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Market Your Business Through the Power of a Blog

Off-Page SEO

Clearly the most popular part of SEO is your off-page work, more commonly referred to as link building. It is where you want to spend the bulk of your time besides planning and creating your content. Some of the strategies below are old-school, some are new and some really niche specific. If you have a question, feel free to ask them in the comments area or you can start a new conversation over here.

Set Up Brand Alerts

Setting up Google Alerts, Talkwalker and Mention are practically staples in any SEO campaign today. Moz also has a neat built-in tracking tool, so if you are a subscriber, be sure to make use of that. The reason you’d want to do this is that you want to know immediately when someone mentions your brand (and any other relevant keywords) anywhere on the Internet. This allows you to track your reviews, negative press, blog mentions, forum questions and more! You’ll have the chance to get backlinks by jumping in early and you also get to build better brand loyalty by showing that you care enough to respond to their posts or issues.

Find Unlinked URL’s and Brand Mentions

If you are working on an established site, then chances are, there will be a ton of unlinked mentions out there for you to take.

Competing Company Links

Find your competitors, look around vertically and horizontally in your niche and category. Compile them and check their links. Then go out and get those links. They got it, why can’t you?

Ranking Competitor Links

Search for your target keywords and find those direct-ranking competitors. Chances are, you won’t see a lot of them during your competitor research phase. Now compile these sites and check their backlinks.

Find Important Links Using Link Intersects

Basically, you want to find the links that already link to your competitors. Why? There’s a higher chance that you can get those links quickly. You can use Excel after you export your competitor backlinks to see which domains link to them but for those rare SEO’s that don’t really like spreadsheets (like me) – then CognitiveSEO has a tool for it, so does Link Research Tools and as well as Moz.

Create Social Media Profiles

Create your social properties and make sure to put a link back to your website. If you can’t use them yet, then treat it mainly for branding purposes and to reserve the name when the time comes that you might actually need them.

Broken Link Building

Broken link building is basically a strategy to start a conversation with a webmaster. You give them something and they might eventually do you a favor. That’s the basic idea. Knowing that you can get creative with it. Here’s a great article from Erika about broken link building. Richard Marriott over at Clamber also put up an awesome tutorial.

Utilizing Relevant Pinterest Boards

Join or ask to get invited to Pinterest Group Boards. PinGroupie is a good place to start. True, Pinterest links are no-follow for the most part but Pinterest can bring you tons of traffic and visibility. You will get links that you would never get by doing normal link prospecting. You can even take it a step further and check the people that shared your pin and reach out to them. You can message with people directly in Pinterest now, just in case you haven’t been using it lately.

Join Expert Roundups

Expert roundups are a dime a dozen nowadays and they are getting bigger and bigger each day just to stand out and squeeze out the most social shares. You don’t have to join all of them but you should join some of them. For the most part, these are on blogs with their own readership, so it’s a chance for you to get your brand out there and eventually pull in more links. Oh, you can also be the one to do expert roundups and offer that as part of your outreach. Lots of people will link to it if you use a proper angle for the roundup.

Guest Posting on Influencer Websites

Guest posting is not dead. They should rephrase that. It’s more like a guest posting on blatantly fake blog networks is almost dead. People keep complaining about it but it really isn’t dead. In fact, it’s more important and more precious now than ever. Find the right sites, build the right connections and create great content for their audience without over-using anchor text.

Blog Commenting To Build Relationships

Blog comment links are mostly no-follow. The real value is in the relationships that are formed. I’ve met a ton of people simply by doing guest commenting and I got connected with new people that eventually linked to me because I took a bit of my spare time to build these relationships. I met Matt Capala through blog commenting and he has sent business my way and exclusive connections. (Blatant Plug: Buy his book.) Some relationships are started through email, some are started by joining local networking events and some can be started simply by blog commenting. If you want to learn by example, my friends Adrienne, Donna, Harleena, Sue, Don, Carol and Ryan are great people to learn from.

Utilize Quote Directories

Sounds funny, but there are many quote directories out there that can be used for links. Since we are talking about directories, go ahead and look for blog directories, startup directories, and niche-specific directories. The links can be acquired easily and for the most part, free.

Get on Sites that Offer Awards

If you are running a pet website, then you can find sites that offer awards both locally and internationally. Run a service business? There are plenty of business awards you can join. If you run a blog, go out and find sites that offer blog awards. Run a podcast? There are awards for that, too. In many cases, being nominated can get you a link already… but do try to win so you can show off the award and get other perks.

Contribute to Newsletters

Consider this as a way for you to get your brand out there. It’s also a way to get targeted traffic and acquire loyal readers. So where does the SEO part come in? You can find sites that would allow you to publish content exclusively for their subscribers. It’s like a guest posting but only through an exclusive list of people. You can also get on newsletter publishers that publish recommended content each month. Many of their subscribers use the newsletter content when publishing their monthly or weekly link roundups on their own blogs. That’s where your link is going to come from! As a side benefit, believe it or not, some people will copy the newsletter content directly and paste it on their site.

Get on Institution Websites

Confused? These are also known as .gov and .edu links. I could talk about hacking their sites, I could talk about manipulating their Moodle platforms and others but…this is sort of a white-hat blog. The traditional way is to get on their resource page. You can also offer work to them in exchange for a link. One of my older tricks is to track down the student editor and give him beer money. The .Gov sites will sometimes have forums that give do-follow links. Sometimes you can be a supplier to a project or event depending on your niche. It can open lots of doors for you if you do it the right way.

Get Links from Local Chamber of Commerce Websites

Local CoC websites are plenty but the rules are different for each one. In most cases, it’s pretty easy to get links from them. Just ask what you won’t do for them or what their requirements are.

Don’t Overlook New Bloggers

New bloggers are going to look for mentors. They look for people that are already where they want to be. They will ask questions and they will need guidance. If you have people following you or somebody emails you, do not hesitate to help them out. Relationships built out this way can net you links you will never really get by simply doing prospecting. Also, when building out your prospecting list, you will encounter new blogs. Do not hesitate to reach out to them. It doesn’t mean that they don’t have readers and it doesn’t mean that the link you’ll get is worthless since they are a PR-0 site. Often, these bloggers have really die-hard followers that jump on any recommendation they make and these followers are usually bloggers too. Imagine the extra links you’ll get. Oh, and in time, the link you get will become more important as they become more important in the space.

Do Guest Podcasting

Podcasting is BIG right now and 99% of the time, these podcasters have their own blogs so they can put the show notes there. You don’t have to even start your own podcast. The idea here is to get on those podcasts. That’s a 100% sure, high-quality link.

Submit to Curating Platforms

Curating platforms like Scoop.it can share your content out and link it back to you. In many cases, these are no-follow links but they have users of their own. Plus these users that curate has blogs. The things they curate get sent to their blogs and their readers get to find your content because of their referral. My personal favorite is Flipboard. It has brought me a ton of traffic already and readers actually do stick around.

Andy Thomson
Andy Thomsonhttps://www.thebloggingstation.com/
My name is Andy, I am a professional blogger, and my passion is helping people and businesses to be the very best that they can. I am 55 years old, and I have been writing all my life, and today the inspiration behind it all are my children, grandchildren, and the city I live in the UK, that cities name is Lincoln, with its people and ancient history there is always a story to be told. I thrive under pressure, because I believe that a challenge brings out the best in you, and I want to write at my best. I have run a blog for many years, and I love blogging, I use this blog as an escape from everyday life, and to spread the word and create awareness about mental health.

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