Strategy

B2B Link Building Strategies

What do you do when you don't have many outreach prospects on your lists?

Either you reach out again to your same link building targets or find new ways to collect more to your list.

This is one of the challenges when you're doing b2b link building campaigns. 

Not enough outreach markets. Niche is too boring. Topics are only limited.

In this blog post, we will talk about b2b link building and how you can brainstorm content topics that get links.

With enough content planning, smart link prospecting, and an effective outreach campaign, you can formulate a plan that works for your industry.

Here are four tips to address those challenges I've covered earlier.

 

B2B Link Building Strategies

1. Vary content creation approaches

Test out options on your content marketing campaign.

One, in particular, is to go with broad topics instead of just niche blog post ideas.

It's easy to get frustrated with the low amount of topics you can brainstorm when you only focus on your niche.

So figure out how to mix your blog targeting with broad topics by looking at categories and interest groups that you can tap onto with your content.

Secondly, you also want to be looking at the content format you can try and test in your blog.

One good example is how Mattermak, a data platform for venture capital companies, does with their Raise the Bar content.

 

They basically compile a "daily digest" of timely posts on sales, marketing, and growth engineering.

Not only do they grow broad on topics, but find a way to make it worthwhile their time to produce content with fewer resources.

Surveys, year-end reports, swipe files, and resource guides are some content assets you can vary for your content.

Two good examples of this are MYOB  and Deloitte.

MYOB features end-of-financial-year resources as they recognize that many businesses are figuring out accounting and financial decisions as they grow. Doing so helps them to position themselves as a go-to-resource brand for businesses navigating in each stage of progress.

 

Deloitte conducts annual and timely surveys for millennials and Gen Zs. During this pandemic, they launched their research revealing "resilient generations," which showcases how those two generations (millennials and Gen Zs) express resolve and thrive for their better future.

 

These are all big brands and you may be wondering if you could actually do the same for your B2B site.

You may not have a big budget, but you can get inspiration from these companies to identify what works for you based on your context and industry.

2. Expand into multiple outreach markets

Not only you should be looking for ways to vary your content strategies, but you can also penetrate multiple outreach markets.

The advantage of doing so is that you create consistent relevant content that yields more brand awareness, as you get to increase eyeballs for your site from every potential linkable market possible.

There are two ways to do this:

1. Match your content with any linkable audience.
2. Find shareable audiences to promote your content.

The first approach must be planned ahead of content promotion.

In the content writing process, there must align the topic to a particular linkable audience you choose.

 

Given that these linkable audiences are more receptive to linking than other outreach markets, you can guarantee links when you promote your content asset.

You can start this off by checking what your competitors are doing. List down all outreach markets they have targeted with their content. You will end up finding more markets that are not included in the graphics above.

 

Then choose among these audiences that make sense to target with your web assets.

The second approach is geared towards people who are open to sharing visuals, assets, and guides rather than just externally linking to your page.

These are bloggers and publishers in your space with past history of sharing assets with their audience. As simple as having a Google search to figure that out is a plus if you want to know how keen they are to respond to sharing-content outreach pitches.

3. Use template pages as link assets for SaaS brands

If you're into SaaS B2B sites, you want to maximize your landing pages that have the potential to get quality links.

Now, it's not that easy to promote a landing page (i.e. template page) and acquire links instantly. No one would give a link to a sales page.

So you must change the template page, targeting, and how you approach your outreach campaign.

Here are some insights you can discover from it:

• Learn from other template-specific sites and model it to your brand
• Add citable elements to your SaaS template page (to add a linkable value proposition to your copy).
• Leverage resource page opportunities
• Build landing page links with brand mention outreach
• Tap off-site brand content like blogs

4. Maximize passive-link-earning content pieces

Passive link building works.

However, there must be an upfront investment of resources to put the content out there and dominate rankings until other content creators see and reference the page from their content works.

Find referential keywords that you can target with content. These include "questions" people ask when looking for something and are likely to be cited by other content creators.

You can also start looking for "research" or "data" keyword-driven opportunities, which publishers normally link to add credibility to their writing.

 

Leverage manual outreach opportunities to promote these referential pages to gain traction and links to have the ability to rank for their target keywords.

Once it ranks, it allows your pages to build the pipeline of organic links over time.

Replicate the same strategy to your other content assets and benefit from passive links.

Mix that with active link building outreach to get some momentum with your link building.

 

Land and Expand

Start small by looking at opportunities in your hand. Leverage what works already to land on a few links. Then get the ball rolling by tapping other outreach markets or content formats that can work for your brand.

 

B2B Link Building Strategies Frequently Asked Questions

What is B2B link?

B2B link refers to business-to-business integration, enabling organizations to automate processes and communication with customers, suppliers, and partners for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness. Automating key business processes, B2B integration facilitates seamless collaboration and trade.

How do I get B2B backlinks?

To obtain B2B backlinks, implement effective tactics like creating high-quality content that provides value to other businesses, reaching out to relevant industry websites for guest posting opportunities, and leveraging your existing business connections for link building. Additionally, consider participating in industry events and conferences to network and gain exposure in your target B2B market.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

Knowledge Graph Optimization For SEO - SharpRocket

You, too, have done it - you've probably searched your brand name or the product you sell to see what comes up on the first page of Google. There will be results from your website, but there is also something else - a box with information about your brand or product.

 

So if you've seen it, you've experienced the power of the Knowledge Graph.

 

What is a knowledge graph SEO?

A knowledge graph in SEO refers to Google's vast database that enhances its understanding of search queries and enables it to offer direct answers in search results. The knowledge panel is the primary way information from the knowledge graph appears, providing key takeaways and insights to users.

Source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-knowledge-graph/

The Knowledge Graph is the box of information that appears on the right-hand side of the screen when you perform a Google search of your brand. It includes things like:

• Brand name
• Logo
• Founded date
• Phone number(s)
• Founders
• Address
• Team Management
• Social media profiles
• What people also search for

Or if it's a person, you'll see:

• Birthdate
• Place of birth
• Education
• Spouse
• Occupation
• Citizenship

And if it's a store or a location, you'll see:

• Opening hours
• Address
• Phone number
• Ratings
• Map
• Photos

You may have also noticed that the Knowledge Graph appears in other places, such as on Google Maps.

The Knowledge Graph box appears when you search for a business on Google Maps. The information is pulled from the business’s Google My Business listing.

 

What Impact Does It Have On SEO?

Google says its goal with the Knowledge Graph is to “Go beyond keyword matching to understand the people, places, and things you care about, and deliver them straight to you.”

They want to provide searchers with the information they are looking for without having to click through to a website. This is great news for SEOs! We no longer have to rely on getting that coveted first organic result to get our brand in front of searchers.

The Knowledge Graph is also great for voice search. With the increasing popularity of voice assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home, searchers use natural language to ask questions. This is where the Knowledge Graph can shine.

Google can use the information in the Knowledge Graph to answer a searcher’s question directly, without the need to click through to a website.

For example, if someone asks their Google Home, “What is the founder of Tesla?” Google can answer that question using the information in our Knowledge Graph listing.

 

What’s the Difference Between Google’s Knowledge Graph, Rich Results, and Featured Snippets?

Google’s Knowledge Graph is not the only structured data that can appear in search results. Google also uses “rich results” to enhance the search experience.

Rich results are similar to the Knowledge Graph, but they are generated from the content on your website. They can include things like:

• Ratings and reviews
• Pricing
• Events
• Ingredients
• People
• Products

Rich results can appear in both mobile and desktop search results. They are generated from the structured data on your website using schema.org markup.

Schema.org is a collaborative project between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex to help structure data on the web.

You can see an example of rich results in the search results for a recipe. The recipe title, photo, rating, and cook time are all generated from structured data on the website.

 

Google also uses “featured snippets” to answer searchers’ questions directly. Featured snippets are generated from the content on your website.

Google pulls a snippet of text from your website and displays it in the search results. They also display the URL of the page where they found the information.

 

Featured snippets differ from rich results because they are not generated from structured data. They are also different from the Knowledge Graph because they are not Google’s own database of information.

 

How to Optimize Your Knowledge Graph Listing

Now that we’ve talked about the benefits of optimizing your Knowledge Graph listing let’s talk about how you can do it.

There are a few things you can do to make sure your Knowledge Graph listing is optimized for SEO:

1. Claim your Google My Business listing
2. Optimize your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number)
3. Add images and videos
4. Add business category
5. Encourage customer reviews
6. Use structured data markup
7. Optimize your website content

Let’s take a closer look at each of these optimization tips.

 

1. Claim Your Google My Business Listing

The first step to optimizing your Knowledge Graph listing is to claim your Google My Business listing.

If you haven’t claimed your listing yet, you can do so by going to google.com/business.

Once you’ve claimed your listing, you can add information about your business, such as your NAP, business hours, website URL, and more.

You’ll also be able to upload images and videos, which we’ll discuss in the next section.

 

2. Optimize Your NAP

The second step to optimizing your Knowledge Graph listing is to optimize your NAP.

Your NAP is your name, address, and phone number. It’s important to ensure your NAP is consistent across the web.

That means if you have a different phone number on your website than you do on your Google My Business listing, it will confuse Google.

To avoid this, ensure your NAP is the same on all your online listings.

 

3. Add Images and Videos

Adding images and videos is the third step to optimizing your Knowledge Graph listing.

Google loves visual content, so adding images and videos is a great way to improve your listing.

Not only will this help your listing stand out, but it will also give Google more information about your business.

To add images, simply go to your Google My Business listing and click on the “photos” tab. From there, you can upload photos of your business, employees, products, etc.

To add videos, you’ll need first to upload them to YouTube. Once uploaded, you can add them to your Google My Business listing by going to the “photos” tab and clicking on the “add video” button.

 

4. Add Business Category

The fourth step to optimizing your Knowledge Graph listing is to add a business category.

Adding a business category is a great way to help Google understand what your business is all about.

To add a business category, simply go to your Google My Business listing and click on the “info” tab. From there, you can scroll down to the “category” section and add a business category.

 

5. Encourage Customer Reviews

The fifth step to optimizing your Knowledge Graph listing is encouraging customer reviews.

Customer reviews are a great way to show Google that your business is reputable and trustworthy.

To encourage customer reviews, go to your Google My Business listing and click the “reviews” tab. From there, you can post a message asking customers to leave a review.

You can also post a link to your review page on your website or send it out in an email blast.

 

6. Use Structured Data Markup

The sixth step to optimizing your Knowledge Graph listing is to use structured data markup.

Structured data markup is code you can add to your website to give Google more information about your business.

Adding structured data markup is a great way to improve the chances of your listing appearing in the Knowledge Graph.

To add structured data markup, you’ll need to edit the code of your website. If you’re not comfortable doing this, you can hire a developer to do it for you.

You can customize your brand's Knowledge panel by:

• Optimizing logo structured data - Add code to your website that tells Google about your logo.
• Adding social profile links - You can add links to your business's social media profiles so people can find you on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Adding company contact numbers - You can add your business's phone number and email address so people can contact you.
• Adding holiday hours - You can add your business's holiday hours so people know when you're closed.
• Adding links to important pages - You can add links to your website's most important pages, such as your About Us page, Services page, etc.

 

7. Optimize Your Website Content

The seventh and final step to optimizing your Knowledge Graph listing is to optimize your website content.

Google crawls your website to determine what your business is all about.

If your website is poorly designed or doesn’t have much content, it will be difficult for Google to understand what your business is all about.

To optimize your website content, start by ensuring that your website is well-designed and easy to navigate.

Then, ensure that your website has a lot of relevant content to your business.

The more content you have, the easier it will be for Google to understand your business.

If you’re unsure how to optimize your website content, you can hire an agency that does local SEO services.

Takeaway

The Knowledge Graph is a powerful tool that can help you get more exposure for your business. If you're not already using it, now is the time to start.

By following the seven steps outlined in this article, you can optimize your Knowledge Graph listing and improve your chances of appearing in the Knowledge Graph.

 

Knowledge Graph Optimization FAQs

How do you optimize a knowledge graph?

To optimize a knowledge graph for SEO, start by ensuring that your entity's information is accurate and comprehensive. Use Schema markup to provide search engines with structured data about your entity. Focus on building strong online authority through high-quality backlinks and content. Regularly update and verify your entity's information to maintain its relevancy and accuracy. Monitor and analyze your knowledge graph's performance to identify areas for improvement and make adjustments accordingly.

 

How to use knowledge graph for SEO?

To leverage Google's Knowledge Graph for SEO, focus on optimizing your website with structured data markup, semantic markup, and relevant content. Implement Schema.org markup to help Google understand your website's entity and relational information. Improve your website's authority and relevance by earning quality backlinks and creating engaging content. Regularly update and optimize your website to enhance its chances of appearing in the Knowledge Graph.

 

Does Google still use knowledge graph?

Yes, Google still uses Knowledge Graph to display information in search results. Knowledge Graph is a vast database of billions of facts about various entities like people, places, and things. It helps provide relevant and accurate information to users directly within the search results.

 

What are the benefits of Google’s knowledge graph?

Some benefits of Google’s Knowledge Graph include:

1. It helps you get more exposure for your business.

With the knowledge graph, you're increasing your chances of appearing in Google's search results. And, as we all know, the higher you appear in Google's search results, the more traffic you're likely to get.

2. It helps you build trust and credibility with potential customers.

When potential customers see your business listed in the knowledge graph, they're more likely to trust and do business with you. After all, if Google trusts you enough to list you in their knowledge graph, you must be a pretty reputable business.

3. It helps you stand out from your competition.

If your competition isn't using the knowledge graph, you can really stand out. This is especially true if you're in a competitive industry.

4. It's free exposure for your business.

Unlike paid advertising, the knowledge graph is completely free. So, if you can get your business listed in the knowledge graph, it's essentially like getting free advertising.

5. It can help you generate leads and sales.

If potential customers see your business listed in the knowledge graph, they're more likely to contact and do business with you. In other words, the knowledge graph can help you generate leads and sales.

 

How to display an e-commerce knowledge graph?

You can do a few things to help Google display your e-commerce business in the knowledge graph.

1. Make sure your website is well-designed and easy to navigate.

This will help Google understand what your eCommerce site provides and make it easier for them to crawl it.

2. Add structured data to your website.

Adding structured data to your website will help Google understand your site's content and make it easier for them to display your business in the knowledge graph.

3. Add content to your website.

The more content you have on your website, the easier it will be for Google to understand your business.

4. Optimize your website for search engines.

Ensure you're using the right keywords and phrases on your website so that Google can easily find and index your site.

5. Promote your website online.

The more people visiting your site, the more likely it is that Google will notice and display your business in the knowledge graph.

 

How does Google's algorithm determine what displays in the knowledge graph?

Google's algorithm looks at various factors to determine what displays in the knowledge graph.

1. Relevance

Google will only display information relevant to the user's search query in the knowledge graph.

2. Sources

Google looks at various sources to determine what information to display in the knowledge graph. These sources include websites, news articles, and more.

3. Authority 

Google looks at the authority of the sources to determine which information to display in the knowledge graph. The more authoritative a source is, the more likely Google will display its information in the knowledge graph.

4. Accuracy

Google also looks at the accuracy of the information to determine what to display in the knowledge graph. Inaccurate information is less likely to be displayed in the knowledge graph.

5. Freshness 

Google prefers to display fresh, up-to-date information in the knowledge graph. So, if you want your business to be displayed in the knowledge graph, keeping your website and information up-to-date is important.

 

How to get certain photos to show in knowledge graph listing?

You can update your knowledge graph listing by adding photos and other information about your business. Here are a few things you can do to get certain photos to show up in your knowledge graph listing:

1. Add photos to your website.

Google will pull out any photos related to your business from your website and display them in the knowledge graph. So, if you want certain photos to show up, add them to your website.

2. Add photos to your Google My Business listing.

If you have a Google My Business listing, you can add photos to it. This will help Google understand what your business looks like and make certain photos more likely to appear in the knowledge graph.

3. Suggest a change to Google Knowledge Listing

If you see that Google has incorrect information or photos listed for your business, you can suggest a change on the listing. Google will then review your suggestion and make the appropriate changes.

Read this guide for more information.

 

How long does Google knowledge graph take to update?

Google doesn't have an exact timeframe for when the knowledge graph will be updated. However, it's generally a good idea to wait at least a few weeks before you expect to see any changes.

If you've made changes to your website or Google My Business listing, you can try resubmitting your sitemap to Google to help speed up the process.

 

When was Google knowledge graph introduced?

Google knowledge graph was introduced on May 16, 2012.

 

How to get your address in google knowledge graph without submitting street address? 

There is no guaranteed way to get your address in the knowledge graph without submitting your street address. However, there are a few things you can do to increase the chances of your address being displayed:

1. Add your address to your website.

Ensure you add your full address (including your street address) to your website. Google will use this information to determine whether or not to display your address in the knowledge graph.

2. Add your address to your Google My Business listing.

If you have a Google My Business listing, add your full address to it. This will help Google understand that your business is located at that address and make it more likely for your address to be displayed in the knowledge graph.

3. Suggest a change to Google Knowledge Listing

If you see that Google has incorrect information or photos listed for your business, you can suggest a change on the listing. Google will then review your suggestion and make the appropriate changes.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

What Are Short Tail Keywords For SEO

In the world of SEO, keywords are everything.

You use them to optimize your website and content for search engines so that people can find you when searching for terms related to your business.

There are two main types of keywords: short tail keywords and long tail keywords.

Short tail keywords are general, one or two-word phrases that are highly competitive and get a lot of searches. Long tail keywords are more specific, three or four-word phrases that are less competitive and get fewer searches.

Short tail keywords are simply shorter, more specific versions of your main keyword.

For example, if you're selling shoes, your main keyword might be "shoes." But a short tail keyword would be "women's running shoes."

On the other hand, long tail keywords are longer, more specific versions of your main keyword.

So, using our previous example, a long tail keyword might be "women's size 10 running shoes."

Statistically, short-term keywords are seen to be more competitive than long-tail keywords. This is because short tail keywords are more general and have a higher search volume. Long tail keywords, on the other hand, are more specific and have a lower search volume. But that doesn't mean they're not important!

In fact, long tail keywords are essential for SEO success. This is because they help you target a specific audience, which can result in higher conversion rates. And they can be much easier to rank than short-tail keywords.

 

Why should you use short-tail keywords?

Short tail keywords are important because they help you target a general audience. They can be difficult to rank for, but you'll get a lot of traffic if you do manage to rank for them.

In fact, according to one research, 10,000 of the most utilized keywords are almost entirely short tail. They also make up about 20% of all searches out of millions of available keywords.

 

5 Benefits of Using Short-Tail Keywords:

1) They have a high search volume.

For instance, a short tail keyword like "buy shoes" has a much higher search volume than a long tail keyword like "where can I buy size 10 women's running shoes."

2) They're more competitive.

Because they have a high search volume, short tail keywords are also more competitive. The more competitive the keyword is, the more difficult it is to rank for.

3) They're more general.

Short tail keywords are less specific than long tail keywords, which means they can target a wider range of people.

4) They're easier to remember.

Because they're shorter and more general, short tail keywords are easier to remember than long tail keywords. This makes them more likely to be used by people just starting their search.

5) They can be combined to create a long tail keyword.

Short tail keywords can be combined to create a long tail keyword. For instance, you could combine the short tail keywords "buy shoes" and "size 10" to create the long tail keyword "where can I buy size 10 women's shoes."

Now that you know the benefits of short-tail keywords, let's look at some tips for using them in your SEO strategy.

 

Tips for Using Short-tail Keywords

1) Use keyword research tools

Use keyword research tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and Ahrefs Keyword Explorer to find short tail keywords relevant to your business.

2) Use negative keywords

Use negative keywords to filter out irrelevant searches. For instance, if you're selling women's shoes, you might want to use the negative keyword "men" to filter out searches for men's shoes.

3) Use keyword-rich titles and descriptions

Use keyword-rich titles and descriptions to improve your chances of ranking for your chosen keywords.

4) Combine short tail keywords

Combining short tail keywords is a great way to create long tail keywords. As we mentioned before, you can combine the short tail keywords "buy shoes" and "size 10" to create the long tail keyword "where can I buy size 10 women's shoes."

5) Use short tail keywords in your content

Use short tail keywords in your content to improve your chances of ranking for those keywords. But don't stuff your content with keywords! Use them sparingly and make sure they fit naturally into your text.

Short tail keywords are an essential part of any SEO strategy. By using the tips above, you can use them to improve your chances of ranking on Google and getting more traffic to your website.

 

7 Short Tail Keyword Examples

1) Local Keywords (Restaurant)

Local keywords are short tail keywords that include a geographic location. For instance, if you own a restaurant in Los Angeles, you might use the keyword "restaurants in Los Angeles."

When you do keyword research, you'll notice that the keyword "restaurants in Los Angeles" has and higher search volume than "restaurants in Los Angeles alfresco dining". This is because people who include a geographic location in their search are more likely to look for a restaurant there.

 

2) Product Keywords (iPhone)

Product keywords are short tail keywords that include a product name. For instance, if you're selling iPhone cases, you might use the keyword "iPhone cases."

The keyword "iPhone cases" has more search volume than "iPhone 6 cases" because it's more general. People who use the keyword "iPhone cases" might be looking for any type of case, not just an iPhone 6 case.

 

3) Brand Keywords (Nike)

Brand keywords are short tail keywords that include a brand name. For instance, if you're selling Nike shoes, you might use the keyword "Nike shoes."

The keyword "Nike shoes" has a greater search volume than the more narrow "Nike running shoes." People looking for "Nike shoes" may be seeking any Nike shoe, not just the Nike running shoe.

The general rule is that the longer and more specific the keywords are, the less search volume they have. So, if you want more traffic to your website, aim for short-tail keywords.

 

4) Digital product keywords (WordPress plugins)

If you've been creating sites using Wordpress, you've probably tried searching for Wordpress themes and plugins already.

"WordPress themes" is a short tail keyword, while "best free WordPress themes for business websites" is a long tail keyword. The latter has less competition and more traffic potential.

 

5) Service keywords (SEO services)

If you offer SEO services, you might want to use the keyword "SEO services." But since this keyword is quite general, you'll be competing with many other SEO service providers.

A better option would be to use a long tail keyword such as "SEO services for small businesses." This keyword is more specific and has less competition.

 

6) Informational keywords (how to change a tire)

Informational keywords are short tail keywords that people use when looking for information. For instance, someone might use the keyword "how to change a tire" if they need to know how to do it.

The keyword "how to change a tire" has more search volume than "how to change a tire on a car." This is because the latter is more specific, and people who use it will likely know how to change a tire. They just need to know how to do it in a car.

 

7) Navigational keywords (Facebook login)

Navigational keywords are short tail keywords people use when looking for a specific website. For instance, someone might use the keyword "Facebook login" to go to Facebook's login page.

The keyword "Facebook login" has more search volume than "login to Facebook." This is because the latter is more specific, and people who use it are likely to know already how to login to Facebook. They just need the shortcut.

 

Key Takeaways

Short tail keywords present many opportunities for you to get more traffic to your website.

1. They have less competition and are, therefore, easier to rank for.
2. They are more general and have more search volume.
3. They are usually less specific, which makes them easier to target.
4. They can be used in various marketing campaigns, such as content marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and email marketing.
5. They are easier to remember than long tail keywords.

If you want to increase your website's traffic, start by targeting short tail keywords. Not only will you be able to rank for them more easily, but you'll also get more traffic from them.

 

Short Tail Keywords Frequently Asked Questions:

What is short tail keyword examples?

Examples of short tail keywords include "egg" and "shoes". Short tail keywords consist of one or two words and are less specific than longer search phrases. They are commonly used to generate broad search results.

 

What is short tail keywords and long-tail keywords?

Short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords are vital in on-site SEO research. Short-tail keywords are broad search queries of one or two words, while long-tail keywords consist of three to five words or more. Understanding their difference is crucial for effective keyword targeting and driving relevant organic traffic to your website.

 

What is a short tail word?

Short-tail keywords, also called head terms, are broad search queries with high search volumes. They differ from long-tail keywords, which are specific and have low search volumes. Using short-tail keywords can help reach a larger audience but may be more competitive.

 

What is an example of a short tail product?

A short-tail product refers to a broad and popular item with high competition in online searches. For instance, common examples are "shoes," "pizza," or "travel." These short-tail keywords have significant search volume and are usually more competitive to rank for.

 

Why do you SEO your home page for short‐tail keywords and internal pages for long tail keywords?

When it comes to conversion, short-tail keywords are being used on homepages because they are general and give people an overview of the website.

On the other hand, long-tail keywords are used on internal pages because they are more specific and help convert visitors into customers or subscribers. Long-tail keywords are the key to optimizing your semantic search. For example, you can dilute your long-tail keywords with broad (short-tail) terms to avoid being penalized by Google and losing potential traffic.

 

Why do you use short‐tail keywords for your home page? 

If you're just starting out, it's best to focus on short-tail keywords for your home page. This is because they are more general and have more search volume. As you get more traffic to your website, you can target long-tail keywords for your internal pages.

However, the rule of thumb in digital marketing is that you should use both keywords (short and long tail) for your website. Short-tail keywords are less competitive and easier to rank for, while long-tail keywords are more specific and have more traffic potential. Doing so can help you boost your bottom line, increase brand awareness and organic traffic.

 

Do you have any suggestions for short tail keywords with low competition?

There is no magic bullet when it comes to finding low competition keywords. However, a good place to start is by using Google's Keyword Planner Tool. You can also try using long-tail keywords, which are usually less competitive than short-tail keywords. Another approach is to use keyword research tools like Moz's Keyword Explorer or Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer. These tools can help you find low-competition keywords that you can rank for.

 

Can short tail keywords be more than one word?

Yes, short tail keywords can be more than one word. They can be up to three words. However, anything more than that is considered a long-tail keyword.

 

What are some of the best short tail keywords?

Some of the best short tail keywords include "buy," "sale," "free shipping," and "coupon." These high-traffic keywords can help you get more traffic to your website.

 

What are mid-tail keywords?

Mid-tail keywords are a combination of short-tail and long-tail keywords. They are somewhere in the middle in terms of both search volume and competition.

 

When should you be using mid-tail keywords?

Mid-tail keywords can be used in a variety of situations, such as when you're starting a new website or when you're trying to rank for a new keyword. For example, if you're starting a website about shoes, you might use the mid-tail keyword "men's dress shoes." This is a high-traffic keyword that isn't too competitive.

 

When should you be using long-term keywords?

If you want to increase your traffic in the long run, then you should be using long-tail keywords. These are more specific and have more traffic potential. They may be less competitive than short-tail keywords, but they will help you get more targeted traffic that is more likely to convert.

 

What are some tips for choosing the right keywords?

There are a few things to keep in mind when choosing keywords. First, you want to ensure that the keywords you choose are relevant to your business and products. Second, you want to choose keywords that have enough search volume to be worth targeting. Lastly, you want to choose keywords that you can realistically rank for. There's no point in targeting keywords that are too competitive.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

Six Enterprise Link Building Strategies

What is enterprise link building?

Enterprise link building refers to a set of strategies tailored for promoting large and complex websites. It involves leveraging brand equity, valuable content, and a positive reputation to establish strong backlinks and drive organic traffic. These strategies are essential for enhancing the online visibility and authority of enterprise websites.

 

To the person on the outside looking in, doing SEO for a big corporation sounds dreamy. Large enterprises have significant budgets, established brand names, and sites that land on your lap carrying a good amount of link equity.

What a lot of people don’t see is the fact that big websites usually face equally big challenges. Massive site audits, deep page hierarchies, and organizational bureaucracy can get your SEO wheels stuck. Building up a competitive link profile in the big leagues is the same way: if you don’t use your time and resources, you can expect your competitors to bury you while trying to figure out what’s happening.

When a high-DR site faces DR90 competitors, you better come to the ring carrying dynamite in your fists. Scoring several links from a few guest posts per month doesn’t cut it in this arena. Getting widespread brand mentions, coverage from premier sites, and getting links from the most reputable domains are the keys to securing a dominant position in search results for highly competitive keywords.

Early in my career, I was lucky to have worked with two Fortune 500 companies running successful organic search campaigns. These organizations taught me that to win big. You have to think big without falling into the black hat SEO pit. It’s a fine line to straddle, especially if you’ve got the resources to do as you please with your campaign.

Discipline, integrity, and a desire to win the right way are the keys to successful enterprise link building service. Here are six of the go-to methods I use when handling client or employer sites engaged in billion-dollar verticals:

 

Six Enterprise Link Building Strategies

Press Release Distribution

It may sound elementary, but issuing a press release and having it carried by news wires is the fastest and easiest way to earn backlinks for reputable enterprises. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, a press release is an official statement by the company targeting news and media outlets.

Press releases often carry detailed information on newsworthy announcements that people in your industry will want to know about.

At Emerson Electric, we routinely release press statements during product launches, appearances at major events, or major organizational developments. These stories get covered by media sites such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. We also get media mileage from industry-specific online media outlets like Data Center Knowledge and Computer Weekly for our IT manufacturing news.

Sometimes, they publish stories with live links to us; sometimes, they don’t. However, even when we don’t get live links, we get SEO-boosting brand mentions, and more importantly, we raise awareness about our activities among members of our target demographic.

News coverage from the New York Times

And from the Wall Street Journal, too!

If you’re running an SEO campaign for a medium or large enterprise, make it a habit to write press releases when you have something important to say. Invest in services such as PRWeb and let them distribute your news release to hundreds of sites. You’d be surprised by how much coverage you can get for little effort.

You can probably learn to do it yourself if you don’t have a dedicated writer to compose a news release. Writing a press release isn’t exactly rocket science, so go for it and see how it works. Here’s a nice guide to follow if you’re just starting out.

 

Thought Leadership Campaigns

A thought leader is an individual or organization recognized as an authority in a field of knowledge. The advice of thought leaders is constantly sought out and rewarded with everything from simple praises to financial compensation. If you’re running a big website owned by a major enterprise, there’s a good chance your company and some of its employees are already recognized as thought leaders in your industry.

Leverage this cache by translating it into content and campaigns that get you more traffic and links. Work closely with product marketing and ask them about hot trends in your business. Get their thoughts on customer needs and wants. From there, you should be able to list a set of themes and topics to drive your content and target it to the right people.

Effective enterprise link builders and content developers can create whitepapers, blog posts, videos, and SlideShare presentations from collaborations between the content team, product marketing teams, product development departments, and your sales force.

McDonalds with another great thought leadership campaign

 

Here’s a good example of an effective thought leadership campaign: McDonald’s is aware that North Americans are becoming increasingly careful about their food. Fast food enterprises are feeling the hit because nutrition experts have hammered into the public that fast food is unhealthy. In response, McDonald’s uses transparency to bolster trust and regain lost mindshare.

In Canada, the company launched the Our Food, Your Questions campaign, allowing anyone to raise a query that an official McDonald’s representative answers. More than 16,000 questions have been raised from the first day to now, and countless links have been earned. From a single campaign that ran for what appears to be marginal costs, McDonald’s was able to reap returns in the public relations, content creation, thought leadership, and SEO arenas.

None of its competitors has anything similar, so Ronald and his friends have stayed atop the American food industry for a long time.

 

Tool Creation

We often think of blog posts, infographics, and videos regarding linkable assets. One of the areas that we forget about as a potential link magnet is a good functionality. People don’t go online just to find information and interact with people via social media platforms. We also go online to find solutions to our problems. One of the easiest ways to provide a solution is by providing a tool that users can enjoy on your webpage or download and install on their devices.

In 2014, getting apps developed for PCs and mobile devices was cheaper than ever. The payoffs can be huge, as simple games, productivity tools, and information software can take your branding and link acquisition efforts a very long way. If you’re looking for examples, you don’t have to look outside the SEO industry.

Just check out Aaron Wall’s SEOBook website: sure, it has excellent content, but one of the biggest reasons people go to it, share it and link back to it is because of his popular (and free) set of tools. SEO for Firefox and Rank Checker are two of the most downloaded and beloved applications in the search marketing game, and it’s been that way for years now.

 

SEO for Firefox earned Aaron Wall links and then some

 

At Emerson, we are heavily engaged in marketing our data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution. One of the challenges we faced was showing CIOs, data center managers, and other executives the business value of our offerings before they even buy them. The solution? An ROI calculator that provides potential customers an estimate of how much money they’ll make back if they adopt our DCIM platform.

By developing an ROI calculator tool, we earned links and media coverage

The tool has enjoyed positive feedback so far, and we’ve received a nice amount of links from media outlets that have taken notice of our tool.

 

Interviews

Having industry experts in your company pays off beyond just content development. You can also leverage their authority for interview opportunities that yield quality links. The same news sites and blogs covering your press releases may also be interested in writing features reinforced by the knowledge of respected people in a given industry.

Keep your ears close to the ground when new trends come along, and look for opportunities to hook up your company’s experts with reporters who need a source.

You can do this in one of two ways. First, you can ask your company’s experts for their opinion when the industry has breaking news. You’ll want to run this past your branding officers to ensure you can comment.

If you are, you can do a little outreach and ask the news site if they’ll be interested in interviewing someone with a good perspective. Reporters and editors often appreciate this as they seek opportunities to publish exclusive content.

Help a Reporter is a great way to earn interview opportunities and links

Another way of getting interview opportunities or being sourced by media is by using Help a Reporter. It’s a cool service that facilitates hook-ups between online news writers and potential info sources. SEO expert Jason Acidre recently wrote about it in a blog post, revealing the link acquisition tactics he focuses on. It also works for small and medium-sized businesses, so check it out.

 

Leveraging Corporate Partnerships

Of the many advantages big companies have, one of my favorites is having strong relationships with equally powerful, influential, and non-competing business entities with monster websites. These partnerships don’t work just with the financial aspects of business: they can and should be a synergy for marketing and link acquisition. Collaborating on thought leadership campaigns, content development, and product placement is a great way to get mileage out of a partnership and enjoy the SEO and branding benefits.

Big partnerships gets you noticed by the online press

 

One of the recent partnerships we ran is between Emerson’s IT manufacturing business platform Emerson Network Power, and IT giant IBM. IBM decided to adopt our DCIM solution to work with its Tivoli portfolio. Without getting into the technical details, it would be safe to say that we turned many media heads when we announced the partnership, which drove plenty of quality links from high-profile sites and blogs. Of course, we also got some very valuable backlinks from IBM’s elite-level pages, and so did they from us.

Our IBM partnership yielded mentions and strong links from their website

Site Acquisition

You won’t get to do this every day, but buying a website or a blog can result in huge gains from a link acquisition perspective. A credible blog with an author who enjoys a good following will drive traffic and links to your site for years, giving your pages a nice push in competition for tough keywords.

Pratik Dholakiya wrote about this in his own guide for enterprise-level link building. He recommended moving the content under your own domain and pointing the old pages to it via 301 redirects. He added that convincing the blogger to stay and keep writing is a good move to help the blog’s transition process. Indeed, readers from the blog you acquired are more likely to become readers of your own site when they see a name and a writing style familiar to them.

Conversely, it can also work for you to maintain the blog or site you acquired just as it is and not move it to your domain. This is for cases when you feel that readership will suffer greatly because of the branding and domain shift. You can make it a subtle promotion hub with graphics, brand mentions and links to your pages.

An example of a site acquired and rebuilt into our own domain where it brings in more link equity

 

In Emerson, our business platforms are grown by acquiring top brands in markets we want to enter. Our information architecture is set up so that our websites house rebuilt pages of sites we’ve acquired in the past. We redirect all equivalent pages, effectively telling Google to credit the Emerson site with the link equity of the old one. The site becomes a bigger and ever-expanding ecosystem of content, backlinks, and brand signals. Above is a screenshot of Avocent, one of the brands we acquired, and its own main page within EmersonNetworkPower.com.

Of course, there are many other ways enterprises can facilitate link acquisition. These are just the most common ones I use because of the high ROI we get. If you have other ideas, share them in the comments section below, and I’ll gladly share notes.

This is a guest entry by Glen Dimaandal, a Former Online Marketing Manager at Emerson Network power, an Emerson Electric Co. business platform. He is also the founder and CEO of SearchWorks, a Philippine-based SEO and Content Marketing Agency. 

 

Enterprise Link Building Frequently Asked Questions

What are the three types of link building?

The three types of link building are deep linking, inline linking, and internal linking. Deep linking involves linking directly to a specific page on another website. Inline linking refers to linking to content within another website. Internal linking occurs when you link to content within your own website. These strategies are important for enhancing website navigation and improving search engine rankings.

 

What is the link building method?

The link building method involves creating backlinks to a website to enhance its visibility on search engines. It includes strategies like content marketing, building useful tools, email outreach, broken link building, and public relations. This practice aims to improve search engine rankings and increase organic traffic.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

21 Actionable Content Marketing Tips For 2024

This is a list of the most actionable content marketing tips for 2024.

In this post, you'll discover:

• how to find content ideas without using expensive tools
• how to write content that gets hundreds of shares and comments
• tips to optimize content to rank in search and get organic traffic 
• effective content promotion techniques for more traffic and links 

Let's dive in. 

 

[toc]

 

1. Start with Topical Research.

Keyword research is not dead. 

The good thing about SEO is you can rank for multiple keywords, not just for one keyword — only if you know how to practice topical research.

Topical research is discovering the primary key topics your content can rank for, while determining semantically-related keywords to optimize content for topic coverage. 

 

How to start with topical research?

A. Begin with an industry head term. 

You can use keyword discovery tools such as Ahrefs' Keyword Explorer.

 

B. Go to the parent topic.

With Ahrefs, you can see exactly what the keyword's parent topic is. 

Either write content just for the keyword you typed in or cover the parent topic.

 

C. Find semantically-related keywords and common questions.

This is useful for topic coverage. It builds more authority when you can cover as much information by answering related questions and including topically-related keywords.

This leads us to our next tip. 

You can check out our link building services and SEO services. 

 

2. Discover Commonly Asked Questions 

Search users want quick answers to questions.

And if you know what type of questions they search for and provide them with quick answers in your content, you'll get more ranking opportunities.

AlsoAsked is an excellent tool to find dozens of questions you usually see in the "People Also Asked Questions" section. 

The good thing with this is you don't have to manually find all related questions for the topic you're writing about. Type in a keyphrase and the tool will provide you with topical questions.

You can also export the list for later use. 

 

Another way to find commonly asked questions is through Ahrefs' Keyword Explorer.

Search for your topic.

Go to the Questions section. 

 

You can also use the latest feature of Detailed Chrome Extension to extract People quickly Also Asked Questions (PAA) from Google searches.

 

Two things you can do with these questions:

First, add a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) at the end of your article. List down all questions with your answers.

Second, you can include these questions as H2s of your article. 

Your readers don't have to check other similar content to find what they're looking for by answering it immediately. 

 

3. Write Content on Topics with Search Traffic Potential. 

SEO and content marketing, when combined, is powerful.

You provide what your readers are looking for while ranking the content for searchers who are looking for it. 

More traffic. More sales.

Use any tools to help you find search traffic potential. 

Here are some of my recommended topic or keyword discovery tools:

SEMrush:

 

Ahrefs:

 

Keyword Everywhere: 

Sidenote: Not all keywords with low search traffic are not feasible topics to write about — most of which are potential topics people are still asking. In aggregate, when you publish articles targeting long-tail keywords (even with lower search volume), the strategy can drive solid traffic to your site. 

 

4. Brainstorm Topics with the Audience's Pain Points. 

Your audience's challenges, issues, and pain points are good content ideas (hat tip to @abbyreimermpls). 

It also puts emotions in your content, making it more shareable and linkable. 

So, how to find your audience's pain points?

Search for "[your audience]," "issues," and "challenges". And see what comes up.

 

For example, if you're looking for paint points of most salespeople, you'll get ideas like:

• Consistent follow-ups
• Self-management
• Personality styles

Tackle each of these pain points as your blog post idea. 

 

5. Rank for Competitors' Keywords. 

Here's a gold mine opportunity. 

Your competitors may be ranking (or aren't ranking yet) for their branded keyphrases.

This could give you some organic traffic that can turn into sales if taken advantage of.

Let's say you want to rank for branded keywords of Monday (a project management software).

Simply enter the domain (monday.com) to Ahrefs Site Explorer and see what they're currently ranking for their own terms.

Filter the results by position 3 & up to see keywords your competitors don't rank in the top 3. 

 

Check each term and consider any pages or content you can create on your website.

One example is "how to use monday com". 

You can create an ultimate guide on how to use Monday and mention its competing products.

Or for any "alternatives" or "product A VS other products" keyphrases, you create a comparison page and add your product. 

Think of leveraging competitors' keywords with new micro-content or a new page. 

 

6. Speak About Your Audience's Interests

Never run out of ideas if you think of your customer's interests.

If you tackle what they need, your content becomes relatable and valuable.

 

How can you find your audience's other interests?

You can use audience research tools like Sparktoro. 

Let's say you're looking for more content ideas for life coaches. 

 

Simply do Sparktoro search: My audience uses these word(s) in their profile "______". 

 

The tool shows you their other interests aside from nutrition. 

 

Create content on public speaking and wellness. 

Replicate this content marketing technique to your brand and never run out of ideas. 

 

7. Use Proven and Tested Blog Post Introduction 

Content is king, but first, you must grab the reader's attention.

You do that by using a blog post introduction that works.

You consistently grab your readers' attention and retain them on site. And thus, it indirectly improves your rankings and conversions.

The success of Backlinko (now acquired by SEMRush) is anchored to Brian's copywriting skills.

Backlinko has its PBB copywriting formula for content's introduction:

• P - Preview
• P - Proof 
• B - Benefit

Tell exactly "what's in it for them?". Show results to build credibility. Give them more by showcasing the benefit of your information.

 

8. Generate Outlines Using ChatGPT or Frase Blog Outline Generator

Writing about the topic flawlessly is much easier when you structure content.

Your writing flows. You cover the essential information.

You can prompt ChatGPT to write a comprehensive outline for the topic you're writing about.

 

One way to generate an outline quickly is by using Frase's new tool - Blog Outline Generator.

 

Input your title and description and wait for the AI tool to generate outline suggestions based on the ranking pages for the keyword.

It gives you insights into your outline quickly—no more hassle when starting. 

 

9. Optimize On-Page With Surfer SEO 

Competitive advantage is when you build proper on-page for your content.

It's not that easy. Add semantic keywords and entities to your content for more topic coverage and topical authority. Include headlines that target topically related keyphrases. 

This takes a lot of work. 

But SEO tools like SurferSEO bring out the exact terms and instructions you need to optimize your content better.

With exact frequency.

And some other entities you can include.

Build your topical authority by providing the quickest answer and the most comprehensive information about the topic. 

 

10. Demonstrate E-E-A-T By Hiring Industry Practitioners.

The bar for content quality increases as more and more brands invest in content marketing.

It's now a competition for expertise.

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust) matter in SEO. 

Experts and industry practitioners can provide better and new information than average writers.

They know exactly what to include in the "How-to" section and provide accurate and quick answers for the "FAQ" section. 

Recently, I started my affiliate health blog that covers everything about sleeping. 

I could find any writers from different content writer sourcing platforms or spend time finding the right fit — which, in this case, are medical practitioners. 

Through Upwork, I found a doctor who writes for health blogs. 

The content provides the highest quality of information with concrete instructions because of the writer's expertise.

Key takeaway:  Hire industry practitioners to write for your blog. It makes your content credible and valuable — and helps you rank quickly. 

 

11. Improve E-A-T by Adding Author Bios of Reviewers and Co-Authors  

Besides the quality of information from industry experts, you also benefit from added "author bio". 

If you ask industry writers to include their author profiles in your content, they won't hesitate to say "yes" to you.

Simply because it's added credibility on their part and more opportunities to market their content writing projects. Easy.

 

What benefits this to you?

Topical authority. Your content is much more reliable as you showcase reviewers of your content (and who they are). Their experiences, educational background — all these improve E-E-A-T of your content. 

Check out this Mobile Monkey's guide on how to become a content creator.

 

12. Apply "First Mover Advantage" When Writing Content 

What is the first-mover advantage?

It is your ability to be better off than your competitors due to being first in the market. 

Being first is way easier than being the "best".

Content marketing translates to providing new information you won't see from your competitors' content.

You can do it by finding resources not easily sourced elsewhere. However, that does take enough work for research.

For example, you can search for filetype:pdf "keyword" to discover file attachments of documents, presentations, and other resource formats from the internal data team and practitioners. 

 

Most often than not, those files contain information that gives you a "first-mover advantage" when included in your content. 

 

13. Create Shareable Images

Shareability is vital for content to get additional links. Thus, it helps improve your website's rankings.  

Ahrefs, for example, create different shareable images that include workflows, templates, data, and other internal information that often gets citations.

 

Another brand doing well in creating shareable images is The Zebra, an insurance comparison website.

They publish statistics content with citable, shareable images of checklists, surveys, and internal data.

Both these brands understand the power of shareable images and how it positively impacts the perceived value of their content.

Think of adding value to your audience by creating shareable images. 

 

14. Add a Descriptive Conclusion (Not Just "Key Takeaways"). 

One of the most overlooked parts of a content piece is the conclusion.

Most often, writers simply put a header, "Conclusion" or "Key Takeaways,” and summarize the entire article into one or two paragraphs.

A good content marketer knows how to grab his readers' attention from the beginning to the end of the article. 

One creative tip is emphasizing a call to action or challenge to readers. 

See SiegeMedia's ability to persuade its readers to act on the information.

And other notable brands that do this well.

 

 

15. Upgrade and Upgrade Content 

One best practice in SEO and content marketing is always to make content relevant to its audience.

That means you update the content from time to time to ensure the timeliness and usefulness of the information to current times and industry trends. 

While having the ability to upgrade the content to make it the most comprehensive content on the topic, year by year.

One SEO technique is to add information for keyphrases your content has impressions yet is not currently ranking for. 

You can use tools like Search Console and Ahrefs to find key phrases to optimize your content further.

In Ahrefs, simply enter the URL of your page that's ranking well and go to its Organic Keywords report.

Scroll down. Discover and check keyphrases you can eventually turn into headings and sections of your article.

By doing so, you improve topic coverage of content and help improve its rankings for those topically related terms. 

 

16. Do Conversion-Oriented Internal Linking

Internal linking is often an overlooked SEO strategy yet provides high returns on ranking improvements. 

If you have middle-of-the-funnel content tied to your landing pages, linking to your conversion pages would be helpful.

It is a strategic move to get more conversions simply through internal links.

Take a look at Gusto. They did a great job internally linking to their product pages from "how to buy" and other middle-of-the-funnel content.

 

It's much easier to get conversions this way, as potential customers have a semi-intent of purchasing products. 

Go through your pages and see which pages you link internally to your conversion pages.

 

17. Create a Content Calendar 

Organization of content ideas is critical to producing highly useful content assets consistently. 

Plotting those topics in a calendar is easier to be consistent.

There are many ways to create a content calendar. 

Here are some valuable resources to help you jump-start with that.

• Content Calendar Template by Backlinko
• The Best Content Calendar Template to Organize The Year 2023 by CoSchedule
• How to Build a Content Calendar (Plus a Free Template) by Convince & Convert

 

18. Use TweetHunter to Grow Your Audience

Twitter is becoming more and more of a content platform these days.

As more influencers and brands leverage the power of Twitter threads to showcase their expertise and build a strong following, the use of the platform is more of a necessity than a luxury.

However, using Twitter may seem time-consuming for most busy entrepreneurs and marketers. It eats up their time — as they say. 

The key is to do it in a single hour (or a few hours every week) and let it run for you.

How?

Publish tweets quickly using TweetHunter.

The tool allows you to write and schedule tweets through built-in AI-suggested ideas. 

You don't have to consume all your mental energy to flesh out the content. All you have is to swipe all trending tweets in your industry and based on niche keywords.

 

Another cool feature here is engaging with like-minded influencers on the platform.

All you have to do is to find tweets from profiles with a certain number of follower counts (>2000). And from the platform, engage these followers by replying to their tweets. 

 

19. Repurpose Web Assets For Content Promotion 

Content writing is 50% of the battle. The other half should be spent on content promotion.

The key here is not to overdo the "thinking process" of content promotion but to leverage some assets you've published on your site and distribute them across your marketing channels. 

You can repurpose web assets by turning them into other content formats better contextualized to be promoted in a particular marketing platform.

For instance, instead of creating another new Youtube video to be posted on Tiktok, you may instruct your graphic artist to produce several short reels (videos). Contextualize it to the platform you're marketing to, either by adding texts, sounds, or images that are popular or useful to your target audience.

Another way is to turn industry guides into several shareable images, which you'll then use as bait for guest posts. 

Simply upload images as part of your email outreach campaign to get more attention right at the start of the pitch.

 

20. Do Omni-Channel Marketing With Your Content 

If you hit the right audience with content on specific platforms where they engage, you get followers consistently and build your brand.

Omnichannel does that.

Look at different customer touchpoints. And see which marketing platform can help you further your content.

 

21. Leverage Blogger Outreach To Get Backlinks

Blogger outreach is a solid strategy to get in front of your potential customers, acquire backlinks and improve your website's rankings.

Given that readers are likely to follow personalities (bloggers) if your brand has been linked to one of their content pieces, you'll have a chance of getting more clicks from those inbound links.

Do strategic link placements on industry blogs.

Either leverage content-driven link exchange or other link building strategies on blogs. 

 

Content Marketing in Action

You'll find many ideas on how to create and promote your content. But these ideas will come into reality if apply them. 

Best practices are based on different contexts and scenarios. Test them out and see the results yourself. 

 

Content Marketing Tips Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 4 C's of content marketing?

The 4 C's of content marketing are Customer, Cost, Convenience, and Communication. By focusing on these 4 key elements, companies can create effective content strategies that resonate with their target audience, are cost-efficient, easily accessible, and facilitate communication between the brand and customers. Prioritizing these 4 C's is crucial for successful content marketing campaigns.

 

What are the 3 C's of content marketing?

The 3 C's of content marketing, namely content, context, and communication, are crucial for successful brand and publisher collaboration. By working together, brands and publishers can drive the evolution of the content marketing landscape, ensuring that the right content is delivered to the right audience at the right time. This collaboration enhances the effectiveness and impact of content marketing efforts.

 

What are the 5 rules of content marketing?

The 5 rules of content marketing are essential for success. Firstly, understand your audience's needs to create relevant content. Secondly, focus on creating unique content that can enhance conversions. Thirdly, strive for excellence in content creation to stand out. Fourthly, establish a strong social media presence to reach a wider audience. Lastly, maintain consistency in delivering quality content for long-term impact. Following these rules will help you achieve your content marketing goals.

 

What are the 7 steps of content marketing?

The 7 steps of content marketing are:

1. Content Planning
2. Content Creation
3. Asset Development
4. Shareability and Viral Marketing
5. Content Promotion
6. Repurposing
7. Ongoing Measurement

These steps provide a structured approach to effectively strategize, create, and measure the success of a content marketing campaign. Using these steps can help businesses achieve their goals and connect with their target audience.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

Getting Dofollow Backlinks from Primary Schools

In a nutshell, do follow backlinks can pass Page Rank (link juice) from the linking page to a website it links to.

These are different from nofollow backlinks because this other type of backlinks has "nofollow" tag attached to them. Google and other search engines ignore backlinks with a "nofollow" tag attribute.

In a natural HTML programming practice, all links are by default do follow unless these links have the nofollow attribute applied.

Sidenote: Learn more of these fundamental topics in this beginner's guide to link building.

Let me cover this one scalable link building strategy that can help you acquire sets of dofollow backlinks for your website.

 

What is the major difference between a no follow backlink and a do follow backlink?

The major difference between a nofollow backlink and a do follow backlink is how they affect website authority. Dofollow links pass on authority, benefiting the linked website, while nofollow links do not transfer authority or "link juice." This understanding helps Google associate and evaluate websites effectively.

 

How to Get Dofollow Backlinks 

Here are three ways to get dofollow backlinks from primary and secondary schools:

• Know the difference between primary school backlinks and Edu links
• Discover available link opportunities
• Establish link building process
• Start content creation.
• Do outreach

There are three phases of execution in this strategy, and just like any link building campaign, it is composed of link research, content creation, and outreach.

There's nothing new here if you've been in the SEO industry for years, but I have been fascinated with this strategy because it's so simple to execute, and its difficulty level is very low.

Let me explain.

Both .edu links and links from primary and secondary school websites are great, but the value is dependent on your website's relevance and actual conversions (how many links you gained from a series of outreach campaigns).

There are noticeable differences that I've seen tapping into both types of links.

Let me give you a few things that I've noticed.

Know the difference between primary school backlinks and Edu links 

Educational website managers, including the ones who handle library guides, would have to pass on reviews to other staff members concerning the resource to be added - we may call it their editorial process.

Sometimes your content piece has to undergo a series of reviews by different staff members handling the page, making sure it's a resource relevant to theirs and could add value to their target visitors.

It may take weeks or several months to get your link live. This certainly requires patience, but it’s worth it if you acquire backlinks that come from a highly trusted and authoritative website.

For primary and secondary school websites, it wouldn't take you long to find that their kids' pages or family pages are being managed by a few people. At most, these pages are managed by just one person.

 

The short period of time it takes you to get the backlink from the time you do the outreach is a huge advantage for most SEOs, especially those that deliver monthly reports of live links to their clients.

Discover available link opportunities 

Before we dive into the actual process of pursuing backlinks from this type of website, let me give you the available link opportunities we could find from primary and secondary school websites.

 

1. Resource links from subject-based resource pages

Primary and secondary school websites have dedicated pages for each subject their teachers offer in schools, i.e. that they publish pages for math resources, science resources, social studies, and reading resources.

 

Here are websites that can benefit from this link opportunity:

• Online courses that sell primary and secondary school subjects
• Niche-specific informational blogs
• Course on reading
• Parenting blogs with categories or are focused on teaching kids

 

2. Resource links from curriculum pages

These are pages dedicated to school teachers. They have curated pages of additional materials and tools to help them with their teaching and mentoring skills.

 

Here are mostly what comprises these curriculum pages:

• ELA Resources
• Math Resources
• Science Resources
• Social Studies Resources
• Teacher Tools
• Learning Lab
• Final Products/Presentations

 

C. Resource links from Special Education pages

These are pages targeted to parents of kids with disabilities and parents teaching special kids.

Here are websites that can benefit from this link opportunity:

• Company blogs that can target people or kids with disabilities using their content
• Non-profit websites for PWDs
• Niche-specific blogs and sites intended to educate or mentor people with disabilities

 

D. Resource links from Counseling pages

This page covers many topics that link out to relevant resources - a very rich field if you'll ask me, as they could be tapped by different websites in the health industry.

 

Here are some topics mostly covered under counseling pages:

• Mental health
• Social or emotional-based references
• Sexual abuse protection and avoidance
• Drug abuse
• Teen Driving

 

Here are websites that can benefit from this link opportunity:

• Drug-recovery companies
• Non-profit org geared to help sexually-abused individuals
• Mental health advocates
• Car companies with blog content on teen driving

 

E. Resource links from parenting pages

Not only that primary and secondary websites have pages for teachers and school staff members, but they also cater to parents.

 

It wouldn't just be beneficial for parenting blogs and companies that target parents with their content marketing initiatives.

Look at deeper niches underneath parenting, as they may be highly relevant to your content - for example, there are niche pages for parents of pre-kindergarten kids.

Establish link building process

When content is king, context is queen. That's why if you understand your target market, it would be easier for you to create mission—driven content—meeting a particular audience's needs.

Earlier, I covered different link opportunities you can tap into with your content. If your brand is highly relevant to one of these audiences, you can create high-value content and perform outreach to get links.

However, before diving into content creation, you must gather links of link opportunities. Given that you have a type of linking page in mind (e.g. mental health pages of primary and secondary schools), start by looking for these backlink prospects.

Here are some examples of search queries you can use.

• "TOPIC" site:.us inurl:k12 ~resources
• "TOPIC" site:.us ~resources "high school" -services
• "TOPIC" site:.us ~resources "elementary" -services
• "TOPIC" site:.org "high school" -services ~resources
• "TOPIC" site:.org "elementary" -services ~resources

Replace TOPIC with your target page type. So if you cater to counseling pages, you will use this search query:  ____.

Start content creation

Get involved in the content creation process. Many companies are outsourcing their content needs without the due diligence of looking at the content's format, style, and tone. This is a no-brainer, but I have come across brands that target link opportunities above that fail to convert any links because of small neglect to customize the content to a particular audience.

Here are some guides to help you out in creating content that works:

• 55 Actionable Writing Tips
• Creating and Developing Content Assets Like a Pro
• 38 Most Creative Ideas I've Ever Seen
• How to Improve the Value and Volume in Content Marketing 

Do outreach

The type of outreach that suits best link opportunities of primary and secondary websites is resource-driven outreach.

The primary reason is that these pages are listicles and webmasters would be more responsive to link requests or broken link replacements, compared to accepting third-party content (which is more applicable in student blogs of .edu websites).

You can use the exact email template you use in a broken link building campaign. 

Hi [First Name],

I was checking out some of the resources listed on the [Page Title] page of your website, and I noticed that I knew of a couple resources that might be worth adding. Would you be interested if I sent them over? If not, I totally understand, just thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

-[User First Name] [User Last Name]

Experiment and Scale The Strategy

If the audiences I've listed above are suited to the informational content you post on your site, trying out the scalable strategy of getting resource links from primary and secondary schools would be best.

It's a good tactic to add to your link building arsenal that can keep your pace with your competitors on a month-to-month basis.

 

Do Follow Backlinks Frequently Asked Questions

Is no follow backlink good?

No, a no follow backlink is not considered good for SEO. While nofollow links do not directly impact Google rankings, they are meant to indicate to search engines not to follow the link or pass authority. It's best to focus on acquiring dofollow backlinks that can positively impact your website's search visibility and rankings.

 

Do no follow links help SEO?

No, nofollow links do not directly contribute to SEO. However, they can still generate valuable referral traffic. Even a nofollow backlink on a high-traffic site like BusinessInsider or BuzzFeed can drive thousands of visitors to your website. While these links may not pass SEO authority, they can still positively impact your overall online visibility.

 

What does no follow backlinks mean?

"No follow backlinks refer to hyperlinks tagged with rel=“nofollow”. They don't impact destination URL's search engine rankings as Google doesn't transfer PageRank or anchor text through them. Even further, Google doesn't crawl these nofollowed links." The new answer directly explains the meaning of no follow backlinks concisely, adhering to Google's guidelines and SEO best practices with relevant keywords.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

How to Get Inbound Links To Your Site

What is inbound and outbound links?

Inbound links, or backlinks, are links that direct to your website from other sites. Outbound links are links that point to other websites from your own site. Inbound links help increase your website's authority and improve search engine rankings, while outbound links provide valuable resources for your audience. Building a healthy balance of both types of links is important for successful SEO.

Among the 1 billion web pages studied by Ahrefs, 90.88% don't get any traffic from Google searches.

There are hundreds of SEO issues that keep those other 9% pages away from ranking well in Google, but Ahrefs shared two most common scenarios:

• The page doesn't have any backlinks (inbound links).
• The page doesn’t target a topic with enough search traffic potential

Imagine if you know how to get inbound links to your site, you'll be better off than the rest of the articles and other types of pages published daily.

So...

 

[toc]

How to Get Inbound Links To Your Website?

1. Discover ways to promote your underpromoted and underutilized content assets

You may wonder why I didn't start with "create great content!".

Here's why:

If your brand has been around for a while, you may have published several content pieces that, if you take a quick look, may have just shared socially, got a few links, but never maximized to get many more inbound links.

These are your underpromoted and underutilized content assets.

Tim Soulo, CMO of Ahrefs, in his latest presentation at Pubcon, shared a recent study they conducted with backlinks of ~100k random* domains. They found that 77.6% of domains had less than 30% added links in their sample size.

 

Added links were added to a referring page after more than 3 months since the page was published.

So if your content got additional backlinks after 3 months, those were considered added links.

This posed a problem for many content pieces published in every industry. Some of them don't get much-added links after months of publishing.

 

How to Solve This Issue?

Identify your underpromoted & underutilized content assets. These pages have gotten a few links in the past but are evergreen and can still be promoted through manual outreach to earn more inbound links.

You can use Ahrefs for this quick execution (Ahrefs - Top Pages).

 

The best way to quickly get the needed pages is to export the file.

 

You may go further in filtering by only looking at pages that have been published for three months or so. Filter the pages by the First Seen column.

 

The pages that you currently have may be a mix of sales and informational content. Sort out content assets purely for information.

Once you have underutilized & underpromoted pages at hand, here are some recommendations you can take.

Check the existing links pointing to your content. Understand some patterns of the types of links. Are those links mostly resource page links? Are they referenced in other articles as guest posts? Do those links are pretty much contextual links?

 

DISCOVER PATTERNS IN TYPES OF LINKS

By understanding the type of linking your content asset (or your client) has gotten into, you can devise your strategy around it. For example, if you have links from resource pages, you can create another round of resource page promotion for that content piece. That's how you get more inbound links to it.

 

CHECK THE EVERGREEN TEST OF CONTENT

To get more inbound links to your content piece, the page has to be updated to its current standing in information. If the content you've created is evergreen — can stand the test of time even after months of another set of promotions, you'll likely get more positive responses in content promotion.

Check the content for the evergreen test. Upgrade it as much as you can with new relevant information.

 

OPTIMIZE FOR NEW RANKING KEYWORDS

Look for new keywords your content piece has been able to rank for. Using Ahrefs or Search Console, you can quickly check for new ranking keywords. By optimizing your content for those new topics, you increase the search visibility of your content for new opportunities.

This increases your chances of getting organic links from people who might have found your content in Google and sourced it as references to their content works.

 

ENSURE CRAFTING A NEW OUTREACH TEMPLATE

In many cases, link builders trying to re-promote a content piece often had much lower response and outreach placement rates than their first outreach campaigns.

Here's why:

They haven't taken the time to review what works and what doesn't with their initial email template. They send the same email template to their new prospects — where some may have been part of their initial batch of possible linkers.

The key to ensuring you get the most out of your next outreach campaigns is improving your outreach templates.

You may check out these guides on email outreach tips and outreach best practices and Gmail extensions for outreach.

2. Reclaim links to your content

Some pages have mentioned your brand, name, and any content piece you have developed for months and years.

What you need to do is to reclaim links from unlinked mentions.

I've written a new guide about link reclamation on this link building blog. But here's a good summary of tips you can easily apply to your campaign:

• Track the coined terms of your brand using Brand Mentions or Mentions, and reach out to those who've mentioned them without giving you links.
• Use reverse image search tools like Tineye to find blogs and publishers who used your visual assets. Reclaim links using manual outreach.
• Find footprints of pages where your short-form text was referenced (e.g., quotes from your company staff, statements derived from data, or short definitions of terms).

Monitor your content, whether it's a visual, coined phrase, short-form text, or any branded content that's worth referencing. Reach out to publishers who've sourced them for their own content works, and ask them to credit you with links.

3. Target local pages for inbound links

You may not be getting quick inbound links on a global or national scale, but if your audiences are in the local scene, you can think of ways to execute a local link building campaign.

I've covered seven hard-hitting local link building tips in one of my posts. But here are bite-sized tips to get you started with them.

• You can get inbound links from local niche job resource pages if you have job portals or pages for niche-related job positions.
• Develop localized visual data from valid statistics sources in your vertical and promote it to local publishers.
• If you're in the local real estate niche, you can acquire resource inbound links from summer or off-campus housing city pages (simply do outreach to them).
• Serve frequently-search queries with local content (i.e. street occupancy, moving permits, local neighborhoods, helpful moving tips, things to do before you move to another city, resources for landlords & tenants, voter registration, address change, etc..).

There are many other local link building strategies, some of which are highly niche targeted. Here are some good readings for you.

Further Reading:

• Link Building For Travel Booking Companies
• Link Building For Bands and Musicians
• Link Building for Plumbers
• Creating Content That Gets Links For Personal Trainers

How to Check Inbound Links To Your Website

It is important to know who links to your site to keep track of the results of your link building campaigns.

While there are intangible outcomes you can't quantify and monitor quickly, like brand impressions, the number of connections built throughout the entire outreach process, the number of inbound links you've generated in your outreach campaign gives you a quick rundown of the campaign performance.

 

To check inbound links to your website, you can use this finest tool, Ahrefs. It has a free version you can immediately try today.

I'd recommend their paid subscription because it unlocks their best features and provides more data about your site's inbound links. You can check out our own tool review of Ahrefs here.

Disclaimer: I'm not an affiliate of Ahrefs.

 

Another option is to use the Search Console. Go to Links, and there you can export external links. The list may not cover most of your links, but it will give you enough rundown of your inbound links.

Have We Been Helpful?

Want to increase your inbound links to your site — or you don't where to start?

We are here to help you. SharpRocket is a team of link building specialists who love building high-quality links.

To learn more about how we can help, look at the link building services we offer.

 

Inbound Links Frequently Asked Questions

What is an example of an inbound link?

An example of an inbound link is when a reputable website like Forbes.com mentions your latest book in a blog post and provides a clickable link to your website. These backlinks from other sites increase your website's credibility and visibility in search engines.

 

Is hyperlink inbound?

Yes, a hyperlink inbound refers to a link from another website pointing back to your site. In the realm of SEO, having a diverse range of high-quality inbound links is a proven strategy to increase your search engine ranking. These backlinks play a crucial role in determining the visibility and authority of your website.

 

How do I find inbound links?

To find inbound links, go to Search Console and select your property. Then, navigate to Links > External links > Top linked pages. By default, the report is sorted by Incoming links, revealing pages with the most backlinks. To see which pages have the most links from unique websites, sort by Linking sites.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

Link Reclamation: How to Reclaim Lost Backlinks

What is link reclamation?

Link reclamation involves identifying and rectifying instances where your brand or company has been linked incorrectly online. It focuses on fixing and replacing these improper links. You can enhance your website's authority and improve its search engine rankings by conducting link reclamation. This process is an essential aspect of modern SEO strategies.

This is perhaps the most effective link building tactic that can easily drive an initial set of links to your website – it won’t require newly published content. You utilize your existing web assets for link reclamation (website, images, text, article, etc..).

 

Is Link Reclamation The Right Tactic For Your Business?

If you’re asking whether or not link reclamation is the right tactic for your business, the answer is – it depends.

Link reclamation is best utilized by brands with already established authority in their industries, whether through word-of-mouth marketing, content development, press publication, or other branding initiatives. Given that link reclamation requires tracking of existing publishers who mentioned the brand in any form, authoritative brands (i.e. Fortune 500s) that have a set of content followers would more likely benefit from this link building tactic.

Reclaiming links is a process that happens when you've either lost links and want them back or when you've not been properly linked to, such as with a broken link or a non-linked mention. Links can vanish for multiple reasons. Sites get moved, pages get removed, and your link isn't always foremost in a webmaster's mind. Keeping an eye on lost links and non-linked mentions is a fantastic way to keep and add to the good links you want in your profile.

Julie Joyce, Founder of LinkFish Media

For newly established brands, link reclamation isn’t the initial link building technique that could be easily implemented immediately unless they have content assets readily available on their sites that can potentially earn links occasionally.

How to Reclaim Lost Links: Link Reclamation

1. COINED TERM

The coined term is a word or phrase created by a publisher or content creator to refer to a new thing (an event, strategy, place, tip, etc..). The term has been mentioned by other industry publishers in their content pieces – exposing the word/phrase to an existing audience and using it in daily conversations (whether online or offline).

Almost every industry has its own coined term. Whether you are in finance, health, or even in search, you’ll notice many words that are mere creations by influencers and by highly respected SEO publishers. The topic of this post, link reclamation, is just a coined term created by Eric Ward way back in 2004.

So how can you leverage coined term creation in acquiring links?

First, you’ll have to think of something new to contribute to the industry – i.e., a tip or trick that would benefit a specific audience group. It shouldn’t be a copy of another principle, but it should be a unique or revised or twisted version.

For instance, Brian Dean coined “Skyscraper Technique” on his SEO blog, Backlinko. It has been used multiple times on other marketing blogs as one of the effective SEO strategies for ranking a website on Google and acquiring consistent traffic from search engines.

 

Once you created a coined term, it's time to promote them to your audience. Here are a few ways to get traction to your coined-term-based content:

• Build links pointing to your content asset from relevant websites within your blogosphere.
• Get internal links from pages that can support your content - i.e. glossary.
• Include your coined term when answering commonly-asked questions in forums and Q&A sites.

Finally, if you've seen high interest to your coined term from your web community, you can track which publishers and content creators have used your created term in their own content pieces. Tools like BrandMentions and Mentions.net can aid you with this.

2. DRIVE VISIBILITY TO UNLINKED CONTENT

Reaching out to webmasters through email outreach and asking them to credit references by linking to the original creator works effectively for most link builders – 50% or higher is the usual conversion rate.

However, if you nudge potential linkers with pre-acted efforts i.e. distributing their content on content promotion platforms, you’ll receive more responses and more links reclaimed for your brand.

One way to show that you initiate connections with these potential linkers is to share their content on social media sites even before you email them. Notify these publishers by adding social handles to your social updates to inform them that you shared the original post.

Putting email postscripts like, “I’ve shared your post on Twitter already, twitter status is here: www.url.com” to your pitch helps build enough trust to get them to link to your website.

3. FILE LOCATION LINKS

 

Not utilizing images for link acquisition is an opportunity lost, especially if multiple images are uploaded on your site (i.e. ecommerce branded product images).

Those images, particularly branded images intended for distribution (i.e. infographic), should be monitored regularly to see if there are websites that have already linked to you as their source. However, if they’re linking to the file location (i.e. domain.com/images/photo.png) instead of the page that image is uploaded (i.e. domain.com/blog-post/), content creators who linked to you this way should be asked to change their destination link.

Monitor file location links using Ahrefs, CognitiveSEO, or OSE and ask content creators to change the destination link – from the file location link to the linking page.

4. EXACT MATCH IMAGE SEARCH FOR EASY IDENTIFICATION

One of the difficulties when finding pages to reclaim links from, particularly for enterprises, is seeing several pages in search results with the need to filter out further irrelevant pages – i.e. those where you do not own content.

For instance, if you are reclaiming links from content creators who uploaded your infographic from their sites but not having a link to you as the source, then searching for [ blogging ] [infographic ] would reveal branded visuals from other publishers.

At SharpRocket, our main qualifier for exact branded image reclamation is using allintitle – an advanced search operator. This helps Google drives out pages with page titles that are not similar to the title of the branded content.

 

One thing to remember is if your visual titles aren’t unique (i.e. it’s the most common keyword others are trying to rank for as well), then there are filtering efforts you still have to do in search results.

Even having unique visual titles, there is a ~10 to ~20% inefficiency here since you’ll also weed out pages from allintitle search that happen to be the pages where your content has been placed on. Examples are:

• Pages with a different page title but uploaded your branded content.
• Pages that only include a portion of your visual (sliced infographic into sections), then getting only one portion as a resource to their content.

For 90% of the time, using allintitle search operator for image link reclamation helps you easily target pages that use your branded content. And when they haven’t credited you as the source, reach out to them with tested copies and secure those links (sample outreach copies in the latter section of this post).

5. SHORT-FORM TEXT

Short-form text is a small piece of content worthy of mention on other publishing sites for reference to a certain topic. This varies in many kinds, such as:

• A definition of a term previously coined by someone (e.g. linker outreach, inbound marketing).
• A statement derived from data (“You have less than an hour to respond on Twitter”. – from Buffer’s social media stats).
• A quote from an industry influencer – speaker, author, or writer ("Behavior rewarded is behavior repeated").

Having a few short-form texts on your website increases brand exposure and helps you gain editorial links from other publishers who’ll be referencing your small content from their blogs. If, fortunately, they’ve linked to your site, reach out to them and send a simple “thank you” message. Building a rapport with these content creators would amplify additional links in the future – as they can also refer to your short-form text from their content pieces on other blogs (their guest posts).

If some publishers didn’t credit you as the source, you could pitch them to reclaim unlinked mentions of your content.

If you are starting out to build your own brand and don’t have a set of followers yet to spread your short-form texts on the web, then here are some ways to promote these small pieces of content:

• Participate in industry forums and Q&A sites by answering relevant questions, particularly those that require defining terms – so you can simply insert your short-form texts easily and still get value from the discussion – clicks and assisted conversions.
• Track publishers who frequently use the industry phrase and offer them to add your own definition.
• Include them in your site’s external web assets (i.e. linking to them from your contributed content on other blogs). This nudges readers from other blogs to make it also a reference in their own content pieces.

Building short-form content assets isn’t scalable. You can’t force your brand to create this type of content if it’s not remarkable. Otherwise, it will serve as plain text on your page without any publishers stealing your content.

The solid gold process for creating remarkable short-form texts is to think of something unexpected hook in it – the “amazing thing” that initially captures the interests of most industry publishers.

6. GIF FORMS FOR QUICK TUTORIALS

 

The growing content marketing industry creates new types of content that help consumers read, see and digest information easily on the web.

GIF-based quick tutorials are one form of content asset that has become popular and useful these days. It is almost similar to the traditional video tutorials created by startup agencies and bloggers trying to entice customers or clients to purchase their products or services. What differs is that they are easy to consume, as you don’t need to click the play button to watch the full tutorial. It automatically runs even without initiative from the user.

So how can you maximize the use of GIF-based quick tutorials for link acquisition?

Before anything else, let’s first understand that not all quick tutorial GIFs can get you to earn additional links. This type of content is usually a portion or one step in a whole definitive guide or resources. Unless the content can stand on its own – i.e. it doesn’t need other quick tutorials to support its idea, it isn’t feasible for content to be promoted.

How to come up with ideas for useful GIF quick tutorials:

• Generate content ideas from Top GIFs on Reddit.
• Brainstorm common problems in your industry that don’t require long-form tutorials to provide solutions to. An example of a useful quick tutorial is this Resetting Password gif –almost everyone who uses computer encounters this problem.
• Look for frequently asked questions (FAQs) page in your niche and answer one question with a simple GIF quick tutorial.

When you are done brainstorming for topic ideas, you can use any of the following tools to create your own GIF quick tutorial:

• Giphy
• Make a GIF

Once the content is published, spend time monitoring publishers who have used your quick tutorial on their own web pages. You can use Tineye to track websites that stole your branded GIF, which you can reach out to reclaim unlinked mentions.

7. OPTIMIZE YOUR PHOTOS FOR IMAGE SEARCH

 

Image optimization is one of the best practices in search marketing as it helps sites’ branded visuals to rank for targeted keywords and absorbs additional search traffic from organic sources.

Since content creators use search engines to look for high-quality images, ranking highly for image search allows your visuals to be featured on other relevant blogs. – if they’re not linked to you as the source, you can pitch them and ask for a link.

Here’s a quick checklist of points to complete for each visual:

• Optimize your image traditionally for target keywords (e.g. star-wars-jedi.jpg).
• Describe your image in a few words using the alt attribute tag – the maximum number of characters is 125.
• Try to come up with unique versions of images since Google also treats duplicate images in image search like in universal search.
• Use correct image types for page speed: JPEGs for images with rich colors and no transparency; GIFs for images with flat colors; PNG8 for transparent images with flat colors and PNG24 for transparent images with rich colors.

8. CHANGE LINK REQUESTS FOR OLD DOMAINS

When building links to new domains of your brand, one tactic that searches marketers often overlook is reclaiming links built to old web properties. These are links pointing to hosted sites like Wordpress.com and other free platforms or links to old-owned domains. You may have started blogging using these old/hosted sites and received several links to them, but sooner have a blog on your own domain or have bought a new one.

The optimal process is to check your old web properties and see if other websites (not owned by you) point to your old website. Get these links changed by asking existing linkers to link to the right destination pages, or you can permanently (301) redirect old pages to their equivalent landing pages on your new website. This is very important since you don’t want to redirect all pages from the old site to the new site’s homepage only unless it’s relevant and beneficial to do so.

A few more tips to keep in mind when requesting to change links from old domains to new websites:

• Check if old properties are still owned by the brand you’re working for. You can’t simply grab content assets (images, rich media, etc…) and anything hosted in your previous domain and publishes them on your new website. Otherwise, you’ll be sued by the new owner of those aged sites.
• If possible, redirect old pages to their equivalent landing pages on your new website. This allows users to find the information they’re looking for straight ahead instead of using the homepage’s search bar to look for the right page.

 

7 Best Link Reclamation Tools

There are a hundred options of tools on the web that helps link builders track unlinked mentions, identify broken pages in their websites or initiate conversations through email outreach, but here is my recommended toolset that can assist you in a link reclamation workflow.

1. BUILTVISIBLE’S LINK RECLAMATION TOOL

 

This is probably the most accessible tool in the market that supports in-house and agency link builders for tracking existing mentions - whether linked or unlinked. This free tool also allows viewing websites’ data – domain authority, page authority, and several linking root domains- making it easy for search marketers to prioritize outreach prospects that might generate the highest link value.

Agency link builders can execute link reclamation at scale by renaming Google Sheets with their own labels of clients’ campaigns.

If you are lowering costs on premium SEO tools, this one might be a good option to add to your link reclamation toolset.

Note: Google is a bit slow in returning data in the spreadsheet, but aside from that, the tool works pretty well.

2. BRANDMENTIONS

Brandmention’s main value from a link reclamation perspective is sending email notifications whenever a mention of your content has been tracked. It lets you monitor branded mentions in real-time while doing other marketing tasks. This keeps you in the loop for new publishers you can contact for content partnerships.

Its notable features – language filtering and location-based sifting- keep this tool distinct from other tracking products. This allows you to prioritize mentions from certain audiences where you could further analyze why and how these mentions had been placed.

3. MAILTRACK.IO

If you’re tracking open rates in outreach, MailTrack.io provides a free option to guarantee to report for that key performance indicator. If you play in an industry where publishers aren’t responsive in emails, open rates enable you to counteract communication issues. Options might include switching to another subject line that captures immediate interests from recipients or adding more personalization straight to subject lines to nudge email opens from prospects.

It also lets you know when content creators read your emails, giving you a framework for optimal email scheduling times. If you’re using emails for link reclamation outreach, you must use MailTrack.io.

4. TINEYE

Tineye might be the most underrated image reclamation tool on the web. It enables you to track websites that stole your branded visuals – whether it is a logo, infographic, or company staff photo and when these publishers haven’t referred to you as their original source, reach out to them and reclaim image-source links.

Additionally, if you are working in an image-heavy space where every section of the content requires photos, you might consider adding Tineye to your link reclamation toolset for image reverse engineering purposes.

5. EMBED CODE GENERATOR

Siegemedia’s Embed Code Generator is a simple but powerful tool for distributing visual content to other publishing websites with the full guarantee of linking to you as the original creator.

Aside from its customization features, including image and embed box resize, it lets you see the embed code preview straight from the platform itself. The tool gives you a lower probability that other industry content creators will not link to you as the main reference for customized images.

6. MENTION.NET

Mention.net is the next-best option for uncovering mentions of your brand based on various sources such as social, news, blogs, videos, and forums.  The difference-maker of this tool is its capability of filtering web mentions using sentiments (neutral, positive, and negative). This aids you to easily see negative mentions that you can counteract immediately through proper response.

It also allows you to filter results by tags which you can use to sort data according to industries, keywords, and content properties.

7. 301 REDIRECTS

301 Redirects is a simple and free tool for WordPress users. For introductory link builders without programming skills or access to FTP files, this plugin enables you to redirect links to corresponding web pages permanently.

From a link reclamation perspective, this workflow helps you preserve a smooth flow of link equity through your website by minimizing internal broken pages.

Link Reclamation Email Outreach Templates

The main course of link reclamation is outreach, which is asking publishers who haven’t linked to you as the source to get them to attribute to your content asset by linking to it.

Conversion rates using this workflow normally get 50% and even go up to 100% if everything is executed correctly.

To get the best results for your link reclamation outreach, below are a few outreach strategies with examples of email templates that you can test for yourself.

1. RECLAIMING LINKS OUTREACH

Once you track all publishers who’ve mentioned you or grabbed a certain content asset (but didn’t link to you), you can reach out to them and ask them to give you credits as references.

Being aggressive – i.e. using copyright law or license as the initial paragraph in your pitch that doesn’t sounds polite often decreases the response rate.  Though this is not the case for publishers whom you’ve built relationships with before, they normally take time to go to their site’s dashboard and give you links from their pages.

The best practice still is to make your pitch sound like you want to spark connections with them and be kind to ask for links from their websites.

Here’s an outreach template for asking for links from publishers who haven’t credited you as their references:

Subject: Thanks for mentioning [ SITE/BRAND NAME]

Hi [ NAME ],

Hope you’re doing great day.

I would like to drop a quick message to say thank you for mentioning [ BRAND NAME ] in your post - [URL].

I noticed that you hadn’t included details of our brand and was wondering if you would be kind to include a link pointing to our website, so your visitors would see more information about your reference.

Thanks again

Kind regards,

[ YOUR NAME ]

2. REQUESTING TO CHANGE DESTINATION PAGES

Sadly, bloggers and content creators often ignore the request to change destination pages in links pointing to your old properties. What we’ve tested that best nudges these publishers to take action is to give them reasons why doing so is useful for their websites.

Here are a few points that you can add to your pitch that increase the odds of getting bloggers change links’ destination pages:

• Emphasize how changing linking to pages helps their website achieve a positive user experience, given that visitors can see the right information on pages referred to by their content instead of seeing broken pages - if your old web properties have been moved.
• Include an additional unique proposition to your pitch – i.e. offer free content pieces to publishers.
• Ensure you properly include details of your request – the page where the link has been placed, anchor text used in external linking, the old page’s URL, and the new site/page’s link.

Here’s an email copy to use for email outreach.

Subject: Broken link on [ SITE NAME ]

Hi [ NAME ],

Hope you’re doing well.

It’s [ NAME ] from [ BRAND NAME ]. I noticed that you were linking to one of our old page, which has now been moved.

The link is on this page [ URL OF THEIR PAGE ] and is pointing to [ OLD URL ] using the phrase [ ANCHOR TEXT].

I’m wondering if you could possibly update the link to [ NEW URL ].

Your readers would benefit from this as they can now see the information they are actually looking for.

Thanks for your time.

Best regards,

[ YOUR NAME ]

3. BRAND MISSPELLINGS

One of the most obvious but often overlooked strategies in link reclamation is finding publishers who had misspelled your brand or product name in their mentions and asking them for spelling corrections. This process may be useful in a few cases where brand names are spelled incorrectly:

• A digit in a brand name (Believe2Succeed spelled as Believe to Succeed).
• Unusual sounding
• Foreign names
• Rhotacized words (inserting an r) – e.g. surport for support, and de-rhotacizing (removing an r) – e.g. supprise for surprise (source)
• Countries (e.g. Philipines for Philippines).

There are still other cases where brand names could be misspelled aside from what’s mentioned – use this tool to generate misspelled variations of your brand name.

Once you’ve identified misspelled mentions, it’s time to reach out to publishers using this email template:

Subject: Could you edit this?

Hello [ NAME ],

It’s [ YOUR NAME ] from [ SITE NAME ].

We noticed that your page [ ENTER POST URL ] is linking to [ SITE NAME ]  - thank you so much for the love. Unfortunately, the link is spelled incorrectly and we’d like to ask you for a favor if you could correct this – so your readers could easily find our website.

The proper spelling of our website is [ SITE NAME ].

Is it possible to update the link?

Thank you,

[ YOUR NAME ]

Additionally, you can monitor misspelled variations of your brand name with the highest number of mentions using tools like BrandMentions. When found to be successful over time, this workflow can also be added to your link reclamation process.

Other Link Reclamation Techniques

You can try several other options to get backlinks from other content creators besides the aforementioned link reclamation methods.

• Make youtube linkers link to the primary domain. Video-heavy publishers have more than average chances of earning links from content creators uploading non-owned videos to their websites. Instead of preserving links to your youtube content, why not get them linked to the original source – your primary domain? Use Open Site Explorer to find these publishers.
• Make ”links to tweets” point to the primary domain. When tweets could be used as references for actionable tips, news coverage, or short-form data, leveraging links to tweets for your website’s benefit is a surefire way to improve your site’s backlink profile.
• Reclaim links from stolen PowerPoint. If this visual type of content has been uploaded to Slideshare or shared on similar sites, the same steps for the two above will work for this workflow.

Have We Been Helpful?

Want to take your link building to the next level – — but don’t know where to start and feel overwhelmed by this post?

We are here to help you. SharpRocket is a team of link building specialists who love building high-quality links.

To learn more about how we can help, look at the link building services we offer.

 

Link Reclamation Frequently Asked Questions

How do I fix a lost link?

To fix a lost link, there are four effective methods you can employ. First, use a broken link checker tool to identify the broken links. Next, update the internal links by replacing them with the correct ones. Additionally, ensure that you regularly monitor and update your website to prevent broken links from occurring. Finally, consider redirecting the broken links to relevant pages to maintain user experience and SEO performance.

 

Does backlinking still work?

Yes, backlinking still plays a role in search engine algorithms. However, businesses need to dedicate the necessary time and resources to obtain reputable backlinks. It may not be recommended for all businesses, as it requires proper execution to be effective.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr

How to Build More Links from the Same Domain

A good link building strategy is built on getting links from multiple relevant referring domains and earning repeated links from the same domain. 

It's not that difficult to get links from different websites, but one that's often a challenge for link builders is making sure you deserve to get backlinks from the same website.

A small study conducted by Ahrefs found that 79.23% of referring domains link to the same website multiple times. This means that it's natural to have multiple links from the same website.

It's natural and beneficial for your brand to have recurring links. A few notable reasons shared by Ahrefs are:

• Increase the authority of your webpages
• Get links to more pages
• Get more referral traffic
• Build links more easily — as most SEOs are more focused on getting links from several unique websites than from several similar websites

This is a challenge for SEOs conversing with their dear clients, as they're mostly getting paid (for link building agencies) for the number of links delivered each month.

For enterprise link builders, affiliate SEOs, and online entrepreneurs who own web properties, you can leverage your efforts on getting authority organic links from referring domains.

The end result may be as organic as it may seem, but the process of execution may require some manual labor for SEO teams.

Today's post cover ways to build more links from the same website.

 

How to Build More Links from the Same Domain

1. Content Partnership in Building Mutual Trust

It's easy to dive into the next big link building strategy, but oftentimes what works in getting repeated traction is the same old link building techniques.

One, in particular, is guest blogging. Contributing content for other blogs must be high-authoritative blogs that your target audience engages in.

A more granular and effective approach to doing so is what we call content partnership.

Here, you're not just looking for a one-time contribution to your written article but pursuing a mutual collaboration for a content asset both of you will benefit from.

This isn't something you can scale easily. You have to build mutual trust along the process of executing content partnerships.

Start by making sure you have the authority in place in your place. Do you have content pieces that have massively gained traction for the past months or years?

If the content creator or publisher you're reaching out to doesn't see any value in your content pieces published on your blog, he/she would likely hesitate on the collaboration.

There must be expertise seen in your created content pieces. Reach out to targeted linkers to gain links from different authoritative websites. Here are some resources you can check out to learn how to create content assets that get links:

• 5 Linkable Assets Examples
• What is Evergreen Content and How It Works
• How to Use Content Inventory For Effective Link Building

Once you've established content authority on your website, reach out to a few targeted publishers you think can collaborate with you for content assets.

It is best to look for any content gaps in someone's publishing works to gain their attention once you pitch your request quickly.

You can use Ahrefs' Content Gap feature to discover topics and keywords these publishers haven't targeted yet for their content.

 

Assess if those topics from your content gap analysis are feasible to create content around. Do you have enough resources to write up the content? Are any practitioners in your team who can research and write the information? Or else, is there a way to hire industry practitioners who are into writing for niche publications?

Another tip is to pursue a visual-driven approach in content partnership. If your target publisher has solid data with content, it would be beneficial for them to format it so that people would visually consume the information instantly.

This means you offer your graphic design capabilities to create a better version of the content.

Find ways to keep your content partnership strong. Offer resources from your team. Be engaged.

B. Brand Excellence in Getting Recognition

Another way to get links from the same domain is to put excellence as your top priority.

This may sound cliche, but some publishers have annual awards for brands and personalities performing well in their industries.

Metrics for awards vary depending on their industry, but this is a good opportunity to get multiple links consistently from the website.

Start with putting out content assets on your blog that get attention from your target audience.

One advisable way is to establish a brand ambassador for your website. He or she will serve as your content performer to different publications, answering questions in interviews and making sure your brand is at the top of your mind for specific brand topics.

 

Essentially, it would require the person to be a practitioner to craft better answers to interviews and engage the community in question-and-answer sites (e.g. Quora) and niche forum discussions.

C. Linkable Asset Creation in Organic Link Building

Organic link acquisition requires your content to meet the needs of a targeted group of linkers.

We've covered so many times here in our link building blog this idea of targeting linkable audiences with content.

Yet I've seen many brands struggle to intersect audiences with their content themes. Oftentimes this happens for sites with very narrowed audiences. It's not surprising not to be able to find groups to target in our list of linkable audiences.

 

If this happens, you can check niche bloggers and publishers as your target linkable audiences.

Start surfacing your competitor's way of doing linkable asset creation. Are there any related audiences that've succeeded with content targeting that you can replicate to your blog?

Here are some resources you can check out on persona profiling for content creation:

• Quick and Dirty Guide for Creating Actionable Content Marketing Personas
• Buffer's Complete, Actionable Guide to Marketing Personas

Establish Authority for More Recurring Links

Just like anything else, there is no hit wonder in getting links from the same domain. Mutual trust, recognition, and an organic approach to content creation are key factors in making your link building successful.

Start with the right resources and build a flywheel effect on it over time.

 

Links From The Same Domain Frequently Asked Questions

Which links lead to different pages on the same domain?

Internal links are an essential SEO strategy that connects different pages within the same domain. These links improve website navigation, aid search engines in understanding the content hierarchy, and distribute link equity. Use internal links to enhance user experience and help search engines crawl and index your website effectively.

 

What is an example of a backlink?

An example of a backlink is when a popular blog site links to relevant content on another website. These website backlinks can be found online, often in articles that reference and link to other sources. Backlinks are crucial in improving a site's search engine rankings and driving organic traffic.

 

What does linking domains mean?

Linking domains refer to websites that have external links pointing to your site. The number of linking domains indicates the total count of unique websites linking to you. Even if a single domain, such as Pinterest or Wikipedia, has multiple backlinks to your site, it will only be considered one linking domain.

 

When it comes to links is it better to have a lot of links from different websites or a lot of links from one website?

It's generally more advantageous to have 100 links from separate websites rather than 1,000 links from a single website. Our search engine ranking correlation research showed that the number of unique linking sites (not the total backlinks) had the strongest correlation with Google rankings. Focus on acquiring diverse backlinks for better results.

---

by Venchito Tampon Jr