WebGrowth » Link Building

Infographic: SEO

Neil Pursey — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 07:50:06 +0000

Here at WebGrowth we give idea sessions to larger teams who are managing content themselves. Every fortnight we give a session to the team at The Publishing Partnership (TPPSA). I was fortunate enough to receive this really cool infographic a few days after the session, kudos to Wendy Ribeiro (designer at TPPSA). It illustrates what we covered in the session; How to increase rankings?, Objectives and Strategy.

What we have noticed with SEO over the past 12 months is that receiving one way incoming links are becoming increasingly difficult. We can get links from social media profiles and links from other blogs but unless we are creating quality content, the social media profiles are useless. Added to that, no blogger will want you to contribute to their blog if you aren’t providing value to their readers. Identifying competitor links and unpacking their link graph is crucial to take advantage of your written content but with no strategy and competition analysis in place, your content will not be fully taken advantage of.

Part 4 – Link building strategy – Project SEO Series

Neil Pursey — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 10:50:25 +0000

We unpack our link building strategy in today’s video. A thorough understanding of Google’s algorithm is needed before you commence with a link building campaign. 2011 is the year of a renewed vigor for generating fresh content but now using social media and community websites to distribute and build authority around your brand. Not many know this but WebGrowth was built by many hours contributing to forums, namely Yahoo! Answers and SEOchat. Back then the links we were getting were nofollows but now they are becoming worth something because of a few changes in Google’s algorithm. 4 years later we still get traffic from Yahoo! Answers. If your strategy is to provide the community with worthy content, you will reap the rewards for years to come because ultimately Google and other search engines will always reward those websites who are adding value.
Use this video’s structure as a platform to develop your own industry specific link building campaign. Please feel free to comment or ask questions that you may have regarding this. Let’s get the discussion going!!

View more about Project SEO:

Previous videos:
Part 3 – WordPress plugins
Part 2 – On-site optimisation
Part 1 – SEO Audit

What Makes a Link Worthy Post

Neil Pursey — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:19:32 +0000

Finding quality SEO research on the internet can be difficult but today I stumbled upon a rare diamond that I recommend you bookmark and refer back to every once in a while. The post was written by Chenry, a contributor at SEOmoz. You can read the original post here but I’ve posted the whole article below for you to read.

What really makes a blog post worth linking to? In my last post, What Makes a Link Worthy Post – Part 1, I took a look at the 3,800 blog posts on SEOmoz and did some analysis on a few different aspects of the posts and their affect on the number of in linking domains (ILDs). Some of the results were very interesting to me and it made me want to push it further.

I created a list of 40 SEO/SEM blogs that I read and feel are important to people in the industry and set those as my sample population. I first crawled each website and collected a list of over 72,330 different blog posts from the 40 different websites. Then over the course of the next few days, I crawled each post and collected the following information in my database:

Blog Post Title
Original URL
# of Links from Root Domains (Via Linkscape API)
# of ILDs (Via Linkscape API)
If The Post Had Images, Lists, Or Videos
Content of Post (No Comments or Other Text on Site)
# of Words in Post

POSTS TITLE EFFECT ON ILDs

Does the length of the post’s title affect how many domains will link to it? The data suggests that posts with a title length between 10 and 18 words are on average more linked to than those with less or more. The data also suggests there may be a “sweet” spot around 14 to 16 words in length. The chart below was created without removing stop words.

This data proves to me that a descriptive title is what the linkerati is looking for. Going overboard on the length of the title can prove to be a bad move also.

EXAMPLES OF HIGHLY LINKED TO POSTS WITH TITLE LENGTH IN THE “SWEET SPOT”

POSTS LENGTH EFFECT ON ILDs

Post length is a long debated thing out there in the blogosphere. Most bloggers will tell you that you should keep your posts around 500 to 900 words, and that might be stretching it. When it comes to SEO/SEM blogs, longer more content filled posts are more linked to than those with limited amount of content.

From the chart below you can see there is a word range that seems to collect more ILDs than other word ranges. Based on the data, the ideal length of your posts should be around 2328 to 2618 words. In my previous post, the ideal length for only SEOmoz’s post was between 1800 and 3000 words.

The chart above shows posts only up to 2812 words, but accounts for over 99.55% of all the posts. Posts that were greater than 2812 words really had a low number of ILDs. For this reason and for the display of the chart, they were removed.

EXAMPLES OF HIGHLY LINKED TO POSTS (BETWEEN 2328 AND 2618 WORDS)

DEPTH OF POSTS EFFECT ON ILDs

Seos know that you want to keep your key content in as few subfolders as possible but does this affect the number of ILDs you receive? The data suggests that the depth of your post doesn’t affect the number ILDs. The graph below shows that just about half of the blogs out there place their content two subfolders deep, such as seomoz.org/blog/POST-TITLE.

MEDIA’S EFFECT ON ILDs

What role does placing list, images, and/or videos in a post play on the number of ILDs? The data shows that putting any one of the media’s in your post will increase the number of ILDs you receive. Putting a list on your plain text post could double the number of ILDs you receive. The results are even more outstanding when all three types of media are used.

Do I really believe that you can take any post, slap a picture in it and you will automatically receive more links? No, but if you have decent content and media to support your post, it will appeal to more users and in turn increase the number of potential links. I find it amazing that just by adding images and lists to your post could increase the number of ILDs by a large percent. Images and lists are one of the easiest things to create and anyone can do it, so why aren’t they? See the chart below for the full specs on adding media to your post.

TOP MEDIA POST EXAMPLES

So I’m sure you are all wondering what some good examples are of the different type of post along with the media. Below are some links to some great posts that contain different types of media and have been successful. Some of these posts should be your guide when creating new content for your site.

ALL 3 MEDIA TYPES

ONLY LISTS & VIDEOS

ONLY LISTS & IMAGES

ONLY IMAGES & VIDEOS

ONLY LISTS

ONLY VIDEOS

ONLY IMAGES

NONE

TOP DOMAINS FOR MEDIA TYPE

The data shows that there were certain domains that tended to use certain types of media in their posts. Below I’ve put together two sites for each category so if you enjoy posts of a certain type you can visit their blog.

ALL 3 MEDIA TYPES

ONLY LISTS & VIDEOS

ONLY LISTS & IMAGES

ONLY IMAGES & VIDEOS

ONLY LISTS

ONLY VIDEOS

ONLY IMAGES

NONE

AUTHORITIES EFFECT ON ILDs

What role does a blog authority play in the number of ILDs? Seems like a simple question and the data seems to show that if your an authority in your niche, you will generate many more ILDs than someone who is not. Look at the chart below and you can see that Matt Cutt’s blog generates almost twice as many as its closest competitor, sugarrae.com!

TOP TOPIC THAT ATTRACT LINKS

Unlike SEOmoz not every blog places their post into nice categories and if they do, those categories will not match across all the sites. So how do we determine what topics are attracting the most links and are good topics to create posts about? We crawl 72,300 posts, determine the ILDs, and then extract the most used words from those posts to create a “super” group of keywords that result in link worthy blog posts.

The first thing I wanted to do was extract all the text and find the words that are most used in all blog posts, I was curious, aren’t you? After pulling out 27,658,728 million words and sorting them, five words came out on top: Search, Google, Yahoo, Site, and SEO. Was I surprised, no but it’s interesting to know and a good starting point.

Taking a look at the top 1% of all 72,330 posts, it was found that the words did change a little bit. Some of the top words used were: Search, Google, Site, Links, SEO, Content, People, and Social. This data seems very similar to what was found in part one of this study, with the SEOmoz data. Posts that are about link building are very popular but now we can conclude that they are attracting links. When we look at a much smaller percentage say only the top 50 posts, you find that you are getting very similar words such as: Google, Search, Blog, Link, Pagerank, and Site.

So what can you really take away from the content of the top 50 blog posts? Stick with the major engines: Google, Yahoo, and maybe even Bing, on a good day. The linkerati likes topics including Link Building, Pagerank, and Social Media. As my disclaimer stated above, these are not the rules but just observations from a small sampling of the blogosphere. If I knew the exact topic that the linkerati loves, I wouldn’t be writing here, I would be out making millions writing all day.

BIGGEST TAKEAWAYS

The data suggests that posts with title between 14 and 16 words attract more ILDs than those with longer or shorter titles.
Contrary to belief, the data suggests that posts with more than 900 words are attracting more links than those with 900 words. Shoot for post between 2328 and 2618 words.
The data suggest the location/depth of your blog post doesn’t seem to have an effect on the number of ILDs you will receive but may affect your SEO work, so be cautious.
If you’re interested in the top post with a certain type of media, check above. Also if you’re interested in the blogs that tailor to a certain type of media, check above.
Authority plays a major role in the number of ILDs that you will receive on your post. Matt Cutt’s blog receives twice as many ILDs as the next closest blog.
Hot topics that attract links include: Google, Search, Blogs, Link Building, Pagerank, SEO, and Social Media.

SUMMARY

In summary, the takeaways above are generalization about a small group of post from the blogosphere and should not be taken as rules but merely as a guide to help you create content that will have the possibility to generate links. Work on the authority in your niche and become that place people come to receive great advise. While you’re waiting for authority to grow, make sure that your posts included visual aids to help readers get the takeaways quickly.

SPECIAL THANKS

Special thanks to the SEOmoz team for the access to the Linkscape API. Without the use of the API this post would have never been possible.

Link Exchange: Is it still worth it?

Neil Pursey — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:02:56 +0000

The SEO industry is abuzz with the term “link exchange”, otherwise known as “reciprocal linking“. For anyone who has delved into SEO, this is a term you have heard before but probably with a negative connotation to it. Most authorative SEO forums will tell you that reciprocal link building is dead but it seems there is still some added value in it.

An article in cnet.com has sparked my interest in link exchanges of late, especially for our clients who have a small amount of links to their website.

Things to be aware of in case you employ an SEO’er or decide to do the link building yourself:

Link spam or bad neighbourhoods; is your website getting links from industry related websites?
Example: if you have a plumbing website, DO NOT go around asking dentists to link to you. Rather approach DIY and building related websites. Always get links from related websites.
Excessive link exchanges; there are clever ways to inter link websites to each other. Having a blatent web page with a long list of links to other websites will not add value to your link exchange and neither to your visitors.
If your website has say 10 incoming links, then using a link exchange strategy would be a good idea but if your website has say 1000 links then rather focus on the current visitors and enhance their user experience by means of forums, blogs and/or design. This will encourage visitors to mention your product in other forums/blogs and increase the “noise”, and in so doing help your website receive those very important ‘organic links’.

According to Danny Sullivan, who writes about search engine optimization for Search Engine Land, says “if you’re a new site, absolutely you want to be doing link building. But you need to be doing that in a smart fashion.”

cnet.com’s article summarises when one should use link exhanges:

Link exchanges only work to get one’s name out there: the real boost needed to turn a Web site into a business comes when real people start discussing and linking to a service on blogs, message forums, and social-networking sites.

From what I can see from the many articles I’ve read about link exchanges is that no one has presented the facts and it’s all hearsay. I’m excited to say that I have been given the opportunity to do a test within a network of reciprocal links. These findings will be able to give me a clear indication as to whether reciprocal linking still adds value to SEO. I shall be presenting these findings in the next two to three months, I’ll keep you posted.

More reading: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/should-i-avoid-reciprocal-links/

Participate

Neil Pursey — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:01:06 +0000

I found a great article in SEO book’s blog. Here is a snippet from the blog which focuses on building relationships in the online community.

Go where your audience are.

It’s not just about getting links that pass PR. It’s about creating meaningful relationships. If your potential audience hangs out on forums, then post to those forums. Become a trusted member and advisor ….. This approach will serve you well for the future. Google will be placing more and more emphasis on engagement metrics in order to determine rank. Why?

The problem Google was created to solve – finding relevant information – is morphing into a problem of locating quality information. There might be a lot of crawlable information on a given topic, so finding it isn’t an issue any more. Finding the information people find most useful is the new challenge.

How people engage with your site is going to become increasingly important. Look to establish meaningful relationships, wherever possible.