Podcasting and link building
In this week’s Office Hours we tried an experiment involving “submitting” our site to Google, in addition to answering some questions about podcasting.
The experiment we attempted involved the old-school, scam-artist claim to “submit your site to Google.” Perhaps you got an email claiming someone can submit your site to Google, for a fee. This is baloney. Not only does Google not allow this any longer but, when it did, it was available to everyone for free.
However, currently Google does allow you to submit page to their index through Google Search Console. Does this do anything? Does this help? Is this worth your time? We’re doing an experiment to find out (something you can do for yourself, if you want- just see how we’re doing it in the video).
When we got to question-time, we continued our discussion about podcasting from the last week. This time we ask a more broad question: is there an advantage in embedding a podcast on a page of your website. The short answer: Google doesn’t care- it doesn’t matter for SEO. The real question is how are you trying to build an audience for your podcast. The answer might be outside your website.
As we talked about this, this lead to a conversation about links. Link building is hard but important for your SEO campaign. Could podcasting be a good way to build links to your website? Watch the video and you can find some ideas for how to use podcasting for link building.
Transcript:
David
Hello, everybody. Today is February 24, and we’re here to talk about SEO and all things like that. I’m surprising the members of the colony today with homework. We are going to do an SEO test together. When I say SEO tests, it’s not a test of like evaluation, and we’re going to do an experiment. Okay. Here’s what I want us to do. I’m going to walk us through it. Let me do a couple things here real quick. Have you ever heard of people claiming that they can submit your website to Google? You ever heard of that?
Ali and Lavonya
[Shake their head]
David
Okay.
Tricia
Is it… Yeah, I can’t remember what it’s called.
Lavonya
The think with Google?
David
What was it again?
Lavonya
I think they have a test on them now.
David
Who does?
Lavonya
Google. I think It’s Think with Google or something like that. I came across it the other day.
David
There used to be a form somewhere in Google where you could submit your website to the search engines. Sometimes scam artists within the SEO community say: Hey, pay me, and I’ll submit your site to Google to people who didn’t realize that; Number one, there’s a free form. Number two, basically, Google ignores the free form.
Tricia
Okay. Because I think I’m thinking of something, you do in the Google search console.
David
You’re getting ahead of me. Slow down there, turbo. So I would like to do a test where we each go into the Google search console and submit a page through the Google search console and then see what happens. Let me show you what I mean. Okay. Here we are in curious ants, Google search console. Don’t be too impressed by the lack of traffic. So, well, the first thing we’re gonna do is we’re going to go to the coverage report, and this is where we see Google and what they think of the pages of our site. For instance, I have zero pages currently that have any errors on them. Some pages are valid with a warning, 120 valid pages, and 190 excluded pages. Okay. We’re going to go through, and we’re going to at only excluded pages and what you might find is there’s going to be something called crawled-currently not indexed or discovered-currently not indexed.
Okay. So both of these are in this case, there are 10 pages have been discovered by Google, but Google’s decision not to add these pages to the index. Okay. They said for whatever reason that page should not be in the index, which means it can never be served to a search user because it’s not in the index. Right? Because someone does a search on Google. They, Google says, okay. It goes to its index of all the pages on the internet and says which of the pages are the best most relevant for that query serves the top 10, right? So it’s not in the index. Google can serve it. Here are your 109 are crawled, meaning Google is actively viewing them but has decided not to add them to its index. Right? So several reasons why it would decide not to be in the index, but for whatever reason, Curiousants has 109 plus 10. So 119 pages that are not in Google’s index. Okay.
Now, theoretically, because they know all of you are following the game plan to the T every week. This is something you’re looking at every week on your web, in your search console, because that’s one of the parts of the process is right. I know you’re all doing this already, and you’re already ahead of the game, but let’s go look at crawled-currently not index for Curiousants.
There are several pages here that Google has identified that it does not only know about, but it has actively viewed them with this crawler. It’s decided it’s not going to add it to the index, but let’s look at some of these.
Game-Plan/analytics/need-privacy-policy/feed
Blog/March-2021-Google-analytics-study/fee.
Here is one from a couple of weeks ago, office-hours/should-I-build-a-page-for-every-location-in-my-business. Not feed. Okay.
David
WordPress gurus to the feed URLs look familiar to you?
Tricia
Ain’t that the RSS feed?
David
Yeah. This is actually every post on a WordPress website with an RSS feed for the comments in that post. You can see them by going to your posts slash feed, okay. Anyway, it’s very interesting. I’m using Firefox to handle it differently from Chrome. Basically, an RSS feed is a text listing of everything in there. In this case, there’s a text listing of every comment on that blog post. Well, I can tell you right now, there are no comments on that blog post, but I don’t want Google to index the feed. I’m totally okay with Google not indexing the feed. There are 109 pages, some of which include the word feed, and we can go here, and we can say URL contains slash feed. Now I see that 96 of 109 include feed. I’m fine with Google not indexing that. That’s not a problem, right? But if I go to does not contain feed. Now I start to see some posts that I really wish Google were to index. Now, maybe not page two of the office hours archive. I would like Google to index the Google analytics study group page. I would like Google to index our conversation about building a page for every location. What I’m suggesting we do at this part is an experiment. First of all, login, copy this URL, and save it somewhere. I’m going to go save it on a text editor on my website. You can save it on whatever. You save it by hitting the copy URL to the little double copy icon. Okay.
Tricia
You want us to go into like hours and pick one, not index, but we want it indexed?
How to index a page that you want to be indexed
David
We would like it indexed. Yeah. For instance, this page two is not a good candidate because I don’t really care if the index, the second page of office hours, I’d like them to find us. So let’s say I’m picking this one. Once I’ve saved that somewhere, I’m going to hit the little magnifying glass, and I’m going to look, and it’s going, Oh, it looks, you look at there. Now it says submitted and indexed. I did here just so you’re following me, you can hit this magnifying glass, and that will inspect the URL. And it’ll show you everything Google knows about that page. In this case, it’s saying it’s submitted, and it’s in the index. In other words, here’s the site map where it found it. Here’s a page from which linked to.
It. Crawl allowed (Yes) Indexing allowed (Yes). Here’s the canonical tag. It’s mobile-friendly. Good. It’s got breadcrumbs on it. Cool. It’s got site link search, but okay. I’ve learned a lot about this page, right? In this case, it seems that the indexed crawl but not the index report is a little out of date. What I want us to do is find one. Let’s go ahead and use this one. Let’s see if this because this is actually a pretty new blog post. It’s in the index as well, but what I would like us to do, this has been around forever.
Okay, here we go. Here we go. This is the main game plan page which lists the process of the game plan. But, but to the public, it doesn’t list it. It’s not in Google’s index. I would like this to be in Google’s index.
In this case, I can copy this URL because this is the one I want to say, if not the other one, and I can go to this button and say request indexing.
Okay, It takes a minute or two. It says we wait, still waiting.
Lavonya
Do we want Google to index the Cookie and policy pages?
David
Probably not.
Lavonya
Oh okay
David
Yeah. Once you submit, it says the URL was added to a priority crawl queue. Submitting the page multiple times will not change its queue position or priority. In other words, we have submitted the page to go. So what I’d like us to do.
Sometime before tomorrow, sometime in the next 24 hours, find a page in your Google search console report. That is not indexed that you wish was indexed. It could be your page. It could be a client site. It could be a page on every one of your client’s sites. Make sure it says like this, not in the index URL is not in Google. After you hit the magnifying glass and then hit the request or submit to the Google button. I forget what it said now because it’s changed.
Tricia
Yeah. Okay.
David
Then what I want you to do is every week. Oh, wait. Let’s do, if you can, every morning after you do this first thing because you’ve saved the URL, as you can go take your URL, log into Google search console in the search bar up here, paste the URL that takes you directly to this report. And let’s cast number one. How many days it takes Google to index this page.
Tricia
So, let’s see. We put it in the top where it says inspect. Okay
David
. Yeah. So that’s the first test. We’re going to see how many days it takes Google to index it. We’ll meet next week. We’ll ask. Okay. How many days did it take? Did anybody get submitted yet? It’s been a week. How many days did it take? Are there some that haven’t been indexed yet?
Tricia
Okay
David
For instance, there’s a reason why Google decides that this page is not worthy of the index. I did not fix whatever reason that was because I just submitted it. Right? But I’m testing more to see if submitting alone actually changes that. Okay. Second of all, after it’s in the index, what we’re going to do is they’re going to go to the performance. We’re going to go, and we’re going to put this URL, exact URL into the report, and we’re going to see having indexed it. Are we now getting impressions, clicks, or ranking? So that’s the second part of it. Once it is in the index. You’ll see because it’ll show green when she searched for the inspector URL. That’s the second part of the test. Does submitting it affect the traffic or not. I have a hypothesis that it doesn’t normally.
If my hypothesis is it might, the pages we submit this way- maybe after a couple of weeks- will Google reconsider and add it to its index. But just [gets interrupted] I’m sorry?
Ali
I have a question.
David
Yeah?
Ali
Can you filter by more than one thing? Like, I was just looking through mine, and I filtered out the ones that say feed, but of the ones remaining, it looks like they’re all just old events. Like every single one is an event, event…
David
Right.
Ali
Obviously, those were. I really don’t want to be indexed. As far as I can tell, those are the only ones that are not included. It just that our website is actually indexed really well.
David
It could be, it could be, try crawled-currently not indexed, try Discovered-currently not indexed. See if there are any others. Because like my list for discovered-not indexed is very different. Like, I don’t care what the membership billing page is. In fact, I don’t want the membership billing page indexed by Google. The measure membership index invoice page better not be indexed by Google. It better be blank.
Ali
Discovered but not index. There’s only one. And it’s our thank you page.
David
That is actually, that’s another story you need to turn, make set the settings. It’s no indexed, but that’s another story. It very well could be that you have nothing to contribute to this test. After all, your site is so good because you followed every step of the game plan to the T.
Ali
Sure.
Tricia
I’ll go back on my really old site, and that is probably a mess, and I’ll see what’s on it. I’m sure there’s nothing on it.
David
Yeah, or maybe you have another site that you’ve just recently started working with.
Tricia
Yeah. I’ve got a client site that I will take a look at too.
David
I’m just curious. I just want to see if submitting it to Google even makes any difference.
Ali
If it makes it, if it makes you feel better, our website is only like a year old. We had an older website, which was updated this, I think, like a year ago. So maybe that’s why.
David
Well, you have a very good website, and you’re doing really good SEO, and you’re doing a lot of things to promote it.
Ali
Yeah,
David
You are.
Ali
I try.
David
I think I’d go to my boss and say, Hey boss, did you know that Google has indexed everything it possibly could.
Ali
I can’t even participate in this group experiment because I’m doing such a good job.
David
There you go, I think that’s worthy of a raise.
[Everyone laughs]
David
All right. Any other questions? All right. We’ll just try it out, and we’ll see. If we forget, we forget, but let’s try and see if we can learn whether Google is indexing these pages now that I didn’t want to do. Okay. Then, the game plan one ended up being a really good one for me, but that’s anyway, so, alright, cool. Moving on, Ali, you had a question for us today.
Ali
Yes, I do. Unfortunately, Stephie’s not here this week since this kind of involves her. This is something we had talked about previously, so I want to extrapolate on it. We found out that the podcast server we use anchor was basically loading our entire podcast onto our server rather than linking it to it. Stephie recommended changing to Podbean, which basically embeds it, but it doesn’t live on your server. So it would increase your page speeds. However, there is a monthly fee for that. I was talking with Kara and some of our other admin team. We’re thinking of just putting the link on the podcast page to the anchor site rather than having the embedded player. And that was for a few reasons.
We thought one, we don’t feel like that many people are actually listening to the podcast from our website. Two, we are trying to avoid yet another monthly fee added on top of many different services. Three kinds of on top of that, we’re not a podcast company, obviously. Like that’s not our focus. It’s just something that we do that brings in traffic and gives us some authority. Obviously, it’s not something that we want to dedicate a whole lot to when at the end of the day. Even if our podcast is great, which I think it is, it doesn’t bring in many customers because it’s geared towards professionals. It’s geared towards other people in the field, and it gives us authority in that sense.
But, It’s not like a parent of a child with autism is going to listen to that podcast and then come to us and be like, Oh yeah, I want your services because of this podcast, because it’s going to sound like, unless they’re extremely familiar with the jargon of our field, which some parents are, it’s going to be very difficult to follow. Were just kind of wondering, is there a real benefit to having the embedded player, what that benefit is, what kind of impact it might have versus saving the cost of just linking out to it?
David
Right, right. I think that’s a really good question. I liked that the way you’re approaching the question is ROI, right? What’s the return on the investment from this? Otherwise, we could really find ourselves just buying more and more services. Yeah. Great. Because at the end of the day, we’re a business for you to provide the services to your customers, you to stay in business, that means you can’t just buy everything you might want to.
Ali
Yeah, and even though It’s something negligible. I think it’s like $10 a month or something like it adds up dozen different $10 a month services. Now you’re talking about $1,200 a year. And you know,
David
I get it after six years of being in business by myself. I finally sat down and asked how much it cost for me to serve every client? And while I did the math? I’m like, Oh yeah, well, I’m glad I’m not cheap.
Ali
I mean, if you go on social media, now half of the advertisements are for services to unroll you from things because just in your daily life, you’re subscribed to so many different services. You don’t even realize like I’m not even using that, and I’m paying for it. It’s the same thing with a business. It’s like you don’t want to be paying for something if it’s really not beneficial.
David
Yeah. I got to say, first of all, what is the goal of the podcast for your business?
Ali
Sure. The goal, I think the main goal is to add authority to us that we are an expert in our field that we do have high-quality staff. That is probably the biggest benefit of our podcast. Our secondary goal is brand awareness because we do. We did actually find that we got some traffic from an outside website because an outside website found our podcast and recommended it. Again, they didn’t find our podcast on our website. They found it on the podcast, you know what I mean? Like they found it on a podcast site and then linked it back to us, saying like, this is a great podcast.
David
Right, right. Well, save that for later because that’s one of the things with the recommendation. Is it true that you also offer certifications and CEOs to professionals?
Ali
We are actually just about to start.
David
Maybe you don’t want to mention that.
Ali
Into CEOs. We offer CEOs for workshops that are not part of our podcast, but one of our projects in the next month is to convert those podcasts into CEOs.
What’s the SEO benefit from embedding a podcast on your website or blog?
David
Okay. Okay. So just carte blanc, just real quick. There is not really, there is not an SEO benefit putting on your site. It’s not like Google’s going to say, Oh, you have an embedded podcast. I’m going to rate this page.
Ali
Yeah.
David
Right. There are advantages you can get in using it to get SEO advantages. For instance, the link that you mentioned, right? The biggest way Google establishes a website’s authority is not how many times you mentioned your favorite phrase. It’s how many other websites say that website there? That’s a good website. Right? Having a podcast as a way of saying I’m an authority. Other websites were linking to your website because you are an authority signal to Google that you are an authority. So the podcast can help with that. Having the podcasts on your site could help attract more links to your site. Those links, even though the podcast is about more professional stuff, websites targeting more customers or patients will help you show up better. Exactly. That you’re going to get more customers because the links are pointing to you. Like you said, in this case, the link came to your site, even though they found you on another site.
Ali
Yeah. But I would be shocked if they said, Oh yeah, we visited your website. That’s where we saw your podcast because that’s not how people find podcasts, and they look for ABA or autism and podcasts, then they find it. Right. Like we share it on our own website for people that already know it’s there and are looking for it and are following us. Or maybe people who are already on our website and are looking at what kind of content we have, but that’s not how we find new listeners.
David
Right. In that, we’ve kind of talked about it this last week, but this is the idea of, so we’re talking about search engine optimization, but there’s an interesting concept within this that search engine optimization could go beyond the search engines right there. We might apply the concept of search engine optimization to rank in Amazon. If we’re selling products on Amazon, there is a way to make your products rank better. It’s so happened to be the sales of the way that Amazon ranks items based on how often they sell. How you rank and Amazon is very different than how you rank in Google. Facebook is a search engine. If you think about it’s just a very different search engine.
You go to Facebook and say, I need a doctor because I have a skin rash. Anybody know a good dermatologist and your friends go, Dr. What’s, she’s a great dermatologist. You should totally call that’s a search engine. The optimization method is totally different. Facebook and Google are competitors. Podcasts, optimizing search on podcasts works totally different. Right?. People go to iTunes. People go to the equivalent on Android. Because I am an eye jerk, I don’t know, but that’s where they searched for. Like I had a friend today goes, Oh, I had a podcast about this. I’m like, that’s awesome. The first thing I did is not going to Google his podcast. I go to the app store, I opened up podcasting. I searched the podcast thing. That’s how I found this podcast. There. It was subscribed.
Using these third-party hosting solutions is going to be a much better way to promote the podcast, which then, in turn, can promote your business. Now, some of these third-party sites that will host your podcast for you will allow you to sync up to like iTunes.
Ali
Well, actually, so part of, kind of the irony of this whole thing was this morning, literally like three hours ago, we got an email from an anchor, which is our podcast hosting it’s by Spotify, that they just announced a partnership with WordPress. Now they’re saying it’s going to be possible to seamlessly embed our podcasts on our website,
Tricia
Without putting the actual file there.
Ali
I’m hoping it is without actually embedding it the way in embedding it because we’ve been embedding it from their website, but it’s loading the whole file. As I’m assuming that part of this seamless and bad process will not have to host it. Part of their new features also being able to convert blog posts to podcasts via text to speech. Although I don’t know that we would really utilize that as much.
David
Yeah. I saw that. I saw that email as well.
Ali
Yeah. That’s like, Oh, you can embed, and you can do all these things. It’s like, did this just kind of solve our problem before we even we go a solution.
David
Again, the whole question is, how are people going to find your podcasts? And I think we all agree here that people are not likely to come. Yes, you could guess someone could be on your website because they found you. After all, they need your services, and they go to your blog, and they read, Oh, there’s a podcast I’m just subscribed to a podcast. Right. It’s an old-school way of thinking about a blog that people subscribe to the blog. Yeah. That’s not really how people consume blogs these days. Right.
Ali
We have like an email, like a blog blast email that goes out when we do blogs, but at this point, I think like my perspective is the most beneficial thing is if this new partnership allows us to embed without having the entire file hosted on our server, then fine. We make that switch. It doesn’t hurt us. It doesn’t necessarily help us, but it’s there. It’s easy to do. If it’s still going to be living on our server, then we’re going to take that out. We’re going to just link to it and not worry about having an embedded player. As you said, most people are not going to be listening to it from the website. They’re certainly not finding it on the website. There’s not a huge benefit in like the cost outweighs the benefit and that particular keys.
Yeah, Exactly. I think if they think about it, right, I want to affirm your gut is exactly right. The only missed opportunity here we talked about this last week is the reminder that transcribing the podcast and uploading it as a blog post could be a huge win.
Ali
We talked about this briefly is cause we don’t transcribe the entire blog, the entire podcast. Because it’s like a two-hour podcast that is seriously in-depth. We offer on our website, we have a page just for our podcasts. It does go over basically what the podcast is about because our podcast is in a debate format. Basically, we like, posit some theory and then debate pro and con on it. The end goal is not for one side or the other to win but more to create a meaningful conversation about controversial topics within the field. What we do is then kind of describe the pro and con sides and then allow people to listen to it.
Tricia
That’s good
David
That’s brilliant. Yeah. I agree. I think continuing to link out with a summary like you’re doing not, what I wouldn’t do is create a page or a post for each of the ones you link out.
Ali
No, It’s one page, and basically, it just updates it each time, and then there’s a sidebar where you can quickly jump to whatever when one you want.
David
Right. I like that. I’ve had sorted by the most recent on top and then went to stuff at the bottom is buried, and that’s. Yeah. Put it on a hosted service that people.
Ali
Yeah. By Spotify.
David
Yeah. And there you go. Spotify, from my understanding, I’m not a Spotify customer, but they are one of the up-and-coming podcast providers.
Ali
Yeah.
David
Obviously, the ideal is getting it into the Apple podcast thing. Thing, for lack of a better word, but I think Spotify would be a great place to get it out there. I think there isn’t a free service with Spotify where you could get it for free to a certain degree?
Ali
I don’t think we pay for it,
David
But customers can use Spotify for free
Tricia
It is like Pandora where you’d to commercials, like a radio station almost, but you pick one. I don’t know.
David
It’s been on my radar because, anyway, I’m migrating all my music off of Amazon right now
Ali
Hey. We are on Apple’s podcast.
Tricia
Oh, great.
David
Great.
Ali
We can listen to it on Apple breaker, Google, overcast pocket. A lot of them
David
Great. Okay. There you go. So I think that’s good. Yeah. I’ve noticed that on Apple podcasts. I wonder if there’s a way to do this. You can almost have show notes and add show notes that will then link to like. You could almost add a show note and say don’t forget to check out our other episodes and linked to your website from it.
Tricia
Yeah. Yeah.
Ali
Here, let me share my screen, please. This is what it shows on Apple Podcasts. And basically, this is the breakdown.
David
Nice
Ali
Basically, it has of blurb about what our podcast is. It shows where to find our references, that they can email us if they have any ideas. Then, it has our support thing in the anchor. Yeah.
Why and how to link to the canonical version of the page
David
Okay. Hold on. Let me let’s look at something here real quick. Scroll down to the bottom. We’re going to talk about link building. It says web episode website hover over that. Okay. So that’s taking you to anchor FM. Okay. Can you click on that for me? Okay. So hover over the website. You see where the website with the link. Okay. Hold on, we’re going to test this. We’re going to put this through the wringer. So remember that. First of all, we always want to link to the canonical version of the page. Hover over the website for a second and notice that your link is www grand behavior services, but your canonical, you, your website is not that it is HTTPS.
Ali
I’m sorry. If you just heard that it was the dog,
David
Not your tummy?
Ali
No, I’m sorry
David
That’s all right. My cat is clicking a bath. You probably can hear that. If you can change this link to the canonical version of… slow down and do a sec, right. Click on that. Okay. There you go. That’s fine. You do it. So this is the right page. Okay. Actually, it’s the wrong page. So go back.
Ali
Wait, why is it wrong?
David
So look at your URL here. Click on that, go all the way to the left. Using the arrow key. Not, not your mouse.
Ali
Wait. What?
David
Now take the left arrow on your keyboard. Okay. Well, look at this. There’s some important detail in this. Okay. It says HTTPS colon slash www green behavior services slash podcast. Okay. Mental note of that. Let’s see if we can go back to.
Can we go back to where we go? Hover over the website. What does it say at the bottom left corner?
Ali
Right? Www, grab behavior. Citizens.
Tricia
It says Showdown.
David
Showdown. Yeah. Not podcast. Also, notice it. Doesn’t start with HTTPS. Right? So do something for me. Right-click on the website and copy the copy link address. Okay. Go up. Open a new tab. Go to redirect detective.com.
There you go. All right. Paste your URL in. There you go. All right. So here’s what this is. This is something you didn’t ask. So you’re getting a freebie. You might not care, but it’s important to me.
Tricia
Interesting. I’m getting a lot out of this, okay.
David
This is, this is link building one on one here. When someone visits the grand behavior services showdown, you see the first black box? That’s what they visit. There’s a three O one redirect to go to the grand behavior services slash podcast. There’s a three O one redirect to go to HTTPS podcast. From a link-building perspective or from a human perspective, who cares? Everything got everybody got the right page, right? From a link-building perspective, every one of these redirects that Google has to go through to end up on the destination page, you lose more authority each time. What you really want to do is go in later and change there, the link to your website from HTTP colon showdown to HTTPS colon podcast.
The link from anchor FM is going straight into the right page. All things equal, you get the same credit. Does that make sense?
Ali
It does.
How to optimize your link building to increase your authority
David
Yeah. Now let me show you something else with this. Okay. Go back to anchor FM. All right. Right-click on the website and go down to services.
What services does it say? Does it show services or click on that?
Ali
Add to Music is spoken track: Open, open man page and terminal search man. Page index in the terminal, show in finder, show info in finder.
David
Okay. Actually, I want you to go to inspect, click on inspect. All right. A bunch of codes are going to show up, and don’t be scared.
All right. Well, that’s weird. Where did it go? Yeah. Go back to the, so on the left side is the page on the code’s rights. Scroll down on the page, not on the code and go back to the website and hit inspect again. There we go. Okay. Yeah. See that a little blue area on the right?
Tricia
that’s highlighted? Yeah.
How to understand the code of the page to help you improve your link building
David
Okay. This is the HTML code that tells the web browser to this is a link, and it’s going to this site. We learned a couple of things from this. First of all, it’s confirming to us that the link is HTTP, not HTTPS. That one little letter makes a lot of difference because it has to pass through and redirect. Second of all, it will showdown, which we know should go to podcast and don’t forget. It should always end in a slash because that’s the way WordPress does it. It should be the that’s where we make canonical a canonical link. It needs to be the final destination link. Now go up to the highlighted section where the link is and see if we can. Oh, okay. There we go. We’re seeing the entire HTML, and we’re looking for it, so I’m trying not to be too technical because I know you’re not a coder. Within each of these HTML links, it’s giving certain pieces of information. You’ll see the word class that helps it. The website to know what it should look like. The word target underscores blank means openness in a new tab. REL is what we’re interested in for link building. If within the rail section, we saw the word, no follow.
That is a special direction to Google saying, Hey, Google, we don’t count this link. However, we don’t see the word, no follow in that REL. We see two other words, no opener, no refer. We learned from this that any link authority anchor FM has is being passed to your website. So that’s good. That means as anchor FM becomes more popular, that link to your website will help your credibility in Google’s eyes. That’s really good because from what we’re talking about, attracting links idea is you’re okay with someone linking to this page on anchor FM because you get credit from an SEO perspective.
The only downside of this link is it says no opener, no refer. Is that is an this is a little newer concept that I’m a little foggier on? Still, the basic gist of it is that you’re going to have a hard time seeing traffic from this link in Google Analytics. Because that’s basically saying, make it really hard. It’s protecting people’s privacy.
Tricia
Is that new now refer you said?
David
No opener, no refer work together. Yeah. You might not see all the traffic to it in Google analytics from anchor FM. In other words, you don’t judge the effectiveness of this link based on traffic because you might not see all the traffic.
Ali
Okay. So ready? I.
David
So you can close out the console. On the right-hand side, there’s the next right under your picture.
Ali
Oh yeah. Sorry.
David
There you go. There you go. Bam. Feel that link juice pouring into your website. Your website is getting stronger as we sit here. So that is a huge value.
Ali
Good.
David
That’s a big value because a very well-established website is linking to you the no-follow attributes missing. That means you get full credit for the link. As you continue to build good content on their site. If people link to that within site, within anchor FM, or from outside of, to this page, that link juice flows to your site and makes your site rank better.
Tricia
So I have a question about that. Does that mean like that any place you give, like if you’re doing citations, you’re putting in Facebook, like your link, you need to make sure you put your canonical link?
David
You should always make sure you put your canonical link. Facebook will not follow the link,
Tricia
Yeah, all the other places.
David
Right. I showed you how to check whether it’s credible or not. In the process, there’s a way to find that out. But, and I do have an article in the process of explaining how to determine your canonical link. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead and look that over if that’s helpful, but I have realized, Holy crap, I’m late for a meeting. Did we answer your question?
Ali
Yes, very thoroughly?
David
As always, way more than I asked for David.
Ali
No, because I feel like you really confirmed what my gut instinct was anyway. Yeah. I’m glad that we kind of talked through it and confirmed what I was thinking. Also identified that link that needed to be changed because that’s great. Update for us because we are growing of a following from that podcast. We definitely want the credit for it.
David
Yeah. And you’ve earned it. Right. You’ve earned. That’s the best kind of link. No one can take that away. You earned it. You didn’t pay for it. You didn’t cheat to get it.
Ali
I don’t Mark it that much at all. Like we just share it when we do it, but it’s not like we invest a lot of time in it. That has really naturally taken on its own life, which is the best.
David
I know it’s going to help you even more because the link is giving you full credit.
Ali
Perfect.
David
Awesome. Okay. I’m sorry. You have to run. I just time got away from me as a was eloquent.
Tricia
Yes. Thank you.
David
Thank you. I look forward to hearing the results of your tests.
Everyone
Bye, See ya.