My topic was earning links by telling stories. In particular I focused on leveraging business assets to create those stories . The main point I stressed is that earning links is a three-stage process. First ideation, then content creation, then distribution. It’s not enough to create good-looking content, or good quality content. Without an idea behind it or a story to tell the content is one-dimensional and lacks the required value to earn links (or social shares for that matter). It’s not enough to create good content, from a great idea and then expect people to link to it. There still needs to be a distribution phase. We still need skilled people to identify the right online audience for our stories, we need to conduct outreach to the people that write the content for those online audiences to position our story to them or offer our story wholesale.

If we don’t have a story to tell through our content then it’s hard to earn those links. This presentation looks at the ideation stage of the link-earning cycle.

The post Earning Links Using Business Assets. My Presentation from SearchLondon Meet-up appeared first on theMediaFlow.

Buzzin’ at SAScon 2012

[Picture courtesy of the global wanderer of online marketing that is,Jackie Hole]

NS: For how long have Majestic had the data capability to perform these metric calculations?

DJ: We’ve of course had AC rank for some time but it was becoming clear that our competitors we’re stronger on their equivalent metric, so we started working on finding out the faults with AC. The main fault being that it only looked at external links when it was clear that internal links were passing some flow. In addition AC rank treated all links equally with no weighting towards position on page or context. So there was really the ability to abuse PageRank, so we wanted to flow it. We started working on this in December/January and we made some headway but it was a massive exercise, as it had to be run over the whole data-set.

NS: Because it’s iterative?

DJ: Absolutely. Citation Flow runs through (probably) trillions of calculations every day and needs to wait for the index to update. It’s difficult to run on a sub-set as its almost meaningless as the whole data-set is needed to complete the calculations.

NS: Can you sum up the difference between”citation” and “trust”.

DJ: The decay algorithm is the same wherever I go, in that the characteristic flows through links. The difference is the start of the data-set. In the case of Citation Flow it starts with AC rank whereas with Trust Flow it’s informed by a human review. One measures how influential links are, whereas trust flow attempts to position a URL in a neighbourhood of “trust”.

NS: Did you use your own human quality raters?

DJ: No there’s just too many, we used several curated data sets.

NS: So trust is a human informed machine algorithm?

DJ: Yes, it’s just the initial seed set that is human iformed so we don’t need to revisit the data.

NS: Have you done any correlation studies between Citation/Trust Flow metrics and PageRank?

DJ: Yes, though I may not publish them on Majestic, I may publish that on my own blog. I have data on DomainAuthority and with PageRank and with MozTrust and MozRank (which in my test did not correlate at all.) DomainAuthority correlated at .7 and Citation Flow correlated with PageRank at .814. Trust Flow less so; however I would stress that the two are not intended to copy PageRank, so it’s slightly coincidental that Citation Flow correlates with PageRank, but we think it’s a much better metric. It’s more granular (on a scale of 0-100), it’s fresher and updates daily, it’s transparent in that it isn’t knackered by penalties – it is what it is. Of course it flows as well; which is we feel a better more modern metric.

Trust doesn’t correlate badly but then it’s not really designed to equate. It’s much harder to get a good Trust score than Citation as every page starts with an AC Rank, but we couldn’t start with every site in a Trust set. 

The profile charts that we’ve done, whilst they illustrate nicely it’s a bit like trying to represent a fingerprint. We’ve only had this data live since Monday [14th] so really we’re looking to see how the community makes use of his data.

NS: Is there a controlled and defined rate of degradation of flow from page to page? Is there a weighted contribution to amount of flow passed?

 DJ: There is a weighted algorithm on the factors that contribute but I can’t really go into that in much detail.

NS: Can you tell me one?

DJ: Things like follow and nofollow we make decisions about and are experimenting with switching that on and off. We do want to work on expanding on that quite a bit further such as context and location on page but again I can’t go into that in too much detail right now.

Thanks Dixon. Great progress for the Majestic SEO product and I’m really excited to get started in on this new data set.

Note: Thanks to Jon Quinton of SEO Gadget for rapping through some questions with me pre-interview.

The post SAScon 2012 Behind the Scenes: Interview with Dixon Jones of Majestic SEO on New Flow Metrics appeared first on theMediaFlow.

Getting decent citations and links from local websites should be a fundamental part of any local SEO strategy. I’m a firm believer that this should mean getting out and meeting real people and forming real relationships. Spurting out link requests all day long can drive pretty much anyone to despair. Getting involved in your local business community is a lot more enjoyable and can be really productive in terms of business development AND your local rankings. In fact, this is all about thinking way beyond just getting links. If you can build up real partnerships and earn a good local reputation, the links you need should follow.

What I’m not saying is that the normal methods of SEO and link building can just be forgotten about; making sure your website is SEO friendly and optimised correctly, whilst at the same time building your domain’s authority are still vital. But how about going the extra mile and making a real impact in your local area? If you can incorporate this into your existing online work, then you should be in a much stronger position to dominate the local search results.

So how can you go about making a start in taking your online efforts offline? I’ve personally been looking at ways in which I can improve our local presence at Go Search Marketing, and without too much effort found some pretty interesting ideas:

Networking Events

Just by searching for networking events in my local area, I immediately found quite a nice selection of organisations who host a variety of different networking events where local businesses can get to know each other. One of the most popular style of events I found were breakfast meetings where for the price of a decent breakfast you get to get to know other business owners over a plate of bacon, eggs and of course a fresh coffee.

Due to my standard pre 9am personality failure (just ask my wife), I thought I’d search for some other options and there were plenty around. Ranging from evening events, business awards and workshops, there are absolutely tons of ways that I could go out and start getting involved with other like minded business folk. Taking this back to local SEO, it shouldn’t be too hard to find people with websites that could be interested on working together on some content, or recommending each other’s services (via links). If all else fails then at least you’ve had some decent grub along the way.

Partnerships

It would be pretty unlikely if your local area didn’t feature some businesses with which you could potentially partner up with in some way. Even if it’s just a case of recommending related services, or coming to some agreement with regards to referring clients; there are always opportunities, you’ve just got to find them.

Even though your end goal might be to get some links, try to separate yourself as far as possible from that state of mind. When contacting someone for the first time try not to even mention links or anything to do with SEO. Instead, why not try asking if they’d like to meet for coffee sometime and seeing if there’s any possibility of getting involved and potentially helping each other out with business?

Local Community Projects

How about looking out for local community events and projects that your company can get involved with? If you’re reading your local press on a regular basis, you should easily be able to find some events or projects to help out with or maybe sponsor. For example, in my town every year we have a ‘Race for Life’ which helps to raise awareness for breast cancer. That’s a great opportunity to get involved and help out. Are there any small charities operating in your area? Small charities are usually really gratefully for any help they can get, so why not get in touch and see if you can help out a little?

There’s quite a lot of debate over whether it’s ethical or not to donate time or money to charity for the purpose of building links. My personal view is that it all depends on your attitude and relationship with the charity or local project. If you’re fully committed to helping out and being involved and you happen to get a few links for it, then to me that’s no problem.

Local Societies

Does your town or city have any clubs or societies that hold events? It would be quite unlikely if there was nothing going on at all. Often, smaller societies and clubs are on the lookout for new ideas for their events as they need to fill their calendar and keep their members entertained. It might be Worthing speaking to some of them to find out if there are any speaking opportunities, or maybe to find out if they are looking for anyone to sponsor any upcoming events.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how SEO and online marketing needs to become more and more integrated with offline marketing and genuine relationship building. With all these great opportunities right on your doorstep, this is approach is none more true than with local search.

About me: I run Go Search Marketing, an SEO consulting business offering advice and services to SME’s and local businesses. Feel free to come and say hi or throw me any questions on twitter @jonquinton1

The post Local Search – Get Real! appeared first on theMediaFlow.

Technorati also use a proprietary blog ranking system, which is useful for helping you to find useful blogs in your marketing sector. Why is this useful? Other than the benefits of learning and reading, you can also use a list of blogs in your sector as a target list for link building and public relations.

Additional benefits exist for you as blog owner, if you add your blog to Technorati. Adding your blog, or “claiming” your blog if it is already on there, is of benefit as you get to ensure the details are as you would like them. Of course the link to your blog is a follow link – which is kind of like a “thumbs up” sign to a search engine crawler.

To claim your blog you just need to create an account on Technorati, add your blog and submit a claim. You will then be given a unique claim code like this Q7759JM7D5M7 (this one is mine ). You will need to write a new blog post and insert your code into the post so that Technorati can crawl and verify the code in your post – thus telling you are indeed the said author, of said blog.

Easy peasy!

Why not try this for your blog? www.technorati.com

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