Live SEO Support 7/27/22 – 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:

[09:39] I built out a rank-and-rent plumbing website for emergency plumbers in the area. There are no searches for “emergency plumber+location”, but 10 for “+near me”. Which keyword should I use to optimize my service page?

We don’t normally focus on “near me”. We’d rather focus on geographic area.

[13:26] I have a client that changed their name, thus changing their domain. 80% of their backlinks are now 301 redirects. Do 301 redirects pass the same amount of rank as a direct link?

It’s definitely going to cause some turbulence, but the point is you have a website that is indexed and resonating in the SERPs. Especially if the site is well-branded, that is the perfect way to do a 301. You can also create a page on your site that says you were formerly the old name, but have since changed. It’s also best to 301 everything page-to-page.

[19:37] What are some tips to rank my website? I don’t have a GMB (Google My Business), which I checked on Moz affects 25% of local rankings.

If you have a local site, there’s no excuse to not get a GMB. Build out some service pages, location pages, and a blog containing articles with topical relevance and inner linking. Basically, write and optimize content based on location relevance and keywords. Have some relevant backlinks such as citations, do local link-building, and focus on accumulating reviews.

[27:17] Do you think cloud-stacking will work individually or does it work only when we start building links to those properties?

We only do pillow linking when starting up a website. Do I go out of my way to find these specific links? No, I just treat them like any other links as far as pillowing goes. Is it enough to do anything on its own? From the perspective of a data scientist looking for little blips, maybe. But, from the perspective of someone who is actually trying to make money from the SERPs, no.

[31:46] What is the best free plugin to optimize a site for converting images to webP?

We’re not familiar, and we don’t even worry about this.

[33:46] There isn’t any harm if you want to test out 10 or so articles using AI + human hybrid, right? I’m a bit tight on budget at the moment.

That’s the best way to use AI in our opinion; but, the verdict is not out on because it’s an evolving situation. People say that AI was targeted in the May 2022 algorithm update; but, to be safe, the best course of action would be to write content yourself instead of relying purely on AI.

[40:07] For local SERPs, there are no local people ranking in the top 10, but there are some in the top 20; so, should I focus on what they are doing to rank as they are ranking just because of DA? They are all just singular location pages of big companies operating mainly in big cities.

It’s a challenge, but ways to increase your visibility would be to use an exact-match or partial-match domain. Especially in giant metros, you’re looking at it from the perspective of almost a national ranking in the sense that you’ll be facing a lot of competition. “Plumber” or “roofer” will have a lot of local competition, for example. If you see in the SERPs that those are the types of websites that are ranking, then those are the types of websites that you will have to mimic to rank similarly to them.

[44:33] What is the best content and backlink strategy for informational blogs? Is it best to publish one daily blog post of almost 1000 words and just market it on social media?

When it comes to backlink strategy, you essentially want to build relevant links from quality sites to your blog. Link to your homepage with natural anchors. After you start to gain some keywords and traffic, slowly add links to inner pages with a focus on your homepage. Use exact-match anchors now and again. Rely on guest posts and niche edits on articles that are relevant to your topic. Don’t forget to do pillow linking, which includes citations, directories, Web 2.0s, links to YouTube videos, and social profiles (including your own).

[54:34] There are local companies but they don’t have websites—only their citations are ranking (local SERPs question). The city is Brookings, Oregon.

A well-developed Yelp can carry more weight than your average citation. You’re going to have to research that particular SERP and find out what it wants.

[57:30] Have you created a hard niche website like health and fitness before? If so, what’s your advice?

Our top two pieces of advice for these super-competitive niches are 1) Expect to build a lot of authority (i.e. a lot of backlinks, etc.), and; 2) Expect to cover the topics fully, which means a lot of different articles about the subject covering all the questions people will have about it.

[1:07:40] How do I recover lost domains when I remove 301s from about 50 domains?

You can always reattach it. It’s not the end of the world. Now, will you get some turbulence? It depends on whether that 301 was connected to your site and the amount of trust it has. If I purchase a domain with the intention of it being a 301, then everything is based on the foundation of the website in the form of its backlinks or referring domains, and deciding whether they are a good fit for the project. You can play with a bunch of variables to hasten this process, such as building out permalinks, 301ing things properly, etc.

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