Yagua Piru

Using link data, although it can never be perfectly accurate, allows you to take a more scientific approach to your SEO strategies. How can we leverage link data for actionable insights? I recently wrote a post breaking down the Mormon SEO strategy, which is a very well thought out plan of action.. There seemed to be a lot of interest in the tools I used and the insights they provided. It's impossible to cover all scenarios, but my hope is to show how this data can be used.

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Tools Used

• Excel
• SEOmoz API / Open Site Explorer
• Free Version of Majestic SEO
• Ninja Skills (prerequisite of working at Distilled)

For most of this post, I’m going to look at the SERPS for "nashville real estate", a competitive result from my hometown. 

The Data Set

To start, I pulled a wide range of link based metrics from the Top 10.

Caveats: Your may want to remove large domains and exact match domains from your analysis. Large domains with solid brands may just add noise to your analysis. Exact match domains may be getting a substantial boost and may skew your analysis as well. I have removed both Trulia and Yahoo Real Estate from this set.

Data

• PA – Page Authority, metric from SEOmoz
• P LRD – Number of Linking Root Domains to the PAGE
• DA – Domain Authority, metric from SEOmoz
• R LRD - Number of Linking Root Domains to the DOMAIN
• Links – Raw number of links (SEOmoz data)
• Deep Links - % of root domains that link to content that isn’t home page
• mR – mozRank, SEOmoz’s metric similar to PageRank
• DmR – Domain mozRank, similar to mR, but on a DOMAIN level
• DmT – Domain mozTrust, SEOmoz metric to measure TrustRank
• EA LRD – Number of Linking Root Domains using EXACT match anchor text
• EA % - Percentage of anchors with EXACT match anchor

All of this information was acquired from SEOmoz’s data set. Items like deep links %, exact match linking root domains, and percent of anchors with exact match anchor were all obtained with some basic analysis. Now that we have our first data pull, we can dig in and talk about what these mean.

Breakdown the Top 10

If my goal is to break into the top 10, I’ll line my site’s metrics up against the trending of the top 10 and their averages. This will identify areas where I’m over- or under-performing. In addition to comparing against the average, I can look at the distribution of metrics across the top 10. I’ll throw out a few examples in this niche that jump out. The factors I look into may depend on the data pulled for a niche.

Link Root Domains

As we know, the number of linking root domains correlates well with rankings. This why in my link builder tipspost I suggested getting a link, or just a few, and moving on from a domain. The majority of the sites in this niche sit around 100 to 200 unique linking domains. This graph gives you a gauge for breaking into the top 10 results. However, the top two results have pulled away from the rest with around 800 unique linking domains, so ranking number one may be difficult.

Exact Match Anchor Linking Root Domains

This metric was measured by looking at the Anchor Text Distribution tab on Open Site Explorer. I was a bit surprised by the results. The number one site has managed to receive links from 544 domains with the exact anchor text “Nashville Real Estate.” Regardless of how they managed to do so, this makes it a highly competitive term to rank number one for. However, it also shows that the majority of the Top 10 do not have a large number of domains linking with well-optimized links for this phrase. This graph, and the one before, shows opportunity exists for this keyword between result 3 and 10. This is why it’s important to note the distribution as well as the average.

Percent of Anchors with Exact Match Domains

Looking at the percentage of anchors using this exact match phrase can provide some interesting insights. First, the top ranking sites are excessively optimizing their link’s anchor text. Second, Google is allowing this significant optimization. Even the third result has nearly 30% of their links using this anchor text. Your link building strategy here could be aggressive without sticking out. Additionally, these sites are overly focused on one golden phrase. I’d have to dig deeper, but this may be indicative of several open opportunities in mid to longtail phrases. I’d likely take advantage of this short-sighted targeting strategy by first focusing on picking up the terms they’re ignoring.

Strategy

To rank well in this niche, you’re going to need a large number of links from a diverse set of domains. Google seems to be forgiving of over optimization and has allowed aggressive link building. The first ranked site appears to sufficiently answer the query, so I don't think there is a reason to not allow it. Most of these sites do not have significant content strategies pulling links to subpages and most do not engage heavily in social media. Although an aggressive strategy would not stick out in this market, I'd caution again the aggressiveness of having almost 70% of your link profile with the same anchor text. This type of optimization is dangerous, limiting and ignores many other phrases.

Link Profiling

Dr. Pete wrote a great post on link profiling, which allows you to see the distribution of inbound links to a domain. This will give you insights on the quality of the links a site has acquired. I also use this when reporting the links I’ve built to my clients to visually demonstrate the distribution of links I've acquired. I’m going to briefly show an example of this profiling using Page Authority, but I repeat this with metrics such as Domain Authority, mR, DmR, and DmT. Disparities in these distributions can draw your attention to items you might not have considered.

Radar Graphs

Not a new tool, but I like the radar graphs in SEOmoz Labs. These are great for demonstrating link analysis or providing a quick audit on a phone call or email. Let’s say the #12 ranked site nashvillebuyers.com called up and quickly wanted to know what it’d take to break into the Top 5. This quickly shows they're falling short on several significant ranking factors. This could also show that they’re beating other sites in all metrics. If this is the case, I might start looking at other factors like anchor text, anchor text distribution, link quality, and on-site targeting.

Top Content

After looking at a site’s links, it’s important to evaluate what’s the top content drawing in links. One of the best guides I’ve seen about visualizing this analysis is the post What Are My Most Linked to Subfolders? written by SEOgadget. This report can be pulled from Open Site Explorer’s Top Pages. In my Mormon SEO strategy post, I used the SEOmoz API and created a pivot table to find the most linked to content in their massive link profile. 

Keyword Tag Cloud

A tag cloud of anchor text is a quick way to visualize the distribution of keyword anchors and pull out the terms being targeted. The most interesting anchor cloud I’ve seen so far is that of the Mormon LDS church.

To get this, I pulled the max number of links from the SEOmoz API, saved the list of anchors to a text file, and uploaded them to Tagxedo. Doing this quickly highlights major targeted terms and visually demonstrates the distribution of anchor text.

Broken Links

Another quick check that can bring you big wins is checking sites for 404 pages by looking at Open Site Explorer’s Top Pages tab. (Hopefully this isn't new to you guys, but worth mentioning.) 

Reasons to Find Broken Links

• Great way to start a relationship with a webmaster: let them know, people like to reciprocate.
• Contact the people who are linking to them and get that link.
• Generate content ideas based off that type of content that has acquired links before.
• Recreate this content and get websites to switch the link.

Link Growth / Velocity

One more check I like to make is link growth rate. Aaron Wall wrote an article a while back about link velocity and the role link growth rates has on your link profile. MajesticSEO provides these graphs up for free and they can provide some interesting feedback. They provide link discovery and cumulative  link graphs.

What we might be seeing here are a few strong pushes early on, followed by very little promotion in early 2007. At the start of 2008, the link building ramped up and remained constant. This is indicative of regular on-going link building, which is no surprise considering the optimization of these efforts. It’s also important to note that it ramped up even more during the last half of 2010. If this was your competitor’s profile, this is valuable information to have. This link growth rate makes this site even more competitive.

Now a profile like this is a bit more expected. They seem to have had a strong push at one time, but the link acquisition has faded over time. They have periods of spiky growth and have had minimal link growth in the last part of 2010.. This is a good sign if you’re looking to outrank this site.

Chopping Up The Link Export

One of the last few questions left is how and where are they getting these links. How can you chop up their link export to get actionable insights and link prospects? Let me just cover a few quick ideas.

Export CSV from Open Site Explorer, open it in Excel.

Filters & Sorts

1. Filter Sites with Exact Match AND Phrase Match Anchor
2. Filter by Branded Anchors and People's Names
3. Sort by PA to get strongest PAGES
4. Sort by DA to get strongest DOMAINS

Questions to Ask

• What content is attracting these links?
• What types of sites are these links from?
• Are they manually building these links? (directories, articles, guest blogging)
• Do they appear to be paid?
• What's the IP address and WHOIS information on anything fishy?
• What strategy is working here? Or is there even a strategy?
• Where are they getting the branded and name links?
• What communities are they participating in?

Perform a search against page title and URL

• How many links come from pages about same keyword?
• How many links include mentions like directory, links, resource, article, forum, etc?

Export into Google Custom Search

Yahoo use to allow you to perform search queries against a link profile's content. However, with the death of the Yahoo! linkdomain, this is not longer possible. Luckily, you can use Open Site Explorer and GCSE to do the same thing.

Search Ideas

• Sponsorships queries
• Paid link footprints
• Blogging footprints
• Person’s name
• Brand name
• Forum footprints
• Embed footprints

There a lot of different queries you can run, these may depend on what information you’re looking to get.

read more: seomoz.org

There has been some discussion as to whether Google likes guest posting. Although some guest posters deny it, and guest posting can be done to leverage traffic and promote brand as well as for SEO, there’s little doubt that for some people at least the goal is to manipulate search engine rankings.

photo by Yodel Anecdotal 

And that, in theory at least, is a definite no no for Google.

When manipulation can help.

Of course, as one of my favourite SEOs, Ross Hudgeons, has pointed out, manipulation is only a bad thing when it disrupts the user experience.

And I’d argue that guest posting does the opposite of that.

If Google has done its work right in the first place, the blogs and websites whose links count will be quality blogs and websites, and therefore only accept quality guest posts.

The bloggers and webmasters who can afford to pay for/are talented enough to produce great content will also be able to afford to pay for/be talented enough to produce great content for their own website.

In many cases the search battle is already being lost, with websites/blogs with great content losing out against sites with large numbers of spammy links. The last thing Google needs to do is penalise those who can and do produce good content.

What if I’m wrong?

I could be wrong, of course.

Because if Google didn’t like guest posts, there would be no point in saying it didn’t like it. That would just drive the practice underground. Sneaky links would be placed in the body of content instead of politely being placed in the footer as they usually are now, and guest blogs would be disguised as run-of-the-mill content.

And by the way, this is not a guest post, my name is not James Dunworth and I don’t also work for The Disabled Shop 

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More than 35 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube every minute. This means 2,100 hours of video is uploaded every hour, or 50,400 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every day.

"If we were to measure that in movie terms (assuming the average Hollywood film is around 120 minutes long), 35 hours a minute is the equivalent of over 176,000 full-length Hollywood releases every week." according to Hunter Walk, YouTube's Director of product management. "Another way to think about it is: if three of the major U.S. networks were broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the last 60 years, they still wouldn't have broadcast as much content as is uploaded to YouTube every 30 days."

So, you will need to learn how to optimize your video for YouTube. Otherwise, the odds that a critical mass of viewers will discover it are slim to nil.

Choose Relevant Keywords

The first step in this process is to think about the words users would type into the YouTube search box to find your video. Choosing relevant keywords can help you get your video content in front of interested users.

You can use the YouTube keyword tool to get new keyword ideas. It gives you a couple of options. You can enter a few descriptive words or phrases, or you can type in a YouTube video's ID or watch page URL. Results can be tailored to more than 40 languages and more than 230 countries.

In addition, the YouTube keyword tool lets you choose the demographic you wish to target. This includes male or female, ages 13 to 65+, applicable countries, and 24 interests from animals to travel.

Although you can use these keywords for advertizing if you want, you don't need to. The YouTube keyword tool can be used to optimize your video for YouTube search, too.

Remember, users are searching for video content, so they're less likely to look for something to buy on YouTube than they are on a search engine. Users search for topics related to what entertains them, so choose your keywords accordingly:

• Names (celebrities)
• Titles (movies, shows)
• Quotes
• Actions/verbs
• Objects in the video (cars, etc.)
• Emotions (funny, hilarious)

When choosing your keywords, think about the trends in online video overall, plus trends on YouTube (hot topics, political awareness, celebrity gossip, and popular videos).

Optimize Your Video Title

The second step is to make sure that your titles, video descriptions and tags actually include your keywords. This will help your videos be discovered in YouTube search results and related videos.

Your video's title can be up to 100 characters long, including the spaces between words. This means your title can be up to 16 words long, depending on the number of characters in each word.

Although you can think of your title as a headline, don't use puns or other word play in this important element of your video's metadata. As Steve Lohr of The New York Times once observed, "There are no algorithms for wit, irony, humor or stylish writing." So, your title should be straightforward enough to be indexed properly and should contain the keyword phrases most important to the message of your video.

If you want to include your brand name in the title, it should always go last. You brand name faces less competition, so put the keywords that face more competition at the beginning of the title, which appears to help in YouTube search ranking.

Your description should be as detailed as possible -- short of offering an entire transcript. It can be up to 5,000 characters, including spaces. This means your video's description can be up to 800 words long.

Include URLs with http:// to other videos, playlists, or your website in your description. This will turn the URLs into a hyperlink.

Optimize Your Tags

Finally, your tags should be as detailed as possible within the 120-character limit. They can include your brand, city, and topics. Consider using your current tags or another user's tags.

If you want to see an example of how this works, examine the video above, "Optimize YouTube videos and 3 key steps on how to do it." It has been found in YouTube searches for the terms "how to optimize YouTube video" and "optimize video for YouTube." It has also been found in Google searches for the term "optimize video for YouTube."

In addition, it has been found after YouTubers watched two related videos, "YouTube Optimization techniques from Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR" and "Optimize YouTube videos and how to share them with Greg Jarboe."

The above video also provides a hint at what I'll cover in upcoming columns. Stay tuned.

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Yesterday, Experian Hitwise reported that the top 10 most-searched terms in 2010 were Facebook, Facebook login, YouTube, Craigslist, MySpace, Facebook.com, eBay, Yahoo, www.facebook.com, and Mapquest.

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Several years ago (2007) I was asked to give a presentation at Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Seminar in Minneapolis. This was pretty cool because I had been reading Jill’s newsletter for years beforehand. The topic I spoke on was “UnGoogle Your Search Marketing,” where I discussed how to employ blogs, social media and optimized press releases as alternative, yet complimentary sources of web site traffic.

While search is the primary source of web traffic for our sites at TopRank Online Marketing and certainly for our client web sites, I think that now, more than ever, it’s important to “UnGoogle” your search marketing. Before anyone thinks I’m talking about ignoring Google completely, I suggest reading on.

Focusing content creation efforts solely to serve Search Engine Optimization purposes can be limiting. If the the only purpose for creating content is for search engine visibility, the publishing web site may improve search traffic but disappoint when it comes to converting that traffic. SEO alone might not be enough.

Every web designer and copywriter’s nightmare when it comes to SEO is an unattractive, keyword stuffed web page that might do well in search ranking but scares the hello out of anyone who visits. That’s an extreme of course, but my point is that great SEO leverages keyword use and search friendly design recommendations to the benefit of site visitors first or at least as much for people as for SEO. The best content optimization is a great expression of left/right brain thinking.

An alternative to such textbook SEO tactics would be to create connections and distribution channels that have nothing to do with search engines. Create sources of web traffic that are independent of search engines  but are executed in a search friendly way.

Fundamentally, that means: Listen to the social web. Learn about customer interests, preferences and needs. Create content to meet those needs. Grow networks in the channels where those customers spend time AND in channels that influence them.  Investigate popular and relevant search based keywords as well as social keywords and incorporate them into the content strategy and social networking effort.

Use a combination of real time search and social media monitoring to detect on-demand marketing opportunities and analyze the ebb and flow of keyword focused conversation. As advertising and media placements drive search queries, so do social conversations. While many of those opportunities are fleeting and not practical, some will take hold in the form of a conversation that turns to buzz and search.

In the end, creating content of value and connections with a network that focuses on delivering value to the customers and influencers you’re trying to reach will reap rewards beyond what SEO by itself can achieve. Invest in customer relationships, networks and an optimized content marketing program and you’ll achieve a distinct competitive advantage on the social web at large AND on Google.

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[photo credit: Mark Knol]

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