2. VP, Marketing at Hive Digital
Jake Bohall
@jakebohall jbohall@hivedigital.com
Jake is passionate about education reform and representing companies
focused on providing opportunities for inspiring entrepreneurship,
discovering life purpose, and improving quality of life.
14. Do Your Homework
Identify target trends/curves for qualitative metrics
Dispersion of authority in backlink profile (e.g. Obvious DA30+ profiles)
Segment SERP by authority groupings to develop "normal" baselines
Compare metrics available by data providers
@jakebohall
18. Broken Link Building
@jakebohall
1. Identify topically related pages with links that are 404’s
2. Best that content… Important step
3. Contact linking sites & drop a mention of your version
21. Accessibility Link Building
@jakebohall
1. Review site and ensure compliant with W3C standards
2. Identify competitor pages that don’t meet W3C accessibility
3. Contact linking sites & drop a mention of your version
25. Plan Your Strategy
Broken Link Dev - Cleaning up web, previous resources.
Accessibility Link Dev - leveraging accessibility standards to poach links
Resource Link Dev - using resource pages to drive content strategy and then
prospect off competitor page links
Be Awesome!
@jakebohall
26. Hive Digital
Hive Digital empowers globally responsible companies, organizations, and
individuals to amplify their message through digital marketing.
Marketing for a Better World
28. @jakebohall
Links from major news/publications…. You are worthy
Links from old content…. You are an improvement
Links from fresh content…. You are present/timely
Links from broken link building… You replace old authorities
Links from resource link building…. You are useful
Link Personality Traits
29. Use Your Brain!
@jakebohall
Are you making a difference… Can you?
Link Development builds the talent and knowledge of your team
Strategies change over time
30. If Content is King,
Links are Queen…
@jakebohall
(and she wears the pants!)
… ☺
31. Hive Digital
Hive Digital empowers globally responsible companies, organizations, and
individuals to amplify their message through digital marketing.
Marketing for a Better World
HiveDigital.com @HiveMarketing 800-650-0820
Notes de l'éditeur
I’ve been with Hive Digital since 2008, and head our SEO team. Thanks so much for coming to our session, I really appreciate it.
How many are agencies? In-house?
Anyone think linkbuliding is dead?
Most companies/agencies get tunnel vision on link strategies. All they see is a metric that says build more links…
Where we are supposed to make the magic happen..
obviously not really magic… its just nebulous enough that unless you know what you are looking at or for,
Magic confused 4 snake oil and CEO orders you to buy links “guru rando” that sent him an email.
hope u decline those solicitations 100%.
You have to plan through your “needs” before ever buying anything for sure.
Would you go all ocean’s 11 or 12 or whatever? Find out the lay of the land, schedules, routines…
You’d do your homework.
Find out what will help you blend with any link strategies you employ, and understand benchmarks in your space.
I’m going to show you a few metrics we look at when doing a link audit.
Is it common to have high branded anchor text / low / etc.
Profile sites on topic/intent, what does a link profile look like
If you see there is a pattern .. 4/5 even in this case… maybe you look for other commonalities (quality of content, user intent differences, etc.)
Can also slice by site section or aggregate data around particular topics.
This example, we just looked at the top ranking page for a target keyword.
Caveat: Dependent upon data provider.. E.g. Moz recently started rolling up link metrics for redirects, etc
As you could imagine, it looks like the site at the end built a bunch of links to the homepage, but ignored the links to their credit pages.
When comparing yourself against competitors, are you predominantly a particular link type.
When there are gaps, there are opportunities… When there are overages, that’s a potential exposure point.
Standard authority distribution for a domain/page/etc..
Note, this only works if there is enough volume.
If no volume, then just be mindful of these distributions if you are going to manipulate… otherwise
Site with an obviously augmented backlink profile. This gives us some hints, which we verified regarding prior “ minimum metrics” required in link building efforts of the past.
Best part, is I had an argument for focusing on natural link strategies without regard for authority
Better and more creative strategies with clients when they aren’t judging on a somewhat BS metric… kudos to Moz for trying
Obviously you want to run across vertical/intents and compare for patterns.
Don’t forget to stop and think, dig deeper… You can’t act on data without understanding why.
Takeaway
Looked at data, so we know homepage is overbranded
Not enough brand to money pages
Need lower authority to fix the curve
What strategies would you use? That type review is used by you guys actively trying to manipulate for rankings and trying to hit a specific baseline.
For the legit people, we need to use it to spot shadiness for disavow and get a sense for areas to avoid to prevent being filtered/flagged.
Easy to take some of that data and say I think I need 200 links with 11-20 DA to “fix things”.
Against googles guidelines if intended to manipulate rankings, nebulous general statement
Regardless, I prefer strategies that have impacts while maintaining minimal risk.
How many of you know of or use this strategy?
It’s great because you are helping clean-up / fix the web.
If doing resource link building… targeting resource pages and asking for inclusion.
Scan resource pages for any links to outbound 404’s.. And then inspect that pages backlink profile for blb opportunities
Hope you are using this tool…
Alternative method is to mine competitor links, assume are a resource, then look for broken links on those pages.
How many of you know of or implement Accessibility Link Building
According to the Orlando Sentinel, (Thank you Rachel Daniel!) Nearly 2,000 suits were filed in 2018 alleging website accessibility issues for the disabled.
As a public business you have a legal obligation to provide accessibility to the disabled.
Winn-Dixie lost a lawsuit 2 years ago over this over their checkout process
Here’s the pitch to the client…
There are ongoing lawsuits against websites for not being ADA accessible.
Google often makes changes that seem to support better/safer/etc. user experience.
You need to make sure your site and content meet accessibility standards.
Look at links to competitor page that aren’t compliant… poach all their links...
Find the right outreach style with any strategy..
Long / Short Form
Slow Play
Like to be direct, especially if it’s a competitor checkout page… (mine affiliate links and more!)
Remember, step 1 was to be accessible.. Don’t do this unless you are actually accessible!!
Works for broken link building as well..
Maybe skip the triple and quadruple tap..
Try to be a good per son…
Don’t forget internal linking. Do those same advanced search queries you use to prospect sites, but use the site: and do it on yourself..
Internal linking opportunities galore
When you help companies like Score fostering free mentorships for business, Human Rights Foundation literally saving peoples lives
Tourism agency focused on sustainability and positive impact in local community
Cosmetic surgeon that takes a month each year to travel to poor countries/areas and help children with cleft pallets, etc.
Also locally helps recovered addicts and felons by removing gang tattoos and scars to improve their self-confidence and help with reintegration.
Think about whether or not you deserve to rank #1… why… make sure that comes through in all aspects of your business.
I like to approach link development thinking about what story my links tell about my business
Ripoffreport – maybe shady
Yelp/Locals - you are a local business
Bloggers – Has money to burn
Highlight the change you can make in the world.. Give back, create… do something! Sets you apart from competitors in a flat world.
You are never too good to link build.
Don’t focus on one thing for too long…
Always remember