What I want you to do is go to CodeCanyon.
For $10 or $20 you can get a tool in almost any industry,
pop it on your website, it's really easy,
and over time you'll notice that the links will kick in.
The fourth reason, I've done studies and research
that people want to reference.
Last year alone I launched two industry studies.
One of them, I gathered 183 companies
who are all leveraging content marketing,
and I produced 17 charts to show people like you
where content marketing is heading.
And the other one, it was about social media,
and its ability to generate traffic organically right?
Without paying for social ads.
I polled 483 companies who were all leveraging
Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest,
and I showed in that study,
what's happening to social traffic over time.
At least from an organic perspective.
Those two studies alone have generated me
97000 backlinks, from 119 referring domains.
So now the real question is this,
should you stop building links too?
Well it depends what stage you are.
Now let me first break down
if you should stop building backlinks.
You should stop if,
you have a lot of followers on social media
that you can use to promote your content continually.
Also you're already ranking for a decent amount of queuers.
Your brand is well known
and people look up to you in your space,
or your company brand is well known
and they look up to your company.
You're already getting some press,
public speaking opportunities, interviews on podcasts,
TV interviews, radio interviews, and even mentions on blogs.
Your content tends to get backlinks naturally,
and you have tools or quizzes or other resources
that people love to keep linking back to.
Now you should keep building backlinks if,
you content is still getting
little to no backlinks organically.
You have started your website less than two years ago.
Your content doesn't get a lot of traffic
if you don't promote it.
You're not even ranking for long-tail,
less competitive queuers that you're targeting.
You haven't built any tools
or valuable, linkable assets in your website.
And you want to speed things up and you aggressively
want to build your authoritativeness in your niche,
and you want to maximize the number of links you're getting
in the shortest possible time frame, right?
So if that's you, you should be building links.
In essence what you'll find is,
if you've been doing this for a few years,
you probably need to build links to keep it short.
And if you been doing it for five, 10 years,
you already have an audience,
you already have a social presence,
you're already ranking a lot.
You don't have to focus on link building.
Like if you're Nike.
Nike doesn't need to build one link, or Ford, or BMW.
These big established companies
don't need to build links and it's obvious,
but in your niche you may be one of those brands as well.
If you need help with your SEO and ranking,
check out my Ad Agency, Neil Patel Digital.
If you enjoyed this video like it,
share it, comment, subscribe to the channel,
tell other people about it.
And if you are confused and you have some questions
and you're not sure if link building is for you or not,
leave a comment below.
I'll answer it and I'll help you out.