Unlocking Off-Page SEO with Majestic

Lydia Fox says: "Hi, I'm Lydia Fox. I'm currently an off-page SEO consultant, working on behalf of Serpify. I'm working in a variety of niches, including YMYL niches such as iGaming, cryptocurrency, and other areas of the market.

I use Majestic in my daily workflows, and I'm really excited to talk about it."

Lydia, thanks so so much for joining me today. So how do you use Majestic?

"The most common daily use is performing a Topical Authority analysis on sites. While working in off-page SEO consultancy, I'm analysing hundreds and hundreds millions of pages of content websites to see if there'll be a good fit for our clients campaigns.

Being able to analyze the Topical Authority more than at face value, which I would otherwise have to do manually, enables me to be make sure that the sites that I'm offering to clients are highly relevant, that they don't have anything sort of lurking in the background, like hundreds of orphan pages about the most random of stuff, and being able to really make it like deep rooted analysis into sort of what the website is has the euphoric behind it.

I do this at least once a day, and it's a significant part of my toolkit that I offer to my clients."

So, from what you discover through Majestic, what are some of the biggest warning signals that you get that indicate that these are the kind of websites that you wouldn't want to be offering to your clients?

"Let's say, for example, I was looking at a cryptocurrency news website, and then it was showing that the second-highest Topical Authority was pornography. I'm going to be like, this is completely and utterly random, and this makes no sense, so it then helped me to find that there's sort of a lot of content that's being published on the site that may not be relevant to the niche of the website, which to me, relevancy insights is the most important thing when you're sort of doing an off-page SEO strategy.

So, if you're building links from a website and it doesn't have high relevancy, or it has content lurking in the background that isn't relevant, it's just not as valuable as something that is deeply rooted.

For cryptocurrency, I would like to see technology, finance, news, and other relevant topical authority niches behind it. However, if I see something that is completely and utterly bizarre and completely irrelevant to what the domain is supposedly talking about, that will raise a red flag for me."

And if you were to summarise to the viewer what a Topical Authority analysis is, how would you describe that?

"I describe it as the tool telling you what a website is about. It's about examining what the website is talking about, where it has authority, and analysing that content to determine what the website is about.

Google also pays attention to these factors, including the site’s EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust) and niche. So for me, it's really important."

Is there a particular niche or size of website that is ideal for using the tool?

"Honestly, because I primarily look at content-based websites, most of the sites I'm reviewing have thousands upon thousands of pages, so I would use it for every website.

I will quite often use it on a bulk analysis level . So I will stick a lot of websites in all at once, and then tier rank which ones I want the most and which ones I want the least. That's the easiest way for me to build it into my workflow as an extra metrics checker."

In terms of building into your workflow, how often do you do this? Is it something done on a one-off basis when you onboard a new client, or do you do it on a regular basis?

"I do it almost every single day, because it's not just the client's websites that I'm looking at, it's also any website that I'm looking to collaborate with on behalf of the client, potentially.

So, if I'm looking to publish a PR piece, that'll be something I'll be looking at as well, not just the client site, but also the partner site."

We’ve talked about a few negative signals that you can perhaps actually get as reasons not to actually want to work with the website, so what are a few positive signals that you could get from this?

"High relevancy is, like I said, the biggest thing for me. So if we use the example of cryptocurrency again, if it was showing topics such as technology, finance, news, and all of those kind of things that even if they're not in the direct niche, they would be adjacent sort of niches where it would be like, Okay, this makes sense that they're going to be talking about this as well. That's a massive green flag to me.

There will be points where if something is really niche in a website, where it can find that, the further that you get down the of levels of authority, then you may then see a few, but if it's the top three or four levels where I'm expecting them to be, then again, that's a massive green flag to me."

Another feature you appreciate in Majestic is link mapping. What's that?

"It's the ability to visualise your links. With many other tools on the market, you simply get a list of links.

But I'm a visual person, so with the Link Graph feature within Majestic, I’m able to actually look at the links and look at how the network itself is sort of constructed in the ecosystem that you're building. I find that it is much more digestible to conduct my analysis than to simply receive a large list of sites and web pages."

How often would you do this?

"This is typically something I do when auditing. So, if I'm auditing the progress we've made or if I’m completing a report for a client, then I would look to do this. It's something that I still find incredibly helpful, especially when it comes to the reporting and auditing side of things, where I'm working with the client."

You say you've used Majestic for about six years or so. Why did you actually start using Majestic? And then how have you seen it evolve?

"The first agency I started working for had Majestic as part of their toolkit. And obviously, you play around with every tool, and it was actually something that I was continually trying to find ways that we could further build it in, to the point where I actually convinced the agency to like up their plan, because I was using it so much, I kept running out, which is, you know, just shows how much I actually really enjoy using Majestic as a tool. But ever since, it's now been something that I can't live without being in my toolkit."

Okay, and how does it actually fit into your workflow of using other tools as well? Are there other tools you use alongside Majestic to help refine the process you've got?

"Yes, so let's say I was going to analyse a list of websites that I'm considering for a PR placement or considering collaborating with, then I ask AI it to give me a list of websites that is finds relevant to a certain niche that I'm looking at, or certain topics that I'm looking at, and then I will compare it against referring domains of one of my clients.

From there, I will look at the sites that our client doesn't currently already have partnerships with, and then I will look at Majestic to go through and see which ones I would whitelist or green list to decide to pursue that opportunity.

I also use Majestic to audit my clients' referring domains through a bulk analysis, especially when I'm first onboarding a client. If you’re working with gambling and cryptocurrency sites, you're often dealing with huge international websites that receive links from all over the world. Therefore, I would examine the language split and identify where these links originate from.

This helps me see if there is a big market for the client somewhere that they're not getting much coverage in. And I would analyse it from there, which allows me to create a better strategy."

Will you also use data from Search Console when you do this?

"Sometimes. Due to the level of companies I work with, they don't allow access to their Search Console, which is a bit of a challenge. But when I can, I will use Search Console."

We mentioned that you've been using Majestic for the last six years or so. Is there any tool that is either or part of the platform or has either launched over the last few years, or you've started using more than you did, or you didn't use at all when you first started using the platform, but now you do?

"It's taking note of metrics such as Trust Flow , especially with the rise of EEAT being such a strong factor in SEO. Being able to examine the Trust Flow of a website I'm considering collaborating with is something I've noticed paying more attention to now than I did five years ago."

Do you track that over time?

"I do for some clients, but I tend to set a minimum score where it may not be the most credible source to be looking at working with, but it's one of those things where, when I first started sort of using metrics, I was, I was kind of looking at things like DA, traffic and all those that kind of stuff.

Now, with the rise of EEAT, I'm finding that trustworthiness has become so important that I'm paying attention to it. I know it's such it's one of the cool parts of Majestic, but it's something that has actually really regained the need to be paying attention to."

One of the things that SEOs struggle with when they're dealing with clients is how technical to be. Should an SEO be talking about Trust Flow or even talking about EEAT when they're talking with clients, or are clients only interested in just the end result?

"I find that sometimes trying to explain things in plain language is the best way forward, and actually being able to break it down into a sentence or even just a small paragraph to explain it.

So if I explain EEAT, if your doctor tells you one thing, are you going to trust them, or are you going to trust your next-door neighbour, Bob? That's literally exactly how I explain it. And I explain that we want to make sure that we're being represented as the doctor side of things, rather than the next-door-neighbour Bob side of things.

It's so simple, but when you actually think about it, that is quite literally what EEAT is."

But are clients just looking for results in terms of links and mentions on other websites?

"Many of the clients I work with are huge international clients, and I'm collaborating with SEOs who are all-rounders. I come in as an off-page consultant and specialist in working with the off-page aspects of their projects. They may already be quite aware of these principles, but they may just not understand them fully. So, being able to reiterate the points that I'm trying to make gives them confidence in my skills and that I do know what I'm talking about."

Lydia Fox is an Offpage SEO consultant at Serpify and you can find her over at Serpify.com.