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:
Watch This Week’s Full Live Stream:
Live Stream Summary:
[08:22] (real estate on-page site audit)
Not much traffic gained over the past year or so—stagnating around 300 traffic, which is not the best thing in the world, but not the worst thing in the world for a real estate site. But there are 1050+ pages indexed for this little amount of traffic, which is not the best sign. If you’re relying on AI-generated content, you aren’t setting yourself apart and, in fact, may experience duplicate content issues. Also, consider how your competitors structure their URLs and mimic what you see. Your URLs are unseparated, each about a dozen words long. The biggest secret of SEO is that all the answers are there for you. All you have to do is Google your keyword and look at how the top-ranking people are doing it.
[24:07] I am starting an SEO agency. What are some ways to get your first few clients? What are your top 3 pieces of advice to new SEO agency owners?
Know how to do SEO before you start an agency. Look for proof of concept. Once you know how to rank a website, you’re going to understand how to sell that. Be willing to work for free until you see results. Approach others and offer value first via free 5-minute video audits. Don’t ask them for an audit. Just do the audit yourself. Send 20 of those a day.
[32:28] Do you guys have any thoughts on Google Analytics GA4 versus Universal Analytics? When I look at GA4, my organic traffic is quite a bit less than with Universal Analytics.
A lot of people end up wasting a ton of time preparing for and worrying about all of Google’s updates when they should be focusing on the fundamentals. Google Analytics is only helpful if you have a lot of SEO clients. I’d recommend following Kayle Larkin. She’s a big analytics person who we’d love to have on the podcast someday.
[39:09] (site audit) I sent an email about my site last week. Why do some locations with fewer backlinks rank way better than others with more backlinks? I started working on SEO in Feb. I have each location as a silo. I would love your opinion on the current structure.
The site is performing pretty well. Despite volatility, the graph is trending upwards. 250 pages with 1000-2000 traffic and DR 30. As to your question about why some locations with more backlinks rank better than others with fewer backlinks rank better than some with more backlinks, this generally comes down to two things: competition in those locations and a lack of topical authority for those locations. For areas with more competition, what will help you rank are higher-quality backlinks and articles (i.e., blogs) on niche-specific information about that area. With regard to siloing each location, the primary issue here is crawlability, in which you want Google crawlers all over your site, not just within certain parts of it. But the common footer the site has may address this. Ultimately, since you only just started doing SEO, it will take time to see real results. Note that Google is going through a period of volatility right now, so keep that in mind when working on your site.
[58:41] What kinds of projects are you guys working on personally?
Our main focus is on scaling SirLinksalot. We also do some affiliate and ad projects. Nothing out of the ordinary.
[1:01:27] Should we try to get the same backlinks as our competitors?
In general, do what your competitors are doing. But like everything in SEO, it depends. If they use low-quality backlinks and they’re beating you now, they may not be able to beat you in the long term. Look instead at their good links via Ahrefs. Use the filters “dofollow,” “Backlink type: In content,” “Dr: From 5” (up to 20), “Domain traffic: 250,” and “Exclude subdomains.” From there, emulate not their exact backlinks but how they got such backlinks, and look for comparable high-quality links that are relevant to your particular site.
[1:07:50] I just signed up for your MLB (done-for-you Managed Link Building service). Can you tell me what’s the ideal budget to get results in 2-3 months?
This is not something we advise on because it’s not something we can answer for you. In SEO, backlinks are hugely important, but they’re roughly half the equation. The other half of the equation is your website—keyword research, on-page SEO, content, etc. Also, 2-3 months is too short a timeframe to expect notable results. If you’re focusing only on backlinks, look at your competitors and see how many referring domains they have and catch up to that. They’ve most likely accumulated those domains over time, so don’t try to set a budget to catch up to that number in just 2-3 months. It will look unnatural if nothing else. SEO is a long-term game.
[1:15:09] How do you find and select a good niche?
Look at a website like Flippa.com, which is a marketplace where you can buy and sell websites. You can see exactly how much money a website is making and how much authority and content they need to keep making that money. They’re great proofs of concept. Other than that, poke around on Ahrefs and find low-competition stuff to start ranking for. Obviously, you need to choose a niche that you’re actually interested in, or else you’ll gradually lose your drive to continue creating content for the site you chose, no matter how much money it had been making when you bought it.
