ionSearch 2012

Tim Grice

Head of Search – Branded3

LINKBUILDING IN COMPETITIVE INDUSTRIES

Tim Grice

Head of Search

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

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

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

Paid Link Profile

Building a Natural Profile

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

Improve the site by adding content

Send To Your Writers

Vary Anchor Text

Variation in Action!

Anchor Text

• Decide on 10 – 15 keywords per page

• Use ‘Brand’ and ‘Noise’ signals

• Use the Google Keyword tool/Suggest/Related

Searches

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

Competitor Analysis

• Use search metrics to find most shared content

Tweets as Links?

• Giveaways and

competitions

• 1872 tweets

• 10th most shared page

Infographics

• 66 links

• 119 Tweets

• 115 Facebook likes

Link ability vs. Share ability

Share Ability Link Ability

‘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

Freshness Test

Time To Get Worthy

Link Worthiness

Website

Price Point

Unique Content

Social

Insight

Commentary

Data

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

Link Building Processes

Link Building process

Competitor Analysis

Search Google

Shortlist sites

QA process

Story ideas Pitch

stories Content

production Place links

QA process

Promote links

Track links

Authority Comparison

The News Method

News Brainstorm

Shortlist Target Sites

Press Release

Premium Post

Social Blog Roll

Out

Publish

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

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

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