No inbound links. Should I link-build or create new content?
-
I have a PR4 site with good traffic but the blog is not very popular--the posts do not generate any backlinks and hardly get any traffic. Yet, I continue to kick out a new post every week.
Site: http://www.stadriemblems.com/
Blog: http://www.stadriemblems.com/blog/I keep posting content so that Google keeps crawling the site and viewing it as fresh (and yes, I'm posting for my human visitors' benefit too!), but I'm wondering if eventually this will hurt more than help if Google detects all these new pages are not being linked to, and therefore starts viewing the site as low quality and devalues it.
So should I:
- Keep posting
- Stop posting and build links to the posts
- Try to promote my blog to get more traffic and hope people link to it
- Something else or some combination of the above
-
Cool. Maybe I'll contact the people who ordered each of those dragon patches and tell them they're included in the list. I could also add something on the bottom such as, "Want to change this list? Vote for your favorite in the comments."
Thanks for all your great advice!
-
To answer your question directly, I think (my opinion only) that Google would not penalize you for not having shares and comments, but in reverse, I believe they will reward you when you do get lots of shares and comments.
I do like your dragon post, I think you are getting more on the right track, it is more interesting for sure than how to save. To improve even more, build the interaction right into the post (like what Matt is talking about). The best thing about getting those other companies involved is that a few of them will really take off and tell people to come and vote for their patch. I think Facebook has a polling program, but there are other ways to do it if you kept it right on your blog too.
My brother was in a submission contest something like this, and he told everybody he knew, all the time, to go vote for his item. It was facebooked around like crazy!
-
Hi Marisa,
Have you done anything to encourage comments and social media shares? If you have email lists of past and present customers that you regularly use I would send them an outreach email asking for them to click on the link in your email and share your blog posts on social sites such as facebook when they are logged in of course.
You could also incentivise people to comment send them links to blog pieces, such as your competition once you have set it up and ask them a leading question then invite them to respond by commenting on your blog.
I have found increasing social shares and comments on sites has had direct impact on one of the websites that I was working on which was always sat at number 2 for one of my main targeted keywords until I went about pushing its social exposure. Without altering anything onsite other than the number of likes on facebook etc it suddenly moved into the top position and has been there ever since. I hope this answers your question or at least gives you some ideas.
Remember don't be afraid to ask the worst that can happen is you get little reponse or someone emails back saying no - which I haven't found to be the case. My point is that I have found social media impact to have a direct influence on search engine rankings so improving yours would always be a positive move.
Also you could have got the members of each of the different organisations involved with the 10 Impressive Embroidered Dragon Patches by leaving it open to which would be number 1 as it could have been voted for and you could have then posted on the different groups representing these patches pages on social media sites, such as facebook, getting them to vote for theres to be the number one and telling them to like the blog page and pass the message on to friends that would support their group, also increasing exposure for them which could potentially lead to new members. You could have also got asked them to start commenting through this method I think.
-
Do you think the fact that they're getting little to no comments and very few social media shares is a signal to Google that it's low quality content?
-
OK, I want your brain! Thanks for taking all that time to write that! I will try some of that stuff. A couple of those ideas I already had in the works.
-
I think you should keep posting, and also promote the blog.
But also, I went to your blog page, and there is no link that I found to easily get back to your main site page. The logo is not even clickable. I was stranded there. You might want to change that.
On your blog, who is the target audience? I don't know much about patches, but it seemed to me that the blog was written to say "hey, here is another use for embroidered patches" Spice it up a little, so people have a reason to come back. Humor, possibly.
So, I am just on a tear, so I will try to write or rewrite some of your titles for you:
"Choose Embroidered Patches over Direct Embroidery and Save" (does anyone talk like that?). How about something like "Four Reasons why Embroidered Patches make you Smarter and Sexier"
"Biggest Patch You've Ever Seen" article, on some stupid patch that was the biggest or whatever. Get people to try to top it with their own super large patch picture that they send in.
"The Great Pumpkin Patch" near halloween of course.
"The toughest Patch we Ever Made" with some crazy durable surface that you used and it had to withstand rocket fuel or buffalo snot or whatever. Heck, make a video with you abusing it and it still holds up.
"Most Unusual Use Ever for a Patch" - also get people to comment on other unusual uses, or get them to submit. Like maybe somebody took a bunch of patches and sewed them together to make a horse sweater or who knows what.
How to Make Patch Pants (maybe you could even use that video? or make your own)
"Hip (or Chic, or Teen, or Goth, or Punk) Patch Fashion" show some cool way that patches have been used that art
"Funniest Patch You will see This Year" with lots of possible interaction.
"I bet You Didn't Know This was Patch" with some offbeat examples, like that tumbler thing in your soccer article.
"Most Patriotic Patch of the Century" article, or challenge.
You could even do things like "How Many Patches Does it take to stop a Bullet" with slow-mo video. Stupid I know, but people love that sort of stuff. Or,
How about a suggestive title like "Oh Yeah, Size definitely Matters for Patches" and then go on to a boring article about how to measure patches for how much information you can put on them or pricing or whatever.
"Do you have a Sexy Patch?" article, with some patches that have inuendos on them or something. Try to get people to comment with the best inuendos they've seen, or maybe get them to send in pictures or something (heck make it a contest). Depending on your market, you might need to tone this one down a bit.
"History of Smuggling Spy Information under Patches" (I just made that up, but what a great place to hide secret info, under a patch that is sewn on.)
"Early Historical Use of Military Patches" or "Patches used in the Civil War" or "Patches used by the (Navy, Air Force, etc.)"
"Rarest and most sought after Patches" or "Highest Price paid for a patch on Ebay" or something.
The cool thing about all of these is that you can link back to them from future blogs, since they will still be humorous and funny.
Okay, the well is dry for now, good luck.
-
I think that's a wonderful idea! I've been trying to market this company for six years; It's nice to have a fresh perspective! Thanks!
-
I think it will work out if you stick with the guest posting route - it will just take some time and effort to encourage others, but it will be worth it. Just a thought - have you thought about running a patch design contest with the best design winning a quantity of free badges of their own organisation? They would have to be voted by visitors and not your company. You could give them a specific design challenge and then you could contact all your old customers and contact any clubs and organisations inviting them to submit their design and information about them and why they should win. Or your contest might be designing some sort of advert in relation to your brand or what you do and getting visitors voting on which they think would be best. I could see something along these lines helping you with traffic etc - what do you think?
-
Thanks for your suggestions. What I have been doing is featuring various customers on our blog in hopes they'd share and link to the content. It hasn't gone as well as I'd hoped. I guess I need to reach out to other people who have a larger reach. But I just created a page yesterday with guest-posting guidelines, so I'm starting to go that route. Offering a discount for a link is something we've considered too. Thanks for validating my hunches.
-
Hi Marisa
If I were you I would keep producing fresh content, but I would also think about how I can go about it. Have you thought about asking authoritative bloggers to do guest posts on your site? This can really help with exposure as they are likely to mention this to their loyal readers and you will start to gain exposure and links from this. I would also think about guest blogging myself on other sites to bring up the interest of what you have to say - that way people are more likely to be drawn to follow what you have to say on the site blog.
I think that you have a very marketable subject - running a judo club myself I would suggest you think about sponsoring clubs with some reductions on badges and embroidery if possible and for this I would ask for a link from their sites etc. I would also think about getting these different clubs and organisations to contribute to your blog if possible. just glancing at your blog I think there are lots of opportunities to gain links.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Building new site on new web host with concerns
Hello, I have a domain with GoDaddy and current site is hosted there as well. I want to leave my domain with GoDaddy and build a brand new site on HostGator. The current website was designed to get us started. Not any significant traffic, backlinks, or SEO. The domain is not really what I want. There are 80 pages including those that are no longer in service. The keywords are not as relevant today. Current site domain is whiterocktech.net The new site will be very much different with SEO leading the way. We have designed it yet have not opened an account yet with HostGator. In addition, we have found a shorter more appropriate domain name. Not ideal but easy to type in yet it has a dash. This site is wr-crm.com. Questions: Does it make sense to "cut bait" from the current site given the lack use? Does it make sense to build the site and still set redirects from the old domain pages to a new one? Given so little traffic, is there really an effect on SEO if we sunset the old domain? Could I strip out the old domain website and just post a message on one page to come to our new site until old domain expires? I appreciate any insights on helping me with this decision. Mike
Technical SEO | | mmcgibbony0 -
Our original content is being outranked on search engines by smaller sites republishing our content.
We a media site, www.hope1032.com.au that publishes daily content on the WordPress platform using the Yoast SEO plugin. We allow smaller media sites to republish some of our content with canonical field using our URL. We have discovered some of our content is now ranking below Or not visible on some search engines when searching for the article heading. Any thoughts as to why? Have we got an SEO proble? An interesting point is the small amount of content we have republished is not ranking against the original author on search engines.
Technical SEO | | Hope-Media0 -
What about Panoramic content ?
Hello everyone ,, We have a website include a panoramic images for many pages this panorama is really unique and we did a hard work to collect it , we thought that will be very useful for our target audience !! We have tried to search about how to make a panoramic content working and support the SEO , Unfortunately NO result and NO information yet, _Could you help us in that filed _ _Thanks _
Technical SEO | | Visual-ex0 -
Link juice and max number of links clarification
I understand roughly that "Link Juice" is passed by dividing PR by the number of links on a page. I also understand the juice available is reduced by some portion on each iteration. 50 PR page 10 links on page 5 * .9 = 4.5 PR goes to each link. Correct? If so and knowing Google stops counting links somewhere around 100, how would it impact the flow to have over 100 links? IE 50 PR page 150 links on the page .33 *.9 = .29PR to each link BUT only for 100 of them. After that, the juice is just lost? Also, I assume Google, to the best of its ability, organizes the links in order of importance such that content links are counted before footer links etc.
Technical SEO | | sprynewmedia0 -
Bad link profile?
Hi Mozzers! We have recently been handed this client due to the former SEO company building up a bad link profile, which resulted in the site dropping off the search results all together. Forcing them to get a new domain. This happened in July last year and we are unsure whether it would be wise to submit a reconsideration request and then 301 their old sites pages to the new domain. Basically I'm asking whether you can spot any spammy links being built in their profile. Here is the old domain: http://www.claimssolicitors.co.uk/ It would be great if you could help me out! 🙂 Thanks
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Caps in URL creating duplicate content
Im getting a bunch of duplicate content errors where the crawl is saying www.url.com/abc has duplicate at www.url.com/ABC The content is in magento and the url settings are lowercase, and I cant figure out why it thinks there is duplicate consent. These are pages with a decent number of inbound links.
Technical SEO | | JohnBerger0 -
OSE Link Differential
I have the chrome toolbar installed. In the SERP a site I was looking at had 686 links from 12 domains linking to the root domain. When I checked this site in OSE with filters set to all pages in root domain it shows 65 links from 12 domains. Can anyone explain the difference?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
About duplicate content
Hi i'm a new guy around here, but i'm having this problem in my website. Using de Seomoz tools i ran a camping to my website, in results i get to many errors for duplicate conten, for example, http://www.mysite/blue/ http://www.mysite/blue/index.html, so my question is, what is the best way to resolve this problem, use a 301 or use the rel canonical tag? Wich url will be consider for main url, Thanks for yor help.
Technical SEO | | NorbertoMM0