How to Add Your Website to Google Search Console

Adding your website to Google Search Console is a crucial step in improving its visibility and performance on Google’s search engine. The Google Search Console provides valuable insights and tools to help you monitor and optimize your website’s presence in search results. In this beginner-friendly guide, we’ll go through the process of adding a website to Google Search Console and submitting a website’s sitemap to Google Search Console.

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free web service provided by Google that allows website owners and webmasters to monitor, maintain, and optimize their website’s presence in Google search results. It provides valuable insights, tools, and reports to help website owners understand how their site is performing in search and make data-driven decisions to improve its visibility and performance.

It helps website owners monitor how Google indexes their site, identify issues that might affect its visibility in search results, and offers suggestions on how to resolve any problems that prevent proper crawling and indexing.

Adding your website to the Google Search Console is one of the ways you can improve SEO on your WordPress website.

 

Benefits of Adding Your Website to Google Search Console

Adding your website to Google Search Console offers several benefits that can help improve your website’s visibility, performance, and overall success. Here are some compelling reasons to add your website to Google Search Console:

1. Website Indexing

By adding your website to Google Search Console, you ensure that Google knows about your site and its pages. Google’s search engine constantly crawls the web to discover and index new content.

By adding your site, you help Google understand your website’s structure and content, increasing the chances of your pages being indexed and displayed in search results.

2. Search Performance Insights

Google Search Console provides valuable data about how your website performs in Google search results. You can access reports that show the keywords and queries users are using to find your site, as well as metrics like impressions, clicks, and average position.

This information helps you understand which pages and queries drive traffic to your site, allowing you to optimize your content and improve your visibility in search results.

3. Indexing Issues and Errors: Google Search Console alerts you to any indexing issues or errors that may affect your website’s visibility in search results. It notifies you if Google encounters difficulties crawling certain pages, encounters errors, or finds problems with your website’s structure.

Identifying and resolving these issues ensures that your pages are properly indexed and improves your website’s overall performance in search.

4. Submitting Sitemaps: With Google Search Console, you can submit your website’s sitemap. A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your site and provides additional information about their content and organization.

Submitting a sitemap helps search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your website, improving the crawling and indexing process. It ensures that search engines are aware of all the pages on your site, including new or updated content.

5. Mobile Usability and Performance: Mobile-friendliness is crucial in today’s digital landscape. Google Search Console provides insights into your website’s mobile usability, highlighting any issues that may affect the user experience on mobile devices.

It helps you identify and resolve mobile-specific problems, ensuring your website delivers a seamless and optimized experience across different devices.

6. Manual Actions and Security Alerts: Google Search Console notifies you if your website has received a manual action or if there are any security issues detected. Manual actions occur when Google penalizes your website for violating its quality guidelines.

By being aware of manual actions, you can take the necessary steps to rectify the issues and have the penalties removed. Additionally, security alerts help you identify and address potential security breaches or malware infections, ensuring the safety and trustworthiness of your website.

 

How to Add Your WordPress Website to Google Search Console

1. The first step to adding your WordPress website to Google Search Console is to visit the Google Search Console website. You should see a page like the one in the image below. Click the “Start now” button to continue the process.

 

google search console landing page

 

2. If you aren’t signed into your Google account, you will be prompted to do so. You can sign into your Google account or create a new one.

Once you log in successfully, you will be faced with a dashboard similar to the one in the image below

 

 

3. Websites are called “Properties” on Google Search Console. To add a new property, click on the dropdown as shown in the image below and click on “Add Property”.

 

4. Google requires some verification before you can successfully add a site to the search console. This is to ensure that you have ownership rights over the website. After clicking “Add property”, you will see a popup like the one in the image below. Google provides two property types which are “Domain” and “URL prefix”. You can select the URL prefix as it provides many ways to verify ownership of your website, then enter your domain name and click the continue button.

 

It is important to state at this point that while entering your domain name, you need to also include the protocol, that is, “HTTP” or “HTTPS”. This is because Google deems both protocols to be different and therefore https://wplearnonline.com is different from http://wplearnonline.com.

To be sure of which protocol to use, you can head over to your WordPress dashboard, click on “Settings” and then click on “General”. You will see your correct site URL just as shown in the image below

 

 

Once you’re sure of the protocol to use, input it into the appropriate field and click on continue.

5. Clicking on the Continue button should reveal another popup with different options to verify ownership of your website. You have various methods such as HTML file upload, HTML tag, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and also creating a DNS record (TXT).

We will be verifying our site using the HTML file upload method

6. To use the HTML file upload method, you need to download the HTML file and then upload it into the folder of your website. For this, you will need CPANEL access ( or something similar depending on your hosting provider).

7. Once the file has been downloaded, head over to your website’s file manager, and locate the folder for your website. In most cases, if your website is the primary domain, you can look for a folder named “public html”. If however your website is an addon domain or subdomain, you should look for a folder with the name of your website. Once you locate the folder, open it and then click on “Upload” as shown in the image below.

 

8. You should see a page similar to the one below, all you have to do is drag and drop the file you just download or click on “select file” to choose where the file is on your PC. You should see an image like the one below if your file upload was successful.

 

 

9. Once you have successfully uploaded the file, you can head back to the Google Search Console and click on the “Verify” button as shown in the image below

 

 

10. Once you hit the verify button, wait some minutes and you should see a popup similar to the one in the image below that says “Ownership Verified”. Click on the “GO TO PROPERTY” option to open up the dashboard for your newly added site.

11. You should see a dashboard like the one in the image below.

Submitting Your Website’s Sitemap to Google Console

One of the things you can do on the Google search console is to submit your website’s sitemap. A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages of your website and provides valuable information about its organization and structure. It is typically in XML format and is used to help search engines like Google understand and crawl a website more efficiently.

Submitting it ensures that Google has information about your site and is able to crawl it so that it can be indexed.

 

Let’s add our website’s sitemap to the Google Search Console.

1. The first thing you want to do is install an SEO plugin. WordPress has a lot of free plugins for SEO that can help you easily generate your site’s sitemap, we will be using All-in-one SEO. You can go to the plugins page on your WordPress dashboard, click on add new, and search for the All-in-one SEO plugin in the WordPress plugin repository. Once you find it, install and activate it.

 

2. After successfully installing it, you can look for the All-in-one SEO menu on the dashboard and click on sitemaps. This will take you to a page as shown in the image below. You can click on the “open sitemap” button to reveal your sitemap on a new page.

 

3. After clicking the “open sitemap” button, you should see a page like the one in the image below. All you need is the address of your sitemap.

 

 

4. Head back to your Google Search Console, and click on “Sitemaps” on the left-hand panel. You will be required to add the URL to your sitemap. Input the URL that was generated by the All-in-one SEO plugin, and click on submit.

5. You will get a popup that says “Sitemap submitted successfully” and that’s it. You have successfully added your website’s sitemap to the Google Search Console

Conclusion

In this article, we have looked at how to add your WordPress website to Google Search Console and how to submit your website’s sitemap to Google Search Console. Adding your website to Google Search Console gives you essential insights, tools, and notifications to optimize your website’s performance in search results. Remember to explore the various features and tools provided by Google Search Console as this will equip you with valuable data to help you make informed decisions about enhancing your website’s presence and driving more organic traffic to your website.

5 Tips For Building A Profitable Blog

Blogging as some people would call it is the new gold mine, for many, blogging has become their major way of earning, there are bloggers out there who are making thousands of dollars monthly and whose fortunes have been turned around through blogging.

Some has even made blogging a full time career, since they can live a profitable life off it.

To grow and build a profitable blog requires much work and consistency accompanying it, it even goes beyond just making quality content.

Also, attracting people to your blog is not enough, you should build up to a point where your blog brings in consistent money for you.

While many argue that blogging is being overtaken by some other platforms, making cool cash through blogging is still very much acheivable.

While you might be focused on Ad platforms like Google Adsense, Adsterra, Ezoic etc

In today's world of blogging there is a wide range of opportunities for you to monetize your blog.

 Blogging is all about creating useful, educative, inspiring or entertaining content for your audience that are well targeted. Blogging is much more convenient if you have a good knowledge on a particular subject, with that it's easier to pick a niche 

You may be currently blogging out of passion or hobby but the time will come where you will need to monetize it.

 Passion can't sustain you for long and sometimes making your blogging experience a profitable one can be challenging and at the same time discouraging, it requires consistency, patience and resilience .

There are various steps to which you can make your blog a profitable venture, in this article I will be highlighting five tips for you to make your blog a profitable venture.

1. Choose a profitable and attractive niche

A niche is that particular cover of subject that you've interest in. Picking a niche may be tricky at first, many bloggers usually find this a bit difficult to do when they start their journey into blogging.

You can go for a niche like finance, health, business, travel and tourism, lifestyle, etc

It's advisable to go for a niche that you have interest in, and as well a niche that's profitable and less competitive. Understand what your audience needs, one you may need to ask yourself on this is that, is the niche you're considering in popular demand.

Study your targeted audience for a moment and what they might need. If you can successfully answer these questions, then picking a profitable niche has become a bit easier for you.

If you pick a niche that people are not searching for, your blogging experience may turn out to be a desire, and frustration may eventually knock you out.

2. Create strategic content

Even while creating content, many bloggers find it a bit difficult to come up with new ideas for a blogpost to engage in their audience, the only way to solve this is through keyword research. Don't create any content on your blog without doing appropriate keyword research. Let your headlines be catchy and SEO friendly and compelling.

Make sure your blogpost is well written and outlined, with appropriate sub headings, table of contents. Also,ensure it's optimized with SEO, you can check content from top ranking pages for inspiration.

Proofread twice and ensure it's free from grammatical errors, one of the tools to ensure this is using Grammarly.

3. Build your email list

While you may be tempted to not start this early, you should not yield to it.

You need to retain your new visitors, especially those that are interested in the contents on your blog, don't let them slip away. They may eventually not be able to visit your blog again, because the internet is populated with so many blogs related to your own very niche .

The most effective way to retain them is through email, so that you can notify them of your new blogposts.

Having an email list in which you engage your audience regularly will ensure that you connect better with your audience. It'll also ensure you drive consistent traffic to your blog.

4. Optimize your blog with SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which you optimize a website for search engines like Google. SEO helps you to drive high quality traffic to your blog especially those that are interested and searching for your content.

You can drive tons of traffic by optimizing your blog with SEO and the good thing is that tou can almost do SEO for free, but sometimes it's just that to get better results, you might need to make use of some paid tools. You can use tools like Ahrefs, Mozrank, Ubersuggest, Semrush and others. Most of them are usually free, but you need to pay a token to have access to their premium services.

Keyword research is the very foundation for SEO, they're the words and phrases that people search for while searching for things on the internet.

There are two types of SEO.

i. On-page SEO: This refers to the process of optimizing your website for higher search engine ranks through your activities on your website. This include optimizing your page titles, meta descriptions, headings and subheadings, images etc.

ii. Off-page SEO: This refers to the process of optimizing your website for higher search engine ranks through activities outside of the actual site.You can do this via link building, social media engagements and a great user experience.

5. Monetize your blog

There are so many ways by which you can make money from your blog in this age, it's just that the most popular way to earn through your blog is by displaying Ads on your site through platforms like Google Adsense, Adsterra, Ezoic etc. You can make money from your blog beyond that.

One of the ways you can earn money from your blog is through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is the process by which you earn a commission by promoting other people's products or services when a purchase is made. You've to be discreet about this, don't promote too many products to your readers, instead engage in affiliate programs that are best related to your niche and will most likely interest your audience. It's also advisable to promote digital products much more.

You can also create your own product to market to your audience, it may be a digital product like a course or an ebook. But make sure it's a product that best suits the interest of your readers.

You can also sell advert slots to companies or organisations, this is more profitable, it's just that you've to go through the negotiation and pricing yourself.

Making your blog profitable is easy if you can follow the five tips provided in this article.

Blogging is a great experience, if it is well utilized will bring in money for you and you might even end up making it your full time career,

6 Differences between No Follow Backlinks and Do Follow Backlinks

Backlinks are also known as either inbound links or external links are a medium for driving good SEO. However, a structure where there is no regulation as to how things are being used is of great disadvantage.

The web is a space where different people of different manners are found and their influence could be negative. This is what brings us to what we know as No-follow Backlinks and Do-Follow (also known as follow) Backlinks.

No-Follow backlinks are simply forms of regulating tricks people use for the web. 

Let us consider an instance without backlinks. 

If a popular site like BBC (which ranks higher on the web and is known for its level of integrity) has in its comment section link blog comments on one of its pages, Search engines will index such links as part of the page. The fact that these links in the comment section are indexed by Search engines is not necessarily a big deal but the integrity of these links is what the problem is. This was a form of the spamming technique used to trick search engines into crawling into their sites and in turn, might not be a legit site. 

Another instance is where people pay sites for backlinks for their sites to get crawled by search engines. All these are what were considered before adopting a way to regulate these occurrences. 

This is why in 2005, Google introduced the ‘rel=no follow’ tag. 

What then is a Do-Follow and No-Follow link?

A Do-Follow link is a link that simply links to another website to have search engines crawl the website basically because the website is trusted and in return serves as a point to increase the domain authority and page rank of that website.

A no-follow link however is the direct opposite of a do-follow link. It is an external link that does not guarantee the integrity of the webpage to the search engine. 

No follow links were initially created to avoid search engines from crawling a page, nevertheless, the rules have evolved. 

3 Differences between No Follow links and Do-follow links

1.       The HTML of both links are different 

They both have the same backbone structure but there is a difference in both links. A do-follow link is a normal code to a particular page but a no-follow link includes the ‘rel=no follow’ to its code.

For instance, a do-follow link will look like this:

                  <a href=https://iloveyou.com"> Ten ways to stop loving someone</a> 

While no follow link looks like this:

        <a href="https://iloveyou.com" rel=”nofollow”> Ten ways to stop loving someone</a> 

The introduction of the ‘rel=no follow’ tag says a lot about the difference. 

2.       No follow links are less helpful than Do-follow links

Usually, the reward for external linking is that it builds page ranking and domain authority of the linked site. When the ‘rel=no follow’ was first introduced by Google, its main role was to avoid crawling the site. The bottom line is that the no-follow link was practically useless at that point. 

As time went on, Google was aware that some of these linked sites are actually legit and they changed the perception of the No-follow links. Even if a ‘rel=no follow’ tag is used, search engines will still crawl the site. Although, this appears like ‘what exactly is the difference then? Despite the increase in flexibility on rules that guide these no-follow links, Do-follow links carry more value than no follow tags still. 

No-follow links can be seen as links that are just there but might help and might not help. Above all, a do-follow link will do a lot to give link juice thereby increasing the chances of ranking compared to a no-follow link. 

3.       No-follow links do not guarantee that a page or site can be trusted

The main reason why there are no-follow links is that we don’t trust those links. Therefore, we are simply telling Google, ‘you can choose to crawl it and you can choose not to’. Doing this basically saves you from spam backlinks which could be a threat to your site. 

While no-follow links are not entirely beneficial to sites, they also in turn protect one from making mistakes that the search engines can penalise for.

As mentioned earlier, no-follow links are still helpful in several ways even when it does not add to link juice, they can still increase the traffic to the linked site. This means that there is still importance attached to no-follow links. A healthy link profile should have both do-follow links and no-follow links, that is, a balance is very necessary for a good SEO. 

The Search engine algorithm, however, keeps changing, which means in the next few years the approach toward no-follow links is likely to change just like it has advanced in a few years. Hence, it will be of great help if we adapt to the changes and make use of them to achieve a sustainable SEO.

 

SEO is amazing, it helps drive refined traffic to your content while ensuring that the audience sees only the very best for them among thousands of other similar web pages on the internet.


It can be a lot to take in at once, that is why Search Engine Optimization is better broken down. Simplify it in smaller terms and explanations.




A Backlink is a major SEO term that is almost impossible to explain without at least defining hordes of SEO jargon, but let us attempt to simplify it. 


Basically, a Backlink is a link which references another webpage while on the current one. 

It leads away from your current page to another on the internet. When a backlink points to a webpage, it directs traffic from another webpage. 


Also, Backlinks are often used to give references, quote, or credit another webpage. This referencing is often referred to as “Link Juice”. 


The search engine crawler uses Backlinks in deciding the relevancy and authenticity of your content. However, it does not always follow this rule. That leads us to the major point.

Read: How to Solve Problems Using Story-telling and Content Writing 

What is a Do-follow Backlink?

Generating valuable traffic is a great way to build a stable revenue or income structure for your website. SEO strategies help to ensure that valuable traffic is steady enough. The higher you rank on the search engine results ranking page, the more your authority. 

Do-follow links are links attached to your content which lead to other webpages, maybe on the same website or on another. Most people think all backlinks are do-follow links. Do-follow means that the search engine crawler is allowed to spill some link juice to the referenced webpage. Technically, the more link juice you have, the more your do-follow links get.

Additionally, do-follow links are not just for the web crawler to analyze. Always keep in mind that any SEO strategy you use should benefit its users and create a more enjoyable experience. Do-follow links show visitors where to visit for more information on the referenced topic or clarify a certain expression. In the case of academic or technical content, the visitor can easily see the original originator of quotes, phrases, theories, research, or any referenced information.

What Is A No-follow Backlink? 

No-follow backlinks are the opposite of do-follow backlinks even though they both show the search engine crawler the link webpage that is being referenced. No-follow backlinks do not share link authority to the referenced website or webpage. They are often just for the reader, instead of giving some link juice to the referenced webpage. You only need to add rel=”no-follow” to effect this when linking your website code.

Effects Of No-follow Links in SEO 

You might be worried about the effects of no-follow backlinks to your webpage. After all, the webpage pointing to yours only referenced yours without credibly backing it up. It is more like saying, “this webpage said this too but I am not sure about the veracity of their information”. However, this does not mean lower SEO results for you. Even though no-follow links do not give link juice like do-follow links, they still help with some other benefits.

Firstly, you will get more traffic to your webpage. Especially if the backlinking was from a relevant page in your niche and receives a good amount of traffic. Expertly done backlinking will increase your visibility. 

Also, it will improve your backlink portfolio. Your backlink portfolio is simply a list of all the websites linking to yours. Note that an external backlink (backlinks from other websites) often tends to drive more authority than internal ones. Generally, while you do not enjoy some link juice, you get some other cool benefits which ultimately ramp up your website ranking on the search engine results page.




Differences Between No-follow And Do-follow Backlinks 

At this point, it is obviously way easier to understand the major differences between do-follow and no-follow backlinks. The differences majorly lie in the use cases and definition. But for clarity's sake, here are 3 differences between no-follow And do-follow backlinks:




    Link Juice Sharing: Do-follow links are the generous types of backlinks that give a generous share of the link authority or link juice to the destination webpage. While no-follow links are quite stingy and do not give any share of the link juice.

5. Credibility

With a do-follow link, you are basically telling the web crawler that the destination webpage is trusted and the credibility of referenced content is assured. Meanwhile, a no-follow link does not even attempt to reveal the destination page to the web crawler, Only the user sees it and decides whether to redirect or not.

6. Security and Trust

A do-follow link shares a big risk between the destination and the source web page because the source webpage is associating itself with the destination page. In other words, a security breach due to users following the do-follow link will impact the credibility of the source page. On the other hand, a no-follow link does not have these issues.  No-follow links are therefore often attached to user-generated content such as comments. 



SEO strategies are good. But like every other good thing, they can be detrimental when used without proper understanding. Backlinks are the king of collaboration and collective growth in SEO. When SEO is done properly, your website increases in ranking and authority while your users get access to more related and valuable content. As long as it's done within the context of the source page, everyone wins. 

Conclusion

It is however important to understand that not all links should be followed through. While providing a better experience to your visitors, take care to not make user-generated content such as comments, drag down your ranking. In conclusion, no type of Backlink is bad. Both are good but intended for different purposes. Even though they aid the SEO of both the source and destination pages. 

 

 

How to Start Your Career as an SEO Content Writer in Nigeria

Over the past few years, it is no doubt that content writing has become one of the most prolific jobs. In Nigeria, as content writing keeps advancing everyday from several trajectories, SEO is one of the major skill that most business owners, blog owners and employers expect from their content writers.

Here, we are going to be talking about how to start as an SEO writer. There is so much to being a content writer ranging from being very creative to being very resourceful. Before even considering starting a career of being an SEO content writer, the first thing is to understand what content writing offers, the skills required of a content writer, the several types of content writing as well as the qualities expected of every content writer. Once all these have been figured out, now you can apply the use of SEO in all of your works.

What is SEO?

SEO simply means Search Engine Optimization. According to David Booth, a Consultant, Instructor and founding Partner of Cardinal Path, it is the process of making improvements on and off your website in order to gain more exposure and more searching results.

In the writing industry today, having an absolute knowledge of SEO is now the HOTCAKE.
It is a great feeling for you to write what people are expecting to read. It's a greater feeling for Search Engines to position your web pages on the front pages in an organic search. That is why you are seeking to build a career in Search Engine Optimisation today.

There is so much to know about SEO and the key to its approach is consistency and patience in order to achieve a long term value. When optimizing content, both the people (readers) and the search engine is expected to derive clarity and quality from your webpages; more like killing two birds with a stone.

Now let’s talk about the real deal, how exactly do you start a career as an SEO Content Writer in Nigeria?

1. Develop your Plan or Strategy

In Nigeria, there are thousands of content writer. In Fact, almost everyone is a content writer. Although, it is understandable that not all that write are writers. Still, this field is highly competitive, hence, the need for wisdom to put things in place. You need to take the time you need for you to understand everything you want to do. You need to be determined and put in the required work.

How do you want to start? What do you need to survive in this career? Who are the best SEO content writers? How do you practise? How do you learn? These are things you need to take your time to think about before diving into this. Well, thinking can take forever but think, then act!

Now when you know all the answers to the question, Plan! The key to understanding SEO is based on a lot of strategies, therefore know what you are in for and take your time to prepare beforehand.

2. Create Valuable and useful content

If your content is not valuable you are on your own. Along the way, you will come to understand why some blogs are in the top rankings despite the invaluable content they offer but truth is, your content must be valuable and free of plagiarism. This will earn you higher points and increase the chances of having organic visits on your webpage. Remember, your content is not supposed to be valuable to just your readers alone but also the search engines.

3. Understand how SEO works

If you don’t know how the SEO works and what you need in order to make the SEO work, you will just waste your time. You need to take courses, understand all ideas and practise. You will need to know about how to use and analyse keywords, understand its attributes and distribution, optimising site structure, working with server side factors, developing a unique content strategy as well as interpreting the code behind webpages. It is a lot of work to put in but at the end it provides a long term value.

Read: The Basics of Blog Writing and SEO

4. Be flexible Enough

You need what we call ‘intent’ to survive or even start a career as an SEO Content Writer in Nigeria. The intent you have to make this work is the motivation behind everything. This is because things will always change. Search engines and SERPs (Search Engine Results pages) are constantly changing. It is not going to be a smooth road and you have to be flexible enough to fit into the system and adapt to how everything works.

5. Research

Even when you are being flexible enough, to start your career in this field you need to make constant researches. Researches on how to analyse keywords and what approach is needed to increase traffic on your site. Just like in the business world, where you have to see how and what your competitors are doing in order for you to make unique choices, you will need to apply such theory here also. Check other sites, see what they are doing to be among the top searches, research their strategies and know their approaches. This not make you versatile, it gives you the intelligent approach to take and increases your experience.
 

6. Repeat the Process

You cannot give up along the way. Repeat the process that provides the quality expected from your content and make use of it consistently.

7. Use Social Media

Social media is very powerful. You can use it to promote yourself and your content, one of the most useful being LinkedIn. You need to put yourself and your work out there to be discovered!


The truth is, understanding SEO and how to effectively it can be used as a content writer is deep but it can be achieved through self-effort and consistent devotion. 

5 Tips to Building Quality Backlinks for SEO in 2026

It is practically impossible for any website to rank without practising linking as one of its SEO strategies. While the number of links pointing (quantity of links) to your website is very much relevant, the quality of those links matters the most and their importance cannot be overemphasized. 

What then are Backlinks?

Backlinks, which are also known as inbound links are links from a particular page of a website linking to a specific page on your own website. An illustration is when a website with high domain authority (such as Wikipedia, or Punch) publishes a particular content containing links to specific pages from your own website. The fact that an authoritative website can link to your site simply tells the search engines that your site is trustworthy. Considering this, the more the quality links directed to your website, the more the link juice acquired hence the higher the chances your website gets to rank on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
 

Quality Backlinks, however, are links externally linked from a website with high page authority to your website. Now, while these quality backlinks are presumed to be the best kinds of links, there are also bad sides to high-quality backlinks. 

According to Neil Patel, “generally, focusing on quality instead of quantity will generate a small amount of high-commitment traffic. You’ll usually have fewer high-quality links because it’s difficult to build more than a few links on massive domain authority websites. However, they’re generally high commitment because they are more relevant and will thus target your ideal client better than other links”. This means that

 

Not to discourage you, even if there is not enough time to build such links, it is very much still possible and that is why we will be looking at the tips that can help you build such links.

POWER OF BACKLINKS.

We've all heard of backlinks, but I feel that most of us here do not know how important it is to your blogging success.

Backlinks are called the currency of the web

a vote of value,

When you get a backlink to site, it's telling Google or any search engine that your site is relevant..and that improves your site in 3 ways:

a. It increases your ranking

b. It increases your discoverability

c. It sends you referral traffic.

That's why they are so important.

Now, while building backlinks..ensure that you build them naturally over time, and also build backlinks from sites with high page rank and domain rating.

A backlink from a government(.gov) or academic site(.edu) will make your site set for life. but those are the hardest to get.

Given that quality links are very powerful in SEO strategy, there are lots of ways in which quality backlinks can be built and taking full cognisance of them all will result in success.

While being at that, let us take a look at five (5) major tips that should be considered to build quality backlinks in SEO.

1.       Delivering the most wanted content

In an interview conducted in 2016 with a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google,

Andrey Lipattsev was asked:

"Would it be beneficial for us to know what the first two are (first to ranking signals are). Would webmasters built better sites…"

He replied:

"I can tell you what they are; it is content and links pointing to your site".

I don’t know if you get the whole idea in this question but from his response, it is evident how important the contents are. And to be very honest, this is what people need the most.

·        Quality of content: Writing SEO-based content is something that requires a lot of effort; the content must be superb, captivating and interesting. It must have all the details it should have and most importantly must be aligned to the user intent. The standard of a particular content will always speak for that site at any moment even if it will take a lot of time before it ranks. 

Therefore, the quality of content can earn quality backlinks. Of course, there is nobody that would not want to link to highly informative and quality content.   

·        Content must contain certain features: It is one thing to draw people to your website but it is another thing to make them stay. The use of infographics cannot be overemphasized and it happens to be of great relevance. You can make use of simple phone apps (Canva, Pixellab) or complex graphics design tools (Photoshop, Indesign) based on your preference. 

Well, it is not just about making use of infographics but they must be very unique that they cannot be found elsewhere.

That being said, the length of written content also matters. A content of 300 words would never rank over that of 3000 words as long as proper SEO is done. The point is full content gaps are very effective in building opportunities to get linked to.  

A detailed lengthy content with well-structured infographics is enough to make your content stand out on the web and hence would make potential websites link to you.

2.       Apply several win-win methods

·        Guest Posting: Guest posting is a common way of generating quality backlinks.

Guest posting simply means writing content for another person's website, usually with a similar niche. This is more of a win-win situation because you get to earn a quality backlink and the website gets content in return. The fact that this content does not get to be published on your personal website does not mean that it should not be created without quality intent.

Guest posting is simply done by contacting the website owner and highlighting the details on how you will like to guest post on their website. After a successful guest posting, you can now advertise on social media or whatever platform you wish to. 

Although Google frowns at guest posting and has given reasons that the backlinks acquired from guest posting are unnatural, this win-win method will still be of great impact on building page authority.

Backlinks from websites owned by the government and educational bodies tend to have a high quality and therefore can be targeted.

·        Volunteering

Volunteering to write blog posts on websites with high page authority owned by non-governmental organizations and non-profit organizations could also be a way of building quality backlinks. However, the blog posts you are to write should have relevance to your website because search engines will indeed run their checks. The content should also be highly informative as it would be on your personal website.

3.       Constant Research and Strategy

Building quality backlinks will require you to do research constantly and at the same time strategize points you could make out of such research.

While the web ranks one website better than the other, it still gives room for fairness.

There is this saying, 

“Know what they know and know what they don’t know”.

There are tons of websites with high page authorities on the internet and one of the best ways to work toward building sustainable backlinks is by analyzing the backlinks of websites that post similar content related to yours. This allows you to see what your competitors are doing to remain at the SERPs. Several tools can be used such as Link Explorer, SEMrush, Google SearchConsoles, Ahrefs, etc; they all have their peculiarities.

The most important thing to take note of is that you should analyse backlinks common to all the 10 blue links of your competitors. An example of a tool which can be used to achieve this is the Common Backlinks Tool (CBLT) offered by Link Explorer (now Link Research Tool).

You have to do this constantly and keep strategizing for it to eventually work for you.

 

4.       Networking

One important method that can be used to build links is by making use of networking. Human beings are social beings and therefore networking is a sure way to get yourself placed on the SERP. You can either do this through social media and the basics are building relevant relationships.

·        While building genuine relationships, they can also be the source of your backlinks. For instance, if you know someone in charge of a website with high page authority, it would be easy to request assistance which can earn you backlinks during the process.

Social media can also be of massive help; in networking and also in publicity. Therefore, you are expected to achieve two things which are to network with people while making your website and you are to publicize what you do offer.

Social media engagement can be a way to get backlinks because it can be an avenue of presenting your work where the audience might be interested in collaboration with you and hence earn you a quality backlink.

5.       Be Vigilant

At intervals of running several strategies to build quality links, it is imperative that one stays vigilant throughout the whole period as proper SEO effectiveness for a particular website might just need a little discernment.

·        Follow and examine the trends

The internet is dynamic and trends can give you an advantage over other websites to be noticed on the web. The appearance of trendy content can earn you traffic on your website and even earn you backlinks on some of your old posts if they are worth linking to.

·        Be conscious of feedback from analysis tools

As much as testimonials from humans are very important, it would be of great significance for constant awareness that you are also meant to satisfy the search engine. These results of the analysis carried out by analysis tools such as Google search console and the like could be of great help in making you realize your shortcoming and what you should do to establish your site so it can be worth linking to.

 

Finally, one thing to also remember is that there needs to be a balance between quality and quantity links.

As Neil Patel said, 

"Neither is better.

I don’t want to upset you, but the reality is that both link-building strategies have their place in the online world. For some businesses, quantity will be more effective, and for others, quality will be more effective.

In the end, you probably will want to fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum".

Moreover, all these tips require consistency and revisitation of strategies. 

Conclusion

The best SEO results naturally do not happen instantly but are rather long-term. Avoiding shortcuts and sticking to the process will earn you the efforts put into the work.

 

The Basics of Blog Writing and SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is a 21st century Digital Marketing Skill that 

What is SEO and Why is it Important?

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of making changes to your content to make it visible to search engines (Google) or to be more direct, to make it rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs)

This is a great way to market your content organically (for free). Just do the right thing and you can promote your work without spending a dime.

There is no human behind Google managing how your content appears on the results pages. But Google has site crawlers, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and every form of technological advancements you can think of for the web. All these works together to help improve the rank of your blog post or your website.

I'm using Google cos it's the most prominent search engine. We have others like Bing. Also, Google is the champion for anything SEO.  Let's just say whatever SEO tactic you are playing works for Google

Has anyone here ever searched for something on Google and went all the way to the 13th page for answers? For me, an unwritten rule of the thumb is that if it's not on the first page of Google, it does not exist.

Of course, that's not true. But if I search for something and it does not pop up on the first page, I rephrase my query and search again. There's a very thin chance that I would check the second page, let alone the 13th.

So, this is the fight. To be on Google's first page, so that whenever anyone sends a query, their site would pop up

Imagine if you had a business but when people search for your product, you aren't on the first page. Do you think they will start looking for you? Nope. Your competitors would be on the first page and would get those customers that could have been yours.

You could try too. Try as much as you can and it doesn't make the first page. It's not magic, it's a process.

For some, it might take years, especially if they have strong competitors


Content Writing Crash Course
*two weeks, after which you get a certificate.

There'll be classes and tasks wit

If you fail to meet the deadline or you turn in a shabby work or show any sign of unseriousness, I'll have to remove you.

*Here's a little background information about me if you're curious:*

I've been writing for the Web for 5 years now and it's one top skill I have today and also make a living from. Ideally, I'd charge a fee for this class but this is in-house training that I'm 

What you'll learn are things that you're expected to use consistently and master over time. Two people can write for 5 years and the results will be different. Because one grew in their craft and the other didn't. Revolving around one circle in your craft can end now.

Types of Blog Writing

There are different types of writing but in this article, we shall be looking at the common writing formats engaged in blog posts. 
Creative writing
Review writing

1. Narrative Writing

This is just story writing. In simple terms, to narrate something. This is often used know fictional and non-fictional stories but beyond that, if have to narrate something, it falls under this category. Like every story you've ever read, it always has a beginning, an interval and  an ending. Or it won't even really have an 'ending' How many of you have read a narrative writing with an open ending? Like, the writer just leaves you to conclude it in your head? Yup. It's sometimes like that with Narrative writings. Especially for fictions. It's also a brilliant way to write a sequel to the story because they left an open ending. So, if they decide to write a sequel later, it'd flow seamlessly
 

2. Expository Writing

This is used to explain ANYTHING. It could be a person, animal, place or thing. From the word "exposition". The dictionary meaning of exposition is "a comprehensive description and explanation of an idea or theory" So, if you want to provide information about something or someone, this is the form of writing you use. Do your research and everything and inform your readers about what you're writing about. For example "What is COVID-19" This article could be a form of expository Writing. That's because you are informing the audience what this virus is all about, how it started, etc. You're not necessarily giving your opinion on this. You're just gathering as much information as you can about this subject, so you can inform your audience. You should notice the difference with Narrative. Narrative is most times from the author's opinion/perspective. But for expository, not necessarily.

3. Persuasive Writing

From the word "Persuade", the author/writer is simply trying to persuade the readers to agree with them on something. Maybe there's an argument on Twitter about gender roles and I want to write about it. But the purpose of this writing is to persuade people to agree with me that the gender roles we inherited from our forefathers are irrelevant today and should be demolished. For me to be able to write about this perfectly, I must have understood the other side of the argument. What is their argument? That women belong to the kitchen. Why do they think women belong to the kitchen? Because "it's oUr cUlTuRe" So, I already know all that before writing anything. I am fully aware of the other side. But with my writing, I want to win my readers to my side. I want to let them know that we can look at it from a different angle. This is me trying to persuade them. Your work should not basically contain counter points? That's an example and one form of persuasive Writing. And with that example, I'm actually not "countering points" but trying to lecture and perhaps convince my readers to take an action.Maybe to quit thinking that we are bound to forever stick to culture and that culture was made for man and not man for culture? Let's use another example. I'm writing an article to persuade people to do something. Not necessarily to counter anything now but to push them to take an action. For example, TMO Join us page. When you read that page, what's one thing it's pointing you to? Trying to persuade you to join TMO. So, me as the author starts writing... And as you read, you realise you're not in Lagos where almost everything happens. But I'm telling that if you're not in Lagos, we have a link for Ibadan and for Osun and Ondo and Ogbomoso. Okay, now that you have decided where you belong, I'm asking you to click a link. "Click on your location and fill the form". So you click. What did I just do? Persuade me to join TMO

4. Descriptive Writing

This is simply a form of writing that is used to describe anything at all. Take for example, if you saw a mango tree with two horns, and you decide to blog about it, you have to describe it in a way that an average reader gets to picture it in their mind/head. If you have ever read a book and you feel like you can see everything happen. Like, you're watching a movie, then you have seen descriptive writing at work. It brings writing to reality such that you know what Clara in the book looks like with her long hair and blue eyes. You can see her sitting in the corner of her room with her skirt raised - just the way the writer describes it.

Although it wasn't until recently that I found out that there are people who can't capture images in their minds. 

What can be done to such people? - Nothing. It's so bad that the writer uses all the figure of speech that they can to get you to capture what they are trying to describe.

This is where "Imagery" also applies. If you're a poet, you should know what Imagery is - a visual description. This type of writing can be used in any form of writing at all. Because at some point, you'll always have to describe something

This should have a medical condition (Aphantasia) and the funny thing is that they think it's the same for everyone else until they meet someone who tells them that's a thing. And they are like "wow! You visualize things in your head?". It’s like being blind except it’s the mind’s eye that’s blind.
 

Objective Writing

This form of writing can be verified through evidence and facts. It is also referred to as the formal way of writing.

If you are to write a random article on the web, you use objective Writing. By writing this way, it simply means you are not biased. You just present the writing with facts. You won't write now and say the ideal sleeping length should be 2 hours because you sleep 2 hours. Instead, Objective Writing would say 6 to 8 hours. If you're writing a fictional book or a superhero movie, you can make 1 hour of sleep normal. Nobody will fight you - but objective writing won't do that.
 

So, if I ask you to write about the benefits of Oranges, you know where it falls under?
[4/27, 6:58 PM] +234 814 902 2642: Yes

Objective
[4/27, 6:59 PM] +234 816 649 3548: Can it be expository too? Since you’re gathering information as well?
[4/27, 7:00 PM] +234 818 802 6026: Ma, what's the difference between objective writing and expository writing?
[4/27, 7:02 PM] +234 904 046 8046: I don’t think it’s expository since you are well aware of the ‘normal sleep time which is 6-8 hours”

Expository is basically enlightening the public about something they do not really know about.

Please note that one form of writing doesn't necessarily have to stand alone.

Remember how I mixes Descriptive with Narrative? By using a fictional book.

A fictional book can be narrative and also have some forms of description (imagery) in it.

Expository Writing relies on facts, statistics, reasons, principles, everything you need to gather information about what you're writing.

Objective is something you write that can be supported with facts and evidence.

Now, apart from the fact that these two can both be used in an article, tell me where either of these should fall mostly under:

1. Benefits of Oranges
2. The origin of Oranges
[4/27, 7:07 PM] +234 812 600 4758: 1...Objective

2....Expository
[4/27, 7:09 PM] Teefaith TMO: *Subjective Writing*

We just discussed Objective. So, let's see this as the flip side.

While Objective can be backed up by facts and evidence, Subjective is *based on personal opinions, beliefs, perspectives, emotions, judgements, etc*
[4/27, 7:12 PM] Teefaith TMO: See these two statements:

1. You have just one life. Once you're dead, that's the end. No second chance.

2. You live forever. You can never die. Christ already died your death, so you don't have to die ever again 🌝.

Which of these two is subjective?
[4/27, 7:19 PM] Teefaith TMO: Number 1 is *Objective*
Number 2 is *Subjective*

Why?

I just explained that subjective is based on personal opinions, *beliefs*, etc.

And as Samson puts it "only the believer in Christ Jesus partakes of this". There's a condition to it.

In formal writing, everyone dies. Unless you add that condition to it, what you just presented is based on your belief. And FYI, not everyone believes what you believe.

So, that statement is *subjective to something*. Subjective to the fact that you have to be a believer. And in the actual sense, you'll actually die and leave this Earth.

Objective says what it sees with no condition or exception. Everyone dies.
This subjective approach helps the reader to see what goes on in your head and mind. It helps the reader know the kind of person you are.

If you write number 2 in an article, I'll assume you're a believer in Christ Jesus.

Apart from belief, remember I also mentioned other things such as personal opinions, perspectives, emotions, judgements...
 

Subjective Writing

This is based on a particular belief. Maybe mostly the Yorubas believe that. That's a particular tribe that ties meaning to that. In personal blogs, do we all agree that the subjective form of writing is mostly used? Because it is my blog! I write what I want, my belief, the Yoruba reincarnation, whatever. My blog subscribers would get to know more about my personality based on what I write.
 

Creative Writing

Get creative. Informal writing. Just explore as much as you want. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, crime, biographies, screenwriting, etc. They all fall into this category. Even the content used for YouTube videos fall under creative writing. If I have a channel that talks about food recipes or DIY. The content I'll have to create to make that video happen can be described as creative writing and this is hot stuff these days. Not everyone will be a creative writer, so they'll always need someone who has the brain and can put in the work. The script for Money Heist is creative writing. Not anyone can write that script. It took an extra talent.
 

Review Writing

People review anything these days. Books. Movies. Songs. Blogs. Videos. Anything at all. There are also reviews for .phones. Laptops. Blenders. This is beyond the feedback you get on your service and product. It could be an entire article on its own which people get to read and decide whether or not to still purchase that thing, listen to that song, watch that movie or buy HP laptop or Macbook. Some companies pay people to write review articles.

Some people get free phones just to write a good review about that phone and share with their audience.
So, if you get a free phone and you're asked to write a review about it, you'll have to do what you can to convince people that the phone is good, right?
Talk about the features. Highlight every brilliant about the phone.

At this point, you might not even be presenting facts, you just want to convince people that it's good.

In this case, creativity is your focus. It's art for you at this point. The Dictionary meaning of Creative is _"relating to or involving the use of the imagination of original ideas to create something"_

Original ideas. Create something.

I don't know how else to explain it but it's definitely not _any type of writing_

Creative writing can be subjective, yes.

If you look at some movies (which came from screenwriting- creative writing), they use personal opinions, beliefs, etc. Not necessarily things that are based on facts (objective).

An article can be creative or objective. It can also be both creative and subjective, yes. But don't stress your brain by trying to create a new term with "creative objective" and "subjective creative"

Copywriting 

This is simply writing something for the main purpose of advertising or to market something.

You're pushing your reader to a *call to action*. That's *Persuasive*

It's also you getting creative with your writing as you try to mix your knowledge with what the brand is about and also try to devise the best way to persuade your audience.

That's being *creative*!

Conclusion

There are