Last Update May 18, 2025 @ 2:42 am

If you’ve been in the SEO game for a while—either as a marketer or a business owner keen on improving their online profits—you must’ve heard about or conducted backlinking and internal linking on your website. 

Both these practices are invaluable for establishing your website’s authority and boosting its rankings in search results. Yet, there is another equally powerful tactic for enhancing your site’s performance—deep linking.

In this article, we will discuss what deep linking is, what benefits it yields to your SEO strategy, and share some of the best practices for executing effective deep linking.

What Is Deep Linking?

Deep linking is the practice of linking to website pages deep within a website rather than linking to the homepage or main category pages. 

In other words, deep linking entails linking to web pages such as individual blog posts, product/service pages, or other pages found on a website. A page can receive a deep link either through internal linking (e.g., a blog post links to a product page) or a backlink (e.g. another website links to your blog article.)

This linking practice isn’t new in the SEO realm; however, it can often be overlooked as marketers focus only on building links to a website’s homepage.

Deep Linking in SEO: Example

If you’re wondering what deep linking looks like in practice, let’s consider a few examples.

Unlike a link to a homepage that would lead to www.websitedomain.com, a deep link refers to a page with a link to www.websitedomain.com/specific-page. 

Deep linking is done not only to boost the performance of a specific web page but also to create a relevant and helpful experience for users visiting your website. 

Deep links should be natural and authentic, meaning the product page, service page, or blog post you link to must be relevant in the given context.

Let’s elaborate on this further.

A website wants a specific page to rank better for the keyword “SEO firms Chicago”. Great—to do so via linking, one can either create a blog post that will link internally to that page. They should use the keyword as anchor text or arrange a backlinking strategy for other sites to link to that page (again, using that keyword as an anchor).

So, now that there’s a keyword to target, one needs a relevant and useful link where users will land upon clicking that anchor. An anchor text “SEO firms Chicago” should take users to a page listing SEO agencies located in Chicago, just like it does here. 

The URL of the page we linked to (http://www.designrush.com/agency/search-engine-optimization/illinois/chicago) suggests a deep link to a page within the agency category, an SEO subcategory, a level deeper subcategory for the state of Illinois, and a subcategory specifically for the city of Chicago as the last one.

This is a page deep within the website and completely relevant to the keyword (or anchor text). If, for example, the users were to land on a homepage (http://www.designrush.com), they would have a hard time locating the information they came for, i.e. the list of Chicago-based SEO companies.

The Benefits of Deep Linking for Website Rankings 

Deep linking is a powerful practice to increase the authority of your website’s individual pages, as well as the authority of your website overall. It provides valuable advantages to your website’s performance and rankings and should thus represent the staple of your optimization strategy.

That said, for optimal results, strive to balance deep linking with “standard” internal linking, i.e., linking to the homepage and other main pages. It’s vital to understand that deep linking is in no way a substitution for an all-encompassing backlinking and internal linking practice.

Ensures Good Distribution of Backlinks

Deep linking can be helpful in creating a more balanced backlink profile for your website. By building deep links that link to a wide range of pages, you ensure the “link juice” flows to all website pages, not only to your homepage.

Allowing the “link juice” to flow across your website improves its authority and, thus, rankings in search results. A service page, product page, or blog post which is linked to from various internal pages and reliable external sources suggests to Google that it contains valuable and useful content.

Adds Value to Google and Users

Linking to a website’s homepage is actually very rarely valuable. The content on homepages is generally very broad and promotional and seldom adds any real value, even to those willing to convert.

On the contrary, pages such as blog posts, services pages, product pages, and other internal pages generally boast specific content more valuable to users looking to learn more about the topic.

Drives Traffic, Better UX, and Conversions

The more links there are linking to a page, the greater the chances of driving more traffic to that specific page. Increased traffic improves the visibility of internal pages, thus also boosting their rankings for targeted keywords.

In addition, deep linking creates a better, smoother user experience as the links navigate users directly to the content they expect to find. Deep links are also beneficial for improving website conversions, as users have fewer steps to make to complete an action, whether it’s a purchase, sign-up, or something else.

Improves Page Rankings

As said in the previous section, deep linking, especially from authoritative domains, ensures pages experience a rise in the SERPs (search engine result pages. 

Deep linking from the same site is also beneficial for improving rankings, as you suggest to search engines that a specific page isn’t a one-time thing, but rather an important piece of content that’s part of a larger whole.

Promotes Website Indexing

Search engine bots crawl a website in an attempt to understand what each page is about and associate them with relevant keywords. Crawling and subsequent indexing make your website findable in search results.

Deep linking makes it more likely for search engine bots to discover, crawl, and index content, especially newly added pages (for example, recent blog posts and new products.)

Deep Linking Step-by-step Instructions

To help you effectively deep link your website, this guide will provide step-by-step instructions on how to identify relevant pages to deep link, conduct keyword research, use relevant anchor text, use internal and external links, ensure link relevance and quality, use deep links throughout your website, and track and monitor your links. 

Following these steps can help you create a balanced backlink profile, improve the visibility of your website, and ultimately drive more traffic to your site.

Step 1: Identify Relevant Pages to Deep Link

Identifying relevant pages to deep link is the first step in a successful strategy. This step involves finding pages on your website that are most useful and valuable to your target audience. These pages should be informative, useful, and engaging, such as blog posts, service pages, or product pages.

To identify these pages, review your website analytics and user behavior data. Look for pages with high traffic, low bounce rates, and long session durations. These pages will likely be the most engaging and informative for your target audience. 

Consider your business goals and objectives when identifying relevant pages to deep link. For example, if your goal is to increase sales, you may want to deep-link to product pages with a high conversion rate.

Another important consideration is the relevance of the pages to your overall website structure and hierarchy. The pages you choose to deep link should be well-integrated into your website structure and closely related to other pages. This ensures users can easily navigate between pages and find the necessary information.

Step 2: Conduct Keyword Research

Conducting keyword research is an essential step in any SEO strategy, including deep linking. It involves identifying your website’s most relevant and profitable keywords and creating content around them. 

By researching keywords related to the pages you want to deep link, you can optimize your anchor text and help search engines understand the linked page’s content.

Various tools are available to help you conduct keyword research, such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs. These tools allow you to identify high-traffic keywords related to your content and create targeted content that will rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Conducting keyword research also helps you understand your target audience’s search behavior and preferences, allowing you to create more valuable and relevant content.

Step 3: Use Relevant Anchor Text

When creating a deep link, it’s essential to use relevant anchor text. The anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink, and it provides context and information to both users and search engines about the linked page’s content. 

Using descriptive and relevant anchor text helps search engines understand what the linked page is about and can improve its chances of ranking higher for those keywords.

It’s important to include the relevant keywords for the page in the anchor text to help signal to search engines what the page is about. However, it’s crucial not to overuse keywords and ensure the anchor text flows naturally within the content. 

Using relevant anchor text can also help users understand what they’ll find on the linked page, making it more likely that they’ll click through to it.

Step 4: Use Internal and External Links

Combining internal and external links is crucial for creating a balanced backlink profile for your website. Internal links help to establish a hierarchy on your website and distribute link equity evenly throughout your pages. 

External links, or backlinks, can help to increase your website’s authority and credibility by showing that other websites consider your content valuable. When using external links, it’s important to ensure that the linking website is reputable and relevant to your content. 

Additionally, linking to authoritative external sources can improve your content’s value and provide additional resources for your audience. Overall, a balanced approach to internal and external linking can help to improve your website’s search engine rankings and user experience.

Step 5: Ensure Link Relevance and Quality

It’s crucial to ensure that the pages you’re linking to are relevant and high-quality when deep linking. The linked pages should provide informative, useful, and engaging content that aligns with the content of the page linking to it. 

Additionally, the pages you link to should have a low bounce rate, indicating that users find the content on the page useful and relevant. The quality of the linked pages is essential as search engines consider the quality and relevance of the linked pages when ranking your website. 

Therefore, linking irrelevant or low-quality pages can harm your website’s reputation and SEO efforts.

Step 6: Use Deep Links Throughout Your Website

Using deep links throughout your website helps to ensure that the link juice, or authority, of your website, flows to all pages, not just your homepage. 

By building internal links that link to a wide range of pages, you can increase the visibility and accessibility of those pages to search engines and users. 

This can also help improve your website’s overall user experience, as users can easily navigate to relevant pages without having to search for them. Additionally, using deep links throughout your website can help distribute traffic more evenly across your site rather than concentrating on just a few pages.

Step 7: Track and Monitor Your Links

Tracking and monitoring links is an essential step in a deep linking strategy, as it helps you measure your links’ effectiveness and make data-driven decisions. 

By tracking and monitoring your links, you can determine which links are driving traffic and conversions to your website and which are not performing. This information can help refine your deep linking strategy over time and improve your website’s overall performance.

Google Analytics is a useful tool for tracking and monitoring links, providing valuable insights into how visitors interact with your website. You can track the number of clicks, the bounce rate, and the time spent on each linked page. 

This information can help you to identify issues with your linked pages, such as poor loading speed or irrelevant content, and make the necessary improvements to boost their performance. 

Additionally, tracking and monitoring links can help you to identify opportunities for new deep linking strategies that can drive even more traffic and conversions to your website.

Conclusion

In conclusion, deep linking is a powerful SEO strategy that can significantly improve your website’s search engine rankings. 

Following the step-by-step instructions outlined in this article, you can identify relevant pages to link to, conduct keyword research, use relevant anchor text, use internal and external links, ensure link relevance and quality, use deep links throughout your website, and track and monitor your links. 

By doing so, you can improve your website’s authority and relevance in the eyes of search engines, leading to higher rankings and increased visibility for your brand. 

By investing time and effort into your deep linking strategy, you can reap the benefits of increased organic traffic, improved user engagement, and higher conversions and revenue.

The post Why Deep Linking for SEO Is Powerful for Boosting Rankings first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Aug 24, 2022 @ 6:18 pm

The Skyscraper Technique has been around in the SEO world for quite a while.

It was coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko and it became popular among SEO practitioners.

Why so successful?

The answer to that question is this guide. We’ll explain what the Skyscraper Technique is, how it works and the results it can bring to your content creation efforts.

And to your link building, too.

(And we’ll also make a note on how to use the Skyscraper Technique ethically.)

Read on!

What is the Skyscraper Technique?

The Skyscraper Technique takes its name from the magnificence of tall skyscrapers, and from the fact that an existing building can always get overtaken by a higher skyscraper.

Not only higher, but a better quality skyscraper, you want to hope!

The Skyscraper Technique work in the exact same way — it’s about building better, more useful content than your competitors, and letting readers decide which one they like best.

(Most probably yours, since it’s outstanding!)

In Brian Dean’s words:

“Have you ever walked by a really tall building and said to yourself: “Wow, that’s amazing! I wonder how big the 8th tallest building in the world is.” Of course not. It’s human nature to be attracted to the best. And what you’re doing here is finding the tallest “skyscraper” in your space…and slapping 20 stories to the top of it.”

The technique in a nutshell

1. Browse the SERPs for your target keywords and note down the top 10
2. Find the backlinks for these results (using tools like Monitor Backlinks’ Link Checker or Buzzsumo)
3. Choose the ones with the highest number of backlinks and read them start to finish, noting down what they’re doing good and the common topics they talk about
4. Create content on the same topic as your competitor, but make it 10X better (not necessarily longer, even though a Semrush study found that long form articles get top results in terms of performance and traffic)
5. Promote that newly created content and pitch it even to the people who are linking to your competitor’s content.

This is where things can get unethical…

Building your content on the same topic as another person’s is not the problem. It happens every time in book and scientific publishing: it’s competition, which you study, of course.

The problem happens when you approach people who are linking to your competitor and ask them to replace their link with yours. That’s where things get nasty.

Keep the practice ethical by suggesting your link as additional value to that page, not as a replacement. Your goal is to ethically compete with your competitor, not to destroy them.

Now let’s see how to go through those 5 steps we listed above.

1. Finding High Quality Competitor Pages with a Lot of Backlinks

Your goal is to build upon the best available content in the SERPs and create something better that users (and search engines) will love.

Now, there are several ways to do that. Let’s list a few.

Google SERPs

This is the most important method: to make a list of content pieces appearing in the top 10 of Google SERPs.

In fact, because links play a critical role in Google’s algorithms, you can be fairly sure that these pieces have at least a few quality backlinks.

Collect these links in a spreadsheet. You will analyze them in the next step.

Competitor Backlinks

Analyze your competitor’s content and check backlinks for the best pieces.

You can use a backlink tracker for this scope.

Below is an example:

Some pretty good backlinks in the mix, right? Like that quoted statistics from Adjust.com.

You will analyze competitor pages that got great backlinks like that in the next step. For now, just collect the URLs.

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a good tool to find topics that people want to read — they’re the ones with the most shares and backlinks!

In the example below, for the topic “SEO copywriting”, we found some good pages that got at least a few backlinks and a lot of Facebook and Twitter shares:

Give this method a try and collect the best pages for the next step.

Ubersuggest

You can also use Ubersuggest to find top linked competitors for a target keyword.

Look at the example screenshot below:

When you look up a keyword or key phrase in Ubersuggest, you’ll be shown a number of sections in Keyword Overview, that includes Content Ideas.

In the Content Ideas section you can find a list of suggested content you can get inspiration from for your article, and each piece comes with the number of backlinks.

You can see immediately which content has the most backlinks.

Alternatively, you can click on Content Ideas on the left sidebar under Keyword Analyzer and get many more content… with all the backlinks!

It becomes easy to see who’s your competitor here, and what they are doing well, so that you can replicate their success and build upon it.

Forums

Forums are another great tool for going topic hunting.

Give Quora, Reddit, and Stack Exchange a try.

Once you have your topic ready, search it in Google and focus on the top 10 results in the SERPs: those are the ones you want to outrank!

2. Analyze Top Performing Competitor Pages

No matter what method from the previous section you used, nor if you used a combination of them, now that you have your list of competitor content handy, time has come to analyze them one by one.

• Start with the best page (i.e. ranks #1 in Google or has the most backlinks)
• Read the page beginning to end and note down the topics and angles it covers (leave out original findings if you can’t cite and link back to your competitor’s work)
• Proceed to the other pages and do the same work until you reach the end of your list. Also, note down common topics between the pieces you read
• Create an article outline using the topics you found in your analysis and note down where you could expand and build upon — you will use this outline later when you work on your Skyscraper content.

That’s a lot of work, we know, but analyzing top performing competitor content is critical to creating your 10x content.

3. How to Make a Piece of Content 10x Better with the Skyscraper Technique

As you have done in the previous section, creating awesome Skyscraper content involves studying your competition to see what’s doing well and replicate that.

But at the same time, you add more value and new sections with ideas or interviews that are unique to you.

Let’s see what areas you can add your “touch” to.

Headline

Start with your headline. You want it to be magnetic!

Get into your ideal reader’s mind: what type of language and approach would attract their attention?

A word of advice: refrain from copying your competitor’s headline. You want your content to be unique! Make your personality shine starting from the headline.

Length

You can make your content longer, but the smart way — not by filling it with fluff, but by adding a lot of value.

As an example, you might add extra hacks. Or more tools. Or more data.

The end result should be a compelling read that readers feel like it’s a go-to gem in the niche or industry.

Freshness

You also want to make sure your content is up to date.

Maybe the competitor content you analyzed dates back 2015 and it hasn’t been updated since.

You can do much better!

Scour the web and libraries for the latest research articles and statistics in your industry and build your content upon the new findings.

Readers will feel they can trust you because you bring current facts to the table.

Visuals

Also, make sure to add images and screenshots.

Not many websites do that, often they only have one or two images, if they have any at all! You want to be a champion of visuals!

Just remember to add descriptive alt text to make these visuals accessible even by visually impaired people.

Examples and Tutorials

Finally, make sure every section in your content comes with practical examples and guided tours so readers don’t have to guess what they should do to apply your advice — be a great not just a good teacher!

4. Promoting Content Created with the Skyscraper Technique

The hard part is promoting the content using as many channels as possible.

You have to get as many eyes on your content as you can reach, and email website owners who are likely to link to it.

Like resourceful or curated blog posts and resource pages.

Make a list of people who might potentially be interested in linking back to your content.

Find link prospects among:

• People who already link to your competitors
• Bloggers in your niche (search “niche + blog” in Google)
• Resource page and resource articles
• Broken link building

Finally, reach out.

Below is an email template you can use for your pitches:

Hey NAME!

I stumbled upon your fantastic article/resource page/roundup while searching for NICHE TOPIC.

Can’t believe how many of those resources I did not know! I learned so much from your piece.

You know, I have recently published a resource on the same topic, specifically on YOUR TOPIC/ANGLE HERE. Would you like to take a look?

This is the URL:

I’m open to feedback!

Also, if you happen to like it, would you consider adding it to your list of resources? Maybe my text can give your readers some more data to work on.

Let me know what you think. I’m all ears.

Cheers,
YOURNAME

Remember to always tell your link prospects why you’re reaching out but avoid telling them to replace a competitor’s link that they find helpful.

Not only this is unethical, it’s also upsetting to the link prospect who will see their own decision on what to link and what not questioned.

Always be kind to your prospects, and never pushy.

5. Monitoring Your Backlinks

You can use a backlink tracker like Monitor Backlinks or Linkody to track your backlinks. It’s also useful to setup a Google Alert for your content.

But don’t look for overnight success.

Mind what Neil Patel says about branding: until your brand takes off and gets recognition, it’s harder to build backlinks.

It’s certainly harder to build links for an SEO guide on a small blog, even if the quality is high, than one on Brian Dean’s blog.

10x content is great, but if searcher satisfaction happens at 1x, you won't beat the big brand who commands the first click.

— Ross Hudgens (@RossHudgens) December 20, 2016

Why Is the Skyscraper Technique So Effective?

Mostly because Google swears by its three ranking factors:

• Content
• Links
• Rankbrain

With the Skyscraper Technique you create awesome content, right? Check!

And awesome content easily attracts backlinks, you know? Yes, so — check!

That means that the Skyscraper Technique allows you to create great content that Rankbrain will read and understand (for search intent) and that people are more likely to link to because its quality is high (the go-to resource in the niche).

See? You caught three birds with one stone.

What If You Don’t Want to Build Links?

Brian Dean created the Skyscraper Technique as a method to acquire backlinks, but you can also use it to just create top quality content that will naturally rank better in Google.

Just remember to always play it smart with your keyword strategy and search intent which are essential to rank well.

Conclusions on the Skyscraper Technique

Whether you use the Skyscraper Technique to acquire links or just to come up with great content, this is a great method to increase the quality of your website.

Epic content always gets rewarded, both in the SERPs and among users, who are more likely to share it and link to it.

Over to you: Have you ever tried the Skyscraper Technique? If yes, how did it go?

Share your experiences in the comments below.

The post Skyscraper Technique: What It Is and How to Use This SEO Goldmine first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Aug 24, 2022 @ 6:20 pm

Don’t worry if you’re new to website SEO and to the practice of link building.

Link building is not as difficult as it might sound. It’s essentially networking and building relationships with other webmasters and content creators.

Human beings to human beings. That’s what it is — a dialogue. And there’s nothing scary about it— even though we understand it might sound too much if you’re an introvert.

This short guide is here to teach you a few techniques that work and that won’t require years of experience in SEO.

So let’s start.

Why Link Building?

First of all, let’s answer a fundamental question: why link building?

Essentially, you may want to build links for two reasons:

• To improve your rankings in search engines
• To grow traffic (and consequently, conversions) to your or your client’s website

The first reason is what SEO is after, as getting links helps you get higher rankings for your content in the SERPs of the major search engines.

The second reason is what brand building, public relations and webmaster relationships are after: exposure of your brand or name and website name (and link) get people interested in you and what you do, and interested in your website, so they’ll come and visit and, hopefully, contact you or download or buy from you.

That’s how it works. You may want to build links for both reasons or only one of them. You’ll work with the same link building techniques.

How to Do Link Building: 3 Pre-Link Building Tips

1. Create content first, go after links later

You already heard it. Content is king.

But is it king when it comes to link building, too?

The answer is yes. Because it’s near impossible (unless you buy a lot of meaningless links) to get quality links to a piece of content that is not quality at all.

So the first step before you build any links is to invest in the quality of your content.

That means:

1. Content that answers searchers’ queries thoroughly and possibly better than the competition, or that shares at least some original ideas
2. Carefully picked images, videos and/or audio, and links
3. A piece of content that speaks directly your audience and encourages feedback (call to action)

Create that masterpiece before you seek out opportunities to get it linked.

Remember: people want to link out to something helpful and memorable, not the usual rehashed stuff.

2. Don’t try to get links from any site

Not every link is like another.

Only links that come from sites that relate to yours to some extent are valuable to your users and search engines alike.

Imagine finding a non-contextual pharma link on your favorite electronics store site: would you click it?

Even if it’s a legit link, it’s irrelevant, and it’s unlikely that you’re also interested in pharma when you are searching for the latest iPhone.

So that irrelevant link is also bound to carry little to no traffic to the pharma site.

Now imagine if that was your link. You would lose traffic and search engine “points”, since search engines also penalize for link schemes (and an irrelevant link like that smells unnatural link everywhere).

So:

1. Search Google or another search engine for websites in your niche or related to it
2. Manually surf and choose the ones that you think are more relevant (and have a lot of content you could get a link from)
3. Collect the sites in a list — an Excel file or a Google Doc will do — for when you build links later

3. Don’t be afraid to experiment

One link building technique might work for you better than another.

Or maybe you want to get original and create your own methods to acquire links.

Don’t be afraid to experiment: like anything in marketing, link building is a creative practice and you may just find out that something you never tried before (or that none of your mentors tried) actually works for you.

How to Do Link Building: 10 Easy Link Building Techniques for Beginners

There’s no need to get complicated when you’re starting out, so this list of 10 ways to build links is all about simplicity and easiness to replicate results.

1. HARO Link Building

This is one of the most effective link building and brand building techniques, and we’re not alone in thinking so. Nearly one hundred experts responded to our HARO query recommending HARO, because it works.

All it requires is that you sign up on platforms like HARO (Help A Reporter) and Source Bottle or follow the #JournoRequest hashtag on Twitter to get media queries in your niche emailed directly to your inbox every day or week.

Then you will respond to interesting queries through email or tweet.

Anna Rubkiewicz, Co-Founder & Content Strategist at Contentki, has found good success with using HARO to earn quality backlinks:

“To fully explore the backlink potential of HARO, I have dedicated 3 months last year and read all 3 HARO newsletters daily. I answered each and every question that fit the profile of the company I was working at. While it required a lot of dedication, it was definitely worth it! Within these 3 months, I was able to earn 18 backlinks from websites that had a domain authority of over 70. As far as backlinks are concerned, I can’t recommend HARO enough – you do, however, need to be consistent to see the results at scale.”

Brett Downes

Brett Downes, Founder and SEO at HARO Helpers, also got great results with HARO for a recent site:

“I launched my site at end of March, and have earned 49 referring domain backlinks and my DR is 53, higher than 90% of sites in the same niche as me who have been operating for a few years.”

Laura English, Lead Copywriter at Sonder Digital Marketing, recommends:

“Putting aside 10 to 20 minutes a day to get through all the callouts on HARO and SourceBottle and putting forward a couple of quotes is fairly simple and a sustainable strategy.”

How to Do HARO Link Building

1. Signup on HARO or Source Bottle or follow #JournoRequest on Twitter
2. Receive interesting emails and tweets, and reply to those emails or tweets
3. Make your pitch emails as in depth as possible, and respond to the query precisely. On Twitter, say that you’re interested and ask that they contact you through email
4. Always end your pitch with your full name, the name of your brand and your website URL, so it gets easy for journalists and bloggers to link back

2. Link Earning Outreach

I’m calling it link “earning” because results are not guaranteed with link outreach if your only scope is to get links that boost rankings.

That happens because the target webmaster may choose to not link out at all, but only to share your content to their social media followers. Or they may choose to create a link but with a rel=nofollow attached to it.

It’s really up to the webmaster to see what to do with the resource you offer.

How to Do Link Earning Outreach

1. Look for sites that can bring in traffic and help ranks
2. Offer your content in a warm email, highlighting how helpful it is and why (don’t ask for a link)
3. Follow up after 4-5 days if you get no response (this time, kindly suggest the idea of a backlink)

Email Template

Hello [NAME],

I’m [YOUR NAME], a reader of your blog. I read the recent post on [TOPIC] and I found it enlightening. [ADD A GENUINE COMMENTARY OF THE POST HERE]

Some time I ago I also wrote about [TOPIC] and the piece took me some long time to get together! Here’s the URL in case you are interested: [URL]

Mind if we swap feedback on our respective pieces?

Warmly,
YOUR NAME

3. Guest Posts

Although Google’s John Mueller recently told SEOs that guest post links don’t work because Google is pretty much ignoring them, guest posts are a great brand building tool and they can get you links that will bring in traffic and leads.

In fact, don’t worry if site owners assign a rel=nofollow to your outbound links in guest posts: Google now uses nofollow as an hint, meaning that there’s a chance they might actually follow the link and assign a value to it.

How to Do Guest Posts

1. Know the niche you’re going to write for (e.g. cooking or gardening)
2. Search Google for sites in that niche (example keyword: “write for us” gardening, or “guest posting” cooking)
3. Select a few of those sites that have the quality you’re looking for, especially traffic potential, and study them thoroughly, by reading some of their posts and the About page
4. If there’s a chance to leave comments on blog posts, leave some interesting ones that add value, so you’ll get a first meaningful interaction with the site owner
5. Find the site owner’s contact information, come up with a guest post idea and pitch it, highlighting how valuable it may be for their readers. If the site has a comment section, let the owner know that you already interacted there so you’re not a new face
6. If your idea gets green-lighted, write it and get it published, along with a backlink to your site (hint: let the site owner choose the format and the landing page)
7. Do this for each site you have targeted for guest posting

4. Link Reclamation

This one may be harder for you to put in practice if you’re really new to having a website and an online presence, but if you’ve been on the Web a while, you might find that your name or brand name is cited somewhere.

With link reclamation, you can turn these simple textual citations into live backlinks to your site.

And it works! Sam Williamson, co-founder of CBDiablo, used unlinked mentions to build their first links:

“When we first launched our website we’d already built up a bit of an offline following, so there was already a bit of discussion going on about us online. An easy way for us to quickly gain links into our website was to find mentions of our business which didn’t include a link to our website, and ask for one to be included.”

Sam suggests that you use search operators on Google to find mentions from last month, last year and so on, so you don’t miss any mentions.

How to Do Link Reclamation:

1. Search Google or another search engine for your name (example: “John Doe” or “ACME Inc.”)
2. Find the author’s or website owner’s email address or social media account
3. Get in touch using warm emails, thank the author for citing you, and ask if they would be so kind to add a live link to that citation

5. Host Expert Roundups on Your Blog

“But shouldn’t I join others’ roundups instead?” You may be asking.

Naturally, it can’t hurt if you do, and you could scores some good backlinks that way, but there’s a reason we are recommending to host your own roundups instead: it’s easier and a traffic and backlink magnet.

Adelina Karpenkova, Content Marketer at Joinative, says:

Adelina Karpenkova

“We […] find it effective to publish expert roundups on our blog. First of all, these pieces of content perform especially well in terms of driving traffic. And the more people see our content, the more likely it is that a few of them will want to link to this roundup on their website. Moreover, when you host interviews with professionals that run their own blogs, it won’t be a big deal to get a link from this blog. Sometimes, you won’t even need to ask for it – people are usually willing to share something they contributed to on their owned channels. For instance, after we featured this native advertising trends roundup, we got great links from Taboola, Revcontent, and other relevant websites.”

How to Do Expert Roundups:

• Setup the roundup on your blog and come up with a list of questions to ask experts
• Find experts through HARO, Source Bottle, MyBlogU or by manually searching Google for experts in your niche (for example, search for “[niche] speaking contacts”)
• Once you got in touch with the experts and got their go ahead for the roundup, send them the interview questions by email
• Copy and paste their insights into the roundup article, edit and review, and publish
• Email all experts the live URL of the article and kindly ask that they help spread the word

6. Go Local

Another link building idea is to leverage local entities, radios, websites and organizations to get backlinks.

Even your old school or church group are good candidates for this strategy.

Colin Little from Social Launch SEO, explains:

“I’d recommend to anyone starting out, especially if it’s for a local business client, to reach out to local bloggers, radio stations, local charities etc. Having that local connection will help in your outreach efforts and it can result in some big wins.

Start by searching city sponsor(s), city blog, city radio station, etc and look for good low cost to free opportunities to drop a link. Local radio stations, charities and blogs can have surprising domain stats that will be a great starting point.

They’ll often be more willing to give you a break on the cost of guest posts or link insertions since they feel they’re helping out a local business in their area. The quickest way to check the page/domain quality is to use an SEO chrome extension like Mangools.

Once you get the hang of identifying, stat checking, and building your outreach list you’ll start generating some high quality local backlinks with ease.”

How to Go Local:

• Look up local entities or businesses you have personally used (school, church, sports club, local library, favorite shoe shop, etc.) and find out if they have a website
• If they do, find a way to support them (or see if you helped them in the past) and contact them asking for a link opportunity, even in the form of a guest contribution
• After this first stage, that will get you the first links, take a habit in checking the metrics of any interesting or related local business website you run into before you contact them for a link opportunity
• Remember that a low score website that however has the potential to drive in a lot of traffic is still a great site to get a link from. Link building is not all about SEO!

7. Monitor Competitors’ Backlinks

Have you ever thought about getting linked from the same sites where your competitors get dofollow links from?

All you need is a backlink tracker like Linkody or Monitor Backlinks or a free tool like Google Alerts to retrieve competitor backlinks and sift through them to uncover hidden gems.

Jeff Moriarty, Marketing Manager for Moriarty’s Gem Art, shares:

“One of the first link building strategies we used starting out was setting up Google Alerts for all our main competitors. This showed us exactly where they were being mentioned online and we were able to then request to get links on those same websites. This was so much simpler and took less work than going out and just requesting links from websites we hoped would link to us. With this strategy, on average we got 1-2 links out of every 5 requests we made. Was very successful for us and we continue to do it today.”

Riddhi Khatri, SEO Executive at Elsner Technologies Pvt. Ltd, suggests to “Find who is currently ranking highly in Google’s organic search for [your] keyword” and says that by monitoring competitors “you may find quality links like business listing, profile creation, social media profiles, guest post and many more. You may directly create a business listing by filling out your business information. For guest posts you may outreach to their emails, It’s a great way to earn high quality links.”

“I am sharing this technique because I personally use it for my client’s website link building. It is an easy way to rank higher than your competitor and I also find it less time consuming. It’s best for SEO beginners without much knowledge of SEO.”

How to Monitor Competitors for Links:

• Signup for a backlink tracking service like Linkody or Monitor Backlinks. You can find more by searching Google for “backlink tracker”
• Add your competitors’ websites to the tracker and wait for the tool to retrieve backlinks (usually within 24 hours). If you don’t know who your competitors are, find who is ranking on page one of Google SERPs for your main keyword(s)
• Browse the backlinks list and note down websites where you would like to be linked. Note down all the guest posting opportunities, too (i.e. where did your competitor guest post?)
• You may also want to check metrics for each backlink (MOZ and Majestic metrics, Alexa Rank for traffic estimates, social shares through Buzzsumo, comments and other engagement on blog posts, social media followers)
• Reach out to each website that the backlink comes from to see if there’s a link opportunity for you

8. Pinterest Group Boards

Danielle Miller, Social Media Marketer at Miller Media Management, says that a good and unique strategy to get backlinks is to “put out a stellar piece of content and get it posted to Pinterest group boards.”

Pinterest group boards are an option for regular boards that allows you to invite people to the board to submit pins. In other words, you create a collaborative board.

Danielle says:

“So many SEMs forget to leverage Pinterest. Pinterest repins build backlinks and have strong search engine rank. Pinterest works because posts have longevity and continue driving traffic for years. Group boards are key because they have thousands of captivated followers, so you don’t need to wait to build your own following.”

Danielle also shares a success story:

“When I started my social media marketing business, I created a set of free marketing plan printables on a Saturday morning. That day, I pinned the promo image to a few group boards. Over the years, this piece of content has been repinned over 12,000 times. All these backlinks have improved my search rank and this pin continues to drive traffic to my website to this day.”

How to Use Pinterest Group Boards:

• Signup for Pinterest if you don’t already have an account
• Find a group board related to your content and submit it. As an alternative, you can create your own board but it will take longer to drive repins and followers

9. Internal Linking

Internal links are completely under your control, so why not take advantage of the opportunity to improve your search engine positioning?

But just linking one page to another won’t do it.

Kevin Puls recommends “Linking relevant pages to each other by using (linking) the keywords, or LSI (Latent Semantic Index)/synonyms.”

How to Optimize Internal Linking:

• Using keywords in your anchor text to link to your other content on the site
• Also uso LSI keywords (or related keywords) to link to content where that topic is touched upon
• Make your anchor text useful to the user who’s searching for content on your site

10. Build Relationships

This one wins every time, because relationships are at the core of any marketing activity — and SEO is no less.

International SEO consultant, speaker and blogger Milosz Krasinski says to build relationships with these 4 types of persona:

• Journalists
• Editors
• Bloggers
• Other link building agencies or freelancers

Milosz elaborates further:

“Journalists looking for a unique angle, give them what they are looking for.

Editors – ask them about their editorial calendar so you can provide them with necessary information in advance.

Bloggers – contribute by doing expert roundup in a given niche.

Lastly, connect with other freelancers who are having relationships with whom you don’t have so may mention each other on upcoming blog posts.

All that can be done with no tools by simple email and basic research.”

Milosz kindly shared a SEMrush screenshot with us showing the correlation between the number of published contributions (dofollow links) and the growing number of authority score:

How to Build Relationships:

• Manually search for journalists, bloggers and publishers and get in touch to know their needs. For journalists, you can also leverage HARO and Source Bottle as seen earlier in this post
• Email these new contacts or reach out to them on LinkedIn. Remember to introduce yourself and to be helpful
• Ask them how you may help them with a current project. Don’t charge for that help, this is for networking and relationship building, not money.

Conclusion: How to Do Link Building When You’re An SEO Beginner? You Stick to A Few Tactics

We offered 10 strategies in this guide, but you may just pick a few and stick with them over the course of your SEO campaign.

It doesn’t matter how many you use, as long as you do your best to make those tactics that work.

That said, there’s one strategy we strongly advise you don’t skip: building relationship. It’s so foundational that even if you may find yourself at loss of options sometimes in the future, you’ll never be really option-less if you have built a network of professionals to rely on.

Also, as a beginner, don’t overlook SEO communities: they can help you get things right and back on track if you make a mistake along the way.

What’s your biggest link building fear?

Share it in the comments below and we’ll do our best to help you.

The post How to Do Link Building (The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide) first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update May 16, 2021 @ 12:08 pm

The world of SEO is such a complicated and intimidating place. Doing SEO without the right tools in your arsenal is like going to war with a kitchen knife: you can, but you will have an awful time. Good thing developers have made tools and software that will help us in our SEO efforts.

Usually, they are cloud-based apps that allow people to work simultaneously.

Cloud software may not be for everyone, though. For the same price of around $100 per month, you can get your hands on something better, something more powerful: like SEO PowerSuite.

SEO PowerSuite is a software that will give you such tremendously powerful tools that will help you optimize your SEO endeavors. It automates SEO, giving you an enormous advantage among your competitors.

SEO PowerSuite contains four tools that will speed up your SEO ventures to Mach 4. These four tools include:

1. Rank Tracker
2. SEO Spyglass
3. Link Assistant
4. Website Auditor

In this review, we’ll feature SEO PowerSuite’s Rank Tracker.

We’ll cover things it can do, pros and cons, and why SEO connoisseurs like yourself need to think about getting your hands on SEO PowerSuite.

Let’s jump right in!

Best Rank Tracking Tools

Rank Tracker is a simple, yet powerful keyword rank checking tool under the SEO PowerSuite software.

It is a reliable keyword monitoring tool that allows you to track keyword performances and rankings, giving you a flawless and excellent SEO execution.

Using SEO PowerSuite’s Rank Tracker, you can automate your reports, trace your snippets, and find out the difficulty level of each keyword you nominate.

With this powerful tool, you can personally structure the way you make strategies to help grow your client’s businesses.

Key Features

Having a Rank Tracker in your arsenal is like Thanos having one of the Infinity Stones of SEO (The PowerSuite is the gauntlet, of course!) It allows you to do different things such as:

• Monitor Keyword Positions

If you need to check global or local keyword positions, then Rank Tracker is the right tool for you. It allows you to scan multiple keywords from all over 400+ search engines. Aside from that, you can also scour the web for listings, search results, and even spy on your competitor’s keyword rankings!

• Geo-Targeted Rank Tracking

Rank Tracker can accurately determine your geographical location and use that to your advantage. Are you in L.A.? London? Singapore? Rank Tracker can determine the highest-ranking keywords in your area and use them to optimize your SEO efforts. It can even assess keyword rankings from multiple and different places!

• Access to 23 Keyword Tools

With Rank Tracker, you can have your choice of keyword research method. You can use Google’s Adwords, Autocomplete, Related Searches, Bing’s Search Suggestion, and Related Search, Yahoo’s Search Assist, and many more.

As you go on your conquest of finding ideas for the best keyword, Rank Tracker will systematically gather those keywords for later assessment.

• Analyze Keywords

This tool can help you determine numerous keywords for you to prioritize.

It can also calculate Keyword Difficulty for every keyword that you have: something that will give you an insight as to what your competitors have

• Automated Reports

The hassle of receiving and creating manual reports is now gone.

Behold, an automated reporting system that can give you daily rank check depending on when you need it; daily, weekly, monthly: it depends on you.

Client Reviews

Many reviews claim that SEO PowerSuite’s Rank Tracker is an excellent tool for SEO campaigns.

It gave them tangible results by reporting accurate keyword rank tracking in multiple search engines.

Pros and Cons of Using SEO PowerSuite Rank Tracker

Pros:

1. Excellent value-to-cost ratio
2. Saves hours of work
3. Continuously upgraded
4. Astounding functionality

Cons:

1. Uses a lot of RAM

Rank Tracker’s Final Verdict

SEO PowerSuite’s Rank Tracker is an exceptional tool every SEO experts need to have.

It is neat, efficient, and, most of all, continuously improving.

With this tool, you can track the keyword rankings of your choice anywhere in the world while receiving automated reports from your desired time. Its keyword tracking ability is off the charts, something you need to best your competitors.

The tool may eat up some of your RAM, restrict you from further actions unless you have their license, and challenge you financially.

Still, in the end, the pros trump the cons: SEO PowerSuite’s Rank Tracker is one of the best rank monitoring tool for SEO purposes.

The post SEO PowerSuite Rank Tracker Product Review first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Nov 14, 2022 @ 6:33 pm

In this article on Guest Posting Tips, we will be looking to cover some important questions-

• What is a Guest Posting Strategy?
• How can a brand, individual or agency create the perfect Guest Posting strategy?
• What are some of the advantages of Guest Posting
• Challenges associated with Guest Posting
• What are some of the most effective Guest Posting Tips to succeed in Digital Marketing?

Guest Posting is one of the most highly prioritized digital marketing strategies in the world. It is the process of creating high quality content around your industry niche and posting it on some other external website.

You might want to ask me as to why should you share your precious content with someone else. Especially given the fact that high quality content, which is original, informative and SEO friendly is so scarce a commodity.

However, in order to build the performance of your website, you would need to share your content with an external website. If you have just started your website and are looking to attract traffic, it is probably better to give your content to a website, which already enjoys high flows of traffic.

Let us look at answering some of the questions, which we have raised earlier.

Guest Posting Strategy: Meaning and Definition

As I have already mentioned, Guest Posting is the process of creating content and requesting an external publisher to publish it on their website. Brands, individuals, and agencies do this in order to grow themselves in a digital ecosystem.

Google ranks White Hat Guest Posting as one of the most effective ways to improve the performance of your website. However, precaution should be taken that spammy guest posting for building low-quality backlinks is avoided at all costs. Google penalizes websites, which engage in spammy link building through manipulative guest posting activities, heavily.

Creating a great Guest Posting Strategy is dependent on a number of factors. We will try to list some factors that you need to keep in mind when pursuing a Guest Posting Strategy-

1. Relevancy of your Industry niche is critical to guest posting success. For Google, relevancy is the new Page Rank.
2. It is important to reach out to industry authority sites and connect with authority publishers.
3. Pitching an idea for a Guest Post is an important aspect of gaining the attention of the publisher.
4. Try to maintain a stellar bio profile. This is where authority publishers are going to give you the much-coveted link.
5. Receive guest posts from authors and sites. This will help you in establishing networks and securing high-quality content for your website.

Most platforms are likely to pass the above five points as ‘Guest Posting Tips’. However, these are the bare minimum basics of Guest Posting that everyone needs to be aware of. In the following sections, I will be highlighting four important Guest Posting Tips that are likely to escalate your efforts 10x times.

Benefits Of Pursuing Guest Posting As A Digital Marketing Strategy

Even though Blogger Outreach has established itself in a short span of time, experts still vouch for Guest Posting as one of the best strategies ever. This is because effective guest posting is a 360-degree digital marketing advantage giving strategy.

We are going to list down some of the top benefits of Guest Posting-

Improvement In Website Traffic

One of the most important priorities that you need to set for yourself from guest posting is traffic. This is the reason why you should always reach out to websites, which have high traffic flows.

The aim should always be to redirect traffic and readers from external sites, back to your site. Your content is your attraction. The better your content, the more are your chances of convincing people to click on the link and come to your website.

Building SEO Backlinks

Let us be honest and state that over 90% of people who pursue guest-posting do it for building SEO backlinks. While this should not be a priority, it is definitely an excellent by-product. Building backlinks and placing them on high authority sites is critical to climbing search rankings.

In-content backlinks should be aimed for; however, backlinks in the author bio section in authority sites should also be considered as a winning situation.

Establishing Credibility And Authority

If your website and mention are there on a leading industry authority website, it adds tremendous value to your credibility. Guest Posting helps in terms of building trust and faith in your brand.

If people see your links on a website they consider in high regard, they are likely to follow the link. This helps in not only building identification and relatability but also contributes to more sales, revenues and influence over a new audience.

Create A Highly Optimized Lead Generation Campaign

At a very advanced stage of Guest Posting, you will be able to create the ultimate funnel to garner high-quality leads and sales for your brand. Once you have established your authority and built your credibility, you will be able to run highly optimized campaigns.

The biggest brands use Guest Posting along with Blogger Outreach to run Lead gen and sales campaign. Brands do this especially when they are about to launch a new product or enter a new territorial market.

Link Juice And Better SEO Metrics

Traffic, backlinks, and mentions by external websites about your website add something known as ‘Link Juice’ in the industry. Every webmaster wants to add this factor to their strategy. This helps in improving website metrics and health.

For example, you might have heard about terms like Domain Authority, Domain Rating, Page Rank, and Alexa Rank and so on. In order to judge how good a website is, these metrics are considered.

Great Guest Posting Tips For More Traffic And Links

Most of the so-called digital marketing gurus will say that reaching out to the right publisher is a tip. They will also talk about how you need to create the perfect email, hound the person on social media and so on. These are not tips, rather, they are the basics. In the following section, I will write about 4 Guest Posting Tips that really make a difference.

Take Great Care Of Creating The Perfect Bio Section

If you have created a high quality, long format article, which is original, informative and adds great value, readers are going to be interested. Publishers are also most likely to give you a backlink in the bio section of the article.

It is important that your bio section has four major elements in the roughly 100-word text limit-

1. Your credibility and authority (where all you have been published)
2. What you can offer (expert advice on digital marketing solutions)
3. Who all have you helped (companies and individuals)
4. Where can people reach you if they are interested (website link, skype ID, contact details)

Once you have been able to squeeze in these four major elements, you will see a major boost in your web traffic and queries. It is important that you invest the proper amount of time in creating the best bio for your profile.

Exchange, Recirculate And Reuse Links

If you have been doing guest posting for some time, you will know that every great article needs to be linked to some authority posts. This is in addition to your backlink. This is where with a little bit of hard work, ingenuity, and creativity, you can add to your traffic and links.

Once a publisher for a guest post has accepted you, try to reach out to others like them and state that you want to add a link to their website in this article. This will help you barter and exchange some important links.

In essence, if you play it right, every One Guest Post Opportunity can lead you to get a minimum of two backlinks. If you are smart enough, you can get even up to three important backlinks. However, it is important that you understand the requirements and try to reach out to the right people.

Interconnect And Interlink Industry Niches

Let us start with an example- suppose you are part of an industry, which is into leather seat covers. You can only find as many good authority sites. However, if you are really insightful, you might want to link automotive with other industries like aircraft for sale!

Think about it. Automobiles and aircraft can be used for a variety of industries. The aim id to interlink your content across industries and spread your user base. You will get access to newer audiences that are not only related to what you write about, but also interact and engage with you on a different level.

Every industry on the planet is in some ways, interconnected with at least four or five other industries. This makes it very easy to reach new markets, engage with different publishers and create your fan following. The biggest advantage of interlinking is that niche publishers would find you irresistible. They would be getting exciting new content for their audiences via you. You might want to leverage that and get some extra backlinks and exposure from them.

Do Things For Free For Others

There are many beginners in the industry who will keep coming up to you for Free Guest Posts. It is important to humor them and engage with them. I conducted a small experiment-

In the last two years, I formed a community of 500 bloggers of various niches and offered them all kinds of help. From guest posting to link building to social shares and so on. I kept nurturing this audience for more than two years.

In those two years, nearly one hundred of them were able to grow themselves handsomely and create a stellar online presence. I knew that they would never be in a position to say no to me. This is how you need to build friends and a community in the blogging community. Without offering help, you cannot expect to get help and assistance. It is important that you help people along the way.

Once you are able to create an active community of at least two hundred bloggers, you will never need to go anywhere else for any outreach strategy. The key is building trust, confidence, and relationships at all times.

Conclusion

In the past few years, the monetization of the Guest Posting industry has not gone down too well with Google and other search engines. They have become skeptical of how spammy guest posting done only for link building is on the rise. This is why it is important to be as organic in nature as possible.

By paying attention to quality, at all times, you can ensure that you will never have Google breathing down your neck. This will also help build your reputation over a period. It is important that you nurture your reputation and credibility. One wrong move might be enough to wipe out all the goodwill that you might have built.

In addition to the above four tips, it is important that you maintain an active and strong presence on social media platforms. This will help you attract the right kind of people at all times. Guest Posting is not only one of the most high-performance digital strategies it is also the toughest. The intricacies of the strategy make it somewhat of an expert strategy to ace.

However, with the above Guest Posting Tips, you will be in a position to enjoy an advantage over your competitors, both in the short, as well as in the long run. Do let us know what you thought about the article in the comments section below.

We would also want to hear from you regarding some guest posting tips that you try to follow while planning and executing this digital marketing strategy.

The post 4 Great Guest Posting Tips To Increase SEO Traffic And Links first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Jun 4, 2024 @ 12:58 pm

SEO is an important part of your business. No matter what your niche is, it will be hard to grow if people can’t find your site on search engines or through organic backlinks on other websites. What exactly are SEO backlinks and why are organic ones important?

A backlink is any hyperlink that links from one webpage to another. An organic backlink is a link that is put on a page without the intention of influencing search engines. For example, if the link is sponsored, has tracking parameters, or redirects through monetization, Google’s algorithms will determine that your link isn’t organic.

Your goal should be to get as many organic links as possible because they are one of the factors that will make your website rank higher when someone searches for relevant keywords in a search engine. 

So, where do you start?

Identify Your Competitors

There are many people who avoid visiting their competitors’ websites and reading the content those competitors publish. This is a mistake. Your competitors are targeting the same market as you, so it is likely that they are attracting similar people. You can get lots of inspiration by researching how they do things.

The first step in getting your own backlinks is to find out which of your competitors are getting the most backlinks. To get that information you will need to create a list of their websites. If you don’t know who your competitors are there is an easy way to find out. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Do a Google search with keywords you expect your customer would use when looking for a website that is in your niche. The tops results should belong to competitors who are nailing SEO optimization.

Now that you have a list of websites, it is time to run each of them through a backlink checker. Backlink checkers are useful web crawlers that will find backlinks for you. They will also give you information on how much traffic each of those backlinks generates and lots of other useful information. You will then have a much shorter list of competitors that should contain only those that have the most traffic and biggest number of backlinks.

Analyze Your Competitors Backlinks

Okay, you have determined which competitors are getting lots of backlinks. It is now time to find out what kinds of websites are putting up all those links to your competitors. This is where a good backlink tracker will be useful again. It will let you open each of the webpages that have a link to the competitor you are researching.

If your competitor has loads of backlinks, there will be thousands of websites in results. Don’t worry, you don’t have to research all of those websites in detail. Open a bunch of tabs and give each of them a quick glance. There will be a bunch of unrelated websites, but there should also be a few groups of websites in a similar niche. Those are the groups you are interested in.

When you do this for all the competitors you are researching, you will find out what sort of websites are likely to mention your business. Most likely there will be several different groups of such websites. For example, if you are selling gardening supplies, you might find websites of florists, chili pepper bloggers, agriculturists, and so forth, on that list. The next step to get your own backlinks is to find out what kind of content each group shares.

What Do They Share?

Even if you know who is interested in putting links to your type of business, that doesn’t mean they will link just anything you publish. You should now open the links that link to your competitors and check what type of content is being linked. Once again, you will get various results. There might be links to their webshops, blog posts, homepages, about sections, etc.

Once you find out what kind of content each of the groups is likely to share you should compare your website to those of your competitors. Find out what is different and if you lack something they have on their websites that can make you more successful.

If you find your website is lacking you should focus on fixing one part of the website at a time. Choose one type of content, based on the group you want to attract first. For example, if you noticed that florists are attracted to your competitor’s blog, and they are the group you want to attract the most, focus on improving your blog.

If your website is of the same quality or better than your competitors’, then it means that your problems are elsewhere and you should move to the next step immediately. Otherwise, work on improving your website before moving forward.

Reach Out To Others

Your website is now top-notch but you are still not getting backlinks. This is can be expected if you haven’t worked on your SEO previously. After all, it is hard to find a business online if they are ranked low in searches. Most of the people don’t look past first 10 results in Google search. Instead, you will have to find those willing to link your site.

Thanks to the research you did in the previous steps, you have already found some. It is time to start getting in touch with them. Send emails and ask if they are interested in collaborating with you. The type of collaboration will depend on what kind of content they share, what their business does, and how that relates to your line of work.

This is where you will have to get creative to motivate them to visit your website, to publish a guest post written by you, or to let them publish a guest post on your website. There are various ways of approaching this step in the process of getting backlinks, and you will have to feel out what will work best for your site.

Consider Hiring SEO Professionals

Generating organic backlinks can be time-consuming and not everyone has time to do it on their own. Even if you do have time, there is a possibility that you would rather invest that time somewhere else. If that is the case, you should consider hiring companies like ourselves or KingMakers who specialize in partnering with website owners.

Whatever you decide to do, you can’t ignore SEO. Good SEO will drive new customers to your website and improve the growth of your business. If you hire professional help; do research on the company and their track record of SEO wins. This way you will get to know people who are interested in your business and get more opportunities for growth and collaboration.  

The post How To Build SEO Backlinks first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

There are mainly 4 types of expired domains. Some are cheaper than others of course, but the truth is that the domain industry is quite large and there are always really good domains available at auctions for any budget.

We can buy expensive or cheap domains from different broker sites. At auctions some domains can go upwards of$ 10,000. Logically, these are very good domains, but these are irrelevant to most marketers. Most of the time, we look for great domains at a great price we can use to make PBN’s.

Below are the different types of domains and where you can buy them.

PRE-RELEASE

A domain tagged under “Pre Release” is when the owner does not renew before the date of expiration. These domains come into auction and the highest bidder takes it in case the owner does not renew.

Some characteristics of these domains:

• Quality: Normal / good / very good
• Cost: Very High
• How to buy: To purchase a domain that is “Pre Release” you must do it in a public auction.

These are the major auction sites are made public domains:
SnappNames
NameJet
Dynadot
Sedo
Afternic
PureVPN review
Goddady TDNAM

CLOSEOUT (DOMAINS IN LIQUIDATION)

A closeout domain name is a domain that is unsold at auction or pre-release. These domains are usually offered at a lower price than the original “Buy it Now”

• Quality: Normal / good
• Cost: High
• How to buy: This type of domains can only be achieved in a BIN dedicated service. As of today GoDaddy TDNAM is the only merchant that sells these domains.

PENDING DELETE

A domain enters this period after going through the grace renewal period. This is the period when it is scheduled for deletion.

• Quality: Normal / good
• Cost: High
• How to buy: This kind of domains can be purchased in any way after the record is deleted. But if you want to get ASAP, you can use some of these services:

NameJet
SnapNames
Pool
GoDaddy Auctions

DELETED DOMAINS

It is called a deleted domain, when it has already been deregistered. These domains are the cheapest of all and is hat you want to look for if you have a low budget. To register you just have to pay the normal cost of a domain.

• Quality: Normal
• Cost: Very low (between $ 2 and $ 10)
• How to buy: To buy them, you can do it as if it were a normal domain. Just make sure it is free and that it has not already been registered by someone else. The most recommended domain registrars are these:

LWS.fr (domains to 0.99 Euros)
GoDaddy (25% off any purchase)
BigRock (Dominos with Indian fare, but very good)
Namecheap (domains at a good price)

What tactics do you use to find expired domains?

The post Finding & Buying Expired Domains first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Keyword Research: This is where everyone must start, but most skip. Finding high search volume keywords is what makes you money. Ranking for a keyword without any search volume does you no good so please research your keyword before moving any further.Unfortunately, the YouTube keyword tool has been shuttered for good on September 14th. Google has replaced the tool with the Display Planner’s AdWords for video keyword suggestions. You need an AdWords account to access this. This is your best friend for finding relevant keywords to target for you videos.

Another great place to do keyword research is by searching on YouTube directly for your main keywords and seeing what other videos pop up in the top results and how they are aligning their video title with specific keywords. You can also see suggested and related videos for even more ideas.

Once you have a list of keywords you then want to throw them into the keyword planner to ensure they have month search traffic. Find keywords with over 1,000 monthly searches as anything below that is not worth your time and effort (unless you have a high converting high ticket item).

Video Title: This is the most important aspect of your video in terms of on site optimizations. This is similar to the SEO page title tag. You want it to be as close to 60 characters without going over. You want to make it with a compelling title that is both keyword rich and readable for humans. This is tricky and almost is an artform of itself. If you are good at on site SEO then this should not be a problem.

Video Description: Do not hold back when it comes to the video description. Make it as useful and informative as possible. You want to properly describe the video and include any relevant keywords you’re trying to rank for in the description. When using keywords in the description I try and differ them slightly from the title by adding plurals, synonyms, etc. If you want to include a URL you should always place it on the first line on the description as it will always be visible for people to click without having to expand the description.

If you have a transcript of the video is is great to include this here. Google LOVES content and cannot read videos (yet) so the description is where the algorithm looks when assigning relevancy. Adding a transcript to videos is similar to adding an alt tag to images. It helps assign relevancy which will in turn ranks your video.

Video Tags: These are a great place to SPAM as many relevant tags as possible. Do not hold back, the more the better. Keep filling out tags until you cannot add anymore. Stop if you start seeing irrelevant tags, but there is no harm in adding as many relevant tags as possible. it is helpful using the suggested tags as a starting point.

Views, Likes, Comments, Subscribes: It is true that these still work when bought, but if done properly. You want full retention views and it is even possible to get people to search YouTube/Google for your video and then to watch it. It is important not to buy a Fiverr gig for this, but rather find a reputable seller or source. When it comes to likes, comments, and subscribers should from legitimate people as you want this to look natural.

Link Building: For quick easy links use social media and social bookmarking platforms such as Reddit, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc. There are thousands of sites like these, but pick and choose the best. To simplify things you can always go onto Fiverr and find a good social bookmarking gig to help get more exposure. A few backlinks are more than enough.

Video Embeds: Video embeds are key to ranking a video. To get the embed code from a YouTube video go to share > embed and grab the snippet of HTML code to paste on third party websites. Web 2.0 properties such as WordPress, Tumblr, Blogspot, etc. are the perfect place to embed videos. make sure to have content surrounding the video that is relevant to the keywords you are trying to rank for. Getting a few video embeds is usually sufficient to rank a medium competition keyword.

Social Sharing: Share the video across all your social platforms such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.. You always want to do the social sharing on your own platforms so you hit the correct target audience. it is good to share your videos in relevant groups to get more exposure and to share it will collegues to see if they will reshare it with their audience.

If all these steps are done you should be able to rank for almost any keyword in Google Video Search and YouTube. Start ranking those videos today!

The post Organically Rank Any YouTube Video in Google & YouTube Video Search first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Jun 4, 2024 @ 1:24 pm

Backlinks can be explained as perpetual, virtual pathways originating from millions of other websites on the internet and ending up on your website, or further connecting you two to dozens of other websites. This systemized connection and combination of domains is exactly why these are termed as ‘websites’. However, unlike for shoe laces, the more tangled up you are on the web, the better. These invisible highways, known as backlinks, bring your website traffic and ranking and strengthen its stance.

The question is how to get these prized backlinks? One way is to get help from marketing and branding agency. However, it is no rocket science; but, there are key elements you must take in consideration before beginning.

First and foremost, strive to create pitch perfect content which becomes a valuable asset to whoever reads it. You do that effectively; links will come to your doorstep themselves.

Be wary, quality content can get snubbed in all the noise on the internet. Promotion will act like fuel to good content and backlinks will come to your website like bees to honey. Here’s a step by step guide in getting quality SEO backlinks which will hold you by the finger and help reach an epitome.

STEP #1: Find Content That Is Already GettingLinks

The Skyscraper technique, as it’s called, helps you find the skyscraper content in your niche. It means digging for content that has already gone viral, making a few amendments here and there and posting it as a revamped version. This is a time tested technique of streaming in backlinks.

Your website should be brimmed with content which is helpful, useful, and viral. So much so that visitors should be tumbling onto your website over any link they click, any query they search. Following are ways to discover content that is already getting links and make the magic happen:

Open Site Explorer

Consider your niche, the topics people expect from your website, and the topics your work covers. Perform a quick Google search for other sites that exist in the same sphere as you and enter the URL of the top three results in this tool.

Once you have received the results, click on ‘Top Pages’ on the left of the page.

You will then see a list of results that look like this:

Look for pages with a high number of linking root domain; these pages are getting backlinks like it’s a piece of cake. Topics and resources are going to depend on your choice.

Keyword.io

It is another free search engine optimization tool which provides hundreds of keyword suggestions free of cost. This tool sums up a comprehensive list of all the relevant, highly recommended keyword suggestions for your content.

Go ahead and search a keyword related to your topic or niche on Keyword.io and you will find everything you want such as:

• Top keywords
• Term statistics
• Relevant pages
• Auto complete suggestion

Step # 2: Take the Concept, Create Something Better

There are a number of ways you can improve on another website’s posted content. For a head start, here are some ways you can take the concept from content that’s already posted and improve on it: You can update it, add in more details, revamp the whole piece with attractive visuals, or just ignite it up with a compelling, substantial opinion on the topic.

• Make it More Detailed

Increasing the length of an article is sometimes all you need to make it look fresh and new again. But, adding a few words won’t do the trick, you really need to raise the bar by adding details and personally tried quick tips. Inspiration from other bloggers can work wonders! You can also merge two relevant articles and give the readers something new in. Who doesn’t love two in one?!

In case you need inspiration and are exhausted of all the ideas already available in the space, use the following tools and methods to motivate you into creating or re-engineering something new:

1. Quora:

Great place to run into ideas for blog posts.

2. BuzzSumo:

This tool helps find out which of your competitor’s posts are doing good in terms of social media.

3. Keyword research tools:

There are numerous tools for keyword research, Keywordtool.io is one of them.

4. Impact Inbounds Blog Title Generator

Plug in the topic that you want to write on and it will spill out some headlines and articles that you can use to help spark ideas.

• Make something relevant again

Updating or customizing an old article is the best way to spruce up enthusiasm that is already out there in your visitors. Look for content that once sparked joy in visitor but has recently gone gray in your competitors’ portals and you will be surprised by the amount of content you can renew and reuse.

• Make your page visually attractive

If your content is of top-notch quality but it’s posted on an ugly page that gives the visitors an eye sore, the website is going to experience a pitfall. Make your page visually attractive and appealing by:

• Breaking your paragraphs into shorter (2-3) lines
• Using bullets and lists
• Making a mobile-responsive webpage.
• Adding pictures to keep the graphics bar high
• Choosing a color scheme that is easy on the eyes

STEP # 3: Reach Out and Promote Your New Content

The icing to the cake requires making sure that your efforts are seen by the people out there, especially your target audience. Look for the following when finding the right people to showcase your work to:

• A website within your chosen niche or topic
• Someone who would be interested in your topic
• A website that has already made links to similar content

Create a list of websites and compile email addresses of the influencers in your niche.

Create an Email Template – make sweet and short emails. Be informative and precise. And send them to influencers and authoritative websites in your niche. Keep in mind that a handful of high quality links are more valuable than a heap of low quality ones.

STEP # 4: Write Guest Posts

Another way to add backlinks to your website is by writing guest posts for other blogs. Popular blogs offer guidelines for their guest writers and make a small mention to them in their blogs for backlinking purpose. However, not all that shines is gold. Don’t fall for websites with high Domain Authority and Page Rank; rather look for websites which genuinely create backlinks to your website.

Remember to use all of the above mentioned blogging tips and tools to maximize your content research, target the right audience at the right time, and build strong lasting backlinks. By doing so, you can greatly pitch up things!

The post How To Get Quality SEO Backlinks: A Step By Step Guide first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Mar 24, 2022 @ 11:16 am

To read Brian Dean’s post at Backlinko, comment backlinks sound not just outdated a technique, but even boring. In fact, he warns readers that they’re “NOT going to find anything about guest posting (blah) or blog comments (yawn)” in his post.

Yet you can still buy blog comment services from most SEO websites (run a web search and often you will post some of these services on the first page in the SERPs).

Matthias Hager at Quora said in 2011 about comment backlinks:

Efficient for SEO? Not usually. Efficient for beginning a relationship building process with bloggers? Sometimes.

He finds me in agreement. Comments are the social side of blogs, it’s where you will create a connection with the blogger and if you run into a very active community, other commenters. Big visibility booster if you play it well.

There are other more effective ways to build SEO friendly backlinks such as guest blog posting on niche relevant websites.

But sending out massive quantities of automated comments doesn’t build relationships — it builds spam, and even Matt Cutts warned against this practice a few years ago.

The Value Of Blog Comments Is In Comment Marketing, says Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin of MOZ says, in a Whiteboard Friday dated May 21st, 2012, says:

Comment marketing is this idea that I want to participate in the Web’s communities to earn the trust and respect of other people and the awareness. This is a blog post, right? Here’s some content. You can add comments down at the bottom. This happens all over the Web. There are literally tens of millions of blogs where this could be valuable, depending on your niche, and contributing here and earning the recognition of readers can earn you all sorts of returns.

Comments work because:

1. They reach the blogger and add value they can use to push the discussion further
2. They reach everybody who subscribed to the blogger’s comment feed (possibly other influencers, too)
3. They open possibilities for guest posting and collaborations

All of these opportunities make it easy to earn a backlink. A natural one, of course.

Valuable Comments Earn You Rewards

They did for me. Look at how this comment I posted on Tad Chef’s blog earned me a mention (with backlink) on Ahrefs: I did comment marketing by not thinking about marketing at all. I was myself all along, I commented on Tad Chef’s blog post because I truly cared and truly wanted to leave an helpful resource for him to use. When you pick a number of blogs to read and comment on a given day, forget about marketing — focus on the message your favorite blogger and influencer is getting across, take notes, then write a comment that speaks of humanity, not machinery. In other words, write a comment that provides value and helps without spamming. When you touch a person’s heart and not just their minds, you won.

Yes, Blog Commenting Still Works For SEO

Provided that you share value — and you do it genuinely — your comment still. If you want to do comment marketing at its best, forget about marketing altogether — at least until you have written your comment, before you hit ‘Submit’. As Rand Fishkin states in his Whiteboard Friday post, your comments “need to be build awareness, meaning people recognize you when you’re commenting, they recognize what organization you’re with. You build trust”. Traffic and backlinks are a consequence of trust.

Some more reading on blog commenting for SEO

• Blog Commenting – A Practical Guide For Bloggers by Amit Sharma
• Is Backlinking from Blog Comments a Good or Bad SEO Tactic? by Bill Walls

How do you comment on important blogs in your niche? Do you just seek backlinks or do you try to add value and create connections? Share in the comments.

The post Comment Backlinks: Do They Still Work For SEO? first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Photo Credit: salemsa via Compfight cc

When was the last time that your affiliate link in your posts earned you new commissions?

When was the last time that post was well received by your readers?

Asking yourself questions like these can make the difference when you try to earn affiliate commissions from your blog posts.

You have to understand that Web users have a fine eye for detecting deception and untrue statements, so you can’t just drop your affiliate link anywhere in your blog and hope users will click it and buy.

Such a link will most likely be ignored. In the worse case, you will lose those readers who found out about the ‘deception’.

In this post, I list 5 affiliate marketing mistakes you should avoid at all costs (and reap the benefits).

1. Blatant sales pitches

No one will believe what you say if you shout it out loud, in high pitch, stressing the features and benefits of your affiliate product and how your readers can’t miss such a wonderful opportunities.

People don’t want sales pitches — they want real experiences by real people. Genuine opinions, first hand accounts of how something worked well for them. People want proof, they want to see that you really care about your affiliate product and are not just about the money.

Brian D. Hawkins’ review of Ryan Holiday’s Growth Hacker Marketing book is a good example of a review (containing affiliate links) that makes an impact and doesn’t go salesy.

2. Spamming the Web

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? Not so much, considering how much affiliate link spam is still done these days.

Nobody will care about the product or service you are trying to promote if you simply throw your link in forum signatures, community profiles, social networks and comments. If you went against the platform rules, you also risk to see your link deleted or your account, email address or IP banned.

When you attempt to promote your affiliate link via existing platforms, always make sure you are allowed to do so. Stick by the rules, contact the admins, make yourself a favor by leaving a good impression on the people who manage the site. They may be more likely to allow you a bit of (genuine, interesting) self-promotion.

3. Asking readers to buy to help you

If readers are not interested in your product or service, they won’t buy. It’s that simple.

However, you can try to spark their interest with a blog post (or a series of) that delivers your honest opinion, how-to and experience with the product. Add images and videos to make it even more convincing.

Ideally, these posts will be on a blog of yours that is in the same niche as the product or service you are trying to promote. It would be useless to place the affiliate link on a blog in a non-related niche or on your personal blog. However, your niche readers will be more receptive to anything good you can offer them — including your affiliate product.

4. Hiding aff links behind something else (cloaking)

It’s deception. Users hate deception. You’re going to build yourself a bad reputation because of this — if you are doing this, stop already!

All affiliate links (like sponsored links) must be disclosed to your readers. They must know you are trying to promote a product, and that product isn’t your “best friend’s new recommendation” or “something so good you just ran into” — it’s your recommendation, based on your personal taste and the remuneration you will get with each purchase.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has rules for affiliate marketing in addition to sponsored content. Please take a read before you do something that puts you in trouble (it’s why this post exists!).

5. Breaking the rules for affiliation

Each affiliate program comes with its own rules. For example, Amazon’s rules are that you can’t put affiliate links in offline products (so mind your PDFs).

Always read through your affiliate program rules and contract, because ignorance can put your earnings and account at risk.

Have you ever committed one of these mistakes? How do you manage your affiliate products?

Share your stories in the comments below.

The post Don’t Commit These 5 Affiliate Marketing Mistakes first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

The idea behind this post came from two simple questions:

How can I maximize the marketing power of each social media channel without wasting time and resources?

And

How to boost blog traffic without relying heavily on Google?

Both problems came to me with a certain urgency as I worked to improve my clients’ social media visibility as well my own websites’.

I came up with this strategy: use one channel’s boost factor to promote another channel, in a chain that leads to your blog and passes through each social medium before it returns to the blog itself.

It sounds like a difficult process, but it actually isn’t.

Look at the image above: I drew that diagram to show you exactly how to work with social media chains.

Let’s look at the diagram in more detail.

Twitter

Use the Website field in the Bio box to link to your Facebook profile, not your blog. The reason is simple: through Twitter you can get your Facebook page known and use Facebook to promote your posts (remember, it’s a chain!).

It’s also a good idea to promote your Facebook posts in tweets, and to use Twitter to respond to users’ questions, in a Q&A platform fashion.

Facebook

Each Facebook post will be promoted on Twitter, so you should keep the quality high and all post should contain an image for better click-through and conversion.

Use each Facebook post to review and explain one of your blog posts, opening discussion on the topics you tackled to solidify your brand strategy.

If you have comments open on your blog, also create Facebook posts around reader comments that are particularly good for sparking debate.

Facebook allows you to create Polls and Events from your Page, Profile and Groups. Leverage these free assets to built even more buzz around your blog posts.

If other Groups you’re a member of allow for it, cross promote your posts from your Facebook Page/Profile/Group.

Blog

When you respond to user questions on Twitter and spark discussion about your posts (and reader comments) on Facebook (which generate further discussion on Twitter, as you will be promoting Facebook posts there), you will see how your blog starts to grow in traffic.

You can further build upon your assets by using feedback from Facebook and Twitter to create blog posts your readers and followers want to read — use their comments, tweets and Likes/Favorites (now Hearts on Twitter) to make a list of blog posts to write to respond to their needs.

Pinterest

Use Pinterest to post images and infographics that complement your blog content, Facebook posts and (possibly) expand on concepts you introduced via tweets.

As you can see, I created a social media chain that takes the maximum advantage from all the functionalities each platform offers (including your own blog).

How do you leverage your social media assets? What role does your blog play in your ‘chain’?

Share your views in the comments.

The post Create A Social Media Marketing Chain To Boost Promotion Benefits first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Does Ghostblogging Work?

Last Update Jun 4, 2024 @ 1:03 pm

Remember how SEO used to go before Google Webmaster Guidelines? Optimizing a website for search engines was a mere collection of tips and tricks that did the job just fine. You could stuff your page with keyword; you could build a gazillion of low quality backlinks and get rewarded for that.

There are webmasters and SEOs who still attempt to ‘optimize’ their websites (or their clients’) using these old tricks, but they end up with a penalty or they don’t get indexed at all.

That’s because they miss out on today’s most important SEO asset: honesty.

I’ve always believed in honesty. I apply it in all things in my life. But I didn’t realize how important this virtue was in SEO until I started to use SEO for work — and no matter how much I may personally dislike Google’s guidelines and defy them whenever I can, I realized I can’t do the same with my clients’ websites.

Being ‘honest’ in Google’s terms means certain things over others and I had to be honest in Google’s terms to make things really work for my clients.

This article is a short case study that takes directly from my 17-months experience as a ghostblogger with SEO and social media duties for a team of blog owners that will remain anonymous in this post, and that I will call ITIPComp (the name is completely fictional).

An initial scenario that required honesty

When the ITIPComp team e-mailed me to inquire about my writing services, they were not just concerned about their rankings, but they also had a urge to build up their blog’s reputation and attract traffic and a human following.

In other words, they needed to:

• Come up with a specific identity of their blog and work it into a sub-niche to make their blog stand out in the crowd
• Spread blog and niche related keywords and key-phrases in deep links and around the Web in natural contexts
• Get their blog known on Social Media
• Get traffic and rankings from Google.

Setting short, long-term goals on a 100% honest ghostblogging + SEO strategy

The first time the ITIPComp team contacted me, all they needed was a writer. My job was to come up with 3 short articles (500-600 words) a week and to use keywords in a way that would help the blog rank and gain traffic without falling in Google’s bad book.

There was a big problem with that newborn blog, though: it was like every other blog in the same niche. It had no special take, no identity. It was never going to rank like that, and if it did, it wouldn’t be for long and users would have had no interest in choosing this blog over another, perhaps more popular.

So I offered to tailor our ghostblogging + SEO plan on a specific angle, a take that would tell the blog part from any other and would help the team stand out for their humor, vision and honesty.

The ITIPComp team worked together to come up with a logo, a vision and an About Us page that would convey all these traits, then the keywords they wanted to rank for, and topics they wanted to offer to the public. they SEO team previously tried to optimize and I analyzed the number and quality of backlinks and citations her company had around the Web.

How to face the challenge of a little known blog without entering the questionable area of black hat SEO?

With my client, I chose to take small steps and to build links and reputation through quality content writing.

I’m a freelance blogger, and writing was the first service she hired me for before I became her SEO. So, why not?

The plan involved intense content production and the following SEO and Marketing efforts:

• Interviews through the MyBlogU platform – involved other bloggers with the blog through interviews and citations.
• Blog Comments – under my ghost (agreed-upon) name or the team name. Comments were consistent with the blog post content and provide value for the owner and their readership to engage with.
• SEO – all posts were optimized for search engines and we used keywords in titles and hastags on both posts and social.
• Social Media Updates and Community Involvement – used social media and web communities to post updates on new content available at the blog and to answer users’ questions and help them solve their problems.
• Content marketing through Social Media and the Kingged web community – user involvement and feedback from all the platforms helped us improve our plan for the growth of the blog.
• Wise deep linking – we made good use of internal linking to boost rankings and help users find related content.
• Weekly or Bi-Weekly Communications / Activity Reports – with percentages of growth or decrease in SERPs and in the traffic rank chart. Social activities were also reported.

On the client’s side, the ITIPCorp team worked on some local marketing.

The results: honest work paid off

The ITIPComp blog slowly but steadly increased in worldwide traffic, Google rankings and reputation. No manual actions were ever present in Webmaster Tools. This blog grew while staying clean in Google’s book.

We never hit more than 100-150 unique visits daily, because doing it

• from scratch
• without an existing community
• entirely trick-less

is hard… but not impossible. The blog earned a small but loyal community and some quality backlinks while the ITIPComp team and I worked together. Here is a screenshot from Google Analytics:

The peak between Jan 10 and Jan 19 was caused by an interview-based blog post we published on Jan 10. The added social shares from the interviewees caused a boost in traffic, confirming the effectiveness of collaborative posts in helping traffic and backlinks grow.

The ITIPComp team still needs to work on their blog community and on adding guest posts to the marketing mix, but the work done over these 17 months has laid a solid base for future work.

Why does honesty in SEO pay off?

Let’s list a few takeaways from the case study:

• Google’s guidelines encourage webmasters to use an honest SEO strategy to earn backlinks and rankings: if you want to stay in Google’s good book and improve your rankings without risking a penalty, you should stick to these guidelines.
• Being honest in Google’s terms doesn’t mean you have to just wait and hope your pages get found, liked and linked to: it takes good on-page SEO and marketing effort to keep your blog alive and thriving.
• It is possible to build traffic and reputation from scratch: it takes more effort, hard work and the patience to connect with other bloggers in the same niche, to be helpful and friendly, to build a community around your blog and to write content that makes the difference in the reader’s life.
• A genuine, truly helpful social media and commenting activity complements SEO and both complement other forms of marketing (online and offline).
• Collaboration with other bloggers, interviews and responsivity to feedback can mean a great deal to the growth of your blog.

How did you build solid traffic, rankings and a community around your blog? Share your story.

The post Honesty in SEO Pays Off – A Ghostblogging Case Study first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

There are WordPress plugins for pretty much every purpose out there, but when it comes to Marketing and SEO, you can count the good ones on the fingers of one hand (maybe two, if your search goes deep enough).

In my 12 years old of blogging for personal and professional reasons, only 6 WordPress plugins made it to my top ranks in terms of user experience and quality of service, and in this round-up post, I briefly review each of them and tell you why it’s a good plugin to use for your blog.

1. SumoMe

Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/sumome/

Also known on WordPress’ plugin page as the “Free Tools to grow your Email List, Social Sharing and Analytics”. SumoMe is an amazing plugin, easy to use soon after installation: all it asks is for you to register an account (name and email address), after which you will be shown a list of in-plugin functions you can activate, like a conversion bar, a newsletter, social buttons and more.

Some of the features I have found particularly helpful in running my blog are the lightbox “List Builder”, the full-screen CTA “Welcome Mat” and “Highlighter”, a function that allows readers to select part of the text and tweet it with a link to the full article. One of the big benefits of having SumoMe installed is that this all-in-one plugin will fullfill most of your marketing and SEO needs, so you need nothing else. You may as well have only SumoMe and be done with that.

You can also integrate SumoMe Can with MailChimp or Aweber to have the best of both platform.

2. Social Media and Share Icons (Ultimate Social Media)

Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/

Ultimate Social Media is a special plugin, one that asks you questions upon installation. For example, it asks which icons you want on your site and what do you want them to do, or if you want to display share count next to them (more details here). You will then select which icons to use (RSS and Email are labeled as “Mandatory”). Icons come in several designs (16 overall), so you get to choose the one that matches your blog design better.

This plugin allows your visitors to subscribe to your blog via email, too.

3. Marketing Optimizer for WordPress

Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/marketing-optimizer/

This is an A/B testing and conversion rate optimization software for WordPress that tracks and analyzes all your content and landing page, as well as offer professional landing page templates.

It helps optimize your conversion rate for better ROI and to work on your most trafficked pages.

4. SEO Post Content Links

Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/content-links/

This plugin automatically links to your categories when it meets the keyword in your posts. You can also add lists of keywords and key-phrases to automatically link to each of your posts from other posts.

If you need automated help to complement your internal link building efforts, go for this plugin. As the plugin author reassures, “You own links, that was created without this plugin, will stay untouchable.”

5. Yoast SEO (ex WordPress SEO)

Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

When it comes to SEO plugins for WordPress, Yoast SEO is the plugin. Almost all of the most popular bloggers and SEOs out there use it to optimize their websites for search engines.

Yoast SEO can make a difference for your blog posts, because it helps you analyze every aspect of your On-Page SEO, from keywords to readability to alt tags. Every analysis comes with recommendations and a yellow or green light to let you know whether you optimized the post just fine or if it needs more work.

I also recommend you watch Neil Patel’s “How to Fine Tune the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin” video tutorial at QuickSprout.

6. Broken Link Checker

Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/

Why is this plugin here, while not strictly SEO or marketing software? Well, first of all, because broken links negatively impact your SEO and UX; secondly, because bad UX leads to lost opportunities to market your content and anything your content tries to convey.

Broken Link Checker monitors your links, internal and external, to see whether they’re broken or not, or if they redirect to some different URL. You can also use an option to make the plugin add a rel=nofollow attribute to all broken links, to save your rankings.

More Plugins?

Check out the following resources (thanks awesome bloggers for sharing these gems!):

• How to Maximize Your SEO Traffic With These Must Have WordPress Plugins by Neil Patel at QuickSprout
• 7 Essential WordPress Plugins for Content Marketing by Syed Balkhi at Search Engine Journal

What plugins do you use to aid your Marketing and SEO efforts?

The post 6 WordPress Plugins for Marketing and SEO first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Even more controversial after the mass penalty on MyBlogGuest.com and the “all nofollow” reaction from eConsultancy that followed. Guest blogging really seems like a gray area to find your marketing and link building efforts in right now.

But it’s a question everybody keeps asking: “Does guest blogging still help with SEO?”

The answer is neither yes or no, but actually slightly more complicated.

I got two writers to share their ideas for this post. Their insight makes it clear that things have changed, but not so much to the smart (and honest) business.

Read on and take away.

Guest Blogging Doesn’t Help With SEO Rankings As It Used To…

Deborah Anderson from Social Web Cafe recalls when it was easier to rank with guest blogging and why it doesn’t work as it used to:

Previously, there was some SEO benefit with guest blogging because of the “dofollow” links.  Of course, there is no such thing as a dofollow link.  What it really is is the absence of the “nofollow” rel tag connected to the link.  This told Google to follow the link (dofollow) and that provided SEO benefit.

What happened is that some people were putting up very inferior “crap” articles and the search results (SERPs) were reflecting poor quality content.  Therefore, Google singlehandedly put a stop to that benefit, to stop people from putting up poor quality articles only for the purpose of the SEO benefit.  That move hurt the rest of us who didn’t mind the SEO benefit but were guest blogging for the other benefits.

What I just described is the direct benefit.  The indirect benefits of guest blogging still exist.  Those include branding, exposure, building the writing portfolio, networking, etc.  Also, there are some sites that do not use the nofollow tag (in other words, dofollow), but those are becoming fewer and fewer.  What happened back in March of 2014, to MyBlogGuest’s clients (basically all of them) resulted in everyone changing their links, site-wide, to nofollow.  Those who did not remained under penalty from Google.  That caused other sites to also change their links to nofollow so that they would not be penalized by Google.

It was a brilliant move by Google, to inflict fear across the globe, for publishers and writers on the Internet.  In one fell swoop they were able to make a statement about the type of content they want to show in their search engine.  We, as consumers of Google products, are to blame, as well, because we gave them the power to be the top dog for search.   And, what can I say.  I love their calendar and I am the “hangout queen” using the Google hangout product.

There are still indirect SEO benefits to guest blogging (i.e. a viral article that happens to do well in the search rankings), but it is not the SEO benefit that it used to be a couple of years ago.  If you are a writer, your best bet is to write for other reasons and then count the SEO benefits as icing on the cake.  If you are a publisher, your best bet is to nofollow the links that are contained in the guest articles that you receive.

It follows that guest blogging as a way to build links and help with SEO is no longer a viable strategy, even though guest blogging always helped and still helps with your branding efforts and it definitely helps to pull links from the Web in indirect ways, like Deborah suggests, which the next paragraph is all about.

BUT You Can Still Guest Blog To Indirectly Help Your SEO Rankings

Not all is lost with the “guest blogging penalty”. Here is what David Leonhardt from THGM Ghostwriter Service has to say about it:

Anything that spreads your name is good for SEO.  Every time you put your name out there, there is a greater chance that people will look for your website, find something they really like and link to it or share it on social media, and that’s good for SEO.

If there is a hyperlink, even a NoFollow one, that serves the same purpose.  If the link is DoFollow, even better.

The value of guest blogging for SEO depends greatly on the quality of the content on your website.  If lots of people read your amazing guest post, then rush to see what’s on your website, only to ding boring stuff, forget earning links and social shares from them.

When you get nofollow links to your blog posts and articles, users will still find them and link back to them as helpful resources in their posts (editorially) if they deem your content trustworthy and authoritative. That is what I do here at Bosmol as a writer anytime I stumble upon an amazing resource that fits into a post I’m writing— I go ahead and link it, whether that link was originally nofollowed or not.

Continue to guest blog and let users find you, if not search engines. In the end, like the say “all chickens come home to roost”, you will still get backlinks that are beneficial for your SEO efforts.

Do YOU guest blog? Has your opinion of guest blogging changed over time or are you still a fan?

Share in the comments below.

The post Does Guest Blogging Help With SEO Rankings? first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Country laws prevent marketers to clutter their recipients’ inboxes and often the simple act of sending a commercial email without the end user’s opt-in is considered unlawful. (That is how it works in my country, Italy, too.)

So you have to make the extra (creative) effort to grow your list while keeping your current subscribers loyal at the same time. (And that can be tough, too! Read what Rand Fishkin of MOZ has to say about it.)

In this post, I will give you 7 ideas to grow your email marketing list without triggering spam filters or getting the law against you.

1. Send Email Outreach Messages, NOT Marketing Messages

Don’t send out unsolicited marketing messages– besides being illegal in many countries, it’s also surefire way to get your efforts in the recipient’s Spam folder or, worse, Trash bin.

If you want to be taken seriously, you need to act like a human being.

Outreach to the recipient, don’t sell them stuff. Be human and generous, don’t ask them to join your list.

Ask recipients if they want to opt-in for a freebie or a special offer, but don’t give the impression that they will have to join a list, too. You can ask them to join your list only after they have received their free good or offer.

Your subscribers should always feel in charge of their presence in your list, never manipulated into it.

2. Leverage Transactional Emails and Support Emails

Transactional emails are all those emails you send out automatically every time a user subscribes or unsubscribes, downloads a freebie, joins a community, and so on.

Support emails are emails you or your team send to users who requested helpin a certain area. Automated emails in response to support requests also belong to this type of messages

The marketing power of these emails is often underrated.

I’ll tell you why.

When users receive a transactional email, they are usually in a relaxed state of mind, so they are more receptive of any gentle offers you may want to present to them.

Of course, you should keep the CAN-SPAM Act guidelines in mind, so such offers should appear after the transactional content, possibly in a “P.S.” at the end of the email, which conveys a sense of one-to-one intimacy that is characteristic of a letter.

You can leverage support emails, too, with support-related offers. For example, if you run a list where you share tips and tutorials for using your products and services, by all means add a note to your support emails to direct your users there!

3. Integrate Email Marketing and Social Media

Last year Bosmol.com co-blogger Lavinia Tauro wrote an interesting post about integrating social media with email marketing. I don’t need to repeat what she said (her post is great, by the way!) but I recommend you follow each social medium’s guidelines when it comes to business communications to avoid being flagged as a spammer.

Everything else is creativity on your part. What you really need to have is a knowledge as profound as possible of your audience.

And did you know you can actually turn your Twitter followers into list subscribers? One way to do this is to tweet special content and offers you know your Twitter audience loves, and to make it available by list subscription only (make it easy! Name and email are enough.)

4. Encourage Re-sharing Of Your Emails

Make it easy to your subscribers to re-share the emails you send them, especially when they come with incentives and free goods that may help attract new subscribers.

Simple “Tell a friend!” links or buttons will work, but you could work out something more complex like “Share this free E-book with 5 friends and get an extra bonus Tutorial!”.

You know your audience, so you also know what is more appealing to it and most likely to convert well.

5. Integrate Email Marketing With Other Opt-ins

If you already use other opt-ins on your website — for example, you ask your visitors to follow you on Twitter or fill a form to get a white paper or a coupon code, or even to place a comment on your blog — you can combine them with list opt-in.

An example from a WordPress blog I run:

There are tons of opportunities to capture and grow your email list on your site; it’s all about finding the right ones. A well-timed popup or a form on a page that’s relevant to your customers’ interests can be just what your customer needs to sign up.

6. Add Your List to Your Business Card, Not Just Your Website

You already have your business number, email and website address on your business card. Why not add your list address, too?

It is much easier for a prospect to subscribe and see what kind of quality you can offer before they actually hire you. (It’s called evidence of trust.)

7. Make Your Emails Pieces to Keep, Not Throw-Aways

Never go sloppy on the quality of your emails— subscribers may forgive one or two over the course of a year, but if you begin to deliver content of lower and lower quality, you are bound to see your unsubscription rate increase over time and put your list in danger.

Instead, make each email you send out to your list a piece to keep— and to share (see #4 in this post).

They will not just keep your current subscribers… subscribed, but they will also attract referral subscriptions through sharing and more subscribers through word-of-mouth.

So growing your email marketing list may not be easy, but it can be done. What are YOUR tips to grow your list?

Further email marketing ideas:

• Top Six Ways to Grow Your Email Subscription List by Linda West at MarketingProfs.com
• 25 Simple Ways to Grow Your Email List by Andy Pitre at HubSpot.com
• 41 Tips that Put Over 10,000 People on My Email Subscriber List by Ramsay Taplin of BlogTyrant

The post 7 Ways To Grow Your Email Marketing List first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Jun 10, 2022 @ 12:03 am

In the past, SEO companies used direct submissions and SEO tools to get links. These outdated tools and tactics are no longer useful. In fact, a few of the old techniques can actually attract penalization from Google.

Today, most webmasters are well versed with the advanced SEO tactics to find link building opportunities but analyzing these activities through Google Search is a whole new ball game. To remain on top of this game, you need to be well versed with the search operators.

Search operators enable you to clear the clutter from your search and make it more effective.

The infographic here narrows them down for you through an easy-to-understand description. Below, I’ve explained, in detail, some of the vital search operators that will aid in your efforts.

Find links to your website

 Don’t you wonder which other websites are linking to your webpages? Finding these links which are indexed by Google is easier than you thought.

All you need to do is type “link:” followed by your website and the search results will cough up all the webpages linked to your website.

For instance, if your website is seooptimizers.com, just type “link:seooptimizers.com” (without space and without quotes), but if you check this out then you will find very few links.

This is because Google restricts showing all the links publicly.

Instead, I’ve found a better approach. It involves simply removing the home page links from the query.

To get the complete picture, instead of the above search, try“Link:seooptimizers.com –seooptimizers.com” and see the magic.

Find your webpages pages indexed by Google

 Now, this can be a vital source of information.

To find out which of your webpages have been indexed by Google, simply type “Site: yourwebsite.com” and all the pages of this website indexed by Google will appear before you.

Guide Google to Yield Exactly What You Want

It can be quite frustrating to not get the exact results you are looking for.

Eliminating this problem is actually very simple. Use of quotes in your search query gives you the exact results you are looking for.

For instance, if you are looking for guest blogging opportunities, simply type guest blogging within quotes, like this – “guest blogging.” You’ll be amazed by the number of highly relevant exact matches that Google brings forth.

Check cache to look through Google’s eyes

Not everything that’s on your website might be indexed by Google.

To see how Google views your website, you just need to type “cache: yourwebsite.com”.

This will give you an idea of what Google saw the last time it visited your website.

Get comprehensive info about your website

Using “info:” is perhaps the best way to gather quick information about several aspects of your website at one go. Typing “info: yourwebsite.com” will give you information such as pages that link to your website, cached version, similar pages and all details about your domain.

These are just a few search operators at your disposal but there is a vast array of advanced search operators that can help you to find out more precise results.

I have highlighted several vital operators in the infographic below. Just explore them and get to know them better. Don’t forget to let me know your thoughts in the comment section.

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<p><a href=’https://seooptimizers.com/advanced-search-operators-for-seo-link-building-infographic/’><img src=’https://seooptimizers.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/A-Detailed-Guide-On-Advanced-Search-Operators-For-SEO-Link-Building.jpg’ alt=’Advanced Google Search Operators’ width=’540px’ border=’0′ /></a></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p><strong>Created by <a href=”https://seooptimizers.com”>SEO Optimizers</a></strong></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p>

Extensive Guide on How to Use Google Search Operators

If you google almost all the time and do not know what the Google search operators are, you miss out a lot. These operators can make your search twice faster and more detailed because you will find what you are looking for at one go.

How Do I Get Google to Search a Word

Before you learn about Google search operators, review how you can search a word on Google in a fundamental way. You can use your computer or mobile devices like tablets and smartphones to open chrome browser applications.

On the top, you will see an address bar where you can type the word that you want to search.

After typing the word, press enter.

How Do I Do a Specific Google Search

Click the three dots aligned vertically on the top right of the page if you want to find the word within a specific page. After clicking it, click find. A bar will appear on the top right part of the screen.

You can place the word there and find what you want to see in highlights. You may also press CTRL+ F to make this process faster.

If you want to look for the word that you found on a webpage, you can highlight it, press right click and search.

For smartphone users, you can search what you find on a particular page by tapping the word to search to highlight it. A panel will pop below the webpage, tap it to see the results.

Please take note that you should set your default browser to Google to be able to do it.

Moreover, if you want to find the specific results for the word that you are searching on Google, you should use Google search operators.

What Are the Search Operators

Whether you are searching for SEO or anything, Google search operators can make your research easier. The result of Google’s search engine is most likely according to your preference for what you want to see.

These are special commands that you can use on the search engine that tells Google what you want or do not want to see on its search results. You do not have to memorize these operators because they are easy to remember. After all, they are short commands. Additionally, many of them are characters that symbolize their function.

For this reason, you do not have to worry about forgetting it.

Although search operators seem useful for researchers and SEO specialists, it seems like Google is starting to get rid of some of the useful ones. There were tons of helpful search operators in the past that people cannot use nowadays.

Therefore, you should know all the search operators that you can still use. Also, it will be helpful to know which are not working or require some trial and error.

How Do I Use Google Advanced Search Operators

You can combine these commands, but knowing the right combination is not easy to reach your target results. However, knowing how to do it will give you an advantage over the others who do not know it.

Here are the SEO tactics that you can use.

Aim for specific results.

The primary function of search operators is to help you get targeted results. That is why you can use their multiple combinations to acquire the results that you want to see.

Exclude the terms that you do not like to see on the results.

The exclusion symbol to get rid of the words or searches on the result is (-). Typing it before the term you want to exclude allows you not to see it on the results page.

This article will delve into this operator later.

Combine the exclusions with exact terms that you do not like to see.

If there are specific words that you do not like to see on the results, you can combine (-) with (“”). For example, you do not like to see the word ‘lorem’ on the search results. What you will do is this:

-“lorem”

Find out how Google indexes your site.

You can find out how Google indexes your site by using the operator (site:) before the domain name. For example:

site:loremipsum.com

Get rid of subdomains

You can get rid of the staging sites and subdomains by using the (-inurl:) search operator.

Find duplicate content

You can also use search operators to find duplicate content on a site. All you have to do is combine the search operator (site:) and (“”).

You use (site:) to index the domain. Use the (“”) to find the internal duplicate of the word inside this operator.

For example:

site:loremipsum.com “dolor”

Which Search Operator Does Google Enable by Default

There are three search operators that Google sets as default now. The first one is (AND), the second is (OR), and the third one is (~).

Google’s logical default is the operator (AND) between the terms of your searches. Google typically ignores both the operators (AND) and (OR) because these are the search defaults.

Also, Google ignores articles, single digits, and other non-valuable words.

The third one is an unreliable operator because Google’s default is now searching for the term’s synonyms.

How do I Search Without a Word

Google is not human, although it seems like it is intelligent enough to know almost anything. It does not know the specific results that you want to return. As a result, once you search for a word, such as ‘divergent,’ it will return all searches related to divergent, whether it is about the movie or the definition of the word.

To let Google know that you do not want it to include particular searches, use the operator (-). For example, you wish to search for a divergent definition, but you do not want it to return results about the Divergent movie. What you need to do is type this:

Divergent -movie -film

Typing these words will get rid of the search results about Divergent movie.

As you can see, using search operators is easy and fun. They allow you to find all you are looking for without cracking your brain to use more specific words to search on Google.

The post Advanced Google Search Operators for SEO Link Building first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Problem:

Their problem was that they had a relatively new website, with little traffic and exposure.  The wanted us to come in and optimize their website and brand their company on the internet to make it easy for users to find.

Solution:

Our solution was a six month project where we came in and made some significant changes to their website.  We began by researching and understanding their industry and their potential customers.  We wanted to get inside the company owners head to see what he envisioned.  From there we researched keywords that will best suit their website, targeting customers that are ready and willing to make a purchase.  Once the initial website analysis took place we began to make on-site optimization changes.  This means setting up analytic tracking tools, adding keyword rich content, changing the HTML, internal website linking structure, and adding new pages.  After all the pages were optimized we submitted the website to all the major search engines.  We waited until the site was SEO friendly before submitting to the search engines because we wanted to make a positive website impression to the search engine spiders.

After the on-site optimization was completed we began to make off-site optimization changes.  Starting off with local business searches and extensive link building we were able to properly optimize Hass Libre.  We built their inbound links through articles, press releases, directory submissions, forum posts, and more techniques.  We created a blog for Hass Libre to generate new content, inbound links, and to interact with their customers.  The blog was syndicated to the major site feeds, thus gaining even more exposure through each blog post.

We created a positive brand image through the social networking sites.  We set up accounts with the major networking sites and built a Facebook fan page, Twitter account, and LinkedIn profile.  These accounts let Hass Libre interact with others interested in the same industry.  We maintained a positive image throughout these sites and with their customers.  After a few months we were able to hand off the social networking accounts and the blog to Hass Libre to manage.  We taught them how to make status updates, new blog posts, and how to make them SEO friendly and keyword rich.

Outcome:

The final results are that Hass Libre dominates the search engines for competitive keywords in their niche such as “Eco-Friendly Clothing”, “Organic Clothing“, “Latin Grammy Gift Bags“, “Organic Clothing and Accessories”, and more!  As they continue to update their blog and social networking pages on a constant basis, they watch their traffic grow by at least 15% monthly.  Initially, the website traffic doubled within the first month and since then has continued growing.

Their return on investment turned out well!  They say an influx of new customers that they never could have expected.  They invested only a few thousand dollars and saw revenues that were triple this amount.

The post CASE STUDY: SEO Optimizers Improves Keyword Rankings and Traffic for Hass Libre first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Jun 4, 2024 @ 1:06 pm

When you first walk through the Internet Marketing door, you’re bombarded with so much information it can become a little overwhelming. Sometimes it can takes weeks or even months to figure out who is giving great practical advice, to the wannabes who are just in it to take your money. Whether you’re just starting out or would like to improve on your Internet Marketing knowledge, we have listed 10 well respected Internet Marketing blogs you must follow.

1. Moz
If you don’t already know about Moz, thank your lucky stars you came across our site. Moz is considered the biggest authority site relating to all things SEO. Over the last few years, Moz has created an unlimited supply of fresh information for digital marketers to improve on their SEO strategies. A must follow site for any Internet Marketer.

Website: http://moz.com/blog
Twitter: https://twitter.com/moz
Best for: Learning SEO

2. Social Media Examiner
Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or any other social media site, everything you could possible want to know is on Social Media Examiner. This blog focuses solely on social media marketing, helping you understand the best way to use paid ads, providing case studies and tips and tricks you won’t find anywhere else on the Internet.

Website: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/smexaminer
Best for: Understanding social media marketing

3. John Chow
John Chow is the poster boy for the blogging scene after he took his blog from $0 to making well over $40,000 a month in less than two years. The impressive part? He spent less than 2 hours a day working on it. Looking to start a blog and make money? Look no further than John Chow.

Website: http://www.johnchow.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/johnchow
Best for: Blogging

4. Niche Pursuits
Want to build your own business online but don’t know where to start? Follow Niche Pursuits and you will have more ideas than you know what to do with. From buying and selling websites, starting your own niche business and understanding SEO, Niche Pursuits is the site to follow for all future online business owners.

Website: http://www.nichepursuits.com/
Twitter https://twitter.com/nichepursuits
Best for: Creating niche websites

5. Mailchimp
Every Internet Marketer will tell you the money is in the list! They are right so you better start following a blog that tells you how to create kickass newsletters. Mailchimp is the go to website for all things email marketing, they constantly put out new blogs showing users how to make the most of email marketing.

Website: http://blog.mailchimp.com/
Twitter https://twitter.com/mailchimp
Best for: Email marketing

6. Digital Marketer
Head over to Digital Marketer for the most up-to-date tips on how to drive more sales, increase your conversions and boost social engagement overnight. What makes Digital Marketer so unique is their blogs are written by actual Internet Marketers, who run their own online businesses rather than ‘researchers’.

Website: http://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/
Twitter https://twitter.com/digitalmktr
Best for: Getting information on how to increase sales and conversions for your websites

7. MarketingProfs
MarketingProfs probably have the biggest online library of amazing reports and case studies relating to writing content and digital marketing. They are constantly releasing new blog posts, market studies and guides to help you plan your perfect content strategy. Want to know what works? Head on over to MarketingProfs.

Website: http://www.marketingprofs.com/marketing/library
Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketingprofs
Best for: Content marketing information

8. Occam’s Razor
Understanding metrics, results and leveraging them to improve your online strategy is what Occam’s Razor is all about. Hundreds of blog posts, videos and podcasts are uploaded regularly to help you better understand the results of your Facebook ad, website visitors or why your website is not performing the way you’d like.

Website: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
Twitter https://twitter.com/avinash
Best for: Understanding online analytics

9. Matt Cutts
Not heard of the name before? Well you better get used to it. Matt Cutts is currently head of Google’s Webspam team, this is the department that controls how content is ranked in Google. Follow Matt Cutts to get an inside peak into Google’s soul. He may not be an Internet Marketer, but his advice and knowledge is invaluable.

Website: https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattcutts
Best for: Understanding Google

10. Bosmol
Get the latest news related to social media marketing as it changes on a daily basis. New sites arise making it difficult to hone in and focus your marketing efforts on one channel. Bosmol.com breaks it down and lets you know how to find the right audience for your products and services.

Website: http://bosmol.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosmol
Best for: Social media marketing

11. Socialwatch.co
Last but not least on our impressive list is SocialWatch. They focus solely on how to optimize every aspect of your social media feed, from the way it looks, how fast it loads to increasing conversions. If you only follow one website optimization blog, make sure it’s Socialwatch.co.

Website: http://rich-page.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/richpage
Best for: Website optimization

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen, 10 world-class Internet Marketing blogs in a plethora of online niches. Whatever your goals are, the blogs above will provide you with a suitable framework to get you on the right path to making you a successful Internet Marketer.

The post Best Internet Marketing Blogs first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Title Tags are an important aspect of search engine optimization as they are the way to convey your marketing skills to your target audience. The wording should flow smoothly while containing important keywords. This is where the search engines and your target audience get a feel for what your website is about. You want to stress all the viral information in this limited area of space. This is your area for free advertising, so take full advantage of this. Put information like company name, and your targeted keywords that you have chosen for this page. Every page on your site should have unique title tags and meta tags.

2) Quality Content

Your content is very useful for the search engines in determining whether or not your website is relevant to your topic. You want quality, keyword rich content. You do not want to stuff your keywords, but place them sporadically throughout you site. Keyword stuffing is a black hat technique that will get you permanently banned from the search engines. Make sure that your content flows smoothly and rolls off the tongue easily. Remember humans, not search engines, have the ultimate decision to purchase your product or service. Write your content first for your audience and then add keywords where it makes sense.

3) Acquire Quality Links

Links are a valuable tool for gaining top search engine rankings. Links (back links) are viewed as a vote from one site to another, so the more links to your site; the more popular the search engines think your site is. Higher quality links from authority websites are weighed more heavily when ranking your site. So you want to acquire links from reputable websites that are popular. You want to get links that are related to your line of work to increase rankings. Make sure all your links are related in one way or another to your website. If not then your site will be penalized in the rankings, which is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.

4) Number of Back Links

Recently, Google began to crack down on link farm sites (sites where you buy links) by penalizing them in the search engine rankings. Avoid link farms or buying links from non authority sites as they will only do more harm than good. Remember, it is not the quantity of links you have, but the quality of those links you do have. Make sure your links appear natural, not like they have been paid for. You must have something of quality to offer others so they will link to your site and increase your search engine rankings.

5) Keyword Relevant Domain Name

Before you purchase a domain name you should look for a URL that has relevant keywords to your company. You want to ensure that your domain name has some relevancy to your website. Your sub domains should not be long and full of strange characters and symbols. This will only confuse the search engines and your human visitors. The simple domain that has your keyword specific to your page is great for the search engines and human readers.

6) Use HTML

Search engine spiders have a hard time reading coding other than HTML. To avoid any confusion for the spider have your website written in HTML not Flash. If you are a large, well known company this does not play as big a role, but if you are a small company trying to make a name for yourself ensure that your programmer is using HTML.

7) Ease of Site Navigation

You want a website that is easy to navigate through. The more confusing and broken links to your site, the less likely it is that the spider will fully crawl and index all your pages. You want to submit a sitemap for Google so it can find and index all the pages in your website. Sitemaps are a necessity for websites getting all your pages indexed and included in the search engines.

8) Fresh, new content

Search engines do not want old, outdated content on their search results, so you must make sure to add new content to your site on a consistent basis. Both humans and spiders like to see new content on your website. Make sure to update your content to make sure it is up to date and relevant. You can make simple grammatical changes to your site or add pages, anything counts as new content. If you stop adding new content to your website then your rankings will start to slip and fall way below your desired results. If you see your rankings start to slip then make sure you add new content to your site.

9) Add a Blog to Your Site

A blog is a great tool for keeping visitors up to date to with your site. Blogs help promote your site and give your visitors another way to locate your website. Blogs and your blog posts get indexed in the search engines quite quickly as well. Start a blog about the industry you are in and you can quickly build up your rankings. Blogs are especially useful for adding fresh content to your site. Blog posts are seen as new content, so post in your blog at least once a week to keep your content new. Blog postings do not have to be relevant to your website, but it does help to keep the content somewhat relevant to build up and authority blog.

10) Make Your Website for Humans Not Spiders!

This is probably one of the biggest that is done by newcomers to internet marketing. They write and organize their website for the search engines to achieve high rankings, yet the traffic that comes in does not make a purchase. You want to have a website that is easy to read and comprehend, not a site that is made for the spiders to read. Ultimately, humans who hold the purchasing power view your site. Ensure that your website is easy to read and does not have any misspellings.

The post 10 Easy Steps to Increase Google Search Engine Rankings first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Once you have chosen your business and purchased a domain name the next step before submitting your site to search engines is to find useful and relevant keywords. Without this step your website will get lost in the millions of websites competing for your business.

To start our keyword research we need to utilize some very useful tools. The first website viewed should be Google Keywords which is a free tool that displays the amount of searches and competition for specific keywords. It allows you to download the data in Excel so that you can sort and filter it. This guide to Excel for SEOs will show you how if you’re not sure.”

A better tool would be to purchase some type of software such as Word Tracker which offers detailed information about keywords. Unfortunately word tracker is not free, but there are other services that are.

2) Find a Niche Market

This cannot be stressed enough as it is much harder to receive top search engine rankings for a new site than an established site. A new site will have to fight amongst web sites that have established high search engine rankings.

To compete with these web sites you would be crazy! You first need to find a niche market, and then build up your website to a position as to where it can compete with these generic terms. For example let’s say you have a web site geared towards weight loss. You would not use the keyword weight loss because it has too much competition. You can use one of the keyword tools to find suggestions of related keywords that you will be able to compete against. You may find the keyword “weight loss surgery” or “weight loss techniques”. These phrases are much better keywords than generic terms like “weight loss”.

Use the list of a few keywords and check out the competition that word/ phrase has on Goggle. Look at the number of competitors. If this exceeds a few million, then you need look for a more specific keyword. The next step is to observe the top listed pages and see how well they are optimized. You can download Google Toolbar and add Page Rank to your browser for free.

A low Page Rank between 0 – 3 means that you can easily compete with these web pages. A web site with a Page Rank of 4 – 6 is a bit tougher to compete with, but is manageable using my guided steps and expertise. You do not want to compete with web sites that have a Page Rank above 7. Check the domains homepage, not a sub page to get an accurate Page Rank!

3) View Competitors Source Code

It is important to view potential competitor’s source code to see if they have efficiently performed on page search engine optimization. To do this on your Brower click “view” and then click on the “source” option as displayed”

This will bring up a page with all the html code on it. You do not need to be an expert with html to understand what we are looking for. We need to see if our competitor’s web site is properly optimized. We look to see if they are using their keywords in the header tags, the title tags, and the image alt tags. These should all be located near the top of the source code.

If you cannot find these then go to the toolbar and chose “edit” and select “find” and type in h1 or title, etc. to see if there are being used for the keywords. If these do not exist or are not being used to hold keywords, you have found an easily beaten page. This means that with some proper optimization you will be able to outrank this page. The last thing you want to look at is the body content and to see if the keyword is used a few times in the body content. A site lacking in keywords in the body context is a poorly optimized page. You should always make sure your web page is keyword rich with relevant content.

4) Keyword Placement

After you have selected a few keywords to use we want to combine the ones that have like terms. For example if you have selected three keywords:
Weight loss story; Weight loss picture; Safe weight loss
As you can see that all three keywords contain the words “weight loss”, therefore we can combine the words to better optimize your page.

For the title tag the fewer the keywords used, the better the search engines will rank your page.

When we create the page it should NEVER have “Welcome to our website!” in the Title Tags.

It should NEVER have “weight loss story and weight loss picture and safe weight loss” in the Title Tags either.

The way the title tags should look is: “Weight Loss Story | Safe Weight Loss Picture”
(Note: You can add this character | by holding the shift key on your keyboard and pressing the backslash key above the enter key.)

should always remove prepositions such as “and” as this will only hurt your search engine optimization. The fewer, more relevant the words are the higher your search engine ranking will be.

Header 1 tags should be placed above your body content. This should contain your most relevant keyword in this tag. Ex) “Weight Loss Story”
This main keyword placed in the H1 tag will substantially increase your page ranking! The Header 2 tag should contain your second most important keyword. The header 3 tag will have your least important keyword placed in it. These header tags are often overlooked, but make a significant difference in your on page search engine optimization.

The body content of your webpage should be rich with keywords and relevant content. You should have each keyword appear at least once for every 1-2 paragraphs. Do not stuff your body with keywords, as this will only hurt you. You want to give your body a clean natural look, meaning do not over or under use keywords!

Image tags alt tags should also be keyword rich. Search engines often look at the alt tags of images on your web site to get a feel of what your web site is about. If the alt tags do not have your keywords then you will be ranked lower than if you had keywords in your alt tags.

5) Homepage Organization

We want the search engines to notice your keywords and index you according to those keywords. In order to do this you should start your body and end your body with your keywords. This gives the search engine spider information that your page is highly relevant to your keywords.

When the spider looks through your web site it reads through your content from top left to bottom right. Below is an example of how the search engine reads your page starting with 1 then 2 then 3.

Rather than creating a table that looks like this:

You should create a table that looks like this:

Now search engines will view your body content before it views your navigational menu. The search engine will see the top of your page then see a blank area and skip to your body content then move onto your navigational menu.

6) Search Engine Submission

The best way to achieve high search engine rankings for new web sites may not be what you expected. You should not submit your site directly to the search engines as this process can take weeks or even months to get your site listed. Instead you need to get listed on top ranking pages that are relevant to your web sites content. These high-ranking pages are often optimized on a weekly or even daily basis. Every time the site is indexed your link will appear and the search engines will automatically list your site in its index. It is as simple as that to get listed on top search engines in only a few days!

To do this we need to search for web sites that that are indexed by search engines and get them to link to us. This can be difficult to do unless you give the site some incentive to do so. The incentive you need to give them is to write some sort of article that is relevant to your line of business. At the bottom of the article you include your web page URL to get picked up by the search engines. You submit the article to popular article directories on the web and you will be indexed by the search engines in a matter of days rather than months!

Here’s a list of the most popular article directories you can submit your website to

1. GoArticles.com
2. Ezinearticles.com
3. ArticleCity.com
4. Certificate.net/wwio
5. Amazines.com
6. Articledashboard.com
7. Article-directory.com
8. Submityourarticle.com/articles
9. Magportal.com
10. Isnare.com
11. Pubs.acs.org/hotartcl
12. Article-hangout.com
13. Webarticles.com
14. Articlecube.com
15. Article-buzz.com

The other option is to perform a search of the most generic term that is related to your business. Click through these web sites looking at the Page Ranks. Contact the web site and by sending them an email asking them to link to your site and in return for you linking back to their web site. Always contact sites that are relevant to your line of work and always offer them something their visitors can benefit from once they add your link.

You can purchase a link in top Page Rank sites through link builders. A few of the good web sites (secret SEO tips) that can do this for you are: textbrokers.com or text-link-ads.com or linkadage.com.

Remember that you only need to purchase a link for one month, since it will take less than one month to get you indexed by the major search engines. Continuing to pay for the link after a month is a waste of your money. Basically you are paying a onetime fee to instantly get indexed in the major search engines.

7) Off page Optimization

This is just as important, if not more important than on page optimization. To do this we need to study the linking strategies of the top 10 websites for your keyword. We want to copy their model, but do things slightly better to achieve the top rankings. First open up a spread sheet in Excel and list the following columns: Linking Website, Anchor Text, Page Rank, Link Popularity Page Title, and Number of Outbound Links. Then we search your keyword on Google and fill in the information for the top 10 websites.

To discover the linking websites go to Google and type in the websites URL “link:www.thewebsite.com” Then count the number of sites that are listed to get the link popularity.

Anchor text is whatever follows the .com or .org of a website URL.

Page Rank is the rank Google gives to websites. You can download it for free at Google’s web site.

Page Title is the title of the page that appears on the top left of the screen. If the title does not contain the keywords then the site is not well optimized and easy to surpass in rankings.

Number of Outbound Links is the number of links located on the webpage linking to the site you’re checking.

Once all this information has been collected you can see what needs to be done to your site to beat the top ranking sites.

8) Search Engines and Capitalization

Capitalizing different letters in keywords brings up different results in search engines. Search engines are case-sensitive so it is important how you use capitalization. The problem with listing every variation of a word results in the search engines thinking that you are spam and deleting your URL. This gets worse with singular and plural words!

The solution is to stick with lowercase listings rather than trying different variations. Studies have shown that most people search in all lowercase and this has the most relevant listings. Not using every other variation means you lose out on 18% of traffic. This is not worth the risk of being banned from the search engines.

Lowercase searching has dominated all the search engines ranging from 85 percent to 90 percent of the total terms used. Now most search engines are not case sensitive anymore.

9) Search Engine Spamming

Spamming does not take well with current search engines. Search engines have discovered ways to fight keyword stuffing and other search engine tricks. Search engines can detect your spam and will act accordingly by penalizing or banning you from their listings.

Search engine spamming is attempting to achieve top ranks for extremely popular keywords. You can attempt to fight that battle against other sites, but you ought to be ready to fight a long and hard battle defending your ranking. All that wasted effort can be better spent for finding other ways for internet marketing.

There is no need for search engine spamming if your website has been optimized correctly using the above methods. The risks are not worth the temporary rewards. Search engine spam should be considered the same as email spam. Nobody likes or wants spam! We want spammers removed from the internet, so why would customers want to work with you, a spammer.

10) Hire a Professional SEO

Hiring a professional seo optimizer is a great idea if your business relies on internet sales. Search engine optimization is something that is time consuming and requires lots of research. Most businesses do not have time to optimize their web sites. They have better things to take care of, like making sure their products are selling and keeping good customer relations. At SEO Optimizers we make sure everything is in line at your site and fix any problems that may be holding you back from reaching the top ranks. If you really want to be at the top of any searches you need professionals to come in and help solve the problem.

The post 10 Easy Ways to Get Top Organic Search Engine Optimization Rankings first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Many new web directories are not known by the mass users of the internet, but this is likely to change as the directory becomes a respected and highly visited site. Why wait for the directories that are full of listings, when you can have your site listed clearly and in visible sight. As the directory matures more sites will clutter the directories listings, but your site has a better chance of remaining at the top.

2) Many new directories are free

This speaks for itself. We all want to save money when advertising and free web directories are the answer. Free directories are a great place to showcase your site to potential clients. Directories are an abundant force in the internet and can give your website that extra boost of advertising that is needed to reach valuable clients.

3) All relevant links are valuable in SEO

Links have and continue to be a dominant force in the search engines algorithms. Directories offer a page on a website that is completely devoted and related to your sites content. This makes the link a relevant link. Sites with many relevant links often achieve higher rankings than sites with fewer links. This has been and continues to be true today.

4) Many directories do not require a link back

Many new directories do not require a back link which is a great thing for building up web presence and search engine rankings. As of recently Google and the other major search engines have edited their algorithms as to not place as much emphasis on reciprocal links. Reciprocal links are two way links in which both sites have a link to one another. This is not as valuable as a one way link, where one site places a link to another site.

5) New directories are not cluttered with links

Directories can become full with hundreds of sites advertising on a single page. This lowers your sites visibility along with credibility obtained by having your site link on the page. Since new directories do not have many web links it is easier to view your sites advertisement. It is easier to find a site on top of a directory, rather than school through hundreds of links on the same page.

6) Potential clients can find your site through directories

Directories are a great place to let potential customers find your site and ultimately make a purchase. Directories list your site offering more web visibility and more ways to reach your target audience. The more advertising your site has the better off it will do in the World Wide Web.

7) Web directories are highly useful resources for SEO

When optimizing websites it is important to have as many back links as possible and directories offer this to sites. Every directory listing is seen as a back link to your website, so the more directories you are listed in the better off you are. Directories will boost up a new or established websites search engine rankings. Remember to submit, submit, and submit again to as many directories as possible.

8) Qualified visitors will find relevant information

When users perform a search, often directories related to the search phrase appear at the top of the rankings. These sites are often visited and used to find relevant information. Why waste your advertising budget on places that are hard to locate on the web, when you can use free directories that have high rates traffic.

9) Less time to edit and approve listings

Because many top directories receive hundreds of requests to be added into the directory it can take quite some time to have your request approved. New directories on the other hand are looking for as many new web sites to add to their directory as possible so the wait time is much shorter.

10) Directories help search engines gather information

Directories are a great place to combine tons of useful information about websites in one convenient place. This makes it easier for web users to find what they are looking for on the web. It is like the Yellow Pages, but made for the internet. With so many web sites listed in the directories it can become a highly used factor for many web users’ searches.

The post Why New Web Directories Are Valuable To You first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Social Bookmarking:

Social bookmarking sites are communities where people can share and view their bookmarks from any computer. The more bookmarks a site has, the more traffic it will receive. The most popular bookmarks are shown on the website’s homepage, giving tins of exposure to the URL. This is a form of guerrilla and viral marketing. Each bookmark can be tagged with keywords making it easily accessible for yourself and others searching for the same keywords. People searching for the same tags that are in your bookmarks will see your bookmarks. As more people bookmark your site on these social bookmarking websites, your traffic and exposure will increase accordingly. You can even share your entire collection of bookmarks to your friends and family. This is great for temporarily increasing traffic to your site.

Social Networking:

Social networking sites typically require you to sign up and create a profile about yourself or business. Websites should have a profile on the major social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace. Once you have created your site you will want to join groups that are related to your business and industry. You can even start new groups about any topic. The next step is to make friends on these sites. A good approach is to view other related sites and leave them comments, with your link in there. This will draw attention to your profile and ultimately your site. Do not SPAM every profile with your link! Make sure your comments are relevant and deserve a link to your page. There is the chance of secondary links, as people often blog about things they have seen or read in the social networking sites. This can be a tedious process, but well worth the end results as more people will learn about your site and your offerings.

Blogs, Wiki, and RSS Feeds:

In recent years it seems that Google has placed more emphasis on blogs and wiki, rather than forums. Blogs and Wikis are more interactive and have fresh, new, easily accessible content. Blogs and Wiki are a great way to promote, get back links, and add fresh content to websites. It is recommended to blog as often as possible, but one to two entries a month are more than enough. Each post can be linked back to your website, thus adding another link to your site. Also, blogging adds fresh, new content to your site. Remember that content and links are the prominent forces on the search engines algorithm, so the more you have, the better off you are (as long as they are relevant). There are many free blog hosting sites that are SEO friendly, the big two being Google’s Blogger and Yahoo’s Word Press. Blogs are interactive as comments can be posted, sometimes with links to other sites. It is a good idea to post comments in other people’s blogs. Comments should contain relevant information, and if suitable add a link back to your blog or website. RSS Feeds allow for internet users to subscribe to your blog. Subscribers to your blog will receive an email notification whenever you add a new post to your blog.

Video Feeds

Videos sites such as You Tube and MetaCafe are making video sharing huge. Now anyone can easily post a video online and have tags with specific keywords attached to it. This means that the search engines can pick up the keywords and add the video to the search engine results. Tests have shown that adding a video to the web with proper tags will get it into the top rankings for those keywords. This is only temporary, but a great way to promote yourself on highly competitive keywords. The number of views affects how often the video shows up on the video sharing sites. The more views a video has the more exposure it will receive. Videos also allow for comments to be posted on them, both rating and critiquing the video.

The NoFollow Tag

As of lately the major search engines have become keen to link building manipulation. Websites have been aware of this for years, using the NoFollow attribute to prevent spiders reading the link and counting it as a back link. Each search engine reads the NoFollow link differently. Both Google and Yahoo follow the NoFollow link, but do not view it as a link for search engine rankings. Ask does not adhere to NoFollow attribute.

I have compiled a list of social networking sites that do not use the NoFollow, making them great for social networking while building up links.
Yahoo 360
Yedda
CREAMaid
Xanga
BUMPzee! (requires RSS feed)
RateItAll.com
Tweako.com

The post How To Make The Most Of Social Networking Web 2.0 first appeared on SEO Optimizers.