And since big search engines – such as Google – frown on “link building” strategies, we like to focus on link earning. 

What’s the difference? 

https://act-on.com/learn/blog/seo-faq-your-most-common-seo-questions-answered/

Link building is typically associated with shady practices. Examples include working with so-called experts to include your website in directories or similar strategies designed to game the system and get ranked higher. Link earning focuses on creating quality content that earns backlinks from high-authority websites. 

Not sure where to start? No worries! We’re here to share our three favorite strategies to help you earn links and stay on the good side of Google. 

Earn links: Spy on competitors 

A great place to start is to uncover how your biggest competitors earn links. The Moz backlink checker is a great option for pulling backlinks. Or you can use the free version of the ahrefs.com tool. 

Simply plug in a competitor’s website and see what comes back. For example, if you type our website into the ahrefs tool, you can see our top backlinks and their domain rating (DR). The DR gives you a quick backlinks quality check (the higher the DR rating, the higher the link quality). 

Here are a few tips for getting started: 

Organize your list and attack the best opportunities first. Focus on backlinks quality. List your competitors’ highest-quality backlinks so you can focus on those opportunities first. 

Review links from domain names ending in .edu and .gov. These sites have high credibility with search engines. Evaluate the competitor content earning these types of links. What types of content are they creating? Do any opportunities exist for your brand? 

Review the most linked-to content. Evaluate the competitor’s content that is being linked to the most. What makes the content “link-worthy”? Is it content that you can develop? 

Search for pages that have the word “links” or “resource” in the URL. These pages often list resources, and if your site isn’t listed, it’s a great opportunity to pitch inclusion. And here’s a pro tip: Consider creating a resource section on your website. Link to relevant resources that have a high domain rating, and then reach out and let them know what you’ve done. When you do this, share a resource on your website that might fit nicely on their resources page. 

Earn links: Hang out with the experts 

Landing niche-relevant backlinks is important to improving SEO. A great strategy for landing these links is pitching related blogs and podcasts. When you write a guest post or appear as a podcast guest, you typically get a link to your website. 

https://act-on.com/learn/blog/seo-faq-your-most-common-seo-questions-answered/

But how do you do it? Here’s a three-step process: 

Research trending content. Blogs and podcasts with high domain authority get many pitches. As a result, you’ll need to stand out. A smart way to do this is to research what already works well for a company. You can use a tool like BuzzSumo (they have a free version) and enter the company’s URL. It will show you the content with the highest social media engagement. On a side note, it also shows who shared the content, which you can keep track of for future use (influencer marketing, anyone?). 

Create your angle. Did you uncover a company’s most successful content? Great! Use this information to pitch a new angle on a high-performing topic. For example, you might learn that a topic related to AI performed well, so you pitch your SME as a podcast guest, discussing how companies use AI in email campaigns to increase response rates by 20%.  

Write your pitch. Your pitch should be short and straightforward. Consider including the working headline of the guest post or podcast episode in your email subject line. Then, include the following:

1. A short sentence about what you love about the blog or podcast. Make it complimentary, but be authentic and honest. 
2. An intro to the topic you’d like to pitch and why you think it works well for their audience. 
3. The working headline and a 3-4-sentence summary. 
4. A CTA that asks the reader to reach out if they’d like to discuss the idea more. 

If you don’t hear back, follow up in a week. Ask for a response by a specific date; otherwise, explain that you’ll assume they aren’t interested, and you’ll send them future pitches. 

Earn links: Feature influencers in your content 

Are you overwhelmed by sending pitches? No worries, there’s another strategy that is a little easier and can help you grab some quick wins: Feature influencers in your content. 

For example, let’s say that you’re a software company and your target market is B2B content marketers. What publications do they read? Which influencers do they follow? After a little research, you learn that many read MarketingProfs, and Ann Handley is the company’s Chief Content Officer and an influencer. She also wrote a book. 

So you write a blog post titled “7 Lessons from Ann Handley’s ‘Everybody Writes’ That Grew Our Email Subscribers by 30%.” 

But you don’t stop there. Nope. You reach out to Ann (perhaps on LinkedIn) and tell her you were so inspired by her book that you wrote a post about it. 

Now, I’ll stop here because there is an important caveat with this strategy. You must be authentic. If you don’t love an influencer’s work, pick a different one. We used this example because we happen to love Ann’s work! 

With any luck, the influencer will share the link. This strategy lets you double dip because you can also share the post on social media, tagging MarketingProfs in hope that they, too, will share the content. 

And here’s one more idea: Check whether the influencer has a resources page. If they do, and you feel your content is worth inclusion, pitch it. 

Bonus tip: Get your SMEs featured

Journalists and writers create a continuous stream of content, and they need sources to bring that content to life. As a result, they’ll put out a call on Help a Reporter Out requesting a specific type of subject-matter expert. 

You can respond to those requests, putting your SME forward to be interviewed for that publication. And when they are interviewed, you will typically get a backlink. Also, if your audience is B2B, you can check out Help a B2B Writer. Calls for SMEs come from writers working on B2B stories that need sources. 

Remember, before responding to a request, check the DA of the publication to ensure that it aligns with your earned link strategy. 

Earned links: It’s a long game 

Link building isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it task. It’s a continuous and ongoing process. But if you’re deliberate and consistent, then over time, your SEO rankings should improve, and you’ll receive more website traffic and greater results. 

Do you have questions about SEO? If so, we’ve got you covered with our SEO FAQ resource, which takes a deep dive into the most common and confusing aspects of SEO. 

Easy wins. Everybody wants them, right? Especially when it’s your job to attract more organic traffic through search engines and you’re working to improve search engine optimization (SEO). The challenge is that algorithms are a moving goalpost – and hey, let’s not sugarcoat it: SEO is hard. These SEO basics are essential knowledge on your path to better rankings, increased visibility in search results and more traffic.

Just when you think you have it all figured out, the algorithm does an inconvenient reshuffle. Google comes out with the latest Google algorithm update.

And yet, even with this difficulty, you can still target some easier areas of SEO. We’ve highlighted basic SEO tips to help get on the right side of Google and other search engines. 

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategy focused on attracting more visitors to your website. More traffic helps you support your audience on their buyers’ journeys, whether that’s providing blog content, downloading an eBook, signing up for your email list, scheduling a product demo, or taking some other action. 

Search Engine Optimization might include keyword optimizing your content, building more links to your website pages, and handling more technical areas (like making sure your website doesn’t load at a snail’s pace). Make sense? Excellent.

Let’s dive into the other SEO basics you can get started with today! 

Pay close attention to your Meta Titles

When you search for things online, the first thing you’ll see in the results are meta titles. Mastering this element is not only basic SEO, it’s an essential component of mastering SEO for beginners. In the example below, the page meta title is “Act-On: Marketing Automation Software”

The meta title is usually the first thing people see when searching for things online. It’s important for search visibility but also for capturing attention in search results. When a user searches for a keyword, you want to show up in the search engine results and do so with a title that’s so enticing they can’t help but click it. 

Here are a few things to remember when it comes to meta titles: 

• Give each page a unique meta title to avoid multiple pages competing for the same keywords. 
• Use your most important keyword in the title, and try to use it early, but do so naturally. 
• Make sure you do a good job describing what the page is about, so the reader feels like “Yes, this is exactly what I’m looking for.”
• Ensure your meta title is the right length to avoid it getting cut off. Aim for less then 60 characters. Use a character length checker when needed.

And while we’re on the topic of how you appear in search results, we can’t talk about meta titles without discussing meta descriptions (those little blurbs that appear under your meta title). And that’s our second tip for improving your rankings. 

Write engaging Meta Descriptions 

If you do a great job writing the meta title, readers will likely skim your meta description and then, hopefully, click your link. That’s why a strong meta title and meta description are essential for your basic SEO knowledge.

We love this meta description example from the Content Marketing Institute:

Meta Title: Don’t Make SEO the Reason for Your Content Marketing

Meta Description: SEO isn’t the best grounding for a new content marketing program. Here’s what you should think about instead.

Consider using curiosity in your meta description, and of course, remember to include your most important keyword in your meta title and meta description to improve SEO performance. Try to keep the length of your meta descriptions to 155 characters or less to avoid them getting cut off.

Avoid keyword stuffing

It’s tempting to stuff pages full of keywords. After all, if one keyword is good, then a bunch must be great, right? Not necessarily. 

What is keyword stuffing? It’s the overuse and misuse of keywords in your content. Before Google cracked down, many marketers crammed far too many keywords into their pages, used them unnaturally, and sometimes just flat-out listed them (separating them with a simple comma). Sometimes they even used tricky tactics, like putting keywords in the same color as the background to hide them! And that didn’t go over well with Google. 

According to Google, keyword stuffing is when you load a page with keywords in order to manipulate a website’s rankings. Instead, Google wants you to provide useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context. So, yes, pick great keywords but prioritize quality and quantity. 

Link to high-traffic web pages

Do you have rock star web pages? You know, the ones pulling in far more traffic than the rest? We’ll let you in on a little secret. This blog on effective email subject lines is one of our top performers. But here’s the point: You want to squeeze these pages for all they’re worth. Here’s how: 

1. Understand which pages bring you the most traffic. We love using Google Analytics to find this data. 
2. Link from your top performing pages to your brand-new content. 

When you do this, it helps more people find your new content and is a positive signal to Google for new content rankings. 

And one more thing you should know as part of your SEO basics crash course. If you’re feeling lost about the performance of your existing pages, you can use tools like our SEO audit tool. It generates real-time reports that detail each page’s SEO performance, along with recommendations on how to improve it. 

Create pillar pages 

If you aren’t using pillar pages, consider them in your B2B SEO strategy. Pillar pages make it easier for search engines to crawl your content while signaling that you’re an expert in your niche. Here are a few tips for getting started with pillar pages: 

1. Define a general topic. For example, we’d look for a topic related to marketing automation since that’s what we do at Act-On. 
2. Plug a topic-related keyword into a research tool. We use SEMrush, but other options exist, such as Moz, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, and Google Keyword Planner. If we type “marketing automation” into a keyword tool, we can find related keywords and begin grouping them. 
3. Create “content clusters.” Staying with the marketing automation example, we may notice keyword groupings around marketing automation, email marketing automation, and lead nurturing. As a result, we could create the following pillar pages: marketing automation best practices guide, email marketing automation strategies for success, and lead nurturing and conversion with marketing automation. 
4. Create related optimized content for each pillar page. Create a pillar page (it’s kind of like a big, long landing page), and then link out to other related pages in the content cluster. 

As you evaluate potential keywords, don’t forget to look for lower funnel keywords. For example, “how to set up a marketing automation demo” or “how to buy a marketing automation tool” are phrases that signal the searcher is close to purchase, resulting in higher-quality website traffic. 

Use ALT tags for images

ALT tags let you add a text description to every page image. They’re an often-overlooked part of SEO basics, but an easy way to optimize your pages. Additionally, they’re important for content accessibility, as they tell users who are visually impaired details about your images via screen reading tools. 

Most content management systems make it very easy to add ALT tags. Sprinkle your keywords in as you write them, but as always, write ALT tags for human readers, not for search engines.

ALT tags are also important for social sharing. A few social platforms, like Pinterest, will use the ALT tag copy as the default description. So make sure your ALT tags make sense in case they are displayed to readers on social media.

Use keywords in the file names

Using keywords as file names is simple and may support better rankings. It helps readers understand what’s in the document – and what’s good for the readers is also good for SEO. 

Just don’t go wild and use multiple keywords in your file names. Ideally, use one keyword, and at the most, two. Here are a couple of examples: 

Good filename: crm-study-ebook.pdf

Bad, keyword-stuffed filename: CRMManagement_BuyCRM_CRMServices_Ebook

Do this well, and you’ll give search engines a little more info about what your content is about, and every little bit helps. You should also use all lower letters and separate the words using dashes.

Don’t forget social media 

Social media might not be an official SEO ranking factor, yet it appears to have an impact, so you should include it in your understanding of SEO basics.

SEMrush recently noted that Google appears to use online brand mentions to influence what terms you rank for. 

As you share content on social media and your audience shares it, traffic to your site improves – and you might even score some backlinks. The number of backlinks, and the quality of those links, also impact SEO performance (more on that shortly). 

So, consider adding social sharing buttons to your content. Share your content via social media. And encourage others to share it, whether it’s your employees, subject-matter experts who you interview, or business partners who work in the same space. 

Build links very carefully

Nobody likes a bad reputation. And shady link-building practices risk earning a bad rap with search engines. 

Smart marketers are cautious about link-building. Google appears to frown on most “link-building tactics.” So avoid any experts who want to submit your site to 500 directory listings or want to “spin” one of your articles and submit it to a bunch of article directories. 

Here are some safe ways to build links: 

• Create a piece of amazing and high-value content. 
• Do unique research and publish it as a report.
• Publish unique, insightful articles on high-authority sites.
• Create the type of traditional business listings expected on sites such as Yelp, your local chamber of commerce, and trade organizations.

And remember, when in doubt, don’t do it. 

Format your content so it’s easy to read

Lastly, if you remember any of these SEO basics, remember to make your content friendly for human readers. Because when humans love your content, so will search engines. Here are a few tips for making your content easy to read:  

• Write short paragraphs.
• Punctuate those short paragraphs with a one-sentence paragraph every so often.
• Use subheaders.
• Use bullet points. See a string of commas in a sentence? That’s often an opportunity for a bullet list.
• Add images every 350 words or so.
• Add quotes and call-outs.

And while there’s no such thing as “easy SEO,” you can use some of these easier tactics to get on the path to improved rankings. Sure, you’ll still need to stay on top of the latest and greatest algorithm shuffles. It’s the nature of SEO, right? But when you write content that is truly valuable to your audience, the impacts are timeless. As a result, the content will continue supporting improved traffic, generate more leads, and get the results you need. 

Want to go beyond SEO Basics?

Yeah, we get it; there’s so much to know! We’ve compiled the most common SEO questions and provided our expert answers.

Hitting the #1 position in search results is every SEO marketer’s dream and low funnel keywords hold the key. With higher traffic and more page views, it’s only reasonable to expect a bump in conversions and sales. However, when that doesn’t happen, it leaves you asking: What went wrong? The answer is simple … not all traffic is good traffic.

We’ll give you an example. 

We have a Yahoo mail blog that has scored high-traffic keywords for almost a decade. At one point, we were in the top five search results for the term “Yahoo mail.” But here’s the question. What is the search intent of those visitors? It’s murky, isn’t it? 

One thing is for sure, though: search intent isn’t aligned with marketing automation, which is what we do here at Act-On. The challenge is that fragmented intent doesn’t deliver targeted traffic. 

And that brings us to strategically aligning keywords with the marketing funnel and, more specifically, low funnel keywords. 

Introduction to Keyword Funnels & Keyword Research

As you probably know, there are three stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness, consideration, and decision. When creating content, you want to align your content with specific stages in the customer journey and strategically choose keywords based on that. 

We’d argue that when you can sprinkle in solid bottom funnel keywords, you’ll get more focused and profitable traffic. Here’s a quick breakdown of the stages to better understand the value of lower funnel keywords. 

Top Funnel Keywords: Awareness

Let’s kick things off with an example. A B2B marketer is struggling to do more with less. At this stage, the marketer is learning, researching, and becoming aware of potential solutions. An example of top funnel keywords she might search include “How to improve marketing productivity” or “How to scale a marketing department.” 

Middle Funnel Keywords: Consideration 

Staying with the same example, the marketer decides she is interested in marketing automation. She narrows potential options by visiting provider websites, reading third-party reviews, talking with peers, and possibly attending trade shows to check out solutions in person. At the middle funnel keywords stage, she might search for “Top marketing automation solutions.” 

Lower Funnel Keywords: Decision

The buyer has finally reached the last stage in her journey. She has thoroughly researched solutions and is close to making a decision. At this point, she might search for lower funnel keywords such as “How to buy a marketing automation solution” or “What to look for in a marketing automation demo.” 

SEO Funnel Explained

Certainly, keywords at all stages of the buying cycle are important — from top funnel keywords to lower funnel keywords. But oftentimes marketers use SEO for the top and middle of the funnel, but not as much for the bottom of the funnel. And the reason we love terms at the bottom of the funnel is that prospects are very close to purchasing. With B2B sales cycles getting longer, this is a critical point. 

So, where do you start? 

First, select a “seed word.” This word is a general term that describes your topic. For the above example, we might select “marketing automation.”  

Type the term into your SEO research tool (we use SEMRush, but there are plenty of others — Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, and more). Look for long-tail keywords, which are expanded and targeted phrases. For example, “marketing automation” is a seed word, but “how to purchase marketing automation tools” is a long-tail keyword. 

In addition to choosing long-tail keywords, you’ll also want your SEO funnel to include words that signal intent to purchase. A few examples: 

• Buy
• Book
• Test 
• Hire 

Here is how those words might be used in a long-tail keyword: 

• How to buy marketing automation tools
• How to book a marketing automation demo
• How to test marketing automation software
• The best way to hire a marketing automation expert 

You get the point. But the key thing to remember is that with these keywords, the audience is signaling they’re very close to purchase. 

Planning & Publishing your Content 

When planning your content, decide where the content fits into the customer journey. Does an asset support awareness, consideration, or decision? Once you do this, you can align the content with the right keywords. 

A few bottom-of-the-funnel content examples:

• White papers
• Comparison/spec sheets
• Webinars
• Demos and free trials 

For example, let’s say you create a webinar featuring industry experts giving their insights about what to look for in a marketing automation demo. The content includes insider expertise, current research, and more. Screams bottom of the funnel, right? 

After the webinar, you repurpose the content into a blog post featuring highlights from the event, and you use those bottom funnel keywords (e.g., “How to buy a marketing automation platform”).

It’s also worth mentioning that your bottom-of-the-funnel content should always have a strategic CTA. What do you want your audience to do? Some options for bottom-of-the-funnel CTAs include scheduling a demo or signing up for a free trial. Whatever action you choose, make sure it moves the prospect closer to the purchase finish line. 

Landing More Targeted Traffic

If your marketing goals include increasing website traffic and conversions, integrating lower funnel keywords into your content is a powerful strategy. Sure, you might pass on keywords that have the potential to bring 5,000+ visitors to your site monthly. But are they the right visitors? If not, a keyword that brings 300 targeted, bottom funnel visitors is way more valuable, right?

And we realize that, yes, SEO can be confusing. Consider starting small, experimenting, measuring results, and pivoting if needed. You can also leverage resources like Act-On’s SEO audit tool to more effectively optimize content and improve search engine rankings. And if you need a little extra SEO guidance, check out our comprehensive guide, which helps untangle the most common marketing questions around SEO to get you on the right track to meeting your goals.