The information shared in this post was originally written April 18, 2019 when Nerissa Marbury submitted to a HARO request. However, her words and knowledge were not shared with the masses until June 2020.

Links are earned, not bought

First and foremost, any SEO agency worth a grain of salt takes a white hat approach to building links. This means links are earned and not bought. Earning links is at times a slow process, yet it is much more effective in the long-run. The more high-quality domains linking to your website the better. Below are five additional action steps to ensure backlink success.

Create Content

Write great content that offers value to your intended audience.

Investigate competitors

Look at your competitors backlinks and see if you can get links from them, too.

Do outreach

Contact the top influencers, journalists, bloggers, etc. in your specific niche or industry and “pitch” them your content.

Be Authentic

If the content resonates with the influencer, journalist, or blogger, you will get a mention of your brand and typically you’ll earn a link too.

Find “dead” links

Fix and reclaim links with 404 errors with a 301 redirect or request the referring domain to change the link on its page.


Interested in reading how other companies build backlinks? Check out this article by SEO National. The juicy gems above from One Epiphany are referenced in this article as well.

I came across a blog post by David Smethie from GrowthOnFire.com while working on another blog post for you.  He talked about how he always thought he had to perfectly master something before actively pursuing it. However, he decided to take imperfect action and just do the best he could.  His post really resonated with me as I have had a similar realization. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of you are on a similar path or journey as well. That being said, we need to push our perfection paralysis aside and move forward with what we know and be confident that our good intentions will win out at the end of the day.

 

This website & blog is a perfect example of what I mean. The visual design isn’t what I want for the long-haul, but it’s doing the job until I get it to where I want it to be in the end. Instead of waiting for everything to get perfect and then do a big reveal, I plan to do a combination of baby steps and big leaps to reach the goal. I preach what I practice to my clients too. Sometimes you have to leap before you’re ready and learn from what works and what doesn’t to achieve the progress (and revenue) you desire.

 

What challenge, task, or ‘to do’ has stopped you cold or caused you to drag your feet because it isn’t quite how you want it?

What did you do to overcome your bout with perfection paralysis?

[Tweet “Lazy man’s Google: with Twitter once you begin following people of interest information comes to you”]

When people ask why they should use or like Twitter, I always describe it as the “lazy man’s Google”. Unlike Google where you have to know what problem you are trying to solve or what information you wish to seek, with Twitter once you begin following people of interest information comes to you. As a result, you’re able to expose yourself to more facets of life, people, technology, politics, pop culture or any other topic without ever having to know specifically what you want to discover.

This reminds me of a September 3, 2010 quote by former Twitter CEO Evan Williams:

“Google is very good at ‘I need to solve a problem, I need to buy something, I need an answer. Twitter is more ‘I’m interested in many things, I don’t know what I need to know.”