I mentioned my Complete List of link building strategies earlier. But if you’re up to the challenge, this article will show you how to get started with original research content. The bad news is that creating this type of data-driven content can be really tricky. That way, your content will stand out from the other step-by-step guides already out there.
Because this guide was one of the first of its kind, hundreds of bloggers in the Paleo space linked to it and shared it on social media. That’s why I also created a thorough guide to link building.
But if you do decide to optimize old URLs, make sure to 301 redirect the old pages to the new URLs. And if this new structure results in multiple pages with similar content, implement canonical URLs. But I usually recommend that people leave their URLs in place… even if their not ideal. Instead, just focus on creating SEO-friendly URLs for future pages that you publish. Bing has their own version of this tool called Bing Webmaster Tools). And in general, it’s exactly what someone searching for “SEO audit” would want to read.
Thanks to my Complete List, you now have one stop shopping for all things link building. Now I’d like to share a few examples of the type of high-quality content that’s working really well in 2020. For your content to stand out in 2020, it needs to be exceptional. Otherwise, it’s going to get buried by the millions of posts that come out every single day. So someone searching for a Product Keyword like “revenue forecasting software” would get a lot of value from this page… even though the main goal of the page is to get you to sign up for a trial. In many ways, even though this isn’t a blog post or article, it’s still high-quality content. As you can see, the well-designed page and outlines key product features.
If you want to dive deeper into link authority metrics, I recommend this video from Moz. With that, here’s a quick primer on off page seo all things link building. In fact, Stone Temple Consulting has been analyzing the same set of search results since 2016.
But the reason I recommend starting here is the fact that Skyscraper content is relatively straightforward to create and promote. With that, let’s cover a few white hat link building strategies that I use and recommend. In other words, did someone link to your site because they thought it was worth linking to? No matter how you slice it, directly paying someone for a link is always against Google’s guidelines. Even though “web design” isn’t exactly the same things as “SEO”, it’s still related. For example, I recently got linked to from this website about web design. To to Google, this is a link from a super relevant website.
With that, here are more details on how to create -friendly content. All you need to do it enter a product keyword or informational keyword into it. I recommend typing keyword ideas into Google and jotting down any suggestions that come up. Here’s where you drill down into the exact words and phrases that customers type into the search box. This nifty free tool helps you create a customer persona, step-by-step. At the end of the process you’ll have a detailed avatar that you can refer to again and again.
And if you run a site with lots of images, image SEO is SUPER important. Otherwise, Google will have a hard time understanding what’s on your page. But I also include lots of variations of my keyword… along with what are known as “LSI Keywords”.
Backlinks from guest posts should make up around 5% of your link profile. Anything more than that can get you into hot water with Google. That’s because guest blogging can easily go from a legitimate way to get traffic and exposure to a black hat approach. Guest posting as a link building strategy is extremely controversial.
One thing to note is that you don’t want to go overboard and use your keyword 100x on every page. That’s a black hat SEO strategy called “keyword stuffing”, which can get your site penalized. Because people use your description to figure out whether or not to click on your result.
Well, when it comes to on-page optimization, your title tag is the most important part of your page. That’s why it’s important to use your target keyword on your page… without going overboard. If you’re ready to get started, I recommend reading this list of visual content ideas and examples. Of course, infographics aren’t the only way to create visual content. You even have combinations of different types of visual content, like “Instructographics”.
The goal of link building is to get other websites to mention your website. That way, you can see if the traffic that’s coming in from SEO is actually converting into leads and sales. If not, you can use the “Mobile-Friendly Test” tool from Google. Mobile optimization has gone from “nice to have” to “an absolute must”. Google gives a slight edge in the search results for websites that are secure with HTTPS. In fact, they just launched an updated version of their PageSpeed Insights tool.