SEO Questions 2013
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- trooperbill
Hi Guys... heres the start of my annual SEO Q&A thread... if youve any seo questions especially post panda/penguin then let me know.
- mg330
Looking forward to good questions in this thread. I'm working more and more with clients about SEO, and, our agency is somewhat framing SEO/content strategy in our own way that best applies to law firm clients and marketers (that's who we work with). I've got a couple blogs I've written about content-specific SEO and SEO tactics for legal marketers. We frequently encounter clients who are being sold on nearly insignificant gimmicks with the promise that it's going to instantly change their search visibility. Even for law firms where thought leadership and experience is critical, they buy into this too often and completely waste money.
I actually really enjoy the opportunities to help them do a 180 and realize they're better off spending money on content strategy rather than this silly witchcraft stuff.My typical explanation includes telling them 3 things:
1. Your website is built with common SEO technical best practices that any website should have, AND that your competitors will have. So, you're all pretty much on equal footing.
2. Your content is what will set you apart. Much longer discussion, but I like to get them to understand concepts of keeping content fresh, sharing to logical social channels, and promoting through newsletters and other sources. Also, focus on what Google is telling you to do. They have approx 84% share for web search; Yahoo and Bing are in single digits, and the rest don't mean anything.
3. The stuff that SEO vendors are trying to sell you are either things the site already has, or are things that won't impact it nearly as much as #2. Don't waste money on it.Had someone the other day express curiosity of how image alt tags would help them rank higher. Really.
This is a great resource btw:
http://searchengineland.com/seot…- yes... we've come a long way from putting "Brittney Spears Scandal Photos" in the META TAGS to get hitsvaxorcist
- billybob4200
What ratio of keywords to random/related words are currently most effective as anchor text?
Are link wheels/pyramids still effective?
Will xrumer/scrapebox blasts to first tier properties negatively affect money site?
What's the best approach currently to build a diverse backlink profile?
- trooperbill0
@billybob420 to identify a safe zone for your niche get reports from majestic seo for the top 10 competitors across your largest terms, categorise the anchor use i.e. brand, brand plus modifier, keyword, long tail, generic and produce a pivot table... blammo you have a safe zone and an idea of what your mix should be
- breadlegz0
What makes a great keyword to go after?
- trooperbill0
link wheels and pyramids... yes for now but be careful dont bet your livelyhood on them
xrumer etc: possibly if theyre off topic
i ask clients for all of their documentation that theyre prepared to publish in the public domain and dissect it... then source loads of authority bloggers and webmasters and identify what topics generate traffic on their websites... then i match a to be and youve got a content strategy thats workable.
- trooperbill0
@breadlegz depends... if youre after sales try long tail keywords with sales motivations i.e. Green Widgets for sale, green widget prices, green widgets price per metre
- trooperbill0
^ also check google suggest (search box) and google related keywords (bottom of listings) for some hot topics
- trooperbill0
any more?
- i_was0
Twitter killed SEO.
- trooperbill0
hardly... but googles giving it a good damned try
- d_rek0
Are one pager websites still taboo for SEO? I've been hearing mixed arguments on the subject.
- d_rek0
Actually, I have a better question: Do sites that have long pages of content - those that scroll well below any 'fold' - have diminished SEO? A particular example of this would be www.nike.com homepage.
- vaxorcist0
I would assume that long copy is good for SEO but extremely sales-ey copy is not.... also note that, unless you're doing lots of AJAX-y stuff, the scroll/fold means nothing to a spider...
- anyone have actual metrics or experience with fewer long copy pages vs more short-copy pages?vaxorcist
- vaxorcist0
I once worked at an agency that was hired to "de-SEO" the copy of a site, as the previous web company had written such keyword/keyphrase satured SEO-oriented copy that it was "un-human-readable" and people couldn't figure out what it really meant the client got lots of confused phone calls....
we also found that our "de-SEO" 'ing actually increased the number of signups and enquiries while no significant decline in hit load .... after a while the page-rank went up, but then somebody at the company hired another "SEO wizard" and fired us and now the site's ugly again....
- spendogg0
I would like to hear about d_rek's question re: one page scroller sites
- trooperbill0
@d_rek no... all my recovery sites are one pagers
- trooperbill0
@d_rek no however google does like pages with text content above the fold.
- trooperbill0
@vaxorcist this is a wierd one... tests with panda show that in the case of product description pages, pages with little content ranked well providing it was original
but as a general rule i'd go with 250 words min per page
- trooperbill0
@spendogg 1 pagers are fine... just remember to build links and vary anchor text