If you are thinking about reeling in your SEO campaign due to budget constraints, restructure the traditional link building budget into content marketing and social media marketing and take a more social approach to SEO to not only continue, but augment your success.

To make it easy, let’s say you’re paying your SEO provider $1,000 a month for their services. Right now, $700 of that is devoted to link building in various forms (online PR, joining industry associations, etc). After 2 years of link building, chances are the number of great industry associations and business directories your company can join is getting slim. Meanwhile, best practice says you shouldn’t publish a press release unless you have a real newsworthy topic to share, so that has probably eased up in recent months. Why not use a large chunk of that $700 and pay your SEO provider (or hire a freelance writer) to write two extra blog posts each week, a monthly whitepaper or focus on guest blog submissions.

You can also reorganize that monthly link building budget and focus on really building your social community. Having a Facebook page or Twitter handle is the first step, but what are you really doing with it? Can you take some of that link building budget and use it to buy ads on LinkedIn or Facebook? Hold a competition or giveaway on your social profiles to drive engagement? Make your profiles more appealing by adding videos, photos and other forms of multimedia content?

You can also take some of your traditional link building budget and use it for offline, local marketing events (remember, everything can be leveraged for SEO!) Are their local events that you could sponsor? Could you host your own local event and drive foot traffic to your business and work on building your local brand? Are there any upcoming industry conferences that you can become a media sponsor of?

Obviously you can’t stop traditional, white hat link building entirely, but that doesn’t mean your methods have to stay the same year to year. If you are willing to redistribute the link building budget across content marketing and social media marketing opportunities, you’ll build a far more diverse link portfolio and continue to build your online brand without having to change the budget.

So when should you incorporate outbound links?

The most obvious scenario for incorporating an outbound link is when you are citing/quoting/referencing someone else’s work. For instance, if I mention a recent marketing study in a blog post, I link to that study so my blog readers can read more about it, in addition to the key points I may have talked about. I can’t claim responsibility for generating that report, so I have no right to infer that I came up with that data on my own. Plus, pulling statistics out of thin air doesn’t lend much credibility to the data. Anyone can make up a statistic and claim it as fact, so linking to the published report will assuage any doubts your readers may have.

The same holds true for quoting someone. If you pull a quote from another blogger, you should link to the post you pulled it from. Don’t let the search engines, readers or that blogger think that you’re plagiarizing content and claiming it as your own words! Outbound linking can help defend your integrity as a white hat link builder. You never want to give anyone the ability to trash talk you or your brand and claim that you are stealing content.

You can also incorporate outbound links as additional references for your readers, which is really useful if you are discussing a trending topic and don’t want to rehash background information every time you write about it. If a reader finds themselves in the middle of a developing situation they are unfamiliar with, they can follow those outbound links back to the beginning and better educate themselves to understand the situation. It saves you the time and effort of rewriting the same information again and again for those few new readers and lets you focus on keeping up with the topic as it develops, which what the majority of your readers care about.

Blog owners should never be afraid to link to their own websites, especially if that website is on a separate domain. Why not take your blog readers, who have already pre-qualified themselves as your target audience, and send them to some of the more internal pages of your website? That kind of outbound linking helps spread your blog’s link juice over to your website, raising the SEO value of your site and taking your readers one step closer to conversion.

Why should you bother with a full link audit?

First off, conducting a full link audit means that not only do I gather the data on how many links my sites have, but I also visit each and every one of those links and categorize them. You should visit all of the inbound links your site has because it is the only way you’ll be able to see just what kind of link it is. Is it a blog comment, article link, press release link or other purposeful link building tactic? Or is it a natural link, like someone quoting one of your blog posts or republishing a Facebook link. By visiting each link you’ll get a better idea of how well your link building campaign is progressing. If you’ve kept track of all the places you tried to get a link over the year, you’ll be able to see which ones went live and which ones did not.

Visiting each of the links in your link portfolio can also give you a good idea of where the holes are in your link building campaign and where there is room for growth. Do you rely too heavily on one type of link? This puts your website in a vulnerable position. For instance, a few years ago link exchanges were a viable form of link building until Google declared them black hat. Sites that were heavily involved in link building saw a majority of their link portfolios go up in smoke and their SEO suffered. I’ve said time and time again how important it is that you take a diversified approach to your link building, and visiting each of the links in your link portfolio really shows how well you have been doing with that.

Running a full link audit also means checking in on the competition. If you feel like you did everything right with your SEO in 2011 and just can’t beat the competition, it may be that they have a stronger link portfolio. Do they simply have more quality links than you? Are they being more aggressive with their link building campaign? How much are they augmenting traditional link building with social signals? All of these factors and more can be uncovered when you run a full link audit.

Depending on how long you have actively been link building, you might have a lot of links to get through. There is no rule saying it all needs to get done at once. If you would rather spread it out, try getting through a few hundred links each week and slowly chip away at the project.

Most of the business owners that attend the SEO Meetup aren’t looking to hire an SEO firm to handle their SEO or link building. If they are attending the Meetup it usually means they are looking to educate themselves to better handle their SEO in-house. (Personally, I think that kind of initiative is great, especially for business owners with new sites.) I don’t attend these events expecting to walk away with a dozen leads at the end of the night. I don’t even expect to walk away with one lead. But by sponsoring the event I’m allowed to bring promotional materials like pens, business cards and flyers to the Meetup. If I make sure they every attendee walks away with a Brick Marketing branded pen, I’ve created a touch point that may come in handy when they begin their own buying cycle if they ever do decide to hire an SEO firm. It helps me build my local brand and get my company in front of local business owners. Connecting with the local audience is the primary benefit of local event marketing.

But a secondary benefit of local event marketing, especially when the event has a website, is link building and long term SEO value. As one of the sponsors of the Boston SEO Meetup, my company is allowed to write as a guest author for the Boston SEO blog. Each blog post gives me the opportunity to target new keywords, both in the author biography and as anchor text in the post itself. Since this is such a trusted and established website, these inbound links are very valuable for my link building portfolio.

Let’s say you own a small restaurant and are looking to bolster your SEO and local marketing at the same time. Are there any charity events in your town that you could donate the food to? This gives you the opportunity to share your best dishes with the community (a great way to introduce your restaurant to the community and build buzz), earn some goodwill and get a few inbound links as well! Most charity organizations have their own websites, and your restaurant can get listed as the food sponsor with a link back.

Or you could partner up with other local businesses and create a whole new event where each brand leverages its unique assets for the betterment of everyone involved. For instance, your restaurant could pair with the local bridal boutique and salon to put on a bridal runway show. You can create a new page on your website for that event, then submit it to online event calendars, post a link to your Facebook page, write a promotional blog post, submit an online press release and so forth. That new page on your website gets links from a variety of sources, and your website benefits from the link juice.

Many site owners don’t realize that their offline marketing activities have SEO value as well. Don’t be afraid to get local with your SEO!

Here are 2 reasons why you shouldn’t let a PageRank govern your link building:

1. Google says you shouldn’t care so much.
A Google employee spelled it out in webmaster central back in 2009, “We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true.” In another forum Google states “Don’t worry. In fact, don’t bother thinking about it.” If Google says you shouldn’t let PageRank affect your SEO, why would you let it dictate your link building?

2. You might miss great link opportunities
Believe it or not, there are sites out there that don’t have an 8 or 9 PageRank that are still great sites to get inbound links from (GASP!). Instead of looking at PageRank, see if that site targets the same audience as you and if a link from that site could potentially drive targeted traffic. Can you use that one link to build a relationship with the site owner? Instead of just getting one link, maybe you start submitting guest articles for their blog or have them write a review of one of your products. By deciding that you aren’t going to even consider a site below a certain PageRank, you are severely limiting your chances of finding a great link opportunity.

The best link building campaigns create links from a variety of different sources. They may be blogs, videos, webinars, social media signals, articles, reviews and so forth. Every single link does not have to come from a PageRank 8 site to be considered valuable to your SEO.

A few years ago, my inbox would be flooded with emails asking for link exchanges, the “I’ll link to you if you link to me” version of link building. Back then, link exchanges were a viable form of link building until Google decreed that they were black hat. As a strictly white hat SEO professional, I take my cues from Google and stopped getting involved in link exchanges with anyone. For me, a few links is not worth the potential long term damage.

Now I’ve noticed my inbox is slowly filling up with similar emails. Only this time, instead of “I’ll link to you if you link to me,” the main point being driven is “I’ll let you write for my blog if you let me write for yours.” Sounds like the same idea, doesn’t it? The increase of “blog exchange” emails I’m getting has me worried that the search engines might decide guest blogging is getting way out of hand and they will be forced to declare links earned from guest blogging as black hat link building.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with becoming a guest author on a trusted industry blog. Nor do I think there is anything black hat about accepting guest blog posts for your own blog. Where it starts to get a little murky is when bloggers from different industries are swapping posts that don’t impact each others’ audiences. For instance, I would never accept a guest blog post from someone who worked as a dog breeder. What does dog breeding have to do with SEO? Why would the people who read my blog care about dog breeding? Even if they are interested, that’s not the information they have come to expect from my site. On the flip side, why would anyone reading a blog about dog breeding care about SEO or social media marketing? Sure, I may earn a couple links from this blog exchange, but what is the real value of those links?

Link building is about much more than just rounding up as many inbound links as you can. I’m worried that an increase in blog exchanging will force the search engines to undercut a crucial component of content marketing.

I would like to hear from other SEO professionals and bloggers. Do you think I am overreacting with my “blog exchange” fears?

1. Is my brand established enough?
Infographics are great forms of link bait, but they shouldn’t be the go-to link building technique for a new site. If you don’t have a strong online presence (something that takes a long time), how will anyone find your infographic in the first place? If your website isn’t ranking well, how do you expect your infographic to do better? And even if they do manage to stumble across it, does your brand have a strong enough trust factor that people will feel comfortable sharing your infographic as a reliable source of information?

2. Do I have the promotional outlets in place to promote it?
Content that no one sees is only half as useful as it could be. While search spiders use content to crawl and index your site, if your real (human!) customers aren’t reading/finding it, what was the point? The same is true for infographics. Before you even considering creating an infographic, make sure you have the promotional outlets in place. This includes social media profiles, partner sites, blogger outreach programs and so forth. You want to give you infographic the best possible chance of being found and linked to.

3. Does it make sense for my industry?
Just because you can create an infographic, that doesn’t mean you should. Will other brands/companies in your industry find an infographic interesting? Will your target audience care? Don’t accidentally waste your time creating a piece of content that isn’t right for your industry.

4. Is the topic creative/interesting enough to get shared?
If you are just rehashing the same information as everyone else in your industry that is pumping out infographics, you’re just adding more clutter to the pile. What do you have to share that is new and exciting (or even controversial) so it can get you noticed? You need to give people a real reason to share your infographic. If you can’t come up with a topic that will make your brand stand out, put the infographic on the back burner for now.

5. Who will create it?
This may sound like a silly question, but it’s something you have to think about. A really professional looking infographic is going to take a lot of time and needs to be handled by someone with good design skills. Do you have that person in-house? Will you need to outsource your infographic creation to a freelance graphic designer or hire a separate firm to get it done? An infographic has to visually appealing, on top of having great information to share, if you want it to do its job.