Smart Ways to Earn or Build Backlinks

Smart Ways to Earn or Build Backlinks to Your Website

What is back link in SEO?

 

 

Backlinks are incoming links to a webpage. When a webpage links to any other page, it's called a backlink. In the past, backlinks were the major metric for the ranking of a webpage. A page with a lot of backlinks tended to rank higher on all major search engines, including Google.

"Backlinks," meaning sites that link to your site, are, for most search engines, the supreme ranking factor. So is getting more organic traffic.


Because that traffic is directly related to the quality of the backlinks your website has, the more authoritative websites that link to you, the better rankings and traffic you’ll get.

And of course you want to keep an eye on your Google rankings. When crawling the web, Google looks in particular for your website’s backlinks, to understand how your pages are connected to one other and in what ways. Certainly there are hundreds of ranking factors. But backlinks represent the most important metric for SEO.


Only write for highly reputable websites in your niche. Don’t waste time writing for websites with a Domain Authority level lower than that of your site. Your link will have very little value, and you might end up having your link removed without further notice

Write more than one time for each website. Build a relationship. Put effort into an ongoing collaboration. Otherwise, it will be obvious you are writing only to build backlinks.



Monitor the links from your guest posts. Use the Monitor Backlinks SEO tool for automatic updates and keep track of all your backlinks. Sometimes, webmasters remove or change your links from dofollow to nofollow, and you should know about this.

Link building is one of the oldest and most effective SEO tactics. It’s also one of the most productive ways to grow organic search traffic.

But you have to be cautious with how you go about earning quality links.

Links have been a major part of how Google and other search engines determine how trustworthy a website is from the beginning.

They viewed each link as a sort of recommendation, so the more links a website had pointing to it, the more credibility it would hold, and the higher it would rank in search results.

Unfortunately, some site owners and SEOs attempted to “game” this process by acquiring links through questionable tactics.

Since then, many of Google’s updates have largely been about getting ahead of these suspicious link-building efforts.

We’re now at a point where only very “white hat,” or ethical, link building methods still reliably work.

It’s basically impossible to beg, borrow, steal, or buy links in a way that will boost rankings. For site owners that used to rely on shady link-building tactics, this is bad news.

But if you’re willing to put in the time it takes to earn valid links, it’s still entirely possible to boost your credibility (and rankings).

That’s why in this post, I’ll explain six smart ways to earn legitimate, high-quality backlinks that will help show Google and other search engines that your site is worthy of high rankings.

Why does backlink quality matter?

Links have always been an important factor in how search engines like Google rank websites in their results, and that still holds true today.

Search engines essentially view each link to your site as a vote of confidence in the quality of your content.

Why does backlink quality matter?

 

Links have always been an important factor in how search engines like Google rank websites in their results, and that still holds true today.

Search engines essentially view each link to your site as a vote of confidence in the quality of your content.

After all, if another site is willing to cite you as a source or direct their users away from their own site in favor of one of your pages, you must be offering something of value.

So the more links you have pointing to your site, the more trustworthy your site will appear.

Unfortunately, Google hasn’t released specifics on how it measures credibility, or how reputable it considers your site. But there are plenty of tools that can give you an idea of how trustworthy your site appears.

Many of these tools center on domain authority. This metric is based on a site’s link data, age, popularity, size, and trust-related indicators, and is scored on a scale from one to 100.

Essentially, the higher your domain authority, the easier it will be for your site to earn high rankings in search results.

Definition of link building

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. A hyperlink (usually just called a link) is a way for users to navigate between pages on the internet. Search engines use links to crawl the web; they will crawl the links between the individual pages on your website, and they will crawl the links between entire websites.

SEO Tips

These SEO Tips Are All You'll Ever Need to Rank in Google

 

1. Pick a good keyword to focus on.

The first step is to simply pick the search term or phrase you want the post to show up for. If I am writing about the best dog toys for small dogs, I'll want to find out what people are actually searching for.

The easiest way to do this is use Google Keyword Planner, a free tool that will show you an estimate for any search phrase. (Although Keyword Planner is free, you may need to set up an AdWords account to gain access.)

For example, I noticed that "small dog toys" receives 590 monthly searches -- higher than any other related combination of words. However, I'm still not totally ready to start writing about this topic. First, I need to do some research.

2. Research the competition.

Now that I have a term I want to try to rank for, I'm going to go undercover and do some recon!
Jump over to your "private browsing" mode on your web browser ("Incognito" in Chrome, "Private" in Safari and Firefox, "InPrivate" on Internet Explorer) and head to Google.com. (At my company, we do "private mode" because we don't want Google to use our past search history to influence what we see on the search results page.)

Take a look at all the content on page one of Google, ignoring any ad results at the top. The 10 (or so) results are your competition! What are they missing? Can you do better?

3. Write the best content.

Now that you know what your competition looks like, it's time to create the content that is going to blow those folks out of the water. This is perhaps the most difficult part, but it's the most important. It needs to be amazing.

I don't care if you are creating a blog post, ecommerce store page or sales-landing page. It needs to be better than the rest, or else neither Google nor your audience will ever take note.

For an example of an article I recently wrote -- with just this goal in mind -- check out "How to Become a Millionaire: The Ultimate Guide.". My goal with that post was to write superb content about that topic. How did I do?

4. Have other websites link to you.

This is really, really important, when it comes to SEO. The bummer is that it’s not something you can necessarily control. Other than creating excellent content, the only thing you can do is ask (which occasionally works).

My counsel is to spend the time you would trying to convince somebody to link to you on just writing great content. And, start guest posting on other blogs.

Regardless of what you do, know that inbound links are essential to SEO.

5. Put the keyword in your header.

You can organize most webpages by having a large title at the top, followed by several sub-headers throughout the page (like the sub-headers in this post).


This organization is helpful not only for people in skimming blog-post articles, it's helpful in showing Google exactly what your blog post is about. Therefore, be sure to use your exact keyword phrase at least once in your sub-headers.

6. Put the keyword in the name and alt-tag of your image.

Next, if your blog post contains images, you can use those images to cement the idea to Google about your post's topic. There are two ways to do this:

The image name
The image alt tag
To change the image name, simply change the name of the image on your computer before uploading. Instead of a file called "2831274.jpg," you can re-name it something like "small dog toys 1.jpg."

The "alt tag" is something you designate after you upload the photo to your website. Without getting too technical, the alt tag is simply the text that the web browser will show if the photo can't load for some reason.

7. Use the keyword in the URL and in the post.

Another way Google is able to determine what your blog post is about is the URL. In other words, we're talking about what comes after the ".com" in your url (or .net, .org, or whatever you use). For example, which of the following URLs do you think Google will like better when deciding whether or not to show a certain page?

www.ExampleDogToyWebsite.com/9124824834-1
www.ExampleDogToyWebsite.com/small-dog-toys
You're right if you guessed the second one. While the former might not completely kill your SEO efforts, the latter definitely helps show Google exactly what the post is about.

8. Insert internal links.

If you aren't talking about your best content, why should anyone else care? For this reason, it's important that your best SEO content be linked to internally by other pages on your website.

Yes, this means you may need to go back and edit some older posts to include links to the new, incredible content.

9. The most-important SEO tip: Get external links.

Okay, finally we're finally at the big one: external links.

External links are links from websites other than your own. Google relies heavily on external links to determine how good a post is. And this makes sense, doesn't it? You can talk about yourself and your own skills all day long, but no one will believe you. But as soon as other people begin bragging about you, others take notice.

On-Page Search Engine Optimisation

On-Page Search Engine Optimisation

Omniture - online marketing and web analytics

                                         Omniture

Omniture is an online marketing and web analytics business unit in Orem, Utah. It was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2009. Until 2011, Omniture operated as a business unit within Adobe as the "Omniture Business Unit", but as of 2012 Adobe began retiring the Omniture name as former Omniture products were integrated into the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

The company was founded in 1996 by Josh James and John Pestana and was backed by venture capitalists including Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, University Venture Fund, and Scale Venture Partners. During a period of rapid growth, the company was one of Inc. Magazine's 500 fastest-growing private companies. Omniture was listed on the NASDAQ with OMTR as its ticker symbol in 2006.

Omniture bought behavioral targeting company Touch Clarity for $51.5 million in 2007. In late 2007 the company acquired web analytics company Visual Sciences, Inc. (formerly WebSideStory) for $394 million, and also purchased Offermatica for $65 million. In October 2008 it agreed to acquire the site search and merchandising aspects of Israeli e-commerce search solution provider Mercado for $6.5 million.

On September 15, 2009, Omniture, Inc. and Adobe Systems announced that Adobe would be acquiring Omniture for $1.8 billion. The deal was completed on October 23, 2009, and is now joined by other Adobe acquisitions such as Day Software and Efficient Frontier, as the main components of Adobe's Digital Marketing Business Unit.

Adobe vacated the former Omniture offices in Orem, Utah in November 2012, moving a large portion of its Digital Marketing Business Unit to a new facility in Lehi, Utah. It is used in web analytics mainly for analyzing the data.

The company was founded in 1996 by Josh James and John Pestana and was backed by venture capitalists including Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, University Venture Fund, and Scale Venture Partners. During a period of rapid growth, the company was one of Inc. Magazine's 500 fastest-growing private companies. Omniture was listed on the NASDAQ with OMTR as its ticker symbol in 2006.
Omniture bought behavioral targeting company Touch Clarity for $51.5 million in 2007. In late 2007 the company acquired web analytics company Visual Sciences, Inc. (formerly WebSideStory) for $394 million, and also purchased Offermatica for $65 million. In October 2008 it agreed to acquire the site search and merchandising aspects of Israeli e-commerce search solution provider Mercado for $6.5 million.

On September 15, 2009, Omniture, Inc. and Adobe Systems announced that Adobe would be acquiring Omniture for $1.8 billion. The deal was completed on October 23, 2009, and is now joined by other Adobe acquisitions such as Day Software and Efficient Frontier, as the main components of Adobe's Digital Marketing Business Unit.
Adobe vacated the former Omniture offices in Orem, Utah in November 2012, moving a large portion of its Digital Marketing Business Unit to a new facility in Lehi, Utah. It is used in web analytics mainly for analyzing the data.

Google Algorithm

Google Algorithm

Google Hummingbird

What Is Google Hummingbird?

“Hummingbird” is the name of the new search platform that Google is using as of September 2013, the name comes from being “precise and fast” and is designed to better focus on the meaning behind the words. Read our Google Hummingbird FAQ here.

Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.

Google Hummingbird is designed to apply the meaning technology to billions of pages from across the web, in addition to Knowledge Graph facts, which may bring back better results.

Mobile Friendly Update

What Is Mobilegeddon & The Google Mobile Friendly Update

On April 21, 2015, Google released a significant new mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that’s designed to give a boost to mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results.

The change is so significant that the date it happened is being referred to by a variety of names. Here at Search Engine Land, we’re calling it mobilegeddon, but sometimes it’s also referred to as mobilepocalyse, mopocalypse or mobocalypse.

One of the best ways to prepare is to test that Google considers your web pages to be mobile-friendly by using its Mobile-Friendly Test tool. More about the algorithm, including ways to bring improve the mobile-friendliness of your pages, is below.

Panda Update

What Is The Google Panda Update?

Google’s Panda Update is a search filter introduced in February 2011 meant to stop sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results. Panda is updated from time-to-time. When this happens, sites previously hit may escape, if they’ve made the right changes. Panda may also catch sites that escaped before. A refresh also means “false positives” might get released.

Penguin Update

What Is The Google Penguin Update?

Google launched the Penguin Update in April 2012 to better catch sites deemed to be spamming its search results, in particular those doing so by buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed primarily to boost Google rankings. When a new Penguin Update is released, sites that have taken action to remove bad links (such as through the Google disavow links tool or to remove spam may regain rankings. New sites not previously caught might get trapped by Penguin. “False positives,” sites that were caught by mistake, may escape.

Payday Update

Launched on June 11, 2013 – the “Payday Update” was a new algorithm targeted at cleaning up search results for traditionally “spammy queries” such as [payday loan], pornographic and other heavily spammed queries.

Pirate Update

Google’s Pirate Update is a filter introduced in August 2012 designed to prevent sites with many copyright infringement reports, as filed through Google’s DMCA system, from ranking well in Google’s listings. The filter is periodically updated. When this happens, sites previously impacted may escape, if they’ve made the right improvements. The filter may also catch new sites that escaped being caught before, plus it may release “false positives” that were caught.

EMD Update

The EMD Update — for “Exact Match Domain” — is a filter Google launched in September 2012 to prevent poor quality sites from ranking well simply because they had words that match search terms in their domain names. When a fresh EMD Update happens, sites that have improved their content may regain good rankings. New sites with poor content — or those previously missed by EMD — may get caught. In addition, “false positives” may get released. Our latest news about the EMD Update is below.

Top Heavy Update

Top Heavy was launched in January 2012 by Google as a means to prevent sites that were “top heavy” with ads from ranking well in its listings. Top Heavy is periodically updated. When a fresh Top Heavy Update happens, sites that have removed excessive ads may regain lost rankings. New sites deemed too “top heavy” may get caught.

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a tag management system that allows you to quickly and easily update tags and code snippets on your website or mobile app, such as those intended for traffic analysis and marketing optimization. You can add and update AdWords, Google Analytics, Firebase Analytics, Floodlight, and 3rd party or custom tags from the Tag Manager user interface instead of editing site code. This reduces errors and frees you from having to involve a developer when configuring tags.

What is a tag?

A tag is a snippet of code that sends information to a third party, such as Google. If you don't use a tag management solution such as Tag Manager, you need to add these snippets of code directly to files on your website or mobile app. With Tag Manager, you no longer need to maintain each of these code snippets in your source files. Instead, you specify the tags that you want to fire, and when you want them to fire, from within the Tag Manager user interface.

How it works

Tag Manager for web works via its own container tag that you place on all your website pages. For mobile, Tag Manager is deployed in conjunction with the Firebase SDK, with support for Android and iOS. The container replaces all other manually-coded tags on your site or app, including tags from AdWords, Google Analytics, Floodlight, and 3rd party tags. (See a list of supported tags.) Once the Tag Manager container tag has been added to your site or app, you update, add, and administer additional tags right from the Tag Manager web application.

Setup for web

To manage tags using Tag Manager:

Go to tagmanager.google.com to create an account (or to access an existing account).
Create a container for your site in the account.
Add the container snippet to your site.
Migrate any hardcoded tags (such as AdWords or DoubleClick tags) from your site’s source code into Tag Manager.

Setup for mobile apps

Google Tag Manager for mobile apps is integrated with Firebase. Firebase is Google’s mobile app platform, which provides end to end development tools and analytics.

By adding Tag Manager to your app, you can make changes to your measurement setup without having to wade into the app update process.

To setup Tag Manager for mobile apps:

Go to tagmanager.google.com to create a Tag Manager account (or to access an existing account).
Create a container for your app in the account (select the "Mobile Apps" option).
Select the appropriate container type (Android, iOS) and SDK version (Firebase, Legacy SDKs)
​

How to Write a Blog Post ?

How to Write a Blog Post ?

How to Write a Blog Post: A Simple Formula to Follow

Step 1: Understand your audience.

Before you start to write, have a clear understanding of your target audience. What do they want to know about? What will resonate with them? This is where creating your buyer personas comes in handy. Consider what you know about your buyer personas and their interests while you're coming up with a topic for your blog post.

For instance, if your readers are millennials looking to start their own business, you probably don't need to provide them with information about getting started in social media -- most of them already have that down. You might, however, want to give them information about how to adjust their approach to social media from a more casual, personal one to a more business-savvy, networking-focused approach. That kind of tweak is what separates you from blogging about generic stuff to the stuff your audience really wants (and needs) to hear.

Step 2: Start with a topic and working title.

Before you even write anything, you need to pick a topic for your blog post. The topic can be pretty general to start with. For example, if you're a plumber, you might start out thinking you want to write about leaky faucets. Then you might come up with a few different working titles -- in other words, iterations or different ways of approaching that topic to help you focus your writing.  For example, you might decide to narrow your topic to "Tools for Fixing Leaky Faucets" or "Common Causes of Leaky Faucets." A working title is specific and will guide your post so you can start writing.

Let's take a real post as an example: "How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post." Appropriate, right? The topic, in this case, was probably simply "blogging." Then the working title may have been something like, "The Process for Selecting a Blog Post Topic." And the final title ended up being "How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post."

See that evolution from topic, to working title, to final title? Even though the working title may not end up being the final title (more on that in a moment), it still provides enough information so you can focus your blog post on something more specific than a generic, overwhelming topic.

If you're having trouble coming up with ideas, check out this blog post from my colleague Ginny Soskey. In this post, Soskey walks through a helpful process for turning one idea into many. Similar to the "leaky faucet" example above, she suggests that you "iterate off old topics to come up with unique and compelling new topics." This can be done by:

    Changing the topic scope
    Adjusting the time frame
    Choosing a new audience
    Taking a positive/negative approach
    Introducing a new format

Step 3: Write an intro (and make it captivating).

We've written more specifically about writing captivating introductions in the post, "How to Write an Introduction [Quick Tip]," but let's review, shall we?

First, grab the reader's attention. If you lose the reader in the first few paragraphs -- or even sentences -- of the introduction, they will stop reading even before they've given your post a fair shake. You can do this in a number of ways: tell a story or a joke, be empathetic, or grip the reader with an interesting fact or statistic.

Then describe the purpose of the post and explain how it will address a problem the reader may be having. This will give the reader a reason to keep reading and give them a connection to how it will help them improve their work/lives. Here's an example of a post that we think does a good job of attracting a reader's attention right away:

Step 4: Organize your content.

Sometimes, blog posts can have an overwhelming amount of information -- for the reader and the writer. The trick is to organize the info so readers are not intimidated by the length or amount of content. The organization can take multiple forms -- sections, lists, tips, whatever's most appropriate. But it must be organized!

Let's take a look at the post, "How to Use Snapchat: A Detailed Look Into HubSpot’s Snapchat Strategy." There is a lot of content in this post, so we broke it into a few different sections using the following headers: How to Setup Your Snapchat Account, Snaps vs. Stories: What's the Difference?, and How to Use Snapchat for Business. These sections are then separated into sub-sections that to go into more detail and also make the content easier to read.

To complete this step, all you really need to do is outline your post. That way, before you start writing, you know which points you want to cover, and the best order in which to do it. To make things even easier, you can also download and use our free blog post templates, which are pre-organized for five of the most common blog post types. Just fill in the blanks!
 

Step 5: Write!

The next step -- but not the last -- is actually writing the content. We couldn't forget about that, of course.

Now that you have your outline/template, you're ready to fill in the blanks. Use your outline as a guide and be sure to expand on all of your points as needed. Write about what you already know, and if necessary, do additional research to gather more information, examples, and data to back up your points, providing proper attribution when incorporating external sources. Need help finding accurate and compelling data to use in your post? Check out this roundup of sources -- from Pew Research to Google Trends.

If you find you're having trouble stringing sentences together, you're not alone. Finding your "flow" can be really challenging for a lot of folks. Luckily, there are a ton of tools you can lean on to help you improve your writing. Here are a few to get you started:

    Power Thesaurus: Stuck on a word? Power Thesaurus is a crowdsourced tool that provides users with a ton of alternative word choices from a community of writers.
    ZenPen: If you're having trouble staying focused, check out this distraction-free writing tool. ZenPen creates a minimalist "writing zone" that's designed to help you get words down without having to fuss with formatting right away.
    Cliché Finder: Feeling like your writing might be coming off a little cheesy? Identify instances where you can be more specific using this handy cliché tool.

For a complete list of tools for improving your writing skills, check out this post. And if you're looking for more direction, the following resources are chock-full of valuable writing advice:

   

Step 6: Edit/proofread your post, and fix your formatting.

You're not quite done yet, but you're close! The editing process is an important part of blogging -- don't overlook it. Ask a grammar-conscious co-worker to copyedit and proofread your post, and consider enlisting the help of The Ultimate Editing Checklist. And if you're looking to brush up on your own self-editing skills, turn to these helpful posts for some tips and tricks to get you started:

  

Top 10 SEO Company

1 | SEO Discovery

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SEO Discovery offering "Guaranteed Google Page #1 ranking" with world-class SEO and Digital Marketing services. We have done specialization in Local SEO, Reputation Management, Social Media, Link Detox and mobile friendly website design. Feel free to get in touch with us for FREE website Audit and Analysis.

2 | Mandy Web Design

Corporate Office – ChandigarhBusiness – SEO, Digital marketing, Mobile Friendly Web Design | Website – http://www.mandywebdesign.com/ |

Mandy Web Design a team of skilled SEO experts who are committed to help your business achieve higher ranking and be seen on popular search engines.

3 | PageTraffic

Corporate Office – New Delhi 

Business – SEO services, Internet Marketing & Web Designing | Website – www.pagetraffic.in |

Page Traffic is an online and Internet marketing company and ranked among the top 10 SEO agencies in India. They have a potential team of SEO professionals who will help grow your online business. Other services include Social Media Marketing and Web Designing.

4 | EZRankings

Corporate Office – Delhi

Business – Digital Marketing services | Website – www.ezrankings.org |

An ISO Certified Leading Digital Marketing Agency. EZRankings has almost 7+ years of experience in Digital marketing and has a strong team of professionals who based on client requirements formulate the best Strategy for SEO,SMO,PPC and ORM. Also, help in various design and development services.

5 | Ranking By SEO

Corporate Office – Noida, Delhi/NCR

Business – SEO services, Software Development & Designing | Website –www.rankingbyseo.com |

It is a leading company in the sector of SEO services, Internet, web development and software solution. Ranking By SEO have expertise in search engine friendly web designing which appeals users. Their SEO related services includes Search Engine Marketing, Google AdSense, Google Webmaster Tools and many more.

6 | Indian SEO Company

Corporate Office – Kolkata

Business – SEO services & Software Solutions | Website - www.indian-seo-company.com |

Indian SEO Company is a outsourcing company providing various Internet and web services like Website designing, development, Internet Marketing, Search engine optimization services and social media Optimization.

7 | Techmagnate

Corporate Office – New Delhi 

Business – SEO services | Website – www.techmagnate.com |

One of the leading seo company in India, Techmagnate is a SEO and internet marketing service provider. They have a team of experienced professionals who will help you with all the SEO related tasks includes everything from social media optimization to re-designing of website to make them visible.

8 | Profit By Search

Corporate Office – Noida, Uttar Pradesh Business – SEO services & Internet marketing | Website – www.profitbysearch.com  |

India’s first SEO Company qualified by Google Adwords and among the top seo companies in India. Profit by Search is a Internet marketing agency having a ROI driven approach for all its clients. Company provides various SEO related services including website designing, Social media optimization, Google adwords, google adsense, google webmasters and many more.

9 | SEO.in

Corporate Office – Bangalore, Karnataka Business – Online Marketing | Website – www.seo.in |

An online marketing agency has an expertise in SEO related services. It is a well known SEO service provider, a leading Search engine optimization companies in India and competing at global level. The company has offices in India.

10 | Savit.inCorporate Office – Mumbai and Pune

Business – Online Marketing | Website – www.savit.in |

Savit Interactive an ISO 9001:2008 certified Digital Marketing Agency and SEO Company in Mumbai and Pune, India.Savit, as one of the leading SEO Agency India, we ensure that your website attains TOP rankings in various search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Savit website promotion approach is FREE from black hat SEO techniques or any spamming methods, generally used by many cheap SEO companies in India who claim to offer guaranteed Top 5 or Top 10 ranking placements within very short time period and at surprisingly cheap SEO prices.

How-to Article in Easy Steps

A how-to is written as a sequence—first you do this, and then you do this. The essential question the writer asks herself when writing a how-to is, “What happens next?” If you are about to embark on a how-to, start at what you consider the beginning, and just keep answering that question over and over again. Before you know it, you will have sketched out a draft of a how-to article.

STEP 1: SELECT YOUR TOPIC.
Choose a topic that interests you enough to focus on it for at least a week or two. If your topic is broad, narrow it. Instead of writing about how to decorate your home, try covering how to decorate your home in country style on a shoestring budget. That’s more specific and, as such, easier to tackle.
Then write a rough, rough draft, including everything you can think of. Stay loose, avoid getting analytical, and enjoy the process of sharing what you know. When you’re done, you’ll have the bare bones of an article that only you could write. Then put it aside for a while.

STEP 2: ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE’S NEEDS.
Now, come back to your piece. Switch gears and imagine you’re the reader of this article. Pick three words to describe the audience you want to address (e.g., professionals, single men). As this reader, what questions would you like answered? You might not know the answers yet, but list the questions anyway; you’ll find answers in the next step.

STEP 3: RESEARCH.
Research will ground your article in fact. Good details to include with your how-to are:

• Statistics
• Quotes by well-known people
• Definitions
• Anecdotes (short, illustrative stories about yourself or someone else)
• Quotes and examples from people like the reader or from popular books on the subject
• References to other media (film, television, radio)
• Helpful tools, resources or products (if many, consider creating a sidebar)
• References to local venues or events (if for a regional/local publication).

Collect everything you have gathered and put it in a folder, an electronic document, a notebook or whatever you like. Don’t forget to keep track of sources in case you are later asked by an editor to verify them. You may want to sift through your research at a separate sitting from gathering it. Or just go ahead and sprinkle your research in right when you find it. It’s a lot like cooking—play around until you feel you have it “just right.”

STEP 4: TIGHTEN YOUR DRAFT.
Keeping your audience in mind, write a tighter draft incorporating the new supporting information you’ve collected. Sometimes what you’ve learned in Steps 2 and 3 may compel you to start over with a completely fresh draft. Or you may just want to revise what you have as you proceed, retaining a nice conversational tone by directly addressing your audience.
This time when you read your draft, ask yourself: Is it working? Is it too general, too lightweight, uninteresting, unclear or choppy? If so, comb some of your favorite publications for how-to articles. What techniques are those writers using that you might employ?

STEP 5: MAKE IT SPECIFIC.
Double-check to see that you’ve included every pertinent step in the process. How-to articles have to be thorough. You want your reader to walk away knowing exactly how to make that Thanksgiving dinner on a shoestring budget, execute that rugby tackle or locate great accommodations.
If your narrative goes on and on, or off in too many directions, break it down into key points indicated with subheads (as in this article). Synthesizing complicated information and breaking it down into steps is especially crucial for online writing, and is also a trend in print.

STEP 6: READ, REVISE, REPEAT.
Read the draft of your how-to article out loud to a supportive friend. Then, ask her a series of questions: Does she now understand the process? Are there any steps missing? Is there anything else she would like to know about the subject? Could she do the task herself? With your friend’s suggestions in mind, use your best judgment in deciding what changes, if any, need to be made.
Here’s a quick list to help you catch errors or omissions:

• Did you adequately describe the ingredients/supplies needed in order for the reader to complete the task?
• Did you include all the important steps?
• Is the order logical?
• Did you use words that indicate sequence: first, next, then?
• Did you warn readers of possible pitfalls?

Steps to a perfect Pay Per Click campaign

Pay Per Click Keyword Research tips from Wordtracker - the leading keyword research tool

Pay Per Click can be a little daunting, especially for small businesses who don't know the tactics to use in this type of advertising campaign. PPC expert, Ian Howie, takes us through the seven stages of Pay Per Click, including how to use keyword research to refine your strategy.

What is Pay Per Click?

Pay Per Click (PPC) is an online marketing and advertising formula, where the advertiser does not pay a fee to place an advert, but rather pays a certain amount of money each time someone clicks on their ad and is taken to their website.

In PPC you can choose the keywords or phrases you want your website to be associated with when a search is performed. This means you have to decide how much you are willing to pay each time someone clicks on the search result - but the upshot is that you are advertising to people who are already interested in you.

PPC expert

Ian Howie is a leading expert in Google AdWords and PPC. For over 12 years he has worked in web creation and online marketing. He has helped businesses large and small create new marketing opportunities online.

Seven steps

So - you know your customer, you know what your approach is going to be, you know what you want to promote and you have a clear marketing message - now Howie is going to reveal the seven step strategy he applies to all his PPC campaigns.

1. Identify the product you are selling

Let's say you are selling iPod cases. Look at your range and decide which ones you want to promote. Look at what you're offering in terms of price, and how competitive you are in terms of price, customer service and delivery. Do some searches on Google to see which ads come up, and which offers your competitors are focusing on.

2. Keyword research and PPC

Use Wordtracker for keyword research, and you'll find it's particularly good for finding negative keywords. SEOs are mainly concerned with keywords they can include in their copy, but in PPC you have different match types - broad, phrase and exact.

If this is your first PPC campaign you can use broad matches to try and see what the market is doing and what people are typing in. Use exact match when you are sure they are the best keywords to go for. Another very popular technique is to use broad and phrase matches with a lot of negative keywords.

For example, if we entered 'iPod nano' with a broad match, the results would include ‘MP3 nano’ or even ‘iPod classic’. To prevent this we can add negative keywords into our campaign to stop ‘MP3’ or ‘classic’ coming in: this will eliminate a lot of wastage. It's hard to believe that people don't use negative keywords.

3. Build your PPC campaign piece by piece

Let’s say your iPod cases site has sections for Nano accessories, classic accessories, and one each for iTouch and iPhone etc. Each one of these sections is a campaign and each has its own ad group - so you will have many ad groups, and each ad group is really just a collection of keywords and adverts. Each type of Nano accessory would have its own AdGroup - furthermore, the AdGroups for iPod Nano cases can be broken down by color and by style.

A good PPC campaign should start with at least 10 AdGroups, and ideally (if you have time) 50 or more. For iPod Nano Accessories you may have over 20 to 30 groups just on Nano cases. The more relevant the keywords and the ads in each AdGroup, the better the Click Through Ratio (CTR). CTR is the ratio of clicks to impressions – it is the measurement of response. The better the CTR (ideally 1% or above) – the more likely you are of getting rewarded by Google by lowering the amount you pay for a click and increasing your ads position on the page.

If a customer is looking for a Black iPod Nano case specifically and they see an advert for a Black iPod Nano case, they are more likely to click on this one, rather than on a generic iPod Nano case advert with no mention of color. It's one of the most common mistakes people make - building generic ads doesn't mean you are targeting the widest possible range of people. The opposite is true - what you should do is dig into the long tail keywords - and the way we do that is by breaking down the ad groups into tightly themed groups of keywords and ads.

4. Build specific landing pages

Each of your products should have their own page, with a very clear 'buy button' and a nice description. Amazon do this very well. Link the ad straight to that page – the keyword should mirror the ad, which should mirror the landing page. It only takes people three to four seconds to make their decision so you have to make sure the page is quick to load.

5. Ad variation

PPC campaigns allow you to have different ad variations, so you can have text ads which can increase your CTR. By producing different kinds of ad you can monitor any patterns showing which ad is being clicked, and which aren't.

6. Report and analytics

Use Google Analytics or Yahoo Web Analytics to help you look at your SEO and PPC keywords. Pay attention to your bounce rates because that is a very important indicator in PPC. If you are getting a high bounce rate of over 50%, but a high CTR rate (ie 3% or more), then you need to work on your landing pages.

Questions to ask – does your copy match the PPC ad? Is your copy above the fold? Is it clear what the user should do next? If you are getting both a high bounce rate and a low CTR rate – then you need to look at your PPC campaign. Look at your Ad text and ask yourself - does it match the Keyword Query? You may need more negative keywords so that you can get more relevant traffic.

7. Refine Your Campaign

Keep looking at your campaign, keep studying it, learn from it and keep refining it wherever possible. We apply the 80/20 rule. Out of all the keywords, only 20% to 40% may give you real value - ie sales. So never be afraid to pause Keywords or AdGroups that are not delivering a positive ROI.

It's a very interactive process with the end-users – use PPC to get people into your Landing Page and use Analytics to learn what they do after they get there.

Following this step will really help you make the most out of your PPC campaigns. And the great thing is that all the lessons you learn from PPC can be taken into your SEO campaigns.

For more help on PPC, have a look at Ian Howie's Trinity of PPC Success.