Live SEO Support 6/8/22 – 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:

[08:02] Is there a consensus on the May 2022 algorithm update yet?

No. Algorithm updates used to target only one thing at a time, whereas now it’s so difficult to track what the exact changes are. No one can agree on exactly what’s going on with this new update.

But it’s a great reminder to do things as naturally as possible whenever a new algo update comes out to insulate yourself long-term from these assets that you’re putting money into.

Diversify what you’re doing with your backlinks profile, the anchors you’re using, etc. to run into fewer issues as things evolve.

[15:00] Do pillow links and niche edits build authority for brand new domains?

Any link will essentially build your authority. Pillow links packs and diversity links packs are perfect for new sites. Guest posts and citation links are also great options.

[17:37] Is it still safe to buy PBN links after the Google update?

Again, there is no real consensus on what the algorithm update has done.

But we use PBN links on almost every website we work on. We’ve actually seen a slow, steady climb after the algorithm update using PBN links sparingly.

[21:20] Does Google automatically assume that a site is an affiliate website if pages have a lot of outbound links to e-commerce websites? Why are these so hard to index?

Google knows when you send traffic to affiliate links via tracking numbers, etc.

Now, is that going to adversely affect you? Not necessarily.

If your website seems to be one large traffic hub channeling to one location, it may have a much harder time in the SERPs than the ones which diversify where they link to.

Anyway, everything is harder to index nowadays.

[26:04] I have a five-month-old site with 50 articles that grew steadily in terms of impressions and clicks, and suddenly dropped to a minimal amount. What can be the reason for that and should I be worried?

There can be a lot of reasons for that. It depends on the individual site, of course. But it could just be from the algorithm update.

[27:58] Have you seen patterns with sites that have dropped from the December 2020 update (and recent updates)? Are there any link- or content-based issues?

From the sites that we’ve looked at as well as what we’re seeing from people in the community, there is no consensus on what’s happening with the algorithm update.

[30:20] With your personal sites, how is your informational-to-commercial content ratio?

50:50 is a good rule of thumb.

[33:45] What’s up with Ahrefs’ new pricing?

This may have something to do with Ahrefs’ plan to move into search, which might fail considering the number of bugs the software has.

Ahrefs increased the pricing on their plans, but now you only get 500 reports per month on all their plans (unless you pay more).

Basically, anything you click is a report. So, if you’re doing an in-depth analysis of a website using Ahrefs, you might be using up to 100 if you’re going really deep.

You can take advantage of the annual plan to get two months free. If it ends up being too much of a problem, we plan on moving to Semrush.

[40:10] I’m interested to hear what you think about using a cross-domain canonical to hide links from your backlink profile. I think it would be a natural way to hide links from Ahrefs without having to block bots.

It’s not something we do. It automatically sounds unnatural for an average website to do, and there’s no real advantage in trying to hide your links.

[41:58] Can I buy a brand new domain and build some authority after four months? Can I then use it as a PBN?

I wouldn’t do that. I’d buy a domain that already has backlinks built in and use that as a PBN instead because you’re going to get those backlinks much cheaper rather than having to build it yourself.

[48:02] What do you think of tools like RankerX and MoneyRobot for tier 2 links?

For automation, take a conservative approach to avoid spamming out your tier 1 links.

Google is crawling this entire network and they can read out multiple tiers and see manipulation.

If you’re doing a good job on building out your tier 1 link profile, spamming that link profile can target your site as a spammy site in the eyes of Google.

[54:25] Ecommerce website audit

Keywords and traffic are definitely spiking right now, but we need to build out more natural anchors on the homepage.

After a few months of solid growth, we can continue building links on inner pages.

Keep it natural, and don’t get aggressive with inner-page links and exact match anchors too soon.

The site also looks outdated: heavy text and stock images are everywhere. That doesn’t exactly scream “trust”.

Showcase the products by using actual images of the products. This is not SEO, but CRO advice: Update the look and feel of your website to get the sales along with the rankings. Look at other websites in your niche for pointers.

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