SEO can be a challenge.

Especially if you’re not sure where to start.

But, if you want to stand out from the other billion or so websites on the internet, it’s important to get your SEO right.

With your website, there are things you can do both on and off each of your web pages to optimize your search rankings. You might be familiar with many of the on page techniques, but off page SEO is often just as important.

If you’re trying to improve your rankings, keep reading for a look at the ultimate off page SEO checklist.

Why Off Page SEO Matters

When you think about SEO, a few things probably come to mind:

• Keywords
• Content
• Proper formatting and tagging

There’s more to it than that, but those are a few of the things that need attention if you want to improve on page SEO.

But there’s another side to search optimization: off page SEO.

Off page SEO includes all of the little things you do outside your website that affects your rankings. In some cases, off page search optimization is just as important, if not more so, than on page SEO.

Off page SEO is, essentially, how your brand is viewed by others and the degree of visibility you have across the web and other channels. It can include anything from backlinks to your customer service reputation, to social media activity.

Improving your image of the page can improve your brand’s image and awareness, making potential visitors more familiar with your organization.

Links are Still King

One of the most important things you can do for your SEO is to start building a robust catalog of backlinks.

Links to your website from others are a key ranking factor with Google and other search engines. But backlinks have an important effect on off page SEO too.

The great thing about getting backlinks through guest posting or other types of mentions is that they help build awareness of your brand and give you credibility in your space.

If you’re not building links, it’s time to get started.

Build a Network

Another great way to improve off page SEO is by networking with other players in your industry.

Much like link building, creating a network can help you gain recognition and authority in your industry. Building a network and being visible can help set you up as a recognized player in your space.

Tap Into Social Media

Though social media doesn’t have an immediate, direct effect on SEO, it does have some very positive long-term benefits.

The personal nature of social media makes it a prime place to directly connect with your audience, establishing relationships that are tough to build through a website or other means.

Being present on social media also lets people know you’re there and you know what you’re talking about. And, the more familiar people are with your product or service, the more likely they are to look you up when they have a need you can meet.

Be Present on the Web

Think about some of the biggest brands out there … Coca-cola, Nike, McDonald’s … what do they all have in common?

Everyone knows who they are.

While you probably don’t have the budget to run Super Bowl ads and show up just about anywhere your customers might appear, you can be present and visible on the web with relatively little investment.

Forums like Reddit and information hubs like Quora are great places to connect with potential customers and establish yourself as a known player with quality products and services.

Customer Service

You don’t have to look far to see how disastrous poor customer service can be for a company.

Unfortunately, organizations with great customer service don’t seem to make the news quite as often, but their customers sure know who they are. Seven out of ten consumers are actually more likely to spend more money with a company that has good customer service.

Customers that have a good experience also tend to share their experience, getting the word out about your brand and raising awareness of how great your service is.

Tap Into Other Content Types

While words are the backbone of the internet and a vital component to SEO, they’re not the only form of content out there.

Video and images are an increasingly important part of the content on the web. Video of all types has exploded in popularity over the past few years.

Tapping into the popularity of video on popular platforms like YouTube and Facebook is an excellent way to raise awareness of your brand and drive traffic back to your site.

If you’re just getting started, don’t over complicate it, creating video content is easier than you think.

Cultivate a Great Brand Image

Your brand’s image is vital to your success with SEO, both on and off the page.

The more customers who know and trust your brand, the more business you’re likely to attract. The fact is, most consumers are much more likely to do business with companies they know and trust.

The same goes for being found and recognized online. The more familiar potential customers are with your name, the more likely they’ll be to navigate to your site.

Your Off Page SEO Checklist

SEO takes time and effort. Success doesn’t come overnight.

Whether you’re trying to optimize on page elements or off the page factors, it’s important to put in the work and be consistent.

This off page SEO checklist is a good place to start, but there are many more factors that may give your rankings a boost too. Don’t be afraid to get creative, experiment and start your own checklist.

Check out the rest of the blog for more tips and tricks on SEO both on and off the page.

2018 is seeing the rapid emergence of several striking content marketing trends. Live video is adding an entirely new dimension of immediacy and authenticity to the content marketing landscape.

SEO experts are placing as much focus on customer experience. More emphasis is also being placed on backlinks and keywords this year.

There is a continuing shift toward the high-quality, long-form content that users and search engines prefer. This is bringing in-depth blog posts and articles to more content marketing campaigns.

On the rise in 2018:

1. Live Video

Live video refers to the process of digitally broadcasting a live event without edits. It made a big splash in 2016 and gained momentum in 2017. Live video marketing may make its greatest gains this year.

You can use live video for a key product launch or an influencer Q&A. Live video brings with it the atmosphere of high excitement, authenticity, and immediacy that only a live platform can.

2. Customer Journey Mapping and CRO

Content marketing campaigns in 2018 are continuing to evolve toward greater specificity. There is an accelerating stream of prospective customer data available to site owners and marketers.

This transition is now reaching new heights of precision. Emergence of customer journey mapping and conversion rate optimization is a confirmation of this.

Customer journey mapping involves creating visualizations, often in the form of infographics. The visualizations track the entire path or journey that customers take on their way to a sale.

CRO, which goes hand-in-hand with customer journey mapping, focuses on the onsite leg of the customer journey. CRO employs sophisticated analytics.

CRO can isolate the most common and effective click-paths that customers take as they navigate your site on their way to a sale.

Customer journey mapping and CRO reveals alternative ways to organize a site’s content, links, and pages. They can match customer needs while increasing conversion rates.

3. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)

No one expects the typical digital ad in 2018 to plunge you into a virtual world of the product or service at hand. However, there is every sign that AR and VR will begin to make real headway this year.

Site owners and marketers can no longer ignore the sheer wealth of possibility that AR and VR present. And no one wants to be playing catchup when these two new modes of marketing take off.

The more technically feasible AR may take the lead with mobile ads that use the idea of surfacing content.

But don’t be surprised if you also see a few bold, experimental VR marketing campaigns this year, one or two of which may become breakout successes.

4. Privacy-Conscious Campaigns

There has been a rapid rise of ad-blockers in recent years. This is due in part to the increasing discomfort that internet users are experiencing as an ever-increasing number of ads. Sites seem to know (or think they know) users’ interests based on their past activity on other sites.

However, many sites are now blocking ad-blockers, leading to a tense stalemate. In an effort to offer both users and site owners a way out, Google is in the process of adding a new feature to Chrome.

The feature gives users the option to pay the site owner a small fee through Google Contributor to browse their site ad-free.

Many site owners and content marketers will make adjustments this year to make their ad campaigns. They will be seeking to reassure users that they don’t need an ad-blocker to address their privacy concerns.

It’s also worth considering the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance. It is bound to impact the content marketing landscape by limiting consumer data collection in certain contexts.

5. Customer-Experience Centered SEO

There was a time when SEO was all about keyword-density and backlinks. Site owners struggled to pack as many keywords as they possibly could into their pages while using any means possible to get backlinks that would bump up their PageRank.

Eventually, it became clear to Google the cream was no longer rising to the top under this approach. Google discovered searchers weren’t always finding what they were looking for, great content.

This is not to say that Google has now ceased to hold keywords and backlinks in high regard.

Most SEO experts agree that Google’s algorithms have begun to penalize ‘keyword stuffing.” Google is rewarding sites and pages that provide an excellent customer experience. They are looking for content that includes rich, long-form, naturally flowing content.

Guided by Google’s gradual transition, site owners and digital marketers in 2018 are continuing to adjust their approach to SEO.

6. Data-Driven Content

Data-driven marketers are adopting new solutions to respond to consumer demands.

Despite all the new marketing models, two of the most enduring digital marketing mainstays are holding their ground as they continue to evolve.

Google’s algorithms are placing more focus than ever on customer experience, and SEO experts are following their lead.

The content marketing space is continuing to shift its focus toward long-form blog posts and articles. There is more focus on a wide spectrum of naturally occurring keywords. This is inspiring content that speaks to the richness and complexity of in-depth treatments of important topics.

Content Marketing Trends to Look for This Year

As highlighted above, several striking digital marketing trends are taking hold this year. There is increased demand for the immediacy, authenticity and sheer excitement of live video. The demand is driving greater demand for live marketing events.

Customer journey mapping and CRO are helping streamline sites and apps. They are helping businesses to match their customers’ precise needs and purchase-paths. The future promise of content marketing is inspiring bold.

SEO continues to be the single most important marketing factor to be aware of in order to build a brand online.

And why not?

Google is fielding almost 5 billion searches a day on its engine. Beyond that, search engines direct nearly 70% of all traffic any given website will get.

That means that making sure your content is up to snuff with what platforms like Google, Bing, and others want to see is paramount to your success.

The tricky part is that SEO is a moving target. Every month it seems like Google is making adjustments to its algorithm and by year’s end, we find vastly different things websites should be optimizing around in comparison to the year before.

To help give you stable SEO footing in the new year, below, our team has compiled a list of SEO trends for 2019, you should pay close attention to.

1. Being Integrated with Google’s Products Will Win You More Favor

There’s no bigger name in the search engine game than Google. Because of that, it’s important to play nice with the search behemoth if you’re hoping to rank well in 2019 and beyond.

Low hanging fruit that could win you some favor with Google, particularly in the coming year, is getting integrated with its product suite.

Is your brick-and-motor store registered with Google My Business? Do you have a Google Plus Page? What about a YouTube Channel?

Really taking the time to get your brand in nice and cozy with Google’s umbrella of products will score you more brownie points as Google continues to push the importance of its tools.

2. Video

Video has been a 2018 SEO smash! And guess what? It ain’t slowing down in 2019.

If your company doesn’t have video built into its content marketing plan yet, start building! People are watching billions of hours of video a day on YouTube, millions on Facebook, and countless more across Instagram and Twitter.

Not only does that mean tremendous opportunity for your brand to engage organically with customers, but it also means that Google is going to be keeping a closer eye on your brand’s video presence and rewarding those that are delivering content in the mediums that internet users prefer.

Not sure where to get started with your videos? Keep things simple and just repurpose your existing blog content into short video content that communicates the same information. You can then build your video plan from there.

3. Voice Search

Voice search started getting its legs this year but will probably be among the biggest SEO trends to contend with in 2019. Not only are more people using devices like Alexa and Google Home to search the web but the way they phrase things with their voice is vastly different from the way they type them out.

What does that mean for you?

It means that if you’ve been optimizing all of your website’s content around keyword metrics that are built on how users type, when they switch to voice search, the value of those keywords you’ve built around will go down and new, similar keywords will go up.

That could mean needing to revamp your whole SEO strategy.

4. Social Media Will Start Get More Love

Google has been publically wishy-washy in how they look at social media to help determine the relevance of your brand.

While we still don’t have concrete direction on how Google weighs your social presence into its algorithm, we do have a strong suspicion that as mobile use goes and social media adoption continue to explode, Google will need to weigh social presence more heavily.

To get ahead of that trend, start investing some time in building your brand’s presence on social media channels relevant to your audience. Then, share interesting content that provides value consistently.

You’ll find that if you do that and interact with your followers, your social media traction will start building fast.

5. Paid Search Will Start Gaining on Organic Search

Web users are smart and to that end, have gotten very good at ignoring paid placement Google throws at the top of its search engine.

That’s bad news for Google because their bread and butter is serving ads. That’s bad news for you too because if you’ve relied on organic traffic, you should expect that Google is going to look to fix its paid advertising problem at your expense.

Watch for Google in 2019 to get more aggressive with its paid placement. It could end up dominating more of search engine page’s real estate and could even start blending in better with organic results.

6. Trying to Find Value From Position 0

The most coveted spot you can have on a search engine results page is position 1. After all, position 1 gets about 33% of all traffic around a particular keyword. Almost double what position 2 gets.

But among 2019’s SEO trends will be Google putting more weight on position 0. Position 0 is essentially a widget that pops up above position 1 that aims to answer a searcher’s query by pulling information from your website without actually making a searcher click through to your page.

You see position 0 pop up a lot today but we anticipate seeing it pop up a whole lot more in 2019.

So how can you get value out of a keyword that’s showcasing a position 0 result, even if you’re ranked high? That’s a question marketers will need to answer to survive going forward with SEO.

7. Quality Content Will Still Reign Supreme

Rounding out our SEO trends for 2019 is a fact that’s held true for a long time now and will continue to gain momentum in the new year. That fact is that tricking Google into thinking your page is relevant to users will become even less effective and having awesome content that provides value to readers will continue to go up in stock.

So keep plugging away and making incredible, hyper-targeted content. Keep looking to get high-quality backlinks to that content.

Do that, and you’ll find success.

Wrapping Up Major SEO Trends for 2019

There you have it! 7 SEO trends we think will help define 2019’s search engine game.

Do our predictions make you worry? If they do, you’re not alone.

Fortunately, our team can help. At BackLinks.com we help businesses like yours buy and sell high-quality links that will help keep your content relevant online for years to come.

Learn more about the links we provide to our customers.

Did you know that your SEO campaign depends on more than just keywords?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) gives all businesses an opportunity to take advantage of the massive amounts of Google search queries that occur every day.

The right SEO campaign can boost your website’s visibility in a powerful way. It can also send conversion rates soaring.

A lot of new SEO marketers spend most of their time honing their keywords. While keywords are extremely important, external links can also play a role in your SEO performance.

What are external links and why do they matter? In this post, we’ll answer this question and give you tips to improve your outgoing link strategy.

What Are External Links?

Nearly every website on the internet is filled with links. These links may direct visitors to other pages on that same website.

Others send visitors to outside sites. These are called external links.

In most cases, these links are designed to be helpful. External links may support evidence or facts, give visitors additional information, or advertise a specific product.

They act much like a conduit for relevant information, giving visitors the option to have a better user experience.

When you visit a website, you may not pay too much attention to these links. Or you may pay a lot of attention, depending on the types of links a website incorporates.

Whatever the case, external links can impact how your site visitors engage with your content. They particularly influence your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.

External Links and SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing technique designed to boost your visibility on search engine platforms like Bing or Google. When you implement SEO, you give your content a greater chance of earning a high Google ranking.

Higher rankings automatically boost your odds of getting more organic traffic, as searchers are more likely to click on listings that appear at the top of search results.

Many first-time SEO marketers overlook the value of links when they are crafting their SEO campaigns. But external links make all the difference when it comes to optimizing your online content.

Domain Authority

When Google assigns rankings to sites, it looks at a lot of factors. One of these factors is domain authority, a ranking signal crafted originally by Moz.

Domain authority is a number on a scale of 0-100 that rates how authoritative your domain is. Naturally, sites with higher domain authorities will rank more highly.

You can build DA by acquiring external links to your site. The more third-party sites link to your site, the greater your credibility–at least, in Google’s eyes!

In this sense, external links to your site function like votes or bids of popularity. Sites often get external links because their content is authoritative and relevant, such as a news platform or a social media giant.

Google does not look only at domain authority when ranking pages. It also assesses the value of your content and your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Nonetheless, a high DA can be your secret to earning more organic traffic.

Outbound Links

External links to your site, also known as backlinks, aren’t the only links that are valuable when it comes to SEO. The outgoing links you have on your own site play a role in optimization.

In general, it’s wise to include at least two or three external links per 500-750 words of content on your site. This is particularly important if you maintain a blog.

If you use WordPress for your website, you may have already installed the popular SEO plugin called Yoast. This plugin will urge you to include external links on specific pages (in addition to internal links).

Outbound links may not automatically boost your SEO rankings. But they can actually help you acquire backlinks, much like tagging someone on Instagram may earn you a follower.

They also support the world of SEO in general. Outbound links can associate your site with other sites. They can also expand and connect the internet itself, making Google’s job easier.

(Yoast’s motto, after all, is “SEO for Everyone”).

For this reason, it’s important to incorporate relevant, frequent outbound links into your content.

Do-Follow vs. No-Follow Links

When it comes to those outbound links on your own site, you have the option to label these as “do-follow” or “no-follow.”

In general, whenever you insert a general outbound link on your site, it is automatically a “do-follow” link. This means that Google can see it and catalog it as a backlink for that specific site.

When you embed a do-follow external link in your site, you’re essentially giving “link juice” to that site. You are, in essence, contributing to their domain authority.

Some site owners, however, will label external links as “no-follow.” This means that the links will appear, but they will not be trackable by Google. No-follow links do nothing for another site’s SEO or visibility.

In general, sites may implement no-follow links when they don’t want to give other sites “link juice.”

For example, let’s say that a site may want to reference a specific product. However, they may not have a policy for actively linking to promotional items. They would then implement a no-follow external link.

For the purposes of your own SEO, we recommend including do-follow external links only.

Final Thoughts: External Links and SEO

So what are external links?

External links are any links that send visitors to an outside site. The right external links will support the information presented on your website and send visitors to reliable outside sources.

In this sense, the external links you have on your website can boost your odds of acquiring backlinks, the type of external link that can contribute to your domain authority. In general, a higher DA can elevate your odds of earning a higher Google ranking for specific searches.

Your external link strategy should, therefore, include the outbound links on your own site as well as the backlinks directing to yours.

At Backlinks.com, we love helping all of our clients achieve the domain authority they deserve. Click here to learn more about getting more high-quality backlinks!

Curious about internal linking?

You’re not alone. Only a handful of people know exactly how Google determines the value of your internal links. Those same people know how your links factor into Google’s algorithms to determine your page rank.

Google is, of course, the uncontested search-engine leader. If you want to increase your page ranking, you need to follow their SEO recommendations.

Unfortunately, they’re notoriously tight-lipped about the exact nature of their algorithms.

They only paint the broad strokes for us. They leave the rest for us to determine for ourselves. Unfortunately, that leaves many people like you in the dark.

So what can you do about it?

You come to people like us. In the following article, you’ll find recommendations from the smartest people in the business.

Follow their strategies and you’ll improve your page rank overnight. Read on to learn more.

What is Internal Linking?

Let’s begin with a little background to ensure we’re on the same page. An internal link connects one page of your website to another page of your same website. In other words, the source domain and target domain are the same.

Your visitors use these links to navigate to other useful pages on your site. If you use them intelligently, you’re guaranteed a longer overall dwell time from each user. Search engines factor dwell times into their algorithms. They use them to determine your search engine page ranking (SERP).

The links also help search engines define the architecture and hierarchy of your site. Google says the number of internal links pointing to a particular page signals the relative importance of that page. On the same note, these links distribute page authority and page ranking power in your site.

How does all this happen, exactly? Well, the jury is still out on that one. Much like other SEO matters, major search engines hint to internal links being a factor in their algorithms.

Unfortunately, they’re unwilling to share exactly how links factor in. It’s left to us to figure out the rest through trial and error. The following sections are based on the results of thousands of tests from dozens of digital gurus.

Build Tons of Content

Search engines mark you down if you have too many internal links on any single page. They similarly mark you down when you have too many internal links on any given domain. What is an appropriate amount, you ask?

We’ll get into that in a little bit. For now, all that’s important is that you know not to overstuff your pages with internal links. You should also know that the more appropriate internal links your site have, the higher your SERPs.

It follows that the only way to have a ton of internal links is to build a ton of content. You don’t need spreadsheets or pie charts to figure out the optimal number. You need just need a roadmap for your content production.

How do you come up with new ideas for hundreds of pieces of relevant, engaging content for your audience? Simple. You cheat.

Check out sites like SemRush that let you spy on your competition. Figure out what content is working for them, and create similar, better content.

Approach the topics from new angles. Give new insight into old ideas. Fill in gaps your competitors might have missed.

Then create a content calendar for yourself, so you’ll never run out of ideas.

Link Using Anchor Text

Avoid images as your primary source of links. Does that mean that you can’t use image links? No. As long as they are correctly alt-tagged and not the primary source of links, we recommend using image links.

Instead of image links, use textual links. Write your content naturally. Then choose a fragment of your organic sentence as the anchor text.

The fragment should be no more than five words, numbers, or a combination thereof. Don’t overthink it. Highlight it. Link to it. And have done with it.

Pages to Avoid

When it comes to internal links, all pages are not built equally. Some pages, top-level pages should be avoided. These include pages like your homepage, about us page, contact us page, etc.

These pages naturally acquire all kinds of links from navigation bars. When you link to internal pages, tie your new content to pages deep within your site. Think cornerstone content and popular pages.

Cornerstone content focuses on fundamental topics. These topics relate to most of the other topics on your site. For instance, if you have a health and fitness site, a cornerstone topic may be “How Your Metabolism Really Works.”

Popular pages are just that. They’re the pages most viewed by your audience. Use metrics to determine which of your pages make the cut.

Boost Page Authority

Search engines place weight on links coming from sites with a high domain authority (DA).

In other words, backlinks from leaders in your industry will increase your page ranking. Backlinks from common Joe’s, on the other hand, won’t affect your page ranking.

Well, the same can be said of internal links. All pages aren’t created equal. Some pages on your site have more DA than others.

The pages most lauded by your viewers have a higher DA than your other pages. If you want to boost the page rank of new content, link to it from your pages with high DA.

Note: Be aware that page rank and DA are two distinctly different things. If you need more clarity between the differences, check out our article on Page Rank vs. Domain Authority

Some thought leaders suggest links at the top of your page hold more weight than links further down. Consider placing your new internal links toward the top of your pages.

Also, Moz suggests that no page on your site should ever be more than three clicks away. Build your pages in an interconnected web, easily accessible from any direction.

What’s Next?

Well, have you had enough of link building? Internal linking doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need a byzantine strategy to be successful.

Start by creating a content building roadmap. Mark your onramps, exits, and main thoroughfares. Then connect the dots.

If you enjoyed this article, take five minutes to check out our other great link-building articles. Do it now while it’s still fresh in your mind.

So long and good luck!

Is your SEO company using digital public relations in your overall strategy? If not, you’re missing out on a valuable SEO tool for you and your clients.

Public relations isn’t just pitching and traditional media relations anymore and that mindset is outdated. The truth is, the internet has changed just about every industry an that includes public relations.

80 percent of the U.S. is online nearly every day, and in 1995 only one percent of the world had access to the internet. Things have changed in the world, and in public relations, so it’s time your SEO agency do the same.

Why Do I Need Digital Public Relations?

Back in the twentieth century, public relations and marketing had very little, if any, crossover. Public relations professionals focused almost solely on media relations and earned media, while marketers had different goals.

This has all changed since the rise of the internet, online media and social media. Now it’s crucial that marketing and communications efforts be fully integrated. If you’re an SEO agency, this means using public relations as a way to boost a client’s website and drive more traffic. After all, the goal of public relations is to generate positive attention around a brand, so why shouldn’t this be used to gain website traffic?

Here are three benefits of including digital public relations strategies in your SEO business:

1. Press Releases

Digital press releases are a gold mine of backlinks that will send people right to your website. Have your client’s PR professionals work with an SEO team to link to appropriate pages throughout the press release. This contributes to your network of links on the web, boosts SEO and sends more people directly to the client’s website, even if the press release is posted on an external site.

2. Pitch Key Words

Pitching isn’t just reserved for traditional media anymore and it still has a valuable place in a digital PR strategy.

Again, this only works if your SEO, marketing and PR teams are working together. Have this new team craft media pitches together. The PR professional will know how to get the reporters attention, and the SEO team can help insert keywords into the pitch that you want the reporter to use in the article. These keywords will ideally end up in your article later on and help drive more traffic.

3. Dive Into Influencers

Bloggers and influencers now have a major impact on public relations, even more so than some of the most famous news outlets.

Use your PR professional’s pitching skills to reach all kinds of new media on the internet, including bloggers, social media influencers and more. When a blogger mentions your site online, it’s helping to create the valuable web of links to your site that can give your client’s SEO a boost. Again, some bloggers generate more traffic than the nations biggest news sites, so pitching to them help you build brand recognition much faster.

4. Use Key Personnel

Using key personnel in a company as experts is a great PR strategy, and it’s one that’s easy to combine with an SEO strategy. There are tons of reputable outlines online (such as Forbes) that accept contributor posts from experts in nearly every field.

Use these opportunities to have C-level executives write (or ghostwrite for them) helpful pieces that can be pitched and shared with top media. These articles are a great opportunity to include backlinks and keywords that will help SEO strategy, while making your company and staff look like experts.

Hopefully by now you’ve realized the benefits of digital public relations. While there are tons of benefits, business people know it’s not always easy to shake up the way things are done at businesses and agencies.

Here’s How to Integrate

Integrating your PR, marketing and SEO strategies doesn’t have to be a long and painful process. Here are three steps to take to integrate digital public relations into your SEO and marketing team:

1. Blur the Department Lines

If your client has extreme department lines, encourage them to try and blend their marketing and communications team into one. This is easier said than done, but removing specific “marketing” and “communications” titles can help employees understand that they need to work together.

2. Switch up Seating

This one might seem obvious, but it’s hard for marketing and PR teams to work together if they’re not sitting close by. Switch up seating to help encourage more collaboration and communication. These are both key when you’re trying to integrate departments.

It’ll be difficult to integrate different digital strategies if the employees feel they can’t bring up ideas or issues to other departments.

3. Encourage Team Bonding

When you’re switching things up on employees, morale can sometimes drop. It’s crucial to keep employees happy by encouraging team bonding.

Host events outside of work to help employees get to know one another outside of the work setting. These settings are more casual and less pressured, so they can develop good communication skills that will transfer to the office.

4. Do Cross-Disciplinary Training

PR, Marketing, and SEO are similar in the sense that they’re all industries that are constantly training. Because of that, the professionals in each field might not be up-to-date on the latest trends in each, and may not fully understand how they can work together.

Encourage your clients to host occasional training events or lunch-and-learns educate everyone on how the industries can work together to boost the bottom line. As an agency, you can even do this for them by hosting webinars or other virtual educational tools.

Want More Information?

Digital PR and SEO both bring in great benefits for companies, but they work better together. As we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of great PR strategies like press releases and pitching that can bring businesses an even bigger ROI when SEO and marketing pros have a voice.

But there are tons of ways to improve website ranking with quality links. Learn more about buying links here.

The Internet is full of terms the average person is definitely not familiar with. And it totally makes sense! What are backlinks? What is SEO? What about CTR or CTA?

Someone who doesn’t really know about the online marketing strategies or technology, in general, can get really lost. Luckily, we are here to help once again!

Today we are talking about backlinks, their SEO value, and how you can make them work to your advantage. Keep reading for their definition, all the tips you need to know, and how you can start creating your web empire today!

First of All What Are Backlinks?

We hate to break it to you, but the backlink definition is much simpler than you think it is. Backlinks are just incoming links to your website. Literally, that’s all.

Think it this way. You have published an article on your website and someone finds it interesting. So far so good. However, since they believe that you are a reliable source of useful information, they decide to put a link on their website so more people can read what you’ve written.

This is a backlink.

Backlinks have been around for many years and they were a huge Google ranking factor. Today, although the list of the things that Google takes into consideration when ranking a website has grown, backlinks are still important.

So, in case you wondered, yes, you still need them.

Backlinks Terminology

Now that we have covered what backlinks are, it’s time to move on to the glossary associated with them.

After all, every digital trend that has been around for quite some time, comes with a slang language we need to get the handle on. Here are the backlinks terms you are going to come across when you start using them:

Link Juice

When people refer to “link juice” they basically mean that a webpage is linking to another webpage without any special tags that we are about to cover in a minute. With that being told, a simple link passes “link juice” from one website to another.

This happens because, by default, all the links that someone adds to their blog, are do-follow links.

If someone doesn’t want to pass that “link juice” and link to a website without giving them the ability to climb up that Google search results, they just add a special tag to do it. This tag is called “No-Follow.”

No-Follow Tag

There are cases when a website is linking to a webpage and they do not want to pass that link juice we mentioned above. It may sound disappointing, but many bloggers want to give credit to a competitor but not help them rank well in Google search results at the same time.

This is when they use the no-follow tag.

However, the good news is that no-follow links can prove quite helpful too. Use the tag when you are linking to an unreliable website. For example, enable it when someone posts a link as a comment at the end of your post.

In other words, a no-follow link will tell Google that it should not rank the website you are linking to because you simply do not trust it.

Click here for more information on no-follow links!

Low-Quality Backlinks

Low-quality backlinks usually come from automated, spam websites that are not considered trustworthy. And yes, porn websites are included.

If you get many low-quality backlinks, Google can penalize you and, sooner or later, associate you with those spam web pages. And you definitely not want that!

Anchor Text

This one is so simple that we are going to need a simple sentence to explain. An anchor text is just the text that is used for hyperlinks.

Something like “Click here” or “Read more” can definitely be considered an anchor text, but if you want to rank for particular keywords, you can ask a website to link you using an anchor text that you have provided.

Click here for a great post about getting the best anchor text!

Internal Links

This one is pretty simple. These are links within the same online directory, such as an article linking to another article in the same website. Interlinking is, again, great for SEO purposes, it can grow your pageviews, and it is also a piece of cake.

Backlinks and SEO Value

Now that you know the types of backlinks you can work with and the full backlink glossary, you need to know why you should actually bother.

Keep reading to find out!

1. Search Engine Ranking

We’re sure you already know that backlinks will help you get much better search engine rankings. However, since this is a full guide, we had to include this one too.

Think it this way: The more someone links to a specific page of yours, the higher this page will naturally rank with search engines. So, do not only try to promote just your homepage, but also great content that you have produced.

2. Faster Crawling

Search engines need some time to scan your website and determine whether it deserves to appear among the very first results or not. With backlinks, however, this process is accelerated.

When Website A links to a webpage of Website B, for example, search engines immediately crawl Website B to take a look at what it is all about. Without backlinks, this can take some more time –especially if we are talking about a new website.

3. You Want Referral Traffic

Referral traffic is a great way to grow. When a website links to another, there is a chance that it also gives away a part of their fans. After all, there is a reason why referral traffic has a low bounce rate.

How To Get Backlinks

So, now you know exactly what backlinks are and you have all the information someone needs about them. The only thing missing is how you can get them so you can rank better.

No need to worry! Just keep reading:

1. Write Great Content

It sounds simple, doesn’t it?

If you have a static website without any content, people will just not find anything that they can actually link to. On the other hand, if you generate good content, people will naturally link to them.

Pose as an authority. Do some research before you publish anything and make your content valuable and up-to-date. If you want to cover a topic that has been covered before, make sure you add something that has not been mentioned in the past.

Valuable content is always shareable and “link-able.”

2. Use Your Community

When you are working online, you are part of a great community that you can actually use in order to make your blog bigger!

Join forums, communities, and comment on other blogs that do not have the “no-follow” tag enabled. You will both reach new audiences and take your Google ranking to the next level at the same time.

3. Form Relationships

This community that we are talking about is made of real people. Try and create some bonds with other, fellow bloggers and talk about things that you have in common.

Ask them about a topic idea you might have, ask for a guest post you can publish on their platform and include a link at the end of it, and create a relationship in general.

Sooner or later, you will start helping each other!

Extra Tip: Use Us!

Now, it is easy to answer when someone asks you “What are backlinks?” You can even give them some advice on how they can get them. But it’s just when you actually do it when you realize it takes a lot of work.

This is where we come in to save the day!

If you are looking to build an amazing backlink network, we are here to help.

Content marketing is an amazing tool in 2018. With Google accounting for over 79% of all global search traffic and content marketing being one of the best ways to show up in search results, marketers everywhere are onboard with content marketing.

It’s not just bloggers or YouTube stars who are using content marketing in their business strategies either. 76% of B2B marketers use blogging as part of their marketing strategies.

With content marketing being such a great way to build content, the question is how do you get that content to rank higher in Google?

Organic link building is one of the best ways to improve your search rankings, and in this article, we will share why organic link building is important, and how you can get started implementing it.

What is Organic Link Building?

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks or backlinks from other websites to your own. A link is a way for another user to reach your site from another page on the internet.

Search engines use these links to explore the web, they ‘crawl’ the links between all of the different individual pages of a website and the external links to other websites.

There are a lot of different techniques for building links, and organic link building is the process of gaining backlinks to your website without paying or using any black-hat methods.

Black hat link building methods refer to methods that don’t comply with Google’s guidelines for building links. While white hat link building methods comply with Google’s guidelines and are usually the preferred method of building organic links.

How Are Links Created?

Links are an integral part of an organic link building campaign, so it’s important to understand the different elements of a link.

You place links on a website using HTML code, or by using an inbuilt interface like WordPress. Your links can be either plain links, such as www.backlinks.com or you can place them inside of anchor text.

Not All Links Are Equal

It’s important to understand that when you are building an organic backlinking campaign that you aren’t aiming just for the highest quantity of links. There are other important aspects to a link that determines how useful Google considers it.

Link Juice

One of the first factors of a backlink to considering is the amount of link juice a website has. Link juice is a phrase used across the industry to describe the amount of influence a website carries when recommending other websites through backlinks.

Google considers websites with high domain authority, or DA to be a trustworthy source. When a high authority site recommends another site through a backlink, it’s sharing some of its link juice with that website.

This means that as the Google bots crawl that link, they can see it’s a strong recommendation, based on the authority of the website.

The Authority Of a Website

To gain as much authority within the eyes of Google, you should try to receive backlinks from high authority websites. This can be easier said than done. A backlink from a highly credible site like Forbes or The Wall Street Journal isn’t something they give out at county fairs.

The process of an organic link building campaign is to try and gain backlinks to your site naturally, through creating amazing content that these high-authority pages will create backlinks to naturally.

This is usually because the content you create is useful. By solving a problem website, visitors can see it as valuable.

It’s important to consider the authority of websites when building links. A lot of links from low authority sites Google can consider being spam. This can sometimes lead to Google negatively impacting your website.

The Relevance Of a Website

Another important factor to consider is the relevance of a website. Google wants to link it’s users to the best quality and most relevant content it can.

This means that if your website is about gardening, it’d be strange for you to have links from a car repair website or a law firm. Instead, it’s also important for you to gain backlinks from relevant sites related to the content you are sharing.

Instead, a gardening website might look to gain backlinks from sites like lawn mower review websites, landscapers, home decor sites, etc.

The relevance of a website is an important signal for Google to how useful the content is and how relevant it is to the target keyword or topic.

Why Is Link Building Important for SEO

Link building is a huge aspect of SEO because, without backlinks, Google isn’t going to rank your website highly. Backlinks are Google’s way of knowing whether they can trust your website.

Think of it as a recommendation. If you are considering a business and the president of the United Nations gives it his approval, you can be sure it’s a solid business.

Alternatively, if the only person vouching for the business is the mailman at the end of the road who’s got a DUI, you’ll be less likely to trust that recommendation.

Organically growing your links allows your website to grow over time, through recommendations from trusted authority sites. This can impact your site hugely and help it to soar to the top of the Google results.

How Can Link Building Benefit Your Business

As we’ve outlined above, links are a very important signal for Google to push your results higher up in the search rankings. That means the more high-quality backlinks that are pointing to your site, the better your website will rank.

It’s why many people see the benefits of working with a link-building company. As a business, this can mean you can get more traffic which is more potential leads for your business.

Backlinks are also a direct way that relevant sites can send traffic directly to your website. If you gain a backlink on a website that has a lot of traffic, you can expect to receive a lot of traffic from that website through your backlink directly.

How Will You Start Your Organic Link Building Campaign?

The benefits of organic link building for your website can be huge. If you can gain high authority backlinks alongside great content, you can dominate the search rankings and gain a lot of traffic.

Google is one of the most lucrative brands in the world. As of Feb. 2017, it was worth $109 billion.

So why are we sharing this information with you?

Because the company’s search engine processes billions of queries per day. And you want to drive as much traffic from those queries to your website as possible.

How, though, can you optimize your site to capture the traffic you’re looking for?

Here are 11 organic SEO tips you can try today to generate traffic:

1. Use Header Tags

There are two major reasons to use header tags when writing online content:

1. Readability
2. Scannability

Readability is one of the most important features of any piece of online content. When people type their queries into search engines, they’re looking for fast answers. For this reason, they prefer content they can easily digest.

Scannability is closely related to readability. It describes a piece of content’s ability to be scanned by its readers.

And how do header tags improve readability and scannability?

They break the content into neat sections that are easy on the eyes. As an added bonus, search engines recognize keywords in header tags and use these keywords to help rank your site.

2. Prioritize Readability

Here’s another tip about readability:

Stop writing blog posts as if they’re dissertations.

Yes, great writing and analytical skills are important if you want to produce amazing copy. Even so, few people will read your content if it’s just a wall of text.

That said, try breaking your content into small paragraphs and using more header tags to break up the content.

3. Optimize Your Graphic Content

There’s more to SEO-friendly content than high-quality images. The off-page elements of your graphic content matter as well.

But what are these off-page elements?

The file sizes and format are just a couple of examples of off-page aspects of images. If your images are too large or are poorly formatted, your pages’ load times will increase.

You should also use keywords in your images’ titles, descriptions, and captions. Even the files’ names should include the keywords you’re targeting.

4. Try Brian Dean’s Skyscraper Technique

The skyscraper technique is SEO expert Brian Dean’s brainchild. The idea behind the technique is curating content and elevating it.

Imagine, for instance, that there are tons of blog posts about how to choose the best cable provider out there already. Now ask yourself:

How can I add to that conversation? How can I write about choosing a cable provider while providing additional information that no one else has thought to add?

We also recommend putting together “ultimate guides” that touch on every possible aspect of a subject. These comprehensive guides tend to perform well.

5. Check Out the SERPs

Before you create something new, you should always find out what already exists.

So if you want to create better content, head to the SERPs to see what good content is already out there. Once you’ve located this content, figure out why it ranks so well and implement some of the strategies you uncover.

6. Don’t Neglect Keyword Research

We all know that keywords are important. But some people underestimate the power of keyword research.

Keyword research’s usefulness extends beyond unearthing the terms people are using to describe your product or service. Keyword research also alerts you to new trends and allows you to think about how you’re branding your service.

7. Use Secondary Keywords

Let’s say that you sell custom-made sports caps. Because you sell these sports caps, you decide that you want to target the following keyword: custom-made sports caps.

But here’s the problem:

Your target audience uses more than one keyword to search for your product. Further still, there might be other, related keywords they usually use in conjunction with your target keyword.

Some customers, for example, might also search for “custom-made sports caps New Jersey.” Others might search for “custom-made sports gear.”

Both keywords are related to your primary keyword. As a result, you can use them as secondary keywords (if they apply) and enjoy some of the web traffic those keywords provide as well.

8. Increase Your Site’s Speed

Have you ever visited a site that took forever to load? If so, how did you respond?

Our guess is that you didn’t stick around for long.

You should expect each customer to behave just as you do when they encounter slow pages. Consequently, prioritize increasing your site’s speed. Doing so will help you decrease your website’s bounce rate.

Here are a couple of tips for increasing your site’s speed:

• Optimize your images. Large images, for instance, can take forever to load.
• Have someone take a look at your web pages’ code. Clunky code can increase your pages’ loading times.

9. Avoid Duplicate Content

Let’s be clear:

Taking inspiration from another website isn’t a crime. In fact, some of the best work is inspired by other work.

But duplicating content isn’t equivalent to taking inspiration. Search engines regard it as plagiarism, which is why they punish sites for posting duplicate content.

Of course, sometimes duplicate content accidentally makes its way onto sites. Some of us forget to deindex obsolete pages. Others forget to use quotation marks where they’re needed.

In any case, always make sure that you’re producing original content. And if you need to, run your copy through an online plagiarism checker.

10. Link to High-Quality Websites

Bloomberg. CNN. The Hill.

All of these online publications have at least one thing in common: authority.

People generally trust the information they find on these websites. And search engines recognize this.

But they also recognize sites users don’t trust. So if you link to one of these sites, you’re going to hurt your sites’ reputation in the process. In the world of Google, a bad reputation means less web traffic for you.

11. Build Organic Backlinks

Listen carefully:

Please refrain from buying links. As a grey hat technique, purchasing links isn’t as bad as most black hat techniques, but you can still get in serious trouble for doing so.

And here’s another tip:

Don’t buy web traffic. Doing so will only temporarily inflate your traffic. And you’ll receive a penalty if you get caught.

Our best advice to you?

Try building organic backlinks by doing outreach and producing great content.

Want More Organic SEO Tips?

Well, those are our best organic SEO tips for you at the moment. They’re actionable and can be put to good use today by any company.

Did you know that without backlinks, you have very little – as little as 0.8% – chance to rank in Google?

According to Moz, one of the leading marketing SAAS (software as a service) providers, it is!

This means that if you don’t use inbound links, you may not see your website (or webpages) appear in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) at all.

At the same time, it doesn’t mean that all links back to your content, such as from random sources, will do your marketing campaign good. This would endanger your SEO campaign, not to mention put your site at risk of penalties.

But what exactly are backlinks in the first place? What value do they have?

All these questions are most likely running through your mind now. Don’t worry. That’s why we’re here.

Let us show you the correct steps on how to hyperlink with this ultimate guide!

Google and Inbound Links: The Strong Link Between the Two

You may have noticed in the intro how we put the emphasis on Google. Don’t get us wrong. High quality, relevant links are as important a ranking factor to other search engines.

Why concentrate on making Google happy then?

Here’s something to put things in perspective:

If we were to ask you how much of the Internet does Google make up, what would you answer?

1. 10%
2. 20%
3. 30%

If you gave an answer from any of the multiple choices above, then surprise, surprise. The right answer isn’t there.

Because Google makes up 40% of the Internet!

The search engine giant processes – at the very least – a shocking 2 trillion search queries every year.

All these numbers already tell you that your SEO campaign, powerful and effective link building included, should revolve primarily around Google. Because if you don’t, you stand to miss out on nearly half of your potential target market using this search engine for their consumer-related activities.

Where to Start

First things first: You need to have a basic understanding of what internal links, hyperlinks, or backlinks are all about.

Let’s break that down further with this links definition from Searchmetrics:

Backlinks are links external domains (websites other than yours) use to point to your domain’s web pages. Basically, they hyperlink keywords or key phrases relevant to the web page on your domain they point back to.

A good example is the link we used (above) to link back to Searchmetrics. See how the words “from Searchmetrics” are in blue and clickable? When you do click on it, you’ll find yourself looking at the company’s definition of links.

In this case, we, as the external domain, act as the “referring domain.” It’s important that your own backlinks come from trustworthy and reliable referring domains since this plays a crucial role in strengthening your backlink profile.

Here’s an easier-to-digest example:

Say your business is all about pet supplies, toys, etc. You have great content that talks about taking care of them in more detail.

Now, Forbes Magazine decides to create a post about how dogs really benefit humans. At one point, the post will feature a section about how people should take off their furry family members.

If they see that your content is really of top-notch quality and can help readers who want to take better care of their dogs, then they may link back to one of your web pages.

See where we’re getting at?

Basically, Forbes here is the referring domain, since they linked back to your site. Seeing that Forbes is a high-ranking, well-trusted domain, then Google (along with other search engines), will take that as a sign you’re credible too.

Thus, your SERP ranking increases. More people will see your site. And the more visitors you get, the higher your chances of generating leads and transforming them into paying customers.

Where to Start?

Before you can start building your backlink portfolio, you first need to curate outstanding content. For the simple reason that it’s your content you’ll link to!

Whether you’re link building for an eCommerce site or creating a backlink portfolio for scholarship sites, your backlinks have three primary criteria to meet:

• Strength
• Relevance
• Diversity

So, strength here refers to the overall credibility of the external domain hyperlinked to. Relevance, as the term suggests, pertains to the relationship between an anchor text (the hyperlinked keywords) and what that external page contains. The more diverse the backlink portfolio, the greater the number of places (referring domains) linking back to a website.

All these said, the key to developing a strong, relevant, and diverse backlink portfolio is first having content that other websites can link back to you.

Curating Content Consumers Crave

The more links pointing back to you, the higher chances you have of ranking better in SERPs.

The thing is, Google is so powerful it can easily figure out which links are bad and which ones are excellent.

Simply put, you want your backlinks to come from not only various but authoritative referring domains.

That’s why the first step to getting those inbound links is coming up with top-of-the-line content. Content that consumers need and they constantly look for. But, it should remain aligned with what your brand is all about (remember the above example of the pet business).

The more satisfying your content, the more people will want to come back for more. The more authoritative websites (again, like Forbes), will link back to you.

From here, Google will consider the link’s anchor text, and if meets the criteria, award your content with higher relevance. This then leads to higher chances of better SERP ranking.

Start Getting Those Backlinks Now

In a nutshell, inbound links, or backlinks, remain an important factor to rank in SERPs. Believing otherwise can really do a number on your web traffic and ultimately, your revenues.

So, if you haven’t started your backlink building campaign yet, there’s no other better time than now to do it. And we can help you with this.