SEO or SEA: which to choose?

SEO vs SEA ? Natural or paid referencing? Should you choose between the two? SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEA (Search Engine Advertising) are two referencing techniques. The choice of one or the other depends on the marketing strategy and the acquisition channel envisaged by a company. Both have their own differences and advantages. Here are some elements to help you make the right choice.

SEO and SEA: what are they?

Find out what the acronyms SEO and SEA stand for, and what it all means.

What is SEO?

SEO is the set of techniques and actions implemented to improve the position of a website on the search engine results pages (SERPs). In English, SEO is equivalent to organic search engine optimization.

The stakes are high when we know that the first results displayed are, in the extreme majority of cases, the main pages consulted.

To rank the search results, the search engine algorithm assigns a relevance score to the page for a given query. We know that, for Google for example, hundreds of criteria are taken into account by the algorithm.

SEO is also based on 3 pillars:

The content, search engines highlight content that is well structured and provides value to users.
Technical optimisation, the aim is to correct any technical flaws in your website that may hinder readability by search engines.
netlinking, this practice aims to improve the popularity of your website by increasing the number of qualified links from other authority sites (backlinks).

The traffic acquired through natural referencing is said to be organic, as opposed to paid referencing (SEA).

The benefits of SEO

What are the benefits of SEO? Here are the main ones:

Steady and sustainable traffic. Efforts to develop organic traffic are sustainable and it is very rare to drop drastically in results once positions are acquired.
Low cost. An SEO marketing campaign requires an investment of resources and means. However, the traffic generated by SEO is highly qualified, so you can expect a very profitable ROI (return on investment) over time.
More qualified leads. The conversion rate is much better when a site is nice and well positioned.
Increased trust. A well-positioned website will tend to reassure Internet users. This is generally the result of providing relevant answers to their questions. In fact, a good positioning gives credibility to the notoriety and image of the brand.

The main variable in SEO is the time you can spend on it.

What is SEA ?

SEA is a paid referencing strategy that is carried out through advertising campaigns. These allow a website to be positioned on search engines.

On Google Ads, for example, the Google advertising network, the advertiser determines the budget to be allocated to the keywords they wish to promote. This strategy is based on a bidding system which mainly includes: CPC (Cost per Click; the most common), CPT (Cost per Thousand), CPA (Cost per Acquisition) or CPV (Cost per View; for videos).

The bidding strategy you adopt will therefore depend on your objective: to promote clicks, impressions, conversions or views.

Most often, the use of ATS displays ads in the search results above, below or next to the organic results.

The benefits of SEA

The SEA has several advantages:

Immediate traffic increase, paid search engine ads offer instant results as soon as the campaign is launched.
Flexibility: advertising campaigns allow for real-time adaptation of the results obtained and correction if necessary. Moreover, SEA is optimal for keywords with a high seasonality that do not require a permanent investment over a year.
With a limited budget, paid search offers strict control over the allocated budget which cannot be exceeded. If the budget is exceeded, the campaign stops.
Detailed monitoring, the statistics and tracking tools allow you to measure the results in detail and adapt the strategy.

The most important parameter in an SEA campaign is the available budget.

SEO vs SEA: 2 different marketing acquisition strategies

SEO and SEA both aim to improve the ranking of a website; only their approaches differ.

Differences between SEO and SEA

The following table summarizes the differences between SEO and SEA:

	SEO – natural referencing	SEA – paid referencing
Duration of positioning	Long. Getting a good ranking can take months.	Fast. Ads are immediately visible at the top of the results page.
Cost	Relatively low for the ROI generated.	Variable and depends on the level of keyword competition.
Duration (time taken)	Long. This is the main parameter of an SEO strategy.	Short. Easy to set up and monitor campaigns.
Return on Investment (ROI)	In the medium/long term. Conversion rates are better (qualified traffic) and the effects are long-lasting.	In the short term. The effects of the advertising campaign stop as soon as it is consumed.

SEO vs SEA: should you choose?

All too often, natural and paid referencing are contrasted. However, these two approaches are part of a global strategy called SEM (Search Engine Marketing) which aims to improve referencing.

In reality, everything depends on the project; the SEO and SEA levers can be mobilised according to the objectives determined. Other constraints (budget, time and resources available, etc.) may influence the choice of one or the other.

Therefore, it is more appropriate to consider SEO and SEA as complementary. A hybrid strategy can allow the benefits of both approaches to be used. SEO will be perfectly suited to a long-term positioning strategy by targeting the most qualified traffic possible. SEA, on the other hand, will allow you to target and focus on crucial keywords in a defined and punctual period of time.

Furthermore, a strategy that combines SEO and SEA allows to:

Test the optimisation of content in a SEA campaign and incorporate it into the SEO strategy later, if required.
Increase overall traffic by adding organic and paid clicks.
Increase visibility on the SERP by being positioned via these two acquisition channels.
Reach different targets, as the users coming from sponsored clicks are not the same as those coming from natural traffic.

In conclusion, the opposition between SEO and SEA does not make sense insofar as they differ in their employment strategy. The choice of natural or paid referencing must be established according to the desired objectives. Moreover, a hybrid strategy will allow you to improve your overall referencing by taking advantage of the combined benefits of both. At Paper.Club, we support you in your SEO strategy.

Why netlinking? Because on the web, the positioning of a site in the search results is essential. For this, there are several methods, including SEO. The latter, synonymous with natural referencing, is the most used and most effective in the long term. Netlinking is one of the pillars of natural referencing with content and technical optimization. Therefore, it is essential to understand how it works to succeed in your SEO campaign.

What is netlinking?

Netlinking is an SEO strategy that aims to receive inbound links on your website. It is also called “link building”. These hyperlinks that point to your website are called “backlinks” and have two main purposes:

Increase the popularity of your website to search engines. This is the main objective when you want to set up a netlinking campaign. When quality links point to your website, it is a very positive sign for search engines. They deduce that your site is a reference in your sector or field of activity since other sites take the risk to send their own traffic to yours.
Increase your traffic. Not content with improving your popularity, backlinks also allow you to attract additional traffic. Again, this is a good signal to search engines.

To be located in a good position on Google, popularity is essential. This last one is acquired by the third party links that will point to your website. Google considers these links, also called “juice”, as trust marks.

This is the very purpose of a netlinking strategy that will allow to “transmit” the popularity of a site to another. However, to be effective, a netlinking strategy must be based on qualitative bases. Search engines can penalize links acquired artificially and favor natural links. It is also advisable to anticipate the netlinking from the launch of a web project and to continue it in the long term to maximize its impact on the natural referencing.

Finally, a netlinking campaign is not improvised and, badly executed, can even penalize you in the eyes of search engines. It is strongly advised to call upon SEO specialists.

Why is netlinking so important for SEO?

Netlinking is, along with content and technical optimization, one of the 3 pillars of SEO. In fact, it is quite possible for your website to rank well in search results by working on the content and optimization of your site.

However, when you want to position pages in the first results, netlinking becomes essential. This is particularly the case if you want to position yourself in the first places on highly competitive keywords. At this level of competition, netlinking is essential to make the difference.

In any case, it is essential to aim for excellence on all SEO components. The best strategy is to always do better than your competitors by combining useful and irreproachable content, an efficient on-site optimization, and a quality netlinking.

Acquiring qualified external links allows your site to:

Increase your popularity in the eyes of search engines.
Get more clicks and traffic.
To attract more frequently the robots on your site.

Provided that:

Always give priority to quality links rather than quantity. A policy aiming at maximizing the number of low quality external links to your site may even have a negative effect on your SEO and especially limits the risks.
Encourage the most natural links possible.

If you opt for these two approaches combined, the effects of your netlinking will be maximized and you will benefit from a profitable and sustainable natural referencing.

Why do netlinking? As we have seen, it allows you to significantly improve your popularity and therefore your ranking in Google search results. Netlinking is a very effective natural referencing strategy when it is well done. To this end, we at Paper.Club provide a netlinking platform to help you with your SEO.

Influencer marketing, which consists of relying on influential personalities and websites to present a product or service or get a message across, is increasingly employed by companies. Among communication strategies, it is undoubtedly the one that has seen the strongest growth in recent years, with its global turnover rising from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $6.5 billion in 2019 (Statista). This is because it offers infinite possibilities while generating various benefits that match the different objectives of advertisers (visibility, awareness, SEO, sales…). What is it exactly? What benefits can a brand get from it? How to set up an influencer marketing strategy? Paper Club takes a look at this new generation of digital marketing!

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is a type of marketing strategy that aims to promote a product or a service by relying on the popularity of influential web personalities – commonly called “influencers” – but also on blogs and sites with a high media profile. This is done to take advantage of their power of prescription, i.e. their ability to influence the behavior or decisions of the community that follows them or consults them.

Influencers can be personalities followed on social networks or via their blog, opinion leaders (journalists, editorialists, captains of industry…), or even celebrities (from the music, cinema, sports, reality TV…). They evolve in a specific theme and are followed by a more or less large community, with a number of subscribers that can reach several million for the most famous among them. They are the new prescribers of brands, which have become essential to communication strategies on the web, and in particular on social media.

Influential media are part of the opinion leader category, and also play a major role in this type of marketing strategy. A role that stems from press relations, considered an ancient form of influence marketing: the journalist is technically an influencer, in the sense that he can “influence” the behavior of a reader, viewer or listener. So publishing content on a blog or on a popular website can greatly contribute to a brand’s visibility (on search engines, for example), awareness and sales.

In doing so, an influencer marketing campaign can rely on relays as diverse as youtubers (PewDiePie, Like Nastya, Vlad and Niki), entertainment personalities (Jennifer Aniston, Kylie Jenner, Shane Dawson) athletes (Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, Serena Williams), opinion leaders (Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Janet Yellen), bloggers (Chiara Ferragni, Julia Engel), media (Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg), etc. Of course, these are some of the most famous examples, but influencer marketing is clearly not limited to them.

How do influencer marketing campaigns work?

An influencer marketing strategy requires partnerships with influencers and/or influential media that correspond to your objectives. This means that, before calling on such and such a personality or contacting such and such a webmaster, you must not only identify the right entities, but also determine which levers are the most relevant.

These levers, specific to influencer campaigns, can be direct or indirect, depending on the way they promote the brand and/or its product or service. Although influencer marketing is mostly known for its “direct” dimension (an influencer talks about a product through an article, a video or images), there is also a whole area of marketing that works “indirectly” by acting as a kind of media “soft power”.

Influence marketing levers

What are these influence marketing levers?

Buzzkit and Unboxing. An influencer, who has received the product or enjoyed the service in preview, evaluates it for their community. In the context of Unboxing, which is becoming increasingly popular, the influencer goes so far as to unwrap the product on camera, so as to give the audience a complete experience, strongly marked by emotion.
Product placement. An influencer mentions the product or service in their content, in a more or less subtle way. This is an old technique (the placement of flagship products in movies) updated for the web. It is mostly implemented within the framework of influence campaigns on video-based social media, like YouTube or Twitch.
Sharing promotional codes. It’s a variant of product placement: an influencer mentions a product or a service and takes the opportunity to share with their community a promotional offer communicated beforehand by the brand. This is what the Chinese influencer Becky Li did to sell Mini Coopers en masse on WeChat by allowing her followers to pre-order a limited edition of this vehicle (read here).
Tourism partnership. Another very fashionable technique, as “travel” influencers federate large and active communities. It consists in offering a service to an influencer (hotel stay, plane ticket, excursion, restaurant meal…) in exchange for a mention on social networks.
Takeover. This influencer marketing technique consists in entrusting the reins of a brand’s social account to an influencer for a limited period of time, so that the latter can draw the attention of their community to a product or service, to the advertiser’s website, to an event, etc.
Event. An influencer is invited to attend or participate in an event organized by the brand. They can promote it beforehand, relay the event on the day on their social media, and then publish a report afterwards.
Guest blogging. This indirect influence marketing method consists in publishing content on a blog, a website or an influential social account, as a guest – or, conversely, in accepting that a third party publish on the brand’s media.
Publication of a sponsored article. This leverage, close to guest blogging, comes down to publishing on a third party (influential) site, but entrusting the content writing to an expert (working for the site itself or on behalf of an influencer platform). This type of influencer marketing is mainly aimed at notoriety and the publication of backlinks for netlinking purposes. By the way, this is what we offer at Paper Club!

Counterparts

These different levers, used for influencer campaigns, share a common point: they imply a counterpart.

This often takes the form of remuneration, but this is not always the case: a brand can “reward” an influencer or an influential media by offering gifts, by sponsoring an activity (invitation to an event, all-expenses-paid press junket…), by improving its brand image (publication of an incoming link, mention on its media…), etc.

But be careful, this is not advertising! Influence marketing is not a form of advertising in disguise. The influence exerted by the personality or by the media can be very subtle, and take, for example, the form of a simple mention (a travel blogger who mentions the hotel they stayed in or the brand that offered them the camera they use).

In some cases, this marketing strategy is similar to traditional journalism: “testers” evaluate the quality of a product or service, but without necessarily hiding its flaws. One of the most interesting sources of influence today is live video game play on Twitch, where players don’t talk about the qualities or flaws of the games, but simply offer an experience to their community. Here, the simple “spotlight” on the product, service or brand is more than enough to make it an influencer marketing lever.

What benefits can influencer marketing bring you?

Why set up influencer campaigns? Use influencers or publish content on influential media?

The weight of recommendation

To fully understand the interest of influencer marketing for an advertiser, we must determine what exactly this “influence” consists of. This marketing strategy is based on the prescription power of influential personalities and media, therefore on their capacity to influence (to a certain extent) consumption behaviors.

This power of prescription works on the recommendation, itself close to word-of-mouth: we are ready to listen (and to follow the opinion) of a person because we trust their tastes. Influencers being close to their community, they play the role of prescribers. For you, as an advertiser, it’s an opportunity to reach consumers who are more receptive to marketing arguments, because they already trust them.

Moreover, being connected to a particular influencer or media, these consumers are necessarily sensitive to the products or services that you offer them. A user who follows Lena Situations’ vlog on YouTube is interested in fashion and lifestyle, so they are ready to receive recommendations in these specific areas. In the same way, a regular reader of La Tribune will be sensitive to sponsored content about economics or finance that is published on the online newspaper.

Why is this so effective? Because influencers are synonymous with authenticity, and influential media with expertise. These are two of the criteria put forward by Internet users when they talk about their choice to follow a personality, a social account or a media: authenticity is considered very important for 58% of them and rather important for 30%. Then come humor (53% and 35%), expertise (48% and 37%), intelligence (44% and 39%) and proximity of interests and tastes (42% and 41%). This is what makes 72% of Gen Z and Millennials follow influencers and listen to their recommendations. (Figures from the report published by Morning Consult.)

Recommendations outweigh all other forms of advertising. 83% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than advertisements (Nielsen). 92% of Internet users trust content published by celebrities more than by brands (HubSpot). 56% of Internet users have already bought a product recommended by an influencer (Morning Consult). Customers who come from recommendations are also more qualitative: their average annual shopping cart is 25% higher than that of other consumers, they are 25% more profitable, and 4 to 5 times more likely to bring in new customers (Extole).

What’s interesting is that the very principle of influencer marketing, when known by Internet users, does not negatively influence their point of view. While 95% of influencers inform their audience of a partnership with a brand for the sake of transparency, 77% of Internet users say they have a positive view of this form of discourse (HubSpot).

Various benefits adapted to all objectives

This recommendation, which is the essence of influencer marketing, brings many benefits to brands. Basically, influencers and influential media let you benefit from their audience (depending on the size of the community), which potentially represents millions of views. From there, your company or brand can…

Develop an audience without spending large sums of money (influencer campaigns are quite cheap compared to other communication strategies) ;
Hitting a specific target through carefully selected influencers and media;
Increase awareness and reach new audiences;
Work on reputation;
Improve referencing and gain positions on search engines (especially with the “SEO juice” obtained through backlinks published on high authority sites, one of our specialties at Paper Club) ;
Generate sales;
Refine your marketing strategy thanks to the long-term results obtained.

These advantages are well known by marketers: 94% of them consider influencer marketing to be effective. This marketing strategy generates an ROI that is eleven times higher than other methods. 58% of brands that have run influencer campaigns report an increase in awareness, and 54% report an increase in leads and revenue (HubSpot).

How do you implement an influencer marketing strategy that works?

Let’s see how to implement an influencer marketing strategy that will give results. Paper Club gives you the keys to successful influencer campaigns!

1. Define your objectives and budget

The first step is to precisely define the objectives you want to reach through your influencer marketing (awareness, traffic, SEO visibility, sales…).

Not only do you need to know where you are going (to evaluate your ROI), but this prerequisite plays a determining role in the choice of the influencer or influential media. For example, if your goal is to gain SEO visibility, the best lever is to get inbound links via sponsored articles. If you want to sell, you have to start by defining target audiences (likely to buy your products or services) to identify the most relevant influencers or sites. If it’s notoriety you’re looking for, you’ll have to focus on influencers with strong communities.

As for the budget, it is an essential component of your influencer campaigns. Influencers apply different rates depending on the size of their community: it can go from a hundred euros for nano-influencers to several thousand euros for macro-influencers in the travel industry or for celebrities (more information in this report published by Klear). It all depends on the type of influencers as we will see below.

For blogs and influential websites, it’s easier: you just have to go through a platform like Paper Club to get a precise rate per content.

2. Identify the right influencers and media

This is a major dimension of influencer marketing: you have to take the time to choose the right personalities and the right media, to guarantee a high “compatibility rate” (depending on your field of activity, your budget, your target audience and your objectives).

Influencers are classified by sector (theme) and by typology, i.e. according to the size of their community. There are several types of influencers :

Mega-influencers have over 500,000 followers: celebrities, athletes, artists, opinion leaders … Their rates are high and the reach of the publications important. These partnerships are excellent for the brand image.
Macro-influencers have 100,000 to 500,000 followers. They stand out because of their high visibility and the great diversity of their community, but also because of their lower engagement.
Micro-influencers have 10,000 to 100,000 followers. Their audience is highly segmented and the engagement rate is high.
Nano influencers have less than 10,000 subscribers. They are niche influencers, with low rates (and often non-financial considerations) but offering high engagement rates.

Beware: the size of the community is not everything. More important is the audience’s engagement rate: their ability to interact and act. Spending huge amounts of money on influencer marketing with a movie celebrity with 10 million followers will not make sense if the engagement rate of his audience does not exceed 0.01% and you cannot reach your objectives!

Influential media are segmented according to their traffic volume and engagement rate. But, depending on your objectives, you can look at other parameters, such as authority for backlinks, or reliability for the credibility of publications. NewsGuard regularly ranks news sites according to their reliability and engagement rate; as far as traffic is concerned, we can refer to the monthly rankings of the ACPM (Alliance for Press and Media Figures).

But don’t just rely on traffic volume. In niche markets, we are more interested in the community involvement. For SEO visibility, we will rather evaluate the authority of the website. The best is to trust an influencer marketing agency like Paper Club: we have a database of more than 10,000 publishers in all fields, with all the necessary statistics.

3. Contacting and developing the partnership

Getting in touch with an influencer implies building a trusting relationship, which should develop over the long term. You have to follow their social accounts, interact with their publications, get to know them to refine your arguments… In other words: adopt a subtle approach. This is because influencers (especially macro-influencers) are in high demand: 14% of them receive more than ten partnership requests per month (HubSpot).

A partnership in influencer marketing must include compensation, which is not necessarily cash. Nano and micro-influencers can be rewarded with visibility on your website or social networks, with a product or service offered as a gift (including the one that is the subject of the partnership), with an invitation to an exclusive event, etc.

It’s easier for influential media: of course, the sponsored articles are paying and must respect the editorial line of the media, but the counterparty includes the whole service (writing and publication of the content), is punctual (no long-term contractual partnership) and does not imply going through a time-consuming approach phase. Moreover, the result – in particular the impact of a backlink on the SEO – is easily and precisely measured.

(Note that these partnerships are regulated by the ARPP (Autorité de Régulation Professionnelle de la Publicité). For example, sponsored articles must be mentioned as such on the support, influencers must mention their partnerships, etc. Breaches are subject to sanctions.)

4. Tracking performance

Finally, it is essential to monitor the performance of your influencer campaigns to identify weak points and possible optimization levers. The performance indicators vary according to the objectives:

– For visibility: number of subscribers, engagement rate, volume of visitors to the advertiser’s site or store…
– For sales: number of sales made, revenue generated…
– For SEO positioning: number of backlinks obtained, Trust Flow of links, positions gained on SERPs…

Paper Club helps you set up your influencer marketing strategy: choose (from our database) the influential sites and blogs on which to publish your content and let us do the rest!

The digital advertising market grew at a CAGR of +13% between 2013 and 2019 in France, with total revenues estimated at over €6 billion for the year 2020 (Monitoring of the epub, 25th edition). Among the various forms of online advertising, native advertising is one that stands out, with a growth rate of 5% in 2020. Native advertising has been developing rapidly over the last ten years or so and is characterised by its ability to adapt to its graphic environment, making it one of the most formidable advertising formats – and the most popular with advertisers. What exactly is it and how does it work? Paper Club tells you everything, everything, everything about native display advertising!

What is native advertising?

Native advertising is one of the most popular digital advertising formats for advertisers. This display advertising has the particularity of blending in with the editorial content of the media on which it is displayed, so that it becomes difficult to distinguish it from other content (organic, specific to the website in question, etc.). This is known as integrated advertising: it is opposed to other forms of advertising that are all identical and recognisable as such.

In other words, native advertising takes on the same codes as the page where it appears (in terms of shape, design, location, typography, image ratio, etc.), thus playing the role of chameleon. It “blends” into the background, without losing the essential components that make it an online advertisement with the objective of encouraging clicks: visible presence of the brand, use of images and videos, Call-to-Action button, clickable link, etc.

So, instead of having a farting red banner at the top of a web page, native advertising allows an ad or a sponsored article to be displayed within the user’s feed. To make an analogy, it’s a bit like product placement in the movies, when the main character looks at the time on his Omega watch or does research on his Apple computer: it all looks natural, but is actually well thought out beforehand to advertise without looking like it.

The aim of the game? To guarantee the continuity of the Internet user’s browsing experience by offering an ad whose content and form make it indissociable (or almost) from the content he or she is consulting. And believe us: at a time when Internet users are rejecting traditional advertising formats en masse (41% of those under 30 used an AdBlock in 2018, according to IAB France), the proper integration of an ad into a page is a strategic issue.

Native advertising is sometimes considered a form of brand content. At Paper Club, we believe that these are two very different approaches, as native ads are not intended to be brand-centric. However, a brand content campaign can use native ads.

How is native advertising displayed?

Native advertising is not a revolution in itself: it is simply a continuation on the web of integrated advertising formats that have always existed in paper magazines and newspapers, such as advertorials and advertorials. The difference comes from the (digital) media, which offers many display possibilities. In fact, native advertising is generally found in the…

Within the user flow (editorial in-feed, external in-feed, social in-feed – depending on the media type), typically in the middle of a website’s homepage or between two posts on social networks;
In a search results page, e.g. commercial links on Google which are displayed above organic links, and which can only be distinguished from the latter by the word “ad” placed before the URL;
As product lists in e-commerce (promoted listings);
As customised content (custom content) written by the advertiser or by an intermediary such as Paper Club, and which has the advantage of corresponding exactly to the editorial line of the site which publishes it (the content is then indicated as a “sponsored article”);
Within other content, as an article (in-article), an email (in-mail) or a video (in-video);
As modules (widgets) to recommend other content from the same site or from third party partners.

What role does native advertising play?

This native advertising format now accounts for 22% of global display advertising and contributes 38% to its growth (IAB).

How do you explain such success? First, through changes in behaviour. Internet users are massively using AdBlocks to escape the increasingly invasive and intrusive traditional advertising formats that disrupt browsing. And even when banners are displayed and cannot be blocked, their presence is largely ignored – this is the phenomenon of “banner blindness”, the ability of Internet users to “not see” an advertisement.

Secondly, through the evolution of the media. Digital content consumption has become predominantly mobile, with this format accounting for over 66% of the online advertising market. However, a mobile screen offers less space for standard advertising formats, which are even more intrusive than on the desktop. This changeover has therefore required a change in strategy.

All in all, the place occupied today by native advertising is the result of an inexorable evolution of the advertising model: we have moved from an intrusive model (“push”) to a user-friendly model (“pull”).

Why is native advertising so effective?

The effectiveness of native advertising is based on two major pillars:

The ability of this advertising format to adapt to new user behaviour. As mentioned above, native advertising is particularly effective against this reflex, developed by Internet users, which allows them to ignore banners and advertising banners. “Banner blindness” is caused by habit: because we know that an ad is going to be displayed in a key place on the page (in the header, in the sidebar, etc.), we no longer pay any attention to it. Only native advertising, for example an in-feed ad or a sponsored article, can go against this habit: it is less easily identified and, when it is, less often rejected by Internet users. This format is also less well filtered by ad blocking tools.

Its ability to meet the strategic objectives of advertisers when it comes to addressing their audiences. This, in terms of awareness, consideration or performance.

Notoriety. Native advertising makes it possible to better capture the attention of Internet users: on average, a native in-feed ad (integrated into the feeds of the main social networks, for example) is seen twice as much as a high banner, and the Internet user spends 3.6 times more time on it. It is by capturing the attention of targets that an advertiser increases the chances that its link will be clicked on or that its sponsored article will be read.

IMAGE: Attention span of Internet users

(Source : IAB)

Consideration. Native formats are also more effective at engaging the audience. They show interaction rates 20-60% higher than traditional digital advertising formats, and register +15% purchase intention following a click. Moreover, 53% of Internet users prefer to consult native ads. (IAB figures.) Not to mention the fact that native advertising delivers a quality audience.
Performance. A better targeted and more engaged audience is likely to convert more easily, which allows advertisers, through native advertising, to also achieve their performance objectives. These ads can encourage users to fill out an online form, subscribe to a newsletter, download content or an application, make a purchase, etc. The result is a significant improvement in ROI.

All these reasons explain the effectiveness of native advertising and its adoption by a growing number of advertisers.

What does native advertising look like?

Are you still having trouble figuring out how native advertising can be integrated into a media in a way that is inseparable from its own content? At Paper Club, we are specialists in sponsored articles: a type of tailor-made content that adopts the graphic charter of the site where it is to be placed, so that most Internet users cannot see the difference with a native article. It is therefore quite natural that we have chosen such an article to illustrate our point.

Here is an example of native advertising in the form of a sponsored article, published on the La Tribune newspaper website. Notice how the content fits in perfectly with the media, both in form (typography of the title and text, illustration with an image that respects the site’s ratio, display of the number of words, etc.) and in content (a subject that fits in with the media’s editorial line). Only the mention “partner article” (under the title) indicates that it is a native advertisement.

Another example of native advertising, this time in-feed: still on latribune.fr, the Internet user is offered content to read with links to other pages on the same site, but also links pointing to third-party sites whose aesthetics are exactly the same as those of in-site recommendations (compare the proposals in the first and third lines, which are almost identical in form). Only the indication “AD”, associated with the destination domain, makes us understand that these are native advertising formats.

Because it is integrated into the media that publishes it and plays on the indistinguishability of the content, native advertising must be highly qualitative and relevant: the reputation of the site or page that hosts it depends on it. This is why it is recommended to entrust the creation of your native advertising to professionals, like Paper.club for your sponsored articles!

Do you know when editorial content becomes an advertising message? The answer is when you use native advertising. An approach that consists of producing advertising content that is perfectly integrated with the site on which it is published. What’s the point? Much more effective than traditional banner ads: 53% of Internet users prefer native formats and 48% of them retain a brand more easily if it is associated with a positive advertising experience (IAB France). However, two formats are still too often confused in this field: sponsored articles and advertorials. To untangle this confusion (and help you choose THE most effective native format for your digital communication), Paper Club offers you a detailed comparison: advertorials VS sponsored articles!

Advertorials VS sponsored articles: definitions

Why are advertorials and sponsored articles often confused? What is the difference between one advertising format and the other? Before getting into the actual match (advertorial VS sponsored articles), it is best to understand what it is all about.

Advertorials: advertising content above all

The advertorial is not a recent advertising format: it has been (and continues to be) a great success for the print press. This type of content has adapted to web challenges to become a fully-fledged lever of digital communication.

It is called “advertorial” because this editorial content takes the form of a journalistic report, of which it uses certain codes (the realism of the description, giving the floor to experts, etc.) by mixing them with those of a classic advertising format, while adapting to the requirements of its media. This is why this type of content is referred to as native advertising: in terms of layout (layout, colours, arrangement of elements, etc.), it blends in with the media in which it is placed, while aiming to be informative and non-intrusive.

But this report is not really a report: it aims to highlight a product, a service or a brand, to show its features and benefits. In other words: to sell. The advertorial is therefore, first and foremost, an advertising message, a camouflaged advertisement – whereas the sponsored article is first and foremost content. In this respect, it is far removed from the basic editorial content published by the site in question, because it adopts a formatted, marketing-oriented language, closer to a press release. It is therefore native only in part.

The sponsored article: editorial content rather than advertising

As native advertising, the sponsored article can be considered as an advertorial in the broadest sense. In fact, some of the characteristics of this advertising format can be found: content created from scratch for a specific purpose, which replicates the site’s layout, so that Internet users cannot easily tell the difference (even though the sponsored article, like the advertorial, must be indicated as such by the host site).

This format is also focused on a brand, a company, a product or a service, but it must, while getting its advertising message across, respect the specifications imposed by the publisher in terms of editorial line, theme, style – as well as form. It is therefore no longer simply a question of ‘ape’ the visual of a site to publish content that blends in with the rest, but also of appropriating the ‘way’ in which the other content is written, so that the article fits in perfectly with its environment. Note that these specifications can also give instructions on the insertion of links or visuals, the choice of keywords or the total number of words not to exceed.

The sponsored article is written by an experienced writer, who may either work for the influential site or blog on which it is to be published, or on behalf of an intermediary such as an inbound marketing platform or an agency specialising in advertising editorial (precisely what we do at Paper Club!). In both cases, the specifications must be strictly respected. Sometimes the publisher agrees to give the writer complete freedom to create the content, but only on condition that they make the necessary corrections themselves.

Although it is referred to as a sponsored “article”, this type of editorial content can in fact take many different forms: blog post, journalistic article, report, infographic, white paper, case study, etc.

Advertorials VS sponsored articles: the differences between these two native advertising formats

The advertorial vs. sponsored articles match is between two types of editorial content that are similar in many ways: both are native advertising formats that are integrated into the publishing platform. However, the above descriptions already suggest some notable differences which we will now explore further.

Degree of integration of editorial content

The first major difference in this advertorial VS sponsored article comparison is the degree of integration with the host site. Here, the sponsored article goes much further than its predecessor in aiming for a perfect resemblance with the rest of the editorial content published by the publisher. This advertising content seeks to blend in completely with the background, respecting both the layout and the editorial line of the media. The illusion must be perfect: without the indication “sponsored article” or “partner” which must necessarily appear at the top of the content, the Internet user would be completely unable to distinguish it from other content published on the site.

This chameleon-like skill has a definite advantage: it makes it possible to cancel out the negative response of Internet users to any explicit form of advertising. As the figures gathered by IAB France in its study on native advertising remind us, the intrusive dimension of the classic advertising format is strongly rejected by consumers: 95% of Internet users do not wish to be interrupted by an advertisement during their browsing, and the increase in Adblocks has reached almost 40% worldwide.

In addition, the use of a sponsored article circumvents the phenomenon of “banner blindness”, which causes Internet users to ignore banner ads and other “pre-roll” videos that impair the user experience on the web. When faced with quality editorial content, which may carry an advertising message but is ideally integrated into the site they are visiting, users are tempted to think that it is indeed in-house content or, if they identify the sponsored article as such, to be more tolerant because of its authenticity and the added value it can bring.

Choice of publication media

Regardless of what the objective of an advertorial content is (as with any digital communication action), the advertiser will inevitably seek to publish it on influential sites likely to increase its visibility.

On this point, there is another notable difference between advertorials and sponsored articles: the media chosen do not meet the same challenges.

An advertorial is primarily an advertising format, and its integration into the site is essentially visual: the advertiser does not therefore have to worry about thematic consistency. Content about the performance of a new farm tractor can be published on an influential blog about the economy (with a tenuous thematic link between the two). In printed format, this disconnect between themes is even more pronounced: there may be no link between the media and the content.

The sponsored article must follow the editorial line of the host site: it must be aligned with the latter’s themes. It is therefore not enough to choose influential sites to host the article, but also to ensure that the content proposed is consistent with the subjects usually covered by the media.

The sponsored article: a win-win agreement

Another crucial distinction between advertorials VS sponsored articles relates to the person writing the advertising content. As you have already understood from our descriptions above:

The advertorial is written by the brand itself;
The sponsored article is written by an experienced writer who may work for the target site or for an intermediary (this also explains why the price of a sponsored article is higher than that of an advertorial: the target site and the writer must be paid).

The sponsored article is therefore written by a specialist in the subject who masters both the codes of the media and the advertiser’s issues, who is at the same time careful to get an advertising message across and to provide content with high added value for Internet users, but also for the target site, which will not accept to publish just anything, just anyhow.

This may not seem like a big deal to you, but this difference changes everything. By writing its own content, a brand is simply following a marketing line: it wants to present a product or a service, or talk about its news, without necessarily bringing anything to its readers. But the experienced writer’s mission is quite different: he or she must produce content that will have influence (that could go viral and be shared on social networks) and that will add value to the publication media.

For a webmaster, for example, the publication of a sponsored post should enable him to gain visibility, to position himself on a search engine, or to monetise his blog. It is therefore a win-win agreement, which implies relying on truly qualitative content. In return, the content benefits from the credibility of the site or blogger who publishes it and who, in the context of influence marketing, takes the place of an opinion leader in his field.

Hence the use of a seasoned intermediary such as Paper Club, not only to ensure that the content is published, but also to ensure that it meets the site’s issues.

Advertorials VS sponsored articles: which is the most effective lever?

These differences, revealed by the advertorial VS sponsored articles comparison, mean that these two types of content meet different objectives. The question is therefore not so much to know which advertising content is more effective, but which one best meets the objectives of your digital communication.

As we have said, both are native advertising formats. But while the advertising message is the main reason for the advertorial, the sponsored article has higher ambitions. The aim is not just to promote a product or service or to present the latest news about a brand, with a view to generating sales. Sponsored content is part of a broader strategy to :

Gaining visibility,
Positioning on one (or more) search engines,
Generate traffic on the advertiser’s website,
Increase awareness,
Create a buzz with a viral article (particularly in the context of a social media strategy),
Boost natural referencing through netlinking.

This last point is essential. Using a sponsored article is often used to obtain a quality backlink, i.e. an external link to a specific page published on a site with a high authority (influential blog, institutional site, information platform, etc.). This is all the more important as search engines, when they are interested in the backlinks obtained by a site, look closely at an indicator called “Trust Flow”: a trust score based on the quality of these links.

For any advertiser wishing to implement a netlinking strategy, the use of sponsored articles is an excellent way to obtain high quality backlinks and to build an almost natural “link profile” (with “dofollow” links allowing the sharing of “SEO juice”).

To sum up, the sponsored article remains the most relevant option for awareness, visibility and obtaining quality inbound links.

And the best way to produce high value-added sponsored articles is still to entrust the writing of them to a specialised editorial agency like Paper Club. In addition to writing your editorial content, we identify influential blogs and sites from a database of over 10,000 publishers in all subject areas. So you’re sure to reach your goals!

Want to write a well optimized SEO article? Whether you want to write for a personal blog or a company website, it is important to publish articles that meet the search engines’ requirements. Here is a simple and methodical approach that can guide you in writing your SEO optimized article.

What is an SEO optimized article?

We call an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) optimized article, an article that is intended to be distributed on the web to improve natural referencing. The objective is to position one or more keywords on search engines to improve positioning and increase traffic to your site. The article must respond to one or more search intentions of the Internet user on targeted requests. The writing of an SEO optimized article therefore meets certain technical requirements that must be respected for a better referencing. The purpose of SEO is to attract Internet users to present a product or to inform them about a subject. Even if the content of your article is interesting, if the reader does not read it, it will have no relevance. If you want to write an SEO optimized article, your main objective will be to attract the Internet user and succeed in capturing his attention by meeting his expectations. This is called SEO-friendly content strategy.

What to do before you start writing an optimized article

It is interesting to first check what the search intention of the Internet users is on the targeted keyword(s). Is the visitor looking to watch a video? Read a blog article? Buy a product? By checking the SERP, you can quickly identify what the user wants to find. Next, there is often a “Other questions asked” section. These are the questions regularly typed in the Google search bar. It is therefore necessary to integrate these questions into the content of your text. You can also use tools like Google Trends to help you find the trending topics or Ubersuggest to help you find the topics of articles that deal with your keywords and that are positioned.

Structure of an SEO optimized article

The title tag or title (h1)

Often confused, there is nevertheless a difference between these 2 notions. The title tag is the page title that appears on the search engine results pages. Ideally, the title tag is limited to 70 characters including spaces beyond it will not be visible on the search engine. Your keywords must therefore be located as far upstream as possible from your title to improve your SEO optimization. The title (h1) is the title that appears on the article of your page. It is not limited in number of characters and allows to offer readers a better understanding of your content. The title of an optimized article must be both meaningful and catchy.

The meta description tag or the heading

The meta description tag is the content displayed just after the title tag on the search results. It is limited to 160 characters including spaces, beyond that it will not be visible on the search engine. Unlike the title or introduction of your page where you are not limited in the number of characters. The keywords must be present. A title or introduction must answer the 5W and 2H (Who? What? When? How? Where? How much? Why?).

h2, h3, h4,…

Segmenting an SEO article into several paragraphs not only helps to organize your ideas, but also to prevent from losing the reader. Depending on the amount of information you want to convey in your optimized article, you can divide it into several paragraphs. To structure your article, you will need to use the h2, h3, h4 tags… The h2 tags represent the subheadings of your article. They must contain the targeted keywords. Unlike other tags, h2 tags have a greater weight in terms of SEO power.

ALT attribute for images

The ALT attribute allows, if the image is not displayed, to display a text instead. It allows to help the referencing of images on search engines.

Your page url

For some experts, the choice of your URL would have an impact. It is therefore necessary to insert only your keywords to maximize your chances. Avoid determiners (one, a, the, the… etc.) and especially separate your keywords with a hyphen.

Optimizing an SEO article

Use SEO tools to write your optimized article

There are many tools on the market to help you optimize your content. Here is a non-exhaustive list: 1.fr, YourTextGuru, Ubersuggest, SEOQuantum, Google Keyword Planner, Semrush…

Determine the number of words in your optimized article

What is the length for an optimized article? According to statistics, long contents would have more chances to be positioned in the SERP on the one hand because they are subjects that will be more in-depth and therefore with more keywords and on the other hand because a long article will tend to show the reader a willingness of the editor to produce quality content. It is necessary to count between 1 500 and 2 000 words.

Use well-targeted keywords

Keywords are essential elements in any SEO strategy that wants to be effective. It is these words or expressions that Google’s algorithms rely on to provide results to Internet users. It is important to use relevant keywords, that is, those that correspond to the terms used by Internet users during their searches. Several keyword generators can help you find the terms you need: Google Keyword Planner, UberSuggest or Semrush.

Check your keyword density

It all depends on the length of your SEO article. You should not exceed 2 repetitions every 100 words. However, you can vary the lexical field of keywords such as company manager, director, founder, president … Note that an excessive use could taint the naturalness of your article and even expose you to penalties from the SEO algorithms. The density of keywords must be reasonable. You have some tools that allow you to measure the density of your keywords: Outiref, Smallseotools, yourtext.guru, Semji, Alyze.

Use internal and external links

Using links is a simple and effective method to improve the referencing of a website whether it is internal or from outside pointing to your site (external link). Not to be confused with links on your page that point to another site (outbound links). The internal mesh or internal link is essential in terms of SEO. It allows the user to navigate on your website. It also allows search engines to detect your pages and therefore distribute your SEO juice through these links to your different pages. There is no limit of internal links, everything depends on your strategy on the targeted pages. However, be careful not to abuse your internal links. Concerning external links, I invite you to read our more complete article on this subject : Backlinks, these friends who do your SEO good!

There are over 1.8 billion websites in the world (Internet Live Stats). Amidst this crowd, how can you make yours stand out and generate traffic? It’s simple: through natural referencing. And do you know the major lever of SEO? Netlinking, that is to say the establishment and acquisition of links to facilitate the indexation of your pages and increase their authority in the eyes of search engines. But to be successful, a netlinking strategy must be effective and relevant, especially when it comes to obtaining external links (backlinks). Paper Club offers you a dive into the complex world of hyperlinks and natural referencing: you will find clear explanations and best practices galore to succeed in your netlinking campaigns and boost your SEO!

Netlinking, or the art of positioning external links

Hypertext links are an integral part of the Internet’s history. They belong to the very definition of the World Wide Web: an interconnection of different networks, sometimes tens of thousands of kilometers apart, logically linked together. These links allow Internet users to move from one web page to another, and search engine crawlers to understand the logical connections between two pages or two sites, for indexing purposes.

It is therefore not surprising that netlinking is still considered as one of the most important natural referencing levers, especially regarding backlinks: these famous external links (we also talk about an “incoming link”) that, published on third party sites, point to the web page that we want to position better on search engines.

If the concept of netlinking also includes internal linking, i. e. the fact of linking the web pages of a same website between them (an important step for the navigation of the Internet users and for the good understanding of the site architecture by the crawlers), it is especially the external netlinking technique, aiming at obtaining inbound links, which is going to interest us primarily at Paper Club (and which is going to contribute to boosting your SEO)

The importance of a good netlinking strategy for SEO

Why is this aspect of SEO so important? Because external links show the popularity of the site to which they point. They work like signposts by indicating to the crawlers the relevant web pages to be indexed.

If we look at Google’s ranking algorithm, we can see that the website ranking is partly determined by the number of backlinks pointing to it (in the same way that the popularity of a tourist place is revealed by the number of references to it in guides and brochures).

To define the ranking of a web page, Google relies on a simple observation: if referent domains with a high authority “talk” about this page (by publishing external links leading to it), it means that this page is relevant, credible and qualitative, and that it deserves to gain authority and be better positioned. Thus, getting links allows this web page to benefit from the “SEO juice” of the domains that link to it, and the quality of this “juice” depends on the popularity of the site that published the link.

The benefits of netlinking

Now you understand what makes netlinking essential. To simplify things, there are three main benefits:

Guide search engine robots (which “surf” on links to index pages).
Gain popularity and improve the SEO positioning of a web page.
To multiply the entry doors to a site by giving the opportunity to the Internet users to reach it via many links, which makes it possible to generate a more qualified traffic (coming from referring domains with themes close to the targeted pages).

In doing so, it is in a website’s best interest to obtain a large number of external links, and to do so to develop an effective netlinking strategy. However, this netlinking has evolved since the beginning of Google, and the methods that worked yesterday are no longer sacred today.

The evolution of netlinking

Before Google’s 2012 “Penguin” algorithm update, any netlinking technique could be used to boost SEO – including buying links on low-quality “farms” and “directories”, or creating a personal blog network (PBN): approaches considered specific to “black hat” SEO – by focusing on quantity.

But things have changed, and PageRank has been refined by taking into account not only the number of external links, but also (and especially) their quality and the authority score of the referring domains from which they come. So that the anarchic aggregation of links for the purpose of wild netlinking is no longer taken into account by search engines, and may even lead to a penalty.

For several years, therefore, the engines are interested in the quality of netlinking set up by a site. And this is where Paper Club comes into play: by activating the levers that will allow a web page to obtain quality links, from referring domains with a high authority.

The notion of “quality” in netlinking strategy

To understand what we are talking about, let’s take a detour to the notion of “quality” in netlinking.

The quality of an external link depends on four factors :

The origin of the backlink, i.e. the authority and popularity of the site that publishes it. An effective link building strategy must take into account this essential point, and start by identifying the most relevant sites on which to try to publish an external link. There are several criteria to determine the relevance of a site: its PageRank, the coherence of the themes addressed and the semantics used, the number of indexed pages, the volume of traffic, the number of external links it has, etc.
The link anchor, i.e. the clickable text. On this point, the rules of netlinking are complex: the anchor must be natural or optimized and be consistent with the content of the landing page, but things get more complicated when we take into account all the links. The anchors as a whole must indeed respect certain proportions, for example: a maximum of 3% of links with optimized anchors on strategic keywords, a balance between natural and poorly optimized anchors, anchors that dilute the main keyword by exploiting semantic variations, etc.
The positioning of the incoming link on the site and in the web page. Ideally, it should be published on a page relatively close to the home page (three or four clicks away at most), positioned above the waterline (so that the user doesn’t have to scroll down to see it), and inserted in the body of the text (and not in the header, footer or side blocks).
The attribution of the link in dofollow. This practice actually refers to the fact of not placing a rel=nofollow attribute on a link or on a web page, with the aim of signaling to crawlers to ignore the incoming link and not to give it any SEO importance. Consequence: a link in nofollow does not generate “SEO juice” and loses much of its usefulness in netlinking. This happens when a site feels that a link is not legitimate or relevant – hence the importance of developing an effective netlinking strategy.

Sounds complex? It is! And that’s why it’s better to entrust your link building strategy to professionals, especially regarding the identification of relevant sites and the choice of anchors (which Paper Club takes care of when you order a sponsored article: you don’t have to manage these aspects).

Natural and artificial links

In terms of link quality in netlinking, another distinction seems important to us: the one that separates natural links from artificial links.

Natural external links are published spontaneously by third-party sites. They are the most appreciated by search engines because of their authenticity, since they do not result from any consideration (financial or not). Typically, a webmaster who has appreciated your content will insert a link on his site to refer to your web page. A netlinking technique based on natural links is therefore more effective; but it is also the most risky approach, because you can not control your link acquisition.
Artificial external links are published by third-party sites on request. This publication is subject to the respect of conditions established beforehand and, in most cases, of counterparts. Artificial netlinking includes link buying, link exchange, guest-blogging, sponsored article publication, etc. – In short, a large part of the levers of a netlinking strategy. This category also includes backlinks created without the knowledge of the webmasters of the targeted sites, for example when they are published in forums or in comments..

Obviously, natural links are the most qualitative, but they can hardly be the object of a link building strategy because of their random nature. Active netlinking implies 99% of publishing artificial links. But, fortunately, some techniques allow you to obtain “almost” natural links, which will be considered as such by the search engines: this is the case of guest blogging and sponsored articles.

Netlinking methods to boost your SEO

Now that you know what constitutes effective netlinking – the quality of external links – it remains to focus on the implementation of a relevant link building strategy.

The first thing to do, before starting your netlinking campaigns, is to identify the relevant sites to receive your links. As we mentioned above, the authority and popularity of the site are essential; but it is equally important to target referring domains or web pages whose themes are in line with yours. A backlink published on a site dedicated to fishing and referring to a page dealing with SEO will not bring you any “juice” and may attract the attention of search engines on your netlinking.

Then, take into account that the key to success is not only in the quality of each link, but in the consistency of your overall netlinking. Google will not only look at your last incoming link: it will be interested in all the external links that refer to your pages, and evaluate their heterogeneity. It is therefore essential to seek a balance and obtain links from sites with high authority and more confidential, offering various formats (institutional site, blog, social network, forum, directory), etc. This is what allows you to build a netlinking as natural as possible.

Best practices for obtaining quality links

When it comes to obtaining external links, there are several techniques available to you. We will start with the natural link acquisition methods, and continue with the link building levers (from the most effective to the least relevant).

Linkbaiting

Linkbaiting is a netlinking technique that consists in “baiting” webmasters, influencers and Internet users to publish external links to your pages.

This approach allows you to obtain natural links, since they have not been requested by you nor have been the subject of a counterparty. They fully meet the criteria of authenticity of search engines. To do this, it is necessary to publish quality content, with high added value, in various formats, likely to attract attention and encourage users to refer to it.

If it is impossible to base a netlinking strategy exclusively on this lever, linkbaiting should not be neglected. Think of it as a challenge: be able to produce contents of such quality and relevance that they will go viral (especially for an article published on a social network), will be widely shared, and will bring you some genuine links.

The claim of due links

The “links due” remain natural links: it is simply a matter of “pushing” webmasters and Internet users to make them happen!

This netlinking technique consists in identifying the sites that have quoted your brand or one of your contents (article, infographic, image, video…) but without inserting a link, and then contacting them to ask them graciously to repair this “omission”. You can, for this purpose, set up an alert on Google, for example targeted on the name of your company or on the titles of your contents.

This method is too rarely used, but it allows you to obtain qualitative natural links that you would not have benefited from otherwise. But it is subject to the goodwill of webmasters!

Guest blogging

As we have seen, the practice of guest blogging is similar to the publication of sponsored articles, except that there is no compensation, neither financial nor in the form of an exchange of links. You write (or have written) content that you publish on a third-party site, free of charge: only the added value of the content constitutes a currency of exchange, which means that it must be particularly qualitative and relevant for the site that hosts it.

But let’s be honest: guest blogging almost only works for sites that are not very influential, or that are very specialized and reach a limited target. Content sponsoring is nowadays the only way to get links from high authority sites, as these sites have taken the habit of averaging their SEO authority and of refusing any content that has not been the object of a compensation.

Indirect netlinking (link exchange)

The expression “link exchange” indicates what it is all about: in indirect netlinking, you publish links on your own site so that third parties do the same on their side. It is a “win-win” agreement that allows both sites to benefit from the authority and the “SEO juice” of the other.

This technique is a partnership. However, it represents a risk: that search engines will notice the trick by spotting the reciprocity of external links. To avoid this, it is advisable to take precautions (by spacing out the publication of links) or to find other counterparts to offer than the insertion of a link (for example, the promotion of the host site on the social accounts of the requester within the framework of an influence marketing).

Buying expired domains

Every day, many domains are abandoned and become available to those who wish to purchase them, because they have not been renewed by their former owner (natural or legal person). Several web tools give you access to the list of these domains, which can be purchased from the registration platforms.

Why is this interesting for netlinking? Because these domains keep their SEO history, especially the external links they have accumulated, and therefore their popularity in the eyes of search engines. By buying a domain and making it your own, you can benefit from its authority and the quality of its existing links.

Nevertheless, this netlinking technique presents some risks: finding a brand that is still active and that could one day claim its domain name; using an unscrupulous SEO who puts the content of the old domain name back online to save time, exposing you to intellectual property disputes (this is a “black hat SEO” method); buying a domain that has been penalized; etc. This means carefully identifying expired domains that might interest you and screening them with a dedicated tool, such as Majestic SEO.

Manual link creation

Let’s finish with a method of netlinking that has had its time, but which is nowadays lacking in relevance – even if it can be useful in some cases: the manual creation of external links. That is to say: inserting links where they will have little added value, in a comment under a blog article, in a post published on a forum, in a directory, etc.

Long and tedious, this netlinking technique is coupled with a low SEO impact, due to the low quality positioning of the links and the fact that they are most of the time passed in nofollow. This approach should therefore not become a pillar of your link building strategy.

You will have understood: netlinking is a must in SEO. But not just any netlinking: your strategy must be based on quality external links, which are close to the level of “natural” expected by search engines. So one of the best levers for an effective netlinking strategy and offering a good SEO boost is the publication of sponsored articles to obtain links from referent domains with high authority. Exactly what Paper Club offers you!

Netlinking is one of the major levers of your SEO strategy as it allows you to maximize the visibility of your website. The use of specialized platforms can optimize the effectiveness of purchasing backlinks or links. But how do they work? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

How netlinking platforms work

The operation of netlinking platforms is based on a fairly simple model: putting advertisers and publishers/media in touch with each other. They are, for the most part, free access (with registration), free and without commitment. They provide a search engine on which you define your technical quality criteria such as Trust Flow, Citation Flow, Domain Rating, number of positioned keywords, number of backlinks… as well as criteria such as rate, country or theme. Depending on the platform, the services can vary: self-service in the catalog, customized support, possibility to contact the editor or the advertiser, validation of texts before publication… as it is the case with Paper.club

You can therefore get in touch easily with sites in the theme you want and according to your constraints and conditions. You pay only at the time of your purchase including the commissions of the platforms like a traditional e-commerce site.

The advantages of netlinking platforms

The purchase of links on netlinking platforms has many advantages that we will try to list. The use of a netlinking platform allows you to access a catalog of various sites in France and internationally with a wide choice of quality sites and rates. You can view the SEO indicators as well as the media conditions very quickly. This method allows you to acquire links in a fast, easy and efficient way. You save time and productivity to launch your netlinking campaigns. This saves you from looking for the right contact, negotiating all the conditions, managing the billing part with the different media. Obtaining links is a very time-consuming task, which requires a large network and regular follow-up.

The other strong points of the platforms are the competitive rates on known and recognized media, the ease of managing the invoicing which is unique, the follow-up of your campaigns, the automatic reminders of the publishers on your orders, the accompaniment by experts in netlinking, the support of the platforms which helps in case of problem. Launching a netlinking campaign is easy! It is important to choose platforms on which you can define your criteria, exchange with publishers and validate your content before publication

Cons of the netlinking platforms

The pros of netlinking platforms are undeniable. There are few cons compared to the benefits they can bring you. To name a few, the rates can be higher when using a platform and some platforms take very high margins. SEO indicators or conditions are not updated daily, usually once a month, so there may be a slight delay. A too large choice of sites, which is then an advantage becomes a disadvantage.

Buying backlinks is specifically prohibited by Google’s policies. You should not forget that this technique manipulates the search algorithm of the web giant. That’s why the search engine can penalize your website if it detects reprehensible practices in terms of SEO.

Know that buying links is not the only technique to improve the SEO of your website. The netlinking platforms may seem to be the magic solution, but you must not forget to take care of the structure and content of your site, as well as the performance.

One of the most effective strategies for improving search engine ranking is netlinking, especially multi-level netlinking. A method that is little used by SEOs and yet has surprising results. Discover the concept in detail in this article.

What is the multi-level netlinking strategy?

The tiered netlinking strategy is a hierarchical set-up with several tiers, each with links. The links from the base feed the next rank and so on up to your site. The classification of this configuration is similar to a pyramid structure. This plan allows you to acquire links from sites of low authority, to your media quality links to make them more powerful. Finally, these backlinks become strong and are directed to your site. Your site is at the top of the pyramid because it is the objective of the whole netlinking strategy. Everything is done to ensure that it receives the juice from the links of the lower levels, and consequently, to make it visible and popular thanks to a successful referencing.

Level 1: Quality backlinks

The aim of level 1 is to target your main site, your “money site”. The part of this pyramid contains the backlinks or quality links, coming from sites with a high reputation related to your activity or theme.

Level 2: The heart of the pyramid

These level 2 links are of lower quality. However, they will be more abundant and easier to acquire. These backlinks point to your Tier 1 links, which are of better quality, but longer and more difficult to obtain. These backlinks help the indexation of your level 1 links, and send them SEO juice. This further strengthens these backlinks.

Level 3: Base of the pyramid

Level 3 should consist of even more backlinks than level 2, and do not require quality. They should point to the secondary level and thus allow your tier 2 links to be better indexed, intensify the power of your tier 2 links by moving them to a higher degree, thematise your links and thus improve the semantics that will make it easier for Google to understand and many other benefits.

What you need to know is that tier 2 of this hierarchy requires 10 times more hyperlinks than tier 1. Tier 3 requires 10 times more than Tier 2. The multi-level netlinking strategy is very interesting. It allows you to send quality links to your money site, to strengthen these links.

Do not hesitate to use our platform for your netlinking campaigns.

“Backlink” is the magic word in SEO. The little key that opens the big door of a search engine’s SERP. In short, it is a hyperlink that points to a given site by transferring some of its “SEO juice” to it, and that tells Google and others that the site in question is popular in the eyes of Internet users and webmasters. The more external links a website (or page) has, the more authoritative it is for search engines. Want to know more? Understand how it works and how you can get backlinks? Thanks to Paper Club, you will soon have all the answers to these questions!

What’s a backlink?

A backlink is a link – more precisely, a certain type of hyperlink. This term is used in SEO to designate an external link, published on a site A, which points to a site B.

The “inbound link” is opposed to the “internal link”, which consists of linking content on the same website. The latter is used mainly for user experience purposes – to improve the user’s navigation – and to facilitate indexing of pages by search engine robots.

The backlink, on the other hand, has two very different objectives. It can have…

a commercial purpose, and seek to direct a user to a particular site where they can learn more about a product/service or even make a purchase;
a purely SEO purpose, in which case it is a question of transferring “juice” from one site to another to take advantage of its authority and improve a page’s positioning.

It is mainly used in this second case. Because the backlink is a link used above all in the field of off-site referencing – a job that is very important to us at Paper Club.

The inbound link as a major SEO lever

For a website, having a large number of backlinks represents a big boost in natural referencing. SEO experts consider netlinking (the strategy of increasing the number of links) as one of the most important levers for the positioning of web pages, because of the weight given to it by the ranking algorithms of each search engine.

Why is this important? Because search engines aim to provide Internet users with relevant answers to their enquiries. Take Google: its purpose is to display results that match users’ search intentions, so that they are satisfied with the service provided. If 1,000 pieces of content do the trick, then they must be ranked so as to offer the best. To do this, Google makes a selective sorting to keep the most qualitative AND the most popular, those that are popular with Internet users, so as to place them in the highest positions in its SERP.

This is where the backlink plays a crucial role: as an index of popularity. It is one of the criteria for measuring how popular a page is (The said “PageRank”).

Because a backlink is a link from site A to site B, in a way, it is as if the former recommended the latter to its readers (and indirectly to the search engine). It is therefore a sign of trust. The greater the number of inbound links, the more popular the site to which these links refer is considered to be. This is similar to the way the number of references a scientific article receives indicates the impact of a researcher on their community.

The search engine algorithm will look at the link between the two sites (A and B) and transfer some of the popularity of one to the other. This is called “SEO juice”, which is diluted as it is shared. Let’s imagine: a piece of content on site A has a popularity of 100 (a completely fictitious figure). If it includes a link to a site B, it will also receive 100. If it publishes two links to two different sites, each will receive 50. If he puts in three external links, each will receive 33, etc.

In reality, things are a bit more complex. Because it remains to distinguish the “good” backlink, the one that will increase the popularity of the site to which it points, from the “bad” backlink, the one that risks ruining all your SEO efforts.

What is a “good” backlink?

The number of backlinks alone is not a sufficient indicator for a search engine. The latter will also look at the quality of external links. But what exactly is a “good” backlink? Several parameters are taken into account to determine the value of an incoming link:

Source site authority. By definition, a backlink is a link published on a site A that points to a site B. To judge the link’s quality, a search engine takes into account the authority of site A. If you publish content about coal shovels, a backlink on the Leroy Merlin site will be more valuable than one on an obscure DIY blog. It is therefore a question of multiplying the links from sites with a large audience and which have been established for a long time in the digital landscape.
Link and anchor relevance. A thematic link must exist between the two sites linked by a backlink, which implies seeking external links from sites close to the subjects addressed in the content to which they point. The same applies to the anchor: the expression on which the link is placed. It must be relevant to the content targeted by the backlink, from a thematic and semantic point of view.
SEO juice transfer. The circulation of “juice” between two sites can be blocked, in the same way as turning off a tap, with the “nofollow” attribute inserted in the link tag. This attribute tells the search engine that it must not transfer popularity; it is used for links that are not assumed, those placed in the comments of an article for example (this attribute can be applied by default to all comments posted on the site). Obviously, displaying many backlinks in “nofollow” has no interest in a purely SEO approach.
The position of the incoming link in the source page. The context in which a backlink is published contributes to its relevance. We are talking about a semantic environment here: the link must be placed in the text body, and not in a menu or in a “footer”. In the eyes of a search engine, a backlink is intended to be clicked by the visitor, which he will not be able to do if the link is not clearly visible.

Basically, to have a good “link profile”, you need to focus on:

External links from popular sites;
Links published on pages whose themes are close to those of the targeted content;
Relevant anchors;
“Dofollow” links, assumed by the source site;
Links that are well positioned on the source page.

A good way to “test” your netlinking, especially when you have a large number of backlinks to check, is to measure your Trust Flow – a performance indicator created by Majestic SEO. The value of a backlink is represented by a score between 0 and 100, so the Trust Flow allows you to quickly get an idea of the quality of your external links.

How to get external links?

Take it from us: getting backlinks, especially quality backlinks, is no easy task!

Given that it is impossible to rely on luck alone and wait patiently for a webmaster or blogger to integrate a backlink to a given site, SEO experts strive to create the conditions in which these backlinks are brought to life. Basically, they practice “linkbuilding”, the construction of a coherent “link profile”, in order to generate a large number of backlinks from authoritative sites.

What levers do they use to achieve this?

Links in directories, forums and comments

This is a great way to get a large number of external links quickly. But beware: the quality of these links is mostly (very) low. You can publish them in link directories, on forums by participating in discussions, or in the comments following blog posts.

The problem is that they usually come out of the blue. This is not a method we recommend at Paper Club.

Guest blogging

This practice consists of offering content to specialised media or influential bloggers. You write the content and the site publishes it.

The problem is that it only works if you are an authority on the subject, the content adds value to the host site, and it generates traffic. You need good reasons for a “big” media to publish your content and share its “SEO juice”.

Otherwise, you can always publish the article without a link and place a backlink in the author’s biography – it’s less powerful, but better than nothing.

SEO or SEA: which to choose?

SEO and SEA: what are they?

What is SEO?

The benefits of SEO

What is SEA ?

The benefits of SEA

SEO vs SEA: 2 different marketing acquisition strategies

Differences between SEO and SEA

SEO vs SEA: should you choose?

What is netlinking?

Why is netlinking so important for SEO?

What is influencer marketing?

How do influencer marketing campaigns work?

Influence marketing levers

Counterparts

What benefits can influencer marketing bring you?

The weight of recommendation

Various benefits adapted to all objectives

How do you implement an influencer marketing strategy that works?

1. Define your objectives and budget

2. Identify the right influencers and media

3. Contacting and developing the partnership

4. Tracking performance

What is native advertising?

How is native advertising displayed?

What role does native advertising play?

Why is native advertising so effective?

What does native advertising look like?

Advertorials VS sponsored articles: definitions

Advertorials: advertising content above all

The sponsored article: editorial content rather than advertising

Advertorials VS sponsored articles: the differences between these two native advertising formats

Degree of integration of editorial content

Choice of publication media

The sponsored article: a win-win agreement

Advertorials VS sponsored articles: which is the most effective lever?

What is an SEO optimized article?

What to do before you start writing an optimized article

Structure of an SEO optimized article

The title tag or title (h1)

The meta description tag or the heading

h2, h3, h4,…

ALT attribute for images

Your page url

Optimizing an SEO article

Use SEO tools to write your optimized article

Determine the number of words in your optimized article

Use well-targeted keywords

Check your keyword density

Use internal and external links

Netlinking, or the art of positioning external links

The importance of a good netlinking strategy for SEO

The benefits of netlinking

The evolution of netlinking

The notion of “quality” in netlinking strategy

Natural and artificial links

Netlinking methods to boost your SEO

Best practices for obtaining quality links

Linkbaiting

The claim of due links

Sponsored articles

Guest blogging

Indirect netlinking (link exchange)

Buying expired domains

Manual link creation

How netlinking platforms work

The advantages of netlinking platforms

Cons of the netlinking platforms

What is the multi-level netlinking strategy?

Level 1: Quality backlinks

Level 2: The heart of the pyramid

Level 3: Base of the pyramid

What’s a backlink?

The inbound link as a major SEO lever

What is a “good” backlink?

How to get external links?

Links in directories, forums and comments

Guest blogging

Sponsored articles