Chapter 5 Off-Site SEO

Chapter 5: Off-Site SEO 5.1 - Links - Any time a user clicks from one page to a different page online, he has clicked on a link. Links can be text-based or image-based. - Links are created using hypertext markup language (HTML), the basic programming language that powers webpages on the internet. - Today, most website-building programs have interfaces that allow one to easily select text and turn it into a link without the need to type out the specific HTML code. - Some of the links on the article are outlined in green. - These links are natural, or organic, outbound links in that they are relevant and fit naturally into the article. - They are citations the author uses for the reader’s reference. Search engines favor these natural links. - The goal in off-site SEO is to have as many reputable websites as a possible link to one's website in this manner. The clickable blue words that make up each link are called “anchor text.” - links without the "nofollow" attribute are "dofollow" links, meaning they instruct search engines to follow those links and pass authority to the linked-to page. - For SEO purposes, webmasters are concerned primarily with dofollow links, but both types of links can still send relevant traffic to a website - Paid links: should not be credited as a natural, endorsed link. Therefore, this image link will need a nofollow attribute attached. - Natural Internal Links: The links outlined in orange are internal links. These links take the site visitor elsewhere on the site. 5.2- Popularity Metrics - To prevent gaming of their algorithms, search engines do not provide the details of their algorithm. So how do we know what metrics search engines now use to measure popularity? Three general sources provide useful information: - 1. the search engines themselves provide some general guidelines as to how popularity is measured (though they, of course, do not provide details) - 2. source of information about search algorithms’ ranking factors comes from career SEOs, people whose jobs center on improving the rankings of their clients’ websites. - 3. source of information about ranking factors comes from correlational data. By comparing the rankings of millions of websites with their attributes, - - - one can find which website attributes are most correlated with ranking success. Link Profile: Search engines determine the popularity of a webpage by examining that page’s backlinks—links from external sources pointing to that webpage. - This list of backlinks makes up what is known as that page’s link profile. - From this link profile, search engines calculate a webpage’s popularity. - The total number of backlinks is an important metric in determining popularity, but it is merely one of the several metrics a search engine considers when measuring a webpage’s popularity. Popularity Metrics Examples: - The total number of backlinks: All else being equal, the more people who like you, the more popular you are. - Backlinks from related/relevant websites: Not all endorsements have the same value. Expertise matters. If a page has a number of backlinks from pages with a similar topic, these backlinks matter more because they are considered expert endorsements. - Anchor text: Anchor text has decreased in importance over time, but it still matters. Many backlinks use anchor text that indicates the topic of the link. For example, “Here’s a great site on fly-fishing.” If the anchor text of the backlinks to a page uses relevant keywords, the value of these endorsements increases. - Link neighborhood: Spam websites typically have lots of backlinks going to and from other spam websites. By linking only to reputable websites and receiving backlinks from reputable domains, a website can avoid being classified as spam. - Link freshness: A high-quality website will continue to receive new backlinks. If a page stops generating new backlinks, the search engine assumes the page’s content is no longer relevant or valuable to people. - Link diversity: Search engines want to see evidence that a page’s backlinks are the result of various webmasters independently endorsing the page, in which case, a page’s backlinks are likely to come from a variety of different domains with different IP addresses. Thus, link diversity enhances the page’s popularity. One metric that correlates highly with good search engine rankings is the number of unique linking root domains (number of unique websites that link to a site). Social sharing: Search engines recognize that if people are posting links to a website on their social network profile, it has worthwhile content and deserves to rank well for relevant searches. Links on social media platforms almost universally contain a “nofollow” attribute, meaning they technically do not pass authority directly to the site, but most SEO experts believe the search engines are taking these links into account when determining rankings. - An additional benefit of social sharing is that it generates buzz for a page, which could lead to additional links, which are more important for increasing a page’s popularity. 5.3- Building Links - Backlinks to a site fit into one of three categories: editorial, manual, or manufactured. - 1. Editorial links are links given spontaneously by another webmaster because he or she likes the page’s content. These links are pure endorsements, and evidence of editorial links will improve a page’s rankings on any search engine. - 2. Manual links are links one earns through direct effort, but still require a third party to sign off on them. For example, when one submits a website to a directory, the resulting link comes directly from that person’s work in submitting the site, but the directory still has to approve the listing. - Manual links are not as highly valued by search engines, but they typically have a positive effect on rankings. - Manufactured links are, as the label implies, manufactured by the webmaster without any third-party approval. 5.4- Content Marketing - content marketing: creating media content that entices and engages potential customers and has a commercial benefit for the publisher. - good content marketing, like good off-site SEO, must begin with good, appealing content. - a good source of ideas for content comes from keyword research done during SEO. The most important principle of content marketing is that the content itself must appeal to users QUIZ: 1. You have a website that sells widgets, and you have a category page specifically for blue widgets. After some extensive outreach efforts, you are able to gain 100 links to your blue widgets category page, but no links to your homepage. How will these new links affect the rankings of your homepage on relevant searches? a. They will improve homepage rankings 2. Two competing websites have the same number of links. Website A received all of its links between January 2016 and January 2017. Website B received its links from January 2016 to the present. Which website is likely to rank higher today for a search that is equally relevant to both sites? a. Website B, because it has higher link freshness. 3. Why is receiving 100 links from 10 different websites better than receiving 100 links from the same website? a. Links from 10 websites mean a higher link diversity than links from one website 4. An editorial link is a. a link created voluntarily by another website owner because he/she values the website’s content 5. Sending out press releases to entice news organizations to do a story about a company can result in links from these news organizations’ websites. These links would be considered a. Editorial links 6. Writing a blog post for someone else’s blog and including links to one’s own site would give a website what kind of links? a. Manual links 7. Content marketing differs from advertising in that a. content marketing is meant to entice readership/viewership on its own merits 8. A major advantage of creating content specifically with the goal of ranking well for a popular search phrase is that a. the content will have a built-in distribution Irene’s Notes: - DEFINE TARGET AUDIENCES AND MARKETS FOR MEDIA PLANS THAT RESULT IN INCREASED BRAND AWARENESS AND ENGAGEMENT. - PARTNER WITH INTERNAL TEAMS INCLUDING ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT, SEO/SEM STRATEGISTS AND PROGRAMMATIC BUYERS TO ACCOMPLISH CAMPAIGNS OBJECTIVES. - Achieving “off the pages” of your website to increase SE performance for target keywords that are related to your “on page” content and the keywords that exist in off site direct links. - Trustworthy Links: Can Increase Click-thru Rate by Between 39% and 200% - LINK BAIT: is any piece of content that is specifically designed to get people to share it across social channels and link to it on their own blogs or websites. - COMMON QUALITIES OF SUCCESSFUL LINK BAIT ARE: - Usefulness - Timeliness - Visuals - Humor By Google: nofollow links tell SEs, “don’t follow links on this page,” which means 2 things: the search engine doesn’t include that link in its map of the internet and the SE does not pass “link juice” to that link. THE 3 REASONS (LISTED BY GOOGLE) FOR USING NOFOLLOW LINKS: - Untrusted content: The prime example of this is user comments. Many websites have a comments section, and if users include a link in that comments section, the site would be linking to other unknown sites, and giving the implied endorsement to those sites. Content spammers would be incentivized to post many linked comments to the site, which would put the site in a bad link neighborhood and damage its search rankings. These websites should ensure that all user comments automatically put a nofollow attribute on all links. WordPress does this automatically. - Paid links: If a site hosts paid ads, all of those ads need to have a nofollow link. But very few websites manage their own ads. Typically, websites just make space available to an ad network to manage their ads, so the ad network will take care of this. Consider instead affiliate websites. Should those links have a “nofollow” attribute? Affiliate links should definitely have a nofollow link. Just because the links are not paid for in the same way as ads does not change the fact that they are paid links. In addition, the affiliate website would rather not promote the ranking of the pages it links to. It wants to earn the traffic for itself.) - - Low priority links: A website may want to direct its users to a registration page, but it doesn’t want to direct SEs to the registration page (which will never rank on any search terms and does not help any other pages rank well). It can use the nofollow attribute on any links to the registration page so that the SE prioritizes attention to its content pages. The textbook defines the link profile as “the list of backlinks” going to a page. That, of course, is a PAGE LINK PROFILE. A website link profile is the list of all of the backlinks to an entire website. This slide is meant to illustrate what a website link profile includes. SEs use link profile info to glean info about a website, its popularity, its content, and more.