This video continues Kori’s series this month on Search Engine Optimization for your #WordPress website.
Video One – SEO vs SEM – Which one is best?
https://youtu.be/j3VKpWwghFw
Video Two – Finding Keywords
https://youtu.be/2AyYaTdE718
Video Three – On-Site SEO
https://youtu.be/-m2MRdsw2ZY
SEMRush start a 14-day free trial https://semrush.sjv.io/c/1223565/1602526/13053 (affiliate link – thank you!)
Looking for even more on SEO –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFXUhTBPPms&list=PLEHHgcyfqqx7OjmmT1lmQvcdJWk2Z2zTJ
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Improve Off-Site SEO
When you’re trying to improve your website’s search engine rank, what are some things you can do outside of your website to actually optimize and improve your website’s rank?
Hey y’all, my name is Kori Ashton, and I’m gonna continue a series on search engine optimization. We started by looking at SEO versus SEM and which one might be best for you. Then we took a look at keyword tools, trying to help you figure out what type of keywords your audience might be searching for. Last week we continued into how to plug those keywords into your on-site SEO. Let’s take a look at some things you can do today to improve your off-site SEO. Off-site SEO tactics include backlinks, social media, reviews and reputation management, as well as sitemaps.
What is a Backlink?
So what is a backlink? Essentially, a backlink is anytime one website links to another website. As an example, perhaps you’re a blogger and you are writing an article about how to become more flexible for yoga. And you know about somebody else’s really great tutorial on the position downward dog. So as you’re writing your article, you add a link in your article over to their website. Ideally, they would realize you would link to them, or maybe even you reached out to them, and they would consider linking back to you. This is how we create a whole structure of backlinks, one website linking to another. So why does it even matter? Well, Google thinks the more people are linking to you the better your content must be, especially if those folks who are linking to you have their own high recognized authority in the industry. And they’re sending more traffic to your website from those great links.
How do you get Backlinks?
So how do you get backlinks? Well, hopefully you’ll create really great content and share it, and folks will catch on and they’ll start to link to it. You can also leverage influencers or guest bloggers, asking them to create content on their own websites to send traffic back to you. Or you can simply ask for them. Maybe you’ve found somebody else’s yoga blog out there and you submit your article to them, letting them know, “Hey, I’ve got an article that your readers might love.” “Will you consider linking to it?” So how do you track how many backlinks you even have? You can use a free tool, Google Analytics. You can also use a pro tool that I would recommend, called Semrush. I’ll give you a free 14 day trial link in the description box below so you can check out both of those tools. Right away though, you’ll start to see how many many backlinks are linking to your website.
How Social Media Helps Off-Site SEO
Alright, y’all, let’s talk social media, and how do you leverage so many different options inside of your digital marketing strategy? What I’m hoping you’ll do is choose one network where your audience is already spending time. This should be manageable for you. Then challenge yourself to post consistently, minimally once a week. Be sure to monitor those comments, and if and when somebody does comment on one of your posts, please be proactive and respond to them. Even just as simple thank you goes a long way. And then you’ll also wanna measure that traffic from networks, and you can do that on either tool that I’ve just recommended, Google Analytics or Semrush.
How Reputation Management Helps Off-Site SEO
Let’s talk about your reputation management, or those reviews out there in the wild. You’ll want to be proactive with your social listening and monitor your brand weekly. There are several tools out there that you can use for that. Hootsuite allows social listening, SproutSocial, and even a free tool by Google, called Google Alerts. I would recommend though that you might miss some opportunities with using that free tool. So if you’re really concerned about reputation management, I would recommend pouring a little bit of your budget toward it so that you’re monitoring it very consistently. You also wanna already have a preset list of responses so that you’re not just responding to any negative reviews in an emotional way. You certainly want to respond though in a timely manner. You can also ask for positive reviews from happy customers. There’s nothing better than reaching out and asking somebody who’s just had a great encounter with your brand to leave you a Google review or a Facebook review. And you certainly wanna claim your profile on any of the directory listings that are out in the wild. So if you’ve gone out there and you’ve seen your name listed in one of these, they typically have a way for you to claim them and then be able to respond to any feedback you’re given there.
Do Sitemaps Help SEO?
Now, sitemaps might not be something you would think about for off-site SEO tactics, but they’re quite important. What you’ll wanna be certain of is that it’s listed at the bottom of your website. You should have a little link down there that says sitemap. It’s typically next to your terms of use or your privacy policy. You’ll also wanna ensure that that area is being built out dynamically anytime you press publish on your website and you’re adding fresh content. This helps signal Google that you’ve got new content for it to start indexing. And if you’ve not checked your robots.txt file, Google might not be able to see your website at all. Now, this is a little bit more technical. I’ll put a link to a video about this specific file so that you can really dig into getting that optimized for Google. But it is an important thing to do so that your sitemaps can even be found. And once you’ve got that sitemap ready to go, you can jump into Google Webmaster Tools and submit that sitemap so that Google starts to track all of your content. This is a really great way to expedite getting onto Google’s radar for all of your pages to be ranked, especially with a brand new website.
Ultimately, y’all, we need to remember that Google will love your website if it can understand you and if users love you. I have an entire playlist dedicated to search engine optimization, and I hope you’ll take time to check out another playlist all about Yoast, if you’re running on WordPress. It’ll help you set up that plugin and use it effectively inside of your content marketing. Please be sure to click like and subscribe. Come back here with me every single week. I’ll see you next time. Bye y’all.
