How to Create a Successful Email Campaign Part II: Writing Your Emails

Mindy Schoeneman - June 29, 2018

Creating a Connection

In Part I, we talked about growing your list by starting with a smart landing page that entices visitors to subscribe. In Part II, we’re going to cover what you should do with those subscribers once you have them.

But first, pop quiz time! Are you ready? Only you can provide the best answer to the question as it applies to your nonprofit’s organization. Here’s the question:

What do you think motivates people to donate money to your organization?

A. The desire to add a tax deduction to the calendar year

B. Positive advertisement for their business

C. A thought-out strategy for distributing funds allocated for charitable donation

D. The desire to be part of something meaningful by contributing monetarily

Maybe in your experience, your donors’ motivations seem to be a little bit of A, B, or C. Maybe most of your donors are businesses and others looking for good publicity, a tax deduction, or an organization to be the recipient of their semi-regular giving.

No matter what motivates a person to choose to donate, that person connected on some level with your organization. Otherwise, he or she would have moved on to the next organization.

Giving Donors a Reason to Choose You

Taking an approach to marketing—and to your presence in the world—that promotes an emotional connection with your audience is everything.

“…you’ve got to give your audience someone to care about, to connect with, to root for. In making that emotional connection, you’re making it easier for them to care about helping with and committing to your cause.”

That’s what we said in our article about nonprofit storytelling. And we think we’re right.

So now you probably can guess what should be in a successful email marketing campaign.

Writing Emails

Let’s break your marketing email content down from big-picture view to tiny little steps. In general, what’s the purpose of an email? It serves to convey information, right?

Step 1—Include important information in your marketing emails.

For those new subscribers, make sure they receive information on what to expect from being on your list in the first email they receive.

Because you want the email sequence to be timeless and automated so it requires little or no maintenance from you and your team, you won’t include announcements of upcoming events and fundraisers in your initial message. But don’t forget to let your subscribers know this kind of important information and how to find more details about them.

Step 2—Always remember to tell a story.

We’re not talking about a bedtime story here. Instead, the story you need to weave is a simple one that clearly outlines the impact of every donation. Draw a map for your subscribers that shows them the connection between their donation, your organization, and the real-life impact the organization makes on the world.

That map needs to lead your subscribers to a look inside the lives of those who your organization serves.

Step 3—Make your story compelling.

Does your organization impact a specific population? Let’s say your organization works to educate pediatric healthcare professionals to prescribe books to help with their pediatric patients’ development. And in addition, your organization provides books to partnering practitioners so families who can’t afford books can still read to their little ones (if you don’t know the organization Reach Out and Read, check them out because this is exactly what they do).

If this is what your organization does, then the most compelling way to tell your story is through the voice of a child who has been impacted. Can you reach out to those who have been positively impacted by your organization and ask them to tell their story? If so, with the family’s permission, do it.

Step 4—Give a clear call to action.

Your first interaction isn’t the time to make a big ask. Hang onto the direct ask for a monetary donation for a few emails. First, you have to connect with your subscribers and build that emotional component. Those who choose to subscribe to your list are looking to connect with you in some way. So give the people what they want!

Part of building a relationship is opening up the lines of communication so it’s a two-way conversation. And you want that kind of relationship with your subscribers because those who feel connected to your organization will do more to further your cause than anyone else.

So your call to action should be an invitation to connect further. Ask your subscribers to hit reply and send you an email back, or invite them to join the conversation on social media. Be specific in your ask, and make it easy for subscribers to follow through.

Step 5—Space your email frequency.

Have you ever subscribed to someone’s email list only to be bombarded with email after email in the first week? Don’t be the organization that clogs up its subscribers inbox. Space out your emails after the initial onboarding sequence. Give them time to wonder what your nonprofit is up to since they haven’t heard from you in a couple of weeks.

Sending one really great email a month is ideal. By sending one per month, you’ll be giving yourself time to compose a better email with the perfect balance between news, storytelling, and a clear call to connect. Imagine if you had to put that much thought and effort into an email every week. It wouldn’t happen, right?

Step 6—Vary your emotional tone.

The other bonus to spacing out these emails is that it’s easier to avoid ending up sounding monotonous. What does that mean in this context? Consider this:

You’ve compiled 10 emotionally packed, compelling emails. Each one tugs at the same heartstring, showing the impact your organization has on its target population. You’re now a master at storytelling for your nonprofit.

You send these 10 emails to your subscribers in the span of 30 (or even 60) days. The first email seems to get a good response. The second one doesn’t do so bad either. But by the fifth email, you start to see your open rate decline. Maybe people even begin to unsubscribe. Not only have they not responded to the emotion behind the email, they’re not even listening anymore. What happened?

You became too monotonous.

Your 10 emails strike the exact same tone, over and over. It’s like purposely re-watching, marathon style, the same episode of This Is Us that made you blubber like you’ve never blubbered before. By your third or fourth re-watch, you’re probably not even shedding a tear anymore.

We need variety in our lives, and we need an emotional ebb and flow. Otherwise, we start to become desensitized to things. Not because we’re terrible, callous humans. But because that’s just the way we are. It’s how we learn to adapt and survive and protect ourselves.

So show the need for your nonprofit, but show it from different perspectives whenever possible. Interview a volunteer. Ask for a testimonial from an outside agency that works with you. Give your story different voices. That will give you a different tone too.

Ask for professional help

Although it’s not listed, your initial step in setting up your email marketing campaign should be to talk to the professionals who understand the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR compliance and the particulars of email marketing. Hire a professional to get you started so you’re not putting your nonprofit in jeopardy for having issues in the future. This is what we do at Wanna Pixel, and the team will be happy to help.

If you’d like to learn how email segmentation can help you raise more money, take a look at this article from Wanna Pixel’s Kelly Kulp.

How to Create a Successful Email Campaign Part I: Growing Your Email List

Mindy Schoeneman - May 9, 2018

Gaining followers on social media is important. It helps you get your message in front of people who might not typically find you. But what happens if the world goes topsy turvy and you find your social media account has been hacked, deactivated, or somehow destroyed in the blink of an eye? How would you contact your followers?

It’s an unlikely scenario, sure. But how many times have you posted something to social media, wishing you could send it directly to every person who has ever supported your organization? If you put those people on an email list, you could send the information directly to their inbox.

How many times have you wished you could send an email to every contributor, volunteer, or customer? How great would it be to have their email information somewhere easy to access and easy to utilize?

Email marketing can provide these time-saving solutions. But first you need to have a list of people to market to, right?

It’s time to start growing your email list. And it’s always better to start off on the right foot. So how do you do that? How do you entice people to give you a direct line to them? And how do you do it in a way that won’t get you put on a spam list somewhere? That’s a really important question that we will address in Part Two of this blog post.

Before you can build your list, you first have to give people a portal where they can sign up to be included on your emailing list.

It all starts with a smart landing page

Meet Client Y (we’ll use a fictitious name to protect the privacy of our client). Client Y came to us with a problem. Their organization was spending most of their funds on advertisements. And while some of that money was coming back to them in conversions, the numbers weren’t sustainable in the long-term.

The organization had no room to grow because every extra dollar went to an ever-increasing ad budget. Nothing was left to be reinvested.

So we started looking at Client Y’s client onboarding process. You know, their funnel. How were they making that first contact with people that drew them into their funnel, eventually leading them to making a sale? How successful was the process?

The start of their funnel

The first part of their funnel included a landing page with a call to sign up to receive emails from Client Y. We looked at the number of people visiting this page, and we saw that they had a steady flow of traffic.

But that traffic wasn’t converting well at all. Only 4 percent of traffic was responding by signing up. That means 96 percent of traffic was browsing away. No conversion. No sale. Ad spend wasted.

We looked at the page and saw one big issue: It wasn’t designed with the user in mind. It lacked elements needed for us regular humans to feel connected to the brand. Ninety-six out of every 100 website visitors were clicking away wondering if the website was run by humans or faceless corporate robots.

We offered our evaluation to Client Y, and with their approval, we then rolled up our sleeves and got to work on improving their landing page.

Building a beautiful website

Providing beautiful web solutions is what makes Wanna Pixel’s website design team giddy. So we put the team to work.

By drawing from website design best practices, our team was able to design a new landing page for Client Y that increased their dismal newsletter sign-up rate from 4 percent to 20 percent within a few short weeks of launch.

That’s a 400 percent increase. In about a month.

How did our designers accomplish this? Let’s break it down a little.

Nonprofit website design

Best website design practices start with understanding how we humans respond to design and how we behave while browsing the web. What does that mean?

Answer this: What type of device are you using to read this article? Is it a mobile device? If so, you’re definitely not alone. Not surprisingly, 85 percent of people browsing the internet are doing so using a mobile device. So a dynamic design that results in conversions needs to be optimized with both desktops and mobile devices in mind. Failing to design properly for mobile screen size will mean losing out on a significant number of potential donors.

Additionally, tell me the answer to this one: What do you do when a website is taking forever to load? Do you continue to sit and wait, wait, wait? Or do you close the browser and move on? Most of us move on. It’s just part of a fast-paced world. We don’t have time to wait for websites to load. We’ll go find the information we need elsewhere. So a beautiful website design must be coupled with speed (and functionality, but more on that later).

If the website is mobile-responsive and fast, now we have an opportunity to convert visitors into subscribers through great design. What are important elements that need to be included in the design of a nonprofit website to make that happen?

The specific answer to that question depends entirely on the exact nature of your business or organization. But the simplified answer is this:

Compelling images
The smart use of color, flow, and white space
On-point, perfectly placed written content

A website designer who understands how to weave these elements together—who understands both your brand and who you’re trying to reach—is the person you need in your life.

Website design best practices

I mentioned website design best practices. Understanding the meaning of that phrase is vital to any organization before beginning digital marketing projects.

A stellar website for your nonprofit organization will do everything you need it to do. But if you’re not sure what you should look for in a website, then maybe this list will help.

Mobile-responsive design
Quick loading time
Conversion optimized with email marketing
Data tracking (how else will you know how the website is really performing?)
A/B testing for landing pages
Security
SEO smart
Content marketing optimized
User experience centered

A website that will pull its weight for your nonprofit is a website built with your past, present, and future in mind. It will tell the story of your nonprofit through design and content, giving visitors a clear call to action. And it will leave room for growth.

Maybe content marketing is outside your reach right now. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could choose to start a content marketing strategy without having to build a new website from scratch? Or maybe you’re not sure how you can even interpret data such as that recorded by Google Analytics, much less use the information to improve your conversion rates. But by having it turned on, you’ll be prepared with invaluable data in the future when you’re ready to ask someone who can interpret the data.

Email marketing

Did you read this and wonder, “What will I do with the people who sign up for my email list? What in the world will I send them?” Check back for Part Two of this series, where we talk about what makes an email marketing campaign turn subscribers into donors and volunteers.

SEO Part IV: Do You Feel Like Google Is Holding Your Website Hostage?

Mindy Schoeneman - August 22, 2017

SEO this, SEO that

Have you been following along with our series of articles on SEO? A brief recap on what we’ve covered so far:

Content is vital to ranking well, and well-written content will also help you reach your goals.
Backlinks are like neon signs pointing to your website that say, “This is a great website!” And who doesn’t want that?
The images on your website should be optimized for users and crawlers, and images really are worth a thousand words. Good images drive human connection.

While we have been discussing SEO and how to rank well on Google, there’s been an underlying theme. Wanna Pixel’s own Mindy Schoeneman is going to fill us in on what that theme is and what it means for your organization.

Google

Over this series of blog posts, we’ve been talking about how to become friends with Google. You want to be friends with Google, because you want people to be able to find your website easily when searching for relevant information and terms. Because more traffic equals more opportunities to win the hearts of potential donors and volunteers.

Implementing an effective SEO-strategy is the best way to draw in a steady stream of visitors (without paying for ads month after month after month). But what do you do if all of the SEO talk has your head spinning?

While you wish you were feeling challenged and energized by all the SEO information we’ve shared, the reality is that you’re feeling overwhelmed and maybe even a little nauseated. Instead of feeling like Google is your friend, you’re feeling as if Google is holding your website hostage. And now, you’re worried that one wrong move will result in the death of your website as it’s buried alive on page 10 of search results.

Whew! That’s a lot of pressure, right?

Above, we mentioned there is an underlying theme with this blog post series. This theme is the answer you need to take all of the pressure off your relationship with Google. And it is based on this premise: You and Google share a common interest.

Your Common Interest

Google is a business that thrives because it provides its users with the most relevant results to their searches. And by choosing which results are relevant to the search, Google has also chosen the websites that provide a clearly understood message.

As it happens, that’s exactly what you want to do for your website visitors. You want to provide them with a message that’s easily understood. You and Google want the same things for website visitors.

What happens when people (and even companies) share a common interest such as this? With any common interest comes common ground. The common ground you share with Google simplifies the bulk of SEO practices. Both your organization and Google want the same thing to happen when someone comes to your website.

So, what is the theme upon which you can build your SEO strategy? The theme that we’ve been repeating throughout every post in this series?

Everything on your website should deliver a user experience that encourages a human connection.

Creating a Great User Experience

As you know, when people understand the emotional impact of what you do as an organization, they line up to help you facilitate your mission. Creating an emotional connection with your website visitors is vital to growing your organization.

And the best way to create a human-to-human connection through emotion is by delivering a superb user experience.

How do you create such a user experience? The answer to that is lengthy and varies greatly. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. There are no templates that guarantee you’ll deliver the best user experience possible to your website visitors.

Instead, there are a million different little details that work together to make an impact, to leave an impression with every visitor. From the content to the images to the dynamic design—all of these components must work together with hundreds of other little details.

The answer to it all, though, is to hire experienced professionals who have a proven track record of delivering websites that offer these user experiences we’re describing. Wanna Pixel can help you.

But first, how do you know if your current site is not providing the best user experience?

Evaluating a User Experience

The best way to evaluate the user experience of your website is to ask for feedback. Start with those who do not have a vested interest in your organization’s success. When you are asking those who are deeply and emotionally invested in the success of your organization, it’s like asking someone to weigh the pros and cons of their own child, pointing out areas that need improvement.

People you should ask:

Strangers who fit within your target demographics.
New donors and volunteers who have just joined your cause.
Wanna Pixel.

Asking for feedback from those who know next to nothing or nothing at all about your organization can be eye-opening. Make sure you’re asking those who are in your target market, though, since your website should be geared toward those you most want to reach.

Asking new donors or volunteers who recently viewed your website and decided your organization is a good fit for them is the perfect way to gain insight on what you’re doing right.

As for asking Wanna Pixel to review your website, book a consultation with Wanna Pixel and this service is included. The Wanna Pixel team will get to know your organization, who you’re trying to reach, and your mission.

Once you know your website’s strengths and weaknesses, you can move toward a solution to capitalize on the good and improve or eliminate the bad.

Human Connection

Before you can secure a single donation or volunteer, your organization has to make an emotional connection with people. This is the first step to building trust and and creating a human connection. And human connections are powerful.

You can spread your message so much more effectively when you have others who are spreading it for you.

Human connection is so powerful that it is the centerpiece of Google’s algorithm. There is no better way to defuse your relationship with Google than to focus on connecting with your target market in a way that is sincere and heartfelt.

So set up your organization right—make sure Google can’t hold your website hostage. Put your users’ experience at the forefront of your SEO strategy.

Also, take a look at this post by our friends at Wild Apricot – The Top 8 SEO Tips for Nonprofits Who Want to Rank #1, or check out the other posts in our SEO series – SEO Part I: What Powerful SEO-Friendly Content Looks Like For NPOs.

SEO Part III: Optimizing Your Images for Users and Crawlers

Mindy Schoeneman - August 1, 2017

SEO-Friendly Images

Who doesn’t know the quote from Field of Dreams? “If you build it, they will come.” While it’s a throwback to 1989, the sentiment is something that often still prevails today in the business and nonprofit world.

Unfortunately, building a website and hitting the publish button isn’t enough to bring in visitors. You need to develop your marketing vehicles and channels to raise brand awareness. And ultimately, you need to secure donations and volunteers or make sales. The best place to start is with a firm marketing foundation. Part of that firm marketing foundation is built on solid SEO principles.

Why? Because it’s hard enough to be heard above the noise without having Google working against you. Use the power that is Google to your advantage. To learn more about SEO and what you can do to improve your ranking, take a look at the SEO series starting with Part 1 and Part 2.

The series is authored by Wanna Pixel’s own team member, Mindy Schoeneman. Mindy specializes in taking an organic approach to marketing and ranking. She covered SEO-friendly content in Part 1, backlinks in Part 2, and in this article, she is talking all about the relationship between SEO and images.

Did you know that images influence your ranking? Did you know there are such things as SEO-friendly images? Keep reading to learn more about it.

how can an image be seo-friendly?

Do Google crawlers scan images and declare a photo to be rankable or un-rankable? Is Google’s AI an art critic too?

The short answer to the first question is sort of, but not in the way you’re probably imagining. As for the second question, the answer is no: Google’s AI isn’t an art critic, but it is designed to show searchers the results that have historically received the most traffic.

An image can certainly be SEO-friendly, though. But its friendliness has nothing to do with its subject matter or composition. At least not from a Google robot perspective.

Say what, Mindy?

Hang in there. I’ll explain. Let’s start at the beginning of how to optimize an image for the web.

image optimization

Optimizing an image starts with your image choice. Remember from Part 1—The best metric by which to measure your SEO success comes in the form of human connection.

You can’t sell anything or obtain a single donation without first making a human connection. That human connection starts with emotion. And images are the perfect vehicle for stirring emotion and making that human connection.

Our brains are wired to look for human faces. Once we find a human face, we analyze that face and process the visual cues represented. Things such as the slight lift of an eyebrow, furrowing of the brow, or a wide smile send a message our brains can process more quickly than written or spoken words. It’s something we do without consciously making an effort to do so.

the human side of making a connection through images

Choosing the right images can make a huge impact on your ability to connect with your visitors.

In this article from Kissmetrics, Jonathan Koo offers up case studies they performed for their customers to improve the user-experience. Skip down to case study number 18, and you’ll see for yourself the difference a properly used photo of a human face can make. Koo’s team saw conversions increase by 65 percent once they added emphasis to a photo of a smiling person, making the design and content work together.

For heart-centered nonprofits and businesses, it’s incredibly important to not only choose an image with people in it, but also to choose an image that gets at the heart of how you serve people. You need images that convey the right emotion.

How are you making the world a better place? Can you show the impact of what you do in a photo with people? If so, then it’s time to capture those images. By conveying the heart of what you do through nonverbal cues found in images, you’re sending a message that your visitors’ brains will process instantly and then pass on to their hearts.

the tech side of optimizing images

The first step to optimizing an image for your website is compression. Anytime you’re uploading large files to your website, you’re setting yourself up for failure. While it’s important to use beautiful, high-resolution images, high-quality images are huge. And a website has to be lean to be as fast as possible.

Any website with a load-time longer than three seconds means you stand to lose some visitors. And Google will lower your ranking. That goes for the mobile and desktop version of your website.

To increase speed, there are many optimization techniques Wanna Pixel employs across each website, but properly optimizing images is something that doesn’t stop when the website is complete. Are you blogging on your website? If so, every image you add to a post needs to be compressed and optimized.

Mindy, what is this compression thing you keep talking about? Won’t my images look terrible if I compress them? Is compressing each image I add to my blogs really going to make a difference in the load time of my entire website?

Okay. Let’s answer those questions.

what is image compression and how does it help?

Imagine you have a box. And in that box, you need to store your clothes from the previous season. You open up your closet and begin throwing all of your clothes into the box. It quickly fills to overflowing, and you still have several pieces of clothing to add. And there is no second box.

Because you’re a problem-solver, you analyze the situation. Then you start over, folding and rolling each piece of clothing so it takes up less space. You discover once you’re done, that you still have plenty of room left in the box. You even throw in the shoes that go with those clothes.

Compression works the same way. The box is your website server where all of your files are stored, and the clothes are your images. If your images are properly compressed, not only will that allow room for more images and files, but it also means that visitors’ browsers will be able to more quickly access those files. Why? Because they aren’t digging through a box of clothes that were just thrown in there. Everything is nicely organized and optimized.

It’s a lot more technical than that, of course, but the general idea is that you can put great-quality images on your website without slowing it down. You won’t be able to see the difference in the images if optimized properly, either.

While it might not seem like a big deal to optimize now while your website is still fresh and shiny, down the road when you’ve written 130 blog posts, your box will be overflowing. And going back to optimize all of those images from the last three years will be more of an undertaking than optimizing as you post.

A great free image optimizer I use often is Optimizilla. And if you’re not sure how well your website rates on load time, then check out GTmetrix. The results can be terrifying if you’ve never asked a pro to optimize your website for speed.

the meta side of image optimization

Anytime you hear the word meta in reference to a website, automatically know that there’s a one-in-10 chance it means information that isn’t visible to the average website visitor. Meta information such as meta titles and tags and alt text are written for crawlers.

Remember when I mentioned that Google crawlers sort of scan images and declare them rankable or unrankable? Well, crawlers don’t have eyes. They can’t actually see an image and note the colors and shapes and subject matter (at least not yet). Instead, they look for the information that is attached to an image. That information is meta information.

A properly uploaded and optimized image will have a filename, alternate text, and in some instances, a description (and possibly a caption where appropriate). This is something that either can be added to the image file ahead of time (that’s above my pay grade, meaning that’s advanced image stuff I don’t know how to do), or the information can be added when uploading the image to your media library on your WordPress website.

If you have something other than WordPress, there’s always a way to include the alt text and filename in a way that lets Google’s crawlers access it. You just might need a little professional help in learning how to do it.

why is meta information for images important?

It’s important because it reinforces the relevance of the information you’re sharing on your website. It’s like a little echo of the words you’ve already spoken. It’s a signal to Google that you are on the up-and-up and not trying to trick visitors with bait and switch tactics.

This information is also important to have on your website because it expands your reach. Have you ever entered a keyword or phrase into Google search and then selected the Images option to search for image results only? If so, maybe you’ve wondered how Google knows to return relevant images.

Google knows because crawlers have indexed pages on which those images were found, indexing the alternate text and filenames for each image. By making sure you have relevant filenames and alternate text on your images, you are increasing the chances that someone will find your website through an image search.

And it’s really simple to do. It takes hardly any time at all.

meta information examples

So what in the world does an optimized filename and alt text tag look like?

Let’s start with the filename. An example of a terrible filename that won’t win you any SEO points:

Img_10192850943.jpg

What can you tell me about the photo based on that filename? I’ll wait. Take your time…

That’s right. You can tell me it’s a jpg file, which is completely useless information. I really doubt very many people if anyone is going to search for img_10192 blah blah and then stumble across your image and fall in love with it and visit your website.

Instead, a really great example that will win you all the SEO points is this:

YMCA_Camp_Fitch_summer_camp_2017_01.jpg

That filename tells a story. It tells me that the image presented should be an image of summer camp hosted by YMCA Camp Fitch from 2017. If I were looking for a summer camp or YMCA summer camp in a search, then this image might be one of the image results.

alt text

Alt text is short for alternate text. Have you ever gone to a website where the images didn’t load? Imagine that’s how all website appear to you. Imagine you are visually impaired and use an accessibility app to browse the web. The only information you have to go on to understand what is in each image is the alt text.

Now imagine you’re a Google crawler and you have to index a page and its images. You can read the filename, but that’s all you have to understand the relevancy of the photos to the content.

Utilize alt text to connect with individuals who are visually impaired. Use it to describe what’s happening in the photo. By doing so, you’ll also be generating more information for Google to index. Which is a good thing.

So, an example of terrible alt text which will not win you any points with Google or those with accessibility needs:

YMCA Camp Fitch summer camp 2017

It’s important to have the important words in there, but this alt text doesn’t do a good job of describing the scene. Instead, a good alt text would be:

Children laughing and roasting marshmallows at YMCA Camp Fitch

That alt text tells a tale. That text gives the visitor and Google more information.

when in doubt

If you’re ever in doubt about optimizing your image, always consult the rule-maker. Who is the rule-maker? Google.

Google knows they make many people go a little crazy trying to understand what it is they want from website owners. So to help alleviate some of the mystery, they have a great repository of webmaster tutorials. Take a look at their image publishing guidelines.

one last thing…

If you don’t have an image sitemap on your website that has been submitted to Google, then it’s time to work on it. After you update those filenames and alt text, that is. If you don’t know what the heck a sitemap is or how to generate one, then contact your webmaster or the Wanna Pixel team to help you with that.

And if you’re like me and you nerd out by reading studies and learning more about human behavior and design psychology, then take a look at this. It’s an article from Will Fanguy at Piktochart about five studies focused on visual information processing.

The next post in the series will be one you won’t soon forget. We’ll be talking about the overall impact of SEO and the SEO overlords (aka Google).

Part IV: Do You Feel Like Google Is Holding Your Website Hostage?

SEO Part II: Why You Need to Develop Your Backlinks

Mindy Schoeneman - July 6, 2017

Ranking on Google

We started a series of posts about understanding SEO. To read the first post, which is all about SEO-friendly content, take a look at it here. In that post, Wanna Pixel team member Mindy Schoeneman talked about the importance of creating content while keeping the most important SEO metric in mind—human connection.

Mindy also mentioned backlinks in the article. Why? Because according to Google, quality content and backlinks are the two most important ranking factors. What is ranking? It’s the position in which you’re listed in a search results page. And the higher your rank, the higher your number of visitors.

Mindy’s going to share what backlinks are, how you obtain backlinks, and what the best practices are around backlink building.

Backlink 411

While content provides the context by which search engines measure relevancy of your site against certain search terms and keywords, good SEO doesn’t begin and end there. Backlinks are equally important because they add credibility and authority to your words. This means that you should be just as diligent about developing backlinks as you are about curating a stellar content library.

So What Is a Backlink?

A backlink is created anytime someone links back to your website online. In this article, for example, up above where it says Mindy Schoeneman, if you were to click on those words, you’d be taken to my website. That hyperlink within the text is a backlink.

Why Do Backlinks Matter?

Aside from the credibility afforded by being linked to from high-quality websites, those links also influence the way Google crawls websites.

Google’s ranking system only works because it employs an artificial intelligence called RankBrain. RankBrain analyzes the information received from Google’s bots, or crawlers.

Google’s crawlers get their information by combing through websites and indexing pages. While they’re crawling, they take note of any hyperlinks within the content. They will then crawl the link that’s within the content.

Understanding the Connection

Imagine a giant spiderweb. The spiderweb is interconnected, each strand made stronger and more effective through its connection to another strand that is connected to another, and another, and so on. These strands meet at intersections all throughout the web. Think of each intersection as a website, and the internet as a giant spiderweb of interconnecting web pages and topics. A backlink creates a strand from one intersection to another.

Backlinks serve to connect the common threads and lend credibility to the information covered at both ends of that link. It provides additional information for RankBrain to analyze and use as it returns the most relevant information to searchers.

White Hat Backlinks

Now that you understand the backlinks, your next step is to start developing opportunities, right? Before you start Googling “backlink opportunities,” there’s more you need to know.

Google has never revealed every ranking factor they use in their algorithms. While I can’t say with certainty why Google doesn’t release that information, I can guess one reason they don’t is because there are always people who try to find a short cut. There’s always at least one person (and usually hundreds of thousands following suit) who strives to find a way to game the system.

Remember the giant spiderweb? The integrity of each strand in that spiderweb adds to the overall integrity of the web. The same goes for the giant web that is the internet.

The quality of the website linking back to yours is important. It will help determine the integrity of that strand. Having your URL by way of a hyperlink attached to several websites known for spammy practices will do you more harm than good because it will create several strands from your little intersection that lack integrity—you won’t be able to build anything from those strands. The first gust of wind will blow them away.

Likewise, having your URL linked with credible, authoritative websites is a point in your favor. It’s a solid foundation upon which you can build.

So how do you build backlinks with integrity? The best way to build a collection of credible backlinks is to start by putting out great content of your own. Before you can do that, you have to get your house in order.

Building Backlinks

Your website has to be in order first for backlinks to have any effect. Because just as you are looking for great websites who might want to host your backlink, those websites are looking for great websites to link to.

What does a great website entail? The folks at Wanna Pixel would be happy to show you their portfolio as an example. A great website is one that has been designed with the user in mind with a focus on providing valuable information in the way of content that’s relevant and well-written. It’s also important to choose a reliable platform that produces the best SEO-friendly results for users (more to come on that in subsequent articles, so stay tuned).

Once you have your online home in order, it’s time to find a home for your backlink. How do you do that? This is the part where you develop a repertoire of topics that you can draw from to produce stellar content. Add some of that content to your website. Then share it. Invite others to read it. And if you’re working to improve your content for the future, ask a few people for feedback on your content.

Finding Interested Website Owners

Once you’ve worked on your content and topics, the next step is to find someone who is interested in having you as a guest on their blog, podcast, vlog, etc. The best way to do this is to start by making friends online. Find professionals and entrepreneurs who are in an industry related to yours.

Not sure where to begin? Check out some Facebook groups. There are many niche-topic groups on Facebook as well as groups dedicated to entrepreneurial life and goal-setting.

If your content-writing skills aren’t up to being featured, you can always hire a ghostwriter to pick your brain and then put your words down for you.

Professional Organizations

Another way to attain a high-quality backlink or two is to join a reputable professional organization that will list you on their website and point back to your website.

For example, anyone who joins this networking group is listed on the members page with a link that leads back to their website. The same goes for my local Chamber of Commerce.

The Most Important Thing to Remember

It takes time to build backlinks. Set a goal for yourself, such as one a month or six per year, and then work on it little by little. You have to find those website owners who have content relevant to what you have to offer. You have to start first with building a relationship with them and getting to know who their target audience is before you can create content that will really speak to the audience they’ve already built.

So take your time, make friends, and focus on providing the very best information you can possibly provide.