Very Frustrated SEO
-
Hi Guys,
I wake up this morning one very frustrated, tired and fed up SEO.
I have always used very traditional link building methods upto last year directory submissions, social bookmarks, article submissions and maybe a few profie links but I always up front and honest with my clients what they were getting for their buck!. and sent them reports showing all links done.
Obviously with the recent algorithm changes, I have switched my focus to content marketing (i hear you all cheering lol), however, I am stumped!. I have read everything I can get hold of to do with content marketing, registered with buzzstream for outreach opportunities and joined myblogguest just so I could understand the process a little bit more.
I have watched the whiteboard Fridays and actually have a great opportunity to get in with a site using "guest post + niche". I love writing content which is a bonus.
Okay here's my moan. Coming from a traditional SEO background and coming to content marketing late, do I ditch everything else. Is content marketing all I should be doing? or can I still do the some directory submissions (good PR moz rank only), social bookmarking (only for content marketing articles), profile linking (maybe I need to drop altogether).
Is content marketing enough to rank a client?. I look at some clients competitors links and they have 100's of links to stuff that looks unnatural.
Kind Regards
Neil
-
Hi Neil,
Glad my response gave you some encouragement!
Whenever something changes in SEO there is always a massive over exaggeration that something is dead or no longer works but the truth normally is we have to tweak the way we work rather than revolutionise.
-
thank you so much this is exactly what I was thinking. I mean content marketing is the way to go no doubt about it, but hey you can't write 15-20 quality blog articles, using outreach every month on say "fencing". So I am thinking:-
- PR verified Directories
- Reddit, Digg etc (for content marketing promotion too)
- 2-3 Guest Blog posts (outreach)
- My Blog Guest - Easy way to get guest blog posts but not as Good quality
Obviously volumes will depend upon the competition.
You have made my day!!!. I was seriously considering packing all this in but now I will dig my heels in instead.
Kind Regards
Neil
-
Don't fully write off your 'traditional' methods yet, yes invest more time into content marketing but find a balance between the two.
The directory, social, article, commenting all still 'work' but you just need to be a bit more strict with the websites you chose to do this with (make sure they are 'good' quality sites) and if you are commenting or submitting a piece to them make sure it is of good value to their audience, isn't nonsensical and non duplicated.
That's my opinion anyway and no-one yet has convinced me that doing the 'traditional' methods of link building don't have any benefit any more or will penalise you if you take a professional and common sense approach.
-
I found doing the old tactics in a really quality way mixed with content marketing works well. So instead of blog commenting on any site saying great post we now comment as the client offering value based on the post on very related sites etc. -
I feel your pain hope this helps
-
After a steady drop in rankings (which I suspect to have been because of the link building company I used for 3 months - Feb/Mar/Apr - then sacked them off) I poked around for bloggers that are semi-related to my industry. In the last month, I've been using about 5/6 different ones, probably getting 10-15 links in the process. PR for these are 1-3 (but hey, who believes in PR, right?), and the domains are in 3/4 different countries I think so I'm getting spread around too.
Perhaps it's a mix of ceasing the use of the crappy link building company and then using these new blogs, it's impossible to tell. Pretty sure that the directories, article submission and 'social bookmarking' (*laughs) were bad for me because it's when that stuff starting going up that I had that horrible feeling when checking my poor rankings on Monday mornings.
And yeah, I'm still targeting the same keywords - in fact, highly-competitive ones, and seeing some encouraging results for which.
-
Just out of interest how many much content (i.e links) are you getting back each month? Are you targeting keywords still?
-
I feel your pain, Neil.
My niche is quite a hard field to work with in terms of getting backlinks - our competitors have bigger budgets and have dominated almost every site out there we could possibly work with. When I do approach sites we can't compete in terms of offering the same incentives to feature our blog fodder as our competitors can.
In a bid to help with rankings, I hired a third party company to help with 'manuel' link building with the intention of using them for a few months. They got us on some terrible directories, distributed terrible press releases to equally terrible PR/Article/Whatever sites, and after a month or two I'm pretty sure their crappy methods dented our decent rankings.
Then I started offering one-off content to better blogs and things seem to be on the up.
A huge frustration is looking at one of my competitors, who rank pretty well, and seeing that they have links from the worst 'blogs'. Clearly, some dude has bought an expired domain that has a bit of historical weight and now publishes half-arsed nonsense posts (including rubbish for my competitors) and now the competition is winning off this highly-questionable technique that Google isn't picking up on. What can I do? Slightly heart-breaking, but then again, another competitor has been doing this kind of thing - they're pretty big in the industry - and they've been nailed so, so hard. I'd hate to have been their SEO for the last few months.
Yup, I feel your pain, brother.
My advice, find some better blogs related to your field, get some rapport going with the blog owner, and get regular blogs off of that iff possible. It's seems to be working for me a bit - I supply them with the content, they publish it with a link or two, everyone wins. Steer clear of shitty directories, social bookmarking (whatever that is), and horrible Article sites.
Relevancy seems to be core - so find bloggers who're related to you and make some new friends.
Other than that, start saving and open a burger joint.
Dave
-
Here is my trick for helping you get the balance right of "should I go for that link"? 1. Go to Google image search and search "Matt Cutts". Find a resulting image and print it out 2. Do an image search for "Rand Fishkin", print one of those out too 3. Pin both image up on the wall behind you - one looking over each shoulder 4. Continue to build links knowing they are watching you Deep down we all know what is a good link and a bad one. Beyond that we are balancing risk v reward. Your new over the shoulder friends will help you stay on the safer/cleaner side of the road if that is your intention.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved Are links from staff profile pages no longer good for SEO?
Hey there, We run a small site that lists lawyers and we have an opportunity to ask the lawyers to display a 'badge' on their own website's staff page, linked back to the page on our site that they are listed on. Initially I thought this would be good link building (i.e. the lawyer's own staff/profile pages on their website linking to our site where they are listed = a highly relevant link). I was less concerned about the authority of the law firm's sites, though these will range from sometimes low-ish to medium. I just assumed that Google would see the value in the lawyer wanting to link to our site where they are listed. However, our SEO has said that these days Google doesn't give much/any value to these types of links from individual staff pages. His advice was to try and get the badge added to one of their service pages (or their About page) which will be unlikely as the badge is person-specific. I thought I'd ask if this was everyone else's experience regarding Google not valuing links from individual staff pages? Thanks for you help 🙂
Link Building | | Andy-H0 -
Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
Sorry if this is a basic question I should know the answer for. We have just acquired the .org for a moderately well searched keyword set. Our objective is to fight for rank specifically on this one set of two keywords. We want make sure our site is setup and business named optimally for this. Here is my question. What is the best business name for SEO and keyword rich backlinks, or anything else I'm not thinking of? KEYWORDS: Blue Widget DOMAIN: BlueWidget.org BUSINESS NAME OPTIONS: A) simply BlueWidget.org. We like this but do we lose some benefit of "Blue Widget" with a space on backlinks? **B) Blue Widget Foundation. Is this better because people will reference us by the keywords with a space "The Blue Widget Foundation", instead of "from the people at BLUEWIDGET.org"? ** Am I missing anything important here in the name? We just want to start everything off on the right foot. Thank you Moz. Just joined and my first post.
Link Building | | RetBit0 -
Does adding relevant keywords to social postings help with SEO?
I was doing some research on social postings and SEO and couldn't really find the answer to my question. Would adding in SEO keywords help with my site's relevancy or would it just help boost my site because of backlinking? For example if I were to add a new Facebook post "Check out these great new blue widgets " help more than "Check out these new products "? Thanks!
Link Building | | EmazingKatie0 -
Reseller seo
so i have a web design firm and, when i decided i need to offer seo services i originally went with an seo reseller company. i decided to try them out on myself so i gave them 4 keywords to rank for and tried them for about 6 months. when they started, our website was in google oblivion for those 4 keywords. after 6 months some keywords are on page 1 and some at the top of page 2. the ones on page 1 are the ones i also optimized for by putting the keyword in a footer link in all my clients' sites. when i look over what they did they either wrote cheesy articles that link back to me and posted them in random places or they commented on people's blogs linking back to me. but it seemed to work. at least to get me from oblivion to page 2. now it seems to me these methods are discouraged here but they seem to do at least some good. any thoughts or comments on this?
Link Building | | dad7more0 -
Competitor seo
This might be a really obvious question but... If building bad links (spam links) negatively impacts and even sometimes draws penalties, what is there to prevent others from building links like to my site to try and strip me of my rankings (like from my competitors)? I ran a quick link analysis and noticed a bunch of spam links pointing to my site the other day. I haven't been affected yet but it was only like two days ago that I saw those. Just curious. Is hostile seo going to be an emerging trend? If so it will be a really easy job. Just go to fiverr and buy 20 bucks worth of links...
Link Building | | MikeShreeve0 -
Wired image releases via Creative Commons for SEO
Wired Magazine has started to publish images under CC licence as reported here: http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/11/wired-releases-images-via-creative-commons-but-reopens-a-debate-on-what-noncommercial-means/ The images are found here http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2011/11/creative-commons/ They allow noncommercial use (though this is not clearly defined) and request to attribute to the original source and "ask for a link back to the original story where the photo first appeared". The latter does not seem to be compulsory, but of course is a great SEO tactic to generate deep links. What's your take on this? Does anyone have experience with providing image material with the request to attribute you as the original source?
Link Building | | zeepartner0 -
Please take a look at the SEO of my site
Hello, I was wondering if you guys could analyze my site and give me pointers on how I could improve it's SEO. I'm a health and wealth coach, NLP coach, and life coach in the Boise, Idaho area. bobweikel.com Also, any link building advice you can give would be great. Here's my backlink criteria Age (as old as possible) A lot of unique content A clean site Backlinks going to that site Facebook followers Which of course means high search engine rankings Thanks
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
SEO Value of Press Releases
Is there still any SEO value of paid press releases services, such as PRWEB which let you embed keyword text links? Or would the associated cost be better spent elsewhere? Thanks
Link Building | | WCR0