Inbound Marketing and SEO: Insights from the Moz Blog

Chapter 9: Scaling White Hat Link Building—Scaling Content

By Will Critchlow

Editor's Note: This post, which focuses on scaling high-quality content as part of a successful link building strategy, is even more relevant than when it was originally published on The Moz Blog more than two years ago (March 13, 2011). Since then, Google has rolled out more than a dozen updates to its Panda algorithm, which rewards websites that have informative, unique content. Google has also introduced Penguin, an algorithm that favors quality over quantity when it comes to backlinks, and penalizes overoptimized sites that employ spammy link building techniques. The introduction of the rel=“author” attribute added yet another incentive for publishers to step up their game. Verifying Google Authorship adds an important level of trust to search results, and increases click-through rates for publishers who implement it in conjunction with a quality content creation strategy—not to mention that it humanizes authors and thought leaders, and rewards them individually with more exposure in the SERPs.

Although SEO is one of the “free” organic marketing channels, there is no doubt that competing with the biggest brands and most aggressive web marketers is not going to be free. In fact, it could be very expensive. I won't be sharing ways to compete with the link buyers for free with no effort, but I will be sharing real strategies that brands can use when they need to step it up a notch. In this chapter, ...