The Secret Link Building Formula That Cuts Costs, Saves Time and Gets Amazing Seo Results

THE SECRET LINK BUILDING FORMULA

THAT CUTS COSTS, SAVES TIME AND GETS AMAZING SEO RESULTS

Jason Brooks

by Jason Brooks

Jason has been practicing digital marketing since 2005. He is the founder of UK Linkology Limited, serving agencies and clients direct globally since 2012.

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER Jason has a Postgraduate Diploma in @UKLINKOLOGY Digital Marketing Communications from Manchester Metropolitan University (2014). CONNECT ON LINKEDIN LINKEDIN.COM/JASONBROOKS23/ “I manage the marketing strategy for UK Linkology and clients with a focus on cutting edge SEO and link building techniques.”

“Please feel free to get in touch and ask any questions about this guide which aims to help you make better link building decisions, free up your time and save you money.”

All the best, Jason

Enjoy!

You are probably reading this because you have the same or similar link building problems we’ve had in the past and you need methods to improve workflow, get better results and grow your client base.

When I started UK Linkology in 2012 link building was just getting trickier.

I come from the old school having started in SEO in 2006 in an agency. Until 2010 using a mix of black hat, white hat and grey hat tactics was getting clients great results and life (and making money) was quite easy.

Do you still know or remember that feeling?

Then along came those famous algorithm updates - Panda and Penguin - and the link building game changed drastically – often killing SEO companies that couldn’t keep up with the pace of change!

LIFE IS TOUGH FOR LINK BUILDERS AND I’M 100% ON YOUR SIDE WHICH IS WHY I’M GOING TO SHARE WITH YOU THE PROCESSES THAT HAVE HELPED ME.

So stay with me for the next 10 minutes or so and I’ll give you the information you will need to make building quality links a more pleasurable and rewarding experience...

1. Get higher quality links

2. Get better results

3. Reduce the link risk

4. Retain and sell clients more services (agencies)

5. Attract more customers

6. Get a crucial edge over your competitors

Agreed? Let’s get started!

These truths are at the core of why link building campaigns fail but nobody admits it.

Truth #1 People still rely on SEO tools to quickly assess sites for link building because it’s the best we have. But most people don’t use the tools or metrics properly and some use only one (DA)!

Truth #2 The SEO knowledge available is thin. Few people outside of Google have statistically significant evidence of what works best in link building and SEO in general. People still rely on industry gossip to do SEO.

Truth #3 Nobody has the resources to unravel how Google analyses billions of sites and then ranks them. But people still gamble on hearsay and flawed research and expect results.

How many metrics do you look at when selecting websites for linking and which ones do you fully understand and trust?

When it comes to assessing sites for link building most people are still making it up!

Maybe this sounds like you?

We get approached by marketers and experienced agency people to find sites using unusual mixes of SEO metrics, often without any substantial justification.

“Can I have websites with these metrics please…”

• “Majestic Trust Flow 10 + with 1000 Ahrefs organic traffic” or... • “Moz DA 30+ with TrustFlow 15+” or... • “US based sites with Domain Rating 40+ and Similar Web traffic of 10k” or.... • “Sites with black backgrounds, flashing lights and bells…etc”

So, they either make up a process based on information they can find, or they look to SEO companies, SEO tool developers and SEO bloggers for guidance (the last one is the biggest mistake as virtually none of these people actually do SEO).

IT IS THIS LACK OF A STANDARD APPROACH THAT HAS CREATED A SITUATION WHERE MARKETERS DON’T KNOW HOW TO SCORE WEBSITES WITH CONFIDENCE

The alternative which is often just being lazy is even worse…

© Copyright 2020 UK Linkology Limited www.uklinkology.co.uk …this is when the need for a quick method of filter- ing sites overtakes rational thinking and the metric from the company with smartest marketing wins.

Currently it’s Moz Domain Authority (DA).

But Majestic TrustFlow (TF) and Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) have ever growing numbers of disciples too.

THIS COMPLACENCY (OR BLIND LOYALTY TO A LIMITED NUMBER OF SOURCES) IS PROVING COSTLY FOR MANY AND THAT MUST CHANGE.

The real dangers of using SEO metrics incorrectly

Consider the obvious fact that tool developers do not have direct access to Google’s algorithm.

The snippets of information posted by people like John Mueller, Gary Illyes and his predecessor Matt Cutts, are picked up by SEO commentators and written about widely on marketing blogs.

SEO rumours spread fast and they’re like Chinese whispers .

Myths quickly become truths because there are so few authority sources to regulate the information shared.

• Do Exact Match Domains still work? • Is guest posting really dead? • Which is more important backlinks or content? • What links work for SEO ?

...are still giving many marketers headaches! It’s no wonder everyone is still confused about which metrics to use.

The SEO tool providers analyse and score websites using their best guesses.

They interpret Google patents, accept industry ‘truths’ and spend a great deal of technical effort to emulate how Google treats websites.

But even with the tools. people still assess sites incorrectly and wastye thousdands on dollaars on backlinks that may be worthless.

The key is how the information provided by SEO tools is interpreted and then applied...

And this is where our method comes in…

The most common mistake is relying on one metric (commonly DA) - Relying on one metric can...

1. Make you pay a lot more for poor quality links (sometimes 600% more) 2. Slow down your link building because you waste so many good sites 3. Push up your costs due to wasted time paying for poor resources

But I understand how you may be feeling because most people just use Moz DA.

And I was afraid to abandon the one metric method too.

I’d used DA for years because it’s what everyone else did and it seemed to work but even Moz say in their own documentation that...

“MOZ DOMAIN AUTHORITY SHOULD ALWAYS BE USED WITH OTHER METRICS”

We developed M-Flux which stands for ‘metrics fluidity’ to cure that problem and give marketers a more reliable way to assess websites for use in SEO campaigns.

Learn more...

My goal was to create a method that significantly improved upon the one metric mentality.

I have not attempted to undermine individual metrics like Moz DA, but to use them in a combined way that gives a fairer and more reliable assessment of websites.

Most of the SEO metrics we have used in the formula have their merits, so we employed the best of them in a multi-metric assessment formula.

We achieved this by considering how Google might assess sites, using the limited information provided by the search engine’s press releases and annnouncements and our onw 12 year’s experience.

Then we matched up the ‘known’ algorithmic factors to the SEO tools that best measure those factors.

While choosing metrics we stayed mindful that tools can be manipulated by website owners and SEO’s and used each metric based on how much trust we have in it.

BUT WITH OUR NEW APPROACH WE WEREN’T AIMING FOR THE BEST – JUST A BETTER WAY OF LINK BUILDING THAN IS CURRENTLY USED BY MANY SEO PROFESSIONALS.

We selected metrics from each tool that are believed to measure a Google ranking factor or a group of ranking factors e.g. backlink quality is measured by Majes- tic Trust Flow which is similar in concept to PageRank.

(There’s obviously no proof that any of them are tracking actual ranking factors, but strong studies by some tool providers like Moz and Ahrefs show some close correlations.)

Overall, the backlink analysis tools we chose work hard to filter spam and score sites based largely on link quality. They are possibly the best we have for this job and we use all of them in our formula.

We wanted to measure the following; 1. Backlink Quality 2. Website traffic 3. User experience

To select the right metrics, I first considered what needed measuring then selected the right tool for the job. I find that great traffic, user experience, content and the quality of a backlink profile are the best indication of a good site for link building.

In the ‘why’ column in the table below are the factors I needed to measure alongside tools that match. (Tip: If you’re going to do this yourself, I recommend these tools, but the beauty of the M-Flux approach is that you can modify it to suit your own needs).

SEO Factor to be measured: Backlink Quality

Tool selected Metric Why?

Ahrefs Domain Good for analysis of size and quality of a backlink Rating (DR) profile. Goes ‘upstream’ to assess the do follow links to the sites that are linking and to what sites they are linking to.

Majestic SEO TrustFlow (TF) TrustFlow has similarities in its method to Google PageRank (PR) of which an upgraded version is still being used by Google under another name. Being closely linked to trusted sites assumes that more “PR” is passed.

Moz Domain DA is powerful for assessing spam and spotting (Link Explorer) Authority 2.0 correlations between website quality and search (DA) engine rankings. It is a relative metric and should not be used in isolation. This is the reason we recommend using other metrics to assess websites

Traffic is not a known ranking factor but visibility for keywords and therefore organic traffic can be a proxy for quality.

Tool selected Metric Why?

SEM Rush Estimated Websites that get traffic are ranking for keywords organic traffic which means they are being crawled and ranked (country - therefore reflecting some degree of trust with specific) Google. We felt SEM Rush traffic data is strong being based on over 200 million internet users.

SEO Factor to be measured: User experience / content

Google has made it clear that it favours sites that meet user expectations. Design, content, information architecture and accuracy are all factors that contribute.

To ensure that you find the best sites, a formula will do 90% of the heavy lifting but to get the cream you have to use people.

Tool selected Metric Why?

Human In house Nothing beats a real human ‘Linkologist’ for this 22-point aspect of site assessment and low-end link builders manual check. don’t do it because it takes time - but we love it.

So now we’ve selected our tools we have to build out the formula. This is definitely the part where everyone has an opinion - but that is cool because if you don’t agree you can configure your formula in your own way.

As mentioned we are trying to map or weight each metric to the importance of a por- tion of the algorithm and that involves some educated guesswork.

Fortunately you have an advantage if you have knowledge of; 1. The commonly known ranking factors 2. How each of the tools calculates their metrics

A full education on the above is outside the scope of this document but the top three ranking factors according to Google are (in no particular order) 1. Backlinks 2. Content 3. Rankbrain (we won’t need this as it’s the machine learning apsect of Google)

1. Backlinks We selected three metrics to measure backlinks, each looking at different aspects. • Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) uses a volume-based algorithm. • Moz Domain Authority (DA) considers multiple factors including spam related ele- ments. • Majestic Trust Flow (TF) uses a set of trusted seed websites and calculates how close other sites are to them to assign a value (similar to PageRank)

WE DECIDED THAT BACKLINK METRICS SHOULD CONTRIBUTE OVER 60% OF THE WEIGHTING BECAUSE THESE METRICS HAVE SHOWN CONSISTENTLY TO CORRELATE WELL WITH GOOGLE’S OWN SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS.

© Copyright 2020 UK Linkology Limited www.uklinkology.co.uk 2. Content Google is clear that good content in conjunction with other factors should rank well. Measuring whether a site has great content with SEO tools can be done by proxy.

We decided that keyword visibility and organic traffic could infer a level of trust from Google in relation to a website. The logic being that if a site is visible for certain keywords, then there must be relevant content on that site.

Additionally if the site gets good traffic, that content must be ranking on the first page for at least some keywords. That alone confirms that Google must trust the site to some extent.

WE DECIDED THAT KEYWORD AND TRAFFIC SCORES WOULD BE WEIGHTED AT LESS THAN 40% IN OUR FORMULA.

Some M-Flux scenarios

High traffic and strong backlinks If a site scores well on traffic and has good backlink scores, this shows that the content on the site is getting backlinks and that Google is ranking it well. A site like this should get a good M-Flux score which will be higher than it’s Moz DA.

Low traffic versus strong backlinks scores If a site scores poorly on traffic and keywords but high on backlink metrics we weight it down. This is logical, because DA is a relative metric meaning that whilst a site might have a high DA score, if it has low traffic then it may not have high credibilty with Google. The M-Flux score will usually be less than the site DA in this case.

High traffic versus low backlink scores Conversely, if a site has high traffic but low backlink metrics it could be a low authority site in a niche where there is a lot of traffic. A site like this may get a score similar to its DA.

M-Flux uses a flexible mix of SEO metrics (DA etc.) combined with qualitative metrics like usability.

We sprinkle in a little common sense and experience and the result is a powerful method for measuring sites for link building.

M-Flux ensures that the best sites score well on at least one domain metric like Moz DA or Ahrefs Domain Rating and that the traffic or keyword visibility metrics score well too.

M-FLUX DOESN’T THROW OUT A SITE THAT HAS GOOD TRAFFIC BUT LOW DA - WHICH IS COMMON PRACTICE RIGHT NOW IN SEO!

Nor does it overrate a site that has a lot of traffic but no backlink quality. It just scores them fairly - meaning you know how much they’re really worth.

We’ve found that using the M-Flux method considerably more accurate at predicting the quality of a site than using just one metric.

We score from 20-29, 30-39, 40-49 and 50+ and find that each range helps us to understand how much time, effort and resources we should be allocating to get the link. M-Flux works for us and our customers love it.

By using M-Flux, smart link builders can manage their risk more efficiently, increase value for money and get better results.

It is a mix of my chosen SEO metrics weighted in a formula to give a totally balanced assessment of how useful a site could be for link building campaigns.

M-Flux reduces time wasted on useless sites, avoids spam and keeps costs down.

SEO is an evolving market and as such, everyone in our industry needs to be changing our approach when it’s needed to stay ahead of the algorithmic curve.

I know the market is saturated with tools and metrics.

But that doesn’t mean we should be lazy and settle for whatever we were told works 5 years ago or follow what everyone else is doing now does it?

Google has layered up multiple game changing algorithm updates, meaning the playing field is very different today.

So being open to new approaches is paramount and it’s how we’ve grown our business year after year. M-Flux is just the latest strategy we’re using to continue deliver- ing effective SEO to our customers.

Unfortunately due to non disclosure agreements we can’t share the names of clients but we hope you appreciate us giving you visibility on what we do!

And there are lots of reviews here too -

https://www.uklinkology.co.uk/link-building-reviews/

Before you dive in, remember we build links and there are other factors at play in organic traffic and rankings growth, such as the quality of the content etc.

But since Google have stated that links are in their top three ranking factors, you can be confident that the link building we’ve done using M-Flux has had an impact!

You can see the page 1 rankings on each screen shot – there’s no fluff hiding the truth, just straight up great results.

Check out the results...

Customer Feedback Survey Results* Rated 1 -5, 1 = poor, 5 = Excellent

Yes of course and if you’ve been reading closely, I hope it is really clear.

But if you haven’t…

Here’s the short version...

1. Decide on the tools and metrics you want to use (hint we’ve told you what works for us).

2. Add a weighting to each metric e.g. 0.1, 0.2 etc until they add up to 10 in your formula.

3. Use a mathematical formula in MS Excel to calculate your own M-Flux style score using the individual weighted scores (that mix of weightings is our secret sauce of course).

4. Give your new metric a funky name (if you like).

5. Collect the data for your sites from each tool and load it into your spreadsheet.

6. Run the formula to get your mixed metrics scores.

Or there is another easier option...

Try using our M-Flux done-for-you link building service today and get the edge over your rivals fast!

M-Flux is a smart approach…

It replaces the expensive ‘one metric obses- sion’ that loses you great links

M-Flux is safer…

It offers you an easier, safer, quicker way to assess sites for customised link building.

M-Flux is cost effective…

Stop paying for sites with inflated backlink or traffic metrics that have no effect on your search engine rankings.

Get started today!

SCHEDULE A FREE ‘ZERO OBLIGATION’ STRATEGY CALL

Whatever you decide, I wish you the best of luck!

Thanks for reading.