This is a podcast for the digital and affiliate marketings in the IBM industry for listen up as I explore the latest digital and affiliate marketing trends and give you the insider screen on what's applying in affiliate marketing. Join us as we explore affiliate strategies, host expert interviews with leading affiliates and top entrepreneurs and discuss the latest affiliates and digital marketing trends. If you want to stay at the cutting edge of affiliate marketing, you're in the right place. Join me for this week's episode and let's get started. Welcome to Affiliate Insiders Affiliate Marketing Podcast. Today I am joined by somebody very special, Miss Julia Logan. Hello, how are you?
SPEAKER_00Hi Leanne, nice being on this podcast with you today. And uh I'm great to do this.
SPEAKER_02Great. I'm super excited to get you on the show because a lot of affiliates and a lot of affiliate marketers are listening in to this podcast now, and they're really here with us to discover what's new and happening in digital marketing. And one of the key things that I always get asked is about technical SEO. And so I'm super thrilled to have you here because there's really nobody I know in this industry that knows more about technical SEO than you do, and in particular, what they need to do when their websites get hacked, which is a pretty common um problem in our industry. So, first of all, let's just start off with your story and get you a little bit more familiar with our audience about how and when you got into SEO. So tell us a little bit about your background and what's brought you here with us today.
SPEAKER_00Right. So it happened, I would say by accident actually. Because uh back in 2000, I had this pretty insignificant job as the third assistant of the fourth web designer for a large uh software development company. Yeah, and we used to build sites for some of our customers that used to sign us up for software development projects. So that was a very, very secondary task. And I used to I used to help a bit with the design, and I've just completed my web design course. I was really, really fresh in the area. Yeah, so I've I've I was helping uh to clean up those sites, design those sites, and then stuff like that, minor tasks really, and then one day uh the head of the company comes to me and says, Could you submit this client's site to a few directories? Yeah, and the year was 2000, and I had no idea about directories or submitting sites to them or anything about that at all. This is what I said.
SPEAKER_02Pre-Google search engine. This is like really the old dark school of the internet.
SPEAKER_00Well really early days of Google, but still. Uh mostly I think people were using Yahoo back in the day still, so yes. I mean, it was passed out of Easter days, but uh yeah, still pretty early on. So I started searching the internet uh for more information about the directories and what you do with the sites in general to make them uh findable and how you help the sites to appear in front of the eyes of the people potentially interested in seeing them and so on. And I came across sites like Search Engine Watch when Danny Sullivan was just basically just recently started and just started writing all the stuff. The SEO just started being called SEO, not not not not too far before that happened. And I started reading and I got so interested. I got so excited about what I was learning that I pretty much never looked back.
SPEAKER_02So you got hooked from day one.
SPEAKER_00I started doing uh SEO as as my main occupation for different companies, and then I started freelancing, and then I started some of my own projects and so on and so on, started looking into affiliate marketing. So that was that.
SPEAKER_02And that's the story as and from the horse's mouth. So, what exactly got you interested into SERP results and the impact of site security in particular? Because that's like a really specialist part of SEO, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I started talking about uh site security, SEO secur uh the the interconnection between SEO and security back in I think 2012. I in fact I did an interview with what was then called Distilled, yes, the the marketing agency. And uh thing is if you come to an SEO person, they could tell you everything there is to know about, well, considering that's a good SEO person, they can tell you everything about uh the indexability and crawlability and this and that, and making sure your site is getting uh into Google and Google can understand what you want them to do with your sites. On the other hand, if something happens to your site, it gets hacked, yeah, in the best case, Google will show you a warning and the SERPs that the site is potentially dangerous for the visitors, and lately I don't really see too many of those warnings, they don't even display them too often, and yet in some especially particularly competitive SERPs, which some of the affiliate marketers would be familiar with, like like like pharma or gambling or something like that, that happens quite a lot, quite a lot of hacking going on. So that's an issue. And if you go to a security specialist, they will tell you how to clean up your site from the point of view of removing the the traces of the hackers' activity, uh, or they might tell you how to secure your site for the future to to to to make it uh impossible to hack it again, but they will hardly tell you how to deal with the aftermath of a site's hack in Google search. Yeah. Sometimes if the site gets hacked, it starts ranking for all sorts of uh stuff that that's not really relevant to it. So it might be some some some inconspicuous sites about travel or some university sites or some small business sites or some little shop or something like that, or somebody's personal blog, and it got hacked and started ranking for all those terms that they never even imagined they would be ranking for, say pharma, adult or casino or something like that, that they don't want probably to rank for at all. Yeah, and they might be hurt in terms of their rankings for their core terms that they are actually interested in because of this um association that Google makes for their sites, and sometimes they might even be affected by the uh safe search filters if something like that did happen to them. So, how to get rid of all the optimophobics, all the negative impact that hangs around right, make your site Google friendly again in terms of uh avoiding all the incorrect connotations for your sites. So, this this is where SEO security comes in. Or else, how do you make sure that your site is not exactly hacked but not used for whatever purposes, not intended initially, just because of the CMS specifics, like for example, indexable search pages and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02I mean, because the implications the implications of this could be quite severe. I mean, for big corporates, obviously, if something like this happened, I mean, I don't know if you heard about BuzzSprite actually got hacked this week and it impacted everybody's podcast. Thankfully, their team was able to, you know, there was no damage done, but caused massive amounts of problems for their corporate business. And on another hand, if you're an affiliate, I mean, this is your livelihood. So, how do you, you know, if your site one day is fine and the next day it gets penalized for something that you didn't even do or didn't even know had happened after a you know site security breach like this, it could have massive ramifications in terms of how you then re-establish that trust, that brand within the Google search, right? So it's a very important part. Now you wrote an article recently um in IGB affiliate about the impact of core up of the core update that Google did in December. And apart from the site indexing link profile quality and relevance, what are some of the other things that site owners need to be aware of that impact search rankings? Because I'm pretty sure a lot of affiliates are going to be listening to this and they'd be keen to hear your your thoughts on that.
SPEAKER_00Well, apparently site speed is pretty important, and uh some affiliates may have heard of this, some uh will be just learning about this from me, mentioning this. But uh in May, Google expects to roll out a new core update that will be focused on the core web uh web vitals, and that is a huge one. But uh actually it's uh it's a double-sided stick, sort of, because apparently certain industries are quite say image heavy, yeah, and they just won't have sites as quick as somebody who doesn't use too many images and just makes tiny pages which load in milliseconds and it's all fine. Of course, Google still has to rank something uh in every serve. They can't have an empty serve just because all the sites that used to rank there have really poor core web vitals. But uh in the meantime, this could make a difference between you ranking, say, number five or number two. Yeah. Which can severely impact your ranking. Yeah, between you uh ranking on the second page and on the first page. So if at all possible, do you look at your core web vitals, at least be aware of what they are and how can they possibly be improved. I'm not saying this is always possible for every site, but wherever is possible, this should be done. Now then, um the links appear to be quite an important factor, but it's not just about throwing any random links at your site. Make sure they are topically relevant. I see this more and more in pretty much every SERP I'm looking at. So I'm not gonna make uh any very general conclusions like some people do. Oh, this is the ranking factor all across the board. I don't like doing that. Uh, if you read this article, you know that I'm really a big fan of analyzing each particular vertical or even each particular SERP you're interested in specifically. So it's just that from everything that I have seen in all the different industries that I come in touch with, I see that this is an important factor. You have to have links which are topically relevant or at least could be to your site somehow logically. Would make sense. Basically, somebody looking at this site, linking to you, says, Why is this site linking to that site? You should have a logical explanation.
SPEAKER_02So for example, pretty obvious Yeah, I mean, we we've just spoken about your article in IGB. We'll obviously be linking to that article from here so that when people are listening to the podcast and this discussion, they can then go and reference that article. So that would be a logical link between my site and and IGB affiliates.
SPEAKER_00Yes, that would make sense because that way everybody will see the context of what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_02So it's so ultimately just about giving the user a really good customer experience, a user journey on your site, and not um you know associating your site to other sites so that you can push your rankings, but actually making those associations logical and natural as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly, exactly. Any link that you are getting, look at it from several points of view, not just what it could give you in terms of rankings, but for example, can it give you some direct traffic that would be relevant to your site? Can any of your potential customers be at this site and would they be interested in going over to your site? Would they actually be your potential customers? It's not always the case 100%. Sometimes when the query is purely of informational nature, they might be just interested in learning more about something. And they might not exactly be interested in buying something right away, but still, if there is a logical reason why a site is linking to another site, it's always a lot better than just randomly linking to something just because you can.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Now we spoke a little bit about site security and why it's so important to have the correct measures in place to protect yourself against the negative impacts that can happen after an initial attack. Um, but can you explain the cause and effect for listeners to take note of here? Because I think, you know, once obviously the most important immediate action is I need to get my site back up online. But what are the sort of simple checks that they can do to make sure that there hasn't been any kind of legacy, you know, hidden negative impact that's associated now to the URL? Are there any like specific things that you think affiliates or brands should be looking at if a site breach or site hack has happened?
SPEAKER_00Right. Uh so one of the reasons sites get hacked, servers get hacked, is so that the hackers can use your mail server.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And that could be a huge problem. That's not directly SEO related, but since we're talking about hacked sites, this is probably important to mention, and people might not be aware of this. Yeah. Basically, if your server has been abused for mail spam, then it means that your IP or your server or your domain could could be on a bunch of blacklists. Yeah. And that means that your legitimate emails could by whoever you're sending them to. Might not even be mailings, mass mailings, that you would be trying to send, might be just something as simple as as you communicating with another person. Yeah. And those emails not reaching that person and ending up in their spam folder or not reaching them at all. So uh there is a number of sites uh where you could check whether you're on any blacklists. Okay. There is one universal site where you could check for a general overview of any security issues that you might have. Sukuri.net. So yes, did they have uh a form for a free check of any sites? Okay, that's quite helpful. So, yes, that is helpful, and that will tell you if you have any outdated software or if you're on any blacklists anywhere or anything of the sort. Okay. So that is quite handy.
SPEAKER_02So go and do a quick help check.
SPEAKER_00Yes, indeed, indeed. Another thing that you might want to to to check is if you still have any planted parasite pages on your server. So what are they hackers?
SPEAKER_02Is that just like a hidden page on the website?
SPEAKER_00Basically, it could be very well hidden or it could be pretty obvious. Okay. Sometimes there is a pattern to how they plant those pages on the servers that they hack, and then it's pretty easy to remove those pages. In other cases, it's a bit more difficult. And basically, it requires uh somebody to go through your server and check everything on the server, and maybe check your logs, and if you see anything suspicious in the logs, Google accessing pages that you know should not exist there, for example. And that must mean that there is something that you still need to clean up on your server as a result of that uh hackers' activity.
SPEAKER_02How often should you be checking your site's security? I mean, is this something that you do once a year or once a quarter or as often as you like? I mean, what's what's the recommended best practice?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's uh it really depends on the platform that you're using and how sure you are in your site's security. Basically, the the key thing to remember here is the more complex any system is, the the the the more chances it will fail somewhere. Okay. So this applies to using multiple plugins with platforms like WordPress or others. Okay. Basically, any plugin you're adding to your WordPress installation reduces your security.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And then I mean, not everybody is a uh security geek. Yeah. And nobody's sitting there and watching all those security publications all the time. But basically, it's worth doing every once in a while. Just to make sure that you're safe, just to make sure that you haven't got hacked without your own knowledge.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The easiest thing the person can do, even without much technical knowledge, is just go to Google and search for site column and then their domain name, and after that, maybe add words that you know should not be appearing in any case on your site, like Viagra or Casino, unless you're a casino affiliate coach. Yeah. Or something like that. Yeah. So that's the easiest way to check, and Google will show you what uh kind of unexpected stuff you might have on your server. Um, apart from that, it's just really uh a matter of what you can do, what you can afford, if you can hire a security expert every once in a while to run a nice check, in-depth check of your server, of your entire system, your your CMS, all your plugins. Because, say I keep an eye on the news about this plugin's vulnerability, that plugins vulnerability. But basically, anytime you hear that a plugin that you're using has been hacked or has been compromised in some way, you should be really looking to see when the developer releases the update, the patch. Yes, and then you should download the new version, update your plugin immediately, as soon as that becomes known that there is a risk factor associated with that. And it's pretty easy when you just um use stay uh standalone plugins, and it's a bit more difficult if those plugins are part of a theme that you're using. Okay, because if it's part of a theme, there is no way for you to update that plugin unless the same developer updates the plugin included in the theme. And then the only thing you have is demand that your same developer updates the plugins included in the theme. That's it.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So I just want to go back to the kind of algorithm changes that you mentioned earlier. What's the best piece of advice that you can give to affiliates and SEOs out there when Google is about to make an algorithm change? Are there any things that they can do to prepare for these things, or is it just a case of wait and see how it all turns out?
SPEAKER_00Well, there is little you can really do to prepare. Uh all you can do is just run uh clean and nice sites and just try and do your best with the sites feed and the core web vitals and and everything else. I mean, with the core web vitals updates uh coming up in May, they have uh issued a warning way ahead of it so that people could prepare. In this case, you indeed can prepare. In other cases, it just happens, will let you know oh, there has been an update already after it has happened. You don't know that it's gonna happen. In this case, we do, so this is something we Can very realistically prepare for. In other cases, it might be a case of it's just happening, and then you see the aftermath, and then you have to deal with it somehow if it affected you in a negative way.
SPEAKER_02So it's a constant moving target, really. I mean, you know, looking after your website, it's everything from what you put on it to what happens behind it to what you plug into it to you know keeping keeping track of it. It's almost like owning a house. You know, you're constantly redeveloping and redecorating your house, but the core uh you know foundation needs to be solid to start with, and and you can make sure that that happens with some of the tips that you've shared with us today in terms of the plugins and security. So, for our last question on this podcast, because this has been invaluable information, it certainly opened my eyes up in terms of site security and how important that is and how it impacts your rankings. Um, what are the top three things that you can tell our listeners here today about improving their SEO and maximizing their rankings in 2021? What do you think are the three biggest tips that you can leave our listeners with today? Um, if they have you know limited budget, for example, we're talking about you know a small medium enterprise, where should they be focusing their efforts to you know make sure that their site SEO remains healthy in 2021?
SPEAKER_00One of the top tips I always mention, and not even all the SEOs know about this or follow this, funny education. Well, I mean, this is not some big news or whatever, but this is pretty important. Be intimately familiar with your own SERPs. Have a look at them every once in a while with your bare eyes, not through the tools, but with your eyes. Browse those actual SERPs as if you were a user searching. What does the person searching for something related to your site see when they go to Google and search for something relevant to your topic?
SPEAKER_02Very true, because I actually did that myself last week on our own website, and I was a little bit shocked about some of the keywords that we rank really highly for, um, which are actually um brand terms, obviously because we cover industry news as well as thought leadership content. So, apart from you know ranking for terms like affiliate marketing, which is is the obvious stuff, we were also ranking really highly for keyword terms like William Hill. Um, and nobody would search for affiliate marketing for William Hill on affiliate insider, but because we're we've got such good at domain authority, uh, when we publish industry news, it's obviously also being picked up because we're in Google News. So it's very true. You you know, you look at your own business the way that you think your customers are looking at it, um, and you focus your content around what you think your customers need and want, but actually you need to take a step back and look at your business as a customer word because their way of searching for you and looking for what it is that you're offering might be very different to how you search for what you think you're offering. So it's a very good point.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, and another tip that I could give is make sure that you get traffic from multiple sources, don't rely just on Google. Very good point. What other what other sources people potentially searching for you could be using? Is it Instagram? Is it Pinterest? Is it Facebook? Is it Twitter? Is it if this is something more business related, link it in? Yeah. Is it maybe Bing that your users are searching in? Have you ever checked your rankings in Bing? When have you last opened Bing? This is really important.
SPEAKER_02I mean, yeah, absolutely, because some people do in different countries, um, depending on where you're targeting. You know, it's uh I think that's a very good point.
SPEAKER_00Okay, quite a large part of the searchers are using Bing.
SPEAKER_02Interesting. Another key fact that um our listeners can take away and have a look at. I'm pretty sure they'll be able to increase their traffic there if they haven't looked at Bing in the past. And what's your third and last tip that you would give to anybody listening to us today?
SPEAKER_00Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are your best friends, really. Okay. Nice and simple. The information there may be incomplete, it might be inaccurate in some cases, it might be not something I mean, uh especially Google. Actually, Bing is much better with their webmaster tools than Google is with their Search Console. It's kind of changing lately, but there are some inconsistencies still. But still, if you use those two tools, they are free. Okay, they are not uh forcing you to do anything specific, but they give you a way. Yeah. And they can help you with so many things, they can help you discover things about your site that you never knew. True.
SPEAKER_02And then you can fix it. Right, right. Brilliant. Well, it has been absolutely fantastic to have you on the podcast today. You have shared so many golden nuggets with our listeners, and I'm sure that um we'll be able to help a lot of people improve their site security after listening to this podcast. So I just want to say a big thanks for being here with us. It's been a pleasure to have you on the affiliate marketing podcast today.
SPEAKER_00It's been a great pleasure to take part in this, and then thank you for inviting me.
SPEAKER_02That's a wrap for this week's affiliate insider affiliate marketing podcast. If you've loved what we've been putting down in this podcast series, head on over to Apple iTunes and give us a five-star rating and subscribe to the podcast channel. That way you'll never miss another insightful episode. Tune in next week for more digital marketing insights and traffic driving training.