Analysis of the Reference Mass of Competitors Using as an Example the Case of a Medical Clinic

What is Reference Mass? Why do we build links to sites?

Quality inbound links are still a significant factor in ranking sites. A good link with a high domain ranking will allow you to raise the page of your site and keep it, transferring its weight to the recipient site. Using one of our medical cases as an example, we will analyze the whole process of building links to the site in more detail.

What is considered a quality link?

The weight transfer's main driving force is the link's useful information: its text and links anchor. It is composed of taking into account user requests. Through it, the useful weight is transferred to the recipient site, which raises the page's position for this particular request.

But do not abuse this good because Google Penguin sanctions have not been canceled. And suppose your anchor profile does not comply with the 80/20 rule (where 80% should be natural/non-anchor links and 20% anchor links) or 90/10 (90% natural/non-anchor links and 10% anchor links). In that case, there is a high probability that if you abuse it, you will fall under the filter, and at best, your positions will not grow.

But natural reference mass does not set any limits because it is formed, like, naturally. 

Hence the name. In other words, these are ordinary URLs without anchors, which are put in the comments of articles on websites, in the articles themselves, on forums, social networks, and other pages allegedly by users.

Such links can be placed without restrictions. Only the rating of the donor domain matters here. The higher the rating, the more weight will be transferred to your site. To form such good for the site, we use crowd marketing.

How to increase the reference mass of the site without errors?

Regionality. The donor of your region will be much more effective in promotion. Another thing is if the choice is between region and topicality. Here it is better to choose topicality.

Topicality. This is one of the most critical factors. A topical donor (the one with a similar topic to yours) will transfer quality weight because the search engine understands that such a link is set naturally. 

After all, we know that, for example, a user with an automotive theme is unlikely to link to a construction resource on an automotive site.

Traffic. Everything is logical here. The more traffic, the more popular the donor site, and the more popular the donor, the higher it is in the search results. Accordingly, here we get both weight and extra traffic.

The number of incoming links to the site should exceed the number of outgoing ones. If this is correctly observed, the maximum weight will be transferred, and the site will not spill its resource.

Sanctions from Google or viruses. The popular resource Sitechecker sitehacker.pro

will allow you to check for sanctions on the site, and SerpStat will help with viruses.

The site has many pop-up banners, pop-ups, ads, and other intrusive features

Now let's talk about the link-building strategy.

You must analyze the existing reference mass if your site is not new. If it is new, then analyze the domain. This can be done using resources like SerpStat, SemRush, or Ahrefs.

And now to the cases. One of our projects is a website of a proctology clinic. Medicine is one of the most tracked sectors in Google. After Medical Update, medical sites are under special control: content, reference weight, contacts, etc.

Our first step was to analyze our site, the domain. We checked the history of link building and recorded it. The toxic links we found were removed. In other words, we conducted an audit of the reference weight.

The second step is to analyze the external reference weight of competitors, having previously identified them for ourselves in the search results by queries from the collected semantics. Before forming a link-building strategy, you should always study the link profile of your competitors. For this purpose, we use paid resources SemRush and SerpStat.

What to do if you do not have a paid SerpStat profile? With Ahrefs Free Backlinks Checker, you can also analyze any competitor's reference weight.

Analyze only those competitors who are at the top of the search results. We can get a quality verified profile from them and use it for ourselves.

Where to find competitors' links?

After analyzing and clustering good links of the clinic's competitors, we searched for them.

For example, on the link exchanges like Collaborator Pro, PRnews.io, or similar. Then we wrote to donors if we did not find them on the exchange — outreach work.

Thus, we take those links that allowed the competitor to raise its position. Do not use the same request as the competitor on the same donor. Otherwise, there is a possibility of sticking requests. And your anchor will be at a disadvantage because it has been created later than the competitors.

We get resources that have already been tested by a competitor for effectiveness, which makes it possible to start from a good position after the formation of links to them.

We started forming the site's link profile in the second month of cooperation. After all, it is crucial to understand that before you start link building, you must organize the site: correct all technical errors, and create high-quality content with meta tags. The last point is very important for link building because the links that we built should stick to the content of the Proctology website. In other words, to the keywords on the pages being promoted.
Thus, working in this direction, we have increased organic traffic by +167% from the third month.

Summing up, link-building works and will work. It is enough to be able to manage it effectively.