However, the backlinks you choose can either help your page ranking or harm it.

Google’s own Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst, John Mueller, explained that websites shouldn’t focus exclusively on link building for SEO.

However, Mueller’s advice doesn’t mean that you should skip link building altogether or that your efforts are in vain.

Several factors determine whether the high authority links you’re building help, hurt, or cause no effect on your website’s rankings.

Essentially, backlinks are external URLs that lead to pages on your website.

These links are the backbone of search engine optimization as they signal to Google that many other websites find your content reliable enough to link back to it.

However, until a few years ago, the quality of these gov links didn’t matter.

All you needed was hundreds of backlinks from nearly every kind of website available.

As a result, businesses started to buy backlinks.

Many of them employed black-hat SEO practices that involved link building with spam-filled websites.

Google had to adjust its algorithm as a result of all that unethical activity.

Now, it checks whether the backlinks coming to your website originate from trustworthy, relevant, and quality sources.

Their findings can have a positive, negative, or neutral effect on your ranking in the search results.

Link building is the practice of improving your SEO rankings through backlinks. Since Google regularly updates its system and algorithms, it can be challenging for businesses to understand which backlinks work for them and which they should scrap.

Selecting Reliable Sources Of Backlinks

Conventionally, websites have tried to source their backlinks from .edu and .gov sites or government and educational sites.

Many websites believe that the more .edu and .gov backlinks they use, the better.

People have gone so far as to say that one backlink from these domains is worth ten from any other.

Previously, SEO strategists strived to obtain backlinks from reputable .edu or .gov website since they were absolutely sure that these domains would get them the top spot on SERPs.

However, this isn’t true.

Instead, it’s born of a misunderstanding—SEO specialists and Google representatives have provided information that seems contrary at surface level, but many aspects of the backlink conversation are lost in translation.

While many SEO strategists still believe .gov and .edu backlinks to be the ultimate reason website rankings go up, they don’t hold up the same way anymore.

In fact, unless care is exercised, your website’s Google rankings are more likely to drop.

Let’s find out how backlinks from these domains can affect your rankings.

.edu And .gov – What Value do These Domains Add?

You may be taken aback by the claim that .edu and .gov backlinks don’t add as much value as you previously believed.

The Internet is full of stories about businesses that used backlinks from these domains and sat back as their rankings soared.

While it’s true that .edu and .gov backlinks can measurably improve your SEO rankings, it’s definitely not because these domains hold more priority than others.

It’s a common misconception that .edu and .gov backlinks have more weight than niche-relevant sources.

American software engineer and Administrator of the United States Digital Service, Matt Cutts, has stated that backlinks from these domains receive the same treatment as any others.

John Mueller went a step further and divulged that Google ignores many .edu links.

His Tweet said,

Because of the misconception that .edu links are more valuable, these sites get link-spammed quite a bit, and because of that, we ignore a ton of the gov links on those gov sites.

So why do websites’ ranking improve when they use backlinks from .edu or .gov sources?

We’ve seen that it’s not due to the domain you’re using since Google officials themselves have confirmed that it doesn’t matter whether you’re using a .gov, .edu, .net, .com, or .org backlink.

It’s essential to recognize the factors that make .gov or .edu backlinks valuable so you can maximize the advantages they offer your website.

What makes a backlink valuable when it comes to SEO?

The Value of These Authoritative Sources

Registering for a .edu or .gov domain is a long, complicated process.

It’s not just a question of going to the local domain registrar and asking them for a new .gov site.

You must provide them with a variety of paperwork that verifies in detail that you’re operating a legitimate governmental organization.

The same principle applies to .edu domains.

Organizations registering for a .edu domain have to prove that they’re legitimate institutions of education to qualify for them.

These barriers are in place to preserve these domains’ authority, and so the public using these sources can trust the information presented on .edu and .gov website without hesitation.

Visitors to these websites rely on the protection that .edu and .gov offer them when they’re looking for concrete, essential answers.

For instance, incorrect information on a .gov financial website could leave a family in monetary ruin, and scams on a .edu website could endanger students’ well-being.

These possible consequences are the reason that organizations looking for an .edu or .gov domain have to face stringent background checks and provide lots of relevant information to domain registrars.

Since websites that apply for .edu and .gov domains have to undergo extensive scrutiny, they are trusted authorities on their subjects, making their link juice extremely potent.

These websites have to provide valuable, trustworthy information to their users or face harsh consequences.

Search engines recognize the value regardless of the domain extension they use.

In fact, you could obtain the same kind of link juice from a .biz or .info website under the right circumstances.

Therefore, the goal for your website is not necessarily to get a vast quantity of .edu or .gov backlinks.

Instead, it would help if you looked for websites that are authoritative and highly ranked sources relevant to your niche.

It’s perfectly fine for you to use .edu or .gov backlinks if they’re niche-relevant.

In addition, a high percentage of .gov or .edu links will definitely not appear natural or diverse.

However, it’s never a good idea to link to websites that don’t relate to your niche.

Also, make sure that you don’t resort to obtaining backlinks through unmonitored forums or guestbook posting. In that case, you’d be better off using relevant links from other domains instead.

Why .gov and .edu Domain Backlinks are Overrated

Obtaining backlinks from .edu and .gov websites isn’t an easy task, so a small but significant black-hat industry has sprung up to find ways around Google’s SEO policies.

These black-hat practitioners can include the link you’ve followed on .edu and .gov domains without the domain finding out about their exploits.

If you add your link in the comment section of a .gov or .edu website, it may give your website the juice—but only until Google discovers it.

The ideal scenario is to have your link in the website’s actual content, but it’s more challenging to make this happen.

Since Google is continuously updating its SEO algorithm, it may reduce the impact of links that belong to these domains. .edu and .gov backlinks are increasingly sought-after, and people resort to spam tactics and other black-hat practices to obtain them.

While the educational and government sites or government websites themselves are not likely to be penalized, sites that cram their links into their content might face the consequences for it.

Steps You Can Take To Strengthen Your Link Building Strategy

Many SEO specialists and strategists spend way too much time and effort trying to obtain backlinks from .edu and .gov websites.

If you put in the same energy searching for niche-relevant, high-quality links, you improve your website’s page ranking.

Here are the steps you should take so your website ranks high on SERPs.

• Don’t worry too much about the domains of the websites you want to build backlinks from. Backlinks from a niche-relevant, high-authority source add value to your website. Whether that source happens to be a .com or any other domain is irrelevant. In fact, it’s much easier to get a backlink from a .com site than a .gov or .edu site.
• Don’t force your website’s link into an authoritative .edu or .gov website. This is a significant factor to remember, especially if you’re using older techniques such as unmoderated commenting. The Penguin update—which is now a core part of Google’s algorithm—primarily targets unnatural links.
• Target niche-relevant websites for your backlinks. If the websites relating to your niche happen to be .edu or .gov sources, then go ahead and use them. Backlinks from relevant sources add value to your website but remember that it doesn’t matter whether they’re educational, governmental, or commercial. Relevance and authority are the key factors—not the domain.
• Don’t buy your links—earn them instead. Google is increasingly geared towards penalizing websites that pay for backlinks. If you are penalized, recovering from a penalty is a stressful but possible process.

The main takeaway is that Google doesn’t favor .edu or .gov websites.

However, websites using these domains have to comply with heavy restrictions to remain trustworthy authorities, thereby making them valuable sources.

The educational institutions and governmental organizations running these websites have legal and ethical responsibilities towards visitors to provide them with high-quality, valuable information.

Curious about your .gov and .edu backlinks?

Use our backlink checker now to see how many you have pointed to your site!

The Bottom Line on .GOV & .EDU Backlinks

While a .edu or .gov backlink will almost definitely improve your website’s ranking, it’s tough to obtain them.

You’ll likely need to use much more effort or an arsenal of back-handed tactics to get backlinks from these domains than you would in receiving them from highly-ranked .com or .net sites.

Websites that use .gov or .edu domains usually rank higher than other websites since they’re authorities in their niches.

However, Google puts them on equal footing with other domain extensions when it comes to building backlinks.

Therefore, it’s best to earn links from niche-relevant, high-quality, authoritative websites, no matter what domains they belong to.

Are you looking for the best link building strategies for your business, then check out our backlink guide? Fortune 500 companies and SEO agencies alike have trusted us with their link-building needs since 2008. Our white-hat practices are time-tested and enable your business to obtain the highest-quality backlinks from reputable sources. Get in touch with us today to learn more!

The post Are .gov and .edu Backlinks Valuable for SEO in 2025? appeared first on SEO Agency.

What is the expected growth of global search engine optimization this year and beyond?

The rise of ChatGPT, Perplexity.ai and Claude have put into serious question not only the growth prospects of this large, but little-understood industry, but also whether or not it will be a sustainable growth driver in the years to come.

If you’re an industry veteran or a newbie thinking about starting an SEO business, this information will prove helpful for your understanding of the SEO space and how the market may or may not expand in both the short and long term.

This high-level SEO industry growth report will give you a sense of the overall size, scope and expected growth of the search engine optimization industry.

Disclaimer & Executive Summary

Please consider the following key points relative to this market report.

• This report on the SEO & digital marketing industry provides detailed expert market size and market growth estimates for digital marketing/SEO consultants, search engine optimization (SEO) agencies, SEM firms and other companies who provide expert consulting for internet advertising. The report includes detailed discussion of the United States as well as global statistics.
• This market report is not comprehensive, but represents a collation of various market reports and research reports performed by reputable third parties. The research included herein should not be wholly relied upon to make complete, accurate or timely business decisions, including investment decisions.
• Related, ancillary SEO services and firms provide various overlapping SEO services, including–but not limited to–website design, public relations, management consulting, advertising & market research/analysis and IT consulting.
• The numbers discussed below do not take into account obscured data, including SEO services provided by white label SEO companies.
• We encourage those interested in further detail based on the findings presented to further consult the original research sources referenced herein.

IBIS World Statistics

• Total SEO industry revenue was $52 billion USD in 2021
• Overall industry profit for 2021 was $3.1 billion USD
• The expected annual growth between 2020 and 2025 is 3.5%
• There are over 125,000 total companies servicing the search engine optimization industry
• The expected growth in internet traffic from 2020 to 2025 is 26.4%

Market Report World

• The expected growth in industry revenue from 2020 to 2024 is $740 million USD
• The expected compounded annual growth rate from 2020 to 2024 is 15%

Borrell

• The expected market size of the industry in 2020 was $79.3 billion USD

As one might expect, significant variation exists between assumptions on market size and growth.

However, some reports take a look at industry specifics like search engine optimization SaaS, including MarTech, while others focus specifically on direct search marketing and SEO services. Despite the variation, key indicators, including the SWOT and industry analysis below reveal additional details on whether or not it makes sense to enter the SEO business.

SEO Industry Performance

Historical performance for the SEO industry.

SEO Industry Lifecycle

Demand lifecycle for search engine optimization relative to market maturation.

SWOT Analysis

The following provides a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of the SEO market.

SEO Industry Products & SEO Services

Products and SEO services provided by agencies, service providers, SaaS/MarTech companies in SEO (search engine optimization). Source: Borrell.

Spending by category

• 53% of industry budget and spend was for “web presence”
• 17% of industry budget and spend was on “online ad production”
• 12% of industry budget and spend was for “online marketing support”
• 9% of industry budget and spend was for “online public relations”
• 9% of industry budget and spend was for “consulting and research”

Major Market Segments in SEO

Major markets that typically engage search engine optimization service providers. Source: IBIS World.

Major Market Segments by Sector

• 30% of the industry is from retail trade and consumer goods
• 21% of the industry revenue is from travel, entertainment and media 
• 18% of the industry revenue is from internet and telecom
• 11% of industry revenue is from other business 
• 10% of industry revenue is from financial services 
• 10% of industry revenue is derived from healthcare and pharmaceuticals 

Major Competitors

As a highly-fragmented industry, industry researchers do not believe that any single SEO agency or search engine optimization company represents more than 1% of the overall industry pie.

AI Impact on the Growth Prospects of the SEO Industry

AI is expected to massively disrupt the growth prospects of traditional SEO in ways that are both good and bad.

Users are still going to be searching, but how they search and interact is changing at a rapid rate, impacting mobile optimization as well as desktop searches.

No longer are individuals or companies simply heading to Google to search and ask questions. The landscape is changing.

And the growth of traditional search engine optimization is most assuredly going to be impacted.

Positive Impacts on the SEO Industry

1. Enhanced Content Creation. AI tools enable faster, more efficient content creation. Marketers can generate blog posts, web copy, and meta descriptions quickly using tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity.ai or Jasper. This allows SEO teams to scale their efforts, targeting more keywords and producing more content efficiently. However, it also takes the cost to produce content — something that has typically been time-consuming and expensive–to near zero. This means that now that everyone has AI super powers, no one really does!
2. Better User Experience with Personalization. AI improves search experiences with personalized results. SEO professionals will focus on providing targeted, hyper-relevant content to match specific user search intent. Websites offering quality, personalized experiences will likely perform better in search engine optimization, especially those that are enhanced by AI (artificial intelligence).
3. SEO Automation Tools. AI can automate repetitive SEO tasks, such as keyword research, rank tracking, and link-building outreach. Tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Surfer SEO already integrate AI for deeper insights. Automation allows SEO professionals to focus on strategic, creative decisions–rather than spending time deep in the weeds of customer campaigns.
4. Better Understanding of Search Intent. AI search engines are becoming increasingly context-aware, prioritizing search intent over raw keyword matches and things like exact match anchor text. SEO strategies now focus on answering questions rather than simply ranking for specific keywords. Websites that align content with deeper search intent will win.
5. Improved SERP Features and Opportunities. AI enhances, and greatly expands, search engine features like featured snippets, “People Also Ask” (PAA) boxes, and visual AI-driven search tools. SEOs can leverage these features to dominate more SERP real estate in the winnner-take-all game of SEO. New opportunities like voice search optimization and AI assistant results create additional ranking opportunities as AI search engines pull from existing quality content form other sources. While not as direct as the traditional “blue links,” being a source in an AI answer can still drive relevant, meaningful traffic to your business.
6. New Analytics and Insights. AI-powered analytics tools provide actionable insights on user behavior, content gaps, and SEO ROI. Search engine optimization experts will be better equipped to measure and refine digital marketing strategies, especially as they expand.

But what will this do for growth of search engine optimization? Will it expand the industry? Will the industry contract?

Searches and interactions with chatbots are expected to increase, but it’s going to be happening well beyond what’s available on Google.com and that dominant, monopolistic ecosystem.

Which means there will be negative effects.

Negative Impacts on the SEO Industry

1. Reduced Organic Click-Through Rates (CTR). AI-powered answers in search engines (e.g., Google’s AI-generated summaries) are reducing the need for users to click through to websites, lowering total traffic numbers, conversions and ultimately revenue to businesses. As searchers get their answers directly in the SERP, traffic to websites concurrently decreases, undermining traditional SEO efforts.
2. More Competition for Visibility. AI tools make it easier for anyone to produce content at scale, flooding search engines with low(er)-quality, AI-generated gobbledegook. SEO professionals must produce high-value, authoritative content to stand out in a sea of AI-generated noise. That means quality search engine optimization is likely to remain expensive (sad face).
3. Shift from Search Engines to AI Chatbots. Chatbots like ChatGPT or Perplexity AI are becoming alternatives to search engines, answering questions directly. Users are bypassing Google altogether. The search engine optimization services market is going to need to shift from a Google-first mindset in optimization and start to approach something more akin to “Search Everywhere Optimization.”
4. Evolving Algorithms with Increased Complexity. Search engines are constantly evolving with AI to detect and demote poor-quality content. Any of those paying attention to recent happenings will see this in the consistent and brutal results of the Helpful Content Update (HCU) rollouts. SEO strategies relying on shortcuts (e.g., spammy content or backlinks) will likely face quick(er) penalties going forward.  SEOs will need to stay adaptable and nimble as AI search algorithms grow smarter.
5. Loss of Control Over Search Engine Rankings. AI-driven search results are becoming harder to predict. AI models often pull data from various sources, potentially bypassing traditional ranking signals like SEO backlinks and keywords. SEO professionals may struggle to influence AI-determined rankings or featured answers. When the search engines have more control, there is a higher likelihood that many will be entering the SEO services industry due to the lack of predictability of outcomes. A friend said it best recently, “foreign markets like Venezuela and Russia are more predictable and stable than trying to rank organically on Google.” In short, technical SEO will become more technical and more broad.
6. AI Content Cannibalization. Large language models (LLMs) generate responses using content pulled (in aggregate) from websites. Websites lose traffic, even though they provided the data that AI tools rely on. This creates concerns over copyright, content ownership, and ROI for content creators. Most importantly, it reduces incentives for creators to create content that is truly original.

The overall growth of SEO in the traditional sense is massively in question, but growth in search in general has never been more promising than it is today.

Conclusion

Strong opportunities remain in the search engine optimization (SEO) industry.

Continuous innovation makes the advertising industry a dynamic sector. Prior to recent memory, advertising was primarily concentrated in print and broadcast media. Significant shifts to internet marketing continue to occur, especially as more brands push toward direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising options through online search, social media and other digital channels. Furthermore, the proliferation of mobile phones, tablet and desktop computers is expected to continue to see the rise in the search engine optimization (SEO) industry. These shifts are also creating shifts in consumer media consumption behavior. As a result, advertisers are expected to follow consumer demand of digital media.

In fact, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) internet advertising revenues increased nearly 54% from the years 2013 to 2018. Increased demand for industry services is expected to expand the industry further in 2020, created anticipated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of nearly 7% of overall industry revenues. Even in spite of pandemic pressures, the industry is expected to continue to grow over the coming four years (through 2025), albeit less rapidly than in years past.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the major profit stats and drivers?

Industry EBITDA accounted for roughly 6.7% of revenue in 2020. This represents a slight decrease from 2015 when EBITDA margins were 8% of revenue. Profit remains higher among larger industry players.

What are expected industry COGS (cost of goods sold)?

COGS (cost of goods sold) in the search engine optimization (SEO) industry are low, representing only about 1.4% of revenues. Most of these expenses are related to software and office-related products.

What are Industry Depreciation Expenses?

Industry depreciation expenses relative to revenue were <1% in 2020.

What are typical wages in the SEO industry?

Wages in search engine optimization accounted for some 38.8% of revenue in 2020, up from 37.6% in 2015. The industry remains reliant on heavy labor inputs, particularly on the consulting side.

The post What are the Market Size & Growth Prospects of the SEO Industry? appeared first on SEO Agency.

Whether via manual link building (e.g. HARO or broken link building), guest posting services or guest blogger outreach services, dozens of link building strategies abound.

But how to build backlinks with guest posts that won’t elicit the ire of Google STILL remains a topic of perpetual debate.

As it should. 

Guest blogging services are not what they used to be.

Quality matters more than quantity and when a single link in your backlink portfolio can create Google penalties, you should take stock of your current guest blogging strategies to make sure they are in-line with today’s best practices.

What worked as white hat only a few months ago, may now be considered a black hat tactic.

This is more true with penalizing Google updates like SpamBrain and the Helpful Content Update.

In this article, we will discuss how to find guest blogging opportunities for quality, avoiding low quality publishers and guest posting services that are blatantly associated with private blog networks.

Spreadsheet Assessment Outline for Guest Posting Services

When assessing these various guest posting service metrics, we typically run them in a spreadsheet that has a header tab that might look something like this:

The spreadsheet header row includes:

• Site name
• Domain Authority (DA) score (per Moz)
• Domain Rating (DR) score (per Ahrefs)
• Ahrefs traffic
• Server IP
• Trust Flow (per Majestic) of the root domain
• Citation Flow (per Majestic) of the root domain
• Site niche
• Total backlinks (Moz, Ahrefs, SEMRush)
• SEMrush rank
• Alexa rank
• Moz quality score
• Moz spam score
• Percentage of quality backlinks
• Total # of indexed URLs

Creating something like this in your own guest posting service and link building outreach campaign assessment is no longer an option, it’s vital.

If you want a walk-through on assessing the quality of a guest posting service, we have created the following video, which should be helpful.

Now, let’s dig into the metrics for qualifying your guest posting services!

What is the Guest Post Site’s Moz Domain Authority, Ahrefs Domain Rating?

Both Moz and Ahrefs have their own proprietary metric to assess the authority of a given URL/page and a website overall.

This gauge is done by taking into account the totality of the site’s linkgraph, judging how the site looks relative to other sites based on the quantity and quality post links pointing to the site.

Both gauges are logarithmic, meaning a 1x jump in “authority” or “rating” equates to a 10x jump in quality.

Similar to Google’s old system of Pagerank, the Domain Authority/Domain Rating of a website can help provide with an initial gauge of the quality of the site and help you determine 1) the value of a backlink from the site and 2) how much effort should be expended in acquiring a link.

However, when making assessments for guest posting services, it’s important not to become too fixated on third party metrics. These are both good gauges, but they’re certainly not perfect by any means. Even Google itself reiterates the need to be wary of third-party metrics.

What is the Guest Posting Site’s Moz Spam Score?

Similar to Moz Domain Authority, the Moz Spam Score..

…represents the percentage of sites with similar features to the site you’re researching which we’ve found to be penalized or banned by Google. Spam Score is based on our machine learning model which identified 27 common features among the millions of banned or penalized sites in the data we fed it.

Bear in mind, the Moz Spam Score is also wildly imperfect. We have noticed that sites with non-dotcom (.com) TLDs are weighted unnaturally poorly via the Spam Score, without any guest post links to them. Just use it as a gauge, but not necessarily THE gauge of whether a site is worthy of guest posts nor is it a definitive one.

If a high Spam Score is present, but not other factors point to negativity, we have no problem using the site in your guest posting services.

It is, after all, a third party metric.

What is the Citation Flow and Trust Flow of the Guest Posting Site?

Majestic publishes two metrics that can help you gauge how natural a given link profile might look relative to other sites of similar age and in similar niches.

Not only are solid Trust Flow and Citation Flow numbers helpful, but comparing the two with one another can provide further detail on the quality of the site in which you’re considering adding to your guest posting repertoire. Majestic has a great piece outlining how to read and interpret trust flow and citation flow for sites that accept guest posts.

Essentially, these metrics help determine how naturally distributed a guest posting service site’s links might look.

Similar to Domain Authority and Page Authority, Trust Flow and Citation Flow measure both the authority and trust of a given site based on the site’s backlink profile.

We have discussed natural vs. unnatural link profiles in depth before, but mostly for assessing your own website and cleaning up spammy links. But, the Moz link graph can also help you tell whether a given guest posting service has a naturally distributed link profile.

We suggest a full assessment of the trustworthiness of a potential guest posting service would include a look into Majestic’s Trust Flow & Citation Flow as well as Moz’s link graph to see how natural a given publisher’s link profile appears.

Does the Guest Posting Service Include Relevant Blogs or are the Sites Generic?

There are several types of guest post websites from which you can attempt to acquire links. Here are just a few, in order of decreasing difficulty:

• High authority, corporate sites
• Low authority, corporate sites
• High authority, niche-specific blogs
• Low authority, niche-specific blogs
• High authority, generic blogs
• Low authority, generic blogs

We always tend to avoid guest posting services that include websites that fall into the last two bullet points listed above.

These types of guest posting services are not all that proprietary or value-adding.

The guest post sites they target are easier to acquire links from (remember difficult to acquire = better link opportunity), tend to link to ANY content provided, offer paid link programs and don’t typically filter for quality. In other words, they look more like a private blog network (PBN) than perhaps any other guest posting opportunity.

Here’s what a typical header menu looks like from one such site:

The most egregious sites like this will offer every topic under the sun in their menu with the invitation to “Write for us!”

Which brings me to my next point…

Avoid Guest Posting Services and Sites that Have “Advertise” or “Write for Us” Language

If anyone can write for a site and they are offering it as an option, then it diminishes the site’s value for a number of reasons:

• If anyone can write for a site, anyone can find it and anyone will write for them. Unless there is a strict filter, the value of any “write for us” site, regardless of domain authority, is greatly diminished.
• “Write for us” is something Google may use as a filter when assessing a particular publisher.
• “Write for us” sites tend to have a lot more outbound links with unnatural anchor text variation.
• By their nature, “write for us” websites are going to be less picky for the quality and type of content they accept, at least in most cases.
• This strategy for finding guest posting opportunities has been massively overused and abused.

We tend to avoid sites that include “Write for us” promotion plastered all over them. The lack of exclusivity greatly diminishes a site’s value as a quality publisher.

Manually Assess the Quality of the Content on Guest Post Sites

When determining whether or not to use a publisher site for guest posting, we always perform a manual review of the guest post website’s overall content by reviewing several pages, posts and articles while asking the following questions:

• How well is each article written?
• Are all the articles of similar quality or are some lower quality while others are higher quality?
• What do the outbound links for the articles and blog posts look like? Are they utilizing natural anchor text or are they extremely keyword specific?
• Does every post look like it includes links to some sort of paid promotional site?
• Does the internal linking of the guest post site look natural?
• Would you want to read the content as a user or is it so bad that a real reader would never want to read it?

This last question is the most important. Google can tell when content is good in most cases by simply looking at bounce rates. When real humans bounce (all else being equal), then the quality is likely poor. The algorithms know that and will adjust quality rankings accordingly.

Would you want links from a site that is certain to get majorly devalued at some point, regardless of the current authority?

I didn’t think so.

A manual review of the site’s used by your guest post service provider is easy and very telling of the quality of guest posts they are delivering.

How Frequently Does the Guest Post Site Update Content?

A site that has not been updated in a couple of years is not likely to be crawled that often.

Furthermore, if you are the only one to post on that site after a couple of years of little to no publication, do you think that will look very natural if suddenly a couple of posts go live which anchor texts that include “lawyer marketing” or “best personal injury attorney Los Angeles”?

That’s grounds for an immediate red flag from the algorithm.

Make sure if you’re planning on publishing with a guest posting service website that there has at least been some recent, relevant cadence to the previously published content.

Perform Archive.org and WhoIs Historical Review of the Guest Post Sites

A quick and dirty review via archive.org can help you assess whether or not the guest post site is simply a repurposed domain bought at auction or from the expired domain drop list.

When assessing various guest posting services, archive.org will show a lag in captures that perfectly coincides with a change in Whois registry for the site ownership.

Yes, guest post sites change hands all the time, but when the site lapsed for six months as a result of a dropped or registration lag and then was resurrected with something that was completely different, didn’t match the original site’s purpose and now includes a bunch of articles with links to other commercial sites using unnatural anchor text, it reeks of a private blog network (PBN) and it’s best to avoid the site as a guest posting opportunity, regardless of how high the Domain Authority is.

Perform an IP de-duplication check against other known guest post websites

Before we ever consider using a website, we keep a list of other blacklisted sites in a spreadsheet from which we run a check for IP address duplication.

It’s a simple task, but will show you what other sites are using the same IP address as the potential SEO publisher in question.

Take a look at who else is on the same server and you’ll be able to quickly see what other guest post sites the server owner is hosting.

Guest posts and links from different domains on the same IP address rarely look natural unless there is common branding among the sites.

In most cases this type of guest posting service is going to be seen as manipulation and viewed as a poorly implemented PBN strategy.

Check for indexation by Google

Is the site indexed by Google? If so, how many pages are actually indexed by Google?

When a site has been repurposed or penalized, it will often show very low or no-indexation rates relative to the total amount of content available to webcrawlers.

If you need help making this assessment, you can review our article on checking Google indexation here.

Make sure the level of total page indexation coincides with the site’s sitemap count. If that is not the case, then the site should be avoided at all costs.

Does the Guest Posting Site Have Existing Website Traffic?

Similar to the indexation confirmation above, sites that have little to nill traffic from search engines are not likely to add any value as a potential publisher for your guest posting service.

This is true for a number of reasons:

• Websites without traffic typically have indexation issues and indexation issues means your guest posting services are likely to have little to no effect
• Websites without traffic will not drive any real referral traffic
• Websites without traffic (especially those with high authority) are more likely to have issues related to Google penalties and manual actions

Ignore domain authority and be sure to check website traffic stats.

While third-party tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs aren’t perfect at predicting web traffic, they can and do provide ballpark estimates that will at least let you know whether the site has real humans visiting.

This final layer is the nail in the coffin for even some of the best guest posting services who may be selling snake-oil AI optimization services or guest posts.

Hire the Best Guest Posting Services!

Make sure your SEO company is giving you the straight dope!

These are the very same filters we place on websites we source through our own guest blogger outreach service.

While you can’t control every link pointing to your website, there is some control on quality guest posting services, depending on who you invite and beg to link to a particularly compelling piece of content you may have created.

And, if you do it right, good online marketers can even outrank other larger websites for competitive terms.

The post Guest Blogging Services: How to Assess the Quality of Guest Post Services appeared first on SEO Agency.

And in order to boost your perceived authority, you need backlinks.

But building backlinks is a lot more complicated than most people initially think.

If you spam your links, or build links recklessly, you could end up doing more harm than good.

If Google catches you deliberately attempting to manipulate your rank, or if they notice suspicious patterns in your technical SEO efforts, you could get slapped with a hefty penalty that sets you back months, or even years.

So what’s the solution?

You have to keep a clean backlink footprint at all times, actively practicing white hat SEO strategies and monitoring your efforts.

How do you do it?

What Is a Backlink Footprint?

Your backlink footprint is essentially a profile of the links you’ve built and how you’ve built them.

It’s a description of all your past and current efforts to improve keyword rankings that reflect on your brand.

If executed responsibly, your backlink footprint can reflect well on you.

It can increase your referral traffic, improve your online reputation, and boost your authority so you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

If executed irresponsibly, your backlink footprint can reflect poorly on you.

It might turn people away from your brand, cut your referral traffic significantly, and evenly due to Google penalties.

Why Keeping a Clean Backlink Footprint Matters

Keeping a clean backlink footprint is important for several reasons:

• Avoiding penalties. If you practice your SEO strategy irresponsibly, you could face a Google penalty. People use the term “Google penalty” pretty loosely, often describing multiple different, independent actions with the same terminology. A true Google penalty is a manual action taken by a human to remove your website from SERPs, usually temporarily. This is usually reserved for only the most egregious offenders, and as long as you correct whatever problems led to this penalty, you can usually reverse it. The more common and arguably more destructive penalty is a natural byproduct of search engine algorithms; if Google detects repetitive patterns or black hat tactics associated with your domain, you could plunge in the rankings, erasing any progress you made and condemning you to the deepest pages of search results.
• Improving your brand reputation. Keeping a clean backlink footprint also matters for improving your brand reputation. It’s not just about making search engines happy; it’s also about making users happy. If the links you build are valuable, relevant, and natural, people are going to be more likely to click them and think positively about your brand.
• Analyzing and improving your SEO execution. Finally, making the effort to improve your backlink footprint and analyze your efforts with SEO software tools, will allow you to better understand and improve your SEO execution. You’ll get a better understanding of which links work and why, and you can gradually tweak your approach to perfection.

How to Keep a Clean Backlink Footprint

Now to the meat of this article.

We’ve talked about what a backlink footprint is and why it’s important.

So how do you keep yours clean?

1. Start with an overarching SEO strategy.

Everything begins with an overarching strategy.

Before you publish your first article or post your first link, you should have a clear idea of what you’re trying to accomplish and how you’re going to accomplish it.

You should have a comprehensive understanding of best practices in SEO and you should be familiar with what constitutes a white hat tactic (vs. a black hat tactic) in the SEO world.

• What types of publishers are you going to use to place your links?
• What pieces of on-site content are going to be the targets of those links?
• How quickly are you going to build links and how are you going to scale?

Document your plan and stick to it; the more you deviate from your original vision, the messier your backlink footprint is going to become.

2. Build links slowly (at first).

Always start building links slowly and carefully, paying close attention to your link velocity.

Google has an established understanding of a reasonable pace of growth for new websites.

If your website launches on Monday, and you have more than 1,000 links by Friday, the search engine is going to be suspicious.

Instead, focus on only building one or two links per week during your first several weeks of operation.

Over time, as your website has more history and develops more natural authority, you can scale these link building efforts up.

It’s not worth rocking the boat early on, no matter how eager you are to attract new traffic.

3. Prioritize content quality.

You’ve probably heard that “content is king” in SEO. This remains true, for the most part, since content is deeply intertwined with almost every aspect of SEO.

In fact, content is related to multiple aspects of ranking in Google search results.

You’ll need powerful onsite content to serve as the target for the links you build.

You’ll also need well-written offsite content to house and support the links you build.

In both of these areas, you need to focus on content quality above everything else; if you link to a piece of weak content, it could ultimately work against you, weakening your reputation or even threatening removal of the link.

If your offsite content is weak, publishers going to accept it, or you might run the risk of having the link flagged.

Hiring a white label SEO content assistant may be your best bet. These types of SEO professionals are not expensive and can have a huge value-boost in your traffic and leads.

4. Keep your links relevant to publishers.

Whenever possible, build links that are relevant for the publishers that will be hosting them.

The easiest way to do this is to be selective about the publishers you work with.

If you primarily choose publishers that are at least somewhat related to your industry, you should have no trouble incorporating links that serve as a good fit.

Also, always make it a point to read the content publication and linking policies associated with each publisher in your network; if you follow the rules, you’ll be much more likely to succeed.

5. Keep your links relevant to readers.

Along similar lines, it’s important to keep your links relevant to readers.

Remember, this isn’t just about optimizing your content or links for search engines. It’s also about optimizing your content and links for users.

When a reader encounters your link, it shouldn’t be jarring, nor should it seem inappropriate.

When a reader clicks your link, they should find exactly the information they were expecting.

To accomplish this, prioritize linking to interesting, informative pieces on your website and present your link in a way that makes it valuable and appealing to your target audience.

6. Avoid repeating the same publishers.

When you find a publisher willing to accept your offsite content and links, it’s tempting to publish with them multiple times in the future.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; building your relationship with this publisher and publishing more links could be beneficial to you.

What’s important is that you don’t abuse this relationship.

Each successive link on the same publisher is going to reward you less, so it’s important to improve your backlink footprint by working with a wide variety of different publishers, especially at the beginning of your campaign.

7. Optimize your anchor text carefully.

Anchor text optimization is a somewhat divisive subject in the SEO industry.

In case you aren’t familiar, anchor text is simply the text that houses your link; it’s “Anchor text optimization” in the preceding sentence.

Most search optimization experts agree that anchor text does play a role in your SEO campaign.

If you optimize your text for specific target keywords, it could increase your website’s relevance for those keywords.

However, we’re currently operating in an era of semantic search, where Google processes information based on its meaning and context, rather than its verbatim wording.

If you optimize your anchor text too much, it could trigger a red flag.

For example, if you use the same phrase over and over, across different articles, regardless of context, you could end up earning yourself a penalty.

It’s important to make sure your anchor text is relevant for the link you’ve included and the content you’ve written – and it’s just as important to vary your anchor text when you can.

This doesn’t mean you have to avoid keyword optimization in your anchor text entirely; it just means you have to tread carefully.

8. Link to different internal pages

If you spam the same link to the same page over and over, eventually Google is going to catch on to the pattern. It’s much better to link to various different internal pages. This way, bill spread authority throughout your site and you’ll be much less likely to attract a penalty. This strategy becomes much easier when you have an abundant amount of high-quality internal content to work with.

9. Write content of various lengths

Though arguably less important than some of the other points in this article, it’s a good idea to write content of various lengths. If you churn out 800-word articles with almost identical formatting on a constant basis, and all of those articles have a link to one of your internal pages, it could reflect poorly on you. Including a handful of shorter articles and several longform articles can improve your backlink footprint.

10. Place links in different areas of your articles

It could also help you to place links in different areas of your articles. Most link builders are incentivized to place the link as high as possible in the article, above the fold, so it’s more visible and more prominent to readers. This strategy should increase your referral traffic as well as your brand visibility. However, if you do this too consistently, it could work against you. Be ready and willing to place links in different areas of your articles.

11. Include links to other authorities

If the only link in the article you’ve published is a link to your website, it’s going to look bad in the eyes of both search engines and readers. To make your link seem more natural, and improve the cleanliness of your backlink footprint, it’s a good idea to include links to other authoritative sources. This is especially important if you’re citing any specific information, or if you’re presenting counterarguments.

12. Use different author names

For the sake of convenience, you might be tempted to publish all your offset content under the same name. This is an especially powerful temptation if you’re a solopreneur or if you’re interested in building your own personal reputation. But if you consistently publish articles with links pointing back to your website under the same name, it’s not going to take long before Google recognizes the pattern. Instead, use different author names; you can set up guest author profiles for various people within your business or invent new personalities altogether.

13. Vary your link building quantity

As your link building strategy begins to develop and you spend more time on your SEO, you’ll want to start varying your link building quantity. If you consistently build exactly 3 links every week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, it’s going to trigger Google’s pattern detection. Instead, consider building a single link one week, then 10 links the next week, followed by 3 links the week after that. In a purely natural world, links aren’t built consistently, so your inbound links should appear inconsistent and variable.

14. Play into seasonal trends

You can adhere to the former point and find excuses to step up your content optimization efforts by playing into seasonal trends. If you’re optimizing for a seasonal business, like a landscaping company or a pool and spa company, step up your efforts to acquire high quality backlinks during the busy season.

15. Don’t participate in schemes

Link schemes come in many forms. Link wheels, link exchanges, and paid links without regard for content quality are just a handful of examples. Newcomers to the link building world are often tempted to try some of these schemes because they promise minimum effort and quick results. To be fair, some people who practice these schemes do see some quick results – but those results never last. Sooner or later, if you’re participating in a scheme, you’re going to get penalized and your momentum will be reversed. It’s much more sustainable to follow best practices and keep your backlink footprint clean.

16. Build links in different ways

There are many different link building strategies available to you. Building links via guest posts is arguably the most common strategy, but it’s certainly not the only one. You can also build links through partnerships, collaboration opportunities, press releases, and more. Diversifying your link portfolio and building links in different ways can make sure your backlink footprint remains as clean as possible.

17. Avoid private blog networks (PBNs) unless you know what you’re doing

Private blog networks (PBNs) are essentially closed groups of different websites that all take turns linking to each other. If you’re a newcomer to the link building world, it’s probably best to avoid PBNs altogether; there are simply too many ways for this strategy to go wrong. If executed properly, there is significant potential here – but you should only attempt to execute this type of strategy if you truly know what you’re doing.

18. Be on the lookout for negative link building

Though not especially common, some brands occasionally find their competitors engaging in negative link building; in this practice, a competitor attempts to build a bad link intentionally to try and tank your rankings. If you remain vigilant, and you evaluate your backlink profile regularly, you should be able to catch these negative links before they become a serious problem. You can reach out to the Webmaster to request removal, and if that doesn’t work, you can disavow the link entirely.

19. Vet your partners

It’s possible to practice link building entirely on your own, but it’s not always practically feasible. Most businesses end up working with a link building agency, or a similar partner, to help them create content and publish new links. This could be a valuable move for your strategy and long term future, but it’s important to always vet your partners. Before agreeing to any kind of link building arrangement, you need to do your due diligence, looking up this company’s reputation, previous reviews and testimonials, and their approach to link building. If you can’t find any information, or if you notice too many red flags (like a lack of transparency, questionable link building practices, unhappy customers, or promises that sound too good to be true), move onto someone else.

20. Measure and analyze with the right SEO tools

Use a free backlink checker to thoroughly analyze your backlink profile on a regular basis. Even if you follow all the advice in this guide specifically and consistently, there’s still a chance that a bad link could end up in your backlink footprint. This is your chance to catch it and remove it before it’s too late. Additionally, monitoring your link building efforts with a backlink checker gives you the opportunity to measure which of your links are most effective and which ones are falling flat. With this information, you can readjust your strategy and optimize it for efficiency moving forward.

21. Scale wisely

Most businesses start building links in an effort to grow – which means you’ll eventually want to step up your link building efforts. When you’re ready to scale, do so wisely; don’t build 1,000 links overnight, and don’t work with publishers or partners that you haven’t vetted. Instead, scale incrementally, remain committed to best practices, and remain patient as you gradually expand your sphere of online influence. You’ll thank yourself later when you start rising in rankings without penalty.

Build a Backlink Strategy with SEO.co

Creating a link building strategy is tough. Maintaining the integrity of your backlink footprint while simultaneously capitalizing on the benefits of link building is even tougher.

That’s why it pays to have a partner.

At SEO.co, we have some of the best and most experienced SEO experts in the business.

We can start by performing a complete backlink audit of your website.

And we’re all here to help you realize your full link building potential.

Reach out to us for a free consultation today!

The post SEO Linkgraph: 21 Steps to Keep a Clean Backlink Footprint appeared first on SEO Agency.

And outreach link building is only getting tougher. 

You can’t just drop your CSV into Mailshake or Pitchbox and hope to receive dozens of positive responses.

We never respond.

We either mark as spam or delete dozens of daily backlink outreach requests, most of them from so-called “link building experts.”

The relentless nature of these continuous link building outreach campaigns is obnoxious, but unfortunately not illegal.

Foreign outreach emails (usually from Indian link builders) typically show up in the inbox looking something like this:

Don’t be this guy! 

When you have high quality backlinks, along with the properly optimized on-page SEO factors, the Google algorithm responds by bumping it up in the rankings,

But there is a right way and oh, so many wrong ways to engage in outreach link building.

Link Building vs. Link Building Outreach

For years, business owners and digital marketers have understood the importance of backlinks and have implemented targeted backlink strategies designed to create and leverage linking opportunities.

Link building is best described as the process of getting third-party web pages to link to your website. It’s a long-term strategy that’s designed to:

Enhance SEO

As mentioned, Google uses backlinks as authority signals. The more quality links you have pointing to your site, the higher you’ll rank for related search terms.

Boost visibility

It’s not all about technical algorithms and search results. There’s a very practical benefit associated with obtaining backlinks: visibility. If you get a backlink on a major site like Forbes.com, you instantly put your brand in front of thousands of new people.

Enhance reputation

Link building drives reputation by affiliation. The more your brand is featured on reputable websites and blogs, the more positive your reputation becomes.

Drive traffic

While not all backlinks will get clicked, many do. The result is a steady influx of traffic to your web pages – a percentage of which may eventually convert in the form of a sale.

Link building, as a strategy, can be executed in numerous ways. In the past, many businesses have resorted to spammy and/or ineffective practices like forcing irrelevant links into blog comments; stuffing links in low authority web pages; setting up dummy pages to harvest links; using blog rolls to reciprocate links; and/or grabbing links on low-hanging fruit like online business directories. Some of these strategies provide a minimal boost, while others can actually hurt more than help in the long run.

Then there’s link building outreach. Outreach is one of the main ways in which modern link building is carried out. It’s considered sustainable and effective. It’s oriented around Google’s primary aim of adding value to the internet search ecosystem.

As the name suggests, SEO blogger outreach involves manually contacting business owners, marketers, webmasters, bloggers, and social influencers in an effort to earn a backlink/brand mention to your website. It’s more time-intensive than some of the standard link building initiatives businesses have relied on over the years, but promises to generate a higher return on investment when executed properly.

How to Perform Effective Link Building Outreach

Performing outreach isn’t a get-rich-quick strategy. It’s a long-term investment that can take months or years to produce significant results. However, it’s highly sustainable. Once the returns come in, you don’t have to worry about them disappearing in the next Google update. The seeds of a quality link building campaign will always yield a healthy harvest.

If you’re interested in the how-to of manual outreach link building, here are some steps to help you generate positive results:

1. Know Your Options

There are a variety of tactics that fall under the title of “link building outreach.” You have the freedom to use any number of strategies or techniques, including:

• Email/PR. This option involves emailing people and asking them to link back to your site. In order to find the right people, you have to perform some due diligence, personalize your offer, and promise value in return.
• Social media. Under this approach, you look for and build relationships via social media as a method of popularizing your content and enhancing its impact.
• Influencers. With influencer outreach, you find, contact, and engage influential bloggers, website owners, and public figures with the intention of leveraging their status to garner highly visible and authoritative links.
• Personal/professional network. You don’t always need highly public figures with millions of followers. Sometimes effective link building occurs via outreach to personal and professional networks. Mine your business cards and LinkedIn profile to unearth these hidden opportunities.

These are just some of the options. Feel free to get as creative as you want, but don’t make things more complicated than they have to be. The aforementioned options should give you plenty to chew on.

2. Create a Shortlist of Linking Opportunities

Whether you decide to go all in on one of the previously mentioned options, or you pick and choose a variety of linking opportunities, you’ll want to create a shortlist to guide your outreach. Some in the industry would call this the backlink pipeline. It’s through this pipeline that all of your link building efforts will flow. A simple spreadsheet with contact information and other relevant notes should suffice.

3. Generate Compelling Offers

The next step is to generate a compelling offer for each individual in your link building outreach pipeline. One recommendation is to use what we’ll call the what-why-how formula. Next to each individual, create three columns and fill in the appropriate information:

• What? When approaching someone with a link building request, the worst thing you can do is string them along. It should be clear exactly what you’re seeking. Any ambiguity here will lead to your email or direct message being deleted.
• Why? It’s equally important that you quickly address the why. In other words, what’s in it for them? How will they benefit from giving you a brand mention, link, or space to publish content on their site?
• How? Exactly how will the process work? Who will write the content, what will it consist of, when will it be submitted, etc.?

The what-why-how formula ensures that each outreach is personalized and relevant to the person on the receiving end. It’s an absolute must.

4. Develop a Link Outreach Template

When you’re reaching out to dozens or hundreds of people at a time, organization is key. If you don’t stay on top of your outreach, you’ll miss opportunities, burn bridges, and look pretty dumb in the process. (Few things are more embarrassing than emailing the same person the same message multiple times – especially when they’ve already responded.)

We recommend developing a link outreach template that enables you to put each “prospect” into specific stages to track where they are in the outreach process. One popular method involves systematically labeling prospects as being in one of five stages:

• Stage 1: Need to Reach Out
• Stage 2: Contact Sent (with type of contact listed)
• Stage 3: Response Received (with brief summary)
• Stage 4: Offer Approved
• Stage 5: Link Acquired

Once a link is acquired, you’ll want to record the specific date, URL, and other pertinent information. This allows you to check in on the link periodically and, if you choose, plug it into a tool that can track your backlinks or give you an automated or customized backlink audit.

5. Be Consistent & Genuine

You don’t want prospects to sit in stage 2 for too long. Give them a few days and then follow up with a second personalized contact. It may take two or three forms of outreach to get a stubborn/busy prospect to enter into stage 3 of your link outreach process.

Link Building Outreach Strategies to Avoid

Link building outreach isn’t an exact science. You can follow all of the so-called best practices and still feel as if your link building isn’t working. But in most cases, it’s pretty easy to see why. You may not be breaking any rules, per se, but you could be using some discouraged techniques. We recommend avoiding the following link building outreach strategies:

Don’t target anyone and everyone

Successful link building outreach isn’t about the quantity of people you contact. It’s much more about the quality of prospects you engage. Conserve your resources by only targeting prospects that can provide you with tangible value (and who you can offer value in return).

Don’t perform blanket outreach

Resist the urge to save time by performing blanket outreach (sending the same message to everyone). It’s much more effective if you personalize your contact. (If you’re meticulous about developing rich what-why-how information in your pipeline, personalized outreach is a breeze.)

Don’t be selfish

You’re obviously looking for backlinks and exposure, but you don’t want to come across as being too selfish. People want something in return. Go above and beyond to explain what value you’ll be giving them in return.

Give before you receive.

Here’s the perfect example of what not to do.

We received the following from a fairly well-known site in our space:

The problem with this email is that it’s all take and no give!

We rarely respond, but given who it was, we just had to:

And here’s the non-starter response:

There were numerous follow-ups, but our responses to this email chain ended there.

In short, give before you can even expect to receive.

Outreach link builders are at the mercy of the webmasters and site owners.

And the end of the day, you’re asking for value, but apart from swaps and monetary compensation which are against search engine guidelines, there has to be value for the site owner.

Don’t overwhelm people

Don’t confuse consistent outreach with a bombardment of emails. There’s a difference between being persistent and overwhelming. Learn where to draw the line.

Don’t get frustrated

The average professional baseball hall-of-famer gets out roughly 70 percent of the times he walks to the plate over the course of his career. In other words, he’s successful less than 30 percent of the time. The link building outreach process is similar. You’ll get turned down and ignored way more than you’re embraced. Resist the urge to become Zoom out and look at the big picture.

When you’re selective with whom you target; you personalize your outreach; you exemplify selflessness; you’re consistent but not overwhelming; and you stay encouraged by celebrating the small victories, good things will eventually come your way. As long as you’re using sound strategies and techniques, time and persistence will produce results.

Using Social Media & Influencers in Your Outreach

As mentioned, one of the best ways to build links is to reach out to social media users and influencers.

For the record, “Influencers in social media are people who have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a particular topic. They make regular posts about that topic on their preferred social media channels and generate large followings of enthusiastic engaged people who pay close attention to their views.”

When you’re able to connect with influencers whose audiences intersect with your own, you have the opportunity to leverage their respect and authority. While you ultimately want to generate your own influence independent of others, this is a way to fast-track the process.

Influencers can include celebrities, industry experts/thought leaders, bloggers, respected content creators, and even micro influencers (people with a few thousand followers who hold significant influence in their personal and professional networks – i.e. the popular kid at a high school or the quarterback of a small college football team).

There’s a right way to reach out to influencers on social media. You start by following them and engaging with their content. This includes liking posts, commenting, and sharing their content. You don’t want to look obsessive, but consistent interaction will establish rapport.

Once you’ve followed and engaged with an influencer for a few weeks or months, you can offer them something of value. This might look like sending a DM and asking if it’s okay for you to talk about them in an upcoming podcast or do a write-up on your own blog. (Of course it is! The point of asking is to build credibility and make them aware of the fact that you’re doing it.)

Only after you’ve given something of value should you ask for anything in return. Based on the relationship you have, you may go for the direct kill – asking for a backlink or earning the chance to publish a guest blog post. Or, you may choose a softer sell. Many influencers – particularly celebrities and industry thought leaders – use their platforms to generate revenue. Ask about any opportunities they have for earning exposure and links via this method.

The 5 Best Tools for Link Building Outreach

When you don’t have the ability to dedicate multiple hours to outreach every single day, finding the best link building outreach tool is critical.

Thankfully there are some pretty powerful link building tools that can assist you with your link building efforts. Here are some of the top ones available:

• PitchBox. This influencer outreach and content marketing platform is the best of its kind. It helps streamline the outreach process from beginning to end. Whether it’s finding prospects, personalizing contact, using email templates, or tracking what stage prospects are in, PitchBox can do it all.
• Ahrefs. As one of the most trusted names in the SEO space, Ahrefs is a must-have tool. It helps you grow your search traffic, identify link opportunities, spot broken links, source lists of high DA/DR sites to target for outreach, research competitors, and much more.
• Guest Post Tracker. Guest posting plays an important role in link building outreach – but link building in general is tough. Enter Guest Post Tracker – a tool that lets you find, manage, and track all of your guest posts and outreach in one place. The platform has a growing base of more than 1,500 websites that accept guest posts, which allows you to spend more time building backlinks and less time soliciting opportunities.
• BuzzStream. This powerful outreach platform helps you stay organized by tracking all of your email outreach in one place. This prevents the need to use multiple spreadsheet and email accounts. It also has a built-in “Discovery” tool that makes it easy to find new linking opportunities.
• Majestic. The quality of your links is far more important than the quantity. Majestic lets you track the “trust flow” of your links. In other words, it allows you to monitor the backlinks of your backlinks. It also gives you a glimpse into the links your competitors have and which missing opportunities could boost your own rankings.

Most of these platforms offer free trials and/or low-cost month-to-month subscriptions. Try them out risk-free and see what you think. Once you find a link building tech stack that works for you, the outreach process will get easier.

How to Automate Your Link Building Outreach

In the early stages of link building outreach, you can reasonably handle the process. But as you continue to add new prospects into your pipeline and the demands for new content increase, it’s no longer feasible for you to handle everything. It’s at this point that automation becomes your friend.

Automating outreach looks different for every link building strategy. Consider the following options and implement the suggestions that you think could help you save time and resources:

Leverage outreach link building tools

The tools mentioned above are great for automating your outreach. It’ll take some time to learn the ins and outs of how each one works, but they’ll ultimately save you time. (Don’t feel like you have to use them all. Only use a tool if it adds value and/or saves time.)

Use systems and processes

Take the guesswork out of your outreach. The more you can systemize your approach through clear-cut processes, the more efficient you’ll be.

Outsource certain elements

We’ll discuss this in greater detail below, but outsourcing and delegating certain tasks will save you time and enhance the value of your outreach strategy.

When it comes to automation, there’s a fine line between streamlining time-consuming processes and putting your entire process on autopilot. When you do the latter, you run the risk of compromising your authenticity and coming across as too robotic in your execution. You also take the chance of overlooking mistakes and violating Google’s rules and requirements (which will negatively impact your rankings).

Diminishing Returns of Your Link Building Outreach

Link building outreach – assuming it’s performed using white hat techniques – is never a bad idea. However, some businesses find that they experience diminishing returns over time. While this is unlikely to affect the majority of websites, it’s worth briefly highlighting.

Consider, for a moment, the following chart by Ahrefs. It shows the domain rating (DR) of a website, how many domains fall into this category, and the average number of referred domains (or backlinks) these websites have.

• DR 0–5: 146,455,043 domains (1 d.ref.domains)
• DR 6–10: 10,322,431 domains (30 d.ref.domains)
• DR 11–15: 5,171,577 domains (44 d.ref.domains)
• DR 16–20: 3,085,066 domains (57 d.ref.domains)
• DR 21–25: 2,499,437 domains (85 d.ref.domains)
• DR 26–30: 2,493,952 domains (137 d.ref.domains)
• DR 31–35: 1,377,630 domains (547 d.ref.domains)
• DR 36–40: 861,493 domains (314 d.ref.domains)
• DR 41–45: 494,599 domains (263 d.ref.domains)
• DR 46–50: 313,324 domains (352 d.ref.domains)
• DR 51–55: 268,988 domains (444 d.ref.domains)
• DR 56–60:152,985 domains (708 d.ref.domains)
• DR 61–65: 93,021 domains (956 d.ref.domains)
• DR 66–70: 64,713 domains (1,374 d.ref.domains)
• DR 71–75: 64,898 domains (2,789 d.ref.domains)
• DR 76–80: 21,209 domains (6,761 d.ref.domains)
• DR 81–85: 7,368 domains (16,425 d.ref.domains)
• DR 86–90: 3,175 domains (36,811 d.ref.domains)
• DR 91–95: 967 domains (637,650 d.ref.domains)
• DR 96–100: 22 domains (8,891,919 d.ref.domains)

As you’ll see in this chart, link building is highly effective when you have a lower domain rating and are looking to enhance your authority. All it takes to go from a zero domain rating to a rating of 26-30 is an average of 137 backlinks. This can be accomplished in a matter of months. Even going from a DR61 to DR75 is feasible (roughly 1,800 links). But there comes a point where the investment you make through link building outreach may no longer justify the return.

For example, if your website has a domain rating in the 86-90 range and you’re looking to bump up to the 91-95 range, you’d need more than 600,000 fresh backlinks! And to go from 91-95 to 96-100, you’d need to add more than 8 million links!

You’ll have to be the judge of what does and doesn’t make sense for your budget, but understand that the returns may diminish over time (at least in terms of SEO and search rankings).

Curious about your site’s backlink profile? Check your backlinks now, using our free tool.

Why You Should Outsource Your Link Building Outreach

With so much time involved in link building outreach, you can’t be expected to handle everything in-house. You’ll eventually reach a point where it makes sense to automate a few things in-house and outsource the rest. Here are a few of the benefits:

Saves time

First and foremost, outsourcing link building outreach saves you time – time that you can dedicate to the core aspects of your business. (Without an emphasis on adding value to your products and services, no amount of link building will lead to success.)

Leverages expertise

When you outsource, you don’t have to guess or experiment with something new. You instantly gain access to experienced professionals who do link building for a living. This guarantees quality output.

Zoom out

When you’re the one doing all of the link building outreach manually, you’re working in your business and not on your business. Not only is this a waste of your time, but it also hurts your ability to grow. By outsourcing, you get the chance to zoom out and look at the big picture strategy, while professionals handle this one aspect of your digital marketing

Outsource Your Link Building Outreach With SEO.co

At SEO.co, we want to be your preferred outsourced solution for SEO link building. When you work with us, we handle the outreach, secure the placement, develop the content, and deliver the backlinks you’re looking for. It’s an easy and effortless process that’s backed by industry-leading guarantees. Link building isn’t dead, it’s just more complex.

There are a lot of companies on the market that promise to provide link services, but there are several distinctions that set us apart from the other guys:

Quality Link Building Outreach Service 

Other link building services use low-quality websites to grab easy, low-hanging fruit that you could access on your own.

At SEO.co, we have a proven system for acquiring high quality links from high DR/DA sites – including some of the most recognized brands online.

We focus on backlink relevancy and quality.

In fact, we are so good at link building, other digital marketing agencies use our white label backlink service to offload their operational workload.

We also have a stable of talented writers with years of experience developing fresh, impactful content that engages audiences and encourages them to click.

Transparent Link Building Process

We believe in clear communication above all else. We’ll share real-time progress reports and let you know how things are going.

Risk-free

The cost of link building services can vary widely. Unlike other link building services that charge based on the time they spend reaching out to publishers and developing content, we only charge for what we actually deliver. This saves you money and ensures you get exactly what you pay for.

For more information on our link building services and how we can help you streamline your outreach strategy, please contact us today!

The post Link Building Outreach: Perfecting Your Outreach Process for Link Acquisition at Scale appeared first on SEO Agency.

Neither is link building.

But artificial intelligence is shaking up the search world more than those 10 blue links ever did nearly three decades ago.

SEOs and webmasters alike are concerned with the prospects of what the next incantation of the internet will look like and how it will impact both business and the bottom-line.

Rightfully so.

Here’s a glimpse of how AI is changing search and what you can do to stay relevant.

The Longtail in SEO is Dead

The longtail has always been the SEO’s secret weapon:

Use keyword research to find low-competition, low-volume keywords where you can quickly and easily dominate competitors for niche-related queries.

In fact, the common phrase digital marketers have used for websites looking to get more exposure has always been, “Focus on the longtail!”

It’s been the age-old Art of War imperative to “go where the enemy isn’t.”

AI is changing that game.

The importance of certain ranking factors will continue to shift.

For example, content quality, relevance, and uniqueness may become even more important than they already are, since Bard will be able to generate high-quality content that meets these criteria, without ever having to click, which has been a purposeful search engine algo trend for some time.

In addition, those top-of-the-funnel informational queries can more easily be answered by AI than ever before.

Searches like:

• “How does ….?”
• “How many….?”
• “How to…?”
• “When did….?”
• “Why does….?”
• “Who is ….?”
• etc.

Unfortunately, these types of searches are dominant in overall queries in search.

They also make up the majority of the long tail, which is now more likely to be dominated by machines.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t fight against it.

Here are just a few other ways artificial intelligence and machine learning are changing how we use search engines.

Content Creation

As Bard and ChatGPT become more advanced, it’s possible that content creation may shift towards using machine-generated content, which will change how websites create and optimize content for search engines.

Keyword Research

With language models like Bard and ChatGPT, keyword research may become less important, since these models are able to understand the meaning behind user queries and generate relevant content without relying on specific keywords.

User Engagement

With the use of ChatGPT to create conversational interfaces, website owners may be able to improve user engagement and potentially increase rankings by providing helpful information to users through chatbots or other interfaces.

Quality Over Quantity

With the ability of language models like Bard to generate high-quality content, there may be an increased emphasis on content quality, relevance, and uniqueness as ranking factors.

Web Design

With the emergence of conversational interfaces powered by ChatGPT, website owners may need to consider new design elements that facilitate these types of interactions, such as chatbots or messaging interfaces in a low-code, no-code environment.

How to combat AI’s eventual dominance in search engine results

The increasing dominance of AI in search engine results is a significant challenge for website owners and marketers.

How the format and display in search will fully shake out remains to be seen.

However, there are several strategies that can be used to combat this dominance and maintain or improve search engine rankings.

Unique, Quality Research (notice I didn’t say content)

Quality, unique content that provides value to users has always been a staple, but web creators can’t just pump out generic content any longer.

Here is our mantra for combating AI/ML issues with unique copy:

• Your content should add value to the world, not just include regurgitated fluff from other websites. That means you need to include things that are original and answer questions before they are asked.
• Your researched content needs to be new. Most AI language models are only relevant to a certain point in time (as of this writing, ChatGPT’s source material is at least a year old). Newly researched material is not going to be available to machine learning models yet. Be the first-to-market with new concepts and you’re more likely to be linked to as the original source — and potentially referenced in future AI searches around the topic.
• Display your content textually, but it’s more important to be visual. Use charts, graphs and detailed walk-throughs explaining why your research matters.

Localize Your SEO

Local SEO remains easier for many terms, particularly for mid-market cities and locales.

Local SEO searches are also more transactional in nature.

Local searches are farther down the funnel, which means someone searching for local keywords are more likely to convert.

In this same vein, it will be critical to make sure your local presence is dominated by positivity.

That is, your business should include 5-star ratings from the likes of Google, Yelp and local review sites, creating an even greater layer of trust from your potential new clients, customers and patients.

Focus on the Medium Tail

The short tail will become even more valuable and difficult to rank for.

For example, “______ service,” searched nationally will become tougher because there will be fewer click-throughs from organic thanks to AI’s dominance above the fold.

However, if someone is looking for “best ________ service in ______,” that’s something that search will likely rank blue links for, but less likely to be dominated.

It’s farther down the sales funnel than generic “What is…” or “How to….” long tail phrases, but it’s also more transactional in nature, meaning you’re more likely to find clients through this strategy.

Use More Schema Markup

Schema markup is a way to provide additional information about your website’s content to search engines.

In a world dominated by generic content, schema markup will provide structured information that search engines can parse, better understand and interpret.

It means you will be more likely to show in the knowledge graph, AI references and other above-the-fold content.

Leverage Video & Other Channels

Video channels, including Youtube and TikTok, are massive channels for traffic.

Diversify your marketing mix away from the standard blue links.

If you lose your top-of-the-funnel in one medium, it doesn’t mean you can’t revive top-of-the-funnel traffic on Youtube.

You just have to have a good strategy for both creation and promotion to do it well, including the addition of other social media channels to drive visitors to your business.

Embrace AI & Machine Learning (don’t flee from it)

When a new normal surfaces, learn to play by the newly established rules.

Yes, agentic AI may eventually kill white label SEO, but that doesn’t mean someone won’t be assigned to managed the AI!

Where change exists, so does opportunity.

It reminds me of the old joke:

A child wakes up on Christmas morning and is surprised to find a heap of horse manure under the tree instead of a collection of presents. Yet, the child is not discouraged because he has an extraordinarily optimistic outlook on life. His parents discover him enthusiastically shoveling the manure as he exclaims, “With all this manure, there must be a pony somewhere!”

Overall, the emergence of language models like Google Bard and ChatGPT is likely to have a significant impact on SEO in the future, and website owners and marketers will need to adapt their strategies accordingly to stay ahead of the curve.

The post ChatGPT, BARD & The Death of the Search Engine Long Tail appeared first on SEO Agency.

It’s never been easier to start your own digital marketing agency, but that doesn’t mean you should.

The very fact that the even the white label agency market has such low barriers to entry should have you questioning how you might come into a very saturated space and carve out an effective niche such that you could make ample revenue to scale. Low barriers to entry and high competition were listed as industry “weaknesses” in the SWOT analysis provided in our recent digital marketing industry report.

But, for the savvy salesperson and experienced marketer there are always opportunities, particularly where poor execution has soured the taste for businesses who may have hired fly-by-night service providers in the past.

If you have a unique edge, a story, a competitive advantage or a network of connections in a lucrative niche, then there may be a justifiable entry into the digital marketing fray.

And, if you’re looking to scale your digital marketing business processes immediately and quickly, so you can focus ON your business, rather than working IN your business in the early days, it may make sense to outsource SEO functions of client service execution and management. That’s where white label SEO and white label digital marketing come in.

In this post, we discuss the eight best digital marketing services you can outsource via white/private label via an experienced SEO reseller.

White Label Custom Writing Services

Anyone who has spent time in content marketing knows that it’s very tough to find a good blog writing service, especially if you want to do it right and do it well.

This is one of the reasons it can be expensive.

But, the understanding that new, fresh and engaging content is critical for SEO & digital marketing should make you–the marketer–the chief evangelist of writing custom content for blog posts, landing pages and case studies.

However, if you’re the chief evangelist, when are you going to have time to devote several hours a day to plunking your keyboard?

That’s where custom private label content writing services come in.

Outsourcing your blogging and other content writing is a great way to get the content you need while still managing and growing your business.

You may find yourself asking,

What should I be paying my blog writers?

Numerous platforms exist for finding outsourced content (e.g. Upwork, Freelancer, etc.). However the range in the price of content can range widely, especially if you’re paying a per-word content rate.

You’ll see ranges from $0.02 per word to $1.00 (not kidding) per word and everything in between.

And while the mantra, “you get what you pay for” applies here, don’t forget that when hiring from freelancer websites, you’ll need to spend time vetting and filtering for things like quality, timeliness, responsiveness and overall contractor fit. Sometimes agencies can be the faster route as they have done this already.

However, don’t forget, they also take their cut, so a premium will be baked-in. However, they will also likely be more able to scale when client demand, processing complex project requirements with an entire partner team, rather than a one man band.

White Label Link Building Services

Like its more legitimate sister content writing, quality link building also requires quality content writing, but its so much more than that. So, as a digital agency owner, once you’ve fully mastered the art of hiring the best content writers, if you don’t work through a private label provider, you will need to implement even more internal processes to scale up your link building, including:

• Implementing SEO best practices and standard operating procedures for the articles themselves, including keyword frequency, anchor text variability, content length, meta descriptions, internal image insertion and Copyscape scans.
• Manual backlink service via publisher pitching and awareness, keeping in mind you’ll want to maintain relationships with quality publishers, focusing on high authority, but also niche relevance for a given client.
• Executing on project management best practices on the above including the need to hire a project manager to process orders, especially as you get to scale and are managing dozens (if not hundreds) of articles/month.

Not to worry, we discuss this process in greater detail in our Ultimate Link Building Guide for SEO.

Perhaps the biggest issue with quality link building is finding quality publishers without spam issues and whose sites don’t sit on some massive private blog network (PBN).

The solution for the would-be digital marketing startup: hire a white label link building provider and resell SEO.

White Label Paid Search Engine Marketing Services

When we first started in this business (even before social media marketing and certainly before mobile marketing), there were only a couple of true market leading pay-per-click providers in the industry that truly added value.

Paid digital media is more than just Google and Yahoo these days.

Today’s media landscape is far more complex. Knowing where to put your client ad dollars will require a detailed understanding of both your clients’ ideal customer persona, including where they are spending their time and how to target them.

Furthermore, you’ll be required to not only know everything about the client so you can target them with paid media on the platforms they are using, but also be able to report back to your client the ROI and other KPIs of the campaigns you are running on various platforms and mediums.

And, did we mention today’s paid ad mediums could include:

• Google, including Google Ads, Google Display, Google Retargeting, etc.
• Facebook, including its vast expanse of other properties like Instagram, Whatsapp, etc.
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Bing

Each platform will require its own expertise for things like retargeting and persona matching, making it impossible for a single operator to be a true expert in any one platform.

This is where hiring a paid digital media management firm will be essential to meet your client needs while still scaling your digital marketing agency.

Shameless self promotion: take a look at our white label services for paid marketing by visiting PPC.co.

White Label SEO Audits

An SEO audit is like a health and wellness check for your client’s website. A complete audit is the first step in on-boarding and processing of new accounts.

Starting a client SEO campaign without an SEO audit is like treating the symptoms of a malignant problem (in this case, lack of site traffic) without running a full check-up to find out what disease(s) need to be targeted. It’s like suggesting medication for malaria when someone has COVID.

First, discover the malady, then treat, not the reverse.

What’s included in a white label SEO audit?

• Full on-site analysis, including full content audit, showcasing content redundancies that may be weighing down your ability to rank or content deficiencies where you should be ranking, but are not currently targeting.
• Backlink profile analysis, including a review of any potentially toxic links that could prove harmful to your site, if not addressed as well as suggestions for new backlink acquisition opportunities.
• Complete site crawl data report from the likes of ScreamingFrog and Ahrefs. The raw data will help you determine which areas have egregious gaps that need to be amended.
• SEO competitor analysis document, including keyword, backlink and content gap analyses for both local and national players in your client’s niche.
• Full site indexation analysis, including comparison of what is indexed vs. what is ranking and suggestions on improvement.
• A PPC audit which will reveal keyword bloat and optimization opportunities on your PPC management.

Any good SEO knows that an extensive SEO audit is great for the following reasons:

1. It’s a double-dip source of revenue. Simple audits are typically free, but most extensive audits take a large amount of time and input and good SEOs charge for them. The double-dip comes when the audit reveals obvious maladies that need major work.
2. White label SEO audits are not one and done. We suggest, at minimum, to perform an SEO audit at least once annually to ensure no significant changes have occurred that would hamper a site’s performance in search.

Finally, any good white label provider will not only perform the audit, but provide an extensive audit report on the findings, including suggestions on how the audit data can be used to improve a website’s performance. The best providers of such reports will give them in a sexy format with a completely editable PPTX file, devoid of any identifiable information, allowing an agency owner to simply include a logo and send the report findings to the client in a PDF format. We report all of our findings through our clients’ custom SEO drive account.

White Label On-Site, Technical SEO

Once an initial audit is performed, there are typically dozens of areas that will require technical on-site assistance, including:

• Site speed enhancements
• Meta, H1 and title tag insertions, tweaks and updates
• Schema markup suggestions and insertions
• Internal backlink consulting or internal link insertions 
• Sitemap issues
• Crawl errors
• 301 redirects, including potential redirect chains or loops
• HTTPS status codes and potential mixed content issues
• Mobile friendliness and mobile load issues
• Indexation issues
• Google Search Console errors
• Keyword cannibalization
• Duplicate content issues
• Landing page optimization

When a full SEO audit reveals issues in nearly every area listed above, no single culprit may be the cause of an indexing and ranking issue. Therefore, all issues should be addressed before any off-site work occurs. You have to clean up your site before others may find it valuable. And while most of these areas are to play to the search engines, many impact the user experience, which can have an impact on leads and sales, depending on the business.

Complete white label solutions should be able to not only help make the suggestions, but dive deep into code-level issues, extracting needed fixes that may be complex (e.g. 301 redirects and mixed HTTPS content issues).

White Label Website Design & App Development

With the proliferation of digital experiences, there is no shortage of what even the smallest businesses with minimal budgets can accomplish. For instance, today’s SMBs can more easily create websites and mobile applications than ever before. Here are some considerations when choosing a white label website development or application development agency:

• Direct, applicable experience. Client examples and testimonials are a must and critical.
• Experience with technical website SEO, including the items listed above.
• Ability to project manage multiple client engagements, preferably through remote project management software.
• Ability to take client needs, run and execute.
• More than sufficient communication capabilities, including near-native English speaking capabilities.
• Nearshore time zones so requests can be immediately executed.

When it comes to digital marketing and online experiences, there is often a split between the technical (left brain) and the creative (right brain). Without both, a client’s digital strategy will be dead before it begins.

Some agencies will focus on the creative (website look, feel and experience) to the exclusion of the technical (see on-site optimization above).

Both are critical for winning in today’s heavily-crowded online world.

We have taken over the digital marketing of sites that look fantastic, but are missing all the technical SEO. So, if you find a website design agency you are comfortable white labeling, make sure they also have the SEO chops to execute on more than just a pretty face. You want the site’s beauty to go skin deep.

White Label Digital Marketing Software

While we are not in the SEO or martech software game, a host of solutions are available via white label to make your reports, analysis and even your website be the best client experience possible. Here are a few of the white label SEO & digital marketing software solutions we have used and suggest for scaling your agency:

• RankRanger.
• SEOptimer.
• SERanking.
• Posirank.
• DashThis.
• AuthorityLabs.
• AgencyAnalytics.

While this list is not exhaustive, we have personally experimented and used each of these providers in the past and have found each to have their own strengths and weaknesses, which we will expound on in future blog posts here on the blog. It is sufficient to note that a myriad of existing solutions exist for making your client management in SEO and digital marketing a breeze.

For instance, we use SEOptimer for many of the SEO tools available on our site. While it has its deficiencies it remains one of our biggest sources for top-of-the-funnel leads.

Fully-Managed SEO

We have tried to compartmentalize many of the pieces that should be included in a holistic digital marketing campaign, fully white-labeled. However, solidifying on a digital marketing company for each will take time and effort in its own right.

You’ll need to vet providers and experts in each of the areas mentioned above, plugging each in to your own client processes. Or, you could go with a fully-managed digital marketing service, allowing you to manage your clients in a hands-off way.

When it comes to private labeling as a digital agency owner, there are a myriad of available options. Finding the client who needs white label digital marketing services is the first and most critical step, but executing on an overall SEO and digital marketing strategy for the client is where the proverbial rubber meets the road.

Once you learn how to sell SEO, let us be your digital marketing back-office by hiring our in-house team of experts able to provide superb white label marketing solutions to your clients.

The post 8 Best White Label Digital Marketing Services for Agencies appeared first on SEO Agency.

Second tier link building, the practice of building “second tier” links that feed your campaign by pointing to “first tier” links (a.k.a. primary links), is a powerful way to improve your results.

But what exactly are secondary backlinks?

What is the value in second tier link building?

And, how can you structure your SEO campaign to include both first tier and second tier links?

First Tier Links vs. Second Tier Links

Let’s start with some basic definitions, and an explanation of link building from a high level. In case you aren’t familiar, link building is a set of strategies designed to help you earn and place links that point back to your website.

While it’s possible to try and manage an SEO strategy without link building, most practitioners find link building to be indispensable.

How Impactful are Secondary Links?

When Google “decides” how to rank search results, it considers both the relevance and the authority of potential results. Relevance refers to the context of the page, and whether it matches the user’s query. Authority refers to how trustworthy the page is. This trustworthiness is measured in terms of “domain authority” and “page authority,” which exist at the domain and page levels, respectively. These metrics are calculated in large part based on the number and quality of links pointing to a domain or page. In other words, the more links you have pointing to your site, and the “better” those links are, the higher your pages are going to rank.

This is a very basic overview of a complex and nuanced topic; for your link building campaign to be successful, you’ll need to consider your external content, the placement of your links, your link sources, and many more variables.

So how do primary and secondary links play into this strategy?

Primary links are links you build on an external source that point to one of your web pages.

You can think of these as “standard” SEO links. They pass authority directly from one source to your website, and are incredibly valuable for increasing your domain- and page-level authority.

Most modern link builders create primary backlinks by writing high-quality content on external publisher sites; these pieces of content cite your onsite content as a source, providing a statistic or further reading.

Second Tier Backlink Definition

Secondary backlinks, by contrast, are links built on an external source that point to a piece of content containing a primary link. These links are designed to pass authority and traffic to the piece of content responsible for generating value with the first tier link.

For example, let’s consider your website “A,” an external publisher “B,” and a separate external publisher “C.”

A first tier link may exist in a piece of content on site B, pointing to site A. Once a primary link exists, a secondary link could be a link built on site C, pointing to site B.

The Two Types of Second Tier Links

Even within this definition, there are two main types of second tier links.

Linking to a page with a primary link

Straightforward secondary link point directly to a page that contains a primary backlink, with no alterations or other functions. Calling up our previous example, C points to B, and B points to A.

Combining primary & secondary links

You can also build second tier links that are used in conjunction with primary links. In this case, your content on site C would contain both a second tier link to site B (which contains a first tier link of its own) and a first tier link that points to A. In other words, C points to both B and A, and B points to A. This approach is arguably more powerful, since it capitalizes on both primary and secondary link value simultaneously. However, it may also be riskier.

The Power of Tiered Link Building

Why would you use second tier link building? Wouldn’t it be better to focus exclusively on primary backlinks?

Second tier backlinks with several advantages:

Increase link equity

First, you can increase your “link equity,” or the potential for your links to pass authority back to your site. If you build a second tier link from C to B, and a first tier link from B to A, your link to B will increase the page authority of B. If you do this frequently, you can greatly increase the authority of site B, and make every primary link on that site more inherently valuable. This is an especially powerful strategy if you’re utilizing a private blog network (PBN), or if you’re trying to grow a number of different sites. It’s also a valuable strategy if you’re link building with lower-authority publishers that could benefit from an external boost.

Multiply referral traffic

Secondary backlinks are also an easy way to multiply the referral traffic generated by your direct, primary backlinks. Remember, even though link building primarily gets attention as a way to increase domain authority and rise in search engine rankings, it’s also valuable for attracting more referral traffic. If you build a first tier link from site B to site A, it may generate 500 monthly visitors for you. So what happens when you build a new link from site C to site B? Let’s say that link generates 1,000 visitors to site B, and 500 of those visitors eventually click through to your site; you’ve effectively doubled your referral traffic from this source.

Expand visibility

Brand visibility is powerful, even if you aren’t immediately generating traffic or onsite conversions. If you have a strong brand mention as a first tier link, building second tier links is a convenient way to get more eyes on that link. This is especially useful if your first tier link is citing your site in a way that emphasizes your expertise on a subject, increasing consumer trust.

Mitigate risk

Though manual actions are reserved for only the most egregious offenses, link building does carry a risk. If you spam links, or if you build links in a way that’s perceived as low-quality, it could hurt your search engine rankings. Second tier links are a great way to mitigate your risk. Not only do you reduce the volume of primary links emerging, you also increase the perceived authority and value of your first tier link sources, making your links look better overall.

This doesn’t mean that secondary links are a practical necessity for all SEO campaigns. However, it can complement and improve most link building strategies that mostly center on first tier links.

Best Practices for Second Tier Link Building

Second tier link building isn’t a guaranteed success. Like with a standard link building strategy, there are many best practices you’ll need to follow if you want to yield the best results.

Make every link natural 

This should be familiar to you if you’re used to first tier link building: make every link as natural as possible. Good links enhance the content in which they reside; they provide value to the reader in the form of citing statistics, linking to further reading, or backing up an important claim. They also fit naturally in the context of the article, and don’t stand out as abnormal or awkward. This will help you in several ways. Most notably, you’ll reduce the chances of catching a Google penalty. But you’ll also provide a more seamless experience for your readers, increasing your ability to generate referral traffic and reader engagements.

Prioritize quality content

As with first tier link building, your main priority should be writing high-quality content. It’s possible to build second tier links with forum comments and other low-quality methods, but content is your best bet. Good content makes your link more natural and better received by readers; it’s also a great way to flesh out your author profiles and earn a good reputation as an expert in your field. Poorly researched, poorly written, and otherwise “thin” content will rob your second tier links of their value.

Optimize second tier links

Second tier links serve a variety of purposes, so it’s only natural that you can optimize your strategy for a number of different goals. For example, if you’re mostly interested in boosting your authority, you can build second tier links with the intention of passing more authority. If you’re more interested in generating referral traffic, consider prioritizing second tier links to the highest traffic-generating first tier sources.

Target your best primary sources

With a backlink profile analysis, you should be able to figure out which of your first tier links are most valuable, both in terms of how much authority they pass and how much traffic they generate. For the most part, these should be your primary targets when building second tier links. However, there are also cases where it’s better to lend support to some of your underperforming links.

Avoid over-linking

Like with first tier link building, if you spam the same links over and over or rely on the same tactics, eventually you’re going to get red flagged as a spammer. It’s important to mix up your tactics, relying on a variety of different publishers and building a diversity of different links. Similarly, it’s important to vary your anchor text and link placement, making your links as natural as possible.

Use a mix of link types

We mentioned earlier that there are two main varieties of second tier link building; you can use standalone second tier links or a combination of second tier and first tier links in the same article. There are pros and cons to each of these approaches, so try to use a blend of both to capitalize on all the benefits while minimizing your risks.

Embrace nofollow links

Too many search engine optimizers avoid nofollow links as if they’re useless. Nofollow links, in case you aren’t familiar, are links marked with a “nofollow” tag, so Google won’t consider the authority they’d otherwise pass. This makes them ineffective for building your authority—but they’re still valuable for generating referral traffic, and they carry zero risk of attracting a Google penalty. Accordingly, you should consider throwing in some nofollow links occasionally, and don’t bail on a publisher if they only allow nofollow links.

Avoid low quality sources

Low quality publishers are rarely worth your time, even if they seem to have low barriers to entry. In a best-case scenario, you’ll get a small amount of authority and a bit of referral traffic. In a worst-case scenario, your link could earn you a Google penalty and your very presence on that publisher could harm your reputation. Instead, focus on the highest-quality sources you can, and if you’re having trouble getting published on them, work your way up to that level as soon as possible.

Build your network

Link building, is largely about relationship management. You need to carefully develop your reputation and presence as an author, and provide value to all the publishers in your network. Maintain relationships with those publishers, and gradually expand your network over time. In time, you’ll develop a following of readers, a more impressive portfolio of work, better relationships with publishers, and access to higher-quality publishers. Keep striving to improve in these areas.

Avoid automated software

Finally, steer clear of automated software. There are some companies claiming they can help you build links in an automated way, sometimes even generating content on your behalf. However, these methods tend to be highly unreliable. It’s easy for Google and other search engines to detect content that has been generated by an algorithm, and even easier to detect patterns of link spam. In most cases, you’ll only end up penalized for trying to use these tricks.

Conclusion

With a better second tier link building strategy in place, you can increase the value of your primary links, ultimately increasing your domain- and page-level authority and increasing your total incoming traffic. If you’re interested in learning more about second tier links (or SEO in general), or if you’re ready to start a campaign of your own, contact SEO.co today for a free consultation!

The post What Is Second Tier Link Building & How Can it Boost Your SEO appeared first on SEO Agency.

After all, it’s just the same text, navigation links, and other basic information that appears on every page of your website.

Your website footer can’t possibly be as important as your homepage, right?

Think again.

It’s easy not to think about the footer since it’s usually just links to other parts of the site or information about your business. However, like everything else on the page, the website footer counts towards your SEO too.

If you optimize this website footer, not only will you provide information and links that your customers will find useful, you’ll also help improve your overall ranking in search engines.

Here are some tips to help you optimize your website footer so that it helps your overall ranking and sales.

Remember: A Fat Footer is a Bad Footer

Even though you’re trying to optimize your footer for search engines, it’s important not to cram it with so much information and so many keywords that it becomes a big block of text that isn’t useful to users.

Website footers are typically fairly light on long sentences. Instead, they are mostly short, easy to read, and understand links and other information. This is one area where too much is worse than too little.

Your footer Should not Stand Out

Another thing to consider before getting into specific elements of your footer is its color and overall look. You want it to blend in with the rest of your page—no one should scroll down to find a footer that’s a shockingly different color from the rest of the page or uses an obnoxious font.

Let’s be real here, aesthetics matter even in business, and the design of your website footer is no exception. If you’re going for calm and respectable colors and then your footer is bright orange or hot pink, users are likely to be put off by this footer design choice.

Imagine scrolling to the bottom of a page for the “contact us” button and having your senses assaulted by something down right ugly.

That said, many web designers do use a simple line to split the website footer from the rest of the page. Another option is to invert your footer’s color scheme. If your page uses black text on a cream-colored background, the website footer would be black with cream-colored text. This helps set it apart from the page, but by using the same colors, it still feels cohesive.

Include Quick Navigation Links

Your footer does not necessarily need to include a link to every page of your website, but it should link to the major sites. This gives users a quick shortcut to your main pages. For example, you might link to your main products/services page, your blog, your about us page, and a few others, but there’s no need to link to specific product pages unless you really want to drive traffic to them.

One way of determining what pages to link to here is to look at your site statistics. What pages do users tend to visit? Those are the pages that you may want to consider including as footer links. You do not need to include every page unless your website is small.

One of the tricks you can use to simplify things in your footer is to group together page links in columns. Contact information, services, and other relevant pages can be grouped so that users can scroll through and click what they need.

It’s a good idea to avoid sitewide external links though, as they tend to mess with the Google search algorithm and if ranking your site is important you don’t want this.

Include Your Contact Information

Yes, you likely have a page on your website that is dedicated to your contact information. It probably includes your address, phone number, email information, an online submission form, and maybe even a map with directions to your location.

There are two major reasons to include your contact information in the footer though. Firstly, it helps your website rank for relevant searches if the information is included on every page.

Secondly, users typically don’t want to navigate off the page they are on to find your contact information. Having it readily accessible from anywhere on the site is a big convenience to users.

Here are the key pieces of information to include:

• Company name
• Address
• Phone Number
• General email address (one that is monitored but is not directed to a specific person).

Your phone number and email address should open the appropriate app when clicked, so users do not have to copy your email address over into a new email. You may also include a small Google Maps image if you expect many of your customers will come to your business in person.

Social Media Links

Social media has become a vital part of online marketing, so you want to make certain that you provide visitors a way of getting to your profiles. You do not need to do any more than include the easily recognizable social media site icons and link them to the appropriate profile.

For example, most people recognize the Facebook F icon, so you do not even need to mention the site name. Just visit Facebook’s online image library (the icons are all there for you to use, and they are free), add it to the footer, and link it. Do the same for Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and whatever other social media icons you use.

One other note about linking to social media is to keep relevant information for your business on these pages. If someone decides to check you out on Facebook, you at least want to have up to date info for your business on the page, even if you don’t maintain much of a presence.

Include Your Logo

Branding is everything, even at the bottom of a webpage. Your logo should be included in your footer, but it should not be the main focus. Look for a place to put it that is still obvious but is also out of the way. Placing it just to the left of your contact information is a good place, as is putting it on the left side of the footer.

The Fine Print

There are four different “fine print” statements you may want to include in your footer, these are mostly to inform users about you and to provide up-front protections in regards to legal issues.

• Your mission statement. If part of your digital marketing is to appeal to those who have specific values or goals, including a very short (one line) mission statement in your footer can help. If you don’t have a short mission statement but do have a motto or tag line that is a part of your branding, you could include those.
• Your terms of use. What are your users agreeing to when they use your website? This can include information such as how you are not responsible for content posted on linked websites or posted by users.
• Your Privacy policy. If you collect any data, how will you use it? Remember, this includes information gathered from cookies, not just what your users provide. This policy is legally required, so you want it to be clear and cover all the bases. Often, it is in smaller text at the very bottom of the footer.
• A copyright statement. The content you create on your website is yours, and no one should be using it without your express permission. This statement needs to include the year the content was last changed. Most website software lets you set the date to automatically update whenever you make changes. This statement isn’t completely necessary since all content is copyrighted when you create it, but it can help you in court if you do have to pursue legal action over copyright infringement.

A Call to Action

We all know what a call to action is, we’ve seen them thousands of times on every website we visit. The purpose is to tell people what to do next, “click here to view products”, “click here to sign up for our newsletter” etc.

The trick to doing it right however, is making it noticeable and interesting to the user. Putting it right before the footer and including a “why” in your call to action will help give that little extra push to get users to click, such as “subscribe to our newsletter to hear about upcoming events”. This gives users a built in incentive to click, not just a blind order to follow.

If you have a secondary call to action, such as signing up for an email newsletter, you can put that in the footer. This is what many eCommerce sites do. They have a small sign-up box in the footer. Users type in their email and hit the submit button to automatically be added to your email list. It is quick, easy, takes up very little space, and is on every page, so it’s hard to miss.

A Search Bar

Most people think about putting search bars at the top of a webpage or on the side navigation, but you can include one in the footer, too. It’s not always necessary, but if you have a large site, you may want to provide users with another place to enter a search. Having it at the bottom makes it quick and easy to find, especially if someone has read the entire page but hasn’t found what they were looking for.

If you have a fairly simple website, it may be better not to crowd the footer with a search bar. Decide if you really need it before including it.

Boost Your Reputation

Finally, you can include brief mentions of awards, honors, or professional affiliations in your footer. This will help to boost your reputation online and show users that you are trustworthy. Some of these awards or professional organizations have created icons specifically for using on websites, so adding one of those icons is often all you need to do.

Pick and Choose What Works for You

The best advice we can give is to tailor your footer to your business and the type of customers that come to your site. If they need directions to a physical store, add a map to your footer. If there are a lot of questions, add a link to an FAQ.

While you may be trying to optimize for search engines, always keep the customer in mind first and foremost and make the footer useful to them. You can work on SEO after the fact.

Once you know what you need, you are ready to work with a design company to create the ideal footer for your webpages. Contact us today to discuss all of your website needs.

The post How to Optimize Your Website Footer appeared first on SEO Agency.

In the case of traffic declines, you may very well see many, if not all of your most coveted keywords remain in top positions while your traffic takes a dive off a cliff.

This is not an irregular occurrence. It happens all the time.

Here’s why.

Money Keywords vs. Total Keywords

Whenever we this question from clients, it is most often due to a myopic view of their overall SEO rankings.

Many site owners are often fixated and only a handful of “money” keywords for which they wish to rank.

In our case, that might be SEO company or SEO agency or the coveted general term of SEO.

For a client it might be Los Angeles law firm, injury attorney or law firm.

The myopia comes into play when a webmaster becomes solely focused on head terms and ignores the real source of website traffic, the SEO long tail.

This is where a great tool like Ahrefs can come into play:

If you’re myopically looking at only a few short money terms, you may miss the overall picture related to your website.

The chart above is an Ahrefs keyword and traffic graph from a recent lead that reached out to us with this very question:

I’m still ranking very well for [company’s main keyword], but my traffic has fallen off a cliff. What is happening? Please help.

This new client was not actively tracking their keyword rankings in Ahrefs, Spyfu or Moz like they ought. Instead, the totality of their keyword analysis included Google Analytics and incognito searches for [company’s main keyword] (which incidentally only has an estimated 1,000 monthly searches and a medium keyword difficulty).

Their fall-off was in the long tail, which caused the crater in their traffic in a short period.

They were also myopically ignoring other keywords with higher commercial value that were likely even driving more sales than their own self-assumed “top key phrase.”

How to Fix Long Tail Traffic Drops

A drop in your long tail traffic could be the result of any one of the following factors, including:

• An algorithmic re-assessment of a site’s poor or unnatural backlink profile.
• A competitive shift within your industry or an algorithmic reassessment for the value of your content. Perhaps your competitors are increasing the quality and quantity of their content at a rate that massively outstrips your efforts.
• The Google dance, which typically occurs with sites whose traffic links and content are <3 years old. The newer your site, the more likely you are to experience a steady surge in keyword rankings over six months, only to be hit by the next Google update.
• Lack of content updates on your blog (long tail most often comes from regular, quality content posting and blog writing).
• Shift in the algorithm’s weight of one of many factors that may be plaguing your site (e.g. future algorithm updates focused on site speed may immediately impact the rankings and traffic of pages with poor loading speed).
• Maybe you’re missing something else? Something may have changed on your site that may not be readily evident on the surface (e.g. HTTPS issues, malware, massive spike in spammy backlinks, etc.) that could have altered the quality in which Google sees your website.

In cases like this, we always suggest a comprehensive SEO audit service, including a full content audit. So many factors can contribute to drops in rankings that a full assessment is the best way to gauge what course correcting on and off-site SEO initiatives will be most effective.

The post Traffic Dropped, But My Keyword Rankings Are Holding. What Happened? appeared first on SEO Agency.