In my last post, I covered my “Blogging Keyword Strategy.” If you missed it, here’s a quick overview, but understand that to get the most from my backlinking strategy, you really need to read the full article and have already implemented the described keyword strategy.
Why Is Linking Important?
When deciding how to rank your website, which is one of the major factors that search engines use in order to determine rankings, Google and other search engines look at how many links lead back to your site.
This means that sites that get more links from authoritative domains will rank higher than those which get fewer.
In addition, the quality of the links also affects ranking, so it’s important for you to use high-quality link-building techniques to increase your site’s rankings.
Also, remember to use your keywords in the anchor text of external links you share. By doing this, search engines can tell which topics are important to your site and will help rank them.
Here’s an example: Imagine that you own a website about eating healthy foods. You might want to link to other sites for recipes. If you have a lot of links to other sites which all have your keywords as the anchor text, that’s great for search engines because they know that it’s a topic you care about.
If your site deals with topics beyond just recipes, consider using link bait so you can get more links from high-quality sites.
Keyword Strategy Overview:
- Create a list of related keywords to target using Micro Niche Finder (aff link)
- Create a category for each keyword
- Create a tag for each keyword
- Write a pillar article for each keyword, using it as the title (no variations)
- Write supporting articles for each keyword (keyword used with variations)
- Link the supporting articles to the pillar articles using a plugin such as KB Linker
The next step: Backlinking for Bloggers
One of the first things bloggers learn when starting out is to get backlinks by commenting on other people’s blogs.
Particularly with the help of plugins like Commenluv, this is an extremely effective approach with the bonus of being a great way to meet fellow bloggers. Since I know you all know this already, I won’t go into detail about it, and instead will focus on more advanced tactics.
Backlinking Tactic #1: Create your own link love using Twitter
Since every Blogger on the planet uses Twitter (and if you’re not, oi- START NOW) we’ll start here. Twitter is an easy, almost overly useful SEO opportunity.
First, start by adding the Twitter Tools plugin by Alex King. Don’t use the tiny URL co-plugin that now comes with this. We don’t want to TinyURL the tweets and hide the keywords we’ve so carefully used to name our blog posts.
Alex has done a great job simplifying this setup, so just make sure yours is set to automatically tweet blog posts when they are published.
Once you’ve tested and are sure blog posts are showing on your specified Twitter account…
- Set up a Facebook account where you’d like your posts to show. I opt to keep my blog posts on a specified fan or business page rather than on my personal FB page but this really depends on your own needs. Using a Twitter app (I use Smart Twitter) link your FB and Twitter accounts. Remember to test and make sure your tweeted blog posts are showing when you hit that magic publish button.
- Set up a Yahoo profile page (also, personal or one specifically for your site if appropriate.) Link your Twitter account here so your Twitter feed shows in the profile.
- Do this for as many sites as you would like. The more the better. Facebook is the most popular for this. Last I heard, FriendFeed was still “no follow” but we don’t care about that since the URLs will be showing “non-tiny” and [BLOGGING TIP:] Google reads URLs. (Google is so clever.)
I’ll list more of these sites at the bottom of this post, but feel free to share more in your comments.
For sites that don’t offer an automated Twitter connect, grab your Twitter RSS and feed that to pages. Many will offer an easy option to add your RSS URL.
For those that don’t, if they happen to allow HTML, add your feed using a snippet that displays your RSS.
For example, I use autoblogger (aff link) to publish one of a feed from my forums to a separate blog I also own.
Not only does this drive traffic to the ad-monetized forums, but the feed pages actually rank higher than the forum pages because of the added SEO features WordPress offers.
This works great for RSS exchange too; if you’ve got a blogging buddy with a similar site, you can use auto blogger to post to a specific category on their blog, automatically giving you backlinks for every post you publish and vice versa.
There are dozens of other ways to utilize this tactic but you get the idea. As you can see, using feeds and aggregators can really cut back your efforts of having to go around and place a link on sites individually.
Ultimately, you can set this up so you are getting hundreds of keyword-rich backlinks for every post you publish, and without an ounce of extra work.
Here’s to blogging smarter, and not harder.
Tactic #2: Resource Links From Trusted Sites
One of the most important steps in developing a resource page is identifying which links will be included.
One way to do this is to identify trusted sites that are relevant to your content and ask for feedback for what they think should be included. Then, you can use those links as a guide when gathering resources on your own.
There are a few ways you can find the websites and blogs that your audience trusts:
1. Search specific keywords on Google’s search bar or use Google’s source filter to pull up only “unbiased” sites for research.
2. Visit Alexa’s Homepage to see which sites rank as the most popular ones for your keyword.
3. Subscribe to Google News, then visit their homepage and sort results by “Most Popular Results” or “Highest Rated Results.”
4. Take a look at the backlinks of other sites on your topic to see where they are linking.
5. Use SEMrush to find which sites are ranking for your keywords.
If you are creating a blog or resource page, then consider these additional steps:
1. Find influencers in your industry who could provide feedback on your content (use tools like Followerwonk and Twtrland).
2. Monitor the social web using hashtags relevant to your subject (use tools like Topsy, Mention.com, and Google Alerts).
3. Use the Twitter list app or Google+ circle to monitor what’s being said in social media about specific keywords related to your blog post.
4. Look at the profiles of people who are linking back to similar resources from their sites.
5. Subscribe to relevant bloggers’ RSS feeds and follow them on Twitter for updates when they publish a new post (e.g., Jeff Bullas, Michael Hyatt, and Social Media Examiner).
6. Get involved in social media communities where you can contribute to discussions or offer feedback on other people’s content.
7. Subscribe to Google Reader and add RSS feeds from related blogs in your industry.
Once you’ve gathered feedback, here are a few things to keep in mind when adding links to your resource page:
1. Cite the source material if it is another website or blog (e.g., Copyblogger, Forbes).
2. Keep the links up to date by monitoring your sources and removing broken links from your blog post.
3. Make sure all pages you reference are relevant to your topic.
4. Don’t publish copyrighted material without citing sources and obtaining permission first (this includes images).
5. Add a disclaimer at the bottom of your resource page to disclose what you’ve added and where it was sourced from (e.g., “This is adapted from ____” or “This list was compiled with input from ____).
Quick Links
- Free Ways To Earn Online Without A Blog
- Opt-In E-Mail Marketing For Newbies
- Ways To Make Money From Blog With Proper Content Management
- Switching From Blogger To WordPress
Conclusion- SEO Tips For Bloggers 2024
Google and other search engines rank websites by looking at how many links lead back to a site. If you want your website to be ranked higher in the SERPs, it’s important that you work on building up this metric by getting people who are already ranking high for their keywords to link back to your content.
One way of doing so is through Resource Links from trusted sites such as Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica which will get more exposure than linking out from an article on Blogger or WordPress.
Use these trusted resources wisely and see if they can help grow your rankings!
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Next post more brilliant backlinking strategy.
