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Effective Strategies for Link Building on Bing and Google

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By Nate Nead

Search engine optimization (SEO) relies heavily on link building to boost a website’s ranking. While both Bing and Google employ link building as an effective SEO tool, their algorithms differ in the intensity with which they consider links when deciding page rankings.

Because of this, honing your link building strategies according to the specific search engines is essential for successful SEO efforts that yield long-term visibility online.

This primer will provide an introduction to the role of links for Bing and Google as well as explore specific strategies for building effective backlinks in each. From understanding link-based ranking factors to pinpointing the best practices for both engines, this article will provide you with essential information used by SEO professionals to propel pages up the SERPs.

Understanding Bing’s Link Building Factors

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Domain authority and relevance

When building strong links for Bing search, one key factor to consider is domain authority and relevance. Domain authority tells Bing how legitimate a link is – if the pages that link back to your site have higher quality content than yours, or are located in more relevant domains within the same field of expertise, those sites will send you stronger signals.

Relevance falls in line with this concept and is important because if your outbound links lead visitors away from topics pertaining to your niche it won’t be considered a “quality” link.

Additionally, having outgoing links leading to bad pages could create a penalty that lowers your rankings. To help build the perfect SEO strategy using domain authority and relevance, Bing Webmaster tools are useful in gathering important insights related to link building.

Quantity and quality of backlinks

Quantity and quality of backlinks are both integral components to successful link building strategies on Bing. The quantity of links shows how valuable the pages linked to are and indicates that many other websites recommend it.

Quality matter most to the search engine but must still be varied in order for a page or website’s SEO value to reach its full potential. This means linking out from unrelated industries, sources with strong domain authority, and using multiple anchor texts – all of which broaden the visibility of a website through showcasing its unique value.

Importance of anchor text

Anchor text is one of the most important link building factors for Bing’s search algorithm. Using relevant keywords in anchor texts helps to show the subject and context of the content that the user can expect when visiting a website from a link.

Bing places additional value in specific phrase matches, so exact matches to relevant target terms should be used wherever possible to optimize rankings on this platform. Compelling descriptions, but more general than an exact match, also help tell cues about what would be found when clicking through from a link.

Strategies for Building Links on Bing

Creating high-quality, relevant content

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Creating high-quality, relevant content is an essential link building strategy for Bing. Relevant and authoritative content not only builds trust and authority with visitors but likewise helps Bing’s algorithm recognize and credit your site accordingly. High-quality content ensures it ranks well on SERPs which encourages users to click through to the page more often.

Factors like bounce rates, time spent on pages, ROI etc play a vital role in determining higher search engine rankings, therefore, increasing traffic as a result of engaging copy is key when building links on Bing. Content should also be updated regularly and include keywords which as well add another layer of link value for SEO purposes.

Conducting outreach and guest posting

Conducting outreach and guest posting can be an effective strategy for building links on Bing. Reaching out to relevant, authoritative websites in your industry to secure backlinks to your content is key.

Having related topics and website material that follows the editorial guidelines of high-quality websites can increase chances of being featured as a guest contributor.

High-value features come with appropriate anchor texts in consistent link usage patterns, favourable placement within articles for increased prominence, and strategic internal linking—all important qualities thoughtfully considered by Bing’s linking algorithms.

Engaging in social media promotion

Engaging in social media promotion is an effective strategy for building links on Bing. Social signals such as likes, shares, retweets and mentions play an important role in boosting the visibility of content while helping to generate backlinks.

In order to make social media offer real value, it is essential to post quality material that adds relevance and engages audiences. The more people are interested in a website or brand’s content, the higher chance they have of sharing these resources which generates valuable backlinks.

Given that social media plays a part within Bing’s algorithm, including this as link-building strategy should be an integral factor in any SEO campaign.

Leveraging local directories and business listings

Leveraging local directories and business listings is an effective link building approach for Bing. When done strategically, claiming and optimizing profiles on music services and directory websites can be a powerful tool for improving search engine visibility, especially among geographically-specific audiences.

The key to getting the most out of this type of link building is determining which sites are favoured by the specific search algorithm rankings that you are looking to influence.

Get your brand listed with the top pertinent types relevant to your industry — not just Google My Business. Additionally, find smaller, niche-specific directories to better target potential customers.

Utilizing Bing Webmaster Tools for insights and optimization

Utilizing Bing Webmaster Tools for link building is an effective strategy to maximize the return on boosting SEO. The tools provide insights into both internal and external link structures, anchor text data, page authority, broken links and much more.

It reveals URLs of websites that are not indexing properly in terms of Google or third-party programs used for backlink auditing tools. Additionally, marketers may employ some tracking codes within the tool for optimization insight.

Most notably Webmaster Analytics shows how successful identification activities actually are. Proper implementation and data interpretation may result in winning the domain’s arrival into top SERP impact.

Understanding Google’s Link Building Factors

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Domain authority and PageRank

Google’s link building factor of domain authority assesses overall online trust in a given website, signifying relevance and quality. PageRank is Google’s proprietary measure of a websites’ importance; it uses the backlink structure between diverse sites to assign an approximate metric for each page. Linking to or from websites with higher PageRanks show increased SEO benefits due to being seen as valuable and authoritative by search engine algorithms.

Natural and diverse backlink profiles

When aiming to rank highly in Google, it is important to focus on building a natural and diverse backlink profiles. Search engines value websites that have overwhelmingly organic rather than artificial links pointing to their site’s pages.

Additionally, link profiles should be fragmented so that not all of the links are using the same anchor text or come from identical sources. Link diversity also applies when looking across main link types such as industry-specific directories as well as domain origins like (.gov, .org). Domain trustworthiness is another important factor for both Bing and Google search.

Importance of anchor text diversity

Anchor text diversity is an important factor that Google considers when evaluating links. This factor assigns a portion of a website’s relevance to the keywords used in linking sites or texts.

It’s best practice to use more than one keyword for anchor text in order to far more accurately depict what content it points toward and express its overall relevance better.

Too much repetition of anchor text can make search engine algorithms see links as less natural and manipulated, which can damage rankings if they observe the same phrases being emphasized over and over again.

By leveraging diversity within anchor texts to maximize rankings, websites can receive better link evaluation from both Bing and Google search engines.

Relevance and authority of linking domains

Google place a high importance on link relevance and authority, which means that links should primarily come from applicable sources within an industry or network.

They evaluate the quality of domains through similarities in top-level categories and topical area weighting. Google also have sophisticated algorithms for evaluating the trust and authority of each domain by closely looking at the data signals behind linking domains to ensure their trustworthiness. Google bonds whether these linking websites represent a quality source worth trusting with its algorithm rewards.

Strategies for Building Links on Google

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Developing comprehensive and engaging content

Search engine optimization (SEO) is built on the foundation of producing content that will naturally develop high-quality link signals for Google. Developing comprehensive and engaging content allows more potential opportunities for organic backlinks to a website or blog. Comprehensive, quality pieces provide deeper information and insights compared to other forms of superficial content.

A good goal when creating this sort of content is to include features such as audio, video, infographics or reviews in order to disproportionately influence link building so that you set yourself ahead of the competition. Such features add to the perceived quality of the content and appeal to more readers, as well as other webmasters who may link to such uniquely engaging pages.

Earning backlinks through outreach and relationship building

Earning backlinks, however, has remained much the same. Outreach and relationship building continues to be crucial component in acquiring quality links from reputable sources. Leveraging direct relationships by emphasizing mutual benefits is key when asking for a link.

Additionally, participating in trade shows, events and conferences can start conversations that might then increase one’s chances of getting recognized by an industry leader who is almost always on the lookout for partners capable of boosting audience engagement with fresh topics or materials they value.

Guest blogging on reputable websites

Guest blogging is a great way to build links on Google. These posts involve writing and publishing articles on relevant, high-authority websites related to your field or industry. These linkbacks increase chances of putting your target pages in improved rankings with this powerful off-page SEO activity. It also builds brand awareness and reaches leveraging established platforms.

When looking for the perfect website to submit your piece make sure it’s an authoritative one with positive engagement, natural visibility, reputable status built around similar topics and original content boasting engaged followers. Guest blogging for building high-quality links is a powerful strategy to do better in search engine rankings with organic, honest link-building activity.

Participating in industry-specific forums and communities

Industry-specific forums and communities are a great way to build links on Google, allowing for greater reach with like-minded peers in your industry. Creating genuine relationships by preferably being active contributors can lead to other members reaching out with potential opportunities for guest blogging or extended coverage.

Partaking in site interviews or sharing advice is another choice avenue to gain visibility as well. Whatever the forum resolution, always be sure that any contribution is informative whilst avoiding aggressive marketing tactics – such as link farming – which could incur penalties from Google.

Conclusion

Link building is an essential part of any comprehensive SEO strategy and entails adhering to multiple factors influenced by the individual values of both Bing and Google.

Developing a comprehensive approach that includes relevant content development (including guest blogging), outreach, social media promotion, leveraging local directories, relationship building, and investing in anchor text diversity when linking back, as well as taking advantage of the available webmaster tools serves many long-term benefits.

Regular monitoring and adjustments via thorough link analyses are needed to optimize link performance across both search engines.

By Nate Nead

Nate Nead is the CEO & Managing Member of Nead, LLC, a consulting company that provides strategic advisory services across multiple disciplines including finance, marketing and software development. For over a decade Nate had provided strategic guidance on M&A, capital procurement, technology and marketing solutions for some of the most well-known online brands. He and his team advise Fortune 500 and SMB clients alike. The team is based in Seattle, Washington; El Paso, Texas and West Palm Beach, Florida.

Sourced from readwrite

 

 

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5 Must-Have Group of Tools for Every Business and SEO Specialist in 2023

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By Joseph Chukwube

As the digital landscape evolves, so do the tools and strategies needed to make businesses succeed online. Search Engine Optimization itself, as a business marketing strategy, has had its ‘death’ declared so many times because it felt like it was no longer relevant. Yet, it’s still here, more strongly than before.

More so, consider the AI revolution that’s currently taking place. Does that mean you should throw away all your old tools and start using AI for everything? It would have been cool if it were that easy.

However, managing a business is not. And search engine optimization is not easy either. That’s why we have reviewed five different categories of tools that your business must invest in to hit your SEO goals and enhance your presence online. Beginner or expert, these tools will make your life easier and your results better.

Keyword Research

Paying for Google Search ads is the fastest way to appear on top of the search engine’s results for relevant queries (if you have enough money). However, the most valuable way to get to the top and remain there is by organically matching the content on your website to the most common terms searched by users.

Data from keyword research tools are organized into lists of the most common keywords relevant to your website. Hence, they are great resources for finding new content ideas, connecting with your audience, and improving traffic.

When choosing a tool for keyword research, you should be okay with free tools such as Google Trends or Google Keyword Planner. However, they each have their limitations. Google Trends is geared toward general knowledge and shows you nothing besides trendiness. Google Keyword Planner, on the other hand, lies within the Google Ads system and is geared towards paid ads, rather than organic search.

As far as free tools go, you can’t do much more than data coming from Google itself. But paid tools take you steps further with improved results, clear insights, and seamless automation. Popular paid tools such as Ahrefs and Moz sit on the high end, costing upwards of $100 for subscriptions. More affordable ones include the Eye10 Keyword Planner, which starts at $39 and includes everything you should expect from a keyword tool: ideas and suggestions, monthly search volume, difficulty level, and the ability to export results.

Analytics

Search engines have an incentive to ensure that their top search results are relevant to the user. But this is not a static process and several (hundreds of) factors come into play.

When your business relies heavily on traffic coming from search engines, you can’t help the occasional jolting feeling when the search engine updates its algorithm such that your efforts seem obsolete. At other times, your efforts are indeed obsolete and you must have been doing something wrong once you notice that your ranking and traffic have taken a hit.

The point here is that, as far as SEO goes, there is always something to improve upon. Always. And how would you know that if you don’t have the right tool to analyze what’s happening? Sometimes, the website itself is the problem; at other times, user behavior may be shifting towards what your website is not yet optimized for. Still, search algorithms may just be doing their thing and it’s affecting you negatively.

Google is, by far, the most popular search engine. So, its Search Console tool is, without a doubt, the best free tool for monitoring your site’s presence in search results. It helps you troubleshoot any issues you might have and ultimately make informed decisions to enhance your website presence.

Content Creation

Everywhere you turn, there is a proliferation of blogs, podcasts, newsletters, videos, webinars, etc. Basically, it’s the content creation revolution and there is an emerging work field of ‘creators’, professionals who apply their creativity in crafting digital content that resonates with their audience.

The most popular creators are individuals, such as MrBeast and Khaby Lame but many businesses have found themselves increasingly locked into content creation because it is a great way to market their brands. Whether it’s a blog or a newsletter, ebooks, or whitepapers, creating content is the order of the day. What you should be thinking about is how to make it better. And there is a solid toolkit for that.

For creating written content, Grammarly is the defacto spelling and grammar checker although others such as the Hemingway Editor and ProWritingAid are excellent alternatives. Canva leads in the graphic design aspect as a highly user-friendly tool for creating social media posts, videos, infographics, presentations, and much more.

Capcut, Descript, Audacity, Buzzsprout, YouTube Studio, etc. are useful for editing, preparing, and distributing your video and audio content for your audience. And any collaborative task manager or workspace tool will help you easily manage your content calendar.

Link Building

Link building is a top-three tactic for getting ahead in SEO. Over the years, Google has developed an immense capacity at detecting and penalizing websites determined to manipulate its algorithm via unethical practices such as link farming and link spamming. The best way to build links today is to earn the backlinks as well as the authority that comes with them.

Ethical link-building opportunities abound but going at it manually can be daunting and frustrating, given the tough competition in the industry. Even something as ‘simple’ as requesting a guest blogging opportunity requires that several moving parts are working without friction. First, you have to publish linkable content, then conduct outreaches, optimize your links and anchors, find broken links and unlinked brand mentions, and monitor competitors. The whole time, you still have to track the effectiveness of your link-building efforts.

As far as link building is concerned, there is no all-in-one tool. It is more likely that you’d be using a combination of various tools to achieve different purposes. For finding link opportunities, SEMrush and Ahrefs offer very useful features. Pitchbox, Buzzstream, and JustReachOut help you to reach out to and collaborate with influencers. Eye10 Backlink Monitor is great for analyzing your backlinks to determine their impact and find issues.

Social Media Management

For many customers today, especially those of the younger generation, a business that lacks a social media presence is as good as not existing. Businesses have responded likewise, by not just establishing their presence on social media but assigning whole teams to control the narrative about their business online.

But social media is not just a PR or a communications tool; it boosts your SEO too when managed strategically. For instance, sharing links to your website increases brand exposure and provides extensive content distribution. Social media might not be an element of SEO ranking, but its benefit such as enhancing your brand recognition and reputation online can contribute immensely to your website traffic.

The entire cycle of creating, publishing, and monitoring content on social media requires strategic workflows, and there are tools that would help you save time and make it less overwhelming, particularly through automation. Buffer, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social help you manage several social media accounts in one platform, including scheduling your posts and accessing comprehensive analytics data. And for building simple landing pages, Linktree is hands-down the most popular tool.

Conclusion

Staying ahead of the competition in a field like SEO takes a lot of hard work. Plus, sustainability is hardly guaranteed; one wrong turn and your website and business are sinking. But these tools can help you to stay afloat when used properly. These are the aspects of SEO you should focus the most of your attention upon.

By Joseph Chukwube

Entrepreneur, Online Marketing Consultant

I’m a Professional Content Writer and Marketer, SEO and PR Expert. I’m the Founder of Digitage and Startup Growth Guide, results-driven marketing agencies. To create content and and improve your brand awareness, get in touch at [email protected]

Sourced from readwrite

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7 White Hat Link Building Techniques to Improve Your Websites Ranking

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By Vineet Gupta

Modern SEO is a complex discipline. That’s because search engines use a wide variety of signals to determine SERP placements. And that means there are countless aspects of web pages that need attention to achieve results

But without a doubt, link building is one of the most critical parts of the SEO process. The quantity and quality of the backlinks leading to a page play a huge role in its search engine ranking. And it’s been that way since the earliest days of search

But in the old days, all backlinks counted equally. And that led to abuse in the form of link farms and other black hat linking schemes. In response, Google and other search engines cracked down on that type of manipulation and worked tirelessly to update their algorithm to detect it

Today, your site would be penalized for attempting to use black hat techniques to improve SERP performance. But there are still a variety of white hats – or legitimate, relevant – backlink building techniques that work well. And while they do take a great deal of work, time, and care to execute, the payoff is tremendous

To help, here’s a top to bottom guide on the subject. We’ll cover what white hat link building is, how it compares to black hat techniques, and the pitfalls to watch out for. Then, we’ll cover 7 white hat link-building tactics that can propel your site to the top of the search engine results pages. Let’s get to it

What is White Hat Link Building?

White hat link building refers to techniques that encourage other authority websites to link to your own. And they all rely on organic linking and not on paid placement of any kind. And the reason white hat link-building strategies aren’t penalized by search engines is that they result in links that add value to the content they appear in

Recently, even John Muller, Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, has confirmed that it is ok to outreach to the websites and share that you have a good piece published on your website and if they like it they can link to it or let their audience know about it.

White Hat Vs. Black Hat Link Building

Where white hat link building relies on generating useful, high-quality links, black hat link building typically seeks to generate backlinks by any means necessary. As SEO techniques go, they are the polar opposites of one another. And because search engines prioritize their users’ search experience above all else, they frown upon sites trying to gain relevance by resorting to tricks and inorganic linking

Common white hat SEO link-building techniques include things like including backlinks within guest posts on other sites or within a related author profile, or through relationship building with other site owners. Those relationships can then become the basis of niche edit requests, where a site owner suggests some relevant content on their site to the other site owner or proposes a barter arrangement

Black hat techniques, by contrast, are attempted shortcuts around all of that hard work. A popular one is the use of private blog networks (PBNs), which are clusters of blogs that exist for little purpose other than to be a vehicle for backlinks. And another is the use of automated link placement tools that focus on link quantity rather than quality. The thing they all have in common is that they’re risky attempts to trick search engines that can backfire spectacularly

7 White Hat Link Building Techniques

Now that you know the difference between white hat and black hat link-building techniques, it should be obvious that the former is the only viable way to achieve SEO success. It should also be obvious why that’s the case. And to help you to develop creative link-building strategies that result in high-quality white-hat links, here are 7 white hat link-building techniques that you can use to push your website to the top of the search rankings

1. High-Quality Content

The core of any link-building strategy has to be the creation of high-quality content to support it. This serves two distinct purposes. First, it creates real visitor engagement that lets search engines know that sending traffic your way is worthwhile. And second, it provides a legitimate reason for other sites to link to your content

Creating high-quality content is one of the SEO best practices that are so fundamental that it should be obvious. But creating high-quality content takes a great deal of research and work. And that’s why it’s considered a white hat technique

You have to put in the time to analyze the pages that rank well for your target keywords, and then create content that represents the best features of them all. This creates a powerful incentive for authority sites to link to your content, creating a beneficial loop that continually improves your SERP performance

2. Guest Blogging

Another powerful white hat link-building technique is to find opportunities to guest post on related, high-authority websites. 53% of marketers believe that link building helps in improving ranking in search engines. Put simply, Google values the opinions of the websites that score well in its ranking algorithm. And getting a backlink to your content from any of those sites reflects well on your site because it represents that site’s seal of approval in Google’s eyes

But you can’t simply pay an authority site to include outbound links to your own. That’s because Google’s algorithm takes the quality of your backlinks into account in addition to their origin. So you have to find a way to get those backlinks organically, which is what you achieve with guest posting. And it’s an easy but time-consuming tactic to master

You don’t have to be a renowned expert in your field to guest post and you can learn how to do guest blogging even if you don’t have much writing experience. What’s important is to do your research and create content that will add value to the site you’re guest posting on. And if you can do that, you’ll find that other sites will be quite receptive to publishing your work

3. The Skyscraper Technique

One of the additional benefits that come with creating quality content is that it enables another kind of white hat link-building tactic. It’s called the skyscraper technique, and it refers to the process of creating content that’s superior to something that already ranks well, and then working to replicate its backlinks. It’s a tactic that requires plenty of work, but that can be worth its weight in gold when done right

The way that the skyscraper technique works is a simple three-step process. They are:

  • Identify a target keyword and look for a high-ranking result for that keyword you think you can improve on
  • Create your superior content
  • Reach out to the sites that have linked to the original and ask them to consider switching their links to your superior version

The reason that this is such a great approach is that it’s less risky than creating brand-new untested content. By working to improve on something that has already attracted quality backlinks, you already know there’s ample demand for what you’re creating. And while the skyscraper technique is a little bit cut-throat as far as white hat link building goes, it’s a legitimate and viable tactic to include in your link building strategy

4. Moving Man Method

Because the internet isn’t static, content tends to come and go offline with some frequency. And you can use that to your advantage to execute another white-hat link-building tactic called the moving man method. As its name implies, it revolves around finding ways to replace links to content that’s gone offline or is otherwise inaccessible with your own

The process is simple. You begin by identifying content that has a large volume of quality backlinks, or a handful of especially valuable ones that’s either moved or gone offline. Then, you replicate that content and ask the sites that linked to the original to consider replacing those dead links with ones to your site

The hardest part of this technique is finding broken links to target in the first place. But you can begin that process by looking for competitors in your market that has rebranded or gone out of business. Then, find the sites that still have backlinks to those competitors. Once you’ve identified a missing piece of content that has plenty of broken backlinks, the rest is simple

5. Niche Edits

Another way you can build backlinks is to create content that’s specifically designed to add value to an existing high-ranking page, and then ask that page’s owner to link to it. It’s a process that’s known as making niche edits, and it’s an excellent white hat link-building technique

The reason for that is simple. It benefits both parties and has no real downsides. In other words, you gain a backlink and the site that links to you improves the value of its content, thereby protecting its own page rank

The only caveat is that some site owners will only consider making niche edits if you pay them to do it. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it can increase your costs significantly if you’re not prepared for it. So it’s best to feel out the owner of your desired linking site partner before creating too much-customized content. If they’re open to niche edits, then you’ll be clear to proceed

6. Reciprocal Linking

One of the most basic white hat link-building tactics is also the simplest to execute. It’s to link to trusted websites as your content sources and then asking them to link to your article in return. This kind of reciprocal linking makes up a large portion of earned backlinks, as all you’re doing is trading some outbound links for some inbound links to your site. Do it with a limited number of websites only to avoid any risk of creating too many 2-way backlinks

Be aware, however, that not all site owners will be willing to engage in reciprocal linking. This is especially true if your site lacks authority. There’s just not enough in it for the other site to make the effort worth it. So, although it’s not impossible to succeed with a reciprocal link-building effort early in your site’s life, it’s a tactic that becomes increasingly valuable as its status grows later on

7. Blog Commenting

Although there’s some debate about how well blog commenting works as a white hat backlink strategy, there’s reason to believe it can still play a role in your overall link-building efforts. It’s also very easy to execute. All you have to do is look for content on high-authority websites that satisfy three major criteria:

  • The content is related to your industry or the keywords you’re targeting
  • The content allows comments from visitors
  • The comment section doesn’t implement a nofollow tag

If you find a high-authority site with content that satisfies these criteria, all you have to do is leave a comment that includes a link to your website. Of course, you’ll want your comment to add something to the discussion on the page, as obvious link insertions are frowned upon and will likely be deleted. Over time, doing this will improve your site’s SERP performance and should also create some additional organic traffic

White Hat Link Building Techniques are the Core of Good SEO Strategy

The bottom line here is simple. Achieving top SERP performance involves trying to improve several facets of your site and its content simultaneously. And, because Google and the other search engines never reveal the exact composition of their ranking algorithms, it’s like trying to hit an ever-moving target

But making efforts to gain as many high-quality backlinks to your site and its content as possible has always been the one sure way to improve search performance. And although the ways that your backlinks are measured may change, their relative value will always remain high. So that means white hat link building using the methods detailed here should always be at the core of your overall SEO strategy

And taking shortcuts will only lead to penalties and even more work. So all that’s left to do is assemble your SEO strategy using the tactics here that make the most sense for your site, and then execute it with everything you’ve got

By Vineet Gupta

Digital Marketing Team Lead

Vineet is a software engineer by qualification and an online marketer by profession. He likes studying Google search algorithms and helps businesses by improving their online presence.

Sourced from ReadWrite

 

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How to Start Link Building if You’ve Never Tried Before

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By Timothy Carter

To the average outsider, link building seems intimidatingly complex. You’ll be in charge of placing links to your site with a delicate balance of brand visibility and subtlety, working with high-profile publishers, and dodging Google penalties at the same time. It’s a service that costs thousands of dollars per month to manage if you’re working with an external agency, so clearly it’s not something you can do yourself, right?

Start Link Building if You’ve Never Tried Before

The truth is, while link building is complicated, it’s also approachable, even if you’ve never tried the strategy before.

What Is Link Building?

Let’s start with a primer on what link building is. As the name suggests, it’s a way to construct links in a digital environment. With the right approach, you can place links with external publishers and other websites, pointing back to various pages on your website.

Builds SEO and DA

The most obvious benefit is that the link serves a functional purpose, creating more roadways that people can use to find your site. But it’s also important for search engine optimization (SEO). Earning more links and being connected to more authoritative sources will increase your domain authority (DA), eventually helping you rank higher in search results – and earning you more traffic.

Link Building helps new business

Links are especially powerful for new and emerging businesses since they don’t have much authority or much of a web presence to work with initially. It’s also valuable here because it’s inexpensive and accessible, meaning you can use it even if you’re working with a limited budget.

There are many possible ways to approach link building. Some people attempt to earn as many links as possible as naturally as possible, creating compelling onsite content and hoping that people link to it. But it’s much more reliable to manually build links yourself – as long as you’re building them in an appropriate and Google-friendly way. More on that later.

The Benefits of Link Building

There’s no question that link building is valuable, at least when done right. But where does that value come from? What makes this strategy so effective?

  • Traffic. First, there’s the potential for traffic generation. Getting a link to your site placed in the right article, with the right publisher, could conceivably send thousands of visitors to your site every month – or even more. And because the link is functionally permanent, it could keep sending recurring traffic to your site for months, or even years to come.
  • Search rankings. Most people discover link building as a tactic when researching SEO. Link building isn’t the only element necessary for an SEO strategy, but it’s one of the most important. Together with onsite content optimization, coding optimization, and technical improvements, it can help your site rank higher in SERPs and, ultimately, get more organic traffic.
  • Visibility and authority building. Link building can also be valuable for visibility and building the subjective authority and reputation of your brand – especially at the higher levels. Merely mentioning your brand in an article, or getting connected to the right publishers and authors, can be a boon for your entire company.

Black Hat Link Building and Potential Penalties

Link building isn’t always straightforward. Google goes out of its way to penalize websites that infringe on the experiences of its users. If it thinks you’re spamming backlinks, overtly promoting yourself, or trying to manipulate its ranking algorithm — you’re going to face a penalty.

Link building tactics that are meant only to manipulate search rankings, and that have little to no value to average users, are known as “black hat” tactics. They’re also considered unethical.

But don’t worry. There are plenty of ways to build links properly – and as long as you’re improving user experiences, you’ll be in good shape. The most straightforward tactic is to write high-quality content for an external publisher, while linking to your own onsite content as a reputable source.

Prerequisites for Link Building

Before you start link building, there are some things you’ll need in place first.

For example:

  • An established website. You can’t build links to a place that doesn’t exist. If you want to get the most value from your links, your website needs to be functional, safe, mobile-friendly, and easy for users to navigate.
  • Good onsite content. Additionally, you’ll want an archive of high-quality written content on your website. This is going to help establish your site’s domain authority, and will also serve as valuable fodder you can use as the destinations for your links. The better your onsite content is, the stronger your links will be.
  • Social media profiles. Social media is the best place to promote your onsite and offsite content. It’s also a great way to connect with other authors and reach out to new publishers.
  • Author profiles. Your business may have an awesome brand built for it, but it’s not always ideal to write as the business. Instead, you may want to write content as individual authors, complete with author profiles you can build up over time.

What Makes a Link Effective?

What is it that makes a link effective?

In terms of SEO, you’ll need to consider, at a minimum:

  • Domain authority. The higher the DA of the publisher, the more valuable the link is going to be.
  • Value to the reader. If the link is valuable to the reader in some way, like giving them additional background information, that’s helpful.
  • Context and placement. The link needs to be relevant to the piece – and should be one of several links to a variety of sources. It shouldn’t stand out unnaturally.
  • Appropriate anchor text. The anchor text can be optimized for your target keywords and phrases, but not to the extent that it makes the link seem unnatural. The text needs to blend with the rest of your content.

Long-term, you’ll also need to consider:

  • Publisher diversity. Repeated links on the same publisher have diminishing returns. It’s helpful to work with as many publishers as possible.
  • Link diversity. It’s not good to link to the same pages over and over; try to point to a range of different pages on your site.
  • Frequency and volume. If you build too many links too quickly, it could invite a penalty.

Starting With Your First Links

You can’t climb to the top of the SERPs overnight. In fact, some businesses spend months to years developing their brands enough to start ranking higher. SEO is a long-term strategy that demands commitment and patience.

Still, the journey begins with a single step. Try to work with a low-stakes, accessible publisher to build your first link(s). Look for local publishers and small publishers in your niche – and reach out to the editors with content ideas their audience is going to love.

If they like your pitch and you get a chance to write for the publisher, take the opportunity seriously. Write the best article you can, place your link carefully (and in a way that’s beneficial to users), and comply with any requested edits you receive.

Building Your Influence

Next, you’ll need to start networking and building your influence. As you start getting featured in more publishers, you’ll get more writing opportunities naturally and your circle of readers will grow. It will get easier and easier for you to get featured with new publishers and build your presence.

While you’re at it, keep up with your old publisher relationships as well – new publishing opportunities can always be helpful.

Working With an Agency

Though link building is approachable and understandable even for amateurs, it can also be prohibitive in terms of time and monetary costs. Getting started with link building takes a lot of work, especially if you don’t already have a team of writers and established publisher relationships. That’s why it may be in your best interest to work with a link-building agency — a team of professionals who already know what they’re doing and can help you get the best results.

Conclusion

No matter what, link building has the power to transform your business. If you’re not already using it to support your SEO strategy or attract more referral traffic to your website, now’s the time to get started.

Feature Image Credit: jonathan borba; pexels

By Timothy Carter

Chief Revenue Officer

Timothy Carter is the Chief Revenue Officer of the Seattle digital marketing agency SEO.co, DEV.co & PPC.co. He has spent more than 20 years in the world of SEO and digital marketing leading, building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams. When he’s not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach — preferably in Hawaii with a cup of Kona coffee. Follow him on Twitter @TimothyCarter

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The Guide to Targeted-Impact Link Building

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By Garrett French

This piece was co-written with James Wirth.

Links drive rankings — that’s one thing that technical SEOs, content marketers, digital PR folks, and even some of #SEOTwitter can agree on. But which rankings, and for which pages on your website?

If you’ve ever wanted to build links that impact rankings for specific pages on your website, we’ve got the guide for you.

Selecting pages for a targeted-impact link building campaign

Preparing a link building campaign often involves helping the client refine their goals in order to be able to effectively measure the campaign. The first step is typically level-setting based on what we can learn from available data.

Comparing link metrics against top competitors will help us size up the competition. Layered against estimated traffic, Page Authority, and SEO “difficulty”, and we’re able to better understand the opportunity. While this isn’t particularly complex or inaccessible, it’s likely deeper than the client has gone, and very often they’re happy to move forward with data-informed recommendations.

If we were preparing a link building campaign for Moz, for example, we might pre-select some sections of the site to focus on in the analysis.

Suppose we start with /products/, /tools/ the beginners guide pages (love those), and a few others that jump out. Here are a few pages from that list:

Target page list

From here, we would compile a list of competitors based on top keywords for each of the pages. That will let us compare average metrics across the top competitors to the metrics for Moz’s pages.

This dataset represents the top 10 competitors from the top 10 keywords for each of Moz’s pages. Once compiled, we’ll have 90-100 rows of competitor data, give or take, depending on where Moz ranks for each page in the list. We can average the competitor data to make it easy to compare, and spot-check from there to look for outliers, or filter out branded or stray keywords we don’t want to compete for anyway:

Now it’s time to look for opportunities. We can eye-ball the metrics in a shortlist like this, but if we’re looking at hundreds or thousands of pages (even after filtering it down), this gets a little cumbersome. Prioritizing the pages will help us look more quickly through the list and find the best opportunities.

In a scenario where it’s a short pilot program, some of these competitors have scary-high linking root domains, and we’re going to have an idea of a monthly budget to set our pilot up for success by not biting off more than we can chew.

So, we’ll add a couple columns to help some of these stand out. To help find the low-hanging fruit, we might look at the relationship to the gap in linking root domains of the competition and our potential campaign page, and the search volume from those top 10 keywords:

By dividing the link gap into the search volume, we can look at higher priority pages for the campaign based on the probability of reducing the linking root domain gap, in order to improve the client’s share of voice on high-converting pages.

Adding rank-order to the rows will help us look at the best potential opportunities:

From this group of pages, the Moz Pro product page seems to be a pretty tasty candidate. We might stay away from the free SEO tools page since, well, “free” doesn’t necessarily scream REVENUE, but it’s worth a conversation to verify. The same can be said for a couple of those beginner guide pages as well.

Even if none end up in the campaign, we’ll still be able to assess the link gap for pages that ARE the targets, and help steer Moz towards effective linking choices

After a few refinements, we’ll have a very solid set of potential campaign pages to recommend!

Finding your most-impactful audience

We build out our model of audience based on the specific client URL that we’re building links to. So, for sales pages, we’re thinking about where, how, when, and why that product or service fits into the customer’s life. What are its various contexts of use? What circumstances or conditions benefit from the use of this offering?

The offering’s contexts of use are intrinsically relevant to the target URL, whether or not the same keyword is used to describe them. For example, if we target the Moz Pro page identified above, we’d start asking ourselves: “when is it that agencies and in-house SEOs start thinking about SEO tools?”

Perhaps we explore that point where someone has to pick up the SEO projects left behind by someone whose career has taken them elsewhere. What’s the checklist like for following behind another SEO? Additionally, what about an SEO crash course for folks who suddenly find themselves in charge of an SEO department (we’ve spoken with people in this situation before). Both of these scenarios could give ample reason and circumstance to mention SEO tools. For either of these examples, an expert survey, expert interviews, and off-site informational placements could enable contextual linking opportunities.

Let’s step outside of the SEO space though and think about insurance sales pages. We could begin mapping out the circumstances and events in life as one decides to seek insurance: Events like having your first child, becoming an independent contractor, buying a home, having a cardiac-related scare, etc.

From these “use-case brainstorms”, we work up into problem areas — and related queries — that the target audience might be having. These give us a basis for discovering publishers that align the audience of the target page with its contexts of usage. For Moz, we’d likely focus on marketing trade pubs — SEO or not. For the insurance pages, we’d likely start with parenting blogs, health/fitness publishers, websites relating to starting a business, and potentially realtor sites.

For good measure, we frequently examine high ranking pages in the target keyword space to learn more about what we call the “linking context” for a given set of keywords. We’re especially focused on the titles of linking pages. This gives instant insight into topics that make sense for prospect discovery. We usually find things like long form guides, tons of coupon pages, review sites, forums, etc. — all of this gives us a better sense of the linking context.

Combined, use-case brainstorms and linking context analysis help us build out a full picture of the audiences and key problems that will lead us to suitable publishers.

Link outreach

Outreach is simple. Well, sort of.

If you understand what the publisher wants, which is ultimately related to how they make a living, then you figure out how to pitch and deliver just that.

If you’re in the digital PR space pitching journalists, you’re pitching your ability to drive “audience engagement” (as we’ve picked up from Neomam CEO, Gisele Navarro). So your subject line and offer need to clearly drip with page views, click-throughs, and social shares. And your content has to deliver. After all, with the high content costs involved you’ll need to reuse your contacts!

If you’re in broken link building (and to a lesser extent, a tactic like unlinked mentions), you’re offering “visitor experience improvements” to a webmaster or page curator who’s dedicated to a particular audience. With this in mind, your subject line and offer (a fix) must demonstrate value to the target audience, as well as mention the impact the broken link could have on an expectant visitor in need.

We find that when pitching guest content, especially to sales-supported publishers, we see higher conversions when we pitch topics that will help drive the publisher’s traffic or conversions. You can learn more about our guest content approach in this Whiteboard Friday, but again, we lean into pitching “publishing benefits” to the site owner.

So your key question: what is this person’s purpose for publishing to their particular audience? Knowing this helps you determine an offer that will resonate, and earn you a link.

One last bit of advice on outreach: avoid directly implementing subject lines, templates, etc. from other experts. Be inspired by the experts, but remember that their advice involves very specific offers, audiences, and publishers, and they are unlikely to align with your actual circumstances. Study them, for sure, but only for understanding general guidelines.

A quick word on link building tactics

Every functional link building tactic earns its links by meeting the target publisher’s unstated “price” for reaching their audience.

The publisher’s cost can certainly be money, but in the earned link space, we’re usually talking about supplying publishers with value such as exclusive news and information, previously unstated but highly useful advice, articles that could help them sell more products or services, and useful corrections that shore up authority.

We’re reminded, as we discuss value exchange, of a campaign by the link builder Debra Mastaler, in which she offered a cement client’s t-shirt to the members of several dues-supported professional organizations. She not only earned links from the organization websites (who got to provide a “special perk” to their members), but earned business and, of course, brand visibility within their precise target audience. Wow!

So, while a free t-shirt may not work in all verticals, Mastaler reminds us of the most overlooked aspect of link building campaigns: finding publishers who reach your target audience and asking “okay, what can we offer that they will actually want?”. Creative, entrepreneurial thinking — perhaps you could call it marketing instinct? — remains the link builder’s most important tactic.

That said, reviewing the existing array of link building tactics can be very useful, especially as you’re starting out, just as a budding chef spends time reading cookbooks to understand key ingredients and guiding principles. And as it is for the budding chef, your greatest lessons will come from the hours spent in the kitchen, working on your craft.

Check out this graphic for a quick overview of some of the more common tactics and their relationships between the publishers and your desired SEO outcomes:

Measurable link building wins

This is one of the most challenging aspects of a campaign for myriad reasons.

It’s also one of the most effective ways to retain clients, or budget, if you’re on the in-house side.

There are a number of ways to track the performance of a link building campaign, but which methods are chosen largely depends on the tactics deployed. In our case, we’re focused on the content side, and specialize in earning placements to hard-to-link sales landing pages. We approach our measurements of success from the perspective of SEO-related metrics that will show both leading indicators of improvements, and the right performance indicators once we have had impact.

Early on in a campaign, we often see a worsening of average position. The cause of this is typically new keywords ranking on the campaign page. Because the page initially begins to rank on SERP #7 or #8, this will initially pull down the average rank of the page, even if the rank for established keywords is improving.

This graph underscores one of the risks of focusing too heavily on rank as the primary success metric. While average position (the purple line) shows a decline in average position, we can see in the stacked columns that not only is the total number of ranking keywords growing, it’s also growing nicely in positions 1-3 (the blue segment at the top), as well as positions 4-10 (the orange segment 2nd from top). Just not enough to keep up with newly ranking keywords further down in the SERPs.

Correlating ranking changes to ranking keyword count was paramount to continuing this campaign.

While we track and report on average position over time, we certainly don’t lead with it. Instead, we focus on metrics that more directly correlate to traffic and conversions, which positions us for demonstrating positive ROI of the campaign.

The metrics that matter for us are share of voice (a search volume-weighted CTR model) and Moz Page Authority.

Share of voice

The benefit for us of prioritizing share of voice over ranking is that it normalizes dramatic shifts in time series reports based on ranking fluctuations from low-volume queries. Ranking reports, as we all know, can be a serious roller coaster.

Share of voice, on the other hand, aligns with an estimated traffic model, expressed as a percentage of total traffic for the keyword set.

As seen in the graph above, we also include a control group: a second set of pages on the site that are not part of the campaign (and preferably not part of any concerted SEO effort). This second set of pages is chosen from similar sections of the site and from similarly ranking and visited pages when possible, to measure the success of our link building campaign against.

While the graph above does indicate positive growth just with the bars, when we determine the percentage difference between our campaign pages and the control group, the results are even more dramatic.

Page Authority

Another critical metric is Moz Page Authority, which is often another early indicator of imminent success. We sometimes see Page Authority increase even before we see improvement to rankings and share of voice.

And again, tracking against a control group helps to underscore the value of our work.

Another benefit of Page Authority: Third party validation of the direct impact of our work.

While many factors outside of the scope of our link building campaign may affect rank, such as core algorithm updates, gaps in page content, topic misalignment or technical issues inhibiting Google’s full valuation of the page), a metric that is best influenced by “improving a page’s link profile by… getting external links”, aligns very well with our offering.

And hey, we think using a third party metric to validate the hard work we’re doing for our clients is pretty okay in our book (now in its second edition!).

 

By Garrett French

Garrett has been in the marketing, writing & link building business since 2001. He brainstorms strategy for all Citation Labs Agency clients and turns the team’s internal processes into Citation Labs Tools.

This piece was co-written with James Wirth.

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21 Smart Google SEO Tips for 2021

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By Cyrus Shepard

Happy new year, readers! We’re back with a brand new season of Whiteboard Friday episodes for your viewing pleasure.

First up: Moz SEO expert Cyrus Shepard shares his top 21 tips for successful Google SEO in 2021, including what to prioritize and what to look out for in the year ahead. He’s also included a bunch of helpful resources for your reference in the transcription below!

Watch and enjoy, and as always, leave your questions and your own suggestions in the comment section.

 

 

21 Smart SEO Tips for 2021

 

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I’m Cyrus Shepard. Today, so glad that you can join us. We are talking about 21 smart Google SEO tips for 2021. We’re getting ready for a new year, a new year of SEO strategies. These are 21 practical tips that you can implement that should, hopefully, move the needle on your organic traffic.

These are some of the best tips that I’ve collected over the past year. Many of them that I’m going to use myself in my own SEO strategies.

Now we have four categories: increasing clicks, content/on-page SEO tips, technical SEO, and a little bit of link building. There are 21 of these. These are going to go fast. We’re trying to do 10 to 12 minutes, so we don’t get to spend a lot of time on each one. But don’t fret. We’re going to link to appropriate resources in the transcript below so that we can keep along and explore a little bit more. All right. Ready to dive in?

Increasing clicks

Let’s start with clicks, specifically earning more clicks from Google without actually ranking higher, because that’s one of the great things about SEO. You don’t actually have to rank higher to get more traffic if you can get more clicks from the rankings that you already have. So let’s talk about some specific strategies for getting more clicks without increasing rankings.

1. Favicon optimization

First, favicon optimization.

Now I’m surprised more people haven’t talked about this in 2020. Google displays favicons in mobile search results, and they can influence your click-through rate if they’re high contrast, if they’re visible or not visible. Having a good favicon can make a few percentage points difference, very minor, but it does make a difference if you can get it right. Aaron Wall, SEO Book, wrote one of the very few posts about that.

2. Breadcrumb optimization

While we’re optimizing our favicons, let’s take a look at breadcrumb optimization. Google displays breadcrumbs in both desktop and mobile search results. They can be keyword-rich breadcrumbs, which can influence your click-through rate. Now Google gets their breadcrumbs from a lot of places. That can be your URL, your schema markup, your actual breadcrumbs on the page.

What you want to do is make sure Google is displaying the breadcrumbs that you want them to display, using those keywords that you choose. The best way to do that, make sure that you have breadcrumbs actually on your page with links, that you’re using schema markup. Ideally, it would match your URL structure, but that isn’t always necessary. So a great breadcrumb optimization audit.

3. Meta descriptions

Let’s optimize those meta descriptions. This is so old-school SEO. But a recent study shows that 30% of websites don’t even use meta descriptions. Now that’s understandable because another study shows that 70% of the time, Google will rewrite the meta description, usually because it’s not using the keywords that the user is searching for. But if we write a well-crafted meta description, it can compel users to click, and that means using keyword-rich descriptions that people are actually searching for, so when Google does use your meta description, it’s encouraging those clicks and acting as marketing copy for your website.

4. Numbers in titles

Along with meta descriptions, titles. Just shared a study recently showing that dates added to titles increased rankings for a particular brand. Numbers are generally one thing that I always test in title tags that usually produce pretty consistent results. Specifically, dates in title tags are often a winner, January 2021.

Don’t be spammy about it. Don’t include it if it doesn’t make sense and don’t fake it. But if you can include a number, it will often increase your click-through rate for any given query.

5. <Title> boilerplate

How about doing a boilerplate audit for your title tag? Tip number five. What’s boilerplate? Boilerplate are the parts of your title tag that repeat every single time.

For example, here at Moz, we put “Moz,” our brand name at the end of every title tag. We used to put “Whiteboard Friday” at the end of every Whiteboard Friday until we tested it and found out that we actually got more clicks and higher rankings when we removed it. So boilerplate, you want your titles to be unique, provide unique value. So I would encourage you to experiment with your boilerplate and see if removing it actually increases your rankings.

Sometimes it’s not going to. Sometimes you need that boilerplate. But do the test to find out.

6. FAQ and how-to schema

Tip number six: schema, specifically FAQ and how-to schema. Google gave us a huge gift when they introduced these in search results. FAQ schema gives you a lot of SERP real estate. You can’t always win it, and you can’t always win the how-to schema, but when you do, that can definitely increase or influence people to click on your result, expand those FAQ schemas out.

It’s not appropriate for every page. You want to make sure that you actually have those FAQs on your pages. But it is one way, in appropriate situations, that you can increase clicks without increasing your actual Google ranking. All right.

Content/on-page SEO

Let’s move on to some content and on-page tips.

7. Relaunch top content

All right, number seven. This is the year I want you to look into relaunching your top content.

Content can go stale after a few years. So we launch content. You have a blog, you launch it, and you share it on social media. Most people forget about it after that. So go back, look at your top content over the last two to five years or even 10 years, if you want to go back that far, and see what you can relaunch by updating it, keeping it on the same URL. In some cases, you can see gains of 500% to 1,000% just by relaunching some of your old content with some updates.

So do a relaunch audit in 2021.

8. Increase internal linking

Number eight: increasing internal linking. Now a lot of top SEO agencies, when they need to quickly increase rankings for clients, there are generally two things that they know are the easiest levers to pull. First, title tags and meta descriptions, what’s getting more clicks, but second is increasing the internal linking.

You know that you can increase internal links on your site, and there are probably some opportunities there that you just haven’t explored. So let’s talk about a couple easy ways to do that without having too much work.

9. Update old content with new links

Number nine is updating your old content with new links. This is a step that we see people skip time and time again. When you publish a new blog post, publish a new piece of content, make sure you’re going back and updating your old content with those new links.

So you’re looking at the top keyword that you want to rank for, and going in Google Search Console or checking tools like Keyword Explorer to see what other pages on your site rank for that keyword, and then adding links to the new content to those pages. I find when I do this, time and time again, it lowers the bounce rate. So you’re not only updating your old page with fresh content and fresh links and adding relevance. You’re adding links to your new content. So make sure, when you publish new content, you’re updating your old content with those new links.

10. Remove unnecessary links

Number 10, remove unnecessary links from your content. Now this is a form of PageRank sculpting. PageRank sculpting is a dirty word in SEO, but actually it works to a certain extent. It’s not nofollow link page sculpting.

It is removing unnecessary links. Do you really need a link to your team page on every page of your website? Do you need a link to your contact form on every page of your website? In many cases, you don’t. Sometimes you do. But if you remove the unnecessary links, you can pass more link equity through the links that actually count, and those links are a major Google ranking signal.

11. Mobile link parity audit

Number 11, need you to do a mobile link parity audit. What is that? What is a mobile link parity audit? That is ensuring that the links on your mobile site are the same as the links on your desktop site. Why is that important? Well, the last couple of years Google has moved to a mobile first index, meaning what they see on your mobile site, that’s your website.

That’s what counts. So a lot of sites, they have a desktop site, and then they reduce it to their mobile site and they’re missing links. They get rid of header navigation, footer links, and things like that. A recent study showed that the average desktop page has 61 links and the average mobile page has 54 links. That means on the web as a whole there are seven fewer links on mobile pages than desktop pages, meaning a lot of link equity is being lost.

So do a study on your own website. Make sure you have mobile link parity between your desktop and your mobile site so you’re not losing that equity.

12. Invest in long-form content

Number 12: need you to invest in long-form content. Now I am not saying that content length is a ranking factor. It is not. Short-form content can rank perfectly well. The reason I want you to invest in long-form content is because consistently, time and time again, when we study this, long-form content earns more links and shares.

It also generally tends to rank higher in Google search results. Nothing against short-form content. Love short-form content. But long-form content generally gives you more bang for your buck in terms of SEO ranking potential.

13. Use more headers

When you’re doing that long-form content, make sure you do number 13: use more headers. I’m talking about H2 and H3 tags.

Break up your content with good, keyword-rich header tags. Why? Well, we have research from A.J. Ghergich that shows that the more header tags you have, generally you rank for more featured snippets. Sites with 12-13, which seems like a lot of header tags, rank for the most featured snippets of anything that they looked at in their most recent study.

So make sure you’re breaking up your content with header tags. It adds a little contextual relevance. It’s a great way to add some ranking potential to your content.

14. Leverage topic clusters

Number 14, leverage topic clusters. Don’t just launch one piece of content. Make sure you write about multiple pieces of content around the same subject and link those together. When you do that and you link them intelligently, you can increase engagement because people are reading the different articles.

You can add the right contextual inner links. I have a great case study that I want to show you in the transcript below, where someone did this and produced amazing results. So look into topic clusters for 2021.

15. Bring content out of tabs

Finally, bring your content out of tabs. If you have content that is in accordions or drop-downs or you have to click to reveal the content, study after study after study shows that content that’s brought out of tabs and brought into the main body, so people don’t have to click to see, generally performs better than content that’s hidden in tabs.

Now to be clear, I don’t believe that Google discriminates content in tabs. They seem to be able to index and rank it just fine. But I think people generally engage with content when it’s out of tabs, and maybe some of those signals help those pages to rank a little better.

Technical SEO

All right. Just a very few technical SEO tips. We’re going fast.

16. Core Web Vitals

Number 16: this is the year to invest in Core Web Vitals. These are some of the page experience signals that Google is bringing to the forefront in 2021. It’s going to be an actual ranking factor very soon. We’re talking about cumulative shift layout, hard word to say. Generally, we’re talking about site speed and delivering great page experience. Now some of these things are very technical, and Google has some tools, like Lighthouse, to try to help you to figure them out.

One tip I like to share, if you are on WordPress, I highly recommend using Cloudflare, in particular their APO for WordPress. It’s a great way to speed up your WordPress website and help you score better for some of these Core Web Vitals. It’s very low cost, it’s easy to implement, and it’s a great way to speed up your WordPress website.

17. Limit sitemaps to 10,000

Number 17: sitemaps. Sitemaps, you’re allowed to have 50,000 URLs per sitemap. This is always a question in every SEO quiz. How many URLs per sitemap are you allowed? Instead, if you have a large site and you have indexing issues, tip number 17, limit your sitemaps to 10,000 URLs. You don’t have to use all 50,000.

We have some evidence that using smaller sitemaps, compressing those into a limited URL set can actually improve your crawlability of those. It’s kind of like Google might prioritize those in some way. The data seems to support it. You also get a little bit better data out of Google Search Console. You can see what’s being indexed and what’s not.

18. Leverage dynamic sitemaps

Also, leverage dynamic sitemaps. Our friend Oliver Mason shows — that I’ll link to in the transcript below — that a dynamic sitemap is a sitemap that changes based upon what you want Google to crawl. So if you have a large corpus of URLs that you want Google to crawl, put the high priority ones in their own special sitemap.

Maybe you limit it to one thousand URLs. As Google crawls and discovers those, remove them and put in additional high priority URLs that you want Google to discover. Keep the sitemap small and tight, and let Google know that those are the ones that you want them to pay attention to.

Link building

Let’s quickly talk about link building tips for 2021, because everybody loves link building.

No, kidding. Everybody hates link building. Link building is so hard. There are some professionals and there are some great people in the industry who do love it, who are great at it. Personally, I’m not that great at link building, but I still am able to build a lot of links.

19. Passive link acquisition

One way that I’m able to do that is number 19: passive link acquisition. What passive link acquisition means is creating content that passively earns links as people discover it in the SERPs.

It means I don’t have to outreach to people. It means that when they find it, when journalists find it, when bloggers find it, they naturally want to link to it. You do that by creating the types of content that journalists and bloggers and web creators are looking for. These are generally data, guides, definitions, how to, such as this video. When you create that kind of content, it generally earns a lot of links as people find it. Passive link building is one of the most sustainable ways to earn links over time.

20. Page-level link intersect

Number 20, page-level link intersect. When you do have to do outreach, you want to do outreach to the pages most likely to link to you. Now we’ve known for a long time one of the top SEO tips for link building is find websites that link to your competitors but not to you.

I like to make that a little more specific and find web pages that link to at least two of my competitors but not to me. That means that they are generally a resource page, if they’re linking to multiple competitors but not to me, and more likely to link to me if I ask them. We have a great tool here at Moz, Link Explorer, that does page-level link intersect. I think it’s the best tool for this specific task in the SEO industry, not because I’m biased, because I actually use it.

21. Be the last click

Tip number 21 for 2021, be the last click. What do I mean by that? I mean satisfy your users. Once you earn the first click, you want to get that first click that people click, but you also want to be the last click. That means they found what they are looking for. User satisfaction is ranking signal number one. Your goal with all of this is to satisfy the user, to give them what they search for.

That’s the magic of SEO. They’re searching for something, and you’re delivering it to them at the exact moment they search for it. When you can be the last click, you’re almost guaranteed to rise in rankings and get the traffic that you deserve.

All right, those are 21 tips. That’s your roadmap for 2021. Hope you enjoyed it. Please share this video and share your tips for 2021 in the comments below.

Thanks, everybody.

By Cyrus Shepard

Cyrus Shepard is the founder of Zyppy, an SEO consulting and software company. He writes/tweets about Google ranking signals, SEO best practices, experiments, tactics, and industry updates.For the latest, follow Cyrus on Twitter, or check out more of his posts on Moz.

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The pillars of successful link building

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Create linkable assets and identify relevant opportunities to reach a wider audience

Creating high-quality content can strengthen your business’ branding and facilitate conversions, but not if your audience is never exposed to that content. Link building can help boost content visibility via other websites and in the search results.

Michael Johnson, sales manager at Page One Power, explained how to create and leverage linkable assets, identify relevant linking opportunities, communicate with site owners in a way that compels them to link to your content and what to do after you’ve acquired a link during his talk at SMX Next (free registration) last week.

Create audience-focused, linkable assets

“Your links will be as good as your content,” Johnson said, explaining that the more valuable your content is to your target audiences, the more likely you’ll be able to attract links to that content.

Michael Johnson’s guidance on linkable assets from his session at SMX Next.

Johnson cautions against requesting links to lower-value promotional content or product pages as they may come across as paid links, which may also discourage users from clicking through.

Identify relevant, valued and trusted sites for links

Johnson uses the following criteria to evaluate which sites are right for any given link building campaign.

Relevance. Your link should be relevant with respect to both the context of the page it appears on as well as the page’s audience.

Value for users. The page you’re interested in getting a link from should receive traffic and engage and provide value to an audience. And of course, be sure the anchor text in the link helps set user expectations when they click through.

Trust and authority. “Look at the backlinking neighborhood of the website that you’re reaching out to,” said Johnson, “If you see that they are linking out to a lot of spam or are posting low quality content on their website, those are red flags that mean you should probably avoid that website.”

Tools and metrics. To help gauge site authority, Johnson suggests looking at metrics such as Ahref’s Domain Rating, Moz’s Domain Authority and Majestic’s Trust Flow and Citation Flow. With a caveat: “I cannot stress enough, do not get too hung up on Domain Authority,” Johnson said, explaining that, while these third-party metrics are useful for getting a general idea of the kinds of sites to reach out to, they are not used by Google and fixating on them can result in lost opportunities.

Vet every site. Thoroughly investigate each site you want a backlink from. “Always ask yourself the question, ‘In a world without Google, would I still want this link?’” he said, adding, “If the answer is no, then you have to question whether or not that’s an organic link.”

Get creative with your link building outreach

“Sites don’t link, people link,” Johnson said, emphasizing that there are people behind every step of the link building process. “When you’re creating content, think about the people behind that . . . When you’re outreaching to that site, think about who you’re connecting with,” he said.

Sending sincere, personalized outreach can make your communications more memorable and increase the likelihood of building a mutually beneficial connection with another site. One way to approach this is to connect with site owners outside of email, via social media or through a direct phone call.

You should also let site owners know how linking to your content benefits them and their users. This is where having informative, audience-focused content is essential: “If you don’t have a great piece of content, if you’re not really building that connection, they’re going to ask for money, and we don’t want to pay for links,” said Johnson.

“You can also learn from not getting responses,” Julie Joyce, owner of Link Fish Media, wrote in her contributed article Why isn’t my fabulous content attracting quality links?, recommending that link builders take a look and compare the subject lines of emails that got opened with the ones that didn’t.

Related: Is link building dead? Depends on who you talk to

Keep the momentum after the link

After acquiring a link, link builders should send a followup communication thanking the site owner. “If you send a thank you, it really does foster goodwill between your brand and theirs,” Johnson said.

Link builders should keep track of the links they’ve acquired so that they can periodically check on their status. “It’s totally acceptable to follow up and say, ‘Hey, I saw that my link is no longer on the page,’” he said. Finding out why your link was removed may enable you to get it back or signal that it’s time to update your content.

Johnson also recommends paying attention to the internal linking of the page that earned the backlink. Since product or promotional pages are unlikely to garner many of their own backlinks, internally linking those conversion-based pages to pages with a stronger backlink profile can help you funnel link equity to them, Johnson said.

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George Nguyen is an Associate Editor at Third Door Media. His background is in content marketing, journalism, and storytelling.

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How to Do Guest Blogging for Natural Looking Link Building

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By Anna Crowe

Guest blogging is still huge.

And I have every reason to believe that it’s going to make even more of my mystical creature dreams come true.

Larry Kim is what happens when you blend a 🦄 with high-quality content and an authoritative publication. Kim, the founder of WordStream, is a winning example of how to swirl content into a distribution funnel.

Just look at his post on Inc. 40 Amazing Places To Learn Something New Every Day, which received 40 backlinks.

Guest blogging can, as you’ve seen before, look scary.

But, enhancing your online visibility or backlink profile doesn’t have to be frightening — or require the writing skills of Shakespeare. You just need the proper arsenal to get that natural-looking link building.

Think Beyond the Links

It’s time we think beyond the links.

There’s been an onslaught of guest blogging for links on the market.

To make sense of it all, Moz surveyed agencies and freelancers to see if they still use guest posting, and 90 percent of respondents said yes, they still use a form of guest posting.

There are a lot of winning entrepreneurs using guest blogging in their link building toolkit: Even the aspiring Julie Joyces will find something to fall in love with.

Just take a look at how other entrepreneurs have used this strategy in the past.

  • Neil Patel publishes an average of 100 guest posts per year.
  • Mark Traphagen shared his thoughts on how Eric Enge built his reputation by writing guest posts.
  • Leo Widrich wrote 150 guest blog posts in 2 months to help build Buffer.
  • Julia McCoy at Express Writers gained $5,000 from one guest blog post on SitePro.

Your Guest Blogging Strategy

Here’s a quick snapshot of my guest blogging strategy:

1. Set Qualifying Factors Needed to Work with a Blog

Here’s a look at my qualifying factors I review for every guest blogging opportunity.

Guest blog qualifying factors

2. Check the Bio Section

Researching the bio section is key because it leaves opportunity for you to not only add a link, but add a link for users to sign-up to your newsletter.

3. Engage Before You Pitch

Before I send my pitch email, I connect with the website on every social platform by engaging in replies to tweets and signing up for their newsletter.

Summary

Timeframe: Ongoing starting Month 3

Results detected: 4-12 months

Average blogs posted per month: 4

Tools:

  • BuzzStream
  • BuzzSumo
  • Alexa

Benefits of guest blogging:

  • Guest blogging improves your brand awareness and SEO authority. If you have a solid strategy of posting to multiple websites within a similar timeframe, it gives the illusion that you’re everywhere.
  • Guest blogging increases your website traffic and leads. By adding a link in your bio to a landing page to sign-up for your newsletter, you’re increasing traffic and gaining leads.
  • Read more in Search Engine Journal’s The Top 11 Benefits of Guest Blogging.

 

By Anna Crowe

Features Writer & Product Marketing Manager at Search Engine Journal & Hello Anna Co.

Anna is the Features Writer & Product Marketing Manager for Search Engine Journal and an SEO-whisperer at Hello Anna & … [Read full bio]

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6 SEO Strategies That Are Hurting Your Online Business

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You’ve probably heard of link building, but you might not know what it really is or how to do it effectively. Sure, you can go ahead and hire a digital marketing agency, but unless you know the ins and outs, you won’t be successful.

What if they use PBNs?

What if they have a bad linking strategy?

What if they waste all your budget and don’t deliver any results?

It’s important to understand link building practices and how Google can change your website — especially with Google’s recent updates.

While working with clients through my agency, Taco, I come across a few common mistakes website owners make as they build links. And even though there are fantastic guides talking about link building, I see these mistakes over and over again. 

Here are six link building strategies that hurt your SEO efforts and how to fix them.

1. Building links to home page links

It seems logical to send all of your SEO power to your homepage because that’s where you want everyone to start. But, it’s wrong. In fact, it’s probably one of the biggest SEO myths. The homepage shouldn’t be used for your top phrases.

I know you’re asking right now, “But then how do I target the key phrases I want to rank for?”

You should build out content-rich subpages in your site to target those phrases, then build backlinks to those pages. By following this method, you will have links going to many pages on your site, not just your home page. This is a much more natural way to build links to your website.

Related: Why You Want ‘Backlinks’ to Your Website

2. Too much keyword anchor text

As I mentioned in the previous section, your homepage is not the place to target all of your important key phrases. Use it instead for building the brand and creating trust with the search engines.

So, when you are building links to your home page, the majority of the anchors should come from your brand or some form of your URL.

Most SEO strategies want to build links that have their important phrases as the anchor, but according to the research done by SEOJet, only 3 percent of your links should have an exact match as an anchor text.

This principle of building branded links also applies to subpages, if you want your link profile to look really natural, you need to have some anchor texts that have no key phrase at all, some links with the URL as the anchor, and some with your brand as the anchor.

This is how other website owners would link to you naturally. It is unreasonable to think that anyone who ever linked to you because they loved your site would use your main key phrase as the anchor. So, you can’t do it either.

3. Not enough nofollow links

There is a misconception about nofollow links and whether or not you should get any as you build links for your site. If you look at it from a real-world perspective, the nofollow attribute was created so we as website owners could let Google know that certain links were advertisements and they shouldn’t be counted in the SEO algorithm.

In other words, Google expects that real businesses will have nofollow links because real businesses advertise. So, how do you expect Google to recognize you as a real business if you aren’t getting any nofollow links through advertising?

This is further supported by the fact that on average over 30 percent of links pointing to top-ranked websites are nofollow links. It is good to get nofollow links.

Related: How to Promote a Website Through Link Building in 10 Easy Ways

4. Not enough high-content pages

If you want people to link to your website naturally, then you should create amazing content ever written so people will link to it.

In fact, in order to build a lot of links to a page, you need good, in-depth content. If you’re not doing that then getting a lot of links pointing to a page of yours will not look natural.

Google would never believe that a post with 500 words would naturally get 100 links pointing to it. But, the ultimate guide on a certain topic with 5000+ words could bring in hundreds of links naturally. That is where you need to focus your content marketing efforts.

5. Bad blogger outreach practices

One of the best ways to get links from high-authority websites is to write a guest blog post for them. There are a ton of blogs that will accept your guest post, but the reality is most guest posts never get approved.

This happens for two reasons.

Your pitch email is a template that could apply to any blog in the world or your writing isn’t good enough. When you pitch a potential blog, don’t think of it as a one-time thing but as if you are building a relationship with a colleague. Reach out to your new business colleague and talk to them about their site and their needs.

Then pitch your guest article that helps solve those needs. After that, make sure you write an amazing article. If writing isn’t your greatest talent, then find someone who is a stellar writer and get them to help you.

If you are looking for a good outreach email to copy, check out this one in SEMRush.

Related: 5 Strategies for Better ‘Link Building’ and Improving Your SEO

6. No link building plan

This is the most common mistake almost all marketers make. They think that if they create amazing content, either people will naturally link to you (good luck with that to anyone who doesn’t already have a following) or you just need to go build links to that page and it will rank.

That is a vague SEO strategy. You might as well say, “Just go do stuff and you will rank.”

For some reason, people don’t treat links as they should — like money. Links are money. Links help you get on page one of Google search results. Page one equals money.

With your own personal money, you create a budget (read: plan) and then tell your money what to do. So, if you treat links like money, then you will have a plan in place and can tell your links what to do. You will plan out which anchor texts you need to get and how many so that you can keep a natural link profile. Using this SEO tactic, you will be able to get better SEO results with fewer links.

You would be surprised how much of an impact these things can have on your rankings, so give yourself a leg up on your competition by fixing these link building miscues.

Image credit: annebaek | Getty Images

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Chirag Kulkarni is a serial entrepreneur and advisor. He is the CEO of Insightfully, which is using AI to discover what employees skills and passions are to reallocate human capital within the enterprise. He has also spoken at Accenture, In…

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