#I’ll just continue to spam my writing blog when I remember I have a bunch of shit that I almost forgot I wrote | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

multimuse-rp-archived · 4 years

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So apparently I have 500 followers now?!? I seriously cannot thank you guys enough! I’m so grateful for every single one of you! I never expected this blog to become what it is today. I just... thank you guys so much!

I’m going to do what a lot of other people do and give a shoutout to some specific people - I love you guys so much!

@jaimelannisterthings you were the first person I ever interacted with on my Tyrion blog. I was so nervous, especially because your writing was just AMAZING! But you’ve stuck with me from the start, and I’m so incredibly grateful for your friendship! You’re the best!

@the-stark-queen you are so sweet! You’ve always made me feel good about myself, and your portrayal of Sansa is just... *chef’s kiss* I cannot thank you enough for sticking by my side and being an amazing supporter through thick and thin!

@severityforgreatness you are seriously amazing! I love you and your writing so much! I don’t even have the words to describe it lol. But seriously, you’re incredible and one of my best friends on here! I’m so happy we get to write together and chat ooc!

@rosefromdeath where do I even start? You’re such a talented writer, and never forget it! Anyone who says otherwise is a complete fool. You’re super sweet, and I cherish all our interactions! I can’t wait to keep writing with you!

@boltxnbastard again, I just have to tell you that your portrayal of Ramsay is literally... I can’t even describe how good it is! You are also such a sweet person! Please always remember that your writing is the best of the best! Love ya!

@dumbthink / @hitundo I love your characters so much! I love our interactions, and I love the chaos that comes out of them lol. Honestly, those chaotic threads are probably some of my favorite ones to write because I can just have so much fun with them! Lol seriously though, you’re amazing, and I’m so glad we’ve became friends and interacted a bunch!

@timidstrcngth Peeta and Valerie literally give me so much life! And you’re such a nice person! I’m so glad we can both obsess over our muses and interactions and stuff! Valerie is precious and adorable and I love her so much! Peeta is incomplete without her lol. Here’s to many more awesome and cute interactions!

@amurderbutnotacrime / @wouldntlastfiveminutes we haven’t written together for a super long time, but we have a ton of awesome threads! Not many people write Beth as good as you do! And we all know Rio needs his Beth ;) thank you so much for being such an amazing writing partner! I can’t wait to see where our threads take us!

@dragvnflare I’m not even sure where to start! The way you portray Dany is so amazing, and you’re such a sweet person! I love talking to you ic and ooc. You were one of the ones that has been with me since my Tyrion blog, and I can’t thank you enough for sticking with me always!

@gangfrnd we have barely interacted, but ever since I finished watching good girls, I’ve admired your blog! I was a little nervous to approach you just because your portrayal is SO good, and I was afraid mine didn’t even compare xD but you seem like such a nice person, and your writing is amazing! Let’s definitely write more! Rio for life!

@silvcrignis / @dcusrclicta you are seriously amazing! I love your muses, I love our interactions, and I love our ooc chats! I’m looking forward to more interactions with you and your amazing muses in the future! Love ya!

@thegoodandthegreat you and I can literally obsess over ships and muses and, well, everything! It’s just so nice to be able to talk with someone who’s as excited as I am when it comes to our threads and fandoms and stuff! You’re such a sweet person, and I can’t get enough of our interactions!

@fxntasmagoria okay, I seriously love the way you write Zoe! I can tell you’ve put a ton of thought into her character, and I just think she’s amazing! Then again, all of your muses are amazing lol. I love interacting with you! We haven’t talked too much ooc, but you seem super nice! Hit me up anytime!

@galaxysought you and your muses are so amazing! I love every single one of our interactions, whether it’s with on my block muses, game of thrones muses, or anything else! Speaking of which, I’m so glad you watched on my block! Lol it’s such a good show! Anyway, you’re super sweet and super talented, and I’ll always be grateful for your friendship!

@legends-and-savages I’ve been writing with you for a long time, and you’ve honestly given me a lot of inspiration! I’ll look at some of your other threads and read them, too, just because I love your writing! You’re also super nice ooc, though we haven’t talked a ton. I’d love to write more, so I’ll probably be sending a lot of memes xD feel free to do the same! <3

@betweenthesinnersandthesaints I wrote with you back when you had Brienne on a single muse blog, and I’m so happy you have a multi now! All of your muses are portrayed soooo well! Also, I never thought I shipped Harry and Luna too much, but I do now! ;) hit me up for memes and plotting anytime!

@saltxwolf okay I know we haven’t interacted in a while, but your Theon portrayal is literal perfection! I also just love interacting with you ooc because you’re so easy to talk to, and you’re so sweet! Let’s keep in touch - I’d love to chat with you and write with you more! <3

@gloryxfades / @ladyxredxwolf I absolutely love the way you write Sansa! She’s a complicated character, and I feel like you really understand her! You’re super talented, and I love chatting ooc with you too! Crossovers are always welcome ;) love ya!

@prophecyfated when I first got into reign roleplaying and added my reign muses, your blog was the first I noticed! The way you write francis is just... *chef’s kiss* and I honestly sometimes read some of your other threads just for the quality content! Lol listen, I admire you so much, and I can’t wait to write with you more!

@ladystaarliing ahhhhh you are so incredibly sweet! I love Sarah (especially with Tyrion LOL), and I miss interacting with you! I’ll definitely try to be more active on my tyrion blog from now on so I can send you shippy memes and stuff! They’re adorable lol and you’re such a talented writer!

@villainouspassion where do I begin? I love the way you write your muses, and the way they interact with each other lol. I love it when you post those things about “muse moods” XD I think it’s entertaining to read some of your other threads, too! But listen, you’re an amazing writer, and I’d love to interact with you more again! Hmu for plotting or send memes anytime!

@armandlucienduval / @winewhiskeybloodandchocolate holy shit I can actually tag you! Lmfao. But in all seriousness, you’re an amazing person, and Armand is the best! I can’t get enough of him lol. You can talk to me anytime, whether you’re doing well or not, I’ll always be here for you!

@getlostsqdwrd we’ve interacted a bit. Not overly, but a bit. And honestly? Your muses and the way you write them? Perfection! I can’t get enough of them! You’re also just really nice ooc and a great person to talk to! I would love more interactions, so feel free to send meme spam and/or hmu to plot! <3

@starlessyonder I had so much fun playing among us with you! Our discord group is amazing lol. You’re also a super good writer and a really sweet person! I can’t wait to write with you even more - and kill you in among us lol

@smokedanced we haven’t interacted a ton, but your writing style and muses are so amazing! You’re so talented! I love getting meme spammed so feel free to do it again xD and I’ll do the same for you! Or, if you want to plot, message me! I’d love more interactions with you!

@itwcntsurviveme raven is literally my favorite character on the 100, and I have to say that nobody else can quite capture her voice like you can! I remember being so honored when you followed me back lol. I’d love more interactions with you, so hit me up anytime to plot or send memes! We stan Raven forever!

@reformed-serial-killer damon is such a hard character to write for me tbh, and I often refer to your portrayal of him to help me when I’m not feeling his muse as much! You’ve put so much thought into writing him, and it pays off 100%! You’re extremely talented, and I would love to write with you more! <3

@xchxsingcxrsx / @jxime-lxnnister you were one of the first people to ever write with me on my Tyrion blog, and I love that you’ve continued to stick with me through my vast number of blogs! Lol seriously, thank you so much for being so talented and always willing to try different things in our threads!

@blackroselovesyou you’re so sweet! Whenever I talk to you ooc, you’re always so incredibly nice and open to new ideas/interactions between muses! I love writing with you so much, and I miss the times when we had more threads! Things have been crazy lately, but come to me to plot and/or send memes anytime!

@musenssang it’s been a long time since our last interactions, and I miss you! You’re always so sweet, and your muses are awesome! You’re such a talented writer. Never forget that! I can’t wait for us to interact even more!

@thecrxmxnal we’ve hardly interacted, but I smile every time you pop up on my dash! It’s been a while since I’ve seen the Breakfast Club, but you’re really tempting me to watch it again! Lol. In all seriousness, you’re a really good writer, and I’m really excited for more interactions with you!

@thxwxlf your oc is the literal definition of a badass! I love her! I can tell you’ve put a ton of thought into her character, and it pays off! You’re an amazing writer, and I can’t wait for us to continue to make awesome threads!

@santagabriela I’m really not sure if you’re active anymore, but I couldn’t leave you out! I love your portray of Gabriela, and I think she’s amazing! I really miss our interactions. You’re super talented and really sweet ooc! Feel free to IM me anytime!

@tricksterreformed Gabriel and bobby give me life xD no but seriously, the way you write him is sooooo good! I’ll check out some of your other threads sometimes just for fun! I smile whenever I see you on the dash because you just bring such good vibes! Let’s write more! <3

@damnstory we really haven’t interacted much yet, but I have admired your blog from the start! Your portrayal of Bellamy is *chef’s kiss* amazing! Feel free to message me anytime to plot and/or send me memes! Can’t wait to interact with you more!

I feel like I’m definitely forgetting people lol. But seriously, I love each and every one of you! All of you are welcome to send me memes, reply to my opens, chat with me ooc, plot with me... anything you need, I’ve got you! Stay positive, and stay awesome! Happy writing!

#500 followers #I’m in shock guys like-#thank you so much <3333 #I don’t even know what to say except I love you #long post #SAVE THIS

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alwaysahiccupandastrid · 4 years

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What happened to katherine?

Nothing’s happened to her; she got an instagram account, which is awesome, and she’s been using it just to promote a charity she’s working with called “SpareHand” that are providing food and supplies to those who need it during the pandemic. She was even out there volunteering with Jude Law at a primary school in London yesterday to sort through supplies.

So basically Katherine is a lovely human being who’s actually doing good volunteer work during this quarantine and NOT just preaching at us while she’s all cosy and safe, and we should all stan her, thank you.

Basically, the problem is that there’s a seriously creepy and messed up fan harassing Katherine/Katherine’s fans and smearing her name.

There’s a LOT under the cut - please read at your own risk.

Years ago, back before CoG came out, there used to be a fan called “Candy Working” on Twitter who was a HUGE fan of Katherine, like her whole twitter was just Katherine related and it was all she could talk about. She kept saying that she was going to meet her at the premiere, blah blah blah. Anyway, during the summer of 2018, a private account appeared that we believed to be Katherine’s - most of us followed it, which is a huge sign something was up because why would she have a private account only to accept fans as follower requests? But we wanted it to be Katherine so bad - myself included. I’m ashamed to admit I told that account stuff in confidence believing it was Katherine, which I’ll get back to in a minute. As it soon turned out, however, the account was a fake - photos posted were either extremely blurred or very generic, or they could be found online with some digging. One of Katherine’s friends, an up and coming filmmaker who regularly speaks with fans, confirmed it was not Katherine. A huge giveaway was that the captions/messages from the account were in broken English and sounded nothing like how she speaks, and Katherine’s brother wasn’t following it, neither were her friends like Henri and the Beasts cast.

To cut to the chase, it was Candy. Candy made the account posing as Katherine. A dead giveaway is that “Katherine” went on a mass deleting followers spree and pretty much got rid of everyone BUT Candy. After that, a lot of us Waterstans got more savvy about things and we told Candy to stop. Candy denied it and for a long time we heard very little. Another thing Candy did in 2018, shortly after, however is editing Katherine and Callum Turner’s wikipedia pages to say that they were dating each other.

Over the past few years, more accounts have appeared posing as Katherine; using my fan accounts, and working with other fans, we’ve shut them all down. Until recently, Katherine has had no social media whatsoever because she’s a very private person, and we as fans should respect that.

Cut to very recently. Yet another troll account appeared on twitter - you see, someone (hint hint) has made account after account, tweeting things about Katherine and her father, saying vile and hurtful things about them. For example, they’re convinced on saying that Katherine is a horrible person, that her and her dad are involved in “child sacrifices” and the pedophile ring in Hollywood, and they’ve attacked Katherine’s fans regularly. Yes, we know it was Candy - all these accounts have the exact same writing style and way of speaking. It’s painfully obvious. Anyway, this account was posting shit, and I happened to click on it whilst on my laptop instead of my phone - and that’s when I noticed that they had posted a pic of me at my uni graduation because it was under their media section. I’ve posted the screenshot before, and I’m on my laptop right now so I’m not going to go digging for it since it’s slow, but it’s on my blog (this AND the Katherine fan blog I run).

Here’s a rundown of what happened:

They used the pic of me at graduation, asked if anyone remembered my name, and then tweeted in on a public platform, saying I was from London (which I’m not exactly, I’m outside of London)

They made up lies about me, took a screenshot from my Katherine blog where I expressed my disappointment regarding a project I had done for her birthday, and said it was proof that Katherine hates her fans

When I blocked them on my fan/usual twitter, they tracked down three of my other ones and continued to tweet/harass me, even when friends of mine told them to stop.

I was truly upset about the graduation thing and asked them to take it down - they refused and said it was a google leak and I should delete all of my accounts because of it.

I just want to say that while the picture is indeed on my personal instagram and on one of my blogs, there’s a HUGE difference between ME posting it to share my excitement/joy, and some CREEP online reposting it WITHOUT my permission in order to smear both me AND someone I look up to.

This account - besides attacking Katherine fans and Katherine herself - was constantly tweeting that 5G caused Coronavirus, was a Trump and Boris supporter, and just in general a tinhatter.

By the way, they claim to know Katherine very well and keep saying about “her son D”, her “rich millionaire husband”, how “katherine is going to post her memoirs and a documentary”. I don’t believe Candy knows anything at all, or if she does than it’s certainly not because she knows Katherine; but the fact that she’s supposedly giving out private information about Katherine’s private life (her baby, for example!) is HELLA creepy and nasty and rings a LOT of alarm bells.

Eventually, with a lot of fans reporting it, the account got terminated.

On Katherine’s instagram in the last week, an account on instagram has popped up and it’s so bizarre, to say the least; they constantly spam her with comments, firstly saying somewhat nice stuff before switching to harassing and being rude - saying she has no career, her fans are couch potatoes, that she’s brainwashed her fans, that the Beasts films are only successful because of Eddie, Jude and Johnny. We all know it’s Candy, we’ve all confirmed it. Again, same writing style, blah blah blah.You can see the comments on any of Katherine’s instagram posts to be honest, but I posted screenshots of some HERE.

Candy of course started to mention ME by name again. Because she’s fucking wacko. Calling me “No 1 London fan Megan” or some shit, saying I have a GoFundMe page to meet Katherine, which I don’t - I had one for my Tina Goldstein cosplay back in 2017, and the only reason I did was because I posted about being worried that I couldn’t afford it, and a bunch of people jumped in and said that they’d be more than happy to give some money in exchange for fics and as a “thank you” for the fics I had written. Frankly, it still stuns me that happened. But that’s not the point; they’ve spouted lies and shit that make me look bad, targeting me as well as a few fans specifically (namely the KW Russia account - who are very nice, by the way!). The spamming itself if unsettling, let alone what she’s actually saying. Candy also made an account called “Katherine Waterston Toronto” that she’s since made private after being called out, again spouting the same shit as she did before and on instagram.

We’re all reporting the accounts as best we can, but Twitter and Instagram are...well, we know what it’s like when it comes to reporting accounts (side-eyeing @staff for NOT taking down the TWO blogs that were specifically created JUST to make call-out posts about ME and every bad thing I’ve done in the past 5 years - good job, guys! Adult content isn’t allowed but call-out blogs calling for someone to be fucking arrested and to be banned from the fandom are A-OKAY!!) I’m hoping that Katherine is either not reading the comments or that if she does, she’ll see it’s a troll and just block them.

What’s interesting, though, is that Candy is claiming that Katherine has “hurt” her in some way, and that Katherine or her family got the police involved...something like that. Very interesting. Again, could be more steaming shit from what is clearly the world’s biggest tinhatter, but it honestly would not shock me if Katherine/her family got freaked out and contacted cops.

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charllieeldridge · 5 years

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How To Build High-Quality SEO Backlinks in 2019

Building SEO backlinks is one of the most important things you can do as a new blogger and it’s the first thing you should be doing after you design your site and publish your first 10 posts. But building backlinks isn’t just for new bloggers. A healthy backlink profile is vital to good SEO practice and it can be the difference between success and failure in this industry.

Even bloggers who have been blogging for 10+ years should still be building backlinks to their site. The scary thing is that it’s so easy to go about this practice the wrong way. There are websites that have had hundreds of thousands of organic visitors one month, and nearly zero the next, simply because they built their backlinks the wrong way and got penalized by Google.

In this article, I’m going to show you the best, white-hat and ethical ways to build SEO backlinks in 2019 and beyond.

What are SEO Backlinks?

A backlink is simply a hyperlink from one article to another. As Moz puts it in this article:

“Backlinks, also called “inbound links” or “incoming links,” are created when one website links to another. The link to an external website is called a backlink.”

Backlinks are one of the supreme ranking factors that search engines use in order to rank websites. The more backlinks you have to your site, the higher your Domain Authority (DA) will be. This means that you’ll have a much better chance of ranking in Google and thus, gaining the highly sought after “organic traffic” that you’ll need to grow a massive audience.

A backlink is basically a vote in the eyes of Google. The more SEO backlinks your website has, the more votes it has from other websites, meaning you’ll likely appear higher in search results. But unlike a democracy, in the SEO world, not all links are created equal. A backlink from a high Domain Authority website is far more valuable than one from a lower DA site.

Similarly, there are some backlinks that can actually hurt your website. If you get a link back from a site with a very high Spam Score, this may diminish Google’s trust in your own site. The key is to have a healthy backlink profile that includes a mix of high and low DA backlinks, and very few spammy backlinks.

SEO Backlink vs. Internal Link

A lot of bloggers and website owners focus solely on building backlinks, but they forget about the importance of building internal links. An internal link is when you link from one of your own blog posts or pages to another post or page on your own site.

While internal links don’t carry as much direct SEO juice as a link from an external domain, they are still extremely valuable for SEO, especially when there are multiple internal links from relevant posts to the main SEO post.

This is what I call a Pillar Web and it’s when you write one, long, in-depth guide of 3,500 – 10,000+ words and then write a bunch of shorter (1,500 – 2,000) word posts on the same topic and link to the main post.

By creating a web of internal links like this you can help the main SEO post rank for multiple keywords. It will also show Google that you have a complete resource on the topic and that you’re an expert with authority.

Internal links are easy to build because you don’t have to ask anyone to publish the links for you, you can simply add them yourself. Whenever you publish a new blog post on your site, you should search your site for 5 – 10 relevant posts that are already published, go into those posts and add internal links to your new post from those posts.

This will help search engine bots find and index your new article and the relevance of the other blog posts will help them understand what the new blog post is about.

Follow vs. No-Follow

Now that you understand that not all links are created equal, you need to also understand that some links are pretty much useless in the eyes of Google. These links are called no-follow links. When a no-follow tag is added to the HTML of a link, it looks like this:

<a href="https://www.thedomain.com" rel="nofollow">Anchor Text</a>:

The rel=”nofollow” in the above link tells Google and other search engines to ignore this link and not count it as a vote to the site it’s linking to.

You may be asking yourself, why would any websites use the no-follow attribute?

There are two main reasons why you might add no-follow to your links.

The main reason is if you were paid to place the link. Google clearly states in its guidelines that webmasters should never accept payment for do-follow links on their site. This helps Google to stop larger companies from simply buying their way to the top of search results by paying hundreds of thousands of other websites to link to them.

Google’s goal is to have the best content possible at the top of their results and they ensure this by complex algorithms that analyze the content and the quality of the site it’s published on.

If companies with larger budgets were able to write sub-par blog posts and simply pay thousands of dollars to get SEO backlinks to those posts and have them rank #1 in search results, then the search engines would have a harder time keeping quality content at the top of their results. That’s why bloggers should always no-follow any links from paid sources as if Google finds out about it, they can penalize your website.

The second reason that you might want to no-follow links is to retain more link juice within the post itself. Every time you link out from a post, you’re essentially leaking some “SEO juice” from the post itself. But this doesn’t mean that it’s best to simply no-follow all of your links to keep all of the juice on your own site.

Google wants to see natural, useful linking between websites so even though you may link some juice by allowing Google to follow the link, it can actually help your SEO overall, as long as you’re linking to relevant, high authority websites.

UPDATE FOR 2020: Google has announced new link attributes that will be used in the same way as rel=”nofollow”. These will be rel=“sponsored” which identifies links that are part of advertising or sponsorship campaign, and rel=“ugc” which identifies links that appear within user-generated content, such as comments and forum posts. As of September 2019, rel=”nofollow” will be used as a hint to Google, rather than a rule.

The Power of Unique Domains

When I said “not all links are created equal” I meant it. One prime example of this is the difference between repeat backlinks and backlinks from unique domains. The first time you get a backlink from a domain, it’s worth exponentially more than the second backlink from the same domain.

This principle of diminishing returns continues as you get a third, fourth, and fifth link back from the same domain. While it’s perfectly okay to get multiple links back to your blog from the same domain, your ultimate goal when building SEO backlinks is to get as many links from unique domains as possible.

Pitching For Links

Since backlinking requires you to get links from other websites, it’s no surprise that one of the main factors in building backlinks will be pitching other bloggers and website owners and asking them to link to your site. Whether you’re writing guest posts for them, offering them an infographic or simply requesting that they mention your new resource and link to it, you’re going to have to do a lot of pitching when you’re building backlinks.

But don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds and the more you practice, the better pitcher you can become.

The key to having bloggers open your emails, read them and actually give you what you’re asking for is by offering something in return. Oftentimes it’s best to first do a favour for a blogger and build up a bit of a relationship before you ask them for anything.

One of the best ways to do this is by simply linking to them first. After you’ve linked to them, simply write them a quick email saying that you loved their article, why you loved it and why you decided to link to it from your article. Then go comment on the blog post and share it on your social media. Then share two more of their articles in the coming week and voila. You’ve got the blogger’s attention.

After you’ve done that, you can send a separate email and request a link to your site. But be careful here. You don’t want to sound generic because you could still get lost amongst the hundred other emails the blogger might get on a given day.

When you’re pitching a blogger and asking for a favour, you need to stand out from the crowd and you need to let the blogger know right off the bat that this is not just another automated email asking for links. Here’s a great guest post template that you can use for different types of pitches.

Guest Post Pitch

Subject Line: “Remember me? I’m the one who always shares your content, [INSERT BLOGGER’S NAME]”

Hey [BLOGGER’S NAME] it’s me again!

I’ve been reading your blog a lot lately and I have to say I’m loving the content. After linking to your resource from my post last week, I really started hanging around your feed a bit more and I love the post about [INSERT FIRST POST YOU SHARED] that you wrote on [INSERT PUBLICATION DATE] and the other one about [INSERT THE SECOND POST YOU SHARED] from [INSERT PUBLICATION DATE]. So much so that I shared them both on my social. Great stuff!

I noticed that you’ve covered this topic in such depth and you have a great resource for it on your site, but I haven’t seen anything about [INSERT RELEVANT TOPIC HERE]. I was wondering if you’d consider accepting a guest post from me?

I really do love your content and it would be awesome if I could get featured on your site! It would mean a lot and I’d make sure that the post was super long, in-depth and useful. I’m also really good at following writer’s guidelines so if you want to let me know what you expect from guest posters, I’d do everything I could to ensure that publishing my post is super easy for you.

Please let me know! Either way, I’ll be following your blog for more tips and advice myself.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,

[YOUR NAME]

As you can probably tell, the above pitch would work for more than just guest posts. By simply changing a few of the words in the pitch, you can easily scale it across all of your pitches. Just make sure if you’re pitching the same blogger over and over, you only use this template the first time.

Add a Link Pitch

Subject Line: “Remember me? I’m the one who always shares your content, [INSERT BLOGGER’S NAME]”

Hey [BLOGGER’S NAME] it’s me again!

You pretty much covered everything in the post and I have to say it’s definitely the most in-depth and useful article I’ve come across on the topic. I did notice that you linked to [INSERT WEBSITE LINKED TO FROM THE POST] and I agree, that’s a great resource. But I also just created a really useful post and it could also be a great resource for your readers within that post. I was wondering if you’d be willing to add a link for me?

I’ve already shared the post on my [INSERT SOCIAL PLATFORM] account, but I’d be happy to share it again on my [INSERT DIFFERENT SOCIAL PLATFORM] once my blog is mentioned in it. It would be great to see my post featured on your amazing site.

Please let me know! Either way, I’ll be following your blog for more tips and advice myself.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,

[YOUR NAME]

Testimonial Link Pitch

Subject Line: “Remember me? I’m the one who always shares your content, [INSERT BLOGGER’S NAME]”

Hey [BLOGGER’S NAME] it’s me again!

After reading and sharing a lot of your posts, I also saw that you had a [INSERT FREE OFFER] on the topic. I decided to jump in and I have to say that you’ve done a great job. I’m not in the market for buying the full course (yet) but I wanted to offer you a quick testimonial for the amazing offer you’ve given.

[INSERT TESTIMONIAL HERE]

I’ve already shared the free offer on my [INSERT SOCIAL PLATFORM] account, but I’d be happy to share it again on my [INSERT DIFFERENT SOCIAL PLATFORM] as well.

You’re free to use my testimonial anywhere you want. All I ask is that you link to my blog from somewhere on your blog. I’m trying to build up my relatively new blog so it would mean a lot. Plus, it would really be an honour to appear on your site.

Please let me know! Either way, I’ll be following your blog for more tips and advice myself.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,

[YOUR NAME]

The pitch template can be further rolled out into pitching for infographic use, cold backlinks and more, but I think you get the point. By simply changing the third paragraph a little bit, you can repurpose this pitch template for all sorts of email requests.

Understanding Anchor Text

Anchor text is literally the text used to link to another site. So in this example, the words “this example” in the link are the anchor text because it’s the words used to link to the site. In the HTML the anchor text looks like:

<a href="https://www.thedomain.com">Anchor Text</a>:

When backlinks were first introduced into Google’s algorithms, people were over-optimizing their anchor texts and getting massive results. If they wanted to rank for the term “SEO Tips” for example, they’d simply build a hundred backlinks linking back to that post with the exact-match anchor text of “SEO Tips”. Not surprisingly, Google and other search engines have wisened up to this spammy practice and these days, over-optimizing anchor text in backlinks will likely do more harm than good.

Instead of building lots of SEO backlinks with exactly the same anchor text, you should only build one or two backlinks with the exact match anchor text that you are trying to rank for, and the others should be naturally varied.

That means if you have control of the anchor text in the links your building (like when you’re guest posting), you should be using branded (ie: yourblog.com) or soft anchor text (ie: Click Here), as well as linking using the article title and numerous different words and phrases that explain what the post is about.

This is known as a healthy anchor text profile. If you have a blog post on your site that has over-optimized backlinks pointing to it, you should either build more links with random anchor texts, or you should contact the bloggers who have linked to you and request that they change the anchor text.

To track what anchor texts are pointing to your site, you can use Moz Link Explorer. Simply put the post you want to track in the URL search box and then under “Link Research” in the lefthand column, click “Anchor Text”.

The Danger of Building SEO Backlinks

Because backlinking can be such an easy way of gaming the system and driving massive amounts of traffic to a site, it’s no surprise that spammy SEOers have been taking advantage of this loophole for years. Ever since Google introduced backlinks and authority into it’s PageRank algorithm in 1996, SEOers have been exploiting it.

It didn’t take long for website owners to realize that if they could get more SEO backlinks, they would ultimately get more traffic. This lead to horribly spammy practices like creating hundreds of websites and simply linking them to each other. It also gave birth to the world of paid links, link triangles, link farming, weblinks and so many more black hat techniques.

These days, the algorithms and machine learning of Google and other search engines have become so intelligent that most of these strategies no longer work. This is a good thing because it means that when you Google something, most of the time you get the best possible answer, not the answer from a site that weaseled their way into the rankings with spammy link-building practices.

But Google is so smart that they can also pick up on the subtleties of bad backlinking, so as a blogger you need to be very careful that you’re doing everything 100% legit.

Your goal should always be to write the best possible content and then market it in the most honest and natural way possible. That’s the only way you can ensure long-term traffic growth for your blog. This is not just a holistic approach. It’s been proven in search engine algorithms for years.

By gaming the system, you may find some short-term gains, but in the long run, Google will catch you, it will penalize you and you will lose all of your traffic.

How To Build SEO Backlinks The Right Way

I hope the last part of this post didn’t scare you off. Luckily there are still lots of ways that you can ethically and effectively build high-quality SEO backlinks to your blog. You can get massive sites to “vote” for you and the more of these links you build, the more the Google Gods will smile down upon you and bestow you with heaps of traffic.

How much traffic?

This blog you’re reading is currently one of the top trafficked blogs in the travel niche and we’ve done that by mastering SEO. Over the past 7 years of studying, testing and working hard on our SEO, we’ve been able to grow this site to nearly 400,000 users per month. We’ve spent over $20,000 on SEO audits, training and testing and we know exactly what works and what doesn’t work.

If you want to learn some of the most actionable and effective ways to not only build backlinks but also to find better keywords, to write better SEO content and to ultimately get more traffic and earn more money, then consider signing up for a Free SEO Training Video Session. I’ll walk you through a few of the key things that you can do with your blog to help grow your traffic in 30 days or less.

SEO has to be done the right way. I never recommend any shady or spammy practices because they don’t work. Using my SEO Blueprint, you can grow your traffic just as fast, but you can rest easy knowing that you did it all legitimately. This will help ensure that your traffic will grow and stay there. Google will love you and so will your readers.

Some of our students have already seen a 500% increase in traffic after just 30 days and I’m sure you can have success from the training as well.

Whether you decide to join a free SEO session with me or not, you should be focusing a lot of your time on building backlinks. But not just any backlinks. You need a healthy mix of high quality, high domain authority, low spam-score links from relevant sites and this is how you can do it:

Guest Posting (The Best Way To Build SEO Backlinks)

Still, the number 1 best way to build great backlinks is through guest posting. This is when you reach out to another blogger in your niche and write a post on their website. Within the post, you link back to a post on your own website and this will count as a backlink.

Not only is guest posting a great way to build backlinks, it’s also a great way to build a more loyal audience and to network with fellow bloggers in your niche. With guest posting, you will write the post yourself, so if the reader is enjoying the post and clicks the link to your site, you have a much higher chance of turning that casual visitor into a lifetime fan.

Each guest post will have to be 100% unique and never published anywhere else online. Google penalizes blogs for duplicating content, so you have to ensure that you are always writing fresh new content whenever your publishing online, whether on your site or on other people’s sites. Google can even pick up on the rewording of paragraphs, so be careful to not plagiarise or try to use the same sentences in multiple articles.

The key to successfully building a lot of SEO backlinks through guest posting is by becoming very good at pitching bloggers. By using my pitch template above, you can easily get accepted for dozens of guest posts per month.

Make sure that you link back to your blog from each guest post with a do-follow link. Try to place the link in the first 3 paragraphs and use a variation of anchor texts. If the blogger will allow, you can also try to link to your home page from the author’s bio.

To learn more about the best practices for guest posting, check out our Ultimate Guide To Guest Posting.

The Guest Post Bomb

Getting one guest post published is great, but having multiple guest posts going live with links back to your site on the same day or within the same week can do wonders for your site. Not only can it alert Google bots to a potential viral post, it can also help you create a buzz around your blog.

If a reader sees that you’ve written on one authority blog, and then they find that you’ve also published on another one of their favourite blogs, you’ll automatically get imprinted in their minds as an authority blogger yourself. The guest post bomb is one of the main strategies that we used to explode our blog traffic by 30% in 30 days and it works time and time again.

To successfully run a guest post bomb, you’re going to have to pitch a lot (and I mean a lot) of bloggers at once. A series of guest posts is only considered a “bomb” if you get 15 – 20 published within the same week, or better yet within the same couple of days.

Ideally, each of the guest posts links back to the same piece of content on your site to drive the most SEO juice possible, but this isn’t essential. As long as you get multiple posts published in rapid-fire, all linking back to your website, you’ll see the results. Just make sure that you’re linking back to your best post(s), because guaranteed you’re going to have a lot of eyes on that content, so if you want to convert casual readers into superfans, you’ll want to make sure you’re offering them something special.

As an added bonus, make sure you have an email opt-in with a super-relevant lead magnet to help ensure that those readers will come back to your site time and time again.

When pitching bloggers during a guest post bomb, you can still use my pitch template, but once you’re accepted and the article has been accepted, ask the blogger if it’s possible to publish the post on the specific day of your bomb. If that’s not possible, as long as it’s within the same week you should still be ok. If the blogger can’t publish it in your time frame, simply schedule a second bomb for a later date and add all of the guest posts that couldn’t make the first one into your next one.

One explosion of guest posts will increase your traffic massively, but by doing a bomb every month or two, you’ll start to see a snowball effect both with your inbound traffic and your organic traffic as Google starts to see you as an authority.

“Hot” SEO Backlinks

I consider building hot SEO backlinks any time you’re requesting links from posts that went live in the past week or two. When a blogger first publishes a post on their site, that post is still “hot” in their mind. They are likely still sharing it, still adding it to their newsletter and potentially even still going in and editing it and making it better. This is the optimal time to request a link from a blogger.

But how do you find hot backlink opportunities?

Easy. You Google it.

Using Google’s special tools, simply add in the topic you want to build links to, then under “Tools”, click “Past Week”.

This will populate all of the indexed posts on that topic that were published in the past week. Now you can simply contact those bloggers and website owners while they’re still “hot” and use my pitch template to request backlinks from those fresh posts. It works.

“Cold” SEO Backlinks

Now that I’ve explained hot backlinks, I’m pretty sure the term cold backlinks is self-explanatory. These are links from posts that have been live for a long time. It’s not nearly as easy to build cold backlinks, but it’s still possible and for the sake of a healthy backlinking profile for your SEO, you should have a variety of hot and cold backlinks.

Cold backlinks have a higher SEO potential than hot backlinks because they are on posts that have already been live for a long time, meaning they likely have some links built back to them and therefore have a higher Page Authority.

When building cold backlinks, make sure you use my pitch template and always (I mean always) do a favour for the blogger first before requesting the link. Share their content, message them on Facebook, comment on their blog posts, do everything you can to quickly build up a positive rapport with the blogger and then, once you have their attention, kindly ask for them to link to your epic resource from one of their relevant blog posts.

Offer Testimonials

One great way to get SEO backlinks from bloggers is to offer them a testimonial. A lot of bloggers have products and resources on their own site. In most cases, they will have testimonials on their sales pages and within their blog posts. If you offer a blogger a testimonial for their course or ebook, it’s likely that they will be happy to offer you a backlink in return, if you ask for it.

We have testimonials for our SEO Course as well.

To find testimonial backlink opportunities, simply Google “topic + course” or “topic + course + testimonials” and see the sites that have courses on the topic and also have testimonials.

I know what you’re thinking. You don’t want to buy a course every time you want to build a backlink.

Luckily, you don’t have to.

In most cases when a course creator sells a course, they also have a very specific free offer that they give first, in order to lead potential customers down the road towards a purchase. Look for the free offer, take it, and then email the blogger afterward with your pitch.

Using my testimonial pitch template above and I can guarantee you you’ll have a lot more success than you would with a normal cold backlink request.

Big Media Feature

This is one we’ve done time and time again and it’s worked for us a lot. As you can see from our “As Seen In” section on our home page, we’ve been featured on some pretty big media sites including CNN Money, Forbes, NBC and TIME.

The key to getting a big media feature is to search for a hot topic or series that the publication is running currently. If you see that CNN Money is running a series interviewing social media influencers about their lifestyle and you happen to have a lot of followers on Instagram… pitch them. If you see that Lonely Planet is publishing a lot of content about Africa and you’ve recently been there… pitch them.

To help you find such series’, I recommend subscribing to as many big media sites as you can. Join their mailing lists, follow them on social media and keep your eye out for patterns of content relevant to your blog topic. Once you see what appears to be series, reach out to the author of the series and request a feature. For this, you shouldn’t use a template because it’s going to be 100% personalized.

Remember, a backlink from a big media site with a high Domain Authority (Forbes is a 97 for example) is worth hundreds if not thousands of regular links, so all of the time you put into getting these backlinks is worth it. Big media features with backlinks to your site can explode your traffic overnight.

If you get a feature on a massive website, you may want to contact your hosting provider to pay for a higher bandwidth hosting plan before the post goes live because the sudden increase in traffic could crash your site. Literally.

Get Interviewed

Getting interviewed is one of the best ways to get backlinks and also to build your personal brand online. It’s actually quite easy to get backlinks this way as well. A quick Google search like “topic + interview” can bring up a lot of sites that have series’ of interviews with people just like you. Reach out to these bloggers and request an interview. Explain to them why you’re perfect for the interview and why you’re an expert on the topic.

We’ve done dozens of interviews, both for big media and for blogs in our niche and each of them has given us a nice big juicy backlink and has also introduced us to a much wider audience. Don’t pass up this opportunity to build SEO backlinks. Start Googling today and get your name out there and your SEO boosted at the same time.

The Podcast Linkback

Similar to getting interviewed in blog posts, you can also pitch to get interviewed in podcasts. While links back from the podcast platforms like Apple Podcast and Google Play will be no-follow, oftentimes people who run podcasts also have a website.

More times than not, these podcast hosts will also transcribe the interview or at least write a description about it on their blog. This is where you can get a nice juicy backlink.

Find podcast series’ in your niche, pitch the bloggers to interview you and you can start getting high-value backlinks for just a quick 30-60-minute interview on Skype. That’s a pretty good exchange!

Facebook Group Link Exchanges

There are some wonderful Facebook groups out there for advanced bloggers who are looking for SEO backlinks. There are entire groups dedicated to linking and you can find these groups in pretty much any niche.

To find these groups simply Google something like: “topic + blogger group Facebook”, “topic + blogger link exchange facebook community” or “topic + facebook group for pro bloggers” and something should turn up. Alternatively, you can ask some of your blogging colleagues if they’re already in a group that does occasional link sharing. Most of these groups are closed groups, meaning that you’ll have to request access. Be sure to explain your DA, your niche and why you’re the perfect fit for the group.

But be careful! This strategy is bordering on grey-hat, meaning if you don’t do it right, you could get penalized.

My recommendation is to never do direct link exchanges with bloggers. Even if the group allows it, you should request that your links are only done in a three-way format, meaning blogger A links to blogger B, blogger B links to blogger C, and blogger C links back to blogger A.

Simple, but effective and much more difficult for Google bots to catch.

To keep track of which domains have linked to you, keep a spreadsheet and only accept new links from blogs who you haven’t linked to yet, at least at first. Once your links have been live for a few months, it’s okay to link back to that same blogger, but be careful not to do direct link exchanges between two domains within the same few week period. It’s an easy way to get penalized by Google.

Infographics

People love infographics and believe it or not, they’re a great way to build SEO backlinks for your site. Simply create a super useful infographic using free tools like Canva, and then pitch bloggers to publish your infographic with a link back to your site.

Infographics can be a great addition to an already useful post, so many bloggers are happy to add them to their posts to add value for their readers. Once added, it’s expected that the infographic will be credited to the owner with a backlink.

Once you’ve created a great infographic, you can pitch bloggers using my pitch template and offer them your amazing infographic in exchange for a link. Bigger bloggers likely get dozens of emails for infographics every day, so make sure your infographic is super relevant and your email is very personalized.

Photo Offer

Bloggers need photos. Not everyone has signed up for and has photos of everything they want to write about. This is where you can come in. Offer a blogger a photo and in exchange, simply ask for a backlink credit in the caption.

Bloggers are less likely to accept this offer if the post is already published, so again it’s good to look for content patterns. If you see them running a series on Africa, consider pre-emptively offering photos on destinations that they haven’t written about yet. There’s a good chance that they’ll get to that piece of content eventually and if you can get a link, it’ll be worth your effort.

The Broken Link Method

This is an oldie, but a goodie. A broken link is a link that points to a dead page somewhere on the web. This can happen when a post is taken down or a website goes offline and the links pointing to that dead page remain across the web.

By finding websites that have broken links and telling the website owner about them, you can be doing them a big favour. Broken links are bad for SEO, so by pointing them out you may be helping the blogger to better their traffic and they may be willing to link to you.

To get started with the broken link approach, simply download and install the Google Chrome plugin called Check my Links extension to your browser. Once installed you can scan websites for broken links.

If you want a link back from a specific site, then scan it for broken links and then contact the blogger and point out that you’ve found a broken link on their site. Using my broken link pitch template above, you may find that this method works very well.

To Summarize Good Link Building

Just like not all links are created equal, not all backlinking strategies are created equal. Be careful when you implement your own SEO backlinking strategies and do your best to be as natural and as helpful as possible when building backlinks to your site.

Always start your pitches with a favour. Never cold call bloggers asking for SEO backlinks, it doesn’t work and it will hurt your online relationships in the long run.

As a new blogger, you should be utilizing every method in this article, but the most important ones will be guest posting, guest post bombs, and hot link building. You should spend 40% of your writing time writing for your own site and 60% of it writing for other sites. Do this until you have 100,000+ users per month on your blog and then once you have your own audience you can start publishing more for yourself and less for others.

Too many bloggers underutilize guest posting and backlinking and that’s why their sites take so long to grow. Backlinking is still one of the main ranking factors that search engines use to rank websites, so if you don’t have a good backlink profile, you’ll never have a lot of traffic.

Start writing more, start pitching more and start growing your Domain Authority through backlinking. If you want to learn about more important SEO strategies that you can implement to quickly grow your traffic, make sure you sign up for our Free SEO Training Session. You can also read more about how to build and grow a successful blog here.

How many SEO backlinks do you build to your site per month? What’s your favourite method for building backlinks? Please comment below.

Some photos in this post are courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post How To Build High-Quality SEO Backlinks in 2019 appeared first on Goats On The Road.

How To Build High-Quality SEO Backlinks in 2019 published first on https://travelaspire.weebly.com/

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ravikherva · 6 years

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If you’ve been wondering how to start a blog…

Or putting it off because you’re afraid you’ll mess it up.

Well – today’s the day!

You’re FINALLY going to cross “create a blog” off your to-do list. And it’s going to be way easier than you expected. Even if you’re not good with computers.

In this beginner’s guide, I’m going to give you foolproof instructions for how to set up a blog, get your own “.com,” and find a design you love – with tons of pictures to guide you that make it impossible for to get wrong.

Along the way, I’ll share some tips that will save you time and money, too! Here’s what we’ll cover:

6 easy steps for starting a blog

Pick your blogging platform.

Choose a host for your blog.

Decide on a domain name.

Set up WordPress (the easy way)

Choose and customize a design.

Start writing!

I promise: I’ll make all of this so straightforward, you’ll be able to start your own blog in just one sitting:

1. Pick a blogging platform.

When I say “platform,” I mean the software you’ll use to run your blog. You’ve got lots of options: WordPress, Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace to name just a few.

You can read a detailed review of the 10 most popular platforms here — but let me save you some time:

WordPress is your best option if you want to start a blog on a platform that…

Is beginner-friendly

Makes blogging as easy as writing an email

Allows you to have your own “.com”

Has no monthly fees (you only need a host and a domain name)

Comes with 5,000+ themes to suit your style, and

Gives you the power to make money from your blog one day,

There’s a reason why WordPress.org powers over 91% of all the blogs on the web, including 62% of the top 100 company blogs.

But please don’t rush out and sign up just yet! I’ll be showing you how to install WordPress in just one click in Step 4 – and how to configure it all — but there a few quick things we need to do first.

Couldn’t I just start a blog for free on a site like Blogger?

Yes, you can create your blog for free on sites like Blogger. I don’t recommend it, because there are some pretty serious drawbacks you should know about:

Your site will be hard to find.Want a nice site address like “Yourblog.com”? Too bad. With a free site, you’ll be stuck with something like “yourblogname.blogger.com” – so less people will find your content.

You won’t control the content. Imagine losing years of work when your blog is taken offline because you broke a rule without knowing it. Sound far-fetched? It happens all the time.

You can’t customize your site the way you want to.No free plugins to add functionality like calendars or online shops. Limited themes, so your site looks like everyone else’s. Boooooring.

You’ll find it expensive to switch.When you decide you want more control, switching from a free platform to something like WordPress can take hours of manual work and formatting.

Someone else will profit from YOUR hard work. This is the worst one: free platforms reserve the right to put ads all over your content. Imagine seeing a huge, ugly pop-up for a product you don’t even support on your blog– and not making a penny off of it! Unfair, right?

You’re better off creating a WordPress blog that can grow with you.

Unsure how much it costs to start a blog? Less than you think!

With a self-hosted WordPress blog you’ll pay less than $10 per month, get a design that’s all your own, AND have your own “.com” to boot. Not bad for the added control and flexibility!

2. Choose a host for your blog.

Assuming you’ve chosen WordPress as your blogging platform (smart move!) your next step is to choose a web hosting service.

Hosting explained in 10 seconds:

Your blog is just a bunch of files. WordPress is the software you create them with. And hosting stores those files so they can be viewed through the web.

TL;DR – Without hosting, nobody will be able to see your blog online. If you’d like a detailed outline of what hosting is/how it works, check out this post.

When it comes to hosting, three things REALLY matter:

Uptime: You want a host that won’t go offline randomly (bad hosts do this all the time!)

Support: You need fast support from actual experts if something goes wrong.

Price: You deserve fair pricing – and no hidden fees!

If you want web hosting that is cheap, but secure and reliable, I strongly recommend Bluehost.

Why you’ll love Bluehost:

One-click WordPress installation (fast; no messing with tech stuff)

Their uptime is excellent

WordPress recommends them (since 2005!)

PLUS…

You can get a great plan for just $2.75/mo and they throw in a FREE domain name!

(Because I continue to use Bluehost and have had a great experience, all links to Bluehost are referral links. I’ll earn a commission if you make a purchase, and you’ll get that discounted price.)

Of course, you’re free to use any other web hosting provider suitable for WordPress, but to keep this guide focused, I’m going to use Bluehost to explain the setup process.

To take advantage of the discount and free domain, click this link to visit Bluehostin another window. Then, mash on the big fat button to get started. Wahoo – you’re on your way!

IMPORTANT: The site might look a little different, but the steps are exactly the same. Just push whatever “Get Started” button they’re currently running.

Choose the “basic” plan (and save some $$$)

The Basic option is perfect for beginners, and you can always upgrade later when you’re ready.

3. Decide on a domain name.

A domain name is just the address people can find your blog at, like “www.yourblogname.com”

I recommend you get the .com if you can, as it’s easiest for most people to remember, but it’s ok to get an ending like .net or .co if your first choice isn’t available.

Quick tip: Struggling with names?

Try using NameStation or Instant Domain Search! Simply enter a keyword or topic and get dozens of ideas for available domain names all at once.

If you’d like a little more help, this post on choosing a domain name will give you 10 of my top tips!

And if you’re really stuck on a name, just click “Skip this step” along the bottom of the screen above. You can always add your free domain name later, when inspiration hits.

If you already own a domain name, fill out the form on the right. You won’t break anything, even if you’re already running a live site.

Once you’ve added your domain, click “next.”

Complete your registration

There are three quick parts to this step. First, add your account info using a real email address (because you’ll need it to log in!)

Choose your package and optional extras

Next, select the options you want for your account. Your first choice you have is the “Account Plan” – 12, 24, or 36 months. I recommend just 12. Why? Well…

You’d potentially save money by paying for three years upfront. But at 12 months, the price is quite reasonable and you’re not out any extra money if you decide blogging isn’t for you after a year.

Finally, you can choose whether to add on extra features.

Quick tip: Most extras are a waste of $$$ for beginners, but two are absolutely worth considering:

1. Domain Privacy – $0.99/mo (must-have)

When buying a domain, your contact details are added to a public database by law. Buying privacy means Bluehost’s details are listed instead, preventing you from being spammed with hundreds of calls from telemarketers—well worth the tiny price tag.

2. CodeGuard Basic – $2.99/mo (optional)

Losing all your content to a hack or glitch would be a nightmare, agreed? CodeGuard Basic ensures your site is regularly and securely backed up, which is great for peace of mind. You can always add this one later on.

IMPORTANT: If you don’t want any of the optional features, make sure you uncheck the boxes before moving on! It’s very easy to miss.

Enter billing details

Pop in your credit card details, and you’ll be off to the races! If you’d like to pay with PayPal, select “more payment options” at the top above the fields.

Set a password and log in

You should now see something like the screen below. Click the green “Create your password” button.

Then, set up a secure password, click “I have read and agreed to Bluehost’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service” box, click “Next”…

And finally, click the “Log in” button. That was easy!

Quick tip: You’re about to get an email from Bluehost with your login information, and possibly an activation link. If you can’t find it, check your spam folder.

Save the emails you get from Bluehost with your login details just in case. I usually “star” them in my inbox.

4. Set up WordPress (the easy way)

Good news: now that you’re logged in WordPress is just sitting there, waiting for you!

On the first screen you see, you’ll be asked to pick a theme.

I recommend you skip this step by clicking the link below the pictures of themes, as I’ll be showing you how to explore more (and better) options later.

If you DO choose a theme now, you can always change it later without any problem.

On the next screen, click the “Start Building” button. If you accidentally click the “Or, go to my Bluehost account” link, just push the back button.

Quick tip: If you chose to use a new domain name, your blog may show up on a temporary domain name for a little bit. It’s NOT a glitch!

It can take a few hours for a host to sort out the tech stuff; Bluehost will automatically fix the domain as soon as it’s ready.

You should now see a screen that looks like this:

Welcome to your WordPress dashboard! This is where the magic all happens.

Quick tip: Wondering how to log into your WordPress after you’ve logged out?

You don’t need to revisit Bluehost: you can log into your WordPress dashboard quickly by typing in: “http://www.[YOUR DOMAIN NAME].com/wp-admin”

Just replace [YOUR DOMAIN NAME] with your actual domain name

It’s a super handy shortcut – consider bookmarking it!

On the side bar, you’ll see a few different tabs. Some quick highlights (don’t click any of these for now!)

Posts: This is where you’ll go to write new blog posts or view old ones.

Media: Check out the library photos and files you’ve uploaded or add more.

Pages: Create static pages (if you ever decide to.)

Comments: Manage the comments on your content.

Appearance: Choose new themes or edit the one you have.

Users: If you create content with others, you can add them as users here so they can edit blog posts.

Plugins: Add and remove plugins that give your blog new features.

Don’t worry about the others for the moment.

At this point, you’ve got two options to focus on in the center of the screen: Business, or Personal.

Pick whichever best applies to you right now, and again: don’t worry. All of this is EASILY changed later. Nothing is permanent, and you literally can’t screw this up.

If you clicked “Business” or “Personal”, you’ll see something like this:

“Site Title” is just going to be your blog’s name for now. Punch ‘er in – and don’t add the “www.” – just write it in plain English.

“Site Description” is your chance to write a short and sweet summary of what your blog is all about. Keep it brief – as if you were explaining your blog to a friend or potential client!

As always, don’t worry: all of this can be edited later if you change your mind.

On the next screen, you’ll be asked if you’d like to update your site with news or blog posts. Just click “Yes.”

Now, you get to choose what you’d like for people to see on your home page: the most recent blog posts/updates, or a more “static” home page. I recommend choosing the first option.

Next, you can set up a “Contact Us” page if you’d like people to be able to send you a message through your site. This one’s up to you!

Finally, you’ve got the option to connect your “Jetpack” profile to WordPress to improve security, grow traffic, and track your site’s stats. Jetpack is completely free – so I do recommend going through this quick process if you have a moment.

BUT!

You can always do this later, so simply click “Not now” if you’re not in the mood.

Quick tip: If you signed up with a new domain name, make sure you check your email from Bluehost for an activation link inside the message.

Click it to complete the activation process and bring your new blog to the world.

5. Choose and customize your design

Finally, the most fun part: it’s time to choose a design you are really excited about. In WordPress, they simply refer to designs as “Themes” – don’t let the language throw you.

The good news: You have over 5,000 FREE options to choose from!

The bad news: With so many options, you can spend HOURS going down the design rabbit hole.

I’ve put together a list of 30+ of the best free WordPress Themes if you want some ideas (though some are better for blogs than others!)

But, let’s get to the installation part. To access the Themes, click the “Appearance” tab, and you’ll see a screen like this:

Simply click “Add New Theme” to get started Here’s a quick video that shows you what to do next to find and install a great free theme for your blog – or change the theme you already have.

<VIDEO>

Found a theme you like? Then it’s time to do a little more customization.

My friend Karol put together an AWESOME beginner’s guide on how to customize your WordPress blog in some really important ways, like…

How to make sure Google can find your site

How to edit your site’s menu in WordPress

How to set up your home page

How to improve WordPress security

How to customize your WordPress theme (advanced tips made simple)

You don’t need to do all that right now (I’m about to show you how to write your first post), but I recommend you bookmark Karol’s guide for later.

It’ll be INVALUABLE in saving you some time and keeping things simple later on.

6. Start writing!

The good news is that if you can use Microsoft Word, Pages, or Gmail, writing a blog post in WordPress is just as easy. Let’s walk through some of the important features you should know!

To start writing a post, just click “Posts” in the side-bar, then click “Add New.” If you’ve logged out of WordPress, type inhttp://your_domain.com/wp-admin/ to log back in!

What you’ll see is a very friendly editor screen that should remind you of MS Word or Pages on Mac:

Let’s break down what you’re seeing here:

1. Title Area: This is where you write the title of your post.

2. Content Area: This is where the body text of your post goes. The whole area works just like text editing in Word or Pages.

3. Standard Editing Tools: Here are options like bold, italic, lists, paragraphs, and headlines.

In a moment, I’ll show you how to use this section to add links, images, and more to your post.

At the very end of the Standard Editing Tools is the “Toolbar Toggle” that looks like this:

Click this to add even more options to your Toolbar, such as Undo/Redo buttons, text color formatting, indentation, and more.

4. Publishing Tools: This is where you get your post shown to the world.

The most important thing to note here is the big, blue “Publish” button you’ll push when your blog post is ready.

You can click “Save Draft” on an incomplete post to save your work without pushing the post live.

The “Preview” button can be useful to test out how your post will look when it’s live without having to publish it right away – especially when adding images or videos.

You can also use the options in this section to schedule a post for the future, make posts public or private (password required), or even UNPUBLISH a post by changing the “Stats” back to “Draft.”

5. Additional Fine-tuning Tools: You’ll sometimes use these tools to update your blog post, tag it with a category, or add a featured image – but for now, you won’t be using this much. You can learn more about

WordPress categories and tags here.

Quick tip: Do you write your blog posts in a program like Word, and then copy and paste them into WordPress? You may get frustrated by how WordPress formats the text you paste.

To avoid problems, make sure you’ve clicked the “Toolbar Toggle” button, then click the “Paste as Text” button that looks like the below:

WordPress will strip out all of your previous formatting, so you can customize the text to look exactly how you like.

Adding headings

Headings help you structure your content and make it easier for people to read. For example, in the text above, “Adding headings” is my heading!

This helps people who want to scan content find what they need. Consider adding headings for each of your main points.

To add a heading, scroll up to “Paragraph” drop-down menu and select the heading you’d like to use.

Note that the “Heading 1” is usually reserved for the post’s title, so stick to the smaller headings (with larger numbers) inside the post.

Quick tip: “Heading 1” is usually reserved for the blog post’s title, so you shouldn’t use it again in the body of your content.

Consider using “Heading 2” to break down the different sections of your content, and “Heading 3” for sub-headings inside those big sections.

Trying to get more traffic from Google? Google loves to see the keywords you’re targeting in your headings, so try to use them naturally!

Adding Links

It’s a good idea to link to other (credible) websites: whether to share a piece of content or back up a claim you’ve made, or share another one of your own posts. WordPress makes it easy.

To add links to your posts, highlight the desired text (for this example, I just wrote “Add links” as my text) and then scroll up to the blog menu.

Click the button that looks like a paperclip, to the right of the “Align right” item and above the “Add BWS Shortcode”.

From there, add the URL you want to link to:

Then, click the Settings icon on the right (the wheel-looking item above, next to the arrow).

Click the “Open the link a new tab” box. This is important—you don’t want people to leave your site when they click on a link!

Adding images

I touched on this briefly before, but I’ll explain it more here. Start by scrolling up to the top of the blog menu and click “Add Media” in the top left corner of the menu.

From here, select the files you’d like to upload. You can find previously uploaded files from the “Media Library” at the top-left corner next to “Upload Files” – no need to upload them again!

Once you’ve uploaded an image, you can choose its size and placement.

Adding a “Featured” Image

A featured image is simply the image that will be displayed at the very top of your post, and will be used in the thumbnails of your article when you share it on places like Facebook or Twitter.

To add a featured image, run your mouse along the right sidebar of your blog menu. You’ll see an option titled “Set featured image”.

Click that, then go through the same uploading process to add an image as you did in the step above.

Quick tip: Try to pick a featured image that draws the eye – you’d be surprised how colorful, weird, or interesting images can make a HUGE difference on how many people will click through to read your blog posts!

Adding videos from YouTube

Videos are AMAZING! Whether you want to showcase your own vlogs or just share a video you love, adding this type of content is a great way to keep people interested.

To add a YouTube video…

Visit the page of the YouTube video you want to share and copy the URL.

Paste the URL into the content area of your WordPress blog. Make sure the link is on its own line (no text before or after) and is NOT clickable (don’t make it a link!)

As soon as you push “Publish” on your post, the video will appear on the live version.

Still stuck? Our friends at WPBeginner have a guide for this if you need any further help—check it out here.

Customizing your “Slug”

What the heck is a “slug?”

It’s the URL of your post – for example, if your domain name is “yourdomainname.com,” the slug would be the address of the specific post you are publishing, such as “yourdomainname.com/my-post/.”

That last bit at the end? That’s the slug.

You want to make this slug clear and concise. This will make it easier for people to share your content on social media.

You can find the slug underneath the post title. It will say “Permalink: https://ift.tt/2wZ3TfR”.

By default, WordPress will make the title of your post the slug. But usually, this is way too long. You should change it so that it’s no longer than 2 – 4 words.

Here are some tips for optimizing your WordPress slugs:

Target SEO keywords. Think of what people would type to Google when they search for the information you share in the post—those are SEO keywords.

Avoid duplicates (make sure it’s not the same as another slug on your website).

Don’t change the slug after publishing the post (unless you absolutely have to) as this will result in lost traffic.

Publish Your Post

All done? Click that “Publish” button. Then click “View post” when the link appears to see your new post live in action!

Congratulations! You just published your first blog post. But don’t stop there!

Here are some tips for creating strong blog content that your audience will love:

Start by creating a lead-generating content marketing strategy.

Follow this guide for creating strong blog posts.

Develop a reading habit, so you can internalize how great writers write.

Make your content scannable with headings, short paragraphs, and high quality images.

Write content that helps your audience solve a problem.

Follow this strategy to become a better blog writer in 30 days.

Use this formula to create stronger headlines (if your headlines aren’t compelling, people won’t read the content!).

Next Steps

Now that your blog is live, it’s time to put it to work for you!

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

connecticut-seo-adwords · 6 years

Text

The Complete Guide to Blog SEO

Rating:

Ryan Stewart is a web marketing expert with over 10 years of experience working with clients like Best Buy, Accenture and the Department of Defense. Ryan holds a number of web certifications as well as a Master's in Business Administration (MBA). Follow Ryan on social media: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram

Over the last 8 months I’ve driven over 10,000,000 organic visits to my client’s blogs and my own. I decided to put together a no bullshit SEO guide to show you exactly how I’m doing it. Before I do, I’m going to show you some screenshots from my Google Analytics account: I’m not showing you these screenshots to beat my chest.

I’m showing you to prove what I’m going to tell you works.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

How to come up with the right blog strategy

How to do keyword research to find high volume, low competition searches

How to craft amazing blog content optimized for Google

The best WordPress plugins to help optimize your blog

How (and where) to build links to your posts (you don’t want to miss this…)

This is long post (5,000+ words). Use the navigational links below to jump to each chapter: [mailmunch-form id=”35465″]

Chapter One: Blog Strategy

1. Define Your Audience

I hate writing cliche tips that you’ve already read a million times, but it’s the truth. You need to define your target audience. I’ll use Webris as an example (we sell Internet marketing and design services). I target 2 segments with my content:

Business owners / marketing managers (potential customers)

Other marketers

You might think speaking to customers is more important –it’s not. Other marketers provide more value:

Social media amplifiers– they’re more likely to share content

Link sources– the content they create is related to yours. This greatly increases the changes of gaining quality and relevant backlinks (key for your blog’s SEO)

Influencers– Your clients don’t make you an influencer though –your peers do. If you’re viewed as an influencer in your vertical, you can sell water to the ocean

Make sure your content speaks to more than just potential customers!

2. Create Epic Posts

I really can’t stress this enough. In fact, this is the most important piece of advice I can give you.

You will never have success with blog SEO if you’re not creating amazing content.

I know, I know – I sound like Matt Butts (ahem, sorry, Cutts). As much as I hate that stupid fucking buzzword “content is king”, it’s true. You have to create content that people want to read, share and come back to. Otherwise, blogging is a complete waste of your time. Every time I create something, I ask myself a number of questions:

Does this solve a problem my audience has?

Does this teach my audience a new skill?

Would I share this with my peers?

If it doesn’t meet all of those requirements, I refuse to post it. If you own a business, you’re an expert at something. Share this expertise –don’t hold anything close to chest. This type of content sets the building blocks needed for blog optimization.

3. Stop Selling, Start Giving

When I log into my Facebook account I’m overwhelmed by shitty marketers selling even shittier products. Stop! Please. Just stop. I’ve been down that road. It’s a waste of time and money. I created [what I thought] was a great offer, funnel and upsell. I set up some remarketing ads on Facebook and was ready to watch the cash roll in. That never happened. Here’s what did:

I spent a ton of time tweaking ad copy, targeting, messaging, landing pages, etc

I spent a ton of money advertising my offer

The leads that converted turned out to be duds

In November I launched this site on a new domain (webris.org). I wanted to start new. I began posting the content to the blog that I was previously charging for. Here’s what happened: This site is now driving 1,000 times the weekly leads and they’re 100% FREE. I no longer have to convince people to opt in –they choose to.

4. Update Consistently

I’m not going to lie to you – maintaining a blog is a bitch. It takes a lot of patience and discipline to continue to create content when you’re seeing no results. I like to try and write for at least an hour each day. At that rate I crank out a solid update once or twice a week.

Remember, the more content you create the more traffic you’ll drive.

Create a schedule and stick to it.

5. Find Your Voice

The chances are you’re writing about something that’s been written thousands of times so it’s extremely important to show yourself in your writing. I write like I speak. I use jargon, humor and I curse. Even though I’m writing about professional topics, I don’t care. This is who I am – this is who I am and my readers respect me for it.

Chapter Two: Keyword Research

If you want your content to perform well in search engines you need to understand the search demand and competition of each post you write. That’s why keyword research is so crucial. Here are the tools you’ll need:

Necessary: Google Keyword Planner– FREE

Necessary: – FREE

Optional: Long Tail Pro– $97

KW Research Step 1: Finding Keywords

Lets’ go back to my target segments:

Business owners / marketing managers (potential customers)

Internet marketers

We want to create problem actionable content that solves their problems –how do we know what those problems are? I use forums and social media groups – specifically, Facebook Groups. Good, active Facebook Groups are hard to find – but they’re gold.

Log into your Facebook account and use the search bar – I use “SEO” and “analytics”

Click on the Groups with the most members

Join as many as you can – once accepted, look for active groups with NON SPAM threads

Browse the group and look for questions – I use [command + f + ?] to find questions quickly

Here’s a thread that I found generating a lot of responses: I also saw related threads in other groups. Using these threads, I can generate a list of preliminary keywords that has a built in audience. The ones I came up with were:

Website silos

Link silos

SEO silos

How to create website silos

Silos link juice

Facebook Groups are great, but I also use other sources. Here are some of my favorites:

Quora

Google+ Communities

Niche forums (Blackhatworld.com, Yahoo questions)

LinkedIn Groups

Twitter #’s

Blog ideas and keywords are all around you – pay attention!

KW Research Step 2: Flushing out Keywords

If you’re on a budget, use Google’s Keyword Tool – it’s free. If you’ve got some extra funds, I strongly recommend Long Tail Pro. For the purpose of this post, I’ll be using Google’s tool.

In the first box, type in some sample keyword searches. I chose:

Website silos

Link silos

SEO silos

Silos SEO

How to create website silos

Silos link juice

Click “Get Ideas”

On the next screen click “Keyword Ideas” tab

The top box will show you the data for the keywords you put into the search field. What we’re looking for here is “Avg. Monthly Searches” (don’t pay attention to the other data because it’s referring to Google AdWords campaigns, not SEO).

Download the entire list as an Excel spreadsheet. Open it and sort the keywords by volume

Take keywords with a high volume, copy + paste them back into the Keyword Tool, and click Get Ideas

Download the new list an Excel spreadsheet. Open it, Copy + Paste the data into the other Excel spreadsheet

Sort the keywords by name and delete duplicates

Repeat this process 3 more times

The goal is to find as many high volume keywords as possible. Try to flush out at least 50 keywords that get 30 or more monthly searches. Don’t be afraid to focus on finding groupings of long tail keywords. If done correctly, long tail keywords will drive more traffic than your main keywords. Save the spreadsheet and keep it handy. We’ll be using it shortly.

KW Research Step 3: Analyzing The Competition

Before creating the post you need to analyze the competition.

The goal is to find keywords with high search volumes and low competition.

Start by downloading and setting up the Moz toolbar:

Chrome version | Firefox version

Click the Settings icon and select Display SERP Overlay

Type your website name into Google: You’re looking at 2 factors:

PA (Page Authority)– The ranking power of that individual page (i.e. rankingsite.com/ranking-page)

DA (Domain Authority)– The ranking power of the overall website (i.e. rankingsite.com)

For your website, find the DA and write it down – this is a gauge of the power of your root domain (NOTE: NOT exact science, but still accurate). You will be comparing your DA to the competition’s. Next:

Re-open your Excel file with list of keywords

Copy the keyword with the most search volume and Paste it into Google

Analyze the DA and PA of the top 4 results returned

The higher the PA and DA of the ranking websites, the harder it will be for you to rank for that specific keyword.

We’re looking for results in the top 4 spots with PA less than 20 and DA similar to yours OR less than 50.

Below is a matrix to help explain:

For each keyword you analyze, record the result in your Excel file

If the keyword you Pasted into Google returns websites with high DA / PA, highlight that keyword row in red

If Google returns sites low DA / PA, highlight that keyword row in green

Repeat this until you’ve Googled every keyword in your Excel file (below is the Excel file for my post I wrote on SEO silos).

Chapter Three: Optimizing Your Content

6 years ago all you had to do was jam a bunch of keywords into a page and you were golden. Through the use of semantic search, Google’s gotten a lot smarter. The algorithm combs your entire page and looks at overall context, synonym keywords and semantic markups. It’s important to keep this in mind when creating your content.

Filter Your Keywords

Filter your Excel list so the keywords with the highest search volume and lowest competition are on top (these rows should be green). The keyword at the top will be your main keyword – the others we will use as long tails and synonyms throughout your post. To better illustrate, here were my top 5 keywords for this post:

blog seo – 2,900 searches

seo for blogs – 260 searches

increase blog traffic – 1,170 searches

optimize blog for google – 50 searches

blog post search engine optimization- 40 searches

NOTE: my keyword list contained 40 keywords in total. For the purpose of brevity, I’m only showing you 5.

Using Your Keywords

There are a couple of places you need to inject your keywords:

Title

Creating a title is tricky because it needs to accomplish a few things:

Contain your main keywords

Convince users to click on it

Be under 55 characters (Google’s display limit)

If possible, stick your main keywords at the front of the title. Then, work in secondary keywords. For this post, I was able to work in my main keyword up front and a secondary keyword behind it:

Blog SEO: How to Optimize Your Blog for Google

The main thing is to include your top keyword and make it legible for users – the rest is a bonus!

URL

Your website should be set up to support permalink structure. If it does, your URL will be auto optimized based on the title of your post. For example:

http://webris.org/blog-seo-guide-to-optimizing-your-blog-for-google/

If your blog is running on WordPress, click Settings -> Permalinks to set it up.

Content

The most important thing is to write a great post that is clear to users. Don’t try and stuff your entire list of keywords in where they don’t read well. Here’s what I like to do:

Use main keyword in the first 100 words of the post

Use main keyword 2 – 3 times throughout the whole post (no more!)

After I’ve written the post, I go back and look for places I’ve repeated low volume keywords (Control + F)

I then replace them with higher volume, long tail or synonym keywords

Again, Google is getting really good at picking up relevancy. The most important thing is to write a focused article that is clear to users – Google will handle the rest.

Semantic HTML Markups

AKA the use of HTML markup to reinforce the semantics (meaning) of the information in your post. Most refer to these as

and

tags. These tags are used as headings and can increase a search engine’s ability to pick up content relevancy. Here’s what you need to know:

Your

tag is your title and auto added to your post

DO NOT add additional

tags

is the most important heading;

is the least

You can use as many

–

tags as you see fit

tags should be used as subheadings to break down content

tags should be used as subheadings to break down

content

tags should be used as subheadings to break down

content

NEVER skip headings (i.e. go from

with no

in between

These tags are best used to organize content –not spam the algorithm. For example:

Good:

How to Set up Google PPC Ads

Body content here

Setting up An Account

Body content here

Keyword Research

Using the Keyword Tool

Body content here

Selecting the Right Keywords

Body content here

Bidding on Keywords

Body content here

Bad:

How to Set up Google PPC Adsh1>

Body content here

Setting up Google PPC Account

Body content here

Google PPC Ads Keyword Research

Using the Google PPC Ads Keyword Tool

Body content here

Selecting the Right Keywords for Google PPC Ads

Body content here

Bidding on Google PPC Ad Keywords

Adding these tags are easy if you’re using WordPress:

From the post editor screen, click Text

Locate the text you would like to markup

Wrap the text in desired HTML

Images

Image optimization is a pain in the ass. However, it’s vital if you want to rank for competitive keywords.

Naming the File

I’ve seen people write about it for YouTube video SEO, but rarely for image SEO.

Before you upload your image, right click on it and select Get Info

Add a couple of descriptive tags that classify the image

Add fitting title by changing the Name & Extension

Close the file

When adding these elements, make sure not to keyword stuff. Simply add in plain English what the image displays. Here’s an example from an image in this post:

Image Title and Alt Tags

Upload the renamed file to your website. The title will pull through as the Name & Extension from the previous step. This is optimized so there’s no need to change it. What you need to add is the Alt Tags. Search engines can’t read images so they rely on Alt Tags as descriptors. The key to a great Alt Tag is being descriptive without keyword stuffing. Let’s say you have the following image (a screenshot of a Google Analytics SEO Report):

Good Alt Text: Google Analytics Avg Page Load Report

Bad Alt Text: SEO Report – Webris the Best SEO Company in Miami – Miami SEO

NOTE: If using WordPress, edit Alt Text on the Media Library upload screen.

Chapter Four: WordPress Plugins

If you website isn’t build in WordPress you can skip this section. If it is, these are my top recommendations.

Yoast SEO Plugin

You can’t fully appreciate the power of an SEO plugin until you optimize an HTML website. The plugin makes optimizing your blog posts a cinch (so easy that I’m not going to cover it in detail here).

WP Smush It

Large images slow down page speed (Google hates slow sites!). This plugin compresses your images and decreases page load time.

W3 Total Cache

By far the most powerful caching plugin. It can minify CSS and JS, disk caching, comment removal, browser caching and more.

NextScripts Auto Poster

This plug in allows you to auto push your blog updates to 26 social networks. I’ll cover this in more detail in Chapter Five of this post.

Chapter Five: Link Building

Links to your blog posts are critical for SEO. Luckily, getting links to your blog is 10 times easier than product, service or home page. In addition, it looks more natural to Google (why would 10,000 websites link to your product page about microwaves?!). There are 5 types of links to utilize:

Social (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, etc)

Contextual (think links from other blog posts)

Blog comments

Niche forums

Internal (links within your site)

1. Social Links

Over 74% of adults spend time on social networking sites. It looks unnatural if your site generates 1,000 links yet no one’s talking about it on social media. It’s important to generate a buzz for your posts before building links – otherwise you can trigger penalties / Google sand-boxing. Here’s how I do it:

a. Social Network Auto Poster {SNAP}

{SNAP} is a free WordPress plug in that pushes your content to:

Facebook

Twitter

Google+

Blogger

LiveJournal

Delicious

Diigo

Stumbleupon

Plurk

Tumblr

Setting up the plug in can be a pain in the ass, as you’ll need to configure API keys for most accounts. Instead, use Fiverr to get it done. Here’s the gig I use: https://www.fiverr.com/seo5rr/setup-social-networks-auto-poster-snap

b. Buffer

{SNAP} pushes your content out when it’s published. Buffer creates a calendar to re-publish when you want. Buffer is great to keep fresh signals flowing through your links on auto pilot.

c. Social Media Groups and Forums

Remember how I showed you to find keywords using Facebook Groups? Use those same groups to push some of your content. Be careful! Group moderators are highly sensitive to blog spam. It’s important to participate in group threads and not just post links to your site. If your content is good, you’ll get a ton of social signals, shares and traffic.

d. Buy Signals

I’ve built my social media following over time so my links get good organic engagement. This wasn’t always the case. When I first got started I bought +1’s, Tweets and bookmarks from vendors. These don’t come close to the strength of signals you generate from your own accounts, but they still help. I use the following vendors:

http://www.socialsignifier.com

http://www.feedmefollowers.com

e. Create Signals

If you find yourself spending hundreds buying social signals you should look into syndication software (I use Syndwire). It’s essentially a software that allows you to auto hundreds of social media profiles with the click of a button. You’ll need hundreds of social media accounts for this to be effective. I don’t suggest you create them yourself:

Hire someone on Fiverr to build accounts (simply search for Syndwire or Onlywire)

Tell them to use proxies when creating accounts

Make sure they add profile pictures to each account

Create profile names based on your niche (i.e. twitter.com/seogurusteve)

The goal is to make these profiles real. Schedule regular updates that contain links to authority sites – not just links to your site! If you follow those rules your signals will hold more weight.

2. Contextual Links

A contextual link is found within the body of content and is in context with the idea surrounding it. These are the most powerful links you can get – a few links from quality sites will skyrocket your SEO efforts. Few marketers know how to correctly acquire and/or build them. This section is going to show you exactly how I build a number of powerful contextual links for my sites.

a. Link outreach

I used to talk a lot of shit about link outreach. I thought it was time consuming and unsuccessful. I refused to do it and would buy/build/use PBN links instead. Then, I started creating great content like this post and I realized how effective it can be. I read a lot of blog spam about how to writing ‘the perfect outreach email’ is the key.

The key to link outreach is giving great content to link to.

That’s it. People only link/share content that can better the relationship with their audience. If you’ve got something of great value link outreach is easy. Now, let me step down from my soap box now and show you exactly how I land between 3 and 5 outreach links every week.

Crafting the Email

Start by writing the email. That way you can easily fire off emails once you find targets. Don’t over think the email. In fact, keep it short and to the point.

Open with personalized greeting [Hey John]

Give a brief intro [My name is Ryan Stewart and I’m a marketing consultant]

State why you’re reaching out [I have a piece of content that I think would be perfect for your weekly roundup]

Send the link [http://webris.org/content]

Thank them

Here’s the exact template that I use week in and week out to score links: Trust me –this template works (even with misspellings)!

Finding Targets

I only do outreach to link roundup targets because these people are actively looking to post links. Other link outreach techniques are annoying. How would you feel if you got pesky emails asking for links in content you spent weeks writing? I do simple Google searches to find link roundup targets:

[insert niche] “weekly link roundup”

[insert niche] “monday link roundup”

[insert niche] “friday link roundup”

[insert niche] “best posts of the week”

You need to make sure that site is actively publishing roundup posts.

Click the “Search Tools” option in the Google results

Change the date to “Past Year”

This will filter the results to only show blogs that have published roundup posts in the last year. You can also do it by month or by week to get extra granular.

b. Private Blog Networks (PBN)

I have a powerful 50 site PBN, but I stopped building it 6 months ago. It was taking too much of my time to maintain. Instead, I buy links on other people’s private networks. The key to buying links is twofold:

Knowing where to buy them

Knowing how to gauge quality

Part 1: Where to Buy Them I don’t use BlackHatWorld or Warrior Forum anymore – those links don’t come from PBNs, but BNs (aka not private). You’ve got to find someone who doesn’t whore out links on their network. These people link to their own personal sites and care deeply about the quality of their network. That ensures the links are not only safe, but powerful. I use Facebook Groups to find these PBN owners. I’ve never had a problem finding niche specific links on well kept networks. Here are the Facebook Groups I use: Part 2: Knowing How to Judge Quality Most PBN vendors won’t share URLs because they think you might work for Google or some shit. If you insist they send you at least one URL they generally will. Then you can check quality for yourself. The best way to do that is Majestic SEO’s browser plugin. Simply install the free plugin and run it on the URL you want to evaluate. Citation Flow is a measure of the power of that domain’s inbound links. Trust Flow is a measure of the quality. I firmly believe Trust Flow is the most relevant measure of link impact. Don’t buy links on domains with a Trust Flow less than 15. The higher the Trust Flow and Citation Flow, the more powerful the potential link.

c. Web 2.0s

Web 2.0 sites like Weebly, Tumblr, WordPress and Blogger are stillgood links. These links are great because:

They’re free (or cheap to outsource the labor)

They’re self hosted on extremely powerful domains

Let’s take a look at one of my Tumblr pages using Majestic: As you can see, Tumblr’s root domain has a Trust Flow of 91. What does this mean?

Google has tremendous trust in this domain

You can blast the SHIT out of it with tier 2 spam

The quality of the domain will filter out that spam and pass on a ton of link juice to your site

Here’s what I do:

Hire someone on Fiverr to set up 20 web 2.0 sites using subdomains related to my niche (i.e. seoexpert.wordpress.com) – make sure they use proxies and different emails

Set up the web 2.0s with original or spun content

Schedule posts and link to authority sites like Wikipedia

Let them sit for a few months

Buy dirt cheap links on Fiverr, BlackHatWorld and Warrior Forum and direct them at the web 2.0s

Link to the blog posts of your choice

This builds a mini authority PBN on high quality subdomains that you can use to link to your blog posts of choice.

d. Guest Blogging

If you don’t write well, learn. Guest blogging is really the only way to get links from top sites (it’s also one of the best ways to drive traffic, exposure and trust for your brand). I hate to beat a dead horse, but the only way you’ll get accepted as a guest author is by writing amazing shit. Here’s how I find website to guest post on:

Enter your blog’s niche in the search bar

Set category to Guest Posts

Set Footprint to a variety of options

Make sure your Moz Bar SERP Overlay is turned on. Guest blogging takes a lot of effort –you only want to submit content to website’s with a DA of at least 60.Be over selective about which sites you submit guest posts to. If you don’t it will take up a ton of your time and deliver very little in return. Don’t buy blog comments. I repeat DON’T BUY BLOG COMMENTS! I don’t care if they tell you they’re using proxies and hand writing them – they’re still spam. The only way to blog comment is to do it naturally. That means YOU post comments on blogs that YOU read regularly. Here’s how to blog comment for links the right way:

Grab the URL from your blog that you want to link to

Once you have the blog URL, find a post on that blog that’s related to yours

Go to Google and type site:qualityblog.com + “keyword”

You should see articles related to the “keyword” that you typed in

Click on the results and read through most of the article

Scroll to the bottom and leave well thought out response to the article

Drop your link at the end of your post

Here’s a live example of how I do it: My blog post to promote:http://webris.org/ultimate-list-of-authority-domains-accepting-backlinks/Target blog to comment on: http://neilpatel.com Google search:site:neilpatel.com + “backlinks” As you can see, I also snuck in a request for a link (it didn’t happen). When done correctly, you’ll see a nice increase in quality traffic as well.

4. Niche Forums

I love forums. They’re a great place to learn, network, build links and drive traffic. Good forums are extremely susceptible to link spam so you’ve got to be careful not to get banned. Dropmylink.com has a forum search, but it’s not very good. Here’s how I do it:

Head to Google

Use the search string inurl:forum “your niche”

Find forums with active discussions related to your blog

Jump in on discussions – drop a link to a blog post when relevant

Rinse and repeat

That’s really all there is to it. Don’t buy forums links and don’t copy + paste the same link spam over and over.

5. Internal Links

Linking your content together has tremendous SEO value:

Helps search engines crawl and index more content

Distributes the power of inbound links to other pages on your site

Adds additional signals of relevancy through anchor text

I hate to cut this section short, but I don’t like to duplicate efforts. I wrote a kick ass piece about internal link silos a few weeks back. I strongly suggest you read that piece for in depth details on internal linking.

Closing

Maintaining a blog is a lot of work. However, it’s the best way to increase your organic traffic (and conversions!). I’m awful at writing conclusions so if you have any questions / comments, please leave them in the comments section below! I’ll answer them all as they come in.

No sales pitches, just marketing tips.

Source

http://webris.org/blog-seo-how-to-optimize-your-blog-for-google/

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thebiggamehunter · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter's Blog

New Post has been published on http://blog.thebiggamehunter.us/becoming-the-goat/

Becoming THE GOAT

I grew up in New York City, not far from the old Yankee Stadium. On the few occasions I saw a goat, it was in a children’s zoo or a petting zoo. That was what I thought of as a goat for most of my life. The Yankees were always world champions and I rooted for them with fervor. I remember pitching in the little league on the site of where the current Stadium is, hearing the roar of the fans after home runs occurred. That was the lot of New York sports fan at that time.

There is a difference between being a champion and being THE GOAT– The Greatest of All Time! I don’t know of anyone other than Ali who proclaimed himself to be The Greatest of All Time. I do know many people who play small but think they are big shots professionally. Frightened to reach for the stars, they hold themselves back. It is sad to see people who could be much bigger, happier and more successful crippled by their self-imposed limitations. They live in cells, prisoners of their conditioning.

Are you one of them?

You see, from the time we are small and go to school, most of us are conditioned to “shut up, do what you are told, regurgitate a bunch of staff when we tell you to do it, get good grades . . . or else.” Or else we won’t get into college

The threats continue in college where we are threatened that we won’t get a “good job.” After college or serving in the military, we are threatened that unless we behave, we will be fired. Is it any wonder that people were (and are still) shocked when they do the right thing and are fired anyway. You kept your end of the bargain but the system spit you out anyway through no fault of yours.

To become THE GOAT, you need to stop believing the lies you are told and begin to dream again. Do you remember how to do that?

Becoming THE GOAT

Let me walk you through steps to help you become THE GOAT in whatever you set out to do. To be clear, although the steps will seem easy, in practice, they are very challenging. You will need to become a different person to evolve into THE GOAT.

There is a model I learned from Lance Secretan of The Secretan Institute called “The Castle Principles.™” CASTLE is an acronym that stands for Courage, Authenticity, Service, Truthfulness, Love and Effectiveness. Each of these will be extremely important to you on this journey . . . but it starts with courage. You will need to be courageous in ways you don’t know yet in order to become THE GOAT. After all, when you think of Ali, his courage was not simply in the ring but outside of the ring where American society HATED him and tried to crush him for not conforming to what white America demanded of black men.

Friends and family may question your sanity for wanting to make a change. “You have such a good career. You have a good job and a good paycheck!” With love being professed but behind that their fear, they are telling you that you are wrong. Don’t leave the prison cell they are also in.

To become THE GOAT, you will need to

Ask yourself, “What do I want to be?” This is the dream of what you want to set out to do. I beg you to take your time to think this through and, ideally, get some help sorting this through. A coach. A husband, a wife, a partner, a really good friend or friends can all be a great source for sorting though your thoughts about this. If they are the right people, they will help you recognize your blindspots but not talk you out of your choice to change.

Next, ask yourself, “Why? Why is this so important to you.” In the face of your decision being called into question, you will need to summon up your courage AND you will need important reminders for why this is so important to you. Trust me when I say that making more money isn’t that important. The money is a byproduct but not the real truth for why you want to do this and change your life. What’s the truth? What’s the real emotional reason for this change.

Conduct experiments that start to move the needle toward what you want to do and who you want to become. Do something tomorrow. Do something everyday. Initially, it doesn’t need to be big and bold. It just has to be something. Don’t worry about what people think about what your are doing (unless it is something that is going to jeopardize your life, your job, your family or others). Do something.

Review. Did you do what you set out to do or didn’t you? Why did you do or not do? What did you learn from this? We have all learned that being “held accountable” is a way of spotlighting flaws, failures and imperfection. It is punitive and we don’t like it. We know how to do that to ourselves too well. Consider doing a simple review without judgement or self-criticism. Follow it up with asking what you learned from this.

Ask for help. You probably don’t know what you don’t know. Sometimes, there are skills or knowledge gaps. Sometimes, you are the crazy person in the room and need help getting control of your fears. All you need to do is contract or hire help if no one is readily available. Without help, you are learning through trial and error. It takes longer and mistakes can be avoided with another’s good questions and perspectives.

See if you can make this fun. Bring a spirit of play into this! I don’t know how it was for you, but when I was young, I got a lot done when it was fun! Somewhere along the line, I was conditioned to think or things as “to do’s” or “jobs” and that came with a layer of difficulty or it being hard or unpleasant. If you are and anything like me, try bringing a “spirit of play” into this. You might not be good at it the first time or the 41st time. Like everything, you’ll get better at it.

Remember, it starts with courage. The courage to re-awaken your desires and no longer succumb to a life time of conditioning.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves life coaching, as well as executive job search coaching and business life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio,” “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice.”

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching from me? Email me at [email protected] and put the word, “Coaching” in the subject line.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn. Like me on Facebook.

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ulyssessklein · 8 years

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4 things I would’ve done differently in my successful crowdfunding campaign

Early in 2016 I released my first new album in five years.

It felt great to shake off the rust. And some good stuff came of it (besides the simple satisfaction of putting new music into the world): a nice review in No Depression, a video premiere on KCRW, a super-fun string of seven shows in Portland, Oregon with the band who helped me create the album, that sort of thing.

But everything about this release, especially the PledgeMusic and PR campaigns surrounding the album, reminded me that anything done well — and done mostly DIY — is bound to eat up twice as much time as you initially anticipated.

Last year, in the midst of my crowdfunding campaign, I wrote “A Musician’s Guide to PledgeMusic: building and running a campaign for my upcoming album.” For anyone who hasn’t run a crowdfunding campaign before, that article is a pretty thorough summary of the process, or at least my process with PledgeMusic.

But in hindsight, there’s a handful of things I would’ve done differently to make better use of my time during my PledgeMusic campaign. I’m not saying it’ll necessarily apply to you or your campaign, but maybe my perspective will be useful.

I also realize that some of these “lessons” have already been taught in a number of crowdfunding tutorials. Why didn’t I take them to heart before I started my campaign? I guess I was running the kind of campaign that came most naturally. Live and learn!

So here it is…

1. I wouldn’t spend as much time creating the campaign video

In the end I’d say that about 95% of the contributors to my PledgeMusic campaign were already fans, friends, or family. As long as my campaign video didn’t look like a catastrophe, many of them were probably going to contribute anyways.

I say this because, well, I spent a long time making my campaign video. My editing skills are limited, and I didn’t have the budget to hire someone to make the video for me. Thus, to get the thing to look decent and to capture the spirit of the project, it probably took me three times longer than it should have: collecting footage and gathering up photos from the session, shooting new stuff, getting two of the musicians on the album to do interviews, creating graphics, writing my “script,” figuring out how to use Final Cut Pro X, and then cutting it all together.

I’m proud of the video I made for the campaign, don’t get me wrong — but I seriously think I could’ve reached my goal almost as quickly if I’d just talked into my iPhone camera for 45 seconds and told people why I was excited about the new album.

So, is the video important? Yes. But it doesn’t need to be a blockbuster with a hundred cuts, a bunch of B roll, and multiple talking heads. If you can deliver the message convincingly with minimal distractions, go that route. Find a good room with good lighting, set up your camera, press record, talk to your fans, and save up your energy and time so you can avoid this next mistake…

2. I would make private Facebook messages my #1 priority from the start

If I remember correctly, I think it was about 15-20 days into my campaign when I realized that the most effective thing driving pledges was private messages to my friends on Facebook. NOT followers of my band page. Friends of my personal profile.

I’d spent the first couple weeks of the campaign worrying about big picture stuff: the launch, my website, the email newsletters, tweets and Instagram photos and Facebook posts, etc.

THEN I started to write to people individually. And they responded. I’d say at least 25% of the people I wrote to personally ended up contributing. (And an added bonus is you get to strike up conversations with people you haven’t talked to in a while.)

So what’s the problem? Well, it takes FOREVER. I have more than a thousand “friends” on Facebook and I didn’t want to spam them all with a copy-and-pasted message. So I tried to customize it, at least a little bit, to acknowledge the fact that I’m asking a real live human being for their support; and that meant that I could really only write to about 20 people a night, after you factor in my job, family, (infrequent) hygiene, and anything else I needed to do for the PledgeMusic campaign that day.

So here I am discovering this approach that REALLY worked for boosting contributions at the same time as I’m nearing my goal. By the time I reached my goal, I’d probably only written to a few hundred of my friends on Facebook at most. That’s less than a quarter of my FB friends.

It sounds crass to lump my social media friends into one big statistic, but basically, at the end of my campaign, 75% of the community that was 25+% responsive remained untapped. Unasked. In short: had I started writing people personally a whole lot sooner, I could’ve raised a whole lot more money.

Which leads me to another issue…

3. I should have set a higher initial goal OR had a clearer plan for continuing “the ask” with stretch goals

I’ll be honest. Despite all the advice of every “crowdfunding expert” out there, I didn’t feel comfortable reaching out to people individually to ask for additional support once I’d already achieved my goal. It felt… icky.

I know, I know. Shame! Shame!

I set a modest goal. Just enough to master and manufacture the album, plus pay a publicist for about 3 months of PR help.

I met that goal in less than 30 days, with 30 days remaining in my 60-day campaign.

After those 30 days, I still had 800+ FB friends that I’d yet to write, despite the fact that this method had proven to be the most effective way of driving pre-sales.

So I guess there’s two conclusions:

I should’ve started with a higher goal, and had more ambitious plans: music video budget, tour support, a radio or streaming promotion campaign! (There’s no shortage of things to spend money on when releasing new music).

Or, I should’ve built clear stretch-goals into the campaign from the start, and made a point of mentioning them all along the way. One stretch goal could’ve been, “Hey, if we can raise an extra $2000, we can press vinyl!” If I’d made a clearer point of mentioning stretch goals along the way, I’d probably have been able to overcome that self-conscious voice inside me that said, “You’ve reached your goal; don’t be greedy.”

4. I wouldn’t have offered as many exclusives

It was fun to come up with a ton of different offerings to meet every kind of “price point.” But honestly, most people contributed $100 or less. Some people contributed $500 or more. But I think I can count on two hands the number of people who contributed an amount between $100-500.

However, even if only two people end up ordering the thing you’re offering for $150, you still have to MAKE it and ship it to them! That potentially means design costs, manufacturing costs, postage, and — last but not least — time.

For sanity, budget, and time reasons, I think my next campaign will offer fewer exclusives, the bulk of which would be priced lower than $100. Keep in mind that fans who want to contribute more can always bundle multiple exclusives together.

Well, there they are: the four things I wish I’d done differently. Hopefully this perspective helps as you’re dreaming up your next crowdfunding campaign.

If you’d change anything about how you ran YOUR previous crowdfunding campaigns, let me know in the comments. I think it could be a helpful conversation.

Go HERE to for more information about building a PledgeMusic campaign from the start.

The post 4 things I would’ve done differently in my successful crowdfunding campaign appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

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