EP 90: Citations, Backlinks & Domain Authority, Oh My!

Ep 90 Citations, Backlinks & Domain Authority, Oh My! === [00:00:00] Alison: Hey guys, welcome back. Um, today’s episode is all about citations, backlinks, domain authority, what they are, why they matter more now that AI is recommending, uh, photographers and what you can actually do about it. Um, but when I think of. Backlinks, I think of the days of trying to basically win the popularity contest of getting featured and things like lemonade and lenses and all these, that’s, I don’t know why, that’s the only one I can think of, but there were dozens of like family photographer or wedding photographer like features and it was just basically these online magazines. And I hate the thought of it. It was, it’s, it was a time suck. I never got any feature, feature, feature. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so this is how to not have to deal with that game is how I like to think about it. Any, any sort of accuracy Melissa Arlena: portrait Alison: to that, Melissa? Melissa Arlena: everybody’s like, oh, get your work featured. Get your [00:01:00] work featured. But there’s like a million places to get your work featured as a wedding photographer. And so like I have tons of features Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: it comes to portraits, there’s not a whole lot. And I feel like. Style wise, a lot of them are very, like, if you’re not that Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: then it doesn’t fit, you know, with their audience. Whereas I felt like Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: was a little bit more broad on things. Um, but yeah, you Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: against other people. Um, you’re trying to get in and the thing is there’s more backlinks and things like that out there for other, you know, other areas you can get those that aren’t just features. Um. Alison: Yes. Melissa Arlena: about what exactly are citations and backlinks. Um, so I like to tell people, you know, a citation is one of those things that anytime your business name, address, and phone number are listed on another website, typically it’s gonna be like a directory website, like the Yelp, um, the Knot, maybe your local Chamber of Commerce. Um, what I Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: like to tell people, ’cause they’re like, okay, well I don’t get, what’s the point of them? So imagine, you know, you have a small business and everyone in town knows your name. You [00:02:00] know, like they know exactly who you are when somebody drops your name. That’s kind of like what a citation is on the internet, that everybody knows your name because you’re listed in all these places. But a back link is a website that links direct, you know, a link that it’s when your website is linked directly on somebody else’s website. And that going back to that scenario of everyone in town knowing your name, that’s where you know the person is like. Oh yeah, I know her and she’s awesome. And here’s a link to her website. So a backlink is much stronger. So a citation’s not a bad thing. There are times your website’s gonna get listed somewhere, like on a directory where it’s not a backlink, but it’s still, you know, putting that website reputation out there, it’s still showing people that, oh, hey, we Alison: Yeah, Melissa Arlena: is, kind of thing. Alison: it’s the phone book of the internet. It is the literal physical phone book you used to get those actual yellow pages and the white pages. Melissa Arlena: their business Alison: the internet for all my 40 somethings. Melissa Arlena: a, plumbing, a Alison: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, Melissa Arlena: name was like a, a, a, [00:03:00] like automotive repair or something because of that. Alison: oh my gosh, that’s crazy. That’s so funny. It, and well, and a, B, C stores probably have something to do with that too, like Melissa Arlena: so basically the citation is when they mention your business, but they don’t have a link. A back link is when it’s an actual clickable Alison: mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: website. But both Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: gonna tell Google that, Hey, this is a real trusted business. This is somebody who’s relevant. I mean, I think for most small business owners, especially in the creative space, you know, we think, okay, well I got my Facebook page, I’ve got my social media, my Instagram Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: um, maybe I set up Pinterest and I have my Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: like. Everybody should know I’m legit. And the rest of the world is like, oh, no, no, no. You need to, you need to. Alison: Anybody can do that. Melissa Arlena: same people that also whose business is closed six Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: because Alison: Spam and bots and, yep. Melissa Arlena: a lot of things with that. Um, the other part is too, is your, uh, domain authority. So like I always talk about like a domain authority, it’s like a Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: for your website’s reputation, like a credit score. Your credit[00:04:00] Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: isn’t what makes you rich, you know, but it tells others if you’re trustworthy to lend Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: Although my husband would argue with that, ’cause he’s a big Dave Ramsey fan and he hates credit scores. So just a side note. Alison: He would hate us. Melissa Arlena: authority is the works the same way for your, your SEO, like, and I also, I love the credit, um, credit Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: uh, reference too, because you’re, how long, how old your domain is, like your, your website name, that has authority too. And I Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: when they’re like, well, I think I wanna change my Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: And I’m like, would you close all your credit cards right Alison: Ooh. Melissa Arlena: over from scratch? And they’re like, no. I’m like, well, that’s what you’re doing when you decide to change your domain name entirely. Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: always tell people, I’m like, be very cautious on that. Like think it through. If Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: for your business, then make it. Alison: Do a redirect if nothing else. Oh my gosh. Melissa Arlena: everything, but you are starting Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: kind of thing. Alison: Ugh, gross. Okay, so what, why, why does all this crap matter? Why I, we understand the yellow [00:05:00] pages are sporty and older. We understand that. So how does this translate for why we need to be aware and cognizant of, of what to do with this? Melissa Arlena: with AI searching like every corner of the internet and scouring everything, um, it has access to a lot of information. And so the more times it’s seeing your business name and accurate information, so your name, your address, your phone number, all of Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: listed in places that it considers like, Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: this is a valid. You know, directory listing like your Chamber of Commerce, like something like that, if it sees it, or any business listings in your city, and you’re listed on there, it’s kind of a checkbox, like it expects you to be there. If you’re a business in Minneapolis, you should be in whatever the city directory is for that, the online version of it kind of thing. And if you’re not, then it’s like, well, are you a legitimate business? Kind of like if you weren’t in the yellow book phone pages back in the day, you probably weren’t Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: of calls and weren’t really a legitimate business. Alison: Right. And all of those things have to be exactly the same. Are we talking down to like when your phone number, are we talking to like [00:06:00] dashes instead of dots? Melissa Arlena: because some, you know, different ones are gonna have different, um, different, uh, setups. You know, like some of them may have where you get Alison: Yeah, Melissa Arlena: Yeah. Alison: address needs to be, so when I was doing this, the address like you can’t just say RD for road. You either need it to be all RD or all ROAD. Like there’s no abbreviations and spelling it out, it’s for the ai, Google everybody to realize it’s the same. It has to be the exact same in every citation. Melissa Arlena: lot like as Allison knows. You gotta redo those things and that is a huge pain in the butt. Um, Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: realized today, I was like, oh, you know what? We used my actual cell phone number when I first did some citations for Picture Perfect Rankings. And I was like. Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: No, I think I’d rather not use my cell phone number going forward. So now I’m having to redo all Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: that I can change my phone number on it. So it is something that you wanna make sure, like, okay, hey, we’ve got all of our information on here. Um, I mean, that’s not to preclude you that if you do move around, it’s just Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: just gonna [00:07:00] be an added expense for you on moving, is that you can need to go in, whether you Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: to do it or you go in and do it yourself. Um, but the big thing with all of that Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: How it matters is, you know, like I was saying, AI is looking at all of that stuff now. Um, but it helps increase, you know, when you’re building up your citations and backlinks, it’s increasing your domain authority. So like we have, um, we have a citations Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: service and last year we analyzed eight of the websites that were part of that service. And by creating citations and backlinks for them, we saw a 729% increase in Google clicks across those eight sites. And like a 1500% increase in search impressions and for I think almost all of them, their domain authority doubled. Like it was crazy rankings. It was Alison: Yeah. Yeah. It’s. I kind of, that’s my working theory from when I redid my website back in 2023 and my, my organic search results and keywords skyrocketed. I don’t have any percentage numbers, but it went off the charts and my marketing girl could show me that Melissa Arlena: Right. Alison: charts right, like it just [00:08:00] doubled, tripled within six months. And I think it had everything to do with backlinks and citations because there was no other explanation, Melissa Arlena: if Alison: like truly. Melissa Arlena: listed in other places, then you start Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: Um, and I will say Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: um, when it comes to domain authority and stuff, and we’ll give you some quick action steps, and one of them is how to check this, but like the score goes up to a hundred, but I could tell you Instagram’s a 99, so you’re never gonna get a hundred. Um. For a small Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: business, if you can get to around 15, you’re doing pretty good. If you’re above a 15, you’re actually doing really good. Um, and if you’re below 15, I would say like start working on it, like try to get more back links, try to get citations set up, that kind of thing. Alison: Well, now I’m curious. Melissa Arlena: today. Alison: I’m gonna do this as we talk. Melissa Arlena: SEO business, I wanna say is like a 20. I think my, my photography business at one point was like a 24. Um, but I don’t remember what it is now. I didn’t check that one today. Uh, but yeah, like you just gotta think about if you’re a brand new business. And that’s another thing like a citations and backlinks [00:09:00] are what I call off page SEO on page SEO is when you’re getting your Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: and all of that stuff onto your website. Yeah, Alison: you control. Melissa Arlena: is things that have nothing to do with what’s on your website and just more about getting your website listed everywhere. Alison: Gotcha. Okay. So when it comes to changing this stuff, what do we need to know? Because anytime, because I. As I was just talking about all the stuff when I doubled and tripled my organic search volume and reach and organic keywords. That was in Virginia. And that was what, three years? Yeah, that was 2023. So that was three, three and a half years ago now, and now I’m in Hawaii. I switched it all. How, how does somebody go about doing this? So we mentioned you can do it yourself. You mentioned services. Melissa Arlena: first thing I would say for most people is to like, you know, Google your business and just see what comes up. Like, you know, you type, I Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: in Melissa Lane of photography, and then I would just start going through the results on page one and seeing like, where is my [00:10:00] name listed? Is it on a directory? That kind of thing. Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: is all the information accurate? Just double checking that. Um, so if all of your listings look good, it’s the same address, phone number, all of that kind of stuff, um, then you should be good there. If you start noticing like, oh wait, that’s the wrong city on this one, or That’s the wrong website. Oh, one thing to Alison: Y. Melissa Arlena: too is, um. Especially if you’re someone who’s been around a while and you did this a while ago, double check and see if you still have HTTP and not H-T-T-P-S, because I definitely have seen that Alison: Oh Melissa Arlena: back links and it’s going to the HTTP. Now granted it’s gonna redirect. But if you can just go in and update it so it’s the correct version, um, Alison: yeah. Melissa Arlena: gonna match for the rest. Um, so the other thing you can do is Google directories plus your city. So I would google like Charlottesville directories or Charlottesville business directories, and then I would start going through ’em to figure out like, which ones can I list my website on? Another thing you could do, you could probably use AI to like do some of this research for you. Alison: Mm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Melissa Arlena: of thing. Uh, look [00:11:00] for any photography directories, so photographer directory services and stuff that you can add to. Um, but you can check your Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: back links and domain authority on, um, it’s back link o.com. We’ll include it in the show notes. Um, and so you can kind of see like, okay, well how many back links do I have? What is my domain authority? And I will say with domain authority, there’s a lot Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: experts that are like, well, Google doesn’t look at, is. A ranking factor. And you’re right, your domain authority is not a ranking, a direct ranking factor with Google. But like I said, it’s that scorecard of how your business is doing with the off-page Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: So just kind of know that if you’re doing really well with off-page SEO, your domain authority is gonna be higher. All the things you’re doing are what Google is looking at. So they’re not just going, oh, her domain authority Alison: Yeah, Melissa Arlena: point. It’s time to rank her higher. Alison: it’s the things that, yeah, it’s the things that gave you your authority that Google is looking at. Okay, so I, I used a different service. I use keywords everywhere or, or so. I don’t know, maybe it’s a little less. Is it as reliable as [00:12:00] Blingo Melissa Arlena: wouldn’t, I wouldn’t like put my hand on a Alison: six to one? Melissa Arlena: as a hundred percent. Alison: Yeah. Word. Well, I am paying for keywords everywhere, and I am not paying for the other subscription, so I’m gonna choose, I’m gonna, I’m just gonna use what I got. Right? So it is saying my domain authority is 18 out of a hundred, um, and it’s telling me my back link. So if y’all have keywords everywhere or if you don’t like get, just get it, you’re gonna, it’s easy. So it’s telling me how many backlinks I have. It’s telling me, um, I have 107 referring domains, which is. Something adjacent and then it’s giving me my search traffic. So 18, that’s greater than 15. So I think we’re doing all right over here. Melissa Arlena: with the Alison: So, cool. Melissa Arlena: will include, um, the one that I found. It is free, so you don’t have to pay for that Alison: Hmm? Melissa Arlena: if you do have keywords everywhere, Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: check it. And then the other thing I like to do is like spy on other people and keywords everywhere. You can Alison: Yes. Oh my gosh. Melissa Arlena: people and see and you can say like, show backlinks. And then there are times not gonna lie, y’all, I will go out [00:13:00] and like, okay, well can I get a backlink from that place too? so that’s a lot of Alison: Yeah, Melissa Arlena: of doing it yourself, but you know, it’s one of those things, if this is something that you’re like, this sounds like watching paint dry, Melissa. Which is, I will be honest. Citations and backlinks are boring as heck, um, to create and Alison: it is, but it works. It works. Let me be. Melissa Arlena: monthly service. So every month we’re building new citations for your business across a bunch of different platforms. Uh, we look at big name directories, um, local listing directories, service area citations, which I love, um, are great for photographers because. Um, if you don’t have a studio, these are really good for that. Um, we do rich media citations using like your photos and stuff and social foundation links that connect like your profiles with do follow links. So, and then this is something new that we created. We actually now have our own exclusive list of photographer only directories that we did the research and put together. Alison: Ooh. Melissa Arlena: that I’m like, I guess it’s now my ip, my intellectual property, like. [00:14:00] I’m fancy now, y’all. Um, so these are ones that Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: this because if you’re a photographer, you should be listed in photography directory websites. So we’ve put all that together. Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: do, uh, press releases to get your name out to like news and media sites. that can be a great way to build your website credibility. Um, and then before we even get started though, we do a full audit and cleanup. So we’re gonna look at your citations and see what’s out there. Is it correct? Is it not correct? What needs to be updated? Um, and take care of all of that. Um, Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: this process is like building out like 300 plus unique citations. They kind of are gonna let Google and AI know, like, oh yes, this person is a real legitimate business and not a fly by night operation. Um, every month you get a report telling you how everything’s performing. You’re gonna get the list of the citations that were built that month, and then I do, um, an SEO training video on some latest tip or trick or something that’s going on in the industry. Uh, we do also have an advance plan for clients that will manage their Google business profile. [00:15:00] So we’ll keep it fresh with new photos, updates, answering questions, optimizing categories, the whole thing. So. Alison: Yeah. So do you have to have worked with you in order to do the citations or is this open to anybody who has done Melissa Arlena: we were like, well, maybe Alison: okay? Melissa Arlena: clients, but some people already have worked on their SEO. They don’t need me to work on it to get them to this Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: why we made it, that it’s not just for, for past clients. We do have a lot of past clients in it, but we also have a good amount of people that haven’t worked with us. Um, and so, yeah. We’re opening up, um, Alison: Perfect. Melissa Arlena: actually starting tomorrow. open it to our VIP list today, but we’re Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: five spots this week for that service. It is a six month minimum commitment because we, we need time to build this stuff up and start getting you results. Alison: Yeah, Melissa Arlena: I have clients who’ve been in the program for two years and they’re about to graduate, or as I say, like kick ’em out of the nest. It’s, we’re, we’ve created everything. We’ve built all the backlinks, we’ve done all the citations, we’ve created their press releases. I’m like, I got nothing else for you guys, like you [00:16:00] have graduated. Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: So if you’re listening Alison: Yeah, absolutely. Melissa Arlena: drops, um, there’ll be a link in the show notes to find our citations and backlink service. Um, but we, you can either join our wait list if we’ve already sold out, um, because we do only open enrollment like once a year, uh, because people stay, which is great for me. Um, and in fact, Alison: Yeah. Right. Not a problem. Melissa Arlena: like, no, no, I wanna continue. And I was like, oh, okay, great. Um, but if somebody does drop early, we usually try to notify our wait list first, that we have a spot open. Yeah. Alison: Oh, that’s awesome. Well, perfect. Well guys, if you don’t feel like creating a spreadsheet and creating individual accounts on your own time and creating each and every individual account and backlink and citation for yourself, you can have somebody else do it, and I would highly recommend it. It’s way more efficient, use of your own time, Melissa Arlena: do it on your own. Alison: so it, it’s miserable. So if you get there and you feel like you realize. Uh, you need to learn the hard way, go for it. But, uh, jump on, jump on Melissa’s wait list if it fills up. [00:17:00] So, well, thanks guys. Thanks for listening. Hope hopefully we didn’t overwhelm you. Hopefully you understand a little bit more now about how all this mess works on the backside. Um, so Melissa Arlena: Bye-bye. Alison: till next time.