If we go by the definition, guest blogging is an SEO and content marketing activity that allows you to promote your personal/corporate brand or specific services & products and content pieces that you’ve published. Therefore, guest blogging has various benefits, some of which we’ll look at later on in this article.

Today, I’m going to break down what you need to know about search engines and content quality in 2022 and beyond in order to create guest blogs that will be successful in more ways than one. The following are the main topics I am going to cover in this guide:

Main Topics

1. Traditional Guest Blogging is Outdated
2. Google’s Guide for Guest Blogging
3. How to Do Personal Branding in Guest Blogging?
4. Build a Brand Through Guest Blogging: Dos & Don’ts
5. How to Choose a Guest Blogging Topic?
6. How to Stand Out from Millions of Guest Posts?
7. What to Do After Your Guest Post is Published?
8. Benefits of Guest Blogging

Let’s get started!

1. Traditional Guest Blogging is Outdated

Many use guest blogging to improve search rankings, brand visibility, build a good brand reputation and get backlinks. All of these were easy to do, but not anymore. Due to the increased level of competition, expertise and a wide range of things search engines are evaluating, it becomes hard to get ranks.

Building a reputation and personal branding through writing is only possible if you are willing to go beyond your traditional writing and adapt to new trends.

When it comes to link building it’s not simple anymore. Google already started to penalize over links and provides Link Schemes for guest blogging to avoid adding links in massive. Also, Google recommends the use of nofollow links in guest blogs.

So, if you’re sending guest blogging pitches where you’re requesting a follow backlink in exchange for the article, you should stop that practice. And start to focus on your content quality,

2. Google’s Guide for Guest Blogging

Google’s core algorithm update is all about providing quick, helpful, high-quality and accurate information to its users that match their search intent, So, today let’s see what Google has suggested for guest blogging.

🐼 Google Panda Update 🐼

This is a bit old Google update, however, it still applies. Google Panda Update in 2011 was designed to reduce the amount of low-quality and thin content in the search results and replace it with helpful, informative and unique content. So, this update alone tells you that Google wanted people to stop writing crap.

Ask These Questions Before You Start Writing a Guest Blog:

✅ Who will get the benefit from your article?

✅ Who would want to read your blog post?

✅ Are you writing the article only for your benefit (links, branding, etc.)?

✅ What information provided will be unique and different from thousands of other articles already ranked in Google?

✅ Is your article’s topic saturated in the SERPs?

 

‍🚀 BERT Models and Intent ‍🚀

In October 2019, Google announced they were applying BERT models to search. Google Said:

“BERT models can reflect the full perspective of a word by looking at the words that come before and after that particular word of a phrase which is useful for understanding the actual intent behind search queries.”

As search intent is the ultimate goal of the person using a search engine, you need to determine the search intent of the person that will be reading your post and provide any and all information needed to match their search intent. If you are writing something with no thought of the readers’ search intent, then your chances of success are low, so, before creating a guest post, you should examine the pages that rank on SERP for the same topic, and take notes on the search intent behind them, then start writing your guest post around that intent.

🟧 Level Up Your Game with E-A-T and YMYL

In 2015, Google published its complete Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines and they highlighted two important factors regarding how Google looks at pages and articles. They are:

• E-A-T — Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness
• YMYL — Your Money or Your Life

 

🟧 E-A-T — Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness

In the 2019 version of search quality guidelines, Google mentioned E-A-T 135 times, and it explains in detail what they are looking for in any kind of content.

☑ What does Google say?

Google want experts writing content that is trustworthy for its readers. Because bad advice can create problems.

Think about it, who will write with expertise and authority, a travel blogger discussing digital marketing or a digital marketing strategist with 15 years of experience? Somebody with expertise is going to be more authoritative and cover the bases that matter in content.

Below Google explains in detail what they are looking for in high-quality pages (which tend to rank better).

🟧 YMYL — Your Money Your Life

Google doesn’t want any content that could negatively impact its readers. Google says:

“We maintain high Page Quality rating standards for YMYL websites and webpages because low-quality YMYL websites or webpages could potentially negatively impact a person’s happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.”

Which is a better choice for writing a Heart Transplantation Surgery recovery guide?

• A lifestyle blogger who just graduated from college.
• A heart surgeon with 10 years of experience.

Simply, we need significant input from an expert to create high-quality content on serious issues related to health, happiness, and money.

3. How to Do Personal Branding in Guest Blogging?

Creating amazing pieces of content that showcase your knowledge and authority is the best way to stand out in any industry. But, you need to add unique points and tips in your content that are better than the top writers out there.

In your articles, you should go beyond explaining a concept and anticipate what your readers will want to know next. What do they need to know that they don’t know yet? What experiences do you have that could help people to avoid potential pitfalls from the start? Simply, inform, educate, and impress the readers with your knowledge, and make sure you have a personal website where people can find you, not just the company you work for.

Also, remember, you can’t make a huge name for yourself with just one blog post; it will take time and effort. But, if you make sure every guest post you write is educational, informative, authoritative, and useful to readers, you are a hundred steps ahead of most people.

4. Build a Brand Through Guest Blogging: Dos & Don’ts

Guest Blogging is a great way to build your brand awareness, but ONLY if you do it in the right way.

Let’s see what are the dos and don’ts of guest blogging to build your brand awareness.

🟧 Dos on Guest Blogging

On a new blog, impress the audience with your knowledge and expertise. Your guest blogging content needs to be high-quality in terms of grammar, flow and structure. In your guest blogging, you need to answer questions, define terms, examine pain points, and provide solutions.

Each person that reads your guest blog has the potential of becoming a fan of your work, so, write to impress, educate and create trust. If the readers share your content on their social media, their followers see you and your brand. As you gain new followers, you need to share posts that are authoritative.

You need to be present and timely with comments on your guest posts and in social shares. The quicker you answer a question, the better it makes you look. And it helps you to build an authentic relationship with your readers.

🟧 Don’ts on Guest Blogging

🔹 Mention your company name/product/service in the guest post.

If you mention your company name/product/service in the guest post it looks like a self-promotional post which tells the readers, the editors and Google that the only point of your guest post is to serve yourself, not the reader. The place for your company info is your author bio UNLESS you were asked to write about something that your company offer.

🔹 Adding links to your website that are not relevant to the guest post.

No editor wants to present their readers with links that are self-promotional, and no editor wants to risk making Google think they are engaging in a link scheme or selling links. Natural links are not a problem, but what appears as unnatural links can result in a manual action or penalty.

🔹 Bragging about your company or a product/service you offer.

Sharing about your company or a product/service you offer doesn’t help the readers or the website you want your guest post to be published on. It isn’t about you; it is about their website, their readers, and creating trust in your brand. So, you don’t need to brag about yourself in the guest post. If you create amazing content, the publisher will brag for you on their website, on their social accounts, and maybe in their newsletters.

Just remember, no one ever built trust by bragging. You can feature your brand on your author bio and make yourself an author who can answer questions in comments and social media quickly and authoritatively.

5. How to Choose a Guest Blogging Topic?

Let’s see how to choose the right topic for your guest blogging.

🔹 Where to Start?

Large and influential blog posts often have content plans and goals. While other blog posts are open to a wide range of ideas within their niche. It’s your job to know their niche and to discover what the blog topic is looking for in guest posts.

The first thing you should do is look for writing guidelines provided by the publication sites and cautiously review what they’re asking for. If the publishing site took the time to write these writing guidelines, then that’s what they want, so pay proper attention to the guidelines and don’t waste your time or an editor’s time by creating a guest post that doesn’t match with the writing guidelines of the publication site.

🔹 Doing Your Own Research

If you can find a ranking gap for the particular publication site where you want to be published on, you have an edge. You can use a tool like the Keyword Gap tool to find a gap between the publication site and its competitors. If competing sites are ranking highly for a specific search term, and the publication site you want to be on does not, possibly you could help the publication site to fill that gap.

🔹 Topic Research for Ideation

The topic research tool is a great option to get topic ideas. Just enter a keyword and you can see a list of recent topics related to your keyword. You can click on each topic and get insights on recent headlines and real-time questions people are asking on the particular topic related to your keyword. By looking at recently published articles, you can identify what has been done well and what has been missed, and then discover a plan to create something better than those articles. Topic research will help you find the questions people need an answer to and provide insights to their intent.

6. How to Stand Out from Millions of Guest Posts?

There are some popular writers who carefully plan their efforts which mean the website they want to rank for has a better chance at gaining rankings. Here are some factors that make your guest posts stand out from millions.

🔸 In your How-To guest posts include clear and easy reading screenshots – Avoid wasting your time and the editors time by putting low-quality images.

🔸 Add informative and high-quality video to the content – Adding videos with good clarity, quality sound, and additional information make the readers share your post.

🔸 Aim for SERP features – Format your guest posts to get a position 0, People Also Ask, or carousel placement is shown on the SERP that help you to make your guest posts successful.

🔸 Use quotes from Industry experts – Adding Quotes from experts are always good, so, get timely and relevant quotes from experts for your article to make it really impressive.

🔸 Use the brand/blog – Whoever you are hoping your guest posts to be published by, integrate their successes and blog posts in your articles, you can include links to their relevant articles, screenshots of positive reviews, or a mention of something impactful that they have done.

• Add Images and infographics – Good editors know the time and effort it takes a writer to create high-quality content. See if they have a design team to help you with images and infographics that would benefit both you and them. If they don’t, Use Canva to create impactful imagery for your guest posts.
• Optimize images – Follow best image SEO practices. Reduce the image sizes for editors, and use Alt Tags when submitting the images via a CMS platform.
• Add quotes for social Shares – Provide editors with some 2-3 good points that they could use for the social shares. And, highlight those best points in the articles to the editors so that they can use them.

7. What to Do After Your Guest Post is Published?

You need your guest post to do well, right? While the publisher is going to promote the post, there are things you should do from your end.

🔸 Be responsive in post comments – Always be ready to answer any questions from readers and respond to positive comments.

🔸 Monitor your guest post on social media – Track your guest posts on social media platforms and respond to comments when it makes sense.

🔸 Promote the post on your social media channels as well – Come up with different methods of social shares and share your guest posts throughout the year while tagging the publisher.

🔸 Keep your post evergreen – Things like statistics, algorithms, procedures and legal issues are kept on changing. So, when you see something has changed, email the publisher with updates that could be added to the post to make sure the article remains relevant and trustworthy

8. Benefits of Guest Blogging

Now it’s time to check out the significant benefits you can get from guest blogging. So, here is the list of benefits you get from guest blogging.

🔹 You can get instant exposure to your targeted audience

🔹 Help you to expand your personal network

🔹Boost more social media shares of your content

🔹 Grow your followers on social media

🔹Enhance your online authority

🔹 Improve your Backlink Profile

🔹 Help you to build and grow your brand awareness

🔹 Help you to generate qualified leads

🔹 Help you to get useful feedback from your community

🔹 Help you to sharpen your content marketing skills

🔔 Conclusion

There is no denying that guest blogging is a great way to build your personal brand and to create awareness for your brand, but, it’s about “how” you do it that will determine whether your guest blogging effort is successful or not. I hope the above guest blogging guide for SEO will help you to write successful guest posts in 2022.

What do you think about this guest blogging guide? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Having knowledge about Search Intent is the secret factor to create an outstanding content strategy. Today, in this article, we’ll discuss the different types of search intent, how to determine the best search intent for your keywords, and how to optimize your content in the right way for search intent. First, let’s start from the basics.

1. What is Search Intent?

Search intent is the end goal a user has when he/she searching a query in a search engine, it’s the exact type of answer or resource a user is looking to receive in search results. We called it “Intent” because the search goal of the users is not always obvious from their query. For instance, if I search for something like “Honda Civic Cars”. Do I want to learn what Honda Civic Cars are? Which are the best models in Honda Civic Cars? Where can I buy a Honda Civic Car? Here my search intent is not clear, so it’s up to Google to interpret my search query and decide what kind of content to show in my search results. On the other hand, if I search something like “Best Honda Civic Car under $2500”, here my intent is clear that I want to see a list of Honda Civic Cars models. Most preferably with the purchase links.

2. Why Search Intent is Important for SEO?

Satisfying users’ Search Intent is the ultimate #1 goal of Google. Therefore, if you really want to succeed with your SEO and content marketing efforts, Search Intent needs to be a significant part of your approach. Actually, Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines are more FIXATED with Search Intent, and Google recently published a research report called “How Search Intent Is Redefining the Marketing Funnel” which simply showing us the importance of search intent. Backlinks and other traditional ranking factors are still important. But, if your webpage doesn’t satisfy the users’ Search Intent, it’s not going to rank in the SERP.

3. What Are the Different Types of Search Intent?

While there are endless search queries, we can categorize them into four primary intent categories:

1. Informational
2. Navigational
3. Commercial
4. Transactional

1) Informational Search Intent

You may have already guessed it, yes, searches with the intent to get information categorized as Informational Search Intent. These information search queries could be in the form of a how-to guide, a recipe, or a definition, and it’s one of the most common search intents, as users can look for answers to a vast number of different questions. However, not all informational search queries are questions. Users simply searching for “Jay Shetty” are most likely looking for information about Jay Shetty.

Examples of Informational Search Queries:

• “What is Adaptive Marketing?”
• “Robin Sharma”
• ”Directions to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport”
• “SEO”
• “Football Scores”

2) Navigational Search Intent

Sometimes users just want to get somewhere, both online and in real life. The users simply looking to navigate to a specific website or webpage, and it’s often easier to do a quick search in Google than to type out the URL., also the user could be unsure of the exact URL for a specific website/webpage. As such, these searches tend to be brand or website names. Besides, users can look for an address of a real-world place and google like Pizza Hut London.

Examples of Navigational Search Queries:

• “LinkedIn”
• “Ahrefs SEO Beginners Guide”
• “Facebook Login”
• “McDonald’s Melbourne”
• “Moz Keyword Research Guide”

3) Commercial Search Intent

Commercial Search Intent is also called commercial investigation. Users start their commercial investigation before they’re ready to make a purchase. Usually, they use search to investigate brands, products or services. In their commercial investigation, users often compare products and brands to find the best solution for them.  These searches queries often include non-branded localized terms such as “best face cream for winter” or “The Best Indian Restaurants in NYC.”

Examples of Commercial Search Queries:

• “Top Indian Restaurants in London”
• “Best Bodybuilding Supplements”
• “WordPress or Medium for the blog”
• “Best Dedicated Server Hosting Germany”
• “Ahrefs or SEMrush”

4) Transactional Search Intent

Users do transactional searches when they are looking to make a purchase. So these searches have words like buy, price, cheap, etc. Also, these searches are mostly about a subscription, service or product. Usually, these transactional searchers have a good idea of what they’re looking for. So, they look for places to make purchase means they search for a product/service page, with a straightforward layout, pricing, and a buy button.

Examples of Transactional Search Queries:

• “iPhone 12 Pro Max Price”
• “Expressvpn Coupon”
• “Buy Michael Kors Handbags”
• “H&M Men’s Shoes Sale”
• “Shop Mac Cosmetics Online”

4. How Does Google Understand Search Intent?

Google always wanted to satisfy users’ search intent to provide them with a better user experience. There has been a series of Google algorithm updates specifically aimed to give more importance to search intent. For example, RankBrain update back in 2015 focused on search query context like user’s location, search history, etc. Then there was BERT update in 2019, which aimed to resolve lexical ambiguity, learn new words, find synonyms, and soon there will be a MUM algorithm update that will be able to change/adjust the content in order to satisfy users’ search intent. But, if we keep these Google algorithm updates aside, there are three general factors that Google uses to understand search intent, they are:

  Context of Search Query

In simple words, context is the circumstance surrounding your search query like your location, language, current events, and search history. For example, if you were to google Australia on a normal day, you’d get a SERP result of regular pages from Wikipedia and the tourist resources. But, if you were to google Australia on the day it was hit by bushfires, the entire SERP results will change to the news coverage about the bushfires.

  The phrasing of Search Query

The more words you add to your search query the more clear and defined the search intent. When the search query is formed as a question using modifying words like what, why, how then the intent is most likely informational search intent, on the other hand, if the search queries have words like best, review, top then the intent is most likely commercial search intent.

  User behaviour

Google analyze the type of content most of the users prefer for the specific search query and promotes more of such content in the SERP results. For example, if many users search for “how to fix the blue screen on the computer”, and immediately switch video results to watch tutorial videos, then Google might consider including those video results into the main SERP results. This could be one of the reasons we see different types of content ranking for similar types of search queries.

5. How to Optimize Your Content for Search Intent?

Now, the trick is to find out the best content approach to satisfy each type of search query based on its search intent. For that, we need to have a proper strategic plan. So, let’s check out how to optimize the content for search intent.

1) Choose Your Keywords by Search Intent

When doing keyword research for your website content, just make sure that you have taken search intent into account. There is no reason to create informational content that targets commercial search queries, simply it’s a waste of resources. So, choose and split your keywords by search intent and add them onto corresponding content. There are many keyword research tools out there where you can use filters to identify keywords with specific search intent.

2) Generate Content Ideas from SERP

Now, you have the Keywords list sorted by search intent, so, it’s time to find out the best type of content to satisfy the users. As we already discussed, the intent of the search query and the search query itself are not reliable resources to indicate the type of content needed to satisfy searchers. It’s most common for two similar search queries to be satisfied with very different SERP results. Therefore, the only reliable resource to create the best type of content for a specific search query is to look at what types of content already ranking in SERP. With a quick systemic approach, you can identify which search queries are best satisfied with text content, videos, image galleries, reviews and so on.

3) Make Good Use of Off-Page SEO

Did you ever notice that certain types of search queries are best met with web 2.0 content and other off-page content? If that’s the case with your search query, then consider making these platforms a part of your content strategy. For example, if a certain search query is often met with results from YouTube, then consider creating a corresponding YouTube video and then have your YouTube channel connected to your website. This way you can get into SERP and still have some traffic generated into your website. Another platform you have to consider for local SEO and navigational search queries is the Google My Business listing, this will get your business into a GMB panel, local SERP results, and Google maps. Also, you have to join the Google Merchant Center and have your product pages validated with Google that will help you get your products directly into SERP results and have them featured for transactional and commercial types of search queries.

4) Add Your Website Schema Markup

Search results are getting more diverse and complex. We can see that there are knowledge panels, videos, featured snippets, rich snippets along with 200 other SERP features. All of these SERP features exist to satisfy very specific search intents of users, like searchers looking for brand information, products, recipes, answers to complex questions, etc. One way Google can pull this specific information from our websites is by relying on Schema markup, aka structured data. schema markup is a collection of HTML tags that are used to highlight the different types of content on our web pages. For example, if it’s a recipe post, we can use schema markup to highlight each ingredient, calorie, cooking time, the number of servings, etc. And Google can use this specific information about the recipe to create a rich snippet. There are certain types of search queries for which you have no chance of ranking in the SERP if you don’t have schema markup on your web pages. For other search queries, having schema markup is not essential, but having it may give you an advantage over your competitors.

5) Watch Out for the Shifts in SERP

SERPs have fluidity. You might have cracked the SERP with exactly the right type of content, but the entire thing might change a day from now. Google constantly introduce New SERP features, so, users may go to other types of content, and your competitors are always on the watch out to grab your positions. But, the fluidity of SERP is not a big problem, it can be an opportunity for you to rank better. Always, watch your rank positions in SERP results, and if you see any sudden drop in rankings, investigate the SERP, look for the change in the way Google satisfies search intent with SERP. Then modify your content accordingly. It’s not an issue to regain your SERP rankings if you optimize your content quickly.

 

Conclusion ????

SERP results have been changing rapidly. These days, we can see everything in SERP like blue links, images, videos, stories, featured snippets, products, etc. It seems like Google is experimenting with different ways to satisfy searchers’ search intent. If this trend continues, then it’s a good idea to optimize your content for search intent that will enhance your SEO performance, also help you rank better in SERP.

Hope you found this search intent guide helpful. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Looking for the best ways to improve your website user experience? Read on to find out the 6 effective tips to boost your website UX.

Driving massive amounts of traffic is one of the key points for successful digital marketing. As a business owner, your goal is converting people into your customers. But, if you do not have any visitors for your website, you cannot convert them into your customers. You cannot survive without a website’s traffic. In order to get more sales and get happy customers, you have to drive people to your website. Do you want Secret Traffic Sources to generate more traffic for your website? Here are the Proven Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Website and the top 10 Conversion Strategies in 2019.

Every website needs to have a proper strategy to get more sales and it is the best driver of our businesses growth. It helps you to:

• See how your marketing is working
• Gather insights about your audience to make right decisions
• Improve your search engine credibility
• Generate more leads, increase conversions and get more customers for your website

A number of ways to optimize your website in order to generate traffic and conversion, the first step is to be attracting the right visitors to our website in the first place. Including CTA (Call To Action) and lead capture forms in the right places. This is very important to drive the traffic for our brand.

Every business owners have their own strategies to grow-up their business and revenue. The goal is driving more valuable visitors to their website! That means, there is no matter how many percentages of visitors we have, the thing is we need to get the valuable customers for our website, that will give more benefits for us. To achieve that, you need to use multiple strategies to bring new visitors to your website.

Here are the Top 10 secret traffic sources to help you to generate more traffic and conversion to your website today!

Before you initiate the strategy, you need to create a better plan and implement it with a right time. That is highly important to the success of your website. If your strategy will work properly, then only you can get a huge number of traffic. Otherwise it will not work. Always focus on the strategy which is really suitable for your businesses niche. The wrong strategy will be getting your business down.

Most of the brands are focusing with all their efforts to get higher range of conversion rates. But some of them are getting very low amount of traffic, the reason is, they are lacking to implement the proper strategy. Before you convert the people, you need to drive traffic to your website first. Once you get the visitors, you can convert them based on your strategies.

Audit Your Website

A lot of ways to optimize your website for generating traffic and conversion. But before you get started, you want to track an A/B testing solution. That means, before you start growing your website traffic, you should know your current traffic stats. This is your baseline to get to know how your efforts are affecting to your traffic’s growth.

Instead, of just doing things, take a strategic approach & audit your website to create a comprehensive plan so that you can focus on the highest range of leverage opportunities to drive more traffic and increase the conversion rate. If you are a newbie, you can easily get a variety of secret sources from online using this term like Conversion strategies in 2019, however, before you get to know that, you should audit your website to generate target traffic to your website.

This way to help you figure it out why you should work on that, not only that,  you can see how your changes are affecting on your traffic and conversions in a positive way. To do the A/B testing, you can get more tools through online, especially, Google Analytics is a free tool and very easy to use, it can help you to drive further traffic to your website. This will enable you to identify which kind of strategies and types of content works, where you need to focus to get the improvement, and the most important thing is where you do not want to waste your time. From this tool, you can track the links for your marketing campaigns and also regularly check your website analytics.

 

The best way to generate your website traffic from the organic traffic, it is truly increase the number of page’s visits that can help to rank-up through your targeted keyword terms. This means, it will help where you can add new pieces of attractive content through visuals, quizzes to target specific keywords or add new category pages and update new blog posts on your website.

 

Speed Up Your Website

Google has announced a website speed is one of the signals used by its algorithm to ranking pages

A website loading speed is a major part to drive the traffic for your website. It reflects how website quickly responds to the web requests. not just for the website owners, it helps to all the Internet users. If your website is loading as fast, users can make an instant judgment about you and your business and immediately take a strong first impression. Everyone should give high priority for your website speed, because of it all depends on the UX (user experience).

Better SEO makes to increase your website’s visibility to the people who are trying to find you online. When you consider your website’s speed, you can get more traffic because of the search engine is able to crawl your content through your website faster and it helps to the indexing process as well.

How to speed up your website in 2019?

Before you get to know the speed optimization tactics, you need to switch the better host for your website, that’s very important to perform the website as fast.

Here are the ways to Speed Up Your Website and Improve Conversion in 2019, mostly focus on the front-end performance.·

• Enable compression
• Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
• Reduce redirects
• Remove render-blocking JavaScript
• Leverage browser caching
• Improve server response time
• Use a content distribution network
• Optimize images

Try and reduce your page load time and increase your website traffic and conversion rates!

Do Content Outreach & Guest Posts

Guest Post is one of the hottest and very easiest ways to drive more traffic. This can be really helpful to add more variety of your content and helps to show your visitors that you are active in your field. Guest posting can help grow your online audience.

Determine Your Guest Blogging Goals

Guest posting can help every business to grow up in online audience.

Before you go, you have to decide what your goal is and why you’re targeting guest blogging. First knowing your goal, it’s playing an important role to choose the right kind of blogs to submit guest posts to achieve your target. Typically there are three major goals for guest blogging.

1. Positioning your-self as an authority and well-known name in the industry.
2. Getting exposure (traffic) back to your website.
3. Building back-links to your website

To be successful as a guest blogger, you must write contents that should be high quality. you can find many reasons through online why guest posting is such a key point to every bloggers to build their online influences. I’ve mentioned below some them are:

• Guest posting builds relationships
• You can reach new audiences; they are usually your highly targeted audience.
• You can build authority in your field.
• You can increase your domain authority through the high-quality and relevant backlinks.
• You can generate inbound sales and more business opportunities.

How to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities?

• The content is focused on your niche / industry.
• The audience of the blog will be interested in your industry.
• The blog has engaged readership (posts have been shared socially and commented upon).
• The blog owner is active on social media (so you know that they will be promoting your work on their site).

Tracking Your Results

My final thought is, Still the Guest posting is a great way to connect with new visitors and get your name out-reach. When you decide your goals is generate traffic, the results are very essentials and it should definitely be measured. based on that, I’m here to tell you guys to do this, Obviously, you can create an Advanced Segment in Google Analytics. it will help you to determine the success of your overall guest blogging strategy in terms of getting traffic and making conversions.

Increase Your Social Media Presence

Social media is one of the best and most popular ways of free marketing tools and also it plays a major role for your website to drive traffic using social media channels to promote your content.

When we investigate Social media usage, it has been increasing at a rapid rate for the past decade or so. Just have a look at the below image, from that, you can get to know the user-growth across social networks from worldwide.

 

Do you have only the Facebook page? It’s not only enough anymore. You have to make sure that you have an active presence on other social media channels as well, such as:

• Twitter
• YouTube
• Snapchat
• Instagram

Please do more than just create a profile. The below-outlined points will definitely help you to social media platforms.

• Share useful and your targeted audience/ relevant content on a regular basis.
• Share Niche related blogs, images, or videos on your all active social media platforms.

Try the above things and get more followers for your brand through your social media. when you create posts that should encourage your target audience to get engaged more. Same time, you should respond to your followers directly to entice communication. This action should make it easier for you to generate new leads. Constantly posting links on your social media platforms will increase many chances you to increase CTR and traffic.

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How to Increase Your Blog Traffic in 2019?

The blog is one of the ways to drive more target audience for our product or any services. If your website doesn’t have a blog  (you need to start ASAP), don’t wait and give a priority and make creating bogs. Doesn’t matter what type of  services you are providing, Blogging is one of the best ways to increase website traffic and generate new leads. it’s a trending point as well. that’s why I recommended you to focus on Blogging.

If you already have a blog, it gives a reason for people to keep coming back on your website. Blogs also help to improve your SEO because if you have blogs, you will constantly adding new/trending content on your page, that will give chances to get back on our page.

Reduce Your Bounce Rate

A majority of online businesses aiming to increase search traffic for their websites to boost their brands’ growth.

A high bounce rate will damage your website’s page views and conversion, not only that it can even hurt your SEO as well. Is your bounce rate too high? Do you want to reduce your bounce rate? Before that, you need to understand the formula of the percentage of bounce rate.

• 80%+ is very bad
• 70 – 80% is poor
• 50 – 70% is average
• 30 – 50% is excellent
• 20% or below is likely a tracking error

If you’re getting higher bounce rate for your website, first you need to Identify the root course and fixing the problems to increase your traffic. So many reasons could be caused for the higher bounce rate such as poor navigation, bad design, slow load time, poor usability, lack of clear call-to-action, etc.

Before you start your work, identify your top pages with the highest bounce rate. then only you can implement the right strategy to increase your conversion. You can do this through Google Analytics and click on Behavior » Site Content » Landing Pages, finally you can see the view like mentioned below snapshot:

Here are a few tips to reduce your bounce rate and Quick Tricks to Drive Traffic.

• Provide a Better Overall User Experience
• Optimize Your Call of Action Placement
• Make Your Site Readable
• Improve Your Site’s Speed
• A/B Testing + Targeted Landing Pages
• Use Videos To Engage Your Audience
• Use High-Quality Images to Captivate User Attention
• Plan a Consistent Content Strategy

I hope you got some good tips to reduce bounce rate for your website and the most effective ways to increase your Conversion Rate.

 

Optimize Your Site For Mobile Devices

I’m sure you all know, mobile use is on the rise.

In fact, over 60% of Google searches coming from a variety of mobile devices.

Comparatively mobile users are consistently improving instead of desktop users. It’s going up so fast that it’s actually overtaken computers and desktop devices. The important thing is Google recognizes the mobile-friendly website ranks accordingly.

If your site is not optimized for mobile-friendly, Go and optimize immediately. because if you are not focus on your site for mobile devices, maybe it will prohibit your user experiences, not only that, it’s affecting your ranking.

According to the Internet Usage Statistics from worldwide of statista, 52.2% was generated through mobile devices in 2018. Meantime, when we go through it in 2019, nearly 80% of internet usage is expected to be mobile devices. (Source: Business2Community)

Your website needs to be optimized for mobile users.

Produce Video Content

Text-based content is always good, but video can be a more valuable resource to attract new visitors and making your site more engaging. That’s why 87% of marketers produce their video content online. Through the Videos, you can increase in organic search traffic as well. Not only that, like 46% of users act after watching a video advertisement which is you produced for your brand.

People mostly love to spend their time to watch a video instead of  reading lengthy text content about your services or products. This is a top reason helped marketers to increase their website traffic through the video content.

The Power Video Marketing

As reported by the HubSpot Research report, more than 50% of customers engaged with videos from the brands compared to any other type of content.

Basically, videos can be help you to generate new leads and increase your website traffic. Therefore I would recommend you to start as much as possible to maximize your reach.

 

Use Influencer Marketing To Establish Credibility

Credibility is more important for every website. Comparatively, this is the major part of to generate more traffic for your brand. that means If your website having a good reputation and credibility, you’ll be able to generate more site traffic.

Do you want to get the credibility for your brand?

It’s not a big deal but something difficult. you can’t get the credibility within a short period. it’ll take time.

One of the best ways to gain credibility for your brand is to leverage your relationships with the right influencers. You can approach this strategy in different ways to achieve what you are expected. In order to approach this, you can use celebrities to promote your brand.

To find the right influencers for your brand, you need to fact check and do not pick someone’s randomly. Before you go, please make sure that your influencers are aligned with your company’s reputation. If you have any ideas to bringing up an influencer to help your marketing campaigns, you can on-board micro-influencers as well. don’t wait for chances, this is your right time and great chance. I would suggest you to use micro-influencers effectively, this will increase your service/product credibility and brand awareness. why I’m suggesting you to for micro-influencers, there is a reason. Actually, through the influencer’s marketing, we can reach a wider audience. but the problem is,  for our celebrities, you want to pay to pitch about your services/products. that’s why I recommended you to go for a micro-influencers. this is one of an alternative solution, you do not need to worry about it,  micro-influencers also can increase your product credibility.

If you have any ideas to bringing up an influencer to help your marketing campaigns, you can onboard micro-influencers as well. don’t wait for chances, this is your right time and great chance. I would like to suggest you use micro-influencers effectively, it will increase your service/product credibility and brand awareness.

Improve Your SEO

One of the best ways to generate traffic is through SEO. As you can see from above what I have already mentioned to implement a few of other Spectacular Traffic Sources, it will automatically help your SEO. When someone is searching for something online, whether it’s your product or service, they will probably start with a Google search. Actually it’s something difficult to get higher ranking. because of the competition is high.

SEO ranking improves when visitors often view your website, more pages, stay on your website longer and get back to them as a return customer. The more user-friendly your site is, the more likely this is going to happen. In fact, 85% of consumers use Google to find more details about their services before they make a decision. From the below snapshot, you can find out the statement.

In order to improve your SEO, you have to do an advanced keyword research based on your business niche. it will be easier to generate more traffic for your website.

I hope you can get them back to visit your website if you’re master of your SEO strategies including to delivering high-quality content that will generate more leads. Your content needs to be high quality, recent, and relevant.

 Use the best SEO strategy and generate more traffic for your brand.

Summarizing Up!

Now It’s Your Turn!

Every website needs to have a proper strategy to get more sales and increase better ROI. This is the best driver of our business growth. Actually, it’s very hard to get high traffic to your website. If you’re struggling, check out this post and get to know the Proven Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Website and the most effective ways to Increase your Conversion in 2019. Start with your Spectacular Traffic Sources from the ten listed above.

Now I would like to hear from you  what you have to say about which technique you are going to try first? Use the below comment box to share your opinion regarding this!

 

 

” Every aspect of marketing is entirely useless unless it produces conversions.” –       Jeremy Smith 

How can a business keep its daily updates without knowing its incoming website’s visitors?

• The initial number of visitors, visiting your site each day.
• The relevant clicks they are making.
• Their interests & dislikes about your business!

Conversion rate optimization tools are structured design in the process of making a website more and even user-friendly for its target audience helping with the analysis. However, in the present world of competition, investing in the right conversion rate optimization tool in 2019 is equivalent just to make a huge business decision. It does not fundamentally involve whether you are an in-house business, start-up, enterprise, or conversion optimization agency. Google often recommends a lot of advised tools from the experts whether a tool is good or bad, downright or upset until now or then.

To understand the tools you can filter out which tool you want based on the rating, and the size of the company it works on the best, Whether the tools help you eventually in things of applying it, it will not necessarily compare the premium accounts if it wants to be successful.

Conversion Optimization Rate Tool in 2019:

Calculating conversion rate formula: 1 sale + 20 visitors x 100%= 5% Conversion Rate

Did You Know: UBISOFT used the A/B testing to increase its conversion by a 12%

Down below are the Conversion rate optimization tools in 2019 that you could eventually use to increase the percentage of website visitors to your site by understanding how users move further through your site, their actions, and what is so complicated about them competing for your goals.

1. Google Analytics 360 Suite

This advanced tool helps you to get a much better understanding of your consumer’s behaviour with much-advanced analysis. Conversion optimization form is all about data aiming to help marketers to get an overview of your online marketing efforts.

Google Analytics 360 Suite intends to help marketers to connect across different marketers, such as PPC, mobiles, and offline marketing channels. As per your convenience, not everyone who has access can see the Admin tab. Suppose if you can see it, it means you are an administrator. However, you may not have access to all the menus still being an admin.

2.  VWO

If you are alternatively looking for a conversion rate optimization tool in 2019, that runs an optimization program that continuously improves your visitors’ experiences, then VWO should be given a try. This holds a reliable structure that can handle billions of events per hour making A/B tests without reducing the actual basic performance.

The A/B testing is more or less methodical fashioned. On-page surveys alone will not help you identify that your users find confusing. All the functionalities of this tool will take care of all your conversion rates. This tool will help you easily gather all your metrics under one roof monitoring. The major advantage of this software is that if you find any new element on your website, it can help you with the best, whilst not going deeper.

3. CrazyEgg

A heat map is a software simply a data visualisation tool. To find out which tabs, links, etc are being clicked on and the part which is being ignored by your customers. CrazyEgg will get to know where your visitors click on!

Apart from these activities, you will get a chart that will show your user behaviour on your website. This helps with interaction in real-time & in recording user experience. Since users are very authentic and objective a recording at their view is important. Find out the user behaviour on how your email and ad campaigns are being visited. Understand eventually how people investigate from a buyer’s point of view!

4. Mixpanel

In this fortunate world of Google, Google Analytics helps you to know what is currently happening on your website, Mixpanel, this software allows you to easily understand who did what? Mixpanel also helps you to encounter your second data helping you to compare it against Google data.

This is an analytic platform for the web and mobile aiding your business to instantly analyze your consumer behaviour, tracking down people’s actions rather than page views by helping your business to learn and deeply understand the behaviour of the consumer. This software helps you to learn desperately from your convenient data. This encourages the increment of sales, by making a huge increment to your visitors on your website, navigating the best relevant results of people visiting your site. Furthermore, helping you with tweaking your site.

5. A/B Tasty:

A/B Tasty is a software-based in the origin of France which aids in providing A/B testing, also with the process of content optimisation. Designed for the masses, along with enlarged factorial common user experience. Evolving with great GUI (graphical user interface), great content with an affordable pricing structure.

This software will help you to measure your visitors’ preferable actions to measure transactions, subscriptions, leads and a large volume of visits to have analyzed the relevant figures needed. Perhaps, imposing the winning variations will significantly improve the rate and return on investment. The dashboard when the software installed will consist of a plain list of tests on a white background. Where each test will have 2 main options an ”Edit & Report.” Holding a separate page for both. Simple!
Moreover, for a clear result, the company that uses AB Tasty must have absolute diversity and should be well organised to fully take advantage of it.

6. User Testing:

Engaging with your customers plays a major key role in almost every business. User Testing is another tool that helps to see, hear & talk to your customers as they engage with your website. Putting your customers at the center of your business is so very important.

This tool will help you to gather your audience’s data’s by engaging with them helping you to identify their likes & dislikes. This tool allows you to prepare your customers a set of convenient questions, whereas they will have to complete the task that is asked. This will let you know the problem areas of your business in your conversion rate optimization tools in 2019!

7. Marketo:

Driving in more quality of traffic to your website and landing page is a vital part of a business’s basic activity. Marketo compares your keyword rankings to your competitors and getting recommendations for higher ranking web pages. Discovering inbound links by targeting keywords and competitors link is also equally important.

This tool helps you to get to know your conversion rate, also get help with getting personalized messages and on customers are. Their problems, interests, what annoys them & encourages them. Methodically, marketers & webmasters can combine the what application interface program, from your marketing automation tool using the social platform, with any number of platforms similar to a ” Social login.”

8. Adobe Analytics:

Adobe Analytics is common knowledge in the digital world that the success of a business relies upon a strong basement of data. The collection of the whole bunch of data allows you to benchmark your business’s success, set goals, all this will serve your business at your best.

With the help of the Top 20 Analytics Tools, huge data gets organised where you will get powerful easy to read visuals of your website. The number of visitors your website gets. This acts as a connector making it important to envision needed tools to further bring in your visitors. This software will help you to focus on r searching your data and find more detailed insights about your customers.

9. Adobe target

Adobe target to start your business with the analytics to advertising and commerce to perfect content creations. This tool will help you with identifying an amazing customer experience.

If you are looking for your visitors to change into your customers, then you have to start using tools that will help you reach your fundamental increase in your SEO optimization. This tool eventually will help you with targeted content. This tool helps with automated behavioral with the acquired data using the IP address, the URL, and brand affinity.

10. Webpagetest

Webpagetest is one of a kind tool that will help you with the SEO tool, however, this tool will also help you to keep up with the conversion rate optimization tools in 2019.

Which means a two in one luck! This tool will help you with testing your website’s speed. A video will be gathered by gathering all data together, to see the results of all the pages together, comparing the overall speed and effect. If your business needs a competitive advantage then this tool is necessary. The demand for your website particularly relies on the speed, run a test from several locations and connect everything, the number of visitors you get, and move on.

Final Note:

There are hundreds of Conversion rate optimization tools in 2019 you could use from the internet, some of them are free whereas some of them are premium tools that can be quite expensive in dollars. All of the conversion rate optimization tools 2019 listed above certainly have the potential to help you increase your website’s conversion rate. I support you to try at least a few of them to see which one works best for your business, test, and keep testing until you get the desired results. Nothing is proven unless you have tested it all by yourself!

I’m so much interested to know your feedback if you have been using any of the newest conversion rate optimization tools in 2019 I have mentioned above. Come back here and do not hesitate to leave your feedback in the comment section below. I hope you would have something to say!

Assume nothing. Test everything. Optimize constantly. 

”Marathons are more than just a single run, digital marketing are more than just a single activity.”

The future of every single business is being transformed into technology! Keeping this in mind, Here’s a quick elegant question possibly you could think of at times in digital marketing trends.

”What is the biggest obstacle for your company’s growth?”

While thinking about the answers to the above question, how does a business with the latest technology conquering the world function without the help of digital marketing? Can you remember seeing artificial intelligence and visual searches in movies? For example, I Robot movie ( could you go back to those memories?) Leaving at in your good old memories these technologies have been coming into reality for businesses in the present. Brands and businesses do need to use digital marketing trends to succeed in their efforts because what worked for you in the past years might not work for you in the upcoming years. Social media, SEO, content marketing and a lot more are experiencing a dramatic shift in 2019.

This article will help you give a quick insight into the latest trends of digital marketing that you can not simply ignore. And to stay ahead of the competition you might want to invest in these insanely futuristic technologies down below.

Did you know: Canada has the most active Facebook users compared to the rest of the countries.

 1)  Artificial intelligence taking over the digital marketing trends in 2019

AI will take over the world and currently is!

Well, what does AI do?

Putting this in simple terms, Artificial intelligent can easily study consumer behaviour by using the data that is available on the internet or social media by the user. This simply helps all your businesses using AI to increase the optimization of your business activity efficiently. AI has made jobs much simpler. For example, email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo have customized smart email categorization. Many government organizations are using AI for security purposes.

Did you know: Some of the tech leaders are worried about AI

Elon Musk- CEO of Tesla– is no stranger to you. Has made a confession that artificial intelligence could eventually be dangerous to the entire human race. He wants people to follow certain regulations and ban on any type of autonomous weapons, to save humanity. Keeping this aside, governments are already working on hidden projects on AI-controlled weapons.

 

 

Another example is companies like Uber and Microsoft- you can try using robots in parking lots that could read license plates and report suspicious activities to prevent crime. They do this by collecting data and reporting it to their owners. This technology has been in use which seems to be less expensive compared to hiring a human security guard!

2) Voice search: The dictators!

In the current world, for example, you will find it easier to ask Siri about the distance of your top travel destination in Sri Lanka rather than manually typing in the query. With this keeping in mind, further, it is estimated that by the next upcoming year’s a higher percentage of web browsing will be done without tapping the screen. This is because of Alexa and Siri’s engagement with the human-level smartness becoming incomparable. However, the disadvantage of voice search is that it is quite different from the typical text search.

 

 For example, when you Google a question you will get hundreds of result pages. But if you ask the same thing to your voice assistant, it will only give you certain results (a few) more than that you will only get one result!

3)  Video marketing 

You might question yourself whether using videos for promoting your business would worth it? The answer simply is: Yes, not because every business is using it but moreover, it is a very profitable tool for digital marketing trends in 2019. To deeply get connected with your target audience, video marketing can be the best way as they are dominating photos and infographics compared to other ordinary advertisements.

Since videos are more appealing and easier to share than large content. With inexpensive methods, such as quality smartphones, and film equipment. Companies all over the world are using personalized videos to create ”real authentic publicity.” Do not just think that YouTube plays here. To get more engagement using your video marketing, you can go live on Instagram, Facebook, or Linkedin.

4)  Chatbots:

You might have definitely experienced online purchasing. And you might have noticed yourself being answered for your queries in a few seconds or minutes by a chatbot, that will have instantly answered your questions. This will bring a closer connection to you towards your customers. Many customers prefer communicating with chatbots since they are quickly responsive. Giving instant answers to what you are exactly looking for modestly and responding to you without losing its patience. These virtual assistants aid in customer expectations, customer service and performing accurate tasks, which means you can literally focus on your other important tasks.

Many businesses have already started using chatbots which include, for instance, Uber helping customers to communicate and making it easier for them to hire Ubers easily. Other brands such as Facebook Messenger, Google Maps, and Slack have started using Chatbots & digital marketing making it efficient. Chatbots have completely changed the way digital marketing looks at its services. Giving companies a better perspective of market sustainability.

5)  Social media stories:

Brand awareness can be easily be promoted and engaged by making good use of live videos. Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube stories have been coming alive for the last half-decade. First came Snapchat with the concept of ”My Story,” followed by Instagram, Facebook while Youtube unrevealed their story format.

Through social media stories, businesses can directly market themselves to their audience by reviewing their product, showing them ” behind the scenes,” of the products, or about the employees who have been apart? With these effective methods, you can easily target your desired audiences effectively almost anywhere and everywhere!

6)  Social Messaging apps:

You and I every one of us are into messaging with each other. The recent trend is social messaging apps whereas people are spending more time texting each other, it makes total sense that marketing your products and services here is the right place for you to engage with your potential customers.

These apps can be very beneficial in sending messages to your customers directly, whether it is an instant sales reply or feedback! Furthermore, people expect businesses to be present in messaging apps so that they could directly deal and interact with you. Also, 70% of the world’s population are willing to shop at companies that interact with enough social messaging apps.

7) Virtual Reality & Augmented reality:

Virtual reality aims at creating a computer-generated experience for customers using specialized technologies and software. You can use VR to make your products/services advertisements 10x more appealing to your customers than an ordinary advertisement. Augmented reality for digital marketing trends in 2019 has made businesses in recent times to reach out customers effectively in different technologized ways. If you are not sure whether to use this tech or not, you should probably clearly understand the benefits and what it offers to you in real tech life.

For example, an international brand in India IKEA is where it allows and helps place their furniture accordingly to your customers’ expectations. Here, customers can enjoy every bit of looking at their furniture placements.

8) Geo – location-targeted advertisements will become popular.

 What is the significant thing in any digital marketing strategy? Location!

Location is the main key role whether it is advertising or marketing your product. Showing your product/service at the right time in the right place is an important digital marketing trend in 2019.

Other than that, appearing in the right location is equally important. If you want to make your brand withstand the most compared to the rest of your competitors then you will have to start communicating brand messages in the user’s native language, which will make a difference.

On the other hand, also demonstrating geo contents to your users will help you get into business more easily. For successful branding, you may also implement local content marketing strategies for your campaign leading it to a trend. Therefore, partnering with local influencers will help you get easily handle local advertisements around!

Final Wrap:

The era of digital marketing has absolutely no ending for the upcoming decades in trends changing, until dusk till dawn!

Being said this, meantime I hope the above given ” Digital marketing trends in 2019,” might have brought in some ideas on how the newest trends that already exist looks like, also helping you with foreseeing the upcoming trends for the next decades.

Have you started following them, yet for your business? On the downside topic, I have given you the top 08 digital marketing trends currently conquering the 21st century. Take a deep look at every trend and know how it is or would work for your business and customer relationship. Further side, it would be great if you could come back here and tell me about your most beneficial trend that would help your businesses’ enhancement. I bet you will have something to say!

“There Is Nothing In This World To Fear, But Change.”

WRONG!

Change is necessary. Change is beneficial.

CHANGE IS THE FUTURE.

Why do we say all this? We live in a world that undergoes drastic transitions with each ticking second.

In business, you need to stay updated and in line with the latest trends. To stay on top, you need to embrace change ahead of your competition. We know, to stay on top you need to stay updated. Why?

SEO’S have changed the digital marketing strategies ever since renowned search engines like YAHOO, Google, Bing, etc. changed their algorithms to favour a much more AI perspective.

Google’s announcement of the use of Rank Brain, as their artificial intelligence system aids in finding pages that don’t have the exact keywords mentioned in the search query.

In short, multiple factors now determine SERP, which makes the conventional ones such as keyword density, linking, and various other norms outdated.

CHANGE, get it? They did, so why can’t you?

Yet, not everyone stays updated and some prefer relying on age-old SEO tactics that were once or sometimes never a success. Hence, they falter from what was once a successful venture during one time, to an abysmal debacle.

The reputed British Broadcast Corporation, BBC was slapped with a penalty in the year 2013 for having unnatural links pointing towards a particular webpage.

In February 2011, Forbes.com was caught in the act of selling links on its own website, without a second thought of adding ‘no follow’ attribute.

 

You certainly don’t want that, do you?

 

Wrong SEO strategies prove to be a bane than a boon, and rightly so, they need to be avoided at all costs.

So which ones are outdated; how do you know which ones to stay away from and if there’s a diamond in the haystack, should you embrace them? Will it actually helpful?

 

 1. Plagiarism:

There’s this huge misnomer in everyone’s mind that replicating the traits of successful companies or anything for that matter, guarantees success.

Nope.

While it’s good to owe inspiration from either the structure of the page or even the contextual combinations, blatant plagiarism is a huge demeanour.

No one wants to see the same thing twice.

Visitors who notice them jump to the conclusion that the webpage (propagating it to the business itself) isn’t inventive enough, and lacks knowledge, and prone to neglect.

 

 2. 3^rd party “Paid” Links

What are you actually paying for?

Matt Cutts says “The vast majority of the time things are incredibly clear: people are paying money outright for links.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s abundantly clear that these are links that are being bought and paid and sold and all that sort of stuff.”

Not only is it like taking the easiest route, these links may possess a stagnant structure that may have been replicated countless times.

Google and various other search engines have always been on the lookout for such stagnancy and they remove quite a few of them too.

Google banned Google Japan from buying paid links.

Now isn’t that enough to stop you?

 

3. Keyword Stuffing :

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the box still underuse. Not for anything good, at least.

So obviously, for your content to be recognized by the search engine the keywords need to stand out. Everyone knows that.

But stuffing a hundred keywords or so into it?

Not only is it unnatural, but it also hinders a certain level of user-friendliness, making it a     viable technique to actually lose customers than anything more. Search Engines don’t like it either and you even stand the chance of being penalized and possibly banned.

It might’ve worked in the past when things were very simple but now, both the search engine algorithm and the visitor’s mindset are different.

How different?

Enough to not fall prey to gimmickry.

 

4. Bots, Spam, Ads, and ClickBaits :

A deadly dozen, to say the least.

Gone were the days when all the content on the web were tailor-made to the needs of the business or the website, and a writer painstakingly sits and writes each and every portion of the text.

With automation and artificial bots come not only the luxuries of having loads of contents prepared by the minute, but also a multitude of problems associated with it.

Why?  Even they go crazy sometimes.

If a certain word repeats all over the content or maybe a similar structure elsewhere was already there, something could smell fishy.

Even if people may miss that, Search Engines do not and it may incur penalties or even less traffic than expected.

Clickbaits take use of flashy yet misleading headlines that would seem to be inviting to the visitor’s eye, particularly to gain traffic through visiting the links and even unknowingly sharing them.

There’s nothing much to say about ads and spam either. Who loves them? Want to make extra money? Improve the content and not resort to stuff like these.

 

5. Cloaking:

Cloaking is merely “sophisticated hiding”.

It’s like presenting a rigged version of the actual webpage such that it satisfies the algorithm of the search engine and hence can be called upon when the visitor searches for the particular keyword.

Doorway pages, there are called which are specially optimized for specific keywords. The page altogether may be entirely different, and may even serve another purpose probably with even questionable content.

Google has banned Cloaking of any form, need I say more?

British Motor Works (BMW) was penalized for cloaking in 2006.

 

6. Article Spinners :

Similar to spam, they were created to produce variants of the same keyword, to establish an alternate version of the same page.

This in turn gave rise to numerous low-quality articles and Search Engine algorithms like Google Hummingbird got updated to further filter out unnecessary variants.

 

7. Spam Comments

Most of the blogs and websites have a dedicated comments section that allows users to post their views on the corresponding content.

However, this was prone to misuse since a lot of bloggers put website links as well, along with the comments – a genuinely false move to induce traffic.

More or less- SPAM.

 

8. Automated Link Building:

Marketers took use of generic software that built links that were embedded in blogs, comments sections, forums etc. They would mostly be redirected to numerous articles that were generally very poorly written.

An ultimate time waster, especially since they might seem to contain information we think we might actually need but often end up as a huge disappointment.

Rap Genius, the famous lyrics-based site fell prey to Automated link building; they faced consequences from Google for allowing users to post links alongside lyrics content resulting in an unnatural hike in traffic.

 

9. Interlinking Websites :

The wrong thing here would be striking the perfect balance between what’s useful and what’s abuse.

Many websites require interlinking them with others for a steady flow of information and even to redirect the user according to their wish.

The problem lies in its misuse. In most cases, arrays of unwanted websites are interlinked of which none might be relevant.

The Google AI has the skill to notice patterns within interlinking spam for its use and it efficiently curbs the rise in low content irrelevant links.

 

10. Short /Thin form Content:

Most of the websites used to get away with this technique where a short word pertaining to nothing specific other than the use of the same word 2-3 times would allow search traffic for their site.

The content may be unrelated to the topic and may not even have other words at all.

 

11. Link and Article Directories :

The Panda Update for Google’s AI bought to a close, the misuse of these directories which basically allowed websites to be categorized based on the needs of the user.

However, misuse crept in especially due to the simplicity of installing the software which powers them, allowing them to create multiple irrelevant links.

Article Directories were even worse.  They were rewritten and became bloated with low-quality content.

 

12. Exact Match Domains :

Matching the domain with the exact keyword phrase allowed microsites such as these to rank up higher than the actual domain for multiple days.

 

13. Paid/ Spammy Guest Blogging

This went out of hand mainly due to its uncontrollable nature.

 

While guest articles were featured on multiple websites, these “guests” took shape of marketers who posted links of completely unrelated subjects along with the content.

A wide flurry of such tactics furthered the need to retrospectively control the content before posting it on the website, and with AI alterations they were taken to their traditional grassroots, favoring the actual content developers.

 

 14. Online Press Releases :

Wannabe website services mimic real journalists by shooting out online press releases with the desire to be scraped up by other websites to induce traffic for their own venture.

Not only is it a genuine time waster, but these releases would also be sold out by sub-standard websites with less visibility that doesn’t offer anything to the client sites which buy them as well.

 

It’s a known fact that Google loathes to confirm any kind of its search engine updates, so it’s always a guess-and-play strategy until there’s an official announcement.

While dealing with SEO marketing, there are some things about which Google has been constant throughout all of its updates, like, spammy links, low-quality content, keyword stuffing, over-optimized anchor text, etc.

Although page content quality is a necessity to remain on the web now, that’s not going to give you page rankings unless you build quality links.

Google’s webmaster guideline is getting strict day by day and this why you need to change your game-plan if you want to stay longer in the game.

Google’s search engine updates have now even started to look after things like the mobile-friendliness of your site, and the fact that improving UX will also increase your page rankings says a lot about how

Google is making it hard for SEO to work on. You need to put in efforts to get in page rankings through other ways too.

As we’re witnessing revolutionizing changes in the mobile industry day by day, mobile phones are proving sufficient in all forms when the user is away from his desk.

The web is now rapidly being optimized for the mobile view, and you should do it too before you start losing mobile users. Just by keeping few factors in mind you can increase your customer to a wide extent, increase your page speed, fix mobile-friendly errors present on your site.

Figure 1: https://www.moovweb.com/beyond-mobilegeddon/

 

However, the Google updates have never stopped the search engine marketers from developing ways to rank up their pages. Link building is coming up as the most important skill in SEO and that’s why you need to master it now. In this post, I’ll be going in brief through all the possible link-building strategies one should know by now.

 

What are the most effective link-building strategies of 2017?

 

1. Create Linkable Assets

Content Marketing is the new Link Building!

This is one of the oldest techniques being used even before SEO came into being. No content is perfect and you can always approach your audience with better, fresh, and updated content.

Come up with content that would appeal to your audience so that you could generate links.

Pretend you’re an online seller of body-building supplements, for example. For your business, a typical linkable asset could be something like a blog post about 10 side effects to be aware of while taking supplements.

Clearly, it offers valuable insight to your readers and displays your concern towards them without getting too self-promoting. You might as well catch the attention of other websites when they come across your post and if your content is great, that they will gladly post it on their website.

Resource guides, infographics, tutorials, visual content, etc. can serve as linkable assets that fetch you the quality links you want for building a great link profile.

 

2. “Ask the Experts”, Panels, Interviews

Whatever industry you belong to, you can always create these types of posts. Frankly speaking, experts love to be featured on the web because even they need to create an audience for themselves and set up a reputation. With these, you are helping them as much as you’re benefitting yourself.

The first task in the line would be to structure a list of experts in your field of business.

According to their level of comfort-ability, you can outline a panel discussion, interviews, “ask the experts, or an expert round-up on any particular issue.

Sketch ideas for content, and then put together the group of experts suitable to answer the topics in your content.

The primary benefit from these posts is that you’re getting multiple links instantly because all the experts will share your post on their websites, which will again give you immediate access to their audience.

Once you are ready with your content, always make a clear plan about how to promote your post later. Remember these are busy people you will be dealing with, so keep in mind that you might have to remind them a few times before they take action on your content.

 

3. Unlinked Brand Mentions

There must’ve been times where you’d forgotten to give a link back while mentioning a particular product/service in your posts.

And chances are that if you have been online for some time, there could be many other websites that might have mentioned you in a post or article and forgotten to give a link, there’s simply no reason why you shouldn’t have a link back.

You can always use tools like Google Alerts, Mention.com, and Moz to keep a track of such unaccredited mentions. You can reach out to the website or individual whenever you get an alert for your mentions and turn those mentions into links. If you keep doing this for a good period of time, these mentions can cumulate into a massive boost to your page.

 

4. Broken Link Building

There must be pages on your website which you’d have taken down or have shifted to a different URL. While you’re aware of this, it could be possible that there must be sites that’d be still linking to your older links; which are now 404 probably, if I’m not mistaken.

Since users are getting a 404 now, you’re losing them within clicks.  Use tools like Ahrefs, Moz to find those broken links on your website and, send the updated link to the webmasters.

Another technique you could also do is, find broken links of your competitors by scanning their websites in Ahrefs. Since those pages are long dead, you could probably rebuild similar pages on your website and reach out to people who are still linking to those old dead pages, with your fresh and updated pages on similar content.

You will be surprised to notice, how many people will happy to replace those old links with yours, and thank you for it.

 

5. Snatch Links from Lower Quality Content

This is one of the steps from the Skyscraper Technique, which I’ll tell you about later in the post. When you’re out there searching for ways to build links, it’s often right under the nose.

If you’re aware of the competitors in your field, go through the posts where they’ve been mentioned on the internet. When you go through the content, try to spot instances where you think you’ve got a better content on your blog/website.

Let’s say you’re browsing blog posts about how to make soap at home, and you end up on a super boring 400-word blog post about the soap industry and whatnot. If you already have a crazy insane post on this exact topic, ping the webmaster and pitch your content.

Since you have a better and thorough resource they’ll definitely link to your post, because they have clearly demonstrated a liking for such posts in the past, and you are only offering them something better.

 

6. Create Educational Resources

Backlinks from .edu domains are a serious ranking boost, right? Well, it’s not that hard to get them as it sounds.

Educational resources result in high-quality links all the time. Tutorials, extensive how-to guides, manuals or other contents that teach students something valuable instead of promoting your brand are very well appreciated and prove valuable to the users at the same time.

These days most universities have resource pages, with links to different sites, for their students and faculties.

Pretend you’re an event planner, for example. You could structure an insightful guide explaining the dos and don’ts while organizing a small-scale event/fest in the University.

Then pitch your content to the universities and spread the guide among students. If the university lists it in their resources, there you have earned yourself an .edu link, and most importantly you’ll end up getting tons of new audience and potential clients for your business – Thanks to your newfound glory!

 

7. Scholarship Opportunities

It must be clear by now how important Edu links are in terms of boosting your page rankings. Although it might not be clear how to get it, it is easier than the normal convention. If you can create something to which universities might like to link, you’re golden.

Here’s how it works: Build a page on your website describing the scholarship (like this one), with necessary information like where to apply, etc. When you’re ready with the scholarship page, it’s time to find the Universities that usually Link to Scholarships.

You can manually search or use inurl:.edu “scholarships” as well. When you come across a scholarship page that seems like a good fit, approach them with your requirement list for the scholarship. Do not forget to give them an estimate of the # of scholarships you have.

 

8. Visual Assets

Visual assets like images, diagrams, infographics, charts, and other visual-oriented pieces of content are proven ways to gain attention from your users. Mostly it is because visual content is easier to grasp as they produce quick info on the topic.

Visuals assets are really easy to link to. For example, when you publish a graph on your site, you get a link anytime someone shares that graph on their site. This powerful “share my infographic and link to me when you do” relationship simply doesn’t go well for text-based content.

 

9. List Posts

List posts, or listicals, are a numbered list of techniques, tips, reasons, myths…or just anything on a particular topic. Again, list posts are liked by users as well as bloggers.

List posts have come across as on the most valuable assets now. In fact, after analyzing 1 million articles, it was discovered that list posts generated more backlinks than any other content formats, and even outperformed quizzes, videos, and infographics.

 

10. In-Depth Ultimate Guides

These in-depth ultimate guides are comprehensive resources that cover everything one should know on a given topic and a little bit extra around it. Ultimate guides have an insane amount of information in one place. This is why it is loved by the readers who are out there in search of answers.

11. Email Outreach

Link building has now moved from the comments section to personal inbox now and this is why it’s getting easier and convenient day by day. The sooner you grasp that link building is not limited to just the internet anymore, the better for you.

The first step of any email outreach is targeting the right people. And for that, you need to use tools available on Ahrefs and Buzzstream, and other websites built for SEOs. Use hunter.io or anymailfinder.com for getting the emails of your webmasters from their posts/pages.

Find the people who’d probably like to link to your post and then comes the important task. If you don’t want to end up in the trash of your target webmasters, personalize your email as much as possible, but don’t forget to lose the corporate touch. Most importantly, build scripts for email but again, don’t forget to personalize.

 

12. Resource Page Link Building

Resource pages are like yellow pages on the internet. They exist solely for the purpose of putting all the web pages on one topic in a single place. This is why they make the perfect spots for link building.

One simple way to search for resource pages would be: “Keyword” + inurl:links

The audience you gain on resource pages are genuine, primarily because this is the audience that is trying really hard to grasp the topic, and secondary there is no “buy now” button on the resource pages which makes them completely trustworthy.

 

13. The Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Technique is the most awesome of all the techniques devised ever. In this technique, you can steal audience from right under the nose of your competitors. How?

 

Step 1: Find the outdated pages on your competitor’s website.

Step 2: Create updated and extensive content on these topics and outreach to the webmasters who’ve linked to the outdated posts from your competitor’s website.

Eventually, it’s content that matters, and if you’ve managed to create something better, people will link to it.

 

14. Give Testimonials

Everyone providing any kind of product/service on the web loves to display testimonials. So, if you happen to use a service/ product that you love, try sending the owners a testimonial.

Just add subtly that if they want to display the testimonial on their posts, they can do that as well. Most people would take the offer and probably boast about their new review to their Social Following as well, letting you leverage some of their followers who see your brand.

 

15. Blogger Reviews

If you’re someone dealing in a software product, consulting service, information product, or anything for that matter, you have a golden opportunity to turn that into high-quality backlinks.

There’s a simple trick here, offer your product to bloggers and in return ask them for reviews. If you’re charging a particular fee for the product, waive it off for the blogger and they’ll happily to the rest.

Keep a mild tone and talk about getting mentions on their blog, the rest is self-explanatory. Now, don’t ask them upfront about giving a link/review, which will then violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

 

16. HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

There are a million reporters looking out for sources every day and by registering on HARO. When you register yourself as a source, wait until you receive queries from your field of expertise, I’m sure there must be developments in news from your industry often.

All you need to do is, sign up as a source at Helpareporter and thereafter follow the guidelines accordingly. Once your register, you will start receiving emails from HARO with requirements from reports who are actively looking for news sources.

While providing your response to reporters, you have the choice of staying anonymous but obviously, that’s not why you’re there. You will get mentions for your website once the news is published online.

It is one of the best ways to get rich backlinks from authority news sites.

 

17. Submit Your Site to Website Feedback Sites

This is totally off the board, but a source for getting links anyway. There are a lot of sites that are designed to give you feedback on everything that is there on your website.

The thing to note here is that most of these sites will give a link back to your site.

All you need to do now is send your site with a brief description of how you intend to improve it.

 

18. The Moving Man Method

As there is a number of websites growing every day on the web, there are also many websites shutting down every day. The moving man method is all about utilizing the opportunity created thereafter.

You can use Google to find out the shutdown websites by using keywords like these:

your niche + shut down

your niche + closed

your niche + not working

 

The next step would be to find the webmasters linking to these broken/closed links. Personally, I’d suggest you go for the webmasters with higher authority sites first.

When you outreach to the webmasters with an updated and possibly better replacement from your website, they should be glad about it. However, make sure that your content is really good.
Watch it in action in the video below  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVMaSvTVmGI

 

19. Guest Posting Gigs on Twitter

On Twitter, there are sites sharing guest posts on a daily basis. That’s your cue, you can reach out to them through tweets/DM and do a guest post.

Although it is a time taking process, then it is a new source of the untapped audience for you actually. If you succeed at getting few guest-post gigs, you can work around and there’s no end to possibilities.

You can always rely on Twitter to get a constant flow of such new gigs. Few examples for your Twitter hunt could be:

 “your niche” + guest post

“your niche” + guest article

“your niche” + write for us

“your niche” + guest author

 

20. Transcribe Videos

Video transcription is a very new source of building links as the video boom is still new on the web. Hence, this can be used as a flexible link building strategy. In every industry, there are experts who have established a major audience base with their video channels. On the internet today, you’ll find a good number of videos uploaded daily, varying from Webinars, Presentations, Tutorials, Q&A’s,Hangouts or Vlogs (video blogs). You can always associate with these video-makers and generate new traffic and audience for yourself.

Video transcription is another way to make link-worthy content because you are getting original content directly from experts in your field. You can also aquiret links by associating with them as they always provide transcription with their video.

Here’s how to do it: First, search on YouTube for key experts/bloggers, and find videos without transcriptions and ping them that you’d like to make transcriptions. Send them when you’ve it done.

It also helps you stand out from the rest of your competitors as you’re helping the influencers. Whatever relationships you build this way will last longer and give you a permanent audience. You get a targeted audience on your page when influencers share your transcripts.

 

21. Hacking Quora

In recent years, Quora has emerged as a last-end solution platform for everyone on the web. There is major traffic on Quora of people looking for answers to every sort of thing and this is the untapped audience you have right there in front of you.

Here’s how to get referral traffic from Quora:

Look for the threads getting maximum traffic on Quora, using Ahrefs. Put in keywords of your niche and find out relevant threads with good traffic and high rankings. Publish answers to these threads with traffic. You’ll find high-traffic questions with low-quality answers or even without any answers.

The most important factor here is that Quora lets you reference sources in the answers and hence it’s easier to link back to relevant websites. However, keep in mind that you do not go over the top and appear too self-promotional. There’s always the chance of getting blocked/banned from Quora if they ever suspect you constantly promoting any particular thing.

 

22. Build links with blog comments

In this technique, it’s all about utilizing the blog comments on your own blog and outline a list of prospective links.

In most of the blogging mainframes, you’ll find the name, website (if they’ve one) and email address of the commenters. Once these people have commented on your blog, it clearly indicates their liking for your stuff. So, now all you’ve to do is make a list of those commenters who own a blog themselves in the same field as you do.

Run a scrapper to collect the websites of all such prospects and check if you could find any content on their website that could relate to you. If so, start an outreach campaign to build links with their website/blog.

The key thing to keep in mind while outreaching is to personalize your outreach emails. Because always keep in mind, there is a human on the other end of your email.

 

23. “Ranking for Links” Technique

There are millions of blog posts getting published daily on the internet. Bloggers need to put references from different sources to back up their points.

How do they get these sources? On Google, right?

So there is a huge probability that your blog/website could be one of those reference pieces. All you need to do now is rank up your pages containing these pieces, “reference” terms.

Note down a list of topics/keywords from your industry with a high probability of getting cited.

You must probably have content built already on these keywords/topics. In general, these kinds of keywords/topics are usually queries or informational terms. So, first of all, make a list of such queries for your niche.

Next, run these keywords through SEO tools and find the terms with low Keyword Difficulty and high search volumes. Now, all you need to do is, just put together contents around these topics and rank up for them.

If you succeed in ranking for these kinds of “reference” terms, there are chances that you’ll get backlinks on a consistent basis from these bloggers seeking references for their own content.

 

Summing up!

The methods which I’ve mentioned above are tried and tested and are backed up with various case studies. However, in the field of SEO, keep in mind that there are a lot of factors contributing to your page rankings. Even while link building, it is important to have a positive approach and keep attempting unless you reach the top.

Link Building is getting personalized day by day, and I cannot stress more on this. Never lose hope, if you have confidence in your page content, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t outreach to even the top players in your field. As a cautionary step, be wary of spammy links and avoid links from sites with low-trust authority lest you could get reprimanded and lose ranking.

Great! Now you’re ready to hunt. All the best!

If you’ve any doubts or suggestions, feel free to mention those in the comments.