Is Link Building Still Crucial, Or A Waste Of Time & Money?

Presented by:Prashant PuriCEO & Co-Founder, AdLift.com@puriprashant

ME

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@puriprashant

Who’s this guy ?

Topics to Cover

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• Is Link Building a waste of time ?

• What works

• What doesn’t work

• Penguin/Panda Recovery

@puriprashant

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Lets get back to the basics for a minute

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine• Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

• “In this paper, we present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine which makes heavy use of the structure present in hypertext.” 

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Quality Link Building

In the past, the page with the most high-quality, relevant links won.

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WINNER!

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Quality Signal Building

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WINNER!

Now, the page with the most high-quality, relevant signals wins.

FacebookTwitter

Usage Data

Local Citations

Sentiment Analysis

Latent Symantic Indexing

AvoidingOver-optimization

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3 Leading Sites in the “Shoes” Vertical

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@puriprashant

Debenhams

drives 5X the amount if SEO

Traffic/Visibility

Links Work

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Debenhams has

5X the amount if External Links

Quality Link Building is What Actually Works

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Sustainable SEO requires scalable long term investment

A couple of slides in.… I’ll give everyone

the latest..

Traffic Doubles in 2 months

What Doesn’t Work

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Unnatural Link Building

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Paid Linking - Unnatural

Low Quality Directory Sites

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Low quality links counter

productive to high quality links

Blog Rolls

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What Works

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The Ideal Anchor Text Variation

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Quality Link Development Takes Time.. But it Works

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1. Identify target sites2. Follow bloggers on twitter3. Comment (not spam) on their blog articles4. Reach out with quality articles/opportunites

@puriprashant

Bonus Tip – Help The Bloggers fix Broken Links

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@puriprashant

• Hey Blogger – I’m a frequent your site and noticed a couple of broken links.. Thought you should know.

• Tools that help identify broken links• Domain Hunter• Xenu• Screaming frog

Competitive Research – Acquiring Competitor Links

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@puriprashant

MajesticSEO Clique Hunter

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@puriprashant

OpenSiteExplorer

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@puriprashant

Penguin 2.0 & Penalties

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@puriprashant

What does a Penguin/Panda Penalty Look Like?

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@puriprashant

What Causes it ? The “Complete Link Building Solution” Does

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@puriprashant

How To Recover ? Check for..

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• Steeeeeep Link growth rate

@puriprashant

How To Recover ? Check for..

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• Anchor Text Variation

@puriprashant

How To Recover ? Check for..

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• Spam Links - Build a spreadsheet that analyzes the following:• Page Rank• Domain Authority• # on incoming links• # of out going links• Other paid links on the site• Comments on the blogs• Social presence

• Tools• aHrefs• OpenSiteExplorer• MajesticSEO• Google Webmaster

@puriprashant

How To Recover ? Reach out

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• Reverse IP Lookup• Email• Call

TRACK EVERYTHING

@puriprashant

How To Recover ? Reconsideration Request & Disavow

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@puriprashant

So..Is Link Building is DEAD ?

REALITY: You can believe what you like

REALITY: You can believe what you like.. But I like to believe the Data

About AdLift

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75 Million Search Visits

Every Month, We Manage

About us & Our Achievements

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• Founded in 2009, AdLift provides customized digital media strategy and search marketing solutions for online businesses in the North American, UK and APAC markets

• AdLift has assembled a world-class technical team of search marketing experts from firms such as Yahoo, eBay, and IAC

• 15+ person team – business development and account management located in Palo Alto, CA.

AcquireAmplify

AdvancePrashant PuriCEO & Co-FounderAdLift.comprashant@adlift.com@puriprashant

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@puriprashant