SEO Q&A Week #4

It’s another questions and answers episode this week. The guys dive into some reader questions on all things SEO. And funnily enough they’ve all been submitted by famous US and Australian politicians for some reason…

Hey, Check These Guys Out

The SEO Show is brought to you by Local Digital – need more customers? That’s where Local Digital comes in.

Stuff You Need To Know

The SEO Show is released once a week so subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts and if you’re feeling extra kind we’d love it if you leave us a review.

Learn more about us at https://theseoshow.co
Check out our YouTube content at http://theseoshow.tv

TRANSCRIPT

Local Digital  0:04
It’s time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization, so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now, here’s your host, Michael and Arthur. Hello,

Michael  0:24
and welcome. Welcome to the FBI say, trying to do something new with my intro then I can’t even make it through the word without failing. Well, look, the loyal listeners have written in and just said, Look, maybe with the intros you could be better because they’re pretty garbage generally speaking, so sorry, guys. I have to try next week with that. But um, look, this week this episode is all about our loyal listeners. Because it is a another episode of q&a week. q&a week. Number four. Pretty cool.

Arthur  0:58
Um, before already, yeah, how time flies?

Michael  1:01
Yeah. Well, I don’t even know how long we’ve been doing this for what

Arthur  1:05
feels like forever. No, it’s been a year. I think we might be coming up to the mark. Yeah, well, we should probably check.

Michael  1:13
Yeah, we’ll do some sort of off the set. He was gonna sing birthday and jump out a thing. Happy Birthday and jump out of a cake for the video portion of the show.

Arthur  1:22
I’ll do that. Like you were saying, Get a cake big enough to fit me.

Michael  1:24
Yeah. A pretty big cake wouldn’t be a shame. All right, moving on. Let’s talk SEO. I’ve talked Q and A’s. Get some good questions this week.

Arthur  1:36
We do. I forgot to copy the names across.

Michael  1:40
Oh, geez. You can make names up for agent doesn’t matter. We don’t need to name this if this time around. If you submitted this question. We don’t have a name. But we do have the name. We just don’t have it on the list. Now let’s hear but you’ll know when you hear the question that it was your question. So thank you.

Arthur  1:54
Anonymous if they listened to the podcast that is but yeah, you’d hope they are.

Michael  1:58
Yeah. If they submitted questions, they should be waiting eagerly for the events of

Arthur  2:02
cool. So the first question is, is internal linking? I saw his internal link spamming a thing.

Michael  2:10
And that was submitted by someone. Barack Obama, I think okay, so

Arthur  2:14
all the way from the White House? Oh, anyway, ignore me. His internal link spamming a thing? I don’t think so.

Michael  2:24
No, no, I don’t think so. What depends on what we classing in terms of when expanding talks

Arthur  2:30
about this off air a little bit. So, for example, if you were to add large number of internal links to your footer, probably not a great idea. Likewise, if you just internal linking from random pages on your website, to another random page without any sort of strategy, a bad idea. Even that’s not that much of a bad idea, because not a bad idea, but it’s probably not gonna get you like, if you don’t know what you’re doing your purpose behind it, you’re not going to see results.

Michael  2:59
What about like, over optimise anchor text internally is fine. Yeah, we think it’s fine. Like I know, there’s articles around that say, Oh, you shouldn’t do it. You can get penalised. But we haven’t actually seen that happen from owl. adventures with internal linking? No. So is internal link spamming a thing? Not really not the way most people would internal link on their website. I

Arthur  3:20
think if you’re going to be internally linking, if you’re doing like an internal linking audit, make sure you have all your high value pages in your head on any sort of pages, I guess top level pages in your footer, don’t even have to. But ideally, why not? And then if you’re going to be doing internal linking within your content, use a href. Have a look at which pages have the most referring domains pointing to them, and then map that out and start internally linking from those pages to deeper pages, wherever it makes sense. And then do the same for, you know, level two pages or three pages. Yep,

Michael  3:52
so on so forth. Yep. Just don’t put, let’s say 100 links in your footer for best locksmith, and then every suburb in the area you want to go after? Like, that’s sort of internal link spamming. That is a thing. It’s just don’t do it. Like, there’s no point in doing that. You know, you can you can have a page with those links in a same purpose. Moving on the next question, so I’m not happy with my SEO person. And I believe I might have been fleeced. So is anyone willing to take a look at my site and tell me if I’m wrong out of the team? That was submitted by John Howard. Thanks for your question was not Joe

Arthur  4:29
Biden. And Sean? Hmm, what’s fleeced?

Michael  4:36
I haven’t heard that term. means like to have money taken. Yeah, so yeah, pretty much okay. Cool. Fleece. It’s like you’ve been you’ve been brought it up, Rob. They’ve been robbed me blind.

Arthur  4:49
This there’s no context behind that. But

Michael  4:51
I know that’s an internal joke we have probably means nothing to you guys. But anyway, it’s the same thing. This person feels that they’ve been robbed or fleeced by an FCA person. You hear it a lot? There is a way like we, we can’t really take a look at that and tell you if you’re wrong.

Arthur  5:08
We wrote the ciders, we probably

Michael  5:12
for. John, if you wanted to send that in again, with the site, we can take a look. But you as a website owner can definitely go and look at a few things to try and figure this out. So um, how do you keep an SEO person honest? Well, first and foremost, what’s their reporting last than what they’ve been doing every month? Yeah, start, they should report, they should tell you what they’ve been doing. They should be updating you on how the site’s going. And they should be giving you a chance to talk to them and understand what’s going on with your campaign. So if they’re not doing that to begin with, then they probably isolating you. If they are doing that, then ask, you know, yeah, what have you done this month? Exactly.

Arthur  5:54
Have a look at your website and see if they’ve made any changes to it, I guess on face value? Yes, you need to know what to look out. Obviously, the I guess the first things that crossed my mind would be Metadata page titles, have they added content to the pages? Are they doing link building? So even if you use a free version of H refs, or any other tool Search Console, have a look at those any new internal links or non internal links, sorry, referring domains pointing to your website? And you’ll be able to have an idea whether or not they are actually building links.

Michael  6:24
Yeah. So you in hrs, when you look at the referring domains, you can see how many you got like the last seven days, 30 days, 90 days, something like that. So just run, run that search and put those filters on just save, there are the good links coming in, you listened to our previous episodes on this topic, and you’ll be able to learn what a good link is. Are these coming in? Or are you getting nothing? Or just random scraper? Junk links? Every website gets in there. There’s no SEO? Yeah, it’s coming in. Look at the pages on Yeah, the site like the homepage, internal pages, category pages are like nothing. I would also have a look at like a page has been created your pages, you know, new copy? Are they sending you a copy to review in the month before it goes up on the site? If they’re not then you know, what are they doing?

Arthur  7:19
Just ask Have a conversation with them? Probably the best starting point?

Michael  7:24
Yeah, well, if they’re fleecing you, they’re like, yeah, yeah. Oh, good. Like,

Arthur  7:28
yeah, but just get them to give you a list of like I said, a list of things that they’ve worked on in the past month, and then just check and see if they’ve actually done those things.

Michael  7:37
I would say a couple of other things that are a bit outside of just looking at tactics, and all that is, what are they charging, like, if you’re paying 500 bucks a month of 600 bucks a month, you’re being fleeced. Because SEO is expensive and takes time. That’s, that’s true. Yeah, you just kind of avoid that. So if you pay him five 600 bucks a month, you’re getting nothing for it. Likewise, if you are in certain types of businesses, and doing SEO, sorry, let me get back if you’re in a certain type of business, you shouldn’t be doing SEO. Like let’s say you are a little local neighbourhood travel agent, and you want to rank for like flights to Bali or something like that. And some SEO person has sold you SEO, you are never going to rank for that. No, you shouldn’t be doing SEO. So if someone is taking your money in that circumstance, you’re being fleeced. So I would say they’re the main things that you can look at, from your side to try and suss out. If you’re being fleeced, you could ask, Hey, am I being fleeced? And see if they’ll be honest? Yeah. The other thing I guess you could do is maybe reach out to other agencies or consultants and get them to have a look. Now, I would put a caveat on that, that they’re going to probably come in and say, oh, there’s all sorts of stuff wrong, because they want to try and win your business. Absolutely. You know, you might if you get a few different opinions pick up on a common theme of things that are wrong. So then that will help you know, then you can take that to the person you’re working with and see what they have to say.

Arthur  9:08
Just be prepared that they’re going to hit you up after that. So

Michael  9:11
yeah, you will be salty. Yes. All right. Well, I hope that helped you, Johnny Howard. Let’s move on to Joe Biden’s questions. He’s been spending some time in Ahrefs.

Arthur  9:22
Housing, apparently. And so Joe Biden has asked Ahrefs traffic improvements not showing up on Google Analytics. Well, the reason for that is Ahrefs traffic is estimated traffic. So what it does is it looks at where you’re ranking. So all your keywords, the position and then based on the click through rate for that position, they estimate traffic depending on where you are. So it’s never going to match up with Google Analytics. That’s why

Michael  9:50
Yeah, so we always say I trust traffic is like a barometer. Mm hmm. Like it should show trends. Generally, yeah. Might if things are going up It picks up if things are going down. It picks that up.

Arthur  10:02
And yeah, it’s a good tool to use when you’re comparing domains if you’re comparing sites so you can get a good idea which sites getting more traffic, but it’s never going to be accurate traffic data.

Michael  10:09
Hmm. And it’s also on a bit of a lag as well. Definitely a keyword rankings can sometimes take a month. Yeah, yeah. To up dunga sometimes. So, yeah. So you need analytics for your site? I guess it’s, it is annoying, if I address is saying you’ve got tonnes of traffic and analytics of you don’t. That shouldn’t really be the case.

Arthur  10:31
Have a look at where you’re looking which location you’re looking at? Because if it’s looking at worldwide traffic isn’t looking at a specific region. Yeah. So if you’re in Australia, make sure you always Australia, and that should be more accurate than Yes. The default setting. Yep. Because you could have keywords ranking in New Zealand or anywhere really?

Michael  10:50
Yeah. But if they ranking, you should be expect that traffic’s coming from there. Not that you should care. Depends what you do as a business as well. Maybe you want international traffic as well. But yeah, the general gist is address is a guide to what’s going on analytics is going to give you the more obviously accurate data. Alright, the next question has come in from Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is asking a lot of us politicians Jenny into the FBI. Shall we do it with a thought?

Arthur  11:23
I know it’s crazy. life after politics is here. Yes.

Michael  11:26
I’ve moved into it. is lazy loading. Good for SEO?

Arthur  11:32
Yeah, definitely. Yep.

Michael  11:36
Yeah, pretty much. So for those that don’t know what lazy loading is, it is where images on your page will load as you sort of get to them. So

Arthur  11:45
it’s loading all the important stuff elements first, before it gets to the images or whatever you don’t need straightaway. Yeah, that improves page load speeds and better user experience.

Michael  11:54
Yep. So your site will sort of appear to be fully loaded much quicker. And then as you scroll down, if they load all these images that are down here now. But pages already loaded quicker. You sent that signal back to Google that your site’s fast. That is a good thing for SEO. So as long as it’s implemented correctly, so Hillary, hopefully you’re having good luck with lazy loading on your websites.

Arthur  12:18
Good luck in 2024. If you choose to run, yes.

Michael  12:23
Moving on, we’ve got another question here. My website was hacked. How do I clean it up? And how do I prevent it? That was from Bill. I’m reading Barnaby here. Bottom, he didn’t have HTTPS on his site. He didn’t update his WordPress plugin, and someone’s gone in and hacked it. And he wants to know how I can stop it.

Arthur  12:49
So let’s ask let’s start with how can you prevent this? Yep. So if you’re depending what CMS you’re using, make sure that all your plugins and WordPress is up to date. That’s probably one of the main reasons sites get hacked plugins to go out of date people exploited vulnerabilities hard to say. And that’s how they inject malware and you know, all the nasty stuff that you can find on a website. Yep. So the first step would be Yeah, making sure that all your plugins are up to date. It’s always good to have some sort of like malware software or security software installed. Yep. If there’s any any issues of any, if there are any known plugins that have vulnerabilities, they’ll let you know.

Michael  13:32
For example, that security wordfence the two main ones hadn’t your like admin username and password. Like don’t use the username admin? Yeah. Oh, password my business. 22 summation? I used to be very common. Yeah. So you should make your admin username like KV at Asterix.

Arthur  13:54
Yeah, use use a bunch of uppercase lowercase characters numbers. Give just just Yeah, make it unhackable basically.

Michael  14:04
Because why? Because the other way people hack on abilities. But yeah, they’ll use scripts that just try combinations and they’ll always start with the stuff that’s commonly used. And then like, variations on that like password 123 Yeah, all of that sort of stuff. Like if you’re doing that you deserve to be hacked, basically. So Barnaby, I don’t know what your password was. But um, yeah, make sure your admin username password tough to impossible for someone to guess really?

Arthur  14:34
How should you go about cleaning it up?

Michael  14:36
Just thinking if there’s anything else we can say on the Preventing side of things? Well, I would say as well secure servers backups of your site cups, like you should be on a host that backs up daily. So if you’re hacked today, you can roll back and not be totally stuffed. Yeah, basically,

Arthur  14:50
happened recently. And it’s using again, I know we’re not sponsored by constar. But having the ability to restore with one click is a godsend. Time, so Yep, definitely make sure you’re doing regular backups.

Michael  15:05
So when it comes to cleaning it up. Now this depends on so many things.

Arthur  15:09
I think getting a developer. Yeah, probably probably be the smart idea.

Michael  15:14
Yeah. Someone else don’t you try and figure it out.

Arthur  15:17
They’ll know where to look donor. How to clean it up.

Michael  15:20
Yeah. When I’m like, if you’re on WordPress, there’s services like fixed dotnet. If I x a dotnet, where you can just go on there and say, Oh, my site’s been hacked. And I don’t know what’s going on. Can you please fix it? Pay them a one time fee, give them access? And they go clean it up? And then tell you what happened? Yeah. Sometimes can stir if you with kids, too. They can help to a certain extent as well. Their support?

Arthur  15:41
Yeah, they’ve got some sort of guarantees around hacking. Yeah, I think they do. They’re guaranteed to clean it up for

Michael  15:46
you. Yeah, yeah.

Arthur  15:48
But I think I think it’s much better to have those backups ready, because it’s a lot easier to restore a site than it is to have to clean it off. Because yeah,

Michael  15:58
you could be waiting a couple of days while your site’s down. Yes. So if you’ve got ads running, let’s say, you’ve got Facebook ads running and Google ads running, you have to pause them, which then interrupts all the like machine learning on those platforms. And it’s not good to have your sites go down. So Barnaby, I hope that helps you out. Get all those things lined up and sort of done properly and your website won’t be hacked again?

Arthur  16:23
Want to be joined.com?

Michael  16:26
I don’t know if that’s cool.

Arthur  16:28
We have a question here from this is the last question actually.

Michael  16:33
I’m ready to go.

Arthur  16:34
I’m trying to think of I can’t think of any other politicians Pauline Hanson.

Michael  16:38
Back. She, buddy mad she doesn’t like it. No. So tentative got more traffic.

Arthur  16:45
Can you tell why competitors getting more traffic than me? So there’s a bit more to this one? Hi, can you tell me from a report why a competitor is getting way more traffic than me. They have much lower back link and lower 30 score could be paid PPC traffic, sorry, PPC or something. Mine is 1.5k. While his is 35k. So there’s a lot to digest in that question.

Michael  17:09
Paulina hill over the plate, hard to read, but I couldn’t be paid third way up. Let’s get back to this. So it depends.

Arthur  17:16
Well, first and foremost, how do you know that getting that much traffic? That would be a traffic estimate. So now looking at a traffic, let’s say assuming Yeah, and let’s assume they are looking at h refs?

Michael  17:25
Yeah. So it won’t be PPC or paid traffic, we can get rid of that part of her question. And so it’s saying that she has one and a half 1000 visitors? And they’ve got 35,000 visitors? Yep. But they’ve got like way less links and Lower School for those 35,000 visits. Allegedly, that’s going on.

Arthur  17:47
So without knowing the site’s you’d have to have a look and have a look. First and foremost, how big are the sites. So you know, if you’re comparing your 20 page website with a 2000 page website, you’re always going to have less traffic, you’ve got a lot less pages ranking,

Michael  18:04
less less nets in the sea to catch fish. Exactly. Analogy review.

Arthur  18:08
So first thing I’ll do is have a look and see what pages are ranking, how many pages are ranking and what keywords they’re ranking for.

Michael  18:16
So the first let, you could go to Google and type in site, colon, and then the name of the website, your URL. Yeah, hit enter. And it will say how many pages are in Google’s index for site eight, and then do it for site beam. Then go to H refs, and have a look at the top pages report and see how many pages on their site are getting traffic, you know, they might have way more articles, blog articles, or they could be getting like, is the traffic even good that they’re getting? Like, are they just getting junk traffic to a blog? That doesn’t mean anything like remember that example of that one client in the past that ranked for sport? The sports Australian sports? Yeah.

Arthur  18:53
Top 10 Australian sports? So by participation or something? Yeah, so is a sporting apparel company that did a blog posts about the top sports in Australia got 10s of 1000s of organic sessions per month, zero conversions. Yeah.

Michael  19:07
And that page ranked, and then after Google algorithm update, it didn’t rank anymore. dropped. Yeah, traffic projections drop in revenue stay the same. Yeah. So what do you care about? Yeah. The other thing is, like you say that the competitor has less links in you. They might not because not every link is even picked up by address, like some websites will actively block Ahrefs from crawling, being able to say, yeah, they exist. So maybe this competitor is out there doing heaps of private blog network link building to boost their domain and their authority and like so much better than yours for you know,

Arthur  19:48
how long has that domain been around? If you’re starting from scratch, if you’ve been around for six months, and then went around for six years? Yep. That will play a part in

Michael  19:55
user experience on the site like is yours just trash? It’s really, really bad. Mobile, you know, like, and that they’re really good. That’s gonna play a part.

Arthur  20:04
There’s a lot to it.

Michael  20:06
Mm hmm. So I think they’re pretty good points to start with. Right? Like, yeah, like we’re basically talking, you need to do an

Arthur  20:17
audit the site, but I think a good starting point was have a look at see how many pages they have, how many pages you have, if there’s a big gap between you, and then that’s the likely cause. Mm hmm.

Michael  20:28
We really missed a trick when we read this question out, right. We said it was from polio. And we should have said the question and then at the end said, Please explain. To thought of that, I look, I thought I’d jump that we could record a top shelf human right at the end there to leave everyone on a high the end of this episode. But that’s all we had for this week. So to the real people that write those questions. We’re sorry, but um, we hope you enjoyed the answers if you were listening. We’re sorry, we didn’t have your real names. But we won’t dwell on this any longer, because we got no more questions, no questions. We hope you enjoyed that. Keep sending them in, keep sending them in. We’ll be back with another episode. For our weekly episode of the SEO show, as stated in our contracts, we’re obligated to do it weekly, and we’re going to stick to it. We’ll see you next week. We’ll see you next week. Bye.