A business is defined as an organization or entity engaged in industrial and commercial activities. Businesses have undergone a preposterous amount of change in the past few years. In 2023, businesses won’t slow down and they will deal with the effects of the pandemic, global economic changes, and the development of technology. In times like this, business owners are expected to create strategies that will help grow their businesses. 

Small Enterprises are those companies with fewer than 50 employees and this business is done on a small scale. Over the years, small entrepreneurs all over the world have faced a huge range of challenges. This includes fast development of technology, economic landscape, and developing work models. We see the continuous development of industries through the advancement of technology throughout the years.  The way we work has changed radically and predictions are evident.

Link Building as an Emerging Trend for Your Business

Link building is key for your business’ digital marketing strategy to reach its full potential. It helps to increase visibility, improve rankings in search engine results, and establish trustworthiness. It also increases referral traffic from other websites and builds relationships with customers. 

Building meaningful connections and improving your domain authority through link building services are essential to delivering a successful marketing campaign. The efforts may take time and require a significant amount of dedication, but the results are well worth the effort. Invest in link building services to give your business the best chance of success.

If you are asking for a way to grow your business, a proper mindset and motivation is the key. If you are looking for the trends to grow your business this year 2023, this article will give you a glimpse about trends. 

Top 7 Trends Small Enterprises Should Take Advantage

Here are the Top 7 Trends for small enterprises should take advantage of for this year 2023: Let’s start growing your business!

1. Accessibility on Workplace

For the past three years, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on industries and businesses worldwide. Many businesses have closed due to a decrease in income, while other sectors have seen a decline in activity as a consequence of economic hardship.

Nevertheless, in this day and age, entrepreneurs are turning to remote and hybrid working environments to keep business running. After all, access to the workplace is essential for the continued success of any expanding business, enabling employees to report physically contributing greatly to growth.

To make sure your business flourishes, it’s important to forge strong connections with the right people. Crafting relationships with influential figures and agencies can help you strategize for the future. Connecting with specialists who are proficient in their roles can really drive your business forward.

2. Employee Incentives 

Have you ever thought about giving incentives to your employees? Did you know that giving them incentives makes them more motivated and productive to work? Take a look at how you take action in creating a positive working environment with your employees. 

Giving incentives to employees can bring positive outcomes in business industries. Through this, you can create a harmonious relationship with your employees. If the employees are motivated to work, they will become productive and can increase their production. 

It is now high time to think about the relationship between employers and employees. The more motivated the employees are, the more products they will make. Engage with people who can truly work with passion and who are willing to be at your side to grow your business. Finding quality link-building can help you to grow your small business.

3. Inflationary Pressures

A high inflation rate affects growing businesses. If inflation is high, there is a tendency for everything to increase in cost. Small businesses are most affected by this inflation rate. For them to survive, business owners must adopt creative and strategic business plans. 

This type of business trend is about finding solutions to economic challenges. Finding smart solutions such as SEO link-building services to come up with an idea on how to properly manage the business and be aware of how to reduce business expenses. 

To minimize your expenses, instead of paying more for advertisements for your business, why not do quality link-building? This will help you to let other people know about your business through search engine algorithms. Through this, your expenses for advertisements will be lessened and will make your business grow. 

4. Metaverse

Nowadays, technology is a necessity in business. As the days go by, the use of technology became imminent even in the small business industry. Technology makes everything possible in the business industry. 

The Internet today became the main source of information. Millions of people communicate using internet connections. We socialize, we access information, we sell goods, and we do business transactions using the internet. 

Metaverse has something to do with the real-world economy by means of being able to sell, invest in products, and offer services. Through this, the metaverse has the ability for industries and individuals to be involved in economic activity. Metaverse is essential in organic link building because technological advancement helps grow your business. 

Why metaverse? Small businesses have the potential to benefit from the growth of the metaverse. By utilizing this technology, businesses can reach new markets, increase customer engagement, cut costs, and develop new products and services. 

With the right strategy, small businesses can take advantage of the opportunities that the metaverse presents and participate in the creation of an immersive, interactive digital world. With creativity, innovation, and a thoroughly-considered plan, businesses of all sizes can carve out a piece of their own metaverse.

5. Mobile Marketing

Any promotions or advertising products using smartphones or mobile devices is considered mobile marketing. It is an advertising strategy that uses mobile phones to send messages containing promotions and notifications about the product offered. It is much more affordable than the advertisements done on television and radio. 

Mobile marketing is an easy way to create a personalized promotion for the goods or services you offer in your business. It can be sent through SMS text messaging, MMS Multimedia messaging, or using an application to be downloaded on a mobile phone. 

6. Personalizing Customer Service

Fostering customer relationships is an effective way to measure customer loyalty. It is imperative for companies and organizations to take into account the trust of customers in order to advance their success. Prioritizing feedback from clients sets the foundation for a strong bond that can amplify business growth.

Personalizing customer service means understanding the desires and requirements of those utilizing your business. After all, fierce competition is rife in any industry – but it is true brand engagement that propels businesses forward. Accessing backlinks allows you to collate the personal data needed to customize experiences and turn small enterprises into burgeoning successes.

7. Email Marketing

A powerful and productive marketing channel to consider in these modern times would be email marketing. It can be in a form of direct client or digital marketing. Email can be used as a marketing strategy and to promote business. 

There are four types of email marketing:

• Email Newsletter
• Acquisition email
• Retention email
• Promotional email

In email marketing, small businesses can engage and acquire customers. Sending campaigns through emails is one of the best trends in small enterprises. The report shows that email is more effective at engaging audience attention rather than social media platforms. 

Small Business Tips

Here are some of the business tips you need to know to grow your small business:

• Create a business plan that reflects your goals and objectives
• Research your target audience and competition
• Create a website and/or social media presence to get your message out
• Build relationships with customers, suppliers, and potential partners
• Utilize email marketing or other digital outreach methods
• Take advantage of pay-per-click and search engine optimization
• Monitor your bottom line and stay focused on profitability
• Invest in quality talent or select freelancers to help with growth
• Take advantage of available grants or other government funding
• Remain informed about regulations and changes in the industry

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What Business Should I start?

You need to start thinking about how you want to run a business. Once you have decided, the next task is to create a plan on how you are going to start your business. Just remember that you are the person who will run your business, that is why you need to think about the things that suit you. Assess your skill, potential, abilities, and talents. You should also look for the resources that you need for your business. 

Q. What Do I Do First?

Once you decide on the business you are going to do and you are confident to start your business. The next thing to do is to look for a strategic location for your business, create a name for your business and look for your target market. 

Q. What do I need to Succeed in Business?

There Are only four (4) basic needs to become successful in business:

• Management Practice
• Experience in Industry
• Planning Ability
• Technical Support

These four basic needs will help you succeed in your business.

Takeaway

Small enterprises are often at an advantage over larger businesses as they can be more agile to take advantage of new trends and opportunities. For example, in 2023, small business owners should take advantage of trends such as leveraging AI, promoting user-generated content, diversifying into similar industries, investing in customer service and data security, utilizing industry-specific software, embracing remote work, and improving sustainability. 

Having a competitive edge is especially important in the small business space and staying ahead of the trends can be a crucial factor in success. Utilizing all the trends discussed here, small businesses can create a competitive environment where their companies can thrive.

The post 7 Trends That We Think Small Enterprises Should Take Advantage of in 2023 appeared first on SiteProNews.

This article will discuss what you need to know about link building tactics for small businesses.

Why Do Small Businesses Need Link Building Tactics in 2022?

There are many reasons small businesses need to focus on link building in 2022. Link building is a great way to increase your website’s visibility and organic traffic. It might also assist you in achieving a higher ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). If you’re not familiar with link building, it’s the process of creating links from other websites to your own.

This can be done through guest blogging, creating informative blog posts or articles, or engaging in online communities and forums. Link building helps search engines like Google understand your website’s relevance and authority. The more high-quality links you have pointing to your site, the more likely you will rank well in SERPs.

Link building companies have the resources and expertise to rank your website higher in search engines. If you want your small business to succeed in 2022, then consider investing in link building tactics. It is one of the most effective ways to improve your website.

What Are the Benefits of Link Building Tactics?

Link building tactics can provide your small business with many benefits. This includes increased website traffic, higher search engine rankings, greater brand awareness and exposure, and more leads and sales opportunities. Many link building agencies can help you achieve these benefits.

However, it is essential to choose an agency with a proven track record and can offer you customized link building services. Outsource link building to a reputed agency that can offer you the required services.

There are many agencies that claim to be the best in the business but only few of them can actually offer you what they promise. A good link building agency will have a team of experienced and skilled professionals who know how to get links from high quality websites. They will also know how to get links from authority websites in your niche.

When you outsource link building services, make sure that the agency that offers white hat link building services. White hat means that it uses organic strategies and methods that won’t possibly let Google tag your site as spam. Organic link building is the only option if you want to be on top of the game in the long run. 

Also, keep in mind to choose an agency that offers customized services. The agency should be able to understand your business requirements and objectives and then create a customized link building strategy for your website. The agency should also be able to provide you with regular reports so that you can track the progress of your link building campaign.

Types of Links That Matter Most for Small Businesses

Small businesses should focus on a few types of links when building their link portfolio. This includes but is not limited to relevant links from high-authority websites, directory listings, link roundups, local business listings, and resource pages. Relevant links from high-authority websites will be the most valuable for small businesses.

These are links from websites in the same industry or niche as your website. For example, if you are a plumber, a relevant link would come from a website about home improvement, plumbing or plumber salaries. Directory listings and local business listings are also important for small businesses.

These links help customers find your business when they are searching online for products or services in your industry. Link roundups are another great way to get quality links to your website. They are blog posts or articles that feature a collection of links to other websites. These links are usually related to a specific topic or theme.

Resource pages are another type of link that can be very valuable for small businesses. These are lists of websites, tools, or products that are helpful for people in a particular industry. For example, if you sell products for dogs, you may want to get listed on a resource page about the best dog products.

How to Identify Opportunities for Link Building

Link building can be a difficult and time-consuming task, but it’s important to do if you want your small business to succeed online. There are a few ways to identify opportunities for link building. Examining your rivals is one method. See who is linking to them and try to connect with those same websites. Another alternative is Google Search Console.

You can see which websites are in the same niche as your website and then try to contact those websites directly. Several link building agencies can help you with your link building efforts. These agencies will have experience in identifying opportunities and securing links from high-quality websites.

If you don’t have the time or resources to do link building yourself, outsourcing to a link building agency is great.

How to Run an Effective Link-Building Campaign

To run a successful link building campaign, small businesses need to understand the basics of link building. The practice of obtaining links from other websites to your own is link building. Link construction may be done in several different ways. One option is to contact other website owners and request a link.

This may be accomplished by emailing the webmaster or contacting them via social media. Another way is to create great content that other people will want to link. This can be a blog article, an infographic, or even a video. If you are unsure where to start with your link-building campaign, consider working with a link-building agency.

A link-building agency can help you to identify opportunities and create a plan of action. Also, It can also offer advice and assistance during the procedure. 

What’s the Future of Link Building for Small Businesses?

The answer may surprise you—link building is not going anywhere. In fact, small businesses need link building tactics more than ever to stay competitive. Link building agencies have become more popular in recent years as links have become more evident.

There are a few things to consider when deciding if link building is right for your small business.

The first is time. Link building can be time-consuming, so it’s essential to factor in whether you can take on this type of project.

The second is cost. Link building services can vary in price. So, it’s crucial to find an agency that fits within your budget.

The third is resources. Link building requires some technical SEO knowledge. It may be worth outsourcing the project to a link building agency.  Especially if you don’t have someone on your team familiar with this.

Conclusion

For small businesses to succeed in 2022, they will need to focus on link building tactics. Links are still one of the top three factors influencing how a site ranks. That is despite Google’s many algorithm changes over the years. Hence, small businesses should start focusing on their link building campaigns.

The post Small Businesses Need Link Building Tactics in 2022 appeared first on SiteProNews.

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

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

1. Guest Posts

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

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

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

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

2. Linkable Assets

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

Examples of linkable assets include:

• eBooks
• Whitepapers
• Infographics
• Templates

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

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

3. Comments on Relevant Websites

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

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

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

4. Broken Links Building

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

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

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

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

5. Resource Page Link Building

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

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

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

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

6. Expert Roundups

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

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

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

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

7. Business Directories

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

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

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

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

8. Brand Mentions

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

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

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

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

9. Competitor Backlinking

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

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

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

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

10. Backlink Exchange

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

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

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

Final Words

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

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

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

Thanks for reading!

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

Today, 65% of brands are using infographics for marketing purposes. They have the power to increase web traffic by 12%. Jeff Bullas, a top social marketer, claims that articles with images receive 94% more views.

Infographics hold incredible linking potential because of the following properties. 

• Persuasive and eye-catching visuals.
• Easy to read and understand.
• Boost SEO efforts.
• Image embedding is convenient for capturing links.

Here are eight comprehensive steps that will enable you to explore the full potential of infographics link-building.

Step 1. Create a Compelling Infographic

A compelling narrative and engaging design are at the heart of any successful infographic link-building campaign. Get your infographic designed professionally around an exciting storyline that revolves around a topic of audience interest. Choose a stunning design and related facts and statistics to support the story. 

Do extensive research, sort out your ideas, and finalize a topic of audience interest with peer review. The S.U.C.C.E.S (S) model is an impressive technique for coming up with an infographic that can capture high-quality backlinks for you.

Simple

A winning infographic typically revolves around a simple topic. Target a single idea in one infographic and keep the words, design, and layout as easy to follow as possible. 

Unexpected

When designing your infographics, try to hatch a schema. Your topic or storyline should be unique enough to elicit some kind of (positive) reaction from your audience. Something that shocks or excites the audience is sure to get circulated and catch links. 

Concrete

Nothing loses interest more than vagueness. Make your idea concrete with statistics and a clear design with actionable insights and realistic statements. Use sensory language to bring your narrative to life in the audience’s imagination.

Credible

With so much crappy content out there, people crave credibility. Support your narrative with statistics and facts from credible sources and create content within your area of expertise. If you’re a home security expert, it doesn’t make sense to create an infographic for helmets.

Emotional

Choose a topic that nudges the strings of your audience’s hearts. Find out what your audience craves. What makes them tick? What do they care about? What are their worries? Reflect how your offering caters to their emotions in your infographic. 

Stories

Every good content, in any format, has a storyline that captivates the audience. Weave an engaging and relatable story around your topic and available data. Make sure the infographic design supports that storyline flow. 

Shareability

We cannot complete the S.U.C.C.E.S technique without adding the essence of shareability. Even if you follow the model successfully, if your infographics aren’t shareable, then there’s no point in creating them for link-building. So make sure to assess the viability potential of your idea during brainstorming sessions. 

Step 2. Publish Your Infographic 

Before you begin sharing your infographic, publish it on your website. That way, the people who quote your infographic will have a place to link to give you credit.

Publishing it on your website also allows you to optimize it for search. Besides adding alt-text, a title tag, and other image search optimization elements, you can create a post around it to rank and invite links. 

The post can further analyze the results, explain the storyline and describe your reasons for creating the infographic. You can spell out how the infographic fills a gap or relates to your audience and why it’s important and trustworthy. If you can make a compelling case, this intro can convince many visitors to share and link to your infographic. 

Search engines are also more adept at reading words than scanning images. When you publish your infographic, each on-page optimization element will enhance its organic reach. For instance, check out this article and infographic from a fragrance brand. It generated a ton of links that helped it rank #1 for the keyword “how to apply cologne.”  

Conclude your post with an appropriate call-to-action (CTA). The CTA may ask the audience to simply share the post or check out your store, buy a product, make an appointment or fill out a survey form.

Step 3: Promote Your Infographic on Social Media

No matter how brilliant an infographic is, it needs a little nudge to get famous. That’s why sharing it on your social media platforms should be a prominent part of your link-building campaign. Since a long infographic may not fit well with the image dimensions on most platforms, you can share its snippets instead. They can arouse the audience’s curiosity to follow the link and access the complete infographic on your website.

Paid advertisements are also a great way to seed the infographics. That’ll broaden your reach, attract more eyeballs to your infographic and increase its linkability chances. Social media platforms are now using AI-powered resources to identify your target market and advertise your brand to them only.

Paid outreach is a short-lived solution, but if your infographic is awesome, an advertisement will be a nudge in the right direction. You can use the following social media platforms for both organic and paid infographic promotion. 

• Twitter: Utilize relevant hashtags and use pay-per-performance ads to increase the chances of getting backlinks.
• Facebook: Best for paid promotion because Facebook’s ad targeting has no match. FB ads are cheap and insanely effective at reaching the right audience.
• Pinterest: Pinterest supports infographics like no other platform. Being a visual search engine, it’s one platform you shouldn’t miss during infographic link-building campaigns.
• LinkedIn: Linkedin Sponsored Content is an excellent tool for generating leads. The paid advertisement on LinkedIn will reach professionals and experts. This means you can receive high-quality backlinks through Linkedin, especially in the B2B domain.

Step 4: Reach Out to the Related Linkable Audiences

Infographics can be an amazing link magnet, but first, you’ll need to get them noticed by industry influencers. Simply reach out to the market experts who cater to related linkable audiences. 

This way, you’ll ensure maximum reception and dispersion of your infographic. 

Linkable Audiences

Not all markets are receptive to infographics equally, so you’ll have to determine which markets related to your domain are likely to link to your infographic. Generally speaking, infographics are pretty popular in business, productivity, eco, pets, and lifestyle markets. 

On the contrary, markets catering to seniors, beauty bloggers, and high-end news channels aren’t too keen to publish infographics. They would prefer guides, beautiful imagery, and news stories (respectively). 

Let’s consider an infographic like this one by a skincare products’ brand. Since beauty isn’t a particularly linkable market, it’ll be best for the brand to approach linkable audiences from associated niches such as wellness, eco, and lifestyle. 

A Well-Crafted Pitch 

Your outreach pitch should be short and to the point. Mention the relevance, importance, and uniqueness of your infographic in as few words as possible. Conclude the pitch with a clear and direct call-to-action.  

Step 5: Offer to Write Custom Intros

Once your outreach pitch is accepted, facilitate its publication by providing embed links and custom written introductions to the piece. 

Many websites will require you to write a custom intro of 300 to 500 words to accompany your infographic. It will allow you to control the placement of your link, the anchor text, and the surrounding text. All of these are significant optimization factors for image search. 

Another perk of writing the custom intro is that you can control the context and narrative for your infographic. If and where it makes sense, you can also include links to relevant blogs or category pages on your website. As long as they fit and enhance the audience experience, you can generate significant referral traffic through those links. 

Step 6: Submit to Infographic Directories 

Directory links have gotten a bad rep, but bear with me when I say infographic directories are OK, as long as they are not spammy looking and have a decent DA. The backlinks from them may not hold as much value, but they do hold the potential to earn you many more links. 

Think of them as repositories with infographics on all topics. If you wish to quote an infographic to bolster your content, you’re sure to find an infographic on your required topic there. You can find dozens of infographic directories where you can submit your visual for publication.

Most of these publishers love to accept and publish your infographics, while some might require a custom intro or unique description with your submission.

The aim of submitting to infographic directories isn’t as much as about winning their links. Instead, it’s about getting the audience’s attention, explicitly looking for infographics to quote in their content. These directories can help broaden the visibility of your infographics significantly. 

Step 7: Track Your Published Links

Link-building is challenging and time-consuming, so it makes sense to keep track of the links, shares, and retweets you get so that you know your efforts are in the right direction. Moreover, as you build links, you can also lose them over time because of various reasons.

• The linking website may have deleted your post.
• They may have removed your link.
• They may have messed up your URL.

Tracking backlinks allows you to keep an eye on such instances. Typically, all you have to do is bring it to the linking webmaster’s notice, and you’ll get your link reinstated.

You can use backlink checker tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to keep an eye on your backlinks. Sometimes bloggers use the infographic without linking to the source on your website. You can use Reverse Image Search to find such websites and contact their webmasters for links. Thank them for featuring your infographic and offer them to use the embed code or link back to the source. 

Infographics are a smart way to increase your website traffic and ranking through link-building. They are a balanced mix of visuals and text which offer information in a digestible and engaging form. 

Link building is one of the most challenging aspects of SEO. However, it’s the most fruitful one as well. A well-designed, informative, and engaging infographic promises a boatload of quality backlinks. Therefore, investing time and resources in infographics is totally worth the effort!

The post How to Use Infographics for Link Building appeared first on SiteProNews.

And the site getting most visits is Google. The search engine gets a whopping 16,140,000,000 traffic every month in America alone. It’s also the site people use mostly when researching local products and services. 

When you want your company to be seen and heard online, it has to be listed on Google’s first page, too, as the first few results often get the most clicks. 

However, reaching the top isn’t as easy as building a website from a template and calling it a day. You need to employ a local search engine optimization (SEO) tactic called “link building” to get results. 

Here’s what you need to know and how your SEO service provider uses it for your digital marketing campaign. 

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is a lot like organic SEO. You research keywords people are likely going to use when looking for your brand, product, or services; and insert them in your copy and content. But local SEO adds location-specific keywords, like your business’s location and your service areas. 

For example, if you’re running an Italian restaurant in one of the neighborhoods in NYC, your keywords could be “Italian restaurant in New York City” or “best Italian resto in East Village.”

Your local SEO service provider may also register your business on online listing sites, like Google My  Business, Yelp, Yellowpages, and TripAdvisor. This makes it easier for customers to find you using “nearby” or “near me” searches. More than 80 percent of smartphone shoppers conduct these searches. 

This strategy won’t just get your organic results to the top; your business may also end up in Google’s “local pack.” 

Local packs are Google My Business listings suggested to visitors when they search for a local business. This pack often appears at the very top of the results, even above organic ones. So it’s a pretty valuable spot to get.

What is Link Building?

Another important part of SEO is link building. This process involves acquiring hyperlinks from other websites leading to your own site. Hyperlinks are what users click on to navigate from one webpage to another. Search engine bots, like Google’s, constantly scan pages for hyperlinks between sites. 

Apart from the quality of your website copy and content, Google also considers the number and relevance of the hyperlinks you get when determining your rank on its results. The more links you get from trusted and authoritative websites, like news outlets and popular blogs, the more likely you are to make it to the top of the results. 

Search engines see a hyperlink as a way for other sites to vouch for yours. Owners of websites are likely leading their visitors to your site because they trust and like it.

Penguin “The Punisher” 

Like every practice in digital marketing, there’s a right way to do link building. Some have tried to game the system by excessively linking their website on a farm of sites they or other people have created. This prompted Google to create the Penguin Update, an algorithm that looks for these link schemes and removes the sites that benefitted from them from the search results. 

How to Properly Build Links

Any link building campaign will come with different components. What those are will depend on your goals, the type of links you want to get, and your assets (e.g., content, services, or products).

Start with these building strategies to help you get more customers to your site and your door. 

Be Part of Your Local Business Community – If your business is based in a major city, chances are your location has a chamber of commerce. A chamber of commerce is an association that aims to promote and protect local businesses. If they have a website, Google likely regards it as an authoritative source. You’ll want them to link to you. 

One way to do this is to register your business with them. After this, they’ll likely list your company on theirs with a link to your homepage. This makes it easier for customers to find your website because it’s listed on both Google and the chamber of commerce site. 

Insert Your Details on Online Directories – The more details you have of your business, the better. But they need to be featured on sites your customers will likely visit. When researching local businesses, they often visit directories and review sites. Over 82 percent of customers read online reviews before they visit a local business. This is why getting linked to such sites is also important in increasing your search ranking. 

Fill out and verify your Google My Business page. Get listed on general directories and review sites, like Yelp and Yellowpages. Find ones for your niche and upload your details in them as well. The more relevant directories you’re listed in, the more links you get, and the easier it is for customers to find you. 

Work with Local Influencers and Sponsor Event Planners – Influencer marketing works because of the trust certain personalities have built with their followers. So their recommendations (or negative remarks) carry weight. Work with the right influencer, making sure they have the kind of followers you want to target. Some of the more well-known ones will have contact information and details about brand partnerships in their profile.

Local events often have websites and social media pages to help visitors learn all about them before they visit. Get publicity from them by being a sponsor. They’ll likely have a page dedicated to linking sponsors. Plus, you’ll have your logo and business name on their event banners, so it’s a win for both your physical and digital marketing campaigns.

Making it to the top of Google requires a lot of time and effort. Besides creating engaging content your customers will love, you also need to reach out and get linked on relevant websites. Use these suggestions to get legitimate backlinks that bring in results. 

The post Building Links for Local Businesses: A Quick Local SEO Guide appeared first on SiteProNews.

It can be even harder for bloggers since setting up a website isn’t really that difficult or costly anymore. Just get a host, install a template, and you’re pretty much good to go. 

If you’re looking for ways to grow your site, increase traffic, and find new audiences, you should consider link building. 

Of course, it’s not like you will get some backlinks and your blog will instantly explode (although that could easily happen). There are way too many factors that can have an influence on your success.

But, it is a reliable way of growing your online presence if you really put effort into it.

So, What Is Link Building?

It is the process of securing inbound links that point to your blog from other blogs or any other online resources. It is mostly done through outreach, but there are lots of other ways of building links that don’t involve this.

Although the highest-quality backlinks that bring you the most value will probably require you to do outreach in one form or another, we will return to that later.

How Exactly Does Link Building Benefit Your Blog? 

Link building is very good for your online presence in a number of ways. 

• First of all, it is an SEO ranking factor. The more links from big, respectable, high-authority websites with large audiences you have, the higher your own DR grows. 

If you get links from authoritative websites, Google will start viewing your blog as a trustworthy resource and that can help you improve your rankings quite a lot, which will, in turn, boost your visibility in search results. 

• Also, the website that’s linking to you is basically redirecting a percentage of their own audience to your site which is always a good thing. Of course, the amount of traffic will vary greatly from website to website and from link to link, but the potential is enormous.

• Finally, link building can even help speed up the indexing of your site. For example, if a crawler sees a link to your site on another resource, it will follow it. That’s also why you should interlink your own pages and posts. 

It can take up to a couple of months for a crawl bot to index your site on its own, but if you upload a sitemap or use a tool that informs Google about each time you modify your pages, crawlers will know exactly when and what to scan.

So, it is well worth investing your time in building some links. 

But How Do You Do It?

There is a number of ways you can go about link building, but let’s start with the ones that don’t involve any outreach since it’s usually much simpler. 

1. First of all, you can repurpose your own content and turn it into a different format. Convert a blog post into a YouTube video, for example, and put the link back to the original article in the description section. It’s not exactly Forbes levels of importance, but it is a place to start, and it is definitely a backlink.

2. Look for questions relevant to your niche in places like Quora, Reddit as well as other message boards and forums. So, if you run a bakery blog, you can answer questions like “How do I make pumpkin spice whoopie pies” or “best frosting recipes”. Give a genuine, informative reply and plug your content while doing so. 

What About Outreach?

But the juiciest links you will ever get definitely involves outreach. Let’s start with the simplest and then scale up the difficulty with each way of securing backlinks through outreach. 

• Unlinked mentions. Sometimes it just so happens that someone mentions your blog or brand but forgets to turn that into a real link, or doesn’t do it for one reason or another. It will most likely be enough to send that person an email asking to turn that mention into a link. Just be polite and clear about who you are and what you want. 
• Broken links and inferior websites. You can look for websites relevant to your niche and look through their backlink profile. You can do that, for instance, with the  Ahrefs SEO analysis tool. Look for dead links that point to now-missing articles on the same topics as your own content. Then, email the owner of that website, informing them about the 404 and offering your article instead.

It’s pretty much the same process for links to inferior content, except this time you’re looking for backlinks to articles on the same topics as yours, but worse. Shorter, less informative, etc. Email the site owner and offer your content in place of it, but be clear on how exactly it is better and why it will be beneficial for them to link to you instead of the other blogger. 

• And finally, guest blogging. This is the surest way to build quality backlinks, but also probably the most time-consuming. It is exactly what it sounds like, and you’re basically exchanging a piece of content for a link back to your own blog. 

The Best Way to Get Backlinks Is Through Quality Content

This is true for absolutely any link building strategy. You need to write something that’s worth linking to and clicking on. So, until you feel like you have written a solid article, you probably should concentrate on doing that before moving on to building links to it. 

Link Building Will Help Your Startup Blog Grow Faster

Link building is not a thing that you do and instantly win the attention of the entire Internet. You have to take tons of stuff into consideration, including your search engine optimization, competition, etc. 

But, remember that in order to build some real links, you need to have great content. Content should be always at the forefront of your attention and you need to know how to write it well and who to market it to. 

Once you’ve secured that, through link building, you can boost your traffic, metrics, grow larger audiences, and establish connections with other bloggers and companies.

The post What Can Link Building Do for Your Startup Blog appeared first on SiteProNews.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Do an E-commerce Site Audit

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

Review Your Backlink Profile

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Run a Sustainable Backlinking Campaign

1. Reach out to Sites in Related Niches

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

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

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

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

2. Guest Posting

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

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

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

3. Create More Content

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

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

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

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

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

4. Work with Influencers

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

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

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

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

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

5. Don’t Participate in PBNs or Buy Links

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

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

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

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

In Conclusion

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

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

From competitive link analysis to third-party outreach, there are many factors to continuously tweak and improve in your link building strategy. Most importantly, generating highly valuable backlinks relies on producing high-quality, valuable content. But that’s not going to be enough because your success depends heavily on strategically promoting that content. 

And what’s the first platform you think of when you hear “strategically promoting content”? That’s right, social media. 

That’s why aligning your content and social media strategies with your link building efforts is a vital approach to a smart SEO strategy. In this article, we’ll give you some useful tactics, tips, and insights to help you integrate all your efforts strategically and harness the power of social media for more successful link building. 

Creating the right type of content

Content and link building efforts need to be aligned from the very beginning. 

In other words, before you actually start producing content, you’ll structure your content strategy in regards to your SEO campaign. That’s how you’ll be able to create content around strategic topics and keyword lists, making it highly relevant to your target audience and able to satisfy searcher intent.

This type of approach sets you up for success because you will be producing content that your key targets will value and want to share with others. This includes your wider audience as well as bloggers, industry influencers, and any third-party website worthy of guest posting. 

That’s why you want to do plenty of research and keep your finger on the industry pulse to come up with link-worthy topic ideas and write content that truly provides value. 

Some worthy tactics include sharing:

• useful tools and resources. Determine which topics your audience needs help with and then share with them useful tactics, guides, tools they can use, and other resources. The more actionable your piece, the more compelled audiences are to share it with others.

• research. Creating research-based content is a great addition to your link-building efforts because people can reference it in the future in their posts. Stats are particularly link-worthy, just make sure you’re focusing on a relevant topic to align it perfectly with your SEO efforts. 

• influencer insights, which we’ll cover in more detail in a moment

It’s important to gain an understanding of your audience, what you can offer them that will meet their needs/expectations, and which type of content they’re most receptive to. With this understanding, you’ll be able to produce valuable content crafted for a specific audience, and that’s really what bloggers and third-party websites want from you. 

Sharing influencer insights

Craft content around the unique ideas promoted by influential people within your industry. These could be certain experts or key industry influencers – the point is that you will be referencing their authority and sharing their insights. 

An interview with an industry influencer is clearly a big boost to your content strategy, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that. You can feature influencer insights in roundups or by referencing their ideas and quotes in your articles. Get creative – and don’t hesitate to use social media to ask your audience what type of content they would like next from you. 

How does this tactic work?

This type of content is highly valuable and interesting to readers, who are eager to learn from someone that’s well-established as a trusty person within the given industry. Basically, you’re borrowing their influence. Consequently, another thing you’re borrowing with influencer-centered content is their audience, and that’s where social media comes in. 

By reaching out to these people either for collaboration or just to let them know you’ve featured them in your content (which can be done directly or through social media mentions), you’ll encourage them to share your content with their audiences – which are highly targeted and valuable for you. So this is not only valuable and highly shareable content, but it also taps into social media power. 

How will you identify the most valuable industry experts?

Start with your link building targets. You can also use FollowerWonk, which will pick out for you the credible profiles that are relevant to the given topic. This handy tool will sort them by social authority and the number of followers to find great opportunities. 

Get visual

Statistics show that infographics are one of the most often shared types of content – which really comes as no surprise, given their rising popularity over the recent years. Visuals are more digestible than textual content, we learn faster with them, and thus they’re bound for more shares and links. 

Now, creating infographics would certainly be a phenomenal boost to your link building strategy, but don’t overlook the basics either. Make sure to include compelling as well as useful visuals in your content – everything from featured infographics to charts, graphs, screenshots, and inviting or even humorous (depending on the context) images that pique the reader’s interest. 

Lastly, get visual when promoting your content via social media, especially Twitter. Research has shown that tweets with images get 150% more retweets than those without.

Give before asking for shares in return

Social media marketing runs on this motto. 

Now, social shares may not be a ranking factor, but they are most definitely beneficial to your link building efforts. It’s simple – the more your content is shared, the more people will see it, visit your site, and hopefully stay on it for a while and convert into subscribers. 

But you can’t just churn out post after post about yourself and what you’re doing. Nobody will be listening. Social media is about establishing authority, participating in a community, and building relationships. No matter the size of your enterprise, you need to approach social media as a valuable community member. Be a part of the ecosystem by engaging your audience, sharing helpful content, staying active, facilitating conversations, sharing others’ posts (with credit, of course), etc. 

Then, when you actually do post something promotional, such as your latest guest post, and tell people “hey, check it out and give it a like or a share” – you’ll have a loyal and engaged audience to take you up on your offer. 

Connect with bloggers before pitching

The previous point sums up to one vital tip: build social relationships before building links. The people you especially want to focus on are the ones you hope to collaborate with. Get acquainted with them on social, follow and share their work, and make yourself known to them. Facilitate conversation by mentioning them in your posts and engage with them by replying to their tweets. 

This will open the doors to collaboration and make them more trusting of you so that when you send them a pitch email, you won’t be a complete unknown. If you’re cultivating a genuine and interactive social media presence, they’ll have seen how collaborating with you is beneficial to them even before you send out your pitch. 

Ultimately, by properly aligning your efforts across these fields, you’ll give momentum to your entire digital marketing strategy. And remember – it’s all a continuous effort. None of it is set-and-forget. Focus on building relationships with industry influencers and providing value to your audience, and the tactics you do employ will have a lot more gravity. 

The post Boosting Your Link Building Efforts: How to Align Social Media and Content Strategies appeared first on SiteProNews.

1. Backlinks are the number one ranking factor on Google

The top three search results for every keyword invariably have a large number of backlinks. Several studies have proven this and hence many tend to believe that getting more backlinks will mean ranking high. The truth is, great content and several other SEO factors help them get a lot of high-quality backlinks that helps high ranking on the SERPs.

Search engine optimization involves several factors that have to be worked upon. Framing an SEO strategy for a business and constantly monitoring it to see the results is what helps to rank on the search engine. Link building is one of the factors in SEO that works along with the others in order to bring up the website ranking. 

2. Penguin does not trigger negative site ranking

Penguin is an algorithm that catches malicious links on websites. These malicious links are caused by spammy link building resulting in negative SEO. To avoid this, remove the links that are qualified as spam on your website, avoid link farms & networks; pursue good linking strategies to recover from negative SEO.

3. Domain authority determines the quality of a link

Domain authority (DA) is not a ranking signal. Websites that are link farms can also have a high DA, which proves it is not a ranking signal for a link. Domain authority is one of the many criteria that determine the quality of a link. 

Quality of a good link is determined by:

• Linking domain has high traffic value
• Linking domain offers content that is relevant to your offerings
• The page linked-to offers value to users
• Anchor text is contextual

4. Link exchange is spamming

Exchanging links between websites or asking a domain owner for a link is spamming – this is a common myth. People do reach out to directories, publications, etc. for a link. The activity between all the parties is the same – to exchange links. The only criterion is to reach out to sites that will benefit you.

There is a lot of content floating around the internet that says when you get a backlink from a website that reaches out to other sites for a link – it will lead to a manual penalty. The only activities to be avoided are – resources link building and broken link building. Building quality backlinks helps to improve website ranking. 

5. Several backlinks to a single piece of content can attract a penalty

People who misunderstand the concept of link building acquire many links for a single piece of content, even if the links are of low-quality. They concentrate only on acquiring links regardless of quality. When Google bot reads their website and constantly finds such links, the search engine slaps the site with profile devaluation and a manual penalty. 

Acquiring a link requires checking for certain factors to ensure the link will impact positively on your SEO. When the content on your web page is of high quality, it will obviously attract high-quality backlinks. Constant creation of high-quality content creates a cycle of high-quality link building for your site. This is what every business aims for – organic link building.

When your site has constantly low quality and irrelevant links, this is what attracts penalty. Good quality links to good quality content do not attract penalties.  

6. Guest post adversely affects link building

Guest posting demonstrates your domain’s authority. When you publish content regarding your products and services on other websites that offer something similar to your offerings, the visitors to that website or directory get to know your brand. This establishes brand value and awareness.

The myth that guest posting has a negative impact on link building came into existence because people started guest posting only to get a link. This distorted the purpose of the guest post, hence the search engines penalized when irrelevant links were placed. Such actions were mistaken by the public at large to an understanding that guest posting was inadvisable. 

Now that the myth is clarified, we understand that guest posting is still important. Guest posting gives you no-follow links which benefit digital marketing by increasing your brand visibility. Guest posting is the right way to market your business in a highly relevant and trafficked publication. 

7. Link building is all about increasing the number of backlinks

Link building is not only about increasing the volume of links to a website. It is about building relationships with other websites for marketing. When you reach out to sites relevant to your business, you build long-term relationships with other businesses and key influencers in your industry. Just like companies get to know their competitors and other businesses in their industry when they have a brick and mortar office, similar activity is performed online to build relationships. 

Building good relationships within your industry will help build your brand. When you create content based upon industry data and publish it on another website that is relevant to your industry, it shows your expertise. You can showcase this piece of content while reaching out to new business and establish a similar friendly relationship.

Here are a few benefits of link building:

• Helps in getting indexed quicker in search results
• High-quality incoming links bring more visibility to your blog
• Increases a brand’s visibility across the web 
• Showcases the brand’s value and authority

Link building can be performed using:

• Guest blogging
• Infographics
• Videos
• Directory submission
• Writing high-quality blog posts on your website 
• Dofollow blog comments
• Dofollow social bookmarking websites

Link building is an important part of any SEO strategy. Formulating a link building plan involves choosing the form of content to be created based on the audience. The next step would be to reach out to the platforms/websites that accept the kind of content you want to market. Reaching out to other businesses in your niche might require modifying your plan. 

Just like any strategy, a link building plan also needs to be monitored constantly to see if the results match with what was planned. Any intermittent changes should benefit the SEO in the long-term. Search engine optimization is a long-term process, and so is link building. It takes a few months to show results, but it is the organic way to constantly improve your website ranking.

Conclusion:

Link building strategy has to be customized time and again based on your SEO strategy. Link  different pages of your website to other sites and refrain from linking only to your home page. It is a good idea to keep a note of all the sites reached out to and linked to, so you can check on the linked websites frequently. Always follow the best practices of link building to see the best results for your online marketing campaign.

The post 7 Worst Link Building Ideas Holding Back Your Campaign appeared first on SiteProNews.

This Blog is about coming to a natural understanding of SEO basics, without forgetting that SEO evolves and develops very rapidly, just like many other aspects of the internet, so let’s rephrase and make this: A Quick Guide to SEO Basics in 2018. We present you five tips, but not any out-of-date, complex or irrelevant suggestions. We have simple, actionable SEO tips that genuinely enhance online positioning with search engines and result in higher ranking every time.

Let’s get started with SEO basic tips for 2018:

1. Relevant Keywords and doing your Research

One of SEO ´s fundamentals is keywords. Do you have a clear understanding of what it is that your potential customers may look for when they use search engines? The rule here dictates that it is usually a combination of the two central aspects of your business: what you do and where you do it. So, for instance, it could be Data Entry Services in London or Customer Service in Northampton. Next, you´ll see some things you can take advantage of, to make sure that you optimise your keyword selection big time:

Keyword Brainstorm: Start thinking about everything that is relevant or related to your business – what it is that you do, location, and offered services – and write it all down. When you finish the list, start combining keywords to get a more precise combination of “what you do”, with “where you do it”. This will produce a list of keywords that can be used for SEO purposes in a positive fashion.

Keyword Research Tools: Try looking for some online tools that are a real aid when it comes to finding keywords. In fact, Google has a useful tool available for that purpose, and in general, you can see both paid and free options that are equally useful.

Do your keyword research: Usually, when you search for something through a search engine, you see keyword suggestions while you type, so you can use such ideas to include in your keyword list.

The critical element here is to come up with words that mean the same (in essence) and have the same intent. Let’s explain this with an example:

Imagine a brand that competes in the Home Automation market, with smart smoke alarms so that a good keyword list would be one with all related terms included; something like this:

• -Smart Smoke Alarms
• -Smart Home Smoke Alarms
• -Home Automation Alarms
• -Intelligent Alarm Devices
• -Smoke Alerts for Home Automation
• -Smart House Alarm
• -Smart Smoke Alarms UK

You can go the extra mile and actually create a file with relevancy statistics for each keyword, but if you choose not to make things too complicated, that’s ok. The whole purpose here is for you to focus on the details and impact of each keyword. An excellent additional tip is always to put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes. That way you can get a clearer vision of what they want and how you can provide that.

2. Meta Descriptions and Page Title Optimisation

Ok, your keyword list is ready, so now it’s time to do some Page Title optimisation. It is essential to understand that this is not the webpage title that can be seen on the actual webpage. This “Page Title” is a vital element of Website Design and it involves the HTML element. It usually can be found as part of the website´s control panel, or if you have an SEO plugin, you can also see it there.

Keywords should smoothly and naturally fit into your page´s title. Keep in mind what Page Titles mean in this context: they are what users see as search results. Remember that to avoid any confusion with the actual Title that can be seen on the webpage. This tip is to enhance the website’s choice of words, so users can’t help but click on your link.

A good mixture of “what” and “where” should suffice, but if you manage to include a “who”, so much the better. Keywords are all about the “what” and hopefully your relevant SEO keywords are at the very beginning. Here’s an example again using Home Automation:

-Smart Smoke Alarms in Guilden Sutton / Cheshire – Allender´s Smoke Alarms Service

We can add a little bit more to be included in other types of searches.

-Smart Alarms for Smart Houses / Allender´s Smoke Alarms Service

-Home Automation Solutions in UK / Allender´s Smoke Alarms Service

Depending on the nature of your business you can include other terms geared more towards marketing than SEO. Such words can be: available 24/7, free quote and things like that. These techniques strive to improve the chances of the user clicking on your website. In the long run, SEO must meet with marketing because SEO is all about advertisement. So a good relationship between your SEO and marketing is a definite must. Marketing is good for SEO but must be used (not overused) wisely.

Once satisfied with the Title, we can move on to Meta Description. Regardless of how important the impact of page titles is for SEO, you cannot afford to overlook meta descriptions because they back up the accuracy of the info contained in your page title. Meta descriptions act like the final push potential customers need to click on your website.

We can easily use this blog as an example. The title: Five SEO Tips for Beginners gives you a pretty good idea of what I´m going to be discussing. Using a good meta description tells readers that the text that followed the title was created according to the central premise. Include all information possible to help your brand to look more professional in the eyes of your viewers.

Although meta descriptions don’t actually contribute directly to search engine rankings, they do help to get clicks from users. Remember that getting ranked and listed is just a tiny part of the whole process of turning SEO content into something that translates into revenue. Getting many clicks is relevant in terms of search engine logic. SEO is very important, but so is your website´s meta description to make it click-worthy to customers.

The 2nd tip here is: Blend descriptive titles and meta descriptions with a hint of marketing included to assure better positioning and potential customers.

3. Page Content Optimisation

Now that you are past the meta description and page title optimisation stage, you can move forward to Page Content Optimisation. The keyword list you generated should give you plenty of related terms with the same intentionality, and now you need to incorporate such keywords into your writing in a natural fashion. The first thing to do is to identify the different elements that comprise a website: Header Tags, Body Content and Imagery.

Headers and subheadings can be sufficiently enhanced by including useful and effective keywords. Remember to let them flow naturally; don’t push terms unnecessarily.

In the best way possible create the content that best describes your brand and services. Again, use as many keywords as possible, just make sure that you include them naturally. Don’t overthink this, just come up with SEO content that uses as many keywords as naturally as possible. Don’t trouble yourself with keyword numbers or specific terminology. Keep it simple and natural.

Imagery can also be fully enhanced with SEO. You can optimise an image and the alt text description for it. SEO is definitely a win-win situation for both the consumer and the merchant. Many leads can come from well-planned SEO.

The 3rd tip here is: Keep optimising your headers, text and images to be able to hit a much broader market and a whole lot more potential customers.

4. Enhance your business’s online presence

Every SEO tip and suggestion is implemented on your website, but this is not the only place where your brand can be found. Remember that the internet still has business directories that can also have details of your company. Now what most people don’t know is that web search engines do take data from these sites in order to determine how trustworthy a website can be.

Make sure you constantly update your information on those business directories and ensure that your address and contact info is accurate as well as the summary of your products and services. It is crucial that you include as many keywords (the very relevant ones) in those business directories as you can, and it wouldn’t hurt to also include keywords about locations.

Social media can be used similarly. Use social media profiles to show the online community the basics of what your company does and where its located.

The 4th tip here is: Keep your information updated on social media and business. Make sure you explain what the nature of your business is.

5. Build useful links

Building links for SEO purposes is not an easy task, but it is vital to drive the visibility of relevant and competitive keywords. It does have a downside though which is why it’s so important to do it wisely because it can positively or negatively impact your rankings depending on how it’s done.

Being strongly visible in search engine results does require a number of links that are continually pointing to your website. Website search engines (like Google) do use links to determine how relevant a website can be. But don´t take it from us, take it from the giant itself. Here´s Google’s take on link building: 

“Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.’”

So Links are okay as long as they are indeed relevant, and that is the way in which Google’s search engine algorithm works. Evidently, Link Building is one of the most onerous parts of good SEO, and it’s something that constitutes a real impediment for website owners trying to begin with SEO. Below you´ll see some useful strategies for successful link building that  will enhance your website’s visibility in the search engine rankings.

Renowned directory sites: We already covered directory sites or business listings, like Yell.com. Do your research on your keywords and locations that rank first and focus your attention on those. See the market in which you develop your business. If customers are likely to see business directories and such, then it is advisable to pursue listings in them.

Competitor´s links: Look at your competitor’s links and seek link opportunities there. We´re not telling you to copy every link there, but try to figure out the strategies being used by the big brands in your industry. Try to put yourself in the customer’s shoes here too.

Testimonials: Add testimonials of companies that are involved in the development of your website and SEO. The company in charge of doing the design of your website, the company in charge of your SEO – they all work for you, are local and can become positive, relevant links.

The last SEO tip here is: Quality links are tough but help you develop engaging SEO for your website.

There you have it, five useful and relevant tips for SEO in 2019. Next year, some things considered valuable here might be replaced by others. We don´t know. SEO evolves very quickly. Right now these are the tips that every website designer or business owner should read if they want to know the basics of highly successful SEO practices. Start right now to give your brand the SEO it deserves in a clear, concise and successful manner.

The post 5 SEO Tips for Beginners appeared first on SiteProNews.

With the help of search engine optimization, you can place your website on the first page of a search engine results page for a strategically defined set of keywords. As your website gets a higher ranking,  chances are better for receiving increased traffic to it. This leads to more sales and more customers.

How many people do you think actually explore the third to tenth page of a search engine results query? Most people only look at the first ten to twenty search results or the first to the second page of the results. SEO can rank your site in the first bundle of search results. Optimization is the only method that will help you get good results. There are many things that have to be considered for Search Engine Optimization such as-

1. Optimization Report 

2. Link building service 

3. Keyword Analysis 

4. Competitor Analysis 

5. Initial Traffic Analysis 

6. Article and Blog submission, and many others.

Having your site top-ranked for a hot keyword can effectively improve your traffic and therefore your profits as well.

Here are 9 free ways to boost your rankings

1. Directory submissions – The most efficient way in getting lots of backlinks quickly is to take a good directory list and submit your link to every single directory. Make sure that you get a new backlink every day to ensure long term success. The perfect way to do that is by viewing all new directory announcements in the Digital Points forum Solicitations and Announcements section.

2. Article Submissions – Nearly each single article directory on the web is free. Article directories are a good complement to ordinary directories because they will bring you more diversity in your backlink structure. Write a good article with 800 words or more and include a backlink to your site and submit it to all major article directories. Hopefully, if your article is good, some webmasters will add it to their own sites, so you’re not only getting backlinks from the article directories themselves, you are also getting free backlinks from real sites, which is very valuable in search engines like Google.

3. Wikipedia.org – A decent source to gather incoming links. Do you have any content that is associated with any Wikipedia article? In this case, you can edit the Wikipedia article and input your link on the link page. Verify or check that the content you are linking meets Wikipedia’s standards, otherwise, your link will be removed as quickly as it appeared.

4. On-page SEO – On page improvement was the most important SEO technique out there before 2001. Today, it’s not the decisive factor that it once was but it’s still very useful to do some basic on-page SEO. Confirm that your targeted keywords are included in the title, the headline and also the footer. Make sure that you always offer some fresh content on the pages that you specifically want to optimize. Add an RSS feed. But most importantly, make sure that the on-page SEO does not overshadow content and cause your site to look less useful.

5. PRWeb.com – Post an announcement or press release for your website. It’ll assist you a  bit in the rankings, but most importantly, if your announcement is good, you’ll get some natural links generated by PR Web’s users.

6. Myspace.com – Lately MySpace has become one of the hottest sites on the internet. It has also become one of the most effective places to plug your web site. Simply build a profile for your web site there, and then try to get as many friends as possible. Post links to your sites on other profiles, post bulletins of your web site and, if it’s good enough, you will get some natural backlinks in return.

7. Ask for backlinks – Send out original emails to other webmasters that have similar sites. Tell them what you think of their sites or anything associated with the theme of their sites. Once you get a reply, answer them, tell them something more and then ask for a reciprocal or a one-way link.

8. Forums – Forums are not only a great place to debate or discuss things but also a decent resource for generating backlinks, feedback, and traffic. Place a link in your signature. Create a post regarding your web site or even better, make a post about something and then make a related link to your site. Note: – choose inactive forums; they tend to be better than the active ones and your links will be displayed over an extended time.

9. Create satellite websites – Put up a site with some content and include a backlink to your site, then submit the satellite web site to around a hundred directories so it will be indexed by Google. This is quick way to get a high-quality backlink.

Also, Search Engine Optimization is an area where there are several paid alternatives that may help you in obtaining a good ranking. Some of these are paid submission, paid on-page optimization, paid directory submissions, paid link exchanges and paid links. If you’re good with doing directory submissions, you can charge others for doing directory submissions and, if you’re bad at on-page SEO, then hire someone to do it for you.

The post SEO – 9 Free Ways to Boost Your Rankings appeared first on SiteProNews.

However as every SEO who reads too much into Google’s Webmaster Guidelines will notice they state the following, “Any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme. This includes any behaviour that manipulates links to your site…” Well that’s it; we may as well pack our bags and hang up our hats because according to this statement the entire practice of SEO could be considered a link scheme.

Details, details, I hear you say…and I agree. In my personal opinion, and this is coming from 10 years experience in the SEO and web development industry, the quote “If you build it, they will come” from the film, Field of Dreams (yes the baseball one with Kevin Costner in it…) can’t ring any more true.

So why wait for the next authority site or expert blog to give you a link. Why not build those sites yourself, in your niche and become what they are, YOUR OWN link prospect.

I often see SEO’s going after guest posts and spending time trying to get a link back from sites with what I would call average authority in exchange for some sort of content. It’s all quite an effort. Here’s a concept I no longer want to keep in-house:

Finding a high authority / quality aged domain for a microsite:

1. Search web directories for web sites which no longer resolve
2. When you find one, check if the domain is available or not
3. If it has expired/is available, use Moz Link Explorer or something similar to check back links
4. Then use Archive.org’s Way Back Machine to check how long it has been a live website in the past. Re-map the sitemap of the old pages.
5. Recreate the site on a something like WordPress, with new original content on the old page URLs – make sure you reuse all the old URLs to ensure you capture any other link juice.
6. Wait for Google to re-index.
7. Enjoy some nice PR!

The beauty of this is that if it was an old site it will regain trust straight away after being indexed and effectively only costs you some time and the registration fee…

I have my own PHP script which I built to do the first 3 steps automatically for me. I can input the URL of a page within a directory (or any site for that matter) and the script checks the status code of all outgoing links on that page.

If it finds any links which return 400 or 500 codes it then queries the whois to see if it is registered or not. If not it queries a link checker API and confirms authority/PR of domain (if any).

Test Microsite Examples

An example of a micro-site (albeit an incomplete one) is Winchester-furniture.co.uk.

Winchester-Furniture.co.uk Vital Stats

• Reg’d in April 2012
• Live online since 2001 – see Archive.org
• PR1, DA12 and PA25 – see Moz
• Ranks 1st position for “winchester furniture”
• Gets 200-300 organic search visitors per month

Another example of a potential micro-site ready to go live for a client (no links inserted yet or graphic design done) is GoldBuyers.org.uk

GoldBuyers.org.uk Vital Stats

• Acquired in August 2012
• PR2, DA25 and PA37 – see Moz
• Can They Be Considered Legitimate?

The best micro sites I have developed using this method include a web hosting portal which had an instant Page Rank of 4 and Domain Authority of 37 when I reg’d it. It is a .co.uk domain first registered in 2002 and has a really great link from a DA 84 .ac.uk domain.

I have even found one with a PR5 Harvard.edu archived backlink, some with a combination of DMOZ, BOTW and Yahoo Directory links (all PR3’s) and all with clean link profiles and a long history in Archive.org.

Now who can tell me that Google wouldn’t consider this good quality? This method simply re-instates historically trusted sites and puts them back to good use.

This isn’t spammy; the microsites we create are unique, with fresh content and are genuine authority sites for their niche. I think where SEOs fall down is by trying to cut corners. Making poor quality microsites with little effort and spamming the heck out of the link profile – treating it like nothing more than a feeder site when in reality it can be a valuable “outpost” for your main website.

So, to summarise, treat your microsites the same way you would a client’s website. Ask yourself what incremental traffic do they bring and do they add value to the overall user experience? If you can answer both of these questions with a “yes” you are onto a winner.

I’m really looking forward to putting Winchester-Furniture.co.uk to good use when the right opportunity comes along; simply to put the natural traffic it receives to better use (which many historic sites benefit from.) If you followed this method your clients could benefit too.

Please let me know your thoughts on microsites in the comments below and feel free to add any questions you might have (and I’ll help where I can!)

The post Are SEO Microsites Still a Legitimate Link Building Strategy? appeared first on SiteProNews.

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

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

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

1. Pay-Per-Link

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

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

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

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

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

2. Irrelevant linking

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

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

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

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

3. Over-optimised links

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

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

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

4. Dead links

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

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

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

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

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

5. Weak linking sites

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

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

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

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

6. Spamming comment links

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

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

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

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

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

The peculiarity of local SEO is that when Google detects some local indicators like: geographic keywords, location data provided by your phone, or the “near me” phrase, it uses a separate algorithm to supply you with three most relevant location- wise results. The whole point is that all links are relevant until they are local (come from the same geographical area as you). What is more, according to the latest interview with Greg Gifford, the Director of Search and Social at DealerOn, it doesn’t really matter if the source of a link is unrelated to your business. However, if a link is local, relevant to your business industry, drives relevant traffic to your site, and builds your brand’s reputation, it’s also a great addition to your local SEO. 

So, now that we know that geographical factor is the core one, let me introduce you to some powerful local link building strategies that I personally find essential for growing local business.

1. Competition research

Spying on competitors is a good idea mostly for two things: you can get an instant overview of their backlink profiles and also borrow some ideas for new backlink opportunities. By the way, SEO SpyGlass can offer you a helping hand with that. Just enter your competitor’s URL and then you’ll be supplied with everything you need to know about your competitor’s backlink profile (the percentage of dofollow backlinks, the total number of links, the backlinks’ IP diversity, and the number of linking domains).

2. Guest posting for local websites

Guest posting can be a very powerful and mutually beneficial strategy if implemented right. The thing with guest posting is that you can not only gain links and visibility, but also attract a new audience accompanied with website traffic. Since we are talking about local link building, it’s only right to find some local blogs or newspapers and offer them your content. The fastest way to find some guest blogging opportunities is by using a correspondent search method in LinkAssistant.

After picking Guest Posting as a research method, specify the keywords, and in a couple of moments the whole list of guest blogging opportunities accompanied with contact emails will be there for you.

What I want to drive your attention to specifically is choosing the right topic for your guest post. It’s crucial, because this is basically what your success depends on. I would highly suggest keeping in mind these 4 things while picking the topic:

1. Try to pick a more or less relevant and trending topic to your host site’s content.
2. It’s only good when the topic adds some value to the host site.
3. Have a look at what your competitors are writing about.
4. Make sure there were no similar posts lately. 

Now that you’ve decided on potential host sites and chose the topic, it’s time for pitching your guest post. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential publisher and write a personalized and standing out from the crowd e-mail. 

3. Find unlinked mentions

Sadly enough, the majority of mentions a brand gets are unlinked. The good news is that the situation might be improved, because Awario is there for you to save your mentions. There you can comfortably keep track of all your mentions be it your business name, a site, a certain competitor, or even a hashtag. After you have entered the keywords you want to get mentions of, and the tool has supplied you with the full list of mentions, the only thing left to do is go through them to spot those that are without a link. Then get in touch with the website owners and ask them nicely to add one.

4. Local influencers

It doesn’t matter where you are located in the world, there are most likely to be some local influencers like: government websites, local news media, or influential bloggers in your area. I would highly suggest going niche-specific in that case. If you are a local bakery, it would be only right and logical to find some sites that overview local restaurants, for instance. Things become a tiny bit easier when it comes to bloggers, because you can offer them collaboration. If you are a local book store, you can offer a couple of your books to a book blogger for linking to you in the next review. But you can also go another way. Once you’ve formed the list of influencers you are willing to collaborate with, search for some events or conferences they are hosting in the near future. Attend the event, exchange contact information, and share your thoughts of how you can help each other. Who knows, maybe you’ll end up becoming friends with a member of the local media.

5. Local business directories

Citation building is another great way to win local links. In a nutshell, citation occurs when your business name, address, and telephone number are listed together. So, the easiest way to carry out citation building is through local business directories, which, as a rule, vary according to location or industry. Almost every city has its small directories, so it’s not going to be difficult for you to spot them and get your business listed. The easiest way to find business directories that would suit your location and business is by typing into Google the search queries below:

Location “recommended links”

Location “add your site”

Location “add your business”

Location * directory

6. Creating a local resource page

This is another win-win strategy that has proved its effectiveness for lots of local website owners. I’m sure that you’ve come across some sites with a couple of pages devoted to so-called “additional resources”. As a rule, those pages are stuffed with some useful information and links to other related sites. This is what SEOs call a resource page. Basically, it can touch upon any topic of your liking from “the best coffee spots” to “where to repair a car”. Just think of what suits your niche the best and make it useful for the people in your area. For instance, if you are a local children’s clothing store, you can consider creating a list of the best restaurants for children in your area. Once a resource page is created, make sure you didn’t forget to inform everyone you’ve included in a list and ask them politely for mentioning you on their resource pages as well.

7. Local press mentions

Beyond any shadow of a doubt, getting local press mentions is always pleasant. However, if you are a small business owner, there’s not much chance of local newspaper representatives queuing up at your door. So, the initiative should come from you. 

Naturally, the first step to being mentioned by local press is to find local newspapers that you find worth cooperating with. If you live in the US, I highly suggest using the US Newspaper List (USNPL), which sorts newspapers by states and cities. Depending on the nature and the size of your business, you may also want to get in touch with some local college or small neighborhood papers. Of course, this can take more time, but could be of great help if the audience or the newspaper matches your targeted area. 

Now that you have a list of newspapers to contact, it’s time to pick the exact person that could be potentially interested in covering your story. Instead of mass emailing to a bunch of journalists, I would suggest a personalized approach. Reach out to a person who typically covers stories somehow related to your business or location. By doing that, you are significantly increasing the chance of getting your desired local press mention.

8. Visiting your prospect’s location

Although the process of local link building is far from easy, quite often a high quality link can be earned through human relationships and interaction. What I mean here is that the better relationships you have within your community, the greater your chances are to earn backlinks. Contacting people not via email but in person will give you more points with those that can potentially link to you. So, come out of the shell and tell them about your business.

Here is a list of places where you can acquire some profitable connections:

• Local meetups
• Conferences and tradeshows
• Suppliers
• Manufacturers
• Networking events
• Associations
• Chamber of commerce / Rotary clubs

9. Hosting a community event

If there’s ever a sure-fire way to earn offline visibility, tons of new links, mentions, and citations, that would definitely be community event hosting. The only condition is that it needs to be done right. First of all, you should decide on the nature of your event. For instance, if you are a local flower shop, you can make a workshop on floristry. Even if you run a plumbing business, you can consider organizing an Easter egg hunt for children in your neighborhood. What is more, I would highly suggest organizing an event at your location. This will help you to promote your business name, location and telephone number to many outside sources and is a ready-made citation. Another thing to consider is an event #hashtag. Add it to all marketing promotions for your event so that people can use it to share photos and tag you. This is how you can get social media mentions. Make sure to create a details page on your website and contact your town’s websites for placing your contact info.

10. Providing a scholarship 

If you have a school or a university in your neighborhood, offering a scholarship would be another link building strategy to go for. Providing even a two hundred dollar scholarship to local students can be extremely rewarding both for your organization’s reputation and SEO. The point is that the majority of schools and universities have separate scholarship pages on their websites that link to external websites offering scholarships. 

What is more, scholarship opportunities are extremely easy to find. You can either contact schools or universities directly or type “school name” + scholarship into Google.

I decided to leave this strategy to the end because obviously it may not suit everyone. But still, if you have some budget to spend on providing a scholarship, the strategy is worth implementing.

Conclusion

Although quality link building takes time and effort, the outcome is worth it. What is more, local link building has a lot of pluses which you can wisely use for your own advantage. By implementing at least some of the above listed link building strategies for local SEO, you can grow your business immensely as well as earn lots of useful connections and authority in your area. 

Please feel free to share your favorite link building tips and experience with local SEO.

The post Top 10 Link Building Strategies for Local SEO appeared first on SiteProNews.

For those of you who don’t know, a backlink is a link coming from any site to your site. Ranking without links is almost next to impossible in even a moderately competitive niche.

Wait, a guy just offered me 55 links on Fiverr!

Not so long ago, you could easily influence rankings by purchasing backlinks on Fiverr and other platforms. You could be pay someone to put your link on their site. You could spam the internet. Then, Google launched the Penguin update in April 2012.

Penguin was designed to deal with low quality backlinks. You shouldn’t be worrying if you haven’t indulged in paid backlinks or spamming websites to oblivion. However, any sketchy link building on your part should ring the alarm bells.

Link Building Strategies for E-commerce Stores That Work in 2018

1. Fake Funny Product

Creating a fake product that will attract links/shares isn’t easy. It isn’t even guaranteed that it will be successful. It will either explode, getting you loads of links or it will flop, leaving you with nothing.

Start by thinking up a product which is funny or too good to be true. Brainstorm with your designer to create images of the product. Get a copywriter to write amusing descriptions.

If you don’t have a designer/copywriter at your disposal, you can easily hire them on Upwork.

The success of this tactic depends on your ability to mask the product as real, at least initially. The possibility of such a product being real elevates the chances of garnering links, social shares, and media coverage.

A few examples of this tactic that worked really well are:

1. KÄT: The World’s First Cat-Proof Sofa – The Swedish giant, IKEA launched a sofa/cat scratcher hybrid for those who love their pets. They claimed to have launched it after a year-long study on how people live with their pets. 

The results? It ended up attracting 140 links from 30 referring domains and a combined 5500+ social shares across all channels. Not bad, right?

2. Canned Unicorn Meat – ThinkGeek.com offers canned unicorn meat which as per their claims, tastes like rotisserie chicken but with a hint of marshmallow sweetness.

1.04K Referring domains.  Mind = Blown.

Just like any other piece of content, don’t expect this tactic to work if you don’t promote it. Work with your outreach or PR team to get the word out in front of bloggers and journalists. Share the product on your homepage and on your social media channels to get maximum eyeballs on it. 

Also, you might want to consider the launch date. April 1 may seem like the most appropriate time but be wary since you’ll have many similar products and campaigns being executed by your competitors and there is only so much that the media can cover.

2. Infographics

A huge majority of webmasters looking to build links to their e-commerce site completely overlook infographics. Well, guess what? They are missing out. 

If you are on a small budget, infographics can be your saviour. However, you will need to be creative. 

For a successful infographic-based link building campaign, you need to work on three things: 

1. Idea
2. Production
3. Outreach

You will have to start out by thinking of an idea which hasn’t been abused by others in your niche. Once, you have thought of a viable idea, make sure to bounce it of your co-workers/employees/friends etc. What might seem like a good idea to you, may not resonate with your target audience.

Then, move on to actually producing the infographic. Hands down, this is the step which will make or break your campaign. If you are going for a data-based infographic, double check that your data is correct and has trustworthy sources. You don’t want to end up red-faced.

If gathering data is important, designing the infographic holds equal value. You shouldn’t expect a data dump to attract links and get news coverage. Your infographic should look nice and present your data in an easy-to-digest format.

Finally, carry out your outreach. Promoting your content is as important as producing quality content. Identify the people that you want to publish your content, send them a personalized email and try to push your story.

Online Doctor Superdrug created the following visual which displays the perception of the perfect woman in different countries. All they did was get graphic designers from different countries to photoshop the “ideal woman” according to them.

This static visual ended up getting almost 2000 backlinks from 800+ different websites. Mission Accomplished. 

3. Guest Blogging

This one is rather simple. You provide your expert opinion to a website in your niche and in return for your fantastic content, they give you a link back to your website, usually from the author bio.

Before anyone says that guest blogging is dead, I would like to say that it isn’t, your approach is. Guest blogging was abused as a method to gain easy backlinks to such an extent that Google’s then head of the webspam team, Matt Cutts, released a statement saying “Stick A Fork In It, Guest Blogging Is Done”.

However, to make guest blogging work, all you have to do is change your methodology. Stop treating guest blogging as simply a way to get a backlink. Aim to provide genuine value to the audience. By doing so, you and your brand will start being recognized as an authority in your niche.

Finding guest blogging opportunities isn’t difficult. For those who aren’t familiar with the functionality of advanced search operators, I’ll be discussing a simple tool, DropMyLink.

Before going any further, decide upon a few broad keywords that are related to your niche/industry, e.g if you sell dog food online, your industry-defining keywords will be dog, pets, dog food etc.

Now, sign up on dropmylink.com, login and stick in your keyword. Set the category to “Guest Posts” and search using different footprints. Don’t go deep into the SERPs, check out the first three results and move on to the next footprint.

You can also use a platform like MyBlogGuest to find sites in your niche that accept guest posts. Sign up for your account and get started.

If all else fails, you can use the following advanced search queries which I personally use to find the best results for guest blogging:

1. [keyword] inurl:write-for-us
2. [keyword] intitle:”Write For Us” 
3. [keyword] intitle:”Guest Post”

An important step that you must undertake is to gauge the quality of the site that you have found. While this can be hard to do if you aren’t SEO-savvy, there are a few methods you can follow to ensure the quality of a site:

• Check the Domain Authority of your target website. Domain Authority(DA) is a metric to gauge the authoritativeness of a website developed by Moz, an SEO tool company. Although it isn’t the only thing you should be focusing on, it can give you a rough idea. Aim for sites with a DA upwards of 40. You can check a site’s DA using this Domain Authority checker tool.
• Check that the site has actual traffic. Use a tool like Alexa or similarweb.com to check the traffic levels of a website.
• Check the quality of previous guest posts. The content should be good and it should have some sort of engagement level, either in the form of comments or social shares.

Once you have decided your target website, it is time to pitch them. I don’t recommend using an email template for a guest post pitch. However, there are a few factors that you should consider before writing your pitch:

1. Mention 2-3 quality topics that you would like to write about
2. Personalize your email – use the person’s name, talk a bit about their blog.
3. Show that you are an expert on the topic and qualified to talk about it.
4. Be polite, even if you get rejected.

Following these points should land you a guest blogging gig. Now, all you have to do is deliver excellent content. Also, don’t disappear once your article is published. Engage with the users and answer any questions they might have.

4. Content Marketing

It is with good reason that everyone keeps on chanting “content is king”. High quality content is more likely to get shared and is easier to build links to. As you might have noticed, few people link to a product or service page.

Before diving into content marketing, it is important to actually know what qualifies as high quality content –

• Well-researched.
• Accurate
• Supporting images/videos/graphs/data
• Up-to-date
• Simply, super valuable

Look for content gaps within your industries. If you are able to think of a topic that people search about but no one has written on, that is your cue. You can also follow the Skyscraper technique by Brian Dean. It simply involves creating a piece of content that is better than anything that already exists. Also, do yourself a favor and read this brilliant piece on content creation by Jason Acidre. You can use a tool like Ahrefs or Buzzsumo to find content that is loved by the public and attracts the most shares.

Once you identify a topic that has a good chance of succeeding, get down to writing. If you are not a writer, hire a freelance writer. Just make sure that they are highly knowledgeable about the topic.

Finally, work on promoting your content. Don’t believe in “If you build it, they will come”. Reach out to website owners and bloggers in your industry and tell them about your article. If possible, spend a little on promoting your content through Facebook & Google ads.

Also, don’t give up on content pieces if they don’t succeed at first. Keep revisiting and updating them. Over a period of time, they can amass a decent amount of links.

5. Steal your competitor’s backlinks

No link building campaign of mine would be complete without a deep and thorough competitor analysis. Your top ranking competitors have probably put a good amount of effort towards building links(hence, their rankings). It would be criminal to ignore the links they have built.

To get a sneak peek into your competitor’s link profiles, get a tool like Ahrefs, Majestic or Moz. All these tools have free/paid trials so it won’t cost you much. Or you can simply order a backlink report for any of these tools for $5 on Fiverr.

I personally prefer using Ahrefs. Once you have access to your competitor’s link profile, have a look at the Referring Domains section. Sift through each of the links.

You can easily uncover any niche or location specific directories that you can submit your site to. You can also find sites where you can submit your company profiles for easy backlinks.

However, we are going to go a step beyond the simple competitive analysis. Find sites that your competitor has guest blogged on – you have a good chance of getting accepted too. 

Finally, uncover the type of content that is attracting the most links for your competitor. This is a clear indication to you about what type of content works and brings in the most links. 

Competitor analysis isn’t simply about duplicating links. It is a means to find out what is working for your competitor. Once you know what has a higher chance of success, you can do it again by adding your own personal touch to it.

Conclusion

Honestly, you aren’t going to rank without links. Link building has gotten difficult over the past few years and will probably get tougher as Google gets smarter.

To stand the test of time and avoid a penalty from Google, make sure that you aren’t paying for links or engaging in shady link schemes. Build links through quality content and proper outreach.

Finally, I would like to end by quoting Bill Slawski of Go Fish Digital – “The links that people are most likely to follow are the ones that end up carrying the most weight.”

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