LinkPlanner ProcessHow to analyse and plan your link building

Pick your keywordsPut 50 relevant keywords into the share of search tool.

With Google keyword finder, get local search volumes and cost per click data.

Keywords to get share of search

The tool scrapes google SERPS

The tool queries google so there isn't a ‘filter bubble’ i.e. no personalised content

Results are shown on a pivot table

The formula is:

CPC x VOL x Rank X No. of Keywords

This gives us meaningful data showing who has greatest share of search over a set of keywords.

The spammers are doing well…

Take the top domains you care about

It’s important to put the domains in order of share of search to make meaningful comparisons later on.

If you are looking at SERPS, the scraper will take the top 10 results for a keyword and show them in order of ranking.

Link planner can look at specific URL’s or whole domains.

For this example, were looking at URL’s because looking at i.e. casino.Ladbrokes.com, rather than Ladbrokes.com makes the data clearer.

Why we trust Majestic TrustFlow

We took 400 randomly chosen .uk sites from Majestic’s 1,000,000 top sites by backlink count and got the total search traffic figures from SEMrush for each of these domains. We then got the Majestic TrustFlow and CitationFLow metrics for the domains and plotted the results. (Organic traffic on a logarithmic axis. The black line is the exponential trend line).Conclusion: This data shows that TrustFLow is a predictor of traffic volumes 75% of the time, whereas CitationFlow is a predictor of traffic only 61% of the time. This is why we use Trustflow as our core site metric.

Lets start our analysisWere looking for patterns that give us guidance on what we should do if we want to rank in the ‘casino’ keyword landscape.

Our underlying assumption with spammers who rank is that they know how to game Google’s algo. Unfortunately, we have lots of spammers, so it’s fairly easy to analyse what they are doing differently to rank in such a competitive segment.

For operators, it’s a case of understanding why those with the biggest share of search, rank, whilst accounting for what lessons we can take from spammers.

Overview of domains

This is an overview of domains, biggest share of search at the top. SkyVegas has a lot of site wide links.

Conclusions so far: Sitewide links may not be so toxic after all.

Backlink growth over time

Growth of new links over time. Interestingly the spam site Onlinecasinotop.co.uk had gone from no links to most new links in March. The most aggressive link acquisitions come from the must successful spammer and 32red.

Conclusions so far: Brands (apart from 32red) are far more conservative about link growth than the spammers.

Cumulative growth of links

When seen in cumulative view, 32Red have been very busy. They are a huge outlier in this keyword landscape. Amongst the brand sites, Casino.paddypower.com is amongst the lower end of the pack

Conclusions so far: 32Red is being far too aggressive on domain acquisition. Casino.Paddypower.com are in a nice ‘safe’ zone.

If you agree with ‘safety is in being the pack’ then it sensible to benchmark off those sites that have greatest share of search and (within reason) least new domains (Paddypower & Gala Casino)

32Red

Oops! That looks like a penguin 2.0 hit!

Link growth over time: Non Cumulative, Tabular form

Onlinecasinotop did a ‘blast out’ of links and took share of search over a 6 week period.

Conclusions so far: Links ‘kick in’ within 4 – 6 weeks. 18 – 25 new domains a month is good for this segment.

Link growth over time: Cumulative, Tabular form

This is historic link data from majestic seo. 32Red have a huge legacy which in theory should help them, but as you see it’s out of step with what the Google algo wants today. This is why onlinecasinotop.net is so interesting.

Conclusions so far: Having a big link history isn't necessarily a good thing.

Linking Domains by Trust Flow band

Here we see the referring domains from Majesticseo’s fresh index set out in bands using Majestic’s trust flow. Sites like 32red, Skyvegas and Casinobonusnodeposit5 (spammer) have far more linking domains in the upper ends of the scale than Onlinecasinotop or Paddypower.

Conclusions so far: Winning links, from very high trust flow sites is great, but isn't a precursor to ranking.

Absolute linking domains x trust band & share of search

This is just another way of presenting the data. Casinobonusnodeposit5 has been very busy and seems to have taken the opposite strategy to the other spammer onlinecasinotop.

Conclusions so far: Volume of links isn't that important.

Referring domains by percentage / band

This view of the data shows the percentage of linking domains per trustflow band. There is a common perception that higher quality linking domains is better, but this does not seem to bear out here.

Conclusions so far: There are no clear patterns here…

Linking domains by percentage & Trustflow BandWhen seen in this way, the brand sites seem to have very similar profiles.

Linking domains percent difference from average

Here we take the average number of linking domains and look at how much a domain deviates from the average per trust band. It makes it easier to see which domains are strongest per band. We have taken out onlinecasinodeposit5 out because its link profile is very distorting.

There is a definite pattern showing the biggest share of search phrases have less TrustFlow per band than the others.Conclusions so far: Spending a lot of money to ‘get ahead of the average’ isn't a clever tactic for 32red. The 2 winning sites prove this point.

Conclusions so far on ‘links’

The common thread with spammers is that they can rank from nowhere in about 6 weeks. They vary in the number of links used and their quality i.e. onlinecasinotop uses relatively few and they are fairly low trustflow, onlinebonuscasinodeposit5 uses far more links and of a far higher trust flow than almost anyone else, but does not win on search share.

The common thread with the operators is that volumes of links and high trust flow isn't that important either. This is positive because it shows that with good planning you can rank on casino phrases with relatively few links per month i.e. 18 – 25 good links.

Next is anchor text analysis.

Anchor text analysisWe assign a classification to the anchor text per domain. This allows us to make sense of anchor text and inbound links.

The process typically takes about 15 minutes.

‘Code’ is the classification type we use for each phrase.

Anchor text breakdown by domain

There is a hypothesis that too much exact anchor text is a bad thing, yet casino.paddypower.com have more 'exact' than any other operator, but have balanced it with the greatest amount of 'brand' anchotext of any operator.

Conclusions so far: Anchor text with 'money' words are ok, as long as you balance it out with 'brand' words

Anchor text split out

All the ‘winning’ operators have similar anchor text ratios except for 32red who appear to have a lot of ‘other’ anchor text.

Conclusions so far: having lots of random anchor text to look 'natural' does not help you.

Consolidated anchor text split out

Operators typically have 55% of their anchor text as ‘brand’ or brand variant i.e. their URL as a link. The variable is the ratio between ‘keyword’ and ‘other’.

Conclusions so far: Having a lot of ‘noisy’ links with random anchor text isn't going to help you much. It’s best to focus on a 60% combination of brand and 40% combination of relevant keywords.

Consolidated anchor text breakout Same data as before. Interestingly, if you discount ‘other’ keywords, the weighting on brand is huge.

Conclusions so far: If you have to sit on one side of the fence, its on ‘brand’

The anomaly is where you have exact match domains and so all your anchor text becomes exact match.

Relevance of anchor text and title tags

By looking at the number of times a keyword is found in the title tags of pages for all inbound linking pages, we can assess the relevance of linking pages. Sites with a high instance of keywords in the title tags show high subject relevance.

Conclusion so far: Relevance of content from where a link is placed is not important from an algorithmic point of view. onlinecasinotop.net proves this point.

Onlinecasinotop.net

casino.paddypower.com

Overview conclusions from LinkPlanner

Overview comment. Either the Google algo is very comprehensive or very basic. Spammers prove that very diverse strategies getthem ranked and whilst you may think ‘the algo will get them’, these sites will generally rank until they have a manual penalty. This proves they understand how to game the Google algo.

When brands are involved, it's about a combination of sustainability and prominence i.e. ranking and not being penalised by Google. Since Google are vague about what exactly gets you a manual or algorithmic de-ranking, link strategies need to be conservative. It also suggests that building your own private content network makes a lot of sense in certain contexts when both the risks andrewards for brands are so high.

Key findings:

• There is a 6 week lag between dropped links and rankings.

• You can aggressively link and rank, but run a high risk of manual penalty

• Anchor text mix is fairly important with a weighting towards ‘brand’, which may explain why exact match domains still do wellbecause they get relevant anchor text and a ‘free pass’ on excessive use of exact match anchor text

• Content relevance of linking domains does not seem that important

• Which country you get links from does not dictate where you rank. Just set your territory in webmaster tools.

• On page relevance is very important.

• Dependent on strength a single page can rank for up to about 25 similar topic, core keywords.

Plan of action

For brands, sustainability and relevant share of search are key. So a sensible rule to employ is ‘plausible deniability’. This means when your site is assessed, you will pass a ‘spam’ test.

Suggested actions:

Don’t have ‘cheap links’, they seem to be the target for Penguin 2.0. Spammers hack into sites for links, you have to get creative, stay within your brand ethics and have plausible deniability.

Look at how to win links from strong non casino sites i.e. chambers of commerce, charities and so on. Do online PR / sponsorship deals to drum up attention and thus links. Topical relevance is not that important.

Work within the natural limits of your segment. For ‘Online Casino’, it 18 – 25 new linking domains a month with a Majestic TrustFlow of above 10 on your links.

Keep a heavy weighting on brand anchor text (60%+) and mix up exact match across at least 6 phrases. It’s important to have ‘natural’ looking anchor text that is in line with other competitors in your segment.

Appendix

• Screengrabs of ranking history for domains in question

Onlinecasinotop.net

Galacasino.com

Skyvegas.com

32red.com

Onlinecasinos.co.uk

Casinobonusnodeposit5.co.uk

casino.paddypower.comOur Searchmetrics account doesn’t give subdomain data, so we are using SEMrush data here.

Grosvenorcasinos.com

Onlinecasinosukgamebestrx.co.uk