SEO can be a scary place. There is a lot of information to consume, and lots of that information is dangerous, or at the very least bad advice.

Question:

I have an age-old SEO question. How can I get links from real websites through guest posts? I have figured out that most of the site that has 'write for us' or 'submit guest post' pages are repurposed websites. They manipulated DA/DR of those websites. Now I was looking for guest post services and found Sirlinkalot but I won't able to afford $100 per guest post. If they can get links from real websites then there must be a way I can get them too. I know there are many SEO superstars are on this group especially Nicholas and Chris. Please help out a noob like me and I'm sure other noobs like me will get benefit from your knowledge too.

Answer:

This question might seem obvious but what’s the purpose of your website/business? Knowing that could really help to answer your question.

For example, if you are a window cleaner for corporations, you might be able to get them to write a story about how you help to keep their offices fresh and looking professional. If you’re an e-commerce business, you might be able to work something out with your suppliers so you can get a link from their websites. If you’re a graphic designer, you can probably get a link from the websites of tools you use to do your job.

Leverage those relationships you already have. Do you use software? Reach out to them. Do you have a lawyer? An accountant? A gardener? Suppliers? Neighbouring businesses? Friends? An office complex?

Also, try to craft some incredible content. Gather data, write some white papers, see if you can get some media attention. Use that content to reach out and promote it to businesses or media outlets that would be interested in covering topics related to your content. Try talking about prominent people in your industry or related industries in your content and let them know when it goes live, they’ll almost certainly share it to their audience. The more visibility you get, the higher the chances of generating natural backlinks.

There are hundreds of ways of getting back links outside of just guest posting. Although you can still build great links from guest posting too, obviously.

Question:

How to get images under 100kb without degrading quality so much?

I see competitors always have high-quality images on their website that follow the under 100kb rule... how do they do this?

My process is:

  1. Download adobe stock photo,
  2. Open in photoshop, make my adjustments,
  3. Save for web... try to get the best mix of low KB and high enough quality, but it always turns grainy because I have to go down to like ~25/100 quality and change to 1200px image size,
  4. save as jpg.... upload and wonder why the fuck my image looks like shit.

I've tried doing png in photoshop, saving and compressing in tinypng, but that ultimately is larger than the route i described above.

Answer:

Images don’t HAVE to be below 100kb, contrary to what generic audit tools will tell you. But if you can achieve that without impacting user experience, then go for it.

Don’t use PNGs unless you need a transparent background. You can use TinyPNG with JPEG files if you need to.

Ultimately, there’s always a trade off between quality and filesize. Make sure you use the same resolution image that matches the element size. If you’re using Mac, I’d highly recommend using ImageOptim.

Also, if you can and wherever possible, I’d recommend not using stock photos. You’ll reduce your visibility in image search results.

Finally, try using webp format, it’s more efficient.

Question:

I've been running a food blog for almost 1 year under a .co.uk domain. I also own the .com domain for it (same name), which redirects to the .co.uk blog. Most of my audience is based in USA and Canada, so I'm not sure if the .co.uk domain affects my blog authority or exposure at all?

Any idea if it's worth considering switching the domains around? And also would that affect my Google ratings and SEO?

Answer:

It can have a HUGE impact on your visibility in Google. Your domain is your unique home. Changing it can cause Issues for Google, even if you redirect. There’s a strict migration process you have to adhere to, and even then you could see visibility declines. At the very least make sure you:

  • keep an identical URL structure
  • 301 redirect every URL to the .com version individually, NOT just the domain
  • set up search console before the move and monitor the data
  • set up search console on the .com after the move
  • inside search console on the .co.uk profile, do a ‘change of address’ to the .com
  • ensure that every bit of content (body, headers, metas etc) is identical. People often think it’s a good idea to make visual/structural/content changes at the same time as a domain migration and it’s not, so avoid this until you know things have stabilised
  • get a trial of SEMrush or Ahrefs so you can extract and monitor all of the keywords that the domain ranks for, this way, when you do the move you can monitor the impact and react accordingly (make sure to track both the .co.uk rankings and the .com rankings)

Question:

Attaching multiple domains with good keywords in domain name for SEO will work?

Answer:

Nope. I’d elaborate but there’s nothing extra to add. Waste of time and money. Now, if you got those domains because they protect your brand from others trying to buy them then sure. But from an SEO perspective, they add no value whatsoever.

Question:

Hi, is there a way for me to crawl the links on my site's navigation to make sure they're pointing to the final URL?

This is for a fairly big e-commerce website and basically what I want to do is crawl all of the links on my site's navigation flyout menu to make sure that they are pointing to the final URL rather than pointing to a URL that re-directs to avoid the hop. Especially on mobile. A buddy of mine who is a dev detected that one of the links on the navigation menu was going through a re-direct hop and I just want to keep an eye out for these on the future. Any way to do this?

Answer:

Really easy with Screaming Frog. Crawl the site, and when finished click reports and then 'redirect chains'. You'll be given a spreadsheet with all internal links they pass through a redirect before getting to the final destination 👍

Question:

What Would be a Comfortable Range of Organic Traffic Fluctuation Month Over Month? 10-15% decline? More?

I know I would get rattled if it exceeded -15% personally, but is there an industry %? What is considered a comfortable change. I can go by what I think, but if there is a sturdier response I would really appreciate it!

Answer:

There are so many variables to give a reasonable answer. All of the below and more could impact your traffic:

  • ranking increases and decreases
  • seasonal trends
  • search volume increases or declines
  • publicity for your brand (again, up or down)
  • competitors doing more SEO
  • penalties or algorithmic issues
  • shorter months
  • extraordinary events (like COVID)

Question:

I was wondering what this would be used for as it's in the Robots.exe of a recruitment agency website that posts jobs. Should it be removed?

Disallow: /jobs/?
Disallow: /jobs/page/*/

Answer:

I'd guess that the jobs get pulled from a job board. If this is the case, then the content ( job description, title etc.) will just be a duplication of the content that can be found in many other locations. If a plugin is used, they sometimes automatically add a disallow into the robots.txt file as to not hurt the parent version of the job page by creating thousands of duplicate content issues.

I'd recommend creating some really high-quality hub pages based on job type, or location and pulling the relevant jobs into that page, instead of trying to index and rank the actual job pages.

Question:

So I know external linking is good, as I've seem to have read every article written on the subject from 2007 to 2016, but can't seem to find anything more recent, but does that mean you are better to at least one external link on every page?

And if so, would it suffice to link just to our social media profiles even if you are in an industry where social media brings in very little in the way of customer enquiries? I've actually linked to all our social profiles but made them nofollow.

However, that said, would it be better to leave them nofollow and link to Government white papers in my sector for example?

Answer:

You should steer clear of creating yourself a rule to say that you need to link out at least once to an external source on every page of your website. On some of your pages, multiple outbound links to great resources can be fine. On other pages, it might not make sense to link out.

If an outbound link adds value to your website visitors, then it's a good thing to do. If it doesn't, don't do it. It really shouldn't be any more complicated than that.

Linking to (or not linking to) your social media profiles will have absolutely zero impact on your SEO, but could be useful for your audience.

I'm not sure what industry you are in but a government white paper should be a superb resource to link to if you think it adds value.