What Are Footprints & How to Use Them in SEO Promotion

The issue of SEO is very tricky. Google is doing its best to deliver the perfectly tailored content to the users’ request, plus keeps a close eye on the activities aimed at improving the website position in search results artificially.

Tracking footprints is one of the tactics used by Google to spot and penalize those using black-hat SEO practices, especially in the field of link building. Still, there is a way to use digital footprints for your benefit. As the first step, let’s uncover a digital footprint definition and suggest how to use footprints right.

What does a footprint stand for? A digital footprint is a track of your behavior with your SEO tactics. You can think of it as behavioral factors the users show on your website. For example, they dwell on your pages, leave their contact data, switch from one page to another, and so on.

SEO strategies and practitioners also leave their footprint when promoting a website. They may use the same account and the same IP address for several websites promotion, partner with the same websites to publish guest posts, host several sites on the same server, and so on. These, by the way, were digital footprint examples that Google can easily find and penalize the website. So, generally, digital footprint images are the things to avoid but there are good footprints as well. Let’s dwell on the difference in more detail.

There is a clear line between good and bad footprints which is easy to understand by analogy with backlink building. While the best backlinks are the ones that appear on their own, because of the content quality and relevancy, good footprints are those that show natural SEO promotion efforts. For example, publishing the content using your account and IP address is a good footprint. And vice versa, publishing the content to several websites and linking them with each other, using the same account, is a bad footprint and risky practice.

So, here is how you can be smarter with your footprints when promoting a website, avoiding negative ones and showing positive footprints only.

Below are some tactics and precaution measures you are welcome to follow for hiding negative footprints from Google (and your competitors) and showing positive activities as well.

Don’t use the same Google account

There is no easier thing to track than your Google account. Google already knows a lot about each of its users, so using your Google account for promoting your website or several websites is the first practice to abandon. Following your trace on the web, Google easily finds out that your websites are interconnected and can penalize both of them.

Instead, make sure to create several accounts which by the way, shouldn’t necessarily belong to Google and manage each of your websites from a separate profile. What’s more, don’t forget to change your IP address to deal with each of the websites since this indicator is also easy to track and tailor to your website and your identity. To change an IP, use a proven VPN service, preferably with a paid subscription. The latter can promise more data safety chances.

Such a simple step also allows you to hide your website from competitors which may track your footprints to find out more about your business and the SEO tactics you follow.

Don’t use Google Analytics only

Using Google Analytics is the best option to track and review your website performance and suggest better promotion strategies, being inspired by the obtained results. However, this is not the case when it comes to hiding your footprints. Instead, you are better to use several different analytics solutions for each of the websites and promote them one by one.

Track your competitors

The footprints your competitors leave can be useful for your SEO strategy as well. The only thing remaining is to find and analyze them to grab the best practices for your SEO promotion. There are dedicated services for SEO tactics tracking, including but not limited to spotting the keywords your competitors use and the websites linking back to them.

Be smart with your link building

And lastly, you have to be pretty intelligent with your backlink building activities since most of the footprints are left during backlink building strategies implementation. Below are some link building safety tips.

• Partner with multiple websites. In order to not leave suspicious footprints, make sure to partner with several different websites when publishing guest posts. Some website owners make the mistake of collaborating with one-two websites, and sooner or later, frequent backlinking becomes suspicious. Instead, partner with multiple platforms, and use different accounts to reach out to them. Also, keep in mind that the websites you work with should be from your or a related niche. This is the only way to create a backlink that will look organically and most importantly, will be relevant for the website’s users.
• Create a unique bio. Also, create unique biography for the authors on whose behalf your post your guest content. For example, you can create ten personalities, write a short and authentic bio, add a photo and publish guest posts to add a natural look to the article.
• Use different anchors. Also, use different anchors when placing a backlink. The core task is to make it look organic so using different sets of words is essential. Try different strategies – from simple “find out more here” to using your brand name, or key query if you link to your blog article.
• Embed your links organically. Lastly, make sure the link you promote with a guest post actually adds value to the article. This is the only way to build backlinks in close to the natural way and avoid penalties from Google.

Surely, waiting until somebody will link to your content isn’t a winning strategy. In the abundance of articles, your one may never get found until you promote it using backlink-building strategies. Buying backlinks is one of the options to do it, however, make sure to play it safe. Google is well aware of this practice so tracking your footprints, in this case, is pretty easy.

To get a lot of high-quality and do-follow backlinks from authoritative websites, consider a safe service to help you with it. For example, Linksmanagement is well-versed in modern approaches to backlinks generation and is right here to support you.

Promoting your website on Google is a challenging and never-ending process. Still, there are two evergreen tips to do it. You have to create top-notch content and support it with high-quality backlinks. At the same time, it is better to hide your activities in the form of footprints from Google and competitors, and we, at Linksmanagement, would be glad to assist you with this task!