Find ethical backlinks and better content by leveraging happy customers

Alan says: “Leverage happy customers for building ethical backlinks – and there are a few different ways that you can do this.

Most companies essentially stop at just asking for a review or a testimonial. They slap it on the website, and they don't really do much with it. The key point here is to think about your customer as a whole person. They have different hobbies, they have different interests, and they have a network of people that they know that you can leverage to gain more reach and more engagement for new content and backlinks.”

How can case studies help you to do this?

“Case studies are a fantastic opportunity. HubSpot is a great example of a company that's doing this really well right now. They have a case studies hub page that you can take a look at, showcasing different case studies for different companies.

The first thing I noticed when I popped the page into my SEO tool is that a lot of those case studies are ranking for the company brand terms. That's traffic that you can get if you optimize your case studies. However, the main thing I noticed is that each case study talks about a specific problem that the software has solved for that customer. That's a really good way for the company to leverage their happy customers.

For example, in one HubSpot case study, they explain how they helped a company achieve 44% social media growth using their marketing hub tool. As soon as I put that case study into my SEO tool, it showed me that they have around 70 referring domains, and most of them are from other websites linking to this one statistic. That's very useful.

To reverse engineer that, you can essentially use the KPIs that you have helped your clients improve as sources for other websites to reference. You could reach out to every article that talks about how to use marketing tools to increase social media growth and say, ‘We helped this client increase their social media growth by 44%. This is the case study showing how we did that.’ Chances are, you will get a very nice backlink from that page because you have provided a great, unique data point. Nobody else has that data, and it's very useful for proving that specific point.”

When is the right time to ask for a case study?

“Straight away – as soon as you have some data to prove that you have helped the company. You want to create the page as soon as possible. You don't want there to be too much time between when you get the results and when you ask for the case study.

There are specific processes and best practices that you should use when asking for a case study, as well. I talked to Joel Klettke from Case Study Buddy, and he gave me a gold mine of processes and best practices to follow. If you are asking for case studies in the best possible way, that will get you the best-written experiences as well.

There is a format, but I would suggest studying companies that are doing it well, like HubSpot and Salesforce. You can get a good feel for how you should go about it by looking at those examples.”

How can testimonials also help in this way?

“Testimonials are very similar to case studies. At the end of the day, most people just slap a testimonial on the homepage because it's nice to see.

However, I would suggest that you create a specific testimonials page. That is a better way to showcase your authority and your social proof, making your whole website more authoritative, which helps when you are negotiating for backlinks. You can demonstrate that your product works, and show that you have a lot of happy customers.

Companies that have a stronger brand and stronger authority typically find it easier to get backlinks. If someone who is negotiating with you for a link goes to your website and sees no case studies, no testimonials, and a very low domain rating, they'll be wondering, ‘What's in it for me?’ If you have more authority, with more testimonials on your page, that will make a difference – particularly if you have testimonials from people who are well-known in your niche.

The best thing about testimonials is the fact that the people who write them are often willing to share them on social media. They might even share the same testimonial on their website to showcase that they have used your product.”

What is user-generated content and how can you benefit from it?

“User-generated content is essentially about creating true advocates of your brand so that they create content about your product or service. For example, I'm a huge fan of Vivo Barefoot, which is a brand that makes barefoot minimal shoes. I have a personal site where I talk about my running, and I wrote an article about my transition from normal shoes to these types of shoes. I talked all about the brand, their principles, and their core values.

It's about sharing your mission and your values so that your customers actually become true advocates of your product and the ethos behind it. That is what makes them want to create their own content.

User-generated content can be blog articles and it can be social media posts as well. It’s great for social proof, but it can also rank and attract backlinks. In fact, the article that I wrote about Vivo Barefoot is now ranking for keywords like ‘barefoot running’ and ‘transitioning to barefoot shoes’.”

Should you ask your customers to write an article and include a link or do you want that content and link to be created more organically?

“Don’t be too pushy. Make it as enticing as possible for them to create content about your brand. 90% of the time, the link will come naturally because it makes sense for happy customers to want to point people to the specific product.

That’s exactly what I did in my article. I actually want people to try out these shoes, so I linked to the company website, and I even linked to some of the training courses that they have.

Maybe, after a month, you could do a link campaign focused on brand mentions. You could go after some of those articles that mention your brand and find ways to incentivise them. If you have a software product, you could say, ‘Hey, I saw you mentioned our brand, thanks a lot for the shout-out! We are offering a free one-month subscription if you add the link to the website so that other people can find us and enjoy the product too.’”

Is guest blogging as effective as it used to be?

“Guest blogging still works. The main thing is having a creative pitch when you reach out. What I'm talking about is essentially having your customer create a guest blog article on your own website. If you have a software product, you can have a customer write an article about how they are using the product.

For example, I use Pitchbox as my main outreach tool. They asked me to do an article on their website and I wrote about how I transitioned from using a bunch of different tools for a lot of different things to just using Pitchbox as my one main tool for everything. That's useful for their customers and for new people finding out about the tool, and it's a backlink as well.

The other good thing about it is that I have now written an article on Pitchbox. It's a great link that goes back to my site, and I can share the article too. It's one of the main pieces of content that I send over to prospective customers when they are interested in seeing my process, the kind of tools that we use, and how it works. The content keeps giving, and it's evergreen.”

Do you also advocate for creating webinars and podcast content?

“These are great, as you know. Companies could create their own show and invite their customers to come on and talk about the company or the product, which is similar to a guest blog but in a video or audio format. This kind of content is really good for distribution. Video or audio snippets that you create from this content can have a lot of reach – potentially even more than a simple blog article would.

It's also important to understand where your customers hang out and the types of media that they consume. If the podcast or video format is best for them, then that might be the way to go.

It’s all about featuring the specific way that your product or service has helped your customer. If it’s done in their own words, it's more credible and more authoritative, and they will be more incentivised to share it back to their digital communities or network.”

Would you suggest using affiliate programs, even though affiliate links aren’t SEO-friendly links?

“That is true, but it's still a nice way to spread the word about your product. If you can get more people to buy your product or service, at the end of the day, that’s more voice your product has in the market. It’s also going to push people to write more content about your product, talk about it, and share it on social media.

Anything that can help you amplify your voice and get more reach is going to benefit your SEO. If you only think about SEO benefits in terms of specific links, domain rating, etc., that's very limiting. Especially in 2024, people need to look at SEO in a more holistic way and take care of everything that's going to give you more reach. That includes distribution, different types of media, and getting more people to talk about the product.

The direction that Google has been going in for years, specifically with Artificial Intelligence in the mix, is all about building trust. It’s all about making true fans; real customers that really love your product and want to be ambassadors for it.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“In short, stop creating new content. Get in touch with your customers and try to get them to create the content for you.”

Alan Silvestri is Managing Director at Growth Gorilla, and you can find him over at MyGrowthGorilla.com.