Live SEO Support 4/28/21 – 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:

[30:20] Do niche edits work? When do they not work?

Niche edits always work. They are contextual links on a preexisting post that should be relevant and placed on real websites. They are some of the most natural links you can get. But make sure you’re implementing link diversity and not only using niche edits.

[39:54] Hey guys, what types of links should be used to close the link gap to also achieve backlink diversity? I know niche edits and guest posts, but what other types of links would have the right DR?

If you’re already using pillow links like social profiles, web 2.0s, citations, directory links, blog/forum comments, then you can just focus on niche edits and guest posts. It’s best to build a healthy mix of pillow links, niche edits, and guest posts each month, trying to incorporate backlinks in different positions from different types of websites. This is the essence of link diversity. 

Don’t worry about the DR. It can be all over the place. And Google doesn’t track these proprietary scores like DR/DA. Closing the link gap is really about effectively utilizing relevant authority links like niche edits and guest posts every now and then to boost your assets. You’re also trying to get your link profile caught up to that of your competitors.

[45:34] I’ve seen a test that shows domain authority doesn’t exist and only page authority does. If so, what is the value of guest posts?

We don’t think this is true at all and feel that it goes against everything we know that has worked. A target site can really get boosted in the rankings immediately after being linked to from a very authoritative domain. A lot of the value a guest post transfers is through the trust and authority of the domain it’s positioned on.

Also, we like to focus on increasing the domain authority of our assets by building a lot of homepage links with natural anchors, and solid inner-linking which trickles down to the inner pages (which we link to much less).

[1:00:37] What are your thoughts on Google’s new December update and Google products algorithm?

Basically, it’s not good for affiliate marketers. Perhaps a bit scary. Some of the sites that were harmed tended to overuse keywords with “best”, which was included in a lot of articles on these sites. Google doesn’t think these types of product articles are natural anymore. You can protect yourself by including more informational content that is designed to inform the user instead of just linking out to affiliate sites.

[1:10:35] I have a 6 month old local leadgen site. All the location pages are ranking (10-30) for their suburb+service KW, but the homepage and main money KW is not ranking in the top 100 for city+service KW. Instead, the main city+service KW is ranking around 120 with an inner ‘services’ page, not at all relevant to the main KW. I messed up by not having much content at all on the homepage for the first 5 months. I added solid content 2 or 3 weeks ago, and built internal links from the well-ranking suburb pages to the homepage. It’s still not in the top 100 for the main KW. My options are to build some real authority links to the homepage now, or build a new location-page for the main KW, the same as I have with all the other suburbs, and start building links to it.

Which way should I go? I’m leaning towards authority links to the homepage.

You have a fresh site coming out of the sandbox phase. You should build out the authority to the homepage with more links. You can keep adding pillow links, but you should spend the majority of your budget on niche edits and guest posts. Work in geographically-relevant anchors. Try to optimize your homepage more for your location. Keep focusing on building authority to the homepage.

[1:25:16] Do any AUTOMATIC link building programs work?

Yes, these programs do auto generate backlinks that can boost your website’s rankings in the short term. We’ve seen some sites that dominate their SERPs with auto generated links. The problem is, if you use them, you’ll probably get penalized at some point. It’s not a natural or sustainable strategy.

[1:30:14] What are the BEST links to build that actually grow rankings?

There is no single type of link that will always deliver the best results by themselves. It’s going to take a good foundation with a diversified link profile that uses the various kinds of backlinks as tools. But all else equal, a PBN link is probably the most powerful link you can get that will pass the most juice because it’s a contextual homepage link.

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