Live SEO Support 1/18/23 – Full Episode

Welcome to another episode of Live SEO Support!

Live SEO Support is an hour-long Weekly Livestream where our founders, Nicholas Altimore and Chris Tzitzis, take questions from the audience on anything related to SEO.

It’s 100% free, and anyone can join us weekly in our Facebook Group or on Youtube.

But in case you missed us live this week, here’s the full episode:

This Week’s Archived Livestream:

Summary:

[44:08] How would you prioritize link acquisition for a blog that is specific to one country? Would it be better to expand to less related niches within that country, or expand to the exact niche from other countries? I’m not sure which one looks more out of place for links.

It depends on the kind of site. If it’s a local, service-based company, such as a carpet cleaner, it’s stranger to get international links compared to affiliate or informational sites. Go for citations and links with geographic relevance. However, if, for example, you’re a UK cleaner who regularly posts on US cleaning sites, it would make sense to get publicity from the US. For the second example, it’s natural to have both local and international links.

[53:17] Can I rank a website with only blog comments?

Nope. I know blog comments are awesome because they’re free and you can automate them with tools such as ScrapeBox, but relying on them alone doesn’t work long-term. Also, quality blog comments that are not just Web 2.0s acquired in bulk via Fiverr are very hard to get. High-quality comments are typically approved by webmasters. We always preach link diversity, which is one of the most important concepts as far as building backlinks go. Protect your website by mimicking what a natural backlink profile looks like. Do this by having many different types of backlinks from many different types of sources, and diversifying your anchor texts with natural anchors and exact-match anchors.

[1:00:18] I was thinking of having a career in SEO. How much money can I expect to make?

The vast majority of people make $0, unfortunately. Most of the SEOs that were there when Nick started a decade ago are now long gone. Consider your first two years as your internship. Keep your day job and start studying on the side. Build an experimental site (affiliate, local, etc.) and rank it. Master those skills. The exciting part is that, once you’ve built that competence, the opportunities are limitless and you need to start asking “How can I make money?” rather than “Can I make money?’. In fact, the hardest thing is deciding which direction you want to take your career once you start building momentum!

[1:07:24] I started doing SEO nine months ago. I built up a site in a niche to the first page in several locations. I rank 1-10 on the site and have lots more business. I have 2-3 keywords. I am stuck at 10-15 but was at 7-8. I have one competitor with 12-16 sites in the same niche that pushed me down a bunch. He pretty much monopolized those 2-3 keywords. The other two in the niche just took the route of getting 100k+ links to compete with him. Long story short, the top guy is getting links from Vice, Thrillist, and Enquirer with other top-end links.

First off, it’s a big accomplishment to be right up against a competitor that big just nine months into your career. You most likely have a competition issue: Your site is newer, and it’s not as fleshed out from an on-page or off-page perspective. You can start getting higher-quality backlinks from a service like ours. You have to flesh out the topical map of your website to make sure you hit all these different angles, especially for the more competitive terms. Just stick to your strategy. You’ve been rewarded in the SERPs. Publish new content regularly and continually add backlinks to your profile.

[1:16:04] How come I am gaining organic search traffic but losing keywords (using Semrush)?

Consider the keywords that you’re losing. A lot of the time, you’ll see websites that start ranking for keywords that they have no business ranking for. Google then notices and knocks those keywords out. Though if you’re gaining organic search traffic, Google’s rewarding you rather than punishing you. I’d rather have more traffic than more keywords!

[1:19:06] How do you beat a giant website as a little website?

Look at the SERPs for the keywords you’re trying to rank for and see which websites are ranking for them. Are there any small websites ranking or are there only big sites? For certain keywords, Google likes to see more authority. The best you can do is to niche down as much as you can and tailor your website towards your keywords by being intentional about your content. You can also go after the lower-competition, long-tail keywords. For example, if you can’t rank for “best gaming computer,” you might be able to rank for “best gaming computer for college dropouts.”

[1:25:14] I am going to start a crypto news website. What do you recommend: taking a fresh new domain or an expired domain with good backlink history? I want to start getting Google traffic ASAP.

If you want traffic as soon as possible, go with a nice, aged domain—not necessarily expired. Use excellent keyword research to make sure you go for things that you can pop up for in the SERPs more quickly. This means lower-competition keywords. Remember that crypto is an oversaturated market, and much of your competition has huge budgets. This will be a very difficult space for a beginner to succeed in, but every space has angles you can focus on to niche down. If you want to stick with crypto, treat it as a long-term project, and don’t expect a lot of Google traffic ASAP.

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