I would do anything for links, but I won't do that

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast, where you get some groovy insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined with the fabulously, amazing, incredible, the always annotative, Crystal Carter, Head of SEO Communications here at Wix.

Crystal Carter:

Hello, you content goblins.

Mordy Oberstein:

And gators.

Crystal Carter:

And gators. Welcome to the gator party of the internet. Hello everyone. Hi.

Mordy Oberstein:

For context, this is coming out like six weeks, five weeks after that article from The Verge, which said basically that SEO folks are goblins and gators.

Crystal Carter:

Spend all our time at gator parties and I have never been to a gator party.

Mordy Oberstein:

I've never been... Is that like a Miami football thing? Like Miami Gators?

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. I feel like people have all kinds of fun and I've never had that kind of fun. I did go to a turtle race though.

Mordy Oberstein:

I've been been to turtle race as a kid. I do remember. That's fun.

Crystal Carter:

I went to a turtle race.

Mordy Oberstein:

I wonder if-

Crystal Carter:

I'm sure that the turtles were treated humanely, so I'm sure that that's true.

Mordy Oberstein:

They seem to be having a great time. They actually got some ooze on them and turned into the giant ninjas afterwards, but that seemed kind of traumatic on-

Crystal Carter:

I'm sure they're treated humanely. Anyway. Anyway, anyway, people have all sorts of fun. I've never been to a gator party, so I will keep my eye out for the-

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm not sure I want to be.

Crystal Carter:

I know, honestly,

Mordy Oberstein:

Steve Irwin went to that one, and you see what happened to him. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/SEO/newsletter, but where you can also utilize our integrations with the likes of Content Contact, Klaviyo and beyond to get your content out there to more people via some solid email marketing, because email marketing is a fabulous way to spread your content so it can get links. So go ahead, email your entire list asking for links. That's how it works. No, don't do that by the way. Don't do that. I'm being facetious. Don't do that.

Crystal Carter:

No, please don't. Don't. Don't. It's not... Don't. Please don't.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a bad idea.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm saying that, I'm making that joke because this week we're covering, "I Would Do Anything for Links, but I Won't Do That." Sing with me Crystal. (Singing). By the way, that baritone they're chiming in is Ashwin Balakrishnan, who is going to join us in just a Jiffy as we are going to explore the fine line between energetic link building and full on spamming as we get into guest posting for links, how and when to ask for links, where are the line between good and bad link practices is.

As I mentioned, to help make the right connection, Optimizer's own Ashwin Balakrishnan is going to join us in just a few minutes. We'll also hear from Digital Olympus's Alexandra Tachalova about when links can make all the difference. And of course, we have your snappy SEO news, who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So buckle up as objects in the link view mirror may appear closer than they are, as episode number 64 of the SERP's Up podcast comes at you like a Bat Out of Hell to tell you we would do anything for links, but we won't do that. No, we won't do that.

Crystal Carter:

Shout out to Meatloaf. Shout out to Meatloaf.

Mordy Oberstein:

Objects in the Rear View Mirror. I remember that came on VH1. By the way, wait, wait before we get going, welcome to the show, Ashwin.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

It's a show, for sure.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

And for the record, I am Team Crocodile all the way.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, okay. Crocodiles over alligators. Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, crocodile party.

Crystal Carter:

If people don't don't know the difference, you can remember it because an A is pointy and actually alligators have round noses and crocodiles have pointy noses, which is the opposite of a C. There we go. Fun facts.

Mordy Oberstein:

My life is so much better now.

Crystal Carter:

I read National Geographic Kids, what can I say?

Mordy Oberstein:

Back to what's important, Meatloaf. Objects in the Rear View Mirror, when that came on VH1, I remember the video so clearly.

Crystal Carter:

I can see it in my brain right now.

Mordy Oberstein:

I could see it in my brain. I'm thinking, who is this dude and why is he singing about what it says on the car mirror thing?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, but fully committed. Fully committed. He's 100% committed to all of his overdramatic things. To be honest, if I can just pivot, I think that's how people have to approach link building. You have to be fully committed to what you're doing and fully confident in what you're doing when you get into that. Ashwin, what's your thoughts on that?

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

I actually discovered Meatloaf through, I guess you could call it, a referral. You remember Pizza Hut back in the 90s had those jukeboxes?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

I would flip through that. There was this album of a motorcycle and dude riding a motorcycle and it's like flying through the sky. It's called Meatloaf. I'm like, who the hell names their band Meatloaf?

Mordy Oberstein:

Right.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

I never listened to it throughout my entire childhood. I guess that's a good thing. But then when I hit my teens, I was like, all right, let's check out what this Meatloaf music is about. And yeah, it never caught on for me.

Mordy Oberstein:

But it's a great name, Meatloaf. So wait, before we get into it, let me catch everybody up. Links have been this sort of linchpin of SEO since God knows when, and we do know when, but for dramatic effect, since God knows when, and there's all sorts of theories about how important links are and are they central, are they losing their... I don't want to get into any of that right now. Links are a part of doing SEO. They are a part of ranking, they are a part of the SEO picture. Okay, we can split hairs about how and when. What I want to focus on, what you want to focus on in this episode is when you start trying to get links, when you have one website linking to your own website and the content and the pages on your own website, things get spammy faster than you can say "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are."

There's all sorts of confusion, even if you're a pro SEO, about what is and what is not a good idea or against Google's guidelines. That's why we're talking about, again, I would do anything for links, but it won't do that. It's really what works, what doesn't work, and what's legal, what's barely legal and what's completely illegal when it comes to Google's guidelines in garnering links. Hi, Ashwin. Let's have you weigh in on that.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Let me begin by telling you what I would never do. What I would never do for links is the same thing that I would never do for love, which is beg.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. Okay, come through action.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Most of my emails these days are people begging, lying, trying to scam me into putting links to their content on Optimizer's website. I've had people email me saying, "Oh, we've worked together before, or I emailed you back in the day for a link when I was managing another domain." I'm like, "No, you didn't." Why just lie about it? I've got people flooding me with requests for links that have nothing to do with digital marketing, let alone PPC. I have people who keep asking me for links like 10 follow-ups in eight days, stuff like that. It's just immediate spam. I just put you in my spam folder and you're done. I never want to hear from you again. That's one thing that I would never do is beg. Don't beg. It's not illegal to beg, but man, it makes you look really, really bad.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Right. Right. I think that I admire the gumption. I admire the energy that goes behind that, but I think that people could potentially put that energy somewhere else because like you, if I get somebody in my inbox giving me that information, immediately block. Somebody on LinkedIn because you get them on LinkedIn as well, if somebody on LinkedIn's like, "Hi, do you want-" I'm like, block, unfollow, done. No, thank you. We're done. I think that I would agree begging doesn't... I mean, there's a theory that says don't ask, don't get, but there's a difference I think.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Yeah, yeah. There's a pretty big difference and I have no admiration for it. I think it's just the worst type of energy.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's bad for your brand too.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

It is.

Mordy Oberstein:

People get those emails. This happens, by the way, even outside of links where you have a, "Hey there, we want to sell you some ad space on our website," and it's a cold outreach and it's really just templatized. You're like, I don't really want to, because that doesn't come across well for your brand. Links to the same thing.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

You don't want to come across and put your brand in a negative light to people who aren't maybe actually important to you, what your brand does.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Don't beg and don't lie. Don't tell me you worked with me when I know for sure that we haven't. If I can search your name in my email and it's not going to pop up, I know we haven't worked together. Don't say you signed up for my product or my newsletter when you haven't. I can check that quite easily as well. Just be honest. If you don't have anything helpful or worthwhile, maybe that's something you need to fix before you go asking for links. It's not even maybe. You absolutely should fix that first.

Crystal Carter:

Right, absolutely. I think that comes down to sometimes, I think John Mueller said this before and it's certainly something I've observed, sometimes SEO is not the answer. Sometimes it's that you need to do better, you need to have a better product, or you need to make better content, or you need to do... I guess that's kind of an SEO thing, but sometimes it has to do with other things that aren't specific to SEO or specific to links. Sometimes there's a reason why people aren't linking to your content and maybe because it's not overly unique or maybe because the right people don't know about it or there might be other reasons why, but it's not just because you didn't ask them.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Yeah. If your site is poorly structured, if your architecture's all over the place, you've got errors riddled throughout your website, your content isn't useful, or if it's outdated, fix all of that stuff first before you go out and asking for links. Do the internal linking first as well.

Crystal Carter:

I think the other thing about that sort of stuff is that kind of thing can improve your performance and improve your natural likeability. For instance, if you had an article that was talking about something like let's say you were an early mover on a particular topic. Let's say you were in an early article on, I don't know, ChatGPT or something like when it ChatGPT had first sort of splashed on the scene. Let's say you go back six months later and you update it because obviously things have changed exponentially in the six months and you go back and you update it to the latest information on that and you add new links or you add new content and things like that.

If you tell people on your socials, you tell people on your email newsletters, you tell people in various different things, "Hey guys, I've updated this article that you remember I was one of the first people to write about this. I've updated it now and it's got this new information about this, this and this," then you are more likely to get some natural backlinks from that piece of content than if you just let it sit around and just ask for links to this thing that you're not even looking after.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Yeah, yeah. Fully agree with that. Then the other thing I would say is you should be trying to create the type of content that does earn passive patents with no outreach, no effort. If you've got a product that has data that nobody else has, if you're collecting surveys and doing research that nobody else is doing, all of that is excellent content that people will naturally want to cite and link to without you even asking for it.

Mordy Oberstein:

Let's dive into what you do. You mentioned before, hey, let's get into some of the things that you're doing at your company for building links. What are some of the things that you do and what are some of the things that you don't do?

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Yes. Like I mentioned, I've been there about three and a half years now, just a little over three and a half years. For the first year, we did absolutely no backlinking outside of the website. We focused on improving the content, improving site architecture, redesigning layouts, all of that stuff. When we did start the backlink program, we started by publishing studies, research from our product data that nobody else had, and then we started using the community to distribute that. We published a study around a new type of ad campaign that Google had put out a few years ago. That took off. A lot of people started linking into it. Really high quality sites, really high quality authors started citing it without us even asking for it. So we said, "All right, there's something in here that's really good."

Then over the next six months, what we started to do is we started to blend our guest log program and our rapid program. We still do the guest posts approach, which is where we write for other sites, and we insert our links over there. What we also do is we have PPC experts write for us on our blog, and once they publish that, then there's incentive for them when they write for a search engine lab, a search engine journal or another blog post, there's an incentive for them to link to the content being published on our site. We also then have a massive arsenal of content that we can say, "Look, it's published on our site, but it's published by experts who are renowned and respected in their particular domains."

And so we can then go out and ask for links and it might be benefiting us, but the content itself is really deep-rooted in expertise, very rich, very unique insights, a lot of business angle to it. There's no way that people can turn down that kind of richness. We have a really good success rate with outreach, but also passing a backlink by doing this.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's almost like guest posting is one of these major backlink strategies. I say to you, "Hey, I'll write a post on your website and it'll link back to my website. You write a post on my website and it'll link back to your website." That's a little bit like maybe I wouldn't do that for links. What you're saying is there's ways to get that very similar result by just working with people on content naturally.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Like Crystal said, if you go back and you update an older piece of content and you tell people about it, you're more likely to get that support and get those backlinks. It's just one step further from that to where you say, "I'm going to involve these other people in the creation process and not just the distribution process, and because they have-" We're a pretty solid team in terms of our marketing team understands how PPC works, but we're not PPC marketers, so we can't speak on these topics with the kind of nuance and depth that the experts in themselves can. We figured, why not allow them the real estate to put their information and their learning across?

We're just a platform where that happens, so we benefit from the SEO, they get a place to publish their ideas, which is high profile, high visibility, high authority, and then everybody wins at the end of the day. They have another thing that they get into  in terms of, "Hey, here's another showcase of my expertise." And we are able to go out and use that content to showcase how valuable we are, get backlinks for it, and of course, something that they can use in future content that they published last spring.

Crystal Carter:

This is something that you discussed in your fantastic primer on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, if I could just shout that out. The Backlinks 101 article, which goes into lots of the different... For anybody who's new to the idea of backlinks, it's a great place to start. It covers all of this sort of terminology that you need to know, how backlinks work, how you can use them, how they benefit you, all of that sort of stuff. It also gets into some of these tactics. In the section where you talk about this precisely around nurturing relationships with top industry creators and brands, you cover also a few things when you're talking to people not pitching for things that are irrelevant or pitching for people to write about content that's irrelevant. Are you able to talk a little bit about that?

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Yeah, I mean, when you do want to ask for a backlink or ask for an opportunity to write a guest post so that we can insert backlinks, we make sure that... I mean, if you're trying to work with another company, they need to get some kind of benefit out it. If you're writing about gardening, for example, if that's your area of expertise you're going to want to go to maybe related, not necessarily that it has to be an exchange with another gardening site, you could go into a home care or do-it-yourself kind of niche. There's a lot of adjacent options where there's some synergy, but if you're a gardening expert, you don't want to go to a blog that's about, I don't know for example, baseball and write about that.

Mordy Oberstein:

You did it on purpose, by the way.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

No, I really didn't. It was very subconscious. I saw you and I thought baseball. I was just thinking of sports and I was like all right.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm letting it slide. Get it? I'm letting it slide.

Crystal Carter:

How do you think they keep the grass so green at Wrigley Field? I feel like-

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Bad example. Bowling.

Crystal Carter:

Bowling, okay, all right. Okay.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

I mean, there's no gardening in bowling, so you don't want to create a complete clash. For example, this week alone, I've had link requests from one site that publishes niche content on how to find discarded furniture and refurbish it, which has nothing to do with digital marketing. I got another request from-

Mordy Oberstein:

Just like you refurbish your old furniture, you should refurbish your digital presence.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

I mean, at least you're drawing a connection there. Then the way they portrayed it was, "You can write something for our site." I was like, "What am I going to write about refurbishing discarded sofas and chairs and stuff like that?"

Crystal Carter:

I think that this is one of the things that people... Google talks about unnatural links and being able to identify unnatural links, and I think that that's one of the ways that they're able to see that is that sort of thing. That's not a natural place for you to be. It would be natural, for you Ashwin, to have a link on Wix SEO, because you write for us, you are in the same industry. That makes sense.

However, it wouldn't make sense. I don't know what your hobbies are, but it wouldn't make sense for you to be on an ice skating website, for instance. That wouldn't make sense. Or refurbishing furniture, for instance, that wouldn't make sense. That's an unnatural link regardless as to how good the content is necessarily. When they crawl it, they understand what the page is about and those two things are connected. That's not going to benefit you.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

That's probably the one place that I would actually recommend still disallowing links is you get a lot of those really buggy, spammy sites that have nothing to do with your domain linking to. You just want to make sure Google knows that, "Hey, I did not ask for this. I have nothing to do with it. I don't want anything to do with it." If you're getting a bunch of work in digital marketing, or if you work in finance and there's a bunch of spammy sites in the same domain that are linking to you, you can safely ignore those because it's purely about the quality of the site. But yeah, domains that have nothing to do with your website, we should absolutely put distance between them, whether it's through you or without your knowledge. You just want to put that distance between you and them.

The other area which is slightly controversial, which I've been hearing a lot about lately, is buying links. A bit of a gray area. Like Google, officially their position is don't buy links, but realistically it happens a lot more than we care to admit. I think the thing there again is if you're going to buy links, make sure A, you are willing to accept the risk, and if you are willing to accept the risk, at least play it smart and don't go out. If you've only got three links in the last six months, don't go out and buy a thousand links in the next six months. Make it look natural, if that's what you're going to do. Otherwise, all you're going to do is just attract attention that you put up.

Mordy Oberstein:

We generally advise, if you're listening, don't buy links. I was going to ask you, what are some practices that are kind of on the borderline for you? You answered my question. I'll be honest. I think there are cases where if you bought links, it would have an impact. Big companies do this. I know for a fact there's a lot of companies out there who do this, who you would be surprised do this. Whether or not it worked... But for the average SEO and for the average site owner for sure, I very much recommend you stay away from that as much as possible.

Crystal Carter:

I think also having come at it from a backlink audit point of view, like when you're an SEO and you go to a site and you're like, "Oh, I'm just going to audit your backlinks," you can tell if somebody's bought links. Because there's a lot of business owners... Again, if business owners are listening or people who are maybe in charge of marketing, but not necessarily SEO experts, for instance, if you're working with someone and they say, "Oh yeah, we'll do some SEO. We'll just do link building," pay attention to what they're doing for you and pay attention to which links they're talking about getting you because at Bias an SEO can look at your backlink profile and go, "Oh yeah, you bought all those links. Those are all just trash links." Google can too. So be aware of that.

I think some of the things with the affiliate, the affiliate updates that they're doing, the spam updates and things like that, and previously they've had previous Google updates, like big ones that were particularly focused on backlink profiles for people, it's something that you have to pay attention to. Make sure. Again, you have in the article about monitoring your backlinks, paying attention to your backlinks. That's an important thing to do.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's just entirely possible that you pay a lot of money for links and Google might not penalize you, but they do with Penguin, which is completely ignore them, and you've wasted all that money for nothing. I wanted to ask you a few questions. Listen, we titled all this episode, "I Would Do Anything for Links, but I Won't Do That," so I was wondering if you could get a million relevant links from high quality websites, follow links, would you donate a kidney? Would you give away a kidney? Would you sell a kidney? Because you have two.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

No, no,

Mordy Oberstein:

No. Okay, so you wouldn't do that for links.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Okay, so clarify. I wouldn't do it for a website belonging to an organization that employs me. I would consider it for my own website.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, good distinction.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

I would consider it.

Mordy Oberstein:

I should have clarified that. Okay. For your own website, again, lots of links, high quality websites, yada, yada, yada, would you eat spoiled cheese?

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Oh, yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

A lot of it?

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

All cheese is spoiled, Mordy.

Crystal Carter:

How old is this cheese though?

Mordy Oberstein:

It's like six months, but it's like cream cheese, six months cream cheese. It's all molding and everything.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Can I scrape the top layer off?

Mordy Oberstein:

No, you can't even put it on bread. You have to just spoon it out and eat it.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

All right. If I can put it on a double garlic bagel, yeah, I would.

Mordy Oberstein:

All right, that's a level. Okay, so you would do that for links. Would you listen to Abba straight?

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Mordy Oberstein:

For two minutes?

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

I love Abba. I love Abba.

Mordy Oberstein:

But you don't like Meatloaf?

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Yeah, it's a weird thing.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a weird one. All right.

Crystal Carter:

Here we go again.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

When I was a kid, they had this Abba cover group, The Eighteens. I went from The Eighteens to Abba. So, I kind of like it.

Mordy Oberstein:

Wow. All right. My last one, would you stick your fingers into an outlet that you're not sure is on or off? It could be that it's off, but it could also be that it's on.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

No, I hate the feeling of electricity. Absolutely hate it.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's interesting. So you would donate the kidney possibly.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Possibly.

Mordy Oberstein:

But theoretically, not even do anything to yourself because the outlet's disconnected. It doesn't work.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Yeah, I'm not taking conventions. I hate static shock to begin with.

Crystal Carter:

I'm guessing you've never been on one of those plastic slides. They've got those plastic slides all over the park now. Your kid…. They're just like, and you're like, "What is going on? I don't-"

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

It's like sensory overlord, just thinking about it.

Crystal Carter:

Their hair's all sticking out.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the worst.

Crystal Carter:

And there's literal... They come out like an action hero or something. It's like, ah, the power electricity, and you're like, "What's going on here?"

Mordy Oberstein:

My kid asked me to go down the slide and my only apprehension is static electricity. I'm like, "Ah, I can't. I'm too big."

Crystal Carter:

I'm wearing polyester.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

When I was a kid, they took us on a field trip to the Science Center and they had that big electric metal ball.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, yeah.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

They had me put my hand on it and your hair stands up and everything. Then the dude just grabbed my hand and all of this electricity started crackling around me. Ever since then, I've hated the feeling of electricity.

Crystal Carter:

I'm sorry, we didn't mean to …

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

It's not like a trauma thing or anything, but yeah, I would absolutely not do it.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, so there you have it, folks. Don't stick your fingers into electric sockets for links. You heard it here first. So now that you know that, Ashwin, where can people find you?

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

I'm on Twitter, I say this all the time when people ask me where you can find me. You can find me on Twitter until that product dies. It explodes, sinks, whatever you want to call it.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm currently @shadowman, so don't get me started.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, look up the copy trail on Twitter. You can also look me on LinkedIn. Yeah, that's where you'll find me and always happy to talk about marketing SEO stuff, but you'll have to pry that out in me.

Crystal Carter:

You can also find him on the Wix SEO Learning Hub as one of our expert contributors, contributing lots of expertise. Yeah, do check them out. The article, the backlink article, it's one of our favorite articles on the hub. We love them all, but we also love this one particularly. Do check it out. It covers it in so many different levels and it's useful for whether you're a pro, whether you're a beginner, whether you need a refresher. Do check it out.

Mordy Oberstein:

All right, well thanks Ashwin, and talk to you soon.

Ashwin Balakrishnan:

Happy to be on. Thanks.

Mordy Oberstein:

Speaking about links and what we discussed with Ashwin, so Google said a lot about links lately, more recently, not like lately, lately, but over the past few months, maybe even a year. They've kind of said links are not as important as you think they are, which I think that makes a lot of sense because links are a secondary signal. So Google's getting better at understanding primary signals than why we're relying on a secondary signal, but that doesn't mean that they're not important.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Right. The way I kind of think about it is like this, and I try to explain this to folks, a link is like somebody vouching for you. It's like if you stood in the line trying to get into Club Page One and you can hear the music is bumping and you stood in the line with all the other schmos, if somebody who is in the VIP lounge goes, "Hey, they're with me," sometimes that can get you into the VIP lounge, but you still have to actually-

Mordy Oberstein:

Be cool.

Crystal Carter:

... represent yourself. You still have to be cool. You still have to show up and, I don't know, have some decent dance moves or whatever it is that makes you stay in that space. If you don't, then you might not stay. You know what I mean? Just having somebody vouch for you doesn't necessarily mean... That's not the end all be all. It might get you in the door, but it's not going to necessarily keep you there. I think that it's part of the mix. It's not the only thing. It's super useful and it's also useful for discoverability and for-

Mordy Oberstein:

Traffic.

Crystal Carter:

... traffic.

Mordy Oberstein:

Traffic.

Crystal Carter:

And also for showing the company that you keep. People say you know somebody by who their friends are. If you're hanging out with those folks, it does say something about you. If you're getting a link from a high profile, high authority site that does say something about you.

Mordy Oberstein:

What we're trying to say basically is links are still important and we don't want you to think that they're not important. And because of that, we wanted to take a look at the Top of the SERP to see cases or situations or thinking where links actually can be a difference maker. Here's a very special Top of the SERP all about link building. To help us out, we asked famed link builder and founder of Digital Olympus Alexandra Tachalova if she can help describe some cases where links made all the difference and what happened and how did it play out. Here's Alex on what actually worked at the Top of the SERP.

\nAlexandra Tachalova: \n

Hello everyone. My name is Alex and I am the founder of Digital Olympus. Links still play a significant role in shaping Google service. You can't expect to outrun brand that have been in the market for ages accommodating thousands of links from reputable sites with better content, site structure on page, SO elements and so on. In well-established niches, niches links are a long-term investment. In contrast, we've noted that in recently emerging niches, links become a solid rhythm that results in a rapid boost in organic traffic.

Today you acquire link, and tomorrow you see changes in organic traffic. We have a client in the LinkedIn sales niche representing a tool that helps marketers and sales professionals automate certain actions on LinkedIn. This niche is very new, obviously, and the overall level of brand awareness across all the competitor power climates is relatively low. With fewer than 50 links back to the client's main page, we've been able to double their organic traffic from 100,000 to 200,000 in less than six months. We've rarely seen anything like this in other niches we've ever worked with.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much, Alex, for that. It's a great point, by the way. It kind of speaks to what we just said before. If you're talking about an emerging situation or an emerging topic, so Google doesn't understand the topic the same way that it understands something that's been around for a while. I've seen this myself a gazillion times when I've worked with some semi-news related topics.

You really, in order to crack the results, especially when you're competing with, in this case I was talking about a news case where you have other really established websites and Google on top of that is still trying to figure out what the heck this topic actually is, links do play a major role for the reason that we said before that Google doesn't have a grasp on the primary signal, which is the content itself and the topic itself. So it's going to inevitably rely on things like links. It makes a great deal of sense to focus on links, especially like Alex said, where the content or the topic is an emerging area on the web.

Crystal Carter:

I think that it's something that can help users to give you more clout when they're connecting with your new content. If you're a new brand, it's also something that's super important to make sure that people know who you are based on the links that you have. I think people forget people are crawling from link to link to link. That's how web crawlers work. They crawl from one to the other and they take information from the original place to provide context for the new place that they find themselves at. It's super valuable and you can see some good impact from link building. It's not the end all be all, of course, but it's certainly very, very, very important.

Mordy Oberstein:

Would you like to buy some of my links? I have high DA.

Crystal Carter:

The most high DA.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, the most high.

Crystal Carter:

300 high DA.

Mordy Oberstein:

You only have 300? I have have 4 million and fire electric power. It's like a Pokemon card.

Crystal Carter:

I posted that and someone was like, "You can only get 100. Where are you getting 300?" I was like, "Dude, it's not. Dude, honestly."

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, yeah, no, I know people. I know Dr. Pete. I get a high DA.

Crystal Carter:

Right? Precisely.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, it's the inside scoop. Now speaking of inside scoops, why don't we get into the scoop on this week's news with some Snappy SEO News.

Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Oh no, we're losing another tool in Google Search Console, except it doesn't matter. From the great Barry Schwartz in the sky, Googlebot Crawl Rate Tool in Search Console is going away, that coming from Search Engine Land. For the record, the tool didn't help you increase crawling, only decrease crawling, which basically, I don't know if you was having a technical issue, you wanted to slow down crawling until it got fixed, you might use this. Basically for 99.9% of the internet, it doesn't matter. So, thank you Barry.

Also, again from Barry Schwarz, but this time from Search Engine Round Table, follower count, fully live in Google search result snippets. So now you can see the number of followers listed within the actual organic result when that organic result of the social media account. So if you're googling Barry Schwartz and you see a Twitter account there, it'll show all the number of followers there. But I don't see this, so maybe either it's not live globally, although I did try to check it in the US, or Barry's wrong. Who knows? Thanks again, Barry.

Article number three from, you guessed it, also from Barry Schwartz, who by the way, at some point, the DOJ, you're going to hit their radar for your monopoly over to the SEO News, Barry. This coming from Search Engine Round Table, Google Bard can now understand YouTube videos. Basically Bard can understand the visual and audio in a YouTube video and then use it to serve up answers to your questions within Bard. I don't know, I personally really don't care, but it does reflect Google investing and understanding audio, and I think there's a lot more that Google can do with leveraging audio onto the SERP, which I think we plan on taking up on this very podcast down the line in a few weeks or so. Other than that, meh, whatever. Thanks again, Barry.

That's this week's Snappy News.

I just want to say that I could have stopped and said, "Well, that was a great pivot," but I didn't, but now I am, but it's after the fact so it's kind of like my compromise. I didn't want to ruin the pivot by talking about the pivot, but now I'm talking about the pivot we did before.

Crystal Carter:

Well done.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you.

Crystal Carter:

Good job.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yep, this is the one thing I'm good at.

Crystal Carter:

You can get a gold star. I feel like we should get patches or something.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't want a gold star. I want high DA links.

Crystal Carter:

Fair enough. Fair enough. That's what everyone dreams of. That's what all little SEOs dream of…

Mordy Oberstein:

On my tombstone, I want my DA score.

Crystal Carter:

He had high authority.

Mordy Oberstein:

He had a DA score of 78. Anyway, we were talking about links and there's plenty of link builders out there who do things like sell high DA links, whatever that even means. I don't even know what that means, but there are people who talk about links and offer some really great SEO advice, which brings us to our Follow of the Week, which is this week BiBi the Link Builder, BiBi Raven @BibiBuzzcom, over on the old Twitter/X/X/Twitter. She's hilarious. She's spunky and she knows what she's talking about, about links. It's like all the things you want in one from a follow on social media.

Crystal Carter:

She's fantastic. She shares a lot of great insights and you can also find her speaking at different events as well. Do keep an eye out for Bibi.

Mordy Oberstein:

All right, well I have no link to our ending.

Crystal Carter:

Like Bat Out of Hell.

Mordy Oberstein:

Totally. We're so far off the beginning of the show, I totally forgot about the Meatloaf thing.

Crystal Carter:

I mean, you hit it really hard at the beginning.

Mordy Oberstein:

I know. I should have hit it on the back end.

Crystal Carter:

To be fair though, the Meatloaf songs that I know I really appreciate, but my Meatloaf playlist is pretty short.

Mordy Oberstein:

There's only two songs, right?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. I mean pretty much. But then... There's three. There's the Objects and there's the... Oh, I'm falling really short. The other one.

Mordy Oberstein:

I Would Do Anything for Love, and then that's basically it.

Crystal Carter:

Yes, and Bat Out of Hell.

Mordy Oberstein:

There was the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Crystal Carter:

He was very good in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Janet. Janet.

Mordy Oberstein:

There's no more Meatloaf leftover, basically.

Crystal Carter:

That's so dark.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? We're back next week with a new episode as we get into SEO testing. It's going to get a little testy with the SEO testing next week, huh? Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO alerting of it, you guessed it, at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking at a little more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO.