TRAFFIC
The cycle I see:
Fresh website = untrusted. Therefore,
aim some good links into it. Google sees
that the site should be ‘auditioned’ on the
search results. Site gets ranked, then either
of two things happens:
● ● site is satisfying to users, engagement
metrics validate this, site ranks and in
most cases rankings are decoupled from
link volumes
● ● site is not satisfying to users, engagement
metrics validate this, site loses rankings
and in most cases rankings are decoupled
from link volumes
In other words, if Google doesn’t like you
then no number of links is going to help.
What is a good link?
I used to think that a good link was one
that had good Majestic metrics or Toolbar
PageRank, but in the new age of Penguin
my opinion has changed.
I decided a good link is from a site that:
● ● ranks on Google search results. Better
rankings equals better link source
● ● has more, rather than fewer, referring
domains from other ranking websites
● ● the link is on new content
● ● the link is above the fold
● ● the link is on a page that has lots of
internal page rank, ie lots of websites
page link to the page the link is on
● ● I have not seen any good evidence for
either geolocation or topical relevance
adding more value to a link.
So when I am buying links (it’s igaming,
this is what we do), I look for all of the
above. My qualifier is the strength of
the rankings. If a site doesn’t rank I’m
not interested.
What about Majestic Moz, AHrefs?
I love Majestic. I’ve used their service
for years, but I never evaluate a link based
on Majestic Trust Flow alone.
I did some correlation analysis recently.
link authority for certain links which
come from highly curated and important
websites such as Wikipedia. All external
Wikipedia links are no-follow, but they are
valuable ‘editorial votes’ for Google, so to
me it makes sense Google would account
for certain links that are no-follow.
“Hey, I was guilty as charged four years ago when I did
several Disavows. But I would never do a Disavow today”
I downloaded the top 30,000 domains by
search visibility on SEMrush and then
used a function called Correl in Excel to
see the relationships between Trust Flow
and referring domains.
With Moz domain authority and various
Ahrefs metrics, I’ve found similarly poor
correlations with ranking.
When I look at what makes a link
valuable, the rankings of a donor site are
a good start.
It makes sense that, when Google ranks
a website, it trusts the outbound links from
that site and therefore passes PageRank/
TrustRank/link authority.
Tip: SEMrush in combination with
URL Profiler allows you to aggregate data
on thousands of domains quickly. If you’re
looking through a link-seller list, run it
through URL Profiler using SEMrush API,
see what ranks and buy from those sites.
Putting it all together
If you do Disavow, I think you’re
wasting your time and money. Even worse,
you’re likely to kill off links that could
be giving you page rank. And, hey, I was
guilty as charged four years ago when I
did several Disavows. But I would never
do a Disavow today.
I would use links only when I’m
confident Google trusts the page I
want to rank and I would get links only
from sites that rank on Google’s index.
Being indexed on Google search results
is not enough.
And remember: if you buy lots of junk
links (apart from an outside risk of manual
penalty) you’re just giving money away
to the wrong people.
No-follow links
Just my guess on this… We know Google
does not pass PageRank on no-follow
links, but to me it makes sense they pass
“Rem ember: if you buy lots of junk links (apart from an
outside risk of manual penalty) you’re just giving money
away to the wrong people”
NICK GARNER is a long-
time digital marketer,
having previously worked
as SEO manager for Betfair
and then as head of search
for Unibet. More recently, he
founded Rize digital.
iGB Affiliate Issue 66 DEC 2017/JAN 2018
27