The New Era of Link Building - Reload Media Discussion

THE NEW ERA OF LINK BUILDING

VISUAL TIMELINE OF SEO

5 BG (Before Google)

• Yahoo and AltaVista ruled the web. Relevancy (based on keyword density and meta tags) were the most important ranking factors.


1 AG (After Google)

• Google revolutionary PageRank-based algorithm, based on the number of links pointing to a site, led to significantly better results than the existing search engines. This eventually led to Google’s dominance in the search world.


Venice Update (April 2009)

• This rarely-discussed update was Google’s first major change how the algo perceived sitewide authority and branding. The Venice update put Google on the trajectory that it’s been on ever since: forwarding trust brands over their smaller competitors


Google Panda (February 2011)

• Affected a massive 12 percent of searches. Targeted low quality "content farms" like EHow, EzineArticles.com and Suite101.com. One of the first Google updates that actively penalized site owners that broke their Webmaster Guidelines.


Google Penguin (April 2012)

• The "over-optimization" penalty that hit 3.1% of sites in Google's index. This update specifically targeted sites that used black hat link building tactics, specifically over-optimized anchor text. Like Panda, this update is a filter that catches sites in its net every time they roll out a refresh(every 2-3 months or so).


EMD Update (September 2012)

• To date, the latest major update from Google. This update targeted sites that used the power of exact match domains to get an edge. This further cemented Google's new hardline stance on site owners that gamed the system.


Google Hummingbird (August 2013)

• Hummingbird allows the Google search engine to better do its job through an improvement in semantic search. As conversational search becomes the norm, Hummingbird lends understanding to the intent and contextual meaning of terms used in a query.


Pigeon (July 2014)

• Google shook the local SEO world with an update that dramatically altered some local results and modified how they handle and interpret location cues. Google claimed that Pigeon created closer ties between the local algorithm and core algorithm(s)

PROACTIVELY AVOID PENALTIES

• Before, the goal of SEO used to be gunning for a single keyword. Once you hit the front page, you were gold. Not anymore, An important part of today’s SEO is working to minimize the risk of penalties and Google updates.

HOW LINK BUILDING IS DONE TODAY

ANALYSIS

AUDIT SITE’S LINK PROFILE

• Anchor text overuse

It is one of the most important webspam signals that trigger the Penguin filter.• Check site’s anchor text distribution• Page level anchor text distribution• Discover natural anchor text distribution

• Branded terms• Generic anchors• Naked urls• Titles

• Apply natural anchor text to the campaigns• Web directories• Press Release• Guest Post

SITE WIDE LINK DISTRIBUTION

• One of the most common mistakes link builders make is to point almost all of their links to their homepage. This looks extremely unnatural, especially for sites with a lot of content. Large sites presumably will have most of their links pointing to internal pages.

LINK RELEVANCY

• See what your site looks like in Google’s eyes• Keyword tool• Google Search

• Check your link profile’s site level relevancy• OSE• Linking domains

PAGE LEVEL RELEVANCY

• Check backlinks from OSE

• Check titles for page topic or look for meta description

LINK DIVERSITY

• Drill down with link detective to see where your links coming from

WHAT IS REALLY DEAD

ARTICLE SPINNING

• Article spinning was the process of automatically generating “rewritten” versions of an article and submitting them to as many low quality article directories as possible. It actually worked surprisingly well before Panda, and even for a while after that when done “correctly.”

EXACT MATCH ANCHOR TEXT

• It is a signal for unnatural links

• A high percentage of exact match anchor text can result in a Penguin penalty

• Exact match anchors don’t entice clickthroughs

WHAT CAN STILL WORK

BUYING LINKS

• Google’s algorithms just aren’t smart enough to identify link buying in every single circumstance.

• This isn’t worth it for brands is because it’s actually more costly to buy links than to attract them naturally. • Link sellers are, understandably, very likely to sell links to others who may

not be as discrete as you are.• The content has to be just as good as if you were doing it completely above-

board, or over time it will become obvious that you are buying the links.• It is more cost-effective to use the money to pay an influencer to write

something on your blog than to pay a link dealer, likely with less influence, to host a link on their site.

SITE HACKING

• It is true that sites can still rank by hacking sites and placing links

• Google’s algorithm really is in terms of spotting things. It’s certainly gotten smarter about spotting low quality content and links, but pages can slip through the cracks if some of their other ranking factors are out of control.

PRIVATE LINK NETWORKS

• A cleverly designed private link network, made up of several sites you bought up to link to yourself, is more or less invisible to Google at the moment.

• Black hats seem to love this tactic. Assuming the quality level of the sites is high enough, this is likely to go unnoticed.

WHAT IS POTENTIALLY RISKY

SITE-WIDE LINKS

• site-wide links often appear spammy to other SEOs, and if anything else about them seems less than editorial, almost anybody else will consider them spammy as well.

GUEST POSTING EXCLUSIVELY FOR SEO REASONS

• This allows you to draw a pretty clear line between what kinds of guest posts are worth building, and which ones aren’t. If the guest post has legitimate benefits outside of SEO, not only do you know it’s valuable even if the search engines ignore it, you also know that the search engines probably won’t ignore it.

PARTIAL MATCH ANCHOR TEXT

• The number of external domains linking with partial match anchor text ties for the third highest correlated ranking factor according to Moz. At the same time, partial match anchor text was more highly correlated with Penguin penalties than exact match anchor text

• This does not mean that partial march anchor text is more dangerous than exact match anchor text.

“DECENT” CONTENT

• There are examples of sites ranking with literally no content when certain factors, like link velocity, are out of control.

• Panda has pretty much obliterated article spinning at this point. Panda’s actual ability to target “mediocre” content isn’t quite as clear, and plenty of limited value content still turns up for certain search queries.

DIFFERENT LINK BUILDING TACTICS WHICH IS WORKING

• Links Pages

• Leverage Competitive Brand Mentions/Links

• Visual Assets

• Diversity

• Editorial Links

• Evergreen Content

• Regular Content Distribution

• Content Assets

• Redistributable Content

• Invite Guest Blogger

• Link Reclamation

• Comment Marketing

• Natural Anchor Text

• Internal Links

• Update OLD content

• Testimonial Links

• Get Links with Partnership

• Broken Link Building

• Sites’ Profile Pages

• Missing Image Attribution

• Network of Partners

THANK YOUResources:

http://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-link-building/

http://digitalphilippines.net/link-building/

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-hummingbird-penguin-panda-link-building-content-marketing-really-changing/86449/








The New Era of Link Building - Reload Media Discussion

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