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.

1. 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,

2. Summary view
If you're not that technical...

3. Penguin
It's not a bird with a chainsaw

4. It's a search engine on a link slashfest!

5. 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...

6. Google $$$
Adwords

7. Penguin
After: Base of links you
can use to get ranked
Before: Base of links you could use to get ranked

8. Now we get technical...

9. 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

10. 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

11. Competitor / competition analysis
Google SERPS data.

12. Excellent Link Data

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

14. Because clients like Moz

15. Excel - Lots of Excel!
http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/
This guy is a hero to SEO!

16. Understanding
Landscape
Direct and indirect competitors

17. 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.

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

19. 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/

20. Zero into SERP sets
We want to understand why No1,
No2 & No3 etc are ranking. So we
compare based on rankings

21. Guess why a domain
ranks
For this exercise, were only looking at links
and anchor text. Relevance is another story
for another time.

22. Pick 10 SERPS
The more competitive, the more
harmonised the onsite SEO will be,
therefore its easier to analyse the
linkscape

23. 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.

24. 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.

25. Project the link growth numbers

26. 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]

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

28. 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

29. Correlations to decide on metrics
The 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.

30. Quality of links
Majestic 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)

31. Anchor text

32. 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+

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. 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

36. Anchor text overview

37. 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.

38. 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.

39. 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

40. Whats
Next?

41. 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.

42. 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

43. 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’

44. Correlations
We 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.

45. Correlations
Same but visually

46. 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!

47. 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

48. 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: nick.garner@searchworks.eu
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!