Author: Ajay Paghdal

Content Marketing: What Are Blogging Best Practices for a B2B SaaS Startup Wishing to Generate Industry Visibility?

I have experience in this area so I’d like to take some time to answer this question.

When we are talking about B2B SaaS, we’re talking about an industry that has national keywords and lots of competitors that have been in the biz for a long time.

And in all honesty, your competitors probably understand the power of content marketing. At least some of them will understand its value.

If you are a startup just joining this industry, you may be funded which makes your life a heck of alot easier. If you’re bootstrapping then you’re going to have to get a lot more creative.

For me, personally, I feel that creativity always leads to better outcomes anyway.

Developing a Solid Blogging Strategy

With a brand-new content strategy, it’s all about creating content that your customers care about. You can figure out what they want in several ways:

A.) Since you already know your customer, write down your ideas about your ideal customer on paper.

B.) Use information provided by your competitors. They are a great resource.

When evaluating what your competition is doing, please pay attention to the following areas:

 

  •         Get a history of all of their blog posts.
  •         What are they writing about?
  •         What are their titles?
  •         What are their topics?
  •         Are people engaging with their content? How often?
  •         Are people sharing their content on social media? How often?
  •         Use Ahrefs or similar to determine their blog traffic.

By evaluating all of this information, you can tell if your competition is connecting with their customers – i.e. your customers.

Just to be clear, this isn’t the Holy Grail though. Many of your competitors aren’t doing content marketing right.

So don’t look at what they’re doing and assume that it’s gospel. Because sometimes your competitors are getting it wrong too.

C.) Initiate in-depth interviews with your customers.

Ask your customers questions like:

 

  • What are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to their business?
  • What made them seek out a solution like yours in the first place?
  • What kind of publications do they read? How often do they read them?
  • Do people in your industry actually go online and read content? Remember, certain industries don’t, so content marketing might not be a good fit.

After asking all of these questions of your customers, gather the answers and use this information to build up multiple personas of your ideal customer.

To start this off on the right foot, you have to create a solid blogging strategy. You have to get to know your customer and understand what they want, while leaving no room for unnecessary assumptions that might not be correct.

2-an-example-customer-persona

An Example Customer Persona:

Sally the accountant is in her mid-40s, she’s married, likes to watch MacGyver in her spare time, she’s a mid-level executive at a firm with 500-1000 employees, and she reports to XYZ decision-maker and she needs to make sure that her numbers look good on this end as a daily concern, and some of the industry publications she reads are ABC.

You create these personas, and based on them, you are starting to lay the groundwork on who you’re writing to.

Whether you’re writing this content yourself, or you have writers to write it for you, having this information helps create content that your customer base will find valuable when reading.

3-building-your-content-strategy

Building Your Content Strategy

Are you going to do the standard blogging model?

In this model, you are blogging once a week. You are either writing content that builds an audience or you’re writing content that’s going to be good for the search engines.

Often times, the content you create will be good to build an audience and please the search engines. They are often mutually exclusive.

Sometimes content that would be very helpful to a user in your specific industry isn’t going to get searched for a lot. But, if a user does somehow come across it via the search engines or paid traffic, they could end up opting in to your list and then you have a subscriber that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

And once they’re on your list, you can keep marketing to them over and over again.

Who Are You Writing for?

You have to decide if you are:

 

  •         writing for the search engines
  •         writing for people
  •         or writing for both

The latest, most effective content creation technique right now is called the hub and spoke model.

4-the-hub-spoke-model

The Hub & Spoke Model

In this content model, the overall goal is to create premium guides. Besides that, the other major goal is to create really, really big thematically relevant interlinked content.

Here’s an explanation of the hub and spoke.

The hub is a meaty, long form piece of content.

The spokes are also long form, high quality articles that help build out certain points of the main hub article. They are perfect for fleshing out certain topics that you touched upon in your main hub article.

If the content is truly compelling, it will end up becoming a backlink generating machine.

Because of this unique ecosystem of content, the homepage will rank highly in Google, the spokes pages will rank highly in Google, and you will be looked upon as an authority in your market.

If you set it up correctly, people will gladly read this content. They will remember you and your business. And if you add an email subscription box, they will even opt-in to your mailing list.

This method can provide very powerful results.

It’s also becoming more popular because so many people are now creating content.

Now you have to create better and more strategic content in order to set yourself apart for success.

My Recommended Strategy

I recommend creating these large, content rich guides that your audience will love.

Think about a specific topic. Something that’s really, really important to your industry.

Think about how you can break that down into a main article (hub) and then and then subparts (spokes).

Figure out how you can link it altogether. And then spend some time writing it or have a trusted writer create the content for you and put it all together.

Once this piece is completed over several months, you can then repurpose the content as well. You can turn it into a downloadable e-book, break it into pieces and use it for your newsletter, create an infographic, turn it into a video, or even use it for print advertisements.

In the meantime, you should be promoting the heck out of it.

The moral of The story is this:

You’ll generate amazing visibility in your industry if you begin with quality content.

This is going to put you on the map. This is what is going to make people stand up and take notice of you.

Blogger Outreach

While this strategy is good, blogger outreach is even better. I’ve written extensively on this topic in a number of posts on my blog.

Here are the links:

https://www.outreachmama.com/advanced-link-building-strategies/

https://www.outreachmama.com/trustworthy-online-services-blogger-outreach/

Thanks for taking the time to read this answer. I really hope you found it valuable.

Good luck!

Content Marketing: What Are Blogging Best Practices for a B2B SaaS Startup Wishing to Generate Industry Visibility?

Posted by Ajay Paghdal

I have experience in this area so I’d like to take some time to answer this question. When we are talking about B2B SaaS, we’re talking about an industry that has national keywords and lots of competitors that have been in the biz for a long time. And in all honesty, your competitors probably understand … Continue reading “Content Marketing: What Are Blogging Best Practices for a B2B SaaS Startup Wishing to Generate Industry Visibility?”

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Best Keyword Research Tools for Bloggers with Step by Step Instructions

I’d like to take a shot at answering your question. I have many years of experience with SEO and content marketing, so I think my insight can help you.

Keyword Research

If you do keyword research right, the rest of your campaign becomes extremely, extremely streamlined.

On the other hand, if you skip keyword research, you’re probably going to end up setting your site up in a weird way.

It will not be optimized properly. Your URL structure will not be in tune. Your titles, keywords, and other stuff will be screwed up.

Now, at some point you could go back and fix it. In all honesty, that’s what most people have to end up doing anyway.

Most people dive right in when they first start a website. They want to get it up and running and hopefully making money someday.

If you take the time to focus on keyword research before building your website, you’ll have a significant advantage and save yourself a tremendous amount of time later on.

Since most people already have websites, they often have to go back and make these changes or start all over again from scratch.

Nobody wants to start over from the beginning!

2-perform-keyword-research-like-its-a-brand-new-site-even-if-your-website-already-existsPerform Keyword Research like it’s a Brand-New Site Even If Your Website Already Exists

Updating your website, doing 301 redirects, and trying to make it really good are important next steps.

Let’s assume that you are ready for keyword research at this point.

3-step-1-identify-the-goals-of-your-outcome

Identify the Goals of Your Outcome

Local Businesses

There are a handful of goals to consider. A local business owner has to identify what his or her main service (the most important services that your business offers) keyword is, and if you have more than one main service, you need to discover the main keyword for all of these services.

Example: Medical Group

If you are a partner in a medical group that offers many different services, you’ll have to discover all of the main service keywords.

Some examples that immediately spring to mind include: primary care, gynecology, gastrointestinal, ear nose and throat, etc.

Each main service mentioned is its own unique category. And each area of care will have different specialists, different patients, so technically you are providing different services even though they all fall under the umbrella of a medical group.

Since each specialty is a different service, you’ll need a unique page for each one of them.

Continuing on with our local business example:

If you are a local business, you need to identify sub keywords for each one of those services.

Example: Gastrointestinal

If one of your main specialists is in the gastrointestinal field, a sub keyword could be IBS, or Crohn’s disease, or sub keywords based on other reasons why people would visit this type of doctor.

And if the specialty is primary care, some sub keywords could be yearly checkup, or yearly prostate exam, or blood test, or other reasons why your patients come to visit you.

Local keyword research is all about understanding the different ways of saying the same thing, when it comes to your industry, how each main service specialty connects together, and how to link these pages together in a way that makes sense to search engine robots as well as actual people.

As a local business, you need to keep this mindset when it comes to keyword research.

E-Commerce Websites

If you are a Jack of all trades like Amazon, be aware that you have your work cut out for you.

With e-commerce sites, we are talking about primary category and subcategory.

Example: Modern Appliances Company

Some of the products being sold on this site could be bathroom sinks, kitchen sinks, bathroom faucets and kitchen faucets as examples.

Ultimately, you have to identify your main product categories. And from this point, you have to decide how you want to set up the URL structure on your page.

You can have a “modern bathrooms” button on your website. And then have subcategories including sinks, faucets, toilets, and other subcategories that you’ve identified.

Now that you’ve gone through this initial thought process, you have a base that you can use to begin your keyword research.

National Websites

If you have a software company, or provide services nationwide, you can follow a very similar keyword research structure.

First, you have to determine what your main service is and that’s what you’ll use as your focal point for the homepage.

But you may also have subcategories that you’d like to focus on as well, and in this case you’ll have to create a page around each group of topics.

Take a look at the examples that are already part of this answer to see what I mean.

Now that you have your foundation in place, you can begin using some good keyword research tools.

4-keyword-research-tools

Keyword Research Tools

There are a bunch of different keyword research tools. Since each of these tools may vary with their data points, let’s take a look at some of my favorite tools now:

  1. Google keyword planner
  2. Google auto suggest
  3. Google related keywords
  4. Ahrefs.com
  5. SEMRush.com

Personally, these are my five favorite keyword tools.

Google Keyword Planner

keyword planner

First off, if you aren’t paying for Google Adwords, you aren’t going to get all the data. So add five bucks to your account and spend it on a small campaign. This way you’ll open up full access to this keyword tool.

To get the most from this tool, you want to put in your general keywords.

Example: Plumbers

As a plumber, you’re putting in the word plumbers.

Next, you click search. At this point, Google is going to give you two tabs.

The two tabs are: exact keywords and keyword groups.

Personally, I like looking at keyword groups.

Why? I like it because it gives variations and LSI keywords.

It will tell you that people search for plumber, plumbing repair, sewer repair, drain cleaning, gas pipe repair, clogged toilets and all of the other related keywords.

This valuable information will give you an idea of how to structure your page.

As a local plumber, you make the homepage relevant for plumber terms in whatever city you are located in.

And then you’ll create each service page.

You might have a sewer repair page, a page for 24/7 emergency services, a page for leak repairs, fixture replacements, and much more.

Each one of these pages should have unique content.

Under all of these sub keywords, you’ll find even more keywords.

Google Auto Suggest

On the Google search engine, type in the word plumber.

The search engine itself will provide you with results. You want to gather these results and use them as a starting point for your website.

Google suggests these keywords because they see other people typing them. So it makes sense to attempt to optimize your website for them since they are the keyword phrases that Google associates with plumbers.

Google Related Keywords

And at the bottom of the results on Google, you’ll see a section of keywords that people also might search for.

You’ll see some results like plumber near me, plumber reviews, plumber work, plumber job description etc.

You can keep clicking on each one of these searches and go as far down the rabbit hole as you can. This will amass a ton of keyword data that you can use to help develop the keyword plan for your upcoming or current website.

Ahrefs.com

This keyword tool is a personal favorite of mine. I like it because it actually crawls through the web and it’s even its own rank tracker.

One of the best ways to use it is to Google your main keyword. We will stick with our plumbing example, so Google: plumber NJ.

On page 1, you’ll see three or four local competitor websites popping up in the results.

Copy the URLs of those competitors and paste them into Ahrefs in Site Explorer and then click on the area where it’s says keywords.

Interestingly, once you click on keywords you’ll see all of the keywords that your competitors ranking for. This is valuable data to mine since they are your direct competitors.

You’ll see their keywords, you’ll see the search volume, and now it’s your turn to decide whether or not you want to rank for those particular keyword phrases.

SEMRush.com

This keyword tool is very similar to Ahrefs.

You can do the same thing, put in your competitors, see where they rank and what keywords they rank for, and then use this data to make a list to build your plumber website around.

5-combining-all-of-your-data

Combining All of Your Data

Now that you have all of this valuable keyword research data, you have to combine it all up and put it into an architecture like I had previously talked about.

Some of the keyword data will be used for your main service pages and landing pages. Other keywords are going to be used as topics for blog posts.

The biggest thing to remember is you have to focus on topics. Don’t try to make one article for every keyword. You want to make one big article for tightly related topics and sprinkle in multiple keywords throughout.

That’s about it for keyword tools and keyword research. I hope you found this information valuable and helpful.

Please use it the next time you have to build or fix a website.

Best Keyword Research Tools for Bloggers with Step by Step Instructions

Posted by Ajay Paghdal

I’d like to take a shot at answering your question. I have many years of experience with SEO and content marketing, so I think my insight can help you. Keyword Research If you do keyword research right, the rest of your campaign becomes extremely, extremely streamlined. On the other hand, if you skip keyword research, … Continue reading “Best Keyword Research Tools for Bloggers with Step by Step Instructions”

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How Many Segments Should My URL Contain For Best SEO?

This is a really important question. It can be approached in a couple of ways, and each way will have an impact on your overall SEO.

As you’ll see in the following examples, there are many ways to segment your URL.

2-our-examples

Our Examples:

Using my business as an example, some URL segment possibilities would include:

https://www.outreachmama.com/link-building/

Or we could use…

Outreachmama.com/services/linkbuildingservices

Or looking at a different example:

Roysdental.com/Manhattan

Roysdental.com/Brooklyn

Or we could use…

Roysdental.com/AreasServed/Manhattan

Roysdental.com/AreasServed/Brooklyn

Or maybe even

Roysdental.com/ManhattanDentist

If you Google 10 different local keywords, you’ll see a huge variation of URLs that pop up. Some will have no folders, some will have two subfolders, some will just rank the homepage, and it varies tremendously. There’s no best practice.

Although there’s no specific way to do this, it will have a major impact on the rest of your SEO campaign and how well it succeeds.

Let’s take a look at some examples to help you understand how each variation will have an impact on your overall search engine optimization efforts.

Different URL Segment Factors to Consider

Roysdental.com/Brooklyn vs. Roysdental.com/areasserved/Brooklyn

If you were to do SEO the same way, and you were to build some links to the homepage, and build a few links to the landing page that you created, chances are that Roysdental.com/Brooklyn is going to rank much better than Roysdental.com/AreasServed/Brooklyn.

Why?

It’s actually pretty simple. The closer a page is to the root domain, the more SEO authority and internal link juice is transferred to that page.

Inversely, the more you bury a page in the site, the less link juice will get transferred from the homepage.

Pretty easy to understand, right?

So, if you only have a handful of areas to rank for, and you aren’t targeting dozens or even hundreds of different locations, put your URL as close to the root domain as possible.

3-why-would-you-potentially-need-a-deeper-longer-url-string

Why Would You Potentially Need a Deeper, Longer URL String?

Maybe you have big plans. Maybe you intend to expand your business and have no interest in being a simple mom-and-pop shop. You have dreams of going nationwide one day and plan to work hard to get there.

In a situation like this, it will get really messy to add pages like Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, Manhattan, etc. and having hundreds and hundreds of other pages directly off of the root domain.

All of a sudden, all of your link juice is being diluted and the SEO effects are weakened.

You’ll suffer from the law of diminishing returns following this method when adding hundreds of pages. After a while, the more pages you add, you’ll no longer receive the same root domain benefit that you’d receive if you only had a few page URLs set up this way.

In the worst-case scenario, you’ll actually get the root domain benefit temporarily, and it may even last for six months. So what appears to be a good thing will eventually come crashing down all around you when you least expect it.

Eventually, the hammer is going to drop and all of the beautiful root domain link juice is going to disappear.

4-when-do-you-use-subfolders-start-categorizing-things-better-at-the-local-level

When Do You Use Subfolders, Start Categorizing Things Better at the Local Level, and Start Expanding into Many Different Areas?

To continue with our example, let’s say you’re attempting to build out pages for 100 different cities in the state of New York.

In this situation, you need to focus on getting more categorized.

In some instances, you may want to sort by the state. In other instances you may decide to sort by the county.

Why is that?

Well, when you create state pages or county pages, they are actually going to become the hub pages on your website. And the hub pages are the pages that you need to build more links to.

It’s just not feasible to build high quality backlinks to hundreds of pages.

Sure, you can send tons of crappy spam links to these pages, but Google will eventually catch up to them and they are going to do more harm than good. Let’s not sacrifice our SEO efforts in the name of building links.

If you want to build high-quality links, and you want those links to go far, you have to create hub pages.

Example:

You have a New York City or County page.

You build a bunch a high-quality links to this page.

Guess what? The link juice from the hub page is going to transfer to all of the other pages that are linked to on that hub.

At this point, Google is going to start dividing link juice out amongst the pages.

And if you’re doing it with quality links, you’re even beginning to build up thematic relevance for dentists and you’re building up location relevance for New York.

Before long, you’re even seeing some nice bumps and traffic.

So you have to approach this with a long-term view.

An Overview of the Process

When in doubt, when you’re building a small site, keep your URL segments as close to the root domain as possible.

And if you’re going big, and you really don’t know what you’re doing, make sure to read up on the topic. Think about the best practices that I’ve shared with you today. And even take a look at what your competitors are doing to get a better idea.

5-an-overview-of-the-process

At the end of the day, URL structure is only going to get you 5% of the way.

This is especially true if you do not have an authority website. It’s at this point that you have to start investing in content for the site, building internal links to each one of the pages – internal link juice is so important; and building backlinks to help boost up your rankings.

All the pages you create, all of the hub pages if you follow the hub pages method, all of the blog pages that are interlinking to your service page – this is how you start building up link juice the right way.

I hope this brief explanation has helped.

 

 

How Many Segments Should My URL Contain For Best SEO?

Posted by Ajay Paghdal

This is a really important question. It can be approached in a couple of ways, and each way will have an impact on your overall SEO. As you’ll see in the following examples, there are many ways to segment your URL. Our Examples: Using my business as an example, some URL segment possibilities would include: … Continue reading “How Many Segments Should My URL Contain For Best SEO?”

Read More

Top SEO and Link Building Trends in 2021

In June 2019, a big shift in search occurred.

The Google Core update impacted a lot of sites and the updates seem to be increasing in frequency.

Here is what the experts have to say about it.

Targeting topics will be more productive than targeting queries

2019 is going to be another year in which we see the emphasis on individual search queries start to decline, as people focus more on clusters of queries around topics. People Also Ask queries have made the importance of topics much more obvious to the SEO industry. With PAAs, Google is clearly illustrating that they think about searcher experience in terms of a searcher’s satisfaction across an entire topic, not just a specific search query. With this in mind, we can expect SEOs to more and more want to see their search queries clustered into topics so they can measure their visibility and the competitive landscape across these clusters.

by Rob Bucci, Founder at GetStat

7 Trends To Keep an Eye On

Trend #1: User Intent Optimization
Trend #2: Microformats / Schema
Trend #3: Mobile Optimization
Trend #4: Voice Search And Home Assistants
Trend #5: Local Search Geo-targeting
Trend #6: Content Is Still King, But Only Thought Provoking Content
Trend #7: Intense Competition

by Bradley Shaw, Founder at SEO Expert Brad

Want to be added to this list? Click here to bring up our submission form. We will be in touch shortly with feedback.

 

Let’s continue with a dive into specific trends of core SEO activities.

To start things off, I’d first like to talk about on-site SEO.

1. On-site SEO

As far as on-site optimization goes in 2019, things haven’t really changed that much.

What has changed a lot is what people are talking about.

Right now, you’ll hear more about the user experience, bounce rate, and how Google is measuring all of these different things.

You might ask yourself, “How does Google even know what’s going on?”

2 how google has their hands in user experience

How Google Has Their Hands in User Experience

Google has their hands in user experience in many different ways now. Some of those ways include:

  1. The Chrome browser.
  2. People looking through Google search results.
  3. Through Google Analytics.

Google can learn so much information about your website.

They know how long a person spends time in a website. They can see how many pages they view while on a site. They can check the bounce rate – if they click on your site from their search engine and then immediately click off and go to another site. And they’ll even know if they stay on the other website longer.

When you add everything up, it will have a major impact on your overall rankings.

And as you can imagine, this is much more difficult to manipulate than standard stuff like long form articles, titles, meta-descriptions and URLs.

This adds a much bigger wrinkle to current and future SEO.

Now that people are starting to see the full power of on-site SEO, everybody is working hard to optimize their website. But by no means is everyone’s website optimized well.

In our experience, we have noticed many websites that still aren’t properly optimized. In fact, SAAS and local websites seem to focus more on brand optimization and not enough on organic optimization.

So that’s one thing that I’ve noticed. It’s definitely a new wrinkle. And there’s still much more to discuss.

2. Content Creation

This was big going into 2019. As we gather more data, it becomes that much more real and tangible. It’s a big, big shift in the way people used to think.

I’m talking about topical optimization for content marketing.

3 content creation

An Example of Topical Optimization for Content Marketing

As an example, if you type in a general term like “entrepreneur apps” and look on page 1 of Google, you won’t see a single small niche website for this broad, general term.

You’ll only see websites like Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and Forbes to name a few examples. You’ll only notice the biggest websites in the rankings, and sadly enough, the results will recommend a cheesy article like “21 Entrepreneur Apps That Will Make Your Day More Productive.”

These days, Google seems to have a big inclination toward showing listicles in the search results. This doesn’t mean that they are the best results. It just shows that Google is attempting to deliver content based on the average user’s low attention span.

They don’t seem to really care about detail as much as you might think.

4 why people are switching to content marketing

The Hub & Spoke Approach to Content Marketing

In this environment, I have noticed that even if you’re writing extremely long form, in-depth content – what we call a spoke and hub approach – I’d recommend that you use this approach to rank highly above your competitors in the search results.

To explain this approach, you’ll have one really big piece of super long form content that covers an entire category and provides a bird’s eye view while being very comprehensive at the same time. This is known as the hub.

As an example, let’s say we’re talking about a piece of hub content for a medical website. In this content, you’ll have the description, what it’s for, side effects, benefits, studies, things to watch out for, and similar.

If someone types Propanolol (it’s an anxiety drug) into a search engine, this big piece of long form content should show up in the results.

As far as creating spoke content is concerned, each piece of content would be considered a subpage.

Sticking with our Propanolol example, each subpage can flesh out and go into greater detail about various parts of the long form hub content.

Some examples include:

1. Things to consider before taking this medicine.

2. How the warnings and cautions of Propanolol have changed over time.

By creating content this way, you are setting up a website with plenty of internal linking. You are building up topical relevance for that particular article.

If you have one hub article and 20 spoke articles around it, this is a huge signal to Google that says this is a very topically relevant site for Propanolol.

Think about content creation in this way. When combined with some link building and good on-site internal linking, you’ll do a lot better in the search engines with a lot less effort than somebody who is just focusing on content or just focusing on link building.

3. Link Building

Link building is always a hot button issue.

Things get more competitive as time goes on. It’s nearly impossible to game Google using low-quality links and automation tools at this point.

And your options for getting high search rankings through low-quality links continue to diminish. Any results that you might achieve through automated link building just aren’t going to stick around for a long time anymore.

5 quote

Google just keeps getting smarter! And good, high quality link building keeps getting more and more expensive.

Why People Are Switching to Content Marketing

And as we all know, as things become more expensive, people start looking for cheaper options. That’s when many people come to the conclusion that content marketing is the cheaper way to go when it’s done correctly.

So it only makes sense that so many people are switching to content marketing. Just don’t ignore the fact that there is still a huge, huge place for link building.

Is Link Building Still the SEO Gold Standard?

Link building is still the gold standard for getting keywords to go higher in the search rankings for your target category or specified keyword.

The biggest thing right now is rankings delays. Google uses psychology to dissuade the use of links because so many people have figured out that link building is the key.

For now, just know that Google understands that you understand that link building works. Link building isn’t rocket science.

Getting Results & Learning Patience with Link Building

Some people haven’t quite figured out how to do it at scale and others have mastered this skill.

Even if you figure out how to scale your link building, and you do it for a few months, you still won’t see the results that you’re hoping to achieve. This is especially true if you just start building links to a new site.

Most people have a problem with this! They are impatient and they want to see instant results. They don’t want to wait around forever.

If you haven’t lived SEO for years, you’re going to look at what you’re doing and wonder “What’s happening? Why isn’t this working?”

I feel this was Google’s game plan all along. I think this is the reason why Google is genius.

They want to discourage people from investing in search engine optimization. It’s a long-term process. They purposely have algorithmic delays in place to keep you frustrated.

6 a lesson about link building patience

A Lesson about Link Building & Patience

Let’s say you build 200 high quality links in 30 days.

Guess what? You won’t see a rankings benefit for at least nine months to a year.

Yup, it takes that long for the algorithms to kick in in your favor.

Every once in a while there’s an outlier and somebody will get lucky, but this doesn’t happen all that often.

On the other side of the coin, some people might have to wait two years before the algorithm counts those 200 high quality backlinks.

At least this is the timeline that we’ve seen in our business.

How many times can someone do something for three months and not get the result that they want? Then they have to turn around and do it all over again for another three months, and maybe three months more after that, and possibly even another three months more after that.

How long will it take for them to bail out and call it quits?

When most people find themselves in this situation, they are going to quit. They are going to bail out on link building.

You know what that means? It means Google has won. It means they have gotten the best of you.

Here’s the really interesting part…

Will You Let Google Win?

You’re going to try something else. You’re not going to give up on online marketing completely. You know the value of it for your business.

What will this person end up trying? If you guessed Google Adwords, you guessed right my friend!

They’ll throw a bunch of money a Google. They may get the results that they want and stick with the Adwords platform.

Or it could completely backfire in Google’s face. This person might turn to Facebook and spend all of their money with them. Or they might even try something different.

This person could invest their money in content, but they have to realize that they’re going to run into the same problem. It’s going to take a long time to get results.

At least they’re doing something different. And content is ultimately what Google wants, so you’re feeding the beast and you’ll ultimately be rewarded for it in the end.

The moral of the story is… Google wins in most situations!

7 link building trends

4. Link Building Trends

Make sure you continue associating yourself with quality sites. Get links from sites with solid domain authorities.

Stick with sites that have unique content. You can look at SEM Rush or Ahrefs profiles and make sure those websites and their webpages are still ranking well.

Do they have a good social media presence? You definitely want to choose sites with a strong presence on social media.

You can’t really game any of these factors. If they exist, it means that it’s a good site in Google’s eyes.

Google looks at good sites, looks to see where they’re linking to, and that’s how it transfers SEO authority from one site to another.

This is definitely a good strategy to continue to follow.

Feel free to ask any questions right here if you have them.

Good luck!

Top SEO and Link Building Trends in 2021

Posted by Ajay Paghdal
In June 2019, a big shift in search occurred. The Google Core update impacted a lot of sites and the updates seem to be increasing in frequency. Here is what the experts have to say about it. Targeting topics will be more productive than targeting queries 2019 is going to be another year in which … Continue reading "Top SEO and Link Building Trends in 2021"Read More

What are Trustworthy Online Services for Blogger Outreach?

Blogger outreach is not an easy thing to deliver on. This is especially true when you start scaling your business and have multiple clients.

It requires a lot of customization, it’s people intensive, it’s process intensive, and there are different variables involved.

2 blogger outreach variables

Blogger Outreach Variables

  1. Is your outreach pitch good enough to get responses?
  2. Is the blogger going to read your email and respond?
  3. How many times will you have to follow-up with the blogger?
  4. How many times will you have to go back and forth with the blogger until a relationship is established?
  5. How many guest post backlinks do you need to generate per month to make it worth your while?
  6. Who will create the content?
  7. How will you follow up with the blogger?
  8. Does the blogger want to get paid?
  9. Is the blog worth your while?

Clearly, there are many variables and nuances to blogger outreach. And the #1 thing you can do is first learn the process.

Then you can hire a few VAs, manage them, and have them handle blogger outreach on your behalf. And there are even better ways to scale this process.

3 steps for successful blogger outreach

3 Steps for Successful Blogger Outreach

1. As Far As Good Blogger Outreach Is Concerned, You Need As Much Automation As Possible.

I realize that people hate the word automation, because spam immediately comes to mind. But automation is necessary to reach greater levels of success.

Automation tools are extremely, extremely intelligent. But they still require a human touch in order to make the emails look personalized. You will not have good results if you don’t personalize your emails.

2. What is Your Pitch?

For the most part, when people receive an email they really don’t care about you. I know that sounds harsh but it’s the honest truth. And they really don’t want to know about you either. Just stating the facts.

Do you know what they want to hear? They want to hear about what you can do for them. So, if you want to increase your conversion rate, you have to first offer them something. And then you can ask for something in return.

Remember, the universal principle of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” applies to blogger outreach. If you do a blogger a favor first, they’ll feel compelled to do you a favor in return.

Robert Cialdini figured out the Law of Reciprocity many years ago. And he was kind enough to share it with us in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

4 what is your pitch

Example: you can include the blogger in a big article that you’re writing for another major online publication, and this will help them get additional exposure.

Or come up with something else using this blogger outreach infographic template:

Guest-Blog-Blogger-Outreach-Email-Template

3. Scaling

Don’t just reach out to 20 bloggers a month. You aren’t going to get enough responses and your results will be disappointing.

You have to reach out to hundreds of bloggers per month and you have to do it consistently. Because at the end of the day, you’re hoping to build a pipeline very similar to sales.

5 treating blogger outreach like sales

Treating Blogger Outreach Like Sales

Most important of all, make sure your organization is completely dialed in to the system.

At Outreachmama.com, we treat blogger outreach like sales.

We actually use CRMs to manage our link building and the back and forth dialogue that goes along with it.

Every time a link goes live, a bell goes off, and that’s a feather in our cap!

If a blogger showed interest at first but then went dark, we’ll know about it and we can follow up with them in a few months.

Keep your blogger outreach really, really organized. That’s what’s going to work out for you over the long term.

 

What are Trustworthy Online Services for Blogger Outreach?

Posted by Ajay Paghdal

Blogger outreach is not an easy thing to deliver on. This is especially true when you start scaling your business and have multiple clients. It requires a lot of customization, it’s people intensive, it’s process intensive, and there are different variables involved. Blogger Outreach Variables Is your outreach pitch good enough to get responses? Is … Continue reading “What are Trustworthy Online Services for Blogger Outreach?”

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