The Top 5 Google Ranking Factors – SEO Guide

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With so many different ranking factors for Google, over 200 in total, it’s important to identify which are the most important that are essential to your success. Overall, there are several ranking factors that do little to nothing in terms of SEO, so we’ve created a definitive list of Google ranking factors that can make or break your search optimization strategy.

Mobile Optimization

Google announced that starting from September 2020 all websites without exception will be judged on their mobile version, not the desktop version. So essentially if you want your website to have any chance of ranking, it definitely needs to be optimized for mobile landing pages. It also provides your customer with a better user experience, so it’s a win win for everyone involved.

Structured Data

This is where you implement tags that are crucial to Google understanding everything about the content you are posting. Structured data can be used to tag authors, ratings, product features, locations, and so much more. This is a not-so well known SEO tool that can do wonders for you in terms of ranking — creating links between entities, pin your location, and enhance your search snippets with rich elements.

Google My Business Listing

Creating the listing, optimizing, and then maintaining your Google My Business listing is hands down the most important thing you can do for your local SEO. It helps establish your company as an entity, which in itself is a great asset to your SEO. Even more, it will skyrocket your local search performance. Once you create a listing, it becomes eligible for the local business panel as well as Google maps, opening your business to nearby searchers. For example, if someone is shopping and stopping for a coffee, your Google My Business listing will help show you in the search results of a nearby option.

Backlinks

Google has said that they are planning to move away from backlinks in the future, but for now they still remain the most important ranking factor for your pages. Except now you have to be very straightforward with your SEO strategies — your links have to come from a variety of high authority websites that are similar to yours. Furthermore, there are Google sources who say that freshness and traffic may also be important backlink metrics.

Avoid Content Saturation

In the past, you could overload your content with keyword rich information. Now things have changed, and for the better including everyone involved. Your SEO content has to contain an appropriate amount of relevant keywords, entities, and images for the length of the copy. The content should not be completely filled, like in the beginning days of SEO, it should rather be a natural-sounding copy written in an informative style.

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Looking for an agency to help your small business with your search engine optimization? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Google Search Results: Page Experience Update Coming 2021

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Roughly a full year after the first announcement, Google confirms a new page experience update is coming to Google search results May 2021. This gives us all another 6 months to ensure pages are optimized to full user experience potential.

But what exactly does the new page experience update entail and how can you start prepping early? Onimod Global experts are here to dish all there is to know and prepare for.

What exactly is page experience?

Google will evaluate a set of signals that are meant to understand how a user will perceive the experience of a specific web page. These signals will cover topics such as how quickly a page loads, mobile-friendliness, runs on HTTPS, has invasive interstitials and whether content jumps around as the page loads.

A great resource for more information on this topic is Search Engine Land’s Guide to Core Web Vitals for a deeper dive into what you need to know about these vital user experience metrics.

Google page experience update: What you need to know

With user experience gaining ever-increasing importance for brands and consumers, it’s only natural that the world’s dominating search engine takes into consideration this element. Another area Google wants to experiment with is testing a “visual indicator that highlights pages in search results that have great page experience,” and how they will perform, according to Google.

“We believe that providing information about the quality of a web page’s experience can be helpful to users in choosing the search result that they want to visit,” Google wrote. “On results, the snippet or image preview helps provide topical context for users to know what information a page can provide. Visual indicators on the results are another way to do the same, and we are working on one that identifies pages that have met all of the page experience criteria.”

– Google Webmaster Blog

Google plans to measure a website’s performance based on user experience by using Core Web Values. The metrics’ role is to identify how a user would rate their experience on a given page. Some of the factors that will be looked at include loading speed, mobile-friendliness, if the page is HTTPS-based, use of advertising, content structure, and more.

How You Can Prepare

It’s likely that even with the 6 month buffer period to prepare, several companies will fall far behind in SEO and quickly.  In fact, research from August revealed that no more than 15% of websites could pass the assessment of Core Web Vitals due to poor optimization.

According to Search Engine Land, The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console is a great place to get started with understanding your initial benchmark and get a good sense of how your site is performing in these page experience areas.

Contact Onimod Global

Still need help to prepare for this new page experience update and to be part of the top 15% of websites that will pass Google’s user experience assessment? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

The Guide To Optimizing For Featured Snippets

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Rising to the top of Google’s search results is no simple feat, but definitely doesn’t mean you can’t win. Even if you aren’t in position 1 you’re still able to outrank it. How so? The holy grail of SEO: featured snippets.

In this post from Onimod Global’s experts, we’ll discuss what are featured snippets, what are their benefits for SEO, and how to optimize for them.

What is a featured snippet?

A featured snippet shows up as a block that contains the exact answer to your query. It’s a two to three sentence summary of text that appears at the top of Google. Featured snippets provide a fast and straightforward answer for a user’s query directly in the search results. Receiving a featured snippet is shown to result in more traffic for a given page.

The featured snippet appears to work on a more simplistic algorithm than Google’s “primary” one. This search result is significantly more influenced by simple on-page adjustments that very clearly define the topic to users and their search queries. See a simple example of a featured snippet below, allowing for users to get a fast answer to their question and also an opportunity to receive more traffic to their page.

featured snippet example

How to optimize for the featured snippet

  1. Add a “what is” heading.
    To start your featured snippet optimizations, you’ll want to look for a place in your content to add a “What Is [Keyword]” heading tag. This is a clear signal for Google that you have a fast and efficient information to share with a user with a specific search query. You will even notice at the top of this article, the first headline contains a “What is” statement, queuing Google to recognize information to include and what they can pull into the featured snippet.
  2. Use sentence structure “is”
    It is very important to use an “is” statement when optimizing for featured snippets. Structuring content this way appears to act as a trigger that allows Google to easily find the text that’s relevant for the featured snippet.
  3. The topic must be fully explained in 2-3 sentences
    Being concise is key. Feature snippets are meant to give users as much information about the topic as possible in a short amount of time.
    Here are some general guidelines from Search Engine Land to follow while concisely defining featured snippets:
    – The first sentence should define the topic
    – The second and third sentences should describe 2-3 must-know facts about the topic
    – Try to avoid using any extraneous phrasing in your definition

Contact Onimod Global

Looking for an agency to increase your SEO and optimize your website content? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

10 Ways to Audit Your Website to Increase Your Search Rankings

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When it comes to SEO, consistent tracking, testing and measuring is crucial to verify your strategies are effective. This includes auditing your website to ensure there are no errors holding you back. 

Here is a checklist of 10 things to audit on your website that can help increase your search engine rankings. 

1. Make sure your pages can be indexed. 

The most crucial aspect of SEO is making sure your pages can be found. You never want to block important pages by mistake. To ensure all your pages are available to be found you should: 

  • Check your index status on Google. Use the index status report in your Google Search Console to see the number of pages Google has crawled from your domain. You want to see that the page count has continued to increase over time. 
  • Check your robot.txt file. Do this by adding /robot.txt to the end of your domain to ensure there are no pages that are “disallowed.” 
  • Review site and URL errors. This is something you can also do through your Google Search Console. Locate the site and URL errors report and see if there are any problems. 
  • Search your website. Simply do a Google search for site:yourdomain.com and you can retrieve a list of indexed pages. 

2. Secure your website. 

In  a recent update, Google announced that it favors websites encrypted with HTTPS. So if you haven’t already, now is the time to make the switch. HTTPS provides encrypted communication with a web server. You can secure your website with HTTPS using SSL.  

3. Check your meta data. 

When pages are crawled by search engines, Noldex meta tags can occasionally be inserted. As a result, this will block Google. Check the source of a page for the code <meta name = “robots” content =”noindex”> and make sure this does not exist on your pages. 

4. Check your link profile. 

A large part of SEO success depends on earning links from trusted domains. You can conduct a complete backlink audit through Google Search Console, Ahrefs or SEMrush to track your backlinks and monitor your progress over time. 

5. Optimize page load times. 

Every digital marketer is aware that search engines favor faster sites. Not only that, but a slow site increases the likeliness of visitors bailing early. You want to aim your page log time in 3 seconds or less. Here are some tips for optimizing site speed: 

  • Use speed testing tools. 
  • Evaluate WordPress plugins. 
  • Reduce image file size for optimum performance. 
  • Remove any redirect chains. 
  • Speed up your Javascript. 

6. Eliminate any duplicate content. 

Duplicate content dilutes the authority of the primary URL and threatens the capability of your search rankings. Be sure to use canonical link tags to combat things. This lets Google know which is the primary URL to pages containing duplicate or similar content. 

7. Remove low valued pages. 

You want to ensure pages that are indexed by Google contain rich, original content and relevant keywords. You can accomplish this by de-indexing low valued pages. You obviously need campaign-specific landing pages, but if they’re not robust pages, they only harm your search rankings. Remove them from the index and redirect these pages to content-rich URLs by using a 301 redirect. 

8. Generate useful links. 

A well-planned internal link structure brings a number of benefits to your overall search rankings. Here are some additional tips for optimizing your site’s link structure for SEO. Also be sure to use descriptive anchor text, making links that feature the same keywords as the page they link to.  

9. Optimize for mobile. 

Google has been favoring mobile-first site designs for a while now, meaning it’s critical to appear in mobile searches. A few ways to ensure your site is optimized for mobile is by: 

  • Using responsive design. You can update your site to feature responsive design that creates an optimum experience regardless of screen size. 
  • Using Google’s testing tool. The Google Search Console offers a mobility usability report that identifies problematic pages and gives you a score for mobile friendliness. 

10. Master the basics. 

Continue to implement the fundamental SEO tactics, such as: 

  • Using unique title tags. Be sure to write unique title tags that include a keyword phrase to accurately describe the topic of your pages. 
  • Implementing relevant keywords. Always include keywords you’ve selected in your headings, subheadings, body copy and URL appropriately. 
  • Creating meta descriptions. Lastly, indexed pages should always include a meta description that features keywords to encourage readers to click through. 

More from Onimod Global 

Struggling with your SEO or any area of digital marketing? Contact the experts. We specialize in SEO and helping our clients dominate organic search and map results. Learn more about us and contact us today!

6 SEO Techniques to Enhance Your Search Traffic for 2021

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As marketers, we’re always looking for new ways to improve and enhance our strategies, especially when it comes to SEO.  

Here are 6 link building SEO techniques that will not only increase the amount of traffic you drive to your website, but the quality as well. 

1. Create and maintain a strong blog strategy. 

It’s not enough to have created a blog calendar if you’re not sticking with it. It’s essential to consistently post blogs that are valuable and relevant among your audience members. Your goal is to get people to want to link back to your blog content. This is one of the best ways to organically generate inbound links. Ultimately improving your search rankings and generating more traffic back to your website. 

2. Utilize infographics. 

People love consuming and sharing visual content. An easy way to get topics for infographics is from your already created blog posts. There are also plenty of online tools that can make graphic creation easy, such as Canva. The goal is to create infographics with valuable information and data that people will share and link back to you as the original source. 

3. Link back to other blogs on your blog. 

A blog is ultimately a social tool. The more you link to others, especially when you do it in a consistent, opportunity-driven way, the greater the likelihood of one of the other bloggers will return the favor. 

4. Write guest blog posts.

Similar to linking to other blogs, you can shop your best performing blogs around to others it would be a good fit for. If you find a taker, it’s just another opportunity for another inbound link back to your site. 

5. Curate and publish helpful resource lists. 

Resource lists are great link bait and increase your chances of getting a featured snippet on Google. Creating a comprehensive resource list makes it easy for other sites to link back to in their own content. Both which are great for your rankings and traffic. 

6. Consistent brand monitoring. 

Consistently perform searches for your name to see if there are any mentions floating around that you’re unaware of. If you find some in a place you want to be, contact the owner of the site to see if you can turn that into an inbound link. And if you find one that might be negative and unwarranted, get that removed, so it doesn’t harm your reputation or SEO. 

Final Thoughts 

At Onimod Global we understand how vital SEO can be. Search engine optimization is our core attribute and a pillar of our strategy. We develop  organic search engine optimization campaigns that deliver increases in organic traffic through an increase in natural rankings on major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. We are a trusted Google Partner and continually excel with their products. If you need assistance with SEO, or in any area of digital marketing, contact us today. 

Why Google Ads Plans To Limit Search Terms

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Google has started to alert advertisers that it will soon stop showing search queries that triggered their ads when there is not “significant” data.

What is exactly changing?

On Google’s Search Terms Report support page they state, “Starting September 2020,  the search terms report only includes terms that a significant number of users searched for, even if a term received a click. You may now see fewer terms in your report.” In simpler words, advertisers will have reduced visibility into which search queries trigger their ads, even if they register a click or conversion.

Google’s statement from Search Engine Land. “In order to maintain our standards of privacy and strengthen our protections around user data, we have made changes to our Search Terms Report to only include terms that a significant number of users searched for. We’re continuing to invest in new and efficient ways to share insights that enable advertisers to make critical business decisions,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land Wednesday.

What does this mean for you?

According to Seer Interactive, you will lose roughly 28% of your budget’s visibility for paid search.

Prior to the update

  • For every $100K you spent on Google search, you got search term data for $98,700 of it.
  • For every 100K clicks you got, you saw search term data for 98,300 of those clicks.

After the update

  • For every $100K you spend on Google search, you get search term data for $71,000 of it.
  • For every 100K clicks you get, you see search term data for 77,900 of those clicks.

That’s ~$27,000 worth of search term data unseen for every $100K you spend.

Why we advertisers care.

The purpose is to prevent advertisers from having the ability to use minimal query data to identify users or have access to any personally identifiable information users may include in their search queries. Protecting user privacy is important and should be prioritized. However, Google limited query data in Search Console for this reason before the update. The difference is that advertisers pay whenever a user clicks on an ad triggered by a users’ query. Losing this data will have severe financial impact on advertising budgets.

In addition to financial implications, there will also be an effect on the optimization of campaigns and negative keyword lists. Not having any access to this data means that advertisers won’t be able to determine if those queries should be added to negative keyword lists to make their campaigns more efficient.

Contact Onimod Global

For more on this news and other Google Ads late information, follow Onimod Global! Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

How to Optimize Your Website Structure for SEO

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Not all website structures are favored equally by search engine algorithms. A site that is a disorganized jumble mess of pages is unlikely to rank well against a structure that is rigorous and streamlined. To make your site structure SEO-friendly, it has to appeal to users while guiding them to relevant content across your website. 

Learn more about website structure, why it matters and steps to take to optimize yours for SEO. 

What is Site Structure? 

Site structure refers to the way a site’s content is grouped, interconnected and presented to its visitors. Website structure starts with a foundation, its home page, then splits off into other sections, such as the about page, contact page or blog page.

Why Does Site Structure Matter? 

Site structure is one of the most crucial components linked to SEO performance. A well-executed website structure sets you up for SEO success down the road. It also: 

  • Creates a better user experience. 
  • Helps with crawlability. 
  • Provides you with sitelinks. 

How to Optimize Your Website Structure for SEO

1. Plan your site hierarchy. 

The hierarchy of your site is the system that arranges your pages from top to bottom. A website’s structure is similar to a skyscraper. It would be difficult to revise the foundation once you’ve already constructed the middle floors. Which is why it’s best to establish the organization of your website from the beginning. Here are some tips to keep in mind when planning out your hierarchy: 

  • Make it logical. You don’t want to overcomplicate this process for both your sake, your users’ sake and for crawlability. Each main category should be unique and distinct. Subcategories should somehow be related to the main category under which it’s located. 
  • Keep the number of main categories between two and seven. There should only be a few main aspects of your website. If there’s more than seven, you may want to rethink the structure. 
  • Try to balance the number of subcategories within each category. You want to keep it approximately even. If one main category has a large number of subcategories, while others only have a few, the site can become unbalanced. 

2. Create a URL structure that follows the navigation hierarchy. 

URL structure also impacts rankings in Google. Your URLs should follow your website structure, as well as be simple and readable. So if your hierarchy looks like this: 

The URL structure for the Chinatown location should look like: www.kimsrestaurant.com/locations/chinatown 

More developed sites might contain a longer series of folders and subfolders, but the main idea is to create a concise URL with recognizable words.

3. Select the right navigational depth. 

The structure of your site determines how difficult it is to click to a different part of your site. You don’t want important pages of your site to be buried too deep. Shallow paths perform best from a usability and crawlability perspective. With that being said, you also don’t want to go with a completely flat structure. You want a site that proceeds deeper than a second tier of folders, but you want users to be able to get where they need within a few steps. 

4. Establish a header and footer. 

Headers and footers help enhance website structure by making navigation more seamless. Best practice is to display your main categories in your header, but you can also include dropdown features that show subcategories. When you do incorporate additional features, it’s important they have an easy-to-follow design. Basic text links and corresponding anchors are a reliable way to enrich your SEO strategy. Text links perform well because search engine bots can comprehend them. Although images have ALT text, text links continue to deliver better results when it comes to SEO. 

If you have a footer with menu links, be sure they’re duplicated exactly like the main menu links. Changing the order of links or adding additional category listings will complicate the user experience.

5. Include internal linking. 

Internal linking shows the relationship between pages and content on your website. Search engine crawlers move from one link to the next, on-site links give search engines a better picture of what your site has to offer. Placing links organically throughout blogs, product/service pages and other posts forms a grid for users to explore. If there’s a related page or helpful link on your blog, users can continue to traverse your site and come closer to converting or purchasing a product. Internal link structures also help crawlers understand the content you think is most important, which supports differences in ranking on search results pages for similar content. Try to link back to your most popular or important pages to instill more ranking value in them for powerful SEO optimization. 

Final Thoughts 

Site structure is something that can be easily overlooked if you’re not experienced in site building, but it’s crucial when it comes to SEO. At Onimod Global we specialize in both web site development and SEO. You can rely on us for new project development, website maintenance, and more. We build all of our sites with search engines rankings in mind. We analyze data from Traffic Sources and Visitor Flow to establish the routes people take to reach you, the devices they use to get there and what they do on your website. Utilizing this information allows us to build highly engaging, search friendly websites for your business.

Learn more about us and contact us today!

SEO Tips for Beginners

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It’s no secret that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be extremely beneficial to a website’s and business’s overall success. But getting there can be complex, especially for beginners, and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. A simple Google search for “SEO” returns almost 500 million results, which is more information than anyone could read in a lifetime. On top of that much of the information is now either out-of-date or not relevant. In reality, there are quite a few simple things you can start with to begin a highly effective SEO strategy. Here are 5 SEO tips for beginners. 

Research and use relevant keywords

It makes sense that keywords are key when it comes to SEO success. Think about what your audience would be searching for on your website. What is their search intent? What are they really looking for? Understanding search intent is extremely beneficial when it comes to planning site content and your SEO approach. 

There are a number of tools and strategies to use to ensure we get a good selection of keywords together. Start by brainstorming potential keywords. Just simply write down everything that is relevant., such as services you offer, products you have, close locations, etc. You can also use a keyword research tool to help you identify new keywords. Google offers a tool that forms part of its Ads PPC service, but there are other providers that offer free and paid variations. Lastly, do your own keyword searches on search engines. When you do a search in a search bar, there will be a list of suggestions at the bottom of the page. You can add any relevant suggestions to your list. 

Optimize titles and meta descriptions

Now that you have your keyword list, you can use them to optimize your titles, descriptions and other forms of content. You want to get keywords into the title of pages, but in a natural way. Remember that these show up in search results, so aim to clearly indicate what the page is about and entice users to click on it. Try to include where, what and who if possible. 

Next we want to optimize the meta description. A page’s description doesn’t have as big of an impact on SEO, but it can still help. The meta description should explain the content on your page and further convince a user to click. 

Optimize for mobile

Almost 60% of searches are done from a mobile device. Google favors sites that are mobile friendly. Back in 2019, Google declared that “mobile-first indexing will be enabled by default for all new, previously unknown to Google Search, websites.” This means Google now crawls the mobile versions of sites first, before desktop various. And eventually, Google won’t index your site at all if it isn’t mobile friendly. So how do you go about optimizing your site for mobile? Here are some quick tips: 

  • Keep page load time down 
  • Make reading and navigation easy 
  • Make it responsive to smaller screen size, meaning there’s no pinching or zooming required

Create content, then optimize it

You don’t want to start your content by picking out your keywords and massaging content to match. Write content you’d like to read, things that are interesting, useful, fun and engaging; then optimize the content for SEO. Once you’ve fully written the content, go back and pick out places to insert keywords. Don’t forget to also optimize: 

  • Titles 
  • Descriptions 
  • Header tags 
  • Images 

Build relevant links

Link building carries a bad reputation due to marketers that use black hat strategies for SEO. But when done correctly, link building is extremely helpful when it comes to driving visibility, especially for competitive keywords. Developing this requires having the right kind of links pointing to your site. These links help Google and other search engines determine your relative importance and to order search results using these metrics. Google has commented on this point by saying, 

“Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.’”

This can be the most difficult part of SEO, but there are some strategies to use to gain safe backlinks to help improve your visibility in search results. You can utilize highly credible directory sites, as well as a competitor link analysis to help identify new link opportunities. 

Final Thoughts

Having success with SEO isn’t something you can do overnight. It can take months and even years to create a site and content strategy that a search engine will favor. Often with SEO it is 20% of the effort that will get you 80% of the results and for most small businesses this is a great starting point that will help your site be more visible in organic search.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

 

Audience Context: Why It Matters

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Your content is most likely catered to audience personas, as it should be. All marketers rely on an outlined demographic of the audience you have targeted as potential customers. However, there is no way for a persona to account for your audience context – what is a real person experiencing at the exact moment they see your content?

In a perfect world, 100% of your content would be catered specifically to every potential customer. Thankfully, there are tools we can use to get a better idea of the customer’s headspace to match up with the audience context.

Keyword Planners

Often times keyword planners are used as a crutch to plug in a few key topics and phrases, and overload on content to increase your organic traffic. We advise to rather think of keyword planners as tools to help understand the specific language your readers are using. Focus on the phrases that pose as questions, and answer those questions in your content to give immediate value to your readers.

Google Trends

Once you have your group of keywords and key phrases, enter them into Google Trends to see what else you can learn about people using those search terms. This step will help you to match up your content to fit your audience context. Look into geographic locations, and the time of day, month, or year people access information and searches increase.

Popular Content

Try googling the question you are trying to answer in your content, and see what else is currently out there. Use this to see if you can do a better job explaining the question at hand or fill in missing gaps of information.

 

Now step one is complete. You know what challenges your potential customers are facing. Now for step 2, which is understanding how your customers feel about their challenges and utilize effective emotional writing to strike a chord with this audience.

Show Audience Context, Don’t Tell

The most simple mistake to make when writing emotional content to engage your audience is telling them that you’re doing it. Don’t tell the reader how they feel. Instead, imagine how they would prefer to feel and give them that. Audience context is all about resonating with the reader without exposing your intention.

Resonate, Don’t Exploit

When it comes to audience context, you should evoke, not exploit, emotion in people. It’s quite simple to exploit intense emotions of fear, anger, agitation in our audiences in order to sell. We advise against this strategy and encourage you to instead show the reader you understand their emotions and maybe even share them.

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

The 3 Pillars Of Link Building

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High quality content is the one of the keys to success when it comes to internet presence. Creating high-quality content can strengthen your business’ branding and spark conversions, but not if your audience is never exposed to that content. Link building is your solution to help your content be visible via other websites and in the search results.

Check out this list created by Michael Johnson, sales manager at Page One Power. He explains how to identify relevant linking opportunities, create and leverage linkable assets, and communicate with site owners in a way that compels them to link to your content.

Create audience-focused, linkable assets

Your links will be as good as your content. If you link to a site or an asset of your company that is worthless to the audience you’re selling to, it makes no sense to include in your content. For example, pointing directly to a product page or other pages that provide low-value to your audience of the sites that you target, you will have a tough time converting into paying customers.

Great linkable assets are audience focused and provide informational educational value. Your linkable assets should not be promotional. Johnson specifically cautions against requesting links to lower-value promotional content or product pages because they may come across as paid links, which may also discourage users from clicking through.

Identify relevant, valued and trusted sites for links

Use the following criteria to evaluate which sites are worth including in a link building campaign.

Value for users. The page that you’re interested in getting a link from should provide value to your customers. And of course, be sure the anchor text in the link helps set user expectations when they click through.

Relevance. Your link building should be relevant to the context of which the link is appearing and also match the audience that you want to attract.

Vet every site. Make a thorough investigation on every site. It’s very important that your sources are credible, and that you can be counted on as a trusted source for your audience.  “Always ask yourself the question, ‘In a world without Google, would I still want this link?’” Johnson said, adding, “If the answer is no, then you have to question whether or not that’s an organic link.”

Trust and authority. Always look at the backlinks to the site you’re thinking of incorporating into your content. “If you see that they are linking out to a lot of spam or are posting low quality content on their website, those are red flags that mean you should probably avoid that website.”

Keep the momentum after the link

After acquiring a link, link builders should send a followup communication thanking the site owner. To keep in contact with these brands puts you in a good position of goodwill between brands. Working together to make sure your audience has accurate and reliable information will translate into paying customers for you both.

Johnson also recommends paying attention to the internal linking of the page that earned the backlink. Since product or promotional pages aren’t likely to attract many of their own backlinks, internally linking those conversion-based pages to other pages with a stronger backlink profile will help you to build link equity.

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.