In this presentation webinar, we’ll guide you through the backlinks basics and give you tips how to attract more of them to your website. If you would like to take part in our free webinar about backlinks, save your seat here: http://try.positionly.com/webinar/backlinks-uncovered/ Also, if you would like to watch our webinar regarding backlinks, please visit, please watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8fM5TwaaQk

1. Backlinks Uncovered
How to analyze their performance and get more for your website

2. ABOUT HOSTS
Customer Success Manager
Jessica Yang
jessica@positionly.com
@jessicamqy

3. Topics we will be covering

4. Attending this webinar is your first step to mastering link-earning :)
4
• Why link-earning?
• Quality vs. Quantity
• Techniques: Black vs White Hat
• Tips: Do’s and Don’ts
• Monitoring: managing your backlinks with Positionly
• Majestic, our awesome backlinks provider
The Topics

5. What are backlinks?

6. Backlinks
- are the links that other websites posted
about you and that are leading to your website.

7. Why are backlinks so important?

8. Investing in link-earning is important for SEO and to getting the great content on your site discovered.
Get discovered
Better linked sites allow crawlers to
discover you easier and faster.
Gain credibility
The website linking to you is giving you
‘link juice’, or their vote of confidence.
Increase traffic
Better linked sites allow crawlers to
discover you easier and faster.
8
Thanks to backlinks you can:

9. What constitutes a good quality
backlink from the bad one?

10. Search engines are taking into account
two important factors when determining
whether a backlink is good quality.

11. It is much more difficult to acquire high-quality backlinks than low-quality ones.
What are good quality backlinks?
11
Relevance
Is the site linking to you related to your
business?
Authority
Is the site linking to you credible?
You’ll want:
• Influential sites
• Popular sites
• Trustworthy sites
• Peers in similar industries
• Industry experts
• .edu and .gov sites

12. How to determine a quality
backlink score?

13. Majestic provides quality scores based on Trust Flow and Citation Flow (like relevance and authority).
How does Majestic determine quality score?
13
Trust flow
and citation
• Like relevance and
authority
• Score out of 100
High >70
Med: 24-70
Low: <24

14. Not all backlinks are equal; some may have no effect on your ranking, and some may even harm you.
Therefore, focus on quality.
Quality vs. Quantity
14

15. Types of link earning strategies

16. Avoid black hat link earning strategies, or risk penalties from Google.
Link Earning Strategies
16
Black hat White hat

17. Bonus: helping the local community can draw third-party media coverage! Instant boost for your brand image.
Link Earning Strategies
17
Pay for your links Sponsor events and donate to
• Inorganic; anyone can do it, regardless of content quality
• Any link paid for is considered an ad, and must be made
explicit
• Related to your business somehow to target similar
audiences
• Often, charities will have very reputable sites explicit

18. Bonus: host credible guest bloggers on your site! They may have a loyal following, and that will draw more traffic
to your site.
Link Earning Strategies
18
Guest blogging for the sake of it High quality guest blogging
• Guest blogging just to earn a link without caring about
content is considered spam
• Think: would a credible site host a guest blogger that
produces poor content?
• Blog for high quality, related sites in similar industries
• Produce high quality content that will draw readers to your
site

19. Bonus: this is a long term solution! By getting into their network, they may take the first initiative to link to you in
the future.
Link Earning Strategies
19
Link exchange schemes Build relationships with industry
peers and experts• ‘I’ll give you a link if you give me one’ is NOT allowed!
• Social media: Tweet them something useful and new
• Email: personalization is key
• Industry experts often have ‘monthly roundup’ posts, bring
your product to their attention.

20. Bonus: this may be one of the most painless ways to earn a backlink. It’s technically already earned ;)
Link Earning Strategies
20
Spam other sites for backlinks Seek out brand mentions and ensure
they’re linked• Don’t constantly post comments, tweets, etc. with your
link or asking for a link
• Google doesn’t count links in comments anyway, and
spamming may get you blocked by the webmaster
• Search for your brand in search engines and go to pages
you’re mentioned
• They may have mentioned you but not linked you - ask!

21. Other important factors in link earning

22. Always remember: users first! That should be your foundation for all SEO strategies.
Other important factors in link earning
22
Diversify your methods
Utilize many white-hat link earning
strategies to achieve maximum
results.
Internal linking
Ensure your site has proper internal
links, so crawlers can easily navigate
within your site and properly index it
Users first
Focus on user experience and
creating content they want.

23. How to track link building efforts

24. Positionly + Majestic = Awesome
So now I that I can start building links… then what?
24

25. Monitoring backlinks in Positionly
25
Be in the know with
weekly updates
Get to the source See if they passed on
their link juice
With our Inbound Links Checker you can:

26. With the weekly updates
you can:

27. Reacting quickly (before any harm can be done to your rankings) is always a good idea.
Get weekly updates
27
Disavow shady links ASAP Reach out to people who provided
you• use Google’s Disavow Tool or ask the webmaster to
remove your link if you don’t want to be associated with
the linking site
• being associated with too many shady sites will make
Google think you are shady too, which can hurt your
rankings.
• easier to build that relationship when you reach out earlier

28. With the source of the link
you are able to:

29. It’s like being a detective - unleash your inner Sherlock Holmes.
Get to the source
29
Monitor what linking sites are saying
about you
Get inspired by the source
• Check out if what they are saying about you is correct -
there can be misspellings or simply wrong information
• Reach out to ask for a correction if not, and of course to
let them know thank you
• Maybe the site linking to you wasn’t a type you expected
• Check out their business and what they’re saying about
you, so you may aim to get backlinks from similar sources
in the future

30. Are your links nofollow or dofollow?

31. Having some nofollow links are inevitable and natural, don’t fret!
See if they passed on their link juice
31
Nofollow Dofollow
• Humans can click on the link and be directed to your site,
but a crawler can not
• They did not pass on their link juice.
• If you see a nofollow from a quality site, nicely contact the
webmaster to change it
• Humans and crawlers both can click on the link and be
directed to your site
• They’ve passed on their link juice

32. What to do with the backlinks data?

33. Don’t be scared! Positionly’s got you.
What do I do with historical data?
33
1,409
TOTAL LINKS
Don’t be scared of having too much backlinks data.
There are great ways you can use it!

34. See? Don’t be intimidated. We’ve got you.
What do I do with historical data?
34
Look for trends and compare it with
your goals
Monitor broken links and rebuild
them
• Download your backlinks history as a CSV and graph
your data
• Compare historical data against recent data, check if new
strategies are successful, etc.
• Ensure your goals are met and adjust it accordingly.
• Look for ‘lost’ links; maybe their page was moved and
wasn’t redirected properly. Your link could’ve been in a
new blog post, but then the post is pushed back a few
pages
• Any cases you can rebuild your backlinks - do!

35. Social media links

36. Have a separate social media strategy!
Social media can indirectly cause
you to earn backlinks
By generating more traffic, it’s more likely you’ll earn
natural backlinks.
Social media links

37. Search engines treat social media links differently, and is changes more rapidly.
Most social media links don’t
appear in the SERPs
This is very hard to predict and social media links
tend to have shorter lifespans.
Social media links are not your regular links!

38. This is very valuable real estate in the SERPs.
Social media profiles do appear across all the SERPs
38

39. They have their own unique algorithms- it’s a completely different ball game. Have a separate social media
strategy!
Social media channels are search engines, too.
39

40. Start gaining backlinks.
Just do it!

41. Link-earning is a long term SEO strategy. Experiment with white-hat strategies to find which ones work for you.
Just do it!
41

42. Thanks for your attention
jessica@positionly.com
@jessicamqy

43. success@positionly.com
EMAIL US AT:

44. Sources
44
• http://peopletechgroup.com/user-experience.aspx
• http://www.tout-sur-profits25.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Strat%C3%A9gie-Profits25.jpg
• http://erikahoward.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/You-can-do-it-BABY.jpg
• http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/03/136_face_with_no_good_gesture/5a6ec2b37.png
• asdhttp://cdn.arn.com.au/media/15397/interpretation-i-dont-even-know-what-think-anymore.jpg?width=233&height=243
• https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Facebook_logo_(square).png/240px-
Facebook_logo_(square).png
• https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9f/Twitter_bird_logo_2012.svg/743px-Twitter_bird_logo_2012.svg.png
• http://a4.mzstatic.com/us/r30/Purple69/v4/b5/06/3c/b5063c3a-97a5-d1a2-45f5-5e7e2c2c70b7/icon175x175.png
• https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1550954462/instagramIcon_400x400.png
• http://pix.iemoji.com/images/emoji/apple/8.3/256/face-screaming-in-fear.png