DOT Report, Latest Content Marketing Practices

Successful content marketing activities involve not only good content but content that complies with Google guidelines as well. Below are some important suggestions on utilizing the latest content marketing practices.

While using advertorials, it is important to declare prominently that such posts are sponsored. In order for the link in the post to not have a follow-up, labelled anchor text must be used. The focus of your advertorials should be good quality and well known sites, as it is important for the link to have SEO relevance. Without any SEO importance, it will fail to attract users to the site. A well known and good quality site has the power to attract web users and to increase your search engine ranking.

Like advertorials, one can also get paid press releases distributed all over the web which is against guidelines set by Google. It is therefore important that press releases do not contain any follow-up links. Like advertorials, even press releases require the use of labelled anchor texts. Most importantly, a press release should contain only newsworthy content. There are many press release service providers in the market who follow strict editorial standards when it comes to producing interesting content.

Guest blogging is another well known content marketing practice. While guest blogging is conducted on a larger scale, most of them end up focussing on inferior quality websites. Google has the software to detect the frequency and number of guest posts that are being submitted by a particular user. It essential to limit the amount of posts being produced by you, since Google has the power to punish you either manually or algorithmically. Guest posts should be created every alternate month in order to avoid getting penalized by Google.

Another aspect of guest blogging that requires consideration is that the structure of the site should be looked at before producing any guest posts. The website should have a continuous and logical theme in the varied guest posts. You need to see whether the site has an authentic social following in terms of social sharing and comments. Like advertorials and press releases, even guest blogging requires the use of labelled anchor text and mention of paid post in the writing.

Another common content promotion practice is blogger reviews. One must always mention in the reviews that the content has been paid for by the reviewer in order to avoid getting penalized by Google. Since the review is already paid for, the reviewers have the choice to write positive or negative reviews. Reviews by bloggers should only be produced and posted on popular websites. At the same time, reviews on well known sites should also contain a reasonable amount of social interaction in the form of comments and sharing with other users.

Infographics are one of the many top content marketing practices that are most widely used in blogs. While the use of good quality infographics is important for promoting your content, there is also a limit as to the number of infographic sites that one can use. One of the best practices that you can follow with regard to infographics is to delink your links. The use of labelled anchor text in the implanted code is a safe way to market your content. Even certain industry sites have use for infographic content. For this reason, these sites are considered to be high quality sites when it comes to creating genuine and organic infographic copies.

These are some of the content marketing practices that are being used by people to promote their content and websites. As long as these practices comply with Google’s rules and regulations, they will not affect your website and content in an adverse manner.

 

 

Ten Twitter Tips

We all know how big social media is today, and there’s no denying it helps with your SEO. After their latest updates, the stronger your brand name, the better your website is going to rank. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other social media outlets all help you build a presence on the web that search engines love and will also be in the best interest of your business.

Let’s start with looking at why having more followers on Twitter is good:

• The advantage of Twitter is that once people follow you, they will invariably see your tweets, while Facebook will block out certain updates or charge to make posts more prominent. With Twitter, you know your tweets will get to your fan base.

• The number of followers you have is a reflection of your brand. The more followers you have, the easier it is to get even larger – and we will see why.

• The larger your user base, the more likely Twitter is to recommend you on their “who to follow.”

Here’s a set of ideas to make your Twitter account more interesting to follow and how you can get the most from your current user base.

• Tweet at the right time. Tweet at a time when your followers are most likely to view your tweets. If you’re a restaurant, try around meal times. For businesses, 10 a.m. works best. Look at when most of your tweets are coming in from followers to decide.

• Talk to people. Since Twitter users like to talk, @message people who are authority figures in your field and you’ll be surprised with the number that respond.

• Engage your user. When talking to people, give them a bone, drop a link to your blog post or infographic so that when you message someone they have something more than just a tweet to look at. The more you engage with your user base, the larger the chance they will talk back to you.

• Keep it going. When you get a reply from your customers, don’t end the conversation with a thank you. Try to get more from them. Hear what they are really saying and keep asking them for more. This will increase your tweet count and make your account look bigger.

• Have more followers than friends. Don’t follow back everyone that follows you. That way, your account looks unprofessional.

• Keep your profile clean. First impressions count. If you have very few tweets of value in your last four (which is all that shows in the preview), then you may not be taken seriously. Ensure that you don’t just have @replies to people, unless you’re just doing customer service.

• Tweets go far. Ensure that when you tweet, it stays relevant. If you keep tweeting with @mentions, it will only engage the person you’re speaking with and not the majority of users. Keep in mind that general tweets will often be retweeted and marked as favorite.

• Check unfollowers. You can use a free service for checking unfollowers. This will let you see who has unfollowed you and allow you to ask why they don’t find your tweets compelling anymore.

• Follow the right people. If you are using your official Twitter handle, don’t follow your kids and friends. This will just give the wrong message to Twitter’s algorithms and to users who want to follow you. Try following those with equal followers, which is likely to ensure a follow back.

• Quick replies. When someone @mentions you on Twitter, try to respond quickly. This will let users feel heard and will encourage them to follow you and be happy with your feedback.

Keep checking with us for more tips on how to make the most of your Internet marketing strategies. We are constantly updating and always welcome your feedback on what you’re doing with your verticals, so do keep messaging us!

 

Using Google’s Research Tools to Create Search Engine Friendly Keywords

The success of various online business sites depends on search engine optimized campaigns that use appropriate and search engine friendly keywords. This is an ongoing process that requires the use of fresh and unique keywords. In other words, businesses need to modify their existing keyword lists from time to time. All kinds of SEO tools are available for creating new sets of keywords. To continue to rank high on various search engines, here are some suggestions on various Google tools that you can use to make your business site attractive to search engines and web users.

Google Analytics

The list of keywords can be further expanded with the help of Google Analytics. Though many ways are available for segregating the data generated by the keyword research tool, a simple way of doing it is by selecting keywords that attract a huge volume of user traffic for a specific landing web page.

Google Trends

Another very useful tool for SEO experts is Google Trends. It provides a deep and comprehensive insight into the usage of a particular keyword. It keeps a record of the search importance for various keywords over a given time. Along with the relevant search engine trends of the various keywords, it also provides users with related terms at the bottom of the page.

Google Webmaster Tools

Another very powerful keyword research tool that one can use for modifying keyword searches is Google Webmaster Tools. It not only reveals the most popular keywords that rank high in search engine results leading to user traffic to your site but also highlights keywords that are search engine friendly which you can use for your own business website.

Google Autocomplete

In order to find fresh keyword ideas for your business, consult Google Autocomplete for realizing untapped opportunities for building your ranking among various search engines. Google Autocomplete is the most easy (and quickest) way of finding new keywords. Simply type in the most used or popular keywords related to your business to get an insight into related searches. In other words, besides the keywords being used by your business, you will get an idea of what kind of searches web users make when they use the same keywords that have been used by your business. Avoid pressing the enter key while conducting a keyword search using Google Autocomplete tool. Likewise, leave some space before your search engine friendly keywords in order to get more ideas on how best to modify your list of keywords. In place of the space in front of the keyword, you can make use of terms like when, where, who, what and why to get interesting ideas for creating unique web content.

Though Google has introduced many search engine friendly products and services, it has also discontinued the usage of certain services like the tilde tool for finding synonyms that are connected to your keywords. This research tool from Google is highly effective and helpful for carrying out keyword research and expansion of the existing keyword list. Yet, there are many other useful tools that can be used for finding synonyms related to your keyword. For instance, Google Sheets can be used for carrying out synonym related searches. Even the search results that come at the bottom of the result page play an important role in being a source for new and innovative ideas and opportunities for your list of keywords.

Besides the usage of the abovementioned research tools from Google, there are other equally popular tools that you can use for bringing about much needed change in your list of keywords and subsequently in your business.

The Significance of User Friendly Mobile Content

Nowadays mobile is playing an important role in business promotion campaigns. Mobile websites have become a necessity for many businesses. Mobile phones are now looked upon as providing widespread economic and commercial opportunities to various online businesses. For this reason, mobile websites are being designed with the aim of providing user friendly mobile content to a variety of users.

Create Neat and Precise Structure

Mobile users are always on the lookout for mobile websites that are easy to read and take less time to download. While creating business web pages for mobile, only the most relevant information should be included. To fully utilize the small screen space available on mobile devices, aspects of computer-based websites like content links and side menus should not be incorporated into the pages of your mobile website.

To generate maximum mobile sales for your business, it is important to emphasize information that is relevant for sales conversion such as contact details, product information, prices, etc. Avoid overfilling your pages with needless information, as that will only make it difficult for people to find the information they want and need. You’ll only end up making mobile users angry if they will have to look deeper for the content they’re looking for.

Navigation links should be placed on the top of your home page. And the other pages should contain only content and navigation links leading back to the home page. By placing your navigation links at strategic points, users will be able to navigate your mobile site easily without losing focus on your valuable content. Again, due to the small screens of mobile phones, users only get to read a few lines of your copy. So your content should be short and brief.

Optimize Layout to the Maximum

Simplifying your content to make the most of the page layout for mobile phones will help provide an improved mobile surfing experience for your users. Just transferring your current website to mobile will create a negative impression of your business among mobile users, which will also lead to a high jump rate. Users will encounter like small text size, multiple menus and others. The ideal layout for a mobile website should contain just one column of content. Additional content should be placed at the bottom of the page and not across it. This kind of layout allows mobile users to scroll down for further reading.

In order to make your content interesting, you should use bullet points, appealing headlines and snippets. This will not only highlight your best products and services, but give people easy access to your web pages which will lead to greater sales conversion. Since mobile users do not spend much time going through all the content, call-to-action messages should be prominent and written in a direct manner so they stand out and are present throughout your mobile content.

Since the Internet is being increasingly accessed through mobile devices, online businesses need to provide those users with a smooth surfing experience of their websites. By following the above guidelines, you will increase your chances of capturing a large chunk of your target market.

Importance of Email Marketing

Email marketing has become the most preferred internet marketing tool of varied businesses. When done in the right manner, this method of marketing can generate the right business leads for online businesses. Among the many facets of email campaign that requires careful attention from businesses effective engagement with your email lists deserves the highest importance. Given below are some helpful tips for organizing a successful email campaign:

Create segmented email lists for better management

In order to better manage your email lists, create email lists based on the different types of consumers. Demarcation of your email lists will help to improve your engagement with the target consumer base; it will enable you to create personalized emails that will best address the needs of your clients. This will help to build trust with your target market as they will be receiving emails which they will find to be useful. By implementing such a personalized approach in your online marketing campaign your business will fetch higher returns.

Send friendly messages to your clients

The first point of contact between businesses and potential clients in any email campaign is the welcome message. A cold welcome message reflects badly on any kind of email campaign. The welcome message should make the email receiver hooked on to your business the moment he starts reading your mail. The aim of the email campaign should be to make each and every potential customer feel important and valuable in order to further connect with them. Your message should contain something interesting that will immediately draw their notice like gift coupons so that they will be driven to know more about your services and products.

Send confirmation mails that will generate more business

Every buyer expects confirmation emails after making their purchase from the online stores. Since this kind of email is important to buyers, it shouldn’t be just a typical confirmation email. Your confirmation email should contain information that will lead to additional purchase by the customer from your online business. This is usually achieved through suggestions of similar products which the buyers might be interested in purchasing. Based on this tactic, many online businesses receive additional orders every time this kind of confirmation letter is send to their consumers.

Build strong client- business relationship through reward programs

Incentive programs form an important part of online marketing promotions as they help to build a long lasting relationship with your target consumer base. Reward programs are wonderful opportunity for businesses to showcase their appreciation for their customers.   This is another approach that your online business can use for making your business grow. The offer of loyalty rewards to customers will further serve to enhance your brand name as well as strengthen the relationship between your business and customers. Reward programs will encourage your loyal clients to continue to support and utilize your diverse and varied services and products. They will always look into your emails as they will contain valuable information that will always help them.

Evaluate your emails thoroughly

In order for your hard work to pay off, you need to test your emails before you send them out to your prospective customers. The various advertising pitch and enticing schemes that are part of the email marketing promotion might become useless if your receivers fail to understand them. Various email elements like font size, images, headings, link placement, text message etc need to be thoroughly evaluated before they are send out.  This will ensure that your clients receive well written business emails that will immediately connect them to your online business. Such a step will save your email campaigns from being futile as the purpose of any email campaign is to connect with your potential subscribers.

By building your email campaigns around these important approaches, your business will reap numerous benefits in the form of long lasting relationship with your clients.

Avoid Out-of-Date SEO

To create good website content, you may try to follow all the usual SEO techniques to get a top ranking in search engines. But even after implementing all the SEO techniques you know, back linking the website with other popular sites, social networking sites, etc., you may see that your website rankings are not appearing in search engines. There can be many reasons behind this problem, among which using outdated SEO techniques is most important.

While learning about SEO, you might have followed websites that talked about older search engine optimization guides and tips which were once highly popular. But with the flow of time, technology is getting upgraded everyday and so is SEO. There are certain things that you always need to consider while optimizing a website for search engines.

  • First and foremost, you must always remember that while creating a website never ever create a duplicate website thinking that more than one website will help you to drive double the traffic to your website. Absolutely wrong! Whenever you are creating a duplicate site of an original, search engines will raise the issue of duplicate content. In some cases, search engines may suspend these websites as well. So, ultimately your search engine ranking is held back. In addition to this, the quality of your website content is also neglected whenever there is a problem of duplicate content and your website(s) will be held back in Google rankings there as well. This is a serious problem with many top notch companies, and it is always suggested that you should focus on only one website with quality content in it to win good search engine rankings.
  • Unlike earlier SEO concepts, meta keyword tags are not as important as they used to be today. Search engines don’t depend on these keywords/tags these days. Basically, these keywords are irrelevant in modern SEO techniques. Keywords are used today in websites only to highlight to other similar websites what you are targeting. If you are not bothered about your competitors, instead of wasting time incorporating meta keyword tags, concentrate on quality content while improving your website with modern SEO techniques to get good search engine rankings.
  • Many people think that submitting websites to search engines helps in earning good rankings. But this is not the case. Simply link to it and your website will be in the top rankings if your website really reads well and has original content. Your website will get more and more exposed with the number of links you bring to it.
  • Now, link building doesn’t mean stuffing links only in one particular anchor text. Search engines prefer to see various kinds of anchor texts hyperlinked with various sources. So, look for variations in anchor texts as well as links to increase your website’s visibility in search engines. While linking, always remember to link your brand name.
  • Search engine ranking and page ranking are something totally different. Even if you get a higher PageRank, it does not necessarily mean that your search engine ranking is also high. Getting a good PageRank indicates that your links are effectively working and websites are driving relatively good traffic to your website. You need to spend time on your website to earn good rankings, not just worry about PageRank.
  • The last (and also a typically outdated) concept is to place link directories in your website. These link directories do no other effective work other than simply cluttering the website with irrelevant links. Instead of incorporating link directories, it is better to link to social networking sites.

 

Understanding the importance of Content Marketing

There can be all kinds of definition for content marketing but the implementation aspect of content marketing is made up of some of the best practices. Like all practices, even content marketing has its dos and don’ts with regards to market research, process and governance, editorials, and execution and analysis.

MARKET RESEARCH

The first important point to remember while conducting your market research is that content marketing should be all about the management of expectations. This can be easily achieved by having a road map with everything from deadlines to deliverables clearly outlined. This would ensure that everyone stays focused on their task. It is a known fact that market research is a tedious process. Nothing can be gained by rushing through it. The fallout of doing so is the irreparable damage to the persona of the firm involved in content marketing.

Proper market research is crucial for the generation of sales. It lays the foundation for the development of strong and sound strategies. For this reason, research shouldn’t be rushed, and most importantly, it shouldn’t be left incomplete. Market research is all about persona development through routes like customer surveys, groups and customer interviews, customer service division interviews, reports of external markets, surveys of readers and interviews of bloggers, and a host of other ways to develop a required persona.

PROCESS AND GOVERNANCE

Traditional publishing mediums like magazines and newspapers have been in the business of content production for a long time. They can be the perfect source for organizing your perfect content producing workforce with a clear cut demarcation of roles and responsibilities. This is essential in order to avoid any kind of internal conflict or confusion. Various teams need to work together to create content that has continuity and consistency for the perfect user experience. This is paramount for ensuring mess free content on your website.

It is essential to have a thorough understanding of your company’s legal stance in order to avoid any kind of obstacles with regard to compliance and editorial reviews. This is essential since the internet is abounding with problems like copyright infringement and plagiarism, and a marketer might unknowingly break some kind of law. Legal woes can be further avoided through the incorporation of a clear cut policy among various content producers.

EDITORIALS AND EXECUTION

There should be certain editorial standards in your content. There should be consistency in the structure and voice of your content. This is only possible if there are well defined editorial guidelines for the writer. Again, the guidelines should be the same for all the different teams. This is necessary for consistency in the content. There can be many forms of content. Content can be made different and creative through the use of different formats, topics, styles, media, and so on. At the same time, one shouldn’t sacrifice revenue for creativity. The content should be creative and should incorporate the necessary keywords, personas and funnel mapping for revenue generation.

ANALYSIS

The end purpose of any kind of content should be revenue generation. A clear knowledge of this goal and the means to achieve it will help your content to stay on track. Content should be created with the aim of improving the overall business of any firm. Before the launch of any kind of content, there should be some kind of mechanisms in place for determining the success of your content. The content list should be updated regularly. Such a practice is important for the development of new content in the future. The focus of content marketers should not be only bringing in new customers, but retaining old customers as well.
Your content marketing initiatives can only reach their full potential through well executed and best practices.

How To Recover From A Manual Google Penalty – A Step By Step Guide

Sometimes while designing your website, you put in a number of links to increase the website’s visibility in search engines, but you may often come across a typical problem where Google reviews your website citing a problem with your links. Here is a step by step guide about recovering from physical link problems.

Whenever there are irrelevant or unnatural links on your website, the Google Webmaster Tools starts giving you warnings. Sometimes, if a warning is not given it might be an algorithmic problem caused by Google Penguin. With Google Penguin, you will not have to submit any reconsideration requests because this is a process where you can discuss the manual penalty with Google.

Now, if you have received any waning from Google Webmaster Tools, then it is time to analyze your back links seriously. This can be a time consuming process, so you need to be very patient. First, sketch out an entire image of your back links. While analyzing the back links, you might need a number of back link analysis tools because there is no such tool that can provide you with an overall profile. Some of the useful and important back link analysis tools are Google Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO, Bing Webmaster Tools, Link Detox, Open Site Explorer and LinkRisk.

An important thing about backlink analysis tools is that you should never ever consider Google Webmaster Tools as the only weapon that can help you out just because Google has warned you about the problem. Google only provides you with an example of the links causing problems and does not give you an entire image of the links on your website. So, you need a handful of different weapons to analyze all your back links properly.

A Google warning indicates a problem. There could be different problems: paid links, advertorials or manipulation of PageRank. So, first identify which problem Google is talking about. The category of the links will be chosen according to the cited problem. Anything in your website that is unnatural or irrelevant anything that is there just for SEO purposes, should be piled up and simply removed from your website.

The next step is link removal. Whenever you are aware of the list of links that are causing trouble to your website, it is time to remove them, but this process is very painstaking and not very effective at the same time. At the end of the removal process, you may come up with a very poor removal rate. But you have to carry out this unlinking process repeatedly to remove all the unnatural links from your website.

The next step is Disavow which enlists all the unnatural links and asks Google to reject those while providing a Google ranking to the website. This will help you to remove all those unnecessary links from your website that you could not remove. This step helps you to remove all the unnecessary links as a whole and not individually. Hence, it is easier to disavow all the links of a particular domain without deleting individual links from the same domain.

By completing all these tasks, you can proceed further by submitting your website to Google for reconsideration. But make sure that you are honest about your activities.

Sustainable SEO Strategy

How can you position yourself in a way that would allow your business to be future proof? We all know that what works well for SEO today is going to change tomorrow. Whether it’s being good with Google, managing social signals, getting the right analytics in place, UX design or just plain innovating to ensure that you’re ahead of the curve, you constantly need to be at it so that it’s moving in the right direction.

SEO is about marketing. It’s about marketing online and getting your business to the people who want to use it. The most direct clues you can pick up about your marketing efforts won’t necessarily come from your analytics program. Your sales team will know exactly how your customers are reacting to your choices. And, even better, they will advise you on what they want to see on the website. Go ahead and ask what your clients have on their website, see what their teams are doing, pick the best of their ideas and try to implement them into your strategy.

Make contact lists. You can use email forms, Facebook pages and Twitter followers. Other options like Pinterest and YouTube may not necessarily suite your business requirements. However, keep building your lists. Not only do social building efforts have an effect on your brand image with search engines, they also allow you direct contact with your clients. You will be able to directly learn from them and keep innovating your product line to suit what your demographic needs. In our view, the biggest advantage of building lists is that it allows you to be agnostic to search engine updates and ready for the long run no matter what.

Link maximization. There’s a new animal from Google’s bestiary about to make a walk onto the field. It’s a Penguin with a 2.0 outlook. The new Penguin is designed to clean out link spammers. Google doesn’t like to get fooled by people gaming the algorithm and continually uses new techniques to weed out the bad guys. If you’ve been using software to build links to your website, you need to watch out. Google launched a link disavow tool, and you should use it to remove links that you feel are not in your best interest. These are links from websites that are not naturally in your neighborhood. For example, if you notice that you are getting links from a website that has more posts about medical products or adult themes, you should ask Google to disavow the link. Keep in mind there are a lot of people who continually use the disavow tool, and Google now naturally understands what bad neighborhoods are. If you’re continually getting links from those websites, don’t expect your website to do well.

Clean content. Ensure that the new content you are putting on your website is not just for search engine ranks but has an overview for all the customers that will use your website. For example, if your website is about food, you may naturally have something written about travel even though the two are not necessarily related. Make sure your content is original and that you’re adding regularly. This isn’t just an idea that works for search engines. It also naturally works well for your customers.

Write good content. Ensure that you cover current and relevant trends. Visitors will read your content, stay longer on your website and return. These demographics are easy to track for Google. For example, if the first search result always causes the user to search for the same term again and then not search after he has visited say the tenth website, Google understands that the website at results number one isn’t covering what the users wants to know but the tenth one is and will automatically start pushing the tenth one up in the results.

Most of the tips we have suggested are quite natural in terms of progression for your website and will happen over the course of time for any business. Just as in real life a brand would make a name for itself over varied references and marketing efforts, it’s much the same online. By spending time and effort, you will naturally come out on top!

Black Hat or White Hat SEO?

You’ve probably heard about the search engine optimization being divided into two camps, “white hat” and “black hat.” The distinction between the two changes over time. However, there’s always an approach you can choose based on the target you have in mind and your mind-set. Today, we’ll look at how these camps stand apart and what you need to know to make a better decision on the course you want to take.

While we are going to speak about both black and white hat SEO, when we talk about black hat, we are talking about tactics and rules that are not part of Google’s set – activities like hacking websites and other outright illegal methods. To be clear, while we are putting general ethics aside, we are definitely not endorsing any activities that are illegal.

Black Hat SEO

Black hat SEO refers to various methods of rapidly gaming Google into believing that your website is as genuine as the established players. Keep in mind that, while these may work, they are generally short lived and Google is getting far better at catching on to these tactics. Google is on a continued offensive to find people who are trying to con their domains up in the rankings. That being said, here are a few tactics that are in use.

Link farms – These are websites that are programmed to link to each other within the group. They are obviously quite easy for search engines to catch onto.

Blog and forum spam – There are automated programs available that will visit several websites and submit comments while leaving a backlink to other websites. These are generally nonsensical comments which are easily caught and removed manually.

Hidden text – This is the practice of having links within pages and then hiding those links by using color or blocking the block via CSS so human visitors can’t view the links but search engine spiders can.

Cloaked and doorway pages – Cloaking is illegal and is the activity of presenting one version of a web page to search engines while showing completely different text to human visitors. Doorway pages refers to webpages with some text for search engines and some programming for web browsers that will redirect to a different domain. Both these activities will result in domains being kicked out of Google if caught!

White Hat SEO

White hat SEO means using methods that are okay with search engines and avoiding automated pages or any of the methods mentioned above. While some agencies will tell you that they use only white hat methods to ensure your pages never slip in search results, keep in mind that these terms are often changing. For example, it used to be acceptable to have keyword-rich domains, links in the footer or paid links with no penalties until quite recently. Now all these activities are frowned upon.

Guest blogging – The process of writing posts for other websites in return for a link to your website will help your rankings and generate relevant traffic as well.

Viral campaigns – If you have ideas and infographics to share on your website that are of importance to your industry, you can be sure they will be shared, tweeted, bookmarked and passed along.

On-page optimization – Ensure that your pages have the correct titles, are named correctly, have well written HTML and do not employ hidden links.

Well written posts – Make sure your domain has regularly updated and well written content. The more relevant your posts, the more traffic you can get from search engines. A five-page domain can attract only so much traffic.

Sitemaps and internal links – Have a sitemap that search engines can use to link all the pages in your website. The easier you make it for content to be found, the quicker you can get indexed and bring visitors onto those pages.

SEO is an evolving field, and there may never be a clear-cut definition of what is right and ethical. However, following a slow and steady link building practice from relevant domains will never get you into trouble. There are tempting advantages of black hat SEO. It may allow your domain to get ranked quickly, but you may tank just as quickly. At the end of the day, your moral compass allows you to decide on which side you want to be and how much risk you want to take with your marketing campaigns.