Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Search News from the Future'
Posted by Reinhart
Citizens of Moz, I come to you at a most desperate hour. I've just returned
from London, Distilled's international headquarters, and I've been patiently
awaiting this moment to share some potentially niche-shattering news with you
all.
I don't quite know where to begin, so I'll just say it: You see, the stories
are all true. Will Critchlow is a wizard. I know, it's common knowledge that
nearly all Englishmen are wizards, I've seen Harry Potter too. But Mr. Critchlow
is a wizard with a most peculiar and exciting gift: that of clairvoyance. He can
see the future!
And no, I don't mean in a Steve Jobs/Carl Sagan/George Orwell futurist kind of
way either. I mean he quite literally has a translucent, viridian ball of
crystal sitting on his desk that divines that which has yet to transpire! I
wouldn't have thought anything of the object upon first glance, but one night I
came back to the office to grab my misplaced jacket to low mutterings, frantic
typing, and wisps of smoke coming from the other side of the room. I dove into
the bean bag room so as not to draw his attention and waited patiently, shaking
with dread but with a fully piqued curiosity.
I couldn't make out what he was chanting and I don't think I would have been
able to translate the Latin anyway. After about 30 minutes of this I heard him
pack up his things and leave. I'm normally more of the craven type when it comes
to adventure, but something that night pressed me to snoop around my boss's desk
for the truth.
The smoke and emerald glow dissipated as I shuffled some papers around. The
smell of ozone lingered in the air. Nothing looked too out of the ordinary: the
latest issue of Inc. Magazine, a Post-it note with a hastily scrawled and
circled "Fire Phil Nottingham: Oct 31"... wait... this news clip read... 2016?
Maybe he was just tired and mistakâ 2020?! What was I looking at here?!
What I'm about to reveal may shock or even scare some readers, but I believe
it is essential that the Moz community hear it nevertheless. I may lose my
jobânay, I may be turned into a toad with a dreadful cockney
accentâbut it will have all been worth it to bring this knowledge to you
all. My interpretations may be shaky at best, but the headlines were as clear as
day: These are digital marketing news items from the future!
You may never get a better chance to peek behind the tapestries of time as you
do now. So read on, friends, and be brave.
Term "mobile" removed from Analytics, Google's vocabulary
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA â April 14, 2015 â A term commonly used by
webmasters, digital marketers and industry analysts may not be so common after
today. Over the weekend, Google removed the term "mobile" from all of its web
products, including Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, and the company's AdWords
tool set.
"Mobile has been a deprecated term for some time now," the search giant
explained in a corresponding blog post. "The lines between where and when we
view our various screens have been blurred beyond parsability. All web-based
content can be viewed on any device these days and thus it makes little sense to
refer to all non-traditional desktop visitors as 'mobile.' "
The web is very close to becoming truly device-neutral largely thanks to
thoughtful webmasters, CMS development teams and device manufacturers who have
all come together to deal with the issue of rendering content from multiple
angles. Data on device type, screen size, and other metrics is still readily
available throughout Google's suite of webmaster tools. [...]
Voice searches now constitute 28% of all queries
AUSTIN, TX â June 29, 2020 â Search engine corporations such as
Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have traditionally held on tight to their data,
offering limited info on global search trends, but a recent study conducted by
the University of Texas has unearthed compelling evidence that shows almost a
third of all search queries are now conducted via voice search.
The nation's only "Professor of Search," Dr. Pete Meyers of the University of
Texas explains the results of his institution's study:
"They called me mad back in 2013, but voice searches now constitute a huge
chunk of the search pie. Several years ago we would have found it laughable to
be walking down the street talking to our devices, let alone talking to our
devices within our home. But with the advancement of voice recognition software
and the nearly ubiquitous nature of the hardware to back it up, today we're
estimating that voice search makes up almost a third of all search queries, and
that number seems to be on the rise."
A few of the major contributing factors to the ascendancy of voice search
include web-enabled automobiles, home appliances, [...]
Traditional television advertising revenues wane as new year begins; YouTube,
Twitter and Facebook post record annual reports
NEW YORK, NY â January 1, 2019 â Google's video platform, YouTube
(GOOG) along with social networks Twitter (TWTR) and Facebook (FB), posted
record gains in 2018 as social and video advertising revenues shattered
forecasts and industry expectations. Analysts speculate that this was due in no
small part to the transference of advertising spends on traditional television
media. When FB and TWTR first hit the stock market, many buyers felt the social
networks needed to prove themselves in the competitive world of media
advertising, but as the multi-billion dollar industry of traditional television
advertising continues to crumble amid stiff competition from a la carte
alternatives like Netflix and Amazon, more marketing budgets are now trickling
down to companies such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Google's AdWords
platform.
"Television is evolving and has been for some time," says Will Critchlow,
founder and president of the world's foremost digital marketing agency,
Distilled International. "Companies want to get their products in front of
consumers, and those consumers are now watching television online. They're doing
everything online." [...]
Netflix introduces video, text advertisements for streaming content
LOS GATOS, CA â January 16, 2019 â Earlier this month we saw
reports that television advertising revenues were waning in the new year. Today
we can report that some of those dollars will most certainly be spent on
Netflix's streaming video platform. The company issued a press release this
morning indicating that the company, for the first time in its history, will now
display advertisements before many of their most popular original programs such
as Arrested Development, Orange is the New Black, and the much-anticipated final
season of House of Cards. Advertisements will be similar to those seen on
YouTube, Hulu, and other video sites.
"With the amount of quality content and general media access we're collecting,
we have no choice but to find revenue from other sources if we want to remain at
the $9.99 price point we set in 2015," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said on an
investor conference call yesterday. [...]
Google cracks down on fake, purchased +1s
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA â February 1, 2017 â For the first several years
of the social platform's life, Google Plus seemed a joke to many. Comparisons
were made to MySpace and other defunct social platforms, and G+ was often called
"a graveyard" as it faced competition from the already-established Facebook. But
since that time, the network has shown some real staying power with the full
faith and credit of Google Inc. behind it. To that end, in late 2016 we reported
on Google's announcement that plus ones, Google's own brand of "Likes," would
help determine the order in which documents appeared in its search engine
results pages. This move forced webmasters everywhere, for big and small
companies alike, to reconsider the social platform for conducting regular
business. Since then, various scams have been created to generate fake or paid
"+1s" for sites who want quick and easy exposure in Google's search engine.
While this practice has been effective for some, it is not sitting at all well
with the search giant.
Today, Google announced a crack-down on those sites which it has determined to
have been generating fake +1s. The process should be easy enough for Google as
it has access to all of its users' account data and history. One well known
Google representative, speaking on condition of anonymity, cut straight to the
point, asking "What were they thinking?" in reference to marketers who've been
attempting to game Google's algorithm. "As if we haven't been aware of fake
Google plus accounts since Plus's inception?... [...]
Panda and Penguin now refresh daily
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA â July 22, 2016 â Five years ago, Google
launched a pair of systems designed to keep poor content out of its search
engine's results and combat questionable citation building tactics. The former
is known as the "Panda" update and the latter, "Penguin." Until this week, the
two algorithms have been updated on unpredictable schedules based on when the
massive amounts of data required to make proper determinations about the quality
of a website and its internet-wide citations were parsed. This would result in
periodic "refresh" days, where webmasters who engaged in deceptive marketing
practices would brace themselves for potential losses of traffic to their
webpages. These updates would traditionally occur four or five times per year.
Last Monday, Google announced that they've dedicated additional resources to
these systems and are now able to parse the same data sets many times faster
than before, meaning that these updates will now essentially occur in real time.
"Our users don't want clean and relevant answers three months from now, they
need them immediately," declared a Google representative at an industry
conference in San Diego... [...]
Google removes "organic keywords" tab from analytics
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA â October 31, 2020 â [...] and for those who
don't remember, Google used to give webmasters access to what was known as
"keyword data," allowing them to make better decisions about their sites'
development and what their users' intent might be when visiting. In the fall of
2013, Google denied access to almost all of this organic data by encrypting all
searches generated through Google.com. Today, Google took it a step further and
completely removed the "Organic Keywords" tab from its popular web analytics
program.
"We've been meaning to do this for some time now," said a senior Google
representative, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We're very concerned about
our users' privacy, and that's why we started to deny access to sensitive data
such as search queries. We know our users don't want webmasters knowing what
they're searching for, and we want to respect that."
Later in the same conversation, the same Googler said with a grin and a
chortle, "There'll always be keyword data in AdWords." Adopting a sing-song
tone, one might have quoted Arrested Development's timeless one-liner, "There's
always money in the banana stand."
In other news, Google added a new tab to analytics titled "ASL," which
includes less-sensitive data about users such as age, sex, location, weight, and
sexual preference [...]
Cutts: Given today's technology, page speed a "deprecated metric" for
determining site quality
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA â October 31, 2022 â For as long as there have
been websites, there have been slow websites. In past generations, particularly
in the 2000s and 2010s, internet users have been frustrated with delay times and
unresponsive pages. Because of this, Google has made several attempts to help
webmasters create more efficient sites, and has also taken measures to ensure
that particularly slow sites do not register as frequently in their search
results. But technology has come a long way since the days of 4G and 5G wireless
networks.
Matt Cutts, the long-time head of Google's anti-spam team, addressed a group
of fledgling digital marketers this weekend at SMX 2022 saying, "Given the
bandwidth speeds of today's internet service providers, we're no longer using
page speed as an indicator of 'site quality,' as this metric is now almost
completely deprecated. In the past it made sense to devalue a site that took 10
to 15 seconds to load, and thus provided a negative experience for Googlers. But
with today's 7G Quantum LTE-X technology, the difference between page load times
are negligible, almost instant and ultimately irrelevant.
"Does anyone else remember 4G LTE? How about 2G? [Expletive], I'm old."
So, there you have it. That's all I found in Will's office that fateful night.
Leave a comment and wish me good tidings if you be so bold. Though as a
soon-to-be-toad, I may have a difficult time responding to your queries.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
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You may view the latest post at
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Build Backlinks Online
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Monday, 28 October 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] TITLE
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'AdWords Impression Share: Understanding and Improving Your Impression Share'
Many times I have seen instances where clients pause keywords because they aren't generating click or impression volume. While pausing is certainly one method for acting on low-performing keywords, I typically recommend pausing only as a last resort. There is plenty to consider when it comes to diagnosing why a keyword isn't generating volume, and one often overlooked, yet informative metric is impression share.
Impression share is the number of impressions you’ve received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. Eligibility is based on your current ads’ targeting settings, approval statuses, bids, and Quality Scores. You can view impression share data at the campaign, ad group and keyword levels.
Types of Impression Share in AdWords
There is more to impression share than just a simple number; there are different facets that you can use to get an even greater depth of analysis. The different breakdowns for impression share are as follows:
- Search impression share – your impression share strictly for impressions generated through the Search Network.
- Display impression share – your impression share strictly for impressions generated through the Display Network.
- Search lost impression share (budget) – the percentage of impressions you lost out on for the Search Network due to an insufficient budget (this is available at the campaign level only).
- Display lost impression share (budget) – the percentage of impressions you lost out on for the Display Network due to an insufficient budget (this is available at the campaign level only).
- Search lost impression share (rank) – the percentage of impressions you lost out on for the Search Network due to low ad rank.
- Display lost impression share (rank) – the percentage of impressions you lost out on for the Display Network due to low ad rank.
- Search exact match impression share – your impression share from the Search Network for search queries that matched your keywords exactly.
Impression share is important because it can give you a great indication of why a keyword may not be performing. Based on the data breakdowns mentioned above, you can use it to identify if your keywords aren't performing due to bidding or budget-related issues, which are two important items to keep in mind when assessing performance.
If your keyword bids are too low, you might risk your ads not appearing on the first page, which may lead to missed opportunities for impressions, clicks, and even conversions. Ensuring that your bids are high enough that your ads are appearing in competitive positions will greatly improve your chances of capturing impressions and clicks, and generating traffic to your site. You will definitely want to use this metric in conjunction with the average position of your keywords. You may notice that the average position for your keywords is high, but that your impression share is low. This can tell you that when your ads appear, they appear in high positions, but because your impression share is low, those ads aren't getting as much exposure as they could be in those high positions.
As a general rule of thumb, Google will stop displaying your ads for the day once your daily budget is exhausted. If your campaigns have a low daily budget, and that budget limit is reached early in the day, your ads will not be shown later in the day. So again, your ads may be generating impressions for you, but they can only generate those impressions for as long as your budget can allow for. Increasing your budget can allow Google to run your ads more frequently throughout the day, and allow you to increase that impression share.
How to Improve Your AdWords Impression Share
Take a look at the impression section of the WordStream dashboard graph for a client I have been working with. When they signed onto WordStream at the beginning of September, their impression count was 12,839. The client was focused on how exactly they could improve that impression share, so we worked together to examine their metrics and construct a plan of action. As all things in the PPC world, the improvement didn't happen overnight, but within just a couple of weeks, their impression level jumped up to 38,331 – that's almost a 200% increase.
So as you can see, impression share can be improved, using the techniques we have discussed. There are also some additional strategies you can use to increase your impression share:
- Adjust geo-targeting settings – If you decrease or restrict your location settings, you may see a spike in impression share. Targeting one specific location or area only will allow you to focus all efforts on that one area, and allow you more control over a specific target. While you will be serving your ads to a smaller area in general, you can take steps to ensure your ad is shown to as much of that area as possible.
- Improve your ad quality – As mentioned earlier, ad quality can also have an impact on impression share. If you can take steps to improve your PPC ads, then Google will display those ads more frequently by virtue of quality score. Try improving your ad text by making it as specific and relevant as possible to the keywords in their respective ad groups.
You can find impression share under the Columns button in AdWords. You will want to choose "customize columns," then "competitive metrics," where you will find all of the different impression share metrics (again, don't forget that lost impression share due to budget is only available on the campaign level).
Impression share can really give you a great indication of how you can act on low-performing keywords. Whether it is increasing bids or daily budget, improving the overall quality of your ad and keywords, or using search terms to identify new keywords and negatives, you have many options for improvement before considering pausing a keyword. If you have questions about how to interpret impression share, leave a comment or reach out to your Customer Success rep.
This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.
Sunday, 27 October 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] Give Link Discovery a Fighting Chance with Monitor Backlinks
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Give Link Discovery a Fighting
Chance with Monitor Backlinks'
There are two things that many bloggers struggle with in the fight to grow a
successful blog. The first is developing well-written, relevant content and the
second is attracting high-quality backlinks. The latest search engine updates
and all of the ot...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BasicBlogTips/~3/kwnf1FumBro/monitor-backlinks.html
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Chance with Monitor Backlinks'
There are two things that many bloggers struggle with in the fight to grow a
successful blog. The first is developing well-written, relevant content and the
second is attracting high-quality backlinks. The latest search engine updates
and all of the ot...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BasicBlogTips/~3/kwnf1FumBro/monitor-backlinks.html
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Saturday, 26 October 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] Cooperative Content Will Eventually Dominate Your Polished Content
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Cooperative Content Will
Eventually Dominate Your Polished Content'
The legions of companies now embracing content marketing as a piece of their
communications arsenal grew by 11% as I typed this sentence. Alas many (perhaps
most?) of these new content devotees have not embraced Youtility in the least,
and are instead making content they think they need, rather than content real
people actually want. []Cooperative Content Will Eventually Dominate Your
Polished Content is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and
Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing-2/cooperative-content-will-eventually-dominate-your-polished-content/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cooperative-content-will-eventually-dominate-your-polished-content
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Eventually Dominate Your Polished Content'
The legions of companies now embracing content marketing as a piece of their
communications arsenal grew by 11% as I typed this sentence. Alas many (perhaps
most?) of these new content devotees have not embraced Youtility in the least,
and are instead making content they think they need, rather than content real
people actually want. []Cooperative Content Will Eventually Dominate Your
Polished Content is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and
Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing-2/cooperative-content-will-eventually-dominate-your-polished-content/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cooperative-content-will-eventually-dominate-your-polished-content
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] Five Reasons Why College Students Should Get Blogging!
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Five Reasons Why College Students
Should Get Blogging!'
Starting a blog is super idea for anybody but its a particularly good plan for
college students looking to further their employment prospects. A blog has a
million and one advantages-but that would make for a rather lengthy article! So
instead, I'd like to bring you five reasons why you should consider blogging as
a student.
VISIT THE BLOG TO CONTINUE READING: http://basicblogtips.com
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BasicBlogTips/~3/MAL-TX5N8lk/college-students-get-blogging.html
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Should Get Blogging!'
Starting a blog is super idea for anybody but its a particularly good plan for
college students looking to further their employment prospects. A blog has a
million and one advantages-but that would make for a rather lengthy article! So
instead, I'd like to bring you five reasons why you should consider blogging as
a student.
VISIT THE BLOG TO CONTINUE READING: http://basicblogtips.com
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BasicBlogTips/~3/MAL-TX5N8lk/college-students-get-blogging.html
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Friday, 25 October 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] Link Reclamation - Whiteboard Friday
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Link Reclamation - Whiteboard
Friday'
Posted by RossHudgens
The one thing any good marketer appreciates more than a mention of their brand
is a link back to their own domains. For a variety of reasons, some
authorsâno matter how well meaning they areâdon't include that link
with the mention. With the right tools and a little diplomacy, these are some of
the easiest opportunities to earn valuable links back to our own properties, and
in today's Whiteboard Friday, Ross Hudgens gives us several great places to
start.
Ross Hudgens - Link Reclamation - Whiteboard Friday
For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard:
Video Transcription
Hey Moz fans, welcome to Whiteboard Friday. My name is Ross Hudgens, and I
work for Siege Media, a content market agency/link building and link development
agency. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about link reclamation, one of my
favorite subjects.
Link reclamation, if you're not familiar with it, is the task of finding
opportunities on the web where you've been linked to or you've been mentioned,
but haven't been properly linked to for whatever reason. Maybe the webmaster
messed something up, maybe they just didn't find the right URL, maybe they
misspelled your domain name, all kinds of reasons inform why someone might do
that incorrectly.
For the purposes of hopefully getting more traffic and also getting those
links that we like that potentially can add a lot of value to our domain and
help us rank for keywords we want to, it makes sense to do link reclamation. And
even more so, I really like it because the conversion is so high. Because
someone has already mentioned you, you get a really high conversion on your
request, because normally they already have a positive brand sentiment for you.
So one thing to think of in general for link reclamation, if you think about
it as a main concept, is it most frequently occurs when your brand has an
experience outside of the digital world or disconnected from your main domain.
So it could still be digital, but disconnected. So for example, if you're
Target, you probably have a lot of experiences in store where people refer to
that, and it doesn't necessarily make sense to refer to your domain.
Similarly, if you have a YouTube video, it might not make as much sense. But
there are still opportunities to ask for a citation back to your domain in those
instances that you might not have totally realized before that. That is possible
with these kinds of opportunities.
So there are a lot of ways to go about doing that. I'm going to dive into a
few of them in this strategy section. A big one for big brands is brand
misspellings. Frequently, people will have webmaster error. For whatever reason,
they will misspell your domain name.
For example, if you're a giant company, Pepsi or something like that, you
could look for PEPS.com, and likely you're going to find some instances where
people have linked to that thinking it's Pepsi. So you can go to them and say,
"Hey, please fix your error on your site, how you've linked to us. It will help
your users. It will help us. It will be a great thing all around." They will
generally do that.
So a good process for finding those and also seeing if there is actually
link volume around different misspellings is detailed on this link by John Henry
Scherck, who I might have mispronounced his name. But that URL, you can find
that process, which I can't really get into as much as I would like to here. But
I definitely recommend you go to that post and check it out.
The most powerful ongoing process is simple brand monitoring. So Moz's tool,
Fresh Web Explorer is especially powerful for that. You can use advanced
operators to see where your brand has been mentioned but you haven't been linked
to. I think it's negative LD, or you can see in the advanced operators dropdown.
But that's extremely powerful to just monitor and see who's mentioning you and
all those things as an ongoing thing.
Similarly, Google by date, so Google has an advanced search setting where
you can search by 24 hours, a week, a month, things like that, and it will give
you the opportunity to see recent mentions that sometimes offer a nice
supplement to the fresh web index. So it's always good to get multiple looks at
the web, Fresh Web Explorer I believe uses RSS feeds specifically. Google, by
date has, of course, their own comprehensive index. So it's nice to get a blend
of both for finding mentions where people have talked about you, but not linked
to you.
So another good one is allinURL/tag/brand. So insert brand. If you're Pepsi,
allin/tag/Pepsi. So these are instances where people think you're significant
enough to actually link to you, significant enough to actually mention you. But
sometimes they haven't linked to you. They've created a tag for you because
they've talked about you in some way in a post. So there's a lot of sometimes
opportunity to get links on those kinds of pages.
So it's kind of a cool way to easily use Google search engine to find pages
that do those kinds of things. So you can just search by that, scrape the
results, dump it into like a spreadsheet, and you can quickly find who hasn't
linked to you by doing that kind of process.
Short form text is a kind of a unique thing. It's any kind of asset that is
short, like a definition, a stat, anything like that, that might have been
mentioned or stolen without attribution. So examples of that: One stat that is
frequently referred to is every second of page load time is a seven percent dip
in conversation rate.
So if you have that stat and you actually were the source of that stat, you
could track it in Fresh Web Explorer and Google search, these same kind of
things just like you do your brand, see who's mentioned it, and say, "Please
attribute us properly with that stat."
Other examples I like pointing to frequently is Content Marketing Institute.
They have a "what is the definition of content marketing," and that has been
stolen like 125,000 times. There is this huge opportunity where people are just
taking that, not linking to it, not attributing it properly just because they
are lazy or what have you. If you go out and reach out to those webmasters, you
can easily get links back, because most of the people will panic in that moment
and be like, "Oh, it was just a honest mistake," and link to you as they should
have.
So sometimes you might have that asset, sometimes you might not, but it's
also something to think about and have in the back of your mind when you do that
kind of data analysis that might come with an interesting stat that people might
want to take.
Reverse image search, so you have a logo or a set of logos, maybe you have
interesting assets on your site. For example, if you're National Geographic, you
might have images that everyone takes. You can start monitoring those images,
see who's taken them without attribution, and get links back by doing requests
of, "Please attribute properly."
There are tools like Image Raider, which I know does that. I haven't used it
extensively, but it's pretty good. Similarly you can use tools like TinEye and
also just reverse image search on Google to find those mentions. Of course, an
explicit and powerful one is your own logos. So you can see who has mentioned
your logo, but not linked to you in the same kind of ways.
Also, just as a tangent from this, Screaming Frog is a really powerful tool.
If you haven't heard of it, it's a good way to dump a lot of links in there,
because sometimes you might see this as a negative process if you go to a lot of
these links and you've already been linked to. So you can use Screaming Frog as
a custom filter and find exactly who hasn't linked to you by setting an exclude
to your domain name. So it can make this process more efficient for you and less
frustrating depending on the domain.
YouTube videos, so a lot of people make video assets that are hosted on
YouTube or some other platforms, but they don't necessarily get linked to for
whatever reason. Again, it's something separate from your main domain. So
because of that disconnect, they don't probably link to it a lot of time. Or
they're going to link to the YouTube video, but it doesn't mean that they're not
willing to link to you as a business if you request it.
So a good way to find that is either dump the YouTube URL in Open Site
Explorer or whatever your link management tool is and see what the data is
behind that. Or just look at the dashboard. YouTube specifically has an embed
dashboard, so you can see where people have embedded that video and not linked
back to you, or hopefully they have already linked to you, of course. But you
can capture that gap where they haven't linked to you and they should have
because it has a slight disconnect from your main domain as a YouTube video.
Links and tweets and +1s. This is more of an advanced thing. If you have a
pretty powerful Twitter account or a Google+ account, you can actually take your
archive from Twitter and create a spreadsheet essentially, dump all of your
tweets in there. Use a tool like Screaming Frog or use the Moz API for example.
Look at the data and see if any of those have been linked to and then see if
there is an opportunity to actually reach out and say, "Hey, this tweet, you
looked to my Twitter account. I'd really appreciate it if you link to my domain
instead."
A similar thing can be done for Google+. You have to do a site search for
your Google+ URL, and they won't get all of your URLs. But if you scrape that
and do the same kind of process, you might find places where people have linked
to maybe an interesting tweet by you or some interesting quote you gave or
something like that, where you might have not been linked to that you might have
wanted to and do a request like that.
So finally, moving links to primary domain. So what that means is, if you're
a big brand, sometimes you have multiple owned properties across the web, but
not all of them are you primary KPI for SEO purposes. So I've worked with
companies who have two main domains, because they can't make up their mind
really, and one is very clearly their SEO domain where they want to rank for
stuff. It's not totally clear which one in the mind of consumers is the primary
one.
So something that you can do and that I did in that instance is you go to
the one that they don't really have reason to rank for anything and ask them to
link to the other one because maybe you're changing focus or that's how you
would evangelize it to them. Most of the time they'll do it because they like
you and they're already linking to you and things like that. You'll get the more
direct link power from those kinds of links.
So, when you're doing this process, it's not as simple as asking every
single person to link to you. There's risk involved if you do this incorrectly.
So it's definitely be delicate and don't step on the wrong toes, because when
you do this, there'll be sites if you're a big brand that people cover you all
the time. Occasionally people will write about you, but maybe in that single
post they don't link to you, but in the previous ten they linked to you.
So in those kinds of instances, just let it go. You don't need a link in
every single post that you get. Potentially it can be kind of put offish to that
person that covers you all the time, and you don't want to lose that good press
by burning bridges by being over aggressive as a SEO. So in those kinds of
instances, verify that you have links already, that they cover you all the time
and just let it go if that's the kind of instance where they just mistakenly
didn't link to you that one time.
Similarly, don't step on PR. It's kind of a similar idea. When you're doing
this process, reaching out to big people that are covering you, it's frequently
newspapers don't link cite properly so you have to do that kind of outreach.
This is where it's a high value kind of campaign when you hit those big
newspapers. But it's also at risk with PR if you step on them and they don't
like what you're doing. They hate that you are talking to their contacts
directly. So verify that this is an okay thing before you start doing this
outreach with your PR team
Ask for links where you should be linked. What I mean by that is sometimes
you'll get mentions in articles in jest. Maybe they'll be talking about general
soda trends, and they'll randomly jitter off five brands that are sodas, Pepsi,
Coca-Cola, Sprite, something like that, all in a sentence. So you could go and
say, "Hey link to Pepsi," but there are four other companies there that they
would also have to link to.
You're just kind of a one off thing in the article. You don't totally make
sense to be linked to in those kinds of situations. So it's an example of a
non-harmonious kind of event where you shouldn't ask for a link because it
doesn't make sense necessarily. So in those kinds of situations, skip it. You
want places where it gets a positive brand sentiment. You should have been
linked to in the article, but they didn't
So if you can really say in your mind it adds value to the article being
linked here, then that's when you should do outreach for this kind of link
reclamation. If not, you potentially could burn bridges, step on people's toes,
and put yourself at risk for future coverage that might have been more powerful
had you not actually ruined your relationship with that press person.
And finally, if you're doing this at scale and you have a lot of people
mentioning you, you're a huge brand, you want to use tools that make this more
efficient. So one of the problems is sometimes you'll have no idea if someone
has linked to you before, unless you have a process put in place.
So there are a lot of link management tools where you can dump all of your
links into it, and it will automatically have a popup in the corner saying that
you have a link from this domain. So if you have a lot of people doing outreach
and doing link reclamation, you can see, "Hey, I've already gotten a link from
this domain or multiple links from this domain. I don't need to do this outreach
again."
Otherwise it's kind of time intensive, trying to remember who's linked to
you, who hasn't link to you, whether or not you should do that outreach, and all
of those things. So doing that on top of all of these things I think is really
powerful.
That's pretty much it, but I hope you guys see this as a valuable thing that
I do. It's really powerful, especially the bigger your brand, the more powerful
it's going to be. But I think any business on the web today who's hopefully
building a brand, because that's what it takes to rank in Google and today's
search results, is going to get occasional mentions in any of these instances
that you can potentially capitalize on that were missed where people don't link
to you.
So I hope this was valuable and have a good one.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/RWkx7nirqS4/link-reclamation-whiteboard-friday
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Friday'
Posted by RossHudgens
The one thing any good marketer appreciates more than a mention of their brand
is a link back to their own domains. For a variety of reasons, some
authorsâno matter how well meaning they areâdon't include that link
with the mention. With the right tools and a little diplomacy, these are some of
the easiest opportunities to earn valuable links back to our own properties, and
in today's Whiteboard Friday, Ross Hudgens gives us several great places to
start.
Ross Hudgens - Link Reclamation - Whiteboard Friday
For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard:
Video Transcription
Hey Moz fans, welcome to Whiteboard Friday. My name is Ross Hudgens, and I
work for Siege Media, a content market agency/link building and link development
agency. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about link reclamation, one of my
favorite subjects.
Link reclamation, if you're not familiar with it, is the task of finding
opportunities on the web where you've been linked to or you've been mentioned,
but haven't been properly linked to for whatever reason. Maybe the webmaster
messed something up, maybe they just didn't find the right URL, maybe they
misspelled your domain name, all kinds of reasons inform why someone might do
that incorrectly.
For the purposes of hopefully getting more traffic and also getting those
links that we like that potentially can add a lot of value to our domain and
help us rank for keywords we want to, it makes sense to do link reclamation. And
even more so, I really like it because the conversion is so high. Because
someone has already mentioned you, you get a really high conversion on your
request, because normally they already have a positive brand sentiment for you.
So one thing to think of in general for link reclamation, if you think about
it as a main concept, is it most frequently occurs when your brand has an
experience outside of the digital world or disconnected from your main domain.
So it could still be digital, but disconnected. So for example, if you're
Target, you probably have a lot of experiences in store where people refer to
that, and it doesn't necessarily make sense to refer to your domain.
Similarly, if you have a YouTube video, it might not make as much sense. But
there are still opportunities to ask for a citation back to your domain in those
instances that you might not have totally realized before that. That is possible
with these kinds of opportunities.
So there are a lot of ways to go about doing that. I'm going to dive into a
few of them in this strategy section. A big one for big brands is brand
misspellings. Frequently, people will have webmaster error. For whatever reason,
they will misspell your domain name.
For example, if you're a giant company, Pepsi or something like that, you
could look for PEPS.com, and likely you're going to find some instances where
people have linked to that thinking it's Pepsi. So you can go to them and say,
"Hey, please fix your error on your site, how you've linked to us. It will help
your users. It will help us. It will be a great thing all around." They will
generally do that.
So a good process for finding those and also seeing if there is actually
link volume around different misspellings is detailed on this link by John Henry
Scherck, who I might have mispronounced his name. But that URL, you can find
that process, which I can't really get into as much as I would like to here. But
I definitely recommend you go to that post and check it out.
The most powerful ongoing process is simple brand monitoring. So Moz's tool,
Fresh Web Explorer is especially powerful for that. You can use advanced
operators to see where your brand has been mentioned but you haven't been linked
to. I think it's negative LD, or you can see in the advanced operators dropdown.
But that's extremely powerful to just monitor and see who's mentioning you and
all those things as an ongoing thing.
Similarly, Google by date, so Google has an advanced search setting where
you can search by 24 hours, a week, a month, things like that, and it will give
you the opportunity to see recent mentions that sometimes offer a nice
supplement to the fresh web index. So it's always good to get multiple looks at
the web, Fresh Web Explorer I believe uses RSS feeds specifically. Google, by
date has, of course, their own comprehensive index. So it's nice to get a blend
of both for finding mentions where people have talked about you, but not linked
to you.
So another good one is allinURL/tag/brand. So insert brand. If you're Pepsi,
allin/tag/Pepsi. So these are instances where people think you're significant
enough to actually link to you, significant enough to actually mention you. But
sometimes they haven't linked to you. They've created a tag for you because
they've talked about you in some way in a post. So there's a lot of sometimes
opportunity to get links on those kinds of pages.
So it's kind of a cool way to easily use Google search engine to find pages
that do those kinds of things. So you can just search by that, scrape the
results, dump it into like a spreadsheet, and you can quickly find who hasn't
linked to you by doing that kind of process.
Short form text is a kind of a unique thing. It's any kind of asset that is
short, like a definition, a stat, anything like that, that might have been
mentioned or stolen without attribution. So examples of that: One stat that is
frequently referred to is every second of page load time is a seven percent dip
in conversation rate.
So if you have that stat and you actually were the source of that stat, you
could track it in Fresh Web Explorer and Google search, these same kind of
things just like you do your brand, see who's mentioned it, and say, "Please
attribute us properly with that stat."
Other examples I like pointing to frequently is Content Marketing Institute.
They have a "what is the definition of content marketing," and that has been
stolen like 125,000 times. There is this huge opportunity where people are just
taking that, not linking to it, not attributing it properly just because they
are lazy or what have you. If you go out and reach out to those webmasters, you
can easily get links back, because most of the people will panic in that moment
and be like, "Oh, it was just a honest mistake," and link to you as they should
have.
So sometimes you might have that asset, sometimes you might not, but it's
also something to think about and have in the back of your mind when you do that
kind of data analysis that might come with an interesting stat that people might
want to take.
Reverse image search, so you have a logo or a set of logos, maybe you have
interesting assets on your site. For example, if you're National Geographic, you
might have images that everyone takes. You can start monitoring those images,
see who's taken them without attribution, and get links back by doing requests
of, "Please attribute properly."
There are tools like Image Raider, which I know does that. I haven't used it
extensively, but it's pretty good. Similarly you can use tools like TinEye and
also just reverse image search on Google to find those mentions. Of course, an
explicit and powerful one is your own logos. So you can see who has mentioned
your logo, but not linked to you in the same kind of ways.
Also, just as a tangent from this, Screaming Frog is a really powerful tool.
If you haven't heard of it, it's a good way to dump a lot of links in there,
because sometimes you might see this as a negative process if you go to a lot of
these links and you've already been linked to. So you can use Screaming Frog as
a custom filter and find exactly who hasn't linked to you by setting an exclude
to your domain name. So it can make this process more efficient for you and less
frustrating depending on the domain.
YouTube videos, so a lot of people make video assets that are hosted on
YouTube or some other platforms, but they don't necessarily get linked to for
whatever reason. Again, it's something separate from your main domain. So
because of that disconnect, they don't probably link to it a lot of time. Or
they're going to link to the YouTube video, but it doesn't mean that they're not
willing to link to you as a business if you request it.
So a good way to find that is either dump the YouTube URL in Open Site
Explorer or whatever your link management tool is and see what the data is
behind that. Or just look at the dashboard. YouTube specifically has an embed
dashboard, so you can see where people have embedded that video and not linked
back to you, or hopefully they have already linked to you, of course. But you
can capture that gap where they haven't linked to you and they should have
because it has a slight disconnect from your main domain as a YouTube video.
Links and tweets and +1s. This is more of an advanced thing. If you have a
pretty powerful Twitter account or a Google+ account, you can actually take your
archive from Twitter and create a spreadsheet essentially, dump all of your
tweets in there. Use a tool like Screaming Frog or use the Moz API for example.
Look at the data and see if any of those have been linked to and then see if
there is an opportunity to actually reach out and say, "Hey, this tweet, you
looked to my Twitter account. I'd really appreciate it if you link to my domain
instead."
A similar thing can be done for Google+. You have to do a site search for
your Google+ URL, and they won't get all of your URLs. But if you scrape that
and do the same kind of process, you might find places where people have linked
to maybe an interesting tweet by you or some interesting quote you gave or
something like that, where you might have not been linked to that you might have
wanted to and do a request like that.
So finally, moving links to primary domain. So what that means is, if you're
a big brand, sometimes you have multiple owned properties across the web, but
not all of them are you primary KPI for SEO purposes. So I've worked with
companies who have two main domains, because they can't make up their mind
really, and one is very clearly their SEO domain where they want to rank for
stuff. It's not totally clear which one in the mind of consumers is the primary
one.
So something that you can do and that I did in that instance is you go to
the one that they don't really have reason to rank for anything and ask them to
link to the other one because maybe you're changing focus or that's how you
would evangelize it to them. Most of the time they'll do it because they like
you and they're already linking to you and things like that. You'll get the more
direct link power from those kinds of links.
So, when you're doing this process, it's not as simple as asking every
single person to link to you. There's risk involved if you do this incorrectly.
So it's definitely be delicate and don't step on the wrong toes, because when
you do this, there'll be sites if you're a big brand that people cover you all
the time. Occasionally people will write about you, but maybe in that single
post they don't link to you, but in the previous ten they linked to you.
So in those kinds of instances, just let it go. You don't need a link in
every single post that you get. Potentially it can be kind of put offish to that
person that covers you all the time, and you don't want to lose that good press
by burning bridges by being over aggressive as a SEO. So in those kinds of
instances, verify that you have links already, that they cover you all the time
and just let it go if that's the kind of instance where they just mistakenly
didn't link to you that one time.
Similarly, don't step on PR. It's kind of a similar idea. When you're doing
this process, reaching out to big people that are covering you, it's frequently
newspapers don't link cite properly so you have to do that kind of outreach.
This is where it's a high value kind of campaign when you hit those big
newspapers. But it's also at risk with PR if you step on them and they don't
like what you're doing. They hate that you are talking to their contacts
directly. So verify that this is an okay thing before you start doing this
outreach with your PR team
Ask for links where you should be linked. What I mean by that is sometimes
you'll get mentions in articles in jest. Maybe they'll be talking about general
soda trends, and they'll randomly jitter off five brands that are sodas, Pepsi,
Coca-Cola, Sprite, something like that, all in a sentence. So you could go and
say, "Hey link to Pepsi," but there are four other companies there that they
would also have to link to.
You're just kind of a one off thing in the article. You don't totally make
sense to be linked to in those kinds of situations. So it's an example of a
non-harmonious kind of event where you shouldn't ask for a link because it
doesn't make sense necessarily. So in those kinds of situations, skip it. You
want places where it gets a positive brand sentiment. You should have been
linked to in the article, but they didn't
So if you can really say in your mind it adds value to the article being
linked here, then that's when you should do outreach for this kind of link
reclamation. If not, you potentially could burn bridges, step on people's toes,
and put yourself at risk for future coverage that might have been more powerful
had you not actually ruined your relationship with that press person.
And finally, if you're doing this at scale and you have a lot of people
mentioning you, you're a huge brand, you want to use tools that make this more
efficient. So one of the problems is sometimes you'll have no idea if someone
has linked to you before, unless you have a process put in place.
So there are a lot of link management tools where you can dump all of your
links into it, and it will automatically have a popup in the corner saying that
you have a link from this domain. So if you have a lot of people doing outreach
and doing link reclamation, you can see, "Hey, I've already gotten a link from
this domain or multiple links from this domain. I don't need to do this outreach
again."
Otherwise it's kind of time intensive, trying to remember who's linked to
you, who hasn't link to you, whether or not you should do that outreach, and all
of those things. So doing that on top of all of these things I think is really
powerful.
That's pretty much it, but I hope you guys see this as a valuable thing that
I do. It's really powerful, especially the bigger your brand, the more powerful
it's going to be. But I think any business on the web today who's hopefully
building a brand, because that's what it takes to rank in Google and today's
search results, is going to get occasional mentions in any of these instances
that you can potentially capitalize on that were missed where people don't link
to you.
So I hope this was valuable and have a good one.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/RWkx7nirqS4/link-reclamation-whiteboard-friday
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] Are You Missing Youtility’s Biggest Marketing Opportunity?
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Are You Missing Youtility's
Biggest Marketing Opportunity?'
Unless youve been off-planet, youve probably already seen, heard, felt, tasted
and/or smelled more than one piece of content concerning Jay Baers new book
Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help, Not Hype (what, you missed the
delicious Jay Baer Claws, available as a PDF you can output on that new
3D-printer oven?). In fact, []Are You Missing Youtilitys Biggest Marketing
Opportunity? is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and
Content...Read the whole entry...
You may view the latest post at
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/48851277/0/convinceandconvert~Are-You-Missing-Youtilitys-Biggest-Marketing-Opportunity/
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Biggest Marketing Opportunity?'
Unless youve been off-planet, youve probably already seen, heard, felt, tasted
and/or smelled more than one piece of content concerning Jay Baers new book
Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help, Not Hype (what, you missed the
delicious Jay Baer Claws, available as a PDF you can output on that new
3D-printer oven?). In fact, []Are You Missing Youtilitys Biggest Marketing
Opportunity? is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and
Content...Read the whole entry...
You may view the latest post at
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/48851277/0/convinceandconvert~Are-You-Missing-Youtilitys-Biggest-Marketing-Opportunity/
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
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