Brute strength vs. finesse (Part 2)

Yesterday's email was all about niche site content quality. It's a spectrum. I called it the [brute strength vs finesse spectrum](). What I didn't discuss is where links come into play. I was going to but I didn't want to muddy up the metaphor. I'll do that today. How you get links to your sites falls on the exact same brute strength vs finesse spectrum. Sometimes people mischaracterize me as anti-links. That's not true. I'm all for getting links to my sites... naturally. Other than a few guest posts over the years, all my links from referring domains are natural. I've attracted over 1 million links from over 100,000 referring domains over the years. I know many of those links are junk but many are good. All I do is publish content, some of which happens to be good enough to attract links. It's actually easier than you think but does take time. I don't promote. I don't do outreach begging for links. I just publish. Brute strength link building is going out and building/buying links. You're forcing it. It's unnatural. Most likely you're building links to some money page. You might outright pay for links. Or you use a service to place guest posts. Or you might be a bit more finessed and promote your content hoping for links. A pure finesse link building strategy is solely publishing content. A pure brute approach is blatantly going out and buying links. Again, it's a spectrum. I'm pretty far onto the finesse side for this one. Probably all the way over actually. The middle part is reserved for publishers who promote select content for links. Broken link building is also a nuanced effort falling in the middle. All methods can work. Some niches do better with one or the other. There are some niches in which you have to build links like crazy. If you're not willing, you won't stand a chance. There are definitely many keywords requiring the same. Then there are some niches where no proactive link building is necessary. And then there's content you can publish that stands a better chance to attract links. My favorite is custom graphics and illustrations. They work great because other sites use them and provide source link. Publishing great images can do the job as well especially if in visual niches. I have a VA who spends 10+ hours per week contacting professionals and other websites requesting permission to use images and graphics. This has turned out to be a very good investment over the years. I've hired Fiverr gigs to create some illustrations. Here's an example of a site where my custom graphics attracted over 7,000 referring domains in 13 months: ​ ​ Quality attracts links and attention At the end of the day, quality content, whether written, video, email, images or graphics can attract links. If you're a finesse blogger, you know this. I'm a hybrid. I publish some finesse stuff that attracts links. I also volume publish content that doesn't. Another good example is this email newsletter. Amazingly, an email newsletter that people like will get mentioned to other people... for free. Word spreads. Just recently, [@NicheSiteLady]( (one of my all-time favorite Twitter accounts BTW) mentioned my email newsletter. That was nice of her. I didn't pay her to. I didn't ask. She just happened to like an email I sent and said so in Twitter. Some of her Twitter followers signed up. Many of you are reading this email right now. That was the result of one email message. I know not every email I send is share-worthy. But it only takes one or some here and there to get shared and attract readers. It's the same with content. One killer article with some link-attraction aspects can get a lot of links. Not every article need do that or be that good. But it doesn't hurt if it is. Everything in this business falls on a spectrum. The tricky part is that for your site in your niche there comes a point of diminishing returns on that spectrum in both directions. What I mean by that is that at some point moving further to one end or the other will yield you less and less of the outcome you seek. For example, 50 epic articles that attract hundreds of links will do a blog wonders. The question is are you then better off publishing 400 lesser quality articles targeting far more keywords (leveraging all those links and authority) or another 20 epic articles? Some will say go for the 400. Others say stick with epic. Another example is I'm pretty sure I could benefit from doing link building. I target some valuable keywords where some more links could dramatically increase that traffic. I don't but I know that it probably would be worth doing. I just can't be bothered. I'm probably a bit too far down the finesse side of link building. My sites could definitely benefit from some outreach. Over time figure out where on the brute strength vs finesse spectrum works best for you. Jon Fatstacksblog.com [Unsubscribe]( | [Update your profile]( | 2016 Hill Drive, North Vancouver, British Columbia V7H 2N5