Timothy Carter

Link building serves many purposes. Most of the time when marketers and link builders talk about the practice of link building, they are referring to global link building, linking to sites all over the web in order to build brand recognition, generate more content, increase page rank, and increase domain authority. While all of these things certainly apply, local link building is more specific in that it is focused on building links that are related to local search results. Here are some examples: “roofer near me” “local painting contractor” “Austin, Texas pest control” “Seattle SEO“ For most businesses, especially brick and mortar or service-based businesses, the majority of their traffic comes from the local searches. In fact, 38% of all internet queries are local. Knowing how to optimize for local SEO link building is crucial to getting traffic through the doors and for cashing in on the local customer base you have. While the principle is similar to standard national link building, there are a few key differences between link building on a global scale and local link building. The primary focus of link building is on finding industry-specific links through finding relevant and trustworthy content to link to or to form link exchanges with other businesses. The problem with this for local businesses is that these types of links do not drive the type of traffic that they need. So then, the question becomes, what types of Links are best for local link building? To help you understand building links for local search, we’ll break down why local link building is different and how it works, as well as how to actually go about finding and securing local link building opportunities. What Local SEO Link Building is All About We all already understand what link building is and what search engine optimization is for, helping you rank higher in search results. Like we said in the beginning, the focus is not on global search results or even Google specifically, but rather on local business search results. Many of the same rules apply as far as being relevant and trustworthy. In other words, you’re still looking at building backlinks with businesses that are relevant to your own and provide useful information to your users, while having a good domain authority (relative to local search). The difference is that you’re not looking for just any sites with relevant information and good domain authority, your search for links should be focused on those businesses in your local search area, the area that you cover with your services. To conceptualize it, picture this, you are a tire salesman in Atlanta, you want to improve your search ranking by building links with businesses that are also in Atlanta and that are in a related field. By following this logic, you may try to reach out to local tire change shops, that don’t sell their own tires, or mechanic shops that buy tires from you, or even paint and dent repair shops that service automobiles, all in Atlanta. With this example, you can see how all of these businesses are related and add some form of value to your users and your business. Getting free backlinks with local businesses is the key point of local SEO link building but is not the only part of it. Content Creation and SEO for Local Link Building The next part of local SEO link building is linking to content that is relevant to your users. This is about what your backlinks are linked to as well as the types of content you create on your own website as well as what pages you backlink to. If you want to find out more about your backlinks right now, use our free backlink checker tool. Your own content is a major part of your SEO, content that is keyword rich is not the only goal. You want content that is on topic, relevant, fresh, and of value to your users. This also improves your chances of building links with other businesses, after all in terms of link exchanges, both parties have to offer something of value. To that point, the businesses that host your links should also have relevant content that is high quality. This is part of the whole, highly reputable, and relevant local link building strategies that is at the core of all global link building tactics, but for local businesses, it is even more important to keep users engaged and build brand trust. If you have a lot of backlinks from disreputable or untrustworthy local websites, this will only hurt your business in the end. It also hurts your search results ranking since domain authority is still a part of the local search ranking. The content you create also needs to be local. Referencing local businesses, talking about area-specific problems, issues that customers in your area face, providing solutions to common problems, all of these types of things are all relevant and local, improving your ranking in local search by being as relevant and impactful as possible. Writing broad or overarching posts and blogs may be useful on the global market, but local residents want content that matters to them specifically. Always keep in mind the audience you’re trying to target and the information that they will find important. The Information You Need to Build Local SERP Ranking You should always consult with a professional link building service to help build out links to your business, but focusing on the right information is important for the purpose of building your ranking in Google’s local SERP. The first thing to focus on is making sure that the information on your site is up to date and listed properly, this means your location (physical address, ) the name of your business, and contact details are as up to date as possible (as a side note, this information should be on every page and should be easy to find) and that Google has this information listed in its index of businesses. The second

If you want to be successful in search engine optimization (SEO), you need to pay attention to hundreds of SEO ranking factors, small and large. In addition to writing excellent content, building links consistently, and optimizing for strategically targeted keywords, you need to fix and adjust dozens of little variables all over your website. Today, we’re taking a close look at one of these variables: navigation links. What exactly are navigation links and how should you consider them in the context of your SEO strategy? What Are Navigation Links? Take a look at the top of this website. You’ll see a horizontal bar with links to various pages and subpages, titled Services, Tools, Why Us, Blog, and Contact (plus Login and Get Started). These are navigation links. Navigation links are internal links to other pages of your website. What makes them different than other links is that they’re more heavily emphasized. When you visit a website for the first time, navigation links are among the first things you see, and it should make intuitive sense why this is the case; after scrolling through the homepage, users need prompts to figure out where to go next. Obviously, navigation links are important for outlining the content of your website and providing users with meaningful direction so they can find the information they need. But what does this have to do with SEO? Why Are Navigation Links Important for SEO? Navigation links serve many different purposes in the context of your SEO campaign, so it’s important to optimize them to boost your rankings. New webpages. First, remember that each link in your navigation is going to lead to a new page – usually a core page of your website. Each new page of your website is another ranking opportunity, and another chance to optimize for target keywords. Website structure and hierarchy. Google uses bots to crawl the web and index pages. The crawling path plays a role in how your pages are indexed, and therefore, presented in search engine results pages (SERPs). How you structure and name your navigation links can play a role in how Google analyzes and indexes your website. Without proper navigation links, Google may treat every page of your website as having equal footing – which probably isn’t the case. Naming and keyword optimization. How you name your pages and navigation links can also influence your SEO results. This is an opportunity to include target keywords, both for the respective pages in your navigation and your homepage. User experience. Finally, navigation links are an important element of user experience. If your navigation links are sensibly organized, easy to find, and easy to use, your users are going to be more likely to enter the inner pages of your website and spend more time-consuming information. Google rewards websites with positive user experience, so this can support higher rankings as well. Types of Website Navigation Links There are many different possible approaches to the design and presentation of your navigation links. These are the main types that most websites use: Horizontal navigation. At the top of our website, you’ll see an example of horizontal navigation. As the name of this navigation link style suggests, these links are listed in a horizontal fashion. This is one of the most common types of navigations on the modern web, since it works well for a variety of devices and browsers and because it’s both clean and efficient. However, it may not be appropriate if you have an excessive number of links to include. Sidebar navigation. An alternative option is sidebar navigation, where users can find links listed vertically on the side of a website. This is arguably quite similar to horizontal navigation, relegating a relatively short list of links to only one small part of the website – without hiding those links. Hamburger menu navigation. Though this design trend is falling out of fashion, the classic “hamburger menu” navigation was quite popular when designing for mobile devices first rose to prominence. It’s called a hamburger menu because of the three horizontal lines depicting its existence. When users click on the hamburger icon, they can expand a navigation menu that presents them with all the navigation links they need. It’s a compact way to include more navigation links than would otherwise fit, but it forces users to interact before they can see them. Footer navigation. If you scroll to the bottom of this website, you’ll also see an example of footer navigation. Here, you’ll have practically infinite room to list all the navigation links you think are important to your users, without having to worry about those links obstructing the average user experience when perusing your homepage. Dropdown menu navigation. What if you have dozens of links to include in your navigation, but for design purposes, you only want to include a few in the header of your website. One option available to you is the drop down menu navigation; in this setup, you’ll have a handful of major headers in the main part of your navigation. When users hover over these headers or click on them, they’ll produce a submenu of daughter pages associated with this parent page. It’s another way to make your navigation more compact without sacrificing the number of navigation links you want to include. Hybrid approaches. And of course, it’s possible to utilize multiple approaches to navigation links simultaneously, as long as you’re not overcrowding your web design in the process. Case in point, our website utilizes both horizontal header navigation and footer navigation. Best Practices for Navigation Links in SEO So, what are the most important best practices to follow for navigation links in your SEO campaign? Keep your SEO navigation links to a minimum. After reading the rest of this article, you may come up with the idea to include as many navigation links as possible in your main navigation. After all, each one of these pages is a new ranking opportunity, and an opportunity to include

Local SEO services are very different from national SEO. Localized results are typically tied to and adjust based on: Specific local keyword included in an individual query The IP address of the individual who performed the Google search The geolocation of the query (in the case of a mobile phone) Our local SEO guide is an extensive overview of the ins-and-outs of local search engine optimization for improving search results on a local level. We will help you solve the problem of why your business does not appear in Google local search. The menu at right (or below on mobile) will provide you with the specific areas that impact local SEO rankings. We hope you enjoy! Introduction to Local SEO Services: The Basics When you perform a local search (and even a local voice search), Google produces a separate set of results at the top of the SERPs. The algorithm that powers these results is not only very different than typical SEO, the code is managed by a completely separate team within Google For local businesses, relying on customers in their own communities to thrive and grow, this distinguished set of ranks has been a boon—it means a shortcut to visibility for the audiences who matter most. Ranking locally is important for most small businesses. As a supplement to this extensive overview of local search, we also created the following PDF guide, available here or as a download from the link below. Why are Local SEO Services Important? First, a quick recap of how local businesses can benefit from improved local rankings: Lower competition. Because your list of competitors is narrowed down to only those in your geographic vicinity, you’ll have an easier time earning a rank quickly. Increased visibility. You don’t have to fight for a top spot—the top three local entries will always rise above the other results for local queries. Peripheral ranking options. If you want to rank, it’s not just about ongoing content and link building (though those are important too). You can hedge your bets by using other ongoing tactics like review optimization and citation management. Greater visitor relevance. Anyone who sees your local entry will be a local resident, meaning the relevance of your traffic will ultimately increase. How Local Search Is Changing The ranking factors for local differ from national SEO (and often get more nuanced as more simple versions of Google’s algorithm dominate international SEO). Moz gives us some hints for where to put your focus when it comes to local marketing strategies from a local SEO services company: But the data is somewhat conflicted when it comes the weight of local Google ranking factors: Aside from these benefits (and opportunities), local search itself is changing. Be aware of what local search engine optimization services are today versus what it will be in the future, could be very different. Greater unification with mobile SEO  Local results on desktop are starting to shift to a layout friendlier for mobile devices. But what does the changing local pack say about the future of local search?  Google My Business (GMB) includes a local map pack (aka local 3-pack results) overlayed on Google Maps, which pulls its information from your Google Business Profile and local listing information to display it in the local search results, including the Google local pack. Website and directions are available with a click, meaning local entries are probably going to keep getting easier and more convenient to interact with. Accordingly, you’ll stand to gain more click throughs, brand awareness and revenue from ranking in the local map pack from optimizing your Google Business Profile in your Google My Business listing. You will also want to spend time optimizing your content and external links for local relevance. Increasing specificity Local search optimization is getting even more local. Instead of just focusing on a city or region, new local searches could drill down further into neighborhoods or even based on proximity to the user. That means even less competition for even more specific niches. It is also important to remember that local keywords typically hit lower on the search intent funnel for your most targeted local customers: Increasing importance Users are starting to grow used to local results, and are using mobile devices (which almost always make queries local) more than ever before. In 2016, local results will be more important to users than ever—which means they’re even more valuable to rank for. The Main Ingredients for Improving Local Search Results What are the main ingredients of local search? What do you need in order to make your local optimization strategy work? For starters, you need all of the things you would need when targeting national search engine ranking factors, only including local SEO ranking factors in with the mix: Technical on-page SEO Your local website needs to function perfectly, loading quickly and providing full content to all users, regardless of how they’re accessing your site. Technical onsite SEO gives you an opportunity to improve the site’s security, performance, usability and local search results pages. There are numerous local SEO tools that can assist you with your local, technical SEO efforts. The better your site works, the higher it’s going to rank. Keyword optimization You also need to think about optimizing for specific keywords. What are people going to be searching for when looking for a business like yours? There’s a lot to keep in mind when researching new keywords and phrases, but you always need at least some direction to succeed. Onsite content You also need an archive of on site content, allowing you to build your authority, appeal to new visitors, and optimize for specific keywords simultaneously. Most websites need hundreds of blog posts (and writing a new blog post regularly) to support their SEO goals. Link building Google ranks sites preferentially, based on their perceived trustworthiness, or authority. The only reliable way to build this authority is to earn more links from high-profile sources. That’s why link building is

Content velocity is simply defined as the amount of content you produce over a given period of time. The more content you create in a given day, week, month or year–the greater your content velocity. The ideal strategy for content velocity will shift, depending on your overall ranking goals and your existing website authority. And while it might not be something that most traditional SEOs and search marketers discuss, it’s arguably one of the most important factors in whether or not you experience results in a timely manner. In this article, we’re going to discuss: what content velocity is, including calculating content velocity? why it matters for new websites with little to no authority. how old, vested authoritative websites should treat content velocity. how focusing on content velocity to the exclusion of other ranking factors can be detrimental to your SEO.  how to publish more content at a more efficient rate, so that you can generate better results and achieve the right content velocity that will help you rank higher in search engines. If you’re ready, we can dive in! What is Content Velocity? Content velocity is best described as the measure of the amount of content a brand creates during a particular period of time. Content velocity is often measured in terms of months, quarters, or years. For example, if you wanted to measure your content velocity over a period of time (say 30 days), you would calculate how much content was produced over this period of time. The question of how to measure content production is one of preference. You could measure it in terms of pages, URLs, word count, or any number of other metrics. For SEO purposes, it’s usually measured in terms of new content pages. There is no content velocity benchmark or threshold for success. It’s highly dependent on factors like how much existing quality content you have, what your current SEO foundation looks like, how competitive your space is, the average competitor’s content velocity, etc. Why Content Velocity Matters In the world of SEO and digital marketing, there’s always been a debate over quality vs. quantity. And if you’ve ever spent any time on our blog or reading any of our content, you know that we’re big believers in a quality-first approach. In our decade-plus of experience in this industry (and our team’s hundreds of years of combined marketing experience), we’re convicted by the fact that customers equate content quality with brand quality. If you can create and deliver real value to the marketplace, it translates into customers. “Thin” content – which is a term we use to describe low-quality content that adds no real value to a customer at any stage of the marketing funnel – rarely translates into dollars earned. Having said all of this, we’re also firm believers in the idea of content velocity. At first, this might seem contradictory, but avoid jumping to conclusions so quickly. While quality and quantity are often juxtaposed against one another, they don’t have to be opposites. Typically, when a brand chooses a quality-first approach, it means slower and more intentional content creation. (In other words, output/quantity is low.) And, in most cases, when a brand chooses a quantity-first approach, quality suffers as a result. But it is possible to enjoy both quantity and quality at the same time. In doing so, you can benefit from the power of content velocity. Here are some of the reasons why content velocity matters: Competition. In terms of figuring out the proper velocity with which to create content and get it published, your competition is one of the defining factors. Everything is relative based on what other brands and websites in your space are doing. If you have three competitors and they’re posting new content 10, 15, and 20 times per month, respectively, this means you need to be posting at least 20 times per month in order to have a healthy velocity. But if you only have two competitors and they post three and four times per month, you could post just 10 times per month and gain ground. Either way, whether you have lots of competitors or just a few, a focus on content velocity forces you to research your competitors and understand their strategies. This gives you better insights into the competitive landscape. SEO. An obvious benefit of content velocity is the way in which search engines rely on content for crawling, indexing, and ranking. The more content you have on your site, the more these crawlers have to engage with. Over time, your commitment to more content and individual on page SEO will help improve your search engine rankings. Content velocity also ties tightly with link velocity, which is another critical element of promoting new websites with SEO. Value creation. Velocity extends beyond basic SEO benefits. It’s also a matter of value creation. Quality content communicates very specific value to a very specific group of people. The more of it you have, the more your customers will come to trust you as a valuable source of knowledge and information. User experience. Your customers are living in a world where content and knowledge is ubiquitous and where they can get personalized content when and where they need it. If your brand is silent and refuses to publish content, customers start to wonder why. Content creation and transparency are seen as going hand-in-hand. The more you publish content, the more transparent you appear. This elevates the overall user experience with your brand. Resource maximization. As with anything, it’s a lot less expensive to execute something at scale than it is to create a “one-off.” In other words, it’s less resource-intensive to create five pieces of content per week than it is to generate one piece per month. Greater vision. Brands that produce just one piece of content here and there typically don’t have much of an overarching strategy. They have not likely mapped out their customer journey. They’re just sort of stringing things together whenever

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been making the rounds in various blogs thanks to the fairly recent launch of ChatGPT. AI seems to be everywhere, and there’s no doubt it has massive potential to boost your digital marketing game. With some exceptions, AI-powered tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard can help you with SEO, content marketing, lead generation, and more. If you’ve always wanted to try using AI to improve your business, keep reading because this article will teach you how it’s done. AI is accessible to local, small business owners If you’re worried that AI tools, like ChatGPT, are just for big corporations, don’t worry – you can get in on this tech, too. In the digital marketing sphere, discussions about AI seem to gravitate toward big corporations using algorithms to scale content creation on a large scale to save time and money. Local business owners fear this might give them even less of a chance to compete in their industry. This fear is reasonable. Large corporations have the budgets required to use any tool they need to increase productivity and profits. Using AI to create content costs a fraction of hiring a human, which gives them even more leverage than before. Where budgets are concerned, large corporations already have the advantage. If they start using AI, do small business owners even stand a chance? The answer is yes. You can leverage AI just like big corporations and see success in your industry. With a strong local SEO campaign, you’ll be competing in a smaller, yet more targeted market where searches are more transactional. This is exactly what you need for success. Using AI will make digital marketing less challenging and will reduce the overwhelm of trying to keep up when you scale your efforts. 5 Ways AI helps small businesses with digital marketing There are many different forms of AI, so to keep it simple and clear, the AI referenced in this article is the type used by ChatGPT, which is generative AI. Generative AI is a large language model algorithm that can provide unique, humanlike content when given a prompt. For example, you can ask a generative AI engine to write you an article, provide answers to a question, or explain a complex topic. It can even write you a poem or some jokes if you wish. As long as the engine you’re using has been trained with content on a particular topic, it can produce unique content for you. 1. AI can write content outlines and full pieces Content is and always will be king in the digital marketing arena; your goal is to publish content your audience can’t wait to read and share with others. Whether you need full articles or just basic outlines, it can all be done with generative AI. The following types of content can be AI-generated: Informational web page content Social media posts Jokes Poems How-to articles FAQ sections Lists Recipes Regular blog articles And more The faster you can produce content, the better. Thankfully, with AI, it only takes a few minutes to get what you need. If you don’t have time to run the software yourself, it’s easy to outsource to an employee or a professional marketing company. Your best results will come from well-structured prompts. AI tools are capable of writing decent content as long as you provide the right input. If you’ve already tried an AI tool and either didn’t know how to use it or you didn’t get the results you were hoping for, learn how to write better prompts. For example, writing like you’re communicating with a human will improve your output. When you receive a response that doesn’t work, you can request another version or adjust your prompt. Over time, your AI tool will continue to learn from your interactions and will provide you with better content. No matter how good your tool seems, never publish content without reviewing it for accuracy and tone. AI bots tend to generate formal language and some of the phrases can sound a bit awkward. Always smooth these areas out so your text sounds as human as possible and reflects your brand’s voice. And don’t hesitate to insert your unique viewpoints or stories. If you content doesn’t add value to the world or if visitors don’t find it interesting, your efforts will be in vain. 2. AI can help you scale content production Being a small business owner, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve. But you probably don’t have a massive digital marketing budget like major brands. Still, you need to create regular high-quality content that appeals to your market and eventually you’ll need to scale your content production. Without a big budget, you might feel hesitant to scale. That’s where AI comes in. Scaling your content production using AI will give you an advantage as though you have a big budget. It’s fast, easy, and can produce content that requires only minimal editing on your part. There are a handful of decent online tools for creating content, including Jasper, copy.ai, and SurferSEO. By entering some text prompts and making a few selections, you can ask these tools to write you any kind of content you need, from articles and recipes to social media posts and informational pages. The output from these AI tools is surprisingly good. It’s natural, it flows, and it reads like it was written by a human. However, you’ll need to review the content and make corrections. Generative AI sometimes provides wrong answers and incorrect information. Even so, using an AI content generation tool will give you a major head start in scaling your content production. 3. AI can write your social media posts Do you ever get bored of writing posts for Facebook, or coming up with punchy one-liners for Twitter? A generative AI tool can do all of that for you, and more. Since the algorithms are trained on vast amounts of content, they are capable of creating posts on

After looking into search engine optimization (SEO), you may have realized it costs more than you thought to hire a professional. If you have the capital, that’s no big deal, but if you’re one of many business owners without a dedicated SEO budget, it makes sense to look for ways to optimize your own website for free (or with as little investment as possible). You’ll be happy to know that you can optimize your website for search engines without paying for professional services. As long as you have an SEO-friendly site design, you have a good foundation to work with, and from there, you’ll need to learn how to implement the following SEO components. 1. Keyword and subject research SEO begins with determining what queries users type into search engines when they need your product or service. You’ll use these keywords in your content, product descriptions, page titles, and anywhere else appropriate. Check out these free keyword research tools to get started. However, don’t stop at keyword research. You’ll need to research your subject matter as well. In the early days, ranking a website was largely dependent on keywords. Google and other search engines ranked websites by finding matching keywords between a user’s search and the words that appeared on a web page without much consideration for other factors. While keywords are still important, they don’t carry as much weight. You can’t expect a website to rank just by filling the pages with keywords people are typing into their search bar. While you need to research keywords, you also need to research your subject to understand it in-depth and identify related keywords and phrases. Doing this will help you rank for semantic search. In the world of SEO, this is called LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing. LSI keywords and phrases work like this. Say you run a law firm and your main keyword phrase is “criminal defense attorney near me.” You also want to optimize your content for phrases like, “criminal defense lawyer,” “do I need a lawyer for criminal charges,” “beat criminal charges in [city],” etc. The idea is to use a handful of additional phrases that help search engines understand the full context of your web page so it will be included in search results when it’s most relevant, since users search for these additional phrases. Keyword research tips Embrace long tail keywords. Use a spreadsheet to organize your keyword lists. Use free SEO tools, but don’t be opposed to paying to get better features. Research your competitors’ keywords to get more ideas. Identify and go after keyword gaps – these are keywords you don’t rank for, but two or more competitors do. 2. Start building your internal link structure You may not realize how important internal links are for ranking. Sure, they’re links to pages on your own website, but they tell search engines how important your pages are and provide more context about your content. The more internal links you have pointing to a given page, the more equity Google will assign to that page. There is no official Google guidance on where to place internal links, but in general, they can go anywhere: blog posts, navigation menus, footers, and sidebars. To get links on your home page, use widgets that link to your latest or most popular posts. After creating a blog post, find other pages on your site with relevant content and link it in your new article. Internal link building tips Use exact match anchor text. For example, if you run a marketing blog, you might use the following anchor text options: “marketing tips,” “target market,” and “hire an agency.” Only link to target content once per page. Use links sparingly. A few per page is good. 3. Optimize your title tags Although title tags aren’t a powerful ranking factor anymore, they are absolutely important on the back end and for getting users to click. Your page titles tell Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines what your content is all about. Search engines use this information to determine how to rank pages. Your page titles will also contribute heavily to your click through rate, since users will skim titles and quickly decide whether or not the page contains the information they want. Title tag tips Keep titles short to 50 characters or less or at least get the most important words into that space. Don’t get too attached to how your titles display. Google often rewrites page titles before displaying results. To avoid having your titles rewritten, don’t use brackets, parenthesis, dashes and pipes, or repeat the same keyword multiple times. Create simple and clear titles that speak for themselves. 4. Update older content Old content isn’t necessarily bad, but Google prefers to display fresh, new content in the search results. Sometimes, users are turned off by content simply because of the publication date. Your page might be exactly what they’re looking for, but if it seems outdated, they may not click. To avoid being passed over, update your pages periodically by adding some new content, references, or images. This will trigger Google to create a new publication date that users will see in search results. Content refresh tips Don’t alter good content just to make it new. Instead, add a paragraph. Replace outdated suggestions with better options. Rework your introductions to capture more attention. 5. Go for rich and structured snippets Getting your website to rank in the search engines is great, but you also need people to click on your links in the results pages. You can increase your click through rate (CTR) by leveraging Schema markup. You may have noticed that some websites in Google’s results show additional information, like product details and starred ratings. These rich and structured snippets make search results stand out, but where does it come from? Well, Google pulls this information from two sources: Schema markup and data formatted in tables on your website. Tips for implementing snippets Use tables to display product