This weekend, I did a TON of reading on SEO, backlinking, increasing traffic and getting indexed for more keywords in the search engines… trying to find out how to increase traffic on this website.
In Wealthy Affiliate's training – we are told to:
=> create relevant content
=> Keyword research and pick low competition keywords at first
=> Publish often
=> Share on social media
=> Comment on other blogs
=> Get comments on your blog and create a conversation
===> I have not gotten far enough in the Wealthy Affiliate training to know all they teach about increasing traffic to a blog.
From all the research I did this weekend, I kept seeing over and over – the single most important thing to do to increase traffic to a blog is create content, content, and more GREAT content. Way to go, Wealthy Affilate! Thanks for teaching us the right things!
Backlinks
Me being as impatient as I am and not seeing much traffic from the search engines yet led me to doing some searches on backlinks — I was wondering if they were still as relevant as I remembered them being when I was doing SEO 3-4 years ago.
And yes.
Backlinks are important.
If you are not on the front page of the search engines – you are not getting the lion's share of the traffic.
And really – positions 1, 2 & 3 get MOST of the traffic.
That's not saying you don't get some traffic for being in position #47 for a relevant keyword…
Everything I have learned for over 20 years of being on the Internet says build backlinks to get more traffic. Everything I read with more recent data – confirms backlinks are the way to go.
Dofollow links are better than nofollow links and all comments from blogs are nofollow unless you specifically look for dofollow blogs. Blogs that are using the “CommentLuv” plugin are dofollow.
So, if you are only getting links from blog comments – you are not getting any dofollow links.
Try searching for “blogs using CommentLuv plugin” if you want to comment on some dofollow blogs for better backlinks.
Online Directories
When I was doing SEO in 2010-2014 I was working for local businesses.
I have a list of 25-30 local directories we would submit our sites in order to get backlinks -sites like yelp, yellowpages, local.com, and angieslist.
This website is not a local business – it's global – so I needed to find a different kind of directory.
I found a list of Top Blog Submission Sites at Bloggerspassion.com – which is one of my new favorite blogs! He is getting around 70,000 visitors a month!
That is social proof – this is someone to listen to about driving traffic to a website!
All I had to do was:
==> make an account at each blog directory
==> submit site, description, email, and pick a category.
==> 3 of the sites required links/tiny banners on each page
Look in the middle, footer for this=======>
The blog submission sites I picked have great numbers as far as reputation go.
Measuring the Reputation of Websites
- Alexa Rating – calculated by how many people who have the Alexa toolbar/widget visit the site – so it's an odd calculation as people in niches other than SEO, web design, and Internet based businesses most likely don't have the Alexa widget and therefore have significantly lower Alexa ratings.
The lower this number, the better ranked the site is.
ShoutMeOutLoud.com wrote this about Alexa Ratings in December, 2017:
“2017 Update: Alexa is no more the same. So there is no point using Alexa widget or paying for Alexa services. You should rather focus on improving domain authority. Learn everything about domain authority here. This article is just for the archiving purpose. Soon, we will remove all instances of Alexa ranking from ShoutMeLoud.” ShoutMeOutLoud.com
Even though some feel it is less relevant than it used to be –
I still included the Alexa rating of these blog submission sites along with 4 other metrics.
- Citation Flow – measure of importance –scale 0-100 – higher is better
- Trust Flow – measure of authority/trustworthiness –scale 0-100 – higher is better
- Domain Authority – score developed by MOZ – predicts how well a website will rank –scale 0-100 – higher is better
- Page Authority – score developed by MOZ – predicts how well a page will rank –scale 0-100 – higher is better
10 Free Blog Submission Sites
reddit.com
Alexa Rating 6
Citation Flow 59
Trust Flow 62
Domain Authority 99
Page Authority95
hubspot.com Free customer relationship management (CRM)
Alexa Rating 522
Citation Flow 46
Trust Flow 37
Domain Authority 89
Page Authority 74
alltop.com
Alexa Rating 80,410
Citation Flow 56
Trust Flow 52
Domain Authority 79
Page Authority 83
blogarama.com
Alexa Rating 127,104
Citation Flow 47
Trust Flow 30
Domain Authority 71
Page Authority 56
blogs-collection.com
Alexa Rating 387,582
Citation Flow 44
Trust Flow 53
Domain Authority 49
Page Authority 52
Blogs Directory
blogflux.com
Alexa Rating 437,989
Citation Flow 49
Trust Flow 37
Domain Authority 68
Page Authority 56
ontoplist.com
Alexa Rating 530,270
Citation Flow 55
Trust Flow 46
Domain Authority 68
Page Authority 44
blogtoplist.com
Alexa Rating 569,135
Citation Flow 53
Trust Flow 53
Domain Authority 65
Page Authority 48
bloghub.com
Alexa Rating 769,114
Citation Flow 46
Trust Flow 38
Domain Authority 59
Page Authority 47
blogville.us
Alexa Rating 984,283
Citation Flow 21
Trust Flow 9
Domain Authority 46
Page Authority 55
blogville
SEO Tool Backlink Checker
free to use click here
FreeTrainingWorkFromHome.com has
39 backlinks
22% of them are follow links (about 8-9)
8 referring domains
7 referring IPs.
Unfortunately – this free backlink tool only lists 9 of the backlinks and they want you to pay to see them all – I don't need to know them all. All I want right now is a count.
39 backlinks is not bad! Remember, this blog is 32 days young!
I did not use this free tool to check how many backlinks I had before adding our domain to the blog submission sites – that would have been even more interesting – but I found the backlink checker after I did these submissions.
Market Samurai
I did have a saved search from Market Samurai SEO Competition from before the blog directory submission
Brief explanation of what the abbreviations stand for in Market Samurai:
DA = Domain age in years
CF = Citation Flow measure of importance scale 0-100
TF = Trust Flow measure of authority/trustworthiness scale 0-100
IC = Index Count – # of pages indexed by bing
RDD = Referring Domains – unique domains pointing back to the domain
RDP = Referring Domains Page- unique domains pointing back to the page
BLP = Page Back Links – # of links pointing back to the page – does not include links from website itself
BLD = Domain Back Links – # of links pointing back to any page on the domain – does not include links from website itself
BLEG = Page .edu /.gov links – # of links pointing to the page from .edu /.gov
Title/URL/Desc/Head – keyword in Title/URL/Description/Head
Now that I have defined the abbreviations in Market Samurai – lets look at the change after I submitted to these blog directories – it was only a few hours difference – and submitting to these directories was the only change.
So far, the only change I can see in Market Samurai is 2 more pages are indexed in Bing…
…within 3 hours of submitting my site to 10 blog directories!
I'm happy with that! We are heading in the right direction!
If you know of a free backlink checking tool – please share!
Share your comments or questions on How to Increase Traffic on Your Website – with Backlinks
Some very useful and interesting information on your site. I don’t really know enough about backlinks but will be following YOUR site and MY training lessons more closely. There is also a little “Get Started” button in brown just above your picture on the right of the page. Something to do with aweber but it gives an error message. Would that affect your banklinks?
That’s a good question! The Get Started button MAY need to get renamed! You are supposed to put an email in the box above and then push Get Started but obviously (by your example) – that is not clear enough! If you push the button without putting an email in — it will give an error. As for Aweber affecting backlinks, no. It’s installed with javascript and search bots don’t crawl through javascript. It’s as good as a nofollow! Thanks for stopping by!
Thank you for this information on backlinks. I have heard of it, but I never totally understood how it worked.
I thought it was bloggers let other bloggers post on their site ?
I am very interested in doing this as I am new and would like to increase my traffic.
How is your site since submitting to the blog directories (other than the results you have listed here)?
If you are an affiliate marketer will this help? If yes, which one would be the best one and most simple to use?
Hi Lee Ann – you can get backlinks from bloggers letting other bloggers post on their site – that’s called “Guest Blogging”
Thanks for asking how things are going since I posted this. It has been 24 hours and here is the new snapshont of Market Samurai
I posted this blog – and Bing has indexed it already for a total of 26 incoming (IC) and I have SIX MORE backlinks to my domain! (BLD) —- I also checked the backlink tool and I have 40 showing there now. I am pretty happy with the results of this submission to blog directories, so far!
This blog is only 34 days old. I am an affiliate marketer – and yes, backlinks help get traffic. More traffic = more sales
All 10 of the blog directories were pretty simple – make an account and enter your information – there were 3 that required I install their banner on my page. blogs-collection.com / ontoplist.com / blogtoplist.com so unless you want to deal with installing banners somewhere on your site – I would avoid those 3.
There is an image link to 131 directories in this post. When you get done with the 10 I did first (which have the best reputations) you could start on that list. That’s what I am going to do – I’m aiming for 10 a week as long as it keeps going as well as this submission did!
Heather, this is great information about increasing traffic to your website using back-link. A little overwhelming as it seems, I believe it’s a teachable skill.
Thanks for sharing this information.
If you ever need help, let me know. It seems more complicated than it is. If you have ever made a facebook account, you could enter your blog’s info on a blog directory. Pick one and try it. You can do it.
I’ve never heard of backlinks before this post but after reading your article im definitely interested now thanks for sharing your insight it was really helpful, have a great rest of your night.
That’s not the first time I heard that! I hope you learn to use them in the future – it can really help with search engine rankings.
once again another great post. Great tips on how to get traffic to your site. I agree 100% content content and more content is the number one way to get traffic.
Thanks, Jackie! Off to write more content, myself! I hope all is well with you!
I didn’t really have a clue about backlinks until I stumbled upon your post (thank the lord).
Hopefully I can build more traffic to my website and start expanding, although I know this all takes time.
It’s time to put in the hard yards! Thankyou:)
You are very welcome. Glad I could help.
Hi Heather,
I like your approach here and with mentioning the Wealthy Affiliate Training then there is a backlink right there.
I’m glad that we did similar posts on backlinks, however from two different approaches will help people more, as they don’t have exactly the same information from two different blogs.
Commenting on other blogs is something that I didn’t enhance on but it is definitely something that is very important, hence as we are doing it.
Great post and keep up the good work.
All the best,
Tom
I agree – they were 2 totally different posts on a similar theme – great minds think alike! Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated!
Hi Heather,
I am very new to blogging and know absolutely nothing about backlinks so am very happy to I have read your post.
Thank you for this information, and I will keep popping into your site in the future for some much needed training!
Great! I am glad you got something out of it! How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. To your success! Love your hair site!
I like the list that you put up here. A lot of online website directories have high DA that can pass on good “link juice” to your website. Although I have to say that when building links through directories. best be sure to check their profile with tools like ahrefs. Directories can give you quick backlinks but it would also be better if you do guest postings and blog commenting to get a good and health backlink profile.
Someday I will have a subscription to ahrefs – that’s definitely in the plan. 🙂
I agree – commenting and doing guest postings are also great ways to get backlinks.
A healthy backlink profile is important – so choosing sites to comment on and guest post on using these same guidelines – DA, PA, CF and TF – helps with getting good link juice!