the power of link building

Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013@searchinfluence

Search Influence’s mission is to help customers successfully

market online by developing tools, technologies, and the

experts who support them.

Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013

• University of Louisiana Lafayette Mass

Communications / Media Studies Grad

• Search Influence Senior Account

Manager

• Influencer for 3+ years

• Google AdWords + Bing Adwords Certified

MEGAN LINDSEYABOUT ME

@searchinfluence


THE POWER OF

LINKBUILDING

@searchinfluence


LINKBUILDING 101:

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• WHAT IS LINKBUILDING?• Process of getting external

pages to link to a page on your website

• WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?• Google’s primary ranking

signal• Seen as a “vote”• Builds page authority

• HOW DOES IT IMPACT SEO?• Trust factor• Quantity of backlinks• Quality of backlinks• Anchor text• Referral traffic• Social signals


ALGORITHM

UPDATES

&LINKBUILDING

@searchinfluence


PENGUIN UPDATES:

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Penalty Reasons:1. Low Quality Links

2. Overly Optimized Anchor

Text

3. Keyword stuffing

4. Blog Spam

5. Exact Match Domains

How to Overcome?1. Natural Anchor Text

2. Contextual Thematic

Links

3. Pruning The “Rogue”

Links

Who Benefited?Websites with variety of

quality back links

PENGUIN:April 2012

• Adjusted a number of spam factors, including keyword stuffing

• Impacted an estimated 3.1% of English queries

PENGUIN 2.0:May 2013

• Arrived with only moderate impact• Exact nature of the changes were

unclear, but some suggested that it was more finely targeted to the page level

PENGUIN 3.0:October 2014

• Appeared to be smaller than expected

• Impacted <1% of English queries• Timing of update was unclear, and

Google claimed it was spread out over “weeks”


=But, not all links are created equal


GOOD LINKS

VS.

BAD LINKS

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GOOD LINKS

What does Google reallywant?

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• Strong, authoritative

links

• Relevant links

• Industry specific

• Location specific

• Natural links

• Brand signals


Bad Links:

What Makes a Link Bad?

Structure• Overly optimized “anchor text”

• If all the links pointing at you are on the exact same keyword, Google sees that as a sign that a website may be trying to “manipulate” the search results

Source• Completely unrelated or loosely related website

• Not good: Mommy blog in Michigan linking to a steel maker in New Jersey

• Appropriate link: Mommy blog in Michigan writing about and linking to vacation rentals in Alabama

• Website linking to many different industries without real context or purpose • (established directories are still good)


Common Sources

of Bad Links

• Poor blog commenting:

– Comments providing

no real input

– Comments on

unrelated blog posts

– Commenter’s name is

clearly a keyword

• Low, low quality directories

• Unrelated “link network”

type sites


PENALTIES FOR

BAD LINKS

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Site rankings can be affected

1 of 2 ways…

Manually

Algorithmically


Diagnosing

• Action plan to “fix” varies based on

the type of penalty…


Google Webmaster Tools:Manual Actions Notice


Algorithmic

• If traffic dips in Google Analytics coincides with a Google

update, but no “manual action” in WMT, then the site’s rankings were adjusted by the algorithm, not manually


Addressing the Issue

• Manual action • Perform aggressive link cleanup, document,

“disavow” and submit Reconsideration Request

• Algorithmic Update• Perform aggressive link cleanup, document, and

“disavow” bad links

• No easy cure for toxic links

• Can take multiple tries

• Most cases are different

• For manual actions, recovery will take place after next Penguin refresh or update


EVALUATING

BACKLINKS

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INBOUND LINK REPORT

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• Evaluates the quality and

quantity of inbound links

pointing back to the site

• Reviewed to determine:

• Presence of “bad”

links

• Baseline of current

links

• Areas of opportunity

to increase quality

backlinks


GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS

@searchinfluence

• Evaluates and Identifies sources of

high and low quality backlinks

• Notifies if there is a significant

number of low quality backlinks that

result in Manual Action


COMPETITIVE BACKLINK ANALYSIS

• Identifies the sites that competitors are getting links from

• Goal: Obtain more authoritative links to your site that

your competitors already have

• Examples: Industry directories, hyper-local directories,

manufacturer/product websites, partnerships, etc.


OFF-SITE

LINK BUILDING

@searchinfluence


LOCALDIRECTORIESOrganize listings

by NAP

information

(by location).

PRIMARY BENEFIT:

Citations


CATEGORICALDIRECTORIESOrganize listings

by business

category rather

than location.

PRIMARY BENEFIT:

Links


NICHE DIRECTORIESRelevant,

Industry/Location

Specific

PRIMARY BENEFIT:

Quality Links


PRESS RELEASES


SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

• Acts as 2nd tier link building

• Goal: Build authority of existing links and

help Search Engines with discovery of links /

content

• Types of content to social bookmark:

• Social network URLs

• Other online profiles or brand mentions (PRs,

articles, niche directory listings)


SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS

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PRIMARY

BENEFITS:

• Brand awareness

• Connect/Interact with

audience + influencers

• Share valuable

Content

• Opportunity for virality


HELPFUL TIPS + TOOLS

• Continuous link building establishes

a brand’s search presence and

site authority

• Monitor organic website traffic

after algorithm updates

• Establish expectations for potential

penalties and recovery efforts

• Evaluate number of inbound links

to client’s site by utilizing helpful

tools:

• moz.com/researchtools/ose• google.com/webmastertools

@searchinfluence

http://moz.com/researchtools/ose


[email protected]

Thank You!

the power of link building

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