link practices: keeping you out of jail by megan geiss
TRANSCRIPT
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Megan Geiss, Director, Marketing Strategy, Merkle | RKG
LINK PRACTICES: KEEPING YOU OUT
OF “JAIL”
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Megan Geiss
Director, Marketing Strategy
Merkle | RKG
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Major financial company 4 domains (2 with manual action penalties)
270,000 Backlinks
4100 referring domains
Reconsideration granted on first try
HOW DID WE DO THAT?
CLIENT EXAMPLE
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Assessing Your Risk
Penalty Rescue
TODAY’S DISCUSSION
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Are you at risk?Backlink Profile Audit
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Penguin or Manual Action Penguin = Algorithmic Penalty
Manual action = Notification
What to look for Assessing the overall health of a backlink profile
Patterns, trends, red flags, anomalies
Potentially threatening egregious backlinks
Do you need a penalty rescue?
BACKGROUND
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
There are clear signals that will help in determinations Quality metrics
Referring Domains
C-blocks
Anchor Text
Geo-Location
Sitewide Links
Advertorials
Relevancy
RISK ASSESMENT
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Link Velocity Newly discovered backlinks
Referring Domains Link network detection
ID client owned domains
C-block analysis
Anchor Text Low ratio of referring domains to backlinks
High % of sitewide links
High %'s for money terms/phrases
Exact match anchor text % relative to entire backlink profile
Followed images ("advertorials" passing PR)
Links to home page vs. deep pages
TIME TO BE A DETECTIVE
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Majestic SEO Comprehensive inventory of inbound links
Ahrefs Deep dive into anchor text analysis
Moz Open Site Explorer Analyzing authority and trust of backlinks
Google Webmaster Tools Sample data from Google’s index
TOOLS
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
ANALYSIS
Majestic SEO can help determine UNNATURAL spikes in inbound links
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AND MORE ANALYSIS…
Pivot table anchor text data to determine ratio of referring domains to links
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
…AND MORE ANALYSIS
Use Majestic SEO to pinpoint geo-location red flags
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
AND MORE ANALYSIS….
Highlight low Citation and Trust flow via Majestic SEO
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
EVEN MORE ANALYSIS….
Use MOZ’s Open Site Explorer to look at page level link data
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Penalty RescueHas Your Site Been Hit?
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
A significant drop in traffic and that is not due to other site architectural or
crawling issues
HOW WILL YOU KNOW?
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Gather all backlinks
Rank by quality
Analysis
Outreach for removal requests
Follow up
Disavow tool
Reconsideration request
PROCESS, PROCESS, PROCESS
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#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Create a comprehensive inventory of all inbound links.
There are 2 primary sources: Majestic SEO (fresh index)
GWT for representative sample of Google’s Index
GATHER ALL THE BACKLINKS1
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Consolidate and de-dupe Majestic and GWT Remove nofollows
Filter by Citation Flow (we use 30 or below)
Look for IP patterns or trends within C-blocks
RANK BY QUALITY2
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Analyze and evaluate the filtered master list.
Determine if a backlink or domain is outside of Google’s quality guidelines or falls within an identified link scheme.
Manually review domains
ANALYSIS3
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Gather contact information for the identified removal targets Can be done during manual analysis
Minimum 2 outreach attempts Be kind…. This is human interaction
Document as much of the communications as possible to later include in the reconsideration request.
OUTREACH FOR REMOVAL4
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Typical removal request responses: Webmaster removes link
Webmaster requests payment to remove link
Webmaster removes link and doesn't tell you
No response
FOLLOW UP5
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Completed due diligence to remove low-quality links
Create file in .txt (must be encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII) – one URL per line
Disavow entire domains with this notation: “domain:example.com”
Include additional information with the "#" character All lines beginning with # will be ignored
Avoid common mistakes:
Disavowing “just enough” to get by
Disavowing everything
Upload a new list overwrites the old
DISAVOW TOOL6
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Tell the story…
Google is looking for the following: Admit the mistake
Website has stopped the violations
Has cleaned up egregious links as much as possible
A good faith assurance
RECONSIDERATION REQUEST7
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
HAPPY ENDINGS
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Rebuilding a healthy backlink profile can lead to more than just links 39% rate of influencer engagement
2,383 social mentions during (Likes, Shares, Tweets, etc.)
Site Visits from Campaign: Incremental 17k
44 Unique Article Posts
2,034 organically earned backlinks
WHAT’S NEXT?
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
THANK YOU!
Megan Geiss
Director, Marketing Strategy
Merkle | RKG