Majestic SEO have today launched a new product (in stealth beta), which I got a little demo of on Tuesday at SMX.

Majestic Million shows data points for the worlds top 1 million websites as determined by link popularity, such data points being number of backlinks, number of linking domains (and gains/losses on the numbers since last crawl). You can request a single site, groups of sites (by  name entry – not yet any classification by industry or type) and sites by TLD. A request for a comparative group of sites generates a URL that you can use to access the same data sources over time.

Potential Data Observations

From a high level viewpoint this data has the (theoretical) potential to reveal very interesting trends about media types, popularity and content consumption.Yes, we know that link graphs can and are often manipulated, but when we’re talking about the global top 1 million websites the percentage of links that could be manipulated do nothing to dent the statistical significance of the percentage contribution to total that will be composed of natural links. In our demo Dixon Jones showed us the data for the BBC, which by Majestic Million criteria, is number 1 position (above New York Times) for large media sites. Interestingly though Dixon pointed out that “The two right hand columns show the number of domains found linking to the site over the last 30 days of crawling and the combined links from within those domains found within 30 days respectively. The fact that so many are red could signify one of two things, either that in general the world’s largest sites are slowly losing prominence on the web to other upstarts further down the food chain, or that the crawlers were more aggressive on the day that just dropped out of the 30 day index.” So it’s kind of a little early to make any socio-cultural observations from data shifts outside of our expectations, but given the volume of data available, I’d say there’s extremely interesting potential here.

Immediate Data Applications

Of course there are a number of data applications that could have immediate validity, most obviously competitor comparison. In addition this data could be cross referenced with rank data per sector and used to take the temperature of “what goes on” per sector. As an example if I spit out the top 10 ranking sites for the term “car insurance” and run them through Majestic Million, I can get an immediate picture of the level of domain diversity and total backlink volume for that sector. I can then compare to other sectors to get a feel for “playing fields”, though of course sectors that do not naturally attract links at volume and are not subject to (ahem) manual intervention, then we’re not going to find them in the Majestic Million. Assuming you do have data sets featuring in the Million, it would also be an interesting exercise to do some correlative analysis looking at rank order, against #referring domains, against #backlinks – which could be done per term, per industry sector. (Yeah, yeah, correlation is not causation, but even if such analysis shows a marked lack of relationship to link graph and rank for a term analysed, isn’t that a massively useful ten minutes?)

Broader Industry Appeal

Despite Majestic having a link-data graph that is arguably bigger than Google’, there isn’t a great deal of outside industry appeal or application. Majestic Million potentially bridges this gap, with the addition of badges that can be added to Million “member” site homepages. Such a feature could be a useful value-add for sites wishing to demonstrate validity and authority even where traffic volumes may not be phenomenal.

Ah, the New York Palace…a truly gorgeous hotel in New York City with a stunning view of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (and The Primeburger), luscious Molton Brown toiletries, and nightly turn down service. All in all, not the kind of place I’m usually seen haunting. However, we visited them for the second time just last week for SESNY, and experienced the same fantastic service that we did during our initial visit. Basically, if it comes to making you feel special, they have it down to an art. We got the room at an insane discount due to a special they were having, and we obviously don’t look like posh people (unless they caught a glimpse of my skull-emblazoned Vans), but we were treated with the exact same courtesy and respect as the people in line beside us with a full suite of Louis Vuitton luggage. That’s because they know what they’re doing. Or else they thought Jay was Kyle Maclachlan.

Here’s our view by the way, in case you think the only hotel views in New York are of the ugly backsides of office towers and people sleeping on trash bags. Maybe that is just my experience though.

Now, to relate this to link building…well as you can see, this hotel treated me nicely, and they’re getting a link. End of story. Not the end of this post of course, as that would be just silly.

With social media letting us all vent the second someone steps on our toes, brands really do need to think about how their customer service ranks in comparison to their competitors. You can either treat people fantastically and get a nice link or you can treat them like shit and get a link with the “asshat” anchor text. No one wants to rank for “asshat” though (like you could ever beat urbandictionary!!) If you start to consider performing a Twitter sentiment analysis on your brand and all you see are frownie face emoticons, well that’s enough to really wreck your damn day. You want to see smiley faces. If my room wasn’t ready when I checked in at the appropriate checkin time (which did happen during my last NYC visit…not at the Palace of course!), my pillows were lumpy and crusty, and I was referred to as “sir” during checkin, I’d be on Twitter fussing like it was my job. You see, I do like to fuss, and I wish fussing could really be my job. If, when checking out of the Palace, I’d felt like they were laughing at my Vans, which are insanely cool seriously, I might have done an apathy icon at the very least. (I was actually so happy with them that I didn’t do any Twitter emoticons though, as that would have seemed declasse and I just wanted to get some tacos.)

If you search for “New York Palace” in Google, you’ll see that the first ten results are all positive. I imagine that they have people monitoring their brand and helping manage their reputation of course, but I also imagine that it’s difficult to find fault with them because they’re just so damned perfect at what they do. You don’t see them making jokes about Japan right now. Cough.

As a link builder, when anything positive or negative happens, my immediate thoughts relate to link building because it’s really what I live and breathe. I don’t think the New York Palace staff were nice to me because I might give them a link, of course, although I like to imagine them seeing my name on the registration form and thinking “damn that name rings a bell…ah yes!!! THAT Julie Joyce, the one Bryan Ferry keeps saying is so cute!” I think they’re just nice to everyone, as much as I hate to think of myself as being all common. It’s like when they card you for a drink and you smirk and pull out your driver’s license only to hear them loudly say “oh we card everyone.” Screw YOU.

Anyway, treating people well will always be an overlooked way to boost your visibility. When we talk about link building we sometimes forget all the really simple ways that it can happen. Just be nice, or respectful, or interesting at a party. You never know where your next link is coming from, so why not ensure that it’s a nice, sweet one? So yes, they got a link, and now I’m off to write glowing reviews on every review site I can find. I’ll mention them on Facebook and Twitter as well, and I’ll use a smiley face.

Here’s a bit of advice for those of you looking for someone to help you out with your online marketing:

Don’t be such a complete asshat. For some of you, this is easier said than done (at least judging by some of my recent encounters) but try, please.

Here’s Bill O’Reilly in case you aren’t sure exactly what an asshat is.

Over the past few years I’ve learned that there are quite a few warning signs that tell me that no matter how much money this guy is waving around, I don’t want him as my client. As I co-run the business with my husband, we try our best to agree on which clients to take, but occasionally one of us has accepted a client that the other person didn’t warm to immediately. Due to one of these issues, we’ve lost a lot of money on a client who refused to pay us. As a small business, this kind of thing can be detrimental, as you can imagine. I have 21 employees to protect and after a few bad experiences, I’m simply not going to let my gut instincts be secondary any longer. I disliked this guy immediately as he spoke over me and did lots of name-dropping about all the famous SEOs he knew. He was, and still is, what I like to refer to as a complete douchebag and if I’d only been stronger is voicing my misgivings and standing firm, things might be different right now. Live and learn though right?

So I’m not going to just keep quiet about all the bad signals. I’m not going to risk my business to take on anyone willing to pay my rates. Therefore, here are some things I’d really, really rather you not do if you want to earn my business, and that of any other professional in this industry.

Don’t insult my accent on a professional business call, first of all. Yes, I am Southern and when I hear a recording of myself I do gasp and immediately think of banjos and fried chicken but some of you don’t really sound much better. If you’re also Southern but you live in a “big city” then, um, still don’t freaking insult my accent. You’re sometimes even more Southern than I am. Don’t call me a hick on a business call, and don’t assume that just because I don’t sound like I could cough up a hairball of disgust and indignation like some posh Brit, I’m stupid. I’m just not insecure enough to hide my accent. I also really can’t hide it due to it being pretty damned thick.

Don’t ask to speak to my husband if I’m the one you contacted initially after reading MY articles. Yes, he’s the CEO but when you ask if he’s around because you’re prefer to speak to him and not me, all that says is that you have issues with women. Or Southern women. He’ll just tell you whatever I tell him to say ANYWAY.

Don’t ask me to sell my services to you. First of all, right now (thank God) I don’t need to, Secondly, what that says to me is that you’re going to make my life a living hell if I take you on. I want to spend my time working, not checking in with you and kissing your arse. I don’t feel like being asked to sell my services mainly because if you need what we’re offering, I will sell it, maybe even indirectly. If you start out being cocky and condescending and ask me to tell you why you should hire me, you’ve already pissed me off enough that I wouldn’t work with you anyway. I totally understand that potential clients want to make sure they are making the right decision in hiring an SEO of course, but any SEO worth his or her reputation is going to sell services in various ways when you first make contact. We’ll sell by reputation, or word of mouth, or references. We don’t need you to immediately start trying to totally call the shots and tell us what to do. In this same line of thought, don’t obnoxiously say you’ve never heard of me when you did, in fact, send ME a damned email. Please realize that I haven’t heard of you either, most likely, especially if you’re a schmuck running a network of sites trying to promote overpriced gated real estate in Texas.

So basically what I’m saying is that if you are a jerk, I’m not going to work with you, ever. I doubt I’m the only one who feels this way. However, let’s look at what types of things make me say “wow, I’d love to work with these people!” because there are a LOT of signals for that as well, and I am happy to say that my gut instincts on loving someone upfront have never led me astray. If I like you immediately, I’m going to keep liking you.

I like nice people. Being nice doesn’t mean you are dull, or unintelligent. It means you have a basic sense of politeness and some good social skills. By and large, most of the contacts I receive really are from nice people, and I’m very, very thankful because I do not at all mind taking the time to respond to these queries, and always I am happy to help these people out in any way that I can, regardless of whether they have money, or fit into my schedule, or just need some questions answered and I know I’ll gain something concrete out of the exchange. Our oldest client (well, oldest to us…) is our nicest. No matter what he needs, he respects what we do and it shows. He was immediately nice and he’s never failed to be nice. Did I mention that I like nice people?

Here’s Judi Dench. I think she’s a nice person. Yes, I’ve been thinking for years about how to work her into a post…

Somewhat similar to this is a sense of gratitude. I like to deal with people who actually do seem appreciative of my time and what our business can do, again, regardless of whether we form a client relationship with them. I have never been as busy as I am right now, and most people I know are the same way. I don’t have much time to spare some days but if someone recognizes that, I’ll make time.

Lastly, I like dealing with people who challenge me in some way, whether it’s to answer questions that stump me or to somehow bring about a new way for me to think about something. My link builders are geniuses at this (especially cute little Rachel Alton), and some of my clients are. Many of the people who contact us ask truly fantastic questions that make me think about something besides spreadsheets, management, keeping timesheets updated, and HR issues. They make me remember the days when I was first getting into all this and couldn’t get enough. I’ve never known a single SEO who didn’t drool at the thought of figuring out an SEO problem.

I remember seeing Steve Carrell on some talk show ages ago when the US version of The Office first came out, and he was talking about what an asshole his character is…he said something like (and I’m paraphrasing) “if you don’t think you know this guy it’s because you ARE this guy.” I think the same holds true here. If you read this and think, god she’s a princess, well…you may be an asshat.

So if you do need help, now or later, respect the experience, knowledge, capabilities, and time of the person you contact. SEOs are fantastic about giving out loads of information as we write, participate in and run forums, function as industry journalists, and just respond to emails and IMs. Go on Twitter and ask a question and see everyone rush to help you out. Why would you ever want to insult these people?? Ah…it’s because you may be an asshat. Right.

I was once highly disappointed by a dessert, to such an extent that it’s become a metaphor for anything bad that happens to me.

I was in a restaurant with my best friend Melinda when, hearing the sound of our waiter and smelling chocolate, I smiled in anticipation of the flourless chocolate dome, expecting it to be, well, bigger than a freaking truffle. It was tiny. Tiny is being NICE. It was a dinky, dinky thing, just big enough to piss me off. Had I known in advance what I was getting, I’d not have been so pouty. Setting expectations is critical when you’re doing anything. Had the waiter said “well nice choice but beware of its teeny nature” then I’d have either chosen something else, or I’d have not whimpered aloud when it was put down in front of me.

Managing expectations is very difficult at times, as when we’re trying to sell something, we sometimes exaggerate our anticipated results in order to close the deal. If things don’t go as planned, this can lead to a great deal of frustration.

To illustrate, here’s Jane looking disappointed.

Here’s Jane looking happy. I almost said satisfied but sadly, you’re all a bunch of perverts.

You want your client to make the happy Jane face.

How do you do this? Well, as cliched as it sounds, I like to underpromise and overdeliver. We don’t always overdeliver of course, depending upon the collective emotional state of my link builders, but I can assure you that I always, always underpromise. A DBA that I worked with years ago once joked that we’d be the two worst salespeople in the entire world, as we’d both be saying “you know? you really don’t need this. The price is just stupid and honestly, you’re fine without it. Sorry to have wasted your time.” Now, I think that everyone needs link building of course…but I never make any promises about the effectiveness of what we do, as it’s always something that is determined by many factors out of my control, such as budget, client’s site, client’s willingness to listen to SEO advice and make appropriate changes, history of the site, willingness of people in the niche to link, etc.

Google’s Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) has become the absolute number one enemy of mine lately, if you don’t count the people who try to get out of paying me. It seems to be the only metric that clients really view as important. After bitching loads about this to the lovely ginger SEOIdiot, I quickly realized that it’s actually all my fault. In this way, Paul resembles my mother, but with better hair.

Anyway, he pointed out that it’s critical to set the value for the client, before doing the work. Pretty simple concept really, but I was so sure that by underpromising and refusing to guarantee results, I had it all covered. He learnt me good.

So, if I gently yet emphatically explain to my clients beforehand that TBPR is really a load of crap, maybe when they get their reports at the end of the month, they won’t all fuss about why we got them some PR 0 and 1 links, right? Riggghhht.

As I learned from all this, I wasn’t quite clear on my definition of value either. As the Director of Operations, I was so used to making sure we didn’t run under or over budget and that we didn’t get worthless links that I didn’t take the time to think about much else. TBPR is a very easy number and it makes it easy to price links if you’re those types of nasty people who buy them. If you can’t rely on that for value, what is there? Defining quality is always difficult. Getting a client to agree with my definition of quality is even more difficult. (see my quality link may not be your quality link) Documenting quality on a client report is, like, fifteen hundred billion times as difficult. So what can you do?

Figure out what you want to get out of marketing, first of all. More traffic, higher rankings, more sales? The figure out a plan to make that happen. Throw away the idea of TBPR representing value up front…god knows we’ve all seen some amazing sites with low or no TBBR and some truly ridiculous sites with high TBPR. Once you’ve been doing link building for awhile, you can just look at a page and tell if it’s going to be a good one to get a link on. You can look at some high TBPR sites that may send traffic to your client’s site, but it will almost all be worthless traffic, as the niches are totally irrelevant to each other.

Since I’m heeding the advice of gingers, Scott Cowley had an awesome post on client expectations that brings up another big Flourless Dome area when link building: quantity and quality of links. At Link Fish, we keep loads of stats and can easily find out what the average cost of a paid link is for a year for each of the niches we’ve worked with, but the fact remains that averages are subject to change. In the past year alone, we’ve seen that the cost of a paid link on a gambling site has gone way, way up. German gambling links in particular have gotten pricey. Thus, if you give us $5000 to spend on links, you may see 50 links, but you may see 25. Clients really, really hate it when they’re used to getting a set number of links in a month, and then that changes for whatever reason. We sometimes decide to tighten up our in-house standards (for the greater good), and clients sometimes decide to change their standards midway through a campaign, which always wrecks the quantity balance unless the budget is adjusted. The quality then becomes an issue because clients get tired of having to pay more money for fewer links, and they consider going elsewhere to get what they think are cheaper yet better quality links. Err on the side of caution: assume the client will change his or her mind about guidelines and that links will get more expensive, and state this up front.

This also applies to non-paid link building of course, perhaps even more so. When you’re not offering money, things can get a bit harder. If a client comes to you after dealing with a paid link campaign and now wants to go all whitehat, he or she may be very surprised at the low quantity of links that you can get for the same effort. I’ll admit that the quality of non-paid links can definitely be much better than that of paid links…but it can also be much worse. It’s probably a good idea to get a nice history of any backlinking work that’s gone on when you take on a new client so that you can adjust expectations accordingly.

I was lucky enough to have coffee with Todd Mintz and his wife recently as they passed through town on their way to somewhere better, with air conditioning and less of a bloodhound smell. He said something that struck me…”I’ve only had one professional link building request.” I could be paraphrasing here, even if I am taking the liberty of using quotes, because my memory is fuzzy and it fits my damn blog post.

Anyway, I started thinking about the link requests that I get…

First of all, I’m annoyed by the link requests that reference my site in some way, then go on to explain why link building works and how to do it as if I am a total idiot who has no clue. While I can easily admit that my site sucks a duck’s ass, I do know that it makes what I do for a living fairly obvious. If you’re going to take the time to personalize your link request email, do more than simply insert my URL and call me ma’am. The best email ever was the one asking if I wanted to rank for the term “large fish.” Um…

Secondly, I am getting incredibly tired of unsolicited email, period. This of course does not conflict with the fact that my link builders send out thousands of unsolicited emails, of course. I’ve seen their emails, and while they are unsolicited, they indicate that yes, they’ve seen the site and they realize that it’s relevant for what they’re marketing. However, I definitely understand the mindset of people who see an email they didn’t ask for and get miffed. I do not understand the people who flip the hell out about it though, and reply with some truly nasty things that they plan to do, should we ever meet up. I also don’t understand middle-aged Caucasian males with dreadlocks who write nasty blog posts about how unsolicited emails are responsible for killing dolphins and wrecking the psyche of humanity.

Knowing how almost everyone views unsolicited emails, particularly emails in which they are asked to do something, how should you successfully craft a nice opening request?

If you’re buying links, you might assume that money is going to knock down all of those barriers, but that rarely happens. In fact, sometimes mentioning money in your initial email has the same effect of using the wrong fork at the country club. People gasp and turn away in disgust. If you can establish a connection and get a response, then you can work it into the conversation. We have had success with being very upfront and indeed mentioning money first, of course, but many money-related keywords trigger spam filters, so be careful. Sometimes it’s just…tacky. If tacky rears its head in the form of my dead gran’s silver sequined disco belt, I like it. If it’s just vulgarity, I don’t.

Please, please don’t call me sir. If you’ve found my contact information that clearly has my name in it, there’s no excuse for this. Julie is not a man’s name. Sure, my daughter has a male name and there are men named Nancy I imagine but it’s not statistically high enough to warrant making this mistake. I understand that if you can only find an info at site.com address, you may not know the gender of the webmaster, but if that’s the case, don’t assume it’s a man. I know it’s hard to believe that we do things other than vacuum and giggle but it’s true.

Pretend that you’re writing to your high school English teacher who isn’t the fuddy-duddy that you remember, but a hip techno-geek who likes the appropriate use of a semi-colon and also is aware of how to use a computer. Nothing annoys me more than a very poorly written email, especially when it contains glaring errors such as using your when it should be you’re. I imagine George Bush saying new-ku-ler when I see this and immediately discount the sender as being a moron of..well, Bush-like stature. If your command of whatever language in which you’re writing is poor, for whatever reason, please ask someone who’s a bit smarter than you to review it and correct the errors. It will save you loads of time spent reading insults about your mother.

No one wants to read War and Peace in the form of an email so don’t go on about all the reasons that you love my site, including its utterly mind-blowing design and amazing content. Don’t tell me that it’s relevant to your site about Viagra, because I will comb the damn content looking for injected code and that wastes my time and makes me mad and then I’ll knock an employee down the stairs. Accidentally. I’ve seen some beautifully written emails that are lengthy, and I’ve scanned, and deleted, asap. I don’t have time and I doubt you do, either. I would ask that you don’t simply email with a caveman-like “Give me link!” though, although that will get a laugh.

Here’s what I hate the most, mainly because of its creep factor. Please don’t figure out who a site owner is, look said person up online, and reference something you’ve found on Facebook or elsewhere. If you happen upon an article written by a webmaster whom you plan to contact, that’s a legitimate thing to mention in my opinion, but if you’ve read my horrible blog and can reference the time when I attended a pig’s birthday party, well ick.

Earlier this week, we told you about the launch of InfluenceFinder, which debuted at SMX London 2010 on Monday. Use invite code [seochicks] for pre-approval on a 7 day trial.

Having now used the tool for a couple of weeks, I wanted to follow up with a review from my perspective. If you missed the story of the launch and case study then you might want to check that out first.

Overview

It’s really important to stress that the InfluenceFinder product (and I think the name gives it away really) is designed to help it users find influential link targets. Although the product does draw and re-index from the Majestic webmap, and is therefore extremely expansive – the main objective is to improve the working efficiency of the linkbuilding process. In their own words InfluenceFinder seeks to facilitate “more conversations in less time, with better outcomes”. Where I’m going with this, is that it may feel at times as if there is a lot of layering and filtering by default. If you’re a bit of an old hand used to making your own target decisions, then this may require an element of trust in the product.

Ease of Use

InfluenceFinder has a very clean, spacious look and feel (until you get to the results set, though more on that later) that takes you on a staged walk-through. You can tell the product is aimed at medium to large agencies with multiple teams of linkbuilders or large websites with sizable in-house teams, as even from the outset the user is taken by the hand and the potential objectives explained…

Once you have your project type in mind, stage two contains lots of helpful prompts and signposts at the various stages. In addition, if you omit to fill in any of the fields, or if you only enter one data point in a field that more often than not would contain multiple entries, then there are handy user prompts that check in with you, and make you aware of the potential implications – which is nice.

Of course the most important screen is the view projects screen. In this view you are presented with your list of domains in a split screen view, with the list of domains on the left, and the list of pages on the right. It’s quite useful to have this split-screen view to detail instances of multiple links from the same domain, as of course each type of link may have different levels of influence and signals that can be applied as filters. On the whole the view projects screen looks and feels like your Outlook inbox, and is therefore fairly intuitive.

On the down side, even though you can drag and drop the split, I’m not sure the vertical tiling is the best method of presentation here; though I am on a laptop with a 15.6 inch monitor. It is a little fiddly to scroll and reveal the various useful columns, and the row depth is a little heavy on the eye too.

Features

InfluenceFinder is packed full of features that really do help to take some of the donkey work out of cleaning target lists. In most cases these features are pretty cool, sometimes a little like overkill.

Features that Work Well

1. When compiling your project you have the ability to add or upload keywords (for anchor text analysis) which you can classify as “brand” or “non-brand”, which can be useful if you’re interested in using type of anchor text as a filter criteria.

2. There’s a detailed range of “signals” displayed as columns, such as Influence Index, Relevance Index (both expressed as percentages), if the link source is a blog or not, if the keyword (brand or non-brand) is in the title of anchor text and to which source the domain links to – which may be multiple sources if you have submitted a list of multiple domain targets.

3. There are some pretty sensitive filters that can be applied depending on how tight you want to tune your list of targets and how large your original project list may be. In particular the Advanced Link Source filters offer some pretty cool options.

Features That May Take Some Getting Used To

Although as I’ve mentioned the user interface is a doddle and extremely intuitive, the vertical tiling and sheer amount of filters and options mean you can almost get carried away playing with the various refinements. Of course once you get used to what’s available, you can then identify more quickly which elements are going to be most useful for most projects and focus there. A couple of things I couldn’t work out…

1. When you view your project you are presented with the first 100, of the total, but only “X” are shown due to the default filters that are in place. It isn’t clear exactly why “X” are hidden.

I think it would be helpful if this said “(552 hidden by filters).

2. I wanted to see how easy it was to reveal hidden link sources, however when I managed to run a project that in the end produced “Link sources 0 – 0 of 0 (2 hidden), I couldn’t work out what filter settings where preventing the display of these 2 hidden sources. It could just be my newbie incompetence, but I think it would be useful to have some way to reveal all hidden sources, or remove all filters in a single tick.

Summary

I’d say that InfluenceFinder is a product that does exactly what it is intended for. It succeeds in taking a large data set and applies its own meaningful signals; plus allows you to fine-tune according to some additional useful criteria. At first sight it can seem like there is almost too much choice, in terms of filter criteria, but of course just because it’s there doesn’t mean that you have to use it. It’s a great tool that should be really useful for any medium to large agencies, and also have features that allow for project sharing.

Id also suggest you check out Wiep Knol’s review of the product too.

UPDATE: May 18th 2010 – The team at Linkdex have provided an invite code for SEO Chicks readers. Please use the invite code [seochicks] for pre-approval for a free 7 day trial at InfluenceFinder.com

Lead by serial entrepreneur and founder of Netrank Ltd, John Straw founded Linkdex in 2008. After two years in the making Lindex is about to soft-launch their first product at SMX today. InfluenceFinder is that product, and I’ve been having a little look at the beta version, plus a rather interesting case study using Econsultancy as the test subject.

InfluenceFinder is positioned as a tool for search marketers to improve their working efficiency by applying additional scientific methods to an extensive webmap; such methods include complex decision trees designed to add more value to returned data. Rather than returning the most expansive list of targets InfluenceFinder seeks to return more targetted data with additional ‘signals’ for relevance and authority.

I’ll talk you through the Econsultancy case study, as that identifies some such interesting signals…

1. Objective

I met Linkdex V.P of Product – Matt Roberts last week, and Matt explained that in the Econsultancy case-study the InfluenceFinder team wanted to see how the product stacked up against other backlink resources, not just in terms of volume, but also in terms of value.

2. Methodology

Working with Econsultancy, the InfluenceFinder team were given access to Google Webmaster Tools data for the site www.econsultancy.com and could therefore compare this to the open API data from SEOMoz Linkscape and MajesticSEO; against Influence Finder.

They looked first at commonality.

What is interesting to note here is that 58% of the links reported by Google in Webmaster Tools, are not covered by any of the aforementioned backlink tools. In addition, though this is well known, it is clear that Google Webmaster Tools doesn’t present all of the links it knows about.

InfluenceFinder claim to re-index the backlink data so that it is a much fresher sub-set of MajecticSEO, with which it appears to have most commonality.

3. Additional Value Signals

Expanding on the value of the returned data, the InfluenceFinder – Econsultancy case-study then goes on to establish its’ case for adding value, by focusing on two of the relevancy signals presented in the project results. Firstly, the “blog” signal…

InfluenceFinder uses comlex decision trees to identify (and they say within a level of accuracy to 95%) if a potential link target is a blog or not?

I can see why this would be useful, as blogs can often be really efficient link targets. Additionally it is always easiest to start a list for blogger outreach using the blogs that already link to you.

Bringing this back to the Econsultancy data, applying this filter to identify the “Is a Blog?” signal, whittled the target list to 2723 blogs.

Going further, the next signal applied to this data was “heartbeat”, which is how they have described if a site is active, however there is a bit more intelligence applied to the heartbeat algorithm so that e.g. feed pushers are stripped out. Essentially then the “heartbeat” signal is more a measure of natural regular activity, than just activity.

4. Conslusion

In the Econsultancy case-study, the InfluenceFinder product stripped an expansive list of backlink data into an efficient list of blog targets which they state is effective in that the product succeeds in its’ aim to “turn large lists of link prospects in to smaller more accurate and actionable lists. Better lists result in more conversations with the sites that matter.”

So that’s the InfluenceFinder Econsultancy Case-Study. Linkdex readily admit that a case study of one isn’t the largest sample size, so I’m happy to give you my perspective and I’ll share some data too! Later this week I will follow up with my own thoughts on the product in terms of user-interface, speed, performance, ease of use, amount of data, usefulness of data and more.

See you at SMX.

In my world of link building, compensation is often offered. That is because I see nothing wrong with paying someone to put up a link for a client, and because I work with clients in exceptionally competitive fields where we’ll be the ones losing out if we try to do things the 100% white hat way. I only make those claims to avoid having this post get turned into a paid link debate…because this post isn’t about the ethics of paid links. It’s about link noise, and how that factors into a paid link campaign.

The key here is that when you’re buying links, you have a lot more control. You can set your desired anchor text, tell a webmaster which page to point to, where to put the link, that you’ll hunt him down and kill him if he slaps a no follow on it 3 weeks from now, etc. Thus, the concept of intentionally going after a bit of link noise may seem somewhat strange. You see link noise in most sites’ backlinks of course but you don’t always think about the role that it serves in a profile.

Before I go any further, I will define link noise as being the type of link that you’d exclude if you were picking out your best backlinks. The anchor text won’t be optimal, the sites may not be relevant, the links will just somehow not be optimal in any way. Now, the idea of approaching a webmaster and requesting a noisy backlink and offering decent money for it still makes me a bit queasy, because I’d prefer to pay for something…good.

You know how all link builders talk about a natural link profile? Link noise is part of that. My number one point with this post is that it is a critical part of paid link building campaigns, because you don’t typically think about offering cash to get a shit link. However, it’s those shit links that can sometimes save you.

So what IS a noisy link? It’s probably a link that, as a professional link builder spending money, you’d never ever want…and considering my feelings on outing people and/or pointing out actual stupidity on someone’s site, I’m not giving any examples to go along with this. Well, there IS the beaver down below…hahahaha.

The Acceptable Noise Links
These are the links that most link builders can agree make a profile look more natural. They’re the ones least likely to annoy and frustrate people who think that buying a link means you’re shaking the hand of Satan. These are the links with anchor text such as “Click Here”, “visit”, your URL, your site name, your company name, “more”, “here”, etc. Not that it can be argued that some of these are not, in fact, link noise. However, remember that I’m talking about the active, paid pursuit of links.

Incorrect links
These are links that are misspelled, go to the wrong page for the anchor text, have incorrect URL but go to the right place (like “seochicks.com” which does go to our site properly but, um, we have a dash…a dash of sass! ) have a space where one should not be, etc. These are links that you might expect a newbie link builder to set up with an inexperienced webmaster.

Missing Anchor Text
These are the links with no anchor text. Need I say any more?

404 Links
These links go to a non-existent page on your site. Again…not much explanation is needed here. However, the very IDEA of getting someone to put up a link to a non-existent page on your site is just so counterintuitive that it makes my head spin. The other way, of course, but it still spins.

The Pesky Second Link
These are the links that aren’t supposed to count, provided that the landing page for both links is the exact same. Some people try to be cool and get in two anchor text combinations, thinking both will count. Some webmasters think that they’re doing us a favor (thanks assholes) by giving us a free second link. In any case, these are excellent for link noise.

Just Plain Stupid Links
These are links that contain a paragraph in their anchor text. They are the links that you’d expect someone who’s a bit of a moron to give you, not knowing any better. I’d put hidden links in this category too, actually, as those really are just plain stupid. However, I do draw the line at specifically requesting hidden links.

Now, with this in mind I spent a bit of time analyzing the backlinks of this lovely site. I know, without any doubt whatsoever, that the SEO Chicks backlink profile is completely 100% organic. We’ve seriously done, well, fuck all to build links. To do this, I used Raven SEO’s backlink tool, which is my current favorite, and I exported, sorted, and did everything but produce a pretty graph that makes it look like I’ve done some work when I haven’t. I didn’t look for the second links or 404 links, mainly because I just wanted a quick and dirty analysis and didn’t feel like digging. Cheese dip awaited.

Here’s what I found:

64% of our backlinks are what I would consider link noise. Out of this 64%, 1.4% have missing anchor text, .6% are incorrect, but only 1 link (0.2%) was just plain stupid. Yes guys, I found the beaver link, and thanks for that. The most interesting thing is that a full 61% of our links are of the acceptable link noise variety. A good bit of these are site names and URL mentions, which, as I have said, could arguably NOT be link noise but hey, we’ve never tried to optimize for our own name so I feel ok putting them into the link noise camp. Before any of you mathletes gets testy about the math, note that I’ve rounded. Sometimes up, sometimes down. It just depends on my mood, really.

Therefore, 46% of our backlinks are something for which, as a link builder, I’d be trying to optimize, rank, and get traffic. Now, if I were paying for links, I might not think that spending money on noise was a good thing of course, but as you can see…noise is 64% of this organic profile. I am certainly not proposing that you invest in 64% link noise, of course, but I don’t think that there’s any way your link profile will appear natural if you ignore those kinds of links.

1. Demanding placement. If you’re paying, I can see where you feel that you have the right to tell the site owner where you’d like the link, but don’t be too insistent or else you’ll risk them turning you down. If you’re asking nicely and saying “pretty please?” then, unless it’s truly a disastrous spot, just shut up and move on.

2. Indirectly insulting the site. The site owner may be passionate about his work, so why risk putting him off? No one wants to hear that their site is only worth x because it has a PR of y, or that you can help them drastically overhaul it and make it sooooo much better. How are you going to feel when you say that and learn that the site owner had to use a head pointer to peck out code? Yeah that’s right. You’re gonna feel like the jerk that you are.

3. Offering too little money. This can immediately cause the site owner to never open another email from you again.

4. Offering too much money. This makes you look flash and no one likes a rich boy. Well, some people do…

5. Continually harassing the site owner after the link is placed. If it takes you fifteen emails to get a link worked out, YOU may be better off walking away. If the site owner is trying and you’re just one of those really picky people who orders a no-foam latte with just a dusting of cinnamon, the site owner’s going to get quite tired of your constant demands and just say screw you.

6. Not being honest about risk. If someone asks if what you’re asking is legal or ethical, then be honest and explain it.

7. Approaching a site with the wrong client. A site for addiction and recovery isn’t the best choice for a gambling link.

8. Being too impersonal in your opening email. A salutation of “Hello Site Owner” is a bit off-putting.

9. Making it obvious that you have never looked at the site. Since I run a link building agency, all of my friends enjoy forwarding their one-size-fits-all email requests that come from, apparently, reputable firms.

10. Not paying on time if you’re buying. Stand by your agreement and pay in a timely manner. Otherwise, you could pay late and find that the site owner is pissed off and has taken down your link, then you waste more time working this out.

11. Being unresponsive when the site owner has a question. Doing this can destroy any future relationship.

12. Bad grammar. That is just wrong.

13. Misspellings. These say that you have little attention to detail and can’t use spellcheck.

14. Purple prose.

15. Being too succinct. You risk sounding scripted and robotic, therefore not like a real human being.

16. Not following up quickly. If someone responds to your link request, get back to them asap. Don’t wait a week, or they might think you were scamming them and will badmouth you all over the internet. It’s also just rude to leave someone hanging.

17. Being ignorant about your subject. It’s usually very obvious when you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.

18. Telling the site owner that your link won’t hurt the site, then insisting on moving the link to a “better” page once your page loses PR.

19. Sending an obviously scripted first email, then replying with one that is in a completely different tone.

20. Getting too personal. Yes, a site owner may want to know what color your hair is but avoid getting into the habit of feeding the souls of lonely guys who operate out of Mama’s basement.

21. Asking for a link that is coded to look like regular text. This just makes the site owner suspicious.

22. Insisting that the site owner make permanent changes to the site’s template or structure just to accommodate your needs.

23. Giving the site owner bad code. Chance are that if you screw up someone’s site, you’re not going to end up with that link. This also makes you look like an idiot. HTML honestly isn’t that tricky.

24. Not providing technical help for the site owner when he or she is putting up the link. If you can’t give any technical advice on getting a link up, you should not be asking for a link.

25. Having your name spattered all over the internet as a known spammer. For the most part, if you’re a quality link builder, this won’t be a major problem but even when you’re doing things by the book, you’ll still encounter a few nuts who will immediately accuse you of spamming and will blaspheme you all over the interweb.

26. Having your company’s name spattered all over the internet as a known crap company. See above.

27. Trying to renew a link by making it a completely different link without any incentives. If someone’s having to make a change, offer up something for his or her time.

28. Removing the page a link points to without notifying the site owner or redirecting it. It’s not nice to cause someone to have broken outbound links.

29. Writing copy for a link that is completely unlike the copy of the site.

30. Approaching an SEO with a lame link request.

31. Approaching the highly idealistic with a paid link request. This usually includes any blogger who fancies himself or herself a true artist/writer/poet/pagan.

32. Asking to trade links if you put yours up first.

33. Asking to trade links when what you have to offer is truly a worthless site.

34. Using a name that does not correspond with your email address.

35. Assuming anything. The sports site owner must be male. The guy who runs a fashion blog must be gay. The mom who has a coupon blog must be poor. Don’t assume anything and make a stupid mistake. You have no idea how many people piss me off by calling me Joyce. Yeah, it’s a first name but it’s not MY first name.

36. Using spellcheck but not reading over your email before you send it. Yes, “incontinent” is a word but maybe you didn’t actually mean that “I hope you don’t think that I’m incontinent.” Or maybe you did, in which case you’re fine.

37. Making a joke or pun before you know the style of humor that the site owner has. Bowel blockage may amuse you, but it might not amuse the site owner.

38. Using tech slang that not everyone knows. Just because someone has a web site doesn’t mean that he or she is familiar with technical jargon that you toss about wildly in day to day interactions.

39. Stating that your company is one of the best-known and most successful SEO firms out there when no one in the industry has ever heard of you.

40. Stalking a site owner on any social media platform beforehand and referencing that in your opening email. That is just creepy.

41. Stating that you have references when, in fact, you’re just gonna make them up. A lot of the link building emails that I receive do state this, and I’ve never been arsed to call anyone out on it, but I have a strong suspicion that said references are either made-up or from other sketchy types.

42. Linking to the definition of any technical term on Wikipedia in your email.

43. Having a truly asinine quote associated with your email signature. It’s awesome that you think Buddha was wise but I don’t want to hear about it. I do too but you don’t see me going on about it when I’m building links.This is especially true for quotes attributed to religious figures, Southern authors, and politicians.

45. Using quotes without listing who said them. This is highly annoying as we struggle to determine just who it was that said this asinine SEO quote. Was it someone well-respected in the industry? Was it just your mom?

46. Using FTW, WTF, LOL, LMFAO, or any other acronym that you may be used to using on Twitter or in IM. Email provides you with the space to properly show people that you are not, in fact, an illiterate hack.

47. Cursing. I will be first to board the cuss buss but it’s just inappropriate in a business-related email unless you’re close to someone and know how it will be taken. As much as I love a good cussing, I also know that some people simply lose respect for you when you do it. Feel the person out before you drop the f-bombs please.

48. If the site owner changes your link and it’s still acceptable but not perfect, just deal with it. Maybe you asked for the anchor text for a keyword but they decided to go with the brand name. If you’re paying for it, yes you do have the right to speak up but you should accept that there are no guarantees. If you asked for the link without offering payment, then just keep quiet and move on.

49. Asking for personal details too quickly, before trust is established. Many people immediately think you’re trying to scam them for whatever reason, so be cautious about getting payment information, address, etc.

50. Approaching a site owner who’s already turned you down.

Welcome to the latest installment in our SEO 101 series, where we attempt to weed out all the conjecture and give you a very basic understanding of the part of online marketing that we’re most comfortable with…mine being links. Lucky, lucky me. Now, the reason for my choice of paid vs. non-paid links as a subject for 101 is because I think that there’s a huge amount of misinformation about paid links out there, and, being public service-minded (not really), I view it as my goal to explain just what the fuss is all about. After all, if you’re starting to build links, you’re going to soon get into the whole paid vs non-paid debate, right?

Note: We’ve written several good posts about links (how to make irrelevant links relevant, what exactly constitutes a paid link, etc.) and I encourage you to read those, despite any nasty formatting errors.

What IS A Paid Link?

This isn’t as clear-cut as you think. Technically, a paid link is one that has been purchased. However, what about links that are given for some other non-monetary reason that’s really no different? The exchange of goods, for example, is one that’s bandied about as people argue whether that constitutes an actual violation of Google’s guidelines. The FTC has recently cracked down on bloggers who blog about a product without releasing the info that they have, indeed, been paid for it, but currently, that same issue isn’t affecting the buying and selling of actual links themselves.


Who Says Paid Links Are Bad?

What this all boils down to is, once again, Google. As you may or may not know, Google has decided that buying links is not a great idea, and it’s a violation of their webmaster guidelines. Thus, to remain happily in their index, you should not buy links, according to them. You’ll read link builders going on and on about how bad paid links are, but I’d honestly love to know how they’d feel if it didn’t constitute a violation that could get a site thrown out of an index.

How Are Paid Links Detected?

Some of them are just so glaringly obvious that it’s laughable. Some of them are so well-done, there’s honestly no way someone would know that the link was purchased. There are the give-away keywords like “Sponsored Links” or “Advertise Here!” There is my favorite, the link that is so obviously out of place, it’s just stupid. There are footprints, where you can find the same exact text surrounding a link, on 15 sites. Some site owners enjoy hiding paid links in text that matches the color of the background. Clever!! Very, very clever. OK it’s not. It’s not at all clever. If I see a link that’s hidden in that manner, I am immediately suspicious when, many times, I wouldn’t have been before.

Why Would You Buy Links?

If you’re working in an ultra-competitive niche, you honestly may not be able to rank well without buying links. All the competitors are doing it, and even though the “everyone else is doing it” argument isn’t usually one that I enjoy making, in this case…it’s true. As I’ve said before, if anyone IS ranking in the top 3 spots for ultra-competitive terms without buying any links, I’d love to hear about it. If you encounter a lovely site owner who wants to give you a great free link on a high-traffic site, I’d also like to know.

What Are The Alternatives?

Building content that attracts links on its own, using social media, and simply asking for a link in a very, very nice way. While these methods definitely work for the right niche, including some very competitive ones, nothing really seems to convince people better than cash. That’s kind of a sad social commentary all on its own, but hey, we live in a capitalist society don’t we?

What’s a NoFollow?

Nofollow is an HTML attribute that basically tells a search engine not to influence the link target’s Page Rank from that link. Thus, if you nofollow a link, you’re telling the engines that you don’t want that link to pass any link juice. Some people will only give you a nofollowed link, but if your aim is traffic and the link is in a nice spot, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Personally, I have become much less interested in nofollow over the past few months, as we’ve seen that nofollowed links are part of a natural link profile. Technically speaking, if you’re buying a link somewhere and it’s really, really obvious that you’re buying, you may want to ask for a nofollow so that you aren’t violating any engine’s guidelines. Since nofollow could really take all day to discuss, just go search and read about it.

Are Paid Links Right for Everyone?

Absolutely not. They may work for everyone, but that doesn’t mean that you should always buy links. A backlink profile for a non-profit that is full of nothing but crappy sitewide fashion blogroll links is just a waste of time and money and a damn good shot at getting a handreview that knocks you out of Google. Good luck cleaning THAT mess up…

Just as I think that there definitely are some sites that will never move up in the rankings without buying links, I’ve definitely seem enough sites where I think it simply isn’t a good idea for one reason or another. Basically, even though I pretend to be all anti-establishment, when it comes to certain niche industries, buying links is just stupid. This site, for example, has never bought a link and we’ve been able to generate a decent amount of backlinks for our troubles. We may not rank in the top 3 for massively competitive phrases all the time, but we’re doing ok. It just depends on what you want to get out of it, I imagine. We want qualified readers, not loads of people who hit the site and immediately leave.

Are There Some Cases Where You Should Never Buy Links?

Absolutely. In fact, if you would lose your shirt if your site got banned, you might want to steer clear of link buying. However, I’ll tell you that I have worked with clients who would indeed be up the creek without a paddle if they got thrown out of Google for buying links, yet they continue to do so in spite of the risk because their ROI happens to make them skip hand in hand with their bankers down the yellow brick road. That’s also an ethical dilemma for you as a link builder. My theory is that if people are aware of risk and still wish to do something, in this case, I’m ok with it. I don’t equate buying links to butchering babies or committing genocide, so I do tend to save my energy for getting angry at meaningful things, like the cashiers at Marshall’s who only open up another lane once I’ve waited 45 minutes and am next up, the bitches.

What Happens If You Get Caught?

If you get caught, which means that you’re turned in by some nasty horrible troll of a person, you’re hand-reviewed by Google, or something else, then you’ll be tossed out of Google’s index and you have to “clean up” your site before you can be reincluded. That’s a massive pain in the arse. It won’t affect you in the other engines, but if you’re dependent upon Google for the majority of your traffic, you’re fairly well screwed. I’ve spoken to people in this situation and it can take full months to clean things up. This isn’t like the days of cloaked sites where you could say hey Google, I’ve removed those redirects and then you’re back in. This involves going to other people who have linked to you with paid links, and either nofollowing them or removing them altogether.

So there you have it, on a very basic level. Paid links are all about risk versus reward (or just not getting caught) so proceed with caution.