In The Ultimate Guide to Generating Backlinks, Part 1, we discussed the different options you have when planning a backlinking strategy and I showed you how to find and evaluate websites where you can submit guest blog posts. However, that is only half of the equation. The other half lies in writing valuable content and appropriate anchor text.
4. Write Amazing Anchor Text
One of the most important parts of backlinking is creating amazing anchor text. However, this involves research. Figure out what keywords your site is currently ranking for, what keywords you want to be ranking for, and what keywords you are slightly ranking for that could use improvement. Use keywords or keyword phrases as anchor text to link to your homepage or specific pages on your site. Take my author’s bio for example:
Meghan Faye Wolff is the senior copywriter and marketing specialist at Instabill—an international provider of merchant account services. Meghan writes website content and blog posts as well as manages the company’s social media. For the latest e-commerce news, follow Instabill on Twitter @instabill_com.
I want my website to rank for the phrase “merchant account services” and my blog to rank for “e-commerce news.” Using relevant anchor text will have more value than linking your business name back to your business website—unless your goal is to build your business name as a keyword.
5. Write Valuable Content
Writing valuable content has many benefits. With an authoritative voice and using proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation, you become an expert on the topic. Valuable content also helps build credibility and trust for your business. It will also result in more page views, shares, and comments. Most importantly, the website owner will love you for providing them with valuable content that meets their own writing standards.
Before writing a guest blog post, make sure you have a guideline of writing standards for the website. Many blog owners who accept guest posts will have them readily available. Treat a guest blog post as if you were publishing it on your own site and keep other SEO elements in mind. Use headings and subheadings to break up the text and look for opportunities to interlink your post to another on the blog owner’s site. Although your goal is to create a backlink to your website, pay attention to keywords and know how and where you use them.
6. Promote Your Guest Blog Post
Although the blog post is not on your website, you should still embrace every opportunity to promote it. Share the guest blog post on your own social media profiles and add it to news aggregators like Reddit.com and Digg.com. Not only will you be sharing your valuable content, but you will also be creating opportunities for more people to see your backlinks and visit your website or blog.
A Backlinking Strategy Takes Time and Effort
Creating backlinks to your website will help your SEO and increase your Google PageRank, but it will not happen overnight. Implementing a backlinking strategy and seeing a positive result takes time and effort, and you will see a change if you are patient and stick with your plan. What type of backlinking strategy works best for you? How do you decide on a topic for a guest blog post? How do you determine what anchor text to use when creating the backlink?
About Meghan WolffMeghan Faye Wolff is the senior copywriter and marketing specialist at Instabill—an international provider of merchant account services. Meghan writes website content and blog posts as well as manages the company's social media. For the latest e-commerce news, follow Instabill on Twitter @instabill_com.
Thanks for the tips. Original contents are what all people seek on the internet. People can be annoyed with repeated phases when they browse for specific things on search engines.
Analytics and others can significantly help. Especially by seeing its bounce rate and sources, as well as how visitors ‘behave’ while visiting. Increasing the number of relevant site sources can help decrease bounce rate.
Not to mention speed. Website speed matters…a lot. Many good websites are heavy to load and this is bad for visitors. And Google is also isn’t a patient visitor.
Hi Rianti,
I apologize for not replying to your comment earlier. (Somehow it got by me.) You raised some good points to support Meghan’s article about generating backlinks. I always make an effort to link to relevant sources to support my posts. I wasn’t aware that it helped decrease bounce rate but it’s not surprising. Thanks for taking the time to contribute to the conversation.
Sherryl Perry recently posted..Tips for Bloggers | Before You Press that Publish Button
Hi Meghan, it would be a lie if I say that I have never followed your posts. I keep reading your posts and they are indeed helpful. According to me the best part about this post was when you talk about anchor text. I have come across hundreds of posts giving advice on generating traffic, but the way you explained it with your example was great. Keep sharing such good posts with us.
Hi Merlin,
Thanks for taking the time to let us know that you find Megan’s posts informative. I’ve been experiencing issues with my blog that have been preventing Meghan from replying to comments. Her point about the importance of anchor text is a good one as well as the other points that she’s made. Hopefully Meghan will not be discouraged by the problems that I’ve been having and will write for me again. 🙂
Sherryl Perry recently posted..Tips for Bloggers | Before You Press that Publish Button
Hi Merlin,
Thank you so much for your kind words. I will undoubtedly write for Sherryl again in the future, especially knowing that I have a fan base! Here’s to hoping this comment posts. *crosses fingers*
Warm regards,
Meghan
The more informative and interesting the content is, the higher is the chances of getting back links that are aiming to your website. The points that you have stated are very clear and perfect. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Bernie,
Thanks for taking the time to let us know that you found Megan’s post about generating backlinks informative. I was experiencing an issue with my blog last month that was preventing Meghan from commenting. I’m sorry it took me so long to reply.
Sherryl Perry recently posted..Time to Tweak Your Twitter Strategy
Everything seems to be back to normal. Glad you found my post so helpful, Bernie!
Your tips had help me a lot. Backlink building can be a time consuming and tedious task, but it’s absolutely critical to generate traffic to a website.
It is also a critical aspect in helping your SEO campaign and raising your Google PR. Keyword optimization, backlinks, URLs . . . they all play a hand in creating a website that generates traffic and ranks well in search engines. I am happy that my tips have helped you! 🙂
Do follow links are becoming harder and for someone providing internet marketing services these days. Do you have anything about that on here?
Hi Rod,
Unfortunately, I do not have any advice for you. I’m not entirely sure of what services Internet marketers provide, so I am unable to think of anything that could help.
lol,I was waiting for the 2nd part ! Found it at the top.
Thanks for sharing !
Glad you found Part 2, Salman! I hope you found these tips helpful!
Hi, I personally feel you mentioned all your points very clearly and perfect. Those who are new in this field it will be great help. I am also taking advantage from this. Thanks
Leena,
It was my goal to help backlinking newbies as well as novices and inspire those to share their own backlinking advice with us all. I know a great deal about backlinking, but I definitely do not know everything about it. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Great advice.The link building techniques you mention above are possibly the best methods of having the job done.Some online marketers spend money investing in link building tools and I think that not a good idea for now.This usually puts you in hot water with the search engines.Even link exchanging is not a great idea in post penguin era.
The best option is to create a good content and make other link to that content.
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Xavier,
You are quite right about link building tools putting you in hot water with search engines. Some link building tools can be helpful, but others may build backlinks for you using black-hat techniques, which will only hinder your business. It is best to put in the effort and make sure your time and money does not damage your business.
Meghan — I’m guilty of linking to my company name rather than the services I’m selling. Good advice that I will follow moving forward. Thank you.
Jeannette,
I am glad to hear that you are going to write anchor text that identifies your business’s services. I am sure you will see positive results!
Hi Megan,
Really useful list of tips for backlinking. I see a lot of blogs that have really good content but when I check out the social shares and comments they are very low. You make some great points, I especially like the point about promoting guest posts. People often fall into the trap that the site owner will do the promotion for them and they do not need too…..
I always try and promote all guest posts that I write. I will even include a link in a post back to the guest post in my site if I think the content warrants it.
Thanks for a great guide. Really useful.
Regards,
John
John Banks recently posted..What is Your Single Best Traffic Source?
Hi John,
I agree that some guest bloggers do not care to share their own content. Sure, your main goal is to gain a backlink, but you should still be proud of your blog post and want to share it with everyone. If you are not writing a guest blog post that you are proud of, then, in my opinion, you should not submit the content at all.
Glad you found my guide helpful!
Meghan
A well crafted article. i’ll put both part 1 and 2 to practice. it might sure be of help.thanks
I haven’t been lucky enough yet to have been invited for a guest post. Yet, if I ever do I will be sure to promote it, as you have pointed out. I never thought of anchor text within a post (on an unrelated topic to other writings) that would then refer back to a person’s site. Sometimes thinking about where the links are going gets me dizzy. I could, for instance, put in a link with anchor text “her article writing” and refer to one of my articles article discussing ways to earn on the net? Yes? That isn’t spamming is it?
anyway, there is a lot of meat in this article and I intend to forward it to fellow writers. Thank you.
John,
Unless you have an established connection with a blog owner, the chances of you being invited to write a guest blog post are slim to none. You need to get out there on the Web, introduce yourself to blog owners, and propose a topic that is relevant to the site and audience.
Thinking of anchor text should not make you dizzy if you understand how to do it properly. Consider the content on the page to where you are linking and then consider the context of your guest blog post. If your blog post does not relate to the content where you are linking, then save the backlink for your author biography box.
Sure, you can use the anchor text “her article writing,” but that does not have as much backlinking value as this: Read Susie’s article about how to earn money online for more information.
The reason my sentence would have more value is because I optimized the anchor text for the keyword phrase “how to earn money online,” which is relevant to the link’s content. The phrase “her article writing” is not relevant to the link’s content. When the anchor text and the link’s content relate, then there is more backlinking value.
I hope this has helped!
Hi Meghan, I agree anchor text plays an important role for keyword ranking. I was wondering that you started the post with point no.4 but then I realized that its a part 2 :D. BTW thanks for the nice tips.
Chaitanya recently posted..Off page seo checklist – Rank high in Google
Chaitanya,
You are most welcome. I hope they help you in your own SEO efforts. Happy holidays!
Excellent advise. I work at it, but not to the extent you described. I plan on creating a check from this post to use to insure I do all that I can to increase back link opportunities. 🙂
Susan,
That is very flattering that you are going to create a checklist from my backlinking posts. Please feel free to contact me if you need more assistance: meghan@instabill.com. I’m always more than happy to help a fellow blogger!
All you suggest is good advice.
Started my career as a a journalist a long time ago and have worked as a writer on and off throughout my life. So I don’t write for search engines but my readers.
Checked out a lot of us and it seems we all have a Google Page Rank of either 3 or 4.
What’s your opinon on Alexa? Personally like it since I can get an idea of how many visitors my blog has compared to the top 30 million web sites in the world.
Catarina recently posted..Communication – The key to Successful Leadership!
Catarina,
Alexa does have some interesting and helpful statistics, but I prefer using using websites such as Google Analytics and Authority Labs to keep track of my company’s websites. In my mind, I feel like Alexa may not be as accurate as other resources, but I could be wrong. Everyone has their own preferences and I encourage you to explore more about Alexa if it interests you.
With Google Analytics, which is free to integrate into your blog, you can track your visitors, where they come from, how they found your blog, what keywords and phrases they searched to find individual pages, what page on your website they went to next, and so much more.
With Authority Labs (I believe we pay for this tool), you can track your blog and see how well it ranks for certain keywords. For instance, we can track how well our website ranks for the phrase “offshore merchant account” in comparison to all of our competitors. Both are great tools that can help you shape your SEO.
Megan for years now I have checked how my blog is doing on Alexa, Google Analytics and Stat Counter on a daily basis.
They are all good for different things. Google Analytics, as you know, counts number of visitors as lower than it is. But it’s easier to see exactly how many visitors you get from different sites there than on Stat Counter.
The exact amount of visitors you have is probably somewhere between Google Analytis and Stat Counter. Then you have Twingly in Scandinavia that make you believe you have even less visitors than GA.
What I like about Alexa is that you get the little buttom at the top right corner you can check all websites’ rankings by just moving your mouse over it.
Catarina recently posted..Communication – The key to Successful Leadership!
Thank you for the wonderful tips, Catarina! You have persuaded me to look into Alexa more and use it with other tools 🙂