What is the greatest blogging reward?
Traffic? The satisfaction of helping people?
For many bloggers an important goal is a new follower. However, lately the most sought after prize seems to be a link.
Links into sites are indeed valuable since they help you rise in the ranks of search engines making it easier for the billions of Internet users to find you.
If links lead to traffic, and traffic leads to followers, you can have it all, but it starts with the all-so-powerful link.
How to get those links into your site is the subject of this post.
There were rumors that link building was dead thanks to Google changing their algorithms. However, according to blogging guru Neil Patel, link building is as alive and important as ever.
There was also a rumor that you need to authenticate your site with Google in order for Google to crawl and index your article.
That rumor is also unfounded. A blogger asked if he could submit his article to my weekly link roundup. Flattered, I asked how he had found my site. He explained he had found me on Google. Since I was new to Mostly Blogging, I had not yet had a chance to authenticate my site, but he still found my post anyway.
Submit to Weekly Roundups
Submitting to other bloggers’ weekly link roundups will definitely get you a link into your site if they accept your submission and publish your link. However, the site needs to be more reputable than your own, if your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking is going to go up.
If the site linking to you is less reputable than your own, I have seen instances where the featured blogger’s SEO ranking actually fell.
Getting a link into a site more reputable than your own is so helpful in improving your SEO ranking, some people actually pay public relations firms to get big blogs to link to them, but there is no need.
I will tell you how to know if a site is more reputable than your own right now.
You don’t have to submit to the most reputable blog on the globe, it just has to be more reputable than yours.
By the way, “reputable” in this context is not a subjective term. I am using the term “reputable” to mean a site with a lower Alexa ranking than yours.
Step 1. Go to Alexa.com to get your Alexa rank.
Alexa will analyze your blog for free if you put in your URL. Alexa will show you your rank internationally. It also showed me my rank in the United States.
By the way, you will see other information about your site you might want to note. For example, if you scroll down, you will see your bounce rate (what percentage of visitors leave after only viewing one page, the lower the better) and how long the visitors who do stay remain on your site (the higher the better).
Step 2. Find a blog with a lower Alexa rank than your own.
- Go to search engines. Enter words that bloggers who hold weekly roundups use.
Curators are collectors. Bloggers curate content. They all use similar wording in this regular feature. Weekly, Week, Friday, Weekly Roundup, Best of the Week, Best Posts of the Week, and Best Articles of the Week are commonalities of weekly link roundup headlines.
In the search bar, enter the key word for your article in quotation marks, a + sign, and the words weekly link roundup in quotation marks.
Be specific. I wanted to submit my Twitter guide. Entering “Twitter” as my keyword garnered me better results than when I entered “blogging”. For this post, I could search “SEO” + “link roundup” which is preferable to the more generic keyword blogging.
A tilde (~) in front of the word, instead of quotation marks will garner not only the search for that keyword but synonyms for it as well.
Typing a tilde before the search word generates extra link roundup choices.
Contemplating the possibility of submitting this post to a link roundup, I put a tilde before my keyword SEO. Typing ~SEO + link roundup produced the three circled selections and many more not shown in the screenshot.
Before submitting to a site there are factors you should consider:
- What is the blog’s Alexa rank? Enter the blog’s URL at Alexa.com. You want it to be lower than yours.
- How many links do they have outgoing? It’s a basic rule of economics. The fewer the number of links, the more valuable your link is.
- How recently have they published a link roundup? You don’t want to submit to an inactive site or a site that no longer has this feature.
Look at the bottom circled selection in the screenshot. You are seeing the headline of a linkup published four months ago.
- If they still have a roundup, is it published consistently? Weekly roundups will get you quicker results than a post titled “roundup” since you have no indication of how often the blogger curates the links or when it will recur.
How you can know the roundup’s publication frequency:
Click “Search Tools” in the upper right of the search engine.
Click “Anytime” under it on the left.
Select how recently you want to check for publication of the roundup.
The search engine will produce the most recent results for the roundup’s publication.
Another way to find a weekly link roundup, is to go to Twitter and put the same search engine terms in the search bar.
Weekly roundups will turn up, and you can find roundups to submit to that way.
Increase your odds of being accepted by submitting your best links.
If you choose this method of increasing your SEO, four benefits will be derived if you can get accepted by a blog with a lower Alexa ranking than your own.
First, you help yourself in three ways. You are getting a link, a link from a reputable site–high in SEO–which will help your SEO more than just any link. You are also giving yourself credibility in your niche since you are being promoted by a blog considered an authority in your field.
Next, you increase your odds of getting referral traffic from a big blog with many readers. Finally, you are helping the admin blogger add content to their site.
Link Swaps
Link swaps work like submitting to weekly roundups work.
Follow the same instructions. Analyze both site’s Alexa rankings. However, if you are going to exchange links, the other blogger can have a comparable Alexa ranking to yours. A link into your site is still valuable.
In order to facilitate getting links into your site in order to facilitate your SEO ranking, I would like to begin a Link Exchange.
When I began blogging, bloggers needed followers so I began a Follow to Follow Directory. Now that I see bloggers needing links, I would like to begin a Link Exchange exclusively for the followers of Mostly Blogging. (Remember, if you haven’t already sent me your Pinterest name, please do, and I will send you access to our exclusive Pinterest group board.)
This recent situation shows why a Link Exchange would be helpful.
When I started my site, a blogging friend knew I would need links into Mostly Blogging in order to get my SEO to increase again. She offered to swap links with me which I appreciated.
However, I blog about blogging. She blogs about healthy recipes. My readers don’t come to my site for cooking tips. My link exchange would have categories of niches in addition to the link. You wouldn’t want to reduce the credibility of your content by linking to a site with no logical connection to your own.
Also, when I link to someone, and they express their gratitude, I feel almost spammy suggesting that a link to my site would also be appreciated.
I want to start a Mostly Blogging Link Exchange if there is interest. If you are following this blog, please put a link and what you blog about in the comments section.
I recommend including a link to your blog not a post. Then, when they get to your site, they can find a post that logically matches their content. If you do not know your niche, you can write “lifestyle” or “miscellaneous”.
Readers, if you think others might benefit from these SEO tips, please share this post.
I am also wondering your opinion of the Alexa site analysis. Had you been there before? Were you shocked with the results or happy? I look forward to your views.
Related Posts:
How to Easily Get Your Blog Found on Google
How to Increase Blog Traffic Like an SEO Expert
7 Warning Signs That Google Can’t Find You
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