How To Use Link Building to Increase Traffic to Your website
In this post I'll be able to explain how to employ a widely-used SEO technique to improve the rank of search engines on your site. This is known as linking If done properly, it can assist in creating a wave of prospective customers who will visit the online course you offer.
The significance of building links in SEO
After a few hours, you have an idea of the keywords that you'd like your site to rank for. Perhaps you've even composed some blog posts targeting the top keywords. However, you're not able to get your website to rank in search engines. Why isn't it ranking?
The answer might be the links
Links are among the most important ranking elements which are taken into consideration by Google and other search engines. Not just the quantity of links that matters however, it is also the quality of those links, and whether they are "followed" (the site instructs Google to consider the link in consideration for purposes of ranking).
But, Google does not specify the value of a hyperlink from the website you are linking to as well as how many of them your website has. So how can you effectively benefit from the ranking factors if Google gives you only a few details about it, or what it can mean for each site? There are numerous tools on the web that can help you out. My favorite tool is Moz which blends several different SEO tools into one package.
Regarding link building, and the other unknowns discussed above one of the best aspects Moz can do is scan the web for any websites that have links to your site (or websites of competitors). It then uses this information, plus some machine learning, and some other variables for assigning an Domain Authority value for each site (this is a Moz measurement, and not an officially recognized Google measure).
When you look at the website's Domain Authority, you can start to build a picture of the importance your site is in terms of its quality and the number of hyperlinks you've got. Since we cannot be sure of how the Google algorithm actually works, we will never find out how closely the numbers given by Moz are to the truth. But, Moz is still a valuable guide.
The reason you should give away part of your course for free
Links are crucial in determining the position of your site. But how can you convince that other websites to link to your website?
Other people will link to you when they feel your site's worth checking out. If you give away valuable material for free, there is a greater chance that other people will find your site interesting, therefore increasing the chance of other websites linking to your website.
If you're a school provider then you are situated in a special place. You already have plenty of useful content that students want to get their hands on. So, I would encourage you to make available a portion of your content for free. You could create a mini-course. Or create a handful of lessons in your main course available as part of the free trial program, such as. By providing freely accessible content to everyone, you are increasing the chance of someone sharing your content.
Choose a non-branded keyword that you want to reach
Before you start publishing free content online or asking for other sites to link to your site, you'll have to pick a specific search term you'd like to be ranked for. The keyword should not be brand-named term like "cooking course", as these types of words are ones that will bring new customers to your website.
Once your have decided the most valuable non-branded keyword to your company, you can start implementing your link building strategy. To illustrate this post, I will keep using the 'cooking course' keyword for an illustration.
- URL: jackscooking.com/cookery-course
- Title Tag: Cookery
Next, you need to choose what information will be included in the body of your website. When you place your free course in the body of your webpage it provides incentives for other sites to link to you. Make sure the instructional video is at the top of your page (if it isn't at the top) to ensure that potential users can see your valuable information immediately.
Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that Google assigns a higher value to websites with more content in them. They believe that content in a webpage can be beneficial for users. Although we've put a video in the upper right corner of the page Google can't crawl the content of that video, and consequently, we have to include more content on the webpage to show Google that the site is valuable.
From my experience, it is useful to include about 1000-2000 words of text on the page. An easy method to accomplish this is to include an audio transcript on the bottom section of your page. If you require more words, you can write more on the advantages that come from following the course, such as being healthier as well as having more enjoyable time cooking.
Get links from sites with the highest Domain Authority
The first thing you should do is make a list of sites with a high Domain Authority that might be open to linking to you.
Do an Google search on 'cookery blog sites Make your list of blogs that have a Domain Authority above 30. Also, you can do a search on 'cookery course compar as well as other search phrases related to cookery classes, and then prepare a list of sites you find there too.
Here is a screenshot of the first few sites that show up in the Google search results that include "cookery blogs" and their Domain Authory (DA), because of Moz:
There is also Moz to locate all sites which link to a website. One other strategy to utilize is to compile the list of your cookery course competitors and see the websites that are linked to these sites. If a website links to a specific cookery school It is most likely to be open to the idea linking to other cooking courses too, especially in the event that you can sweeten the deal with a free cooking lesson. If you want to, you can enroll with Moz for a free 30-day trial. You can download all of the site link profiles you need to in that time.
Once you have created an inventory of websites that might be open to linking to your site, conduct some investigation on the website and then try to locate the email address of the site owner or blog manager. Hunter is a great instrument for this.
In order to increase the chances of receiving a reply, I suggest sending a personal email to every website's owner or manager of a blog. The goal here is to give them a reason to hyperlink to your site, in a way which is sensible for them and provides the value of their customers.
Here's an example the kind of email you could send:
Hi [name],
I've been following your blog and it's got some great material! I am really impressed by your post [insert link here] ].
I've recently put together a free online cookery lesson which you may find useful. Are you interested in checking it out, and perhaps posting a critique of the lesson for your website (if you think that your followers would like it too )?
Let me know whether this is something you're interested in. I'd be happy to send you a lesson.
Thanks so much, and please keep up the excellent work!
Jack Saville
It is important not to mention or ask about a link straight away and to maintain the interest of your students in your course. If they feature your course on their site it is likely that they will offer you a link probably without needing to ask. You could even arrange to provide a discounted rate or additional bonus for those who visit their website.
Use your keyword within the text anchor which links to your website
The last thing you need to bear at all times when building a link is anchor texts that you use in those links you obtain. Once you reach the stage of asking for an additional link (or asking them to alter an existing link that they've provided you with) it's crucial to ask whether the link will lead to the specific page you're trying to rank on for your selected keywords, and also ensure that the anchor text in that link refers to the exact keyword you are targeting.
So in our cookery course example, we would ask for a link to jackscooking.com/cookery-course from the anchor text 'cookery course'.
In linking to the rank page, using anchor text that is targeted The site endorses this specific page for the specific term 'cookery course'.
Quality link building will increase the number of visitors to your site as well as sales
Having other websites link to your site, specifically those with a high Domain Authority, will help you to rank higher in Google for the selected terms. That means that those who search for that phrase are more likely find your website and online training courses.
It is a long time before you can implement the strategy correctly and begin ranking in search engines with your chosen keyword. However, the result will be an ongoing flow of prospective students to your course. It's a pretty decent deal in my opinion!
Jack Saville is an SEO Specialist with Bynder, a digital supplier of asset management.