Getting Started With Linkdex

Step 1: Integrating Google Analytics

Read our article on Integrating Google Analytics and getting Google Adwords help to learn how to bring your GA data into Linkdex. This allows us to integrate vital information about your website into the platform, such as the traffic you experienced, the keyword searches visitors used to find you, and more. If you use another Enterprise Analytics solution talk to your Account Manager about custom integrations.

Step 2: Add your Keywords

Keyword data is used across the platform to not only drive rankings, but to also drive forecasting, content suggestions and content performance. The better the universe of keywords being tracked is, the better the insights Linkdex can give you.

There are a number of ways of adding keywords to Linkdex.

Option 1 (Best Option):

In Excel collate the following data:

• Keywords Phrases:Add the universe of keywords that you provide from sources like your historic analytics data and adwords data you.
• Search Volume / CPC: Use standard keyword planner data or add custom search volume / CPC data based on what sources like your Adwords campaigns are showing.
• Tags: Add a tag taxonomy that allows you to filter your keywords into groups. Note: against Tags you can also specify a % conversion and monetary value.

Optional Inputs:

• Click-through formula:Linkdex offers a ‘default’ and a ‘brand’ keyword click-though by position formula. You can also create your own and tell Linkdex which formula to use at keyword level. These inputs allow our forecasting data to provide the most accurate information available.

Whilst you’re at it:

• Page mapping:Why not add the ‘mapped page’ aka ‘the page you think should rank’ for the individual keyword. This drives lots of other insights like the potential value of a page.

Here’s a template you can download and use. It contains some example entries which you can replace with your own keywords:

Download Keyword Template

It’s an important and valuable area. If you want or need help please ask. We’d be delighted to get involved.

Then upload the data. If there are any new keywords in the list we’ll then get the ranking data in a few hours. Once we’ve got the lot, you’re good to go.

Option 2

When your Analytics account is linked you will see some suggestions in the Keyword Research tab.Using the left navigation, the filtering options and text search, you can select keywords not being rank checked, and add them to rank tracking, tagging them along the way.

The suggestions come from Google Analytics data on the keywords that have driven traffic to your website and the converison rate. With NOT PROVIDED this source has its days numbered. Using legacy data from Google Analytics is still useful.

The other data we get from Google Analytics are the keywords and performance data from your Adwords campaigns. Consider tracking the keywords that work for you in Adwords inside Linkdex.

Option 3

Copy and paste keyword lists from within the Rankings section via the Action Button.

Option 4

Otherwise you can extract some keywords from third party Keyword Research tools like Google Adplanner and SEM Rush.

Step 3: Rank Tracking Configurations

Once you have your keywords inside the platform you can tag them if you haven’t via the upload (tagging keywords allows Linkdex to analyze and report on keywords by group), set the country, geo-location, engine, and language you want to track your keywords in. Plus you can define how often you want to rank check them, map pages to them and more. For full details go to the Rankings articles.

Step 4: Add a Domain

Inside the Rankings section you’ll find that in the left pane you can Track a Domain. Simply click on the button and enter the required information to add additional domains.

The domains you add are important as based on your inputs here we’re going to gather lots of insights that include industry Authors, Competitor Benchmarking and more.

Don’t just add competitors, try adding leading media titles / blogs. They are a great source of Author, Content Performance and Link intelligence.

Typically, the ideal number of domains is between 10 and 25 for a comprehensive view of an industry. This is because we also analyze domains as a cluster not just as individual domains. If you add just a few, the insights we can provide are more limited.

Step 5: Add Team Members

In order to add users, access Account and Preferences from the Settings icon and choose User Management. Here you can add, edit or delete team members from the account.

Step 6: Add Tasks Lists, Delete and Add Tasks

You can add Tasks from most pages on the platform, by clicking the tick button. Your current Tasks are then available inside the Tasks section. This is an important way of keeping track of your actions and progress.

You can add, delete and edit Task Lists from within Accounts and Preferences.

Completed tasks also become annotations on some charts, to help you see the long term effect of your efforts.

Step 7: Link your Twitter Account

If doing work in the Networks section of the platform you will need to click the button ‘Login to Twitter’. This will connect a Twitter account to Linkdex so we can gather data, much like we do with Google Analytics.

Step 8: Ask us!

If you have any questions or need help, simply email support@linkdex.com or talk to your account manager.

Getting Started With The Linkdex API

A Linkdex Account administrator can create an API user, which will be assigned an API key and a “secret”. The key and secret should be used to sign any HTTP requests being submitted to the Linkdex API service using the HMAC-SHA1 algorithm.

The API uses “2-legged” OAuth v1.0a to provide authentication and authorization services. The Java oauth-signpost library provides one simple method for doing this:

// create an HTTP request to a protected resource
URL url = new URL(“http://api.example.com/protected”)
HttpURLConnection request = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();

// sign the request (consumer is a Signpost DefaultOAuthConsumer)
DefaultOAuthConsumer consumer = new DefaultOAuthConsumer(“my_api_key”, “my_api_secret”);
consumer.sign(request);

// send the request
request.connect();

The OAuth signing process also generates a timestamp and unique request id.

The Linkdex API will validate the signed request, including the timestamp and unique id, before allowing access to the requested resource.

An HTTP 401 Unauthorized response will be returned if access to the resource is not permitted.

There is also currently a Sample Java Client that can be requested via emailing support. All of our sample code is currently provided in Java, however we will of course use best endeavours to help answer any questions relating to accessing the API with other languages.

Linkdex API Example Code

Once you have contacted your Administrator and have had an API key and a “secret” assigned to you you can use the below code written in Java to get started with the API.

The Java oauth-signpost library provides one simple method for doing this:

// create an HTTP request to a protected resource
URL url = new URL(“http://api.example.com/protected”)
HttpURLConnection request = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();

// sign the request (consumer is a Signpost DefaultOAuthConsumer)
DefaultOAuthConsumer consumer = new DefaultOAuthConsumer(“my_api_key”, “my_api_secret”);
consumer.sign(request);

// send the request
request.connect();

Full documention for the API can be accessed here: http://api.linkdex.com/application.wadl.html.

This will provide a list of all of the different requests that can be made to the API, methods, responses and a reference guide showing how requests should be structured. Currently the only available example code has been written in Java. There is also currently a Sample Java Client that can be requested via emailing support.

Which Symbols Does Linkdex Recognize?

Sometimes when using the search box or entering keywords you might need to use a symbol. For this reason, here is a list of the symbols the platform does and does not recognize.

Linkdex recognizes the following symbols:

• @
• #
• $
• %
• ^
• &
• _
• –
• :
• “
• .
• ?

It does not recognize:

• !
• *
• (
• )
• +
• =
• [
• {
• ]
• }
• |
• ;
• ,
• <
• >
• /

Where Can I Find The API Documentation?

The full API documentation can be accessed here: http://api.linkdex.com/application.wadl.html

An API (application programme interface) allows a client to ‘pull’ data directly from our platform, into their own. In order to do this, their developer will need to look at the instructions on the above link, decide which ‘elements’ they wish to pull, then integrate the API at their end.

You can also request a Sample Java Client via support to act as a starting point with making API requests. We can also provide credentials to test the API via your Account Manager.

Integrating Google Analytics (& Trouble-Shooting)

In order to authorize Linkdex to access your Google Analytics data you need to click on Account & Preferencesfrom the Settings button in the top right. Then select Google Analytics from the left hand navigation. You will then be given the option to ‘Authorize Now’ which will in turn redirect you to your Google Account for authorization with Google.

Providing you are logged in with the correct email address, you should see the Google Analytics profile you wish to use. Follow the onscreen instructions to link it.

Trouble-Shooting Analytics

The Google Analytics API is unsupported and therefore unpredictable behaviours are sometimes observed, unfortunately we have little control over this. The most common requirement is to re-authorise access to this data. Although frustrating, no data is lost during reauthorisation.

Now that Google’s organic keyword data supply is now significantly reduced, we have made changes to the scale of data that Linkdex requests, which may make retrieval more reliable. Alternative integration models are also being considered.

Use The Google AdWords API Tool

Video Guides

Below are two videos explaining how to add your keyword, CPC and search volume data into Linkdex.

1. The first video outlines the process of exporting your Adwords data and uploading it into Linkdex. This is ideal for the majority of users.
2. The second video explains how to use the Google Adwords API tool. This includes how users can export search volume and CPC data through Adwords and into Linkdex via Excel. This is for users who have access to the Adwords API.

The password for the above videos is SearchData99.

Full Instructions

These instructions mirror the second video in explaining how to use the Google Adwords API.

Installing

• Download and unzip the zipped Excel plugin folder, which should contain 6 Excel files.
• Open ‘setup.xls’, making sure to enable Macros. (Image)
• Enter the folder you wish to install the Plugin to, and then click ‘Enter API Credentials’, where you need to enter your Google AdWords API account information. (Image)
• Click ‘Install In Folder’ and wait for confirmation, then close the ‘setup’ spreadsheet.

Processing

• Go to the folder where you installed the Plugin, and open the ‘LINKDEX_control.xls’ spreadsheet (again, enabling macros)
• In your Linkdex account, export the keywords from the project that requires the AdWords data. (Image) Put the exported CSV file into the ‘IN’ folder in the installation folder. (Image)
• Back in the spreadsheet, click ‘Fetch Files to Process’. The name of the file should appear below the buttons (Image). Then click ‘Load into Excel to process…’, and a new Excel workbook should open.
• Click ‘Fetch AdWords info’. The ‘Country Search Volume’ and ‘CPC’ columns should be populated after a few seconds. Once they have been, click ‘Save as CSV’. (Image)

Uploading

• Go back to your Linkdex account and click on the ‘Bulk Upload/Update Keywords’ button. (Image)
• Click ‘Choose File’ and locate the output file in the ‘OUT’ folder in the Plugin folder, and click ‘Upload’.
• Make sure ‘First row is headers’ is ticked, and then assign ‘Keywords’ to the first column, ‘Volume Google – UK’ to the Country Search Volume column and ‘CPC Google – UK’ to the CPC column (substituting in a different country if it is a non-UK project) (Image)
• Click ‘Import’. Your keywords will import, and you’ll get an email when the data is ready for use (normally within an hour, unless you are uploading a very large number of keywords).

Liaising With Your Personal Account Manager

If at any time you get stuck you can contact your personal account manager directly. You should be presented with their contact details when you first join Linkdex. If you need further help at any time, please email support@linkdex.com or call us on +44 (0)20 7659 2390 for the UK or +1 (212) 297 6191 for the US. You can also check the Knowledge Base for answers to other common questions.

Keyword Research Overview

In this section you can link your Google Analytics accounts to the platform to integrate important data that can reveal what people are searching for to reach your website. By requesting that we track these keywords, you can see how you rank for the terms that matter to you. You can also bring Adwords details into Linkdex to review your campaigns and analyze performance, competitor keywords and organic keywords which are referring traffic via your Google Analytics account.

Roadmap Overview

Much of Linkdex’s roadmap is confidential. We tend to share more in face-to-face meetings than we’d document online. That said, we’re happy to share the following elements:

Reporting

There a lot of work going on to improve the visual output of our reports, the data and insights our reports present and the UI / UX of the reporting area.

Forecasting

Get traffic, value and conversion forecasts at keyword level, and model what improvements in rankings would means for traffic, value and conversions.

Ranking Authors

Discover the authors are that rank in Google for the keywords you care about, get more data on their social profiles and footprint. Build these trusted topical influencers into your outreach plans. When combined with our existing author data and social data these insights become an amazing way to create and prioritize influencer lists for PR / Outreach campaigns.

Deeper crawls

We’re going to give clients to ability to crawl hundreds of thousands or even millions of pages in order to retrieve technical data that provides insights on things like server response codes, redirects, duplicate content and broken links.

Social

The social UI / UX is having an upgrade to make it easier to find and understand your media landscape and who influences whom within it.

Media Value Calculations

When you view your list of keywords in the Rankings tab, we present information on the value of your visibility. The data that appears depends whether you are just analyzing your own domain, or comparing your domain performance against a competitor.

Analyzing Your Value

Total Volume

We add up the Visits you have received for each keyword phrase – as reported by your Google Analytics account – and tally them at the bottom next to ‘Total Volume’. For the Estimated Google Searches, this is the total number of Google searches done for each keyword as reported by Google Adwords.

Total Media Value

After we have taken the volume of searches and the visits you received, we can use this data to calculate a ‘value’ score. If we imagine you had to pay for the natural search clicks in the Total Volume line, this is how much it might cost in Google Adwords using the average cost per click data reported by Google Adwords.

Comparing Value Against Competitors

Once you toggle on another domain to compare your rankings, the bottom value section will expand. You will not only see the volume and value for you (and your competitors), but you will be able to analyze your:

Estimated click volume. We use the click-through rate (CTR) by position data, as taken from Linkdex users who have given permission to anonymously gather this insight.

Estimated click share shows the number of clicks in the above estimated click volume line as a percentage of the total volume of search reported by Adwords. In other words, it is your estimated CTR across all Google searches for this keyword phrase.

Much like the Total Media Value, in Estimated Media Share we show the value of your Estimated Click Volume as informed by Google Adwords cost per click data.

Share Of Search Overview

Share of Search is a subsection of Rankings that presents a pie chart showing the proportion of the total search market that is held by the selected domain(s). At the bottom of the page this data is expanded upon.

Try toggling on your competitors to see how they fare in the market (as far as rankings go) and to add them to the bottom analysis for a powerful quick comparison.