How to Increase Backlinks With an Effective Content Strategy?

posted on February 8, 2022

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Backlinks are, arguably, the best methods to increase organic traffic to your website. Their main purpose is to ensure Google that your website is top quality and that, in turn, will help Google recognize this aspect and rank you higher in its search engine.

Backlinks are mostly created by guest posting articles, blogs on other websites and adding certain links that lead to your own site or by other websites referencing your site. This strategy is sure to give your website that edge over your competitors and other websites while also helping you garner more viewership.

With all that said, here are the six most effective ways to increase backlinks and implement the best of content strategies in the process. Remember, like any escape room out there; a good strategy is absolutely necessary when wanting to solve clues towards efficient content marketing.

1. The Right Keywords and Pages

Look at it this way: if you want to land your content on a site, you will have to write unique, high-quality blogs or articles so that pages pick up on your hard work. To be effective in doing so, you will first have to figure out what content you want to be writing about; based on that, note down the relevant keywords to use by placing them strategically and adequately. And lastly, make sure you are targeting certain genres of pages so that you have an idea of where your backlinks are.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

A good way to start if you are new is to do thorough keyword research before adding them to your content. Make sure you go for moderately competitive keywords that can rank you just high enough. Also ensure to not cram keywords into places wherever strategic placements are key.

2. Add Meta Title and Meta Description

After the relevant keywords are placed perfectly, the next step would be to boost your visibility on the search engine of Google. The best way to do that – instead of just adding a URL link at the end of your content – would be to include strong keywords, maybe in titles or meta descriptions of your content.

This will allow Google to find your content easily, and based on its quality, it will surely consider ranking the content higher even if not many people are clicking your URL link just yet. So, either way you look at it, you are winning at the end of the day. The recommended number of backlinks per write-up is around two. Make sure to switch up the anchor text keywords across your articles or blogs.

3. Stats and Monitoring

Now you are officially done with the hard part. What is now left for you to do is quietly track how your content is being received by viewers. Certain site analytic tools will allow you to keep track of which backlinks are effectively driving traffic and which ones are not.

And with that sort of information, you then get to learn and understand just what exactly the people are looking for and can base your future content in or around similar topics or keywords.

4. Guest Posts

As mentioned earlier, guest posting is also a very effective method of boosting backlinks to your site. If your company has some high-quality writers, you can assign them guest post articles that will be published on other pages but will contain links back to the mother site.

This strategy is especially effective if you want to tap into a whole new audience with different tastes and preferences. Let us assume that you know of a blog site that has certain work that people just adore, and the topics are pretty similar. One possibility is to reach out to them and ask them if they would like to include certain articles that your writers have conjured to use on their page. Said articles then obviously will include links that lead back to your website.

5. Social Media

Why are not more people using the power and influence of social media to their advantage? It is obvious that most people who have an online device are surely on some kind of social media.

A very effective backlinking strategy would be to come up with creative posts on your social media platforms with the help of your social media team and create backlinks that lead back to your website.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

The advantages of doing this are so immaculate. For starters, if you get a social media engagement going, you do not have to ask anyone to post content on your social media; you are basically the boss. And the cherry on top, you get effective backlinks that help you with external traffic.

6. Consistency

But on a serious note, ever since Google has started to take user-intent into consideration while ranking sites, it is extremely important that you do not slack off after creating some good content for a few months or so.

Google will recognize the downfall and will punish you with lower rankings in the end. The best way to maintain these standards for users is to provide gaps between content posting to, let’s say, one write-up a week.

Conclusion

There you have it! These are some of the most effective ways to backlink your content. If you use this content strategy and stay consistent with the standards set by Google, you will not have much of a problem with traffic.

Yes, it is harder to maintain standards than to hit them. That is how the majority of things in life work because as soon as you start to provide content of the highest quality, your expectations and standards are automatically raised. You just have to maintain it, and you will be just fine.

The post How to Increase Backlinks With an Effective Content Strategy? appeared first on SiteProNews.

How to Screen Guest Post Submissions for Your Blog

posted on December 15, 2021

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Guest posting or guest blogging is one of the most effective off-site SEO strategies. Publishing content to another site can bring more attention to your website, company, and products. You essentially get some promotion from a high-traffic website with thousands of regular readers. Getting backlinks from reputable sites also boosts your domain authority, a crucial ranking factor for search engines.

That said, what’s in it for the host? Should you allow guest posts on your blog?

How Does Guest Blogging Benefit the Host Site?

The common practice of guest blogging is a system of equivalent exchange: You submit high-quality and original content to another site, and you get a backlink in return.

The one who submits content gets a quality backlink and exposure to the host site’s audience, while the host site gets fresh and original content.

Allowing guest posts can have other advantages, such as:

  • It’s an opportunity to publish content from other industry and niche experts.
  • You can provide your audience with a different perspective.
  • You can build a relationship with other reputable sites and companies.
  • You reduce the content you have to create for your blog.

In some cases, bloggers open for guest post submissions when they encounter changes that can potentially affect their writing schedules, like a company expansion, a rebrand, or traveling.

Why Do You Need to Screen Submissions?

If you’ve pitched a few ideas and manuscripts before, you might notice that some sites are quite strict with their submissions.

That’s because host sites also stand to lose and gain something from the exchange.

In most cases, allowing guest posts will get you a lot of submissions. Since it’s a well-known SEO strategy, people are always looking for sites willing to host content and give them backlinks. However, not all of those submissions will be high-quality, original, or relevant to your blog’s theme or content. Additionally, not every author is going to be qualified.

Remember, content and backlink quality are SEO ranking factors. This means hosts can’t publish low-quality content and link to low-quality sites. So you can’t just accept every submission that comes through.

This means you need to look out for two crucial things:

1. Submission Quality

The guest post itself should be high-quality. It needs to be relevant, original, well-written, and proofread. It needs to be free of rookie errors like spelling mistakes and bad grammar.

2. Backlink Quality

Since you’re getting content, you need to give backlinks in return. However, you don’t want to link to low-quality sites. Watch out for spam, duplicates, and plagiarized content.

3 Ways to Screen Your Guest Post Submissions

When it comes to submissions, you must have a system to check the content, the author, and their website.

Here are some tips to help you create a streamlined and effective screening process:

1. Have A Clear Guest Post Guideline

Screening guest posts can be a lot of work, but it’s only the first step to publishing guest posts. You still need to review, edit, and reformat them before they go live on your blog. However, restricting possible irrelevant content from the start should help reduce the emails and submissions you have to go through.

Since guest posts are a viable marketing tool, a lot of people are eager to get their manuscripts published. However, you don’t want to get gardening and maintenance articles clogging your emails if you’re running a digital marketing blog.

So, be clear about what you want from guest blogs and make sure they’re accessible through your website.

Here are a few crucial things you need to include in your guidelines:

  • Allowable topics, themes, and content
  • Minimum and maximum word count
  • Acceptable document files (i.e., .docx, HTML, etc.)
  • Desired writing styles (i.e., the tone, formatting, and delivery of your ideal submission)
  • Details you want to be included in the pitch (i.e., author details, links, previous work, etc.)
  • Submission instructions (i.e., links to forms, emails, attachments, etc.)

In short, be very detailed about what you want from the submissions. For example, if you need author headshots, brief bios, links, attached images, or other specific details, make sure to include them all in your guidelines.

If you’re getting a large volume of submissions, you can also include your estimated turnaround time. Some guidelines are even frank enough to say they’ll ignore and won’t reply to pitches they don’t like.

2. Ask for Title and Outline Pitches

Manuscripts can range from 500-3000 words. They not only take so much time for authors to write, but it’s a lot for you (or your editors) to read through.

One way to make it easy for both parties is to only allow title and outline pitches. This will enable you to look at the crucial parts of the pitch without going through the entire 1000-word manuscript. In most cases, the title and summary are enough to give you an idea of what the content will be.

Of course, don’t forget to look at the author’s website and do some research on their past writing ventures. An applicant or author’s credentials can hint at the quality of writing to expect. Fortunately, most authors will try to layout their qualifications, as they’re trying to convince you that they’re a reputable source who will deliver a great guest post.

Finally, make sure you set deadlines. Asking for titles and outline submissions means that the applicant doesn’t have to write anything until you’ve approved their pitches. Setting reasonable deadlines makes sure your publishing schedule is unimpeded.

3. Use Online Forms

Some hosts prefer that submissions are directly emailed to their editors. However, using forms can make it easier to sort data that are being submitted.

You can ask people to submit the title, summary, and outline along with an attached manuscript. Then, you and your editors can just look through the titles and weed out irrelevant content. On the other hand, if a title or summary sounds fantastic, you can immediately open the attachment and review the manuscript.

Additionally, you can also ask authors to fill in information about themselves. Ask for their names, website, a brief summary of their qualifications, as well as links to previously-published content. This will allow you to see whether it’s worth linking to their websites.

If their company or products are associated with thin content, plagiarism, link farms, or spam, it’s best to steer clear of them.

Bottom-Line

Like most SEO experts would tell you, your content should always prioritize “quality over quantity.” So even if you’re not getting as many submissions as popular sites, you still need to make sure your guest posts benefit your website’s SEO.

Otherwise, you’ll end up publishing spam and low-quality content, which can start to affect your rankings.

The post How to Screen Guest Post Submissions for Your Blog appeared first on SiteProNews.

7 Essential SEO Tips for Beginners to Boost Traffic

posted on November 29, 2021

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Even if you’re not in a technical position, you’ve likely heard of search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization is a powerful tool that drives business in all industries, no matter if you own a small business or are a Fortune 500 executive. You can optimize your pages to appear higher in search engine results by producing high-quality content.

Your website’s rank for the correct search queries will determine how much traffic you can drive to it. After all, many internet users — a whopping 75% — tend not to look past the first page of search results. SEO is a must-have part of any digital marketing strategy to grow your company. With so many people using the internet to search for what they need, it’s impossible to ignore SEO.

In our recent State of Content Marketing Report, 67% of content marketing professionals surveyed indicated that improving SEO performance is a top priority for their company. Another 73% stated that they use their SEO skills and tools frequently to improve content marketing results. To remain competitive, it is important to learn how to improve your search engine rankings.

Do you feel lost? Continue reading to learn SEO tips and search engine optimization strategies that even novices can use in their work. These non-technical SEO tips will help you see quick results.

1. Create Content Around Primary and Secondary Keywords

Keyword research is the heart of any SEO strategy. Keyword research is the key to creating great content. Searchers will find your site by knowing how to use both primary and second keywords.

Your landing page should have your primary keyword as its main focus. The page should contain a strong description and possibly connect to your brand. These keywords should be the main focus of your content.

Secondary keywords are words that support the primary keyword and can be included in your content in a natural way to improve your search ranking.

Start your keyword research by identifying long-tail keywords that are relevant to your audience. Say you run a DIY home improvement blog. Using our Keyword Overview Tool, you can start by searching for “DIY home improvement” as your target keyword and then expand to include more keywords from there. You’ll see the search volume and difficulty of ranking for your primary keyword in your area, along with related terms that you might be interested in.

2. Use Short, Descriptive URLs

There are also some not-too-technical ways you can optimize your SEO efforts when it comes to on-page SEO. For those just beginning in SEO, it is easy to improve your SEO rankings by structuring your URLs.

A URL that is effective should:

  • Use keywords: Your URL should contain one or more keywords that you are targeting.
  • Be easy to understand It should be easy to read and cater to the human eye.
  • Be concise Using shorter URLs is preferable. Keep them under 60 characters. Search engines won’t accept URLs longer than 60 characters, which could cause you to be pushed further down the results pages.

3. High Authority Websites Have High Quality Backlinks

Link building is an important component of any SEO strategy. It’s also relatively simple to begin. Backlinks are an important ranking factor. They come in two types: nofollow and follow, with the latter having more ranking weight.

Backlinking refers to the linking of other websites to your website as a source for information. These links are a sign to search engines that you are an authority on a topic and should be pulled up in the rankings. Higher rankings in online searches will be achieved if your website has more quality links.

Bloggers, journalists, and other companies will recognize you as an expert in your field, and may link to your content. However, this doesn’t always happen instantly. You may have to do some research before you start.

You have many options to create links to your site. Here are some strategies to consider:

  • If you have something to share or an interesting infographic, consider writing a guest blog post for other outlets.
  • Reach out to publishers for any data or research you have done to support your site content.
  • Look for directories and listings in your industry and get your company listed. It may mean joining professional associations, networking groups or business organizations. However, it increases your credibility.

How do you determine where to get backlinks? Use our Backlink Gap Tool to compare the backlinks for your site with four competing URLs. This will allow you to compare which websites link to your site more than your competitor, and vice versa. To help you target high authority sites with your initial link building efforts, you can organize the list by authority score.

4. Try to Rank for Featured Snippets

Google’s Featured Snippets are a highly desired spot that digital marketers want to reach when it comes search engine result pages (SERPs). Featured Snippets are at the top of Google search results, and they have a high chance of attracting lots of organic traffic. Optimizing your content is key to achieving this position.

First, decide what content you would like to be a featured snippet. Choose something that will make internet users click on the link. You should also carefully examine the keywords in Featured Snippets. Studies show that a piece of content that asks a question is more likely to have a Featured Snippet.

5. Format Your Content for Search Engines

While the words you choose are important, how you present your content is equally important. You want your content to be clear, concise, understandable, and easy to read. However, search engines will also require that you adapt your formatting. To improve your organic search ranking, you will want to use headings and subheadings in your content.

It is important to know how to organize your paragraphs and sentences. A sentence should not exceed 20 words. You shouldn’t have more than 20 words per sentence, but you don’t want your paragraphs to be too long either.

6. Do Not Forget Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Keywords have a significant impact on the content you create, but did you also know that they should be included in page titles as well as meta descriptions? These two elements are basic HTML components that can help you optimize your page and pack a punch. They’re also easy to edit for beginners.

Most platforms offer an easy way for you to modify your page title or meta description. WordPress offers two boxes, “SEO title” or “meta description”, that can be edited.

These items will show up in search results. These short sections could be enough to convince an internet user to click on your site. This is a lot of power in so few words. Make sure your words are powerful.

7. Take Out Anything That Loads Slowly

Did you know that page load times can impact your SEO? Higher bounce rates are common for pages that take longer to load. 

Google PageSpeed Insights is a free SEO tool to check the speed of your site. You can add your URL to get a range from zero to 100 with 100 being fastest. You can also compare the speed of your mobile website to your desktop site.

Do yourself a favor. Take a look at your website. Do you have any plugins or elements that slow down your website’s load times? You’ll see an increase in traffic if you remove or restructure them.

The post 7 Essential SEO Tips for Beginners to Boost Traffic appeared first on SiteProNews.