Ah, links. They can be friend or foe in an SEO campaign. Do them well, and improve your organic search rankings. Do them poorly, and have them devalued by Google, or worse, get a search engine penalty.

Even though Google says links have less impact now than they used to, we know they are still important to SEO. But they are not the end all be all.

Remember that for every keyword query, the algorithm itself will vary the weighting percentage of inbound links. So link-building campaigns (we like to call them link-earning campaigns) need to be focused on quality and not quantity.

That said, it’s important to get links right. But where to start? How do you actually create a framework for a link-building program, and what steps do you take? Here, I’ll discuss a three-step framework for a link-building, or rather, a link-earning campaign:

• Understand your current link profile
• Build the program step by step
• Monitor backlinks and prune as needed

FAQ: How can I create a successful link-building campaign to enhance my website’s SEO?

1. Understand Your Current Link Profile

One of the first steps you are going to take is to understand the link profile that your website already has.

There are many reasons that you may already have a good or bad link profile. Link profiles are built up over time from many initiatives. Perhaps prior employees sought out links for the website or maybe a web design company that did not know better added links, or a prior SEO vendor had a link-building campaign.

Whatever the reason, you want to get a clear view of it. Google ​Search Console is a good place to start gathering link data. ​Choose “Links” on the navigation menu to get a view of the top linked pages and more.

To get a fresher, more complete list to begin your link audit, add data gathered from several link-tracking sources: Bing Webmaster Tools, Majestic Site Explorer, Moz’s Link Explorer, Ahrefs, or our SEOToolSet.

Our SEOToolSet provides link reports to give you a better understanding of your link profile. The link report is integrated with Majestic, one of the leading link analysis providers.

Next, you need to evaluate the links — are they good or bad? Check out our article on a step-by-step guide to link pruning for more information on how to do that.

2. Build the Program Step by Step

A link-building program can be quite involved; however, if you have a framework to follow, that’s half the battle.

Here are some important steps in a link-building program:

1. Finalize keywords
2. Analyze link opportunities
3. Create quality content
4. Attract links
5. Using link attributes
6. Ensure search engines are aware

Finalize SEO Campaign Keywords

You will want to establish which keywords to target in your SEO program. This will guide your link-building efforts. As you are securing links, you may ask for specific anchor text with your keyword in the link from the site that is linking to you.

Earning too many links with the same anchor text may be seen as spam. So variety is key. Once you have the keywords established, you will:

1. Select the keyword.
2. Select the webpage it will be associated with.
3. Select the sites that you want a link from for that webpage.

Analyze Link Opportunities

First, you need to uncover potential linking opportunities. This requires research online and with SEO tools into the areas that are related to your business or services.

You will also want to know who your competitors are and who they link to or get links from. If a site links to your competition, consider getting that site to link to your site as well.

There are a few guidelines to keep in mind as you look for link partners:

• Look for a relevant partner site and keep your links targeted.
• Understand the link’s SEO value, the potential traffic and its contribution to experience, expertise, authority and trust. An SEO professional should be able to help you here.

Create Quality Content

Links do not exist without content. And quality links do not exist without quality content. This is a critical part of your link-building campaign. So before you begin the process of getting links, you need to have quality content that supports E-E-A-T.

Attract Links

While quality content is an important first step to getting the links you want, sometimes you need to be creative in getting that content in front of the right people.

There are several “old” approaches to obtaining links that are still used by many today. That includes the approach of begging for a link by email or paying for links (including guest posting — unless, of course, you are using a link attribute that indicates it’s a paid link, in which case it will not count).

Once you have done your research to analyze keywords and understand what target websites you’d like to gain links from, it’s time to get creative. If you spend a little time each week reaching out to the people who might benefit from your content, you can make good progress.

For ideas on how to do this, check out 50 ways to get quality links.

Use Link Attributes

It can be important to tell search engines what kind of links your website is obtaining. One reason is that if it is a paid link and it is not indicated as such, search engines might look at it as violating their guidelines.

You can qualify your links with Google by using certain technical attributes within the <a href …> HTML tag. These attributes tell search engines when a link may not be totally relevant to your site or other important things, like if the link is paid.

The attributes can hint to the search engines that you have a link but to not follow or count that link. That way, you can provide a useful link for your site visitors but steer clear of looking like spam.

Ensure Search Engines Are Aware of Your Links

As time goes on and you get more links, you want all the pages of your site and those linking to you to be crawled and indexed by the search engines. Search engines can find and crawl these links naturally and eventually, but encouraging a manual process can speed it up and get results faster.

To submit your own webpages to Google, go to the “URL Inspection tool” in Search Console, enter a URL, and click “Request Indexing.” For more details, see our article on How to Submit a Website to Search Engines.

3. Monitor Backlinks and Prune as Needed

A key part of the link program is to monitor your website’s link profile. Once you know how to find backlinks and evaluate them (see Step 1), you can remove the lowest quality links from your link profile as needed.

This is a proactive approach and complements Google’s Penguin signal (which is now part of the core algorithm). This particular signal analyzes a site’s link profile and devalues any links that look suspicious.

Once you have found links you don’t want, you can begin the process of removing them. See our step-by-step guide on link pruning for how to do that.

Get Started

With the link-building campaign framework outlined in this article, you have the necessary steps needed to start earning quality, relevant links the right way and to maintain your link profile for years to come.

For expert tips and strategies on how to build a quality link campaign, get our free e-book The New Link Building Manifesto: How To Earn Links That Count.

Looking for help with your link-building campaign? Let’s work together.

FAQ: How can I create a successful link-building campaign to enhance my website’s SEO?

A well-crafted link-building campaign is the cornerstone of effective SEO. Understanding the nuances of this process is crucial for enhancing your website’s visibility and authority in search engine rankings.

To commence, it’s imperative to comprehend your current link profile. Leveraging tools like Google Search Console and SEO analysis providers like Majestic and Moz can provide a comprehensive view. Evaluate the quality of existing links, distinguishing between assets and liabilities, laying the foundation for a robust strategy.

Building the program step by step is the next critical phase. Keyword finalization is pivotal in guiding your link-building efforts. Opt for variety to avoid the spam tag; choose specific anchor text for links, aligning with your overall SEO program. Analyzing link opportunities involves meticulous research into your business niche, competitors and potential partners. Identify and target relevant sites, ensuring each link contributes to experience, expertise, authority and trust.

Quality content is the linchpin of successful link-building. Without valuable content, acquiring quality links becomes a formidable challenge.

Ensure your content resonates with your target audience, establishing your website as an authoritative source in your industry. Creative promotion strategies, such as personalized outreach, can amplify the impact of your content, attracting the correct links organically.

Utilizing link attributes is a subtle yet essential aspect of the process. By qualifying links with Google through technical attributes in HTML tags, you signal transparency to search engines. This step prevents potential penalties for violating guidelines, adding a layer of trust to your link profile.

Lastly, continuous monitoring of backlinks is paramount. Embrace a proactive approach, regularly evaluating your link profile. Prune low-quality links to align with Google’s algorithm updates, ensuring sustained improvement in your SEO performance.

Mastering the art of link-building is an ongoing journey. By comprehensively understanding your link profile, strategically building your program, and continuously monitoring and adapting, you pave the way for sustained SEO success.

Step-by-Step Procedure:

1. Analyze your current link profile using tools like Google Search Console.
2. Evaluate the quality of existing links, distinguishing between valuable and potentially harmful ones.
3. Finalize keywords that align with your overall SEO program.
4. Choose specific anchor text for links, ensuring variety to avoid being flagged as spam.
5. Research and analyze potential linking opportunities in your business niche.
6. Identify competitors and analyze their link profiles for inspiration.
7. Create high-quality, valuable content that aligns with your SEO goals.
8. Promote your content creatively, using personalized outreach to attract organic links.
9. Use link attributes in HTML tags to qualify your links and signal transparency to search engines.
10. Regularly monitor your backlinks, proactively identifying and removing low-quality links.
11. Stay informed about Google’s algorithm updates and adapt your link-building strategy accordingly.
12. Continuously refine and adapt your link-building program for sustained SEO success.

The post 3 Steps To Create a Better Link-Building Campaign appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Today, I’ll give a brief overview of internal links — what they are, why they are important to SEO, and how to do it.

• What are internal website links? 
• Why are internal links important to SEO?
• How do you do internal linking for SEO?
• Internal linking from day one and beyond
• FAQ: How can I optimize my website’s SEO using internal linking?

What Are Internal Website Links?

An internal website link is a link that points from one webpage on a website to another webpage on the same website.

Some examples of common internal links include:

• The main navigation at the top of a website
• The footer links at the bottom of a website
• Any contextual links embedded within the content on a webpage
• Those related-content links that suggest other content on the website
• Those links within a webpage (aka “fragment” or anchor links)

Why Are Internal Links Important to SEO?

There are several reasons why internal links are important to a website’s SEO strategy. Here are a handful:

• Satisfy users: Internal links help your website visitors discover content while they are on your website. Besides providing related information that may be helpful, keeping visitors on your website longer is one goal of SEO.
• Reinforce relevance: Internal links help search engines figure out what your website is about. The way you organize your website’s content through its internal links can make you more relevant to show up on page one of the search results.
• Help search engines: Internal links help search engines discover more of your content. As search engine spiders crawl your website, links help them get from page to page to discover and index more pages.
• Distribute PageRank: Internal links can boost the authority of any given webpage. When one high-authority webpage links to another page on the same site, it passes some of its authority to the page it is linking to.
• Strengthen ranking pages: Internal links, especially breadcrumbs, pass PageRank upwards and define a clear expertise hierarchy (silo identification).

How Do You Do Internal Linking for SEO?

One of the best strategies for internal links is SEO siloing. SEO siloing is a concept we invented in the year 2000.

The goal of SEO siloing is to organize your website content through internal links so that:

• It is easy for website visitors to find and access your content, and
• It is easy for search engines to crawl and understand what your website is about.

This creates a better user experience. At the same time, siloing makes your website more relevant for certain search queries (aka the target keywords you are after).

SEO siloing involves two main activities:

1. 1. Create an internal site structure through the physical directory. Physical siloing is the practice of organizing webpages by the URL structure, using a hierarchical website directory. For example, one URL directory structure might look like this:
      1. herdingcats.com
         herdingcats.com/how-to-herd-cats
         herdingcats.com/how-to-herd-cats/equipment-needed
         herdingcats.com/how-to-herd-cats/pitfalls-to-avoid
   2. Create an internal link structure through a virtual directory. Virtual siloing is the practice of interlinking your similar-theme pages through contextual links. For example, using anchor text to link from one blog article to another blog article on the same website.

Depending on the website, changing the directory structure to implement physical siloing may not be possible. However, virtual siloing is more important and should be sufficient if you establish clear themes via links.

To learn more about how to do internal linking, see:

• A Jam-Packed Guide on Internal Linking for SEO
• SEO Siloing: How to build a website silo architecture

Internal Linking from Day One and Beyond

Internal linking for SEO takes a lot of thought, planning, and implementation. It’s best to build this strategy into every new website, and then take it into consideration every time you add a new webpage to the site.

Review your content, internal links, and silos on a regular basis. Ensure that the silos are organized well and that you take advantage of any internal link opportunities in your content. And check out our New Link Building Manifesto for more on how to tackle your linking strategy.

How can we help you with your SEO needs? If you’d like a free quote and consultation, contact us today.

FAQ: How can I optimize my website’s SEO using internal linking?

Optimizing your website’s SEO requires a multifaceted approach, and one crucial aspect often overlooked is internal linking. When done strategically, internal linking can significantly impact your website’s performance in search engine results pages. Let’s delve into the world of internal linking and discover how to harness its potential for optimal SEO outcomes.

The Power of Internal Links

Internal links are the navigational pathways that connect different pages within your website. They serve as signposts, guiding visitors through your content while aiding search engines in understanding your site’s structure. These links facilitate a seamless user experience, ensuring that users can easily explore related content that matters to them. From a search engine perspective, well-placed internal links highlight the hierarchy and relevance of your pages, which can boost your chances of ranking higher.

Crafting a Strategic Approach

To maximize the impact of internal linking on your website’s SEO, it’s essential to approach it strategically. Start by identifying cornerstone content—those core pages encompassing your site’s main topics. Embed links to these pages within your other articles or blog posts. Additionally, consider using descriptive anchor texts that provide context about the linked content. This not only helps users but also assists search engines in understanding the linked page’s relevance.

Establishing Content Silos

Content siloing, a powerful internal linking strategy, involves grouping related content under overarching themes or categories. Create a web by connecting articles of similar categories. This will demonstrate your expertise on a subject matter, helping users search for further details while sending an important signal about your knowledge base to search engines. Implementing this strategy fosters a clear content hierarchy that can enhance your website’s visibility for relevant search queries.

Balancing Quantity and Quality

While internal linking is valuable, overdoing it can lead to clarity and better user experience. The key is to balance the quantity and quality of internal links. Prioritize linking to content that genuinely enhances the reader’s understanding or provides additional value. As you create new content, incorporate links to existing relevant pages. This enriches the reader’s experience and ensures valuable pages receive the attention they deserve.

Transition smoothly between these paragraphs to offer a comprehensive view of optimizing website SEO through internal linking. Each section contributes a unique perspective, culminating in a holistic understanding of the topic.

Step-by-Step Procedure for Optimizing Website SEO through Internal Linking:

1. Identify cornerstone content to establish a foundation for internal linking.
2. Prioritize user experience by embedding relevant internal links within your content.
3. Choose anchor texts with clear context and relevance to linked pages.
4. Implement content silos to group related content under overarching themes.
5. Strategically interlink articles within the same silo to create a comprehensive web of knowledge.
6. Focus on content quality, linking to pages that genuinely enhance the reader’s understanding.
7. Avoid overloading content with excessive internal links that could confuse readers.
8. Create a balance between the quantity and quality of internal links for optimal results.
9. Incorporate internal links naturally within the flow of your content.
10. Regularly review and update your internal linking strategy as your content evolves.
11. Use descriptive anchor texts that give users a clear idea of the linked content’s purpose.
12. Monitor user behavior and engagement with internal links to gauge effectiveness.
13. Establish a clear content hierarchy that aids users and search engines.
14. Leverage internal links to guide users to valuable resources on your website.
15. Link to cornerstone content from relevant blog posts or articles.
16. Consider using breadcrumb navigation to enhance user experience further.
17. Analyze the performance of different internal linking approaches and adapt accordingly.
18. Experiment with variations of anchor texts to see which ones yield the best results.
19. Optimize internal links for mobile users to ensure a consistent experience across devices.
20. Stay informed about the latest SEO trends and best practices for internal linking.

The post Internal Links: What, Why, How appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

• Links must be high-quality
• What are backlinks?
• Types of links, the good, the bad, and the ugly
• How to get high-quality backlinks 
• Where does my site stand now with backlinks
• FAQ: What are the consequences of using bad or low-quality backlinks?

Links Must Be High-Quality

Good links help SEO: They improve rankings, increase PageRank, and support site authority.

Bad links hurt SEO: They destroy rankings, give no PageRank or authority, and can be poison.

And the average site owner cannot tell the difference.

It’s common to get an email offering you followed links on high domain authority websites. Sounds good — the rates are reasonable, and all links help, right?

Well, absolutely, the opposite is true. Google has strict rules about link schemes in its webmaster guidelines (more on that later). For sites that violate those rules, it is only a matter of time, and playing the odds seldom, if ever, wins on the web.

So there is a right way and a wrong way, and we teach the right way to earn links.

In the last lesson, you learned how to structure your website’s internal linking. Now, it’s time to turn your focus outward. Here, you learn how to safely get those all-important external links to your website.

Links were the lifeblood of search engine optimization for a long time. Ever since Google cofounder Larry Page invented PageRank back in the late ’90s, links have been a primary way search engines determine rankings. Still, today, getting quality inbound links from other websites (aka “backlinks”) is a crucial SEO ingredient — if they are obtained naturally and safely within search engine guidelines. Links are still important, but far less now.

A pet peeve: “Link Building” is often done external to your own assets with purchased links, spinning content, posting elsewhere, and more. And such link-building is not SEO. Posting onto your own site content worth linking to is SEO. Yes, SEO is also marketing, but not all marketing is SEO. Is buying a billboard ad considered marketing? YES, but it is not SEO. We consider a backlink as a term when another site links to you, but you are surprised by it. If you bought the link then that is marketing (a paid ad), not SEO.

That does not mean backlinks are not valuable at times. It just says you can get links from other marketing activities than SEO.

In this lesson, you’ll learn:

• Why high-quality backlinks are so valuable
• How to develop a link-earning strategy rather than a link-building strategy
• What kind of backlinks to avoid
• How to attract links that increase your site’s link popularity and rankings

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are incoming links (excluding ads) that point from another website back to your own.

Search engines evaluate a site’s backlinks (or inbound links, or external links) to help determine the site’s popularity, authority, and relative importance on the web.

What Is Link Popularity?

Link popularity comprises the number of links and the authority of the websites linking to your site. Search engines recognize when a site is popular based on the links that point to a page on the site from external websites.

Link popularity is factored into search engine algorithms, most famously through the use of Google’s PageRank technology. In Google’s PageRank algorithm, each hyperlink to a webpage acts like a vote of confidence for that page. It’s expected that websites will naturally recommend high-quality resources to their readers. That’s the simple concept behind PageRank (and the link measurements used by other search engines).

For example, a site about fishing would link to a site where someone can get a fishing license. A site about stamp collecting might link to the U.S. Postal Service. And a marketing blogger might link to this SEO Guide.

Because of the emphasis placed on link popularity, increasing the number of quality links to your site can improve your search engine ranking. Research from Backlinko shows that the No. 1 result in Google has an average of 3.8 times more backlinks than positions No. 2 to 10.

But we have seen sites with fewer but higher quality links outrank those sites with more links. Link popularity is not a numbers game anymore. Even more important than the quantity of your backlinks are the quality and relevance of the sites where those links are coming from.

If enough relevant, quality sites link to you, then your site becomes a more trusted authority by association. So you want the best sites, not the most, linking back to you.

Understanding the basics of establishing good links will help increase your site’s link popularity and thus improve its SEO rankings.

Types of Links: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Unlike a popularity contest, the PageRank system doesn’t give every backlink an equal vote. In fact, some backlinks can even have a negative impact on your website’s ability to rank.

In an effort to stop sites from trying to manipulate PageRank and game the system, search engines analyze links and even penalize sites suspected to have unnatural backlink profiles.

In the next lesson, you’ll find out more about search engine guidelines and avoiding Google penalties in particular. But for now, suffice it to say that there are:

• Good backlinks: Beneficial links come from authority websites in your field, experts who write about your topic or non-spammy sites that have content that relates to your site’s subject.
• Bad backlinks: Links from unrelated websites (for instance, a dog training website linking to an insurance brokerage) don’t do you any good and could look unnatural.
• Ugly backlinks: Links coming from link farms, spam sites, sites known to sell links, guest posts or low-quality content (such as pages with lists of random links and no text) can put your site in hot water.

Google defines link schemes as:

Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.

The examples listed in Google’s webmaster guidelines in its “link schemes” help file are the kinds of things you want to avoid when thinking about link building.

To be safe, focus on link earning instead of link building. “Never buy links” is something Bruce Clay repeats in every SEO Training class.

Definitely ignore those emails that offer you “20,000 links for $29.00” — otherwise, you will rue the day you burned down your own site rankings for (knowingly or unknowingly) getting involved in a link scheme.

Outbound Links Matter, Too

If you link to quality sites in your field, then your site seems higher quality by association.

However, the destination page and the whole website must be about the same topic as your linking page. This makes sense from a user point of view. The new page must be relevant if the link is going to be useful to your readers. If the two pages are not on a related topic, the link may appear unnatural to search engines and hurt your SEO.

One thing to recall is that the probability of a link being clicked may influence how much PageRank passes through that link to a destination page. In general, links high on a page are more likely to be clicked, and the search engines know it. Google patents imply that they might decrease PageRank transfer if the link is unlikely to be clicked.

SEO GUIDE BONUS VIDEO

Is website ranking really all about links? And is link popularity what search engines really care about the most?

That’s what critics of search engine optimization sometimes claim. This classic video by former Googler Matt Cutts explains.

How to Get High-Quality Backlinks

Links should be a byproduct of having expert content worth linking to. That is our methodology. Links should be earned.

In order to improve your link popularity and earn better SEO rankings among the major search engines, you need to attract links to your website — not beg or barter (or spam) for them. To earn backlinks and stay within search engine webmaster guidelines, here are some SEO best practices for attracting links.

Link-Building Strategies That Work

• Make high-quality content: The key to getting quality inbound links is having expert-level, unique content. Your site will accumulate backlinks naturally over time if people find your high-quality content valuable or enlightening enough to share with others. (See Steps 5 and 6 of this tutorial for tips on creating great content that uses keywords.)
• Keep your content fresh: A regular supply of new high-quality articles or other content can get people’s attention and help you compete against sites that may have only static, stale content. In fact, Google instructs its quality raters to look for content that’s “added and updated over time” as a sign of a quality site. How can you do this? Posting regularly in a blog, building up an articles section for your site, or adding new support pages are all ways to freshen your content, strengthen your brand, and help establish your website as more of a subject matter authority.
• Promote your content in social media: Social media posts that link to your website do not pass link popularity in most cases. Nevertheless, social media gives you a way to publicize your content and attract traffic (that is, visitors) to your site. The buzz and traffic you generate from social media, especially if you take time to interact with people there, builds your audience and can net you some worthwhile backlinks as people write about your content — not to mention earning you fans and customers!
• Link to experts: Within your own website, occasionally include links to reputable sites and subject matter experts in your field. Do this primarily for your users’ benefit, to give them related resources about the subject on that page. Linking to known authorities helps legitimize your website in the search engines’ eyes, too.
• Use traditional PR: Press release links can no longer pass PageRank directly to your website safely, as they once could. (SEO tip: Make sure to put a rel=”nofollow” attribute on links to your site in your paid press releases, so the search engines won’t look at you suspiciously.) However, you can use press releases to seed ideas that you hope a media outlet will pick up. If a journalist writes about your news, that article will likely have a high-quality link pointing to the original source — your website. For this traditional PR technique, news that’s non-promotional and interesting to many people works best.
• Create videos, podcasts, and other shareable objects: What topics could you turn into engaging videos or audio podcasts? Videos attract viewers, whether embedded on your website or uploaded to a video-sharing site such as YouTube. Podcasts can also increase audience interest. Infographics, images and other multimedia elements you create can become popular, talked-about and shared on the web. Exciting, rich media content helps make people aware of your brand and result in short- and long-term links to your website. (See Step 11 for tips on optimizing multimedia content.)
• Be patient, be awesome: Focus your efforts on creating great content, optimizing it for SEO, and building relationships with your target communities online. Backlinks will follow in time.

For more ideas on how to get backlinks, get our e-book The New Link Building Manifesto.

How NOT to Get Backlinks

Webmasters should steer clear of these tactics for obtaining backlinks:

• Sending mass email requests
• Participating in link farms
• Purchasing links (although paid links identified clearly as ads and nofollowed are fine)
• Having links from irrelevant or disreputable websites
• Using negative comments to get links (like Decor My Eyes)

Links obtained by any of these activities might be seen as “unnatural” or “spam.” They could cause ranking issues and damage your E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness).

Where Does My Site Stand Now with Backlinks?

To get a feel for how your site currently stands with link building, you’ll need to look at link reports.

The Links report in Google Search Console lets you export up to 100,000 sample external links. Or you can export the latest backlinks to your site to see recent activity.

Some paid SEO tools do more than just list pages that link to your site. They can analyze how trustworthy they are and much more. Two link tools that we recommend are Majestic (whose link reports are integrated into our SEOToolSet®) and Ahrefs.

Next up! Let’s go deeper into how to avoid Google penalties. You’ll learn how to monitor backlinks to spot any “ugly links” that may be threatening your site and how to get rid of them.

Next Lesson

Need more SEO tips?
If someone has done damage to your site’s SEO with low-quality link building in the past, talk to us about our Penalty Assessment & Recovery Services. For additional link-earning tips, check out our book Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals and the articles below.

Related blog posts and articles:

• The CMO’s Guide to the “New” Link Building Strategy
• 50 Ways to Get Quality “White Hat” Backlinks
• The Complete Guide to Disavowing Links in Bing and Google
• Backlink Analysis: How to Judge Good Links from Bad
• 19 Fresh Thoughts on Link Building and Disavow Shared by Top SEO Minds

FAQ: What are the consequences of using bad or low-quality backlinks?

Backlinks play an integral part in determining a website’s search engine results page ranking and visibility, but not all backlinks are created equal. In this blog, we explore the negative ramifications associated with low-quality or poor backlinks as well as why link-building strategies must be pursued with caution.

1. The Downward Spiral of Ranking

One of the most immediate and detrimental consequences of utilizing bad backlinks is a drop in your website’s search engine ranking. Search engines like Google consider the quality and relevance of backlinks when determining a website’s authority. If you associate your site with spammy or irrelevant websites, you risk being penalized, causing a significant decline in your search engine rankings.

2. Damaged Credibility

Credibility is paramount in the digital world. Backlinks of low quality can severely undermine the trustworthiness and reputation of your website, decreasing sales or trust for it among users who see these questionable sources as links. Building trust takes time, but it can be shattered in an instant if your backlink profile is tarnished.

3. Increased Risk of Penalties

Search engines continuously refine their algorithms to combat spam and unethical SEO practices. Your website could be penalized if it contains infected links, leading to lower rankings, reduced visibility, or deindexing – these penalties could take some time to overcome.

4. Lost Organic Traffic

High-quality backlinks can drive organic traffic to your website. Conversely, bad backlinks can deter potential visitors. When search engines push your site down in rankings due to poor backlink quality, your organic traffic is likely to dwindle, resulting in fewer opportunities to convert visitors into customers.

5. Wasted Resources

Finally, using bad backlinks can be a costly endeavor. You may spend time and resources acquiring these links, only to realize their detrimental impact later. Redirecting your efforts toward building a solid, reputable backlink profile will yield better long-term results.

Bad or low-quality links can have an enormously detrimental impact on a website’s rankings, credibility and success. I advise webmasters to prioritize quality over quantity when building backlinks; doing so is vital for its future success.

Consequences of Using Bad or Low-Quality Backlinks

1. Backlinks in SEO It is imperative that we recognize backlinks in SEO; their presence can have a hugely beneficial effect on website performance.
2. Recognizing High-Quality Links: To differentiate high-quality from low-quality links, take into consideration factors like relevance, authority, and reliability.
3. Conduct a Backlink Audit: Review existing links pointing back to your site and identify low-quality or potentially harmful ones to improve SEO and boost rankings. This can help strengthen rankings.
4. Remove or Disavow Bad Backlinks: Take action to remove or disavow any harmful backlinks using tools like Google Disavow or by contacting webmasters.
5. Focus on Content Quality: Prioritize creating valuable and engaging content that naturally attracts high-quality backlinks.
6. Engage in Ethical Link Building: Develop a strategy for acquiring legitimate, relevant, and authoritative backlinks through outreach, guest posting, and partnerships.
7. Monitor Your Backlink Profile: Continuously monitor your backlink profile to ensure it remains free of bad links and maintains high quality.
8. Stay Informed: Keep up-to-date with SEO trends and search engine algorithm changes to adapt your backlink strategy accordingly.
9. Avoid Black Hat Practices: Steer clear of unethical practices such as buying links or participating in link schemes that can lead to bad backlinks.
10. Put User Experience First: Focus on creating an accessible, high-quality site with seamless navigation that builds credibility and trust among visitors. This can help build credibility quickly.
11. Google Analytics is an invaluable tool for tracking the impact backlinks have on traffic and conversions.
12. Educate Your Team: Make sure all team members understand the potential risks associated with poor links and how to make informed decisions when building links.
13. Regularly Review and Update: Periodically revisit your backlink strategy and make necessary adjustments to maintain a healthy backlink profile.
14. Seek Professional Help if Needed: If you’re unsure about managing your backlink profile, consider consulting with SEO experts or agencies for guidance.
15. Focus on Long-Term Results: Understand that building a reputable backlink profile is a long-term investment in your website’s success.
16. Prioritize Quality Over Quantity: Emphasize the importance of quality backlinks over the sheer quantity of links.
17. Build Relationships: Foster relationships with other websites and online communities to naturally attract valuable backlinks.
18. Educate Yourself: Continuously educate yourself on SEO best practices and the evolving landscape of backlink strategies.
19. Avoid Quick Fixes: Be cautious of shortcuts or quick fixes that promise rapid results, as they often involve bad backlink practices.
20. Monitor Progress and Adapt: Continuously monitor your website’s performance and adjust your backlink strategy based on the outcomes.

By following these steps, you can effectively mitigate the consequences of using bad or low-quality backlinks and cultivate a strong and reputable online presence.

The post Link Building – How to Attract Quality Links appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

The more things change, the more things stay the same. Even though the Google ranking algorithm has significantly progressed over the years, links still matter for a website to rank.

But the way Google looks at links has changed. And the way businesses should approach link building must also change. We are in the era of link earning, not link building.

To protect your website from links that could harm your ability to rank and go after the links that matter, you need to know how to earn them. We go in-depth on this topic in our newly released guide, “The New Link Building Manifesto: How To Earn Links That Count,” which you can download instantly here.

In this article:

• Links: The good, the bad and the ugly
• Backlink strategies to avoid
• How to start a link-earning program
• How to create content that gets relevant links
• Moving from link building to link earning
• FAQ: How can I transition from traditional link-building to a more effective link-earning approach?

Links: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Link popularity is not a numbers game anymore. More important than the quantity of your backlinks are the quality and relevance of the links and the sites where those links are coming from.

Google’s John Mueller confirmed this:

We try to understand what is relevant for a website, how much should we weigh these individual links, and the total number of links doesn’t matter at all. Because you could go off and create millions of links across millions of websites if you wanted to, and we could just ignore them all.

If relevant, quality sites with favorable comments link to you; then your site becomes a more trusted authority by association. So you want the best sites, not the most, linking back to you.

Before you engage in any link-building program, be sure you know what types of links to look for and which to avoid:

• Good backlinks: Links from authority websites in your field, experts who write about your topic, or non-spammy sites that have content related to your website’s theme or webpage’s subject.
• Bad backlinks: Links from unrelated websites (for instance, a dog information website linking to an insurance site) don’t do you any good and could look unnatural.
• Ugly backlinks: Links coming from link farms, spam sites, sites known to sell links, guest posts, or low-quality content (such as pages with lists of random links and no text).

Backlink Strategies to Avoid

As the CMO, you probably get tons of emails offering you links for a price. Steer clear of those! Unnatural linking schemes can only hurt your brand and your website rankings. So avoid the following tactics for obtaining backlinks:

• Sending mass email requests
• Participating in link farms
• Purchasing links
• Getting links by guest posting in most cases
• Getting site-wide links (such as from a footer link on an external website)
• Having links from irrelevant or disreputable websites

Note: Paid links identified clearly as ads and nofollowed are fine. They don’t pass link value, but advertising and promotions have value for other reasons.

How to Start a Link-Earning Program

Today, the right way to obtain backlinks is by earning them naturally. Here are three steps to get started with a link earning program:

1. Benchmark your website’s link profile.
2. Build the link-earning program.
3. Monitor backlinks and prune as needed.

1. Benchmark the Link Profile

Begin with a benchmark of how your website is currently doing. I suggest you use two or more tools to gather your backlink data into a spreadsheet you can then look at. You can use tools like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Majestic Site Explorer, Moz’s Link Explorer, Ahrefs and/or SEOToolSet. You’ll know what you are currently dealing with and if you need to prune any links (see Step 3).

2. Build the Link Earning Program

A link-earning strategy should involve several tasks. At a high level, these include:

• Analyzing links
• Finalizing keywords
• Creating content
• Making search engines aware
• Publicizing and sharing content
• Using link attributes properly
• Attracting links

Creating quality content is arguably the most important step in this process, followed by getting that content in front of the right audience. This is something we go into more detail on in the e-book linked above and below.

3. Monitor Backlinks and Prune as Needed

Once you’ve started earning links, you’ll want to maintain your link profile. The general process for this includes:

1. Monitor backlinks to your site – Who’s linking to me?
2. Evaluate your link profile – What makes a bad backlink?
3. Remove unwanted backlinks by “link pruning” – How do I get rid of bad links?
4. Use Google’s Disavow tool – What’s my last resort if they won’t cooperate?

How to Create Content That Gets Relevant Links

As a rule, you want to create quality, valuable content for users. This type of link-worthy content fuels your link-earning program.

Keep in mind that experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) are three principles upon which quality content is created, according to Google.

E-E-A-T is important for most websites, but for “Your Money or Your Life” topics (those that Google says “could potentially impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety”), it is critical. You can learn more about that here: Complete Guide to the Fundamentals of Google’s E-E-A-T

When you have great content people want to share, earning links comes more easily. Of course, there are a lot of ways you can get that content in front of the right audience. And we have 50 ideas for you in the e-book that you can download above or below.

Moving from Link Building to Link Earning

Modern SEO ditches the old link-building tactics that merely collect a mass of irrelevant links.

Today, we must focus on quality over quantity. So center your link-earning program on great content and creative marketing.

For more on linking, get our comprehensive guide: The New Link Building Manifesto: How To Earn Links That Count

FAQ: How can I transition from traditional link-building to a more effective link-earning approach?

The significance of backlinks in determining website credibility cannot be overstated. However, the approach to acquiring these links has evolved drastically over the years. Transitioning from traditional link-building to a more effective link-earning approach requires a strategic and holistic understanding of cultivating meaningful relationships within your niche.

One key shift is focusing on high-quality, relevant content creation. Crafting content that addresses your target audience’s pain points, questions, and interests positions you as an authority and attracts organic links. Search engines prioritize content that adds value, making it essential to produce informative articles, insightful infographics, and engaging videos that resonate with your audience.

Collaboration emerges as another pivotal strategy in this transition. Identify authoritative figures and thought leaders in your industry instead of contacting numerous websites with generic link requests. Building relationships through genuine engagement, such as co-creating content, participating in webinars, or interviewing experts, can lead to natural link-earning opportunities. These links are more likely to be long-lasting and impactful.

While traditional link-building might have focused on quantity, the link-earning approach emphasizes the importance of relevance. Conduct thorough research to identify websites and platforms that align with your niche and values. Tailor your outreach efforts to demonstrate how your content adds value to their audience, fostering a mutually beneficial relationship that goes beyond link placement.

Moreover, embracing social proof can significantly enhance your link-earning strategy. Positive reviews, testimonials, and case studies inspire trust and attract attention from other websites seeking credible sources to reference. When your content is recognized as a reliable source of information, the chances of earning organic backlinks increase substantially.

Transitioning from traditional link-building to effective link-earning requires patience and a willingness to invest in relationship-building. It’s a shift from transactional interactions to genuine engagement, emphasizing fostering connections that yield long-term benefits for all parties involved. By understanding the needs of your target audience and aligning your content with those needs, you can navigate this transition successfully and establish a solid foundation for sustainable SEO growth.

Step-by-Step Procedure: Transitioning from Traditional Link-Building to Effective Link-Earning

1. Evaluate Current Link-Building Strategies: Assess your existing link-building practices to identify areas for improvement.
2. Research Target Audience: Understand your target audience’s interests and pain points to tailor your content effectively.
3. Create High-Quality Content: Develop informative and engaging content that provides value to your audience.
4. Identify Industry Authorities: Locate your industry’s authoritative figures and thought leaders.
5. Engage in Meaningful Collaboration: Contact industry experts for collaboration opportunities such as co-created content or webinars.
6. Personalize Outreach: Tailor your outreach efforts to demonstrate the relevance of your content to potential link sources.
7. Focus on Relationship Building: Prioritize building genuine relationships over one-off link placements.
8. Provide Social Proof: Showcase positive reviews, testimonials, and case studies to enhance credibility.
9. Identify Relevant Platforms: Research websites and platforms that align with your niche and values.
10. Craft a Compelling Pitch: Develop personalized pitches highlighting your content’s value to potential link sources.
11. Participate in Industry Conversations: Engage in online discussions and forums related to your niche.
12. Offer Expert Insights: Provide guest contributions to authoritative websites in your industry.
13. Monitor and Adapt: Continuously monitor the effectiveness of your link-earning strategies and adapt as needed.
14. Build a Content Calendar: Plan and schedule your content to maintain consistency and relevance.
15. Leverage Social Media: Share your content on social media platforms to expand its reach.
16. Measure and Analyze: Use analytics to track the performance of your earned links and adjust your approach accordingly.
17. Nurture Relationships: Keep nurturing relationships with industry authorities for future collaboration opportunities.
18. Stay Abreast of Trends: Stay updated on SEO and content marketing trends to refine your strategies over time.
19. Patience and Persistence: Understand that link-earning takes time; stay persistent and committed to the process.
20. Refine and Optimize: Continuously refine your link-earning approach based on feedback and results to achieve long-term success.

By following these detailed steps, you can successfully transition from traditional link-building to a more effective link-earning approach, enhancing your website’s credibility, authority, and online visibility.

The post The CMO’s Guide to the ‘New’ Link Building Strategy in Less Than 5 Minutes appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Google has been repeating itself for years: paid links are spam. Yet an entire economy has sprung up around paid guest posting — essentially just another form of paid links.

What is the difference between selling or buying a link on a webpage and paying someone to write a webpage with the link in it? There is no difference to Google.

Yet paid article writers have been selling linked articles to the naive marketer for years. However, Google has drawn a hard line: paid guest posts are spam. And it doesn’t matter who you paid … if any fee is involved, then you are in the danger zone.

The latest developments absolutely send a clear message that paid guest posting as a way to build links will not be tolerated. And here are the lessons we’ve learned.

• Lesson 1: Guest posting services selling links are spam
• Lesson 2: Know when to tell Google about the links in guest posts
• Takeaways for guest posting

Lesson No. 1: Guest Posting Services Selling Links Are Spam

On June 3, 2020, SEMrush (a popular SEO tools SaaS company) received a tweet from Google’s John Mueller. The message? Your guest posting services are spam.

That’s an unnatural link – the kind the webspam team might take action on. https://t.co/kfQQithCnK & https://t.co/q5GmAxx2YM have more. Making sure the links use rel=nofollow / rel=sponsored would still allow sites to get visibility without having to worry about manual actions.

— John (@JohnMu) June 3, 2020

You can read more about how this came about here at Search Engine Roundtable for context. SEMrush was caught up in the turmoil because it had a service clearly called out by Google. They promptly responded to the community saying that the links through their service were not paid placements. Were the posts and included links free? Of course not — someone somehow made money.

Fantastic tool but this is incredibly concerning.https://t.co/Weo1astBPg

Feel like I’ve travelled back in time 10 years.

Sort it out @semrush

— Ryan Ogilvie (@ryanogs) June 3, 2020

Exactly who did not receive payments? No one can argue there wasn’t some form of payment involved.

Looking at Google’s advice on steering clear of link schemes, we can see some examples here of what to avoid. In Mueller’s tweet to SEMrush, he pointed to this article on links in large-scale article campaigns.

Some relevant excerpts from that article include:

Google does not discourage these types of articles in the cases when they inform users, educate another site’s audience or bring awareness to your cause or company. However, what does violate Google’s guidelines on link schemes is when the main intent is to build links in a large-scale way back to the author’s site. …

For websites creating articles made for links, Google takes action on this behavior because it’s bad for the Web as a whole. When link building comes first, the quality of the articles can suffer and create a bad experience for users.

It’s pretty clear that Google does not want people or businesses to manipulate their rankings using links on paid guest posts. That’s due to the long history of guest posting as a way to extend and disguise link spam.

If Google does not take action to curb link spam, then pretty soon the first page of results will go to those that have the most money to buy guest posts instead of those worthy of ranking. Sounds like a breach of trust to me.

Ultimately, SEMrush decided to rethink its guest posting service and sent out a message to its community about it.

At the end of the day, this is not about pointing the finger at SEMrush, but about the lessons we can continue to learn about guest posting and link spam. SEMrush, like many, I think just got caught up in the moment and the fact that Google was quiet about it for so long. Now the signal is clear.

So this first lesson is understanding what link spam is.

I talked about this in a recent article on guest posting and manual penalties. It’s not just the people who are placing paid guest posts that should be aware of link spam. Websites that accept guest posts stand to suffer the most from Google penalties on their websites.

Back in 2017 (link earlier), Google said:

Sites accepting and publishing such articles should carefully vet them, asking questions like: Do I know this person? Does this person’s message fit with my site’s audience? Does the article contain useful content? If there are links of questionable intent in the article, has the author used rel=”nofollow” on them?

Add:

• Am I getting a fee? If yes, then it’s spam.
• Am I paying for placement? If yes, then it’s spam.
• Is this a link I would normally use and support? If no, then spam.

That brings us to our next lesson about paid guest posting and link spam: How to actually handle the links.

Lesson No. 2: Know When to Tell Google About the Links in Guest Posts

On June 3 and then again on June 11, 2020, John Mueller described how people should be handling links in guest posts: “nofollow” or the newer attribute, ”sponsored”:

@JohnMu Since your recent tweet with SEMrush, it would be good to get total clarity, as there now seems to be a lot of confusion around.

We all know, ‘paying’ for a guest post is against the guidelines BUT what about guest posting in general, where no money changes hands?

— Mark Preston (@MarkPreston1969) June 11, 2020

Mueller followed up in the same thread, clarifying a little bit:

Essentially if the link is within the guest post, it should be nofollow, even if it’s a “natural” link you’re adding there.

FWIW none of this is new, and I’m not aware of any plans to ramp up manual reviews of this. We catch most of these algorithmically anyway.

— John (@JohnMu) June 13, 2020

In typical Google fashion, the message is not 100% clear. One would assume that he meant that we were to disclose to Google the links pointing to the guest poster’s website.

But his message seems to say all links, even if they are “natural” (which could mean links to supporting research, too).

I assume he is doing this to make it easy for guest posters not to intentionally or unintentionally have spam links. If you “nofollow” all links, you have less of a chance of harming the site.

There are plenty of people who disagree with Google’s latest suggestion. Is it that big of a deal to go ahead and comply by using those attributes? Not really. Because even with those attributes, Google is likely to figure out more about the links on its own.

In March of this year, Google began treating these attributes (“nofollow” and “sponsor”) as merely “hints” when considering the links they are applied to. But a hint of what? A hint that you are probably selling links?

From its announcement of this change back in September 2019:

When nofollow was introduced, Google would not count any link marked this way as a signal to use within our search algorithms. This has now changed. All the link attributes — sponsored, UGC and nofollow — are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search. We’ll use these hints — along with other signals — as a way to better understand how to appropriately analyze and use links within our systems.

Why not completely ignore such links, as had been the case with nofollow? Links contain valuable information that can help us improve search, such as how the words within links describe content they point at. Looking at all the links we encounter can also help us better understand unnatural linking patterns. By shifting to a hint model, we no longer lose this important information, while still allowing site owners to indicate that some links shouldn’t be given the weight of a first-party endorsement.

In other words, as Danny Sullivan at Google mentioned in a tweet, using these attributes is now a way to send more granular signals to Google (which, of course, is good for Google and some say not so good for others). But a signal of what? A signal that you are probably selling links?

And then Google can determine whether the link is good and will count, or if it’s a paid link and spam that will hurt the site.

And there remains the issue. According to the FTC, this may be an advertorial and it needs to be clearly identified as a paid page. I really think this is an entirely new blog post, so I only mention it here.

Takeaways for Guest Posting

So what’s the takeaway for a business that wants to guest post? Do it for reasons other than link building. Do it for traffic and users.

If you want to contribute content as a way to add value to a community, that is fine. But don’t expect it to build quality links or boost your website’s authority.

A better strategy is building links to your site by creating great content published on your own site. As I wrote in that post:

You want to build authority and you need links. But there are good links, bad links and downright ugly links. The good links you earn naturally by creating great content on your site that people want to link to. The bad or ugly links are usually those that come out of a “link building” program.

If you’re a website publisher who is accepting guest posts, create guest post guidelines that meet Google Webmaster Guidelines. If a link in the article is off-topic, the quality of the linking site (i.e., yours) will likely suffer.

Only accept posts that don’t diminish your website’s expertise, authority and trust. And make sure you and an SEO pro review all posts before publishing.

Only accept guest posts that you wish you had written. Otherwise, consider them poison.
Click To Tweet

When in doubt, it’s a good practice to use a “nofollow” or “sponsor” attribute on relevant links in guest posts.

But keep in mind that Google may catch spam links anyway:

The other thing is that because this is so old, we have a lot of training data for our algorithms. I wouldn’t be surprised if the largest part of those links are just ignored automatically. If all that work is for ignored links, why not just do something useful instead?

— John (@JohnMu) June 14, 2020

This is something I talked about in my article on guest posting and manual penalties:

In most cases, “nofollow” is a hint to Google. But on Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) pages like news, finance, health and so on (see the list in Google’s guidelines), Google may ignore “nofollow” entirely. In other words, if you have a spam link on a YMYL website, consider yourself open to more scrutiny by Google and potential penalties.

Also, have you ever gotten an email telling you about all the wonderful sites you can get a paid guest post on? Think about it: Who owns Gmail? Do you really think Google does not know who is manipulating the link landscape and the sites to ignore?

I think that selling high domain authority (DA/DR) posts for the value of the links where Google probably ignores the links is unethical.

So does that mean every single link in a guest post needs to have “nofollow” or “sponsored”? If you want to be safe and are unsure, yes. The reader cannot tell if the link is followed or not, so making them all nofollow is a viable choice.

But for those who are savvier when it comes to the nature of link spam, you can make the call on which links should have which attributes.

As a reminder, here is Google’s help file on qualifying your outbound links.

Note: If you receive guest blog post spam requests, you can report them to Google as “paid links” webspam.

Closing Thought

Remember Penguin? Now think about what happens when (not if) Google rolls over onto paid guest blogging.

I am imagining a world where, like the Penguin penalty, Google marks paid guest posts as spam. Not simply a zero value, but rather a hard loss of rankings that takes websites years to recover from.

Google does not want link manipulation by any means. What would you do if you were Google trying to protect your product?

If you need help deciding on the most effective ways to increase your website traffic and revenue, contact us today for a free quote and consultation.

The post Paid Guest Posting: More Proof That It’s Bad for Business appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

The answer is not always clear: Should you create great content and put it on someone else’s site, or keep the best content on your website? In this article, I’ll explain the factors that you need to consider if you want to produce the best results from the time and effort you put into your content.

• Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust: 3 golden SEO rules
• Your website vs. their website
• FAQ: How can I effectively use an SEO content strategy to maximize my website’s expertise, authority, and trust?

Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust: 3 Golden SEO Rules

Before we dive into whether to publish on your site or another site for the best results, let’s talk a little bit about the concept of E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness). This will help set the stage for our conversation.

E-E-A-T is a concept forged by Google that shows up in its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SQEG). Google uses E-A-T within the SQEG as a guideline to evaluate website quality.

The SQEG allows Google to better understand if the changes it’s making to its search algorithms are producing quality results. This can act as a feedback loop for Google engineers to make further tweaks to the algorithm.

If a brand wants to be relevant in the search results and drive traffic, E-E-A-T is something every website should strive for.

For more on E-E-A-T, read our Complete Guide to the Fundamentals of E-E-A-T.

To briefly summarize, let’s look at two key elements of E-E-A-T important to our discussion here today: expertise and authoritativeness.

• Expertise is one way Google assesses quality, and it mainly has to do with the expertise of the content creator.
• Authoritativeness (shortened to authority) builds on expertise and takes three things into account: 1. The authority of the content creator, 2. The authority of the content itself, and 3. The authority of the website as a whole. To achieve authority, one must be a recognized expert in the field on the matter, whether a brand or a person. Links and mentions are important contributors, though not mentioned directly in the SQEG.

Why E-E-A-T matters when considering where to publish: You cannot build your website’s expertise and authority without great content and great links. If you do not have expert and authoritative content, your site has less of a chance of ranking in the search results.

We also know that links serve a role in building your authority. Let’s briefly talk about links next.

Links: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Many website publishers mistakenly think that the more links you have, the better positioned you will be. That is not true. It’s about the quality of your link profile as a whole. We have seen sites with fewer than 100 quality links beat sites with 10,000 mediocre links.

Still, many brands believe that building links by publishing content on other sites will help them build their authority.

“Link building” is not the way to be thinking about acquiring links. In fact, when someone asked Google’s John Mueller if link building in any way was good, he said:

In general, I’d try to avoid that … We do use links as part of our algorithm but we use lots and lots of other factors as well. So only focusing on links is probably going to cause more problems for your web site than it actually helps.

Instead, Google wants you to build high-quality content that people want to link to and share. That way, you earn backlinks naturally. Of course, SEO is an excellent strategy to drive traffic to your website so that people discover your content.

About links from guest posts: When it comes to guest posting for links, back in 2013, Google’s John Mueller advised to <nofollow> links from guest posts.

I think one thing you could probably do is to think about whether or not this is a link that … would be on that side if it weren’t for your actions there. And especially when it comes to guest blogging that’s something where you’re essentially placing links on other people’s sites together with this content, so that’s something I kind of shy away from purely from a link building point of view. I think sometimes it can make sense to kind of guest blog on other people’s sites and drive some traffic to your website — if the people really like what you’re writing and kind of interested in the topic and they click through that link to come to your website but those are probably the cases where you’d want to use something like a rel nofollow on those links …

Then in 2014, former Googler Matt Cutts said to stop it with the spammy guest posting strategies.

In other words, if you want to contribute content as a way to add value to a community, fine. But don’t expect it to build quality links or boost your website’s authority.

And remember that Google is smart. It can detect if your guest posting strategy is a way to manipulate links, which would leave you open to a manual penalty.

How links factor into where to publish: You want to build authority, and you need links. But there are good links, bad links, and downright ugly links. The good links you earn naturally by creating great content on your site that people want to link to. The bad or ugly links are usually those that come out of a “link-building” program.

Your Website vs. Their Website

At this point, it should be clear that in order to build the expertise and authority of your website, you need expert content that people want to link to.

Now let me explicitly answer the question of publishing on your website versus others. Lots of brands believe they need to get their content out there on other networks so that they can build a name, and get links and clients.

I believe that giving away all your best content to other sites is a mistake, and here’s why.

When you create expert content and put it on someone else’s site, what you are doing is building that website’s expertise, not yours. You drive traffic and potential revenue away from your site and onto someone else’s.

I’m not downplaying the value that sharing content in other communities can have. But it’s not a solid SEO strategy (and it might not even be a good business strategy).

Say you publish an article on someone else’s website. You may get a link, but it may be a <nofollow>. Let’s say the article on their site gets 1,000 views. Maybe a few of those people actually go to your bio and click through to your site.

Meanwhile, their site gets the credit for expert content, ranking in the search results, engagement, and more … and you get a few visits.

On the other hand, if you create the content, optimize it, and publish it on your site, you build the expertise of your website. And then you can earn natural, quality links because people want to share your content.

Bonus: You get to keep all the potential rankings, traffic, and revenue as a result. Those 1,000 visitors are all yours.

It’s for all of these reasons that we believe strongly that your content should be on your own site.

Of course, this requires a content strategy and SEO. That, in turn, requires keywords and a strong content architecture with a siloing strategy. And that requires persona development, and the list goes on. Not to mention that high-authority links often come as a result of other brand-building activities — many of which originate offline.

The Bottom Line

You need to create quality, optimized content on your site. The byproducts include building expertise and driving traffic to your site. And having shareable content is how you attract links to build authority. All other efforts that take your time and focus away from this publishing strategy are largely a waste.

If you’d like help with your content strategy, contact us for a free quote.

FAQ: How can I effectively use an SEO content strategy to maximize my website’s expertise, authority, and trust?

Achieving success online hinges on more than just attracting visitors to your website; it’s about becoming a trusted industry leader. To maximize your website’s expertise, authority, and trust (E-A-T) in the eyes of search engines like Google, a well-thought-out SEO content strategy is paramount.

1. Content Quality Is King

Create top-quality, engaging content that has been thoroughly researched. This will bring more viewers in. Your articles should address the needs and questions of your target audience comprehensively. Regularly updated, authoritative content resonates well with both search engines and readers.

2. Keyword Research and Optimization

Conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant keywords for your niche. Integrate these keywords strategically into your content, titles, headings, and meta descriptions. Ensure they flow naturally and don’t disrupt the readability of your content.

3. Consistency Matters

Maintain trust by sharing regular posts that keep your audience up-to-date. It also signals to search engines that your website is active and relevant.

4. Optimize User Experience

A user-friendly website is crucial for SEO and user trust. Ensure your site is mobile-responsive, has fast loading times, and is easy to navigate. Incorporate clear calls to action and provide a seamless browsing experience.

5. Link Building for Authority

Develop a strong backlink strategy by acquiring high-quality, relevant inbound links. Guest posting on reputable websites, earning mentions, and creating shareable content are excellent ways to boost your website’s authority.

6. Social Signals

Engage actively on social media platforms relevant to your niche. Sharing your content, interacting with your audience, and building a loyal following can indirectly impact your website’s E-E-A-T.

7. Expertise Showcases

Highlight your team’s expertise by featuring author bios and credentials. Encourage industry experts to contribute guest posts to your site, further establishing your authority.

8. Monitor and Adapt

Use analytics tools to monitor the performance of your content strategy. Adjust your approach based on the data you collect to continuously improve your E-E-A-T.

Mastering the art of SEO content strategy is pivotal in maximizing your website’s expertise, authority, and trust. By focusing on content quality, keyword optimization, consistency, user experience, link building, social engagement, and showcasing expertise, you can elevate your digital presence and position your website as a trustworthy source in your industry.

Step-by-Step Procedure: Implementing an Effective SEO Content Strategy for E-E-A-T

1. Begin by conducting comprehensive keyword research to identify relevant keywords for your niche.
2. Develop a content calendar to maintain a consistent posting schedule.
3. Produce informative, high-quality content tailored specifically for your audience.
4. Optimize your website for an effortless experience, which means ensuring it is mobile-friendly and has a fast loading time.
5. Strategically integrate keywords into your content, titles, headings, and meta descriptions.
6. Implement a backlink strategy to acquire high-quality inbound links from reputable sources.
7. Actively engage on social media platforms related to your industry, sharing your content and interacting with your audience.
8. Showcase your team’s expertise through author bios and credentials.
9. Encourage industry experts to contribute guest posts to your website.
10. Monitor your content’s performance using analytics tools.
11. Use the data collected to adapt and refine your content strategy.
12. Continuously update and refresh your content to keep it relevant and authoritative.
13. Ensure that your website is mobile-responsive and provides an excellent user experience.
14. Maintain a regular posting schedule to signal your website’s relevance to search engines.
15. Actively seek out opportunities for guest posting and backlink acquisition.
16. Engage with your audience on social media platforms to build a loyal following.
17. Highlight the expertise of your team members to bolster your authority.
18. Analyze the performance of your content strategy regularly and make data-driven adjustments.
19. Stay up-to-date with SEO trends and algorithm changes to adapt your strategy accordingly.
20. Never compromise on content quality, always aiming for high standards of research, accuracy, and engagement.

This article was updated on December 20, 2023.  

The post Where Should I Publish My Content for the Best Results? appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

People should link to you because you have earned the link, not because you bought or bartered for it.

It is our opinion that link building is less about the number of links and more about the number of linking domains from within your industry. Quality over quantity always.

Our list of 50 ways to get quality SEO backlinks is different from other link-building-idea lists in one important way. We stay focused on how you can add value for your ultimate audience through your website.

Then, with a little extra effort, you can get a link from other sites serving that same audience.

The List: 50 Ways to Get Quality Links to Your Site

1. Ask — It Sometimes Works

When it boils down to it, links are about relationships. The business you run may be of service to another business and its audience.

Think about link building first in terms of building a library of helpful content resources to link to.

Then think about people in your network that could use the resources you have to offer. It can be as simple as asking another business if a link on their site to yours might benefit their audience.

Example: A music website might have a great collection of music and articles on a particular singer or band. Form relationships with the artist’s fan clubs. Some may accept articles, and some will simply link to your great content. This would be a relevant link, and a win-win. Fan clubs love free information for their audience.

As another note here, if they just mention your site, maybe asking for a link to be added to that mention will make it more useful for you both.

Think about link building first in terms of building a library of helpful content resources to link to.
Click To Tweet

2. Do Some Blogger Outreach

Since a big part of links is relationships, think about who you know.

Who in your industry would benefit from knowing about your website content and sharing it with their readers?

Some bloggers like to link out and some do not. Some will gladly curate and some need to write for themselves. Some are influencers and some are not.

Choose what is most appropriate for your content, and work with the bloggers as best fits your industry and content.

Forge relationships with those people. Face time could be an important part of this.

Do you attend the same industry events? Send a note ahead of time and plan to meet there. A few minutes over a drink or coffee could pay dividends for your content and link-building efforts.

3. Approach Colleagues Gently

Think of your current business network as a gold mine for getting links. However, depending on the industry you’re in, you want to tread lightly when asking for a link. A mere mention of the content you’re working on that might be a fit for their audience could work.

Example: If you publish a research report, even a competitor’s audience would appreciate reading it. This type of content is almost always attractive to others in your space.

And remember, never compensate anyone in your industry — even if they are influencers and you’d really like the link. This is against Google’s guidelines.

Hear Bruce explain why businesses need a “white hat” linking guide:

4. Write for Your Audience’s Audience

Your audience will be more likely to share your content if it helps expand their audience reach.

What would make your audience want to share your content with their audience?

An example is a newspaper journalist. When trying to get in front of the journalist, your content should be less about what things they (the journalists) like and more about what their readers like. This approach (what their readers like to read) is very powerful.

5. When You Have a Link, Stay Engaged

You might be surprised at which sites are linking to your site.

Do the research. Find the relevant domains that link to your site, and forge a relationship. If they have a quality site that’s relevant to your industry, stay in touch with them.

This is especially important if they are well connected and/or the site’s owner is an influencer within your industry. They might need guest bloggers, and you could potentially offer useful content to their audience. In your author biography, you can also include a link to your site.

6. Host a Contest

Recently I visited our Bruce Clay India office. The team took the opportunity to run a contest in which private consulting time with me was the prize. The content generated a lot of mentions and shares, drawing attention to Bruce Clay India and the contest page itself.

If you do something like this, your website might receive links from your social media followers (see No. 28 for why social links/mentions matter) and from your colleagues’ blogs and websites.

7. Host an Event

Think of ways you can enrich your local community with an event.

Example: You might host a business luncheon in the community to divulge some of your business-success secrets.

Then, tell people about your “mini-conference” through an events page. You will get some links to the page (and maybe some clients as well). Once the event has passed, consider doing a 301 redirect from that event’s page to your main events landing page.

8. Join Local-Focused Organizations

Your business is part of a local community. Being listed in directories, like the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and Chamber of Commerce, secures a link. Local listings also help your potential customers find and learn more about you.

And if you’re in good standing with organizations like the BBB, it can lend credibility as well. Also, is there a significant attraction in your area (such as a local kids camp) that gets a lot of links? Sponsor them and get a link on their website (see No. 10 for more).

9. Speak at Events and Have Something for the Audience

If you speak at community or industry events, offer something useful for your audience to download after the talk. Provide a link to the resource and encourage them to share.

Example: You may have the results of an informal survey, an ebook, or some other content on your website that would be helpful to the audience in some way. Create a shortened link that they can remember (for example, a Bit.ly link) and drive traffic to the page. They may, in turn, share it with others.

10. Do a Sponsorship

Do you want to make an impact on your community?

Sponsorships can do that and get your name out. Moreover, you can obtain links to your website from the organization you’re sponsoring, as well.

Think local softball teams, not-for-profit activities (like a beach cleanup), school scholarship funds and so on.

11. Reference an Industry Leader

Write content that references an opinion of someone in the Top 10 in your industry.

You may not even need to interview them. You can draw upon previous statements they made elsewhere (with attribution).

Identify the influencers in your industry who tend to either link to articles mentioning them on their site or share such posts on social media. These are the ideal targets.

12. Create/Review Case Studies

Write case studies that your audience can learn from.

You could identify major blunders that were turned around. Or hot breaking news stories (that involve terrible losses or even massive wins). This idea ties well into the “unicorn” approach we will discuss in No. 14.

Example: In the digital marketing community, a popular journalist who wrote a lot about Google for many years ended up joining Google as an employee.

Also remember that, similar to the nightly news, “dirty laundry” types of headlines are always read and quoted with links (narrative on society omitted).

13. Start a Blog

Having a blog is one of the basic tenets of attracting links. After all, the content you’re blogging about focuses on your business and brand. While a blog is essential to your SEO, it doesn’t stop there.

Blogs that tend to do best express strong opinions about matters in their industry, things that their clients care about and so on. That doesn’t mean every post is controversial. Every now and then, plan to tackle a topic that matters to your industry or business with gusto.

Example: Say you have a casino in Las Vegas. Every so often, you might tackle the topic of gambling safely, or express an opinion on the changing regulations you face.

14. Create Great “Unicorn” Content

“Unicorn” content is any article that strikes a community’s chord. You’ll know a unicorn article by the high level of traffic, comments, shares and backlinks it generates.

You’ll want to latch on to a unicorn. For example, take note of what your competitor’s unicorns are, and write your own unique content on that same topic.

A unicorn article stands out from the competition, meaning it’s better than other articles on the topic.

Take best advantage of each of your unicorns. Publicize them well within the community.

This content should ideally be published on your website. If you publish this type of content on a third-party website, include embedded links to your site. This includes useful “find-out-more-on-the-topic”-type content (in moderation).

One approach similar to this is creating “skyscraper content.” This is similar to unicorn work, except it’s on the level of an entire website. Find a great website, mimic it, do it better, add engagement, then see if links to that other site can be switched to links to your site instead (see No. 34 for more on this).

15. Consolidate Landing Pages

Do you have a handful of similar landing pages on your website that garner a lot of traffic and links?

Assume you have two great pages, one page on how to choose the right microscope for your job, and the other page on how to choose a microscope for your specific needs. You should consider combining the content from those two landing pages and 301 redirecting the page(s) to the chosen URL.

The popularity of those landing pages now combined gives you one powerful webpage that reaps the benefit of aggregate traffic and links. See: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+do+a+301+redirect.

16. Help a Reporter Out

If you’re short on money for public relations, you can take matters into your own hands.

HARO (Help a Reporter Out) connects you with reporters who are looking for subject matter experts in your field. If you get interviewed for a story that will run on the web, it’s likely you’ll get a link to your website when you are cited.

17. Be Interviewed by Bloggers

Creating quality content these days means citing credible sources. One way that bloggers like to cite sources is through interviews.

Find out who the writers and bloggers are in your industry, and become top of mind for them.

Engage with their content online. Add value by commenting or resharing, and you’ll start to build a relationship.

Ask them what they’re working on, and let them know you’re available to offer quotes or interviews on “X” topics whenever they might need it. This will almost always guarantee a link to your website when you’re cited in the article.

18. Interview Experts

A great way to attract links and traffic to an article is to interview experts yourself.

People like to be recognized for their expertise, and every expert has their own audience. The people you interview will usually share and link to the article on your website.

Try an in-depth article interviewing just one or two experts, or a “roundup” that features quotes from many. The more experts you can pull together in a roundup post, the better! For example, you might write an article on “What the Top 10 Digital Marketers Predict Will Be Most Successful in [X Year].”

19. Educate, Educate, Educate

Part of building your business into a brand involves thought leadership. You do indeed have a specialization and unique insights. Share those with your audience on your website to help them do something or understand a topic better.

This act of creating unique, quality, educational content benefits your website’s search engine optimization, too. Google wants to feature high quality webpages in its search results, and its ranking algorithm is designed to find them.

You do indeed have a specialization and unique insights. Share those on your website to build your brand.
Click To Tweet

20. Offer a Webinar

As part of a low-key, educational approach to sales, webinars are great. People love free training.

You can embed the recorded webinar on a webpage with the transcript. This engaging content can drive traffic and links.

Consider partnering with someone in your industry who has a large audience. You can tackle different aspects of a topic together, and you’ll benefit from the partner’s wide reach.

21. Do Original Research on a Topic

Creating standout content that people want to link to and share takes time. Put your journalist hat on and take a deep dive into a topic to create a long-form webpage. Consider topics that have burning questions in your industry, or timely topics as well.

22. Create a Whitepaper

A whitepaper is a great way to demonstrate your expertise. Use them to show you’re aware of the challenges facing your clients and can offer solutions.

Example: Maybe you are selling a revolutionary new cleaning system. In a whitepaper, you could show how it is more cost-effective and friendlier to the environment than other systems. You can use this content asset to gather emails in exchange for the download.

Aside from gathering email addresses for drip email campaigns, whitepapers can rank on their own merit. A useful whitepaper also gathers links.

23. Create a Graphic

Graphics are big wins in the link world.

People like easy-to-digest visuals, and if you do it right, these can spread like wildfire.

One example is an infographic that shows trends in an industry, like the types of jobs available, their salaries, employment rates and so on.

To facilitate a link, make it easy for people to share by offering a link for attribution, and add your logo or company name to the image. Make sure that you take the same care creating visuals as you would with text content. That means everything is fact-checked and quality.

24. Create Videos

YouTube is the second largest search engine, aside from Google’s web search engine. In all cases, the power of a video link is massive and it must be a priority.

You can create a video, host it on YouTube, for example, and then offer a link for more information from the video that leads viewers to a page on your website.

Example: Let’s say you have a style-focused YouTube channel. You might create a video reviewing a new beauty product and include a link to a full review on your site within the video. That would let people learn more (and even buy the product with your affiliate link attached).

25. Be Mentioned in a Podcast

Consider putting your useful content in front of podcast creators. They, in turn, may mention that content in one of their episodes as a resource on the topic.

Example: Say there’s a podcast that tackles psychology issues, and you have an ebook on overcoming anxiety. A mention of the tips in your ebook on a podcast is like a verbal testimonial. It could carry a lot of weight with listeners and lead to people visiting your site and linking to your content.

26. Create and Promote Web Tools

Create useful tools that people can access on your site.

Example: Here on BruceClay.com, we offer some of our popular tools for free, integrated into our SEO Guide.

Use the tool’s name as the anchor text for the link when you link to the tools yourself.

27. Get a Mention in Wikipedia

Obtaining a link from Wikipedia does not pass link juice since all their links are nofollow. However, it CAN give your site a huge boost in traffic, and probably expert status.

Since the community at large maintains Wikipedia, obtaining a link may not be too difficult if you are truly worthy.

Example: Say you are a thought leader when it comes to software development. You might identify Wikipedia articles that talk about your involvement in software development. Or your thought leadership content could be a reference.

But be aware that Wikipedia frowns on self-promotion. Editors will likely reject any links that you try to insert on behalf of you or your business. Worse yet, if you are too persistent about adding links to your site, your website can be added to a spam list.

The key is in your approach. Focus on adding value with content, not links. For more information, read Wikipedia’s general guidelines for links.

28. Get Mentions in General

Online mentions (such as in social media or reviews) are important, too. They help search engines determine that people have an interest in what a brand is about.

Social mentions may not generate valuable links to a site. However, social mentions signal to the search engine how people are talking about a brand.

Example: Pizza Franchise-A may be mentioned more often and more favorably than Pizza Franchise-B.

29. Create Quizzes and Puzzles

People just love to take quizzes, and that engagement is an important step. Create a quiz that you can run on social media, where a click to the webpage for the right answer gains traffic. And as they finish your quiz, be sure to give them social icons to easily share your quiz with others.

If it is fun, then word may spread and links can be generated.

Example: If you run a dating website, you might create a quiz on “Your Perfect Soul Mate.”

30. Attract Links from the Right Neighborhood

Links from spammy sites can harm your website. Keep this in mind as you’re link building.

If your link profile has a fair amount of these types of links (think “Viagra”), it’s risky business. Google devalues these types of links in general (so no value to your site) and in some cases, penalizes them.

31. Get Listed in Online Directories

For getting listed online, think geography-specific directories that would be relevant to your business. Add your business link there.

Examples: YellowPages.com or Angie’s List, to name just a couple. In many cases, this may also include the BBB (remember No. 8 on this list), but there are many others you should consider.

32. Get a Link Audit

An SEO vendor or a consultant that is savvy in link building will have all the tools and data needed to decide if your backlink profile needs cleaning up. This will point you in the right direction on what to do next.

These audits can typically cover things like:

• Link analysis from Google Search Console link reports.
• Link analysis utilizing our proprietary tools.
• Anchor text analysis.
• Identification of links that need to be pruned, general link-pruning guidelines, and recommendations for how to submit for reconsideration.
• Checking for any other possible “Penguin”-related problems, such as the “cupcake effect” or over-optimization

33. Buy a Competitor

A merger or acquisition has the potential to give you some great (or bad) links.

Suppose there’s an opportunity to purchase a competing and popular website in your same industry. If you buy it, then you will have the option to either consolidate the sites, thus combining links, or generate new link prospects from having an additional site.

Tip: We highly advise SEO services such as a link audit as part of your due diligence when acquiring a new domain (see No. 32).

34. Perform a Competitor Backlink Analysis

Find out the quality sites that are linking to your competition and try to hijack those links.

This is not as nefarious as it sounds, especially if your resource on a given topic surpasses the competitor’s page.

Contact the webmaster and ask them to consider your page as a more relevant source for their readers. Hijacking links is fair competition.

35. Reanimate Links on a Competitor’s Site

When your competitor has websites linking to them but the competitor’s page returns a 404 error, it creates an opportunity for you.

Example: Let’s say your competitor had an article on how to create a custom wood table, step-by-step, but it has been moved. Now that page looks broken to visitors. You are a furniture maker who has a great article on this (or you can whip one up).

Contact the webmaster and offer them a better link — to your relevant webpage — instead. Also remember to keep your links updated so that this doesn’t happen to you.

36. Evergreen Your URLs

Without changing your URLs, you can replace old content with newer, more relevant content. That way, any links to the existing page still benefit the site.

Example: If you have a page on Ford Mustangs with data from 2017, you might replace the content with the current year’s data. Do this each year.

37. Fix All 404s

A 404 “not found” error occurs when a user reaches a page URL that doesn’t exist. As we mentioned in No. 35 on this list, this creates a bad user experience.

A 404 error is especially problematic if the broken page has a lot of inbound links.

Just as you can find dead links to competitors and “hijack” them, your competitors can do the same to you.

Routinely run reports to identify any 404s. Then 301 redirect each 404 URL to its most relevant equivalent live page (if the page returning a 404 truly no longer exists).

In the interim, create a custom 404 page that can direct users to helpful content. This is recommended in Google’s guidelines.

38. Fix Your Site’s Quality

Another reason to address 404s and have good content is to raise the quality of your site. This is an indirect link-building technique.

The publishers of quality websites and the people in charge of building links for those websites will not link to a site that is not maintained. A low-quality website cannot be considered a link-worthy subject matter expert.

Again, the reason is user experience.

39. Link Prune

If your website has been hit with a penalty, sometimes the best option is to cut the junk.

See our backlink evaluation flowchart and link removal recommendations for more:

We call this link pruning, and it’s something we offer with our penalty assessment services at Bruce Clay, Inc.

40. Perform Site Migrations with Care

PageRank cannot transfer from an old site to a new site until you can get the old pages re-crawled by the engines. To facilitate that, submit the old URLs to Google and Bing via an XML Sitemap file (see Google’s recommendations on this). The PageRank will transfer in a matter of days instead of months.

41. No Site-Wide Links

Sometimes a link to your website appears on every page of a site. For example, your website development company might put a footer link on your site such as “Created by XYZ” that points to their homepage. These links might seem helpful, but they do not send much traffic — and search engines may view them as spam.

Run-of-site links can look like an ad. If the links pass PageRank (i.e., they are followed), they may look like paid links. It’s not natural to link from every page to some third-party site.

There is no reason to have an excessive number of links from a third-party site unless it is an actual ad (and nofollowed).

We believe that it is the number of linking domains and not the number of links that has a high correlation to ranking. Choose wisely and get very few “right” links, so you do not look like spam.

42. Have One Redirect Jump Only

In recent years, Google representatives have said that no PageRank is lost for any 3XX redirects (301, 302, etc.). However, all redirects come with risk, and this risk can get larger if you have more than one redirect in place for a page.

Any given page may naturally experience a redirect in the case of a site redesign (or two or three) over the years. Here’s some basic information on how to properly implement a 301 redirect.

43. Silo Your Website

Once you obtain links, the next concern of link building should be to make the most of the link juice you receive.

You can magnify the PageRank flow of those incoming links by using siloing — a hierarchy structure of your URLs and content through linking.

For example, you might have a page that answers a common FAQ in your industry. But that landing page should also have a call to action that keeps that visitor engaged within your site, pointing to a relevant page on the same topic.

Here’s more information on SEO siloing:

The term siloing originated as a way to identify the concept of grouping related information into distinct sections within a website. Much like the chapters in a book, a silo represents a group of themed or subject-specific content on your site. The reason this grouping is such a high SEO priority is that search engines award “keyword” relevancy within their index based on the page and then the rest of the site with the most supporting relevant content. Well ranked websites are founded upon the concept that a website should physically be organized like a doctoral dissertation. A dissertation has a clearly identified title, abstract, table of contents, then content laid out to reinforce the overall theme of the dissertation as a whole, all with references and footnotes supporting the subject.

44. Post Answers on Question-and-Answer Sites

Quora is an example of a Q&A website that has nofollowed links. But the trust of those links is high, and you control the number of mentions based upon the number of answers you provide as the expert.

Another option is a forum. This is only good for industry credibility, and certainly not for links for search engines. Unfortunately, a forum is generally a place where someone that does not know the answer gets answers from others that do not know the answer.

Therefore, carefully look at the audience and the quality of the answers before joining a forum.

45. Rank in Search Engines

One of the best ways to become an expert in Google’s eyes is to create content that demonstrates your expertise and authority (Google PDF).

The better you do this, the more you become perceived as an expert. Once you start ranking for search queries time and time again, you will naturally be the site that people reference in their links.

46. Get Ratings and Reviews

While you may not have much control over what ratings and reviews say, they do send links to your site.

Expanding on that thought, think about industry review sites that you can get to review your site or business. Are there local award contests? Does your local newspaper do a “top places to work” or a fastest-growing list?

All of these reviews can generate business and possibly links, especially if they come from a trusted resource.

47. Get Testimonials

What is your strategy for gathering testimonial reviews from your audience? Reach out to happy connections on a regular basis and ask for a testimonial on their website with a link to your home page.

48. Use Reciprocal Links with Care

There is much debate about reciprocal links (aka I link to you and you link to me back). The bottom line is that if you are linking between similar and relevant websites, it may not be a bad thing. Think of it as adding value to one another’s website.

Example: If you are a real estate agent, you might have a community resources page of helpful businesses in the area, such as local lawyers. By extension, one of those lawyers may also have a resource page or a blog article about helpful resources for their audience, like real estate agents.

49. Expand the Relationship with Existing Links

Websites that have linked to your website previously might link again. Is there another page on your website they might also be interested in linking to? Reach out and propose something.

50. On the “Do Not Do” List: Buying Links

White Hat means never buying links, never hiding links in widgets, and avoiding anything that would violate Google’s guidelines. See Google’s Link Schemes page for more:

Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.

Remember, there is not really an “under the radar” approach that works for link building, certainly not for long. Google has years of fighting link spam; there’s likely nothing they haven’t seen before.

Can you do it and Google won’t catch you?

Maybe. But if a competitor catches you and reports you to Google, then you are toast.

Additional Notes and a Plan of Action for Link Building

Notice that we did not include some common myths about links such as commenting on others’ posts or even guest posts. These tactics make the other website the expert while giving you less fame and traffic than if you ranked yourself for that content.

Always avoid thin content sites (e.g., short pages) or sites where each page has many outbound links, especially if the linked-to sites are of poor quality. Assume that this rule applies to each of the techniques in this list.

So now what?

The recommended link-building process is obviously far more difficult than just reading a list. In general, there are a handful of things that need to happen:

1. Invest in what we refer to as a “strategic link analysis report” that talks about the linking opportunities, the risks and the estimated implementation costs. As part of your link building, these insights should balance the links’ SEO value with the traffic value with the contribution to expertise, authority and trust (refer to No. 45).
2. Finalize SEO campaign keywords. Variety is absolutely needed since building too many links with the same anchor text may be seen as spam. Select the keyword, select the landing page (new or updated) and then select the top-linking sites that you want a link from.
3. Research and finalize SEO campaign content. It could be a blog post, an image, an infographic, a video or something else, but it needs to be created before you embark on link building. Be sure to publicize the new content as appropriate.
4. Manage your existing link inventory and link prune the bad links while retaining the best links.
5. Go slowly, make sure links are relevant and on topic, and prefer respected sites as link acquisition targets.

For even more help regarding quality link building strategies, see our list of 35 Creative White Hat Link Earning Ideas.

Want to receive more resources like this one? Subscribe to our blog!

The post 50 Ways to Get Quality ‘White Hat’ Backlinks appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

If you’re in the business of attracting traffic to a website and building brand awareness, you should care about how links impact your key performance indicators. As an SEO agency, we’ve written about how to get high quality backlinks in the SEO Tutorial. That resource covers link building best practices in black and white. But where personal experience and opinion are concerned, we have our own view of how links should be managed.

While we are sure some people will disagree with some of these views, we created this declaration that outlines what we hold true when it comes to web links.

We believe …

Google likes links. Google does not like link building. Links are the “voting system” of the web, and Google believes that they should be earned. They are earned by the nature of the content as a result of it being useful or entertaining to a particular audience.

Links are contributors to expertise, authority and trust. A link is a vote for a website. The more links it has, the more votes, showing Google that the website is one of authority. Within that, there are weighting factors for how strong the signal is. When weighing inbound links, a high expert ranking is a stronger signal than a spammy site.

Content is a link magnet — without it there is nothing to link to. Content is the stuff the web is made of. It’s what people want to link to and share, and it allows you to acquire links naturally when it’s quality.

Content needs to be relevant to your brand. The only way to become a subject matter expert in the eyes of Google is to have a themed website. A themed site happens when a brand contributes meaningful content to the conversation that it is an expert on. Sites that have too many topics all across the board are confusing to both search engines and users.

Content builds trust … over time. As a website adds more and more content on a particular subject, the audience starts paying more attention to it. Do it at the right level for that particular community, and people will start remembering the brand.

Write to high quality, not to high volume. It is far better to write high-quality content than to aim for quantity of content. Follow that rule, and gain readers’ trust and links. Once you can maintain quality, then you can increase quantity. Maintaining high quality is the only way to “blog often.”

You need standout content to earn links. Millions of web pages are published daily. Content needs to be able to be noticed among all the content out there. Only a handful of web pages are considered relevant enough to make the first page of Google. In addition, create and follow a supportive outreach strategy to inform others of your content. In theory you have already earned the link through great content, but nobody knows about it until you tell them.

“Unicorn” content gets a lot of shares, links and traffic. Publish content and pay attention to the popularity and traffic, visitors and shares. If it does well, then publish on that topic again, perhaps with additional content. Keep hammering on what people are excited about versus blindly following an editorial calendar. Know the competition and watch for their unicorns, too.

Cheap content doesn’t perform. “Cheap” content can end up being expensive in the long run. You get what you pay for when low-quality content doesn’t perform for a site. As the saying goes, “The cheaper you want it, the cheaper you get it” — and that hurts quality. Hire true professionals, optimize the content, then publish. And remember that content contributes to a brand’s key performance indicators, brand awareness and ROI.

Optimize articles to match the links. Make sure that your content uses keywords and is clearly relevant to linking anchor text for greatest positive SEO impact. While building links is a natural process, too many “click here” links could indicate that there is too much complexity to your page. Content, once written, needs to be reanalyzed and its inbound links evaluated.

Opinion pieces, once you are an authority, get links. Establish your brand and its people as subject matter experts. With credibility in place, opinion articles become very valuable.

Certain types of content get links. Articles showing the results of worthy research will get links; detailed and lengthy research articles do well. “How to” articles, because they are searched on a lot, also get links.

Evergreen existing content; don’t allow content to become stale. Content that was once great can age, leaving it less useful. Refreshing those pages and linking to them from somewhere else on a website can renew interest and, perhaps, links.

Keyword and topic analysis drives content. Identifying opportunities to create content based on active keyword queries, social media topics and “unicorns” the competition has can drive important content for a website. If it is useful to others, determine if it is useful to you.

Choose guest blogging partnerships wisely. Posting to other authority websites may make sense, but if the site is not considered “expert,” adding content there may be a waste of time. Choose carefully when vetting and strategizing your guest blogging opportunities. Google’s official stance is that guest blogging for links is against their guidelines.

Link spam kills rankings. Google’s link scheme guidelines state: “Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.” This includes: paid links, unnatural links, low-quality site links, off-topic links, widget links, footer links, run-of-site links (links in a template placed on many pages across a site), unpoliced post sites, reciprocal links, links from pages of all the same PageRank, many links from the same IP or sharing the same WhoIs, and links with the same anchor text. Google fights this link spam.

Domain authority, however measured, helps. The authority of the linking site, while it’s not pure “PageRank,” does indicate expertise. In an ideal world, expertise and authority are what domain authority is all about. If a high-domain, authority site is linking to a website, in theory, that site will have elevated domain authority, because an expert links to another expert most of the time.

Link relevance to a website and query are big ranking factors. The relevance of the page that’s being linked to should match the relevance of the page it’s coming from. But it shouldn’t be just about the target page; the words should also match how people search. When a link points to a page, that page and the anchor text pointing to it should contain keywords with high search volume that matches the content of that page.

The theme of the linking site is important. If you have a link coming in from an unrelated site, Google takes that into consideration when evaluating links. Links need to come from sites that are in the same realm of topics as the site being linked to.

The linking site’s quality counts. Google looks at the quality of sites linking to a website, and takes that into consideration when evaluating the site’s authority.

Internal linking matters. Siloing is a way to theme the content on a website through links, and it helps the website become a relevant source on the topics it publishes. The technique helps search engines better understand what the website is about through the strategic organization of content.

It is wrong to say that links make up a certain percentage of the algorithm, since the algorithm changes for every query. In 2016, Googler Andrey Lipattsev said the most important ranking signals were links, content and RankBrain. It’s still wrong, however, to think a third of the Google algorithm is based on links for every query. For every keyword, based upon the intent and geographic location of the searcher, the algorithm itself will vary the weighting percentage of inbound links.

Major ranking signals include mentions. Online mentions are important for search engines because they help determine brand sentiment and whether people have an interest in what a brand is about. Social updates may not generate very valuable links to a site, but they signal to the search engine that people are talking about a brand.

Social media works well for links; fish where the fish are. To catch fish, you have to use the right bait (what the fish are eating) and fish where the fish are. Write what the audience is looking for, and then put it in front of them. Social media puts the bait in front of the fish and catches links and traffic.

Influencers with a large following can generate both links and traffic. Think of creative ways to engage the influencers in a space, whether it’s co-marketing, collaborating on projects, interviewing them, or having them write for the brand’s website. Including their opinion in “roundup”-type content can increase the content’s visibility by leveraging the influencer’s audience.

Links from within your expert community are great. Every industry has a pool of “experts” — sources that are known as subject matter authorities. Links from other experts to a website show a brand’s authority. You can also partner with non-competing experts to gain PageRank and links.

A competitor’s links are a gold mine. Identify sites that link to the competition and determine why those sites link to them. Then, reach out to those who link to the competitor, and offer them a better page to link to.

When trying to get a link from journalists, put yourself in their shoes and their audiences’ shoes. Journalists respond to their favorite topics and news. The only good way to get a link from a journalist is to understand what they like, what they normally write about, and understand that they are writing for their audience. You don’t only want to pick a topic that a journalist may like; you also want to write about what their readers will like. In other words, target the journalists and their audience.

Videos are link magnets. Make relevant videos and keep in mind duration best practices, then host them on a website and YouTube to drive links and traffic. Videos also contribute to a brand’s expertise.

Use testimonials for links and conversions. A testimonial on a website helps with conversions, and it also helps with links. Give a testimonial to another site, and they will often publish the testimonial and link to the source (the site the desired link should go to).

Good online reviews generate traffic and conversions. If you have a positive review, the sentiment is positive and will be considered by Google to be a testimonial — whether or not it’s passing PageRank.

Email as a way to get links has been overdone. Sending email requests to try to get someone to link to you is played out and ineffective. My advice is not to bother.

Advertising drives traffic, not link equity. If you are buying advertising, expect no link equity or PageRank. If you’re buying advertising to get a link that passes PageRank then expect a penalty. You should not be able to buy links, and advertising is often a purchased link. If buying ads, make sure they are “nofollowed.”

Broken links on your site are bad, but it’s worse if someone is linking to your site with a broken link. When a site has a broken link to another site, the user will arrive at the new site and see a 404 error page. The majority of people will have an immediate perception of a low-quality site when they land on the linked-to website. Identify incoming broken links and recover the link equity and traffic with 301 redirects.

Broken links to competitors create an opportunity. Determine who has a broken link pointing to a competitor, and contact that website publisher and ask them to consider replacing that broken link with a link to your desired website instead to improve user experience with current and updated content.

Local links are absolutely needed for local businesses. A company cannot be an expert in their region without having experts in their region link to them.

So there you have it — my linking view. We urge you to follow these guidelines and hope your link building journey is one of safe travels.

Do you identify with my views on link building for SEO? If so, share it with a friend or post it anywhere.

The post Bruce Clay’s Views on Building Links for SEO appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

High-quality backlinks are a website’s friend; they help establish a positive reputation about your brand and business to customers and search engines.

When you have organic inbound links pointing to your website from another website, search engines will bump up the E-A-T factor (Expertise, Authority, Trust) and ranking gains will follow.

Of course, this is barring a variety of possible negative consequences of paid or manipulative links that can hold a site back. (If you know the pain of Google penalties, you might find SEO penalty services of use.)

The problem is that not all backlinks are the result of real business relationships. But that’s also the key!

Search engines value backlinks only when they’re the authentic results of your marketing strategies and not because you opened your wallet and bought them. To cover this base, do not buy links. In any form. If you’re still interested in more traditional methods and the “dos and don’ts,” check out our link building tutorial for more information.

Think of links as the natural byproduct of happy customers and impressed industry affiliations that are attracted to the efforts or achievements of an individual or organization. We use the term “link magnet” to describe a campaign to attract links as a result of doing something outstanding or offering something exceptional. Like metal attracted to a magnet, people will naturally share and link back to your content or campaign by sheer power of its attraction factor.

Below is a list of 35 natural and safe (white hat) link earning ideas that have the potential to produce quality backlinks that support a healthy website and are an honest reflection of your reputable brand.

Reward Loyalty

Brand loyalty is a powerful emotion to capitalize on. Any kind of giveaway or discount for repeat or long-term customers is going to have a positive impact.

If you have a customer that repeatedly buys a product from you, then you have a loyal customer who might write about you. Maintaining loyalty is where the work is.

One way to build loyalty is to reward a loyal customer with a discount on something that they regularly purchase or is related to something they’ve purchased.

Send them a free T-shirt, which sounds basic and boring, but it’s free advertising for you and the customer feels appreciated. At the very least he/she will think the company is trying to be nice, even if it is a simple gift like a key chain or a sticker with a handwritten note.

Non-Profit Partnership

If you give a small percentage of your profits to a charity or host a fundraiser in the name of a charity, you automatically become a “good guy” in the public eye.

This is a pretty basic concept and it’s great for building brand awareness/opinion. It can also be the tipping point on the scale when a potential customer is choosing between two products.

If your competitor isn’t making the same charitable contributions and the customer is aware of your good will, they’re more likely to choose your product or service because of the positive intent of the company.

At the same time, people love to read “nice guy” stories and many forms of charitable work, are likely to draw in some visitors and links.

Other online publications will want to suck up a bit of the potential traffic too, which will lead them to create content that highlights the partnership or fundraiser in order to drive traffic on their own site.

Be authentic with this approach, however, as consumers can smell a scam a mile away. Choose a charity carefully and one that reflects your consumers wishes. Maybe even ask your consumers to tell you which charity to support each year.

Publish Research

Solving a problem or proposing a solution to an industry-wide problem is a little easier said than done, but it’s sure to have a large impact and can be approached in terms of conducting research. Conducting research doesn’t have to be an overly complicated process; often times it only requires a small investment in terms of time or money.

After funding research or producing a survey, the information may be best presented in an infographic or video. The intended results of this strategy can affect both sides of the equation because it can relate to customers and competitors alike, even if the competitor is a much larger player.

Larger companies talk about new information because it drives traffic and if it’s your information they reference, then some of that traffic will inevitably lead to you and help you establish authority in the industry.

The information you present could also be the deciding factor for an undecided customer.

Event Swag

Specific products or giveaways that can only be obtained at or during an event is sometimes called swag (stuff we all get). Event swag builds hype around a seemingly limited product.

Similar to the exclusivity tactic, people like to have something that’s considered limited or a collectible within the industry. This can be accomplished by simply modifying an existing product or you can take it a step further and design a whole new product that fits the event exclusively.

Referral Rewards

This strategy is just as useful today as it has been in the past. If someone recommends a friend buy from you, you kick them back a percentage of the proceeds (or something to that effect).

The idea is to entice a customer or visitor to influence others in the hopes that they will get a small prize, which could be a discount on a product, reduced rate on a subscription, etc.

The motivation of this tactic revolves around the ‘prize’ aspect, and the mere fact that a visitor could receive something for very little effort will generate some buzz with a variety of online publications.

This all depends on how generous you are, so keep in mind that giving someone a 1% discount isn’t going to go very far.

Web Tools

Designing and creating a useful web tool is easier said than done, but the end results can be bright green grassy hills full of positive content, enthusiastic social media, and consistent traffic.

There are two factors to keep in mind when contemplating whether you have a golden idea or not: 1) Will this tool be used more than once by a single users/website and 2) How long does it take to function in comparison to other similar web tools.

Industry Standards

This tactic can be very useful for inserting your company brand into a larger conversation and it’s a two-part strategy.

The first part revolves around developing an objective way to measure or judge a product, service, company or experience.

Then, you can publish content that shares your findings after the tests have been completed.

The idea is that by creating a standard measure that your industry adopts as indisputably useful, you’ll connect your brand to an industry standard for performance and/or quality. You might also generate content that is based off of the comparisons and conclusions you can draw from the standard in action. One example of an industry standard is the SEO Code of Ethics that Bruce Clay developed for a nascent SEO industry in 2000.

Industry Recognized Metric or Score

Creating a score or metric for measuring an aspect of your industry or style of business can be a very useful tool to have. Examples are Majestic’s Trust Flow and Citation Flow scores, or Moz’s Domain Authority score.

These are two metrics that are used across the search engine optimization industry and the brand names are built in.

It really doesn’t get much better than that when it comes to building brand awareness, content development, and everyday exposure.

Live Talks

Going on stage isn’t easy for most people, but public speakers that know their craft can leave a lasting impact on others, much like how a good movie can leave you thinking well after you’ve left the theater.

Many people who attend speeches or conferences like to liveblog, share bits of information on social media, etc., and all of this can help build up your brand and spread the word about your business or a topic that is exclusive to your business, product, or service.

Articles & Blog Posts

Correctly utilizing your established base should be the first place you start when you try to earn links or build a link magnet, so target your current audience. You can probably assume they’re interested in what you have to say or sell because they’re already on your site.

Leveraging your strengths is key unless you have a lot of time or money to waste, which most people don’t.

Publishing insightful articles or blog posts that prove a point, highlight a useful service, or provide real actionable content are one of the more effective ways to generate links to your site.

Exclusive Promotions

Everyone wants to be part of a group and that’s your advantage. Any marketing strategy that lends itself to a visitor’s inner curiosity will draw in that visitor.

An example would be a service/group/product that requires an invite, similar to the way a test group works for a video game or product in early development. The exclusivity factor is what kick starts the other websites to start creating and sharing content.

Other online magazines and blogs will use this same insight to their advantage to generate content and most likely link back to you for their visitors.

Social Media Interactions

Social media is a generally misunderstood tool for companies. In order to establish a worthwhile social media presence, you have a put in the work of providing excellent customer service and otherwise entertaining and delighting followers. The resulting benefit is marketing momentum.

Social media platforms are a tool that provide a direct line for personal interactions, but they won’t do the interactions for you; give AI and chat bots a few more years.

A brand known for being friendly and helpful has invested a great deal in positive interactions with visitors or customers. The best case scenario is a positive experience that goes viral. Yes, viral-level popularity is challenging, but don’t let that stop you from aiming high. Content goes viral as a result of a combination of offer, statement, audience, timing and more.

Of course, if it were easy, everyone would repeat the steps to make a viral hit over and over at will. Instead, you have to think outside of the box with your approach. Don’t be afraid to give something away. People love to share good experiences or things they’ve received.

Comparison Articles/Blog Posts/Studies

Writing an article or blog post that compares and contrasts your company with other companies in the same context can be a useful way to insert yourself into a larger conversation. This is a great tactic for increasing brand authority, or at the very least for increasing awareness of your brand.

If the content is compelling and makes a valid argument or sheds light on a specific point, the companies mentioned in the article or blog post are more likely to respond or mention you in similar content they publish.

Publish Surveys

Similar to publishing research, publishing a survey is a good way to provide insight and useful data for your visitors.

This can also help build a conversation that your competitors will jump in on, ideally larger, more authoritative competitors.

The main goal of the survey is to produce information that is actionable and not just something that makes you think for a second.

If you can produce a survey that steers a customer one way or the other, you can be sure your competitors will notice, and may even syndicate that same information; at the very least the news sources of that industry will pick it up.

Limited-Time Offers

Offer a product or service for a limited time or to a finite number of customers. The objective here is to take advantage of the scarcity principle; if a product or service is only around for a limited time it becomes a must-have item in many people’s minds, regardless of the actual need.

You can find countless examples of this in a wide variety of industries from selling cars and mattresses, to fast-food eateries and online retail.

Seasonal Products

Seasonal products fall into the same realm as limited-time offers, but there are a couple of other variables that are key.

Most people love to be part of a group or system and making them feel like they’re part of the holiday season is no different.

Designing seasonal products or offerings are great way to stir up a conversation that surrounds your brand.

Scholarships

Offering a scholarship to a person(s) is a great way to build a conversation around your brand. The size of the scholarship doesn’t necessarily matter, it’s the intent and thought behind it.

Your company is giving away money to someone who could put it toward an educational use. So just like partnering with a charity, your good will could be the deciding factor for a potential customer. Not to mention the possible content that will be built around it on competitors websites, which is just another bonus for your brand authority.

Let’s be honest here, however: offering something meaningful will carry more weight than offering something paltry. It’s a balance between your budget and expected returns. When playing in this space, don’t be cheap, as that can hurt your brand.

Sponsorships and Donations

Sponsoring a program, product, event, contest, club, etc., is a great way to get your brand’s name on the board and insert yourself into a larger conversation.

Similar to a sponsorship or charity partnership, donations can be a one-time payout that kick-starts a conversation.

The key here is to target the right charity at the right time. What we mean by that is, if it’s during the holiday season and you make a large donation to a foundation, odds are you’re not the only one. However, if you make the donation in the “off-season,” you’re more likely to draw attention to your brand by being one of the only companies making donations at the time.

The charity or foundation you donate to can play a big role, too, but be careful not to choose one that has had some bad press in its recent past. Make sure you do your homework here so you’re not donating to a charity with some negative baggage.

Look for trending opportunities, such as new charities with lots of buzz or those with social media support from celebrities and the general population. Then determine if attaching yourself to that charity will resonate with your customer base.

Branded Contests

Contests can be an easy and affordable way to stir up some chatter in your industry or local community and having your brand attached to that chatter is usually a good thing.

The central idea is hosting a contest that gets people talking and gives back to someone in community that’s involved. This is likely to generate content when other websites advertise your contest (to build their own traffic, not sponsored ads about the contest) and the story of the contest and winner will generate it’s own content, too.

People love to share information or things they think other people don’t have. The more scenarios you generate that follow this model, the more content will be produced online and it’ll all focus around your brand or business (links included).

A perfect example of this is a Facebook Contest. You can ask that participants write a bit of content or submit a photo that revolves around some contest framework. Make the rules of entry something simple enough that anyone can get involved, but require enough creativity that entry presents an initial investment by the participant and drives them to get involved.

Internships

Internships aren’t typically a great marketing strategy, but you can shape the end-game of an internship so it’s more enticing, thus building a larger conversation around the position.

A full-time job, one-time involvement, part-time job, etc., anything that drives more interest to the opportunity, will help drive content that points to your website, company or product.

Infographics

Not too long ago, infographics were all the rage in the marketing and content community, and while their use has died off, their usefulness hasn’t.

Infographics still remain one of the best ways to digest large amounts of data in a clear and concise manner. Using colorful, high-contrast, attractive imagery and themes, and legitimately interesting data can still lead to a spike in traffic, sales and brand awareness.

No shortcuts here, though, as the goal is to be genuinely useful. Shortcuts on data, or confusion when reading an infographic can lead to this tactic backfiring.

Influencer Interviews

Interviewing big players in your industry is a great way to drive some new visitors to your website.

Anyone who makes a point to follow your big-name competitor, for example, is going to want to read what they have to say during an interview.

It’s a good assumption that those same users will more than likely wind up reading or listening to such interview content on your website.

Conferences

This isn’t always the easiest strategy to implement, but when a conference is hosted correctly it sticks in the collective mind of the community like going to a good party would. Sponsoring a successful conference is almost as good for building brand recognition/awareness and authority.

Any company that hosts or sponsors a well-received conference will come off as a major player in the industry and a trustworthy brand, not to mention the word-of-mouth conversations and blog posts that will be written shortly after it concludes.

Webinars

An online seminar is arguably a better use of a company’s marketing budget and resources due to the lack of travel, overhead costs, etc. for the people attending. This means more people can attend via a web presence and you have the same potential for building brand awareness and kick starting content development.

Similar to a conference, however, a well-produced webinar can result in a lot of follow-on blog posts and conversations.

Awards

Hosting an awards ceremony or simply giving an award out yourself is a great way to build an ever-growing presence.

Any recognized award tends to be the hallmark of someone’s career, or at the very least, is a great talking point, and if your brand name is attached to that award … enough said.

Whitepapers

Publishing a whitepaper can be a time-consuming task given the detail and research they usually go into. However, they can be just as popular as infographics and they don’t require any graphic design skills.

Simply producing factual content with granular details can be more than enough to entice an industry expert to talk about it and share it.

Local Directories

Getting listed on a local directory is still something every website is going to want to accomplish.

Websites like Yext, Yelp, Yellowpages, etc., are still considered trusted sites with good reputations.

Directory spam is still nothing you want to even dip your toes into, but legitimate local directories are a safe bet for getting your name out there and building up some brand awareness.

In this same camp, look to local Chambers of Commerce and Better Business Bureau listings.

Evergreen Content

Developing and publishing evergreen content is an old strategy and remains just as effective as ever.

Any form of content that can provide a copious amount of valuable information for a topic that doesn’t change very often, will most likely be considered good evergreen content (until someone else out does it).

This form of content is considered some of the best you can develop, specifically because evergreen content is known to stick around for a while in the SERPs. So it stands to reason that the longer your content is visible to users, the more it will be read, shared, referenced, etc.

Wiki-page

Anyone can build a wiki-page, but the key purpose of these pages are purely informational. Any form of marketing or linking to transactional pages is considered spam in a wiki site.

The best way to take advantage of this strategy is to create a contextual link that relates to the founder of the company or website or to use a URL from your site as a reference link.

Video Tutorials & Reviews

Any kind of how-to, video walk-through, or product review is a great source for driving content and generating traffic. However, the real payout here is building an engaged following that does the all the sharing and syndication for you.

For example, if you run a blog around iPhones and the newest IOS is released with a bug and you’re aware of a quick fix that hasn’t hit the public yet, then sharing that quick fix could start a following full of people that will turn to you when another similar problem arises.

This theory is true for reviews as well. If you’re known to go into great detail and really dive into a product or service’s ins and outs you’ll most likely become a trusted source of information over time.

This will only cause potential customers to be more likely to buy something from you, provided it relates to the topic in which you’re a perceived expert.

Newsletters

A regular newsletter is still a valuable method for marketing or starting up a conversation. The problem most companies have is, just as in social media, they don’t remember to follow up with their readers.

Unless your newsletter is meant to sell a product (which is just an ad) you’re going to be presenting information and anyone who wants to interact with the company about said information, will more than likely search for some form of response.

It’s always a good idea to have an actual person to talk to rather than a FAQ page. How often do you hear stories of great interactions people had on the Frequently Asked Questions pages they encounter?

User Experience Attraction (Web 2.0)

Using user experience to your advantage has become an increasingly common route for many companies and it’s proven to be quite successful.

A catchy logo or theme that draws more attention than your competitor (in a good way and all things being relatively equal) will make visitors more likely to return to your website, as well as share positive opinions about your brand.

You can improve a user’s experience by choosing correct colors, contrasts and sleek designs, logos, buttons, etc., that don’t confuse people. All of this will help to influence a user when they land on your website.

AMA or Live Online Q&A

Providing a live experience (like an Ask Me Anything AMA session) is one of the best ways to start a conversation and build brand trust in your industry.

Being able to talk to people and answer spontaneous questions in front of an audience (this could be just one person) will give your visitors some perspective on you and your company.

People have an uncanny knack for being able to tell when others are lying or don’t know what they’re talking about, which is why any live event or presentation can be disastrous.

However, if you do know what you’re talking about and you’re able to impress your audience, then the likelihood of them using your service, buying your product, or signing up for your subscription goes up significantly.

E-book

Just like a white paper, an e-book tends to be a static form of material that is easy to share and is usually considered a more detailed and in-depth version of a blog post or article.

E-books have a benefit of requiring less maintenance and upkeep, such as responses to comments and answers to questions in blog comments. E-books have the desired effect of building brand name, enticing visitors to share content, visit (or return to) your website, and lead to possible sales.

Crowdfund Support

Promoting a crowd funded event, product, idea, etc., helps to establish good will among your visitors and potential customers.

Crowdfunding isn’t thought of as a traditional form of marketing, but supporting a crowdfunded effort is like supporting a community fundraiser and can be surprisingly effective when it comes to building brand trust and content development/sharing.

The more positive signals you’re able to build and publically connect with, the more likely customers are to remain loyal and share the content your company produces.

By supporting a crowdfunded effort, you show a commitment to giving back to the community, and your customers will feel better about giving to you.

The Benefits of Link Magnets

In an effort to gain quality links, websites often lose sight of the bigger picture: backlinks are byproducts of real connections and relationships.

Without compromising search engine guidelines, take the time to implement smart, and strategic link earning ideas that will naturally attract quality links to your site.

Get started with link building by choosing a few of the ideas above and prioritizing them and scheduling them for production. Then have fun getting creative.

If you’re hungry for more SEO how-to posts like this one, subscribe for updates to the Bruce Clay Blog and get digital marketing strategy delivered to your inbox for free.

For even more, see our post 50 Ways to Get Quality ‘White Hat’ Backlinks.

The post 35 White Hat Link Earning Ideas appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Link removal specialist Sha Menz has a word of warning for SEOs: Manipulating the link game is like everything else — it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

A superhero SEO can come along and save your site, but there are much more powerful things your superhero SEO could be doing rather than link cleanup.

Menz shared 17 areas where link building can go awry and 3 ways link earning/building can be done best!

17 Ways Link Building Can Go Wrong

1. Anchor Text

2. Paid Links
There’s nothing wrong with a sponsored link, by the way — but call it out. Note that it’s sponsored, like Search Engine Land Editor Barry Schwartz does in the below example.

3. Reciprocal Link Exchange

These seem to be having a resurgence, said Menz. If you’re shaking hands and agreeing to trade links with someone, it’s not necessarily a bad thing — if there’s some actual reason that both of your sites can link to the other in a natural and useful way. BUT if this is the case, don’t hesitate to use a nofollow tag. Getting traffic and being useful are the key things you’re doing here.

4. JavaScript and CSS Tricks

Don’t hide things here. Search engines will see it.

5. Irrelevant and Spun Content

6. Footer Links

People can get very sneaky. In the below example, the word “C-o-p-y-r-i-g-h-t” actually has a link on every letter.

7. Comment Spam

8. Wiki-loading

9. Bad Directories

10. Guest Posting

11. Kiss-of-Death Domains

Learn about suspect domains at DomainTools.com.

12. Link Networks

13. Redirect Madness

Watch out for third-party redirect passes through high-quality domains. This might appear in the form of intentionally misspelled domain names in the code. Use the SpamFlag Chrome extension in conjunction with Majestic SEO.

14. Coupon Capers

15. Link Builders You Forgot to Fire

This may sound ridiculous, but it can happen. Ensure previous link builders have been informed and are not building additional links.

16. Rogue Themes, Toolbars and Plugins

17. Black Hats Masquerading as White Hats

3 Ways Link Building Works

It’s all about doing the work. None of the tricks are worth it. Investing your time in actual work is much more profitable. Consider, then, doing the following:

1. Help Others to Help Yourself

Sometimes you’re just out there in a forum being really helpful, or you have written a blog post that’s really valuable. Those kinds of things can pay you back dividends with links.

2. Share Your Expertise

Loan a developer, teach a local class, etc.

3. Do the Unexpected

The Elephant in the Room: Penguin in the Wild

Menz would be remiss if she didn’t bring up the elephant in the room: Penguin. Is the newly hatched real-time Penguin the light at the end of the tunnel for your site, or are you clinging to a runaway train?

“Recognition of your cleanup work will be quicker by the search engines, but results will be harder to spot,” said Menz, adding that the only real results she’s seen (so far) have been people who are ill-affected.

One thing she wants to note is that disavows are still important, which we also confirmed with Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes earlier this week:

@BruceClayInc we haven’t changed our recommendations for the disavow tool with this launch

— Gary Illyes (@methode) September 26, 2016

Bruce Clay, Inc. is a global digital marketing agency specializing in SEO penalty repair, SEO services, SEM PPC management, content development and social media marketing. Looking for a partner to grow your online business presence? Let’s talk.

The post 17 Ways Link Building Can Go Awry appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..