INTRODUCING

LINK CONTEXT
majestic.com

with a foreword by Dixon JonesForeword
By Dixon JonesFounder of DHJ Ventures, and Global Brand Ambassador at
Majestic.

Link Context Changes the Link Analysis Game
Everyone at Majestic should be immensely proud of what you are about to read. They have spentmuch of the last year developing this idea, pushing huge amounts of energy, brainpower andresources into creating the system that underlies Link Context and Link Density.
These are not simply rehashes of other people’s takes on links, and the more I look at what the teamhave built (which was secret even to me until weeks before launch) the more I see that they havefound an entirely new way to graph how links appear on pages. No other SEO tool on the planet (asfar as I can see) can show this kind of information instantly, for anything on the Internet. No wonder
it was Patent Pending even before launch.
By taking the content of a webpage and dividing it into chunks, they have built out new visualisations
which they have protected under international law. I understand that truckloads of hardware had to
be built to be able to process all this data. The results are astounding. Once you climb the shortlearning curve surrounding the Link Density Charts, you’ll be able to tell, with unerring accuracy, justhow good/relevant/powerful a link is likely to be. You’ll know where it is on the page, you’ll know
how many other links are on that page, and whether they are affecting your spot or not. You’ll beable to start thinking not just in terms of Trust Flow or Citation Flow, but also you will be able toconsider what a random surfer might do. You’ll know – not just because of the metrics, but because
you will be able to see a machine and human-readable visualisation of the link IN CONTEXT.
The more I play with the early data sets, the more I see just how important the new Link Density
score is. Surely any self-respecting full-text search engine looks at this? On top of this – and central
to the new work – is the context in which a link exists. Do images surround it? Is it in an editorial
piece? Or navigational bar? Is it high on the page or below the fold? Now you’ll know, and all
through the clever visualisations.
I urge you to learn about Link Context. It will change the way you look at links, both internally andexternally.

Dixon.

1

Contents
Introducing Link Context ......................................................................................................................... 3
First, let’s take a look at the old Backlinks results .............................................................................. 3
Link Context Superpower #1 – The area around a link ....................................................................... 4
Link Context Superpower #2 – Link Density ....................................................................................... 5
Link Density ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Why do you need Link Density? Why not just use the number of links? ....................................... 6
Seems complicated. Why do we need Link Density?...................................................................... 7
Link Context Superpower #3 – Checking Nearby Links ....................................................................... 8
Link Context Superpower #4 – Filters ............................................................................................... 11
The Context Filter.......................................................................................................................... 11
Find when a site links to your competitor, and mentions you nearby ......................................... 12
Saving the best until last ............................................................................................................... 14
Link Context Filtering will change how you Link Prospect ............................................................ 15
Link Context Superpower #5 – Link Density Chart............................................................................ 16
Link Density Chart – Link Position on Page ................................................................................... 16
Link Density Chart – Link Counts ................................................................................................... 18
Link Density Charts – Adding Link Density .................................................................................... 19
How does adding Link Density to the charts help? ....................................................................... 19
Pages Tab ...................................................................................................................................... 21
Appendix: Link Context – Things you can do ........................................................................................ 22
Find the best links ............................................................................................................................. 22
Find where your brand is used near spam terms ............................................................................. 23Intellectual Property Protection ....................................................................................................... 23
Track down deleted links .................................................................................................................. 23
Identify undesirable lists ................................................................................................................... 24
Find similar sites................................................................................................................................ 24
Check the profile of pages on your own site .................................................................................... 25

2

Introducing Link Context
To help you rapidly distinguish between good links, bad links, and GREAT links, we invested much ofthis year’s development work into building a tool that will drastically shrink the time needed toperform link prospecting and auditing work.
This tool will show you the exact context that surrounds every backlink. You’ll see how many links
are nearby and where those other links point to. You can find out how many are noFollow, orframes, or images. You can even zoom out and check how typical that piece of context is, whencompared to the structure of the entire source URL.
Crucially, you will be able to find out all of this at Majestic’s typical big data scale, without leaving
the site.
We call our new tool Link Context, and we think it may be kind of a big deal.

First, let’s take a look at the old Backlinks results
The top three results all have the same thing in common – the anchor text for the link is just “BBC”.

There is no indication what these links are. Are they header links? Editorial links? Footer links? Links
in a directory site? Citation links? Are they candidates for disavow? Are they near spam phrases?
Who knows?
The only way that you could find out more is to go and have a look at each individual website – andwhen you are link prospecting, or trying to get through as many results as possible, this becomes ahuge chore.

3Link Context Superpower #1 – The area around a link
With Link Context, you can check out up to 200 extra characters around your anchor text.
You’ll see where other links exist, and whether they are internal or external. You’ll find out how
many images, image links, empty links, frames and object links are nearby.
All of this adds a whole new level of richness to the Majestic data results.
Here are those same three bbc.co.uk links, with Context – directly inside Majestic.

(Some Context items have been removed from the results to help the narrative)You’ve only started, and already you’ve already discovered that Link Context canShow you the terrain that surrounds an anchor text you are interested inShow you how many other links surround that anchor text
Show you if your anchor text is in a paragraph of text, or a directory of links
Show you when images appear near your anchor text
Show you weird formatting problems that occur around your links (those dashes in thebottom result) Show you more expanded page titles and URLs than the Backlinks tab







4

Link Context Superpower #2 – Link Density
Once we had Link Context, we identified a new problem.
It wouldn’t be much use to make this new time-saving tool, without creating a way to very quickly
find the sites that were of most use to you.
To help you sort, filter, rate and categorise, we added a new Majestic metric, Link Density.

Link Density
You will love Link Density. Once you wrap your head around it, it will seriously cut through the time
you take for your Link Research work.
Let’s look at two more links for bbc.co.uk .
(again, some context items have been removed to focus on Link Density)

The top example, from UK Polling Report, has 18 nearby links. It’s going to have a large Link Density[LD] number. The maximum LD is 100.
But, while the link is almost completely surrounded with other links, you may be able to spot thatsome of the words are not links (Pollsters, News, Blogs, ‘By elections Blog’). As there is some nonlink text, this context only has an LD of 83, which may not be 100, but is still considered to be high.
The bottom example has an anchor text that has no other links around it, it is a great example of an
Editorial Link. We can confidently say that this piece of context has a Link Density [LD] of 0.
Link Density is a measure that describes how saturated a piece of context is with links.

5

Why do you need Link Density? Why not just use the number of links?
When Link Density is high, that means that more of the context that surrounds our backlink is insideat least one link. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there are more links.
Here is an example…

This piece of context has only 7 links surrounding it, but as every piece of context is in a link, this has
the maximum LD of 100.
The previous example (UK Polling Report) had 18 links, but as it also had some text that was not alink, its LD was still high, but only 83.
You may want to use this example to note that while Link Density and Number of Links in context
are related, they do not share a one-to-one mapping.

6

Seems complicated. Why do we need Link Density?
Because then you get filters. And sorting.

“Hey Majestic, I’m looking for directory listings, so please only show me results for bbc.co.uk where
the Link Density is greater than 75”
Or filter by…

“Hey Majestic, I’m looking for editorial links in paragraph text that my competitors got, so please
only show me results for where the Link Density is lower than 5”
Or maybe you’re more of a sorter than filterer…

“Hey Majestic, show me all the results, and sort by Link Density, Ascending.”or,“Hey Majestic, show me all results, and sort by the most External Links, Descending.”
7

Link Context Superpower #3 – Checking Nearby Links
While Link Density is a great tool to filter and evaluate, sometimes you’ll really want to drill into thelinks that surround your anchor text.
“Where am I linked to beside my competitor?”“Where does my competitor have a link, and I don’t?”
Going back to our first result, here is another link for the BBC. It has a LD of 58, which shows that
there’s about an even split of link and non-link content. (You may see the image icon after the green
anchor text – we also report on images, frames, and other objects we find)

Under the context area there are two buttons, one that counts the internal links in the context, andthe other that counts the external links.
You can hover over each button to highlight which of the links are internal …

… and which links are external …

8

( As an aside, here is a different example to show orange underlines to highlight NoFollow links)

If you are interested in where individual links point to, it’s really easy, you can hover over a single
external link to see which root domain is linked to.

Sometimes context will have many, many links – so to save you having to hover over each link, oneby-one, you can click the “3 Ext Links” button for a complete coupled list of linked-to anchor texts
and root domains.

(We show root domains in this view, not the exact link)

And you don’t just get a dry list of linked domains and anchor texts - if you notice the button topright, you can even export this list to any other Majestic compare tool, like Backlink History or Clique
Hunter.
9

With this Export button, each Link Context result becomes a potential source of ‘similar sites’ for any
website.
You are half-way through the new stuff, so let’s recap
Link Context can …








Show you the number and distribution of internal links that surround an anchor text
Show you the number and distribution of external links that surround an anchor text
Show you the root domains of links that appear near your anchor text
Show a table of anchor text and root domains that appear near your anchor text
Offer you quick export link to push the entire list to other Majestic tools
Offer a quick link to find other links to that root domain that share the same anchor text
Boil link saturation down into a single, sortable and filterable metric10Link Context Superpower #4 – Filters“Hey Majestic, show me backlinks to my competitor where I am mentioned nearby, but that mention
doesn’t have a link”
One of the most beautiful things about Link Context is that it works with the backlink filters that you
are hopefully already using. This means that you can easily filter down your links based on Trust
Flow levels, page language, crawl status, anchor text, or source URL string.
For Link Context, we have added two new filters.
You have already met the Link Density filter in the Superpower #2 section, and the other new filter
may be your most treasured part of Majestic.

The Context Filter
The default Context filter will let you search for any piece of text that contextually appears near yourlink. Crucially, this does not just look at text and anchor texts, it also reports on text that appears inlinked-to root domains, or image alt text.

Here are the top 3 results for a Context search of the word, “Cornwall,” where it appears near links
that point to bbc.co.uk.

11Just from these first results, there are three items to note …
•••

You can find the word “Cornwall” in links (Result #1 & #2)
You can find the word “Cornwall” in non-link text (Result #3, item #1)
You can even find when the word “Cornwall” is in the root domain of an image link (bluesquare in Result #3, item #2)

So, how can you use this superpower?

Find when a site links to your competitor, and mentions you nearby
This is so easy. Use our Context filter to search for the term you want to find. Make sure to use thedefault ‘SEARCH ALL CONTEXT’ option to show where your term appears anywhere in a context
item.
Imagine you are working for the Chrome browser, and you are looking to see where you are
mentioned near links to firefox.com.
Context > Search all context | “chrome “This is going to look for where the word ‘chrome’ appears anywhere, and in any instance, near a link
to firefox.com. This search is not case-sensitive.

12

Context > Search nearby root domains only | “chrome “… or you can use the option “Search nearby root domains only” to find where someone links to aroot domain that contains, ‘chrome’ near a link to firefox.com. This is very handy to find where
someone links to a site with non-branded anchor text or images.

Here is a result where the word, “other,” has been used as the anchor text for chrome.com.

Remember – you can expand the EXT LINKS. In this case, you’ll see the inventive way this site author
has linked to other browsers.

13

Context > Search nearby anchor text only | “chrome “
Use the option, “Search nearby anchor text only” to only return results where a link’s anchor text
explicitly contains the word, “chrome,” and is near a link to firefox.com

Here’s a result that shows the link going to google.com this time, but with ‘Chrome’ in the anchor
text.

Saving the best until lastContext > Search for non-link terms | “chrome “
Use the option, “search for non-link terms,” to find where a site links to your competitor, mentions
you, but DOES NOT provide a link

Here is a great example from the results, where the author has linked to Firefox, but not to IE,
Chrome, Opera, or Safari.

14

Link Context Filtering will change how you Link Prospect
Even with an entry-level Majestic subscription, you can now filter the top results of any top domainon the web, and return only those data rows that match your context preferences.
Filtering will let you reduce thousands of potential backlinks into a highly curated list that can beinstantly exported in the format of your choice. Right now, on Majestic, you can search for wherean unlinked mention of your branded term appears next to a competitor link, export the entire list,
and then upload to your preferred link prospecting provider.
We cannot think of any other Link Intelligence tool that offers the ability to interrogate this amountof web graph data, at this scale, and deliver almost-instant results.

Link Context can …








Sort for words that appear near a backlink
Sort for domains that are linked to near a backlink
Sort for other anchor text that appears near a backlink
Sort for image alt text that appears near a backlink
Show you links to your competitor that appear near links to you
Show you non-linked mentions of your brands that appear near competitor links
Offer direct exports of your curated lists

15

Link Context Superpower #5 – Link Density Chart
What do you consider to be the elements that make a great backlink?
Your answer will depend on why you build links, but where would you place the position of a link?
That is, how far it is from the top of a piece of content? You want your link to be near the top of thepage, right?

Link Density Chart – Link Position on Page
Let’s go way back to the start, and look two more links for bbc.co.uk. Which is the best?

They both have good Trust Flow, and a healthy Trust to Citation ratio. They have a similar Link
Density, and close-enough number of nearby links. The eagle-eyed may notice that the bottom one
is a NoFollow link. Is that enough to make the top link better?
Do you think you’d be able to make a better call if you could see the likely position of the context
and anchor link on the page? Here you go. The green bar on the chart on the right shows where thecontext appears in the page source.

16

With context position, it is clear that the bottom link, from the W3C, is higher up the page than the
one from GeoNames.
Now, imagine being able to see this for each and every link where we have collected context. This isavailable today with Majestic.
Majestic now shows you where a link exists in a page’s source HTML. This will help you rapidly
differentiate between links at the top, middle, or bottom of a page.
There are caveats to this…. We do not parse CSS, or run any scripts, so the position that you see isthe position of the link in the site’s HTML source.

17

Link Density Chart – Link Counts
As a link builder, you now have two conflicting pieces when deciding which link is best. Is it the one
nearer the top of the page that has a NoFollow tag, or is it the one further down the page that is not
a NoFollow?
Perhaps looking at the number of links on the page will help.
To help you with that, we split the source page into (up to) 40 segments, and count Internal andExternal links in each segment. Internal links to the left are blue, external links to the right are
yellow.

All of a sudden, that bottom link doesn’t look too good. Yes, it’s near the top of a page with good TF
and CF, but there are 453 other external links evenly scattered all over the page. This looks more likea directory site than a link in editorial text.
In comparison, the GeoNames link is further down the page, but with a more natural Link Density
profile for the type of site that you may value.

18

Link Density Charts – Adding Link Density
The final part of the Link Density chart is the one that will need a little bit of a mental leap, but whenit lands in your brain, it really does super-charge your link building and prospecting workflows. The
next stage is where we overlay Link Density for each segment.
We take the same Link Density calcualtion that we use on your context results, and perform thesame arithmetic on each of the segment splits for the whole page. By doing this, we can build you
some fantastic graphics that will help you instantly see, compare and evaluate a whole page’s links
and link density, without having to read a single word.
Here, we overlay the previous chart with a symmetrical curve that shows the Link Density for each of
the 40 segments on the page.

It looks like the GeoNames page has sections of text with lots of paragraph text, and few links, then a
big section of densely-packed links, before another peak in what could be the footer at the bottom.
This is typical of a blog or article site with a classic “Blogroll” (a side panel on a site where the ownerlinks out to other websites).
In comparison, the W3C page is just full of links. Almost every part of the page is saturated withlinks.

How does adding Link Density to the charts help?
There are two huge advantages to this chart.
1. You can see if the context Link Density is typical of the whole source page. For instance, inthe first link (GeoNames), the LD of your small anchor text context portion is 87. But when
you look at the shape of Link Density for the entire page, it’s incredibly easy to see that thispiece of context is an outlier – and that there are areas on the page that have more editorial
text than our focussed context.
2. With practice, you start to instantly identify different types of page link profiles. Is it anarticle, or a home page, or a directory page, or an image-intensive page. Knowing exactly
where your link of interest appears on each different type of page is an incredible timesaver, particularly when you are trying to evaluate 1000 pages to find which ones may
deliver the best impact on placing your link.
19

During development, we have noticed some clear examples of the types of site that are out there.
To whet your appetite of the variety of charts, here are five distinctly different links from a variety ofwebsites.

From left-to-right
•
•
•
•
•
•

A link in the header of a BBC web page
A citation in a Wikipedia article
An editorial link from an article on medium.com
A link from a small blog (page size is too small to generate 40 segments)
A link from the hub of a directory site
A footer link on the personal blog from a UK TV personality.

20

Pages Tab
As a special bonus, you will also find Link Density Charts on the Pages tab. This is incredibly helpfulwhen you want to compare different pages, and page styles within a single domain.

For instance, you can look at a competitor or brand’s entire site, and check to see how and where
they use external links.
Or, if you have a smaller website, you can see which of your pages have comments (if you use
external links in comments).
Or, you may use it as you build a profile for a domain you’d like to buy.
Adding Link Density Charts to Pages is a very small change, but we’re sure that it’s something thatwill be hugely useful to some of our link builders and auditors.

Link Density Charts can …









Show you the page position of a piece of context
Show you if a piece of context is in a potential header or footer area
Show you if a piece of context is an editorial link
Show you if the area around your context is typical for the rest of the source URL page
Show you if your piece of context is on a directory site
Show you if your piece of context is on a page with a healthy or unhealthy number of links
Let you rapidly tell the difference between different types of source page
Identify pages on your site where the profiles are unnatural

21

Appendix: Link Context – Things you can do
Find the best links“The best links are near the top of a page, in natural language”.
This is so easy to do with Majestic – just Order your Context tab results by “Link Context > Context
Position”… then filter to only see Link Density [LD] that is less than 10.

We’ll deliver you a fresh set of the links near the top of a page, in natural language.

22

Find where your brand is used near spam terms
Search for contextual typical spam words in your source URL, to see where they appear near to yourlinkIntellectual Property Protection
Find where your brand terms are used near links to reseller-favoured sites

Track down deleted links
Finding out where deleted links went can be difficult. Google doesn’t share histories, and Internet
Archive may not crawl often enough. We will show you not only the exact text surrounding yourlink, but where it existed in the source code23

Identify undesirable lists
Find instances where your brand may be linked to from directories or lists that may be low-quality,
or considered harmful to your link profile.

Find similar sites
Use contextual links from topically-relevant backlinks to generate lists of similar sites.

24Check the profile of pages on your own site
We love Link Density Charts so much that we’ve added them to the Pages tab. At any time, you cancheck out the typical Link Density of any crawled page.

25