Quick recap: you now know what are Knowledge Graph and Knowledge Panel and you’re more confident in your chances of receiving the latter without a Wikipedia page.

By now you should’ve settled for an entity home, uploaded your new description, and started working towards spreading it on 3rd party websites. Websites that Google perceives as credible sources of information.

As mentioned in the previous articles, you should aim for a list of 30+ corroborated sources. Ranging from well-known social media sites to industry or niche websites.

Personal or business, keep in mind that everything that’s on your entity’s home should match the information presented on those websites: name, founding, or birth date, location, no. of employees, etc.

Here is a list of potentially credible sources that Google uses for personal, business, and podcast Knowledge Panel:

Remember that your main strategy is to educate Google about your entity: who, what, why, how. Once Google is confident about this information, it can then create a Knowledge Graph entry and eventually present your entity using a Knowledge Panel.

Once you have created your set of 30+ corroborations, it can range from anywhere between weeks or several months before receiving a Knowledge Panel. Best of luck!

In the previous article, you’ve learned what a Knowledge Panel is, where it comes from, how it works, and a couple of hands-on tips aimed at obtaining one for yourself personally or for your brand.

Today, I’ll go even deeper into the subject so that you can take action and work step-by-step in order to become a known entity for Google’s Knowledge Graph and receive your very own Knowledge Panel.

Knowledge Graph and Knowledge Panels are not your usual marketing tactics, don’t worry if you are not well versed in the topic. Take action now and be ahead of the game (these things tend to become common knowledge in the blink of an eye).

Step 1: Create a clear description of your entity

This is as simple as it sounds. Only it isn’t. Sorry!

If you want Google to be confident in sharing information about you or your brand in the form of a Knowledge Panel, you need to consistently deliver the same set of essential information to it.

Fundamental things such as who you are, what type of business you do, who your audience is, or since when are you doing whatever it is that you’re doing.

It might sound easy, but buckle up for the ride. People usually have this tendency to describe things poetically, use ambiguous phrasing – especially adjectives. Unfortunately, that’s a big no-no from Google’s machine. It requires factual information, expressed in a clear and concise manner.

Source: Giphy

Pro tip: prepare both a short and extended description. You’ll find out why later in this article.

Take your time, and read your text out loud – dumb it down as much as possible. Jason Barnard, the Brand Serp guy and Knowledge Panel connaisseur, puts it this way: imagine you are explaining something to a baby. You must be able to describe it as clearly as possible, don’t bore, and be consistent. Otherwise, trust issues might appear.

If possible, avoid inserting information that’s dwelling on the past or at least do not emphasize it too much, it’s ok to briefly mention important bits of information.

Step 2: Settle your entity’s home

Once you’ve written your description, it’s time to move to the next step: your entity’s home!

Your entity’s home is the main hub of information entrusted to that entity. It must be a page that you control 100% and it’s under your propriety. I’m talking about a homepage or a dedicated about me/us page.

Although possible, it’s not recommended to use a social profile such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Why? Well, those companies may very well decide one day to remove or edit your page in a way that doesn’t do you justice.

Having full control of your entity’s home is a smart choice for the long run.

Cool.

Now that you’ve decided what page is the entity home, it’s time to bring the set of information from Step 1 into action. I recommend adding the description in the upper part of your entity’s home webpage so that it’s perceived as the most important part of the page both for Google and your readers.

Machines read text from top to bottom – most important to least important, so the order is crucial.

Step 3: Deliver a consistent message about your entity around the web

Drafting a clear description (Step 1) and publishing it on an entity home (Step 2) is only part of the game here.

Moving on to Step 3, you need to spread the entity’s description and its home across the web. How do you do that?

You need to create a list of 3rd party websites and profiles of your entity. Ranging from social media platforms, trusted knowledge bases to business listings, here is a list of potential platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Crunchbase, WikiData, BestCompany, Glassdoor, Craft.co, ProductHunt, Owler, TrustPilot. This is not an exhaustive list, for more examples check this page.

Next, after you’ve built your list, you need to add the exact same set of information that’s published on your entity home to all those platforms in the about me/company section. This will corroborate your entity home to this 3rd party website and consolidate how Google and users perceive your entity.

Remember that pro tip for Step 1? I hope you took it because it’s a major time-saver when it comes to platforms that only allow a limited number of characters for your description field.

The end goal here is to reach a list of a minimum of 30 corroborations.

Step 4: Schema code and why it matters for a Knowledge Panel

By now, you should have a clear description of your entity, a home for it, and a list of a minimum of 30 corroborations that consolidate those efforts.

This is where it gets technical for a minute. Because Google’s understanding of your efforts is crucial, you need to make sure you clearly deliver all this information in a language easy for it to digest: Schema Markup, also known as structured data.

You have to format the essential set of information in Schema Markup and implement it within the code of your entity’s home. Similar to FAQ, Reviews or How-to Schema.

Screenshot of a Schema Markup using Detailed Chrome extension.

This step can easily be accomplished by a developer or by using free tools from Kalicube for personal entities or business entities.

Step 5: It’s a wrap – now what?

You did it. Not only that you now have a more factual and clear description of you or your business, but Google and the entire web are aware of it as well.

Congratulations!

What’s left to do now is a periodical check-up to see when your entity will receive a Knowledge Panel thanks to its entry within Google’s Knowledge Graph. A weekly search for your brand name should do it.

Hubspot is a great example of what we’re aiming for in the long run:

If you are a totally unknown entity to Google, it could take several months. If you are already mentioned around the web, it could be several weeks or days. Either way, the hard part towards earning a Knowledge Panel is now completed.

Feel free to drop a comment below or reach out to us via email if you have any questions.

Link building is an ever-evolving process. Over the past years, it’s been shifting from simply dropping tons of spammy links all over the web to spending extensive amounts of time for just a couple of relevant opportunities.

Nowadays, link building is more about developing multiple strategies in order to develop a healthy backlink profile. We’ve previously discussed using Google Alerts and online forums for quick wins in the game.

This article is about building E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) through contributing to Quora and Reddit threads. For those reading with a skeptical mind, John Muller from Google confirmed that links from Quora are definitely picked up.

What is E-A-T and why should I care?

E-A-T is a ranking factor launched by Google in 2018 and represents a set of website quality standards to be applied by quality testers when rating websites.

It was initially aimed at YMYL (YourMoneyYourLife) websites, precisely topics around finance and personal health. However, it’s now part of Google’s core algorithm and has an impact on a wider range of niches.

With roughly 547200 new websites created each day, it makes sense that Google had to come up with a highly evolved algorithm to reward quality and trustworthy websites while demoting pure spam.

Quora and Reddit are considered low-hanging fruits in the process of increasing your E-A-T scores and it comes as no surprise, but you should take into consideration a couple of dos and don’ts.

Taking the time to develop a professional user profile

Rushing this step won’t help you in the long run and could compromise your entire campaign for both Quora and Reddit. There are millions of fake profiles, bots, and spammers so you need to make sure your profile stands out from the crowd.

Your profile should, at the very least, display the following:

1. Your real full name and/or username – avoid as much as possible weird symbols or numbers as they are usually used by spammers.
2. A real photo of yourself as the profile picture – use a relevant image to the niche you are planning to contribute to.
3. Biography – education, experience, maybe something funny, and profile links from other relevant social networking sites.

What does it take to successfully contribute to Quora and Reddit threads?

Both Quora and Reddit developed highly sophisticated anti-spam systems so that threads are not flooded with useless information and self-promotion comments. Without further ado, here’s our list of dos and don’ts when it comes to using Quora and Reddit for link building:

• Quickly scan the entire thread and understand where the conversation stands. Your reply should flow naturally with the rest of the messages.
• Avoid beginning your reply promoting an external resource – it will automatically be picked as spam.
• Show that you’ve done your homework by referencing high-quality sources for that topic.
• Simply replying with a bunch of random words or pitching a mundane sentence will most likely get your comment deleted.
• Format your text so that it’s easy to read and understand – use bullet points, stylize text and even add visual content if possible.
• Link to your website as naturally as you can – first prove your expertise on the topic, add value to the thread and avoid being too salesy. We recommend you reference your website as a resource within the body or at the end of the post.
• It’s not all about placing backlinks – building E-A-T is a delicate and nuanced process, sometimes all it takes is to contribute with a high-quality reply and help to answer the question.
• Make sure your quote’s sources are always disclosed – plagiarism is not acceptable, I hope that comes as no surprise.

Wrapping up

I hope that this article managed to remove some of the stigmas Quora and Reddit have when it comes to backlinks, SEO, and building an online presence.

Nonetheless, as emphasized in the previous article of the series, this strategy can turn out to be tremendously helpful when you take the time to understand the game and avoid toxic self-promotion.

Using Quora and Reddit for link building in 2021 is no easy feat, but I’m sure by now you’re understood that link building is a marathon, not a sprint!

In our previous article from the Link Building 101 series, we discussed what hyperlinks are, why they are relevant and important for higher organic rankings, and how you can start earning backlinks using Google Alerts. I hope you’ve already managed to put it into action and you’re eager to learn another link-building strategy – this time slightly more challenging.

Today we’re going to uncover how online communities and forums can play a crucial role in developing a healthy, authoritative, and diversified link profile in 2021. Whether your website is brand new or already established in its niche, this form of link-building has the potential of boosting not only your organic but also direct traffic.

Source: Giphy

First, let’s discuss ground rules 

If you’re looking to get successful at building backlinks using this method you need to know a set of basic principles. As with most of the link-building strategies out there, you mustn’t treat this superficially or you’ll end up earning yourself a manual penalty from Google. So, in order to obtain positive outcomes you have to:

• Find highly relevant forums for your niche – I can’t stress how important this is. Trust me, earning links for your B2B AI software from a pet food forum is a big “no-no”.
• Try and prioritize forums and online communities that have solid metrics such as organic traffic, referring domains and depending on what SEO tool you’re using DA (domain authority – SEMRush’s trademark), or DR(domain rating – aHrefs trademark) .
• Take a look at how moderated those forums and communities actually are. You don’t want to be part of a platform that has zero moderation. Why? Because sooner or later Google will associate you with low-quality spammy websites and bots. You need to find that sweet spot of a forum where you are allowed to comment and you’re in genuinely good company.
• Your comments should have proper grammar, add value to the forum discussion and actually help its readers.  This will increase the chances your comment won’t get deleted or marked as spam by the above forum moderators.

Following this high-level overview set of rules will increase your chances of landing and maintaining quality backlinks from online communities and forums.

Ok, I’m hooked – how can I start building backlinks using online forums?

As the golden rule of SEO says: “it depends”.

Based on time availability, budget size, and link-building expertise, you have 3 options:

1. Keep it in-house or DIY: if you’re just starting to heat your engines and money is crucial, you could start researching opportunities and participating in online discussions yourself. After all, no one will ever promote your own product better than yourself. However, keep in mind that the process in itself is very tedious and time-consuming, so scalability will eventually be an issue.Pro tip: use Google Search in order to find relevant forums. You could search for example: “inurl:forum online marketing” or “inurl:forums b2b marketing”
   
   
2. Use freelancing platforms such as Fiverr: finding a freelancer proficient in this link-building strategy can work if your budget allows for medium costs. While it might be a little bit riskier in that you’re not fully under control, scalability will likely increase at a rate unattainable by yourself.
3. Collaborate with a specialized provider: this comes as an alternative for established businesses that can afford to set aside a dedicated budget for link building. Specialized providers already have a vast database of opportunities and are aficionados in successfully earning backlinks on online communities and forums. One of the services that have been recently making waves is Crowdo.

Wrapping up

Hopefully, you’re more confident in what’s usually deemed as a highly spammy link-building strategy: using online communities and forums for hyperlinks. You should know by now that when done properly, online comments can boost online rankings and potentially bring direct traffic from relevant discussions around your niche’s topic.

Feel free to test what you’ve just learned in the comment section below. Until our next link building 101 article – remember that link building is a marathon, not a sprint!

Let’s get this out of the way from the very beginning.

No, link building is not dead, and frankly, it might never be. Why?

Although it might not play the leading role it did when Google initially launched its Search algorithm, earning hyperlinks or mentions from other relevant websites in your industry is still a powerful way of showing Google that your page should be deemed authoritative.

It seems like everything’s gotten a bit more complicated over the last few years when it comes to finding those link-building strategies that are able to increase online rankings and are also in accordance with Google’s guidelines.

Source: Giphy

You might want to consider reading our previous article about safely approaching link building.

TL;DR: although often a tedious process, link building is not something that you should ignore in 2021 as it’s still one of the top three most important ranking factors out there.

With tremendous amounts of content published each day, and people having their inboxes bombarded, one might feel helpless in the journey of earning backlinks for their online assets.

How can you take action as soon as possible in this space? What free tools can you leverage to build backlinks?

Join us as we uncover some of the most beginner-level link-building techniques that you could take advantage of right after reading our article series. Today, we’re thrilled to share one of our most low-hanging fruit strategies: Google Alerts.

Using Google Alerts to claim what’s yours and more

From the initial setup, tips & tricks, and tracking  – here’s what you need to know in order to maximize your link-building efforts using Google Alerts.

• First off, you need to set up Google Alerts for specific brand queries ->
• Let’s imagine you run an email marketing software for small businesses called SendAway. We recommend setting up basic brand name alerts as such:”SendAway” -site:sendaway.com
  “Send Away” -site:sendaway.com
  “SendAway.com” -site:sendaway.com

This way you should be able to pick up relevant notifications from Google’s database, without triggering alerts when your own website publishes new content (hence the -site:sendaway.com part). Adding quotation marks will trigger only exact match searches, thus helping you avoid most of the noise from reaching your inbox.

• You could also set up specific alerts targeting the types of products sold by your business:”email marketing” -site:sendaway.com
  “email tools” -site:sendaway.com
  “email templates” -site:sendaway.com
  “email marketing software” -site:sendaway.com
  “email automation” -site:sendaway.com

You can use any search operator aka the special commands available for an enhanced Google Search experience, so hopefully, you’ll have some fun while setting alerts. If you’re not familiar with search operators, Ahrefs did a great job at creating a comprehensive list.

• Now that you have your alerts in place, it’s time to wait for some Google magic. As per your setup, relevant alerts will be sent to the email address you’ve used initially. What you’re looking for in an opportunity is when a mention comes from another website, but there’s no backlink attached to your brand.
• When that happens, you can use a tool like Hunter.io or manually check a website’s contact and/or advertising pages in order to find their contact information. Now, you are ready to send a pitch asking if they could also add a backlink to your text mention. We suggest that you prepare the pitch beforehand and simply change certain fields for personalization reasons.
• What? An email template that you could use right away?

Yes, of course, we have a turnkey template for you – however, we do recommend creating one that accurately suits your style and brand voice:

Subject line: Thank you for the mention!

Email body:

“Hey [Name, Website],

I just noticed that you’ve mentioned [Me, My Brand, My Product, etc.] on your site: [Link].

Thank you for endorsing our efforts, it’s always a pleasure to meet people that find our [Content, Products, Resources, etc.] useful and valuable for their [readers, audience, etc.].

Would you mind linking back to us for attribution purposes? 

Let me know if you’d like us to share any insights.

Talk soon,
[YourName]”

• As a final step, make sure to add the opportunity to a link-building status sheet  alongside outreach dates so that you can send follow-up emails easier and smarter (don’t expect to get a response straight off the bat, these will typically require a sequence)

However, honest disclosure, you should set realistic outcome expectations in accordance with your business/brand growth phase.

When such mentions do pop up, you know you’re halfway towards earning a new link. With the author already being familiar with your business and products, there’s a good chance they’ll be responsive to your email.

Wrapping up for now

Important note: Google previously announced that they can pick up on unlinked mentions BUT that they do not pass PageRank. This means that striving to earn that link will definitely pay off in the long run. Furthermore, you should know that a no-follow link is also better than nothing at all thanks to Google treating it “as a way to better understand how to appropriately analyze and use links within our systems.”

Feel free to drop us a comment if you have any questions. Hopefully, you’ll find our article motivating and jump straight to the action.

Until our next link building 101 article – remember that link building is a marathon, not a sprint!

Recently Google announced that it was penalizing guest blog post articles.

This is a huge deal for many marketers basing their SEO strategy on link building.

At Bold we’ve ceased utilizing this best practice for a while now. Backlinks built via link building outreach tactics are in many cases completely unnatural.

From our experience, even before this announcement, google don’t buy this anymore. Submitting guest posts doesn’t actually lead to any improvement in rankings. Having a guest post or not having it ddoesn’t matter from an SEO perspective. So we’ve stopped focusing on link building but we didn’t have anything against guest posting once in a while.

Now, Google officially want backlinks from guest posting to be nofollow. A no follow link doesn’t deliver SEO juice so it doesn’t impact the rankings. On the other hand, dofollow links are mostly discredited by Google, so in the best case scenario they will have no impact, in the worst case scenario they will lead to penalties.

Basically, from now on Google will not completely ignore nofollow links, the algorithm will take them into consideration giving them very little importance, but still, it won’t ignore them completely.

We don’t recommend not guest posting at all as there are other added values to guest posting such as building authority and generating relevant traffic to your website from publications your target audience reads.

So what should you do?

1. Don’t abuse guest posting, be moderate
2. In order to be on the safe side, when you guest post, ask the website that hosts your post to use a nofollow attribute. You can check that was done by viewing the page source, look for your link and see if the nofollow tag appears there.
3. When you publish guest posts on your own website – use a nofollow attribute as well.
4. Don’t guest post aiming for ranking improvement. When you choose a website to host your guest post consider other parameters that might benefit you such as the traffic it can potentially bring you, the relevancy and the authority of this domain.

Guest posting purely for SEO ranks is almost dead. Content on the other hand, is still king, and it’s there to stay.

Good luck!

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