Content Marketer & SEO

If I post comments in online forums that include a link back to my website, does that automatically penalize my SEO? What if I'm leaving a substantive comment along with the link, such that I'm actually contributing to the discussion? Am I also penalized then?

Asked by KraqFu about 12 years ago

No, there are very few situations where leaving a comment - particularly a substantive one - would hurt your site. Leave the comment, contribute to the discussion, and don't worry about doing any harm to your site. If they're valuable comments on valuable sites, you'll only help yourself. That said, leaving tons of comments on blogs all over the internet, valuable or not, is not an SEO strategy in itself. It can have some benefit, but it's not going to be the cornerstone of anyone's internet marketing.

Are there any books, classes, blogs, or other resources that are absolute musts for a basic understanding of SEO?

Asked by n00b101 over 12 years ago

Yes, absolutely. I subscribe to about 10 or 15 different SEO and website marketing blogs that send daily or weekly updates, to give you an idea of how much time I have to spend keeping up to date on practices and trends.

In terms of basic understanding of SEO, however, here are the initial resources I would recommend:

SEOMoz Beginner's Guide to SEO: It's free, it's pretty to look at, and most importantly I can recommend every tip in there as quality information. Find it here: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Google's SEO Starter Guide: The content is basic and doesn't always go into depth, but getting the information straight from the horse's mouth is worthwhile in the beginning. Go to http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html and download the PDF link.

Search Engine Land's Periodic Table of Ranking Factors gives a good broad overview of the factors that affect search engine rankings, and the visual layout can be very easy to digest compared to written versions: http://searchengineland.com/seotable

Search Engine Land's Video, What is SEO? is also a good one to review. http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo - Further down that page they also have links to their own "Guide to SEO," which is worth reading.

Books: There are some decent books written about SEO, although I have only perused most of them. I'd look at The Art of SEO (multiple authors including Rand Fishkin) as well as SEO Secrets by Danny Dover. The only trouble with SEO books is that it's a fast-changing industry, so certain aspects can change frequently. That said, I respect the authors of both books and I'm sure they both have plenty of timeless suggestions that won't be affected by smaller day to day changes in the industry, which is why I'd recommend them above other books if that's your preferred method of learning.

Classes: There are tons of courses, both local and online, so it's hard to single out a few. http://inboundmarketing.com/ is completely free and is focused on website marketing in general as opposed to just SEO, but I've heard decent things about their training and again, I respect the authors of those classes as well.

There are a ton of quality resources that I haven't mentioned, but these are ones that I'd recommend starting with to make sure you're on the right track and not learning from the wrong sources.

What are the best FREE things i can do to increase my traffic besides having the keywords in crawlable format on my pages. How are some people consistently at the top of the unpaid search listings.
p.s. i heard metatags are a hoax too

Asked by YMCA about 12 years ago

There are two things I tell every client they need to do: 1 - add more quality content to their site 2 - build more links to their site. Content: There's a billion ways to approach this topic, but basically write quality articles that your visitors would find useful, and make it pretty with images/photos, video, whatever. Plenty of that on your website is pretty helpful. Give people a reason to care about your site, basically. Answer customer questions, whatever. Millions of ways to approach this. Please make sure your website has crawlable text. If you're using something like Wordpress you're fine. If not, type "cache:yourdomain.com" into google, click on the "text-only version" link on the top right of the page, and make sure you can read all of the text on there. Links: I'm going to keep this part short and give you 2 links. The first is an article I wrote explaining why links are important in simple terms. The second is an excellent and non-technical guide to link building if you're serious about doing it yourself: http://www.hoodwebmanagement.com/890/why-links-are-important-for-small-businesses/ http://www.clockworkpirate.com/ (you'll have to tweet to get the download link, but it's worth it) In regards to meta tags, they're not a hoax. You're referring to meta keywords specifically (there are other meta tags that are very important, like title and description). Meta keywords used to get spammed heavily and search engines stopped relying on the keywords as an indicator. I still add a few keywords to each page to future proof them, since there's the off chance that it will be used by a future search engine or other service. That said, the keywords aren't a priority so don't spend more than a couple seconds on them, but title and description absolutely are and deserve some attention on every page of your site. Read the SEOMoz Beginner's Guide to SEO if you're uncertain about how anything works: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo In regards to other people being at the top of unpaid search, it's typically because they have better content, or more links, which is why you need more of both.

I've noticed a significant increase in the number of "link farms" and a decrease in the quality of my search results (i.e. the internet seems more flooded with crap than ever.) Is this a known 'thing' in the SEO world? Are the major search engines doing anything to combat this?

Asked by melania over 12 years ago

To be honest, I personally have seen quite a few less of these over the last year or so. That said, they definitely had been out of control for a few years prior to 2011, and there is certainly plenty of "crap" left to get rid of. In February 2011 Google rolled out the first of a series of updates referred to as "Panda" updates (no special meaning, just the name for this series of updates). Since February, there have been a number of large and minor Panda updates, many of which have been aimed at content farms, sites with excessive ads, sites with lots of stolen & duplicated content, and other forms of crap. If you're interested in specifics, here's an ongoing log of Google updates: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change So, yes, the SEO world in general is very aware of these issues, and many of us are the people running the sites with *good* content, which means we're the ones trying to outrank the crap, so we're certainly monitoring search results closely. If you're still seeing a lot in your search results, try testing other search options - can't hurt right? Blekko is one that has banned all content farms in general, even the farms like eHow that *occasionally* have useful content: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/blekko-bans-content-farms/

A lot of people these days are calling themselves SEO gurus...how can I tell who's for real and who's full of it? What questions should I be asking?

Asked by ProudPapa over 12 years ago

I figured this would be one of the first questions asked. There is definitely plenty of snake oil and useless services being sold in the name of SEO. I think the best way to answer this question is to give you some examples of signals I use to determine the legitimacy and quality of an SEO provider: Lofty promises are the first sign. If they're making broad promises to all customers of #1 rankings or first page rankings, that's a sign that either (A) they're full of it, (B) they're using spammy links that can hurt you in the long-run, or (C) they're talking about paid advertising, which isn't SEO at all. B is the most likely scenario for a company promising great results. The second signal is what they say they will do. If they're talking any of the following I'd run away: number of web 2.0 properties they'll build for you, linkwheels, tons of article submissions, lots of squidoo lenses and hub articles, lots of social bookmarking, submission to RSS and ping aggregators, 1000s of directory submissions. These are all thinly-veiled ways to say that they're going to hire foreign writers of poor quality to create a bunch of terrible useless content, and they're going to spam the internet with that content and a link back to your site. It can be tricky to hire a quality SEO. For a typical small or local business, I'd expect to spend $500 to a few thousand a month depending on the type of company (lead-driven small businesses with high-ticket transactions like dentists, lawyers, chiropractors, etc will typically have to pay more). I personally offer a few lower priced options than that, but they're for just a few hours of work each month and they're targeted at businesses looking for a basic service, and I'm a freelancer with lower overhead than most agencies. Larger businesses and corporate level companies can expect to pay $100 to $1000+ per hour depending on the provider they choose. Here's a good idea of overall rates for the SEO profession as of late 2011: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-pricing-costs-of-services Another excellent resource to read is the Google Blog Post on tips for hiring an SEO. They give some good 'best practices' advice and other signals of quality to look for, as well as questions to ask: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

What's your favorite example of a company you worked with where you brought them from obscurity to wide visibility? What was the tipping point?

Asked by Jayson over 12 years ago

I can't give any specific businesses as an example, but I think starting with a new website, or one that has absolutely no traffic, and building it up from scratch is the most exciting and rewarding. Since I work with a lot of small business clients, that's often the case. Knowing that you've created all of that traffic and revenue for the company from thin air feels powerful, and every bit of it is attributed to your work. As far as the tipping point, it tends to happen after a couple months of work. There will always be small initial increases or bursts of traffic from links that you create, but when the site finally pops up in the rankings and all of a sudden the business is getting 50 or 100 visitors a day instead of the 3 that they were getting before, that's when you know it's real and your efforts are paying off. From there, a few more hundred visitors each day isn't far off, and at that point you're earning the business more than you're costing them, which is job security at its finest.

Do you prefer Facebook or Twitter for brand-building? Why?

Asked by harkesh over 12 years ago

That always depends on the business. Both communities will be most successful if you've got an engaged employee or social media person proactively representing your company. If you can identify any sort of community or key interests surrounding your customer base, that will also carry you a long way in building a following and actually giving value to your fans. I can give examples where I have recommended to businesses that they not focus on a social network. I have seen a vacation rental company that serves mostly older clientele - 40 to 70 is probably the average age. They do great on Facebook, but Twitter has never been a factor and I don't see it getting bigger in the near future. As far as Facebook, Business-to-Business (B2B) providers typically have a hard time gaining traction and value from being active. There are exceptions, especially if you're delivering a great service that people love, but for the most part these companies have a hard time on Facebook since people aren't really looking to get updates from examples such as a paper shredding company or a DUI attorney.

What's the right time in the life of a website to start fine-tuning its SEO? Should that be contemplated before it's even built, or is that something to do as the website is refined over time?

Asked by 321blastoff about 12 years ago

Early, Often, and Always. Planning ahead is best. Many of my clients are people who had their site building by graphic designers (who do beautiful work but often have poor code & SEO skills), and they pay me quite a lot of money to audit their site and tell them why it's broken. So, make sure that's a consideration upfront during the design process. Site structure, for one, is a big hassle to change later, so avoiding that issue from the get go is highly recommended. Getting someone who specializes in both SEO & web design is recommended. Then, you need to do some things once, and some things continually. Some things like your sitemap can be set up and will take care of themselves from then on. For examples of ongoing considerations, every time you add content you'll need to do things like make sure the title tags and description tags are good to go, and that images have alt text. Link building is another ongoing consideration - you need quality links, preferably more of them than your competitors have. That's a process that starts as early as you can afford it, and continues for the life of your website. See above comments for info on link building.

I'm not understanding the Pinterest hype at all. Do you think this is a must-use (along with FB and Twitter) for anyone pushing a brand? Or is it more for the fashion crowd?

Asked by UnPinterested over 12 years ago

UnPinterested, great name! I feel like I'm answering a Dear Abby column for internet marketing. Just like Facebook & Twitter, it's not a must-use site for every brand. That said, I think most brands can get a little value from it, but shouldn't necessarily prioritize it over proven online marketing methods that are already working. There was some initial hype among the SEO crowd because Pinterest had followed links, although that ended a week or two ago. The links are now "nofollow", which means they're not quite as valuable as they once were. The obvious benefits of ramping up on Pinterest are that it's growing exponentially, and it's supposedly being used by many as an "exploration site" to find things to purchase (whether that's clothes, travel, gifts, home decorations, etc.). The brands that benefit most will be those that offer a cool or interesting product or community, especially one that is visually interesting. That could mean things like photos from a photographer, portfolio examples from a landscaper who does great work, a clothing company that has attractive models (we're talking eye candy here, remember?), or perhaps a blog with great photos. If your site can be interesting to someone, then I think there's plenty of reason to get a Pinterest strategy into place, that coordinates with the rest of your content & social media strategy. The downside is that there is growing evidence that traffic coming from Pinterest to your site is going to be of similar quality to a site like StumbleUpon. What I mean by that is that most visitors will glance at the page and bounce, and few will stick around for more content or to buy something. Before you go overboard with it, test it out. Get a few succesful pieces of content shared on there and see how the traffic performs. Does it bring in email subscribers? Does it bring in sales? Does it bring in repeat visitors? A lot of the value is going to be long-term and related to brand awareness, so you'll have to look at metrics other than just sales. Here's a few tips for making the most of it: 1 - Make awesome content that is branded or gives people a reason to click through to your site. If you share a bunch of photos that look cool, people might repin them but nobody is going to click through to see the link. If you share a bunch of photos that have your logo on them, or an incredibly good title that gives people a reason to want more info, you'll have better luck getting click-throughs. 2 - Once you get the click-through, take immediate advantage of the fact that they're there and try to get them to stick around. For a blog or content producer that might mean, having a Subscribe/Like/Follow-on-Twitter box at the top of the screen whenever your traffic comes from Pinterest (use a plugin like WP Greet Box if you use Wordpress). Those people aren't around for long, so this will have to be way cooler than your average email subscribe box. Offer them something of value and you might get better results. 3 - Dabble with creating Pinterest-focused content. One example is what I have been calling "tall content." If you take a look at the homepage feed on Pinterest, you'll occasionally notice really long images that take up a large vertical space in the Pinterest feed. Here are two examples: http://pinterest.com/pin/146367056609064888/ & http://pinterest.com/pin/162340761537430037/ - Content like this will catch on quickly, so this tactic may not work for long, but that type of cool, Pinterest-only content is pretty clever still and I think it will perform well for repins and likes. Good luck, feel free to ask any clarification questions.

What are the most important inputs and variables that search engine algorithms use to rank pages?

Asked by Builder over 12 years ago

Broadly I'd say that 45% of ranking is the content on your site, 45% of ranking is related to quality and quantity of links from other sites pointing at your site, and maybe 10% is related to how users interact with your site (such as how many pages they look at, how long they spend on the site, how quickly they leave the site, etc.). To continue the broad recommendations, most sites I review need to do two things to rank better: (A) produce more content, including written content, images, video, etc., and (B) get more backlinks to their site from quality sources. Both can have their challenges depending on your niche. A lot of people will such building great content and the links will come naturally. That's not quite true. You need to build great content, and then proactively go find places that should be linking to you, and tactfully find a way to get them to link to you. There's a billion recommendations hiding within those two suggestions, so feel free to ask another question if you want details on a particular topic. The most reputable source for more specific ranking factors is SEOMoz's annual ranking factors report, which is based on consensus of a number of SEO practitioners: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors In regards to small / local businesses ranking on Google maps and other local searches, I'd also recommend the annual Local Search Ranking factors done by David Mihm: http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

Do huge companies still have to throw a lot of money at SEO, or once you're as established as, say, ESPN or CNN, does the volume of content and brand recognition make having an SEO budget moot?

Asked by MZB about 11 years ago

Yes and no. Content + brand recognition is awesome and makes the link building & community development process incredibly easier. But, huge brands have **tons** of technical site issues that prevent them from ranking well in search. Site architecture issues and internal organizational silos that prevent change from happening are two common examples. There's a good presentation that I just saw yesterday by John Doherty (http://www.johnfdoherty.com/) called "The Price of Technical SEO Debt" (http://www.slideshare.net/dohertyjf/the-price-of-technical-seo-debt-final). It talks about examples of big sites that have had poor search performance due to technical issues that had accumulated over the years. So - SEO budget can be reduced but not eliminated. Additionally, a content team *has* to be cross trained in SEO concepts and understand how to implement best practices while maintaining the integrity of their content. It's part art and part science.

Do you think SEO consultants should offer money-back guarantees for their services?

Asked by Just Pete over 11 years ago

In short, no. The trouble with something like this is that SEO is rarely a short term project (unless it's a matter of fixing technical issues on an established site). So, if a campaign hasn't shown measurable results that doesn't necessarily mean it's been ineffective. In addition, many clients aren't in a position to know whether or not the services have been effective due to lack of knowledge of how to measure effectiveness, so there's an issue with who determines effectiveness and what metrics they use. That said, I think that there are decent ways to include a performance guarantee in a contract if it has very clear criteria/goals/metrics attached to it. But, I don't think the lack of a performance guarantee is a strike against the consultant or company. Also, if those goals aren't hit, I don't think money back is the best solution, I think they should continue service until the goals are reached. My personal approach to this is that I don't do long term contracts with clients. Our engagements are month-to-month, so if we're not showing results, the clients are free to stop service. We combine that with an upfront, honest estimate of how long we think it will take to show results. Not all companies take this approach, and there are plenty of very effective companies that require longer term contracts, but it works for us at our current scale. We may revisit that approach as we grow as a company. The good news is, if a client or company does want a performance guarantee before starting service, there are plenty of firms that operate entirely on a performance basis, so those clients can mitigate that risk if they have to.

Thanks, that was a great answer! 1 more: is Google still the dominant search engine to optimize for? And is the Google algorithm similar to what Bing, Yahoo, and others use, or do some strategies pay big dividends for one but not all search engines?

Asked by Deeeeez about 11 years ago

The short version is yes, Google is very dominant. And the more mobile & tablet usage sucks away from desktop, the more they increase that position (Android & Apple devices both default to Google, and make up 98% of the mobile device market. Full statistics can be found on a presentation I did earlier this month (Feb 2013) at http://www.contentharmony.com/2013-internet-marketing-trends/ . Regarding how to target Bing specifically, I don't spend too much time worrying about it because of the volume of traffic, and because I mostly work with small/medium businesses. The only SEOs I've met that do much Bing-specific activity are working for larger websites, where an increase in traffic from Bing can be substantially worth the time to devote to it. Yahoo has different rankings but it supposed to be powered by Bing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Search#Yahoo.21_search_deal - so in theory whatever works for Bing should work for Yahoo as well. In general, I've heard that Bing is highly dependent on sitemaps to index. You need to have a spotless sitemap, that only contains URLs that load properly without redirects. In terms of status code, this means 200 only, none of these: 301/302, 404, 5**, etc. Aside from that I've noticed that Bing can be easy to rank for with an established site and good on-page optimization practices. Not certain but I think they rely less heavily on links. In general though, I'd say there's a lot of overlap in best practices for Google and Bing, and I haven't come across anything that conflicts between the two, it's mostly just differing priorities.

Dan from Jobstr.com here:) Love your Q&A, Kane. Looking at our site, what are a couple things you think we could be doing better?

Asked by Jobstr Dan about 11 years ago

Hey guys, started working on this as a blog post and got distracted... Will update this comment when it's live.

What do SEO marketers who offer backlink-building actually do? Is it just a bunch of comment-spamming? I see that your company offers it, so how do you go about getting quality backlinks for clients?

Asked by Deeeeez about 11 years ago

Link building is a big world. Blog comments are by no means decent quality link building. They're mostly pointless and spammy, and not much use since there's not a ton of SEO value from those links. There can be value from the traffic they create via clicks, but only for high quality comments on high quality sites. Link building at its best is identifying great content that exists or should be created on a client's site, and then finding all of the hidden corners of the internet where that content should be shared and linked. We also do quite a bit of competitive analysis, assuming that the competitor's backlinks aren't mostly spammy. This allows us to identify where they're outperforming our clients in terms of links, and we can often secure many of those same links for the client (but never 100% of them). I'm going to defer to this great list of link building methods to give you an idea of some specific tactics: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies. Without reviewing the list again to double check, I know for certain that 98% are ethical and non-spammy ways to build links.

Given that SEO is a bit of a crapshoot how do you set expectations with new clients?

Asked by 5678 about 11 years ago

Expectations depend on the following aspects:

1. On-site SEO (How much time will it take to clean up and fix the current site? Is it Wordpress, Drupal, static HTML, PHP, etc?)
2. Existing Content (Do we have 8 pages on the site, or 80? is the content any good?)
3. Link Metrics (Compared to primary competitors, how is the client doing on backlink metrics as reported by Open Site Explorer and Majestic?)
4. Keyword Difficulty (How hard is the keyword to compete for? This is gauged using SEOMoz's keyword difficulty tool to get an objective idea of competition levels, and manual check of the search results for the keyword for a more subjective and in depth look)
5. What is the client's monthly budget?

considering outsourcing some blogposts for my landscaping site ... smart or dumb move? have my doubts about the quality of posts coming from overseas, but can this be effective?

Asked by G. Westheimer about 11 years ago

Here's a rough guide of what you can expect if you hire the writers directly:

• Under $25 for a blog article around 500-1000 words is a waste of your money. The time spent editing all of the mistakes and dealing with writers who can't direct their own efforts typically doesn't make sense for most business owners.
• $25-50 for a blog article around 500-1000 words can get you OK results depending on the writer, but you may need to edit the content more heavily and the content won't be groundbreaking.
• $50-100 - this is more along the lines that I'd recommend the average small business look into.
• $100-$200 - this is going to get you higher quality content with some research behind it - especially important for niches that are more complicated (attorneys for example). For landscaping this should get you some pretty good content from a writer with plant/gardening knowledge.

• keyword research
• the company comes up with the post titles and ideas
• the company can post the content directly to the site
• other misc perks depending on the company

If a blog has content of absolutely superb quality, how much worse will it rank in search results than the identical blog that's been heavily SEO'd? I guess what I'm asking is, if the content is THAT good, how much does SEO matter?

Asked by brokenarrow about 11 years ago

Great content is a huge part of the equation, but without proper technical checks across the entire website, good site structure, and link building and content promotion, great content may never be found. SEO complements good content, and good content makes link building and promotion easier, but content can't live with out the other areas being monitored and improved.

Bad or ignored SEO implementation can mean that the success of a viral or popular piece of content is severely dampened, so I'd say it matters quite a bit.

For an e-commerce biz selling several distinct products, would it be better in terms of search clout to have several URLs that link to one another or one URL with several subdomains?

Asked by Erika Leaf about 11 years ago

Purely from an SEO perspective, subfolders are better than subdomains, and subdomains are better than separate domains. Therefore the answer to your question is that subdomains are better than separate domains from the standpoint of consolidating link equity.

Now, if these products are really different enough to warrant separation, then you need to consider from a marketing perspective if it makes sense to have them associated or not. While link equity and search traffic are important, nobody is going to buy your ipod accessory if you're trying to sell printer ink on the same site - it doesn't make any sense. BUT, if the products are similar and being sold to different audiences, then that's a different situation. So, the true answer to this question is going to depend on the exact products and your business model.

Is it even possible for another search engine to usurp Google, ever?

Asked by broken_arrow about 11 years ago

Yes, but in my opinion it won't happen through traditional search. For better or worse, Google's got that locked down reasonably well. I think it will happen through a disruption like Siri or another service that offers something crazy - predictive search or something like that (figuring out what you need to find based upon your day to day activities, calendar, typical searches, etc. On a sidenote, I've used Siri about 20 times in the year I've had it, mostly while driving to look up directions, and it has never once worked correctly, so that's still not the answer at this point.

what do you think about Certified Internet Marketing Practitioner (CIMP) course from EC-Council is it useful?

Asked by Hamoosh over 8 years ago

I've never heard of it but that doesn't mean it's a bad program. Internet marketing certifications were once too basic, but over the past few years some reputable programs have evolved.

The one you're talking about looks... rough around the edges. It's a website full of IT certifications, which is a red flag to me, because internet marketing is a marketing discipline, not IT.

I would recommend looking at programs like DistilledU and various courses on Marketing Profs, and maybe programs like Market Motive (can't personally vouch for it but reputable people are connected to it). For the cost, Hubspot's free inbound marketing training is worthwhile as well.

As a final note - employers don't care about these training programs. They'll set you apart from someone with zero experience, but if I had to choose between someone with zero experience and a certificate, versus someone with two years experience, I'd take the second candidate in a heartbeat. Do the certificates - but get some experience however you can.

I want to email marketing for the data https://www.medicoreach.com/therapists/ . How can I do it?

Asked by Lauren over 5 years ago

Which Digital Marketing strategy works well for a Business?

Asked by Mounica Sathya over 5 years ago