Using Google AdWords For Link Building & Targeting Customers

How To Target Customers By Integrating Link Building With Google AdWords Data

There are numerous ways to find value link acquisition opportunities. A well-run SEO campaign will include a “link prospecting” process where that work is carried out, and websites are assessed by the value they might have in terms of:

• Will a link on this website send traffic?
• Will a link from this website send traffic that converts into sales and enquiries?
• What is the authority of the website?
• Is the website indexed and frequently crawled by Search Engines?
• Do individual pages have authority?
• Are we able to produce the necessary content or meet the requirements to acquire a link from this website?

Many link building campaigns focus on acquiring links from websites with “good authority”, using metrics including Google PageRank and Moz Domain or Page Authority. This is a sensible approach, because higher authority links will have a more positive influence on rankings and traffic than lower authority links.

However, lower authority links are valuable if they send traffic, send conversions and provide visibility for your website —visibility means putting a company or website name in front of prospective customers and people who might be interested in products and services you provide.

Businesses will take Sales over Enquiries, and Traffic over Rankings. Links on other websites that send quality visitors are the best type of links to acquire.

Using Google AdWords To Find Link Opportunities

The Google AdWords Conversion Funnel is something I’ve talked about recently. AdWords is a valuable tool for finding new customers, but its benefits aren’t limited to directly targeting customers. By focussing on two features of AdWords, Search Advertising and Retargeting, it’s easy to find link opportunities to use in an SEO Campaign.

Find Prospects With Search Advertising

So first it’s important to find visitors who are initially interested in our products and services. Running an AdWords Search Advertising campaigns is a quick, easy and when managed correctly, cost-effective way to do that.

Pick some relevant keywords and run some ads. If AdWords is already running, or if the website is already receiving visitors from other sources then that’s great – we just need to add those visitors to a retargeting list.

Retarget & Discover Link Opportunities

Links that send traffic can be found when you discover where your customers (and prospective customers) spend time on the internet. By using Retargeting, you are able to do that.

Retargeting itself is a way of promoting a brand or service to visitors who have already expressed some kind of interest in using a company, but it’s not a permanent tactic – once your budget has depleted, you need to spend more money to get coverage across websites in Google’s Display Network.

By using the report in AdWords, it’s possible to obtain a list of websites that customers who’ve been added to a retargeting list have visited. In order to acquire links from these websites, it’s simply a case of assessing each website and using an appropriate link building tactic.

Some good questions to think about are:

• Is it possible to acquire a link from this website?
  YouTube regularly appears in Retargeting reports – but we’re looking for other opportunities here
• Is it a relevant website – Recipe and Dating websites might not be relevant places to have links from depending on the products and services we’re promoting
• Can we produce the content required to obtain a link from this website?
• Do competitors have links from these websites?
• Consider standard link assessment criteria – has the site been penalised? do they sell links? etc

Good link opportunities from retargeting campaigns can include Forums, Blogs, News sites and websites specific to the industry we’re trying to promote products for.