Optimize Pages for Keywords Prior to Building Links?
-
Greetings MOZ Community:
According to site audit by a reputable SEO firm last November, my commercial real estate web site has a toxic link profile which is very weak (about 58% of links qualified as toxic).
The SEO firm suggests than we immediately start pruning the link profile, requesting removal of the toxic links and eventually filing a link disavow file with Google for links that web masters will not agree to remove.
While removing toxic links, the SEO firm proposes to simultaneously solicit very high quality links, to try to obtain 7-12 high quality links per month.
My question is the following: is it putting the cart before the horse to work on link building without optimizing pages (with Yoast) for specific keywords?
I would think that Google considers how each page is optimized for specific terms; which terms are used within the link structure, as well as terms within the meta tags. My site is partially optimized, but optimization has never been done thoroughly.
Should the pages of the site be optimized for the top 25-30 terms before link building begins. Or can that be done at a later stage. Note that my link profile is pretty atrocious. My site at the moment is receiving about 1,000 unique visitors a week from organic search. However 70% of the traffic is from terms that are not relevant. The firm that did my audit claims that removal of the toxic links while building some new links is imperative and that optimization for keywords can wait somewhat.
Any thoughts?/
Thanks for your assistance.
Alan
-
If the links are toxic, your firm is correct in that it's important to start the removal process. That said, I don't see any reason not to start optimizing pages for your terms. These aren't dependent tasks in any way. If the links were built by you and are toxic and your pages are not currently well optimized, you should definitely be working on both of those things.
If it's time that's the issue, think about what you can do on your own. There's no need to have a paid firm gathering contact info from the linking sites when you could easily be doing that yourself. Make sure you're communicating with one another so that they're helping with things you need help with
-
Hello,
Firstly, no submission of disavow file doesn't mean that you will get a manual review. it doesn't even mean that Google will indeed ignore those links. If you know what you are doing, filter the domains correctly and disavow low quality links you can only gain from this.The second part i want to refer to is to the good quality content. Good quality content is an amazing marketing tool but not a replacement for keyword rankings as most people think. For example an article about "5 easy tips to design the perfect email marketing campaign" will definitely drive few visitors per month on the site (lets say 100) but you wont substitute the 5000 you will get if you rank for "email marketing services" (this is just an example with random numbers). Keep always in mind at all times that Google doesnt want to make web sites popular, they want to rank popular sites.
Lastly you mention Yost SEO which means you use wordpress and also onpage optimisation. Yoast tells you that your onpage optimisation is top notch based on the content your write but doesnt take into account the fact that wordpress by default is an on-page nightmare. make sure you take care of tags, categories and always consider them in case you use your targeted keyword onpage.
-
Hi Brett:
The domain is about 9 years old and that has value. Organic search volume dropped from 6800/month to about 3100/month after the April 2012 Penguin update. It has climbed back in the last five months to about 4500/month. So the penalty has atleast been partially lifted.
I never received a notice of penalty from Google. However my SEO firm believes that so many of the links are toxic (per "LinkDetox") that that some sort of penalty exists on the site. Google Pagerank has decline to 2 from 4 and Cemper Trust has also declined significantly. Strangely enough search volume has increased significantly in the last 4 months despite the drop in PR and Cemper Trust. Being that the site still performs, I really hope it is not necessary to move to a new domain and start from scratch!!!
Are you saying that submitting a disavow will trigger a manual review of my site? If so, this may be very good, as the content on the site is useful and unique.
In the scenario above, where the site still ranks for keywords, search volume has increased but Cemper Trust and PR have declined, do you believe recovery and improvement is possible? Note, I have never received any penalty notice.
Thanks,
Alan -
Hi George, thanks for your response.
Actually, the content is high quality, unique content that is useful to the visitor. I have noticed that as new content is added search traffic increases.
Prior to the April 2012 Penguin update organic traffic was as high as 6800 visit per month, dropping to as low as 2800 per month. Search traffic is now about 4000/per month.
In 2010 and 2011 submissions were made to a few hundred low quality directories. As a result there are many toxic links pointing to the site, which I believe should be removed.
Content is useful, question is should that content be optimized with Yoast before we remove links?
Thanks,
Alan -
Hi Alan,
Do you need this website? would it be better to ditch and rebuild a new site. Its very hard to get back from a penalty. I would advise ask yourself these questions first. The SEO company will advise it can fix these things of course for a fee. At the moments Google's spam robot has spotted your links and warned you by using disavow it may mean they take a manual look at your site. Sorry to be negative but all the time getting back from this it could be easier to build a new site and learn from mistakes.
-
Hello Alan,
You should Optimize pages First.. Well Optimized Pages with Good Quality backlinks Will get you Required Rankings.
As a Start, Optimize your Web pages in regards to your Keywords and then start building backlinks.
Thanks
-
A house built on sand? Low quality pages will not attract natural links. Without good content, there's no there, there.
Build a quality site with good content, and useful design, relevant to your prospects and clients needs, before you do anything else. Deliver value first.
Even with fewer links, a site with higher quality content can often outrank a site that has more links, and will also be more link-worthy.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Paginated Pages Page Depth
Hi Everyone, I was wondering how Google counts the page depth on paginated pages. DeepCrawl is showing our primary pages as being 6+ levels deep, but without the blog or with an infinite scroll on the /blog/ page, I believe it would be only 2 or 3 levels deep. Using Moz's blog as an example, is https://moz.com/blog?page=2 treated to be on the same level in terms of page depth as https://moz.com/blog? If so is it the https://site.comcom/blog" /> and https://site.com/blog?page=3" /> code that helps Google recognize this? Or does Google treat the page depth the same way that DeepCrawl is showing it with the blog posts on page 2 being +1 in page depth compared to the ones on page 1, for example? Thanks, Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyRSB0 -
Best to Spend Marketing Budget on High Quality Articles OR Link Building Services?
Greeting MOZ Community: My site has 400 domains linking to it of which about 180 are toxic and 180 are suspicious according to a site audit from a reputable SEO firm. The SEO firm is offering link removal and link building services to remedy the situation. My question is this: if I can create and post high quality blog articles on a very regular basis, will this in and of itself create high quality links to my site? If the articles are of exceptional quality can I post them elsewhere to earn quality links? Does it make more sense to use my budget on paying a PR agency to create high quality articles and posting them on my blog or elsewhere rather than spending on an SEO link building campaign? Should I do both? I plan on having the SEO firm remove toxic links and optimize content using Yoast. But I want to be careful about not wasting my budget if the links will develop naturally if I post the content online myself. I am more inclined to have an SEO pro work on creating links but why pay if I can do it myself. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Advice on Link Building?
I know webmasters shouldn't focus on link building but unfortunately there are some types of content that doesn't get shared as much as other. And for content to go viral, it ain't that easy and it's almost impossible in some smaller niches where you don't have the volume to go "viral". That said I know about the common link building techniques. I know I can submit guest posts but when you're competing with websites that have over 10,000 backlinks, there is no way I'm going to get close to this with guest posting and commenting on other blogs. One way I found for getting backlinks is to publish interviews. Most of the time, people/businesses you interview like to link to this type of content. Publishing value-added content about other businesses' products or services may get some backlinks in return but not that often. So other than that, can some of you share some "out-of-the-box" link building strategies? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Scarce niche websites for link building
Hello! A small company from Mexico that offers cleaning services for home & businesses wants to rank on the first page of Google. The Good: Every month they give away stuff (discounts and/or a free service) and they also participate in campaigns that support non-profitable organizations & charity. So there is plenty of material for me to build some backlinks and to create some interesting content. Their competitors have 0 SEO. I have been doing my homework and none of their competitors websites that are ranking on the top 5 are doing any kind of SEO. But they have had their website for a long time and they probably have a decent amount of traffic per day. Open Site Explorer shows minimal to no websites pointing to them. Google Adwords has increased their sales. They are using virtually nothing as budget and it is helping, but they want organic SEO. The Bad: Blogs seem to be dead in Mexico. And that is one of my strongest ways to create backlinks. I usually get a blogger to write about the company I'm working for to create backlinks and works like a charm in countries were SEO is prehistoric. Usually it takes me very little effort to accomplish a website to rank very well in this kind of scenario, but I'm having trouble this time. The Something: I have been able to boost their rankings with basic SEO in a month but I'm stuck in page #2-5 on their most important keywords. The Ugly: I'm out of ideas. And their budget isn't good enough to apply paid strategies. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eblan0 -
What's your Link Building Tactics?
So my question is: What's your Link Building Tactic. I always have a bit of a problem building links for my websites. Also Do you use some kind of a tool? If yes can you reccomend it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
Do Outbound NoFollow Links Reduce the Page's Ability to Pass PageRank?
I get the recent change where adding a nofollow to one link wont increase the juice passed to other links. I'm wondering if nofollow still passes link-juice into the void. i.e. if a page has $10 of link-juice and has one link then regardless of whether this link is follow or nofollow will the page will leak the same juice? Specifically, Is this site benefitting from having a nofollow on the links in it's car buyer's checklist: http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/mitsubishi/diamante/auction-480341592.htm
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomoz8steer0 -
Where does link authority get passed to a stand alone landing page
Hi All, We are currently building a landing page that contains a bunch of funny top 10's, some that aren’t suitable for all customers, it can only be accessed from a PR source or recipient of one of our emails. The question I have is; where will the authority gained from people linking to this page go? Would it be passed to the home page, if there’s a link to it? Or would you recommend a way to control it? Any insight welcome. Cheers Neal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Exclaimer-2868850 -
Are URL shorteners building domain authority everytime someone uses a link from their service?
My understanding of domain authority is that the more links pointing to any page / resource on a domain, the greater the overall domain authority (and weight passed from outbound links on the domain) is. Because URL shorteners create links on their own domain that redirect to an off-domain page but link "to" an on-domain URL, are they gaining domain authority each time someone publishes a shortened link from their service? Or does Google penalize these sites specifically, or links that redirect in general? Or am I missing something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay.Neely0