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“6 Reasons to Link Away from your Blog” plus 1 more

“6 Reasons to Link Away from your Blog” plus 1 more

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6 Reasons to Link Away from your Blog

Posted: 04 Sep 2013 09:17 AM PDT

This is a guest contribution from Adam Grunwerg.

The world of SEO and blogging is kind of limited in that most people will tell you the same things: "build high quality content and do personal outreach in order to receive natural authority backlinks".

For example, this awesome resource from PointBlankSEO.com is genuinely one of the best articles and tools I've ever read for link building strategies in 2013.  It offers hundreds of tips for building white hat links such as PR, competitions, tools, interviews and tests.

However, I still feel this misses the point.

It focuses entirely on link building tactics, rather than how you can increase the perceived value of your content to users – namely by linking away from your blog.

Why? Well here are 6 great reasons to link out.

1. Useful Resource for Readers

The best bloggers will routinely link out to content on a regular basis because it provides readers with more information about a particular subject. For instance, if someone is looking for charts or tools not hosted on your site then it makes sense to link out for your reader's benefit.

You can even include a cloaked affiliate link if you're interested in getting credit for the referral (although transparency about affiliate links is always recommended)

2. Creating a "Top List" of the Best Resources or Products

Creating lists such as "13 Tools and Services that I use Everyday" or the "Top 5 Affiliate Blogs" are extremely popular among readers. By linking out to the best resources, you can improve your relationships with other bloggers and websites. It's a bit like re-tweeting some else's status – it’s a way of supporting great content and becoming known to the author.

3. Give Credit to External Research and Statistics

Backing up your articles with research and statistics from external resources helps add credibility and value to your content. If you use someone else's statistic or surveys in a piece then you should also ensure you quote or link to the original source.

4. Interviews and Quotes with Experts in the Industry

Many bloggers and newspapers will routinely look to interview industry experts in order to get better insight and quotes for their story. If you want to add value to your website this way then you need to build some solid contacts, engage in B2B relationships and use PR enquiry services such as HARO and Response Source (both of these services are free to use).

5. Publish Charts, Infographics and Aggregate Data on your Site

Using visual chart and infographics can make it much easier to get a point across to your readers. If you publish someone else's infographic, you should give credit to the original source as they've taken the time and cost to research, produce and distribute it.

6. Improving your SEO, Usability and Panda Score

The best websites will link out to high quality sources for their articles and it’s great for SEO and website rankings. While incoming links are more important (from a ranking point of view) outbound links, to valuable content, is good for your readers and that’s what gets rewarded long term. Too many blogs are scared of linking out in order to preserve their own Page Rank but they’re actually missing out on the other rewards.

Remember…

Linking away from your blog can increase the value of your own content; help build real relationships with other bloggers; and in many cases it's just the right thing to do (a bit like when you use someone else's images).

If you're scared of losing traffic to other websites through external links then you can always use the target="_blank" HTML tag in order to force open the link in a new window, or you can use cloaked affiliate links to be compensated for the referral.

whiteboard

Image by Jeff Kubina, licensed under Creative Commons

Now it’s over to you. How much link love do you send away from your blog?

Adam Grunwerg is an Internet marketing specialist who runs his own consultancy at http://www.searchable.co.uk.  He writes extensively about marketing, PR, blogging and affiliate marketing.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Build a Better Blog in 31 Days

6 Reasons to Link Away from your Blog

Don’t Fall Into This Trap That Could Destroy Your Blog

Posted: 03 Sep 2013 09:15 AM PDT

NewImageLast week I spent time with a young blogger who was completely stalled with her blog (for the purpose of this post I’ll call her Sally).

Sally’s blogging had started with a bang and had put together 3 great months of content and had started to build a readership but then it suddenly all came to a halt.

I arranged to catch up for coffee to see what had happened and see if there was a way to get her moving again and she told me a story that I’m sure many readers will find familiar.

Paralysed by Comparisons

The reason Sally started blogging was that she had been a reader of another reasonably well known blogger. She had been so inspired by this established blogger that she simply had to start her own blog – which she did.

The problem that brought Sally’s blog to a grinding halt started a few weeks after her blog began when Sally began to compare her fledgling blog with her hero’s blog.

It started innocently enough with her noticing that this others blogger’s design just seemed to flow much better than Sally’s. However in the coming days and weeks Sally started to compare other things too.

Her hero seemed to blog with more confidence, she got more comments, she had a larger Twitter following, she was more active on Pinterest, she was getting some great brands advertise on her blog, she was invited to cool events…

Once Sally started comparing she couldn’t stop. She told me that she would sit down to work on her blog and end up on her hero’s blog and social media accounts – for hours on end – comparing what they were doing.

On one hand Sally knew it wasn’t a fair comparison – she had only been blogging by this stage for a couple of months and her hero had been blogging for over 4 years… but logic was clouded out by jealousy and Sally found her blogging beginning to stall.

She started second guessing herself. She would work for days on blog posts – hoping to perfect them to the standard of her hero only to get to the point of publishing them and trashing them instead for fear of them not being up to scratch.

Days would go by between posts and then weeks. Sally’s blog began to stall… and then it died completely.

The Comparison Trap

Sally isn’t the only blogger to fall into the trap of comparing oneself with others – in fact I’ve heard this story (or variations of it) numerous times. If I’m honest, it’s something that at times I’ve struggled with too.

I remember in the early days of my own blogging comparing my style of writing with other bloggers that I admired who wrote in a much more academic, heavy style of writing. I tried to emulate this over and over again and never felt I hit the benchmark that they set.

The temptation was to give up – but luckily I found my more informal and conversational voice through experimentation and persistance.

Comparing Is Never Fair

As I chatted with Sally last week a theme emerged in our conversation – the comparisons were simply not fair.

Sally knew this on some levels but needed to hear it again.

Her hero had been blogging for years. Sally had been blogging for months.

Not only that – Sally was comparing herself to tiny snapshots of this other blogger.

She could see her hero’s Twitter follower numbers, how many comments she was getting, how many times she Pinned on Pinterest and the instagram photos of this blogger at glamorous events – but she didn’t really have the full picture of this other blogger.

She didn’t know how many hours that blogger worked, she didn’t know whether that other blogger had people working for her, she didn’t know if that other blogger was actually happy with her blog or life and she certainly didn’t see the instagrams of that other bloggers boring, dull or hard moments of life.

I’m not saying the other blogger is hiding anything or doing anything wrong – just that the comparisons Sally was making were of everything Sally knew about herself (and her insecurities) with tiny edited snapshots of the life and work another person.

Run You Own Race

Sally is a remarkable person. I’d love to tell you her real name and story because she’s overcome some amazing things in her life, has some unique perspectives to share and has an inspirational story to tell.

My encouragement to Sally (and to us all) is run her own race. Yes she’s running beside others that at times seem to be running faster or with more flare… but nobody else around her has her unique personality, set of experiences or skills.

Nobody else can blog like Sally – so the sooner she gets comfy in her own skin the better.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Build a Better Blog in 31 Days

Don’t Fall Into This Trap That Could Destroy Your Blog

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Should you submit your dirty laundry to the Google spam team?

Posted: 03 Sep 2013 09:20 AM PDT

In case you missed the news, Matt Cutts has solicited webmasters to submit their poorly ranking websites to them, so they can have a look exactly why your website isn't ranking as well as should. No, that's not a joke. Really.

Matt Cutts had everybody aflutter when he tweeted "If there’s a small website that you think should be doing better in Google, tell us more here”

Now, looking at the responses  it is clear I wasn't the only one who thought Matt was trolling!

Now, it could be legitimate that Google honestly wants to learn why some websites, particularly the small ones it seems to be soliciting, aren't ranking as well against larger websites.  Okay, it's been kind of a problem when the Wikipedia's of the world are dominating the search results, and Mary's little hobby site ranks somewhere beyond the 15th page of search results. But do you really want to wave a red flag about your site and say "Hey Matt, Look at meeeeeee!"

And when you think about it, doesn't every single webmaster think their site deserves to be ranking at the top? If not, you're creating the wrong type of website and should probably go back to the drawing board and think about it some more. Because really, people aren't creating websites and hoping they rank on page 10.

Now, maybe you submitted your site and it is a perfectly lily white site that you've never done a teensy bit thing wrong with. But I'm willing to bet that more than a few people are submitting sites there really shouldn't deserve to be indexed.  And you really want Google looking that closely at your dirty laundry of a website, where they can easily permaban if they see something they don't like?  At least if they aren’t looking at it manually, you have a chance to make it clean and have the site make a comeback.

Supposedly it is one of the engineers on Matt's team who is wanting these websites, but clearly Matt is having a look at them too, as evidenced by some of his tweet responses.  Oh to be a fly on the wall of that Google doc!

Personally, if I have a website that is not doing well, the last thing I want to do is go crying to Matt Cutts sobbing that my website should be ranking better, although there are more than a few well known SEOs who do just this on a regular basis (yes, really, although they aren’t likely to admit it to many). And in a world where the rules of SEO engagement are constantly changing, and with negative SEOs still being a real problem, having the Google spam team personally take a look at my website is not high up on with the things I want to do this week.

However, not everyone feels this way because they were definitely getting submissions, although how many is unknown beyond Matt Cutts tweeting it was a couple hundred shortly after he posted it. Now what say you? Did anybody submit their website to have Google personally look at why it's not ranking?  Did the spam team sprinkle the magic Google ranking fairy dust on it and suddenly it is doing well again?  Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but I don't want to be the next example in a Matt Cutts video saying “for example, we had this one guy….”

Trying to increase your Google rank that is like no other?

ShoeMoney August Recap

Posted: 03 Sep 2013 06:21 AM PDT

Post image for ShoeMoney August Recap

Kaplan-Word-Blog1Happy (day after) Labor Day! Here is the full August Recap for ShoeMoney.com.

Aug-02 07:00:53 – Free Shirt Friday – Backlinko (1 comments) Backlinko is Brain Dean’s blog where he talks tips and strategies for backlinks and other great SEO strategies.
[more]

Aug-05 12:13:59 – How the new Gmail tabs could be affecting your email campaigns (12 comments) Gmail, if you have not heard has completely changed their inbox interface. This change to the average subscriber appears to be for the better but, on the other hand for business owners it is really causing some disorder. They have added tabs …[more]

Aug-06 09:00:47 – So, how much is bad SEO worth in a lawsuit and should you cash in? (11 comments) It was bound to happen, an SEO company has been sued for allegedly providing, shall we say, less than then stellar sea…[more]

Aug-07 07:13:46 – Wes Mahler Bends Over For Dennis Yu (25 comments) Dennis Yu wrote a gut wrenching post on Wes Mahler’s blog about how broke he is. Dennis has always been any amazing story teller.

Anyone with half a clue can see how broke he is… Just look at his activity on Tripit.

[more]

Aug-07 17:20:46 – PAR Program Data Points Updated (5 comments) We just rolled out our new data points for the PAR Program. We now have over 100 different data points to gather information on your consumers in your list. When agrigated properly the data for demographics, social interests, and ROI is badass.

[more]

Aug-08 11:21:54 – Jury Awards 300,000 in damages from blogger (18 comments) The legal system fascinates me. I have always wanted to be a lawyer ever since I watched every episode of Perry Mason as a kid . But I couldn’t hack the school. I do think it would have been badass to be a criminal litigator. I am envious of litigat…[more]

Aug-09 07:17:21 – Free Shirt Friday – inBoundio (9 comments) This FSF comes from one of my long time readers of the blog all the way from India! inBoundio is great for small business or individuals looking for inbound markting solutions starting…[more]

Aug-12 11:02:05 – Eat it, Kill it, or Have Sex With It – Content Marketing (14 comments) This is a mini series on how to keep people interested in your product or service. In each one I will break it down to our primal instincts. When pitched something everyones brain is filtering information and deciding should I kil…[more]

Aug-13 09:00:14 – Eat, Kill, Sex – Part 2 – Video Marketing (13 comments) [more]

Aug-14 08:00:30 – Is Google making it too easy for spammers to win? (20 comments) Googl…[more]

Aug-15 09:24:33 – Eat, Kill, Sex – Part 3 Face To Face (17 comments) This is a mini series on how to keep people interested in your product or service and in each one I will break it down to our primal instincts. When pitched something everyones brain is filtering information and deciding should I…[more]

Aug-16 07:00:42 – Free Shirt Friday – HitReach (5 comments) Based out of the UK, HitReach is a service company that is centered around web design and SEO for your website. I was reading through some of their …[more]

Aug-19 09:56:50 – FTC becoming more aggressive on misleading advertising practices (15 comments) Chances are you have never heard of the ?Undertaking Spam, Spyware, And Fraud Enforcement With Enforcers Beyond Borders Act of 2006,? an addition to the Federal Trade Commission?s (FTC) enforcement statute known as the ?SAFE WEB Act.? If you?r…[more]

Aug-20 09:09:46 – Why Google should put their money into better AdWords reps and not upsell reps (5 comments) Now, I?m not a newbie when it comes to pay per click advertising. I?ve been doing it for years on a variety of platforms, and have a pretty good instinct when it comes to what works and what doesn?t, and when I?m not sure, that?s what A/B testin…[more]

Aug-21 08:00:12 – Don’t miss my live webinar with Copy Press- August 22, 2013 (8 comments) This Thursday I?ll talking with Nicole Jones at Copy Press. We?ll be focusing on the dos and don?ts of email marketing. You?ll also get a chance to learn more about our PAR program. The event takes places Thursday August 22nd at 1pm C…[more]

Aug-22 08:03:33 – Check out my interview with Domain Expert Adam Dicker (41 comments) Yesterday morning I go…[more]

Aug-23 07:00:56 – Free Shirt Friday – ActiveCampaign (5 comments) This is ActiveCampaign, which is a great email marketing service to start with like MailChimp for example. However, if you are not looking for a higher end service check out …[more]

Aug-26 09:41:56 – Email marketing with me and @copypress (10 comments) Last thursday I did a Google Hangout with Nicole from Copypress. As you can tell it was super laid back. I lead off talking about my new company the PAR Program but we quickly …[more]

Aug-27 10:04:10 – When will Rand from @Moz learn his lesson to not piss of Matt Cutts with false SEO claims? (21 comments) Ah, Rand. I started off a blog post like this over a year ago, and the same phrase fits with the latest Moz scandal that hit last week, one t…[more]

Aug-28 11:14:51 – Ask Me Anything – ShoeMoney Questions (22 comments) I am super excited to start our ShoeMoney Questions series again! And we are gonna give away prizes for the best questions. Nothing is off limits… You can ask me anything.

A lot of times someone will ask me a question via Faceb…[more]

Aug-29 07:30:11 – Killing It With Lead Gen – A Step By Step Guide (21 comments) If you are not familiar with the guys over at IMGRIND its run by a super affiliate and the owner of one of the successful affiliate networks out there. They have a …[more]

Aug-30 07:00:02 – Free Shirt Friday – CrushAds (3 comments) If you bought my book you might recognize this these guys, CrushAds was one of the companies whose contributions to the book went to charity.
[more]

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