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SEO vs SEM and some Benefit & Different

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How To Obtain And Improve Paid Traffic

Here are some practical ways to increase paid traffic to your website:

Run Google Ads

Google Ads is a highly effective online advertising platform for driving paid traffic to your website. Research shows that Google Ads have a four times higher click-through rate (63%) compared to other online ad types.

Upon entering the desired search terms, Google displays a list of relevant search results that provide answers to the user’s query. Paid campaigns are often included among these search results.

Utilising Google AdWords for your service promotion can yield swift results, particularly through pay-per-click (PPC) ads. With PPC ads, you only pay for each click, reducing your financial commitment accordingly.

A few minutes after your ppc campaigns are published, you will notice increased traffic to your site, and part of that traffic will indeed convert to customers.

Use Social Media Marketing (SMM)

In 2022 social networks will have approximately 4.62 billion users, making them an excellent opportunity to advertise and obtain paid traffic.

Social media platforms serve as a means to amplify both your organic and paid traffic. They offer effective tools to target specific audiences and direct traffic to your website.

Run a social media advertising campaign, and target the desired audience with the platform’s demographics, interests, and other data. Within a few days, you will be able to see the results.

Social media marketing will help you generate traffic to your site, and you have a great versatility of platforms available, depending on your targeted customers.

Social media marketing involves the consistent publication of entertaining, creative, and valuable content. The number of likes and shares of your posts matters and could affect your rankings because they increase the visibility of your brand and links to your site.

Keep in mind that social media marketing must be subtle. An aggressive or even intrusive campaign may turn away relevant users.

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What Is The Best Way To Improve Organic Traffic?

Generating organic traffic involves two main components: on-page and off-page SEO.

Organic search methods involve on-page optimisation, which aims to enhance the usefulness and value of your website for users. Emphasise optimising your keyword density and crafting content centered around those keywords.

Implementing off-page SEO tactics is essential, as it allows you to obtain strong backlinks from reputable, high-authority websites. These backlinks play a vital role in driving quality leads and boosting your organic traffic.

Lastly, optimise your site’s loading speed, and you’ll be on the right way to success. Listed below are some helpful tips:

Research Keywords Relevant To Your Industry

Keywords are the words users type into a search engine to find the information they need. When choosing your approach, don’t just focus on short keywords.

Long-tail keywords or phrases containing 3-5 words have a considerably higher potential that often remains untapped. Still, they can be very competitive and often impossible to rank for, especially if you are a beginner.

Once you’ve found the right keywords for your categories, product descriptions, and blog posts, you’ll move on to the next step, which is content creation.

If finding the right keywords and undertaking keyword research for your business seems daunting, consider contacting an online digital agency. Most digital marketers have paid SEO tools to ensure you are targeting the correct keywords.

Creating Good Quality Content

Developing quality content requires a deep understanding of your target audience and the problems your product or service can address. Craft content that provides value and addresses their needs.

People enjoy reading studies, articles that answer frequently asked questions, tutorials, and everything that can inform and educate them about your product.

To increase organic traffic, avoid keyword stuffing — it will not help you rank quickly and better.

You write equally to please Google and your readers, and both entities want natural text that is easy to understand. When writing, prioritise conciseness and substance, not length. Skilled writers can say more in 700 words than unskilled writers in 3,000.

Interlink Your Content

Interlinking is the interconnection of relevant pages on your site. It provides a better user experience (UX), more straightforward navigation through the site, and reduces your site’s bounce rate.

Linking to your internal pages positively affects your rankings, helps increase your online visibility, and ultimately generates more leads.

Optimising Your Images

If you’re not optimising for image searches, there’s a good chance you’re missing out on opportunities to drive organic traffic.

Visual searches have increased by 60% in the last two years and represent 30% of all search queries.

Choosing the right image alt is essential for your site’s SEO and ranking in image search results.

Before you upload any image, name it with relevant, descriptive keywords. Don’t forget to enter alternative text (alt-text). Visitors may understand the image, but the search engine needs other relevant clues.

Without alternative text, search engines can’t index the content of your image accurately.

Earn Quality External Links

External links or backlinks link other websites to yours. Create a solid link-building strategy to achieve better rankings and earn more organic traffic.

Investigate reputable sites in your industry, check their domain authority, and then reach out and connect with web admins. They will likely link to your content if they think it is valuable to their readers.

With backlinks, your site earns a boost in reputation. In Google’s eyes, they’re giving you a vote, saying your site is valuable.

Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

Everyday life is getting busier, mobile phones are becoming more advanced than ever, and many people find it easier to search on their phones.

In 2021, we performed approximately half of all searches from mobile devices (54.4%). So, mobile traffic is extremely important and works for your business’s benefit.

If your website has a poor loading speed or, worse, if it doesn’t load completely, optimise it ASAP, or you’ll lose valuable traffic!

Make sure your site is easy to access from a variety of devices. In its algorithm, Google favours mobile-friendly websites over those only optimised for desktops.

Promote Your Content On Social Media

SEO is the best way to increase organic traffic, but relying solely on SEO strategies could miss out on other valuable methods that can drive even more traffic.

Utilising social media ads is another excellent avenue to drive users to your article pages through social media marketing (SMM).

You can share your posts on social media to help drive organic traffic to your website. Not only does this bring your readers back, but they will generate new traffic if they share your posts.

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What Is Off-Page SEO? A Guide to Off-Page SEO Strategy

What Is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO (search engine optimization) refers to efforts to improve a website’s unpaid search engine rankings without making changes on the website itself. Common tactics include link building, guest posting, and social media marketing.

The goal of off-page SEO is to get search engines and users to see your site as more trustworthy and authoritative. 

It’s an essential part of a successful SEO strategy.

Note

Off-page SEO is sometimes called off-site SEO or off-page optimization.

Why Is Off-Page SEO Important?

Think about off-page SEO as building your site’s reputation. 

And off-page SEO factors like backlinks, reviews, and recommendations help search engines see your site as reputable. Which can lead to better visibility in search results.

One of the best ways to build your credibility in the eyes of search engines is to focus on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T)—a concept Google’s Quality Raters use when evaluating search results and providing feedback to improve future algorithm updates.

Which all means:

Off-page SEO plays a major role in your site’s ability to rank. 

On-Page SEO vs. Off-Page SEO

While off-page SEO refers to optimization tactics applied outside your website, on-page SEO refers to efforts applied on your webpages.

Here’s a quick overview of the tactics used in SEO—on-page and off-page:

Both on-page and off-page factors play an important role in SEO.

But there’s also technical SEO to consider. This involves making site-wide technical improvements to things like security, loading speeds, and mobile-friendliness. With the aim of improving search visibility.

5 Off-Page SEO Techniques That Work

Let’s take a look at five different off-page tactics you can use to boost your site’s authority and organic (unpaid) search traffic:

1. Link Building

Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to your site. In SEO, these links are called backlinks. 

The more backlinks a page or domain has, the more authoritative it may seem to Google. Especially if those backlinks come from domains that are authoritative themselves.

Semrush measures a website’s authority with a metric called Authority Score. It’s based on the quality and quantity of backlinks, organic traffic levels, and the naturalness of the site’s entire backlink profile.

Our 2024 Ranking Factors study shows that domain Authority Score is the sixth strongest predictor of a webpage’s ranking position.

In order, the other most important off-page SEO metrics are:

Page Authority Score: The Authority Score of the individual page

Number of referring IPs (domain): The number of different IP addresses that link to the domain

Number of referring domains (domain): The number of different domains that link to the domain

Number of referring IPs (URL): The number of different IP addresses that link to the page

Number of referring domains (URL): The number of different domains that link to the page

Number of backlinks (domain): The total number of backlinks that point to the domain

Number of backlinks (URL): The total number of backlinks that point to the page

You can gather these metrics for almost any site with our Backlink Analytics tool.

Just enter the domain and click “Analyze” to get a detailed report like this:

Find Links to Any Site

Eager to start building new backlinks?

Let’s explore some of the most popular link building tactics:

Broken Link Building

Broken link building is the process of finding relevant backlinks that don’t work properly and convincing creators to update them with links to your site.

Let’s say an industry publication linked to a competitor resource that has since been deleted.

You could contact the publication to let them know the link isn’t working. And suggest they link to your version of the resource instead.

One of the best ways to find broken backlinks is with the Backlink Analytics tool.

Just enter your own or a competitor’s domain. Then, go to the “Indexed Pages” tab and apply the “Broken Pages” filter. 

This will show you URLs that have backlinks but don’t work properly.

Look for pages that you have a good replacement for. 

Then, click the “Backlinks” number in the corresponding row to see all the backlinks to the URL. These are the sites you might want to contact.

Unlinked Brand Mentions

Unlinked brand mentions are online references to your brand name that don’t include a link (e.g., “Semrush” rather than “Semrush”).

In many cases, publishers will be willing to add a link if you ask nicely enough.

The easiest way to find unlinked brand mentions is with the Brand Monitoring app.

Just set up monitoring for your brand name (and any common misspellings). 

Then, go to your “Mentions” report and filter for references to you without backlinks.

For the best chance of success, you can also filter for: 

News sites and blogs (not discussions or social media sites)

Mentions made in the last 30 days

Articles with positive sentiment

You can then scroll through the results and see which sites you want to contact.

Journalist Requests

Journalists often need expert commentary or other brand assets (e.g., images) for their articles. If you can fulfill those needs, they may be willing to link to your site in return.

You can find journalist requests through platforms like Connectively.

Or by monitoring hashtags like #JournoRequest on X (formerly Twitter).

2. Content Marketing

Content marketing is an important off-page SEO technique.

Publishing great content is an effective way to earn backlinks, gain media attention, and show E-E-A-T. 

And finding ways to distribute that content to other channels can help boost off-page signals.

Let’s look at some of the best ways to distribute content you’ve created:

Digital PR

Digital PR involves using PR techniques to gain backlinks and is now the link-building tactic of choice for many SEOs. It’s a great way to earn authoritative links at scale. 

A great PR campaign can also:

Increase brand awareness and branded searches

Put your business in front of your target audience

Drive referral traffic

Show E-E-A-T

Take your PR strategies up a notch by learning Brian Dean's proven, step-by-step system.

Social Media

Social media doesn’t directly impact Google rankings. But it’s great for getting more attention. 

The more people share your content on social media platforms, the more traffic and links to that specific piece of content you’ll probably get. 

And even if you don’t get a link or immediate traffic, you’ll get more attention. And more attention leads to more branded searches and mentions.

That’s a win-win for your off-page SEO.

If you need a hand with your social media efforts, check out Semrush Social. 

The app lets you schedule content on multiple platforms, track your social media performance, and much more.

Check out our guide on social media management for more ideas on how to improve your social media results.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing involves working with popular bloggers and social media creators to promote your products or services. 

It’s a phenomenal way to build your brand, amplify your content, and reach new audiences. 

Influencers have large audiences. And can help ensure you’re present on relevant platforms. 

A quick and efficient way to find influencers is to use the Influencer Analytics app. 

For example, we can search for YouTube influencers, as shown here:

Filter by the number of subscribers, category, price, and more to find influencers who may be most helpful for your brand.

You’ll see a list of filtered results.

Once you click on the influencer’s picture, you’ll see their engagement stats. And a contact email if it’s publicly listed. 

Guest Posting

Guest posting gets your brand in front of a different audience and can lead to mentions and backlinks. 

And it can help with link building when done right. You just need to make sure you’re focusing on publications that are relevant to your niche and that you’re focused on providing genuinely valuable information.

To find guest blogging opportunities that are relevant to you, try searching on Google with search operators like these:

“your target keyword” + “this is a guest post by”

“your target keyword” + “this is a guest contribution”

“your target keyword” + “guest column”

“your target keyword” + “guest post”

“your target keyword” + “contributing writer”

“your target keyword” + “contributing author”

This will show you sites with at least one post written by a guest author.

If they’ve accepted guest posts before, they might also accept yours. And they might allow you to include a link to your site in your contributed piece.

For example, if you’re writing about affiliate marketing, you can search for “affiliate marketing” + “this is a guest contribution.”

Like this:

Podcasts

Podcasts are immensely popular right now. And that popularity shows no signs of slowing down.

If you are not using them as part of your marketing strategy, you could be missing out on huge opportunities. 

Why?

Most businesses still aren’t using podcasts, so they’re a great way to gain a competitive advantage.

They also enable you to reach new audiences, share your expertise, and gain visibility on other sites.

And if you’re a guest on a podcast, they might link to your site. Or an external podcast could find your site and use it as a source somewhere in their description if it’s relevant.

If you know what a particular podcast usually covers, you can even reach out to them with a suggestion to link to your content in their show notes.

Content Syndication

Content syndication refers to republishing content on one or more websites. 

Some publications like to syndicate content because it’s easier than creating fresh content all the time. 

And it’s great for you because it gets your brand in front of a new audience. 

Here are a few popular content syndication platforms:

Medium

LinkedIn

Outbrain

Taboola

Business 2 Community

Quuu

You can also find sites in your niche and reach out to them about syndicating your content.

But syndicate content carefully. 

Google says it will “always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.” Meaning the version of an article published on a site that syndicated it could possibly outrank the version published on your site.

To prevent that from happening, make sure the syndicated version of the piece links back to your original one. And properly configure your canonical tags—which entails adding a bit of HTML code to your site to show which version of a page is the main version.

Forums 

Dropping links in forums for SEO purposes won’t help you rank better in Google. 

But you can use forums to get involved in conversations that are related to your expertise. To position yourself as an expert and help new audiences become aware of you. 

Very few other platforms allow you to have open discussions with potential customers who are already asking questions about what you have to offer. 

So, this is a fantastic way to begin building relationships and trust. And if community members want to know more, you can share relevant content they’ve expressed interest in.

Reddit and Quora are key large-scale platforms to use. But forums within your niche can be just as effective.

Like Google’s Search Central Help Community, for example. 

3. Local SEO

Local SEO is the process of optimizing your online presence to increase traffic, visibility, and brand awareness in your business’s local area. 

Let’s explore two off-page SEO techniques you should use as a local business:

Google Business Profile Management

Google Business Profile (GBP) is a free business listing tool that helps you influence how your business shows up in Google.

And because that occurs outside of your website, optimizing your Google Business Profile is a key off-page SEO tactic.

In fact, it’s a critical local SEO ranking factor.

And it can increase your site’s visibility in high-value positions on Google’s search results pages. 

Like the map pack for our example, “plant store near me”:

Here’s what the Google Business Profile for one of those businesses looks like:

Here are a few Google Business Profile tips:

Be meticulous with your contact information

Respond to all reviews

Publish posts regularly (including photos and videos)

If you want to learn more about this subject, read our guide on Google Maps marketing.

NAP SEO

NAP SEO is the process of getting your business’s correct name, address, and phone number (NAP) in online listings.

These citations usually appear in business directories, social media profiles, and review sites. But they can show up on all kinds of websites. 

Like this:

NAP citations are important because Google uses them to confirm that all your business information is accurate. 

So, one of the keys to success with citations is consistency. Inconsistent citations are confusing to both people and search engines. 

You must take the time to ensure that all of your NAP references match.

And a quick way to do that is to use our Listing Management tool. 

Start by entering your business name and clicking the search icon.

You’ll see a dashboard with a summary of your overall online presence. Including reviews, listings with errors, and more.

Here are a few NAP citation tips:

Keep your citations consistent everywhere

Submit your information to niche and local websites

Run monthly NAP audits

4. Reviews

Reviews can persuade others to trust your business.

In fact, reviews are one of the most important factors Google takes into account when evaluating your site’s reputability. 

And they’re particularly important in local SEO.

Google recommends replying to all reviews. Good and bad. Doing so shows that you value your customers’ business and feedback. 

You can quickly find and reply to reviews with Review Management (part of Listing Management).

Once you’ve configured the tool, you’ll see a dashboard with all your reviews. To reply, just enter your comment in the tab and click “Reply.” 

Here are a few tips for online reviews: 

Kindly ask all customers to leave reviews

Build trust by responding to all reviews

Don’t accept (or offer) money in exchange for reviews 

Increase Your Local Visibility

5. Events 

Not only can events engage your audience, but they can also benefit you by creating buzz around your business. 

For example, you can earn brand mentions across social media while the event is being promoted. And on other websites if attendees write summary articles afterward.

Your event landing page could also attract links if people are interested in it, if a speaker wants to promote it, or if influencers want to share it with their audiences. 

Events may require more effort to run properly, but that buzz can be difficult to replicate in other ways. They’re also a great way to pick up some fantastic PR coverage. 

To learn more, read our guide to experiential marketing.

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How to build your SEO report

If you’ve been asked to create a regular SEO report, it’s hard to know what to include if you haven’t made one before.

SEO reports can be presented in different formats: spreadsheets, dashboards, and Word documents, but usually, the most popular format is slides. Choose whatever format you think best suits your client or boss.

To start your report, break it down into sections and determine which parts are the most relevant to the website you’re reporting on.

Here are the most important things you should include in your report:

1. Executive summary

This is the first section I would have in my report, but it’s also the last one I write (it’s hard to summarize the key points of an entire report if you haven’t yet created it).

Executive summaries are designed for senior stakeholders who don’t have time to flick through a long report. They want to know the most important points. So you need to keep this section easy to understand.

In bullet points, an executive summary summarizes the key points from the entire report.

2. Organic traffic performance

Organic traffic and analytics data give a bird’s eye view of a website’s performance over time. This data is often visualized in a graph near the start of many SEO reports.

Most SEO reports visualize performance using GSC, GA, or Ahrefs’ Overview data. This data can be displayed as a screenshot or exported and turned into a chart.

Here’s an example of comparing Google Search Console (GSC) clicks year over year (YoY). You can use GSC when reporting on a site you own or have access to the GSC profile.

And here’s another example of Site Explorer Overview showing YoY performance:

If you can’t get access to GSC or GA, then Ahrefs can show your website’s SEO performance over time. This is useful for tracking competitors’ Organic traffic performance.

SIDENOTE.

You can access the report for free in AWT by clicking on your project in the Dashboard, scrolling down to Performance, and toggling the Years button.

The key point you want to communicate at this stage is the website’s total performance over time. Is the movement positive, negative, or somewhere in between? And, crucially, what does this mean for the website?

Next to the chart, provide a few lines of commentary on the performance.

For example:

Organic traffic is up 5.5% MoM but down 3% YoY

Organic traffic was higher than expected this month. This is due to {reason}

There was a Google algorithm update at {date} that impacted our organic search traffic

3. Keyword rankings

Once you’ve established the state of organic traffic, the next task is to dig into the keyword rankings to understand which keywords are driving the most traffic.

Clients or stakeholders rarely want to see all of the tracked keyword rankings for their site.

Usually, they want to see:

Winner and loser keywords from the time period – which keywords improved and which declined?

A keyword position spread – for example, XX keywords rank in positions 1-5, XX position rank in positions 6-10)

You can use various keyword tracking tools to do this, but you’ll need a tool like Rank Tracker to regularly track your keyword rankings.

Let’s see how we can include these elements in our report using Rank Tracker.

To find keywords that have improved:

Head to Position

Select Improved

To view loser keywords, repeat the process but select Declined.

Once you have exported the keywords, you can present them in a simple table and add a bullet point commentary. 

To see a keyword position spread, select a time period, then click on the Positions tab, and it will show how many keywords rank in each position.

You can visualize this in a chart over time like below, or you can take a screenshot from Ahrefs and include it in your report. 

On the same dashboard, you can get the headline metrics like share of voice, average position, and SERP features.

4. Links

If you’ve dabbled in SEO, you’ll know that links are a fairly big deal for SEO. So, how do you report on them in an SEO report?

SEO clients and stakeholders usually want to know two things:

The number of external links you acquired during the time period

The quality of those links

Luckily, Ahrefs’ Site Explorer can help you report on both elements.

But before we dive too much into the details, let’s see how we can get an overview of the last calendar month.

To do this:

Head to Calendar on the sidebar

Click on the Referring domains tab

Check Dofollow

Best links: Only

You could include a screenshot of this heatmap in your report to provide a general overview of the last time period.

To find the number of links acquired from the last calendar period, do the following in Site Explorer:

Select Dofollow

Select New

Set the time period (I’ve used the last 30 days, but you can use a custom range to get the exact dates for the previous month)

Once you’ve added these settings, you can see we’ve acquired 3,446 domains during this period.

If we want to highlight the quality of any of the links, we can do this in the report as well. Just scroll down to see all the domains.

Here’s an example of a high-quality link Ahrefs.com acquired during this period. It has a domain rating (DR) of 93. This is the type of link that would be worth sharing in an SEO report.

Once we’ve shown this is an important link, the first question stakeholders might ask is, what is the Washington Post linking to on Ahrefs?

If we click on that link, we see they’re linking to our SEO basics article.

This would be a valuable insight to share in the SEO report because it shows that this type of content is capable of earning high-quality links.

Business cases for creating new content can be hard at the best of times. By highlighting high-quality links in your SEO report, the value of content becomes more obvious to stakeholders, and they’ll be more inclined to increase investment in SEO.

As well as reporting on links you’ve acquired, it’s worthwhile to report on links you’ve lost.

Sometimes, you can lose links accidentally by making site changes. You can report on this using Ahrefs’ Broken backlinks report.

We can see that Ahrefs has a broken backlink from Neil Patel… alas.

5. Technical SEO

Reporting on technical SEO is often harder than it looks. For SEOs, it’s easy to get lost in the details, but most stakeholders aren’t as interested in the details as you are and just want to know one thing: is their site in good technical health?

To answer this question, you can run a Site Audit crawl and check the website health score.

TIP

If you have access to Google Search Console, you can run a Site Audit for free on your website. Click here to get started.

Site Audit scores your website from 0-100 after the crawl based on its technical SEO health status. If the score is low, it means there are some technical issues to be fixed.

As well as running a Site Audit crawl, you can check in GSC to see if there are any technical issues with page indexing or page experience (like core web vitals or HTTPs).

Usually, if everything is fine, there isn’t any need to report on it. Unless your stakeholder or client is technically focused, keeping the technical part of your report as concise as possible is best.

6. Content performance

If you create content regularly, assessing its performance in your SEO reporting is important—otherwise, you won’t know whether you are wasting your time.

In my experience, when it comes to content, stakeholders want to know:

What the best-performing content was during the time period

What organic traffic it drives

What opportunities exist in the content space

For smaller content projects that have less than 1000 URLs, you can use Portfolios to track these keywords.

I use Portfolios myself to track the performance of my articles in Ahrefs.

Once you’ve set up your Portfolio, head to the Top pages report and click on Compare pages. On this page, you can get a good visual screenshot to share in your report of content performance, or if you want, you can Export the data and chart it yourself in a spreadsheet.

7. Competitors’ performance

In addition to reporting on your site’s performance, it can also help to report on your competitor’s performance.

This gives stakeholders a better understanding of the digital landscape they are operating in: who they’ll compete with in SERPs, and who they should look to for inspiration.

You can do this in 30 seconds by heading to Site Explorer and typing in your competitor in the search bar.

Then click on the Organic competitors report, and you’ll get an overview of the top competitors in your space.

If you want to add specific competitors, you can do so using the Custom tab.

This report is helpful as it gives you a client-friendly visual representation of your competitors’ performance. But more importantly, it shows your competitors’ keywords and their overlap with your own site, helping you to make strategic SEO decisions to outrank them.

In the SEO report, I would screenshot the top half to include in my report and then export the data from the bottom half of the table to filter out the more detailed information that would interest the stakeholders.

8. Opportunities for improvement

Ahrefs makes it easy to find things to improve in its Opportunities report. This report can identify content, links, and technical opportunities in a single click.

Here’s an example of the content opportunities it can find:

Low-hanging fruit keywords: shows keywords between positions 4-15 in Site Explorer that could be easy to rank for.

Featured snippets: shows keywords between positions 2-8 in Site Explorer where the target doesn’t rank for a featured snippet

Top suggestions from Content gap: shows keywords that the target’s top 10 competitors rank for, but the target doesn’t

Content with declining traffic: shows pages with declining traffic in the last six months that could do with an update

Pages only published once: shows old pages that have low traffic that might need an update

If you work through this report, it’s easy to spot opportunities for the website you’re reporting on that you can share with stakeholders.

9. Roadmap

Lastly, most SEO reports will share an update on the progress of their SEO campaign: the work that’s been completed so far, the next stages of the process, and the milestones you aim to hit.

The best way to do this is to share progress through an SEO roadmap Gantt chart showing your total SEO campaign.

Rather than messing around with a spreadsheet, I usually head to Canva and use one of their premade templates.

But if you want to go down the spreadsheet route, you can use our Google Sheets template.

You can quickly adapt these templates for your purposes, giving stakeholders a good idea of what work has been done on the account and what is coming next.

Final thoughts

SEO reports are important as they act as your virtual paper trail, documenting your progress to the top of Google. Without them, it can be hard to prove all the work you’ve put in to get to the number one spot.

But for many clients, SEO is just one small ingredient in the marketing mix. They aren’t as interested in the minutiae of SEO as you are. So, if you want to win your clients over on the value of SEO, show them the opportunity, appeal to their emotions, and ground your decisions in industry-trusted data—like Ahrefs.

[seoakasahammed]

On-Page SEO vs. Off-Page SEO

While off-page SEO refers to optimization tactics applied outside your website, on-page SEO refers to efforts applied on your webpages.

Here’s a quick overview of the tactics used in SEO—on-page and off-page:

Both on-page and off-page factors play an important role in SEO.

But there’s also technical SEO to consider. This involves making site-wide technical improvements to things like security, loading speeds, and mobile-friendliness. With the aim of improving search visibility.

[seoakasahammed]

Study key aspects of any website across 3 major areas:

Organic traffic performance—See what keywords your competitors are ranking for and which pages bring the most search engine traffic.

Backlink profile—See which websites link to your competitors' sites and gauge the quality of their backlinks.

Paid traffic performance—Learn whether your competitors are doing paid search advertising and where they funnel their paid traffic.

Website structure—See how many pages a website has, how they are organized, and what their internal links look like.

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The benefits of guest postingGuest posting works well as a marketing strategy because it benefits both the company contributing the guest post (the writer) and the company hosting the guest post on their site (the publisher). You're offering something of value in return for exposure, as opposed to having to either beg or pay.

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A guide to guest posting

Setting up your guest blogging strategy from scratch can take a bit of prep work, but once you have your process in place, things become a bit easier. Whether you're a small business owner or a blog editor at a mid-sized business, this will do the trick.

Step 1: Get organized

The first thing I like to do is create a spreadsheet to keep track of my guest posting efforts. Yours might look a little different depending on the tools you use or any other specific information you need to track, but here are the columns I have:

Website name

URL

Moz domain authority (DA)

Topics covered

Guest post ideas

Editor's name

Contact email

Contact date

Follow-up date

Accepted?

Date accepted/rejected

Post sent date

Date published

Guest post link

Some websites will have a dedicated page for guest post submissions (instead of an editor's name/email)—if that's the case, you can link to that page instead.

Note: To quickly see a website's domain authority (DA), I recommend installing Moz's free SEO toolbar called. A good rule is only guest posting on sites that have a DA that's equal to or higher than yours.

As you build out this spreadsheet, 

 can lend a hand. Ask ChatGPT or your favorite chatbot to summarize the blog content of a site you want to write for or to search for the email addresses of contacts. You can also ask for it to come up with potential guest post topics that will match your intended blog and refine the ideas it gives you.

Step 2: Find guest blogging opportunities

Once you have a place to keep your data organized, start searching for websites in your niche that accept guest posts. Depending on how established your company is, you might look for a broader set of sites or only focus on your specific audience. Just keep in mind that a backlink from a relevant site carries more weight than a backlink from one that isn't.

Here's a list of strings I've used on Google to find guest posting opportunities: 

Your keyword + "guest post by"

Your keyword + "guest post"

Your keyword + "write for us"

Your keyword + "guest article"

Your keyword + "contributing writer"

Your keyword + "contribute to our site"

One example of a blog with clear guest posting guidelines is right here—the Zapier blog. If a website has a well-thought-out guest blogging program, you'll find a page like with the details you need.

You can also reverse engineer your competitors' backlinks. Using tools like the free on Ahrefs, you just enter your competitor's website URL, and you'll get a list of all the websites that have linked back to them.

Now, not all of those backlinks will have come from guest posts, but if your competitor was able to get links from these websites, it means they might be a good fit for your content.

One other tip: make sure you understand , and do your research about which one the publication offers (you can look at previous guest posts on their site to find out). No-follows shouldn't be a dealbreaker, but they don't provide a direct SEO boost like do-follows.

Step 3: Send your pitch

A surefire way to get a guest post rejected is to send the same pitch to every outlet. Editors from big publications might receive hundreds of pitches each week, so if you send a generic guest post pitch, chances are they'll hit that delete button right  away.

A freelance writer who frequently lands guest posts with brands like WordPress, suggests a customized research process for each pitch. If you haven't added the host's blog topics to your spreadsheet yet, go to their blog and analyze what topics they post about: "Are they writing more about AI? Or maybe a specific cluster like 'product management'? This will provide insights into their existing strategy," Ankit says.

From there, identify keywords related to those topics and the host's audience that you can base your pitches around. will do the trick here if you don't have an 

 subscription. "This research step is crucial," Ankit emphasizes. "It shows that you've done your homework and aren't just pitching generic content. When you put in the research to understand where a company's focus is, you can tailor your guest post proposal to directly align with their current content goals."

Here are a few things to consider when preparing your pitch:

Read the submission instructions. Not following instructions will show the editor you're not serious about the opportunity. This includes everything from following their requested format to avoiding pitching topics they've explicitly said they don't accept.

Check their already published content. Avoid pitching articles on topics they've already covered (you can do a site:website.com search on Google first to be sure). The only exception might be if what they have is an extremely outdated piece, in which case you can show you've done your homework by mentioning that.

Include work samples. Add links to 2-3 relevant articles you've previously published.

Give them options. As long as their guidelines allow it, include multiple topics that they can choose from. They should all be variations on a theme to show that you're pitching about a specific area of expertise and not just shooting in the dark to find something they might like.

Include a description of each topic. It can be hard for an editor to judge the potential of a pitch by just a title (especially if the title is clickbaity instead of descriptive). Take 1-2 sentences max to describe each pitch.

Keep it brief. Introduce yourself, mention why you're reaching out, link to your previous work, and include the pitches. 

Here's a template I've used in the past:

Hi [First name],

My name is [Your first name], and I [tell them what you do for a living]. I'm a [new/frequent] reader of your blog, and I'm reaching out because I'd love to contribute a guest post on [Their website name].

Since you publish content about [topic A] and [topic B], I thought your readers might enjoy one of these articles:

- [Idea 1]

- [Idea 2]

- [Idea 3]

Here are three samples of guest posts that I've written before:

- [Link to guest post 1]

- [Link to guest post 2]

- [Link to guest post 3]

Please let me know what you think!

Thanks!

[Your first name]

If you haven't actually written any guest posts before, you have a couple options. You can link to guest posts that other people on your team have written (showing you have support from experienced writers can hold a lot of weight) or link to articles you've written on your own site.

Step 4: Send a follow-up email

Most guest pitches get ignored—that's just how the cookie crumbles. So don't get discouraged if you send 50 guest post pitches and only hear back from 10—all of which are rejections. It's normal.

While some editors might not reply simply because they aren't interested, others might genuinely forget. That's why it's important to always send a follow-up email unless otherwise stated on their website.

For small publications, I like waiting at least two weeks before sending a follow-up email. For big ones, I typically wait between three and four weeks. If they don't reply to my follow-up email, then I leave them alone. The last thing you want is someone making you temporarily internet notorious by tweeting about the annoying marketer who wouldn't stop spamming them.

Also: don't be surprised if you hear back from someone several months after the fact. I once sent a pitch to a big publication and didn't get a reply until three months later. Sometimes topics aren't a good fit right now but are at a later date—and sometimes, you're just not a priority. That's ok.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when sending a follow-up email:

Use the same thread. Make sure the first email with your pitch is in there—don't expect the editor to go through their inbox trying to find your previous email. 

Be brief. Because they already have all the info they need in the thread, I like keeping it under 50 words.

Email early. Send your message in the morning when the editor has had their cup of coffee and is happy. 

Only follow up once. This isn't a sales pitch. Only send one follow-up email, unless it's an extremely big publication that you know gets a massive quantity of pitches.

Don't email too soon. As mentioned above, wait at least two weeks for small publications and three or four weeks for big ones. These editors have a lot on their plate, and guest posts might not be their priority.

Here's a quick template you can use:

Hi [First name],

Just wanted to quickly follow up to see if you had any thoughts on my email below Thanks in advance for your time!

Sincerely,

[Your first name]

Step 5: Write your guest post

Getting your pitch accepted doesn't guarantee publication—you still need to bring your A-game. Plus, if your article does get published, you want to be sure that anyone who reads it is impressed and wants to know more about your brand.

Here are the ingredients for a successful guest post:

Follow guidelines. The writing guidelines might live on a page on their website, or the editor might send you a copy. To maximize your chances for publication, do what they say.

Replicate their style. You should always follow the format and style of the guest website, so read their blog posts and get familiar with how they write. If the editor won't need to do much before publishing the article, they'll be much more inclined to accept it.

Write something unique. Don't regurgitate the same information that's in every post on the topic. Offer a unique angle or a more comprehensive guide, whether that means including a personal story or adding templates the readers can follow.

Include internal links. Including internal links to their blog shows that you're a thoughtful writer and makes it less likely that they'll remove any links to your site.

Include links to your site. Make sure that the links you include are relevant to the topic of the guest post. Avoid linking to your home page, your sales page, affiliate links, or any other page that doesn't offer value to the reader. Those will get cut, and then you might end up with nothing.

Check your grammar and spelling.  You can use Free writing tools

 like Grammarly and Hemingway App. A typo isn't a big deal on its own, but it can create a lack of trust from an editor.

Include images. The editor may not use these images, but it shows that you're trying to offer the most helpful content for the reader. Don't include generic stock images that provide no value—instead, include unique screenshots or your own personal designs.

Step 6: Thank the editor and reply to comments

Once your guest post has been published—which can take several weeks or even months (be patient!)—make sure that you send an email to the editor thanking them for the opportunity.

If the host's website has comments enabled, take the time to respond to people's comments as they roll in. You can even leave a comment as soon as your post goes live to show visitors that you're hanging out in the comment section and are happy to engage. This tip also works for social media posts related to your guest post if that's how the host promotes content.

Step 7: Promote your guest post on social media

Hyping up your guest post on your active social media accounts benefits both you and your host. You'll build even more visibility for your brand, and your host will get additional promotion for their website. Create thoughtful social media posts that highlight some of your main takeaways, and tag your host in them.

If you have a regular rotation of content you like to promote on social media, consider including your guest post there, too. This practice will help you build an ongoing relationship with your host, which could lead to professional support or more guest posts down the road.

Step 8: Link to your guest post from other guest posts

This one is kind of ongoing. 

Most publications will only allow you to include 1-2 backlinks to your site but are often ok with more links to other authoritative websites. You can use this to your advantage.

The more links that point to a page, the stronger a link from that page is. So if you have several guest posts that link to your website, you can link to those guest posts from other guest posts to boost their rankings.

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The 10 Best Link Building Tools: Scale

1. Semrush

World’s fastest backlink discovery platform.

2. Respona

Full-suite link building outreach platform.

3. Pitchbox

Use workflows that walk you through the outreach process.

4. Buzzstream

Keep track of your relationships.

5. Hunter

Find accurate email addresses in seconds.

6. HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

Get featured in upcoming news articles.

7. Buzzsumo 

Discover influential bloggers in your niche.

8. Ahrefs 

Backlink data is powered by one of the world’s most active crawlers.

9. Moz Link Explorer

Reverse engineer your competitor’s backlinks.

10. Majestic 

Link analysis on a budget.

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SEO (Search Engine Optimization) process:

Keyword Research: Start by identifying relevant keywords and phrases that are related to your website or content. Use keyword research tools to find popular and low-competition keywords that you can target.

On-Page Optimization: Optimize your website’s on-page elements to make it more search engine friendly. This includes optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and URL structure. Incorporate your target keywords naturally into your content.

High-Quality Content: Create valuable and engaging content that provides useful information to your audience. Focus on creating original, well-written, and relevant content that incorporates your target keywords appropriately.

Link Building: Build high-quality backlinks to your website from reputable and relevant sources. This can include guest blogging, social media promotion, influencer outreach, and directory submissions. Quality backlinks can improve your website’s authority and visibility in search engine rankings.

Technical SEO: Ensure that your website is technically optimized for search engines. This involves optimizing site speed, improving mobile responsiveness, fixing broken links, and creating a sitemap. Also, ensure that search engines can crawl and index your website properly.

User Experience: Create a positive user experience on your website. Make it easy for visitors to navigate, find information, and engage with your content. Improve page load times, optimize for mobile devices, and use clear calls-to-action.

Local SEO (if applicable): If you have a local business, optimize your website for local search results. Include your business address, phone number, and other relevant information on your website. Create and optimize your Google My Business listing.

Monitor and Analyze: Regularly monitor your website’s performance using analytics tools. Track keyword rankings, organic traffic, bounce rates, and conversions. Use this data to identify areas for improvement and adjust your SEO strategy accordingly.

Stay Updated: Stay up-to-date with the latest SEO trends, algorithm updates, and industry best practices. SEO is an evolving field, so it’s essential to adapt your strategies as search engines change their algorithms.

#seo #seostrategy #seoexpert #onpageseo #onpageoptimization #onpageseoservices #offpageseo #offpageseoservices #offpageoptimization #contentmarketing #contentcreation #contentoptimization #socialemediamarketing #socialmediamanagement #socialmediamarketingtips #socialmediaexpert #emailmarketing #backlinks #backlinkservices #backlinksforseo #backlinkbuilding #backlink #guestposting #guestpost #guestpostservice #guestblogging #hashtags #hashtagstrategy #keywordresearch #keywordstrategy #keywordoptimization #keywordanalysis #titlesearch #competitoranalysis #technicalseo

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There are 5 Type of Backlink 

Backlinks are essential for search engine optimization (SEO) and play a crucial role in determining a website's ranking on search engine results pages. There are several types of backlinks, each with its own characteristics and impact on SEO.

 1. Natural Backlinks

Natural backlinks are editorially given without any action on the part of the website owner. They are the result of high-quality content that others want to reference, making them highly valuable for SEO.

 2. Manual Link Building

This involves actively seeking out and obtaining backlinks by reaching out to other website owners, submitting to web directories, or creating link-worthy content. While effective, manual link building requires time and effort to yield results.

 3. Self-Created Links

These are created by website owners themselves, often through blog comments, forum signatures, or user profiles. However, search engines are increasingly disregarding self-created links due to their potential for manipulation and spam.

 4. Guest Blogging Backlinks

Guest blogging involves writing and publishing a blog post on a third-party website, with the aim of including a backlink to the author's own website. This can be an effective way to build relevant backlinks and increase visibility.

 5. Do-Follow and No-Follow Links

Do-follow links pass on link equity and play a role in boosting the recipient site's search engine ranking. No-follow links, on the other hand, do not contribute to the recipient site's ranking and are often used for paid or untrusted content.

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Off-Page SEO Strategy

Off-page SEO is a crucial aspect of any digital marketing strategy. It involves activities done outside of your website to improve its search engine rankings. Here are some key strategies for an effective off-page SEO approach:

 1. Link Building

   - Acquiring high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites is essential for off-page SEO. Focus on building natural and relevant links that add value to your website's content.

 2. Content Marketing

   - Creating and promoting high-quality and shareable content helps attract natural backlinks, social media mentions, and increased visibility, thus enhancing off-page SEO.

 3. Social Media Engagement

   - Engaging with your audience on social media platforms can lead to increased brand visibility, more traffic, and potential backlinks, all of which contribute to off-page SEO.

 4. Online Reputation Management

   - Managing and improving your online reputation through customer reviews, brand mentions, and PR activities can have a positive impact on off-page SEO.

 5. Influencer Outreach

   - Collaborating with influencers in your industry can help increase brand awareness, reach new audiences, and acquire valuable backlinks.

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On-Page SEO Best 10 Tips

On-page SEO is essential for improving the visibility of your website in search engine results. Here are some best tips to enhance your on-page SEO:

1. High-Quality Content:

2. Keyword Optimization:

3. Meta Tags:

4. Optimized URLs:

5. Heading Tags:

6. Mobile-Friendly Design:

7. Page Loading Speed:

8. Internal Linking:

9. Image Optimization:

10. Schema Markup: