Data Driven Internal Linking With Botify

CLICK
TO
CONTINUE
DATA DRIVEN
INTERNAL
LINKING WITH
BOTIFY
JAMES BARDSLEY
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ENTERPRISE DIGITAL MARKETING & ANALYTICS |
JAMES
JAMES BARDSLEY
HEAD OF DATA & ENGINEERING
HI MY NAME IS JAMES
● LEADER OF THE IMWT NERD
SQUAD
● BASED IN MELBOURNE
● BEER, RUNNING, PETTING CATS
● WAS UNABLE TO GROW A BEARD
UNTIL THE AGE OF 36
CLICK
TO
CONTINUE
2

DIGITAL MARKETING & ANALYTICS |
I’M ALSO A
DEVELOPER
3

HOW BOTIFY TOOK
MY JOB
HOW BOTIFY TOOK
MY JOB MADE MY
JOB MORE
INTERESTING
4

DATA DRIVEN
INTERNAL LINKING
OPTIMISATION…
WITH BOTIFY AS
THE DATA
PROVIDER
5
I like to make
your life easier
so I brought you
this data!
Wow, thanks
Botify! I love
you!

3 DIFFERENT USE
CASES…
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1.Identify quick wins and tidyup
work.
2.Post hoc selection of test and
baseline groups after launching
experiments.
3.Data supply for machine learning
models.

ENTERPRISE DIGITAL MARKETING & ANALYTICS | 7
1. FINDING
QUICK WINS

HAVING WELL
TARGETED
INTERNAL LINKS IS
POINTLESS IF THE
SITE IS BROKEN
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FINDING QUICK
WINS
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The Botify Action Board tells us where internal linking
needs to be tightened up before we begin to work on
targeting links better.

EXAMPLE: CUTTING
DOWN HUGE SITES
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Discoveries:
● 280M pages known by Google (that’s 11 pages per
every human in Australia).
● With only 100M crawled, and less than 1% of the pages
crawled producing traffic in a given period.
Actions:
● We dropped 60% of the 'crap' pages for Google.
● Increased 'the good URLs' by 5M by redirecting crawl
resources.
Results:
● 47% increase in traffic.
● ADDED 1.6M NON-BRANDED VISITS PER MONTH.

IDENTIFYING AND
FIXING THESE ISSUES
GIVES AS A SOLID
FOUNDATION TO
BUILD FUN STUFF
ON…
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2. POST-HOC
SELECTION
TESTS AND
BASELINES

YOU SHOULD
ALWAYS DESIGN
YOUR EXPERIMENTS
WELL BEFORE YOU
LAUNCH THEM…
13

BUT SOMETIMES
THINGS GO AWRY…
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OR SOMETIMES YOU
FIND YOURSELF IN
THE MIDST OF AN
ACCIDENTAL TEST
15
“One sometimes finds, what one is not
looking for. When I woke up just after
dawn on September 28, 1928, I
certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all
medicine by discovering the world's
first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I
suppose that was exactly what I did.”
— Alexander Fleming

WE’VE EXPERIENCED
BOTH OF THESE
SCENARIOS. BOTIFY
TO THE RESCUE!
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SPLITTING
TEST/BASELINE
GROUPS FOR
INTERNAL LINKING
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Filter ourselves a test group
Then filter ourselves a control group

WE CAN THEN RUN
CAUSAL IMPACT
ANALYSES ON THESE
RESULTS
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…the positive effect observed during the intervention period is
statistically significant and unlikely to be due to random fluctuations. It
should be noted, however, that the question of whether this increase also
bears substantive significance can only be answered by comparing the
absolute effect (2.74) to the original goal of the underlying intervention.
The probability of obtaining this effect by chance is very small (Bayesian
one-sided tail-area probability p = 0.002). This means the causal effect can
be considered statistically significant.

3. DATA
SUPPLY FOR
ML MODELS

PROBLEM: CAN WE
IDENTIFY THE PAGES
WHICH WILL
RESPOND BEST TO
RECEIVING MORE
INTERNAL LINKS?
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OUR APPROACH:
TRAIN A MACHINE
LEARNING MODEL TO
PREDICT IF A PAGE
WILL RANK IN THE TOP
10 SEARCH RESULTS
FOR A GIVEN
KEYWORD
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THEN: TEST IF THE
PREDICTION CHANGES
IF WE TEST THE PAGE
WITH DIFFERENT
PAGERANKS AND
INTERNAL LINK
COUNTS
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Is Page X predicted
to rank?
No!
Is Page X predicted
to rank if we
increase link count
by 500? Yes!

DOING THIS WITH
ANY LEVEL OF
ACCURACY? THAT’S A
LOT OF DATA
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BOTIFY WERE ABLE
TO PROVIDE US
HUGE DUMPS OF
DATA - BOTH FOR
ON PAGE AND
INTERNAL LINKS
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● Full URL
● No. of Internal Inlinks (From Distinct
URLs)
● Inlinks Percentile
● No. of Incoming Redirects
● Internal Pagerank
● Internal Pagerank Position
● LCP: Agg
● FID: Agg
● CLS: Agg
● No. of Similar Indexable Pages (Score ≥
75%)
● No. of Words (Total)
● …And 240 more!

WE THEN
COMBINED THIS
WITH DATA FROM
OTHER SOURCES
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Delicious Data Salad
On-site details CTR
Bounce rate External backlinks

THE MODEL WAS
THEN TRAINED
WITH THIS DATA
AND WAS QUITE
SUCCESSFUL IN
PREDICTING PAGE
PERFORMANCE!
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AND WE USED THAT
TO PLAN LINK
DISTRIBUTION
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Is Page X
predicted to
rank?
No!
Is Page X
predicted to
rank if we
increase link
count by 500?
Yes!
Is Page Y
predicted to
rank?
Is Page Y still
predicted to
rank if we
decrease link
count by 500?
Yes! Yes!
Reassign 500 links from
Page Y to Page X (with a
bunch of logic to ensure
this is not done
destructively and those
links are relevant)

LIVE TESTS ON
THIS ARE A
WORK IN
PROGRESS
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THANKS
FOR LISTENING.
JAMES BARDSLEY
james@inmarketingwetrust.com.au
www.inmarketingwetrust.com.au
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Data Driven Internal Linking With Botify

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