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Hi Julia,
It really depends on the quality of those backlinks. Let's use the Moz scoring system for this example. If you are losing 30 links with very low page authority (PA), low domain authority (DA), and high spam score, you will not be affected much, if at all. You shouldn't worry in this case. However, if you are losing 30 links with high PA, or high DA especially, you might be affected considerably, and should work to keep this links or get new links with similar PA and DA scores.
Hi Liana,
As far as spammy links, Google has done well detecting whether or not they are intentional, aka black hat. If they aren't, Google does not penalize you for these links, so it's best to leave them.
As far as a strategy for generating links to your website, you should always focus on high quality over quantity. High quality links give you exponentially more return than high quantity of bad links.
I recommend this article Google wrote for us to understand when and how to disavow links.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
In short, rarely do you ever need to disavow links, even if they have a high spam score. You are only hurt when they sense you are gaming the system and in the case that they detect or suspect unethical backlinking, you will be penalized with a "manual action". You can check if you were penalized, as well as disavow flagged backlinks, in the Google Search Console.
Google has an easy-to-read article for you about when and how to disavow links.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
In short, rarely do you ever need to disavow links, even if they're spammy. They have smart analysis built-in to detect whether a spammy link is just spam or if it is the result of unethical SEO practices trying to game the system, otherwise known as "black hat SEO". In the case that they detect or suspect unethical backlinking, you will be hit with a "manual action". You can check for these, as well as disavow links, in the Google Search Console.
Hi Mark,
Don't fret too much about spammy links. According to Google, they try to limit negative effects of third party sites.
Spammy backlinks that bring you down usually come with a "manual action", that is a big penalty sent down from the big man Google himself. These actions are made when it appears these spammy links are deliberate, paid for, or appear to be "black hat SEO".
Unless you've experienced one of these penalties, or want to pre-empt one, you don't need to disavow them. If you want to check for manual actions or would still like to disavow these links and keep track of them, use the Google Search Console.
You should also check if there have been any manual penalties set against you. You can do this through the Google Search Console.
You've pointed out you're beating them in both on-page and off-page SEO. My guess is that your user experience scores are very low. The last Google update has significantly increased the weight of user experience variables in their algorithm.
I was able to confirm my suspicions using the PageSpeed test by Google (which now includes Core Vital metrics).
While your content and off-page SEO is great compared to your competition, it doesn't mean much if your site doesn't load or takes too long to load. You need to cut that FCP, LCP, TTI down significantly.
That is odd. I've tried out 3 different password managers, not including the built in Apple and Google ones, and I haven't encountered this issue.
I looked into why this could happen. I inspected the page source of the login page (https://moz.com/login) and it has valid markup with every field clearly marked (for example, password is marked as password by 3 separate html attributes), so no error on Moz's end.
Perhaps you should file a ticket with your password manager help line/ support.
Hi Harol,
You can identify the top players for a keyword in an area by setting a Search Profile. You can do this with the MozBar extension.
Hi Keith,
I meant the physical bandwidth - i.e. your time. I probably should've been more clear in a technical forum!
For the architecture, there are a few common setups. What I am in the middle of doing here at my company is through Google Cloud services. Duplicating the website app or script (I.e. Wordpress, Ghost, Drupal, CMS, Python App, Rails app, etc) across the several servers and using a load balancer to determine the fastest server. In the app's configuration I am using a single Database server also set up on Google Cloud, so when one server executes a command, it is reflected for all users on all servers. If you're Cron-jobbing all the servers you have set up but no common database, you're going to have some integrity issues, with some servers having some comments or edits, and some servers not.
Personally, I would use the one domain. And from what you've said, you would prefer it as well.
Thankfully, rankings are on a domain basis and not an IP basis, so there would be no issue in the first scenario. If you are duplicating and synchronizing the servers, you are better off using the one domain because you aren't creating two separate websites with differing content (UK English vs US English).
Do you have the bandwidth or ability to produce separate versions (for each domain) for each area you want to target? If not you are best off generalizing your website to target all English users instead of en-US, en-GB, etc. You're going to have to evaluate your geotargeting goals and budget.
Your best strategy in beating a spammy website is following the best practices of SEO and web development.
You've already outlined two key components you will need to use: high quality backlinks and rich relevant content. As you've pointed out, generating a wide network of backlinks takes a lot of time and many relationships. That is a big reason as to why links have a high value in SEO. Although it is not as effective as it previously was due to the increasing number of variables, it still holds a lot of equity amongst the signals used by Google. Your .edu strategy should be noteworthy, as only established institutions are afforded this domain space.
Because at first you will be outmatched on the off-page SEO like backlinks, focus on the on-page factors. This includes content relevance, content quality, page speed, and others. You will find a lot of resources available here on Moz that you can refer to.
https://moz.com/learn/seo/on-site-seo
https://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors
The way GeoDNS works is through one of two methods: split DNS or load balancing. The end result is the same, the user will be directed to their closest or fastest available server.
Theoretically, this helps achieves a major goal of technical SEO - great site speed.
With the new Google Web Core Vitals update of this year, site speed and user experience has been further notched up as ranking factors. To get more technical– LCP, largest contentful paint, the speed of which the largest asset on a page loads, and FCP, first contentful paint, the speed of which the first legible content is produced on the screen, are site speed signals used by Google in their ranking algorithm. By connecting a user to the closest/ fastest server available, you can bring down the time on LCP and FCP and thereby increase your rank. The rank change may not be immediately noticeable depending on the competitiveness of your keywords and industry. You can measure these and other variables here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
In short: No, your SEO won't be negatively impacted, and it will more likely be positively impacted by these optimizations.
Ranking for low difficulty keywords creates kind of a domino effect. By ranking higher for those keywords, you might be link-building or establishing a higher domain authority. In doing these, your website will have generated better metrics to be more competitive for higher difficulty keywords.
Basically, as long as your content is relevant for all keywords, high and low difficulty, the strategies you'll typically use to boost one will help both.