DA (Domain Authority): How do you get it?

1. SEO pagerank linkbuilding examples intro: My first SEO class was about keyword research and how to put your keywords in your website. Once you done this, it's time to take it to the next level. Time that Google gives you some reward for your big efforts. This class will teach you how to be seen by Google as a relevant and reliable website and how to get more value than your competitors and that you will get a higher search results in Google. I'm an online marketing consultant living in Amsterdam, and with this class, I will help you to get ahead of your competition and give your business a boost. 2. LESSON 1: BACKLINK RITUAL: One of the factors why Google things that your website is relevant is how many websites are linking to your website. These are called backlinks. The more people are pointing to your website, the more relevant information seems to be on your website. If a website like the New York Times links to your website, this means more than, for example, your aunt with her personal website that's linking to your page. So with this valuation process of Google in mind, you can start link building. In this class, I will teach you a structured way of link building and make it into a weekly ritual. The first step is to get a list of these relevant websites. Let's say that I'm selling indoor plants like these and I want to be found on the keyword indoor plant. I type into Google indoor plants to see my competitors. This keyword set does not have to be very focused, it's just to do some benchmarking, so to look at your competitors and what they are doing with link building. I chose for pikaplant.com, because this website shows up with their homepage URL, and it also seems like a similar competitor. The next step is to go to a very scary, spammy looking websites named backlinkwatch.com. Here you fill in the competitors URL and you click on Check backlinks." If you do not have an app blocker on your website, there might pop up some very scary ads, like these, then you always have to click on "Close this thing," and don't click on the green button or anything else, only on Close this thing. It can take some time before the website of Backlink Watch has processed and has shown up, because it sometimes starts to process more than 1,000 links, so it can take a while. Well, here, you see how many links there are in total, and that's quite a lot. Now I will show you how you can put these links that are showing here into a spreadsheet to give it a structured way for yourself, and I will show this not in this PowerPoint, but in the real life situation. Once all the processing is finished, select the data. You see here that the processing is finished if all the data's there, and you can select all the data before this number 1 and go to the end of this data, and then you copy with Command C, all this data. Then you go to Google Drive and open a new Google Spreadsheet. Then you leave a few rows open on the top. Let's see. Let's put all the data here, paste it. Yes, I got this already before that it comes in one row. We don't want this, we only want it in more rows. So what we do is we take it back with Command Set and we go back to Backlink Watch. What we do is, totally, again, this is just what sometimes happens. I can show you also another tool. But I do like this to better because it gives you all the processed data at once. We go back, we do it again. But now, I think that's the trick. We don't stop at the end, but we stop here. So before the end of the table, and then we press Command C, then we go to this nameless spreadsheet and we paste it in. Let's see if it works. Yes. Now you see that it's going all in different columns. Then we are trying to get it in the nice layout. Yes, it works, and here, I put the name of the URL that I put into Backlink Watch to see which backlinks are pointing to a pikaplant.com, so you know that for the future. I told you that it was going to show you also another tool than this, I mean Backlink Watch, and that's Open Site Explorer, so I can put also here the URL, pikaplant.com, and then we do search, and there it goes. Loading. What you see here, that's quite funny of this tool, that you can see spam score, which means that some things have a bad spam score. But what you see is that if you want to take everything, you have to go to every page. If it's a lot of page, you cannot select all the URLs at once. For me, it takes me too much time. I cannot just copy at once and paste it into my Excel or my Google Spreadsheets, so for me, it takes long. But I can also show you a little bit more about the spam score because it is very important. I put in my own URL of my website, and it will start with some spammy things that they think, because here you see amsterdam-bedriiven, and startpag, and startpag is like a directory. It gives you a little bit of spam score because it's just a website with a lot of links on it. I can show you so you have an idea of what Google might think is more spammy, something like this. It sees it as more spammy because it's only links. It's not any content. So this is an important factor. Try not to get on those kinds of websites, but more on natural websites of normal people that write blogs or want to link to you. Let's go back to our nameless spreadsheets too and here we put linkbuilding plant indoor, because that is what we are searching for, so here. [inaudible] Then we start with today, it's like the 5th of December 2015, and we are starting this linkbuilding. Let's say that I would like to do linkbuilding every week, once, and then I do like three links. First, I've already checked this one and I want to get on this website. What you do, you scroll until you find somebody that you can contact. Let's see when he pops up because he should pop up now. Yes, because I did already before, and here you could contact this guy that has this website on, for example, Twitter or LinkedIn, and ask if you can send him a press release or just send him a press release via LinkedIn. So if you did that, you go to this startup list, you copy here, the URL, so it's actually both these, and then you give it a color. So I gave it this color, so you know already that you've done it. Then here, I paste it again, so I know, again, that I've done it. I give it, again, nice color, and then I say, okay, I send press release. Good. Next one. I already looked it up. I liked it. It's called Positive Magazine. This Pikaplant just got a lot of attention of nice blogs. I mean, not everybody does have such a brilliant product that it can be on every blog. I mean, that's nice. If you just come across this website, then you're finding your submissions and you're trying to get your press release or your content by sending them your press release or just asking, "Okay, I have this very nice plant, can you post something on your blog about my nice idea?" That's what it's all about. Copy it again and paste it on top. It's also a press release, so I put it there. It's not the best color so I make it again nice. Let's do that later. Done. These are very nice blogs, but not every website and every product is so good in taking on all these blogs. I will show you also another website. This one, I'll go back to the start of Backlink Watch. It's called houseofplants.co.uk. Let's see if it works. It's already processing. You can see that because on the top here, it's really working. You see here that it has 123 links. We do it again. We go all the way to the bottom here. I paste it again on the same row, and here, I put the URL, houseofplants.uk. Then we make it a little nicer. In this row, you can go, for example, to a link that I've found there which is not yet generated, but I will show you this link. This link is on number 63. I found it here in this list. Let's say that I do this one week later, the 13th of December, 2015. Here, I did also another one, so let's save that. Now, also on this one. I send them a press release. Here, let's make it a nice color. Let's go in. I'll show you this one, it's the bigplantnursery.co.uk, and it offers a website page with links. Because we are relevant for them, we can ask them also to be here. What we do is that we are going to contact these people and we are going to send them an e-mail. We will also put here. We will send them an e-mail. Let's make this nice looking because it's important that you have a structured document. Here, we send a press release or just an e-mail to this website to go and do some Backlink Watch. We're going to send an e-mail to this e-mail address to ask for a link exchange. Here, you can say, link exchange. Now, I will show you how to write this e-mail and to ask for link exchange. To send an e-mail for link exchange, you can start with dear and then try to find a name on the side of the website owner or otherwise just use website owner. "I came across your website and it has very relevant information to my customers, so I like to exchange links. I already put your link on my website Here. Could this link," and then you put your link there, "be mentioned on your website with the link text: indoor plants? That would be great. Thanks in advance. Hope to hear from you soon. Best regards, Marjet Wullink," with also maybe your link underneath your name. That's it. Then probably, this person is happy to link with you if your website is relevant also to them. Then a week later, you do again some of these links. Now, I'm going to show you some links where you can just fill in a form like this one. I found this one in-between all the other links. Sometimes, it's really some searching. Then you just have to put in your URL, your titles, your site, and your site description, and use a CAPTCHA as a verification, and then you click "Submit". This is actually just very easy. But they, most of the times, also always ask for a link exchange. Really, read good all these policies and how you have to link building. Or you can add your URL by putting it into a forum by participating in a forum. Here, you see what House of Plants did. They went to a forum, or somebody else actually might have gone to this forum, and they thought this is a really good resource to put in this forum and it's relevant. Here, you have no idea, maybe this Petee is a member or online marketer for House of Plants, but at least they're linked there. Also, this is one of the backlinks that I found here in this row. You can just see what your competitors do and do the same. I can add these last things that I did. I did a forum, I posted myself also in this forum, and the other one was this here. I filled in a form for link exchange. Let's make it nice in nice color. This is how you just get every week, three links done, or give yourself a minimum and a maximum, if you like. This means that your website also gets actively link building, and that's also what is good for your website, that it keeps on being active. What I explained to you in this first lesson about backlinks is that you can exchange links via sending e-mails, or you can send a press release to the links that are very relevant to your website and where it's like blogs, so they put your press release on their blog. The third one is a link exchange submitting in forms. That's more of directories where you put your link to, or you can put your link in a forum by participating in a forum. With this structured weekly ritual, you can get yourself to a higher page rank. There are more things, so that's what I'm going to teach you in the next lessons. 3. LESSON 2: AGE OF DOMAIN: One of the first factors that determine how Google will value your website is the age of your website. The longer you website is online, the more credibility it gets. The higher the pagerank, if we can still speak about it. So here in website terms, the older, the happier. You can check your own age at pagerankchecker.net. Here you see, for example, if I checked my own website step-by-step seo.com, it just started 150 days ago, so it's very young and one of the oldest website is apple.com. It is already 28 years old and also has been given nine as a PageRank. It is obvious that the longer you website is online, the more data about your website is possible to be accessed by Google. The more it can see how much value you create with your website. But I do can give you a tip for not wasting value of age that you already got from another website or blog that you had before. You can make 301 redirects from your old URLs to your new URLs. If you just started a new website, and you also have an old website on a platform like Blogger or something. It is possible to take the pagerank or value of your old website with you to your new website by making a 301 redirect. This redirect will tell Google that your website moved permanently to a new address. So it is actually like sending a change of address postcard to Google, for a 301 redirect in Blogger, you can just Google Blogger or a 301 redirect and you will find all kind of guides to do this. If your website is built by somebody else, you can ask the builder, or developer, to make a 301 redirect to the new URL. Or even your hosting company can do this for you. Try to keep the age value that you already had with your old website and give it to your new website. 4. LESSON 3: TRUST & AUTHORITY: Lesson 3 of PageRank is trust and authority. Websites of authorities like a university have most of the times high PageRank. See here, the website of Yale University, it has a PageRank of nine, and the website of the White House even has a PageRank of 10. So these two organizations, the White House and the university, are both big authorities or organizations that are trusted by Google. But suddenly becoming an authority is not so simple, though, I want to give you two tips that might get you there. So the first tip is become a trusted expert in your field. To become that is, to start interacting in forms, start blogging, give workshops and lectures that will create you as an expert in your field. The second tip is getting links from other websites that have authority, like getting your link on the White House or university page website. So try to engage with other trustworthy people. Becoming a trusted expert in your field, then you also be granted by Google as a trustworthy website. An example of a website that is an authority for Google is oprah.com of Oprah Winfrey. She has PageRank of seven. So being linked with her can do a lot of good things to your website and to your PageRank and that is what Marie Forleo did very good. She started to connect with Oprah and Marie Forleo now already has a PageRank of five. She does a lot of things very good. She's a very good example for everybody to look at how she does her marketing. So for example, she's not shy. She started to work together with trusted people and she reached out to them. So my third tip is, don't be shy and reach out to authorities to connect. This will help you to get a higher PageRank. So you will beat your competition in the Google search results. 5. LESSON 4: RETURNING VISITORS: Lesson 4 is about how to get more value of Google by getting visitors to return to your website. Your aim is to create a website with loyal followers, but how do you do this? We will take a look at a few inspiring showcases of websites that created a lot of returning visitors and I will mention the tools that they provide. For example, freundevonfreunde.com. Why do I return to their website? It's because of their regularly new inspiring interviews. I will show you this in their website. This is their website. Here you see the interviews and they are created and filtered by their geographical position. So Los Angeles, here is Jesse Kamm. I really was inspired by this interview. For example, she's wearing this nice bracelet and I saw it in the pictures and I also like to have this bracelet. So that's one of the inspirations for me. She's a fashion designer. You can see here nice pictures of her family, of her house, what tools she uses in the garden. This kind of funny things are presented in these interviews. So you like to go back to new posts of new inspiring people, how they have their way of life and what they do. You can, for example, post this on your own Facebook, or Twitter, or Pinterest, or Tumblr, but they also do it, not only by sharing. Now, let's totally go quickly to the bottom. Here you see that you can also join their newsletter to keep updated with all the things of freundevonfreunde, or you can subscribe to one of their social media so that's very good to have also on your own website. So social media and newsletter to present to people. This is yourlittleblackbook.me. Why do I go here? Because they have new spots regularly posted. I go there because I see them on social media, newsletter, and they give free guides. I will also show you their website in live view. Here you see all their social media that they have. For example, some blog [inaudible] and this one a good social media channel that you can use. On the top here you see already that you can sign up for the newsletter and they have, for example, free city guide. She went to New York and she was looking there for things she likes and it also depends, of course, on your own personal style. This is the style that I like for visiting spots. The spots that she likes, I most of the times also like. So that's why I returned to her website because also of her personal taste and style for new restaurants and bars. So it's good to also have a personal style. The next website at rachelkhoo.com also has a very personal style. I will show you this also here. This is her website. You see that she uses nice illustrations for her work and she has social media. So that's all something that is good and you can also subscribe to her newsletter. She also gives away free things like free recipes. You get recipes regularly new on her blog, which is nice to give your customers something for free. Advice, could also be, but also recipes or just things that you love and like, that's just inspiring to see what other people like and love. That's why I would return to these websites. Let's sum it all up. The first thing is newsletter subscribers. Get a lot of newsletter subscribers via, for example, Mailchimp or Aweber. Also, get some social media followers. So put on the top of your website also the Facebook and Twitter icons. Make it all about your readers and give things away. So not only talk about what you like but also give your knowledge away. Use a personal style because people like that it's not just another blog but that it has some style details, so that's how they return. Regularly post new inspiring articles, interviews of products or something else that you're thinking that would be good. In the next lesson, I will give you examples of how to get new content on your website in a way that suits you so you can easily keep on posting new content. Because sometimes it just blocks people if they think "I have to create the blog, but I have no idea what about," so you have to find your own way in creating new content easily in your style. 6. PROJECT OF THIS CLASS: Add the website you like to return to: The Skillshare product of this class is to post the URL of a website that you like to return to, and also the elements of why you return to this website. This way, we can all learn from your examples. If you think that your website contains interesting elements, this is even a smart way of link building. For the most original project; every month, I will give free SEO tips for your website. 7. LESSON 5: RENEWAL OF CONTENT: For being valued by Google, it's known to renew your website. Using your website as an online static flyer is not the way to be valued. A lot of customers ask me also, "Is it okay if I just change a word or a sentence every once and awhile?" My response is if the change is only to do it from Google, it's not enough, but if it's because you want to make your website better or because there's new keyword results that you want to change your website to, then it's okay. The more natural you work on your website, not only for your search engines, the more value you create. See the renewal of content on your website as sending your visitors a present. What to do about renewing your content? "Start a blog," is most of the times what people say. Blogging works best if you give it a personal twist. I like to always work with ground tools, not just a list of what you should do to make your website better in search results, but give examples. In my blog on stepbystepseo.com, I introduce always somebody's website and give tips for the specific branch, like for photographers or life coaches. Another example is a client of mine that has a therapy practice, but she heard also about this renewing of content so she ask me, "What should I do?" Then I ask her, "Well, what's the most natural way for you to make content?" Well, she said, "I'm doodling a little bit. In my practice, sometimes I use it in therapy." So she thought maybe these doodles will work as some blogging, like picture blogging. She just started her blog and already she's asked to make two of these artistic doodles for clients that want to pay for it and she's now even creating postcards. Just making new blogs or making new content can even create new products and can make you revive in your own creativity. Here you see that making blogging easy by picking up some things close to you to blog about will give the best results and keep you active. Another example of blogging can be to start tutorials or guides or make lists of things that you think that the visitors will like or while you have knowledge about. Another thing is to update your portfolio regularly and to use texts with it, especially if you chose graphics most of the time. Just describe with words where you want to be found on in your portfolio. For example, in my portfolio, I put WordPress websites that I made, and the URL of my portfolios, not just portfolio, but examples of WordPress websites. That's also what I want to be found on because nobody's going to search for portfolio, but they want to see examples of WordPress websites in their branch. Examples of coaches, website of other coaches so they can look at their navigation to take it over or these things. I think it's good to update your website with your portfolio, but also add some text with it so it's more like a blog than just new images. Or add a product or service every once in awhile to your range of products and services. Updates that you do should be noticed by your customers. You can put them in a newsletter or you can post them on social media platforms. In the next lesson, I will give you the best practices of how to get visitors from your social media to your website. 8. LESSON 6: SOCIAL MEDIA: Lesson 6 is about how to get more value to your website by using social media. For a lot of people, the first question already is, which social media should I use? They most of the time have profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. But my advice is to start with a few social media that suit your content. If your features are not stunning original, you don't have to start being active on Pinterest. If your content is aimed to trigger professionals, you should choose to post on LinkedIn. In the end, just get two or three social media platforms to start with and do it good. That's always better than doing it half with six. Start with a few that suit your block content. Linkedin, if you want to aim for professionals. Pinterest, if you have original visuals. Instagram, if you like to take pictures of your daily findings. A Facebook page for your company is to my opinion always a good idea, and Twitter, if you are good in posting short messages. If short messages takes too much time for you, then it's better not to go for Twitter. Pick your best two or three and start with this. Then, the next question is, how should you post? That it's also affects the value of your website to Google. I often see my clients have a Facebook page and then they create the most stunning albums of pictures, but they never refer to their website. This is a big mistake because that is how you can generate traffic to your website. That is how Google will give you value of sharing things that happen on your website with your social media. If you publish a new post on your blog, also post it on your social media wall with a link to this particular post. If you have a new product or service, also first put your link into the message and then check what Facebook or the other social media makes of it. If the picture that goes along with it does not fit your wishes, start with the picture that you prefer and that fits your content, and then also post your URL extra to the message. Try to develop a social media ritual in which you include your keywords and your URL to get the most value to your website for Google. You should take some time to develop this ritual by trying out a couple of best practices for your personal goals. In my next training, I will teach you how to develop an online marketing and social media ritual to gain a structured way of getting out without a lot of effort, and then just a few showcases and tips. Learn from the best so look at what the people that you admire post on their Facebook page. For example, like I checked Marie Forleo here. She would not forget to put her link to her website in her posts. On Twitter, also pictures are getting more and more important so always try to create a visual with your posts to enhance your social media click-through to your website. Visuals are giving your content more quality. This is also what our next lesson is about, the quality of your content. 9. LESSON 7: QUALITY OF CONTENT: Lesson 7 is about content quality. Google and other search engines want only to rank content that provides value for human readers. But search engines don't have the ability to understand contents like humans do. They have to rely on certain signals to determine whether content provides a high degree of quality. The tips to send out the quality signals are amongst other things, the time that you spend on a site or page, which means that your content is so engaging that you would even like to take it into your bathtub. Try to make your content fun, entertaining, and engaging, so that it really gives value to your readers. How long people spend on your website or your page is visible in your statistics. Maybe your hosting company provides the statistics of your website or your web developer has installed Google Analytics. Use only original data, so no content of other websites, which is called content copy. Never steal this data. This will not be good for your valuation. If you do want to use content of another website, mention where it originally was posted, or really use it as a basis and add your own vision to it so you have created original content. Use a proper spelling and make sure your audience understands the level of grammar that you use and also that they understand the terminology, the difficult words. Sometimes also in my field, I use words that are typical for my field, but they are not understandable for the unknown. If also people out of your field are your audience and they are not within your field, so they don't understand these difficult words, make sure that you simplify your words. Is your website easy to read and easy to scan through? I will show you a few examples of nice layouts and visuals that make a website better to scan through and easier to read. Here you see an example of a good to scan through website. You see this by the paragraphs that they make and the subheadings, and also images. But it does not really have a nice layout. This blog, for instance, really made an effort to look good. It has different subtitles, which is good, what we learned in my previous course. Make different subtitles, but also make different paragraphs. The next thing are social shares. Using social sharing on your posts will motivate readers to share it with others and the more your article is shared, the more valuable it seems to Google. Internal linking is done very quickly in the wrong way. Like adding all the links again to your footer. Even links that are not even important for your content. See for example here, this company uses a lot of not so important links, again, in their footer, while they were already using it in their left side menu. The most important links here are the links to the products that they want to sell. So you should focus on these product links. Internal linking is good for your website, but do not link to pages that are not so important for your website. Do only link to pages that a lot of people are tending to visit. The last signal are the comments on your blogs. The more real and relevant comments, so no spam, the more value Google things you have. The main thing of comments is that it generates a lot of spam, so you have to be careful with this. Again, a good example is Marie Forleo, who always tells people in her post that the most valuable information is put in the comments underneath her post by the reactions of her followers. She even lets her visitors actually create her content. This is very smart. A final remark I want to make here is if you're publishing content only for the sake of search engines and without providing real value to readers, it's time to rethink your content strategy. The next and last lessons of this class is about keyword quality. The use of the keywords in your posts. 10. LESSON 8: KEYWORD QUALITY: Lesson 8 is about the keyword quality within your content. The quality of your keywords is depending on the way you use your keywords. Signals for quality of keywords for search engines are, for example, only use keywords that are relevant for the things that you offer. So don't use keywords that don't have to do anything with what you offer. For example, don't write about free stuff that you give while in the end, the visitors need to pay for it. Don't overdo it. Never use your keywords over five percent of the whole content. See about this in my first class about keywords. Also you can see and check there, what is the sentence of your keywords? Use keywords in a structured and elegant way. The most important again, is that the use of keywords is not making the text unpleasant to read for your visitors. Don't write only for the search engines, but write especially for your audience. It's important that you don't change everything at once. Just take it step-by-step. Otherwise, it can get too big to start with. If you go through step-by-step.com/downloads, you can find there a summary of this class. You can also download a Google spreadsheet of link building. My next class will be about creating your own weekly online marketing ritual. Keep posted and keep optimizing your website to give your business a boost.