A look at how links impact on SEO has changed, and why link assessment should now be a part of every SEO's monthly task list. Contains some useful things to look out for as well as tips on how to use excel to find them.

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HowTo ImproveAtLinkAssessment

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With algorithm updates coming faster and faster it is
important to be able to quickly analyse a client’s link portfolio
and understand whether or not they are at risk, which links
work for them and where opportunities are for building new
links in future. This session aims to show you how to collect
and analyse link data to produce a regular link audit.

3. 100sOfUpdatesPerYear
Less than one
months
updates!

4. Penguinupdate

5. ThoughtLinksCouldOnlyAddValue
Nowwe’reveryawaretheycanbedamaging

7. Apr May Jun Jul Jul Aug
BrightEdge page-level optimisation
On-Site initiatives
On-Site initiatives implementation
Re-use & small scale content marketing
Quarterly content calendar creation
Content initiatives proposed
Content initiatives created & distributed
Backlink Analysis
Report scoping and dashboard setup
Report delivery
Keyword research
Technical SEO audit
Technical implementation
Local SEO audit
Local SEO implementation
Social Audit
Twitter Trend Optimisation
Creation of SEO / social playbook
RatherThanDoingOneBacklinkProfileAudit

8. Apr May Jun Jul Jul Aug
BrightEdge page-level optimisation
On-Site initiatives
On-Site initiatives implementation
Re-use & small scale content marketing
Quarterly content calendar creation
Content initiatives proposed
Content initiatives created & distributed
Monthly Backlink Analysis
Report scoping and dashboard setup
Report delivery
Keyword research
Technical SEO audit
Technical implementation
Local SEO audit
Local SEO implementation
Social Audit
Twitter Trend Optimisation
Creation of SEO / social playbook
WeNeedToDoItEveryMonth

9. Getting Started

10. SelectionofTools

11. Positives
 Free
 The links Google have identified
Negatives
 Limited to top 1000 – less all encompassing.
WebmasterTools

12. Positives
 Massive index that is kept very up-to-date
 Lots of custom metrics
Negatives
 Paid
MajesticSEO

13. Positives
 Utilises a number of different sources
 Custom reports that can do some of the analysis for you
Negatives
 Paid
LinkResearchTools

14. Others

15.  Blogroll/sidebar links – Lots of links from single domain
 Poor quality links – Links that are built only to pass equity
 Overuse of non-brand anchor text
 Velocity of links built
Anything unnatural.
WeWantToIdentifyTheFollowing

16. Things to look at to get a rough idea
Useful Metrics

17.  BBC has 216 links per domain
 Volkswagen has 46 links per domain
 Toyota has 76 links per domain

19. Citation Flow & Trust Flow
Citation Flow is similar to PageRank
Trust Flow is more like Hilltop (based around
expert documents)
 Higher the numbers the better
 Relationship between the two is
interesting
Very low quality websites will have
three/four times higher citation flow than
trust flow

20. Velocity of links
 Has the number of backlinks spiked and
the number of referring domains stayed
static?
 Are we gaining additional links
incrementally more than we were doing
previously?

21. Anchor text
 Do we have lots of exact match
anchor text?
 How has this changed over
time?

22. Analysing Individual Links
Digging Deeper

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#1
Poor Trust Flow to Citation Flow

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#2
Over-targeted Anchor-text

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 Why do we have
more “hw moon
toyota” links
than toyota
links?

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#3
Finding Sitewide Links

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#4
Low Quality Backlinks

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46. Rinse and repeat
Integrating Into Monthly
Reporting

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50. 1. Export backlink data each month
2. Create copy of previous months dashboard
3. Paste in new months data
4. Update pivot tables
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KeepingDashboardsUp-to-date

51.  LinkResearchTools allows you to run similar reports to those explained
earlier, meaning you don’t have to worry about manually updating data.
 These reports can be scheduled to be automatically run and sent to
clients if required.
51
Alternatively–UseLinkResearchTools

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TwoTime-savingReports

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CompetitiveLandscapeAnalyser
Similar metrics and
charts to those we
created in excel

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LinkDetox

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LinkDetox

57. Some nice little quick wins
Added Extras

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SEOToolsforExcel

59. Additional–Linkingto404s
Pages in
MajesticSEO
shows top 100
linked to URLs

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Surely none of
our top 100
pages are
wasting link
equity?

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3 of our top 100 URLs produce a 404
This accounts for thousands of backlinks
Toyota.co.uk have 199K indexed URLs

65. Thank you!
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