Live SEO Support 5/19/21 – 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:

[21:49] Hey guys, can you explain your method of doing link gap analysis? Would a stronger domain require less links to rank, and if yes, how does that affect the analysis?

Even though there may be more advanced and in-depth methods of performing link gap analysis, we like to keep it very simple and general (because it works for us). What we basically do is pull up our competitors in Ahrefs, see how many referring domains they have, and then quickly analyze the quality of their backlink profile (smaller sites will be easier to check). You should apply this method to inner pages and the entire domain.

You want to see how relevant the backlinks are, what kind of backlinks the domain is receiving, and try to get a sense of how many authority links there are (this is when you can sort by the Domain Rating metric). For example, are most of the links between 0 and 10 DR, or do they have some 80+ links?

Basically, there are two simple questions you should try to answer: how many backlinks does the inner page/domain have and how good are they? Because there are several factors that determine ranking, it is possible to “close the link gap” with fewer links depending on how good the links are and whether you’re optimizing your site for a highly specific target. Generally it’s easier to rank with more links, but that’s not a strict rule.

[33:00] Do links on non-indexed sites pass juice?

You definitely want authority links like guest posts, niche edits, and PBN links to be indexed. Pillow links like citations, and other links you would use for natural diversity, don’t really need to be indexed. 

Remember that indexed sites are simply assets that Google has decided to show users in the search engine. Just because a site isn’t indexed doesn’t mean Google is unaware of its existence.

Also, backlinks aren’t all about passing juice. Backlinks add value in other ways because link building should be about trying to create a bigger picture of your website that makes sense for your target market.

[45:41] How far can good on-page optimization get you in rankings without links, or is it the case that backlinks are always required to rank at a minimum?

Backlinks are not always required to rank. However, they are typically necessary when trying to outrank other competitive sites. Hypothetically, you could build a website or blog with enough quality content and solid on-page to eventually rank without receiving a single backlink. Also, whether you expect it or not, your website may start to naturally accumulate backlinks on its own (which is usually a good thing). Regardless, we aren’t interested in building websites without the intention or expectation of gaining backlinks.

[52:17] It’s been awhile since I’ve been in the SEO game. I’m just wondering where would be the best place to start learning it again?

Welcome home! You’ve come to the right place. We recommend that you join The SEO Roundtable, our Facebook group, and explore our blog.

We also have a post about popular SEO Facebook Groups that you can consider joining as well. You can learn a lot about the field in these groups because they’re managed by some of the top SEOs in the industry.

[1:02:32] How do you approach H1 heading tags and what are the best practices for using them? The reason why I’m asking is because I recently read an article in Search Engine Journal that said you can use as many H1 tags as you want, but NOT using them won’t hurt your rankings either. The article also said that Page Title can match H1 tags, and H1 tags aren’t as important as H2 tags. What are your thoughts?

Even though we don’t recommend reading big SEO publications like the SEJ, these points are basically true. This is what we do:

• One H1 tag.
• Many H2 tags.
• Some H3 tags if necessary.

Best practice is to use just the right amount of tags to concisely tell Google what your article is about.

[1:14:57] Which is better for a new blog? 1. A domain with a big history (dropped 4 times in the last 10 years) 2. A fresh domain with no history?

We prefer to build on domains with some history because at least you may get to start with an existing backlink profile. But it’s important to audit the site and make sure there’s nothing wrong with it. For example, why was the site dropped 4 times?

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