1.
On-Page & Off-Page SEO
Rocks Digital
June 2017

2.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – About Me
About Me
• Senior SEO Consultant, BillHartzer.com
• Founder, DFWSEM Association (2004)
• US Brand Ambassador, Majestic.com
• Brand Ambassador, OnCrawl.com
• Practicing Organic/Natural SEO since 1996
• Formerly Senior VP, Advice Interactive (Advice Local)
• Senior SEO Strategist, Globe Runner
• Director of SEO, Standing Dog

3.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing - Overview
Overview
• Off – site SEO - Linking Basics
• Using Majestic for Link Analysis
• Analyzing and Fixing Your Links
• Using OnCrawl for SEO Analysis
• SEO Testing Results
@bhartzer

4.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing - Linking Basics
Why Use Links as a Ranking Factor?
• Google has run experiments that excluded links as a factor.
• Google doesn’t have a way (yet) to exclude links
@bhartzer

5.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Linking Basics
Anchor Text
<a href="http://www.example.com">Example Anchor Text</a>
• Anchor text describes what a user will find when they click
• Keyword rich anchor text still helps rankings
• Too much? Algorithmic or manual penalty possible
@bhartzer

6.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Linking Basics
Link Placement – Maximum SEO Value
• Header & content areas most valuable
• 1st link counted if multiple links to same
URL on page
@bhartzer

7.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Linking Basics
Paid Vs. Natural Links
• Buying or Selling Links that Pass
PageRank is bad
• Google can identify Guest Blog Posts,
Sponsored Posts, Advertorials
• Sponsored Posts must be “nofollow”
• Sponsored posts must disclosure it’s
paid or sponsored (FTC guidelines)
• Google knows which sections are ads
@bhartzer

8.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Linking Basics
Link Schemes Are Bad
Google’s Guidelines: http://bit.ly/google-link-schemes
• No Paid links that pass PageRank
• No Excessive link exchanges (define excessive?)
• No Large-scale article marketing or guest posting
• No Using auto programs or services to create links
• No Optimized anchor text in articles or press releases
• No Low-quality directory or bookmark links (Web 2.0)
• No Forum comments with optimized links
• No Keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links in widgets
• No Widely distributed links in the footers or templates
@bhartzer

9.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Linking Basics
Google Ignores Certain Types of Links
• “Most” links with “nofollow” link attributes on them
• Most Web 2.0 links (and other low quality web spam)
• Google ignores 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. link to same URL on a page
• “1 | 2 | 3” links
• “Previous and Next” links
• Google might ”nofollow” certain links internally even though they
are not tagged as “nofollow”.
@bhartzer

10.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Majestic
What is Majestic? www.Majestic.com
• Formerly known as Majestic SEO (majesticseo.com)
• Marketing Search Engine
• SEO Backlink Checker
• Provides Link Intelligence Tools
• Site Explorer shows inbound link & website summary data.
• One of the world’s largest link crawlers
• Link data provided back as far as 2004.
@bhartzer

11.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Majestic
@bhartzer

12.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Majestic Search Explorer
@bhartzer

13.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Majestic Trust Flow & Citation Flow
Majestic Trust Flow and Citation Flow
• Trust Flow = Number of clicks from seed set of trusted sites to a given
URL, or Domain
• Citation Flow = Number of citations to a given URL, or Domain
@bhartzer

14.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Majestic – Finding Bad
Links
Identifying Low Quality and Bad Links
@bhartzer

15.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Disavow
What To Do With Low Quality and Bad Links?
@bhartzer
Download and Disavow
Download ALL your links:
• Google Search Console, Majestic, Ahrefs, OSE
• Add to spreadsheet, remove duplicates
• Manually review all your links
• Identify low quality, bad links, unnatural links
• Prepare and upload Disavow File to Google, Bing

16.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Disavow
Disavow File – Text File
@bhartzer
You Can Disavow URLs or Entire Domains
Format of text file:
http://www.bad-domain-name.com/page1.html
http://www2.bad-domain-name2.com/page2.html
https://www.bad-domain-name3.com/page3.html
OR
domain:bad-domain-name.com
domain:bad-domain-name2.com
domain:bad-domain-name3.com

17.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Disavow
Notes and Warnings: Disavowing Links
@bhartzer
Keep in mind:
Verify all versions of site in GSC.
Upload file to all versions of site:
https://yourdomain.com
https://www.yourdomain.com
http://yourdomain.com
http://www.yourdomain.com
• Upload text file with list of URLs to Google.

18.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Disavow
Notes and Warnings: Disavowing Links
@bhartzer
Keep in mind:
• Manually upload each URL to Bing, one at a time.
• Use automation to upload (“manually”) to Bing
https://www.billhartzer.com/disavow-bing/
• Google won’t disavow URLs until page linking TO you is
cached. Check Google cache date.

19.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Disavow
Disavowing Links Didn’t Work? Here’s Why
@bhartzer
• It hasn’t been long enough.
• You disavowed the wrong links.
• You disavowed URLs and not domains.
• You didn’t upload the disavow file to all versions of site.
• You disavowed links but that’s not the problem.
• Your site has a manual action, a manual penalty.
Pro Tip: Use Link Research Tools’ Link Detox Boost too
http://www.linkresearchtools.com/tools/boost/

20.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Majestic – New and Lost Links
Identifying New and Lost Links
@bhartzer

21.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Majestic – Compare Tool
Compare Tool
@bhartzer

22.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Majestic Keyword Checker
Keyword Checker
• Shows how often keywords appear in the Majestic Index
@bhartzer

23.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Majestic – Bulk
Backlinks
Bulk Backlink Checker
@bhartzer

24.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Majestic Neighborhood Checker
Neighborhood Checker
@bhartzer

25.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Analyzing a Link
Profile
Analyzing a Site’s Link Profile
• Gather all of the links (Majestic, GSC, ahrefs, OSE)
• Review Trust Flow, Citation Flow, Topical Trust Flow
• Review anchor text, compare vs. keywords ranking
• Review percentage of anchor text (brand vs. keyword text)
• Review SEMRush.com Data
• Site penalized by Google Penguin in past?
@bhartzer

26.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Getting Trust
Get Links From Trusted Links, Seed Sites
• Closest you can get to having a link from trusted seed site the better
@bhartzer

27.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Getting Trust
Trustworthy Domain Info Could Help
• Register your domain for 2+ Years
• Make it public (don't hide with privacy whois)
• Put whois info on your contact page
@bhartzer

28.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Getting Links
Untapped Link Sources
• Donate to Charity
• HARO Help a Reporter Out
• PodcastGuests.com
• Expired Domains
• Blog Aggregators (Alltop)
• Broken Link Building
• Perform Research, Socialize Results
• Find Content w/links, Better Content
@bhartzer

29.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – Getting Trust
On-Page Trust Optimization
• Link out to Authority Sites when appropriate
• Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Disclosure pages on site
• Bounce Rate, prevent pogosticking
• Blocked Sites (users can block sites via Chrome browser)
• References and Sources (at end of articles)
• Schema Markup (local sites’ contact matches citations)
@bhartzer

30.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – OnCrawl
OnCrawl
• Site analysis combining Google Analytics, Crawl, Log Files
@bhartzer

31.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – OnCrawl
Crawl Analysis – On-site issues
• Pages crawled
• Indexable pages
• No-Index pages
• 4xx errors
• Pages with tag duplication issues
• Pages with content duplication issues
• Page depth distribution
• Load time
• Links internal/external, follow/no-follow distribution
• HTML quality: Title, Meta description, H1
• Status codes
@bhartzer

32.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – OnCrawl
Log Analysis
• Unique pages crawled
• Crawler hits
• Pages newly crawled
• Pages not crawled
• Crawl frequency
• Hits distribution by bot
• Newly crawled vs pages not crawled
@bhartzer
• Crawl behavior over time
• Crawl frequency & crawl frequency
of newly fetched over time
• Crawl behavior by page group
• Crawl frequency & crawl frequency
of newly crawled pages by page
group over time

33.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – OnCrawl
More Analysis - OnCrawl
Cross Analysis
• Pages in the structure
• Unique pages crawled by Google
• SEO visits
Crawl Behavior
• Pages in structure vs unique pages crawled
• Crawl ratio by group
• Crawl frequency by group
SEO impact
Orphan pages
Traffic Analysis
@bhartzer

34.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – OnCrawl
Actionable Data
@bhartzer

35.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – OnCrawl
On-Page Keyword Placement Locations
@bhartzer

36.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – OnCrawl
On-Page Keyword Placement Testing Results
@bhartzer

37.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – SEO Testing
SEO Testing
• SEO Intelligence Agency – SEO testing, real world tests
@bhartzer https://www.billhartzer.com/seotesting/

38.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – SEO Testing
Does Incorrectly Marked-up Structured Data Harm
Rankings?
• Most penalties from Google in Search Console for
marked up content where a rating or review doesn't exist
• Schema code - easy to make mistakes
• SIA Tested to see if errors in markup harm rankings.
• Tested 3 pages, one with incorrect markup
(lots of text in phone number field)
@bhartzer https://www.billhartzer.com/seotesting/

39.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – SEO Testing
Does Incorrectly Marked-up Structured Data Harm
Rankings? Results
• After several weeks, no movement in rankings.
• Incorrect schema markup didn't harm rankings.
• No rankings changes.
@bhartzer https://www.billhartzer.com/seotesting/

40.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – SEO Testing
Does Page Freshness Affect Ranking?
• Updated Date of a Post
• Changed the date of the publication from what it
originally was to a more recent date
@bhartzer https://www.billhartzer.com/seotesting/

41.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – SEO Testing
Does Page Freshness Affect Ranking? Results
• Initially, the post jumped up in rankings
• Page held rankings for less than 12 hours
• Jumped back in rankings
This is where user engagement metrics kick in.
• More click-thrus, time on page, etc. could keep rankings
around longer.
• Same results with images - updating images on a post.
@bhartzer https://www.billhartzer.com/seotesting/

42.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – SEO Testing
Can You Boost Link Strength Through Traffic?
• Sent traffic to a page that contains a backlink.
• Traffic did not click on the link on that page, just visited
page.
• Google patent: what makes one link stronger than
another link and what makes one link stronger than
another is the propensity for that link to be clicked.
@bhartzer https://www.billhartzer.com/seotesting/

43.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – SEO Testing
Can You Boost Link Strength Through Traffic? Results
• Sent traffic to one of 3 pages - page with traffic went to
#1 position.
• You can increase value of a link with user metrics,
traffic, clicks
• Send traffic to your PBNs (I didn’t just say that!)
@bhartzer https://www.billhartzer.com/seotesting/

44.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – SEO Testing
More Tests and Results
• Page only needs to be 51% unique to get passed
Google's duplicate content filter
• 2-3 internal links = 1 external link of the same value
@bhartzer https://www.billhartzer.com/seotesting/

45.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – SEO Testing
More Test Results
• DA - Domain Authority Doesn't Exist. What people see
as Domain Authority is probably the cumulative sum of
individual Page Authority with good internal linking.
• You can't index a page just with links and anchor text
@bhartzer https://www.billhartzer.com/seotesting/

46.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing – SEO Testing
Some Final SEO Testing Results
• To index a page, you need your target term or an
appropriate match on the page. Backlinks with exact
anchor text alone won't get it done.
• Does Compressing Images Boost Your Rankings?
No. Testing shows that just compressing an image won't
boost rankings--a page with a larger image stayed in the
#1 position.
@bhartzer https://www.billhartzer.com/seotesting/

47.
2017 Rocks Digital Marketing- Contact
THANK YOU
Contact
Bill Hartzer
SEO Consultant
Email: Bill@BillHartzer.com
Phone: (214) 236-4378
Web: https://www.billhartzer.com
Twitter: @bhartzer
Facebook: facebook.com/bhartzer