Not all links are created equal.
Contextual links are the most difficult types of links to get, but they have a strong impact on search rankings.
The truth is links are still the most important component of the search algorithm. No matter how useful its content may be, a site without links is far less likely to rank highly in organic search results.
Contextual links — links that are surrounded by text in the body of content — have a higher SEO value than links that appear in the footer or sidebar.
The rules surrounding link building seem to be always changing. Through its Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird updates, Google’s making it even harder for site owners and bloggers to get quality incoming links.
Building links can, in fact, do more harm than good – especially if you do it wrong.
In order to hedge your bets, get the authoritative links that Google respects, and sustain your search rankings, you need to concentrate on getting contextual links (i.e., links surrounded by relevant content).
Earning contextual links is the quickest way to boost your site’s search performance.Over the past 10 years, I’ve been creating link-worthy content that people frequently cite and share, even when I didn’t ask for it.
These social shares and off-page search activities led to my blogs attracting over 1,000,000 organic search users per month.
If you want to build the kind of contextual links that’ll boost your search rankings and traffic, here are 4 simple ways to do it:
1. Connect with content curators for contextual links
I give the Google team a lot of credit.
They’ve done a great job leveling the SEO playing ground for both authoritative and new sites. Anyone with a site that provides useful content and has the right network can now drive organic traffic.
But you can speed up the process of getting useful links by connecting with content curators.
HubSpot defines “content curation” as the process of “finding information relevant to your audience from a variety of sources and sharing it strategically through your communication channels.”
If you can connect with content curators who make these resources available on the web, you’ll increase your chances of getting your links in context.
Content curators use social media and search engines to find content worth curating.
According to Curata, “79% of marketers use social media to find content for their curation strategy…” compared to the 63% who rely on “company newsletters and subscriptions.”
To connect with content curators, simply follow these steps:
i). First step: Go to Google and search with any of the following strings:
- Top list blogs + your keyword
- Best blog posts + your keyword
- Top link building posts + month
Here’s the result that I got when I searched with the first string:
ii). Second step: From the curated pages that appeared in the search, click on one of them to review the page and its links. When I clicked on the first result, here’s what the page looked like:
iii). Third step: Reach out to the author. Click on the “contact us” tab and connect with the content curator or blog owner.
Email outreach is the quickest way to connect, communicate, and build a relationship with content curators and site owners. When I’m looking to get a link, here’s one of the emails I send to site owners:
When you write emails to content curators, bloggers, and influencers – especially those whom you’ve not familiar with – make sure you do the following:
- Keep the subject lines in lower case letters: Emails that appear casual as if you’re sending it to a friend work best with email outreach.
- Personalize: To avoid coming off as spammy, use the recipient’s name in the email.
- Be creative: Write emails that persuade people to click and respond to you. Boring emails won’t trigger a response, or even get read at all.
2. Leverage the guestographic strategy
Sometimes, all you need is 5 – 10 relevant links from authoritative sites to begin seeing results from Google.
Through the guestographic strategy, you can get relevant links from those authoritative sites much more easily.
When Brian Dean coined the concept of the guestographic and implemented it, he quickly increased search traffic by 175.59% over the previous month.
And now Brian Dean ranks #1 for a high volume keyword – “on-page SEO” – all because he used the guestographic strategy.
Guestographics truly can help you get contextual backlinks. To implement the guestographic strategy for yourself, follow these 5 simple steps:
- Design and post a valuable infographic on your site.
- Find sites that write about your infographic’s topic.
- Show them your infographic.
- Offer them a relevant “bribe” or benefit (e.g., a unique blog post).
- In return, get contextual links to your site that’ll boost your organic search performance.
Mike Bonadio used the guestographic strategy to create an SEO campaign thatgenerated 1,117 social shares and 15% more organic traffic in 2 weeks.
Successfully using the guestographic strategy requires two separate but essential skillsets:
- Creating the right infographic
- Promoting the infographic in the right way
Many people who started new blogs have seen tremendous benefits with incorporating their infographics intoguest post pitches. Why not give it a shot yourself?
3. Interview authority site owners – and get interviewed
Most contextual link building techniques require unique content as a prerequisite. Butif you’re not ready to create written content or videos from scratch, you can still tap into other people’s knowledge (OPK).
Interviews are some of the most-linked to content on the web, because they give us a deeply personal look inside what makes others tick. It’s hard for people to be dishonest during an interview.
Expert interviews are powerful ways to acquire rank-boosting backlinks from authoritative sites. But you have to plan and be strategic about it.
When conducting expert interviews, you don’t have to use video as your medium. Yes, video interviews tend to be the most popular, but don’t let that stop you.
So, if the technical details of a video interview would be overwhelming for you, create text-based interviews. They, too, can deliver great results.
An example of a text-based expert interview is this post published at Fizzle.co. In the interview, Shannon Whitehead and Kristin Glenn, founders of Revolution Apparel, were asked to share how they generated $64,246. 321% through their KickStarter Campaign.
These inspiring startup founders generated a highly valuable contextual backlink from the Fizzle.co blog. Take a look:
Brand mentions and co-citations are also very important to Google in determining the quality and usefulness of a particular web page.
Their brand name was also mentioned in the blog post, though it wasn’t linked to anywhere.
But the good news is that both the brand mention and actual link are surrounded by contextual editorial content. It wasn’t as though the anchor texts were overly optimized or the keywords stuffed into the content.
Don’t be scared to reach out to industry experts. In my experience, they’re the easiest people to connect with. The majority of them are fun to talk with, and would be happy to help you succeed.
I’ve been interviewed on several blogs that are still trying to pick up more organic traffic, as well as authoritative blogs that I respect. See some of the best of those interviews below:
If it’s impossibly difficult to get a positive response from an influencer, how do you explain the fact that I’ve got over 460,000 search results for “interviews + Neil Patel?”
Here’s more proof that getting industry power users to answer a few questionnaires for your expert interviews series can be easier than you may think:
Expert interviews are usually popular because users get to They also learn fascinating things they wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Practical experience is something you can’t get from books or blog posts. But through interviews, you can share the most accurate practical information with your readers who deeply desire to achieve their goals.
A short time ago, I got interviewed on Mixergy. This interview generated thousands of targeted visitors to my blog, and I earned a contextual backlink that passed strong SEO juice to my pages.
The interview with Joost De Valk, founder of Yoast, on TechWyse led to a contextual link that linked out to Yoast.
If you want to get the most out of expert interviews, try moving beyond the standard one-expert format. Instead, connect with 20+ experts in your industry, asking them a simple, fundamental question relevant to your topic.
This will have a multiplier effect on your link building efforts, because those experts you interviewed and linked to will gladly link back to you in their own blog posts.
Mary Fernandez recently shared a valuable blog post on Huffington Post, where she interviewed 13 seasoned entrepreneurs on a single question: “What’s your best advice for beginners who are starting their online business?”
The expert list post generated 563 links from 11 referring domain names (most of the links are from curated pages and curation sites).
If you’re lost or confused about how to get interviewed by authoritative blogs in your industry, the post below by Ann Smarty will guide you:
4. Create newsworthy content
Finding authoritative sites that’ll link back to your pages can be difficult. But you can make it easier by positioning your page. How?
Simply create newsworthy content.
Newsworthy content can be defined as that type of topical, timely content that people are interested in – i.e., that they want to read, share, cite, mention, link to, and promote.
You already know that content that gets picked up and republished by media sites such as BBC, CNN, and Mashable (to name just a few) generally have some useful or surprising element.
However, the term “newsworthy content” doesn’t necessarily mean that news-related sites are the only viable sites that will amplify the content’s reach.
You’ve got to understand that authority, niche-specific, and generic blogs that publish related content can do the same.
There are bloggers who understand how to create newsworthy content. One of them is Brian Dean. Although he doesn’t publish new content every week, whenever he does, his engagement level is usually out of this world.
In fact, his most recent post generated close to 750 valuable comments from his loyal audience. And there were more than 4,000 social shares on Twitter and Facebook combined.
And how many inbound links has the page had generated so far?
Well over 3,000 links from 321 referring domains:
You can find newsworthy content that’s both helpful and interesting in your industry using Buzzsumo. Just input your primary keyword and click on the “Go” button:
Next, you’ll see the most shared content targeting the keyword – in this example, “landing pages.”
You can model these titles and craft even more clickable ones of your own. That way, you’ll attract the right audience to your content, since 8 out of 10 persons read the headline.
Social media networks can help you give your content the initial boost it requires before the media and other interested users find it.
Conclusion
A word of caution: Be mindful of your link positioning.
Yes, contextual links are important because they boost search results, but the number of links on a particular content page also matters to Google. Having your links above the fold is always better.
This could be one of the reasons why Google rewards the first link they crawl, assuming several anchor texts were passing link juice to the same page on another site.
There are other things you can do to get contextual links such as guest blogging, and mentioning other sites in your content (and letting them know about it).
At the end of the day, Google makes decisions based on the number of links pointing to your pages and the circumstances surrounding such links.
Ultimately, it’s all about how users interact with your site. Google collects user data on site, and makes further ranking decisions to determine where your content pages should be ranked in the organic search results pages.
Which other strategies have you used to build contextual links that actually improved your search rankings and traffic?
No comments:
Post a Comment