What are Zombie pages in SEO: chase them away from your site!

Zombie pages are pages on a website that generate little or no traffic and are difficult or impossible to access through search engine results.

In this article, we will give you our advice on how to detect these pages and how to treat them so that they do not affect the visibility of your entire site.

Summary:

1. Why do we have to deal with the zombie pages?
2. The different types of zombie pages
3. How to locate these pages?
4. How to deal with zombie pages?

Why do we have to deal with the Zombie Pages?

The detection and processing of zombie pages allows to:

• Improve the user experience of visitors. Removing or correcting the zombie pages of a site allows to provide a better user experience and to improve the bounce and conversion rate of a site.
• To improve the Quality Score awarded by Google. The search engine judges a site as a whole – compensating for the negative effects of zombie pages raises its overall score and therefore improves its positioning.
• To optimize the crawl budget. Removing or blocking the indexing of zombie pages allows to spread the crawl time that is allocated to a site on its most significant pages.

The different types of Zombie Pages.

1 – Unindexed Pages.

These pages usually have technical problems such as loading times that are too long or scripts that do not execute. Google divides the time that its crawlers spend on a site according to the number of pages on it, it will choose not to index pages that slow down its task and which would anyway also have a high chance of being abandoned by visitors.

These pages are absent from Google’s results index, they are not visited or in any case, do not receive direct traffic from the search engine.

2 – “Non Responsive” pages.

Pages that are not optimized or that take too long to navigate on mobile phones are also at a disadvantage. Google will punish them because it considers them to offer a degraded user experience.

These pages are present in Google’s results but their ranking is penalized.

3 – Pages with obsolete or low-quality content.

There are two types:

• Published pages that have not been updated for several years. Google may downgrade the rating of such pages by considering that they are no longer current.
• Pages with low content (less than 300 words) or without real interest are also penalized.

These pages are gradually downgraded in the results.

4 – pages not (or not enough) optimized for SEO.

These pages can be quite useful and interesting for internet users but they do not apply the SEO criteria (such as the absence of alt, h1, h2, or h3 tags, a bad title or a too-long title, and no keywords…).

These pages are downgraded in search engine results.

5 – The annex pages.

These are often pages that can be accessed at the footer of the site: contact, legal notices, GTC, GDPR… Even if they are of little interest to the internet user, they contain legal information and their presence on a site is an SEO requirement.

The absence of these pages negatively affects the referencing of a site.

6 – Orphan pages.

These pages are simply not found by crawler robots, they are not linked by any internal link to other pages of the site and they are not accessible through the site’s menu. They are pages that somehow float in a parallel universe with almost no chance of being visited.

Several techniques exist to identify the orphan pages of a site. One of the simplest (well, unless your site has thousands of pages) is to compare your XML sitemap with the Google index of your site (you will get this index by a search such as “site:mywebsite.com” in Google). You just have to compare the two lists to identify the pages present in your sitemap but absent from the Google index. You will then just have to link the orphan pages to the rest of your site by internal meshing.

How to locate the Zombie Pages?

If you want to make the diagnosis by yourself without going through the services of an agency, we advise you to use the Google Search Console. You will find the tools that will allow you to detect pages with low or decreasing performance.

The “performance” tab (+ new + page), very easy to use (especially if your site is only a few pages long), will allow you to compare the evolution over time of traffic on each of your pages and thus detect those that are experiencing a sharp drop in traffic.

The “excluded” tab (+ coverage + excluded) will allow you to analyze two types of zombie pages:

• The “Explored, currently unindexed” pages

These are pages that Google decided not to index during its last crawl considering their content too weak, duplicated, or containing information already present on many other sites. It is therefore advisable here to first complete and/or rewrite the content of these pages and wait for Google’s robots to come and explore them again.

• The pages “Detected, currently not indexed”.

These are pages that Google has chosen not to index due to technical problems (e.g. when the server response time is too long).

How to deal with the Zombie Pages?

Some pages just need to be updated or optimized, while others really need to be removed and redirected.

Improve these pages.

As zombie pages are often pages with a too-long loading time, absent from the site’s mesh, or with unsuitable content, you need to rehabilitate them in the eyes of Google as well as in the eyes of your visitors.

• Update and enrich the content of these pages;
• Check that they contain the right keywords and that the semantic richness of the text is adapted to the subject matter;
• Improve UX and Loading Time;
• Add links to other linked pages on the site;
• Add internal inbound links from other pages on your site.;
• Share it on your social networks;
• Do not change their URL.

Delete them!

Don’t launch into this delicate operation without checking the pages you are going to delete on a case-by-case basis.

If there are zombie pages on your site that have outdated content and do not generate any conversions, then it is possible to delete them.

On the other hand, pages that interest only a few visitors but which have a very “profitable” conversion rate should be kept.

Of course, there are zombie pages that are essential like the legal notices, the General Conditions of Sale, and the RGPD… which generate little or no visits and are to be kept.

Once your zombie pages have been deleted, don’t forget to redirect (301) the URLs of these pages to the pillar pages of the appropriate category or to other pages that deal with a similar theme.

What is a PBN?

 

PBN stands for Private Blog Network. It is a network of multiple websites that are owned and operated by a single person or organization, with the goal of manipulating search engine rankings to increase the visibility and authority of a specific website or group of websites.

PBNs are typically created by purchasing expired or deleted domains with existing backlinks and redirecting them to the primary website to pass on link juice and improve its search engine ranking. However, PBNs are considered a black hat SEO technique and can result in penalties from search engines if discovered. As such, it is not recommended to use PBNs as a part of your SEO strategy.

Is PBN good for SEO?

No, PBNs are not good for SEO in the long term. While they may provide short-term gains in search engine rankings, using a Private Blog Network (PBN) is considered a black hat SEO technique that violates Google's guidelines. If Google detects the use of PBNs, it can result in severe penalties, including a drop in rankings or even complete removal from the search index.

Instead of relying on PBNs, it is recommended to focus on creating high-quality content that provides value to your audience and attracts natural backlinks. Building relationships with other websites in your industry and earning backlinks through guest posting, content partnerships, and other legitimate means can also help improve your website's search engine rankings over time.

What is trust flow and citation flow in SEO?

In SEO, TF and CF refer to two different metrics used to evaluate the quality and authority of a website or webpage.

TF stands for "Trust Flow," which is a metric developed by Majestic SEO. It measures the quality of the links pointing to a website or webpage, taking into account the authority of the linking domains. The more high-quality and trustworthy links a website or webpage has pointing to it, the higher its Trust Flow score will be.

CF stands for "Citation Flow," which is another metric developed by Majestic SEO. It measures the quantity of the links pointing to a website or webpage, regardless of their quality or authority. The more links a website or webpage has pointing to it, the higher its Citation Flow score will be.

In general, a high TF and CF score indicates that a website or webpage is likely to be authoritative and trustworthy. However, it's important to note that these metrics are just one aspect of SEO, and should not be relied upon solely to evaluate the quality of a website or webpage. Other factors, such as content quality, user experience, and technical SEO, also play a critical role in SEO success.

What are backlinks and backlink types?

Backlinks are links from one website to another website. They are also known as inbound links, incoming links, or simply links. Backlinks are important for search engine optimization (SEO) because they signal to search engines that other websites consider your content to be valuable and worth linking to.

There are several types of backlinks, including:

Natural backlinks: These are links that other websites give you voluntarily because they think your content is valuable or useful.

Manual backlinks: These are links that you create yourself, such as by commenting on blog posts or forum threads, submitting your website to directories, or exchanging links with other websites.

Editorial backlinks: These are links that you earn because another website has found your content to be valuable and has linked to it without any request or incentive from you.

Contextual backlinks: These are links that are embedded within the content of a webpage, rather than in a separate section like a sidebar or footer.

Do-follow backlinks: These are links that pass on link juice, which is the value or authority that search engines associate with a website. These links are considered valuable for SEO.

No-follow backlinks: These are links that do not pass on link juice, and are typically used for links that are paid or are considered to be of lower quality.

It's important to note that while backlinks can be valuable for SEO, not all backlinks are created equal. High-quality backlinks from authoritative websites are typically more valuable than low-quality backlinks from spammy or irrelevant websites.

Additionally, it's important to focus on creating valuable content that naturally attracts backlinks, rather than relying solely on manual or paid backlink strategies.

What is the ideal length for a meta tag for SEO?

There isn't necessarily an ideal length for a meta tag, as the appropriate length can vary depending on the specific type of meta tag and its purpose.

For example, the ideal length for a meta title tag is generally considered to be between 50-60 characters, as this is the typical maximum number of characters that search engines will display in search results. However, the length of a meta description tag can vary and can be up to around 155-160 characters, as this is the typical maximum number of characters that search engines will display in the description snippet in search results.

It's important to note that while there are general guidelines for meta tag lengths, it's more important to focus on creating accurate and relevant meta tags that provide clear and concise information about the content on the page.

How to submit website to the Google Search Console correctly?

Submitting your new website to Google Search Console is an important step in getting your website indexed by Google. Here are the steps to submit your new website to Google Search Console:

1. First, go to the Google Search Console website (https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome) and sign in with your Google account.

2. Click on the "Add a Property" button and enter your website URL.

3. You will be asked to verify that you own the website. There are several methods of verification, such as adding an HTML tag to your website, uploading a HTML file, or adding a DNS record. Follow the instructions for your preferred verification method.

4. Once your website is verified, you can access the Google Search Console dashboard. Here, you can see information about your website's performance, index status, and more.

5. To submit your website to Google, click on the "URL Inspection" option in the left-hand menu. Enter the URL of the page you want to index in the search bar and click "Enter."

6. If the page has not already been indexed by Google, you will see an option to "Request Indexing." Click on this button to submit your page to Google.

7. Google will review your page and add it to the index if it meets its guidelines. This process can take a few hours or several days, depending on various factors such as the size of your website and how frequently it is updated.

That's it! Your website should now be submitted to Google Search Console and ready for indexing. It's a good idea to regularly check the Search Console dashboard to monitor your website's performance and make any necessary adjustments to improve its visibility in Google search results.

Google Launching May 2022 Broad Core Algorithm Update

 Google is releasing a broad core algorithm update on May 25, 2022. It will take roughly two weeks to fully roll out.

 Google confirms a broad core algorithm update, called the May 2022 core update, is rolling out today.

Core updates are designed to make search results more relevant for users. Though the update is launching today, it will take 1-2 weeks for this update to fully roll out.

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Public Liaison for Search, notes that changes to site performance in search results are to be expected.

“Core updates are changes we make to improve Search overall and keep pace with the changing nature of the web. While nothing in a core update is specific to any particular site, these updates may produce some noticeable changes to how sites perform…”

When a core update rolls out, Google is known for pointing to the same guidance it published in 2019.

Nothing has changed there, as Google references the same document with respect to this update.

To sum it up, Google’s general advice regarding core updates is as follows:

• Expect widely noticeable effects, such as spikes or drops in search rankings.
• Core updates are “broad” in the sense that they don’t target anything specific. Rather, they’re designed to improve Google’s systems overall.
• Pages that drop in rankings aren’t being penalized; they’re being reassessed against other web content that has been published since the last update.
• Focusing on providing the best possible content is the top recommended way to deal with the impact of a core algorithm update.
• Broad core updates happen every few months. Sites might not recover from one update until the next one rolls out.
• Improvements do not guarantee recovery. However, choosing not to implement any improvements will virtually guarantee no recovery.

It has been six months since the last Google core update, which rolled out in November 2021.

Those who have been working hard on their site during that time may start to see some noticeable improvements to search rankings.

On the other hand, those who have left their site sit idle may begin to see themselves outranked by sites with more relevant content.

It’s too early to start assessing the impact, however, as this update will take a week or longer to roll out.

Your rankings may fluctuate during that time, so don’t be alarmed if you notice changes right away.

Google will confirm when the update is finished rolling out, then it will be time to start doing your analysis.

Google is testing the IndexNow protocol for sustainability

After both Microsoft Bing and Yandex announce IndexNow, Google promises to give it a try.

A Google spokesperson has confirmed that the search company will be testing the new IndexNow protocol first introduced by Microsoft Bing and Yandex a few weeks ago. Google said while its crawling efforts are efficient, Google will test to see if it can improve its overall sustainability efforts by leveraging the IndexNow protocol.

Google’s statement.

Google told Search Engine Land “we take a holistic approach to sustainability at Google, including efforts to develop the most efficient and accurate index of the web.” “We have been carbon neutral since 2007 and we are on pace to be carbon-free by 2030 across both our data centers and campuses. We’re encouraged by work to make web crawling more efficient, and we will be testing the potential benefits of this protocol,” a Google spokesperson added.

What is IndexNow?

IndexNow provides a method for websites owners to instantly inform search engines about latest content changes on their website. IndexNow is a simple ping protocol so that search engines know that a URL and its content has been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to quickly reflect this change in their search results.

How it works?

The protocol is very simple — all you need to do is create a key on your server, and then post a URL to the search engine to notify IndexNow-participating search engines of the change.

The steps include:

1. Generate a key supported by the protocol using the online key generation tool.
2. Host the key in text file named with the value of the key at the root of your web site.
3. Start submitting URLs when your URLs are added, updated, or deleted. You can submit one URL or a set of URLs per API call.

Submit one URL is easy as sending a simple HTTP request containing the URL changed and your key.
https://www.bing.com/IndexNow?url=url-changed&key=your-key and the same would work by using https://yandex.com/indexnow?url=url-changed&key=your-key

How does it work with Google?

We asked Google if https://www.google.com/IndexNow?url=url-changed&key=your-key would work with the search engine and we await to hear back. The protocol works that if you submit it to Bing or Yandex and, one would assume now Google, that one submission to any of those search engines would send them to all the search engines participating in this protocol. So submitting it to Bing, would essentially also submit it to Yandex, Google and other participating search engines.

Google changed its mind?

When this first was introduced, we were told that Google is aware of the IndexNow initiative and the company was asked to participate but that Google did not. I guess Google had a change of heart?

Google crawling is efficient.

Google’s crawling mechanism is supposedly very efficient and Google has continued to improve its crawling efficiency. Last year Googlebot began supporting HTTP/2, the next generation of the fundamental data transfer protocol of the web. HTTP/2 is significantly more efficient than its predecessors and it saves resources for both Google and web sites. Google uses HTTP/2 in over half of all crawls.

Why we care?

Like we said before, instant indexing is an SEO’s dream when it comes to giving search engines the most updated content on a site. Google has been very strict about its applications indexing API, used for job postings and livestream content only now. Google’s change of heart here can be an exciting change for SEOs and site owners.

The protocol is very simple and it requires very little developer effort to add this to your site, so it makes sense to implement this if you care about speedy indexing.

Google November 2021 Core Update

Google is rolling out a new broad core update today named the November 2021 Core Update. This is the third core update Google released in 2021.

The announcement. Google announced this rollout on the Google Search Central Twitter account, not the Search Liaison account, which it has done for all other previous announcements on core updates.

The November 2021 Core Update is now rolling out live. As is typical with these updates, it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out.

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) November 17, 2021

Rollout started at about 11am ET. Google updated us that the rollout has begun at about 11am ET. Google said “The November 2021 Core Update is now rolling out live. As is typical with these updates, it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out.”

Timing before holidays. It is a bit shocking to see Google rollout this update before, and likely during (assuming this is a normal two week rollout), the biggest online holiday shopping season. Black Friday and Cyber Monday is less than two weeks away and Google is rolling out this update starting today.

Previously Google took breaks before the holiday shopping season, it was Google’s gift to webmasters said former Googler Matt Cutts.

Previous core updates.

The most recent previous core update was the July 2021 core update and before that it was the June 2021 core update and that update was slow to roll out but a big one. Then we had the December 2020 core update ands the December update was very big, bigger than the May 2020 core update, and that update was also big and broad and took a couple of weeks to fully roll out. Before that was the January 2020 core update, we had some analysis on that update over here. The one prior to that was the September 2019 core update. That update felt weaker to many SEOs and webmasters, as many said it didn’t have as big of an impact as previous core updates. Google also released an update in November, but that one was specific to local rankings. You can read more about past Google updates over here.

What to do if you are hit.

Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past. There aren’t specific actions to take to recover, and in fact, a negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages. However, Google has offered a list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update. Google did say you can see a bit of a recovery between core updates but the biggest change you would see would be after another core update.

Why we care.

Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms, it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results. Knowing when Google makes these updates gives us something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your web site or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm. Today, we know Google will be releasing a core ranking update, so keep an eye on your analytics and rankings over the next couple of weeks.

13 Proven Steps to Grow Your Domain Authority Fast

How to grow your domain authority?

To keep it real with you, every high authority site on the Net today started at the bottom rung. You’ve just gotta work your way up (Siri, play Drake’s “Started from the bottom”). That’s how the system is designed.

Actually, getting a higher score gets tough as you climb. Therefore, it is easy to go from 1 to 20, and this is the lower tier of the scale.

Landing within the range of 40 to 60 is quite another level of challenge, but if you hit it, then you deserve a pat on the back. Why? Because you’ve made it to the big league!

It is much tougher to grow your domain authority to the 70-100 range. Much tougher? Yes. Impossible? No.

So, instead of lamenting about how many other sites are way ahead of you, gear up! I am about to share with you the surefire steps to get your domain authority rocketing.

Are you ready?

Let’s get to it!

1. Work on your off-page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to activities that take place outside your website. Think of it in terms of external tactics geared towards effectively marketing your site and reaching a wider audience.

An off-page SEO tactic that has proven its worth is influencer outreach. This involves reaching out to established entities (businesses and individuals) and asking them to kindly share your content.

Another aspect of influencer outreach includes reaching out to authority sites and asking them to link to a quality post that is relevant to them. 

Of course, they will only share your content if it meets a certain standard. However, if they do share your content, that means that you’ll have the attention of their followers.

Your site will thank you for the visibility it will experience.

Another move that seems underrated is joining relevant discussion forums and replying to questions on “question and answer” sites. These sites are dear to the hearts of search engines and people who need information.

Your role is to answer questions that are related to your niche and also become an active participant in discussions. Essentially, you are positioning yourself as an authority in that industry. Also, include links to posts on your site which are relevant to the question asked.

The outcome?

An upthrust in your domain authority, site traffic, and brand exposure!

2. On-page SEO matters, too

On-page SEO refers to optimization activities that are carried out on the pages of a website. They are easy and can be implemented in an instant, quite unlike their off-page counterparts.

An important aspect of on-page SEO is a site’s URL structure. It should be arranged in a manner that displays the category hierarchy of the site.

Search engines pay attention to it because it helps determine a given page’s essence. It also matters because if it contains keywords (it should contain keywords), users will easily link with the keyword.

On-page SEO also involves title tags. Title tags specify the title of a website page. It is easy not to think much about them. But they play the role of attracting users to click on your site when it shows up on a search engine result page.

Also, they briefly describe the content of a page on your site and help with SEO. You should make them attractive enough to capture your users’ attention, or else you might lose that click.

There is always a tendency for users to get distracted and lose track of your content. In that case, a good title tag serves as a placeholder and reminds them of the page’s content in the event that a user has multiple tabs open.

Additionally, social media platforms utilize and display the title tags when you share your page.

Keywords are part of on-page SEO

Hardly ever is there talk about on-page SEO without mention of the term “keywords”.

In fact, many think that SEO is just all about keywords. It isn’t, but keywords are important if you are concerned about growing your domain authority and boosting your site’s visibility.

Keywords should be smoothly added to a page’s content so that it flows naturally. Gone are the days of keyword stuffing. Worse still, Google penalizes sites that are guilty of it. Therefore, keywords should be cleverly spread throughout the text, and even included in the image alt texts.

3. Go hard on technical SEO

Obviously, you need to improve on all aspects of SEO if you are keen on growing your domain authority.

Technical SEO is aimed at optimizing the workings of the complete website for the sake of search engine crawling, indexing and general visibility.

As the name implies, a measure of technical knowledge is required. However, the good news is that for the most part, once you get your technical SEO on lock, you won’t have to do it again.

Security is one core facet of technical SEO. You should add SSL (Secure Socket Layer) to your site to make it HTTPS. This means that your site can only be accessed with https and not http.

The big deal with HTTPS?

It helps with search engine ranking, and also develops trust with your users. It shows that any information transferred between your site and the server is encrypted, and thus protected from malicious eyes.

If you’ve ever made a purchase online, then you know how relevant this is.

Optimizing your 404 page aids technical SEO

From time to time, site owners delete certain pages from their site. Frequently, users make mistakes when typing URLs into their browsers. That brings us to the need for the optimization of the 404 page.

As part of technical SEO, an optimized 404 page informs users that the page they are searching for is not available. It also provides a simple way of returning to important pages of the website or suggests related pages. It should also have the same navigation and structure menus as your site.

To have a feel of what your 404 page looks like, just misspell a URL of your website in your browser and search. Make sure you type in the root domain correctly, though.

Below is an image of this site’s 404 page. Pay attention to the URL I typed in. I don’t think avocado smoothies have much to do with internet marketing.

4. Increase your site’s speed

As far as increasing your site’s domain authority goes, a faster website blows a slower one out of the water. Website speed falls within the lines of technical SEO, but it is worth a separate mention.

According to an infographic by Kissmetrics, 40% of people say that they will leave a site page that takes 3 seconds or more to load.    

There are different metrics for measuring site speed, and they are:

• The time it takes for 100% of the resources on the page to load;
• Time To First Byte (TTFB) and this measures how long it takes for a page to start the loading process; and 
• First meaningful paint (first contextual paint) which refers to how long it takes to load enough of the resources for the content of your page to be actually read.

A wise move would be to improve your site speed based on all these metrics. Better to err on the side of caution, right?

Here are some tips to make your website faster:

• Compress your images. This might be the billionth time you’ll hear this, but large images make your page slow.
• Also, trim your code. Codes resulting from shoddy developer work are bad for your domain authority.
• Enable browser caching. With this, a user will store parts of your site in their browser, and this will help your site load faster upon subsequent visits.
• Apply a Content Delivery Network (CDN). It identifies your visitor’s physical location and then serves up your site from a nearby server.

Additionally, you should keep track of your site speed. You can do this by utilizing tools such as Google Page Insights, Google Mobile Speed Tools and others. They normally give tips and recommendations after an analysis.

5. Make your site mobile-friendly 

You must be living under a rock if have not noticed the prevalent use of mobiles in accessing the Internet. A 2019 survey shows that there are way more mobile Internet users than desktop Internet users.  

A site’s mobile-friendliness is another technical element that determines its domain authority. In fact, Google seems to have a thing for mobile-friendly sites.

How else would you explain the introduction of the mobile-first index (a ranking principle that displays mobile content first regardless of the searcher’s device)?

A solid tip on making your site mobile-friendly is to make it responsive. This makes the content and layout respond to the user’s particular device.

The benefits of making your site responsive include:

• A bump in user-friendliness.
• A single URL which eliminates the need for a separate URL (M. configuration) and also makes for easy sharing of content.
• No need for dynamic serving which demands different HTML for a different device.
• No worrisome redirects and SEO problems.

Some recommended tools to help you check your site’s mobile-friendliness include Google Developers Mobile-Friendly Test Tool and Bing Mobile-Friendliness Test Tool.

6. Good content means a higher domain authority

Stellar content will help you grow your domain authority.

High-quality content is content that understands your audience and thoroughly answers their questions.

Some tips on how to create amazing content are:

• Provide deep information, as scanty posts of 500 words might not help you. Also, make use of casual language. Save the jargon and strange language for classes at Hogwarts.
• Let the post be helpful and provide a solution to a particular challenge. When writing long-form content, it is easy to lose sight of the intended goal. Maintain your focus.
• As much as users want to learn and be informed, they want to be entertained and thrilled too. Think of your post as a conversation between you and the reader, and lace it with elements of emotion and popular culture.
• Make it easily readable. The truth is that lots of people breeze through posts. Also, large walls of text are intimidating. Therefore, to keep people from running away from your post, utilize short paragraphs, bold letters, numbered lists and bullet points.
• Use keywords efficiently. Spread keywords through your post evenly, and make good use of synonyms and varying word forms of the keyword.

If you are serious about boosting your domain authority, then having a blog on your site is a no-brainer. It serves as a chamber for the production of content. The benefits of having a blog on your site are tremendous and cannot be over-emphasized.

It doesn’t really matter what name you give to it. Some websites have different captions such as “What’s New”, or “Tips”. All that matters is that you have a section of your website dedicated to the provision of content for your audience.

7. Get high-quality backlinks

Say it again!

To some, high-quality backlinks are the brain, heart, and spine of boosting your site’s domain authority. Such persons might not be far from the truth. Generating high-quality backlinks is an aspect of off-page SEO, but it is worth a separate mention.

The simple implication is that getting high-authority sites to backlink to your website will make your domain authority grow. You know what they say, “the higher the site’s authority, the sweeter the link juice”.

What?

Isn’t that how the saying goes? 

Well, at least you get the idea. Find sites that are considered thought-leaders in your industry and get them to link back to your site. One surefire way to hit this goal is by writing guest posts for high authority sites in your niche. 

What you are essentially doing is giving them a quality post in exchange for a quality backlink.

With good backlinks comes more referral traffic for you, greater visibility and a climb in domain authority.

Another way is to create first-class content that such sites would want to link to. You could also reach out to them and ask them to link back to any of your posts which they find link-worthy and relevant to their audience.

Whichever means you opt for, the outcome is that a high-quality backlink is sure to help grow your domain authority.

8. Conduct link audits

Health experts advise that for good living we need constant self-examination and de-cluttering of our environments.

Come, lemme whisper a secret to you.

THE SAME APPLIES TO YOUR WEBSITE!

The function of a link audit is to comb through your current links to determine whether or not they are good for your site’s health. Generally, a link audit helps you:

• Find links sending traffic to your site.
• Identify risky links, weak links, and the strongest links.
• Figure out how to improve your overall link strategy.
• Know which parts of your website are drawing the most inbound links and which parts are lagging behind.

They say prevention is better than cure. It is best to conduct a link audit sooner than later because bad links incur penalties. A thorough link audit will expose unfavorable links, and you can disavow them.

To effectively grow your domain authority, you must avoid bad links like the Black Plague. 

Links which are generally considered bad include:

• A link from sites that activate a virus warning when you enter their URLs.
• Links from sites that haven’t been indexed.
• A link from spam sites.
• Links from sites with odd content and sites that promote social vices.

However, I must point out that a bad link and a low-quality link are not entirely the same thing. In fact, you should allow some links to stay, even if they seem to have low quality.

That’s because the site having the low-quality link might be on its way up, and disavowing such a link will rob you of the juice that is to come.

Some tools that you can use to check your backlinks are Google Search Console, and Moz.

Conduct a link audit regularly, and watch your domain authority go boom.

9. User-experience is a factor

Focus on your site visitors. This is the long and short of user-experience. Make your site all about them.

User-experience involves many things from the technical aspect of your site down to how you write your content. It is all geared towards making your users enjoy their time on your site.

One effective way is to make your site responsive to mobiles. The majority of Internet users today are on mobile. Honestly, nobody wants to have to zoom in and zoom out all the time to view stuff simply because your site has a poor layout.

Another angle of user-experience is tailoring content with a proper understanding of searcher intent and conducting keyword research. It reveals the various words that searchers use when seeking answers and enables you to write accordingly.

Let your posts nourish your users with information and entertain them at the same time. Their experience on your site should be a memorable one.

10. Apply good site navigation 

A well-structured site trumps a poorly structured site any day.

Site navigation is also called the internal linking structure. It refers to the links that connect pages on your site. 

They make your site easy to navigate, and also indicate to search engines what pages are on the site. Whenever you step into a supermarket, you find that it is organized and divided into sections. A proper internal linking structure works in the same way.

There are several tips on how to make your site easily navigable. Firstly, if you want to convert your users to buyers include a link to a product to enable a purchase.

Also, mega menus are helpful if you have a ton of content on your site. They efficiently group subpages and keywords and also isolate pages that are relevant to the same keyword.

Another tip is to utilize image carousels. Since they occupy very small spaces, they come in handy if you have lots of information on your site. Additionally, the pictures they contain easily capture the eyes, and in some cases, the heart too.

11. Publish regularly

Frequent publishing of content is another tip on how to grow your domain authority. Regular publishing indicates that your site means business.

Besides that, it also helps with quicker indexing by Google if your site is new.

A solid tip on steady publishing of content is to create at least one post in a week. It might not seem like much, but keep the pace and watch how far you’ll go in 2 months. 

Slow but steady, right?

12. Keep your social media marketing game on lock

Don’t mistake social media for a platform only suitable for the sharing of funny clips. Remember that on the Internet everything is connected.

With that being said, social signals do your site’s domain authority a world of good. When you publish a post, go ahead and share that link on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and even LinkedIn. If you are active on other platforms, by all means, continue your campaign over there too.

These platforms are highly regarded by search engines, and if your link features prominently on them, then you are in for a treat, I tell you.

Jeff Bullas is extremely active on Twitter. Every post is shared there for tons of followers to click and read. What a way to bag optimized visibility, greater traffic and higher domain authority in one fell swoop.

13. Be patient

As much as we all would like to have our domain authority scores touching the skies overnight, the truth might burst your bubble.

A site’s domain authority might be anything, but it is not a magic beanstalk.

An increase in domain authority is a product of strategic moves made over a significant period of time. I daresay that any site with a domain authority of at least 50 has been up and running for a number of years, and has oodles of good content.

You can use Webconfs to check any site’s domain age. Peep at the domain age of this site in the image below.

This site has been up for a decade and then some. Recall that it has a DA score of 72 as we saw in an image earlier.

That should tell you something.

Therefore, instead of lying awake in your bed all night, expecting a growth spurt in your domain authority score, rest easy, my friend. Do all that I have discussed above and let time pass. Because time will pass, regardless.

Every good thing takes time. The same goes for the growth of your domain authority.

What are meta tags in Blogger, and how do you create them?

If you run a Blogger blog for your business or organization, you may occasionally need to alter the HTML code for it. In general, Blogger automates the coding aspects of your blog, saving you significant amounts of time creating HTML and CSS code. However, if you want to include meta tags within your blog, you do need to edit its HTML code. Adding meta tags to your blog allows you to include information that may affect how well it performs in search engines.

1. Create a blank text file in a text editor to build your meta tags. Rather than writing the code directly into Blogger, it is easier to prepare it in advance. The most common meta tags are for the site keywords and description. You can also include meta elements to indicate the author and revised dates for page content. To create a keywords meta element, use the following outline:

This example could be for a print and design business, with the keywords indicating the content of the site pages. Alter the keywords to suit the content on your own blog. For the description meta element, use the following syntax:

The description includes readable sentences concisely explaining the content and purpose of the site. Again, alter this to suit your own blog.

2. Access the HTML content for your blog. Log in to Blogger and find your blog in the Dashboard. If you are using the newer Blogger interface, select "Template" from the drop-down list for your blog. For the older style, click "Design" for the blog you are working on. Click "Edit HTML" from the list along the top of the Design section. A large text field appears with your blog code in it. Check the "Expand Widget Templates" check box above the text field to show all of the code for the template your blog is using.

3. Find the head section of your blog. You need to place your meta tags in the head section of your blog template. The easiest way to do this is to locate the closing tag. You can use your browser's "find" tool to do this by pressing "Ctrl-F" or choosing "Edit" and then "Find" from the browser toolbar menu. Enter "" (without quotes) and press "Enter" to find it in the HTML code. Place your cursor before the closing head tag.

4. Enter your meta tags. Copy your meta tags from the text file you created by selecting the code and pressing "Ctrl-C" or "Edit" and then "Copy" from the menu in your text editor. Go to the point you placed your cursor at in the Blogger HTML code and paste the meta tags by pressing "Ctrl-V" or choosing "Edit" and then "Paste" from your browser menu. Click the "Save Template" button under the HTML text field for your blog. Your blog template will be updated to include the meta tags.

Buy website traffic cheap

How to Get Pages Indexed by Google, Quickly?

If a page isn’t in Google’s index, there’s 0% chance that it will receive organic traffic.

Indexation, in an over simplified nutshell, is step 2 in Google’s ranking process:

• Crawling
• Indexing
• Ranking

This article will focus on how to get Googlebot to index more pages on your site, faster.

How to check if your pages are indexed by Google

The first step is understanding what your website’s indexation rate is.

Indexation rate = # of pages in Google’s index / # of pages on your site

You can review how many pages your website has indexed in Google Search Console’s “Index Coverage Status Report“.

If you see errors or a large number of pages outside of the index:

• Your sitemap might have URLs that are non-indexable (i.e. pages set to NOINDEX, blocked via robots.txt or require user login)
• Your site might have a large number ‘low quality’ or duplicate pages that Google deems unworthy
• Your site might not have enough ‘authority’ to justify all the pages

You can dig into the specifics in the table underneath (this is an awesome new feature in Google’s updated Search Console).

 

How to get pages on your site indexed

I hate to be cliche, but you really need to deliver the right experience to get Google’s attention. If your site doesn’t meet Google’s guidelines in regards to trust, authority and quality, these tips will likely not work for you.

With that being said, you can use these tactics to improve your site’s indexation rate.

 

1. Use Fetch As Google

Google Search Console has a feature allowing you to input a URL for Google to “Fetch”. After submission, Googlebot will visit your page and index.

Here’s how to do it…

• Log into Google Search Console
• Navigate to Crawl Fetch as Google
• Take the URL you’d like indexed and paste it into the search bar
• Click the Fetch button
• After Google had found the URL, click Submit to Index

Assuming the page is indexable, it will be picked up within a few hours.

 

2. Use internal links

Search engines crawl from page to page through HTML links.

Image credit

We can use authority pages on your site to push equity to others. I like to use Ahrefs “best pages by links” report.

This report tells me the most authoritative pages on my site – I can simply add an internal link from here to a page that needs equity.

It’s important to note, the 2 interlinking pages need to be relevant – it’s not a good idea to link unrelated pages together.

Read my guide about internal linking silos

 

3. Block low quality pages from Google’s index

While content is a cornerstone of a high quality website, the wrong content can be your demise. Too many low quality pages can decrease the number of times Google crawls, indexes and ranks your site..

For that reason, we want to periodically “prune” our website’s by removing the garbage pages

Pages that serve no value should be:

• Set to NOINDEX. When the page still has value to your audience, but not search engines (think thank you pages, paid landing pages, etc).
• Blocked via crawl through Robots.txt file. When an entire set of pages has value to your audience, but not search engines (think archives, press releases).
• 301 redirected. When the page has no value to your audience or search engines, but has existing traffic or links (think old blog posts with links).
• Deleted (404). When the page has no value to your audience or search engines, and has no existing traffic or links.

We’ve built a content audit tool to help you with this process.

 

4. Include the page in your sitemap

Your sitemap is a guide to help search engines understand which pages on your site are important.

Having a page in your sitemap does NOT guarantee indexation, but having failing to include important pages will decrease indexation.

If your site is running on WordPress, it’s incredibly easy to setup and submit a sitemap using a plugin (I like Yoast).

Read more about how to build a sitemap

Once your sitemap is built and submit is GSC, you can review in the Sitemaps report.

Double check to make sure all pages you want indexed are included. Triple check to make sure all pages you DON’T want indexed are NOT included.

 

5. Share the page on Twitter

Twitter is a powerful network that Google crawls regularly (they index Tweets, too).

It’s a no brainer to share your content on social media, but it’s also an easy way to give Google a nudge.

 

6. Share the page on high traffic sites

Sites like Reddit and Quora are popular sites that allow you to drop links. I make it a regular practice to promote recently published pages on Quora – it helps with indexation, but also can drive a ton of traffic.

If you’re feeling lazy (and grey hat), you can buy “social signals” on sites like Fiver.

 

7. Secure external links to the page

As previously mentioned, Google crawls from page to page through HTML links.

Getting other websites to link to yours is not only a huge ranking factor, but a great way to pick up the indexation of your website.

The easiest ways to get links:

• Guest post on a relevant, authoritative website
• Find relevant bloggers or media sites and reach out with an advertising request

This is grossly over simplified – you can check out my top link building tactics for more ideas.

 

8. “Ping” your website

Sites like Ping-O-Matic that send “pings” to search engines to notify them that your blog has been updated.

Honestly, it’s not the greatest method – but it’s fast, free and easy to use.

Source: https://webris.org/google-index/