TRAFFIC
words, a bad link has zero value.
TrustRank – the history and authority
a domain built up over time. When you
have high TrustRank as a domain you can
rank really easily, and if your content is
consistently engaging, you will maintain
those rankings.
And our old friend – engagement . To
be ‘auditioned’ for a key phrase, you need
a bit of TrustRank and some PageRank.
TrustRank comes from being engaging.
The accumulation of PageRank
(the black hat part)
Once upon a time, the game was all about
PageRank, and whole businesses and
ecosystems built up around delivering and
acquiring PageRank.
From my point of view, I see PageRank
as a ‘raw force ‘ separate from the location
of a website and its content.
As mentioned before, there is a
PageRank ‘on off switch’, controlled by
the Penguin algorithm. If your links are
‘PageRank off ’, then you’re wasting your
money acquiring them.
So how do you know if a link is
‘PageRank on’?
Having been away from the SEO scene
for a bit, instead of talking to my content
marketing friends, I decided to get in touch
with the most hard-core black hat people I
know; the blackhatworld crew.
Why? Because they know what ranks
and roughly why.
My question to them: if a website ranks
on Google and has good Majestic Citation/
Trust Flow, can I be fairly confident about
PageRank being ‘on’?
My content marketing friends didn’t
really know, but fortunately the crew in
90 Digital, which corroborated with the
answers from my blackhat friends, did. The
consensus is: if a site ranks, links from that
site will pass PageRank.
The rationale is really simple; if Google
ranks a website, it likes that website.
Therefore it’s more likely Penguin has not
switched off PageRank for outgoing links
from those sites.
Tools to assess ranking
How do you work out which sites rank?
SEMrush scrapes Google search results
and collates them on a big database so you
can work out whether a domain ranks in
a particular country. You can then get an
estimation on the value of the traffic from
those key phrases.
There are three ways you can get this
information:
● ● run SEMrush reports on each separate
domain (very slow)
● ● use your urlprofiler, a bulk analysis
tool which gives you a combination of
SEMrush and Majestic data (fast)
● ● talk to a friendly agency which can run
these reports for a modest cost
If you’re the DIY kind, to make it work
you will need to buy SEMrush API credits,
only available on the business plan, which
is $399 a month (I know, it’s expensive).
You will need a tool like your urlprofiler,
which comes with 500 majestic lookups per
day. Your urlprofiler has a 14-day trial and
costs £155 a year.
If you’re not the DIY sort and you want
to do this, go and reach out to a friendly
SEO agency and ask them to do what I’ve
outlined here.
Links seller lists
My old agency, 90 Digital is an obvious
target for link sellers, and over the years the
agency has built up tens of thousands of
links seller domains.
As a small favour to me, I asked one of
the team in the agency to run reports on
some fresh lists of domains they received
in the last couple of months. Around 5,000
domains were analysed and about 15% of
these domains actually rank for something
somewhere on the Google index, according
to SEMrush.
For context, were talking about junk
sites with link placements going for around
US$80, which unbelievably rank on
Google. Typically, these sites rank down
in 30th position, but among them you will
find a few domains which are very strong
in particular phrases.
Combine this ranking data with Majestic
key metrics such as number of referring
domains, Citation Flow and Trust Flow,
and you can build up a very accurate hit list
of domains to go and get placements with.
Going back to my earlier point about ‘if
it ranks, PageRank is probably switched
on’, this will provide a nice supply of fairly
cheap PageRank.
You will probably start thinking about the
‘Fred’ algorithm update targeting medium-
to high-quality spun/badly written content
blocks, and you would be right.
Huge numbers of these links seller sites
will be hit by Fred, but that doesn’t really
worry me because as long as the SEMrush
database remains up-to-date, 90 Digital can
run API reports for me and isolate those
domains which still rank. And by definition
if a site ranks, it’s got through ‘Fred’.
SAPE
If you’ve never heard of SAPE, maybe it’s
time... It’s a Russian link network. They
are a marketplace for links. You go there,
you rent links. Here’s the ethically difficult
part: often those links are submitted by
hackers who find vulnerabilities in sites
and inject links.
It’s not pretty, it’s not ethical, but
the PageRank can be awesome. If you
play a dirty game, this is a great way of
renting PageRank really cheaply. I’m not
advocating it, but I am saying it exists and
it works. The important part with SAPE:
qualify the domains you rent from.
As with links seller lists, there are 10%
of these SAPE domains which rank and
maybe 3% which are great value i.e. big
Majestic Citation Flow/Trust Flow and
some nice rankings.
Once again, SAPE is not ethical and
you’re playing with fire, but it works. Tip:
never directly link from SAPE to your
money site.
Caveat: This is hard-core igaming SEO.
You do this kind of thing with great care.
Finally
I’m very relieved that SEO hasn’t really
changed all that much in the last year. All
I’m seeing are megatrends moving steadily
in one direction or another, i.e.
● ● the selectiveness of Penguin controlling
PageRank
● ● Google’s artificial intelligence getting
better at judgement of content
● ● Google search results becoming more
meritocratic
● ● Engagement still being a long-term
decider on rankings
Any page of content can rank, as long
as it satisfies users. So think carefully about
how you can satisfy user intent before you
go accumulating PageRank.
NICK GARNER founded the
successful SEO agency 90
Digital and subsequently
founded Oshi bitcoin
casino: oshi.io.
iGB Affiliate Issue 62 APR/MAY 2017
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