My Slides from SEO On The Beach conference in Manga, Spain. Not all links are equal, to increase rankings in Google you need links that are of high quality and relevant to your site. In this talk I explain better ways of measuring the value of a link. Plus case studies of campaigns that has generated links that has increased rankings.

2. Nominet Homepage

4. How many links to increase
rankings?

5. 22 Links

6. 1
11
21
31
41
51
61
01/03/18 15/03/18 29/03/18 12/04/18 26/04/18 10/05/18 24/05/18
Ranking
”Domain Names” from position #52 to position #2

7. 73
websites
everything
else

8. Data from: SimilarWeb

9. Google makes hundreds of changes to its algorithm
every year but directionally they have been saying
the same things for a decade…..

10. Brands are the solution… brands are how you sort out the cesspool
”
“ Eric Schmidt, former CEO, Google

11. We actually came up with a classifier to say,
okay, IRS or Wikipedia or New York Times is over on this side,
and the low-quality sites are over on this side.
”
“ Matt Cutts, former Head of Webspam, Google

12. Google has repeatedly altered it’s algorithm to give
higher and higher value to sites that are:
trusted
authoritative
highly read
routinely receive links from brands and other publishers

13. The way we report on link building hasn’t
meaningfully changed in
the last 20 years

14. “We want 250 links a month”

15. that’s easy

16. Links are not worth the same

17. We didn’t find traditional link metrics all that useful,
so we built our own algorithm

18. https://www.vervesearch.com/linkscore/

19. • Traditional metrics (TrustFlow, linking root domains etc)
• Language
• Relevancy
• Content Category of site
• Link location
• Follow/no follow
• Penalty/no penalty
The LinkScore takes into account dozens of metrics, like:

20. Score: 14Score: 494 Score: 159
Score from 0 to 500

21. 22 links moved a client 50 positions for ‘domain names’
1
11
21
31
41
51
61
01/03/18 15/03/18 29/03/18 12/04/18 26/04/18 10/05/18 24/05/18
Ranking

22. Those links included…
Those total 22 links got a LINK SCORE of 3,000

23. x 87
x 1,500
3,000 link score is the equivalent of

24. Data from: SimilarWeb

25. To get to the quality sites you need to
bring quality, and DESERVE more
than just a link

26. You need to deserve more
than just a link

27. Our Work Regularly Receives Print Coverage
New York Post Washington Post The Mirror The Metro

28. Radio Coverage

29. TV3 (Sweden) NBC ITV
AND even TV Coverage

30. Greenpeace
And social shares
WWF
NASA

31. Most journalist has to write between
8 -15 articles per day

32. They are crying out for good content, that is
shareable and connects with their audience

34. 24 Hour London
for Lenstore
https://www.lenstore.co.uk/vc/24-hour-london/

38. 159 Links
10,557 Link Score
1.7 million views

39. It is not enough to do one campaign that gets good links.
You need consistently high quality links!

40. Launched 6 Campaigns in 2018

41. 0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
Jan Feb March Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec
LinkScore by month:

42. 358 links
27,838 LinkScore

43. Their target term, “Contact Lenses”, searched 74k times a month, moved
from position 12 at start to position 2
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
01/04/2017 31/05/2017 30/07/2017 28/09/2017 27/11/2017

44. Non-brand organic traffic increased by 188%

46. National Stress
for Babylon

49. Professor Mike Thelwall
Professor of Information Science
Wolverhampton University
Inventor of TensiStrength

50. 158 links
7,316 LinkScore
74k social shares

51. 0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
7,000
8,000
9,000
08/06/2017 08/09/2017 08/12/2017 08/03/2018 08/06/2018 08/09/2018 08/12/2018 08/03/2019
SearchmetricsVisibility
8x increase in 10 months

52. team of
50
dev
design
Tech
SEO
creative
outreach

53. It wouldn’t work in our industry, because it’s tightly regulated
It wouldn’t work in our industry, because we’re B2B
It wouldn’t work in our industry, because it’s boring
It wouldn’t work in my country
It wouldn’t work in our industry, because it’s very competitive

54. Bullshit.
Ok, it might be harder but not impossible.

55. Name things that are white?

56. Name things that are white in the fridge?

57. Restrictions and challenges can be better
for creativity

58. We’re saying it because we got Newsweek to link to an online casino

59. we got the BBC to link to an online pharmacy… with this headline

60. Median Linking Root Domains for Top 20 Rankings Sites in each country

61. It wouldn’t work because
we don’t have the contacts

62. Tools

63. gorkana.com
www.gorkana.com

64. www.buzzstream.com

65. hunter.io
www.hunter.io

66. Outreach Email Tips

72. The main difference between success
and failing is not giving up

74. 3 buildings fell through – it took 6 months to get this campaign created.

75. Anyone can come up with ideas, but
developing ideas is the key, and that is a team effort.

76. uper chickens
Source: Margaret Heffernanhttps://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_why_it_s_time_to_forget_the_pecking_order_at_work?language=en

78. “Being afraid, but doing
it anyway, since 1978”
Lisa.Myers@vervesearch.com
@LisaDMyers