Connecting the dots: link building strategies and best practices - Floor Jansen - SearchNorwich 12
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Floor Jansen, Digital PR Executive at Candour to explain why do we need links, defines what good and what bad links are, how to decide your strategy and also link building best practices. For the full slides and information about the event, go to https://www.searchnorwich.org/events/searchnorwich-12
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Connecting the dots: link building strategies and best practices - Floor Jansen - SearchNorwich 12
- 3. ● Why do we need links? ● What is a good link? ● What is a ‘bad’ link? ● How to decide your strategy ● Best practices Overview
- 5. Which site will rank better? Site A 12000 backlinks Site B 12 backlinks
- 6. Site A 12000 backlinks Site B 12 backlinks Which site will rank better?
- 8. Why do we need links?
- 9. Links are a ranking factor
- 11. What is a good link?
- 13. Trust: links from a ‘high quality’ domain
- 15. Good directory links exist!
- 16. Good directory links exist! ● Trusted domain - gov.co.uk ● Editorial control ● Relevant content ● Geographically relevant
- 17. Follow vs nofollow (don’t say link juice!!!)
- 18. Nofollow = worthless for SEO?
- 19. sorry not sorry (again)
- 20. What is a ‘bad’ link?
- 21. Buying or selling links for ranking purposes
- 22. Paying for cheap backlink services
- 23. Adding your website to loads of directories that don’t have value for your audience
- 24. Google’s list of link spam Google Search Essentials (Link Spam)
- 25. How to decide your strategy
- 26. Competitor backlink profile Competitor DR Referring Domains Backlinks Client site 22 138 4.5K Competitor A 72 5K+ 234K Competitor B 71 2K+ 68K Competitor C 63 2K+ 70K
- 27. Link intersect example Referring domain DR Competitor A Competitor B Competitor C huffingtonpost.co.uk 88 37 139 3 independent.co.uk 91 4 16 1 vice.com 91 13 7 0 bbc.com 93 9 43 0 cumbria.gov.uk 74 12 83 3
- 28. Conclusions to draw from link intersect ● What type of sites? ● What are the recurring themes? ● What type of content? ● What kind of tactics could result in similar coverage?
- 29. Link building tactics ● Digital PR Campaigns ● Newsjacking ● Reactive
- 34. Newsjacking
- 35. Newsjacking
- 36. Newsjacking
- 37. Reactive
- 39. Reactive
- 40. Reactive
- 41. Reactive
- 42. Ahrefs Rehabs
- 43. Other link building tactics ● Product Promotions & Round-Ups ● Brand News ● Resource Targeting ● ‘Evergreen’ content ● Competitor Broken Link ‘Theft’
- 44. ● Why do we need links? ● What is a good link? ● What is a ‘bad’ link? ● How to decide your strategy ● Best practices Conclusion
Editor's Notes
- Had to do it! In this talk I will explain that not all links are equal, more links isn’t always better
- In short: links are a ranking factor. Question: what’s the most important ranking factor? A: Awesomeness Many factors could make a website awesome, we know links is an important one We know content quality is important. Google is good at knowing what is terrible content, but can’t always good and very good. Links are a good way that’s under your control. Google podcast: search off the record (something like that) with Gary Eesh and John Mueller (check spelling). Gary says Google still uses a form of PageRank He recently said links are not in the top 3 ranking factors anymore: doesn’t mean they’re not important. Content quality is important.
- Most of you will have seen EEAT. Google’s principles of what good content looks like. Many of these you can ‘write’. If you don’t have experience or expertise you can interview someone who does. Trustworthiness cite your sources etc. Isn’t just about what’s on the page. But Authoritativeness, reputation within a topic, you can’t just borrow. Links are a way to demonstrate authoritativeness. PageRank is part of Google’s assessment of quality content Something to keep in mind, don’t have time to go into detail EEAT: is a set of principles part of ‘Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines’ Experience: first-hand. For example: author has been to the restaurant they’re writing about. Or SEO from London writing about restaurant in Norwich Expertise Authoritativeness: reputation within topic. This can be demonstrated by links! Trust: legitimacy, transparency, and accuracy https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
- We’ve established why we need links. What makes a good link? Good links are things that demonstrate these values EEAT
- Authoritativeness: Backlinks demonstrate quality of your site Vote of confidence from an authority
- Trustworthiness: site that Google trusts links to you We can’t see Google’s exact ‘score’, but there are tools that can estimate. They can be used to assist your decision making, but your decision shouldn’t be made solely on these tools.
- Higher ‘score’ isn’t the only metric though Sites with a lower ‘Score’ can also be really valuable. For example, sites that are seen to be an authority on the topic you want to rank for Example
- Directories get a bad rep Some good ones. Will show why this good example
- This actually sums up what a good link looks like. If the directory is genuinely useful. You can’t just make a gov.co.uk domain!
- Speaking of what is a good link, must mention nofollow Google used to like any link, but then everyone started spamming links everywhere. They had to add the option for a ‘nofollow’ link, which Google would not count towards ‘your backlink profile’.
- Does that mean it’s worthless?
- Even if it wouldn’t affect ranking, getting links from high quality and relevant sites can still be beneficial. Brand awareness. Clicks Some newspapers add blanket nofollow However, Google is now so good at picking out spammy vs high quality links. Hint not directive.
- We’ve seen what a good link looks like. What is a bad link? Just what it says on the tin. ‘anything that is spammy or dishonest’
- For example, paying another website to publish a post with a link to your site Includes guest posting Many reasons why this tactic could be valuable (brand awareness etc), just won’t improve your backlink profile If you do this, make sure to nofollow it
- Google knows, gmail knows Same thing at higher scale
- Adding your website to loads of directories that don’t have value for your audience Image source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/bad-links/
- Google ignores bad links, but can get a penalty of obvious bad behaviour, but very rare. Won’t go over all of these, just some examples https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies
- You need to know what your competitors are doing Review your backlinks and referring domains Quick check on volume of links This example shows a very competitive landscape
- Which sites link to your competitors and not to you? (Ahrefs link intersect / Semrush backlink gap)
- This can help you decide which tactics to use, and which type of sites to target Themes like: addiction, adhd, etc Content types like: interviews, guides, expert commentary (we didn’t see product listicles for example)
- ‘Create news’, finding out something interesting and newsworthy, content-led or data-led story. Using freely available data, campaign with regional alcoholism figures. Example: campaign about the root cause of addiction issues - Mental health issues and financial insecurity Freely available data + client expert commentary
- Example coverage
- Lots of different angles Example of regional coverage, specifically using the Liverpool data
- Jump on a current news story or trend. Of course, be careful around sensitive topics. Make sure you have something useful to say.
- Jump on a current news story or trend. Of course, be careful around sensitive topics. Make sure you have something useful to say.
- News story about fortnite addiction lawsuits We researched other addictive games 59 pieces of coverage
- Example coverage on ladbible
- This basically just means responding to journalists and writers when they are actively asking for insight on a story they’re working on.
- Diff tools: HARO, #JournoRequests, SourceBottle, Qwoted, JournoLink, Featured (formerly Terkel)
- https://adhdonline.com/articles/relax-stimulant-meds-for-adhd-do-not-lead-to-substance-abuse/
- Graph go up! Our strategy: review competitor landscape and choosing our targets and tactics carefully Also other SEO work Organic traffic gap against competitors closed more over this period than backlinks Our backlink strategy more targeted, quality over quantity