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Hmm, that's a legitimate point.
I haven't read anything on the importance or limit on # of links recently, but this Moz post from awhile back says you should usually aim to keep it below 100. It also has some good insight behind the reason that's the recommendation in regards to page rank, and creating a hierarchical structure that makes sense.
I'm interested to see if anyone else has any thoughts!
Man, that's tough. Just in general, I would say it's really tough to (ethically) guarantee page 1 results within 6 weeks - if at all.
I might recommend having a conversation with your client where you ask if they are aware of the kinds of tactics / activities these other agencies will be performing for them. Lay out your plan, and be up front about what kinds of results they can expect with a potential timeline. Encourage your client to ask the other agencies the same. In my personal opinion, if these other agencies might be doing unethical work, and your client is okay with that, that client may not be the best fit for you.
I'd be interested to hear what thoughts others have on client situations like this.
That makes a lot of sense if you have multiple photos for a single item – didn't consider that.
Hello!
It's important to note that Google does its best to give users exactly what they're searching for, and is aware of searchers location (for the most part). So a search for the query "tipi camping" from the lake district – if Google sees the search as a locally intended search – the searcher will more than likely see local results, like yourself.
So for starters, I would ask how you've seen Google treat those keyword searches – when you search for the query "tipi camping" from the lake district, do you see local results, or more general knowledge and national results?
Within your Moz campaign, I would make sure you're tracking for both "tipi camping lake district" nationally, and also "tipi camping" locally for your service area. If you're optimized well locally, and Google interprets the keywords you're seeking to optimize for (like "tipi camping") as a search with local intent, you most definitely have a shot at beating out those bigger brands.
So I would say not to worry too much about that search volume or the national competition for said keywords, but to put more focus on local optimization, citations, a stellar Google My Business profile, etc...
Is that helpful at all? Make sense?
Here are my two favorite guides:
From Moz: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building
From Backlinko: https://backlinko.com/link-building
Thank you so much, Miriam, this is very helpful!
I think there is a very slight different between Google's "People Also Search for" and "Related Searches" features.
It's my understanding that "Related Searches" is mostly fueled by current top searches and trending searches. Which may explain why a search query you're seeing doesn't yet have a very high search volume.
On the other hand, "People Also Search for" feature is powered by Google's Knowledge Graph.
I hope that's helpful!
That's awesome! You're right, if you were utilizing a strict filtering criteria, you would have missed out!
I do typically filter backlink opportunities, but put a little more weight on domain authority than page authority. So for my agency personally, I'm usually looking for DA > 30, and usually don't place too much emphasis on PA. For instance, if I have an opportunity with a site that has a DA of 50, but the page I'm looking at only has a PA of 5, I would still very much be interested.
Having said that, I'm no link building expert, and I do know page authority is a factor. But at the end of the day, I think you have to consider what your link profile currently looks like, and what the link profiles of your competitors look like.
Hope that's helpful! And would love others' input on the importance of page authority.
^^ these are both great answers.
I'll add one thing: I often view FAQ pages as a great opportunity to earn featured snippets for specific questions related to a brand. I can't say for certain, and this may not at all be a goal of yours, but the HTML structure this WP theme element utilizes probably doesn't lend itself to stand out for earning any featured snippets. If you break them out of the FAQ element, utilize headers well, and maybe even consider schema markup, there's a chance you could earn a featured snippet or two among those frequently asked questions.
I think Google is constantly testing for user intent: analyzing things like dwell time, bounce rate, and effectiveness of the results give users. For searches with higher search volumes, I would think some of the top players are more cemented, due to thousands of instances where a searcher landed on their result and seemingly had their query answered.
Whereas with a search query that has much lower search volume, the top results are probably less cemented, due to being less proven in the eyes of Google's algorithm. Therefore, it may not take as much time to prove that your result better answers the query.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case for other countries as well.
This is entirely assumption, I would love to hear others' thoughts.
I don't know if it's a good idea to go after all backlinks for your top competitors. I would recommend establishing for yourself some criteria (unless you have tons of time on your hands) – like I mentioned, maybe something along the lines of DA > 30. And then I would go after the lowest hanging fruit first. Having said that, it usually seems the be the case that the hardest links to earn are the most valuable ones.
As for the skyscraper technique, I don't know that current ranking for a given keyword should matter as much as other factors. Here is a really good Whiteboard Friday from Rand where he discusses why your link prospects don't always necessarily have to rank great: https://moz.com/blog/links-from-low-ranking-domains
I agree that voice search will only continue to grow and grow in 2018.
The results that are read aloud as answers are primarily featured snippets. So when you ask how to optimize for voice search, what you're really asking is how to optimize for featured snippets. A few optimization tips I've come across:
Here's a post that answers your question as well.
Hope this is helpful!
When you say "connected," you mean the blog lives ON your company site. For instance: your-site.com/blog
I would agree with ILNA and say, without any more information to go off of, it is more than likely worth it to clean up and continue to keep updated with quality and relevant content.
It's really hard to give a general price estimate for a custom theme v.s. using a WordPress theme and utilizing child themes.
I would say you can expect the custom theme to be at least double the cost, but again, there are countless factors to consider. You will most likely be looking at more maintenance with the custom theme, but it will largely depend on how your developer codes, how many plugins they utilize, whether they build custom plugins, etc...
Here are two (again very general) pricing guides that might be somewhat helpful:
I definitely understand.
My agency works with premium themes / child themes and find that while many are very clunky and bloated, we don't notice any issues with the code not being clean enough. When using pre-built WordPress themes, we find it's important to utilize canonical tags when necessary, always check on page speed, and to noindex unnecessary pages. We also use Yoast SEO plugin, which will cover some themes' faults.
Having said that, I'm not a developer, but I'm sure there are themes out there with invalid or unfriendly code.
Yoast has a good post on choosing WP themes: https://yoast.com/perfect-wordpress-theme/
In general, from what I know, the WordPress codex itself is relatively SEO friendly.
When we're talking about which theme to go with – it's true a custom built theme is probably going to be less bloated and provide faster site speed.
I would encourage you to audit (or have someone else audit) your competition. If you have similar content, similar link profiles, similar brand strength, etc... then site speed could be a factor that makes a difference – especially when Google issues a page speed update. However, if they have you beat on other fronts, I would put more effort into link building or content generation before worrying about which theme to go with. Does that make sense?
It depends on many factors, but I would estimate building a custom theme will be at least 2X the work of utilizing a theme. And yes, the maintenance of custom themes and custom plugins is a good bit more involved than simply updating pre-built themes and plugins.