Those days when you could just put a site up, spam it with a ton of links and rank well are looong gone. In the last few years with the advancement of Google´s algorithm and the rise of the Social Networks came a time where you can (nearly) only get results in the search engines if you:
Provide value
If you have something unique, fresh and useful it´s easy to do and you can gain great visibility with a few viral content pieces of your ground breaking idea. But what if you are trying to rank in an established industry with a less unique idea? You should reach back to the age-old craft of link building. In 2014, you can only do this with methods that won´t trigger Google´s anger. You should definitely avoid getting spammy “dofollow” comment links, do NOT buy bulk paid links with the same anchor text and forget about directory submissions (aka. link farms). These methods will get your hard-built site banned from Google and be awfully contra-productive. Here is the problem with real, valuable and honest links: you have to earn them, opposed to easy and hurtful links what you can get.
Here are 4 ways to earn such links, with providing value:
1. Infographics
It takes a little time and work to collect relevant and very interesting informations about your industry, but it can be tremendously rewarding. First gather 4-5 metrics about what you do and how you´ll help your customers. Write 1-2 lines of descriptive text to each metric then hire a graphic designer to create a nice infographic based on the data you collected. Make sure your data is VERY interesting before you send it to a graphic designer because (this is very important) mediocre won´t get shared. Test it´s “wow effect” on your family or colleagues and if they are feeling an urge to share it, then you know it´s good. Make your sites name and URL clearly visible on all your infographics, so if someone displays it on their own sites readers will get curious about your site and will enter your URL manually. Encourage social sharing of your content, put FB, G+, Twitter, Reddit buttons around it. Another very important sharing form of infographics is letting other bloggers embed it on their sites. You can do this by displaying an easily copyable image link below the graphic with an “alt” attribute that is relevant to your site and the infographic too. Eg: Copy and paste this link and show this grahpic on your site! This will take some resources and bandwidth from your server if it appears on a very popular site ,but the value of the links will push your site up in Google.
2. Writing Awesome Content
One of the best ways for your site to get links, shares and ultimately traffic is by providing value with information that is very interesting and useful. Everyone is an expert in something and probably you are an expert in your industry. Let´s start by writing down a few titles for
Many bloggers make the mistake of wasting their time on bad content and spit out multiple posts a day. The most important rule in content marketing is “Quality over quantity”. Make it only 1-3 posts every week, but put everything you got in them. A valuable post is not slapped together in 30 minutes, it´s researched for a few hours, written for a few hours, rewritten for a few hours. Good posts analyize one topic in detail and give very useful information.
Types of posts that work the best:
1. How-to: Tell your readers how to do a specific thing
2. Lists: Give tips collected in a list. People love to read lists because it´s easier to follow.
3. Guides: Prepare a very detailed guide to your readers about a topic.
4. Honest and thought-provoking data and info about your business and yourself. People will connect with you through your content and will be more likely to buy.
There are of course a million other ways to make your audience engage and get their shares and links but these are the basics that you could use to start. Come up with your own ways of creative content and do everything to engage your audience. Ask for their advice or insight in the comments. Ask them for a good name for a new feature in your software and give a free licence for the best 3 etc… Being creative, experimenting and make great content. Do good for your readers and they will do good for you by sharing your content in their audiences with a link to you.
3. Guest Blogging
You can also get very valuable visibility and links from fellow website owners by contributing on their site. To do this you should already have a good number of posts on your blog that show to other bloggers your expertise in your industry. If you have at least 5-7 high quality posts you can start researching similar blogs in google. Use phrases like industry+”guest post by” or +”guest blogger” and similar variations. If you already know a few blogs that allows guest blogging in your niche than look at some guest blogger and connect them for a potential post. Make a list about the potential blogs and blog owners you would like to reach out to and read some of their work to get a picture of their audience. When you contact the blog owners be very symphatetic and tell them what you love about their work. Attach a link to the top 3 posts you ever wrote and suggest a few titles and topics you could explore in your guest posts and write about how that could be great for his/her audience. You´ll likely get at least a negative response from each one, but a good percentage of them will reply positively and accept your guest post. If you can put your link in your author bio and don´t write about your business, just provide useful information, don´t sell in your guest post.
When you research for possible guest blogging opportunities don´t always look for blogs on your level, try to be aggressive and reach at least one level up, or even be ballsy and try to ask the big dogs. If they see that your content is valuable and you are symphatetic enough you´ll get accepted. Always try to start out good and give more than you ask for. This way you can build a good relationship with a few bloggers and get opportunities for more guest posts on their sites.
4. Get Links from Customers
If you already have a few customers you can set up a reward system for testimonials and rewards. Most companies do this just to get testimonials that they can put on your site but you can twist this method and ask them to write a review about your service on their blog (if they have one) and link to you. You can either ask them to this for free but you´ll have higher chances to get links if you provide something yourself in exchange for this. A few extra features, a little discount or even a month of service for free. This will reduce your income a very little amount but the quality links will outweigh that in the long run. The additional upside to this is that your customers who take part in this promotion will be more engaged by you and more connected to your service. The retention for these customers will have a huge increase.
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