How To Use Link Building to Increase Traffic to Your Website
In this post, I'm going to demonstrate how you can employ a widely-used SEO technique to improve the search engine ranking of your website for courses. It's called link building, and when executed correctly, it will help to create a wave of potential customers to the online course you offer.
The importance of link building in SEO
After a few hours, you've got an idea of the keywords that you want your course to be ranked for. You might have even written some blog posts targeting the top keywords. However, you're not able with getting your site to be found by search engines. Why doesn't it rank?
It could be the links
Links are among the primary ranking elements which are taken into consideration by search engines. The importance of links isn't just the quantity of hyperlinks that is important however, it is also the quality of these links as well as whether or not they have been "followed" (the website tells Google to take the hyperlink into account for ranking purposes).
Unfortunately, Google does not specify what the importance of a link on any website is, or how many links your site is able to get. How can you benefit from this ranking factor if Google gives you only a few details about it or the significance it has for every website? There are a number of online tools to help. My personal favourite can be Moz which blends several different SEO tools in one.
Regarding link-building, and also those unknowns that I mentioned earlier, one of the most useful methods Moz performs is scanning the internet for links pointed at your site (or the sites of your competition). It then uses this information together with algorithms, and some other variables for assigning the Domain Authority value from 100 points to each site (this is a Moz measurement which is not an official Google measurement).
When you look at the website's Domain Authority, you can begin to construct a picture of the value your website is in relation to the quantity and quality of hyperlinks you've got. As we can never be certain about how the Google algorithm operates, we cannot find out how closely the numbers assigned by Moz are to the truth. However, Moz is still a useful guide nonetheless.
What are the reasons to offer a portion of your course to the public for free
Links are crucial in determining the position of your website. But how can you convince others to add links to your site?
Others will hyperlink to you if they think your site's worth checking out. If you provide valuable material for free, you increase the likelihood of other visitors finding your website interesting, thus increasing the chance that other sites will link to you.
If you're a school provider then you are in a unique position. There is plenty of valuable content that users are eager to grab their hands on. This is why I suggest to share some of your material in exchange for a fee. Create a mini-course, or make a few of the classes in your primary course available for an initial trial like. In providing content that is freely available for everyone, you're more likely to get someone linking to you.
Select a keyword that is not branded that you want to reach
When you begin publishing free online content or asking others to hyperlink to yours, you'll need select a key phrase you'd like to rank for. The keyword should not be brand-named term like "cooking course", as these types of words are ones that will bring new customers to your site.
When you've decided on the most valuable non-branded keyword to your company, you can start implementing the strategy for building links. In this blog, I'll continue to use the 'cookery course' keyword for an example.
- URL: jackscooking.com/cookery-course
- Title Tag: Cookery
The next step is to decide what is going to include on the page. If you include your free lessons in the body of your webpage it provides incentives for other sites to connect to your page. Make sure the instructional video is at the top of the page (if not the top) to ensure that potential linkers see the valuable content straight away.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Google gives a greater value to websites with more content in them. They consider that more text on a website will be more beneficial to a searcher. Even though we have put on the page a video, if it is on top of our page, Google is unable to crawl the video's content of that video, and so we need to put more words on the site to prove to Google that the site is valuable.
In my experiences, it's helpful to include about 1000-2000 words of text on the page. One easy way to do this is to include the transcript from the video at the end of the page. Then if you need more text, write a bit more on the advantages that come from following the course, including eating more healthily as well as having more enjoyable time cooking.
Link to websites with a an excellent Domain Authority
The first thing you should do is create a list of websites having a high Domain Authority that might be willing to link to you.
Do a Google search on 'cookery blog sites to make an inventory of the blogs with an Domain Authority above 30. It is also possible to look up 'cookery course comparison and other terms related to cookery courses to make a list of the websites you come across.
Here is a screenshot of some of the websites to show up in Google's search results for "cookery blogs" and the Domain Authory (DA), due to Moz:
It is also possible to use Moz to locate all websites that have links to any site. Another strategy you can utilize is to compile an inventory of your cooking competition and then see the websites that are linked to these courses. If a website links to a specific cookery school It is most likely to be open to the idea of linking to different cookery courses too, especially in the event that you can sweeten the deal with a free cookery lesson. If you want to, you can sign up to Moz for a free 30 day trial, and then download all website link profiles that you'll need within that period.
After you've created a list of sites that could be willing to link to your site, conduct some investigation on the website and try and find the email address for the website's owner or blog manager. Hunter is an excellent instrument for this.
To increase your chances of getting a response, I would suggest sending a customized email to each website owner or manager of a blog. It is important to convince them for linking to your site by presenting a message that is logical for them and adds the value of their customers.
Here's an example of an email you can make:
Hello [name],
I've been reading your blog, you've got some great material! I am really impressed by your post [insert the article here] ].
I've recently put together a free cooking lesson online that you might find valuable. Are you interested in taking a look, and perhaps writing a review of the lesson on your blog (if you think that your followers might like it as well)? )?
Let me know if this interests you. I'd be happy to send you the course.
Thanks so much, and please keep up the excellent work!
Jack Saville
It's not necessary to mention or ask about a link straight away, but to nurture the students' interest in your program. If they feature your program on their website They will most likely give you a link, likely without asking. It is possible to provide a discounted rate or additional bonus for those who visit their website.
Include your keywords within the text anchor that hyperlinks your website
Another thing to keep to keep in mind while building links is the anchor text of the links that you get. If you get to the stage of seeking the link (or soliciting them to modify the link they've already offered you) it's crucial to make sure whether the link will lead to the page that you're trying to rank for your chosen keyword, and ensure that the anchor text in the link is the keyword that you're aiming for.
So in our cookery course example, we would ask for a link to jackscooking.com/cookery-course from the anchor text 'cookery course'.
When linking to the top ranking page with targeted anchor text The site endorses this particular page in connection with the specific term 'cookery course'.
High-quality link building will increase the number of visitors to your site and sales
Linking other sites to your site, specifically those with a high Domain Authority, will help your website rank better in Google for the selected keyword. This means that people who search for that keyword are more likely to discover your site and classes.
It takes time to execute this strategy properly and start getting ranked in search results with your chosen keyword. However, the end result is constantly flowing potential customers to your courses. Pretty good deal, according to me!
Jack Saville is an SEO Specialist with Bynder, a digital supplier of asset management.