SEO - when doing the right things doesn't help you improve rankings

Reverse Engineering Competitors Rankings
8/31/2010
@wilreynolds

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3 steps
Step 1 - Background on REAL client example
Step 2 - How a losing SERP changed our process
Step 3 - Turn data analysis into SERP improvement

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“Let’s
get
Busy”

Client who has links from

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Client profile
10+ years online
.edu links from research
4 million searches / month
Newspaper / magazine links
Some SERPS are adult category
CEO is sought after by media outlets

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Competitive SERP
Only 1 result in the top 10 of Google had a link from 1-2 of these quality magazine / newspaper sites

Tee-Ball right?
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This guy is gonna love me
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What did those big media drops do?
Let me show you…

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Nothing Like Getting your Butt Kicked

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To make you change the way you do things

What I needed…
Needed to bring in a vast amount of data on the top 10 sites for target keyword.
Include big brands and exact match domains even though you won’t learn a ton from them
More KWs = uncover trends
Needed to be way more deep than PR & link tallies
SEOQuake was not going to do it (poor mans)
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Time to get some data

Manual Aggregation
80 factors
About ½ come from OSE or are calculated by multiple OSE metrics
Others come from
Twitter*
Delicious
Alexa
Majestic
YSE
Google webmaster tools
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Manual Aggregation
Factors
# of links (excel limits at 10,000 – impacts %’s)
Compare OSE, YSE, Majestic (conditional formats)
Linking domains relative to # of links (sitewides)
Linking domains w/o anchor
Linking domains w/ domain name as anchor
% of links with targeted anchor text
% links from edus – ex: competitor
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Factors to review
Factors
Domain age
mR & mT
Major 301 event (trigger by outliers)
Steady growth (.edus/ high mT)
% keywords in domain
# of linking domains over 25/50 domain auth
% of linking domains over 25/50 domain auth
% of links over 25/50 domain auth
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Manual Aggregation – Excel First
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The output of this data aggregation looks like this…

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API’s and scripts make mistakes

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Use validation to catch them
When PR is over 10
When # of OSE links > Majestic links
When AC Rank puts a domain in the top 10% yet it is not in the top 40% mT/mR

Visuals, Visuals, Visuals
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Visual Trends
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Link analysis visuals
Go from this
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% Anchor text vs Brand Links

Link analysis
To this…
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Importance of Visuals
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So what did we learn from this experience?
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Gameplan FIRST
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Use analysis to uncover Un-Natural link building profiles
Yourself & Your competitors
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Un-Natural Works but is risky
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Client who is at 20% the average of the top 10 is 2.5% - time to diversify

Homepage link juice / domain authority on large sites does not really flow to article pages
Authority links don’t add instant value
Big sites paginate like crap and bury stories
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What happens when you get exact match anchor texton a page 1 link from the homepage of one the most popular women’s magazines in the world…
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What happens when you get exact match anchor texton a page 1 link from the homepage of one the most popular women’s magazines in the world…
Nada
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Refuse to take a butt kickin’ lying down
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Here’s what we did about it…
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Getting the links we NEEDED
Sought out pages that don’t cycle content that have been around for a LONG time:
Sponsors
In Kind Donations
Testimonials
Supporters
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You must socially promote the page where your link lives.
Twitter
Facebook
Delicious
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You must socially promote the page where your link lives.
Queries in Twitter
Queries in Forums [keyword phrase] + powered by vbulletin / phpbb
Subscribe to search results in yahoo
Yahoo Answers
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Good homepage / evergreen page links
Badges / Awards
Watch the anchor text
Wordcamp / other “camps”
Edu discounts
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Bad homepage / evergreen page links
Bought homepage links in blogrolls with exact match anchor text
Watched bought links on homepages of “cigarette sites” work like a charm
phpdircetory link swaps working like it was 2004
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What you learn from spammers
Reverse engineering rankings lets you see how long spam and aggressive tactics last
(actually watch the serps)
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I see a site with only reciprocals + 2 kws in domain winning
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I see localcleaning up spam with one of our clients who has the weakest link profile in the top 10 (not in the 7 pack)
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Double D’s of SEO
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D
iversification
efendability

Manual Aggregation
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Download the exact / phrase match counter - http://bit.ly/boiFGz

Create your game plan
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Stop building links
Build data on the top 10 and trend it (25 data points)
Sign up for Majestic SEO, Raven, other tools with API’s
Force yourself to practice excel

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Create visuals of how you are getting beat
Create conditional formats to trigger un-natural patterns for you and your competitors
Use conditional formats & trends to learn how long spam works
Execute your tail off

Critical takeaway
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Stop link building without a game plan…

http://www.seerinteractive.com	746
http://feeds.feedburner.com	55
http://paper.li	31
http://www.razvanalexa.ro	28
http://linkfusion.epiphanydev4.co.uk	13
http://knowledgebase.linkfusion.co.uk	6
url_unknown	5
http://us-w1.rockmelt.com	5
http://www.linkfusion.co.uk	2
http://seerinteractive.com	2
http://www.netvibes.com	2
http://a0.twimg.com	1
http://www.xfruits.com	1
http://feedproxy.google.com	1
http://www.linkedin.com	1

SEO - when doing the right things doesn't help you improve rankings

by wilreynolds on Jun 23, 2011

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SEO - when doing the right things doesn’t help you improve rankings Presentation Transcript