Thanks for sticking with us for PART 2 of this WordPress SEO training!
In the first post we discussed 5 On-Page SEO Strategies for WordPress. In this second part we will take a look at Five out-of-the-box Off-Page SEO strategies and social media promotion ideas. Let’s just dive right into it!
6. MASSIVE GUEST POSTING FOR LINK POPULARITY
I’m sure everyone has heard of the strategy of doing guest posts for link popularity, but in reality this strategy doesn’t work well for most people. Primarily because they do one or two guest posts, and they usually do them on blogs that aren’t that strong in pagerank to begin with. Here is my twist on this strategy.
Create a Massive Guest Posting Strategy! Instead of focusing on writing one or two guest posts, put together a plan to write 20-50 guest posts, and be sure that every blog that you post on has at least a pagerank of 1 or better.
When you are negotiating these guest posts with blog owners, be sure to tell them that you will do a “video review blog post” where you will review a popular video that their audience will be sure to like. Then, simply follow the strategies that I outlined in my 3rd SEO Tip: YouTube Embedded Videos for SEO.
This will allow you to pump out dozens of guest posts, while still providing value for them at the same time, and getting 2-3 links in each blog post that you do, pointing back to your homepage, as well as a couple of inside pages. Then, every once in a while you can do a very in-depth post (like I am doing here) to practice blogging yourself and to provide a ton of value to the person you are guest blogging for.
Bonus Tip: When you write a guest post, be sure to ask them if you can write a post in exchange for a link in their blogroll. Many blog owners will accept you on this offer if your website is decent, and this will give you a link on EVERY page on their site instead of just in the one blog post page that you write 
7. HOW TO BARTER FOR FREE LINK POPULARITY
Most SEO gurus will tell you to “buy text link ads” from a directory of some kind. The problem with this is that Google is always tracking down these directories and changing their algorithm to not give much value to those links. The other problem is that most of those links are for a monthly fee, meaning that you pay every single month without knowing whether or not the link is actually helping you. It’s the “Pay and Pray Method” which I am not a big fan of!
Instead, here is a cool tip on how to barter text links for free to help build link popularity to your WordPress site. I already mentioned one tip above, which is a massive guest posting strategy, but this tip here involves you creating either an info-product or a membership site or something of similar value.
Here is the idea in a nutshell.
Trade something, besides money, for a link on their blogroll or somewhere else on their site.
For example, if you created a very valuable webinar training on a topic that is related to your blog, then you could take that video training and create a product page for it, and sell it! Then, you could contact other bloggers in that niche, and offer to give them that product for free in exchange for a link on their site. The more valuable that your product is, and the more they want it, the more likely they would be to give you a link in exchange for getting it free.
If you are really serious about promoting your blog/website/business online, and you are in this for the long term, then you might even want to create a membership site, or a continuity program of some kind, with an ongoing monthly fee (which is a great way to monetize your blog), and then offer some bloggers that membership for free in exchange for a link to your blog.
I have done this over the past few years for some of my client websites, and have managed to get dozens of very high quality sites to give direct links in exchange for a product for free. So definitely get creative and think of some cool ways to barter link popularity and you will solve one of the most difficult parts of the SEO process!
8. NINJA SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTION TECHNIQUE
Most SEO experts will agree that social media sharing of your blog posts will significantly increase the ability for them to rank in Google. Some people argue this strategy suggesting that most social media sites use “nofollow” tags on their links, but in my experience I have found tremendous results in Google rankings with posts that have gone viral on social media sites, versus posts that have not. I have no doubt that Google and other search engines take this into consideration in their algorithms one way or another.
So you will need to acquire a social media promotion for your blog posts in order to kick start the algorithm to rank your sites on the first page of Google.
One of the sites that I have had the most success with is a social network called “Empire Avenue“. You can join this website for free, and network with other social media professionals online, and create “Missions” where you can trade virtual currency with them in exchange for liking your blog posts.
For example, I might trade $500,000 in “virtual currency” for 100 likes on a blog post. The likes will be real, from people all over the world, and several of them might even have pretty big followings online. Now, if you are writing dozens of posts per day it might be hard to heavily promote each one, so focus on doing at least one post per day that you plan on promoting. Be sure to share it on your own Facebook account, your Twitter Account, and create a mission on Empire Avenue.
Check out BABO on Empire Avenue as well!
And whenever you share posts on Social Media sites (like Facebook) you want to always ask a question to create engagement on your blog post. Get the discussion going as often as possible. More people will respond, and it will be seen in more newsfeeds. This is how you are going to create some viral activity from your blog posts.
9. GOOGLE PENGUIN UPDATED ANCHOR TEXT TIPS
If you are going to learn about SEO, then you are going to need to follow Google’s big updates, like the Panda Update and more recently the Google Penguin Update.
They have changed the game with the “anchor text” that you use in your links. The anchor text is the words that you read that are highlighted as the link. For example, look at the paragraph above where it says “Google Penguin Update”. That is the anchor text for the link, and when you click through it goes to a page titled: “How Does the New Google Penguin Update Affect Internet Marketers?“.
The new Google Penguin update is looking for more “natural” anchor text, meaning that if you are writing a ton of guest posts, or using one of the link building strategies in this article, then you want to make sure to switch up the anchor text often. Think about how people would link to your site if you didn’t give them any direction. Not everybody would link to you the same way, or in the same place, or the same amount of times in each article right? So you want to take this into consideration when you are creating backlinks to your own site.
10. BONUS - TOP 300 ALEXA SITE BACKLINKS
Here is a tip that I have been having a lot of success with lately. Empower Network is a new company that allows you to get a multi-user WordPress Blog built for you for just $25/mo. They are currently ranked #300 in Alexa in the United states meaning that they are the 300th most popular site based on traffic. Google definitely takes this into consideration when ranking your pages.
I use Empower Network for many of my clients, and even for my personal blog because of this ranking factor. You still need to build some link popularity, as I have mentioned in this article, but because of the big Alexa ranking you generally work half as hard to land on the front page of Google for the terms you go after.
Empower Network is especially good with Longtail Keywords!
So here is how I look at it. For just $25/mo not only can I have a blog that ranks very well, but I can also set up a blogroll on that site with links pointing to all of my other sites and get some good link popularity pointing back in. That is some of the cheapest and best link popularity that you can buy!
Plus, Empower Network has built-in sales funnels that sell their system, and they profit share 100% commissions with their affiliates, so if you refer just one person, you pretty much reimbursed yourself and basically got your blogging system FREE!
