Setting Up Your SEO Project / Agency for Success The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. For the past 1.5 years, I have been the Client Development Executive for Distilled's NYC office. I helped open this office in June 2011, and at the time we were struggling as an office because we had few leads, minimal recognition in NYC, and massive competition from both local bespoke agencies and larger full-service agencies. Within 6 months, I was able to ensure the SEO consultants were at full capacity. Currently, my role entails working with both amazing big brands and innovative startups to help Distilled consultants solve pain points and define scalable solutions (usually not pertinent to SEO). This post was written for SEOs who are client-facing and those who manage their own agencies. For SEOs: how to set up your project for success Why the cycle of sadness is so important I'm going to start off with something to wake everyone up. Dear Mr. or Mrs.
Enterprise Social Intelligence Platform This is the first in a series of posts by Candy Chang, an intern from my alma mater whom I had the pleasure of hosting this past week. She put together a summary of NetBase’s social intelligence report on Sennheiser, a German headphone manufacturer. My generation has grown up with parents always tugging earphones out of our ears or yanking headphones off our heads, warning us about our imminent deafness. But after taking a look at NetBase’s social intelligence report on Sennheiser, I might just hold that thought. This is a pretty important observation, because that means all headphone manufacturers have a chance at getting into the lead if they can just figure out how to make themselves the most durable brand (or at least seem like the most durable). Also shopping for headphones or curious about Sennheiser and too lazy to scroll back up to the link? Not enough time?
When Promoting Link Bait, Twitter is King! A few weeks back we were promoting a link bait article on digg. Before long, the submission hit the front page but in a matter of minutes was then buried. In the meantime, however, it was quickly picking up steam on Twitter. Within a few hours, the article got picked up by a major online news source, retweeted, and it exploded from there. (and is still going 3 weeks later) As of today, the link bait article that went viral on twitter has 32K backlinks (according to Aaron Wall’s SEO toolbar) many from highly trusted websites and news sources. Because it’s a client, I can’t link to the site or link bait piece (trust me, I REALLY want to). The goal of link bait First, some background…If you’re well versed in the art & science of link bait, you can skip this section. The trick to link bait, however, (beyond having FANTASTIC content) is making sure that content gets in front of the right webmasters. Social Bookmarking & News Sites Why Twitter is King
Eric Ward Answers 10 Questions on BizDev Link Building Eric Ward is the godfather of link building (just ask Jeff Bezos, who hired Eric to help launch Amazon). I've been learning from him since I started in the SEO industry back in 2001, and continue learning from him to this day through his LinkMoses Private Link Building Newsletter. Big thanks to Eric for helping continue the BizDev link building interview series that started with Ken McGaffin last month! In this series I'm working to stretch my brain - and yours, dear link builder - into thinking more deeply about link building and its importance to business. Garrett French: How do you or have you defined or described BizDev link building in the past? Eric Ward: BizDev link building for me means I'm pursuing relationships and proposing ideas that are not purely driven by search rank. My favorite question to ask of any link opportunity is, "Would this link be helpful to me if there were no search engines?" One client decides to use the QR code to encourage downloads of a mobile app.
SERPs As One Of The Factors For Measuring The Success Of The SEO Campaign In The Long Run We SEOs know that once the client signs the SEO Contract – The expectations are: Page 1 Position 1 ranking on the search engines andLoads of target traffic with conversions taking place regularly. But, we also know that when we start working on an SEO campaign, we follow a certain procedure for on-page and off-page factors – and after regular monitoring and measuring of the analytics, we try to achieve the following objectives step by step. Maximize the visibility all over the webWork on the website to making it more rich in content and error free HTMLSolve cannonical issuesEliminate duplicate content issuesAdd more meaning to the images of the websiteWork on many other technical aspects of the website like HTTP headers, 404 pages, 301 redirects etc.Help establish an online brandHelp establish a good online reputation The main goal is to achieve targeted traffic and we all know a high CTR is possible when your website ranks on page 1 and preferably on first three positions. Read Further….
Turning SEO Link Building into SEO Audience Targeting with Twitter profiling Admit it. You’ve sat in a meeting with your SEO Agency and thought, “surely, this shouldn’t work”. Endless, near irrelevant “guest posts” at best, “article submission” and “directory link building” at the very worst. For the past decade, “SEO” and “Marketing” have been allowed to remain almost entirely different disciplines. With a few exceptions, the vast majority of the SEO industry has been allowed to stumble along without a second thought to who they are targeting, where those people might be, and how best to reach them. Today, I want to share a combination of a few simple tools that actually help us identify our target audience, show us who might be influencing them and how to identify what content those influencers share. SEO has finally arrived at the intersection between search engine rankings and real marketing. Start by identifying Your Audience Let’s think about an audience and do some imaginary targeting for a moment. Let’s return to our market research scenario.
Content: The New Marketing Equation Hard Thoughts About SEO & Link Bait Is creating link bait good SEO? Emphatically, yes! If it does not get links it is not link bait. If it does, then people are finding value, which is exactly what the search engines want to reward. But what is link bait, what makes it work and why does it fail? What Is Link Bait? Link bait is content designed from conception to go viral. In theory, if you to create the perfect viral link bait, people keep sharing and sharing until everyone on the Internet sees your creation. In the diagram above, you send your link bait to four people. Great link bait earns links. Just like SEO, making link bait work is difficult. Link Bait Strategies Over the years, link builders have identified a few common link bait strategies. News StoriesDebate ArticlesAttack ArticlesResource Lists, How-to Articles and InfographsHumorous StoriesIncentive Pieces (Contests, Awards) A good place to learn about each strategy is The Link Baiting Playbook: Hooks Revisited by Todd Malicoat. Link Bait Is About Links Noise Timing
Template club get PageRank 9 with millions of hidden links - Edgy SEO Last year I discovered a hidden link on a client site pointing to a template site with a PageRank 9. Wow! How did they get that. After some digging around I found the reason. Let’s look at the links As you can see they have lots of links, not just from hidden links. They have 3234 root domains using templates with hidden links. High-profile clients Many of the domains are high-profile and trusted sites. Link hidden inside a H1 with a div The code looks strange, right? Takeaways from this case Always look closely on any template or plugin you use.