Live SEO Support 1/20/21 – 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:

[18:31] Will Google frown upon your site if the words are shortened? Such as ‘em (instead of them), or groupin’ (instead of grouping)? Will it affect SEO negatively? I mainly want to add a bit of flair to some heading/text.

Check the search that you’re going after first and see if that type of flair is included in any of the articles that are ranking. A lot of top pop culture sites like TMZ are filled with slang. It probably won’t have an extreme effect on your ability to rank if your content is optimized properly. If everything within the SERPs you’re trying to target are speaking with very proper English, then try to be as grammatically correct as you can. Also try to keep it off of important sections such as your URL or title tag.

[22:53] I have multiple pages on my site such as “web design company in Mumbai,” “web development company in Mumbai,” and “WordPress development company in Mumbai.” I want to add FAQs to these pages regarding those services. Can I use the same FAQs for all the three pages as the service offered is generally the same/similar?

If it doesn’t take that much extra effort to make your content unique on different pages, it’s best to give the crawlers unique information pertinent to each individual page. You can use this as an opportunity to use more keywords and keyword variations.

[27:48] I’m on the lookout for sites that accept guest posts. What metrics should one keep in mind to evaluate such sites that allow guest posts and offer a backlink?

DR is probably one of the more important metrics for guest posts, however there are many other things to keep in mind such as RD, traffic, relevance, quality backlink profiles, and so on. Read: What is a quality link?

[34:55] What’s a good way to effectively monitor keyword cannibalization?

It’s not really something you monitor if you start off doing things properly with keyword research. Part of that research would include going into the SERPs to find out which SERPs overlap for these particular keywords. If you start there and do a good job, you’re not going to have cannibalization issues. But if you purchase a site with similar slugs and none are ranking well, use tools like SERanking to see which URLs are conflicting, then adjust accordingly.

[42:47] Does it make sense to purchase a social signal pack if the site is about a year or so old? Or is it too late for it?

Social signals are basically likes, shares, comments etc. They’re good at any point in time. With SEO, you always want to be thinking about what’s natural. You always want people talking about your brand and sharing information about it. Do social signals periodically. If you’re doing a heavy backlinking campaign of any kind, you can mix in social signals.

[50:02] As a beginner SEO agency, what should I do to attract clients?

You should be thinking about your current budget and how you’ll market your brand according to that budget. Also think about how much time you’re willing to invest in the beginning while building your brand and reaching out. Email marketing is always a good place to start for everyone, but don’t spam. Take your time and personalize every interaction. If you happen to be good at cold calling and don’t mind endless rejection, that’s the best way to get a spark going if you keep at it. You might have to work for cheap at the beginning; but as you get clients, make it a point to collect reviews and document case studies to build your social proof. If done right, this will lead to a snowball effect of even more clients coming your way.

[59:48] What are your thoughts on EMDs for local?

EMDs (exact match domains) are widely useful for ranking anything – local or otherwise. Just Google any service with a location and see what comes up. To be more specific, use EMDs for local: a) if it’s a super high-competition niche; b) if you know for certain that you have no plans for expansion; c) if you have a small budget and need to rank fast.

[1:07:28] If EMDs are still valuable, what’s the best way to rank them?

When you consider what branded or URL anchors are, you’re essentially getting keyword anchors naturally through these non-keyword anchors. If your site is austinplumber.com, you can have a hundred branded anchors saying “Austin plumber,” and that’s going to look natural instead of manipulative as it’s your brand name.

[1:12:37] Are expired domain 301s to new domains still working, and is relevancy important? Or can you 301 any expired domain to a new domain regardless of niche?

Take the domain that you want to 301 and put some content on it. Get it just barely resonating on the SERPs so that it’s indexed, live, and is seen as having some sort of value. Then 301 the domain. More relevance is better than less, especially with 301ing. It increases the odds that this tactic will work.

[1:20:35] Since you spoke about auditing a site (for pitching/attracting new clients), is there a free tool that will quickly throw up a decent audit? Maybe not thorough but enough to bait them in.

The best free tool is your brain and Google.com. Do a search, pick a site ranking low on the first page, and do a quick on-page audit of important stuff like titles, URLs, h tags, metas, inner-linking, etc. If you see room for improvement, go ahead and reach out to the company and offer to sell them an on-page fix for cheap. From there, you can upsell them on link building, ranking other keywords, etc. Also, collect data on sites that are ranking in your niche. This makes you look more like an authority to potential clients.

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