Link Building |

June 9, 2016

| by

The Ultimate Link Building Strategies For Your Business (Infographic)

Gaining online exposure for your business is no small task. You have to account for multiple moving parts like local SEO, organic search, social media, and so on. One tactic you should never forget, though, is link building. While this is something that goes on behind the scenes for the most part, it’s an integral part of any complete SEO strategy.

Today I’m going to show you one of my favorite link building strategies, followed by an infographic that will further enhance your tactics and ultimately your success.

Today’s Top Link Building Strategies (Infographic)

Over at OnBlastBlog, I champion link building because it’s worked for me and it continues to bring new and exciting exposure to my website.

My favorite strategy by far is Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique. This strategy is composed of three simple but incredibly effective steps:

  • Find Content that is worthy of links
  • Create your own content that’s even better
  • Reach out to the proper webmasters and show them your content so they can link to it.

 

Essentially, you are building on the foundation of content that you know earns links. You have a great starting point and you go from there. You take the best, and you make it better, and up the skyscraper goes.

At the heart of link building, people just want to link to content that is relevant and beneficial to their readers. It’s your job to create that content and put it front of the right people. Let’s take a look at today’s infographic which will show you how to do just that.

Let us know how it helps you in the comments below!

7

Link Building, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Software, Web Development |

June 5, 2014

| by

Link Building – Backlinks, Analysis, Data And Tracking Link Metrics For Link Building

Link Building TipsInsight To Link Data And Values

BACKLINKS, don’t you love them? Backlinks are what makes search engines run. Period. When it comes to SEO, there’s no more of an important ranking factor for Google’s search engine. Understanding all the different analytics, data and values for backlinks can be exhausting, literally. Often, link building is one of the most time consuming SEO strategies in your wheelhouse. Some are great with backlinks, others not as much. However, if you only learn one things from this article, it should be that backlinks are critical to ranking your keywords and there’s nothing else that comes close to comparing.

So you’ve been told that backlinks get results. It’s officially 2016 and to answer your question, YES. Backlinks are the top ranking factor for SEO, but not the only one. And not the only significant SEO technique, but they’re certainly important. A backlink is when another website links to any page of your website. Links 101 there. Take Google for example. Google views backlinks as trust factors and votes from one website to the next. In order to win in a vote, you need the most votes, right? Same case here. While that analogy is not always true, the majority of the time it is. Websites that have thousands of referring domains are often ranking heavily in search engines. So the more votes you can get for your website, more than likely, the better you’ll be.

Two key elements that are important factors when it comes to links. Number one, relativity. Backlinks with the highest relativity scores will have priority. Number two, authority. Authority platforms often carry more SEO value, the same can be said about

Backlinks have always been an important for search engine optimization and search rankings for years now. In 2013, we saw some big changes that changed link metrics forever. Google, the leading search engine by far, controls over 68 percent of all searches. In 2013, the famous search engines made vital changes to search engine algorithms that forever changed the landscape of links. Afterward, we’ve even saw major ranking players fall from grace per say. Needless to say, link building was forever changed. We saw more changes in 2014 and then again to local search in 2015. Now 2016, I’m sure we’ll see more changes as Google continues to provide the best search results based on site popularity and metrics.

Today, link building is still as important as ever. The way we build links has changed. There’s a lot of risk and reward in link building, more so today then ever. Tough choices have to be made and if you don’t know what you’re completely doing when you build links, you can jeopardize your company and website forever. It can jeopardize your company if you build links and your reputation as well. That’s a lot of responsibility for a freelancer, even a company. Learning proper link metrics, analysis and data is the key to success.

Link BuildingEvery link has a value that breaks down into multiple categories, no two links  are alike. Although you can get two links with the same strength in terms of link value, all links have different metrics. In order to evaluate your links, you’re going to need some type of software to give you data and analysis. For Hale Associations, we’re a big fan of WebMeUp’s SEO software. I’m not an affiliate nor do I promote this SEO software, it works and that’s crucial. Ahrefs is another great website, far more expensive then WebMeUp. The point, you need a tool that will read data and give you feedback for individual link metrics and values. All of the pictures below are from the interface of WebMeUp software.

Evaluating Link Values

As mentioned above, every link has a value. Some links are extremely valuable, often coming from authority websites with a decent sized Google page rank. Some links are do follow links, others are no follow links. Do follow links pass along link value from one website to the linking website. These are the links that everyone aims for. No follow links pass very little value. Although this is true, you need your fair share of no follow links to keep a diverse link profile. If you refer to the picture above, you see mixed links that are do follow and no follow. The software tells us which links are do follow links and which links are no follow links.

One of the new features added to WebMeUp is the Link Risk feature. This is extremely useful for link building and evaluating link values. It calculates a percentage 0-100 to each link, warning you if the link is at risk for a penalty. In this screenshot, you can see that all the links are trusted and show no risk of a link penalty.

How To Determine Link Values

The picture above shows us important link metrics and analysis that give us insight in determining the value of the link. We can see the anchor text that is given for the specific link on the far left. We see our homepage link in the next option. Next, we see the page strength for the specific link, which is the complete link value for all combined metrics. The next feature shows us the page rank of our domain to the specific set URL. The following section displays the page rank of the linking domain. This stat plays a vital role in the strength of a specific link. Lastly, you have your Alexa rank, which plays no role in a link’s value.

Link Building Tips

Without having link building software, SEO software or some type of link building tool, it’s difficult to determine the value of a link. With this software and many others, you can also plugin a competitor URL to see who they are building links through. You can use these metrics for a number of link building techniques and evaluations.

If you’re building links, you should put your focus on high quality, high link valued authority websites. As you can see, just because a PR6 website links to you doesn’t mean that you get PR3 back. This is a SEO myth. I’ve heard it a number of different times in the past decade and it’s completely false.

You want to put in the effort to research relative links that will bring your website the largest value for links. You want to make sure the link is do follow if possible and you want to make sure that your links are diverse. Although it isn’t pictured in this article, you want to make sure your links are coming from different IPs. Make sure your anchor text are diverse also. Link building should always be carefully planned. If you’re a link builder or SEO, you don’t want the risk of penalty. Always use your link values to determine the best link building strategy possible for your domains.

Link Building |

May 30, 2014

| by

Link Building Techniques-Broken Link Building

Link Building TechniquesBuilding Links

Link building is a questionable SEO technique at this day and age. In 2013, we saw the linking landscape change forever. Gone our the days of link farms, hidden text and building tens of thousands of links in a single day. Google has forever changed the mindset of link building. Link building is a valuable part of every website’s SEO plan. If it isn’t, then it should be. So, how are we building links in 2015?

There’s a variety of different ways that links can be built, manually or automated. If you’re not for sure, links are important to SEO rankings. Not as much in past years, but links are still very important. Who links to your website matters. Authority websites that link to your content can give you significant improvement in SEO rankings. One link building technique that is gaining popularity is broken link building.

Let’s start with a common question. Is link building good or bad? Or, is link building white hat SEO, black hat SEO, shades of gray even? I know most of you have heard the terminology. Scratch it. Everyone builds links. Yes, Matt has explained link building or the thought of in dozens of videos. No one said that link building can’t be done. You do have to be careful how you build links. I’m not telling you one way or other. I will say this, if you are adding value to the page or user, how can it be wrong?

The first thing you need to know is how to evaluate your links. For some of you, this is going to be quite the job. The more links you have, the harder it will be to track, record and analyze. Everyone should strive for a diverse link profile. If your link profile doesn’t look normal or looks automated, it can bring up red flags to Google. Everyone needs a great link building tool, such as Moz or Ahrefs.

Now that we have that clear, lets talk about a great link building technique known as broken link building. Broken link building is one of the most effective link building techniques I’ve ever known. Broken link building doesn’t have to be “spammy,” it is actually an effective way to get high quality links. So, what is broken link building?

Link BuildingBroken link building is a link building technique that involves researching broken links and offering a solution to these broken links with links of your own. It involves using a tool to check for broken links, finding those broken links and reporting them to the webmaster. Easier said then done. If you know link building, you know that it can be time consuming and it involves a lot of research, if you’re doing it right. You’re not just going around pasting links, you’re offering a service.

If you’re using broken link building in your link building campaign, be sure that you stay within your niche. Unrelated links brings up red flags. You don’t want to risk your business or another’s business. That is bad business and you don’t want to have to go through the trouble of cleaning up bad links. It’s a complete headache, trust me. Stay within your niche or the field of your content, media, audio or videos.

Don’t contact a webmaster if you don’t have high quality options for the broken links. When you’re link building off broken links, you better come with your best content. This increases your chances of the links being added, saving you time, effort and money. You also want to make sure you have the content ready to rock-n-roll before sending the contact email.

In your email, be respectful, professional and be sure you have the exact link URL that is broken. Be polite and let them know that you found a broken link. Tell them you have a great article on the same subject manner and send them the link back. As a webmaster, you’re appreciative of this gesture, you don’t want broken links on your website. Having a go-to article in the making saves time for the webmaster also. Although you benefit the most, the webmaster does also.

Link building and content are two of the biggest factors for ranking on search engines. If you have a new domain, you’re at a big disadvantage. Aged domains have authority, thousands of links and piles of content. In order to gain time and rankings, you have to build links. There’s no question about it. However, there’s a right way to do it and there’s a wrong way. Keep your links related, minimal and don’t go building thousands of back links to your website on day one. This would be a white hat SEO approach. If you’re going “black hat,” then you can build links like there’s no tomorrow. It just depends on what needs accomplished.

Quality Content Is Still Link Bait

Here’s another tip, take the time to write great content. If you’re scared to build links, I respect that fact. Do I believe you’ll be penalized for following the directions I’ve laid out? Absolutely not. With that said, if you can’t build links, you have to have superior content. Great content attracts a lot of natural links. Don’t worry about content length, just make sure your content is useful as it can be. Make it informative, use descriptive titles, subtitles and optimize it for SEO. If it is useful, the links will come.

Broken link building will help you get high quality links. It also helps you build relationships with other webmaster, a very beneficial element. I’ve built some great relationships with other webmasters and web professionals through broken link building. Remember, we’re all in the same boat. If not, your boat is chained to back of mine. Point is, we all want to rank well and have authority links, trust me, your not alone. Call it as you will but link building is a technique that you have to have in your arsenal.