Samuel Edwards

Chief Marketing Officer at SEO Company

In his 9+ years as a digital marketer, Sam has worked with countless small businesses and enterprise Fortune 500 companies and organizations including NASDAQ OMX, eBay, Duncan Hines, Drew Barrymore, Washington, DC based law firm Price Benowitz LLP and human rights organization Amnesty International.

As a technical SEO strategist, Sam leads all paid and organic operations teams for client SEO serviceslink building services and white label SEO partnerships.

He is a recurring speaker at the Search Marketing Expo conference series and a TEDx Talker. Today he works directly with high-end clients across all verticals to maximize on and off-site SEO ROI through content marketing and link building. Connect with Sam on Linkedin.

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Why Your Google Rankings Dropped & How to Fix It
Samuel Edwards

Why Your Google Rankings Dropped & How to Fix It

A significant and sudden drop in your Google rankings can can be both frustrating and frightening. It’s especially terrifying if you have no idea why your Google rankings dropped so suddenly. With over 200 Google ranking factors, there are a multiplicity of reasons why a site’s Google ranking might suffer an abrupt plunge. If your Google rankings dropped overnight, don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be permanent. Luckily, a majority of Google rankings issues can be remedied with a bit of time and effort. Although, if your Google rankings drop overnight, it can sometimes take months of heavy work to fully recover the lost ground. But, don’t despair! Recovery from a sudden drop in Google rankings is possible! Let’s look at some of the most common issues that could cause a site’s search engine ranking to plummet AND how you might fix them. Your Website is New(ish) The number one issue we see when it comes to drops is typically related to new websites. New sites get a lot of love from Google. And a lot of hate. It’s complicated. When your site launches, Google will have never heard of it, and it won’t have your site indexed, which means you can’t show up in any search results. When Google first indexes your site, the Google algorithm might give you an artificial ranking boost (since Google’s algorithm naturally favors new sites temporarily), leading you to believe you’ve earned those ranks all on your own. After that introductory period, your rankings will probably drop again as Google tries to make better sense of who you are and how authoritative you are. If your site is less than five years old, chances are there will be much more volatility than other established websites. To put it concisely, volatility (a.k.a. Google dancing, which we discuss a bit more in detail below) is expected and normal for new sites. You’re Not Diversified in Your Google Ranking Factors The second most common reason for a Google rankings drop is an over-focus on one ranking factor to the exclusion of all others. For instance, it is possible to have too many internal links and over-optimized content. Did you know that the most important Google ranking factor is diversity of the overall factors? It’s not backlinks! So, when a site focuses too much of their SEO efforts on building backlinks, to the exclusion of other factors, they are more likely to see a drop in their rankings. Excessive backlinks (particularly if they are not natural or diverse enough) can look like unnatural links to Google, which might be a factor if your Google ranking dropped dramatically. We cover this in more detail in our complete list of the most statistically significant Google ranking factors. Canonicalization Issues Problems with canonicalization are somewhat similar to issues with duplicate content. These problems crop up when Google has indexed a page from your site with multiple different URLs. Canonicalization issues can occur when two versions of a domain name are indexed or when a single domain name is indexed with both HTTPS and HTTP. Unfortunately, this type of problem is easy to encounter through no fault of your own. Anyone who links to your site with an incorrect version of the URL can cause canonicalization trouble for you. If this happens, it’s important to reach out to the webmaster of the site with the bad link and attempt to have it changed. Host Server Problems Google is typically quite forgiving of short-lived server problems on your site: If your website is down for maintenance or experiences a day or two of availability problems, your ranking should be unharmed. However, if the webcrawlers have trouble accessing your site for several days, it could have a negative impact on your ranking. If you’re planning to take your site down for maintenance, you should make changes on your server so that a 503 code is generated; this indicates to the outage is temporary. Detection of Malware The presence of malware on your site won’t directly harm your ranking, but the impact it has on the traffic you get from search results is just as significant. If Google observes the presence of malware on your site, it will add a warning for users next to your listing in the search results. If the problem becomes too extensive, Google may blacklist your entire domain. Various tools are available for finding and removing malware on your website. Once you succeed in dealing with the infection, Google will be able to remove the malware warning from your search results listing. Google Updates & Search Algorithm Changes If you’ve been playing by the rules with your website, and your site hasn’t been experiencing any technical problems, your drop in ranking may be due to an algorithm change by the search engines. SEO rankings usually drop after Google algorithm updates and unfortunately, many people experience a dramatic Google ranking drop. In an effort to improve the overall quality of their results, Google and the other engines have made many adjustments to the way they index and rank web content. It’s not just about backlinks and site speed. Google updates and Google Core Updates, in particular, can cause immediate and sudden changes to Google rankings, regardless of the industry. It’s hard to find a business owner who hasn’t been impacted by a Google algorithm update ranking drop. Take a gander at any Google search sensor to tell whether or not major flux is occurring: While most of these algorithm tweaks result in a more gradual impact on rankings, an overnight rankings drop could occur if your site is particularly affected by the changes. If this happens to your site, your only recourse is to work on improving your website’s SEO and attempt to make your website stronger and better. The most likely culprit to an overnight Google rankings drop is actually the simplest explanation. Google has released a new algorithm update or a new data refresh that reevaluated the rankings

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Lead Nurturing: How to Nurture Leads & Close Sales
Samuel Edwards

Lead Nurturing: How to Nurture Leads & Close Sales with SEO

Do you collect email addresses, but struggle to turn your leads into sales through your email marketing campaign? If so, you need a solid lead nurturing strategy. Most leads won’t convert right away. In fact, at least half of your leads won’t be ready to buy from you right away and will need to be nurtured to become a customer. Your ability to convert leads into customers depends on your lead generation and lead nurturing strategies and your ability to close the sale. This article will help you understand and apply the most important lead nurturing strategies. What is Lead Nurturing? Lead nurturing is the art of generating relationships with your leads and taking them from being just another email address to a paying customer. When a lead becomes a customer, it’s considered a conversion. The more conversions you generate, the more money you’ll make. However, converting leads into paying customers isn’t as simple as it sounds. The lead nurturing process involves more than just emailing your list with product announcements and special deals. You’ll need an effective lead nurturing strategy from wherever they are (an interested person) all the way to where you want them to go (making a purchase). This process requires time and serious mental input as you consider their individual journey down the sales funnel and through your marketing automation software. Lead Nurturing Along the Buyer Journey In order to convert your leads, you’ll need to guide them through a specific journey called the buying journey. There are multiple stages to this journey that can be envisioned as a funnel: Stage 1: A lead is curious This is the top of your funnel and is the widest part. In this stage of lead nurturing, a lead is just starting to look at their options for what you’re selling. They may not even be familiar with your brand but stumbled upon your website while performing a search. At this stage, a lead will have plenty of questions and may not even know what they need. Stage 2: A lead knows they want a product This is referred to as lead nurturing in the middle of your funnel. In this stage, a lead knows they want to buy a certain kind of product, but they’re not sure who to buy from just yet. This is also referred to as the “research stage” where leads take their time to gather as much information as possible about the brands offering what they want to buy. A lead’s goal in this stage is to make the best decision regarding which company has the best solution. Stage 3: A lead is ready to buy This is the bottom of your funnel and is the narrow part. In this stage, a lead has completed their research to their satisfaction and has a good idea about which companies they’d buy from and what specific details matter regarding their purchase. 5 tips to nurture your leads until you get the sale Here are some tips for nurturing your leads until they turn into customers. 1. Lead segmentation supports lead nurturing To convert your leads, you’ll need to reach them at each stage in their buying journey. This requires delivering stage-specific marketing messages throughout their journey. This is accomplished best with lead segmentation. If you’ve never segmented leads before, it’s a critical marketing strategy, yet easy to implement. Once you apply tags to your leads inside of your email marketing program, you can send emails only to leads with specific tags. The purpose of segmenting your leads is to be able to send different emails to different leads based on their interests and where they are in their buying journey. Segmenting based on interest To reach leads based on their interests, you’ll need to segment them as they come in according to certain qualities that only you can define. For example, if you run PPC ads for different products, you’ll want to tag each new lead according to the product they expressed interest in when clicking the ad. Another example would be if you own a pet store. You’d want to segment your leads according to the type of pets they shop for. Someone who owns lizards will have very different needs than someone who owns dogs. Segmenting based on their point in the buying journey With regard to emailing leads based on where they are in the buying journey, you want to send different emails to leads who are ready to buy vs. leads who are just entering your funnel. Your language will be different and so will your marketing tactics. Not every lead who enters your funnel will be at the top, so while you can certainly segment new leads as ‘new,’ you’ll also want to send regular emails asking your leads to click on links that will tell you more about where they are in the buying journey. With a powerful CRM, you can automatically apply and remove segment tags from leads based on the links they click. When you segment your leads, you can deliver targeted marking messages to generate better results. For instance, when you know a lead is ready to buy, they’ll be easier to convert. For this reason, you might use language that assumes the sale when sending an email to a lead at the bottom of your funnel. However, assuming the purchase would most likely be a turn-off for leads at the top of your funnel. For leads at the top of your funnel, you’ll want to send them emails to help them understand your products, brand, or your industry. Nurturing leads guides them gently down your funnel All leads are important, as you can convert leads at any stage, including leads at the top of your funnel. Although leads that are ready to buy are much easier to turn into customers, they were once at the top of your funnel and had to work their way down. The good news is, each new lead that lands

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how has link building changed
Samuel Edwards

How Has Link Building Changed?

Link building is at the heart of any search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, and it has been for more than a decade. But over the course of the past 20 years, the role of link building in SEO has changed. In fact, it’s changed so much that “link building” today is practically unrecognizable to old-school practitioners. If you want to succeed in climbing the rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to understand how link building works today—and how it’s different than the link building of yesteryear. So how exactly has link building changed? And what should you do with this information? The Big Picture: SEO Link Building in a Nutshell Let’s start with a basic overview of what link building is, and its role in SEO. SEO is all about ranking higher in search engines like Google. The goal is to make your website more visible and more attractive to search users looking for a company like yours. The higher you rank, the more easily you’ll be seen, the more traffic you’ll generate, and the more your brand reputation will grow. How do you rank higher in search engines?  Despite all the changes that Google has gone through over the years, the basic formula remains the same. Google wants to give users the best possible results for their searches. Part of that means identifying relevant content—the content that most closely aligns with the user’s search query. This is why keyword research and keyword optimization is so important. But Google also needs to consider the trustworthiness of webpages. Assuming 100 pages are relevant to the user’s search query, Google wants the most authoritative page to be at the top. Google calculates the “authority” of a website (and individual pages within that website) based on a number of ranking factors, but most importantly—links. The exact formula is unknown, but generally speaking, the more links you have, and the better those links are, the more your authority will rise. Getting links from high-authority sources will pass more authority to your site, while low-authority sources will pass less authority. Link building is the practice of establishing more links to your site, in an effort to boost your authority and rank higher. Old-School Link Building Back when Google was relatively new and people were just figuring out the basics of SEO, link building was easy—for lack of a better word. You could build any link in any way you wanted, and practically guarantee that your site would benefit from it. You could post random forum comments with nothing more than your link, with fully optimized anchor text. You could buy links directly from certain sites. You could build links over and over again on the same sources, or create a link network to regularly pass links between multiple sites. It was easy for optimizers, but obviously, it was also deeply problematic. Building links in this way isn’t good for web users. It also doesn’t help your brand’s reputation. People who encounter these spammed links in the wild generally find themselves frustrated; the links don’t add any content, context, or value to the conversation. It didn’t take long for Google to figure out that people were manipulating their search engine rankings with links like this. And of course, they wanted to take action. How Links Have Evolved in SEO Some search optimizers feel like Google is a schemer, out to sabotage their efforts or make their life difficult. In reality, Google just wants search users to have the best possible experience. Over the years, Google has issued a number of algorithm updates designed to improve the average user’s experience. These include updates to make the algorithm more efficient and more accurate, with better aesthetics in SERPs, but most of the updates are designed to stop abusive practices and do a better job of finding high-quality web content. There was a smattering of link-focused updates in the early years of Google, from around 2003 to 2010. For example, the Cassandra update of 2003 issued penalties to sites that relied heavily on co-owned domains linking to each other, as well as links that were hidden from view. However, the biggest game changing update of the past decade was the Penguin update of 2012. Issued in April 2012, the Penguin update majorly overhauled the way Google evaluates link quality and spam. As with most Google updates, we don’t know the exact mechanics of Penguin—we just know that link quality standards sharply increased. Many smaller updates followed Penguin, sometimes referred to as Penguin 1.1, 1.2, 2.0, etc., but they were generally in line with the intentions of the original Penguin. Obviously, search optimizers have had to update their practices to accommodate these new evaluative criteria. Important Ways That Link Building Has Changed So how, exactly, did link building change? How have search optimizers adjusted their strategies, and how is modern link building different from link building in the 2000s? It’s not only about SEO. For starters, building links is no longer only about SEO. Historically, links were used only as a tool to increase domain authority and help websites rank higher. But remember, links also serve an important purpose for users: connecting them with other sites on the web. If harnessed properly, link building can function well as an independent marketing strategy. If you build links on a high-profile publisher that gets a lot of traffic, you may generate a significant stream of referral traffic directly to your site. We’re talking thousands of referral visitors. At that point, the SEO benefits of earning the link become secondary—an added bonus, rather than the sole reason for the link’s existence. At the very least, most optimizers attempt to build links that can yield many different benefits simultaneously. The penalties are steeper. Nobody likes the idea of getting a Google penalty. Google penalties have existed since the earliest days of Google, used as a tool to discourage problematic website management behavior and to clean up the web. “Real” Google

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How to Steal Competitors' Featured Snippets Using ChatGPT
Samuel Edwards

How to Steal Competitors’ Featured Snippets Using ChatGPT

To enhance the user experience for the search function, Google uses Featured Snippets and video featured snippets to the Google search results. Here’s an example of what a featured snippet might look like in the search results: This 0 position text offers a quick answer to the question being searched while also providing a quick link to the corresponding page. This way, the user doesn’t have to click-through to the site if they have already seen the answer in the Google’s search results. An SEO expert is fast adapting their relevant content to be used as feature snippets. It is an excellent opportunity to presenter create content at the top of the search results page, even if the rest of your site is positioned lower in the results. Read ahead to find out what types of featured snippets are and how you can get the most out of them. What are Featured Snippets? The short text rich snippets that Google displays as a drop-down menu featuring pertinent questions at the top of its search results are the featured snippets. Google attempts to answer queries more quickly through this method, as the video content displayed in this featured snippet is pulled directly from Google index’s web pages. With an optimal placement and presentation of the featured snippet box, the showcased websites have a higher probability of a better CTR (click-through rate) and more organic traffic. Importance Of Featured Snippets For SEO There are two ways in which types of featured snippets important for SEO: One of the most essential aspects of featured snippets is the opportunity for a website to get more clicks than it could through organic search results. According to research, it gets around 8% of all clicks. Interestingly, it has been named by many SEO experts as “Position #0” as it is displayed above the conventional #1 spot. Consequently, you don’t need high Google rankings for more clicks yet; give your organic CTR a good boost if you can get your content through to the paragraph featured snippet. Another reason why types of featured snippets are important for SEO is that they increase the no-click search number. The number of times they get the results without clicking on them as trigger featured snippets usually give users the answer they’re searching for. Categories Of Featured Snippets There are four main categories of featured snippets: Ordered List When there is a list of things presented in a particular order, Google generally uses Ordered Lists. It is a helpful technique to answer queries that require some steps. Additionally, ordered lists are also used to present things that are ranked. Unordered List Google uses an unordered list to present a list of things that don’t require a specific order. For instance, to present a list of data analysis research SEO tools, Google can list them out without ranking them from best to worst. Table Google usually uses a table to present data that it has pulled out from a website. Definition Box A definition box gives a concise and direct description or definition to searchers in the form of a text snippet. These are usually used to answer the “what is or are” queries with an average of 40-60 word–long definitions. Optimize Your Page For Featured Snippets Here’s how you can optimize your page for featured snippets: Use Featured Snippets To Find SERPs Start by looking for a search results page with an existing featured snippet, so you are sure that the Google search console tool shows one for that specific keyword. You can also make the entire process of page optimization a lot easier if you also figure out the category that Google wants to display for that keyword. You can determine the SERPs with featured snippets in two ways: Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to focus on keywords that have a featured snippet Search for a few keywords one after the other, and you can note if each one of your potential target keywords has a featured snippet with it or not Optimize For The Particular Featured Snippet Once you have chosen your keywords, optimize your page’s content so Google can display it as a featured snippet the next time a user searches for it. For the four commonly featured snippets’ categories, this is how you can optimize your page’s content: Ordered List One of the best ways to optimize your page content for an ordered list featured snippet is to format it using bulleted lists or numbered steps. It is best to present every step or item using H2 and H3 text as a subheader. You can also label every step or item in the subheading as “1” or Step #1″ so Google knows for sure that your page’s content has an ordered list. It is essential to maintain consistency in your formatting. That is if you write “Step 1: Do __,” then ensure your second step isn’t written as “Step 2 – Do __”. Instead, it would help if you wrote it like this: 1), 2), 3), and so on. Table Google usually takes content from actual tables to display in its table featured snippets. It doesn’t collect data from different sections of your website and display it in a table form, but uses an already existing table. The optimization of your content for table featured snippets depends on presenting your data in tables and how they are coded. However, the coding depends on your site’s setup and if you use WordPress. Generally, if there is a <tr> tag in your HTML that presents the content as a table, it’ll be easy for Google to read it. Definition Since Google uses 40-60 words in a definition box, you have to provide it a ready-to-use text snippet or featured snippeton your page to increase your chances of being selected. Additionally, you can use a “What is ___?” as your heading before you write the definition. When you give Google an exact definition of something that it can

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Experiential Marketing
Samuel Edwards

Your Complete Guide to Experiential Marketing

Effective marketing doesn’t merely involve following the same set of “expert tips” year after year. True, some marketing best practices are constants, but generally, a smart marketer is a marketer who adjusts their strategies based on new trends and changing customer behaviors. For example, in recent years, many companies have begun launching experiential marketing campaigns to a much greater degree than ever before. Regardless of your industry, you should strongly consider doing the same. You just need to know how to get started. This overview will help. It explains what experiential marketing is, why it’s a valuable component of a marketing strategy, and what types of experiences you might offer your customers. Experiential Marketing: What You Need to Know Experiential marketing is exactly what it sounds like: marketing that involves promoting a brand through experiences. These experiences are often live events. For example, a brand might organize a music festival as part of an experiential marketing strategy. However, experiential marketing “content” doesn’t exclusively need to consist of live events. Virtual events can also qualify as experiential marketing. After all, brands didn’t universally abandon their experiential marketing campaigns during the Covid-19 pandemic, when organizing live events with large numbers of attendees was essentially impossible. They may have simply modified their approaches. Additionally, virtual events can reach far more potential customers than events that can only involve a limited number of attendees, most of whom will likely need to live relatively close to the event venue to participate. Why You Need an Experiential Marketing Strategy Why should your brand promote itself via experiential marketers when you’re already investing vast resources into other types of marketing? The following are just a few key reasons: Catering to customer behavior Again, while the Covid-19 pandemic did prevent most of us from attending live events in 2020, in general, interest in live events is on the rise. Harris Group research indicates that most Millennials prioritize spending money on live experiences over products. Recent surveys also confirm that 75% of live music fans would gladly attend concerts again in the wake of the pandemic as long as a means of confirming that attendees aren’t ill before entering a venue is in place. Being stuck inside for a year has been particularly unpleasant for those who enjoy concerts, museum visits, and other experiences that don’t involve binging The Office for the third time in a month. A large portion of your potential customer base was already growing increasingly interested in live events before the pandemic. In its wake, they’ll likely be eager to return to such events. You can take advantage of that eagerness by developing an experiential marketing strategy now. Getting free marketing content When developing ideas for events you might organize as part of an experiential marketing campaign, make a point of constantly asking yourself how you can make the events “shareworthy.” Again, although virtual events can be part of an experiential campaign, it’s still wise to host live events as well. Of course, only so many people can attend such events. You might thus wonder why you should invest time and money organizing an event that only a relatively small part of your customer base can actually engage with. This is understandable. However, you need to remember that we live in an age when people will share a picture of their dinner with thousands of Instagram followers if they think it looks even somewhat impressive. True, not very many people can directly engage with experiential marketing content when it takes the form of a live event, but if they share pictures and posts about the event on social media, others will still engage with it in an indirect way. This highlights one of the key benefits of experiential marketing: When event attendees post about your event on social media, they’re essentially generating free marketing content for your brand. This makes experiential marketing much more cost-effective than it might initially seem. Once more, you just need to make sure you’ve given event attendees a genuine reason to post about it in a way that ensures those who see such posts will associate them with your brand. For example, an outdoor music festival is already somewhat shareworthy by default. It’s definitely not uncommon for music festival attendees to post pictures of their favorite performances on social media. However, those pictures might not necessarily have anything to do with your brand. A marketer could improve brand association by choosing to include their brand’s name in the name of the festival, creating a branded hashtag, asking that performers wear branded clothing, and extensively decorating the venue with an emphasis on the brand’s iconography. Those are just a few experiential marketing examples. The main point to remember is that experiential marketing can give customers a way to naturally create free marketing content for your brand. Strive to take full advantage of this benefit when developing a strategy. Immersing customers in your brand A customer or lead won’t necessarily develop a strong connection with your brand if they only engage with it for a short period of time. For example, a witty Twitter post may make a brief impression on a customer, but that might not be enough for them to connect with your brand in a way that fuels loyalty and long-term engagement. That’s not to say you should abandon social media marketing. However, you should consider how experiential marketing can amplify the short-term effects of your other marketing content. When a lead has an experience or attends an event you’ve organized, it gives you an opportunity to immerse them in your brand for hours (or even days) at a time. This level of immersion can result in far greater brand engagement marketing experience than is possible with other marketing strategies. Demonstrating products Just about any company can benefit from implementing a winning experiential marketing strategy. However, experiential marketing is particularly useful for companies whose products or services need to be demonstrated in order for customers to understand their

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Link Building with Directories
Samuel Edwards

Link Building with Directories: Pros, Cons & Proper Strategy

Directory link building used to be a primary link building strategy. Search Engine Optimization has changed significantly. Today’s link building services include very few, if any, backlinks from traditional internet directories. The best backlinks have some of the following features: They are in-content and in-context They come from a relevant website URL, preferably in a similar or tangential niche They more frequently deep-link (not homepage backlinks) to quality, on-site content They use anchor text that is natural and diverse Though not as powerful as it was in the past, directory submission can still provide businesses with value in terms of targeted traffic and improved ranking. If you’re relatively new to SEO, the following are some tips for creating effective content and link building strategies through the use of web directories. Optimizing for Humans, Not Bots Right from the start, it had been Google’s and other search engines’ goal to serve not only the most relevant information to users, but also to direct them to information that is of great quality. By providing high-quality information, you will optimize not just for search engines, but for the real market here, which is other human beings. People search the Internet for real solutions to their real-life problems. If you fail to provide the quality of information that users are looking for, they’ll turn to your competitors instead. So the more you provide high-quality information, the more people will perceive you as a valuable source of information. They’ll grow to see you as the go-to expert in your field. It might seem like a daunting challenge to try to churn out extremely high-quality content on a regular basis, but don’t be too concerned about it. The search engine game has shifted from quantity to quality. You don’t have to produce massive amounts of content, as long as you provide high-quality content on a regular and consistent basis. Link Diversity While link building from directories has declined as a primary source of backlinks to websites, it still remains a source for creating a diverse backlink portfolio. Admittedly, the mix and share of directory backlinks has significantly declined. With the exception of a few high quality directories, there are other means of producing quality backlinks for your website. Direct Exposure First off, you need to pay attention to the type of directory listing you will be submitting content to. Since Google Penguin has wreaked havoc and taken down low-quality directories, the type you have in mind may no longer enable you to appear on Google’s radar. There are paid directories and free directories. Many of the paid directories took a huge hit when Google Penguin started demoting sites it regarded as spammy link farms. When you choose a directory to get linked from, try to ascertain the level of the quality of traffic it provides. Niche Directories: Rank vs. Relevance Choosing among directory listings that have high authority can still be helpful (as long as it’s not a repurposed site as part of a private blog network). However, as a result of recent developments in search technology, relevance trumps general directories and general guest blogging opportunities, especially if you’re gunning for targeted traffic. That’s why it’s important to reiterate the value of posting content on niche directories; because no matter how high the PR of a directory, if you don’t get the attention of the right kind of customers or audience for your content or business, your efforts will have been wasted. And there’s also the risk that you’ll earn a penalty from Google. Be sure to choose niche directories, or directories that are relevant to your site. And before finalizing your choice of directories where you will post your directory links, check their history as well as authoritative reviews of their performance. Deep Linking Many newbie marketers commit the mistake of linking only to their site’s homepage. You will ultimately want to take advantage of deep linking, however. Deep linking refers to the use of specific keywords as anchor texts linked to specific pages on your site that are relevant to those keywords. This is important because Google has been taking variations into consideration. Deep linking also helps individual pages on your site to rank highly in search. Local Businesses Local companies have perhaps the most to gain from building links from local business directories. These types of local link citations help to enhance your exposure in the local 3-pack in Google Maps and can service to get you targeted leads from the clients in closest geographic proximity to your business. So whether your run a laundromat or a local legal practice, look to local link opportunities from directories first. How to Assess the Quality of a Directory Site We take a similar approach to quality assessment in directory link building as we do in assessing guest blogging services. We utilize a number of third-party tools and applications to determine whether a given site is worthy of a business listings to ours or our clients’ websites. Trust Flow / Citation Flow (Majestic) Trust Flow and Citation Flow are link analysis SEO metrics to assess the quality and authority of a website or webpage. They were developed by Majestic. Citation Flow (CF) measures the quantity of links pointing to a particular webpage or website. It counts the number of backlinks and evaluates the link equity or influence flowing through those links. Essentially, it gauges the popularity or visibility of a webpage based on the number of citations it has received. However, Citation Flow alone does not consider the quality or trustworthiness of the sources linking to the webpage. Trust Flow (TF), on the other hand, focuses on the quality and trustworthiness of the backlinks. It evaluates the reliability and authority of the websites linking to a webpage. Trust Flow is based on a seed set of trusted websites and considers how closely linked a particular webpage is to those trustworthy sources. It measures the distance from the seed sites and assigns a score accordingly. A

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