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Tag: backlinks

Disavowing a Backlink: When Is It Okay to Say Bye Bye Bye to a Backlink?
If the internet was high school, websites would be the students and Google would be a top of the line, elite institution. Think of Google’s search engine algorithm as their admission’s department because it decides which students (websites) are worthy of being apart of their academy (The Top Search Results).

Keeping with this analogy, one of the ways The Top Search Results’ admissions department decides which students to let in is letters of recommendation, aka backlinks. Letters of recommendation from prominent, trust-worthy people put a nice polish on any application, right? On that same note, letters from sketchy people or from yourself can have a negative effect. No letters at all… Well, you get the point.

Thinking of backlinks as letters of recommendation is an excellent way to simplify a multifaceted part of SEO because that’s how search engines treat them when deciding which websites are most authoritative. Backlinks from reputable, popular sites (e.g. CNN.com, Forbes.com, Rollingstone.com) can do wonders for your domain authority and keyword rankings.

A backlink from a spammy site can have the opposite effect.

Although you can’t control who/what links to your site, you can disavow an unwanted link. Disavowing a link lets Google and other search engines know that even though a site is linking to yours, you have no association with it.

Disclaiming a backlink can do wonders for your SEO because it pulls out associations that could be hurting your rankings, and it makes backlinks from authoritative sites stand out even more. If you let link-building-professional Liam Cook tell it, “Link disavowing is almost as important as link-building for SEO.”

The trick (because there’s always a trick) comes in deciding which backlinks are harmful enough to your domain authority that they need to be disavowed. To help you out, here are a few good reasons to think about disavowing a backlink.

1. The link is coming from a spammy site

If you find that a link to your site has ended up on a spammy site, it is probably best to disavow the link right away. How can you tell that a site is spammy? According to Hamish Fitzhenry, three telltale signs are:
- Having tons of links on one page
- Taking a really long time to load
- Having an abnormal amount of pages and links that 404
Cameron Conaway, one of Klipfolio’s senior marketing managers, says that a red flag for him is if the anchor isn’t in English.

However, if it is too hard to tell just by looking at a site, you can always check its Spam Score. As defined by Moz.com, a Spam Score is the portion of a site with attributes that are typically “penalized or banned by Google.” It is believed that a backlink from a site with a Spam Score that’s higher than 7 can raise the Spam Score of the receiving site.

2. The Link Isn’t Relevant to Your Industry

Let’s return to the analogy we started with.

Imagine that your application to The Top Search Results is impeccable. And then… admissions goes to read your letters of recommendation. You have two superb letters from Barbara, who runs a flower shop in your hometown, and your cousin Joey, who you babysat one summer. But none from academic relationships like past teachers or principals.

The two letters you have may be great, but they won’t be that helpful because they’re completely unrelated. The same thinking can be applied to a site’s backlink profile. If a website for used cars has a backlink from Foodnetwork.com, that could be a red flag that something isn’t right, so it’s worth checking out. Evaluate whether or not the backlink is organic and makes sense. It’s worthy to note, though, that an unrelated backlink probably won’t be from a recognizable website like Foodnetwork.com; it’ll likely be a domain that you’ve never heard of before.

(On a similar note, you should also think about disavowing backlinks from sites that are linking to URLs that you’ve removed from your site.)

3. The Link Isn’t Organic

Google values authenticity. It likes to keep it real (in this case). If a link wasn’t honestly earned, you may want to think about disavowing it.

If a large percentage of your backlink profile is comprised of inorganic links, tread carefully. You’d do well to remember these words by Justin Metros: “The long term gain for positive SEO isn’t the number of backlinks you have but the quality of backlinks. Get rid of anything questionable.”

How Do You Keep a Handle on Your Backlink Profile?

Once you clean up your backlink profile, implementing a plan that will keep it squeaky clean will save you time in the future. You can use one of these backlink monitoring tools.

Majestic Bulk Backlink Checker

Majestic.com’s Bulk Backlink Checker is a subscriber-only service that lets users check 400 to one million URLs (depending on how you upload them). The program offers metrics like “Trust flow,” “Citation Flow,” and the number of NoFollow links on a site.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker “has the second most active web crawler after Google.” This platform offers URL metrics like the total number of backlinks, “Domain Rating” and “URL Rating.” It also offers a Backlinks report, which shows users every single site that links to theirs.

SE Ranking

SE Ranking uses Google Webmaster Tools data to show users their backlinks. You can use it to monitor your backlink profile and disavow links using a file the site will generate for you. This service comes with a small monthly fee, but the tool also allows you to track your site’s keyword rankings, do a website audit, and generate keywords.

Deciding which backlinks to disavow is no easy feat. So, here’s one last piece of advice from Mike Kawula, the CEO of Social Quant who also was named as one of the Top 100 Marketing Influencers in 2017: “My biggest piece of advice on deciding whether to disavow a link pointing to your site is to be sure SEO is your area of expertise. If it isn’t, either hire someone to handle it for you or bring on a contractor who specializes in this area.”

Luckily, Search Influence has a team of SEO experts who can help you develop a comprehensive backlink strategy. To learn more about our SEO services, call (504) 208-3900 or schedule a consultation.

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The Hangover

The real you

Workers
November 19, 2019
What Are Good Backlinks Vs. Bad Backlinks?
Backlinks are one of the many components of behind-the-scenes SEO strategy. A backlink is essentially a link on a site that leads users to a different site. Think of backlinks as a continuous chain that links websites to one another; some chains are firm, strong, and reliable (good backlinks) and others are rusty, neglected, and not doing their job (bad backlinks).

The Role of Backlinks in an SEO Strategy

Before diving into the nitty-gritty of backlinks, let’s differentiate between backlinks and internal links. While both sound similar and have substantial SEO value, they play different roles. An internal link is clickable text (a.k.a. a hyperlink) on your site that leads to another page within your site. We go into more detail about internal links and their juicy SEO power in our past blog post. (See? I just made an internal link!)

A backlink is a hyperlink that lives on another site and links back to yours. WPBeginner points out that backlinks are one of the many tools used by search engines to calculate search result rankings. (And just like that, I gave a backlink to WPBeginner’s site!). Think of backlinks as an approving nod from one site to another. When used correctly, backlinks acknowledge the authority of another site.

Google has used backlinks as a ranking signal for keyword searches for almost two decades. Google didn’t really differentiate between the quality and quantity of backlinks until their Penguin algorithm update rolled out in 2012 to closely monitor backlinks and prevent spammy “black hat” SEO backlink tactics. This update gave the SEO world a clearer picture of what Google considers legitimate backlinks that actually add to sites’ authority. Now, the strongest backlinks come from authentic, well-known sources, such as newsworthy press releases, trusted editorials, news articles, or webinars.

For the sake of consistency, we’re going to focus on Google’s backlink policy and how sites are affected in Google search results in the remainder of this post. Because backlinks can have a significant impact on search rankings, we’re going to explore what separates strong backlinks from rusty ones.

What Is a Good Backlink?

A good backlink is a relevant outbound link to a trusted, authoritative site. Generally, a site is viewed as trustworthy if it has lots of strong backlinks pointing to it. Google views these backlinks as one way to confirm that your site contains helpful, quality content.

Now, let’s break down some key factors of a good backlink.

It Comes From an Authoritative Site

Earlier we mentioned that a backlink should link to an authoritative site, but what exactly does this mean? An authoritative site provides trustworthy, well-sourced content that is updated regularly. It’s considered an expert in its field. For example, readers interested in sustainable building requirements may read multiple online blogs or articles on the topic, but they would likely consult the Environmental Protection Agency’s site, epa.gov, to reaffirm this information and treat it as the most authoritative source on the topic.

Not all quality backlinks have to come from a source as renowned as the EPA, but keep in mind similar characteristics when searching authoritative sites.

The Anchor Text Is Specific

Hyperlinking to a page with clear, specific anchor text is a big win for both the user and search engines. Concise anchor text will give users an idea of where this link will bring them if they choose to click on it, while search engines will use the keywords in said anchor text to figure out the topic of the page it lives on.

Let’s put this advice into action—which anchor text would you feel more comfortable clicking?
1. Click here!
2. Dive even deeper into why anchor text matters in backlink strategies.
I hope you went with number two.

It’s Relevant to On-page Content

Backlinks aren’t just there to take up space and serve as an SEO metric—they should enhance the reader’s experience. Backlinks need to be relevant to the content they’re in and actually provide supplemental information. Think of it from the reader’s perspective—backlinks won’t add any value if they’re bringing readers to completely unrelated sites.

Google aims to provide users with helpful, rich content that answers queries. Unrelated, distracting backlinks just get in the way of that. Google considers relevant backlinks to be much more valuable than a backlink from a random, unrelated site. A dermatology clinic site that links to a used car Q&A forum would probably send a red flag to Google (and also confuse readers browsing the site).

What Is a Bad Backlink?

Don’t let anyone tell you any backlink is a good backlink; it’s simply not true. Since Google focuses mostly on quality over quantity, they track and evaluate backlinks to flag potentially spammy practices.

Here are a few clues that a backlink may be rusty and untrustworthy.

They Come From One Site

The well-known saying “variety is the spice of life,” may not be referring to backlinks, but it’s a mantra we can use here. If a site has a plethora of backlinks, but almost all of them come from one site, this will look spammy to Google. You should actively strategize to build strong backlinks from a range of relevant sites.

It’s Hidden or Paid

Yes, a hidden backlink is basically what it sounds like—it is invisible to a user and Google. Sounds sketchy, right? It is. A backlink that is hidden—whether by manipulating text and background colors or hiding the link in a punctuation mark—is a “black hat” SEO strategy that clearly defies Google’s best practices.

Paid backlinks are a grey area because some methods of paid links are viewed as legitimate. Just because a link has been paid for doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad. Since this a gray area, you should be highly selective with paid methods. If the site’s content is related to your industry, you won’t be penalized for paying for ad space. Paid directory business listings are also fine, as long as they’re reputable.

It’s Sourced in Spammy Forum Comments

This relates back to the importance of backlinks being relevant and actually helpful to readers. Linking back to your site from off-topic discussion forums just for the sake of a backlink will look suspicious. Like most things in SEO, the intent of posting links to forums may have originally been authentic, but this strategy can too easily turn from trustworthy to spammy.

Acquiring Good Backlinks and Ditching the Bad

Congratulations, you’re now armed and ready to differentiate good backlinks from the not-so-good! Because strategic link building is so effective for search rankings, it can be one of the most challenging SEO strategies. But great news—you don’t have to do it alone! Search Influence can help increase your website’s authority by building a strong backlink strategy that’s relevant to your business. Our range of SEO services can also help increase your online presence and ability to reach customers. Let’s start a conversation about how we can help you.

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Lock and chain

Star Trek

Barack Obama

Homer
March 19, 2019
How Small Businesses Can Build Quality Backlinks in 2019 and Beyond

Backlinks have traditionally been one of the most important ranking factors in Google’s mysterious SEO algorithm. So what exactly is a backlink, and why is it important? A backlink is simply a link on someone else’s site that leads to your site. Google values them because your site must be reputable and authoritative if lots of other sites value your content enough to share it. The classic ways to acquire backlinks can still be useful, but the landscape of link building is changing.

What Makes a Good Backlink?

The main thing about link building is that quality and quantity both matter. Google values links from sites with strong domain authority (think national sites that everyone in your niche has heard of) and relevance to your industry. For example, if a small business gets a backlink on The Wall Street Journal, they’re getting a top-notch link. That being said, a handful of great links won’t necessarily outweigh hundreds of decent links. For SEO purposes, a “follow” link is better than a “nofollow” link, as nofollow links are not technically backlinks. However, while they shouldn’t be a large focus of a link-building campaign, nofollow links help with branding and shouldn’t be discounted.

Beware of Spammy Link-building Tactics

Before Google’s Penguin algorithm update, the quantity of backlinks was most important, so businesses invested tons of money in “black hat” link-building tactics that placed backlinks on random sites with software. Though some sketchy SEO companies still employ software to build links, Google is not only aware of this tactic, they will actively punish a business’s rankings if they find that most of their backlinks are bought.

The Penguin update came out in 2012, so the “quality over quantity” issue is well known throughout the SEO world, but many small businesses or recent start-ups aren’t aware of it. If you are paying a company to build backlinks for your site with software or other black hat methods, you are paying to penalize your search engine rankings.

What Are the Tried-and-true Ways to Build Links?

Building quality backlinks isn’t an easy task—that’s why links are still highly valuable in Google’s algorithm. These link-building strategies have been covered ad nauseam, so we won’t go into too much detail here. Most of the ways to get links back to your site start with an outreach campaign to other website owners and businesses.

One of the simplest ways to find a potential backlink is searching for business mentions of your site that are unlinked and asking the site owner to add a link. Another straightforward tactic is to use competitive research, wherein you find who links to your competitors’ sites and target those businesses with your outreach campaign. A similar strategy, which we’ve already delved into, is to search for broken links on relevant sites and either ask them to replace the broken link with one to your own content or point out the error and ask for a different backlink on the page.

How Do I Build Backlinks in 2019 and Beyond?

The digital marketing industry received confirmation that SEO trends are changing when Moz published their survey of 2018’s local ranking factors, which found that interacting with Google My Business is one of the most important factors in Google’s local ranking system. So while this may mean that backlinks hold less value than they have in the past, link building is still crucial to a well-rounded SEO plan, as we explained in our analysis of Moz’s survey. The traditional methods of link building still apply, but, in today’s world, businesses need to remember that…

Content Quality Is King

Link building nowadays relies heavily on getting people to share your content, and the main way to get people to share your content is—wait for it—to have great content that people want to share.

So, then, what qualifies as great content?

One of the biggest factors for Google, and your audience, is that your content meets Google’s E-A-T guidelines. This means that your content demonstrates expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. It should thoroughly cover the topic and answer your audience’s questions, especially because most people find sites through indirect queries. In addition, useful content that draws people in is one of the main principles of inbound marketing. There are some more specific tactics to create fantastic content, but the main goal is that it helps your audience with their pain points.

Once you’ve got high-quality content, how do you get people to share it?

Include images or video. Articles with an image receive up to 94 percent more views than plain text articles, and social media posts that include an image or video get up to 10 times more engagement than content without one. Of course, you need to find a good image to include. You should also focus the content on channels targeted to your audience (so making your content easily shareable on Instagram is going to be different from posting it on YouTube).

It should go without saying that you should share your awesome content on all of your social media channels (and get your friends to do so, too). However, sitting back and hoping it goes viral and is featured on Ellen isn’t exactly practical. You need to build networks with influencers in your niche, reach out to them, and ask them to include a link to your content.

Optimize Your Outreach Strategy

The businesses that you target for your link building campaign should find your content useful—as in, their audience will find it useful. You need to demonstrate to them why it’s worth their while to share your content or link to your site. And, while it’s best to have backlinks on websites with strong domain authority, don’t ignore smaller businesses that are relevant to your industry. Smaller businesses may be more likely to include your link in their content, and any backlink will help build brand awareness, which is a growing part of modern SEO strategies.

Don’t Be Impersonal

No one wants to read spam emails, and if your outreach emails have obviously been carbon-copied and sent to 200 people, it’s likely that the recipients won’t want to take their time to help you. Sending emails to tons of people does take a lot of time, so it’s fine to use the help of a template, such as these from Hubspot. But you should still make sure that the contents of your email are specific to the person you’re sending it to. Better yet…

Find Content on Their Site That Could Use a Link to Your Content

You’re going to be more successful building links if you find a specific article that would benefit from including your link in it, rather than just sending an email saying “Hey, I wrote this. Can you stick it on your site somewhere? Thanks!”

Let’s say you’re a smoothie company, and you’ve written an amazing, super-detailed article about the nutrients in common smoothie ingredients. After scoping out businesses that would benefit from this information, such as a nutritionist’s website or a lifestyle blog, see if they have any pages that relate to your article. Maybe you find a parenting website that has a blog about making sure kids are getting enough vitamins from their food, and you know that your article would provide helpful additional information. The writer will likely be more receptive to including your link because you’ve shown them exactly where it should be on their site.

Reciprocate the Link Love

Website owners love seeing their name and work out there as much as you love seeing yours, so including relevant links to another business’s content on your own site is a great way to open the door. At the very least, they are more likely to share the article and could help create a partnership. You can offer to guest blog and invite them to guest blog on your site. You can even syndicate your content to get the most out of your work while maintaining a good relationship with influencers in your field.

Link-building Tips for Local Businesses

To bolster their local SEO strategy, small businesses need to ensure that they create brand awareness, both on- and offline. You should build relationships with other related businesses. For example, a restaurateur could reach out to a local farmer’s market. Try to go even further and create strategic local partnerships, where you and another business leave reviews on each other’s sites and share each other’s content. You should also network and reach out to influencers in your industry.

Link building can be one of the most challenging aspects of boosting your search rankings, but it doesn’t have to be. At Search Influence, we can help you find the right link-building strategy through both tried-and-true methods and by creating quality content to build brand awareness. If you’re ready to take your link building to the next level, start a conversation with one of our SEO experts today.

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Mind Blown

Internet, So Helpful

No, Thanks

January 10, 2019
A Tale of Two Strategies: PR & SEO
Last month, I sat in on a webinar with a few fellow Influencers about how to integrate PR into SEO strategy. Given that I used to work in PR and am constantly looking for ways to combine the two industries, attending this was a no-brainer.

Integrating SEO & PR Best Practices

Samuel Scott, Senior Director of SEO & Digital Marketing at The Cline Group in Tel Aviv, took us through how to best integrate SEO and PR best practices into a holistic, integrated marketing strategy. After all, traditional public relations is the best way to build brand awareness and earn quality, authoritative backlinks – the SEO dream.

Authoritative Link-Building

“If I had to choose between your average link builder and an expert PR professional, who knew how to approach and interact with media outlets and presented well on camera, I’d go for the public relations person any day of the week.” -Everett Sizemore, seOverflow.

Now obviously if you have to choose between your average anything and an expert, you’re going to choose the expert. What Everett is saying here is that good PR leads to optimal placements, and that placements lead to links.

PR+SEO In Action

A press release we recently wrote for a client was picked up by WGCL-TV and Digital Journal, two sites with extremely high domain authorities (74 and 85, respectively). Without even really trying, we were able to build the client links on two very authoritative sites! In the week and a half following the press release, overall traffic to the client’s site increased by more than 10 percent and referral traffic increased by nearly 60 percent.

Working Together Makes Everything Better

There are a few things that SEO pros can learn from PR experts, and vice versa:
- What PR can learn from SEO:
  - Which traffic from what outlets tend to convert the most and bounce the least?
  - Are PR efforts increasing branded searches?
- What SEO can learn from PR:
  - From what outlets (and types of outlets) is it easiest to get coverage & links?
  - How are reporters and others are responding to the company’s online presence?
Both SEO and PR should utilize data such as placements, traffic, conversions and bounce rate to answer the questions above and further hone their strategies into a single streamlined, holistic, integrated strategy. It’s time to stop thinking about “traditional” and “online” marketing as two separate things – they’re quickly becoming just “marketing.”

If you take one thing from the Mozinar (Moz’s punny-but-cute name for webinar), let it be this: Don’t think about how to get links. Think about how to get coverage and publicity! The links will then come naturally as a result.
December 4, 2014
Five For Friday: Backlinks Back, Alright! The Missing Linkjuice & More

1. Blogs on Blogs
– Moz

Recently, Isla McKetta wrote an entry on The Moz Blog entitled “When Is a Blog the Right Form of Content Marketing?” Blogs have been championed as sure shots for improving online traffic and increasing a company’s influence. McKetta, however, argues that blogs are often overrated, and whether or not a business needs a blog depends on the type of business it is. The article provides concrete examples of when blogs are superfluous and marketing efforts would be better spent on other areas. It’s definitely worth reading.

2. Link Trouble
– Search Engine Land

Julie Joyce wrote a piece on why a website might not be as “linkworthy” as it could be. It’s common knowledge within the SEO realm that having other websites link to yours is vital. There are many steps that can be taken to optimize your site’s linking potential. While some of Joyce’s examples are somewhat obvious, such as including social sharing buttons, there are some important points that could be overlooked. For example, if your site has “atrocious writing,” it’s very unlikely that anyone will link to it.

3. Backlinks Matter
– Search Engine Watch

Adam Stetzer posted an article concerning why backlinks matter for small businesses. Stetzer argues that while small companies can’t afford to overlook backlinks when trying to rank higher on Google, they can’t take an easy way out either. According to Stetzer, low-cost deals offering “500 backlinks for $79” are actually dangerous for businesses because Penguin will view those links as spam and therefore suppress the business’ ranking. The article also discusses the relatively new concern of “Negative SEO” and how to avoid it.

4. How to Verify Apple Maps Listings Faster
– Mike Blumenthal

It has happened to just about everyone working in Internet marketing – while trying to verify a listing on Google or Apple Maps you’re forced to spend extraneous amounts of time retrieving a verification code over the phone and enter it in online. It seems as if these directories are trying their hardest to prevent you from taking control of the listing. Arbitrary factors, such as using a specific phone number too many times, can delay this process from anywhere between 5 minutes to an hour. Luckily, Justin Moseback of blumenthals.com has a trick to curb your time (and anger) spent on getting this task done.

5. Stuff: Where Should You Put it?
– Matt Cutts

When working within SEO, copious amounts of data are used every day. Therefore, it’s important to know where and how to store it most effectively. Matt Cutts has posted an in-depth article that explores the pros and cons of various data ecosystems. Ultimately, it seems, the best option is the one that molds the best to your business’ needs. However, there are some very convincing arguments for a few of them!

Image Sources:
Thanks to Dricker94 for the #5 pool ball image, and to Ministerio TIC Colombia for the typing image.

November 14, 2014
Is Your Website Healthy? Increase Its Organic Intake & Watch It Grow!
Whether you’ve noticed it or not, all website owners are in the parenthood business. Our websites are our babies; despite how frustrating they can seem, how stressed they make us, and how much of our money and time they require, we love them anyway. And, of course, we want them to live long, healthy lives. So, whether your business is currently raising a newborn, keeping track of an 8-year-old, or guiding a young adult, your baby deserves undivided attention, precious care, and the healthiest food available.

Why Choose Organic?

Just as any living and working body, your site deserves a high intake of organic food, and in this case, every visitor is a small portion of a meal. Organic traffic is traffic that comes to a website through unpaid links from search engines, directories, and more. Because organic traffic is considered natural, it’s not a quick process but rather builds over time. Its success is directly related to the content on the site and the number of backlinks it receives from trustworthy sites. Since you’re the parent of this functioning being of the virtual world, you’re responsible for its wellbeing.

The Recipe To Increasing Organic Traffic

The organic method is not only a high-quality and reliable tactic, but it’s also free and increasable. Plus, high numbers in organic traffic will naturally inflate your search engine rankings. How do you do this? Here are a few, efficient ways to increase your site’s organic traffic:
- Build a site with relevant, unique content that’s up to date and free of grammatical errors.
- Add keywords as naturally as possible into your compelling content. (Don’t overuse them.)
- Do NOT post duplicate content on your pages.
- Start an engaging blog.
- Only have dependable, authoritative backlinks to your site. (Strive to have content that others want to link to. Don’t use link schemes.)
- Optimize your photos.
- Remember to add page descriptions.
The Final Health Check

The question at hand is simple: Is your website healthy? Or, is it stuffed with too many keywords? Is it living on manipulative, artificial backlinks? Is its body suffering from the lack of unique content nutrients? Deceptive preservatives will decrease your traffic and discredit your right to rank high on Google, Bing, and other search engines. Fill your site’s body with authentic, creative content with striking, optimized photos and strong backlinks. Then, you can sit back and watch its organic traffic grow.

Your website has a heart. Treat it like it does, and give it your best.
July 2, 2014
5 For Friday – Backlinks, Knowledge Graph, And Privacy!

1. Matt Cutts: Google Won’t Devalue Links Anytime Soon

-Search Engine Watch

Well, you’d certainly hope this is the case with the way Google is initiating hundreds of thousands of manual actions every month…But in Matt Cutt’s recent video, he explains the value of those quality links while Google continues to better understand and define what determines quality content. As it stands, Cutts sees the value of quality links to be a relevant ranking factor for the time being. So fear not, if you are working to improve the quality of your content along with improving and diversifying that backlink profile with authoritative links, you’re certainly protecting yourself from future menacing Penguin updates.

2. Google’s Knowledge Graph Expands into Google Maps

-Search Engine Land

Google’s knowledge graph is expanding from organic search results into their map results. Much like the results from regular search queries on google.com, the knowledge graph will now pull information cards with quick facts about certain places searched in Google maps results. But hey, don’t just take Search Engine Land’s and my word for it, run a maps.google.com search for New Orleans’ own St. Louis Cathedral and check it out for yourself!

3. European Court Requires Google to Delete Personal Info

-Search Engine Roundtable

Hey SEOs! Reputation management just got easier! If you live in Europe that is. In a recent ruling, a bill so cleverly titled “the right to be forgotten” requires that search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing must remove links from search results for a person’s name if that person requests to have that result removed.

4. How to Dramatically Improve Your Google Authorship

-KISS Metrics

This article provides some great tips for improving your Google authorship. As with any authorship improvement tip article, though, do keep in mind that excessive guest blogging is a definite no no. Keep the list of sites you contribute to condensed and featuring only those important and authoritative sites you write for. Guest blogging, if done incorrectly, can be seen as a spammy link-building tactic. A definite highlight of the tips provided in this article was “feature your most flattering picture…you don’t have to be good looking. You just have to…’put your best face forward.’” So no worries—you don’t have to be Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, or Jon Hamm. You just want to ensure your thumbnail image is clear.

5. 5 New and Improved Twitter Features Marketers Should Use

-Search Engine Watch

This article is a fantastic overview of those new Twitter features and how they translate into tactics marketers can utilize. A particularly interesting, stand out feature is that Twitter now allows for engaging tweets to appear larger than others. Now “all” you have to do is make sure your tweets are always relevant, engaging, and interesting to your audience.

May 16, 2014
5 Things You Need To Know Before Performing A Backlink Analysis

Getting lost in the jargon of backlinking research tools is common whether you are new to SEO or have been practicing link building for a long time. However, the number of other sites that link to yours (inbound links) has consistently been a critical factor for search engine rankings. So, naturally there are many tools that allow you to easily perform a backlink analysis on your site—or even a competitor’s site—to find new opportunities.

Popular sites that allow you to do this are OpenSite Explorer.org, LinkResearchTools.com, Ahrefs.com, and MajesticSEO.com, to name a few. There are also search engine sites that allow you to pull backlink reports like Blekko.com and Bing Webmaster Tools (only lets you check sites you own, though). No matter which service you choose to use, you will be faced with a lot of technical jargon that you will have to understand prior to performing your analysis.

So, here are the 5 terms that I feel are most needed to understand in order to perform this type of analysis:

1. Backlink

It seems like the most obvious one, but in order to understand the more complex vocabulary of SEO research you must first truly understand the basics. A backlink is any link from one website to another. Backlinks are also know as “incoming links,” “inlinks,” and “inbound links.” Sometimes the word “citation” is incorrectly used as a synonym, but a citation refers to any mention of a business on the web. This can occur with or without a link and can be the name, phone number, and/or address of the business.

2. Page Authority

This is a metric used by the increasingly popular Moz. Page authority describes the probability of a particular page being found on a search engine. According to Moz.com, “The best way to influence this metric is to improve your overall SEO.” It is not an easy metric to influence directly because it takes into account a varied array of factors.

3. Domain Authority

Also used by Moz, domain authority is a similar metric to page authority, but it measures the probable ranking strength of an entire subdomain or domain instead of a single page. Like page authority, it is hard to directly effect, so it’s best to use both page and domain authority as comparative metrics when doing backlink research.

4. Citation Flow

This is a metric that both MajesticSEO’s site explorer and WhiteSpark.ca’s local citation finder provide. Citation flow is a number that attempts to anticipate a site’s influence based on its link portfolio or number of inbound links. The numbers from this metric range from 0 to 100.

5. Trust Flow

Trust flow is a little bit for tricky to define, but it basically quantifies the quality or “trust” of the links pointing back to a site. For both citation flow and trust flow, the higher the number the better. It seems that a site must have a large quantity of high quality inlinks from pages with good authority to increase these metrics. Google, for example, has a 99 for both citation and trust flow.

Conclusion

As with all SEO efforts, the practices used in backlink analyses are most effective when performed alongside other internet marketing work with the big picture of SEO in mind. Hopefully this has been a good refresher for the more experienced SEO gurus and a foundation builder for some of you newcomers out there.

November 27, 2013
Is Google Ignoring Your Backlinks? Webmaster Tools Can (Maybe) Help (Sometimes)

Congratulations Dat Dog, you almost rank in the Top 3 for your own name!

Anyone who is aware of the most basic and fundamental tenets of SEO knows as long as you’re not screwing up your site too bad (using only flash, no content on home page, etc.), backlinks will be the most important factor determining how well your site performs organically. If you don’t believe me check out how much better Dat Dog performs after I gave them a link in my last Search Influence blog (it actually shot up 10 spots in a few days in spite of being new and having hardly any words on their home page). The problem is, Google may or may not be using all of your backlinks, so not all of them will have value to you.

Before any search engine can see your backlinks, it needs to index the page containing them. Consider that search engines are constantly scanning the web for new pages to include in their index, which will be available for searching. To be considered for any search you need to be in that engine’s index. So how do you know if you’re indexed? The easiest way is to search for the actual URL in any search engine, like you see below. In this case, this Scottsdale plastic surgeon‘s Thank You page is not in Google’s index (which is fine because it has no value being there).

When your page is not indexed, you get no results.

So back to your backlinks. You know they are out there, you know where they are, and you know whether they have been indexed or not, but do you really ever know whether Google, or any other search engine, is reading or ignoring the links pointed towards your site? Some people think as long as the page that your link came from is indexed, Google is reading all of the backlinks and boosting your page rank, but it’s not always the case. Let’s say your backlink was added to a page that a search engine has previously indexed: it’s possible that the Google Spider has not come back to visit the page, and doesn’t see your link yet. Beyond this, we just don’t always know what search engines are really doing, it’s highly possible that some may deem a given page worthy of indexing and only feel like visiting some of its links.

Here is the sure-fire way of knowing whether Google has even read a given link to your site: Webmaster Tools. If you haven’t registered for one of these accounts do it ASAP. Here you can submit your sitemap, get warnings about problems you’re having, and much more, including getting a list of your backlinks.

After you sign up and submit your site, your links won’t appear instantly, but will slowly accumulate. In the Dashboard, under Links to your site, click More. Then, under Who links most go to More and you can download a spreadsheet of all the links that Google is willing to admit to knowing about!

OMG look this site has a link from facebook.

This is far from fool-proof. As I read on Search Engine Roundtable, there have been some reporting issues with these links. The least you can do is pull your links from the dashboard and visit the sites that you’ve never heard of before and make sure you really have a link on that site. Many times content gets scraped by spam sites, which is not necessarily bad for you, depending on the reputation of the site and the content that it scraped. Another problem is this: just because the link is not mentioned in this report, doesn’t mean Google doesn’t care about it and has not viewed it, it’s just impossible to know, because the SEO dominatrix won’t tell us. The internet is gigantic and growing every day. Search engines do amazing things, but they can’t be perfect, especially with their free software. Just because you can’t find a link in this report doesn’t mean it is not there; you should be worried, however, if you know you have several different pages that link to you from a given domain, and none of them show up here after months. You might want to stop building links there.

April 26, 2011