Offpage SEO: Social Network Signals and Link Building

Presented by:

Dan Anton / Matt Anton

With our Onpage SEO setup, we can now focus on Offpage SEO (known as promoting your website) in

order to get others to link to us and share our content via social networks.

The search engines rely heavily on Social Networks such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,

Linkedin, Stumbleupon, Youtube, etc to determine a website’s popularity and ranking ability factored

with the amount of links that link back to your website (their quality matters as well).

It’s simple. The more people that are liking, sharing your content on social networking websites, and

linking back to you, the better you will rank. Get more than your competitor’s for your desired keyword

phrases and you should rank #1. This is the main principle behind Google Pagerank.

When getting links back to your website you want to ensure they are relevant, non-spammy, and vary

the keywords. You do not want all your keywords to say “robot vacuum” for example as this is unnatural

and may cause a penalty. It’s best to keep your percentage below 10% for any one keyword.

We will use: http://robotvacuumhut.com as an Example to examine for Offpage SEO

Ahrefs.com (can use free version) is a great tool to understand how many social network signals your

website has, and the amount of backlinks

We can see this website has over 3,000 backlinks and a good amount of social network signals on

Google+, Twitter, and Facebook. The strategies to achieve this are revealed below:

Social Network Signals: ( http://socialnetworksignals.com )

Start with the main social networks. You can register to them and make a post. First example is Google+

Google’s social network is Google+. By creating a post and obtaining “likes” or plus ones, the webpage

will gain credibility in the search engines.

Facebook Shares and Likes are huge indicators of webpages popularity

Create a status and have others interact with it.

Twitter tweets/retweets also play a role in Search Engine Rankings

You can create a message and attempt to get retweets, favorites and replies to it

Pinterest is a visual social network which is also considered part of the ranking algorithm

Linkedin is very popular, but harder to track. You can use their built in API to find out how many shares

you have. Replace http://robotvacuumhut.com with your webpage

http://www.linkedin.com/countserv/count/share?url=http://robotvacuumhut.com/

To achieve this level of social sharing you can use the strategies learned earlier in social media

marketing modules, or use an organic service such as socialnetworksignals.com

Case study: http://socialnetworksignals.com/social-seo/

Link Building:

Web2.0 backlinks ( http://web2.0backlinks.com ) (free blog/website hosting platforms) are for people

that want a blog but don’t have the technical knowhow to setup their own website, don’t feel like

paying, or prefer a template.

Platforms such as Blogger (Google owns them!, Wordpress, Tumblr, and dozens of others)

All you have to do is register, setup some basic blog details and you can begin posting related content to

your niche.

http://www.blogger.com/home#create

http://clashofclansvideogame.blogspot.com

Article Marketing / Directories: Similar to web2.0s, you will need to register to post to them (usually

moderated). The standard is 500 word unique articles but some require more, others are less strict. One

link back to your website in the author bio section of the article.

Very important not to submit to fly-by-night websites as your efforts will be wasted if the website goes

*poof*. Directorycritic has a great list. Be sure to sort by date and do the oldest ones first (since they are

most likely to be around in future).

http://www.directorycritic.com/article-directory-list.html?sort=date_added

Register, write and post. Example here:

Social Bookmarking ( http://bookmarkingbeast.com ) sites are pages where users can

“save/bookmark” your webpage for later. These are public viewable lists of what people around the web

are saving. Each save can be seen as a backlink and social signal back to your website. While not as

powerful as the major social networks these are highly trusted websites and platforms.

http://www.reddit.com/r/retirement/comments/1hggdn/retirement_communities/

Like all things, focus on the long standing, highest pagerank ones to start. Once you get good coverage

on them you can post to other social bookmarking websites. A quick Google search for list of social

bookmarking sites will give you an updated list.

Real Guest Posts: ( http://realguestposts.com ) Similar to web2.0backlinks and article marketing

(because you need to submit unique articles, real guest posts are posted on domains owned by people –

with quality standards in mind). This means they are very hard links to get (can’t simply register to most

of them) and they are very valuable, but can be extremely time consuming and frustrating to get posted.

http://www.samsill.com/top-10-green-cities-in-the-usa

I contacted the owner of this guest blog. The easiest way to do this is through 2 networks I use:

Easiest way to find is through blogger communities, or you can search in google for phrases such as

“write for us” “your industry”, i.e. “write for us” “marketing”.

This is the technique used to become the #1 most published Google Author:

http://backlinksvault.com/google-authorship-how-i-became-the-1-most-published-author/

Authority Site Links: ( http://authoritysitelinks.com ) Websites that have high pagerank, allow you to

register and add a link usually somewhere within a bio section, about me, or website field. They are very

difficult to find and the more content you can add on the page the better chances of it getting indexed

(found) by Google.

http://www.zibbet.com/Nubby

Forum Posting: ( http://bulkbacklinks.com/forum-posting-service/ ) The Internet is made up of

communities that use forums to help engage in conversations. Many of them allow a link to your

website in the “signature” section. Vbulletin is one of the most popular forum softwares that website

owners use. You can find forums that are in your niche, but also other ones because they are highly

trusted by Google.

http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/member.php?191052-brucekrausse

Important to not spam for this technique to work. If you want to mitigate risk of being banned you can

always post, wait a few days and edit to include your signature (works on some forums).

Forum link building case study. Thousands of links using hundreds of different keywords:

http://backlinksvault.com/forum-link-building-case-study-forum-signature-backlinks-help-seo-rankings/

Video syndication/marketing: Everyone loves videos, including the search engines. You can make

simple slideshow videos, interviews, product tours/reviews, etc. Almost any video is better than

traditional media. In the description section of Youtube and other ones you can add a link back to your

website.

The more likes/views/comments and average time spent viewing, the stronger the video will rank and

more power the link will possess.

Blog Comments: ( http://high.prblogcomments.com ) Blogs rely on user engagement to further the

conversation, which is why many bloggers allow commenters to leave a link back to their website. This is

done out of mutual benefit, as the blog owner gets new perspective, while other readers can see where

they can learn more about the author and his website.

Blog commenting increases pagerank / trust and keyword rankings case study:

http://high.prblogcomments.com/case-study/

Press Releases: Press Releases are usually an over expensive option that typically yield underwhelming

results. Not many people will care that your business just expanded into new territories, or that you

have a new product line (unless you are a big brand). However, if you are a major brand, or working with

one, platforms such as prweb and prnewswire are known as the industry leaders.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/CashiersRealEstate/HighlandsRealEstate/prweb11292598.htm

Summary:

With Google Authorship, Onpage SEO, and now Offpage SEO in place, robotvacuumhut.com continues

to rank better not only for its main phrases, but hundreds of related ones as well. These are the core link

building tactics being used by high level marketers and small businesses looking for better rankings.