In a recent SEMRush survey , over 97% of respondents said content marketing is part of their marketing strategy. This is not surprising considering how effective assets such as videos and blogs are in driving brand interest. Part of a successful content marketing strategy relies on backlinks for SEO.
Once your website is created, you must put all the means in place to optimize your content for users and for search engines (SEO).
This is where a smart and targeted SEO strategy comes in. An effective SEO approach can help you rank higher in search results, increasing your visibility and the likelihood that visitors will come to your site.
For this approach to be effective, it must encompass both on -site and off-site SEO tactics .
In this article, we will detail the two SEO techniques and give you some tips for implementing them.
What is On-Site SEO?
On-site SEO , also known as On-Page SEO , is all about optimizing the content of your own site.
When optimizing your On-Site SEO , consider the following factors:
Relevant Content : Nothing plays a greater role in your SEO efforts, and the success of your inbound marketing strategy as a whole, than the quality of your content. After all, that's why people come to your site in the first place. Providing useful, engaging, and most importantly, relevant content is essential if you want to be found in search results.
Keywords : Keywords are the search terms you want to rank for. Include them in your website and strategically integrate them into some of the elements described below. However, don't overdo it - keyword stuffing is very frowned upon and can even end up hurting your site's visibility.
Titles and title tags: The title of your site and individual pages has a huge impact on your rankings. Try to include basic keywords in your titles whenever possible.
Titles: Search engines give titles more weight than other text on your site. Be sure to use proper header tags (H1, H2, H3) and work with keywords here as well.
URL structure: One of the most often overlooked – and underused – aspects of on-site SEO is URL structuring. The way your URLs are structured - and the words they contain - can seriously influence your SEO results. Structure your URLs to make it easier for search engines to crawl your site and include relevant keywords. Avoid generic URL strings, such as "yourstore.com/page1234343" and use "yourstore.com/cnc-machining-services" instead.
Meta description: A meta description is the small informational text that appears directly below your page title in search results. You can easily edit this information in WordPress, HubSpot, and other website publishing tools.
Page Load Speed: Believe it or not, your page load speed is an important ranking factor. Ideally, your pages should load in less than three seconds. If yours takes longer than that, it could frustrate your visitors and hurt your site's performance. Use GTmetrix or PageSpeed Insights to test the speed of your pages.
Alternate Text (ALT) : Speaking of images, you want to use them as an opportunity to boost your SEO rankings by including relevant, keyword-rich alt text – essentially a textual summary of an image – for each visual in your site.
SSL Certificate: A relatively new ranking factor, website security is important not only for search engines, but also for your visitors. Make sure to convert your website from HTTP to HTTPS.
See also: Technical SEO: 10 techniques to optimize the SEO of your site
What is Off-Site SEO?
While on-site SEO focuses on improving the quality of your website, off-page SEO focuses on leveraging other sites and places on the web to improve your position in search rankings.
At the heart of off-page SEO, backlinks are links pointing to your site from other sites. Having a backlink from a high quality site can help give your own site a boost.
See also: 5 mistakes to avoid when creating your backlinks
Why are backlinks important for SEO?
Backlinks are valuable for SEO because they signal to search engines the quality of your content. The more external sites that link to you, the more authoritative your content is viewed and the higher search engines rank you in their search results. In fact, search engine leaders like Google have confirmed the importance of backlinks in their ranking factors.
High-quality inbound links present content as valuable and trustworthy. It's hard to earn quality inbound links, so the more you have, the more search engines will reward you with higher page rankings in search results.
More backlinks means other websites are passing authority from their own website to your website, but it's about quality, not quantity. Backlinks from domains with high authority have more SEO value than backlinks from websites considered low quality or spammy.
Getting more quality inbound backlinks improves your SEO
Getting more sites to add your links to their content is hard work, but it's worth it. One organic way to start creating more opportunities for inbound backlinks is to put out a steady stream of content. Posting useful content related to your industry and sharing it on social pages creates more opportunities for people to find it and share it with their networks. As the visibility of your posts expands to new audiences, your inbound backlink potential also increases.
What else can you do to encourage more backlinks from your content?
How to Get Quality Backlinks in 2022
Discover here 8 techniques to get backlinks in 2022 and improve your visibility on the web:
Find backlinks using the “Skyscraper” method
Working on your on-site SEO will not be enough for Google to grant you its trustworthy credit. For this, you will also have to rely on off-site referencing in order to acquire many backlinks and promote the positioning of your site. One of the best ways to do this is to do it the “Skyscraper” method. This innovative method owes its name to the famous SEO Brian Dean. Also called the "Skyscraper Technique", it is a very simple strategy to apply, but which has proven to be effective and formidable.
To set it up, you must first identify an article that adds a significant number of backlinks to your theme. You must then reformulate one of the linked articles and add value to it. Finally, contact the owner of the site and make him the proposal to replace his initial link with yours. In most cases, the latter should accept.
Offer a service in order to obtain backlinks
To get a backlink, there is also another way to proceed. Thus, if you have certain skills, you can use them as bargaining chips in order to have backlinks. These skills can be summed up in a service, a reduction, a service or a new offer. Website owners may be interested in one of your proposals, especially insofar as you are in the field of photography, design, writing, or commerce. Do not hesitate to offer what you know how to do so well. It's a legitimate and discreet way to get links pointing to your site. So you don't have to worry about Google's recommendations, because this search engine will not be able to notice them in any way.
Get links from interviews
This method is much more accessible if you already have a certain notoriety on the Net. So, whether on YouTube, in writing or in a Podcast, you could offer influencers to interview you. This will then be an opportunity to place a backlink and this will allow you to boost your reputation online and acquire a quality external link.
If you are not known in your field, the solution available to you is to offer reciprocal interviews to certain bloggers who also need them to make themselves known. Know how to go about it, however, since this will result in an exchange of direct links.
Have connections through your private and professional network
If in your circle of relations there are friends of yours who have a website nestled in the same theme as you, you can ask their permission to place a link there. Be careful, however, not to make a reciprocal exchange. Indeed, search engines already know this technique. Which means that it is no longer effective than before and you can see yourself penalized if you overdo it.
However, to make it simpler, you can directly ask your customers for permission to add a link to their site. The recommendation is a powerful element to improve the trust score of your site.
Take advantage of backlinks by writing a guest article
Here is a powerful strategy that will allow you to obtain quality backlinks. The idea is to contact bloggers specializing in the same field as you and offer them to write a free article. In return, you can add a link to the content or page that you believe has added value to the written text.
Don't forget, however, that you need to find interesting blogs to create a backlink. To do this, you will need to list all the blogs you are aware of. In addition to that, do a search on Google to find other blogs. Using tools like Semrush, Ahrefs or Majestic, check their SEO popularity and contact the sites to which you grant a good level of influence.
Use infographics to get backlinks
Infographics are also an effective way to get backlinks. If you think you have design skills and are able to do a very good transcription of information on an infographic, you could find backlinks without wasting all your time. Even if you don't have specific skills in the field, don't get me wrong, you can also benefit from this technique. You will only have to outsource this work to a professional that you can find on Fiverr or 5 euros.
Call on a SEO for the creation of backlinks
Finding backlinks is not an easy task, you will surely have understood it. So, to avoid wasting time, you can call on a professional. The latter, thanks to its expertise and its network of partner sites, will set up a refined netlinking strategy to help you in your SEO strategy. On LinkedIn, you will find an SEO expert. Take the time to check out their recommendations.
Acquire backlinks from netlinking platforms
If you are ready to spend money, you can buy links directly on the web. Not only will you save time, but you will also find effective quality links for your backlink. The competition being strong in this field, it is important to find the right platform. There are several for this purpose. A Google search will find sites to buy links from. However, this tactic is not recommended.
Using this practice violates Google's SEO best practices policies. Here is what Google says:
Any link intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and in violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines . This includes all operations that manipulate links to your site or links to other pages from your site.
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