Category: SEO

Link Building is something that you definitely should be doing as a blogger. Yes, I know you already have a lot on your plate. And that the last thing that you want to hear about is one more task.

Still, I promise you that you will want to spare some time to work on your link building from now on. And here are the reasons why:

1. It will increase your traffic
2. It will boost your conversions
3. It will help you to establish yourself as an expert in your industry
4. It will bring more awareness to your brand
5. It will help you to get your posts and articles on the first page of search engines’ results

But, what is link building?

Link building is a series of strategies that developed to increase your chances to get links pointing to your blog, website, or to a post or an article in particular. You won’t get penalized for doing it. It will bring you the results mentioned above only if you decide to take it seriously enough.

And it is important because more links point to you, more likely is that your visitors and search engines will consider you as a reliable source of information. So you must have something useful to say.

I guess that now you are convinced that you should read this post and get prepared to implement the link building methods that It will be presented below. So let’s go.

Method 1: Invest in networking

One of the most interesting ways of getting links is using networking. All that you have to do is here is to join online communities, groups or forums, such as Blogster. Chances are that your custom written content will be mentioned by your new followers and groupmates, and your links will come from there.

As you probably have noticed, you will need to spend some time here trying getting to know people and letting them know about you. You can’t just show up and post your articles from day one, or you will not be seen with good eyes.

So be careful when implementing this strategy and take your time. Also, read the guidelines if there is any. They will usually tell you what you can do in terms of self-promotion.

Method 2 – Create viral content

Another great way to get many links pointing to you is by creating viral content. For obvious reasons, it will be shared so many times that you will enjoy a large number of links. We are talking here about something that is considered as highly useful or just so funny and exciting that it feels impossible not to share with family and friends.

It is easily said that done. Highly shareable content is a science to be mastered by a few, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve it. Just do some research and apply the best tips on how to create viral content. The only thing here is that you must remember that what is appealing to some people might not be to your target audience, so choose your topic and format wisely.

Method 3 – Publish great content

Yes, the same old thing is back again. Content is the king, and that is it. As a consequence, f you want to get links, you will need to provide great content in the first place.  But do you know why? Because even your friends won’t be interested in linking their blogs and websites to a post or article that won’t add value to their strategy.

And, as a blogger, you know how much online research you have to do on a daily basis, and how you don’t want to be in trouble accused of plagiarism. So you use the information you can find, then give credit to the author and link to the original post to be fair. If you do it, you should also be assured that other bloggers will do the same, and you will get mentions without even having to contact them.

But, for it, it is essential that you offer valuable content.

Final advice

The three methods mentioned above will give you what you want: all the benefits of a well-structured link building strategy.

But it is also important to say that link building is a continuous process. If you would like to see it bringing you results on a regular basis, you need to keep getting fresh links.

Have you ever thought about what is the SEO-friendly URL structure and why it is useful? It is one of the most basic subjects of debate from many years in Search Engine Optimization and Digital Marketing field.

However, the people are not much concerned about turning their URL structure as SEO friendly in past but today almost everyone who so ever is related to digital marketing wants to use it. Nonetheless, most of the marketers are not familiar with the exact tips to do so, this, in turn, make them think ‘is it really possible to get SEO-friendly URL Structure?’

The true answer to this question is ‘yes’. From a variety of things such as primary keywords and more, the professionals have combined numerous tactics to create the perfect SEO-friendly URL structure. This guide will make you aware of the excellent information that aid you in understanding and creating the SEO-friendly URL. So, go through it to rank as high as possible by preventing being the owner of websites that utilize incorrect or suboptimal URLs.

What is SEO-Friendly URL?

URL is a tool that explains your websites or the articles on it. For the URL to be referred to as SEO-friendly, it should be easy to read by both the search engines and humans. This, in turn, increases the chances of obtaining higher ranks in the search engines’ results.

Now, before start making the efforts of taking your website amongst high rankers with help of creating the best SEO-friendly URL, let’s have a look at some reasons that shows ‘why you should go for it?’

Why Go for SEO-friendly URLs?

#1. Get the best out of your keywords: It is a sneaky tactic that can make your post or page more relevant without raising the effort of keyword stuffing or turning your post/ page difficult to read. Whenever someone looks for anything on search engines, it performs the task of making the bot crawler (the researcher that hunts all the websites for the related keyword) familiar with your website. It informs that your website is the one holding that relevant keyword which is being searched.

In short- It is an excellent way to achieve high rankings for your specific keyword without making many efforts.

#2. Make the URL extra understandable: It is obvious that if your URL contains the relevant keywords, the visitors would not struggle to be familiar with what your page is all about. More visits and increased number of clicks are the results that you’ll obtain if you use an URL that is relevant to visitors’ search.

#3. Turn the URL sweet and short: Short URLs always put sweet and attractive impressions. When it comes to copy, paste, or recall the URLs later, most of the people prefer shorter possible URLs. Thus, in order to get more traffic, prefer creating the short structure.

#4. Obtain a good match between your URL and Title: As keeping your keyword in the title is beneficial, keeping it in the URL also make a great sense. Usually, the visitors expect reading the thing relevant to your keyword whenever they click on the URL.

How to Turn your URL Structure SEO Friendly?

Now, after being aware of the fact that why you should turn your URL SEO-friendly, let’s begin with effective ways that make you do it. Some smart ways to perform it are as follows:

#1. Obtain the top-level domain: Whenever starting with the process of creating or turning your SEO Structure SEO-friendly, the foremost thing you have to consider is obtaining the top-level domain. Doing this will increase the chances of getting better ranks for your website. Examples of such domains are .com, .net, .biz, .edu, .net, or .info.

#2. Evade Stop Words: Search engines have a habit of ignoring the stop words. Moreover, they offer nothing except occupying space and limiting the chances of turning your URL shorter. So, stop including stop words such as ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘or’, ‘but’ and more.

#3. Maintain a shorter length: Creating a short and unforgettable URL is one of the best ideas to ensure success. As per the experts – the ideal length should be below 60 characters. Short URLs are well-known for providing the users with a good idea about what your article is all about. If it comes to words, then you should go for near about 3 – 5 words per URL – as per the experts’ recommendations.

#4. Build up the Trust: Almost all the search engines, be it Google or Bing or any other put a great prominence on online security.  Thus, the websites without https are unable to rise high as the search engines are having desires to lower down the risk of cyber-attacks and other online threats.

Using https rather than HTTP ensure the visitors that the data on your website is safe and encrypted.

#5. Maintain the Readability: Ensure that the readability of your URL is maintained. As the task that the visitors are able to understand your article/ post just by going through the URL makes a great sense.

For example – URL such like https: //smartphone.com/best-android-smartphones/ appears better for both the search engines and your visitors. This is because such types of URLs are easy to read & understand and holds your keyword as well.

Conclusion: Optimizing or modifying your URL might be a little bit tricky. But doing this offers you with the great opportunity of taking your post and website amongst the high rankings offered by the search engines. So, don’t waste more time and without thinking about anything else, start the URL optimization by obtaining the top-level domain. After that, the next step is to move towards including your keyword and avoid using the stop words. Enhancing your URL means improving the chances of getting better results by obtaining more traffic to your website.

Hence, enjoy the benefits of achieving top positions in the search engines’ results by using the effective SEO-friendly URL Structure.

Digitization has revolutionized the way how the business performs their operations. Businesses are constantly trying to maximize their outreach among masses. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps in improving the organic traffic of the websites. SEO techniques improve the ranking of the websites.

Machine Learning: Machine Learning is the sub-branch of artificial intelligence. Machine Learning helps in making more intelligent machine by training them with a huge amount of datasets. These machine can perform tasks autonomously without much human intervention. These machines have the ability to learn from past experience and that too without being explicitly programmed.

Why is SEO important?

SEO is a technique to improve the quality and quantity of organic traffic over the website. This also helps in improving the ranking of the website on the search engine result page (SERP). SEO helps in driving more traffic towards the website hence improving the sales of the website.

Search Engines like Google are using machine learning algorithms to improve the SEO techniques. Recent updates in various search engine algorithms like RankBrain, HummingBird and many more are using Machine Learning applications to understand the intent behind the search better and discourage various Black Hat techniques.

Let us now have a look at how machine learning is playing an important role in SEO.

#1. Ranking Factor: There are billion of websites over the internet. Search engines like Google have to rank these websites by understanding the intent of the user’s search. The intent behind the search is more important than the keyword itself. Earlier, this was not the case. If you were including keywords in your content, you were easily able to rank your website on the first page. However, with the introduction of machine learning in search engine algorithms, keywords takes the back seat. Some of the top results in the searches are not even using the keywords in their content.

According to Google, RankBrain is the third most important ranking factor in SERP. SEO optimization should be done keeping in mind the search engine algorithms to get better rank.

#2. Content marketing: In any SEO technique, content is the key. Google has ranked content to be the number one ranking factor. Such is the importance of good content. Machine learning applications in search engine algorithms can understand the context of the content. The good, relevant and fresh content is ranked high in the search result pages. A good content always attracts more readers and Google is intelligent enough to understand that you are providing good quality content. Google then ranks you higher up on the search pages. Machine learning algorithms have given the ability to differentiate between good and bad quality content to the search engines. This also helps in improving the user experience as most relevant results are shown on the very first page.

#3. Improving the User Experience: Gone are the days when you can get high rankings just by using the keywords in your content. Machine learning algorithms have made search engines intelligent enough to determine your ranking on whole lot of other parameters also. These parameters are based on providing the better user experience. Recent updates in SERP has included load time of the websites, relevant and quality content, time user spends on your website and many other parameters as ranking factors. These are directly related to the better user experience.

#4. Voice Searches: In the upcoming years, voice searches will completely overshadow the text-based searches. Machine Learning Algorithms are helping the search engines to understand the user query better. It also means that the content should be designed in a more conversational form. The content should match our day to day conversation and should be natural. The content should not be built for machines but for the humans.

#5. Customer Segmentation: Machine Learning companies are building software for the businesses that are helping in customer segmentation. This has made the advertisements more focused and targatted. Business is now able to focus more on the target audience rather than taking audience as a whole. Brands are now more aware of their target customers. So it saves a lot of budget of carrying out SEO campaign by showing advertisements to the target customers only.

#6. On page and off page optimization: Machine learning algorithms have a huge impact on the page as well as off page optimization. While the importance of on-page optimization is reduced, off page optimization still holds its importance. Off-page optimization such as link building is still important. If you are using quality links for your website, your ranking is definitely going to improve. Bad, unrelated links can harm the reputation of your website.

#7. Personalize the buyer’s journey: Guide the customer throught the buyer’s journey. Machine learning algorithms can guide the buyer through the buying life cycle and personalize the user experience. Before buying the any product, the buyer preforms a a research to find the best product. Help the customer by finding the best products and services neraby. Get them product reviews so, they are able to better understand the product. Finally help the buyer in buying the product from multiple sources.

#8. Structured Data: Structured data is also going to improve the SEO. There are two types of data available over the internet. Structured as well as unstrcutured. Building structured data for the websites can make the websites more search engine friendly. This will also improver the Click Through Rate of the website. Google will understand that your website is serving some quality content.

Conclusion

Every business wants to rank high in the search engine result page. However only a few are able to achieve this target. With the application of machine learning in modern SEO, it has improved a lot. Digital marketers are required to adapt to the latest and new changes in the technology to gain maximum out of it. So it is advised to be future ready. Machine learning companies is improving the current SEO techniques by making them smarter. Also, let us wait and watch what machine learning has more for SEO and how it is going to improve it further.

There are a number of ways to effectively gather links in link building as you optimize your website for SEO. One of which is Broken Link Building. This method aims to acquire links by searching for – as its name suggests – broken links, and replace them with working ones on your site. This is a proven effective white hat tactic that is focused on content that provides real value to users.

However, undertaking a broken link building campaign can become tedious. In fact, some experts say that for every 100 emails sent to website masters and administrators, only an average of 5 to 10 links will materialize into links. Broken link building is a time-consuming task that includes:

Prospecting – The first step in link building, finding prospects that fit your criteria includes using search operators and clicking through every result to check on its relevance.

Dead link checking – Websites with dead links is a great opportunity for BLB, so link builders usually use browser plugins and other web services that check on links.

Outreach – Both the steps above will be useless unless you reach out to them. This step is vital because this is where you let webmasters know about their broken link, and present them with a solution.

While there are other link building tactics you can use to acquire links and increase your website’s ranking, broken link building is a technique that provides a great room to practice creativity and decisive thinking. It’s also one of the cheapest ways to increase your website search ranking, considering some techniques require some sort of payment or cross deals with bloggers and webmasters.

If you’re trying to check if you should give broken link building a try, look at some of its aspects first to help you find out:

Searching for target sites on a certain niche

Any digital marketer would already be familiar with Google’s Advanced Search Operators. However, if this is the first time you’re hearing about this, then you should try to at least familiarize yourself first with Advanced Search Operators first. It is basically a much more advanced way of using Google Search by putting syntax and symbol operators in your search queries to quickly filter your web search.

For example, if you’re looking for resources about parenting, you can type in parenting blogs inurl:links, which will provide a search result with websites that links to related web pages.

Otherwise, there are basically three types of broken link building strategies:Otherwise, there are basically three types of broken link building strategies:

⦁ Resource Page Targeting with Keywords

⦁ Resource Page Targeting with URLs

⦁ Direct URL Targeting

Taking advantage of broken links

In broken link building, the most difficult part of the process is probably finding relevant websites. This is why it’s important to be really knowledgeable of Google’s advanced search operators. Aside from this, it’s also important for you to identify which keywords and topics are associated with your niche.

Once you’re finished identifying these keywords, you can then match them with prospecting phrases. To illustrate what we mean by prospecting phrases, I’d like to show some of our favorite keywords when searching for broken link building prospects:

⦁ topic keyword “useful links”

⦁ topic keyword “useful links”

⦁ topic keyword “resources”

⦁ topic keyword “useful websites”

⦁ topic keyword intitle:resources

See to it that the websites you find and choose are relevant enough so that users will be encouraged to research further. You can do this by checking the keywords normally used in your niche or in your industry, and checking them further for relevance. Once you have at least 10 of these relevant websites, you can proceed to search these websites for broken links.

Expired Domains are also gems

Aside from the usual 404 error, broken links that you’ll find from the tools mentioned before usually links to a website that no longer exists. In link building, this is a solid opportunity that should not be missed.

Websites that link to expired domains is actually a solid find that will easily mean good results. Depending on your own observation together with automatic analyses of tools such as AH Refs that review websites for broken links, you should decide what to do with the broken links of old websites. If it has good links, you can consider purchasing the old domain and recreate all the pages on it. After which, you can proceed and reach out the webmasters who linked to these pages.

Personalize your outreach email

When you’re sending an email to 10-20 prospects at a time, it is quite hard to customize every single email you send out. Despite this, you should at least try to customize your emails on a campaign or industry level. Simply using templated emails across all your efforts will only waste your prospects and diminish your chances of getting links.

It will also help if these steps are seen as a collective process. During the part where you verify each website, try to look for something peculiar or descriptive about their website – is it cute? Is it very appealing to kids? Is it rustic? Why so? Keep note of this and use it to customize this specific email outreach down the line.

In composing your email outreach template, a simple and concise email should do the trick. Right off the bat, introduce yourself, tell why you sent the email, and include solid ideas that can fix what’s broken (and how to include a link to your site). Here are some tips that can help you make awesome emails for outreach:

⦁ Refrain from using full hyperlinks or website URLs in the email as it can cause your email to go straight to your recipients’ spam folder. Embed these links by hyperlinking relevant phrases.

⦁ Refrain from using full hyperlinks or website URLs in the email as it can cause your email to go straight to your recipients’ spam folder. Embed these links by hyperlinking relevant phrases.

⦁ Do everything you can to know their real name and email address. Look for clues and do some research to verify their name, as you wouldn’t want to get this wrong.

⦁ End emails with a question, or a statement that will compel them to right back.

⦁ Proofread your email to get rid of mistakes.

Broken Link Building is worth it

Even if broken link building requires a tedious process and long waiting times for links to materialize, the result it brings is unparalleled. I have acquired a great deal of very high-quality links through broken link building and didn’t even had to pay for any posting or publication fee. In fact, our team of digital marketing experts are mainly composed of professional link builders that have, over time, mastered broken link building just because it is so effective we cannot ignore its benefits.

If you are an organization looking for fresh ways to acquire links for SEO and has a limited budget, broken link building is perfect for you. With just pure wit and creativity, plus some technical knowledge of SEO, using broken link building in SEO can be a fun way to increase your website’s ranking on the internet.

SEO is the most required and long process in online marketing domain which is changing its landscape at a fast pace. SEO means to sustain your website presence on the top or Google’s first page where users can find you quickly. So, if you want to increase your business exposure over the web, it’s necessary that you keep pace with the latest SEO trends. Implementing the proven and new SEO tricks are the ways that can lead your website to the top and make it popular among visitors.

It would be fine if you know how to manage SEO activities of your website. But, if you don’t have resources to run SEO implementations, hiring an authentic SEO company from the market provides you the brighter ways.

You may find several SEO companies that are indulged in offering result-oriented SEO services for businesses. In the rush of countless companies, there are chances that you may stuck to some fake one who claims to increase your online presence within few days. You should beware of them and never get tangled in their diplomatic promises.

This blog comes up with a few questions by asking them you would be able to recognize the credibility of an SEO company or expert.

Question 1: How much do you know about the latest Google updates and algorithms?

You may find the SEO companies that are familiar with the Panda and Penguin updates. Apart from that Google has raised many other updates and SEO updates that need to be known to SEO professionals and companies. You can find a list of (the) latest Google updates and ask your prospective company if they have knowledge about them. If they agreed to the terms, they are genuine service providers and bound to deliver quality results.

Question 2: How much experience do you possess in delivering SEO projects?

Today, it’s easy for someone to claim that he/she has gained a tremendous experience in SEO industry. But, the reality comes in front of you when you analyze his portfolio and contact some of the previous references who availed SEO services from him. Similarly, when you choose an SEO company, don’t get flat by its sugar-coated website or the portfolio. Rather, ask them for the list of SEO projects they have successfully delivered. It will help you identify their true industry experience.

Question 3: What is your technical expertise?

Most of the people think that implementing SEO tactics is an art. But, they are wrong at it! It’s totally a technical exercise which requires technicality at its best. You need to hire such personnel who possesses excellent SEO technical skills. For example, they should have an idea of several level redirection, preparing SEO-friendly website architecture, giving consistent URL naming convention, handling 404 errors, etc. Besides, there are numerous aspects that should be known to your SEO company.

Question 4: What tools do you use to execute SEO techniques?

Needless to say that the best and the most important tools for SEO is Google Webmaster Tools. It provides a comprehensive glance at the website important data like keywords, crawl errors and links that directly increases ranking. Whenever, you decide to
hire the SEO company, make sure they are the pioneer in analyzing and implementing SEO tricks on the basis of collected webmaster reports. There are other powerful tools that are powerful in processing the bulk information within seconds. Your company should also be aware of those as well.

Question 5: Do you employ social media optimization in your SEO services?

Today, an SEO expert can’t ignore social media as a website rank booster. It has become a quite mandatory aspect to promote and boost business revenues. Asking your future SEO partner for the social media practices implementation is the way you can recognize their SEO potential. If they are specialized in leading SEO with social media optimization, it means they will also be good at other things.

Question 6: What link building strategy do you follow?

This is the perfect query you can raise. If a company or SEO expert is not answerable to this question that how they build links for their client websites, they are not worth hiring. Every SEO professional or company must know the practices to build quality links in this cut-throat competitive world. Being a customer, you should ask them if they are apprised of the advanced link building strategies or not. This is the best way to spot a good SEO company.

Question 7: Do you publish quality content over the web?

We know that quality link building is crucial for getting maximized views and clicks. But, it doesn’t mean to put irrelevant links in between the on going content. It destroys the content quality and makes it vague for readers. You should go with the one who cares about content and modifies it by keeping the quality and readability points in mind. A good SEO professional knows the value of curative content, thus will lead your website towards attaining growth and optimum traffic.

Question 8: Can we have an idea about your client retention rate?

Among all important questions, it is the prior one which clarifies the dignity and reputation of an SEO company. To know everything about company’s goodwill, it’s important to know that how long they have been in the industry and what are numbers of active clients. It will directly give you insights for their client retention rate.

Question 9: Do you have any references of your delivered SEO projects?

You need to be careful to whom you are hiring. It’s good if they have provided you the details of their working experience and best SEO practices. Apart from this, there are things like past references or sample work reports you can demand for your satisfaction. Sometimes, companies deny providing you such report due to some legal terms but they surely give something else to make you contented. It’s your responsibility to ask for the references.

Question 10: What is your criteria to measure your success?

How do you make us believe that we should trust you as a reliable SEO service provider? This question is frequently raised by customers. You can also put this question and ask them about their strategy to measure their project’s success. Generally, a project’s success is measured by checking the progress and comparing the previous and current growth of website rank. If you find the same in their current and previous projects, you can hire them without any hesitation.

In A Nutshell:

It takes a long time to analyze deadlocks of a website. So, give your SEO provider time to prepare himself for implementing proven SEO strategies to uplift your website’s rank. But, make sure that you are connecting with the SEO experts and not the newbies.