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6 Tools to Throw your Link Building into Overdrive

March 6, 2012 By

Anyone whose worked on optimizing websites for the search engines knows about link building and how tedious, repetitive and time-consuming it can be – prospecting, researching, contacting and following-up can certainly drain away your day.

We’d know – we’ve spent a few years working to get sites to the top of the search engines. Building links is a big part of that. But sometimes though, it can literally be considered a “needle in a haystack” trying to find the right, do-follow link that will really move a website.

As the years have gone on, this task has gotten even more complex as search engines like Google continually make changes to their algorithms.

Fortunately though, there are tools available that can expedite these steps and make the daily task of finding good quality links slightly easier. Below are 6 recommended tools for really cranking up your link building efforts. Each tool has its own unique strengths and focus.

1.    Screaming Frog SEO Spider (http://www.screamingfrom.co.uk/seo-spider/)

    Utilizes an often overlooked way of getting links and audits your site and your competitors’ site(s). The desktop tool sees which incoming links to your site are going to 404 error pages and crawls competitor sites to see where they’re linking.

    2.    Majestic SEO (paid) (http://ww.majesticseo.com/)

    Majestic SEO is now considered the premier tool for comprehensive backlink data since Yahoo Site Explorer went offline last year. Many SEO companies use this tool as a ‘behind-the-scenes’ data provider for their own stats.

    3.    Blekko (http://blekko.com)

    Blekko is unique in that it uses backslash functionality to provide SEO-rich data. Basically, you register for free then enter any site’s URL with modifiers like “/SEO,” “/inbound,” or “/outbound” for detailed link information.

    4.    SubmitEaze (http://www.submiteaze.com/)

    Since Google’s Panda update last year, the value of directors and article links for link building is something to be real careful with. SubmitEaze helps you find the qualified directories related to your industry that will benefit your firm.

    5.    Quix (http://www.quixapp.com/)

    Quix is a “bookmarklet” tool that brings many everyday SEO, social, WordPress and webmaster tasks under one umbrella. Literally dozens of commands allow you to research competitor sites, Google and even social sites like Facebook and Twitter.

    6.    ToutApp (http://www.toutapp.com/)

    Although link building through blind e-mails requesting a link to page A in exchange for a link to page B are in the past, there is still a need for link builders to stay in touch and cultivate media and PR contacts. ToutApp helps do this by automating the process and providing detailed tracking.

    We’ve used a few of these tools to help us dramatically improve link building efforts for us and our clients.

    Have you used any of these tools?

    Any other link building tools you’d recommend?

    Let us know in the comments field below!!

    Some other posts you may be interested in

    Outlook for Search – Building High Rankings in 2012

    3 Steps You Should Take Before Linking to another Site

    8 Ways you can safely sell Links on your Website

    Filed Under: SEO Technology, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , ,

    6 Basic Landing Page Optimization Techniques

    February 7, 2012 By

    In a broad sense, a landing page can be pretty much any webpage on your site. Taken literally, it’s a page a person ‘lands’ on from another website or from a search engine results page.

    For example, if someone uses a very specific term on Google, they may land on an article in your knowledge center discussing the topic they’re looking for.

    For our purposes here though, a landing page is also a web page that “…allows you to capture a visitor’s information through a lead form.” This is a definition provided by a recent e-book from HubSpot on landing page optimization and conversion.

    Good landing pages will target a particular audience – traffic from an email campaign or pay-per-click ad for example. It’s important you create a landing page for each offer you have. For example, you can either build a landing page designed to promote downloads of a new e-book or you can build one designed for the visitor to make contact, provide information or signup for an offer.

    Landing pages are important because they allow you to convert more visitors into leads since these pages make the process of receiving an offer much easier. One main reason is because site visitors don’t have to spend time navigating your site to find your offer.

    Landing pages also eliminate visitor confusion on what they must do to receive your offer. They eliminate frustration for visitors, guaranteeing you will see more conversions.

    Continue reading for 6 basic landing page optimization tips everyone should consider.

    1.    Use clear title, description and layout to convey the value of your offer. Create a strong incentive for your visitors to download, contact or sign-up.

    2.    Minimize disruptions on your landing page, including navigation links you may have on other pages. Keep visitors focused on completing your form or reading through to the call-to-action.

    3.    Include social sharing links like Google’s +1, Facebook’s ‘Like,’ Twitter, LinkedIn and so forth. This allows visitors to easily share your page/offer with their friends.

    4.    If you’re using a form, design and structure it with the user in mind. Only ask for what you need to follow-up and qualify the lead. Don’t make it too long or invasive.

    5.    Have a Thank-you page that appears once the visitor finishes downloading your e-book or completing the contact form. Maintain engagement by suggesting other pages/offers they may be interested in or next steps they can take.

    6.    Track conversion rates and keep testing to find areas of improvement. Use metrics and A/B test results to refine your pages so they continue to grow.

    Point 6 is especially important in that testing and metrics lets you see what works and what doesn’t. Having this information in hand gives you a tremendous advantage in building landing pages that work.

    Check back with us again soon for more information on A/B split testing, conversion metrics and other important items you can consider to help maximize your landing pages’ potential.

    Other Posts you May Be Interested In

    Hooking your Readers – 7 Approaches to Great Headlines

    How Minor Tweaks to your Headlines Can Boost Conversions

    Maximize Conversions by these 9 Tips for Writing the Ultimate Landing Page

    Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, Online Marketing, Tip of the Day, Usability Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

    Hooking your Readers – 7 Approaches to Great Headlines

    January 24, 2012 By

    We spend a lot of time talking about content and its necessity. Your landing pages, site pages, blogs and knowledge center content are there to not only tell your story, inform and motivate readers, it’s there to build search rankings as well.

    But search engine optimization and building search rankings go well beyond just keywords, an arbitrary amount of content and so on. It also has to be informative and interesting enough to be shared either through linking or the increasingly important social media mentions.

    Simply writing generic content that doesn’t grab the reader’s attention won’t exactly yield a whole lot of benefit for your firm.

    Headlines are how you grab this attention, which should intrigue the reader into continuing on for more.

    Time is valuable….

    Since we’re bombarded with so much information all the time, we’re only going to look at what really intrigues us and think will benefit us. Seeing a boring headline limits your content’s potential in this regard. And if it doesn’t see much in the way of traffic, links and mentions in social media, it won’t have the impact it can.

    That’s why taking a few minutes to craft a headline that grabs your reader’s attention is so valuable. Headlines are an invaluable part of print media (…think about when you’re in the checkout line looking at the magazines). In the online world, headlines are doubly important due to the sheer magnitude of content that’s out there.

    Nick Usborne has outlined 7 approaches to headlines that can grab readers’ attention and ignite their curiosity to keep reading. Using one of these will help you maximize the impact your content has on your bottom line.

    Approach #1: Ubiquitous List

    People love seeing lists, which are easy to scan and read. They are a lot of times a hit on social media. Lists can be especially valuable if you include some sort of benefit like “5 Ways to save on your Vacation,” or whatever is applicable to your business.

    Approach #2: “How To”

    Always a winner too…explaining how to do something will always draw a lot of attention. Be sure you say that in your headline (ex: “How to save 15% on your heating bill) so people will clearly see the benefit of reading further. Millions of people go online each day to find out how to do something – buy a car, pick a stereo, fix a flat, whatever.

    Approach #3: Challenge

    Another thing that compels people to read is a challenge. Do I know the answers or not? What don’t I know or what am I missing? Good example from Nick – “5 Things you don’t know about your teenagers.”

    Approach #4: Intrigue

    This approach is kind of like a brain-twister where the reader has to keep going to find the answer. “Body Found, Man Still Missing” is an actual headline from a newspaper. While searching for a missing person, someone else’s body was found.

    Approach #5: Conspiracy

    We all love a good conspiracy involving anyone in a position of authority (doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc.). Giving any indication they’ve hidden the truth will certainly entice readers for more. (Ex:  The truth about raw food diets)

    Approach #6: Secrets of the Opposite Sex

    People love delving into the mystery of what makes the opposite sex tick. If you’re targeting a specific gender, you will grab a lot of attention this way. (Ex: Why women love to shop or Why men love to watch sports)

    Approach #7: Scarcity

    Indicating scarcity of an offer or a closing window of time to do something will indeed motivate people to read further. People don’t like to miss out on something so their attention will be drawn by the prospect of a last chance. (Ex: “Last chance to get tickets” or “Deadline for applications soon”)

    Examples of headlines are mainly from Nick with a few more thrown in there by me.

    These 7 approaches to headlines will garner much more attention than regular, descriptive headlines. The result will be a much higher number of social media mentions, likes and shares.

    Nick Usborne has an e-book on crafting killer headlines that I hope to obtain and read here soon. When I do, I’ll come back and share what I learned.

    Have you taken one of these approaches in crafting a headline?

    If so, did you see more conversions, shares and so forth?

    Other Posts You May be Interested In

    How Minor Tweaks to your Headlines Can Boost Conversions

    Test Headlines with the ‘Breath’ Test

    Beware of your Page’s Primary Purpose When Writing Content

    10 Steps for Optimizing Web Content and Landing Page Copy

    Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

    7 Strategies for Maintaining ‘Fresh’ Content

    December 13, 2011 By

    Just over a month ago, Google announced an update to its Caffeine indexing system known as the “freshness update.” As you know, Caffeine was rolled out last year and changed the way the search engine crawls and indexes pages.

    This latest update is known as the ‘freshness update’ because of its stated goal – rank newer content higher in search results.

    The search giant says these changes should affect around 35% of searches, mainly in areas where the most recent content matters – current events, hot topics, celebrity gossip, product/movie reviews and breaking news are examples of where this principal would apply. See further explanation and a list of the winners & losers in this great post from TechCrunch.

    Here are a few searches you can look at for an example – “Black Friday 2011,” “Penn State scandal” or “NBA lock-out”

    One thing you will notice is how top results are time-stamped and annotated more visually than before. Some of these annotations are in days while others are notated in minutes or even seconds. From these ‘time-stamps,’ we can tell that date-specific content is being served now more than ever.

    Considering this emphasis on placing newer content higher in search results, consider the following 7 strategies to ‘evergreen’ your content and increase your chances of a ‘freshness’ boost in search results.

    1) Start and maintain a blog

    It’s clear from this update that more timely content is better. Therefore, one of the best ways to accomplish this ‘timely’ requirement is to publish content on a variety of topics on a regular, even daily basis. A blog is one of the best ways to easily get this content online.

    2) Generate ‘Link Bait’ pieces

    Content pieces that are informative and entertaining sometimes bring in thousands of visitors, hundreds of social media impressions and dozens of links each day. When these types of pieces are published on your blog, you will certainly see higher rankings. Seeing the popularity and relevancy for so many people will be a strong signal to Google.

    3) Use Time Stamps to your advantage

    Take a look at the top results in our sample searches and you’ll notice that each one has a time stamp. Each ‘freshness’ result has a clear publication date pulled by Google from the piece. Time stamping is easy to do and automatic on many blog platforms like WordPress. Google recommends the YYYY-MM-DD format (…2011-12-12).

    4) Maximize Your Use of Social Media

    Make sure you’re using social media tools to ‘push out’ new content as well as ‘pull in’ traffic     and social signals to that same content. Nothing says ‘fresh’ like a Tweet, Facebook comment or a +1 on Google’s new social network. Also, you can tap into your social networks to help write more content for you. If that isn’t possible, getting your friends to simply promote your content or leave comments will dramatically boost your ‘freshness quotient’ with Google.

    5) Dynamically Update XML Sitemaps

    By default, XML sitemaps include time stamps for each crawled URL within the sitemap.      Making sure these time stamps are updated regularly when new content is posted is now a pretty big deal. Blogging platforms like WordPress do this automatically but for your regular site content, it’s recommended you install a standalone XML sitemap generator that will automatically update your pages when you do.

    6) Publish more Press Releases

    Press releases scream ‘fresh’ and timely. In this new era of freshness though, press releases just may be the best and fastest way to feed the search engine a steady stream of the type of content they’re displaying high in search results. However, a press release will only remain fresh for a couple days up to a week so think about ways you can ‘update’ a prior press release with new, more detailed information when possible.

    7) Get into Google News

    Although it’s extremely difficult for a lone blogger to get into Google News, doing so can have a tremendous influence in how/if your content will find its way to the top of these ‘freshness’ results.

    After reading about Google’s new fascination with freshness, you may be thinking that you can simply make changes to a previously published piece of content. According to Google’s statements though, one of the more important factors affecting which content they serve is when they first crawled a page. Making changes to your content in the hope of getting a ‘freshness boost’ will not work.

    Therefore, be sure your content is correct the first time!!

    One observation about these changes that we and others like our friends at Search Engine News have noticed – freshness doesn’t always equate to ‘most relevant’ in terms of returned search results. Down the road, this distinction may cause problems for Google…we’ll see of course.

    Related Posts

    Google “Caffeine” Goes Completely Live

    Press Release Optimization – Why Your Press Release May Not Be Ranking

    5 Common Mistakes that Stop Press Releases Cold

    Getting Wisdom from the True Masters of Social Media

    Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , ,

    Preparing for the Mobile Revolution – Part II

    December 6, 2011 By

    Simple things you can do to ensure you’re reaching potential customers through mobile smartphones

    In our last post discussing mobile smartphones, we listed some astounding statistics on how rapid this technology is being adopted and how many users are projected to access the Internet through a smartphone in the coming years.

    Many of the facts and figures we found (…some of which listed in Part I) certainly provided compelling reasons to begin thinking about smartphone technology and its role in your online marketing strategy.

    In Part II, we’re going to delve in and examine the ‘how’ of building a website compatible for smartphone’ display…as far as marketing goes, it’s hard to say what works and what doesn’t. For now, let’s focus on making sure your site(s) can display on a mobile device and are properly optimized.

    To start, one point from a HubSpot article on mastering mobile marketing pointed this out – “…the answer to how lies in not thinking about mobile as another PC but another limb for busy, active customers.”

    That’s right – don’t look at mobile smartphones as yet another item on your long to-do list. Rather, think of it as another way customers can interact with your brand. Being accessible both through a computer and smartphone will most assuredly put you at the apex of businesses marketing online.

    So getting started – the first step is for you to evaluate your users. Find out how many people visit your current site through a mobile device and which devices (I-Phone, Android, Blackberry) they use. Set realistic goals by optimizing popular content from your website for smartphones.

    Next step is to understand mobile’s limitations and leverage its capabilities to your best advantage.

    One of the most important things to remember is screen size and making sure your page(s) are viewable on the smaller smartphone screens. Images need to be sized properly to ensure they display and load quickly (…if images are so large they take up huge amounts of bandwidth, visitors are less likely to come back). Include ‘alt image’ descriptive copy that can display in lieu of an actual picture.

    Also, if you have forms, keep them short. Studies have shown that users will not spend lots of time filling out a request form, especially on a smartphone. This goes for clicks too – don’t make your users click too many times to get to your content. The more clicks visitors have to make, the fewer of them who will stick around.

    If you have a storefront for instance, including click-to-call functionality on your mobile site is an important component to have. Functionality for directions (…Google Maps) are invaluable in these cases as well.

    And although mobile browsing should be more streamlined than desktop browsing, you shouldn’t neglect your calls-to-action.

    One more important point – be sure you test your mobile site and content on different devices, just like you test regular web content on different browsers. Some will display certain things differently. It’s best to find this out in the beginning so you can make any necessary adjustments.

    These items are just a few basic things to get you started. As we said earlier, mobile ‘marketing’ is still pretty new so there’s not much to report on what truly works. You can always consider developing an ‘app’ for I-Phones and I-Pads but it’s generally recommended you get the site down first. Apps are more for mid-level prospects anyway.

    One of the best ways to learn what may work is to think about your experience using mobile smartphones. Let us know about some good mobile sites you’ve seen in the comments below.

     

    Filed Under: Online Marketing, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , ,
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