Search engines like Google use links to figure out how relevant a page is, and enough backlinks will boost your website’s visibility in search engine results.

Building backlinks can be expensive since you must create high-quality content that will get people to link back to you. And very often, backlink marketplaces sell them at hundreds of dollars a link.

It’s far more useful to generate content for your blog that generates backlinks naturally.

This post will provide helpful tips and strategies for creating the kind of content that will organically generate backlinks for your website and help build domain authority over time.

Keep reading to find out more.

The Key to Driving Backlinks Organically

Getting backlinks is important for any website as it increases visibility, reach, and credibility. To achieve this, building great content is essential. However, in the current world of ever-growing digital platforms and content, it can be difficult to stand out from the rest.

So, what can you do to separate your content from others?

• Unique insights on a topic of discussion
• Providing value to users by deep diving into content
• Creating totally original content

High-quality, valuable, and distinct content makes a big difference in gaining backlinks.

It will take time and effort to build such content, but the amount of work involved has a disproportionately high impact on how many other sites link to you.

Understanding this is important since it will help you know what to look for and how to focus on your content creation efforts.

Types of Content To Attract Backlinks

To help you with your content marketing strategy, here are different types of content you should publish.

These formats often create interesting talking points and encourage other bloggers and brands to send their audience to your material.

1. Case Studies and Success Stories

Case studies and success stories are highly persuasive pieces of content that provide real-life examples of how a product or service can help solve a problem.

They often go into detail about a customer or client’s problems, how they solved them with the help of a product or service, what strategies and tactics were used, and finally, the outcome.

These types of content demonstrate your expertise in the industry, show off data points and statistics, and help build trust with readers.

They also offer insights into how specific actions can lead to desirable outcomes. Or they can describe a situation, an event, and how products or services can solve problems.

As such, they’re great for building backlinks, as other brands will point to your content when they want to illustrate an idea or feature an example.

2. Infographics

Infographics deliver a huge amount of information in a visually appealing way.

They often display numbers and complex data in an easily readable package. This can be a great help for those wanting to understand information and make decisions quickly.

Infographics are also hard to create and involve design thinking, tools, and comprehensive knowledge about a topic. So, they can require a lot of effort and are valuable brand assets that add authority to your site.

The other outcomes of creating infographics are that they’ll drive traffic to your site. And, of course, generate backlinks to your domain.

One of the easiest ways to create infographics is to use a tool like Canva. It has free templates and user-friendly tools that anyone can use to create useful infographic material.

You can also use free graphics from Freepik and other sources to help you build this type of content.

3. Expert Roundups

Expert roundups are a great way to show off your credibility and build relationships with other people in your industry.

This content format is simple yet effective. You reach out to experts in the same field as you and ask them to provide insight into a specific topic or trend related to the subject matter of your blog post.

Once you’ve collected the information, compile it into an article that includes all the answers from your experts.

This type of content will attract backlinks as readers want to learn more about a subject and gain insight from industry professionals. Plus, the experts you reach out to will also be likely to share the post with their followers and link to your website.

4. Long-Form Content

Long-form content like pillar posts shows off your in-depth knowledge of a topic.

It also has the potential to rank higher in search engine results as it’s often more comprehensive and relevant than shorter pieces of content.

Additionally, long-form content can be broken down into subtopics and linked to other related pieces on your website.

This will help readers explore further, as well as generate internal links that can boost your SEO rankings.

Long-form content is also more likely to get shared compared to short posts. This means it has the potential to attract more backlinks from those who find value in what you’ve written.

Thus, it’s important to write long-form content that offers value and contains accurate data.

5. Thought Leadership Posts

Thought leadership posts are useful for demonstrating your expertise and knowledge on a topic.

These types of pieces usually include an in-depth analysis of a particular problem and how to solve it.

By offering an original perspective on topics, you can add more value to the conversation around them. It’s also a chance for you or the leaders in your business to build your personal brands online.

So, create Twitter threads, LinkedIn posts, and blog content, and share your insights and ideas on council platforms.

Your thought leadership pieces are great for building relationships with other influencers in your arena. And very often, such pieces are sources for quotes and examples that other people will link to when they want to reinforce an idea.

6. State of the Industry Reports and Trends

It’s common to look for trends and patterns in the world of business. Such information helps you form predictions and make better decisions.

State of the industry reports are great content pieces to create as they show readers what’s happening in your industry and how it may affect businesses and consumers.

Some examples of such reports are:

• Hootsuite’s Social Media Trends Report 2023
• Blogging Trends and Statistics by Blog Tyrant
• eCommerce Trends 2023 by Shopify

Such reports are mostly interesting to people in sales and marketing as well as decision-makers who want to know what areas to prioritize to meet business goals.

So, if you want to appeal to B2B decision-makers, state-of-the-industry reports are a great way to attract backlinks.

These types of content pieces take more time and research to create. But they can be extremely valuable and help you build trust and authority in your industry. Plus, as the reports become more detailed over time, they will continue to attract more backlinks.

Over to You

In conclusion, by creating content that offers value and is high-quality, you’ll be able to attract backlinks from other websites.

To do this, focus on powerful content types such as long-form articles, thought leadership posts, and state of the industry reports.

These types of content pieces can help you build relationships with key industry players and showcase your knowledge and expertise. Not to mention, you build your online authority which can increase traffic, lead generation, sales, and other key metrics.

Let me know if there are other types of content that worked well for you and helped you generate backlinks organically.

The post 6 Powerful Types of Content That Attract Backlinks appeared first on SiteProNews.

One of the most common questions asked by SEO experts and business owners who want to rank better in search engines like Google is what do you have to do to have backlinks count as one of the ranking factors? If you are asking yourself this question, then let me explain first what backlinks are and why they are considered one of the ranking factors in SEO in the first place. Then I will tell you some effective ways to outweigh backlinks in SEO.

Google Algorithm Updates

Many people believe that Google has updated its algorithm and it doesn’t weigh backlinks heavily anymore. However, that isn’t the case, there are many ways you can outreach and link build your way to some high-quality, organic backlink growth. Plus, it never hurts to take a page out of everyone’s book who is good at link building (or guest posting) and do it for yourself. Link outreach might be something you have never done before but with some research and patience, anyone can succeed.

Linking Root Domains

In an ideal world, you could trust that backlinks alone would always be enough to help your site rank. That being said, we live in the age of link building, and there are too many people trying to game the system. The best way you can have high-quality backlinks is by utilizing outreach and working on quality link building with guest posts and other forms of content marketing. This way you can have links coming from your domains which will weigh more than any outreach or guest post.

Number of Links from Different Domains

Google uses backlinks from other websites to assess how valuable your website is. They track how many links point back to your page and make an estimate of how many quality backlinks you have based on the popularity of the site that is linked to you. While you can’t manually track this, there are ways for you to get more backlinks, which Google will then take into account when ranking your site higher. One thing that is essential for achieving better rankings is building up link equity. Link equity refers to the number of quality links pointing at a site as well as factors like reputation, popularity, and relevance. Essentially it’s just a numerical estimate of how popular or important someone thinks your website might be so they link it in hopes that others will come by and see it too.

Strength of Links from Different Domains

Ideally, you want backlinks from higher domain trust networks. For example, the New York Times or Harvard University will not be of the same value as a blog post on Tumblr. Generally speaking, if you want links from authoritative domains, it is best to create high-quality content that attracts them organically. Links are also weighted by how recently they were published; there is more value for a new link on your site than an old one.

Link Volume Data

Recently, there have been some studies done on the importance of backlinks. This led us to ask: just how important are they? If you have 2 backlinks and I have 10, will your site rank higher than mine? Will I get more traffic?

Domain Age and Trust Flow

You have likely heard that backlinks are still one of the top-ranking factors. For example, Domain Age and Trust Flow are both ranked as moderately important ranking factors. These measures will help you improve your site’s trustworthiness. This is one of the main reasons that backlink building should still be included in your SEO campaign. However, you don’t want to forget about other techniques like targeting long-tail keywords or writing blog posts on topics related to your niche– they’ll also help get your website discovered by people searching for specific things online.

Page Authority

A major component of Page Authority is linked domain authority (LDA), which essentially quantifies the power that a page wields on linking websites. Linked domain authority is a measure of how powerful an individual page is, or how much weight it has on other websites. The higher the DA, the more important the content is and should be treated with higher respect by other sites and by Google. 

The final element of Page Authority considered for ranking purposes is link quantity and quality. Each time another site links to your content, their DA rating is divided among any sites linking out; this number will decrease as more links are made from it, providing a baseline for how much weight that particular backlink brings with it.

7 Surefire Ways to Get High-Quality Backlinks

As search engine algorithms continue to evolve, content marketers are tasked with staying one step ahead of the game to remain competitive and relevant in their niche market. Many of the long-standing traditional methods used to obtain backlinks are no longer guaranteed to boost your rankings, and savvy content marketers are on the lookout for new ways to get high-quality backlinks that will help their sites rank well in search engines. Here are seven effective strategies you can use to get high-quality backlinks in 2020 and beyond.

1. Focus on Quality

It’s become all too easy for sites that don’t deserve the high rankings they hold, to climb the Google ladder and gain authority. If you’re just starting, you may have seen articles about something called SEO guest posting but never thought it would be an option for your business.

Backlinks are an important part of any search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. They are links from other websites that Google considers to be votes of confidence that your site is high-quality and user-friendly.

2. Focus on Long-tail Keywords

It’s now more important than ever before to get high-quality backlinks. The way you go about doing this might be a little different now that Google has put so much weight on user experience and relevance. One of the most effective ways is to create content that provides longtail keywords with information that they can’t find elsewhere, then contact them directly with your piece as an offering. You can also offer other people’s content if it offers any value or ties in with your topic of expertise.

3. Increase Your Chances by Using Influencers

Utilizing influencers is one of the easiest ways to get high-quality backlinks. An influencer can provide a new angle for your blog post and make it much more interesting or applicable to their audience. However, it’s important not just for you but also for them as well. If you want people on social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter to share your link then offer them a shootout in return.

4. Guest Blogging has Gotten Harder

Guest blogging was the easiest way for a business to grow backlinks when search engines were first created. Until now, most businesses use guest blogging as a way to generate links that allow their content or site more visibility on the web. However, Google has been cracking down hard on this strategy over the past couple of years and penalizing sites that have abused this strategy. That’s why if you’re looking for ways to start earning backlinks, it’s better that you focus on quality rather than quantity.

5. Link Building Doesn’t Stop 

This decade is just getting started and this means that 2022 isn’t going to be the same as 2018, either. With a new year comes new technologies, trends, and opportunities for internet marketers who are ready for change.

For external backlinks, various sources will help to gain some link juice and relevancy.

• Forum Profile Links
• Guest Posts
• Wiki Links

6. Track Your Results

• Use Medium – Create an account and publish quality content relevant to your target audience.
• Ask Influencers for a Link – Connect with influencers by sending them a quick message or Tweet, you could ask them for a link. Influencers are more likely to engage with you if you send a note of introduction and share some of your work first. 
• Guest Post on Other Sites – Reach out and submit articles as guest posts on other sites that are related or have an overlapping audience. 

7. Google Authorship is Dead, but Social Media Posts Can Do Well

Marketers all know that links are key to a good SEO strategy. To do well on Google, links need to be credible and from reputable sites. But there’s also an old technique of adding links with keyword phrases just for the sake of getting some words on the page and hoping for a backlink—and it can work in the short term. The reality is, however, that search engines are cracking down on these types of posts.

The post How to Rank Well in Search Engines Using Backlinks appeared first on SiteProNews.

Backlinks are an important factor when it comes to search rankings on Google. The more quality backlinks you include, the higher would be the chance of ranking at the top. In short, backlinks are a way to bring the audience to your website from another website. When your website is backlinked, it shows that your content is trusted and approved.

If you’re unsure how to get those valuable backlinks, then you have found yourself at the right place. In this article, we will share fresh and effective strategies to get you those backlinks you need to rank higher. Let’s dive right in:

1. Explore Top Referral Sources for Backlinking Opportunities

The first thing that you need to do in order to get more backlinks is to track the current ones that you’re getting. For that, you need to start looking at the top referral sources for your website. There must be a few websites that link to your content and give you the backlink.

Once you review what kind of websites are doing that and which specific type of content is being backlinked the most, you’ll be able to identify the content that does well. When you have this information, it becomes easier to create similar content or publish about similar topics to gain even more backlinks.

Knowing your strengths is key to capitalizing on them. You can find out your referral sources by using Google’s Universal Analytics. All you need to do is open the “Acquisition” tab, then click “All Traffic,” and then choose “Referrals”. There are several WordPress plugins that provide you with easy-to-read reports on your referrals, so you can consider utilizing those as well.

2. Build Partnerships with Outbound Links

If you’re a new platform with no backlinking or referrals, then a great way for you to establish those partnerships is to use outbound links. You can link high-profile and credible websites to your own content when you’re publishing something that is similar to their niche. This way you’ll be sending your traffic to these websites.

Then, you can reach out to these platforms via email to offer a partnership opportunity or to just introduce yourself. If the other party agrees, you can proceed to use their website in your outbound links while they backlink to the content you produce. These partnerships can be short-term or go on as long-term collaborations. Once you have built that trust, it would be easier for you to get backlinking from other sources as well.

3. Google Search Console Reports

Google Search Console reports are another excellent resource to find backlinking opportunities for your content. It is a free tool that Google offers to keep track of your backlinks and also provides you the necessary data to see what kind of websites are backlinking to your content.

Additionally, this report also offers valuable insights into possible opportunities for backlinking. The other amazing data that this tool offers includes a top linking sites report, which shows all the websites that have ever linked back to your website.

This will allow you to reach out to these platforms for more or continued collaborations. As these platforms have found your content valuable before, it would be easier to establish a partnership that sustains that for a longer period. You can also backlink their content and make this a collaborative project.

4. See What Your Competitors are Doing

Your competitors are another excellent resource for identifying possible backlinking sources. You can ethically find out what their strategy has been to gain backlinks and implement them for your own website.

There is much to learn from competitors when it comes to SEO and backlinking strategies. You can learn from the kind of content they publish and the sources of their backlinks. Make sure you pay close attention to the competitors who seem to be doing especially well in terms of website traffic through backlinks. What are the strategies that they use? What kind of content are they publishing? Which type of outbound links are found within their content?

It is actually very easy to get access to the complete backlink profile of any website. SEMrush is an excellent tool that can provide you with this kind of data. All you need to do is enter your competitor’s website domain in the Backlink Analytics tool on SEMrush, and it will give you a comprehensive report. Make sure you analyze this report closely to understand where most of their traffic is coming from with respect to backlinks.

5. Capitalize on Broken Links for New Backlinks

Another smart strategy for gaining new backlinks is to look for broken links of your competitors. Broken links are any links that either don’t work or don’t exist on a website any longer. These links are often formed when the source website deletes them or replaces the link.

When you find a broken link on a website that is relevant to your website’s content, then you can reach out to them to pitch your own domain as an alternative. Often times, these platforms would be more than happy to replace these broken links to backlink your content if it is relevant.

You will not only be building backlinks for yourself but you will also be helping these websites fix the broken link issues, which will allow you to build trust and create an opportunity for longer term partnership.

Final Thoughts

Backlinking is very important for websites to garner higher views and bring new audience to their platform. Moreover, search engines like Google tend to rank the websites with more and quality backlinks higher than those without them.

By using the strategies that we have discussed above, you can easily create more opportunities of white hat link building for your website content. However, make sure that the kind of content you’re posting is actually valuable and high quality because that is what it comes down to eventually.

The post How to Go About Getting Those Valuable Backlinks for SEO? appeared first on SiteProNews.

It’s not just about getting other sites to link back to you, but also about earning those links by providing value in your online presence. This ensures you’ll have good organic rankings for your website as well as an increased likelihood of driving traffic to your site.

There are a few different ways to build links, and each has its own benefits and drawbacks. In this blog post, we will discuss the top link-building methods that are known to be effective in increasing website rankings.

1. Guest Posts

One of the best ways to build links is to guest post on high-quality websites. When you guest post, you write an article for another website in your industry. Generally, in the content, you can include a link back to your own website.

If you want your guest posting to be effective, you should first make sure that the website is high-quality. You can check the domain authority of a website using a tool like Moz. The higher the domain authority, the better!

You should also make sure that the website has a good link profile. You can check this using a tool like Ahrefs. If a website has a lot of links from low-quality websites, it’s probably not worth your time to guest post on that site.

Once you’ve found a high-quality website to guest post on, you should reach out to the site owner and pitch them your article idea. If they accept your article, you can write and submit your post. Be sure to include a link back to your website within the content or in the author’s bio.

2. Linkable Assets

Another great way to build links is to create linkable assets. Linkable assets are pieces of content that other websites will want to link to.

Examples of linkable assets include:

• eBooks
• Whitepapers
• Infographics
• Templates

To create a linkable asset, you should first choose a topic that is relevant to your industry. Then, you should create something that would be valuable for other website owners, such as an eBook or infographic.

You can find bloggers to reach out to by using a tool like BuzzSumo. Just enter your topic into the search bar and it will show you the most popular pieces of content for that topic. You can then contact the website owners and ask them to link to your asset.

3. Comments on Relevant Websites

Another great way to build links is to leave comments on relevant websites. When you leave a comment, you can include a link back to your own website. This is a great way to get links from high-quality websites.

To find websites to comment on, you can simply use Google. Just enter your keywords+”leave a comment” into the search bar and the results will show you all of the blogs where you can share your thoughts.

When leaving a comment, be sure to add value to the conversation. Don’t just leave a link and run! Website owners are more likely to approve comments that are helpful and add value to the discussion.

4. Broken Links Building

Broken link building is a great way to get links from high-quality websites. In this link-building method, you find broken links on high-quality websites and then you offer to replace the broken link with a link to your own website.

This is a great way to build links because it’s helpful for both parties involved. The website owner gets rid of a broken link, and you get a link from a high-quality website. Everybody wins!

To find websites that have broken links, you can use a tool like Ahrefs. Just enter your keywords into the search bar and then click on the “Broken Links” tab. This will show you all of the websites that have broken links related to your keywords.

You can then reach out to the website owner and offer to replace the broken link with a link to your own website.

5. Resource Page Link Building

Resource page link building is another great strategy to build links. In this method, you find websites that have resource pages, and then you offer to be included on their resource page.

A resource page is a page on a website that includes a list of helpful resources related to a certain topic. For example, if you have a website about gardening, your resource page might include links to helpful articles about gardening, garden supply stores, etc.

To find websites that have resource pages, you can use Google. Just enter your keywords+”resource page” into the search bar and the results will show you all of the websites that have resource pages related to your keywords.

You can then reach out to the website owner and offer to be included on their resource page.

6. Expert Roundups

An expert roundup is a blog post that includes input from multiple experts on a certain topic. For example, if you were writing an expert roundup about gardening, you might reach out to multiple gardeners and ask them for their input on the best gardening tips.

You can then include their input in your blog post, along with a link back to their website. This is a great way to get links from high-quality websites because you’re providing valuable information that they can share with their readers.

To find websites that have done expert roundups, you can use Google. Just enter your keywords+”expert roundup” into the search bar and the results will show you all of the websites that have done expert roundups related to your keywords.

You can then reach out to the website owner and offer to be included in their next expert roundup.

7. Business Directories

Business directories are websites that list businesses in a certain category. For example, Yelp is a business directory that lists restaurants in a certain area.

If you have a business, you can list it on business directories to get links back to your website. This is a great way to get links because it’s a simple way for people to find your website.

To find business directories, you can simply use the search on Google. Just enter your keywords+”business directory” and the results will show you all of the websites that have business listings related to your keywords.

You can then register and proceed in adding your business details, together with your website URL.

8. Brand Mentions

A brand mention is when someone mentions your brand name, product name, or website URL without linking to you. For example, if someone publishes an article about your product but doesn’t include a link to your website, that’s a brand mention.

Brand mentions are a great way to get links because you can reach out to the person who mentioned you and ask them to link to your website. This is an effective way to get links because you’re not asking them for anything other than what they’ve already done.

To find websites that have mentioned your brand without linking to you, you can use a tool like BuzzSumo. Just enter your keywords into the search bar and then click on the “Mentions” tab. This will show you all of the websites that have mentioned your keywords.

You can then reach out to the website owner and ask them to link to your website.

9. Competitor Backlinking

Competitor backlinking is when you find websites that link to your competitor’s website and then ask them to link to your website instead. This is a great way to get links because you’re already targeting websites that are relevant to your industry.

To find websites that link to your competitor’s website, you can use a tool like BuzzSumo. Just enter your competitor’s URL into the search bar and then click on the “Backlinks” tab. This will show you all of the websites that link to your competitor’s website.

You can then reach out to the website owner and ask them to link to your website instead.

You can also use the competitor research strategy to find link-building ideas and replicate them for your website.

10. Backlink Exchange

Backlink exchange is when you link to someone’s website and they link back to yours. This is an effective method to get links because you’re guaranteed a link if you link to someone else’s website.

To find websites that are open to exchanging links, you can use Google. Just enter your keywords+”link exchange” into the search bar and the results will show you all of the websites that are looking for link partners.

You can then reach out to website owners similar to yours and ask them if they’d be interested in exchanging links.

Final Words

These are just some of the many methods you can use to build links and increase your website’s ranking in search engines.

Just remember to focus on quality over quantity, and always add value when you’re link building.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to help.

Thanks for reading!

The post 10 Powerful Link Building Methods for 2022 appeared first on SiteProNews.

But why is backlink important for SEO? First of all, let’s take a look a bit at the definition of a backlink itself.

What is a Backlink?

A backlink is a link that a website gets to one of its pages from another website. It is usually created when a website wants to refer to another website’s content for further explanation of its own content.

As it is a reference, that means the website owner who creates the backlink has some trust on the backlink target. After all, if you don’t feel confident about something, you won’t normally recommend it to other people, right? A backlink you create will make your content to become richer and provide a better experience to your content users.

There are several types of backlinks in its relation to SEO, such as dofollow, nofollow, sponsored, and UGC. From the four of them, dofollow backlinks are the most valuable in SEO although the other three can also add value.

5 Reasons Why Backlinks are Important in SEO

Now that you have read the brief description about backlinks, it is time to understand their importance, especially the dofollow ones. Here are the simple reasons why backlinks are crucial elements to improve our SEO results.

1. Google Says It is One of the Three Most Important Ranking Factors in Its Algorithm

According to what Google said in a Bloomberg article and its Q&A session, there are three most important Google ranking factors. They are backlinks, content, and RankBrain (an AI system employed by Google to better understand its user’s search intent). RankBrain is the third most important while the first and the second are between backlinks and content.

Now, if Google already said that, you should consider backlinks as a method to boost your SEO campaign. After all, Google is the one who operates the search engine you want to rank high at, right?

2. It Acts as a Vote of Confidence Towards Your Page Content

As described previously, backlinks are something that is normally given as some kind of vote of confidence. If a person links to your website page, this should mean that person trusts its content. Thus, the more backlinks your website page has, the more trustable its content should be.

And this seems to be the case for Google as well. According to Ahrefs, its UR scores (the score that assesses the backlink quantity and quality a website page has) correlate positively with Google rank positions. Therefore, it seems more quality backlinks towards your page should help it rank higher in people’s search

3. It Can Improve the Authority of Your Domain

The more trustable pages a domain has, the more trustable the domain should be too. This means your website should have more authority in what it talks about. Especially, if your backlinks come from relevant websites that operate in the same area as your website.

Google also said it looks at a website as a whole as well when determining its SERP. It seems if you want your website to become more prominent in SEO, you should consider having more quality backlinks

4. It Can Help You Get More Feedback to Improve Your Page Content

Backlinks can serve as a way for you to get visitors from sources other than search engines. This is true especially if you get your backlinks from highly popular and relevant websites.

The more visitors who come to your website means the more people will interact with your content. If you employ an analytics tool on your website, you should be able to get more data to analyze too. This can help you to know more about your content quality to further improve it in the future. Furthermore, you may get direct feedback from those extra visitors for your consideration as well.

Better content should help the visitors who come from search engines to have a better experience. This should help in making your website pages more likable by those search engines too

5. It Can Make You Know Your Prospective Audiences More and the Content They Probably Need

By using analytics tools, you should be able to know the websites which backlinks send you the most visitors. From there, you may understand what kind of website audiences are more interested in what your website offers. This can help you to further develop your website to better serve your prospective audiences.

You can develop your content based on keywords that suit the audiences or update your existing content to cater to them. This action should boost your SEO results as it potentially helps you to get more organic traffic as well.

Backlink Is an important factor to consider in SEO as the reasons above have illustrated. You should put in the effort to get quality backlinks for your website so its SEO results can further be optimized.

The post 5 Simple Reasons Why Backlinks are Important in SEO appeared first on SiteProNews.

Backlinks are mostly created by guest posting articles, blogs on other websites and adding certain links that lead to your own site or by other websites referencing your site. This strategy is sure to give your website that edge over your competitors and other websites while also helping you garner more viewership.

With all that said, here are the six most effective ways to increase backlinks and implement the best of content strategies in the process. Remember, like any escape room out there; a good strategy is absolutely necessary when wanting to solve clues towards efficient content marketing.

1. The Right Keywords and Pages

Look at it this way: if you want to land your content on a site, you will have to write unique, high-quality blogs or articles so that pages pick up on your hard work. To be effective in doing so, you will first have to figure out what content you want to be writing about; based on that, note down the relevant keywords to use by placing them strategically and adequately. And lastly, make sure you are targeting certain genres of pages so that you have an idea of where your backlinks are.

A good way to start if you are new is to do thorough keyword research before adding them to your content. Make sure you go for moderately competitive keywords that can rank you just high enough. Also ensure to not cram keywords into places wherever strategic placements are key.

2. Add Meta Title and Meta Description

After the relevant keywords are placed perfectly, the next step would be to boost your visibility on the search engine of Google. The best way to do that – instead of just adding a URL link at the end of your content – would be to include strong keywords, maybe in titles or meta descriptions of your content.

This will allow Google to find your content easily, and based on its quality, it will surely consider ranking the content higher even if not many people are clicking your URL link just yet. So, either way you look at it, you are winning at the end of the day. The recommended number of backlinks per write-up is around two. Make sure to switch up the anchor text keywords across your articles or blogs.

3. Stats and Monitoring

Now you are officially done with the hard part. What is now left for you to do is quietly track how your content is being received by viewers. Certain site analytic tools will allow you to keep track of which backlinks are effectively driving traffic and which ones are not.

And with that sort of information, you then get to learn and understand just what exactly the people are looking for and can base your future content in or around similar topics or keywords.

4. Guest Posts

As mentioned earlier, guest posting is also a very effective method of boosting backlinks to your site. If your company has some high-quality writers, you can assign them guest post articles that will be published on other pages but will contain links back to the mother site.

This strategy is especially effective if you want to tap into a whole new audience with different tastes and preferences. Let us assume that you know of a blog site that has certain work that people just adore, and the topics are pretty similar. One possibility is to reach out to them and ask them if they would like to include certain articles that your writers have conjured to use on their page. Said articles then obviously will include links that lead back to your website.

5. Social Media

Why are not more people using the power and influence of social media to their advantage? It is obvious that most people who have an online device are surely on some kind of social media.

A very effective backlinking strategy would be to come up with creative posts on your social media platforms with the help of your social media team and create backlinks that lead back to your website.

The advantages of doing this are so immaculate. For starters, if you get a social media engagement going, you do not have to ask anyone to post content on your social media; you are basically the boss. And the cherry on top, you get effective backlinks that help you with external traffic.

6. Consistency

But on a serious note, ever since Google has started to take user-intent into consideration while ranking sites, it is extremely important that you do not slack off after creating some good content for a few months or so.

Google will recognize the downfall and will punish you with lower rankings in the end. The best way to maintain these standards for users is to provide gaps between content posting to, let’s say, one write-up a week.

Conclusion

There you have it! These are some of the most effective ways to backlink your content. If you use this content strategy and stay consistent with the standards set by Google, you will not have much of a problem with traffic.

Yes, it is harder to maintain standards than to hit them. That is how the majority of things in life work because as soon as you start to provide content of the highest quality, your expectations and standards are automatically raised. You just have to maintain it, and you will be just fine.

The post How to Increase Backlinks With an Effective Content Strategy? appeared first on SiteProNews.

That said, what’s in it for the host? Should you allow guest posts on your blog?

How Does Guest Blogging Benefit the Host Site?

The common practice of guest blogging is a system of equivalent exchange: You submit high-quality and original content to another site, and you get a backlink in return.

The one who submits content gets a quality backlink and exposure to the host site’s audience, while the host site gets fresh and original content.

Allowing guest posts can have other advantages, such as:

• It’s an opportunity to publish content from other industry and niche experts.
• You can provide your audience with a different perspective.
• You can build a relationship with other reputable sites and companies.
• You reduce the content you have to create for your blog.

In some cases, bloggers open for guest post submissions when they encounter changes that can potentially affect their writing schedules, like a company expansion, a rebrand, or traveling.

Why Do You Need to Screen Submissions?

If you’ve pitched a few ideas and manuscripts before, you might notice that some sites are quite strict with their submissions.

That’s because host sites also stand to lose and gain something from the exchange.

In most cases, allowing guest posts will get you a lot of submissions. Since it’s a well-known SEO strategy, people are always looking for sites willing to host content and give them backlinks. However, not all of those submissions will be high-quality, original, or relevant to your blog’s theme or content. Additionally, not every author is going to be qualified.

Remember, content and backlink quality are SEO ranking factors. This means hosts can’t publish low-quality content and link to low-quality sites. So you can’t just accept every submission that comes through.

This means you need to look out for two crucial things:

1. Submission Quality

The guest post itself should be high-quality. It needs to be relevant, original, well-written, and proofread. It needs to be free of rookie errors like spelling mistakes and bad grammar.

2. Backlink Quality

Since you’re getting content, you need to give backlinks in return. However, you don’t want to link to low-quality sites. Watch out for spam, duplicates, and plagiarized content.

3 Ways to Screen Your Guest Post Submissions

When it comes to submissions, you must have a system to check the content, the author, and their website.

Here are some tips to help you create a streamlined and effective screening process:

1. Have A Clear Guest Post Guideline

Screening guest posts can be a lot of work, but it’s only the first step to publishing guest posts. You still need to review, edit, and reformat them before they go live on your blog. However, restricting possible irrelevant content from the start should help reduce the emails and submissions you have to go through.

Since guest posts are a viable marketing tool, a lot of people are eager to get their manuscripts published. However, you don’t want to get gardening and maintenance articles clogging your emails if you’re running a digital marketing blog.

So, be clear about what you want from guest blogs and make sure they’re accessible through your website.

Here are a few crucial things you need to include in your guidelines:

• Allowable topics, themes, and content
• Minimum and maximum word count
• Acceptable document files (i.e., .docx, HTML, etc.)
• Desired writing styles (i.e., the tone, formatting, and delivery of your ideal submission)
• Details you want to be included in the pitch (i.e., author details, links, previous work, etc.)
• Submission instructions (i.e., links to forms, emails, attachments, etc.)

In short, be very detailed about what you want from the submissions. For example, if you need author headshots, brief bios, links, attached images, or other specific details, make sure to include them all in your guidelines.

If you’re getting a large volume of submissions, you can also include your estimated turnaround time. Some guidelines are even frank enough to say they’ll ignore and won’t reply to pitches they don’t like.

2. Ask for Title and Outline Pitches

Manuscripts can range from 500-3000 words. They not only take so much time for authors to write, but it’s a lot for you (or your editors) to read through.

One way to make it easy for both parties is to only allow title and outline pitches. This will enable you to look at the crucial parts of the pitch without going through the entire 1000-word manuscript. In most cases, the title and summary are enough to give you an idea of what the content will be.

Of course, don’t forget to look at the author’s website and do some research on their past writing ventures. An applicant or author’s credentials can hint at the quality of writing to expect. Fortunately, most authors will try to layout their qualifications, as they’re trying to convince you that they’re a reputable source who will deliver a great guest post.

Finally, make sure you set deadlines. Asking for titles and outline submissions means that the applicant doesn’t have to write anything until you’ve approved their pitches. Setting reasonable deadlines makes sure your publishing schedule is unimpeded.

3. Use Online Forms

Some hosts prefer that submissions are directly emailed to their editors. However, using forms can make it easier to sort data that are being submitted.

You can ask people to submit the title, summary, and outline along with an attached manuscript. Then, you and your editors can just look through the titles and weed out irrelevant content. On the other hand, if a title or summary sounds fantastic, you can immediately open the attachment and review the manuscript.

Additionally, you can also ask authors to fill in information about themselves. Ask for their names, website, a brief summary of their qualifications, as well as links to previously-published content. This will allow you to see whether it’s worth linking to their websites.

If their company or products are associated with thin content, plagiarism, link farms, or spam, it’s best to steer clear of them.

Bottom-Line

Like most SEO experts would tell you, your content should always prioritize “quality over quantity.” So even if you’re not getting as many submissions as popular sites, you still need to make sure your guest posts benefit your website’s SEO.

Otherwise, you’ll end up publishing spam and low-quality content, which can start to affect your rankings.

The post How to Screen Guest Post Submissions for Your Blog appeared first on SiteProNews.

Your website’s rank for the correct search queries will determine how much traffic you can drive to it. After all, many internet users — a whopping 75% — tend not to look past the first page of search results. SEO is a must-have part of any digital marketing strategy to grow your company. With so many people using the internet to search for what they need, it’s impossible to ignore SEO.

In our recent State of Content Marketing Report, 67% of content marketing professionals surveyed indicated that improving SEO performance is a top priority for their company. Another 73% stated that they use their SEO skills and tools frequently to improve content marketing results. To remain competitive, it is important to learn how to improve your search engine rankings.

Do you feel lost? Continue reading to learn SEO tips and search engine optimization strategies that even novices can use in their work. These non-technical SEO tips will help you see quick results.

1. Create Content Around Primary and Secondary Keywords

Keyword research is the heart of any SEO strategy. Keyword research is the key to creating great content. Searchers will find your site by knowing how to use both primary and second keywords.

Your landing page should have your primary keyword as its main focus. The page should contain a strong description and possibly connect to your brand. These keywords should be the main focus of your content.

Secondary keywords are words that support the primary keyword and can be included in your content in a natural way to improve your search ranking.

Start your keyword research by identifying long-tail keywords that are relevant to your audience. Say you run a DIY home improvement blog. Using our Keyword Overview Tool, you can start by searching for “DIY home improvement” as your target keyword and then expand to include more keywords from there. You’ll see the search volume and difficulty of ranking for your primary keyword in your area, along with related terms that you might be interested in.

2. Use Short, Descriptive URLs

There are also some not-too-technical ways you can optimize your SEO efforts when it comes to on-page SEO. For those just beginning in SEO, it is easy to improve your SEO rankings by structuring your URLs.

A URL that is effective should:

• Use keywords: Your URL should contain one or more keywords that you are targeting.
• Be easy to understand It should be easy to read and cater to the human eye.
• Be concise Using shorter URLs is preferable. Keep them under 60 characters. Search engines won’t accept URLs longer than 60 characters, which could cause you to be pushed further down the results pages.

3. High Authority Websites Have High Quality Backlinks

Link building is an important component of any SEO strategy. It’s also relatively simple to begin. Backlinks are an important ranking factor. They come in two types: nofollow and follow, with the latter having more ranking weight.

Backlinking refers to the linking of other websites to your website as a source for information. These links are a sign to search engines that you are an authority on a topic and should be pulled up in the rankings. Higher rankings in online searches will be achieved if your website has more quality links.

Bloggers, journalists, and other companies will recognize you as an expert in your field, and may link to your content. However, this doesn’t always happen instantly. You may have to do some research before you start.

You have many options to create links to your site. Here are some strategies to consider:

• If you have something to share or an interesting infographic, consider writing a guest blog post for other outlets.
• Reach out to publishers for any data or research you have done to support your site content.
• Look for directories and listings in your industry and get your company listed. It may mean joining professional associations, networking groups or business organizations. However, it increases your credibility.

How do you determine where to get backlinks? Use our Backlink Gap Tool to compare the backlinks for your site with four competing URLs. This will allow you to compare which websites link to your site more than your competitor, and vice versa. To help you target high authority sites with your initial link building efforts, you can organize the list by authority score.

4. Try to Rank for Featured Snippets

Google’s Featured Snippets are a highly desired spot that digital marketers want to reach when it comes search engine result pages (SERPs). Featured Snippets are at the top of Google search results, and they have a high chance of attracting lots of organic traffic. Optimizing your content is key to achieving this position.

First, decide what content you would like to be a featured snippet. Choose something that will make internet users click on the link. You should also carefully examine the keywords in Featured Snippets. Studies show that a piece of content that asks a question is more likely to have a Featured Snippet.

5. Format Your Content for Search Engines

While the words you choose are important, how you present your content is equally important. You want your content to be clear, concise, understandable, and easy to read. However, search engines will also require that you adapt your formatting. To improve your organic search ranking, you will want to use headings and subheadings in your content.

It is important to know how to organize your paragraphs and sentences. A sentence should not exceed 20 words. You shouldn’t have more than 20 words per sentence, but you don’t want your paragraphs to be too long either.

6. Do Not Forget Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Keywords have a significant impact on the content you create, but did you also know that they should be included in page titles as well as meta descriptions? These two elements are basic HTML components that can help you optimize your page and pack a punch. They’re also easy to edit for beginners.

Most platforms offer an easy way for you to modify your page title or meta description. WordPress offers two boxes, “SEO title” or “meta description”, that can be edited.

These items will show up in search results. These short sections could be enough to convince an internet user to click on your site. This is a lot of power in so few words. Make sure your words are powerful.

7. Take Out Anything That Loads Slowly

Did you know that page load times can impact your SEO? Higher bounce rates are common for pages that take longer to load. 

Google PageSpeed Insights is a free SEO tool to check the speed of your site. You can add your URL to get a range from zero to 100 with 100 being fastest. You can also compare the speed of your mobile website to your desktop site.

Do yourself a favor. Take a look at your website. Do you have any plugins or elements that slow down your website’s load times? You’ll see an increase in traffic if you remove or restructure them.

The post 7 Essential SEO Tips for Beginners to Boost Traffic appeared first on SiteProNews.

One thing has always been abundantly clear; Google will burn your e-commerce site if they discover your efforts to manipulate the search results with link building.

Back in the day, the focus was on quantity over quality, and e-commerce SEO services heavily automated their backlink building to churn out thousands of backlinks every week.

A few algorithm updates later and we find that modern-day Google is a lot more discerning about what it considers to be a quality backlink.

Google has gotten better at ignoring low-quality backlinks, so negative SEO strategies have less chance of attracting a manual penalty.

However, it does pay to ensure your backlink profile is as clean as possible because high-quality links still play an important role when it comes to Google deciding where a website will rank.  

Reputable e-commerce SEO services will ensure that only quality backlinks are acquired, but before any backlinking strategy is implemented, it’s essential that an audit is conducted on the site.

The inspection will show you where you stand with your SEO and provide insight into how well your backlinking efforts are holding up.

Here’s how to do an e-commerce SEO audit, so you know if your site stacks up with regards to backlinks right now.

How to Do an E-commerce Site Audit

A well-built SEO friendly website relies on more than just backlinks to achieve higher rankings in the search results pages. However, the fact remains, if there are tons of low-quality backlinks pointing at your site, it could very well be the reason you are tanking in the search results.

Review Your Backlink Profile

 A backlink profile will provide data about every link pointing to your site, but you will need access to a tool to find them.

Ahrefs provides an online tool which offers many e-commerce SEO services, but it can also be used to monitor a site’s backlink profile and comes with what is considered the most comprehensive dataset in the industry. Use Ahrefs site explorer to find information on your backlinks. You can monitor a single section of your site, such as your blog, but selecting “.domain” will provide a report on every URL of your website.

Go over your report to see if there may be links that are worth disavowing. Check the anchor text. Branded anchor texts are authoritative for ranking, but if you see many links with irrelevant anchor text, then it could be the result of a negative SEO attack.

Spikes in link acquisition, followed by sudden dips, may also be indicative of a spam attack. Keep an eye out for those, as it may be worthwhile to your rankings to spend some time in the disavow tool to remove them.

Once you have a good idea about the quality of the backlinks you already have then it’s time to get to work at improving your profile. If your site is new, then you won’t have any, but even if your website is years old and well established, more quality backlinks are never a bad thing.

Use the following tips to build quality links using strategies which won’t get your site burned from the SERPs.

How to Run a Sustainable Backlinking Campaign

1. Reach out to Sites in Related Niches

Sites which are in related niches to your online e-commerce store are some of the best backlinks you can get. Domain Authority is considered by many e-commerce SEO services to be a made up thing, but it can still be used as an indicator of quality.

Reach out to the owners and send out a nicely worded email asking for a link. This strategy won’t work unless the link you are asking for will provide value to their readers.

Another strategy you can use is to find broken backlinks pointing to the site from which you would like a link. Alert the owner of the website to the broken link and let them know that you have a high-quality page they could use as a replacement.

 Site owners always appreciate a heads up about faults with their site, and they are more likely to provide you with a link out of gratitude. 

2. Guest Posting

Guest posting gets a bad rap, but that’s because most people are doing it wrong. The negative reputation of guest posting comes from sites which use the strategy to swap reciprocal links, which is an unnatural way to build them.

Google doesn’t have a problem with guest posting. If you know of sites operating in your niche, and you know the readers of the other sites could benefit from your information, then there is nothing wrong with a guest post.

A guest posting strategy will work best when done in moderation, and your posts are spread out over many different sites.

3. Create More Content

Websites (not just e-commerce sites) with blogs have, on average, 434% more indexed pages than websites without a blog. 

More content on your site means more opportunities to get indexed and ranked for relevant keywords. Also, if your website is regularly updated, the Google bots will have more reason to return and index your fresh content.

As the cycle repeats, you will find that you can rank for more and more keywords, and your site will grow in authority.

Having more content also gives other site owners something to link out to, and over time, you will find that your e-commerce site is attracting links naturally, which are the best kind.

As a further incentive for you to grow your content, 47% of buyers viewed 3 to 5 pieces of content before engaging further with an organization. 

4. Work with Influencers

People talk about stuff they see on the internet, and they also put much stock in what an influencer has to say about a product. 

 Most influencers have blogs, and with the right incentive, you can convince them to put in a good word for your products.

Check out YouTube and Instagram for influencers operating in your niche. Once you find them, reach out and ask them if they would like to create a sponsored post about your product.

Of course, unless you’re budget allows, you are looking for up and coming influencers who haven’t yet reached the level where they can demand huge sums for their work.

With a bit of research, you will find a few influencers who will be happy to promote your site for a small fee or even a free sample of your product. Be sure to follow all the guidelines for working with influencers, because you don’t want to run afoul of Google or the FTC.

5. Don’t Participate in PBNs or Buy Links

Private blog networks (PBNs) are a huge industry, but for long term profitability, they are a risky venture. PBNs are a network of blogs you use to create artificial links to a site to increase its ranking potential.

There are ways to hide a PBN from Google, but it’s getting harder every day, and then you have the hassle of managing an extensive network of sites.

When Google finds a PBN, they are happy to deindex every piece of content, which cuts off the flow of ranking juice to your site. You also risk a manual penalty if Google deems you guilty of artificially inflating your search results. 

Buying links is also risky because most links you purchase will be placed on low-quality sites or PBNs in danger of being discovered by Google.

In Conclusion

Backlinks will be an important ranking factor for many years to come, if not forever. Using e-commerce SEO services which practice white hat link building strategies exclusively is the best way to ensure the long-term profitability of your e-commerce site.

The post How to do Link Building for your eCommerce SEO without getting Burnt appeared first on SiteProNews.

For example, Google has a very complex set of algorithms that they use to determine which YouTube videos should rank the highest on the YouTube search engine, which then translates to rankings on Google, if they think people want to see video results for that search.

I will do my best to break down the specific things you need to know with each type of social media page, along with giving an explanation of how to do link building that will work to rank any page.

Facebook Page SEO

You might notice, if you can be bothered checking, that this Facebook page affordable social media marketing services is outranking the home page of this site for the same keyword phrase.

That’s not a big search, but anything to do with social media marketing or internet marketing has a lot of competition, so it’s not a bad example of how you can get a Facebook page on the first page of Google.

What I did for that one was first of all get a bunch of random likes, and I also made other pages which I then used to make cross links to that page.

I liked that page with my other pages, by using Facebook as each page, and clicking the like button, which puts a permanent link on the other pages.

I constantly update each of those pages with new posts and videos, like social media tricks, social media marketing services, page likes, welcome page, social media marketing tips, social promotion services, and it’s all linked together in such a way that it has really good SEO.

I made backlinks to the page, from articles on different sites, (I’ll be mentioning the sites I use for backlinks later), and I also have a backlink from the home page of this site.

If I removed the link from the home page of this site, the Facebook page would probably fall down the page a bit in rankings, but I decided to keep it there, just to show that it could be done, and that you could rank a Facebook page higher than a PR 3 WordPress website that is constantly updated with new blog posts, and has hundreds, or even thousands of backlinks leading to it.

If you’re interested in getting my help in ranking your Facebook page on Google, send me a message to talk about that, or about anything you want to talk about, I can probably help.

YouTube Video SEO

Ranking a YouTube video on Google is not an easy task, and at the same time, it is a lot easier than ranking an ordinary web page.

Sound confusing? It depends on so many factors, that it’s not easy to say that there is a process that will work each time, it’s more a matter of doing certain things to the best of your ability, and hope it works.

You see Google likes to show video results on a lot of searches, but they don’t show video results for all searches, just the ones they think have the subject matter which means that’s what they think people want to see.

I’m not sure how they work out which searches are the ones that they think people want to see videos for, but I have got some idea of which videos come up at the top of a YouTube search, and therefore a Google search.

The bounce rate is very important, because Google can’t really tell what’s on a video, but they can tell if people are watching it all the way through.

They can tell if people are leaving comments, clicking the like button, subscribing to the channel, clicking the share buttons, and if the video is being embedded, and if it has backlinks leading to it.

You can manipulate some of these figures, but the main thing that you’re going to have to get right is making a video that people actually want to watch.

If you get everything else right, and the video is completely boring, like a dull ad with nothing interesting happening in it, it will probably slip down in the rankings, regardless of how many high quality backlinks you make to it.

I am an amateur video maker, but I can help you out with a nice looking video for a really good price if you want to try out my services. Again, send me a message, my email is in the sidebar if you want to talk about that.

I can also help you out with the social sharing side of things, and if I publish a video to my channel, it stands a much better chance, since my channel is fairly highly regarded and has had many thousands of views and lots of videos published on it.

That’s the other thing, it’s not just the video itself, it’s the channel as a whole, and you can increase the ranking of your videos by being active on the site, like leaving comments on other videos, publishing regularly, giving the signals that you are an important member of the site.

Back Link Building for Social Media Pages

I’m not sure how much Google cares about backlinks leading to YouTube videos, or Google Plus pages, but I assume it’s a bit like any other web page, and I know a bit about how to build effective backlinks to rank any page.

If I wanted to rank a page like this, I would start off by writing a few high quality, original, relevant articles of over 500 words on sites like Ezine, HubPages, Go Articles, Yahoo Voices, Knoji, Squidoo, Info Barrel, eHow, Triond, Typepad, Blogger, and build them in a link pyramid, so one backed up the other one.

If you don’t know what I mean by that, I might write one on Knoji, and then write a HubPages article that linked to that one, and a Blogger post that linked to the Knoji article as well, with the aim of making a higher PR link that linked to the first site.

According to It Rate.co, the important thing is that it looks natural and looks like a quality link. It might also help to link out to authority pages such as Wikipedia because that will really make a difference.

You can make social bookmarking backlinks, or do blog comments, but what you really have to avoid is looking like you’re just making spam links just for the hell of it.

Recently Google made changes that meant that a ton of different techniques which used to work, no longer work. For example, they de-indexed a ton of blogs on blog networks like Build My Rank and Buy Blog Reviews.

If you purchase almost anything that might have worked well a couple of years ago, odds are Google will punish you for it.

What I mean by that is that if you buy a .edu link, or 1,000 backlinks made with software like Xrumer, or whatever, nine times out of ten it won’t work, and might even be a negative.

The way to build high quality backlinks is by writing high quality, original material, or if you can, finding someone who has that sort of stuff, and asking them for a link.

For example, I accept guest posts on this site, if they are really high quality, relevant to what this site is about, (internet marketing, social media marketing), over 400 words, etc.

I also write articles myself, although my services don’t come cheap, because it’s not easy to write high quality articles for a product, and also do it in a way that really works for SEO.

I don’t claim to be an SEO expert, although I do probably know more about SEO than half of the people who are out there claiming to be experts. It’s just such a complicated thing, but I know enough to say I could help, if you want to talk to me about that.

So there you have it, some tips on social media SEO, that I hope you found informative. If you would like to ask me any questions, or talk to me about how to improve your rankings, or promote your site, send me a message, and I’ll do my best to sort you out.

The post Social Media SEO appeared first on SiteProNews.

Advantages of Backlinks in SEO

First things first. Let’s talk about why it is advantageous to use backlinks to improve your SEO process. Backlinks provide a few things for you:

An improvement of organic rankings

By using backlinks, you can get better results and be able to improve your search engine rankings. Keep in mind that you need a goal, which is to create backlinks leading to your homepage plus individual pages. Google will also give more credit to websites with quality backlinks.

Faster indexing

Backlinks help the chances of your website being discovered more effectively and efficiently by search engine bots. This way, your site is recorded faster in the online world, making it easier for people to notice and visit.

An increase of traffic (through referrals)

Traffic to your site also increases, especially through the use of referrals, and is usually targeted with a low bounce rate.

With all these factors in mind, we know that backlinks can really help with the development of your business. Now, let’s get on to the types of backlinks – decide which ones suit you the best.

Fundamentally Two Different Kinds of Links

A link is a link, right? Not so. Right off the bat, there’s a major difference in links that you should know about: NoFollow links and DoFollow links. Basically a NoFollow link tells search engines not to count that link for any pagerank qualities, these links get no love from search engines. People may see them and decide to click on them, but search engines will ignore them – at least that’s the general belief, but it turns out it’s not so simple. What you really want is DoFollow links, which allows not only people to see them, but also for search engines to give them credibility, but don’t get mad if someone gives you a NoFollow link, it’s still useful so be grateful. And you don’t want all of your links to be DoFollow. You want a mix, because all DoFollow links may make it appear that you’re doing something fishy.

Backlink Categories

Backlinks can be classified into at least 3 different categories, and these categories are the ones that you should focus on, especially with Google’s ever-changing algorithm that penalizes websites for posting spammy/low-quality links. Here they are:

Editorial links

These links are “natural” in the sense that they come from other website owners linking to your content. For example, you’ve created a good article that receives a lot of attention and you’ve seeded it with a few key bloggers… as time goes by, more and more people (including other online influencers/other businesses) are sharing it, and some put it on their own websites. The links to your website will then become more qualified, as it stands true through the test of time, and has proven to make people interested in visiting your site. As a result, this type of link is usually deemed valuable.

Manual links

Also referred to as outreach building, this is one of the most common link-building strategies. It’s done by contacting other website owners and asking them if they could place links to your website or pages. Of course most won’t just do it for free: you have to convince them why it would be worth it for them to post backlinks leading to your site. Also, contact people who are relevant. For example, if you’re selling beauty products, establish a relationship with beauty bloggers.

Self-created links

Self-created links can take many forms, such as those found in non-moderated blog comments, an article directory, a guestbook, or even a forum signature. While these can be the easiest ways for you to post backlinks, be advised that if you’re doing it too much, you can be viewed as spamming, and instead of getting many quality visits to your site, you can be banned from certain search engines.

Creating Quality Backlinks – The Do’s

How then, do you create quality backlinks that ensure an increase in the measured performance of your site?

Make relevant backlinks. This means that relevancy needs to be the primary focus in your backlink strategy, since search engines are all about relevance. Mainly, take note of the following:

• The general content, or the “theme” of the linking domain.
• The content itself on the linking page.
• The relevancy of the backlinks that are hitting the domain.

Make the right friends. Create and establish friendships with authoritative websites in your field. By doing this, search engines will tend to put you in the same bracket as these popular, highly-qualified websites. Generally, the stronger the site is, the better the results will be.

Focus on quality websites. Post your backlinks on trusted sources only. Forget the mediocre ones, don’t go spamming as many links as possible – because, again, what’s more important is the quality, not the number.

Intelligent use of anchors. Be creative. If you’re providing a mortgage advice service, don’t go repeating the same phrase over and over again. Try its variations, such as “advice on mortgages” and “mortgage guidance”.

The Don’ts

And what are the things that you should really avoid?

Purchasing backlinks. This is against many search engines’ terms of use, including Google, so avoid this at all costs. Think of it this way: would you vote for a politician that pays people to vote for them in an election?

Exchanging links. This can lead to a decrease of reputation in the search engine indexes, especially when you don’t know the quality and content of the partner site.

Selling backlinks. Much like purchasing, selling is also ranked at the bottom of the “most desirable backlink practices by search engines”.

Websites suspected of being involved in some of these activities can be penalized and suspended.

More Specific Methods

Here’s some more specific methods to build backlinks – after taking into account all the information previously stated above:

The “broken-link” building method. Just as the name suggests, you create backlinks by “fixing” related broken links on other websites. If you find a broken link on a website, the broken link being related to your content, then contact the owner of the website and suggest it be replaced with a working link of the same relevance (which can be your site).

Guest-posting method. Some websites accept guest posts, so try writing one for them and include a backlink to your own site while doing so.

The donation method. Simply by donating, maybe to one of your favorite causes, you can sometimes get your site linked to on a charity website.

There are actually many other approaches, but you would need to spend some time and do your own research, because every website is different. The bottom line is: remember quality comes first, and relevancy comes second. Happy back-linking!

The post All You Need to Know About Backlinks appeared first on SiteProNews.

It starts with identifying a niche where you can fit in your service or product and ends at getting your site featured as a link in between their content or other places. That way, you get a whole new exposure through their reader base.

But how does one go about seeking backlinks from people who did not even know you before you emailed them your pitch? 

The answer is pretty simple, if you put your mind to it. You make use of the bountiful resource named the Internet and use it to your advantage. From resources to backlinking tools, you will find it all there. 

In fact, the Internet is right where you will find this post about the 10 best ways to backlink your website to others. Using the tools and your marketing genius, there is no end to the positive outcomes that you can achieve when it comes to getting backlinks for your website. 

10 steps to backlinking like an expert

Yeah, you have read all those ultimate SEO guides. You have revamped the entire system of marketing online using all the trendiest techniques and best practices, as some like to call them. But have you considered how you will go about building links? Backlinking strategies, as we all know quite well, matter a lot when it comes to affecting your rank online. 

So why not take the best course to backlink like a pro so you can always have that extra edge over your competitors?

Here are 10 sure-fire backlinking tips that can take your business forward by leaps and bounds. Whether you are a recycled furniture retailer or run a trendy salon for pets, backlink in style and your business is sure to rank high and flourish like never before!

1. Make use of infographics

Creating infographics is something that we all do. However, those can be turned into fabulous tools for getting backlinks, and here’s how. If you have an existing infographic that has ranked well previously and has been a constant hit with readers, then you can rehash and use it again (repurpose it, that is) for building verifiable and credible backlinks. 

No worries if you are new to the whole infographic scene though. You will find plenty of easy-to-use infographic-making tools online that create customised designs and templates as per your requirements. Once you create an infographic that is sure to blow the readers’ minds, look for similar content online featured on high authority websites.

The next step is what every marketer worth his salt must learn to do: pitch your product (in this case, the infographic). Contact those websites personally and provide a link of the post you want to collaborate to for context and ask if they would be interested in giving you a backlink in exchange for the infographic. Make sure that your infographic adds to their content, enriching it further, so it is easier for them to consider giving you a backlink to your site on their website.

2. Leverage the skyscraper technique

Do you know what the skyscraper content is on your website? Those are the blogs or articles or videos (or any form of content, for that matter) that have performed really well in the past. What you need to do is go over the performance metrics for each post on your website and identify the ones that rank high in performance metrics. 

There is no need to worry if you cannot identify skyscraper content that you can use to get a backlink. You can always create one. The simplest process to do so is to check out the leading content in your domain. A simple keyword search on Google will help you identify the most popular and relevant content.

Come up with better content and start promoting it everywhere with as much zeal as you can gather. Let that be your anchor content for backlinking. Once websites in your niche look at the stats for your content, they will be only too keen to provide you with a backlink on their sites.

3. Use information on broken links

Broken links are pretty common all over the Internet. You click on a link and end up on a different page than the one where you had wanted to visit in the first place. Broken link-checking tools online will help you identify the broken links for any website whose domain name you enter. Make good use of the tools to get a backlink for your website. Simply report the broken links to the webmaster (along with the location of the link as well as a screenshot to back it up) and ask for a backlink politely in the follow-up email. Since you will be doing them a favour by reporting the broken links so they can get on with fixing the issue to bring in higher ranks, you will get your backlink soon enough.

4. Try your hand at guest-posting

Yeah, we all know about this one. But do we really explore the wondrous domain that is guest-posting? It offers a plethora of opportunities for earning backlinks and give tonnes of credibility to your brand. Go for websites with a higher rank than yours so you can leverage on their reader base using your content. Naturally, the quality of your content needs to be awesome for it to be approved for guest-posting on credible websites. 

If you cannot find websites that will accept your guest post, try streamlining your search using Google search queries. Alternatively, look in the blogger profiles of leading influencers in your domain and see where they have contributed as guest bloggers.

Pitch your ideas for guest-posting to the websites that you shortlist. Not all websites are patient or prompt with prospective guest bloggers, but keep your hopes up. If your content is compelling and well-researched enough, you will find your call through guest-posting. Get a backlink on the content or author descriptions and half of the work is done!

5. Earn a backlink with a heads-up

The Internet will work out generously in your favour if you give backlinks to the community as well. Calling out outdated domain names or links is one of the superb ways of doing so. Additionally, this might even get you a fair share of backlinks. So are you still going to pass up being a responsible netizen on the web?

Staying abreast of all that is happening in your industry is imperative for making this work. Whenever you spot information or an announcement regarding sites that have:

• Altered/ modified operation names
• Stopped offering a service/ product
• Stopped offering updates for a resource
• Moved to a new domain location, or,
• Shut down shop

It is time for you to create a list of all the site mentions for those websites, especially by the high authority websites. Once you have identified all such sites, all you need to do is compose a heads-up email that gives them the updated information regarding expired links that they keep mentioning in their sites. Earning a backlink after giving away this heads-up is almost guaranteed, for good work always pays off. 

6. Cash in on your credibility

Now that you have got a whole website to manage, the chances are that you must be an expert in one field or the other. Whether it is providing Assignment help through expert academicians or custom designing bistro menus as per the requirements, you can always get backlinks by proving your credibility. 

If you are already an authority in your niche, then obviously, you are not new to the matter of using your credibility to take backlinking up a few notches. Sign up for online interviews in websites that would mention your website in exchange for an “expert’s take” on your niche or knowledge area. That way, as you become a familiar face on the Internet, you will find plenty of websites wanting to give you a backlink (sometimes in exchange for one in your site.) 

7. Barter a backlink for another

This is perhaps the easiest way to get backlinks for your website. Whenever you are interacting with a fellow blogger or influencer in your domain, try pitching a follow for follow technique for backlinks. Sometimes, this might not work out as they might not be interested in getting their link featured on another website.

Just kidding! This one works every time. 

Simply put in a word with someone whom you have networked with before. A well-written and assertive email cheering for their work usually does the trick. Put in a line about how you would like to reach out to their readers in exchange for a link where they can do the same for your readers, and you will be good to go.

8. Review and testify to win a backlink

Review products and services online to win a backlink for your brand. In fact, testimonials work wonders too. Reviews are shorter and occur on a host of media platforms. Ranging from websites to social media, reviews appear everywhere. Most products or services are all too keen to provide backlinks for websites so that they can cash in on the reader-base for faster conversion rates. 

The same goes for testimonials. Select a list of websites that you currently use and sort them as per their SEO metrics. Pick the ones with a high performance level when it comes to SEO and write a positive testimonial on the website in exchange for a backlink snuck in (in the content or as part of your brand name). 

9. Go for an ultimate guide and own it

Do you rock journaling? Are your baking hacks simply out of the world? Then you are perfect for writing ultimate guides. Ultimate guides are all resources regarding your craft that your readers can benefit from – all in one place. Of course, you can create the structure and design of the guide as per your specific taste and requirements, but the content should be as engaging and informative as possible. 

Once your ultimate guide becomes popular, you will receive requests galore from websites who want to feature that particular link with a content of similar slant. Sure, creating that kind of content is pretty difficult, but it will be totally worth your time and effort once the requests for backlinks start pouring in. 

10. From brand mentions to backlinks

If you rank among the moderately good in your business, the chances are that your brand name is more popular than you know. Search for all mentions of your brand name by others. Google search queries are the fastest and most reliable way to do this. The next step is to shortlist all those brand mentions that have not linked back to you.

Simply send in a polite email acknowledging the post and ask for a link back to your website. Brand mentions are the commonest forms of acknowledging that they were impressed by what you do. Turn that in your favour by asking for a backlink for all mentions that have not linked back to you. 

Summing it up

From making use of designing skills to learning how to call out broken links (and turn them to your advantage), backlinking is fun indeed. You get to try your hand at a plethora of skills and marketing tactics through the entire process and receive high-value backlinks that add to the ranking factors for your website. Backlinking also helps create a network within your industry that you can always fall back on and takes your brand many steps ahead from the rest. Try the tricks suggested in this post and spread the word if they work out for you. Good luck!

The post 10 Awesome Ways to Backlink Like There’s No Tomorrow appeared first on SiteProNews.

April 2012 saw the introduction of Google’s Penguin update. The idea was to release an update that held corner-cutting webmasters to account, and it caused masses of websites to plummet into the abyss of low-ranking, low-quality, digital pond-life.

Penguin considered a lot of factors before delivering its crippling penalties, and website owners have had to think on their feet ever since to keep ahead of Google’s wrath.

There are many types of links that have the potential to turn a seemingly good and honest link into a bad one that negatively affects your rankings. We’ve gathered five of the biggest offenders that lure many unsuspecting webmasters. We also thought it would be worth explaining how to keep away from volatile linking too, just because nobody should see their website suffer due to a bad link or two.

1. Pay-Per-Link

Buying yourself some backlinks is definitely an ethical minefield when it comes to strategies for boosting rankings on Google.

It’s well documented that nothing gets the job done quicker than purchasing links and reaping the rewards just minutes later, so why are we discussing it on a list of the most volatile links to utilise?

Well, the problem is that while paid links can work wonders in helping sites jump up the SERPs, Google has made it their mission to eradicate the practice from their results pages – or at least get website owners to list their paid links with a ‘no follow’ tag.

This means that if Google figures out that you’ve been paying for those all important backlinks, you risk incurring a penalty so severe that it will send your site all the way back to the dark ages.

If you’ve paid for links in the past, and don’t particularly enjoy living dangerously, then it’s advisable that you convert said links to ‘no follow’ to prevent the risk of waking up one morning to find that your domain authority has dropped from 50 to 15 on Ahrefs .

2. Irrelevant linking

Quantity is rarely ever equal to quality in the linking world, and websites that utilise links that have minimal to no relevance to the content that they’re referring to are bound to hurt your rankings in the post-Penguin world of SERPs.

Put simply, a website whose primary focus is on stargazing has no business linking to Madrid’s finest tapas restaurants – even if a night of pointing telescopes to the sky does work up an appetite.

Google’s Penguin update looked to get to the bottom of these flimsy links and increase the value of relevant links while devaluing the ones that are deemed irrelevant between websites. The all-encompassing algorithmic behemoth of Google looks to be continuing its pursuit of whittling down these linking cowboys even today, so if you have any ill-fitting links that are currently working in boosting your position through the search engine’s results pages, the chances are this won’t be the case much longer.

To counter this, be sure to run a quality control over your links – if something looks out of place, it’s advisable not to risk it.

3. Over-optimised links

Sometimes SEO can be taken to unsavoury extremes. Links can be over optimised when webmasters manipulate anchor text with empty keywords to get more attention on the SERPs.

Anchors are essentially defined as the text that links to another website, and they can be easily edited to say various things that can help search engines pay attention.

However, once again, Google’s Penguin update was designed to put a stop to this level of manipulation, and now websites with an anchor-rich level of arbitrary keywords will find their rankings floundering as a result.

4. Dead links

When it comes to link building, the term ‘gone but not forgotten’ only applies to the website that’s still embedding links that have stopped working – as far as Google’s concerned, the moment a link gets broken, it’s like it never existed in the first place.

While accumulating dead links won’t incur a penalty when it comes to Google’s algorithms, it certainly won’t help your website to gain any prominence on the SERPs.

Coming across a link that no longer exists is part and parcel of life as a website owner, especially if you’ve been operating for some time.

The best course of action to take in this situation is to regularly monitor your backlinks. There are plenty of websites available that monitor your links for free and highlight any broken ones – saving potentially hours of blood sweat and tears for those who would otherwise do it manually – namely Moz and Ahrefs among many others.

If you’ve found that you have broken links nestled in your pages, it’s advisable to replenish them with other references that suit your content just as well, thus reviving your connection and maintaining the informative quality of your work.

5. Weak linking sites

Not all links are created equally – and Google can be fairly snobby in the face of backlinks for low ranking websites.

Once upon a time, low-quality website directories were abused by chancers that were keen to see their site gather high quantities of links, but Google’s moved efficiently to nip the movement in the bud.

Today, backlinks are much more viable if they’re born from websites that rank high on authority. It’s little use reaching out to a site that’s been in existence for three months with around 500 organic visitors per week when larger sites can bring much more favourable results on the rankings pages.

This isn’t to say that directories are bad for websites looking to build links, however, and Yahoo, Best of Web and DMOZ are all excellent resources in which to get your site listed in a way that’s guaranteed to benefit its overall position on the pages of Google.

6. Spamming comment links

This is a bit of a moral grey area. There are many people that read the content of fellow bloggers and writers and feel like there’s value in sharing a link to their thoughts on a relevant subject in the comments section of the page. There are also many people who spam anchor-rich backlinks on websites with little or no regard for the post above.

The quandary for Google here is that it doesn’t want to penalise the information-sharing qualities of the internet. Afterall, that’s what the net’s all about. This opens a window up for abusers that are willing to go as far as using software that automatically dumps links on innumerable blogs and forums in the hope that this will gain some traction on the SERPs as a result.

Luckily for website owners, there are plenty of measures now in place to nullify the act of spammy links, and Google’s continually adapting to drop penalties on to users that comment with irrelevant links only. For many blog owners, automatic filters have begun to spot the trends of immoral comment links and as a result, send them directly to the wastebasket before they even see the light of day.

The online comments sections’ and forums’ descent into the Wild West should never deter honest commenters, though. If you have an opinion and a link to share, then, by all means, share it – but to avoid the risk of being snuffed out by Google’s algorithms and spam filters, always be sure to avoid submitting anonymously.

The post 6 Types of Links That Cause Ranking Turbulence (And How To Avoid Them) appeared first on SiteProNews.

Then, people started dismissing the idea of guest blogging. It’s ineffective they claimed. You’re likely to be penalized for guest blogging, not rewarded, they said. These claims weren’t wrong, but they were incomplete. Yes, Google did take a stand against guest blogging solely for the purpose of SEO. However that doesn’t mean that guest posting is verboten, or that it cannot help SEO. It isn’t, and it absolutely can. Google is simply taking action against spammy, blackhat techniques such as spinning content and indiscriminately posting it across irrelevant sites. Guest posting is a great technique! Keep reading to learn more about using guest posts as a means to improve your search results.

Work With Sites of Equal Quality to Yours

Never guest blog down, or allow bloggers from lesser sites to post on your blog. How do you determine this? It isn’t audience numbers or traffic. A niche site might have a very small, but dedicated audience. Instead, you want to consider factors such as content quality, engagement, and overall website quality. Here are some things you can do to ensure that you work with sites that are worthy:

• Spend time reading posts. Are they relevant, educational, and well-written?
• Are people sharing and commenting? Are the site owners responsive?
• Gauge whether or not they post frequently.
• Follow them on social media and get an idea of their following and presence.
• Check out their other guest bloggers.

Guest blogging should be a largely symbiotic relationship. If one party stands to gain significantly more than the other, proceed carefully.

Make Guest Bloggers Earn Their Spot

Not long ago, there were websites that allowed people to post any article, on any topic, with absolutely no quality control. Before long, these article directories were full of spammy posts, spun content, and articles that were nearly unreadable. Low quality websites used article directories to pump posts full of keywords in an attempt to drive traffic to their websites. Fortunately, Google and other search engines changed their search algorithms to catch and penalize this behavior.

Unfortunately, a lack of quality control has left guest blogging in a similar state. This is why Google has taken a bit of a stand against it. To work around this, you have to establish your own editorial standards. Don’t allow open guest posting on your blog or website. Instead, establish guidelines, and read posts before you approve them. Likewise, be wary of posting your content on sites that don’t have equally stringent standards. If they don’t hold you to high standards, they won’t hold anyone else to high standards.

Use Relevant Links

It’s tempting to link back to your own content as much as you can. In fact, you should do that when you have content that is relevant to your post. However, for the sake of credibility, you should mix one or two of your own links with links to other, data-heavy, fact based content. 

Here’s a good rule of thumb. Your main points should be backed by data. Look for articles and other content that contain trustworthy statistics, case studies, and working examples. This makes your posts more believable.

Consider Branching Out Internationally

Depending on the nature of your products and services, you might consider reaching out to international audiences. If you can find a website that is international in scope guest posting on that site could be a great opportunity for you. Just keep in mind that you should not entrust content translation to just anyone. Instead, work on your own to identify translation companies you can trust to localize and translate your posts.

Write Top Quality Content

Of course, you should never publish content anywhere that isn’t high quality. Still, the content you post on other sites should go above and beyond. Remember that when someone allows you to post content on their site, they are trusting you with their audience and platform. One post that’s ‘phoned in’ and you might not get a second chance. Worse, other bloggers in your niche may see this and cross you off their own lists of potential guest bloggers.

To make your content really pop:

• Use plenty of high quality visuals.
• Make sure your content has the potential to go viral. Focus on trending topics
• Know what evergreen content is. Consider ‘how to’ content and other educational posts.
• Write for readers using mobile devices.
• Remember that the acceptable level of spelling and grammatical errors is zero.

Engage Beyond a Single Post

Don’t just blog. Stick around. The best part comes in the days and weeks after your content is published. This is the time when people will begin commenting and otherwise engaging with your content. This is your chance to connect with potential, new audience members. Make sure you are available to respond to questions and comments. You’ve gotten people’s attention. Now, show your insights.

Don’t forget to do some leg work on your own to create engagement. Use your own social media to promote guest posts that you have published on other sites. If you are hosting a guest blogger, give them a boost by promoting their posts as well.

Write a Great Author Bio

Some sites do not allow backlinks to your site at all. Don’t cross these off your list. If a site has an audience that fits your target and plenty of traffic, they are still a viable target for guest posting. Just be sure they allow you to include an author bio. There you should be allowed to link back to your own website, and describe your qualifications.

Conclusion

Guest posting can absolutely lead to better search results. It can help drive traffic to your site, increase social engagement, and bring you quality backlinks. All you have to do is follow a few best practices to stay in the good graces of Google and other search engines.

The post SEO 101: How to Use Guest Posts to Improve Your Search Results appeared first on SiteProNews.