Step 12 to SEO: Off-Page SEO

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Am I building authority to my site from external websites?

We’ve arrived at the final step. And last certainly doesn’t mean least. Building authority to your site from external websites, also called link-building, is one of the most critical steps in SEO.

But with all the work you’ve done up to now, you probably already know that. In fact, we’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to share any stories, challenges, or wins from your SEO journey in the comments below.

First of all, what is link building and why is it so important?

Link Building 101

Link building is the act of getting other websites to link to yours. Not only does having lots of high quality links pointing to your page increase your traffic, it also helps search engines crawl the web and between individual pages on your site.

Link building can involve a very basic strategy and set of techniques, or it can be the most difficult part of SEO. It just depends on how you do it.

Anatomy of a Hyperlink

There are four parts in a hyperlink. Links can point to other sites, graphics, sounds, files, email addresses, and other locations on the same page.

The first ‘a’ is the anchor tag that tells search engines a link is going to follow.

Second is the ‘href’ which stands for hyperlink referral and indicates the URL the link is pointing to. (A # indicates a local link to somewhere else on that page).

Third is the visible text, meaning what users will see on the page. It’s the front end of the hyperlink usually highlighted in some way to signal that it’s a link.

Finally, is the link tag closure.

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Link building helps search engines discover new webpages, extract and index content, and determine how well they should rank in the search results. So when we type a keyword into Google’s search bar, we’re not actually searching the web, we’re searching Google’s index of the web, that is, what it has determined good enough to store and show in the search results.

Page ranking is dependent on more than high quality, relevant content. Lots of high quality external links to your site mean a better report card with Google, which is great news for you because you’ll rank higher in the search engine results page (SERP) than without them. It’s a vote of confidence in your favour.

But there are more benefits to link building that just ranking. A well defined and executed link building strategy can:

  • Help you build relationships with key influencers in the industry
  • Send referral traffic to your site
  • Boost brand building

Whether you’re collecting natural links or manual outreach links, we’ll take a look at what types of links you want pointing to your site and how to make that happen.

How to Get A High-Quality Link (or many!)

Start a Link Building Campaign

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty of link-building, it’s important to mention that link-building takes time. If you manage to acquire 10 links in the first month of your campaign, that’s a job well done, but you’re not going to notice a difference overnight. It takes time for those links to have an impact on your site’s traffic.

Determine your hook.

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You need to reach out and offer up a relevant asset. What will make people care about your site and what you offer enough to want to link to you? This varies according to your business and industry. Examples are: content, data, products, services, and people.

If you want to offer content then you need to know what people want to know about. Social media can steer us in the right direction here when we scout out and analyze the type of stuff people are sharing. Offer content that is relevant and gives a unique angle on a particular subject. (See Step 9 to SEO for more info).

Get various types of links.

  • Links to your homepage
  • Links that contain your brand
  • Links containing your target keywords
  • Links to deep pages, eg. a product or category page

Identify targets.

If you’ve been following from Step 1, then you’re getting to know a little bit about dogs, if you didn’t already. Let’s stick with that example.

You have a dog training website and you’ve just created the Ultimate Guide to House Training Your Puppy. Who might be interested in this content? Pet bloggers, e-commerce shops selling dog merchandise, dog trainer apps, pet stores, and pet sitter companies.

Go through each one (yes, it’s time intensive), and contact sites that are relevant to your pitch. To narrow down results a bit, consider only looking at pet bloggers that have a resource page, to which you could contribute with your guide. Such a search looks like this in the Google search field:

Pet bloggers inurl:resources

That command will return a list of pet bloggers’ resource pages. Boom. Those are the ones you want to start with.

But don’t just cold call them. Learn about their ethos to determine relevance to your site. Also, check on whether or not they link to other sites.

Then, prioritize them first by domain metrics, influence, and the probability of them linking to your site.

Check up on the competition.

If you can become a master in link building you’ll be way ahead of your competition

Here’s an excerpt from Step 2 to SEO on how to get insight from your competitors:

“How many referring domains do your competitors have? This points to site popularity and strong SEO.

You can use the MOZ link explorer tool (free for 30 days) to generate a list of all the backlinks to your competitors’ sites. From there you can compare those links against yours (use a spreadsheet for this) to see where the gaps are, if any.

If you’re already ahead of your competition, this is not your current focus (but, don’t lose focus of this important aspect). If you are behind, time to step-up your link-building strategy.

What sites are linking to your competitors and not to you? Reach out to them.”

Become a Master Builder

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Link building is full-on. That doesn’t mean that you have to spend all of your time trying to get links. Compared to every other SEO task on your plate (creating content, on-page SEO, keyword research, etc., etc.), we recommend devoting as much as 30% of your SEO time to link building, at the very least.

Once you have your strategy in place, you may consider hiring someone to manage this task if you want to go all in. Otherwise, MOZ gives us a free downloadable link-building guide (for beginners!)  that helps out big time. Get it here.

If this is your first visit to Logical Mix, check out our blog for a comprehensive 12-step beginner’s guide to SEO. And feel free to contact us anytime you have questions about the process.

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Logical Mix

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Step 11 to SEO: Internet Partners

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Have I been building relationships with non-competing companies?

Why would I need to build relationships with non-competing companies, unless they’re stakeholders in my business?

Two things:

First of all, everyone is a stakeholder in your business.

Second, It’s not all about you and your business.

Just kidding! It actually is, but it’s also all about the other guy and how you can help each other out. You know, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

But rather than risk collecting someone else’s dead skin cells and DNA under your nail bed, let’s view this idiom through the lens of online business and internet marketing.

Forbes noted that “the best way to create a consumer Internet company worth north of a billion dollars is to build a digital transaction business – a company that connects buyers and sellers so they can more efficiently transact.”

So north of a billion dollars is rather ambitious but hey, we also don’t want to limit ourselves so let’s just say that anything is possible.

Now, in my opinion, this statement doesn’t target a particular type of business; this is every company that’s in the business of selling a product or service online.

Let me illustrate:

You have a dog training niche website that sells every possible thing a dog lover could want. Out there in cyberspace, exists a really cool app that measures your dog’s health, sort of like Fitbit, but for your pooch.

With this app, you can time your dog’s walks (and yours, incidentally), find breed-specific diet recommendations, manage your dog’s vet check ups, create a feeding and med schedule, and monitor his vitals. It’s even shareable so when pooch goes to the sitter, they have an automatic detailed set of care instructions without you having to list everything out.

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This is an ideal non-competing internet partner. You can install a link to download that app on your site, and that app can link to your site for extended, comprehensive information and all the cool doggie merch you sell.

Further, you can also link up with local vets, doggie daycares, and pet insurance companies, so that you’re providing your customer with a toolkit of dog care products and services.

The most important thing in all of this is that they can all drive traffic to your site.

Why Should I Purposefully Create Internet Partners?

It’s probably going to happen organically and randomly after all, why is a strategy necessary?

Think about it this way:

When you hit the gym, it’s for a purpose: to achieve your fitness goals, whatever they are. If you just allow the randomness of Nature or Chaos Theory or the Cosmos to guide you to it, you’ll end up on your couch eating cheese doodles and watching Game of Thrones, wondering why you have to undo the button of your jeans every time you sit down these days (I speak from experience).

The same is true for digital marketing relationships.

Every success starts with a goal.

And every goal starts with a strategy for achieving it.

A strategy involves a set of actions or behaviours that help you reach your goal.

You simply can’t get the goal unless you have some idea of what you’re going to DO (binge eating junk food and watching Netflix ain’t it).

But this is not a blog about productivity (though we could all use a little brush-up on how to be more productive), so I’ll get to the point.

Let’s look at what those actionable steps look like in your Build-BOSS-Net-Buddies strategy (Yes, I just used the word BOSS as a synonym for awesome. No, I’m not 21 and hanging-10).

Step 1: Go Local

Start with citations.

Create online citations so other local online businesses can find you. To learn more about how to do that, check out our Step 5 to SEO blog: Local SEO.

Step 2: Be Present

Develop a social media platform and get active.

I can’t stress how vital this step has become in this Insta-age. People won’t even go to a restaurant these days unless they’ve scoped out entire menus, read related reviews, and seen a catalogue of food pics first.

You need an online presence to be anybody now.

The great part is that it helps you find non-competing companies to hook up with. Even just a few minutes scrolling, searching, hashtagging, and commenting is time well spent.  

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Step 3: Network

Reach out to other companies and offer them something of value.

Remember the I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine idiom? Here we are. People love givers so be the first to give. You’ve got to give a little to get a little so don’t be afraid to spend your time or expertise helping other people.

This is where you get creative. How can you share your product or service with non-competing companies in a way that truly benefits them and also helps to promote your business?

For example, as a local SEO company in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, I’ve connected with dozens of local businesses in my community through a network called Java Jolt. It’s a member-led group of business people who meet up to help each other out and build a supportive network. From there, my network of contacts exploded and I’ve got partnerships with just about every industry you can imagine. (If you want to know more, check out my interview with Whitby’s Chamber of Commerce).

Now I had a starting point with which to offer my service to companies who needed some digital marketing expertise, perhaps a little nudge in the right direction. This contributed to my professional reputation in all the right ways and I got to meet and help some really cool people and be part of some interesting projects.

The Bottom Line…

Forging new relationships is a vital part of any business development but it’s absolutely crucial for SEO. It’s the other less technical, softer and squishier side of SEO because it deals with real, honest, and often face-to-face interaction if you’re sticking local.

Consider all the people, consumers, businesses or otherwise who search and buy based on recommendation. Consider all the times you’ve searched for a product or service based on someone else’s recommendation.

So the bottom line is, if you want to show up in an online search, Build-Boss-Net-Buddies. That is, create and foster giving relationships with non-competing companies.

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Logical Mix

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Step 10 to SEO: Content Marketing

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Am I marketing the quality content I created?

You spent hours (or a good chunk of change) creating content that answers your customers’ questions and solves their problems.

Your customer wanted to know the best way to train their dog so you went beyond the call of duty and collected resources on how to actually make their dog smarter. Then, you put it all together in some easy-to-read, 100% accessible, problem-solving, smart, snappy blog that would make your customers so happy they’d convert on the spot and share your blog with their dog-loving friends.

Job well done.

(Well, maybe it was your copywriter but we’ll give you the credit).

But hang on, what are you doing with it? Is it just sitting there, all dressed up with no place to go, and no one to hang out with?

Why isn’t anyone reading your fantastic stuff?

You didn’t create swipe files and outlines and sweat over the perfect headers and paragraph structures and learn everything there is to know about how to avoid raising a dumb dog just to sit back and watch your awesome copy call in the crickets and collect digital dust, did you?

Of course not.

You might recall from Step 9 to SEO that writing for a person and writing for SEO are different.

On the one hand, you’re speaking directly to your potential customer in order to give her something she needs, to solve her problem, to provide her with answers. It’s a tall order but you did it.

One the other hand, you’re structuring your copy to speak directly to Google, to say, “hey G-dawg, check out my keyword-optimized headers, my high-quality backlinks, my relevant, user-friendly content rich with answers to people’s questions. Please give me a front-row seat in the SERP so everyone knows where to find me.”

The goal of marketing your content is two-fold:

First––get people to your site, reading your content and buying your product or service.

Second––gain authority in your niche, which happens when you start ranking for a target keyword in Google’s SERPs.

How do you do both?

There are several ways to get the right traffic to your site, but the best ones are here:

Email List

The obvious way to get what you want is to ask for it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but you have to try.

Ask your readers to subscribe to your site. Once you’ve got their email keep them engaged with regular, useful information to get them back to your site again and again and to build their interest and trust in your product or service.

Pay the most attention to your email subject line. Make it short, relevant, intriguing, and urgent when necessary. In the body, include a short story or anecdote, dropping in buzz words like yummy snacks. Hint at how you’re going to solve their pain point and include your simple, direct call-to-action with a link to juicy new content on your site.

Then, your clever silo structure takes them on a delicious journey through your site. (Keep reading to find out what I mean).

But don’t miss the following stuff––unless you enjoy watching your ROIs plummet like a suicidal emu from a high rise building.

Link Building

Inbound links from authority sites are one of the number one ways to get people reading your content. Link building isn’t the most fun activity you’ll ever engage in but it’s necessary for building relationships and proving to Google that you are worth a mention and a visit.

Now don’t get the idea that you can approach link building passively because it makes you want to jam toothpicks in your nose. Hire someone. There are tons of people out there who can take over the task of reaching out to different sites once your strategy is in place. We’ll get more into this in Step 12 so stay tuned.

I came across a clever strategy one of my clients was using to get links to his site. As a database for ESL teachers searching for work, he knew that universities were high authority sites so he contacted schools across the US and Canada offering their students the chance to win a scholarship. All they had to do was write an essay about why they want to be a teacher and send it to him through their newly created profile on his site. See? It attracted thousands of soon-to-be-teachers to his site, massively increasing his database

Social Media Sharing

Get on Twitter, FB, LI, Instagram, and whatever else floats your boat, and engage. Connect with as many people as you can, especially your competitors. Comments on posts. Set up staggered scheduling so you’re not posting the same thing on every platform. Consult a social media expert, or check out this guide from Buffer: How to Schedule Social Media Content for Next Week, Next Month, and Next Year.

A final and absolutely necessary step in marketing your content

One of the most clever strategies I’ve come across is interlinking. Not only does this appeal to Google, it takes your customer on a little journey through your site, providing him with resources like a trail of cinnamon-raisin bread crumbs.

Check it out:

Your home page should link to your product pages, which should link to your content where your customer can get all the information they need to build trust in your offering.

Or more likely, they come at it the other way, from a link in an email you sent to a content page, perhaps an interesting blog or something about the awesome benefits of that dog harness you’re selling. From there, they can navigate through to your product page where they can buy said dog harness.

Or, if they’re not yet sold, you’ve left some yummy snacks throughout that content that leads them to more useful content, which also leads them to your product page so when they’re ready to buy, it’s an easy hop over.

Here’s a key takeaway:

  • Parent links to child and child links to parent.
  • Child links to siblings and uncle if useful, but not to cousins.
  • If child must link to cousins for UX, make it no-follow to avoid confusing relevance.

I can’t stress enough how absolutely critical this structure is on your site. This is your marketing, nicely structured on your site, doing all the work for you.  

Don’t forget to check out our next Step––Internet Partners. Until then, get writing, emailing, building, sharing, and structuring.

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Logical Mix

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Step 9 to SEO: Content Creation

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Am I creating quality content that solves the searcher’s problems?

Every search for something begins with a problem. It’s the reason you’re reading this blog right now––you have a problem that needs a solution. Maybe your problem is small and you just need a little help on how to create great content. Great––but it’s still a problem because it means a few different things:

Maybe you’re not already creating awesome content and you need to to sell your product.

Maybe your revenue is down and you’re looking for ways to improve sales.

Maybe someone told you your copywriter stinks and it’s time you took matters into your own hands.

Maybe you’re your own copywriter.

Don’t worry, you’ve come to the best place to find out if:

  • You’re already producing awesome content (you might be, in which case you’ll be nodding your head as you read this)
  • Your content is readable but not clickable
  • Your content stinks and how to make it better

Now, if you’re not a writer and you don’t like to write, don’t waste your own time. Get a copywriter. Pay for a good copywriter. And trust us, price usually indicates quality so low ballin’ on the Fiverr side of things may get you a crapload of content for the cost of double-fat chai latte at your local barista, but it won’t be very good.

Several sources claim that quality content is the number one ranking factor. That’s right, NUMBER ONE. That means that content is more important than anything else on your site.

The #1 Most Important Question You Need to Ask Yourself Before You Write Anything

Who are you writing for––the person or the machine?

Well, both actually. And we’ll get there in a minute but it’s super important that you know “the machine” is much, much more like a person these days than ever before.

Back in the days of yesteryear, Google didn’t care so much about content, their algorithm paid attention only to having content with highly searched terms up on a page. Times are different now. Google will actually penalize sites that stuff keywords into content, even if that content reads sensibly enough. Sophisticated algorithms are now able to assess content quality––meaning, relevance, and where and how often you use certain keywords through a script (keyword density and frequency).

So, start with the person––your ideal customer––and write content that she (or he) cares about, that speaks directly to her, that solves her problem. Don’t write a sales pitch (even though selling is your goal).

Remember this:

Writing and Writing for SEO: What’s the Difference?

Straightforward copywriting is the art of using words to sell a product or service. A copywriter knows how to use words strategically to engage a reader and persuade her to purchase whatever you’re selling.

An SEO copywriter employs the same tenants, except she tailors the copy for an online presence, optimizing it for Google The tricky bit about SEO writing is striking a balance between optimizing for a search engine and serving your potential customer. You need to do both.

Write Clickable Headlines

You want to spend more time putting together a smashing headline than you do on your entire copy. Why? Because the title is what engages or repels readers. If your headline makes people snore, they’re not going to care what your page is about and they’ll bounce away.

If you’re walking the plank and doing your own copywriting, here are a few tips for writing a title that converts:

  • Lead with a 6-7 word phrase
  • Make it clear, snappy, and simple
  • Use adjectives, strategically
  • Promise to solve a problem
  • Use numbers wherever possible

Maybe that sounds like a lot to cover in just a few words but it’s easier than you think, especially when you get the hang of it.

For example, you’re writing a blog about dog training for your pet niche site.

Instead of: “Training Your Dog”

Try: “6 Easy Ways to Make your Dog Smarter”

See the difference? You’re speaking to the ultimate goal of the reader. No one wants a dumb dog, right? That’s why we train them, and it makes our lives “easy”.


“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” – David Ogilvy

If you’re stuck, check out copyblogger’s 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work for some ideas.

Deliver on Your Headline’s Promise

Beef your content without the bloat. You want to publish content that is meaty, meaning it satisfies the reader with lots of useful information. Google penalizes sites with thin content––only there as a base for keywords, which is why 1000 words is a recommended average for any piece of content. Build your content around a keyword, but ensure your copy reads smoothly and engages the reader.

Make your content compelling by putting the most important information first. In The Copy Cure, Marie Forleo refers to the first words of a sentence or paragraph the corner real-estate spot. Fill it wisely.

Link to Authority Sites

Why would you want to send your reader elsewhere for information? Isn’t the point to keep potential customers on your page?

There are two schools of thought. At Logical Mix, we want to help people solve their problems. If someone can do that better than us, then people should know about it. Keep in mind that selfishly coveting your customer and withholding useful information from them may do harm than good.

Linking to authority sites (like we did back there with copyblogger) also shows social proof, that you’re connected, sociable, value good content and want to share it around. Not only does this put you in Google’s good books, but it helps your customer––and they’ll remember you.

The Tail End…

Remember from Step One, always start with keyword research. It’s how you know what people people’s problems are and therefore, what they’re searching for. Then use free tools like Google Analytics to find out what part of your site is getting the most traffic and why. Use that info to generate new content to improve user experience.

And if you can’t write, don’t enjoy it, or don’t care enough to try, get a copy writer. The cost is worth the result.

Photo credit: Neil Patel

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