Timothy Carter

If you want your SEO agency to continue growing, earning more revenue and enjoying more stability, you’ll need to ensure you have a steady stream of new clients—or increased sales from your existing client base. But investing time and resources on new SEO clients can spread your team thin. So how do successful agency owners find new SEO clients without compromising their existing workflows? When the SEO Industry is Growing, But Your SEO Business Isn’t… As an industry that continues to grow, organic search is also extremely competitive. All sales and marketing strategies need to start with sound principles, and any competent agency knows this. By adhering to these foundational principles, you’ll not only increase your chances of getting seen, but you’ll also demonstrate your knowledge of marketing fundamentals: Demographic targeting. All your strategies should be targeted to one specific demographic (or multiple specific demographics, with a segmented strategy on your target audience). Aiming your words, ads, and sales pitches toward more specific audiences means you’ll instantly reduce your competition and simultaneously increase your relevance to that demographic. The better you understand the demographic, and the more finely tuned your SEO strategy is, the more effective it’s going to be. Competitive differentiation. There are dozens, if not hundreds of marketing agencies like yours, so what makes yours different? In Google Ads, marketing materials, and sales pitches, it’s vital to showcase how you’re different. That might mean lower prices, higher-quality services, a field of specialty, or even better customer service. In any case, it’s imperative to stand out. There are those who drill down into markets like SEO for lawyers or SEO for dentists. Sometimes niching down may be exactly what you need. Valuable offers. If you’re going to persuade new clients to enlist your services, you need to convince them of the value you bring. Don’t just pitch a new service; explain how that service is going to yield a positive ROI. Don’t just tell them a strategy is important, or that their competitors are already using it; show them the numbers, and explain how the strategy will affect their bottom line. Experimentation. No client acquisition strategy starts out flawless. The only way to improve is to try different approaches, measure the results, and adjust your tactics in the future. Outbound Strategies Ultimately, every strategy can qualify as an “outbound” or “inbound” attempt to acquire SEO clients. Outbound strategies rely on intentionally reaching out to new prospects, pitching them on your services and persuading them to pull the trigger on a new contract. They come in many forms, but typically include traditional advertising and the use of an in-house team of salespeople. Cold emailing: Identify potential SEO leads and reach out to them through email, highlighting the benefits of SEO and how it can improve their business. LinkedIn outreach: Use LinkedIn to search for businesses that could benefit from your services and reach out to them through direct messages. Networking events: Attend industry events, conferences, and meetups to network with potential local businesses and offer local SEO services. Referral programs: Offer existing clients incentives for referring new clients who could benefit from your SEO expertise. Guest posting: Write guest posts for industry blogs and include a call-to-action that offers a good hook to would-be clients. Cold calling: Reach out to potential SEO customers through phone calls, highlighting the benefits of SEO and how it can improve their business. You can even offer incentives like free SEO audits or competitive keyword research. Content marketing: Create valuable content on your website, such as blog posts and whitepapers, that can help pipeline prospects understand the value of you could provide and how they can benefit. Direct mail: Send targeted mailers to potential SEO clients, highlighting the benefits of SEO and how it can improve their business. Social media: Use social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to reach out to potential prospects and promote your SEO business. Outbound strategies can be effective, but they require strict attention to efficiency. Hiring a team of full-time sales members might seem like a strong way to secure new sales, but it’s only worthwhile if you’re properly incentivizing those team members, measuring your results, and constantly tweaking your approach for improvement. The other problem with outbound strategies is that they tend to have finite value; a targeted ad is only useful so long as it remains paid for, and your list of prospects is only valuable until you’ve exhausted it. Inbound strategies, by contrast, don’t suffer from these drawbacks. Inbound Strategies Inbound strategies consist of tactics designed to naturally increase the visibility and attractiveness of your brand (and website). Again, there are many forms here, but search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing are some of the most common. Inbound marketing has several advantages over its outbound counterpart. Most of the strategies you’ll use here are permanent, or at least long-term, and will yield value indefinitely, increasing their ROI over time. They forgo the need for a robust full-time team of salespeople. And most inbound strategies are infinitely scalable; in other words, they can serve businesses of any size and at any stage of growth. The best benefit of inbound strategies is that nearly all of them complement one another; investing in two strategies simultaneously can improve your results in both areas. Investing in multiple strategies can eventually result in a polished, lead-generating machine—and one that doesn’t require much maintenance. For example, take the cohesion between these inbound marketing strategies: Search engine optimization (SEO). SEO relies on both onsite and offsite changes that increase your site’s rankings in search engines. Search engines like Google measure your site’s authority based on its available content, its technical advantages, and the number and quality of links pointing to it, then use your authority to determine how to rank you for queries relevant to the content on your site. There are hundreds of technical factors, like how your site is coded, that could affect your rankings, but perfecting them can make your

SEO is the ideal way to obtain high search rankings for your website organically. Organic listings in Google are trusted more than advertising and paid listings. That’s why business owners invest a lot in search engine optimization. Many companies provide legitimate SEO services, but there are many pretenders out there. If you see a company offering one of the SEO scams we mention here, better keep looking for other, more reputable search engine optimization services. We Guarantee a #1 Placement Who doesn’t want their site to come up first in Google? But most people don’t want to think that a #1 ranking isn’t possible all day, every day. If you don’t believe a #1 search engine placement is a scam, note that Google has said it cannot guarantee top placement in search results. Companies that make that promise should be avoided, the search giant continued. Remember that competition for your niche’s keywords is intense unless you target phrases that few want. Also, your competitors didn’t hit #1 in a day. They’re probably spending thousands per month on SEO and have done it for years. So, if you see a company offering #1 placement for $300 or something, remember this is a classic SEO scam! We Have THE SEO Secret! Here’s the truth: There is no ‘secret sauce’ that one SEO company has that others don’t know about. No one can say they understand every aspect of the Google algorithm, not even Google! That said, there are best practices and techniques that any SEO company worth a darn knows will work over time. If the SEO company doesn’t detail their processes for you, odds are they aren’t doing anything or are using ‘black hat’ methods that can get your domain name blacklisted. Remember that Google holds you accountable for what your SEO does. If they find violations, Google will remove you from their site without warning. The search giant recently said that the business owner is responsible for their contracting companies’ actions, so you need to know how the SEO company is doing their job. Unsolicited Emails Almost all unsolicited emails through your website or personal email should be thrown in the trash. If you didn’t contact the fir, they’re probably part of a massive spam operation. Scrapers and bots find email addresses on the Internet and send out millions of spam emails daily. And check this out: Spam email from SEO companies often shows up in your inbox when your SEO is working, and the site ranks well. So, your current SEO strategy is probably doing the job. We Have Contacts At Google This MIGHT be true sometimes, but it’s misleading. It’s probably not going to help you, anyway. Note that a company may partner with Google for ads, but never for SEO. Google has no financial incentive to provide a business user with an SEO service. But it has a considerable interest in making sure its search algorithm is a secret. A partner in Google advertising has an account representative who works with them to manage their advertising campaigns. It doesn’t mean they have insider info on its search algorithm. You’ll Get a Zillion visitors To Your Site Per Day These ‘targeted visitors’ probably are just fake traffic produced by a bot. Traffic alone is only a phony metric. Conversions won’t change from fake traffic that totally misses search intent. Further, bot traffic affects the site’s Google Analytics data, so you should pass on these offers. Our Link Building Is The Best A link building scammer may offer to create thousands of links to your site. Somehow, all these excellent links will boost your search results. Backlink quality is one of Google’s algorithm’s most vital parts. A quality link to your site means it comes from a respected and trusted website. You can’t pay for quality links. They don’t come easily. If your site has thousands of links from no-name websites, Google will think you’re trying to manipulate their search engine. You don’t want that. Google will detect link schemes and penalize your site if it has an abnormal link profile. The search engine finds link building schemes quickly and will ding your site. They might even take manual action on your site and damage your ranking. Your Site Is Submitted to Hundreds of Search Engines If you get this offer, look at the search engines they mention. You’ll probably notice most are fake or have been history for many years. Remember: 3 search engines on Earth account for almost 100% of search traffic. They are: Google Bing Yahoo The rest don’t matter or don’t exist. Free Trial Some SEO companies give you a free trial for up to a month. This is desperation to pick up new clients. A skilled SEO company never offers services for free. Additionally, 30 days isn’t enough to produce results. Even Google says most SEOs need four months to a year to obtain benefits. If you fire your current company and take a 30-day-free offer, the new SEO could do NOTHING for a month, and they’ll get credit for the results. We’ll Do It Better For Less The SEO company has no idea what your current company is doing, so how can they make this promise? This is pure deception. Second, no matter what the new guys do, you probably won’t see any results for at least 60 days. The SEO process takes months to work. Also, you probably won’t see a traffic reduction after many months, so they’re deceiving you that they can do it for less. The SEO Company Owns and Hosts Your Domain Watch out for this one! Some SEOs will take over your online presence by owning the URL and hosting. But what if you decide to part ways? Now your SEO company controls you. Don’t expect them to give you the best customer service when you drop them as a vendor. Always own your domain yourself and use a hosting company separate from the SEO agency. Summary

While certain SEO fundamentals, like maintaining a regular and high-quality content strategy, still apply to local businesses, entrepreneurs also need to take measures to optimize their online presence for a local community. If you’re looking for simple, local SEO tips, try some or all of these 15 actionable ideas for improving your local SEO and Google business profile: 1. Optimize your site with location-based keywords. First and foremost, use onsite title tags and metadescriptions to maximize your geographical relevance. For example, if your homepage’s title tag currently reads “Unique coffee shop,” change it to read “City, State unique coffee shop” or something similar. Use variations of your location, such as Seattle, Seattle Washington, and Seattle WA to avoid duplication and optimize for multiple potential queries. 2. Create location-relevant blog posts. This is a long-term local SEO strategy that will improve your ranking in local search results and win you more local customers as well. Blog about things that are currently happening in your city that might have to do with your business or industry. For example, if you own a coffee shop and the city is making renovations to a park down the street, talk about how it’s going to benefit your community! And of course, use lots of location-specific keywords. 3. Make sure your contact info is consistent, everywhere. Sometimes referred to as “NAP” (standing for name, address, and phone number), your onsite contact info is vitally important for SEO. If Google detects even the slightest formatting inconsistency, such as displaying “Rd” in one area and “Road” in another, it could penalize your local rankings. Ensure its consistency across all your pages, and on your offsite profiles as well. Titles and Descriptions The first things to look at are your titles and meta descriptions. Are they narrowly local to your area? If not, then you need to change them so that they are. Example: If you have a page for Kansas City Events in 2013, you want that to be specifically portrayed. You don’t want a title like “Local Events in 2013.” You want it to say specifically: “Kansas City Events in 2013.” Meta descriptions may not be a ranking factor the way they once were, but more often than not they are what’s seen on the search results page. The terms you use will show up as bold text in the title and as the description on the search results page if they match the words that someone was searching for. 4. Create a specific location page. Google will penalize you if you have too many pages that only exist to boost page rank, but it’s a good idea to have one page that details your physical location. You can include this on a contact page, but it’s better if you title your page in line with your physical location. Include map integration, and multiple ways to contact your business. Optimizing your images is something you should be doing as well. That goes for every website, but it can work wonders for local businesses. Next time you’re at an event or out on a job, take photos. Use them in your blog posts. Before you upload them to your site, make sure that the filename, description, and ALT tags mention your local area. Using Google Maps can be tremendously helpful for your local site. But most businesses don’t realize just how much you can do with them. Do you offer a service of some kind? Let’s say that you specialize in kitchen remodeling, okay? Now that you know you should be taking photos on every job, you should have lots of photos of your work to show. This is where it gets good! (I do have to mention that this does cost a bit of money, but you’ll see why it’s so worth it.) You can use a map of your local area to highlight jobs you’ve done. Each one gets its own placement on the map. Each one will have a thumbnail of the photo for that job and a link to a post or page that goes into more depth about it. So essentially, you’re creating localized pages for each job, which gives you that many more pages of localized content on autopilot. Each map icon of each job also gets indexed as a page in Google! The posts that are created for each icon are done so in GEO-Tagged microdata format, which Google, Bing, and Yahoo! all love. So how’s all this possible? It’s done with a WP plugin. (Sorry, you’re kinda outta luck if you aren’t on WordPress). It’s called WP Map Folio. 5. Set up all your social media profiles (if you haven’t yet). You probably already have a Facebook page, but you need to go the extra mile. Even if you don’t plan on updating every profile regularly, it’s important to claim as many profiles as you can. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn are the power players in social media, but don’t neglect your other options. Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Snapchat can all help improve your local authority. 6. Ensure your listing with Google Local or Google My Business Google Local Businesses recently combined with Google+, so if you already have a Google+ profile, you’re halfway there. Fill out your profile completely—Google is a stickler for details. Make sure your name, address, and phone number are all consistent, and post your business hours so your potential customers can easily see them when they search for you. 7. Create local listings wherever you can. After Google’s recent so-called “Pigeon update,” the importance of local directories has significantly risen. In fact, some directory pages on Yelp! are actually outranking company pages in branded local searches. Check out every local directory that’s relevant to your business, such as Yelp!, Urbanspoon, and TripAdvisor, and make sure your business has a presence there. It’s also a good idea to make sure your information is up-to-date. There are a number of local SEO tools available to assist in automating much of the setup here. We provide

Search engine optimization (SEO) is multi-faceted and complex. Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of an SEO campaign is even more daunting, especially when direct results cannot always easily be tied to specific inputs. It’s the old John Wanamaker conundrum: Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half. Fortunately in today’s paid marketing, it’s much easier to target waste and bloat by knowing how your PPC ad spend is working (or not). But not when it comes to organic search traffic. In SEO, correlation is often inappropriately tied to causation, which may not always be the case. In this guide we discuss the specifics of measuring the ROI of your SEO campaigns, particularly your off-page SEO in building links and promoting content. In doing so, we assume your site passes the table stakes metrics required for optimal on-page SEO including quality content, Core Web Vitals, internal linking, proper title/meta/h1, etc. In the next several sections, we’re going to teach you how to measure both the costs and the value of your link building (and link outreach) campaign, and determine which of your links and offsite content are making the biggest impact. From there, you’ll be able to optimize your link building campaign for a higher return on investment, or ROI—and much more impressive long-term results. SEO Link Building Value: More Than Higher Search Engine Rankings Understand that the true value of your link building campaign is about more than just higher search engine rankings. It can’t be tied to any single variable. Instead, your link building outreach campaign must be considered in a variety of different performance areas: Organic rankings (and traffic). Though not the only barometer for value you’ll use, there’s no denying the importance of search engine rankings and the organic traffic they generate. Google and other search engines measure the relative “trustworthiness” of a site in terms of domain authority, or DA, which is calculated with a complex formula that heavily depends on existing links pointing to various sites. Generally, the more links a site has pointing to it, and the higher-authority those links are, the higher its DA will be. Referral traffic. Organic traffic isn’t the only source of traffic generated by links. Depending on the publisher you use, the audience to whom you’re writing, and the positioning of your link, it’s easily possible to generate more visitors in referral traffic than you generate in organic traffic—especially early on in your campaign. User behavior. Traffic is always nice to earn, but the value of that traffic can vary. For example, if you’re running an SEO or PPC campaign on an eCommerce site, your conversion rate will be directly linked to sales, and it’s going to play a massive role in your eventual success. In scenario 1, you’ll get 35,000 visitors a month with a conversion rate of 1 percent, resulting in 350 conversions total. In scenario 2, you’ll get 25,000 visitors a month and a conversion rate of 2 percent, resulting in 500 conversions total. Scenario 2, despite lower traffic, is the favored option. This is important to consider because the nature of your link building campaign can influence user behavior once they’re onsite. Secondary effects. SEO also has a host of secondary effects, most of which are much harder to measure than the primary benefits preceding this list item. For example, if you have a guest author profile on a publication site, you could generate referral traffic from this blurb. If you mention your brand name consistently enough in your links, you’re going to improve your search visibility and reputation—even for people who don’t click your links. Plus, building authority on small- to mid-sized publishers can set you up for even bigger opportunities, resulting in a kind of ladder-climb; in this way, every link you build carries value in supporting the future of your campaign. Some of these impact variables will matter more to you than others. For example, your brand may be especially eager to outrank your top competitors in search engines. However, it’s hard to argue with objective outcomes; if it’s possible to generate more total traffic, as well as traffic more likely to convert, from referrals than organic traffic, it will benefit you to optimize your approach accordingly. The Big Picture of SEO ROI Let’s turn our attention to the main premise of this piece: SEO ROI. The high-level view is that SEO ROI is a function of two variables: costs and profits. If you spend $500 on a campaign and you generate $600 in revenue from it, that’s an ROI of $100, or 20 percent, depending on how you want to measure it. In the realm of link building, costs can be tricky to measure, since you’ll need to factor in both time and money. If you’re working with a link building agency, things get a bit simpler, since you’re only dealing with one cost variable. In the next section, we’ll explain how to accurately project your costs. And as you can see from the previous section, outcomes can also be difficult to measure; there are many benefits of link building, both direct and indirect, and you’ll need to factor all of them into your final SEO ROI equation. In several sections that follow, we’ll explore how to measure the impact of your links, including how much traffic they’re generating, how they’re improving your search engine rankings, and how they’re influencing user behavior on your site. For both costs and value, you’ll need to consider both your overall SEO strategy and each individual link; for example, if your strategy is performing well, but a certain type of link seems to be underperforming compared to the others, you can weed out whatever strategy is producing that link in favor of something more in line with what’s generating your results. Some publishers will outperform others, and some pieces of onsite content will be more rewarding as link destinations than others. Measuring Your Off-site

Digital marketing for startups and new websites is more difficult than it has ever been. Competition is more fierce, existing budgets are more robust and customers are more distracted, but that doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t be done. It can now take 3+ years for new websites to emerge out of the hypothetical Google Sandbox and start ranking for thousands of keywords: How to Promote a New Website Marketing a brand new website can be a challenge, but with the right strategies, you can drive traffic and increase conversions. Here are six effective tactics you can use: Optimize your website for search engines using relevant keywords and meta tags. Leverage social media to build a following and engage with your target audience. Invest in pay-per-click advertising to target specific keywords and demographics. Collaborate with other websites and influencers in your industry to gain exposure and backlinks. Utilize email marketing to build relationships with your audience and promote your offerings. Offer incentives or promotions to entice visitors to take action on your website. “The Dip” for New Websites Seth Godin has a best-selling book titled The Dip. And while it’s certainly shorter than most of his other books, it’s arguably one of his best. It centers around the concept of knowing when to quit on an idea and when to continue pushing through. The basic premise is that most people have an unrealistic idea of what growth in business looks like. They believe it happens exponentially from the start (something Godin calls the “Naive Curve”). But this is rarely true – even with the best ideas. In reality, most people start with lots of energy and excitement. And as they launch a new business or even prepare for a new website launch, they experience an initial jolt of results, which sends positive feedback and encourages the entrepreneur to put in more effort. But then something inevitable happens: Results flat line while effort simultaneously increases. It’s at this point that people experience “The Dip.” Unfortunately, most people throw in the towel at this point. But as Godin puts it, this is a “bad quitting point.” Because the dip is typically followed by a rebound (which is where the real results occur). One of my favorite quotes from the Godin’s book: A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner When launching a new website, you have to resist the tendency to believe in the “Naive Curve” and instead embrace “The Dip.” This isn’t a pessimistic outlook – it’s just a realistic one. If you launch a website correctly, you’ll experience your fair share of results over the first 24 to 72 hours. But then things will flatline a bit. And if you aren’t careful, you’ll be tempted to throw in the towel. However, as you now know…true growth is just on the other side. By developing a proactive site launch plan to market your new website, you’ll reach this point faster and more efficiently. In this article, I’m going to show you: The What and Why of a website launch plan How to set yourself up for a successful new site launch by doing all of the right things before going “live” What to do on launch day to maximize your traffic and long-term results Post-launch website marketing tips for scalable traffic and conversions How building the right team makes all the difference when marketing a brand new website If you’re ready to learn the correct way to launch and market a website for maximum impact and lift, you’re in the right place. Keep reading and I’ll dish my favorite secrets for success. The What and Why of a Website Launch Plan I’d venture a guess that 95 percent of new websites don’t have any sort of formal launch plan. They simply hit “publish” and then take a wait-and-see approach. But I’d also venture to say 95 percent of most websites flop faster than a middle-school boy jumping off the diving board at the neighborhood swimming pool. All of that to say this: A website launch plan is not a requirement, but having one typically improves results and could even put you 90 to 180 days ahead of where you’d be if you just started publishing content without any real marketing or promotional strategy. When you first launch a website, nobody knows you exist. Google doesn’t know, strangers on the internet don’t know, even most people in your personal and professional networks don’t know. And it’ll stay that way for several months if you don’t develop a plan to intentionally systematize your launch. A launch plan is basically a formalized website promotion strategy for announcing and promoting your website to the right people in an effort to gain initial traction that can be parlayed into exponential growth over the following weeks and months. As the classic saying goes, a failure to plan is a plan to fail Without any formal launch plan, you’re basically publishing content for an empty room. It’s possible that some people will eventually wander into the room by accident, but why not send invitations? There’s no singular formula for developing a website launch plan, but it’s typically going to encompass three major phases: Pre-Launch. These are the steps you take just prior to launch to ensure your website is ready to go live. It’s a very specific set of steps that need to be checked off in order to ensure your launch day and post-launch processes go smoothly. Launch Day. On launch day, all cylinders are on fire. Assuming you were intentional with your pre-launch approach, you’ll see a pretty decent amount of lift in the first 24-72 hours. The more you can take advantage of this traffic and exposure, the better. Post-Launch. While launch day is certainly important and full of excitement, it’s just one day. What you do after launch day is even more important.

Everyone wants to be #1 on Google. The objective is always to rank as highly as you can as this will drive exponentially more traffic to your site, which ultimately means more sales and reaching your target audience. One of the top ways to boost your search engine optimization (SEO) and Google rankings is through guest blogging and this has been a strategy used for many years now. Getting guest bloggers and using backlinks from high authority websites is a way in which you could move up through the Google ranks and show your own site to be authoritative and was using legitimate strategies for link building. Google Sends Businesses into Meltdown Over Guest Blogging     Back in 2014, Matt Cutts, the former Head of Web Spam at Google said that “guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy’. This sent many businesses into a panic. Would their website be affected by this type of update if they previously featured guest bloggers? You never know when the next Google algorithm update is going to come along and set back all your SEO hard work!     Although this was said back in 2014, now as we are heading into 2021, is guest blogging dead? The objective of guest blogging has always been about backlinks. This is still fundamental to Google’s algorithm on how it assesses the authoritativeness of a website. If you are faced with a competitor who has lots of high authority backlinks and you have none, chances are they are going to beat you in the rankings for the best targeted keywords! This means that anyone with a website has had to re-evaluate the effectiveness of their own guest blogging and achieving backlinks. So, is guest blogging dead? The answer, overall, is no. However, there are specific rules to adhere to if you want to ensure that your guest blogging backlinks help your ranking and don’t hinder them. The Basics of Guest Blogging   Source: visual.ly Before we go on, it’s important to establish the basics of guest blogging. Essentially, a guest post is, is written content which is published on a third-party website with the author’s name. Alongside the author’s name, there is normally a line of two of information about who the author is and a link to their website, which is the backlink. In a guest blogging piece, the backlinks are also often included throughout the main body of the content. This type of strategy to get authoritative bank links on your website is one of the most popular, although there are still other options available. Now, you may be asking yourself, what is the problem with this method of obtaining backlinks? It appears great! The problem is that when an SEO technique is popular and widely used, it can be abused. Furthermore, Google catches on to this popularity and will look to weed out the spammy content that is bad practice. While bad content is targeted, it could still end up affecting your good content which is, of course, not what any website owner wants. What Guest Blogging Content Does Google Punish? There are a number of ways in which Google will penalize guest blogging content. These are some of the bad practices that you should avoid. Content with No Value If you are publishing guest blogging content that has no value, or very, very little value, then Google will recognize this and punish you for it. If a guest content piece is purely being written just to include a backlink and does not contain any helpful information, you can be sure this won’t help with your rankings. When creating guest blogging content, at the forefront should always be informing your readers with valuable information. This will then, subsequently, help your SEO. Re-publishing Content If you are thinking about creating one piece of content and then just simply editing it a little to create more backlinks – don’t! When you republish content and spin it a little in order to post it on another website for extra backlinks, Google will recognize this and punish you for it. Overloading Content with Backlinks Many sites that accept guest posts make the mistake of cramming in as many backlinks as possible into an article, however, this is a big mistake. Google will be able to pick this up immediately and see that you are trying to cheat the system and you will be penalized for it. Don’t Go Crazy with Anchor Text Keywords Another common error that is made with guest blogging content is using overloading the backlink anchor text with a tonne of keywords. This isn’t natural and makes your backlink and article appear spammier. To be clear, less than 1% of your anchor text should be exact match, according to Ahrefs. Using Low Authority Guest Blog Sites A big no no when it comes to backlinks and guest blogging is publishing content on low authority sites. You’ll know exactly the types of sites that we are talking about such as the news sites that are very low-quality and look like spam articles. These sorts of sites use very poor content and simply a way to make quick money. In the long run, this will only damage your SEO efforts using these types of websites. Repeatedly Using the Same Websites Guest blogging can be extremely time consuming and so it seems easier just to repeatedly use the same handful of sites that you are on good terms with. However, this is wrong as it can, again, appear like spam. Instead, you need to take the time and effort to build relationships with a wide range of different sites and do blogger outreach. Not Knowing the Subject You’re Writing On If you want a piece of content to appear reputable, knowledgeable and authoritative, then it has to be written by someone who knows about the subject you are writing on. This ensures that your content provides value to the audience it is intended for