August 29, 2024 • 47 mins
Discover groundbreaking insights on how link building truly impacts local SEO and Google rankings, based on three years of extensive testing. In this episode, we reveal surprising results showing that while link building significantly boosts organic rankings, its effect on local pack rankings is minimal. We also discuss how to evaluate the effectiveness of citations, avoid common link-building mistakes, and explore the persistence of "link echoes"—the phenomenon where ranking benefits remain even after a link is removed. Promo Links
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Article Referenced: https://moz.com/blog/link-echoes-ghosts-whiteboard-friday
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
In the last three years, we
(00:01):
have done a ton of testing to find out
exactly how links impact
ranking on Google.
Today I'm going to be sharing tests
that we have done in the last few years
that have completely changed
my mind on how link
building impacts local SEO,
so make sure you watch
all the way to the end,
because I'm going to be dropping
a ton of new, not well known information
(00:21):
about exactly how links impact ranking.
With me
today I have my wonderful colleague
Colin Nielsen,
who's going to be kind of talking
and asking me various questions
about all these tests
we're going to be sharing.
Thanks for coming, Colin.
Great to be here.
Now, I will say, Joy
definitely is underplaying how much time
she's actually spent immersed
(00:43):
in link
building over the last three years.
I think you could use obsessed.
Probably, an appropriate word here.
I think
probably 95% of every single message
I've gotten from Joy on slack over
the last three years has been like,
hey, check out this new thing
I just discovered
related to this link building test I did.
So so this is really good.
(01:03):
And I'm like,
so excited
that we get to share this stuff
with everyone.
It's definitely a peek
behind the curtain.
Yeah, and we made this
episode super long,
as you probably noticed,
because we were like
six months behind in publishing.
And I was telling my team, I'm like,
we got to get this stuff out there.
So in order to share more information,
we decided to do an extra long video
(01:24):
so that we could get through
just all of the stuff
that we've been learning
in the last few years.
Let's dive right in.
And I think
if we're going to talk about links,
assume, generally speaking,
the burning question
that everybody thinks about is
how do ranks actually impacts
ranking, right.
Everybody cares about rankings.
It's importance,
whether you think it's important or not.
(01:46):
What's interesting
is Google is constantly telling us,
you know, the links don't matter.
You don't need to be going out there
building links.
They don't impact ranking,
which then creates
maybe some division
right between us SEOs.
Some people say it's super important.
Some people say, man, it doesn't matter.
Let's talk about joy.
What have you discovered
specifically around
(02:07):
how links impact ranking?
I think that would be
a really good starting point here.
Yeah I agree.
So to kind of kick this off,
I got to go back to the very beginning.
So this again started
like three years ago.
I was really annoyed
because I went around asking
lots of SEOs,
hey guys,
can you tell me how you measure
the impact of links?
So I got a lot of,
you know, we know links impact ranking or
(02:30):
we do a lot of link building
and we see our clients
move up in ranking,
but no one could actually pinpoint,
you know, I built this link
and this page went up
or I built this link
and this Google business
profile listing went up.
And they used to ask people
this in interviews
all the time to
I would ask them, you know,
could you tell me a time
where you built a link
and you're positive
that that ranking increase
(02:51):
you got was a result of that link?
I usually get a lot of,
you know, kind of thing.
So I decided, you know,
I'm not satisfied with this.
If we're going to spend a lot of time
and a lot of money
building links for clients,
I want to know exactly
what is happening as a result of this.
So to start us off,
I basically started this test
three years ago, and I decided,
(03:12):
you know what?
I need to pick a site
that hasn't had any SEO done on it,
that doesn't have anything else
that would kind of get in the way
of measuring the results.
So my colleague Dave allowed me
use this testing site that he had,
and we decided to build a bunch of links
to it.
Now, there's one particular test
that we did that
I'm going to be covering.
We just built a single link,
(03:33):
like just what I wanted
to legitimately know.
Could you measure
the value of a single link?
So for this test,
I used Stirling's Kai's website
because frankly, I was like,
we have a pretty high
domain rating, right?
71 at the moment.
It's pretty proud of that.
And it was topically relevant to the site
we were linking to.
So I was like,
I know that's another thing
(03:54):
that people will say is a best practice.
So we literally gave one link
from Stirling Skye's
website to this defunct website
that had nothing
kind of going on with it.
Great. Quick question for you.
So you mentioned topical relevance.
I think most people maybe
have a sense, like a feeling of what
topical relevance means.
Like,
could you define what you mean
when you're thinking
(04:14):
and doing these tests?
What is topical relevance?
Sure. Yeah.
I should definitely clarify that.
So the site that I was linking to
was a site about SEO.
It was a site about advertising,
marketing, etc..
The site
that was linking to
it was also a marketing
company, Stirling's Guys website.
So there's this thought that, you know,
if you have, let's say, a plumber
(04:35):
and an electrician,
they're kind of related
because they're both in home services.
But, you know, if you have,
a lawyer, let's say that's,
that's linking to,
I don't know, a realtor or something,
they're not as connected.
So there's this idea
that you want to try
and get links from sites
that are related to you.
I'm not saying that's actually true,
because I don't know,
but that was the theory.
Oh yeah, makes sense.
(04:57):
Or at least it sounds like it does.
Yeah.
So I built this one link,
and I was not at all surprised
to see that organic rankings
had a massive increase.
This is kind of what I was
hoping and expecting.
So you'll see that there was like red
this grid.
This shows you
how this website ranked for that keyword
before we built the link.
And then the green
was just a couple weeks
(05:18):
later, shows you how they rank
after we built the link.
Now I really want to clarify
organic rankings
versus local rankings
if you're not familiar
with those two terms.
When we talk about local rankings,
we're talking about Google's
local PAC results that show up.
So generally
there's like 2 to 3 businesses
that show up by a map.
(05:38):
When we're talking
about organic rankings,
we're talking about the other results
on Google's search results page.
So this was organic rankings.
Huge lift right? No surprise.
So when we looked at
how this one link impact their local PAC
rankings,
this is where I was really surprised.
So as you can see here, they did increase
(05:59):
at the same time from 4 to 3.
But let's just be clear here.
This is very different
than the trend that we saw for organic.
Let me just put these side by side
from organic.
We go from like not really being anywhere
to being in the top three.
Whereas for local
PAC rankings it moved one position,
which was honestly pretty not exciting.
(06:24):
If we're going to summarize
that organic massive impact, local back
some impact and maybe in some cases
in this one here
we went from yellow to green.
It puts us over the line.
But it was like
we were already on the five yard line
and it just helped,
which was in a little bit.
I wonder, for clarification, Joy,
if we're talking about the local PAC
(06:45):
rankings spread here,
is this a links that was built to the GBP
landing page,
or are you talking though building links
to the GBP itself with the CID number
kind of thing?
Yeah.
So we this link that I built
was straight to the website
link to the home page of this website,
their Google Business profile
or GBP as we often call it,
(07:07):
that also links to the website.
I've heard people talk about
how you actually want to link
to your Google page,
like literally link to your
your listing on Google Maps.
We've done other tests on that
that we've already published,
but that is definitely not
what we were doing here.
We were linking straight to the website.
Thank you.
So yeah, in summary,
links have a really big impact
on organic rankings in this instance.
(07:30):
But we were really shocked to see
that the impact on local PAC
rankings was just really small.
Now, I also need to clarify,
we've repeated this test multiple times
over and over and over again
and seen the same thing.
So while I'm only sharing specifics
for this one isolated test,
it is something that we have repeated
and I found very consistently that links
(07:50):
in fact organic a lot impact
local PAC rankings just a little.
Though much enjoyed.
There's potentially
some people watching right now
and they're thinking, okay,
I've got
a link building budgets
and I'm responsible for organic.
I'm also
responsible for
for local kind of mat PAC rankings.
If you were to drop,
like a pie chart and say, okay,
(08:11):
like this, percentage of your efforts
should be organic
and this should be
thinking about mad Pac.
How would you draw that out?
Are we talking, like 90%
plus of your effort
should be focused on organic
when it's when it's link
building tactics. Yeah.
So I'm going to give two examples.
So we have lawyer client
lawyer clients
get a lot of leads
from their organic rankings.
(08:32):
We track those separately.
So I'd say if you're a lawyer
you should definitely be
doing link building.
But on the other hand,
we have an insurance agent.
The whopping
majority of their leads
comes from their Google business profile.
So I think it'd be kind of crazy
to put too much focus on link
building for an insurance agent,
because in reality,
if you're trying to move map pack
rankings, link
building is not the most
(08:52):
efficient way to do that.
Okay,
so I want to ask you
a really important question here.
And that is why is it that so many SEOs
seem to be failing
when it comes to link building?
Is there something we can point out?
Is there
stack of really important reasons
that are at the top of that pile?
What are you seeing as you've been doing
this, this research
(09:13):
for the last three years?
Yeah.
So one of the
biggest things
that I've realized
over the last three years
is that a lot of efforts on link
building are, frankly, wasted.
So there's some truth to
what the Googlers are saying.
When you hear Googlers out there
going, you're wasting your time.
You're wasting your money.
There is truth to that.
We have clients
all the time that will send this,
link building reports.
(09:33):
And I'll take a look at them.
And I'm like, yeah, like,
you are literally wasting your money.
And I'm going to explain
exactly how you can tell.
There is one fundamental thing
that I discovered
in my three year
journey that I feel like
most link building doesn't even address.
So I'm going to talk about that.
So before I do that,
I got to explain how Google's index works
because people might not know
(09:54):
what I'm talking about when I talk about
if something is indexed.
So when you search on Google,
you get a list of websites,
you get a list of pages, right?
Not everything is in Google's index.
And that is really important to know.
Just because
you have a listing on a website,
on a page, on a website,
does not mean that Google
has indexed that page.
And if it's not in Google's index,
(10:15):
there is no SEO value
that could be passed to your website.
For the most part,
there's a small exception.
We're going to get to
that later in the video.
So I'm in explain
by kind of giving you an illustration.
Here is an example of a website
that we used to use back in the day
when citations
were like the big thing with local SEO.
So there's a site called City Search.
(10:36):
And when you look at this graph
that I've got open here in Ahrefs,
you'll notice that the number of pages
that they have
ranking on
Google is like dropping substantially.
And this is a super important metric
to look at.
So the metric that I've actually
highlighted in here
is called organic pages.
It's a metric that Ahrefs has.
I haven't seen another tool
(10:57):
that has something similar,
but is a really good metric
to look at when you're looking at a site
that's like a directory
or a content site
where maybe you've posted an article
because it'll give you an idea
of how the site as a whole is doing,
and how likely it is
that your listing on that site
is even going to be in Google's index.
So you'll see with this particular site,
there's a huge drop off
(11:17):
the Google is not indexing these listing.
And I'm going to kind of share
an example or show you why.
So just to confirm
what we're looking at here,
this has nothing to do with traffic.
We're not looking at traffic
or anything like that.
This is purely how many pages is Google
aware of that exist
on a particular website.
And over time it's it's not aware of less
(11:38):
and less and less pages,
which obviously is a problem.
The pages are still there.
Yeah.
And I mean Google's
aware of them probably
because you're telling Google
to to index them and rank them,
but they're not ranking them.
So yeah, Google's usually aware of them,
but they're going
we don't want to index that.
And this is a general thing
that people have to understand
about Google.
Google doesn't want to index every page.
(12:00):
They want to index information.
They already don't have a copy of
because it cost them time.
It cost them money.
It costs them resources
to keep all these pages in their index.
So they want to use
those resources efficiently.
So when they're looking at city search,
let's just take a look at city Search.
This is a results page on city search.
(12:20):
A lot of listings
don't have much activity on them.
There's not really anything being added.
Now compare that with something similar
on Yelp.
So this is the exact same
kind of search on Yelp.
Yelp has users
generating photos
and adding photos of a listing,
a lot more details filled out
like ours, and reviews
and things like that.
(12:40):
So when both of these sites
are literally giving Google
the same kind of information,
it's pretty clear
which one Google's going to want to keep.
And then they're going to go, hey,
city search is basically got kind
of the same information
as Yelp and several other sites.
Why would we keep it in there?
I'll share one more example.
So this is a listing
for a business on City Search.
You'll see that
(13:00):
some of the reviews on
this listing are from like 2010.
Like it's not very active.
People are not actively using this site.
So when you compare that to Yelp,
you'll see more recent reviews
that have been left by users
that are also very detailed.
So fresh,
like user generated content
seems to be something
that Google clearly favors,
especially when it comes to directories.
(13:21):
That's fair to say for sure.
They also want signals
that are going to tell them.
If users like a website.
So one of the reasons
why Reddit is doing so well on Google
is because people search for Reddit
and people specifically look for Reddit,
and then when they see
Reddit in the search results,
they click on Reddit.
So in a sense, Google is rewarding
bigger brands,
but they're also rewarding the brands
(13:43):
that people actually want to see there.
You tell me if people aren't
searching Google for city search,
that's why you're saying
you're not doing that anymore.
I mean, maybe a bit, but
not a shocker to Yelp.
Okay.
So how this relates to link building,
just to tie it back,
if you are submitting a profile on a site
that is unlikely to get indexed
because there's nothing really unique
(14:04):
about that
site, and Google's
not indexing a lot of their pages,
a lot of the time,
what we will see is that the links
or the pages that the links are on
are not even in Google's index.
And if that's the case,
you're getting zero SEO benefit from it.
So usually what I've been
seeing on these reports
that I'm getting from
people
is a long list of either
profiles on directories
(14:24):
or guest posts on websites.
And when I go to the actual URL
that is linking to my client,
that pages in Google's index and the link
is there for worthless.
Well, so I have
a sneaking suspicion that there are link
builders, you know, PR
people in the industry
(14:45):
who, have been doing this
for the better part of a decade,
maybe more
that actually are still to this day,
thinking about indexing,
and had a conversation with,
with somebody recently
who does link building, full time.
And we were asking them
about indexation rates,
and it wasn't even a metric
that was part of their whole system
or they were concerned. You get the link.
(15:07):
That's it.
You've you've done your job.
Really important question.
And so
if you're starting
a link building campaign
and you're prioritizing,
what things to look for in a site
that you may want to go
after to get a backlink
is, I assume, this indexation check,
looking to see how many pages over time
(15:27):
they're losing or gaining.
Is that the number one
first thing
you're looking at
to determine quality of the link
or is it near the top?
Yeah.
And I would say
the time duration that they've had
patterns is also important
because you'll see this often
with what we call PBN,
which are private blog networks.
People set up sites
just to do SEO
with just a link to themselves.
(15:47):
They'll look great for a bit
until they get hit
by an algorithm update,
and then you'll see
their organic pages tanked.
I'm going to show examples of that later
in this video.
So in summary,
if you're spending money
on link building,
make sure you check the pages
that you're getting back
from your SEO company
and make sure that they're
in Google's index.
If they're not,
there's a good chance
you are wasting your money
(16:07):
on link building.
Okay, Joy, here is a question
that I hear all the time,
probably once every week
in some forum somewhere,
or from one of our clients
that we work with.
And that is
you're a business owner,
be paying an annual subscription
to some of these citation services
that offer yearly subscription services.
(16:28):
Give us
your give us your thoughts on that.
And what have you seen over
the last three years
as you've been really diving into this.
To
this is definitely
something we have tested.
So we have a recent example.
It was a Multi-location
personal injury lawyer
and they were paying a pretty hefty
fee to have somebody manage
their citations annually.
It's a tool.
(16:48):
It's something
where they just pay
to kind of keep their citations correct.
And they wanted to know
if they should renew it.
So I decided to take the list
of all their citations
and see how many were in Google's index.
To clarify,
there is a total of 516
citations that I was checking.
Colin, can you take a guess
at how many you think
(17:09):
would have been in Google's index?
Okay, well,
somebody's paying for service, and,
here's at least 50%, because still,
that means you're paying me for something
and you're only getting half
of what you it'd be for the 50%.
You would assume that, right?
Because you're
getting all these additional details
filled out
and it gets
(17:29):
you kind of priority and all this stuff.
Well, when I ran it out of 516,
there was a total of 16 or
3% that were in Google's index.
Whoa. Okay. Hold on.
The 3%.
So I'm trying to do
the math in my head here.
So so you pay for a service
(17:50):
subscription service.
And they're essentially saying
at the end of the year
you're getting 3% of what you paid for.
I know
500 of them are
not even in Google's index.
So how in the world
are they helping your ranking
if Google doesn't know they exist?
Wow, that is insane.
Seems crazy to me.
(18:11):
Okay. Go on.
So I will point out
there's a caveat here.
I'm not saying that
there's never a scenario
where you want to pay for a service
like this,
because I know a lot of big brands
don't want the headache
of managing their information online.
And there are some industries
where there are a good number of sites
that people actually visit.
Just turns out that
(18:31):
a lot of these services
for citations
for this particular industry,
it wasn't worth it.
The jury, I definitely agree with you
that that one situation
where you have
multi-location operations,
franchise operations,
we work with a bunch of them,
and I can definitely tell you
that there is a use case
for these subscription based tools
when you're running that
(18:52):
kind of operation.
But definitely in a case like that,
the indexing thing is,
is insanely surprising.
So if you're a business
and your renewal is coming up,
what I would
advise is to simply go
and use one of those index checker tools,
see what percentage of the citations
that they kind of blasted out for you,
or actually indexed,
and use that to base your decision
(19:13):
on whether or not you want to renew,
unless you have a really good other use
case, like you're
running some thousand location operation.
Exactly.
And you can check the comments.
We'll have an example tool
that you could use
if you want to check a whole bunch
at once
instead of putting them
into Google manually. Right.
So if a business is paying an SEO company
(19:34):
to do local
SEO for them,
good that SEO company be building
citations every single month.
So I'm going to give the typical SEO
answer of it depends. All right.
And the reason why it depends
is it has the number of citations
that matter
really, really based on the industry.
And I'm going
to give some examples of that.
(19:55):
So that brings us to
but I think maybe is the most important
question is
how do we know
what citations actually matter.
So the easiest way to figure out
what citations
matter for your business
is to do a branded search on Google,
see what ranks.
There might be wildly different results
for a plumber, for example,
than you would see for a lawyer.
And then to kind of expand on that
(20:17):
to see which ones are missing,
pick some of the top businesses
that rank on Google in your industry.
I do a branded search for them as well
to try and pick up on
some that you might be missing.
Do you have any guidelines
or best practices?
Assuming there's no infinite scroll.
How many pages
are you going back to assess
the citations?
Is it just what's on the first page?
Maybe the first two?
(20:38):
Or is that also a bit of a. It depends.
I'd say check the top 10 to 20 results.
Now to give an example of this,
I want to share a test
that we recently did
when it came to tiered,
what I call tier two citation.
So I'm going to clarify
what tier two citations are.
These are the ones that
you will often hear about in local SEO.
You'll see people building them,
but they do not fit the description
(20:59):
of what I just described.
So these ones are not usually sites
that you see ranking on Google
for brand terms.
And I really wanted to know,
do these types of citations
still hold any weight
to the old any value?
And should you pay for them.
Because there's a lot of providers
that offer citations pretty cheap.
So to test this out,
we built a pretty small number
for a client of ours.
(21:19):
We built 15 different citations.
So some of the sites that we included
were ones like Brown
Book, Merchant Circle, Hot Frog, Manta
two, Fine Local,
and a few others like that.
It just for some context
and actually
a little bit of a fun story here. Joy.
When I got into the SEO industry in 2010,
I think the very first task I ever had
(21:41):
to create
a business profile on Brown Book.
That's how long this particular profile
has been around. Same with Hot Frog.
So it's kind of crazy
that they still exist.
They do? Yeah.
And outside of that SEO,
as you probably won't hear
anybody talk about these sites. Yeah.
So we knew from previous tests
that links are more likely to impact
organic rankings than local.
And what we saw with this test
(22:02):
was the exact same thing.
We were actually able
to track some impacts
to our organic ranking,
but there was no impact at all
for local PAC rankings.
When we first built these links,
you will see that
we saw a small increase
in organic ranking for this business.
The reason why it was small
is because a lot of the citations
that we had built
were not even in Google's index,
(22:24):
to be specific.
Four out of the 15 that we built,
or 26%,
were in Google's index at this point.
So I thought about it and I was like,
what if we forced Google to index them?
I mean, we're SEOs.
We know how to make links, get indexed.
So we went ahead and did that.
So we were able
to get another five citations
indexed by doing this.
(22:45):
The others were just toast.
Google was like,
no, I'm not putting these in our index.
They're not high quality.
And we kind of gave up at that point.
Just a lot of people wondering.
Now, you mentioned Faust,
which is a really interesting,
portable kind of word.
And I picture
you like taking Google
and putting its arm
behind his back and, like,
index this now.
(23:07):
Like, what do you mean by force?
How do you specific tool,
what was the tactic to force
Google to index something.
Yeah.
There are absolutely tons of tools
out there that do this.
You can also link to it.
That's a good way to get Google
to index something.
Just link to it somewhere.
But that's exactly what we would do in
a task like this.
So after forcing Google to index them,
(23:28):
we saw an increase in ranking.
The kicker is it didn't last.
Everything looked great
until a month later
when we went back and checked.
We saw all the gains we have got
from all these citations
and did themselves.
And the reason
why was pretty obvious when we went
and checked
to see
if any of these citations
were still in Google's index,
(23:49):
all of them had become an index
six months later,
with the exception of one.
Any guesses on which one it was?
Well, I'm going to go with
my earlier mentioned Brown book and,
the reason I mentioned Brown book
is because it's
got a soft spot in my heart.
I think in 2011,
I submitted
like 6000 different businesses
(24:09):
to Brown Book
Dungeon with Brown Book all the way.
What is it, Joy.
That I mean, that's it, right?
It's literally why I hired you, Colin.
Because you know these things.
You know the Value Brown book.
So it got you your promotion.
Way to go.
Now question 43.
So so that's interesting.
So out of all these Brown book
was the only one
that was actually indexed,
(24:30):
after all was said and done.
Is there anything you can share
with the audience
in terms of what you think
maybe was the reason why
Brown Book
was the last directory standing,
or is this just, a random thing?
You know, how how can people systematize
trying to figure out how to make
another realm book and.
(24:50):
Yeah, I honestly, I'm kind of
shocked at Brown Book, to be honest.
I don't expect that in another six months
it'll still be indexed at all.
I think that the site structure is is
well done.
I think overall their
their traffic trends
aren't nearly as awful
as some of the other citation
sites that we were using.
So I think it's just a matter of time
with them.
But definitely if you want to know
(25:10):
if a citation is valuable or not,
you need to check it out in Ahrefs
or a tool like Ahrefs,
and just look to see
how many pages on that website
are in Google's index,
or how many are getting
traffic from Google.
That's really the best metric to look at.
Well, and I assume, Joy,
you're looking for that hockey stick
upwards trends
when you're trying to determine
(25:31):
if it's the best site.
Obviously you don't want
things to be going downwards.
But what about a situation
where it's
just kind of maintaining over time?
Or is it the hockey stick
you're looking for?
I think maintaining is fine,
but the majority of the ones that I look
at when it comes to citation sites,
a lot of them are headed down.
And especially if you look back
five years, you'll see that
five years ago, a lot of these sites
(25:52):
did really well on Google,
and then they're just starting
to tank in recent times.
Okay. It's good to know.
So something to keep in mind
if you are paying for SEO
and you are getting citations
on an ongoing basis,
make sure you're checking to see
how many of them are in Google's index.
Otherwise,
you are literally paying for SEO
that is undoing itself.
And don't just check once, check again
(26:13):
in like 3 to 6 months.
And that will be the true test
of whether or not
they're worth paying for. Actually.
So how many citations total
should a small business
owner be looking to build?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I really wanted to know
the answer to this
because I'd heard that, you know,
if you submit a whole bunch all at once,
you might see a boost in ranking.
So clearly,
(26:33):
we wanted to test this
using a citation provider.
We decided to order 50 citations
all at once
for a dentist client of ours,
and then also a handyman client.
But we specifically made sure
we picked locations
that we weren't actively working on,
so that nothing else
was really contributing
to any ranking increases
that we saw as a result for the handyman.
(26:54):
We saw some definite increases
in their organic ranking
right after ordering these citations.
We saw no impact
to their local park rankings.
The dentist that we did this
for saw the exact same pattern.
So just to clarify joy,
we again
were specifically talking
about the organic
algorithm here is is receiving
(27:14):
the most impact from this,
which is really quite interesting
because I think the vast majority
of people
directly associate the word citation
with the local algorithm.
And this is kind of telling us
there's some benefit here
if you do it a certain way,
but maybe not in the way
that everybody thinks
it's supposed to happen.
Is that a fair assessment so far?
(27:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Usually when I hear
people talk about citations,
they're referring to local PAC rankings.
And in both the past
50, building 50 all at once
did not impact a local PAC rankings
for either business
that we tried this on. Yes.
And I think it's worth even noting
just for,
you know,
everyone who loves this
kind of historical trivia,
David Mihm
actually invented the word citation.
(27:56):
I think back in the year, like 2008.
Maybe it was before that.
So it was clearly always meant
to capture something
that was related to the local algorithm.
So this this is really interesting.
So what we found with these tests
as we moved on
is that these citations
did not stay in Google's index,
and that was really the problem.
So for the dentists, for example,
(28:17):
a month later,
two of the 50 citations were still
in Google's index. Oh, I.
Wish I could do math.
I'm trying to think right now
two divided by 50.
That is insanely low.
I got yeah, at first there were 26,
so that's how many fell out
within that one month period.
The handyman was similar.
I tracked this one
even longer
(28:38):
and went back six months later
to see how many of these citations
were still in Google's index.
Want to take a guess?
Just to say,
I feel like I want to plug my year
for this one,
because it's
probably going to be
even worse than earlier.
So I'm I'm going down this time.
I'm going to say 12%.
Not far enough down. Collin.
(28:59):
This one
also only had two out of the 50
still in Google's index six months later.
That is wild.
Wow. Okay.
Now I want to give a disclaimer here.
There are some industries
that have some niche sites
that do matter.
Now, often
these are not included
in a lot of these citation packages
because you have to pay for them.
And I'm going to give you an example.
(29:20):
So let's say you're a wedding planner.
You want to be listed on the wire,
because the wire is a directory
that ranks really well on Google.
It's not specific to most industries,
but if you're a wedding planner,
it's related to you.
So there's a lot of industries like that.
Lawyers is another one.
There's quite a few legal websites
then you would want to be listed on,
but they are not usually covered
(29:41):
by a lot of these citation
building packages.
So all this is really interesting.
And so what it seems sheer joy is that
it's not really we think of citations.
We think of name, address, phone number,
and occasionally people say,
well it's actually not plus w.
But what this sounds like
is the real benefit from citations
is actually coming from
that little W website.
(30:02):
Part of it,
the link
versus the mention of a business's
name, address, phone number.
And I assume that's
because Google
already has that information
and they've already built
your you're kind of
cluster of information.
With that
said, this indexing thing
is a bit of a problem and a challenge.
So if somebody's
trying to build some KPIs,
like what percentage
should I actually go for?
(30:22):
Like how many of my citations
should be indexed?
What would you suggest?
Like what's a good KPI there?
And by the way, I know
you love the word KPI.
Does.
Okay.
So in general
and I'm gonna say in general,
because again
there are some industries
where there's a long list of citations
that matter,
but most of them are paid for.
So like you're
not just going to get a free listing.
A lot of them
(30:42):
you have to pay to get
any type of exposure on them.
So we're talking about
the generic citations like Yelp,
for example,
where any industry can be on them.
You are generally going
to have a really tough time
keeping more than 10 to 20
in Google's index.
Okay, that's good to know.
Feels like such a low bar.
But clearly this is just
this is just the way it is.
Very good to know
(31:03):
if you're enjoying this video so far.
Make sure to subscribe
so that the algorithms know
that this is awesome stuff,
so we can get this out
to as many people as possible.
All right.
So this is great question
I have for you here.
So historically
let's think back to 2013 2014.
And what I would see
(31:24):
in the early days of my SEO
career is a business would move
and we'd be like, no,
like, you cannot move.
This is the worst thing you can ever do
from a local search perspective.
What what kind of happen is
the business would move?
You'd update the address, now
all of a sudden
they'd have a 100% mismatch between
their Google Places listing
(31:44):
and all their citations.
It was like
the kiss of death back in the day.
So what I would like to know
is kind of like,
has that answer evolved over time?
And the specific question
I want to ask you is, as of today,
if I go to move my office,
what kind of impact
is that going to have?
Do I need to go out there
like rush out there and update
(32:05):
all of my citations?
What do we need to be thinking
about related to to moving these days?
Yeah, so it's definitely something
that you don't want to ignore
for any of the citations
that rank on Google.
So when you do a branded search,
for example, whatever's listed there,
you want to make sure
that that information is correct.
And I'll give you an example of one
(32:25):
we came across recently
where the business had this problem.
So we had this client
and they actually acquired
another business.
And that business
had a specific phone number
that they were using,
but that didn't transfer
with the acquisition.
So now you have all these listings
on Google for that old business name
that like literally lead
to a dead phone number when you call it.
(32:46):
So their clients
and their customers were complaining.
They're like,
we can't find your phone number.
We're looking on Google
and this phone number doesn't work, etc..
So naturally the client was like,
okay, we need to update these, right?
That's a perfect use case where it's
absolutely worth your time
and effort and money
to get those updated.
The problem was
because they're buying this business,
(33:07):
they don't have any clue
where the log ins are stored.
And all these citations
were set up by somebody else.
So they're really challenging
to get updated. Yeah.
So tell us a little bit
about what you did here.
I think I think this is
this is really important.
Yeah.
So I'll be honest here.
Sterling
Sky is definitely not
the known expert on citations.
So I reached out to the guy that is,
(33:28):
which is Darren Shaw over at White Spark.
And what Darren told me
was a really solid
tip that I told him
we needed to share with our audience.
Darren told me
that when you run into this situation
where you don't know
the email address
or the logging information
for a directory listing,
you can simply
first create a new email address
(33:48):
on that company's domain name.
This part is really important,
as it sets up your authority and proves
that you are actually associated
with that business,
and you're
just not some like random person
trying to sabotage or hijack a listing.
So step one
make sure you have
a domain email address.
Step two
you reach out to that particular site
(34:09):
using that email address.
You say that's simply
the person that created this doesn't work
there anymore,
and you're
trying to get access to the listing.
Now, Darren did warn me
your mileage may vary.
So some sites are a lot more responsive
to their inquiries than others,
but hopefully if it's a site
that cares about their traffic
and their quality,
(34:29):
they will get back to you
and allow you to reclaim the listing.
It's a really good tip
and I assume
this has been tested as well.
If you're going to try and do this
without actually
going and creating the proper
company domain,
essentially waste of time.
Like don't even bother as,
as a, as a worst case scenario.
Like don't even attempt to do it
without the domain email. Right?
(34:50):
Like let's just pretend
you're like Bob Joe at gmail.com.
They don't know if you had any
relation to the business.
Like there's no way for them
to possibly prove that.
So huge shout out
to White Spark and Darren Shaw
for giving us this awesome tip.
Hopefully it saves you
a lot of time and effort.
Also, if you're like,
I don't want to deal with the headache
of doing this,
you can reach out to White Spark.
(35:10):
They have a service
that will literally do it for you.
We'll put a link to that service
in our description
and I would say
citation building
is one of those things where
if you're not doing it all day,
every day,
you definitely should be having
someone who is doing it all day,
every day.
Do it because there's layers
to the game of citation building,
and it does require
(35:30):
knowledge, expertise
to actually do it properly.
100%. Virtually.
If you build a link to websites
and then that link gets removed,
do you lose the ranking benefit
that that link provided?
This is such a good question.
All right.
Rand Fishkin
talked about this concept back in 2014.
I can't find anybody
(35:52):
other than Rand who talked about this.
So Rand wrote this article on Mars.
We'll make
sure it's listed in the comments,
because this article is fascinating,
and I didn't know anything
about this concept
until I started researching it.
So he
calls this
concept link Echoes or Link Ghosts
literally working in SEO since 2006,
(36:12):
and I've never heard of that
term, have you?
Link. Echoes. Link. Ghosts.
Yeah. No.
Never heard about it.
Sounds really cool though.
Right?
I know
it's like your perfect Halloween day.
Maybe we should, like,
you know, pump this up at Halloween.
So this concept
he talks about in this article is
he did a series of tests
on various websites,
(36:32):
and he built a bunch of the links,
and then he saw increases
in ranking as a result of those links,
as we often do.
But then he went back
and he deleted the links
like he removed them.
And he saw that the rankings
did not go back down
to where they were before he built them.
Oh yeah. Okay.
(36:52):
Makes sense for.
Okay.
Yeah. So probably makes sense.
So just to straight up
we're link building a link exists.
It improves rankings.
Nothing much else is going on.
That link goes away.
The rankings that were gained
don't detract it.
It's same thing's holding it up.
This is crazy okay.
I mean, there's lots of practical
(37:12):
use cases for this.
Think about sponsorships.
Let's say you like sponsor
a little league
and then they give you a link. Right?
But you don't go back and sponsor them
every year.
It makes sense
that that link should
still give you some credit,
even though it's gone right.
Like it doesn't.
It seems natural.
Google wouldn't
want to reverse that, right?
So what I'm thinking in my head
now is everybody.
(37:33):
And I think Google
even refers to links as votes.
Maybe, maybe Google never said that,
but it was.
People think of links as as votes
between different websites.
So that makes sense.
If you're voting for something.
The vote count is always there, right?
The thing that you wanted
Google to be aware of
is still a thing that exists. Yeah.
(37:53):
So again,
other than Rand,
never really heard this talked about
and I couldn't find much on it
when I was searching for it.
So the problem I had
was that I can't find
anything recent on this.
The last article was literally from 2014,
so I had no idea
if this was still a thing
that worked the way
it used to work ten years ago.
Naturally,
(38:14):
I wanted to actually see
if I could show in reality
that this still happens.
So we had a perfect use case
for seeing if this is still true.
We had a specific website
that accepted articles,
and we had a bunch of our clients
listed on that website
contributing to it.
So what we call guest posting in the link
building world.
Now, this particular site was doing
(38:35):
really well.
It's good quality site,
and it got hammered
by an algorithm update in the last year.
So when that happened,
a lot of the pages,
the articles
that our clients
had basically contributed to the site
started getting on indexed.
But what I found was fascinating.
See, as these links are being created,
(38:56):
we were able to tie direct
ranking increases to those links.
So we knew
this is where the client ranks.
Before this was
where the client ranked two weeks later.
That link
definitely made that movement happen
when they started to get an indexed
we know, hey, a page
that doesn't get indexed by
Google doesn't really count for anything.
(39:18):
It's kind of the same as getting deleted.
So I was curious
to see if those ranking gains
that we got were lost later.
What do you think happened?
Well, I'm going to go that
whatever was happening in 2014
is probably to
some degree still happening
(39:38):
ten years later in 2024.
I'm going to go with that.
So it's nothing's new in the world of
SEO, I guess.
You're right, old is new.
What's new is old.
Some of the core fundamentals
about SEO haven't really changed.
Let's be honest. This is one of them.
We looked back and again
checking rankings.
I looked at screenshots.
I looked at before and after pictures.
(39:59):
And these clients
didn't lose the ranking benefit,
so they were still gaining the ranking
benefit of that link
from when it got created,
which frankly blew my mind.
Okay, so the burning question
I have joy and I, I'm going to
guess is on
people's minds
is they're listening to this
as we just talked about citations
and we talked about the fact
that citations have a horrible
(40:21):
indexation rate and that creates problems
on the ranking algorithm.
How come this isn't like,
why are we seeing the same thing here?
Like, shouldn't
we be seeing the same thing
that happens when citations get
the indexed?
That's the fascinating
thing about link building.
Like sometimes things are true
one instance and not for others.
We've definitely found
with citation building
(40:41):
and that type of link,
when they get on indexed,
you see a ranking decrease.
Like I've seen that consistency
consistently amongst a lot of clients
with this type of link building,
which is very different. Guest posting.
I've seen the opposite.
And so it's one of those things
that like link echoes, still exist.
This is still possible.
It doesn't mean
(41:02):
you will see this exact pattern happen
every time you build a link,
and then it either
gets deleted or un indexed.
You might see it go down.
It's all relative
to who you're competing with,
how many links they have,
what sites are linking to them
like it's a giant,
massive puzzle
essentially with like all these different
things contributing.
And I assume when
(41:23):
you were
learning about this,
this was during the webinar
when you were interviewing Rand, correct?
Joy.
No, no, this had nothing to do with what.
I didn't even know. Okay.
I didn't even ask him about this.
I'm curious
to see what he says
when he watches this video
or if he watches this video, but,
I think I'd probably be happy
to know that stuff he was teaching us
ten years ago in SEO is still true.
(41:45):
Kind of cool.
What I would I'd be curious to know.
And if anyone watching has any insight
or have done any testing around this,
let us know in the comments.
But I think this echo concept
is probably applicable
to other parts of SEO as well,
and the one that immediately comes
to mind on the local algorithm side.
Is adding descriptors here GBP name.
(42:06):
And I know we've done
testing historically and seen cases
where you can now to descriptor
remove it.
And we have seen cases
where you remove it
in the ranking things.
But we've also seen cases
where the rankings
you gained from the descriptor
once it's removed held right.
So I don't know if it's a time thing,
like the thing needs to exist
in Google's world
for a certain period of time.
And then they finally,
although I think categories are the same,
(42:29):
with Google business profiles,
I think it has a little memory,
or echo or whatever
you want to call it, there to.
Yeah.
And there was something addressed
about this concept
in the leaked articles that that came out
about Google's algorithm.
So I think,
I think Rand may have talked about that
in the video interview
that we did with him,
but I believe there is,
a shelf life
of like a certain time period.
(42:51):
So one of the things I really don't
know is like,
you know, 2
or 3 algorithms from now,
will those rankings start decreasing?
That's a good question.
I don't have the answer to yet,
but I would assume so.
I'm going to give you very specifics
on like some of the ones that I track
just so you can understand
like why this was so important.
So so I know, Rand, if you are watching
this, we'd love to hear your feedback.
Please leave it in the comment.
(43:12):
So for this very specific examples
that I was tracking,
I want to just share what I saw.
So we had an orthodontist.
They were ranking fifth
for a particular keyword.
We built a one single link to their page
and they increased from position
five to position three.
So this was substantial
because it actually doubled their traffic
(43:34):
for that keyword over
the next three months.
That's crazy.
As insane.
Just like that one thing.
Yeah.
And then they kept that gain
even after this link.
Got an index later on for another client.
They were dentist.
They went up from position
four to position
two after a single link was built.
And they also kept that ranking
(43:55):
after the link was on indexed.
Enjoy these examples.
Or things
like you were just mentioning before.
You're going to be going back over like,
like further down the road to see,
you know,
the image that comes to mind is like,
is this echo in the Grand Canyon
or is this in like a small warehouse?
Right.
Like an echo in the Grand Canyon
is going to go a lot further.
(44:16):
So this is really interesting.
I guess
I just want to make sure
people are grasping this,
that one of the most important things
with this,
and some of the other things
that we've been talking about today,
is you need to continually
check on these things over time,
just because something hasn't happened
within a three or 4 or 6 month period,
it doesn't mean it can't be happening
four months down the road.
(44:36):
Yeah.
And I'm going to actually
that's a great point, Colin,
because every link that you build
likely has a shelf life,
which is not something that I feel
like a lot of people really understand.
And so something that I saw as well
with the tests that I shared earlier
in this video about the website
that we link to from Sterling, Skye,
they also had a shelf life to that link.
I tracked it for like over almost a year
(44:58):
and saw that after eight months
they started declining and ranking again,
so that one link
kept them up high for eight months.
And then it started to go down.
This is wild, absolute roller coaster.
Ride.
And it's something like I mentioned,
we've seen it for lots of industries.
We also had a divorce lawyer
that I was tracking.
They went from position three to position
one as a result of the link.
(45:19):
Also got an indexed.
They kept position one.
Now again
don't expect them to keep position
one forever,
which is why we can kind of need
to continue building links
and doing other things to help their SEO.
So in summary,
link echoes are very much still a thing.
They still exist.
The concept that you get a link,
you lose the link,
you keep your ranking benefit.
(45:41):
That's still true today.
That being said, it's
not overly consistent.
We've seen some cases in shared examples
where you have a bunch of links,
you lose them
and you do actually decline a ranking,
but not always.
So I love to hear from you guys
if this is a new concept to you,
if you've noticed this concept of link
ACOs like,
please share with us in the comments
because I love hearing
(46:01):
other people's stories
and I will leave you
with my theory on why.
I think some people keep their positions
and some people don't.
I think that if you deserve the position
that you now have,
and if you
have a solid click through rate,
you should keep that position.
Whereas if you never really deserved it.
And let's say, for example,
some like major website is out
(46:23):
ranking you.
Let's say
you managed to get above Reddit.
I'm just going to pick on them.
You probably don't deserve
to be above Reddit.
Very few people do.
You probably won't keep that position
right though.
So we've talked about a lot today.
Link building is the topic de year.
We've talked about indexing and citations
and what to do when you move.
Really good stuff here.
Give us a little taste of,
(46:44):
what's what's coming down the road.
What kind of things
are we going to be talking about?
Oh my goodness.
So when I mentioned
we had to make this video long
because I have so much to get through,
we only got through seven
out of the 17 topics
that I need to get through,
so the rest is coming next month.
I really want to hear feedback.
If you liked this video,
what did you like?
What parts did you find
the most interesting?
(47:05):
Your feedback really helps us
make sure that we can cater
our future videos to you.
So please leave us
feedback in the comments.
Next month
we're going to be talking
about some spam stuff
when it comes to link building,
so I got to look at it
like a manual penalty recently,
which I haven't seen in a very long time.
So I'm going to dive into that a bit.
We're going to talk about parasite SEO
(47:26):
and some controversial
kind of looks at that.
Spoiler.
It does work.
And then we're going to talk about things
like guest posting
and other types of link building,
and how exactly
someone can measure the results
from link building.
So tons of stuff coming.
Make sure you do subscribe to our channel
to get alerted of that video.
When we publish that one next month.
In the last three years, we
(00:01):
have done a ton of testing to find out
exactly how links impact
ranking on Google.
Today I'm going to be sharing tests
that we have done in the last few years
that have completely changed
my mind on how link
building impacts local SEO,
so make sure you watch
all the way to the end,
because I'm going to be dropping
a ton of new, not well known information
(00:21):
about exactly how links impact ranking.
With me
today I have my wonderful colleague
Colin Nielsen,
who's going to be kind of talking
and asking me various questions
about all these tests
we're going to be sharing.
Thanks for coming, Colin.
Great to be here.
Now, I will say, Joy
definitely is underplaying how much time
she's actually spent immersed
(00:43):
in link
building over the last three years.
I think you could use obsessed.
Probably, an appropriate word here.
I think
probably 95% of every single message
I've gotten from Joy on slack over
the last three years has been like,
hey, check out this new thing
I just discovered
related to this link building test I did.
So so this is really good.
(01:03):
And I'm like,
so excited
that we get to share this stuff
with everyone.
It's definitely a peek
behind the curtain.
Yeah, and we made this
episode super long,
as you probably noticed,
because we were like
six months behind in publishing.
And I was telling my team, I'm like,
we got to get this stuff out there.
So in order to share more information,
we decided to do an extra long video
(01:24):
so that we could get through
just all of the stuff
that we've been learning
in the last few years.
Let's dive right in.
And I think
if we're going to talk about links,
assume, generally speaking,
the burning question
that everybody thinks about is
how do ranks actually impacts
ranking, right.
Everybody cares about rankings.
It's importance,
whether you think it's important or not.
(01:46):
What's interesting
is Google is constantly telling us,
you know, the links don't matter.
You don't need to be going out there
building links.
They don't impact ranking,
which then creates
maybe some division
right between us SEOs.
Some people say it's super important.
Some people say, man, it doesn't matter.
Let's talk about joy.
What have you discovered
specifically around
(02:07):
how links impact ranking?
I think that would be
a really good starting point here.
Yeah I agree.
So to kind of kick this off,
I got to go back to the very beginning.
So this again started
like three years ago.
I was really annoyed
because I went around asking
lots of SEOs,
hey guys,
can you tell me how you measure
the impact of links?
So I got a lot of,
you know, we know links impact ranking or
(02:30):
we do a lot of link building
and we see our clients
move up in ranking,
but no one could actually pinpoint,
you know, I built this link
and this page went up
or I built this link
and this Google business
profile listing went up.
And they used to ask people
this in interviews
all the time to
I would ask them, you know,
could you tell me a time
where you built a link
and you're positive
that that ranking increase
(02:51):
you got was a result of that link?
I usually get a lot of,
you know, kind of thing.
So I decided, you know,
I'm not satisfied with this.
If we're going to spend a lot of time
and a lot of money
building links for clients,
I want to know exactly
what is happening as a result of this.
So to start us off,
I basically started this test
three years ago, and I decided,
(03:12):
you know what?
I need to pick a site
that hasn't had any SEO done on it,
that doesn't have anything else
that would kind of get in the way
of measuring the results.
So my colleague Dave allowed me
use this testing site that he had,
and we decided to build a bunch of links
to it.
Now, there's one particular test
that we did that
I'm going to be covering.
We just built a single link,
(03:33):
like just what I wanted
to legitimately know.
Could you measure
the value of a single link?
So for this test,
I used Stirling's Kai's website
because frankly, I was like,
we have a pretty high
domain rating, right?
71 at the moment.
It's pretty proud of that.
And it was topically relevant to the site
we were linking to.
So I was like,
I know that's another thing
(03:54):
that people will say is a best practice.
So we literally gave one link
from Stirling Skye's
website to this defunct website
that had nothing
kind of going on with it.
Great. Quick question for you.
So you mentioned topical relevance.
I think most people maybe
have a sense, like a feeling of what
topical relevance means.
Like,
could you define what you mean
when you're thinking
(04:14):
and doing these tests?
What is topical relevance?
Sure. Yeah.
I should definitely clarify that.
So the site that I was linking to
was a site about SEO.
It was a site about advertising,
marketing, etc..
The site
that was linking to
it was also a marketing
company, Stirling's Guys website.
So there's this thought that, you know,
if you have, let's say, a plumber
(04:35):
and an electrician,
they're kind of related
because they're both in home services.
But, you know, if you have,
a lawyer, let's say that's,
that's linking to,
I don't know, a realtor or something,
they're not as connected.
So there's this idea
that you want to try
and get links from sites
that are related to you.
I'm not saying that's actually true,
because I don't know,
but that was the theory.
Oh yeah, makes sense.
(04:57):
Or at least it sounds like it does.
Yeah.
So I built this one link,
and I was not at all surprised
to see that organic rankings
had a massive increase.
This is kind of what I was
hoping and expecting.
So you'll see that there was like red
this grid.
This shows you
how this website ranked for that keyword
before we built the link.
And then the green
was just a couple weeks
(05:18):
later, shows you how they rank
after we built the link.
Now I really want to clarify
organic rankings
versus local rankings
if you're not familiar
with those two terms.
When we talk about local rankings,
we're talking about Google's
local PAC results that show up.
So generally
there's like 2 to 3 businesses
that show up by a map.
(05:38):
When we're talking
about organic rankings,
we're talking about the other results
on Google's search results page.
So this was organic rankings.
Huge lift right? No surprise.
So when we looked at
how this one link impact their local PAC
rankings,
this is where I was really surprised.
So as you can see here, they did increase
(05:59):
at the same time from 4 to 3.
But let's just be clear here.
This is very different
than the trend that we saw for organic.
Let me just put these side by side
from organic.
We go from like not really being anywhere
to being in the top three.
Whereas for local
PAC rankings it moved one position,
which was honestly pretty not exciting.
(06:24):
If we're going to summarize
that organic massive impact, local back
some impact and maybe in some cases
in this one here
we went from yellow to green.
It puts us over the line.
But it was like
we were already on the five yard line
and it just helped,
which was in a little bit.
I wonder, for clarification, Joy,
if we're talking about the local PAC
(06:45):
rankings spread here,
is this a links that was built to the GBP
landing page,
or are you talking though building links
to the GBP itself with the CID number
kind of thing?
Yeah.
So we this link that I built
was straight to the website
link to the home page of this website,
their Google Business profile
or GBP as we often call it,
(07:07):
that also links to the website.
I've heard people talk about
how you actually want to link
to your Google page,
like literally link to your
your listing on Google Maps.
We've done other tests on that
that we've already published,
but that is definitely not
what we were doing here.
We were linking straight to the website.
Thank you.
So yeah, in summary,
links have a really big impact
on organic rankings in this instance.
(07:30):
But we were really shocked to see
that the impact on local PAC
rankings was just really small.
Now, I also need to clarify,
we've repeated this test multiple times
over and over and over again
and seen the same thing.
So while I'm only sharing specifics
for this one isolated test,
it is something that we have repeated
and I found very consistently that links
(07:50):
in fact organic a lot impact
local PAC rankings just a little.
Though much enjoyed.
There's potentially
some people watching right now
and they're thinking, okay,
I've got
a link building budgets
and I'm responsible for organic.
I'm also
responsible for
for local kind of mat PAC rankings.
If you were to drop,
like a pie chart and say, okay,
(08:11):
like this, percentage of your efforts
should be organic
and this should be
thinking about mad Pac.
How would you draw that out?
Are we talking, like 90%
plus of your effort
should be focused on organic
when it's when it's link
building tactics. Yeah.
So I'm going to give two examples.
So we have lawyer client
lawyer clients
get a lot of leads
from their organic rankings.
(08:32):
We track those separately.
So I'd say if you're a lawyer
you should definitely be
doing link building.
But on the other hand,
we have an insurance agent.
The whopping
majority of their leads
comes from their Google business profile.
So I think it'd be kind of crazy
to put too much focus on link
building for an insurance agent,
because in reality,
if you're trying to move map pack
rankings, link
building is not the most
(08:52):
efficient way to do that.
Okay,
so I want to ask you
a really important question here.
And that is why is it that so many SEOs
seem to be failing
when it comes to link building?
Is there something we can point out?
Is there
stack of really important reasons
that are at the top of that pile?
What are you seeing as you've been doing
this, this research
(09:13):
for the last three years?
Yeah.
So one of the
biggest things
that I've realized
over the last three years
is that a lot of efforts on link
building are, frankly, wasted.
So there's some truth to
what the Googlers are saying.
When you hear Googlers out there
going, you're wasting your time.
You're wasting your money.
There is truth to that.
We have clients
all the time that will send this,
link building reports.
(09:33):
And I'll take a look at them.
And I'm like, yeah, like,
you are literally wasting your money.
And I'm going to explain
exactly how you can tell.
There is one fundamental thing
that I discovered
in my three year
journey that I feel like
most link building doesn't even address.
So I'm going to talk about that.
So before I do that,
I got to explain how Google's index works
because people might not know
(09:54):
what I'm talking about when I talk about
if something is indexed.
So when you search on Google,
you get a list of websites,
you get a list of pages, right?
Not everything is in Google's index.
And that is really important to know.
Just because
you have a listing on a website,
on a page, on a website,
does not mean that Google
has indexed that page.
And if it's not in Google's index,
(10:15):
there is no SEO value
that could be passed to your website.
For the most part,
there's a small exception.
We're going to get to
that later in the video.
So I'm in explain
by kind of giving you an illustration.
Here is an example of a website
that we used to use back in the day
when citations
were like the big thing with local SEO.
So there's a site called City Search.
(10:36):
And when you look at this graph
that I've got open here in Ahrefs,
you'll notice that the number of pages
that they have
ranking on
Google is like dropping substantially.
And this is a super important metric
to look at.
So the metric that I've actually
highlighted in here
is called organic pages.
It's a metric that Ahrefs has.
I haven't seen another tool
(10:57):
that has something similar,
but is a really good metric
to look at when you're looking at a site
that's like a directory
or a content site
where maybe you've posted an article
because it'll give you an idea
of how the site as a whole is doing,
and how likely it is
that your listing on that site
is even going to be in Google's index.
So you'll see with this particular site,
there's a huge drop off
(11:17):
the Google is not indexing these listing.
And I'm going to kind of share
an example or show you why.
So just to confirm
what we're looking at here,
this has nothing to do with traffic.
We're not looking at traffic
or anything like that.
This is purely how many pages is Google
aware of that exist
on a particular website.
And over time it's it's not aware of less
(11:38):
and less and less pages,
which obviously is a problem.
The pages are still there.
Yeah.
And I mean Google's
aware of them probably
because you're telling Google
to to index them and rank them,
but they're not ranking them.
So yeah, Google's usually aware of them,
but they're going
we don't want to index that.
And this is a general thing
that people have to understand
about Google.
Google doesn't want to index every page.
(12:00):
They want to index information.
They already don't have a copy of
because it cost them time.
It cost them money.
It costs them resources
to keep all these pages in their index.
So they want to use
those resources efficiently.
So when they're looking at city search,
let's just take a look at city Search.
This is a results page on city search.
(12:20):
A lot of listings
don't have much activity on them.
There's not really anything being added.
Now compare that with something similar
on Yelp.
So this is the exact same
kind of search on Yelp.
Yelp has users
generating photos
and adding photos of a listing,
a lot more details filled out
like ours, and reviews
and things like that.
(12:40):
So when both of these sites
are literally giving Google
the same kind of information,
it's pretty clear
which one Google's going to want to keep.
And then they're going to go, hey,
city search is basically got kind
of the same information
as Yelp and several other sites.
Why would we keep it in there?
I'll share one more example.
So this is a listing
for a business on City Search.
You'll see that
(13:00):
some of the reviews on
this listing are from like 2010.
Like it's not very active.
People are not actively using this site.
So when you compare that to Yelp,
you'll see more recent reviews
that have been left by users
that are also very detailed.
So fresh,
like user generated content
seems to be something
that Google clearly favors,
especially when it comes to directories.
(13:21):
That's fair to say for sure.
They also want signals
that are going to tell them.
If users like a website.
So one of the reasons
why Reddit is doing so well on Google
is because people search for Reddit
and people specifically look for Reddit,
and then when they see
Reddit in the search results,
they click on Reddit.
So in a sense, Google is rewarding
bigger brands,
but they're also rewarding the brands
(13:43):
that people actually want to see there.
You tell me if people aren't
searching Google for city search,
that's why you're saying
you're not doing that anymore.
I mean, maybe a bit, but
not a shocker to Yelp.
Okay.
So how this relates to link building,
just to tie it back,
if you are submitting a profile on a site
that is unlikely to get indexed
because there's nothing really unique
(14:04):
about that
site, and Google's
not indexing a lot of their pages,
a lot of the time,
what we will see is that the links
or the pages that the links are on
are not even in Google's index.
And if that's the case,
you're getting zero SEO benefit from it.
So usually what I've been
seeing on these reports
that I'm getting from
people
is a long list of either
profiles on directories
(14:24):
or guest posts on websites.
And when I go to the actual URL
that is linking to my client,
that pages in Google's index and the link
is there for worthless.
Well, so I have
a sneaking suspicion that there are link
builders, you know, PR
people in the industry
(14:45):
who, have been doing this
for the better part of a decade,
maybe more
that actually are still to this day,
thinking about indexing,
and had a conversation with,
with somebody recently
who does link building, full time.
And we were asking them
about indexation rates,
and it wasn't even a metric
that was part of their whole system
or they were concerned. You get the link.
(15:07):
That's it.
You've you've done your job.
Really important question.
And so
if you're starting
a link building campaign
and you're prioritizing,
what things to look for in a site
that you may want to go
after to get a backlink
is, I assume, this indexation check,
looking to see how many pages over time
(15:27):
they're losing or gaining.
Is that the number one
first thing
you're looking at
to determine quality of the link
or is it near the top?
Yeah.
And I would say
the time duration that they've had
patterns is also important
because you'll see this often
with what we call PBN,
which are private blog networks.
People set up sites
just to do SEO
with just a link to themselves.
(15:47):
They'll look great for a bit
until they get hit
by an algorithm update,
and then you'll see
their organic pages tanked.
I'm going to show examples of that later
in this video.
So in summary,
if you're spending money
on link building,
make sure you check the pages
that you're getting back
from your SEO company
and make sure that they're
in Google's index.
If they're not,
there's a good chance
you are wasting your money
(16:07):
on link building.
Okay, Joy, here is a question
that I hear all the time,
probably once every week
in some forum somewhere,
or from one of our clients
that we work with.
And that is
you're a business owner,
be paying an annual subscription
to some of these citation services
that offer yearly subscription services.
(16:28):
Give us
your give us your thoughts on that.
And what have you seen over
the last three years
as you've been really diving into this.
To
this is definitely
something we have tested.
So we have a recent example.
It was a Multi-location
personal injury lawyer
and they were paying a pretty hefty
fee to have somebody manage
their citations annually.
It's a tool.
(16:48):
It's something
where they just pay
to kind of keep their citations correct.
And they wanted to know
if they should renew it.
So I decided to take the list
of all their citations
and see how many were in Google's index.
To clarify,
there is a total of 516
citations that I was checking.
Colin, can you take a guess
at how many you think
(17:09):
would have been in Google's index?
Okay, well,
somebody's paying for service, and,
here's at least 50%, because still,
that means you're paying me for something
and you're only getting half
of what you it'd be for the 50%.
You would assume that, right?
Because you're
getting all these additional details
filled out
and it gets
(17:29):
you kind of priority and all this stuff.
Well, when I ran it out of 516,
there was a total of 16 or
3% that were in Google's index.
Whoa. Okay. Hold on.
The 3%.
So I'm trying to do
the math in my head here.
So so you pay for a service
(17:50):
subscription service.
And they're essentially saying
at the end of the year
you're getting 3% of what you paid for.
I know
500 of them are
not even in Google's index.
So how in the world
are they helping your ranking
if Google doesn't know they exist?
Wow, that is insane.
Seems crazy to me.
(18:11):
Okay. Go on.
So I will point out
there's a caveat here.
I'm not saying that
there's never a scenario
where you want to pay for a service
like this,
because I know a lot of big brands
don't want the headache
of managing their information online.
And there are some industries
where there are a good number of sites
that people actually visit.
Just turns out that
(18:31):
a lot of these services
for citations
for this particular industry,
it wasn't worth it.
The jury, I definitely agree with you
that that one situation
where you have
multi-location operations,
franchise operations,
we work with a bunch of them,
and I can definitely tell you
that there is a use case
for these subscription based tools
when you're running that
(18:52):
kind of operation.
But definitely in a case like that,
the indexing thing is,
is insanely surprising.
So if you're a business
and your renewal is coming up,
what I would
advise is to simply go
and use one of those index checker tools,
see what percentage of the citations
that they kind of blasted out for you,
or actually indexed,
and use that to base your decision
(19:13):
on whether or not you want to renew,
unless you have a really good other use
case, like you're
running some thousand location operation.
Exactly.
And you can check the comments.
We'll have an example tool
that you could use
if you want to check a whole bunch
at once
instead of putting them
into Google manually. Right.
So if a business is paying an SEO company
(19:34):
to do local
SEO for them,
good that SEO company be building
citations every single month.
So I'm going to give the typical SEO
answer of it depends. All right.
And the reason why it depends
is it has the number of citations
that matter
really, really based on the industry.
And I'm going
to give some examples of that.
(19:55):
So that brings us to
but I think maybe is the most important
question is
how do we know
what citations actually matter.
So the easiest way to figure out
what citations
matter for your business
is to do a branded search on Google,
see what ranks.
There might be wildly different results
for a plumber, for example,
than you would see for a lawyer.
And then to kind of expand on that
(20:17):
to see which ones are missing,
pick some of the top businesses
that rank on Google in your industry.
I do a branded search for them as well
to try and pick up on
some that you might be missing.
Do you have any guidelines
or best practices?
Assuming there's no infinite scroll.
How many pages
are you going back to assess
the citations?
Is it just what's on the first page?
Maybe the first two?
(20:38):
Or is that also a bit of a. It depends.
I'd say check the top 10 to 20 results.
Now to give an example of this,
I want to share a test
that we recently did
when it came to tiered,
what I call tier two citation.
So I'm going to clarify
what tier two citations are.
These are the ones that
you will often hear about in local SEO.
You'll see people building them,
but they do not fit the description
(20:59):
of what I just described.
So these ones are not usually sites
that you see ranking on Google
for brand terms.
And I really wanted to know,
do these types of citations
still hold any weight
to the old any value?
And should you pay for them.
Because there's a lot of providers
that offer citations pretty cheap.
So to test this out,
we built a pretty small number
for a client of ours.
(21:19):
We built 15 different citations.
So some of the sites that we included
were ones like Brown
Book, Merchant Circle, Hot Frog, Manta
two, Fine Local,
and a few others like that.
It just for some context
and actually
a little bit of a fun story here. Joy.
When I got into the SEO industry in 2010,
I think the very first task I ever had
(21:41):
to create
a business profile on Brown Book.
That's how long this particular profile
has been around. Same with Hot Frog.
So it's kind of crazy
that they still exist.
They do? Yeah.
And outside of that SEO,
as you probably won't hear
anybody talk about these sites. Yeah.
So we knew from previous tests
that links are more likely to impact
organic rankings than local.
And what we saw with this test
(22:02):
was the exact same thing.
We were actually able
to track some impacts
to our organic ranking,
but there was no impact at all
for local PAC rankings.
When we first built these links,
you will see that
we saw a small increase
in organic ranking for this business.
The reason why it was small
is because a lot of the citations
that we had built
were not even in Google's index,
(22:24):
to be specific.
Four out of the 15 that we built,
or 26%,
were in Google's index at this point.
So I thought about it and I was like,
what if we forced Google to index them?
I mean, we're SEOs.
We know how to make links, get indexed.
So we went ahead and did that.
So we were able
to get another five citations
indexed by doing this.
(22:45):
The others were just toast.
Google was like,
no, I'm not putting these in our index.
They're not high quality.
And we kind of gave up at that point.
Just a lot of people wondering.
Now, you mentioned Faust,
which is a really interesting,
portable kind of word.
And I picture
you like taking Google
and putting its arm
behind his back and, like,
index this now.
(23:07):
Like, what do you mean by force?
How do you specific tool,
what was the tactic to force
Google to index something.
Yeah.
There are absolutely tons of tools
out there that do this.
You can also link to it.
That's a good way to get Google
to index something.
Just link to it somewhere.
But that's exactly what we would do in
a task like this.
So after forcing Google to index them,
(23:28):
we saw an increase in ranking.
The kicker is it didn't last.
Everything looked great
until a month later
when we went back and checked.
We saw all the gains we have got
from all these citations
and did themselves.
And the reason
why was pretty obvious when we went
and checked
to see
if any of these citations
were still in Google's index,
(23:49):
all of them had become an index
six months later,
with the exception of one.
Any guesses on which one it was?
Well, I'm going to go with
my earlier mentioned Brown book and,
the reason I mentioned Brown book
is because it's
got a soft spot in my heart.
I think in 2011,
I submitted
like 6000 different businesses
(24:09):
to Brown Book
Dungeon with Brown Book all the way.
What is it, Joy.
That I mean, that's it, right?
It's literally why I hired you, Colin.
Because you know these things.
You know the Value Brown book.
So it got you your promotion.
Way to go.
Now question 43.
So so that's interesting.
So out of all these Brown book
was the only one
that was actually indexed,
(24:30):
after all was said and done.
Is there anything you can share
with the audience
in terms of what you think
maybe was the reason why
Brown Book
was the last directory standing,
or is this just, a random thing?
You know, how how can people systematize
trying to figure out how to make
another realm book and.
(24:50):
Yeah, I honestly, I'm kind of
shocked at Brown Book, to be honest.
I don't expect that in another six months
it'll still be indexed at all.
I think that the site structure is is
well done.
I think overall their
their traffic trends
aren't nearly as awful
as some of the other citation
sites that we were using.
So I think it's just a matter of time
with them.
But definitely if you want to know
(25:10):
if a citation is valuable or not,
you need to check it out in Ahrefs
or a tool like Ahrefs,
and just look to see
how many pages on that website
are in Google's index,
or how many are getting
traffic from Google.
That's really the best metric to look at.
Well, and I assume, Joy,
you're looking for that hockey stick
upwards trends
when you're trying to determine
(25:31):
if it's the best site.
Obviously you don't want
things to be going downwards.
But what about a situation
where it's
just kind of maintaining over time?
Or is it the hockey stick
you're looking for?
I think maintaining is fine,
but the majority of the ones that I look
at when it comes to citation sites,
a lot of them are headed down.
And especially if you look back
five years, you'll see that
five years ago, a lot of these sites
(25:52):
did really well on Google,
and then they're just starting
to tank in recent times.
Okay. It's good to know.
So something to keep in mind
if you are paying for SEO
and you are getting citations
on an ongoing basis,
make sure you're checking to see
how many of them are in Google's index.
Otherwise,
you are literally paying for SEO
that is undoing itself.
And don't just check once, check again
(26:13):
in like 3 to 6 months.
And that will be the true test
of whether or not
they're worth paying for. Actually.
So how many citations total
should a small business
owner be looking to build?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I really wanted to know
the answer to this
because I'd heard that, you know,
if you submit a whole bunch all at once,
you might see a boost in ranking.
So clearly,
(26:33):
we wanted to test this
using a citation provider.
We decided to order 50 citations
all at once
for a dentist client of ours,
and then also a handyman client.
But we specifically made sure
we picked locations
that we weren't actively working on,
so that nothing else
was really contributing
to any ranking increases
that we saw as a result for the handyman.
(26:54):
We saw some definite increases
in their organic ranking
right after ordering these citations.
We saw no impact
to their local park rankings.
The dentist that we did this
for saw the exact same pattern.
So just to clarify joy,
we again
were specifically talking
about the organic
algorithm here is is receiving
(27:14):
the most impact from this,
which is really quite interesting
because I think the vast majority
of people
directly associate the word citation
with the local algorithm.
And this is kind of telling us
there's some benefit here
if you do it a certain way,
but maybe not in the way
that everybody thinks
it's supposed to happen.
Is that a fair assessment so far?
(27:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Usually when I hear
people talk about citations,
they're referring to local PAC rankings.
And in both the past
50, building 50 all at once
did not impact a local PAC rankings
for either business
that we tried this on. Yes.
And I think it's worth even noting
just for,
you know,
everyone who loves this
kind of historical trivia,
David Mihm
actually invented the word citation.
(27:56):
I think back in the year, like 2008.
Maybe it was before that.
So it was clearly always meant
to capture something
that was related to the local algorithm.
So this this is really interesting.
So what we found with these tests
as we moved on
is that these citations
did not stay in Google's index,
and that was really the problem.
So for the dentists, for example,
(28:17):
a month later,
two of the 50 citations were still
in Google's index. Oh, I.
Wish I could do math.
I'm trying to think right now
two divided by 50.
That is insanely low.
I got yeah, at first there were 26,
so that's how many fell out
within that one month period.
The handyman was similar.
I tracked this one
even longer
(28:38):
and went back six months later
to see how many of these citations
were still in Google's index.
Want to take a guess?
Just to say,
I feel like I want to plug my year
for this one,
because it's
probably going to be
even worse than earlier.
So I'm I'm going down this time.
I'm going to say 12%.
Not far enough down. Collin.
(28:59):
This one
also only had two out of the 50
still in Google's index six months later.
That is wild.
Wow. Okay.
Now I want to give a disclaimer here.
There are some industries
that have some niche sites
that do matter.
Now, often
these are not included
in a lot of these citation packages
because you have to pay for them.
And I'm going to give you an example.
(29:20):
So let's say you're a wedding planner.
You want to be listed on the wire,
because the wire is a directory
that ranks really well on Google.
It's not specific to most industries,
but if you're a wedding planner,
it's related to you.
So there's a lot of industries like that.
Lawyers is another one.
There's quite a few legal websites
then you would want to be listed on,
but they are not usually covered
(29:41):
by a lot of these citation
building packages.
So all this is really interesting.
And so what it seems sheer joy is that
it's not really we think of citations.
We think of name, address, phone number,
and occasionally people say,
well it's actually not plus w.
But what this sounds like
is the real benefit from citations
is actually coming from
that little W website.
(30:02):
Part of it,
the link
versus the mention of a business's
name, address, phone number.
And I assume that's
because Google
already has that information
and they've already built
your you're kind of
cluster of information.
With that
said, this indexing thing
is a bit of a problem and a challenge.
So if somebody's
trying to build some KPIs,
like what percentage
should I actually go for?
(30:22):
Like how many of my citations
should be indexed?
What would you suggest?
Like what's a good KPI there?
And by the way, I know
you love the word KPI.
Does.
Okay.
So in general
and I'm gonna say in general,
because again
there are some industries
where there's a long list of citations
that matter,
but most of them are paid for.
So like you're
not just going to get a free listing.
A lot of them
(30:42):
you have to pay to get
any type of exposure on them.
So we're talking about
the generic citations like Yelp,
for example,
where any industry can be on them.
You are generally going
to have a really tough time
keeping more than 10 to 20
in Google's index.
Okay, that's good to know.
Feels like such a low bar.
But clearly this is just
this is just the way it is.
Very good to know
(31:03):
if you're enjoying this video so far.
Make sure to subscribe
so that the algorithms know
that this is awesome stuff,
so we can get this out
to as many people as possible.
All right.
So this is great question
I have for you here.
So historically
let's think back to 2013 2014.
And what I would see
(31:24):
in the early days of my SEO
career is a business would move
and we'd be like, no,
like, you cannot move.
This is the worst thing you can ever do
from a local search perspective.
What what kind of happen is
the business would move?
You'd update the address, now
all of a sudden
they'd have a 100% mismatch between
their Google Places listing
(31:44):
and all their citations.
It was like
the kiss of death back in the day.
So what I would like to know
is kind of like,
has that answer evolved over time?
And the specific question
I want to ask you is, as of today,
if I go to move my office,
what kind of impact
is that going to have?
Do I need to go out there
like rush out there and update
(32:05):
all of my citations?
What do we need to be thinking
about related to to moving these days?
Yeah, so it's definitely something
that you don't want to ignore
for any of the citations
that rank on Google.
So when you do a branded search,
for example, whatever's listed there,
you want to make sure
that that information is correct.
And I'll give you an example of one
(32:25):
we came across recently
where the business had this problem.
So we had this client
and they actually acquired
another business.
And that business
had a specific phone number
that they were using,
but that didn't transfer
with the acquisition.
So now you have all these listings
on Google for that old business name
that like literally lead
to a dead phone number when you call it.
(32:46):
So their clients
and their customers were complaining.
They're like,
we can't find your phone number.
We're looking on Google
and this phone number doesn't work, etc..
So naturally the client was like,
okay, we need to update these, right?
That's a perfect use case where it's
absolutely worth your time
and effort and money
to get those updated.
The problem was
because they're buying this business,
(33:07):
they don't have any clue
where the log ins are stored.
And all these citations
were set up by somebody else.
So they're really challenging
to get updated. Yeah.
So tell us a little bit
about what you did here.
I think I think this is
this is really important.
Yeah.
So I'll be honest here.
Sterling
Sky is definitely not
the known expert on citations.
So I reached out to the guy that is,
(33:28):
which is Darren Shaw over at White Spark.
And what Darren told me
was a really solid
tip that I told him
we needed to share with our audience.
Darren told me
that when you run into this situation
where you don't know
the email address
or the logging information
for a directory listing,
you can simply
first create a new email address
(33:48):
on that company's domain name.
This part is really important,
as it sets up your authority and proves
that you are actually associated
with that business,
and you're
just not some like random person
trying to sabotage or hijack a listing.
So step one
make sure you have
a domain email address.
Step two
you reach out to that particular site
(34:09):
using that email address.
You say that's simply
the person that created this doesn't work
there anymore,
and you're
trying to get access to the listing.
Now, Darren did warn me
your mileage may vary.
So some sites are a lot more responsive
to their inquiries than others,
but hopefully if it's a site
that cares about their traffic
and their quality,
(34:29):
they will get back to you
and allow you to reclaim the listing.
It's a really good tip
and I assume
this has been tested as well.
If you're going to try and do this
without actually
going and creating the proper
company domain,
essentially waste of time.
Like don't even bother as,
as a, as a worst case scenario.
Like don't even attempt to do it
without the domain email. Right?
(34:50):
Like let's just pretend
you're like Bob Joe at gmail.com.
They don't know if you had any
relation to the business.
Like there's no way for them
to possibly prove that.
So huge shout out
to White Spark and Darren Shaw
for giving us this awesome tip.
Hopefully it saves you
a lot of time and effort.
Also, if you're like,
I don't want to deal with the headache
of doing this,
you can reach out to White Spark.
(35:10):
They have a service
that will literally do it for you.
We'll put a link to that service
in our description
and I would say
citation building
is one of those things where
if you're not doing it all day,
every day,
you definitely should be having
someone who is doing it all day,
every day.
Do it because there's layers
to the game of citation building,
and it does require
(35:30):
knowledge, expertise
to actually do it properly.
100%. Virtually.
If you build a link to websites
and then that link gets removed,
do you lose the ranking benefit
that that link provided?
This is such a good question.
All right.
Rand Fishkin
talked about this concept back in 2014.
I can't find anybody
(35:52):
other than Rand who talked about this.
So Rand wrote this article on Mars.
We'll make
sure it's listed in the comments,
because this article is fascinating,
and I didn't know anything
about this concept
until I started researching it.
So he
calls this
concept link Echoes or Link Ghosts
literally working in SEO since 2006,
(36:12):
and I've never heard of that
term, have you?
Link. Echoes. Link. Ghosts.
Yeah. No.
Never heard about it.
Sounds really cool though.
Right?
I know
it's like your perfect Halloween day.
Maybe we should, like,
you know, pump this up at Halloween.
So this concept
he talks about in this article is
he did a series of tests
on various websites,
(36:32):
and he built a bunch of the links,
and then he saw increases
in ranking as a result of those links,
as we often do.
But then he went back
and he deleted the links
like he removed them.
And he saw that the rankings
did not go back down
to where they were before he built them.
Oh yeah. Okay.
(36:52):
Makes sense for.
Okay.
Yeah. So probably makes sense.
So just to straight up
we're link building a link exists.
It improves rankings.
Nothing much else is going on.
That link goes away.
The rankings that were gained
don't detract it.
It's same thing's holding it up.
This is crazy okay.
I mean, there's lots of practical
(37:12):
use cases for this.
Think about sponsorships.
Let's say you like sponsor
a little league
and then they give you a link. Right?
But you don't go back and sponsor them
every year.
It makes sense
that that link should
still give you some credit,
even though it's gone right.
Like it doesn't.
It seems natural.
Google wouldn't
want to reverse that, right?
So what I'm thinking in my head
now is everybody.
(37:33):
And I think Google
even refers to links as votes.
Maybe, maybe Google never said that,
but it was.
People think of links as as votes
between different websites.
So that makes sense.
If you're voting for something.
The vote count is always there, right?
The thing that you wanted
Google to be aware of
is still a thing that exists. Yeah.
(37:53):
So again,
other than Rand,
never really heard this talked about
and I couldn't find much on it
when I was searching for it.
So the problem I had
was that I can't find
anything recent on this.
The last article was literally from 2014,
so I had no idea
if this was still a thing
that worked the way
it used to work ten years ago.
Naturally,
(38:14):
I wanted to actually see
if I could show in reality
that this still happens.
So we had a perfect use case
for seeing if this is still true.
We had a specific website
that accepted articles,
and we had a bunch of our clients
listed on that website
contributing to it.
So what we call guest posting in the link
building world.
Now, this particular site was doing
(38:35):
really well.
It's good quality site,
and it got hammered
by an algorithm update in the last year.
So when that happened,
a lot of the pages,
the articles
that our clients
had basically contributed to the site
started getting on indexed.
But what I found was fascinating.
See, as these links are being created,
(38:56):
we were able to tie direct
ranking increases to those links.
So we knew
this is where the client ranks.
Before this was
where the client ranked two weeks later.
That link
definitely made that movement happen
when they started to get an indexed
we know, hey, a page
that doesn't get indexed by
Google doesn't really count for anything.
(39:18):
It's kind of the same as getting deleted.
So I was curious
to see if those ranking gains
that we got were lost later.
What do you think happened?
Well, I'm going to go that
whatever was happening in 2014
is probably to
some degree still happening
(39:38):
ten years later in 2024.
I'm going to go with that.
So it's nothing's new in the world of
SEO, I guess.
You're right, old is new.
What's new is old.
Some of the core fundamentals
about SEO haven't really changed.
Let's be honest. This is one of them.
We looked back and again
checking rankings.
I looked at screenshots.
I looked at before and after pictures.
(39:59):
And these clients
didn't lose the ranking benefit,
so they were still gaining the ranking
benefit of that link
from when it got created,
which frankly blew my mind.
Okay, so the burning question
I have joy and I, I'm going to
guess is on
people's minds
is they're listening to this
as we just talked about citations
and we talked about the fact
that citations have a horrible
(40:21):
indexation rate and that creates problems
on the ranking algorithm.
How come this isn't like,
why are we seeing the same thing here?
Like, shouldn't
we be seeing the same thing
that happens when citations get
the indexed?
That's the fascinating
thing about link building.
Like sometimes things are true
one instance and not for others.
We've definitely found
with citation building
(40:41):
and that type of link,
when they get on indexed,
you see a ranking decrease.
Like I've seen that consistency
consistently amongst a lot of clients
with this type of link building,
which is very different. Guest posting.
I've seen the opposite.
And so it's one of those things
that like link echoes, still exist.
This is still possible.
It doesn't mean
(41:02):
you will see this exact pattern happen
every time you build a link,
and then it either
gets deleted or un indexed.
You might see it go down.
It's all relative
to who you're competing with,
how many links they have,
what sites are linking to them
like it's a giant,
massive puzzle
essentially with like all these different
things contributing.
And I assume when
(41:23):
you were
learning about this,
this was during the webinar
when you were interviewing Rand, correct?
Joy.
No, no, this had nothing to do with what.
I didn't even know. Okay.
I didn't even ask him about this.
I'm curious
to see what he says
when he watches this video
or if he watches this video, but,
I think I'd probably be happy
to know that stuff he was teaching us
ten years ago in SEO is still true.
(41:45):
Kind of cool.
What I would I'd be curious to know.
And if anyone watching has any insight
or have done any testing around this,
let us know in the comments.
But I think this echo concept
is probably applicable
to other parts of SEO as well,
and the one that immediately comes
to mind on the local algorithm side.
Is adding descriptors here GBP name.
(42:06):
And I know we've done
testing historically and seen cases
where you can now to descriptor
remove it.
And we have seen cases
where you remove it
in the ranking things.
But we've also seen cases
where the rankings
you gained from the descriptor
once it's removed held right.
So I don't know if it's a time thing,
like the thing needs to exist
in Google's world
for a certain period of time.
And then they finally,
although I think categories are the same,
(42:29):
with Google business profiles,
I think it has a little memory,
or echo or whatever
you want to call it, there to.
Yeah.
And there was something addressed
about this concept
in the leaked articles that that came out
about Google's algorithm.
So I think,
I think Rand may have talked about that
in the video interview
that we did with him,
but I believe there is,
a shelf life
of like a certain time period.
(42:51):
So one of the things I really don't
know is like,
you know, 2
or 3 algorithms from now,
will those rankings start decreasing?
That's a good question.
I don't have the answer to yet,
but I would assume so.
I'm going to give you very specifics
on like some of the ones that I track
just so you can understand
like why this was so important.
So so I know, Rand, if you are watching
this, we'd love to hear your feedback.
Please leave it in the comment.
(43:12):
So for this very specific examples
that I was tracking,
I want to just share what I saw.
So we had an orthodontist.
They were ranking fifth
for a particular keyword.
We built a one single link to their page
and they increased from position
five to position three.
So this was substantial
because it actually doubled their traffic
(43:34):
for that keyword over
the next three months.
That's crazy.
As insane.
Just like that one thing.
Yeah.
And then they kept that gain
even after this link.
Got an index later on for another client.
They were dentist.
They went up from position
four to position
two after a single link was built.
And they also kept that ranking
(43:55):
after the link was on indexed.
Enjoy these examples.
Or things
like you were just mentioning before.
You're going to be going back over like,
like further down the road to see,
you know,
the image that comes to mind is like,
is this echo in the Grand Canyon
or is this in like a small warehouse?
Right.
Like an echo in the Grand Canyon
is going to go a lot further.
(44:16):
So this is really interesting.
I guess
I just want to make sure
people are grasping this,
that one of the most important things
with this,
and some of the other things
that we've been talking about today,
is you need to continually
check on these things over time,
just because something hasn't happened
within a three or 4 or 6 month period,
it doesn't mean it can't be happening
four months down the road.
(44:36):
Yeah.
And I'm going to actually
that's a great point, Colin,
because every link that you build
likely has a shelf life,
which is not something that I feel
like a lot of people really understand.
And so something that I saw as well
with the tests that I shared earlier
in this video about the website
that we link to from Sterling, Skye,
they also had a shelf life to that link.
I tracked it for like over almost a year
(44:58):
and saw that after eight months
they started declining and ranking again,
so that one link
kept them up high for eight months.
And then it started to go down.
This is wild, absolute roller coaster.
Ride.
And it's something like I mentioned,
we've seen it for lots of industries.
We also had a divorce lawyer
that I was tracking.
They went from position three to position
one as a result of the link.
(45:19):
Also got an indexed.
They kept position one.
Now again
don't expect them to keep position
one forever,
which is why we can kind of need
to continue building links
and doing other things to help their SEO.
So in summary,
link echoes are very much still a thing.
They still exist.
The concept that you get a link,
you lose the link,
you keep your ranking benefit.
(45:41):
That's still true today.
That being said, it's
not overly consistent.
We've seen some cases in shared examples
where you have a bunch of links,
you lose them
and you do actually decline a ranking,
but not always.
So I love to hear from you guys
if this is a new concept to you,
if you've noticed this concept of link
ACOs like,
please share with us in the comments
because I love hearing
(46:01):
other people's stories
and I will leave you
with my theory on why.
I think some people keep their positions
and some people don't.
I think that if you deserve the position
that you now have,
and if you
have a solid click through rate,
you should keep that position.
Whereas if you never really deserved it.
And let's say, for example,
some like major website is out
(46:23):
ranking you.
Let's say
you managed to get above Reddit.
I'm just going to pick on them.
You probably don't deserve
to be above Reddit.
Very few people do.
You probably won't keep that position
right though.
So we've talked about a lot today.
Link building is the topic de year.
We've talked about indexing and citations
and what to do when you move.
Really good stuff here.
Give us a little taste of,
(46:44):
what's what's coming down the road.
What kind of things
are we going to be talking about?
Oh my goodness.
So when I mentioned
we had to make this video long
because I have so much to get through,
we only got through seven
out of the 17 topics
that I need to get through,
so the rest is coming next month.
I really want to hear feedback.
If you liked this video,
what did you like?
What parts did you find
the most interesting?
(47:05):
Your feedback really helps us
make sure that we can cater
our future videos to you.
So please leave us
feedback in the comments.
Next month
we're going to be talking
about some spam stuff
when it comes to link building,
so I got to look at it
like a manual penalty recently,
which I haven't seen in a very long time.
So I'm going to dive into that a bit.
We're going to talk about parasite SEO
(47:26):
and some controversial
kind of looks at that.
Spoiler.
It does work.
And then we're going to talk about things
like guest posting
and other types of link building,
and how exactly
someone can measure the results
from link building.
So tons of stuff coming.
Make sure you do subscribe to our channel
to get alerted of that video.
When we publish that one next month.
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