They’re not just pathways leading readers to more information; they also tell search engines what your content is about and how it connects to the broader web. But, like any tool, when used incorrectly, they can cause more harm than good.

In this article, I mention a few common mistakes people make with outbound links. I’ll also share tips on how to avoid these common pitfalls.

1. Using irrelevant anchor text can be harmful

Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink, and it’s a key factor in SEO. The problem comes when anchor text doesn’t match the content of the linked page, is vague, or is over-stuffed with keywords.

Common mistakes:

• Using vague phrases like “click here” or “read more.”
• Choosing text that’s unrelated to the content it links to.
• Using keyword-stuffed anchor texts that have a negative effect on the user experience.

Why it matters:

• Poorly chosen anchor text can confuse both users and search engines. It may reduce the relevancy signals your site sends, negatively affecting your rankings.
• It can also frustrate readers, leading to a higher bounce rate.

How to get it right:

• Always use descriptive, relevant anchor text that gives readers a clear idea of what they’ll find when they click the link.
• For example, instead of “click here,” use “learn more about SEO best practices.”
• Avoid keyword-stuffed anchor texts and keep it organic.

2. Linking to low-quality websites can lead to Google penalties

Not all websites are created equal. Linking to sites with poor reputations or low-quality content can damage your site’s credibility.

What to avoid:

• Linking to sites filled with spammy or irrelevant content.
• Pointing to websites that have thin content or questionable practices.
• Sending users to websites that do not provide the best user experience.

Risks involved:

• Associating with low-quality sites can make search engines view your site as less trustworthy.
• In extreme cases, this can lead to penalties or a drop in rankings.

How to avoid this pitfall:

• Before linking, check the quality of the website. Look for well-researched, informative content and a clean design.
• Use tools like Moz or Ahrefs to assess the domain authority and overall reputation of the site.
• You can also check if other credible websites link to the target website.

3. Overusing dofollow or nofollow links can send wrong signals to Google

Understanding the difference between dofollow and nofollow links is essential. Dofollow links pass on SEO value, while nofollow links tell search engines not to follow them. It’s important to keep a natural profile by mixing dofollow and nofollow links where it makes sense to do so.

Common mistakes:

• Overloading your content with dofollow links can appear manipulative, signaling that you’re trying to game the system.
• On the other hand, using too many nofollow links might also send the wrong signals to Google that you’re hoarding all the link equity.

The right balance:

• Use dofollow links for reputable, high-quality sites that add value to your content.
• Reserve nofollow links for less authoritative sites or for situations where you want to avoid passing on SEO value, like in user-generated content or ads.

4. Failing to regularly audit outbound links

Outbound links aren’t a “set it and forget it” aspect of your site. Over time, links can break, become outdated, or lead to irrelevant content.

Common oversights:

• Broken links that result in 404 errors.
• Links that point to content that is no longer relevant or useful.

Why it’s a problem:

• Broken links frustrate users and can harm your site’s SEO.
• Outdated links may mislead readers or fail to provide them with the value they’re seeking, disturbing their search journey just because they landed on your website.

Staying on top of it:

• Regularly audit your site’s outbound links using tools like Semrush, Screaming Frog, or Ahrefs.
• Fix broken links promptly, either by updating them or removing them altogether.
• Replace outdated links with more current, relevant content.

5. Not considering the user’s journey when placing links

Outbound links should enhance the reader’s experience, not interrupt it. Misplacing them can disrupt the flow of your content.

What often goes wrong:

• Placing links too early in the content, causing readers to leave before fully engaging with the material.
• Overloading a page with links, making it hard for users to focus on the main message.

How to get it right:

• Place links where they naturally fit within the context, guiding readers smoothly to additional information without disrupting their experience.
• Use links strategically, focusing on quality rather than quantity.

6. Ignoring the context of the linked content

It’s essential that the content you link to matches the context of your page. Irrelevant links can confuse and frustrate readers.

Common mistakes:

• Linking to content that doesn’t directly relate to the topic at hand.
• Directing users to pages that don’t add value or are off-topic.

How to ensure relevancy:

• Always vet the content you’re linking to, making sure it aligns with your page’s message.
• Ask yourself if the link truly benefits the reader and enhances their understanding of the subject.

7. Overloading pages with outbound links

While outbound links are valuable, too many can overwhelm readers and dilute the impact of your content.

What to avoid:

• Filling a page with so many links that the main content gets lost.
• Creating a spammy appearance that turns readers and search engines off.

Keeping it balanced:

• Focus on linking to high-quality, relevant resources.
• Aim for a balance that provides value without overwhelming the reader.

Conclusion

By avoiding these common outbound link mistakes, you can maintain a site that not only ranks well but also offers a valuable, seamless experience for your readers.

Regular audits, thoughtful anchor text, and strategic link placement will keep your outbound linking strategy on point.

How do you use outbound links on your website? Let us know in the comment section below.

The post 7 Common Outbound Link Mistakes & How To Avoid Them appeared first on Improve My Search Ranking.

Here are 6 SEO audit tools you can use and some tips on how to use each of them.

1. SEMRush

SEMRush is one of the most popular tools among search engine optimisation professionals. It offers a full suite of features that SEOs need for an SEO audit, from keyword research to site audit to content optimization.

With SEMRush, you can:

• Do keyword research during SEO audits and find new opportunities.
• Analyze competitors to identify the keywords they target, the pages they drive traffic to, and their traffic-generation methods.
• Identify your top- and worst-performing web pages.
• Conduct a detailed site audit to identify on-page, off-page, and technical SEO issues on your website.

Alternative: You can also achieve similar results with SpyFu and ScreamingFrog. But we recommend SEMRush for its ease of use.

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another very popular tool and is an excellent alternative to SEMRush.

Ahrefs and SEMRush share most of the features, albeit under different proprietary names, of course. Many SEOs prefer Ahrefs for off-page SEO as their backlink profile analyzer seems more robust and detailed than SEMRush.

If you don’t have a SEMRush subscription, you can easily use Ahrefs to achieve the same results. Ahrefs also offers a limited free trial that is usually enough to perform a site audit and identify the biggest issues on your website.

Alternative: Moz and Mangools are other similar software that you can use instead of Ahrefs.

3. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that mainly helps you with on-page optimisation. With Yoast SEO, you can:

• Easily update keyword-rich meta titles and meta descriptions to your web page
• Add a focus keyword and see how well a page is optimised for that focus keyword
• Quickly identify missing alt text on a web page
• Define canonical URLs
• Create and manage temporary and permanent redirects
• Monitor keyword density on a web page
• Optimise on-page heading tags to make them more keyword rich
• Clean up permalinks
• Check the readability of the contents of your web page. Yoast SEO uses the famous Flesch-Kincaid readability test to analyse how easy to read your content is, assigns a score, and shares actionable tips on how to improve it.

During your SEO audit, you will need to take action to fix various on-page SEO issues. The Yoast SEO plugin can be extremely helpful in that case.

Alternative: All in One SEO is an excellent alternative to the Yoast SEO plugin.

4. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is arguably the most powerful tool when it comes to performing SEO audits.

With Google Search Console, you can do the following things during an SEO audit:

• Identify the pages that get the most organic traffic
• Identify the search queries that drive the most organic traffic to your pages
• Identify crawlability and indexing issues
• Identify issues related to core web vitals
• Identify issues with page experience and mobile usability
• Monitor any manual actions and penalties given by Google
• Check and submit a sitemap to Google

5. Google PageSpeed Insights

When you are performing an SEO audit, keep a close eye on how fast your website loads. You can check your website’s loading speed with Google PageSpeed Insights.

This free tool by Google not just tells you how fast your web page loads but it also generates a report that contains actionable insights for fixing issues that are slowing down your site.

In addition to website speed, you should also use Google PageSpeed Insights to see how well your website performs in terms of Core Web Vitals.

Alternatives: GTMetrix and Pingdom are two other popular tools that help you measure how your site performs. They use slightly different methods to measure a page’s performance, so we recommend using all three tools when performing an SEO audit to get the most comprehensive data.

6. SERP Snippet Optimization Tool

Some of the most common issues found during an SEO audit are meta titles and meta descriptions. While tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs will help you identify which pages have these issues — and whether you need to shorten or lengthen titles — they won’t help you write them.

For that, you need a tool that can help you visualize what a page’s meta title and description would look like.

For that, you can use a free tool like our Google Snippet Optimiser.

It’s important because, contrary to common belief, meta titles and meta descriptions do not have a word count limit; they have a pixel limit. So, even a 50-character meta title can be truncated by Google, while a 70-character meta title appears perfectly fine.

Conclusion

SEO audits can be overwhelming and complicated, but they can be made easier with the right tools.

Let us know if we missed any of your favorite SEO audit tools.

And if you need help with an SEO audit of your local business website, give us a call. We can help pinpoint what’s wrong with your website and any growth opportunities we find.

The post 6 SEO audit tools (and how to use them) appeared first on Improve My Search Ranking.

They send powerful signals to search engines that help them evaluate and rank a website higher in the search engines.

But not all backlinks do that. In fact, some of them are way more powerful than others, and some backlinks can even harm your website and its rankings in the SERPs.

This is why it is highly recommended to get more contextual backlinks for your website. It is believed that a good contextual backlink is at least 5x more powerful than any other kind of backlink.

And in this post, I’m going to share some proven methods on how to get powerful, contextual backlinks for your website.

For now, let’s start from the top.

What is a Contextual Backlink?

A contextual backlink is a link that is acquired naturally within the body of a blog post or webpage and points to your website. Here is an example of a good contextual backlink.

As you can see the backlink in the above screenshot “11 content optimization tips” appears naturally within the post. It is totally contextual and adds value to the post.

Search engines love these contextual backlinks as they are appear more genuine, honest, and valuable for the readers.

It can be a bit tough, however, to get these contextual backlinks from high authority websites. Here are a few proven methods to help you get these powerful links.

1. Broken Link Building Strategy

This is one of the easiest methods to get high-quality and 100% natural contextual backlinks to your website. The idea behind this strategy is actually very simple and can be summarised in the following steps:

• Find broken links on a high-quality relevant website in your niche that you would like to get backlinks from.
• Create a relevant piece of content that can replace that broken link.
• Publish that piece on your blog
• Inform that owner of the website of the broken link they have and offer your piece to fix that broken link.

It almost always works if the blog post you’re offering is of very high quality.

For most people, finding those broken links can be confusing and difficult. You can use a free Google Chrome extension, such Broken Link Checker or Check My Links to easily find these broken links.

Or, if you have money to spend on a tool, you can also buy Ahrefs to help you find these broken links and much more.

2. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is another very good way to acquire high-quality contextual backlinks from authority websites in your niche.

When people talk about guest blogging, they don’t often think of contextual backlinks. All they usually focus on is the author-bio link that they get at the end of the blog post. While it is a backlink, it is not a contextual backlink and, therefore, isn’t that powerful.

What you should do is try to include a couple of contextual backlinks within the body of the post, provided if it seems natural.

You can even get a couple of relevant posts ready specifically for this particular purpose, i.e., to include as contextual links in your next guest post.

3. Seek Roundup Posts

Another tip is to find relevant roundup posts and get one of your blog posts listed in there.

It’s actually a relatively simple process if you have some high-quality posts published on your website. After that, it just requires manually outreaching to a few website owners.

Here is an example of a roundup post.

Assume that you have a very high-quality blog post in the personal development niche. Do you see yourself contacting the owner of this post and getting your post included in this list?

If it truly adds value to the readers of personal development niche, the owner of this would love to include your blog post.

And any link from a roundup post like this is almost always a natural, contextual backlink.

4. Infographics

Blog posts are relatively easier to create. Infographics, however, are very unique and take a lot of time to create and publish on the web.

If you have some great infographics, you can use them to get hundreds of high-quality contextual backlinks.

Brian Dean from Backlinko has written a step-by-step guide to teach you how to do that. If you are interested in getting backlinks with infographics (which might not be as easy as some of the other methods mentioned in this post) I highly recommend you to read his post.

Final Words

Contextual backlinks always carry a lot of search engine power with them. If you’re building links anyway, always go for the contextual backlinks first.

By using these 4 proven methods mentioned in this post, I’m confident that you will be able to generate a lot more contextual backlinks to your website.

The post How to do Contextual Link Building appeared first on Improve My Search Ranking.

Backlinks have a lot of importance, and that significance is only going to grow. So, if you want to rank your website higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs), you better start building some high-quality backlinks.

But how do you do that when you have a completely fresh and new website?

You see, it is slightly easier for established websites to build backlinks. However, new websites and blogs can find it extremely difficult to get going.

But don’t worry.

In this post, I’m going to share 3 solid tips on how to build backlinks for a fresh new website.

1. Build a Free Tool

Although it is a slightly expensive option, it’s still a highly effective one.

You can get tons of awesome backlinks by building a free tool and sharing it with the online community for free on your website.

If that tool serves a useful purpose for your target audience and blogging community, people will not only come to your website to use that tool, but they will be also talking about it and sharing it on their social media profiles.

For instance, KeywordTool.io is a great keyword research tool that many people use. When somebody mentions it on their website — just like I did right now — they create a valuable backlink. Moreover, the backlinks that you will get with this method would be highly relevant and targeted.

We’ve created a couple of our own tools too:

• On-Page SEO Analyser
• SEO Keyword Profit Calculator

2. Replicate Your Competitor’s Backlinks

For this method, you will need another tool that can thoroughly examine your competitor’s backlinks. There are three tools that instantly come to mind:

• Moz
• Ahrefs
• Majestic

Moz is a great digital marketing tool; it serves multiple purposes. But if your primary goal is to thoroughly examine backlink profiles, Ahrefs is a better option. Furthermore, Ahrefs is constantly introducing new tools, such as ‘Content Explorer’ and ‘Keyword Explorer’ to make the tool even better and more comprehensive.

Anyway, the idea is to research and find out how your competitors are getting their backlinks and then replicate those strategies.

Once you know the source of your competitors’ backlinks, you can go after those sources and get backlinks for your own website.

The benefit of this method is that you will not have to manually search for resources from where you can acquire powerful backlinks. By analysing your competitors’ backlink profiles, you can instantly find out their sources and go after them.

For instance, if you see that one of your competitor has been building backlinks via guest posting, you can approach those blogs and try to get your post there as well. That way, you will be also building backlinks — the same as your competitors — but you won’t have to do the research and find out blogs that accept guest posts. Ahrefs would have done that for you.

Let’s talk more about guest posting, which is our next point.

3. Guest Posting

I highly recommend guest posting for any blog or website. It is, by far, one of the most effective techniques to not only acquire relevant and high-quality backlinks but also to build important online relationships.

When guest posting, make sure to remember the following points:

• Do not publish your guest posts on irrelevant websites. Stay within your specific niche and industry.
• Too many backlinks from irrelevant websites may actually cause a search engine penalty.
• Aim for blogs that have a higher ‘Domain Authority’ than yours.
• Do not just rely on the author-bio link in the end. Also aim for a couple of contextual backlinks within the text of the post.
• Make sure that you are fully utilizing the guest posting process by redirecting the users to a specific landing page — not just the homepage of your website. Use that landing page to build your email list that you can later use to acquire more customers.

Final Words

So these are the 3 proven tips and tricks that you can use to build backlinks for a completely fresh and new website.

Building backlinks is tough — and it is even tougher for a new website with no presence — but it is definitely manageable with the right tactics and strategies. Use these 3 tips to make sure that you are building valuable backlinks as soon as possible.

The post New Website Link Building appeared first on Improve My Search Ranking.

This was confirmed by Google’s John Mueller when he was asked if the equity of a backlink increases based on how much traffic it sends to the other domain during a recent Google Search Central SEO hangout.

John didn’t take long to confirm that it’s not a factor.

“We don’t use things like traffic through a link when trying to evaluate how a link should be valued. As far as I know, we don’t look at things like the probability that someone will click on a link with regards to how we should value it.”

After the straightforward response, John Mueller elaborated on why referral traffic does not affect the equity of a backlink.

Spoiler: it’s because backlinks are mainly just references.

“Because sometimes links are essentially just references and it’s not so much that we expect people to click on every link on a page. But if someone is referring to your site and saying like – I’m doing this because this expert here said to do that – then people are not going to click on that link and always look at your site and confirm whatever is written there.

But they’ll see it as almost like a reference. It’s like if they needed to find out more information they could go there, but they don’t need to. And from that point of view, I don’t think we would be taking that into consideration when it comes to evaluating the value of a link.”

In the end, John shared more information regarding how Google passes link equity from one domain to another, especially in the context of PageRank.

“If you look into how PageRank works, it’s a bit different nowadays how we handle that. But essentially, the idea behind that is that in general, with PageRank you set up some value for the individual pages, and then you pass a fraction of that value on through the links there.

If the page is seen as being very high value, then the links from there will be treated with a little bit more weight compared to some random page on the internet.

As as I know, we don’t do it exactly the same way as things were in the beginning with regards to PageRank, but it’s a good way of thinking about that.”

Here is a timestamped video if you want to check out the full conversation.

The post Referral traffic does not contribute to link equity, confirms Google appeared first on Improve My Search Ranking.

The Bing Content Submission API notifies Bing of any website changes in real time. Therefore, in theory, the API allows webmasters and content creators to notify Bing of any recent website changes (or new content) in real time and have their website indexed instantly.

The idea behind having a content submission API like this is to reduce the dependence on Bingbot.

According to Fabrice Canal, Principal Program Manager at Bing:

“With an overwhelming response and great feedbacks from website owners who had adopted the API, we are pleased to announce that Bing Content Submission API is now open for all to implement and to start sending their content changes to Bing, not only to reach more relevant users on Bing but also to reduce bingbot crawl load on their sites.”

It is recommended to see the Bing Content Submission API in combination with the Bing URL submission API. This will grant webmasters access to a unified dashboard that they can use to see insights such as latency data for their submissions and indexing stats.

How to use the Bing Content Submission API

Here is a three-step guide:

1. Verify your website with Bing Webmaster Tools.
2. Generate an API key in the Bing Webmaster Tools. Here is how to generate the API key:
   1. Log into Bing Webmaster Tools
   2. Click on Settings
   3. Go to the API Access section
   4. Click the Generate API Key button.
3. Once the API key is generated, integrate it with your website.

Note: This API key can be used by a user for all verified websites on Bing Webmaster Tools.

The Content Submission API is a big step towards instant indexation and reducing submission latency. However, it is a work in progress, so webmasters may run into issues early on. Also, further adjustments can be made based on the feedback Bing receives.

“We are excited to publicize the API to our users, and we are here listening to your feedback. We will continue to learn and improve at a larger scale and adjust crawl rates for sites implementing the API, so as to give maximum benefit in terms of not only indexation but also crawl load management and freshness of the content to searchers.”

Learn more about the Bing content submission API.

The post Bing’s Content Submission API Allows Instant Indexing appeared first on Improve My Search Ranking.

This means your pages won’t rank for important keywords, and you won’t get any free organic traffic from search engines.

In this post, we will briefly look at website crawling issues, how to identify if you are experiencing problems, what to do about it, and what Google recommends.

Website crawling and technical issues

It is important to understand that the majority of unintended website crawling issues stem from technical problems in your site.

This may or may not be limited to incorrectly using the robots.txt file and the no-index meta tag. But those are some of the first things you should look at anyway.

See if you have the no-index meta tag on pages that are meant to be indexed on the SERPs. In addition, double-check your robots.txt file and make sure it does not list pages that should be ranking on the SERPs.

How reliable is the site colon search string?

You can see how many pages on your site are being indexed in the Google Search Console. But that number may or may not match the number of pages you get by enforcing indexed pages on Google with the site colon search string.

The site colon search string looks like this: site:yourwebsite.com.

If there is a difference between the two methods, go with the number of indexed pages that you found in Google Search Console.

Here is what Google’s John Mueller has to say about it:

“In general, I would not worry about the difference between a site/colon query shows and what Search Console shows.

In practice, the site/colon query is not meant to be used for diagnostic purposes. So sometimes you do see quite different numbers.

And for some sites, you see much lower numbers. For other sites you see 100 times larger numbers.

And essentially, the numbers we show in the site query result are optimized for speed and to give (kind of) a sense of the website. But they’re not optimized to be comprehensive. So that’s where the Search Console numbers would come in.”

Site auditing tools

If you are still in doubt, you can use website auditing tools to see if there are any crawling issues on your website. There are plenty of free tools that do the job for smaller websites.

Here is the advice that John Mueller gave:

“If you’re talking about a site that is about 500 pages or so and after a period of several months only like 100 are indexed, that seems like something where probably you could do a lot better with minimal extra effort.

So that could be something where what I would first of all check is just the technical side of things to make sure that technically everything is okay, that the website can be crawled.

There are some website crawling tools available. I think they’re even free for very small websites, where you can check your site to see if it’s crawlable or not.

And if it’s well crawlable then the next thing I would consider trying to figure out is what you can do to promote your website a little bit better.

And that could be something like encouraging users to come to visit, maybe by buying ads, maybe by working together with someone else for a while just to (kind of) get the ball rolling.”

Website promotion

Actively promoting your website can help expedite the indexing process. This is especially beneficial if you recently changed pages from being no-indexed to being indexed.

Google crawls websites through the network of links (internal and external) from pages to pages. More activity on certain pages may also send signals to search engines that certain pages should be considered. 

That’s why driving paid traffic to pages, creating internal links to and from said pages, and promoting those pages on social media websites can all prove to be useful.

One of the most effective ways to send crawling and indexing signals to Google is to build relevant backlinks from credible sources. John Mueller gave an excellent example for local businesses, and how relevant backlinks can play a part in expediting the indexing process.

He said:

“If you’re an e-commerce site or especially if you’re a small local business site, maybe there are local chambers of commerce that would be interested in linking to your website to give you a little bit of extra information.

So that when our systems look at your website, they say, oh, this is actually a legitimate small business. We should try to index everything.”

Conclusion

Most of your SEO efforts go to waste if your website pages aren’t easily crawlable and indexable. Avoiding website crawling issues should always be one of your top priorities, and conducting regular SEO audits to ensure everything is fine is important.

If you do find crawling and indexing issues, now you know what to do.

For more information and SEO tips, stay tuned.

The post Crawlability and Indexability, no-indexed pages, site colon search, and more appeared first on Improve My Search Ranking.

However, acquiring high-quality backlinks and building a strong backlink profile isn’t the easiest job. Therefore, maximizing the impact of backlinks and your link-building program is of utmost importance.

Here are a few tips on how to do that.

1. Industry relevance

Industry relevance is crucial for maximizing a backlink program. Google prefers backlinks that come from industry-relevant websites. So relevant backlinks will carry more weight and value than non-relevant backlinks.

For example, if you have a gardening website, backlinks coming from tech websites won’t be as relevant and, therefore, won’t carry significant value. On the other hand, backlinks from other gardening-related websites — even if they are from websites with relatively lower domain authority — will likely carry more value.

A few years ago, Google also introduced the Google Penguin update. One of the main focuses of the Google Penguin update was to target and penalize websites with lots of irrelevant backlinks.

It is a part of the current search engine algorithm. Therefore, if your website acquires too many irrelevant backlinks, there is always a risk of a search engine penalty.

2. Match user intent

A very important, but often neglected, part of backlinks is the user experience. It is not very beneficial to force links to a page that do not match the user intent. Such pages and links aren’t future-proof and rarely perform well in the long term.

Mismatched user intent is often one of the biggest reasons why some pages and websites do not perform as well as they should — despite having a higher number of backlinks than other pages in the SERPs. If your web pages are facing the same problem, user intent is one of the first areas you should investigate.

Remember: the number one rule is to provide value to users. This happens with the help of informative content and relevant links to other pages that provide further information on that topic or other contextually related topics.

3. Power pages that are linking to you

Backlinks are a two-way street. If your web page (the page that is receiving backlinks) becomes more authoritative and valuable, it will also benefit the page that is linking to you.

Similarly, if the page that links to your page becomes more valuable, credible, and authoritative, it will also benefit your web page via that backlink.

That is how SEO juice flows through the web. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Therefore, apart from improving pages on your website, you can also help pages that are linking to you.

For instance, you can create relevant links to such pages. You can also share them on social media websites to build social signals. These pages can also be shared among interested email subscribers.

All these benefits eventually trickle down and eventually benefit your page through that backlink connection.

4. Utilize pages with a high number of backlinks

Once you have a few pages with a high number of backlinks, you can leverage them to benefit other pages on your site that may not have many links.

Link juice can be passed among pages across the website and beyond. By creating a robust structure and network of internal links, you can lift other pages up — even if those pages do not have backlinks of their own.

One of the easiest ways is to create a list of the top pages on your site by links and rank them in descending order. Then shortlist high-value pages on your site that you want to rank higher.

The third step would be creating contextually relevant backlinks from pages with lots of backlinks to pages that you wish to improve.

Another (simpler) idea that often works is to create contextual links from the home page of your website. This technique generally works because the home page usually has the highest number of backlinks and the most link power.

5. Focus on new referring domains

While the total number of backlinks that your site has is a good metric to track, it is not the only thing that matters.

How many unique referring domains link to your site is another very important metric that you should monitor closely. Generally speaking, the more websites (unique referring domains) link to your site, the better it is for your website’s backlink profile.

Therefore, you shouldn’t always focus on backlinks from websites that already link to you. Instead, you should also focus heavily on acquiring backlinks from new websites.

The post How to maximize the impact of your link-building campaigns appeared first on Improve My Search Ranking.

How to pick the right anchor text? What should the link profile look like? Are long anchor texts better than short ones?

Google’s John Mueller recently answered some of these questions in the latest SEO office-hours live stream on November 27, 2020.

Treatment of long and short anchor texts

One important point that John Mueller revealed is that Google does not necessarily treat longer and shorter anchor text any differently.

For example, an anchor text that contains just two words ‘cheap shoes’ will be generally treated the same way by Google when compared to a longer anchor text, i.e., ‘you can buy cheap shoes here’.

More context

However, Mueller confirmed that longer anchor texts give more context to Google — which is something that the search engine uses.

According to John Mueller:

“I don’t think we do anything special to the length of words in the anchor text. But rather, we use this anchor text as a way to provide extra context for the individual pages.

Sometimes ,if you have a longer anchor text that gives us a little bit more information. Sometimes it’s kind of like just a collection of different keywords.”

Shorter anchor text isn’t necessarily worse

While longer anchor text does provide more context and information to search engines as well as website visitors, it does not mean that shorter anchor text is worse. 

As per John:

“I wouldn’t see any of these as being better or worse. And it’s something where, especially for internal linking, you want to probably focus more on things like how can you make it clearer for your users that if they click on this like this is what they’ll find.

So that’s kind of the way that I would look at it here. I wouldn’t say that shorter anchor text is better or shorter anchor text is worse, it’s just [a] different context.”

The takeaway

The takeaway here is that there is no clear winner here. However, longer anchor text does help provide more context to users and search engines.

If it is an option, consider detailed anchor text that would drive more relevant traffic. It may also have other indirect benefits. For example, detailed, contextual, and accurate anchor text may lead to lower bounce rates and exit rates on the target pages.

The post Google’s John Mueller on short anchor text vs. long anchor text appeared first on Improve My Search Ranking.

Google 0 – Bing 1

The new and improved backlink research tool by Bing now has more information than ever, including:

• The top anchor text
• Unique top referring domains
• Links on a page per page level

This new set of information makes the Bing backlink tool a very handy assistant, especially when you are researching data for a link-building strategy. These new tools are part of Bing ‘Similar Site’s feature.

It is important to remember that before this update, the Bing backlink tool only had two backlink-related features:

• Disavow
• All Links

Now, after the update, there is a third feature, i.e., Similar Sites.

How to access it

To access the updated backlink tool, log in to the Bing Webmasters Tools and click on Backlinks.

You’ll notice that there is now a second tab that says ‘Similar Sites’ — where you’d be able to add competitor websites for backlink comparisons and competitor data.

What’s so special about it?

To be honest, there are many tools (free and paid) that give similar information about competitor backlinks.

However, this news is exciting for two reasons:

1. This data comes directly from a search engine. Although you could always see your own website’s link data, now you can also see link data of websites that you do not have verified access to.
2. Second, this will push the SEO industry forward. Who knows, Google may also be forced to show competitor backlink data similar to how Bing is doing now. Healthy competition is always good for the end-user.

A word of warning

While this is all indeed very exciting and helpful, remember that the Bing backlink tool won’t give you complete backlink information of your competitor’s website. Instead, the tool shows you a “representative” set of backlinks.

Having said that, the information provided is still very comprehensive and useful for building a link-building strategy.

The post Bing has updated the backlink research tool with competitor data appeared first on Improve My Search Ranking.