Historical Link Analysis is Here!

Season’s Greetings, fellow Mozzers! As if this month hasn’t been exciting enough with the release of Custom Reports and Branded Keywords, today we have a special surprise for you. You asked for it, and we are happy to deliver. Introducing Historical Link Analysis for PRO!

(Photo credit: Dana Pleasant Photography)

Being able to see your link metric data over time helps demonstrate the effectiveness of your link building strategies. And hey, who doesn’t like to see progress? Read on to see how this new feature works.

Subdomain Link Metrics

This update to the Links section is full of lots of little goodies. Not only are we now storing your campaign link metrics over time, but we have also added Subdomain Link Analysis metrics for you and your competitors.

Historical Data Charts

What matters most in viewing historical metrics is how you are faring against your competition. For each metric, you can view historical data over time in comparison to your competitors.  This way you can distinguish between the effects of your hard work to improve your link metrics and fluctuations that affect the entire index.

You can view historical data via the History tab or by using the menu link next to a given metric on the Summary tab. You can also export all historical data to a CSV file.

You may notice that we have made a few additional improvements to the Link Analysis section, including:

• adding Total External Links to Root Domain Metrics (to align with what is reported in Open Site Explorer)
• moving Link details to a separate tab for better readability
• updating the Summary PDF report to include Subdomain metrics

Linkscape Index Updates

Your link analysis metrics will continue to be updated every time a new index is released. With the rollout of this feature we’ll now be able to store your data from previous indices as well, starting with data from the October 28th index. However, this data only goes back as far as you campaign does. When you create a new campaign, we’ll only begin storing link metrics for you and your competitors from that point forward.

In order to give you the best data, we’re continually improving our Linkscape crawlers and the data they return to the Index. As indices change, it’s possible that your metrics may change as a result of what is included in one index vs. another. This may occur even if a site’s link profile hasn’t changed at all. I encourage you to check out Rand’s Linkscape Index blog posts (released with each new index) to better understand additional factors that could affect your metrics. Best practices indicate that you should always compare your progress against your competitors, versus solely comparing to your past performance.

Let Us Know What You Think

We hope these product updates bring a little cheer to your holiday season. As always, we would love your feedback! Feel free to share your thoughts, or holiday stories, via a comment on this post. For feature ideas you can always share via the feature request forum.

Happy holidays!

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/historical-link-analysis-is-here

5 Steps Beyond Competitive Link Analysis

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/5-steps-beyond-competitive-link-analysis-2011-10

The job of link building is getting tougher. The introduction of encrypted searches, the series of Panda updates, and whatever Google come up with next is putting more and more pressure on us all to drop any shortcuts and concentrate on quality link building. And the proven formula for quality link building is ‘great content, well promoted, equals great links’.

Not only must we continue to create great content, we’ve got to find more quality sites from which to get links. And to find more quality sites, we’ve got to go beyond simple competitive link analysis.

For many marketers, the first thought in link building is to do a competitive link analysis and then target the sites that are linking to your competitors but not to you.

That’s a good start, but it will never bring you all you need: if ‘follow your competitors’ is all you do, you’ll only be chasing links from sites where your competitors have already succeeded and that means you’ll always be behind them.

To be really effective in link building we’ve got to be more creative and go way beyond competitive link analysis in looking for new link opportunities.

Step 1: Broaden your idea of relevance

You have got to have relevant links, right?

That’s true but it’s only part of the picture. Many people’s idea of relevance is limiting.

Take BobsRedMill.com who produce whole grain foods. As you’d expect they get links from food sites like Chow.com, Epicurious.com and VegWeb.com.

But they also get links from:

• [GetRichslowly.com], a personal finance website that recommends them as a source of inexpensive, quality cereals.
• [Children’s Hospital Boston] as part of their Patient Education Information on Gluten-free foods
• [CNN small business] because of their employee ownership scheme
• [New York University’s Student Health Center]
• [BikePortland.org] for providing breakfasts for participants in a cycling event.

All of these are relevant links in the context in which they appear.

If you take only a limited view of relevance, you won’t even think of opportunities like these.

Step 2: Maximize your relationship with sites that already link to you

Sites that have already taken the step of linking to you, have done so for a reason. Do you really understand what that reason is and what their motivation is for going to the trouble of writing the code that gives you the all important link?

Perhaps:

• they’ve used your products and found them particularly useful
• you solved a specific problem for them
• they’re compiling a resource list
• perhaps they’re posting on a specific topic and they found something you wrote relevant
• …etc.

Discovering the specific reasons why gives you the basis of strengthening your relationship with a site. That could lead to:

• further coverage and links in the future
• keyword-rich linking text
• links to deep content on your site
• interest in joint ventures or affiliate relationships
• and much more…

You get the idea – linking to you is a sign that they’re interested in what you’re doing and you should follow up with something that strengthens your relationship.

Step 3: Check out who links to the sites that link to you

So you’ve looked at sites that link to you, you’ve understood why they linked, and you’ve approached them to strengthen your relationship. Now it’s time to move on and win some new links.

The sites that already link to you can be seen as an informal ‘organic link network’ that has evolved due to their interest in what you do. Sites that link to them are also sites that are likely to be interested in what you do.

For example, Footlocker.com get a link from the fashion blog [Nitrolicious.com] which in turn gets a link from another fashion blog, [ElementsOfStyle.com] – that blog and many hundreds of others could be more targets for Footlocker.com.

So find out who links to the sites that link to you and you’ll find many more linking opportunities.

Step 4: Check out who links to the top magazines in your market

Top magazines in your market can be a great source of high quality link prospects.

Magazines, newspapers and online news sites often quote and link to each other, so compiling links to the top magazine will reveal many other media outlets. This helps you build lists of target publications and identifies journalists and editors who could be interested in your company. Furthermore, bloggers will comment upon, link to and share any interesting article or news piece they come across.

So if you’re interested in ‘gourmet food’ for example, sites that link to leading food magazines like bonappetit.com, saveur.com, cooksillustrated.com, foodandwine.com and epicurious.com
are likely to be of great interest.

Step 5: Collect lists of the top blogs in your market

Link building is a tough task and you need all the help you can get. So how about getting some help from all those wonderful people out there who compile lists on the ‘top blogs’ in any given industry. Such people will probably have reviewed the sites, maybe even published some metrics that can help you identify blogs that you can target.

For example, SportsManagementColleges.net provide a list of the [top 50 skiing blogs]

And even better, you can use the top blogs that you find as I’ve used the top magazines in the example above. Blogs tend to link to and comment upon posts made by other blogs in their industry. So using them as a source for finding new links is very productive.

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