Friday, June 9, 2023

How to Explain the Value of SEO to Executives — Whiteboard Friday

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Seer Interactive’s Larry Waddell discusses how you can translate the SEO work you do for your clients into how executives think of value — specifically, business value.

How to explain the value of SEO to executives

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Video Transcription

Hello, Moz community, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Larry Waddell, EVP of Business Strategy for Seer Interactive, and today I want to talk to you about how to translate the great work you do for your clients into how they think of value, specifically business value.

So let's jump right in. Now to do it, I'm going to review two frameworks or two ways of thinking. One is the value pyramid. That's where we're going to start. But then we're going to move from there to the four forms of business value, and I'll walk you through that.

So starting with the value pyramid, and this is something I've used at Seer for years, and I've had the great privilege of leading the Analytics team at one point in time, the SEO team, thank you Wil, and the Paid Media team, thank you, Crystal, and through all of that, I've used a very simple construct. As you can see, there's nothing terribly fancy here, but it's a way to help our teams understand the work that they do and to understand the work the clients are asking us to do.

So to start, it's a pyramid like any other, four different layers, and for SEO you can think about the bottom layer as something like link building. It's something very important to do, extremely important, but perhaps at the bottom of the pyramid. Link building we get rankings. With rankings, we get traffic.

Traffic gets us engagement on the website. But we don't stop there of course. Engagement on the website and traffic, now we want to focus on conversions. Now we get those conversions and depending on what our conversion value is, that gets us to revenue. So really nothing earth-shattering there. But I want to introduce a couple other concepts. So you might want to think about titles at your clients.

So if you're down here, perhaps at the bottom of the value pyramid, maybe it's link building, maybe it's other low-level but very important tasks, you might be dealing with somebody who's a specialist or a manager at your client day to day. As you move up this pyramid, where you're talking about things like revenue and you've been in those meetings, you've had these people join your QBRs or they pop into a weekly call or a monthly call, and they have titles like director or VP or CMO.

Every once in a while, you might get a director of finance or a CFO in those meetings. You might also have noticed that those meetings tend to be more strategic. They tend to be focusing on things other than the nitty-gritty tactical that you might be grinding out day to day with your manager at the client.

These folks are worried about business problems. They're worried about things that are impacting the trajectory of the overall business, of which SEO plays a very important part. Down here, perhaps less visibility into those things at the client, but down here we're focused more on SEO problems, rankings, how much traffic are we getting, what are our conversions, content on the site, load speeds, and those sorts of things.

It's not that these folks don't care about that. They're just perhaps removed from it, and they don't necessarily understand how any of this stuff down here impacts the stuff that they care about unless we have a lot of explanation and we've all been there. So what do we do with something like this? Well, we can start to think about a hypothesis around value.

What if there's greater perceived value on the part of these folks at the client, the higher up this pyramid you happen to be? So down here, again, important but perhaps less perceived value than strategic conversations that relate to business problems at your client. So what are the things to worry about down here?

There's actually a lot to worry about down here. So in my experience, if you have engagements that tend to focus mostly on talking about, reporting on, and reviewing activity at the bottom of the value pyramid, you can get locked into just doing that for your client.

The way I like to think about it is this is the big kids table or the adults table perhaps. How do we get a seat at that table? Again, in my experience, if these folks don't see a way to translate what you do into what they care about, you kind of get relegated down here.

Again, there's nothing wrong with it. But the problem is, if we look at fee competition, it tends to be the case that there's higher fee competition down here than there is up here. There tends to be more competitors down here. There's less differentiation between providers down here. You're more susceptible to being ChatGPTed, for example.

You're more susceptible to getting big data out or automated out. You've seen some nibbling around the edges around things that you might characterize as tactical. More and more of it is becoming automated or good enough automation. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's good enough. Then I can save some money because down here there's high fee competition.

You can see the robot there coming to get us. So the thing that we need to do is think about how we move up this pyramid, both in the work that we do and how we talk about the work that we do with clients. So, again, that's moving up the value pyramid and tying more of our work to the business problems that these folks, VPs, CMOs, directors, CFOs care about.

Another way to think about this too is career progression. So if you start off in SEO, you might start down here. You might start doing content audits, and you might start doing link building and things like that. Again, very important things to do. But then over time, this also creates a path for you to sort of think about where you can go as you start to unpack a little bit more of how progressively more sophisticated work you can be doing for clients translates to value for these people, because it turns out these people control the budget.

So you might also have discovered that when it's time for renewals or pitching work, that oftentimes there's a big boss and that big boss sits up here, typically not down there. So that gets us to value. Now, when we think about conversions and we're thinking about revenue generated from our work on a client website, we tend to focus on the revenue of that, and revenue is extremely important.

We can't get anywhere if we're not generating revenue or more revenue for our clients. So revenue for the win. You can see it right there. Well, yes and no, and that gets us to the four types of business value. So there are at least four.

There's a fifth that I'll touch on briefly in a moment. But for the most part we can increase revenue, but ah, not so fast, gross profit. We can reduce cost. We can do something which is called cost avoidance. We can help our clients avoid cost. Then there's insurance value.

In my time at Seer, I've found us in projects that do one or more of these things, oftentimes without our team even realizing that they're creating this additional value. Now down here there's a little bit of an economics lesson, and this is called a utility curve.

I'll get to why that's important in a second, and it'll help me explain why some of these things over here create value, how that actually happens. But let's go back to increasing revenue, gross profit. So questions you can think about if you're focused here. Are you generating more profits for your client, or are you stopping at revenue?

I suggest we take a pause to really consider that. We've had situations where we might be generating more revenue for the client, but it turns out that the unit economics are such that at the gross profit level, the client might be losing money on everything we help the client sell. So even though everything over here has been geared towards up and to the right, better rankings, more traffic, higher engagement, more conversions, more revenue, all for naught if the thing we're selling has crazy shipping costs and the shipping costs are turning out to be a loser for the client.

This person might not be aware of that, but these people might. So you kind of see how understanding a little bit more of what happens at this level can help you put what you're doing here in greater context. So when I talk about gross profit, gross profit is basically revenue minus cost of goods sold or COGS generally speaking.

That's gross profit. The thing to bear in mind is that gross profit pays the rent, not revenue. You still have to pay for the cost of the thing that your client produces, and what's left over is what actually covers other expenses. We don't often think that way when we're doing SEO projects, and we're strictly focused on revenue.

Might want to think about gross profit or asking these kinds of questions, which is a signal. So that's the other thing about this. We don't have to become experts necessarily in our clients' businesses, but maybe asking better questions once we're in the meetings up talking about this stuff with these people that signals, "Hey, I know your business. I understand that there's more going on than just the SEO."

Next is reducing cost. So reducing cost increases value, and that's where this comes in. It's a very simple concept and well-proven that the gain that one might get from a little bit more of something doesn't feel as good as losing a bunch really stinks.

So that's called loss aversion. So it works in such a way that adding a little bit more profit makes the client better off. Losing profit can hurt a lot. It's a concept that's going to be helpful and let me sort of step you through it in more detail.

So if you reduce cost and we make recommendations to our clients all the time. We don't always realize that those clients necessarily are saving more money from what we do. It's a useful thing, but all of our charts over here have to go up and to the right. We don't necessarily report on how much money I saved you.

We tend to report on how much revenue I generated. But there are sometimes conversations and recommendations that we can have with the clients that could be either new tools they can procure, or maybe there are things that we can be doing for a client, like content creation, that we can do at a lower cost than the client can do at another agency or even with an internal team.

So I gave a quick example here. So imagine you have a client that happens to be valued at 10 times their net income let's say. If we save that client $1,000, that might be, "Oh, great." One little thing I threw into an update at the end of the month as I'm talking about the revenue I'm generating, but the CFO will immediately recognize, "Oh, I'm valued at 10x. They just increased the value of my business by $10,000."

That might not be something that ever enters into the conversation if we're just thinking about the SEO work that we do, but we just created a lot of value for somebody. The other one is cost avoidance. This is a tricky one. But this basically means what are the recommendations we can make for a client that will allow them to not spend money on something in the future.

Quick example, some time ago we had a client that was faced with a choice. They were running a m-Dot site and their dot-com for desktop, and they maintained them both. But it came time to upgrade their CMS, and they had two options. One, they could upgrade both systems and continue to maintain a separate mobile and desktop experience.

But if they did that, they would have to hire additional developers and another agency to maintain both sites. The other option was to have a fully fluid site, a dynamic site that allowed them to avoid all that cost. We helped them understand which might be better for their SEO, but using this framework, also which might be better from an expense standpoint.

They chose to do option number two. They avoided all that extra expense, and that was cost avoidance. The reason why that's tricky is because it's hard to prove the counterfactual. We don't know what they literally would have spent had they done both sites, but we know what they budgeted and we said, "Hey, by following this other recommendation, you avoided having to pay this."

That's actually budget savings. Budget savings means, back to our utility curve, that their profit went up, made them better off, possibly also allowed them to increase the value of their business. Lastly, there's insurance, and this is one that is not terribly intuitive until you think about it.

So imagine you have a client that is contemplating a site relaunch. They have an internal SEO team, and they're very confident in their abilities, but they might not have a lot of experience or maybe not as much experience as you in a migration or the site relaunch. So your client might engage you to have a short-term project to help augment the capabilities of their internal team, maybe check on things, maybe be there the night of the conversion, and those sorts of things.

Now it's an additional expense. So this person here might say, "Oh, I don't know if I can get another agency through procurement because we already have an internal team helping us on our migration." But the CFO might say, "Oh no, this is insurance. I will gladly pay an insurance premium to avoid a massive loss if this website is generating a lot of revenue or gross profit for me," because they do that all the time. If you think about all the insurance that a business might spend money on, explaining that SEO project or that technical SEO support project in the context of insurance might make a ton of sense to them if you've been invited to that table and you can explain what you do within that context.

So here, I won't get into the details, but what I will show you is that you will gladly pay this little bit of premium, in other words, your contract to support their internal team. The client might gladly pay that to avoid the possibility of a large loss. So you just have to convince the client that your presence will actually prevent that loss.

That's insurance and that's value for your client. So that's about it. To recap, think about the work that you do and how to translate that into the business challenges that these folks are grappling with. So they might just pop into your QBR or pop into your monthly meeting. They might not understand Penguin and BERT and ChatGPT or any of that stuff, but they do understand what's going to make me more money, gross profit, what's going to save me money, what's going to help me avoid some nasty costs I would really rather not pay, and what's going to insure me.

How are you going to watch my back and prevent some larger loss later? So basically back to where I started, how do you translate your SEO expertise into the language of your client executives? Thank you very much.

Learn more about creating value for clients here

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Wednesday, June 7, 2023

B2B SEO in 2023: What's New and How to Adapt Your Strategy for Success

In the fast-paced digital landscape of 2023, having a strong online presence is crucial for B2B companies to drive traffic, generate leads, and stay competitive. SEO is pivotal in achieving these goals. This blog post (and its accompanying comprehensive guide) aims to provide B2B marketers, SEO specialists, and business owners with the knowledge and tools necessary to create a successful B2B SEO strategy in 2023. From understanding the latest trends and challenges to implementing effective keyword research, on-page optimization, backlink building, result analysis, and staying up-to-date with SEO trends, let’s discuss what actually “moves the needle” in B2B SEO.

Understand the B2B SEO landscape in 2023

The SEO landscape is constantly evolving, driven by updates to search engine algorithms, changes in user behavior, and the increasing influence of voice search and AI. To create an effective B2B SEO strategy, staying informed about the latest trends is essential. Some key trends in 2023 include:

Mobile-first indexing

With the majority of internet users accessing websites through mobile devices, search engines like Google prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their rankings. This was rolled out years ago, but it is the case across all industries. The B2B industry usually does have a slightly larger audience that views content and websites on desktops (due to the target audience usually being at work when they are researching companies or vendors). However, many still do check their email, conduct research, and view websites on their phones and tablets just as often.

Voice search optimization

As voice search is still widely used with smart devices and now some vehicles (such as Toyota’s new operating system for their lineup, which allows drivers and passengers to look up questions, businesses, and other information from their vehicle’s infotainment system), B2B companies need to optimize their content for voice queries. This involves incorporating natural language, long-tail keywords, and structured data markup to increase visibility in voice search results.

AI in search and marketing

ChatGPT has blossomed in popularity over the last year, reaching a new record for the fastest-growing user base in February 2023, according to Reuters. It now has over 1.16 billion users, according to DemandSage. OpenAI, the owners of ChatGPT, are said to be rolling out a business/enterprise level for organizations who want to make ChatGPT’s offerings available to employees via an encrypted platform (so they can share proprietary information that remains secure), and Microsoft plans to use its technology to let enterprise organizations “create their own” ChatGPT so information stays secure.

Additionally, Google announced at Google I/O in May 2023 that it plans on adding more AI experiences in user’s search journey on Google. This is likely the biggest development with search engine results pages (SERP) changes we’ve seen in a while.

User experience and core web vitals

Search engines increasingly focus on user experience metrics, such as page load speed, mobile responsiveness, and interactivity. Optimizing these factors improves both search rankings and user satisfaction. In 2023 and beyond, a user is much more likely to exit out of a slow page load experience within seconds, figuring they will just find the information they need elsewhere.

Continuous Google algorithm updates

Luckily for those in the SEO industry, Google has started announcing some of their bigger algorithm changes and updates, including when they are going to be taking place. To stay updated with Google changes, be sure to bookmark our Google Algorithm Update History page.

SEO, no matter the industry, is always evolving, so it’s important to regularly read SEO publications (like the Moz Blog), learn from subject matter experts in the space, and continue to stay on top of updates so your strategy can pivot accordingly

Conduct keyword research

Keyword research forms the foundation of a successful B2B SEO strategy. It involves identifying the keywords and phrases potential customers use to find products or services in your industry. To conduct effective B2B keyword research in 2023, consider the following steps:

Understand your target audience

Develop buyer personas and identify their pain points, needs, and search intent. This insight helps you choose keywords that align with your audience's interests. It’s important to pay attention to the “curse of knowledge” and don’t assume your audience has the same level of knowledge about your product that you do. Just because you know how your products work (or that they even exist) doesn’t mean that your audience does. This is a unique opportunity for SEOs to identify the operating knowledge of their target audience so they can best produce content that answers their search queries.

Utilize keyword research tools

Tools like Moz Keyword Explorer provide valuable data on search volume, keyword difficulty, and related keywords. Leverage these tools to identify high-potential keywords. It’s also important to look at your own data in Google Search Console or Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Today’s keyword research is becoming more and more accurate when compared to search engines, and these are all invaluable tools forSEO and keyword-related research.

Focus on long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific search queries that tend to have lower competition. Targeting these keywords can help you reach niche audiences and generate high-quality leads. Most B2B product offerings serve a niche purpose, so try to go after keywords that explain the problem or solution of your product or service instead of its name.

For instance, if your company was an “iPaaS” (integration platform as a service), going after keywords around integration, data architecture, and application integration would likely get more traction than repeatedly building content around the term “iPaaS”.

In order to complete effective keyword research, you have to know where to start. Better target audience identification, high-quality tools, and a focus on keywords that users are actually searching for (which are usually problem- or solution-oriented) can help B2B SEOs get the right phrases they need to bring in more users and potential leads.

Optimize on-page content

On-page optimization involves making your website and its pages search engine-friendly. Here are some best practices to optimize your on-page content:

Meta title tags

Craft compelling, concise, and keyword-rich title tags and meta to briefly describe your page's content and entice users to click within 70 characters. The advice on whether or not to include your business name in a meta title tag still isn’t concrete, but if you have the character space, include it at the end after a pipe: |.

Meta descriptions

It’s best practice to write compelling meta descriptions, because that first paragraph on your page not only tells the reader what your content is about, search engines also pull it into the search snippet in a SERP. It is known that Google frequently rewrites meta descriptions, but it’s still worthwhile to spend about 180 characters describing the page so search engines, and search engine users have a good idea of what it’s about.

Header tags

Use header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to structure your content logically and improve readability. Include relevant keywords in your headers to signal the topic of each section. This can also serve as a table of contents if your blog article formatting allows it, improving readability for longer pieces of content (usually over 2000 words). Header tags also get pulled into the SERP and can be used in SERP features such as the ‘People Also Ask’ feature, if they are used in a question-answer format.

Image optimization

Optimize images by compressing their file sizes (for a better page load experience), using descriptive file names, and adding alt text that includes relevant keywords. This helps search engines understand and index your visual content. It also helps make images more accessible to users with visual impairments.

Site architecture

Good site architecture is essential for SEO success because it helps search engines and users find your website pages easier. By doing this, effective site architecture improves user experience, facilitates efficient crawling and indexing by search engines, distributes page authority effectively, and contributes to website speed and performance.

Meta titles and descriptions, headers, and site architecture may seem like SEO 101, but they are still valuable cornerstones to properly optimized content that is going to get indexed faster by search engines and have a longer time on-site for users. Google has preached time and time again about always doing what’s best for users and making sure content is fast, findable, and easy to read checks all the boxes.

Build quality backlinks

Backlinks remain a critical factor in B2B SEO, as they signal the credibility and authority of your website. However, it is essential to focus on quality rather than quantity. Consider the following strategies for building quality backlinks:

Create link-worthy content

Produce high-quality, informative content that provides value to your target audience. This increases the likelihood of other websites linking to your content as a valuable resource. Consider running your own research studies for new industry data that others will want to share, or create infographics, white papers, and other guides.

Split content into separate areas (when it makes sense)

This strategy won’t work for everyone, but if you are at a large organization, it might make sense from a site architecture standpoint to separate different types of content.

For example, Moz has the SEO Learning Center and Blog, and the strategy (and the types of content we produce for each) varies. Many large corporations also have a press mentions section, as well as a media/PR blog, where they release company announcements or press releases.

This helps news outlets and other organizations parse and subscribe to whatever type of content section they’d like. You can see Moz’s “News & Press” page for an example of this type of content area.

When it’s easier for news outlets and others to find your company announcements, they are much more likely to find and link to them more quickly and easily. It’s all about getting users the information they need quickly.

Partnerships

If your executive leadership team agrees to it, working with other organizations that cater to your same target audience but aren’t competitors can be a great way to get more exposure (and traffic) to your brand. Partnerships can entail sending a dedicated email about the other brand to your email list (and they do the same), or collaborating on a promotion through other marketing channels (such as blog posts, white papers, or videos) to get more leads and engagement.

Many organizations still buy backlinks, but in my experience, this is a risky and low ROI strategy. Companies that offer this can’t promise backlinks from high-quality places, and the ones that do may be using nefarious tactics (such as not fully disclosing links in the content they are sharing with the other website to get a link). It’s usually best to think of link building as an inbound strategy, rather than outbound.

Partnerships can be fruitful, but it takes it a lot of planning to make them reputable and pay off for both sides of the deal.

The end game: Optimization to drive results

From on-page optimization to working on your backlink strategy, SEO is truly a sum of its parts: it’s only as good as each component. To see where you're making the most headway, all of the above efforts need to be tracked properly with accurate revenue attribution so you can see where SEO is moving the needle for your B2B organization. To learn more about measuring and analyzing results, visit the measuring success chapter in Moz’s ‘Beginner’s Guide to SEO’ and learn more about measuring organic search traffic quality from Adriana Stein.

Once you have a good understanding of where SEO is making the most impact, you can choose what to prioritize in upcoming quarters and long-term future planning. This can help your B2B SEO efforts compound over time, as most parts of SEO utilize one another to work more effectively. For example, a better site architecture and experience will likely lead to more users linking to your content. Make sure you have a well-rounded program to ensure better results over time.

Monday, June 5, 2023

The Moz Links API: Touch Every Endpoint in Python

The purpose of this Jupyter Notebook is to introduce the Moz Links API using Python. This should work on any notebook hosting environment, such as Google Colab.

If you’re looking at this on Github, the code snippets can be copy/pasted into your own notebook environment. By the time you’ve run this script to the bottom, you will have used every Moz Links API endpoint, and can pick the parts you want for your own project. The official documentation can be found here.

Confused? Be sure to check out my intro to the Moz Links API.

Do global imports

The import statements at the top of a Python program are used to load external resources that are not loaded by default in the Python interpreter. These resources may include libraries or modules that provide additional functionality to the program.

Import statements are usually placed at the top of a program, before any other code is executed. This allows the program to load any necessary resources before they are needed in the program.

Once the resources have been loaded using import statements, they can be used anywhere in the program, not just in the cell where the import statement was written. This allows the program to access the functionality provided by the imported resources throughout its execution.

The libraries here not part of the standard Python library are requests and sqlitedict. You can install the with pip install requests and pip install sqlitedict in your terminal or a Jupyter cell. If you’re using Anaconda, requests is pre-installed.

import json
import requests
from headlines import *
from pprint import pprint
from sqlitedict import SqliteDict as sqldict

Load login values from external file

The code below reads a file named “linksapi.txt” from the “assets” directory, which contains the login credentials, including the access ID and secret key needed to access the Moz API. These credentials are extracted from the file and assigned to two variables named ACCESSID and SECRETKEY. The with statement is used to ensure that the file is properly closed after it’s been read. Create a file whose contents look like this with your credentials manually retreived from moz.com:

ACCESSID: mozscape-1234567890
SECRETKEY: 1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef

Once the credentials are extracted from the file, they are stored in a tuple named AUTH_TUPLE. This tuple can be used as an argument to the Moz API functions to authenticate and authorize access to the data.

The purpose of this approach is to avoid hard-coding sensitive login credentials directly in the program, which could pose a security risk if the code was shared or published publicly. Instead, the credentials are kept in a separate file that is not included in the repository, and can be easily created and updated as needed. This way, the code can be shared without exposing the credentials to the public.

with open("../assets/linksapi.txt") as fh:
    ACCESSID, SECRETKEY = [x.strip().split(" ")[1] for x in fh.readlines()]

AUTH_TUPLE = (ACCESSID, SECRETKEY)  # Don't show contents

Configure variables

In this code, there are several configuration variables that are used to set up the API call to the Moz Links API.

The first variable, COMMON_ENDPOINT, is a constant that stores the endpoint URL for the Moz API. The second variable, sub_endpoint, is a string that represents the endpoint subpath for the anchor text data, which will be appended to the COMMON_ENDPOINT URL to form the complete API endpoint URL.

The fourth variable, data_dict, is a dictionary that contains the parameters for the API request. In this case, the data_dict specifies the target URL for which we want to retrieve anchor text data, the scope of the data (in this case, page-level), and a limit of 1 result.

Finally, the json_string variable is created by converting the data_dict dictionary into a JSON-formatted string using the json.dumps() function. This string will be used as the request body when making the API call.

These variables are used to configure and parameterize the API request, and can be modified to perform any data_dict request against any Moz Links API sub_endpoint.

COMMON_ENDPOINT = "https://lsapi.seomoz.com/v2/"
sub_endpoint = "anchor_text"
endpoint = COMMON_ENDPOINT + sub_endpoint
data_dict = {"target": "moz.com/blog", "scope": "page", "limit": 1}
json_string = json.dumps(data_dict)

Actually hit the API (ensure success)

In JupyterLab, the last line of a code cell is automatically printed to the output area without requiring an explicit print() statement. The code you provided is using the requests module to send a POST request to a URL url with data in the form of a JSON string json_string. The authentication details are passed using the AUTH_TUPLE variable.

After sending the request, the response object r is printed using the print() statement. This will print the HTTP status code, such as 200 for success, 404 for not found, etc., along with the response headers.

Finally, the .json() method is called on the response object response to parse the response data as JSON and return it as a Python dictionary. This dictionary can be assigned to a variable, used for further processing, or simply printed to the output area without requiring an explicit print() statement due to JupyterLab’s automatic printing behavior for the last line of a code cell.

response = requests.post(endpoint, data=json_string, auth=AUTH_TUPLE)
pprint(response.json())

Outputs:

{'next_token': 'JYkQVg4s9ak8iRBWDiz1qTyguYswnj035nqjRF0IbW96IGJsb2e58hGzcmSomw==',
 'results': [{'anchor_text': 'moz',
              'external_pages': 7183,
              'external_root_domains': 2038}]}

List Sub-endpoints

This code defines a list of different sub-endpoints that can be appended to a common URL prefix to make different API endpoints. An API endpoint is a URL where an API can be accessed by clients. It is a point of entry to the application that acts as a gatekeeper between the client and the server. Each endpoint is identified by a unique URL, which can be used to interact with the API.

In this code, the list of sub-endpoints is defined in the sub_endpoints variable, and each endpoint is represented as a string. The for loop iterates over the list, prints the index number and name of each sub-endpoint using the print function, and increments the index by 1. The enumerate function is used to generate a sequence of pairs consisting of an index and a value from the list.

This code is useful for exploring the available endpoints for a particular API and for selecting the endpoint that corresponds to the desired functionality. By changing the sub-endpoint in the URL, clients can access different resources or perform different operations on the server.

sub_endpoints = [
    "anchor_text",
    "final_redirect",
    "global_top_pages",
    "global_top_root_domains",
    "index_metadata",
    "link_intersect",
    "link_status",
    "linking_root_domains",
    "links",
    "top_pages",
    "url_metrics",
    "usage_data",
]
for i, sub_endpoint in enumerate(sub_endpoints):
    print(i + 1, sub_endpoint)

Outputs:

1 anchor_text
2 final_redirect
3 global_top_pages
4 global_top_root_domains
5 index_metadata
6 link_intersect
7 link_status
8 linking_root_domains
9 links
10 top_pages
11 url_metrics
12 usage_data

Human-friendly labels

This code defines two lists: names and descriptions. The names list contains human-friendly labels for the set of sub-endpoints, while the descriptions list provides a brief description of each endpoint. The two lists are kept in the same order as the points list defined earlier in the code.

By keeping the three lists in the same order, they can be “zipped” together into a single list of tuples using the zip function. This produces a new list where each tuple contains the name, endpoint, and description for a particular API endpoint. This makes it easy to display a user-friendly summary of each API endpoint with its name and description.

The zip function combines the elements of the three lists element-wise, creating a tuple of the first elements from each list, then a tuple of the second elements, and so on. The resulting list of tuples can be iterated over, and each tuple unpacked to access the individual name, endpoint, and description elements for each API endpoint.

names = [
    "Anchor Text",
    "Final Redirect",
    "Global Top Pages",
    "Global Top Root Domains",
    "Index Metadata",
    "Link Intersect",
    "Link Status",
    "Linking Root Domains",
    "Links",
    "Top Pages",
    "URL Metrics",
    "Usage Data",
]

descriptions = [
    "Use this endpoint to get data about anchor text used by followed external links to a target. Results are ordered by external_root_domains descending.",
    "Use this endpoint to get data about anchor text used by followed external links to a target. Results are ordered by external_root_domains descending.",
    "This endpoint returns the top 500 pages in the entire index with the highest Page Authority values, sorted by Page Authority. (Visit the Top 500 Sites list to explore the top root domains on the web, sorted by Domain Authority.)",
    "This endpoint returns the top 500 pages in the entire index with the highest Page Authority values, sorted by Page Authority. (Visit the Top 500 Sites list to explore the top root domains on the web, sorted by Domain Authority.)",
    "This endpoint returns the top 500 pages in the entire index with the highest Page Authority values, sorted by Page Authority. (Visit the Top 500 Sites list to explore the top root domains on the web, sorted by Domain Authority.)",
    "Use this endpoint to get sources that link to at least one of a list of positive targets and don't link to any of a list of negative targets.",
    "Use this endpoint to get information about links from many sources to a single target.",
    "Use this endpoint to get linking root domains to a target.",
    "Use this endpoint to get links to a target.",
    "This endpoint returns top pages on a target domain.",
    "Use this endpoint to get metrics about one or more urls.",
    "This endpoint Returns the number of rows consumed so far in the current billing period. The count returned might not reflect rows consumed in the last hour. The count returned reflects rows consumed by requests to both the v1 (Moz Links API) and v2 Links APIs.",
]

# Simple zipping example
list(zip(names, sub_endpoints, descriptions))

Outputs:

[('Anchor Text',
  'anchor_text',
  'Use this endpoint to get data about anchor text used by followed external links to a target. Results are ordered by external_root_domains descending.'),
 ('Final Redirect',
  'final_redirect',
  'Use this endpoint to get data about anchor text used by followed external links to a target. Results are ordered by external_root_domains descending.'),
 ('Global Top Pages',
  'global_top_pages',
  'This endpoint returns the top 500 pages in the entire index with the highest Page Authority values, sorted by Page Authority. (Visit the Top 500 Sites list to explore the top root domains on the web, sorted by Domain Authority.)'),
 ('Global Top Root Domains',
  'global_top_root_domains',
  'This endpoint returns the top 500 pages in the entire index with the highest Page Authority values, sorted by Page Authority. (Visit the Top 500 Sites list to explore the top root domains on the web, sorted by Domain Authority.)'),
 ('Index Metadata',
  'index_metadata',
  'This endpoint returns the top 500 pages in the entire index with the highest Page Authority values, sorted by Page Authority. (Visit the Top 500 Sites list to explore the top root domains on the web, sorted by Domain Authority.)'),
 ('Link Intersect',
  'link_intersect',
  "Use this endpoint to get sources that link to at least one of a list of positive targets and don't link to any of a list of negative targets."),
 ('Link Status',
  'link_status',
  'Use this endpoint to get information about links from many sources to a single target.'),
 ('Linking Root Domains',
  'linking_root_domains',
  'Use this endpoint to get linking root domains to a target.'),
 ('Links', 'links', 'Use this endpoint to get links to a target.'),
 ('Top Pages',
  'top_pages',
  'This endpoint returns top pages on a target domain.'),
 ('URL Metrics',
  'url_metrics',
  'Use this endpoint to get metrics about one or more urls.'),
 ('Usage Data',
  'usage_data',
  'This endpoint Returns the number of rows consumed so far in the current billing period. The count returned might not reflect rows consumed in the last hour. The count returned reflects rows consumed by requests to both the v1 (Moz Links API) and v2 Links APIs.')]

Show an example request for each endpoint

This is a list of API requests in Python dict format, where each dictionary represents a request to a specific endpoint. Don’t hurt your brain too much trying to read it. Just know that I lifted each example from the original Moz documentation and listed them all here in order as nested Python dicts.

You could call the format is a dict of dicts, where each sub-dictionary corresponds to a specific endpoint, same order as the sub_endpoints, names, and descriptions lists for easy combining. The output of running the below cell is doing that list-combining to document every sub_endpoint.

dict_of_dicts = {
    "anchor_text": {"target": "moz.com/blog", "scope": "page", "limit": 5},
    "links": {
        "target": "moz.com/blog",
        "target_scope": "page",
        "filter": "external+nofollow",
        "limit": 1,
    },
    "final_redirect": {"page": "seomoz.org/blog"},
    "global_top_pages": {"limit": 5},
    "global_top_root_domains": {"limit": 5},
    "index_metadata": {},
    "link_intersect": {
        "positive_targets": [
            {"target": "latimes.com", "scope": "root_domain"},
            {"target": "blog.nytimes.com", "scope": "subdomain"},
        ],
        "negative_targets": [{"target": "moz.com", "scope": "root_domain"}],
        "source_scope": "page",
        "sort": "source_domain_authority",
        "limit": 1,
    },
    "link_status": {
        "target": "moz.com/blog",
        "sources": ["twitter.com", "linkedin.com"],
        "source_scope": "root_domain",
        "target_scope": "page",
    },
    "linking_root_domains": {
        "target": "moz.com/blog",
        "target_scope": "page",
        "filter": "external",
        "sort": "source_domain_authority",
        "limit": 5,
    },
    "top_pages": {"target": "moz.com", "scope": "root_domain", "limit": 5},
    "url_metrics": {"targets": ["moz.com", "nytimes.com"]},
    "usage_data": {},
}

for i, sub_endpoint in enumerate(sub_endpoints):
    h1(f"{i + 1}. {names[i]} ({sub_endpoint})")
    print(descriptions[i])
    h4("Example request:")
    pprint(dict_of_dicts[sub_endpoint])
    print()

Outputs:

# 2. Final Redirect (final_redirect)

Use this endpoint to get data about anchor text used by followed external links to a target. Results are ordered by external_root_domains descending.
Example request:

{'page': 'seomoz.org/blog'}

[...]

Write a function that hits the API

If we’re going to hit an API over and over in mostly the same way, we want to spare ourselves re-typing everything all the time. That’s why we define functions. That’s the def in the below cell. Once that cell is run, the moz() function can be used anywhere in this Notebook. You need only feed it the sub_endpoint you want to use and a Python dict of your request. It will return the API’s response.

def moz(sub_endpoint, data_dict):
    """Hits Moz Links API with specified endpoint and request and returns results."""
    json_string = json.dumps(data_dict)
    endpoint = COMMON_ENDPOINT + sub_endpoint
    # Below, data is a string (flattened JSON) but auth is a 2-position tuple.
    response = requests.post(endpoint, data=json_string, auth=AUTH_TUPLE)
    return response

This does not output anything to the screen. It just defines the function.

Conditionally hit the API

The code uses a Python package calledb which provides a persistent dictionary-like object that can be stored on disk using the SQLite database engine. The with statement in the code sets up a context manager for the SqliteDict object, which automatically handles opening and closing the database connection. The database file is stored at ../dbs/linksapi.db

The code iterates through each sub-endpoint in the sub_endpoints list, and checks if that data has already been retrieved. If it hasn’t, the API is called using the moz() function and the result is saved in the SqliteDict. The db.commit() statement ensures that any changes made to the dictionary during the iteration are saved to the database.

The SqliteDict serves as a local cache to prevent the API from being hit every time the code block is run if the data has already been collected. By using this cache, the code reduces the number of API requests required, which is useful when working with APIs that have quota limits. Congratulations, you’re using a database!

with sqldict("../dbs/linksapi.db") as db:
    for sub_endpoint in sub_endpoints:
        if sub_endpoint not in db:
            print(sub_endpoint)
            result = moz(sub_endpoint, dict_of_dicts[sub_endpoint])
            db[sub_endpoint] = result
            db.commit()
            print("API hit and response saved!")
            print()
h2("Done")

This does not output anything to the screen. It saves the results of the API-calls to a local database.

Show the locally-stored API responses

This code uses the sqldict context manager to open the SQLite database containing the previously retrieved API data. It then iterates over the keys in the database, which correspond to the endpoints that were previously retrieved.

For each key, the code prints the endpoint name, description, and the data retrieved from the API. The pprint function is used to print the JSON data in a more human-readable format, with indentation and line breaks that make it easier to read.

with sqldict("../dbs/linksapi.db") as db:
    for i, key in enumerate(db):
        h1(f"{i + 1}. {names[i]} ({key})")
        print(descriptions[i])
        print()
        pprint(db[key].json())
        print()

Outputs:

1. Anchor Text (anchor_text)
Use this endpoint to get data about anchor text used by followed external links to a target. Results are ordered by external_root_domains descending.

{'next_token': 'KIkQVg4s9ak8iRBWDiz1qTyguYswnj035n7bYI0Lc2VvbW96IGJsb2dKBcCodcl47Q==',
 'results': [{'anchor_text': 'moz',
              'external_pages': 7162,
              'external_root_domains': 2026},
             {'anchor_text': 'moz blog',
              'external_pages': 15525,
              'external_root_domains': 1364},
             {'anchor_text': 'the moz blog',
              'external_pages': 7879,
              'external_root_domains': 728},
             {'anchor_text': 'seomoz',
              'external_pages': 17741,
              'external_root_domains': 654},
             {'anchor_text': 'https://moz.com/blog',
              'external_pages': 978,
              'external_root_domains': 491}]}

2. Final Redirect (final_redirect)
Use this endpoint to get data about anchor text used by followed external links to a target. Results are ordered by external_root_domains descending.

{'page': 'moz.com/blog'}

3. Global Top Pages (global_top_pages)
This endpoint returns the top 500 pages in the entire index with the highest Page Authority values, sorted by Page Authority. (Visit the Top 500 Sites list to explore the top root domains on the web, sorted by Domain Authority.)

{'next_token': 'BcLbRwBmrXHK',
 'results': [{'deleted_pages_to_page': 11932076,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 23942663640,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 21555752652,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 64700,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 3688228,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 3516235,
              'domain_authority': 96,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 5042652519,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 31163,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 12375460748,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 11393036086,
              'external_pages_to_page': 118102549,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 91362310623,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 83283626903,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 0,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 445730476,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 432323198,
              'http_code': 5,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 0,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 701121,
              'last_crawled': '2023-01-15',
              'link_propensity': 1.76710455e-05,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 2,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 31163,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 12375623717,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 11393036179,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 980,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 3696150,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 3622349,
              'page': 'www.facebook.com/Plesk',
              'page_authority': 100,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 1810872,
              'pages_from_page': 0,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 5289,
              'pages_to_page': 118102549,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 91368257043,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 83288001442,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 0,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 447189164,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 433411292,
              'root_domain': 'facebook.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 32,
              'root_domains_to_page': 491956,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 59416650,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 50993087,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'subdomain': 'www.facebook.com',
              'title': ''},
             {'deleted_pages_to_page': 5828966,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 79909678,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 79909678,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 16552,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 98416,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 98416,
              'domain_authority': 94,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 1177381629,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 453328699,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 1643990147,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 1643990147,
              'external_pages_to_page': 456279611,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 2808523112,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 2808523112,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 125,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 24941546,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 24941546,
              'http_code': 3,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 723,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 252606,
              'last_crawled': '2023-01-14',
              'link_propensity': 0.118001014,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 121166,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 453328699,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 1644293277,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 1644293277,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 67627,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 9800973,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 4959747,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 4959747,
              'page': 'wordpress.com/?ref=footer_blog',
              'page_authority': 100,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 1731019,
              'pages_from_page': 0,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 1080338,
              'pages_to_page': 456293004,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 2817137385,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 2817137385,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 125,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 25449067,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 25449067,
              'root_domain': 'wordpress.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 204262,
              'root_domains_to_page': 9878742,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 12653294,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 12653294,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'subdomain': 'wordpress.com',
              'title': ''},
             {'deleted_pages_to_page': 3904778,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 23942663640,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 21555752652,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 11671,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 3688228,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 3516235,
              'domain_authority': 96,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 5042652519,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 4449343,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 12375460748,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 11393036086,
              'external_pages_to_page': 59602588,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 91362310623,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 83283626903,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 12625,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 445730476,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 432323198,
              'http_code': 5,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 1632,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 701121,
              'last_crawled': '2023-01-16',
              'link_propensity': 1.76710455e-05,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 2,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 4449343,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 12375623717,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 11393036179,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 28624,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 3696150,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 3622349,
              'page': 'www.facebook.com/home.php',
              'page_authority': 100,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 1810872,
              'pages_from_page': 0,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 5289,
              'pages_to_page': 59602589,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 91368257043,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 83288001442,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 12626,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 447189164,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 433411292,
              'root_domain': 'facebook.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 32,
              'root_domains_to_page': 239697,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 59416650,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 50993087,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'subdomain': 'www.facebook.com',
              'title': ''},
             {'deleted_pages_to_page': 3440567,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 3440700,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 3440700,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 60839,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 60840,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 60840,
              'domain_authority': 1,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 7,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 288,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 1499,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 1499,
              'external_pages_to_page': 140954613,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 140959216,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 140959213,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 70,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 70,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 70,
              'http_code': 200,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 0,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 0,
              'last_crawled': '2018-02-05',
              'link_propensity': 0.3998428881,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 12,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 805,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 288,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 10799,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 10799,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 2,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 7,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 30,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 30,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 30,
              'page': 'music.skyrock.com/',
              'page_authority': 100,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 2546,
              'pages_from_page': 61,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 3382,
              'pages_to_page': 140956009,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 141008586,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 141008583,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 70,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 70,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 70,
              'root_domain': 'music.skyrock.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 19,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 1018,
              'root_domains_to_page': 10609865,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 10609868,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 10609868,
              'spam_score': 9,
              'subdomain': 'music.skyrock.com',
              'title': 'Blog de Music - DES NEWS, DES CLIPS, DES INTERVIEWS - '
                       'Skyrock.com'},
             {'deleted_pages_to_page': 64159924,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 17641375891,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 336246205,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 63574,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 1728606,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 234073,
              'domain_authority': 100,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 19281720347,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 34635431,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 7885369442,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 184067821,
              'external_pages_to_page': 285612569,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 55013651418,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 1492976347,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 593282,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 250423075,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 5678006,
              'http_code': 302,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 1072,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 231256,
              'last_crawled': '2023-04-01',
              'link_propensity': 0.006248265505,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 991472,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 34635436,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 7948674425,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 184068512,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 182393,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 126656,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 2322389,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 304381,
              'page': 'youtube.com/',
              'page_authority': 100,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 41258009,
              'pages_from_page': 0,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 11109186,
              'pages_to_page': 285612606,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 55255620288,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 1493073570,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 593282,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 263224806,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 5678383,
              'root_domain': 'youtube.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 257791,
              'root_domains_to_page': 598403,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 23134271,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 1927717,
              'spam_score': 4,
              'subdomain': 'youtube.com',
              'title': ''}]}

4. Global Top Root Domains (global_top_root_domains)
This endpoint returns the top 500 pages in the entire index with the highest Page Authority values, sorted by Page Authority. (Visit the Top 500 Sites list to explore the top root domains on the web, sorted by Domain Authority.)

{'next_token': 'BcLbRwBmrXHK',
 'results': [{'domain_authority': 100,
              'link_propensity': 0.006248265505,
              'root_domain': 'youtube.com',
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 23134271,
              'spam_score': 4,
              'to_target': {'deleted_pages': 0,
                            'nofollow_pages': 0,
                            'pages': 0,
                            'redirect_pages': 0}},
             {'domain_authority': 100,
              'link_propensity': 0.008422264829,
              'root_domain': 'www.google.com',
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 14723695,
              'spam_score': 14,
              'to_target': {'deleted_pages': 0,
                            'nofollow_pages': 0,
                            'pages': 0,
                            'redirect_pages': 0}},
             {'domain_authority': 100,
              'link_propensity': 0.0001607139566,
              'root_domain': 'www.blogger.com',
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 30580427,
              'spam_score': -1,
              'to_target': {'deleted_pages': 0,
                            'nofollow_pages': 0,
                            'pages': 0,
                            'redirect_pages': 0}},
             {'domain_authority': 99,
              'link_propensity': 0.04834850505,
              'root_domain': 'linkedin.com',
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 12339087,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'to_target': {'deleted_pages': 0,
                            'nofollow_pages': 0,
                            'pages': 0,
                            'redirect_pages': 0}},
             {'domain_authority': 99,
              'link_propensity': 0.006264935713,
              'root_domain': 'microsoft.com',
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 5344181,
              'spam_score': 11,
              'to_target': {'deleted_pages': 0,
                            'nofollow_pages': 0,
                            'pages': 0,
                            'redirect_pages': 0}}]}

5. Index Metadata (index_metadata)
This endpoint returns the top 500 pages in the entire index with the highest Page Authority values, sorted by Page Authority. (Visit the Top 500 Sites list to explore the top root domains on the web, sorted by Domain Authority.)

{'index_id': 'NE+lX5bFh06baS9ojUwVbw==',
 'spam_score_update_days': ['2019-02-08',
                            '2020-03-28',
                            '2020-08-03',
                            '2020-11-13',
                            '2021-02-24',
                            '2021-05-19',
                            '2021-08-16',
                            '2021-11-02',
                            '2022-02-01',
                            '2022-05-10',
                            '2022-11-16']}

6. Link Intersect (link_intersect)
Use this endpoint to get sources that link to at least one of a list of positive targets and don't link to any of a list of negative targets.

{'next_token': 'AcmY2oCXQbbg',
 'results': [{'domain_authority': 100,
              'matching_target_indexes': [0],
              'page': 'www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-aliso-viejo-shooting-20171012-story,amp.html',
              'spam_score': 14,
              'title': ''}]}

7. Link Status (link_status)
Use this endpoint to get information about links from many sources to a single target.

{'exists': [False, False]}

8. Linking Root Domains (linking_root_domains)
Use this endpoint to get linking root domains to a target.

{'next_token': 'IokQVg4s9ak8iRBWDiz1qTyguYswnj035qBkmE3DU+JTtwAVhsjH7R6XUA==',
 'results': [{'domain_authority': 99,
              'link_propensity': 0.006264935713,
              'root_domain': 'microsoft.com',
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 5344181,
              'spam_score': 11,
              'to_target': {'deleted_pages': 0,
                            'nofollow_pages': 0,
                            'pages': 2,
                            'redirect_pages': 0}},
             {'domain_authority': 98,
              'link_propensity': 0.02977741137,
              'root_domain': 'wordpress.org',
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 12250296,
              'spam_score': 2,
              'to_target': {'deleted_pages': 0,
                            'nofollow_pages': 2,
                            'pages': 2,
                            'redirect_pages': 0}},
             {'domain_authority': 96,
              'link_propensity': 0.09679271281,
              'root_domain': 'github.com',
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 2948013,
              'spam_score': 2,
              'to_target': {'deleted_pages': 0,
                            'nofollow_pages': 12,
                            'pages': 12,
                            'redirect_pages': 0}},
             {'domain_authority': 96,
              'link_propensity': 0.004641198553,
              'root_domain': 'amazon.com',
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 5023132,
              'spam_score': 28,
              'to_target': {'deleted_pages': 0,
                            'nofollow_pages': 0,
                            'pages': 2,
                            'redirect_pages': 0}},
             {'domain_authority': 95,
              'link_propensity': 0.005770479795,
              'root_domain': 'shopify.com',
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 2948087,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'to_target': {'deleted_pages': 3,
                            'nofollow_pages': 0,
                            'pages': 0,
                            'redirect_pages': 0}}]}

9. Links (links)
Use this endpoint to get links to a target.

{'next_token': 'AVvpJ4gPPvOY',
 'results': [{'anchor_text': 'moz blog',
              'date_disappeared': '',
              'date_first_seen': '2020-06-29',
              'date_last_seen': '2023-01-14',
              'nofollow': True,
              'redirect': False,
              'rel_canonical': False,
              'source': {'deleted_pages_to_page': 570,
                         'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 1251501128,
                         'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 1182759912,
                         'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 34,
                         'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 322790,
                         'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 314554,
                         'domain_authority': 96,
                         'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 863103308,
                         'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 1407,
                         'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 667480081,
                         'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 650421076,
                         'external_pages_to_page': 3710,
                         'external_pages_to_root_domain': 5309615021,
                         'external_pages_to_subdomain': 5086141938,
                         'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 14,
                         'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 143685025,
                         'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 142061138,
                         'http_code': 200,
                         'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 2,
                         'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 180014,
                         'last_crawled': '2023-01-14',
                         'link_propensity': 0.09679271281,
                         'nofollow_pages_from_page': 199,
                         'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 7541042,
                         'nofollow_pages_to_page': 1407,
                         'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 678014273,
                         'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 660443683,
                         'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 93,
                         'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 564314,
                         'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 58,
                         'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 186407,
                         'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 171632,
                         'page': 'github.com/mezod/awesome-indie',
                         'page_authority': 68,
                         'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 7254823,
                         'pages_from_page': 202,
                         'pages_from_root_domain': 8613796,
                         'pages_to_page': 3746,
                         'pages_to_root_domain': 5628821927,
                         'pages_to_subdomain': 5352019489,
                         'redirect_pages_to_page': 14,
                         'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 145613441,
                         'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 142856036,
                         'root_domain': 'github.com',
                         'root_domains_from_page': 96,
                         'root_domains_from_root_domain': 702214,
                         'root_domains_to_page': 231,
                         'root_domains_to_root_domain': 2948013,
                         'root_domains_to_subdomain': 2857538,
                         'spam_score': 2,
                         'subdomain': 'github.com',
                         'title': 'GitHub - mezod/awesome-indie: Resources for '
                                  'independent developers to make money'},
              'target': {'deleted_pages_to_page': 169073,
                         'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 19022927,
                         'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 18554702,
                         'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 1457,
                         'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 27522,
                         'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 27273,
                         'domain_authority': 91,
                         'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 45290099,
                         'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 7388,
                         'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17425478,
                         'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17269297,
                         'external_pages_to_page': 553261,
                         'external_pages_to_root_domain': 69376449,
                         'external_pages_to_subdomain': 68746190,
                         'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 265,
                         'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 41112725,
                         'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 41109338,
                         'http_code': 200,
                         'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 2219,
                         'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 28779,
                         'last_crawled': '2023-04-02',
                         'link_propensity': 0.008849279955,
                         'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
                         'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 209067,
                         'nofollow_pages_to_page': 7388,
                         'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17442464,
                         'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17285191,
                         'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
                         'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 55943,
                         'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 1727,
                         'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 37789,
                         'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 37690,
                         'page': 'moz.com/blog',
                         'page_authority': 69,
                         'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 7872618,
                         'pages_from_page': 7,
                         'pages_from_root_domain': 343751,
                         'pages_to_page': 906052,
                         'pages_to_root_domain': 98442581,
                         'pages_to_subdomain': 97352802,
                         'redirect_pages_to_page': 746,
                         'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 47575576,
                         'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 47570092,
                         'root_domain': 'moz.com',
                         'root_domains_from_page': 5,
                         'root_domains_from_root_domain': 69667,
                         'root_domains_to_page': 9712,
                         'root_domains_to_root_domain': 179884,
                         'root_domains_to_subdomain': 178649,
                         'spam_score': 1,
                         'subdomain': 'moz.com',
                         'title': 'The Moz Blog [SEO] - Moz'},
              'via_redirect': False,
              'via_rel_canonical': False}]}

10. Top Pages (top_pages)
This endpoint returns top pages on a target domain.

{'next_token': 'BXULGXd3IggK',
 'results': [{'deleted_pages_to_page': 1963527,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 19022927,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 18554702,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 6527,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 27522,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 27273,
              'domain_authority': 91,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 45290099,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 9684724,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17425478,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17269297,
              'external_pages_to_page': 14981546,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 69376449,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 68746190,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 3632556,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 41112725,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 41109338,
              'http_code': 200,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 10580,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 28779,
              'last_crawled': '2023-04-01',
              'link_propensity': 0.008849279955,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 209067,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 9684724,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17442464,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17285191,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 55943,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 8749,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 37789,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 37690,
              'page': 'moz.com/',
              'page_authority': 74,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 7872618,
              'pages_from_page': 7,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 343751,
              'pages_to_page': 15343034,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 98442581,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 97352802,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 3633007,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 47575576,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 47570092,
              'root_domain': 'moz.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 5,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 69667,
              'root_domains_to_page': 41190,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 179884,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 178649,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'subdomain': 'moz.com',
              'title': 'Moz - SEO Software for Smarter Marketing'},
             {'deleted_pages_to_page': 185579,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 19022927,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 18554702,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 2440,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 27522,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 27273,
              'domain_authority': 91,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 45290099,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 11211,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17425478,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17269297,
              'external_pages_to_page': 424268,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 69376449,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 68746190,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 348,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 41112725,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 41109338,
              'http_code': 200,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 1389,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 28779,
              'last_crawled': '2023-04-03',
              'link_propensity': 0.008849279955,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 209067,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 11211,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17442464,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17285191,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 55943,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 2487,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 37789,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 37690,
              'page': 'moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo',
              'page_authority': 72,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 7872618,
              'pages_from_page': 7,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 343751,
              'pages_to_page': 786960,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 98442581,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 97352802,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 365,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 47575576,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 47570092,
              'root_domain': 'moz.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 5,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 69667,
              'root_domains_to_page': 15276,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 179884,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 178649,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'subdomain': 'moz.com',
              'title': "Beginner\'s Guide to SEO [plus FREE quick start "
                       'checklist] - Moz'},
             {'deleted_pages_to_page': 7159,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 19022927,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 18554702,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 1382,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 27522,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 27273,
              'domain_authority': 91,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 45290099,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 8605,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17425478,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17269297,
              'external_pages_to_page': 34152,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 69376449,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 68746190,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 70,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 41112725,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 41109338,
              'http_code': 200,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 782,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 28779,
              'last_crawled': '2023-04-03',
              'link_propensity': 0.008849279955,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 209067,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 8754,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17442464,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17285191,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 55943,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 1380,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 37789,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 37690,
              'page': 'moz.com/google-algorithm-change',
              'page_authority': 70,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 7872618,
              'pages_from_page': 420,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 343751,
              'pages_to_page': 35181,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 98442581,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 97352802,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 73,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 47575576,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 47570092,
              'root_domain': 'moz.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 60,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 69667,
              'root_domains_to_page': 8881,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 179884,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 178649,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'subdomain': 'moz.com',
              'title': 'Moz - Google Algorithm Update History'},
             {'deleted_pages_to_page': 33133,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 19022927,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 18554702,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 1192,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 27522,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 27273,
              'domain_authority': 91,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 45290099,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 31500,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17425478,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17269297,
              'external_pages_to_page': 70673,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 69376449,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 68746190,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 77,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 41112725,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 41109338,
              'http_code': 301,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 315,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 28779,
              'last_crawled': '2023-04-02',
              'link_propensity': 0.008849279955,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 209067,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 31628,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17442464,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17285191,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 55943,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 1689,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 37789,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 37690,
              'page': 'moz.com/researchtools/ose/',
              'page_authority': 70,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 7872618,
              'pages_from_page': 0,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 343751,
              'pages_to_page': 344305,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 98442581,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 97352802,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 78,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 47575576,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 47570092,
              'root_domain': 'moz.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 69667,
              'root_domains_to_page': 8086,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 179884,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 178649,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'subdomain': 'moz.com',
              'title': ''},
             {'deleted_pages_to_page': 169073,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 19022927,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 18554702,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 1457,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 27522,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 27273,
              'domain_authority': 91,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 45290099,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 7388,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17425478,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17269297,
              'external_pages_to_page': 553261,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 69376449,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 68746190,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 265,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 41112725,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 41109338,
              'http_code': 200,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 2219,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 28779,
              'last_crawled': '2023-04-02',
              'link_propensity': 0.008849279955,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 209067,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 7388,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17442464,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17285191,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 55943,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 1727,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 37789,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 37690,
              'page': 'moz.com/blog',
              'page_authority': 69,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 7872618,
              'pages_from_page': 7,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 343751,
              'pages_to_page': 906052,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 98442581,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 97352802,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 746,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 47575576,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 47570092,
              'root_domain': 'moz.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 5,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 69667,
              'root_domains_to_page': 9712,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 179884,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 178649,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'subdomain': 'moz.com',
              'title': 'The Moz Blog [SEO] - Moz'}]}

11. URL Metrics (url_metrics)
Use this endpoint to get metrics about one or more urls.

{'results': [{'deleted_pages_to_page': 1963527,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 19022927,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 18554702,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 6527,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 27522,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 27273,
              'domain_authority': 91,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 45290099,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 9684724,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17425478,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17269297,
              'external_pages_to_page': 14981546,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 69376449,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 68746190,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 3632556,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 41112725,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 41109338,
              'http_code': 200,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 10580,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 28779,
              'last_crawled': '2023-04-01',
              'link_propensity': 0.008849279955,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 209067,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 9684724,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 17442464,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 17285191,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 55943,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 8749,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 37789,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 37690,
              'page': 'moz.com/',
              'page_authority': 74,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 7872618,
              'pages_from_page': 7,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 343751,
              'pages_to_page': 15343034,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 98442581,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 97352802,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 3633007,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 47575576,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 47570092,
              'root_domain': 'moz.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 5,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 69667,
              'root_domains_to_page': 41190,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 179884,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 178649,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'subdomain': 'moz.com',
              'title': 'Moz - SEO Software for Smarter Marketing'},
             {'deleted_pages_to_page': 249094,
              'deleted_pages_to_root_domain': 224212706,
              'deleted_pages_to_subdomain': 898844,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_page': 3696,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_root_domain': 177001,
              'deleted_root_domains_to_subdomain': 9251,
              'domain_authority': 95,
              'external_indirect_pages_to_root_domain': 156562794,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_page': 163849,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 72093550,
              'external_nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 294697,
              'external_pages_to_page': 1165187,
              'external_pages_to_root_domain': 514661963,
              'external_pages_to_subdomain': 2310818,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_page': 3049,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 4827448,
              'external_redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 8140,
              'http_code': 301,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_page': 1439,
              'indirect_root_domains_to_root_domain': 30315,
              'last_crawled': '2023-03-31',
              'link_propensity': 0.02704063244,
              'nofollow_pages_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_pages_from_root_domain': 97163,
              'nofollow_pages_to_page': 163881,
              'nofollow_pages_to_root_domain': 72644206,
              'nofollow_pages_to_subdomain': 294765,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'nofollow_root_domains_from_root_domain': 22711,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_page': 5647,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_root_domain': 178651,
              'nofollow_root_domains_to_subdomain': 11590,
              'page': 'nytimes.com/',
              'page_authority': 82,
              'pages_crawled_from_root_domain': 13567138,
              'pages_from_page': 0,
              'pages_from_root_domain': 3152122,
              'pages_to_page': 1170498,
              'pages_to_root_domain': 763781494,
              'pages_to_subdomain': 2489707,
              'redirect_pages_to_page': 3053,
              'redirect_pages_to_root_domain': 9268395,
              'redirect_pages_to_subdomain': 14273,
              'root_domain': 'nytimes.com',
              'root_domains_from_page': 0,
              'root_domains_from_root_domain': 366864,
              'root_domains_to_page': 25307,
              'root_domains_to_root_domain': 2200598,
              'root_domains_to_subdomain': 62699,
              'spam_score': 1,
              'subdomain': 'nytimes.com',
              'title': ''}]}

12. Usage Data (usage_data)
This endpoint Returns the number of rows consumed so far in the current billing period. The count returned might not reflect rows consumed in the last hour. The count returned reflects rows consumed by requests to both the v1 (Moz Links API) and v2 Links APIs.

{'rows_consumed': 254}

Friday, June 2, 2023

Easy to Implement Tactics for Local Link Building — Whiteboard Friday

Google’s local algorithm demands different tactics for link building. And even if you don't need local SEO, local link building strategies can still give you a different perspective and improve your work. In today’s episode, Greg walks you through some of these strategies.

Easy to Implement Tactics for Local Link Building

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

♪ [music] ♪ Howdy, Moz fans. I'm Greg Gifford, the COO of SearchLab Digital, and I'm back to do another Whiteboard Friday. Today we're talking tactics for local links. Get it, huh? The important thing to remember is that Google's local algorithm is different, so you need to approach local link building differently.

Even if you don't need local SEO, local link-building tactics can still give you a different perspective, and we all know that with a different perspective, you can do better work. Whoa. So the most important thing to understand is that the best links are based on relationships that you have in the real world. They're easier to get and they're more powerful.

The other thing to remember is the easiest way to get local links is to turn the clock back and do the things that businesses used to do to get exposure in the local community that everybody kind of stopped doing once we had the internet. So if you just get involved in the local community, you'll naturally acquire a lot of amazing local links. Remember checklist link building rarely works.

That's not what I wrote, but I wasn't watching. But yeah, checklist link building doesn't really work. You have to be original. You need unique links to win so that you've got links that your competitors don't have. So don't follow a checklist. Think outside the box. Be creative.

So a couple of ideas and tactics that I want to run you through. Sponsorships are great. Now, also I should remind you Google is basically pattern detection. So most importantly, remember that when you look at your link profile, you can't just do one or two things. You have to have a natural mix. But with sponsorships, a lot of people avoid them because they think that you're really buying links because obviously buying links is bad.

But Google is totally okay with you buying a sponsorship that results in a link. So Little League, peewee hockey, peewee football, 5Ks, golf tournaments, these are all great things that a lot of businesses are already doing. So find those easy, cheap, awesome local sponsorship opportunities. Knock those out.

Charities are great too. So you're not sponsoring an event, you're giving money or donating time to a local charity. That's an awesome link opportunity as well. Volunteer opportunities are great as well. You know, you're taking your team down to feed the homeless at the soup kitchen or anything like that, or highway clean-ups. Things like that are awesome local link opportunities. Local meetups are one of my favorite things to do.

So you want to go to a site like meetup.com, and there's a couple of different tactics you can use here. First of all, if you've got some sort of a meeting room or a board room, conference room kind of situation and you're not using it all the time, go on meetup.com, look for local groups that have meetings on a regular basis. Let's say the group has a meeting on the second Monday of every month at 7:00 p.m. but your office is closed at 6:00.

So you could offer them your conference room or your meeting area. They've got free Wi-Fi, they've got an awesome big TV they can connect to and etc., and cool, boom, you get a local link out of it. Now, if you don't have a space that you can offer to those local groups, again get on meetup.com or Facebook groups or whatever and look for local groups that are looking for meeting sponsors. Forty, fifty, sixty bucks a month buys their soft drinks and their snacks, and killer local links come right your way.

Blogs are great too. Find the local bloggers and get them to write about you. Now, obviously, the blog is going to say, "Hey, I was given a free widget to write about Greg's widget company," but who cares? You still get an awesome link from a local blogger, and even if it's something that seems like it may not be related to what you do, it's still okay because that blogger is in the local area.

So even if it's a food blogger or a travel blogger and you give them a free widget to talk about your widget company, doesn't matter. You still get an awesome local link. Local business associations, it's a no-brainer. Better Business Bureau is an amazing one. In fact, Google has just added the Better Business Bureau link into your verification process if you're trying to get reinstated in your Google Business profile.

But that's a whole nother Whiteboard Friday that we'll cover later. But join all of those local business associations. They're a no-brainer. Local business directories, couldn't fit that in there, but local business directories are great as well. Join all of them that you can. Even if it's a little bit of a fee to join that business directory, it's still a really killer list of really relevant local links. Local calendar pages are another thing that a lot of businesses don't really think about.

There are always different websites or organizations in the local area, and a lot of times it's the city government site or local newspaper or TV that has a calendar page of just community events and you can't get on there if you don't have something event worthy. But if you've got a sales event or a barbecue or some sort of a cookout like that, you get a local link back to your site.

You also want to think outside the box. Don't do the same thing that everybody else does. You don't do the same SEO for every client, so you shouldn't do the same link building for every client. So a couple of outside-the-box things. If you work with car dealerships or pediatricians or even personal injury attorneys, child seat installation is a killer tactic.

You can have the staff of that location go to a two-day safety course. You can sign up at cert.safekids.org. I didn't have room to get it all on there. But you sit through the safety class and then you are officially certified to be a place that anyone in the community can come for free to get their child seat installed correctly.

Because guess what, 99% of us are installing our child seats incorrectly. So if there was an accident, our kids would get injured. So this really makes sense if it's something related to kids or if it's something like personal injury or doctors, really killer. If the business owner or leadership of the business is a member of a certain ethnic group, there are ethnic business directories in every city in the country.

So let's say you have an Iranian dry cleaner. I'm pulling that out of the air. There will be a list of Iranian-owned businesses in that area. You can get on that list, and the competitors can't. It's killer. Or if someone is LGBTQIA+, that's a link you can get that again competitors can't get, and there are LGBTQIA+ directories in every city that you can get on.

So go look for those if it's applicable to your business. This last one is a really kind of wacky one that people don't really understand the first time I mention it. This isn't about the clubs and organizations that your business is a member of. You want to talk to the staff at your client's business or at your business if you're in-house, especially leadership of the organization, and find out what they're passionate about.

What do they do in their free time that they really enjoy doing? What are their hobbies? Because if they're a member of a local club or organization, especially if they're so involved in that club or organization that they're on the leadership board of that organization, guess what, it's going to be super easy to get your business linked from that business' website.

This one here, a lot of people are going to laugh at this because it's an old-school technique, but it really works. If you periodically, I'm not saying every week, but periodically you write a local informational blog post of like, "Hey, our staff loves to go out and grab barbecue every Friday and here are the five best barbecue places in Dallas, according to our staff," once you've got that blog post up, you can then do outreach to each of those five locations and say, "Hey, we listed you as one of the five best places in Dallas."

Even if it's not related to the business, this is the kind of stuff that shows up in search results. So you get surfaced and you get eyeballs on your business. So it's great for branding. It's kind of that billboard effect, and it gets killer links. The really awesome part that people don't really think about is most of the time, when you're getting these links, you're dealing with people that aren't that technically savvy.

So yeah, sure, the people that are technically savvy are going to link to that specific local blog post. But the people that aren't, they're going to link to your homepage. So it's really killer. So a cool story because everybody that knows me knows I'm a story guy. Several years ago, I was speaking at a conference in Vegas and a lawyer came up and he said, "Hey, man, I know a lot about SEO and I need your help."

I said, "Okay, let me help you." He said, "I've got three times as many links as this other attorney in town, yet he outranks me on every single query possible." I said, "Okay." The guy again said, "I know SEO, so I should be winning." Well, obviously there's a lot more than just links at play. So what I did, I built a little spreadsheet and I graphed out the link profile of this guy versus his competitor based on Domain Authority.

Stick with me, though. It doesn't matter how many links they had, it's just based on the authority. So we see here the guy in red is the guy that I was talking to. So the guy in red has three times as many links as the guy in blue. So when I graph it out, this one right here is Domain Authority of above 50. This one right here is Domain Authority of 11 to 50, and this one right here is Domain Authority below 10.

You can see 67% of the guy in blue links are above a 50, and 53% or almost 60% of the guy in red who was the guy asking me for help was below 50. I said, "All right, there's a story here. Let's break it down a little bit more." So this is 91 to 100. This is 71 to 90, 51 to 70, 26 to 50, and 0 to 25.

You can see right here that almost a massive section, like 65% of the guy in blue links are above Domain Authority of 7 versus 60% basically of the guy in red that is really low, below a DA of 50. Now, the guy in red wasn't doing local SEO.

Even though the guy in red had three times as many links, they all skewed towards the bottom of the authority range because he was getting really horrible links from like seodirectory.com and linksxyz.com, and stupid things like that that wouldn't matter. The important thing to understand is if the guy in red had been doing local SEO and getting local links, this graph would look the same way because local links skew towards lower authority.

But the guy in red would have been destroying the guy in blue if he'd been getting local links. So that's the way that you need to change your perspective and think about it differently. If you'd like to do something similar yourself, you can do exactly the same thing with my Badass Link Worksheet. You can download it right here at bit.ly/gregs-bad-ass-link-sheet. That is all lowercase when you type it in.

So make sure you do that, or I'm sure they'll drop it down in the blog post or in the comments so that you can click on it there. You can download that sheet. It's an Excel spreadsheet. It does have macros enabled to basically make it easy to clear information out. It's set to work with your Moz link export. You need last month's link export, this month's link export, and your competitor's link export for this month.

You drop those in, automatically it's going to graph out all of this stuff. On another tab, it's going to give you a list of all of the link gap opportunities where your competitors have links and you don't. Then on another tab, it's going to give you a list of all the links that you've lost since the last time you did it. Now, yeah, there's some link tools out there that do it too, but this is a really easy tool.

It's super killer, and I'm sharing it with you guys today for free. Thank you so much for watching my newest episode of Whiteboard Friday.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com