Is Your Company Paying for Negative SEO?
Transcript of Is Your Company Paying for Negative SEO?
Is Your Company Paying for Negative SEO?Adam [email protected]
OverviewNegative SEO isn’t just being done by competitors.
You have people YOU are paying:Affiliate agencies/managersPR firmsInfluencer marketing campaignsReview companiesOther???
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Why Would They Do This? Affiliate managers – They already talk about us, why
not reach out…it’s an easy target. Affiliates – Why shouldn’t I or we get paid for the
content we’ve already created PR – We need to measure and provide reporting Influencer – I need to show results to stay in business Other - Because we don’t know there is a negative
impact!
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How to Detect An IssueWhat do you mean Merlotisn’t a proper tool to deal with link issues?Let’s see you try without!
AdamRiemer.me
Find Disappearing or Changing Links Download your links with
Majestic SEO Search Console SEMRush Raven Other
Note: see if your tech team or analytics experts can pull a list of referring URLs that come from cloaked links, redirects or other and also pull the original domain.
Consolidate and de-duplicate Sort and compare numbers to previous month/week.
Note: pull the report and see if it recognizes redirects. You can also look for backlinks that have parameters attached. By identifying the sources and parameters your vendors use, you can now see what/who is being contacted and where you’re losing “organic looking” links.
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Downloading your links.Step 1.
Step 2.
Step 3.
In This Tool Too #adhttp://www.adamriemer.me/smbtools/
Step 1. select SEO & backlink explorerStep 2. type in your domainStep 3. select historic index and entire domainStep 4. hit explore
In This Tool Majestic Search for your links
and set your query
Now download.
Next it’s time to search or sort.
Parameters
PR tagsUTM tagsMerchant IDsOther???
In This Tool Majestic (lets get crazy!)
Now click backlinks and download again.
Column A has the pages with the links.
Raw exports give you theparameters as well.(how many credits do youhave?)
In This Tool Majestic
They have a lostLinks report.
You can sort by deleted and find the date.There is trust flowAnd citation flow.Pay attention, it includes feeds which you don’tneed to worryabout.
Find Disappearing or Changing LinksWhen evaluating your link reports, ask yourself:
Did they become redirects? Good time to also look for backlinks that point to redirecting pages
Are they now no follow links? Is the amount of no follow increasing? (time to change strategies) Is there now an FTC disclosure on the page/site/post
Have they been changed out for affiliate links? Which software does your company use?
Network based In house Direct with parameters
Do they now have tracking parameters? Pull referral reports from Google Analytics or Source and Medium. Look to see if there are more
tracking or less.
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How Does Google Find Them.We’re just good like that!
AdamRiemer.me
How Can Google Find Monetized or Paid Content? Javascripts Disclosures Cloaked links Patterns of links, images and brand mentions
This occurs with large PR, Social and Influencer campaigns or sale announcements.
Contest/giveaway software URL parameters More???
http://www.adamriemer.me/advertising-disclosures-seo/
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Understanding Each Departments & Vendor’s Needs & How to Work with them.
Understand you needs? Let’s talk
about mine, starting with
a refill!AdamRiemer.me
Monetization LinksWebmasters are monetizing through many channels. Sponsored posts, affiliate links, javascripts and more.
How does Google know who is paying and who isn’t? As yourself who paid for a post and then check to see if:
Whose link is no followed If your backlink is no followed? Are the image links to your site no followed? Ask yourself again “How is Google supposed to know who paid
for the post?”
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Review Companies Unique reviews on your site
This is going to become more important Is someone using a third party feed (UX Team, Customer Service, etc…) Check your affiliates as well. Sometimes they get a reviews feed for their site or they are a
reviews aggregator and sell reviews back to your company. Backlinks pointing to reviews
Register both http and https Register both www and non www Check where your backlinks are pointing too Look for reviewers leaving links
“check out my review here” Affiliate Direct Blog comment Other…
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Affiliate Links Apparently all 3XX redirects pass authority
You know they are affiliate links, but how does Google? Maybe you’re trying an old trick? Maybe it’s in house or a refer-a-friend program.
Old tactics for SEO include Buying and redirecting URLs Satellite sites and pages
Moving domains Moving from
www.sitebuilder.com/your-old-domain or subdomain versions brandname.sitebuilder.com to stand alone TLDs.
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Javascript Example
Other??? Blog plugins
Do they allow do follow links instead of no follow What does your SEO neighborhood look like now? Crawl your blog/commenting software for external links
Blog/community commenting software Not spambots Does the software monetize links and are you paying for sales from
your internal links and comments Javascripts – these get into your company through the affiliate
program. Remove them from the program and/or create a negative site list that they are not allowed to monetize.
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What Can You Do? Create a list of Do Not Contact Sites
Update weekly in a shared drive with other departments Make them upload weekly targets
Have a two day leeway before they do outreach You can check for cross over this way Add it into your agency and consultants contracts to require this.
Weekly meetings to go over Revenue and increased exposure vs. SEO value Who rejected the link you wanted and why
By talking about these issues, others may see a fit for their channel and may send you some better qualified leads.
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ConclusionIt is not your co-workers and agencies jobs to know SEO. It is up to you to educate them and be on the lookout.
Set up meetings, common sheets to share and compare targets and make sure you’re all on the same page. This is the best way to help save your site from creating your own negative SEO issues.
Thank You!Adam Riemerwww.AdamRiemer.me@rollerblader