Among the over 200 Google ranking signals, quality and trusted
incoming links are the firepower that
incredibly increase search engines ranking; with domain-level link
authority and page-level link features sharing 40% of total ranking
factors between them.
The more relevant, quality, trusted and authoritative links pointing
back to your webpages, the more your chances of ranking high in search
engines results pages increases, right?
Well, that’s true and it is a fact that has being proven, established and accepted in the SEOs arena.
But sometimes, you’re not just getting the expected reward for your
ongoing link building efforts, you’re sure of putting in your all and
just about everything you’ve read on effective link building strategies
for seo purposes – you’ve tried and tested everything.
Image Credit by Cybernaira
You’ve done almost everything accordingly, the links are live on your
link partners websites pointing back to your individual webpages – but
your ranking didn’t move up an inch, why?
Well, that’s what we’re together on this page to find out, and see
how you can go about fixing things up, and hopefully your ranking will
start moving up the search results page.
First, you’ll need to do a bit of work here to see if you’ve being
guilty of some of the listed points below, you can then follow the
suggestions to see how your search ranking will improve overtime.
#1. You’re not Getting the Right Links
What are the right links, I guess you are asking?
There are a wide range of scenarios that determine the
effectiveness of a link pointing to a page at any given time, here I discuss five:
Low Root Domain/Page Authority
Five or six years ago, this could mean different thing, and can really shoot a page right the roof top…but not anymore.
Getting links from low root domain may in today’s competitive online
marketing place, and the struggles to hit #1 on Google SERP for high
competitive queries will do little to nothing in regards to helping a
page moving up an inch in search ranking.
Links from low root domain authority won’t yield better result
especially if you’re trying to rank for high competitive search queries.
This links may come from relevant pages, but their domain or page
authority doesn’t have the firepower to move another external page up in
search ranking.
How do you Discover High Authority Domain/Pages?
I use two simple tools to quickly analyze the important metrics of a domain/page either on search result page or current browser tab page url.
SEOQuake and Mozbar are two of my favorites Google Chrome extensions SEO tools.
With the help of these tools, you quickly get important data you need
to evaluate a page metrics and see if they worth adding more values to
your pages. Mozbar let you quickly analyze Page and Domain authority,
current page analysis, followed, nofollow, Internal and external links
on a page – you get more page analysis with Moz pro subscription.
SEOQuake do lots more. From Alexa traffic rank to whois data, # of
index pages – you get a wider range of quality info of a page instantly.
With these two set of SEO tools, It is now possible to channel your
link building efforts to where it will bring you the best returns in the
shortest possible time.
– Relevancy
Though in some rare cases, the absence of this might make a different
in ranking, but to get the best out of your link building strategies,
it will do more good if your links are coming from pages that are on
same topic or sub-topic as yours.
Lets assume you write on WordPress Plugins, and you get linked to from a page that talked about “
breast cancer cure“, I don’t know how links from such page will benefit you for anything.
Even if such page has a very high page and domain authority, Google may choose to discount it for so many obvious reasons.
– Getting Links from Same Domain
Diversifying your link building profile is one of the most important
link building strategies to master after post-Google algorithm updates
that have changed the SEO game.
Gone are the era where gazillion links from a few root domain can make the BIG different in search engine ranking; now “
more is not better“, is now all about the quality of links even if they’re just a few hundreds from different root domain.
Start getting links from different domain and page authority sites
asides from the ones you already had, take your link building campaign
further – reach out to other webmasters, create new
connections, establish new relationship, market your content to wider
relevant audience.
From this activities, and if done correctly you may get fresh links
from new domains that will add to your link building profile.
– Location On a Page
If your links are placed on the sidebars, footer links, etc……Google again may choose to discount it.
This is not like getting links within the main content on a page, and
I don’t think there would ever be a time that links in these places
will hold same value as links in the main content.
In Google’s eye, links placed in such places as footer and sidebars
of a page are good as promotional links, or for showing stuffs out and
not editorial links.
Get your links placed in the main content of a page. Though this is
harder to achieve, because you have no control over what goes on other
people’s blog.
Here are few strategies to get your links in the main body content:
- Do Guest Post. After the Google crack down on blog
network such as MyBlogGuest, adding links in the body of a guest post
became a forbidden thing. But don’t worry, you can still get a link in
your guest article if you offer great value, sincerity and the link is
highly relevant, necessary and best for educational purpose. If this is
just “a” link in the article pointing to your site, most blog owners
won’t worry much over it, but if you populate your guest post with
external links, that’s a red flag.
- Use Link Roundup Sites. Link round-up sites are
very good ways to get what looks like an editorial links, because the
webmasters ask for it. Find sites that publish link round-up articles in
your niche, submit your recent best work for inclusion in their link
roundup post. If your entry is highly informative and useful, it will
get published and a link back to your site is guarantee, though it may
not be a followed link.
- Use My Blog U. My blog U is a community of content
marketers that relate together on different topics and engagements. Here
you will get the advantage of being interview, share your expertise and
get cited in the publication. It’s an easy way to get links to your
sites. Though, there are lots of low-level domain authority sites over
there, but it is a way good way to get started.
- Contribute to expert opinion post. Though you can’t
make this happen on your own, your participation in an expert opinion
posts will come mostly from the level of expertise you’ve successfully
demonstrated over the years. Start building your expert portfolio today,
and sooner, people will start knocking on your door for opinions on
industry related issues to be published on their blog with a link back
to your domain.
– Credibility
Trustworthiness of links is one very important signal Google looks
into before deciding either to count a link as a vote for your webpage
or not to count it.
If your incoming links are from questionable sites, it may hurt your site search ranking instead of helping it improve ranking.
Verify that your link partners are not involved in any kind of shady
SEO tactics that may results into penalizing external sites they’ve also
linked to. The dent this kind of problem leaves on your part maybe so
severe that may result in you starting a new blog all over or takes
months to recover from the consequences of Google hammer.
2. Searchers Intent
Sometimes, you’ve just written and publish what
you believe to be an epic content.
This content you expect to rank top on Google page one result, with
all the leg work of manual link building you’ve get to it; but remember –
an epic content is said to be useful if only the consumer of such
information find it valuable and it solved her problem(s), otherwise
it’s useless.
What happen next?
Zilch.
It remains on Google search result page two or even three for its focus keyword.
The problem sometimes is what Google in their own discretion believe
to be the searchers intent – what the searcher really wants to get from
typing into search box such words.
It doesn’t matter to Google what you think of your page, if Google
believes that the user want more than what your content talked about,
then it will not be shown to that user but another more in-depth article
that touched on every points concerning that topic.
This is why sometimes; you will see some old pages outranking some
fresh ones in SERP for same keyword. Google interpret searcher intent,
based on different search queries and combination of words.
If you’re looking for a strategy that walks you through on how to
cover a topic in full without going off track, take advantage of
“topical targeting”.
Let’s assume your choosing keyword is “what is SEO”?
Technically, once you’ve define what SEO means in search marketing
terms, you’ve answer the question and could decide to wrap up the
article there. But such approach to writing content will only leave your
search traffic to chance.
Go further on the topic, go fully on topical targeting by including
in your information sub-topic on what is SEO like “how to do effective
search engine optimization”, “what is on-page and off page seo”, “How to
go about on-page and off-page seo to maximize your chances of hitting
top ranking” etc…
Now you’re writing something that will ended up look like “an
ultimate guide to xxx”, and no more a sub-topic or branch of that
industry topic.
Sure, a user who type into search box “what is SEO” doesn’t know a
bit of the term and is definitely seeking for information that will
explain all about the concept of “search engine optimization”.
Give him a complete dish full of meat and potatoes. He will sure
thank you, and the search engines spiders will be happy that you didn’t
make their work harder by looking for another search result to present
anyone asking same question.
3. Click-Through Rate – CTR.
Well, you might have heard this before, but didn’t pay attention to
its importance – is that time you take it seriously to ensure that users
don’t bounce off too quickly from your site. A higher bounce rate could
possibly tell Google that users are not satisfy with your website
content.
And a lower bounce rate could possibly tell Google that your content
perfectly answer users search queries, this could results into Google
rewarding you with better search ranking for such phrase.
There are lots of reasons users could quickly leave your page within a second of stopping by.
- Your content doesn’t meet with his/her expectation, because it is poorly written and badly formatted.
- Your content doesn’t answer her question within the first few paragraphs, because you’re just rambling all over the places.
- Your website design doesn’t appeal to her.
- Too many clusters and distraction on the content area itself –
Adsense ads, affiliate banners embed at every junction within that
article.
- Slow page speed.
- Your mobile visitors are finding it difficult to access your site.
- Bad navigation menu.
Take a look at your website and analyze what could be wrong, if you
can’t do this yourself, get a professional that can look into things and
tell you what to fix and what to remove.
However, if you can spend a little cash on SEO tools, there are
quality once out there that makes things easier. SEO PowerSuite from
Link-Assistant is a complete sets of search engine optimization tools
that will drastically improve the seo quality of your website if done
right.
Google built is search engine with the goal to provide users with the
best possible answers to their search queries. So, build your blog for
users.
Conclusion
Before going ahead on your link building campaign, make sure you know
and understand what your goals are, and that your blog is well optimize
to support the links you’re going after.
This will lead you to the right path and help you identify potential
effective link building opportunities lying around the corner that will
accelerate your progress level.
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