Category: SEO

SEO experts have been saying it for years: backlinks are one of the most important factors for ranking in search results. So it’s no wonder that you’re exploring your options and putting together a strategy for building quality links to your website to get more traffic.

But building links is not easy, in fact it’s hard work. Surely there must be some shortcuts you can take to speed up the results. Maybe you should drop five bucks for 1,000 backlinks on Fiverr? Or perhaps you should buy 100 of those cheap link packages on Black Hat World? Surely all those links will skyrocket your blog to the top of the search results!

Yeah, right.

As with many other things in life, there’s a right way to do things and a wrong way. You get what you pay for, and building backlinks the wrong way will get your site penalized so hard that you might never recover.

So forget about the shortcuts. Hang that black hat back up on the coat rack. Roll up your sleeves and get ready to do some real work. Here are three of the right ways to build links that will get you solid traffic results for months and years to come.

1. Focus on Quality Over Quantity

It wasn’t very long ago that you could easily spam a bunch of forums and blogs and create thousands of backlinks on autopilot — and get great results! But those days are over, and nobody should be surprised about it.

Still, it’s amazing how many SEO “experts” are still pushing low-quality spam links. Do they not realize that that ship has sailed? Do they really think that they can escape Google penalties while doing stuff like that?

If you want to get more traffic for the long term without destroying your reputation and rankings, then you need to focus on getting backlinks from high-quality websites with content that is relevant to your own.

Start by reaching out to blogs in your industry and in related niches. Then go for top media sites and blogs with massive traffic. You can also do press releases with local media sites and bloggers, if your customer base is geo-targeted to your local area.

2. But Also Focus on Quantity

While it’s far more important to seek out high-quality links from authoritative websites with high levels of traffic, it’s still important to get as many of them as you can. The web pages that rank in the top spots in search results not only have high-quality links pointing at them, but they also have a large quantity of such backlinks. So if you are going after high-volume keywords with tough competition, then you need to get a lot of quality backlinks.

This is going to take a lot of work. There is no getting around this fact. You need to actually interact with editors and staff at these blogs. You need to offer them something of value, such as high-quality guest posts, infographics and relevant brand mentions.

Yes, it will take a lot more work to get links like these — especially to get a lot of them — but the good news is that once you start landing high-quality links, it then becomes easier to get additional links from other high-quality sources.

For instance, landing your first guest post on a site like Entrepreneur.com might take a lot of time and effort. But once you have that clip under your belt, it will then become a lot easier to land guest posts — and backlinks — on other authoritative sites like Forbes, FastCompany, Wired and Inc.

3. Build Your Personal Brand

One of the keys to landing backlinks and guest posts on high-quality blogs in your niche is to build your personal brand.

When your reputation precedes you, you’ll find that guest post opportunities actually come to you. Quality sites and media outlets will actually start reaching out to you and asking you to contribute to their publication. At this point, things really start to pick up momentum.

But getting to this point is the tricky part. You have to commit to a consistent campaign of outreach, real networking and non-stop guest posting. You’ll need to get your name out there however you can in the beginning, and it can be frustrating if nobody has heard of you yet.

Don’t let that discourage you, though. Every top business leader was once a nobody. Every industry expert in your niche started out as a no-name guest poster. But if you commit to putting in the work, the results are yours for the taking.

Building backlinks that will stand the test of time is a lot harder than it was in the past. You really have to work for those links. But one strong link from a reputable site is worth thousands of links from lesser-known blogs. So make up your mind to go all in on backlinking. Then make a plan incorporating the ideas above and then spend time every week putting the plan into action.

If you link it, they will come.

Author Bio

James Gorski: In addition to being the editor at designrfix and writing about tech, web and graphic design among other subjects, I love “unplug” and be outdoors hiking and enjoying nature. If you can’t reach me, it’s probably because where I am at doesn’t have cell phone reception.

Have any specific link building questions?

Let James and I know in the comments section below!

In an ideal world, the quality of your website and the features included in your products/services would be all it takes to ensure the success of your brand online.

Unfortunately, this often isn’t enough.

No matter how advanced or sophisticated search engine algorithms become, they still have certain patterns you have to accommodate to in order to get more visibility. This is why you need a proper SEO strategy in place.

Nevertheless, while everyone boasts about their SEO abilities, a staggeringly large number of digital marketers are still unsure about what it is that makes a thriving SEO campaign. With this in mind, here are four things you have to keep an eye on.

1. Set your budget

The greatest misconception about digital marketing is that you can do it efficiently for free. Sure, self-promoting your content on social networks and sending emails to your contacts is also a form of marketing, but what about PPC (pay-per-click campaign), Facebook advertisements and premium SEO tools? In other words, what about the most efficient digital marketing methods? In order to use them, you have to be ready to allocate at least some of your resources, however, making this choice may not be as easy as you’ve been led to believe.

When setting your digital marketing budget, you have to take several things into consideration, all of which depend on your situation, which is why being honest with yourself is paramount. For instance, you need to set your goals early on, analyze your current visibility and consider your target demographic. Once you have all of this out of the way, you will be able to set a minimal budget that helps you achieve your plans.

2. Explore your demographic

Before you start with any further actions, you have to analyze your target audience and do your best to try and understand them. Find out exactly who they are and what types of keywords they are searching for. This will better help you craft your SEO plan.

One of the most reliable sources of data is paid surveys, seeing as how their participants also have a financial incentive to give honest (actionable) answers. Knowing your customer to a “T” before starting any SEO work is essential to success.

3. Start with on-site optimization

When it comes to boosting your visibility, reach and traffic in general, you need to realize that it all starts and ends with your on-site SEO. A non-optimized, non-responsive and poorly designed website will drive your audience away in no time, which will make your bounce rate skyrocket and therefore, result in decreased search engine rankings. To avoid this, you should work on your website prior to trying off-site SEO techniques that we will discuss below.

For more specifics on how to actually optimize your website properly, check out my post here.

Another mistake you need to avoid is looking at your website only through the eyes of your audience. Keep in mind that you also have to impress search engines, so try looking at your site’s infrastructure from their perspective as well. Metadata, tags, website speed and crawler-friendly navigation should be your top priorities.

4. Off-page SEO

Once your website is properly optimized with on-site SEO best practices, you need to shift your focus towards off-page SEO. Sure, tags and metadata are still important, however, if you’ve already set a proper infrastructure, you can just update this on the go, as soon as you upload a new piece of content. Your focus during the initial stages of off-page SEO needs to be A) proper keyword research and B) building quality backlinks. Needless to say, these two are the main pillars of an organic SEO campaign.

By pulling these two things off, your link building efforts will be much more efficient. Unfortunately, unless you’re a skilled copywriter or creative yourself, you might not be able to do all of this on your own. Web designers and writers are essential allies in this line of work, which is why an experienced digital marketer also has to possess certain organizational and negotiation abilities.

Conclusion

SEO is a process that takes time and should by no means be rushed. If you’re not comfortable attacking the SEO for your website on your own, then it’s a good idea to hire an experienced SEO specialist. Combine SEO with various other marketing strategies for the best chance of success and maximum exposure for your business!

Author Bio:

Lauren Wiseman is an entrepreneur, currently based in Melbourne and a regular contributor to bizzmarkblog.com. She assists clients in growing their personal and professional brands in a fast-changing and demanding market environment. Covering finance and investment topics, Lauren strongly believes in holistic approach to business.

Do you currently have an SEO plan in place?

Let us know in the comments section below!

Since the internet was created for the mainstream audience there has been an ongoing battle to create and optimize websites for the sake of increasing search engine rankings. However, this has never been a steady road.

Throughout its history, SEO has gone from throwing in keywords in white at the bottom of a website with vast amounts of link farms, to creating high quality content and adopting a strong link building strategy. As Google controls that vast majority of search traffic, when Google makes a change to its algorithm it effects the entire world of SEO. In this article we will look at how SEO has changed over the last 17 years of its existence.

SEO In The 1990’s

Throughout the 1990s there were several search engine projects developed such as Architext created in 1993 by six Stanford students, Matthew Gray’s World Wide Web Wanderer, along with Ask Jeeves in 1997. It wasn’t however until the early 2000s with the launch of Google’s Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) that we arguably start seeing webmasters paying close attention to measuring the rankings of websites. TBPR allowed webmasters to for the first time comprehend what search engines and specifically Google perceived to be a good website. You could argue that this is the point that SEO started, as it gave a way for webmasters to measure the success of optimization techniques on their websites. It was at this point that Google released its white hat guidelines that would allow the correct websites and best quality websites to appear at the correct place. However, whilst these guidelines existed, they were largely ignored as Google’s algorithm was fairly easy to cheat in that day.

2000-2010

The first documented update to Google’s algorithm was launched in 2002, after which many webmasters suffered heavy casualties. Webmasters complained of ranking within the top 10 results only to completely drop off the search engine results overnight. Prior to this shift, Google would update its algorithm every month with changes here and there, but this was an algorithmic update that would change the entire world of SEO. People complained that relevant searches were being deranked in favour of irrelevant search results. This was due to the way in which this update affected those who had optimized their site on what was previously considered perfectly acceptable link building techniques. After this change, Google began its mission to create a search engine algorithm that focused on providing the user with the most relevant content possible.

During 2003 Google launched eight documented updates in a major attempt at cracking down on black hat SEO. The updates were; Boston, Cassandra, Dominic, Esmerala, Fritz, Supplemental Index update (September Update), and Florida. Cassandra was the first update to come down hard on hidden text and hidden links along with dealing with issues such as large scale link farming. The most notable update was the final update of the year “Florida”, which Search Engine Journal has claimed to be Google’s first major update, and the update that changed SEO forever. After this update, all previous  spammy tactics of SEO e.g hidden text, keyword stuffing, multiple sites under same brand were completely eliminated as a method of improving a website’s SEO. This was a time when retailers relied drastically upon affiliates for their traffic, and affiliate based websites were some of the worst hit by the algorithmic update. In return retailers saw a drastic reduction in website traffic as a result of the update. This triggered a tremendous amount out of outcry from companies, since some were going out of business and some even threatened to sue.

2005 marked a massive change in the world of SEO with the introduction of the no-follow attribute. This was a time in which Google joined forces with MSN and Yahoo to crack down on spammy blog comment links. As of today the vast majority of links found in comment sections of websites automatically use the “no-follow” attribute. It was also the year in which Google launched the Google Analytics tool created to help webmasters have a better understanding of the operations of their website along with detailed traffic statistics. In June 2005 Google launched its personalized search function whilst this is a far cry from the personalised search that Google now uses today, it was a drastic improvement from Google’s previous attempt at personalising search results. The Jagger update was an update targeted at reciprocal links, link farms and paid links. Other updates in 2005 also included the introduction of XML sitemaps that could be submitted through webmaster tools, along with the introduction of Google Local/Maps which drastically grew the world of local SEO. A final update which rolled over until March 2006 was known as “Big Daddy” changing the way that Google handled URL canonicalization and 301/302 redirects along with other technical issues.

Throughout the latter half of the noughties there were relatively small updates from Google that to varying degrees had an impact on SEO. However it wasn’t until 2009 that we started to see Google again implement major changes. It was the year that Bing argued that it was going to show drastically better and more relevant search results than Google- a plan that never came into fruition. It was a year that the “Caffeine” update was first previewed, an update aptly named for its focus on drastically boosting Google’s crawling and indexing speed. It wasn’t until the year drew to a close in December 2009 where google found a way of implementing real-time search with Twitter Feeds, Google News and newly indexed content. Prior to this, SEO and search engines only really focused on websites that were designed for the long-term, now journalists and the news world needed to focus on optimizing their content and entering into the world of SEO.

2011-Today

2011-2012 marked two years that many SEO agencies went bust practically overnight, and the reason for this was the Panda update. For a while now many webmasters realized that .edu and links with hypertext such as “van repair” or “car for sale” would result in a higher serp ranking. After Panda tactics such as these had been abused so much, sites that attempted similar practices were deranked. The first major focus for Panda was “thin content”. This would be websites that offered hardly any quality content that were clearly set up for the purpose of increasing search rankings. Duplicate content (content that is somewhere else on the internet) suffered exceptionally heavy repercussions. Low-quality-content that essentially offered no useful value to human readers was swiftly deranked. Authority also became an increasingly important factor in which Google now turns to and stated that they would focus on websites with links from trustworthy sites rather than sites than low authority blog sites. Content farming (creating a website with tons of low quality content with its sole purpose of increasing the serp rankings of other websites) was also cracked on. Further updates included high-ad-to-content-ratio, low-quality content surrounding affiliate links, websites blocked by users, content mismatching search queries etc. Additional important updates include the introduction of schema markup and Google +.

The final massive update from Google was the Penguin update launched in 2012. This was an update that aimed at taking down the more subtle black hat techniques however many have argued that it negatively affected websites using what was previously considered white hat techniques. It meant that sites using spammy hyperlinks around good quality content suffered deranking in the SERPs. There have not been many updates since then apart from a heavier focus on local search which started in 2015 along with a stronger focus on mobile-friendly websites. Google continues to update its algorithm and the way in which the search engine operates, however recently there have been no major changes. We can only speculate what the next great update (if there will be one) will be.  The likeliest theory I would put forward is a clampdown on high-quality PBN’s which continue to exist and many have argued produce positive results. These are blog networks owned by SEO professionals that produce high quality content, with non-spammy links, designed and optimized well but exist purely for the purpose of boosting search rankings. It’s something that google has said it is against but at the moment is finding very difficult to detect, 2018 could be the year that this changes.

Author Bio:

Robert Bailey is the managing director of a digital marketing agency specialising in SEO based in Cardiff called SEO Article Heroes.

I hope you enjoyed this post from Robert on the “History of SEO”…Feel free to contact us with any further questions!

It’s been around 4 months (a little longer actually) at the time of writing this post, since I purchased an SSL certificate and switched to https on my website.

Please make sure to read my first post here on switching from http to https to see the reasons for this change.

I’m still surprised how many websites I see using an http protocol, when there are so many advantages of converting to https.

Anyways, I wanted to provide an update on my results of switching to https to hopefully help you understand why you should consider making the change as well.

Before we dive in, one important point I’d like to mention is if you do make this switch, you must ensure that all old URLs (http) are being 301 redirected to your new URLs (https).  You do not want two versions of your website as this will negatively impact your overall SEO and search engine rankings.

Now let’s get to the update…

Update: 4 Months Since Switching to https

A good way to track some of these big changes on your website is to use the “annotation” feature in Google Analytics…see screenshot below.

You can find this feature under the traffic chart inside your Google Analytics account and it’s a great way to gauge how your website is performing in terms of traffic after you make a change.

Since making the switch to https my organic traffic has noticeably increased when compared to the time period I was using the http protocol.

In fact, organic traffic is up a total of 310% when comparing August 5, 2017 – December 22, 2017 to March 18, 2017 – August 4, 2017 (basically this is approximately 4 months prior to and 4 months after switching to https).

See the screenshot below for a visual comparison:

The blue line represents “https” and the orange line represents when my website was “http” (this is tracking organic search visits).

I think it’s safe to say that this was a good decision.

Switching to https really helped my overall search engine rankings which in return is bringing me in more organic traffic to my website.

Let’s take a look at the screenshot below that shows the overall progress from switching to https (organic traffic again): 

As you can see again, there is a noticeable improvement in organic traffic after switching to https.

Now it’s also important to point out that this increase in organic wasn’t all due to switching to https.

I believe two other key factors to the increases I’m seeing in traffic and search engine rankings is due to consistent content generation and link building as well.

However, I wouldn’t be able to make this kind of progress if I was still using the http protocol.

The combination of all these SEO techniques are working together to help the organic growth of my blog.

This is evidence that adopting the right marketing strategy pays off…maybe not right away but eventually down the road.

Stay patient!

I hope this post was insightful/helpful and you received some value from it.

When combining the right strategies and constantly monitoring, tracking and testing your results, you can really begin to make some progress.

My goal here is to share with you what is working well for me, so you can go ahead and implement the same strategies.

Have you made the switch to https yet?

If not, what are you waiting for?

The past couple of months, I’ve been noticing an increasing number of people reaching out to me to see if they can get a guest post published on my blog.

If you’re new to this, guest posting is basically a link building technique, where you reach out to other relevant blogs in your general niche to see if you can get an article published on their website (with a link back to your blog within the article).

It’s a very powerful strategy for strengthening the overall SEO of your website, and more specifically increasing your search engine rankings as well as organic traffic.

I recommend you check out my blog post “What Is Guest Posting- Powerful Link Building Tips” if you’re unfamiliar with this method or if you’d like to try it out for yourself.

Google heavily favors websites that have a healthy backlink portfolio (meaning a number of natural, quality and authoritative backlinks pointing to your website).

And guest posting is one of the best techniques to achieve this.

Now I know I’ve talked about the power of guest posting on other websites, but why is it also powerful to accept guest posts on your own website as well?

There’s a reason why so many successful bloggers accept guest post submissions on their website…

A few of the main benefits that jump right out at me are:

1.) Consistent Content Generation: Accepting guest posts not only saves you time, but it also provides you with consistent content from other established bloggers. It’s really excellent when you receive a 1,000 word article from someone you’ve connected with and literally all you have to do is hit publish. This is a great way to boost your blog and provide your readers with additional content. It’s important to note that even if you’re getting a ton of guest post submissions, it’s still vital that you continue to publish your own blog posts as well. Think of how your blog got to this position in the first place…by you creating valuable content yourself.  The majority of your articles on your website should be written by you, and then if you’d like, you can supplement that with external posts from other bloggers.

2.) Additional Stream of Revenue: Guest posting can actually turn into a form of revenue for your website. Many people charge for guest posts (sometimes called sponsored posts if someone wants to include a commercial backlink to their website). This is entirely up to you if you want to charge money. If another blogger sends you a post that is a bit more promotional rather than informational, it may be worth it to charge $50-100+ given the content style. This is somehting you will have to decide for yourself depending on your vision and mission of your website. It could be a nice way to create some passive income and an additional revenue stream from your blog.

3.) Connections with Other Bloggers: Last but not least, accepting guest posts is a great way to connect with other bloggers in your niche. Sometimes you can pitch them back and ask if you could have a guest post published on their website to build a quality backlink for yourself. It’s also a great way to both give and receive tips, brainstorm marketing strategies etc. Not all bloggers and blogs are competition, in fact, many will help you get to the next level. Look at guest posting communication as a great way to network with like-minded individuals who share similar goals as you do.

At the time of writing this, I currently don’t have a page dedicated to guest post submissions, however it is something I will most likely be creating within the next few months.

This is a good way to go over your writing guidelines, details, pricing etc…

If you’re not at the stage of accepting guest posts yet, no problem…your main focus then should be getting your articles published on other websites until you build up enough authority to begin accepting content for yourself.

Try to start really moving the needle in your backlinking and content generation efforts.

Once you start, the momentum continues to pick up.

Stay patient and remain consistent!

The wonderful thing about search engine optimization (SEO), is that there are so many tools available at your fingertips to help you monitor and improve your overall SEO efforts.

SEO marketing tools are continuing to get more advanced, detailed and accurate, which can alleviate some of the complexity that comes with properly optimizing websites for search.

However, it’s important that you find the right mix of tools that aligns with your goals and your aspirations.

Below are the SEO tools that I personally use on a regular basis.

There are hundreds (if not thousands) of other powerful marketing tools to choose from online…if there are any

that you use, that are worth checking out, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

My Favorite SEO Marketing Tools (In No Particular Order)

1.) Screaming Frog– This is a unique SEO spider and website crawling tool where you are able to scrape out any website/URL to gain additional insight and analyze onsite SEO elements.  Screaming Frog is excellent for checking things like Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, H1 Tags, Image ALT Tags, 301 redirects, 404 errors, canonical tags and much more.  There are also more advanced reports you can pull as well. One of my favorites is identifying unnecessary redirect chains for websites that have too many redirects in place. Feel free to explore Screaming Frog more on your own, I would not be able to do my SEO work without it. Absolutely amazing tool.

2.) MOZ– MOZ is a powerful platform that allows you to keep track of your search engine rankings, monitor important crawl issues related to your website, analyze link metrics (backlinks, competitor backlinks) and much more. The team behind MOZ really knows what they’re doing when it comes to SEO, and the software they’ve built is extremely helpful whether you’re doing SEO for yourself or other companies. Being able to track your rankings effectively will ultimately help you increase your position in Google overtime as well as bring in more organic traffic. If you haven’t tried MOZ yet, you need to take it for a spin.

3.) Ahrefs.com– Ahrefs provides all the necessary tools any serious SEO specialist needs, including ranking insights, keyword data, in-depth backlink analysis, site auditor/crawl error data and much more. I find myself using Ahrefs more and more as time goes on and I especially take advantage of the comprehensive backlink features they have to offer. This is an incredibly robust SEO platform that can be very helpful in monitoring, maintaining and growing your or your client’s website.

4.) Serpfox– This is similar to MOZ but on a smaller scale (and does not track crawl errors). However the reason I added it here is 1.) because I use it for some of my smaller accounts and 2.) it is a great starting point for someone who is just getting into tracking their search rankings. Serpfox has packages starting at $10 per month and allows you to track your keyword phrases and pull ranking reports.  It’s a really solid little rank tracking tool, and perfect for someone who is just getting their feet wet in terms of SEO (and beyond).

5.) Google Search Console– It is highly recommended that Google Search Console is set up for every website you do SEO for. If Google gives you access to these tools for free, it’s a no-brianer to use them to collect data.  Google Search Console allows you to submit your XML sitemap to Google, gain more insight on organic traffic, monitor crawl errors, check your index status, disavow spammy backlinks, analyze your search appearance and a whole lot more. It is beyond valuable for any SEO specialist and provides the information you need for a better optimized website.

6.) Google Analytics– Another no-brainer is making sure Google Analytics is set up on your website.  This allows you to track all of your traffic data, including total traffic, organic traffic, referral traffic, direct traffic, page views, bounce rate, average time on page, conversions and about a million other metrics. Google Analytics is powerful in comparing traffic year-over-year and month-over-month traffic to see how your SEO campaign is performing. It is also a vital resource to identify what pages are driving the most traffic/conversions and which pages need some work. Every website need Google Analytics set up, regardless if you’re doing SEO or not. Take advantage of all the free information Google is giving us and utilize Google Analytics to take things to the next level.

Now I do use other SEO marketing tools in addition to what you see above, but these are the core ones I go to on a daily and weekly basis.

Actually a recent SEO tool I’ve been testing is called Seomator, which is a very useful website crawler and auditing tool to help improve the overall SEO of your website.

Everyone will have a somewhat different lineup in terms of SEO tools, so it’s always interesting to see the variation from person to person.

If you use different SEO tools that aren’t on this list, please leave them in the comments section below…this could really help anyone who is reading.

What SEO marketing tools do you use?

Are you a fan of any listed in this post?

Link building is an SEO strategy that I personally really enjoy doing.

Mainly because it results in the most noticeable improvements/movement for my blog and other external websites that I work on (this is assuming all other SEO is in place properly as well).

And by movement I mean increases in search engine rankings, organic traffic, engagement, conversions etc.

Unfortunately, link building for many people can be a very daunting and confusing process.

This is quite common actually.

There are many bloggers out there who write great content, optimize all of their SEO tags with target terms, post on a consistent schedule but hit a wall when it comes to link building…This makes them and their blog stagnant.

If they just mastered this one link building technique I’m going to share with you below, it could potentially sky rocket their results.

In this post, I want to go over one of the most natural, easiest and ethical ways to build quality backlinks to your website.

So what is the technique I’m talking about?

Guest Posting For Maximum Results!

That’s right, guest posting!

This is as simple as reaching out to other websites/blogs in your general niche and asking them if you could write an article that would be published on their website…which in return would contain your website link within the article, building you a natural backlink.

Other bloggers and website owners are constantly looking for unique and fresh content to put on their websites…and this is where you come in to help out.

There should never really be a shortage of guest post opportunities (unless you’re operating in an extremely specified niche) because every website needs quality and consistent content….Remember content is king!

If you want more information on how to actually get started with guest posting, make sure to check out my article on “What Is Guest Posting?” for more details on the process.

One thing I’d like to point out is that you must remain patient with guest posting and link building in general.

Some of these websites you reach out to may take a little while to respond, or some time to publish your article but if you stick with this approach it WILL be worth it.

On the topic of patience, it’s also important to understand that if/when you do get a guest post published, it will take Google some time to recognize that backlink pointing to your website.

Don’t expect to see the benefits immediately.

Sometimes it can take a few weeks and even months before you really see your hard work pay off.

And I say hard work, because although this is a simple link building technique, it will take a little while to master the process from start to finish.

But when you do, watch out!

Link Building Benefits- Don’t Put This Off

I’ve already mentioned some of the link building benefits above but this will help bring everything full circle.

If you truly master link building and make it a main priority in your marketing efforts, the results can really be exciting.

Let’s take a look at the main benefits of link building below:

1.) Increased Search Rankings:

This to me is the biggest benefits overall of link building. When Google starts recognizing the backlinks pointing to your website, you really start to jump up in the search results. It’s exciting when you start hitting the first page of Google for relevant and highly searched keyword phrases….which brings me to the next benefit.

2.) Increased Organic Traffic:

As a result of higher search rankings, this will ultimately bring your site more organic traffic. I don’t know about you, but organic traffic from the search engines is my favorite traffic source.  It’s free, it’s highly targeted and sky is the limit with how much you can generate.

3.) Strengthens Overall SEO/brings everything together:

Link building strengthens the overall SEO of your website and really brings everything together.  It helps you rank for the keywords you’re targeting in your Title tags, H1 tags, Image ALT tags etc.  It also helps build authority to specific blog posts, web pages and your website in general.

4.) Referral Traffic From Other Sites:

Although not the main benefit, but an added bonus is the referral traffic you could potentially receive from having your article published on another website.  Depending on the popularity of the site, this could bring in a healthy amount of traffic and new readers.

5.) Create New Relationships:

Another great benefit is the relationships you build with other bloggers.  These are people you can possibly work with in the future, share ideas, tactics and strategies with. Networking in this industry is always important, and this is a great way to connect with like-minded people.

To summarize this post, if you master the strategy of link building, your website will thank you for it and respond over time.

This is one of the most important skills you can have in your toolbox when it comes to the organic growth of your blog.

Don’t take this lightly and more importantly get out there are start building some links.

It may feel difficult at first, but stick with it.

And if you need extra support, either contact me or refer to this post here.

What are your thoughts on this?

Have you had success with guest posting?

Have you not even tried yet?