Julie Joyce says, “Why are we so afraid of links? Back in the old days of SEO, we loved any link if it was free, even if it was from a spammy scraper site or the lowest-quality directory you’ve ever seen. If we did nothing to get that link, it was a great link. People assumed that all links were beneficial — and that even “bad” links were completely harmless, with no potential to cause damage. Then we started to get scared… and we nofollowed links. We performed loads of link analysis and reached out to sites that we thought were spammy and asked to have our links removed. Oh,... [...]

Dr. Peter J. Meyers says, “Any SEO worth their sustainably harvested pink Himalayan salt knows that Google offers a variety of advanced search operators – special commands that take you above and beyond regular text searches. Learning search operators is a bit like learning chess, though. It’s easy to memorize how each piece moves, but that’s about 1% of your path toward mastery. I know that the pointy-hat guy in chess moves diagonally, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to take on Kasparov or Deep Blue. Instead of just listing all of the operators and telling you what... [...]

Kerry Jones says, “Do your link building results look something like this? – Start doing outreach – Get links – Stop doing outreach – No more links Everyone talks about the long-term benefits of using content marketing as part of a link building strategy. But without the right type of content, your experience may be that you stop earning links as soon as you stop doing outreach. In this sense, you have to keep putting gas in the car for it to keep running (marketing “gas” = time, effort, and resources). But what if there was a way to fill up the car once, and that... [...]

MOz team says, “We all know how effective link building efforts can be, but it can be an intimidating, frustrating process — and sometimes even a chore. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand builds out a framework you can start using today to streamline and simplify the link building process for you, your teammates, and yes, even your interns”. How to Prioritize Your Link Building Efforts & Opportunities MOZ  [...]

Jason Puckett says, “It’s inevitable. Despite your best efforts to prevent them, there will likely be some 404 errors showing up on your website for old pages that have been discontinued on your site. Or perhaps someone just inadvertently mistyped the URL they were linking to on your website. Certainly, 404 errors aren’t great for search engine indexing, but they also represent potential inbound links that are now broken and lost. Or can those links be reclaimed? I have two techniques you might want to try. Reclaiming broken links with Google Search Console Google Search Console is free,... [...]

Andrew Dennis says, “Link building isn’t some mystical SEO hack. Building links is straightforward: find relevant sites that have a reason to link and convince them to link. Why would another site link to yours? For a variety of reasons: because a relationship already exists; because they’re talking about your business/products; because you’re a valuable resource for their audience; or because you’re involved in the same community events. These are other reasons, of course. Links represent a relationship and connection online. If you want to build links without creating content, then... [...]

Andrew Dennis says, “Link building isn’t some mystical SEO hack. Building links is straightforward: find relevant sites that have a reason to link and convince them to link. Why would another site link to yours? For a variety of reasons: because a relationship already exists; because they’re talking about your business/products; because you’re a valuable resource for their audience; or because you’re involved in the same community events. These are other reasons, of course. Links represent a relationship and connection online. If you want to build links without creating content, then... [...]

Julie Joyce says, “Back in 2014, I had 14 link resolutions. For 2017, I have 17 for you. Maybe you’re doing some or all of the following already; congratulations if that’s true, as you’re much more proactive than most. If you aren’t doing any, start with just a couple — but please, please, please make sure you do the first one. That’s the biggest first step you can take if you’re not clued in to what’s involved with your link development. 1. Check out your backlink profile This one is really never going to change, as far as I’m concerned. It’s definitely not earth-shatteringly... [...]

David Koji says, “There are several traditional link building strategies that most companies engage in. One of the most popular, guest posting, is used by almost every organization. However, there are several additional linking building strategies, tactics and resources to help your content strategy grow and flourish. Here are 10 actionable steps to generate additional backlinks for your site. 1. Blogger reviews. Decide on something you can give away in exchange for a review. It can be software, an informational product, physical product, or service. Anything of value that bloggers in your... [...]

Mark Johnstone says, “A few weeks ago, a post was published entitled The SEO Myth of Going Viral. It referenced 8 pieces of content across 4 different sites that went viral and, most importantly for SEO, gained hundreds of linking root domains. I was the creative director on a lot of those campaigns while working as the VP of Creative at Distilled. Today, I’d like to add some important context and detail to the original post. I actually agree with much of what it said. However, it’s based on the assumption that one big viral piece of content would result in a visible jump in rankings... [...]