In the ever-evolving world of search engine optimization (SEO), one factor remains consistently important: citations. These online mentions of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) act as digital breadcrumbs, helping search engines like Google verify your legitimacy and understand your local presence. And while citations can be found scattered across the web, having a dedicated “Find Us Online” page on your website can significantly boost their impact.

Check out GMW Fire Protection’s “Find Us Online” page for a great example of a “Find Us Online” page.

Why “Find Us Online” Pages Matter

Here are just a few reasons why every business needs a “Find Us Online” page:

• Improved Local Search Rankings: Citations are a key ranking factor for local SEO. Having a comprehensive “Find Us Online” page that links to all your accurate citations sends strong signals to search engines, boosting your visibility in local search results.
• Enhanced Credibility and Trust: A well-maintained “Find Us Online” page showcases your online presence and demonstrates your commitment to local engagement. This builds trust with potential customers and establishes you as a reliable and accessible business.
• Increased Website Traffic: Your “Find Us Online” page provides a central hub for all your online listings, making it easier for potential customers to find your website driving valuable traffic and leads.
• Streamlined Citation Management: Maintaining accurate and consistent citations across the web can be daunting. A “Find Us Online” page acts as a central repository, making tracking and managing your citations easy, ensuring their accuracy and effectiveness.
• Improved User Experience: A user-friendly “Find Us Online” page provides visitors with all the essential information they need to find your business, including your address, phone number, website, and social media profiles. This enhances the user experience and encourages engagement.

Creating a Powerful “Find Us Online” Page

While a “Find Us Online” page can be helpful for website visitors, its primary purpose is to consolidate your citations in one place for search engine crawlers to find and index easily. This helps search engines understand your online presence and improve your local search rankings.

Here’s how to optimize your “Find Us Online” page for search engines:

• Prioritize NAP Consistency: Ensure your business name, address, and phone number are exactly the same on this page as they are on all your online listings. Accuracy and consistency are crucial for local SEO.
• Link to All Citations: Include links to every directory and platform where your business is listed. This helps search engines discover and associate these citations with your website.
• Use Schema Markup: Implement schema markup (structured data) to help search engines understand the information on the page. This can improve visibility and click-through rates in search results.
• Focus on Relevant Keywords: Naturally incorporate relevant keywords and location-based terms within the page content and link anchor text.

While visual appeal is always a good practice, prioritize providing a clear and easily crawlable structure for search engines on this page.

“Find Us Online” Pages: A Must-Have for Local SEO Success

In today’s competitive online landscape, a well-crafted “Find Us Online” page is essential for any business looking to improve its local SEO, build trust with potential customers, and drive website traffic. By following these tips and leveraging the power of citations, you can ensure your business is easily discoverable online and ready to connect with local customers.

Ready to take your local SEO to the next level? Contact BlakSheep Creative today to learn more about our comprehensive SEO services and how we can help you create a “Find Us Online” page that gets results.

Are you making these SEO mistakes? Many businesses unknowingly sabotage their search rankings with common errors. Discover three critical mistakes to avoid in our recent post, “Three SEO Mistakes That Can Impact Your Search Rankings.”

What Are Orphaned Pages?

Simply put, an orphaned page is a page that has no internal links from other pages on your website. It exists in isolation, with no roadmap guiding users or search engine crawlers to it. Think of it as a treasure chest filled with valuable content, hidden away without a map for anyone to find it. It’s like creating great content and locking it in a vault without a key.

How Common Are Orphaned Pages?

Orphaned pages are surprisingly common. For instance, around 15% of all articles across 319 language versions are orphaned in Wikipedia alone. This means that even with the immense linking structure of Wikipedia, a significant chunk of content is effectively invisible. Imagine how much more common orphaned pages are on smaller, less organized sites!

The Hidden Costs of Orphaned Pages

So, why should you care about orphaned pages? The answer lies in the significant impact they can have on your SEO, user experience, and overall site performance.

1. Reduced Search Engine Visibility

Search engines like Google use internal links to discover and index content. Pages without links are less likely to be crawled and indexed, meaning they have little chance of appearing in search results. Adding internal links to orphaned pages can significantly increase their visibility and pageviews.

2. Poor User Experience

Imagine navigating a website without guidance and getting lost in a maze of isolated pages. Orphaned pages create a poor user experience by hiding valuable content from users. If a page has information that could engage users, increase time on site, or encourage conversions, it’s a loss when no one can find it.

3. Wasted Crawl Budget

Search engines allocate a specific “crawl budget” to each site, the number of pages they’ll crawl on a given visit. Orphaned pages can lead to inefficient use of this budget, leaving critical pages less accessible. Search engines may miss newer or more important content if they spend time on isolated pages with no internal links.

4. Missed Page Authority Distribution

Internal links help distribute page authority, or “link equity,” across your website. By linking from high-traffic pages to others, you signal their importance to search engines. Orphaned pages don’t receive this benefit, which can hurt their ability to rank.

How to Identify Orphaned Pages on Your Site

The first step to fixing the issue is identifying your orphaned pages. Here’s how:

• Use Analytics and SEO Tools: Tools like Google Analytics, Ahrefs, or SEMrush can help you find pages with no internal links pointing to them.
• Check Crawl Reports: These reports show crawled pages but lack inbound links.
• Manual Audit: Review your site map and verify whether each page is accessible through internal links.

Strategies to Bring Orphaned Pages Back into the Fold

Ready to make your orphaned pages visible? Here’s how to integrate them into your website’s internal linking structure:

1. Link from High-Traffic Pages: Add internal links from popular pages to orphaned ones. This not only increases visibility but also passes link equity.
2. Create Topic Hubs: Group content into relevant hubs or clusters. For instance, if you have a blog post on “SEO Basics,” provide links to related orphaned pages on advanced SEO tips.
3. Use Descriptive Anchor Text: Make links more user-friendly and appealing to search engines by using descriptive anchor text.
4. Regularly Audit Your Site: As you add new content, ensure it’s linked from other pages. Set up a process to avoid creating new orphaned pages.

The Bottom Line: Don’t Let Great Content Go to Waste!

Orphaned pages might be hidden from view, but their impact on your site’s performance is far from invisible. By bringing them back into the fold, you ensure your valuable content is not wasted. Every page on your site should have a purpose, and by linking strategically, you can boost both user experience and SEO performance.

Ready to optimize your website’s structure and eliminate orphaned pages for good? BlakSheep Creative can help you build a fully connected, optimized, and primed website for top search engine performance. Reach out to us today, and let’s ensure every page on your site shines. Fill out the form below to get started today!

However, getting high-quality backlinks is a challenging task. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some effective strategies for obtaining high-quality backlinks for your website.

Create Valuable Content

The first and most important step to obtaining high-quality backlinks is creating valuable content people want to link to. High-quality content is informative, engaging, and valuable to the reader. When you create valuable content, other websites will naturally want to link to it, increasing your website’s visibility and authority.

Related Reading: What is High-Quality Content, and How Do I Create It to Keep Google Happy?

What is Valuable Content?

Valuable content provides helpful information, answers questions, solves problems or entertains the audience. It should be well-researched, informative, and engaging.

Valuable content can take many forms, such as blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, ebooks, etc.  Here’s an example of one of our recent infographics on the AIDA framework for copywriting:

The key is to create something unique and valuable to your target audience. When you offer valuable content on your website, it attracts visitors and encourages other websites to link back to your site, improving your authority and search engine ranking.

How to Create Valuable Content?

When creating valuable content, it is important to consider your target audience and the topics they are interested in. Research what types of content they engage with, then create something similar or better than what is already out there.

Also, be sure to optimize your content for search engines. Ensure it includes relevant keywords and phrases that your target audience will likely use when searching for information.

Finally, promote your content on social media and other platforms to get more eyes on it. The more people see your content, the more likely they will link to it. This will help you build high-quality backlinks over time.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is an excellent way to obtain high-quality backlinks. By writing a guest post on another website, you can include a link to your website in your author bio or the post’s content. To get the most out of guest blogging, focus on websites relevant to your industry or niche with high domain authority.

What is Domain Authority?

Domain authority is a metric developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). It’s measured on a scale of 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating a greater likelihood of ranking higher in search results.

For example (obviously), Google has an authority score of 100.

Whereas one of our competitors (whom we’ll leave nameless) has a domain authority of 2.

Several factors, such as the quality and quantity of backlinks, the age of the domain, content relevance, and more, determine the score. A website with high domain authority is considered more trustworthy and authoritative in its industry or niche, leading to better search engine rankings and increased traffic.

How Do I Increase My Domain Authority?

There are several ways to increase your domain authority, such as obtaining high-quality backlinks from other websites, creating valuable content regularly, optimizing website pages for search engines, and more. Additionally, you can use tools like Moz’s Open Site Explorer and Link Explorer to monitor the quality of your backlinks and identify any potential issues.

If you’re into Moz and its metric: Discover the power of your brand with Moz’s innovative Brand Authority Metric! Uncover your brand’s online strength and influence. Learn more about it here: “Moz’s New Brand Authority Metric“. Let’s take your brand to new heights!

Broken Link Building

Broken link building is a strategy where you find broken links on other websites and offer to replace them with a link to your website. To find broken links, you can use tools like Ahrefs, which will show you which pages on a website have broken links. Once you find a broken link, you can contact the website owner and offer to replace the link with a link to your relevant content.

Here’s an excellent infographic (remember earlier) from Ahrefs about the subject:

Image Source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/broken-link-building/

How to Perform Broken Link Building:

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to perform broken link building:

1. Identify relevant websites: Find websites relevant to your industry or niche.
2. Use a backlink analysis tool: Use a backlink analysis tool like Ahrefs to find broken links on those websites.
3. Create relevant content: Create high-quality and relevant content that can replace the broken link.
4. Contact website owner: Contact the website owner and inform them about the broken link, offering your content as a replacement.
5. Follow up: Follow up with the website owner if you don’t hear back from them within a week or two.

Broken link building is an effective way to obtain high-quality backlinks but requires effort and persistence. By providing valuable content as a replacement for broken links, you can increase your chances of getting a link back to your site and improve your search engine rankings over time.

Related Reading: Why a Strategy is Vital for Effective Link-Building

Participate in Online Communities

Participating in online communities like forums, social media groups, and niche communities can be an excellent way to build relationships and obtain backlinks. By participating in these communities and providing valuable information, you can establish yourself as an expert in your field and gain backlinks from other community members.

What are Some Good Online Communities?

Some good online communities include Reddit, Quora, and LinkedIn groups. Additionally, you can search for niche-specific forums in your industry or market.

How to Participate in Online Communities:

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to participate in online communities:

1. Identify relevant communities: Find online communities related to your industry or niche.
2. Do your research: Research the topics being discussed in the communities and familiarize yourself with them.
3. Engage with other members: Participate in conversations and provide valuable information when appropriate.
4. Add value: Share helpful resources, answer questions, and offer advice when possible.
5. Provide your contact information: Provide a link to your website and social media pages for other members to follow.

By participating in online communities, you can position yourself as an expert in your field, build relationships with potential customers, and obtain high-quality backlinks that will boost your domain authority and search engine rankings over time.

Related Reading: Using Quora for SEO – The Ultimate Guide

Reach Out to Websites in Your Niche

Reaching out to websites in your niche and offering to contribute content or collaborate on projects can be an effective way to obtain high-quality backlinks. When reaching out to other websites, be sure to provide a clear value proposition and explain why it would be beneficial for them to link to your website.

In conclusion, obtaining high-quality backlinks is essential for improving your website’s search engine rankings and overall online visibility. 

By creating valuable content, guest blogging, broken link building, participating in online communities, and reaching out to websites in your niche, you can obtain high-quality backlinks that will help your website to rank higher in search engine results and attract more traffic.

If you want help obtaining high-quality backlinks and improving your website’s search engine rankings, look no further than BlakSheep Creative. We have a team of experts with years of experience in SEO, link building, and content marketing who can work with you to create valuable content, engage in broken link building, reach out to other websites in your niche, and participate in online communities. 

Contact us today or visit our affordable SEO services page to get started on improving your website’s visibility and rankings!

Frequently Asked Questions

Still have questions about obtaining high-quality backlinks? Here are some of the most common questions we get asked about link building:

By following the tips outlined above, you should be well on your way to building a solid backlink profile and improving your website’s search engine rankings. Remember that link-building is an ongoing process, and links take time to start having an effect. Be patient and don’t give up – you can achieve great results with hard work and dedication!

“Without a plan, your efforts will be haphazard and ineffective. You need to know what kinds of links you want to build, where to find opportunities, and how to approach potential link partners.”

But what does an effective link-building strategy look like? Here are a few key components

1. Set realistic goals.

Before you start link-building, it’s important to set some goals. What exactly do you want to achieve? More traffic? Better search engine rankings? More brand awareness?

It’s also important to be realistic. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are high-quality links. Be patient and set achievable goals that you can slowly work towards.

2. Research your competition.

One of the best ways to develop link-building ideas is to research your competition. See what kinds of links they’re building and where they’re getting them from.

Of course, you don’t want to copy your competition exactly. But their link-building efforts can give you some good ideas.

3. Find link opportunities.

Once you know what kinds of links you want to build, it’s time to start finding opportunities. There are a few different ways to do this:

• Use Google Search Console to find links to your website that are broken. You can then reach out to the website owner and ask them to fix the link.
• Use a tool like BuzzSumo to find popular content in your niche. You can then reach out to the author and ask them to link to your similar content.
• Use a tool like Moz’s Link Explorer to find websites that link to your competition. You can then reach out to these websites and ask them to link to you as well.
• Use a tool like SEMRush’s brand monitoring tool to find mentions of your brand online. You can then reach out to the author and ask them to link to your website.

Automating these processes can save you valuable time and ensure a more systematic approach to building backlinks. By using backlink prospecting AI software, you can streamline the discovery of link opportunities, identify broken links, and track brand mentions across the web more efficiently. This not only frees up your resources but also enables you to focus on crafting compelling outreach messages and nurturing relationships with potential link partners.

As you build a comprehensive link-building strategy, it’s also essential to address any orphaned pages on your website. These are pages that lack internal links and may be hurting your site’s SEO. Ensuring all valuable pages are linked can improve both visibility and user experience.

4. Build relationships.

Link-building is all about relationships. If you want people to link to your website, you must first build relationships with them. The best way to do this is to provide value.

For example, you could write an article for a website in your niche. Or you could create a helpful infographic that people would want to link to. Whatever you do, make sure it’s something that will be genuinely useful to your target audience.

5. Reach out to potential link partners.

Once you’ve built a relationship with someone, you can reach out and ask for a link. But it’s important to do this in the right way.

First, don’t just ask for a link outright. Instead, try to create a win-win situation. For example, you could offer to write an article for their website in exchange for a link.

Second, make sure you’re only reaching out to relevant websites. There’s no point in trying to get a link from a website that’s not related to your niche. Not only will they be less likely to link to you, but it could also come across as spammy.

Finally, don’t forget to personalize your request. A generic, one-size-fits-all message is more likely to be ignored than a personal one.

6. Monitor your progress.

Once you’ve started building links, monitoring your progress is essential. This will help you see what’s working and what’s not so that you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

There are a few different ways to do this:

• Use Google Analytics to track your website’s traffic. This will help you see if your link-building efforts are having a positive impact on your traffic levels.
• Use a tool like Moz’s Link Explorer to track your link growth over time. This will help you see if you’re slowly gaining more links over time.
• Use a tool like Google Search Console to track your website’s search engine rankings. This will help you see if your link-building efforts positively impact your search engine rankings.

7. Keep at it.

Link-building is an ongoing process, not a one-time thing. So, keep at it even after you’ve started seeing results.

If you stop building links, your traffic and search engine rankings will eventually decline. So make sure you keep up with your link-building efforts even after you’ve seen some success.

Conclusion

Building links is a vital part of any SEO strategy. But it’s also a time-consuming and challenging process.

That’s why it’s crucial to have a solid link-building strategy in place. By following the tips above, you can ensure your link-building efforts are effective and efficient. And that will ultimately help you improve your website’s traffic and search engine rankings.

Are you looking to improve your website’s traffic and search engine rankings?

BlakSheep Creative can help! We offer a range of link-building and SEO services to help you get the links you need to succeed.

Our team of experienced professionals will work with you to develop a custom link-building strategy that fits your needs and budget. We’ll help you get the links you need to improve your website’s visibility online.

For more information, please visit our services page or contact us today. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Google’s John Mueller was recently asked about this on Reddit.  He said that there are a few tools out there that help identify poor quality or even spammy links, but in general, Google has said it has no internal concept of “toxic domains” and that you can ignore toxic links and the tools that report on them.

What Changed?

In the early days, Google would drop a penalty on sites with many bad or deceptive links pointing to them.  This was known as the “Google penalty.” But in recent years, Google has changed its tune.

Ever since the Penguin 4.0 update, Google started ignoring bad links rather than penalizing sites for them.  So if you have a few bad links pointing to your site, don’t sweat it.  Google is no longer taking that into account when determining your rankings.

Should You Still Try to Remove Bad Links?

While you don’t have to worry about a Google penalty anymore, that doesn’t mean you should ignore bad or spammy links altogether.  If you have a lot of low-quality or spammy links pointing to your site, that could be a sign that you’re using black hat SEO tactics, and that’s something you definitely want to avoid.

Additionally, bad links can still hurt your traffic and conversion rates.  Unless your business lives on the shady side of the internet, you probably don’t want visitors from sites known for being spammy.

So while you don’t need to worry about a Google penalty, it’s still a good idea to clean up any bad links pointing to your site.

How to Remove Bad Links

If you want to remove bad links pointing to your site, there are a few different ways you can go about it.

The first is to reach out to the site owner and ask them to remove the link.  This is usually the quickest and easiest way to get rid of a bad link.

If the site owner doesn’t respond or refuses to remove the link, your next option is to use the Google Disavow Tool.  This tool allows you to tell Google not to consider certain links when determining your rankings.

Of course, using the Disavow Tool should be a last resort.  You should only use it if you’ve tried everything else and you’re sure the link is bad.

How Do you Find Bad Links?

If you want to find bad links pointing to your site, you can use a few different tools:

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a great place to start.  Just head to the “Search Traffic” section and click on “Links to Your Site.”  From there, you’ll see a list of all the sites linking to yours.

1. Go to Google Search Console

2. Click “Start Now”

3. Select Your Property

4. Click Links

5. Click More

But, if you have a lot of links pointing to your site, this process can be time-consuming.  In that case, you might want to use a tool like Moz’s Link Explorer or Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

Moz’s Link Explorer

Moz’s Link Explorer is an excellent tool for finding bad links.  Just enter your website’s URL and hit “Search.”  Moz will then give you a list of all the websites linking to yours.

From there, you can click on each link to see more information about it.  Moz also assigns each link a “Spam Score” from 0 to 17, with 17 being the most spammy.  So if you see a link with a high spam score, that’s a good indication that it’s not a good link.

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer is another great tool for finding bad links.  Just enter your website’s URL and hit “Search.”  Ahrefs will then give you a list of all the websites linking to yours.

Ahrefs also assigns each link a “Quality” score from 0 to 100, with 100 being the best.  So if you see a link with a low-quality score, that’s a good indication that it’s

These tools will give you a comprehensive overview of all the links pointing to your site.  You can then sort them by “Domain Authority” or “PageRank” to find the most toxic links.

We’ll tell you what.  Here at BlakSheep Creative, we pay a lot for our SaaS tools.  And anyone knows that paid tools are always better than free ones, right?

So here’s what we’ll do.  We pay for these tools so that you don’t have to.  We’re in the business of making things easy for our clients.

If you’re serious about getting rid of your toxic links, we can help.  We’ll run a complete link audit and give you a report of all the bad links pointing to your site.  We’ll even provide you with a list of sites you can reach out to have the links removed.

If you’re interested, just shoot us an email, and we’ll get started.  In the meantime, check out our blog for more great tips on SEO and link building.

Just email us at seo@blaksheepcreative.com, and we’ll audit your link profile for free.  We’ll send you a report of all the bad links pointing to your site, and we’ll even tell you how to get rid of them.

What are you waiting for?  Email us today and let us help you clean up your link profile.  After all, we’re in the business of helping our clients rank higher.

The Bottom Line

Bad links are no longer something you need to worry about, thanks to Google’s Penguin 4.0 update. 

However, that doesn’t mean you should ignore them altogether.  Bad links can still hurt your traffic and conversion rates, so it’s a good idea to clean them up if you can.

But insofar as Google, “don’t get hung up about it.”  Google no longer cares about bad links, so you can focus your energy on more productive things.

Do you still worry about toxic links?  Let us know in the comments below!