GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 41 - July 2018

Links Are Dead - Long Live Links perble.com . Of course, there are lots of link suppliers, so make your own judgment call. LINKS ARE DEAD You remember I talked about ranking signals? A far better ranking signal than a link is user engagement. It’s relatively easy to fake a link profile, but it is fairly difficult to fake user engagement at scale. What do I mean by user engagement? I am talking about click-through rates from search results and the subsequent hopping from one search result to another as a user seeks what they want. In its most distilled form, we’re talking about clicks and dwell time. On a higher level, we’re talking about user satisfaction in the context of the search query they have used. WHAT MAKES A SATISFYING WEBSITE? Short answer: Whatever satisfies a user based on the search query they have found you through. If it’s a query for “casino bonuses,” there is an implicit need to be satisfied: “Give me casino bonuses.” If you want to understand more about how Google evalu- ates the quality of websites, do a search for “Google quality evaluator guidelines,” and you’ll see a 2017 document that is used for training Google search quality evaluators. CONNECTING LINKS AND ENGAGEMENT TOGETHER Simply: Links get you into what I call the “traffic zone,” which means you get ranked, and then Google can start to make sense of whether users like your content or not. If there are lower click-through rates and higher bounce rates than expected, they drop that page in the rankings. Obviously, the opposite user metrics would mean a rise in rankings. Once a website accrues enough trust from Google, it will rank content without the need for a links. If the content exceeds Google’s expectations, the site builds accrued trust and rank- ings keep rising until they reach an equilibrium point, where they stabilize. Overall, engagement is a far more powerful signal than links for determining rankings. Over the last five years I’ve seen loads of examples of sites that either climb the rankings without new links or do not achieve greater rankings, despite huge spend on link acquisition. FINALLY . . . If you follow the principles of these simple ideas: • Good links give a website an initial ranking “bump.” • A good link is from a ranking site. • Ultimately, rankings come down to how satisfying the content is. I’m confident you’re going to rank. If you’re buying links from such bad sources , aren’t you worried about a penalty ? This leads to the question: Is there such a thing as a bad link ? Nick Garner is the founder of Oshi.io, a popular bitcoin casino, and was a successful enough affiliate to sell his affiliate site. More recently, he has invested in perble.com , a sports content and link acquisition business aimed at sportsbook affiliates and operators. Illustration by Sammby/Shutterstock 37 W W W . G P W A T I M E S . O R G