Advanced link building for SEO process

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Advanced link building post Penguin Speaker: Nick Garner, CEO, SearchWorks / Brand Ambassador AnalyticsSEO A clear plan on how to linkbuild using methodologies outlined in the presentation: - the sort of sites you should get links from - the sites not worth dealing with - how much you should pay for 'content placement' - how you calibrate the quality, relevance and number of new links over time, - how to avoid a Google penalty, whilst pushing your SEO hard A budgeting formula you can use, to work out what it takes to rank their site on a given phrase A analyticsseo.com 'fremium' account with unlimited functionality for one domain,

description

This was a presentation I did at London Affiliate COnference 2013. It goes through how we analyse and organise our link building blueprint i.e. the stuff you do before you decide to go linkbuilding.

Transcript of Advanced link building for SEO process

Page 1: Advanced link building for SEO process

Advanced link building

post Penguin Speaker: Nick Garner, CEO, SearchWorks / Brand Ambassador AnalyticsSEO

A clear plan on how to linkbuild using methodologies outlined in the presentation:

- the sort of sites you should get links from

- the sites not worth dealing with

- how much you should pay for 'content placement'

- how you calibrate the quality, relevance and number of new links over time,

- how to avoid a Google penalty, whilst pushing your SEO hard

A budgeting formula you can use, to work out what it takes to rank their site on a given

phrase

A analyticsseo.com 'fremium' account with unlimited functionality for one domain,

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Summary view

If you're not that technical...

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Penguin

It's not a bird with a chainsaw

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It's a search engine on a link slashfest!

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Links

• A link is a vote

• Google has made it so votes are harder to fake easily.

• Google likes this because it makes industrial scale link building harder

• And this theoretically makes the search results better because spamming doesn't win

• And pushes brands to use adwords more because SEO is harder and less accountable (not provided)

• And Google makes more profit...

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Google $$$

Adwords

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Penguin

After: Base of links you

can use to get ranked

Before: Base of links you could use to get ranked

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Now we get technical...

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Insight into Penguin

You can get answers to the following questions (and more!)

•Is this all just a conspiracy to sell Google Adwords?

•Are footer links a cause of a Penguin penalty?

•Does the age of my domain play a role in this update?

•How important is link velocity (AKA link growth)?

•What about the number of linking root domains (domain popularity)?

•Does the number of indexed pages of a site decide between winners and losers?

•Are site-wide links a factor in the Google Penguin 3 update?

•Does the hosting country of my site matter?

•Does it matter from which country my links come from?

•Do social shares help boost rankings?

•How can TitleRank be used in the post-penguin era? and what does it tell?

•What does Power*Trust have to do with it?

•How does Google look at the Deep Link Ratio site?

•Are big sites with a lot of rankings in favor over small ones with only a few?

•How does Alexa as a traffic indicator matter in the Penguin 3 update?

Read more: http://www.linkresearchtools.com/case-studies/google-penguin-3-update/#ixzz2JpnjNAwY

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Link building

1. Plan out:

a. Number of links to rank

b. Quality of links

c. Rate at which you need new links

2. Decide on anchor text mix

3. Begin Outreach

a. Research processes

b. Solicitation tactics

"it's amazing how it all works out

when you have a good plan"Quote: Clever person with a plan

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Competitor / competition analysis

Google SERPS data.

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Excellent Link Data

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For Onsite housekeeping (soon to have 'deep' link analysis)

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Because clients like Moz

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Excel - Lots of Excel!

http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/

This guy is a hero to SEO!

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Understanding

LandscapeDirect and indirect competitors

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Get Share of Search

Share of search comes from using a basket of phrases and scraping Google SERPS from

a given country TLD of Google.

Once we have this data there are 3 things that you will find useful:

• Who has the greatest share of search amongst a given keyword set and so know

who you compete with overall and where you stand against them using a simple

percentage metric

• Sites you can approach for links

• Ranking sites and suitable inbound links to those sites discovered by Majestic.

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Get Share of Search (free Excel tool here: http://searchworks.eu/tools )

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SiteFinder. How to use it.

1. Make sure you have SEO tools enabled in excel 2010 or newer

2. Pick your keywords...carefully. Avoid brand phrases.

3. Paste the keywords cost per click and search volumes into SiteFinder

4. Config to country version of google you are interested in

5. ... and like magic you have share of search!

Share of search is based on this formula

• Volume of searches > denotes general interest in a phrase

• Cost per click > denotes commercial value of a phrase

• Ranking > the click through rate dependent on the search result position

• Equals a metric like this: VOL:1,000 x CPC:£10 x CTR:10% = 1000

i.e. a theoretical value for this traffic is £1,000 if this was adwords paid for traffic. The benefit is a

simple metric to order the commercial importance of a keyword. i.e. the bigger the number, the

greater the commercial competition and thus a useful metric.

Want to have a go? - download the excel doc: http://searchworks.eu/tools/

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Zero into SERP sets

We want to understand why No1,

No2 & No3 etc are ranking. So we

compare based on rankings

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Guess why a domain

ranksFor this exercise, were only looking at links

and anchor text. Relevance is another story

for another time.

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Pick 10 SERPS

The more competitive, the more

harmonised the onsite SEO will be,

therefore its easier to analyse the

linkscape

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Look at Link growth over time

These are the raw link growth

numbers which we have

make our assumptions

from...

Since sitewide links etc...

skew results, we also

look at number of

inbound linking domains.

We organize the data by top

ranking down. Where

there are irrelevant or

skewing domains,

remove them i.e.

wikipedia.

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Link growth

By comparing cumulative

link growth, we can

see who has been

busy.

By downloading a full lnk

report per domain

from Majestic, we

can see discovery

date, Citation flow of

link and actual

number of links per

domain.

But thats a lot of data. So

to save processing

we can draw certain

extrapolated

conclusions about

number of domains

over links from

Majestic's historic

links and historic

new domains data.

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Project the link growth numbers

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Link growth: staying in line...

A rule of thumb on link

growth: be like

everyone else, just

a bit better.

1. An aggressive domain

might get penalised

2. A smart domain sits in

the pack and gets

higher quality, more

relevant links than

the rest. This way

he doesn't get

flagged up for

unusual behaviour.

He's just the clever

one!

[1]

[2]

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Link analysis: Understand what quality of links you need... Majestic TrustFlow / CitationFLow and AC Rank for all

links to poker.williamhill.com

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Definitions:Citation Flow – This number predicts how influential a URL might be based on the number of sites linking to it. The

more links that the site has, the higher it’s Citation Flow.

Trust Flow – This number predicts how trustworthy a URL might be based on a backlink’s proximity to trusted domains.

Links from within trusted neighbourhoods are more trustworthy than links from spammy neighbourhoods.

888.com vs Spinpalace.com vs reddit.com

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Correlations to decide on metricsThe same data in graph form. The important part is that Citation Flow and AC Rank correlate 97% of

the time, so we can use AC Rank spread as a shorthand way of understanding link strength

across a domain within certain data Majestic gives us. Citation Flow is the best metric to work with

though.

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Quality of linksMajestic data again...Look at the AC Rank spread in our set of domains going from 1st ranked to 10th.

Look for patterns. In this case, as a proportion of all links, higher ranked sites have fewer 0 AC

rank links. (were moving to Citation Flow as our core metrics shortly)

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Anchor text

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Analyse & categorise anchor text.

To make sense of

anchor text, its

good to break it

into 3 profiles:

• The keywords

• Phrase type

• AC rank

Grouping

Why? so we can

plan

understand

what anchor

text for what

quality of link.

The data comes

from the anchor

text report in

Majestic

AC rank grouping is

• 1* AC 1+2

• 2* AC 3+4

• 3* AC 5+

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Anchor text for 1* rating / ranking

Here you can see for 1*

links, on average 48%

are phrase match links.

Top ranked sites have more

links and less exact

match.

Because Penguin is looking

for 'unnatural' anchor

text, it's very important to

carefully balance your

anchor text i.e. more

random phrase match

and brand

When you do the analysis,

patterns will emerge that

work for your keyword /

competition levels.

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Anchor text for 2* rating / ranking

Here you can see for 2*

links, there is a

weighting on the top

ranked SERPS towards

Brand and Brand

Phrase.

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Anchor text for 3* rating / ranking

Here you can see for 3*

links, there is a

weighting on the top

ranked SERPS towards

Brand and Brand

Phrase.... again

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Anchor text overview

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Anchor text by *star grouping

The main point behind this exercise is not to set 'rules', but to look at the patterns that emerge

because the data is organised in a structured way around winners and losers i.e. top or bottom

top 10 SERPS.

Consistent patterns do emerge, like winners having more links and more random phrase match links

giving a more 'natural' appearance

Its critical you account for the overall strength of a domain i.e. if you are analysing a big domain, to

focus on the relevant subdomain ,subfolder, page, rather and have a weighting to account for the

power of the domain. i.e. big domain will give any links more power to rank , therefore you need

for instance 40% fewer links.

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Putting it together

And finally we have a table

with number of links,

assuming 1.3 links per

domain, discounting

things like sitewide links

that skew results.

We also have the phrases

targeted in this instance

and the number of links

and quality of links per

star grading.

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Pricing model

Number of Links / Domains: 10

/ Month £500 a month

£100 X 10,000 visits

Conv: 2%Pot. Rev: £14,000

Risk:

30%

Competitiveness:

70%

Power of home domain:

40%

Onsite

90%

Time To

Rank: 10

Months

Quality Of Content 50%: £20 an article

Quality Of

Doner Site:

90%/ £30 a

link

Link

Spend: £5,000

ROI 2.8

35% Mktg

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Whats

Next?

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Excel - Lots of Excel!

http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/

We use a lot of Excel because

its a simple way of

modelling out ideas.

Using Excel Tools has meant

we can play with more

Majestic data, more easily

and easily integrate it into

the models were working

on.

When data sets get too

big, we then get into a

combo of Access and

Excel

And when an idea has 'grown

up', we work with

Analyticsseo.com to roll it

into their platform, so

expect to see a lot of this

functionality in

analyticsseo.com fairly

soon.

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Breakout of AC rank and Citation Flow

Use a 6 star system for more accuracy and work of citation flow rather than AC rank which

Majestic are deprecating.

Stars AC Rank Citation Flow

0* 0 0-6

1* 1 7-12

2* 2-3 13-26

3* 4-6 27-39

4* 6-8 40-59

5* 8 -15 60-100

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Relevance

We are working on a 'relevance metric' based on the idea that all keywords hav a degree of relevance

to you, so by attributing your relevance rating to a phrase, we can then analyse title text and page

content to score pages that are most relevant with the highest citation flow and trust flow, to then

outreach to. In theory as we tune this simple algo up, we will be able to build a 'value over

relevance' number that will help us in our outreach.

Relevance split out 0* - 5* by

0* Irrelevant and no meaning connection with my phrases

1* peripherally relevant i.e. core=’online casino’ 1*=’internet betting’

2* vaguely related i.e. core=’online casino’ 2*=’online betting’

3* quite related i.e. core = ‘online casino’ 3* = ‘gambling online’

4* closely related i.e. core = ‘online casino’ 4* = ‘online blackjack’

5* very tightly related i.e. core = ‘online casino’ 5* = ‘online casinos’

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CorrelationsWe are doing a lot more around solid correlations that help us create useful rule sets. Of course

correlation is not causation etc etc,

Here is an interesting correlation:

Here the correlation for share of search and linking domains is 100%. This validates the idea that more

linking domains equals a stronger ranking site (DUH!!!)

Above you can see a table of linking domains per star rating. Now we have a general idea of the

number of new domains and 'power' of the domains we need to acquire to win against these

Poker operators.

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CorrelationsSame but visually

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Final Thoughts...

As Moz always say, correlation is not causation...however we have seen certain patterns

again and again in the SERP across various territories and keyword sets.

Shortly we will release the tool you have seen as an excel on http://searchworks.eu/tools

In the meantime, take a copy of the share of search tool!

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Bonus: AnalyticsSEO

AnalyticsSEO You get the Freemium account (1 site, 1000 pages crawled, 1000 detailed backlinks –

for life!)… so long as you login once a month.

And...if decide to sign up before the end of February, you will get 50% off any product using this

coupon we have set up for you: WELOVELINKS

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This PPT is here : http://searchworks.eu/tools

The Free SiteFinder share of search tool is here http://searchworks.eu/tools

The Analyticsseo.com free signup and 50% off offer is at http://analyticsseo.com

Nick Garner

CEO

SearchWorks™ / Driven By Data.Multi Language SEO, PPC, Digital Marketing

----

E: [email protected]

M: +44 7814029751

Skype: nicholashgarner

Gtalk: nicholashgarner

London: 136 – 138 Holly Road, Twickenham, TW1 4HQ | +44 208 816

8208

Leeds: Manor House, Manor Street, Sheepscar, Leeds, LS71PZ | +44 113

207 9283

Thanks!