Newbie Question(s) so dumb, you're afraid to even ask!

[ToffeeLa]

I been googling all morning an noticed that Wordpress have something called /separator. Looks qute neat if added at the end of the article to "mark" the start of the FAQ. Any thoughts about that?

Yes, it's a horizontal rule ( <hr> ). You can also style it with css to make it fit in with your design.

 

[L900]

I'm thinking of changing hosting as I would like faster loading times for a better user experience.

Not sure whether I want to just change from shared hosting to different shared hosting. Or instead go from shared hosting to dedicated hosting. Is the cost of dedicated hosting worth it?

I’ve also read about the importance of having your website hosted on a server as close to your customers as possible. From a search ranking perspective, how important is this when choosing a host?

If you change hosts, how likely is this to negatively impact search rankings?

Any guidance or recommendations would be much appreciated.

 

[Biggy]

My ranking dropped for quite a lot and its not going up. What would you do?

1. Wait and hope for best? Keep adding articles?

2. Work more on acquiring new backlinks.

Lost traffic -40% -50%!

 

[Potatoe]

@L900 Have you considered something in the middle between shared and dedicated? Cloudways is good if you want to spin up a Digital Ocean / Linode server that ought to put you above the average shared hosting without the cost of dedicated. It's also really easy to scale up as you grow. HMU if you need a hand. As long as the migration goes smoothly, it shouldn't negatively impact search rankings. It could have a short-lived impact (it's not impossible), but if anything it should help if you're getting a faster/better server without a bunch of janky sites on the same IP.

@Biggy Keep posting and use this as a chance to make sure all of your fundamentals are in order. Here's a good starting point for things to check (Kitchen Sink Method). Do as many as you can reasonably pull off. You could scale back your posting a bit to make time for this if you need to, but a lot of sites have been hit pretty hard so you can either subscribe to the idea that organic traffic is over and do something different with your life entirely, or just keep pushin' post so that you don't have a lull in growth if organic traffic isn't over. It's not a bad time to explore some other traffic options, too, especially ones that could also benefit your SEO. (But it depends why your rankings dropped, I guess. If your site is getting rightfully de-ranked cos it's bad or spammy or something, I probably wouldn't keep putting resources into it. If it's a solid site and you're just caught up in the same shit that's getting a ton of people, I'd keep plowing ahead. That's what I'm doing, anyways.)

 

[Zoro]

My ranking dropped for quite a lot and its not going up. What would you do?

1. Wait and hope for best? Keep adding articles?

2. Work more on acquiring new backlinks.

Lost traffic -40% -50%!

Same thing happened to me today, lost 90% of my trafic from 1 day to the next.
Something is strange, went from 50 visitors a day down to 8 and 900 impressions down to 80.

 

[Ryuzaki]

If I have several links in the FAQ section that link back to itself like this (not jump links and not links to other articles), will that cause any negative consequences for SEO, rankings, flow of link juice, etc?

I don't think it will hurt you, but I don't imagine it's going to benefit you either. I probably wouldn't do it based on user experience, though you could argue getting them to refresh and look at more ads or whatever might be worthwhile, but at this point in time, I'd say it's not good for the user, so I wouldn't do it.

Back in the day we used to try all kinds of things like this with no real benefit showing. I remember one test where we linked the H1 header / Title of a post right back to itself over the entire site, to kind of create PageRank link wheels, except there's just one node, hoping to short circuit the algo calculations. It didn't do anything harmful or beneficial.

 

[JOoa0ky]

For a FRESH domain, isn't it "suspicious" to be building links to it too early?

Do you guys have rules like no links for the first 3 months or something like that or y'all just go nuclear and pump 1000 links to it on day one...?

 

[Ryuzaki]

For a FRESH domain, isn't it "suspicious" to be building links to it too early?

Do you guys have rules like no links for the first 3 months or something like that or y'all just go nuclear and pump 1000 links to it on day one...?

No, it's not suspicious, in my opinion. Also, you're talking about to binary opposites at the extremes, when there's a huge area all in between the two where the correct path most likely lies.

Instead of building zero links or building 1000 in one day, you should start out by building the kind of links most sites would be expected to build. I'd consider these to be links like:

• Social Media Profiles & Posts (all sites)
• NAP Citations on Local Directories (local businesses)
• Blog Comments (blogger personality sites)
• Forum Links (in posts, avoid signatures)

Who starts a branded site and doesn't immediately create the social media profiles and start sharing content? Personal sites of real people immediately start commenting on their other online buddies' sites. Lots of people still communicate on forums where you can create a profile and share with friends (even Reddit is a giant forum, so count that).

There's a lot of spider food you can be slinging out there. You could even do a press release if you wanted to get silly, which would especially work for a local business, which should be building out NAP (name / address / phone number) citations immediately.

I don't think any of this is fishy. What you could argue could be fishy is a ton of editorial, in-content links flying out on day one. But if you aren't doing mass PBN posting, you won't be able to do this at any scale where it would be harmful anyways. If you're doing it in a way that's not spammy and automated, it'll be slow and steady regardless.

hallo, i have a case when some article was posted with same topics but different tittle. in this case, what should i do? since one of the ''original'' posted is down in ranking on search.

You've already identified the problem. This is called Keyword Cannibalization. You're competing against yourself in the Google SERPs and while you'd think Google would just choose the better of the two articles, they seem to actively hurt both of them to some degree instead.

Your first weapon against this is to not cover the same topic directly more than once. You can of course mention it in other posts but you shouldn't be optimizing for the same topic/keywords more than once. One article per main topic.

Now that the damage is done, you should choose which of the two articles you prefer and combine the articles without duplicating any points (don't add fluff). Create one post that's better, using the content of the two posts. Do that in the post you intend to keep. Then the one you'll be getting rid of should be 301 redirected to the post you intend to keep. That's all you need to do. Now you're back to one post for that topic.

 

[Sutra]

No, it's not suspicious, in my opinion. Also, you're talking about to binary opposites at the extremes, when there's a huge area all in between the two where the correct path most likely lies.

Instead of building zero links or building 1000 in one day, you should start out by building the kind of links most sites would be expected to build. I'd consider these to be links like:

• Social Media Profiles & Posts (all sites)
• NAP Citations on Local Directories (local businesses)
• Blog Comments (blogger personality sites)
• Forum Links (in posts, avoid signatures)

Who starts a branded site and doesn't immediately create the social media profiles and start sharing content? Personal sites of real people immediately start commenting on their other online buddies' sites. Lots of people still communicate on forums where you can create a profile and share with friends (even Reddit is a giant forum, so count that).

There's a lot of spider food you can be slinging out there. You could even do a press release if you wanted to get silly, which would especially work for a local business, which should be building out NAP (name / address / phone number) citations immediately.

I don't think any of this is fishy. What you could argue could be fishy is a ton of editorial, in-content links flying out on day one. But if you aren't doing mass PBN posting, you won't be able to do this at any scale where it would be harmful anyways. If you're doing it in a way that's not spammy and automated, it'll be slow and steady regardless.


You've already identified the problem. This is called Keyword Cannibalization. You're competing against yourself in the Google SERPs and while you'd think Google would just choose the better of the two articles, they seem to actively hurt both of them to some degree instead.

Your first weapon against this is to not cover the same topic directly more than once. You can of course mention it in other posts but you shouldn't be optimizing for the same topic/keywords more than once. One article per main topic.

Now that the damage is done, you should choose which of the two articles you prefer and combine the articles without duplicating any points (don't add fluff). Create one post that's better, using the content of the two posts. Do that in the post you intend to keep. Then the one you'll be getting rid of should be 301 redirected to the post you intend to keep. That's all you need to do. Now you're back to one post for that topic.

Say post ’A’ is the post that is going to get combined into post ‘B’, to fix keyword cannibalization. What do you recommend doing about all of the internal links pointing to post ‘A’? Since post A will be 301d to post B all those internal links will get directed over to post to B. However, would it be better to manually edit those internal links so they go straight to post to B, that way it doesn’t go through the 301 first?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Say post ’A’ is the post that is going to get combined into post ‘B’, to fix keyword cannibalization. What do you recommend doing about all of the internal links pointing to post ‘A’? Since post A will be 301d to post B all those internal links will get directed over to post to B. However, would it be better to manually edit those internal links so they go straight to post to B, that way it doesn’t go through the 301 first?

I think it's good "hygiene" to go back and point the internal links to the new destination. While I simultaneously believe it's a drop of water in the ocean of Google's crawling resources, I feel like relieving them of that technical debt is probably favorable to your site. I'm saying that while I'm also emphasizing that I think it's a very minuscule benefit. I'm the kind of person that does go fix them and save Google the extra hop during crawling. I'm a glutton for diminishing returns punishment.

 

[MWWWconquest]

• Forum Links (in posts, avoid signatures)

I've never heard anyone say avoid signatures when posting forum "backlinks." Is this just because profiles are unlikely to be crawled and thus seen by google? Or is there another reason I'm missing?

 

[MrPotatoKing]

I've went through the aged/expired domains thread - I understand everything except one thing:

- Is it more beneficial to restore an aged domain through Archivarix OR can I just use WordPress?

I'm seeing people recommend one over the other but I don't really know why.

Personally, I think that using WordPress is fine as long as you're rebuilding the URLs that historically have links pointing to them, but is that wrong and there is some added benefit of using the other method?

Thanks

 

[Ryuzaki]

I've never heard anyone say avoid signatures when posting forum "backlinks." Is this just because profiles are unlikely to be crawled and thus seen by google? Or is there another reason I'm missing?

If you're posting a handful of times and not returning it's fine. The problem is when you have 500 posts or whatever, and you use the "wrong" anchor text, it can screw you over pretty good. It's not something I've tested in the recent years, mind you. I'm pretty sure I've seen Google reference signature links as spam, too, at some point. Maybe they ignore it these days.

Profiles aren't uncrawled, I don't think. But they're definitely ignored and usually nofollow anyways. I'm talking about signature throughout all the threads you participate in. That adds up pretty quickly with the same anchor text. Anything other than a non-optimized brand name could be problematic for you, and that's if we ignore that the links themselves may be considered spam as it is.

 

[ItsYoBuddy]

I have a dumb question. I think I found a very good domain being auctioned. It looks like the previous owner built it as a passion project and had his image/name attached to it, no fake bio. The quality of backlinks is a good amount and looks like it got a good amount of traffic a few years ago. When I look into the archive the site says along the lines of "Reproduction is strictly prohibited". If I'm lucky enough to obtain this domain, I assume it's okay to reproduce the existing content and have my own writers re-write it? The only thing that will take time to do is reproduce the images. Every single image is a picture they took and I'll have to recreate those images.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Yo guys about backlinks, where should you build backlinks? Your homepage or separate money posts?? (If you got a tight budget? and in a somewhat competitive niche?)

Also, why do agencies and many SEOs say first you get foundational links and they offer services for this, then they say profile links, then they say niche relevant web 2.0s, then do "authority stack", social signals, web 2.0s with pbns and "repeat that?

Yet people here say to do HARO, Guestpost, and Outreach?

And 1 more question, what does "RD" mean?

Also, is it better to write more articles for money pages rather than build backlinks or build backlinks and have fewer articles supporting them? I don't get this part.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Yo guys about backlinks, where should you build backlinks? Your homepage or separate money posts?? (If you got a tight budget? and in a somewhat competitive niche?)

Send links to the pages you want to rank, especially if your budget is tight and the competition is high. Otherwise you won't rank, won't make money, and won't increase your budget to do the rest of the linking you need.

Also, why do agencies and many SEOs say first you get foundational links and they offer services for this, then they say profile links, then they say niche relevant web 2.0s, then do "authority stack", social signals, web 2.0s with pbns and "repeat that?

They tell you that you need what they're selling because they're selling it.

Profile links are no-follow and Google ignores them entirely anyways. Look up Xrumer (from a decade ago) and you'll understand why Google ignores profiles. Xrumer would let you create a million profiles in a day even. They had ways to register profiles on every forum platform and other types of CMS's automatically. Mass spam.

Web 2.0's are trash, hard to index, are on new subdomains with zero link authority. Social signals aren't "links". Authority Stacking was cool when it first came out, but the meaning is starting to change and become "tiered link building" rebranded. The original authority stacking is a very interesting concept though. Sending PBN links to web 2.0's is a giant waste of time.

Yet people here say to do HARO, Guestpost, and Outreach?

Because contextual links (links within the actual content) are the needle movers, period. Everything else barely contributes anything, if anything at all.

And 1 more question, what does "RD" mean?

It means "referring domains" and is usually combined with a number like "300 RD's" meaning 300 referring domains point at least one backlink from at least one page to the domain in question.

Also, is it better to write more articles for money pages rather than build backlinks or build backlinks and have fewer articles supporting them? I don't get this part.

This "either / or" thinking will hinder your progress so badly. A majority of your questions are usually "this or that". "Which is better?" which does a huge disservice to you because you're simplifying very complex things with dozens of variables down to a binary choice, meaning there's now only 2 variables and you have to choose one or the other. The answer is both.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Send links to the pages you want to rank, especially if your budget is tight and the competition is high. Otherwise you won't rank, won't make money, and won't increase your budget to do the rest of the linking you need.


They tell you that you need what they're selling because they're selling it.

Profile links are no-follow and Google ignores them entirely anyways. Look up Xrumer (from a decade ago) and you'll understand why Google ignores profiles. Xrumer would let you create a million profiles in a day even. They had ways to register profiles on every forum platform and other types of CMS's automatically. Mass spam.

Web 2.0's are trash, hard to index, are on new subdomains with zero link authority. Social signals aren't "links". Authority Stacking was cool when it first came out, but the meaning is starting to change and become "tiered link building" rebranded. The original authority stacking is a very interesting concept though. Sending PBN links to web 2.0's is a giant waste of time.


Because contextual links (links within the actual content) are the needle movers, period. Everything else barely contributes anything, if anything at all.


It means "referring domains" and is usually combined with a number like "300 RD's" meaning 300 referring domains point at least one backlink from at least one page to the domain in question.


This "either / or" thinking will hinder your progress so badly. A majority of your questions are usually "this or that". "Which is better?" which does a huge disservice to you because you're simplifying very complex things with dozens of variables down to a binary choice, meaning there's now only 2 variables and you have to choose one or the other. The answer is both.

Okay and 1 more question. I heard gambling sites are really competitive and idk someone mentioned that "they take backlinks from anyone".

But then why do people recommend only getting relevant? If gambling is a way harder niche than mine, shouldn't I do their approach of getting general backlinks?

Also, do you think getting backlinks where they say sign up for this website they have a high DA dofollow link <- is this worth doing or nah?

 

[Potatoe]

Okay

You spelled "thanks so much for always taking time out of your day to answer all of my questions" wrong, common typo.

People like to get inspired by dudes who do tons of pullups or run long distances. But Ryuzaki continuing to answer all of your questions for over a year, thanklessly, is the truest demonstration of resilience I've ever witnessed. You didn't even click the like button, you absolutely ingrate.

Have you noticed that you get fewer and fewer replies to your questions as time passes? Hint hint.

The short answer to your question is no, you don't want to do the stuff you need to do in a super spammy niche where you're desperate for any links you can get if you're not in a super spammy niche where you're desperate for any links you can get. You can do better. Sites that don't want to link to casinos will link to you.

You said yourself, they scrape the bottom of the barrel. There are definitely things they do that you could observe and learn from, but the takeaway lesson from casino SEO isn't "pay $150 a pop for a bunch of trash links".

Also, do you think getting backlinks where they say sign up for this website they have a high DA dofollow link <- is this worth doing or nah?

This super depends.

What is a "backlink where they say sign up for this website they have a high DA dofollow link"? Who are they, who is saying this?

If they = a website telling you to sign up for their site in order to get a link and a DA boost? That sounds like some silly business to inflate empty metrics, fiverr-tier, hard pass.

If they = a third party, like an SEO blogger or something, who put together a list of sites that you can grab links on, then it shouldn't hurt anything, it could be worth your time to grab a few. As long as we're talking about real sites here, not sites that were created just to inflate your metrics. If we're talking about profile links and stuff, I think Ryuzaki already addressed that.

If one party is telling you to spend your time signing up for profile links, and another is telling you that it's a waste of time, you have to do a bit of thinking for yourself and crunch the numbers and make it apply to your own situation.

Luckily (for you), this is one of those things where it takes 30 seconds to just do the thing, a minute to ask about it, or 10 minutes for people to answer you about it.

 

[makoloko]

I added a footer link for my company page's LinkedIn (and other social profiles). Unfortunately, LinkedIn company page's require you to login to view. So when you click the link, and aren't logged into LinkedIn, you get redirected to the login page.

Is this this redirect bad for SEO? I've read that redirects are bad in general (fixed a bunch of those during my site cleanup). But it seems like this is a special case since LinkedIn is a major site.

 

[Golan]

I have a dumb question. I think I found a very good domain being auctioned. It looks like the previous owner built it as a passion project and had his image/name attached to it, no fake bio. The quality of backlinks is a good amount and looks like it got a good amount of traffic a few years ago. When I look into the archive the site says along the lines of "Reproduction is strictly prohibited". If I'm lucky enough to obtain this domain, I assume it's okay to reproduce the existing content and have my own writers re-write it? The only thing that will take time to do is reproduce the images. Every single image is a picture they took and I'll have to recreate those images.

You might re-write, or order new content, or scrape old content from other abandoned sites from archive.org, depends on your goals and budgets.

 

[matora97]

I couldn't find a good section to post this thread in, so I'm posting it here. Can someone share some online freelance sites or similar where I can get writing gigs? I am not a native speaker, but I believe I can still write decently, and am willing to take a smaller pay per-word.

 

[zak]

I couldn't find a good section to post this thread in, so I'm posting it here. Can someone share some online freelance sites or similar where I can get writing gigs? I am not a native speaker, but I believe I can still write decently, and am willing to take a smaller pay per-word.

Problogger
Upwork
Fiverr
FB Groups (There are plenty where people look for writers)

As a former freelance writer, though, here's my recommendation:

1. Pick a niche you know well.
2. Get involved with the community of that niche (FB, Forums, wherever).
3. Offer up your services as a niche enthusiast who wants to write.
4. Contact sites in that niche, making the same offer.

You're way more valuable as a writer if you stick to a single niche than if you try to be a generalist.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I added a footer link for my company page's LinkedIn (and other social profiles). Unfortunately, LinkedIn company page's require you to login to view. So when you click the link, and aren't logged into LinkedIn, you get redirected to the login page.

Is this this redirect bad for SEO? I've read that redirects are bad in general (fixed a bunch of those during my site cleanup). But it seems like this is a special case since LinkedIn is a major site.

This is a tough question. What I'd do is at least use the sameAs schema tell Google explicitly what URL you intend to be associated with your brand. They should be able to figure it out from the URL in the link, but they don't know if it'll resolve and also when they follow it it doesn't resolve, it gets redirected to some other page.

Is it bad for your rankings and all that? I don't really know. If it had a negative impact I would assume it's a negligible impact. LinkedIn really should change that "login wall" to only partial visibility or something.

I'm thinking that this should be horrible for LinkedIn's own SEO, which they undoubtedly care about, I'm sure. Perhaps they allow Googlebot to go through and view the page. That's something you could test. You should be able to change your browser's user agent to googlebot (by looking up how it's defined) or run a simple non-rendering test using something like this to see what content it can fetch.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Thanks.
Quick question: Can you branch out if you have an EMD?

I am planning on doing an EMD (I will make a case study on it.) and on my EMD I will have 3 keywords.

(Subject 1)First Keyword (Subject 2 Within Subject 1)Second Keyword (Subject 3 Within Subject 2)Third Keyword.

If I cover every article relating to subject 3, could I possibly branch out to subject 2 and/or 1? Assuming I will build up some authority on Subject 3?

Even though Subject 2 is a bigger subject encompassing subject 3 but subject 3 doesn't encompass subject 2.

 

[DanielS]

Thanks.
Quick question: Can you branch out if you have an EMD?

I am planning on doing an EMD (I will make a case study on it.) and on my EMD I will have 3 keywords.

(Subject 1)First Keyword (Subject 2 Within Subject 1)Second Keyword (Subject 3 Within Subject 2)Third Keyword.

If I cover every article relating to subject 3, could I possibly branch out to subject 2 and/or 1? Assuming I will build up some authority on Subject 3?

Even though Subject 2 is a bigger subject encompassing subject 3 but subject 3 doesn't encompass subject 2.

Hold on. Do you not already have 2 websites on the go?