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SEO Link Building Course Notes. SEO Introduction. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving the visibility of your website in a search engine’s organic results. On Page SEO – making sure your site is search engine friendly and relevant to your targeted keywords.
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SEO Introduction • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving the visibility of your website in a search engine’s organic results. • On Page SEO – making sure your site is search engine friendly and relevant to your targeted keywords. • Off Page SEO – building authority, trust and relevance for your website on other pages of the web.
The Basics What is a link? • A link/hyperlink is a reference that a user can follow to get to your page. Links help search engines evaluate the content on pages as well as identifying authority & relevance. • When someone uses a link to reference a page on the web, they pass authority (link juice) to that page. In the end, you want to obtain links from highly authoritative pages with a low outbound links, and preferably have your link near the top.
Relevance of links To determine relevancy with links, search engines utilize the anchor of the links, the content of the page the link is on and co-citations. • Anchor of the links – the clickable text that is being hyperlinked, if you wanted to rank for ‘pool supplies’ on Google, you try to obtain links with the anchor ‘pool supplies’ or something very similar using these words. • Content on a page includes main text content as well as things like title and description (Meta data). You would want to obtain links from pool supplies websites or articles about pool supplies. • Co-citations – when a website mentions two sites, if these same two sites are cited on another website they can build a stronger relationship with each other even if they do not reference each other.
Domain/Page Authority • Domain Authority – CNN has a higher domain authority than pointblankseo, and with all else equal a link from CNN to your website carries much more authority due to the amount of traffic that goes through their website. • Page Authority – If page A has 10 links that pass 100 votes and page B has 20 links that pass 90 votes, then page A would be more authoritative. NOT ALL LINKS ARE CREATED EQUAL.
Trust Rank • How trustworthy is your site? This is based on how trustworthy the sites that are referencing you are, if a lot of trusted sites are linking to you, you have a high trust rank. • In order to have a high trust rank, you want to pursue links from ‘seeded layers’ of sites, these are highly trusted websites like CNN. • Who you link to is just as important as who is linking to you.
Who to obtain links from • Link Diversity – If every one of your links came from the same forum with the same anchor text, you can be viewed as manipulative and unnatural. You want to try and increase your number of link root domains, gain links from as many sites as possible. • You want to also try to obtain links from different types of sites, including directories, articles, press releases, profiles, blog posts and many more.
Differing Anchors • Obtain links with a wide range of anchors! • Exact match – Trying to obtain links with the exact anchor text of the keyword your trying to rank for. • Partial Match – mix other words into the anchor as well as your keyword, like for ‘running shoes’, partial match anchors may be ‘black running shoes’ or ‘running shoes for men’. • Branded Match – Use brand name in anchors, if you are Nike trying to rank for ‘running shoes’, get a few links with ‘Nike running shoes’ or ‘Nike shoes’. • No Match – A few generic anchors like ‘click here’ or ‘my website’. • Related Match – Using anchors that are ‘close’ to your keyword, if your keyword is ‘running shoes’ related match anchors may include ‘athletic shoes’ or something similar. • Obtain links that aren’t just to your homepage, ‘deep links’ are links that go to specific pages on your website; you should also aim for these.
Page Rank • Page Rank – Being linked to by a page ranked on page 1 of Google carries great authority, for example links from websites on page 1 will get you to page 1, whereas you would need 1000’s of links from websites on say page 7 to get ranked on page 1. • An important rule is try not to obtain links that try to manipulate page ranks – involved in link scheming. They engage in heavy reciprocal linking (link farms), sell links and contain a lot of user generated spam.
White Hat Vs. Black Hat • White Hat – the usage of SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that that focus on human audience oppose to search engines and follows search engine rules. • Black Hat – Aggressive SEO strategies and techniques that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, doesn’t obey search engine rules. (Software that allows you to generate thousands of links at the click of a button).
Quality Links • What defines a quality link? • From apage with high domain authority • From apage with few outbound links • From a relevant website • From a new domain • Its domain is aged and trusted • Has a recent Google cache data Link velocity – The speed at which you build links and the growth of how many links you are building in a certain space of time. If your link is from a page that Google cannot find due to it being ‘excluded’ by googlebot or hardly ever found, or if the link isn’t in plain html, this link basically does not count.
Link Attraction Vs. Link Building • Natural links are links you don’t actively pursue • When someone finds a piece of content that they like and they link to it freely, then it’s considered to be a natural link • Attracting links consists of the link happiness of your niche, the trust your users have in your website and brand, the quality of your content. • Trust is a massive factor in whether someone chooses to link to you or not.
Content’s role in Link Building • Content plays a role in both building & attracting links • A piece of content created for the purpose of attracting links is known as link bait • Once you create the content your work is not done. It’s up to you to get it out there through various traffic streams.
What about your pages? • Preferably want links to your pages that generate the most revenue that will still benefit from a higher search visibility. • If a page is built to attract links naturally, do not use opportunities of receiving a link; to link to that page, use the opportunity wisely. • Internal linking is important, you can use whatever anchor text you like to link to other pages on your website. The more external links you have, the more important internal linking is. • Putting related links at the end of a page (to other pages) is a good practice, usually around three, it helps spread link juice around the website in a user friendly manner. One extreme word of caution is not to use exact match anchors in your site’s navigation
Final Rules on Link Building • Creating something that someone would LIKE to link to, is the essential part. • Relevant links are just as important as authoritative links (find a balance). • Focus on the user, would they click on a particular link? If not, don’t exclude it straightaway. • Obtaining links is the priority, not what anchor text is used. • If anyone can get a ‘certain link’, than it is not very valuable. • Don’t waste time pursuing links you’ll never get, if your content is nowhere near relevant. • Competitor research is very important.
Conducting a Campaign Competitor Research • Type in head keywords into Google, competitors show up, use open site explorer and put a competitors url in. • Filter through what you want to obtain, like only followed links that are external and link to the homepage of the competitor. • Download as CSV, do this for every competitor and then click on ‘recent csv reports’, download them all and put them into a spread sheet resulting in a list of your competitors top links.
Prospecting Possible Links • When trying to find opportunities online, keywords and operators are key. • E.G: Wanting to find opportunities to write for a home improvement brand, query to use would be *Home improvement “write for us”*. A quotation mark means pages have to include these exact words in this order not scattered.
Useful operators to use on Google • Site:ehow.com – only show results from the eHow website • Site:.edu – only show sites that are on .edu domains • -website.com – don’t show any results from website.com • gold OR silver – include results that are about gold or silver, and not necessarily both • allintitle:“chicken soup” – The phrase “chicken soup” has to be in the title • filetype:pdf – only show results that are PDF files • ext:html – only show HTML web pages (i.e. abc.com/example.html) • inurl:links – the word “links” has to be somewhere in the URL of the page • link:competitor.com – show pages that link to competitor.com. Note however Google never shows more than a small percentage of competitor.com’s links. • ~food – searches for the word “food” as well as any synonyms of “food”, such as “nutrition”.
Outreaching • Once a list of prospects is built, email addresses must be found to contact them about building links, or phone numbers, try to find personal email addresses. • When emailing potential link providers, try to use their name (so it seems personal) and come up with a subject line that will make them take notice of the email rather than just trash it. • Testing subject lines and responses for a few emails and then choosing the better subject line for the rest of the emails you send is a good way to see which subject line receives better or more responses. • GOAL OF OPENING EMAIL- to engage a response, not to get a link straightaway. • Different templates may be used to the different types of people you may be contacting.
Tips on Outreaching • Show interest – If you’re not genuinely interested in them, they won’t be interested in you. • Talk about their interests – Everyone has a topic or two that they’re interested in & like talking about. • Show emotion – We all know what it feels like to read an email that looks like it was written by a robot. • Talk in terms of what’s in it for them – They only care about what’s in it for them, so always put it in their terms, not yours. • Be clear & direct – Don’t dilly-dally, get straight to the point. • Use reciprocation to your advantage – I’m not talking about reciprocal links, I’m talking about geniunely helping someone out and asking for something (a link) in return. They’ll feel almost obligated to if what you did was kind enough. • Don’t forget about them – Once you get the link, make sure you thank them and continue to keep in touch. As you build up that relationship, they’ll be even more likely to link to you the next time around. • Offer value – Whenever you can, offer value to them in some way. It’s tough to justify that it’s valuable for someone to add a link to a preexisting page, so in cases like this, offer value in some other way. • Put yourself in their shoes – Try and think like they would. Why would they link to you, and what would make them want to link to you?
Organising yourself What to keep track of: • Name & Contact info on each prospect. • Date of first contact, so you can follow up if there is no response after a certain amount of time. • Date of first response back. • Date of link acquisition. • Your templates and how well they perform.
