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Link Building The Key to Rankings

Link Building The Key to Rankings. Eric Enge CEO, Stone Temple Consulting. On Page SEO Summary. Establish Relevance! Can’t compete for a term without it Critical to SEO But how do the search engines decide which relevant pages to show first in the results?.

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Link Building The Key to Rankings

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  1. Link BuildingThe Key to Rankings Eric Enge CEO, Stone Temple Consulting

  2. On Page SEO Summary • Establish Relevance! • Can’t compete for a term without it • Critical to SEO • But how do the search engines decide which relevant pages to show first in the results?

  3. Links Are Like Votes in an Election

  4. One Method For Valuing Links is PageRank

  5. Role of Relevance Car and Driver Magazine Casino Gambling Your Page (Used Ford Mustangs) Low Value High Value Ford vehicles .com Online Prescriptions Anchor Text also plays a key role in establishing relevance!

  6. The Concept of Authority All Websites about Used Cars A A A

  7. Search Engines Do Not Count All Links • Links they can’t read: • Encrypted JavaScript • In an iFrame • Links on pages that they can’t crawl • Can’t find • Marked as NoCrawl in Robots.txt • Links marked with NoFollow Attribute

  8. Links Should be Citations • Search engines do not want you to buy links • Search engines do not want you to get all your links through link swaps • These are compensated links, not citations • So you must create a reason for people to link to you

  9. Algorithmic Ranking Factors

  10. The 8 Basic Kinds of Link Building

  11. #1 – Manual Requests Will you link to us? Hmmm • Develop list of relevant sites • Research who to contact (and how) • Send an email (or call) requesting a link Scalability Value Downsides: Hard to scale Use: For high value link build

  12. #2 – Competitive Research How did he get so big? • Use tools to see who links to your competition • Pursue top targets with manual link building • Research competitor link building strategies Scalability Value Downsides: Hard to scale Use: For high value link building. Get ideas from competition

  13. #3 – Distribute cool tools Cool Tool 3rd Party Site • Create a cool tool • Allow other web sites to include it on their site • Embed a link back to your site Link Back Your Site Scalability Value Downsides: Success is not certain Use: If you can create a unique and compelling tool

  14. #4 – Linkbait and Viral Campaigns • Create unique, killer content that every-one wants to link to • Let market influ-encers know about it • Watch the links roll in Blog Media Viral Content Social Site Hobbyist Scalability Value Downsides: Success is not certain Use: If you can create truly compelling and unique content

  15. #5 – Content / Data Syndication Your Content Or Data Site 1 • Create content others may want to place on their sites • Offer it to other sites • Require links back in return Site 2 Your Site Site 3 Links Back Scalability Value Downsides: Creating the syndicated content/data Use: If you have a rich array of unique content or data

  16. #6 – Link Reclamation 404 Page • Get a list of 404 errors found by the search engines • Determine which ones are from bad external links • Request fix, or implement 301 redirect Broken Link Good Link Source Fixed Link Your Site Scalability Value Downsides: Hard to scale Use: Always, it’s easy

  17. Google Webmaster Tools 404 Report

  18. Strategies to Avoid

  19. #7 – Exchanges and Trades Dude, wanna swap links? Hmmm • Research relevant sites • Figure out how to contact them • Suggest trading links Scalability Value Downsides: Search engines can detect and discount links Use: Only with quality relevant sites

  20. #8 – Buy the Links Hey Dude,Want some dough? Hmmm • Research relevant sites • Figure out how to contact them • Offer to buy a link Scalability Value Downsides: Search engines want to devalue these links Use: Never

  21. Evaluating Link Value

  22. Google Directory • Pulls from DMOZ • Ordered by Google’s PageRank.

  23. Google Toolbar • View PageRank of current page, once turned on. • Available for: • Firefox • Internet Explorer

  24. 10 Google Sampling of Homepage PageRank Ratings Amazon 9 E F F O R T 8 7 Disney Gap 6 5 4 3 Relative number of pages with PR rating 2 1 Toolbar PageRank • Not the same as “Real” PageRank • Logarithmic scale from 0 to 10 • Assigned to web pages, not sites • Still, a useful metric ebay Culligan Boston Store 0

  25. How well does PR predict Ranking? http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-science-of-ranking-correlations

  26. Quantitative Metrics • # of Linking Root Domains to URL • # of Linking Root Domains to Domain • Homepage PageRank; Domain mozRank • URL PageRank; URL mozRank • mozTrust • # of Links to the Page (Yahoo!, GG Blogsearch, Linkscape) • Twitter mentions (Backtweets.com)

  27. Subjective Metrics • Brand name reach/recognition • Quality of other links on page/site (Bing - Linkfromdomain) • Attainability and Effort

  28. Link Building Tools

  29. Example Yahoo! Link Commands • linkdomain:hulu.com –site:hulu.com • See links to hulu.com, but exclude links from hulu.com • Linkdomain:hulu.com linkdomain:youtube.com • See who links to hulu.com AND youtube.com

  30. Social Media Leveraging Social Media to Create Buzz and Links

  31. Proceed with Care! • Social communities do not like to be “used” • People in the communities take action • So do the social media properties themselves • Play nice! • Be a member of the community • Contribute to the community • And it will pay you back

  32. Wikipedia • If you can, obtain a profile page on Wikipedia • Links to your site do not pass link juice, but still valuable • Builds credibility with media and others • Don’t go add it yourself! • Against Wikipedia guidelines • Become a contributor, add lots of value, make friends, establish credibility, then suggest it • Must meet notability test • Suggest relevant category tags • Monitor your articles with a tool that emails you when the article changes (trackengine, urlywarning).

  33. Wikipedia Summary This guy must be the real deal Wikipedia Your Name Play by the rules Benefits: Builds Credibility Brings traffic Scalability Value Downsides: Time investment Use: Only if notable

  34. Digg • An article that makes the Digg home page: • Can get tens of thousands of visitors • Can get hundreds, or thousands of links • Getting there is the hard part • Create great content • Use Digg to research other articles on your topic area that have made it • Target the audience (13 to 28 year old males) • Befriend or hire a top Digger

  35. Digg • Strip away all commercial links from your article • Friend popular Diggers. Better yet, get a popular Digger to submit your story. • Craft a killer title using this formula from Muhammad Saleem: number + adjective + key phrase • E.g. “13 Most Chilling Haunted Hotels” or “16 Incredibly Unconventional Hotel Rooms”

  36. Digg Summary Tons of Visitors 16 most… Digg Home Page Tons of Links Your Article Benefits: Traffic Links Scalability Value Downsides: Home Run Ball Use: If your site lends itself to the right type of content

  37. YouTube • Create great videos • Post on YouTube • If related to a current event, that’s a plus • The videos on YouTube get most of the links • Stack the odds by creating a microsite and making the microsite URL your username. • E.g. “willitblend.com” is BlendTec’s username • Use as many tags as possible while still being accurate

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