Dan Grant: Hi again, guys. It’s Dan from FatRank, and in this video I’m going to be doing another link audit. I’m going to run through a site I found that’s ranking in an okay position for a key phrase and talk about how I feel it can be improved. The idea of these videos is to get some ideas out there for backlinks and how a company could improve them to boost their Google rankings.

The example I’m using today is a site called Adam Bartlett. These guys are a Birmingham-based window cleaning service. Their website is clearly targeting those key phrases — Birmingham window cleaners, content about window cleaning, and so on. But we’re not focusing on the on-page website today; we’re focusing on the link side of things.

Since they’re targeting “window cleaning Birmingham,” I put that key phrase into a tool that gives information about its performance on Google. The keyword gets about 200 searches per month and has a difficulty of only 3, meaning it’s very easy to rank for. With 200 searches a month, it’s definitely a phrase they should be ranking well for, so I wanted to see why they're not ranking higher.

Scrolling down in the tool, it shows a mock-up of Google’s results. Adam Bartlett is ranking number five organically for that term. Number two is Top Dog Window Cleaning, and number one is Gumtree — which will be hard to outrank — but the number two spot is completely attainable, because it's another local Birmingham window cleaner. That’s who they should be competing with. If you check Google manually, they’re indeed in the fifth position.

The first thing that stood out to me was the backlink data. When I looked at Top Dog Window Cleaning, they’ve clearly pushed hard to build backlinks: 912 backlinks from 157 referring domains. Just to explain, referring domains means unique websites linking to you. So they have 912 links coming from 157 different websites — that’s solid.

Comparing that to Adam Bartlett’s data… they only have 205 backlinks and 63 referring domains. So immediately, there’s a big gap in quantity. Top Dog has clearly recognised backlinks as a ranking factor and gone for volume. The first piece of advice for Adam Bartlett would be simply: build more links, or you won’t be able to compete. But I’m not just going to say “build more links” — because what comes next is much more important.

Once I put Adam Bartlett’s site into the backlink analysis tool, I looked at the backlink profile in more detail. What I found is that almost every backlink they have is from directories — Wales Online, The Mirror, Liverpool Echo, The Standard — lots of directory-style newspaper listing links. These aren’t harmful, and I wouldn’t remove them, but they’re not powerful links. They’re basic starter links that tell Google where your business is located, but they don’t push rankings the way higher-quality links do.

What this company needs is a more diverse backlink profile. Instead of relying almost entirely on directory links, they should build stronger links like guest posts relevant to their key phrases. Guest posts are page-level links that carry more weight and help diversify the profile. Google can see directory links and treat them neutrally — not bad, but not particularly helpful. And when you compare that to a competitor with 900-plus backlinks, including guest posts and a variety of link types, Google is going to favour the more diverse and powerful profile.

So to actually compete in this market, Adam Bartlett needs more backlinks, better quality backlinks, and different types of backlinks. Not just throwing links at the wall, but adding them intelligently — making sure each link adds something strategically valuable.

Before wrapping up, I also put their site into a social-signal checker. This tool shows how many social signals a website is getting. Adam Bartlett’s site is getting zero. Google likes sites that are shared and talked about online. If a business is doing well, social signals usually appear as a natural by-product. 

So I’d recommend getting some social signals — they don’t have to be built naturally, and buying small amounts is harmless. It just gives the appearance of activity around the business and helps with trust signals.

So overall, I’d recommend this business look at purchasing links — better-quality ones — and also get some social signals going. I’ll drop some links in the description to help with finding those services.
Hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thanks a lot for watching, and I’ll see you again later.