Agencies: Why you should embrace White Label Link Building

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Last updated: November 2023

If you run a digital marketing agency, you’ll understand the fundamental importance of having a sound SEO strategy if you’re serious about helping clients reach the top of Google. However, with the greatest will in the world, sometimes you simply won’t have the time, or perhaps the expertise, to build authoritative inbound links that promise to propel your search rankings.

This is where White Label SEO services can take your campaigns to the next level, complementing existing work to ensure both your onsite and offsite optimisation strategies are firing on all cylinders.

Here’s our guide to making white label marketing work for you:

What is White Label Marketing?

Firstly, the term ‘white labelling’ dates back to the practice of record companies sending out promotional copies of vinyl to DJs and radio stations, hoping to generate a dancefloor buzz and secure airtime long before public release. These would often arrive in plain packaging with handwritten notes on white labels, as the commercial artwork was not yet ready.

It has also been said that white label copies are occasionally produced to conceal an artist’s identity, ensuring no preconceptions, and it’s this notion of anonymity that’s most pertinent in the world of retail and marketing.

Ultimately, white label products are made by one organisation and sold to another, with the latter able to affix their own branding to give the impression it’s made in-house. This is prevalent when taking a moment to study supermarket own brands, as one factory will commonly supply the same product – baked beans, for example – to rival chains, but each one will have their own packaging.

It may sound like a crazy business model on the face of it, but it’s incredibly convenient and cost-effective, enabling businesses to broaden their offerings without draining resources. Why build your own bean factory when you can outsource to someone else and benefit from their expertise?

Your customers are guaranteed a quality product, enhancing brand loyalty, and you get to make a tidy markup to boot, keeping those in the bean counting department happy. Not such a half-baked idea now, is it?

Full of beans

Link building is integral to successful content marketing, but in our experience very few agencies have a good grasp on how to do it effectively in a consistent, sustainable manner that plays by the rules.

In essence, links pointing to your website (or your client’s website) are considered a form of ‘vote’ from the wider Internet community; if people link to your content it suggests you produce valuable, insightful material, and the more ‘votes’ you have, the better your resources must be. Thus, search bots count these ‘votes’ and use them as part of the wider algorithm to help determine search rankings.

Unfortunately, this knowledge once led to unscrupulous marketers trying to manipulate the system by indulging in dodgy ‘link spam’ practices, resulting in Google’s Penguin update as well as repeated warnings on large-scale article marketing.

Thankfully, we’ve avoided making the same mistakes and are well-versed in the art of obtaining high-quality inbound links that boost search performance. Furthermore, rather than simply working to improve background SEO, our finely-tuned approach to outreach marketing has a more obvious PR benefit: exposure on premium websites relevant to your niche extends your reach and bolsters brand recognition, potentially opening the door for new business opportunities. The articles are often shared with large social media exposure, generating great referral traffic.

So how does White Label Link Building work?

To the uninitiated, the world of White Label link building may seem mysterious and somewhat precarious, but it’s actually a very straightforward process:

  1. The client must have high-quality, non-advertorial content on their site, such as an informative blog or in-depth white paper. Ultimately, there has to be something valuable that people would naturally link to. If you’re a content creation agency, you probably take care of this side of things already. (If not, we can help you with this as well, please get in touch.)
  2. Once a site has great on-site content, you can then promote the benefits of publishing thought leadership articles on high-authority third-party websites as part of an integrated content marketing strategy.
  3. You then provide your link building partner (us!) with details such as which vertical markets the client wants to target, what industry publications they and their customers read, and whether there’s any particular keyword focus or web pages that should be promoted.
  4. We then get to work on researching the best publishing websites for that particular client and come up with a series of potential articles (to be ghostwritten under their authorship) aligning with the objectives highlighted in step three. It’s worth highlighting that we never pay for link placements, as this contravenes Google’s quality guidelines, yet many other outreach agencies are tempted to take this perilous shortcut.
  5. You then take the synopses and proposed publishing sites back to the client (under your banner) and once they’re signed off you can give us the green light to start collaborating with the target websites. Our outreach emails make it clear that we’re the point of contact, so there’s no danger of editors contacting the client directly.
  6. As soon as an article is commissioned, we’ll write it up, taking care to conduct thorough blog research making sure it frames your client as a respected voice of authority. Wherever possible, we’ll also naturally link back to the client’s website within the main body of the text. You can then pass the final content to the client for approval, and once they sign it off you can notify us, and we’ll submit to the website.
  7. We’ll inform you once the article is published, you inform your client, and bish-bash-bosh, job done – a juicy, Google-friendly backlink to boost SEO, while also gaining exposure in front of a very targeted audience. This is Digital PR at its finest.
  8. We’ll produce a ‘white label’ monthly report which you can edit to suit your own branding before sharing with the client.Repeat monthly, and you’ll soon build up a portfolio of high-quality links that raise the client’s overall domain authority, ensuring they consistently rank highly for their targeted search terms, and creating a content hierarchy that complements on-site work.

So partnering with a link building specialist means you get to broaden your services quickly and efficiently, making you indispensible to the client as you add genuine value to their online presence in more ways than one.

It’s a win-win-win for all parties involved, and you get to take all the glory as the work will be presented as part of your digital marketing services.

As a digital agency, you’re no doubt skilled at writing captivating copy, but the science of natural link building requires serious attention, and article marketing absorbs numerous hours of outreach activity, if your clients are ever going to get noticed in organic search. If you’re keen to hear more, we can take a look at your client’s editorial calendar and propose a ‘white hat’, future-proof link building strategy that will see their rankings blossom.

Be wary of other white label link-building services which are not as open and transparent – many secretly use private blog networks (PBNs), and you get very little visibility of the quality of the sites, which are often irrelevant, not niche-specific and built solely for the purposes of generating links. The content is often written offshore and is of dubious quality, and ultimately you risk your client’s site getting penalised.

Google frequently highlights that you’ll be wasting your money doing this as they just ignore if not penalise low-quality, irrelevant links. Also, fake links will never get any traffic or social activity, so it’s crucial to use real sites.

From day one, the goal for Bespoke Digital has been to deliver genuine quality rather than faking it, and we achieve great results accordingly.

We’ve partnered with dozens of agencies in the past, and we’re always keen to meet more, so if you’d like to have a chat about all things content marketing and SEO, gives us a buzz on 0117 230 6010 or drop us a line at enquiries@bespoke-digital.co.uk.

If you have any comments or questions about this post, or would like to discuss a specific issue with your site, please get in touch using the form below.

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Magnus Linklater SEO Consultant

Author: Magnus Linklater

Magnus is an SEO specialist and online marketing professional with over 25 years of digital and traditional marketing experience.

As the founder of Bespoke Digital, Magnus has worked on technical site audits and content marketing campaigns for hundreds of clients and regularly writes about SEO strategy, tips & tricks.

Find Magnus on LinkedIn

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