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Setting up a sitemap for your page and then letting Google know about it can absolutely help it’s SEO improve, but there’s a few factors you need to keep in mind.

One of them is how to actually do it, where to put it up and finally what to do on your page itself to help all of this stuff prosper. All of that will be covered right here to make sure you get better rankings 🙂

Let me just quickly clarify what sitemaps are in case you’re new to this:

What is a sitemap in general?

It’s basically an index of all the pages on your website. Think of any book you’ve ever read and in the back of it, there’s an index of every single page and topic referenced. That’s a good way of looking at it.

Here is an example of what it looks like if you use this page:

What is a Google sitemap?

Once you create a sitemap on your website, you can then submit it to Google through it’s free program known as Webmaster Tools. This gives Google a much more thorough look of your page as whole, allows it to examine it better and this leads to better rankings and since Webmaster Tools was created by Google and is one of the most important SEO tools I’ve ever recommended, you need to have it. 

Here is an example of what it looks like when you successfully submit it to Webmaster tools:

If any of these images look complicated, I have a tutorial on this article (and video instructions) that’ll take you through the process. 

Note: Bing also has a Webmaster program and you can submit your page there too. But Google’s is more important to keep in mind because through this one, you’ll get more traffic. Never the less once you get it going through Google, I would recommend hopping over to Bing and doing it there too (the process is nearly identical there too).

How do sitemaps help with SEO?

As I just mentioned, having this set up and properly registered on Google through it’s Webmaster Tools, your page gets a much more detailed look at from Google. You’re basically helping them analyze your page better and thus grade it, as well as give it improvement tips. 

Think of yourself submitting a report to a boss. The more organized it is, the better feedback you’ll get from the boss and the better your results will be.

Well in this analogy, Google is the boss and the organized report IS the Sitemap you’re submitting to it. 

What may happen to your SEO results if you don’t do this:

It’s not a catastrophe if you don’t do this, but do note that without submitting this stuff to Google, it is left trying to figure out your page on it’s own, which it actually will, but the problem is that the figuring out stage will take WAY longer to do. It’s just a lot easier for bother parties (you and Google) to set all of this up on Webmaster Tools and the good news is that it’s free, fast and you don’t really have to do this more than once 🙂

Furthermore, this program also indexes and ranks your content faster than if you were to go without it. 

For example:

If I have a new page, and I don’t don’t make a sitemap or use Google’s webmaster tools, what’ll happen is that eventually Google WILL find the page, will index it and the ranking growth will start from there, but the time it takes to reach that initial point can be weeks if not longer.

So without setting up a sitemap and then registering it on Google Webmaster Tools, you are basically slowing down your ranking and SEO process by a very long time whereas if you didn’t make this mistake, set it up correctly and fast, then registered the page with Google, and then submitted a sitemap, you’d be getting indexing and rankings way faster.

So on the question of how sitemaps specifically affect SEO, the answer is…

• You get direct connection with Google if you set it up through them.
• You get a more thorough look at your page from them.
• And you get faster indexing and ranking because you connected with them through Webmaster Tools. 

So now the question is, how do you start? Here’s step 1…

First you actually need to create a sitemap before you submit it. In order to do that, you first need to identify what platform your website is using…

I’m using WordPress for example as are most people. If this is your situation, simply head over to your dashboard, plugins, and add a new one called “XML Sitemaps”, the creator of that plugin is called “Arne Brachhold. Install that and activate it.

Once you do, it’ll create a sitemap for you. To get it, head over to the dashboard area in settings (you’ll find it there), the link, which will look something like this:

If you don’t use WordPress, instead use this free program. 

Whichever method you choose, just know, the goal here is to actually make it. Then once you do, the next step is… 

Step 2: Submitting it to Google Webmaster Tools.

Head over to Webmaster Tools. 

By this time I hope you at least registered and verified your site there. If not, read this tutorial on how, then come back to this page.

Head over to your website that’s in Webmaster Tools, click it, then scroll to where it says “Site maps”.

Click it, then add the URL I mentioned above. Here is a video tutorial on how it should look and how to set it all up:

Once it’s submitted, you’re good to go. 

Remember, all that you’re doing here is generating an “official” sitemap page (a new page) on your website through the tools I showed you, then you’re just telling Google about it by submitting it in their webmaster tools program.

In the end, after it’s all generated and you’re in Webmaster Tools ready to submit it, all you’re really entering is:

It may be a confusing thing for first time users, but it takes less than a minute once you get used to it. And this whole process is EXTREMELY helpful to aid your SEO results in improving, believe me.

Step 3: What’s next?

Well once you submit it, you’re pretty much good to go. Google will now look at your site more closely each time you publish new content and it’ll expedite that SEO process faster. But on another note, don’t let this make you lazy and stop growing your page. No you should be doing the opposite! 

Now that it’s submitted to and recognized by Google, your job should be to write more and more content, publish new page/s every single chance you get. That content will get picked up faster through Google and will help your SEO improve.

Remember, by adding new content, it gets picked up faster (crawling) since your sitemap will update that and let Google know about it. This will allow everything on your website and it’s SEO to grow and flow faster than before. That is the end goal of this whole tutorial. 

Again do not make the mistake of thinking that just because you have Webmaster Tools installed and your page registered on it, that it’ll flow from there, it’s only a small part of the process, you need to keep working on and growing your page, and here are ways to do this correctly for better rankings. 

It’s amazing to me how many different, shiny object type SEO programs there out there which for high costs can’t even come close to the awesomeness that is Google Webmaster Tools (WMT):

I guess because it’s free, people just don’t value it enough, but they should I’m going to explain how you SHOULD be using this program to improve your website rankings. 

Let’s get something straight: Google created and gave us this awesome tool for many good reasons:

1. They WANT to see your site succeed.
2. They WANT your site’s rankings and SEO to improve (I even included WMT in my personal tips for raising rankings).
3. They WANT to help show you what your site needs, what it’s missing, what’s broken in it, all in an effort to help it improve.

Why are they going through all the trouble to help you and all through this free program? Well because through having a good site that they can proudly rank higher, their brand name will become more trusted by their users. 

The more trustworthy, high authority, credible sites they have ranking high on their search engines, the better they are going to look and this tool is just one of the many ways they are helping you do this through.

As soon as you understand this, you will understand how mandatory this tool is for your SEO success (here are others, but WMT is most important). 

So how exactly can someone use Webmaster Tools to improve their site’s SEO?

This program allows you to get a front seat look into how Google views your site, where it sees “holes” in it and where you can make better adjustments, which if you do, it will reward you for it, with higher rankings, more traffic and all the good stuff you seek for your site to grow.

In order to get to that point though…

Stage 1: First, you’ll need to properly register your site on this program. There is a tutorial coming up on that. This will really help gain trust with Google and will be the first step to improving your site’s SEO.

Stage 2: And from there, you’ll want to use good SEO techniques to grow your site so that it’s recognized by Google. I will also provide a tutorial to help you there.

Stage 3: If you do all of this right, then the WMT program will show that progress is being made correctly, that your rankings, traffic, impressions for keywords and other stats are increasing. It’ll be sort of like a real time report.

Let’s get stage 1 completed: 

First and foremost, you will need to actually have a Google account. Create one here if you haven’t already.

Then you will need to head over to the official Webmaster Tools page found here.

Once there, you will need to add your existing site and verify that you’re it’s owner. I’ll give you a personal step-by-step video coming up so you understand how to do this right.

How to get this done:

Onto Stage 2:

Once you have a site set up on WMT, the next step is to focus on your site and it’s SEO growth. Wait a second, doesn’t signing up with WMT do that? Not exactly…

You see this program is simply a program that helps Google see your site better and in turn they show you how they see if. If you do what I’m about to explain, then WMT will reflect that work you put in and show that the site is growing. This is a two way street in essence.

Stage 3:

Let’s imagine I have a website with 10 pages. I register it with WMT and then grow my content base by increasing it to 20 pages.

These 10 new pages I added are keyword focused and provide good content. Google WILL pick it up and this will make my website show more often on Google’s search engine. These are called “impressions”.

These stats will be reflected in the WMT website as you will see an increase in impressions (indicating that Google did indeed rank the new content).

As long as this keeps growing (more content is added), the impressions will also grow. This will also lead to more people seeing my website and clicking on it more often and in WMT this will also be reflected as you will see more clicks, more impressions, more growth of your site.

In short, the hard work you put in on your website and growing it through SEO will be reported to you through the WMT program.

Here is an example of…

A website which followed all 3 of these stages and what WMT showed (that my hard work was producing results):

• I registered the following site with WMT.
• I then proceeded to focus on producing content on it as often as I could.
• As I was doing this, at the same time, Google was also indexing this new content. 
• This new content I was producing was indexing and then ranking on the search engine.
• This brought in new traffic and visitors to my site.
• As long as I kept adding more content to my site, the exposure of that site increased on Google.
• And you can see the slow, yet upward trend that the site is experiencing.

I would not be able to see these through other programs, but through WMT, I now know I am growing my site’s SEO correctly.

Now that you have the basic idea of WMT down…

The next articles and tutorials I will be producing will show you more specifically how you can utilize WMT more intelligently. For example:

This program will show you where your site has things like broken links (404 errors). Fixing them will cause better rankings.

It’ll show you where and what position your site is ranking for and for which keywords. This information is gold for helping you grow and market your site better organically. You will be able to index and rank your new content WAY faster than ever before.

Fetching (URL Inspection): One of the most critical SEO tools in WMT:

WMT allows you to use a cool tool known as the fetch option which will in a matter of hours have your NEW content published and indexed on Google.

Compare that to NOT using that option and that it may take days to see that content get indexed. Expedited indexing and thus expedited ranking!

And again, this program is completely free to use. Do not let anyone, ever charge you for it or convince you that you need something better. WMT is where it’s at and again, with all the uses and information it provides, it’s amazing to think, all of is free, but it is.

Social media can totally be used to help your SEO, but it’s not just about getting likes or shares. There’s a correct way to use these places and I’ll show you how.

If you have a website that’s not doing too well in the SERPS and you have or use one of the many social media outlets available (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, ect…), odds are you’ve probably wondered if you can somehow leverage these places to boost your site’s SEO status.

You may have probably thought and asked these types of questions:

• Can Facebook likes lead to better rankings for my website on Google?
• Can people sharing my page on their social media accounts also boost rankings?
• Can Instagram likes, comments, shares also do this?
• Can people tweeting about my website help it rank better? 
• Does sharing my content on Google+ help it’s ranking on Google itself?

As an SEO expert who HAS used social media to try and boost his website’s ranking/s, I can tell you the answer is YES, it’s possible. But at the same time, the answer can also be NO, and that happens when people don’t properly understand how to use these outlets.

But don’t worry, after you read this article, you will have a good grasp of how to properly use social media and it will positively affect your website’s SEO, I promise 🙂

I do also want to say that there’s direct things you could be doing on your website to help it’s SEO and here are the best tips. If you don’t have any strong social media followings, then these ranking tips will help a lot more.

So to begin, here’s what you need to understand:

Social media websites and places like Google which rank websites are entirely different entities. Just because your website gets acclaim on for example Facebook (and likes) does not mean that it will suddenly start to get acclaim on Google as well.

For example:

A few years ago, when my SEO game was still developing, I had more than a few articles that I wrote with the intent to rank high in search engines, not do well enough, but somehow they became viral on Facebook.

Someone saw it, shared it, and then it just blew up from there. Yet despite getting 100’s of likes on Facebook, the ranking of those articles did not rise in Google. 

Conversely, if you have a website that ranks well on Google and has it’s SEO game intact, will not mean that it’ll be acclaimed on social media.

For example:

I’ve had tons of articles rank on the 1st page and even the first spot on the first page of Google, and at the same time not even get a single like on social media, not on Facebook, not on Twitter, not on Google+, nowhere. 

So what gives? 

Well what determines if one will affect the other is the enthusiasm of the audience that sees your content and decides if they wish to share or like it. It’s their action that will ultimately determine whether or not your website’s SEO ranking will improve or not and I’ll explain this in great detail, as I know how confusing this may sound right now.

What I mean is this:

Social media audiences & search engine audiences have different mindsets…

Generally speaking, the social media audience is not looking for any answers to questions. They are just looking to communicate with one another and just socialize basically (even if it is an argument). The only way there is an exception with this audience is if they are following you or your site personally on social media.

Whereas again, generally speaking, the search engine audience different. They visit Google.com with the intent to find something. It could be a product, it could be a question, but the intent is entirely different. 

When was the last time you used, say Facebook to ask a question on a health problem you had? Probably never.

Odds are, you visited Google and typed that question in and that’s because you know Google will provide you with the best results to answer that question.

When I do SEO, I am always writing content and looking to get this search engine audience to my site first, because I know they are more open to reading my content than the social media audience.

Then I will share that content on social media with the right audiences who are more open to taking the types of actions that will send positive SEO signals to Google that my content is worth boosting in the SERPS.

Now I did just summarize a lot but I will explain everything right now, so don’t worry if this didn’t make sense…

The core thing you need to understand…

Every like, share and comment you get across ALL social media platforms carries it’s own level of value for SEO and we’ll just divide it up into 3 categories of points:

• No points.
• A few points.
• And finally a lot of points.

And this is all in regards to SEO. 

Depending on the type of like, comment or share you get from an individual or many people on these platforms will determine if those things translate into more points and better SERP results for your site on Google.

Think of a “thank you!” which is authentic vs a “thank you” which is empty. 

You know the difference between both and that’s how you need to look at this subject too. These likes absolutely carry value and you are about to see exactly why.

Here is what I mean:

An example of when using social media offers no SEO points:

You buy likes from a company. Yes these things sell because people want to give off artificial value to others, but there’s people who seek to improve their SEO game by buying likes and then thinking more likes = better SEO.

The answer is that no SEO points will be awarded because those likes are empty. If they are even made by real people, those people do nothing but click a like button and that doesn’t translate into anything that helps your site.

Those people don’t actually visit or stay on your site, they don’t read your content, they don’t comment on it, they don’t share it. Those lack of actions, to Google indicate that the like is an empty like and thus there’s no SEO value in it.

Another example is when you share your content with friends and family and perhaps get a few likes, but it’s more of  “pity like” where the people don’t really care about your site or it’s content, they just like it for the sake of it, but that empty like means no SEO points are given, thus you won’t see any positive improvement in rankings from that alone.

An example of when sharing on social media does give you some SEO points:

You share your content on social media with a small audience who knows you and values your content. Perhaps you have people follow you on social media because you offer good advice and they just decide to befriend you on Facebook of Instagram and once you share content there, they put a like, but in addition…

They also comment on it, they click through to the site, they read it for a few minutes and they even share it with other people.

Those actions that those people take show Google (and yes Google does have mechanisms to observe this) that you are providing content that people like and this WILL give you SEO points. These are also good backlinks.

When using social media provides a lot of SEO points:

In this example, you basically have to take the previous example and just multiply it many times. Imagine an icon, a brand name, a popular person who runs a Facebook Fan page or even a personal one who is followed by many people, who when he tweets, shares something on Facebook, on Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, whatever platform they choose, they get instant attention.

People flock to comment, like (or show anger) to the thing that was posted. 

Now I would imagine that most of you aren’t in any of these fields, and that’s OK, because neither am I, but if you want to maximize your social media impact on your site’s SEO, you need to start thinking about becoming someone who people want to listen to and follow.

In my case, about a year ago, I started a fan page for one of my websites which has slowly grown since. I didn’t invite any friends or family to that page because I don’t need pity likes. I instead collected an email list from my website and sent those prospects who knew me to the Fan Page and asked them to like it.

Thus when I post content on my site, with the intent to rank high in Google, I share that with my audience on that fan page and because they know me, I get likes in the yellow category (some weight). Now if the fan page grows, it can move into the green category and get bigger SEO points, but it’s a process and it takes a lot of time to get to.

This is how you should think about the social media game if you want it to help improve your SEO status. It doesn’t matter if it’s Twitter, Google+ or whatever other media you can imagine, they all carry their own form of likes and those likes each carry their own value, which you can distinguish with the 3 categories I just listed.

So remember…

It’s not the social media likes which help boost a site’s SEO status, it’s the value within those likes and what people do AFTER the actual like which counts.

3 ways to use this info I just gave you:

1) If you are running a business and have an online presence, sign up with places like Facebook, Google+, Google+ business and ask your clients/customers to like, and more importantly COMMENT on how they like your business. These comments will be what adds SEO value to the business and helps it rank higher.

2) If you run a blog and wish to leverage this info, focus your blog writing on talking about serious, controversial subjects as those generally attract audiences that are more passionate about commenting and sharing your content.

They are also more likely to share that content with people on social media who are like minded and will also give you “value likes”. 

3) If you run a blog or business that helps people with problems, start a fan page and ask your website visitors to like your page on those social networks. Then share your content on those social networks each time your site releases new content to get those audiences interested.

These 3 tips will at least make sure you are attracting value likes to your site and at the very least giving it SOME sort of SEO value (yellow and green categories).

There is 1 final tip you need to read on this subject:

DO NOT fret or worry if you are not getting much attention or value likes on social media, especially if you are already building a website, an online business or even a blog business whose focus is SEO and high rankings on Google.

You can absolutely achieve high rankings WITHOUT having a social media presence. I have known many successful people who run successful sites, got and get plenty of search engine traffic and have next to NO social media presence. It’s OK and quite honestly a VERY small and optional piece of the things needed to be a success in SEO, trust me.

That is all on this subject 🙂

There are very few cases today in which I’d recommend someone buy an exact match domain. They still work for SEO, but only in special circumstances. 

I will explain those circumstances and help you decide if an exact match domain name, which is also known as an EMD is right for you to buy and build off. Before I do, let me explain a few things about this topic:

The most common question and scenario in which people ask about EMD’s is in regards to their SEO and ranking power.

There was a point in time, many years ago, where the name of your domain would be considered one of the most important ranking factors. And if you look at the 10 I listed in that link, you’ll notice that this is not the case anymore, but before I explain why, let me give you the proper context of why EMD’s are still a popular SEO topic today:

When the name of your domain did have a big impact on your rankings, smart marketers simply chose high volume keywords, and purchased domains that literally were the very same keyword they targeted. In other words:

And without doing much SEO work, people who did this were able to get high rankings for the targeted keyword, and obviously get traffic to their site from it, by simply leeching of the website’s name itself.

I can’t deny that I was one of those people who did get high rankings from doing this, but that was a very long time ago. Today, the value of an EMD is still present for rankings, but it has been depreciated substantially, so much that I would never even suggest it be taken into consideration for someone whose thinking of a title for their page (unless it meets a certain criteria I’ll be listing).

What happened to EMD’s? Why they lost their SEO value:

Because the amount of ranking factors rose as SEO had become more complex, the value of the domain continued to depreciate overtime.

Most of the people I knew (including myself) who used EMDs to rank their sites, typically didn’t put much work into them and had maybe a few pages worth of mediocre content.

This is why as the standards rose, the very same people who relied on EMD’s suddenly saw their rankings drop and thought that this was some sort of Google penalty, when in fact, it was just a rise in more standards expected for a quality website to rank high, and the value of the domain not playing a large role anymore. 

The smart marketers who realized this changed their approach and improved the value of the website, while those who originally relied on the lazy method of just letting the name of the site carry them, failed. And I assure you that if you still own an EMD that you wish to grow, it can be done if you do these things.

Then there were those who completely stopped caring about having EMDs altogether and decided to structure their websites under names they could turn into a brand. I would argue that today, these are the people who are most right.

Here is the most important thing to understand about EMD’s today:

In short, every website name, EMD or not has the same ranking potential today. What determines the success of these sites is a combination of doing SEO things like these and not having too much competition, which will allow them to rank.

So if you are currently deciding on a domain name and wondering if it should be an EMD or not, let me help you decide…

When to use exact match domains.

1) If you want to use your name that is a keyword.

A few months, I helped a friend who happens to be a pro fighter create his own website. When deciding on what to title it, I suggested we just use his full name and the reason why was because through fighting, he would become popular among mass audiences who would then look him up on social media and Google. Having a website that is literally under his full name would be the right choice.

The great news was that there was hardly any competition for the keyword (his full name) so after taking about 1 hour to set up the pages and optimizing them briefly, I gave it a few months and let the site get out of the sandbox. Now whenever people Google his full name, the website is ranked #1. 

Here is a link to his site in case you want to see how it played out. Setting this up didn’t cost me much, but I do know people and companies who would have charged him well over $1,000 to set this up, and yes, that would be a rip off.

Now this idea made the most sense in this circumstance because his name would be the keyword and there wasn’t any competition for it. So it made sense to make an EMD.

2) When the website name’s keyword is high volume and it blends together with your content.

Let’s take the keyword I used above “Six pack ab exercises”. The very name of it suggest that the site is going to talk about this topic and in this case, the keyword gets searches and if I start writing individual blog posts on specific ab exercises, each which carry their own keyword value, then it’s blend well with the domain name.

For example, if one of the keywords is “Do crunches make six pack abs”, then it blends well together with such a domain name and it’ll become “Sixpackabexercises.com/do-crunches-make-six-pack-abs” and the pemalink in that case will rank for the keyword. It’s also called the meta title.

Note: And by the way, the meta title 100% carries more SEO value than the EMD.

When not to use exact match domains:

1) When you’re seeking to create a brand name that isn’t already a searched keyword.

When I used my friend and the website I created for him, his name was already getting searches in Google, but there was no official site set up, and thus making an EMD made sense. 

However, if you’re seeking to create a brand name which no one knows about, then you SHOULD do it, because the content you build from the site will then grow it and people will eventually start to recognize the site name and Google it.

That is actually what I am seeking to do with HelpingHandSEO.com. Right now, not many people know about it, but through getting more and more people to visit the site and remember the name, it’ll eventually grow and become a popular keyword. 

2) A business name.

Again, if no one knows about the business, let your domain name be the name of the business. It will have all the potential to grow and become a brand. I helped a client a long time ago do this. His site wasn’t ranking well and just improving it’s content (not the website name!) caused it to grow and get higher rankings. 

Remember: All fresh domain names, carry the same ranking potential.

It doesn’t matter which ones you buy, EMD or not. If it’s fresh and has no history, it will always start with the same ranking potential. But it will be the growth you put into the site, that will help it grow and become valuable.

This is why you can technically choose any website name you like when starting out and not worry about it’s SEO potential. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should choose profanities or controversial names. Choose simple names for your site that are simple to remember.

If after having said all of this, you still have questions or worries about picking the right name, let me know.

What if I told you that 99% of all backlinking efforts and advice are a waste of time? That they have very little, none or even negative impact and importance on your SEO? 

Don’t believe me?

I don’t blame you, the fact of the matter is that backlinking is one of the most misrepresented, lied about and incorrectly explained concepts when it comes to SEO improvement. I hear, and see people preaching about it all over (blogs, ads, social media, ect…), but the fact of the matter is, most of them have no clue about it. 

And being that I have years of experience with this topic from just about every single angle (I’ve experienced loss of rankings from them, I made a lot of high ranking websites from them and I’ve had no results from using them), I believe I’m more than qualified as an expert to explain what I’ve learned about this and how it’s supposed to REALLY work.

As long as this article is going to be, I want you to take one very important thing from it which summarizes the whole point I’m trying to make here and that is that…

It’s not the backlink that counts or how many you have, but the value behind it.

If you TRULY understand what that statement means, congratulations, you are the 1% or less of SEO experts out there who truly understand this subject and frankly, you can stop reading this article right now.

But if you have any doubt about that statement and I mean even a LITTLE bit of doubt, I strongly encourage you to keep reading what I’m about to say because I promise that after you do, you will no longer waste your time and money building backlinks the wrong way or hiring scam artists to build it for you.

Because believe me, they’ll try to convince you of the wrong ways to do it in an effort to make themselves money, whilst putting your site’s SEO at risk. Don’t fall for that mistake like I once did…

Another word for this is link equity (value).

You may have heard a phrase like this before, but it’s very much tied in with this topic, if not, and you’re wondering, what is link equity, it is simply a way of grading the value of the backlink.

As I go through specific examples below, you will notice the ones which carry the highest value (green), also carry the most equity, and these are the ones which also bring the SEO results you want.

There’s 3 categories of backlinks you need to know about:

The problem most people fail to realize is that not every backlink carries the same value. They just hear that magic buzz word and think it’s automatically important, but the problem is that this lack of knowledge and not being able to distinguish the value of the backlink is what leads people to totally screw it up. 

Let me explain it like this…

Consider the following 10 examples, all of which are backlinks…

They all fall under that definition and they are common, so it works out for this example:

1) Going around forums, leaving your URL.

2) Sharing your URL on a social media site.

3) Buying a package from a company which sells them.

4) Providing a URL from one of your website’s pages to another page on your website.

5) Asking a friend to share your URL with their friends. 

6) Emailing your list or friends with a URL to your website.

7) Your page/post gets liked by MASSES of people, aka it goes viral. 

8) Having a large, loyal following and sharing your URL with them.

9) Getting a popular person to recommend your site and point to it through their email list and/or their website.

10) Providing a URL on your website to a completely different website, elsewhere (it could be to an affiliate product or just to an informational website).

Based on that list, if you can’t tell me which ones carry the real value, then you need to keep reading this article (before you finish it, you will be able to!).

People who don’t understand this subject might classify every single example I just put above to carry the same value (big mistake…).

But here’s how I’m going to help you understand this stuff…

In my experience, there are 3 categories of backlinks you need to know about.

If you can distinguish them based on the criteria I am about to tell you about, you will be able to build the right ones and truly improve your SEO. After you do, we’ll review those 10 examples again and you’ll see in minutes what took me years to see personally…

Low quality ones.

This is the most common type people fall for. It can involve anything from going around forums, sites, social media pages and spamming your website URL (and let’s not pretend it isn’t spamming!) to buying masses of backlink packages from companies and individuals (which is also spamming!).

There used to be a time MANY years ago when this was considered high quality for getting good SEO results but believe me, if you do this stuff today, you will see zero (0) SEO value out of it and you may even suffer SEO penalties from it. I’ll provide you with examples further below to illustrate what counts as low quality.

Medium quality ones.

Examples include socially sharing your URL with friends, family and perhaps a small fan page you build up on social media. It could be Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, ect…

I almost entirely endorse focusing on these. I put them in yellow because while they work, they don’t always work as well as intended. At worst, you won’t get any value out of backlinks in this category. At best, they can carry high value (depending on the result of building them).

High quality ones.

These are the rare ones and the TRULY important ones for SEO. Examples include someone with a large, faithful audience linking to your website and telling people to comment/read your article.

Other examples include linking pages and posts within your website to one another. 

The real meaning behind each category: What’s the value of it?

The easiest way I can explain this part is by saying a backlink has TRUE value IF it leads to the following outcomes:

• People are seeing it and clicking it.
• As a result of that, people are reading your content for an extended period of time.
• And as a result of that, people commenting on it, sharing the article and coming back to read more.

If you can get at least 2 of these things to happen, then you have yourselves a high quality backlink taking place. Anything other than that, is at best in the yellow category, but most likely red, in the low quality arena.

And here is the best way to make sure you get at least 2 of those 3 things (if not all 3):

You may think that sounds simple, but it takes a lot of practice to get it done right, yet this has been the exact formula I’ve followed which has gotten me great SEO results over the years.

Let’s go back to the 10 examples with this new knowledge:

Now that we all have a better understanding of the value of a backlink, let’s go back to the 10 examples we had up before. Here is how I will grade each one on the color scale I put up (let me know if you agree or disagree with it below):

1) Going around forums, leaving your URL.

This is one of the worse things you can do. It’s quite literally spamming and it doesn’t work. In fact, many forums ban this practice because it ruins their image. Do not do this. Here you are engaging in one of the lowest forms of SEO, and it won’t lead to anything good.

2) Sharing your URL on a social media site.

Unless you share this URL with a large, loyal following, MOST of the time, this will not really get you any major points with regards to SEO. It may lead to a like, a share here and there, and maybe even a comment or two, and frankly, that will be better than nothing, but most of the time, it’ll play a small role in helping your site’s SEO grow.

So this is why it’s yellow. It’ll be green if you have a large following clicking on the link and truly visiting your site though.

3) Buying a package from a company which sells them.

No way. This is the other way of doing backlinking in one of the worst imaginable ways. Do not do this!

4) Providing a URL from one of your website’s pages to another page on your website.

This is known as internal linking and while by definition it counts as a backlink, it does not involve outside sites pointing back to yours. In fact, internal linking may not provide direct equity in terms of having people click on all the links you give them, BUT it is still something that when present on a website, gets points from Google, 100%.

You can even read Google’s own words, to get the proof that this tactic absolutely has positive weight on your SEO and is thus green in my book. I actively do this on ALL of my websites and it allows more of it to be exposed to not just Google, but my audience. 100%, do this on your website.

5) Asking a friend to share your URL with their friends. 

Unless that friend is a big time social media icon and/or has a large social media following/email list, these tactics don’t usually lead to anything majorly positive. They won’t result in negative SEO happening, but it’s basically another way of describing scenario 2 above.

6) Emailing your list or friends with a link to your website.

Again, unless you have a large following and that following does things such as likes, comments and shares your content, this will usually not result in anything spectacular. 

7) Your page/post gets liked by MASSES of people, aka it goes viral. 

This is a tricky one because it can either result in minimally positive or highly positive SEO results. Say you shared an article on social media and it received a 1,000+ likes. Wow, you may be thinking that 1st page rankings on Google are just around the corner.

Not so fast. Are those 1,000 likes just likes for show or are they causing people to do more such as leave comments, re-shares and bookmarks? 

If it’s the first thing, then you’ll get a yellow result from this, and if you get the latter, you’ll get a green result from this, which is why I said it’s a tricky one. I explain this a lot more here.

8) Having a large, loyal following and sharing your URL with them.

This is one of the best things you want happening to get good, high quality backlinks working for you. Suppose a person with an email list of 1,000 loyal subscribers and/or a social media following of 1,000 fans creates a blog post and shares it with them.

If they are indeed loyal and into what you put out, not only will they like it, but they will comment on it in masses, they will create a dialogue with you and between themselves. 

ALL of this activity will lead to more content being produced on that very blog post and it WILL lead to Google taking notice and rewarding that blog post with massively high rankings.

9) Getting a popular person to recommend your site and link to it through their email list and/or their website.

This in ideal circumstances can have the same outcome as #8, but it ultimately depends on the person who shares your URL and how loyal THEIR subscribers are. I find that this, while considered a high quality form of backlinking may not have the same influence/result as #8, but it still is VERY much a good thing to experience.

10) Providing a URL on your website to a completely different website, elsewhere (it could be to an affiliate product or just to an informational website).

Generally, external linking which is what this scenario is classified under can be a hit or miss. 

This approach does not actually create backlinks, because more often than not, you are providing a URL to a completely different sites, often without them knowing about, and/or without any expectation that they’ll link back to you.

Yet, from an SEO point of view, this tactic does have positive results if done right.

But there’s different places you can externally link to.

If I link to an informative, high quality page, without any intent to monetize from that, then it can be a green level scenario.

If I link to an affiliate product, it can be either yellow or green. It’ll be yellow if the page I send my traffic to is low quality quality and green if the page I send people to provides valuable info.

Do you agree with my grading of these 10 scenarios?

I’d love to hear your point of view below on how you would grade those same scenarios, if they would be the same or different. And also, if you want to get specifics on using these strategies, here’s 15 awesome methods for raising your rankings, many of which include the good kind of backlinking.

Either way, you now have the same knowledge of backlinks that took me years to attain and I hope with this knowledge, that you’ll be able to raise your SEO rankings (you will).