I Only Want 500 Inbound Links Please

I was speaking with a potential new local SEO client a few weeks ago, about developing and implementing a white hat link building campaign for his website. Things were going pretty well on the call until he mentioned that he really only wanted 500 inbound links created throughout the course of the link building campaign. I have to admit, I found that hard line to be a little odd. Why would any site owner want to limit their link building like that? Was he worried we’d build too many links too quickly? Did he not trust they’d be quality inbound links? Usually prospects are asking me how many links they can expect to see each month (I can’t really give a hard and fast number since the whole point of white hat link building is to make it look natural) and here was one telling me that he didn’t want us to go past a certain point with his link building.

What happens next?
If you are thinking of limiting the amount of inbound links you create with your link building activities let me ask you a question—what happens next? What if a piece of content you write goes viral (or at last viral compared to your norm) and it gets shared a couple hundred times on the social networks, quoted in other blogs and so forth? Are you going to put the rest of your link building that month on hold because something you did worked really well? I hope not! Most of the time site owners struggle to come up with quality inbound links time and time again, so why look a gift horse in the mouth and try to stop inbound links from occurring naturally?

There are so many opportunities, don’t limit yourself.
Every industry is different, but I couldn’t help but think about how many great link building and brand building opportunities this photographer would miss if he limited himself to 500 inbound links. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of photography forums that he could get active in. He could partner with local wedding vendors and build business partnerships to cross promote each other, he could do so well in social media (especially Pinterest which is image driven) and write great content in a company blog. All of those activities are perfectly white hat and build quality inbound links over time so why not take advantage of that?

Link building is ongoing.
It’s important to remember that link building never really ends; it’s an ongoing process. I still have to build new links to the Brick Marketing site every day and am always on the lookout for new opportunities to create inbound links. Creating 500 links now (or over the course of the next few months) isn’t going to carry your website forever. I’d much rather a site owner build 10 links every month for the next 5 years than push 500 links through (even if they were quality) in the next six months and then pull the plug on their link building.