Slides fromPaul Madden of LinkRisk speaking at the omg.no frokostseminar

1. Links
in
2013
How
to
spot
the
bad
How
to
solve
the
problems

2. HOW TO SPOT
A SHI**Y LINK
BY PAUL MADDEN

3. HOW TO SPOT
A SHITTY LINK
BY PAUL MADDEN

4. What
we
will
cover

5. Current
state
of
link
building

6. How
to
audit
what
you
have

7. How
to
clean
up
and
solve
issues

8. Who
is
Paul
Madden
?

12. 200+
Staff

13. SCALABLE PEOPLE POWER!
OFFSHORE!

14. In
3
countries

15. The Provider of the Largest
Number of Links in the UK

16. BAD YEAR
2012 A
For blatant SEO

17. PRE 1ST QUARTER OF 2012
Throw as many links
as you dared
Some counted some
did not
If you threw enough of the
right stuff you won

18. WHAT CHANGED?

19. Further Pressure Penguin
Unnatural Link
Warnings
Disavow Penalties all over
the place
&

20. WHAT IS
PENGUIN?
Squawk!

21. IS A PENALTY OR FILTER
PENGUIN
AIMED AT SEO

22. TO DULL THE EFFECT OF
DESIGNED
People Chasing the Algorithm

23. PENALTIESLINK

24. Google have sent a
number of waves of
unnatural link
warnings
There is now a much
more formal
procedure to get the
penalty removed
They are still
sending them

26. Timeline:
Unnatural
Link
Warning
You’re
expected
to
clean
up
2-­‐3
weeks
later
Manual
penalty
applied

27. If
you
get
a
penalty…

29. WE ALL NOW FACE
THE PROBLEM

30. Links are STILL
the Signal

31. THEY NEED US
WE MAKE THE SIGNAL

32. THE MYTHOF NATURAL LINKS

34. ABOUT SHEEP
A WARNING

35. Don’t follow what everyone else does
or you’ll be in the next filter
Guest Posts Infographics

36. WHAT’S LEFT ?
TYPES OF LINK

37. PAID LINKS

38. GIFTS

39. ADVERTORIALS

40. Infographics!
Guest posts!
Directories!
Social Bookmarks!
Paid in content !

41. TYPES OF LINK PROFILES
THERE ARE 2

42. YOU HAVE TO MANAGE EACH ONE
EVERY LINK HAS RISK

43. Validate every link opportunity!
Only buy link building services if
the company can demonstrate
that they know what risk is and
how they handle it!
Be realistic in your link risk
exposure !

44. Link
Value

45. Link
Value
DA
–
Higher
is
beSer
CitaTon
Flow
–
Higher
is
beSer
Trust
Flow
–
Higher
is
beSer
Page
Rank
-­‐
0-­‐10

46. Link
equity
/
number
of
outbound
links
=
Value
passed

47. Quality
raters
Disavow
Spam
Team

48. EWOQ’s

49. EWOQ’s

52. 10,000
Quality
Raters

53. At
least
4
other
companies

54. 40-­‐50,000
Quality
Raters

55. Who
said
is
just
a
machine
?

56. Trust

57. WHAT WAS
OUR RESPONSE?

58. We needed to try understand what the link risk was of every
link we had placed or were going to place

60. Google have hidden
what they consider a
bad link well
To rank you have to
build, but you have to
manage the risk far more

61. MANAGING THE RISK OF LINK BUILDING
1. 2. 3.
Have someone audit your
links with experience
Audit what you have
Determine what is risky
and what to remove

62.  Removing is almost as bad as not
removing!
 If you determine what the problem
links are, out of every 100 links you
identify as bad Google probably
only thinks 20 are bad!
 Removing all 100 is as bad for
your rankings as getting penalised
in some cases!

70. linkri.sk/omgmajesTc

71. WHAT TO LOOK FOR!
SIGNALS OF RISK!

72.  far higher % of on anchor!
 higher % of sitewides!
 higher % of suspect cctld!
 more links that 40x or 50x!

73. What makes a link
problematic?
Reason for
the site!
Commercial
Anchors again
and again!
Poor link metrics
(Majestic / Moz / PR)!
No Social Activity
on a site (Twitter /
Facebook)!
Banned
Words!
Links to bad
places!
No interaction
on the site!
Wrong
CCltd!

74. PROPENSITY 4 DISAVOW

78. OR EVERY SUSPECT ONE
LOOK AT EVERY LINK

80. 1

81. Submit
your
URL

82. 2

83. LinkRisk
scores
each
link

84. 3

85. Divide
your
links
up:
-­‐
Links
to
remove
Links
to
disavow
Links
to
keep

87. Risk is obvious in the anchor text distribution!

95. 700+
beta
signups
in
the
queue
in
72
hours
3
free
entries
to
you

96. WHAT TO DO IF YOU
GET CAUGHT?!

97. 3 Main Risks:
Penguin Link Devaluation Link Warnings

98. If
you’ve
been
penguined

99. AND WAIT FOR GOOGLE!
REBALANCE!

100. If
links
are
devaluing

101. WITH CAUTION!
REBUILD!

102. If
you
get
a
manual
penalty

103. Manual Penalty:
 Link audit and clean-up!
 Link removal attempts
(keep records)!
 Disavow the links that
you cannot remove !

104. REMOVALS!

105. FOR EVERY LINK
YOU REMOVE
You have to consider what
you might have to add & how

106. Disavow
Defini&on:
I’ve
been
a
bad
boy

107.
#
example.com
removed
most
links,
but
missed
these
hSp://spam.example.com/stuff/comments.html
hSp://spam.example.com/stuff/paid-­‐links.html
#
Contacted
owner
of
shadyseo.com
on
7/1/2012
to
#
ask
for
link
removal
but
got
no
response
domain:shadyseo.com

108.
www
is
not
the
same
as
non
www
to
Google
disavow

109.
Most
people
disavow
the
whole
domain

110.
That
is
an
important
fact
Its
probably
why
many
sites
are
slowly
dropping
in
ranking

111. UTF-­‐8
.txt
Or
they
will
ignore
it

112. linkri.sk/omgdisavow

113. WAIT!

114. Here

115. Some
poor
links
can
take
months
to
get
cached
again,
if
they
ever
do

116. REINCLUSION REQUEST
IF YOU AREN’T SUCCESSFUL TRY AGAIN

117. Reinclusion
requests

118. Dear
Google
Quality
Team,

119. Reason
why
you
are
asking

120. AcTons
you
have
taken

121. Show
that
you
have
changed

122. Be
polite
Many
Thanks
Paul

123. KNOW WHEN YOU’RE
BEATEN

124. DON’T WORK AS WELL AS THEY DID
301’s

125. REDIRECTIONS
AND NEW DOMAINS
BEWARE WHAT PASSES…

126. Takeaways

127. Link
build
with
cauTon

128. Manage
your
link
profile

129. Don’t
believe
the
hype

130. Sites
with
links
sTll
win
Every
7me….

131. Takk
!
paul@manuallinkbuilding.co.uk
@pauldavidmadden
manuallinkbuilding.co.uk