4 Problems With Backlinks and How You Can Solve Them
When SEO is brought up in conversation, it usually goes straight to keywords. What doesn’t get enough attention is backlinks. No backlinks, issues with do-follow backlinks, and backlinks that are just broken are all issues that can sink a site.
Problems with backlinks aren’t permanent but they do take a bit of work, and sometimes luck from the SERP gods, to solve. Let’s start by looking at 4 common problems that website owners face when dealing with backlinks.
1. Broken backlinks
A broken backlink is an incoming link that leads to an “error 404” page on the target website. This is a problem because people don’t like clicking on a link and seeing an error. They want to find what they’re looking for and move on.
Broken backlinks indirectly harm your SEO and can affect your bounce rate, and conversions, and make your site feel abandoned. Think of it this way, would you want to go to a business that had a bunch of empty rooms or broken windows? No, you would pass it up and go somewhere else.
How do broken backlinks happen?
It’s just one of those things that just happens. Think of it as the maintenance needed to keep a site healthy—you’re going to have to check on a regular basis if you have any broken links in general, not just broken backlinks.
Solution
Broken backlinks are simple to fix but can get really tedious, depending on the size and age of your website. If it’s a new site, then you could probably fix this on your own by using a broken backlink checker extension on Google Chrome. If you have a sizable site, then you might need something like a SaaS to help you out.
After you find the broken backlinks, then you have to put in some leg work:
Your first option is to reach out to the hosting site to change the link.
Second, you can set up 301-redirects to other pages on your site
Third, you can just replace or recreate the content
Finally, you can make a hard 404 page
2. do follow backlinks
Link juice is the stuff that propels a site to the first page on a SERP. A do-follow backlink tells Google how to rank your site. This makes them extremely valuable and important to track.
So, what are the issues that revolve around them if they’re so great? Well, getting them in the first place is one, and getting poor-quality do-follow backlinks is another.
How harmful are poor-quality backlinks?
Imagine having someone with the worst reputation possible, introduce you to a crowd of people. How do you think that those people, who don’t know you, are going to think about you? Probably not good.
This is how poor-quality backlinks affect your site. It takes a huge chunk out of your SEO and PageRank on Google. You have to identify these poor-quality backlinks and handle them as soon as you find them.
Can you influence high-quality do-follow backlinks?
Yes, to a certain extent. The quality of your content is going to determine if a high-quality site is going to link back to you. While quality is subjective, and not a guarantee to get backlinks, it’s still something that you can control.
Solution
The solution to getting high-quality backlinks is pretty straightforward. You have to create great content, network with high authority sites, guest post on those sites, and kind of hope that you get lucky. The more of these activities that you do, the better the odds are that a high-quality site will link back to you.
Poor quality backlinks are another issue. Google doesn’t penalize you for having spammy backlinks anymore but that doesn’t mean that you ignore them. Identify the bad backlinks with a tool, or SaaS option, find out where they are coming from, request removal from those sites, and create and submit a disavow file to Google.
3. No backlinks
It’s debatable if having no backlinks is worse than having poor-quality backlinks. This is a huge issue because your site isn’t getting any kind of attention. Now, this is typically an issue for brand-new sites with little to no content. The solution should be a bit obvious.
Solution
You have to start producing content, mid-tier quality is fine, and get something up on your site. You need to give high-quality sites something to actually link to, that means content. Now, once you get some content posted what else can you do?
Take a look back at the tips for getting high-quality backlinks. Guest post, network, and just keep up with it until you start seeing backlinks for your site. Again, make sure that you’re using a tool, like a SaaS, to track the backlinks leading to your site.
4. Over Optimized backlinks
Problems with backlinks aren’t limited to something bad, sometimes doing the right thing too often is the problem. Now, what does an over-optimized backlink look like? Well, it’s a collection of backlinks that all anchor to the same set of keywords.
Think of keyword spamming, link spamming, and other black hat SEO tactics. A backlink profile is supposed to be natural. Some things, like websites all linking to the same keyword, send a warning sign to search engines.\
Solution
You need a diverse set of backlinks coming from a number of different websites. This can be a bit difficult since your influence on backlinks is limited, but there are some things that you can do.
You can start by using a tool, or SaaS option, to identify problematic backlinks. Then you identify which websites are linking to your site and reach out to them to change which keywords they’re linking to. You can also try creating a disavow file and sending it to Google.
Conclusion
Fixing problems with backlinks is simple but it does require a bit of work. You don’t have a lot of control over what website is going to link to your site. This takes a lot of control out of your hands.
Using a SaaS-based tool is going to be your best bet when looking at how to solve issues with backlinks. With a SaaS-based tool, you can track poor-quality backlinks and identify where they are coming from. A good SaaS tool will act like a one-stop shop for all your SEO and even content production/management needs.
Don’t let backlink issues keep your site from ranking number one on the SERP.
Are you new to SEO and worried about common SEO mistakes? Don’t worry; we got you. The SEO industry is constantly changing and evolving. As a result, there’s always new information to learn and new practices to adopt, and following SEO strategies is advised.
Common SEO mistakes
Anyone can make mistakes; novice or experienced SEO professionals. These common SEO mistakes can lead to poor rankings for your website or, even worse: a loss of traffic altogether. Below we’ll look at some of these common mistakes and offer solutions so you can avoid them next time!
Not making sure your website is crawlable.
Crawlability and indexing refer to the ability of search engines to read and understand the content on your website. If Google doesn’t know what you’re trying to say, there’s no way for it to add that information to its index. This can result in a poor ranking for relevant terms, making it much harder for users to look for those terms with their query string. Crawling issues plague many websites today—and they’re not just limited to small businesses; even large ones can still fall victim if they don’t take care of these issues!
Keyword stuffing.
Keyword stuffing is when you place keywords where they don’t belong. This can be avoided by using an SEO checklist, which will help you identify areas of your website that aren’t optimized for search engines and fix them accordingly.
Keyword stuffing is terrible for SEO because it makes it more difficult for Google to find relevant content. Users may have trouble finding what they’re looking for on your site. If a user searches for something like “best WordPress plugins,” but no results are linking back to this page (or any other pages), then it’s likely that someone has keyword stuffed their way through the SERPs—and those poor users may end up leaving without finding what they were looking for!
Not optimizing your keywords.
Using a keyword that’s too broad—For example, “green tea health benefits.” You’re not going to rank well for this phrase because so many people are searching for it. Instead, use something more specific like “caffeine-free green tea detox drink recipe.”
Not targeting the right keywords—If you want people to find your website and read it, ensure you use keywords related to what they were looking for. If they were looking at something else first, don’t waste time optimizing a page specifically around those keywords! This is called “keyword stuffing,” where someone throws as many words into their content as possible until they hit targeted results (which isn’t helpful). The best way around this issue is using tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush’s Keyword Research tool, allowing users to create automated lists based on specific criteria including industry verticals and phrases.”
Inconsistent or duplicate content.
Duplicate content can noticeably impact your rankings and is one of the most common SEO mistakes. Duplicate content is not suitable for SEO. Search engines use duplicate content to identify and penalize websites showing up in their SERPs with the same content, regardless of whether it’s from the same source.
Duplicate pages will hurt your site’s rankings and may even result in you being removed from Google search results!
Duplicate content is often caused by multiple versions of the same page published on your site. This could be because someone has created an advanced version of your website or because you’ve added new features that require more media files (like video).
Here are some common causes of duplicate content
Using an exact copy/paste from another source without any updates/changes made to that original source (copying something straight off an article without adding anything new), is also known as plagiarism.
Copying large portions of text or images from another website
To avoid this problem:
Create unique content for each page instead of duplicating existing material.
Use 301 redirects so that people who land on the old page will automatically be redirected to the new one when they visit again.
Forgetting about sitemaps
For example, if you have a blog post that includes links to other articles on your site, you can use sitemaps and metadata to tell search engines what those other articles are about.
Sitemaps help search engines understand the structure of your website by including links to all of its pages (including internal links). This means that when someone searches on Google or Bing for information related to the topic of your web page, the site will appear in their results.
Ignoring search intent
Google favors sites whose content satisfies the search intent for a given query. Search intent refers to the ultimate motivation behind a user’s search. You have to figure out what a user wants to get when searching that query on Google. Is the searcher looking to buy something? Or are they trying to learn something?
If you fail to satisfy the searchers’ intent, you won’t be able to rank for very long.
Not optimizing for mobile
As reported by Google, more than half of online searches are done by mobile. For this reason, search engines prioritize responsive websites that can load just as well on mobile devices as on desktop computers.
Neglecting the mobile aspect of your site is a grave mistake that could have you penalized severely.
Not paying attention to 301 redirects.
301 redirects are an important part of your SEO strategy. They tell search engines where to send users moving from one page on a website to another, so they can find what they’re looking for more quickly.
For example, if you have a blog post titled “SEO Mistakes” that links to a site: http://www.example-site/seo-mistakes/, then Google might send people directly to this URL: http://www.example-site/seo-mistakes/blog/.
If the link doesn’t include “blog,” then Google won’t know how to direct people back here later (and thus won’t count it as an optimized entry point).
In other words, if there’s no explicit path for someone coming from outside of your website to get back inside again (aka “backlinks”), then Google cannot see any value in linking towards those pages—which means they’ll probably penalize them!
Slow Site Speed
Slow site speeds will kill your website. Users are unlikely to keep browsing a slow webpage even if the content provided is relevant. This will affect the bounce rate of your website. Search engines use bounce rates to tell whether a site is good, has good content, or if something is broken.
Non-Optimized Images
Images are key to a website’s SEO, but they can be challenging to optimize. The first step in optimizing your images for SEO is deciding what you want them to do. Do you want them to be high-quality and stand out from other pages on your website? Or do you want them to link back directly to the product page they came from so users can easily find it again later?
The second step of optimizing images for SEO involves taking care of some common issues that prevent search engines from seeing them properly:
File size: Keep an eye on how large each image is compared with other images on your site and adjust accordingly if necessary (e.g., reduce the file size by removing unnecessary metadata).
File type: Make sure all images are in GIF or PNG format instead of JPG because these formats will help get better indexed by Google!
Missing alt tags: ALT attributes provide search engines and visually impaired people with descriptions of the images in your content. Relevance is lost without them, and engagement can suffer.
Thin Content
Thin content is copy that’s not useful for the reader. It may include an image, a link to another page on your website, or any other piece of information that won’t provide value to your visitors.
This type of writing can be hard on search engines because it takes up space and doesn’t add much value to the user experience (UX). The best way to avoid this problem is by creating content that has relevant information to users. It is also crucial to learn the market you are catering to. Hence, there aren’t gaps between them where thin content might appear.
Broken Links
Broken links are bad for search engine rankings but can also miss the site owners, and search engine crawlers can also miss them. Users may also take notice of the broken link and report it to Google. This can lead to lower rankings in the SERPs and reduced organic traffic from Google Webmaster Tools (GWT).
Broken links can be detected by crawling websites regularly with web crawlers built into tools like Screaming Frog or Open Site Explorer (OSE). When these tools find broken links on your site, they will mark them with a red dot, so you know which pages have been affected by this issue.
Long URLs
Short URLs are easier to remember and use, making them an excellent option for SEO. They also make it easy for users to share your content on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. Shortening your links also reduces the amount of code in your site, which can help improve performance on mobile devices and search engine bots (which crawl through sites).
Summary
SEO mistakes can reduce the quality of your site and harm your SERP rankings. While embarking on this journey, it is important to know what to do, but more importantly, what not to do. Bad SEO practices have crippled many websites, don’t be one of them.
DO NOT take shortcuts. Instead, go over every SEO item carefully. If you are unable to do it yourself, consider hiring a professional. It will be a worthy investment.
Top 10 ways SEO copywriting increases traffic to your website
What is SEO copywriting?
SEO copywriting is the practice of producing keyword-optimized content that is designed to appeal to human users and search engine algorithms. It is writing search engine-friendly content that Google can understand and, most importantly, caters to users’ needs.
SEO copywriting, when done right, can boost traffic to your website.
This means finding that balance between satisfying Google’s algorithm guidelines for SEO and providing content that users relate to.
Why is copywriting important?
Focusing on just SEO for your content will make it sound robotic. The Saturation of keywords may be annoying or distracting to users. On the flip side, content written purely for human reading does not focus on keywords. A lack of keywords in your content means that it won’t be displayed when users conduct a search.
Both of these scenarios are detrimental to the progress and ranking of your website. Content should be fine-tuned to the ever-changing search engine algorithms. By using SEO web copywriting tactics, search engines can categorize your content better, and visitors can relate to your content.
A copywriter creates a variety of keyword-driven deliverables depending on a client’s needs. Although it is not required to have in-depth knowledge of SEO, it is paramount to know the basics:
Keyword research
Creating optimized and organized content
Creating user-oriented content
10 ways that SEO copywriting helps in bringing traffic to your site
1. Keyword research
Keyword research and analytics are vital to creating articles with keyword phrases that generate high search volume globally. This information helps create content That is user-centered and search engine optimized. Search engines will rank Your content higher on SERPs And therefore generate more leads and traffic to your site.
Keyword Research is an essential part of SEO copywriting that dramatically improves the quality of your content.
When conducting keyword research, also make sure the keyword phrases you choose have few competing websites also trying to rank for the same keywords. Determine the keyword effectiveness index (KEI)
Keyword effectiveness index is a formula that helps compare the number of searches for the terms or words With the number of competitive pages. It pumps out which keywords have higher search with the lowest ranking competition, which can be most effective for your content strategy. Our article on keyword types goes into more detail about how to leverage the use of keywords.
2. Optimizing for evolving search modes
The way people search for information online keeps evolving. Nowadays, it is possible to search the internet using voice search and photos on Google. SEO copywriting optimization helps you understand how to Leverage AI technology like Google Assistant or Siri using these search methods.
Optimizing your web content to appear with this type of search increases your visibility leading to more traffic. A prime example of leveraging this type of search is creating content on FAQs.
3. Creating more Trust
SEO copywriting is vital because it makes your website more trustworthy by providing information people are searching for. More people will visit your site by knowing what questions or search queries users have and Tailoring your content to meet their specific needs.
Quality content that is search engine optimized will Increase your ranking on search engine results pages and attract more organic traffic to your site. This could translate to higher click-through rates and building a solid customer base for your returning visitors.
4. Competitor analysis
An integral part of SEO and keyword research is analyzing what your competitor is ranking for. This information helps you inspect their analytic data, what they are succeeding in, and get insight on keyword gaps that could be potential sources of great content that will drive traffic to your site. SEO copywriting services can assist businesses in analyzing and learning from their competitors’ sites and developing effective tactics to outrank them.
Competitor analysis helps you visualize what your competitor is doing and how you can rank better.
Doing this research is crucial if you want to last in your niche market and attract the right audience.
5. Identify and leverage search Intent
Search intent describes the reason why a user is interacting with your content. Knowing where a customer is in their search journey helps a copywriter to correctly identify the type of information they need to put out that would attract the right customers. This strategic and calculated planning of content should be based on your customers’ bulk of the kind of content they are seeking, divided into three main pillars:
Informational
Transactional
Navigational
6. Writing relevant content
It doesn’t matter how optimized your site is Or user- friendly or content test if it is irrelevant. A lack of proper SEO copywriting is like treading blindfolded in murky waters. You might never make your way around. Copywriting helps writers grasp what content is relevant to users in their niche and ideal times for posting. This subtle yet crucial process is the difference between steadily increasing search traffic to your website and a steady decline or reduced interaction with your content.
SEO tools such as Google Analytics Assist in researching relevant content.
7. Create easy-to-read content
Attracting organic traffic to your site is easy enough with a few basic SEO steps. Maintaining traffic, modeling revisits, and converting click-through rates is a bit more challenging.
The easiest way to attract human traffic is to create content they identify with. This means creating content That is easy to read and understand and organized appealingly.
Think of it this way: Would you rather spend your precious time trying to decipher content you can barely understand or read thought-provoking content that is digestible and easy to understand?
No one likes to read repetitive blocks of boring, seemingly unorganized text. SEO copywriting helps make unique, lively content that speaks to most users. This type of content is a magnet in attracting organic traffic to your website.
8. Use visually appealing images
Speaking of visually appealing content, adding images or visuals to your content goes a long way In improving the quality of your content. Images and illustrations break the monotonous text cycle and are easier to remember than just plain text. Visuals can also feature SEO information to leverage SERP ranking under the image section.
It is important to note that while using visuals for your content, high-quality images that load faster on the page are preferred over low-quality images or bulky images that reduce the overall speed of the webpage.
9. Backlinking
Search engines look at how many links are pointing to your articles. Backlinks can affect your ranking positively or negatively, so it’s important to be careful here. SEO copywriting helps build strong backlinks through high-quality content or sourcing from successful websites in the same niche.
Source backlinks to drive more traffic to your website.
You might receive backlinks naturally if your SEO copy contains high-quality, valuable information for others. These backlinks are important because people are genuinely interested in your content, and they want to talk about it and share it with others. Besides improving ranking in search engine results pages, it also gets your content noticed by people visiting sites that contain your links.
10. Optimize titles and metadata
Titles and meta descriptions play a significant role in SEO, influencing users to click on your links and driving more traffic to your website. Good SEO copywriting knowledge helps you identify the proper key phrases to include in your metadata. The content in metadata must be appealing to the viewer, providing enough provoking information to make them click on your link to view the full web content. Meta titles are short phrases that are accurate, while meta descriptions answer the user’s immediate query.
Conclusion
Content is one of the backbones of SEO, and perfecting your copywriting skills will help steadily direct organic traffic to your website. By using copywriting tactics to create content, you’ll attract prospects to your site and satisfy search engine ranking guidelines, ranking you higher on results pages and potentially driving more traffic to your site. It is a cycle of a win-win situation; the only thing it requires from you is to put in your energy and effort. Keep experimenting with web copy tactics suitable for the web content you are working with; soon enough, you’ll be reaping results.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you won’t see a sudden increase in traffic to your site, but a steady increase with time and habitual use of SEO copywriting methods.
