1. ANALYZING A LINK
WITH GOOGLE’S EYES

2. Matteo Monari
● Co-founder and COO of BizUp srl:
Internatioanl projects, Competitive segments, Link Earning
● Former Head of SEO for Populis (Excite, Blogosfere, Blogo...)
● Former SEO Manager for gambling sites (Poker, Casinò, etc.)
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3. What we will see
• Why links
• Links’ origins
• What Google knows
• Parameters à Tools
• Relations and footprints
• How to accelerate and simplify measurements
• Examples of stats from link-earning campaigns
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4. Why links
• On-site SEO – Technical (code + architecture)
Ground of any SEO project. Search engines should be able to crawl
and index the site fast, extensively and easily.
• On-site SEO – Copywriting (content)
Will allow the site to rank for certain queries. Should be properly
planned, focus on the right KWs/topics, be informational and
qualitative.
• Off-site SEO (link e citazioni)
Links and mentions, counted as “votes” in favour (or against) a site
allow Google to determine its level of Trust and Authority.
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5. Off-site SEO: Link’s origins
• Received thansk to the brand’s fame
• Received thansk to valuable content
• Collaborations (guest blogging, partnerships)
• Online marketing (es.: affiliates, media-buys)
• From sites of the same “network” (interlinking)
• Exchanges with other sites (deprecated)
• Pyramids and sites’ networks (deprecated)
• Purchases from brokers / agencies (deprecated)
• Directories and “article marketing” (deprecated)
BRANDING
MARKETING
SEO
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Spontaneous
Built / Earned
Investment = measurements

6. What to measure?
What does Google see?
1) Qualitative and semantic values for:
• Site
• Page
• Links
2) Relations of the link and linking site with other links and
linking sites
à Possible link devaluation
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7. Linking site: qualitative and semantic factors
• Size
• Penalizations
• Spam
• Authority
• Topic and thematic authority
• Age
• Backlinks and linking domains
• Traffic
• Geographic Location
• Content quality
à + Distribution and genuinity of linking sites
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8. Site - Tools
1. http://www.google.com
2. http://www.semrush.com
3. http://www.majesticseo.com
4. http://www.seoquake.com
5. http://www.archive.org
6. http://www.domaintools.com
7. http://www.copyscape.com
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9. Sito linkante : fattori qualitativi e semantici
à Google [site: ]
à SemRush
à Google [site: + KW]
à PR / MajesticSEO - TF
à MajesticSEO - Topical TF
à Archive.org – WhoIs
à MajesticSEO
à SemRush
à SEOQuake
à Copyscape
• Size
• Penalizations
• Spam
• Authority
• Topic and thematic authority
• Age
• Backlinks and linking domains
• Traffic
• Geographic Location
• Content quality
à + Distribution and genuinity of linking sites
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10. EXTRA: Relations between linking sites
Possible footprints in related sites/networks:
• Code elements
• Adsense codes
• Analytics codes
• Templates’ signatures
• Mail addresses
• Servers
• Mail servers
• ...
= low genuinity / spam
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11. EXTRA: “Intelligence tools”...
Correlation based on public data
• IP
• hosting
• email
• server
• blacklist
• social
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(spiderfoot.net)
Searches for matches in code elements
• File names
• JS
• CSS
• Templates
• Adsense/Analytics codes
• ...
(nerdydata.com)

12. Page: qualitative and semantic factors
• Topic
• Indexing
• Authority
• Backlinks
• Internal links
• Outgoing links
• Social signals*
à Site
à Google [site:+URL]
à Google
à MajesticSEO
à ScreamingFrog
à SEOQuake
à Twitter / FB / Sharedcount
for * Not a qualitative factor, but supporting signal
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13. Page – Additional Tools
8. http://www.screamingfrog.com
9. http://www.facebook.com
10. http://www.twitter.com
11. http://www.sharedcount.com
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14. Links: qualitative + semantic factors
• Format (text/immage)
• Anchor text / ALT + distribution
• Target page + distribution
• Surrounding text
• Position in the page
• Style
• NoFollow Attribute
(Detailed analysis of all factorsà http://goo.gl/MbtFeH)
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15. Total:
More than 25 factors, assessable (in part) with 11
different tools, mostly paid-only... for each link!
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16. How to accelerate?
1) Simplify
à Limit to factors fast to extract
2) Automate
à Reporting, extraction, analysis
3) Summarize
à Simplify visualization
...FREE!
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17. Factors that are easy to tack and extract
SITE
• Size
• Authority
• Back-links
• Linking domains
• Traffic
• Distribution (IP)
PAGE
• Indexing
• Authority
• Back-links
• Linking domains
• Social signals
LINKS
• Anchor text
• Target page
>50% of the total factors – not bad ☺
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18. Data – 1: Reporting
Manually report, for each link, only:
• Linking page
• Target page
• Anchor text
• Date
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19. Data – 2: Extraction: SEOQuake
SEOQuake: Data scraper from external tools, with limited amount of
parameters available, often out of date...
...but customizeable:
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20. Data – 2: SEOQuake: Necessary parameters
On SEOQuake, we need the following 13 parameters:
Google pagerank
Google index
Google cachedate
Domain IP
SEMrush links IT (added)
SEMrush linkdomain IT (added)
Twitter Tweets (added)
Facebook Likes (added)
SEMrush Rank IT (custom)
SEMrush Traffic IT (custom)
MajesticSEO Domain - LDs (custom)
MajesticSEO Page - LDs (custom)
Google Homepage PR (custom)
9 parameters out of 13 are
custom:
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21. Data – 2: SEOQuake: Necessary parameters
... do not worry: here is a doc with ALL custom
parameters, tested and working, ready to add!
http://goo.gl/lLVQ99
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22. Data – 2: SEOQuake: Extraction
Using the “Check/compare URLs and domains” option
we extract and export all data for ALL linking URLs:
(Note: in case of intense use better use a proxy)
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23. Dati – 2: Reporting
Paste all data in the original table, replacing all “n/a” with “-1”.
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24. Dati – 3: Visualizing
It is now possibel to create a control dashboard, composed of pivot tables.
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25. Qualitative heat map
Authority, Popularity, Traffic, Size
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26. Qualitative distribution graphs
PR Distribution
(Authority, Popularity, Traffic)
0
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2
3
4
Linking sites’ traffic
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Linking domains and tweet Domini linkanti
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Tweet
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
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27. Check on IP’s and C classes’ distribution
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28. Check on target URL’s and anchor text distribution
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29. Data – 3: Visualizing
... here is the dashboard file, ready to use!
http://goo.gl/qCvDSn
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30. Example - Analysis of a successful campaign
Client: Kaspersky
Activity: Digital PR
Tpic: IT Security & World Cup
Results:
92 publications
65 linking sites
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31. Successful campaigns – Analysis - 1
Linking sites’ traffic
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Linking domains and tweets Tweet
Domini linkanti
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1000000
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32. Successful campaigns – Analysis - 3
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33. What we saw
• Why links are important
• Depth of Google’s analysis
• Importance of measurements
• Do not get scared by data
• Measuring + analizing = better investments
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34. Feedback?
twitter.com/matteo_monari
bizup srl
via del commercio 36, 00154 roma
p.iva: IT11517471006
phone: +39 06 45554500
fax: +39 06 45554501
email: info@bizupmedia.com
web: http://www.bizupmedia.com
twitter: @bizupmedia
matteomonari
ujigeng
m.monari@bizupmedia.com