Articles in The 'Offsite SEO' Tag

How to Find out who is Linking to Your Website

by Matt Crowley

It is a well known fact by most of those who own or operate a website that having links to your website on other companies or people’s websites is beneficial for a few reasons:

• They can provide relevant traffic to your website, if for example a news article is written about your company.

• They can provide great PR; the more visibility that your company can achieve the better.

• They can benefit you in regard to Search Engine Optimization, as long as they are high quality.

But many people wonder, “How do I find out who is linking to my website?” Google provides a tool to see when your website has been linked to, what websites are linking to yours, and what pages on your website people linking to.

All of this data and more can be found in your Google Webmaster Tools account. If you are unsure if you have an account, check with your webmaster or IT team in order to verify that you have access. If you do not, it is very simple to set up. Have your webmaster or IT professional visit this link to the help article from Google about how to verify your website with Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Now let’s go over how to find out who is linking to your website. Once you have verified your website with Webmaster Tools, visit www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ to log in to your account dashboard. If you are managing multiple sites, they will all be listed in your home dashboard once you log in.

Next, select the website that you wish to collect your data from and you will see a more detailed dashboard than the previous one. This dashboard is specific to the website that you have just selected.

The next step is to click the option that reads “Traffic” on the top left side navigation of the page. This option will be the third possible choice below “Messages.” A drop down menu will appear that gives you the following 3 options:

1. Search Queries
2. Links to Your Site
3. Internal Links

*Note: They will not be numbered in your webmaster tools account.

Select “Links to Your site” and you will see 4 separate sections of data.

1. The first is “Total Links” which will be located near the top of the page. This includes the current total number of links that Google has found on other websites that point to yours. Not all links to your site may be listed; however this is the most accurate source available.
2. The second is “Who Links the Most.” This data includes the list of domains that contain links to your website. It is also sorted in order from domains that contain the most links to your website, to domains that contain the least number of links to your website.
3. The third is “Your Most Linked Content.” This section displays the specific pages on your website that have the most inbound links pointed toward them.
4. Finally, the last section is “How Your Data is linked.” This section displays the anchor text found within the inbound links to your website. Put plainly, anchor text is the visible text that a person can see when clicking on a link. For example the proverbial “click here” text.

Lastly, the data for numbers 2, 3, and 4 above can be downloaded to a .CSV or Google Docs file. This is done by clicking the “More »” link beneath any of the sections then selecting “Download this Table” near the top of the page.

You also have the option to:

• “Download More Sample Links” which will download the data from Google about specific pages on other websites that contain links to your website, and will not sort them in any specific order.

Or

• “Download Latest Links” which will download the data from Google about what links have been recently found that point to your website along with the date that Google discovered the link.

Now, take this data and make use of it. What pages on your website have been more popular than others? Is everyone only linking to your homepage, and not specific internal pages? Are there websites linking to yours that would make a good partnership?

Link Building through Academic Websites

by Michael Bergbauer

When you’re working on a link building campaign, there are two approaches you can take: creating original content for your site that people will want to link to or reaching out to other relevant websites to request a link. Generally, the latter practice has been falling out of style due to its difficulty. If you want to pursue this method, you’ll need to make your efforts worthwhile by getting links from high-ranking, authoritative sites. Depending on your business and location, links from college and university websites can yield excellent results.

In search results, academic websites receive high-rankings either by virtue of their sponsored top-level .edu domain (Google and Bing have not confirmed whether top-level domain type contributes to a site’s ranking in search, but some SEO professionals believe it does), and/or because they have a robust profile of back-links. Why so many back links? Because, .edu sites are large and full of authoritative content — which naturally attracts lots of links from other sites. As such, links from .edu sites have a lot of value.

Even though your website may have nothing to do with academia, links from .edu domains can be beneficial for your link building. On top of that, there are many avenues of approach you take when requesting a link:

The Local Approach: .edu sites often provide users with links to nearby businesses. This helps the site show prospective and current students all available off-campus resources while drumming up some sales for local retailers or service providers. Contact your local schools or universities to see if your business can be included in such listings.

The Career Approach: If your company is hiring, inform the career services office at universities that specialize in your field. By maintaining a career page on your website, you can ensure that career services offices link back to it.

Along similar lines, you can also contact your alma mater about your own personal career success. The alumni organizations and academic departments may be delighted to showcase your success and link back to your company site.

The Research Approach: As academic institutions, most colleges and universities maintain an active library staff. As gurus of information, University librarians consistently produce research guides for online audiences on nearly every topic imaginable. Are they writing about you? Try an “inurl” command search in Google using “libguide” or “libraryguide” and a keyword related to your business. Here’s an example for “real estate.”

As you can see, university libraries across the nation are covering it. Find some guides where you think a link back to your website would be relevant, and then reach out to the library or author of the guide.

As you can see, links from .edu sites not only provide link building value, but are rife with multiple opportunities for many types of companies. Going after .edu links might be just the boost your link building program needs!

The Dos and Don’ts of Guest Blogging

by Lauren Owens

Guest blogging is a great way to get quality inbound links to your site. And inbound links, we all know, are a cornerstone of SEO. But, like many ways to market your brand online, there are good ways and bad ways to go about it. Here, we’ll look at some of the Dos and Don’ts of guest blogging.

Do – Use your expertise in a way that can grow your audience – and your influence.

This is the main reason behind guest blogging.

There are blogs that do not directly compete with your business but that relate to your business in some way. If you sell shoes, for example, you might want to look into creating quality content for wedding blogs, fashion blogs or, depending on what kind of shoes you sell, blogs aimed at parents, gardeners, environmentalists, etc.

Don’t — Contact blogs that have nothing to do with your business.

The purpose of guest blogging is to find your audience — or potential audiences — where they live. The key word here is synergy. Creating posts for blogs that have no synergistic connection to your business is a waste of time for all involved.

Do — Create quality content.

The content that you create for each blog should be unique, and should depend upon the look and feel of the blog you’re writing for. If you want to produce content for a blog that tends to be photo-heavy, for example, you will need to produce photos that illustrate your blog post.

Don’t – Pepper your guest blog post with unnecessary links.

Guest blogging is all about cultivating relationships, not building link farms. Link once or twice to extremely pertinent information on your own site, and leave it at that.

Do – Find your audience where it lives.

Use a demographic tool like Google’s Double Click Ad Planner to determine what kind of audience a blog attracts.

Don’t – Waste your time.

Don’t waste your time producing blog posts for blogs with little traffic. Evaluate a blog’s traffic with Double Click Ad Planner to make sure a blog is worth your time.

Do – Write your blog posts ahead of time.

When you approach a publisher with a complete package, rather than an idea, you make it much more likely that the blogger will accept your content.

Don’t — Be impersonal.

Think of guest blogging as relationship building. Don’t send out mass email blasts, or the same content to more than one publisher. Your goal is to make friends. So be human and put your best face forward.