Links Matter (Data-driven) with Examples

To start, I have rules to protect owners from throwing away money. Link building is expensive; if you’re ready to invest externally, everything internally should be near perfect.

Also, I recommend reading Ahref’s post (Links Matter Less but Still Matter) published on Jan. 30th.

Link building amplifies everything you’ve done internally.

1. business, brand, purpose (9/10)
2. site quality, hosting, theme, plugins (9/10)
3. content pruned, low-quality removed, remaining significantly improved (9/10)
4. content new, exceptional quality (9/10)
5. socials, newsletters (9/10)

Owner (9/10)
If you expect to build links but are not consistently working on your business, don’t bother. This is for real businesses making a genuine effort to grow long-term.

The above are far less expensive and easier to execute than building quality links externally.

Links Are Last

Once everything is done internally, we lean on link-building to amplify everything. Owners rarely execute this in-house due to the time, effort, and operating procedures required to execute this at scale, which also explains pricing.

Outreach Process

1. Prospecting – identifying quality sites
2. Vetting – verifying quality
3. Outreach – crafty outreach
4. Pitch – suggest content opportunities
5. Write – agreed content
6. Close – publish and monitor

Securing a quality link takes a lot of work and time. In some cases, often around holidays, it can take two months from start to finish.

Two of my least favorite times to secure links are in December (Christmas Holidays) and July (Independence and family holidays).

Data-Driven Results

This is my favorite part, mainly because this is where we identify potential opportunities based on existing data.

Ahrefs

Load your domain, go straight into keywords, and filter volume (50k plus). The initial display will sort by traffic, and you’ll likely see opportunities.

We typically look for the highest-quality opportunities possible, ignoring anything already in positions 1-3 and focusing on positions 4-20.

I tend to hone in on 4-10 first and might end up with something like:

1. 57k, KD14, Pos 8
2. 92k, KD20, Pos 7
3. 53k, KD28, Pos 4
4. 177k, KD50, Pos 8
5. 151k, KD71, Pos 13

You’ll note that 1-3 are short-term targets (1-3 months), while we’ll also work on long-term targets (3-6 months).

For privacy reasons, I can’t share the keywords above. We always try to build links to similarly themed content, so 1-3 may be related, which helps reinforce authority around your site’s purpose.

Content Overview Document

Once we have preliminary ahrefs data, we’ll use our content overview document, which provides a birds-eye view of internal content data.

We immediately know:

1. age of content
2. how many words
3. how many internal/external links
4. referring domains
5. pageviews
6. display ads per view
7. revenue
8. RPM
9. CPM

We generally match our ahrefs targets and validate based on potential and return on investment.

High CPM means each individual ad view pays more:

• CPM x IPV = RPM
• $2.46 x 17.19 = $42.28

Older content, possibly lacking internal links, may require significant improvement first.

Identifying Keywords (Anchor Text)

We constantly vary the anchor text and aim to build authority based on Intent rather than repeatedly spamming the exact anchor text.

Example:

1. Pizza Dough
2. Pizza Dough Recipe
3. Homemade Pizza Dough

I’m using a quick example from Ahrefs keywords. However, we typically use GSC to identify meaningful keywords (queries) with the highest clicks.

Content Overview Documents Examples

You’ll quickly notice this aligns perfectly with Ahref’s article (linked at the top). Specifically when focusing on high volume (green segment) and average referring domains (Links).

I was going for 20 but added 21 because the last site listed is in the finance niche, and I wanted to showcase the difference in authority requirements across niches.

• Crafting site doing $200k with minimal authority (easy)
• Finance site doing $200k with extreme authority (difficult)

The total of the content overview documents above is 6.264 million annually, which means the monthly revenue of these sites alone is 522k/month.

I’ve done hundreds of these documents over the years, and the only difference between a 7-figure site and a 5-figure site is the number of high-volume posts ranking in the green segment.

On average, 5-20% of your content drives 80% of your traffic, and the remaining 80-95% is necessary as support.

• Orange Segment supports the Green
• Red Segment supports both the Orange and Green

Without these, the green segment wouldn’t exist, so it’s critical to create content for people at all levels of volume (low, medium, high) and difficulty (low, medium, and high).

One of the first clients I worked with over five years ago continues to set all-time highs. The yellow line shows content (inventory), and the orange line shows organic traffic.

Had the owner stopped publishing, his traffic would have followed. A lack of inventory limits growth; you can’t grow without content.

Calculating Returns

Let’s use one of the examples identified earlier.

Volume: 57,000
Keyword Difficulty: 14
Position: 8
CPM: $2.76
IPV: 17.56
RPM: $48.56
Pageviews: 79,029

Again, I love this part. We use known data to estimate future revenue based on your current rank and pageviews. The numbers above represent our data today, and we use known metrics like CTR to extrapolate future revenue at varying positions.

CTR Data
Overall, going into 2025, searchers seem to trust the highest organic results a bit more than last year (39.6% → 39.8% CTR for Position 1; 18.4% → 18.7% for Position 2).

If we have 79,029 pageviews in position 8, we can use the data above to estimate pageviews at any position.

L12, is estimated revenue calculated over 12 months, and we all know high-value content can easily rank for years.

We’re not after the monthly; we’re after the L12+

While many are obsessed with ranking first (difficult/expensive), we’re far more interested in moving 10 posts up by 4 positions (easy/meaningful).

Example:
Moving the above post to 1st nets 72k annually, but the investment and time required is often extreme.

Moving 10 posts from 8th to 4th nets 131k annually, increased diversification, improved distribution of internal links, and room for future growth. This is a far more lucrative and profitable link acquisition strategy.

The why resonates with earthquakes. A 6.0 earthquake isn’t just a little stronger than a 5.0; it releases 10 times more energy.

The same applies above! We can focus our resources on moving one post from position 3 to position 1, or we can focus the same resources on moving ten posts from position 8 to position 4.

The above is known as scaling vertically, and our goal is to increase our target post from position 8 to position 4 or higher.

However, keep in mind this also results in horizontal scaling thanks to internal links. In this case, the page we’re targeting has 14 internal links, and each page will also gain authority through its connection to the primary.

Example-wise, consider purple as external links reinforcing E (5x) and B (3x).

• E naturally reinforces B, D, F
• F naturally reinforces B
• B naturally reinforces C
• D naturally reinforces A
• This is why internal links are critical.

This is also why we prefer to target and build links that focus on your business’s purpose. Building authority across a group of posts aligned with your purpose, combined with relevant internal links, accelerates everything.

Summary

If you’re invested in your business and keen on growing, I’m proof that intelligent, data-driven options exist that hone in on content with the highest growth potential.

As always, my intent and goals align with the owners I work with. I genuinely want to contribute, see your business grow, and consistently set new all-time highs.

Link Ready

If you’re interested and ready, meaning you’re done optimizing internally, I’d love to help you scale. Of course, if you’re not ready and want help internally, schedule a meeting to review internal options.

Link Process:

1. onboarding
2. collect and analyze ahrefs data
3. create/refresh content overview document
4. identify and document high-value opportunities
5. execute campaign

I’m consistently improving standard operating procedures and efficiency internally. And while I may be able to reduce prices further in the future, my going rate is $375/link, with a minimum of 5 per month ($1,875).

I understand budgets and opportunities vary and are often based on the business’s revenue and cash flow. Once targets are identified, we typically aim for 3 links/per month per post and prioritize by opportunity.

10 links monthly, for example

• target 1 gets 3 links < primary
• target 2 gets 3 links < primary
• target 3 gets 2 links < secondary
• target 4 gets 2 links < secondary

If you’d like to explore this further, please book a meeting to review.