The Ultimate SEO Guide for Intermediates

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Over the years, Search Engine Optimization has continued evolving, and as SEO keeps on growing as a means through which most businesses focus on to generate leads, engagements, and sales, knowing the basics of SEO is no longer enough.

Today, if you want to stand with your two feet in the industry, you have to understand more than just the fundamentals of SEO.

It’s no secret that the rules that govern why and how websites rank against each other on the SERPs are continuously evolving.

Whether you take notice of it or not, each Google algorithm update sends little waves of effect throughout the whole SEO industry, and if you don’t swindle with your processes and systems, you’d be kicked off the road.

However, despite all the changes, SEO remains an acronym for “search engine optimization.” For marketers, the “optimization” side of it is what requires dexterity.

According to Google, SEO is “the means of maximizing the number of visitors coming to a particular site by making sure that the website emerges high on the list of results returned by a search engine.”

And while that remains true, to some extent, we’ve broadened the circle around the SERP (search engine results page). Of course, you’ve got to monitor your ranking, but also, look farther out on the box.

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If you’ve mastered all the basics of SEO, now is the time to look further into the other essential aspects of SEO that matters a lot. Like I said earlier, if you desire to last in this industry, you had better mastered both the intermediate and advanced level of SEO.

The Changing SEO Landscape In 2019

The Ultimate SEO Guide for Intermediates

There have been several developments in the world of SEO over the past few years. A lot of the prominent trends of last year will continue and grow in 2020 and beyond.

As the algorithm updates by Google often keep business owners on their toes, lots of other trends are expected to take shape both now and later.

Here are a few of the things happening so far in 2019 which are also expected to continue:

1. Voice Search Is Becoming the Next Big Thing

Early this year, Rand Fishkin of Moz predicted that “voice search will be over 25 percent of all Google searches in the US within 12 months.”

search trends

Well, I think this is already happening. Voice search has been a continuing project in the tech industry for some years now. Interestingly, it has become one of the available fastest-growing search options. The advantage is undeniable. It’s fast, futuristic, and hands-free.

As each update improves technology, the error rate of voice search declines. According to Google’s director of conversational search “Behshad BehzadiIn” in his speech at SMX West 2016:

“The speech recognition error rate has reduced from around 25% from the past years to just 8% today.”

Now, the primary goal of voice search in 2019 is to go beyond and above voice recognition and metamorphous into voice understanding. This involves lots of changes with respect to:

  • Personalized information
  • Previous searches
  • Context based on frequently used apps
  • Location-based context
  • Keyword research based on spoken queries

Voice search is undoubtedly one of the most significant trends of the digital age. With massive improvements to Google Now, Cortana, and Siri, search engine optimization experts would be smart to carefully observe voice invention and think beyond the typical text-based queries in 2019.

2. Focus on Mobile Users

Here’s an interesting little tidbit that evolves every time. We already know the dominant share of internet usage has recently moved to mobile devices leaving desktop behind. At last count, 71 percent of U.S. internet use happened on mobile.

This is a figure that’s somehow both obvious and astounding, that once made expert Benedict Evans to advise that, “We should stop talking about “desktop” internet and “mobile” internet. It’s like talking about “black and white TV” as opposed “color TV.”

Benedict finally declared that “Mobile is the internet.”

3. User Experience Now Matters a Lot

No matter what product you’re selling, or what services you’re offering, every business should focus on the user experience. After all, in the end, it’s always people that are going to use the service or product we are selling.

No wonder that even Google is now focusing more on the overall user experience as well.

user experience

This should give every marketer more concern and reason to channel his improvements and processes with the customer experience in mind.

Therefore, when we’re improving or designing our website, we should consider some elementary but impactful design elements such as:

  • Creating buyer personas that would result in a better understanding of buyer’s needs
  • Accessibility for users who are differently-abled (those with visual and audio impairments)
  • Creating high-quality and valuable content that actually solves real problems

4. Google Will Remain The Top Referrer Of Website Traffic

In his 2019 SEO predictions, Rand Fishkin also stated that “Google will remain the number one referrer of website traffic by “5 times plus.” Not even Facebook, or any other source, will pass it.”

Below is the breakdown from SimilarWeb’s showing who sends traffic on the internet:

Generally, I’d ignore “direct traffic” here as those include HTTP->HTTPS referrals that pass little to no referral string, bookmarks, links from applications that don’t carry referrals, each opening of every browser and browser tabs, etc.

The data below is where I often pay attention to.

“Google is 11 times bigger than Facebook, which is 1.5 times YouTube.

Rand predicts that Google will always dominate, no matter the prophecies about Amazon, Facebook, Snapchat or anyone else.

Now, that’s the end of this section, let’s move on to the next thing…

Keyword Research

Keywords are topics and ideas that define what your blog post is about. With regards to SEO, they’re the phrases and words that searchers put into search engines, also known as “search queries.” while searching for a particular subject.

Now, as a content creator and website owner, your number one desire is for the keywords on your web pages to be highly relevant to what people are searching for in the search engines, so they have a high possibility of finding your content among the top results, hence, keyword search.

Keyword research is the process of finding and discovering the various vital phrases your prospects are entering into the search engines that are related to your business.

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There are basically two types of keywords used in SEO which includes “head keywords” and “long tail keywords.”

Head Keywords

Head keywords are keywords that are the most frequently searched for by users on search engines. Head keywords tend to be shorter and less specific. The term “skin care” for example, could be a head keyword.

It is a general and non-specific keyword that can drive a relatively high volume of traffic from people who may or may not be interested in what a website might have to offer.

Head keywords can also come in single words. Such keywords might appear to be your primary goal as they often have temptingly high-search volume. However, they usually have a very tough competition of which if you’re on a low budget, you might not be able to rank for.

For example, you may want your clothing store to rank for a term like “clothes,” but it’s going to be extremely difficult to beat Nordstrom and Zappos in the SERPs.

Apart from the intense competition, head keywords can be annoyingly vague. If someone is searching for “dog,” for instance, you don’t know if they’re looking for information about dog food, a list of dog breeds, a site with cute pictures of dog, or just where to buy a dog collar.

Long Tail Keywords

Contrary to head keywords, long-tail keywords are more specific and longer keyword phrases that visitors are more likely to use when they’re using voice search, or when they’re closer to a “point of purchase.”

At first, they may seem a bit counter-intuitive, but they can be highly valuable in the long run if you know how to use them.

search demand curve

(Source)

These types of keywords usually have more clearly defined intent. For instance, “cheap dog walkers Seattle,” “best organic dog food for puppies.”

You’ll also discover that “long tail keywords” usually have less competition as compared to head keywords. This means the chances of a smaller site breaking in and making their impact on the SERPs is very high.

You’re obviously going to drive less traffic with a long tail keyword than you would with the head keyword, but the traffic you’ll get will be much better: more specific, more committed, more focused, and more targeted to your products and services.

According to Lion Blogger, “over 80% of all website traffic comes from long-tail keywords.” Therefore, ignore long-tail keywords at your own peril.

(Source)

One of the best places to find great long-tail keywords is on the “search related” section of Google search results. For example, when you type the word “skin care” into Google, scroll down the results, and you’ll see something like:

searches related

Keywords Categories

Being aware that people are conducting searches with keywords that are relevant to your products and services is essential but having the ability to identify the intent of the prospects is what helps companies to boost their revenue and stay ahead of the competition.

Now, classifying keywords into three different categories is a practical first step in helping to know what stage a potential customer is in the buying process.

1. Informational Keywords

Informational keywords usually have high search volume but do not always convert well into action.

Why?

This is just because, with these type of keywords, people are often searching for information about a particular thing of concern. For example, they might be conducting the research to support their belief in a product they want to purchase, to compare prices, or just to read reviews.

This type of keyword can be distinguished by “question words” as they usually contain words such as “how,” “where,” etc.

As a marketer, you need to pay less attention to such keywords as they are not “buyer/commercial keyword” and probably won’t convert to sales.

Some examples of “Informational” keywords are:

  • Free stock photo websites
  • How to conduct keyword research
  • Where to get health insurance

2. Navigational Keywords

This is another type of keywords you should know about.

When web users type in a brand or company name in the search engines, they are performing a navigational search, and this type of keywords seldom lead to sales.

This is because they already know this product or brand and probably want to find the correct web address to get to the company website.

Such keywords are usually valuable when the website’s brand is trendy on the internet. However, there are some cases when websites try to rank for the brand of their competitors, but this rarely works very well.

Examples of such keywords are:

  • Sumome
  • Disney world
  • Mercedes
  • Long Tail Pro

3. Commercial Keywords

These are the types of keywords you should really care for. This comprises of the various keywords which have a high probability of converting casual web surfers to paying customers. On the other hand, “Commercial keywords” strike that balance of relevance and volume.

However, whether a given keyword should be referred to as “Commercial” totally depends on the website itself.

For example, if a website’s main goal is to generate email leads via a free lead magnet for further marketing of skin-care related products in the future, the keyword “skin care guide” would be useful.

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But for a website whose aim is to generate phone calls for commercial group plans, that wouldn’t be the case.

Similarly, if you have a product review website where you’re promoting outdoor gears, for example, then a keyword “Outdoor gear review” would also be valuable.

search result

Here is a simple tip that will help you to easily identify “Commercial keywords.” Input the keyword in Google and see what type of sites comes up in the SERPs and whether you would be happy for your site to be listed among them.

Another critical thing to take into account is to know if there are paid ads for the keyword. If there is, it means that other companies are spending money on this keyword; therefore you should probably use it as well.

Examples of “Commercial keywords” are.”

  • Best outdoor clothing brands 2019
  • Outdoor gear reviews
  • Best outdoor gears
  • Best outdoor gear brands

How to Know Your Audience to Create Winning SEO Campaigns

The first step in almost every marketing campaign, SEO included, is to define your target audience. I bet you already know what I mean by “target audience,” but in case you don’t, it is a defined set of people who you are marketing your products and services to.

Typically, defining a target audience involves knowing their sex, age, geographic locations, and their needs (also called pain points).

What we want to find out about our SEO Strategy are those pain points. What are their needs that aren’t being met? What is keeping them awake at night when others are sleeping?

Knowing all these about your audience will help you to better define a good content strategy and prioritize content to bring to the forefront.

Apart from content, knowing your audience will equally help in “target keyword discovery.” This means that when you’re doing keyword research, you’ll want to do it based on what the audience wants, not solely on what you think your site needs, or what content the site already has.

Now, when it comes to identifying your target audience, one of the best ways to go about it is to use social media listening platforms.

Social listening involves monitoring the various social media networks to find out what is being said about your brand, your competitors brand, and topics that are relevant to your business. This alone will give you a lot of ideas into who your target audiences are and what they need.

One of such tools I’m so fond of is Buzzsumo. With this tool, you can easily see what’s popular in your industry judging by their social shares. And as you know, if something is popular, it simply means that people are interested in it.

Using the “Skin Care” niche as an example, below is the result I got when I entered the keyword into Buzzsumo:

buzzsumo result

With Buzzsumo, you’ll always be informed of what people like in your industry. Another fantastic tool I often use to figure out what questions people are asking in my niche is Quora.

Visit quora, and you’ll see what questions people are asking in every conceivable niche on the internet. From there, you’ll have a solid idea of what challenges your audiences are facing and how to tackle them.

For example, Brian Dean recently discovered a question on the platform that is highly related to his industry. Someone asked to know “why Google hates his site:”

quora answers example

This question got lots of attention Quora that Brian used it to create a very informative post on the subject which ended up ranking on the first spot of Google for the keyword “Google hates my site.”

If you’re still finding it hard to know your target audience, then visiting quora could be very eye-opening. Why not check out the platform now?

Combining SEO and Inbound Marketing

Every online marketing strategy has to be more than just SEO today. It’s no longer about checking off boxes for the search engines; it’s more about connecting deeply with the customer.

Today, you must combine SEO with inbound marketing for a complete approach. Now, in case you don’t know what inbound marketing means, it’s a relatively new online marketing practice that focuses on a customer-first approach.

This approach has had a significant impact on the world of SEO (whose focus is typically on appeasing search engine ranking criteria). Inbound marketing tactics involve content creation, email marketing, and social media marketing.

inbound marketing

(Source)

It might seem like these strategies are concerned with finding potential customers and offering them a service or product, but the basis of inbound marketing is that it is focused on a customers’ activity after they’ve discovered your business.

With Inbound marketing, the consumer can further learn about your business and brand; it’s customer-oriented and offers informative and helpful content (blog posts, whitepapers, guides, etc.) in a non-disturbing manner.

So how does inbound marketing help your brand and business?

It’s simply by efficiently using calls-to-action (CTAs). A smart business owner can use inbound marketing techniques to take potential customers all through the buyer’s journey and eventually enhance their business’ internet traffic and conversion rates!

Finally, inbound marketing will:

  • Boost your website’s user experience (UX)
  • Enhance your relationship with your (potential) customers
  • Improve your online marketing goals
  • Give your audience lots of values

Meanwhile, SEO techniques can be used to generate traffic to your brands’ website and boost your business’ search engine ranking, while inbound marketing will help to convert those traffic.

Through the combination of search engine-friendly strategy and the user, your business will be well on its way to a stable, more customer-oriented web presence!

Cohesive SEO Strategy

The barriers to entry into SEO have dramatically changed over the years. Some years ago, any site with a pulse will definitely rank. But today, the World Wide Web is no longer a level playing ground. The scales have pointed toward expertise and volume.

Now, building a cohesive SEO strategy is not just about sitemaps and meta titles. When you set up a strategy for a client, you have to use a plan that’s custom and tailored to their needs, wants, and market landscape.

Your cohesive SEO strategy should be reflective of your brand or that of your client. It should act, sound, and move continuously and authentically – just as they do. Because, after all, search engine marketing helps to position your brand or that of your client in front of their potential/ideal customer.

So here are some cohesive SEO strategies you should start using right now:

1. Searcher Persona

Having a thorough understanding of who your target audience is, and then building different searcher personas around this will help you to reach your ideal customer base.

searcher persona

(Source)

This approach offers you a structured look at how your business goals align with their own goals. And, you can match your products, messages, and content with what matters to them most.

To achieve this, as I stated earlier, you want to know:

  • What is their biggest hesitation before testing your product or service?
  • What words would your customer or target audience possibly use to describe their current problem?
  • What is the best possible way for you to interact and engage with them?

2. Keyword Discovery

Keywords are still valuable in today’s internet marketing and SEO landscape. They give structure to your pages, a theme to your site, and also benefit your site by leading and guiding searchers to a specific page.

Keywords don’t just help your content; they craft content. You don’t have to take my word for it, check out Rand Fishkin’s comment on this topic.

To perform keyword research, I first start by coming up with a list of keywords I think my ideal customers might be using to find my business. Assuming I deal on Dog food, I can use the following keywords:

  • Dog food
  • Dog food supplies
  • Dog food reviews
  • Best dog food
  • Dog food brands

Then, I’ll head over to a tool like the popular Keyword Tool, or Keyword Shitter, or SEMRush and start entering the seed keywords one after the other until I’m able to come up with a big list of long tail, low competition keywords I can target.

Another trick is to input your competitors’ site into your keyword research and see what keywords they’re targeting, and then use that as your own target keywords too. To do this, I’ll use SEMRush.

Below are some of the keywords I found:

3. Reduce the Numbers

After I come up with about 50 keywords or more, I’ll paste the list of keywords into a Google spreadsheet, and erase all the other mumbo jumbo that comes with it, keeping the good ones.

The good ones mean keyword with low competition, long tail, and probably have a good volume. Then, I’ll also remove all the keywords that are not relevant to my business.

4. Divide Keywords into Categories

After you’ve decided on what keywords you want to target, the next step is to bucket your keywords based on topics or themes into different categories. You can segment these based on pages or blog posts that you can write about.

This allows each blog post or page to target a different set of keyword. Again, under each keyword theme, you should list your five keywords or more by volume, including any geographical elements that might be helpful.

This approach will allow you to identify any gaps or opportunities you may be missing to drive relevant traffic.

5. Stalk Your Competitors

This is often an ignored but very crucial part of creating a coherent SEO strategy that your business or client will love.

Knowing what your competitors are doing at any point in time and your differences let you understand what differentiates you from your competition. Then, you can channel your energy and time on creating content that gets your ideal searcher personas to click.

To achieve this, you want to:

  • List some of your top competitors
  • Research them thoroughly. (This means finding out everything they’re doing that’s currently working for them including what keywords they’re ranking for, and if they have any organic search data that may be useful). You can achieve all these with SemRush.
  • Compare your site with that of your competitors using all the data you’ve collected from step 2 above.

Search engine marketing is just as much about the user as it is about the search engines. It’s critical to stand out and be different in the search results, but for the right reasons.

Recommended Reading: This 2-Powerful (Yet Ignored) Metrics in Google Analytics Will Improve Your Search Rankings

Understanding who your competitors are provides you with reliable insights into who your target customers really are and what they need from you.

How to Bounce Back When Things Go Wrong in SEO

In search engine optimization (SEO) world, even small, insignificant errors can sometimes have a large and costly impact on your site.

This can happen as a result of you getting over-aggressive with SEO tactics, or because you unknowingly made mistakes in Google, or if you hire an SEO agency that uses shady tactics.

Whatever is the case, the situation can be scary — and you have to work hard and fast to remedy whatever happened.

Things Google Frowns On

There are a bunch of things Google frowns at in their Webmaster Guidelines, they include:

  • Creating articles with little or no unique/original content
  • Automatically generated content
  • Sneaky redirects
  • Participating in link schemes
  • Scraped content
  • Doorway pages
  • Partaking in affiliate programs and not adding enough value to users
  • Link cloaking
  • Sending automated queries to Google
  • Hidden text or links
  • Loading pages with irrelevant keywords
  • Abusing rich snippets markup
  • Creating pages with malicious behavior. This includes things like phishing or installing viruses, Trojans or other

Regrettably, people often convince themselves into thinking that many of these devious practices are right. They think that spinning content to bypass duplicate content penalty that does not exist is the best option – they hear of the benefits of building backlink, and suddenly start exchanging links with other webmasters.

All of the above are wrong SEO practices, but that won’t stop people from jeopardizing their site’s success.

Manual Penalties

Hearing the word “penalty” alone is indeed terrifying. It means you’ve done something very wrong! Google has a list of common manual actions:

  • Partial link penalties
  • Site-wide link penalties
  • Thin content penalties

When your site has a manual penalty, the message in Search Console usually provides you with some high-level description of the issue.

Here’s a good example of such a message focused on thin content in Google Search Console:

Similarly, below is another example of a manual penalty that’s focused on links:

 google link penalty

The fundamental process of tackling a manual penalty is:

  • Identify what caused the penalty (For instance, if you have a link penalty, you need to find out which links Google hate.)
  • Find a solution to the problems.
  • Submit a Reconsideration Request to Google asking them to remove the penalty

Best Free and Paid SEO Tools You Can Use

1. Buzzstream

If you do blogger outreach at scale or you have a team, then you need a tool like Buzzstream. Why? Because Buzzstream makes the tedious job of link building and email outreach very streamlined and organized. They also have prospecting and email-finding features.

2. Citation Labs’ Broken Link Finder

Instead of looking for broken links everywhere, The Broken Link Finder tactically searches the internet for them. Just search using a keyword and this amazing tool will thoroughly comb the web for different broken links, and hand them to you on a platter of gold.

Then you can check out Wayback Machine to know what the content was (and create something similar or even better). With this tool, you can also sort your results by how many people link to the broken link.

3. Google Keyword Planner

When it comes to keyword research, the Google Keyword Planner is the only keyword tool on the web that provides you data straight from the horse’s mouth.

GKP lets you know how likely someone searching for that specific keyword will buy something from you. How? Check the “estimated bid” and “competition” columns.

If the “estimated bid” and “competition” are high, you’ve probably gotten a keyword that converts like crazy. I often focus more on this than the normal search volume. Besides, who wants a bunch of tire kickers coming to their website?

4. SEMRush

This is one of the few SEO tools that I can’t live without. Unlike most keyword research tools on the web, SEMRush shows you your competitor’s top keywords.

So instead of grinding away in the Google Keyword Planner, simply input a competitor URL into SEMRush, and it’ll show you every single keyword they’re ranking for. #puregold

5. Yoast SEO Plugin

Yoast is my number one SEO WordPress plugin for just one reason: it works like magic. It lets you know if your content is well optimized for SEO before you hit the publish button.

SEO Metrics and Conversions

How do you plan on tracking and measuring your success in the world of SEO? In other words, what metrics will show you if your SEO strategy is working or not? If you don’t know, then the answer is to start by creating conversion goals in Google Analytics.

The first thing you have to do apart from the basic installation of Google Analytics is creating Google Analytics goals.

This will help you to track actions visitors take on your site, such as signing up for your email list, submitting a lead generation form, making a purchase, submitting a quote form, etc. Follow the steps below to set up your goals.

The goal setup area can be found on your website’s Google Analytics admin under “view column.” The easiest way to get started is to select a template.

Select the destination type:

Enter the destination URL; this means the URL that a visitor would be taken to after completing the goal that you are tracking.

Creating Content For Users And Search Engines

In the quest to rank high in the SERPs, most content marketers often fall into the trap of neglecting their readers and instead, they focus more on satisfying the search engines.

However, one thing you should remember that is that the search can never replace your users. Search engines will rank your pages, but they can’t click on your adverts, they can’t share your posts, in other words….they won’t make you money.

Therefore, you also need to be appealing to your users. The search will help them to discover your site before taken your desired action. So, they’re both critical.

So, how do you create content that will be loved by both your users and the search engines? Follow the steps below:

1. Put yourself in your user’s mind: It’s vital that you know who your audiences are, as we’ve covered earlier in this post, and then create content that will help them solve their problems.

2. Avoid keyword stuffing: While this used to be a common practice, it’s no longer acceptable. Stuffing keywords in your content add nothing to user-experience, and this also increases your risk of being penalized by Google.

3. Implement the various SEO basics: This includes having an SEO title, having your keyword in your meta description, inbound and outbound linking, keyword rich URLs, tactically mentioning your keyword on the body of your content, having the various headlines (H1, H2, H3, etc.), optimized image alt tag.

4. Make your content scannable and easy to read

We’re undoubtedly in the age of information overload. To help your readers combat content fatigue, it’s important to give them easily digestible content. A few ways to achieve this include:

  • Utilize bullets and numbering for lists
  • Avoid large blocks of content
  • Italicize or bold words or phrases to make key points stand out
  • Use H2 or H3 tags as subheads to break up content even further

5. Let Content Flow Naturally: This shouldn’t be an issue if you’ve followed all the other guidelines above.

Link Building Strategies To Improve Search Rankings

I guess you already know the importance of link building in SEO. Simply put:

More high-quality links = higher search engine ranking

Remember this is not an SEO guide for newbies. Therefore, I assume you already know the basics of link building like guest posting, blog commenting, social media, and the links. For the cause of this guide, I’ll share with you my two favorite ways of building links to scale your search ranking.

1. Resource Page Link Building

First of all, what does a resource page mean?

These are pages that link out to lots of useful content on a given topic.

Here’s an example:

Because these pages were created for the primary purpose of linking out, they make excellent link building targets.

That being said, here’s the step-by-step guide:

Step 1. Find Useful Resource Pages

Enter these search strings into Google to unearth awesome resource pages:

  • “Keyword” + “useful resources”
  • “Keyword” + “helpful resources”
  • “Keyword” + inurl:links
  • “Keyword” + “useful links”

Step 2. Check the Page Size

Here, you have to answer the question – “will a link from this page worth all the effort?”

Just enter the link into Moz Open Site Explorer and check its domain and page authority.

This resource page, for example, has a decent domain and page authority:

It’s obviously an authoritative domain.

And my link will probably end up somewhere on the body of the page. Already looks like a winner!

Step 3. Find a Befitting Content

Here’s something you must take seriously. Your content can be the very best on its topic, but if it’s not a perfect fit for that resource page? You absolutely won’t get a link.

So, on this step, browse your entire site and figure out content that’ll perfectly fit that resource page like a glove. Once that is achieved, proceed to step #4.

Step 4. Send This Proven Script

This script has been proven to work for many people, and I’m sure it’ll also work for you:

Email subject: Question about (Their site)

Hi (His name),

I was searching around the internet for content about (The Topic) this morning, when I stumbled on your fantastic resource page: (The URL).

I just wanted to let you know how helpful your page was to me. I would have never discovered the [Site They Linked To] without it.

Funny though: I recently wrote a guide on [The Topic] a month ago. Your content [Brief Description].

Here’s the link in case you’d like to take a look: [Your URL].

Also, my guide might make an excellent addition to your resource page.

Either way, thanks a lot for putting together your impressive list of resources. And do take care!

Talk Soon,

[Your Name]

That’s it about resource page link building; let’s check out the next one.

2. Broken Link Building

This has been one of my all-time favorite link building tactics.

Why?

Instead of begging for links, with Broken Link Building, you’re helping other webmasters by adding value to their website.

Below is how to go about it:

Install LinkMiner or Check My Links

Both of these Google Chrome extensions can quickly locate broken links on any web page.

Discover Pages That Has Lots of Outbound Links

The more outbound links a page has, the more chances of one of them being broken.

Recommended Reading: 5 App Developers That Are Super-Serious With Content Marketing

Resource pages, for example, work great here. So you can also use the search strings we mentioned earlier to find resource pages. But instead of contacting the site owner immediately, try step 3.

Search For Broken Links

In this step, you just need to run the extension you installed in step one above.

They’ll reveal all the broken links on that page:

Notify The Site Owner About The Broken Link

Finally, notify the person that maintains that page about the broken link, and pitch a relevant resource from your own site as a possible replacement.

Here’s the recommended script:

Email subject: Problem with [Name of Their Site]

Hi [His Name],

Are you still monitoring and updating your website?

I was googling for content on [The Topic] when I found your wonderful page: [Page URL or Title].

However, I discovered that a few the links didn’t seem to be working well:

[Enter URLs of the broken links]

Furthermore, I recently wrote a guide on [Brief Content Pitch] which may make a perfect replacement for the [Point Out a Particular Broken Link].

Either way, thanks for writing such a helpful resource.

Thanks,

[Your Name]

That’s all about link building. These two methods alone can give you all the links you need to rank your site in the SERPs.

Anchor Text Diversification

Over optimization of anchor texts can lead to Google penalty, the best way to avoid this is to tactically diversify your anchor texts.

Rank Fishkin suggested that a 7:3 ratio of non-targeted and targeted anchor text would be a perfect frame of reference for emulating a ‘normal’ link profile. (Targeted anchor text refers to exact match, and phrase match anchors, while non targeted anchor text consists of else).

Here are the various types of anchor text distribution:

  • Brand Name, g., Giant Bicycles
  • Branded, g., this cool company, Razoo
  • Keyword Branded, g., a ton of motorcycle helmets at Dennis Kirk
  • Exact Match, g., Downhill Bike
  • Phrase, g., the monthly mountain bike magazine I get
  • Random, g., this website
  • URL, g., http://www.malibuboats.com

Take a look at this product anchor text distribution below to see how to properly diversify your anchor texts.

Conclusion

This brings us to this massive SEO guide for intermediates. I believe I left no stone unturned here. Now, it’s your turn to take everything you’ve learned here and start implementing them gradually to build a solid SEO campaign.

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