Link building can be incredibly effective, but sometimes a lot of effort can go into earning links with absolutely no improvement in rankings. Why? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand shows us four things we should look at in these cases, help us hone our link building skills and make the process more effective.
For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard. Click on it to open a high resolution image in a new tab!
Video transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about why link building sometimes fails.
So I've got an example here. I'm going to do a search for artificial sweeteners. Let's say I'm working for these guys, ScienceMag.org. Well, this is actually in position 10. I put it in position 3 here, but I see that I'm position 10. I think to myself, "Man, if I could get higher up on this page, that would be excellent. I've already produced the content. It's on my domain. Like, Google seems to have indexed it fine. It's performing well enough to perform on page one, granted at the bottom of page one, for this competitive query. Now I want to move my rankings up."
So a lot of SEOs, naturally and historically, for a long time have thought, "I need to build more links to that page. If I can get more links pointing to this page, I can move up the rankings." Granted, there are some other ways to do that too, and we've discussed those in previous Whiteboard Fridays. But links are one of the big ones that people use.
I think one of the challenges that we encounter is sometimes we invest that effort. We go through the process of that outreach campaign, talking to bloggers and other news sites and looking at where our link sources are coming from and trying to get some more of those. It just doesn't seem to do anything. The link building appears to fail. It's like, man, I've got all these nice links and no new results. I didn't move up at all. I am basically staying where I am, or maybe I'm even falling down. Why is that? Why does link building sometimes work so well and so clearly and obviously, and sometimes it seems to do nothing at all?
What are some possible reasons link acquisition efforts may not be effective?
Oftentimes if you get a fresh set of eyes on it, an outside SEO perspective, they can do this audit, and they'll walk through a lot of this stuff and help you realize, "Oh yeah, that's probably why." These are things that you might need to change strategically or tactically as you approach this problem. But you can do this yourself as well by looking at why a link building campaign, why a link building effort, for a particular page, might not be working.
1) Not the right links
First one, it's not the right links. Not the right links, I mean a wide range of things, even broader than what I've listed here. But a lot of times that could mean low domain diversity. Yeah, you're getting new links, but they're coming from all the same places that you always get links from. Google, potentially, maybe views that as not particularly worthy of moving you up the rankings, especially around competitive queries.
It might be trustworthiness of source. So maybe they're saying "Yeah, you got some links, but they're not from particularly trustworthy places." Tied into that maybe we don't think or we're sure that they're not editorial. Maybe we think they're paid, or we think they're promotional in some way rather than being truly editorially given by this independent resource.
They might not come from a site or from a page that has the authority that's necessary to move you up. Again, particularly for competitive queries, sometimes low-value links are just that. They're not going to move the needle, especially not like they used to three, four, five or six years ago, where really just a large quantity of links, even from diverse domains, even if they were crappy links on crappy pages on relatively crappy or unknown websites would move the needle, not so much anymore. Google is seeing a lot more about these things.
Where else does the source link to? Is that source pointing to other stuff that is potentially looking manipulative to Google and so they discounted the outgoing links from that particular domain or those sites or those pages on those sites?
They might look at the relevance and say, "Hey, you know what? Yeah, you got linked to by some technology press articles. That doesn't really have anything to do with artificial sweeteners, this topic, this realm, or this region." So you're not getting the same result. Now we've shown that off-topic links can oftentimes move the rankings, but in particular areas and in health, in fact, may be one of those Google might be more topically sensitive to where the links are coming from than other places.
Location on page. So I've got a page here and maybe all of my links are coming from a bunch of different domains, but it's always in the right sidebar and it's always in this little feed section. So Google's saying, "Hey, that's not really an editorial endorsement. That's just them showing all the links that come through your particular blog feed or a subscription that they've got to your content or whatever it is promotionally pushing out. So we're not going to count it that way." Same thing a lot of times with footer links. Doesn't work quite as well. If you're being honest with yourself, you really want those in content links. Generally speaking, those tend to perform the best.
Or uniqueness. So they might look and they might say, "Yeah, you've got a ton of links from people who are republishing your same article and then just linking back to it. That doesn't feel to us like an editorial endorsement, and so we're just going to treat those copies as if those links didn't exist at all." But the links themselves may not actually be the problem. I think this can be a really important topic if you're doing link acquisition auditing, because sometimes people get too focused on, "Oh, it must be something about the links that we're getting." That's not always the case actually.
2) Not the right content
Sometimes it's not the right content. So that could mean things like it's temporally focused versus evergreen. So for different kinds of queries, Google interprets the intent of the searchers to be different. So it could be that when they see a search like "artificial sweeteners," they say, "Yeah, it's great that you wrote this piece about this recent research that came out. But you know what, we're actually thinking that searchers are going to want in the top few results something that's evergreen, that contains all the broad information that a searcher might need around this particular topic."
That speaks to it might not answer the searchers questions. You might think, "Well, I'm answering a great question here." The problem is, yeah you're answering one. Searchers may have many questions that they're asking around a topic, and Google is looking for something comprehensive, something that doesn't mean a searcher clicks your result and then says, "Well, that was interesting, but I need more from a different result." They're looking for the one true result, the one true answer that tells them, "Hey, this person is very happy with these types of results."
It could be poor user experience causing people to bounce back. That could be speed things, UI things, layout things, browser support things, multi-device support things. It might not use language formatting or text that people or engines can interpret as on the topic. Perhaps this is way over people's heads, far too scientifically focused, most searchers can't understand the language, or the other way around. It's a highly scientific search query and a very advanced search query and your language is way dumbed down. Google isn't interpreting that as on-topic. All the Hummingbird and topic modeling kind of things that they have say this isn't for them.
Or it might not match expectations of searchers. This is distinct and different from searchers' questions. So searchers' questions is, "I want to know how artificial sweeteners might affect me." Expectations might be, "I expect to learn this kind of information. I expect to find out these things." For example, if you go down a rabbit hole of artificial sweeteners will make your skin shiny, they're like, "Well, that doesn't meet with my expectation. I don't think that's right." Even if you have some data around that, that's not what they were expecting to find. They might bounce back. Engines might not interpret you as on-topic, etc. So lots of content kinds of things.
3) Not the right domain
Then there are also domain issues. You might not have the right domain. Your domain might not be associated with the topic or content that Google and searchers are expecting. So they see Mayo Clinic, they see MedicineNet, and they go, "ScienceMag? Do they do health information? I don't think they do. I'm not sure if that's an appropriate one." It might be perceived, even if you aren't, as spammy or manipulative by Google, more probably than by searchers. Or searchers just won't click your brand for that content. This is a very frustrating one, because we have seen a ton of times when search behavior is biased by the brand itself, by what's in this green text here, the domain name or the brand name that Google might show there. That's very frustrating, but it means that you need to build brand affinity between that topic, that keyword, and what's in searchers' heads.
4) Accessibility or technical issues
Then finally, there could be some accessibility or technical issues. Usually when that's the case, you will notice pretty easily because the page will have an error. It won't show the content properly. The cache will be an issue. That's a rare one, but you might want to check for it as well.
But hopefully, using this kind of an audit system, you can figure out why a link building campaign, a link building effort isn't working to move the needle on your rankings.
With that, we will see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Great post and extremely timely for me...quick question/comment...
You mention the low domain diversity and the relevancy of the domain, however, with some more established/highly authoritative sites covering multiple topics, does the location of the link (not on the page, but in the site structure) impact at all?
To extend your example of artificial sweeteners...If I ran a blog on recipes, would the link value be higher on a 'useful resources' page, or in a references page? Logically it should be more valuable in the content itself, but would that change based on the content?
Thanks,
Dan
Interesting question, do you think links are more useful in the page than in the site structure?
Great whiteboard Friday as always Rand!! Most of the points you touched in this session do make sense but I am wondering why didn't you talk about competitor analysis? No matter, how well your outreach program is and how great back links you are earning but if your competitor is doing comparatively better that you, probability is quite high that there will be no upward movement.
I do believe that before going for link building, we must first assess the back link portfolio of our competitors and then should go forward with own plan.
Great point and agree. You are competing against the other 9 people on the page...not against yourself!
Totally agree, competitor analysis is my first starting point, but not to imitate, or gain links solely from the same sources, but rather to devise a strategy from a solid platform of knowing what sources/types of links works. That doesn't mean to say that competitor analysis alone provides the perfect strategy every time though!
Very interesting, thank you for providing this valuable information with which I hope to save time and improve my results on SEO. As always, logic works is better than artificial tricks.
I'm loving this format - SEO is so text based and I find that a ten minute video is a refreshing way to absorb some of this stuff. So thanks, and keep it up!
Also very useful to go over this kind of audit, as I find it easy to get so comfortable with the regular 'go to' issues and problems that sometimes I forget to check all the less likely issues. I quite often sit down with a project and treat it as if weren't my own, to try and come at it from a completely fresh perspective, and I always find things I wouldn't have seen otherwise.
Awesome WBF because of the inclusion of content and topic relevancy points. One of the big issues I see as Google gets better and better is matching the RIGHT CONTENT to the RIGHT QUESTIONS. In e-commerce for instance, matching broader terms to category and subcategory pages and more specific queries to product pages. Having those pages optimized for the right type of keyword phrases is paramount to a good search experience.
Matching the expectations of searchers will lead to decreased bounce rate, more targeted traffic, and overall better conversions.
Making sure that your domain is associated with the topic or content can also help to keep your content strategy in line with your company's brand and goals as well.
As far as ensuring website relevancy is concerned, I'm a big fan of using MajesticSEO and their topical trust flow metrics. Great whiteboard Friday,as links are still one of the top ranking factors that often get abused.
Question about links and global expansion (and domination!!).
Suppose a company has a strong US (.com) presence, but are expanding into the UK. This company consistently rank lower in Google.co.uk results than Google.com results for the same keywords.
I assume NAP, language, domain,... issues play into the ranking signals. However, do links from the same country (.co.uk) add more weight to a domain on Google.co.uk results versus Google.com results?
In order to boost .co.uk rankings, would the best approach be:
Am I missing something?
Hey Brian
Same thing I faced in my project but thanks to my friend who suggest me to go for NAP. The citation creation and local links helped me lot to get better stand for my website in UK also.
Hi Brian
One more point I would like to add..
Start engaging with UK specific audience on social media. Set up independent social media channels for UK and connect potential brand fans or followers who lived in UK with them. Number of brands like Pandora(jewellery), Swarovski, Dominos etc. follow this practice. Start contest, launch special offer, schedule a hangout and other promotional activities for this country(UK) specific audience. Don't make a headache by populating US social media updates on these channels frequently.
That is great advice. Thank you!
Hello Brian,
Yes I would say, "links from the .co.uk add more weight" , but still should focus on getting links from multiple TLD so it would look natural. As simple as your strategy should not look like intentional, Google hats intentional link building.
I liked very much your post , I'm working my seo and I will consider more seriously the part of the video work . a greeting
-Not the right content
Probably the most important thing content creators should pay attention to. Rarely can one see content created with the purpose of satisfying a query (doing enough research and then creating content based on the research).
We are currently experimenting with a site about a specific tourist location, and most of the queries we are trying to rank for are badly served with existing content. Experience shows that sometimes it is enough to even create the right content- not a single link back to the page- and it will outrank most competitors. Of course, this is a slightly less competitive industry we are talking about here- but I've witnessed how serving the right content can, most of the time, help you outrank sites with DA that goes even above 70-80.
I watched the full video and its indicating towards quality link building, Relevancy, and user interference, Great post!!! thanks for sharing.
This Video should watch all SEO who is doing link Building, because this strategy Really Great ! if any body wasting time and efforts then Please stop NOW.. Please Share to all SEO..
Thanks Rand.
Brilliant post as always Rand! I think you hit the nail on the head when you stated, you keep going back to the same well for links. You need to have diversity in the pool that you draw from. Thematically relevant links in my experience will reap a much greater reward then general link building. There are lots of other things that you mentioned that can effect your rankings or lack of them. Is your on page set up correctly? Do your competitors have a better site architecture? What does their on page look like? Do they have higher Trust in Google's eyes? Do they have more social engagement? Love the whiteboard fridays man! Thanks so much.
That´s a nice video and thanks for the tipps. I completely agree, but it is relay difficult to get links from webs with the same thematic and with a high authority. It takes time, strategy and works!!
Rand, as someone who's new to the world of SEO, this was extremely helpful! I wasn't aware that promotional links in the sidebar or footer are evaluated differently than links in body content. Looking forward to next week's Whiteboard Friday already.
Question - how do you guys transcribe your videos? Is it by hand or do you use a specific tool?
At the bottom of their article they link to speechpad.com - a service offering human transcription of videos, looks like they pay about $10 for ten minutes of video, which looks pretty great considering the time involved to transcribe.
Yep! We use Speechpad. They turn things around quickly and are remarkably accurate -- even getting things like "rel canonical" and the (often complex) names of industry pros spelled right. We do a quick check for typos and add the formatting ourselves, but have had great experience with the service.
Another great article, Rand! This really demonstrates how SEO's and PR teams have to work closely now more than ever - And that relationship is only going to get stronger over time as Google continues to develop & grow!
I think the page linking to you needs to be on the same topic, otherwise a question mark is raised as to why that page has linked to you. I'm sure a flag goes up for links from non-relevant pages, and an algo explores and punishes those links
Nice, Informative Post!
Interesting post. If content marketing has been used to increase a page rank for a particular keyword phrase, I also feel that the 'follow' links should be placed naturally in the text and not as a source at the bottom of an infographic for example. Google is getting smarter with this and I believe they have less value than a natural link. Natural links are useful for readers rather than source links which have been forced upon for link building purposes.
When I'm reading, I like the followup info at the bottom. I dont want to stop midsentence and click a clink while I'm reading the article. I am a human, btw. :)
Hello, so I've just watched your video. The funny thing is my website is on position 10 (first on the second google page) for almost a month now and it doesn't move up. I tried to create 2, 3 more backlinks but, when I do that it goes 1 or 2 positions down.
So if i'm not doing anything it stays at 10. I don't know what should I do next. Maybe I should wait a little time and then to start building links based on your strategy in this video...
Anyways, good tips, thank you!
they were usually built without seeing any relevance to the context or the quality of website, and were hurting the rankings big time.
Love how you went FULLY went over the common and uncommon mistakes link builders might be making with link acquisition. It's always a pleasure to listen to Rand explain each topic on his lists in such depth.
Awesome explanation Rand!
Often times I get caught up in trying to write specifically about one topic, but forget about the overall picture and about all the sub-topics that a user inherently needs as well.
A perfect example of where I came up short, but expected greater results in link building and rankings is on a travel site that I'm working on. I was trying to help my client rank their travel site for a particular city... and wouldn't you know it, I had the same results as you listed in your video and I COULD NOT get the site above #10 or #11.
My Problem...
As I can see from your video, I was being too narrow with my focus. While I provided great information on this particular travel city (history, maps, climate, culture etc) I completely missed the boat for what the visitor is looking for when they TRAVEL to a city... like (lodging, restaurants, things to do, map etc).
So I have a travel domain talking like an encyclopedia, when it needs to be geared towards the tourist and talk like it too. Now the work begins... again :)
Thanks for the video Rand!
This is a great post, it's massively important to sometimes take a step back and look at why the links are not preforming as you expect.
Post to the point, Rand Fishkin !
It is all about pagerank, and you are forgot to mention about dofollow attributes....:P
Many thanks for this Rand. You mention that some links may not help if they are not appropriate for the reasons you list, do you think it is possible to be penalised for having too many of these links
Awesome post Rand , I liked it so much , I will consider more seriously the part of the video work .
I think thats very tru , but i also think we cant forget some site wich will give us a ranking boost and have high DA/PA and maybe are not so directly to our content.
Another reason that does not work, is that coincidences of life, the web sites that have your links are hosted on the same IP (server).
Great WBF Rand,
I know DA/PA are Moz's metrics, but does a link from a page from higher PA/DA brings more juice?
Off topic: Would you consider adding English subtitle on your WBF videos (since you have a transcript)...
... because English isn't my native and sometimes I find it hard to follow.
Stay awesome,
Hi Rand,
Does Google consider links created by related-post type Wordpress plug-ins to be internal links? Or is this just another example of links you've built that don't help your page rank higher?
Hi Rand! You are genuinely brilliant. I have sat through hundreds of presentations in my life and you have an outstanding insight into your topic. You also present the information in a way which is both engaging and conveys the information so that it can be easily absorbed. Thank you!
Great piece as always! I personally have found acquiring high quality organic links to be one of the greatest challenges to SEO. The pieces you laid out in your whiteboard Friday will definitely have me re-think parts of my strategy. Thanks for taking the time to post this!
Great topic, Rand. We must all go back to basics from time to time, and work on expanding our knowledge continuously. And, with this video you are providing exactly that.
To be honest, until now, I didn't care much about "Not the right domain" part, but it it really makes sense to me now (when I look at some past projects and building tons of links without getting the ranking movements I expected). If your domain is not associated with targeted topics in searchers’ minds, you are bound to have some problems.
Thanks again for another great lesson!
Google and their AUTHORITY! lmao
very good post and very helpful,i can resolve my own same problems ,it will be helpful in my own blog
https://kamaldeep198720.blogspot.in/
Outstanding Explanation! I would summarize parts of this video by saying I hypothesize Google tracks each link and where it is placed. They watch how each link performs in each position and based on various different insights and and algorithms decide on where your placement belongs. More and more it is getting less about what the SEO does and more about how Google interprets the page, value, and performance.
Great detail and ideas to take into consideration. I always say to people, "Try and think like Google".
Incredible post, but I have a doubt. Is the domain the most important thing in SEO?
I know that is very important but you give more importance here.
Thanks for your help :)
Excellent article Rand. Im based in South Africa and your name is actually our currency so maybe this means good financial reward soon :-)
I agree 100% with your points in that Google will not reward links for the sake of simply having volume. Lately the drive has been to engrossing content with relevant backlinks which is exactly what you are saying.
very exhaustive and full-scale article, though it's short! This list of factors really contains all the most important directions of the optimization strategies that we have to keep in mind all the time and to work on. Thanks, Rand!
Very god article!
In ecommerce the very big issues is better matching the right content to the right questions.
Improve the matching for improve the navigation experience.
Improve the navigation experience for lower the bounce frequency.
Great! quality of the backlinks is crucial to get high ! content, images, blogs....a lot of work to do! :-)
One of a Google Webmaster Office hours attendee mentioned that link building is dead. Though it's not and we all know that link building is the propellant which fuels your online efforts. Doing only link building is what Google hates. If you are not adding any value to your niche, gradually you will fall down the SERP results. The good thing was link diversity which most people lack to achieve. My question here is What should SEO's do in order to rank above News sites or sites which are already there, like in your example Mayoclinic, medicnet & news.sciencemag.org? No matter how good you do for UX and content, I have rarely seen anyone ranking better than them. What do you suggest?
Totally agree about the "fresh pair of eyes" comment. This happened to me recently on a client I've been working with long term. It's always a good idea to step back and bring in a new perspective.
I really love the way you described the matters. One thing I would like to know, is there any relation between LSI and the Question Answering of user's query (you're mentioned topic).
And would you please tell us more about the Domain Diversity.
Thanks. :)
What Rand said is absolutely correct. My question is what needs to be done for science mag to beat the big players in the industry and to rank on top of them. What would be a spot on link building strategy for them?
You almost right. I'm with you. This Video should watch all SEO who is doing link Building.
Another awesome WBF Rand :) what I have observed during most of the SEO Audits is the irrelevant links, they were usually built without seeing any relevance to the context or the quality of website, and were hurting the rankings big time. I think modern SEO's preference should be earning links within the context, relevance and originality rather than running after some PR or PA or DA.
This is a very useful article. Thanks.
But I still have a doubt uncleared.
My moz rank, which was 2.11 without my effort or knowledge, suddenly declined to '0' when I worked and tried to increase it. What can be the reason...?
Rand Fishkin Though the video is buffering and I will see it later. I have small REQUEST to you that make the Next White Board Friday based on what On-Page Elements we need to make sure be present on it and in which way.
Also, then on the other Next White Board Friday tell us about the On-Page Elements we need to make sure be present on the web for our portal.
Good One..
Hey Rand I am not surprised with the points you described above but liked the way you presented. It's so easy to understand and follow. Back-links are the major factor to drag your business on top positions but it matters how they are built.
Have a great weekend ahead...!
Great whiteboard Friday as usual!
It could also be that the people above you are getting more/better links at a faster pace than you are.
Wow,
I love the video. I have to invest a lot more time in link type diversity among other things.
Thanx
All good tips - thanks Rand :-)
Great video, Rand. I really like the point on temporal vs evergreen content.
Hi,
Rand thank you very much for your new edition of white board friday
Nice read and very informative. Thanks Brian
Hi Rand,
I have watched full video and It may game changer for me. Because, I am focusing on all following SEO parameters on pages before make it live.
1. Page Elements with help of Moz Toolbar
2. Page Attributes with help of Moz Toolbar
3. Adding Proper Images
4. Adding Content
5. Load Time
6. Browser Compatibility and many more.
But, I can see certain issue to rank well with other pages on website. If we are talking about home page then I can see maximum impressions and clicks on home page with hundreds of keywords. And, I was confuse after analyzing it on Google webmaster tools.
I have checked various domains on Google webmaster tools to check links to respective pages on website. (home page, category pages, product pages, blog posts and more)
And, It's amazing! Category pages are not ranking well on Google even after adding all important parameters. Now, Answer is pretty clear for me. We have very less links to other pages (exclude home page)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxyEDFdgDN-iX2s1U...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxyEDFdgDN-iUEQzO...
Just see at following screenshot, We have quality links on different pages and We have distributed our efforts to gather links with all page. And, We have good ranking position with all pages where we have added our efforts.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxyEDFdgDN-icmIxR...
I have pretty simple question to gather quality links... I am using Open Site Explorer, AHref Tool and Google Alerts to discover external opportunity. And, I am wishing to double my efforts to sprint up ranking position... So, Are these enough tools? Any suggestion!!
Now, If we are talking about right content then, It's very true. We have changed Title Tag and Meta Description on website without enhancing content on pages... It's happening with eCommerce industry. And, We got issue to cut down our impressions and clicks from Google!
Ultimately, We have decided to enhance and match content on pages associated to Title and Meta... It works!! Because, We have started to give answers to customers by adding FAQ, Features and many more...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxyEDFdgDN-iRnlHN...
Hi Anand Mistry
I am with you, all website owners did all this steps, but why some sites always in first result in google?
The answer to this question'll find in this article,
thanks
I have an alternate hypothesis: Links are not helping your rank because they are not a strong signal anymore / everyone else has them / you don't have the other signals required Its just not about links anymore. Nor is it about content marketing. Pursuing this circa 2010 strategy is wasting your client's money and putting their site at increased risk
"Backlinks, even though there’s some noise and certainly a lot of spam, for the most part are still a really, really big win in terms of quality for search results."
— Matt Cutts, 2/19/14
You are almost right. I would say it's just not about any links anymore.
If we assume a page has decent or better content, the links are by far the most important factor. But that doesn't mean any link will do the work.
I think this WBF is great and good way to make sure you don't build links in vain.
I agree that it's not only about Links.. But it plays an important role. what you think the best alternative for links? You may say about Social signals...No doubt they helps a lot (for branding) and a few for SERPs.. as they don't pass any link juice..
The most important thing is "Authority Links".. how can you ignore it?