The Importance of SEO for any website

SEO has become the most effective digital marketing tool for website owners around the world. However, many websites do not have a well-defined SEO strategy and resort to quick fixes. To get your website to the top of the search rankings, you need a comprehensive strategy that addresses all aspects of SEO. Therefore, it is crucial to seek the help of a WordPress development agency to optimize your websites and posts so that they will rank higher on Google.

Without a doubt, SEO is the most effective digital marketing tool. 95% of all search engine traffic goes to the websites that appear on the first results page, and your SERPs ranking is critical. Increased traffic means more chances to convert website visitors into customers. Companies have risen above their competitors as a result of the incorporation of WordPress SEO. Research shows that 80% of local online searches result in a sale. Furthermore, 4 out of 5 consumers use search engines to research products and find businesses.

The Complete WordPress SEO Checklist

Select A Reliable Hosting Provider for your website

Selecting a reliable hosting provider is the first step in optimizing your WordPress site for SEO. When you choose self-managed hosting, you rent the hosting space or server and install everything yourself. You have more flexibility with self-managed hosting, but you must maintain the operating system, security, and updates. If your WordPress website receives hundreds of visits per week, a shared hosting service provider can be an excellent choice. However, as your traffic grows, your website’s performance may suffer, and then you may wish to migrate to specialized WordPress hosting.

 Install and activate a good SEO Plugin for WordPress

An SEO plugin is an essential tool that assists you in optimizing the content of each page of your WordPress site. This software analyzes the content of your web pages and generates an SEO score that allows you to estimate how well the page will rank. A variety of factors influence the score, including the number of times your keyword and other related key phrases appear throughout the text, the number of words, the number of images and other multimedia, and utilization of internal and external links.

Research Optimal Keywords for Your Content

Researching optimal keywords is crucial as it enables you to identify the words, phrases, and questions that are most relevant to your target audience and SEO objectives. When researching a keyword or phrase, keep in mind the monthly search volume, difficulty, and websites that are currently ranking on the first SERP. It’s also important to consider the keyword’s search intent. A good practice is to look for relevant keywords with a high monthly search volume but low competition or seek the help of a SEO agency to optimize your websites and posts so that they will rank higher on Google.

Optimize your Website URLs

Adding relevant keywords to your URLs will help your SEO slightly, but the main benefit will be the increased traffic you’ll receive when you have understandable and descriptive URLs. URLs that are shorter are easier to share and embed in blogs and social media. Keep the URL length to under 60 characters, including the domain and extension, as much as possible.

Develop Unique HTML Or Meta Tags that Google Will Love

The use of relevant and unique HTML tags or meta tags is an important aspect of WordPress SEO and makes your WordPress site stand out. This helps to organize both your content and the information on your website so that search engines can understand it better.

The title tag is the most important element of your HTML tags. This is because the title tag is what search engines display in their results. Your title tag should be unique, concise, and contain your primary keyword.

Meta descriptions, on the other hand, are descriptions of the content of the page that appear in search results. They don’t directly impact search rankings, but they do impact click-through rates. Your meta description should be unique, concise, and contain your primary keyword. Keep your meta descriptions to no more than 160 characters.

Conclusion

In conclusion, optimizing your WordPress site for search engines is critical to the success of your online business. By using the above checklist, you can ensure that your site is fully optimized and ready to compete with other websites in your niche.

Remember, it takes time and effort to achieve top rankings, but the long-term benefits of doing so are immense. By utilizing the right hosting provider, SEO plugins, keyword research, URL optimization, and unique HTML tags or meta tags, you can improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your website.

We hope that this WordPress SEO checklist has been helpful in guiding you through the essential steps to take to be on top of your competition. Keep in mind that SEO is an ongoing process, and you need to continuously optimize your site to stay ahead of your competition.

Feel free to check other useful articles about WordPress design & development on our blog.

The post WordPress SEO Checklist: Essential Steps To Be On Top Of Your Competition appeared first on ColibriWP Blog.

It is a fast-paced world where things change at lightning speed. We have witnessed this trend in almost all spheres of life. This revolution is the engine behind the robust Learning Management System (LMS). LMS has gained extreme relevance and popularity, which has led to a general rise in the global e-learning market size. According to a projection by Statista, the e-learning market size will grow to 400 billion U.S. dollars by 2026, with LMS generating roughly 18 billion U.S. dollars in the same year.

A look at such figures tells you how lucrative the LMS industry is. From the onset, this might look like a great thing. However, the fact that LMS is a lucrative spot makes it a number one target for hackers. Moreover, that brings us to our primary focus- LMS security. Ask yourself this question: “Is my LMS secure? LMS systems hold huge bundles of sensitive data that hackers seek to compromise and use for nefarious purposes. Even more challenging is that most LMS systems are cloud-based, presenting new and urgent LMS security challenges. To that extent, security becomes a critical factor for an LMS.

LMS Security Features For Better Security

Do not panic. Although LMS security vulnerabilities exist, there are several LMS security features you can initiate to safeguard your learning management system. These features and security measures are discussed herein.

• Mobile Security

People (learners, to be precise) prefer using mobile devices to access the LMS. This prevalence in LMS mobility increases the number of vulnerable endpoints and threats. Several types of mobile-related security threats will target your LMS system. They include social engineering, data leakages via malicious apps, unsecured public WiFi, end-to-end encryption gaps, spyware, and many others.

A sound LMS system should have mobile security features to accommodate mobile users’ security. These features should apply to both mobile websites and apps. Here are some of the LMS security features you can have for the mobile version of your LMS system.

• Keep idle screens locked
• Regularly update your phone’s software
• Only download LMS systems, software, and extensions from trustworthy sources
• Use antivirus software on your phone
• Use a virtual private network, especially when using public WiFi
• Avoid jailbreaking or rooting your phone

• Authenticated by 2-step verification 

The 2-step authentication is one of LMS’s most crucial yet disregarded security features. According to Google’s account authentication and best practices report, multiple-step authentication provides 100% protection against automated cyberattacks. The two-step authentication ensures that only authorized users access the learning management system. Once users input their login credentials (usernames and passwords), the system will require them to prove their identity further.

There are various two-factor authentication forms, such as secret codes, biometric authentications, and one-time passwords. For enhanced LMS security, it is wise that you initiate these factors. With 2FA, even when a hacker bypasses your passwords, they will still not access your data because they do not have access to the second authentication factor.

• Enable SSL Encryption

No web application security strategy can be completed without the mention of SSL encryption. Your LMS carries lots of sensitive data. In the modern day and age, data is a significant and vital asset and one of the most sought-after elements by attackers. Covering data through encryption makes it impossible for attackers to access, read and decipher the data. Different types of SSL certs are available in the market which is available at low prices. For example, cheap Wildcard SSL, cheap EV SSL certificate, and above all multi-domain SSL, single domain etc. All these SSL certs are designed for specific purposes.

Enabling SSL certificates on your LMS websites turn on HTTPS encryption. All communications on the websites will be concealed and protected from unauthorized access. In layman’s terms, encryption converts plaintext data into an indecipherable format called ciphertext. The ciphertext is like a “scribbled gibberish” that both machines and regular users cannot comprehend. Unless someone has the decryption key, they will not be able to read encrypted data.

Other than for security purposes, having an SSL certificate on your LMS also helps to boost user confidentiality. Most users prefer HTTPS to HTTP websites. According to Google’s Transparency Report, 93.2% of browsing time in Google Chrome was spent on HTTPS websites. SSL certificates also help to increase visibility in search engines. All these elements are for the good of your LMS.

• Single Sign-on system

A single sign-on system is a security approach that requires users to have a single set of credentials across multiple applications.

For instance, users will have to log into their LMS portals using their work emails and passwords instead of remembering new login credentials. This approach is good for the security of your LMS. LMS users using a single domain-specific email address will find this approach beneficial.

• Strong Password

Passwords are indispensable ingredients for any secure network. Most previous data breaches have happened because of poor and weak passwords. For that reason, a good LMS should have complex password requirements. For instance, the system should require users to use a password of less than a specified length. Moreover, it would be good to encourage users to refrain from using passwords across multiple platforms. According to a 2019 Google study, 13% reuse the same password across multiple platforms. This is a dangerous habit. An attacker who lays a hand on the password could compromise all accounts that use the password.

Here are some of the best password practices you should adopt for your learning management system:

• Make it a requirement for users to use long passwords (7 or more characters are ideal)
• Advise users to change their passwords frequently
• Never use similar login credentials across multiple platforms
• Blend different characters when creating your passwords

• The automated backup storage system

No single network or system is wholly immune to security vulnerabilities. It does not matter the number of security measures you take to safeguard your LMS against attackers. Hackers could still bypass all security walls as they have done to even the most secure system. Your LMS is also vulnerable to data loss, system failures, and many other vulnerabilities outside the scope of control.

It is wise to create a robust data backup and restore strategy to cushion yourself from such unexpected events. While at it, ensure you create the backups offsite and on a separate server. It is also wise that you conduct frequent checks and tests on your data backup and restoration plan to ensure that data is stored correctly and that it can be easily retrieved in things go haywire. Lastly, we highly recommend that you frequently back up your data on the LMS. Once or twice a week is good.

• Individual user, roles & permissions

Some of the most devastating security breaches that could hit your LMS are brewed from within your organization. According to the 2022 Ponemon Cost of Insider Threats Global Report, there has been a 44% rise in insider threats. The same report further states that an insider attack’s average cost is $15.38 million.

The best way to deal with insider attacks is to define the user roles and permissions. For instance, regular learners enrolled for training should have minimal access inside the platform to system administrators. Granting regular learners administrative rights will lead them to do all sorts of wrongs, such as grading themselves and awarding good grades.

• Use an Antivirus software system.

Malware, such as viruses, could corrupt sensitive data inside the LMS UX. There is no better way of protecting your learning management system against viruses than using antivirus software. The antivirus software will automatically and frequently scan your LMS to check and stop any form of viruses that might want to eat into your learning management system and its data.

• Must have an IP Blocker

IP blockers prevent hostile IP addresses from accessing your data. With an IP blocker, the system admin can list IP addresses that are allowed to access your system and those not allowed to access. Doing so ensures that malicious virtual attackers cannot access your LMS to view data without permission.

Conclusion

LMS, like all other internet systems, is vulnerable to cyber-attacks. It knows the best LMS security measures to initiate to protect your system against attackers. This article has explored nine security features of LMS that will help boost the security of learning management systems. As a best practice, always ensure you use multiple measures for utmost security

The post 9 Important Security Features of LMS of 2023 appeared first on ColibriWP Blog.

There are various ways to improve the growth of your website. Search Engine Optimization is the core factor in boosting the growth of your site.

Because nowadays, when someone gets stuck in finding some information, they go to the Google search bar to find their desired data.

If your website becomes relevant in the user’s search results, users can easily get to know about your website. So you must optimize your website SEO.

But how can you do that?

No worries!

From this article, you will understand how to do SEO for your website with multiple fruitful strategies.

How to Do SEO Yourself in 2023: 06 DIY Tips for Success

In this section, we will discuss some important tips that will help you in optimizing your website SEO.

So let’s jump on that!

• Improve Website Loading Speed

Do you know that your website speed impacts your SEO ranking?

Google’s system focuses on the site loading speed during ranking the search result. A fast website takes place in a higher position on the search results rather than a slow website.

If your website speed remains slow, it will impact the overall user experience of your site. Your visitors will feel irritated and leave your site if it loads slowly.

As a result, your website bounce rate will be increased. Even Google authority says website page experience highly impacts the search results ranking factors.

For this purpose, you should optimize your website speed properly. But before that, you have to analyze your site’s speed.

Google has a powerful tool called PageSpeed Insights. This tool helps users to maximize their website performance.

So let’s see how you can analyze your site speed with the help of this tool.

First, go to the PageSpeed Insights homepage.

Now just enter your site address and click on the Analyze button.

As you can see, it will show you various metrics about your website’s overall performance.

You should also focus on some significant factors to improve your site speed. One of the important factors is to choose a reliable hosting service provider. Because your site data is stored on the hosting server.

• Focus on Quality Content

It’s significant to focus on your content quality because it impacts the overall SEO ranking of your website.

Your content needs to be original, unique, and valuable to your audiences. So that the readers can find the answers to what they are seeking from the content.

Besides that, your content should be plagiarism free. Suppose you copied content from the other website. It will badly affect the overall SEO outputs.

In the beginning era of SEO, people mostly relied on keyword stuffing to rank their content in a higher position on the search results. But after the Google algorithm update, now the good quality and original content ranked in the search results.

The major goal of Google is to provide helpful and informative content to users. Naturally, if the contents are not relevant to the user search intent, then the users will not read that content at all.

For this purpose, you need to pay attention to SEO content writing on your website. Also, remember that your content could provide effective solutions to your user’s problems.

To create relevant content, you have to know what the readers are actually looking for. There are various tools available to find the appropriate content ideas. One of the prominent freemium tools is AnswerThePublic.

This tool will help you to recognize what people are trying to find on the internet.

In fact, your content structure is a vital issue to maintaining your content quality. If you write your content in a descriptive way, the audience doesn’t feel interested in reading your article.

Your article should be written in a structured way. While describing your thoughts, you can include multiple headings and subheadings based on chronological order. Furthermore, you should include bullet points and number lists.

As you can see, content headings and subheadings appear in the featured snippets. So the audience can get an idea about the whole content.

Also, make sure that your contents are readable to your audiences. Writing fluffy content can reduce your audience’s acceptance.

• Properly Optimize Images

To improve your website’s SEO ranking, you must optimize your images properly. Because images grab the audience’s attention in the digital world.

When audiences scan any content of the website, they normally check the images to find their desired information.

If you add low-quality and blurry images to your site, this can’t be able to fulfill the audience’s demands. As a result, it will badly affect the overall user experience.

Although unoptimized images could reduce your website speed. For this reason, you should carefully optimize your site images.

For image optimization, you should follow these efficient Image SEO strategies.

• Appropriate Image Format: Choosing the right image format is very important. There are various formats for images, such as PNG, JPEG, WebP, etc. Also, multiple formats vary in image quality and different sizes. PNG is the most balanced format in terms of quality and size.

• Visually Appealing Image: As we already know, images can grab the attention of the audience. So that your website images should be unique and visually stunning.

• Include Image Alt texts: Image alternative text contains the descriptions of your image. This is one of the powerful factors in image SEO practice.

• Compress Site Images: Image sizes also matter in the SEO performance of your website. Because big-size images can slow your website speed. So you should compress your images to an optimum size.

• Customize Names: Your image name should be relevant to the user search intents. You can include keywords in the image name.

So just uploading images can’t give you a better result at all. You have to look up all these factors while customizing your images for SEO.

• Develop a Mobile-Friendly Website

In the current era of digitalization, mobile internet users are increasing day by day.

The majority of the population uses smartphones for multiple purposes, such as product purchases, communications, information, etc.

According to Statista, 58.99 percent of the entire website traffic comes from smartphones.

One of the biggest reasons for the emergence of a mobile website is mobile devices are flexible to operate from anywhere. People feel more comfortable using the internet on mobile devices rather than using a desktop.

Do mobile-friendly websites impact your website SEO?

Yes, it affects your site’s search engine ranking. It’s a powerful ranking factor in Google’s search engine.

Google authority said that you should focus on creating a mobile-friendly version of your website. Also, they mention that they are boosting the ranking of the mobile-friendly website in mobile search results.

Also, Google has a powerful tool called Mobile-Friendly Test. This tool will help you to check your website’s mobile-friendliness.

You just have to input your website address and click on the TEST URL button. This will show you the result of your website’s mobile friendliness.

During developing a mobile-friendly website, you should focus on various factors, such as

• Choose a theme or design that is compatible with mobile devices.

• Use lightweight images on your site.

• Optimize buttons and icons based on mobile interface requirements.

• Make your site functions easily navigable to the audiences.

If you can properly optimize your website for mobile device users, it will help you to improve the ranking and traffic of your website.

• Internal Linking

Internal links are those links that redirect users from a particular page to a different page of the same website.

Suppose you are writing content for your website. You can include another page link in your content with appropriate anchor text.

Internal linking is a powerful method of increasing traffic to your website. According to Ninja Outreach, internal links increase their website’s organic traffic by 40%.

Also, internal linking influences the SEO of your website. Because Google crawls through the internal links and understands your website structure properly. Besides that, with the internal links Google will index your new pages more frequently.

Let’s assume you created a new webpage or content but didn’t use any links. It will be considered as orphan content or page. Googlebot will not be able to detect your page.

To improve your internal linking process, you should focus on some efficient strategies.

• Select an appropriate anchor text for the links.

• Detect the high authority page of your website.

• Update old content through the internal links.

• Try to use the links of the popular and new content of your site.

• Backlinks

Backlinks are your website links that are placed on other websites. If the visitors click those links, they will automatically redirect to your website page.

This process is very helpful in improving the SEO of your website. Because backlinks indicate that other websites testify, your website links will be valuable for the visitors.

Besides that, when you are building links on multiple websites, the search engine will understand that your web pages are worthy of placing an upper position in the search result.

During link building, you should focus on the fact that your backlinks are coming from highly authoritative websites. You can generate backlinks in multiple ways, such as guest blogging, blogger reviews, link reclamation, etc.

Top 4 Must-Have Tools For Your Website SEO

We hope that you have already understood how to do SEO for your website. To do all the SEO-related tasks more effectively, you need to require various types of tools.

So let us know about some tools that specially help your site SEO.

• Semrush

Semrush is one of the leading full-fledged SEO tools available in the digital world. They provided various SEO and other marketing-related services to users for 14 years.

There are multiple famous companies that use Semrush to grow their business, such as Samsung, Tesla, Amazon, Quora, etc.

Semursh has multiple keyword research functionality such as keyword overview, organic research, keyword magic tool, keyword gap, etc.

Also, this tool will help you in other SEO-related tasks such as competitor analysis, local SEO, on-page SEO, content marketing, rank tracking, etc.

 Key Features

Effective competitor analysis.

Content marketing analytics.

On-page and local SEO optimization.

Various keyword research options.

• Moz

Moz is another SEO tool that will help you to increase the traffic and visibility of your website.

To optimize your site SEO, you need to analyze your own website properly. This tool has a powerful function called “Site Audit.” It will crawl your website and help you to find technical SEO errors.

Also, Moz has a powerful rank-tracking feature. With the help of this option, you can track your site ranking and take the initiative.

In fact, Moz will suggest you more than 500 million keywords. So you can choose traffic-boosting keywords for your website.

Key Features

Provide 500 million keyword suggestions.

Website crawl functionality.

Advanced link research option.

Optimize custom reports.

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frogs has a powerful website crawler tool that is especially beneficial for website on-page SEO.

With the free version of this tool, you can easily crawl 500 URLs without spending any penny. SEO Spider helps its users to find broken links and server errors in their websites.

This tool will provide you with efficient analytical data about your web page titles and meta descriptions. In fact, you can find the duplicated contents of your website and customize them based on your requirements.

Besides that, SEO Spider integrates with tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and PageSpeed Insights.

Key Features

Detects the broken links.

Integrates with multiple famous tools.

Advanced website crawling.

Optimize XML Sitemaps.

• Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an efficient SEO tool that will help you to do your SEO-related research, such as paid traffic research, organic traffic research, backlinks checker, etc.

This tool has a powerful keyword explorer option. It will give you the opportunity to research seven billion keywords for your website.

One of the significant functions of this tool is competitor analysis. It will help you to understand what type of keywords your competitor uses and get more traffic.

Besides that, it has a function for researching keywords based on different countries. It will provide your keyword insights from 171 countries.

Key Features

More than thousands of keyword suggestions.

Advanced competitor analysis.

Site audit functionality.

Rank tracking capability.

Final Words

As a beginner website owner, your main goal should be increasing the visibility of your website. Because it will increase the traffic of your website.

In this situation, your website’s search engine ranking plays a huge game. If your sites constantly appear in the user’s search results, more visitors will come to your website.

In this article, we have discussed how to do SEO for your website and some must-have tools. We hope this will help you to boost your website’s SEO ranking.

Best of luck!

The post How to Do SEO For WordPress in 2023: 6 DIY Tips for Success appeared first on ColibriWP Blog.

When it comes to SEO, link-building plays a very important role. Securing high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites signals to search engines that your website content is relevant and useful to people in your audience. And this will lead to search engines ranking your content higher on their results pages. 

Having certain high-quality assets on your website can make it much easier for you to build links, either manually or organically. And, in this article, I am going to take you through 5 types you can publish on your site to give you the best chance of earning more backlinks.

Content-type 1: Findings from original research 

Publishing original research on your website can be a great way to earn backlinks, as people will use your results to back up their own points or inform their own content. 

There are several ways you can carry out your own research. For example, you could conduct a study to help you collect relevant data, or you could even plan and execute your own experiment to test out a hypothesis you have. Once you’ve carried out your study, just make sure you publish the findings so people can examine, share, and link to them.

To give you some inspiration, let’s take a look at a company that’s done a great job of publishing original research that’s very link-worthy.

Copyhackers provide digital marketing services and resources. And, on their website, you will find a case study about an experiment they conducted to work out how they could best optimize a pricing page for one of their clients, Mad Mimi.

In the article, they’ve highlighted things like what the previous pricing page looked like and what was wrong with it, the changes they planned to make, and the results they got from some A/B testing. This is a great example of a case study that sets out helpful results other websites might want to discuss and link back to.

If you would like to use a similar tactic for your website, consider what you could study to provide helpful information for publications and businesses in your niche. Or is there a specific problem you could solve for a client, and then publish your process and the results? It’s all about creating a resource others in your field will want to cite and link to in their own content. 

Content-type 2: Buying guides or comparison pieces 

Buying guides or comparison pieces are primarily designed to help people make informed buying decisions, but they can also attract a lot of links. This is because, if a writer wants to recommend a particular solution to a problem but doesn’t necessarily want to endorse a specific company, they can link to a round-up and let their readers come to their own decision about what to spend their money on.

If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to creating buying guides or comparison pieces, here are some great examples to provide you with plenty of inspiration. 

First, let’s take a look at an example from SocialPilot, which is a social media marketing and management tool provider. They’ve created a post that rounds up the best Facebook ad tools. While the piece mentions their own product as well, it also outlines the pros and cons of some of the other programs on the market.

They understand that many marketers or business owners in their target audience will be looking for effective tools to help them manage their social media marketing. And they’ve tried to make the decision process much easier for them by putting together this guide.

But this is also the type of content that can attract a lot of links from people recommending Facebook ad tools. So, if you would like to reap the same benefits, consider putting together a product round-up that includes some of the items you stock. Mentioning your competitors in your own content might seem counterintuitive, but it can actually help to show you’re unbiased, make it clear you only care about your customers’ needs, and secure you more links. 

Another great example comes in the form of a round-up from Best Nursing Programs. This is an online resource that aims to help aspiring healthcare professionals choose their next step in life. On their blog, they have a  post that talks about the best-chartered nursing assistant programs in the United States. 

Their post compares 40 schools that offer online and in-person programs, outlining the admission requirements for each school, the program lengths, and the tuition fees. Not only will this resource prove very useful for prospective students, but it’s also very link-worthy as it contains such a wealth of information. It could be shared by a lot of sites in the educational, healthcare, or career progression niche. 

In the electronics world, there are lots of buying guides. Let’s say you want to buy a mirrorless camera. You might want to compare the offers from Nikon, Sony, and more. Here’s a buying guide example from PrinterWire that compares lightboxes for product photography.

Finally, check out the bohemian rug buying guide from Overstock. The company sells furniture for offices and homes, so this content is going to be very relevant for their target audience. It provides a great deal of information, from what someone should consider when buying a rug, to the different boho styles they’ll find on the site.

Not only can it help the company’s customers to make the best possible purchase, but this could also attract a lot of backlinks for the site. Interior design, lifestyle, and fashion blogs could all be interested in sharing this resource when talking about how to decorate a home with a boho style, so it’s a great tool for link-building and boosting the company’s SEO. 

Content-type 3: Well-designed infographics 

Infographics provide a visual representation of data and information. They can be used to present statistics, processes, or timelines in a visually appealing and easily digestible way. 

If you create strong infographics using information that is relevant to your field of work, others in your industry will want to share them and include them in their own content. This will then lead to you being credited with a backlink. 

To create strong infographics, keep them simple and make great use of whitespace — you don’t want them to look too cluttered. You should also use bold and catchy colors to catch people’s eyes and keep their attention. You could even make your infographics interactive to ensure they’re as engaging and link-worthy as possible.

If you don’t know where to start with creating these graphics, Venngage has a great guide to making a high-quality infographic in 5 steps, which will walk you through the process. And it even has an infographic.

Once you’ve created your infographic, make sure you reach out to websites in your niche to let them know you’re happy for them to use it. Just be sure to ask for a credit and backlink to make it worthwhile. 

Content-type 4: Content that answers questions relevant to your industry 

If you can create content that answers common industry questions, this can help you to earn plenty of backlinks, as people will use it to back up points they make in their own articles. 

To discover which questions you should be answering with your content, you’ll want to conduct keyword research using tools like Ahrefs and Ubersuggest. Once you type a relevant word into any of these tools, you’ll be provided with a list of phrases that are commonly typed into search engines. You can then use these to come up with content topics and identify questions that need to be answered.

For more inspiration, you could also ask your customer service team whether there are any common queries they would like you to answer on your website, or browse industry forums to see if there’s any information people are frequently searching for.

Let’s take a look at some examples of businesses that are already doing a great job of creating content to answer common questions. These should provide you with lots of inspiration for when it comes to producing yours. 

FreshBooks is an accounting software provider that aims to help small businesses and freelancers balance their books. And, on their blog they have a post that discusses whether you should hire an accountant for your small business.

A lot of small business owners will ask themselves this question at one time or another, and might even type it into a search engine. So, this is an incredibly relevant topic for FreshBooks to cover with their content.

Because it’s such a universal query, it’s also a piece of content that’s sure to attract a lot of backlinks. Business, finance, and freelancing websites could all link to this as a helpful resource to provide further reading and advice for their visitors. 

We can also take a look at an example from RMIT Online, a university that provides online courses in a range of fields including marketing and data science.

They’ve created a piece of content that aims to answer the question of whether we’re facing an oversupply of data scientists. Because some of their prospective students will be thinking about pursuing careers in this area, it’s obviously a very helpful resource for their target audience, but it could also serve as a strong backlink magnet.

This piece of content could be linked to by a wide range of websites, including educational, science, and careers publications. It’s a genuinely helpful guide that provides lots of in-depth information, which is what makes it so shareable and link-worthy. 

Finally, we have an example from My Canada Payday, which is a financial lending company. On their website, they’ve published a post that explains how Canadians can invest for the long term.

Because the company is in the financial services industry, it’s likely a lot of their target customers will have questions about how to make their money go further. The guide contains information about high-risk and low-risk investments, trending markets and industries, and how people can diversify their investment portfolios. It’s incredibly relevant to what the business does and is sure to be helpful for the people they serve. 

This is also a resource website in the financial, investment, and business spaces will want to link to as further reading. It explains everything in a clear and concise way, and provides a lot of expert advice publications will want to share with their visitors. 

Content-type 5: Round-ups of advice from experts 

Expert round-ups are essentially lists of advice that have been collected from professionals in your field. They’re great for building links, as they give a lot of advice at once, and the fact the opinions come from a lot of experts will give the piece a sense of authority. 

To create an expert round-up, you’ll first need to choose a strong topic. This should be a subject you know your target audience already wants to know about, and it should stir up different opinions to make your round-up as interesting as possible. 

Once you have a topic, you can then begin to reach out to your contributors. Since this is an expert round-up, you can’t just contact anybody. You should focus on getting in touch with people who have some authority in your field so their advice will be credible. 

You can connect with experts by sending personalized emails that contain your question and politely asking if they would like to contribute to your round-up. It could also be worth following and interacting with them on social media first to build a connection. This is likely to increase the chances of your receiving a positive reply. 

After your expert round-up has been created and published, you can promote it on social media, and ask the people featured to do the same. You can also let them know you’re happy for them to post a snippet on their own website with a link back to the original piece on your site. This is a relatively fail-safe way to secure plenty of backlinks for your site. 

Here’s an example from Campaigner, who used to make roundups of their favorite marketing articles.

Summary

Building backlinks can take a lot of work, but it’ll be worth it once your website starts to climb the search engine results pages. By publishing findings from original research, creating buying guides, answering your customers’ questions, and more, you can publish content that’s going to attract links organically. 

The post 5 Types of Content that Will Help You Build More Backlinks for Your Website  appeared first on ColibriWP Blog.