Measuring the value of links has been a continuous challenge. We know it is not about quantity of links, yet people still keep on counting links! Here's a way of measuring the value. Slides from conference at SEODay in Denmark (Jan 2019).

2. 1.5 billion

3. 89 Sites A Month

4. 0.0046%

7. We looked at who was ranking for 450k commercial SERPs in the UK
(with at least 1k searches a month)
Thanks to for the data

8. The BBC appears 11% of the time

9. Amazon appears 20% of the time

10. Youtube appears 23% of the time

12. Google makes hundreds of changes to its algorithm
every year but directionally they have been saying
the same things for a decade…..

13. Brands are the solution… brands are how you sort out the cesspool
”
“ Eric Schmidt, former CEO, Google

14. We actually came up with a classifier to say,
okay, IRS or Wikipedia or New York Times is over on this side,
and the low-quality sites are over on this side.
”
“ Matt Cutts, former Head of Webspam, Google

15. trusted, accurate or reliable
”
“ Obtaining authoritative search results ,
US9659064

16. …has a high readership
”
“ Website quality signal generation , US8442984

17. Google has repeatedly altered it’s algorithm to give
higher and higher value to sites that are:
trusted
authoritative
highly read
routinely receive links from brands and other publishers

18. The way we report on link building hasn’t
meaningfully changed
in the last 20 years

19. “We want 250 links a month”

20. that’s easy

21. “50 links of DA 30 or higher”
“100 links with an average TrustFlow of 35”
“20 links, 300 shares and 5000 views”

22. We suspected that standard SEO metrics weren’t all that useful

23. We looked at how well they correlated with rankings
(Looking at 1k high-volume commercial terms)
Thanks to for the data

24. and they definitely correlate
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average TF Average CF Average Domain TF Average Domain CF Page Authority
Domain Authority MozRank MozRank - Subdomains Domain Rating

25. But when you ask
‘what percentage of SERPs can those metrics correctly guess the order of?’

26. They start to look less compelling:
0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
16%
18%
Page Authority Domain AuthorityDomain Trustflow MozRank
Subdomain
Domain Citation
Flow
Trustflow Citation Flow Domain Rating Mozrank
Percentage of Time Metric Correctly Predicts Ranking Order

27. You can read more about this study here:
https://www.vervesearch.com/blog/SEO-metrics-study/

28. So we built an algorithm that takes into account off and on site metrics

29. https://www.vervesearch.com/linkscore/

30. Score: 14Score: 494 Score: 159
Score from 0 to 500

31. Scale is an issue with traditional metrics
DA 95 DA 43

32. 22 links moved a client 50 positions for ‘domain names’
1
11
21
31
41
51
61
01/03/18 15/03/18 29/03/18 12/04/18 26/04/18 10/05/18 24/05/18
Ranking

33. Those links included…
Those total 22 links got a LINK SCORE of 3,000

34. x 87
x 1,500
3,000 link score is the equivalent of

35. Traditional metrics also don’t take into account language
Trustflow: 72Trustflow: 84

36. Trustflow: 72Trustflow: 84
LinkScore: 191 LinkScore: 305

37. how Google sees the sites
DA 40
DA 60
site-wide manual
penalty

38. DA 40
DA 60
site-wide manual
penalty
LinkScore: 84 LinkScore: 34

39. The LinkScore takes into account over a dozen different metrics including:
• Traditional metrics (TrustFlow, linking root domains etc)
• Language
• Relevancy
• Link location
• Follow/no follow
• Penalty/no penalty

40. 70
websites
everything
else

41. Data Source: SimilarWeb

42. Create campaigns that deserve more than
just links!

43. Our Work Regularly Receives Print Coverage
New York Post Washington Post The Mirror The Metro

44. Radio Coverage

45. TV3 (Sweden) NBC ITV
AND even TV Coverage

46. Greenpeace
Our work is regularly shared by high-profile organizations
WWF
NASA

47. and high profile figures

48. It’s not bragging if it’s true

49. FJOLS

50. 24 Hour London
for Lenstore
https://www.lenstore.co.uk/vc/24-hour-london/

54. 159 Links
10,557 Link Score
1.7 million views

55. It is not enough to do one campaign that gets good links.
You need consistently high quality links!

56. Launched 6 Campaigns in 2018

57. 358 links
27,838 LinkScore

58. Their target term, “Contact Lenses”, searched 74k times a month, moved
from position 12 at start to position 2
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
01/04/2017 31/05/2017 30/07/2017 28/09/2017 27/11/2017

59. Non-brand organic traffic increased by 188%

61. Wheeler Dealer
for GoCompare
https://www.gocompare.com/car-insurance/wheeler-dealer/

64. 694 Links
34,356 Link Score
2 million views

65. 35 creative campaigns
(in 7 verticals)

66. 3,977 links
210,598 LinkScore

67. on sites like these

68. 16.2 million online views from the coverage alone

69. Washington PostThe Mirror
Daily MailThe Mirror
Detroit Free Press
The Herald
out
Plus a lot of offline coverage
The National Post

70. As well as Radio & TV

73. 100 Links
5,289 Link Score

77. By using LinkScore we are able to focus our
efforts on links that actually increase rankings.

78. But we also use the LinkScore internally to focus efforts
individually and as a team

79. Different targets - seniority
Senior OutreachNew Person

80. UKUK Nordic
Different targets – market/country
Nordic

81. LinkScore Dashboard - Client

82. LinkScore has been a huge part of how Verve
has been able to scale

83. #1 How do you guys come up with ideas?
#2 How do you guys do Outreach?

84. #1 How do you guys come up with ideas?
#2 How do you guys do Outreach?

85. It’s really about not giving up

87. 3 buildings fell through – it took 6 months to get this campaign created.

88. Can you Spot it?
One of the hardest working campaigns of 2018 was from 2017
Links: 69 LinkScore: 7,498

89. Anyone can come up with ideas, but
developing ideas is the key, and that is a team effort.

90. uper chickens
Source: Margaret Heffernanhttps://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_why_it_s_time_to_forget_the_pecking_order_at_work?language=en

91. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcUAIpZrwog

92. Summary of “How to measure the Value of Links”:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/measuring-value-links-lisa-myers/

93. Thank You!
Lisa.Myers@vervesearch.com
@LisaDMyers