Earning Links, the right way<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/solution.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The only way to earn a link is to create something \u201cremarkable\u201d. Remarkable can come in many forms:<\/p>\n
- \n
- A unique product (think Dyson) or iPhone.<\/li>\n
- By solving a problem for someone such as a user struggling with an application, in a lot of instances someone else will have experienced a similar issue in the past and the solutions are often widely linked to and shared.<\/li>\n
- From Research \u2013 though this is difficult unless you can provide information on something truly new and interesting. This can be exceptionally time consuming and expensive.<\/li>\n
- By selling at a cheaper price.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Press Releases <\/strong><\/h4>\n
Used in the right way these will yield links where they\u2019re deserved. Don\u2019t ask or embed them. Journalists should be approached directly \u2013 don\u2019t rely on news wires or distribution services as they rarely yield good results.<\/p>\n
Penalties<\/h3>\n
Google\u2019s ability to both automatically discount unnatural links and to manually penalise sites has significantly improved over the last 5 years. The severity of penalties has also improved to better reflect the level of foul play.<\/p>\n
It is possible to get both \u201cPartial\u201d and \u201cSite Wide\u201d penalties for artificially inflating PageRank.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Partial Penalties often impact a page or set of pages within a larger site.<\/li>\n
- Site Wide penalties typically remove all of a site\u2019s organic rankings including its own Brand Name where extreme levels of abuse have transpired.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Do negative SEO campaigns work?<\/h3>\n
Yes \u2013 we\u2019ve seen an example in 2017 of a full-blown negative SEO campaign negatively impacting a site\u2019s organic visibility.<\/p>\n
Tools & Link Sources<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/tools.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWe use a variety of tools in order to get an accurate picture of a site\u2019s link profile. These services use their own crawlers to scrape the internet and build a comprehensive link index of every webpage they can find and where they link to.<\/p>\n
Majestic<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Majestic remains our favourite source of data for link profile. When doing a deep dive it\u2019s well worth exporting both historic and fresh indexes as often there will be some discrepancies between the two. For normal monthly updates, the fresh index will typically suffice as you only want the latest links.<\/p>\n
Ahrefs<\/strong><\/h4>\n
We also make use of Ahrefs who has the same model as Majestic \u2013 Ahrefs crawls the internet building its own link index then sells this data. We export this, along with Majestic\u2019s data, minimising gaps in between.<\/p>\n
Google Search Console<\/strong><\/h4>\n
The final source of links we use is Google themselves via Google Search Console. Google claims to show a site\u2019s latest and most important links via this tool, though presently the quantity of data is very limited. This makes Majestic and Ahrefs essential to carry out a link audit.<\/p>\n
Kerboo<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Kerboo brings all the data discussed above into a single platform where all of the data is re-crawled to check its validity (the web is a fast changing place).<\/p>\n
Kerboo then shapes all the data by hostname (domain) so it can be reviewed. There are a number of alternative tools that do the same.<\/p>\n
Investigating a Link Profile<\/h3>\n
Once you have got to the point of having all the data setup and ready for review, it\u2019s a case of reviewing each domain and determining whether a site is spam or legitimate. At Bronco this would be carried out by an experienced consultant who can very quickly determine whether a site should be disavowed (discounted from Google) or kept as part of the link profile that\u2019s contributing to your site\u2019s rankings.<\/p>\n
Some examples of what would typically be disavowed:<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Ant-example-1.jpg\")
fig 1. Spam<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n In this example, the site has been attacked with various porn anchor text links into its main landing pages. The safest way to maintain rankings in this circumstance is to disavow all links that may have been generated by the attack. This is typically rare.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Ant-example-2.jpg\")
fig 2. Low quality directories<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Often, we see low-quality directories \u2013 sometimes via historic activity that the client has engaged in; other times they end up in a directory database which is distributed all over the place. It is then a case of actively monitoring and preventing these from negatively impacting the site\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n
However it is important to remember that not every web directory is low-quality. We would have no issue paying for Best of The Web to review sites we look after, for consideration in the directory.<\/p>\n
In terms of deciding whether a directory is low or high quality \u2013 it\u2019s a case of common sense. For example the directory highlighted above is called www.dofollow-links.co.uk<\/a> which immediately suggests the directory has been created to funnel PageRank into sites.<\/p>\n
On top of that, it\u2019s a UK domain, linking to mainly Australian sites demonstrating little editorial control over the site\u2019s content.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Ant-example-3.jpg\")
fig 3. Paid posts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Anything with a label \u2013 whether in an image or as plain text, with a followed link is immediately exposing you or your client to a penalty if manually reviewed. These should just be disavowed without question. Why? If your site is every manually reviewed by a Google Search Analyst, you will get penalised for manipulating PageRank.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n
We actively recommend monitoring your link profile quarterly or monthly depending on the size of the site.<\/p>\n
There are many other types of links you should look to disavow. This blog post covers the most common circumstances in which we would look to disavow links to safeguard your rankings.<\/p>\n
Paid Posts continue to positively influence rankings \u2013 so if that is part of your strategy, have a risk management plan in place so you can quickly react should the worst happen.<\/p>\n
Below are a number of links of useful resources for further reading:<\/p>\n
- \n
- majestic.com<\/a><\/li>\n
- ahrefs.com<\/a><\/li>\n
- kerboo.com<\/a><\/li>\n
- bronco.test\/what-we-do\/google-penalty-recovery.html<\/a><\/li>\n
- https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/66356<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In short \u2013 we think so! Read on to find out why… What makes a good link?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":4539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"class_list":["post-4533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-search-engine-optimisation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronco.co.uk\/our-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- ahrefs.com<\/a><\/li>\n
- majestic.com<\/a><\/li>\n