GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 34 - February 2016

First, the scary stuff Protecting against negative SEO We’ve seen this become more and more prolific in the last few years, and Google’s re-inclusion team doesn’t tend to believe the “it wasn’t me” defense too readily. As a result, you should check your links at least once a month to make sure nothing strange is popping up. We’ve seen sites given penalties for a rela- tively inexpensive amount of negative SEO, and we can only imagine there’s go- ing to be more. It can be difficult to active- ly remove any bad links flying your way, but doing so will make your life easier if you end up having to ask for re-inclusion because of negative SEO. Time to really look at your profile A lot of affiliates haven’t gone through their backlinks properly in a long time, and a lot will still have low-level legacy links. You really need remove and dis- avow these types of links. The noose tightens every year with this, and you need to stay ahead of the curve. Of course, you should also look to rebalance anchors if necessary; while most people in English markets have already needed to do this, it’s worth keeping an eye on all the same. What should you be building, then? Justified links If you read my last GPWA Times Magazine piece, you understand “link justification content” and how to stretch your bud- get so you can give the impression of be- ing a large brand. (You can read it here: gpwa.org/381 ). The idea of link justification content is that you’ve created something that peo- ple would want to link to, at least if you weren’t a gambling site. That way, even if you pay for links, it becomes incredibly hard for Google to say that it’s outright paid linking. This isn’t too hard to do as an affiliate; even a simple infographic will give you an excuse. And you don’t have to worry about it being completely niche and only going out to niche sites, as long as there’s a legitimate tie-in. A good example would be a slots affiliate creating a piece on Game of Thrones and mentioning the slot game at some point on the graphic. That graphic then links back to the game demo or the original post on your site, which in turn has internal links to whichever pages you are trying to rank. You can also get away with linking to the homepage with things like this, but only if it’s brand anchor text and is clearly refer- encing you as credit for the piece. Stop using domain authority and trust flow This is one of those industry-perpetuated myths that sometimes confuses people, as they get told so many different things from a variety of “experts.” I’m going to upset a few people by saying this: Domain authority and trust flow are used time and time again in an unbeliev- ably misguided manner. The second you actually stop to think about what they are and how they work, you’ll understand why they’re essentially worthless outside of agencies. The problem is that their best use is for ju- nior staff members; it’s a good metric for them to look at while they’re still learning the ins and outs of what a good site is. It’s also something that the industry uses as a sales tool to make it look like we’re check- ing more things and that we’re more tech- nical. Think of it as “security theater for 12 SEO resolutions for 2016