Link Building Archives - Single Grain

Domain Authority: How to Increase Your Ranking Score from Scratch

Ana Gotter — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 15:00:00 +0000

I’ve run into the same scenario more times than I can count: I start working for a client with a brand new site, we develop an incredible content strategy, and then they ask how long it will take to rank on the first page of Google for high-volume, high-competition terms.

It’s never fun to explain that no matter how great the content and the strategy, we won’t be hitting those top spots for the top keywords for a little while. Not when the site is relatively new, has no content history, and has a limited backlink profile.

New sites naturally have lower domain authorities, which make it harder to compete with established sites that are trusted by and prioritized in search engines. In this post, we’re going to go over everything you need to know about domain authority, including how to check your current score and how you can improve your score, no matter where you stand.

What Is Domain Authority and Why Does It Matter?

When someone enters the search term “tips to paint the exterior of my house,” there are likely thousands of relevant pages that are targeting that keyword phrase, and Google has to decide which page they want to show first.

Because the search engine giant wants to increase the likelihood that the user has a great experience, it’ll look for content relevance as well as sites that have a history of producing valuable, trusted content along those lines.

This is where domain authority comes in. Your brand new mom-and-pop painting company will struggle to compete against a huge chain like Lowes for similar keywords, all else being equal.

Domain authority is not a metric that Google uses when compiling their ranking order for the SERPs, but it is a gauge of how well you can expect to perform there against your competitors. Created by Moz, this metric will give you a number from 1-100 (the higher the score, the better) that tells you how trusted your site is by Google, and therefore how likely you are to rank well.

Even though this metric doesn’t actually affect the SERPs, domain authority still a good one to pay attention to, because it indicates your potential there.
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Increasing your domain authority score will often correlate with more potential to do well in the SERPs, though it will have no impact on what your competitors are doing.

Learn More:

How to Check Your Current Authority Status

There are a number of tools that allow you to check your domain authority for free, but the best ones are Moz’s Explorer tool or their free MozBar Chrome extension, both of which give you the domain authority right from the source itself. Moz’s Explorer is not a free tool in general, but you can get up to 10 free queries per month.

When you search for a specific URL, you’ll be able to see what your domain authority is, and what the page authority is for that specific URL. The page authority is basically the same thing as the domain authority, but it’s focusing on an individual URL instead of the root domain.

If your site is newer or hasn’t aggressively worked to build up site links, there’s a good chance that you’ll be hovering around a 30 or less. That’s ok! While it does take time to increase your authority, which is no fun, there are strategies that can help, and it’s much easier to go from a 30 to a 40 than a 70 to an 80; it gets more difficult the higher you go, which is good news for everyone getting started.

5 Concrete Ways to Build Your Domain Authority

We know that domain authority, in its own indirect way, is important. I want to stress again that time is a factor that you need to take into account; older sites are more trusted and naturally have a much more extensive backlink profile, so it will be hard to catch up.

Notice, though, that I said hard and not impossible. I’ve worked with sites over a period of two years that ended up beating out major competitors for those number one spots, so with the right strategies, you can do the same.

Here are the 5 ways you can take action to start building your domain authority as quickly as possible.

1) Focus on Link Building

Link building is the first thing that you should focus on when it comes to domain authority, because this is a big quality signal that Google looks at. If plenty of other great and high-authority sites are linking to you, after all, it means that they trust you and think you have something to offer. Google notices this.

If you haven’t already, the best place to start is to run a backlink audit, which will show you your current backlink profile. It will also flag any potential harmful backlinks you’ll want to remove (which we’ll cover in the next section). I like SEMrush’s tool, but there are others that you can using, including Moz.

While looking at your backlink profile, take note of not just how many links you have, but which sites they’re coming from. Check those sites’ domain authorities online; are any of them high enough to give you a boost? Over 50 is good, but 70+ is outstanding.

As you’re looking at your backlink profile, consider how you can expand upon it. Creating great content on your site through blogs is always a good start, because it gives people something that they can link to.

Guest posting is the best option when you want to build up your domain authority quickly, as it allows you to get backlinks from a number of high-authority sites.
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Look for some of the most high-authority publications when choosing your link building profile, and remember that it’s better to have links from four different sites than four links from a single root domain; Google prioritizes the former.

Dive Deeper: How – And Why – To Build A Backlink Portfolio

2) Eliminate any Harmful Backlinks

Sometimes it’s easy to get a little overeager with the backlink building, especially if your business took part in any of the “not punished then but now not approved” backlink practices. Private blogging networks, for example, will typically hurt you more than they’ll help you, and spamming your link online is a fast way to get a Google penalty and a knock down on your domain authority score.

Check that backlink audit, and look over it closely. SEMrush will flag all the toxic links that you have, showing you the individual backlink, along with your overall ratio of positive-to-toxic links. They’ll also show you the number of referring domains you’re getting backlinks from, which is helpful to see.

Create a list of backlinks you need to start working on. If you can remove them manually, go back and do so. For example, remove links to your site in the comments sections or forums. If, however, you no longer have access to the sites where your links are placed, which may be the case for something like a private blogging network, you should look at doing a link disavow through Google.

A link disavow should only be done if you believe that you have links that are knocking you down and if you haven’t been able to remove them manually. The process is pretty straightforward, and you can learn more about it here.

Dive Deeper:

3) Create Great Content

Content marketing is going to be a huge asset while you’re trying to build up your domain authority. It allows you to keep the main pages on your site in order while still creating new opportunities for you to write fresh content (which Google loves) that can attract your target audience, provide a valuable avenue for new backlinks, and allow you to rank for more keywords.

When using content marketing as a core part of your backlink strategy, keep the following in mind:

If you want to get more eyes on your content, which will get you more shares and more backlinks, you need to have a strong distribution plan in place. If your domain authority isn’t strong yet, you can’t rely on SEO alone; have social campaigns set up to share your posts, and consider reaching out to your network and ask for a few shares at the beginning. You can also use PPC campaigns like Facebook Ads to promote important posts and hopefully gain traction early on. Be agile here.
Offer unique, original content. If you want those links and a lot of attention on your post, you have to create something that no one else has done yet. Otherwise, people can easily steal the ideas covered in a post, if they’re even interested enough to read it. Instead, opt for original thoughts and, if possible, even consider creating resources like infographics or case studies that contain statistics from your own research. People will have to link back to you for this.

Dive Deeper: The Skyscraper Technique: How to Build High-Quality Backlinks to Your Content

4) Look for Crawlability Issues

If Google can’t crawl your site, there’s a good chance that they’re missing out on the great content you have to offer, and it will hurt you in the SERPs. There’s also a good chance that Moz will have the same issues, and it will cause your domain authority score to take a hit.

Crawlability issues are something you want to avoid, because that means not getting all the SEO points you should be getting even if you have all the right elements in place. Use a site audit tool to regularly monitor your site for any issues that could be causing problems, such as confusing redirects, broken links, and even duplicate content. SEMrush is still my go-to here, but again, Moz is another great option.

These tools will show you the specific errors that could be hurting your SEO potential, and they’ll often have suggestions for how to fix it. In many cases, the errors are relatively easy to fix, especially considering the huge payoff that you could get in return.

Learn More:

5) Boost Your Social Presence

Google and Moz both look at social signals like retweets, likes, and shares of your content when evaluating domain and page authority. This ranking factor does not weigh as heavily as other things like backlink profiles or crawlability perfection, but it can make an impact, so if you want to change your domain authority score as quickly as possible, take some time to get this right.

Find ways to increase social proof on your content, as this will get more traffic to your site and boost your authority score at the same time, both of which will only benefit your business.

Social is a huge driver of online traffic, and if your domain authority is struggling but you’ve started to gain a social following, you can use the latter to help you get more traction with the former.
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Make sure that you’re sharing blog posts, infographics, and lead magnets with interesting descriptions explaining why users should click to read, instead of just posting the title and hoping that will be enough. Make the value clear up front and include a CTA like “The ebook is free– download it now!” to increase clicks on the post and further actions.

Conclusion

Domain authority can frustrate a lot of new sites trying to make a name for themselves (and increase site traffic and lead generation) through content marketing, but it’s something that everyone has experienced. Be patient, because a combination of time and some dedication to your link-building strategies will help your site authority, and it will be easier for you to rank well.

Consistency is important, so keep at these strategies even if it feels like you’re spending too much time waiting on editors to respond to your guest posting inquiries. In the meantime, you can always target some lower-competition long-tail keywords so that you can still rank and start getting some of those clicks to your site.

If you’re still looking for a little help with giving your domain authority a boost and improving your overall SEO traffic, we can help. Learn more here.

The post Domain Authority: How to Increase Your Ranking Score from Scratch appeared first on Single Grain.

5 Ways to Improve Your SEO Without Building Links

Eric Siu — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 15:00:53 +0000

When it comes to improving your website’s SEO, most advice includes a call to focus on building links. There’s a good reason for that — it works really well for some people (usually the people telling you that you need to do it).

But here’s what they don’t tell you: there are other ways to improve your rank on Google and other SERPs, and they may even work better. And in this article, we’ll tell you just how to do that!

What Is Link Building?

When we talk about building links, we’re talking about inbound links — getting other people to link to your content. The way most people do it is by finding dead or outdated links on high-authority websites in your niche, creating replacement content (if you don’t already have it), and then pitching the website owner to use their link to fresh, new content.

Tactic 1: Build a Great Product

If you have a good product, you don’t have to fight for links. One of the biggest misconceptions about link building is that it has to be done manually. If you build it, they will come. If they love it, they will link to it.

A while back, I noticed that Single Grain was ranking for “strikethrough text,” because we had mentioned it in a blog post. So I said, “We should just make a strikethrough text tool.” So we did.

It’s just a simple generator, but it actually helped move us into a higher ranking for the keyword. This is a great example of not needing to build links or do any outreach — we just made something useful that people were already searching for and it attracted more links.

This approach is called “product-led growth” (PLG), and it’s a term that was coined by OpenView Venture Partners. Basically, it means building something not as a standalone product, but as a marketing channel for the other products or services that your business offers.

Dive Deeper:

Tactic 2: Embrace Freemium Products

If you already have a premium product — or are planning on building one — it may be worth giving at least some of it away for free as a tool to market the paid version. That’s the freemium model.

HubSpot has a tool called Website Grader, and it does just what you think it does: it audits websites based on a variety of factors and gives them a “grade.” Then it uses that grade to upsell you to the paid products that you can use to improve it.

Is Website Grader the most comprehensive website auditing tool out there? No, but it’s free, and if it gives you actionable advice, you’re much more likely to pay for the upgraded product than than just sign up for a premium product that you know nothing about.

And, according to SEMrush, Website Grader has more than 700,000 backlinks and ranks for 1,600 keywords:

HubSpot also does this well. Not only do they offer a suite of free marketing tools, but they have effective marketing funnels to steer you into the multi-featured paid products.

The downside to freemium products is that you have to build something, and that takes time, resources and money. Before diving into this model, do your research and make sure it really makes sense for your brand.

Dive Deeper:

Tactic 3: Or Just Give It Away

Are your competitors charging thousands of dollars for a product? Figure out how to make a similar product totally free for your customers.

A good example of this is Ubersuggest, Neil Patel’s free SEO keyword tool. Now, there are a lot of keyword tools out there, but what differentiates Neil’s tool from them is that it’s free. Not freemium. Free. No strings attached.

Neil doesn’t really market Ubersuggest or do any outreach, but it has more than 270,000 backlinks and brings 10,000 people to his site every day. Why? Because people want free keyword tools, and he’s the highest-ranked game in town.

Like HubSpot’s Website Grader, Ubersuggest doesn’t have a ton of bells and whistles, but it has enough information to make it useful. And when people land on his website to try it out, they may discover that he has tons of content telling them how to improve their SEO or decide to inquire about his consulting services. He’s not pushing those things through the tool, but people can find them. People do find them.

Tactic 4: Create Linkable Assets

If you don’t have the budget or resources to build a free or freemium product, you still have an opportunity to create linkable assets. Linkable assets are, quite simply, items that are created for the express purpose of getting people to link to them.

Here are a few examples to get you started:

Visual assets: These are your infographics, maps and diagrams. For example, let’s say you’re an influencer marketing agency. You can pull together an infographic with stats about your industry, a map of where the biggest influencers in a particular niche live or a flowchart about the process of vetting influencers. All those assets have a high likelihood of being shared by people in the influencer space.
Tools: This includes all the tools above. It could be as simple as the text strikethrough tool or as complicated as the website grader. Either way, it should fulfill a specific need that your clients and customers have.
Tutorials and guides: What do your customers want to know? If they want to learn how to tie a tie, for example, they’ll probably land on How to Tie a Tie. What can you teach people to do? You don’t have to create a standalone site for it — you could simply publish something like “The Definitive Guide to Tying Every Type of Tie.” Check out our how-to guide: Step-by-Step Guide to Writing an Earth-Shattering Blog Post:

Interactive content: Quizzes, transformation apps other types of interactive content that give customers an opportunity to learn something about themselves — which you can then enhance with a paid product or service — are an effective tool for virility and inbound links. They can also be great for establishing thought leadership, as seen in the New York Times’ investment in interactive content.
Research: Survey your customers and package the results into a report. Your stats are likely to start showing up in industry roundups, news articles and blog posts, improving your Google rank. Everyone who creates content regularly needs statistics, so make sure yours get the links.

Many linkable asset types are easy and affordable to create. And because there are so many different types, you can start small and scale up to something more feature-heavy as you learn what works.

Dive Deeper:

Tactic 5: Leverage Social Sites for Press

If you do decide to build a tool or linkable asset, launch it on Reddit, Product Hunt or Hacker News, or whichever sites are applicable to your industry. Reddit is applicable to most industries as there’s a subreddit for just about everything.

You need to be careful about promoting products within communities, though, especially on Reddit. Read the rules before posting, and/or consider paid ads so you don’t get banned for blurring the lines between helpful and spammy.

Using the more niche sites is a great way to get qualified eyeballs. Some of those people will probably end up linking to you if they like your content or product.

How We’re Doing SEO without Link Building

Single Grain already has domain authority, so our SEO tactics may differ from yours. When we publish something, it’s going to attract a lot more traffic and therefore more links. But I have another site, Growth Everywhere, that doesn’t rank as high, so I have an opportunity there:

I have a book coming out called Leveling Up, and it’s basically about how you play the game of life (what can I say? I like playing games). As a result, we’re going to rebrand the site to be more of an extension of that idea, with tools and widgets that will help people learn marketing or how become an entrepreneur.

To go back to the “How to Tie a Tie” example, we want it to be like that — something practical that people are searching for, something that’ll help them stay motivated or track an aspect of their professional life. I don’t have it fully defined yet, but that’s where it’s going.

Basically, I want to create widgets that people will use on a daily basis. Those widgets will function as linkable assets, which will help improve the SEO of the site. That’ll get more marketers and would-be entrepreneurs to the site, which will funnel them to the book or into any other content or products I create. At least, that’s the plan for now.

Dive Deeper:

You Need to Do More Than Just Create Great Content

SEO used to be about creating comprehensive, useful, up-to-date content. In some respects, it still is, but with so much competition out there, you have to do more to stand out and get ranked.

I started writing marketing guides and in-depth articles and blog posts back when it was still your ticket to Google’s front page, and I was pretty successful at it. I didn’t have to do much outreach to get backlinks. Now I, like everyone else, have to diversify.

It’s important to think outside the box when it comes to your SEO strategy. Whether it’s releasing a free or freemium tool, doing a free in-person event or even hosting a PR stunt, that’s how you build links. It’s not about manual outreach, and it’s definitely not about buying links (don’t do that!).

SEO is purely about dangling the best carrot that people will naturally want to link to. And what is that carrot? It’s typically doing the opposite of what everyone else in your space is doing.
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Every time Google’s algorithm changes, people rush to crack the code. But no matter how much it changes, there are a few things that remain constant — the most important one being the importance of providing value.

What do your customers or clients need to be successful that’s complementary to the goods or services you sell? Give it to them, in a unique way. It could be unique because it’s free or because no one else has tried it yet. Either way, make sure it’s the best.

The post 5 Ways to Improve Your SEO Without Building Links appeared first on Single Grain.

How to Make Broken Link Building 10x Easier

Eric Siu — Wed, 29 May 2019 15:00:01 +0000

Think about the last time you landed on a page that said: “404: Page not found.”

It’s frustrating, right? You click the link expecting to consume a length piece of content. You’re excited to dig into it only to find out that the page has since been removed.

It’s a common problem that can happen for several reasons without site owners even realizing it, such as you’ve:

Changed from HTTP to HTTPS
Switched your URL structure
Deleted a page by accident

These changes could mean that the backlinks you’ve previously built could be broken — sending people to a 404 error page on your website. It’s not all bad news, though. You can use your competitors’ broken links to your advantage when it comes to SEO.

And it’s pretty easy to do.

What Is Broken Link Building?

Broken link building does what it says on the tin: finds broken links on other, high-authority websites in your niche, and uses them to build links back to your own website — usually in the form of a replacement.

For example: Let’s say the Single Grain blog linked to an article about meta titles. But when readers clicked that article, it sends them to a 404 error page. A broken link builder would create a blog post on their website around the same topic, then shoot an email to our editors to:

Inform them that their link is broken
Nudge the editor towards swapping the broken link for theirs

Broken link building differs from traditional link building in that you’re creating content for demand — rather than hitting “publish” on a piece of content you think you can get links from.

And it works. Website owners don’t want their blogs to be littered with 404 error pages because they’re bad for user experience and essentially stop visitors in their tracks. Broken links are bad for SEO and result in reduced chances of a website ranking organically because Google wants their users to land on high-quality pages.

No website owner wants to lose organic traffic — which is why broken link building works so well — so they’re more receptive to pitches that ask for a backlink if they’re replacing broken ones.

Learn More:

Link Prospecting: How to Find Broken or Outdated Backlinks

If you want to build links by replacing broken ones on other websites, the first step is to create a list of publications you’d love to get a link from.

To do this, you could:

Survey your audience and find out which websites they read regularly
Search Google for popular blogs in your industry (e.g. “top marketing blogs”)
Use tools like BuzzSumo or Social Animal to find websites that are writing about your topic:

For each blog post you find, analyze its SEO power using Ahrefs or Moz. Does it have a strong Domain Authority (or Rating)? Lots of referring domains? Rank for several keywords?

Let’s take say you sell travel backpacks on your website. You might pick Open Stories’ travel blog as a way to build links. But Ahrefs shows that their blog has a DR of 6 (on a scale of 1-100, with 100 being the best) and ranks for zero keywords. That’s probably not the strongest website, SEO-wise.

Rough Guides, on the other hand, has a DR of 79, over 15,000 referring domains, and ranks for over 442,000 keywords:

It’d be much more valuable to get a link from this website than Open Stories — purely because it’s already established some SEO power. Building a link from there would give your site a similar reputation.

Make a list of relevant websites you find that meet this criteria. Then install the Broken Link Checker Chrome extension and do a site search for a blog post you’d love to get a link from. Continuing with the Rough Guides website as an example, I might search for “backpacks” on that site:

Comb through recent blog posts they’ve published on their website. The tool will highlight any broken links on that page:

Alternatively, you could run the entire domain through Free Broken Link Checker to find a complete list of broken links on their website:

All that’s left to do is create a blog post with which the site owner could use to replace their broken one. Follow the skyscraper technique and make sure the topic you’re covering is the best one. It’s an easy way to convince a site owner to link to your blog post from their site.

You could also plug the broken URL into the Wayback Machine and find what the original page discussed. Use the original content as your structure, and expand on certain topics to add depth.

Learn More:

Bonus: Scale Your Link Prospecting

If you want to scale this process to make it more lucrative and easier, you could hire a freelancer through Fiverr or Upwork to do this link prospecting for you. Simply ask them to find blog posts in your niche that contain broken links using a spreadsheet with these columns:

Website
Blog post with the broken link
Broken URL
Anchor text
Link you want to replace it with

(Grab a copy of this template by clicking here.)

How to Create a Broken Link Outreach Strategy

You’ve found a list of websites you could build backlinks from and created a bunch of top-quality blog posts to replace their broken links with. Now we’re moving onto the trickiest part: making the ask.

When Backlinko studied over 12 million outreach emails, they found that just 8.5% of emails receive a response. Combine that with the fact link building outreach has garnered a reputation for being spammy and you’ll see why crafting the perfect email is important.

So what makes a “good” outreach email? Typically:

It has a long subject line: The same Backlinko study found that outreach emails with long subject lines have a 24.6% higher average response rate.
It’s truthful and to-the-point: Don’t waffle on about how much you love their content and that you’ve been reading their blog for years – unless you have. Website owners can see right through it and don’t have tons of time to invest in reading your outreach email.
It’s personal: Instead of pitching someone out of the blue, build a rapport with them first by liking their tweets or commenting on their LinkedIn posts. Bring up that connection in your email.

If you’re panicking at the thought of composing an email, don’t! Here’s a free broken link building outreach email you can customize to make the ask:

Subject line: There’s a broken link on this page

“Hey, [NAME],

I love what you’re publishing on [WEBSITE]. I fell down the rabbit hole after reading the post you shared on [PLATFORM] last [WEEK/MONTH], and landed on your blog post on [TOPIC]. I wanted to learn what [BROKEN URL WEBSITE NAME] had to say about [BROKEN LINK TOPIC], but the link was broken and I was redirected to a 404 error page.

The broken link is on this blog post with the anchor text “[ANCHOR TEXT]”: [URL OF POST CONTAINING BROKEN LINK].

My team recently worked on a similar post, which covers [2-3 TAKEAWAYS FROM YOUR POST]. Here’s a link: [URL].

I think it’d be a great replacement for the broken link. But either way, keep up the good work! I’m excited to see what you publish next.

Thanks, [YOUR NAME]”

Notice that I’m pitching a link to my content that’s already published. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can whip up something good in a few days when you get a response; have the content ready for them to review.

You want to:

Show them that your content is an equal (if not better) replacement in terms of quality
Make it as easy as possible for them to replace their broken links with yours

Learn More:

When Is the Best Time to Send My Email?

The timing of your email is just as important as the content you’re sending. Get it wrong and you could slip to the bottom of a webmaster’s inbox and never receive a reply. But get it right and you’ll land your broken link outreach email right in front of them when they’ve got time to take action on it.

CoSchedule compiled the results of multiple studies and found that you’re more likely to get a reply if you hit “send” on at 10 am on a Tuesday morning:

Of course, it’s important to play around with these timings. While 10 am on a Tuesday is seen as “best practice”, you might stand out by emailing them at other peak times — like 2 pm on a Thursday. You don’t know what works for your business — or the webmasters you’re emailing — until you try it yourself.

Should I Follow Up with My Outreach Email?

That’s a common question that leaves link builders scratching their heads.

But it’s important that you stay up to date with your broken link building outreach, especially when it comes to following up with your initial email. A report by Woodpecker found that people who send one email get an average reply rate of 16%, compared to 27% who follow up at least once.

However, just like any link building outreach email, there’s a fine balance between following up and being downright annoying. I recommend following up using this schedule:

Email #1: Initial ask
Email #2: Follow up 3 days later
Email #3: Follow up 7 days later

Here’s a quick template you can use:

“Hey, [NAME],

I checked again this morning and the link is still broken, so I wanted to make sure that this didn’t slip through your inbox.

Let me know if you need anything else,

[YOUR NAME]

If you haven’t got a response by email #3, cut your losses and move on. It hasn’t got lost in their inbox — they’re just not interested.

Learn More:

How to Keep Track of Your Outreach

By this point, you’ll have emails flying all over the place. It’s easy to get caught up in the details and forget that you need to follow up with someone or track which broken links you’ve successfully converted.

The same template I shared earlier can help with this. It’s got columns for:

Outreach date
Follow-up dates
Whether the site owner has replied
Any additional notes you need to remember (e.g. this person is out of office until 05/15)

Treat this spreadsheet as your bible. Keep it updated whenever somebody gets back to you and don’t send an email without consulting it first. It’s the best way to keep your broken link building outreach organized.

Final Thoughts

Are you ready to add broken link building into your to-do list for 2019?

I don’t blame you. You’re about to form relationships with other webmasters, create a library of new content, and build backlinks that help your site skyrocket in the SERPS!

The post How to Make Broken Link Building 10x Easier appeared first on Single Grain.

The Ultimate Guide to Link Building with Content for SEO

Eric Siu — Wed, 22 May 2019 19:00:00 +0000

Search engines are constantly evolving their algorithms to ensure that the highest-quality content is surfaced in response to user queries. And as far as they’re concerned, receiving a high volume of quality links from external websites suggests that your content falls closer to trustworthy than spammy on this spectrum.

But that’s only part of what makes creating valuable content and investing in inbound marketing so valuable these days. Because 86% of B2C organizations and 91% of B2B organizations use content marketing, failing to invest in content puts you at risk of being left behind.

In this guide, I’m going to share the tactics that will help you create linkable high-quality content for your website as well as use that content for link building to your website.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: ↓

What Is High-Quality Content?

Before we jump into tactics, let’s get some background information out of the way.

You’ve probably noticed that a lot of link building and SEO guides focus on creating high-quality content. There’s a good reason for that: it’s far easier to build links to top-quality content because that’s what gets shared.

Businesses and individuals are constantly in search of quality material to link to so that they have something of value to offer their website visitors. As you’ll notice, few people link to a homepage, product page or shopping cart.

Of course, there’s a difference between creating content that is simply stuffed with keywords and links and creating top-notch blogs and articles that are specifically geared towards helping you build authoritative links to your website.

And just to be sure we’re speaking the same language, here are two important definitions:

Content marketing refers to creating and sharing content (articles, blogs, infographics, videos) for the purposes of driving traffic to your website and moving visitors through your marketing funnel in order to acquire new customers.
Link building is when you get other websites or blogs to link to your site’s page in order to improve your search engine rankings. The engines crawl the web looking for links between your web pages and other websites to decide how valid your content is and thus where your page should rank in their search results. 58% of SEO professionals believe that backlinks have a big impact on search rankings. So if you want to invest in link building, you need high-quality content resources.

Here’s how to kick the process off.

Dive Deeper: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know About 10x Content

Part 1: Creating Linkable High-Quality Content

In the introduction, I explained that linkable, well-crafted content can help you build links to your website. But let’s step back for a moment and explain what exactly quality material is.

High-quality content:

Is well-researched and provides accurate information
Speaks directly to your target audience
Contains impeccably written copy
Uses supplemental images, graphs, videos or infographics, when appropriate
Is as complete and up-to-date as possible at the time of publishing

Succeeding with these five points requires that you start the content creation process with in-depth research. Without this background, you won’t know what’s truly “high-quality” within your niche.

Understanding Your Industry’s Content Landscape with the Skyscraper Technique

To see where you stand out with content, we’re going to use a process called the Skyscraper Technique. Coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko, the Skyscraper Technique involves three steps:

Step 1: Find link-worthy content
Step 2: Make something even better
Step 3: Reach out to the right people

As a side note, since his original publication, Dean has expanded the Skyscraper Technique to a “2.0” version that takes keyword intent into consideration. His post on the changes is well worth the read if you’re serious about successful content.

All this research might make your content longer, but that’s a good thing. According to another study in which they analyzed 912 million blog posts, long-form content gets more backlinks and social shares.

For example, Dean found that “Content longer than 3,000 words gets an average of 77.2% more referring domain links than content shorter than 1,000 words”:

The ideal content length for social shares, according to Dean’s research, is a little shorter. But it’s still important to write at least 1,000 words per post. He says, “According to our data, long-form content generates significantly more social shares than short content. However, our research indicates that there’s diminishing returns once you reach the 2,000-word mark”:

Dive Deeper: The Skyscraper Technique: How to Build High-Quality Backlinks to Your Content

Choosing a Topic for Your Content

Keeping the principles of the Skyscraper Technique in mind, do some basic searches on Google to get a feel for the content that’s already out there in your industry. Start by Googling common questions or queries related to your business:

Pay attention to the drop-down “search suggestions” on Google. This will show you which keywords and phrases people use the most to find out more about your topic. Each of these search suggestions could become a topic that you explore in greater detail in a content piece.

You can also use sites like Quora to uncover more about the questions people are asking in your industry. For example, you can type “wordpress blogs” into Quora’s search bar to see the most common questions:

This process may help you identify new angles that you can take on existing topics. If everyone is talking about the technical side of starting a WordPress blog, you could talk about the psychological side. If everyone is writing generic articles on how to get more traffic to a WordPress site, you could write niche-specific articles.

BuzzSumo is another great tool for this process. Use it to search for either industry-specific keywords or your competitors’ websites, and you’ll be able to see the most popular content pieces over a set period of time, as determined by social shares:

From your research, try to come up with 5-10 possible content piece topics. Choose one to start with, based on what your research has told you about the topics that your audience is most interested in, as well as your own understanding of what your prospects and customers need to hear from you.

Dive Deeper: 10 Ways to Generate Topics and Write High-Ranking Blog Posts

Creating Expert-Level Content: 5 Strategies to Test

With your topic ready, it’s time to start writing. But if you still aren’t sure what to put in your articles, consider the following five strategies for ensuring that your finished product supports both your website visitors and your future link-building efforts.

1) Finding Existing Research to Cite

Don’t just make assumptions in your article. Backing up any statements you make in your content makes it stronger, increasing the odds that readers and others in your industry will link to it as a reference.

It’s one thing to say, for example, that Facebook is the most popular social network on the planet, but without the numbers to back it up, it just comes off as opinion. But when you write that with 2.38 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social network on the planet, this is no longer opinion; it’s fact-based writing with the statistics to back it up. This is what separates the experts from the amateurs.

Cite specific sources for every one of your claims throughout your article so that readers instantly get that they are looking at a well-researched piece of content. This gives them a reason to trust you and link to your content rather than content written by others. It also allows the readers to dive deeper into the subject to which you sourced if that interests them.

Finding these sources of existing research is pretty easy. If you’re writing an article about Facebook advertising, you could search for “Psychology of Facebook ads,” “Facebook ad research” or “Facebook ad case studies” to find interesting research to cite in your post:

In-depth, well-researched articles are the type of posts that readers bookmark and visit over and over again.

2) Creating Your Own Custom Research

If you want to go further, keep in mind that research in and of itself can be highly shareable.

For example, imagine that you conduct a survey of several hundred webmasters on trends they’re seeing by using a tool like SurveyMonkey or Jotform (Note: As of November 1, 2022, Google Surveys is no longer available). You can take the conclusions and trends that come out of that work and publish them in your content – as a chart-heavy guide or infographic, for example.

Content creators are always looking for sources to cite. When they go looking for research to support the content they’re creating, you’ll earn backlinks when they cite your work.

3) Quoting Industry Experts from Existing Sources

Another way to add credibility to your writing is by using quotes from industry experts (aka, anyone with authority in your niche).

For example, I could say that link-building methods of the past will no longer help your website. But again, that’s just opinion, and unless you already consider me an expert, you won’t necessarily pay heed to it:

On the other hand, if I say that John Mueller of Google suggests that webmasters should focus less on link building as it’s been done in the past and instead focus more on creating high-quality content that is easy to link to, I have now added an expert opinion from Google – a source that most people trust. All the better if I can use word-for-word quotes that are hyperlinked to the source.

Even if someone has never heard the name John Mueller, the fact that he is from Google makes him an instant expert in the area of SEO. When you can’t find specific research or statistics, expert quotes are the next best thing to back them up.

In addition to making your content higher quality by adding expert opinions, you have also added influencers to the article who might actually help you promote it.

Even if Mueller doesn’t link to your content, he might share it with his 55.8K Twitter followers, which may in turn prompt one of his fans to share it with their own audience or link to your content.

For that reason, popular blogs in your industry can also be recognized as go-to expert resources for research and statistics. For example, if you’re in the marketing space, you can cite data from blog posts on sites like:

When your readers see that your claims are backed up by expert opinions – even if all you’ve done is copy them from existing content – they’re more likely to trust your articles, and they’re more likely to mentally associate you with that expert.

If you cite a blog post as your resource, you can email an editor from that blog and mention that you linked to them. Then you can ask them if they’d be willing to link to a specific post of yours in return.

4) Conducting Your Own Interviews for Custom Quotes

Another way to get backlinks from experts in your field is by interviewing them.

In many cases, interviewing experts in your field is a better way to get backlinks than by just linking to their content.

There are a couple reasons for this:

Emotional investment. An expert in your field will feel more of an emotional investment in your content if you interview them rather than just giving them a backlink. They’re spending more time and energy interacting with you and, as a result, they’re more likely to do favors for you in the long run.
More value added for the expert. Interviews allow thought leaders and experts to share their story with more people. They’re able to promote products or services, build their brand, and interact with a new audience on a relatively deep level.

When we interview entrepreneurs and marketers for our Growth Everywhere podcast, they usually share the content or link to it on their own blog or social media:

Experts typically like to do interviews for people who already have an audience. But if you don’t have an audience already, there’s another option: offer to interview them for a major publication.

Approach a blog like Business Insider, Huffington Post, etc. and ask them whether they would be interested in publishing a blog post where you interview a specific expert in your field. If they say yes, you can then approach that expert, interview them, and write the blog post about it.

For example the above example is a blog post I wrote for Entrepreneur.com featuring Brenton Hayden – the 28-year-old who built a $28 million empire from his own businesses.

5) Citing Specific Resources to Create Credibility

Finally, always look for opportunities throughout your content to assist your readers and give them actionable assistance by mentioning specific resources. For example:

Don’t just say that people should try various SEO tools. Recommend your favorites, like SEMrush for paid search advertising research and Monitor Backlinks for link profile monitoring.
Don’t just say there are tons of great beginner’s guides to SEO. Provide a few examples, like Moz’s Free Beginner’s Guide or Buffer’s Complete Beginner’s Guide.
Don’t just say there are lots of SEO experts. Mention the ones that you frequently refer to, like Bruce Clay, Loren Baker, Dr. Pete Meyers, John Rampton, or Single Grain. 😀

Better yet, don’t just include links – include images that show what people will find when they click through to one of your recommendations, like this quick peek at a report from SEMrush:

For the average reader, this adds more value to your content because you are giving them additional resources that provide substantial information.

You have also added more opportunities to connect with people to let them know that you have featured them, their resource or their product in your latest piece of content.

Resulting shares based on “ego-baiting” (creating content that features an influencer for the purpose of getting a link or share from them in return) have the potential to create new links.

In addition to “ego-baiting” on your own blog, you can write guest posts for other major blogs where you feature experts in your industry. If you write a guest post on a site like HubSpot, Search Engine Journal or Moz and feature thought leaders in your field, that tends to make it easier when approaching them for backlinks.

And in the future, when you post on your own blog, you’re more likely to get backlinks from them because they’ll already know your name.

Dive Deeper: 4 Ways to Signal to Google that You’re an Expert Content Creator

Part 2: Building Links to Your Linkable High-Quality Content

Once you’ve published your linkable high-quality content, your next goal is to actually build links to it.

If you remember from the Skyscraper Technique article mentioned earlier, the final step in the process is sharing your new work with the world. There are plenty of ways to do this, including:

Playing the numbers game
Getting as much exposure for your content as possible
Reaching out to the people most likely to link to your content
Answering questions
Syndicating content

Each of these steps plays a vital role in getting links to your linkable high-caliber article. Let’s take a look at each one in a bit more detail.

Playing the Numbers Game

The first step is playing the numbers game. The number of social shares, the number of votes and the number of comments you receive on your content all play a role in convincing people that your piece is valuable, popular and, ultimately, link-worthy.

This is why the second after you publish your content you need to start building up these numbers. Begin by sharing it on all your social media networks and scheduling it to publish multiple times (since your audience won’t all see it the first time you share it).

An experiment by CoSchedule found that sharing the same piece several times led to new engagement with each post:

Also, be aware that the way you share your content on social media can influence how much engagement it receives.

For example, according to KISSmetrics, “photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more clicks on links than text-based posts.” Even if your content piece is text-based – like a blog post – sharing it through an image update, rather than a text one, may increase its social shares.

You can also submit your content to popular voting networks like:

Growth Hackers for marketing content
BizSugar for business content
subreddits for any kind of content

But be careful. These communities tend to be sensitive to self-promotion. You’ll see the best results if you engage with them actively on a regular basis – not just when you have something to share.

Finally, get comments. The best place to start is your email list. Send out a broadcast announcing your post and at the end of the email provide a clear call to action: that people stop by and share their thoughts on your blog post.

From there, try out the groups on Facebook that are built specifically for bloggers to reciprocate one good comment for another.

Learn More: Putting Together a Social Media Team for Your Brand

Earning Social Exposure

The next step is exposure. The more people that you reach with your content, the greater the number of links you’re likely to get from them. The fastest way to get exposure with your target audience beyond simply sharing it on your social accounts is through social media advertising. Specifically, create ads for:

Do some social media outreach by finding people who have shared similar content using the pro version of BuzzSumo:

If you can find direct contact information for these people, trying emailing them (Hunter is a great tool for finding email addresses). Otherwise, tweet or DM them about a post they shared and that you have a good one on the same topic you think they’d be interested in. Start with those sharers who have the most followers and retweets and work your way down the list.

Just in case your outreach is ignored, you can also combine tactics by exporting lists of people from BuzzSumo who have shared similar content and then create Tailored Audiences for Twitter ads using their usernames. This is a great way to craft a relevant remarketing campaign for your target demographic.

Since Twitter takes a while to create Tailored Audiences, you might want to do this research prior to publishing your content so that your Tailored Audiences are ready when the content goes live.

Dive Deeper:

Reaching Out to Influencers

Now it’s time to reach out directly to the people who are most likely to link to your content. If you’ve quoted or interviewed people in your content, start there. Otherwise, look for bloggers who are already linking to similar pieces.

BuzzSumo also offers a feature that allows you to view the articles that link to this piece of content, so as you are viewing sharers, look at the linkers too:

BuzzSumo makes your backlink research valuable by showing you only content backlinks — i.e. links to content from other pieces of content. Seeing the social share potential of the blog will also help you determine if it’s a quality website that will drive traffic to your own site.

Using the results from that report, reach out to the blog author as well as the author who created the link to the similar post and let them know about yours. You’ll have a higher rate of success if you aim for the most recent posts, as they are more likely to be recently updated, as well as posts from authors who write link roundups, like Marketing Day.

From here, start looking for additional link roundups in your industry. They will usually have keywords like:

[your topic] roundup
best [your topic] links
best [your topic] posts
best [your topic] articles
top [your topic] links
top [your topic] posts
top [your topic] articles, etc.

Reach out to those people directly so that they can include your content in their next edition.

Also be on the lookout for people who do roundups by email. In the SEO world, the holy grail is the Moz Top 10. Subscribe to their emails (preferably in advance), familiarize yourself with the content they share, and then reply to the latest one to let them know about your suggestion for their next email. Subscribers to those emails might have blogs of their own and might link to yours.

Dive Deeper:

Answering Questions with Your Content

Next, look for ways to answer questions with links to your content. Search for these opportunities in Q&A networks like Yahoo Answers and Quora, forums, and social media groups:

Put some time into this strategy. As more and more marketers use Q&A forums to promote their content, getting noticed has become more competitive. If your only goal is to get a link for your content on a site like Quora, standing out might not be your priority. But why not take advantage not just of the SEO benefit of the link, but of the perceived authority and influence that comes with proving your knowledge when answering questions?

Syndicating Your Content: Why Syndicate?

Once you’ve created a piece of content, you can also look for other sources where it can be syndicated, resulting in a link back to your website as well as greater exposure.

According to marketer Barry Feldman:

Choose sites where you know your target audience spends time. For example, if you mostly work with business owners, you’ll want to look at LinkedIn’s Pulse platform. Sites like Alltop and newer content curation services like Quuu can get the word out about your content while increasing your link-building potential as well.

Not all of these platforms will create SEO links, but they will allow you to gain more exposure for your content in a helpful way. And more exposure has the potential to lead to more links.

Dive Deeper: Why Content Marketing Should Always Be 20% Creation and 80% Promotion

Building High-Value Backlinks with High-Quality Content

Here is a quick rundown of the steps to building links with content:

Create linkable high-quality content that is valuable, accurate, up-to-date, complete and 1,000+ words.
Include specific research, expert opinions and resources.
Build social proof immediately after publishing by getting social shares, votes and comments.
Get exposure through social advertising and social outreach to people who share similar content.
Get links through direct outreach to people who link to similar content.
Get links by answering questions on Q&A networks, forums and social media groups, as well as by syndicating your content to relevant sites and platforms.

If you follow these steps each time you write an epic piece of content, you will ultimately create a library of linkable high-quality content on your website that drives up the overall authority of your domain with great, editorial links.

If you’re not an SEO-savvy marketer or you just don’t have the time, Single Grain can help you! We’ve helped businesses of all sizes improve their marketing ROI, ultimately increasing revenue – check out some of our case studies here.

Click the orange button below for your FREE marketing consultation to see how we can help you. (Just wanna geek out about SEO? That’s cool, too! Let’s chat.)

Get My Free Marketing Plan

The post The Ultimate Guide to Link Building with Content for SEO appeared first on Single Grain.

5 Types of Guest-Post Content that Support Your Link-Building Efforts

Jessica Thiefels — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 15:00:57 +0000

Guest posting is one of the best ways to build a high-value backlink profile, allowing you to earn brand authority in your industry, drive clicks back to your site, and boost organic traffic. However, landing page links are almost always removed by the editor before publishing.

Websites want you to link to content that provides value to the reader — a resource, data point or insight that further illustrates the point you’re trying to make. This more legitimate format for building your backlink profile with guest posting — not spamming editors — is what will help you land the most opportunities.

A quick word about backlinks: Matthew Barby analyzed a million SERPs and saw the correlation between a page’s Google ranking and how many backlinks pointing to it:

This is why great content is key for guest posting. Not only does it allow you to get the much-needed in-text link — versus a bio link — but great content gives you unique pitching angles. If you can intrigue the editor with your idea, you’re more likely to get the opportunity while fitting your link naturally within the text.

If you want to get your guest posting program off the ground, add these five pieces of content to your blog calendar. Use them as tools for getting more guest posting opportunities that further your brand and drive SEO value for years to come.

1) Case Study

A case study shows your value as a brand, making it a great piece of content to have, regardless of whether you use it as a tool for guest posting. It’s also ideal for building backlinks because data helps to support your argument — a bonus if you have a graphic from the case study that you can also include in your article.

However, this is only a great piece of content to link to within a guest post if it further illustrates the point you’re trying to make. Meaning: your blog post needs to be closely related to your case study so you can naturally highlight it in the article without being promotional.

Here are a few tips to get the most out of your case study:

Plan Topics Before Creating Your Case Study

To make sure you can naturally link to your case study, start by brainstorming which data is most usable. The best way to do this is to look at each data point and come up with at least five blog post titles you could pitch to editors that would allow you to include that supporting data point.

For example: a data point about how much time it took to increase by X spots in Google’s SERPs and what was done to reach that top spot would lend itself well to an article like:

5 Ways to Get to the First Page of Google

In this article, you would then reference the data you found like:

“Remember to be patient. It took [client name] 6 months to get to the first page of Google using on-page SEO optimizations, including X and Y.”

Make sure you have a number of angles like this for each case study data point.

To Gate or Not to Gate?

Another detail to consider is whether your case study is gated, meaning someone needs to enter their email address to access it, which is common practice. In this case, it’s ideal to have the data you plan to source in your article on the landing page of the case study so that the editor can quickly reference the link to check your facts. While not all editors are concerned with whether the data is gated or not, some do.

Another easy way around this potential challenge is to gate the full case study, so you can still drive leads, but create a supporting blog post as well. You can include a few snippets of data in the blog post with a CTA to download the full report. This is common practice for a wide range of brands and allows you to drive traffic and leads.

Dive Deeper:

2) Proprietary Data Report

Publishers are always looking for data that tells a story. While your case study can do that, proprietary data is a little different. Holly Rollins, President of 10x Digital, explains, “Survey-based content is one of the most sought-after pieces of content by editors, which can be a huge differentiator. It’s also one of the best types of content to present on your site, your blog and social posts — speaking to all of your audiences.”

For example, with proprietary data, you can make broader statements like:

“X retailers publish on Twitter X times each day, according to the 2018 State of Social Report.”

Not only is this great for linking to in guest posts, but it also benefits your status as a leader in the space, says Rollins. She explains, “Real data from statistically valid surveys that relate to your industry really shows that you or your company [are] an expert and [have] the data to backup your claims.”

Here are a few ways to uncover this proprietary data:

Customer or Company Data

What kind of data can you extract from customers? Not one specific customer, but information that speaks to a broader audience. For example, if you have a keyword-tracking tool, you might be able to extract data like:

How many keywords brands track
How many keywords businesses in specific industries track
The most-tracked keywords — in general and per industry

When choosing this data, look for clusters of information that can cover a broad topic, like SEO for retailers. In the example above, you might be able to do an entire report on keyword usage, but make sure the data is both interesting and fills a gap in the industry, suggests Rollins.

Survey Data

There are two main ways to get this data: survey your customers or user base, or use a tool like Google Surveys to get data from a large set of people:

In either case, you want to do the same thing you did with your case study: start with the topics.

With surveys, begin by asking yourself: which questions will give us data that we can use to pitch unique topics and include naturally in each guest post? Thinking in this way ensures that you’re getting useful and unique data.

When using Google Surveys, you pay per response. Set a budget that allows for at least 500 responses, which is the minimum that most editors will want to see when you reference the data. It also makes the data stronger in the article when you can say something like In a survey of 500 small business owners, we found that 73 percent published one blog post each month.

Get an overview of pricing from Google Surveys to decide what a reasonable budget will be. If this takes a substantial amount of your budget, remember that you can reuse this data in social media posts, email marketing and even as proof of the need for your product or service on your website.

Dive Deeper:

3) E-book

An e-book provides a lot of value to your business. As Julia McCoy of Express Writers says:

“The rationale behind it is that an ebook offers something to the customer in exchange for something else, usually an email address and permission to be added to a mailing list. Lead generation through this way allows for follow-ups through email and is a great way to get people talking or simply interested in your product or service.”

In the case of link building, an e-book is a great resource to help readers delve deeper into a topic of your guest post. Better yet, you can use it to pitch ideas like:

5 Resources for New Marketers in 2019

And then list your e-book alongside other related e-books. This format for linking to your e-book is even more valuable than most because you’re directly calling it out in a way that encourages readers to click through. Rather than linking to it as a source to data, you’re saying, “Check this out.” That CTA can be powerful for driving clicks.

To get started, consider both your topic and author:

Choose an E-book Topic

The key to using this piece of content to drive guest posting opportunities is writing about a truly unique topic. In their guide on how to create and sell an e-book, FounderU suggests that you need to consider:

What you’re passionate about
What your audience wants to read about
And what’s unique in your industry

FounderU explains:

“A great way to gauge what your audience responds to is to look at which of your blog posts and social media updates currently get the most comments or shares. Before finalizing your topic, do some research on the existing market. Look at potential competitors already selling Ebooks in similar categories on Amazon or their own site. Consider ways in which your story and unique perspective can help you to stand out.”

Choose Your E-book Author

As a business, you have a few options for authoring the e-book: the company itself, or the CEO or other chief officer within the company. The latter may provide more clout and boost your brand as a thought leader. It also makes the link more “sellable” in a guest post because you can say, “In his brand new e-book, John Smith, CEO for Company X, shares his insights on….”

In this way, the book sounds more legitimate and valuable — everyone wants to hear from the person in charge. Remember that the marketing team can still ghostwrite the book; the CEO doesn’t need to do that herself.

Dive Deeper:

4) Thought Leadership Article from the CEO

A thought leadership article from your CEO or other executive is a great way to add value to both your own blog and your guest post because with their title comes an assumption of expertise and knowledge.

For example, in your guest post, you can source the blog post using a quote: “Technology is forcing the marketing industry to evolve at a rapid pace,” says Sarah Brightman, CEO of Marketing Company.

This type of linking in your guest post gives you, as the author, more legitimacy because you’re referencing insights from experts in your industry. It also allows your business to develop their thought leadership with the mention of your CEO.

When creating the initial content for this blog post, choose topics based on two things:

Your CEO’s experience
Your brand and niche

By combining these two factors, you create content that’s both valuable to your audience and allows you to highlight the knowledge of your CEO.

For example, if your CEO was the brainchild of your best-selling marketing tool, and you’re a B2B company targeting other marketers, you might have him or her write a post called:

How We Generated $100K in One Year With X Tool

In this way, your audience is learning, your brand looks great, and you can easily and naturally feature your CEO’s experience.

Again, remember that the CEO does not need to write this piece — your marketing team, or an outside writer, can ghostwrite it.

Dive Deeper:

5) In-Depth How-To Blog Post

An in-depth blog post is like a case study or report, but more content heavy. In this case, you’re teaching your audience how to do something from start to finish, providing a significant amount of value and showing your expertise as a company.

Many brands do this. Check out a few examples:

As you build your in-depth, how-to post, consider the topic first. Turn to your social media metrics and blog post data to determine which topics your audience cares about. Once you have a topic chosen, fill out the post with:

Graphs that make data easy to understand
Screenshots that make it easier to follow processes
Actionable tips that your reader can use to implement your ideas
Definitions of terms, if needed
Embedded videos to complement your text

You can also add a linked table of contents at the top. This makes the piece more interactive, and also allows your reader to jump around — as a longer post, it can be hard to scan, so this makes your reader’s life easier.

Create Guest Post-Worthy Content

Great content will help you land high-quality placements with your guest posting efforts. These pieces allow you to pitch unique ideas and naturally include a link back to your site in a way that provides value to the reader. Use this style of guest posting to build thought leadership, develop content that will drive SEO value for years to come, and form relationships with publishers that will continue to benefit your brand over and over again.

The post 5 Types of Guest-Post Content that Support Your Link-Building Efforts appeared first on Single Grain.

How – and Why – to Build a Backlink Portfolio

Caz Bevan — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 15:00:43 +0000

The Internet is a big place and you need to help people find their way to your website, which is where backlinks come into play. Backlinks – those inbound links that point back to your site in everything you post – are essential building blocks on the information highway that leads to your virtual door.

In this article, I’ll show you how they work and why they’re important so that you really understand what backlinks are all about.

Why Are Backlinks Important to SEO?

Backlinks actually perform several interrelated functions when it comes to helping your website become more visible in the search engine results pages (SERPs), which is what users receive when they type keywords into a query. Take a listen to Matt Cutts, former head of the web spam team at Google, explaining how search works:

Here are four reasons why they are super helpful when it comes to search engine optimization:

1) Backlinks Help Google Find Your Website’s Pages

Once your website is built, you have to make sure that Google (and, thus, people) can find it. Backlinks are one of the best ways to put your site on the Internet’s map. Google sends out little electronic “spiders” that crawl throughout the Internet to find and index new web pages.

The more well-developed the links to your site (and within your site) are, the better it is in terms of how Google operates. A substantial number of quality backlinks can help you get indexed faster – and faster indexing leads to higher ranking in search in a shorter time frame.

Dive Deeper: The Marketer’s Guide to Link Building

2) Backlinks Increase Your Website’s Overall Credibility

Did your mother ever teach you that you can tell a lot about a person by the company that they keep? Well, Google has the same philosophy.

When your site starts to gather backlinks from reputable sites in your industry, Google takes that as a sign that you’re delivering high-quality, trustworthy content. Your credibility as an expert in your field rises.

The theory makes sense – after all, which would you trust more: a site with just one or two backlinks or a site with one or two hundred backlinks? Sites that produce the most value in terms of content simply tend to collect more backlinks.

Dive Deeper: How to Squeeze the Most Value Out of Nofollow Backlinks from High-Authority Sites

3) Backlinks Drive More Traffic to Your Website

What else does all that credibility get you? Better results in search! Since Google’s aim is to provide users with what they’re trying to find as quickly as possible, it looks for credible sources of information and puts those toward the top of its SERPs. Higher search results translate into increased visibility and more clicks.

Backlinks bring people to your virtual door. Every time someone lands on a page that’s linked to your site – whether they’re looking at a social post on Facebook or Twitter, a guest post on an industry magazine’s site, a listing in a local directory or somewhere else – they see a link to your website. Every time someone clicks that link, it boosts the amount of traffic your site gets.

Dive Deeper: The Skyscraper Technique: How to Build High-Quality Backlinks to Your Content

4) Backlinks Build Relationships

Backlinks are, by their nature, a social process, a way of building relationships. Building a quality portfolio of backlinks often requires reaching out to other websites and influencers in your industry. When you continue to be a source of valuable information and support, you build a network of trust – a partnership between you and other highly-regarded experts that, ultimately, benefits everyone.

How Do You Build a Backlink Portfolio that Works?

If you’re building a business online, you need to make sure you stick to “white-hat” marketing strategies when you’re building backlinks to your site. In other words, make sure you’re focused on your human audience first – and Google’s algorithms second. This is the key to long-term sustainability.

Beware that black-hat tactics that try to fool the algorithm with less-than-credible material can get your website banned from search. But you can learn how to use black hat SEO in a white hat way:

Here’s the key word that you want to keep in mind as you go about building your backlinks: diversify. Why? Different types of links can help you overcome sudden changes in Google’s algorithm down the line and keep your site elevated in search.

So, where do you get started building backlinks?

1) Directories

Directories can take some of the pain out of building backlinks, especially when you haven’t yet built up your reputation and authority.

Adding your business profile and a backlink to your site in places like Google My Business, Facebook, and Yellowpages.com will let you quickly establish a few foundational links that will start the ball rolling (and gather a little referral traffic to boot). The best part? These are all free!

Spend some time building links back to your site on:

Local directories (small business associations, city sites, etc.)
General directories (Yelp, Whitepages.com, etc.)
Business directories (AngiesList, BizJournals, etc.)
Niche directories in your industry (like Healthgrades or Vitals for doctors)

Sometimes directories can open the doorway to other link-building opportunities. Look around and see if your favorite niche directory accepts articles. See if you can find a discussion board related to your local directories and get involved in the conversation. Leave positive comments and reviews on partner sites. Just make sure that you always take the time to add your most important, relevant links along with your contribution!

2) Social Media

You can’t overlook the importance of social media when it comes to building quality backlinks. Social is a crucial vehicle for gaining an audience and getting exposure. Whatever your industry, there’s a whole community of people out there thirsty for the knowledge you have – and social is how you find them.

First things first: do all your social media profiles have links back to your site? If not, you’re missing out on a golden opportunity to create some quality backlinks.

However, that’s not all you can do with social. You can use social media to:

Advertise your content through ads, images, and posts.
Share relevant information about your products or services (backlinks included).
Develop relationships with customers, potential customers, and influencers alike who can help spread your backlinks to others.
Use niche forums, where you can post and talk directly to an interested consumer base.

While you’re doing this, stay focused on the number one social rule: consistency. You have to post consistently. You also have to consistently provide quality content. Otherwise, you run the risk of alienating the very people you’re trying to attract.

3) Blogs

A blog is a great tool for backlinks because you can go at them from two different directions. First, you can create a blog as part of your own website and continually backlink to relevant pages within your site.

For example, if you run a law firm that specializes in criminal defense, you can create running posts that will help criminal defendants and their families understand what to expect in court and where to get help – and gently nudge them back to specific pages and topics, such as DUI or theft, elsewhere on your site.

Second, branch out and find industry-specific blogs that will accept submissions and put yourself out there. A high-quality, informative post – complete with your backlinks in your bio and possibly in the text itself – can generate attention and increase your credibility dramatically if you score the right guest spot.

Start by locating a few highly-specific niche blogs that have a solid reputation in your industry. While these kinds of blogs may not attract a ton of traffic, they do draw in a very focused sort of interest. What makes the links you create so valuable is that they’re attracting the attention of people who are already interested in what you have to say and offer.

Each time you publish, add it to your resume and recognize that it’s part of the process of building your overall reputation as an industry authority.

Learn More:

4) Articles

Once you’ve gotten your feet wet and have begun to broaden your reach a little, try submitting authoritative articles to a number of high-quality online magazines, like:

Again, make sure that you include a backlink or two to your own website where it flows naturally in the text and in your bio for maximum effect:

While niche blogs gain you a focused audience, these types of e-zines gain you something else: credibility. Most of these magazines have strict guidelines for submissions (which is why it’s smart to get some practice before you try them) and focus on culling information from the “best of the best.” A backlink or two from these kinds of sites can generate a great deal of growth in your search engine results.

What Else Should You Know About Creating Backlinks?

Knowing where to start building your backlinks is, naturally, just part of the battle. Sooner or later, the ultimate goal is to have backlinks occur organically. You want people to want to visit your site – without necessarily having to work so hard at drawing them in, right?

So here’s how that happens:

1) Write Great Content

It all starts with quality, relevant, valuable content. Backlinks won’t happen on their own until you put great content out there for people to use. What great content looks like is going to vary a bit, based on your industry, whether that’s detail-rich and technical, creative and humorous, or somewhere in between.

Here’s what all great content has in common:

Originality. This doesn’t mean you can’t re-use content from time to time or write about the same topics as other brands. But it does mean that you need to put a fresh spin on whatever you create – something that makes it unique.
Answers. Think about this: most people use a search engine because they’re trying to answer a question, and they want the answer fast. Your job is to give it to them and easily sate their curiosity.
Accuracy. You won’t find people sharing your links if what you say isn’t worthwhile. Check your work. Verify your statistics. Make sure your links go only to trusted sources. Accuracy is how you build credibility and trust with your readers (and Google).
Engagement. Great content always engages the reader. Start with an attention-grabbing headline and then a strong introduction. Provoke questions or deep thoughts. Never talk down to readers; challenge them instead. A post that kindles questions and comments from readers attracts more attention and may even result in higher rankings in search.
Optimization. Even though you want to focus on the reader first, you can’t forget the search engines. Learn everything you can about keywords, writing effective headlines, meta-tags, the use of images, and search engine optimization strategies for your posts.

Dive Deeper: Do You Really Need to Write 1,890-Word Blog Posts to Rank on Page 1?

2) Partner Up

What do you do when you see great content somewhere that really excites you? You share it, right? Well, that’s a smart way to go about building backlinks, because there’s a lot of give-and-take online, especially on social media. If you create a link back to another person’s site, they may just take a look at yours. If they like what they see, they may post a link to your site.

Partnership marketing can also be a deliberate collaboration between two or more brands who share similar goals. An SEO partnership can be mutually beneficial and help both partners access a larger market. A good partnership could develop within your industry, but it doesn’t necessarily have to operate that way.

For example, Disney frequently partners with McDonald’s by putting toys related to upcoming movies in Happy Meals to reach more families with children, and Sherwin Williams partnered successfully with Pottery Barn to reach more people interested in upscale redecorating. Just remember: pick your partners carefully. Look for someone whose authority you respect and whose brand values are similar to your brand values.

A Few Final Thoughts

Building a portfolio of backlinks to your site is going to take time. While you can get a solid foundation through your backlinks on directories, social media and the like, the best backlinks are going to come organically – because you earned them!

There’s simply no substitute for content that accurately, clearly and completely meets the needs of your audience. Your content also has to stay current, which means that you constantly need to be pushing out creative, interesting content for people to consume.

Is any of this easy? No, of course not. Like your business, it’s a process that has to be tackled one step at a time and one day at a time if you’re building with the long-term in mind. Focus on building high-quality backlinks that arise naturally and you’ll ultimately be rewarded with better search results.

The post How – and Why – to Build a Backlink Portfolio appeared first on Single Grain.

How to Sustainably Build Quality Links by Building Relationships

Sujan Patel — Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:00:16 +0000

Let’s talk about links.

You need them. But not just any link will do. You need quality links.

The ranking algorithm used by Google is still a bit of a mystery. Although the company has never revealed exactly what it is or how it works, we do know that there are roughly 200 ranking factors. Some we know for a fact, others are an educated guess, and the rest are assumptions and/or shots in the dark.

Domain factors, site-level factors, page-level factors, user interaction, brand signals … and backlinks.

Source

In fact, backlinks are one of the keystones, according to Google itself. The search giant considers a wide range of criteria related to the number and authority of links pointing to your site: number of linking root domains, links from “expected” websites, links from competitors, diversity of link types, contextual links, location on page, page-level relevancy, and more.

If you want to rank, you need backlinks. If you want to rank well, you need plenty of high-quality backlinks. You can actually do quite well with little else (not that I’m suggesting you do that). They’re that important.

So, knowing that, what’s the single greatest channel for generating consistent and high quality links? Relationships.

“The best way to start and maintain a relationship with fellow content marketers is to regularly mention their content in your articles; every outbound link in your article is an opportunity to start a professional relationship with the author of the article you link to.”

~Stefan Debois, CEO of Survey Anyplace

Free Bonus Download: Get our free SEO guide to learn how you can skyrocket your rankings, even in a competitive niche! Click here to download it for free right now!

The Business of Backlinks

You can generate backlinks in many different ways: business listings, industry directories, review sites, guest blogging, and so on. They’re all worthy of your attention.

Fundamentally, backlinks are produced by a) creating content your audience wants, and b) promoting that content.

Create something awesome, share it, and promote it. People will pick up the gauntlet and share it within their circles, which creates a link back to your content.

Source

Sounds simple. However, we know that not all backlinks are created equal. You need authority, quantity, and diversity to increase your odds of success with the search engines.

Learn More:

Quality Content that People Want

The quality content part is all on you. High-quality, long-form content gets more engagement, which generates more backlinks. Blog posts with over 2,500 words earn the most links, according to HubSpot:

Other studies have shown the sweet spot to be a read time of seven minutes, a minimum of 1,000 words, just under 2,000 words, and 2,000+ words. While there’s no magic number, the experts agree that longer is better, so aim for at least 1,000 words. Less than that, and it’s difficult to produce a thorough, useful and quality piece.

Don’t Forget Content Promotion

The promotion part is on you too, but you can give yourself a massive boost by building relationships with other relevant experts and leveraging their audience in addition to your own. By connecting with others in your industry, you’ll increase your reputability. People will think of you, quote you, and talk about you – and you’ll naturally build links.

When creating content, try reaching out to relevant influencers while you’re creating it – not after the fact – so the promotion is actually happening simultaneously. Ask influencers for their feedback or to contribute to the content so that they’ll be invested in it enough that they’ll naturally want to help you promote it later on.

When it comes to earning quality backlinks, think relationships. Build the relationship, leverage the connection, and you’ll both benefit from increased exposure, backlinks, traffic, and a larger network.

Learn more with this short content promotion checklist video:

Focus On You

But let’s slow down. Before you do anything else, you need to build a site and a reputation deserving of backlinks.

Produce your own content – one thousand words or more, engaging and valuable – and publish it on your own site.
Work to increase your web traffic organically.
Ask your followers and readers to share. SocialBakers found an average of 73.48 retweets/hour when asked for, versus only 2.09/hour without being asked.
Build and increase your domain authority.
Spread brand awareness by commenting, engaging, guest posting and possibly even paying for it.

In essence, build yourself up as a worthy expert that people want to know and link to.

“That’s why I create my personal blog (www.robertkatai.com) to have a place where I can experiment, test, and also create the kind of content that will tell the author that I’m a real deal for their website.”

~Robert Katai, Content Marketing Strategist

Free Bonus Download: Get our free SEO guide to learn how you can skyrocket your rankings, even in a competitive niche! Click here to download it for free right now!

Find Relevant Audiences

Aim high: who are your “dream” connections, the industry/niche superstars you’d love to connect and share with?

There are probably a few names that immediately pop into your head, but don’t stop there. You need to identify everyone – even those under the radar – who is consistently writing about and getting engagement (likes, comments, shares) on your topics.

Tools like BuzzSumo, Social Animal, or NinjaOutreach can help identify these people by topic or keyword, as well as provide all the links pointing back to them. These are your people and sites. Make a list.

Source

Learn More:

Establish a Connection

Start small and work your way up. It’s tempting to begin by contacting the biggest name on your list. But here’s the thing: influencers just aren’t able to respond to everyone who contacts them. They have to be selective.

Instead, turn your attention to the small fish in your niche, the ones like you. They are much more likely to respond and want to help you as much as you want to help them.

You have names and websites. Use a service like Voila Norbert or Email Hunter to find email addresses. Reach out with a brief, personalized message with no ask. Offer them something like a compliment on a recent post or achievement, a broken link you found on their site (and an appropriate replacement), a resource, or a simple notification that you’ve included them in your latest expert roundup or blog post.

That last one can work miracles:

“I started using targeted outreach alongside HARO to gather quotes and get in contact with other marketers and CEOs. I alert everyone included in the article. At the bottom of my email, I mention the idea of a content partnership or a guest post. Since I’ve already provided a value to them by including them in my roundup, I usually get a warm response. And many of these relationships have opened up many other doors for our business.”

~Ben Johnson, Head of Content at Proof

In the beginning, you can increase your productivity by utilizing an automated email tool to reach out and personalize at scale (check out these email outreach templates). Just be sure to respond in person once you get an actual reply, and follow up if at first you don’t get that response:

Start at the bottom of your dream list and work your way up. Once you reach the major players at the top, you should already have a decent reputation and following that makes it worthwhile for them to respond to you.

Maintain and Build Those Relationships

Now that you’ve made a connection, work to organically grow your relationship with the person. Don’t suffocate them with constant emails, asks, and direct messages. Be there for them. Be an asset to them.

Comment on their blog and social media posts, pass on stellar resources and content (not necessarily yours), congratulate them on recent achievements, awards or events, link to their site in your content, and consistently share their content with your audience. Increase awareness and traffic to their site, and they’re eventually going to reciprocate.

“I love to think of everything – including link building – in terms of ‘Give First’, a mantra that was hammered into us while LawnStarter was in Techstars. When I’m doing a guest post, I try to link out to products or resources I enjoy, and just let them know without asking anything for it. It feels good, and more times than not, I’ll get a reply saying ‘Wow thanks! Is there any way I can return the favor?’”

~Ryan Farley, Co-founder of LawnStarter

Learn More:

Simple Asks that Benefit Them

Once a relationship is cemented, you can begin to leverage it for mutual benefit.

Start small, like a request for them to read over and possibly make suggestions for something you’re working on. Everyone loves a little flattery, and they’ll be inclined to share it with their audience later because they’re invested and feel part ownership.

Larger asks might include a quote, a short Q&A, or a longer interview or profile, all of which increase their reputation and reach.

“If you’re a web writer yourself, offer your help and write a post on a topic of their choice. I did it for experts who had columns at HuffPost, Entrepreneur, and Forbes – and they backlinked to me as a thank-you for my help. Yes, such a method is time-consuming and requires extra skills, but the result is priceless.”

~ Lesley Vos, web writer at Bid4Papers

Keep giving more than you take from the relationship, and you’ll become an asset to them. They’ll start to share your content, recommend you and link to your resources without being asked. Find consistent ways to help them, and they’ll deliver consistent, high-quality backlinks to you and your site.

Free Bonus Download: Get our free SEO guide to learn how you can skyrocket your rankings, even in a competitive niche! Click here to download it for free right now!

Final Thoughts

Of course, that’s not the end of it. Backlinks earned are only one part of your overall strategy. You have to monitor, manage and repair. Luckily, there are a number of great tools to assist you with this, including SEMrush, Ahrefs and Nightwatch.

Keep earning links, monitor the ones you have, and conduct periodic backlink audits to keep it all healthy and positive.

The overall blueprint for SEO success may have changed over the years, but quality content and quality backlinks remain at or near the top. They are the foundation upon which your efforts should be built. And there’s no stronger building material than backlinks earned via your relationships with the movers and shakers in your niche.

The post How to Sustainably Build Quality Links by Building Relationships appeared first on Single Grain.

How to Squeeze the Most Value Out of Nofollow Backlinks from High-Authority Sites

Senko Duras — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 15:00:49 +0000

For better or worse, the number and quality of your backlinks are still one of the most important ranking signals. Since appearing in the first few search results for selected keywords can bring an immense value to your business, it’s not surprising that everyone is still putting a lot of effort into link building.

One of the first things a beginner link builder learns is that not all backlinks are created equal. So whenever there is any serious discussion about link building, an unavoidable topic is the value of nofollow backlinks.

If you took a minute right now to Google this topic, you would find many different opinions and some contradictory advice:

While it is impossible to say if nofollow links have any direct impact on your rankings, it is wrong to assume that they are useless and that they should be avoided at all cost.

The reality is that you will have to deal with nofollow links at some point in your link-building campaigns, so this article will give you a few ideas on how to squeeze the most value out of those links when they come from high-authority sites in your niche.

Free Bonus Download: Get our free SEO guide to learn how you can skyrocket your rankings, even in a competitive niche! Click here to download it for free right now!

Follow vs. Nofollow Links

Follow Links – In many cases, backlinks in your content will be follow links – links that are visible to Google, generate “link juice,” and work to improve your rankings in search results.

Nofollow Links – Some backlinks, however, will be nofollow links. These links contain an instruction to search engines to disregard the link so that it doesn’t help you improve the ranking of your page/domain. Google’s official stance on nofollow links is: “in general, we don’t follow them”:

There is a good reason why nofollow links are sometimes preferred by site owners over follow links. The most notable reason is to minimize the occurrence of bad link-building practices, such as comment spamming and paid links, for example, which hold the potential to unfairly influence search results.

Despite this solid reasoning, nofollow links are often frustrating when it comes to SEO link-building campaigns.

Further Reading:

Are Nofollow Links Ever Valuable?

If nofollow links don’t generate link juice and don’t count towards search engine visibility or improved PageRank, then is there any point in distributing content through channels that implement a nofollow link policy?

Of course there is. If that wasn’t the case, there would be no point in writing this article. ?

What’s important to look at is the potential secondary value that nofollow links could bring to any sort of promotional campaign. It can’t be denied that nofollow links contribute to improved brand awareness through greater exposure and relevant referral traffic.

A recent study from SEMrush indicates that links are not the only (or the most) important ranking signals:

With other valuable ranking factors, including pages per session and bounce rate, it also really shows just how important it is to focus on creating engaging, relevant and optimized content to keep visitors around, not just draw them in.

But we’re getting off point here.

In the context of this article, this is interesting because it shows that nofollow backlinks can still indirectly impact your rankings by helping you bring more relevant visitors to your website and improving other signals listed above.

And that’s not the only benefit you can get from nofollow backlinks.

Free Bonus Download: Get our free SEO guide to learn how you can skyrocket your rankings, even in a competitive niche! Click here to download it for free right now!

Benefits of Nofollow Links

There is a wide range of notable benefits of nofollow backlinks that can prove to be highly valuable to your business.

Building Brand Awareness

A link to a brand — regardless of whether that’s a follow link or a nofollow link — serves the purpose of increasing exposure of that brand. Ultimately, greater education and awareness of a brand is a significant contributor towards traffic.

Businesses can choose to distribute their content across multiple channels that naturally boosts visibility with or without a follow link. The more sites on which your content is published and the higher the authority of those sites, the wider the reach of your brand.

Increasing Audience Trust

There’s a common saying: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” and this is something that is important to consider with nofollow backlinks. The advantages of association should not be overlooked, especially for young brands or smaller businesses. A mention/recommendation on an authoritative website in your niche can significantly boost the credibility of that brand, regardless of they type of the link.

Bringing in Referral Traffic

A nofollow link is equal to a follow link in terms of referral traffic and is an effective way to drive traffic to your website. However, it is necessary to publish content strategically on websites that are relevant to your business and are of interest to your target audience.

When creating content, marketers naturally want to include links to high-authority websites to form an association and improve the credibility of their sources. By guest posting on these high-authority sites, you’re increasing your chance of being linked to from other websites.

These links are referred to as “second tier links.” While they don’t link directly to your website, they do link to your guest post, which in turn links to your website. These links don’t need to be dofollow links as long as they’re directing traffic to the right destination.

Generating Social Signals

The correlation between social media and PageRank forms one of the hottest debates in SEO. It is generally accepted that social signals from networks such as Facebook and Twitter do have an effect on rankings, but the exact ways in which they influence SEO haven’t been solidly determined. What research does show is that social signals like shares, likes, comments, and retweets may help with SEO:

Further Reading:

Deriving More Value from Authority Sites

To prove that nofollow links can bring a lot of value outside of SEO, here are some tips on how to creatively use them in different digital marketing activities.

Use Engaging Anchor Text

When the dust is settled, the common agreement is that even if nofollow links do bring any direct SEO value, that value is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

While this may initially seem frustrating, there is another way you can look at this: it gives you complete flexibility to write strong anchor text that isn’t restricted by the limitations of your keywords or phrases.

At a time when experts are really emphasizing the need to write for audiences, not simply for SEO, the flexibility to use SEO-free anchor text can be an advantage.
Click To Tweet

What’s the point in writing keyword-rich anchor text if Google isn’t going to pick up on it? Instead, to really squeeze the value out of a nofollow backlink on a high-authority site, write anchor text that appeals specifically to the sort of audience that would be visiting such an authoritative resource.

Who are these people? What are they interested in? Write text that encourages readers to click and maximize potential referral traffic. Since you’re not limited to an exact keyword or phrase, take the opportunity to concentrate on using an engaging anchor and surrounding text that really makes visitors want to click through.

Add a “Featured In” Badge

You don’t need a follow link in order to derive value from backlinks coming from high-authority websites. If a high-quality site is willing to publish your content, there is a relationship there. You may as well milk the association.

Adding a ‘featured on’ badge to your homepage shows your visitors that you’re endorsed by a familiar, reputable and well-respected resource. It is an excellent trust builder.

Probably the most common example is adding the featured badge to your homepage as seen on the picture below of PointVisible:

As conversion expert Jeremy Smith puts it bluntly: If they don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you.

Use Them as Trust Builders

Not so long ago, we had a client that wanted to do a live webinar. The problem was that we were missing some trust builders to help convert visitors who were looking at the landing page.

One of the ways we tackled that problem was by mentioning that the presenter (the client) was featured in many top publications in the niche:

This is just one of the ways to use association with high-authority sites to your advantage. You can use this in similar ways in everything from newsletters to social media promotion. Anything that needs to contain a trust builder is a good candidate.

Build Partnership Opportunities

Any type of association that is formed between websites can create the cornerstone of a future partnership. By building and nurturing connections with high-authority websites, as well as with a range of different publications and ‘influencers’, you have more options available for potential future collaboration projects.

Further Reading:

Improve Your Future Link-Building Efforts

While this technically qualifies as a trust builder, we felt it was important enough to get its own section since it is closely related to blogger outreach and link building.

As you probably know, an important part of a guest post pitch is convincing the editor that you deserve a chance to publish some content on their blog. A great way to do that is by showing them your previous work. They are not going to care what type of links your samples have, but they might be more inclined to give you a chance if you’ve published posts on other respectable sites in your industry.

Free Bonus Download: Get our free SEO guide to learn how you can skyrocket your rankings, even in a competitive niche! Click here to download it for free right now!

Nofollow & the Future of SEO

Recently, one of the biggest questions surrounding digital marketing was: How long will links dominate as the strongest ranking signals?

It’s a tricky question to answer. On the one hand, we can say that the introduction of Web 3.0 — the semantic web — is expected to change some standard SEO practices. On the other hand, as long as audiences are still beginning their purchasing journey with an online search, SEO will always be a primary consideration.

The focus of SEO certainly appears to be shifting. As discussed, there is obvious value to be derived from nofollow links, particularly those on high-authority websites, which suggests that aspects such as keywords and anchor text are becoming less important, while context is starting to dominate. Some experts claim that we need to stop focusing on keywords, and instead value the importance of topical authority.

While the real impact of a semantic web remains to be seen, one thing that marketers got used to is constantly learning new things and adapting their practices. Whatever happens, the need to change their approach to link building certainly won’t be anything new.

Main image credit.

The post How to Squeeze the Most Value Out of Nofollow Backlinks from High-Authority Sites appeared first on Single Grain.

The Skyscraper Technique: How to Build High-Quality Backlinks to Your Content

Elise Dopson — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 15:00:42 +0000

There’s little point in investing tons of effort into creating content if no one’s ever going to consume it, right?

Trust me when I say you’re not alone with that struggle – which is perhaps why growing SEO and increasing organic presence is 61% of a marketer’s top priority:

Source

Suffering from minimal search visibility is difficult, but if people aren’t going to find your content organically, then you have to push it harder through alternative channels. Let’s take social media, for instance. It should be part of your social media marketing strategy to share your content, but over-promoting a specific post runs the risk of annoying your audience.

We’ve all seen it happen. One of our favorite brands or channels is pushing a new post hard — so hard that it’s dominating their (and our) feed. It gets stale fast. As a result, we (the brand’s audience) penalize the brand for over-promoting by not clicking through to view the content or simply unfollowing the brand. It’s much more effective to increase website traffic by making your site more prominent in search engines. But is that really possible without an SEO budget the size of Amazon’s?

Increasing organic search traffic requires plenty of upfront work (especially if your budget is minimal), but the rewards are long-lasting. In fact, you’ll see results from your SEO activity 12 months down the line, long after the initial work is done.

That’s where we bring in the skyscraper technique – it’s designed to build high-quality backlinks to your content, which will increase your organic referrals.

What Is the Skyscraper Technique?

The skyscraper technique was developed by Brian Dean of Backlinko back in 2015. Broken down into three steps, the skyscraper technique involves:

Finding link-worthy content
Creating something better
Sharing what you’ve written

Simply put: the skyscraper technique is a method of building upon the best content to create something even better. Dean likens it to, well, skyscrapers. Just as you’re unlikely to wonder which building is the 8th tallest in the world, (you only care about the tallest, right?), you’re unlikely to be too concerned with the content that is ranking in 8th position.

Using the skyscraper technique is a way for you to construct a taller “building” — or build upon an already-existing idea. In many ways, the technique is very similar to creating 10x content. The skyscraper technique, however, is incredibly effective for link-building and for that sweet, sweet organic search traffic.

Don’t believe me? Well, when Dean first executed the skyscraper technique, overall search traffic to Backlinko doubled within 14 days. That’s quite a difference – but that’s not the only impressive result.

Source

That single piece of skyscraper content has driven more than 300,000 referral visitors to Dean’s site so far. What impact would 300K visitors — attracted to your website by one post — have on your business? I’m guessing a powerful one.

Let’s talk about why the skyscraper technique is so effective.

Further Reading:

The Skyscraper Technique and Backlinks: What’s the Deal?

Backlinks are links that lead to your website from other sources. Naturally, the more useful, informative, and entertaining your content, the more likely you are to encourage backlinking. But why are they so important?

Let’s do a mini experiment. Do a Google search for the first thing that comes to mind and take note of the top two results. I’m going to use “headline analyzer” as an example:

The first result shown is CoSchedule’s headline analyzer tool – but why? There are tons of headline analyzer tools on the market. Why would Google pick this one for position number one? Let’s dig a little deeper.

Using Monitor Backlinks, we can see that this page has some awesome backlinks pointing to it:

That’s part of the reason why this page is ranking so well and dominating the search engine results pages (SERPs) for this term.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at Matthew Barby’s data. When he analyzed over a million SERPs, he found a strong correlation between a page’s search visibility and the number of backlinks pointing to it:

Source

Backlinks are crucial in the SEO world because they tell Google that your site is reputable, high-quality and relevant.
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Think about it: if tens of thousands of cooking-related websites are linking to a car blog, Google wouldn’t think it’s relevant and would rank the site lower as a result. However, if other car websites link to the car blog, Google’s going to think, “Hey, this site’s really relevant to this topic. The website must provide some incredible value to this audience.”

Using the skyscraper technique allows you to build these backlinks from awesome content. As a result, you’ll increase your site’s rankings and boost organic traffic and search visibility. You’re still creating content – but also putting that content to work for you.

How to Use the Skyscraper Technique to Build High-Quality Backlinks

Now that you understand the benefits of the skyscraper technique, it’s time to put it into action.

The following steps will help build high-quality backlinks that have a direct impact on your website and business.

1. Check What’s Popular

It goes without saying that any content you create needs to have some sort of demand in order to be worth the effort. If there’s no audience for your content, it doesn’t matter how good it is — no one’s going to read it.

So, keep your finger to the pulse of what’s popular in your niche. Tools like BuzzSumo make it easy to find content that’s buzzing. It identifies content with the highest social shares, which is exactly the kind of content you want to build your skyscraper piece from.

Another effective tactic for finding popular content is taking a gander at what influencers are sharing on Twitter. Each niche has plenty of prominent personalities, and a simple dig through their feeds could spark the inspiration for your skyscraper content (a peek at their feeds can give you an idea of their audience’s shared interests, too).

Much like influencers, online communities are a great way to discover popular topics. Forums like Quora or Reddit – which make use of community voting to increase the visibility of content the community enjoys – have a wealth of topic ideas spilling from them. Make note of the topics with a high number of “upvotes” to gauge what content is popular within a given community, and use this as your basis.

2. Research Your Competition

Once you’ve identified a topic you’d like to build upon, search for the topic in Google. Which result ranks first?

Let’s say you wanted to write a post about creating effective Facebook ads. Here are the results that pop up after performing a Google search:

Take a look at the top two links (excluding the ad). These are the results that Google deems most relevant – and the pieces of content you have to beat.

If those results are comparable to the tallest skyscraper in the world – meaning they’re the best, highest-quality and well-researched pieces available to your ideal audience – you know precisely how much taller you have to build your own piece.

You can also use a tool like Ahrefs to research your competitors. Ahrefs allows you to check out the exact keywords that others are ranking for in organic search results as well as how much traffic they’re getting.

3. Ask Yourself: “Can I Create Anything Better?”

Once you understand your competition — the content you’re up against — take a step back and ask yourself: “Can I create anything better?” If you think you can, it’s time to roll up those sleeves and get to work!

But how do you create a better piece of content? Here are a few ideas:

Write Long-Form Content

Long-form content serves many important purposes.

First, writing an article that’s longer than what other people are writing is a clear way for you to stand out. Visitors will have the perception that you’ve put more work (i.e. research) into producing that content and you’ll be seen as the industry authority that you are – making you a thought leader.

It’s easier for long-form content to become evergreen content, and a post that’s relevant for more than a month drives more traffic, converts more leads, and generates more backlinks.
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Long-form content demonstrates that you’ve invested significant effort in its production. Because your post is so lengthy, it’s likely to be the most comprehensive source for the topic you’re writing about. You’re establishing authority in your field and helping readers to find all the information they’ve sought in one convenient location: your website.

Plus, long-form content has been proven to get the most content shares:

Source

And getting the most content shares will help your skyscraper piece be seen by more people. That’s the goal, right?

Further Reading:

Target a Handful of Keywords

Writing content that ranks high for one keyword is fantastic way to help your website boost organic rankings for that term. But what if the same piece ranked for a handful of keywords?

Use keyword research tools such as Ubersuggest or KWFinder to identify a small group of keywords to target.

Since Google use latent semantic indexing in their algorithm (meaning it can understand when similar phrases mean the same thing), targeting a multitude of relevant keywords may even rank your content higher than a competitor’s.

Offer More…Everything

There’s no sane argument against the power of creating data-driven content because, as content marketer Pawel Grabowski says:

“The data-driven approach focuses on creating high-quality posts that solve the audience’s problems or issues they care about by offering proof and backing up every claim with scientific findings, data, and up-to-date research.”

But since everyone’s using this in their content strategy, your skyscraper piece will need to do it better.

This is where competition research really comes in handy. When your competitors sprinkle data, case studies and statistics throughout their content, you need to provide even more of all that in the content you create. If their case studies are flimsy, offer your readers something much better – making it the best piece of content on the topic.

When people invest their time in consuming content, they want the best. So use facts, research, current data, studies, and statistics to reinforce and support the information you’re providing. Provide references to useful resources that are relevant to the topic you’re covering and you’re bound to create the most authoritative source.

Write a Strong Headline

A headline is your first chance to make a good impression on a reader. If you fail to capture their attention, they’re as good as gone. All the hard work you’ve put into your content is for nothing if someone chooses to stop reading at your headline.

In fact, 80% of people will read only the headline, leaving a mere 20% who will actually consume the rest of your content. That’s a lot of people who are slipping through the net, so you’ll need to do your absolute best to appeal to that 80%.

Think about how many posts you’ve skipped over because the title didn’t attract your attention – perhaps it was too vague, too long, too short, or simply poorly written. For fun, check out 10 of the Worst Press Headlines Ever (like “A Unique New Business”).

An interesting headline is integral to the skyscraper technique and if you’re not good at creating compelling titles, you can use a tool like the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer. If you’re a skillful writer, create your own using Jeff Goins’ 5 Easy Tricks to Help You Write Catchy Headlines:

Use numbers to give concrete takeaways
Use emotional objectives to describe your reader’s problem
Use unique rationale to demonstrate what the reader will get out of the article
Use what, why, how, or when
Make an audacious promise

Go Above and Beyond

Going in-depth into a subject creates a more comprehensive piece of content and thus provides more value for your readers. Your goal should be to create the ultimate source for the topic at hand.

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience for a moment. If you’re searching for something — say, how to build a website — do you want to refer to multiple resources for bits and pieces of guidance? Or would you rather have one solid resource that takes you through the process from start to finish without ever giving you a reason to leave the page?

If you’re anything like me, it’s the first.

People are busy. Nobody has time to sift through the Internet and find pieces of information here and there, furtively bookmarking, downloading or copy/pasting to make sure you’ve got everything. If you offer all the information on a plate, we’re much more likely to be impressed.

This means taking the time to fully research, address all possible pain points, include images or graphics to back up your text, add current statistics, supplement with case studies to illustrate results, and break it down into an easy-to-read format – not to mention write the article well (in terms of both grammar and content) and have a professional editor take a last pass at it! This all takes time, money, and patience.

4. Pitch Your Content to Influencers

Remember the influencers I mentioned earlier? Well, now is when you ask them to share your content — which creates a backlink!

A viable strategy is reaching out to popular blogs in your niche with the intent of earning a backlink. Search for “industry + blog” to find a list of popular blogs in your niche:

Then, send a polite email asking for a backlink. Here’s a sample email you can send along:

Hey [name]!

I came across your blog after looking for information on [topic]. I love what you’re sharing! However, I spotted that you linked to this article: [your competition]. I actually created a similar piece to this, but it includes additional data and is more up-to-date. Feel free to use this on your page if it’s something your audience would be interested in.

Cheers!

[your name]

Because you share a niche with those you’re emailing, your content likely appeals just as much to their audience. Your content helps the user experience of visitors to the blogs you’re contacting, so it’s a win-win, all round.

Further Reading:

5. Measure Your Backlinks

Your job’s not done once your content starts earning backlinks. (Remember: that’s the entire aim of the skyscraper technique.) You need to be aware of where backlinks are coming from so you can truly capitalize on your execution of the skyscraper technique.

Use a tool like Monitor Backlinks to find your backlink profile – a document which details every backlink pointing to your overall website. It’s wise to set up instant alerts (you can do that via Google Alerts, too) for when someone links to your content but hasn’t let you know. Trust me, it happens.

You can also monitor the SEO metrics of each backlink you’re building – including the Domain Authority, Spam Score and Page Authority of each link. This allows you to analyze what’s working and what isn’t, so you can continue to build awesome backlinks that’ll supercharge your content in the SERPs.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that the skyscraper technique is an effective way to build high-quality backlinks to your content. Remember, backlinks are important to your SEO efforts because that’s how Google knows that your website is reputable, relevant, and contains high-quality content.

First you’ll want to find link-worthy content
Then you’ll need to create something better
And finally, share what you’ve written

Check out what’s popular, research your competitors’ keywords and content, and decide if you can improve upon anything that’s already out there by making it longer, meatier, more compelling and up to date. Reach out to influencers in your field to help you share your 10x content and don’t forget to keep track of your backlinks.

Now that you’re familiar with the technique and understand the power of backlinks in growing search visibility, get out there and start building!

The post The Skyscraper Technique: How to Build High-Quality Backlinks to Your Content appeared first on Single Grain.

Build Backlinks – and Website Traffic – with Blogger Outreach

Aljaz Fajmut — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 16:00:07 +0000

Backlinks should be a key part of your off-site SEO strategy. However, being off-site means you can’t control where links come from or how many you have. As such, the question is this:

How do you build an effective backlink SEO campaign?

How do you get influential bloggers to link out to you? In this article, I’ll show you how to do it via blogger outreach and I’m going to break it down into 4 sections:

How to Find Relevant Bloggers
How to Build Relationships with Bloggers
Tactics for Awesome Backlinks
Analyzing Your Results

But first …

Why Backlinks?

Source

In a nutshell, backlinks = traffic.

Backlink building means that you are getting a link from someone else’s site that points back to your own. And the more credible and authoritative the sites that are linking to you are, the higher you will climb up the rankings.

However, backlink building takes time, patience, and effort. When you go down the route of using blogger outreach to create a quality backlink campaign, you need to be prepared to do what it takes to build relationships with other bloggers. And building relationships doesn’t happen overnight.

But is it worth it? Totally.

Free Bonus Download: Get our free SEO guide for 20 easy tactics that can skyrocket your rankings, even in a competitive niche! Click here to download it for free right now!

What Is Blogger Outreach?

Blogger outreach is a form of influencer marketing, a type of marketing where you leverage an influencer’s fan-base for your own exposure.

In other words, you find someone in your niche who has amassed thousands of fans and tons of daily traffic and ask them if you can hop on their website or social media channels with a guest blog.

This is a great way to achieve maximum exposure and get more of the right eyeballs onto your own website – provided you choose the right influencer, that is.

Bloggers now have a lot of power, especially those who have massive social media followings. A backlink from their site to yours can work wonders for your SEO campaign, but building a strong relationship with bloggers can also:

Drive more traffic to your site via social media
Expand your network
Boost the chance that other people will start linking to you

Blogger outreaching to build effective backlinks is a win/win situation. So how to do it? Let’s take a look.

Learn More:

How to Get Premium Backlinks When No One Knows Who You Are

How to Get Started With Influencer Marketing

How to Leverage Influencer Marketing [Podcast]

1. How to Find Relevant Bloggers

The first thing you need to do is find relevant bloggers who are not only blogging about your niche but who are also active and have a lot of followers.

This is easier than it sounds, but it is also time-consuming. Before we move on, however, a good idea is to start a simple spreadsheet and use it to keep track of the different bloggers you come across who are influential on different platforms. It could look something like this:

Here are a few ways to do it….

a) Scour Blog Directories

You can find almost anything on the Internet which means, of course, that there are blog directories! These are resource pages or listings on which bloggers are able to add their sites and are there to help fellow bloggers and people like you find each other easily. All you need to do is pop over and find the ones that match what you’re looking for in terms of niche and size.

Some blog directories include:

Source

b) Comment on Blogs

Finding bloggers amidst comments on blogs might sound like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but it’s actually easy. Why? Because you’ll find that a lot of people who comment on blog posts are bloggers themselves who were struggling with the problem that the author of the article has just solved.

You’ll find this all the time. So check in on some popular blogs, get your fine-tooth comb out, and go over the comments with it. It won’t be long before you come across a few bloggers to whom you can reach out.

Source

c) Spy On Your Competitors

If your competitors are ranking well, there is a good chance that their backlink efforts are going well. People are linking to them. But who?

There are SEO “spy” tools you can use that let you spy on your competitors’ SEO tactics. You can literally see from where their links are coming. If people are linking to them, I see no reason why they wouldn’t be inclined to link to you, too.

SpyFu is an excellent SEO tool that enables you to take a peek at your competitors to see what they’re doing – including where they’re getting those crucial incoming links. You can download their most profitable backlinks and then devise a plan of action that will allow you to get some of this link love, too.

Source

Learn More:

The Ultimate Guide to Link Building with Content

How to Quickly Find the Most Popular Blogs in a Niche [Podcast]

d) Just Google It

Good old Google never fails when it comes to finding relevant bloggers who will allow you to write for them! You just need to use the right keywords to find them.

For example, you can type in something like:

write for us

That kind of search query should show some promising results.

Other queries you could try include:

guest post

product review

Free Bonus Download: Get our free SEO guide for 20 easy tactics that can skyrocket your rankings, even in a competitive niche! Click here to download it for free right now!

2. How to Build Relationships with Bloggers

If you want positive results from backlink building with blogger outreach, you have to forge solid relationships with bloggers. The deeper your relationship is, the more long-term benefits you’ll get from this. In other words, those incoming links will keep coming.

However, as we all know, reaching out to influential bloggers can be a tad scary. Here are a few ways to foster a good relationship so that asking for a link becomes a bit easier.

a) Get to Know Who the Blogger Is

I once wrote a piece of content for a client whose ultimate aim was for it to be posted on an influencer’s blog. She told me that she’d spent countless hours researching the blogger so that she knew this person and their market inside out.

Why? Because influencers are big deals. The more you know about them, the greater the chance they’ll work with you and link out to you. Whatever you write about, it absolutely has to be in line with their target audience, their values, and it needs to conform to their style.

For example:

Do they usually post long- or short-form content?
In what kind of tone do they write?
Are they big on data?

b) Communicate Well

Communication is the bedrock of all relationships, and it’s just as true where blogger outreach is concerned.

A popular blogger’s time is valuable. Not only should you be replying to their messages in a timely manner, but you should also clearly outline what you are looking to achieve with a guest post.

Here’s an example from Ahrefs blogger Tim Soulo of a blogger outreach email that worked:

c) Link to Them First

Get the relationship started early by linking out to them ASAP. The more you do this, the more of an excuse you have later on to kindly ask if they’ll reciprocate.

You should also be tagging bloggers on social media and sharing their posts. The more you do this, the more you’ll get noticed.

d) Comment on Their Stuff

If you’re in a Facebook group, you’ve probably noticed that there are one or two folks who stick out. You know their names more than anyone else’s, and you know what they do and what they’re all about.

I’m in a Facebook group in which one particular member was so active with his comments that the group founder asked him to become an admin. Just think how many links this guy is now getting – all because he was active in a social group.

Find your bloggers and start commenting (authentically, of course!) on their stuff. This will help you to create a good relationship with them.

A Guide to Using Blogger Outreach to Earn Links and Social Shares

3. Tactics for Awesome Backlinks

You’ve found your superstar bloggers, you’ve caught their eye – and now it’s time to execute and do the things that will get you those simple but powerful links.

a) Create One Piece of Content and Add Numerous Experts

I love this tip, and it’s totally guaranteed to work every time. You’ve got a niche. Now pick a topic to write about. It could be anything.

Then decide on a format. Maybe you want to write an e-book or put together a long-form blog post or even compile a physical book.

Next, draw up a wish-list of potential contributors. Here is a quick checklist to help you pick the best ones:

A contributor must be an expert on this topic
A contributor must have a large social media following

That’s literally it. If you’ve already executed parts 1 and 2 in this article, you should know who you want to contribute – and there is a good chance that they already know who you are if you’ve got yourself noticed.

Reach out to each person on your wish-list of contributors and invite them to add a few words to your topic. Perhaps you could even let them have their own chapter!

Naturally, you will need to offer them something in exchange for their time, effort, and knowledge, and you might have to pay them if a link out to them isn’t enough. That’s fair enough, so do that if you have to. Alternatively, think about whether there is anything you could give them for free (like your product or service) in exchange for their contribution.

Once the book/blog/e-book is finished, let everyone know. They’ll be so happy they were featured as an expert that they’ll waste no time sharing it with their fans. You’ll get lots of links, and it’s happy days all around.

It probably won’t stop there either. The more you do this, the greater the chances that a blogger will ask you to contribute something for them. This will increase the likelihood of even more links.

b) Write an Awesome Guest Post

Guest posting (or guest blogging) is exactly what it sounds like and is the biggest blogger outreach tactic there is. You pitch an article to an influential blogger and ask if they’d consider posting it on their site.

Guest blogging on a site such as The Huffington Post or Entrepreneur is so invaluable that contributors generally don’t care that they aren’t getting paid for their efforts. All they’re concerned about is link juice.

Vincent Dignan is one such guest blogger for The Huffington Post who uses this opportunity to link out to his own sites:

I’ve already covered how to find an opportunity to guest post (to recap, search “guest post ”). What you need to fine-tune now is your pitch as well as what you will write about.

The best way to do this is by understanding a few things about the influencer:

What is their audience like?
Who do they typically write for?
What kind of content do they put out?

Also, you should be checking out the guest posts that are already up. What are they like? How popular are they? Which types of posts perform the best?

When it’s time to pitch your idea, make sure that you:

Read their guidelines
Personalize your e-mail pitch
Explain who you are
Talk about why you would make a great guest poster

Always remember that a guest post is not about you and your product. It’s about giving value to their audience. This should be clear in your pitch and in your subsequent post.

Learn More:

Influencer Marketing for SEO: How to Build Links with Influencer Outreach

The Power of Guest Posting and How to Get Started

7 Keys to Becoming a Successful Blogger [Podcast]

Free Bonus Download: Get our free SEO guide for 20 easy tactics that can skyrocket your rankings, even in a competitive niche! Click here to download it for free right now!

4. Analyze Your Results

Lastly, all your efforts will be for nothing unless you know what the results are.

Source

Remember, your overall aim with blogger outreach is not getting to know great new people – it’s getting more traffic. As such, you need to track your results to make sure you’re doing this right. Otherwise, the most you’ll get out of it is a new online friend.

To track your results, head over to Google Analytics and create an Advanced Segment. You only need to create a single segment for all the domains you’ve guest posted for.

Then you can use Google Analytics to see what the data is from your backlink building efforts. This will let you know how successful or unsuccessful your campaign has been so far, including the amount of traffic and conversions you’ve got. Nightwatch, an all-in-one SEO tool, also offers advanced backlinks tracking:

Learn More:

7 Advanced Segments You Ought to Set Up in Google Analytics [Podcast]

How to Make Google Analytics More Actionable [Podcast]

Our Favorite Google Analytics Hacks [Podcast]

Wrapping Up

Backlink building with blogger outreach is as simple as fostering strong relationships with bloggers and guest posting amazing content on their site. It’s a three-step process:

Identify relevant bloggers
Get to know them/catch their eye
Guest post amazing content

To paraphrase from Field of Dreams, “If you build the relationships, the links will come.”

Don’t forget to share this article so that securing those crucial backlinks becomes easier for us all. Plus, it will make you look like a backlink expert.

The post Build Backlinks – and Website Traffic – with Blogger Outreach appeared first on Single Grain.