Backlinks UncoveredHow to analyze their performance and get more for your website

ABOUT HOSTS

Customer Success ManagerJessica Yang

jessica@positionly.com@jessicamqy

Topics we will be covering

Attending this webinar is your first step to mastering link-earning :)

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• Why link-earning?

• Quality vs. Quantity

• Techniques: Black vs White Hat

• Tips: Do’s and Don’ts

• Monitoring: managing your backlinks with Positionly

• Majestic, our awesome backlinks provider

The Topics

What are backlinks?

Backlinks

- are the links that other websites posted about you and that are leading to your website.

Why are backlinks so important?

Investing in link-earning is important for SEO and to getting the great content on your site discovered.

Get discoveredBetter linked sites allow crawlers to

discover you easier and faster.

Gain credibilityThe website linking to you is giving you ‘link juice’, or their vote of confidence.

Increase trafficBetter linked sites allow crawlers to

discover you easier and faster.

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Thanks to backlinks you can:

What constitutes a good quality backlink from the bad one?

Search engines are taking into accounttwo important factors when determining

whether a backlink is good quality.

It is much more difficult to acquire high-quality backlinks than low-quality ones.

What are good quality backlinks?

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RelevanceIs the site linking to you related to your business?

AuthorityIs the site linking to you credible?

You’ll want:• Influential sites• Popular sites• Trustworthy sites

• Peers in similar industries• Industry experts• .edu and .gov sites

How to determine a qualitybacklink score?

Majestic provides quality scores based on Trust Flow and Citation Flow (like relevance and authority).

How does Majestic determine quality score?

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Trust flow and citation • Like relevance and

authority• Score out of 100

High >70Med: 24-70Low: <24

Not all backlinks are equal; some may have no effect on your ranking, and some may even harm you. Therefore, focus on quality.

Quality vs. Quantity

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Types of link earning strategies

Avoid black hat link earning strategies, or risk penalties from Google.

Link Earning Strategies

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Black hat White hat

Bonus: helping the local community can draw third-party media coverage! Instant boost for your brand image.

Link Earning Strategies

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Pay for your links Sponsor events and donate to • Inorganic; anyone can do it, regardless of content quality• Any link paid for is considered an ad, and must be made

explicit

• Related to your business somehow to target similar audiences

• Often, charities will have very reputable sites explicit

Bonus: host credible guest bloggers on your site! They may have a loyal following, and that will draw more traffic to your site.

Link Earning Strategies

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Guest blogging for the sake of it High quality guest blogging• Guest blogging just to earn a link without caring about

content is considered spam• Think: would a credible site host a guest blogger that

produces poor content?

• Blog for high quality, related sites in similar industries• Produce high quality content that will draw readers to your

site

Bonus: this is a long term solution! By getting into their network, they may take the first initiative to link to you in the future.

Link Earning Strategies

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Link exchange schemes Build relationships with industry peers and experts• ‘I’ll give you a link if you give me one’ is NOT allowed!

• Social media: Tweet them something useful and new• Email: personalization is key• Industry experts often have ‘monthly roundup’ posts, bring

your product to their attention.

Bonus: this may be one of the most painless ways to earn a backlink. It’s technically already earned ;)

Link Earning Strategies

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Spam other sites for backlinks Seek out brand mentions and ensure they’re linked• Don’t constantly post comments, tweets, etc. with your

link or asking for a link• Google doesn’t count links in comments anyway, and

spamming may get you blocked by the webmaster

• Search for your brand in search engines and go to pages you’re mentioned

• They may have mentioned you but not linked you - ask!

Other important factors in link earning

Always remember: users first! That should be your foundation for all SEO strategies.

Other important factors in link earning

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Diversify your methodsUtilize many white-hat link earning

strategies to achieve maximum results.

Internal linkingEnsure your site has proper internal links, so crawlers can easily navigate within your site and properly index it

Users firstFocus on user experience and

creating content they want.

How to track link building efforts

Positionly + Majestic = Awesome

So now I that I can start building links… then what?

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Monitoring backlinks in Positionly

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Be in the know with weekly updates

Get to the source See if they passed on their link juice

With our Inbound Links Checker you can:

With the weekly updatesyou can:

Reacting quickly (before any harm can be done to your rankings) is always a good idea.

Get weekly updates

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Disavow shady links ASAP Reach out to people who provided you • use Google’s Disavow Tool or ask the webmaster to

remove your link if you don’t want to be associated with the linking site

• being associated with too many shady sites will make Google think you are shady too, which can hurt your rankings.

• easier to build that relationship when you reach out earlier

With the source of the linkyou are able to:

It’s like being a detective - unleash your inner Sherlock Holmes.

Get to the source

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Monitor what linking sites are sayingabout you

Get inspired by the source

• Check out if what they are saying about you is correct - there can be misspellings or simply wrong information

• Reach out to ask for a correction if not, and of course to let them know thank you

• Maybe the site linking to you wasn’t a type you expected

• Check out their business and what they’re saying about you, so you may aim to get backlinks from similar sources in the future

Are your links nofollow or dofollow?

Having some nofollow links are inevitable and natural, don’t fret!

See if they passed on their link juice

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Nofollow Dofollow• Humans can click on the link and be directed to your site,

but a crawler can not• They did not pass on their link juice.• If you see a nofollow from a quality site, nicely contact the

webmaster to change it

• Humans and crawlers both can click on the link and be directed to your site

• They’ve passed on their link juice

What to do with the backlinks data?

Don’t be scared! Positionly’s got you.

What do I do with historical data?

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1,409TOTAL LINKS

Don’t be scared of having too much backlinks data.

There are great ways you can use it!

See? Don’t be intimidated. We’ve got you.

What do I do with historical data?

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Look for trends and compare it with your goals

Monitor broken links and rebuild them

• Download your backlinks history as a CSV and graph your data

• Compare historical data against recent data, check if new strategies are successful, etc.

• Ensure your goals are met and adjust it accordingly.

• Look for ‘lost’ links; maybe their page was moved and wasn’t redirected properly. Your link could’ve been in a new blog post, but then the post is pushed back a few pages

• Any cases you can rebuild your backlinks - do!

Social media links

Have a separate social media strategy!

Social media can indirectly cause you to earn backlinksBy generating more traffic, it’s more likely you’ll earn natural backlinks.

Social media links

Search engines treat social media links differently, and is changes more rapidly.

Most social media links don’t appear in the SERPsThis is very hard to predict and social media links tend to have shorter lifespans.

Social media links are not your regular links!

This is very valuable real estate in the SERPs.

Social media profiles do appear across all the SERPs

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They have their own unique algorithms- it’s a completely different ball game. Have a separate social media strategy!

Social media channels are search engines, too.

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Start gaining backlinks.Just do it!

Link-earning is a long term SEO strategy. Experiment with white-hat strategies to find which ones work for you.

Just do it!

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Thanks for your attentionjessica@positionly.com@jessicamqy

success@positionly.comEMAIL US AT:

Sources

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Facebook_logo_(square).png

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