Get Links Organically Without Asking for Them

It is a fact that a successful link building campaign starts with link outreach. However, link outreach has become much harder to enact because of the feeling of alienation content writers get whenever we give them unreasonable amounts of link requests.

That is actually not the only reason why link outreach is harder to do now than it was before. Another reason is that most SEOs do not prioritize “begging” for links. This is why it’s a common occurrence for me to produce content that I want people to link to.

The failure of contacting and asking other content writers and influencers for links is what stops most people from successfully having links for their content – not me, though.

Fortunately, I’m going to be introducing you to some ways that you can do to earn links from varying sources while not directly asking them for it. Let’s get started

The Problem With Link Outreach

Link outreach, as most of you know, is a demoralizing process to undertake. Every time you ask content writers/creators for a link and fail actually takes its toll on an SEO’s morale. Failed link outreach programs can be detrimental to your brand because if you have published quality content that is sure to help your brand, but do not get enough links that point to it, then all that you’ve done is for naught.

This can be solved in two ways. It’s either you optimize your outreach and try your hardest to have a higher success rate or you can do as I do and improve your link outreach without having to explicitly ask for links.

Without further ado, here’s how to get started: 

#1. Offer Something Useful

Instead of downright asking for links, you can tell the content creators that you have something that will probably of use for them. Usually, the content that you need for this fulfills a specific need for the content creators.

So, look for content on the web that you think needs some additional resources – which you have – then message the author or publisher of that content. You should introduce your content in a way that makes them think that they really need that additional resource in order to back up some of their claims in their own content. Additionally, if they do not need the additional resource as of the moment, you can introduce your content as something that they will need for an element in their niche, or for future content that you think they will be writing about.

Some of the people that this tactic is effective on are bloggers, journalists, researchers, or people that often include tools and visuals in their content. So, you can do content that focuses on things like data, visuals or supporting evidence. However, this tactic is not effective when it comes to commercial content.

 #2. Fit in Their Criteria

Instead of directly asking for a link, you can look for content that lists or follow certain criteria, then you can approach them by telling them that you are perfect for their criteria.

For example, you find a website that regularly publishes a list of content that caters to a certain need, and fortunately, one list that they are going to do is where you already have content about, then, by all means, tell them that you fit in their criteria. More often than not, this gets you included in their lists and also a link back to your website.

#3. Be Helpful

This tactic involves a lot of your focus because you will be looking for sources that are in your niche, focus on them, and know when and where they publish their content. If you find these kinds of publications and check on them regularly, you will have the chance to earn some links whenever they ask for assistance on something related to their content or website.

Offer your services/help, and after the completion of the task, you will generally earn a link for your assistance. Basically, just monitor these content creators that you would like to get a link from, then wait for them to ask some assistance from external sources. When this happens, you can immediately offer to help, then get some benefits through links.

#4. Offer an Endorsement

This tactic is perfect for websites that sell a certain product, write a specific piece of content, a tool, and whatever object or services that need endorsement. It is important to remember that you are trying to endorse them and that your endorsement must mean something to them.

One of the things you must make sure of is that you are a part of the audience they are trying to reach. So, when you offer an endorsement, and they accept your offer, you will probably get a link back to your own site. This is because they want to establish your authority through sharing the fact that you have your own website, and that you regularly publish something related to their niche.

#5. Guest Blogging

This one is known by almost all of the SEOs and is probably the first that came into your mind when you thought about earning links without asking. Guest blogging, guest contribution, guest editorials, and any other guest authorship you can think of is included in this tactic.

If you are new in the SEO industry and don’t know what guest blogging is, it’s basically you submitting content to websites that publish content about your niche. You get links through incorporating them into the content that you submit, so whenever a user reads your guest post on a website, and they like the content, they look for links that point to your website in order to read similar content that is written by you.

Key Takeaway

Link outreach is much like any SEO technique – it is an integral part of your SEO campaign, and you need them to have success in your campaign. However, if you are not a fan of the traditional way of link outreach, then keep all the tactics I wrote about in your minds, and you will have far better results than you did when you tried out directly asking for links.

Go do your outreach by using these tactics, get numerous quality links from authoritative sources, and have a successful SEO campaign. Keep in mind that you won’t be successful in this endeavor if you do not put in enough effort for it to work.

Do you know any other tactics for link outreach? Tell me in the comments below, and let’s talk about it.

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Social media for small business owners

You are a small business owner with a local target audience. Of course, your local audience needs to find your shop or office, and you want to use social media for that. But, in the plethora of platforms, you just have no clue where to start. So you post something on Facebook, try a tweet now and then, but nothing happens. To small business owners, social media can feel like a struggle every time. And perhaps that last word sums it all up: you are probably just putting your extra time into social media. Whereas investing actual, accountable time in social media will probably pay off way more.

Investing that time deliberately means you need to figure out some things first. Let us help you with that.

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Buy now » Info What platforms should I use?

You need to find the social platforms your target audience uses. Otherwise, you won’t be able to reach the right people. There are (at least) two ways to find out what these platforms are:

• Ask your customers what social media they use. That might be Twitter or Snapchat, but can also be Yelp or Meetup.com, depending on your type of business. Simply ask your customers and see what response you get. If you have hundreds of customers a week, this is probably not the best course of action.
• Simply start using a certain social platform. And see what happens. I prefer this option over the alternatives. Try everything, keep track of the results, and stop doing the things that don’t work for your business after a couple of months. Don’t give up the next day, but set a goal for yourself and see if you can achieve that.

Read more: ‘Social media strategy: where to begin?’ »

Factors that influence social media for small business

There are many things to keep in mind when you’re thinking about social media plans as a small business owner. Your results will depend on the platform you’ve chosen, but the three factors below also definitely play a part.

Give it time

Keep your expectations in check: your social following won’t grow overnight. Don’t expect people to follow you right after creating a profile. You need to invest that time we talked about. And creating a profile isn’t investing time, that should be done in a few minutes. The actual time investment starts right after that.

Create relevant content

You need to make sure your messages/mentions/promotions/articles are worth sharing. In other words, your content, in general, must be relevant and worthwhile. At Yoast, we try to publish five articles a week, but only if we have something that deserves publishing. We’d rather skip a day than publish something that could backfire on (for instance) social media, due to lack of relevance.

The need for relevance can hold back certain businesses from using social media. People often say:

“But I have nothing worth sharing.”

That’s nonsense. If you are good at what you do, you’ll have projects, testimonials, pictures, and quotes worth sharing. No need to write new blog posts every day, simply find something you’re proud of and share it. And if you do want to start a blog, Marieke has some tips to get inspiration for you. For those who want to dive into blogging, there is always our ultimate guide to blogging.

Don’t give up

The third factor that influences social media for small business is determination. To work properly, social media for small businesses has to be a continuous process of publishing and engaging. Saying “I have tried social media and it’s just not my thing” doesn’t show determination. You may have tried Snapchat, and it’s not your cup of tea. That’s fine. But perhaps Facebook is. And maybe posting on Facebook isn’t for you, but engaging in Facebook Groups might be. I call bullsh*t on the statement that “social media isn’t your thing.” You probably just haven’t found the right medium or platform.

Social media usage for small businesses

Let me go over some social platforms and give you some ideas on how to use them. This isn’t a blueprint for your own social media strategy: the actual use will depend on your type of business and the time you are willing to invest in social media. Here are some ideas:

Twitter

Twitter is an excellent way to send messages and interact with your local community. Two things come in handy here:

• Hashtags. Hashtags allow you to connect your tweet to an individual subject, without having to add an extensive introduction. It’s being used to tweet about television shows like #GoT or cities like #Seattle. Especially adding your town’s name to a tweet will get you local attention. We can confirm this works even for #Wijchen, the small town where we’re located.
• Advanced Search. If you are looking for a way to get involved in relevant, local conversations, you should try the advanced search option on Twitter. It allows you to search for any subject you like, in the area you want. See screenshot below.

Facebook

First things first: is your company already on Facebook? I recommend adding it as a local business or place. Facebook has 1.94 billion monthly active users and 1.28 billion daily active users on average (Source: Facebook). Facebook is huge. That alone should be reason enough to add your business to Facebook. And adding your company to Facebook isn’t that hard. It’s a relatively small effort when it comes to social media for small business owners.

Promote your page to your personal friends, get likes, and share updates and photos. Note that for sales posts (“Buy our product!”), you have a better chance of success if you ‘boost‘ your post just a little bit. Boosting can be done for a specified audience, with the location being one of the filters.

Another reason Facebook is an attractive choice for your social media efforts is Facebook Groups. Facebook Groups can be about just about everything. A quick search for Facebook groups about Milwaukee shows how much variety there is:

Pokemon Go, Refugee supporters, Saab, ukulele, auto modelers, running – you name the subject, and Facebook has a group for you. Usually, there are also networking groups for local business people. Just search and find the group that fits your need. Introduce yourself and your business, and engage in discussions. That’s an easy, time efficient way to promote yourself and your company to a local audience.

Instagram

Do you have product images or photos worth sharing? In that case, Instagram might be the social platform for you. Instagram works with hashtags, much like Twitter. I use hashtag apps like Hashme or Tag o’Matic to find the right ones matching my content. Hashtags on Instagram work like a charm when adding local content. An example:

#seattle #seattlelife #seattleart #seattleartist #seattlelove #downtownseattle #spaceneedle #spaceneedleview #spaceneedles #washington #spaceneedleseattle #washingtonstate #seattlewa #seattleskyline #seattlecenter

It took me 30 seconds to find 15 relevant local hashtags using that last app. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags a post, by the way. Use these to your advantage!

Of course, there are many more social media platforms for small businesses. But I don’t want to overwhelm you with options right now. One thing I would like to mention is that review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor are also social sites. They shouldn’t be forgotten if your business is mentioned on these sites. Be sure to monitor your mentions there and act on them if needed. That’s also being social!

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Buy now » Info Measure your social media efforts

We have written some articles on the various analytics tools for social media networks, and I’d like to point you to these as well. Keeping track of followers and reach gives you an indication of how well your strategy is working. Focus on the numbers that tell you something about engagement, to see what social networks do indeed help you build your community. Here we go:

• Facebook Insights: Get 30 likes, and Insights will be available. After 100 likes on your page, you can even compare your numbers to the competition.
• Twitter Analytics: See who your influencers are: the people that like your tweets and have a nice following of their own. Find local influencers and get acquainted with them: ask them to tweet about you now and then.
• Iconosquare for Instagram: As there still is no proper analytics for Instagram from Instagram, I rely on Iconosquare for that. Use it to find the best time to post, and see what kind of content works best for your business.

Please check out these tools yourself. Keep a keen eye on trends and engagement, as that is the most important thing in my opinion.

The obvious social media strategy works best

I want to leave you with two final thoughts here:

• Post engaging content, because that is the best way to build an audience. Sounds simple, but it is pretty hard. Don’t be afraid to experiment here. Usually, personal stories lead to the most and best engagement. Having said that, Yoast office life pictures on social media often lead to questions about the awesome features of Yoast SEO Premium (for instance). Keep an open mind and help any customer with whatever question they have, related or not. The engagement counts, not the subject of your post.
• Your employees are your brand ambassadors on social media. They love your company, enjoy working there and are most likely to share a lot of your social content if not all. Your employees create that local snowball effect. After all, most of their connections on Facebook are probably/usually living in the same geographical area as you. Acknowledge this, and stay aware of the value of these ‘in-house’ shares.

That’s it for now! I’m sure I’ve convinced you that even as a small business, investing some time and effort into your social media strategy will pay off. So go for it! And feel free to drop any questions or thoughts about social media for small business in the comments!

Keep reading: ‘Ultimate guide to small business SEO’ »

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How Is Locadium Different From Yext & Other Citation Monitoring Services?

One of the more common questions we have received since launching Locadium, our new GMB monitoring service, is how it differs from Yext and similar services that monitor NAP consistency.

The answer is pretty simple – Locadium monitors GMB changes and alerts you when it detects a change or a dupe listing that has been published.

Yext also has a GMB change alert system that monitors the GMB API and alerts you when the API alerts Yext that there is new information for your page that Google needs you to check and approve to publish. But that’s not all – In the US, Yext monitors your data on over 60 local sites including Facebook, Bing and Yelp. Yext also has a huge number of features related to that data including review management, analytics, rank-tracking, real-time updating and a ton more stuff. It is a truly “integrated solution”.

We decided to build Locadium because we often saw differences between what GMB’s dashboard told us and what we saw published on Google. To our knowledge all of the GMB monitoring services were just checking the API. We wanted to get the full picture. We also didn’t want to have to buy a subscription to additional services just to keep track of our clients’ GMB pages.

Locadium is not a Yext replacement. Many of our clients use Yext and it works well for them. We just wanted something a little different and didn’t want to wait for a bigger company to build it for us. So we built Locadium. And once it was built we liked it so much we thought the Local SEO community would like it too.

If you’d like a demo of Locadium, hit us up at http://ift.tt/2wiyYIS

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Copywriting for mobile

Mobile traffic is important. People are searching and reading on their mobile devices more than ever. What does that mean for your copy? Do you need to write differently if you’re aiming at a ‘mobile’ audience? How do you tackle copywriting for mobile? Here, I’ll share some useful tips on how to write awesome texts that can be read on both desktops and mobile devices.

Why is copywriting for mobile different?

Reading on a mobile device is different from reading on a desktop, mainly because the screen is much smaller. Texts appear stretched on a mobile device, as people have to scroll much more. Besides that, people reading from a mobile device can be anywhere. Lots of people use their mobile device ‘on the go’, while also doing other things. Their attention span and their concentration are very limited. That’s what makes writing for mobile challenging. 

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$ 199€ 199 - Buy now » Info Tip 1: Always focus on your audience

The mobile phone will not read your post, but your audience will. And perhaps your audience likes reading from their phones. In that case, you can improve their reading experience a lot with the tips in this blog post. But the first thing to keep in mind is that your content should always be focused on what your audience wants and expects from you. That does not change if you start writing for mobile (too). By focusing on the question ‘how can I write best for mobile,’ you should never lose track of the most important issue: ‘what does my audience like?’.

Tip 2: Make your fonts large enough

Font size is important for the mobile UX of blogs. You can’t just use all your desktop font sizes on your mobile website, without checking how they look on a mobile device.

It’s important that people can read your base font – your paragraph font – without having to pinch and zoom. Also, make sure there’s sufficient white space between sentences. Mobile websites are usually browsed with a thumb. Your visitors should be able to click on elements with that thumb.

Be aware that your mobile site will look messy when you use more than three font sizes. The size differences will be much more visible. That’s why we advise limiting the number of font sizes to two, maybe three.

Read more: ‘10 ways to improve mobile UX’ »

Tip 3: Write short sentences

A sentence of 25 words takes up two lines on an average desktop screen. For a mobile screen, this will be four lines. Longer sentences will be spread over even more lines, and that makes remembering words in the short term memory even harder. So don’t use too many long sentences. It’ll make reading your text much more difficult. This is true for desktop as well, but it’s even more important when you write for a mobile audience.

Tip 4: Check your subheadings and white space

Paragraphs will quickly appear very long because they get stretched out on a mobile screen. You should limit the number of sentences in a paragraph and use sufficient white space. That’ll make a text much easier to digest. Informative subheadings that reveal what a paragraph is about will help people understand your text. Good subheadings will also increase the chance your audience will stay engaged, even if a lot is going on around them.

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Buy now » Info Tip 5: Keep an eye on text-structure

The structure of your text should be just flawless. In a well-structured text, paragraphs follow in a logical order. Within paragraphs, sentences also connect to each other. So make sure to use lots of transition words. These words will help people understand the meaning of your text.

If your text is well structured, people will more easily understand the main message of your post. If your audience is unable to grasp that main message, they will get lost and tune out.

Conclusion: readability is of the utmost importance on mobile

Copywriting for mobile is not that different from writing for a desktop. In both cases, you need to write for a real audience. ‘Mobile’ texts do demand an even better readability than ‘desktop’ texts. That’s because reading from a mobile screen is more challenging than reading from a desktop. But, if you make sure your readability is top-notch, your texts will have loads of readers, on both mobile devices and desktops.

Keep reading: ‘Mobile SEO: the ultimate guide’ »

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The Most Basic Framework for Developing an A/B Test Hypothesis

Optimization testing has been the hot thing that everyone wants to tap. Some boast that they’ve done it forever – weekly subject line split testing with 10% of their email list and then sending the remaining 90% the winner.

Maybe you read some variation on color psychology and tested red vs.…

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8 Ways to Dominate Your Local SEO Rankings

Google’s update on their local listings made the competition for webmasters to be featured in the listings harder than ever. Sadly, there is no easy way to be featured – which means every business must depend on a great local SEO performance to obtain much better online visibility.

Local search engine results pages (SERPs) are immensely competitive, and Google has made some revisions with the paid ads that reduce organic results to the lower parts of the SERPs. This means that SEOs have to give twice the effort to obtain the results that they want.

Fortunately, it isn’t all bad news. SEOs just have to make a few improvements into their local SEO campaign in order to have the substantial effect on your organic search rankings. Today, I’m going to give you some tips on how you could improve your local SEO campaign.

#1. Local Search Simulation

Essentially, a great SEO strategy starts with researching keywords – preferably using their favorite keyword tool. However, since Google removed their location search filter, simulations of local search results, when you are in a different location, has become complicated. To make up for this, numerous SEOs opt to do one of these:

a.) Incorporate the “near” parameter in their URL – After inputting a query, SEOs add “&near=cityname.” into the URL. This will garner results that would have shown up if you’re actually near that location.

b.) “uule” parameter – You can attach each search query with a base64 that is basically an encoded form of a location’s “canonical name”.

c.) Softwares that target GPS coordinates – The easiest and most accurate way to geo target your keywords is through the use of an algorithm.

Once you’ve found your desired keywords, it is time to start putting in work. You should generate content that specifically targets keywords that have low competition, and always remember that it is best if you add them to your HTML tags and anchor text.

#2. Link Building Opportunities

It is a well-known fact that a great link building campaign is essential for a successful SEO campaign. Therefore, it is also a priority whenever you do local SEO. Unfortunately, building and earning organic links takes up a lot of time. You will be needing a sense of authority through your content in order to have influencers trust you and the content that you publish.

Whenever an influencer deems your content as quality and top-notch, then you can take advantage of this link building opportunity. Using your content to earn links from influencers is not easy, but it will be worth the effort and time you put in. Focus on collaborating with influencers and finding other ways to improve your brand’s online reputation.

One way to easily earn some high-quality backlinks is to help webmasters look for and replace broken links in their content. Investigate high-performing posts in your niche and find out if it contains broken links, afterward, contact the webmaster and tell them about the broken link while offering up your own page as a substitute.

#3. Research Your Competitors for Link Opportunities

Go to your preferred competitor tracking tool to find out which websites are linking to your competitors. You can use this strategy to have more backlinks that can help your local SEO campaign. Here’s how to do it:

• Find out which websites link to your competitors, but not to you
• Determine their domain authority
• Compile the most influential and relevant domains
• Execute Link Outreach to the compiled domains

#4. Ensure NAP Consistency

It is imperative for you to make sure that your NAP (name, address, and phone number) is consistent on each and every website it is listed on. You may use a rank tracking software to oversee your citations. If ever there are inconsistencies, immediately contact the site owner of that certain domain and ask them to correct the inconsistency.

Since NAP is a part of on-page signals, it is one of the most important factors for both the local listing rankings and local organic rankings.

#5. Google My Business Listing

It is undeniable that your Google My Business page is the most important ranking factor for your local list ranking, and it is necessary for you to optimize it. All you have to do is:

• Add or claim your listing
• Verify your account
• Update your business details. From opening hours to category listings, make sure that they are all correct
• Link to your website
• Upload recent and high-quality images of your business

Once you have your page, all you have to do is to gain customer reviews and have citations for local listing in order to optimize it.

#6. Encourage Customer Proof

Social proof such as reviews, case studies, and testimonials are among the most important ranking signals that you can have. These are usually copies that help customers decide if they avail of your services or not.

Getting and encouraging customer proof takes effort, so here are some ways that you could use to improve the rate of receiving customer proof:

• Give them link building opportunities – Your customers also want to build links as much as you do, and many of them will take you up on your offer if you give them the chance to build links. It will mean free publicity for them and more engagement for you.
• Encourage customers to give reviews – Include a QR code on your business cards and receipts, give out some brochures, and personally ask customers if they are in your store.
• Request reviews – Not everyone you request from will give you a review, but you just need few positive feedbacks to get the ball rolling and slowly build up a great reputation.

#7. Structured Data Markup

You will be needing structured data markup if you wish to see your business appear in the local Knowledge Graph panes of the Google SERPs. It also helps your visitors find out your NAP and reviews through the snippet provided in the SERPs.

It is important to keep in mind that you will have to use different markups for different platforms. Google uses schema for their search results while Open Graph is used for social media sites. The great thing about this is that there is software available on the internet that will help you manage your markups from one place.

#8. Manage Your Image and Video Ranking

While most SEOs I know measure metrics such as rate of visitors and CTR, only a few know that if they have a great rank tracking software, they can also check up on their image and video rankings.

You can optimize images by compressing them to reduce their overall file size. Also, make sure that they are properly formatted – it’s either .jpg or .png – and then compress it using a tool that could preserve their quality.

For videos, you can optimize them by changing your titles and metadata to be more “click bait” – or clickable – and it would be best if you also include a keyword. Additionally, incorporating unique thumbnails, and transcribing your video’s text will help in Youtube’s indexation of your videos.

Key Takeaway

Before you start your SEO campaign, refresh your knowledge by first taking over your local search rankings. Through local SEO, you will be able to perfect some keyword research, understand Google My Business, do competitor analysis, and practice engaging your customers – which is important for your overall SEO campaign.

Start small and work yourself up until you gain success in the local SEO. There will be a lot of time for you to do some advanced SEO once you have mastered the basics.

Still having trouble with your local SEO rankings? Talk to me in the comments below, and let’s help each other out.

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Doesn’t Everyone Hate it When Service Companies Get Involved in Software?

Local SEO Guide is happy to announce Locadium, a Google My Business reporting system built from the ground up for multi-location brands and agencies. According to a recent poll of Local SEO Sherpa’s, 78% of them have problems with Google changing information on GMB profiles. Now I know you are saying:

“Dan, there is the ability to see changes suggested by Google in the GMB dashboard”.

Thanks, random Internet person! You can see Google suggested updates in the various GMB dashboards, and in addition to that, Locadium reports actual front end UI changes that users are seeing. 

In addition to the core reporting application, you can also push updates to GMB through the GMB API in real time, manage thousands of children locations from a parent agency or brand setup, check recent reviews and see how Google is updating your information over time. These are all things that we have been using internally to help us manage GMB profiles at scale.

In addition to these features, we are hard at work building out aggregate GMB Insights reporting and the ability to push attributes via the GMB API that we plan to include at no extra cost.

While I think that those are all pretty exciting features,  my favorite is probably our industrial strength GMB duplicate checker. Using our proprietary technology we gather and score all the relevant duplicates and potential duplicates out there so you can detect any rogue GMB listings. Then you can either claim and optimize them or terminate them with EXTREME PREJUDICE.

So that’s all the good stuff if you are so inclined head over to www.locadium.com now and check it out. But before that, screenshots!

The top level dashboard:

A “Location Page”:

The reviews at the bottom of a “Location Page”:

The ability to edit a location page:

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