How to Use Link Building to Increase Traffic to Your Site
In this blog I'll show you how you can employ a widely-used SEO method to boost the rank of search engines on your course website. This is known as link building When performed correctly, it could aid in attracting a flood of new customers for your courses online.
The significance of building links in SEO
After a few hours, you have an idea of what keywords you'd like your site to rank for. You might have even written blogs that target your most popular keywords, however you're struggling to get your website to be found by search engines. What's wrong with it?
This could mean links
Links are one of the primary ranking aspects which are taken into consideration by search engines. The importance of links isn't solely the amount of links that matters as well as the quality of those hyperlinks as well as whether or not they have been 'followed' (the site instructs Google to take the hyperlink into account for ranking purposes).
However, Google does not specify how valuable a link from each website and how many hyperlinks your website has. So how can you effectively take advantage of this ranking factor when Google provides you with so little information about it or what it can mean for each site? There are numerous websites that can help you out. My personal favourite is Moz is a program that integrates a variety of SEO tools into one package.
In terms of link-building, and also the unknowns mentioned above One of the most useful methods Moz does is to scan the web for all links pointed at your site (or your competitors' sites). It then uses this information along with some machines learning, and several other elements in order to assign a Domain Authority value out of 100 to every website (this is a Moz measurement that is not a official Google measure).
When you look at the website's Domain Authority, you can begin to construct a picture of the value your website is in relation to the quantity and quality of hyperlinks you've got. Since we cannot be certain of the way in which the Google algorithm is working, it's impossible to be able to determine how accurate the scores given by Moz correspond to reality. However, Moz is still a helpful guide.
Why you should give away part of your class for free
Links are incredibly important in determining the position of your website. But how can you convince that other websites to link to yours?
Others will hyperlink to you if they think that your site is worthwhile to visit. If you offer valuable content for free, then you are increasing the chance of other visitors finding your site interesting, therefore improving the likelihood that other sites will link to you.
If you are a course provider then you are in a unique situation. You already have plenty of useful content that students would like to read on. So, I would encourage you to offer a small portion of your work for free. You could create a mini-course. Or make a few of the classes in your primary course available for a free trial, such as. If you make your content accessible to everyone, you are increasing the chance of someone linking to you.
Select a keyword that is not branded to target
When you begin publishing web-based content for free or requesting for other sites to link to yours, you'll need choose a particular key phrase you'd like to be ranked for. The keyword should not be brand-named keyword like 'cookery course' for example, since these kinds of keywords are the ones that bring in new clients to your site.
When you've decided on the most valuable non-branded keyword for your business, then you can start implementing the strategy for building links. To illustrate this post, I will keep using the 'cooking course' as an instance.
- URL: jackscooking.com/cookery-course
- Title Tag Description Tag
You must then decide what is going to include on your website. By putting your free lesson on the page, you are providing an incentive to other websites to hyperlink to your site. Make sure the course video is near the top of the page (if not the most prominent) to make sure that potential visitors can view the content straight away.
Another thing to keep to be aware of is that Google gives a greater value to websites with more content in them. They believe that content on a website will be more beneficial to the user. Although we've put a video in the upper right corner of the page Google is unable to crawl the video's content of the video, therefore we must put more words on the page to demonstrate to Google that the page is valuable.
In my experience, it is useful to add between 1000 and 2000 words on the page. A simple way to accomplish this is to add a transcript of the video at the end of the page. Then if you need more text, write a bit more about the benefits of following the cookery course, including being healthier as well as having more fun in the kitchen.
Get links from sites with an excellent Domain Authority
The first thing you should do is start by identifying websites that have a good Domain Authority that might be open to linking to you.
Do do a Google search on 'cookery blog sites to make your list of blogs that have a Domain Authority above 30. Also, you can search for 'cookery course comparison as well as other search phrases related to cookery classes, and then make a list of the sites you find there too.
Here is a screenshot of the first few sites that show up in Google's search results for "cookery blogs" and the Domain Authory (DA), thanks to Moz:
You can also use Moz to locate all websites that have links to any site. One other strategy to employ is to make an inventory of your cooking course competitors and see the websites that are linked to them. If a site links to a particular cookery class, then it is likely to consider the possibility of linking to different cookery courses too, especially when you offer a sweet offer with a complimentary cookery lesson. If you want to, you can sign up to Moz for a free 30-day trial, and then download all site link profiles you need in the time.
After you've created your list of sites which might be open to linking to you, perform some background research about the site and try and find the email address of the site owner or blog administrator. Hunter is a fantastic tool to do this.
To increase your chances of getting a response, I would suggest sending a customized email to every website's owner or manager of a blog. The goal here is to provide them with a reason to hyperlink to your site and in a manner that makes sense to them, and also adds value to their readers.
Here is an example of an email you can make:
Hello [name],
I've been reading your blog. You've created some fantastic material! I really like your article [insert link here] ].
I've recently put together a free online cooking class which you may find useful. Are you interested in taking a look, and perhaps posting a critique of the lesson for your website (if you think your readers would like it too )?
Let me know if this interests you. I'm happy to give you a lesson.
Thanks so much, Keep up the good work!
Jack Saville
It's important to not mention or ask about the link right away, but to nurture their interest in your course. If they promote your program on their website They will most likely provide you with a link likely without asking. It is possible to offer a special discount or a bonus to their readers.
Make use of your keyword in the anchor text which hyperlinks your website
One final thing to bare to keep in mind while building links is anchor texts that you use in the links that you get. If you get to the stage of seeking an additional link (or asking them to alter a link they have already offered you) it's important to ensure whether the link will lead to the exact page that you want to rank for your chosen keyword, and that the anchor text of the link matches the keywords you're trying to rank for.
So in our cookery course example, we would ask for a link to jackscooking.com/cookery-course from the anchor text 'cookery course'.
When linking to the top ranking page with targeted anchor text this site has endorsed this particular page in connection with specifically the phrase 'cookery class'.
Link building that is of high quality will increase the number of visitors to your site as well as sales
Linking other sites to your website, especially ones with a high Domain Authority, will help you to rank higher in the search engines for your selected keywords. It means that the people who are searching for that term are more likely to discover your site and courses.
It can take time to implement this strategy properly and start getting ranked in search results for your keyword, but the result will be constantly flowing potential customers to your courses. It's a pretty decent deal in my opinion!
Jack Saville is an SEO Specialist with Bynder an online supplier of asset management.