Category: SEO

Link building has to be part of every search engine optimization project, no matter whether you’re dealing with a brand new or an aged website. Why? Because the number (and quality) of links coming to a website from others, and going out from your website to others is a major ranking signal. You could have a perfectly optimized site, but without links, you’ll struggle to obtain any kind of substantial ranking.

Now, there are two kinds of link building – white hat, and black hat. White hat methods are the ones I’ll focus on here, because Google and other search engines are against the black hat methods. Those are shady techniques that may work for a short period of time, but are ultimately against terms of service and could cause your ranking to come crashing down thanks to a manual penalty or a future algorithm change.

White hat methods take longer, but build ranking more naturally. As such, this kind of ranking is easier to sustain over a period of time because you’re much less likely to fall victim to a manual penalty and better able to withstand any algorithmic changes. Focus on providing value to your readers, and you’ll be on the right track – because everything Google does is aimed at improving the user experience for searchers.

This is by no means an exhaustive list – but here are 9 link building methods that I consider the most effective.

1. Earn Your Links with Quality Resource Content

Create content that others can use and link to as a resource for their audience. Though it can take a while to craft this kind of content, especially when it comes to case studies, research, and other types of in-depth material. Try to include a variety of this kind of content in your editorial calendar so you can still keep publishing while you build it.

2. Make it Easier for People to Link to You

Who doesn’t love easy? If you’re publishing an infographic that you want others to share, include the HTML code with a link back to your site already built in. That way those who are interested only have to copy and paste that code to display the infographic on their own blog. Each time they do, you get a back link.

3. Link Out to Quality Resources

Whenever there’s a quality resource to help your readers find more information, link to it appropriately. For example, if you’re writing a piece related to small business funding, you could link to the Small Business Administration. While it’s a long shot you’ll get them to link back to you, the point is you’re adding value for your readers. And sometimes, when you link to smaller but equally valuable sites, you may get a link back from them.

Whenever you link to someone else in your content, share the article and let them know you’ve mentioned them. While they may not link back to you, they will likely share the content with their own audience, which helps build traffic since it increases exposure to your content. You may find you get new social followers, which also helps build potentially valuable relationships.

4. Link to Other Internal Relevant Pages

You have pages and posts on your website, so you should link to them wherever it is appropriate on your website. Internal links are a huge part of link building since you are in complete control of everything about them, from their location on a page to their anchor text.

There are CMS plugins that automatically hyperlink a certain word every time it appears on your website – this is what Wikipedia and similar sites use – but it’s not really a good idea unless you’re a big brand, or enhances the user experience. I’d recommend instead, to go through all your previously published content and link in context wherever it makes sense – changing up the anchors accordingly.

As you write new content, you can link to certain topics you’ve already written about it, so you can link to it and ensure it makes sense from your reader’s perspective. You’ll see that I do it often on blog posts. My first purpose is always for you, my readers, to help make it easier for you to read more on a topic I’ve previously covered. But, it does help from a back link and SEO perspective, too.

5. Spy on Your Competitor’s Backlink Profiles for a Starting Point

Spend a decent amount of time looking through your competitor’s back link profiles. You’re saving yourself time in the long run because sites that link to your competition may also link to you. And, you’ll learn how many links, and the types of domains those links need to come from to help you beat them in the search engines.

Of course, you won’t be able to get links from all the same websites – like if your competitor was mentioned in a random news article. But, you may find a high-quality niche directory you could easily get a link from – one that you didn’t know about before.

A great tool for this is Ahrefs. Run your competitors through the tool and export their backlinks to a .CSV file. Then, place them all in a single Excel workbook, so you can sort them with various metrics to find the best opportunities for your own site.

Remember, you don’t have to stop once you run through your full list of direct competitors. You can also take a look at indirect competitors in your vertical or other relevant niche sites are getting links. If you’re a local business, look at other sites in your area. If you’re in ecommerce, take a look at how other sites are getting links to the same kinds of pages you’re struggling with.

6. Just Ask

Start with the people you know – friends, relatives, clients, business partners, or anyone else. Someone you know has a website or a blog of their own, so you never know who may be willing to link to you.

Generally speaking, not just any links will do. It’s better to get to links from relevant websites. If it’s not relevant to your niche or your audience, it won’t have much of an impact on your rankings, and website owners will be less likely to link to you. So, if your best friend runs a clothing website, and you’re building a site on goldfish ownership and care, it’s not going to make much sense.

You can also ask the people from your competitor’s lists. There are plenty of email templates out there to help you figure out what to say – though blindly emailing may not be the best way to go about it. It’s better if you can build a relationship with someone at the company before asking for something. You can use a tool like Voila Norbert to find corporate email addresses if you’re in the B2B space, and then a tool like MailShake to help you handle cold emailing.

7. List Your Site in Relevant, Trustworthy Directories

These links vary in value depending on the quality and size of the directory. The key is focusing on the directories where your potential customers will be looking to find you. There are numerous trustworthy directories in the homebuilding niche, for instance – such as Porch, Houzz, and Angie’s List. If you have a service related to building a home – make sure you join those platforms. There are many free directories you can submit to for decent back links.

There are also paid directories you can join, such as Chamber of Commerce. Some of these paid listings can pass legitimate link value, but others won’t really pass anything and aren’t worth the time and money. Others worth considering are Business.com and the Better Business Bureau, if you run a business that makes sense to list in either of those. Certain niche specific directories also require payment to be included.

If you’re in a global business and have versions of your website available in multiple languages, you could submit to appropriate non-English directories, as well.

8. Include Your Link in Testimonials You Leave for Others

Take a few minutes to write a list of the products and services you’ve bought recently. As long as it doesn’t come from a massive company like Walmart, there’s a fairly decent chance you can get a link on their site in exchange for leaving a testimonial or a review. Of course it will depend on the domain and whether it’s dofollow or nofollow as to how much weight, if any, it will hold as a back link, so do your research before sending out mass emails to offer testimonials.

9. Include Your Website on Profiles Wherever You Can

If you sign up to become a member for most sites, you’ll get a link in your profile. Not all of these links will be do-follow and pass link juice through Google, such as the case with Twitter. Even if you don’t get the link juice, that’s one more place for people to discover your website, so you should include it. This way, you can at least drive traffic to your site.

Getting Started

The best thing to do is start with an analysis of your own website’s back link profile. Check to see what links are already out there, and then craft a strategy based on the amount of time you have available. Dedicate a bit of time each day to building new links to your website with any of these methods, because too many links too fast will send signals to Google that something fishy is going on. Links should appear naturally, so as tempting as it may be to build out as many as you can as fast as you can for increased rank, you could be shooting yourself in the foot.

Keep an eye out for next week’s post when I share even more back link building methods you can use to improve your rank.

At the end of April 2017, Google announced it was doing its part to combat fake news with an algorithm update and a procedure change for managing the results for fake news content. Google refers to this type of content as “offensive or clearly misleading content.” Like any other algorithmic update, Google is aiming to improve results quality for their customers – searchers like you and me.

Feedback Form

With the new feedback form that appears underneath Google’s suggested searches, users will now have the ability to report any information they believe to be inaccurate, inappropriate, or offensive. Users will also be able to find the link to a feedback form under “Featured Snippets.”

When users see a search suggestion they believe shouldn’t be there, they can fill out the feedback form to let Google know what the issue is. If it’s a prediction issue, you’ll be asked to mark which predictions were inappropriate. Then, you’ll be asked to describe the predictions as either:

• Hateful
• Sexually Explicit
• Violent
• Dangerous and other harmful activity
• Other

And you’ll have the option to leave additional comments if you feel it necessary to do so.

If the issue is with the search results, rather than the search suggestions, there’s an option to report inappropriate results at the bottom. You’ll get a form similar to the one used to report inappropriate search suggestions.

A New Kind of Quality Issue

The changes were implemented because of some quality issues with search results. For example, in December 2016, a pro-Nazi website was the first result for “did the Holocaust happen“. In addition, Breitbart was featured as a top site for a query about the Great Barrier Reef. Clearly, these were not isolated incidents, or we wouldn’t have seen Google take such swift action to correct it.

Because of these changes, this is no longer the case – results now show information from credible sources, with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum being the number one result. Now, instead of getting a bunch of results suggesting the events never actually happened, users can find answers to the most common questions about the Holocaust. The snippet even reads, “Hitler did not make the Holocaust happen by himself.”

Google is dealing with a series of queries it’s not necessarily had to deal with before – where people are searching for content that reaffirms their point of view, regardless of whether or not that content aligns with actual facts.

Add to the fact that people are searching for rumors, racial slurs, urban myths, and other derogatory content with enough volume to influence the search suggestions Google offers, and in many cases, they’re influenced in offensive and potentially dangerous ways.

These searches are a problem because they don’t fall into the areas where Google has taken action – they’ve been dealing with spam for a long time. Google has also dealt with poor quality content showing up in popular searches, and it has also had to do deal with piracy. But these particular problematic queries aren’t any of that.

They are fake news and heavily biased content. People have completely made things up, bought into rumors, spread conspiracy theories, and perpetuate myths. They can include offensive or shocking information, and thus, presents Google with an entirely new quality issue.

Though it represents only a small portion of their overall query volume, it’s worth addressing, and I for one, am glad to see the changes being made. Google says the issue affects ¼ of a percent of searches, but when you consider they handle nearly 6 billion searches per day, that’s quite a bit of misinformation they have the potential of spreading.

Placing More Emphasis on Authoritative Content

Google already places weight on site authority when it determines rank in the search engine results. With the Google Owl algorithm update in place, additional weight will be placed on authority, but the specifics are unclear as to how it will work.

Search quality ratters have also been instructed to start flagging content they consider offensive or upsetting. Quality raters and the Google employees who are monitoring the forms are using the feedback to strengthen the algorithm to prevent further issues like this from happening in the future.

What Does This Mean for Brands?

Right now, there’s not much of anything this update has done for brands. If you’re a brand that’s producing content that Google considers inappropriate or controversial, you’ll see a change, of course. But if you’re not, you probably won’t notice much, if anything at all.

Does that mean you should ignore what’s going on? As much as I wish I could say yes, I can’t. As the program expands and gets more feedback from users, there could be more implications for brands.

Given the current feedback form, there’s nothing to stop marketers from flooding Google to push for their version of correct information. Right now it doesn’t seem there’s a way for the feedback forms to distinguish between feedback advertisers or marketers and between traditional users.

Google hasn’t clearly stated what it considers to be “authoritative”, so it’s possible branded content may not be considered such. While branded content isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it could mean it shifts to a lower priority in the search results than informational-based websites.

If your brand already has high ranking authoritative content, you may see a boost in ranking because you’ve become more relevant. Because it seems Google is pushing for more information-based (facts, rather than opinion) content, you could bring in more interested leads organically.

If you’ve already shifted away from a promotional-based content strategy to a more informational/educational-based approach, you’re on the right track, but if you’re using this update as the motivation to make the change, you may see a boost in your ranks.

If you get the increase rank, you in theory would see more qualified traffic arriving on your website, making it easier to market to them and possibly convert them after the initial site visit.

Ultimately, this change will hold all content creators more accountable to keep their content as accurate as possible. Information changes quickly these days, and to keep authority for ranking purposes, marketers will likely need to make more effort to provide reliable information.

Customers are already researching your brand, products, and services well before they ever contact you, so the brands that are providing the most current and reliable information will more than likely be those that rank higher – simply because they’re providing a better user experience.

This could also translate to pushing old and outdated content down the ranks – giving marketers the incentive they need to keep things fresh.

What Does This Mean for New Websites?

Basically nothing – unless you’re building a new conspiracy theory website, or satire site with tons of fake news. New websites should not have a harder time ranking, and larger brands won’t be at an advantage over small businesses in terms of ‘authority’.

If you’re building a brand new website, build it with principles of providing a good user experience in mind. Follow current SEO guidelines for good on-page SEO. When building backlinks and working on off-page SEO signals, make sure you’re reaching out to high quality websites. Keep an eye on your backlink profiles to make sure you’re not falling victim to a negative SEO attack that involves building a backlink profile full of spam.

For Now – It’s a Waiting Game

The changes were first made in December to address the immediate issues, but didn’t go into effect full force until just last month. As such, it’s really too soon to tell how this will affect marketing efforts. The most important, and best thing to do, is to focus on creating quality, factual content. When you do this, you’re likely to avoid falling victim to any kind of Google penalty, because you’re acting with the user’s best interests in mind.

Chances are you’ve not really seen an impact on your sites because of Google Owl, but if you have, let me know what you think in the comments. Feel free to share your thoughts on this update as a Google user, too.

Link building is an important part of SEO, since Google and other search engines look at the number of domains linking to your website. Broken link building is one of many link building tactics. Though it sounds like it could be a little black hat based on the name, it is actually an effective white hat strategy that is focused on creating quality content. it’s also a highly scalable operation, which makes it easier to implement as part of your overall strategy. And, it’s not a new approach – it’s something that’s been around for years, so you know it works.

Broken link building involves finding broken links, recreating the broken content, and helping webmasters replace the broken links with your corrected link. The success of your campaign depends on how much good you do for the web. You only stand to profit if you create high-quality content that replaces the lost or abandoned content that webmaster still want to link to. You cannot just churn out crap or hire freelancers who barely speak English and expect to be successful with broken link building.

Let’s break down the process from finding the broken links, to creating the stellar replacement content, to pitching webmasters to replace the broken link with your content.

Tools of the Trade

• Domain Hunter Plus: This Chrome extension allows you to scan the links on any page your visit. When you find broken links, add them to a spreadsheet.
• Check My Links: This is another Chrome extension. Any broken links on a page will be highlighted in red. When you see them, add them to your spreadsheet.
• Canned Responses (Gmail Feature): This is a useful tool for reaching out to webmasters with replacement content for a broken link. In your account, go to Settings >Labs and then click the radio button so it’s enabled. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “Save Changes”. I’ll tell you more about how to use this in Step 5 below.
• Link Sleuth: This only works with Windows, from 95 up to 10. If you’re a Mac user, try using Integrity. You can use it to check a single URL, or a list of URLs at once. Using the list feature requires a text file with the list of URLs, one on each line. You can also use Screaming Frog to crawl sites to find duplicate content and 404 error pages.
• Link Research Tools Contact Finder: This premium tool ranges from $169/month to $1998/month and includes a number of SEO tools, link data sources, and more. Though it’s robust, it’s not meant for solopreneurs.
• BuzzStream: This tool lets you find and research influencers and bloggers, so you can focus on building relationships with people who matter in your industry. Pricing starts at $24/month for a single user after a free trial.
• Raven Tools Contact Finder: This is part of a larger collection of tools that includes automated marketing reports, data, and a site auditor. After a free trial, pricing starts at $99/month.

Step One: Find the Broken Links

Option 1: Choosing a Domain

Using the crawling tool of your choice, check the URL’s external links. It’ll run a report, so then you can check to make sure they are actually broken. You can also check the URLs properties to see which pages have the dead link on them.

Note the broken links on a spreadsheet. Your spreadsheet should include columns for the page URL where you found the broken link, the broken link, a contact name, and an email address or a contact form URL.

Make sure you’re targeting domains that are worth your time in terms of domain authority, and don’t have tons of outbound links. You want link juice and lots of eyes/potential clicks. If your link is one of thousands on the page, does it really matter? If the site has more than 10 broken links, skip it. It’s a sign the site is no longer properly maintained.

Option 2: Finding Sites in Your Niche

Use a variety of search queries to find potential links. Options include:

• keyword + “resources”
• keyword + “blogroll”
• keyword + intitle:resources
• site:.gov keyword + “links”
• keyword + intitle:blogroll
• keyword + “related links”
• site:.edu keyword + “recommended sites”

In each of these, click any results you think may be promising, and check each page for broken links using one of the extensions above. Check all pages and collect the broken links, recording each of them in the spreadsheet you started for option one.

Option 3: Searching by Keyword

Search in Google for a keyword you’re targeting. Visit all the top results. Choose any of those URLs and run it through Ahrefs. (You’ll need a paid account, starting at $99/month, to use this method.) Now, hover over “Inbound links” and then click “links” to bring up the list of websites that are linking to them. (The top results will have the highest number of inbound links.)

Next, scan the pages that link to that page for broken links, using your browser plugin. Add those to your spreadsheet, because you can reach out to them with a suggestion to link to your resource instead, and if it’s great quality, you could get a link.

Step Two: Getting Contact Information for Each Webmaster

You’ll want to be sure you can find a contact for each website you’re interested in reaching out to.

You should avoid sending emails to a generic email address, or a site that uses a generic contact form, because it’s harder to reach a real person. Even if there’s a real person there, there could be such a large influx of email that your message gets lost. If you want to see whether or not your email has been opened or read, you could install YesWare to track the message.

If you’re reaching out to a blog with a broken link, sign up for their email list. You’ll get an email from an email address that’s actively monitored. Look for signup forms in the blog’s sidebar. Note the email address in your spreadsheet.

In the case of .gov and .edu websites, this is a bit harder. Look for a department specific email, or consider making a phone call. You can also use staff directories to try to find contact information if you see names, but no other information. Consider trying to find the contact information for the webmaster, and only rely on general emails or contact forms as an absolute last resort.

Step Three: Generating the Quality Replacement Content and Publishing on Your Site

You can try looking the broken URL’s previous content on WayBack Machine, if you want to create something similar. Or, you can wing it on your own, by creating what you know to be a solid resource on the topic, based on what’s already out there.

You have the option of creating content based on your content creation schedule and then going to look for relevant broken links. All you have to do is email the person and say that you noticed a broken link on their site, and you have a similar topic posted on your website. Sounds great, right? While many will take for the bait since it makes since for them to save time not having to find a replacement, there’s always the chance that your article won’t be a good replacement.

So, there’s another method. Check to see how many sites are linking to that broken link. Then, using what you see on the WayBack machine, make your version of the content even better than what was on that now dead link. This way, you know your content not only fits the website, but also all the other websites that linked to it.

Yeah, I know it’s going to take more time, but this way you’ll get more webmasters converting to your link, which is worth it in the end.

Step Four: Reaching Out to Each Contact

Here’s where that handy Canned Responses thing comes into play. Instead of having to copy and paste the same email over and over, if you’ve followed the steps above, you’ll be able to type everything out once, and save it as a template in Gmail.

You have a few different ways you can approach this – and I recommend you have a canned response setup for each. You can either make it sound like you’re a user who found the broken link, or you can ask to mix your link into an existing resource list, or reach out to connect, then offer your replacement link in a follow-up email.

If you want to see some templates, take a look at these or this one for a place to start. You’ll see the option to save each as a canned response in Gmail if you’ve implemented it correctly.

Step Five: Tracking Your Results

At this point, I hope you’ve gotten at least a few sites to agree to change out the link. Sometimes, you’ll find your link was added, but you won’t get a response. Other times, you’ll get an email saying your link was added, but it may or may not actually be added.

You can manually check the page that’s supposed to have your link on it. Just right click, choose “view source” and then use “Find” to see if your domain name is in the code. If it’s there at least once, you got the link. If not, you didn’t.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of time on this manually, simply run your domain through Ahrefs and look at the inbound links report – clicking on “New” after you hover over inbound links. You’ll be able to choose how far back you want the report to go. Then, collect the information on a spreadsheet – including the URL with the anchor text. You can remove it from your initial spreadsheet, or choose another organizational method to help you keep track of the ones you landed versus the ones you need to follow up with. This way, you’re not wasting time emailing the same sites again and again.

You should also be tracking which templates are getting the most responses, so you can quit wasting your time on ones that aren’t bringing in results.

Step Six: Calculating Your ROI

This part is easy. Take amount of time you’ve spent, and multiply it by your hourly rate. Then, divide the number of links you get by that.

If you earn $100 an hour and spent two hours gathering the information – and got two links, then each link cost you $100. But if you were able to get five links in those two hours, then each link cost you $40.

Part of – Not Your Entire Strategy

Broken link building should only be part of your overall SEO and link building strategy. It shouldn’t be the only think you’re doing in terms of building links, so start small until you can make sure it’s worth the ROI.

Have you ever had someone reach out asking you to link to their source instead of a current link on your site, broken or not? How often do you check for and replace broken external links on your website? Tell me in the comments below.