Mehedi Hasan

24/08/2023

Complete SEO Service:

Monthly SEO Result

Benefits of SEO: 4.5K Traffic increases in 1 month

27/07/2023

12/05/2022

Product structured data
Overall, Shopify does a pretty good job with structured data. Many Shopify themes should contain “Product” markup out-of-the-box that provides Google with key information such as your product’s name, description, price etc. This is probably the highest priority structured data to have on any e-commerce site, so it’s great that many themes do this for you.

12/05/2022

Fast Simon implementation
Fast Simon is an enterprise solution that adds robust personalization features to your Shopify store, and is becoming increasingly popular. If your Shopify site is utilizing the Fast Simon technology, you’ll want to be sure that you’re taking steps to adjust any potential indexing issues from an improper implementation.

Confirm that Fast Simon is pre-rendering your website’s content so that Google doesn’t run into crawling and indexing issues. This will give Googlebot a server-side, rendered version of your site that will make it easier for it to interpret the content. For more details, you can read our case study here.

20/04/2022

10 Ways to increase Instagram followers

1. Optimize your Instagram account

2. Keep a consistent content calendar

3. Schedule Instagram posts in advance

4. Get partners and brand advocates to post your content

5. Avoid fake Instagram followers

6. Showcase your Instagram everywhere

7. Post content followers want

8. Get the conversation started

9. Find hashtags that convert

10. Make your Instagram followers happy

13/04/2022

Wordpress SEO Checklist: 20 Tips to Improve Your Rankings

1. Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider
You need to make sure you are hosting your site with a reliable provider — site speed, uptime, and security are all key reasons to think carefully about who you will use as your host.

Site speed has a direct impact on your WordPress site’s SEO performance, and both poor uptime and security vulnerabilities can result in site quality issues. Don’t be tempted to go for the cheapest option, as you are more likely to suffer from performance issues.

WordPress themselves recommend three hosting providers, and it makes sense to consider these options if you are not sure where to start.

2. Install an SEO-friendly WordPress Theme
When you first install WordPress, you will almost certainly see the platform’s default ‘Twenty Twenty’ theme. However, chances are this isn’t one you will want to use for your site.

There are literally thousands of free themes available straight from the dashboard and many more premium themes, you need to choose carefully, or you could end up using one which isn’t SEO friendly.

While many themes claim to be SEO-friendly, it is not uncommon for themes to come bundled with scripts and plugins that you will not use, and that will slow your site’s performance down. Before installing a theme, run its demo through Google’s web.dev tool to get insights on potential performance and SEO issues.

Measuring SEO best practices
This should at least give you the confidence that you are choosing a theme that is not going to hold you back.

3. Install a Free WordPress SEO Plugin
Before you begin to optimize your site, you need to install an SEO plugin. Luckily, there are a couple of main options which come commonly recommended, both of which are free to install:

Yoast SEO

All in One SEO Pack

For the purpose of this guide, we will be using Yoast, but take a look at our best WordPress plugins for SEO guide for both free and paid options.

Please note, a plugin won’t optimize your site for you; it just makes it easier for you to do blog SEO and to adhere to best practices.

One way to install a plugin on WordPress is to log in to the admin panel and navigate to the ‘add new’ plugin page down the left-hand menu: Plugins > Add new

Once you are there, search for the plugin which you want to install and hit ‘install now.’

5. Check Your Site’s Visibility Settings
WordPress gives you the ability to ‘discourage search engines from indexing’ your site, which essentially means it won’t rank. This is commonly used by developers while a site is in development to stop it from being indexed while pages and content are not complete.

It is more common than you would think to find that this block is left in place after launch. You need to check your site’s visibility settings under: Settings > Reading.

Here, you will see a checkbox right at the bottom of the page:

search engine visibility checkbox for WordPress SEO
If this box is ticked, you need to untick it.

6. Enable SEO Friendly Permalinks
WordPress gives you a number of different options for how URLs are structured, and you need to make sure you are using the most SEO-friendly option.

By default, WordPress uses URLs like this:https://domain.com/?p=123. These URLs are not search engine-friendly, and there is absolutely no way to even begin to identify what the page is about from the URL alone.

Luckily, you can choose a custom URL structure at: Settings > Permalinks

For most sites, you will want to choose ‘Post name’ for your permalinks.

image.png
7. Verify Your Site with Google Search Console & Submit Your XML Sitemap
If you’ve not previously done so, you’ll need to verify your site with Google Search Console. If you have never done this before, you can learn how to do so in our definitive guide to Google Search Console.

Follow the verification steps listed and choose the ‘HTML tag’ method. From there, jump over to the Yoast plugin: SEO > General > Webmaster Tools.

Then enter the contents of the HTML tag into the ‘Google verification code’ box:

image.png
Once you have verified your site, you need to submit your XML sitemap by heading to the ‘Sitemaps’ tab. (Yoast generates an XML sitemap by default — check domain.com/sitemap.xml)

image.png
You can then submit your sitemap location (sitemap.xml):

WordPress SEO Tips: Optimizing Pages & Posts
Once you have implemented the WordPress SEO basics, you are ready to get started optimizing your site and working through the things that will make a real difference to how you rank.

First, we need to look at how to approach SEO when optimizing pages and posts before sharing a number of advanced tips and tactics you can use to take your site to the next level.

8. Carry Out Keyword Research
Without keyword research, you are not going to know which search terms you should be optimizing your site’s content for. In fact, keyword research should come at the start of any SEO project and be used to plan your site content and on-page optimization.

You can use our Keyword Overview tool to identify the keywords you should be using and optimizing for.

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To learn how to use SEMrush to carry out keyword research in more detail, take a look at this guide.

Whether you are starting to optimize your site from scratch or are creating new content, knowing the keywords you are trying to rank the page for is essential.

9. Install the SEO Writing Assistant by SEMrush Plugin & Create Great Content
Before you start creating or optimizing the content across your site, install our SEO Writing Assistant plugin (also available as a Google Docs add-on). As you write (or review) content, the plugin will help you to ensure that it is written in an SEO-friendly way, and will give recommendations and an analysis based on your Google top 10 rivals for a given keyword.

SEO Writing Assistant plugin recommendations
Simply enter your target keyword(s) and hit "get recommendations" to see a list of suggestions to improve your page’s content:

image.png
Perhaps it goes without saying, but if you want to rank at the top of Google with your WordPress site, you need to make sure that you are creating great content. The SEO Writing Assistant will help ensure that your content is optimized and structured in a search-engine-friendly way, while also recommending additional keywords you might consider working into your copy.

Review Ranking Content

It is important that you spend some time analyzing the content which already ranks for the terms you are trying to target. Without understanding what is already ranking, you will start creating content blindly — why create content that won't work?

Here’s a great guide that gives more insight into creating content for SEO to help you improve your skills while approaching and writing content that will help you rank better.

10. Set Custom URLs for Pages & Posts
By default, WordPress uses your page’s title to create the URL, meaning that these can end up being lengthy and sometimes truncate on the SERPs.

Let’s say you have launched a piece of content which is titled ‘The Best Dogs Beds to Buy In 2020.’ Dependent on how you set your permalinks, you are likely going to end up with a URL of https://domain.com/the-best-dog-beds-to-buy-in-2020.

image.png
However, you know that the main keyword which you are targeting with the content is "best dog beds". The good news is that you can choose to overwrite the default URL and choose a custom permalink for the page.

Simply click the "edit" button, and you can enter your preferred URL.

image.png
11. Use Optimized Page Headings
As well as creating your page’s default URL, the page title also defines your H1 heading. Not familiar with what this is?

A page’s H1 heading is intended as a way to give context on what your page is about to both users and search engines. Think of it the same as the title of a book.

Best practices typically call for using one H1 heading (the page’s title), but you should also use H2 - H6 headings; they t give structure to your content, also to break up the text and make it easier to read.

If your H1 is the book’s title, the H2s are chapters, with subsequent tags acting as sub-headings. Page headings are a great place to include your page’s main keyword and variants but don’t over-do this and never force the inclusion of a keyword somewhere that it doesn’t naturally fit.

You can add H2 - H6 tags into your content by clicking onto a block, selecting the style as ‘heading’ and choosing the type:

image.png
12. Craft Unique Optimized Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Your page's title tag tells users and search engines what your page is about and is commonly regarded as being an important ranking factor. It is what feeds the clickable page title you see on Google search results.

Yoast automatically sets your page’s title tag using your page heading, but you also have the ability to overwrite this to improve on it and work in variations of keywords that you might not include in your page’s heading:

Optimized Title Tags options in SEO plugin
You can either use snippet variables, add custom text as your title tag, or use a mix of both.

You consider rewriting your title tag to include variants that define location or intent:

Optimized Title Tags variant options
Use keyword research to guide how you optimize each page’s title tag and read this guide to learn more about how to structure this important page element.

And while meta descriptions are no longer a direct ranking factor, they do indirectly impact your site’s organic performance due to CTR (click-through rate). It is worth spending time to write enticing descriptions (these can be any length but typically truncate after around 160 characters). You can add meta descriptions within the same section as title tags:

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13. Use Internal Linking
You need to use internal linking within your content to help establish topical relevancy between different pages on your site, to pass authority earned from external links, and to help users efficiently navigate.

Adding in internal links to other pages in WordPress is really simple. All you need to do is highlight the text which you want to link (this will be your link's anchor text) and click the ‘link’ button on the toolbar, which will then allow you to either paste a URL or search for pages within your site.

image.png
Check out our guide to building an internal linking strategy to learn how to choose the most suitable pages to link to.

14. Use Optimized File Names for Images
You should be using images and rich media within your content. In fact, a Backlinko study found a correlation between using at least one image on a page and rankings.

image.png
It is all too easy to simply upload a screenshot or image with a useless file name, and it is not something we always pay attention to, but we should.

Before uploading an image to the WordPress media library, make sure you are using optimized file names — this helps to give further context to a page. Rather than /image123.jpg for an image of a large dog bed, use /large-dog-bed.jpg. It is simple; make sure that the file name of the image reflects what it shows.

If you need to rename images after they have been uploaded, here is how.

15. Add Alt Text to Images
When using images in your content, make sure you are adding alt text to each of them. Not only are alt tags a principle of web accessibility to aid visually impaired users with screen readers, but they help to give context and a description of images to search engines.

Ensure your alt tags reflect a clear description of what the image shows. You can add alt text to any image within WordPress in the ‘Image Settings’ section of the ‘blocks’ menu:

Using alt-tags in WordPress
Think carefully about how you write your alt text. If this is your image:

An example of an image to optimize with alt-tags - a dog bed
Use alt text like ‘starry square dog bed’ rather than defaulting just to ‘dog bed.’ Be as descript as you can be, and use unique alt text for each image.

Advanced WordPress SEO Tips: Take Your Site Performance To The Next Level
If you follow the above tips and advice, you will find that you can master the basics of WordPress SEO pretty quickly. Think of these steps as a checklist for every page and post you create, and you will struggle to go wrong.

But what about other things which you can do to improve your site’s performance and help it to rank above your competitors? Here are a number of advanced WordPress SEO tactics for you to use.

16. Install a Cache Plugin to Improve Site Speed
While WordPress undoubtedly offers strong performance almost out of the box, there are improvements to site speed that almost all sites can make, especially when we consider that a site’s speed is a strong ranking factor.

You can get very technical on improving your site’s speed, but one of the most effective ways to increase this is by using a caching plugin to cache your posts and pages as static files. These static files are served to your users, rather than being dynamically generated each time and can significantly improve performance.

WordPress recommends using either W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, or Cache Enabler.

17. Optimize Images
Another proven way to improve your site’s speed and performance is to optimize your images, as these are one of the most common things which contribute to slow speed.

If you are using lots of images and rich media within your content, the size of the page can increase noticeably, but this is often because images not being properly optimized. A common image issue is using one that is much larger than the size than the image will actually display at — this is a sign that the image was not optimized.

The good news is that you can quickly optimize your WordPress site’s entire media library, as well as all future images you upload using the Smush plugin.

18. Noindex Tag Pages & Other Low-value Content
WordPress uses a number of different page taxonomies, including categories and tags. Categories serve a great purpose, especially when grouping content together:

Example: You launched a recipe collection, and you want to use categories for different cuisines.

Tags are smaller and typically focused on specific topics.

Example: One recipe my tag parmesan cheese, pasta, and butter.

Tags are rarely useful to users that aren’t already on your site. From an SEO perspective, these pages rarely offer anything of value, and you typically don't want these pages to be indexed and send traffic from Google (traffic quality is low).

And the same applies to media pages and other post formats that WordPress uses. Usually, you don’t want these to be indexed by Google, and you can add ‘noindex’ tags straight within Yoast.

Head to: SEO > Search Appearance > Taxonomies

Here, you can choose whether or not to show the taxonomy type in search results.

Yoast noindex example for wordpress plugin
Make sure you select ‘no’ for any taxonomies, content types, or archives (found in another tab), which you don’t want Google to index.

As another note here, head to the ‘Media’ tab and make sure that the ‘Redirect attachment URLs to the attachment itself?’ option is selected as yes, as this helps to prevent an issue which occurred in Yoast back in 2018 where individual attachment URLs were being indexed.

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19. Mark Up Your Pages with Schema
Schema markup can help to enhance your SEO efforts by adding context to your content and data. It helps Google to understand your content, present it in different and useful ways, which enhances a searcher's experience.

To put it simply, by adding context to your pages, you are making it more likely that you not only rank higher but also get clicks when your page receives impressions.

Thankfully, since Yoast 11.0, a full structured data graph is built for every post or page on your site, but there are instances where you will want to mark up specific blocks within WordPress. You can do this when you create a new block by choosing a ‘Yoast Structured Data Block’, which you can read more about here.

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20. Use ‘Last Updated’ Dates
You should regularly be updating your evergreen content to ensure it is always current and relevant, but a question that is often asked is whether you should be changing the original publishing date of your pages and posts, removing dates all together or something else.

One suggestion is to use ‘last modified' or 'updated on' to show users and search engines when your content was last updated, giving them the confidence that the information is current and relevant right now. Thankfully, you can easily add last modified/updated info on your WordPress pages and posts using the WP Last Modified Info plugin.

Happy Optimizing
There is no arguing that WordPress is one of the most SEO-friendly CMS’ out there, and that is one of the reasons why it is so popular. Not only is it user-friendly, but it is easy to implement a whole host of SEO tactics using just a small number of fantastic plugins.

If you are running WordPress, you have made a good choice. By following the steps above, you are putting yourself in a great position to outrank your competitors.

12/04/2022

The 5 Crucial Benefits of Hiring a Social Media Manager

1. Post Consistency
Mobile Social Media Manager KelownaDaily tasks can start to take over your day and push smaller tasks to the back burner - we understand. Posting to social media accounts tends to be one of those tasks that gets neglected for a lot of people due to the piling up of daily responsibilities and urgent tasks. The idea that “Facebook can wait - I’ll post tomorrow” is all too real. As tomorrow turns into next week, and next week into next month, you’ll eventually wake up to realize you no longer have an active social media account. You’ve gone silent.

This is where a social media management company comes in. It’s important that followers are getting fresh content from your brand on a regular basis in order to keep reminding them of your company - and in turn your products and services. Think “out of sight, out of mind” when it comes to your accounts. It is also important for new users coming to your social pages to see that your company is not only posting often, but the information that they receive is recent and interesting. For a user to get value from following your account - they need to be engaged in what you’re sharing.

A social media manager has time dedicated specifically to your social media accounts to ensure that posting stays on track. Not only will they stick to a posting schedule, but they will schedule posts in advance in order to eliminate the “I’m too busy to post right now” mentality. Keeping your company relevant to followers is the top priority here.

2. Customer Engagement
social-media-likesAlong the same line as posting consistently to social media, monitoring accounts is just as vital to keep track of your company’s account engagement. This is another one of those things that just might not seem as high priority as other daily tasks - but it is just as crucial to the success of your accounts. One of the last things you want to do is miss messages from customers or potential customers and end up making them feel ignored by your company.

A social media manager will make monitoring and engagement a top priority. They can allocate time to monitor your accounts and not only listen in on what is happening on your accounts but engage with users. This “listening in” on customer posts will give you and your social media manager a keen knowledge of what customers are looking for. Acknowledging these customers through various forms of engagement provides “evidence” that you’re paying attention to what they’re saying. This evidence is important to show customers that your company cares about their input.

3. Content Research
We know how time consuming it can be to find relevant articles and information for you to post to your company page. It’s crucial to find interesting content that is new, relevant, and will engage users while keeping away from anything that may be controversial. On top of finding articles and information to post - it is important to track what your company’s competitors are doing on social media. You want to stay ahead of what everyone else is doing in order to stand out, but the time it takes to do the research can add up quickly.
We can’t stress enough how important it is to make sure the content you find and post is engaging for your audience. Not only should posts be interesting, but you should have a diverse range of post types as well. Gaining more meaningful engagement on your social media posts is where a trusting relationship is built between your company and its customers.

A social media manager will utilize the necessary tools to monitor keywords and search through resources to find the best and most engaging content for your target audience. Staying up-to-date on the latest news and information specific to your company will give your customers a place to get interesting articles and keep you in the spotlight.

checking-social-media

4. Post Analysis
It’s easy to argue that you could look at the likes and engagement on your posts to see how they are doing. However if you’re not utilizing reporting tools and doing a full analysis of what posts garnered the most engagement, the demographics of the post engagement, what days and times work best, and the amount of clicks on your post links, you’re simply not getting the full picture. There is much more of a science to it than looking at previous posts and the number of likes.

Monthly post analysis can significantly impact your social media strategy - and it is (major) key to constantly update your strategy based on what is and what isn’t working. The longer reporting continues, the more detailed reports can be made and your company’s target audience can be narrowed down and marketed to accordingly.

There are a number of tools that a social media manager can put to use in order to better survey your posts. These can be used to build reports and keep track of the success of your posts on a month-to-month basis. Adapting to trends is the big point here - moving forward each month, a social media manager can analyze different aspects of each post and create a content release schedule for the coming month. The result is content that has been tailored to what your customers want to see.

social-media-analysis-roketto

5. Overall Value vs. Price
Now that we’ve scratched the surface on some of the crucial work that goes into social media management, let’s revisit the question “How hard can it be to post to a couple accounts every few days?” It is important to consider all aspects that go into creating a successful social media account when considering whether to get a social media manager for your business. The overall value of social media when looking at the price, comes from the time spent putting together an effective strategy, sticking to that strategy and shaping it each month to reflect what’s working best.

Look at the entire picture when reviewing the cost of a social media manager or management company. Consider the amount of time that needs to be spent on posting, engagement, research, analyzing posts and reviewing and reworking your overall social media strategy. Now multiply that by the amount of different platforms you want your company to utilize. The time adds up quickly, and handing this off to a professional will result in more time that you can spend growing your company in other ways, while your social media presence is in good hands.

In Conclusion
When you take a step back and survey your options - be it posting on your own or hiring a company like Roketto - you can see that the value significantly outweighs the price. At Roketto, our first step to the success of running a social media account is understanding your business, your brand, and your vision in order to help propel your company towards success.

11/04/2022

1. Post Consistency Mobile Social Media Manager Kelowna Daily tasks can start to take over your day and push smaller tasks to the back burner - we understand.

03/04/2022

This is a complete guide to off-page SEO in 2022.

In this new guide you’ll learn exactly how to build the type of off-site signals that Google wants to see, including:

Backlinks
Social signals
E-A-T
Branded searches
Online reputation signals
Lots more
Let’s get started.

Off-Page SEO Fundamentals
Off-page SEO Fundamentals
Let’s start things off with a quick review of the basics.

Specifically, I’m going to share what off-page SEO is and why it’s important in 2022.

You’ll also learn the major differences between off-page SEO and on-page SEO.

What Is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO includes activities done off of a website in an effort to increase the site’s search engine rankings. Common off-page SEO actions include building backlinks, encouraging branded searches, and increasing engagement and shares on social media.

In other words: off-page SEO is all the stuff that you do off of your site to get Google and other search engines to see your website as trustworthy and authoritative.

Why Is Off-Page SEO Important?
Backlinks and other off-site signals still form the foundation of Google’s algorithm.

In fact, our 2020 search engine ranking factors study found a clear correlation between total backlinks and Google rankings.

Top ranking pages have more backlinks than lower ranking page
And Google has gone on the record saying that they still use PageRank.

Google still using PageRank
That said: links are only one part of off-page SEO. Google themselves state that they use other off-site SEO signals to size up your website.

Google uses other off-site SEO signals
For example, Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines largely relies on a site’s off-site reputation to figure out whether or not that site can be trusted.

(They call this “Reputation Research”.)

“Reputation Research” includes looking at online reviews:

Google Guidelines on user reviews
Recommendations from experts:

Google Guidelines on expert sources
And mentions on authority news sites and Wikipedia.

Google Guidelines on authority sites
The bottom line? Links are by far the most important off-page SEO signal. But they’re one of many.

I’ll cover links and the other off-site factors that you need to know about in the rest of this guide.

But for now, it’s time to learn about…

On-Page SEO vs. Off-Page SEO
On-page SEO is everything that you can directly control on your website, including content, title tags, keyword usage, SEO-optimized URLs, internal links and image alt text. Off-page SEO are actions that happen away from your website, like links and mentions on other websites.

For example, I published this complete list of seo tools a few years back.

Backlinko – SEO tools post
And to optimize that page, I used my main keyword in my title tag, URL, and a handful of times in my content.

"SEO tools" keyword in post
I also sprinkled in synonyms and LSI keywords to help Google understand the content of that page.

SEO tools post – LSI keywords
Even though that page was “perfectly optimized”, I knew that my job was far from done.

My target keyword for that page has an Semrush keyword difficulty score of 94.

SEO tools – Keyword difficulty
Which meant, if I wanted to rank that page on the first page of Google for that keyword, I needed some serious off-page SEO.

This is why I promoted that post on social media.

SEO Tools post – Promotion tweet
And used email outreach to build links directly to that page.

Because I combined on-page and off-page SEO, this page now ranks in the top 3 for that keyword.

Google SERP – SEO tools
With that, let’s get into the strategies that you can use to improve your site’s off-page SEO.

CHAPTER 2:
Boost Off-Page SEO With Backlinks
Boost Off-page SEO With Backlinks
When it comes to off-page SEO, backlinks are SUPER important.

That said:

Building backlinks for off-page SEO is all about quality… not quantity.

And if you want the links you build to actually boost your rankings in the SERPs, they need to be authority links from related sites.

In this chapter, I’ll show you 4 ways to build authoritative links that are working great right now.

Be a Data Source
A while ago I was looking at the links pointing to Moz’s keyword research guide.

Backlinks to Moz Keyword Research Guide
And I noticed something SUPER interesting.

The vast majority of that page’s links cited a specific stat from that page (that long tail keywords make up 70% of all searches). Here’s an example:

Shopify longtail keywords quote from Moz
In other words: people didn’t link to the page because it was a piece of “high-quality content”.

They linked in order to cite a stat on the page.

That’s when it hit me: What if I added more stats to my site? Would that get more people to link to me automatically?

So I decided to put this little hypothesis to the test.

Specifically, I invested a ton of time and money into creating this giant list of email marketing stats.

Backlinko – Email marketing stats
And I optimized it around a keyword that bloggers and journalists search for when they’re researching a topic (“email marketing stats”).

Sure enough, within a few weeks, the page started to crack the first page.

And a few days after that, I got my first link.

Email Marketing Stats post – Backlink
Nice!

Broken Content Building
This is a twist on traditional Broken Link Building.

With most Broken Link Building campaigns, you look for broken links that point to a specific page.

The problem is: finding broken pages in your niche can be a huge pain.

Enter: Broken Content Linking.

With Broken Content Linking you use Semrush Site Audit as a broken link search engine.

Then, use traditional BLB to build links to your site.

For example, some time ago I published this comprehensive email marketing guide.

Backlinko – Email Marketing Guide
All I need to do is type “email marketing” into the Content Explorer.

Ahrefs – Content Explorer – "email marketing"
Then, choose “Only Broken”.

Ahrefs – Filter broken pages
This shows you popular content that’s now dead.

Ahrefs – Broken pages report
Just like that, I found dozens of pages that I can use for Broken Link Building.

Double Down On Long-Form Content
Will publishing long-form pages magically send links your way?

No.

But it can increase the odds that other people link to you.

In fact, when we analyzed 900+ million blog posts with BuzzSumo, we found that long-form content gets 77% more links than shorter posts

Long-form content generates more backlinks than short blog posts
Strategic Guest Posting
Guest blogging helps your off-page SEO in a bunch of different ways.

First, guest posts get your brand in front of an entirely new audience.

Comment from reader on guest post
(Which helps with branded searches. More on that later.)

Second, guest posts can lead to unlinked brand mentions.

OkDork – Unliked brand mention
Unlinked mentions aren’t as powerful as a backlink. But they still help.

Finally, you can build links from your guest posts.

Build links with guest post
And in my experience, guest post backlinks DO help your rankings.

(In small doses.)

There’s only one caveat:

This really only works if you publish guest posts on sites in your industry.

To be clear: these sites don’t need to be in your exact niche to work.

For example, I published this guest post on the Buffer blog a while back.

Buffer guestpost – Increase conversions by 134%
Most of Buffer’s content is about social media. Backlinko is an SEO blog.

But they’re close enough.

CHAPTER 3:
Generate Brand Signals
Generate Brand Signals
Now it’s time to cover a SUPER underrated part of off-page SEO:

Brand Signals.

Brand Signals are what Google uses to figure out if your site is a legit brand.

Or as Google’s Eric Schmidt famously put it: “Brands are the solution, not the problem… Brands are how you sort out the cesspool“.

And in this chapter, I’ll show you how to boost your site’s Brand Signals.

Audit Your Branded Searches
Branded searches are how many people search for your brand on Google.

This can be searches of your exact brand name (“Backlinko”). Or your brand name plus a word or phrase (“Backlinko SEO tools”).

You can easily find this info in the Google Search Console Performance Report.

Search Console – Performance report
Look at the “Impressions” column for all of your branded searches.

For example, you can see that 38,997 people searched for “Backlinko” over the last 3 months.

Search Console – Backlinko impressions
So that’s my benchmark.

If I wanted to increase my branded search totals, I’d look to improve this number over the next few months.

Invest in YouTube
YouTube marketing is one of the best ways to boost your site’s Brand Signals.

(Especially branded searches.)

Why?

Two reasons:

First, your videos can get in front of A LOT of people.

For example, my videos get in front of 127K viewers every single month.

YouTube Analytics – Unique viewers
This leads to more people talking about, covering and writing about my brand online.

Backlinko – YouTube channel mention
(Plus, having real, popular social accounts may be a Brand Signal itself.)

Second, a lot of the people that see your videos will search for your brand on Google.

That’s because YouTube doesn’t make it easy for people to visit your site from YouTube.

In some ways, that’s a bummer.

But the upside is that, if one of your videos does well, it can lead to a torrent of branded searches.

For example, look at how searches for “Backlinko” correlate with my channel’s monthly views.

Topic search vs. Page views
Not a 1:1 relationship. But pretty darn close.

If you want to get started with YouTube, I recommend reading my definitive guide to video marketing.

Set Up Brand Tracking
This is an easy way to see how many people talk about your brand on news sites, blogs and forums… and see how that pattern is changing over time.

There are a lot of great brand tracking tools out there (like Mention.com). I personally use BuzzSumo’s “Alerts” feature.

Buzzsumo – Mentions
You can even see if brand mentions are trending up or down over the last year.

BuzzSumo alerts – Backlinko brand trend
Publish Research-Backed Content
Research-backed content can directly help your off-page SEO by sending high-quality links your way.

For example, our outreach email study has accumulated 964 backlinks from 462 different domains so far.

Ahrefs – Email outreach study
It also led to A TON of social media shares.

Email outreach study – Social shares
Do I think Google uses “social signals” to rank content?

No.

Google has said that social signals don’t help rankings.

Google – Social signals ranking
Plus, they’re super easy to game. Anyone can go on Fiverr and buy 10,000 Facebook likes.

That said, social sharing can indirectly help your off-page SEO.

That’s because social shares get more eyeballs on your brand… which can lead to more branded searches and mentions.

For example, lots of people have mentioned and discussed our studies on SEO forums and marketing subreddits.

Reddit – Backlinko post mention
And I’m confident that most of these people first saw our study being shared on Twitter or LinkedIn.

CHAPTER 4:
Improve E-A-T
Improve E-A-T
E-A-T has quickly become a super important off-page SEO ranking factor.

(Especially in the health niche.)

And despite what you may have heard, there’s A LOT more to E-A-T than adding a bunch of author bios to your site.

That’s because Google largely measures E-A-T based on signals that happen off of your website.

So if you want to improve your site’s E-A-T, this chapter is for you.

Get Brand Mentions on Authority Sites
Google’s Gary Illyes recently stated that both links AND mentions can help determine a site’s E-A-T.

Marie Haynes – Tweet about external mentions
So yeah, links are your best bet.

But I’ll take an unlinked mention if it’s on a big enough site.

For example, I got mentioned in The Globe and Mail.

The Globe & Mail article
And to get that mention, I had to email back and forth with the reporter a few times. And do a 45-minute interview over the phone.

In the end, that coverage “only” landed me an unlinked mention.

The Globe & Mail article – Backlinko mention
Fortunately, the Globe and Mail is a huge newspaper in Canada. So that mention probably still helped my off-page SEO… even though they didn’t link to me.

Get Links From Trusted “Seed Sites”
As it turns out, Google still uses good ol’ PageRank to establish E-A-T.

Google uses PageRank for E-A-T
But they don’t just look at a site’s overall Domain Authority.

A 2018 Google patent describes a system where they put more weight on links that come from a small set of “seed sites”.

Google puts more weight on links that come from a small set of "Seed sites"
(For any SEO OGs out there, this is basically TrustRank 2.0.)

In other words:

Getting links from the NY Times and other authority sites is helpful.

But getting links from sites that have links from the NY Times can also help boost up your E-A-T.

Get Positive Reviews Online
Google’s Quality Rater guidelines put a lot of emphasis on online reviews.

Google Guidelines – Emphasis on reviews
Which makes sense: if people hate your business, why would Google want to show your site to more people?

If you run a local business, you probably already know that reviews are huge for local SEO.

As it turns out, reviews also affect your site’s E-A-T in the eyes of Google.

If you don’t run a business that people review (like a blog or media site), Google relies on any awards you’ve won:

Google Guidelines – Prestigious awards
And how other experts in your field feel about your website:

Google Guidelines expert recommendations
For example, Semrush listed Backlinko as the #4 SEO blog.

Semrush – SEO blogs
From a traditional SEO point of view, the only SEO benefit I get from this post is the backlink.

But it’s clear that Google probably also uses awards like this to determine my site’s E-A-T.

CHAPTER 5:
Bonus Off-Page SEO Techniques
Bonus Off-page SEO Techniques
Now it’s time for a list of super actionable off-page SEO strategies.

So if you’re ready to take action on what we covered so far, you’ll love this chapter.

Let’s dive right in.

Press Release Distribution
Sending out a press release can directly lead to brand mentions and backlinks.

(It obviously helps if you have something newsworthy to share. But that’s another story. 🙂 )

For example, a few years ago we had this press release syndicated around.

Backlinko – Press Release
There was (obviously) a brand mention and a link in the release itself.

But more important than that, a handful of sites found out about our study from the press release. Which led to even more links and brand mentions.

The Drum – Backlink from press release
Participate In Roundup Posts
Roundup posts are a SUPER easy way to get links and mentions.

(Especially compared to traditional guest posting.)

As an example, last year I submitted a quote to this expert roundup.

Elementor Growth Roundup
Which led to a solid (dofollow) link and another mention of my brand.

Elementor Growth Roundup – Backlink
Get Interviewed
Getting interviewed on podcasts or on other websites is an untapped off-page SEO strategy.

For example, I was recently interviewed on a popular startup blog.

HackerNoon interviews Brian Dean
Sure, that interview came with a link. But almost as important is the fact that Google sees Backlinko getting coverage on authority sites.

How about another example?

A while back I went on Pat Flynn’s podcast.

Being a podcast, most people that listened to my episode didn’t visit Backlinko via a link.

Instead, they searched for “Backlinko” or “Brian Dean” in Google.

Which helped boost my brand searches.

In fact, I noticed a large uptick in organic traffic from people visiting my homepage after that interview went live.

Bump in organic traffic after podcast
Partner With Bigger Brands
You might think that big brands have no time for small business owners like you and me.

But you’d be wrong.

If you can provide legit value to a big brand, they’re usually happy to send some traffic your way.

For example, in the early days of Backlinko, I reached out to HubSpot. And I offered to create an infographic for them.

Brian& #039;s email to HubSpot
All they had to do on their end was to publish the infographic on their blog.

They agreed. So I hired a designer on Upwork to create this infographic.

Backlinko – Infographic for HubSpot
Not only did HubSpot publish the infographic on their blog (and promote it on social), but they agreed to have our logos side-by-side at the bottom of the image.

Backlinko and HubSpot logos on infographic
Needless to say, as a guy starting out in a competitive space, having the HubSpot logo next to my logo was a HUGE credibility booster.

Create Visuals That Other Blogs Can Use
Visual content is an awesome way to get other blogs to mention your site… without needing to rely 100% on blogger outreach.

For example, in our guide on LSI keywords, I asked our designer to create this graphic.

Google now aims to find the overall topic
As you can see, nothing fancy. But it’s a helpful visual for people that aren’t familiar with how Google figures out a topic of a page.

Which led to people using that visual in their post (and linking to our site as the original source).

In my experience, most people that use your image in their content will link to you.

Even if they don’t, you still get an unlinked brand mention out of the deal.

Unlinked brand mention
Which can still help your off-page SEO a little bit.

CHAPTER 6:
Off-Page SEO Case Studies
Off-page SEO Case Studies
This chapter is a collection of three all new case studies.

You’ll see how Daniel went from DA0 to DA48 in 90 days with ONE link-building strategy.

I’ll show you how Josh and Ash built SUPER high-quality links to their site using some pretty creative approaches that you probably haven’t tried yet.

Case Study #1
How Josh Used Broken Link Building to Get Links to His SaaS Tool
Josh Howarth is the co-founder (along with me) of a new tool called ExplodingTopics.com.

Exploding Topics – Homepage
Back in January, Exploding Topics was brand new. And Josh and I were both thinking of ways that we could build links to our new site.

Then, one afternoon, I saw this:

Google correlate shutdown
A semi-popular tool called Google Correlate just shut down. Bingo!

The next day, Josh started sending out super-targeted broken link building emails.

Josh – Broken link building email
Even though Exploding Topics wasn’t a 1:1 replacement for Google Correlate, it was close enough to land Josh several decent links.

Exploding Topics – Nimbus backlink
Not bad.

Case Study #2
How Daniel Skyrocketed His Domain Authority in 3 Months
Daniel Daines-Hutt runs Amp My Content, a content marketing agency.

Amp My Content – Homepage
Like most people, Daniel was initially tempted to build links to his agency site with guest posting.

But then he realized that there was an easier and more scalable way to build links:

Podcasts.

The issue was, Daniel wasn’t a big name in the marketing space. He was just getting his agency off the ground.

So: how was Daniel able to get on 60 podcasts in 90 days? And take his Domain authority from literally zero to DA48?

Insanely targeted email outreach.

For example, here’s one of the pitches that Daniel sent:

Daniel outreach email
And because Daniel went the extra mile to personalize each email, people were happy to have him come on their shows.

Reply to Daniel& #039;s outreach email
Daniel starting racking up backlinks left and right.

Amp My Content – Referring domains
Which has helped his new site get some early SEO traction.

Case Study #3
How Ash Got Dozens of Media Features With Zero Marketing Budget
Ash Turner runs a mobile device trade-in site called BankMyCell.

BankMyCell – Homepage
Because Ash was bootstrapping his new site, he had essentially zero marketing budget.

But he DID have experience getting press for small businesses using surveys.

So the first thing Ash did was look for surveys in the mobile phone space that already got press coverage.

Mobile space – Surveys with press coverage
Then, once he found a successful survey, he popped it into SEO tool to see which data points journalists cited most often in their coverage.

(Very clever.)

Next, Ash basically used The Skyscraper Technique on an existing survey… and pushed out a bigger and better version of his own.

BankMyCell – Mobile phones survey
To get the word out, he creates a press release with the key findings and sends it to journalists that covered the initial study.

And because he’s promoting super valuable content to people that WANT to cover it, Ash has racked up tons of authority links from sites like The Guardian, Wired, CNET, Forbes and more.

BankMyCell – Backlinks
Pretty cool.

Conclusion
Off-Page SEO: The Definitive Guide
I hope you enjoyed my guide to off-page SEO.

Now I’d like to hear what you have to say:

Which tip from today’s guide do you want to try first?

Are you going to send out more press releases?

Or maybe you want to get interviewed on podcasts.

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.