Bradley Benner from Semantic Mastery is guiding us on the most effective press releases SEO strategies, which will help you rank in Google for your keywords and get more visibility.
Best Targeting Options
Brad: Hey guys, I’m looking to power up my press release organization page with some PBN links. What anchors would you recommend and PBN providers. Also, are you hitting the main organization page itself or internal PR article pages? Yes. Both, but if you’re going to choose one target, then the organization page is my preferred target, because it lists the, you know, the existing, the press releases that have been published or linked to from the organization page. It’s like a blog index page, right. So it’s like, it’s an archive page that has all your brand information, NAP (name, address, phone number) an embedded Google Map, embedded website, it’s got these zero by zero pixel at the bottom underneath the website embed where you can put the ID page or whatever else you want to iframe in there. So it’s, you know, it’s a very, very powerful page to hit with links because it will not only power up your whatever is linked to from that page, meaning your website URL plus the GMB map or the Google business profile map and everything else that’s iframed in there, but it also powers up the individual press releases because they’re linked to from that page. So if you’re going to do just one target, that’s it.
The Siloing Strategy
Brad : However, I would recommend that you understand press release silos or siloing press release, PR stacking, there’s a number of terms for it, they’re all interchangeable means the same thing. Then it also makes sense to take specific press release silos and you know, set up separate link building campaigns to hit those press release URLs. I use the press advantage, press release URLs, not any of the others. And that’s just because I like to continually power up that, you know, the press releases on the press advantage domain as well as like I said, it kind of flows back through to the organization page, right. Because if you look at the individual press releases published on the press advantage domain, there’s always a link back to the organization page on that as well. And then also the most recently published press releases are at the bottom too.
So again, hitting individual press releases can also flow back to the organization page. What I’m talking about with the silos is if you have a specific keyword set or keyword theme that you’re trying to power, you know, boost or optimize for, then when you do a press release silo and you target that keyword cluster, right. Now you’ve got all the press releases that you could target with a very set specific type of link building and anchor texts that are relevant, super relevant, hyper relevant to that particular keyword theme, right so that that topic clusters. And so again, it just depends on what it is that you’re trying to do. Now, if you’re just trying to do a general powering up of the press advantage organization itself and you’re not going after a specific topic cluster for example, or keyword set. Then yes, you can then you can just power up the organization page which is what I would I would do and I always start with that to begin with.
PBN Providers
Brad : So PBN providers you know, there’s a number of them that I like. Some good PBN providers for tier two PBN links are ‘rankclub.io’, ‘rankclub.io’ that one’s pretty good. I’ve tested that on a few and I like it. There’s also some really good providers on legit ‘legiit.com’. I’ve been testing a whole lot of providers over their last few months now. I found a few, I’m not going to reveal my favorites here and hump day hangout. That’s more stuff that I reveal in the mastermind, or on one on one conversations if you join the mastermind, I was just talking about how I had my one on one call with David today and I, David’s a good guy and I revealed a couple of my inside sources to him today. So yes, membership has its benefits, I should say.
But yes, as far as anchor text guys, like you know, if you’re hitting the organization page, go with brandon URL to begin with. That makes sense guys remember when you’re powering up tier one assets. In other words, when you’re building links to tier one assets, they’re branded assets, right? So it still makes sense to use a lot of brands/URL anchors and those are in the same anchor text category.
If you guys have gotten our get, what was formerly the Google My Business process checklist right now, it should be updated to GBP Google Business process checklist, or excuse me, Google Business Profile checklist. That’s a mouthful; it’s going to take a while to get used to that. But anyways, you’ll know that I talked about, you know, the 5 different types of anchor text categories that I basically learned these types of anchor text categories for Matt Diggity. But that’s brand/URL is one; right then there’s topic anchors, which are keyword anchors. Then there’s target anchors, which is keyword plus location modifier. Then there’s miscellaneous anchors, which are the same as generics. And then there’s empty or frame anchors, which are, you know, like an iframe is an empty anchor or a frame anchor. An image, a hyperlinked image without alt text if it has all text, the alt text is the anchor text so then it would fall into another type of anchor text category, right, depending on what the old text is. But if it’s if it’s an image link without an old text, and it’s an empty anchor. Also a redirect a redirect so a 301 redirect is an empty anchor or, or frame anchor, like it goes into that same category, if that makes sense. So there’s 5 different types of anchor text categories that I classified, any type of anchor into one of those 5 categories.
Anchor Text Strategy
Brad : And so like I said, when powering up tier one, branded assets, it makes sense to build naked URL or brand, you know, brand slash URL anchors to those, because it’s a branded asset, right. That might not make sense if you were building tier two links to just a tier one link, but a branded asset link, it makes sense to do that, because it’s clearly about the brand, it’s been optimized for the brand. So that’s always good but here’s what I like about, you know, using tier one entity assets as the primary targets instead of the money site for link building. Because you can get away with doing a lot more target type anchors with right, so I don’t like building links directly to the money site itself, with any sort of target anchors, maybe, you know, a handful, a couple of them here and there. And again, I talked about this in some of the training that I’ve done in some the mastermind in other areas, I get into a lot more specifics about it. But with something like you know, press advantage, the organization page, it’s got high 40, it’s going to have a follow link from the NAP section of the organization page back to whatever website you put in there as the primary website for the organization page.
Local SEO Scenario
Brad : It’s got the GMB map embed, right, it’s got the then your primary website URL is going to be iframed at the bottom, as long as it’s on SSL, right HTTPS, it’ll iframe into the bottom. And so my point is, you can hit that page with some target anchors, keyword plus location, right. And you can push that through the naked URLs and the iframes kind of that relevance without it being the same as if you were building target anchors directly to your money site so it makes sense. But you got to be real careful with that, guys, again, I’ve talked about this in various venues where I’ve trained about the Google Business Process checklist.
But if you go doing it and in the process checklist, we get to the tier one link building, there’s a local link building workbook template that you can copy into your drive account. And I give an example and then there’s the data template which is the first sheet that has, you know, the formulas and everything else in there where you just it talks, you know, and you go and you just go do an analysis of your top 10 rank competitors for whatever search query it is you’re targeting, where you’re optimizing for.
The second tab in that sheet was just a set or that second sheet in the workbook, I should say, is just an example. I think using tree service Baltimore was the keyword there. And it shows examples of that so what we’re looking at in there are the top ranked local business websites for whatever search query it is you’re optimizing for, not directory sites that’s comparing apples to oranges. We want to compare apples to apples, oranges to oranges, not apples to oranges, right? So we don’t even analyze the directory sites, the big directory sites, they’re, they’re not. They’re not truly what we’re competing with. Yes, we’re competing with them for space on the first page of Google, but when you take a look at when you try to analyze a directory site, you’ll see that they have way more content on the pages because of the endless scroll. There’s like I mean, by magnitude of sometimes, you know, 4 or 5. In other words, when you’re comparing local business competitor websites, you know, in the space that I’m in which is three services, you know, the average is probably about 800, 850, 900 words is what you’ll see. But on the directory page listings for the directory pages that are in the top 10, you’ll see 3500 words, right. You’ll also look like a domain authority and I don’t mean like Moz domain authority, but like a proprietary authority, like for example, if you’re using surfer SEO to analyze the SERPs. You’ll notice that a lot of the directory sites like Yelp, for example, have an authority score of like 9, HomeAdvisor, Angie’s or Angie’s formerly Angie’s List. Lawn Starter, which is another big name for it’s a directory for like home, landscapers and lawn entry service and stuff like that and you’ll see that they have real high domain like authority scores. And again, there’s not a Moz score, but that’s true as well but Moz domain authority is also really high on those. And the local business sites will have 1 their score will be 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. That’s one and the directory sites are like 8, 9,10. Does that make sense? And the difference in keywords or amount of words of content on the page is huge. Like I said, the average for tree service contractors is somewhere between 8 to 900 words, but the directory sites will have like 3500 words so you don’t want to compare those. So to get back to that, what I was saying was, you know, let’s say you’ve got 6 local business websites on page one, well, you go analyze the backlink profile of those. And then I and why I like to use majestic guys over any other the other tools is majestic has a filter built in, that just filters out links, it doesn’t even display them, I guess if you go into the historical index, you can see him but if you’re looking at the fresh Index, they have filters in place that like by default filter out all the real low quality links that really provide no value.
There’s so so all you’re looking at are any links that really produce, really push any link equity at all, right. And so that’s why I like to use majestic, I’ve tested Majestic versus REFs or AHREFs versus MozPro, versus, you know, other tools that I’ve looked at, too, but, and out of all of them, my favorite is Majestic because of that it really only focuses on the links that are really pushing any sort of power at all. And so when you analyze your top ranked local business competitors there, you’ll, at least in the space that I’m in guys, like you’ll see that the vast majority of top ranked local business sites have like less than 20 referring domains, which is insane, right? I mean, it’s like I remember years ago, you know, you compete with 100s or even 1000s of referring domains for the top rank, and that it’s not that way anymore. And so what I’m saying is that it’s really easy to just go to the backlinks tab and majestic or whatever tool you’re using and you can just scan down, it’s a manual process.
I haven’t haven’t built any tools for this yet. But it’s a manual process but you can just scroll on down and look at the anchor text types for each one of the links and just categorize it.
So again, if it’s less than, and by the way, when I say backlinks and referring domains, I look at referring domains not backlinks because you could have 50 backlinks from one domain. And there’s going to be one backlink from that domain that is weighted to heaviest and the rest are not as powerful or given as much credit. So all, when I look at the number of backlinks, I’m really looking at the number of referring domains. So if there’s less than 20 referring domains, then I’ll just scroll on down. And the most notable, the most notable backlinks from any one domain is always going to be the one displayed in majestic. Does that make sense?
So whatever the anchor text is for that link, that becomes the anchor, I played, you know, I categorize it that way. So like I said, if I’ve got, you know, say 20 referring domains then I’ll just scroll on down I’ll start at the top, and I’ll just count, okay, that’s a brand that’s a URL, and I’ll just, you know, old school like. And I’ll get down to the bottom of 20 and I’ll say, okay, I’ve got, you know, 7 brand/URL anchors so I mark it off 7. Then I’ll go back to the top and I’ll scroll on down as I’m going down going down, I’ll count the number of topic anchors, which are very few. It’s interesting, but very few topic anchors, remember topic anchors are just keywords. Then I’ll go back to the top and I’ll scroll down and as I’m scrolling down I’ll count target anchors which is keyword plus location modifier, you’ll see a couple of those in there. Unless it’s a real spammy site every now and then you’ll see a spammy site, you’ll see a ton of those.
Natural Looking Link Profile
Brad : But for the most part, most organic ranked, top ranked, local business sites have a very natural looking link profile. And again, I just keep going through that process and what I have found in my testing, and from not analyzing hundreds of sites over the last several months, the tree service based primarily is that about 60 to 85% of the backlink anchor text ratios are 60 to 85% are in the brand/URL category. Then about you know, 15 to 20% are in the miscellaneous category, which is generics like click here, website, read more, you know all those types of terms. And then there’s usually just a, there’s a small percentage, usually about 5 to 5 to 10% of frame or empty anchors, which again, come from redirects, iframes, and image links with no old text. And then there’s a very, very small percentage, usually between 5 to 10% of target anchors, and virtually zero topic anchors. I mean, occasionally, you’ll see an odd topic anchor but for the most part, I don’t see those in backlink profiles for local businesses. So it’s usually really heavy and that’s why I say whenever in doubt, if you’re not sure about what anchor text ratio to hit, just go with brand/URL anchors.
So I tell all of you this, or tell you all of this, because when you’re when you’re talking about the press advantage organization page, or any really branded tier one asset, you can go heavier there on target anchors, especially if the, if the link from the tier one asset that’s linking to your money site is a brand/ or your brand/URL anchor, if it’s one of those right, or miscellaneous or a frame like an empty anchor, then you can target the you know, you can hit that tier one asset with target anchor so that you can push kind of a more powerful link equity with that that keyword relevance into that asset which flows through a miscellaneous frame or brand/URL anchor to the money site. Does that make sense?
So I know that was kind of a long winded answer but I want you guys to understand my methodology on link building, which is, you know, try to keep all the tier one assets kind of linking to the money site with I go real heavy on brand/URL anchors. And once I get that, you know, up then what I’ll do is I’ll strategically build target anchors to the money site if needed. But I prefer to try to get the push that I want, by building anchor text, target anchor text links, from tier two to tier one. Does that make sense? And so, you know, again, you can analyze some of your top right competitors, like I just said, using the workbook template that I gave you guys in the Google process checklist. And just go, go start analyzing, guys, the more that you, especially if you’re in a single industry, it makes it easy, because you’ll start to see kind of a commonality, like trends within that industry as to what is working. And that’s what you mimic, right you meet and then exceed that. In other words, you try to get your anchor text ratio, close to what the average ratio is of the top rank competitors. And just get close, you don’t have to be exact, just get close. And again, when in doubt, always go heavy on brand/URL anchors. And then you start doing all of your target anchor link building out at tier two to your tier one assets. And that’s just the safest way in the world that you can do it.
Topical Relevance
Brad: However, one last thing I want to mention is that I’ve noticed Google’s gotten a hell of a lot better about just discrediting links, that aren’t that are from sources that aren’t topically relevant. So in other words, it used to be where you could go out and just buy, you know, you could buy a link on a high powered page. Or, you know, place a link on a high powered page, whatever and if the, if it wasn’t fully topic, if it wasn’t topically relevant to what the target URL was, from that page, you would still get a boost from it. What, excuse me, what I’ve been finding over the last couple of months now is that I can go out and purchase a link or place a link somewhere that has got really, really, really strong metrics, no matter what kind of metrics they are. But if the page that I’m placing that link on isn’t relevant to what the target URL is that I’m trying to build the link to then I get little to no boost from that at all. So it’s not worth the effort; in other words, you know, if, and Google’s algorithm I think, has gotten better at determining that like, and that’s a way to beat spam, right to combat spam and combat, what we do as SEO’s, which is to, you know, if we can find somewhere that’s a strong page by metrics, which are usually proprietary metrics, you know, PADA, domain rank, trust, flow, citation, flow, whatever, whatever metrics you use, you can go out and get a link there. And yes, you might be able to boost your metrics, but does it provide a boost in the SERP right, does it provide positive SERP movement, right, or positioning? And if not, then what good are the metrics? Does that make sense?
And so what I found is there are ways to check to improve that which I’m not going to disclose here, for sure. But there are ways to disclose that I think what I’m trying to get out here is what’s more important is to find links for more relevant, relevant sources, if possible. And that does make things a lot harder. But if you can get a link from a relevant source that might, if it’s relevant, it even if the metrics are a lot lower than, say up an alternative source where you could get a link that the metrics are much higher, but it’s not relevant. If you can get a link from a lower, you know, a less strong metric type of, you know, platform or website or page or whatever, but it’s more relevant that produces a better result. And that that’s the way that I mean, I’ve seen that time and again over the last several, several months and boosting metrics is nice I guess there’s, you know, there’s I guess it’s cool to see that, but if it’s not moving SERPs, what difference does it make? So I think having topical relevance is actually way more important than just any sort of particular metric.
I know that was a long answer, but I thought that was a good question. So thank you for that question.
See the full episode here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slNDhGvTAgY
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