Archive for the ‘Building Backlinks’ Category
Guest posting is a great way to build high quality links. It’s also a great way to attract new readers, network with important bloggers in your industry, and build a reputation for your brand. Guest posting is one of the most beneficial activities you can undertake as a novice SEO or even just as a business owner.
But how do you know which websites will make a great home for your guest post? It’s not as easy as you would think. This guide will help you decide which sites you should publish to, and which sites you should avoid.
Check the Quality of the Site
There is one major reason that professional SEO services charge so much money for high quality link building—a high quality link needs to reside on a high quality site, and these high quality sites have much harsher restrictions on content quality. In short, building good links is hard work. You can do this yourself if you know how to analyze the strength of the sites in question.
Here are some common metrics to look for (hit the search engines to find tools to help you):
- Frequency of updates
- Topic and quality of content
- Number and diversity of sites linking in
- Number and quality of other published guest posts
You’ll notice when something is wrong if a shoe blog has hundreds of inbound links from gambling websites, or if a blog has guest posts containing links to auto dealerships and baseball card dealers on the same page. Any time you see a lapse in theme, tone, or purpose you can guess the site is a low-quality resource.
Contact the Website Owner
Unless you have a strong background in SEO link building, you want to avoid websites that direct potential guest posters to an online form. You want the ability to contact the site owner or at least one of the major editors so that you can ask the necessary questions—especially if your link disappears or ends up on the wrong page.
A website that refuses one-on-one interaction with guest posters is most likely nothing but a low-quality content mill. These websites do serve a purpose, but you should let professional SEOs navigate this tough terrain.
For the sites that are more than happy to chat with you, send out a few polite emails asking for a guest posting opportunity. Provide a few short lines detailing the proposed subject of your post, the subject and demographics of your website, and if you’re feeling extra bold, a few reasons that your post will benefit that site’s readers. You will learn a lot from trial and error.
Do you feel like you have a better handle on website evaluation for guest posting? Every blogger, every marketer, and every SEO will have to approach the situation from a different perspective—but in the end, website analysis and productive conversation will help you find the perfect site for your high-quality guest post.
I currently work for an Internet marketing company, and, though I really enjoy my job, there are some stressful and annoying things that come along with it, as, I assume, is the case with nearly every job.
Where Posting Gets Obnoxious
One of the things that sometimes drives me up the wall is writing SEO articles. The irony about this article is that it is being written for SEO purposes, and I will freely admit that. Here’s to meta-writing!
Regardless, the most frustrating thing about these articles is not the actual writing of them. It’s getting them accepted and published that’s the tricky part.
I personally prefer to write fiction articles that involve short stories, but the site I post the articles to often rejects that kind of content and gives it a poor rating, even though I know the story was high quality. That’s the frustrating part of my job.
Avoid Having Your Articles Rejected
So, since I’ve been writing these articles there are some things I’ve noticed about why SEO articles get rejected. Here’s a list for you:
Inappropriate Content
Though, yes, vulgar or unclean content will definitely get rejected, that’s not what I’m talking about. Sites will almost always reject content doesn’t fit with what they want on their website. I suppose that one is, or at least should be, a no-brainer.
Keywords that Are Not Embedded Correctly
So, say your keyword is “Nhance franchise,” and you write something about how much you like a video game. Unless you spend a few paragraphs talking about franchises and have the words interspersed in those paragraphs, the article website might think your “Nhance franchise” link is too spammy.
So, what are your options? I’ve been trying to figure that out. Most times having those paragraphs around the “Nhance franchise” link works well enough for the website to accept it, but sometimes they are super picky and act as if they don’t understand SEO at all. Yes, I know; it’s very annoying.
The other thing you could do is throw creativity to the wind and just write an article about Nhance franchises, but where’s the fun in that? I suppose you could learn something about franchises when you go about doing the research, but I feel like it takes the fun out of the writing. Unfortunately, that’s what the majority of my coworkers have resorted to.
Incorrect Formatting and Grammar
Because Google now looks at formatting, it is important to have headers and subheaders scattered throughout your article. Oftentimes, websites will reject you if you only have one huge block of content. Also, 3-4 line paragraphs and at least one bulleted list are ideal, though not always necessary.
Grammar and spelling must be of the highest quality if you want to be accepted anywhere. I did, however, find out that writing colloquially is not a bad thing, even if Microsoft Word decides that the common use of a word or phrase is spelled wrong or is grammatically incorrect.
Now that You Know Why Your SEO Articles Are Getting Rejected…
You can go and post your own SEO articles and begin to create more online prestige for your client or for your own website! Just make sure to keep up with Google’s ever-changing algorithms; otherwise, your work is all for naught.
So today I make it to the site to moderate any comments, and just to perform some updates and the such, and low and behold what do you think I find? Hmmm, about 600 or so registered users, hundreds of gibberish articles awaiting approval, and over 700 post tags! I mean, come on already! Why are you so fucking stupid? Do you even think about what your trying to do, or do you just make aimless attempts to pollute each and every site that comes across your browsing path?
Go away!
You spammers will never get into this site anymore, ever, ever, ever!
I’m going to keep this post short.
Today was the day I dedicated to arduously moderating the more than 400 comments in the comment queue of Backlinks For SEO. Yes, I visit each and every URL submitted. Yes, I analyze each and every site for page rank and/or the number of pages indexed. Yes, this takes hours of my time, but I do it to ensure that this backlink resource is a worthwhile investment for everyone. Just like the old saying, “one bad apple spoils the bunch,” so too is the principle that one backlink associated to porn or gambling can have a bad impact on the reputation of this site, as well as every site that links to or from it. But that’s not what I wish to discuss. Actually I wish to discuss the importance of building backlinks that look natural to the search engines.
There’s a plethora of information out there about building backlinks that look natural, but I’m going to dissect it into one tiny segment: “Pages You Link To”
Link To Internal Pages:
I couldn’t help but to realize that many visitors who submit comment here at this site only fashion the backlink to the landing page of their site. In most cases many of the sites I visit have numerous pages, yet there’s only a link to the landing page. Why? Are the other pages not worth the time to visit? I would certainly hope not! Is it just a matter of being lazy? Probably not… Most importantly, what do you think it looks like from the viewpoint of the Google search engine — or the Google employee who happens to randomly review your site — when all of the backlinks to your website are directed at only the landing page? Got you thinking? Good! Because I’m willing to bet that you agree with me that this doesn’t look very natural. Not to mention the fact that neglecting to promote the entirety of any website is likely detrimental to a sites SEO. Just a thought…
Anchor Text:
Another matter is the text or anchor text that you use when creating the actual backlink. Do you always use the same anchor or keyword? Does that seem natural to you? Probably not. But some times we just use the same term anyway — hoping and impatiently awaiting for our site to rank for the term. Did you ever take into consideration that on many sites the text for a URL is “Visit Website” or “Website”?
In the least I would recommend a random anchor backlink of this type. Perhaps 1 out of every 10 backlinks would be the best proportion; though I’ve heard as high as 20%… Nevertheless, break up the monotonous anchored backlinks directed toward your website or blog they look more natural.
So there you go. Chew on this information a little bit and analyze it. Most importantly, start getting some backlinks to ALL of the internal pages on your website to make the link-building process more natural!
Here are some excellent backlink resources to help and get you on your way:
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http://www.websiteoutlook.com/
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http://www.alexa.com/
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http://www.cubestat.com/
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http://www.quantcast.com/
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http://www.aboutdomain.org/