Live SEO Support 9/8/21 – 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:

[6:15] How do you define aggressive and short term link building (I know you’re putting some related content together)?

We tend to separate link building strategies into two categories: natural, diverse link profiles with longevity & aggressive, risky short-term link building. Sometimes beginner SEOs are tempted to try either strategy but aren’t sure whether it’s a good idea. Lots of newcomers to SEO tend to favor aggressive link building because they desire results as quickly as possible. Often, this can be their downfall.

And “aggressive, short-term link building” is exactly what it sounds like. It’s hastily done link building that only focuses on short-term results. Sure, it can be done with success by knowledgeable and experienced SEOs, but that does not mean the risk is entirely eliminated. It’s not a strategy we would recommend to anyone just starting out as an SEO.

Aggressive can be defined in any number of ways. Typically it involves someone exhausting their budget very early without seeing positive results to justify the costs. Or it can involve someone unknowingly utilizing too many “black-hat” techniques without much regard to best practices and getting an algo slap. Aggressive link building is usually a scheme that tries to “game the system” as much as possible, and as quickly as possible, before Google eventually catches on to the manipulation and penalizes the site. Whenever you look at the organic search traffic or referring domains acquisition rate of a successful website and notice extreme spikes in growth for either in a short period of time, that website is likely deploying aggressive, short-term tactics to generate traffic. Often, spammy links / anchors, cheap PBN links, and cheap content are involved. What happens is the website works for a while before it blows up in your face.

On the other hand, “natural, diverse link building that lasts”, is the least risky and most stable kind of link building effort. It’s the strategy we preach the most and one that always works for us and our clients. It’s supposed to be a slow and carefully deliberated process of gradual, natural growth. Choosing the right links for the right applications. Focusing on quality over quantity. Constantly publishing great content etc. This is a winning mindset that will teach the beginner SEO how to be patient and intelligent in their decision making.

[38:56] It appears like Google deactivates or devalues the link juice for cheap PBNs. But I’ve seen low competition e-commerce sites counteract this penalty by simply building new, cheap PBN links and maintaining ranking. What are your thoughts?

First of all, cheap doesn’t necessarily mean bad. Moreover, some people see the value of PBN links as reflected by the quality of the website they are on. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not the sole requirement for effectively utilizing a PBN link. Our private PBNs that are used for specialized projects have barebones websites without any design influence. They are solely used to direct power to the target sites, as long as the PBNs are indexed and have some level of Trust with Google. So PBN links can look cheap but still be useful for a campaign. What’s more important is the PBNs footprint, if you didn’t personally build it yourself, which takes considerable work to explore and fully understand. You want your PBN network to be as unique as possible without overlapping too much with competitive sites.

Sometimes after a PBN has been established with a big link profile and has gained Trust with Google, the addition of cheaper spam links is relatively tolerated. Still, one should always understand the risk involved with using cheap PBN links.

[50:19] What are your thoughts on using programs like MR running to tiered links (T1 – T2 etc)?

I wish we knew what “MR” is referring to. Assuming it’s some kind of bot program, we prefer more manual efforts over automated ones.

Related Posts