As Digital Marketer, I am currently managing the PPC campaigns for the company I am working for. Despite the global trend for many businesses of stopping the paid advertisement,  I believe it is now the right time of spending money because there is less competition. This translates in less Cost per click and more impression share. This is a very valuable opportunity if you run an eCommerce selling items online.

Getting into specific in this instance I am promoting Social Distancing signs, queue management signs and safety posters, either floor or vertical signs. As you can read and check the link, there is no reference to Covid-19 or virus, etc. These are just safety signs for the social distancing, things that doesn’t require to be a GP to sell and actually these might help any Irish business to manage their customer traffic flow who comes in the store and their staff as well who works there for 8 hours or more.

This according to the “novel” Bing Ads “verba” policy it is not permitted while Google Ads, where currently our Ads are active, it seems they are not bothered with this policy at any time. These big giants are from the same sector and location, either in Ireland, they are both in Dublin. So, if it is something “dictated” by the Government, both should follow the same rules.

The post Bing Ads PPC Policy Disallowes all Covid-19 related items appeared first on Donald Piccione.

The main reason as a business to join Groupon and offers a discounted price is usually because the business’s revenue is lowered, having fewer customers. So here the main idea is to drive customers to the business location.

One practical example can be a restaurant in Dublin, where in the last 3 months lost customers. The restaurant offers a set menu at a 60% discount compared with the normal price. Is it the solution to gain new customers? To consider also that usually, the restaurant not only has to reduce the price but also they have to pay a commission for each voucher sold on Groupon platform.

When Groupon may be useless for your business?

A first mistake that a business does is thinking that driving customers and offering a cheaper set menu, would mend the loss of revenue. Instead, a business should understand first why they are losing customers. Getting back to our restaurant it could emerge that:

• Food is not compelling
• Staff is not friendly or prompt in serving the customer
• The chef is not suitable for that restaurant (too slow or too distracted in preparing the food)
• Cleanliness of the location is not enough
• Place too noisy
• Wrong customers (too young, families, singles, couples, etc)

You got the point. If for example, the service or the food was not above the standard, customers wouldn’t come back again. So even if you drive new customers with a 50% discount on the menu, they will just eat once and then won’t be back.

What can be worse than that?

In the case of bad service or bad food, a business may risk also to get a negative review on Google Maps, TrustPilot, Facebook etc. So in practice, a business pays a commission to get a bad review. Crazy isn’t it?

So, What to do before creating a campaign on Groupon if you are a business?

It is very important that you do your own homework and you study why your customers are leaving and not coming back. Assess every “moment of truth” in your business (touchpoints where the customer interacts with your business). Don’t be afraid to talk to your customers, asking them what can be improved, rather than asking if “Everything is ok?”. Go online and search for your business name. See if there are reviews where you can get insights. Either you see a bad or good review, take it as a point for improvement or strength. “Fix” everything as much as possible. Again, ask your customers or create survey cards where customers can write on it and leave it at the table or put into a box. It is priceless when you start getting vital information. Sometimes we think we are doing all well, but in reality, in the eye of the customer, we are missing something. Once your business ticks all the boxes, you then are ready to use Groupon to nurture new customers. Next step will be to let them return to your place.

From one-off purchase to loyal customers

You have now the chance to convert all your new clients into potential loyal customers. How to do it? Imagine again, you are a restaurant. First of all, engage with them, chat with them, let them know you, let them listen to your story. Transform their experience into a personal journey you share with them. They want to be entertained, they want to be happy, not just eating food. Give them happiness, the best experience.

Another trick up your sleeve, create a special promotion for all your new customers. Once they register on Groupon they will leave their email address. While they make a reservation online they will leave their phone number. There are several ways to send them a special promo. By email or by SMS. Let them feel special.

If all is done according to plan, they will be more than happy to leave a positive review online and also recommend to their friends and come back.

If you are a restaurant owner and you would like to chat with me about marketing strategy for your business, you can contact me using this form or reaching me on LinkedIn.

The post When Groupon may be useless if you run a food business? appeared first on Donald Piccione.

Still, we keep making mistakes. Still, the website doesn’t get traffic and mostly nobody cares about you and your brand. So next phase is usually start making things with no clue why and these are the top 5 mistakes I see often non/bad marketers do:

1) Backlinks desperation or depression

You read some expert online that tells you “You must have backlinks or you are useless”. So, you feel desperate and depress because you read that “Google loves backlinks”. What do you do then? You go to some link farm websites and buy backlinks. That’s sound nice. You just wasted your money and be in the chance to win a trip to penalization (nowadays is rare but still applies sometimes). Another very bad thing you can do it, is to go to some 5 bucks service website (sounds familiar to you?) and purchase a service for 1000+ HQ backlinks. Yeah. That must save my life, you think. Nothing far from the reality. See the previous point for the outcome.

Solution: Start writing excellent, expert content and offer useful information. Know the “pain” of your audience and propose solutions. Be an expert in your niche. In simple words: Don’t build backlinks, earn backlinks.

2) Keyword anxiety

You have to put keywords everywhere. So you create a page with lots of keywords and start writing unnatural sentences. The page is not easy to read. This doesn’t attract traffic/users and the few they are landing on your page they will just leave. You missed the opportunity to get the few users and transform into many.

Solution: Write genuinely, get inspirational content. Use keywords wisely, don’t stuff a page with keywords and use only one related with the topic. Don’t write for the keywords, write for the content and message you want to share with your readers.

3) Social Media: know your limits and resources

You have limited resources, but you want to be on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. If there is a new Social Media channel, you have to be there too. The story ends with you having very huge gaps in time posting so nobody will follow you.

Solution: It is better to have one channel than many while you are unable to keep up with fresh original content. I have seen people re-posting same content on different social media channels but honestly I don’t see that such a big strategy. At the end it is just duplicate content.

4) I do Advertisement because of all they do it

This is another situation where you don’t have a clue about advertisement, PPC, CPM but you have to do it. Let’s spend some money on that. You think that because you are spending money on advertisement you will get something back in sales. Well, did you track your campaigns correctly or at all? Did you create segments and you know what is your audience? Who you are targeting and what message you are communicating? It is not just about paying. Do it wrong and you will get an opposite effect.

Solution: Depending on the nature of your business and the product/service you sell you need to study who your customers are and what they do. Only then you can come up with an advertisement strategy.

5) You don’t focus on customers

Another common idea is that Marketing is seen solely as Search Engine Optimization and Paid advertisement, while on the top level there is your customer. Remember that. Treat your customer well. Don’t see them as just one off purchase but as a recurring transaction. When a new enquiry appears to your inbox or you get a phone call, your company has to provide with the best customer experience. Let them feel special always! It is useless to invest in digital Marketing activities if then the product, service, pre and post sale you provide is aweful or not competitive.

Remember the good old traditional marketing too as the “word of mouth”. If a customer is happy they will spread the word to other friends. You might get, know knows, even out of the blu brand ambassadors who will start telling people how your product or service is excellent. On the contrary, if this is not, you will get the opposite effect, bad pubblicity and bad online reviews.

Do you have something to add? Please do in the comment section below.

The post Top 5 Marketing Mistakes you still doing in 2019 appeared first on Donald Piccione.

Although trying this now on Bing.com it doesn’t seem to work anymore 🤔 .

But Searching the same 🍎 on DuckDuckGo.com it works 😛

Coming back to the emoji SERP story, almost 2 years after, Google woke up and started to support emoji search too. See here a current example searching for a red apple.

Now the question and topic of this post is to ask yourself if you are currently using emojis into your meta title so that it might appear in the SERP. It has been said by many that this helps with increasing the Click Through Rate (CTR) while other SEOers see this “technique” as just a desperate measure to climb up the page ranking ladder with no results. Who is right? My answer is nobody. It all depends on what is the purpose of using it and what value you are going to bring when using it. Read more below.

This year (2019) Search Engine Journal wrote about this emoji SERP topic, telling that Google might not show them in their search result page all the time. This would dipend, according also to Google’s Senior Webmaster Trends analyst John Mueller if the emoji in the website is relevant with the user’s query.

We don’t always show exactly what is listed in the description and title. So that might be playing a role there.

With regards to emojis we also filter some of these out in the search results. So, in particular, if we think that it might be misleading, or looks too spammy, or too out of place, then we might be filtering that out.

So depending on what you’re showing, and what you’re seeing otherwise in the search results, if the same emoji is being shown in other sites then we could be able to show it for your site as well.

It’s probably just a matter of us picking up the title and description and actually showing that to users.

John Mueller

Being said that, first thing to keep in mind if you want to use emojis in your title or description is to be relevant with the topic of your content. Adding something that doesn’t improve the value and it is there just to try catch attention of the user it is just considered too spammy or too out of place. Also it depends on what kind of business you are. Emojis are mostly used in an informal context and towards a young audience. Best to do is analysis and A/B tests. This will be based on analytical data. Start from just one page to see if you can get results.

My Test using a red heart ❤️

I  did test on this Irish website called Moitif where it sells home furniture. This website is online since September 2019, so still fresh in organic traffic. Another reason why I wanted test it. I choose a page with low traffic , “Bed furniture” so to be sure that in case of bad results it won’t impact the current performance. I modified the meta title into: “Beds ❤️ Bedroom Furniture – Moitif”. Here is the screenshot of the current SERP in Google, either using the “site:” query or the normal query. This means that currently Google is happy with the emojii and it doesn’t see as spammy. Why?

My hypotesis is because there are currently no competitors using emojis for this market so there wouldn’t be any sort of war between two or more similar meta titles. Also, the heart emoji might represent something like “lovely beds” or “your favourite beds”, so that doesn’t spam the title. Another more practical conclusion is that currently that page it is not ranked on the first page, so saying that, it is also out of the Google’s radar to even be spending time to filter it in the SERP 😀 . Having said that, this could be the starting point for a a title optimisation with emojis when your page is not under the radar rather when your start climbing the ranking. Also now it is for me better to conduct experiments and A/B tests.

In conclusion, the use of emojis in the title of a page might be worth a try to see if your target audience might love more that not having any. But who knows, Google might also change its mind and get back to the standard text, as in many other cases it deprecated some SERP features in the past.

If you did some experiments on this and you got something to share please do so in the comment section.

The post 👉 Are You using Emojis in your SEO Strategy? 🙄 appeared first on Donald Piccione.

Tomorrow, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the June 2019 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this tweet for more about that:https://t.co/tmfQkhdjPL

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 2, 2019

This news reached all over the Internet and gained massive responses among  Marketers and seo enthusiasts. Some replies where just twitter complaints with animated gif images, just to try catch attention from Google team like John Mueller,  others more interesting, from users who actually shared traffic data and their personal experience, like Marie Haynes.

On the overall and from the twitter replies, this new Google Core Update has raised more clues than actually firm answers. I personally experienced traffic improvements from all my website assets which I wasn’t surprised. After all, as a professional Marketer, you do things based on your experience learned on the field and gained knowledge over the years.

What Google is trying telling us with this new 2019 Core Search Algo Update?

In my very humble opinion, I don’t see anything new here, neither magical. Over the years, Google have been working on improving Quality Search Results for their users, analyzing either manually (Quality Search Team) and with complex artificial intelligence algorithm million of websites. Although still not the best algorithm and sometimes, depending on the info you are searching for, some of their results are not as good as it seems, but, still showing good grasp of what website to show on the first page. How this happens?

1) Quality content
Believe it or not, content is still the basement of good SEO strategy but it doesn’t have to be focused only on SEO. In fact, this should be natural, genuine, original. I still see websites who have been created only with SEO in mind, focusing on Keyword density, search phrases, internal linking and other well known strategies. Instead it should carry a natural comprehensive content aim to entertain or give useful info to a reader. What Google have been trying to tell over the years is “Are your readers happy and satisfied while visiting your website?”

2) Website performance
Coming back from the previous question. Are you readers satisfied of the loading speed of the pages? Are they satisfied with the user experience? Waiting long time than the necessary they would just hit the back button and go to the next website in the list. Google or not Google, you lost an opportunity.

3) Avoid backlink obsession
In 2019 we are still obsessed about backlinks and how to get desperately one for our website, at the point of going on the Internet and soliciting website admins or in the worst case scenario, buying them on some platforms. If your website provides great content and shows that you worked hard to be better than other websites, you will see that other website link you back.

4) Again: Focus on your website users not on what Google would think if you do something
Over the years I have been hearing people telling me the same sentence: “If we do xxxxx , Google will be happy and rank our website better”. “Google says if we do that, our website will gain more traffic”. Hence the focus is shifted away from the user.  Think instead “What can I do to improve User Experience, engagement, entertaining my user?” Find that instead.

5) Yes Google Best Practices are still valid, they never changed, so be sure to follow them
Being over focused on SEO tactics or SEO strategies, we loose sometimes the aim of what we want to achieve. Start from the basic. Are you complaint with Google Best Practices? Example: does your page have a useful title and meta description?

Another thing above all is web authority and it is measured on how your “brand” resonates on the Internet. This can happen though conversation, mentions on Media Outlets, events etc. If you are just a drop into the ocean would be more difficult to be noticed rather than a big wave. That’s why on-page SEO activity only is not enough. You have also “to be seen in public by other people and get to know you”. Are you on Social Media?

If you have any thoughts or experience you want to share with me, please add it on the comment section. I will read it and reply.

The post Google Core Update – June 2019 appeared first on Donald Piccione.

You might be aware that on the Internet there are companies who have online paid tools, where for example connects to your IG account, trying to gain followers with the above trick. This can be done based on a particular keyword, hashtag or interaction you set on this tools. Blatant to say that this is not the right way to gain followers on Instagram. Also nowadays, Instagram itself started to analyse this kind of behavior and if you get caught you might risk a suspension.

One thing I found, it is difficult to notice when these IG accounts unfollow you. In fact, you need to go to your account, click on followers and check your list. It takes ages and also if you start having 1,000 or more followers, it becomes crazy to keep track of it. Not to mention you have to remember the name of all the followers 🙂

Another alternative, very smart and simple, is to install a free app who keeps track of IG accounts who unfollow you, so you are able to unfollow them too automatically.

There are plenty of APPS on the market that do the job, so one thing you can do is to go to App Store or Play Store and search for “Unfollowers” or “Instagram Unfollowers” and see what you can get. Otherwise you can read below a list either for Iphone and Android Phone.

Apple iphone

• Mass Unfollow for Instagram (rate 4/5) – Free App;
• Unfollower for Instagram + (rate 4/5) – Free App;

Android Phones

Having myself an Android phone and also thanks Google you can search for Apps on any Internet Desktop Browser it makes things more easy.

• Followers – Unfollowers (rate 4.5/5) – Free App, plus I am using it;
• Unfollowers for Instagram, lost (rate 4.5/5) – Free App;

How these Unfollowers apps works?

Once you installed into your smart phone, you are prompt to access to your Instagram account by login and password. Once you are authenticated, the app will start to gather data on followers. Since then, any Instagram user who follows you change their mind and unfollows you, the app will show this and you can on your arbitrary decision remove the user from following just pressing a button. If you have android system phone, I would advise to use the Followers – Unfollowers App. I am using for a good 2 years now and never had issue with that. Of course you are free to choose what best app suits you and have a try. Feel free to leave in the comment below if you found a good unfollower app to recommend and I will put into the list above. Please tell me also why.

The post How to keep track on unfollowers on Instagram appeared first on Donald Piccione.

What I usually do is installing Google Tag Manager script first, then Google Analytics and other tracking system publishing them in Tag Manager. This way I am able to control under the same roof all the tags.

Another positive thing about Google Tag Manager is that you will avoid messing with tracking and configuration on the website, so you can make tests and publish versions of your tags on the Tag Manager website by Google. If there is something that is not working, you just need to make the fixing and publish your new version. You can also test it in preview mode before going live, but this is a topic on how to use it, rather than what plugin to install into your WordPress website.

So, let’s come back to us and our question: What is on my opinion a very good WordPress plugin to install Google Tag Manager script? Its name is Metronet Tag Manager, created by Ronald Huereca.

To install it, you just need to go to Plugin and select Add New. Then just search for Metronet Tag Manager. Once you installed and activated you will need to configure it, but it takes probably 5 minutes or less. Just in case, if you need to locate the setting section of this plugin, go to Settings > Metronet Tag Manager. In that section you will need to paste the code to install in the head of your pages, then in the body. You will find the exact code in Google Tag Manager. Once you save the configuration you are ready to go.

This plugin, which is why I advice you to install, allows also to play with variables in the Google Data Layer. This way you can track your website better, extracting values that are helpful to you to know a customer journey or if you have an e-commerce website, pass dynamic values from the cart or the thank you page, such as total payment or single item price.

Another reason why I am in love with this plugin is because the code is kept to a minimum to let the Tag manager code work but doesn’t overload your website with useless code. In fact, you can see it is installed into Setting section of your website, not like other plugins who create their own icon in the left vertical bar, which sometimes is disorienting.

Once again, this article is just about the Best WordPress plugin you can add into your website or a client website to install the code in GTM. I didn’t want on purpose write about special configurations on how to install other trackers such as Google Analytics or what variable to add. I will leave this in one of my future posts to be in topic with the title of my article.

The post Best WordPress Plugin for Google Tag Manager (Free) appeared first on Donald Piccione.

Reality is, it is hard. This because it takes time and effort. If you see quick results it means: 1) probably you cheated and 2) It will not last long. I give to people who ask me about SEO consultancy the example of building a house. You start from the foundation, then you build the walls and then the roof. So in order to build the roof, you need to build a support to keep it stand. The same is for SEO. You need first to be sure you have built your foundations before starting with more competitive tasks.

As I am talking about “increasing organic traffic” I will take for granted that your website follows the Best Practices given by Google. If not, I will write a post on that topic in the future, but now I want to focus only on how to drive organic traffic on a website.

It all starts with a Search Online

It all begins with a Google Search. Searches are varying and different in nature. For example, a search can be informational (eg. What is SEO?) or transactional (eg. I want to book a hotel room in Dublin City). It also can be very generic or very detailed. In the case that a search is very generic, you will notice that the big websites usually dominate the scenes. They have high authority, backlinks and they can cover almost every generic topic. Another search instead might be very specific, where it uses a “Long tail keywords”. This is when a user specifically requests a particular information. One example I give you is this post I wrote it some time ago on how to fix an issue with Windows 10. I called it “How to Fix SBAVMONL DLL Error In Windows 10 Once For All“. As you can see it, it is a specific subject for a more niche audience. This is the “secret” where you need to write your posts, not on Windows 10 errors, but on your niche. Being specific you will attract less audience but you will be sure to start driving organic traffic, increasing also CTR.

Knowing your niche, you can start writing on topics and be helpful to your users. For example, you might encounter in your profession some issues or difficulties that others are facing and you have the right solution. You might find already answers online as well as nothing. In the first case, try to write your post better, adding insights that other posts don’t provide. In the second case, you need to be sure to write a very good piece of content, otherwise, your competitors will steal your idea and write a better content than yours.

What usually happens with long tail keywords is that the traffic is lower than generic ones. You may think “bad” but in reality, those searchers are the one you need to fulfil if you want to start growing your organic traffic.

How should be the structure of your post?

Try to make a list of topics you can cover in your website who belongs to your niche. On each topic try expand them with subtopics adding issues or missing information that an user would need to know. Once your list is fulfilled, take one of this subtopic and try to write in the following structure:

1. Introduction – What is the topic about? Explain briefly what it is the problem
2. Content – Add discoveries and researches about this topic. What have been proposed so far to fix it? Have it worked yet? Is there any point of weakness where you contribute to solve the issue better?
3. Conclusion – Tell your user why they are benefiting from your contribution and if you want you can also that this is based on your professional experience.

You will have then to publish more than just one. This way if you mention something that you wrote in a previous post, you can link it to it, this will help to grow the page value of your previous posts.

The post SEO for Dummies – First Steps to Drive Organic Traffic to your Website appeared first on Donald Piccione.

Just to be sure you got it clear: Nothing magic or fake in doing this. No need to pay anything nor add any account credentials (login or passwords). I have been tested this with one Instagram dummy account and it works. There is no danger neither issues to be suspended by Instagram so you don’t have to worry about it.

>>>Brief parenthesis: This not the way you should work on Instagram if, for example, you are a business or a company. This is just a test I did it and I wanted to let you. Maybe you have a personal account that you don’t mind to follow people you don’t know and be followed by IG users you don’t know either. For sure, your account will gain up to 50 followers or more.

There are three types of Instagram followers:

1. Real users who engage with you liking and commenting;
2. Real users who don’t engage with you;
3. Fake Instagram users who follow you using a bot or program. These are not engaging, these are not real but it serves the scope of increasing number of followers.

In the last case, it is not advisable to have many of them because if you have for example 1,000 followers and only a bunch of users likes your posts, you are telling Instagram AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithm that your posts suck because nobody likes them. If you start with a new IG account and you want to show to people who might follow you because you have already some followers, it will increase chances of getting that extra, real follower.

It is imperative to have posted at least 10-15 good images before doing the following, otherwise, you won’t be credible to have 50 Instagram followers and no images. Why the follow you in that case? Exactly.

So, what did I do to gain these free Instagram Followers?

If you search online you can find plenty of websites who offer you followers from 10 up to 1,000 Euro. Of course you don’t have to buy any. There is an option to test their service, meaning that they can send you up to 20 followers for free. You just need to type in your username and click next. Remember: Never disclose any password with anybody. Only your IG account.

What to avoid in this case:

• websites who ask login details or using your IG account
• to do surveys in order to get your followers. It is just a waste of time
• Don’t pay a cents for this, you can get a sample free of charge and reach 50 users easily.

What website did I try? One is called BuzzDayz. There, you can choose the Free 20 Instagram Followers. You just have to type in your username and email. Now, you don’t need to type a real email. Like that website, there are others (example: iDigic)  where you can get 20 users in one shot. Just search for “Free Instagram followers” and similar query. Remember, no credit card, no login details. I didn’t add any link to these above websites because I don’t promote stuff (unless they pay me 🙂 ).

Another source for free followers: Instagram itself.

On Instagram, there are hashtags who are used to let other users know that you follow back, some example to use are: #followforfollow #followbackalways #follow4follow etc, etc. As I wrote in the title, you want to get 50 followers in one hour so you can stick to these hasthags. If you want to use this “technique” longer, then you can find similar hashtags. When you click on one of the above hashtags you see that other users posted and they are in theory looking for a mutual following exchange. You have to follow them (better if you like the profile and their pictures) and they would do the same.

Doing what I explained above (start with first step, then the second) would give you around 50 free Instagram followers within 60 minutes.

Again, this was my personal test to see if I could reach this number and I got 55 users so was great success. Be sure you don’t mind to have strangers who follow your account. If you are not comfortable, don’t do it.

You can also follow my IG profile @donography and I will follow you back. I am a real user 🙂

If you liked this post, You can read this: How to Deliver a Perfect Social Media Strategy?

The post How to get 50 Instagram Followers in 60 minutes for Free appeared first on Donald Piccione.

What I usually tell them is “Don’t build backlinks, but earn them”. But, what does it means? It is simple: Who visit your website has to find useful, simple, easy and engaging information. If they find it, you will have a chance that:

1. Your content is shared on Social Media Channels because it is very interesting;
2. A Blogger or a content writer will cite you when they write something similar because you made your point. In this case, you also need to be an expert on the topic because you can share your experience, where who just write for the sake of creating content doesn’t have;

If your content is not good, if the information is just what other people write about it, you will have very low chance to get selected. Think about it.

How can you earn backlinks? What do you need to do?

[Provide Good Content]

1. Provides good quality content on your niche or niches you are expert. If you don’t have a niche or you are not an expert, you can become one. Focus on one area that you feel you are interested and do research. Read other articles, read theory and do practice and start writing your opinion on that. You probably followed an advice and you found that actually, you can add more info on it. You found that some advice on the internet is not all applicable to any circumstances. Forget about traffic and backlink. Focus on the bloody content.
2. Once you started to research about your topic, you surely find also gaps in what is the information available online. This is a good chance to write your contribution because nobody wrote about it. One common mistake is that people check if there is traffic volume for that particular topic upon a google search. In this case, you are working on long tail keyword research so the volume is very low but you will bring good traffic. This means good bounce rate, time on site, pages visited.
3. Publish your content on a regular basis. If you can publish one article per week is fine. If you can do more even better. Keep writing good content. Show you are a good source and your (motor) engine is running.
4. If you used some ideas or framework already written on the Internet, don’t forget to cite the sources. Don’t take credit of something you didn’t invent. So, add links to the source, so your readers are aware of that. For example, I would like to invite you to read Neil Patel Blog that wrote a very good article on how to create backlinks so you can have extra material and take it as an example of good content.

[Engaging in the conversation]

1. Go online and interact with other peers. If the topic of your website is something professional or work-related, you can engage on Linkedin. Find similar topics and give your contribution. Don’t try to sell your content putting a link on your LinkedIn post. Instead, engage in conversation. Establish your presence first, so other peers will know you. Then, you can start sharing your content but here the importance is to generate engagement and conversation. When you reply or make a comment, others want to know who you are. It is psychology. Here they will see your website and what you write.
2. If you find a website that publishes good content and you feel that one post can be positively criticized, you can contribute with your knowledge adding it in their comment section. This is not because you may put your URL in the comment section, rather you have the chance to show you are an expert on this matter. You added a contribution to the post enriching it.

[What avoid doing if you want to get backlinks]

1. Don’t go to any website who sells backlink. Don’t buy backlinks!
2. Don’t go to any platform such as 5 Euro service one (if you know what I mean), that sells “10,000 HQ quality backlinks” or similar services for 5 bucks. These are all bullshit and you may risk the opposite effect, meaning being penalized.
3. Don’t contact random webmasters asking them to do backlink exchanges. You just waste time. Invest the time in writing better content.

In general, cure also all the aspects of the on-page SEO optimization, such as page speed, the usability of the website, good images and all that may create the better user experience. This means that if one user lands on your website and they stay there for some time, navigating to other pages, you tell Google that your website is good in content and other people are interested. This set the basis for improving the traffic towards your website. In fact, if you have got 10 visitors in a time range and your bounce rate is 80%, it means that 8 visitors out of 10 left your website without moving to another page. This means that you didn’t provide much interesting content. Your visitors were not engaged by you.

If you follow my advice above, after a couple of months you will start seeing backlinks popping up in your Google Analytics dashboard or any other SEO tool.

As usual, I hope you could get something helpful from this post. If you have anything to add, please feel free to do it and I will try to reply back.

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