If you’ve been around digital marketing for a hot minute, you remember the day Google released their Panda update and crowned Content as the new King of online marketing.

And if you weren’t there, you have definitely heard the Content Is King phrase at least once.

However, back in 2012, when YouTubers weren’t mega-stars and YouTube itself was still a toddler, most “content” referred to written content.

Times, they are changing – and these days, studies show that more than 500 million hours of videos are watched every day (on YouTube alone!). Even more, 87% of digital marketers use video content to amplify their efforts.

Sure, there’s a lot of video content and a lot of it is watched.

But does that make video content an actual Search Engine Optimization ranking factor?

We have plunged into the topic for you – so read on if you want to find out more.

Is Video an Actual Ranking Factor?

Back in the day, ranking factors used to be more or less clear – but as soon as Google algorithm updates started to pour in, these factors also started to change. Sometimes, ranking factor differences between one update and the other are hardly noticeable. Other times, they only target specific types of sites (e.g. Google Medic targeted medicine-related websites). And other times, these ranking factors can change overnight (such as in the case of the then-dreaded Mobileggedon, in 2015).

Officially, there is no clear information to show that videos are an actual ranking factor (such as in the case of spammy links, for example, where the ranking factor has been established for years and it stuck with the algorithm throughout all the following updates).

However, this doesn’t mean you should not consider videos (or even worse, label them as useless from an SEO point of view). And here is why:

• There are industry studies showing a strong relationship between videos and content that ranks higher on the search engines. Like this study, for example.
• A video is approximately 50 (!!!) times more likely to pop in the Search Engine Results Page than a normal web page.
• A blog post that includes at least one video is more likely to be naturally shared, giving you the opportunity to build more backlinks organically, with no extra effort put into this.
• Videos can decrease the Bounce Rate because they capture your users’ attention for a larger amount of time than written content does. This might be related to the fact that most people can find some sort of emotional connection in videos, or it might simply be related to the fact that the attention span of an average internet user stops at around eight seconds.

No, videos might not be an actual, Google-confirmed ranking factor. But they can be a complete game changer for pretty much anyone doing online marketing (which, at this point in time, should be pretty much everyone).  Regardless of whether you are an educational institution or a business, including videos in your entire content marketing strategy will benefit you from at least one point of view.

How Do You make Videos that Actually Rank High?

Video marketing might not (officially or directly) affect your site’s SEO.

But it does have a huge influence (as shown in the previous part of this article).

The higher your video ranks, the more likely it is that it will have a positive impact on your site’s ranking.

But what are the ranking factors for videos and how do you “make it”, given the staggering amount of video content produced every day?

Here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Create genuinely qualitative video content. Tossing some photos in a slideshow with a royalty-free musical piece on the background might have semi-worked in 2008. But given how much video content is produced these days and what a high-quality it has (both from the videography and from the actual content-related point of view), it is of the utmost importance to create video content that looks great and offers excellent information.

The great news about this is that it’s also easier than ever to gain access to this kind of video content. For instance, Renderforest is an AI and machine learning-based automated video creation tool that allows anyone to create videos that are eye-catchy and entertaining. Basically, you just have to select the template you want and let the tool do its job.

2. Optimize your content for YouTube. Google and Youtube rank videos differently, so if you want to post your content on your YouTube channel (and then embed it in your written content on the site), you will first have to make sure your YouTube video is fully optimized. Some of the ranking factors include:

• • Brand your videos (not necessarily a ranking factor as a way to make sure people associate your videos with your brand – and that your videos aren’t simply stolen and re-posted as plagiarism);
  • Include a customized thumbnail;
  • Create a SEO-friendly YouTube description for each video;
  • Create an SEO-friendly title for your YouTube description;
  • Choose the right keywords and categories in YouTube;
  • Create videos that are long enough to provide information and entertainment, but not long enough to become boring (a short video should be of about 2 minutes and a long one between 7 and 10 minutes);
  • Be recurrent in your video marketing efforts (posting one video now and another one next year will not yield the results you are looking for).

3. Share your videos. Make your channel known, make your video style known. Share your video content on all of your social media channels and embed them in as many blog posts as you can (both those that go on your site and those you submit as guest posts to other sites).

4. Embed videos in your content. If you have embedded your videos in the core content of your site, make sure to create a video index and submit it to Google Webmaster. This might not help with ranking the videos higher per se, but it will help Google determine what your site is all about and rank it accordingly.

Video marketing can change everything for you and your business. Aside from the positive influence it can have on your SEO efforts, video content can also bring users closer to you. It can help you create a closer connection to your customers. It can help you understand them better – and help them understand you better as well.

Video marketing can push your business towards new heights!

Efficient SEO for blog posts can help you feature in the prized first page on Google. Here are some ways you can make that happen!

Can you guess how many blogs there are on the internet currently? Take a guess!

Let me give you an idea:

As of October, Tumblr, a microblogging website and social media platform, had more than 165.5 billion posts. And the social network just accounts for less than two percent of social media website visits in the United States. You can now imagine the total number of blogs on the internet!

If you are a blogger, life’s tough! With more and more blogs being created and published each day, you need to do something amazing each time you create a blog.

Getting on that prized first page of Google is any blogger’s dream come true. But how do you get there?

See: How To Find Early Readers For Your New Blog

This is where Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, comes in.  

SEO for Blog Posts

For Google, ‘relevance’ and ‘intent’ hold the key. When the user searches for an answer on Google, they expect it in the first few results of the page. These results are likely to get more clicks.   

As a blogger, your goal is to provide relevant answers to people’s questions. You want to help solve problems and build trust. But before all of this, you need to make sure that your blog becomes visible on the first page results. After all, a very high-quality blog hiding on Google’s third page is of no value to anyone.    

You can boost your chances of ranking by doing effective SEO for blog posts. Here are 9 SEO tips for bloggers:   

Do Keyword Research for Every Blog Post

Before starting to write any blog, it is essential that you spend some time doing keyword research. The idea is to have insights about what your target audience is thinking about and the language they are using to find that information.

One of the free tools for keyword research is Google’s Keyword Planner. It tells you relevant details about popular searches around the world. It can also inform you how often people search for specific keywords.

It is a good idea to have one primary keyword and a few secondary keywords for a blog post. However, make sure that you are only naturally using your keyword. You do not want to be guilty of keyword stuffing. What’s more, Google uses Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) that helps it identify the content’s context and synonyms related to a particular keyword, so you don’t need to use exact keywords everytime.      

Do Not Miss to Score with Long-Tailed Keywords

Long-tailed keywords are highly specific search phrases. They have low competition and low search volume. Let me give you an example:

Say, you sell cars. A relevant keyword would be ‘Cars for Sale’. However sometimes, users do not search that way. They might type ‘Buy Maruti Suzuki Ciaz Facelift’. Now this is very specific and shows that user has intent to buy a particular car type.

While ranking for a general keyword (Cars for Sale) can be very difficult, you cannot miss out on a high intent keyword (Buy Maruti Suzuki Ciaz Facelift). Searchers looking for these kinds of long-tailed keywords are more likely to read your blog and seek more information from you.  

Make Your Content Engaging

For visitors to keep coming to Google, it has to ensure that it is providing value to them. This means that it always has to rank the most relevant content – content that solves user’s problem first. It would not be wrong to say that it is in Google’s self-interest to promote good content at the top.  

This is why creating engaging, high-quality content has become all the more important. Lower bounce rate of a page helps its search engine rankings. Surely, if fewer people immediately leave or bounce off your page, it tells Google that your page is indeed providing value.

Here are some tips to help make your content more engaging:

• Writer shorter sentences,
• Break longer paragraphs into shorter ones,
• Add images and videos.

Optimize Meta Description

Meta description is the short, additional text that appears below the SERPs. It tells the reader what the link is about and whether it is the content they are looking for.

Not only should your meta description be clear, it should also contain the regular or long-tailed keyword that you are trying to rank on. This particular term will get bolded in the meta description to help users learn if the content matches the intent.

Google displays around 300 characters in the meta description field. Make sure you make the most of this space.

Optimize Images’ Alt Text

As mentioned above, you should make your blog pleasing by adding images in it. Since search engines cannot see the images the way we do, the image’s alt text helps them understand what the image is about.

Your alt text helps enhance the user experience and hence, Google is more likely to favor your blog when it has the alt text. It occurs when the image cannot display and is also very helpful for people who are using screen readers. What’s more, it’s another opportunity for you to slip through a keyword. Just take out a few minutes to add a short description in the image tag in HTML.      

Use Fast and Reliable Hosting

Since the speed of your website determines user experience, page speed or page load time is a critical SEO factor. People do care about the speed and therefore, Google does too.

To ensure good website speed, you need a fast and reliable web hosting service. Many people ignore the importance of good web hosting and choose an inexpensive one. This is surely not a good practice.

We’d suggest Cloudways as it is one of the most high performing SEO hosting services out there. Their custom designed hosting stack, called ThunderStack, ensures enhanced website performance. With faster page load times, you can enjoy higher SERP rankings. They also provide 24/7 customer support that gives you peace of mind.   

With almost no downtime, your website always remains up and running with Cloudways. Their powerful servers across different locations around the world can help you get into Google’s good books.

Make Blog Mobile-Friendly

More and more people are turning to mobile these days. In 2018, mobile phones generated around 52 percent of all of world’s website traffic. This means that more people are searching from mobile phones than from their PCs. When optimizing for search, it would be naive to ignore mobile.  

Not just that, Google also prefers mobile-friendly websites. Use ‘responsive designs’ to ensure that your blog runs on both types of devices with the same URL. Having one URL is also great for SEO purposes as any inbound links will not have to be divided into separate URLs.   

Use Guest Blogging

Link building is a very crucial part of SEO. Links are a virtual currency of trust. The more links from high authority websites your blog gets, the better it will be for the SEO.

This is where guest blogging can help. Many bloggers think that just producing high-quality content for their own website is enough. It’s not!

Creating valuable content for other relevant websites not only helps you get links, it also allows you to build relationships with key players in your industry.

Research blog websites in your niche that accept blogs. Take some time to study the kind of content on these websites. After that, pitch your idea and tell them how it would be useful for their readers.

There will be many rejections along the way, but when your blog gets published, it will all be worth it.

Employ Google’s Search Console

Google’s Search Console is a collection of tools and reports to help measure your website’s search traffic and performance.

In the ‘Search Analytics Report’ section, you can analyze clicks from Google search and which keywords people are typing to discover your blog content.

With these and more insights from the report, you can optimize your future blogs more efficiently.  

Final Words

As a blog writer, you want your blog to be read by as many people as possible. If it’s hidden on Google’s 10th page, your efforts might not have been worth it. This is why you need to optimize your blog posts for search.  

SEO for blog posts is tough and takes a lot of time. You need to ensure that you are making consistent efforts, even after you have published the blog.

From determining the right keywords to target to choosing the right host, there is a lot that goes into successful search engine optimization. Follow all the above SEO tips and get incredible results over time to increase your blogs market reach.

Hope you liked my SEO tips for bloggers! Let me know your thoughts in the comments’ section below.

As an SEO specialist, you know how important SEO is in your professional life, especially if the chosen tool can save you a ton of time.

And Linkody is one of those tools.

About Linkody

Imagine a situation where you are creating link building campaigns for your clients or for yourself. How do you track and analyze them? You probably use tools.

Well, Linkody is exactly that sort of a tool – and it’s fantastic!

It’s a tool for monitoring and analyzing a website’s backlink profile, whether you utilize Linkody’s features to track your own backlink campaigns or to check who is linking to your competitor’s website.

Linkody is fully automated and it draws the newest backlink data all the time along with the most important SEO metrics.

Keep reading to find out about Linkody’s features.

Linkody Review – Beginning Process

Linkody’s user interface is really well designed and easy to understand for any first time user.

Registration process takes only around 3 minutes and you will be surprised to find all the features that Linkody has to offer.

Starting Process

As mentioned before, the UI is pretty straightforward and after the registration is complete, you can start adding your domains.

Linkody guides you with  four easy steps to add your domain:

1. Connect with your Google Analytics account
2.  Add your domain (manually or using Google Analytics)
3.  Add your competitor’s URL
4.  Connect with your Ahrefs account (optional)

Website Dashboard

After you add domains of your choice to Linkody, it takes about five to twenty seconds to refresh. Linkody tool will automatically analyze domains and domain backlinks with all the necessary SEO metrics.

The dashboard additionally shows features like gained and lost backlinks within a specified time interval, latest competitor links, and latest discovered links.

The dashboard will show you different SEO metrics:

• Moz rank
• Domain authority
• Spam score
• Total backlink count (no-follow & do-follow)
• Social shares
• Trust flow
• Citation flow
• Alexa rank

Additionally, 5 of these measurements can be utilized to track progress. Individually, you can see the historical data which looks something like this.

No worries if your current competitor doesn’t have enough backlinks. Just use “Add a Competitor” tab, link to other competitors straight from the dashboard, and see how all their backlinks magically appear in front of you. (Don’t forget to refresh the page.)

At the lowest point of your dashboard, you will see extra windows with information on the latest changes of your backlinks and link status summary pie chart.

Links & Metrics

Among the Dashboard and Competitors tabs you can see Links – this is the most exciting part. The “links” tab shows all of your backlinks with metrics that you can select.

Additionally, you can customize the columns and have the table show you exactly the metrics you need.

And this is what the above metrics show you:

• Date Added – the day this domain has been discovered by or added to Linkody
• Status – the status of the link when it was last checked
• URL From – the URL of the page linking to your domain
• Landing Page – the landing page on your site the link is pointing to
• Anchor – the visible, and clickable text of the link
• Rel – NF (nofollow) or F (follow), where NF means that the hyperlink should not influence the ranking of the link’s target in the search engine’s index (Read more.)
• Moz – includes Mozrank, Page Authority and Domain Authority which represent a link popularity score and reflect the importance of any given web page on the Internet. Click on the mini-menu to switch between each metric.
• Spam Score – a metric from Moz that indicates how likely a website is to be penalized by Google (Read more.)
• Shares – the total number of social shares (hover over to see distribution by social network)
• IP – the hosting server’s country
• TLD – the Top Level Domain’s corresponding country (.com .fr etc.)
• EFL – the External Follow Links is the number of links on this page pointing to a different domain (that the domain the page is on).

You can also press on the magnifier in the “Status” column to expand more information about the link. For example, page title, social shares, IP address, etc.

View All Competitors Links

Click on Competitors tab to see it in detail and see what options Linkody provides. This segment will show you competitor’s top-pages, specific competitor backlink profile, and all the backlinks together in one neat .csv file if you choose to export it.

You can sign up for a free 30-day trial subscription. Doing so allows you to add one competitor to monitor and well… compete with him.

Top-Ranked Pages

The “View Top Pages” option is only available in the competitor’s section after you click on a competitor.

The motive behind using this feature varies from person to person but its primary purpose is to find which article performed the best and attained the most links.

And then…you have to come up with a new title for the same topic and produce a content that is 3x better than your competitor’s. Success!

All Competitor’s Links

This feature is where Linkody shines the most and it’s no wonder because it’s a backlink monitoring tool.

It’s crucial because you need to add competitors who work in a similar niche or products/services as you do. It’s important because you need to increase the chances of other blogs featuring you as well.

You can see all of your competitor’s backlinks along with vital information that a SEO guru needs to know. Although in the image above you can see 289 links, it can go as  high up as 60,000+ links.

Also, you can customize columns just like we did in the Links section.

You can even use the search option to look for specific website types, for example:

• Search for “Blog” – to be able to find all your competitor mentions in different blogs. This hack is great for people who are looking for guest post opportunities
• Search for “Review” – to see a list of backlinks who’ve reviewed your competitor
• Search for “Forum” – to see on which forums your competitors are active. This can potentially bring you a lot of referral traffic

Of course, I don’t have to tell you what to do. Your imagination is your limit – try various combinations and perhaps even share some cool tricks in the comments below.

Analytics

If you cannot find necessary SEO metrics in the Links or Competitors tab, Analytics will definitely have more options to choose from.

You can filter the data on the graphs, check backlink status, analyze data, etc.

In the analytics section, you can see graphs like:

• Moz metrics distributions
• Spam score distribution
• Your top TLDs
• IP geolocation
• Most linked landing pages
• Dofollow/Nofollow distribution
• Class C IP Distribution
• Domains with most links to your content

Check If Your Link Is Indexed

This is probably the coolest thing after the latest Linkody update!

You can check Google Index Status, meaning, you will see if the backlink is indexed by Google or if you still have to wait.

Green – URL is indexed by Google

Yellow – Referring domain is indexed

It takes at least 24 hours to update the status after the post is published.

Conclusion

Also, Linkody’s pricing is pretty wallet-friendly, so it is easily affordable even for a small start-up. And the features they’re providing are definitely worth the money.

Take the free trial and test it out for yourself and spy on your competitors. Have fun with it!

Also, let us know in the comments as to why you choose other tools over Linkody and how are you tracking links currently?

Shopify and WooCommerce are the chosen e-commerce platforms for more than four million online businesses combined!

While both platforms share similarities, it’s important to understand the differences between Shopify vs. WooCommerce to make the most informed choice.

Which is more expensive? Which caters to your niche more? Which looks better?

Get the answers to these questions and much more with this quick and easy guide to Shopify and WooCommerce.

Shopify vs. WooCommerce: Which Is Cheaper?

As a business owner, you want to cut costs where you can. But you don’t want to sacrifice quality either.

Not only are Shopify and WooCommerce the two most popular e-commerce solutions, they’re also the most affordable.

In fact, WooCommerce is entirely free to use!

To enhance your customer experience, you can install WooCommerce extensions for Amazon, eBay, subscriptions, dynamic pricing, shipping, hotel booking, and more.

While WooCommerce is initially free, many of these extensions range from $49 to almost $250.

Shopify Pricing

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that you install. But Shopify is an online e-commerce platform with monthly plans.

Depending on your needs, Shopify may be a more cost-effective solution for your business despite WooCommerce’s free plugin.

Shopify is ideal for sellers who don’t code and need a simple and seamless e-commerce platform.

The basic plan starts at $29 the month. This option will get you the following:

• Your own online store
• Unlimited products
• At least two staff accounts
• Tech support
• Sales channels
• Order creation
• SSL certificate
• Shopping cart recovery
• Printable shipping labels
• Fraud analysis
• Point-of-sales application

If you want more than just the basics, you can choose Shopify’s $79 plan or the advanced $299 plan.

Advanced plans offer everything in the basic plan, along with these features:

• Gift cards
• Professional sales reports
• Third party shipping rates
• Discounts of up to 74%
• Lower credit card fees for as little as 5%
• Hardware peripheral support
• Unlimited Shopify point-of-sale pins

Shopify also offers an enterprise ‘Shopify Plus’ solution for large operations. And for sellers just starting out, there’s a ‘lite’ version for as little as $9 a month.

The ‘lite’ plan has very minimal features and isn’t the best option for e-commerce businesses looking to grow.

Which Platform Looks the Best?

Your products may be amazing, but consumers won’t bite if your online store doesn’t look professional.

This is one of the biggest draws to both Shopify and WooCommerce. But which is the most aesthetically-pleasing choice?

Design is one of the biggest differences between Shopify vs. WooCommerce.

Shopify offers “out-of-the-box” designs created by professional web designers. This is an ideal option for sellers looking for an install-and-go solution.

There are more than 50 shop designs to choose from including 10 free complementary designs. All designs are mobile responsive and allow sellers to change their color scheme.

However, one drawback according to sellers is that Shopify websites have a tendency to look the same. This is further exacerbated by the fact got Shopify is the most non-technical of all the platforms.

This leaves less room for sellers to customize their shop design.

WooCommerce, on the other hand, is compatible with a wide range of e-commerce
designs. Plus, many premium WordPress themes already come with integrated WooCommerce plugins.

For sellers who really want to stand out, WooCommerce may be the best option for creating a unique shop design.

Start Selling

While both platforms come with their pros and cons, Shopify and WooCommerce are the most effective and user-friendly solutions for online sellers.

It’s all about choosing a platform that fits your needs and goals.

Bookmark this guide to have on-hand as you build your first online store. Check back to learn more about Shopify vs. WooCommerce and to discover tips and tricks for attracting customers.

Did you know that there are around 2 billion websites online right now?

Yes, the competition is that tight.

This means you’ll need to boost your online presence. You might need to investigate overlooked marketing tips. This helps you know when to revamp your website or give out promotional offers.

To improve your website’s presence, you need the best free backlink checker tools online. It’s especially important when you’re starting out as a business. There are good ones out there that can give you a good audit for a better backlink profile.

Are you ready to get a good backlink tool? Read on and learn more:

Why Do You Need a Backlink Analysis?

The main reason you need a backlink analysis is to know the sites linking to your own. It also lets you see which sites link to your competitors’ websites. This helps you get these domains and add them to your list of friendly domains.

You can compare your own backlink profile to a stronger, more established business. That helps you find ways to surpass them. If you’re using Google as a backlink tool, you can tell it that you’re a competitor of certain websites.

It’s also great for checking for websites linking to you. That way, you can return the favor to them. It’s a good way to increase your domain authority.

What are the Top Backlink Checker Tools?

If you need to do audits to your backlink profile, you need these tools. These are the best backlink checker tools that don’t need payments. Use them to your advantage.

1. SEMRush

This tool is one of the most popular SEO tools on the internet. Their recent addition of backlink analysis features makes it even more useful. Before, it only served to analyze keywords regardless of whether they’re organic or ad keywords.

Now that it has its own backlink checker feature, you can go to the SEMRush homepage. Once you’re there, you can type your website’s domain name for it to get analyzed. Hit enter as soon as you fill out the proper information field.

SEMRush allows you to compare your website to another. You can access it on a tab located on the left corner. It shows you a detailed list of domains that refer to both your website, including IP addresses and links from various top-level domains (TLDs).

This free version of the tool works for your necessities since you can export the information as a PDF. But if you want to compete with larger companies, you might need its paid version. It’s a monthly subscription that gives you a more in-depth analysis of your current SEO standing.

You can use the 30-day free trial period of the premium version to take advantage of its backlink analysis feature to the fullest.

2. Ahrefs

This is one of the best tools to get a backlink analysis of your site or your competitors’. It has an edge over other tools since its detailed analysis comes with excellent consumer support. Take note that its free version only works thrice so you might need to get another tool after.

It also has a monthly subscription if you want to have full access to its capabilities. If you want a free analysis, go to their homepage and get a total analysis of your desired website. You’ll get a complete audit of the website’s backlink profile.

The report includes the number of the following:

• Dofollow backlinks
• Nofollow backlinks
• Text links
• Image backlinks

The backlinks include those beyond the basic .edu and other TLD-based searches. It also presents the number of social shares of your website in a diagram. This includes Google +1, Facebook likes and shares, and tweets from Twitter.

The free audit will only show you the top ten results. If you get the paid version, your audit will show you unlimited results. It also allows you to export it as a .csv file.

3. Serpstat

This tool is a universal platform that caters to SEO, PPC, and content marketing. It has five tools in its arsenal-rank tracking, site audit, keyword research, competitive analysis, and backlink analysis. You can start the audit by going to its homepage and typing your domain on the proper field.

Open the backlink analysis part and go to the dashboard tab. You’ll see the domains, pages, IPs, and subnets referring to your website. You also see the number of indexed images, domain zones, page rank, trust rank, and other important information.

You can view these statistics in a graphical format. You can also export it as an Excel file or store it on your Google Sheets. The free version allows you to use it 10 times a day with 20 results each report.

4. Open Site Explorer

This tool comes from Moz, meaning it should be good. This tool allows you to check the sites linking to your competitors. It filters the report using the websites’ domain authority and the anchor text they used.

The tool allows you to compare different websites. You can use this to understand the important strategies used by your competitors to build their backlink profiles. It’s especially important when you’re trying to do some quality control to your online business.

The only drawback of this tool is that it can’t filter the spammy links from the results. That’s why it’s important to stay alert when choosing backlinks found in the OSE. Remember, Google has about 90% of the global market share of search engines, and they penalize these links.

5. Backlink Watch

Do you have little to no experience with backlink auditing? If so, Backlink Watch is the best backlink checker for your needs. It’s the easiest tool for analyzing any website’s backlink portfolio.

It’s free in its entirety and it gives you a good idea of your backlink profile. You can check your competitors’ portfolio and compare it with yours. The drawback is that there’s no way for you to export the results.

There is a workaround to make spreadsheet reports using this tool. Copy the reports from the site and use Paste Special while selecting Text on your spreadsheet app. It transfers all the data without any problems.

6. Google Alerts

When tracking your online mentions, you need to use Google Alerts. It’s easy since you can set it to give an alarm when your selected phrase gets a mention on the internet. You can use your brand name or your competitors’ names.

This is a great tool to track your competitors whenever their name gets mentioned as a link. This Google tool delivers it in real time, making it useful and accurate. It’s a useful means of gathering information on your linking activities.

The main drawback is that you can’t see any link notifications before you set your alert. That means you won’t see the bigger backlink profile. It also doesn’t give you any insight on the linking site’s quality.

7. Open Link Profiler

A lot of people find Open Link Profiler as their favorite SEO tool. The main reason is that this website has a large database of fresh backlinks to any website. This can range up to 2 million backlinks to the domain you search for.

The great thing about this tool is that it only shows active links within the last three months. That means you won’t have to see anything outdated and dysfunctional. The free version can let you save up to 100 links with the .csv format.

This feature isn’t present in other tools like Ahrefs and Open Site Explorer. It also has a link influence score for all the websites on the internet. This gives you an idea which are the best pages based on their backlink profile.

What to Avoid in Backlink Analysis

It’s important to remember that you shouldn’t waste too much time analyzing backlink profiles. This can lead to analysis paralysis, meaning you won’t have time to do actual backlink building. This can lead you to waste a lot of resources.

Don’t get too caught up in researching your competitors’ backlink profile. Always focus on building your own profile. Give more time getting more meaningful backlinks to move ahead of your competitors.

Get the Best Free Backlink Checker Tools Today!

There are a lot of ways you can optimize your online presence. If you have an in-house SEO team, you can use different methods to make your business more desirable to search engines. But if you want to save money while getting information, you need to use the best free backlink checker tools.

Do regular audits of your backlink profile alongside your competitors’. This gives you more means of surpassing them and becoming an industry authority. It can get difficult, but the results are worth the effort.

Do you need help using the Ahrefs tool? Read our guide here to learn its features and other functions that can help your SEO efforts.

If you want to make your blog stand out online, learning the ins and outs of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is non-negotiable. 

Every piece of your blog content contributes to your overall SEO score. Content is king, which is why blogging and SEO go hand-in-hand.  

SEO can involve complex site restructuring and many businesses enlist a professional SEO service, but it can be implemented by any blog administrator with enough know-how. This is an idiot’s guide to blogging and SEO practice. Learn the many facets of what goes into your blog’s SEO score, and how to improve it.   

Dummies Guide to Blogging and SEO

Starting a blog is easy, but getting subscribers is hard. The way to get organic blog subscribers is to show up on search engine results.

SEO is the practice of finding ways to improve your blog’s search engine ranking. It includes your website metrics, user statistics, but most of all, content publication.

The media you feature on your blog is the biggest contributor to your SEO score. Media, including video, audio, text, image, etc. all goes into how Google ranks your site. The better your SEO score, the closer to the top Google places your website in a user’s search results.

The difference between good SEO and great SEO is a vast landscape. Good SEO means that your blog pops up on Google when you search for it by name. Great SEO means that your blog pops up when you search for any number of keywords that relate to the content of your site.

The end goal of any SEO strategy is to increase the viewership and site conversions on your blog. And, the only way to reach a wide audience is to create content that appeals. This way, when someone types in keywords that relate to your post, it shows up in their search results.   

What are Keywords?

A keyword is a string of words that are searched for on a search engine, such as Google. If the title of a blog article is “Best Soccer Balls”, the SEO keywords may be Best, Soccer, and Balls.

If your blog is about outdoors sporting equipment, your blog’s home pages must be optimized for those exact words.

If a user searches, for “the best soccer balls” Google looks for posts and websites that feature those keywords.

Every page featured on your blog needs from one to five keywords, depending on the total word count of the page. For blog posts, you must carefully search for keywords and implement them in the correct places throughout your content.

Keywords are the key for search engines to find and rank relevant online content. Almost every other aspect of SEO is reliant on the quality of your blog’s keyword optimization. When you write your blog content, be sure to base it off of relevant keywords.

On-Site and Off-Site SEO

Search engine optimization is split into two distinct parts: on-site and off-site. Think of the “site” as your blog’s website.

“On-site” SEO is in reference to the optimization practices that can be implemented from a website’s origin platform. Put another way: On-site SEO is the stuff that can be done solely from your website. Onsite SEO includes:

• Blogs and other posts
• Meta titles/descriptions
• URL structure
• speed and safety metrics
• Internal links (crosslinks)

This is in contrast to “off-site” SEO. Off-site SEO refers to optimizations for your site that are done from a separate website, other than your own. Off-site SEO refers to the optimization of:

• Backlinks to your site on other sites
• Social media shares and traffic
• Domain authority

Both onsite and offsite SEO are crucially important to your website’s performance. Together, they provide a vehicle with which your content travels over the internet.

Off-site SEO is anything that you do not have direct access to. This includes any links to your content on other sites, social media shares, backlinks, and your domain authority.

On-Site SEO Best Practices

On-site pertains to everything that the administrator of your blog has access to. The best practices of o-site SEO practice include:

Put Cross-Links in Blog Content

A cross-link goes to another piece of your own content. It travels your user to another part of your blog which contains relevant information. Cross-links do not take the user away from your blog so they interact more with your content.

Unknown to many WordPress site administrators, URLs are vitally important to your sites SEO. URLs are the first thing that a search engine sees, and they inform it as to the content and relevancy of your WordPress site.

Customize Your URLs

Make sure your URLs are readable and clear, for humans, as well as algorithms. A search engine reads text from left to right, and, assumes that the word order of a URL is indicative of each word’s value.

For this reason, it is very important to customize your URLs instead of using the automatic, dynamically generated URLs. Remember that search engines are like people. If your URL has a bunch of random characters which make no sense, it will be just as confusing to a search engine.

URL Content Organization

All of your website’s content is not created equal, and there is some strategy to getting it right. In your URL, organize your content with the most prominent keywords nearest to your site name.

For example, when a URL reads “yourdomain.com/what-we-sell,” a search engine determines the most valuable information to be the words which it reads first: “yourdomain.” So, the URL’s second-most-important text must be “what-we-sell.”

Do Not Use Any CAPITALS in URLs

To be honest, the exact reasoning eludes us, but, one thing is unmistakably clear: Capitals in your URL will lower your SEO score. So, don’t use capital letters in any of your URLs, just to be on the safe side. 

Use Hyphens Instead of Underscores

Hyphens are a literary tool, but underscores are not. In a URL, search engines read hyphens as space. The algorithm is designed to understand a hyphen, not underscores

Underscores confuse the search engine and lower your SEO score.

Add AMP and Mobile Page URLs to Your SiteMap

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. When using a mobile device, search engines guide users to AMP web content before any other. It is an open source platform initiative that is working to create web content that limits the amount of data being requested by a mobile user.

When using a mobile device AMP content is shown as a carousel. You have seen these carousels sitting just above your Google search results, and, they are shown before any other content. These are AMPs.

Block Unsafe URLs with Robots.txt

Robots or bots are the labor workers of the internet. They do the tasks that are simply infeasible for humans. This can include sifting through all of Google’s content to properly score each sites SEO.

These robots are called many names, like spiders and crawlers. This is because these robots have many arms, so they touch a lot of web content at once.  

Some robots, work for the good guys, like Google. If it weren’t for these robots, Google would have no idea what kind of content was stored in its library.

Some robots, work for the bad guys, like hackers. These robots crawl across the web, recording up other users personal information.

Search engines favor websites that have protection against bad robots. Google can see whether your blogging site is vulnerable to bad robots, or whether you have protection.

Robots.txt acts like a basic robot virus protection for your blog. It lets the good robots in and keeps the bad robots out.

Canonicalize (Standardize/Normalize) Your URLs

Search Engines see www, https, non-www, etc. as separate websites. If you have multiple domains that direct to a single site Google flags them as duplications. Canonicalizing your URLs tells the search engine that a single URL represents the master copy of a webpage.

Use a “rel=canonical” tag to specify your sites preferred domain. This will prevent search engines from perceiving your other URLs as duplications.

301 Redirect for Broken URLs

If a search engine sees your sites URLs when they are broken, it lowers your SEO score. Once your website is published online, search engines will see if your site goes down for any reason.

Google doesn’t want to send people to sites with broken pages, so it is important to implement a 301 Redirect. When you change a pages URL, inform the search engines, by implementing a 301 redirect on the old URL.

Off-Site SEO Best Practices

If you are using a WordPress site for your blog, Yoast SEO is a must-have plugin. It guides you through all of your on-site optimizations. But off-site SEO can involve some creative strategy. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind: 

Domain Authority and Online Directories

Your domain authority is contingent on the length of time you have owned your domain. If Google sees that your domain has had four owners in as many years, it lowers your SEO score. The longer you own your domain, the more reputable it is.

A great way to establish reputability with your website or blog is to join online directories. Sign up for a Google My Business account, as well as other top directories. This helps your SEO score and off-site visibility.

Social Media and Backlinks

A backlink is another website on the internet that links to your web resources. They are references made to your content, elsewhere online. These can include online directories, links in others social media posts, and links in other bloggers posts.

Backlinks are scored on how reputable the source is. Huffington Post or the New York Times is a very high-quality backlink. But to get the Huffington Post to link to your website is difficult.

An option for generating backlinks is to hire an SEO service. Professional SEO agencies pull resources together from their myriad clients to establish beneficial quality backlinks.

The most economical option is quid-pro-quo. Develop mutually beneficial backlink partnerships with complementary businesses. They can be local businesses or online.

Your SEO rank is affected by the quality of your backlinks. A good backlink is from a site that is reputable, relevant, and reliable. A bad backlink is from a website that is unknown, outdated or redirected.

Final Thoughts

SEO is a practice, so complacency is the enemy of bloggers. Consistency, relevance, and appeal are necessary to ensure search engines rank you highly.

If you can follow this guide to blogging and SEO resources, you will see an immediate improvement in your blogs search engine ranking.