Live SEO Support 3/24/21 – 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:

[31:32] What excites you about the future of SEO?

We’re very excited about using and developing the networks we have in place for delivering backlinks. And we expect to gain momentum in the SERPs for a few assets we have in the pipeline.

The future of SEO looks bright and we’re looking forward to continual growth in our business and assets. Moreover, any SEO starting out now has got a competitive edge and will be able to capitalize on their current white/black hat knowledge in the future.

It’s also exciting to see how SEO will play a more important role in the future as the internet and digital marketing becomes more pervasive. We will be at the forefront of this trend.

[41:42] What is keyword clustering and how do you do it?

Keyword clustering is when Google groups keywords together based on topical content. It’s about seeing which terms overlap each other in the SERPs. This means there are similar keywords that can rank on a single SERP as well as other related SERPs. A web page can also rank for multiple keywords.

You want to create content for a broad parent topic and implement related keywords throughout the web page. You can do this by looking at what keywords are ranking for a given SERP and getting ideas from each result. Using a tool like Surfer SEO allows you to use their content editor to discover what type of similar content is being repeated in pages that are ranking for a target keyword. This will let you add relevance to an article that will help you rank.

Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer is also a great tool for discovering what other relevant search terms a target keyword may rank for. It also tells you what it thinks the parent topic is for related keywords so you can get an idea of of which clusters exist.

[57:30] Hey guys, I’m starting an e-commerce project. I’ve noticed that the top ranking sites have no content on the homepages that rank. How are the sites ranking and how are they doing their on-page SEO? They just have images of their categories and products on their homepage that are ranking for keywords.

It sounds like the top ranking sites aren’t trying to rank their homepage for anything. Instead, they are probably used as hub pages to power up more important product category pages that will rank for specific terms. E-commerce sites will typically have product pages because user search intent is about looking for something to purchase.

To get a competitive edge, you should always try to include more content than your competitors. This can mean providing descriptive summaries for each product category. It’s great that you’re already doing competitor analysis. You should do what the top competitors are doing, but better. So if they don’t have any homepage content, then you should add some great homepage content on your site. This is where you can include broad summaries about your products. But how much content on a homepage in order to rank depends on the direct competitors. You may only need to do a little on-page. But as previously mentioned, we would add more content to the homepage no matter what.

[1:06:23] What WordPress SEO plugin do you recommend?

We get this question almost every week and we love it! The answer is: it really doesn’t matter. You can choose one that looks the coolest. We recommend Yoast because it’s free, effective, and we’ve always used it. If you need more paid options, you can take a look at Rank Math.

[1:07:10] What are the top affiliate networks that generate the most revenue for you?

Nik: I’m really happy with AvantLink. It was hard to get accepted into the network at first, but it offers a great commission structure that’s based on what your partners want to offer you (e.g. 8-15% per sale). They also give you an amazing suite of WordPress tools for marketing your products.

On the other hand, Amazon has a very low barrier to entry, which makes it a great place to start for beginner affiliates. Also, one of the best features of the Amazon affiliate network is that you benefit when users visit Amazon.com through your affiliate site and purchase other products that interest them.

[1:14:34] I have a 50 page website (all pages are covering the same topic), and I’m planning on getting 5 guest posts per month. How long will it take me to get out of the sandbox?

Honestly, we don’t really believe in the “sandbox” and would advise you not to worry too much about it. You should focus on the essentials like smart link building (starting with pillow links) in the beginning. Use natural anchor texts and send the links to your homepage. Keep adding the 5 guest posts per month.

Also, we hope that your content is reasonably diversified and the 50 pages aren’t all covering the exact same thing. You’re not going to progress and “leave the sandbox” if you don’t diversify and implement proper on-page.

[1:21:05] Nick, will you be writing a beginner’s tutorial to building a safe PBN?

Please check out our PBN Checklist.

[1:23:32] Hey guys. I started working with a client, and after analyzing his website in Ahrefs, I noticed that he has 3,700 backlinks, but 3,600 of them are from his website builder domain. Will that negatively affect our SEO strategy?

This sounds like it could be a footer link. It also doesn’t seem like the overall backlink profile is well-diversified, which is not a good thing. Of course, this can be overcome by adding more diverse links from different domains to gradually improve the link profile.

On the other hand, it sounds like the 3,600 links are coming from just 1 referring domain (the website builder) and the remaining 100 backlinks could be diversified. So that would be only 1 domain is sending you a bunch of weak backlinks. This isn’t that bad, and you probably don’t need to worry too much. However, it also depends on the anchor texts of those 3,600 links (let’s assume they are footer links). The footer is kind of an unnatural position to have that many money anchors, for example.

Still, having just 1 referring domain send you a bunch of backlinks isn’t that bad and shouldn’t harm your overall SEO strategy. The number of referring domains is more important than the number of backlinks.

[1:28:20] What are your thoughts on press releases? Are these good links to acquire?

Nik: I like press releases a lot and use them as pillow links (but not TOO much). They are great for diversification in the beginning.

[1:31:46] Any tips on activating a new website that is set up on an expired domain, but not getting enough keywords/rankings?

Keep doing what any normal site should do, which is to keep putting up content and getting diverse backlinks. A lot of people use expired domains for PBNs. Regardless of its purpose, make the site look natural with authority outbound links, good on-page optimization, flow of content etc.

Adding backlinks will make the site look healthy and reduce the time it needs to build trust with Google. Still, it takes time for expired domains to activate and pick up keywords to rank. It’s going to depend on how long you’ve already been waiting. It also depends on how “abused” the site was in the past by its previous owner.

[1:35:51] Is it bad to repeat the same anchor text for all the internal links in an article?

It’s not something you want to get in the habit of doing. Although some scenarios make it reasonable to repeat the same anchor for a broad topic, it’s still a low-quality signal that’s easy to improve on simply by adding more to the text and diversifying.

You should be using related keywords and search terms that people actually type in Google search engine that best represent your target assets/products. Use your internal linking as an opportunity to diversify what those inner pages are about.

[1:41:03] Do you guys have a backlinks masterclass or course?

No, we aren’t really interested in that because we would rather give away all our informational content for free. Ultimately, we are making money through our informational content when people read it and decide to buy our backlinks through the website. But the closest thing to a masterclass/course would be our Facebook Group.

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