We are talking about goodwill link

building on this episode of the show.

Doing good things for people, for

people, for organizations, for

companies, good things where eventually

you get a backlink or several of them.

And I'm going to start by sharing some

stories on X about goodwill link

building and then I'm going to give

ideas. Ideas for SAS, for e-commerce and

for local services. That's what I got

for you on this episode. It's going to

be a great show. Let's go. So this

episode is inspired by Bodhi Local SEO

on X who shared this. And then I

reshared it and got an awesome comment

from Lily Ray and I you know, I'm like

goodwill link building. I love it. So

Bodhi said, "A roofer in South Florida

donated a free roof through a local

Habitat for Humanity chapter last year.

The charity posted about it on their

website with a full backlink to his

business.

A local news station picked it up. His

Facebook got shared over 200 times. That

one act of goodwill built more authority

in Google's eyes than 6 months of buying

links from some random vendor on Fiverr.

This works with nonprofits, youth sports

leagues, school fundraisers, church

community projects. Every single one of

these organizations has a website and

most of them will happily link to the

businesses that support them. If you

want to build real backlinks for your

local business, start with your

community. Sponsor something meaningful.

Get the link and watch what happens to

your domain authority over the next 90

days. I loved that post from Bodhi and

it got a bunch of comments. This one guy

Dane said, "We're going to do this.

There's a habitat project happening

locally. We already donate new gutter

systems a couple times a year. In fact,

we are doing one soon, and we kind of

suck about bragging about it ourselves.

And then, actually, there's this cool

comment, which is that these donations

is from somebody named Formula, who said

these donations happen constantly, and

asking for the link is the part that

almost nobody does. Most contractors

sponsor the team, get a photo caption

with their name in plain text, and never

think to ask. It is a 2-minute email

that's the entire value. And it's true.

So many local businesses, because they

don't know about SEO, local businesses

or just other businesses, they don't

know about SEO, and they're doing these

donations for marketing, you're do

they're doing sponsorships and donations

for marketing purposes or to help people

that they like, help organizations that

they like, and they don't realize the

power of a backlink. And so they don't

even ask, and it's a it's a 2-minute

email. So I shared this original post on

X from Boti, and I said, "Doing good

things for people is one of the goat

link building tactics not enough people

talk about." And Lily Ray responded, "I

learned this during COVID. I set up a

matchmaking project connecting digital

marketers with small businesses who

needed pro bono marketing help during

the pandemic. Got a ton of links." So

two ideas each, SaaS, e-commerce, local

services for goodwill link building you

can do. For SaaS, how about free

lifetime accounts for nonprofits with a

public directory page. You give these

free lifetime accounts, and then the

nonprofits publish an our tools or how

we operate transparency page and annual

reports, and you you get the link.

That's it. Or actually, this is

something that we're doing with the Vibe

Coded SaaS that I am funding. And it is

saying nice things, saying nice things

about the companies that you use. If

you're a SaaS, you probably I mean any

This actually works with any business,

SaaS, e-commerce, local services, works

with anything. Is say nice things about

the companies that you rely on. So, what

we're doing is the companies that we

genuinely use, we'll post about them for

free on social media, just sharing what

we've done, sharing how they have been

helpful. They really like to hear that,

they will reshare it. If you're a

business and somebody shares your

business saying that your business

helped them, you're going to reshare

that. And then after that, then we ask

if the business wants to collaborate on

a post on their blog about how we're

using their product to get results. And

if they believe that we're legitimate,

as in like this is real and we're not

just trying to get something from them,

and it is real, we're we're not just

trying to get something from them,

they'll oftentimes say yes. They want to

link to us because sharing the story of

how we are using their product to get

results makes them look better, makes

them look more credible. So, you start

with this this social post unsolicited

saying, "Thank you. This company has

been so helpful." And then they reshare

you and then you message them and you

say, "How about you write a post about

us about how we've been using your

product to get XYZ results." And that

works in any business, for anything. All

right, e-commerce, product donation to a

cause tied to what you sell. Baby gear

to shelters, outdoor gear to a trail

group, food to a pantry. The donor and

partner pages, they link out to you. The

topical relevance is real. Do this on a

recurring schedule and sometimes each

cycle produces a new page, so now you're

getting backlinks across pages. You can

use new inventory, you can use returned

inventory, you can even use lightly

damaged inventory, but lightly damaged

because you might not be able to use

that inventory, and so give it away.

Give it away. And when you give it away,

ask for a link. And I'm going to share

at the end how people use Goodwill link

building for press as well. But you

know, also just do the good things to be

to be nice. Help the world. But also get

the backlink. Another idea for

e-commerce is you probably have some

domain expertise that nonprofits or

businesses would find very valuable.

Something where you could fix a problem

or help a company with a buying the

right equipment so they don't waste

money or time or audit a nonprofit's

recurring supply spend. Basically, any

good thing that you can do for another

organization is an opportunity where

afterwards you can be like, "Hey, it

would be really great if you had a

partner page or you could list us as a

partner or you could write a blog post

about how we helped you." And this is

also again, this is normal marketing

that also gets backlinks. I posted on X,

and a lot of people liked this.

Actually, I posted this on every social

media platform. Your backlinks work best

when they look like real marketing. And

so one of the comments that I got when I

shared doing good things for people is

one of the goat link building tactics

not enough people talk about. Somebody

named Alexu Rududu said, "The funny

thing is that it's also one of the

oldest tactics that's always been big

offline. Same as sponsoring events and

stuff like that. Again, so few

businesses who do it know to ask for a

backlink or a blog posts or a

partnership link." All right, local

services. Similar to lending e-commerce

expertise, you could do your service

free for nonprofits or for new local

businesses who are in their first year.

So okay, think an organization launching

a program or a business that just opened

is publishing a website, an about page,

an announcement, and then they credit

whoever helped them get open. And then

the last idea is disaster responses or

helping people or businesses and

nonprofits prepare for disasters and

then ask for the link if the disaster

passes, obviously. But also use the

effort to get press links. And what I'm

going to share next works for everything

that I just talked about. So, I know

SEOs who have friends and relatives or

this is a little bit darker, but they're

still doing good things, even fake

Gmails like Sue Phillips who lives in

the neighborhood who give heartfelt tips

to local news as in this company is

doing this nice thing and they deserve

some love for it because sharing things

yourself to relevant news outlets is

great. That is super great. But having

people share it for you is best. Having

people share it for you pretty much

always does better than sharing it

yourself. And so, a lot of SEOs they'll

just have their friends and family give

a tip to the news and some people they

don't even do that. They just have fake

Gmails that look real saying, "Look at

the what this company has done. Look at

this nice thing that this company has

done." And if it's a cool thing, just

like in this first story that I shared

where the roofer donated a free roof

through a local Habitat for Humanity

chapter, the local news station picks it

up or the relevant news outlet shares

it. The website gets shared. The social

media gets shared. Everything is getting

shared. So, this is a fun way to do some

good in the world while also getting SEO

backlinks. If you want more link

building methods, I have a 2-hour

section on link building in my SEO

course Compact Keywords. Compact

Keywords is about how to do search

engine optimization that specifically

targets people looking for what your

brand sells, but they don't have your

brand top of mind, or they just don't

even know your brand exists. If they

knew your brand existed, they would go

with you, but they don't. And so,

they're doing these searches on Google

or prompts in an LLM, and you want to

come up when they are in their time of

need searching for what your brand does.

And so, you find what these people are

searching, you show up for their

searches with conversion-based SEO

landing pages, structure your site for

these pages, do an SEO technical audit.

So much is in this course. It is at

compactkeywords.com. I spent a year

making it, and it's really good.

Actually, I meant to give this example

at the beginning of the episode, but you

know, better late than ever. This is

from Luke, who said, "Purchased your

course, recently implemented the compact

keywords, and have been actively working

at it every few days. Last week, I got

my first call from a lead that came from

a compact keywords page. I did build a

personal skill for Claude by

transcribing your course into a very

detailed skill that's worked really well

for me. My site is fully AI generated

with edits by me. Okay, that's good

edits. So, it's super easy to build the

pages and post to test and learn. You

can see from my results, it's gaining

progress. Anyway, the lead came for a

Google Ads page talking about a type of

ads product not yet available in

Australia. That one customer will pay

for the course four times over." And

Luke shared his growing Google Search

Console traffic. That's excellent. And

then, a couple days later, he followed

up and said, "Hey, just got another

lead. Two leads in 7 days for my target

customer trades from SEO. Let's go." So,

if you want that for your business, that

is at compactkeywords.com,

and this is episode 1,155

of the podcast. 1,155

days in a row. Wow. If you watch this

episode on YouTube, thank you so much

for watching. If you listened on Spotify

or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for

listening, and I will talk to you again

tomorrow. Bye now.