However, despite its importance, many brands fail at link building. In this post, we’ll explore the top five mistakes that brands make when it comes to link building, and offer tips on how to avoid them.

Mistake #1: Think you don’t have to be proactive about building links

In low-to-no competition niches such as pet food, link building for long-tail keywords may not be necessary. However, the lack of competition often translates to low profitability. In contrast, highly competitive niches such as finance are lucrative but require effective link building strategies to succeed.

To illustrate, we compiled a list of 1,000 popular finance keywords and analyzed their Ahrefs data by keyword difficulty range and referring domains per page for the top search engine results pages.

The results showed a bell curve distribution. While some keywords are less difficult and have fewer referring domains, the majority fall in the middle with a keyword difficulty range of approximately 30-60 and 50-200 referring domains per page.

This trend is consistent with other similar industries, highlighting the importance of implementing successful link building tactics to compete and succeed in highly competitive and profitable niches.

This is because in order to compete in a profitable industry, you need to have a substantial number of high-quality backlinks per page. This number typically ranges from 50-200. If you are unable to attract or acquire this number of external links for each page or article you want to rank, you will never be able to compete effectively.

In highly competitive industries, a combination of quality and quantity is required to succeed. For instance, a popular commercial keyword like “how to make a website” has search engine results pages (SERPs) dominated by sites with high domain ratings (DR) ranging from 76 to 90+. Additionally, these sites typically have several hundred or more referring domains per page on average, making it difficult to compete without similar link building strategies.

Scaling both the quality and quantity of links is necessary to compete in industries with a high level of competition. Focusing solely on one without the other is insufficient in industries with fierce competition.

Mistake #2: Leaving links to chance compared to systemizing success

Many average and small-scale marketers believe that backlinks will appear out of thin air without putting in any effort. The idea of “if you build it, they will come” is a naive and simplistic approach to link building. While this may work for large companies such as HubSpot, Coca-Cola, or American Express, it is not a realistic expectation for the majority of businesses.

For instance, let’s consider the commercial keyword “best project management software.” According to Ahrefs, approximately 273 links are needed to compete for the first page of search engine results. However, this estimate is subject to variation based on factors such as link quality, domain rating, and topical authority. Nevertheless, the underlying point remains valid.

Expecting a large number of links to materialize on a heavily commercial product comparison page is unrealistic. Instead of attempting to purchase links, a better approach is to identify what other potential link partners might require from you in exchange.

Usually, this can be boiled down to three things: money, content/assets, or visibility. For example, content sites that require advertisers, brands that need creative assets, or influencers seeking to expand their audience can all be potential link partners.

To put it differently, it is important to determine your own assets or areas of expertise that you can utilize to assist others before requesting a reciprocal gesture. By doing so, you will eventually obtain a significant number of backlinks on a regular basis.

Mistake #3: Using the wrong link building tactics for the wrong kinds of links

At this point, it is clear that link building requires effort and cannot be left to chance. However, the issue is that many marketers tend to use ineffective link-building tactics at the wrong time. This leads to limited success, a waste of resources, and ultimately hinders their financial growth.

One such tactic is cold outreach, which may work for lower DR (i.e., smaller) sites in certain industries but is less likely to succeed with high DR (i.e., big) sites. To build links with such sites, warm tactics, a referral, or offering something of value may be necessary.

To sum it up, the approach to link building depends on the domain rating of the websites you’re targeting.

• If you’re in the under 30 range, it’s likely that you’ll receive natural links if you create quality content.
• For sites with a DR of around 30-60, cold outreach can be effective in acquiring links. For DRs between 60-90, it’s important to provide creative assets or content, or engage in mutually beneficial partnerships.
• For DRs above 90, it’s necessary to have personal relationships, a strong network, or a large budget for sponsorships or donations.

While these guidelines may not be universally applicable, they are generally accurate for most competitive spaces.

Mistake #4: Scatterbrained link building vs. doubling down on 2-3 scalable ones

The format of list posts has been around for a long time and has been a classic. However, marketers have ruined it by creating extensive list posts that are essentially useless.

These “1,093,394,560 link building tactics” posts are misguided and give a false sense of belief. In reality, you only need 2-3 legitimate link building tactics to start and then you should focus on doubling down on those tactics as much as possible.

For example, if you hit a link building goldmine with proprietary data and linkable assets, you should continue producing new related proprietary data and linkable assets instead of switching gears to classic 404 or broken link building outreach emails.

Winning in link building is not about chasing overplayed or cliché tactics, but about focusing on what works and consistently producing high-quality content.

Mistake #5: Prioritizing the wrong pages at the wrong times

It may not be fair, but big brands are able to rank for a wider range of topics with fewer links due to their established topical authority, content quality, and internal linking. Instead of complaining, it’s important to learn from their strategies.

One key aspect is how they prioritize link building efforts for different pages on their site. For instance, building brand recognition should always be a top priority for the homepage, while commercial pages often require more creative link building tactics.

Lastly, focus on creating high-quality pillar pages for competitive queries and use internal linking to drive traffic to related child pages.

The list provided above does not include links to long-tail pages which are typically top-of-funnel (TOFU) type pages. This is because big brands prioritize resource allocation towards the three categories mentioned above and can use internal links to rank longer-tail, less commercial content. However, for new or small sites, focusing on long-tail pages is a good starting point.

Nonetheless, professionals move beyond this stage and implement high quantity and quality link building strategies for key pages to scale faster than amateurs.

Link building is a difficult task but can yield significant results if executed properly, which distinguishes the experts from the novices who commonly commit the same errors.

Bottom Line

Many people have misunderstandings about link building. Some believe it is illegal, which is not true, while others think they don’t need it, which is also false. The reality lies somewhere in between, and this is where professionals excel. They know how to leverage the right tactics at the right time, from the right websites, to obtain the right types of links that will benefit their site’s specific pages.

Professionals don’t rely on tricks or gimmicks or hope for success like amateurs. They have a deep understanding of the process and how to make it work consistently.

The post Top 5 Mistakes: The Reasons Why Most Brands Fail at Link Building appeared first on Creativ Digital.

Backlinks are still one of the most important ranking factors for a website. However, 95% of websites still don’t have any going to them.

Backlinks from high-quality websites that are relevant and reliable tell Google, “Hey, this content is so helpful for people that other websites want to recommend it to their followers.”

In short, yes, link building is still relevant to SEO. However, the days of quantity over quality are long over.

What is Link Building?

Link building in SEO refers to the process of acquiring high-quality inbound links (also known as backlinks) to a website. The goal of link building is to increase Google’s confidence that your website can deliver a relevant experience for visitors. Links from reputable websites (such as trade organizations, trade publications, or suppliers) have a greater SEO impact.

Link building has long been a topic of discussion in SEO, but since Google’s Penguin update in 2012, this strategy has come under closer scrutiny due to the increased risk involved. In essence, link building started to be more closely monitored, so there was a chance that your website might actually be penalized if it appeared as though it was trying to monopolize this strategy and negatively impacted users’ search experiences.

Link building campaigns should be approached as authority-building rather than just backlink building. It’s time to consider how to naturally build authority (in the form of backlinks) by producing excellent content, assets, or promoting your company. Create something that users find valuable and wisely promote it rather than paying link brokers or cold-calling websites for guest posting.

How To Effectively Build Authority Links

Giving users high-quality content that meets audience needs is Google’s main objective, and this is something that must be remembered in order to gain authority. Think about how businesses gain the trust of their customers in the real world. They offer high-quality goods and/ or services in order to win customers’ trust. When customers trust you, brand loyalty soars as word-of-mouth advertising spreads.

The same strategy should be applied to link building. Create something worthwhile and concentrate on promoting your UVPs rather than purchasing backlinks or paying websites to post your blog and link back to you.

It’s crucial to keep investing in links that generate income once you’ve established a strong backlink profile. Analyze converted referral sources to find them and then replicate them. Although technically not link building, this involves looking more closely at sources that appear to generate income so you can maximize your investment.

Create a Valuable Asset

Building something that users will link to as a source or tool is one way to naturally increase authority and backlinks.

For instance, your company might be able to conduct audience research and surveying to compile a thorough whitepaper on your industry’s trends. Or perhaps your company can develop a customer-valuable tool, similar to how banks develop savings tools to assist customers in making plans for buying homes and determining how much they need to save.

If you produce something worthwhile and take the necessary steps to promote it, backlinks will naturally follow.

Encourage Excellence

If your company has a PR team, make sure to incorporate your their strategy with SEO. While online newspapers that link back to your website will increase your authority, word-of-mouth will help your brand stay relevant outside of cyberspace.

Asking publications to link back to your website is worthwhile if they are already writing about your company. It’s a win-win situation because linking to your website makes it easier for readers to learn more about your business and increases referral traffic and search engine authority.

Even better, you can start the outreach with the link request if your SEO and PR teams are integrated and working together to achieve the same objective.

Link Relevancy Versus Link Authority

How can you tell if your links are of the highest quality? The authority of the website that links to it and the link’s relevance are the two factors that Google takes into account when evaluating links.

Domain Authority and Links

Use Domain Authority as a practical backlink-building tool to find out how search engines will view your website and how websites for which you are considering requesting a backlink will be ranked. Generally speaking, links from sites with higher domain authority, such as a trade journal or an industry association, are what you want.

Backlink Relevancy

Domain authority isn’t enough for Google, however. The link in question must also be relevant (closely connected) to your site’s content. If you’re linked by the New York Times, but that article discusses golfing skills, not business skills, the link will be irrelevant, and may actually hinder your reputation in Google’s eyes.

Authority or relevancy in link building

But which strategy, relevancy or authority, is more important? You need two wheels to make a bicycle run, but you could theoretically balance on the back wheel and still move forward if you had to. Links with high authority are difficult to win unless you can harness high- end publicity to attract those links to your new startup. Until that happens, relevancy is key. Get links from sites that would naturally link to you because your content is aligned.

Quality vs Quantity

Even if the links aren’t of high quality, it might be tempting to go out and gather a lot of links to your website from anywhere in the hopes that the sheer volume of incoming links will improve your search engine ranking.

However, links from low-quality or irrelevant websites will actually impede your efforts to establish your own website’s reputation and harm its search engine ranking. It can be very challenging to get links from popular websites, but you can start your SEO link-building process there by getting a few from relevant websites. Building links is a continuous process that businesses develop over time.

TLDR

Link building is still important for SEO in 2023. While there are many factors that can affect a searcher’s rankings, correlation studies consistently demonstrate that a site’s capacity to rank for competitive terms is significantly impacted by its backlink profile. The best way is to build authority through natural backlinks: create great content, utilize relationships, become a thought leader, digital pr and other similar high effort endeavors is still important to SEO.

The post Is Link Building Still Relevant to SEO Today? appeared first on Creativ Digital.

The answer to this depends entirely on which SEO you’re talking to. Some swear by DA while others consider it a pointless vanity metric.

The confusion perhaps arises because domain authority is not used by Google when establishing search rankings. DA has no impact on the SERPs. Instead, domain authority is a 100-point scale used by Moz to measure the predictive ranking strength of a domain.

Whatever stance you take on the importance of domain authority as a metric, it’s difficult to deny that a site with a high volume of relevant external links is highly likely to outrank a site with a weaker backlink profile. Search engines judge websites partly in terms of the company they keep. If your health site has an abundance of links to Healthline, CDC, and Mayo Clinic, it will appear more authoritative than a new health site with no link profile in place.

So, a more pertinent question for business owners is this: “How can I increase the overall authority of my brand?”

We’re here today to outline the power of link outreach if you want to enhance authority and to potentially grow your sales.

Before anything else, a snapshot of some link building basics…
Link building at a glance
Link building is the process of obtaining links from other websites across the internet.

In general terms, link building provides three powerful signals for your site:

Authority
Trustworthiness
Relevancy

You can buy links, exchange links, and acquire links through writing guest posts. For the purposes of today, we’ll be focusing primarily on guest posting. This is an affordable and actionable way to start building links right now.

Why Practice Link Building?

If authority, trustworthiness, and relevancy are not enough reasons to start link building, there’s more…

When you start building a profile of backlinks to your site, you can bring in more referral traffic and potentially rank for more keywords. Both of these elements could lead to more sales, the end goal of any business.

By increasing your perceived authority, you could become a thought leader in your industry. This will open up a wealth of public relations opportunities like appearing on podcasts and at conferences or masterminds.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s get back to how you can start winning links for your site through guest posting.
Guest posting: lay the foundations on your own site
Guest posting is one more thing some SEOs claim is dead.

Even if you share this view, reframe it and consider the increased opportunity for you as more companies heed this questionable advice and stop guest posting.

The first thing you need in place is high-quality content on your site. Google wants to reward searchers with an enjoyable experience that addresses their query usefully. Make sure your content is entertaining, informative, formatted for skimming, and contains plenty of outbound links to relevant sources. Keep it simple, too. You don’t want to confuse your readers.

Your underlying goal of content is super-simple: make it so good that people want to share it and are eager to be associated with that content and your brand.

Assuming you have this bedrock of authoritative content live, it’s time to put a three-pronged strategy in place:

Prospecting
Outreach
Relationship-building

Prospecting
Prospecting is one of the most tedious and time-consuming parts of the equation. To this end, it’s an ideal task to outsource.

You need to get creative here, though. Generic cold email templates tend to turn most people off. Ask yourself when was the last time you responded to this type of cookie-cutter email.

Use LinkedIn and social media to find information about the editor that will help you craft a personalized message when you’re ready to strike.

Ideally, you should be searching only for relevant and authoritative blogs so take your time at this stage or pay someone to do the job for you. Finding appropriate sites to target will streamline outreach, the next step of your link building strategy.

Outreach

With a list of prospects compiled in an Excel sheet, it’s time to start sending some emails.

Don’t be afraid to stand out here. Indeed, that’s what you should be striving to do. Differentiate yourself from the scores of other daily emails filling the inbox of the recipient.

Avoid generic approaches that betray the fact you haven’t read any of the content on the site in question. Do your due diligence.

Bottom line, the person you are contacting wants great content and they want high-quality links. If you can provide that, deliver this message as concisely as possible while including some personality.

Remember, outreach might be time-consuming, but it saves you from buying links or taking a chance on PBNs.

Relationship-Building

You should approach all attempts at link building as a long game.

Instead of sending a single email expecting one guest post and one link as a result, view this email as the start of a potentially ongoing relationship. Take the time to build a relationship from the get-go with your point of contact. Under promise and overdeliver.

Final Thoughts

Well, we hope this overview has shown you that building a strategic link profile can increase your perceived authority within your industry.

Now, if you’re planning to undertake a link building campaign, remember that it takes time. This time could be very well spent, though. You might take months to reap dividends, but as those do-follow links start mounting up, and your domain authority score starts rising, you could even see a direct increase in sales.

If you’re still not sure how you can get started – and getting started is often the hardest part – get in touch and we’ll be more than happy to help out.

The post How Link Outreach Will Help Your Website Build Authority appeared first on Creativ Digital.

The number of directory links you had influenced how well your site ranked on Google. However, online marketers caught on and littered Google with links to their own site.

Today, Google’s algorithm is more sophisticated. While links are still one of the best signals, Google does not view all links equally. Links from directory listings are now less valuable compared to contextual links coming from a high-authority site in your niche.

But this does not mean to say that web directories are worthless. According to MOZ research, web directories and local citations still have a small ranking factor especially for businesses. In fact, Google’s John Mueller has said that directory links “generally” don’t help with SEO.

Therefore, marketers should move beyond seeing directories as a source of links. They should instead view directories as a source of traffic and trust.

If you’re a business looking to boost sales and traffic don’t just put your listings on the first web directory you see. Consider these listings before signing up:

• Is this site reputable? Ask yourself if a customer sees your business on this site, will they view my business as legitimate?
• Is my target audience likely to come to this website? If the answer is no, it’s probably not worth listing your business.

Here are some web directories that are still relevant in 2019.

To remain relevant many online directories transitioned into review sites. This is a list of web directories with real traffic that can translate to real value for your website.

Best of the Web

Best of the Web (or BOTW for short) has been around since 1994 and is still a trusted online directory for 16 million businesses. A lifetime listing (with a followed link) costs $299.

AboutUs

AboutUs was originally a business domain directory but transitioned to allowing all kinds of websites to be submitted.

Spoke.com

If you want to find or discuss business people, companies, news and other business related stuff, you can do that in Spoke.com. The site allows you to add a web listing for a business or a person.

For Blogs Only

Blogarama

Blogarama is one of the web’s oldest blog directories. It features over 143,000 blog listings that are being actively updated by admins. The site has over 230,000 visitors monthly and offers premium and business packages.

For Local Business

Google My Business

You can say that Google My Business is the grandfather of web directories. Many SEO professionals are familiar with the benefits of submitting your site to this directory. Google My Business continues to be relevant in terms of local SEO and it’s also worth mentioning that Google is the world’s largest search engine. Therefore listing your business on this directory is not just a good idea but also good marketing sense.

Bing Places

Bing Places is Google My Business Equivalent in the world’s second most popular search engine. Even though only 4% of the world uses Bing for searches, it is important to note that this is the default search engine for Internet Explorer and Edge and Microsoft still dominates the world’s desktop market.

Yahoo

Yep, Yahoo is still relevant and is the 3^rd most popular search engine. Adding your business to Yahoo Local (and 6 other daughter directories) cost $8.25 a month.

Yelp

Yelp is still the place to go for online reviews for local businesses. If you want your customers to find you, you have to be on Yelp and get positive reviews.

Foursquare

Foursquare is not as popular as Yelp but it provides listings for all types of businesses.

Yellow Pages

The company that used to print huge yellow books has gone online. Claiming your business is free although you will be pestered into signing up for their advertising options.

YP is still relevant because it provides listing to all types of industries, offers coupons and regularly posts blog content to drive internal link equity back to their directory pages. The site also converts. When people go to Yellow Pages, they’re looking for contact information. 60 million people go to YP.com every month and 91% make contact within 24 hours.

Chamber of Commerce

ChamberOfCommerce.com is the online version of your local Chamber of Commerce. It boasts a robust listing of small business online and also serves as a small business owner resource center.

Merchant Circle

Merchant Circle’s mission is simple: “find the best local merchants.”

You can find all kinds of businesses, merchants, industries, contractors and professionals on Merchant Circle. It has a listing of around 2 million and gets approximately 340,000 monthly visits.

Better Business Bureau

The BBB remains a major trust signal to consumers. If your business has a BBB accreditation, customers can visit the site to verify you’re a business they can trust.

The post Web Directories That Are Still Valuable In 2019 appeared first on Creativ Digital.

Search engines like Google use backlinks and other measures to figure out the relevance of your website. If links are found in sites with poor quality content, search engines will think that it is not relevant. However, if links are found in high quality sites, Google will think that your website is credible and reward you with a high ranking.

Link Building Strategies For Bloggers

When it comes to search engines and backlinks, quality is more important than quantity. Here are some link building strategies that bloggers need to note.

Guest Posting

Links become live and backlinked (when followed) through guest posting. More importantly it is critical that your link gets published on the right website.

Guest posting can help you do this. Start by creating valuable content that attracts links. Next, promote content to the right audience so that it can be seen by people in the same industry or niche as you. The objective here is to get trustworthy sites to publish your links and create backlinks to the desired link. The only way they will do this is if they view your content as valuable.

Showcase Experts & Influencers

Experts and influencers like to give interviews. This can be a win-win situation because your readers will be more interested in hearing what they have to say. Additionally you can easily connect with them on social media so one of your strategies should be showcasing experts and influencers.

This works because they will want to share the link of the interview on their blog, website or social media. If they are experts, they will have high quality site. Luckily you don’t need to meet them in person for an interview; you can easily chat with them through video calls.

Be Relevant

People are more likely to read trendy subjects. Writing about relevant topics is a good way to bait for links.

Keep up with what’s hot in the news and make sure to read every day to find out what’s exciting and new in your niche. You also need to figure out what your target audience likes to read.

Be sure to include infographics as they are easier to understand and share. Also people are stimulated and excited by visuals.

Have A Strong Opinion

Readers want a strong opinion. Don’t be afraid to let them know what you think and how you feel. It is also alright to rant from time to time. However, if you do decide to publish this type of content make sure to support your views and opinions with fact.

A little controversy is usually a good thing especially if you want to hold and engage your readers’ attention. Just don’t overdo it with drama and always avoid being hurtful.

Research & Analysis

As we all know, credibility is very important in the internet. Always use statistics and data to support your articles. Factual information is very important to readers because they want valuable information. Not all posts need to read like a user-guide but it’s best to stick to the truth and be comprehensive.

You can create this type of article several times a year. They usually take more effort but they also result in high-quality backlinks.

Strong Keywords

Aside from content, keyword optimization also plays a key role in search engine optimization. Don’t hide the keywords when creating your website and building pages. Be keyword friendly when it comes to URL page names and descriptions.

Link building strategies for bloggers should be more than just about getting a bunch of random links. As a blogger it is important to create relevant content that is linkable and considered as valuable by your readers.

What do you think about our strategies? Do you want to share strategies you’ve tried on your blog? Tell us by leaving your comments below.

The post Link Building Strategies For Bloggers appeared first on Creativ Digital.

So what will a low bounce rate give you? A sign that your website needs a serious makeover is when you see a high bounce rate. Low bounce rate means higher search engine ranking, more leads, more clients, and high conversion rate. In this article, we will show you what you can do to boost your conversion rate so you can build a successful website that generates search traffic on a consistent basis.

Listed below are 3 effective and proven ways that will reduce bounce rate and increase conversions for your website:

1. Improve Your Content’s Readability

While relevant and authentic content adds value to your website, user experience occurs when your content is readable and legible. A website with great content is nothing if it comes with lousy formatting and boring design.

Here are helpful tips to help you present your content and make it more appealing:

• Use subheadings only when needed
• Use bullet points to highlight important details
• Bold important keywords only
• Use images when necessary

2. Update Your Website Regularly

Regularly updating your content will not only generate leads but will also rank you higher in search engines. But it’s important to note that regular updates should come with the right and enticing content. If you have the right content, you will attract the right visitors who will engage in your website.

With fresh content, you can build and establish trust with your readers. And when they trust you, they will visit your website regularly. If people visit, view, and look at other parts of your website, there is a great possibility that you have developed trust with them and they will return.

3. Develop a Need to Explore Your Site Further

One of the most popular ways of engaging your readers is by adding links to pages within your website in your content. In our own experience, a reader is more likely to buy a product if he is educated. So instead of focusing on directing your visitors to a sales page, direct them to a page that will educate them.

Use your sidebar wisely, add content to your sidebar that all your visitors will love. An example would be your most read content, your newest post, and your latest products.

The Bottomline

There are countless ways to reduce the bounce rate of your website. The truth of the matter is addressing user experience will positively impact your bounce rate. Making your website user-friendly, enticing, and neat should be your first step. Focusing on giving the best for your reader will produce the results you are looking for.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Reducing Your Website’s Bounce Rate appeared first on Creativ Digital.