10 Smart Search Engine Marketing Tactics To Get Free Google Traffic

Search engines on average will drive 300% more traffic than social media. So how do you let Google know you exist?

One tactic is to put more focus on quality content. But content on its own can’t make you rank in “Top 10” search results. You should also take into account the importance of link building.

Link building is the most significant but also the most challenging aspect of optimizing your blog or website for search engines.

It has significant effects on how your website ranks in search engines. But what is “link building“?

“It is the process of attracting and establishing inbound links to your website which help your website achieve higher ranking with search engines and drive targeted traffic to your site“.

But there is a lot of buzz about how Google reacts to unnatural and spammy backlinks. Google is always updating its algorithms and changing the game by releasing Penguin updates that give you penalties for using unnatural ways of getting backlinks on your websites.

I’ve learned through hard work many search engine marketing tactics that can benefit your business. I’ve chosen the top 10 best strategies that I’ve implemented. Each one has resulted in great success.

Here they are!

1. Scoop.it

It is one of my favourite SEO ways to get good links within 15 minutes. It is an awesome content curation basement where people gather interesting content over the web and publish them in a magazine format.

Lots of these Scoop.it pages have high PR like 3 and more. This type of publications draws much attention via social engagement.

How do you do it?

Chose the category of your post or infographic you want to share, find the closely related Scoop it page and suggest your post. Based on my experience, 50 % accept them within a day what means a good amount of quality backlinks for 15 minutes of your work.

2. Finding broken links

This method is time-consuming and scalable. You should get much patience to find links that have 404 errors.

It is a real problem that it takes a lot of time and effort.

There are many companies that moved and changed their brand names, therefore, the links were deleted. I guess this tactic is totally worthy to spend time and efforts to gain these killer links.

How to find these broken links? In Google search you can use the following search strings that allow you to find some of them:

• “SEO” + “resource page”
• “Seo” + “recommended sites”
• “Seo” + “useful links”
• “Seo” + “toolbox”
• “Seo” + “resources”
• “Seo” + “useful tools”

So, as soon as you find pages, check whether all the links are working well. When you find such kind of broken links, you can instantly contact the owner of the website and inform him about this crap-shoot.

I can recommend you to use the Chrome Extension Check My Links. It will help you to find out all broken links that are highlighted in red.

Replacing dead links in Wikipedia

I guess you’ve noticed some dead links on Wikipedia pages. They don’t instantly remove these links and just add a footnote with the link “dead link”. That will give you a chance to replace it with your link.

You can find these links with the next search string:

site:wikipedia.org SEO + “dead link”

Or you can check out with the tool WikiGrabber to find all dead links on Wikipedia. After you find a dead link, you need to recreate it on your site and replace it with your link in Wikipedia.

3. Monitor competitor’s backlinks

It can seem kind of creepy to keep track of competitors’ backlinks, but I can make sure you will get a lot of great ideas how to get quality links based on them.

Before monitoring them you should figure out your top competitors in SERP, I actually use SE Ranking tool to monitor my top competitors. As soon as you get their target keywords, enter them into your backlink tool like Webmeup or Ahrefs, you will get a diverse list of backlinks linking to their sites.

Weekly or monthly checkups will help you to stay awake with what SEO tactics your competitors use to acquire links and draw up a plan how to replicate as many links as possible.

4. Getting the most out of Infographics

Creating and submitting infographics is the most effective and powerful link building strategy in SEO. It taps into the visual content marketing trend and Visual.ly is one of the leaders in this segment.

Most people try to stay away from this method, creating a professional infographic costs a pretty penny. But you can easily create by yourself with the following resources:

• Visual.ly
• DailyInfoGraphic.com
• AmazingInfoGraphics.com
• Piktochart.com
• Coolinfographics.com
• Submitinfohraphics.com
• Infographicjournal.com

Personally, I use the last one. It has a good functional and various themes, even for free users.

You can also find some freelancers on Odesk or Freelancer that will do it at low cost.

Just few points you should keep in mind:

1. Include only real data sources
2. Embed your website link in the infographic source code (probably, someone will use this info-graphic on his website and you will get a good backlink)
3. Use attractive design
4. Be brief. Don’t blur your facts in text
5. Limit the size of your infographic to 1500 pixels
6. Use statistics that will make the info-graphic more actionable
7. Share it via social networks

To get the most out of your infographic, you can offer bloggers to post it as a guest post. You can also share you work on above-listed websites, or you can find the submission sites with the search strings:

• “submit infographic”
• inurl: submit infographic
• intitle: submit infographic
• “infographic directory”

When you submit an info-graphic, make sure to write a unique description with 200-300 words to take real advantage from it. With this form of creativity, you will make your campaign successful in your niche.

5. Answer online

Businesses need not only to build up quality links, but also build good relationships with customers. Monitor the activity of your potential customers and check out how they are doing online.

They will gather in groups to discuss some items on forums and blogs. Try to monitor all the activities online. You can check on Yahoo answers, topical forums, Quora and etc. You can use Google Alerts and add your keywords to track any mentions about your service. Try be helpful and user-friendly, don’t be spammy.

It can take some time, but it will pay off. You can gain a good authority on the websites. People will know you and follow you. They will start linking to your website to get additional awesome content.

6. Reverse guest posting

Reverse guest posting is the opposite of guest posting. The idea is that you find guest bloggers to write a good content for your website.

The idea of reverse guest posting works completely in a different way. You don’t need to find just any bloggers that have time to write a content. The main idea is to build up a good relationship with authority and famous bloggers. Ask them for content for your blog.

What are the benefits of reverse guest posting?

1. Effective mechanism to build relationships
2. The post can be shared via social media by that blogger
3. Fantastic way to place that link
4. Show your readers a new perspective
5. You have control of the process of reverse guest posting

How Does Reverse Guest Posting Work for you?

You should figure out what you want to get out of a guest writer and define the subject of guest articles. How often you want him to contribute on the blog.

It is easy to make a list of famous bloggers you want to work with. Make some research and find other bloggers you can’t know them.

Contact these bloggers and talk to them about this opportunity.

Few steps how to reach out google bloggers:

• Use Twitter search to get bloggers with search query “guest post SEO”
• Use Google with search strings “guest post by”, “guest blog by” and specify your topic
• Use the websites you already know or ask others for any recommendations
• You can use Followerwonk tool for outreach

You will be surprised with how many bloggers will want to talk to you.

7. Blogger reviews

Reviews about products, software or services are one of the best ways to get good backlinks at scale. It is especially good for e-commerce websites.

How do you catch the attention of bloggers? You can offer some free stuff and they may start reviewing it on their sites. It is quite an intensive and time-sapping process. You need to find bloggers, contact them, send them products, wait for product reviews and send email reminders.

It is a hard work!

Try to find bloggers in your niche. If you sell some products or information that can help people to learn something, for example, “ways how to make coffee”, you should use search strings like “how to make coffee”, “make coffee home” and etc.

You will get a list of bloggers and filter out authority websites. So, right now you have to reach out them with the following email template:

Make sure what you are writing. Check your language and grammar mistakes. Don’t be too spammy. I want to note that you don’t ask them to post your links and reviews. You just let them take a decision about your product.

8. Get feedbacks about your website

This is an easy mechanism of getting backlinks. I’ve met a bunch of feedback websites where you can get a dofollow backlink. You should register, submit your website, write a small description about it. I love ConceptFeedback.com website, but before submitting your website you should leave five reviews on other websites.

Here are some sites you can check out:

• ConceptFeedback.com
• BounceApp.com
• SuggestionBox.com
• Criticue.com

Or you can find them in Google using search queries “website feedbacks”, “site review”, “website customer review”.

9. Quality links from brand mentions

Monitoring any mentions about your brand or product is a good way to get quality backlinks. It is vital to know what customers think about you online. You can use Mention tool to track all mentions about your business.

It works fine for me. You should create an alert like for Google Alerts and you will get mentions about your brand or service. If you notice someone mentions about you without a link, you can contact that person, tell him thank you and ask him kindly to place a link to your product.

You can use the following email template to outreach:

Following this tactic, you can gain a bunch of quality backlinks.

10. Reverse image search

Reverse image search is something new and totally different from the other link building tactics. It is one of the greatest way to get links.

If you manage a website and use only quality images, you should keep track of your image theft. You can take some advantages from theft to gain quality links.

So, how to do that?

In Google image search you can enter the search string like site:yoursite.com and you will get all images on your website that Google has indexed. Click on images and see how they are displayed.

If you find out someone is using them without your link, you can reach out the admin and let him know about it. Site owners, usually, try to avoid any conflicts, and you will have a high rate of response to your email. Don’t forget to mention that the image is originally from your website and ask them to place an attribution backlink.

To simplify your SEO process, you can use TinEye to check all images that are used by other people from your website.

It is a call time on posting…

I’ve mentioned just my favourite ways of intact link building tactics out there. Take enough time to digest them and check out how they will work for you.

If you know any other effective link building tactics, I will be more than happy to hear them.

Author: Irina is a specialist marketer at SERanking.com