MODULE 1 LESSON 2 – TRANSCRIPTION - Who Are The Linkreators?

 

Hey it’s Brian Dean. Welcome to the second lesson of Module 1. Let’s get right into the training. A while back I conducted the largest search engine ranking factors study ever. Together with a few data partners, we analyzed millions of Google search results to find out which factors correlated with first page rankings. So, what did we find? 

We found the number of sites linking to a page correlated with rankings more than any other factor. In other words, the more sites link to your page, the higher it will rank in Google. And our study isn’t the only one that found that, despite lots of updates and changes, Google’s algorithm is still heavily reliant on backlinks. In fact, Google themselves have confirmed that links are one of their top 3 ranking signals. Bottom line? 

Despite the fact that many people say links don’t matter as much as they used to, the data (and reports straight from Google) shows that backlinks still form the foundation of their algorithm. The question is: HOW do you get people to link to you? Well the first step is to identify people that have the power to share and link to your content. Also known as your Linkreators. 

I’ll explain. You have two types of people that visit your site: people that run a website in your industry and people that don’t. Now most people write content exclusively for their target customer. In other words, their content appeals to the latter group (people that don’t run websites in their industry). The issue with this approach is that these people will NEVER link to your website. 

Why? Because they don’t run a website in your niche! On the other hand, people that succeed with SEO today, create content that appeals to the first group I mentioned – people that run websites in their industry. Let me explain the difference with a quick story. Back in the day I did a lot of consulting for SEO agencies. They’d come to me with their most challenging clients and I’d help them develop a plan for creating content and building links. 

And I remember one time I was finishing a call with one of these SEO agencies, and they said something that shocked me. I was about to hang up, when the CEO of this agency, let’s call him Jim, said to me: “Thanks Brian. That was really helpful. Just one more question: how can we get higher rankings f or our site?” And when I looked at the content Jim’s agency was putting out, I could see why he struggled right away. 

When I read the latest posts on his blog it was stuff like: “5 Ways to Optimize Your Title Tags” “The Importance of SEO for Small Business” “7 Keyword Research Tips” Look: I know that his agency is trying to appeal to his potential customer base of small business owners. I get that. But the issue is that their potential client – like a dentist or a lawyer – is NEVER going to link to him. No way. Why?

Because that dentist or lawyer doesn’t own a website in the marketing niche. Which means they’ll never link to his site, no matter how much they love his content. In other words, Jim’s clients aren’t part of the Linkreators in his industry. Despite that fact, Jim is creating content that appeals strictly to these potential clients: small business owners like dentists, lawyers and flower shops. Unfortunately, this is the approach that most so-called SEO experts recommend. 

They say things like, “create great content for your potential customers and the traffic and rankings will follow”. Even though that sounds nice in theory, it doesn’t work in the real world. Luckily, you made the right choice by joining SEO That Works. 

Because here’s where you’ll learn the truth about creating content that ranks on the first page of Google. And the truth is that, for you to succeed with SEO, you need to create content that appeals to your Linkreators. 

In the next lesson I’ll show you how to find your Linkreators, step-by-step. But first, I need to explain who the Linkreators are. Linkreators are people that run websites in your industry or a related industry. That’s it. In other words, Linkreators are the people that have the power to link to your site and share your content with their audience. And that’s the group Jim should be creating his content for.

Unfortunately, like Jim, I had to learn this difference the hard way. Like I mentioned in the last lesson, one of my first websites, a blog in the weight loss space, was a colossal failure. Overall, the content that I published on that site was really good. It was all based on scientific research. But I didn’t really go deep into the research. Instead, I published lots of list posts because those were more accessible to my target audience.

The thing was, my Linkreators told me that my content wasn’t in-depth enough. And that they didn’t like list posts. So despite the fact that I was consistently publishing great content, my Linkreators didn’t like it, so I didn’t get any links. And no links meant no traffic. Contrast that to a blog that Steve Kamb started around the same time: Nerd Fitness. 

Steve realized that his Linkreators didn’t tend to share list posts with little bite sized tips. Instead, they tended to link to massive ultimate guides that covered a topic in-depth. So Steve focused 100% on creating content that appealed to his Linkreators, like this ultimate guide. And because Steve’s content was designed specifically for his Linkreators, he got crazy amounts of backlinks in a very short period of time. 

So after the failure of my weight loss blog, I decided to launch another site in a so-called “boring” niche. And I made sure not to repeat the same mistake that I made with my weight loss blog.
This time, I created content specifically for my Linkreators (personal finance bloggers). And because that site’s content appealed to Linkreators, it went from zero to $10k/month in revenue in less than 4 months. Needless to say, I also used this Linkreator-focused approach when I first started Backlinko.

Today Backlinko ranks for some of the most competitive terms in the SEO industry. Even though I launched Backlinko in the crowded and competitive digital marketing space, I got most of these rankings within months of launching the site. My secret? I created content that appealed directly to the Linkreators in my industry. 

And I still do.In fact, as crazy as it might sound, when it comes to creating content, my readers and potential customers are a second priority to my Linkreators. For example, let’s look at one of my most successful pieces of content. In that post I cover almost 100% advanced SEO tactics like broken link building and email outreach psychology. Think about that for a second: do you think that 95% of the people reading my content have any idea of what broken link building is? 

Of course not. (By the way, I’ll cover my unique twist on broken link building in Module 3.) So why do I cover broken link building? Because I know that tactics like broken link building appeal to the people that can share and link to my content. Specifically, bloggers that write about SEO which are my Linkreators. Of course, I have an occasional post that speaks to my broader audience. But 90% of my content is aimed squarely at the Linkreators. 

And that’s the main reason I do so well. And make no mistake: The Linkreator-focused approach doesn’t only work for blogs. As you’ll see in Lesson 3, finding your Linkreators also helps ecommerce sites and service-based business get higher rankings. For example, the screenshot you see here is from one of our students, Freddie Chatt, that runs marketing for an ecommerce site. And the foundation of his success was that he published content specifically designed for his Linkreators. 

I’ll show you exactly how to find your Linkreators, step-by-step, in the next lesson. But for now, let’s wrap things up with one last example. Anyone that’s met me knows that I love The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. What you may NOT know is that – although the book is popular today, it wasn’t a huge success on Day 1. When Tim launched the book, he didn’t have a huge marketing budget or the help from his publisher to promote it. Most people in his position would have hit the book tour circuit: doing talks and signings at bookstores. 

And that’s how most people approach their content marketing. They appeal to the masses. But Tim took a different approach: he appealed directly to his Linkreators. Instead of trying to get his book in front of as many people as he could, he got it in front of the right people. Namely, tech bloggers in the Bay Area. Why? He knew that these people had the outlet – popular blogs and social media accounts – to spread the word about his new book. So he made sure his book appealed to these power brokers. 

And it worked! These bloggers shared his book with their audiences, and the rest is history. In later lessons in this course I’ll show you how to find your Linkreators and how to create content that they’ll happily link to and share. Right now all you need to do is understand that you want to write content that appeals to the people that run sites in your niche or in a related niche (your Linkreators)… not the masses. 

Sometimes there’ll be crossover. But if you want to succeed with SEO today, you need to put the Linkreators ahead of your target audience. Now you don’t worry about alienating potential customers or clients with your content: in Module 2 I’ll teach you how to create content that appeals to both groups. But for now, let’s quickly recap what we covered in this lesson. 

You learned that many people struggle with SEO because they only create content that appeals to their target customer. Instead, I showed you why creating content for your Linkreators – people that have the ability to share and link to your content – is KEY. So yeah, that’s about it. 

Now it’s time to download the worksheet for this lesson.In this worksheet I’ve included a few additional examples of Linkreators in different industries. Then, in the next lesson, lesson 3, I’m going to show the exact strategies that you can use to find your industry’s Linkreators. So download the worksheet. And I’ll see you in the next video.