This presentation is from Affiliate Summit East 2014 (August 10-12, 2014 New York City).
Session Description: Overview of cutting edge link building tactics. How to leverage current events & trending topics, reverse content marketing, publisher relationship building and a discussion of pitfalls to avoid.
3. The Link Audit
Reasons
• Preemptive … before you get a penalty
• Penguin … devaluing of links
• Penalty – Unnatural Link Notification
• Algorithm Update
7. Link Audit: Data Collection
Utilize various sources of data
• Google Webmaster Tools
• LRT (Link Research Tools)
• Ahrefs.com
• Majestic SEO
• Internal Link Acquisition Reports
8. The Link Audit: Data Analysis
Datapoints to look for
• Unique Linking Domain Count
• Links from penalized domains (PR0 – not in index)
• Links with Exact Match Anchor Text
• Sitewide Links (Footer – Sidebar)
• Links from non-relevant content
• Links from Article Directories &
• Links from Traditional Directories
• Links from same IP or C-Block
• Hidden Links within HTML
• Comment Spam (Follow & NoFollow)
• MozRank, Alexa, Domain Authority
10. The Link Audit: Visual Review
• Relevancy – is this site relevant to your site?
• Natural – does the link look natural?
• Location – where is the link located?
24. The Link Audit: Data Action Projects
• Link Removal Requests
– Manual vs. Automated Tools (Used automated tools to
create links? Got a penalty? Please learn from this
mistake and do not use an automated tool)
• NoFollow
– Link sending you traffic or part of brand strategy?
Affiliate Links to your site
• Disavow
– If a link cannot be removed via requests. Do not pay
to have a link removed
• Affiliate Links
30. The Link Audit: Data Action Projects
Affiliate Links
• Do NOT try to gain link equity from Paid Links
– If it is an Affiliate Link then it’s PAID
• NoFollow
• Custom Landing Pages
– Create Custom 404 error page for Affiliates to link
to and use so the link equity will not pass
31. What’s Next?
Once you have cleaned the link profile, then
submit your documentation to Google.
If under manual penalty for links, wait for
response, if it is rejected repeat process
Once clear … start on Link Acquisition
32. Link Acquisition
• Organic Outreach of content – unique
– Interviews / Thought Leadership
– In-depth Articles
• Content Marketing
– Infographics (image & interactive)
– Videos