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

[Ryuzaki]

@Lowrider, you can transfer domain names to different registrars, but most of the time immediately after purchasing or transferring there will be a "lock" where you can't transfer for some period of time. I want to say about 3 months.

What you do need to know is that once you transfer it to your current domain provider, the renewal price will be at their higher price, so you aren't really doing yourself a favor there.

Another thing to realize is you can have your domain at any registrar and point it at any server. You do not have to register the domain with the same company you intend on hosting with. In fact, in all my years I've never done this. Godaddy domains can point to WPX servers. Namecheap domains can point to Knownhost servers. Etc, etc.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Hey guys on my site I have a few reviews of products that no longer exist. Should I delete them? (Yes near the end I recommend another product but it's pointless if it doesn't get any traffic though right?)

Or say I had a product that I taught people to use it/based an info article around it and it's now gone. Sure I can recommend a product but is it better to remove it for say SEO purposes?

 

[JanisG]

Hey guys on my site I have a few reviews of products that no longer exist. Should I delete them? (Yes near the end I recommend another product but it's pointless if it doesn't get any traffic though right?)

Or say I had a product that I taught people to use it/based an info article around it and it's now gone. Sure I can recommend a product but is it better to remove it for say SEO purposes?

If the product is discontinued, I will still keep the review published for topical authority and as a source of internal links. I often see these posts getting some traffic because people do not know the products are discontinued. You can even add sections like Is Product X discontinued and Where can I buy Product X now and 3 Best Product X alternatives.

 

[builderboy]

Anyone have a rule/guide for how long a site could have been down in archive.org to still consider buying a expired domain for the backlinks? Been looking at a few but every one I check seems to have had no live site for years.

Presumably the longer it has been then the less likely it is to get value out of the links when bringing a site back?

 

[JOoa0ky]

Wondering if anyone can shed some light upon this.

I have a couple of articles which seem to do this:

• When I search the KW for article A, it shows up but I also have article B directly below it with an indentation.
• When I search the KW for article B, only B shows up but there is no A.

Who? What? When? Why? How?

I have noticed that if I publish an article that gets the indentation below a ranking page, it usually ranks real fast. Less than a week.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Hey, I been having facing canonical issues for the LONGEST time. Would a lack of internal links cause this? This is a very important thing for me to focus on cause my articles with select keywords make the most of my money.

So I am trying to rank for a few keywords but some of my other articles rank. Anyway to fix this other than internal linking? I am most likely going to start interlinking to those pages and see if they start to rank. (Btw they are indexed, if it's low quality it won't even index from what I know and this is not low quality article.)

 

[DarkCarnage]

I want to sell digital products/downloadables that are popular in my niche. I have an audience and a WordPress site with content. I came up with three different ways to do this:

1. Etsy store
2. Shopify store on subdomain
3. Woocommerce.

I just want basic features and the ability to sell digital files. Basically, take the money and give them the digital file and maybe collect email as well. I don't have the time or budget to manage a full-fledged e-commerce store.

Can anyone recommend how to go about this?

 

[Million]

New to paid linkbuilding.

A relevant site has offered sponsored guest posts for X $ per post. They've stated that author links must be marked as rel=sponsored/nofollow, but any contextual/natural links in the body are blank/dofollow.

I assume this is a method for agencies/pros to sponsor posts and drop dofollows to their clients pages in the body text?

Am I correct in this, and if so, I also assume having a rel=sponsored tag on a link within the same article/page doesnt undermine the dofollows in any way?

Thanks

 

[Ryuzaki]

Anyone have a rule/guide for how long a site could have been down in archive.org to still consider buying a expired domain for the backlinks? Been looking at a few but every one I check seems to have had no live site for years.

My two rules are, first, if I'm looking to buy a domain for the backlinks, I want to make sure that the domain's original registration date never changed. It hasn't ever completely dropped, ever. It may have changed hands, but it never dropped. The second rule is that it remained in the index. I want at least the homepage to still be indexed (even if the site is down). The more indexed, the better, especially if its pages that have inbound links pointed at them. Google is pretty lenient in how long they'll keep something in the index, and the higher "quality" the longer it'll last. If it falls out of the index, it's ran its course and possibly is up for a juice wipe.

When I search the KW for article A, it shows up but I also have article B directly below it with an indentation. [...] When I search the KW for article B, only B shows up but there is no A.

It seems to me to dance a fine line between cannibalization and tangential-relevance. It's not something I'd try to target and exploit because the downside, I feel, is much larger than the upside, where the upside is what you've described and the downside is that you harm the performance of both articles.

Hey, I been having facing canonical issues for the LONGEST time. Would a lack of internal links cause this? This is a very important thing for me to focus on cause my articles with select keywords make the most of my money.

So I am trying to rank for a few keywords but some of my other articles rank. Anyway to fix this other than internal linking? I am most likely going to start interlinking to those pages and see if they start to rank. (Btw they are indexed, if it's low quality it won't even index from what I know and this is not low quality article.)

This doesn't sound like it has anything to do with rel="canonical" so much as it does with cannibalization. This happens when multiple articles are too optimized for the same set of keywords. Google can't decide which should rank, and more often than not, will choose to rank all of them way less well than they should rank. Interlinking can signal to Google which article is considered the most important by you on your site, but de-optimizing the others is usually what you need to do.

I just want basic features and the ability to sell digital files.

Sounds like you're saying all you need is payment processing, not web design and all that. WooCommerce sucks in my opinion and offers more than you need. Shopify could work and offers payment processing for a cut. You could have decent branding and presentation there for minimal effort. Etsy will offer you payment processing without much effort otherwise. It won't be as impressive in terms of branding or "doing your own thing", though. But based on your description, Esty sounds like the easiest path forward.

A relevant site has offered sponsored guest posts for X $ per post. They've stated that author links must be marked as rel=sponsored/nofollow, but any contextual/natural links in the body are blank/dofollow.

The problem with this is that there was a point in time where people created guest posting networks, which caused Google to say guest posting needed to be marked with nofollow, and then they supposedly went on to "figure out" how to nofollow guest post links (aka ignoring them).

Whenever I've done guest posts, I tell the site they must (and same for my sites) accept that I'm going to write the post as if they wrote it, and I don't want it posted on some new author account, and I don't want any mention of "guest post, guest author, etc." mentioned on the page. That's the only safe way to ensure you're going to get the credit for the link that you want.

 

[Million]

The problem with this is that there was a point in time where people created guest posting networks, which caused Google to say guest posting needed to be marked with nofollow, and then they supposedly went on to "figure out" how to nofollow guest post links (aka ignoring them).

Whenever I've done guest posts, I tell the site they must (and same for my sites) accept that I'm going to write the post as if they wrote it, and I don't want it posted on some new author account, and I don't want any mention of "guest post, guest author, etc." mentioned on the page. That's the only safe way to ensure you're going to get the credit for the link that you want.

Thanks for this. So there's a chance Google won't pass any authority from all links on page, even if they're to different domains? That's disappointing!

 

[zak]

I want to sell digital products/downloadables that are popular in my niche. I have an audience and a WordPress site with content. I came up with three different ways to do this:

1. Etsy store
2. Shopify store on subdomain
3. Woocommerce.

I just want basic features and the ability to sell digital files. Basically, take the money and give them the digital file and maybe collect email as well. I don't have the time or budget to manage a full-fledged e-commerce store.

Can anyone recommend how to go about this?

look into Easy Digital Downloads. It’s like Woocommerce, but without all the extra fluff and focused (until recently) only on digital products.

 

[jelf]

I have Thrivecart. Works well for individual sales. And they have a membership addon for downloads, etc. which I have not used.
One time purchase around $500.

 

[DevMystic]

In my niche, the same "how to" article can be applied to different target keywords.

For example, let's say my website is about painting your house.

Through my keyword research, I have found the following keywords:

1) How to paint your house if you are from Germany
2) How to paint your house if you are from France
3) How to paint your house if you are from Italy

Etc.

There are no different ways of painting the house (for argument's sake).

So all of these could be answered with the same article titled "How to paint your house"

Of course, if I only write "How to paint your house" it will put me in a super competitive keyword which I doubt I will rank for.

How should I reuse and apply the same content for all these different long-form variations?

 

[Zoro]

In my niche, the same "how to" article can be applied to different target keywords.

For example, let's say my website is about painting your house.

Through my keyword research, I have found the following keywords:

1) How to paint your house if you are from Germany
2) How to paint your house if you are from France
3) How to paint your house if you are from Italy

Etc.

There are no different ways of painting the house (for argument's sake).

So all of these could be answered with the same article titled "How to paint your house"

Of course, if I only write "How to paint your house" it will put me in a super competitive keyword which I doubt I will rank for.

How should I reuse and apply the same content for all these different long-form variations?

Don't duplicate your articles because Google wont like that, but you could write them in the same style.

 

[thisishatred]

In my niche, the same "how to" article can be applied to different target keywords.

For example, let's say my website is about painting your house.

Through my keyword research, I have found the following keywords:

1) How to paint your house if you are from Germany
2) How to paint your house if you are from France
3) How to paint your house if you are from Italy

Etc.

There are no different ways of painting the house (for argument's sake).

So all of these could be answered with the same article titled "How to paint your house"

Of course, if I only write "How to paint your house" it will put me in a super competitive keyword which I doubt I will rank for.

How should I reuse and apply the same content for all these different long-form variations?

Each article needs to be unique. I've seen people try to push a "brand swapping" strategy on Twitter and it's borderline thin/copy/pasted content with literally a brand name changed. I've found the sites of the folks that push that strategy and it's bad, real bad.

I'd also wager to say there are "things" intrinsic to each of those SERPs though and if you aren't doing enough digging, you either don't know the niche well enough or you're looking for a way to be lazy - that's my opinion.

For example, is there any legislation that governs what color houses can be in those specific countries?

Even googling this myself: QUORA

A person in the comments mentions things that naturally should be mentioned: "A colorful house absorbs and retains heat and a white reflects it." - In regards to the houses of northern Italy using a brighter palette due to being in the mountains.

Googling things in regards to France. I found this article that states: "There are laws about painting shutters in France."

Upon checking if that's a myth or not there is a comment from 14 years ago stating: "The 'declaration prealable de travuaux' is to be used for changing any exterior aspect of your house (original french: modification de l'aspect extérieur d'un bâtiment). So this does include changing doors, windows, shutters ect."

I'd then actually read that documentation - if available - and see what sort of laws there are in regards to changes like painting.

You get the gist.

If you can't think of shit like the above, and I can; I'm going to win in the SERPs and you aren't. Simple as that.

The problem is that most content mills don't want to pay for their writers to do hours of research because it's all about cost/article. If the Writers take too long to write the articles, it's money out of their pockets because the writer is busy doing research and not writing content that's in queue.

If you're paying an individual writer on a per article basis, find someone who has a genuine interest in the topic and will want to spend the time to provide the Searcher a thought provoking response.

 

[JOoa0ky]

@thisishatred @DevMystic Definitely agree...

There are uniqueness to each one you just have to look for it.

In addition to what you said, there's also interesting color preferences with certain countries.

Like why do norway and various scandinavian countries prefer to paint their houses RED?

Things like that are what you want to include and talk about to add "uniqueness" and "relevancy" to that particular KW topic.

 

[makoloko]

I'm showing a GDPR popup consent form for EU traffic. Everyone seems to hate these, and only a very small % opts out. I'd guess most people just simply click accept, just like with EULAs.

I want to remove this popup. I think it causes higher bounce rate, and most of my competitors (even ones in the EU) don't show this. It's like driving 70 mph when everyone else is driving 80 mph.

What's the worst possible outcome of removing this popup and violating GDPR? I get fined and lose all EU traffic?

What's the most likely outcome? I'd guess nothing. I'm a minnow in a swarm of minnows.

 

[Breen]

Can't remember where I read it, but somebody said that for SEO purposes, you should 301 redirect your entire domain to www or non-www, whichever your preference. Is this actually a thing or BS?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Can't remember where I read it, but somebody said that for SEO purposes, you should 301 redirect your entire domain to www or non-www, whichever your preference. Is this actually a thing or BS?

It's a real thing. You only want one of them accessible. Either www.domain.com or domain.com. Not both. The same goes for http:// and https://.

So let's say you choose https:// and non-www for your domain. You'll then have https://domain.com and all of the others should 301-redirect to their respective pages in one leap. So...

• http://www.domain.com
• https://www.domain.com
• http://domain.com

These should all redirect to https://domain.com in one leap each. Not two leaps and all the other crap people do. Is it critical to be one leap (one redirect) only? No, but it's the right way.

Google will index both versions of a site if both www and non-www are available. They are NOT the same website because www is a sub-domain. So now you have a duplicate copy of your site up and it will hurt your performance. Could Google be nice and add a canonical to the one you prefer? Sure, but they don't know which you prefer.

It's a very real thing to sort out before you start doing much else.