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SEO in 2017, IT'S ALIVE!

hughjasle

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My question is for the SEO hot shots here: What's the best method(s) for doing SEO in 2017?

I know I know, SEO is dead.

I. Don't. Care.

I'm on a quest to build a "built to sell" business and I've found that in my space buyers tend to like good SEO rankings. Sure they might be stupid for doing it, but I've found it tends to pay off when you give people what they want no matter what my opinion is on the matter.

I've looked around this past week for good courses or looking in my personal networks for anyone doing SEO and only know a couple and they are they type to not part with their tricks and can't blame them. As for the courses, most all of them post videos or screenshots from 2015 and older which sets off red flags in my head. I'm assuming SEO is a lot like paid traffic where some of it is fundamental, but to really be able to do anything you need current and up to date info.

I'm really at step one here. I'd gladly hire it out but don't want to get hosed by guys who use BH tactics to rank me only to get blacklisted by google in a few months or pay someone stupid fees and not see any results. I hate hiring when I don't understand the basics of what I'm hiring out.

Here is an example of my position: I am someone who has various products and brands they want to rank for. Primarily just for my product/brand names (ie: Ford, Mustang) and secondly if we can rank for the product type or something that's great too (ie: sports car, muscle car, etc.).

What's the deal these days-
  • Outsource it?
  • Study and learn myself? If so where is a trustworthy source to begin?
  • Hire someone in-house/partnership?
Looking for a little guidance in this dying art :innocent: :halo:

Willing to share paid traffic knowledge or pay if that's what it has come down to.

(at Mods, I could have sworn there was an SEO sub-thread somewhere but couldn't find it, if this is the wrong category please move and sorry!)
 
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TheKing

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Regardless of your reasons for doing SEO, there are still ways to rank higher in search engines. I'm not sure that SEO is "dead" - but I would agree that SEO is not the most efficient use of resources and time for getting customers online.

With that said, here's what you need to know about SEO.

SEO in 2017 is all about a positive experience for the person searching on Google.
In the old days, you could just put your keyword 100 times on a page and rank pretty well - those days are over and that specific technique will most likely get you punished by Google (it's called "keyword stuffing").

Google wants the person searching to have a positive experience doing so, which means Google wants the person searching to,
  1. Quickly find the info they are searching for
  2. Easily be able to read and digest the information they searched for
The most important thing you need to be focusing on when trying to rank for a keyword or a string of keywords is having really relevant content.
The biggest reason Wikipedia ranks so high so often is that the page on Wikipedia contains so much information, it becomes the most relevant for the person searching.

If you have the most relevant, high quality content, most of the work is already done.

Specific tip: Have relevant and high quality content - never less than 300 words, be sure to use subheadings.

Now, you might already have the best content in the world - what do you do now?
You make it readable, and you make it pleasurable to read.

Having a mobile optimised site is probably one of the most important factors for ranking (and making your content readable).
Google recently changed the way they rank sites - since more than 50% of all Google searches are now from mobile devices, ranking for mobile is now more important than ranking for desktop.

Specific tip: Put mobile first, optimise for mobile before you optimise for desktop. Mobile > desktop.

Since so many people are using mobile to search - you need to make your site lightweight.
Having 7 huge images that are 3 megabytes each is a bad idea!

People searching on mobile are often on a limited connection, if your site is too heavy it affects load times - which is also a big ranking factor. It's important to make your site as lightweight as possible using compression.

A tool I use to compress images is TinyPng - it's awesome and works with both png and jpeg files.
To test the actual speed and performance of your site you can use tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom.

Specific tip: Compress everything on your site, images and code. Make sure that your page is not larger than 2 megabytes and loads fast.

The bottom line is this: Focus less on techniques - focus more on having great content that is easily readable.

As to whether you want to outsource SEO,

If you have time = do it yourself.
If you have money to spend = outsource.

Be wary of people using bad SEO techniques since it'll most likely get your site punished.

Good luck!

Edit: Thank you @Scot for the rep! It's my first time receiving.
Edit 2: And thank you too @Fredyisgold for the rep. I'm glad I could be of help :)
 
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Ravens_Shadow

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Be wary of people using bad SEO techniques since it'll most likely get your site punished.

Just wanna second this. Lots of guys out there who do SEO for you are often pushing blackhat methods that they learned from a number of online courses. TheKing nailed it though. Readability and Quality of content are what matters.
 

lowtek

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create content that people will want to read, and put it up on reputable sites that link back to your own. That's the only SEO that will stand the test of time (basic on page stuff aside).
 
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Scot

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Regardless of your reasons for doing SEO, there are still ways to rank higher in search engines. I'm not sure that SEO is "dead" - but I would agree that SEO is not the most efficient use of resources and time for getting customers online.

With that said, here's what you need to know about SEO.

SEO in 2017 is all about a positive experience for the person searching on Google.
In the old days, you could just put your keyword 100 times on a page and rank pretty well - those days are over and that specific technique will most likely get you punished by Google (it's called "keyword stuffing").

Google wants the person searching to have a positive experience doing so, which means Google wants the person searching to,
  1. Quickly find the info they are searching for
  2. Easily be able to read and digest the information the searched for
The most important thing you need to be focusing on when trying to rank for a keyword or a string of keywords is having really relevant content.
The biggest reason Wikipedia ranks so high so often is that the page on Wikipedia contains so much information, it becomes the most relevant for the person searching.

If you have the most relevant, high quality content, most of the work is already done.

Specific tip: Have relevant and high quality content - never less than 300 words, be sure to use subheadings.

Now, you might already have the best content in the world - what do you do now?
You make it readable, and you make it pleasurable to read.

Having a mobile optimised site is probably one of the most important factors for ranking (and making your content readable).
Google recently changed the way they rank sites - since more than 50% of all Google searches are now from mobile devices, ranking for mobile is now more important than ranking for desktop.

Specific tip: Put mobile first, optimise for mobile before you optimise for desktop. Mobile > desktop.

Since so many people are using mobile to search - you need to make your site lightweight.
Having 7 huge images that are 3 megabytes each is a bad idea!

People searching on mobile are often on a limited connection, if your site is too heavy it affects load times - which is also a big ranking factor. It's important to make your site as lightweight as possible using compression.

A tool I use to compress images is TinyPng - it's awesome and works with both png and jpeg files.
To test the actual speed of your site you can use tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom.

Specific tip: Compress everything on your site, images and code. Make sure that your page is not larger than 2 megabytes and loads fast.

The bottom line is this: Focus less on techniques - focus more on having great content that is easily readable.

As to whether you want to outsource SEO,

If you have time = do it yourself.
If you have money to spend = outsource.

Be wary of people using bad SEO techniques since it'll most likely get your site punished.

Good luck!

Excellen write up. And it comes at perfect timing for me as well. Rep + for this info.

Thanks for asking the question @hughjasle
 

Shades

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Such a waste of time IMO. In a world where there are Facebook ads why am I putting a minute into SEO apart from when my site is first setup? Sell products and get people interested in your brand and by the magic of the gods SEO takes care of itself.
 

Evil_Jester

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I've heard that using social media that allows backlinks can be a big help. For example, tumblr, pinterest, facebook pages, reddit. When your page gets shared, it's more backlink power. But that's what i've heard, I don't know from experience.
 
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DarrenW

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I'm no SEO expert but I think I have a few tips (non-blackhat) to help rank on google.

I have several posts ranked first page for my niche sites without any backlinks. How? It really comes down to a few things...
  • Including the search term in your title, URL, and meta description
  • Broadly following the Yoast SEO (wordpress plug-in) guidelines
  • Using SEO Moz Toolbar (free Chrome plug-in) to check for competition
  • And just waiting for Google to index your post via Google Webmaster Tool
Just these things alone were able to get me on the first page.

But of course, the hard part is simply finding the right keywords to rank for.

And like TheKing said, avoid keyword stuffing. Not only is it annoying for a reader, but it's not necessary at all. Maybe 5 times at most, in one post is enough.

Also, making your posts >900 words will help. Anything less will be harder to rank.
 
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@TheKing 's post is accurate in my experience - content should be the main focus.

Some things I've noticed:
1. Many (most?) SEOs are newbies trying to side-hustle - nothing wrong with that but pros with proven results are rare
2. SEO has a weird rep for a reason - Google doesn't like it. Tactics change constantly (silo structure works today, could be penalized tomorrow) because G only cares about delivering relevant results so they can charge a premium for ads
3. Social media-based traffic (both paid and free) into a working funnel can outperform SEO
 

Scot

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Such a waste of time IMO. In a world where there are Facebook ads why am I putting a minute into SEO apart from when my site is first setup? Sell products and get people interested in your brand and by the magic of the gods SEO takes care of itself.


If I can rank on google for free with a bit a tweaking, why would I only rely on a paid traffic source.

It all depends on where your audience hangs out. For my particular niche, being ranked on google is important.

Edit: Paid ads and social media traffic are important, but why not do both.
 
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AdamMaxum

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I do SEO for a living. First thing to realize is that it's going to take months to start seeing traction. I'd even say a year in most cases unless you can get a lot of PR buzz and links from legit sites. (For a national ecommerce site anyway. Also depends on competition)

I would out source on-site SEO and do off-site SEO myself since that's where you get in trouble. Off-site seo is relatively simple to understand. Get links from other websites to yours and make sure those links are from legit sites. Links are still the main factor in ranking websites.

Architecture of website + good content/media on pages + backlinks/PR = how to rank.

For the onsite just make sure your URLs, meta tags and content on page are optimized and the content is not junk.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that people believe SEO has changed significantly when in reality it has not. The basics still apply. Just don't try and shortcut your way to better rankings and you'll do just fine. Its the people who try to shortcut the "process" that get into trouble...
 

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What TheKing says up above is absolutely spot on.

We've been doing SEO for ten years, and the only tactics that consistently work don't involve black hat, dodgy techniques or anything else that could be seen as gaming the system, but solid content and distribution.

Also, SEO covers many subjects, including visitor path optimisation, lead magnets and a whole host of other buzzword-dense stuff that sends most people to sleep, it's a broad church.

If Hugh contacts me via PM or something, I'd be more than willing to give a couple of weeks free access to a course we have, It'd really help to get some feedback, and as soon as I can work out how to join here properly, I'd be more than willing to help others on the forum!
 

Shades

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If I can rank on google for free with a bit a tweaking, why would I only rely on a paid traffic source.

It all depends on where your audience hangs out. For my particular niche, being ranked on google is important.

Edit: Paid ads and social media traffic are important, but why not do both.


Well to me one option leads to results and income, assuming your product is offering value. While at the same time improving your google ranking on its own if you are getting traction.

The other option is more in the realm of wantrepreneur self masturbatory BS. Its not that SEO isnt a thing. Its more that its a gigantic waste of effort for at best little results. And those little results only last until Google decides to make a algorithm change to cancel out the nonsense you did to get fake rank.

I think the effort is better off being put in to something that can actually help your brand and its reach.
 
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AdamMaxum

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Well to me one option leads to results and income, assuming your product is offering value. While at the same time improving your google ranking on its own if you are getting traction.

The other option is more in the realm of wantrepreneur self masturbatory BS. Its not that SEO isnt a thing. Its more that its a gigantic waste of effort for at best little results. And those little results only last until Google decides to make a algorithm change to cancel out the nonsense you did to get fake rank.

I think the effort is better off being put in to something that can actually help your brand and its reach.

I agree in some respect. If it's an ecommerce business I would definitely focus more on paid and social strategies as my focus for sales. For SEO purposes I would make sure my website has the ability to rank and show up higher over time, get PR and links whenever an opportunity presents itself during my other marketing activities and over time your SEO sales could become your number one source of purchases over time. Diversify your traffic streams and don't over rely on any single one but do take advantage of those that exist if they've been proven to work.
 

AdamMaxum

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I've heard that using social media that allows backlinks can be a big help. For example, tumblr, pinterest, facebook pages, reddit. When your page gets shared, it's more backlink power. But that's what i've heard, I don't know from experience.

The main social platforms don't provide any SEO value in terms of links. A link from someone's Facebook page to your website is not counted towards SEO value. There are a bunch of random social sites out there that do count as links and people usually create these to provide a safety/starting layer of links for newer websites. These links however won't move the needle in terms of keyword positions or domain authority very much though.
 
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hughjasle

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thanks for the contributions everyone, I have only read everything once but lots to comment on/respond to. I'll
Quickly find the info they are searching for
So in my case, I want to simply start ranking for my brand name "Rearden Metal". When people who see my ads everywhere but aren't the type to click on ads yet still want to find info on their own, they go to google and/or amazon to check on me. I'm already working on the amazon side of things and found out that I was missing a lot of free traffic from that venue so I suspect I'm missing a ton by not paying any attention to how my brands do on the search engines.

If my product is just a "Rearden Metal steel beam", and I'm already running all kinds of paid traffic showcasing it, I know people are googling for it.

What kind of 'info' is google wanting to see on my pages to help me rank? Think of my page like a typical Amazon product page. A few pictures and maybe a video of the product plus a brief description of the product, usually in bullet point format.

Is that enough to please the google Gods and rank well for "Rearden Metal Steal Beam"?
really relevant content.
Have relevant and high quality content - never less than 300 words
making your posts >900 words will help
So are we talking multiple pages of content, ie a full website and blog dedicated to Rearden Metal? or are we talking each page should be minimum 300 word (better if 900+)? I haven't done a word count but that seems like a lot for a simple product page and more into a long form copy style page. Please advise if wrong, don't want to confuse others as well as myself with bad info.
Links are still the main factor in ranking websites
reputable sites that link back to your own
How do you know if an outside site a reputable or not?
I would out source on-site SEO
Have you ever outsourced on-site SEO before? If so, how did you find someone to hire? Can someone like me who has no clue about SEO safely hire this out without a high change of getting screwed, or worse, blacklist my company's name on Google?
 

The-J

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My question is about backlinks.

How important are backlinks in today's SEO world?

Does it still help to purchase backlinks, do outreach to get your link on someone's blog, and submit to directories?

I like to buy my traffic and I know basically nothing about SEO. Because of that, I've argued that SEO is largely dead, to which people have said 'no way, there's still sure fire techniques to getting rank #1'.
 

TheKing

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I want to simply start ranking for my brand name "Rearden Metal"...

... What kind of 'info' is google wanting to see on my pages to help me rank?

If you want to rank your brand name, in this case "Rearden Metal" you'll mostly want to optimise your homepage for it.
It's generally a good idea to only optimise one page per search term.

So you'll optimise your homepage for "Rearden Metal" and optimise the product pages for something else.

As I mentioned earlier, really relevant content is what you want to have, but it can be a bit confusing to know what that actually is.
The most simple way to find out is to check your competitors.

In your case the top 10 pages ranking for "Rearden Metal" have an average word count of 2526 words, that's quite a lot! So having only 300 words probably isn't going to do it - but still keep in mind that having fewer words that are more relevant is better than more words that are irrelevant.

Here is a more detailed list of your top 10 competitors word counts, and how many times the phrase "Rearden Metal" appears in their text:

szLnCmZ.png


Images are great to have on the page you're trying to rank for. Remember that images help create a good experience for the reader, and a good reading experience will get you ranked higher.
(Tip: edit the alt-tag on the images to be relevant to your keyword)

So are we talking multiple pages of content, ie a full website and blog dedicated to Rearden Metal? or are we talking each page should be minimum 300 word (better if 900+)?

Having multiple pages of high quality content is good for SEO as it gives your entire site a better reputation in Googles eyes. A blog function is a pretty popular way to mass produce content.

The word count is per page. But again, fewer but more relevant words are much better than thousands of irrelevant words.

How important are backlinks in today's SEO world?

Does it still help to purchase backlinks, do outreach to get your link on someone's blog, and submit to directories?

They are important. But the quality of the link is more important.

Purchasing backlinks is a pretty bad idea as you'll most likely get a bunch of really low quality links that hurt your rankings.
Submitting your link to directories could be a good idea, but it's risky.

I'd generally recommend avoiding going after unnatural links altogether.

Having really great content on your site usually means it's also shareable, which leads to people linking to your site from their blogs without you having to do much.
Getting your link on someones blog is a good idea, as long as it's not a spammy blog.

Hope that helped :)

P.S. Thank you @hughjasle for the reps!
 
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AdamMaxum

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My question is about backlinks.

How important are backlinks in today's SEO world?

Does it still help to purchase backlinks, do outreach to get your link on someone's blog, and submit to directories?

I like to buy my traffic and I know basically nothing about SEO. Because of that, I've argued that SEO is largely dead, to which people have said 'no way, there's still sure fire techniques to getting rank #1'.

Links are still the primary fuel source of ranking in Google...But as the king said, quality is the most important factor.

If you're going to buy links you should only do it if it's a negotiation with the blog or website owner in private...not with 3rd party sellers, blog networks, or cheap offsite SEO providers.

Outreach efforts are still the best way to acquire links but few people do it because it is the most time sucking process...It is the safest and best method to acquiring quality links though.

If youre going to link build on your own you must first understand how links work and be able to decipher link quality. This is done by reading about it (learning) and using 3rd party research tools like ahrefs, semrush or majestic.
 

splok

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Think of my page like a typical Amazon product page.

So are we talking multiple pages of content, ie a full website and blog dedicated to Rearden Metal?

How do you know if an outside site a reputable or not?

Can someone like me who has no clue about SEO safely hire this out without a high change of getting screwed, or worse, blacklist my company's name on Google?

Consider this amazon product page: Fire - Amazon Official Site - 7" Tablet at an Incredible Price
Lots of text, lots of educating users about the product, lots of relevant pics, FAQ, user reviews, etc. A good product page can manage a bit more than a few bullet points. If you wanted to do more, you could add other pages educating people about tablets, how to use them, what you can do on them, how to protect them, etc. Is all that necessary? Depends on how distinctive your brand name is. Ranking for your brand should be pretty easy unless it's something that's typically used in common language (maybe not the best brand in that case). The higher level question is, would all of this help a potential user? If so, then that's good for your business either way.

In this case reputable would be pretty much any site that isn't trying to excessively manipulate google (note that excessively is a very fuzzy word in this context). You basically want the most relevant and popular sites possible to link to you. Can you get reporters for actual news organizations to write articles about you? (It may be easier than you think, pick up Trust Me, I'm Lying, by Ryan Holiday.)

Imo, never pay a cent for seo unless the person is willing to walk you, step-by-step, through what they're going to do until you're 100% sure you understand and that it sounds 100% on the up and up.
 

AdamMaxum

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thanks for the contributions everyone, I have only read everything once but lots to comment on/respond to. I'll

So in my case, I want to simply start ranking for my brand name "Rearden Metal". When people who see my ads everywhere but aren't the type to click on ads yet still want to find info on their own, they go to google and/or amazon to check on me. I'm already working on the amazon side of things and found out that I was missing a lot of free traffic from that venue so I suspect I'm missing a ton by not paying any attention to how my brands do on the search engines.

If my product is just a "Rearden Metal steel beam", and I'm already running all kinds of paid traffic showcasing it, I know people are googling for it.

What kind of 'info' is google wanting to see on my pages to help me rank? Think of my page like a typical Amazon product page. A few pictures and maybe a video of the product plus a brief description of the product, usually in bullet point format.

Is that enough to please the google Gods and rank well for "Rearden Metal Steal Beam"?



So are we talking multiple pages of content, ie a full website and blog dedicated to Rearden Metal? or are we talking each page should be minimum 300 word (better if 900+)? I haven't done a word count but that seems like a lot for a simple product page and more into a long form copy style page. Please advise if wrong, don't want to confuse others as well as myself with bad info.


How do you know if an outside site a reputable or not?

Have you ever outsourced on-site SEO before? If so, how did you find someone to hire? Can someone like me who has no clue about SEO safely hire this out without a high change of getting screwed, or worse, blacklist my company's name on Google?

Concerning website quality...Imagine every website is scored on a scale of 0-100 and the higher your score the more reputable, trustworthy and powerful your website is. Google is a 100. A brand new site would be 0. You want to find websites that are higher on this scale. If they are relevant to your business industry that is even better.

With that said, people can "fake" power so you have to look for red flags and stay away from those sites which usually requires someone who understands SEO to truly do. This is why I would recommend learning offsite SEO because that is where the majority of sites being penalized comes from and to trust someone else to do it is to open yourself to risk. (Unless your paying decent $$ each month to a reputable SEO company)

Onsite SEO is much harder to get penalized for which is why it's safer to outsource. As long as you have unique content on your website and are not trying to hide links or things on your website you will be fine. A technical audit of your website for SEO can diagnose any issues that could impact indexing and ranking.

As soon as someone starts trying to send bum links to your website and affect your keyword density ratio on links...That's where Google can kill your website and prevent it from showing up for keywords and it takes a lot of work to recover a site that has been penalized due to link quality.
 
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AdamMaxum

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Consider this amazon product page: Fire - Amazon Official Site - 7" Tablet at an Incredible Price
Lots of text, lots of educating users about the product, lots of relevant pics, FAQ, user reviews, etc. A good product page can manage a bit more than a few bullet points. If you wanted to do more, you could add other pages educating people about tablets, how to use them, what you can do on them, how to protect them, etc. Is all that necessary? Depends on how distinctive your brand name is. Ranking for your brand should be pretty easy unless it's something that's typically used in common language (maybe not the best brand in that case). The higher level question is, would all of this help a potential user? If so, then that's good for your business either way.

In this case reputable would be pretty much any site that isn't trying to excessively manipulate google (note that excessively is a very fuzzy word in this context). You basically want the most relevant and popular sites possible to link to you. Can you get reporters for actual news organizations to write articles about you? (It may be easier than you think, pick up Trust Me, I'm Lying, by Ryan Holiday.)

Imo, never pay a cent for seo unless the person is willing to walk you, step-by-step, through what they're going to do until you're 100% sure you understand and that it sounds 100% on the up and up.

Touching a little further on the "brand" searches. These are the easiest to rank for unless there are multiple companies competing for same name or similar versions. Social media and putting out a PR that links back to your website would actually do the best for coming up on your brand terms. Make sure you have all the main social media accounts going with your brand name and linked back to your website. Add social icons and links to those from your website. Have a press release done announcing your business/website and send it out via prweb or some basic PR distribution website. Give it a couple months if it's a brand new website and you should show up at the top anytime someone searches your brand name or versions of it. Oh, and have an about us page somewhere on the website (doesn't need to be in main nav) with your name on the page and talk abut your company a bit.
 

Ravens_Shadow

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I keep hearing PBN (private blog network) (blackhat) thrown around left and right, what do you guys think about that? Google ever gonna crack down on it? I personally wouldn't ever use it.
 

AdamMaxum

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I keep hearing PBN (private blog network) (blackhat) thrown around left and right, what do you guys think about that? Google ever gonna crack down on it? I personally wouldn't ever use it.

From a buying standpoint - I wouldn't buy them publicly, no. Not so much because of the risk, but because usually the people you're buying them from suck at managing their PBN and your links fall off the homepage and it's a waste of money. Or they get de-indexed because they are publicly selling them and the links become useless anyway.

From a creation standpoint - they still work fine and if you're doing it right, there's little risk. Google has cracked down on many "public" PBN's in the past and that scares majority away, but if you take the time to actually do it right and "control" the network yourself, you don't have much to worry about as long as you are not selling space/links on your private network. When you do that, you expose it and that's when you get de-indexed.

Also, the worst case scenario is that your blogs/network gets "de-indexed". When this happens it affects your "money" sites because it essentially kills the value of the links from the PBNs thus causing keywords to start dropping in rank. You lose all your money/time invested in creating the network and just start from scratch again. The majority of the time though only a few sites here or there get de-indexed over time (years). To capture an entire network, there would need to be obvious footprints between them all and if you're smart, you don't allow there to be any connections between any of them.

For most people, creating a PBN is overkill unless you're an SEO guy/company and have enough client websites to make it worth your while.
 
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Evil_Jester

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Here's an oddball question/scenario i've heard horror stories about:
Can competitors send your site or youtube channel spam traffic & links with the sole intention of getting you blacklisted?
I've heard of this happening to people's youtube channels getting unwarranted spam traffic and they got banned.
 

Ecom man

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Such a waste of time IMO. In a world where there are Facebook ads why am I putting a minute into SEO apart from when my site is first setup? Sell products and get people interested in your brand and by the magic of the gods SEO takes care of itself.
I disagree. SEO done right is definitely not a waste of time or money but it is a long game many times. If you are looking for immediate results do PPC. SEO will take some time to see any results.

I hired an SEO company about 18 months ago. I was hoping they would have rankings up for Christmas sales 2015. I was hoping for quick results that didn't happen. I've been paying 3k a month for the last 18 months so I've invested over 50k in their SEO work. Results were trickling in but nothing like I was hoping for. Starting in January of 2017 I started to see some super exciting results! I started getting between 500-1,000 visitors a day from organic traffic. That doesn't sound like much but my average CPC is .50-.75 so 500 "free" visitors a day is worth $250-$400. I should make back my money spent on SEO by the end of 2017. It took me 2 1/2 years to see the results I wanted... it does work but it is far from immediate!
 

maverick

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Couple things to add to this:
  1. Use tools like AnswerThePublic and KeywordTool to get an idea as to what people are searching for. Use their questions as inspiration for your content.
  2. Link out to other relevant domains / content in your niche. Relevancy is not only calculated by looking at inbound links, outbound links play a role too. This is why curated content ranks really well (e.g. grabbing the 10 most relevant pages in your niche and writing a summary on it + linking out to these 10 pages).
  3. Using paid traffic (e.g. facebook ads) is obviously the 'easiest' way to scale your traffic however by having relevant content that interests your visitors, they will stick around for longer. Effectively decreasing your customer acq. cost (CAC) and increasing your lifetime value (LTV) by converting paid traffic into future organic traffic.
  4. Google will increase the importance of how long visitors stay around and how much they interact with your content so you need to make your content as sticky as possible. Make it interesting, add some interaction elements to it (e.g. accordeons for sub-questions - a11yAccordion, embed videos/HTML5 type graphs).
  5. Focus on getting deep links (i.e. links to the pages of your website and not just your root domain). By structuring your pages logically and gaining links to the individual pages, you will effectively grow your link and relevancy profile.
Feel free to shoot me a private message with your link and I'll be glad to offer free and actionable advice.
 
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Shades

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I disagree. SEO done right is definitely not a waste of time or money but it is a long game many times. If you are looking for immediate results do PPC. SEO will take some time to see any results.

I hired an SEO company about 18 months ago. I was hoping they would have rankings up for Christmas sales 2015. I was hoping for quick results that didn't happen. I've been paying 3k a month for the last 18 months so I've invested over 50k in their SEO work. Results were trickling in but nothing like I was hoping for. Starting in January of 2017 I started to see some super exciting results! I started getting between 500-1,000 visitors a day from organic traffic. That doesn't sound like much but my average CPC is .50-.75 so 500 "free" visitors a day is worth $250-$400. I should make back my money spent on SEO by the end of 2017. It took me 2 1/2 years to see the results I wanted... it does work but it is far from immediate!


Are you sure this happened because of anything these people did? Or could it have been from years of having a quality active store and Google started favoring you more by default?
 

Ecom man

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Are you sure this happened because of anything these people did? Or could it have been from years of having a quality active store and Google started favoring you more by default?
Nope definitely what they've been doing. I have 2 sites that are approximately the same age. One I hired SEO for the other I did not. The one without SEO is bring in barely any organic traffic. The one I paid for SEO is bringing in tons of organic visitors.
 

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