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October 14, 2022by Sudhir TambeOptimization SEO61 comments

5 Ways to Increase Google Ranking in India

Hoe to Increase Google Ranking – Article Content

How Long Does It Take To Increase Google Ranking?
How To Increase Google Ranking
1. Start With A Sound Foundation
2. Deliver A Great Page Experience
  - Core Web Vitals
  - File Size
  - Browser Caching
  - Script Handling
  - Mobile Friendly
  - HTTPS
  - No Intrusive Interstitials
3. Optimize Your Pages For Google
  - Tell Google What Your Pages Are About
  - Keep Your Titles Short
  - Craft Unique Titles & Meta Descriptions
  - Be Specific In Your Internal Anchor Text
4. Optimize For Search Intent
  - How To Optimize For Search Intent
5. Optimize Internal Links
  - Link Architecture
  - Fix Broken Links & Duplicates
  - Reclaim Your Site Mentions
Takeaway

Many things have changed in SEO since Google first came online in 1998.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is this: Your organic traffic is directly related to your search engine ranking positions.

If you have a prolific number of keywords in the Google index and they appear at or near the top of the search results, boundless traffic will follow.

Conversely, if you have a great website, but no visibility in the SERPs, you are destined to have little if any organic search traffic.

In this post, I’m going to break down the steps needed to boost your Google SERPs. That said, I know you are equally interested in knowing the following.

How Long Does It Take To Increase Google Ranking?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and give you the definitive answer, “It depends.”

While I recognize this is frustrating and seems like a copout, it’s the truth. SEO doesn’t happen in a vacuum and every situation offers a unique set of variables.

Skill, budget, the level of competition, and how your website stacks up can all play a role in how quickly one can move the dial.

So, bearing that in mind, let’s break it down in a more quantifiable sense and review what you can do to make things happen sooner, rather than later.

During an episode of AskGooglebot in June of 2021, John Mueller, a Google search rep, said it can take “several hours to several weeks” for Google to index new or updated content. He also warned that just because a page gets indexed, doesn’t mean that it will rank for anything right away, if ever.

Due to the number of factors in play, rapid changes in SERPs should not be expected.

Mueller has said in the past that even if you make drastic changes to your website’s design and functionality, it could still take a couple of months or even a year to have an impact.

This, however, doesn’t mean that you should just sit and wait after you upgrade your site. He mentioned some specific ideas for speeding up indexing, which included:

Preventing server overload by making your server and website faster.
Prominently linking to new pages.
Avoiding the use of unnecessary URLs, like category page filters.
Taking advantage of user submission methods like uploading sitemap files, and utilizing the URL inspection tool.

Finally, Mueller reiterated the best way to get ranked is to create high-quality content that searchers will find useful. In his words, make your site “fantastic.”

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YGOASO.com – Trusted SEO Partner

How To Increase Google Ranking

To reach the top 10 SERPs in less than a year takes lots of hard work, skill, and sometimes luck.

And this takes us back to the topic of today’s discussion on how to improve Google ranking.

So, if you want to boost sales and conversions by taking your website to the first page of Google, here are five steps you should take.

1. Start with A Sound Foundation – Increase Google Ranking

Poor website structure and information architecture can doom even the best SEO campaigns.

If your website is difficult for users to navigate and Google to crawl, your rankings are likely to suffer. Pay attention to Core Web Vitals.

Perform A Technical SEO Audit

The Google algorithm incorporates thousands of signals, plus machine learning and AI to determine search rankings.

That said, attending to the basics, even today, will give you an advantage over many competitors. Here are the need-to-know steps for conducting an SEO audit.

2. Deliver A Great Page Experience – Increase Google Ranking

Google defines page experience as “a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value, both on mobile and desktop devices. “

Core Web Vitals

Whether it’s a mobile or desktop site, you must continuously monitor the speed and keep improving it. Specifically, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

File Size

For file size, use your favorite image editing program.

Before uploading, you can further optimize the size of the file with apps like Optimizilla, Image Recycle, and Kraken.io.

Lastly, always confirm that the dimensions of the image fit into the reserved image space to retain a clean, structured look of your live webpage.

Browser Caching

When a web browser loads a page, it loads a number of resources. Browser caching stores these resource files locally on the users’ computers.

That way, when a user navigates to a new page, those resources need not be loaded again.

For most, the best way to enable caching is by adding code to the web host/server .htaccess file.

For WordPress, there are free plugins available to accomplish this, like WP SuperCache.

Script Handling

Before loading countless JS and CSS files to enhance your site, make sure that you need those extra augmentations as they end up slowing down your website.

You can also minify your files by stripping comments, for instance, to keep things running fast.

And if it’s possible to merge several scripts into a single file, go for it. That way, there will only be one retrieving call to the server to load all the scripts.

Here are some tools that can help you measure and monitor Core Web Vitals.

Mobile Friendly

With the evolution of search and the mobile-first index, your website needs to pass the Mobile-Friendly Test.

According to Google “… our crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have typically used the desktop version of a page’s content… Mobile-first indexing means that we’ll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking…”

To avoid mobile ranking problems, you should double down on search intent and performance.

HTTPS

Check if your site’s connection is secure. If the page isn’t served over HTTPS, learn how to make it secure.

No Intrusive Interstitials

Intrusive interstitials are page elements that obscure content from the view of users, typically for the purpose of promotion.

YGOASO.com – Trusted SEO Partner

3. Optimize Your Pages For Google – Increase Google Ranking

It goes without saying that you must write great content that will keep readers engaged so that they can read to the last paragraph.

To quickly win them over your target audience, start with a quick summary intro that tells the readers what they expect to find in that post.

Now, to make your content friendly for Google, some of the best strategies you can implement are:

Tell Google What Your Pages Are About

Do this by adding structured data throughout your site. That way, Google can easily understand what your content is about.

Schema.org is the format preferred by Google. Schema types include recipes, businesses, products, authors, and more.

Keep Your Titles Short

Apart from turning off your readers as it will be impossible for them to get the full info at a glance, extra-long titles will also hurt your keywords’ SEO impact.

To properly fit the SERP length, keep your titles between 135 and 159 characters. SEO plugins can help you identify titles with excessive characters.

Craft Unique Titles & Meta Descriptions

Even though titles and meta descriptions don’t have a direct impact on your website’s ranking, they are quite significant in portraying your content’s value from the SERP.

Thus, if done right, they can boost your click-through rate and subsequently increase your traffic.

So, make sure that you write unique titles with a simple and attractive description that also contains a target keyword.

Additionally, you should also know that if you don’t write your own unique and vivid meta descriptions with target keywords for your pages, Google will auto-generate them.

Obviously, the auto-generated ones won’t be as effective for your site as the ones you have properly crafted. Still, you should also be careful not to stuff your titles and descriptions with keywords.

Be Specific In Your Internal Anchor Text

Get straight to the point if you want your content to rank for a specific keyword.

Many websites out there unknowingly use vague and elusive anchor texts to link to other pages within their site.

This is a huge mistake because it will not be a clear enough anchor to your visitors and even the search engines.

YGOASO.com – Trusted SEO Partner

4. Optimize For Search Intent – Increase Google Ranking

The evolution of modern search has its roots in Hummingbird, later supplemented by Rankbrain and then BERT.

The end game for Google is to better understand the context of a search to serve up results that match the intent of a given query. In fact, Google’s continued success depends on it.

Four common types of search (a.k.a. user) intent are:

Navigational – a search for a particular website.
Informational – a search for knowledge.
Commercial – a search for data (like reviews) to make an informed purchase decision.
Transactional – a search to make a purchase (where to buy).

How To Optimize For Search Intent

Check the SERPs for the keyword phrase that you are interested in ranking for. If the top results don’t align with your page, you aren’t going to rank. In other words, if Google has decided the intent of a search is informational and your page is transactional, that page will not rank well.
In cases where a page does not match the top results/search intent, you have two choices:
- Edit your page to match the intent.
- Create a new page to match the intent.

YGOASO.com – Trusted SEO Partner

5. Optimize Internal Links – Increase Google Ranking

The links on your website must be placed strategically, and you must ensure that all the links are working properly as well. Here are a few tricks to polish your link game.

Link Architecture

The page depth of your site shouldn’t be more than three clicks; an efficiency hack that sometimes people forget.

A proper internal linking strategy will mean that your best pages appear on the first level.

An effective way of doing this is creating a home page section that links directly to your ‘Best-Selling Products’ or ‘Top Categories’.

Fix Broken Links & Duplicates

Some website owners have a habit of ignoring broken links because they don’t realize the impact of the poor user experience they create.

By running a crawl on your site with tools like Sitebulb, you can easily spot the 404 errors and fix them in a jiffy!

Reclaim Your Site Mentions

Reclaim the mentions of your site by setting a Google Alert that will help you keep track of your brand mentions across the internet.

And in case any of the mentions come without being linked back to your site, contact the webmaster and request them to link back!

Takeaway

SEO can seem overwhelming. It’s easy to get caught up in the paralysis of analysis and do nothing.

That said, it’s important to remember that even in 2022, simply paying attention to the basics, as outlined above, will position you for online success.

YGOASO.com – Trusted SEO Partner

YGO Marketing is one of the best SEO, ASO, Local SEO & PPC – Google, Facebook Ads campaign expert company in Mumbai-India for Real Estate Builders, Jewellers, Jewelry Businesses — YGOASO.com – Trusted SEO Partner

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October 12, 2022by Sudhir TambeOptimization SEO57 comments

25+ Ways to Drive Traffic to Website

Drive Traffic to Website

You know you’re a marketer when you’re sitting in traffic on the highway, it’s completely bumper to bumper, and all you can think about is “Why can’t I Drive Traffic to Website like this?”

If you’ve struggled with driving traffic to your website, you’re not alone. According to 2020 research done by Content Marketing Institute, 63% of content professionals are challenged with finding enough staff skilled in content strategy which is one of the top drivers of website traffic.

Between writing a new blog post, posting on social media, and strategizing for a new email campaign, it’s hard to look back and see what’s driving traffic to your site and what isn’t.

25+ Ways to Drive Traffic to Website

The list below will help you increase the traffic to your website, generate more leads, and improve ROI.

Content Creation
Topic Expertise
Organic Social Media
Website Analysis
Collaborate with Influencers
Email List Building
Community Engagement
On-Page SEO
Quality Backlinks
Video Marketing
Content Repurposing
SEO Tools
Historical Optimization
Voice Search Optimization
Local SEO
QR Codes
A/B Testing
Internal Linking
Technical SEO
Community Building
Content Offers
Media Coverage and Public Relations
Social Share Buttons
CTR Optimization
Academy and Knowledge Base Posts
Social News Sites

1. Content Creation – Drive Traffic to Website

Inbound marketing focuses on attracting the right people to your company. One of the best ways to do this is by creating content through blogging.

To come up with content that will attract the right visitors to your website, you must first understand the buyer persona you’re targeting. Once you know your audience, you can create content that will naturally attract them to your website.

But how do you write a good blog post that will draw in the right audience? Follow these five steps:

Identify your buyer persona: Find out more about your target market. Understand everything from job title to pain points.
Conduct SEO research: Learn what your audience is searching for on search engines so you can provide the best content.
Write a draft: Begin by drafting a post that answers your audience’s questions. Use interesting angles to make your post stand out.
Publish: Publish your post on your blog site. Use SEO tools to optimize your content.
Promote: Promote your blog post on social media and email newsletters to generate traffic. The more traffic your post generates, the higher it will rank in search engines.

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2. Topic Expertise – Drive Traffic to Website

Ranking higher in Google will increase the organic traffic to your site. At HubSpot, we do this by using the pillar/ topic cluster model. Google favors sites that are known to be topic experts on the subject matter they’re writing about.

To be seen as an expert, you can create a pillar page, which is essentially a longer blog post that broadly covers all aspects of a topic. Then, you write “cluster content,” or supporting blog posts, targeting long tail keywords that show you’ve covered a topic exhaustively. Focusing on long-term traffic will help you rank higher on search engines

Christina Perricone, a senior blog manager here at HubSpot, says, “The pillar cluster model organizes content on your site around a single topic and search term through internal linking. This organization helps search engines easily crawl and categorize all of the content that you have on a particular topic, thereby making it easier for you to rank for that search term. When the model is done right, it also helps visitors navigate your site and move through related pages, boosting traffic for all of the pages in your topic cluster.”

3. Organic social media -Drive Traffic to Website

Organic social media is not a new strategy, but it’s still something marketers should pay attention to. Besides posting on social media platforms, you can also use Instagram Stories (hello, swipe up feature!), live video, IGTV, or Facebook Messenger. The key with organic social media is to be an early adopter of new features.

For instance, Facebook released an automated lead generation feature on Messenger, allowing businesses to create an automated chatbot experience within Messenger to link to content offers on your site. This is a great feature for sending traffic to your website.

It’s also important to have a diverse social media strategy and use the right social media platforms — not just Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Platforms like YouTube or Pinterest can generate a lot of traffic to your site.

Henry Franco, a brand marketing associate at HubSpot, recommends two things regarding organic social media. “First, don’t spam your audience — it costs a user nothing to scroll past your post, and if you don’t offer them any value, that’s exactly what they’ll do. Know your audience, and craft content that speaks directly to them,” Franco says.

“Second, stay active with community management. People love when brands like and reply to them — it’ll humanize your business, and keep people coming back for more content.”

4. Website Analysis – Drive Traffic to Website

Let’s do a little reverse engineering of our thought process. Before you drive traffic to your website, it’s important to learn about your audience. To do this, analyze your website using platforms, such as Crazy Egg, to see where you’re losing and gaining visitors. With this information at your disposal, you can create the right content to drive the right traffic to your website.

5. Influencers – Drive Traffic to Website

We know that customers are more likely to buy from organizations with excellent word of mouth, but how do you create great word of mouth? First, delight your customers. Second, work with influencers.

Influencer marketing isn’t a passing fad. In fact, it’s a budget-friendly option to drive traffic to your website. When influencers post discount codes, links, reviews, or giveaways, you are tapping into their audience to drive traffic to your website.

6. Email List Building – Drive Traffic to Website

Using your current readers and customers is a great way to drive traffic to your website. When you post a new blog or content offer, you can promote it to your followers/subscribers for a quick traffic boost. With content-heavy websites, having repeat readership is helpful for traffic goals, conversions, and lead generation.

To get started with this, build an email list or grow your current list. Below are a few strategies you can use:

Content offers: Publish content that requires visitors to share their email address to access it. Include CTAs for content offers on your website.

Easy-access newsletter sign-up: Include sign-up forms on your website, from your homepage to your about page. If a visitor had a delightful experience on your site, they might want to sign up for a newsletter.

Use HubSpot’s free forms tool to easily add a form to your site and start growing your email list.

Social media: Promoting your email newsletter on social media, whether through a post or contest/giveaway, is a great way to convert your current followers into subscribers.

Pro Tip: Learn how to build an email list from scratch here or grow your email list here.

7. Community Engagement – Drive Traffic to Website

The more brand recognition you have, the more traffic you will drive to your website. One way to achieve brand recognition is to be active and engaged within the market. You can implement an engagement strategy today by participating in Facebook group discussions in your industry, answering questions on public forum websites, and interacting with your followers on social media.

One of my favorite brands on social media is Taco Bell. Taco Bell delights its customers on social media just about every day. See a couple of examples from the company’s Twitter below.

In the example above, Taco Bell uses a simple tweet from a customer to engage with them and build community organically.

Just remember to be helpful and human. No one likes spammy links or self-serving rhetoric when they’re asking a quick question online.

8. On-Page SEO – Drive Traffic to Website

On-page SEO can help your website rank higher in search engines and bring in more traffic. Some on-page SEO elements include the bpage title, header, meta description, image alt-text, and the URL (plus more). Showing up in search engines will generate more traffic for your site.

Pro tip: To get started with on-page SEO, check out our ultimate guide to on-page SEO.

9. Quality Backlinks – Drive Traffic to Website

In order to drive traffic to your site, you need to rank high in search engines. In order to rank higher in search engines, you need to be an authority in your industry. One way to do that, besides the topic/cluster model described above, is by acquiring quality backlinks. If websites with high authority link to your site, that gives you more credibility.

Irina Nica, senior content strategist at HubSpot says, “There are two main ways in which high-quality backlinks can help drive more traffic to a website: boosting ranking and driving referral traffic. On the one hand, backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors for every major search engine out there. By constantly earning high-quality backlinks from relevant websites, you’ll improve your rankings in SERP and, as a result, see a lift in your organic traffic.”

Nica adds, “On the other hand, backlinks can also drive a substantial amount of referral traffic. That’s something to be expected if you get mentioned on a popular news website. You can also see referral traffic coming through if you’re mentioned (and linked to) in an article that’s already ranking well for high search volume keywords and is getting a constant flow of traffic.

10. Video Marketing – Drive Traffic to Website

It’s time to add video marketing to your content strategy because the audience is looking for video content. Statista reports that 77% of internet users ages 15 – 35 are using YouTube to consume video content.

You can create videos for Instagram or Facebook Stories, live videos, IGTV, Facebook Watch, news feed videos, YouTube, etc. Want to get started today? Learn everything you need to know in our ultimate guide to video marketing.

11. Content Repurposing – Drive Traffic to Website

Need content to drive traffic to your site but struggling to come up with ideas? I get it. A great way to overcome this hurdle is to repurpose old content. Take a well-performing blog post and repurpose that into a video. Or if you have a podcast that did really well, write up a blog post on that topic. Using content that has already performed well will continue to drive traffic to your site.

12. SEO Tools – Drive Traffic to Website

To drive traffic to your website, it’s important to be a student of SEO. Learning SEO tools such as Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and SEMrush will help you develop a strategy to generate traffic to your website.

These tools will help you learn and analyze what’s working on your site and what isn’t. Plus, these help you come up with ideas for content that has the potential to generate high traffic. Check out our roundup of the best SEO tools to monitor your website.

13. Historical Optimization – Drive Traffic to Website

Historical optimization is the process we use at HubSpot to update old blog content and generate more traffic and leads. If you’re anything like us, a majority of your monthly blog views and leads come from older posts.

Pamela Vaughan, a principal marketing manager on HubSpot’s Web Strategy team, a.k.a. the person who introduced us to the concept of historical optimization, has written about this extensively.

She says, “Historical optimization is a tactic best-suited for a blog that’s been around for several years because you need to 1) be generating a significant amount of organic search traffic, 2) have built up a critical mass of blog subscribers and social media followers, and 3) have a sizable repository of old posts at your disposal.”

Vaughan adds, “Historical optimization should be a piece of your overall blogging strategy — not the whole strategy.”

Pro Tip: Follow her step-by-step process for historical optimization.

14. Voice Search Optimization – Drive Traffic to Website

Remember in “The Little Mermaid” when Ariel wanted to go where the people were? That same principle applies to digital marketing. In order to drive traffic to your website, it’s important to show up where people are searching.

Voice search is an increasingly important area in which to rank. In fact, according to eMarketer, voice searches will have increased 9.7% by the end of 2021. That’s why optimizing your content for voice search is essential.

Here are a few tips to get started:

Research long tail keywords: When people use voice search, they speak in full sentences rather than short phrases. To optimize for voice search, start researching longer-tail keywords.
Write answer-focused content: The content you write should answer your audience’s questions.
Optimize for snippets: Smart speakers like Alexa and Google Home look for short, concise answers. Writing quick summaries in your posts makes it easier for search engines and smart speakers to find the answer they need.

15. Local SEO – Drive Traffic to Website

If your company is a brick-and-mortar store, local SEO is an important factor to consider. My colleague, Kelsey Smith, wrote about it in this blog. She says, “To gather information for local search, search engines rely on signals such as local content, social profile pages, links, and citations to provide the most relevant local results to the user.”

For example, when someone types in “best soul food restaurant” on Google, the results are generated by the user’s location. Tools such as Google My Business and Moz Local help businesses manage their directory listings and citations so they show up in local searches. Here’s a restaurant that shows up for that search in Memphis, TN.

To rank for local search:

Ensure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) is consistent on your Google My Business and social media pages.
Use a directory management tool to monitor directories like Yelp, Foursquare, Best of the Web, etc.
Research and use location-based search terms on sites like Google Trends, which analyzes popular search terms across various regions.

16. QR Codes – Drive Traffic to Website

If there’s one thing that brings technology and the real world together better than any other tool, I’d bet my bottom dollar it’s the QR code. This interesting image of pixels can drive traffic to your website from just about anywhere with a flat surface. And they’re not just for restaurants trying to operate safely during the Covid-19 pandemic — marketers love them because they drive traffic — trackable traffic.

The main catch with QR codes is that you have to give the user a reason to scan them, so you can’t place them haphazardly. That shouldn’t be too difficult though, think of it as creating a real-life CTA button. If you make it enticing and accessible enough, people will scan it, and you’ll get to assess the success of that QR code’s placement in real-time. When you use a dynamic QR code generator, your QR code will remain the same and still be accessible even if your web address changes later. That’s something you’d spend weeks figuring out in a digital-only traffic campaign.

17. A/B Testing – Drive Traffic to Website

Besides driving traffic to your website, you know you’re a marketer when your motto is, “Test, test, and test again.”

A/B testing is a split test that helps you determine what version of a campaign performs best. These tests can give you key information about your audience so you can create tailored content and offers that drive traffic to your site. There are a lot of tools you can use to get started. Check out our roundup of the best A/B testing tools.

18. Internal Linking – Drive Traffic to Website

When a visitor comes to your blog, your goal is to get them to continue reading on other pages of your website. That’s why internal links — links to other pages on your site — are very important. When visitors continue to other pages of your website they’re more likely to convert and become a brand enthusiasts.

For example, you can create an internal linking structure using the pillar/cluster model described above. Pillar and cluster pages link back and forth, which boosts your site’s credibility on search engines, while also increasing the likelihood of a conversion.

19. Technical SEO – Drive Traffic to Website

Technical SEO focuses on the backend of your website to see how the pages are technically set up and organized. Factors include elements like page speed, crawling, indexing, and more. Matthew Howells-Barby, HubSpot’s director of acquisition, has written about technical SEO in this blog.

In it, he says, “Don’t underestimate the power of technical SEO changes. [Technical SEO] resulted in us growing our organic traffic by more than 50% in just one month.”

To get started with your technical SEO, use some of the tips from Howells-Barby’s article, including:

Fix broken links and redirects.
Create an XML sitemap for your subdomains.
Set up language meta tags.
Add custom H1 and introductions to topic pages.

20. Community Building

Building a community of brand enthusiasts is a great way to continuously drive traffic to your website. You can build a Facebook group, Twitter chat, LinkedIn Group, or Quora Space specifically for your followers and others in your industry where you create value, while also linking back to your site.

A great example of community building comes from career coaching business CultiVitae. They have a closed Facebook group where Emily, the founder, answers questions and provides networking opportunities.

With over 10.3k members in this group, CultiVitae creates value for its followers, while also promoting its product.

These types of communities keep you top of mind in your customer’s eyes. Plus, it’s a great way to engage with your followers and learn more about your audience as they evolve over time.

21. Content Offers

Content offers, sometimes referred to as lead magnets, are a way to use content to drive traffic to your site and generate leads. Content offers vary depending on what stage of the buyer’s journey your customer is in, but can include webinars, guides, reports, trials, demos, checklists, and more.

Pro Tip: You can learn about different types of content offers here and how to create content for every stage in the buyer’s journey here.

22. Media Coverage and Public Relations

Earned media coverage is a great way to drive brand awareness for your company and traffic to your website. If your marketing and public relations teams work together, you can generate traffic to your site and create excellent word of mouth.

Ellie Flanagan, a senior corporate communications manager at HubSpot, says, “Although most outlets these days try to stay away from including backlinks in their stories (it’s usually against their editorial guidelines), that doesn’t mean that a good story won’t drive folks back to your site.

Media coverage provides great third-party validation for your company. Stories about new products or services, your company culture, or even industry thought leadership can all be great drivers for a reader who maybe hadn’t heard of your company before and wants to learn more.”

23. Social Share Buttons

Social share buttons are links that make it easy for your readers to share your content on social media. When your readers become promoters of your content, your traffic will increase. Here’s a quick cheat sheet on creating social share buttons.

Once you’ve created your social share buttons, how do you get people to share your content? Here are a few tips to get started:

Ask people to share on social media.
Create strong content.
Include quotable content.
Add multimedia such as images, videos, infographics, etc.

24. CTR Optimization

Once your content is posted and you begin ranking on search engines, make sure people are clicking through to read your posts. Your click-through rate (CTR) measures who clicked on your post and read it against the number of people who viewed the link to your post (e.g., the landing page, email, or advertisement) in total.

A great tool to measure your organic CTR is Google Search Console. To get more people to click through and drive traffic to your site, it’s important to write compelling and apt meta descriptions and titles. To write quality meta tags that are click-worthy, make sure your titles are short and snappy, and your description leaves visitors wanting more. This ties into on-page SEO, described above.

25. Academy and Knowledge Base Posts

One form of content that can drive traffic to your website is educational content. If you create courses, certifications, or educational posts that are helpful to your audience, you’ll likely see an increase in traffic.

For example, HubSpot uses HubSpot Academy to generate content that is helpful to our audience. We provide videos, certification courses, and knowledge base articles to answer questions. See an example of a knowledge base article below.

26. Social News Sites

Have you heard of Reddit and Quora? These are social news sites and they’re great for driving traffic to blog articles. By nature, these platforms are similar to social media because they foster asynchronous connections between users. The difference is that these types of sites engage people around a question or topic, and external content can be shared to help explain the users’ points of view.

Another way external sites benefit from increased traffic via social news sites is when they’re shared in popular channels. You can share your website’s content on these sites yourself if you’re just starting out, but do so carefully. Just like on traditional social sites, too much self-promotion is frowned upon in the Reddit and Quora communities. You’ll fare best when you share your content in context of the topic and when it’s the best information to answer the user’s question.

Paid Advertising
Contests and Giveaways
Guest Posting
Thought Leadership

1. Paid Advertising

You can drive traffic to your website quickly with paid advertising. With search engines, you can run pay-per-click or retargeting ads. With social media you can run display ads or sponsored posts. Your strategy will most likely include a combination of different types of advertising like social media, display, and search ads. In fact, according to the 2020 CMO Survey, firms expect social spending to rise by 62% over five years.

2. Contests and Giveaways

A simple way to drive traffic to your website is through contests and giveaways. This can give you a quick boost, while also rewarding your followers. You can host giveaways on social media, through your email list, or both.

Implementing a strategy like this can be simple. Just follow these six steps:

Decide what platform on which to host your giveaway. (You can use multiple.)
Choose a prize. (Free tickets, discount, etc … )
Select the criteria. (Website comments, email sign up, etc … )
Write the ad copy.
Create the graphics.
Post and promote the contest or giveaway.

3. Guest Posting

In that same vein, writing guest posts can generate traffic to your site. Guest posting shows you’re active in your community, while also linking to your website — more on generating backlinks below.

To implement a guest posting strategy, you need to find a site that would be a good fit for your company, draft a blog post, and then write a pitch. Caroline Forsey, senior content strategist on the Blog team, says, “I’m always particularly intrigued with a guest pitch if it shows me the writer has done their research ahead of time.

For instance, I’d pay much closer attention to a pitch if it tells me how this piece could appeal to my readers. Additionally, I’m impressed when a writer can recognize gaps in our content and how their piece will fill those gaps, rather than competing with existing content.”

As an example, here’s what HubSpot looks for in guest posts to the Marketing Blog.

4. Thought Leadership

According to Edelman’s and LinkedIn’s 2020 research, more than half of decision makers spend an hour or more reading thought leadership content each week. It’s clear that people have an interest in this topic, so why not dedicate more of your calendar to it?

Just about every industry has several well-respected people with words of wisdom to share. Even if they come from a completely different background than what your company specializes in, influential thought leaders have transferable knowledge that can be helpful for your readers.

When choosing a thought leader, the most well-known person isn’t your only option. Instead, look for great storytellers. The HubSpot Blog Team recommends keeping your eyes peeled for up-and-coming experts as well as individuals who thrive in less hyper-digital industries like agriculture, food and beverage, and humanitarian work like Sippie Siphiwe Mungaraza does at Mealtime Limited.

YGOASO Article List

October 12, 2022by Sudhir TambeOptimization SEO50 comments

8 Ingredients to a Traffic-Generating, Rank Boosting SEO Strategy

Most of you will have heard the term SEO thrown around in relation to digital marketing, online businesses, or internet circles in general. Regardless, you’d be surprised how many people simply remember those three letters but never really understand what they mean.

If that’s you, we’ve got you covered, and if this is your first time coming across the phrase, then you’re in luck. In this post, you’re going to learn everything you need to know in order to carry out an effective SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. We’re going to cover:

What SEO is and why it’s more important than ever.
The basics of an SEO strategy (keywords, meta data, and link-building, technical components).
Eight specific tactics that will set you up for SEO success based on SEO trends.

The importance of SEO – Rank Boosting SEO Strategy

According to Safari Digital, approximately 61% of marketers believe that SEO is the key to online success, which is why modern businesses allocate an average of 41% of their marketing budget to it. In short, taking the time to outline a proper SEO strategy can revolutionize not just your online traffic but your business as a whole.

Given the way the world is right now, internet use is as high as it’s ever been. The pandemic has us doing more online shopping, streaming even more movies and television than usual, and attending enough Zoom meetings for a lifetime. SEO has been crucial for so many organizations throughout 2020 and we expect 2021 to be much of the same. So, as we approach the New Year, how can you create an SEO strategy that moves with the times? Well, let’s start with the basics.

What every SEO strategy must have – Rank Boosting SEO Strategy

SEO is essentially the practice of using certain qualitative content principles and technical improvements to improve your online traffic and rankings on SERPs (search engine results pages). Quantity plays a big part too. Writing more content, using more links, and using a wider variety of keywords is a great way to rank higher over time—this is called ‘scaling’ and it’s pretty much what it sounds like.

So, there are a few things we’ve chucked in there. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s rattle off the main tools you’ll be using to start building your 2021 SEO strategy:

1. Keyword targeting

Keywords are phrases that are commonly searched for on Google, Bing, etc. and they are a crucial part of determining your website’s rankings. Use the right amount of keywords in the right places and in time you’ll see your pages climb up the leaderboards.

Keyword strategy has changed a lot over the years, it used to just be stuff as many in there as possible, but lots of content then became spammy and sites were ultimately penalized by Google’s algorithms. These days, you need to do your keyword research, use a wide variety of keywords, and fit them in naturally. Google gets smarter by the day, so they’ll make you work for it.

2. Metadata

You can think of metadata almost as your shop window. Your meta title and meta description are the first things a user sees in the SERP which influences whether or not they click.

Also, Google uses what are known as ‘crawlers’ (imagine tiny robot spiders), to scan through websites and collect information that matches search queries. By including keywords in your meta data (including image tags and heading tags) Google can more quickly understand the relevance of your page.

3. Backlinks

As we move into the more technical side of things, another crucial factor in SEO performance is acquiring backlinks. This is when another website links to yours in an article or blog post. Not only does this help you gain what is known as domain authority, but it also directly improves the chances of people clicking through to your website if it appears on other reliable domains.

You can earn organic links by simply writing engaging content: the better your work and the more closely you match with a person’s search intent, the more likely others in your industry are to reference your site. This overarching process is known as link-building and while you can simply reach out to other sites to trade links—quid pro quo—there a plenty of other activities that can help speed up this process:

Guest blogging.
Testimonials.
Answering questions on sites like Quora.
Creating shareable content such as videos and infographics.
Using industry contacts and sharing on social (e.g. LinkedIn).

4. Technical SEO

Carrying on from that, there are various other technical issues in the back end of your site that once addressed, can make a huge difference in your overall SEO results. At the end of the day, if your website’s UX isn’t smooth and accessible, it’s going to be hard for any visitor to do anything significant on your website. For context, over 50% of all online traffic is mobile, so when it comes to things like UX, the technical stuff matters.

Whether it’s ensuring site speeds are quick, removing ‘toxic’ backlinks (links to websites that are deemed irrelevant or untrustworthy etc.), or creating a clear XML sitemap with a clean URL structure, all of these technical SEO tips can be huge when it comes to securing those higher rankings. You don’t want anything to get in the way of SEO doing its job, which is allowing for people to find your website organically.

5. SEO metrics

You can’t do effective SEO if you don’t know what “effective” means! You’ll need to have a thorough understanding of SEO metrics in order to measure, analyze, and improve your SEO strategy.

Why is organic traffic and SEO important? – Rank Boosting SEO Strategy

If you’re looking for longevity and cost-effectiveness when it comes to your digital marketing, organic search strategies driven by SEO can’t be beaten. Not only is SEO cheaper than paid advertising but its effects are longer lasting. While PPC campaigns need to be renewed and bidding costs fluctuate, SEO tracking tools use organic data to compile lists of keywords and continue to throw up more content ideas the deeper you dig.

Admittedly, SEO can feel like a slow burn at first. Nevertheless, you can start to see serious upturns in your overall traffic and rankings after a few months. Furthermore, the longer you stay at it, the more backlinks and site authority you build, meaning you can go for even bigger and better keywords, and so on and so forth.

Even starting at the other end of the spectrum—targeting long-tail keywords and more detailed variants—especially when it comes to content and specific sub-topics, is an excellent way for SMBs to see results early and build a platform towards momentum. Over a third of Google’s total search queries feature four or more words (i.e. long-tail keywords). Not only are these keywords less competitive and therefore easier to rank for, but they can also still drive plenty of cumulative traffic organically.

8 tips to build an effective SEO strategy – Rank Boosting SEO Strategy

It isn’t always about trying to go for the most popular search terms and expecting to be able to compete with the big fish right out of the gate. It’s about knowing your audience and trying to provide the content, information, and overall service they want/need. With that in mind, here are eight SEO tips that are just as effective now in 2021 as they have always been.

You may also be interested in our epic website audit checklist (with a six-tab Google Sheet) to help you out with your strategy.

1. Write for humans first and search engines second

As mentioned already, the Google algorithm gets smarter by the day and using constant human input, continues to better align with our thinking. That being said, there is no clever loophole or magic formula to outwit a search engine, so don’t bother trying. Write for humans first and search engines second.

Ultimately, your priority should always be to provide your audience with what they are looking for, and that only comes through writing engaging and fundamentally naturalistic content. Anyone can spot a keyword that’s been shoehorned in and stuffing is even more blatant, so fit them in where it makes sense and allow driving keywords to elevate your already informative and valuable content.

2. Use targeted keywords in all the right places

Whilst the motivation should always be humans first, search engines second, the bedrock of this whole process is keywords. Not only do they get to the heart of what visitors and Google are looking for by isolating common search terms, but SEO also drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media, which itself dominates over half of all online traffic. So, if keywords are at the heart of SEO, they should be at the heart of everything you do, too.

However, once again, it isn’t about just chucking them in left, right, and center. It all starts with keyword research. Use SEO tools like Google Ads, Ahrefs and even simple on-site search bars to identify broad search intent and your “seed” keywords. Then dig deeper to find more long-tail variants, study competitors to find keyword gaps, and don’t forget to include them in your metadata as well as the anchor text for your links. Lastly, remember not to keyword stuff. Fit them in naturally so as not to disrupt the readability of your copy.

3. Focus on user experience (UX)

There is nothing worse than having to navigate a site that you can barely use. In fact, after more than a few seconds of frustration, most people don’t bother and Google will struggle to make the best out of it too. Things like dead links, error pages, and messy site structures will all impact what people take away from your website.

Not only do users value a good experience and easy navigation, but this seamlessness also helps Google’s crawlers scan your content and determine your SERP rankings. Use headings and short, easy to read paragraphs, tidy up your sub-folders, and optimize for mobile. All of these things will help to reduce your bounce rate, improve your rankings, and generate better conversion overall.

And now that Core Web Vitals have become a ranking factor via the page experience update, you should be optimizing page speed more than ever.

4. Focus on building relevant links

As mentioned, another key aspect in building domain reputation/site authority is link-building. We’ve already touched upon why outbound/external links are important: you not only enhance the information you are providing but you can receive reciprocal backlinks through outreach, etc.

Furthermore, links are a key ranking factor. Bots/crawlers discover content by following links through to subsequent pages and judging how relevant they are to a search query. This goes for internal linking as well, so don’t be afraid to link to other useful pages on your site where necessary and where it feels natural. 51% of marketers notice an impact after one to three months of implementing a link-building strategy.

We talk a lot about link building in our 10-step SEO audit—check it out.

5. Format content for Featured Snippets

Featured snippets pretty much rule SERPs these days. It’s likely that you’re familiar with them even if you haven’t heard the term before. They are the highlighted answer boxes that appear at the top of the pages for most search queries. If you manage to earn a featured snippet, you’re doing something right.

There are certain formatting and stylistic choices you can make to up your chances of landing a featured snippet: bullet points, numbered lists, infographics and answering question-based searches directly, to name a few. Whilst there is data that shows snippets don’t always result in direct clicks, as the search query is answered in the Google preview itself, over 19% of SERPs have featured snippets and counting. They are great for raising brand awareness and getting your name out there. Therefore, the clicks will still come.

6. Remove anything that slows down your site

Once again, it can’t be overstated how simple it is to get the technical stuff right in order for your website and specific content to speak for itself. Whether you’re writing informative blogs, selling a product/service, or simply pointing someone in the right direction, your site needs to be quick, accessible, and easy to use. These days, people expect instant information and instant results. If your site takes an age to load, they’ll simply move on.

There are a number of ways you can improve site speed and the overall smoothness of your UX: delete old/defunct plugins, clean up your code, optimize and compress your images, make sure your sub-folders flow and make sense, and use tools like Google Page Speed Insights or GTmetrix to continue monitoring in the future.

7. Pay attention to Google algorithm updates

We’ve briefly touched on this already but Google gets smarter and more intuitive by the day. The core updates and tweaks to the algorithm are constant and often unexpected, with sites either benefitting or being penalized for how closely they adhere to the most recent update.

Rankings and penalties are determined by a variety of factors: accessibility, speed, excessive advertising or spammy content, etc. Whilst it can’t always be avoided, there are a few easy steps you can take to stay in touching distance. Firstly, subscribe to industry websites and forums to keep track of recent/impending updates. Google’s Search Console Community is a good start – and make sure to closely track your traffic using services like Google Analytics and SEMrush to see where updates may have occurred, so you can then adjust accordingly.

8. Improve existing content & add missing subtopics

Lastly, you need to remember that there is no real finish line when it comes to your SEO strategy. Constant updates and battling with your competitors means that there’s always work to be done, not to mention that you can still improve on what you’ve done already. If you haven’t been using SEO properly already, going back and updating content with keywords, backlinks, and better readability is a great way to get started. You can even ensure that pages that have been performing better maintain traffic growth or build upon that standard by regularly updating them.

Circling back to your keyword research, this is a great opportunity to use these phrases and competitor analysis as the basis for a long-term content plan. Each keyword should branch off into a plethora of others and with that comes more ideas for content. Rather than writing, say, one piece of a specific topic, make it a ‘cornerstone’ article from which a number of other more specific ones spawn. A proper content audit can be done using tools like SEMrush and Yoast; adding and updating old content can double your traffic —just try to make it as evergreen as possible and be sure to use that internal and external linking we talked about.

Lock in SEO success for 2022

This post only scratches the surface of what SEO is all about. It’s a discipline that grows more complex and nuanced by the day, but by giving you some tried and true tips that have stood the test of time in this field, you should be well prepared to handle whatever 2021 throws at us.

To get more information and examples of SEO for beginners, intermediates, all the way up to experts, we has a wealth of resources at your disposal. The SEO landscape is constantly shifting, so don’t leave it any longer to play catch up!

8 Ingredients to a Traffic-Generating, Rank Boosting SEO Strategy

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September 21, 2022by Sudhir TambeOptimization SEO58 comments

5 Steps to Get Quality Backlinks for Free

Go to any SEO forum and you’ll find the obligatory post from a confused, link building noob wondering, “How do I create quality backlinks?”

In the post, the frustrated linker claims they’ve tried everything to build quality backlinks: free directories, profile links, article submissions, comment spamming, etc. But nothing works. Despite all their low-value efforts, they can’t leapfrog their competitors in the SERPs, so they’re pleading with others to share their secrets to building amazing, stupendous, superfantastic backlinks.

Trouble is, those secrets don’t exist.

There are no magic shortcuts, no highly classified insider hacks to getting quality links for your website. Building quality backlinks takes work.But that’s the last thing the forum vagrants want to hear. They want a quick fix, and creating something of value is a whole lot harder than slapping a forum signature on a discussion thread post. So that message often falls on deaf ears.

However, if you’re willing to bust your ass, then I’ll share my process for building amazing backlinks. It’s not simple. It’s not easy. In fact, it requires creativity, tenacity, dedication and hard work. But unlike low-value link spamming, if you follow these steps, you can build some amazing backlinks.

5 Steps to Creating Quality Backlinks

Find Links
Link Prospecting
Content Linkworthiness
Linkbait
Link Outreach

Step One: Find What People are Linking to – Quality Backlinks

The first step in getting amazing backlinks is to ferret out the sites that already have fantastic backlinks and scrutinize their link profiles. The logic being that good content attracts links, as site owners feel compelled to share it with their audience. So in this first step, you’re looking for pages with ‘lotsa links’ because they’ve already proven to have link-worthy content.

To find out which blog posts have attracted the most inbound links, follow this process. Note: for this entire blog post, we’ll use a hypothetical example of Jim’s Pet Shop, an online pet store looking to attract links, traffic and attention for its line of dog toys.

Install the SEO for Firefox Toolbar (it’s free!)
Run a search in Google (for this example, I’m running a query for “dog toys”), select “show options” button (below the search box, left) and click “blogs” from the categories
Click the “100” option (just below the search box, right), which will give you the Top 100 search results
Once that’s resolved, click the “CSV” link (just below the search box, right) and export the results fileFirefox for SEO gives you a lot of great information, but for this exercise, we just want the data for the column “Y! Page Links,” so you can delete the rest.
Sort the list by “Y! Page Links” from “largest to smallest.” Your CSV results should look like this:

We now have a collection of all the blog posts about “dog toys” that have attracted the most links. The next step in the process of building quality backlinks is to see which sites are linking to these posts.

Step Two: Find Out Who’s Linking – Quality Backlinks

Now that we know which content pieces are the link magnets, let’s figure out who’s doing the linking. Why is the “who” important? It’s because these website owners have already pre-qualified themselves as link prospects by demonstrating their willingness to link out to a particular type of content, which in this example is content about “dog toys.” So chances are good that they might link to our dog toy content.

So to find out the “who,” pull up the CSV dashboard we created above, select each of the top linking posts and drill down into their link profiles. This can be done using the “Yahoo Page Links” button on the SEO for Firefox Toolbar or you can use the Yahoo link command: link:http://www.pawnation.com/2010/03/16/wacky-pet-product-squeaky-squigglers-dog-toys/ -site:pawnation.com

This produces a SERP list of all links pointing to this page, minus any internal site links from the root domain, which looks like this:

After running this analysis for link prospects, there are two sites that keep popping up in the link profiles of these top dog toy posts: Doggies.com and Funstufffordogs.wordpress.com. Given their willingness to link out to dog toy related content, they are great candidates for outreach campaign (covered in step five).

Now, if it’s not clear yet, the objective of this step is to assemble a list of qualified prospects for outreach. This can be done in a simple spreadsheet with multiple data columns. For my own outreach lists, I like to collect data on :

Target website URL: note the name of the website as well as the deep page I’ve found that’s linking out
Toolbar PageRank: here I use TBPR to sort by relative value (loosely)
Contact name: personalizing your outreach letter is key; addressing an email “To Whom It May Concern” is lazy and for losers
Personal email: don’t send emails to info@ black holes or contact us forms, unless you like having your emails ignored or deleted. I give detailed information on obtaining hard to find personal emails, in this article about 12 advanced tactics on how to find someone’s email address.
Social media profile(s): what’s their Twitter or LinkedIn handle? don’t know? figure it out.
Notes: additional information about the blogger or website to help personalize my outreach letters even more

Also, remember that many blogs have a stable of bloggers on staff. So I recommend you dig around and find out which ones link out to your type of content more frequently and cite that in your notes section as well.

Step Three: Find Out Why People are Linking – Quality Backlinks

To create linkable content, you must determine why certain pieces of content attract links. Let’s examine the blog posts in the example above and see if we can discern why these five blog posts about dog toys have attracted more than 11K total links. Is there some shared element, some common thread that makes them so link worthy?

It just so happens that in this case the clues are pretty clear: the top link performers are all articles about weird, odd, whacky or silly dog toys.

It’s really not surprising because life can be pretty mundane, so people love anything that’s out of the ordinary. That’s why creating odd or funny posts or videos is often a sure fire way to attract links.

I mean, how can you not share or link to that Michael Vick dog chew toy photo, right?

So if you’re the owner of our hypothetical Jim’s Pet Shop and you’re hunting for content ideas that will attract links, writing a post about weird dog toys looks like a fantastic strategy.Which brings us to our next step.

Step Four: Create the Bait – Quality Backlinks

To attract links like the top link worthy posts, you need to create something of similar value. Now, I’m not saying outright copy it, and I’m also not saying you need to reinvent the wheel. You can absolutely do something similar, but make it your own. If it’s a handy widget, create a widget. If it’s a whacky list, create a whacky list. Point is, the content that you create needs to be valuable and interesting to your target market.

For example, take the premise above that people love content about weird dog toys. Now, there are many different ways you can turn that intelligence into an effective content strategy. I’ve thrown together a few ideas for articles that I’m grading by degree of effort and difficulty:

Easy: Create a blog post about a whacky dog toy: It’s not entirely original, but I bet it attracts a stray link or two.
Harder: Create an article about “10 Weird Dog Toys Your Dog is Gonna’ Love.” This involves more work, but there’s more opportunity for links.
Wicked Hard!!: Fire up your big brain, get super creative and start a contest on your pet shop website where people submit and vote for pictures of their dogs with bizarre dog toys, with the top pics all win a prize. You create a contest page (with contest details, photo galleries and voting component), write a blog post announcing the contest and one announcing the winners, with the winning pictures, names of the dogs and their owners.

Now which of these ideas is most intriguing? Which do you think will attract the most links? Point here is that the effort matches the results, which is why I listed each idea by level of labor involved. In my experience, the harder I work on a piece of content, the more links it attracts. This isn’t rocket science, but it bears mentioning.

Step Five: Pimp Your Content – Quality Backlinks

Okay, so it’s time to market your content via blog marketing. You’re going to get to work reaching out to the site owners, key influencers and bloggers for the sites in backlink profiles that you’ve gathered in your pitch list from step two. Now, you’re not going to boldly ask them to link to your page about X in your request. That’s way too obvious and heavy-handed. Instead, you’re going use a more subtle approach, by writing to make them aware of your content and asking if they’d be willing to “share it” with their audience, as they’ve done with similar types of content.

To give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, here’s what a sample letter might look like using the “Whacky Dog Toy Photo Contest” idea for Jim’s Pet Store. Note: this email template is based on successful outreach letters I’ve used in the past.

Now, anyone who’s ever engaged in the sort of coordinated, targeted, personalized and aggressive link outreach that I’ve outlined above understands its value. But you’ll get the naysayers who say “link outreach doesn’t work” and that’s primarily because:

They don’t create anything of value
They’re unable to dedicate themselves to marketing content effectively
They’ve never even tried it, yet slam it because they’re lazy

Whatever the case, I’m here to say that I follow the same process I’ve laid out in this article and it works for me.

Also, don’t fall for the old adage that all you need to do to attract links is create great content. Just because you write good content doesn’t mean the Web will automatically notice. You have to hit them over the head with it. It’s okay to be self promotional, in fact, it’s vital. Nobody else is going to pimp your content, so it’s up to you.

One last note on link outreach is that once you get all the steps in place and have an outreach list and an email template, you can have just about anyone help with sending out the emails. I usually enlist interns to send out the emails and tell them to customize and personalize each email in the various fields, using the data I’ve collected in my outreach spreadsheets.

Conclusion – Quality Backlinks

So as I said at the beginning of this post, everything I’ve discussed here takes work. Like anything worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Now if this isn’t for you and your heart just isn’t in it, then that’s fine. There’s no shame in admitting this is more work than you signed up for. But don’t go back to bitching in the forums in a few more months about how you’ve created 300 social bookmarking links and you can’t get on page one of Google, so you need a magical way to build amazing backlinks that doesn’t involve thought or effort.

Point is, the top ranking sites work their tails off to acquire quality links. To keep pace with them, you need to devote the same level of effort to content strategy and link marketing. If your goal is to outrank them, then you’ll need to do something even more exceptional. And dumping a dozen comment spam links on some poor guy’s “do follow” blog isn’t going to get it done.

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August 13, 2022by Sudhir TambeApp Store Optimization Optimization67 comments

How to Get Backlinks: 11 Strategies

If you follow this right formula How to Get Backlinks, you can massively improve your website’s rankings and authority.

But low-quality backlinks can damage your rankings and reputation.

The most impactful backlinks are:

Editorially earned
From a relevant, authoritative website
Not paid for or sponsored

In this article, we’ll cover 11 ways to get quality backlinks, regardless of your industry.

1. Digital PR – How to Get Backlinks

Digital PR consists of creating linkable assets and promoting them to relevant journalists and publications. If done well, it can be a scalable way to earn backlinks.

But keep in mind that you’ll need to create assets that publications want to link to.

Some common examples include:

Data-driven studies
In-depth, long-form guides
Infographics and visuals

If you create a resource that’s in-depth, compelling, and accurate, people will naturally cite you as a source.

The best part is that these links are editorially-placed, which Google prefers.

And John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, states that digital PR is “just as critical as tech SEO.”

To create this post, we first did keyword research to find a high-volume keyword. “Most visited websites” has a US search volume of 4.4k and a global search volume of 11.9k.

Keyword volume and difficulty in Keyword Overview tool

The goal was to create something that journalists would use and link to from their articles. To do this, we included the right data from our tools and designed a post that would make a good resource relevant to many industries.

Here’s the section on Education:

To sum things up, we made a resource that is frequently updated, visually easy to understand, and relevant to many industries.

And as a result, our blog post has over 12.3k backlinks from over 847 referring domains.

This includes backlinks from the likes of Time, Glamour, Hubspot, and more.

2. Resource Link Building

One of the most effective—and simple—ways to get backlinks is with resource link building.

Resource pages are curated lists of links (i.e., resources).

There are resource pages for pretty much any topic you can think of.

Like:

Resources for learning SEO
Information for dog trainers
Sites for career planning

Let’s look at the career planning resource from the above list as an example.

Here’s what the resource page looks like. It’s filled with links to other websites that help people plan their careers in different industries:

resource page for architecture and construction

To get your website listed on this page, all you’d need to do is fill out this form:

Voila: with only five minutes of work, you could get a valuable backlink.

You can find more resource page opportunities by looking at which pages already link to your competitors.

Here’s how to do that with the Semrush Backlink Analytics Tool.

First, click on the Backlink Analytics tool in the “Link Building” section of the navigation sidebar.

Enter the competitor’s URL you’d like to review, and click “Analyze.”

Searching for carmax.com in Semrush's Backlink Analyzer

Next, navigate to the “Backlinks” tab on the top navigation bar.

This will give you an overview of what types of backlinks a site is getting as well as a full list of them.

Now, filter the URL column by the word “resource.” This will provide you with a list of pages that link to your competitor and contain the word “resource” in the title or URL:

In other words, it’s a list of resource pages that already link to a site in your industry (your competitor).

Which means there’s a good chance they’ll be willing to link to your site, too.

Review the results to see if there’s a page on your site that would be a good addition to one of these resource pages. Or, if you don’t have a page currently, you can always create one.

Your last step is go through the resource pages and either submit your resource via their forms or contact the site owners directly.

3. Broken Link Building

Broken link building is the process of finding broken links on pages within your niche and reaching out to the webmaster with resources of your own to replace them with.

Here’s an example of what a user may see if they click on a broken link:

Not only is this a poor user experience, but it also makes the site owner look bad.

Broken link building is a relatively low-effort tactic that leads to a win-win situation: the site owner fixes a broken link, and you get a backlink.

Here’s how to find broken links and contact site owners with your replacement:

First, navigate to Backlink Analytics. Input a domain related to your niche and click the “Indexed Pages” tab.

For example, if your business was related to personal finance, you could look at nerdwallet.com.

Indexed Pages report in Backlink Analytics

Next, check the “Broken Pages” box on the top left.

This will show any broken pages on the site.

From here, you can click the hyperlinked numbers under the “Backlinks” column to find out what sites are linking to these broken pages.

Now, look for any broken pages focused on topics that you have existing content for (or could create content about).

The second example on this list was a page about the average credit card debt in a household. It has 1,533 backlinks. Let’s run with it.

Click the number of backlinks (the “1,533” anchor text in this case).

You’ll be taken to a list of all the domains that link to the page that’s 404ing:

Use the filters if need be to sort through your results (e.g., type your desired keyword into the “Filter by title or URL” section at the top right of the above screenshot).

You can check the “Anchor and Target URL” column to find the page URL as well as the anchor text that the sites are using to link to the broken page.

Once you’ve found a few solid opportunities like the one above:

Reach out to the site owners to inform them they are linking to a broken page;
Offer an alternative page on your site that they can link to instead.

To stay organized, track your progress with our Link Building Tool.

4. Unlinked Brand Mentions

It’s possible that your site is mentioned across the web—from online newspapers to product reviews to podcasts.

Ideally, these mentions link to your website. However, that’s not always the case. Hence the phrase “unlinked brand mentions.”

The good part is that people are mentioning you. So you’re halfway there. If the site already mentions your brand, they may be willing to add a link.

You can find these opportunities with our Brand Monitoring Tool.

Start by clicking the “+ Add new project” button.

Next, scroll down and click “Set up”, which is located to the right of the project name.

Next, enter your brand name, including any alternate versions of your brand name (or even common misspellings) to cast as wide a net as possible.

Fill out the rest of the campaign details, then tick the “Send me email report” box at the bottom of the page if you’d like to receive weekly updates:

Once you click “Start Tracking,” you can keep tabs on any brand mentions within the campaign parameters you set.

To specifically find unlinked brand mentions, navigate to the filter that says “Link to website” and select “No link.”

This way, you can find and reach out to the webmasters, journalists, or bloggers who mentioned your brand and ask them to add a link.

To maximize your chances of earning a high-quality link, you need to be able to showcase how the link adds value. In other words, you need to tell them how adding your link will benefit them.

You can use this template as a base for reaching out, which you can do and manage through the Link Building Tool.

Click “Send to Link Building Tool” at the top right of your results.

You’ll be directed to the tool, where you can connect your email and use a template like this one to reach out:

5. Supplier Links

If you sell other people’s products, you could be sitting on an excellent opportunity to earn authoritative backlinks to your site.

Many manufacturers and suppliers have “where to buy” pages on their websites, like this example from a bicycle manufacturer.

Each one of these is a store that sells that specific brand of bike. The supplier is happy to link to these shops from its website because it draws attention to their product (win-win):

This link-building tactic is simple.

First, pull together a list of all of your suppliers.

Then, visit each website to find out which ones have pages linking out to their retailers.

Look for a button or link called something like “retailers” or “dealers”:

Find a page where your site isn’t listed?

Reach out to your contacts at the company and ask how to get your website listed and linked.

6. Business Association Links

If you’re a member of a business association, you may have an easy opportunity to earn a backlink.

Business associations are organizations that bring together businesses, usually in one area (like a local Chamber of Commerce group).

To start, either join a local business association or navigate to the website of the one you’re a part of.

Then look for a “members” page on their site. This page will typically be in the form of a member directory, like this example from the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce:

If you are a member but don’t see yourself listed, reach out and ask how to get added.

Here’s another example from the Downtown Naperville Business Directory for businesses in downtown Naperville, IL. It includes a directory that links to its members:

If you aren’t a member and think that you could benefit from what they offer, go ahead and become one. Then, chase that link.

7. Listicle Link Building

Listicles are articles presented as lists. They can vary depending on your industry and can cover topics like:

Best restaurants in [city]
Top 10
20 ways to do [action]

Here’s how the search results look like for “best vegetarian recipes”—all listicles:

But the key is to find listicles that don’t include your site. Here’s how to find these pages so you can reach out and pitch your business:

If you own a local business, try searching for “things to do in [your city],” “best restaurants in [your city],” etc.

You can also use Google search operators—commands to further specify your search—to identify listicles in your industry that exclude your site.

Use the minus sign (-) to exclude phrases you don’t want to appear in your search. In this case, it would be the name of your business.

Let’s say you own Quartino Ristorante, an Italian restaurant in Chicago.

If you wanted to find listicles that didn’t (yet) include your business, you could search the following on Google: “best restaurants in chicago -quartino ristorante”

None of the results here contain the phrase “Quartino’s Ristorante.”

Take a look at the page one results and make a note of any listicles you’d like to feature your site.

Let’s say we’d like the position one page from Eater Chicago to feature our hypothetical restaurant.

Do some digging to find the best way to reach out to the site owner. In this case, Eater Chicago has a contact page where you can specify why you’re reaching out:

You can also click the social media links in their navigation bar if you think you’d have better luck messaging them there.

Eater Chicago has a pretty large following, so it may not be a foolproof method, but it can be a good chance to reach out in a more personal way.

Not exactly sure how to craft your pitch? Read our guide on email outreach to learn tips on pitching to earn backlinks.

8. Link Gap Analysis

One of the quickest ways to find backlink opportunities is to conduct a link gap analysis.

This allows you to find sites that link to your competitors, but not to you (yet). You’ll have the chance to earn the same quality backlinks that your competitors have—or even edge them out.

If a website has linked out to more than one of your competitors, there is a very good chance that they will also link out to yours.

As long as you can justify why they should do so, of course.

You can use the Backlink Gap tool to make this process much easier.

Start by entering your domain and up to four competitors.

You can enter up to five domains total. Once you enter them, click “Find prospects” and you’ll be able to see the domains (and pages) linking to one or more of your competitors.

Here’s what the main screen will look like:

On the left-hand side, you can see which referring domains link to the domains you chose to review.

To find out exactly which pages are linking to your competitors’ sites, click the arrow symbol next to the number in the competitor’s column:

If you click on this arrow in the realtor.com column, you can see links to the two pages from nj.gov that link to them, the authority score of those pages, and more.

Not every page will be a perfect match since you may find some spammy backlinks. So take the time to visit the pages that provide your competitors with backlinks to see if they are worth pursuing.

Once you find a page that you’d like to link to your site, you can begin outreach straight from the Backlink Gap tool.

Click the “+ Start outreach” button toward the top of the page.

This will open a window that allows you to send prospects directly to the Link Building tool, where you can manage outreach and send emails without leaving Semrush.

Send prospects to Link Building tool pop-up

9. The Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Technique is a link building tactic that follows a proven process:

Find successful content that has earned lots of links
Create better content
Promote that content to those who linked to the original piece

Why does the Skyscraper Technique work?

People are naturally attracted to the best of the best.

So the goal is to become the tallest “skyscraper” in your space. Your content should be so good that people will want to link to it over other options.

To perfect the Skyscraper Technique, create the best piece of content on the web for your chosen topic. Go all-in on things like:

Length
Depth
Visuals

Let’s dive into a few examples that follow the Skyscraper Technique. We’ll start with this comprehensive list of SEO tools from Backlinko:

You’ll have a hard time finding a longer list of SEO tool reviews than this one (hence why it’s so linkable).

It also includes a filterable table of contents so users can find exactly what they want within the list.

While more isn’t necessarily better, it can be if all the content is useful and covers all aspects of the topic.

Here’s another example from Hubspot. It covers 25 “About Us” page examples, templates, and a downloadable guide for users who want even more information.

The page itself provides plenty of examples and visuals, but they go one step further with long-form downloadable content.

Ready to try out the Skyscraper Technique yourself? Start with competitor research.

Your goal is to find popular sites within your niche and find out which of their pages get the most backlinks.

You can use Backlink Analytics to research a competitor within your niche. Let’s use Crate and Barrel as an example.

Head to the “Backlinks” report as seen below.

Crate and Barrel Backlink Analytics results

Scroll down to see where they are getting backlinks, the Authority Scores of those pages, and more.

Specifically, look at:

1. What pages are getting the most links?

2. What do they have in common?

You can also perform this step in Google if you want to start your research by topic.

Search for a topic within your niche that you’d like to pursue. Then, take a look at the pages that rank on page one.

For further details, enter individual pages into Backlink Analytics the same way we did for Crate and Barrel above:

Searching for individual pages in Backlink Analytics

Be sure to research more than just traffic and backlinks. Editorially review the pages to take note of content, graphics, etc. that you can make even better on your own page.

Once you’ve gathered enough information, create your own piece to compete with the pages you found in your research.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t simply take a piece that’s performing well and reword/add more images—that probably won’t work very well. Add your own spin to the topic via the angle, structure, visuals, etc.

While writing (or updating) a page using the Skyscraper Technique, your goal should be to make your page:

More comprehensive
More up-to-date
Better designed
Better organized

Now that you’ve updated your page, look for prospects who may be interested in linking to it.

The key is to reach out to people who already link to similar content. You’ll offer them a better, more comprehensive option to link to.

To find people to reach out to, head back to Backlink Analytics and plug in a page you want to compete with.

Navigate to the Backlinks report again and see what pages link to the competition.

Backlink for "make a fruit fly trap" page

As highlighted above, you can see exactly what pages link to your competitor’s page and what anchor text is used.

Repeat this step until you have a list of potential link building prospects. This is an ongoing process, though, so you can always go back and add more.

Here’s a template you can use when you reach out:

Keep in mind that the idea is quality over quantity here. So while you may only end up getting 10 or 15 links, this can actually make a huge impact if they are from relevant, authoritative sites.

Ideally, if you’ve put in the work and have created a solid page, it should be a no-brainer for others to link to your page.

10. Help a Reporter Out

If you’ve never come across HARO before, you’re missing out on some great opportunities to earn links from the press.

HARO, or Help a Reporter Out, connects journalists with sources. If a journalist chooses to use your content as a source, they may also give you a backlink.

Here’s how it works:

After signing up, you’ll receive emails three times each business day.

They will look something like this example from zestard.com:

In this case, the journalist is searching for tips on making a home look more elegant. They include requirements so sources know exactly what to send.

You can choose which industries to subscribe to as well. So if you signed up to get queries within the interior design industry, then you would have received this tip.

Visit the live page from Best Life Online and you’ll find a variety of tips with quotes attributed to various sources. A.k.a: backlinks.

The best part about this tactic is that you don’t need to do much legwork if you set up your HARO account correctly.

Respond to relevant emails with a link and any additional information from the journalist’s request.

Journalists across all industries need quotes and sources to back up their articles. In order to cite a source properly, they’ll need to call out where they got specific information.

So if you see a request that is relevant to what you do, go ahead and respond to it and you could become a source for an article (in other words, earn a backlink).

Be as comprehensive as possible and only reply to topics and requests that you are indeed an expert on.

You won’t be successful with every pitch, but choose your responses carefully, and it can be a great way to authoritative links.

11. Provide Testimonials

Customers often rely on testimonials and reviews to make purchasing decisions.

But did you know you can also leverage testimonials to earn backlinks?

Here’s how it works:

Write a blog post that highlights products or services you love. Then, notify the owners of the sites you mention.

They may link to your content or share it on social media.

Or, if a site has a space for users to leave reviews, that’s an easy and less time-consuming way to get started.

Here’s an example of Hubspot’s testimonials page. If you click the “learn more” buttons, you’ll be directed to the sites that gave Hubspot an award or shoutout:

Semrush also has a Success Stories page where companies can email their testimonials:

We’ve posted success stories for a wide range of Semrush users and link back to their sites from this page:

This process is a win-win: sites can send us their stories and receive a backlink if we feature them, and we can highlight some of the ways Semrush has helped businesses succeed.

Here’s how you can get started:

Begin by writing a testimonial or case study on your site that shouts out a tool/service/etc. (Of course, make sure it’s relevant to your industry and a tool you actually use.)

For example, we wrote a blog on some of our favorite free and paid SEO tools. We included over 50 tools we use and love and added a link to each of them.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t create useless content in an attempt to get links. You’ll want to make sure that your content is valuable to your readers.

However, “free seo tools” has a search volume of 3,600.

results for "free SEO tools" in Keyword Magic Tool

So in this case, we chose a keyword people in our industry were interested in. Then took the opportunity to provide some testimonials for tools we use and love.

As of writing, this page has a total of 5.1k backlinks from 421 referring domains.

After sharing an accompanying infographic on LinkedIn, we got over 2.7k reactions and 391 shares:

If you write a thorough, informative piece that also highlights tools you use and love, it can be mutually beneficial. The owners of the tools you mention may share, and it might resonate with others within your community or niche.

Final Thoughts

The right tactics for your link building strategy will depend on many factors, including how competitive your industry is and how authoritative your site is.

While there are many ways to build links, it’s a good idea to start by creating high-quality content. From there, you can start pitching specific pages and trying out different approaches.

Not every attempt will earn you a backlink, but it only takes a few quality links to make an impact.

Good luck and happy link building!

Reference links to read:

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Hoe to Increase Google Ranking – Article Content

How Long Does It Take To Increase Google Ranking?

How To Increase Google Ranking

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YGOASO Article List

25+ Ways to Drive Traffic to Website

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8 Ingredients to a Traffic-Generating, Rank Boosting SEO Strategy

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