Presentation for Reload Media peeps.

1. THE NEW ERA OF LINK
BUILDING

2. VISUAL TIMELINE OF SEO
5 BG (Before Google)
• Yahoo and AltaVista ruled the web.
Relevancy (based on keyword density
and meta tags) were the most
important ranking factors.

3. VISUAL TIMELINE OF SEO
1 AG (After Google)
• Google revolutionary PageRank-based
algorithm, based on the number of
links pointing to a site, led to
significantly better results than the
existing search engines. This eventually
led to Google’s dominance in the
search world.

4. VISUAL TIMELINE OF SEO
Venice Update (April 2009)
• This rarely-discussed update was
Google’s first major change how the
algo perceived sitewide authority and
branding. The Venice update put
Google on the trajectory that it’s been
on ever since: forwarding trust brands
over their smaller competitors

5. VISUAL TIMELINE OF SEO
Google Panda (February 2011)
• Affected a massive 12 percent of
searches. Targeted low quality "content
farms" like EHow, EzineArticles.com and
Suite101.com. One of the first Google
updates that actively penalized site
owners that broke their Webmaster
Guidelines.

6. VISUAL TIMELINE OF SEO
Google Penguin (April 2012)
• The "over-optimization" penalty that
hit 3.1% of sites in Google's index. This
update specifically targeted sites that
used black hat link building tactics,
specifically over-optimized anchor text.
Like Panda, this update is a filter that
catches sites in its net every time they
roll out a refresh(every 2-3 months or
so).

7. VISUAL TIMELINE OF SEO
EMD Update (September 2012)
• To date, the latest major update from
Google. This update targeted sites that
used the power of exact match
domains to get an edge. This further
cemented Google's new hardline
stance on site owners that gamed the
system.

8. VISUAL TIMELINE OF SEO
Google Hummingbird (August
2013)
• Hummingbird allows the Google search
engine to better do its job through an
improvement in semantic search. As
conversational search becomes the
norm, Hummingbird lends
understanding to the intent and
contextual meaning of terms used in a
query.

9. VISUAL TIMELINE OF SEO
Pigeon (July 2014)
• Google shook the local SEO world with
an update that dramatically altered
some local results and modified how
they handle and interpret location cues.
Google claimed that Pigeon created
closer ties between the local algorithm
and core algorithm(s)

10. PROACTIVELY AVOID
PENALTIES

11. • Before, the goal of SEO used to be gunning for a single keyword. Once you hit the
front page, you were gold. Not anymore, An important part of today’s SEO is
working to minimize the risk of penalties and Google updates.

12. HOW LINK BUILDING IS
DONE TODAY

13. ANALYSIS

14. AUDIT SITE’S LINK PROFILE
• Anchor text overuse
It is one of the most important webspam signals that trigger the Penguin filter.
• Check site’s anchor text distribution
• Page level anchor text distribution
• Discover natural anchor text distribution
• Branded terms
• Generic anchors
• Naked urls
• Titles
• Apply natural anchor text to the campaigns
• Web directories
• Press Release
• Guest Post

15. SITE WIDE LINK DISTRIBUTION
• One of the most common mistakes link builders make is to point almost all of their
links to their homepage. This looks extremely unnatural, especially for sites with a
lot of content. Large sites presumably will have most of their links pointing to
internal pages.

16. LINK RELEVANCY
• See what your site looks like in Google’s eyes
• Keyword tool
• Google Search
• Check your link profile’s site level relevancy
• OSE
• Linking domains

17. PAGE LEVEL RELEVANCY
• Check backlinks from OSE
• Check titles for page topic or look for meta description

18. LINK DIVERSITY
• Drill down with link detective to see where your links coming from

19. WHAT IS REALLY DEAD

20. ARTICLE SPINNING
• Article spinning was the process of automatically generating “rewritten” versions of
an article and submitting them to as many low quality article directories as possible.
It actually worked surprisingly well before Panda, and even for a while after that
when done “correctly.”

21. EXACT MATCH ANCHOR TEXT
• It is a signal for unnatural links
• A high percentage of exact match anchor text can result in a Penguin penalty
• Exact match anchors don’t entice clickthroughs

22. WHAT CAN STILL WORK

23. BUYING LINKS
• Google’s algorithms just aren’t smart enough to identify link buying in every single
circumstance.
• This isn’t worth it for brands is because it’s actually more costly to buy links than to
attract them naturally.
• Link sellers are, understandably, very likely to sell links to others who may not be as
discrete as you are.
• The content has to be just as good as if you were doing it completely above-board, or
over time it will become obvious that you are buying the links.
• It is more cost-effective to use the money to pay an influencer to write something on
your blog than to pay a link dealer, likely with less influence, to host a link on their site.

24. SITE HACKING
• It is true that sites can still rank by hacking sites and placing links
• Google’s algorithm really is in terms of spotting things. It’s certainly gotten smarter
about spotting low quality content and links, but pages can slip through the cracks
if some of their other ranking factors are out of control.

25. PRIVATE LINK NETWORKS
• A cleverly designed private link network, made up of several sites you bought up to
link to yourself, is more or less invisible to Google at the moment.
• Black hats seem to love this tactic. Assuming the quality level of the sites is high
enough, this is likely to go unnoticed.

26. WHAT IS POTENTIALLY
RISKY

27. SITE-WIDE LINKS
• site-wide links often appear spammy to other SEOs, and if anything else about them
seems less than editorial, almost anybody else will consider them spammy as well.

28. GUEST POSTING EXCLUSIVELY FOR
SEO REASONS
• This allows you to draw a pretty clear line between what kinds of guest posts are
worth building, and which ones aren’t. If the guest post has legitimate benefits
outside of SEO, not only do you know it’s valuable even if the search engines ignore
it, you also know that the search engines probably won’t ignore it.

29. PARTIAL MATCH ANCHOR TEXT
• The number of external domains linking with partial match anchor text ties for the
third highest correlated ranking factor according to Moz. At the same time, partial
match anchor text was more highly correlated with Penguin penalties than exact
match anchor text
• This does not mean that partial march anchor text is more dangerous than exact
match anchor text.

30. “DECENT” CONTENT
• There are examples of sites ranking with literally no content when certain factors,
like link velocity, are out of control.
• Panda has pretty much obliterated article spinning at this point. Panda’s actual
ability to target “mediocre” content isn’t quite as clear, and plenty of limited value
content still turns up for certain search queries.

31. DIFFERENT LINK BUILDING
TACTICS WHICH IS WORKING

32. • Links Pages
• Leverage Competitive Brand Mentions/Links
• Visual Assets
• Diversity
• Editorial Links
• Evergreen Content
• Regular Content Distribution
• Content Assets
• Redistributable Content
• Invite Guest Blogger
• Link Reclamation
• Comment Marketing
• Natural Anchor Text
• Internal Links
• Update OLD content
• Testimonial Links
• Get Links with Partnership
• Broken Link Building
• Sites’ Profile Pages
• Missing Image Attribution
• Network of Partners

33. THANK YOU
Resources:
http://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-link-building/
http://digitalphilippines.net/link-building/
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-hummingbird-penguin-panda-link-building-content-
marketing-really-changing/86449/