Live SEO Support 11/30/22 – 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:

[06:28] Can a .com site outrank a country site in that specific country, such as .mx in Mexico or .fr in France? Does a .com site necessarily need more backlinks and content?

.com sites can rank just fine anywhere. Check with the SERPs to see what’s ranking. Some niches might be heavily dominated by geographic-specific SERPs.

[08:43] I have a 12-year-old website in the travel niche (this domain has “travel guide” + “the city name” in the domain). DR 7, organic traffic only 400 unique visitors per month. I haven’t touched it in years. Can I use this site to start promoting inns and bed and breakfasts? Or should I start a PMD from scratch?

It depends on whether or not you want to stay niched down to that specific city since that city’s name is in the domain. If you want to expand outside of that city, I would go the PMD route or for a new brandable domain.

[12:25] I found a brand new available EMD. Should I buy it, or should I create a brand by adding a word? It’s an affiliate website.

It’s up to you. I like having more branded influence with PMDs (Partial-Match Domains) so that I can play with my anchors a bit more. But, EMDs (Exact-Match Domains) do work. You can do either route. It’s all down to personal preference.

[16:40] Should we still use the word “best” in titles and in URLs for our affiliate websites?

Absolutely, but when you’re doing your keyword research, make sure that the keyword you’re using is the biggest one, so it doesn’t get buried in your group of words. Though, I like to be broader: Instead of /bestdogtoys I’ll just write /dogtoys. I sprinkle “best” or “top” in my titles very sparingly and never use them in my permalinks. When in doubt, check the top rankers.

[21:28] What can I do if a 301 redirect has been lowering my rankings for a month now? Should I yoink it out?

There are a lot of variables that could make a 301 act adversely. A month used to be a very long time, but now if you’re simply doing nothing (ex., not adding new content, not adding a backlink campaign alongside the 301, etc.), it might take longer to see results. For me, getting 301s to take “quickly” is a process that could last up to three months.

[32:38] How can I know if I build too many links to an inner page? I mainly compete with a couple of much higher DR sites that do not actively build links on their inner pages since they rank with their general authority. Because of this, I have no reference on how many links I should build on my inner pages, and I do not want to blast a lot of links and tank my pages. (Currently, I’m building 4-5 links a month on 2-3 top-revenue pages.)

We build links to inner pages in proportion to the total amount of links the website has. So, if the website has 100 referring domains, 20-30 links would be too much. That would start to tip the scales toward looking unnatural. My advice would be to do what other sites are doing: Build your site’s authority on your homepage and maybe some hub pages and category pages or blogroll pages. You can build links not just to your inner pages but also to your supporting content for those inner pages.

[41:09] Any idea how to buy PR (press release) backlinks?

Fiverr. They won’t be high-quality, but they’ll be very good for pillowing.

[44:26] How do you build powerful backlinks?

Guest posts and niche edits are your two most used types of backlinks. These are links to other websites that you do not own. The way to get them is to email the websites, which we call “outreach.” Work out a deal with them, which is a time-consuming process and oftentimes involves money. It doesn’t have to, but in 2022, in most cases, it does. Find a lot of sites to reach out to, get their contact information, and send them somewhat-personalized messages pitching them to write content for their website or why your link would make a good insertion into one of their preexisting articles. Try using HARO (Help A Reporter Out) as well, where you answer reporters’ questions, and if they like the answer, they link back to your website, usually to your homepage.

[49:19] Please talk about e-commerce link-building. Should I buy the same guest posts that top sites have?

You could, but you don’t need to focus on it too heavily unless you find really good links. As far as e-commerce link-building goes, just build a diverse mix of relevant links and use a diverse mix of anchor texts. Don’t rely only on guest posts, either. Do niche edits as well.

[57:03] Also, since this is an aged domain, I do not actively build any links on the homepage since the site has more than 100+ unique referrals on the homepage. Do you think I should start to build links here and there also on the homepage? The general site DR is a bit slow in Ahrefs.

You never want to stop building links on the homepage, even if there’s a ton of press.

[1:02:44] I see in many case studies that you insert social signals at the beginning of a campaign. I get the reason to justify the buzz and the backlinks. Do you have another good reason to do it? I’m thinking of doing it every month before building those 3-5 links per page.

You can literally do social signals every month. It’s justified if the site has good content and is being linked to by other sites (i.e., it’s getting backlinks), the site will generally get talked about on social media. Sites get popular not only through links from other websites. Social media is also a huge part of how people use the internet. Social signals help tie the whole picture together. It’s like a pillow link: It helps everything look nice and natural to Google.

[1:07:18] (site audit)

You have a new site—a new domain—in the financial niche and have been in business for a while. But you’ve never done SEO and need clarity on how to move forward. It’s a very small site that doesn’t target any particular SERP for keyword research. Your main focus at this point in time should be content. Learn keyword research and build a topical map under the finance umbrella. You need to speak the language that Google speaks, which is a robotic language. Building authority takes time. Being in the financial niche, it’s better to start creating content consistently sooner rather than later.

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