Live SEO Support 10/6/21 – 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:

[9:22] How long does Google keep websites in the sandbox? How do I get mine out of there?

There’s rarely ever immediate gratification when doing SEO and that’s the case at the very beginning too, when you just built your brand new site. The Google sandbox, or “sandbox effect”, is a time period when a new website does not show up in the search results for keywords. It is like a probation period during which Google bots crawl and monitor the website for quality and relevance. 

Even though the Google sandbox has not been officially confirmed, it’s an effect that everyone has felt in one way or another. Basically, the length of time it takes to exit the sandbox is unknown / unpredictable. Sometimes it can take 4 to 8 months or more. What we do know is that websites that have good on-page SEO (e.g. internal links) & healthy, natural backlinks will get the green light from Google faster than low-quality sites and leave the sandbox sooner than later.

[18:34] I have multiple blogs, DR 50 – 70, but many of its articles rank #6 – 10. The content is ‘matching intent’ & properly covers the topic. Should the next step be outreaching for links to these articles?

We assume your blog is already getting a decent amount of backlinks given its high DA. Having said that, it’s good that you have quality content with backlinks pointing to them, but you also want to focus on acquiring backlinks that point to your homepage and other inner pages throughout the website. Check out your anchor profile and see if you can throw in exact match anchors too.

[25:19] What do you look for when buying backlinks / SEO services on Legiit / Fiverr (other than reviews)?

We prefer the simpler pillow links services that are offered by such marketplaces. These types of links are more reliable / less riskier than authority links because it’s harder to mess them up. If we really needed some serious authority links for an important project, we would try to build them ourselves.

Before you choose to purchase links off Legiit / Fiverr, you should have a solid understanding of what is a good backlink . Other than that, look for white-hat links like citations, directory links, Web 2.0s etc. It’s better to be safe than sorry, especially when dealing with a stranger in an online marketplace.

[37:36] What is your advice on internal links? Do they give you more leeway to use exact match anchors? I am sure that contextual links are the best, but would it help to have sitewide navigation & footer links that point to important pages (e.g. guides)?

Yes, there’s more flexibility to use exact match anchors with internal links versus external. But it’s always a good idea to diversify your internal anchors too (although you probably shouldn’t use URL or branded anchors).

Contextual links are a good idea. Sitewide nav & footer links are also helpful. But don’t go overboard with a bunch of unnecessary links. Be efficient about navigating users and Google bots.

[43:18] I know from other posts that the data in Ahrefs is often inaccurate. But how far off is the data? I am asking because Ahrefs is reporting that one of my site’s monthly organic traffic is about 10K, when it’s actually 55K. I know they don’t track every single keyword, but is this discrepancy normal?

Unfortunately, yes this inaccuracy is completely normal despite metrics that can be objectively determined (although your variance seems to be higher than normal). Almost everything on Ahrefs is a proprietary estimate and users should know this.

Check out our article on Ahrefs alternatives.

[49:38] Just hired an agency to help with backlinks for my new website. Getting 90% of non-relevant links from foreign TLDs. Should I care?

In this case, the backlink profile seems quite unnatural and a cause for concern. Using non-relevant links from foreign domains is not a best practice when you want relevant, local traffic. You should try to attract & rank for your target market. 

Related Posts