Live SEO Support 2/10/21 – 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:

[19:55] If I ‘301 redirect’ three domains with relevant ‘high DA dofollow’ backlinks to my money site, how much time do I have until I get penalized?

It really depends on how natural the redirects appear in relation to the size and quality of the money site (or any redirecting site that’s receiving the 301 domains). 301 redirects aren’t really known for causing penalties, but you obviously don’t want to mess around with sneaky redirects and shady cloaking techniques like that.

But let’s say you have a small domain, with around 20 links and 5 inner pages, and you suddenly redirect a few high DA domains with a ton of backlinks to this new website. You’re probably going to get penalized relatively quickly because it doesn’t seem natural for a low DA site to receive a huge influx of backlinks in this way.

However, let’s say you have a big money site with a ton of content and 1000+ RD that’s been growing for 6 months to a year, and you decide to redirect three smaller domains to it. You’re probably going to get away with the redirects with no problem.

There are various factors, but it helps to think of a redirect like a merger of two companies. Big successful companies will naturally absorb smaller ones, not the other way around. It doesn’t seem natural for a smaller domain to take over a bunch of high DA sites in short succession.

So given a hypothetical example of having a new money site with less than 100 RD and you want to redirect three 301 domains to it (each with over 500 RD), how would you approach this transfer?

It would be a good idea to prioritize the 301 with the most indexed pages and hold off on the other two 301’s until after you monitor the first redirect and make sure it’s showing some positive trust signals in the SERPs. Then you can consider staggering the other redirects.

Basically, when dealing with a small money site, spreading the 301’s out over time will make the transfer look more natural.

[26:05] True or false? An ‘aged link’ is a ranking factor.

Nick: 

Good question. It could help if you’re considering redirecting old link juice (like from a 301 domain).

Personally, I’ve noticed that there’s kind of a “delayed fuse” when trying to revive backlinks on dead pages that were 404’ing for 6 months to 2 years. They didn’t appear to deliver results or resonate in the SERPs right off the bat.

But I tend to notice positive results in a few days or less, in terms of passing link juice, for a normal aged backlink that’s been on a functional page for awhile.

Chris: 

No, I don’t think a backlink or linking page’s age matters that much by itself as a ranking factor. I feel that a linking page’s history and accumulation of backlinks (link profile) over time is a strong ranking factor.

It’s more about how a linking page has developed over its existence rather than it’s age per se. However, the age of links by themselves should be considered in terms of how it shapes the footprint of your link profile through diversification.

Take guest posts and niche edits for example. Guest posts are brand new and niche edits have old URLs. So ask yourself if your link building focuses more on acquiring new URLs from guest posts or aged links from niche edits (or both)?

Nick: 

I recall a situation when a bunch of links were dropped from an asset after only one month and how that negatively affected the asset. Still, an aged link could have an increased Trust Flow situation happening with it.

I would need to test this theory out because I’m not too sure about what kind of positive impact on ranking the age of a link really has. Honestly, it’s not something I think about at all. Maybe speed is more of a factor than ranking. And trust and authority matters a lot more than age.

[31:05] What’s your opinion of ‘Ubersuggest’ as a keyword research tool?

We’ve never used Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest before, but we really respect Neil and think he’s done a great job creating a clean and well-designed tool that has a free option for beginners.

Personally, we prefer simpler plugins like Keywords Everywhere and MozBar that provide us with the essential data and workflow directly on the SERP.

We feel that Ubersuggest displays a lot of information that we don’t really need like proprietary rating systems etc. However, Ubersuggest’s search volume feature is pretty neat and useful for emerging trends/changing niches. The keyword ideas is another good feature as well.

MozBar has a pretty good feature for quickly gauging the ‘difficulty’ of individual SERP results. Keywords Everywhere gives search volume data and related keywords directly in the search results too, which we really like. In terms of the proprietary ratings given by multiple platforms, such as DA/DR in Ahrefs, we really care about the # of RD the most and wouldn’t pay too much attention to Ubersuggest’s “SEO Difficulty” rating, for example.

But Ubersuggest seems like a solid tool to try out, so go ahead and use it if it looks cool to you. Just make sure you’re implementing other tools/concepts and not trusting one platform too much.

[42:53] I’ve got a page in the pharmaceutical space that’s bouncing around between ranks #2 and #4. The volume is very low (180), but the CPC is $30. The #1 position is always a site that’s dedicated to the keyword niche.

Should I (A), Hit it with an NLP rewrite (it’s not NLP optimized) (B), Hit it with backlinks (C), Hit it with CTR manipulation or (D), Hit it with EAT (expertise, authority, trust)?

Nick:

EAT stands out to me and should be the priority. Your niche, pharmaceutical, requires a lot of expertise, authority, and trust. I would beef up author profiles (e.g. social media profiles) to enhance authority and focus on high-quality backlinks (DR 50+) that are relevant to the niche, have healthy rankings, and already carry a lot of trust in the niche.

Chris:

In terms of EAT, if your site is already ranking on page 1 (positions 2 to 4) then you probably aren’t having difficulty with the expertise and trust factors. You should focus on building authority. 

Look at the RD (referring domains) counts of the other ranking sites in your SERP (domain and inner page level), and look at the distribution of DR ratings for each competitor’s link profile.

As far as NLP is concerned, I wouldn’t put much weight on that technique if your site’s content is already optimized. Maybe use a tool like Surfer SEO to optimize the content a bit better (although this is not guaranteed to improve results).

[52:21] Should I come up with a concept and create a press release before buying some backlinks?

Yes, you can certainly “set the stage” with a press release before buying backlinks. It’s even recommended in some legitimate situations where sites will be acquiring a bunch of new backlinks. 

You can even do a press release to “camouflage” your link building (such as when dealing with PBN links), but it’s really not necessary to “cloak” your backlink activity if you’re building high authority links.

Generally speaking, press releases are very effective tools for announcing news that will naturally attract more backlinks. Just don’t overuse them.

[1:04:32] How do you define/determine the value of backlinks such as guest posts and niche edits?

We look at the Holy Trinity factors of relevance, authority, and power when gauging the quality/value of a backlink. Our article on what makes a quality backlink is very helpful for this question and will explain many of the important factors that determine the value of a backlink.

It’s also a good thing if the URL and domain have traffic and rankings.

[1:13:50] Rank Math vs Yoast?

Honestly, your choice of plugin doesn’t really matter so use whichever looks cooler to you. Both will probably do exactly what you need them to do. We trust Yoast because that’s all we’ve ever used.

[1:18:42] What are some reasons why someone would outsource PBN links?

Nick:

From experience, building PBNs can be a risky pain in the ass. And if a PBN gets de-indexed, it’s basically gone and you have to write that asset off as a loss (or auction it at a loss).

It’s just easier and much less riskier to buy them 1-off in the beginning or rent them on a staggered basis. Building and managing PBNs is very technical, time consuming, and you have to know what you’re doing to be safe (especially when the network gets bigger).

A big, diversified PBN farm can afford to lose a few assets every now and then. But do you really want to see 50% of your PBN network get wiped out overnight because a money site got flagged?

You can read our PBN Building article for more information.

[1:28:18] What is your approach to building PBNs in 2021? If you get an auction domain, should you try to rebuild it within the old site’s niche, or make it relevant to the target site?

Nick:

If I’m buying domains for my own private PBN network that’s designed to target my own money site/asset, then I want the domains to be as relevant as possible. I’ll buy aged domains that are specific to the target site’s niche.

PBNs for our rental network are generalized more with multiple categories.

Chris:

A private PBN network for a single site should be niche-relevant. But if you’re using a PBN for multiple sites, like we do with our agency, then perhaps keep it more generalized. You’ll be able to get more usefulness out of a PBN if you keep it general.

[1:33:19] Is there a reason to prioritize PBN links over other authority links in a hypothetical scenario?

You shouldn’t ever prioritize a PBN link over high authority links, like guest posts or niche edits, if the strategy is to diversify and make your link profile look natural.

If you’re dealing with a ultra high competition, spammy niche where PBN links are deployed frequently, you’ll want to add PBN links to your profile as well.

You shouldn’t be using PBN links too much (not nearly as much as other authority links). PBN links can be a good “last resort tool” or “secret weapon” at the later stages of a link building campaign for really delivering a lot of power to a site (if used correctly). This is because contextual homepage links are some of the best you can get.

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The rest of the livestream touches on why Google might de-index a page after you update the page title and request indexing, and some suggestions for boosting a local niche site to the #1 spot after being stuck on #2 and #3 for a year.

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