Question

Mariah is performing an SEO competitive analysis on her client’s website. She identifies that their backlink profile is relatively weak, primarily because her client believes backlinks are a trend and isn’t interested in investing in them. However, she notices that their top competitors have received backlinks from a few reputable news agencies and aggregator sites. As a result, they are outranking her client in the SERPs. How should Mariah approach this situation with her client?

a-Mariah should educate her client on the value provided by high-quality backlinks, then suggest a strategy of approaching the same sites which link to their competitors and ask for a similar backlink to their website.
b-Mariah should send her client information from popular SEO blogs about backlinks, then propose that she start a cold outreach campaign to 100 relevant websites to ask for links.
c-Mariah should instead focus on content marketing and creating more high-quality blog posts.

Answer 1

Mariah should educate her client on the importance of high-quality backlinks and propose a strategy to approach authoritative sources for backlinks, targeting more than 100 related websites while highlighting the importance of related keywords.

Step-by-step explanation:

Mariah should approach her client by conveying the importance of high-quality backlinks in search engine optimization. She could explain that backlinks from authoritative sources are a significant factor in search rankings and not just a trend. A practical step would be to educate the client on why their competitors outrank them and suggest a tailored outreach strategy. This strategy could involve identifying reputable news agencies and aggregator sites that have linked to competitors and crafting personalized requests that demonstrate the value that the client's content can bring to those sites' audiences.

In addition to direct competitor backlink analysis, Mariah could propose expanding their SEO efforts by targeting related websites known for their authority and relevance. Through this, the client can build a robust backlink profile, diversified across various domains. Mariah may also stress the importance of intertwining these efforts with related keywords to ensure that the backlink profile is not only large but also topically relevant to their niche, potentially improving their SERP position even further.

While sending information from popular SEO blogs about backlinks could be helpful, it would be more effective to provide a concise report with actionable insights and direct evidence of how competitors benefit from a strong backlink profile. Moreover, focusing purely on content marketing without addressing the backlink deficit may not yield the full scope of SEO benefits that strong backlinks could provide.