link building for dummies

1@DavidIwanow

2@DavidIwanow

Link Reclamation for dummies

3@DavidIwanow

Who am I?I’ve been doing SEO for over 10 years and I’m currently the Director of Strategy at BlueGlass, a London-based digital

marketing agency with a focus on SEO and Content Marketing.

We also have BlueGlass offices in Zurich and Tallinn.

4@DavidIwanow

The Drum 2016 Content Marketing

Agency of the Year

5 x Search Awards winner

5@DavidIwanow

1. Building links are hard

2. Do you need to update links?

3. Why should I do link reclamation?

4. Why should webmasters care?

5. What data to source?

6. Set quality guidelines on links

7. What to send?

8. How can webmasters might react?

9. Improve your campaign results

Link reclamation done right or wrongThere is always ways to screw things up if you cut corners or don’t gather enough data

6@DavidIwanow

Building links is hardWhy make things harder than they should be?

7@DavidIwanow

Already have enough links?

1. How many links resolve in 404 errors?

2. Have you moved domains?

3. Have you rebranded the business?

4. What % of your links redirect?

5. What % of your links land at 404 error pages?

8@DavidIwanow

Are inbound links current?

9@DavidIwanow

Do your links redirect?

10@DavidIwanow

How many links to update?

11@DavidIwanow

How many can be reclaimed?

12@DavidIwanow

Why should I do it?Webmaster need a good reason to action your request

13@DavidIwanow

Personal attacks may not be ideal

14@DavidIwanow

Negative emails don’t motivate

15@DavidIwanow

Should they care?You are asking them to do something that might require their time

16@DavidIwanow

Give them detailed background

17@DavidIwanow

Cleaning up past SEO mistakes?

18@DavidIwanow

Cleaning up past SEO mistakes?

19@DavidIwanow

What data to source?Success relies on gathering as much data as possible before outreach

20@DavidIwanow

Gather as much detail as possible

1. Does the page still resolve? Status code?

2. Google Cache Date

3. Scrape IP address

4. Whois details

5. Adsense & Google Analytics ID

6. Domain extension

7. Trust Flow, Citation Flow, Referring Domains, Backlinks

8. Is the Page or Domain indexed?

9. Does the website have too much adsense?

10. Does the website have links to Porn,Pillz, Casinos

11. Type of link? Mention, Redirect, 404, Affiliate Link

12. Classification? Forum, Blog, PBN, Directory, Aggregator, Affiliate

21@DavidIwanow

Group URLs with same owners

1. Check whois details company details

2. Check whois email details

3. Check IP address

4. Check Adsense & Google Analytics

5. Check if page is mirrored ie Blogspot.ie & Blogspot.fr

22@DavidIwanow

Set quality guidelinesConsider the strictness based on why you are doing it

23@DavidIwanow

Which websites to contact?

1. Focus on ccTLDs that match your website (ie .CO.UK)

2. Focus on authority domains next (Gov,Org,Edu,AC.UK)

3. Focus on the links based on this priority

a. Pointing to old domain or anchor with old brand

b. Pointing to error pages (500,503)

c. Pointing to dead pages

(400,401,403,404,405,410,414,415)

d. Pointing to redirects (301,302,307)

e. Pointing to parameters (Gclid,UTM,Internal tracking)

24@DavidIwanow

Which websites to avoid?

1. Domain or page is not indexed

2. Page contains malware

3. Site has links to Porn, Pillz or Casinos

4. Suspect site is part of a blog network

5. Domain has same whois registration details

6. Domain has same IP or DNS as other domains

7. Links are sitewide

8. Domain uses same Adsense or Google Analytics code

9. Anchor text is SEO friendly/suspicious

10. Content is low quality

11. Content about your brand is negative

12. Link is from a spam domain like XYZ or CC

25@DavidIwanow

What to send?You will have to balance between being polite and getting action

26@DavidIwanow

What should your email contain?

1. Who are you?

2. What is your relationship to the website?

3. Why are you disturbing them?

4. Why should they care?

5. Why do you want them to fix the link?

6. What is the old link you want fixed?

7. What is the anchor text, as this helps them find it?

8. What is the new link you want in place?

9. When will you follow up if not resolved? 2 weeks?

27@DavidIwanow

We had several rounds of review

28@DavidIwanow

Webmasters react?Why do I need to better measure what we’ve done?

29@DavidIwanow

Sometimes webmasters react

30@DavidIwanow

Manual checks and balances

31@DavidIwanow

If you mess up…. then apologise

32@DavidIwanow

Sometimes they ask for money

33@DavidIwanow

Sometimes they get angry

34@DavidIwanow

Sometimes they remove the link

35@DavidIwanow

Improve resultsYou are doing the hard work, why not go the extra step?

36@DavidIwanow

Go above and beyond

Geachte Mijnheer,

Beste,

Mijn naam is David, medewerker van Domain.be. Eerst en vooral wil ik u bedanken voor het geweldige werk dat u doet met uw website.

Het viel me echter op dat uw pagina (...) nog geen link naar onze website bevat. Om het aanbod op uw site verder te verbeteren, raad ik u aan om deze link(s) toe te voegen ...

• URL 1• URL 2

Het zou fantastisch zijn, mocht u dit even updaten.

Indien u nog vragen hebt, dan kan u mij altijd contacteren. Met plezier help ik u vooruit.

Vriendelijke groeten,

David

37@DavidIwanow

Improve your success rate

1. Don’t send to [%First Name%]

2. Don’t use a generic Gmail address

3. Be honest & sincere

4. Use real contact details

5. Ensure you get their name right

6. Ensure you get the website details right

7. Provide them with the right details of link to update/fix

8. Provide them with what actions you want them to take

9. Try not to spam same webmaster with multiple requests

10.Localised your email template where relevant

11.Test different subject lines

12.Use alternative email templates

13.Consider how to deal with spam filters

14.If doing bulk send provide unsubscribe/feedback option

38@DavidIwanow

Thank You!