Link Development - Attracting & generating the right links Lisa Myers CEO, Verve #EdgeBristol

About Lisa Myers 11 years experience in Marketing, 7 in Search & Social Speaker at Search Conferences Worldwide (SES, SMX, A4U etc) Regular contributor to on and offline publications and author of several SEO Best Practise Guides including eConsultancy and B2B Marketing Heavily involved in the global Search Community, founder of SEO-chicks.com and co-founder of European search blog StateofSearch SEO-chicks.comStateofSearch Awards “Search Personality of the Year” UK Search Awards “Best SEO Campaign” for her agency Verve Search Management Today “35 women under 35” list 2009 “Best Use of Technology woman under 30” BlackBerry Woman & Technology Awards (2008) “B2B Marketing Newcomer of the Year” #EdgeBristol

some link history

PageRank Google developed PageRank to measure importance of pages largely based on incoming linking structure and #EdgeBristol

{then came quality and relevancy}

relevance + strength = quality Your Site /Page Site 1 link /Page Site 2 link Latent symantec indexing, surrounding content of a link.  Not just about page 1 linking to your site, but about the overall SITE and it’s relevancy  Also about Site 2 linking to SITE 1

In 2012 the algorithm is significantly more sophisticated, but.....

FCUK SEO

there are still weaknesses

Like....Article Spinning Where one article is used to create several versions, by replacing original words using synonyms and rewriting sentences Where a single piece of writing is remade into multiple variants of the original by substituting words and sentence structure using similar #EdgeBristol

Article spinning still works because the Search Engines aren’t there #EdgeBristol

INTENT

“In the beginning there were Robots”.....then they evolved

evidence?

SEOmoz 2011 Study Correlation between social signals and higher rankings (this was pre G+) Source: SEOmoz.org

Tasty Placement – Test 2012 Does Social Media boost organic rankings. 6 websites used in the test. Source: TastyPlacement.com

but...

Boost in rankings from social shares is likely to be restrained by time.

Is Google serious?

+ My WORLD

Rel=author

Google + + my World rel=author } evidence how serious Google is about Social signals

subtle hint

Link Development

SEO TOOLS +

1.Brainstorming 2.Link Analysis & management 3.Link Prospecting 4.Creative & Implementation

{ brainstorming – let your mind wander #1

Topics - Don’t Restrict Yourself A site selling clothes does NOT need to be restricted to fashion #EdgeBristol

Allow a Chain #EdgeBristol

{ link analysis & management #2

tools...

What to analyse: The Basics Anchor text Depth of links (what pages are linked to) Type of links (sources) Authority & Strength of links Backlinks history Analyse your own site & your competitors!

# Domains #EdgeBristol

Type of #EdgeBristol

Use of Anchor #EdgeBristol

Depth of #EdgeBristol

{ link prospecting - finding sites to target #3

Competitors Links By analysing competitors links you will be able to find sites that have already linked to someone in your industry Targeting these are good to start with, BUT you obviously don’t want just exactly the same as what they #EdgeBristol

Finding Relevant Sites Keyword + “article” Keyword + “blog” Keyword + “directory” Keyword inurl: “write for us” Keyword inurl:”guest posts” Keyword intitle: “write for us” and so on...

Mangia Guest Post Tool tools/guest-post-opportunity-finder/ Useful Tool

Using Known Social Networks Utilising forums and social networks in your industry to find relevant target sites Bloggers are also often very social active on twitter, facebook, pintrest, instagram etc

{ creative & development #4

Types of Link Development Utilising Existing Relationships Link Building Link baiting Article/Content #EdgeBristol

Utilising Existing Relationships Often it is the simplest idea that gives you the most link juice! For example; -Would your partners, customers etc link to you? -Which University did the CEO go #EdgeBristol

Apple.com Links to domain= 35.8 MILLION! PR=9/10

link building

Link Building Directories Blog & forum comments Usually low quality so work best as fillers. Should NOT be Primary Link Dev Strategy

link baiting great digital content

A piece of digital content (article, video, infographic, etc) that specifically increases the chances for generating “organic links” {

GREAT IDEA funny interesting competitions intelligent newsworthy educational provoking

real examples {link (and social) bait

Infographics is great link bait!

Using a piece of content to get a link can be very EFFECTIVE! Content Outreach

It’s all about the ANGLE!

Give something back Have something to trade, why should they be linking to you? -Content (must be relevant!) -Discount/competition -Breaking news -Free “something” -YOUR USPs??!!

Don’t always try source a home for an article already written. Find sites you WANT to get a link from and then write the article! Their tone of voice and style and type of #EdgeBristol

Writing the content Spend time writing the article, it’s got to be good! Include stats, research or similar. Make sure the angle is appropriate for target site Including keywords that you are targeting for surrounding text ANCHOR TEXT (ideally your main target keyword) Stay away from main keyword in HEADLINE though, as you don’t want them to rank ABOVE you! real examples {content outreach

creating content for influencers

Thank You! Web: