For this month, Clint talks about the tests in this month's dossier and Google's process of indexing pages. When updates come, it seems almost as if they shut off indexing or they made it a lot more harder. You can still get indexed pre-update, it's just that if you let Google do it on their own, it slows down Googlebot and it takes a week for your blog posts to get indexed and all kinds of other issues are encountered.
6 Phases of Indexing was also discussed:
- Crawled for indexing - search for URL, if its there it has been indexed in a database
- Analyzed and cached - cached copy in Google indicates it been read and stored
- Sorted for long tail specific terms or by site search only - indicates that content has been assessed and analyzed
- Recrawled for JavaScript - maybe seen if cache date refreshes in Google
- Sorted for general queries - shows up in primary index for queries
- Crawled for updates
Tests in this Month's Dossier
Test 651: Do GMB Map Embeds Work To Boost Maps Rankings
Test 652: Would A Page That Links Back Into Itself With A Hyperlinked Image Make A Difference?
Test 653: Does Data-link Pass Link Juice?
Test 654: Would A Page That Links Back Into Itself With A Generic Anchor Make A Difference?
Test 655: Can A Page Be Pushed Down By Using Reputation Management Services?
January 2022 Dossier
Transcription below:
So what I'm doing is we're recording the monthly webinar, obviously. And as you know, the team actually divides that up and puts it with the tests and all that stuff. But we're also adding anything like, what do I do with this. So rather than worrying about trying to get 50-60 tests out and try to beat some number and then getting messed up with Google that does in.
We're gonna provide a little bit more value. So you still get tests, but you actually get the so what's. I mean, why are we testing this, and then how the heck are we going to use it. So that's what we're gonna do going forward. If you guys hear me take a real long pause, like just stop and pause, that's the team can find the break in the recording and bust those out. Ultimately, that was going to happen is these are all going to be organized for you in a better way. Dori and I talked about it, and then the team's implementing some new changes on the website.
So all the new tests from 2020, all the tests from 2021. And then new ones going forward, there will be on the new platform. And then we'll have the archives, everything's in the old will be in the current platform that you guys have access to now. So you have something go back to you from ages when SIA started to the new stuff. And then as we roll through the retest and all that, it's all going to go into the new platform. So it'd be pretty swift.
So Hunter is building that right now. He's rebuilding the website on Oxygen. And we'll probably have a thing in there about Oxygen, we'll have Hunter come on and actually record something. You guys can see Oxygen. I know a lot of people heard about it, not many people are using it. And LearnDash is the platform that we're actually building to show the tests and the courses and all that because we're gonna actually put these together. And not necessarily so you can give it to VA and be able to do the things but you can actually create a pretty decent process.
If you wanted to use your membership here is a training set. So if you're gonna teach your VAs to do citations, for example, and we'll have the test on the citations, how we build citations and some things to do and you can have your VAs learn all that stuff. So ultimately, that's the whole goal in this webinars, the first implementation. So let's get into it a little bit. We're gonna do field observations. I'm gonna do those every month.
Just weird, crazy stuff I found and all that. Obviously, I mean, img Ted Kubaitis talking about field sight observations and stuff. And I just kind of adopted it, it works. And Ted Kubaitis is a member of the SIA as well. So I'm just gonna use field observations, just weird things that we're looking at, probably like future tests that we're going to get into, and all that stuff. And as this grows out, I think you're going to get a lot of value out of it. Because you can start doing testing on your own websites, based off the field observations, while you're waiting for the SIA tests come through, so you have kind of a double verification whether something works or not.
Alright, so let's get into 2020. First we have obviously the indexing thing. Google indexing in the processing of pages and what brought this out is when the updates come it seems almost as if they shut off indexing or they make it a lot harder, you can still get index pre updates. And I've seen it, it's just that if you let Google do it on their own for whatever reason, it's like, slows down Googlebot and then it takes a week for your blog posts to get in there and all kinds of other madness. So it's frustrating if you're watching it a lot.
So what we're doing as part of testing is finding sub processes that we can actually look at on our own. So I gotta shut this off for a second. Okay, so I did this test. And this test was supposed to be is actually doing the canonicals. We're trying to see if I build out all these test pages, and then this page here would be the one that I was going to make a copy of one of the test pages off and then set the canonical link to the test page. And then I was gonna watch see what happened.
And after that I was gonna send backlinks to it, but the problem is that was indexing. So and I can run in here and search for them in Google. And sometimes you see him, sometimes you don't. But you see that that URL is in deindexed. Here's where it gets weird. So this is essentially what I call phase one of indexing. Does Google know about it? And that's in the PDF right here. So it's crawled for indexing, it's there, it's in the database.
This indicates to me that it's in Google's database, okay. And then analyzing cached, meaning it's read it and stored it. So you as a business owners as SEO can come over here and look, and it's here, it's in the cached. So it's read it and has it stored it. If you push the cached button, it has stored it. Here's your storage date. Okay, and then sorted, indicates the contents been analyzed, so sorted for longtail specific terms or search by site only.
So basically, if I go the first four words it's a longtail specific words, and then I go over to Google. Is it going to find it for this? And you see is not there. So it's failed this step of the indexing, it's not there. Let's go for here, look at this. This is the test keyword. It's not there. And then we go here. It's not there. So Google is aware of my URL. It is analyzing cached my URL, but is not assessed the content inside it in there. And so I can't go on to the recrawl for JavaScript and then sorting for general queries and crawling the updates. Those are the other three steps.
So when you're doing your SEO now you can actually watch this whole process. The process from here was 24 hours to get it in here. And then the first cached actually was another 24 hours. And it's been since January 6th and January 15th, when I resubmitted them, and it's still not indexed for those terms. This tells us a couple things. One, it tells us and gives us this process now.
Anyone can follow that process, it's really easy now right? So if you're having indexing issues, you find out where you're at in that process, and you know kind of, maybe you may need to change something. So you get a little bit of insight by following this process. And then the other thing is, it tells us that Google may have been given or the algorithm may be given dictionary. So if you don't recognize this type of testing, it's called random alpha.
Essentially, it's exactly what it is. It just takes random letters it throws them together and creates random nonsense on these. And random alpha pages in two different sets, has shown not to get pass this. They all come back like this. So I'm thinking that Google has been given a dictionary, which is really, really important for us to know. Especially if you're targeting, let's say you have an English site and the Spanish site, and you get your hreflang messed up and Google's expecting English and sees Spanish and is like, you're not passing the English dictionary. That can be important.
Number two, it could just totally destroy random alpha for single variable testing. Random English saw the same thing. So now, that raises the question that Google will not only get a dictionary, is it getting better at putting words strings together and seeing expected word strings together. And the we still have to test lorem ipsum, but lorem ipsum pages are still in the search results. I've seen them.
So that's kind of where we at with the testing thing and why in the last few times, we're like Google's messing with testing. This is what they're doing. They're making it almost impossible to do these single variable tests. For us, is that a bad thing, though? Honestly, I don't think so. Because we need and we're going to be moving on into multivariable testing, etc. And AV testing and mass page testing and that kind of stuff, just kind of expand it for you and do some stuff that you know maybe will apply to your particular market.
So I think all in all, it's interesting, it taught us the 6 phases of indexing, whatever you call it. And it gave us all something that's really easy to follow and to check up on. So I'm gonna go over one more time, 6 phases of indexing. Phase 1, search for your URL, is it in the index, Google aware of it. Phase 2, see that it is been cached, it will be in here when it first indexed and not be in the caches. So you get to see when it's been cached.
Now you do is just click on the three little dots, click on cached. And then you can check the date. This date is also cool if you note that down, you can actually see when your crawl. How often Google bots coming back and refreshing your URLs. This is from January 11th. As it noted in here, I submitted some of these, again on the 15th. But it's submitted on the 6th and it hasn't come back. He hasn't done anything since January 11th. And then search for a random string, just find a random string in here and search for it.
See if it's analyzed the content, hasn't done it yet. A little bit longer. there's no data yet, a little bit longer. It's not there. It's not ranking. It's not been analyzed and sorted for ranking purposes. And then Number 3, find your target keyword put exact match and see what happens. If all of those fill, then your page is indexed, but it's not ranking. And if it was this long in time, Google probably hates your page. I mean, there's no nicer way to put it. Google's might hate your page.
Maybe you need some backlinks, maybe you need some onpage optimization, not entirely sure. We'll figure that out and get you guys the answers for that. So that's indexing, the process of indexing. The 6 phases of indexing. Have anyone have any questions on that?
Okay, so the next we're gonna go over the discovered - not indexed. And this is a neat little trick that people are using that I found on, I believe it was a Reddit. The users was pointing that out. And Google has this discovered - not indexed message inside of Search Console. And it bothers everyone to know in. If you're building mass sites, you see this a lot. Like it's constantly there.
And we've been messing with and doing rather consistently is we've been changing the URLs. So if it's in here and you can't get it, you've resubmitted it, you sent it to indexers, you've done Google API, you've done all that crap. And it's still sitting in discover not indexed, change the URL. Just add a number to it. Like in this one, group management analytics. Let me zoom in so you can see I'm reading.
So group management in Linux, like add a one to it, and resubmit that URL. And what that seems to be doing is getting around this discovered not indexed. If it's a mass site build, and you have a whole bunch of them, like we build a mass site with 8 million pages, 2 million pages got indexed, and then most of them dropped out and we then all end up in this madness right here.
Which is because the content was just so much similar like no guy here, crazy, man, right? I'll let you do that. I mean, we're okay with the 1 million we gave you. But come on crazy man, 8 million just not happening. So if you see this in there and you know they're not really that duplicated, and you just see them sitting in here, like, obviously, how to install Google Chrome, how to set up separate IP addresses. Those are all unique pieces of content, go in there and try to change your URL. And that should pop it in and get it ranked for you.
Let's see, Tracy, is there a way to request indexing about? There is. Google indexing API, you have to be the verified owner. Let me do it for you so you guys can see it. Google Indexing API's, and this one right here. And if you don't have a tool, like rankmath has it built in, but I hate rankmath. So I use this SEO tools for Excel. And it has a connector right here, click on connectors, Google indexing API. So if you're a verified owner, you can't be a delegated owner, you have to be a verified order.
You can go in there and you can use this and connect your API key, 200 a day, doesn't cost you anything. You submit to end of the day. And do it in bulk, that way, that is as bulk as you're gonna get though. It's not like you can't submit 10,000 using that. But SEO tools for Excel and Google indexing API is great to do that.
There is a test, I did a test that shows that if you didn't have jobs schema on there or broadcast event schema, that this wouldn't work for you, that there's a filter. But there has been some reports that Google's listed that and more and more people are saying they're getting successful getting their pages in. So I'm going to review the test. But since this is free, and the only thing I'm really going to cost you is getting access to SEO tools for Excel.
I would say go ahead and do it. Well, you have nothing to lose by trying it. And then we'll wait till the test results come out to see if they have in fact lifted the restrictions that were on there previously requiring that two schemas or one of those two schemas. All right. And that's it.
Hopefully, that's pretty simple. Discovered - not indexed, sitting there for a long time, no matter what you do, it doesn't work. Get in there, turn it into and do a change URL and you get. Another one from Tracy, what about Scrapebox rapid Indexer? I haven't tried that, Scrapebox rapid indexer? haven't tried it. I mean, I'm trying everything.
So Omega, you guys know I rebuilt or thought up the concept to get omega indexing in 100%. And then Google fixed it. And that's around the same time that all the indexers broke. And now omega is indexing horrible. Speed links, the normal version of Speed links is indexing horrible. But then the VIP, indexers actually indexing it 100%. The only caveat here is I submitted here, January 6th, 24 hours they were all in and then when I checked to get in 25th, I had to resubmit these 4 pages, because those pages fell out and I resubmitted in and I believe they're back in. I mean we could check.
Yeah, see it's still up. So I mean, even though speed links VIP was 100%, It's like once it's in, Google decides. There, that one's back. Let's see, was it 5? There's five. Check nine, there it is. It's back. So how many is that? I think there's 11 URLs there. Two of them were not deindexed. So whatever that percentage is the indexing rate, it's better than what most things are right now.
So Tracy that's your question, I'd say give it a try and see what your percentages come up with. If you change the URL, what do you do with? just do a redirect, most of those SEO plugins now all come in with redirects. Or if you change it in the permalinks, all by itself inside of WordPress, I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about.
Alright, so let's say digitaleer here for example, posts and come in here. Yeah, the new Gutenberg is out. And you come in here and if you change the URL slugs here, it'll automatically set the 301s, WordPress will do it for you. You don't have to worry about the inner plugin. So you get those two options to do that. I mean HT access, I wouldn't do that. Unless you absolutely have to. Like if you're on like when a GD site, she does all HTML, she called them out and stuff. And probably you'll have to do the redirects, needs to access.
But if you're using WordPress, just change it here or user SEO plugin to do it. Typically if you change it here, you don't have to have an SEO plugin take care of it. WordPress will do the redirects for you.
Alright, so that's the indexing stuff. There's two things that we know right now. This one, the 6 phases of indexing is actually pretty interesting, be a little watch that, follow along and then you can start figuring out what the heck is going on.Like if you get here, and then your content that you have firing into JavaScript, so you know that your regular indexing is good. Now Google's having problems with the JavaScript, if your JavaScript comes in there, and then you can actually start thinking about, alright, so is it in the index for my queries? for my primary target keywords? And that's onpage stuff. And then if you do, how much onpage changes and Google hasn't crawled it yet, since you did the onpage changes and you know that from the crawl date and you know that you're missing for the crawl of updates.
So that whole indexing is that it's actually pretty good. I think it's easy to teach staff and business owners or ease for yourself to diagnose what the heck is going on, and then discovered - not indexed, which is a pretty handy little trick, it's kind of a last resort thing. I mean, they'll go in and just do that first. Try to figure it out the rest of the way before you change your URL strings because you pick those URLs for a reason.
Okay, GMB's. Do GMB Map Embeds Work To Boost Maps Rankings? And this is the test by Matthew Bennett, embedded GMB's on PBN. So he's using Dori's network. I think he's in Dori's network, don't quote me on that. He may even as zone but he didn't say. And so what he did is he selected 5 different GMB profiles, just random random selection in the water damage niche, we get the PDF, you can check out the niches for yourself.
And then he placed the map embeds inside of PBN links. And he did optimize the posts a little bit, and then did an app, was posted below the hyperlink. So there's the example, that's what it looks like in this situation here, in this case. And here are his results kind of a mixed bag. So when you look at this, you got improvements on these two and then these two dropped and then this one kind of stayed blur. And he did have a theory about why he got these results and it all centers around citation stuff. And you can see the rest of his deep dive into that, here.
But the short version is these two sites had well optimized pages onpage. And they didn't look, I don't want to use the term spending. They weren't keyword dragged out, right. So they weren't over optimized, let's put it that way. And then these sites had either a spammy link to them, or they were the Google Business sites, like the profile site. So it was kind of like the minimum valuable product versus these two here that were good.
So these had citations and then these three didn't. And it's seems like Google sort of respected, what was actually going on, like the citation said, Hey, these are real businesses. The sites are taken care of, and all that stuff. And then that pattern when they saw that Google saw the embeds, like, Ah, okay, that makes sense because it's a legit business, there's citations. So we're gonna give it a boost. And then these ones did not have any of those things.
This was a wash, I believe this one was probably the site, the Google Business Profile site. And then these two are the ones that are blown out, like so. Yeah, more spammy. See, like water damage page, blah, blah, blah. Then the other one is here. And here's the third one. So this is like really crazy, City keyword, City keyword. So that kind of detracted from the trust, and then the link showed up in Google's and maybe it's a theory, but maybe Google figured that out. It's like, alright, so crappy things, got me links. Yeah, were not buying, you're optimizing for keyword, we're gonna drop you from rankings. Pure theory.
So I wanted to test this again. And what I did is I actually did use Dori's links and I did use a map that I knew about in like the trust. And I put those inside of my tools. And essentially duplicated this. So the map that I did, I know it has some citations, is not a lot. It was ranking number for pretty much in the entire proximity zone.
And I've tried to look for, and then they put the map embeds, and it knocked it up closer to the location. But it wasn't a whole lot. And it was only 5 embeds where I think he did 5 too. Yes, he did 5 too. So I did 5, he did 5, and we knocked it up a little bit. Mine was I wasn't looking at like one specific keyword.
While I was looking at the keyword, but I was using local Vikings to see the little heat map thingy. And mine wasn't as dramatic as this. It was more kind of like this in line with everything. So the 5 embeds work, I would do like 5 at a time. So how would you use this? How would a business owner use this test? what I would do is find some websites, ie some parasites, for example, like medium.com, Pearltrees, other parasites like that, and then do the map embeds on them.
Set up a page, make it about your brand, and then put a map embed on there. Represent your brand, you don't want to put crap on there. You don't want to get all crazy and do a whole complete redesign and all that man, this would just you know, set up your brand and make it look nice. Put your name, address phone number and your backlink to your URL.
And now it's a citation and then embed your map on there and just do it five times. And then watch what happens. Assuming that you're onpage and your site is your map is linked to that right page, you should see a slight increase. Again, you're not going to go from 21 to 4 or 3, it's not gonna happen. But if you're in bunch of number 4s, you're going to kick in and get some number 3s, which puts you in the mud pack versus not right.
And then once you've seen that, just do five more and then do five more until you're kind of where you want or you see that it might be slipping a little bit. And the slipping just indicates that Google's onto you. So stop doing the map embed and you got to think of something else. That's how I would leverage the results of this test.
Again, citations were all in order. The onpage for the pages was all in order. Everything looked legit. And then they got results if it looks spamming from the beginning, if the foundation was crap, and then you just throw these on here, you're not going to get any results. So get all your other stuff in order before you even bother with the bits. That's what this test is telling. You have any questions about this one?
Would A Page That Links Back Into Itself With A Hyperlinked Image Make A Difference?So way back when SIA started, and if you remember, Kyle Roof, one of the SIA testers did a test about and showed that or prove that if you link to a page from that page, it was a boost, you get a slight boost, you're not going to go from 20 to number 1 by doing it. If you're 10 and you know, knocked maybe up to 9, you know, that's kind of a how a slight boost that would turn out. But it still worked.
And then single variables, it locked it up for five to number one, it's really easy keyword, place at number one with just a link to itself. We wanted to see if there's actually effect in place for images. So in image hyperlinks. If you know how to do that you just embed the picture on your page and then you give it a link. So when someone clicks on the image, it goes to the page. And that's a really good link building technique as well as image link building.
So we want to see if the image on there knocked it out. So here's the two pages that I got. The heavy images and got the link treatments. And here's the results. And now that's not the same picture. It actually just did nothing at all, nothing happened. So if you are going to do this, maybe try and probably the next iteration of this test would be to try to use the images for interlinking. But if you're going to do that, I would make sure that the alt text is relevant to the page that you're linking to.
So let's say you had a page about WordPress design. This top one was WordPress design. And then this bottom one in the red box was WordPress SEO. And the WordPress design says when the image would be about taking SEO consideration or WordPress SEO, and that link would go to the WordPress SEO page. That would be a pretty good way to pass relevancy back and forth between these two things.
Interlinking the pages while at the same time keeping your audience on this page to do exactly what you want. So you don't give them any other options, but you fulfill your call to action or leave the site. So in using the image links may be a good way to take care of that and try that out. So that would be a next good test to apply for yourself in the Euro markets. Any questions on that? Pretty simple.
Okay, Test 653: Does Data-link Pass Link Juice? So data link, it's out of JavaScript. And I mean, you can apply this data link to anything you want. Like here it's an HTML, but really, it's a JavaScript function. So if you want to tie your page and set conditions and stuff, it uses the data link the source of the data, to populate a page or to change the content of the page, etc, etc.
We wanted to know if this link actually passing juice as Google reading that analyzing the data link, and saying, Alright, so this is the URL, that's going to get the juice. If you look in the code, the Ahref here is blank. So the only link is right here. It's in the data link section. And so we set up the test. And the two test pages ended up at the top, that's where they started off at.
And then mid test, one of those pages disappeared, and then finally this other one dropped. So what that's telling us is that this data link didn't give us anything. This is not recognized as a backlink. So if you're using that in In JavaScript, for example, and you're tying pages together with data links, and you have no actual backlink to them, then it's not going to pass link juice.
So it'll be great changing your content and leveraging and getting used to those data link settings, etc. But this will help you that. Now what do you guys use this for? Number one, all JavaScript sites, I mean, Google's catching up, they're getting better even reading JavaScript, but for the most part, they're just kind of like Pooh poohing on it.
I mean, they can do it, you write it, they've kind of accepted that as their, but they're in no hurry to fix all the dramas with it. So if you are building some internal link issue, we're having some internal link issues, or you're just not seeing the success, or maybe even a tool says you have a whole bunch of orphan pages, and your developers like they're all connected with JavaScript.
Go take a look at that data link, or ask your developer about that data link. And make sure that that Ahref reference here is populated, that will create the backlink. This is not doing it by itself, you have to have the Ahref link in there as well. And that will hook that back up. And that'll help you with your internal linking.
See it more and more as JavaScript and JavaScript platforms get better and more web developers move over to those because they are allow you to create cool and exciting features. I see that kind of rotation and those kind of problems. So now you know how to fix it, which is good. And even more specifically, now you know how to diagnose if you have a problem. All right. Any questions on that? I mean, that was kind of vague, right? No blur? Boring?
Alright, Test 654, Would A Page That Links Back Into Itself With A Generic Anchor Make A Difference? So this is kind of like the image thing. But instead of we're using a generic anchor, if you don't know what generic is, in regards to anchors, it's like, click here or read more. Or I mean, there's tons of meaning in Google and if you want to, if you're curious, generic anchor texts examples.
A cool way, all these words are all generic. They're totally unrelated. Anything like you can't look at these and think what that page is about. These are commonly used by SEOs to dilute the link profile. In regards to anchor text, in particular, if you're been around during the penguin days, I mean, before Penguin, we can pretty much exact match anchor our pages and send a bunch of links to them. And Google be fine with it, the more you add the better.
And then penguin came along. And now this generic anchor text came along. And it's essentially is a way to protect from the overs, optical preferences should you build links with having these generic anchor text. Personally, I don't use these anymore, because they pass no value whatsoever to my website, other than maybe the potential traffic but 99.9% of your backlinks are not going to generate traffic.
So why would you do this? It doesn't make any sense anymore. But I mean, here's a list you can find tons of the lists, if you want to and just kind of play with them. So we're looking at is if I link to via my page and I linked to the page itself using generic anchor text, what is going to happen? And before the test started, kinda expected the same thing with the images stuff. So here's the test page started up at the top with the generic link.
In this case, because it was too late and at the top right off the bat, we started the test you're like, I can't see anything. I mean what if it works? What if it doesn't just gonna be staying there? So if it works, then it works. And if it doesn't, you get this. The page is actually dropped out and down from the top two positions and these ones one, but why? It's about your anchor texts. That is the relevancy.
So I'm linking to myself to itself. I've taken the relevancy from the keyword because I'm not using the keyword as anchor text, I'm using some generic thing. And that irrelevancy of that anchor text said, these pages are not as relevant to that money keyword as you think it is Google. And so Google drop those rankings. And that's exactly. That's how it works. And that's also why I stop using generic anchor text at all.
In lieu of generic anchor text, now, what you can do is use your entities. You can use LSI keywords, if I dare call them that. You can be on Twitter lately, you know that the flaming war where LSI keywords don't exist kind of thing. But you can use those kinds of words. But mainly I rely on entities stuff, where I'm trying to reduce my exact match and my broad match and my brand and the exact match, brand and related searches.
I'll throw in some anchor text to the entities that are on that page versus wasting the relevancy that the anchor text is passing to the page through the backlink. With a click here, read more or that kind of stuff, that's this test really proves. I mean, especially on your internal links, you don't want to use generic at all.
You don't have to go 100% exact match. I mean, I go 100% exact match until it stops moving up. And then I'm done building internal links. But there is people who say that they've seen 100% Exact match across the entire website. So if you have SEO on your SEO website, you have 100 pages, and they all link to one page with all SEO on it. The argument is that that is bad for your rankings and improvement. I haven't proved it, just saying I use 100% Exact Match until it stops moving up. And then I'm done building internal backlinks.
In this case, you just don't build any generic internal backlinks on your website. If you want to build a whole bunch more like you get the exact match and it starts moving. Switch to entities if you want to build some more to see what happens switch to, you know, related searches that are long tails, switch to brand only, but don't switch to read more, click More stuff, you're just wasting your time. And you're reducing the relevancy, your anchor text is passing on to your pages and then thus hurting the ranking of your pages. Any questions on that?
All right. So this is a Reputation Management test from James Goldsmith and I had to actually kind of push him to publishing this because there was an interesting thing that happened here. And you as business owners or SEOs are going to run into this from time to time. And so what the test is, is if this Reputation Management Services thing, claim what they were going to do was actually drop the page that was bad. And they were usually doing it through backlinks.
So the gig was for as essentially a negative SEO campaign, which is essentially where reputation management is either negative SEO, the target page, or you positively SEO everyone else and pushed in the battle and then your two options with reputation management. And James ordered from this gig right here. He found it on Fiverr, I believe it was, he had a link in here. And then they started the test and it immediately the test, like the test page drops. And then it went right up and dropped. And James was like what is going on?
Because he didn't get a report from the Fiverr people like where's my links? All that stuff. And then it turns out that the gig was shut down, like the marketplace banned the game. And my guess is what happened is he selling reputation management, online reputation management. And they saw that as a negative SEO on Fiverr. They're getting pretty vague about blocking negative SEO campaigns.
Which, I mean, that's their business model and their decision is totally fine. And I know how to do negative SEO, I just choose not to do it because if you have to be another SEO that way, then you're just not a very good SEO. As far as you know, that's my opinion. So then knocking off people that are providing that services is awesome.
Anyway, so the page that they supposedly sent the link to actually dropped for a little bit, but then it shot right up to number two and then here to number one. And that behavior is pretty much what I've noticed from a lot of air quotes, negative SEO, close quotes, campaigns. It's the sudden shot of essentially bad backlinks but it's bad backlinks out of relevancy with the anchors.
And then Google sort of figures out that it's not in line with the link rest of the link profile of the website and goes, you know, we're not going to punish you. And as a matter of fact, often ends up happening is that the negative SEO campaign over time turns into a positive thing. I've previously talked about one of my websites, it was hit by 150,000 backlinks. And it got a manual penalty.
The disavow, the reconsideration request, they brought it back and now that site ranked, or that site ranked really easily, because I had 150,000 nofollow backlinks, which is essentially what the do deindexed thing does. And it was filtering out all the bad juice and give me credit for all the good stuff.
And I could pretty much like in launch jack all day long with that thing and not really have to build any backlinks because the site huddle. And that's what I kind of think here. So even though James didn't get his report, I think that it was sorted out. I mean, and this is not abnormal, the links not showing up in a Ahref for example. That's not an anomaly and you can look in majestic.
You can look in the SEMrush, you can like SEO Spyglass, and maybe find them. But for the most part, I don't think that's abnormal right there. You can see this page has been made of SEO, but through reporting tools don't show any backlinks. So if your reporting tools are showing you bad backlinks, you're already too late with negative SEO thing. You can't go, Oh, I dropped and then I saw them. No, you were on the way down way before those links showed up.
Or those links showed up and it took some time for drake again. And then finally the tools find them. But by the time you're reporting, the point is by the time the reporting says there, it's already too late, the damage has been done. So that's pretty interesting. So what can you do with this knowledge?
First buyer beware, and this reputation management stuff, when it's presented like that. I'll build backlinks to the bad page. And then I will demote them because this, in most likelihood is actually what's going to happen. They'll drop for a while, and then you'll be all excited. Thanks, it's moving is dropped, and then Google's gonna figure some stuff out the Tinky.
And she to never want to change the value of those backlinks and promotes your page that you're trying to push down the number one. So don't do that. Two, kind of just expect that gigs are going to disappear in fiverr, especially in the SEO market with the providers. I mean, it's a money, it's a numbers game for them. So it's not unnatural on this platform to have a gig disappear. And so just kind of expect that.
It happens on Fiverr, happens in Legit, happens on Upwork just deal. And then three, if you going to do online reputation management, just get good at pushing up the sites around it, find the parasites, the easy ones, the ones that are like the mediums and plus and the Pinterest and all that. Find all those that are sitting over on page two, and build some backlinks to them. And you can push that above the negative SEO thing and knock this down and those guys will have actually a hard time in the reputation management section to get that right back up.
Once it's pushed down with those parasites it's really hard to get it back up. And that's more than enough. Obviously you want enough page one, hopefully page two, but by page three, then you're done. No one's really gonna get like that for, for stuff. Unless you're just intentionally searching for dirt. It's only a matter of time before they're gonna find that. And that's the reputation management tests.
Again James didn't want to do that, because he did lose the contract with the seller there. But I think it's a good lesson to get test. So it's kind of shows some of the stuff that we've been dealing with, providers disappearing, indexing, and that kind of stuff.
So I hope you appreciate the insights on that. I hope that you appreciate the, you know, what do I do with it section like, I have these fields, observations, and how do I employ that? And what's the value of it to me? And if you do, just let me know, either sending them email support, or hit me up on Skype or Slack.
And this is what's good. This is what's bad. Can you add this? Can you take that out? And we'll make this whole more about for everyone. And then when we start putting together the courses, the VA thing that I talked about the beginning, so that you can actually make these part of your SOPs, and it's all backed up by testing. So if anyone questions you, here's the test. This is what they ship, they did, here's my test.
Here's how I proved it that they are right or wrong. And if you disagree, that's awesome. Show me your tests. Then if they don't show you the test, then you can default to your test results in the test results in SIA, which is the purpose of this whole wonderful membership in the first place. All right. So that's it. Do you guys have any questions? Any questions at all? You got 10 minutes. So if you have any questions at all, go ahead, you can ask them. Doesn't have to be a test. If you don't want to. It can be anything?
Okay, Tracy, what would happen if you redirect to the link it's off? It would be called a redirect loop and you never get to the page, you just keep doing it over and over and over again. And as bad, eventually, Googlebot will stop your browser will be like No, not doing it. It was go to nowhere. It's like getting stuck on a roundabout, and never really had to pull off the exit. It's kind of what that was a quick.
Okay, this one Tracy, thank you. If I change URL, should I wait to Google gives me 404s then do the redirects? As I said, I have a very large site. No, when you change URLs, put the 301s in place right away, don't do the 401 thing that will actually screw you up even more. Just do the change URLs, the redirects in place, and then you can go into the discover. Discover not indexed and here. And then when you're in here, there's actually another button when it's all done that you can say validate that it was fixed. And you push that and it'll go through and then find this for you.
So after you're done, you push that, then it'll go through and check all those URLs and then it might actually throw them in there. You have to see it that's there. I don't remember that's there or not. For discovered currently not crawled, what I do, typically is there for the errors. So if it's not there, you're just gonna have to use the API. Okay, doesn't look like there's any other questions.
Again, thank you for coming. This has been the January 2022 webinar. See you on the weekly Asked Me Anything. Remember, those are not recorded the AMA's if you want to sign up for those, the emails go out before the event starts. So you should have got some emails with the Zoom signup link to get notified every time every week.
And those are there for you to ask questions. You know, obviously you can do some general stuff and if you want to get direct on your website, just know that other members will be able to see that stuff but you get to ask more specific questions like if you're having a problem that week. Specifically, you can come in, if I can't fix it, maybe someone else in there can or will help you research it and solve that problem right there.
AMA, those are on Mondays at 10pm, Arizona time. We don't do daylight savings time. So Arizona time 10am, it'll always be Arizona time. Thank you all and have a nice February. See you in the Skype in the chats. Bye everybody.