HubSpot has released 9 link building email outreach templates. Along with the templates, Sophia Bernazzani has also mentioned some rules on link building outreach. Bernazzani says, “There are right and wrong ways to go about improving your site’s SEO, and inbound link building — when done correctly — is generally regarded as one of the right ways. You’re pitching your content to publications that might be interested in sharing it with different audiences. A backlink is just the cherry on top. However, there are wrong ways to go about asking for inbound backlinks,... [...]

Julie Joyce says, “I’m one of those people who thinks I can usually handle things by myself — I don’t need or want anyone’s help. It’s been tough for me to let go of that attitude when it comes to link building, but I’ve been doing much better lately after realizing that it really is beneficial to have more involvement from various people. Sometimes that extra involvement has been kind of forced on me. Sometimes I’ve had to beg for it. But all in all, I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that the best links we get these days come from working together with the client, their... [...]

Tom Capper says, “Back in September last year, I was lucky enough to see Rand speak at MozCon. His talk was about link building and the main types of strategy that he saw as still being relevant and effective today. During his introduction, he said something that really got me thinking, about how the whole purpose of links and PageRank had been to approximate traffic. Essentially, back in the late ’90s, links were a much bigger part of how we experienced the web — think of hubs like Excite, AOL, and Yahoo. Google’s big innovation was to realize that, because people navigated the... [...]

Julie Joyce says, “When it comes to being unlinkable, there’s a lot more to consider besides boring content, poor quality writing and low-end design. Of the many issues that could cause users not to want to link to your content, here are four major ones that I see all the time: intrusive intersitials, gated content, excessive pagination and avant-garde design. You can find someone to argue for and against all four of these barriers, and I’d probably see some of those points in the last three cases, but I’m not sure much can change my mind about interstitials. Intrusive interstitials It’s... [...]

Brian Clark says, ““Link building” is something I’ve never done in my 19 years of publishing online. In other words, I’ve never spent any time whatsoever emailing strangers and trying to convince them to link to my content. I have, however, been on the receiving end of many link-building requests. And they’ve never worked on me. Now, I know there are smart people who work on behalf of clients to get links through these outreach initiatives. Strangely, I’ve never received a link request from a smart person. It’s usually just dopey people using bad email scripts and automation... [...]

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,... [...]