intermediate How to BUILD LINKS POST- PENGUIN By KELVIN NEWMAN, SITEVISIBILITY SEO FROM THE EXPERTS series A publication of
2 IS THIS ebook RIGHT FOR ME? Not quite sure if this ebook is right for you? See the below description to determine if your level matches the content you are about to read. INTRODUCTORY Introductory content is for marketers who are new to the subject. This content typically includes step-by-step instructions on how to get started with this aspect of inbound marketing and learn its fundamentals. After reading it, you will be able to execute basic marketing tactics related to the topic. INTERMEDIATE THIS RESOURCE Intermediate content is for marketers who are familiar with the subject but have only basic experience in executing strategies and tactics on the topic. This content typically covers the fundamentals and moves on to reveal more complex functions and examples. After reading it, you will feel comfortable leading projects with this aspect of inbound marketing. ADVANCED Advanced content is for marketers who are, or want to be, experts on the subject. In it, we walk you through advanced features of this aspect of inbound marketing and help you develop complete mastery of the subject. After reading it, you will feel ready not only to execute strategies and tactics, but also to teach others how to be successful.
3 HubSpot s All-in-One Marketing Software.... brings your whole marketing world together in one, powerful, integrated system. Request A Demo Video Overview Y Marketing analytics Analyze your web traffic and see which sources are generating the most leads. s Improve search optimization your rank in search engines by finding and tracking your most effective keywords. N Blogging Create blog content quickly while getting SEO tips and best practice pointers as you type. U Lead management Track leads with a complete timeline-view of their interactions with your company M email Send personalized, segmented emails based on any information in your contact database. q social media Publish content to your social accounts, then nurture leads based on their social engagement.
4 SEO from the experts: how to build links post penguin Kelvin Newman is the Director of Strategy at SiteVisibility. He is responsible for R&D and maintaining the SiteVisibility web presence, including the No.1 ranking Podcast and Blog. Kelvin also worked for Emap consumer media working across high profile magazine titles and websites including Zoo, Arena and Empire. Expert Advice By Kelvin Newman Follow me on twitter @KELVINNEWMAN Desmond is currently a creative designer and inbound marketer at HubSpot. He has worked with a variety of start ups, medium, and large sized companies over the years with a focus in branding and business development. Follow me on twitter @Detectiveddubs Designed By Desmond Wong
5 Introduction There s no question that the Google Penguin update, which was created to combat manipulative link building practices, is one of the biggest shifts in Google s search algorithm history. Despite this huge change, there has been a tendency within the search industry to overstate its impact. Most of the people who believe they ve been negatively impacted or penalised by Penguin haven t actually been impacted -- they ve just been overtaken by more effective competitors. The make-up of a good link building campaign has changed, but in most cases the tactics that have been taken off the table haven t really delivered value for years. The people carrying out the tactics couldn t wean themselves off those approaches. Yes, they kept them busy, but they weren t delivering results. Despite all this, in order to build links that work in a post-penguin world and deliver value in the future, you need to evolve. If you want to get traffic from search engines, the only thing you can be certain of is change.
6 Part One: Your Links in Context Every single time someone makes a search on Google, a competition takes place. You compete against your rivals to rank and potentially get traffic and business. The important thing to remember is that this competition is with your competitors; not with Google. They re the referee, not the opponent. Everything you do is in the context of your competitors, and this has been emphasised more in recent Google updates. Your links are evaluated in the context of your competitors. So, you need to understand that landscape. You have to know how you compare. Think of your links as an investment portfolio. Putting all your investment in Oil wouldn t be a sensible investment strategy, nor would relying on one type of link. Google s search algorithm will rank links to your webpage based on how they compare in the context of your competitors.
7 Part Two: What s an Un-Natural Link? Penguin exists with one simple purpose, to ask the question: is this an un-natural link? It s an algorithm, a piece of software based on rules and patterns. We could try and replicate those rules and patterns, but the algorithm is created to understand human behavior, and nobody is better at that than another human being! It s difficult to make hard and fast rules about which links could harm you/have no impact, but some important things to think about are Will the link potentially send traffic? Will the traffic convert? How similar is your link portfolio to the market? Does the link look like it exists for SEO reasons? Can you be proud of that link? That last point is really important and gets to the core of what link building post-penguin is about, every link you build you need to be proud of. No more links hidden away in ten tabs deep in an excel spreadsheet or part of an aggregate number of new links. You
8 want proper links you can send to your boss or client and say Look at this link we built. These are the kind of links that even people with noappreciation of SEO can see will have value. A well built link is almost self explanitory in the way it uses proper keywords and how it is laid out. See how the keywords and structure of the links above correspond with the keywords in the meta description. How is the trust of your links distributed? How does that differ from your competitors? Spreadsheets like the one below from Tom Anthony do a great job of visualising how your links differ from your competitors. Whose links have outliers? Why do they tend to attract links of certain levels of trust? What sticks out like a sore thumb?
9 Each competitor is represented by different color on the line graph. Notice how they each perform a bit uniquely from one another.
10 Part Three: The How Part of Link Building While understanding that you need to be proud of the links you re building helps you avoid the links that won t help, it doesn t help you attract inbound links. That requires insight and understanding, in addition to appreciating a problem that others actually want to link to. Think about who you want linking back to your content, and create content that directly helps accomplish that goal. Those problems may be straightforward ones such as My website needs more traffic. I want to produce content that resonates with my audience..what perm is best suited for my hair. Where can I buy girl scout cookies. I want to know more about marketing. You can help these visitors solve these problems, usually with content, and the link will follow. Creating helpful and relevant content for users will enable you to build effective links.
11 Sometimes the problem you re solving can be more complex. Here s an example: Imagine there s someone at a university careers service who has a glut of talented graduates interested in engineering but struggling to find a job. There are a few different ways you could help them solve that problem. Perhaps you could write an ebook to help them improve their cover letter, or arrange a face-to-face mentoring session to guide them into their new career. Perhaps they need a seminar that reviews the extra work they can do to make themselves more employable. All these different types content ideas could help lead to links and long-term value. Here s another example: What if the audience for your website is first time homebuyers struggling to navigate the jargon, plethora of services, and financial implications of purchasing their new house? Could you work on an interactive tool that takes them through a decision tree to navigate some of the difficult decisions they have to make? You could produce a checklist of all things they need to get sorted before they move especially if you put them in sequence and help them input the details into their iphone diary. You may want to help them escape all the paperwork and help them dream about how they re going to turn their house into a home.
12 Here s one last example: Maybe your target audience for linking back to you is a small business owner who knows they should be doing more to market their business but doesn t know where to start. Can you produce a super-in-depth questionnaire that really helps them understand which social network they should be targeting? Consider a series of podcasts that they can listen to while driving to their next meeting that helps them make more intelligent buying decisions, or a blog post full of ideas that they can use as inspiration next time they brief their agency. Every situation will be different. But if you understand who you re trying to attract a link from, what type of topics they re interested in, and their different pain points, you can use that information to create content people are really engaged with. This helps to attract links, social signals, and everything the search engines love. Create content that you know your audience will be interested in and searching for.
13 Part Four: Killer Content Types for Link Building Now let s review different content types for link building. Surveys, Insights, & Data Survey results are news-worthy so long as the results are significant. Something that s news worthy will naturally be link worthy. Starting a survey is simple; it s getting that survey promoted to the right people and enough people that s difficult. If you already have a mailing list and a potential gift to give away for those who fill out that survey, you ll be able to attract a good number of people in no time at all. If not, it s still possible to conduct research. Avoid the temptation for Eight out of Ten Cats statistics and try and conduct respectable research. When you conduct relevant and respectable research on topics that are interesting to your audience, your content will be naturally link worthy.
14 Whitepapers & Ebooks A thought leadership whitepaper can be a perfect example of this linkbuilding tactic in the B2B market place. With a little bit of imagination, the whitepaper can also work in B2C applications, though it s likely the content will go by a different name. At SiteVisibility, we ve done well with consumer facing whitepapers, though we ve called them Downloadable Guides or Print and Keep Guides. Audiences love resources like whitepapers, ebooks, and downloadable guides. Creating this type of content is a helpful link-building tactic that will attract visitors, establish though leadership in your industry, and develop your link authority on those topics.
15 Podcasts & Video Content Podcasting and audio isn t particularly fashionable at the moment, but it still works. We get around seventeen thousand listeners per show of the Internet Marketing Podcast. That volume dwarves the readership of many blogs. On the other hand, video is very popular and can also attract great links. If there is anything we ve learned from the internet, it s that videos have the potential to become extremely viral content. Adding podcasts and video to your content library will allow you attract more effective and shareable links.
16 Blog & News Content If you can be the first to cover some breaking news (also referred to as newsjacking), everyone who subsequently covers the topic will refer to the originator. If you want to regularly attract high quality links, you need to do your best to be the originator as often as you possibly can. If writing swiftly isn t your style, spend time writing articles that are more research or thought based, but are unique and the best of its kind. Utlising a blog as a content creating machine and news source is one of the most effective ways to build high quality links that rank well and develop link authority.
17 FAQs & Resource Centre s Everyone was a beginner at one point or another. In every sector, there s someone starting out who wants to pick up the basics as quickly and painlessly as possible. There are always people on the internet looking for quick and simple solutions to their problems. Providing visitors with a simple webpage with answers and helpful tips to common questions and issues can put you at the top of their search listings.
18 Guest Blogging Guest blogging is a very common tactic being used to build links. This is where you provide an article or blog post in exchange for a link. It s recently come under a lot of scrutiny as a viable link building option, and Matt Cutt s did a video with his own advice on how best to implement it. Here are three quick tips to keep in mind when it comes to guest blogging: Quality of the site providing the link is key. Anchor text should not be your primary concern. Consider to what extent Authorship may help provide a quality stamp. Guest blogging can be a beneficial link building tactic for both parties involved. The authors can beneifit from having links on authoritative sites with large volumes of traffic, and the website can benefit from having high quality content to share with its audience.
19 Infographics & Interactive Content Infographics and Data Journalism have become some of the most wide-spread types of content generated for link building. This has led to backlash, but in the same way there are good blogs and bad blogs, there are good infographics and bad ones. Recently we ve seen more success with interactive infographics that are built around sharing data or information. Visual and interactive content is both highly shareable and lovable. Use this form of content to help improve your link building efforts.
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