SEO is like courting someone you like.
You can try every trick in the book: flowers, chocolates, long walks home, serenades—you name it.
But at the end of the day, you can't know what'll work on that other person until you've tried it.
Just like the way you would approach your SEO, your dating strategy involves trying different tactics and measuring the results to see what works.
And like in SEO, you also need to dig deeper to determine what tactic works and what doesn't.
You need to push emotions aside, think clearly and develop a strategic approach.
After all, nothing feels more frustrating than giving something (or someone) your all—only to find out that it'll never work out anyway.
Unfortunately, there's no magic trick to winning over the person of your dreams.
Fortunately for you however, when it comes to your SEO, methods that consistently produce results are quite well-telegraphed.
The first rule is simple: Make sure you only get the best backlinks from authoritative sources.
For this purpose, you need a well-developed backlink campaign that's focused on cream-of-the-crop backlinks and guided by data.
Want to push your website over the line?
I'm going to show you how the right backlink campaign can send you skyrocketing up the SERPs.
Developing a successful link building campaign isn't something you can do alone.
This is where SEOptimer steps in.
This all-in-one backlink management platform has everything you need to maintain a healthy backlink profile that search engines love. More importantly, it can help you develop a repeatable link building system that can boost your rankings.
Here's how to use Monitor Backlinks to develop your most powerful backlink campaign yet:
1. Determine Keywords You Already Rank For
One of the fastest ways to attain high rankings in search is to focus on keywords you already rank for.
It may sound unlikely, but ranking for keywords without an active link building campaign is more plausible than you think.
Keep in mind that search engines love quality content. If you offer valuable, relevant and insightful posts, you'll naturally receive backlinks from people who enjoy them.
This, in turn, will improve your chances of faster indexation and ranking in SERPs.
SEOptimer can help you spot these valuable opportunities for higher rankings. In the “Keyword Tracking” section, scroll down to find the list of keywords that you've added and are currently ranking for:
If your website has been active for a while, you could already be ranking for hundreds or even thousands of keywords.
2. Prioritize the Most Profitable Keywords
In SEOptimer, you can also view important metrics regarding the keywords you already rank for.
This includes the position, estimated monthly search volume, and traffic.
ROI-wise, keywords with a decent amount of monthly search volume generally have the most value.
The next step is to look at the pages that rank for these profitable keywords.
Under the “Page Ranking” column, you can identify the content that ranks for the keyword as well as their SERP placement.
At this point, it’s a good idea to review your content’s on-page optimization. If it ranked naturally with little to no SEO, imagine how it’ll do if you actually put in some work!
Here are some of the basic on-page optimization techniques you might've missed:
- Use the keyword as a subheading in the post
- Insert the keyword near the beginning of the permalink
- Insert the keyword in the post title
- Make sure the keyword appears at least once throughout the post
- Mention your focus keywords in the meta description
You could then target this page’s URL in your link building campaign. You just need a content strategy that’s tailored to the target keyword and authoritative websites for the actual links.
This begs the question: Where can you find authoritative websites for your link building content?
To answer this, we turn to one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to marketing—competitor research.
3. Find Websites Ranking Ahead of You
What’s brilliant about SEOptimer is that it not only monitors your own backlink profile. Once you identify your top competitors, you can also monitor and analyze theirs as well.
First, you need to look for pages that rank ahead of you for your major keywords. The most straightforward approach is, of course, to perform a quick Google search.
For example, suppose we want to rank an in-depth post about social media marketing on the keyword: “optimal posting time.”
From this SERP, we can verify that the CoSchedule blog is one of the biggest competitors for this keyword.
To understand how they build their links, let’s boot SEOptimer right back up.
4. Plug Your Competitor’s Domain into SEOptimer
Now that you've identified a competitor, it’s time to put them under the microscope. In the “Backlink Research” tab of SEOptimer, simply add the domain of a competitor and click on "Research".
Take note that it may take a while before the full backlink data of your competitor can be extracted. But once that's done (usually immediately), you'll have a clear view of their entire backlink profile.
In the previous step, we found out that a certain CoSchedule post ranks for the keyword “best time to post.” We can assume that this particular phrase is used at least once as an anchor text in their backlink strategy.
Using SEOptimer’s competitive research features, we can confirm this theory:
This indicates that you'll likely need to get other websites to use the same anchor (best times to post) in your backlink campaign.
Take note that this is merely an example. In an actual link building campaign, you need to carefully analyze each linking domain and be a bit more selective when it comes to your target domains.
What’s important is that you learn how to dissect the strategy of competitors and adopt some aspects as your own.
5. Stay on Top of the Game
Finally, Monitor Backlinks can be used to make sure you’re never left behind in the competition. The good news is, adding a competitor’s domain automatically schedules email alerts whenever new backlinks are found.
Whenever new backlinks are found, conduct your own investigation. Identify what your competitor did and where they built or earned the links from.
Most importantly, plan how you can take advantage of the same strategy in the same domain. It may sound tedious, but it'll definitely help you stay relevant as you focus on other link building activities.
The steps above have probably significantly increased the amount of work you need to do in your backlink campaign.
You now have a longer target keywords list, new link building strategies to execute and more competitors to worry about.
But if you pull it off, you're guaranteed to see results.
