Thanks 🙂

It’s been a long time since I sourced and built my own PBNs.  These days I just buy from RankClub.io

You can use rank trackers. Put in the URL of the backlink you want to track, then set the anchor text to “site:http://url.com“. Then set an alert to tell you when it drops off page 1.

How do you keep track of the indexing of your backlinks?

Do you use a backlink monitoring tool?

I keep records of my backlinks but it’s the process of tracking what backlinks are indexed that is throwing me off.

I can build a ton of backlinks but Google will only take evaluate those that are indexed which can throw off my anchor text ratios.

That’s correct.

So I checked the Excel file and I have a question about it.

You have that Reference Section where the Keywords with their Search Volume are listed. Then you have the column with used (yes or no). Do I understand it right that here you list all the keyword combinations the site could rank for with their search volume and if you have used them as an (exact-) anchor?

For example in the casino niche:
888 casino – 100k SV – Used: yes
888 casino bonus – 2k SV – Used: yes
888 Casino No Deposit Bonus – 1k SV – Used: No
888 Casino bonus offer – 0,5k SV – Used: No

So in this particular example I would just use all those 4 anchor at any given time, track the rankings for them and then check them as used: yes?

Thanks for your answer in advance!

Best regards from Germany
Nils

Correct. That’s my threshold as of March 10, 2018.

First of all, I don’t look at traffic for PBNs. Traffic for PBNs is a nice to have, not a must have. I literally wrote the book on it.

That said, based on more recent tests, you can indeed get a 15-20% increase in ranking boost (this is handwaiving here as accurate testing for this is impossible) from PBNs with traffic. But PBNs work completely fine with zero traffic.

As for white hat links, this is where I do my future proofing. It indeed does make sense that Google would only want to honor sites that they rank, and thus have traffic. But that’s not the case right now.

So what I do is make sure my white hat links have 1k traffic or more per month.

I checked ahrefs traffic. I am surprised as it always shows very high numbers for the organic traffic (10^2 – 10^3 per day) even for trashy domains. Also for my own domains the traffic estimation from ahrefs seems way off. Could we still use it as a rough indicator? If so what do you consider the minimum ahrefs traffic to go for a a link?

Ahrefs.

last question then: Which tool do you use to look at the referring domain’s traffic?

I won’t look too far into whether a competitors backlinks are worth getting or not. The answer is usually on the wall: they’re ranking and they have these links, so it’s probably a part of it. Normally, I’ll just look at the referring’s domain’s traffic, make sure its not spammy, then have my team get it.

I have another question. You wrote “[…] I ignore all ratings from third party tools. I only care about what Google thiks a link’s value is, and I assess that through testing.”

For your own links you see the value of a single link by the ranking-boost you get or dont get. How about (old) competitor links? How do you assess their value and if it is worth going after for yourself?

If I see a blog post which is linking to a competitor and the title of the blog post is “Quick weight loss with intermittent fasting – Seven magic tricks” (just example I am not in weight loss niche) then I check if this blog post is ranking for “weight loss intermittent fasting” etc. If it is ranking well I assume that google likes the post and therefore the backlink is probably valuable. However, this is more guess work.

Would be interesting to know how you do it.

Yes I do.

Have your VA do the work. Skip over anomalies like sites hiding backlinks and authorities.

And in some niches the top 5 ranks on authority and tropical and not the actual ancor.

I really get how vital that info is.

Note, when aim reading here i get thet popup all the time, like in massive all the time.

Anyways grt imformation you clearly know your stuff and have a talent.

Added my glasses and I found it hehe. Blind from new imputs.

Sure… just click away.

Grt post. Still posible to get the sheet?

Correct.

Agree completely on that point. I’m really asking the same question as Douglas a couple of comments up.

Maybe I need to phrase my question differently: Do you just get the total amount of links by type (misc, target,URL, etc), put them in the “Counts” column in the “Average of the Top 5 Rankers in the Niche” and then just let the spreadsheet calculate the percentages?

Everyone is going to have different percentages. That’s why it’s “niche-specific.”

Thanks for the spreadsheet!

One noob question for you: In the “Average of the Top 5 Rankers in the Niche” table, where do you get the numbers under the “Counts” column?

I’m asking because those numbers make up part of the calculation of the percentages in the column before it.

I did this manually following the directions from your post about choosing your anchor text, but I get different percentages.

I just count it as 5 URL anchors. Who knows what Google does though.

Say you do a press release syndication of 150 to 300, and these get indexed. Would you also count all of them as URL anchors? In that case it can just seem pretty overwhelming to get a balanced anchor text distribution like the competition but hey, I’m probably overthinking it and should just enjoy the pillowing that allows us to then use PBNs for a lot of target anchors etc.

Kind regards,
Simon Treulle

1) URL. 2) Not sure I understand the question.

Also, how did you count up the types of links you show in your sample tracker spreadsheet? I’m looking at the charts, where you say “target, misc, url, brand…” etc. Is that just a count you did by hand of the top 5 in a particular search? The chat is super cool and very powerful, but it’s not clear to me, other than by hand, how you got the numbers and how you update those charts to keep them accurate.

My pleasure. Thanks for stopping by.

Only just discovered your blog, wow. Most SEO’s charge a fortune for this type of information, great advise about tracking all links, I will be putting the spreadsheet to use!!!

thanks

James

You’re going to hate this answer, but I ignore all ratings from third party tools. I only care about what Google thiks a link’s value is, and I assess that through testing.

would like to get your take on this for 2017. To improve your rating across each platform, it requires different approach. For example, URL shortner concept has a positive impact on MOZ page authority and a little bit on AHREF url rating, but does not do any thing on majestic trust flow rating.

similar concept when you look at social signals. These signals also have different results across different platforms.

so, the rating from which platform has the closest correlation with improvements in google serp?

Anytime.

I think I have found something great to here and I am going to try it pretty soon on y blog. You xls format sheet also looks perfectly maintained. Will surely get it into work to achieve some SERP.

Thanks again Matt!

I ignore them completely as Google does as well.

One question though, how would you count social bookmark links for the anchor text distribution chart? For one of my sites I ordered 20 manual social bookmarks on Fiverr. As with a press release, these links probably are not very powerful. In your reply to another comment you said for a press release you usually count these as 5 for an entire set. Should I do the same for these social bookmarks or should I count them separately? And if I should group them, what would you use as a count for these 20 links?

If your keyword is “best hockey stick” then some examples of topic anchors are “sports eqiupment” or “athletic gear”.

Hey Matt, can you give me a quick example of what Topic Anchors are?

My pleasure, Tyler. Thanks for stopping by.

If your domain is Bintang.com, then your only brand anchors are “Bintang”, “bintang”, “Bintang LLC”, etc.

Lets say the keywords I am working on are as follows

Bintang Beer
Bintang Alcohol
Bintang Beverages
Where to buy Bintang Beer

The Brand name is “Bintang” but the keywords Im trying to rank for is also “Bintang Beer” how do I classify these into the sheet correctly as a target..

Also do variations of my target keywords like “where to buy bintang beer” is this classified as a target keyword or would this be considered topic?

Thanks for the help and keep up the great work, enjoy reading your articles.

OpenLinkProfiler.org is a good start.

Thanks for the email. Thou shall not be spammed.

Got it – thanks man!

Thanks Matt, Got backlinks from Sue of Successful Blogging, Stuart from Niche Hacks, etc so far so pretty pumped 🙂

Crazy. Keep fighting the good fight!

All white hat. 15 so far via roundups, testimonials and content mentions 🙂

If you type in “Blue Shoes” its a target anchor. If you type in “blueshoesinfo.org” then its a URL anchor. This applies to any link type, not just comments.

Sry Matt! I meant what if I put a link in to the column “Website” of a blog contact form. When my KW is “Blue shoes” and my website is blueshoesinfo. org. Does Google think that I used my Keyword or does Google sees that as a naked URL anchor?

Regards,
Chris

I typically count press releases and citations as 5 URL anchors each for an entire set.

Can you please rephrase? I’m lost about what we’re talking about with a contact form.

Thank you Matt! I´ve one follow up question, if I may. Considering the anchor texts of an pmd. If the Money KW is “Blue shoes” and the URL is: Blueshoesinfo . org (sorry if that is a real site!) and I fill that website in eg. the contact detail form below. Does that count as money anchor?

Thanks again though, for real!

Is your question regarding how to reverse engineer the target anchor text distribution for the niche?

Sincerely, Buyseech

Hey John. No I don’t really mess with aged social accounts.

1) That’s correct, but I don’t assign them an anchor for every indexed PR syndication. Pretty sure Google treats them differently. I usually count a PR as 5-10 URL anchors then call it a day.
2) If the link is going to the same URL, whichever anchor is on top is the one that’s counted.

Sure, but software is failiable.

What’s your opinion on using Automated software as was mentioned above to input all of the data from the crawlers? Or is this something you feel should be done manually? Thanks Matt!

Good stuff. Let me know how that goes. You white or black-hatting those links?

Use all the crawlers and WMT and hope for the best.

Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, Open Link Profiler, and manual checking.

Or if an expired domain is picked up and used as a money site?

This seems to apply to brand new sites with no backlink history so everything can be tracked.

But in the scenarios above what would be the best approach?

1) If you care about ranking those inner pages, then yes, add them to the XLS.
2) Nope. Anchor text distribution is calculated on a per-page basis.

If it contains a target keyword, then its a target anchor.

Thanks for the pointer!

Once.

Openlinkprofiler is rarely blocked, but its not the best crawler in the world. You can always uncover backlinks if you use search parameters to cleaverly dig them out. Perhaps another blog post.

You’re onto something!

Always a pleasure hearing from you, Ian.

Thanks for the kind words.

My pleasure, fellow O.C.D.

Thanks for stopping by, Neil.

Glad to help, Ayush.

One question: lately I’ve been seeing a lot of URLs with anchors like this one, “you can read the best product reviews at http://www.thebestproductreviews.com“.

How would you classify such a long anchor text like the above one?, brand?, url?, misc?

Thanks!

One tool that I use to manage my backlinks is a program called “backlink monitor” by inspyder, it does all the things you outlined. It’s a one time fee software and you can add your links into the software as you build them and it keeps track of your anchor as well as if the link are still on the page. It can also track the PA/DA of a link, the date the link was added, the date the link was submitted to be index, etc…This is great if you manage a large PBN network as well since you’ll know if one of your PBN’s are down without checking them one by one.. Also, if you do tiered link building, it can keep track of all your tiers and let you know when a link whiten your tier is dead/broken.

It makes life that much easier!

Regards,
Chris

Question: When acquiring the data for the competitor’s anchor text ratio, do you just use the typical tools available (moz, ahrefs, majestic, semrush) or do you have any “not so typical” that you recommend as well?

The obvious issue is that so many people use PBNs now, and block spiders from crawling, so you can end up with a very skewed sense of actual anchor text ratio (and authority/power of domain).

I did become aware of one, not-so-typical tool out there called http://openlinkprofiler.org which is not always blocked. (Though I guess it will be now! Lol) Do you have any other sources like this you could share? Thx!