First and foremost, write your buyer personas so you know to whom you’re addressing your content. By creating quality educational content that resonates with your ideal buyers, you’ll naturally improve your SEO.
This means tapping into the main issues of your personas and the keywords they use in search queries. Optimising for search engines alone is useless; all you’ll have is keyword-riddled nonsense.
Please your buyer personas, and you’ll automatically please the search engines.
2. Blog regularly
Blogging is perhaps the most effective way to increase your organic site traffic. It lets you go into more depth than your website allows and creates a large catalogue of helpful, persona-optimised content centred on your market niche. However, poorly-written, spammy or cheap content can do more harm than good. Avoid it.
3. Plug into the blogosphere
The blogosphere is a reciprocal sort of place. Read, comment and link to other people’s sites and blogs, particularly those operating in your market, and they’ll hopefully read, comment and link to yours, attracting more prospects.
A good place to start is Quora. A neat tactic for getting your voice out there is to spend some time answering peoples’ questions on Quora and providing real, valuable and tangible insights for the specific area you are an expert in.
4. Use long-tail keywords
Don’t just go with the most popular keywords in your market. Use keywords that are more specific to your product or service. In time, Google and other search engines will identify your website or blog as a destination for that particular subject, which in turn will boost your content in search rankings and help your ideal customers find you.
Remember: Ranking on Google is about owning a sphere of influence for a specific niche topic. This blog post, for example, is targeted for those who want specific learnings on increasing organic traffic. We’re not targeting every SEO-related keyword.
5. Get your meta down
The meta title, URL and description are the three key ingredients for an optimised web page or blog post. It’s simple but effective. In fact, all on-page SEO factors are important to get right, but meta descriptions and meta data means you can tell Google exactly what you’re talking about.
We use a plethora of tools, including Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, HubSpot’s SEO tools and Ahrefs to help us optimise our pages. But it’s not enough to just ‘install a plugin’, you have to work on each page in turn.
6. Consistently create quality content
Try to write and publish as often as possible, but not at the cost of quality! The more quality content – including thought leadership articles and blog posts – you have on your website or blog, the more opportunities you create for organic traffic to come your way.
7. Use internal links
Once you’ve built up a decent back catalogue of content, you can link to it in blogs and on your website, guiding visitors to more relevant content. This can keep visitors on your website for longer, which helps boost your search rankings.
HubSpot call this process Topic Clustering; we thoroughly recommend you watch this short video about topic clustering here:
Don’t, however, overuse internal links; too many and it starts to look like spam.
8. Encourage incoming links
Google prioritises sites that have a lot of incoming links, especially from other trustworthy sites. Encourage clients, friends, family members, partners, suppliers, industry mavens and friendly fellow bloggers to link to your site.
The more incoming links you have, the higher your site will rank because, quite simply, the more authoritative it becomes in the eyes of search engines.
But beware: SEO snake oil salesmen try to trick Google with spammy links from low-reputation sites. Some links can actually damage your SEO.
9. Blow your own trumpet
You can also link to your content yourself, on your own personal blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon etc – no spamming, mind. If people come in from social media and spend time with your content, it is a strong signal to Google that the content is relevant, useful and interesting.
10. Use social media
Build a presence on social media networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook etc. All of these activities help to get your name and website address out on the internet.
Read about how we doubled our social media audience in a week. Add share buttons to your site to make it easy for people to share your content. And write content worthy of sharing.
11. Use data and metrics to optimise results
Use something like Google Analytics to track visitors to your site and blog. Being able to see where they come from and what keywords they searched for allows you to fine-tune your content.
Ultimately, to increase organic site traffic, you need to give your customers what they want – quality advice, information and insight.
That’s what I’m going to show you in the remainder of this article: 9 of the techniques recommended by top SEO experts for getting high authority backlinks to your website.
2.1 Write Data Driven Content
The best way to get high authority backlinks is to publish outstanding, data driven content that shines within your niche and gets linked to simply because its good.
Here’s a quote from Google’s Mat Cutts that puts this in a nutshell:
The objective is not to ‘make your links appear natural’; the objective is that your links are natural.
In other words, Google would prefer that you do nothing that is aimed at getting another website to link to your website.
But the simple fact is this:
It doesn’t matter how good your content is. Your articles and blog posts are going to languish in obscurity…
Unless you reach out to other bloggers.
That said, all the techniques described below are what SEO experts call ‘white hat’.
In other words, they are not techniques designed to game the system or trick Google in to giving you a higher rank than your content deserves.
What you should definitely avoid at all costs is:
buying links
participating in any kind of ‘link scheme’
engaging in any link activity that involves a quid pro quo (“this for that”)
In summary:
The best link building strategy is to write content that is so good, people want to link to it.
And in fact, none of the techniques below will work unless your content is good.
2.2 Create Infographics
Infographics are another very effective way of building high authority backlinks.
Digital marketing expert Neil Patel calls them the link builder’s Trojan Horse – they get you inside the walls of high authority websites and get you links that you would otherwise never get.
But to get linked to, your Infographic will have to stand out from the crowd.
Use programs like Visme to create stunning infograhics.
Step 1: Do Your Research
One way to ensure your infographic stands out is to apply the skyscraper technique: Do a search on Google for keyword + infographic.
The infographics that appear on page #1 of the search results must, by definition, have acquired a lot of high authority backlinks – otherwise they wouldn’t have made it on to Page #1.
Study the top 5 Infographics that came up in the search results. Make a note of the facts and statistics each Infographic contains.
Then go to work and do some extra research. Dig deep and find more information, more up- to-date stats, new research etc.
You’re now in a position to create an infographic that’s better than any of the infographics that are listed on Page #1 of the search results.
Step 2: Create Your Infographic
Use one of the many infographic templates in Canva or Visme.
Step 3: Promote Your Infographic
Of course, getting people to link to your Infographic won’t happen on it’s own. Here are some tips to get your Infographic shared and linked to:
=> Make sure your infographic is accompanied by text that discusses the information in the infographic – remember that it’s words that get rankings on Google, not images.
=> Install a mouse-over sharing app (places share icons over your image on mouse-over) to make it easy for your visitors to share your Infographic. Here are some best-known:
Then, under the heading ‘Content Type’ (left sidebar) check the ‘Infographic’ box:
Then go to the ‘Backlinks’ part of BuzzSumo and type in the URL of each of the Infographics that came up in your search.
This will tell you who shared those Infographics. Now you just need to contact those people.
But don’t ask them to link to your Infographic (that will backfire). Instead, tell them you value their opinion and ask them for their feedback.
If your Infographic is good, there’s a good chance they’ll link to it.
After all, you know from your search on BuzzSumo they this person has linked to a similar Infographic. And because of your research in Step 1, your Infographic is orders of magnitude better any other Infographic on the same topic!
Those experts have large followings and most of them will share your infographic.
Pro Tip: One way to give your infographic built-in shareability is to use the infographic to display the results of a survey of experts in your niche.
2.3 Mention Other Bloggers
An often overlooked way of getting high authority backlinks is to simply write blog posts that mention prominent bloggers within your niche.
Step 1: Link Out to 4 or 5 Bloggers in Each Blog Post
With every new blog post you write, try to mention – and link to – a handful of websites that are relevant to your topic.
Why?
Because linking out is going to improve your website’s overall SEO profile, as SEO expert Rand Fishkin points out:
Links From Your Site Encourage Links To Your Site. By definition, the Internet is a network of links between different sites. By linking out to relevant resources on other websites you’re participating in an activity that’s fundamental to the Internet. The people you link to will notice it and there’s a good chance they, in turn, will link to you.
Search Engines Notice Who You Link To. Studies by Moz strongly suggest that search engines are aware that high quality sites typically link to other high quality sites. This means that when you develop a pattern of linking to relevant, high quality sites, your site will be rewarded by the algorithms.
Linking Out Rarely Goes Unnoticed. Most websites have someone tracking their referral traffic – if you link to them, at the very least they will be curious to know who you are. They’ll visit your website and may even link back to you.
Step 2: Reach Out And Let Them Know
But don’t just hope that they notice – take it a step further and let them know. Send them a quick email along these lines:
Hi [Name],
I just wanted to let you know that I mentioned you in my latest blog post: [URL]. Thanks for the great article!
Best regards,
[Your Name]
If you can’t find their email address, send them a tweet instead.
This is what I usually do, because it’s quicker and because their Twitter ID is much easier to find:
@username Hi [Name], just to let you know that I mentioned you in my latest blog post [shortened URL]. Keep up the good work!
Make it a practice to do this with every new blog post.
At the very least you’ll be developing connections with people in your niche. And you’ll most likely also get some high authority backlinks.
2.4 Look for Link Roundups
‘Link Roundups’ were almost made for getting high authority backlinks to your best content!
Pro Tip: If you’re chasing a backlink from a specific website, use the ‘site’ search operator followed by the domain name of the site you want to target.
after all, they publish weekly roundups on that subject and you’ve just written an amazing article on that very topic.
Hi [Name],
I noticed that you publish a weekly roundup on [topic]. I’ve just written an article that you might like to consider for inclusion in your next roundup:
The title is… [short article pitch together with URL]. I think your readers would find it very useful.
Either way, thanks for your time and keep up the good work!
Cheers,
[Your Name]
Use this technique every time you publish a new blog post.
But only use this link building strategy on your very best content – posts that are very well researched and written.
After all, link roundups are designed to showcase the best content from that week so you’ll need to put your best foot forward.
2.5 Broken Link Building
Broken link building is an ingenious but simple technique for acquiring high authority backlinks.
Here are the 4 key steps:
Find a page that no longer exists,
Find other pages that have links to that page
Create content that is similar to the page that no longer exists
Contact the people who have broken links (i.e. links to the page that no longer exists) and suggest to them that they link to your page instead.
If ever there was a completely white hat link building technique (and one that Google would surely smile upon) it is broken link building.
Why?
Because you’re building links back to your website at the same time as providing a public service:
to the Internet in general (cleaning up the Internet of its broken links)
to the website owner in particular (fixing up their broken links for them)
Step 1: Find Pages That No Longer Exist
What you’re looking for in this step is a resource page (i.e. a page that links out to a lot of other pages) on a particular topic.
Because of ‘link rot’, chances are you’ll find broken links on that page. Here are some search operators that will help find the kind of web pages I’m talking about:
Next, use your keyword with one of the above search operators.
In this instance I used:
blogging inurl:”useful links”
As you scan the search results you’ll be able to spot the difference between pages that offer links to articles and pages that contain links to paid services.
You want to avoid pages with links to paid services because if they contain a broken link, you’re not going to be able to offer an alternative.
What you’re looking is pages that contain links to articles or blog posts.
Now click on one of the search results:
Next, open the ‘Check My Links’ Chrome Extension. You’ll see the broken links marked in red:
Now reach out to the owner of the website with an email like this:
Subject: Broken Link on [name of their website] — Hi [Name],
I was searching for content on [Topic] when I came across your very useful list of resources: [URL].
However, I did notice a broken link: [URL of broken link]
As it happens, I recently published an article on that very topic, titled [title of your post]: [URL of your post]
Please feel free to check it out – it could make a good replacement for the broken link on your page [insert broken link, again].
Anyway, I hope this helps. Cheers, [Your Name]
You can expect a much better response from this technique than simply asking for a backlink.
Why?
Because in pointing out the broken link you’ve rendered a service to the website owner – you’ve let them know about a problem on their site that needs to be fixed.
But, you’ve also provided them with the solution!
Website owners are busy people – why would they hunt around for a replacement link when they have yours in front of them?
It’s more than likely they’ll take you up on the offer and add your link.
2.6 Resource Page Link Building
If there’s one link building strategy that generates more high authority backlinks than any other, it’s resource page link building.
Resource pages are easy to find and page owners want to link out to you. After all, what good is a resource page without any links?
A resource page is simply a page on a website that lists helpful links and resources for a particular topic.
To find resource pages, do a search using these search strings:
keyword + “resources”
keyword + “useful resources”
keyword + “helpful resources”
keyword + “links”
keyword + “useful links”
keyword + “helpful links”
To get more specific, use these search operators:
Keyword + inurl:links
Keyword + intitle:links
Keyword + inurl:resources
Keyword + intitle:resources
Educational websites generally have a very high domain authority. A link from a University or College Resource Page will give a huge boost to your link profile.
To find educational Resource Pages, uses these search strings:
site:.edu + keyword + “resources”
site:.edu + keyword + “links”
Pro Tip: I’ve also found that these search strings turn up good results:
Keyword +inurl:articles
Keyword + intitle:”curated list”
Step 2: Narrow Down the Results
Narrow down the results by eliminating sites with a domain authority of less than 30.
In some cases, resource pages will actually have a link (“Suggest a New Resource”) where you can submit a relevant article.
Pro Tip: To find resource pages that are actively seeking new submissions do your string search on ‘Keyword’ + ‘Suggest a new resource’
Step 3: Reach Out and Offer Your Article
If there’s no link inviting new submissions, install the Hunter Chrome Extension and get the email address.
Then reach out with an email along these lines:
Hi [Name],
I was doing some research on [topic] and came across your resource page at: [URL]
Congratulations – there are some great tools there!
As you clearly know a bit about this topic, I thought you’d be interested in checking out my article: [title of your blog post].
I think it would benefit your readers and make a fantastic addition to your resource page.
Here’s the link if you’d like to check it out: [URL]
Either way, keep up the good work at [name of their website]
[Your Name]
2.7 HARO (Help A Reporter Out)
As with educational sites, news sites usually have very high domain authority. Here are some examples, with the DA in brackets:
Journalists are forever looking for facts and statistics. And when they use them they have to cite their sources.
So if you can write articles that contain well-researched statistics, there’s a good chance you’ll get linked to from a high domain authority.
Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Create an Account and a Profile
Sign up for a free account at HARO (Help A Reporter Out).
Next, create a profile that showcases your accomplishments and your expertise, and if possible, some social proof (e.g. unique visitors per day, number of subscribers, followers etc).
You’ll get three emails a day from HARO requesting information from experts on a whole range of different topics.
Step 2: Respond to Enquiries
The 3 emails that HARO sends out each day are sent at 5:35am, 12:35pm, and 5:35pm (EST) Monday through Friday.
The journalists who submit these queries are working to very tight timeframes – often their article has to go live within a few hours. This means they’ll grab the first response that answers their query.
Let’s say there’s a query in the 12:35 pm email that’s right up your alley, but you don’t see the email until 1:00 pm, it will already be too late.
So you need to respond to the HARO queries literally within minutes.
Pro Tip: Here’s a tip about using HARO that I got from blogging guru Brandon Gaille. To make sure you’re never late responding to a query, set up an alarm on your smartphone for 5:35am, 12:35pm, and 5:35pm (EST), Monday through Friday.
Here’s an example of a HARO query I received:
If you were able to successfully answer that query you would get a link from Ontraport which has a Domain Authority of 64:
Not bad for a few minutes work!
2.8 Write Statistics Articles
Bloggers and journalists are always looking for hard facts that they can cite in their articles. It lends credibility to what they are saying. And they nearly always link back to the source of those facts.
So this is a good way to earn backlinks. And it’s more powerful than nearly all the other techniques I’ve reviewed in this article.
Why?
Because the other techniques will earn you just one backlink (broken link building gets you one backlink, HARO gets you one backlink, resource page link building gets you one backlink).
But there’s no limit to the number of backlinks a statistics article will earn.
There are basically two ways of writing statistics articles:
Go out and do original research and compile your own statistics
Aggregate already published statistics
Method #2 is obviously much quicker than Method #1: all you do is search the web for facts and figures on a particular topic and put them all together.
Here are some ways you can add value and make the article uniquely yours:
1. Organize the facts and figures into categories of information (instead of presenting them as an unordered list of statistics) with headings for each category.
2. Create infographics that display in visual form the facts and figures you present in written form.
Tips for creating infographics:
1) Tall ‘skyscraper’ infographics are impressive to look at but they are hard for bloggers to insert into their articles. Create much smaller infographics that illustrate just one point, and your infographics will get used more often (resulting in more backlinks).
2) Always include the URL of your website at the foot of the infographic. With some online infographic makers (e.g. Venngage and Canva) you can make the URL a clickable hyperlink.
2.9 Write Testimonials
This is one of the easiest ways to get high authority backlinks. Businesses are constantly looking for testimonials.
And because they want to show that the testimonial is genuine, they’ll almost always link back to you, sometimes with a DoFollow link.
But there’s a catch: they want real testimonials from genuine customers. So make a list of all the plugins you use on your site.
You could also make a list of all the SaaS (Software as a Service) products you use. Here are some popular ones:
Use MOZBar to check the domain authority of each site. Eliminate the sites with a DA of less than 30.
Then check to see if they publish testimonials. Use a search string such as: “company name” + testimonials or “company name” + “what our customers say”.
Then contact the website and offer your testimonial.
When writing your testimonial keep in mind these two key elements of a powerful testimonial. Include one or the other, and chances are your testimonial will be accepted:
Qualitative and personal – “this software solved months of frustration in an instant!”
Quantitative and objective – “your plugin resulted in a 300% increase in my organic traffic in just 60 days – awesome!”
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“Are you going to find your next client, or are they going to find you?”. Hopefully, you’ll have more of the latter than the former – it would make things much easier and would be a signal that you are reaping content marketing benefits fully. Business owners need to have a properly defined inbound marketing strategy – one that is a combination of content marketing, search and social media.
Content marketing is the very foundation on which a successful inbound strategy is built. Without content, there is nothing to share. If you don’t already have a My Business account with the Goog, by the way, you really should.
There are plenty of content marketing benefits to be had, no matter if you are marketing to consumers (B2C) or to businesses (B2B). Content marketing benefits include:
Increases the visibility of your brand
Been able to promote your high-quality content across your social channels is going to get your brand in front of as many eyes as possible and, crucially, the eyes of your target audience. This is possibly the most important of content marketing benefits.
Builds lasting relationships with your intended audience
Continually providing actionable content to your audience is another important benefit because they know they will be able to turn to you and your business when they need a solution to a particular problem.
Builds on your brand awareness and recognition
Small businesses in particular have the challenge of making their brand visible to their intended demographic. Making sure that you are getting high-quality content found, when somebody is looking to the answer to a question they may be having, can have a positive impact on your brand reputation.
Creates loyalty and trust, with both your current customers and prospects
When we offer content that is based on advice (like this post), education and/or useful solutions based on the two caveats of it being free and has no sales pitch is going to build trust between your business and potential customers. Relationships that have a strong foundation in trust are much more likely to move away from content and into a more profitable relationship.
Content marketing builds credibility and authority
Service based businesses, that is businesses that don’t sell a product (digital or physical) succeed or fail based on their expertise and how well they communicate this expertise to their audience. If you are able to produce content that shows that you don’t just how to provide a solution, but also that you can then this is going to help build your credibility and authority in one fell swoop.
Shows you and your business as being an industry expert
This ties into the content marketing benefit outlined above, because once that you have proven your expertise your readers are going to naturally turn to the content that you put out when seeking answers to their questions.
Increases traffic for your website to improve lead generation
One of the top content marketing benefits is generating and increasing inbound leads (warm leads) – these are always much more fruitful than cold calling or emailing prospects (cold leads). Creating more content (obviously, high-quality content) for your site is going to create a larger digital footprint – sites with just a posts or pages are going to find it very difficult to generate organic search listing positions.
Creating properly optimised content that either answers a question, or provides a solution, means that you are going to be much more likely to rank higher in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). This in turn this is going to help generate more organic leads and more opportunities for people to become leads.
Opens a channel of communication through social shares and comments
As content is shared, promoted and hopefully creates conversation, you can begin to connect and engage with people that have shared your content. This will provide opportunity for you to answer further questions, enhance your brand and further improve your image as a trusted source of qualified, helpful information.
Helps customers make a purchase decision more quickly
Purchase decisions in the digital world begin with a search. If your content leads people in the right direction, they are far more likely to engage. Done correctly, content marketing can move potential customers their purchasing decision at their own pace but at the same time with more certainty. When ready to follow through and make that purchase, your business is most likely to be the one that they turn to and the decision to buy is easier.
Provides value with no strings attached
If you are not familiar with the concept of Giver’s Gain, it is the idea of helping people grow their business without you having an ulterior motive. Content marketing takes the concept of Giver’s Gain to higher heights. You help people out without expecting anything in return. Why? It helps make your business much more approachable and people are more likely to feel very comfortable with you when it comes time for them to choose a paid solution.
With all of these content marketing benefits taken into consideration, it’s little wonder that a 2018 report states that 74% of online marketers tend to prioritise an inbound lead generation approach to marketing. In addition to this, businesses are almost 4 times more likely to see a higher return on investment than they would with outbound lead generation. Let Geeky Designs have a look at your SEO.
One of the best practices for gaining exposure for your business is having a marketing strategy that incorporates proven social media best practices. Obviously, the very best way is to do so without draining your budget.
The average person spends, on average, 3+ hours plus each day on social media. In fact, roughly 74% of online adults browse social media with Facebook seeing the most activity.
With so many social networking platforms out in the world, what is the best way to maximise your own efforts? There’s no need for it to be overly difficult either, you just need to keep these social media best practices in mind.
Set Measurable Goals for Your Social Media Best Practices Strategy
You should start by identifying just how you want your social media efforts you gain more traction and exposure for your business. Establishing measurable goals is going to help you in setting objectives that can be tracked. This in turn will help you identify what’s working, what needs to change and allows you to focus.
Common strategic social goals and objectives include:
Building Your Brand Awareness: This involves getting people to know your name and give the public a positive perception of you and your business.
Increase Your Customer Base: Drive traffic to your social media pages or your website if you have one.
Bolster Your Customer Service: Help existing customers with your services or products, engage with potential new customers or clients by answering questions.
Choose the Right Social Media Networks
It’s no big secret that online activities like engaging on social platforms is time consuming. Trying to manage all of them is not likely going to help and it’s just going to dilute your resources and take away from channels that you might have more success with.
Us e your target customer as a starting point and the networks they are more likely to be engaging with. The ability to narrow down your social media best practices strategy will give that extra time to cerate the content that your followers want to see.
Be Sure to Brand Your Social Media Profile Pages
Your company image needs to consistent across all channels, websites and emails. This not only builds you a stronger brand but always boosting brand awareness. Make it as easy as possible for people for customers to recognise your brand by maintaining your business image across the following areas:
Logo. You should always the same logotype for your brand. Your logo is a massive visual aid that is going to stick in the minds of your audience.
Images. Other images and photos can also be customised across your channels and also act a visual identifier, further strengthening your brand.
Business Description. A clear, easy to read and understand “about us” also needs to be consistent across your online presence. It’s important to get to the point using the fewest amount of words. The reader needs to be able to grasp who you are and what you do, quickly.
Each platform has size specifications when it comes to profile photographs and cover images. Read the requirements and find what fits for each.
