The way we are measuring the value of links is fundamentally broken. Counting number of links is not useful. In this presentation Lisa goes through a possible solution to measuring links more meaningfully, and showing campaigns that have gained great value links, and thus increased rankings.

2. 900 Billion
(16x the world’s population)

3. 89 Sites A Month

4. 0.00001%

7. We looked at who was ranking for 450k commercial SERPs in the UK
(with at least 1k searches a month)
Thanks to for the data

8. The BBC appears 11% of the time

9. Amazon appears 20% of the time

10. Youtube appears 23% of the time

12. 73
websites
everything
else

14. Google makes hundreds of changes to its algorithm
every year but directionally they have been saying
the same things for a decade…..

15. Brands are the solution… brands are how you sort out the cesspool
”
“ Eric Schmidt, former CEO, Google

16. We actually came up with a classifier to say,
okay, IRS or Wikipedia or New York Times is over on this side,
and the low-quality sites are over on this side.
”
“ Matt Cutts, former Head of Webspam, Google

17. trusted, accurate or reliable
”
“ Obtaining authoritative search results ,
US9659064

18. …has a high readership
”
“ Website quality signal generation , US8442984

19. Google has repeatedly altered it’s algorithm to give
higher and higher value to sites that are:
trusted
authoritative
highly read
routinely receive links from brands and other publishers

20. The way we report on link building hasn’t
meaningfully changed
in the last 20 years

21. “We want 250 links a month”

22. that’s easy

23. “50 links of DA 30 or higher”
“100 links with an average TrustFlow of 35”
“20 links, 300 shares and 5000 views”

24. We suspected that standard SEO metrics weren’t all that useful

25. We looked at how well they correlated with rankings
(Looking at 1k high-volume commercial terms)
Thanks to for the data

26. and they definitely correlate
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average TF Average CF Average Domain TF Average Domain CF Page Authority
Domain Authority MozRank MozRank - Subdomains Domain Rating

27. But when you ask
‘what percentage of SERPs can those metrics correctly guess the order of?’

28. They start to look less compelling:
0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
16%
18%
Page Authority Domain AuthorityDomain Trustflow MozRank
Subdomain
Domain Citation
Flow
Trustflow Citation Flow Domain Rating Mozrank
Percentage of Time Metric Correctly Predicts Ranking Order

29. You can read more about this study here:
https://www.vervesearch.com/blog/SEO-metrics-study/

30. So we built an algorithm that takes into account off and on site metrics

31. https://www.vervesearch.com/linkscore/

32. Score: 14Score: 494 Score: 159
Score from 0 to 500

33. Scale is an issue with traditional metrics
DA 95 DA 43

34. 22 links moved a client 50 positions for ‘domain names’
1
11
21
31
41
51
61
01/03/18 15/03/18 29/03/18 12/04/18 26/04/18 10/05/18 24/05/18
Ranking

35. Those links included…
Those total 22 links got a LINK SCORE of 3,000

36. x 87
x 1,500
3,000 link score is the equivalent of

37. Traditional metrics also don’t take into account language
Trustflow: 72Trustflow: 84

38. Trustflow: 72Trustflow: 84
LinkScore: 191 LinkScore: 305

39. They also don’t take into account relevancy
TF 24 TF 50

40. how Google sees the sites
DA 40
DA 60
site-wide manual
penalty

41. DA 40
DA 60
site-wide manual
penalty
LinkScore: 84 LinkScore: 34

42. by communicating the value of what we do we’re better able to:
plan
grow results
get appropriate budget

44. We KPI our outreach people against it

45. 73
websites
everything
else

48. Create campaigns that deserve more than
just links!

49. Our Work Regularly Receives Print Coverage
New York Post Washington Post The Mirror The Metro

50. Radio Coverage

51. TV3 (Sweden) NBC ITV
AND even TV Coverage

52. Greenpeace
Our work is regularly shared by high-profile organizations
WWF
NASA

53. and high profile figures

54. It’s not bragging if it’s true

60. In print On TVOn Radio
New York Post (250k)
Yahoo Finance (131k)
Today Show (NBC) (2.5
million)
Virgin Radio Canada (7.8k)
ESPN Radio (59k)
WKRC Radio (79k)
E!News (3 million)

61. 165 links
8,281 Link Score
6 million views

65. GIF For TwitterBehind the Scenes Video for Youtube

66. 159 Links
10,557 Link Score
1.7 million views

69. 694 Links
34,356 Link Score
2 million views

70. Yeah sure, cool campaigns.
But does it really increase rankings??

71. After 12 months - 5 campaigns + outreach
Their target term, “Contact Lenses”, searched 74k times a month, moved
from position 12 at start to position 2
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
01/04/2017 31/05/2017 30/07/2017 28/09/2017 27/11/2017

72. After 4 months:
Keyword Search Volume Before After Change
CASINO 74,000 33 10 +23
blackjack 27,000 >100 20 ++
roulette 18,000 29 20 +9

73. #1 How do you guys come up with ideas?
#2 How do you guys do Outreach?

74. #1 How do you guys come up with ideas?
#2 How do you guys do Outreach?

75. Anyone can come up with ideas, but
developing ideas is the key, and that is a team effort.

76. Outreach is an individual style thing, let people
do their own thing.

77. It’s really about not giving up

82. Thank You!
Lisa.Myers@vervesearch.com
@LisaDMyers