What is the most powerful ranking factor in SEO? That would be backlinks. Everybody knows: if you want to rank high, you will have to build links to your own site from other sites. Problem is, not all backlinks are equally good at helping you rank higher.

In terms of quality, backlinks can be categorized as such:

• Really great: these come from websites that are an authority in the niche they represent and boast a strong reputation.
• Good: these backlinks are from websites that can’t really be called an authority, but still have high-quality content, and their overall quality is high, too.
• Potentially dangerous: backlinks from sites you’d rather not visit at all (such as low-quality or obviously harmful) or sites whose specialty is way too different from yours.

That last one is clearly not like the other two, is it? It raises a few questions you probably want answered now. Let’s not keep you waiting.

• Q: What does “dangerous” mean?

A: Google used to penalize sites for having too many low-quality backlinks, even going so far as to remove them from its index and prevent them from showing up in search results. That doesn’t happen anymore. These days, Google Penguin (the link-evaluating update to Google’s algorithm) does little more than devalue those backlinks. The result is a lot less dramatic: a mere drop in site rankings.

• Q: Why are such backlinks dangerous in the first place? What does Google have against them?

A: Backlinks mean that someone voted your site as an authority. If that was all there was to it, everybody would be gaming the system with sheer numbers of links (and that’s indeed how it was at the dawn of SEO). Google realized that quality trumps over quantity and made the votes unequal – in a meritocracy-like way.

That’s why there’s a difference between a site which has proven its worth over time and a site which has not (or one that has even proved the opposite). A vote from the former carries more weight than a vote from the latter. Now, if you keep collecting “bad” votes, what does that speak of you?

So the obvious takeaway is: if you want your link building activities to bear fruit, build as many good backlinks as you can while gaining as few bad ones as possible (preferably zero). But what are you to do if you’ve already collected too many bad backlinks?

Then you have some cleaning up to do.

How to find bad backlinks

Undesirable backlinks generally come from three sources:

• Dubious, unauthoritative sites
• Sites thematically unrelated to yours
• Spam

The bad part is, 99% of the time you aren’t the one creating backlinks. Other people do it, and you have little to no control over what backlinks you are getting. It’s therefore an easy job for a nasty competitor to use shady backlinks to pollute your link profile and cause your rankings to take a nosedive. This is called “negative SEO.”

Fortunately, there’s a way to prevent that. All you need are SEO tools – namely, a toxic link checker.

Step one is to check your site for bad backlinks. For that, you can use WebCEO’s Toxic Backlink Checker Tool.

It’s easy as pie. If it’s your first time using the tool, it will scan your site automatically once you open it. Otherwise, you’ll just need to click the part saying Scanned X days ago (or Scanned today) and then Rescan. Now take a moment to sit back and relax until the tool finishes doing its job.

When it’s done, Toxic Pages will display a table with the most suspicious linking sites. This is how the tool evaluates them:

• URL trust level and Domain trust level. These are metrics provided by Majestic and are very similar to Moz’s Page and Domain Authority. Low numbers (below 0.5) indicate potentially harmful backlinks. Emphasis on “potentially”: good low-authority sites do exist, such as new websites that just haven’t made a name for themselves yet.
• Total number of outgoing links on the page. Unless you are Wikipedia, chances are, you can’t point to a big number of external domains from the same page at once without looking like a link farm. This only applies to dofollow links, though.
• Number of backlinks pointing to the same domain. Same reason as above.

If you want to change how the tool should evaluate backlinks, click on the Settings button or on Configure toxicity factors at the top of the screen. Other than configuring the factors listed above, here are a couple more things you can do:

• Tell the tool which links it should consider toxic and which ones it shouldn’t. That is, if you are confident your own preferences will be more accurate than the default settings.
• Automatically label links from specific domains as toxic. The reverse is true, as well.

Lastly, you can also manually mark URLs in the report as non-toxic. Such URLs will be moved to the Pages manually marked as non-toxic report and stay there in case you decide to change your mind.

How to remove bad backlinks

Okay, scanning is over and you have a list of offending backlinks. What’s the next step?

Getting rid of them, of course.

• Remove them manually. If you can edit those websites’ content yourself, the backlinks there will be an easy target.
• Contact the person who can remove those backlinks. This method is tricky because it can fail in so many ways. Maybe there’s no “contact me” section, maybe the person won’t receive your message or just won’t listen or care. But if it works, then you’re golden.
• Disavow those backlinks. You can just ask Google to not consider these specific undesirable backlinks as part of your link profile. There are two ways to do it: with the help of Google Search Console or right in WebCEO’s Toxic Pages tool.

How to disavow backlinks in Google Search Console

We’ll assume you have already created a Gmail account and registered your site as your property in Google Search Console. Let’s jump straight to disavowing backlinks.

First, you will need to create a .txt file with the links you want to disavow. In this file, you can list individual pages or entire domains.

• For individual pages, simply put their full URLs (e.g. https://example.com/page).
• Domains are described in this format: domain:example.com.

Once your file is ready, you can start using the Google Disavow tool.

Choose the affected site (if you own more than one) and click Disavow Links. The next page will warn you to be careful while using the Disavow tool; click Disavow Links again. It will display a popup window that will ask you to choose and upload your disavow file. Do that and click Submit.

The rest is up to Google. It might takes weeks to disavow the backlinks, so be patient.

How to disavow backlinks in WebCEO

The Toxic Pages tool displays an instruction for disavowing links right above the table with problematic links.

1. Select the links from the table.

2. Click the Download button to automatically generate a disavow file.

3. If you want to disavow an additional domain, add domain:example.com, then save.

4. Click the Disavow Tool button to open the Google Disavow tool.

5. Click Done after you’ve finished using Google Disavow.

Not having to create a disavow file manually saves time and is definitely a plus, isn’t it?

The pages you’ve sentenced to disavowal will be listed in the Toxic pages reported to Google report.

Now what’s next?

With the toxic links gone, your link profile is now cleaner than before. But the possibility of getting more of them in the future is always around the corner. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed to happen again.

In order to protect your link profile and Google rankings, you can make it a regular practice to scan your site for toxic backlinks and repeat the cleaning procedure. At least once a month should be fine. You can even automate the scanning part to make this task easier.

Safe link building to you!

The post Safe Link Building: How to Find and Remove Bad Backlinks appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

I remember when SEO software was built for desktops and they all had a tool to send bulk emails to site owners asking to link to your site. It never worked. You were ignored at best or even blacklisted for spam. However, if done right, cold emails are a powerful tool to get more relevant traffic and improve your ranking positions.

A quick recipe for a successful outreach would be the following:

1. Identify your “hit list”
2. Make initial contact
3. Grow a relationship

In order for your content marketing strategy to succeed, you will need to increase your promotion efforts. Let’s dive deeper and get you some great new links and a ton of relevant traffic!

When do you need to reach out to popular bloggers & media?

1. You’ve just launched a new service or product. If you’ve investigated how to market a product, you must have been advised to ask some niche authority to write about you. Getting some publicity in relevant media is a great start for every new product.
2. You want to attract new readers. One of the most effective ways is to get an authoritative blogger or niche expert as a guest blogger on your site. You may think of an interview format.
3. You want to expose yourself as a niche expert. Try to publish some great content in a popular industry media outlet.
4. You need some good links from authoritative sites. Sometimes 1-2 links from a good relevant source can drastically improve your ranking and help you outrank your competitors. For this, WebCEO’s Backlink Quality Checker is an invaluable tool. It helps you analyze the quality of your existing backlinks and identify new, authoritative sites to target for link-building efforts.

5 tips for reaching out and getting results

1. Write about them, not about you

Templates that were massively used to spam popular bloggers and media all started with “Hello, I am XXXX from YYY”. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work today. Instead of writing about you, start with their work: “Your post …. really caught my eye.” And then tell them who you are.

Example:

“Hello Jane!

You article on the keto-diet is great and I just retweeted it as @memyself! Your wit combined with thorough scientific approach makes your writing fascinating and useful. Our portal about healthy food could really use an article written by you.”

Ensure you have genuinely engaged with their content on social media. This builds a connection even before you make direct contact. To track the performance of your social media activities and understand which influencers are most engaged with your content, consider using WebCEO’s Social Engagement Tool. This can help you identify key influencers who are already interacting with your brand.

2. Make it easy to speak with you

It’s highly important that you make it really easy to speak with you. Say that you are happy to work on your respondent’s schedule and will be available when they are free. Provide every which way for someone to contact you. Remember, that you are the one who needs something.

3. Get social proof

After your email is read, it is very likely that your respondent will take a few seconds to find something about you and your business. Create trust with social proof: embed it into your initial email. Tell for how long your business has been operating, who has written content for you and where your own articles were published.

4. Send follow-ups

Quite often people don’t respond, not because they don’t want to but because they forgot to. On the image below, you can see the number of follow-ups we tested. As you can see, the third email has a rather high response rate. I would recommend that you send an initial email + 2 polite follow-ups. When you are smart and polite, your follow-ups will not look “pushy”.

My advice for every follow-up is: share something valuable, share an exciting update on your achievement, repeat your ask in different words or from a different angle on why it’s so important that you speak with them.

5. Grow the relationship

Now when you’ve reached out to a blogger and gotten their articles on your site or you’ve gotten your content promoted on theirs, it’s time to strengthen your relationship. Follow them on more social media and keep sharing and commenting on their publications. Try to develop friendly win-win relations.

How to find bloggers to reach out to

1. Search for blogs in your niche

Create your hit list – find bloggers in your niche with whom you want to build relationships and whose networks you’d love to tap into.

I usually create a spreadsheet where I keep all the information found. First of all, search for bloggers who write on relevant topics. You may use the WebCEO Web Buzz monitoring tool. In the tool’s settings enter keywords that describe your niche (try broad terms first), and see the latest posts with them.

Add blogs you’ve found to your spreadsheet and move to the next step. The next step is to find a maximum information about them, especially their contact information.

2. See who links to other niche blogs

When someone links to other sites in your niche, there is a really high chance they will link to your site too. Use the WebCEO Backlink Checker Tool to see who links to your competitors but not yet to you.

Add sites and blogs, that do not link to yours, to the spreadsheet. Now, when you’ve used these three tools you should have a massive hit list.

Investigate each of them carefully: find who the author is, what are his/her favorite topics, think of content you can provide to them. When all the preparation is done, reach out to them with PERSONAL emails and lots of likes and shares of their previous articles and do not forget the tips I’ve given.

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The post How to Reach Out to Popular Bloggers and Always Get Replies appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

“You need backlinks and organic visitors searching for the answers, products, and services you provide. Guest blogging is the best way to do all that…” © Neil Patel.

Each SEO professional knows or should know that the hardest and the greatest part of the SEO process is to create decent content. No SEO tool will help here. Content will lead you through all SERP positions and become a business card of your website. However, you can’t get the highest positions immediately, because people don’t know about you at the beginning. In addition, your competitors already have their places and will not give you a crown for no reason at all. So, how do you make a website visible on the Internet and stand out in the crowd?

The answer is pretty simple and, at the same time, difficult enough: attract more people and increase traffic.

How can you do this? Create content of high quality and in detail. This will definitely attract visitors to your place.

Look at Google. Even though we are angry because of all those Algorithms, penalties, and rank drops, at the same time we are always ready to admit that Google seeks to algorithmically present its idea of quality and tries to give this quality to the users. This has brought Google a lot of customers.

How can other websites make their field of customers big enough and show that they have needed quality? What do webmasters try to do besides keyword research in order to get the highest positions on the SERPs? The most common answer: they do link building. It is hard but future success requires this.

And guest blogging for a long time has been one of those ideas which come to mind almost immediately when we talk about backlinks. Today we are going to focus on this.

Table of Contents

1. Get Started with Guest Blogging
2. Pros of Guest Blogging
3. Cons of Guest Blogging
4. How to Identify Your Target Audience
5. Where to Publish Guest Posts
6. How to Introduce Yourself for Guest Posting
7. How to Promote Your Guest Posts

Guest blogging is a great opportunity to show the audience of a well trafficked site with a high domain authority that you are worth their attention and they can bravely come to your website. People trust websites that are already quite authoritative and sometimes don’t want to miss any material they present. From those interested people you can get more traffic: they may share your post, advise their friends, and they may also come to your website looking for more good material. If they are satisfied with the stuff you provide, you can wait for backlinks, because great content is always worth sharing.

Here we encounter the quality content problem. Guest blogging is not just about interesting things you want to share with others; this is your business card for potential visitors. You should use all your talent and power and conduct a lot of research on a chosen topic to prove that you are competent enough for people to want to visit your site.

However, you should think carefully about guest blogging. As well as any other strategy this one has its pros and cons, and we definitely should consider them in detail.

We have chosen to sort out a huge amount of advantages and make a simple and short list for you with little descriptions.

1. Website Popularity

By posting on another website with a large audience with a well done article, you can extend the borders of your own site’s popularity, which means:

• A lot of traffic comes to your place with people who have read your words, liked them, and decided to explore more material you offer. They may come and go or stay for a little longer, sharing your content and linking to you, which is really great for your rankings;
• You can welcome a bunch of new interests and goals at your place. Such people are a breath of fresh air: they may enter your website and a bit later become your permanent subscribers who wait for new content from you or even offer some interesting topics to cover;
• Social media followers: social media has become hugely popular. People try to develop their social media accounts, and attract more people, by posting a lot of related material – this provokes comments, shares, likes, a lot of new followers, which leads to an extension of your popularity far beyond social media, which means more backlinks. Just don’t forget to communicate with your audience;
• Feedback is the golden apple in your pocket: feedback from ordinary people about how great your content is on your website or others, especially from those who have some authority…all this makes you more reliable and interesting. People like to read a comments section first and then build up their opinion about your product. Bad feedback about you can spread faster than you can even imagine, so be on the ball.

2. Reputation

With a well written article, you will build up a reputation as a writer, a good one or bad one. Accordingly, you will create a definite impression of your website throughout the Internet. Google is also watching you.

• By providing readers with great, fresh, and relevant content you will build your own authority and heighten the level of credibility among them and specifically in the niche you perform in. People perceive you as a professional concerning the sphere you are writing your posts about, which actually influences your traffic as well. We go directly to the most clued in people, because we believe them and their content;
• Remember that an earned reputation always works for you. Guest blogging is not a single article. You can guest publish on a regular basis, so be sure to provide quality and meet deadlines. Webmasters will not ever give you any opportunity to write anything for them once again if you can’t reassure them that you are a writer they need and who follows their rules.

3. Guest Blogging Opportunities and Business Benefits

Guest blogging provides you not only with people who come to your website, it gives you much more than you can think about at the moment. Let’s dive into this deeper:

• By posting your article on other websites besides yours, you extend your circle of acquaintance. They can be your potential partners, webmasters for other sites on which you can post your articles, and even candidates for ad hoc link exchanges. This is a widespread fact that your friends can give you more than you think. They are happy to be your accountants as well;
• Guest blogging gives you a chance to spread the word about your products. In your guest posts you can easily present your products, showing their benefits and importance to users. However, be careful, please: people don’t like direct advertisements. Even if they are not going to buy your products as soon as they read your article, people will be informed that such products exist. They can spread this information further, share this, and keep it all in mind. Who knows, maybe one day they’ll come to your website and become your customers;
• Such alink building strategy opens some new business opportunities. This could be a business collaboration with other website owners. With a greater amount of traffic which comes after a successful guest post, you can get the chance to offer webinars, teaching courses, new products and much more.

4. Better Search Engine Rankings

Google likes quality, and when it sees quality it works for you. So, this is one more chance to work on your SEO, for instance, to heighten your domain and page authority. In addition, if there are a lot of backlinks to your website and those are from trustworthy sites, Google can reward you with some extra points. Apart from this, with guest posts you can find an extra opportunity to promote other related articles in the form of anchor links.

5. Personal Benefits

There are a lot of benefits of guest blogging. With this you not only bring success to your website, you can also receive something for yourself:

• Guest blogging for someone who has never done this before is a new and useful experience. While writing for a new source, you will put all your knowledge and talent into each word you use. Creating content for new people always means new ways of writing, because the audience of big sites will be wider, more complex and more diverse than on your site. You should take into account each of these details and write something that fits everybody;
• You will improve your writing skills. When writing a new article, you will put all your talent into the process and make yourself a better writer. The more qualitative content you create, using new words, phrases, sentence structures, etc., the more experience and tips for writing you obtain. In each sentence you will use something new and “communicate” with the audience on a new level. Just compare your first articles and last ones and you will see what I’m talking about;
• You create unique content. Guest blogging is not only posting your material on a popular website. You still compete with people who are already popular in your niche and have some authority which is bigger than yours is. It is a real struggle to write something unique and catchy about topics that have already been mentioned. Outline yourself among competitors and offer something new for even old topics. Once you’ve done this, you can be proud of yourself and get traffic;
• Self-promotion comes with guest blogging. In guest posts you advertise not only your content and company, but also You “sell” your knowledge, skills, products, if they exist, and your name which is given in a bio after or before the post. You create your portfolio as well.

As well as other link building ideas, guest blogging, despite such juicy pros, also has its cons and they should be explored. Again we have a short list that includes a lot.

1. You Depend on Other People

If you write for websites, you should follow the rules and you may encounter not so pleasant consequences sometimes. This means:

• Somebody else may build their own authority using your name and material. If your article is well done, people will read it and spread it with the link to the website that contains the needed article, and this is not yours. People will visit your site only if they read your content till the end, so a significant part of the backlinks your post receives will go to the benefit of the website you wrote for;
• Your article can be rejected. This depends on you and a website owner. If the content you’ve written is pretty poor and boring for a webmaster, he or she can reject your post and next time “look” at you with suspicion and disbelief;
• Editing can eliminate your uniqueness. Webmasters have a right to “clean” your content, change it a little bit, or give it to a professional editor and proofreader, who will investigate your material from A to Z. They can erase a part that sounds great for you and or change things to fit their opinion or business more. This happens more when you are a newcomer and don’t have a name and the needed experience.

2. No Guarantees

Link building ideas can’t guarantee you success, so you should not rely on one strategy. Here are the main reasons why guest blogging can pass you by:

• Because of the popularity of guest blogging, you may not be chosen to write something for websites with, for example, a high domain authority. This can happen because of the low popularity of your name, i.e. an article from an unknown author may not be OK with a big site. However, you can start with websites which are not so widespread and, by a step by step process, reach those you’ve been dreaming about;
• It takes a lot of time to see some results of guest blogging. If you want to see them right away, you should write as a guest more However, it’s unlikely for this to work, because writing of great articles is a long process, as everything should be unique. Great content demands great effort.

3. Harmful Impact

• Harmful associations can’t be avoided on the Internet, where surroundings are not so clean. They appear when you post your articles on untrustworthy or toxic websites, when people who share them have already lost their reputation, or if you decide to go for plagiarism. To protect yourself and your website from a Google penalty you should always check websites you are going to write for and present only unique material;
• Never go to spammy websites or those which are of low quality, if you don’t want to lose link quality, because this may damage your website’s rankings. You can check the quality of backlinks with the help of the WebCEO Backlink Quality Check Tool, which gives full information regarding the parameters and the level of reliability of all your backlinks;
• Spammers are everywhere. No-one will ever beat them. They come to every house and make it dirty. Be aware of this and clean the territory of your website and the post’s comment section after posting your guest post.

4. Great Risks

Nowadays risks are everywhere. However, forewarned is forearmed!

• One of the greatest risks is to not understand your target audience. Make time to analyze deeply who you will write an article for as well as the website itself – whether if fits your niche or not. If you write an article for basketball lovers and put this into the table sports section, this will be your greatest failure: you will never get even a single reader;
• With bad writing you can just forget about guest blogging at all. We don’t even need more words here;
• Content syndication is when your content is published on multiple websites. So the place of your content will not be unique anymore and your article will be spread all over the Internet. For SEO this means duplicate content which Google doesn’t like, but if this is tagged (rel=canonical) and indexed (content=”noindex,follow”) properly, everything will be okay.

5. Personal Losses

Everybody values their resources and people who do guest blogging are not an exception.

• Guest blogging always means unpaid work. This doesn’t matter if your material is great enough to even be published for money in papers or magazines: in this case you will get no money – only web benefits;
• You will spend a lot of time and effort for a single article, making unique and interesting content, and this can be really sad if you don’t get anything in the end;
• Too much time for guest blogging and too little time for your own website. It is always vitally important to find balance between guest blogging and your own website updates. You can be popular enough to guest blog more often, but there is no sense in this if you can’t offer fresh content to your own site’s audience. They will bounce more often this way.

LET’S GET STARTED!

Your target audience will be your potential clients; people who are interested in content you create. Those can be representatives of different ages, locations, and spheres of interest. It is rather important to properly identify a circle of people who can be interested in your further content. Even a single guest post should be prepared carefully and be focused on the needed audience.

There are a few steps you should take to find relevant new readers:

1. Analyze your current audience to understand who is already interested in content you provide. This is rather important because with the help of this step you can find out ways to extend your audience. Learn who they are: age, gender, location, educational level, income level, and their occupation (through fast surveys on your website or during sign up). Then go into personal things like personality, hobbies, and lifestyle.

2. This will come in handy if you conduct such research concerning your competitors’ audiences as well in order to understand who is interested in them and, of course, what they offer to their readers. Why should you do this? Because a competitor’s audience is also your potential audience as both of you provide material/products of the same niche. Learn why people go to their websites instead of yours, do better, and welcome people at your place.

3. Analyze the topic you are going to write about and analyze the statistics regarding its demand among different layers of population, ages and locations. Maybe you should spend more time on research and then think carefully about following a certain writing style and type of presenting information – how exactly you can attract people who are interested in your niche and have them fully satisfied with your content.

4. Write an article, taking into account everything that has been mentioned.

A tool which you can use to get necessary data: Google Analytics, which will disclose both types of data: demographic (age, gender, location) and physiographic (people’s lifestyle). In addition, this will show you information regarding sessions, bounce rate, transactions, and revenue on your website.

There are a lot of guest blogging sites where you can post your material, but the problem is to find the one or several that fit you best. This mission is not so simple, but you are definitely able to do this.

• The first thing you should do is to identify your niche – what you will write about and which topics you can cover as a After this you can bravely look for sites which are of your niche and where you can be useful. The simplest way to do this is to use Google. Type keywords related to your field in a search box and some of the best search results will be your candidates to choose from. Go to those websites’ blog sections if they have them, and start the investigation process: what they write about, who writes for them (businessmen, freelancers, or journalists), which topics are the most popular, etc. Maybe, some of them are looking for guest blogging writers.
• The next way is pretty widespread among those who often go for guest blogging. You just need to type your keywords with the next phrases or similar to them: “accepting guest posts”, “submit content”, “guest post”, etc. in a search box, and you will receive data on more sites for guest blogging. This is pretty simple and a little bit similar to the first variant, because further actions are alike: investigate everything, starting from available material and
• You yourself may be a frequent visitor of a website, where webmasters sometimes allow others to post articles. Then take this chance! This can obviously help you because you already know the audience of the website and, maybe, you even know some users who may be interested in your content/products.
• The next great source is Connectively, a website which provides journalists with new contacts for content they want to write about. This is not a guest blogging opportunity per se, but close to it. You can write a decent text and image outline for a journalist to officially write an article with their own byline, but with a link to your website. You should remember that your content in this case should be of the highest quality, relevant and compelling enough for the journalist to want to put their name on it and link to you.
• Apart from this, you can always try to knock on the doors of the most popular websites which are known to almost every blogger, for example, HubSpot, Marketing Land, Entrepreneur, Alltop.com, and many others. However, take into account your popularity and the direction you want to choose for your article! Small websites are also a valuable source if you are just a beginner and don’t have any experience in this sphere.
• Don’t forget that you can use your competitors to find new places where your content will be a perfect match. WebCEO’s Competitor Backlink Spy Tool will show you detailed information on your competitors’ backlink profiles. The data will let you know which websites are relevant to your type of content. These sites, which link to your competitors now, can potentially link to your site in the near future. With this insight, you will open new paths for promoting your material and new topics to work on, proving that you are a great representative of your niche. Analyze the content of your competitors, learn their good and bad aspects, create great copy that will stand out, and then offer it to webmasters who previously thought that your competitors were worth linking to.

• In addition, you can check a list of 200+ websites which are accepting guest posts in 2022 or a huge list of 5000+ guest posting sites, and another one with about 54 guest posting websites, in order to find the best place!

An important thing to remember before you go to the next step: ALWAYS check the quality of websites you’ve chosen to write an article for: domain authority, number of backlinks, security, website’s traffic through Alexa, and even people’s words about those websites, if this is possible.

Once you’ve found a website which looks like a good fit for you, negotiations begin. You want a backlink in exchange for your piece, but there’s more than one option to consider. What kind of backlink is the best?

Ideally, of course, you want to shoot for dofollow links in your guest posts. However, most websites which accept contributions have a “nofollow links only” policy for their guest authors. It’s not as bad as it sounds; nofollow links are only slightly less powerful than dofollow. Despite the name, sometimes Google may actually follow and crawl those links (which is what they mean by treating “nofollow” as a hint signal) to evaluate content on the linked pages.

Let’s also not forget about rel=”sponsored” links. As the name implies, the rel=”sponsored” attribute is reserved for paid links (e.g. sponsored posts). You may remember that Google doesn’t approve of the practice of buying backlinks, but it’s fair game if a link is openly declared as such by using this attribute. That way, nobody will be penalized, though it does tell Google about the insentive behind placing such a link, and it will be evaluated accordingly.

But don’t let it get to you. Dofollow, nofollow and sponsored links look all the same to users, so you won’t be missing out on user traffic. That comes down solely to the website’s popularity and your own post’s quality.

We have come to the most important part.

After you’ve found a website you want to write for, the next thing to do is to contact its owner in order to get permission for your article to be posted on the website. It is better to choose several topics and then offer them altogether. This will give a webmaster an opportunity to choose from and see that you can master more than one topic. Accordingly, you get more chances to be chosen or at least to be kept in mind. However, as this was mentioned a bit earlier, there is no 100% guarantee that you will be approved immediately, so don’t wait for instant results.

The way you contact a webmaster is pretty simple – through email or social media messaging systems, the most important of which is LinkedIn. However, this also demands some effort. Nowadays there are a lot of writers who want their material to be published, so you should be outstanding starting from the subject of your letter. You have to raise some interest from the very first words in order to be noticed among thousands of similar letters; choose something unusual and catchy, something that will definitely attract some attention to you.

After that you should work on the body of your letter. The same conditions: catchy, interesting, and beneficial for a website owner, not for you. We prefer to communicate with polite people who know something about etiquette, don’t we? So, don’t be cheap on politeness and complements and describe why their website got your attention and which posts particularly, and then write about things you want to give to their benefit. Be direct, short, and present two or three ideas, cogently describing their filling: topic, headline, and word count. If you have some great material on your website, you can leave some links in order to show that you are talented and professional enough to write for somebody. Here is a simple example, which is not obligatory to use:

To: webmaster@gmail.com

From: iwillwriteforyou@gmail.com

Subject: Do you have an article about baking fruit into pies and cakes?

Hello Jenny!

I’ve been reading you for a long time, realizing day by day that you provide, undoubtedly, the best material in your niche. However, I’ve noticed that you haven’t published any article concerning baking fruit into pies. I would be really glad to provide you with a great article about this and offer you some other variants:

#1

Topic: Bakery.

Headline: “Donuts and Cakes with Fruit Are All You Need”.

Word count: 1500 – 2000.

#2

Topic: Science.

Headline: “Lemons for Science or How to Start Liking Lemons”.

Word count: 1500 – 2000.

#3

Topic: SEO.

Headline: “WebCEO gives you the best fruit related keywords”.

Word count: 1500 – 2000.

 

You’d get a lot of traffic with one of these articles. I have a lot of experience in writing, with such articles as you can find here and here: *links*

Thank you! I will wait for your response.

 

Best regards,

Sally.

However, remember, that some serious and authoritative websites will ignore you. Let’s take The New York Times as an example here. They accept Op-Ed essays but mostly only from their favored contacts. In this case you should be polite, formal, direct, and cogent, especially in your subject line. It is also better to have a widespread name and high authority in terms of your sphere to have a chance of writing for them.

You can learn some other details about essay submission to The New York Times.

The next step is to wait. An answer to a good proposal can come after a whole week, if not longer, so don’t give up hope the next day. After you have received an approval message, it’s high time to start writing AND send a “Thank you” letter to the webmaster for the given opportunity.

Here are also some inspiring pieces of advice of How to Never Run Out of Blog Post Ideas. Check this out in order to always be ahead of your competitors and not undergo “freezing periods”.

First things first: make sure you can attach your guest writer’s bio to your posts wherever possible – and, fortunately, it is possible almost everywhere. Aside from introducing yourself in your bio, make sure to link to your social media profiles as well: that’s what Google uses to establish that different pieces of content were written by the same author.

SEO and Google search are entering an age of entities, an age that’s expected to revolutionize or even replace link building as we know it. Becoming one such entity will definitely make your name carry a lot of weight – and, if you can become famous, so will your website.

What about the more proactive ways of boosting your popularity?

The first option is to use your own website: leave a link to your guest post, so your visitors will be able to enjoy your content more and may become your constant readers.

The second option is to use social media. Leave a short and challenging description with a link and your post picture on all your accounts with appropriate hashtags. Going through hashtags, people can notice your post, read it, like it, and share it with others in the end, which means more traffic, followers, and subscribers on your website via the guest post on the other site. In other words, you can increase your traffic via social media, even if you are directly linking only to the other website.

In your social media post, you can tag people who will be alerted to your post automatically. This is a sneaky but effective way to gain attention from such people.

Performance Tracking.

Be sure to use the WebCEO Chosen Link Watch Tool in order to keep track of the backlinks to the guest post on the other website – those ones which you strived to get with guest blogging. This tool is extremely useful to monitor your links and be aware if:

1. a webmaster changed the anchor text of your link;
2. a webmaster tagged your link as nofollow:
3. a webmaster eliminated your link entirely;
4. a webmaster applied user-agent cloaking.

If you encounter these violations you can take appropriate measures. Never give anybody an opportunity to deprive you of an award for hard work!

TO SUMMARIZE: guest blogging has a lot to offer. First, this is a great opportunity to present your content to a new audience interested in your niche and converting people into your readers. Second, this is a rather successful method of building backlinks and getting traffic for your website. Of course, this is not perfect, but in capable hands, guest blogging can bring a lot of benefits. WebCEO is always by your side to help you. Find real link opportunities with WebCEO right away:

The post An Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging That Works appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

SEO is a harsh, never-ending road. The Internet is a ruthlessly competitive space. The moment you relax is the moment some other website swoops in to steal your rankings and traffic. And you have no choice but to do the same to others. You know you’ve become good at it when your site:

• Looks great on all devices
• Works like a charm
• Loads quickly
• Ranks high for your major keywords
• Is well-known on the Internet
• Has lots of backlinks

You can’t go wrong with the technical side of SEO. Unless you are lazy, this part is fully in your control. Now, the other factors in the list above make up a different story. Off-page SEO will require you to involve outside forces and get approval from people. That’s every bit as tough as it sounds, and then some more.

Fortunately, a lot of off-page SEO is centered around the same task: building links to your site.

And that’s the purpose of this guide.

Here you will find 20 Tactics Used by Experts to Build Links in 2019: tactics that work, tactics that you can and should use for your own site. What are they?

Let’s start with some of the easiest ones.

1. Turning broken links into your backlinks

Have you ever visited a site and noticed a broken link on one of their pages? If the circumstances are right, the next time that happens could be a link building opportunity for you.

Here’s how you know the stars can be aligned in your favor:

• It’s a site in the same niche as yours;
• The page’s content is related to what you have on your site (even on just one of your own pages);
• The broken link is used to point to a resource that’s similar to something you have on your own site.

The page on the other side of that link might not exist anymore for any number of reasons; the why doesn’t matter. You are lucky to have found that broken link because the site owner might soon decide to have no link at all in that place. Be sure to act quickly!

Send a message to the site owner and explain the situation. If you say your site has content that fits what that broken link describes, the owner might very well agree your content is a worthy replacement. You’ll score a link and make a new friend!

2. Turning unlinked mentions into backlinks

This tactic is similar to the previous one and a bit easier, too. Instead of broken links, you comb through other resources for mentions of your site – specifically those that are just plain text without a link. As specific words are much easier to find on the Internet than specific links, you can use this link building method with just Google and nothing else. Of course, specialized tools will make this job even more of a breeze.

Like our Web Buzz Monitoring tool, for example.

Once you’ve found an unlinked mention, the next step is the same as with broken links: reaching out to the person who can put a link there.

3. Guest posting

Someone has a blog, but is temporarily too busy to write a new post? That’s where you come in.

Of course, there can be other situations when people can agree to accept an article from you. Maybe you have a really good topic idea. Maybe they are in a writing slump. As long as your content contribution is really valuable to them, they won’t mind putting a link to your site on theirs in return.

4. Infographics

Visual information tends to be more interesting than plain text. That’s why infographics keep standing the test of time and don’t go out of trend. And, of course, they attract plenty of links when used wisely.

Create an infographic that looks fantastic and has lots of useful information. Submit it to content directories which accept infographics and offer it to sites that might be interested in it, too. You’ll have greater chances of hearing “yes” if your infographic can positively impact those sites’ reputations – for example, by having well-researched, hard-to-collect information that will make anyone who posts it look like an expert.

5. Viral content

You can make amazing content, but predicting whether or not it will spread across the Internet like wildfire is a completely different matter. It’s easier when you are already a popular brand. Not everyone is, so what kinds of content can give you an edge?

To name but a few:

• Hilarious
• Controversial
• Sensational
• Interactive (like games)
• Shocking

Just remember the rule about not making people regret they shared your content. They should be glad instead, even if it’s at your expense.

6. Participate in group projects for links

If a single guest blogger deserves credit for a post they wrote, the same is obviously true for larger projects with more people. When the final product (whatever it may be) is released, everyone involved can expect accolades. Why not accolades in the form of backlinks?

So if you’ve got skills that could be useful and you have your sights on a team who might need help with something, this might be your chance. Do the job they give you and ask for a link in exchange.

7. Speak at events, meetups, conferences

If you host an event yourself, you are guaranteed to get backlinks from interested parties. If you aren’t the host, you can be one of the speakers instead – it’s just as good for the purpose of link building.

It’s the same as participating in group projects. The only difference is that you will be more visible to the crowd. No pressure!

8. Interviews

Taking or giving interviews – either is fine when your goal is earning links. It may at first be easier to interview someone, since you probably aren’t famous enough yet for others to care what you have to say (but this can change quickly). Find someone who has an interesting story to tell  and whose opinion your audience would like to hear.

Once your interview is ready, you probably won’t even have to ask the other party for a backlink. Remind them to share it in their social media as well.

9. Comment on blogs and forums

This is the low-hanging fruit of link building, but it still has its uses. A well-chosen blog or a forum can connect you to your target audience better than a million posts in social media. Be careful not to come off as a shameless self-promoting spammer, though, or you’ll lose any links you make there.

This tactic can be especially good for local businesses. Users would rather dig through a hundred forum posts than a hundred Google search results.

10. Simply ask someone you know

Or you could just rely on the old proverb: “a friend in need is a friend indeed”. Got any friends or acquaintances who own websites, too? Will backlinks from those websites be good for you? Then it won’t hurt to ask. I’m sure you’d help your friends if they asked you.

This tactic is only as good as your ability to make friends, as are many things in the world. SEO can be one of those things, too.

Want the rest of the tactics, numbers 11 to 20? Of course you do. All you need to do is sign here and transfer to us the rights of ownership of your soul… What do you mean, we don’t do that anymore? Then how are we supposed to take over the world!? Oh well. It seems like the new protocol is signing up and getting the guide for free. Then you’ll get all 20 link building tactics at once. Neat-o!

The post 20 Link Building Tactics Used by Experts [New Guide for 2019] appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

When people want anything, they go to Google and ask it to show them the way. Be it a recipe, a piece of information, an entertainment, or a new pair of shoes. Therefore, whatever your site is offering, you want Google to see it, love it, and show it to people when they ask for something relevant.

If you are a new website owner and you wish to improve its ranking, you are probably familiar with all the link building buzz and how it is important for being visible. There is a chance that you’ve read link-building guides by gurus such as Brian Dean, Rand Fishkin, and Neil Patel. There is also a chance that you understood very little of what they were trying to teach. That’s because of the three major differences between them and a fresh webmaster.

Can you still build links if you aren’t any of these gurus?

Three ways you are not Brian Dean:

First, there is an experience gap. They talk to a specific audience of SEO experts or at least people who are to an extent knowledgeable in the topic of search-engine optimization. They say things like “crawlers”, “trust flow”, “MOZ ranking”, “authority”, “link juice”. They advise tools which can be quite costly for an individual entrepreneur and are anyway too obscure and overwhelming for someone who only just embarked on their optimization journey.

The second difference is in scale. They give advice in terms of “campaigns” and “budget” thinking of you as of CEO employing a team of people, while instead, you are a one-man army.

Third and by far most important, there is a magnitude discrepancy. They tell something along the lines: “I’ve written a really cool guide based on my 10 years’ experience in the field, I’ve reached out to a Forbes editor whom I happen to know through a guy I met on networking occasion, I’ve crafted this sweet friendly personalized email and they published my article and linked back to my site. Score!”

Well, Brian Dean writing to a Forbes editor is not exactly a rags to riches story. He is a celebrity in his own right, why wouldn’t they be interested in his article for the insights and his name’s sake?

1. Don’t outsource your link building

Given all that, I can see how newbies can be discouraged. They feel helpless and unable to replicate this experience. “Well, that’s some kind of rocket science, I’d rather hire a professional to do this for me. Let’s see what Fiverr has in stock!” Stop right there.

There will come a time when your team is ready to grow. You will be able to crew your business, hire a writer who will create evergreen content for you, maybe even a research paper helper to tackle your strategy. Yet until then, don’t trust the wellbeing of your site with guys who promise to bring you to the top in a week, guaranteed (no less).

First of all, link building takes time. It is okay, to grow link by link. Sudden outbursts of links look suspicious to Google algorithms and can harm your site instead of improving its ranking. WebCEO’s Backlink Checker can help you track and analyze the quality of your backlinks, ensuring they contribute positively to your site’s SEO.

Second, often those hired self-proclaimed wizards will just link to you from a bunch of low-quality sites they own and you will get zero value for your money or even worse – get punished by Google for spammy practices.

2. Embrace content marketing

Before we start talking about reaching out to other sites and encouraging them to link to you, there is an option of gaining links naturally.

The first step here is to create something that other people have reasons to link to – helpful information, a collection of resources, or simply something entertaining they would want to share or reference. For that purpose, you will need to start a blog and make a commitment to create quality content and post it regularly. It is important, however, to stay on the topic and make sure that your content is relevant to your niche.

By the way, WebCEO’s SEO Content Assistant is a great resource for ensuring your content is not only relevant and engaging but also optimized for search engines.

The second step is to make your content visible. How can you do that without SEO? Through sharing on social media, posting on relevant forums and boards, and even sending links via emails and messengers to acquaintances you think might be interested in it. Be careful not to spam people you barely know, but do promote your content to theme groups and genuinely interested contacts. For people to link to your content, they must know it exists, right? You will have to invest some time to win your first visitors and followers and get your website off the ground, but that is the safest and most reliable way.

You can also leverage some PR tools. To gain mentions of your brand on other websites, create newsworthy initiatives that have a potential to go viral (remember the Ice Bucket Challenge?) and connect with micro-influencers (people with a significant, yet not massive following who can get you exposure and are more likely to answer to your request).

3. Explore community-driven platforms

User-generated sites can be of tremendous value for those who are yet to become an authority in their niche. Thanks to mainstream citizen journalism and participatory culture we have Medium, HubPages, and many other community-driven platforms, where any member can submit their content and gain exposure. If you think that they are too crowded, you are right but don’t be too hasty to dismiss them!

They have a tremendous readership and provide you with all the tools to become visible: channels, topical groups, subtopics, and tags are there to ensure that your content will find its audience. It’s a two-way street: a) your article will be shown to the most interested readers in the first place, b) people who will search for something related will easily find you.

Some of those platforms are true Wild West, but mostly they are moderated and blatantly promotional stuff gets weeded out, so make an honest effort to post good stuff that will provide value to readers and you will get the attention you seek and deserve.

Another added bonus of this strategy is that by posting to those platforms you build a portfolio of published articles that you could showcase when you outreach to guest blog. This way an editor will be able to appreciate your style, topics you deal with, and your unique take on them.

4. Do handpick sites for outreach

Guest blogging is still a great opportunity for a small fish with big potential, such as you are. Don’t start with stellar sites, aim for some smaller but relevant ones instead, and reach out to fellow bloggers who already have decent following and ranking.

How do you find such opportunities? You probably already know. Classic Googling. Search for keywords relevant to your niche and pair it with phrases like “write for us”, “contributor guidelines”, and “submit an article”. Experiment with other words. Sites that had “write for us” on their pages got creative in conveying the meaning after being persistently pestered by spammers who used automated outreach tools. This is another reason why handpicking pays off.

Always take the trouble to go and look at the site – you don’t want a link from a hideous article farm that exists solely for the purpose of content marketing and doesn’t have any real readership. Besides, if everyone and their uncle posts there it’s hardly relevant.

Even personalized emails with relevant pitches aren’t always opened and seldom answered. Yet if someone took the trouble to email you back, they are probably genuinely interested in what you have to offer, so cherish those answers.

I am not going to lie, it is very time-consuming. Yet this grind will pay off later. A hundred of relevant, legitimate links paired with quality content will get you much further than a thousand paid links in the long run.

Yet what is even more important, is that by being honest, investing your time in good content and finding your genuinely interested devoted audience, you don’t merely build links. You also establish yourself as an authority in your niche and that means you are on the way to becoming as big as Brian Dean. I admit, it is a long way, but you have to start somewhere.

The post Can You Build Links If You Aren’t Brian Dean? appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

In just a few years, the best SEO tools have moved online, now performing in the cloud to collaborating users. These users can access their projects from any device, anywhere in the world. This is why online SEO software is so popular. The only serious choice people are making these days is between having free online accounts or mining the advantages of paid subscriptions.

A contemporary SEO tools list would include more than 80 online SEO programs to choose from, but a comprehensive, really good, web agency oriented set of tools can make a big difference – you can work smarter and faster with them. Some users prefer a mix of top SEO tools, while others go for all-in-one platforms. Let’s take a look at the current field:

BEST SEO TOOLS 2019

Keyword Research tools

• Answer The Public
• LSI Graph
• Google Search Console
• Google Keyword Planner
• WebCEO’s Keyword Suggestions tool

Site audit and SEO analysis tools

• Google Search Console
• BrightLocal
• WebCEO’s Technical Audit and On-Page SEO Issues tools

Link building tools

• Majestic
• Ahrefs
• Linkody
• Link Research tools
• WebCEO’s Backlink research tool

Rank Tracking tools

• Pro Rank Tracker
• WooRank
• SEO Monitor
• Advanced Web Ranking
• WebCEO’s Rank Tracking tool

All-in-one SEO platforms

• SEMrush
• Ahrefs
• Moz
• WebCEO

First, we can’t ignore Google SEO tools. The best free SEO tools you can get in the niche are run by Google. There’s Google Keyword Planner, Search Console, Trends, Analytics, PageSpeed Insights. All marketing people need to be logged into these on their browsers.

Keyword research tools

those that show you keywords you haven’t thought about but your potential customers have been thinking about:

This free SEO tool provides a lot of keyword suggestions from Google and Bing. They call themselves ‘a goldmine of insight for today’s marketers’. You can see an aggregated view of search queries with hints about the motivations and emotions of the people typing them. This will really help for inspiration and consumer insight in the age of Google. However, to use the full functionality of Answer The Public you will have to pay $99/mo.

Summary: This online SEO tool is really great to find keywords you never thought about; however, the tool may show keywords which are not relevant. Also, it may not work as well with very specific keywords.

Official website: https://answerthepublic.com/

Summary: These keywords won’t drive you to position #1 instantly, but this will help your content ranking over time, when SEO effort has already been put in.

Official website: https://lsigraph.com/

This is a free Google SEO tool and it’s a shame not to use it. Google Search Console will help you find underestimated keywords which people are already using in their Google searches to find your website. You can also analyze your site’s impressions, clicks and each keyword’s average position on Google Search as well. With the help of Google Search Console, you can make your website shine on Google Search results.

Summary: Every list of the best SEO tools includes Google Search Console. Keywords from Search Console will help you understand what people have already been searching for when they visit your website.

Official website: https://search.google.com/search-console/about

These are also free and they will help you get plenty of keyword suggestions, so you can research them and narrow your keyword list. You can also get bid estimates, so you can plan your advertising budget. Once you have found the best keywords for your website, you can add them to your advertising plan. You can also add them into a major SEO tool platform like WebCEO. You may finalize a list and launch a marketing campaign any time you are ready.

Summary: Google Keyword Planner is a must; it’s really informative. But you will have to wait until your account is matured to see accurate data.

Official website: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/

Well, everything looks good, but when it comes to doing even more effective work, you will face the downside of free keyword tools. They usually have low limitations and really lack statistics data. You will have a hard time evaluating monthly searches, bid competition, search trends etc. – so it might not be so easy to pick the most effective keywords on a free tool. Even the AdWords keyword tool won’t give you precise data when you have just created a vendor account: you will only see huge ranges (for example, 1-10k). Once your account has matured, you will see more precise data, but that takes time and money. Which brings us to

This gives you a definite, not an estimated, number of a keyword’s monthly searches from the get-go and offers additional metrics that most other SEO tools don’t even have: for example, search trends (how a keyword’s monthly searches have been fluctuating throughout the year), a keyword effectiveness coefficient, clicks and impressions. WebCEO’s Keyword Research Tool can also show the number of local searches per month for an area of your choice. You can also estimate your advertising budget with the bid competition number.

Summary: Relevant keyword suggestions, precise keyword effectiveness metrics, accurate and high quality data and good usability are united in the WebCEO Keyword Suggestion tool. I absolutely love it.

Official website: https://www.webceo.com/

Site audit and SEO analysis tools

Google and the visitors of websites love fast loading sites with zero technical issues. So you have to audit your site for errors on a regular basis. Mobile friendliness, page speed and errors – every factor is critical.

This tool allows you to check the mobile friendliness of your website and see if there are SEO issues (like duplicate titles and descriptions). You may even receive email alerts when Google identifies issues on your site. Unfortunately, it won’t show you a full list of technical and SEO issues on your website. An additional site audit tool is a must-have too, so you can see a full picture.

Summary: Good enough for an instant check of a website’s technical issues and mobile friendliness, but it won’t compete against the top SEO tools.

Official website: https://search.google.com/search-console/about

This is a great choice for those who are working for locally oriented businesses and doing local SEO. It will be easy for you to uncover technical issues with the site’s local SEO profile. The most useful thing about BrightLocal is the ability to audit, clean and build citations from the most popular sites. Also, with BrightLocal you will never forget about Google My Business – we all know how important it is to register one’s location and keyword descriptions with search engines.

Summary: Their automated reports look really good! You’ll have to schedule a report and then wait a long time until it is scanned.

Official website: https://www.brightlocal.com/

You should ask yourself if you really need a standalone tool for technical/SEO audits. The big all-in-one SEO programs offer great auditors, so it will be much easier to use a platform instead of a variety of different SEO tools with separate logins.

For instance, WebCEO has Technical Audit and On-Page SEO tools which scan your site for technical and SEO errors, respectively. Both are completely free if you use the free trial and they won’t add to the variable cost of an agency level paid plan.

Summary: A technical audit for webmasters and an SEO analysis report for SEO specialists are exactly what you need to keep your website user- and search-engine-friendly. Scanning is quick so even if you forget to schedule – it will only take a minute or two!

Official website: https://www.webceo.com/

Next in line are the tools all SEO professionals love:

Link building tools

It shows special metrics like trust flow, citation flow, historical index, fresh index, etc. With all these metrics you can see your improvements and progress. You will see must-have data on your backlinks, so you can estimate if they are naturally earned or you’d better get rid of them. Also Majestic is a data provider – and the best SEO tools use their data.

Summary: Majestic is really cool and affordable – the biggest database on the web, with an easy interface and good usability. However, there are SEO programs that show backlinks divided into two columns: natural and unnatural.

Official website: https://majestic.com/

This platform is also well known for their backlink opportunities. Ahrefs offers its proprietary metrics such as DR (Domain Rating), UR (URL Rating), AR (Ahrefs Rank) which are used to estimate backlink popularity. Also, Ahrefs is not a data provider so you will have to buy a subscription to their platform to have access to their backlink tool.

Summary: This SEO software has a lot of valuable information and you just have to get used to its interface. However, it is not cheap and won’t do for small businesses or solo SEO specialists.

Official website: https://ahrefs.com/

Linkody is an amazing backlink monitoring tool that every webmaster should possess. Its main focus is set on monitoring your backlinks as well as tracking the success of your link-building efforts.

What’s more, Linkody automates the whole process for you! You will get notified when you gain or lose any backlinks and you will have a full overview of the necessary SEO metrics to assess your backlinks. To help you improve your link-building strategy, Linkody will give you insights into your competitors’ link building strategies.

The post 20+ Best SEO Tools in 2019 appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Do you grimace when you see “SEO” and “nofollow” used in the same sentence? If you know what nofollow links are, you might think they are utterly useless in SEO. You might even hate them enough to avoid them completely and never use them yourself, not even to share somebody else’s content with others.

But that is wrong!

Are nofollow backlinks really bad? Yes and no! The answer would vary depending on who you ask. Certainly, they do have their own undesirable traits… but it would be unfair and unwise to ignore the good ones.

SEO has come a long way, and there is a need to thoroughly understand and analyse the old and new optimization tactics in order to separate the good ones from the bad. In this post, we will shed light on how nofollow backlinks can be good for your SEO and from other points of view.

What is a Nofollow Link?

Links are an integral factor in Google’s ranking algorithm. They can be compared to votes: linking to a website means that someone vouches for its quality. However, if you do not wish to vote in its favour, then you can add a rel=nofollow attribute inside the link’s HTML code. A nofollow link, therefore, is one that does not vouch for the site it is pointing to nor pass link equity.

In the year 2005, the concept of nofollow links was introduced to combat link spam. One thing it did was help Google see the difference between natural and paid links. It also served as protection for sites from others that were creating unnatural backlinks or using irrelevant anchor texts. Even today, this attribute is still widely used due to the fear of web spam and the damage it can cause to Google rankings.

Below are nine reasons you absolutely should build nofollow backlinks for SEO.

1. Nofollow Links Help Google Understand and Trust You

Do you want a reason to bother with nofollow links at all? Here’s a really good one: they still pass information about your site to Google, even if they don’t let Google crawl it. That information lies in the link’s anchor text.

A nofollow link can still let Google know what the content on the other side of the link is about, thus giving your site a small boost in authority on the subject. Advertisement links are often nofollow, but their very existence is enough to be of use to your site because of this fact. It prompts Google to give you the credit you deserve and not treat your backlinks as unnatural, which also builds trust between Google and you.

2. Nofollow Links Build Awareness

Links play a crucial role in raising and spreading awareness of your brand among users. That’s pretty much what link building is: a form of online networking. Links act as a bridge between users and products or services. That’s not to mention how links can boost traffic, provide additional details of information and back statements up with proof.

In that regard, even nofollow backlinks come in handy. Brand awareness is achieved with links that are seen and followed by the audience and not necessarily by search engines. For instance, people link to all kinds of valuable content from Facebook and Twitter, and their followers can click on those links without even reading the posts in social media. And even if they don’t click immediately, they might still come back and check the page again.

3. Nofollow Links Are Invaluable in Local SEO

Google considers unlinked brand mentions as “implied” links. They may not offer as many benefits as dofollow links, but they certainly count. One way to put a bit more oomph in an unlinked mention and make it more useful for your brand is to turn it into a nofollow backlink.

It’s especially effective when you optimize your site for local search. Local SEO is interesting because the users’ search intent is always more clearly defined than with regular search. When you show users a link, chances are, they are already motivated to click on it.

In particular, NAP citations (which consist of your business’ name, address and phone number) are a boost to local SEO in and of themselves, but they work even better when there’s a link attached to them.

4. Better a Nofollow Link than No Link

A mention of your site or brand with a nofollow link is better than an unlinked mention (and certainly better than nothing at all). Links unlock opportunities to connect you with your target audience. A nofollow link is even more valuable if it leads to you from a reputable website with a large audience; it might even make the difference between success and failure of your business goals.

A backlink at the right time, in the right place is a source of traffic, exposure and brand awareness, in addition to opportunities to expand your online network and bond with your audience. In fewer words, backlinks are powerful assets in lead generation. Prospective clients don’t care if a link is dofollow or nofollow; they only want you to meet their expectations and needs.

5. Metrics Other Than Google’s Use Nofollow Links

Google metrics aren’t the only ones you should be using. There are other metrics, such as Domain Authority and Alexa Rank, that can really help you with SEO. These “unofficial” metrics are meant to evaluate your website’s potential to rank high in Google, and they rely on your nofollow backlinks, too.

Turning that around, building nofollow backlinks is necessary in order to make effective use of the “unofficial” SEO metrics. Of course, you’ll want to research what each metric truly means before including it in your SEO campaign.

6. Nofollow Backlinks Are Natural

Google dictates the rules of the Internet. It is Google everyone submits to when they need to build their brand or launch a successful SEO campaign. One of the rules set by the online titan is to have a natural link profile – that is, one that has both dofollow and nofollow backlinks. Websites that try to game link building and create only dofollow backlinks are likely to suffer a drop in their rankings.

Focusing on having only dofollow links will attract Google’s attention, and not in a good way. That’s why it’s important to maintain a healthy balance in order to ensure your online strategy bears fruit. Shortcuts will only lead you astray in SEO.

A mixed profile of dofollow and nofollow links shows clearly that you are real, your efforts are real, and you play the SEO game fair and square.

7. Nofollow Links Can Pass Juice Indirectly

Link juice is a term SEO experts know very well. It refers to the numerical value a backlink adds to a website’s total authority score. However, when a link is marked with rel=nofollow, it becomes unable to pass link juice to your site. Does this mean nofollow links absolutely can’t give you link juice under any circumstances?

Actually, it doesn’t and they can.

It is true that nofollow links don’t pass equity directly; that’s what they were made not to do. However, let’s not forget the main purpose of links: letting users move between websites. If somebody comes to your website and likes your content, they might link to it from their own website! And it might even be the dofollow link that you want.

Creating a nofollow backlink can be compared to planting a seed that will eventually blossom into a flower. Nofollow links, especially when they come from authoritative websites, can open an obscure path full of advantages for your brand.

8. Nofollow Traffic Is Still Traffic

Directing more traffic to websites is one of the main goals of SEO. However, it’s fine to generate traffic even without helping your SEO. Link building, while usually brought up along with SEO in the same context, results mainly in creating opportunities to engage with the audience. It works like this:

Links > Traffic > Engagement > Profit

This way, nofollow links can be even more useful than dofollow links. And since user experience matters to Google, they can eventually improve your search engine rankings.

9. Other Benefits of Nofollow Backlinks

Lastly, in addition to what was mentioned above, you should also take into consideration the following points.

• When it comes to nofollow backlinks, the most important things at the end of the day are not keywords in their anchor text and not even SEO. A link’s primary job is to make users click on it. A nofollow link that incites exploration and convinces people to visit your site directly is better than a dofollow link that does not.
• Mentioning your brand in a nofollow link helps a lot. It can give a boost to your status as an authority, as well as make your online presence stronger by encouraging searches of your brand name.
• Journalists and influencers are often present on sites which enable only nofollow links (such as social media). It’s all right: those people’s pages gather large audiences and can potentially send lots of traffic your way. Even a single nofollow backlink in the right place and in the right context can be a huge victory.
• In the same way, if a piece of your content manages to go viral on social media through nothing but nofollow links, your brand might even receive media coverage.

Ticking even one of these boxes spells success for your SEO strategy and makes your brand more of an authority. Aim for all of them!

To sum it up: link building is generally about creating referral traffic. Backlinks you earned naturally end up being the most valuable ones. Nofollow backlinks are not useless at all; on the contrary, they must be a part of your SEO strategy.

Strive to build links from reputable sources and avoid making irrelevant backlinks from low-quality sites, and your SEO will be fine.

To identify the number of nofollow links on your site, use WebCEO’s Backlink Checker. This tool will also help you improve your backlink profile by allowing you to conveniently track all the links that other sites have pointed to yours.

The post 9 Reasons You ABSOLUTELY Have to Build Nofollow Links for SEO appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Hottest SEO news: Moz upgrades their Domain Authority metric!

Moz’s plans to make improvements to its DA have been known for a while now. That doesn’t mean you won’t find this post helpful. DA is a very well-known and widely used SEO metric; any changes made to it are absolutely worth discussing if you have a website to run. So keep reading!

This post is for you if:

• You do SEO, but don’t usually follow SEO news;
• You haven’t heard about Domain Authority or don’t quite understand what it is;
• You want to know how exactly Domain Authority has changed and what it means for SEO.

Let’s dive in.

What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority, or DA for short, is a metric invented by Moz. It looks at the backlinks pointing to a website (i.e. how many domains acknowledge it as an authority), then calculates the probability that it will rank well in Google, on a scale of 0 to 100.

In a nutshell:

• What Domain Authority is: a prediction that isn’t guaranteed to be 100% accurate. However, it does come pretty close, and it does its job well. There is a strong correlation between high DA values and high ranking positions.
• What Domain Authority isn’t: a Google ranking factor or any other sort of an absolute thing that you must always take into account when doing SEO.

I mean, if DA was infallible, there wouldn’t be any need to upgrade it now, would there?

DA is widely used by SEO tools other than Moz – for example, WebCEO displays it in the Competitor Link Profile tool.

Which is why this makes this post all the more relevant to our users.

How has Domain Authority changed?

The motivation for upgrading their site-evaluating metric is pretty simple: Moz simply wanted to make it more effective. How exactly? They did it in three steps:

• Changed their approach to link profile analysis;
• Expanded the list of factors DA looks at when analyzing sites;
• Scheduled daily updates for the new DA.

Now, a few words about each.

DA has become more scrupulous about evaluating linking domains and their authority. It takes into account the fact that all ways of acquiring backlinks are not equal. Certain methods – such as link spam and buying links – are frowned upon by Google, as it prefers links to be genuine and reflect honest feedback from users. Therefore, the new DA will lower the value of those “dishonest” links in its algorithm as well.

What’s more, the Moz people have increased their link index to a whopping 35 trillion. It will let them detect link manipulation much more effectively; in fact, such a drastic increase is a must if they want to be good at this job.

What does this all mean?

The obvious consequence of this upgrade is that many (if not all) websites are going to see a drop in their Domain Authority score. However, as stated earlier, DA does not affect Google rankings, so that’s nothing to worry about. At worst, everyone will start being pickier about who links to them… And that could make improving Google rankings more difficult.

Next, the newer and longer list of factors determining a site’s DA.

It’s actually way simpler than it sounds.

The new DA incorporates another Moz metric called the Spam Score. What is the Spam Score? It compares your site against other sites that have been penalized or even banned by Google. The more “spammy factors” your site shares with them, the higher your score, and vice versa.

In short, depending on how “spammy” your linking domains are, your renewed DA score could go either way. You might even find it hasn’t changed at all.

Daily updates: self-explanatory. Moz used to update DA monthly, so this is a step forward without a doubt.

What’s next?

This update’s consequences are surprisingly much less dramatic than the update itself.

The most important takeaway is this: carry on as usual. Only search engines can change SEO as we know it – for example, if Google alters its algorithm. For now, SEO remains the same, as does one of its core principles: build your backlinks wisely. Reliable, high-quality, authoritative and context-relevant websites are your best friends as always.

Are you still worried your Domain Authority is too low? In that case, I have good news for you. High-quality backlinks aren’t the only way to increase it – another way is to make a revision of your link profile. Test your site now and see if you feel you should remove any toxic backlinks.

The post SEO News: Moz Upgrades Domain Authority appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Two SEO facts that everybody knows:

1. Backlinks from reputable sites help you rank in Google;

2. You can find new link building opportunities by spying on your competitors’ backlinks.

If somebody links to sites that share a niche with you, they can be persuaded to place a link to your site, too. Sounds easy in theory, right? But once you actually try it, it turns out to be a complete headache. Link building is hard, folks.

“Who cares if it’s hard? I’m motivated to build links and rank high!”

That’s what I love to hear. Motivation is the foundation of success! Don a black cape and put on your mask. A noble thief who wants to steal competitor backlinks needs two things: charm and SEO tools. Let’s go into detail about how to use each.

1. How to Find Competitor Backlinks with SEO Tools

Before you can go rummaging through your competitors’ link profiles, you need to identify your competitors (obviously). If you don’t know them yet, read on! If you do, consider staying here for a little longer. You might learn how to find more competitors – and more backlinks to steal.

The most optimal way is to use an SEO competitor analysis tools, such as WebCEO’s Dangerous Competitors. As the description of the tool says,

“This report shows sites that you compete with on the search engine results pages. It uses the list of your keywords and search engine organic & vertical results (except ads) to find your niche competitors.”

Input your keywords in the tool’s settings and press Save. If you have used the Rank Tracking section in WebCEO before, the keywords will already be there, and you won’t have to open the settings again. You’ll just need to press Rescan.

The report will be made of two parts: a graph and a table. The graph shows how much traffic your competitors get for the same keywords as yours.

The table shows other information, such as the competitors’ total backlinks and the number of ranking keywords that overlap with yours.

Tip: competitors with a smaller keyword overlap will be easier to beat.

Be warned: not all sites shown in the report will be your direct business competitors. Their services might be very different from yours, but they could still outrank you for your keywords. Choose your competitors from that list wisely – in other words, choose the ones whose audience you want for yourself.

Once you’ve decided on who to compete with, it’s time for a competitor backlink checker to take the stage –  WebCEO’s Competitor Backlink Spy. Enter your competitors’ URLs in the settings and start scanning. Once the report is ready, it will show the pages that link to you and to the competitors.

Look for the rows where your competitors have ticks, but your site doesn’t. That’s how you can find domains where your competitors have backlinks and where you might be able to build some of your own. The Competitor Backlink Spy report displays the linking domains’ authority as well, so you’ll know if reaching out to them will be worth the effort.

And now you just add your potential backlink sources in an Excel spreadsheet. There! With that, your link building strategy has tangible goals, and your work is cut out for you.

2. How to Ask for Backlinks with a Noble Thief’s Charm

Next comes reaching out to those sites and convincing them to give you a backlink. But how? Unfortunately, there is no failsafe plan that is guaranteed to produce backlinks. But there is a strategy that has helped many people before and may work for you, too.

Step 1: Create excellent content

Bait is often used to catch thieves. Great content is a special kind of bait that works in reverse.

Why does it work? Because people won’t link to just any dubious page. They’ll be ashamed of themselves if they tell their users to go somewhere shoddy. Save your targets from embarrassment and put on your site a great piece of content.

What counts as great?

• Meaningful: it has a point. If people read it and think “so what?”, it isn’t worthy of a backlink.
• Valuable: it satisfies the needs of the users who read it. If they want information, it’s there; if they have a problem, you have a solution.
• Premium quality: it’s even better than what those sites usually link to.

Mind you, even the highest quality doesn’t guarantee your content will be accepted. What can you do to increase your chances? Make your content useful not just for its readers, but also for the person you’re offering it to.

What exactly does it mean?

Suppose they have a broken link pointing to your competitor. You have content similar to what the competitor had on the other side of that link. Your target would certainly like to fix the broken link on their site. If you offer them your content from that angle, you’ll most likely hear a yes.

Or a different scenario: they have a link pointing to an outdated piece of content by your competitor. If you have something that’s more relevant and up-to-date, that link might be changed if you ask. See the pattern? When giving you a backlink solves someone’s problem, you have a very good chance to get that backlink.

This will be reflected in the emails you can send, the examples of which you can read a bit further down.

Step 2: Connect with your target

Some people have been lucky to get a backlink after asking once, despite having never talked before. However, I think you’ll agree that it’s much better to build a cordial relationship before asking. Friends and even mere acquaintances tend to receive consent more often than strangers.

Where can you connect with your future backlink buddies? Anywhere you can freely talk like equals will do. Facebook, Quora and other major social media platforms; comment sections on their websites and on your own, too; any site you can think of works. Chat them up until you feel you are ready for the next step, which is…

Step 3: Reach out and ask

If you never ask, the answer will always be silence. This is where you are put to the test and judged for being worth your salt. Once preparations have been made, it’s time for you to have a shot at asking for a backlink.

Email outreach is a popular option, but not the only one. Any means of sending a private message (for example, via social media and forums) will do. If anything, if you happen to know what channel your backlink buddy uses most often – use that one to send them a message.

Here are a few examples to inspire you:

Example 1

Hello John!

I’ve been looking through your blog for articles about client outreach and really liked (article’s title). Some of its points were exactly what my marketing strategy had been missing. You’re amazing! I can’t thank you enough for your help.

I’ve also noticed that you talked about outreach templates in that article. I happen to have a post on my blog with examples of the best email outreach templates: (link). I’m sure you’ll like it, so feel free to check it out! Your readers may find it helpful if that part had a link to my post.

Keep up the good work with (your website) and your blog.

Sincerely,

Dave

Example 2

Hi Steve!

I’ve been looking through your blog for articles on client outreach and noticed a broken link in (article’s title).

Judging by the context, it used to lead to a resource about outreach templates, and my blog has a post with exactly that: (link). If you find it a good alternative, would you consider linking to me instead? I’m sure it will be up to your standards.

Best regards,

Mary

Example 3

Hey Laura,

I’ve been looking through your blog for articles on SEO and noticed a link pointing to (another site) in your post (title). Their article appears to be outdated: it recommends using obsolete techniques like writing in the <meta keywords> tag and even harmful ones like keyword stuffing.

I happen to have a more up-to-date post on the same subject on my blog, titled (post’s title). Would you consider linking to it instead of the other article? Here’s the link if you are interested: (link).

Best wishes,

Kate

Can you see the key points? Let’s sum them up:

• Write as you’d write to a person. It sounds like it goes without saying, but it can be harder than you think! Be careful not to write up a cold, impersonal email that reads like an obvious template.
• Show interest in their work. It’s a nice way to close distance when it’s your first time writing to that person. You won’t instantly graduate from a stranger, but you’ll score some points if you show you are familiar with their website and its content.
• Make it mutually beneficial. As was said earlier in this post, people like it when the deal isn’t one-sided and benefits them in some way, too. Say what they have to gain by giving you a link.

Be aware, though: not all will accept your offer or even reply. But those who will, no matter how few, will be a tremendous help. So if you want to get more backlinks, you need to cast a really wide web and befriend a lot of people. Turn up your charm up to eleven!

Is your motivation still strong? Then there’s no time to waste. Find your competitors and break into their link profiles. They’ll never see it coming.

The post How To Do Link Building by Exploiting Your Competitor Intelligence appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Have you experienced reading an article online and clicking a related link, but it turns out not to be working? It’s frustrating, right? But that’s the reality of the Internet.

A broken link can be a deal-breaker for many readers. Websites that rely on customer engagement may be struggling with this problem. And right there is an opportunity for you called broken link building.

If you’ve been working with SEO for a while, you’ve most likely heard of it. If you haven’t, then you’ve come to the right place. Today, we’ll talk about broken link building and give you a practical guide on how to secure links at scale.

What Is Broken Link Building?

Broken link building is a marketing tactic of finding broken links on other websites, contacting the webmaster about it, and recommending your own website as a replacement for the links.

It provides a win-win solution for marketers and website owners. In addition, it presents a long-term strategy as, every day, millions of links become broken due to various causes. Because of the nature of the Internet, broken link building is less likely to become obsolete.

Is Broken Link Building Effective?

Yes, it is. As a marketing strategy, broken link building relies on the principle of reciprocity. When someone does something nice for you, your automatic response is to reciprocate the good deed.

Reporting a broken link is a favor that you’re extending to the website owner. Not only are you making them aware of a problem, but you’re also offering a solution. So when you offer your website as a replacement link, they’ll be more receptive to your recommendation.

Scaling Broken Link Building

In order to maximize the benefits of broken link building, your goal must be to scale it.

It works in the same way that making a sale does. Imagine that you’re a salesperson and your website is your product. Going door to door promoting your product is more tedious and less profitable compared to making a bulk sale.

Similarly, doing broken link building on a large scale will reap more benefits with less effort.

Step-By-Step Guide to Securing Links at Scale

Step 1: Get the right tools

The first step in broken link building is to know what tools you need. There are millions of links on the Internet, so you’ll need tools to help reduce the work.

Numerous tools are available, but here are some of the most effective:

• WebCEO’s Website Audit

This tool can scan a website’s pages for errors, as long as you have created a project for that website. It detects broken images, server errors and, of course, broken links. You can also set this tool to automatically scan your site and send you reports weekly or monthly.

• Check My Links

It is available as a Chrome extension. It allows you to instantly check for broken links on a page. Since it’s a Chrome extension, it appears beside your address bar after installation. You can simply click its icon, and it will scan all links on the page. Broken links will be highlighted in red. As an alternative, you can use Domain Hunter Plus.

• Xenu’s Link Sleuth

This is a tool for site crawling or web indexing. It checks the web for broken links. It searches website URLs and finds broken links and server errors. You can also use Screaming Frog SEO Spider.

Step 2: Find your prospects

The next step is to look for relevant dead or broken pages. There are different methods you can employ in doing this. You can choose one or combine several.

• Keyword Targeting

This is the most common and straightforward method in broken link building.

Start by identifying a keyword that is both relevant to your site and generally broad in scope.

Then, search for your target keyword in Google. Visit the top results displayed as those typically contain the most number of links.

Next, plug the URLs of the top results one at a time into a link database tool. The tool will give you a list of pages linked to those top result articles.

Scan all of the pages for broken links using Check My Links or Domain Hunter Plus. Alternatively, you can extract the URLs using Xenu’s Link Sleuth.

• Niche Targeting

With this method, you’ll target sites in your niche. Use this if you’re aiming for relevant results more than scope. You’ll still use keywords, but only those specifically used in your niche. After determining niche-specific keywords, follow the steps in the keyword-based method.

• Domain Targeting

Use this method if there’s a particular site you’re eyeing. A backlink from an authority website can do so much for your website. However, it’s hard to get noticed by the popular sites. Broken link building may be your way in.

To do this, identify the domain that you want to target. You can use WebCEO’s Technical Audit to scan the website and receive a report of dead links.

Other web crawler tools, such as the abovementioned Xenu’s Link Sleuth and Screaming Frog SEO Spider, can also do the trick.

Of all the methods, this one is the least scalable since you’re targeting a specific website. But it also holds promise because getting backlinks from authority sites can provide long-term benefits. Who knows, you may even attract loyal readers.

When using this method, choose broken links that are external. There’s a greater chance that a webmaster will replace a broken external link with another external link than replacing an internal one.

Step 3: Create content

After you’re done with the first two steps, you’ll have a list of broken links and the pages that contain them. You can now create content that fits the broken link or improves upon it. Since you searched using relevant keywords, you’ll have a general idea about the substance of the dead page. You can also search for it on archive.org to know what the broken page looked like.

A way to be smart about this is to check the number of backlinks pointing to a broken link. That way, you can create content that targets broken pages with several backlinks and referrals.

Another way to proceed is to write content before searching for broken links. This is less effective, however, because it would be harder to find broken links that will match your written content.

Step 4: Contact your targets

Once you’re ready, contact the webmasters of the sites where you found the dead links. It’s best to have an email template so that you can just edit the details. Avoid appearing generic by adding a tailored sentence or two in every email.

Be sure to look for the right contact information for higher conversion rates.

Step 5: Monitor results

After you’ve contacted the webmasters, some will respond informing you that the dead page was replaced with your link. However, others will not, so you’ll have to check them yourself. You can do it manually or use the WebCEO’s Backlink Quality Check tool segment that shows you new links.

It’s important to be organized when recording the pages in a spreadsheet so that it’s easier to track your results. You’ll also avoid emailing the same sites repeatedly. Finally, it will give you some insight on how to improve your success rate.

Conclusion

Broken link building is a powerful marketing tactic. When used smartly, it can give you high-quality backlinks across niches. It might take a while before you achieve your desired outcome, but don’t let that stop you! Just track your results and adjust your methods until the strategy bears fruit.

The post Broken Link Building: The Step-By-Step Guide to Securing Links at Scale appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.