Archive for link building
Sunday Morning SEO: How to Discover Your Most Linkworthy Content
Posted by: | Comments
In my last post, I talked about checking your stats to find out which posts are attracting links. Then, you can use that information to create similar content and earn more links.
In today’s post, let’s look step-by-step at how to actually discover your linkworthy content. I’ll be using Google Analytics since it seems to be the most popular stats program. It’s free and has many features and stats. But with all complexity in the program, it can look cluttered and it can be hard to figure out how to do simple tasks.
Quick Tutorial
First, look at the top left and click Traffic Sources.
You’ll go to the Traffic Sources Overview page and a drop-down menu will show. Click Referring Sites in the menu.
This will take you to the Referring Sites page. Look for the Pages/Visit stats on the middle of the page and click the drop down menu below it. Then, click Landing Page in the menu.
A new column will show up. This column has the posts on your site that are getting referral traffic.
Posts that get a lot of referral traffic are usually linkworthy posts since the best links tend to send a lot of traffic compared to other links.
Analyze these posts and you should see a pattern that shows you what kind of posts on your blog are getting good links.
Sunday Morning SEO: A Simple Way to Create Linkworthy Content
Posted by: | Comments
Creating content that attracts links is one of the most efficient ways to build links. Link building is usually a time consuming task so anything that makes it easier is a welcome strategy.
If you read about linkworthy content, you’ll often find articles about the qualities the content should have. For example, some SEO experts talk about using humor or controversy. Others say you should be the first to scoop the latest news while there’s another camp that recommends giveaways and contests.
While these tips can definitely help, I favor a more pragmatic approach. I like to look at the content in my niche (including my own) that’s already getting links and then create similar content. I like this tactic because it takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation.
What’s Already Working?
First, check out your referral stats to see what types of content are already attracting links. Also, you can look at the trackbacks in your comment section.
A couple weeks ago, I did a quick scan of my stats and found that 90% of my natural links were pointing to a certain kind of resource post. With this information in mind, I started publishing more of these posts. As a result, my links and traffic have gone up significantly.
Second, when examining the links of competitors, look at the blogs with mid-level traffic instead of the super popular blogs. The A-listers tend to get links because of the sheer size of their audience even if their content is not particularly link worthy.
Once you’ve looked at a couple blogs, you should have a good idea of what attract links in your niche. Then, publish similar content and you’ll be on your way towards a strong link building foundation.
Sunday Morning SEO: Why Should You Evaluate Sites?
Posted by: | Comments
In my last post, I talked about using an SEO tool to evaluate a site’s link authority. In this post, let’s look at why you should be evaluating sites and how to apply the information you get from your research.
Getting quality backlinks is the best competitive advantage you can get in SEO. Backlinks are a major part of the search engines’ algorithms and it’s much harder to copy someone’s backlinks than their keywords.
You can focus on keywords but keywords are easy to implement. Once a webmaster figures out that they are important, he can look at the free keyword tools, find relevant keywords, and then add on their website. Compare that process to building links on quality sites.
That’s why the search engines place a lot of value to backlinks on their algorithms. With the early search engines, you could just place keywords on your site and you would rank pretty quickly. Savvy SEOs realized this and created many low quality sites that dominated the search results. Google became the best search engine by focusing more on links instead of keywords on a site. This focus helped Google create search results filled with more quality sites than their competitors.
It’s not just the quantity of links that today’s modern search engines look at. Quality of links is much more important. In fact, if you get too many low quality links in proportion to your other links, you could get penalized and lose your rankings. That’s the main reason I often talk about quality sites.
Therefore, we need to figure out what quality means to the search engines. I gave the following metrics in the previous post:
- PageRank
- Number of backlinks
- Number of links from unique domains
- Age
- Traffic from popular keywords
These numbers aren’t perfect but they do give a good picture of the quality of a site from the search engine’s perspective. Once you’ve found some quality sites, you can apply that knowledge. Here are some common ways:
Guest posting: I’ve written that guest posting is the best SEO method for bloggers. You can maximize your guest posts by sending them to quality blogs.
Link requests: At the beginning of this month, I wrote that the key to successful link requests is researching sites, figuring out the type of content they link to, and then creating that content. Once you’ve done those steps, you can confidently ask for a link. You can increase the effectiveness of your link requests by sending them to quality sites.
Reciprocal links: Getting reciprocal links is not a powerful strategy by any means. Still, it can give you a small boost in the rankings. But the most important thing it can do is let the search engines associate you with quality sites. Of course, for this to happen, you need to know which sites are the quality ones.
Buying sites: This application is not as common as the others. But if you ever find yourself in the position to buy a site, it can be very profitable to buy a site with a lot of authority. Also, because not every webmaster focuses on keywords, there are many sites with good links but poor onpage keyword use. Ycan quickly improve the search traffic of these sites by doing keyword research and including those keywords in strategic locations like the title tags.
Sunday Morning SEO: Link Building With Directories
Posted by: | Comments
Hello BloggingPro readers, my name is Dee Barizo and I’m the resident SEO geek. My SEO column for Blog Herald has moved here. I’ll be covering practical SEO tips to help you improve your rankings and get more search traffic.
Today’s topic is about web directories.
In the fast moving internet landscape, directories seems very outdated but they actually still work. For my day job, I do SEO for clients. I’ve seen their rankings improve after building links on directories.
Quality Over Quantity
You may have seen those mass submission services like 500 free directory submissions for $25. These services seem like great deals but you get what you pay for. The vast majority of free directories are low quality sites that don’t help you. In fact, they may hurt your rankings.
It’s much better to choose a few quality directories even though you’ll probably have to pay a review fee.
Here are three guidelines for evaluating the quality of a directory.
- Outbound link policy: Quality listings is a sign of a quality directory. On the other hand, Google penalizes sites that link to low quality sites.
- Traffic: If a site gets a lot of traffic, that usually means it has good rankings. I like to check traffic with Compete.
- PageRank: I don’t usually like to look at this stat because high PR doesn’t necessarily equal high quality site. However, if you combine PR with the other two guidelines, you should be fine. I would look for directories with PR4 or above.
Recommended Directories
Here are a few of my favorite directories.
Best of the Web Blog Directory: Best of the Web is a reputable directory that’s been around since 1996. Over that time, it’s been a great place to find useful sites in just about any category.
V7N Web Directory: Along with having high quality standards, V7n Directory is part of a domain that includes a blog and an active webmaster forum.
Romow Web Directory: Romow doesn’t even look like a directory because it has so much content. It has over 15 blogs that generate traffic and attract links.
Directory Journal Web Directory: Directory Journal is similar to Romow because it uses content to drive traffic and build links. It has a couple blogs and a webmasters tools section.
JoeAnt Directory: JoeAnt is a well-organized directory that’s been around since 2001. The site has been mentioned by Business Week. It has attracted a large team of volunteer editors, who review the submissions and only approve useful sites with sufficient content.
For more directories, check out this list.
Benefits
Why choose directories as a link building tactic?
There are two main benefits. First, it doesn’t take much time to build the links. Yes, you’ll need money to pay for the review process. But when you consider how much time and effort it usually takes to build a good link, it can be worth it to trade your money for time.
Second, directories associate your blog with top sites in your niche. One of the keys to link building is having a link profile that intersects with quality sites in your industry. This builds trust with the search engines, which leads to better rankings.
Over to You
Have you ever submitted your blog to directories? If you have, which ones did you use?
Did you see any increase in rankings or search traffic?