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9 simple SEO and linkbuilding tips that work wonders!
Is Google sending lots of traffic your way, or could your website do with an SEO boost? These simple search engine optimisation and link building tips are easy to do (even for non-techies), and should bring you some great results.
(1) Develop brilliant content
First and foremost, developing great content is key to a good search engine optimisation and linkbuilding strategy. SEO and link building go hand in hand. And the way to build a ton of high quality links is to keep creating valuable content that people want to share – on their websites, in their blogs and through their social media pages. It doesn’t matter how much other SEO activity you do, if you don’t put time and effort into posting regular, compelling content, then your website or blog will never rank as highly as others that do.
(2) Client reviews
When you’ve completed a project or transaction with a customer or client, ask them about their experience. If they are not happy, this gives them the chance to tell you so you can make improvements. If they are happy, ask them to post a review, either on a popular review website, or as an article on their website (offer to help them develop a case study, if this will be of benefit to them). Then ask them to link back to your website from the review. This not only develops links, but also shows potential new clients or customers that you are a good company to work with and buy from.
(3) Develop your internal links
While external links with good quality sites is important, the value of internal links should not be overlooked. Look at all your website content and make sure all your pages have a call to action – preferably to a conversion page on your website, ie one where you can either gather data from your website visitor or entice them to buy something or make an enquiry. There is a tool that can help you do this: Type your website URL into ahrefs.com to view your top pages (ie the pages that have the most referring domains) and link to these pages throughout your website to drive traffic to them.
(4) Check your website loading speed
Google is paying a lot of attention to page speed nowadays. You may be putting lots of resources into generating great content and optimising the technical aspects of your website, but if you site isn’t loading quickly, Google won’t be imperessed. PageSpeed Insights is a useful tool for analysing your website speed. IT breaks results down into device type and includes advice on how to improve your website loading speed. This type of analysis should be included in a good website SEO audit.
(5) Listen to your readers and use their comments
Your blog comments are a valuable source of information, both to inform your keyword strategy and to help you develop suitable blog post topics for your editorial calendar.
Look at the questions that people ask in your comments (LinkedIn group questions and client queries via phone and email are also good sources). If some people are asking these questions of you directly, then a whole lot more people are probably typing them into a Google search too. If your blog posts answer these questions, then you’re likely to rank for them in search – especially if you choose your title carefully and choose a unique or niche topic that nobody else is blogging about. Always request comments on your blog and website, then take time to engage with your audience to increase the amount of relevant keyword variations.
(6) Broken link building
Another way of developing great quality links is to scan through popular and reputable websites to find broken links. This can take time, but can reap great results. When you find one, write a good quality detailed article on your website about the topic of the broken link, then contact the site owner and ask suggest they might like to replace the broken link with yours. You can even go further and check the backlinks of that broken link, then contact those site owners as well. As Google scores websites down on broken links, it is advantageous to the website owner to reinstate a link, so most are usually happy to comply. Use Topsy to check what people are linking to.
(7) Check your competitors
A detailed competitor analysis should be part of any good SEO audit. What are your competitors ranking on? What keywords are they using? This competitor backlink analysis guide Matthew Woodward gives a good step-by-step guide to analysing your competitors. SEMrush is a great tool for seeing what keywords your competitors are ranking on (more about keyword analysis and using SEMrush here).
(8) Be generous! Share and share alike
When I referenced respected digital marketing and social media blogger Danny Brown’s excellent ‘Without context, data is meaningless’ article in my ‘Big issue with big data’ blog post, I was delighted when he then then referenced my post in another brilliant article he wrote called ‘the question of context in meaningless data’. You can see the conversation we had in the comments section of my blog, and our resulting conversation on Twitter. Danny has almost 38K followers on Twitter, and him sharing my link resulting in a huge boost for my website traffic.
(9) Use the ‘Guestographics’ method
At jrc.agency, we now offer blogger outreach as one of our services. High quality links to your website from a relevant, reputable, high traffic website are favoured by search engines, as long as they are natural and don’t appear spammy.
As well as offering guest blogs, another great link building tip is to use the guestographics method. This works well when you have a highly regarded piece of shareable content that adds value to the website that you are pitching it too.
I hope this has given you the confidence to try out some of these techniques on your own website – they really do work!
What SEO and linkbuilding techniques do you use? What results have you seen?
If you’d like help with your SEO and linkbuilding strategy, an SEO audit or content generation, just give me a call on 011 33 20 21 21.
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Hey there Johnny,
First, thanks for the double ping, appreciated mate, and glad the posts helped in whatever way they did. 🙂
The “clients do a review” is an interesting approach – never really thought of that before. Sure, we ask people to endorse us on LinkedIn, or provide a testimonial we can leave on our sites.
But a dedicated review with external linking? Nice – will look to use that more as I move forward with some projects, cheers!
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And of course, I meant “Jonny”, not “Johnny” (nor even “Johnnie”).
Need more coffee – sorry!
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Coffee is exactly what I need right now! Been away for a few days and fighting with my inbox! I knew you meant “Jonny” 🙂
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Hi Danny,
My pleasure, I love you posts, always great to read, and more so helpful!!!
Glad you like the idea of external reviews, just thought I would think out of the box for a bit! Always helps!
I look forward to reading more of your posts!
Jonny
Tips like these can do wonders to websites if done properly. It’s updated and are in accordance with Google’s current guidelines, putting you ahead of the game and will assure that your site will rank, naturally.
Hey there Johnny,
First, thanks for the double ping, appreciated mate, and glad the posts helped in whatever way they did. 🙂
The “clients do a review” is an interesting approach – never really thought of that before. Sure, we ask people to endorse us on LinkedIn, or provide a testimonial we can leave on our sites.
But a dedicated review with external linking? Nice – will look to use that more as I move forward with some projects, cheers!
And of course, I meant “Jonny”, not “Johnny” (nor even “Johnnie”).
Need more coffee – sorry!
Coffee is exactly what I need right now! Been away for a few days and fighting with my inbox! I knew you meant “Jonny” 🙂
Hi Danny,
My pleasure, I love you posts, always great to read, and more so helpful!!!
Glad you like the idea of external reviews, just thought I would think out of the box for a bit! Always helps!
I look forward to reading more of your posts!
Jonny
Tips like these can do wonders to websites if done properly. It’s updated and are in accordance with Google’s current guidelines, putting you ahead of the game and will assure that your site will rank, naturally.
Hi Tabby,
Thanks for stopping and for the endorsement!
Jonny