Get Free Backlinks And Boost Your Search Ranking

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A backlink is a link coming from another site to your own website. Some of the backlinks you may have you received passively with no effort of your own, but there are quite a few ways to get free backlinks and boost your search rankings.

Create and maintain a steady blog with great content.

Create great blog content that people naturally want to link to. This is the easiest way to get free backlinks and boost your search rankings.

Link to other blogs on your blog.

Blogs are supposed to be social and informal. The more you link to other blogs, the greater the likelihood that someone you link to will return the favor.

Write guest blog posts.

Writing guest blog posts is another good way to get free backlinks. Most media outlets allow you to submit original articles on topics relevant to their audience. Here are guest blogging instructions for some of the top media outlets online.

Curate and publish helpful resource lists.

Resource lists accomplish two goals – people love to link to them and they often also consist of helpful content for your audience. If you create a comprehensive resource list, it will be easy for other people to link to.

Create case studies.

If you make your clients look great in case studies about their business, they will definitely link to your site. But the key here is that they have to be great. This means choosing companies that have seen the best results (from your work), like you a lot, and know your product or service.

Write book reviews.

If you provide a book review about another author’s content, there’s a good chance they will link to it. Just remember to review the site on your website. There’s no backlink/search rankings value for you with a review somewhere else.

Create slideshare presentations.

Slideshare presentations are popular but content and quality is key. Make sure that whatever you do is compelling. Otherwise it’s just a waste of time. Read this Hubspot guide to nailing your next powerpoint presentation.

Sponsor or speak at an event.

Events usually give their speakers and sponsors great website publicity. You can also negotiate inbound links into your terms to be sure your time and resources yield a marketing boost.

 

What Are Backlinks and Why Are They Important for SEO?

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A backlink or inbound link is a link coming from another site to your website.

The person receiving the link is the one who refers to the link as a backlink. In other words, if someone links to your site, you have a backlink from that person. Backlinks are very different from outbound links (links from your site to another website) and internal links (links from one internal page of your website to another internal page of your website).

Backlinks are important for SEO (search engine optimization) because they:

    • They drive traffic to your website.

If someone posts a backlink on their website to your website, one of their readers might click on it and you will benefit from that referral traffic.

    • They can help you rank higher in search results.

Backlinks tell search engines that your website is an authority on a certain subject. So the more backlinks you have from high quality, high traffic, high authority websites, the better your website will rank in search engine results.

A good inbound link comes from an authoritative website, and uses natural anchor text. Anchor text is simply the text copy that’s hyperlinked, like this. (The anchor text there is “like this.”) Natural anchor text means you’re not just hyperlinking keywords left and right. Google understands the context of a link, so more generic “learn more” and “click here” anchor text can be just as valuable as keyword-optimized anchor text.

How to Sync Multiple Google Calendars to Your IPhone or IPad

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Google Calendar is one of the best online calendars. I use it for work and play but recently had some trouble syncing the calendars I have view-only access to with my iPhone and iPad.  Follow these instructions and you will be fully synced in no time.

Here’s how to get all of your Google calendars working on your iPhone or iPad:

  1. First, make sure your Google calendar is synced. The process is the same on all devices.
  2. Go to Settings. Then open Mail / Contact / Calendars.
  3. Next, select Add Account and Gmail. If you have already added your Gmail account, then instead of Add Account, choose Gmail from the list.
  4. Toggle the Calendar switch to On.

Next you must choose which calendars to sync to your phone or tablet:

  1. To do this, you need to visit www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect
  2. Make sure you are signed into your Google account. On this page you will see a list of all your calendars. Beside each calendar there is a check box.
  3. Tick the check boxes of the calendars you want to sync with the iPhone or iPad.
  4. Shared calendars that you don’t have administrative control over need to be selected individually, and the default setting is “Off”. This means that when a new calendar is shared, you will have to go back to https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect and configure again.
  5. Click save.
  6. Open the Calendars app on your iPhone or iPad and wait for it to sync.

 

Optimize Your Website For Lead Generation

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If you have a business, you are familiar with lead generation. Leads become prospective clients or customers who (hopefully) become paying clients or customers. Most businesses ultimately get leads by referral – word of mouth – but there are ways to optimize your website so that it can be a powerful tool for lead generation.

Even if a referral is made, visitors come to your website, read a blog post or your main website content, click on a call-to-action, and enter their information into a form on a landing page. Since they have already expressed an interest in the topic they came to your site to learn about, it’s a simple matter of engaging them, providing them with information, and making them aware of the solutions you have for them. Here are several steps you can take to optimize your website for lead generation.

Optimize your content.

This should be obvious but I will say it anyway. You need to create content that’s relevant and valuable for your visitors. Without great content, it’s hard to turn visits into leads. Next, you will want to optimize the content so that users can easily find you in search engine results. Ranking for a highly competitive keyword is extremely difficult. Therefore, focus your efforts on finding long-tail keywords that you can realistically rank for.

Optimize your calls to action.

Once you optimize your content, the next step is to create calls to action that persuade visitors to provide you with their contact information.

The first thing to think about is what copy to use. Words and phrases such as “free”, “trial”, “try”, “exclusive”, and “download” are commonly used to attract visitor eyeballs.

Make sure the offers are relevant. “Limited time offer” is not good if visitors can download something anytime.

You also need to make sure that your buttons or banners are used strategically to draw attention. A plain text link can sometimes work, but you want to make sure that it grabs attention.

Optimize your offers.

Even if your content and calls to action are optimized, you want to make sure that your offer is good enough to entice someone to sign up. You need to think about what your visitors are getting at every stage of the process. What did they learn from your blog post? What is the next logical thing they would like to learn next? What content could help you nurture leads? How do you convert those leads?

Applicable content upgrades can boost signups. Make sure that your offers are matched to your visitors and the information they want.

Optimize your landing pages.

Whether to have landing pages or not is an important decision in and of itself. You could have visitors click on a “call to action” button and instantly have a form pop up so they will be able to enter their information and claim the offer without ever viewing another page.

If you want to collect more information than just a name and email address, then you probably need a landing page. Your landing pages should include a brief summary of the offer your visitors will be getting when they sign up. The copy needs to be optimized to ensure good performance. The page should also have a signup form. The exact information to collect at this point depends on your strategy, and is another item to optimize. Collecting too much information could be a deterrent to potential leads. On the other hand, those that provide you with more information might turn out to be better quality leads. You will need to test and experiment to figure out what information your target customers are comfortable giving.

One more piece that’s worth your attention is the “Thank you” page, the one visitors see when they sign up for your offer. You can use this page to thank visitors and provide a download link to an ebook, template, report or white paper. You can also serve links to relevant pages on your site for additional reading.

Final thoughts

The exact steps you take to generate leads depend on your target audience and niche, as different audiences exhibit different behaviors. However, by tailoring the items discussed above for your specific audience, you’ll be able to boost performance significantly.

What are long-tail-keywords and why are they important?

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Long-tail keywords are longer and much more specific keyword phrases that people type into search engines. So instead of googling “shoes” when we want to search for “Italian carbon fiber cycling shoes”, we search with a much more specific long-tail keyword phrase that drills down directly to the information we want to find. There is far more competition for the keyword “shoes” than there is for the keyword phrase “Italian carbon fiber cycling shoes.” Long-tail keywords are also the specific keyword phrases that visitors are more likely to use when they are closer to a point of purchase. They can be hugely valuable if you know how to use them.

Take this example: Connect4 Consulting designs websites. The chances that I will rank number 1 for website design are very low because there’s too much competition (this is particularly true for small businesses and start-ups). But suppose what Connect4 Consulting really does is design websites for small businesses and non-profits in the DC Metro area. Then keywords like “website design for small businesses and non-profits in the DC metro area” are going to find customers looking for my services. That obviously doesn’t mean that I’m the only business out there, but it shrinks the pond and focuses the target audience.

Managing long-tail keywords is basically just a matter of establishing better lines of communication between your business and the customers who are already out there, actively looking for the services or products you provide. Obviously you are going to get less traffic with a long-tail keyword than you would with a more common one, but the traffic you do get will be far better: more committed, more focused, and more interested in your products or services.

Using a Free Keyword Tool as a Long-Tail Keyword Generator

WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool returns nearly an unlimited number of keywords, including multi-word long-tail keywords, for you to use in organic and paid search campaigns. It’s easy to find long-tail keywords with this free keyword research tool. Just enter the word you want to research:

The tool returns the top 100 most popular keywords. Just enter your email to receive the full list of long-tail keyword phrases, completely free.

Additional Keyword Tools

There are several other sites that offer free keyword research tools:

https://moz.com/products/pro/keyword-explorer

http://keywordtool.io/

https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/opinion/2423921/5-tools-for-finding-high-value-long-tail-keywords

Essential Elements of An Awesome Website

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At Connect4 Consulting we like to think that we specialize in creating Awesome Websites for our clients. But what’s awesome one day is not so awesome a few years later. This blog post lists the essential elements of an awesome website and unpacks each of the essential elements.

Your website is often the first interaction between you and your audience (customers, donors, readers, grantees, general public, etc.).  It is essential that your website impresses your target audience. Building an impressive website requires either a significant investment of time and effort or a significant investment of money.  Sometimes it requires all that and more.

You really shouldn’t settle for anything less than a totally impressive website.  In fact, your website should be awesome right from the get-go.  In this article, we’ll tell you the best things you can do to help you stand out from the competition.  Here, then, are the essential elements of an awesome website:

It has to look good.

If you want to capture and maintain attention, your website must look good and it must look good to your target audience. Knowing your audience is critical because there are a wide variety of awesome websites, but not all are appropriate for the same audiences. So you need to think about the following elements of visual design:

  • layout
  • color palette
  • fonts/typography
  • images
  • symmetry and balance
  • white space
  • supporting media/videos

It needs a clearly defined purpose.

Visitors should be able to determine what your site is about at a single glance.  If your site is about cars, that should be obvious.  If your site is about drones, I should be able to see that.  If your site is about Chuck Norris, you shouldn’t need to explain.  It should be perfectly clear what your site is about, without requiring any real thinking.

Yet you’ll see dozens of therapy and yoga websites with serene pictures of waterfalls or zen-like arrangements of pebbles. These may be beautiful and put people in a good mood, but it’s only a good approach if the purpose of the website is obvious. It is hard enough to get people to your website. Make sure that once they get there, they know what it is you want them to do.

It has to be easy to use.

An awesome website should be totally intuitive. That means someone visiting the website doesn’t have to think to figure out how to move around the site. The very best sites make people forget what they came to see – as long as they find what they were looking for in the first place.

User-friendly websites include:

  • clear and coherent navigation
  • links that give a good indication of what they lead to
  • something that makes users want to explore further
  • good accessibility features
  • seamless responsiveness

A well designed website is like a well-designed chair. People should want to sit in it. The feeling should be that it’s almost impossible to resist being drawn in. 

Put the most important things at the top of the page.

Always lead with whatever is most important. Don’t tuck those things away in the footer and make people have to hunt for them. When the visitor finds what they are looking for, make sure it works.

Make sure all users have an awesome experience.

The site should work on all devices. To do this your site needs to be responsive. It needs to have images that are optimized so they don’t use too much bandwidth to load.

Use Answer The Public for Small Business Marketing

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Answer The Public’s tool is completely free and has become an integral part of my content strategy. We use it to determine the topics and questions surrounding the primary keywords that we want to rank for. We then try to answer as many of these questions as we can with our content. This way, when Google is looking at which websites have the best information regarding the topic, we’re not only more likely to rank, but we also are more likely to convert visitors because we answer the most important questions they have.

Answer The Public is extremely easy to use. Just go to http://answerthepublic.com/ and type a category or keyword and make sure you have the correct country selected.

 

 

A PIN is Better Than A Fingerprint For Protecting Private Data on Your Phone

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A PIN is better than a fingerprint for protecting private data on your phone. Most modern smartphones now have fingerprint scanners. They are great for adding an extra level of security to your phone and make it really convenient to log into accounts and pay for purchases. But it turns out that in the United States, they don’t help you maintain your privacy in front of law enforcement.

In October 2014, a Virginia court ruled that suspects can be asked to unlock their phones using their fingerprints. Apparently this wasn’t tested until this February, when a judge in Los Angeles issued a warrant requiring a woman accused of identity theft to unlock her iPhone with her fingerprint.

The key in this case is that had the woman used a pin instead of her fingerprint to lock her phone, she wouldn’t have had to unlock it for the police. This is because the Fifth Amendment, which protects people from incriminating themselves during legal proceedings, prevents government agencies from forcing people to turn over memorized codes. However, a fingerprint or any other biometric identifier, can be collected.

There are several ways to fool fingerprint scanners, including the use of tape, so if someone could find you, they could make a copy and use it to access your phone.