How To Build Links To Product Pages Without Looking Like A Spammer | BrightonSEO 2020

How To Build Links To Product Pages
Without Looking Like A Spammer

● Laura Slingo
● Senior Campaign Manager
● Link building + SEO 5 years
● Writer + editor 10+ years
● Obsessed with building links and brands
● More organised than Monica Gellar
● @lauraslingo
@LauraSlingo seeker.digital/link-building-checklist
About me

Link building is hard.

Link building to product
pages is the hardest.

Fact: Nobody wants to link
to your product pages.

The pre-Penguin era: The wild west of webspam
Links from
questionable brokers
Aggressive anchor text Directory submissions
Proﬁle links Reciprocal links

Matt Cutts on Google’s updates (2012):
We look at it as something designed to
tackle low-quality content. It started out
with Panda, and then we noticed that there
was still a lot of spam and Penguin was
designed to tackle that.
“
”

MyBlogGuest and more

● Google deﬁnes link schemes as being:
“Any links intended to manipulate
PageRank or a site's ranking in
Google search results.”
What are link schemes?

Link building dark ages

Where’s link building headed?

We’re the community that cares

Where science meets art
Keep it natural Keep it honest
Keep it data led Don’t be a prat

Break the mould
Break the mould

Agenda
● Spammy error #1 – The link opportunity is toxic ☠
● Spammy error #2 – No relevance or purpose between your page and the prospect 💔
● Spammy error #3 – Your campaign isn’t data led 📉
● Your ﬁnal link building for product pages checklist 📔

Break the mould
Error 1
The link
opportunity is
toxic ☠

Break the mould
The (not so little) shop of link
building horrors

Break the mould
The result?

Break the mould
And if we take a deeper look
at this site...

A trip to the farm

Break the mould
Check visual factors ✔

● Lots of guest author articles
● WordPress “square” tile design
● “Write for us” in the TLN
● Submissions forms
● Mentions of guest posts or payments
● Blog pages for a homepage
● No real purpose – a “catch all” site
● Affiliate widgets
● Inconsistent formatting
● No custom favicon
● Lack of EAT signals
Visual factors to look out for

Break the mould
Okay, but what about
site metrics?

Break the mould
What else can we check?

Break the mould
Outgoing links

Break the mould
Top keywords

Break the mould
YUCK

Break the mould
But there’s hope

Break the mould
Quality checks & site
suitability guidelines

Here’s a handy download
seeker.digital/link-building-checklist

https://www.serpworx.com/spec/537

Break the mould
Error 2
No relevance or
purpose between
your page and the
prospect 💔

Break the mould
Link building shouldn’t look
like link building – it should
be adding value

...when a topical cluster associated with the
source document is related to a topical
cluster associated with the target document,
the link has a higher probability of being
selected than when the topical cluster
associated with the source document is
unrelated to the topical cluster associated
with the target document.
“
”@LauraSlingo seeker.digital/link-building-checklist

Break the mould
A links purpose in life is to
be clicked

Break the mould
What topics and link
building tactics are relevant
for product pages?

Tools
DownloadsRelationshipsData
What are linkable assets?
They are tools and tactics that will earn you a link or coverage
Creative
assets
Blogs

Linkable asset analysis
Work out what earns links and what could earn you links if it doesn’t already
Competitor sites
Your site
SERP competitor sites

Break the mould
Video marketing

Hubspot study:
54% of consumers want to see
more video content from brands
and businesses they support.
“
”

Read this:

Break the mould
Leveraging or creating
extreme products

Mini-break with
Alpacas, anyone?

Who wouldn’t be keen?

Break the mould
Creating an on-trend story

Break the mould
But we love a challenge 💜

Break the mould
COVID-19

Break the mould
Before you start link building
to product pages...

Break the mould
Error 3
Your strategy isn’t
data led 📉

Break the mould
Not every link carries the
same weight

Break the mould
You could go horribly wrong

Break the mould
With link building, the science
has to meet the art

Break the mould
How to create a link
building strategy

https://www.jivochat.co.uk/features/

1. Backlink proﬁle audit

● Backlink and referring domains
A high-level overview of your backlink profile

● Acquisition of backlinks over time

<<< RDs for the whole domain
RDs for the live chat product URL >>>

● Weird or alarming spikes in the referring domains or organic keywords graph

● Links from “spammy” CTLDs

● Links from “spammy” CTLDs
● Backlinks to the product page

Break the mould
Link deﬁcit analysis

Break the mould
Anchor ratio analysis

● Exact match
● Partial match
● Partial match + branded
● Branded
● URL
● Generic
This is how I categorise them:

Break the mould
QA guidelines for prospecting

● Target pages:
○ Homepage: https://www.jivochat.co.uk/
○ Product page: https://www.jivochat.co.uk/features/
○ EAT pages: https://www.jivochat.co.uk/about/, https://www.jivochat.co.uk/contacts/,
https://www.jivochat.com/help/functions/enable-gdpr.html
● Anchors:
○ Homepage: Branded
○ Product page: Branded (50%), Generic (20%), URL (10%), Partial match + branded (20%)
○ EAT pages: Branded
● Monthly velocity guidelines for first 3 months:
○ Homepage: 70% of links
○ Product page: 20%
○ EAT pages: 10%
● Prospect site parameters:
○ DR 25+
○ TF 15+
○ Organic traffic 1,000+ monthly from Western regions
○ Tech, sales and marketing sites only
○ Legitimate sites only
○ The ratio of low-traffic sites to high traffic should not be more than 20% per month
● Link building tactics:
○ Foundational links + citations campaign
○ Editorial campaign based on competitor backlinks
○ Discover and update campaign

Break the mould
Putting it
all together

Break the mould
A bad example

The prospect site

Pills
Porn
Poker
Payday

The target page

The end result

Break the mould
A good example

Your final checklist ✔
● The “link builders eye” stuff
○ Familiarise yourself with what toxic website looks like
○ Conduct a linkable asset audit to ensure relevance and value
● The technical stuff
○ Understand your own backlink profile (backlink audit)
○ Check what your link building velocity should be (backlink acquisition audit)
○ Check how many links you need (link deficit analysis)
○ Check you have enough sitewide authority to get your page to rank (DR gap analysis)
○ Check your anchor text ratio is in line with industry standard/your competitors (anchor text ratio analysis)
○ Set up your quality assurance guidelines for prospecting
● The creative stuff
○ What’s your brand or product’s story?
○ What’s trending and relevant?
○ What tactics can you use to land links?
○ What link opportunities are out there for your linkable assets?

Thank you
laura@seeker.digital
@LauraSlingo
https://www.slideshare.net/LauraSlingo/

How To Build Links To Product Pages Without Looking Like A Spammer | BrightonSEO 2020

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