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5 Old (But Still Relevant) Content and Link Building Strategies….And 1 New One

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Infographics still work….sort of

Why-Infographics-Still-Work-link-building-strategies

Infographics started to gain traction around 2010 and then saw an explosion across the web for the next 2 years as they grew in popularity. As with all new content and link building strategies SEO and marketing firms were all over them like a bad rash until Google stepped in (as they always do) and reduced the effectiveness of signals from links within infographics. However this doesn’t mean you can’t still use them. The field is pretty crowded these days so you really need to dig deep to come up with an interesting topic and get the data to go with it, after that you really need a killer design with the information displayed correctly to get your message across. This is really the hardest part as if you have an infographic on a unique and interesting topic then people will still accept it to be published on their sites and people are more likely to share it and link back to it. On top of that there are many infographic galleries you can seed your design on and again, the better the design and unique the topic is the more likely gallery sites will accept it. The links from infographics will not carry the same weight as they used to but are still a solid link-building strategy.

Refreshing or updating old content

refreshing-old-content-link-building-strategies

This is a a great tactic as it gives you a legit reason to push some old content to the front of your website or blog again and share it across Facebook and Twitter. If you have any kind of list post you wrote in the past or resource post then go over it again, is there any new content or information you can add there? Nothing ever stays the same and there should always be something new you can add., a resource page that is contently evolving is more likely to be linked to.

Guest Blogging (yes this is still an option)

guest-blogging-link-building-strategies

Guest blogging was the new ‘go to’  and popular link building option throughout most of 2012 and 2013. As with all of the latest SEO tactics it was abused and Google once again had to take action. Matt Cutts first made some warnings and noises about the quality of the content and links that people allow from guest bloggers at the end of 2012 and then again several times in 2013 and early 2014. Finally in spring of this year My Blog Guest and many blogs and websites associated with it were heavily penalised. In the days and weeks after the guest blogging ‘scene’ went very quiet as no-one knew what to do next. Slowly it has been coming back though but what we are seeing now is that many sites and publications have taken a much stricter stance on what they accept, this means guest blogging is moving back to what it originally was and reclaiming its position as trusted content and links.

Sponsoring events

Planning Law Webinar Flickr - Photo Sharing!

‘Sponsored’ is a dirty word in SEO and link building, if you pay for a link then it should not be a normal and followed link. But if you help out at and event or on a podcast then your name is going to be mentioned anyway and this is more than likely to bring links also and links that have been earned naturally.

Interviews

Mark Zuckerberg interviewed by Financial Times, Scobleizer, and Techcrunch Flickr - Photo Sharing!

An old strategy and still a good one. Many people make the mistake of trying to interview the biggest names in their niche, if you can get these people then that’s great but chances are they won’t have the time. Look for people who are new to the scene or have just started a new project, they are more likely to be keen to talk or have something to say. A good example of this is over at our new crowd-funding site Stiqblox.com, we often reach out to creators with the offer of an interview when they launch their campaigns on Kickstarter or IndieGoGo as this is when they are hungry to talk to the press, but you need to catch them before they hit the funding target as after that they simply don’t have the time and/or don’t need the coverage anymore!

An ice bucket challenge?

Gwen Stefani ice bucket

I’m sure you have seen different celebrities across the globe doing this for the past month or so for the ALS charity, it’s guerilla and viral marketing at it’s best and companies should get involved by taking the challenge while it’s still viral, this way you get to help out a good cause while at the same time getting a little exposure and coverage for your brand.

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One, two, three, four

How to Promote Your Guest Blog Posts on Social Media

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guest blogging social media

Social media and guest blogging were meant to be together– they both can increase your exposure, allow you to meet new people, and make it easy to share your ideas with the world. Whether you are the blog needing guest posts or the blogger who has posts that you would like to publish, guest blogging can be more successful if social media is involved during the entire journey.

Setting Up Expectations

Before even getting actual guest posts, be sure to set up the expectations from either the writer or the website. Besides setting up the guidelines for the content of the post itself, it is also important to iron out how social media is going to be used. Will the writer or website promote your guest post? If so, on what accounts? How many shares are they going to post? Is there a special hashtag that is going to be used? It’s also important that both sides know each other’s Twitter and Facebook profile names so they can tag one another.

It benefits both the writer and website to promote any and all guest posts– the website gets more traffic and the writer gets more exposure for both him or herself and their business or website.

Building Up Your Social Audience

Building up your social audience should always be at the forefront of your mind when it comes to social media. If you have a big following across multiple social media platforms, this can be an added incentive and benefit to your perspective guest author or publisher of your content.

For instance, if you propose a guest post, you can mention that you also have 10,000 Twitter followers. This not only lets the website know that you can increase the exposure of their website by tweeting your guest post link, but it also shows that you are an established and knowledgeable person in your industry. Including other metrics, such as your Facebook likes, Pinterest followers, and website metrics (such as pageviews per month) can also be useful to websites that are considering you as a guest writer.

On the flip side, for websites that are looking for high quality guest writer, a large platform will bring better writers (and therefore, higher quality posts). The more traffic you get, the more credible you will look to potential writers who are looking for places to submit unique content.

Building a great social audience can make a difference, no matter which side you are on.

Find Your Opportunities

In addition to increasing your credibility, social media can also be used to find guest blogging opportunities. Putting a call out on Twitter for guest bloggers or asking fans on Facebook for places to submit content can be a great way to connect with others who need content or who are writing it.

It also helps to search by keyword or hashtag via social media– #guestblogging or #writeforus might be good places to start. Set up an alert for specific hashtags or phrases and have it send you an alert as soon it appears online.

Besides searching for hashtags and phrases, you should also regularly follow businesses and individuals that are in your industry. Some may follow you back, allowing you to connect. This type of digital networking can lead to genuine connections that can create all different kinds of content opportunities.

Working With the Writer

From a website perspective, you should treat writers with respect and admiration. These writers are wanting to give you content for free, and you should be appreciative. It is easy to do this if you expectations have been declared up front. Have a unique guest blogging page or section on your website that outlines:

  • The types of post you are looking for
  • The length of the post
  • Whether or not the writer needs to include photos, attribution, links, etc.
  • The type of bio allowed, including what type and the amount of links

It is also helpful to include topic suggestions, “ideal” post examples, and places to find royalty free stock photo content (photopin.com is amazing).

Working With the Website Owner

If you are a writer needing places to distribute your content, it is important to choose websites that fall into your industry or interests. For instance, don’t ask to guest blog on a website that sells jewelry if you work for a travel app start-up. While there are some creative ways that blogs and websites of all industries can work together, it’s usually best to stick to what you know (this also makes your posts easier to promote via social media).

When you are contacting the website owner about a guest post, be sure to:

  • Pitch a topic for a post
  • Ask any follow-up questions, such as photo sources or bio length
  • Frequency opportunities

 

Website owners and writers can both greatly benefit from guest blogging. Even though it can be a time-costing endeavor, it is worth it to all parties involved, especially when social media is thrown into the mix.

To learn more about the guest blogging services that Performancing provides, please contact us. 

What to Focus on When Implementing a Guest Blogging Strategy

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curateGuest blogging is one of the best ways to increase traffic, search engine placement, and SEO value of your website or blog. While it does take significant time and effort to find the best platforms for content, as well as organizing the writing and marketing of the posts, guest blogging will help any company or individual gain visibility, credibility, and links online. Guest blogging can also help drive a sense of community and conversation surrounding the ideas of the post itself in the comment section.

To be successful at guest blogging, there are few guidelines to ensure that posts are shared often and are driving links back to your website.

Write an Amazing Bio

The majority of blogs or websites that accept guest posts will allow writers to include a short bio at the end of their content. This bio must be carefully optimized to include the best possible information about the company and its services in the shortest amount of space. Be sure to always include a link to the company’s website, and also a few keywords surrounding the company’s products or what they offer.

In many cases, the bios can only be about 25 words, so be sure to eliminate any necessary information, while also personalizing the writer and the company.

Here’s an example:

Kelsey Jones is a writer for Performancing (hyperlink), a new media company focused on blogging, marketing, branding, and more. Follow Kelsey on Twitter (hyperlink) or read her posts on the Performancing blog (hyperlink).

Of course, not all sites will allow 3 links in the bio, but always use as many as are allowed. Great bios include call to actions that give readers options to learn more about the company or its writer.

Choose an Engaging Topic and Title

To make a splash on someone else’s site, guest post topics must be engaging and interesting. The best posts answer questions, drive controversy, share news, or teach the reader something they didn’t know before. The title of the post is what first introduces the content to readers– so it must be catchy while also giving them an immediate idea of what the post is going to be about.

Titles that do well include numbered items (such as “Five Marketing Tactics You Don’t Know About”), make people mad or curious (“Why Your SEO Strategy Sucks”), or answer a question by teaching the reader something (“The Complete Guide to Adobe Photoshop”).

Once a catchy title has been generated, the content must be just as well-written. Don’t include  anything that isn’t absolutely necessary and be sure to include photos, links to support statements, and call to actions or the inspiration for change.

Tie-In What The Company Does

It is also important to tie in industry keywords or services that the company sponsoring the guest post provides. This increases the company’s credibility because they are writing in areas that they are actually working in. For instance, it doesn’t make any sense for an app developer to write a guest post about knitting. However, if they just made an app that showcases knitting patterns, then the post could be “The Best 5 Knitting Apps”, including their app (if guest posting guidelines would allow).

Just because a blog is willing to take posts doesn’t mean it is right for your company if they aren’t in your industry. It will also mean that less readers will actually click on the links in the writer bio to go to your website. While having a dofollow link on an reputable website has some benefit, the benefit for your gaming customers just isn’t going to be there on a canoeing blog.

Online and Social Sharing

When the post is published, be sure to promote it via the company’s social media accounts. This only serves to generate visibility for the post, which can lead to more site traffic and more trust from the website the guest post is published on. If a guest blogger’s content is heavily read and shared, then a website is more likely to ask them to guest blog again.

Besides social media, there are other places online to share content– email blasts with link roundups, newsletters, the company’s website, or a blog post summarizing the content with a link to the article. By promoting the content in every available outlet, you are not only benefitting by getting your posts more exposure, you are also showing your existing audience that you are reputable enough to be published on other websites.

Follow-Up

Once a post has been published, it is important to check it regularly for the first couple weeks to respond to any comments. Users appreciate having their questions answered by the actual writer of the article. The bigger the site, the most comments articles it will generate, so it is important to make sure these are answered in a timely fashion.

For posts that are extremely popular, many readers appreciate follow-up articles by the same author. So if “The Complete Guide to Adobe Photoshop” went viral, then the author could benefit from writing “The Complete Guide to Adobe InDesign.” Because the author has already set himself up as an expert in Adobe products, it only makes sense to continue writing content surrounding that software.

The Legal Risks in Guest Blog Posts

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Swim at Your Own Risk

Ideally, guest posts are great for both your site and for you as the webmaster. For the guest post author, it’s a way to expand their reach and talk directly to your audience. For you, it’s a way to take it a little easy one day, offer some variety for your readers and improve the discourse on your site.

However, like almost anything you do online, guest posting comes with a set of legal risks. For the author of the guest post, these risks are pretty clear, they’re the author of the post so they bear all of the usual risks that come with publishing anything online.

But what about the owner of the site? They didn’t write anything and are just accepting and publishing the works of someone else, do they have legal risks to worry about?

The answer, sadly, is yes. You can’t simply publish anything that someone hands you and expect that you face no potential liability or other consequences. Depending on the details of your guest post, you can be held accountable for what your guest authors publish. Fortunately, there are simple ways to mitigate that risk and prevent guest posts form causing you trouble down the road. [Read more…] about The Legal Risks in Guest Blog Posts

Link Building: Determining the Value of a Link

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link building

Link building is an important part of any SEO campaign. Building links has the effect of sending our websites direct traffic, while at the same time signalling Google that our website is important. The latter leads to increased crawl rate, and optimally increased rankings.

In nutrition, we realize that overall health and fat loss is not a simple measure of calories in minus calories out. Consuming 200 calories worth of fresh fish and vegetables will certainly decrease body fat faster than consuming 200 calories of ice cream.

The same is true in link building. Increasing our page authority entails building quality, relevant links from high authority websites. There is a difference between receiving a link from The New York Times and receiving a link from your college buddy’s blog with 10 followers.

In this article we examine the SEO basics of valuing a prospective link.

Begin with Pagerank

PageRank is Google’s measure of a website’s authority and importance. The scale is from 1 to 10, but is not linear. Moving up from 1 to 2 is much easier than moving up from 6 to 7. Named after Larry Page, Google PageRank is measured internally within Google, but updated very infrequently to the public.

This creates a conundrum for link builders. The ranking we are allowed to see may be vastly different than the internal ranking. This is especially true with websites which are “moving quickly.” They may have been brand new a few months ago, but have built a substantial following since.

Determining how popular or authoritative a website is becomes more art than science. There are a number of data sources we can tap to estimate how important a link might be from a website. For instance traffic estimates from Alexa or Compete can help with sites which have experienced high traffic for at least a couple of months.

In recent years, social media has become important source of data. How many followers does the website have? How much discussion revolves around them? Are people regularly linking to them using social media?

There are third party tools which provide a rough approximation of Google PageRank, but these often seem to me to be akin to the blind man feeling the elephant analogy. The bottom line is it more art than science, and it will take multiple sources to piece together a rough approximation of a website’s authority.

But it needn’t be so difficult. If you have to look hard to determine if a website has high authority, then it likely it does not have it. Obvious high authority should hit you square in the jaw. High authority blogs have a large following, and many times an active commenting community. High authority websites are linked to frequently, and talked about across the web.

Outbound Links

Once you determine how authoritative a webpage is, you should next look at the number of outbound links on the webpage. The amount of link juice a webpage sends is divided among the outbound links. So if there are 3 links on the page, each link will receive 1/3 of the benefit.

This becomes a major issue with lists and directories. A webpage with hundreds of outbound links is probably not worth the effort, no matter how authoritative their domain is.

Matt Cutts discusses this on his YouTube channel below:

Relevancy

I’m not sure how to quantify this with a number, but I am certain that links from an irrelevant webpage will not pass much authority if any. The link to your own webpage should have a relation to the content on the linking page, and optimally to the content of the entire domain.

Domain Trust

Again, this is difficult to quantify. A domain may have many links point toward it, but that doesn’t make the domain trustworthy. If you are Google, do you value a link from a spammy gossip website more than a link from an Ivy League university, even if the gossip website has more inbound links?

I avoid seeking a link from any website with a very spammy look to it, pop up windows, or questionable advertising and content.

Fresh Material

This is especially obvious with blogs. I have received offers to post blogs with websites with decent PageRank values, but ultimately declined because of a lack of fresh material. PageRank is a snap shot in time, and does not offer you information as to whether the velocity is positive or negative. Assume with any website lacking fresh content that the PageRank is stagnant or in decline.

When targeting a blog, or any article rich website, ensure that the articles are updated on a regular basis. Infrequent updates not only sends you a red flag that the website authority is in decline, it also sends a message to Google that the search engine need not crawl the website frequently. Therefor any new link posted may take a while before Google notices it.

Guest Blogging

The actual process of link building is worth several posts of their own. However one of the most effective methods you can use is guest blogging. Guest blogging gives the website a reason to link to you, as it is in exchange for the valuable content that you are providing.

What I really like about guest blogging is that you expose a large audience to your knowledge of a subject, and give them a reason to want to learn more about you. The catch is, you need to be able to write effective articles and express yourself through the written word. If you don’t feel comfortable with this, you can hire writers to produce content for you.

Summary

Link building should begin with identifying high authority websites with content which is related to our website. The website should be trustworthy, if you expect the link to have its maximum effectiveness. You should also consider the number of outbound links on the page, as the link juice will be divided among them.

About the Author

Dan Padavona is the lead web designer for Warmpicture Royalty Free Stock Photography. His blog covers the business of photography, and SEO advice for photographers wishing to start their own websites.

Sample Guest Blog Post Submission Guidelines

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Last week, I wrote a post here on Performancing about weeding out guest blog post spam and suggested that you write very clear guest post submission guidelines and publish them on your blog.  Doing so might not deflect all guest blog post spam, but it can help to make sure the legitimate guest posts that are submitted to you meet your publishing criteria.

With that in mind, following is a guest blog post submission and publishing guidelines sample that you can tweak to work on your blog.  Feel free to copy and use it as needed.

Sample Guest Blog Post Submission and Publishing Guidelines

If you would like to submit a guest post to this blog, follow the instructions below for consideration.  Only guest posts that meet these criteria will be considered for publishing.

  • The post must be useful to the readers of this blog.
  • The post must be grammatically correct and well-written.
  • The post must not include marketing-related links and must not be entirely self-promotional.
  • The post may include links to your website and blog in a brief author’s bio (approximately 3 sentences), which will be published at the end of the guest post.
  • Guest posts must be original and may not have been published elsewhere online already.  All submissions will be verified for originality using a tool such as Copyscape.com or Plagium.com.

Guest posts that are approved for publishing will be published without notice.  Please check the blog periodically to see if your post has been published.  Due to the high volume of guest posts this blog receives, messages following up on the status of a guest post submission will not be responded to.

If you have any requirements related to length of guest posts, specific topics, things you won’t publish no matter what, image size or format, and so on, add those to the above list, too.  In other words, the more specific and clear your submission guidelines are, the less time it will take you to review and approve guest post submissions.  You can automate the submission and publishing process using a tool like the Gravity Forms plugin if you use WordPress.org for your blogging application.  Alternately, you can use a service that links blogs up with writers who are interested in providing guest posts such as MyBlogGuest.

The point of publishing guest post submission and publishing guidelines is to set expectations and alleviate some of your workload processing submissions.  If your blog gets a lot of blog post submissions, it can take up a lot of your time to review, edit and publish all of them.  Let your guest post submission guidelines take care of some of that work for you.

How to Help Your Guest Authors in Their SEO Efforts

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Help Guest Authors in their SEO Efforts

The blog SEO is nothing to go mad about: essentially there are just a few tweaks needed to make sure the blog post is search-friendly enough to go live. A couple of weeks ago I shared a blog post SEO checklist – it only has 5 points in it – but if you frequently feature guest posts on your blog, it is a smart idea to engage your authors into the optimization process.

You don’t have to spend time teaching each of your new authors SEO specifics of your blog. What you need to do is to fine-tune the process once and you will notice your guest bloggers get enrolled eagerly.

1. Create a Well-Outlined SEO Basics Cheat Sheet

You blog SEO basics list shouldn’t be anything too theoretic. Just outline what you have to deal with each time you are writing or publishing a post.

What I would recommend creating is a one-page well-organized outline in PDF listing your blog SEO specifics:

  • Your recommendations as to (sub)heading usage. Note, that h2 and h3 tags make your posts easier to scan; they also make your keywords more prominent.
  • Your advice on using the keywords in the article copy: which tools do you use to research keywords? How do you make your copy richer (by using synonyms, keyword suggestions, etc);
  • Your image optimization tactics: what I usually mention here is that:
    • The images should be no larger than 100K
    • The images should always have the ALT attribute – not just the TITLE tag like the standard WordPress editor would prompt you to.
    • You can also mention your hotlinking preferences (Would you like the images to be hosted on your blog? – which is usually preferable. Which free image hosting services would you recommend – I usually tend to stick to Flickr).
  • Your internal linking requirements: make it a rule that your guest authors always link (from within the article body) to a few related posts that were previously published at your blog. Let them know the best ways to find those related posts (I for one use SITE:yourdomain.com search for that).
  • Any of the SEO plugins you are using and how to apply them at the post editor level.

2. Install Some SEO WordPress Plugins

These are not actually plenty. Just a few WordPress plugins will help your authors optimize their posts:

1. Either Headspace2 or All in One SEO Pack: the choice is up to you. What’s good about both of them is that they allow to provide custom title tag, meta description and keywords – right at the post editor page:

Guest SEO: All-in-One SEO Pack

2. Insights: This plugin makes it easy to search for the related posts right from the blog editor page and also instantly link the words right from the editor:

Insights: Guest author

3. SEO Smart Links: automatic interlinking. This plugin interlinks your blog content automatically. It is rich in settings and options – so you can configure it in plenty of ways:

  • Set what to interlink (posts, pages, categories and/or tags);
  • Ignore words in links (like “about”, “contact”);
  • Set the maximum number of links;

SEO smart links

3. Equip Your Guest Bloggers with Essential Tools

Many huge multi-author blog owners prefer to buy a corporate licence of some useful SEO tools and give access to all their (guest) authors. This section looks at some free tools instead. Include the links to those tools in your SEO tutorial (see #1) and make sure your authors are using those:

1. SEO Blogger: This tool is the FireFox addon that lets the user research the related phrases in the browser sidebar. You can thus research the keywords without having to leave the blog post editor: write and format your post while researching your keywords.

SEO blogger

2. Copyright Checker. There are actually quite a few plagiarism checkers out there (Copyscape is the most famous but paid one). This one is free and easy to use. Your authors can copy-paste their post text and run it to make sure their content is totally unique.

3. SEO Analysis Tool: Suggest your authors run the tool immediately after the post is published. The tool is great at reporting prominent keywords in:

  • Link text;
  • Image alt attributes;
  • Heading and phrase elements.

This way the bloggers may quickly estimate if they are on the right path:

Keywords Found in the Anchor Tags

Relying on guest blogging and user-generated content to let your resource grow is a great tactic. The only thing is that at least some effort is required to put your readers on the right path. Do you help your guest bloggers to optimize their content?