Your Digital Footprint

what it is| how to avoid common mistakes | how to fix a bad footprint | anchor-text detail

What is Your Digital Footprint

Everything you do on the internet leaves a digital footprint. The photos, pages, videos you like, subscribe to, the button you press and links you click on, along with the pages you visit leave a record that indicates something about what you like and who you are. More significant are the post and content that you put online. All of this is your Digital Footprint which tells the story, good and bad, of your brand. It is vital that you get it right and don’t mess it up by doing what might seem logical but runs afoul of rules and regulation you don’t even know exist.

Content Marketing Builds Your Brand Footprint

Your online activity and communication leaves an important impression of who you are and of your brand. Today it is important for brands to engage in building content about their products, people and company. It is even more important to have others create this content about you. This is what we call content marketing. This along with what you do on social media, what publication and directory mention you (citations) and who is talking about you, that creates your brand digital footprint.

Marketing Mistakes That Destroy Your Digital Footprint

Of course you do want to have all that content and brand mention point to you website or your promotions etc. And you want to have those articles, link and mentions refer to you with words that describe your target market. You want the links and articles to use words that people are searching for. But this is where you have to be very careful as we explain in the video below.

One of the biggest mistakes markets make today is to stack content and links with search keywords which leaves a bad digital footprint and insures they will not get ranked.

Chapter 2 of Digital Media Marketing shows you how to avoid this critical error and optimize your footprint with quality content marketing and high authority links to your website.

VIDEO – Building your Digital Footprint

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-bCCm5SlA

Your Digital Marketing Footprint Video Script

content marketing is a major part of creating your digital footprint

Hello Ian here, this time with a short review of chapter 2 of my latest book Digital Media, which is about your digital footprint.

Probably one of the most famous acronyms for marketing is AIDA that means that you create awareness, interest, desire and action. But one of the mistakes that people make is that they think it all happens on their website and this is not true.

You create awareness of your website by marketing it on the Internet …and that happens long before they get to your page. In the simplest term this means that you have to be seen to be heard and you need to get your most persuasive and informative content where your prospects are.

It must be relevant, high quality content that is not seen as self-serving, and it has to be on high on quality relevant sites, .. with appropriate links back to your page that are balanced and natural.

Balance and Authority is Essential

We used to link to your site with keywords in the link, it just made sense. That was the way that we were taught to do it, that’s what Google wanted. If you’re marketing a family hotel in Barbados it’s logical to use those words in the link. The link would say family hotel in Barbados. Everyone did it but if you already have a lot of links to your page with that word – it’s not okay, not anymore.

This is one of the biggest mistakes that markets make today – they stack content and the links back to their site with words that people are searching for, but with everyone trying to stock content with keywords, much of the content seems suspicious ….and not authentic to google and search engine.

It gets zapped, not indexed, not bothered with and it does not get listed or ranked

Look here at the links to B.B.C. – 74 % of the links are generic. They don’t mention the brand or the keyword, why? Because that would be bad balance, it’s too self-serving, Spamy and it’s not going to get picked up by Google.

This chapter shows you precisely what that means and what tools you need to check it and help balance it out.

It gets quite detailed but the language is not technical and I explain things from the ground up so you get a pretty good idea even if you haven’t a grounding in the Internet.

There’s a lot more to it

… including insights on using directories, things you need to know about TripAdvisor, Metasearch engines and Google new search ranking with RankBrain.

It’s all explained in an easy conversational style.

Next see Review of Chapter 3 – Content Marketing Strategies

BONUS! – Just for looking

How You Can Balance Bad Anchor Text

This is a Book Buyer Bonus that I am pleased to make available to you because you just read this page. Congratulates I am delighted to help! The book explains how to avoid getting your links out of balance, it does not show how to fix it. i created this short video for those readers who find themselves with unbalanced text and want to fix it. /span>

Anchor Text in Detail

What we call your digital footprint is actually defined largely by Anchor-text. It is and integral part of your footprint as most places that you build for your network will have links back to your site. These are also called Backlinks, and the text that you put in the link such as “MYHOTELNAME” is the Anchor-text. We cover that in the overview and videos above about your foot print. But not in detail. It get a bit precise, sorry, but that’s they way it goes. I’ll be brief as i can and cover what you need to know in the next couple of paragraphs.

Google Knows What Anchor-Text you Need

Google has an amazing database of links and content and what is the exact combination of good and bad anchor-text is constantly shifting. To be safe you need to know how your site and the pages you want to promote stack up against the averages and then plan your anchor-text based on facts. Other than that its guess work and trying to guess the averages of millions of sites is simple not on.

You Can Find What you Need with a bit of Work

Now you can go to ahref and put in your url to get a list of all the backlinks to you. you can go to Majestic to see how the breakdown into several categories and you can go to MOZ to find out the Domian Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA). you need to know this as you have to have some High DA (70+) and you may need to get rid of some Low DA (less that 10) as they don’t help build your Authority.

Well that a lot of work but you can do it all for free if you are prepared to jump about. but their is one solution that just dies it all fir you. It may cost 40 or so $ per month but I could not exists without it. The software i use is SEOJet.com – Check it out – its all explained on their site and i am not an afiliate so this advice is honest and not self serving.

Quick and Easy Summary of the Jet

First you enter in your website address (URL like Markhat.com). The jet will then create a link map which tells you what links you need in what category and tells you exactly what blogs and anchor-text you need. Pretty Simple really. Here is what you will see.

Ok so we have 3 new terms. Whats really great about this is that through extensive research and constant monitoring and tweaking the jet has summed up 12 types of anchors into the 3vital categories that kill or build your SEO footprint.

Exact Match are you key phrases like “FAMILY HOTELS in XYZ” or in my case in the above example it might be a phrases like “Digital Media for hotels and Tourism”- This is you danger zone and it was what we demonstrated in the above video about bad footprint. The dial say I am very safe – actually too safe and I can adds some more of the other types.

Blended Anchors – Can include one of your key phrases plus non key phrase words (ie “this is why bookmarking is so vital”,“Markhat has backlink tools reviews”) – Use keyword plus, page title, brand plus keyword, partial keyword

Natural Anchors These are anchors that have no reference to your key phrase, unless your key phrase is part of your brand (ie Markhat). Can include Brand, Natural , full URL websitename.com, .www.url, home url

As you can see the dials above are telling exactly what I need to do to get on page one for my keywords. It says I have too many natural links and i can change that by adding a couple of Exact Match Phrases and a few more blended anchors.

That Simplifies it a lot!

Imagine trying to sort thru all 12 types. Here s a list prepared by TheHoth – another set of tools I have used.

Keyword – this is an exact match anchor for one of your key phrases.
Page Title – this anchor text is usually a blog post title or the actual SEO title as the anchor text.
Keyword Plus – this anchor includes one of your main key phrases plus other non-keyword phrases with it (ie “this link building article here”).
Brand Plus Keyword – this anchor includes your brand name plus a key phrase (ie “HOTH link building service”).
Partial Keyword – this anchor contains just a part of your key phrase (ie “if you’re building”).
Brand – this is just your brand name as the anchor text/
Natural – this anchor has no reference to any keywords or brand.
Full URL – this anchor is the full URL of the page being linked to as the anchor.
WebsiteName.com – this anchor is your URL written in this format: “TheHoth.com”.
Home URL – this anchor occurs on inner pages and even though the link points to an inner page the home URL is the anchor text.
No Text – this anchor is associated with image links that have no alt text.
URL with www’s – this anchor is the url written without http:// (ie www.thehoth.com).

Types of Anchors – Source is TheHoth

A Bit Of History – The Penguins Story

Google started to seriously penalise sites with over-optimized Anchor Text in 2012 2ith its update to search called Penguin. This update looked for at your total profile of links and if any one anchor was 30% or over they would throttle back your rank. A lot of people just dropped off search. A year later they dropped the threshold to under 10% and more listing vanished.

They are always tweaking the search algorithms and its impossible to guess whats coming next or even know what the actual norm is at any time. If you don’t have a tool to see what the current top sites are doing you are just playing poker with your SEO. Today there are thousands of of over-optimized profiles as many have just given up or just don’t know the rules.

Marketers are catching on and changing anchors and adding new one with “click here” and natural links, but without knowing exactly what you need its seldom effective. It is very mush a guessing game. that why I use software like the apps noted above. They show exactly were your site is positioned relative to industry norms and guides you to do exactly what needs to be done.

Other Common Anchor Text Mistakes

Internal Site Links Should have Intent
I have always had some trouble understanding the difference between internal links to pages within your website pages, back-links form other sites. The question that most SEO text omit is what are the correct anchortexts within your own site. Should you use the same classification as noted above, The answer is NO!. Using natural links – like “click here” etc can be a wasted of time in SEO terms. Internal links should have anchor text should be about INTENT. “Contact us” or “Download Our Free Destination Guide”.

Repeating Anchor Text in Links
Many of the automated post tools that we use today like Buffer, Onlywire and others, copy the same titles. and descriptions everywhere. This can undermine your SEO strategy. Search BOTS and search Algorithms can see this as a flag that you are “gaming” the system! Its important to vary anchor text. Tools like Syndwire will allow you to vary the titles and description and you can use this in conjunction with Buffer etc to vary your footprint/anchor tect.

Choosing the Wrong Keyword
It is easy to fall into this trap and many peple choose words that are too general and not specific to you. Choosing keywords that are too competitive or that no one is searching for are also common mistakes in creating a SEO strategy! Do your research using tools like Ahref, KWfindre, Semrush and Google Adwords Keyword Planner. I have been a big advocate of the keyword planner but there are better took available now. G’s planner is a very biased to Adwords so it measurements are tailored to competition for advertising, not general search and consumer need.

EAT Quality Content
A lot of SEO content used to be just focused on keyword, title, links and anchor text optimization. Today article relevance and quality are now essential. You simple cannot get a sloppy article to work for you. In fact it will hurt your effort. Write quality articles, with positive voice, with helpful on topic information about question real users have. Today articles need to demonstrate Expertise, Authority Trust – We call this EAT, its what differentiates your article and get you to page for high quality relevant articles that are properly optimized.

To Little or Too Much Content
It bites both ways. Put yourself in the user’s shoes when writing content. Address where they’re on the site, the page and in the buying process? Ask yourself if the content is necessary, if not it will largely be ignored. by the user and hurt your ranking in search. More is usually better but only if its relative an EAT-able. Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, John Mueller, gives this example: “If you’re adding random information to a category page, is it still an ecommerce page for users with “shopping” intents? Make up your mind, focus, don’t blindly stuff text.”

If You are Still Not Ranking

If you have aced all of the above and you are still not ranking- Check that your Content is Properly Optimized.
If you have optimized your page currently then you are probably failing because of RankBrain. That is summarized in chapter 3 of Digital Media. I will be writing a bonus report for book buyers that will explain this in detail and show you what needs to be done.

Technology for marketing hotels and tourism online

Coming Soon – Book 3 Technology- Sign Up For Launch Special & Bonus

Click here for an Overview of RankBrain

In a Nut Shell Here is What it Means

Often it is not SEO, links and content that stops you from getting ranked. Other factors link user behavior and signals, that are picked up by RankBrain, may be the problem. Google tracks how users react with your content compared to the content of your competitors. If a site you are competing with has a higher engagement and click-thru rate, they will get listed above you, all things being equal.

The good news is that you can boost these signals with good Social Media and off site Strategies. There are also sever tools and services that can help in this regard and I shall be evaluating them in the next book 3 on Technology.

If You Find this Helpful – Please Buy My Book

My book Website and Digital Media guides you an overview of the entire digital age strategies, tools and resources. It will help you understand the many parts and give you confidence to hire the right people and manage a full Digital marketing marketing campaign.

Also when you buy any one of my books you are helping me to continue to research, test and create articles and videos that give you leading edge tactics and know-how. It’s a good cause for both of us.

Thank you for reading this and feel free to contact me anytime.