Archive for Sunday Morning SEO
Sunday Morning SEO: How to Discover Your Most Linkworthy Content
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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
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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: 3 Great SEO Articles For Beginners
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I came across 3 great articles about SEO that are especially helpful if you’re new to the field.
Also, these articles are great if you’re confused about SEO. The search industry can be a confusing one because there are many spammers spouting off misinformation to get more sales. But the articles are solid and contain useful advice.
Another reason I like them is because they’re written by Brian Clark, who I consider to be one of the best writers in the blogging field. Brian has a lot of experience as a copywriter both offline and online. He’s able to take complex topics and explain them so that they’re easy to understand.
So, free up some time, grab a cup of coffee, and check out the following articles if you want to know the fundamentals of SEO including why it still matters.
1. Does SEO Copywriting Still Matter?
In this article, Brian gives reasons why SEO is a very effective traffic technique. Over the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of buzz about social media. But Brian talks about a survey that shows that using a search engine is the 2nd most common internet activity after email. With all those people using Google or other search engines, it makes sense to do SEO to maximize your traffic.
Also, Brian talks about the importance of getting links and writing SEO copy.
2. Five Areas to Focus On for Effective SEO Copywriting
In this article, Brian gives 5 onpage elements that you should focus on to improve your rankings. Fortunately, implementing his advice won’t be a time consuming task.
Onpage SEO is easy to do and once you get into the habit of doing it, you’ll see an increase in search traffic.
3. Does Writing for People Work for SEO?
This is my favorite article out of the three. In it, Brian blows up the myth that writing for search engines is different from writing for people. That may have been the case many years ago, but the search engines have gotten much more advanced. These days the best SEO writing methods are geared towards human readers not just search bots.
But make sure to read the article since Brian explains what he means when he says writing for people. It might not be what you think.
Sunday Morning SEO: 3 Golden Rules of Guest Posting
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From the early days of the blogosphere, savvy bloggers realized they could get traffic and links by offering free posts to other bloggers. The bloggers receiving the posts were happy to get free content. It was a classic win-win situation.
This strategy of guest posting is not only effective for SEO and referral traffic, but it also builds your reputation, brand, and credibility.
If you want to have a successful guest posting campaign, consider these 3 rules.
1. Relevance
Your post should fit the overall flow of the blog.
Read the last couple entries to get an idea of the style and tone of the blogger. Some blogs are very informal while others have a traditional writing style. Some blogs use many images while others don’t use them at all.
One of the best ways to be relevant is to read the previous guest posts on the blog. Look at what they have published before and create a post that is similar.
2. Quality
Create something so good that it can’t be ignored.
About a month ago, I found out that a PageRank7 blog with 1,800 subscribers and 80,000 monthly visitors was looking for guest posts. As you can guess, the blogger had pretty high standards for the content on his site. I started working on a guest post since PR7 links are hard to come by. I came up with a topic but after 3 hours, I realized the post was not going to be good enough so I scrapped it and started a new post. It took me 7 hours to complete. I did a lot of research and wrote four rough drafts to get the post just right.
I sent off the post and the blogger really like it. He published it within a week.
You might balk at the thought of spending hours creating one post, but oftentimes that’s what it will take to get popular bloggers to notice you. Now you may not have to spend 10 hours like I did but don’t underestimate the time and effort it takes to produce quality content.
3. Persistence
The old saying goes, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
If your post gets rejected or you don’t get a reply, don’t give up. Send it to another blogger. You worked hard at creating a top-notch post, so someone else will be willing to publish it.
About three weeks ago, I sent a guest post but the blogger said they already had similar content. I thought my content was unique but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I moved on. I did some research and found a blog with better stats. I sent them the guest post and they published it within a week.
Sunday Morning SEO: Why Should You Evaluate Sites?
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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.