How To Get Backlinks From Authority Websites

By Peter Brittain on June 9, 2021 in SEO Strategies

Within SEO circles we increasingly speak about E-A-T, and why websites that have or display expertise, authority, and trustworthiness are going to get preferential treatment from Google when it comes to ranking.

With the ever-increasing ranking power that these high authority sites have, it means that the backlinks from them will pass some of that power to the websites they link to. That provides an excellent opportunity for website owners to harness that power by getting the authority sites to link to their own website.

Before everyone goes rushing off to write emails asking for a backlink from a huge website, it does not work like, although admittedly SEO would be a lot easier if it did. Instead, we need to take a more subtle approach, because otherwise, we are just going to look like spammers, trying to ride on their coattails.

That is not to say large website will not entertain backlinks to smaller websites. In fact, that helps their SEO too, given that linking out is a ranking signal to Google. So, we can get backlinks from them, and here are some ideas on how.

Give Them A Testimonial

Even the biggest of companies cannot resist receiving positive reviews and testimonials. You can take advantage of this by researching larger websites to see where they allow reviews, case studies or testimonials, and if they also permit a link within them. Obviously, you do not just copy and paste the same testimonial on each website, and even if you only can get one or two posted with backlinks, it is still worth it.

7 Local SEO Ranking Factors That Every Local Business Must Optimise

By Peter Brittain on March 7, 2021 in Local SEO

Unless you are trying to rank a website for a business that operates purely online, or if it’s a business that competes on a national or international scale, the ability to rank your business website for local search terms is vitally important. If you are a local business and not focusing on SEO that helps you appear on page one of Google for local searches, then you are losing lots of customers to local business competitors who are.

There are several actions you can take which will ensure that your local business’s website can compete with, and ideally, outrank your competitors, provided they are done correctly.

Below we have 7 of the most important ranking factors which Google look for when assessing local websites in its search engine results. Many of these can be implemented quickly and easily, while some may take a bit more time and effort.

Google My Business: Normally abbreviated to ‘GMB‘ this is arguably the most important ranking factor that exists for local businesses. It is essentially set up to let Google know what your local business is about. You need to include the business category, your business address, highly relevant keywords in the title, and even having your opening hours is a plus.

Linking: With backlinks, it is important that you focus on the type and quality of the backlinks rather than simply trying to amass as many as possible. By all means, try for high numbers of links, but make them quality links. Link signals which are especially influential in local ranking are the anchor text used and the authority of the websites that the backlinks are coming from.

How to Set Up Internal Linking on Your Website to Boost Its SEO

By Peter Brittain on February 12, 2021 in Internal Linking

Lots of website owners trying to improve their SEO heed the advice that backlinks are important and then put 100% of their efforts into creating those links from every website and social media platform they can find. They overlook that the links they have within their website and how they are structured are also important for SEO, and they play a role in helping visitors who visit that site too.

An internal link acts in much the same way an external link does in that when it is clicked; it will take the person who clicked it to a different location.

Whereas an external link will take them to a different website, an internal link will either take them to another page within the website or to another part of the page, or it could be used to allow the visitor to download something, such as a document file.

These are some of the practical applications of internal links, and the navigation that they can provide must make the task easier for visitors rather than more difficult. Easy navigation means visitors are liable to stay longer on a website and are more likely to take action, which in many cases means they become a customer or subscriber to your email list.

From our experience with many SEO case studies, good internal links are desirable for many reasons. We know that when Google’s spiders crawl the internet, they do so using links that go to and from the hundreds of millions of existing websites. If that is how they do it externally, then within a website it is the internal links that they crawl.

It follows that if your linking structure is optimized and provides a logical path throughout it, then Google will be able to crawl and index every page and all content that exists within your website. If so, then all those SEO factors such as titles, descriptions and meta tags contribute to the site’s ranking. Compare that to a website with poor linking where 50% of the pages are missed and therefore add nothing in respect of SEO.

How To Optimise Content For The Questions People Ask On Google

By Peter Brittain on October 1, 2020 in Website Content

If you have been following developments in SEO, and in particular what direction Google has been heading in determining the rankings of websites, you will have seen that ‘user experience’ has become one of the primary factors they apply.

For Google, it is no longer enough for a website just to have good information; it also needs to meet the needs of and provide a better experience for those who have searched and then landed on that website.

There are lots of complex solutions as to how a website might achieve these aims, however, there is one simple, and highly effective, method you can try, and that is to answer questions.

Questions, Questions, Questions

When we say answer questions, we mean the questions that get typed into Google’s search bar. When searching, what many people do is, instead of simply typing in a search like ‘SEO Sydney‘, they will instead type ‘what is the best way to get SEO done on my Sydney website?’, or ‘how can I do SEO on my Sydney website?’.

Within your niche or business sector, you will hopefully have ideas as to what questions your potential customers might ask on Google, and if you do, you are even closer to taking advantage of this.

What Is Mobile-First Indexing?

By Peter Brittain on September 15, 2020 in Mobile SEO

In recent times, Google has made a number of announcements about mobile-first indexing. It had planned to roll out mobile-first indexing for the entire worldwide web in September 2020 but at the time of writing that has now been postponed until March 2021.

No doubt, it brought a collective sigh of relief for those who have no idea what mobile indexing is and, therefore, no clue how to prepare for it. The other group who may be relieved are those who knew what to do but hadn’t bothered to take any action yet.

In truth, mobile-first indexing is nothing to be alarmed about, although if you have no idea what it is, it might serve us well if we explain it to you.

Why Is Mobile-First Indexing Happening?

As a business owner, It can’t have escaped your notice that more and more of your customers are interacting with your online properties via their mobile devices. By properties, we mean not just your website but your social media pages as well.

It has also not escaped Google’s notice either, but for them, the trend is not just with regards to people going online via their mobile devices, but them also searching whilst on their mobile devices too.

This has developed to the point whereby we have crossed the point there are now more searches carried out on Google via mobile devices than there are via desktop computers or laptops.

As such Google has determined that it needs to change how it presents search results to take account of this, and that change is called mobile-first indexing.