Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts

13 Errors to Avoid with Canonical URL

Canonical URL SEO

The canonical URL is used to tell the engines what is the official URL of a page; This is useful in some cases to resolve duplicate content issues. But beware: misused, canonical URL can hurt your SEO!

Why is it necessary to monitor the canonical URL?


Since the time I do audits (2003!), I have encountered many kinds of errors with the canonical URL. I will summarize them here, which will save you from doing them too ...

Maybe you do not realize the large number of instances where a site contains errors at the canonical URL (which is not necessarily indicated via a URL, by the way).

13 Errors to Avoid with Canonical URL:


  1. The same URL is indicated as canonical for a very large number of pages on the site (yet having different contents)
  2. Several canonical URLs are indicated in string (A indicates B, which indicates C, etc.)
  3. A indicates B as canonical, but B redirects to A
  4. No canonical URL is specified for a page that is called with different URL parameters (eg utm_source and utm_medium, or "sort", "orderby", etc.)
  5. No canonical URL is specified on a non-responsive mobile site (for example, with m.example.com)
  6. A indicates B as the canonical URL, but B is in error 404 or forbids crawl (disallow in robots.txt) or indexing (meta robots noindex)
  7. The actual URL and the canonical URL indicated differ by a slash at the end (present or absent)
  8. The canonical URL is indicated in relative and not in absolute (begins with http), which is not a problem in itself, but sometimes the reconstructed URL is different or wrong
  9. The actual URL uses one or more uppercase letters but not the canonical URL (or vice versa)
  10. The actual URL uses URL rewriting but not the canonical URL (or the reverse)
  11. The canonical URL always corresponds to the URL consulted, without verification, whatever is added in the URL
  12. A indicates B as canonical, and B indicates A as canonical
  13. In case of pagination, on each URL (page 2, page 3, page 4 ...) one finds as canonical URL that of page 1

It does not look like anything, but by force it can really hurt your SEO, not only on Google for that matter.

Both check and correct if necessary! And do you know of other errors with the canonical URL?


5 Essential SEO Principles To Master In 2017

I Believe, An Effective Keyword Strategies, Keywords Focus on the Website, Design for Optimal User Experience, With Good Quality Content and Crawlable Linking Strategy is The Foundation of a Successful Website SEO Campaign.

5 SEO Principles


Keyword Strategies: An Effective Keyword Strategy Start with Keyword Research and Selection, Selected Keyword and Keyword Phrase Should be used in the Website Content and Linking Strategy.

Keywords Focus on The Website: Selected Keyword and Keyword Phrase or its Synonyms or Similar Words Presence throughout the Website and Internal Linking.

User Experience: Site Loading Speed, Performance, and Security.

Good Quality Content: Fresh Content Focusing on Providing the Right Solution to Human Visitor with as much Information as Needed in the Smallest Possible Space.

Crawlable Linking Strategy:

  1. Internal Linking: Place Only Links that are Natural for the Human Reader. 
  2. Inbound or Incoming Links: All types of Incoming links that does not violet Google Link Scheme and Incoming Link Pointing to Live Pages.
  3. Outbound or External Link: Advocate site visitor to read related resource by pointing External hyperlinks.

How to find good links that will help your website ranking?

How to find good backlinks?
How to find good links that will help your website ranking?


Link building has been one of the most hotly debated issues in the SEO community for the past few years and The controversy started in the SEO community back in 2012, when Google first released Penguin update.

Experts believe that your website organic ranking can get hurt if your website has the wrong type of backlinks. Wondering, How do you judge the quality of a website? What is a good website and from which web pages should you get links?

Links are still the most important ranking factor for search engine like Google Organic Ranking and here's how you'll find and build quality links.

What Is a quality links?
In my opinion, there are few factors that make a link quality backlink:

  • Come from High Domain Authority, Page Authority and has high authority linkbacks.
  • Not created by any automated software/application.
  • Come from related site/topic.
  • Not Paid.

How do i get quality backlinks?


  • Relevant Source
  • Trusted Source
  • Sends traffic
  • Few other Backlinks on the page
  • Not easily acquired
  • Authors/Bloggers
  • Local
  • Industry
  • News



Make no mistake: all automatic backlinks are bad
All backlinks that have been created automatically have no positive influence on the rankings of your website. If these automatically created backlinks use the rel=nofollow attribute, there’s nothing you have to worry about.

If you used tools that automatically created backlinks in bulk for you, you should try to get rid of these backlinks to avoid a penalty. The link disinfection tool in SEOprofiler can help you to get rid of bad backlinks.

The easier it is to get a link, the less you will benefit from that link
For example,uploading an image to imgur.com and then adding a link to your site in the description or comments won’t do your website any good. Creating a blog on Tumblr and linking to your site also won’t boost your website rankings. If it is very easy to create a link, that link won’t have an effect on your rankings.

You do not need special metrics
Many webmasters only want to get backlinks from pages with a particular PageRank. While you can use this method, it is usually a waste of time and it makes link building more difficult than it really is.
If a website has an overall high-quality then it does not matter if the page with the link to your website has a low Google PageRank:

If a high-quality website adds a new page, the new page will have an initial PageRank of zero. Nevertheless, the page can still be very good. A page that has a PageRank of zero today can have a high PageRank tomorrow.

If only pages with a high PageRank had a chance, it wouldn’t be possible to get new pages in Google’s results page. Experience shows that new pages appear in Google’s results every day.

Using your common sense leads to lasting results
When you find a web page that could link to your site, ask yourself the following questions:
Does the linking page look good to the average web surfer? Does the page have interesting content?
Is the content related to my website? Does it make sense if the web page links to your site?

If you can answer all questions with “yes,” then you should try to get a backlink from that page. It doesn’t matter if that page has a low PageRank.

Google tries to imitate common sense with its algorithms. If you use common sense to build your links and follow the tips above, you make sure that the backlinks to your website will count in all future updates of Google’s algorithm.

SEM, PPC and SEO - Are you Paying for Website Traffic. What, Why, How?

SEM, PPC and SEO


Difference Between  PPC and SEM, may seem like a stupid question for some people. However, I guarantee 90% of people don’t know the correct answer of this question. Even further more, I bet most people think they are exactly the same.

So let me take the time to explain this concept a bit further so you don’t think I went off the internet marketing deep end here. We will begin with the definitions of both ppc and sem.

SEM - Search Engine Marketing

SEM is marketing and technical work designed to increase a website’s visibility on Google and other search engines. SEM can include…


  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
  • SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management – sort of like Public Relations Management for your business’s reputation on search engines).
  • PPC Advertising (Pay-Per-Click Advertising – including ads on Google AdWords, Yahoo and Bing – more below).

SEM is big business. There are thousands – soon I predict millions – of companies and consultants who specialise in this field. Companies like Google and Yahoo make almost ALL of their money from SEM, including their huge PPC text ad fees.

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click (PPC), also called cost per click, is an internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, in which advertisers pay the publisher (typically a website owner) when the ad is clicked. It is defined simply as “the amount spent to get an advertisement clicked.”

With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system. PPC "display" advertisements, also known as "banner" ads, are shown on web sites or search engine results with related content that have agreed to show ads.

PPC includes ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing – these are the ads you see at the top and right-hand side of search pages – or even on Facebook pages.

Usually PPC ads cost nothing to display – when a viewer clicks on the ad, only then is an advertiser is charged for the ad – hence ‘pay-per-click’.

In some cases ads are charged per 1000 ‘impressions’ (1 impression = the ad appears one time on a webpage displayed on one person’s computer).

The most popular PPC program is Google’s AdWords, accounting for around 90% of PPC ad dollars. In my experience, AdWords has been the most profitable choice due to the high percentage of total web search traffic on Google. AdWords is, however, becoming more competitive and costly every day which reduces the return on every advertising dollar you invest. Other networks are working hard to offer attractive systems and traffic to advertisers – trying to get a bigger piece of Google’s pie.

The most popular PPC ads are text ads like you see on Google’s search page. Video and display ads (display ads have a photo or graphic or logo) are also common and can appear on almost any website (although they are generally ‘served’ from an advertising provider like Google).

PPC is a very easy way to promote your website when getting a 1st-page organic position is a longer-term, more difficult goal.

PPC is generally profitable when your business targets a specific segment of the market with a relatively unique product or service or offer – and when there are not a lot of competitors bidding against your ads and driving up the cost of your PPC efforts.

The basic measures of PPC accounts are:

  1. CPC (Cost Per Click – the amount you pay each time someone clicks an ad and is directed to your site). CPC can range from a few cents for specialized, noncompetitive business niches – up to $100 or more for highly competitive industries like financial services.
  2. Cost Per Conversion (the amount you spend before you get one sale, signup or other goal). If you ‘convert’ one out of ten visitors, and you pay $1.50 for each visitor from Google (ie: CPC = $1.50), then your Cost Per Conversion will be $15.00.


The Difference Between Pay Per Click and Search Engine Marketing

So by now I am sure you have figured out my proposed analogy. If you didn’t, either my description is lame or you don’t drink Whiskey.

SEM, or search engine marketing is the 'big brother' to SEO. If you've considered getting your business online, you're sure to have heard of it...but what exactly is SEM? How does it work? Most of all, is it worth paying to make sure your business generates web traffic?

Biz4Afrika decided to enlist some expert help from Elwyn Dhliwayo, CEO of SEO Specialist, and we've got answers for all of your SEM-related queries.

What is the difference between SEO and SEM? Which, in your opinion, is more effective? Can you have one without the other?

Many people find it difficult to distinguish between Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). In most cases, both terms are often used interchangeably, which makes it even more confusing.

I will sum up everything in below.


As can be seen in the diagram above, SEO is simply a component of SEM. Therefore, SEM includes elements of paid search, such as PPC and also Social Media Marketing (SMM).

SEM is more effective in the short term, especially when you begin online marketing, as it has the ability to generate instant exposure, leads and sales for your business. However, as you run your SEM campaigns, it is crucial to invest in SEO as it will generate significantly higher returns in the long run. SEO results are permanent and will last for years!

In my opinion, for a business to achieve the best results from online marketing, it is important to make use of all elements of SEM, which are, SEO, PPC, and SMM. These three work together. For example a business can use PPC to drive traffic to the website, while SMM creates brand awareness and user engagement and then SEO ensures that the business website becomes more visible for valuable keywords / phrases that actually result in a lead or sale. I personally use Google Adwords (PPC or pay per click) as a research tool to inform organic search (SEO) and it really works.

How does SEM work? What are the main pros and cons of implementing SEM? Why should small businesses use it?

With PPC, you allocate a budget for your paid search campaigns and only pay when users click on your advertisements. On the other hand, for SEO, you pay an SEO specialist to optimise your website on a monthly basis, so it can be more visible on Google for keywords or phrases that are related to your business. All these efforts are aimed at generating more website visitors, enquiries / leads and sales for you company.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

SEO is a process which improves the quality and the quantity of the traffic coming to optimised website from organic search.

SEO Is:

  • SEO is a process, not a single action.
  • SEO is concentrated not only on quantity of the traffic but also on its quality.
  • SEO contains different seach engines: image search, local search and vertical search.
  • SEO helps Getting indexed your website quickly.
  • SEO is a long term marketing strategy

Does Google PageRank Still Matter for SEO

is PageRank Matter for SEO


Before knowing whether pagerank is dead or not, let’s know what is pagerank in detail. Pagerank is the initial brainchild algorithm developed by the Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Initially, the Google ranked the webpages according to the relevancy and each page was given a rank and that ranking system is called pagerank (PR). The website would have a pagerank from n/a, 0-10. Where n/a means Not Available and 0-10 where 0 being least and 10 being the highest.

Simply, we can say that using PageRank Google determines the importance of the webpage and is also one of the most important SEO factors to rank the websites in the search results.

This issue got me thinking, rather than repeating the same discussion over and over, why not write an article outlining all the commonly misunderstood metrics thrown around?

Before we get into all that however, let me invite you to comment below on additional metrics and questions we’re all asked about that are less than relevant. We all may be able to share replies but if not, at least you’ll feel better knowing that others feel your pain. Misery does love company.

How PageRank is Measured?

According to Page and Brin’s theory, importance of the page is determined by the number of pages leading to that particular page; and at the end importance is estimated to be the pagerank. Each link to the page is casted a vote according to the pagerank algorithm, so having as many as relevant links pointing towards your page is beneficiary. Moreover, websites with higher pagerank have more weightage in their votes compared to the website with low pagerank.

The most famous part of our ranking algorithm is PageRank, an algorithm developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded Google. PageRank is still in use today, but it is now a part of a much larger system. Other parts include language models (the ability to handle phrases, synonyms, diacritics, spelling mistakes, and so on), query models (it's not just the language, it's how people use it today), time models (some queries are best answered with a 30-minutes old page, and some are better answered with a page that stood the test of time), and personalized models (not all people want the same thing).

For Example, If website A is having PR 7 and website B is having PR 1, when they are pointing their links to website C, both the sites A & B have casted a vote to website C; but when compared to website B, vote of A has higher priority and more weightage.

Why PageRank?

In 2008 Udi Manber, VP of engineering at Google, wrote on the Official Google Blog: “The most famous part of our ranking algorithm is PageRank, an algorithm developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded Google. PageRank is still in use today, but it is now a part of a much larger system.”

PageRank may have distinguished Google as a search engine when it was founded in 1998; but given the rate of change Manber describes—launching “about 9 [improvements] per week on the average”—we’ve had a lot of opportunity to augment and refine our ranking systems over the last decade. PageRank is no longer—if it ever was—the be-all and end-all of ranking.

Is Google PageRank Really Dead?

In December, 2013, it was the last time, when we had Google Page Rank update, as John Mueller wrote it out in a Google Webmaster Help thread saying, that “there will be no other Page Rank update ever. He even said that webmasters and SEOs should stop using "PageRank or links as a metric" around their web sites.” Everything was depended on Google Page Rank updates but the end to Google's Page Rank updates has impacted on the growth strategies of SEO providers and webmasters.

Google has said for years that selling links that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines. We continue to reiterate that guidance periodically to help remind site owners and webmasters of that policy. February 22, 2013

Google PageRank, was designed for Google searchers and website owners. It has been associated with SEO since its establishment, its main functionality is to determine if a page will rank well in a search. PageRank plays a very important role in SEO arena and play a vital role in many of our web search tools that means it make your page more important and highly regarded by Google.

PageRank is a toolbar numbering system (0-10) that provides the estimate page rank of a site and measure the quality as well as the importance of a website based on the quantity and quality of a website's backlinks with maximum accuracy, while concluding you page rank. This ranking system had website owners and SEOs working overtime to achieve the highest Page Rank or to get closer to actual page rank which is profitable in order to apply your next strategy to get good ranking for their websites.

Here are some important elements that are the key to better Page Rank:

  1. Total inbound links
  2. Total outbound backlinks
  3. Quality of backlinks


Page Rank has been on the decline for a year now, but still if we measure the importance and popularity of a website, which has always been tricky without Google Page Rank. Several different tactics have been emerged since then but the importance of Google Page Rank metric has always been chased by SEOs and webmasters.

Some site owners are interested in their site’s PR because people won’t buy links from their site unless they have a high PageRank. Buying or selling links for the purpose of passing PageRank violates our Webmaster Guidelines and is very likely to have negative consequences for your website, so a) I strongly recommend against it, and b) don’t be surprised if we aren’t interested in helping you raise your PageRank or improve your website when this is your stated goal.

It might be possible that Google Page Rank will survive this year, as it is one of the most valuable metric that will never entirely can disappear, and if it doest not survive then we should be aware of how we can present and configure our content on the Web.

Signs Google PageRank is Dead

PageRank data removed from Webmaster Tools in 2009. Less updates over time - - - Not many updates of the pagerank algorithm was released as the time passed.

Pagerank was never added to their Chrome browser, if it was really important in the point of Google then there was no need of 3rd party add-on to know the Pagerank

Matt Cutts statement saying that “I would be surprised if that happened”, when asked about pagerank update On October 6, 2013.

Matt Cutts also states that, Google pagerank is broken and Google is not interested to fix it. Pipeline is the updated information about pagerank that is sent to the toolbars. PageRank was not updated for 10 straight months.

Matt Cutts, once said, “the reason why they (Google) still have it (PageRank) is not because SEOs use it but rather because searchers and users still use it to determine how “reputable” a website is.

Googler John Mueller says, Google will never update PageRank again on 1/22/14.

In 2013, Pagerank algorithm was not updated for 10 consecutive months, which is a big downfall when compared to previous updates release.

PageRank has not been updated in 14 months (as of 1/28/15).

After December 6, 2013 update; pagerank was not updated till 14 straight months. This indicates that updates have been stopped.

PageRank became leverage for spammers, and Google knows it.

Only Toolbar Pagerank is Dead – Real Pagerank is Alive & Well

Signs Google PageRank is Alive


December 04, 2009 by Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Zürich " The performance overview shows a graph of the aggregated speed numbers for the website, based on the pages that were most frequently accessed by visitors who use the Google Toolbar with the PageRank feature activated. By using data from Google Toolbar users, you don't have to worry about us testing your site from a location that your users do not use.

For example, if your site is in Germany and all your users are in Germany, the chart will reflect the load time as seen in Germany. Similarly, if your users mostly use dial-up connections (or high-speed broadband), that would be reflected in these numbers as well. If only a few visitors of your site use the Google Toolbar, we may not be able to show this data in Webmaster Tools."

March 11, 2016 by Posted by the Google Webspam Team " Links that pass PageRank in exchange for goods or services are against Google guidelines on link schemes. Companies sometimes urge bloggers to link back to: the company’s site the company’s social media accounts an online merchant’s page that sells the product a review service’s page featuring reviews of the product the company’s mobile app on an app store Bloggers should use the nofollow tag on all such links because these links didn’t come about organically (i.e., the links wouldn’t exist if the company hadn’t offered to provide a free good or service in exchange for a link). Companies, or the marketing firms they’re working with, can do their part by reminding bloggers to use nofollow on these links.


October 06, 2009 "Handling duplicate content within your own website can be a big challenge. Websites grow; features get added, changed and removed; content comes—content goes. Over time, many websites collect systematic cruft in the form of multiple URLs that return the same contents. Having duplicate content on your website is generally not problematic, though it can make it harder for search engines to crawl and index the content. Also, PageRank and similar information found via incoming links can get diffused across pages we aren't currently recognizing as duplicates, potentially making your preferred version of the page rank lower in Google." by Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Zürich

June 21, 2013 "How can I assess the quality of a site’s backlinks? "The links to your site section of Google Webmaster Tools is a great starting point for an investigation as it shows a significant amount of your site’s inbound links. If you know that you ran an SEO campaign during a particular period of time, downloading the latest links can come handy in slicing links created at that time. Using the links found in Google Webmaster Tools, we recommend looking for patterns that point to general issues that are worth resolving. For example, spammy blog comments, auto generated forum posts or text advertisements with links that pass PageRank are likely to be seen as unnatural links and would violate Google’s quality guidelines. For individual examples and hands-on advice we recommend getting help of peers and expert webmasters on the Google Webmaster Forum. by Written by Kaspar Szymanski and Uli Lutz, Search Quality Team.

September 09, 2010 Written by Surabhi Gupta, Joachim Kupke & Jayesh Vyas, Search Localization and Indexing Teams "The configuration above allowed visitors speaking different languages to more easily interpret the content, but for search engines it was slightly problematic: there are three URLs (English, French, and Spanish versions) for the same main content in Javier’s profile. Webmasters wanted to avoid duplicate content issues (such as PageRank dilution) from these multiple versions and still ensure that we would serve the appropriate version to the user.

September 01, 2011 Announcement "Q: How are links treated in PDF documents? A: Generally links in PDF files are treated similarly to links in HTML: they can pass PageRank and other indexing signals, and we may follow them after we have crawled the PDF file. It’s currently not possible to "nofollow" links within a PDF document."

July 27, 2012 Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer Example scenario: paid links The next example is paid links. I wrote this email to someone: "I also wrote to another link building SEO who got this message pointing out that the SEO was getting links from a directory that appeared to offer only paid links that pass PageRank, and so we weren't trusting links like that.

June 21, 2010 Announcement It's important to clarify that any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort. There are those who advocate for short-lived, often spammy methods, but these are not advisable if you care for your site's reputation. Buying PageRank-passing links or randomly exchanging links are the worst ways of attempting to gather links and they're likely to have no positive impact on your site's performance over time. If your site's visibility in the Google index is important to you it's best to avoid them.

September 23, 2016 Announcement "Google's algorithms rely on more than 200 unique signals or "clues" that make it possible to surface what you might be looking for. These signals include things like the specific words that appear on websites, the freshness of content, your region and PageRank. One specific signal of the algorithms is called Penguin, which was first launched in 2012 and today has an update."

September 08, 2016 Announcement "Google has long taken a strong stance against links that manipulate a site’s PageRank. Today we would like to reiterate our policy on the creation of keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites."

PageRank Term Repeat to next Para as "You can resolve issues with unnatural links by making sure they don't pass PageRank. To do this, add a rel="nofollow" attribute on the widget links or remove the links entirely. After fixing or removing widget links and any other unnatural links to your site, let Google know about your change by submitting a reconsideration request in Search Console. Once the request has been reviewed, you'll get a notification about whether the reconsideration request was successful or not."


Google pagerank is probably still a ranking factor (not as important as it once was) however the public version of Page Rank, what you and me sees will never be updated again, last update if memory serves me well Dec 2013, but they will still be updating their version of pagerank - but as AI becomes more and more intelligent, traditional signals will disappear.

If I don’t track my PageRank, what should I be tracking?

Take a look at metrics that correspond directly to meaningful gains for your website or business, rather than just focusing on ranking signals. Also consider metrics that are updated daily or weekly, rather than numbers (like PageRank) that only change a few times a year; the latter is far too slow for you to reliably understand which of your changes resulted in the number going up or down (assuming you update your site more than a few times a year). Here are three suggestions to get you started, all of which you can track using services like Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools:

Conversion Rate
A “conversion” is when a visitor does what you want them to do on your website. A conversion might be completing a purchase, signing up for a mailing list, or downloading a white paper. Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your site who convert (perform a conversion). This is a perfect example of a metric that, unlike PageRank, is directly tied to your business goals. When users convert they’re doing something that directly benefits your organization in a measurable way! Whereas your PageRank is both difficult to measure accurately (see above), and can go up or down without having any direct effect on your business.

Bounce Rate
A “bounce” is when someone comes to your website and then leaves without visiting any other pages on your site. Your bounce rate is the percentage of visits to your site where the visitor bounces. A high bounce rate may indicate that users don’t find your site compelling, because they come, take a look, and leave directly. Looking at the bounce rates of different pages across your site can help you identify content that’s underperforming and point you to areas of your site that may need work. After all, it doesn’t matter how well your site ranks if most searchers are bouncing off of it as soon as they visit.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
In the context of organic search results, your clickthrough rate is how often people click on your site out of all the times your site gets shown in search results. A low CTR means that, no matter how well your site is ranking, users aren’t clicking through to it. This may indicate that they don’t think your site will meet their needs, or that some other site looks better. One way to improve your CTR is to look at your site’s titles and snippets in our search results: are they compelling? Do they accurately represent the content of each URL? Do they give searchers a reason to click on them? Here’s some advice for improving your snippets; the HTML suggestions section of Webmaster Tools can also point you to pages that may need help. Again, remember that it doesn’t matter how well your site ranks if searchers don’t want to click on it.

Google PageRank is not dead to Googlers, but it is dead to us. In all, I’m glad. Less spammy emails, fewer cheaters, and less confusion from the name “PageRank”. Fellow SEO professionals know what I mean by “confusion”. We have to constantly explain to clients the difference between PageRank, and your page’s ranking in search engines. It just got annoying. But it is ironic. Larry’s last name is “Page”, hence the term “PageRank”. I really hope you knew that.

How can I get readers for my blog?

Use Social Media
Social media can be a very effective way of getting the word out about your blog. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram etc can be brilliant at driving traffic.

Just posting your blogs onto social media won’t work very well. Using social media to promote your blog means you will need to put in some time to create genuine and thoughtful posts and connections.

Guest Posting/Blogging
Contact sites you feel you could write a great, interesting post for that would interest their readers. Contact the editors of those sites with a personal, engaging and unique message complimenting them on their site and pitching some ideas for articles.

Make sure you make it clear why you think you can add value to their readers with your guest post. The more information you can provide about what you plan on writing the more likely you are to get a positive response, it’s all about making it as easy as possible for them to make a decision.

Commenting and Connecting
Another great way of promoting your blog is to comment on the blogs of others in a similar niche (but not in direct competition with you). Like and comment on their blogs, offer to link to them (or even better, DO link to them and alert them you’ve done it).

After a period of time of interacting directly, post an article into the comments of one of their most relevant blogs with a link to your article and an explanation of why you think they will find it interesting. The link may not be a “do follow” but you’ll be presenting your blog to an audience who is already reading the kind of content you offer.


  1. Create compelling unique content that fosters growth: contests, reviews, controversy, etc. "Link bait" 
  2. Link from your posts to other blog posts. Not other websites, not other blog homepages. Link to blog posts which often automatically link back to you while pinging the author to which you are linking.
  3. Post to Twitter
  4. Post to Facebook
  5. Post to G+
  6. Comment on a bunch of commentluv blogs so people can see your recent post.
  7. Deep link to other bloggers posts so they will be sent trackback notifications, getting them to your site might get it mentioned elsewhere - engaging with other bloggers is the best way to get your content promoted.
  8. Mention other people and products in your post and send out tweets letting them know they were mentioned.
  9. Get guest bloggers who will often promote the post to their audience (ex / current journalists have a healthy audience).
  10. Send an email newsletter to your list with a personalized intro and a link to the blog post (I use MailChimp it's great).
  11. Go into forums that are are active in and look for threads that your post relates to, if rules permit reply with a link to the post.

SEO and Content Marketing with Wizard of Moz Rand Fishkin

SEO and Content Marketing with Wizard of Moz Rand Fishkin
Search engine optimization (SEO) has come a long way since the days of stuffing keywords and hoping for the best. Back then, it was too often used to bolster weak writing, to trick people into reading something that wasn’t worth their time.
Now, good SEO makes great content even better. We use the keywords people search for to make sure what we offer will have value—which, in turn, makes the content naturally keyword rich. Good SEO practices help people find valuable content. As such, SEO is an essential part of content marketing strategy.
Few marketers know more about the mysterious inner workings of search engine algorithms than Rand Fishkin. Rand and the team at Moz have been helping clients improve their inbound marketing for over a decade. In addition to serving clients, Rand shares his expertise with the marketing community on the Moz blog, particularly in his Whiteboard Friday series.
As Arthur C. Clarke said (sort of), “Sufficiently advanced SEO is indistinguishable from magic.” So it makes sense that Rand’s official job title is “The Wizard of Moz.”
As part of the The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to Content Marketing, we asked Rand to share his thoughts on SEO’s role in content marketing strategy. Read on to learn which SEO skills all marketers should have, which opportunities marketers should capitalize on within the coming year, and more.

Ask the Expert with Wizard of Moz Rand Fishkin

LinkedIn: If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin?

Rand Fishkin: I'd work hard on getting to know my audience, studying my competition, and formulating a strategy around what would resonate before I ever took to the content creation itself. But, from that point, everything would be experimentation and evolution based on what I learn. Every audience and every platform are different. I suspect that, depending on how unique the new audience I was going after was from my current audience (of mostly marketers and tech folks), it might take me some serious time to get good at finding a sweet spot.

LinkedIn: In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today?

Rand: A lot has changed, but I think, more than anything else, the last five years have reduced loyalty and attention to almost unrecognizable levels. No one subscribes to just a few feeds or just a few accounts on social media. No one's messages have a shot at reaching 60 or 70% of their audience—even the audience that's opted in and said "I want to see what you're sharing." All of the social networks have substantially reduced reach. Email deliver-ability and open rates continue to shrink. RSS readers are barely alive anymore. Earning your audience's attention five years ago was relatively easy (or at least, much easier) if they'd already connected themselves to you. Today, that advantage is gone—a subscriber doesn't mean what it used to, and I doubt it ever will again.
Every new message you want to send will have to pierce the cacophony of noise that overwhelms us in the digital age.

LinkedIn: If you were tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you would be looking for?

Rand: Empathy. Great marketers have immense empathy for their audience. They can put themselves in their shoes, live their lives, feel what they feel, go where they go, and respond how they'd respond. That empathy comes out in content that resonates with your audience.

LinkedIn: In your opinion, what is the baseline of SEO skills content marketers need to have?

Rand: I think a content marketer actually needs more SEO skills than marketers in nearly any other position (with the obvious exception of SEO specialists themselves). That means understanding keyword research and how to do keyword targeting, how search engines generally rank pages, some of the technical aspects of SEO around indexation and crawling, how content on the same domain can boost that site's authority and ranking potential, etc. Given that content marketing isn't just about producing content, but about earning traffic to it as well, SEO should be a cornerstone of any content marketer's repertoire.

LinkedIn: What current SEO opportunities will content marketers be glad they acted upon two years from now?

Rand: First, better content > more content. This is one that's tough because A) many teams and managers and clients still want a certain number of pieces rather than aiming for fewer pieces of higher quality and B) quantity is how content marketers get their reps in—it's how we practice our art and get better at it.
The reason this matters so much is that engines are starting to learn which domains people prefer, to put those domains in front of them more and more. If you fall behind this curve, and a substantive portion of your content doesn't interest, excite, or engage visitors, you could quickly find yourself in a negative spiral of a feedback loop that lowers your aggregate rankings long term.
Second, schema and rich snippets. This one's obvious because it not only drives up clickthrough rates today, but is likely to have more and more influence and opportunity over time. If you get good at it now, you can expect a string of returns.
Finally, link outreach and link-earning content. Many of us keep hearing how link building is dead, and it's something I've said myself. But the need for links is not dead, and it doesn't even appear that links are getting less correlated with high rankings. So links are still something we need, but classic, old-school, manipulative and low-quality link building is diminished if not gone. Thus, we need to produce content that naturally earns links, and content that's likely to earn links once we do the right kinds of outreach. Then we need to do that outreach!
The best part is that if you get good at link earning and link outreach now, you'll rank and earn visibility and those links will compound and earn you more and more rankings over time.
Thanks to Rand for carving out time to talk with us. You can follow him @randfish and find more of his always awesome content on the Moz blog.