Mailbag

Because I'm behind on replying and can work on it in chunks as I do actual (hopefully) valuable things.

But first...

I'm a potato.

All my calendars are Sunday thru Saturday, left to right.

Sessions, the app I'm recording the webinar on next week goes Monday through Sunday.

No idea why, that's toilet paper coming out from underneath territory but whatever...I didn't catch it.

The real date is Friday the 16th. 2PM PST.

Of course I'm not going to make you lose precious Saturday time when you could be watching on your bosses dime.

I got your back.

It will be recorded for those of you in different time zones or other conflicts.

Let's dive in...

I know you want "why" type of questions, but I just want to know how you say xrumer (shroomer?) as I can't think of any other way to say it. I love your newsletter.

X - Rumour.

Pronounced like a Canadian.

Still the best SEO tool ever. Edit: Maybe A-Parser. Let me think on that a bit.

Any free site/parasite you can recommend building out "boost" targets on?

Free? No.

How about $8-$12?

Expired domains with existing good links from authority sites are available by the thousands.

They're not easy to find, you've got to love the grind of Easter egg hunting to get enough of them to pop big terms but I still maintain this is the one high level activity most SEOs will never do...but should.

And never get the benefits from.

To be clear, because Clint is speed skimming this...

I'm registering the (relevant) domain, throwing up (relevant AI) content and Boosting the links on the Authority sites, not the domain itself.

You're adding a tier but you need to because even though you can find expired domains with great links, the domain itself doesn't have enough authority to be a proper vehicle for passing the juice through.

You expect me to read all this?

Nope, bang that unsubscribe button down there somewhere.

<Slur> Are you going to make a loom of the Friday SEO slap event?

You picked an awkward time for all your European homobuddys 00:00-01:30am? On a Friday night?

I'll try to be there all the same, camera on, <censored> out.

I have the best readers.

Thanks for the no BS insights so far, appreciated. Especially after attempting to do a certain 'semantic' course online which seemed to specialize in complicating topics.

I'm not smart enough to pretend to be smart. I'll just do the work instead.

Questions:
1. A large portion of my exact match links come from links to images on my site. The images alt text title was the exact match so it seems these spams sites pick up the title and use it to link with anchor 'exact match-website name'. Assume i should change all these image names to something less direct and disavow all?

2. Does enough of these exact match links cause a sitewide loss in rankings, ie. losing large traffic for pages without these exact match links.

Great questions.

I don't have a solid answer for you, haven't tested image link building in a minute.

I know I've had a few discussions on the topic lately so it's on people's radar as a possible culprit to lost ranks.

I would tackle it by disavowing any low quality TEXT exact match first, get those pages all crawled again after the file processes.

Monitor.

If no movement after 2-3 attempts (over 5-7 days) at getting Googlebot back on top of those shitty links, then I'd crank up my suspicion on those image links a few levels and start working on mitigation processes for those.

Nice one Grind, here's a question for a potential future email what are your "foundational links" lookin like? The same basic social profiles, web 2.0s and citations everyone's talking about?

My process on foundation links for my sites is to act like a business trying to promote their business online and not a SEO.

What are new businesses going to do?

Facebook, X, IG, etc.

Then they're going to advertise locally.

What you guys don't put fake contact NAP on all your affiliate sites?

Just me?

Weird.

Anyway, advertise locally, then maybe a business would try to get listed in the handful of high quality directories that remain.

Or find expired domains with those types of links. Wink Wink Nudge Nudge.

After that, they're probably going to try to run some promotions.

Local newspaper links anyone?

Local radio? TV in bigger markets.

They all have sites with great links to be had.

After I get that foundation built, I start laying in the power links as my content grows.

That's my rank forever plan.

Parasites?

Buy multiple, interlink them, hit each of them with Amplified Links, continually monitor to see if they're picking up any decent natural links (more likely on Hearst properties than SandboxIndia) and those links I hit with Link Boost only.

Rinse and repeat.

Scale as they start paying for themselves + +.

So simple a caveman could do it.

I'll call it Simple Semantic Stacking so people think I'm smart and know what I'm talking about.

Donezo.

Chat Soon.

Grind

P.S. As always, for done for you vs DIY, head over to https://clients.grindstoneseo.com and keep the team hopping.