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In SEO, internal and external links help establish site authority and trust. The question is, are all links created equal? Join us as we explore the different types of offsite authority building and look at ways to strengthen internal pages of a site.
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Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013@searchinfluence
Search Influence’s mission is to help customers successfully
market online by developing tools, technologies, and the
experts who support them.
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
• University of Louisiana Lafayette Mass
Communications / Media Studies Grad
• Search Influence Senior Account
Manager
• Influencer for 3+ years
• Google AdWords + Bing Adwords Certified
MEGAN LINDSEYABOUT ME
@searchinfluence
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
THE POWER OF
LINKBUILDING
@searchinfluence
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
LINKBUILDING 101:
@searchinfluence
• WHAT IS LINKBUILDING?• Process of getting external
pages to link to a page on your website
• WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?• Google’s primary ranking
signal• Seen as a “vote”• Builds page authority
• HOW DOES IT IMPACT SEO?• Trust factor• Quantity of backlinks• Quality of backlinks• Anchor text• Referral traffic• Social signals
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
ALGORITHM
UPDATES
&LINKBUILDING
@searchinfluence
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
PENGUIN UPDATES:
@searchinfluence
Penalty Reasons:1. Low Quality Links
2. Overly Optimized Anchor
Text
3. Keyword stuffing
4. Blog Spam
5. Exact Match Domains
How to Overcome?1. Natural Anchor Text
2. Contextual Thematic
Links
3. Pruning The “Rogue”
Links
Who Benefited?Websites with variety of
quality back links
PENGUIN:April 2012
• Adjusted a number of spam factors, including keyword stuffing
• Impacted an estimated 3.1% of English queries
PENGUIN 2.0:May 2013
• Arrived with only moderate impact• Exact nature of the changes were
unclear, but some suggested that it was more finely targeted to the page level
PENGUIN 3.0:October 2014
• Appeared to be smaller than expected
• Impacted <1% of English queries• Timing of update was unclear, and
Google claimed it was spread out over “weeks”
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
=But, not all links are created equal
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
GOOD LINKS
VS.
BAD LINKS
@searchinfluence
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
GOOD LINKS
What does Google reallywant?
@searchinfluence
• Strong, authoritative
links
• Relevant links
• Industry specific
• Location specific
• Natural links
• Brand signals
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
Bad Links:
What Makes a Link Bad?
Structure• Overly optimized “anchor text”
• If all the links pointing at you are on the exact same keyword, Google sees that as a sign that a website may be trying to “manipulate” the search results
Source• Completely unrelated or loosely related website
• Not good: Mommy blog in Michigan linking to a steel maker in New Jersey
• Appropriate link: Mommy blog in Michigan writing about and linking to vacation rentals in Alabama
• Website linking to many different industries without real context or purpose • (established directories are still good)
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
Common Sources
of Bad Links
• Poor blog commenting:
– Comments providing
no real input
– Comments on
unrelated blog posts
– Commenter’s name is
clearly a keyword
• Low, low quality directories
• Unrelated “link network”
type sites
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
PENALTIES FOR
BAD LINKS
@searchinfluence
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
Site rankings can be affected
1 of 2 ways…
Manually
Algorithmically
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
Diagnosing
• Action plan to “fix” varies based on
the type of penalty…
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
Google Webmaster Tools:Manual Actions Notice
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
Algorithmic
• If traffic dips in Google Analytics coincides with a Google
update, but no “manual action” in WMT, then the site’s rankings were adjusted by the algorithm, not manually
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
Addressing the Issue
• Manual action • Perform aggressive link cleanup, document,
“disavow” and submit Reconsideration Request
• Algorithmic Update• Perform aggressive link cleanup, document, and
“disavow” bad links
• No easy cure for toxic links
• Can take multiple tries
• Most cases are different
• For manual actions, recovery will take place after next Penguin refresh or update
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
EVALUATING
BACKLINKS
@searchinfluence
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
INBOUND LINK REPORT
@searchinfluence
• Evaluates the quality and
quantity of inbound links
pointing back to the site
• Reviewed to determine:
• Presence of “bad”
links
• Baseline of current
links
• Areas of opportunity
to increase quality
backlinks
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS
@searchinfluence
• Evaluates and Identifies sources of
high and low quality backlinks
• Notifies if there is a significant
number of low quality backlinks that
result in Manual Action
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
COMPETITIVE BACKLINK ANALYSIS
• Identifies the sites that competitors are getting links from
• Goal: Obtain more authoritative links to your site that
your competitors already have
• Examples: Industry directories, hyper-local directories,
manufacturer/product websites, partnerships, etc.
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
OFF-SITE
LINK BUILDING
@searchinfluence
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
LOCALDIRECTORIESOrganize listings
by NAP
information
(by location).
PRIMARY BENEFIT:
Citations
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
CATEGORICALDIRECTORIESOrganize listings
by business
category rather
than location.
PRIMARY BENEFIT:
Links
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
NICHE DIRECTORIESRelevant,
Industry/Location
Specific
PRIMARY BENEFIT:
Quality Links
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
PRESS RELEASES
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
• Acts as 2nd tier link building
• Goal: Build authority of existing links and
help Search Engines with discovery of links /
content
• Types of content to social bookmark:
• Social network URLs
• Other online profiles or brand mentions (PRs,
articles, niche directory listings)
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS
@searchinfluence
PRIMARY
BENEFITS:
• Brand awareness
• Connect/Interact with
audience + influencers
• Share valuable
Content
• Opportunity for virality
Fairway Group in Partnership with Search Influence 2013
HELPFUL TIPS + TOOLS
• Continuous link building establishes
a brand’s search presence and
site authority
• Monitor organic website traffic
after algorithm updates
• Establish expectations for potential
penalties and recovery efforts
• Evaluate number of inbound links
to client’s site by utilizing helpful
tools:
• moz.com/researchtools/ose• google.com/webmastertools
@searchinfluence