How To Use Link Building to Increase Traffic to your Site
In this article, I'm going to show you how you can employ a widely-used SEO technique to improve the rank of search engines on your site. It's known as link building If performed correctly, it could aid in attracting a flood of prospective customers who will visit your online courses.
The significance of link building in SEO
After a few hours, you have an idea of what keywords you want your course to rank for. Perhaps you've even composed blogs that target the top keywords. However, you're struggling with getting your site to rank in search engines. Why doesn't it rank?
It could be links
Links are among the main ranking aspects that are considered by Google and other search engines. The importance of links isn't just the quantity of links that matters, but also the quality of those hyperlinks and whether they're "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. What can you do to take advantage of this ranking factor when Google tells you so little about it, and what it means for each site? There are many websites that can help you out. My personal favorite is Moz which integrates a variety of SEO tools in one place.
Regarding link building, and the other unknowns discussed above One among the methods Moz does is to scan the web for all links pointed at your site (or your competitors' sites). This information is then used together with machine learning, and a few other factors, to assign the Domain Authority value for each site (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 create a visual of the value your website is in relation to the quantity and quality of links you have. As we can never be sure of how the Google algorithm actually is working, it's impossible to know how close the values assigned by Moz match the reality. But, Moz is still a useful guide nonetheless.
The reason you should share a part of your course at no cost
Links are vital to the ranking of your website. How do you convince that other websites to link to your site?
Other people will link to your site if they believe your website is worth visiting. If you provide an informative piece of material for free, you are increasing the chance that people find your website interesting, thus improving the likelihood of other websites linking to your website.
If you're a school supplier, then you're placed in an exceptional position. You already have an abundance of valuable content that users are eager to grab their hands on. This is why I suggest to offer a small portion of your work in exchange for a fee. Create a mini-course, or make a few of the classes in your primary course accessible as an initial trial like. In providing content that is freely available to all, you're more likely to get someone sharing your content.
Pick a keyword with no brand to target
Prior to publishing your web-based content for free or requesting other websites to link to your site, you'll have to pick a specific keyword you want to rank for. The keyword should not be brand-named such as 'cookery', as these types of keywords are the ones which will attract new visitors to your site.
After you have chosen the most relevant non-branded keyword for your business, then you can start implementing your link building strategy. In this article, I'll keep using the 'cooking course' keyword as an instance.
- URL: jackscooking.com/cookery-course
- Title Tag Description Tag
Next, you need to decide what is going to include on your website. If you include your free lessons on your page, you are providing an incentive to other websites to connect to your page. So make sure that the instructional video is at the top of your page (if it isn't at the highest) to ensure that potential users can see your valuable content straight away.
Another factor to bare in your mind is the fact that Google gives a greater value for pages that have more text on them. This is because they believe that having more content on a page can be beneficial for users. While we've placed a video at the top of our page, Google is unable to crawl the video's content of the video, therefore we must add more text to the webpage to show Google that the site is valuable.
From my experiences, it's helpful to have around 1000-2000 pages of text page. A simple way to accomplish this is by adding a transcript of the video on the bottom section of your page. If you require more text, write a bit more about the benefits of following the cookery course, such as eating more healthily and having fun in the kitchen.
Get links from sites with the highest Domain Authority
The first thing you should do is start by identifying websites having a high Domain Authority that might be open to linking to you.
Do do a Google search for 'cookery blogs Make a list of all the blogs that have a Domain Authority above 30. You can also search for 'cookery course comparison' or other search terms related to cookery courses to create a list of sites that you discover.
Below is a picture of one of the very first sites that show up in Google's search results for "cookery blogs" and the Domain Authory (DA), because of Moz:
There is also Moz to locate all sites which link to a website. So another tactic you could utilize is to compile an inventory of your cooking course competitors and see the websites that are linked to these courses. If a site links to a particular cookery class, then it is likely to be open to the idea of linking to different cookery classes, particularly when you offer a sweet deal by offering a no-cost cooking lesson. You could even enroll with Moz for a free 30-day trial. You can download all of the 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 research on the site and try and find the email address for the site owner or blog administrator. Hunter is an excellent instrument for this.
In order to increase the chances of receiving a reply, I would suggest sending a customized email to each owner of a website or blogger. Your goal is to provide them with a reason to hyperlink to your site, in a way that makes sense to them, and also adds worth to their visitors.
Here is an example of the kind of email you could send:
Hey [name],
I've been reading your blog. You've got some great content! I'm really enjoying your article [insert the article here] ].
I recently created a free online cooking class that I think you will find helpful. Do you have a desire of exploring it, and perhaps reviewing the course in your own blog (if you think that your followers would like it too )?
Let me know If this topic interests you. I'd be happy to send you the course.
Many thanks, and please keep up the excellent work!
Jack Saville
It's not necessary to mention or ask about the link right away and to maintain their interest in your course. If they promote your course on their site it is likely that they will offer you a link most likely without having to ask. It is possible to provide a discounted rate or additional bonus for those who visit their website.
Use your keyword as the anchor text which hyperlinks your website
One final thing to bare at all times when building a link is anchor texts of those links you obtain. Once you reach the stage of soliciting the link (or soliciting them to modify the link they've already given you) it is important to ensure that the link directs to the specific page you're trying to rank on for your selected keywords, and also that the anchor text on the link is the keyword 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'.
By linking to the ranking page, using anchor text that is targeted this site has endorsed this page specifically for the term "cooking course" in particular'.
Quality link building helps boost your website traffic as well as sales
Linking other sites to your website, especially ones with a high Domain Authority, will help you rank better on the search engines for your selected terms. It means that the people looking for the phrase are more likely find your website and online courses.
It can take time to implement this method correctly, and then start getting ranked in search results for your keywords, however the result will be a constant flow of potential customers to your courses. Pretty good deal, in my opinion!
Jack Saville is an SEO Specialist with Bynder the digital company that manages assets.