Tim Grice discusses Google's recent crackdown on unnatural links and provides strategies for building natural, high-quality links. He recommends thoroughly cleaning up any unnatural links and focusing link building efforts on creating valuable content that is worthy of links and shares. Specific techniques include analyzing competitors, identifying link-worthy landing pages, varying anchor text, leveraging social signals, tracking link performance over time, and developing processes to ensure link quality remains high. The overall message is that sites need to focus on generating natural links and social shares through insightful, shareable content rather than manipulation.

1. ionSearch 2012
Tim Grice
Head of Search – Branded3

2. LINKBUILDING IN
COMPETITIVE INDUSTRIES
Tim Grice
Head of Search

4. Unnatural Links
• In March Google made the biggest change ever to
how they handle links
o Over 1 million unnatural links messages in WMT
o Ranking drops hit 2-3 weeks later
o Link clean up needed before re-consideration should
be sent

5. Our Experience
• 50 sites have contacted us specifically about the
message
• Clean up is difficult as spam sites rarely have contact
info
• Legacy SEO agencies may not co-operate in the
removal of links
• We’ve been looking for common networks – one site
had used an outsourcer to place links across 650
domains, payment had to be made for removal
• Google are detecting/penalising blogs selling posts

6. Which links are bad?
• If you’ve got the message then you need to remove
every link that was built for SEO purposes as Google
will look closely at your link profile during
reconsideration
• For other sites it’s very important to reduce the
percentage of keyword anchor text – this means
actively making changes ASAP to your link profile if
you are at risk
• Paid blog posts on low quality blogs, sidebar links,
footer links, forum profile links, article directory links
etc. are all very dangerous now

7. Paid Link Profile

8. Building a Natural Profile

9. Choose Landing Pages Not Keywords
• Do keyword research
• Allocate keywords to landing pages
• Prioritise pages by sum of keyword search volume
• Vary anchor text across all keywords
• Mix in brand variations for good measure
Google wants to rank the best result

10. Improve the site by adding content

11. Send To Your Writers

12. Vary Anchor Text

13. Variation in Action!

14. Anchor Text
• Decide on 10 – 15 keywords per page
• Use ‘Brand’ and ‘Noise’ signals
• Use the Google Keyword tool/Suggest/Related
Searches

15. Social Signals
• http://www.blueglass.com/blog/secrets-of-viral-content/
• Good content always gets
far fewer links than it gets
social shares
• Make sure that you build
social shares at the same
time as you get links to
make your link building
appear natural

16. Competitor Analysis
• Use search metrics to find most shared content

17. Tweets as Links?
• Giveaways and
competitions
• 1872 tweets
• 10th most shared page

18. Infographics
• 66 links
• 119 Tweets
• 115 Facebook likes

19. Link ability vs. Share ability
Share Ability Link Ability

20. ‘Fresh Rank’
• Google wants up to date content
• A page can be deemed ‘fresh’ through inbound links
• Links placed in ‘crawled’ content have low value

21. Freshness Test

22. Time To Get Worthy

23. Link Worthiness
Price Point
Unique
Data
Content
Website
Commentary Social
Insight

24. Think Referral, Not Link
• Why would this site refer traffic to me?
• Does the content refer as well as link to my site?
• How did I earn the link?
Links have to be justified in order to look natural

25. Link Building Processes

26. Link Building process
Competitor Search Shortlist QA
Analysis Google sites process
Content Pitch
Place links Story ideas
production stories
QA Promote
Track links
process links

27. Authority Comparison

28. The News Method
News Shortlist Press
Brainstorm Target Sites Release
Blog Roll Premium
Social
Out Post
Publish

29. Creating Social Hit list
• List all info graphic sites
• List all industry blogs
• List all sites that have published a similar info graphic
in the past
o Find using search
o Find using “search by image”
• Seed by asking influential users to share via social
media

30. Summary
• Remove unnatural links
• Address anchor text balance
• Focus on being link worthy
• Great sites generate shares as well as links
• Processes to focus on quality and natural signals

31. Questions?
• seowizz.net & blogstorm.co.uk
• www.branded3.com
• twitter.com/tim_grice
• tim.grice@branded3.com
• We do free link analysis and link strategy for those
who email me