Live SEO Support 4/12/23 – 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:

[07:20] I have to build a website for a business providing 5+ different services, all B2B services. But I cannot really find a common keyword that is used for at least ⅔ services, so the keyword variations are different for each service. Would you start with multiple PMDs, targeting each service keyword (knowing that the traffic is significant) or focus only on building one branded domain that will provide all these services and also expand later? In the SERPs, there are many PMDs, but a branded domain is most of the time in the top 3 for services (while for blog posts, they are in the top 1 for a lot of high-traffic keywords) because of higher DR. In the SERPs, there are many PMDs, but a branded domain is most of the time in the top 3 for services (while for blog posts, they are in the top 1 for a lot of high-traffic keywords) because of higher DR, many high-quality backlinks, better topical authority, EEAT, etc.

If it’s just one business, I’d just go with one branded site and put all of your services up on that site. Once you’re ranking with that one website, you can start thinking about putting up little PMD sites for each specific service and try to rank those to have more real estate on the SERPs.

[14:23] I’ve put all my EEAT requirements in the About Us page (picture, bio, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube links, contact email, address). Is this fine, or would you put some of this stuff on the homepage?

I would not put any of this on your homepage, but on their own pages, or at least on the footer. As for LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube, you can put those links in the About Us page. You can add a Meet the Team section which branches out to individual author pages. If you use WordPress, an author page gets treated like a category page, so an author is tagged in every post that they write, providing a link back to the author page, which contains a blurb and links to their social media.

[23:33] Can it be a big red flag for Google if you get multiple high-authority backlinks (e.g. Business Insider) after you just got started (first few months)? In my opinion, it is very unnatural, but in some very rare cases, it can be a natural thing: when a big corporation launches its website in a new country or a new brand for another industry. But from what I’ve seen, in these rare cases, they also have a lot of unlinked mentions, social signals, and no-follow links. Moreover, a lot of those unlinked mentions are before launching.

You can get those backlinks and be fine. Google can’t say you can’t hit the ground running and have awesome press from the get-go. Note that, a lot of the time, a company has been around for a while, even before its website goes live. Viral press also isn’t a regular thing, but typically a sudden burst of backlinks for about a month before leveling off.

[29:55] What is the best indexer you would recommend?

We don’t have a recommended indexer. We haven’t been trying to force-index anything for a while. It comes down to internal linking and quality content on your site. We also don’t recommend trying to index pillow links, citations, profile links, etc. In general, backlinks are a good way to get things to index. Tiered link-building through social media and barrage niche edits is a good option.

[35:14] I rebranded. Instead of doing a redirect from an old site to the new one, I just contacted all of the websites that gave me a backlink and had them change it. I’m currently stuck on page 5. The old site was on page 2.

If you look at it from the perspective that an algorithm snipes manipulative or unnatural behavior, then this is a risky move. It’s more natural to 301 the old business to the new one and save that link juice. Google understands what a rebrand or takeover looks like. With your strategy, there is a complete disconnect. Google doesn’t know that you rebranded, and now all of a sudden, these existing links are all getting changed. That will look like link-building manipulation to Google. I’d 301 your website, which might help with your transition.

[40:05] I have a pretty effective process in place to get “foundation”/“pillow” links indexed, but most of them still don’t appear in 3rd party tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush. I understand that third-party data doesn’t matter to Google, but why do these types of links not show up? Is it due to the quality? I mean, these links are placed on very high-authority, trusted sites. Am I missing something?

Again, we don’t think there’s a real benefit in force-indexing something. If your backlinks are indexed, don’t worry about what Ahrefs or Semrush are showing or not showing. This isn’t a precursor to ranking. No one cares about your profile links or citations. Just because they’re not indexed doesn’t mean Google doesn’t know it’s there. It just means they don’t think they’re valuable for searchers.

[46:55] If I wish to publish 150 articles (where ⅓ are info articles for topical authority, ⅔ affiliate best of and vs comparisons) in a short amount of time, what articles should I publish first to show trust?

You can post the informational stuff first to show that you have a site that’s not just for monetary purposes via affiliate content. Some people like to drop a bunch of content all at once, while others prefer the drip-feed method. But we believe that you can post a bunch of articles at once as fast as you want as long as the information is valuable and well-written. The same goes for AI. Don’t freak out if they’re not showing up in the SERPs right away. Patience is key.

[55:16] My site is standing between page 8 and page 9. I have used 10 guest posts, but things haven’t changed.

There are many factors that could go into this. But the moral of the story is: Just because you shoot links at your website doesn’t mean anything is going to change. That doesn’t translate to results. If you have search intent wrong, if you haven’t done proper keyword research, or your articles aren’t optimized, if you have no inner linking, if you have low topical authority, if you have a really new site, if you’re in a super-high-competition niche, if you had some really sketchy link-building done before your 10 GPs, or if you got knocked down by an algorithm update—these are among the many reasons you’re not ranking.

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