You guys know your shit. Please explain a few things to me.

[ucool]

This forum has been a pot of gold. I've spent the last days reading and bookmarking incredibly valuable posts and am amazed by the quality of information found here.

I'm just starting to get my own business up and running and I have a few questions regarding it.

I'll mainly be working as a web designer, but while researching I've realized that seo is a very profitable business, too. So why not combine them and offer my clients both?

I'm situated in Germany and am going to offer my services locally. The competition in my city is rather low. The few companies there are do horrible jobs when designing homepages. And although I barely know anything about SEO, I can already tell they know even less.

I'm fully aware that some questions might be stupid, but there's only one way to learn..

1. Will my website have an advantage for the keyword "cityname webdesign" if it's domain name is cityname-webdesign.de?
2. Does it make sense to register different domains like that and just relink them to my homepage?
3. If I redesign a clients homepage and have to start completely over, how do I make sure all backlinks to the site stay valid?
4. At what ranking is a backlink "good"? I've used some seo tools and saw the value of backlinks ranked from 0-100%. Are 30% links worth getting or should I only aim for 80, 90% ones?
5. So there's the SEO difficulty rank. But I've seen a lot of pages valued 20 rank before ones at 40. How is that possible? (going by kwfinder rankings)
6. At what point is a site high authority? or high trust?
7. Are local backlinks (from companies near me) more valuable than foreign ones?
8. How important is my domain name for seo? (not for the probability of a user to click it, just for the ranking)
9. Will PBN and other black hat methods of this board work for websites in germany?
10. Could someone buy shitty backlinks to a competitors site so it gets penalized?

I'm not going to use black hat seo for my main business. But I need to know what my competition is able to do and what possibilities there are in general.

Thanks a lot helping me out guys. I appreciate any answer!

 

[issorc]

This forum has been a pot of gold. I've spent the last days reading and bookmarking incredibly valuable posts and am amazed by the quality of information found here.

I'm just starting to get my own business up and running and I have a few questions regarding it.

I'll mainly be working as a web designer, but while researching I've realized that seo is a very profitable business, too. So why not combine them and offer my clients both?

I'm situated in Germany and am going to offer my services locally. The competition in my city is rather low. The few companies there are do horrible jobs when designing homepages. And although I barely know anything about SEO, I can already tell they know even less.

I'm fully aware that some questions might be stupid, but there's only one way to learn..

1. Will my website have an advantage for the keyword "cityname webdesign" if it's domain name is cityname-webdesign.de?
2. Does it make sense to register different domains like that and just relink them to my homepage?
3. If I redesign a clients homepage and have to start completely over, how do I make sure all backlinks to the site stay valid?
4. At what ranking is a backlink "good"? I've used some seo tools and saw the value of backlinks ranked from 0-100%. Are 30% links worth getting or should I only aim for 80, 90% ones?
5. So there's the SEO difficulty rank. But I've seen a lot of pages valued 20 rank before ones at 40. How is that possible? (going by kwfinder rankings)
6. At what point is a site high authority? or high trust?
7. Are local backlinks (from companies near me) more valuable than foreign ones?
8. How important is my domain name for seo? (not for the probability of a user to click it, just for the ranking)
9. Will PBN and other black hat methods of this board work for websites in germany?
10. Could someone buy shitty backlinks to a competitors site so it gets penalized?

I'm not going to use black hat seo for my main business. But I need to know what my competition is able to do and what possibilities there are in general.

Thanks a lot helping me out guys. I appreciate any answer!

1. It's negligible. Exact match domains are getting less important over time.
2. If you mean to register domains and 301 redirect them, no. If you want to build up valid sites and link back to yours, only if the domains have some quality, because then you are going to build some kind of pbn.
3. Keep the domain and 301 all pages that not longer exist to the homepage.
4. That always depends on the SEO tool and it's hard to tell in general. Look for contextual links from high DA/PA/TF sites with real traffic. Homepage links are usually better than links on inner pages.
5. KWFinder can only value several metrics that are coming from other sources (like MOZ' DA and PA) and don't know what Google thinks about a site. SEO is not only about links (and usually kw tools are even unreliable about links because MOZ is) and no one does know which factors are important and how they are weighted.
6. Depends from site to site. If you are looking for links, have a look at sites DA20+ and look whether they really have some great links that would pass some juice or if MOZ' drunk again. Majestic and Ahrefs are a great source for checking backlinks too and usually have much more in their index.
7.Backlinks coming from the same niche are always better, but I guess it's no big difference if another webdesign company from 10km next to you or 500km away links to you.
8. If you choose a new domain without links and a history the domain name has no impact on your rankings.
9. Yes, they will. Tried that myself. I'm german too and you can easily rank german sites just with english backlinks, although it might not be the best choice for long term rankings.
10. It's not that easy anymore to penalize someone with shitty links, google gives low value to them and tends to ignore them. But an overoptimization of anchors usually leads to sites dropping in serps.

 

[ucool]

1. It's negligible. Exact match domains are getting less important over time.
2. If you mean to register domains and 301 redirect them, no. If you want to build up valid sites and link back to yours, only if the domains have some quality, because then you are going to build some kind of pbn.
3. Keep the domain and 301 all pages that not longer exist to the homepage.
4. That always depends on the SEO tool and it's hard to tell in general. Look for contextual links from high DA/PA/TF sites with real traffic. Homepage links are usually better than links on inner pages.
5. KWFinder can only value several metrics that are coming from other sources (like MOZ' DA and PA) and don't know what Google thinks about a site. SEO is not only about links (and usually kw tools are even unreliable about links because MOZ is) and no one does know which factors are important and how they are weighted.
6. Depends from site to site. If you are looking for links, have a look at sites DA20+ and look whether they really have some great links that would pass some juice or if MOZ' drunk again. Majestic and Ahrefs are a great source for checking backlinks too and usually have much more in their index.
7.Backlinks coming from the same niche are always better, but I guess it's no big difference if another webdesign company from 10km next to you or 500km away links to you.
8. If you choose a new domain without links and a history the domain name has no impact on your rankings.
9. Yes, they will. Tried that myself. I'm german too and you can easily rank german sites just with english backlinks, although it might not be the best choice for long term rankings.
10. It's not that easy anymore to penalize someone with shitty links, google gives low value to them and tends to ignore them. But an overoptimization of anchors usually leads to sites dropping in serps.

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain everything to me! I really appreciate it!
You helped me to understand the whole concept even better.

Just a few follow up questions:

6. In Germany there are a lot of company registries (similar to telephone books) or sites for job offers where you could just register your company and get a 80+% backlink. Does this help my ranking? There's even a lot of these shitty CMS company sites where you could register your company as a partner and get a link from them with 90%. They also have high DA as they're legit as fuck. But the backlink would just be from the list of partners.

9. Glad to hear! I might try some churn and burn site, just to get a feeling for how everything works. As it appears to me Germany is pretty far behind in terms of SEO, at least in my region. What experiences do you have? Is it harder for you to rank national sites or easier?

Again, thanks a lot for your efforts my friend!

 

[issorc]

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain everything to me! I really appreciate it!
You helped me to understand the whole concept even better.

Just a few follow up questions:

6. In Germany there are a lot of company registries (similar to telephone books) or sites for job offers where you could just register your company and get a 80+% backlink. Does this help my ranking? There's even a lot of these shitty CMS company sites where you could register your company as a partner and get a link from them with 90%. They also have high DA as they're legit as fuck. But the backlink would just be from the list of partners.

9. Glad to hear! I might try some churn and burn site, just to get a feeling for how everything works. As it appears to me Germany is pretty far behind in terms of SEO, at least in my region. What experiences do you have? Is it harder for you to rank national sites or easier?

Again, thanks a lot for your efforts my friend!

6. It's usually good to get your company in such listings/directories. Has a lot to do with local seo too. You should take some time and read up on it, because that will be very important when you're providing a local service. Partner links are not contextual obviously, but if you get a few of them on the best sites it won't hurt you. Just make sure that OBL is not too high and that there are no spammy sites in the partner list.

9. National keywords are (obviously) harder than local, but most of the times easy too. There are enough affiliates in german who think that it's easy to rank sites with forum entries and blog comments, featured by all those "join my affiliate course" youtubers that came up lately. I've seen keywords with 20-30 affiliate sites in top 100 and with one single decent link I outranked 25 of them. PBNs are not as common as for english sites.

 

[MisterF]

What I would suggest is this;

Partner up with an seo company/service.

You can't use your clients sites to teach yourself as you go, it's unprofessional and will do your reputation damage if it ever came out.

Alternative is to employ a great VA who can do off page seo, that way you keep it all in house.

 

[seoz87]

1. Will my website have an advantage for the keyword "cityname webdesign" if it's domain name is cityname-webdesign.de?
A .de domain is enough . you dont have to use the city name in domain. Instead use it in Title tags, content and heading tags. You will rank easily.

2. Does it make sense to register different domains like that and just relink them to my homepage?
A. No. Its waste of time and money.

3. If I redesign a clients homepage and have to start completely over, how do I make sure all backlinks to the site stay valid?
A. design vs site url is completely different things. But even if anything changes, it can be handled with 301 redirects


4. At what ranking is a backlink "good"? I've used some seo tools and saw the value of backlinks ranked from 0-100%. Are 30% links worth getting or should I only aim for 80, 90% ones?
A. contextual link or links from HIGH DA websites. The greatest seo formula is to get links from websites that are already ranking on the keyword you are targeting.


5. So there's the SEO difficulty rank. But I've seen a lot of pages valued 20 rank before ones at 40. How is that possible? (going by kwfinder rankings)
A. Its just an idea. Even some kws with 20 SEO difficulty will be hard to rank.


6. At what point is a site high authority? or high trust?
A. Multiple factors, site links, one box results , branded searches, natural links, viral traffic, high user engagement etc


7. Are local backlinks (from companies near me) more valuable than foreign ones?
A. Depends on where you want to rank the website. if you are looking to rank a website in germany than ideally links from german sites are better.

8. How important is my domain name for seo? (not for the probability of a user to click it, just for the ranking)
A. Having the keyword or related word in domain always helps. But even generic domains can rank better than keyword based domains. It all boils down to SEO.


9. Will PBN and other black hat methods of this board work for websites in germany?
A. Work everywhere as long as you are doing it right.

10. Could someone buy shitty backlinks to a competitors site so it gets penalized?
A. it can but you have to do lot more than buying some shitty backlinks

 

[ucool]

What I would suggest is this;

Partner up with an seo company/service.

You can't use your clients sites to teach yourself as you go, it's unprofessional and will do your reputation damage if it ever came out.

Alternative is to employ a great VA who can do off page seo, that way you keep it all in house.

You're right. But still I want to learn so I can do it by myself eventually.

6. It's usually good to get your company in such listings/directories. Has a lot to do with local seo too. You should take some time and read up on it, because that will be very important when you're providing a local service. Partner links are not contextual obviously, but if you get a few of them on the best sites it won't hurt you. Just make sure that OBL is not too high and that there are no spammy sites in the partner list.

9. National keywords are (obviously) harder than local, but most of the times easy too. There are enough affiliates in german who think that it's easy to rank sites with forum entries and blog comments, featured by all those "join my affiliate course" youtubers that came up lately. I've seen keywords with 20-30 affiliate sites in top 100 and with one single decent link I outranked 25 of them. PBNs are not as common as for english sites.

Thanks again! I'll use the tipps you gave me!

1. Will my website have an advantage for the keyword "cityname webdesign" if it's domain name is cityname-webdesign.de?
A .de domain is enough . you dont have to use the city name in domain. Instead use it in Title tags, content and heading tags. You will rank easily.

2. Does it make sense to register different domains like that and just relink them to my homepage?
A. No. Its waste of time and money.

3. If I redesign a clients homepage and have to start completely over, how do I make sure all backlinks to the site stay valid?
A. design vs site url is completely different things. But even if anything changes, it can be handled with 301 redirects


4. At what ranking is a backlink "good"? I've used some seo tools and saw the value of backlinks ranked from 0-100%. Are 30% links worth getting or should I only aim for 80, 90% ones?
A. contextual link or links from HIGH DA websites. The greatest seo formula is to get links from websites that are already ranking on the keyword you are targeting.


5. So there's the SEO difficulty rank. But I've seen a lot of pages valued 20 rank before ones at 40. How is that possible? (going by kwfinder rankings)
A. Its just an idea. Even some kws with 20 SEO difficulty will be hard to rank.


6. At what point is a site high authority? or high trust?
A. Multiple factors, site links, one box results , branded searches, natural links, viral traffic, high user engagement etc


7. Are local backlinks (from companies near me) more valuable than foreign ones?
A. Depends on where you want to rank the website. if you are looking to rank a website in germany than ideally links from german sites are better.

8. How important is my domain name for seo? (not for the probability of a user to click it, just for the ranking)
A. Having the keyword or related word in domain always helps. But even generic domains can rank better than keyword based domains. It all boils down to SEO.


9. Will PBN and other black hat methods of this board work for websites in germany?
A. Work everywhere as long as you are doing it right.

10. Could someone buy shitty backlinks to a competitors site so it gets penalized?
A. it can but you have to do lot more than buying some shitty backlinks

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer!
Your insights are valuable and it's great to get a second oppinion on everything. You know your shit!

Just one thing regarding 10.
That would mean the risk of buying pbn links is overrated or am I interpreting this the wrong way? I've seen a lot of warning to not buy links or you'll hurt your business in the long run. If you can't hurt others this way - what's the risk?

 

[issorc]

Just one thing regarding 10.
That would mean the risk of buying pbn links is overrated or am I interpreting this the wrong way? I've seen a lot of warning to not buy links or you'll hurt your business in the long run. If you can't hurt others this way - what's the risk?

No, this risk is not overrated in the long run. Especially if you are buying links from PBN networks 30000 other people buy here, you'll get destroyed sooner or later. If google finds a network and you're in, chances are high you're fucked. Especially when you don't have other authority besides the PBN links.

If you need PBN links for the long run, build your own. Link to one money site of yours only and a few other authority sites and sites that are no direct competition to you. Treat your PBNs like money sites and take care of them, because otherwise, Google will fuck you one day. I guess in your case getting a few relevant and high-quality guest posts are much easier to get. There should be enough german blogger out there who'll link to you for a few bucks. Paying for guest posts is way less common than for English sites, therefore the prices are usually lower.

 

[seoz87]

Just one thing regarding 10.
That would mean the risk of buying pbn links is overrated or am I interpreting this the wrong way? I've seen a lot of warning to not buy links or you'll hurt your business in the long run. If you can't hurt others this way - what's the risk?

Its because of OVERALL link profile. If your competitor is ranking on some keywords in top 3 that means the website's link profile is good enough for Google.

Now if you build 100's of links in a very short period of time, there is strong evidence that google bot will simply dilute or ignore their value. Also if a site has 10 very good links and then suddenly has 100 bad links, those 100 bad links will take ages to devalue the original 10 links.

For a new site, building crap links may hurt but for sites already ranking you have to do it like you are doing NATURAL SEO i.e. building links in regular intervals from crap sites. And if any shithead is willing to do that, that piece of shit can utilize that time in more productive things like building links for his own fuckin site

 

[ucool]

Its because of OVERALL link profile. If your competitor is ranking on some keywords in top 3 that means the website's link profile is good enough for Google.

Now if you build 100's of links in a very short period of time, there is strong evidence that google bot will simply dilute or ignore their value. Also if a site has 10 very good links and then suddenly has 100 bad links, those 100 bad links will take ages to devalue the original 10 links.

For a new site, building crap links may hurt but for sites already ranking you have to do it like you are doing NATURAL SEO i.e. building links in regular intervals from crap sites. And if any shithead is willing to do that, that piece of shit can utilize that time in more productive things like building links for his own fuckin site

That makes sense. Thanks for the blunt answer.

And you could also get rid of those links, right? If someone does this or one of my clients has shitty backlinks, then I'd find out using seo tools and could act.

I suppose for local business it'll be a lot more sustainable to do natural SEO. Maybe you could also answer the question below; how I best place my link on the website of my clients to get the most out of it. They probably wouldn't mind my logo + link on their hp.
Is there also a way to do this without anyone actually seeing it? Or just a very stealthy way? White font on white background (the stupidest thing I could come up with, just so you get the idea).

 

[issorc]

That makes sense. Thanks for the blunt answer.

And you could also get rid of those links, right? If someone does this or one of my clients has shitty backlinks, then I'd find out using seo tools and could act.

I suppose for local business it'll be a lot more sustainable to do natural SEO. Maybe you could also answer the above; how I best place my link on the website of my clients to get the most out of it. They probably wouldn't mind my logo + link on their hp.
Is there also a way to do this without anyone actually seeing it? Or just a very stealthy way? White font on white background (the stupidest thing I could come up with, just so you get the idea).

Do not hide the backlink. Google will fuck you if you use white font on white background for your links.

The most natural and most taken way is to place it somewhere in the Legal Disclaimer (Impressum) next to the companies information. You can write something like "Concept and Programming made by yourlink.de"

 

[ucool]

No, this risk is not overrated in the long run. Especially if you are buying links from PBN networks 30000 other people buy here, you'll get destroyed sooner or later. If google finds a network and you're in, chances are high you're fucked. Especially when you don't have other authority besides the PBN links.

If you need PBN links for the long run, build your own. Link to one money site of yours only and a few other authority sites and sites that are no direct competition to you. Treat your PBNs like money sites and take care of them, because otherwise, Google will fuck you one day. I guess in your case getting a few relevant and high-quality guest posts are much easier to get. There should be enough german blogger out there who'll link to you for a few bucks. Paying for guest posts is way less common than for English sites, therefore the prices are usually lower.

I see, thank you!
I'll probably start doing that and also take advantage of my clients.
Could you give me an estimate of the difference between homepage links and for example those in the imprint? Like; direct hp link is worth 100% and imprint maybe 20%? Just so I get an idea of how valuable those links are. Excuse me for bothering you even more. This just came up.

 

[ucool]

Do not hide the backlink. Google will fuck you if you use white font on white background for your links.

The most natural and most taken way is to place it somewhere in the Legal Disclaimer (Impressum) next to the companies information. You can write something like "Concept and Programming made by yourlink.de"

Thank you! I wanted to reply in one text, but I got a spam error message which kept me from posting (?)

I've seen that's the common practice. But wouldn't another way (like on the homepage) be more valuable?
I could probably include this in my contract.

 

[issorc]

I see, thank you!
I'll probably start doing that and also take advantage of my clients.
Could you give me an estimate of the difference between homepage links and for example those in the imprint? Like; direct hp link is worth 100% and imprint maybe 20%? Just so I get an idea of how valuable those links are. Excuse me for bothering you even more. This just came up.

Hard to give numbers for that. The link has the biggest effect if the site you're linked from has many links. Usually that's the homepage, but it can be different on some sites.

Thank you! I wanted to reply in one text, but I got a spam error message which kept me from posting (?)

I've seen that's the common practice. But wouldn't another way (like on the homepage) be more valuable?
I could probably include this in my contract.

Unless you're going to build some super high quality links to your client's homepage it's not worth to make the client more uncomfortable by complex contracts and a link on their homepage they might not want. Most of the times you won't get contextual links from your clients so for the really strong links you should try guest posting on SEO blogs that do have a strong link foundation.

 

[ucool]

Hard to give numbers for that. The link has the biggest effect if the site you're linked from has many links. Usually that's the homepage, but it can be different on some sites.

Unless you're going to build some super high quality links to your client's homepage it's not worth to make the client more uncomfortable by complex contracts and a link on their homepage they might not want. Most of the times you won't get contextual links from your clients so for the really strong links you should try guest posting on SEO blogs that do have a strong link foundation.

The more you explain, the more I realize how little I know.
I'm sorry for being such a pain in the ass. Please bear with me and one last question, so I really get this.

Do you mean outgoing links or is this referred to the infrastructure of the site. Like links from the "center" of the site give me more juice?

Some of my potential clients have shitty homepages but a few very high authority links. Mostly local restaurants and little bars that have been linked to by the cities homepage or etablished news and radio stations. Not sure how much this is worth, but that's mostly what my competition got.

 

[HatIsBlacked]

You are getting way too ahead of yourself. You need to determine if there is even a profitable web design business that can be created where you live and one that can carry on into the future supporting your livelihood.

What if those two web design businesses did just 10 websites a year? Certainly, you don't expect that you will get all those contracts do you? You'll be lucky to get, say, 3 of them.

If those three contracts only amounted to a few thousand Euros, would it be worth all this effort?

 

[ucool]

You are getting way too ahead of yourself. You need to determine if there is even a profitable web design business that can be created where you live and one that can carry on into the future supporting your livelihood.

What if those two web design businesses did just 10 websites a year? Certainly, you don't expect that you will get all those contracts do you? You'll be lucky to get, say, 3 of them.

If those three contracts only amounted to a few thousand Euros, would it be worth all this effort?

I appreciate your advice.
I've already analyzed the local competition and potential customers. There are a lot of big companies who are way behind with their online presence. They have the funds to pay thousands of dollars and would profit enormously. All they need is a pitch.
One of the biggest companies has a website which was created in 2007. It looks like shit, is user unfriendly and on page seo is non existent.

My country is so backward in development. There's enormous potential. The industry adapts very slowly to the digitalization and there's a huge lack of capable web agencies.

 

[LinkBuildingServices]

I must say you are brave to start search engine optimization on your own Good luck with it, mate!

I have experience and expertise with SEO issues and can help with the following:

1. Will my website have an advantage for the keyword "cityname webdesign" if it's domain name is cityname-webdesign.de?
- Yes, it will be good for ranking if the main keyword is on home page and in domain name.

2. Does it make sense to register different domains like that and just relink them to my homepage?
- This way is rather complicated, moreover you may get under Google affiliate filter.

3. If I redesign a clients homepage and have to start completely over, how do I make sure all backlinks to the site stay valid?
- You are mixing design and SEO. Links always go to url, and design is something different.

4. At what ranking is a backlink "good"? I've used some seo tools and saw the value of backlinks ranked from 0-100%. Are 30% links worth getting or should I only aim for 80, 90% ones?
- I am interested to know in which tool you have checked backlinks? I have never met measurement of backlinks with %. There is popular metric for measuring quality of backlinks - SB Rank, it is based on page authority and domain authority value. So try it. When building links you should consider their quality since a link from a bad, spammy and irrelevant source may do much harm to your website's ranking.

5. So there's the SEO difficulty rank. But I've seen a lot of pages valued 20 rank before ones at 40. How is that possible? (going by kwfinder rankings)
- It's all about quality of pages. A link from a page with content relevant to your niche, with few outbound links and with low competition will be considered more valuable for Google. So be cautious when building or buying backlinks. JFI, Google considers more than 200 factors when analyzing a website.

6. At what point is a site high authority? or high trust?
- You might be talking about Domain authority. It depends on domain's age, whether it contains unique and popular (sharable) content and quantity of backlinks.

7. Are local backlinks (from companies near me) more valuable than foreign ones?
- Yes, if you plan to promote it locally a link from Germany will be much better than a link from USA for instance.

If you ever need high quality backlinks - feel free to PM me.

 

[issorc]

I appreciate your advice.
I've already analyzed the local competition and potential customers. There are a lot of big companies who are way behind with their online presence. They have the funds to pay thousands of dollars and would profit enormously. All they need is a pitch.
One of the biggest companies has a website which was created in 2007. It looks like shit, is user unfriendly and on page seo is non existent.

My country is so backward in development. There's enormous potential. The industry adapts very slowly to the digitalization and there's a huge lack of capable web agencies.

Always take into consideration that those people maybe like their website and don't want anything new. I'm currently in the process of developing a new website for a quite huge company and the design would have been modern in 1990. As someone who is really tech-savvy you usually see the things others than those 50 year old business man. Had to learn it the hard way too.

 

[ucool]

I must say you are brave to start search engine optimization on your own Good luck with it, mate!

I have experience and expertise with SEO issues and can help with the following:

1. Will my website have an advantage for the keyword "cityname webdesign" if it's domain name is cityname-webdesign.de?
- Yes, it will be good for ranking if the main keyword is on home page and in domain name.

2. Does it make sense to register different domains like that and just relink them to my homepage?
- This way is rather complicated, moreover you may get under Google affiliate filter.

3. If I redesign a clients homepage and have to start completely over, how do I make sure all backlinks to the site stay valid?
- You are mixing design and SEO. Links always go to url, and design is something different.

4. At what ranking is a backlink "good"? I've used some seo tools and saw the value of backlinks ranked from 0-100%. Are 30% links worth getting or should I only aim for 80, 90% ones?
- I am interested to know in which tool you have checked backlinks? I have never met measurement of backlinks with %. There is popular metric for measuring quality of backlinks - SB Rank, it is based on page authority and domain authority value. So try it. When building links you should consider their quality since a link from a bad, spammy and irrelevant source may do much harm to your website's ranking.

5. So there's the SEO difficulty rank. But I've seen a lot of pages valued 20 rank before ones at 40. How is that possible? (going by kwfinder rankings)
- It's all about quality of pages. A link from a page with content relevant to your niche, with few outbound links and with low competition will be considered more valuable for Google. So be cautious when building or buying backlinks. JFI, Google considers more than 200 factors when analyzing a website.

6. At what point is a site high authority? or high trust?
- You might be talking about Domain authority. It depends on domain's age, whether it contains unique and popular (sharable) content and quantity of backlinks.

7. Are local backlinks (from companies near me) more valuable than foreign ones?
- Yes, if you plan to promote it locally a link from Germany will be much better than a link from USA for instance.

If you ever need high quality backlinks - feel free to PM me.

Thanks for your answer. I spent my whole day reading and learning. Every new bit of information helps!
I just have a few follow up questions.

1. I'm still unsure about how to name my domain. How much influence does the keyword in the domain have? It would look pretty generic but if I gain more visibility or potential to rank higher, I'd go with it and just take cityname+keyword. The others pretty much contradicted you, but I'm open to other opinions!

3. Thanks! You're right. I meant it more like if you switch CMS, do the backlinks suffer this way if a lot of urls change. But someone already suggested to do 301 redirects for every url that doesn't exist anymore.

4. I believe it is openlinkprofiler.org it states LIS for the backlinks. Also, is it better to just get one backlink from a good domain or e.g. 10 (even if it's in the same context).

I really apreciate your reply. As you've seen I still confuse a lot of basic terms and lack some basic understanding. But I'm trying my best.

Always take into consideration that those people maybe like their website and don't want anything new. I'm currently in the process of developing a new website for a quite huge company and the design would have been modern in 1990. As someone who is really tech-savvy you usually see the things others than those 50 year old business man. Had to learn it the hard way too.

I get your point. As long as it's only concerning design and not usability I can life with it. Although it might be more rewarding and entertaining to create something beautiful.