Client Has No Money for Backlinks - What To Do?

What was supposed to be easy nich (i burried that term in 2017 however), turned out to be a hard niche.

1-3 is covered with city.com/localsiteseing
rest of the spots are covered with competitors with link profiles consisting of high UR/DR/RD press releases, local newspapers, and high DA posts. you get the idea. linkbuilding for 10k...

Clients ranking are dropping (no wonder) since last year.

Sadly, she cant afford premium posts. And I dont work and have never worked with cheap rubbish for clients.

What's your take on this?

I came of with the idea to scrape competitors backliks/domains, send her the list, so SHE can contact some for link-exchange, or similar. That way, I could keep her as a client (referral), and she has some elbow grease, but keeps the costs low.

It wont be the best approach, but she might get 3-5 premium links "for free" that way, that will surely help her at least stay in the spot.

web2s, expired domains, and tiered shit truely is out of the question.

I also offered her PPC, so that way she could boost sales to re-invest in premium content marketing..

Kind of tough situation.Either the clients got "money stashed on the roof", or even 17$ "Social Signals" is too expensive, when top 10 are loaded with DA30+ sites .

I think your suggestion sounds reasonable - from the sound of things it's about all you can do.

One question though - is she not prepared to pay for premium posts because she is cheap, or because the business is truly not making enough money for her to do so?

If the former then I would work on convincing her that she has to invest in order to see results. If the latter, then is the business truly viable?

That sounds like a former client to me as opposed to a client.

You're idea of scraping and then giving her the list so she could reach out for guest posting opportunities might have some value but does she understand all that goes into a decent guest post?

I think your choices are work for free or cut her loose.

It is admirable that you want to help her out but we are not always in a position to help a person.

find another client...
if you want to do free work, build something for youself

Well, if your client has original content, as far as images, pictures and stuff, why don't you try reverse image searching posts from IG, see if other sites online have used it. Then try to gain backlinks off them? You can search google by picture. Now obviously, if someone has scrapped all image details etc, this won't work. But good idea i think especially if she/he has lots of photos or original content. Other than that, not much you can do unless you want to work for free.

One of the things I always try to do when taking on clients/work is make sure they will not solely depend on me to succeed. Try to get established business etc.

BassTrackerBoats said:

That sounds like a former client to me as opposed to a client.

You're idea of scraping and then giving her the list so she could reach out for guest posting opportunities might have some value but does she understand all that goes into a decent guest post?

I think your choices are work for free or cut her loose.

It is admirable that you want to help her out but we are not always in a position to help a person.

Click to expand...

well, I'd like to get her as SEM client.

CPC is so low... and competition are just like 2 websites..
however in SERPS, there obstacles, she will have to pass, or be behind in a few months...

However, the stuff she does, aint that viaable.. no referral stuff, no recurring clients.
I'd even bet she be better of working 9-5.. truely..

still, in .de, people got in their mind like:

YT is for kitten movies and funny clips
Linkbuilding aint needed, you can rank with flashy responsive theme and good content.
something like "SEO competition" or "strong links" dont exist.
and PPC is like: nobody clicks on ads..

oh, and if you think, its just SMB.. no way.. same goes for 5 million in sales client. was a mess to talk too. horrible.. really.
I upped price into oblivion just to scare them away or to efford my first Porsch' if they hire me - I have to have fun somehow..

Have you tried ranking for long tail keywords?

Myblogguest.com
Try that. Finding good sites is easy with mbg.
Get some interesting articles written first and then submit 2 articles per day on mbg.
U will receive offers. Approve good offers.

NYC SEO said:

Have you tried ranking for long tail keywords?

Click to expand...

no volume there, sadly.