Category: SEO

The landscape of online search is evolving again. Artificial intelligence in search engine optimization (SEO) is here. In 1950, Archie would index FTP archives to find files.

In 1994, WebCrawler was the first search engine to index entire web pages. The same year Yahoo! Directory debuted human-curated lists of websites.

In 1998, Google Search launched and became quite popular thanks to its clean interface and PageRank method of assigning relevance.

All other changes in online search since then have been directly influenced by Google, and mostly affected the Google search algorithm.

Today, we have Google Search, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity AI, ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, and Anthropic among others, fighting for the share of search.

How Has AI-Powered Search Impacted SEO?

As artificial intelligence (AI) has come into play, we are seeing search evolving into AI providing summaries and answers, while citing sources.

Because users are getting answers immediately, marketers have to plan for this “answer-first” trend.

If people get answers in search engines or AI platforms before they ever visit any website, it means websites are getting fewer clicks than ever before. In most cases, no clicks at all. It is the “Zero-click” phenomenon. (Add stats here – some from latest newsletters)

What began with simple keyword matching has evolved into a sophisticated dance with artificial intelligence (AI), moving beyond mere ranking to prioritize understanding, synthesis, and direct answers. For companies that need digital visibility, “AI Search SEO” is not a trend but something they must do.

In this comprehensive guide, we will clarify AI’s role in search engine optimization (SEO), discuss the core AI technologies driving this new search paradigm, understand the mechanism of LLM citation, come up with a roadmap to not only rank higher but also be cited directly by Large Language Models (LLMs).

In addition, we’ll explore the fundamental concepts of AI in SEO, advanced strategies to optimize your content for Search and LLMs, and essential tools you must have to thrive in the AI-powered search revolution of 2025 and beyond.

By the end of this guide, you will learn:

• How AI search engines and LLMs process and understand information.
• Fundamental and advanced strategies to optimize your content for AI.
• Practical tips for increasing your chances of being cited by LLMs.
• The essential tools that can assist your AI Search SEO efforts.
• Insights into the future of AI in search and how to stay ahead.

Why is it crucial to optimize your website for AI Search Engines?

“AI Search SEO” (basically artificial intelligence search engine optimization or optimization of AI Search Engines) is the practice of optimizing your content and website to be understood, favored, and most importantly, cited by AI-powered search engines and Large Language Models (LLMs).

No traditional ranking. The AI itself will be providing the answer, potentially diminishing direct website traffic.

The real prize in this new era is LLM citation and synthesis.

When an AI overview or conversational AI confidently references your content, you get:

• Increased indirect visibility: Even if users don’t click immediately, seeing your brand or website cited by a reputable AI builds recognition and trust.
• Enhanced brand authority: Being consistently referenced as a primary source positions your brand as a leader and expert in your field.
• Future traffic: Users seeking deeper dives or more context may still click through to your site after seeing you cited.
• Competitive advantage: Early adopters of AI Search SEO will gain a significant edge over competitors still relying on outdated strategies.

How LLMs and AI Search Engines Work

To optimize for AI, you must first understand how AI “thinks” and processes information.

These are the core AI Technologies driving search

a). Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Understanding Context:

Imagine trying to understand a conversation without knowing the nuances of language. That’s what search engines used to do with just keywords. NLP is a branch of AI that enables computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language.

How does NLP empower AI in search?

In search, NLP allows AI to:

• Understand synonyms and related terms: If you search “hiking boots,” NLP helps the AI understand that “trekking footwear” or “trail shoes” are related concepts, even if you don’t use those exact words.
• Discern user intent: AI aims to know why you’re searching. Are you looking to buy, learn, compare, or find a location? NLP helps distinguish between “apple pie recipe” (informational) and “buy apple pie” (transactional).
• Grasp the sentiment and nuance of text: AI can detect whether a review is positive or negative, or if a piece of content is truly helpful and empathetic.

b). Machine Learning and Ranking Algorithms:

Machine learning (ML) is the process by which computers learn from data without being explicitly programmed.

In search, ML algorithms analyze vast amounts of data (user behavior, content quality, links, freshness, etc.) to constantly refine how results are ranked.

They learn from patterns.

For example, if users consistently click on a particular result for a query and spend a lot of time on that page, the ML algorithm learns that this result is likely highly relevant and useful, and may boost its ranking for similar future queries. (There must be a stat that relates to this somewhere, find and add it here)

This continuous learning makes AI search engines incredibly adaptive and increasingly intelligent.

c). Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG):

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s Gemini are powerful text generators.

They are trained on immense datasets of text and code, allowing them to understand and generate human-like language.

However, a common challenge with pure LLMs is “hallucination”—making up facts or citing non-existent sources.

This is where Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) comes in.

How does RAG work?

RAG combines the generative power of LLMs with a retrieval component.

When you ask an LLM a question, the RAG system first retrieves relevant information from a vast knowledge base (which can include the entire internet, specifically indexed web pages, or proprietary databases).

Once the relevant information is retrieved, the LLM generates a response based on this retrieved data, often citing the sources it used.

This is crucial for “AI Search SEO” because it means for your content to be cited, it must first be effectively retrieved by the AI.

(A visual can illustrate this concept faster)

Important: RAG basically works on the model of retrieve first (because source must exist) then generate answer.

How Do AI Search Engines (Google, Perplexity, ChatGPT, etc.) Process Content?

AI search engines interact with your content in a more profound way than previous generations:

a). Semantic Understanding vs. Keyword Matching

Forget just repeating your keywords. AI now understands the meaning (semantics) behind your words.

It identifies key concepts, entities (people, places, things), and relationships between them within your content.

This means your content should be rich in semantic relevance, covering a topic comprehensively and naturally, rather than just keyword-stuffing. (Add a rich visual of semantics here)

b). Importance of Structured vs. Unstructured Data

Unstructured data is the vast majority of information on the web: plain text on a blog post, images, and videos. AI is becoming very good at processing this.

Structured data, also known as Schema Markup, is information organized in a standardized, machine-readable format. Think of it as labeling elements on your page for AI: “This is a recipe,” “This is the author,” “This is the rating.” (Add a visual for structured data here)

Structured data helps AI understand your content more precisely and efficiently, making it easier for them to extract and synthesize information for AI Overviews and LLM responses.

c). The Role of Embeddings and Conceptual Relationships

AI models convert words, phrases, and even entire documents into numerical representations called “embeddings.”

These embeddings capture the semantic meaning of the content.

Pieces of content with similar meanings will have similar embeddings, even if they use different words.

This allows AI to understand conceptual relationships between your content and a user’s query, making it easier to identify relevant information even if there isn’t an exact keyword match. (illustrate embeddings using visuals here)

How Does Your Content Get Referenced in LLM Citations?

This is the holy grail of AI Search. How does your content go from being indexed to being explicitly cited by an LLM?

a). LLMs identify and extract key information from your content

LLMs don’t just “read” your article; they scan for specific, factual, and actionable pieces of information.

They look for direct answers to common questions, data points, unique insights, and well-supported arguments. (there should be something like a stat here – is data showing users like llms for its direct answers? find out)

Content that is clearly structured with headings, subheadings, bullet points, and defined facts is easier for an LLM to extract key information from. (What’s the proof? Any study? Stat? Sth?)

b). LLMs prioritize authoritative and unique data

LLMs are designed to provide helpful and accurate information.

Therefore, they prioritize content from sources deemed authoritative and trustworthy.

If your content offers unique research, original insights, or is a definitive guide on a topic, it stands a much higher chance of being selected as a primary source for an LLM’s response. LLMs are less likely to cite generic, rehashed content. (Proof of this? Any study?)

c). LLMs associate your brand with a definitive topic or niche

The more your brand or website is associated with definitive information on a topic, the more likely you are to be implicitly or explicitly referenced.

This means consistently producing high-quality, unique content that becomes synonymous with specific answers or data points within your niche.

For example, if you’re the go-to source for statistics on renewable energy, an LLM might pull a statistic from your site and, in some cases, attribute it, or your site might be included in the “learn more” links.

(Can we find a stat or visual to emphasize this part?)

Foundational Strategies for Optimizing for AI Search: You Can’t Skip This Basics

Before diving into advanced AI-specific tactics, ensure your fundamental SEO house is in order. These practices are more critical than ever.

a). High-Quality, User-Centric Content Remains King

No amount of AI optimization will compensate for poor content.

i). Answering User Intent and Solving Their Problems

Instead of asking “What keywords should I use?”, ask “What problems does my audience have, and how can my content provide the best solution?”

AI rewards content that genuinely addresses user needs, often predicting follow-up questions and covering a topic comprehensively. (Any recent study to prove this?)

ii). Comprehensively Cover Your Topics

AI loves content that leaves no stone unturned on a given subject. (Proof or data to prove this?)

If you’re writing about “how to bake sourdough bread,” cover everything from starter maintenance to troubleshooting common issues. (Example of a comprehensive topic outline about “how to bake sourdough bread” in a visual or coded text?)

Aim to be the most complete and accurate resource available.

This depth signals to AI that your content is highly valuable.

iii). Avoid “AI-Slop” Content

“AI-Slop” is content that has been spun from other sources and presented as new content on a web page without any originality or additional value besides what already existed on other websites.

To stand out, your content must be original, insightful, and offer unique value.

This might involve original research, unique perspectives, or specific real-world examples.

b). Content Must be Both Human and Machine-Readable

AI learns from patterns in human language.

If you write in a clear and natural way, AI can understand and process your content.

i). Conversational Tone and Natural Language

Write as if you’re explaining something to a friend.

Avoid overly formal or academic language unless your audience specifically requires it.

AI-powered search engines are designed to understand natural, conversational queries, and they favor content that mirrors this style.

(Show a visual of conversational content with green checkmark, and academic content with red checkmark)

ii). Concise Paragraphs

Long, dense paragraphs are difficult for both humans and AI to read.

Break up your text into short, digestible paragraphs (2-3 sentences max).

Use clear, direct sentences.

Tools that measure readability scores (like the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test) can be helpful. (Show the flesh score of this article in a described image)

It is good to note that if you obsess over the score with these tools, you miss the point. Focus on clarity instead.

iii). Flow and Hierarchy

Organize your content with a clear, logical structure.

Use headings (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, etc.) to break up sections and signal the hierarchy of information. (Take a screenshot of our Table of contents as an example and illustrate it)

This helps AI understand the main topics and sub-topics, making it easier to extract specific answers. Think of it as creating an easy-to-follow outline for both your readers and the AI-driven engines.

c). Technical SEO for AI Crawlability and Indexability

Even the most brilliant content won’t be seen if AI search engines can’t access and understand your website. You should make your website both machine-readable and accessible for humans.

Here is how:

i). Clean HTML and Semantic Markup:

Ensure your website’s underlying code (HTML) is clean and error-free. If you are not sure, hire a code auditor from gig sites like Fiverr to audit your content. Better still, use AI vibe coding tools like Replit and Loveable to check your code quality and suggest any fixes that you can do by yourself.

Use semantic HTML tags (like <article>, <nav>, <aside>) that clearly define the purpose of different content blocks. This helps AI understand the structure and meaning of your pages.

ii). Site Speed and Mobile-Friendliness:

Page loading speed and mobile responsiveness are critical user experience factors and Core Web Vitals that AI also considers for ranking.

Slow sites or those that don’t display well on mobile devices usually send the wrong signals to AI search engines. How is that?

• User Experience Affects Perceived Trust and Usefulness – AI systems are optimized to provide helpful, high-quality answers, and the user experience of linked websites affects that. For instance, if users bounce quickly from a slow or clunky site, AI platforms might learn that the link isn’t satisfying users’ intent. This signals low engagement or dissatisfaction, which AI models and ranking systems can factor into future decisions.
• Google’s AI Overviews – Google already uses Core Web Vitals and other UX-related metrics (page speed, interactivity, visual stability) in its search rankings. If a site loads slowly, has intrusive interstitials and a broken mobile user experience, it’s less likely to be featured prominently, both in traditional search and AI Overviews.
• Click Feedback Loops (AI Models Learn from Behavior) – We know that as of today, ChatGPT doesn’t use real-time user feedback loops. However, AI engines that are integrated into search engines ( like Google’s AI Overviews & Gemini or Bing’s Co-Pilot) track which links users click, how long they stay and whether they come back and ask the same thing again.
• Content Visibility and Indexing – Even if your content is great, poor loading speeds can block AI engines from accessing it properly. Slow pages may fail to render or get partially indexed, complex JavaScript user interfaces may not expose full content and broken layouts reduce trustworthiness.

iii). Proper Robots.txt and Sitemap Management:

Robots.txt: This file tells search engine crawlers which parts of your site they are allowed or not allowed to visit. Ensure it’s correctly configured to allow AI crawlers access to all important content.

Sitemaps: An XML sitemap is a list of all important pages on your website. Submitting an up-to-date sitemap to search engines helps them discover and index your content more efficiently.

iv). Server-Side Rendering (SSR) vs. Client-Side Rendering (CSR) for AI:

This is a bit more technical.

Many modern websites use JavaScript to render content on the client’s (user’s) browser (CSR).

While search engines are getting better at rendering JavaScript, server-side rendering (SSR) delivers fully formed HTML pages to the browser, which is often easier and faster for AI crawlers to process.

If your site relies heavily on CSR, ensure it’s optimized for search engine rendering or consider SSR for critical content.

Advanced Tactics for “Artificial Intelligence for SEO” and LLM Visibility

Once your foundations are solid, these advanced tactics will specifically target AI’s preferences for deeper understanding and citation.

a). Structured Data and Schema Markup for Enhanced Understanding

Structured data is your secret weapon for communicating directly with AI.

i). Implementing JSON-LD for Articles, FAQs, How-To’s, Products:

JSON-LD is Google’s preferred format for structured data.

It’s a piece of code (often placed in the <head> of your HTML) that clearly labels specific elements on your page for search engines.

For example:

By implementing relevant schema, you make it incredibly easy for AI to understand the meaning and context of your content, significantly increasing your chances of rich results and LLM citation.

ii). Rich Results and Featured Snippets in the AI Era:

Structured data is a key enabler for “rich results” (enhanced search listings with extra information like star ratings or images) and “featured snippets” (direct answers highlighted at the top of search results).

While AI Overviews are evolving, the underlying mechanism of extracting concise answers from well-structured content remains crucial.

Optimizing for these traditional AI-driven features will naturally align with optimization for generative AI.

Want to check if your website is well optimized for rich results? Do the Rich Results Test.

Google maintains a comprehensive list of structured data markup including how to implement each feature to your website here.

b). Entity Optimization: Building Brand-Topic Associations

AI thinks in terms of “entities” – real-world concepts, people, organizations, products, and ideas.

i). Identifying and Utilizing Key Entities:

Go beyond keywords to identify the core entities your content is about.

For example, if you write about “climate change,” key entities might include “carbon emissions,” “renewable energy,” “Paris Agreement,” and specific scientists or organizations.

Ensure these entities are clearly mentioned and contextualized within your content.

ii). Consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) and Brand Information:

For local businesses or brands, ensuring consistent Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) information across your website, Google Business Profile, and other online directories helps AI confidently identify your business as a unique entity.

This builds trust and authority.

iii). Multi-Channel Entity Optimization (Website, Social, Directories):

Your brand and its associated entities should be consistently represented across all your online properties.

This reinforces your authority in the eyes of AI.

Use consistent branding, messaging, and information wherever your brand appears online.

c). Creating “Quote-Worthy” Content with Proprietary Data and Insights

This is perhaps the most direct path to LLM citation.

Here is how you can get your brand cited more with higher value content:

i). Conducting Original Research, Surveys, and Case Studies:

If you want LLMs to cite you, give them something unique to cite.

Original research, data from surveys you conducted, or in-depth case studies with unique findings are highly valuable.

AI prioritizes novel, verifiable information.

ii). Presenting Data Points and Statistics Clearly for Extraction:

When you present data, do so clearly.

Use tables, charts, and infographics, but also state key statistics explicitly in plain text within your content.

For example, “Our survey found that 70% of businesses…”.

This makes it easy for AI to extract and synthesize.

iii). Expert Commentary and Unique Perspectives:

Don’t just regurgitate existing information.

Offer your unique perspective, analysis, or expert commentary.

Interview industry leaders, share your personal experience, do a research and share the study, or present a contrarian viewpoint supported by evidence.

This unique contribution makes your content more valuable to AI.

Optimizing for Conversational AI and Question-Based Queries

AI overviews and conversational AI are designed to answer questions directly.

a). FAQ Sections and Q&A Formats:

Dedicate sections of your content to frequently asked questions (FAQs) related to your topic.

Structure them clearly with a question followed by a concise answer.

This is gold for AI, as it directly mirrors how users ask questions and how AI provides answers.

b). Long-Tail Keywords and Semantic Variations:

People type full questions into AI search engines.

Optimize for long-tail keywords or better still simulate the prompts that users might ask in AI conversations for them to find your brand and their semantic variations.

Instead of just “sourdough recipe,” think “how to make a sourdough starter from scratch” or “how to fix sticky sourdough dough.”

c). Addressing Common Follow-Up Questions:

Anticipate what users might ask after getting an initial answer.

If your content answers “what is AI search SEO?”, consider also addressing “how long does AI search SEO take?” or “what are the best tools for AI search SEO?”

This comprehensive approach signals greater helpfulness to AI.

Building E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) in the AI Age

Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines are more crucial than ever for AI.

AI prioritizes information from credible sources.

a). Author Bios and Credentials:

Clearly state the author’s name and include a detailed bio that highlights their relevant experience, expertise, and qualifications.

If the author is a recognized expert in the field, showcase their credentials.

This builds the “Experience” and “Expertise” components of E-E-A-T.

b). Citing Reputable Sources and Building Backlinks:

Reference and link to other authoritative sources to support your claims.

This demonstrates thorough research and reinforces your content’s “Trustworthiness.”

Earning high-quality backlinks from other reputable websites still signals “Authoritativeness” to AI.

c). Showcasing Testimonials and Case Studies:

For products or services, include genuine testimonials and detailed case studies. This provides real-world “Experience” and “Trustworthiness.”

d). Digital PR and Brand Mentions:

Actively pursue digital PR opportunities to get your brand mentioned on other authoritative websites, news outlets, or industry publications.53 Even mentions without direct links can boost your “Authoritativeness” in the eyes of AI.54

Content Modularity and Scannability

AI needs to quickly extract precise information.

a). Using Bullet Points, Numbered Lists, and Tables:

These formats are highly scannable for both humans and AI.

They break down information into digestible chunks, making it easier for AI to identify key facts or steps.

b). Summaries and Key Takeaways:

Include a concise summary at the beginning or end of your article, highlighting the main points.

This gives AI a quick overview of your content’s essence, increasing the likelihood of extraction for AI Overviews.

c). Avoiding “Read More” and Multi-Page Articles:

While sometimes necessary, try to keep core information on a single page if possible. Fragmenting content across multiple pages can make it harder for AI to get a complete picture quickly. Similarly, “read more” links can create unnecessary hurdles for AI’s complete understanding of a topic.

AI Powered Tools for Search Engine Optimization

Leverage AI to fight AI!

Several tools can aid your AI Search SEO efforts.

a). AI-Powered SEO Tools for Content Creation and Optimization

1. Keyword Research Tools: Modern keyword research tools (e.g., Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz Keyword Explorer) are incorporating AI to help you find not just keywords, but also related questions, semantic gaps, and topics. They analyze SERP features (like AI Overviews and People Also Ask) to identify opportunities.
2. Content Optimization Platforms (e.g., Surfer SEO, Clearscope): These tools analyze the top-ranking content for your target keywords and provide recommendations on what topics, entities, and questions to include to be comprehensive and semantically relevant. They act as a checklist for creating AI-optimized content.
3. AI Writing Assistants (e.g., ChatGPT, Jasper, Claude): While you should never rely solely on AI for content generation (remember “AI-slop”), these tools can be invaluable for:
   • Brainstorming ideas and outlines.
   • Generating drafts for specific sections (e.g., FAQs).
   • Rewriting sentences for clarity and conciseness.
   • Summarizing long texts.
   • Generating headlines and meta descriptions.

b). Analytics and Monitoring for AI Search Performance

Measuring your success in the AI era requires a new approach.

1. Tracking AI-Driven Traffic: While direct organic search traffic might decrease for some queries, monitor referral traffic and potentially identify traffic coming from AI answer engines. Create custom segments in Google Analytics to track how users engage with your content from different AI sources.
2. Monitoring LLM Citations and Brand Mentions: Regularly search for your brand, key phrases, and specific data points from your content within AI Overviews and other LLM responses. Set up alerts to notify you of new mentions. This is your direct feedback loop on AI citation. Click Raven is your go to AI visibility tracker that tracks your prompts, notifies you of your brand mentions, and provides you with weekly reports about your visibility rate and share of voice in AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Gemini.
3. Identifying Pages Favoured by AI Search Engines: Using an AI visibility app like Click Raven, you can identify which pages are getting cited more often for specific prompts in AI engines. Analyze these pages to understand what attributes (e.g., structured data, clear formatting, comprehensive answers) might be contributing to their success.
   

c). Emerging AI Search Tools and Platforms

Keep an eye on emerging AI-powered search engines. While ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews remain dominant, platforms like Perplexity AI, Andi, Claude and You.com are gaining traction fast.

Understanding how they prioritize and present information will be crucial for diversifying your AI search SEO strategy.

These platforms often emphasize source transparency, which is a great opportunity for content creators.

VI. The Future of “SEO for AI”: Trends and Predictions

The AI search landscape is dynamic. Staying ahead means anticipating future shifts.

At Click Raven we are betting on these trends:

a). Continued Evolution of AI Search Algorithms

AI models will become even more sophisticated at understanding nuance, context, and user intent.

They will get better at filtering out low-quality, unoriginal content, placing an even higher premium on genuine value.

Expect more personalized search results driven by user behavior and preferences.

b). The Blurring Lines Between Traditional Search and AI Answer Engines

The distinction between clicking a link and getting a direct answer will continue to blur.

AI Overviews will become more prevalent and integrated into the core search experience.

This necessitates a strategy that caters to both scenarios: providing comprehensive content for those who click and concise, extractable answers for those who don’t.

c). The Growing Importance of User Experience and Trust Signals

As AI becomes more integral, its reliance on strong user signals (time on page, bounce rate, direct engagement) and trust signals (E-E-A-T, brand reputation) will only increase.

A positive user experience will be directly linked to AI’s perception of your content’s value.

d). Ethical Considerations and AI Content Disclosure

The debate around AI-generated content and its ethical implications will continue.

Search engines may introduce guidelines or requirements for disclosing when content is primarily generated by AI.

Transparency and ensuring human oversight will be paramount to maintaining trust and avoiding any penalties.

e). The Role of Niche Expertise and Community Platforms (e.g., Reddit)

In a world flooded with generic information, niche expertise will shine. AI will increasingly favor content from recognized specialists and communities where genuine, first-hand experiences are shared.

Platforms like Reddit and Quora, often rich in authentic user-generated content, are already gaining more prominence in AI-driven search results.

Optimizing your presence and contributions on such platforms could become a critical part of your overall “AI Search SEO” strategy.

Finally: Recap of Key AI Search SEO Principles:

To thrive in this new era, remember to:

• Prioritize user intent and comprehensive content.
• Focus on originality and unique insights.
• Ensure technical crawlability and site performance.
• Leverage structured data to speak AI’s language.
• Build undisputed E-E-A-T.
• Create quote-worthy, easily extractable information.
• Embrace conversation-based optimization.

In SEO, things move more quickly than you can keep up, and landing on the first page of Google seems like hitting the jackpot. If you’ve ever worried about keywords, been frustrated by backlinks, or wondered why your site isn’t ranking despite your best efforts, you’re not alone. SEO can be a difficult and sometimes perplexing job, but it also has a lot of amusing moments that only those in the industry fully understand.

In this post, we’ve compiled 35 SEO memes that shows the ups and downs of the job . Now get a cup of coffee,  settle in, and get ready to chuckle (or groan) as you go through the most hilarious SEO jokes the internet has to offer.

1. The Viral Unicorn vs. The SEO Marathoner

It’s humorous sometimes, despite all the hard work, a bit of luck and timing can catapult someone to the top! It’s like watching someone effortlessly get through a challenging course you’ve been sweating over by using a secret shortcut that no one else is aware of.

2. Cat Listens, No One Else

It seems like only your cat, with its unblinking gaze and full attention, fully comprehends the depths of your SEO existence. Your cat sits there, ears perked up, hanging on every word as if you’re sharing the secrets of the universe, while everyone else is lost in the jargon.

3. The Ultimate Test of Patience

You speak SEO, but they hear “blah, blah, blah.” They don’t care about the complex science involved—they just want to know why their rankings are declining!

4. Seriously, Google?

Just when you thought you could relax and enjoy the holidays, your rankings decide to take a holiday too!”

5. Planning a Coup?

It’s like trying to dethrone a king with an impenetrable fortress—sure, a coup is possible, but it’s going to take a lot more than just good content.

6. Either Way, it’s A Headache!

Is there a Google update that will pass, or have you been penalized? Either way, you’re stuck figuring out how to get back on track!

7. Great Job, Honey!

It’s a little accomplishment, but it feels like winning the lottery of internet validation. Finally your moms comments have a competition!

8. My Morning Brew

Knowing that my content has just received a boost, I’m motivated to plunge into optimizing and ascending the SERPs, driven by coffee and SEO successes!

9. The Polite Threat

I may not know where you are, but I’ll find you and politely ask you to remove those links!

10. Constantly Checking SERP positions? Yep, We All Do It

No matter how many SERP tools come out, we just can’t resist. SEO is thrilling for geeks. Google always keeps us on our toes. So, here we are: checking rankings, checking again in incognito mode.

11. It’s Just Waiting for Google to Get Around to You

SEO may appear hard, but it is more about patience than brain surgery. With a little time and effort, you will notice results!

12. No Content Strategy? Nice Try, But No Entry!

Without a content strategy, you’re not getting through the SEO gatekeepers. You Gotta Have a Plan, Bro! Without one, you’re just wandering aimlessly in the SEO wilderness!

13. Thought I Will Never Find You

I’ve finally done it! It makes you want to shout from the rooftops. That moment is pure, unadulterated joy, and no amount of metrics can ever measure it!

14. Nichmares Again!

You’re tossing and turning, dreaming of keyword opportunities and market segments, as if your subconscious is hosting its own SEO conference. SEO can consume your thoughts, even when you’re supposed to be catching some z’s!

15. How Now?

It’s like asking for a slow-cooked, gourmet meal but demanding it in five minutes. But don’t worry, we’ll turn up the heat as much as we can and get those results cooking faster.

16. You Might Lose Your Leg Next Time😄

It’s like saying “I’m not afraid of spiders” and then realizing you’re in a room full of them.

17. Oh, Really? Dream On!

Sure, good content is important, but don’t forget about all the other factors that come into play!

18. The Never-Ending Battle

Please google let me hold it a little longer.

19. Your Crush Doesn’t Know You Exist

Time to give it a makeover before Google swipes left for good.

20. Backlink Insomnia

“I really need to build more backlinks!” It’s funny how SEO stress can invade your sleep and make you obsess over backlinks.

21. Play By The Rules, Buddy 😉

The goal is to play fair and make Google’s job easier by offering valuable content and a great user experience. Earn those rankings with quality content and honest effort! The goal is to stand out, not to sneak around!

22. A Thousand Reasons To Smile

Could have been worse, LOL! Seeing this graph makes me realize my day isn’t so bad after all. Sometimes, a little perspective on someone else’s SEO struggles can be oddly comforting.

23. The SEO Struggle of Being Almost Famous

You’re so close to the spotlight, but somehow, you’re stuck in the “better luck next time” zone! “Don’t give up your big break could be just one search engine adjustment away!”

24. SEO Goldmine

Time to seize that prime spot on the SERP and enjoy the sweet taste of SEO victory!

25. The Ultimate ‘Déjà Vu’ Moment

When your competitor takes ‘great minds think alike’ to a whole new level.

26. I’m Just A Devotee At The Church of Google

While my friends and family think I’m a tech wizard, I’m only just paying tribute to the Google gods if you see me with my eyes glued to the screen and whispering sweet nothings to the search bar, know that I’m just paying homage to the SEO gods.

27. Google’s Wandering Eye

Did I forget to sprinkle some magic SEO fairy dust? The whole thing just leaves me scratching my head and laughing through my frustration—because, let’s be honest, sometimes the SEO game is just downright confusing!

28. Pure frustration! Lol

I start off with enthusiasm, but end up feeling like I’m reciting the alphabet in a foreign language. They’re nodding and smiling, but I can tell they’re mentally checking out! Meanwhile, I’m left wondering if I should just show them cat videos instead!

29. Just Lost My Appetite

Why does every update feel like Google’s way of saying, “Surprise! Your hard work is now a puzzle with missing pieces”?

30. Seriously, Where Do We Hide?

And just when you think you’ve found a hiding spot, Google’s like, “Found you!”

31. If Pity’s Too Much, How About a Bit of Shame? Lol!

So here I am, laughing through my exasperation, wishing Google would at least feel a twinge of embarrassment for all the chaos they create!

32. Mastering the Art of SEO Self-Sabotage

Hey Google, check me out! I’m so obviously human with all my ‘genuine’ spelling errors and grammar slip-ups, right? No way an AI would mess up like this, so my EEAT score is bound to skyrocket… isn’t it? Guess am in for a shock!

33. Newsflash! You can’t Rank By Adding More Garbage

Exactly! More words don’t equal better rankings. Quality and relevance are key.

34. The Struggle is Real

I stand a chance but its tough though. I need the Lords intervention too!

35. When Your Client Thinks SEO is Instant Magic—Brace for the LOLs

Unfortunately, we don’t have a fairy godmother on speed dial.

SEO doesn’t have to break the bank or fry your brain. You don’t need to splash out on fancy software or hire an expert. With the right free tools and some know-how, you can boost your website’s visibility all on your own, and your site will rank higher.

In this blog post, I’ve added some user-friendly SEO software to help you assess your website’s performance and tackle any issues. Keep reading to determine which budget-friendly options can help you climb the rankings ladder.

Can You Do Your SEO?

You can tackle SEO yourself, commonly known as DIY SEO. While it’s true that professional SEO agencies and experts can handle a lot of the heavy lifting, plenty of folks prefer to roll up their sleeves and give it a shot on their own. With a bit of digging and practice, you can become adept at optimizing your business’s online presence and keep a few extra dollars in your pocket.

A great starting point for diving into SEO is to seek out top-notch DIY SEO software, grasp the basic principles of SEO, and understand what factors Google considers when ranking websites. Some critical elements of SEO that you’ll want to get a solid grip on include:

1. On-Page SEO: On-page SEO involves optimizing the elements on your web pages to help bring clients to your site. It means optimizing your keyword strategy for metatags, using high-quality content, and other site components like images to keep clients onsite longer, with a more positive experience.
2. Off-Page SEO: Off-page SEO involves leading traffic from other sites to your site. The main components of this SEO component involve building relevant links from other sites, guest-blogging, and raising social media awareness.
3. Technical SEO: Technical SEO enables search engines to engage with your site to identify keywords and phrases that potential customers have used in their searches. 
4. Page Experience: This mainly deals with improving your customers’ experience on your web pages through faster load times, visual stability, and response times.

Pairing the best DIY software tools with your fundamental SEO knowledge will empower you to do SEO effectively. Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that SEO is a continuous process requiring time to see results. 

What Is DIY SEO Software?

DIY SEO Software is any tool that allows you to conduct various search engine optimization tasks from your computer. While many tools are on the market today, some are very complex and designed for SEO experts. Nevertheless, you can find other software that SEO experts love, and it is easy for DIYers to use.

Here are some of the best DIY SEO software and tools to start DYI-in SEO. 

1. SEMRush DIY SEO Software

Semrush is one of my favorite software for keyword research. It’s an award-winning all-in-one SEO tool best suited for local and non-local businesses. This comprehensive software provides everything you need to achieve profitable keywords for targeted traffic and leads.

Some of the Key Features

• Backlink Analytics
• Competitive Analysis
• On-Page SEO checker
• Site Audit
• PPC Keyword Research
• Position Tracking
• Organic Traffic Insights
• Organic Research
• Keyword Overview
• Link Building Tool
• Social Media Management

How to Use SEMRush as a DIY SEO Software

1. Sign up for Semrush’s page. It would be best to have your email and a password to create an account.
2. Then, you can either sign up for a free trial or use Semrush’s free version. The free trial allows you to test the complete tool for seven days, while Semrush’s free version will give you limited searches and access to data. It is the best for beginners.
3. To start the free version, click on skip trial; to try the free trial, click on get a free trial.
4. If you skip the trial, you’ll head straight to your Semrush dashboard. Then, pick one of your seed keywords and go to Keyword Overview from the left menu.
5. Then, insert a keyword or phrase into the search bar and click the “search” button. Once you click Search, you’ll see specific data on your chosen keyword.

Pricing For SEMRush

This software has a seven-day free trial and three pricing plans: 

1. The Pro plan costs $119.95 monthly and is suitable for small teams or beginners. Under this plan, you can add up to 5 tasks and track up to 500 keywords.
2. The guru plan costs $229.95 monthly and suits agencies and mid-size businesses. It can add up to 15 projects and 1500 keywords.
3. The business plan costs $449.95 monthly and is suitable for large agencies and enterprises. It offers up to 40 projects and 5000 keywords to track.

2. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a DIY SEO software that lets you observe and report your website’s presence in Google SERP for free. Even though you do not require a Search Console account to pop up in Google’s search results, you can manage what gets indexed and how your site represents itself with this account. 

As an SEO checker software, this tool helps you understand how Google works and lets you optimize for better search results performance. It’s useful for new sites or beginners as it allows them to submit their web pages for search indexing. 

Some Key Features

• Keyword Analysis Through Search Queries
• Page Positioning in Search Results
• Assess User Interaction 
• Site Coverage
• Submit Pages for Indexing with The URL Inspection Tool
• Sitemap Submission
• Mobile-first Indexing
• Penalty Reviews

How to use Search Console as a DIY SEO Software

1. To create an account, go to Google Search Console’s official page.
2. Then, pick a property type by adding your website address to the URL prefix or domain.
3. After that, you need to Verify Site Ownership. You can do this by using your Google Analytics tracking ID.
4. Next, you will add a Sitemap to Google Search Console. This is important because it helps Google find and crawl your website’s dominant content. To do this, navigate to “Sitemaps” and paste the URL of your XML sitemap into the box labeled “Enter sitemap URL.” 
5. After that, hit “Submit.” You will now receive an overview of your website’s most important data, which you can use to identify significant issues and check your site’s overall performance.

Pricing 

Free

3. Ahrefs DIY SEO Software

Ahref is another comprehensive DIY tool for local SEO. It includes keyword research, site explorer, and rank tracking. It is one of the most recommended SEO tools highlighting your site’s ranking performance. Also, from a competitor analysis approach, this tool determines your competitor’s backlinks quality and uses them as a starting point for your brand. 

With this tool, you can find the most linked content within your niche, look over and fix broken links on your site, and get an overview of your best-performing pages.  

Some of the Key Features

• Do keyword research for search engines
• Get total search traffic estimations.
• See ‘clicks’ data.
• See backlink growth or decline over time.
• See keyword click distributions.
• See top subfolders by traffic.
• Analyze SERP history
• See ranking history
• Monitor outbound links
• Get keyword ranking alerts.
• Analyze internal backlinks

How to use Ahref as a DIY SEO Software

1. Create your Ahref account or log in to the Ahref site. 
2. Then, enter your site’s URL into the search bar on the homepage and hit “enter.” After that, Ahref analyzes the site and provides all the data regarding that URL, including its organic traffic, URL backlinks, and much more.
3. Key in a keyword in the search bar to research specific keywords or phrases.
4.  After that, Ahref will provide you with all the data about that keyword, including organic search traffic, related keywords, and more.

Pricing 

Ahref has four pricing options:

1. The Lite pricing plan starts at $99 and is essential for small businesses or starters.
2. The standard pricing plan costs $199 for in-house marketers and SEO experts.
3. The advanced pricing plan is $399 for a mid-sized enterprise or growing business.
4. The enterprise pricing plan is $999 for large businesses and big agencies. 

4. Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider

Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider helps you optimize your website and increase traffic. Unlike most SEO software, this tool lets you search, filter, and customize your crawls. It also informs you of identical content, errors to fix, and improvement areas for link building while directing you on what to do next.

Some Key Features

• Audit Redirects
• Find Broken Links
• Discover Duplicate Content
• Analyse Page Titles & Meta Data
• Review Robots & Directives
• Extract Data with XPath
• Generate XML Sitemaps
• Schedule Audits

How to use Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider

1. Before performing any site crawls via the Screaming Frog SEO spider software, install the software on your PC. 
2. After installing the software, navigate to the configuration menu, then pick the Spider option.
3. After that, select crawl all subdomains. Start crawling and wait until it is completed.
4. Once the software finishes crawling, click on the Internal tab.
5. Filter your results by HTML, then export the data.

Pricing

This DIY SEO software for has two pricing options: free and paid. The paid version is usually $209 annually and has more features than the free version.

5. SpyFu SEO Software

SpyFu is another SEO tool with excellent competitive research features. It provides detailed SEO analysis on keywords to help boost your website’s ranking in search engines.

In addition to keyword information, SpyFu software provides data on your competitor’s ad spending, displaying how much they are willing to spend to be visible for different keywords. It’s valuable software for any business that wants to improve its website ranking and visibility. 

Some Key Features 

• Comprehensive Keyword Research
• Google Ads Spending Data
• PPC Competitor Research
• SEO reports 
• Backlinks builder
• Social Outreach for Backlinks
• SERP Analysis
• Website Ranking Information

How to use SpyFu as a DIY SEO Software

1. Create a SpyFu account. 
2. Enter your URL into Spyfu and navigate to the SEO Overview. 
3. Scroll down and see which keywords you share with your competitors.
4. After that, Spyfu will provide you with a list of your top 5 most valuable keywords. Review content that is already optimized for the top keywords.
5. Then, identify related posts you may have on this particular topic. Link these posts together where it makes sense. This will drive more traffic and build strong organic growth.

Pricing

SpyFu offers three different pricing plans in addition to their free trial option.

1. The basic plan costs $39 per month.
2. The professional plan goes for $79 per month.
3. They also have an enterprise price plan that they price upon request. This price version is mainly for larger businesses and agencies.

6. Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a great SEO Chrome extension that collects data from different SEO tools, like Search Console, Google Analytics, or Google Trends, to help you find the perfect keywords to rank. This tool simplifies discovering the best keywords for your site. So, instead of going through different websites daily, you can save time using this software.

Some Key Feature

• Accurate Search Volume Data
• Competitor Gap Analysis
• On-Page Analysis
• Traffic Metrics
• Trend Charts
• Keyword Research Widgets

How to use Keywords Everywhere as a DIY SEO Software

1. Download and install the Keywords Everywhere extension from either Google Chrome or Firefox
2. Then, decide if you want access to the premium features or not. For the premium features, you require an API key, which includes creating a Keywords Everywhere account (select the get API key option and enter your email address). However, you can easily access the free features after installation.
3. To access the premium features, copy the API key link sent via mail and open Keywords Everywhere. 
4. Select Settings and paste the API Key into the API settings box. Then, you can purchase credits to access the premium features.
5. Now you are set to go. You can search for any of the supported APIs. Your keyword metrics will appear below the search bar or be inserted into the platform you use.

Pricing

This DIY tool has different pricing plans for credits, where one credit equals one keyword.

1. Free version: Here, you can relate keywords and People Also Search For (PASF) keywords in Google and Bing or see YouTube insights and Tags, but no volume data.
2. $10 gets you 100,000 credits, $50 gets you 500,000 credits, $100 gets you 1,000,000 credits, $200 gets you 2,000,000 credits, $500 gets you 5 million credits, and $1000 gets you 10 million credits.

DIY Tips for Better SEO

1. Find the keywords Google attributes to your site
2. Optimize content for relevant, long-tail keywords 
3. Do basic on-page optimization
4. Improve Click-throughs
5. Optimize Title Tags
6. Monitor Analytics
7. Identify Keyword Gaps
8. Set up Google Alerts to trail mentions of your company
9. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
10. Study your competitors

Final Thoughts

If you own an e-commerce business or have a website, performing DIY SEO is essential. It saves money and puts you in control of organic rankings. You can use the best DIY SEO Software to make it even easier. They provide insights that would otherwise take ages to generate manually.

That said, you need to work to get the best results. This means creating SEO-optimized content, conducting keyword research, and staying current with the latest SEO trends.

Image Credit: matchboxdesigngroup.com

The main element of your search engine optimization / SEO strategy is to drive more qualified leads to your site by using keywords in your Content. Excellent keyword research reveals the most common terms, phrases, and questions your users and customers search for.

Read on to learn about keyword optimization, its benefits, and how to use it for long-term website rankings and traffic.

What Is Keyword Optimization?

Keyword optimization effectively uses the best keywords to improve visibility in search engines, drive traffic to your site, and increase its organic ranking.

Good keyword optimization involves researching, analyzing, and selecting the keywords you will use for each page on your Site.

In simpler terms, keyword optimization helps search engines better understand your Site, making your pages more accessible for people searching for those key phrases.

Benefits of Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization is significant in digital marketing, from content strategy to how your site content is organized. It is among the most critical aspects of search engine optimization and pay-per-click/ PPC.

Here are the specific benefits of keyword optimization:

1. Increases Organic Discovery: Keyword optimization will help deliver your site pages to a relevant audience through pertinent search queries.
2. Measure and drive potential traffic flow to your Site: Optimization helps you measure and understand your potential online market size.
3. Write captivating Content. Optimized keywords in your website’s Content let you instantly connect with potential customers and address their needs.
4. Understand client behavior: By analyzing the best keywords, you get an idea of what your clients need and how to service those needs.
5.  Credibility and Trust: As a result of ranking first for a specific keyword, your credibility is endorsed, helping clients trust you more 

How Do You Optimize Keywords?

1. Find the Right Keywords for Optimization

Keyword optimization begins with finding keywords and phrases associated with your Site, product, or service. 

However, figuring out which words to use is a daunting task. 

Therefore, using the best keyword optimization tools will help you analyze the popularity of the keywords and improve your SEO. 

Several practical keyword optimization and SEO analytics tools will help you choose the right keywords.

Some that offer free trials include Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Keyword Hero, Jaaxy, and Soovle. 

Ideally, it would be best if you aimed to find keywords with high search volumes but lower competition. This way, your Content will easily rank high on Google’s search result pages.

2. Map The Keywords to Each Page on your Site

Now that you have the relevant keywords you will be working with, the next step is mapping them to your website. This is assigning keywords to specific pages on your Site based on keyword research to avoid duplicating keywords on multiple pages.

It would be best to focus on one primary keyword per page while including at least two or three SEO keyword variations. Each page should focus on a single topic and include the most essential SEO keywords. 

3. Check Your Current On-Page SEO and Do Keyword Optimization

You will audit your current on-page SEO strategy to see if your Site has existing Content.

However, if you are creating new Content, ensure it is optimized.

Here are things to look for during content optimization:

a. Title Tags

 The title tags will show what your page is about. You need to ensure they contain the right length of 56 to 60 characters and are unique.

b. Header Tags

 Your page should have appropriately formatted headings and subheadings in HTML instead of bold headers.

c. Meta Descriptions

This short description is usually below your web page in search results. It should be 100 to 155 characters and clearly describe your page.

d. URL Structure

 The URL should be short and simple and include your primary keyword.

e. Images

You should have more than one image on the page. Ensure the image has the image file names for each keyword and alt text.

f. Content

Ensure that your content is optimized by using the main and a few secondary keywords within the first 100 words on your page. Content should be at least 300 words.

g. Internal Links

If you have links to other Content, ensure those links still work. 

4. Submit your Content to Google Search Console

 Submitting your Content to Google Search Console will help index your pages on the search engine results page (SERPs). It will also potentially speed up the discovery process.

5. Track Your Keyword Rankings

After your Content is indexed and ranked in Google, you need to track and see how those keywords rank. 

You should give it at least 2 months for new Content before making any keyword search optimization changes.

You can track rankings daily for 14 days before changing existing Content.

Featured Image credit: page.one

Investing in backlinks involves paying for a link back to your website from another site. The primary aim is typically to enhance your site’s ranking on search engines, amplify referral traffic, spark meaningful conversations, and fortify your website’s authority.

Paid links manifest in various forms, such as niche edits, paid guest posts facilitated through blogger outreach, paid link insertions, private blog networks, and services distributing press releases. This article is designed to walk you through acquiring high-quality backlinks, address prevalent safety concerns associated with purchasing links, and offer valuable tips for making sound decisions when buying backlinks.

Is It Safe to Buy Backlinks?

Even though buying backlinks is considered a black hat activity, it is an entirely safe and effective SEO practice. However, purchasing the backlinks from an SEO agency that follows industry best practices is necessary.

In addition, it can be unsafe to purchase low-quality links from PBN link sellers with footprint issues who need help understanding how to build links for SEO and from link agents selling link spam to client sites from their networks.

Paid Link Building vs. Natural Link Building

– Natural Link Building

These are backlinks created naturally without the site owner having to buy and generate them either through guest posting or other link-building practices. In simple terms, natural links occur when other web admins, bloggers, or site owners link to your content because they think it is helpful for their audiences and adds value to their sites.

This is the type of link-building that Google wants all site owners to engage in. When you provide high-quality content, you will get your name out there, and sites will link naturally to your business. With natural links, you can be assured that your content is good and that your rankings and traffic will not be affected by a Google algorithmic change.

The main problem with this type of linking is that it rarely happens if you are not already well-established. Therefore, when first growing your business, you may need to invest in paid link-building to maximize your visibility.

– Paid Link Building

On the other hand, paid linking occurs when a site pays another site to place your link in its content. While outsourcing link building is a core component of SEO, search engines prohibit paying for links, which can result in penalties. However, if it’s done strategically, it can be effective. 

The thing is, Google can’t tell the difference between a paid and a natural link as long as you produce high-quality content. So, if you’re starting a business, you may find this practice helpful and necessary to get into the visible radar. In addition, it can kick-start your SEO strategy, even if it is just a few links.

How to Buy Quality Backlinks

1. Identify How Many Backlinks You Need

The first important thing you need to do while buying backlinks is to identify the number of backlinks you need to rank before targeting a keyword. To do this, you must determine which pages to build backlinks to and calculate the gap between you and your competitors.

You can use SEO tools like Ahrefs Keyword Explorer to estimate how big your link-building budget may need to be.

2. Perform a Link Gap Analysis

You need to know more than just the number of link root domains you need; you will need to see the number of authority sites you need. To do this, you need to perform a link gap analysis. This identifies sites and pages linking to your competitor’s sites.

To do this, you must examine at least five of your competitor’s link profiles and enter the number of links at each Domain Rating (DR) level. This will help you pinpoint the strength of backlinks you need from guest posts, niche edits, etc.

To compare your domain’s link profile against your competitors, you could use SEO comparison tools to make the process easier. If there is a gap, you need more site backlinks.

3. Map Out Your Anchor Text

Remember anchor text optimization. If you get it wrong, you will not rank, or Google could penalize you. So, it is best to avoid repeating the exact anchor text. The best approach to do this is via anchor text cycling.

This means using your best anchor text on your best link opportunities, then cycling through variations and seeing how the page performs.

4. Establish Your Drip Dates

Some people prefer to buy quality links in batches, which is usually a huge mistake. It’s better to purchase backlinks frequently than bulk to make them more natural. That’s why you must assign a date for when the placement should be bought. It’s best if you kept it more random. The beauty of organized or scheduled paid links is that you can repeat the process based on the performance.

5. Buy Quality Backlinks

With a content plan in place, you can now purchase quality backlinks and rank on page 1. Then, follow your link gap analysis, stick to the plan, and watch the performance. Also, you must pay attention to your existing backlinks. 

How Much Does It Cost to Buy Quality Backlinks?

Usually, the cost of buying backlinks will vary from one site to the other. On average, robust and quality backlinks cost generally $900-$1500 per link. Nevertheless, the cost depends on the strategies and tactics you are using. It’s important to note that you can get other backlinks from high-authority domains that cost large sums of money; however, they are usually challenging. 

That said, you need to be very careful about who is selling the links since shady agents will give you backlinks they have purchased from PBNs, brokers, webmasters, and forums. Such links will mostly put your site at risk. That’s why you must consider buying backlinks built through manual outreach.

Factors Affecting the Cost of Buying Quality Backlinks

1. Type of Website

The price can vary depending on the status or type of website you want agencies to reach out to. Most site owners wish to link from sites with high organic traffic. Nevertheless, outreach to such sites takes a lot of effort, and the link price will be higher. Most of the time, such links are earned, and your money is spent on the grind put in by the outreach team to build a connection with the site owner.

On the other hand, if you want short-listed links from sites based on SEO metrics, the pricing varies based on the authority metric you pick.

2. Content 

The type of content on your site is most likely to affect the cost of backlinks. High-traffic driving websites are picky when it comes to the quality of content. Mostly, they look for content created by experts. Therefore, the cost will be lower if you have high-quality content.

3. Brand Strength 

Your brand strength matters regarding link building or link buying. This is because other brands will notice you quickly, and you will likely get a response when you reach out to them. Your emails will be answered faster, resulting in quick offers from the valuable partners on your list.

4. Creative Control 

Your brand’s level of creative control affects the link-buying process. This means that your brand’s integrity must be on a desirable level. As the list of standards for acceptable websites increases, which happens when brands know they are at the top of their game, you must ensure that your brand’s integrity is always protected.

5. Industry or Niche

Niche is another factor affecting the cost of buying backlinks. While some industries will draw a lot of site traffic from websites wishing to purchase quality backlinks, operating with some brands is tricky and expensive because they already have many offers. An excellent example of this is the finance industry.

Tips for Buying Quality Backlinks:

1. Check the Link Quality: Good SEO agents provide multiple options, meaning you can decide the link quality from different packages. We recommended opting for links from high-authority sites for quicker results.
2. Avoid Site-wide Links: You should avoid placing backlinks in areas less likely to be noticed, such as the footer, sidebar, and navigation. Good SEO agents will ensure that your link secures a contextual place in the main content of high DA sites.
3. Never Choose Red-Flag Sites to Build Links: Avoid using sites that have previously been penalized, feature low-quality content, or rely heavily on ads. This is because Google is likely to watch these websites with suspension, which means earning links from such sites may lead to looking at your site the same way. Instead, opt for niche-specific and high-authority sites to help build your authority.

Frequently Asked Questions on Buying Quality Backlinks

1. Are paid backlinks worth it?

Paying for backlinks can be worthwhile, provided you don’t get caught. In addition, backlinks help establish a website’s reputation and relevance in Google’s eyes.

However, paying for direct backlinks from shady sites is never worth it. You can improve your website’s rankings without backlinks, traffic, and revenue.

2. How can I get backlinks without paying?

Building linkable content is the most effective way to get free backlinks without having to pay or struggle to look for other sites to link your content. Other sites will link to them if you find prevalent informational subjects and create high-quality content. Some links will occur naturally, and others may be achieved through outreach.

Image Source: 30degreesnorth.com

Many companies heavily rely on data to make decisions. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are essential for businesses to track growth. Without KPIs, it’s tough to measure the success of campaigns. We’ve listed the top 10 SEO KPIs to help you monitor your website’s traffic growth.

What are SEO KPIs?

SEO Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) allow online marketers to measure a site’s SEO performance in search engines. They show you the success of your optimization strategy. In addition, KPIs provide a learning environment where you can continuously measure and optimize your growth.

Why are KPIs important for SEO?

Like other initiatives where you invest time, money, and resources, measuring your SEO KPIs can help improve your digital marketing efforts.

Apart from growth and providing a means to measure your progress, tracking SEO KPIs can:

• Alert you in case of any problems on your site and show the working strategies so you can apply them throughout the site. This way, you can track and measure your progress against set goals.
• Provide accountability by clearly pointing to the metrics, dimensions, and reports behind your business’s growth.
• It can help you track your return on investment (ROI) for better profits. With a better understanding of ROI, you can also estimate the payback period for your SEO business.
• Help you meet your audience’s needs efficiently.
• Make intelligent decisions that bring more profit.

Top 10 Important SEO KPIs to Track

1. Return on Investment (ROI)

Regardless of your current business challenges or the business model, you want your business to bring in returns.

Return on investment is the ratio between the profits you have made and the money you have spent. A high ROI means higher profits and a low ROI means lower profits in terms of the amount paid.

Measuring and tracking ROI from your SEO activities is critical because it is the best measure of success. Know your ROI target and measure your performance against it, understanding and reporting on how it is improving.

The fantastic thing is that several SEO tools, such as the Google Analytics account, simplify ROI calculation as you track your goals.

That said, it is necessary to remember that it can take time to see your ROI. It often takes 6 to 12 months, so try to set a reasonable ROI goal for your business.

2. Organic Visibility

Seeing that it takes time to see financial returns from SEO, another primary KPI you can measure and track to see your consistency in terms of growth is organic visibility.

Organic visibility is a metric that helps you quickly summarise your organic ranking performance. Typically, it provides the impressions of your content’s growth as the Google Search Console rates it. Based on this, you can identify the searches that increase organic traffic over time.

The good bit is that you can measure and report the visibility in two ways. First, you can showcase growth in impressions from Google Search Console. This is the ideal method to show continued growth, seeing that impressions show your website’s searches even if they were not indicated in clicks.

Another way to measure and report visibility is to look at keyword trends. Using organic research tools like Semrush and Ahrefs, you can track how your visibility changes for essential keywords.

3. Site Speed

Site speed is another important KPI you should track and measure for several reasons. First, the site’s speed affects its usability, as potential clients will likely abandon slow-loading sites.

The site’s page also affects its conversion rate. For instance, if clients want to purchase through the site and it takes long to load, they will likely leave.

Finally, page speed impacts SEO rankings. Slow-loading sites are likely to have low rankings in search engine results, which leads to fewer visits and views and fewer returns.

4. Organic click-through rate

Another crucial metric is the organic search click-through rate (CTR). The CTR is an SEO KPI that shows the percentage of people clicking on your link when searching for a specific term. It will also show how often the number of searchers converts into website visitors.

A high CTR shows that your site is relevant to the searcher’s query and that your search snippets are compelling. It also shows how well your SEO title and metadata attract searchers for a search term. The click-through rate highly depends on the rankings of your content on a search engine. 

So, if your CTR is rising, it’s a great sign that clients enjoy and want to engage with content. It is also a sign that your SEO rankings are improving.

In addition, you can track your CTR using Google Analytics at the search engine query and page levels to have a more accurate scope of effectiveness on money spent.

5. Domain Authority

Domain authority is an important SEO KPI that you can use to gauge the strength of your site’s backlink profile. The backlink profile is the number and quality of the links pointing to your site from other websites.

This metric is one of the many KPIs that can be tracked to measure the health of a site’s SEO. The higher the number and quality of the backlinks, the higher your site’s domain authority.

However, it is essential to know that your domain authority is not just affiliated with the backlinks you buy but can also be based on your website’s age, traffic, and trustworthiness.

6. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the number of visitors or clients who leave your website after viewing one page or leave without interacting with it. For example, if a potential client clicks on your site and only views 1 page, it will boost your bounce rate and decrease your visibility. However, if they view more than the first page, it will reduce the bounce rate – a low bounce rate means customers are engaging with your content for longer, boosting your visibility.

Depending on your page’s topic, the average bounce rate can range between 20% and 80%. Any percentage above 80% shows that you need to optimize landing pages, create high-quality content, and improve your site’s page speeds to retain users for a longer time and reduce the bounce rate.

7. Conversion Rates For Sales and Leads

Conversion rates refer to the number of new leads you have obtained on your site compared to the number of visitors. This metric helps by showing the number of visitors converted to customers or leads on your site. The higher the number of visitors who complete a goal (e.g., buy something, fill in a form, contact you), the more profit you are likely to make in the long term.

Nevertheless, not every visitor will convert, so you can not expect to have a 100% conversion rate. Knowing your site’s average conversion rate will help you measure how your site’s landing pages and content are performing.

You can easily calculate your site’s conversion rate percentage by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors. The best way to measure and track your site’s conversion rate is by using Google Analytics.

Suppose you notice that your site has a lower conversion rate; try to increase it by optimizing your site for conversions, using effective marketing strategies to drive more traffic, and A/B testing different elements on your site to see what works best.

8. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a metric that measures and tracks how much your business can plan to earn from an average customer throughout the relationship. In addition, it gauges the financial value each customer brings to your site over an extended period.

 By measuring your client’s feedback at all key touchpoints and understanding the customer experience, you will know the key drivers of CLV.

This KPI helps you identify the SEO activities with the most significant positive financial impact. It also redirects SEO efforts toward customer-centered strategies that maximize the value your customer gets from different types of content on your site. It usually focuses on extending beyond current clients to incorporate potential clients for future growth. 

9. Keyword Rankings

Keyword ranking is another valuable SEO KPI that can help you track your growth. Keywords are the words or phrases potential clients use when searching for something online. 

Using the right keywords in your content will help increase your site’s traffic and improve your SEO efforts. Keyword optimization is fundamental for any good SEO strategy for ranking content, as it guarantees increased profits. 

You can track your organic keyword rankings by using the best SEO tools. One such tool is the Google Search Console. This tool is fantastic because it allows marketers to monitor their website performance on Google without asking for money.

Depending on your site’s niche, you can focus on tracking high-volume, product, branded, and your most important keywords (popularly known as money keywords in SEO circles). 

The high-volume keywords usually have a higher potential since they drive more traffic to your site. However, these phrases tend to be more competitive and, as a result, are difficult to rank for.

Product keywords will help you see how well your products or services rank in search engines. Branded keywords will help you see whether your brand is famous in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Your “money keywords” will show you where you rank in the SERPs on the most essential phrases that make you money. These might not be product or service keywords; sometimes, they are just directly related to your product keywords.

10. Branded and non-branded traffic

Branded traffic is driven by users who have previously visited your site and are specifically searching for your brand using their keywords. For instance, they might search for your company name, product name, service name, or anything else from your brand.

On the other hand, non-branded traffic is driven by unfamiliar visitors who have never heard about your brand before. These users search with keywords that do not directly relate to your company or brand, but they may end up on your site.

Typically, the non-branded traffic you want to keep growing is the organic search traffic, which will eventually increase your branded traffic. You can evaluate which drives more traffic to your site by having branded and non-branded traffic.

 Tips on choosing SEO metrics and KPIs to track

Several SEO KPIs can help you keep your SEO efforts focused and continually measure your marketing campaign performance. You only need to identify and pick the most critical metrics that align with your site.

However, it is tricky to know what to measure and what not. So here are a few tips to help you stay on the right track:

1. Choose quantifiable KPIs that will align with your brand’s goals. These will mostly be sales or leads. 
2. Use leading indicators and industry statistics to show the direction the economy is headed. This will help you focus on the KPI metrics that move the needle.
3. Avoid tracking things that can’t impact your business. If you can not change it, it is unnecessary to measure or track it.
4. Create KPI time frames to see if you reach your set goals against set time.
5. Find a direct connection between the SEO KPIs and your business goal since different niches or businesses require different KPIs.
6. Choose an easily achievable SEO KPI while still finding the right balance between measuring and tracking everything.

Image credit: smartinsights.com

In the sprawling landscape of online business, navigating Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services can feel like traversing a labyrinth. Most online businesses use search engine optimization (SEO) services to optimize the website content to rank better on search engine results pages. However, selecting an SEO agency can be challenging since many choices exist. Each one of them provides a unique justification for choosing them.

Some SEO firms offer SEO guarantees, such as a first-page ranking guarantee or your money back. While an SEO guarantee is a compelling offer, any guarantee is a red flag that you should seek other SEO services. Read on to learn why you should avoid SEO companies that guarantee first-page ranking results and what to look for instead.

What Are Guaranteed SEO Services?

At first glance, guaranteed SEO services seem like a lifeline in the turbulent seas of digital. Who wouldn’t be enticed by the promise of skyrocketing to the top of search engine results? They often promise first-page rankings for particular keywords, an exact timeline for when you will see results and even a money-back guarantee.

Remembering that such first-page SEO guarantees come with several additional risks would be best. For instance, in most cases, any guaranteed SEO services use unethical SEO techniques to improve rankings. These techniques may include black hat strategies instead of acceptable SEO strategies like white hat link building.

In that case, aggressively using black hat SEO techniques to guarantee first-page results will be more detrimental to your company than beneficial.

Why Are First-Page SEO Guarantee Services Unreliable?

As we’ve already discussed, an SEO guarantee is reasonable. Businesses would be tempted to cooperate with SEO firms that guarantee first-page SEO.

However, selecting an SEO firm that advertises guaranteed SEO services carries many risks. It frequently results in subpar results over the long term or even significant harm to your rankings and business permanently.

Let’s talk about why such services are unreliable.

1. The First-Page SEO Guarantee Is Impossible

Simply put, you can’t guarantee what you can’t control. Although aggressive SEO techniques may raise your rankings, it is hard to say how much a specific strategy will boost your rankings and how high. This is mainly because SEO demands producing relevant and quality content and engaging with Google algorithms.

This first-page SEO guarantee is also unattainable because various factors outside the SEO agency’s control affect search engine results. These factors may include your brand’s online reputation, the intense rivalry with other companies, the time factor, and the ever-changing search engines’ ranking algorithms.

2. A First-Page SEO Guarantee Firm Will Use Black-Hat SEO Techniques

Guaranteed SEO services employ black-hat strategies. Black-hat tactics are essentially a set of actions that violate Google’s policies. These unethical SEO techniques deceive Google’s ranking algorithms into giving your website a higher rating.

Because it is intended entirely to target search engines rather than consumers, this SEO technique is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Some famous black hat SEO tactics include:

• Engaging in link exchange schemes
• Concealing keywords
• Producing redundant content
• Leaving spammy comments on other blogs

Black-hat tactics are used by agencies that guarantee results because they are quick. They may get away with it for a few weeks, just long enough to meet their SEO KPIs and get paid, but your website will eventually be exposed.

If Google discovers that you are utilizing these SEO techniques, your website may be penalized or banned from Google. Imagine spending all that time and money to have it vanish into thin air.

3. Your Website Will Appear in Search Results for Irrelevant Keywords

If you’re collaborating with an agency that offers outcome assurances, they will likely choose the keywords they want to help you rank for. It doesn’t matter to them whether the keywords they help you rank for are relevant to your business, provided they think it will be an easy win quickly.

Imagine placing on page one for over 10 keywords with zero search volume. Or that they’ve assisted you in ranking for terms unrelated to your industry so the traffic you get results in zero conversions.

4. A First-Page SEO Guarantee Firm Endangers Your Business

Most first-page guaranteed SEO services might cost you a lot of time and money. Not just that, though. They will do more harm than good as well. Even if you choose to work with a different SEO agency later, you will still have to deal with the penalties and poor rankings you accrued while working with the guaranteed SEO services.

Authority is crucial to rank higher in search engine results. It will take some time for your site to recover if you used first-page guaranteed SEO services and they interfered with the authority you had gotten before. The best and only option is to avoid these first-page SEO guarantee companies from the start.

5. Limited Services

The fact that these organizations frequently offer very few services is another factor to consider. They often have contract clauses that allow them to avoid responsibility if they don’t deliver results or if your website rankings decline rather than rise.

Again, these companies frequently emphasize quick rankings and neglect other aspects of the SEO process, like great content, high-quality backlinks and niche edits, and technical SEO factors, among other things.

6. A First-Page SEO Guarantee Service Offers a One-Size-Fits-All Approach

Good SEO is particularly customized and tailored to your company and your niche. Therefore, it would be wise to be cautious of any company offering you an SEO approach employed on numerous other businesses they’ve worked with.

A good SEO agency will take the time to research your brand, dive deep into it, do an SEO audit, and develop a cutting-edge SEO plan to win the game.

7. A First-Page SEO Guarantee Firm Provides Low ROI

Any efficient SEO technique aims to gain more relevant traffic to your website. You have a better chance of generating leads and closing sales when you drive qualified traffic to your website. As a result, you will notice an increase in your SEO return on investment (ROI).

Read Also: Crucial Metrics for Measuring Your Content Marketing ROI

The opposite occurs with guaranteed SEO services. The emphasis moves from quality to quantity.

For instance, if you pay an SEO service $6,000 to grow your traffic by a predetermined number, let’s say 100% in 30 days, even if your traffic doubles, it will only matter once you also experience an increase in leads and sales.

Instead, you’re merely spending money on vanity metrics that don’t affect your financial situation. You get the traffic but not sales or leads of any kind.

How to Choose a Good SEO Agency

Now that we understand why you should avoid first-page SEO guarantees let’s look at the criteria for selecting a reputable SEO agency.

1. Experience

The first and most crucial factor to consider is an agency’s experience. A modest amount of experience will say a lot about the company’s methods of operation and principles. Furthermore, if a company has an established track record in its field, it is easier to trust it.

It would be best if you were alert to whether or not they have experience in your specific field of expertise. This does not, however, indicate that you should not have faith in a newly founded company. Of course, you can, but you must be sure they can deliver results.

2. Approach

Trustworthy agencies also offer a unique content strategy specific to your target market, business objectives, and industry. A competent agency will pay close attention to your demands and want to know exactly what you’re having trouble with. Avoid companies that provide generic solutions to your site’s problems and are cookie-cutter in their approach.

3. White Hat Techniques

Any reliable SEO agency knows that using white hat techniques is the best approach to ranking a website. These include creating unique, high-quality content, adjusting your website’s SEO, and using social networking platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn to disseminate material.

Given that they know they can neither control nor circumvent search engine algorithms, white-hat SEO businesses will never provide first-page SEO guarantees. They prefer to adopt natural and legitimate methods to increase your website’s authority; rankings will come from this type of effort.

Google’s E-A-T provides a detailed understanding of this methodology.

4. Transparent

Furthermore, you want an SEO agency that is open and honest about its interactions with previous clients, their achievements, and their statistics. Trustworthy agencies support their promises with facts and previous client experiences. Ensure they can provide evidence to support their claims of expertise that they are willing to share. Avoid the agency if they are unable to do this.

Again, good agencies should also give regular updates on their progress and provide data on the effectiveness of their campaigns. Ensure the agency you select keeps you informed and explains the information it sends you. SEO is a long game, so weekly to monthly updates are good for knowing that the SEO agency is still working on your campaigns.

5. Reviews and References

Reviews and testimonials show a company’s dedication and effort. If you need help deciding between multiple businesses, check out their web reviews and client endorsements first.

Additionally, you can contact previous customers and inquire specifically about their interactions with the agency. Any honor or recognition the agency receives for its work is an extra feather in its cap.

6. Are They Willing to Teach You?

An SEO agency is likely reliable if it is eager to share its expertise and assist you in becoming familiar with SEO tactics. They demonstrate their knowledge and good intentions by being forthright, open-minded, and willing to respond to inquiries regarding their procedure.

Before partnering with any firm, you can ask them questions about SEO in general and how they approach it. It is a scam if they appear distant or unwilling to provide information.

What Can You Expect From a Reliable SEO Company?

What will a professional SEO provider deliver if they don’t guarantee you results?

Any reliable SEO agency should assist you in achieving a few goals as part of your continuing SEO campaigns. Here are a few things to expect:

1. Attract Qualified Leads

A competent SEO agency should raise your page rankings for keywords related to your industry. This results in more qualified traffic visiting your website over time. Additionally, more qualified traffic translates into high-quality leads subscribing to your email and expressing interest in your goods or services.

2. Long-Term Results

Any long-term SEO strategy aims to get you on top and keep you there. While getting page-one rankings within 30 days sounds impressive, it’s a far-fetched dream in most cases. It can take between 3 and 12 months to see benefits from a top-notch SEO campaign.

On the other hand, white-hat SEO strategies increase the likelihood that you’ll remain at the top, where you’ll receive targeted visitors and make money for years to come.

3. Quantify Results

Every step of the SEO process should be data-driven, from creating results to measuring them and leveraging these metrics to produce additional results. The most powerful SEO tools are used to make SEO and content decisions. This allows for setting realistic, reachable goals and real-time progress tracking.

Reputable services often analyze your customers’ site navigation, pinpoint your precise problem areas, and determine how much of your income improvements are directly linked to SEO using a range of indicators, such as rankings, traffic, and average session time.

4. Credibility and Authority

With an excellent, personalized approach, you earn more than just high rankings. You will increase your authority and trustworthiness with your target audience. Consequently, you gain many high-quality backlinks and boost your Google rankings.

If you consistently show up when clients are looking for information about your product or service, eventually, they will come to view you as the authoritative source in your field.

5. Quality Backlinks

Building backlinks is a crucial component of SEO and digital marketing in general. Quality contextual backlinks prevail over quantity.

Using strategies like blogger outreach, a trustworthy service provider will promote links to your website on high-quality, pertinent websites, like media websites or websites with high authority. These types of backlinks benefit your website in two ways:

• They raise your website’s authority and online exposure.
• They also bring in targeted internet visitors relevant to your business.

Conclusion: First Page SEO Guarantee

Guaranteed SEO is something that ought to be avoided at all costs. Even the best SEO companies cannot guarantee traffic growth or results for a specific number of keywords. They will be focused on what is essential: utilizing white hat SEO tactics to assist you in exceeding your business objectives and fostering commercial success.

Launching a successful content marketing campaign in today’s competitive digital landscape requires innovative strategies to enhance search engine rankings and brand visibility. Contextual backlinks emerge as a powerful tool for achieving these goals effectively.

By integrating contextual backlinks within your content, you enrich your blogs and articles and provide search engines like Google with valuable insights into the relevance of your content to specific topics and themes.

This comprehensive guide aims to delve into contextual linking, elucidate the significance of prioritizing contextual backlink building, and outline various effective link-building techniques.

What Are Contextual Backlinks?

Contextual backlinks are hyperlinks embedded within a webpage or blog post intricately connected to the content’s topic or theme. Unlike conventional backlinks, contextual links seamlessly blend into the narrative, offering readers a natural progression within the text.

These links can be in your page’s body content, the resource box, or the author’s biography. You can also find them on the website in pictures, movies, and other types of material.

Typically, there are three primary categories of contextual links that a company may utilize for its website:

1. Internal links: These links lead people to other pages on the same website. You may link your blog post to one of your product pages so visitors can easily click through and purchase.
2. External links: These are links that take visitors from your website to another pertinent or authoritative website. For instance, you can direct readers to the study’s source by providing a fact or statistic and then linking to it.
3. Reciprocal links: These are links acquired from agreements between two websites, where they link back to one another’s websites so that both websites can gain from each other’s authority and popularity with search engines.

What’s critical in this case is that the link has to point to a relevant webpage; otherwise, it’s not contextual.

Why Are Contextual Backlinks Important?

1. Brand Awareness

Contextual links are an excellent way to increase or expand brand awareness. When you obtain a contextual link or participate in a reciprocal link-building campaign, the website you mention in your content will be able to find it via search or social media. This exposes more people to your content, website, and everything you offer.

2. Higher Credibility

Contextual linking lends credibility to both your content and the website or blog. This is because a backlink from an authoritative website demonstrates that you conducted thorough research and contributed to creating helpful content.

When links come from popular websites in your industry, your credibility as a blogger or website owner is enhanced.

3. Improved Rankings and Organic Traffic

Another critical benefit of contextual backlinks is that they help you rank higher and increase the traffic to your website. Because they are placed on relevant web pages, these links are thought to be more natural. Backlinks boost the quality of your website by providing search engines with relevant information.

Read Also: SEO Tips to Help Your Rank Higher

4. Better SEO Efforts

Contextual backlinks can also enhance your SEO efforts. These links can be helpful to search engines because they are put on relevant web pages. Additionally, increase your chances of appearing higher on their search pages. This implies that more individuals will find your content using Google or other search engines.

5. Enhanced SERP Rankings

Raising brand awareness and acquiring more high-quality backlinks will eventually help your website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERP).

Because Google views contextual links as endorsements, they aid in improving your ranks. When a website with a lot of authority links to your content, Google interprets this as a recommendation that your work is worthy of being ranked.

In essence, Google and other search engines are more likely to rank your pages higher on their search result pages when you acquire contextual links and use them to enhance users’ experiences.

Read Also: Best SEO Practices to Dominate the SERPs

How Do You Get Started With Contextual Link Building?

1. Guest Blogging Contextual Backlinks

Guest blogging, or guest posting, creates content for another website while including a link to your own. It’s one of the most successful link-building techniques for attracting new clients and increasing brand recognition.

Read Also: Why is Content Marketing Important for Your Brand?

Why is it a little more straightforward than other approaches? Well, both the author and the publishing site benefit from them. The webmaster receives top-notch content for their website, while the author gains the ability to add external links to their site, improving their backlink profile.

You want to research your industry to find suitable sites for your guest links. Find out where audiences will find the most delinquent news and the sites they consider the most authoritative.

However, keep in mind that not all backlinks are created equal. If you want to boost your site’s search performance, your guest post should be on a site with a high DA or domain rating (DR).

Once you’ve decided which websites to contact, you can either write content for them to read or suggest themes for future articles. Remember, your main goal should always be to establish relationships. 

2. Broken Link Building

One of the many practical contextual link-building strategies is creating backlinks from broken links. Getting other websites to fix their broken links also entails providing them with more resources. If the content is relevant to your industry, this could be a chance for you.

It is evident that webmasters want to avoid broken links appearing on their pages, but occasionally, unexpected things happen. This implies that if the resource URL changes or the resource itself disappears, a once-useful link could soon stop working.

By pointing broken links at the website owner and providing them with a resource like the one on your website, you can leverage broken link building to your benefit.

3. Create Shareable Content for Contextual Backlinks

Producing high-quality, helpful content is one of the most crucial elements in developing contextual backlinks. Natural links from other websites will occur when your content is helpful, informative, and relevant to your target audience.

Since it benefits their audience, people will want to link to it, share it, and recommend it. When creating content, consider your intended audience’s questions and issues. Ensure that your information is precise, thoroughly researched, and current.

Read Also: How to Remove Outdated Content from Your Website

Additionally, your writing should be simple to read and comprehend by dividing lengthy text passages into manageable sections and employing headings and subheadings. It would be best to consider producing various content, including blog articles, infographics, videos, and podcasts. Connect with a variety of audiences by using different formats. Besides that, your content needs to be SEO-optimized.

Lastly, spread the word about your content using email marketing and social media. Inform your network about it, and request that they tell their network about it. More opportunities exist to obtain those priceless backlinks as more people read your article.

4. Guestographics for Contextual Backlinks

 A study found that 90% of the information sent to the brain is visual. While blog postings are terrific, infographics often have a more significant emotional impact. Because designing infographics requires few people’s strategic expertise, only some marketers use them to their full potential.

Using infographics, you can obtain contextual links. Find a popular blog post and create an infographic for it. Next, contact the bloggers and inquire about putting the infographic on their sites along with a link to your website.

5. Conduct or Receive Interviews

Another excellent content strategy to obtain a contextual backlink is to secure an interview. When you conduct interviews for your business, you can build additional contextual backlinks for your website. For instance, if you interview an expert in your field and publish the interview on your website, they are most likely to link to the interview from their website, enhancing both their brand and yours.

A great place to start the interview process is to find websites that frequently feature interviews with business owners and are relevant to your industry. Published interviews typically have backlinks. 

Additionally, you may request an interview with industry leaders, particularly from smaller companies and brands. You and them will gain from this relationship because you can both increase your marketing efforts. 

6. Use Manual Outreach to Bloggers or Influencers

One of the best ways to get an excellent contextual link is to conduct a manual outreach to bloggers. Making a list of target websites is the first stage in the manual outreach link-building process. Finding sites important to your company and with a high domain authority will be necessary. 

When you have a list of potential websites, the following step is to contact the website owners and present your idea. For instance, if you’re a florist, you might suggest writing a guest blog post about spring flowers. The site owner will link to your post if your pitch is compelling.

In addition to increasing website traffic, this link will raise your website’s search engine position. Although manual outreach link building takes time, it is a valuable method for obtaining high-quality links from pertinent websites.

7. Participate in Online Communities for Contextual Backlinks

Engaging in online communities related to your specialty and industry is another successful method for creating contextual backlinks. By conversing with other users and sharing insightful knowledge, you can establish yourself as an authority in your niche and draw links from others.

You can accomplish this through forums, social media groups, SEO Slacks, and other social clubs. However, it’s crucial to remember that establishing a reputation and trust within the community takes time. Being a productive member of these platforms can increase your chances of earning trust, which may open up options like backlinks.

Contextual Link Best Practices

When you’re ready to start a contextual link campaign, there are several best practices to adhere to. Some of the top tips we suggest you should follow include: 

1. Select Relevant Websites for Contextual Backlinks

Google appreciates links from comparable websites. Therefore, you must develop contextual links with appropriate websites within your niche.

2. Analyze Website Metrics

We advise double-checking their SEO analytics as you select prospects. Attention to their domain rank (DR) and authority (DA). The more authoritative a website is regarding domains, the more benefit you receive from its links. This is ultimately what raises your ranking and increases traffic.

3. Check Backlink Profiles

Regarding backlink profiles, quantity and quality matter; therefore, you must perform a backlink analysis to determine how many backlinks an external website has. Remember to examine each backlink’s quality.

4. Anchor Text

Pay special attention to the anchor text as you acquire contextual links. This is the text where your link will be inserted. We recommend using highly descriptive keywords or long-tail keywords in each anchor text. This benefits the ranking of your website for such keywords, which is the explanation. 

5. Personalized Outreach

Whether you contact prospects or use a unique SEO tool, you must personalize your messages. Again, make each pitch unique to improve your chances of obtaining a relevant backlink.

The Bottom Line

Search engines are moving toward contextual link creation. Context and relevance linking are becoming increasingly crucial factors in their algorithms when determining a link’s worth. It’s, therefore, vital that you acquire contextual links.

Good quality contextual backlinks can be hard to come by, but fortunately, you can either buy backlinks from an agency, outsource your operations, or generate these links manually.

Additionally, numerous strategies exist to acquire a contextual connection with vital link metrics. In this manner, you can design a varied strategy for constructing contextual backlinks to produce the best outcomes for your campaign.

If you’re running a website, whether a blog, an online store, or a web portal, chances are you want to boost your organic traffic and improve your search engine rankings. It’s a big goal, and there are countless strategies out there, but one of the fundamental tactics is link-building. Now, not all backlinks are created equal. Some make a difference in elevating your search rankings and landing a prime spot in search engine results.

To determine which backlinks are the real game-changers, you need to dive into the different types, understand how they benefit your website, and choose the correct quantity to go after. That’s where we come in. This article has compiled a comprehensive list of the various types of backlinks that can supercharge your link-building efforts. It’s all about helping you craft a solid plan to snag those top-notch links for your site.

What Are Backlinks? 

Backlinks, also known as inbound, incoming, or one-way links, emerge when a website links to another. Imagine it as a virtual recommendation – if someone links to your website, you score a backlink, and vice versa. These clickable connections serve as digital pathways, allowing users to seamlessly navigate from one site to another.

Backlinks aren’t just superficial nods; they reflect your website’s popularity. Consequently, integrating, overseeing, and evaluating their performance becomes a pivotal element in search engine optimization (SEO) and overall SEO strategies. The quality and quantity of your backlinks play a crucial role in elevating your ranking on search engines.

In essence, backlinks serve as a digital reputation, determining how widely recognized and respected your website is in the vast online landscape. Managing these connections is the key to boosting your website’s prominence and relevance in the ever-evolving digital sphere.

Besides ranking, backlinks can increase organic traffic and help you get noticed by search engines. For example, if many sites link your webpage or website severally, search engines can conclude that content is worth linking to and surfacing on search engine results pages (SERP).

However, if you are learning to create a link-building campaign, you must know that not all backlinks are valued similarly. Some types of backlinks will help improve your search rankings, while others are low-quality and can negatively impact your website’s organic search performance.

We have listed some backlinks you need to know to help you determine the best types for your site.

Types of Backlinks To Get You Ranking High in SERPs

1. Editorial Backlinks

Editorial or contextual links are acquired from purely having a site that produces high-quality content and applies white hat SEO. Where the acquired link has been paid for or requested, editorial links are earned organically by providing valuable content.

These links don’t come cheap; they only come from highly authoritative sites with higher rankings. Additionally, you can acquire these outbound links from news agency sites or extensive publications like the New York Post, Forbes, or The Guardian. Generally, an editorial link comes from a trustworthy source with high domain authority.

The most effective way to earn editorial links is to focus on writing high-quality, engaging, shareable, original content on prevalent topics that most people find attractive. When your content can sell itself, your content marketing strategy becomes much more manageable.

2. Guest Blogging Backlinks

Guest blogging backlinks are among the highest-valued backlinks that digital marketers should target as part of their link-building strategies. It involves creating content as a guest author on another person’s site with a link to your website.

A guest link can be free or paid, but usually, it’s an arrangement between one website and another. You can write a guest post for another site and get a link within the article to the writer’s site.

Practicing guest blogging outreach to request more valuable sites for these opportunities should be vital to any SEO strategy. Undoubtedly, this backlink can be beneficial and boost your rankings tremendously.

Read Also: SEO Tips to Help Your Rank Higher

3. Acknowledgment Backlinks

You can issue this backlink if your label or brand sponsors an industry event, has representatives speaking, or does other similar activities. You can use backlink checkers to get this type of backlink.

The best way to form acknowledgment backlinks to your site is to constantly monitor your competitors regarding the events they participate in and then make a wise move that conveys benefits for your company.

4. Authority Links

Authority backlinks deliver raw ranking power, authority, and relevance to promote your site’s ranking in a SERP. Due to their age, quality, and size, these website links have established significant trust and authority with search engines.

Authority sites are market-leading sites representing established government and educational institutions, large corporations, or leading websites. Authority links can bring massive ranking power to a site if you can obtain one or more.

These backlinks are extremely difficult; the best approach to authority links is to be watchful for opportunities to obtain them.

5. Image / Infographic Backlinks

Infographics are educational or informative images showing data or research. You can attain these links by creating a well-designed image and sharing it with others on their sites.

Infographic links can help people apprehend complex concepts using visual aids such as images, charts, graphs, or diagrams. They can use images and text in a visual format to demonstrate concepts. They are often used for marketing purposes but can be helpful when writing articles or sharing research.

You are credited as the creator each time someone shares the image, whether via social media, blogs, or sites. This attribution correlates to a backlink to your site.

6. Pillow Links

Pillow backlinks are like the supportive backbone of your website’s link strategy, adding diversity to your link profile. While they might not skyrocket your rankings in highly competitive niches, they support your link-building efforts. These links act as a protective layer, offering insulation for your main page.

The beauty of pillow backlinks lies in their flexibility. You can incorporate them before, during, or after your dedicated link-building campaign, signaling to Google and establishing a foundation for further activities. Their ease of attraction sets them apart, requiring minimal cost and effort.

Consistency is critical here; integrate them gradually into the ranking process, using them as the foundational steps for building your website’s authority. These links contribute to initial rankings and play an ongoing role in constructing your site’s credibility and influence.

7. Private Blog Network (PBN) Links

 Private Blog Network or PBN links is a powerful link-building strategy that can help you rank in competitive niches. PBNs are confidential and, ideally, leave no digital footprint, achieved with several manipulative and deceitful measures.

These contextual and authority backlinks are typically on a blog’s homepage to manipulate search engines. That said, it is necessary to note that PBN link building is entirely a black hat practice and goes against Google’s guidelines. Suppose a site is found to indulge in this practice. In that case, Google reserves the right to penalize or remove it from its search results based on the intensity of spam involved.

8. Social Bookmarking Links

Social bookmarking is simple, accessible, and natural to obtain links that allow users to post high-quality content and share links to web pages. These bookmarks are public on bookmarking sites, with groups, networks, or private domains.

Social bookmarking links could be more effective than other recent types of backlinks. However, if you still want to get involved with communities relevant to your industry, you can engage with your audience on forums with relevant content and sharing.

9. Niche Edits or Curated Links

SEO professionals often leverage curated links or niche edits as potent tools in digital marketing to enhance website rankings. Instead of creating new blog posts, contextual backlinks can be seamlessly integrated into existing, relevant blog posts. These targeted posts have already aged, indicating that Google has indexed their content, and their backlink profiles continue to resonate actively.

Acquiring niche edits or curated links involves various approaches. One method is contacting webmasters and authors through payment for link opportunities or securing them for free. Success in this endeavor requires dedicated efforts to identify content that closely aligns with your own.

Search for similar topics and locate content that would benefit from including your outbound link. For example, if your blog focuses on pet care, your content could significantly enhance the value of any site that has previously covered pet-related topics.

The second involves hiring a professional agency to help you do the hard work. Most companies that offer SEO services will provide link-building. The best will manage your outreach and build a contacts database for appropriate white hat opportunities.

10. Article Directory Types of Backlinks

Article or blog directories are websites that contain collections of articles written on different subjects. Also referred to as content farms, article directories allow an author to present an article and syndicate it across various websites. Other site owners can then reuse these articles for their websites.

Article directories are links placed in content that are reproduced every time the original article is syndicated. This type of link-building is an outdated tactic that will not advance search engine rankings. Marketers should focus on attaining more qualified and trustworthy website links than those obtained from article directories.

11. Blog Comments Backlinks

Blog commenting is one of the most straightforward ways to get backlinks. Go to the sites that have enabled the comments feature. Then, comment with your website URL; you will get a backlink after the comment is approved.

That said, you should not exploit blog comments to attain links. Once blog comments become spammy, they contribute to a link scheme that violates Google’s guidelines.

If you want to leave an organic and meaningful comment on a post, then do so. If you’re engaging with authoritative websites, blog commenting can bring organic traffic to your site if your comment is particularly insightful or relevant. However, several factors must be considered when commenting to avoid participating in manipulative link schemes.

12. Auto-Generated Types of Backlinks

When you generate links automatically, you’re creating programmatic links. This means these links are generated without a clear indication of intent. Tools like WebEffector and SEO Hammer allow you to automate posting links in comments and online posts, targeting specific website anchor keywords. However, it’s worth noting that these automated links may provide short-term benefits, but they often come with risks.

The practice of auto-generated link-building goes against Google’s guidelines. Authors shouldn’t have to take specific actions to generate links automatically. Moreover, this method is considered aggressive and manipulative in link-building. It contributes to the degradation of the web by introducing spammy and low-quality practices. Knowing that these shortcuts may lead to short-lived gains before Google detects and penalizes such activities on your site is essential.

13. Links From Press Releases (PR Links)

PR Link Building uses public relations techniques such as press releases and media pitching to secure useful editorial links to your site. This SEO backlink-building practice is a critical component of a Digital PR strategy.

You can increase your PR backlinks by increasing social shares with visual content. Gaining more social shares will help you rank higher in Google search results. However, you should note that PR is not a link-building tactic that will advance search engine visibility.

14. Widget Backlinks Types

A widget is a web-based app with a link to your website, which can be taken and added to a web page or article on another website. By giving a widget to another website, they can display your links on their page, providing a backlink to your website.

Most of the time, widget backlinks are in the form of tools, resources, or additions like calculators or weather widgets to a page. The primary goal of widgets is their viral effect in boosting traffic to your site.

15. Testimonial & Review Types of Backlinks

Testimonial and review link building is the process of getting positive comments or reviews about a product or service featured on your website. At its essence, the testimonial link-building strategy is about providing a lot of value to the owner in exchange for a link from their site. 

These types of backlinks work in two ways. The first is when you write a review on someone else site. You can add it as a testimonial and include a link to your website. The second is a review a customer leaves for your service on a platform, including a link to your site.

Unlike other backlink strategies, like the guest post strategy, you will not need to write long articles to build links. Instead, you only need to write a paragraph to get a testimonial link. In some cases, you can record your video testimonial and send it to the brand you’re working with. In addition, testimonial link-building efforts will have a higher success rate than other strategies.

Wrapping Up on Types of Backlinks

Getting websites to appear higher on search engine results is a big deal, and one key factor is backlinks or inbound links. It’s like the online world giving your site a thumbs-up. But here’s the thing – not all thumbs-ups are created equal. Many of these links are out there; some are more valuable than others.

So, to make your website shine, you’ve got to put in some serious effort to create an intelligent strategy for building the best possible collection of these links. It’s all about making your website friends with the right crowd on the internet!

We hope this guide helps you avoid low-quality tactics and focus on the best link-building approaches for high-quality backlinks in your next digital marketing campaign.

In the fast-paced digital landscape, it is crucial to remove outdated content from your website regularly. Outdated content can mislead readers, harm your website’s credibility, hinder search engine optimization efforts, and sometimes create compliance risks.

Proactively identifying and eliminating outdated content can ensure accuracy, enhance the reader’s experience, improve search rankings, maintain industry compliance, and present a positive brand image.

In this post, we will explore the importance of removing outdated content and provide insights on how to do it effectively if you want your website to stay fresh and updated.

What Is Outdated Content?

Outdated content refers to any information, media, or resources that have become obsolete, inaccurate, or irrelevant to the current context or audience. It can include various forms of content, including articles, blog posts, images, videos, product descriptions, and more. 

Outdated content on most websites may arise due to changes in industry practices, technological advancements, legislation updates, consumer preference shifts, product/service offerings, products out of stock or no longer available, and more.

It can confuse readers, damage a website’s reputation, and hinder improved search engine rankings. Google has favored websites that continuously update their content and keep it fresh for readers by rewarding them with better search engine rankings.

Identifying and removing outdated content is crucial to maintaining credibility, providing accurate information, and enhancing user experience. We are in the age of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), where content relevance at any particular time is a ranking signal. When your content is irrelevant to the current times, your rankings drop; when it is relevant, your rankings improve.

Why You Need to Remove Outdated Content 

1. Accuracy and Credibility

Outdated content can provide incorrect or misleading information to your audience. Keeping your content up to date ensures that you provide accurate and reliable information, enhancing your credibility and reputation.

With more accurate and credible content, you can also command more clicks to your offers because of the improved trust with your audience.

2. User Experience

Users rely on your content for relevant and valuable information. Outdated content can frustrate and confuse them, leading to a poor user experience. A lousy reader experience makes them leave your website without spending much time on it, increasing your bounce rate. A high bounce rate is recorded by Google: “Even though we send readers to this website, people leave the website very fast, which means they don’t like the website. So we will stop sending people to this website.”

It’s not exactly what Google says, but this is what it will think, and then boom! Your rankings drop.

Removing outdated content improves user satisfaction and engagement, positively impacting your website’s performance, keeping readers on your website longer (hence a lower bounce rate), and a positive signal to Google that the readers it’s sending to your website love it.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engines prioritize fresh and relevant content. Outdated content can negatively impact your search engine rankings, reducing your visibility and organic traffic. Regularly removing and updating obsolete content with current and optimized content can help improve your SEO efforts.

Read Also: SEO Tips to Help You Rank Higher

When people search for things on Google, now Google shows them how long ago the content they’re finding was published or last updated. See this screenshot below:

The one with the most recently published data is ranked higher than the article with a later date. In most cases, Google’s users will prefer to click on the topmost result that’s been recently updated.

Don’t miss out on the clicks or higher SEO rankings because of outdated content. Keep your content updated whenever you can.

4. Industry Compliance

Industries undergo changes in regulations, best practices, and standards over time. Outdated content may no longer align with the latest compliance requirements for your niche, potentially leading to legal or regulatory issues.

Some marketers have lost money in court battles because they didn’t understand the offers they were promoting or were too busy promoting them, and they didn’t realize the policies of those programs had become fraudulent. Think it’s a joke? Read this: Affiliate Marketers to Pay More Than $4 Million to Settle Charges that They Promoted a Fraudulent Business Coaching and Investment Scheme.

By removing outdated content, you ensure that your platform remains compliant and avoids any potential liabilities. If you were promoting a program that became fraudulent, you need to update your content as soon as possible to stay compliant.

5. Resource Optimization

Outdated content takes up storage space, server resources, crawling budget, and maintenance efforts. By removing outdated content, you free up valuable resources that can be allocated to more relevant and helpful content, improving overall website performance and efficiency.

6. Brand Perception

Outdated content reflects poorly on your website.

It may give the impression that you are not actively maintaining and updating your site, potentially diminishing trust with potential visitors.

Removing outdated content demonstrates your commitment to providing current and valuable information, enhancing your website’s perception.

Read Also: Why is Content Marketing Important for Your Brand?

How to Remove Outdated Content Safely 

Removing outdated content safely is necessary to ensure your website’s integrity and user experience and avoid the loss of good content that could still serve your readers.

Here are detailed steps on how to remove outdated content safely:

1. Conduct a Comprehensive Content Audit

Before removing any content, perform a thorough content audit to identify outdated pages, articles, or resources.

This audit should include checking website analytics, feedback or comments from your readers, engagement metrics, and SEO KPIs.

Look for content with outdated information, low user engagement, high bounce rates, or declining traffic.

In some cases, even pages with consistent traffic (not falling or rising) might get better performance after an content update.

2. Establish Clear Criteria for Outdated Content

Define specific criteria for determining whether the content is obsolete.

This could include outdated facts, statistics, references, technologies, or practices. Also, check for links to any broken or 404 pages.

Consider consulting subject matter experts or doing more research to ensure the content’s accuracy and relevance.

3. Prioritize Content for Removal

Once you have identified outdated content, prioritize the removal process.

Focus on pages with the highest negative impact on user experience, search engine rankings, or compliance issues.

Consider the potential consequences of removing content, such as broken internal links or adverse user reactions, and plan accordingly.

4. Archive or Update Relevant Information

For content that still contains valuable information but needs updates, consider archiving or updating it.

Archiving involves moving content to a separate section of your website and preserving it for reference. Updated content can be edited to reflect current information.

5. Implement Proper Redirects

When removing outdated content, implement proper redirects to guide users and search engines to the new addresses where they can find the most relevant and up-to-date version of the content.

To redirect visitors and search engines from old URLs to the new equivalent URLs, utilize 301 redirects.

This prevents users from encountering 404 errors and helps preserve your website’s search engine rankings because Google will direct users to the new page and keep your rankings intact.

6. Update Internal Links and References

After removing or updating content, review and update any internal links or references pointing to the outdated content.

This includes updating links within your website’s content, navigation menus, sidebar widgets, or related post sections.

Broken or incorrect internal links can negatively impact your user experience, which has a ripple effect on your website’s rankings.

7. Communicate Changes to Users and Stakeholders

Inform your readers about the removal or updating of outdated content.

Consider adding a notification on the affected pages that shows the content has been updated or removed. You can also publish a blog post explaining the reasons behind the changes.

This helps manage user expectations, reduces confusion, and demonstrates transparency with your audience.

8. Maintain a Backup of the Removed Content

Before removing any content, create a backup to preserve a copy of the original content.

This ensures that you have a record of the removed content for future reference or in case you need to restore it.

9. Handle 404 Errors Properly

Despite implementing redirects, some users may still encounter 404 errors due to outdated links or cached pages. Customize your 404 error page to provide a helpful message and suggest alternative resources or navigation options. Monitor your website for 404 errors and fix them promptly to enhance the user experience.

10. Update Xml Sitemaps and robots.txt Files

After removing or updating content, update your XML sitemap to reflect the changes.

This allows search engines to locate and index your updated information quickly.

Review your robots.txt file to ensure it doesn’t block search engine crawlers from accessing your updated pages.

11. Conduct Thorough Testing and Quality Assurance (QA)

Before and after removing outdated content, conduct thorough testing and QA checks.

Test your website’s navigation, internal links, redirects, and search functionality to ensure everything functions correctly.

Also, check for any unintended consequences of the removal, such as broken design elements or functionality.

12. Monitor Search Engine Indexation and Traffic

Keep a close eye on search engine indexation to ensure your updated content is properly crawled and indexed.

Monitor your website’s traffic, user behavior, and engagement metrics after removal to gauge the impact and identify any necessary adjustments.

SEO Factors to Remember Before Removing Your Outdated Content

When removing outdated information from your website, it’s critical to consider the possible influence on your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

Here are the key SEO factors to keep in mind before removing outdated content:

1. Traffic and Rankings

Review the organic traffic and search engine rankings of the content you plan to remove.

If the content drives significant traffic or ranks well for relevant keywords, consider the potential impact on your website traffic and visibility.

Look for opportunities to update or repurpose the content instead of removing it to maintain the traffic and rankings.

2. Backlinks

Examine the backlinks pointing to the outdated content pages.

Backlinks are crucial for SEO as they contribute to your website’s authority and search engine rankings.

If the writing has important backlinks, redirect the URLs to relevant pages on your site to maintain link equity and keep the SEO juice.

3. Internal Link Structure

Evaluate the internal links pointing to outdated content.

Internal linking plays a significant role in distributing link equity across your website and helping search engines understand the hierarchy and relevance of your content.

If you remove internally linked content, ensure that you update or remove those internal links to maintain a logical and organized internal link structure.

4. User Experience

Consider the impact on user experience when removing content.

If the outdated content provides valuable information or serves as a reference for users, removing it abruptly can disrupt their experience.

In such cases, it’s better to update the content with current information or redirect users to a relevant alternative rather than remove it entirely.

5. Redirect Strategy

Implement proper redirect strategies when removing content. If the outdated content has valuable traffic or backlinks, use 301 redirects to redirect users and search engines to relevant and updated pages.

This helps preserve link equity, maintain user experience, and prevent organic traffic loss.

6. XML Sitemap and Robots.txt

Update your XML sitemap and robots.txt file after removing the content. Remove the URLs of the outdated content from your XML sitemap to ensure search engines don’t crawl and index them.

Review your robots.txt file to ensure it doesn’t block search engine crawlers from accessing your updated pages.

7. Keyword Considerations

Evaluate the keywords targeted by outdated content. If the content ranks for valuable keywords or contributes to your keyword strategy, consider updating it with fresh information rather than obliterating it.

Ensure the updated content aligns with your keyword strategy and provides relevant and optimized content for target keywords.

Read Also: Keyword Optimization Guide For SEO Beginners

8. User Intent and Search Queries

Analyze the user intent and search queries behind outdated content. If the content no longer aligns with user intent or fails to address users’ queries effectively, it may be appropriate to remove it.

However, consider creating new content or optimizing existing pages to meet user intent and address those search queries, ensuring you don’t leave gaps in your content coverage.

9. Monitor and Adapt

After removing outdated content, monitor your website’s performance, organic traffic, and search engine rankings.

Analyze the impact of the removal and make necessary adjustments based on the data. If you notice significant drops in traffic or rankings, consider revisiting your content strategy and finding alternative ways to address user needs and search engine requirements.

Tools You Can Use to Remove Outdated Content

1. Content Management System (CMS) Tools

If your website is built on a CMS like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, you can leverage the built-in tools and plugins to manage and remove outdated content.

These CMS platforms often offer features to delete or update content in bulk, schedule content removal, and manage redirects.

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides valuable insights into the performance of your website’s content.

Utilize the “Behavior” section to analyze engagement metrics, such as bounce rates, time on page, and exit rates.

Identify pages with low engagement that may be candidates for removal or updating.

3. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a powerful website crawler that can help you identify outdated content and broken links.

It scans your website and provides detailed reports on URL status codes, metadata, and other SEO-related information.

Use it to find pages with outdated timestamps, low word counts, or other indicators of obsolete content.

4. SEMrush

SEMrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that offers various features to assist with content management.

Use the Site Audit feature to identify outdated pages, broken links, or issues affecting SEO performance.

The Content Analyzer tool helps you analyze content quality, relevance, and engagement metrics.

5. Google Search Console

Google Search Console gives information about how your website ranks in Google’s search results.

Use the “Coverage” report to identify any errors or issues with your pages, including outdated content.

The “URL Inspection” tool allows you to check individual URLs and request removal from Google’s index if necessary.

6. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO toolset that offers features to analyze and manage your website’s content.

Searching for specific keywords or subjects may uncover old information with the content explorer tool.

You can also utilize the Site Audit feature to identify pages with low traffic, low backlinks, or other indicators of outdated content.

Final Take 

Removing outdated content from your website is crucial for maintaining relevance, user experience, and SEO performance.

You can safely identify and remove outdated content by following a systematic approach, utilizing tools, and considering SEO factors.

This process helps ensure that your website provides accurate and valuable information to your audience while maintaining its visibility and authority on search engine pages.

Keep your content fresh, up-to-date, and aligned with user needs to impact your website’s performance positively.

If you’re like most people, Google is your go-to search engine due to its unmatched popularity and domination. It might not, however, always provide the greatest experience for everyone. Whether you want new viewpoints, increased privacy, or more customized search results, there are numerous options to consider.

Here are 25 excellent Google search engine alternatives to consider. These search engines each have unique features, privacy benefits, or specialized search capabilities.

AI-Powered Search Engines

AI search engines offer numerous benefits, including the capacity to understand context, quicker and more relevant results, and customized experiences.

They do, however, have drawbacks, including the possibility of bias, privacy issues, and an excessive reliance on technology.

It’s important to exercise caution while using AI search engines, double-check information from several sources, and be mindful of any potential negative effects. In this manner, you may maximize the advantages while lowering the dangers.

1. Bing

Google’s closest rival is Microsoft’s Bing search engine. It offers a variety of search features, such as map, video, and image searches.

According to HawkSEM, about 27% of US search queries are handled by Microsoft’s Bing.

Bing offers a range of customizable search settings, such as location settings, privacy controls to control data collection and usage, and safe search filters.

With the help of Microsoft’s AI technologies, Bing’s search capabilities are improved, outperforming many other search engines in terms of accuracy and contextual relevancy.   

Bing uses its own search algorithms and crawler, making its SERPs different from Google’s. It also offers Microsoft Rewards, earning users points for searches or shopping. These points are redeemable in Microsoft and Windows stores.

Bing has its chatbot, Copilot, which provides customized results to users.

According to Meetanishi Microsoft Bing gets more than 3 billion monthly active users.

3. Perplexity.ai

Perplexity AI is a search engine powered by AI that can be accessed via online and mobile applications. Since its launch in 2022, it has grown to 15 million users and answered 250 million questions by July 2024.

The platform uses AI to provide answers to search queries, providing source links that allow users to explore the original content. While the basic version is free, membership is necessary to access other services like image generation and Copilot, an intelligent assistant that prompts follow-up questions to improve search results.

However, because it relies on large language models (LLMs) to extract answers, Perplexity can occasionally generate false or misleading results.
For example, when asked “What are the seven wonders of the world”, Perplexity delivered a clear and informative response, accompanied by helpful citations for further reading.

4. You.com

You.com was founded in 2020 by Richard Socher, a well-known natural language processing (NLP) expert and former Salesforce chief scientist. Since its launch, they have served 1 billion queries.

You.com’s AI-powered search engine provides summary responses to questions. Additionally, they offer a list of websites with content related to your search.

Even though You.com has its internet crawler, it uses Bing to power its searches. You can select between a private mode, which guarantees that You.com does not gather any of your data, and a personal mode, which provides more customized options. You.com offers both a paid and freemium edition.

Additionally, the company provides an AI writing helper called YouWrite, an image-generating tool driven by AI, and a Chrome extension.

You may select from more than 20 different AI models with it, making it the ideal option for AI enthusiasts.

Mainstream Search EngineschGPT

Mainstream search engines have established themselves as credible competitors to Google and have retained a small but consistent market share over the last few years.

5. Yahoo!

Yahoo! is one of the more popular alternatives to Google, with a decent 2.67% of the market share in 2023.

Yahoo was around before Google. It started as a web portal and in 1995 developed its search engine. Yahoo’s strength lies in its diversification; in addition to search, it offers services like email, news, finance, and more.

Since Yahoo! uses Microsoft Bing as its engine, search results are comparable. It has a simple, text-heavy layout for its search results page.

Yahoo received over 700 million monthly active users and received 3.4 billion monthly visits in 2022 even though their search market share is declining.

6. Ecosia

The primary distinction that sets Ecosia apart is its dedication to using ad income for green initiatives, like planting trees.

Ecosia plants a tree for around every 45 searches you conduct. They give you a customized counter to keep track of the number of searches you’ve done, which demonstrates your direct involvement in reforestation.

Nearly 210 million trees have been planted by Ecosia to date, and the organization has also committed 85 million euros, or roughly $92 million, to climate action.

It doesn’t build a personal profile to customize adverts and search results, nor does it keep your search history indefinitely (it gets erased after a week). Additionally, Ecosia is open about the fact that you can disable cookies.

Additionally, Ecosia asserts that it is carbon-negative, having constructed its solar power plant to power its servers sustainably. Ecosia is free, however, you can gift a tree.  

7. Aol

AOL, previously America Online, is a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. You still get a start page with selected hot subjects from the news, entertainment, sports, health, food, and finance categories in the online portal game.

However, it can also be used as a web search engine. In the US, its market share is 0.09%. During the 1990s and 2000s, it was extremely popular.

It is not the most private search engine because location and activity tracking are enabled by default. On the other hand, you can disable these through the Privacy Dashboard. The search results are powered by partnerships with Google and Bing.

Privacy-Focused Search Engines

Protecting your digital privacy might be tough in the present day of targeted ads and tracking. For a more private and safe online search experience, these are the best alternative search engines.

8. Startpage

Startpage, headquartered in the Netherlands, provides Google-like search capabilities without tracking users. It is excellent for people who appreciate privacy.

Instead of searching the entire web, Startpage collects results from numerous search engines such as Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, highlighting links that are present across all of them. It also includes a URL generator, a proxy service, and HTTPS capability.

Startpage had topped 3 million daily searches by 2023, indicating that it was becoming increasingly popular among privacy-conscious users. It also complies with the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), which ensures user data privacy.

9. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a mainstream search engine, but its main appeal is that it doesn’t collect or store any personal information.

In 20121 it had substantial growth, managing about 98.79 million search queries per day. DuckDuckGo accounted for 2.13% of the US search market as of December 2023.

DuckDuckGo’s search results come from over 400 sources, but no personal information is shared with any of them.

DuckDuckGo is a wonderful solution for those who value their privacy and personal information when exploring the web.

They have DuckDuckGo Lite, a mobile version of the search engine.

10. Swisscows

Swisscows is a privacy-focused search engine headquartered in Switzerland, a country known for its strict privacy rules. It uses semantic information recognition to get rapid and efficient search results without retaining personal information.

Swisscows is also family-friendly, with automatic filtering of violent and inappropriate content. It avoids using tracking cookies and geolocation. While it uses Bing for web searches, it created its index for the German language edition.

With over 20 million searches processed monthly in 2018, Swisscows distinguished itself as a search engine that respects user privacy by not collecting or keeping data.

Swisscows also provides a unique, ad-free music search option that respects user privacy.

11. Brave Search

The private search engine Brave Search is produced by Brave Software, the same company that created the privacy-focused Brave browser.

In 2023, it became completely independent of other search engines such as Bing, relying only on its index to improve user privacy and transparency in search results.

Brave Search, which is integrated with the Brave browser, provides an ad-free browsing experience while also rewarding users with cryptocurrency, resulting in a unique combination of privacy and earnings.

Brave Search has grown rapidly, with 24.57 million daily active users as of January 2024. Additionally, it states that over 65 million people use the Brave browser every month for a faster and safer browsing experience.

12. Gibiru

Gibiru is a search engine that values privacy and does not censor results. It is ideal for people who want to avoid being tracked by the government or companies. Gibiru’s servers remove all search logs within seconds after processing the query. In March, Gibiru received 2.84 million visitors. It uses a modified Google algorithm to provide search results, so you can get what you’re looking for without worrying about Google tracking you.

Gibiru also offers a mobile app for anonymous online browsing. Gibiru earns commission when users make purchases or perform activities based on its search results, rather than using personal data for ads.

Search Engines for Specific Countries or Languages

These search engines are intended to address the special needs of users in various regions by reflecting local languages and cultural backgrounds. They can adjust to both language and cultural differences.

For example, Baidu and Yandex adhere to local censorship laws, which influence the material that users see. Similarly, Naver’s design has been modified to South Korean consumers’ preferences.

Here are some notable examples:

13. Baidu

Baidu is China’s leading search engine, with a 66% market share. Its search results cater specifically to the Chinese market, with content hosted on Chinese servers ranking higher in the SERPs.

Baidu, like Google, provides a variety of services, such as maps, music, movies, and an app store. In addition, Baidu offers a mobile browser and an app.

14. Yandex

Yandex is Russia’s top search engine, with more than 50% of the market share. It is well-known for its powerful algorithm, which accurately interprets Russian-language search requests. Yandex is also widely used in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Ukraine.

Apart from its search engine, Yandex offers a range of services like Yandex.Maps, Yandex.Music, and Yandex.Money, all of which contribute to a smooth user experience.

It also has an advertising network that lets businesses and organizations reach their intended audiences.

15. Sogou

Sogou is a rapidly growing Chinese search engine with a 5% market share in China. It provides an interactive search experience and includes features like WeChat integration, article search, English search, and translation services.

Sogou is committed to providing professional, accurate, and convenient search results by utilizing its own artificial intelligence algorithms.

16. Naver

Naver is the second most popular search engine in South Korea, accounting for 34% of the market share. Its interface is only in Korean, with no English version available.

As a local search engine, Naver does not index the entire internet. Instead, it concentrates on offering a variety of services, including blogs, news, music, and shopping.

Furthermore, Naver provides a mobile app for easy searching on the go.

Charitable search engines

17. Goodsearch

Goodsearch is a charitable search engine that donates a portion of its profits to organizations that its users choose. Goodsearch donates $0.01 to the user’s selected charity for each search that is conducted. Yahoo generates the search results.

But there are a few things you should know about the GoodSearch browser extension. It is categorized as a browser hijacker by PCRisk, which implies that it can change browser settings without the permission of the user, possibly compromising their security and privacy.

18. YouCare

YouCare, a charitable search engine founded in France, gives away 80% of its income to various charitable organizations.

YouCare stands out for being transparent; to confirm the contributions made, go to their donation certificates page. YouCare also has a counter that keeps track of how many searches you’ve done.

You can also specify where your money can be allocated among the many charitable deeds.

A Copyright-Free Search Engine

19. Openverse

Openverse is an open-source search engine developed as part of the WordPress initiative to assist users locate free and freely licensed content like as images and audio.

Unlike Google, which provides a broader range of search results, Openverse focuses on a huge, searchable library of open-source media, such as images, audio, and videos.

It’s excellent for anyone who needs music for movies or photos for blog articles without having to worry about copyright issues.

Openverse indexes more than 700 million objects from 45 sources, including Wikimedia Commons and Flickr.

A Revenue-Sharing Search Engine

20. Yep.com

Yep.com, created by Ahrefs, positions itself as a unique search engine that prioritizes user privacy by not tracking or selling user data.

While it monitors the frequency of keyword searches and the click popularity of links, it does not create personal profiles for targeted advertisements. Its business approach encourages direct pay for content providers by offering a 90/10 revenue share.

Additionally, it does not keep search history, IP addresses, or User-Agent strings indefinitely.

Knowledge-Based Search Engines

21. Wiki.com

Wiki.com collects results from thousands of wikis throughout the internet, making it a perfect search engine for people who value community-driven information, such as Wikipedia.

Wiki.com increases the accessibility of varied information sources by focusing on collaborative content, which appeals to individuals who value community-led information.

22. Wayback Machine

The Internet Archive, often known as the Wayback Machine, is a useful tool for researching historical web pages and much more.

It serves as a comprehensive online library, providing access to a wide collection of digitized materials such as millions of free videos, books, music, and software.

23. X (Formerly Twitter)

X stands out as a fantastic real-time search engine, especially useful during situations when immediate updates are critical. While Google may eventually catch up, nothing beats the speed of a tweet in critical situations.

X excels in providing minute-by-minute information, making it the go-to platform for those who need quick updates and insights when every second counts.

Its capacity to supply real-time material ensures that people remain informed and connected during critical events.

Specialized Search Engines

Specialized search engines focus on specialized topics or industries, giving users more relevant and focused results than broad search engines such as Google.

Here are some  examples:

24. WolframAlpha

WolframAlpha is a powerful computational knowledge engine that delivers precise answers in a variety of fields, including mathematics, science, and linguistics.

It is an excellent resource for students, teachers, and professionals.

The Pro version, priced at $5.49 per month, includes advanced computing and data processing features.

25. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is widely known as a business-oriented search engine, with 61 million searches made each week. Its search algorithm promotes the originality of an organization’s LinkedIn Page name; more distinctive names get higher search results. 

However, overusing keywords might backfire, triggering spam filters and lowering visibility.

The system takes into account criteria such as the number of followers, connections to the searcher, page activity, and the relevancy of search terms in the organization’s name, all of which influence search ranks.

Conclusion

While Google is still the preferred search engine for many people, it’s important to know that it may not always be the greatest fit for your requirements and tastes.

Exploring other search engines can have numerous advantages, including increased privacy and a more personalized search experience. Whether you want to share entertaining material or protect your online privacy, these options can help.

From privacy-focused platforms to those with unique features and eco-friendly solutions, there is a search engine for everyone. We encourage you to experiment with these alternatives and share your results.

Which ones did you try, and how did they affect your search habits?

Let’s say you just launched your website. It looks great, it has all your services, maybe even a blog post or two. Now what?

How do people find you on Google?

This is where SEO comes in.

In this guide, I’ll explain what SEO really means, how it works, and how to start using it—in plain, non-technical language. Whether you’re a small business owner, startup founder, or total beginner, this is for you.

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

It simply means making changes to your website and content so that search engines like Google can:

1. Find your pages
2. Understand what your pages are about
3. Decide to show them to people searching for something relevant

In other words: SEO helps your website show up when people search for things on Google.

If you sell handmade soap, and someone types “natural lavender soap for sensitive skin” into Google—you want your page to show up, right?

That’s SEO.

How Does SEO Work?

To understand SEO, you have to know what happens behind the scenes when someone types something into Google.

Here’s a simple version of what Google does:

1. Crawls your site (like a robot scanning all your pages)
2. Indexes your pages (stores them in its giant library)
3. Ranks them (decides which page should show up first for each search)

To help Google do this well, your site needs to be clear, helpful, trustworthy, and easy to navigate.

Let’s break it down further.

Key Concepts to Understand

1. SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)

The SERP is what you see after typing a question or phrase into Google.

It includes:

• Organic results (these are the ones SEO helps with)
• Ads (people pay to show up here)
• Featured snippets, AI overviews, people also ask, and more

Your goal in SEO is to appear in the organic results—ideally near the top, because most people don’t scroll far.

2. Keywords

Keywords are the words or phrases people type into Google.

For example:

• “how to bake banana bread”
• “best hiking shoes for beginners”
• “accounting software for freelancers”

To rank on Google, your content needs to match the intent behind those keywords. That means:

• If someone wants a guide, give them a full tutorial
• If they want to compare products, create a comparison
• If they want to buy, show them pricing and features

Keyword research is the process of figuring out what people search for, how often, and how hard it is to rank.

3. Links (Backlinks and Internal Links)

Backlinks are when other websites link to your site. Think of it like a vote of confidence.

• The more high-quality backlinks you have, the more Google trusts your content.
• That trust helps your pages rank higher.

Internal links are when you link from one page on your site to another.

• This helps users navigate your site
• It helps Google understand how your pages relate to each other

4. Crawling and Indexing

Google uses bots (called spiders or crawlers) to scan the web.

• Crawling is when the bot visits your site and checks out your pages.
• Indexing is when Google stores that information and decides whether your page should be shown in search.

If your site has broken pages, weird code, or missing information, Google might skip it or not understand it well.

That’s why technical SEO—making sure your site loads fast, works on phones, and is structured clearly—is so important.

What SEO Looks Like in Practice

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you run a local dog grooming business in Seattle.

You create a page titled “Professional Dog Grooming Services in Seattle.”

You include:

• A clear description of your services
• Prices
• Photos
• Customer reviews
• Your location and hours

You also:

• Add this page to your website’s menu
• Submit your site to Google using Search Console
• Ask a local pet blogger to mention your service (earning a backlink)

Now when someone nearby searches “dog grooming near me” or “pet grooming Seattle,” Google might show your page—especially if your competitors aren’t doing SEO.

That’s the power of SEO.

Why SEO Matters

• It brings free traffic to your website
• It compounds over time: the longer you invest, the more results you get
• It builds trust and authority with your audience
• It helps you get discovered by people actively searching for what you offer

You don’t need to be an expert to get started.

You just need to:

• Create helpful content
• Make your site easy to use
• Learn a little at a time
• Keep showing up

SEO is like planting seeds. It takes time, but once things start growing, the results keep coming.

What’s Next?

Now that you understand what SEO is, you might want to:

• Learn how long SEO takes to work → [Read our SEO Timeline Guide]
• Discover what search intent is → [What Is Search Intent and Why It Matters?]
• Fix common tech issues on your site → [Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO]

Let’s take it one step at a time. You’ve already started.

Welcome to SEO.

Backlinks remain one of the most critical factors in improving search engine rankings. This guide highlights 40 free backlink sites that can help you earn high-quality backlinks to your website.

We selected platforms based on their reliability, domain authority, and relevance to different industries.

Whether you’re just starting or refining your SEO strategy, these free resources offer practical opportunities to strengthen your backlink profile and boost your site’s authority in search results.

What is the Role of Backlinks in Improving SEO Rankings?

Backlinks are a key factor in how search engines evaluate and rank websites. When reputable sites link to your content, they signal trust and authority. These links validate your site’s relevance and credibility within a topic or industry.

Google and other search engines rely on backlinks as part of their ranking algorithms. The more high-quality backlinks you earn, especially from authoritative sources, the higher your site will appear in search results. It boosts organic traffic, lead generation, and brand awareness.

However, not all backlinks are equal. A few links from trusted, relevant sites are far more effective than dozens from low-quality or unrelated sources. Prioritizing quality over quantity is essential to building a strong SEO foundation.

In short, backlinks directly impact your site’s authority, visibility, and position in search results.

Read Also: How Many Backlinks Do I Need To Rank On Page 1

Top Free Backlink Sites 

In this section, we will introduce you to the top free backlink sites that can provide valuable backlinks to your website.

These websites have been selected carefully for their domain authority, relevancy, and reputation to ensure quality. As a result, utilizing these sites can improve your website’s SEO rankings and increase your online visibility.

1. Crunchbase

Crunchbase offers a high-authority (DA 81) backlink opportunity. You can list your business for free, include your website link, and optimize your profile with accurate details and relevant keywords to strengthen your backlink profile and boost SEO visibility.

2. HARO 

HARO (Help a Reporter Out) connects journalists with expert sources. Create a free account, select relevant industries, and receive three daily emails with media queries.

Respond to the ones that match your expertise. If a journalist uses your response, you’ll earn a backlink from a reputable publication.

3. MyBlogU

MyBlogU is a content collaboration platform where bloggers, writers, and marketers connect to exchange ideas and co-create content.

Create a profile and participate in interviews or brainstorming projects. Share valuable insights within your niche, and contributors may credit you with a backlink, helping you grow authority and improve SEO.

4. Google Sites 

Google Sites is a free tool that lets anyone with a Gmail account build a simple website and secure a backlink. These sites get indexed quickly, helping improve your brand’s visibility in search results.

Create a Google Site with relevant content about your niche or business. Then, add a link to your main website and optimize the page with niche-specific keywords to boost SEO.

Read Also: Best SEO Practices to Dominate the SERPs

5. Google Drive Assets

Google Drive offers more than just cloud storage. You can use it to build quality backlinks. Create public Docs, Sheets, or Forms that include links to your website.

Share these assets publicly and embed valuable content with niche-relevant links. Boosts your backlink profile, drives referral traffic, and strengthens your authority in search results.

6. SourceBottle 

SourceBottle connects journalists with expert sources. It sends daily emails with media queries from reporters looking for insights and quotes.

To earn backlinks, sign up, create a complete profile showcasing your expertise, and monitor queries related to your niche. Respond with precise, helpful pitches. If selected, your quote may appear in a published article with a backlink to your website, boosting SEO and referral traffic.

7. BizSugar

BizSugar lets business owners and entrepreneurs share tips, trends, and news. You can gain backlinks by posting niche-relevant content others vote on and engage with.

To build backlinks, create an account, publish valuable content, and include a link to your website. As your posts gain traction, other members may share or link back to your content, increasing referral traffic and SEO rankings.

8. GitHub 

GitHub is a platform where developers collaborate and share open-source projects. You can build backlinks by contributing to repositories, creating documentation, or launching your projects.

Add a link to your website in your GitHub profile, project READMEs, or shared resources. Positions you as an active contributor and helps drive traffic while improving your site’s authority.

9. GrowthHackers 

GrowthHackers is a community for digital marketers focused on business growth. You can earn backlinks by sharing original content, syndicating blog posts, and engaging in discussions.

Post valuable insights and link to your website where relevant. Consistent participation increases your visibility, drives referral traffic, and improves SEO.

10. DeviantArt 

DeviantArt is an online community where artists share artwork, photography, and GIFs. Upload your creations, include a backlink in the description or bio, and attract a new audience while improving your SEO.

Create an account, post consistently, and link to your site. Boosts visibility and earns valuable backlinks from an engaged art community.

11. Business 2 Community 

Business 2 Community is a content-sharing platform where professionals publish insights on marketing, SEO, leadership, and tech. As a contributor, you can submit original or repurposed content to build authority and gain backlinks.

Not only boosts your visibility but also drives referral traffic to your content marketing website, helping improve your search rankings.

12. SoundCloud 

SoundCloud is a popular platform for sharing both music and podcasts. Create a free account, upload your audio content, and add your website link to each track, episode description, or show notes. Helps you build backlinks and drive referral traffic from listeners.

13. Blogger

Blogger is a free, Google-owned platform you can use for link building. Set up a branded blog, publish valuable articles related to your niche, and add relevant links to your website. Optimize blog posts with keywords to drive organic traffic and strengthen your backlink profile.

14. Alltop 

Alltop is a content aggregator that collects real-time RSS feeds from top blogs and websites. Submit your blog’s RSS feed to earn a backlink, boost brand visibility, and drive referral traffic. Optimize blog content to ensure relevance and value for the Alltop audience.

Read Also: How to Remove Outdated Content from Your Website

15. Mix 

Mix is a free platform for curating and sharing content. Create an account, build collections of high-quality articles, videos, or images, and include links to your site.

As users engage with your collections, you earn backlinks, boost brand visibility, and improve your backlink profile.

16 Weebly 

Weebly is a free Web 2.0 platform for building backlinks. Use its drag-and-drop builder to create a branded site, add valuable content, and include backlinks to your main website. These links help improve SEO, boost brand visibility, and build credibility.

17. Wix 

Wix is a free platform you can use to build Web 2.0 backlinks. Create a site, add optimized content, and include backlinks to your leading site.

Sign up for a free account, customize your pages with valuable content, images, or videos, and boost your SEO with relevant links.

18. Yola

Yola is a user-friendly site builder that lets you create content and add backlinks to your business. Sign up, build a site with optimized content, and include links to your main website to strengthen your backlink profile and improve SEO rankings.

19. Live Journal

LiveJournal is a blogging platform that lets you share industry-related posts and include backlinks to your website. Create an account, publish content with targeted links, and engage readers to boost traffic and strengthen your backlink profile.

Read Also: Content Marketing Statistics to Drive Your Brand

20. Tumblr

Tumblr is a microblogging platform that still offers link equity, making it helpful in building free backlinks. Create an account, share valuable multimedia content, include backlinks, and optimize posts with relevant keywords to boost traffic and brand visibility.

21. WordPress

WordPress is the world’s leading content management system, powering over 40% of all websites. To build backlinks, start with a self-hosted WordPress site.

Then, publish high-quality content in your niche and embed strategic backlinks. Additionally, engage your audience through comments and social sharing to boost SEO and increase traffic.

22. Yelp

Yelp is a high-authority platform ideal for building local backlinks. To get started, claim your business listing with a verifiable local address. Once approved, Yelp provides a free, high-quality backlink.

Next, optimize your profile with accurate details, images, and services. Finally, respond to customer reviews to build trust and improve local SEO visibility.

23. Google My Business Profile

Google My Business helps your business rank higher in local search results and builds website authority by linking your brand to a trusted Google platform.

Since 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, claiming your profile can significantly boost local visibility and customer trust

Read Also: SEO Tips to Help Your Rank Higher

24.  TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is a high-authority platform ideal for businesses in the travel industry, such as hotels, restaurants, car rentals, or tour services.

You can earn a quality backlink by creating a strong profile, responding to reviews, and highlighting what sets your business apart. Additionally, this builds trust and attracts potential customers searching for reliable travel experiences.

25. Trustpilot

Trustpilot is a customer review website that contains reviews of businesses worldwide. You may sign up, have your company listed, and add a backlink.

Then, encourage your consumers to submit reviews for your site, which can help you increase your brand’s authority in your sector.

26. LinkedIn

LinkedIn helps you connect with industry professionals and share content relevant to your niche. When you post valuable insights, engage in conversations, and link to your website, you build backlinks while increasing your brand’s authority and visibility.

27. Medium

Medium lets you publish for both original and repurposed content with backlinks to your website. Use this platform to boost your reach, build authority, and strengthen your SEO strategy.

28. Quora

Quora is a popular Q&A platform where users seek and share knowledge. While it doesn’t primarily serve for backlink building, providing valuable answers related to your expertise can indirectly drive traffic to your site.

Include links when genuinely relevant. However, be cautious not to overly self-promote, as Quora values informative contributions.

29. Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual discovery platform where you can showcase both contents through engaging pins and boards.

To get started, create eye-catching visuals, optimize descriptions with keywords, and link back to your website. Consistent activity helps you build visibility, drive traffic, and earn valuable backlinks.

30. Facebook

Facebook isn’t a primary backlink source, but you can still earn link equity. Create a business page, add links in the About section, and share content in posts. Join niche-relevant groups, engage with users, and post valuable content to increase visibility and drive traffic.

31. Twitter

Twitter is a popular site for various Internet marketers, and it’s an excellent place to obtain a steady supply of backlinks.

32. YouTube

YouTube is a powerful platform for building both do-follow and nofollow backlinks. Add links in your video descriptions, channel About section, and community posts.

Include more than five links per channel to drive traffic and improve SEO. Create helpful videos that match your niche, and engage with viewers to guide them to your site.

Also Read: How Many Backlinks Per Month Should You Get?

33. Vimeo

Vimeo is a professional video-sharing platform that creators and businesses use to showcase high-quality videos. Additionally, it lets you add links to your website in your profile and video descriptions.

Vimeo doesn’t primarily focus on link building, but supports your SEO strategy if you regularly publish video content. These links can drive traffic, improve visibility, and boost your brand’s authority.

34. Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a widely used online encyclopedia with strict editorial standards. You can earn backlinks by contributing well-sourced, neutral content to relevant articles.

When you cite your website as a credible reference, editors may retain the link if it adds value. While Wikipedia backlinks are usually nofollow, they can improve your site’s visibility and drive traffic from a trusted platform.

35. Industry Blogs

Industry blogs offer opportunities for guest posting, which is an excellent way to earn backlinks. However, to make the most of this strategy, choose reputable blogs relevant to your niche with good domain authority, ensuring that the backlinks gained can positively impact your SEO efforts.

36. Minds

Minds is a blockchain-based social media platform where users earn tokens by posting and engaging with content.

You can include backlinks in your posts and profile to drive traffic to your site. It offers a niche space to build backlinks while participating in a decentralized, crypto-friendly community.

37. Unsplash

Unsplash is a platform where users share and download free, high-quality images. While not designed for link building, photographers and creators can add backlinks to their website in image attributions.

By uploading original photos, you can earn backlinks and drive referral traffic when others use your images and credit your site.

38. Flickr

Flickr is an image-sharing platform where users can upload and showcase their photos. Moreover, you can include your website link in image descriptions or your profile.

While Flickr isn’t primarily a backlink-building tool, popular images can generate referral traffic and improve brand visibility.

39. SlideShare

SlideShare is an online resource that allows you to share presentations and documents. Moreover, it enables users to include backlinks in their slides, making it a valuable platform for sharing content and earning backlinks.

40. Wattpad

Wattpad is a writing and reading community. While it allows authors to showcase their work, including backlinks within the content might be more complex.

However, you can still use it to engage with readers while indirectly promoting your website.

Final Take on Free Backlink Sites

Free backlink sites can help boost your SEO rankings, but they work best when used strategically. Focus on relevant platforms, share high-quality content, and diversify your link sources.

It builds a strong, natural backlink profile that supports long-term SEO growth.
Since the value of these sites can change over time, track their performance and adjust your strategy regularly to maintain lasting results.

Featured Image Source: seochatter.com