Link Development: Getting the Reward For Your Effort - by @Vanetcetera
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•2,490 views
Jen Van Iderstyne Marketing Manager of Internet Marketing Ninjas on link building: Links should come as a bonus. They don't need to be your ultimate goal!
Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to Link Development: Getting the Reward For Your Effort - by @Vanetcetera
Similar to Link Development: Getting the Reward For Your Effort - by @Vanetcetera (20)
Link Development: Getting the Reward For Your Effort - by @Vanetcetera
- 1. Getting the Reward For Your Effort Jenniver Van Iderstyne Link Building
- 3. It used to look like this… http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 3
- 4. Now it looks like this… http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 4
- 7. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 7 Identifying the Problem: Manual Vs Algorithmic
- 20. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 20 What does Recovery Look like?
- 27. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 27 It’s A Whole New World
- 28. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 28 We only do “White Hat” Link Building…
- 29. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 29 And here’s the 5 phrases we want to build links for.
- 30. “We Only Care About 1 Keyword” http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 30 “Long tail phrases don’t matter to us” “We only want links to specific pages” OR OR
- 31. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 31 It’s Time for Broader Horizons
- 34. Play to your Audience http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 34 What does the linker do and what do they care about? Linkable Assets are not about you What will benefit the end user most? Do you really have something worth linking to?
- 35. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 35 Create Guides and Learning materials Widgets and Applications and Quizzes Contests and Scholarships Aggregated Collections Sponsors and Partners Infographics, pictorials, memes,
- 36. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 36 But None of it Matters Without Promotion Blogging Press Releases Social Media Email Marketing Personalized Emails
- 38. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 38 “Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, Eric Schmidt – Executive Chairman of Google
- 39. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 39 Google is Connecting Sources, Influencers, Industries. Through mapping the web of people…anything they can connect, they collect….Linkedin - Twitter - Facebook - Emails – Bio’s - Usernames (ie, forums username) …AND Google Plus.
- 40. Intent If you can detect honest intent as a human, trust the algorithm will follow http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 40
- 41. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/ 41 Thank You For Coming!
Editor's Notes
- Joined the Ninjas in 2006, I’ve worked as a link builder, an analyst, and now I lead a client services team and spend most of my time talking to clients. So when it comes to link building, the field has changed…
- But now it’s a Brand New Landscape…
- There are dangerous missteps if you’re not careful.
- For a long time, websites could by links by the thousand, they would go up over night and they’d affect rankings fairly quickly. Then came Penguin, twice, link devaluation and a wave of manual penalties
- You aren’t alone. They worked, so everyone did it. Some people lost a little, others lost a lot. There are different details that affect the depth of some hits, like whether the losses are site wide, or specific to certain pages and directories, there are also broader factors, like industry niches where there is Extra sensitivity. So everyone is looking for a way back.
- To deal with the problem you have to figure out which it is.
- Manual Penalties should come with a warning in Google webmaster Tools in the Manual Actions Section of your dashboard. As I said, actions can be “partial” against sections of the site, or even against the links themselves, but any of these can affect your overall site traffic.
- An algorithmic filter issue will be most easily identified by a sudden, steep drop in traffic in a date range associated with an update. We call this a “Ski Jump” when traffic drops off significantly on a certain date – Devaluation is more evident by a slow decrease in traffic patterns over time as ostensibly Google stops counting some of your links as quality votes.
- Whether the issue is Manual or algorithmic though a lot of the red flags on links are the same.
- Too Much Exact Match Anchor Text Key word Anchor Text that matches highly sought after search terms
- Network signals – Easily mapped link networks, shared IP addresses and C-classes.
- Directories that Exist for SEO purposes
- Blogs where all of the posts have out going links with keyword anchor text spanning everything from safety deposit boxes to dog grooming supplies.
- Site Wide and heavily syndicated links
- There’s also Content Context when Word patterns are repeated over and over on numerous linking pages
- The linking site is big on Links but small on traffic
- Once you’ve diagnosed the problem you have to take your Medicine. For link devaluation, you need to start replacing the de-valued links with real, quality links For an algorithmic issue, it means link removal and probably a disavow for links you are unsuccessful in removing For a manual action it usually means link removal, a disavow for links you can’t remove, a love letter to Google apologizing for your mistakes and supporting documentation to prove your efforts.
- When we create disavow documents one of the tools we use is a free tool on freetools.webmasterworld.com if you upload the export of your links from Webmastertools you can look at patterns, and risk factors from anchor text and backlink volume, to search engine traffic value.
- Algorithmic Recoveries we can sometimes be spotted by increases in traffic patterns. We usually give a disavow 90 days to evaluate effectiveness. Recovery may demand multiple iterations of a disavow. Your disavow can be updated, and changed and the only sites recognized as “disavowed” will be the links listed in the most recent version of your disavow. We treat disavows a lot like cancer, we typically start with conservative cuts to try to maintain link equity wherever possible. If this is ineffective, we cut deeper and deeper.
- Manual Penalties though involve a bit more of a direct line of communication between Google and Webmasters
- When you submit a Reconsideration, it may be rejected, and if you’ve taken half measures, relied only on a disavow or only built new links, it probably will be. But the rejection letter may have important insight, as to why. Sample URLs can reveal exactly which Red Flags Google is looking for in your profile In this message, they explicitly say they require link removal you will have significant trouble having a reconsideration accepted without substantially changing the composition of your link profile. The dominance of anchor text, the kinds of links, the links to unique domains ratio… these things must change for Google to recognize the effort.
- All of your efforts should be covered in supporting documents that go with the letter these should include things like: The websites you contacted for disavow The number of times contacted and ideally the dates of the contact attempts The result of the contact Tip, Links may come down without notice, check live links prior to submission to find and list any sites that were unresponsive but the links are no longer active. Don’t bother listing any links as “good links” or “natural links” Google is ultimately the one the determines if a link is “good” or appears “natural”. Even if something is naturally obtain it may still contain red flags that make it appear ot Google as manipulative. If that’s the case, it still needs to go. For any links that you didn't get removed, the supporting documentation should show that there is a damn good reason (might not want to use the word damn) that the links weren't removed like, you tried contacting multiple times with no reply...there was no contact info to be found anywhere, webmaster asked for payment The websites you contact are the sites that you no longer want associated with your site, which are typically the ones you end up putting in the disavow
- An altered message in response to a reconsideration request, can indicate that you are moving in the right direction but not completely out of the woods. So keep going.
- Because a release notice is a clear and welcome message. Manual Penalty recoveries are generally acknowledged by a message from Google indicating a release, though we have also seen an unceremonious removal of the message from the WMT Manual action section. To get here it may take multiple iterations of the disavow and the letter and most importantly the “supporting documentation”
- Even when the Google forgiveness does come, the traffic rebound can be extremely visible or may not be exactly what you’d hoped. Link Losses from Disavows, removals and devaluation can all result in rankings losses. So that even when an algorithmic filter is untripped or a penalty is lifted rankings and traffic may not “rebound” to pre-filter or pre-penalty levels. A lot of that depends on your industry, your other relevance and trust indicators and, of course, what you have left for links when all the bad ones are gone. In either case moving forward…
- And we need to set realistic expectations for new circumstances Depending on the scope of the damage it may be like starting back at square one. That means rebuilding a link profile with real, quality authentic links. It may also mean changing your entire view of what link building.
- So this is good…
- This is bad. So are things like…
- These kinds of statements make puppies cry.
- Whether you’ve been hit with a manual penalty, tripped a filter or successfully avoided the wreckage. It’s time to re-evaluate how links are acquired and evaluated.
- Blogs are kind of a hot topic right now right? But getting a blog link is all about the quality of the other content on the blog and the community associated with the blog. The kinds of blogs that are low value are obvious from the complete lack of any interaction and the low quality posts. Guest blogging isn’t entirely dead, just as a link building method. As an opportunity to put your voice in front of a different, but engaged audience it is still a valuable opportunity for branding,
- When it comes to press releases, it should be real News or Northing. Use services like HARO (Help a reporter out) to find opportunities. You can even cultivate Relationships with local and international periodicals, experts, Authors and Journalists
- If all you have is commercial content, the answer to the last question is probably “no”.
- Which means you need things like this. Of course a lot of these have been done before and some to death, so the trick is to try to find a unique approach. When you can be the original source of information or bring something unique to the party.
- Whatever your content is, you have to give it legs. And Social Media promotion doesn’t really work unless you have an engaged network as an audience. If your connections aren't engaged, it’s promoting your own content on social is like talking to an empty room.
- You can also help leverage your content to better help your site by establishing an Author. An person or people who write for the site and build up their expertise and author rank through the consistent creation of quality content. You can also get the benefit of Author rank by getting links form people who Google recognizes as Authors. This doesn’t necessarily mean someone has to have written a book that sells on Amazon, though that is a nice benefit when it happens.
- This is extremely important as we look at both our content and how we evaluate links. A link from a smaller site but a known author can be an extremely valuable link even if the linking domain doesn’t have thousands of incoming links.
- Google can tell an Author even if the code isn’t always there
- The Bottom line when I talk to clients about what is a “good” link or a “good” website. It’s all about intent, why does the site exist? Is it for SEO, or is SEO not even on this site’s radar. There are great links that ocme form sites with strong metrics and high relevance, and those are worth working for, and doing whatever it takes. But there are also plenty of links which smaller in metrics but big on long term growth value.