Just found your podcast! Very informative so far. Thank you for creating it! I’m listening to them daily to catch up. I have a question about keyword competition. How should we evaluate sites such as YouTube videos, Pinterest boards, etc. that are ranking in the top 5 of the keywords I’m targeting? Thanks for the feedback. On to episode 59 for me.

Crystal

Hi Mark

That’s great – thank you. I will certainly give it a road test.

Gillian

Thanks for the answers Mark. Think I’ll put your advice to work and not worry about the Page Rank. Perhaps we can come up with some kind of link back network strategy with all the LatenightIM folks.
Looking forward to future posts on this!

Hey Gillian — there is a $7 trial to KC, by the way. Not sure if that helps or not.
Mark

Hey dude. Good to be back. Sounds like we need more coffee.

Your site is beautiful, by the way.

Great questions:

1. This is a tough question, and I have a whole podcast episode planned for this. In your case, I’d be interested to look at what keywords you are targeting to understand where the competition is getting their links. You are already creating great content from what I see, so understanding what the competition is doing in your space will be key to answering this question correctly.

2. “Page Rank does not matter” is the mantra of people with high page rank — but I think those people are right. I would not worry about page rank, except to say that low PR generally means low search traffic. And since you want search traffic, PR does indeed matter. But it only matters because it means that you don’t have enough backlinks.

As for the google changes — the timing of your impact correlates to the “Payday Loan update” on June 11 — but your niche was not targeted by that update, so I doubt that is related. Panda is updating monthly right now — so depending on your backlink profile, that could be what you are seeing. Or, it could just be noise. If it makes you feel better, I see changes that I cannot explain on my own sites all the time.

Looking at your backlink profile on ahrefs, there are two trends — longterm decline and a recent spike. Neither of these explain a change in early June.

Regards,
Mark

Thanks Al! Really appreciate the comments! You are absolutely correct that in the post-panda era, blog comments seem to be even more effective than they have been in the past. They are a great backlink strategy when done correctly because your comments add value to the internet (as opposed to some other techniques that just create spam).

As for the link in the comments — you are asking about home page links versus “deep links”. The problem with deep links is that Akismet (which most bloggers use) looks for “lots of slashes” in a URL and will mark it as spam if it has “too many slashes” or is “too long”. To protect against that, you can create a short URL on your site (using pretty links lite or similar) and 301 (not 307) redirect the short link to the page you want to promote. Does that make sense?

I have not tested this extensively — but I have done it and it seems to both help and pass link juice to the target page.

Hope that helps,
Mark

My linkback on the comment was for my home page. Should I start leaving links for the page I wish to rank? Thanks

As an aside, I don’t know what Google did about 6 weeks ago, but I went from having 30-40 unique visitors each day to averaging only 15-20. My visitors via organic search have fallen from 60% of my traffic to 40%. I haven’t done anything differently so I’m wondering what might have changed.

My website is http://www.DrJasonJones.com.

Thanks for all your work and willingness to share!

Jason

My pleasure — it was a great question.

I sent James Jones (owner of MNF) a message. Will let you know what he says.

Regards,
Mark

I was delighted that you read my question about Micro Niche Finder and I look forward to your catch up with James Jones.

KC sounds great but it’s a pity there is no free trial.

Best regards

Gillian

Thanks — I knew you would enjoy that reference. Appreciate all your support. Great things to come!

Really looking forward to where you’re going to take things going forward, with the focus on being THE resource for ethical affiliate marketing. That’s really been where I want to focus with my online adventures, so I’ll definitely be along for the ride!