Help putting together SEO strategies?

seachto7

Hi all,

Just looking for some advice. I have been doing some low level SEO over the last year or so, as I mentioned on here before (I am like a broken record at this stage). Some of what I was doing was ok, some of what I was doing would not be best practice. Not saying it was all black hat, but buying links is something I want to avoid at all costs (no pun intended....).

So, from my research here, I know I would have to do A, B, C, and D in order to get results. My problem is how do I know at the start whether I should do A, and B, or whether I should be doing A, C, and D, or all together, or just A.

I know it all depends on the client I suppose, but I have no idea where to start on strategy, on what must be done for certain types of clients.

One question, is there training there? Is there someone who would sit with me for a day who could go through some stuff with me? Or is it all trial and error. There is no set answer to this I realise, but I am chasing my tail I think at the moment. If someone came to me now and said "I need some SEO done on my site, on these 10 keywords", I wouldn't really know what to say. I could say "ok, do A, B, C and D", and it should work. But maybe it's a case of doing A, and B, for this client? This is my problem....

Any advice? I do think a day sitting with an advanced SEO person would do the world of good for me. If anyone wants to for $$$....I'd be open to it....:o

benbob65

Have you read the book on SEO from David Amerland?

seachto7

benbob65 wrote: »

Have you read the book on SEO from David Amerland?

I have not, but will check it out......

seachto7

anyone gone through "search engine optimisation: an hour a day"

benbob65

seachto7 wrote: »

anyone gone through "search engine optimisation: an hour a day"

Rings a bell, but only vaguely. Who is the author?

ket

You can study the SEO guideline which are available in online. Just search 'SEO tutorial' and you will get lots of free seo guidelines and can easily understand. After that if you any doubt (may be many) topics, then please post here, your will definitely get the answer.

seachto7

Just wondering, after the algorithm change, is there still any use submitting articles/sites to directories or guest posting / guest blogging....

benbob65

If nothing else, directories will increase your traffic, and blog articles will be read and create interest in your website, provided both actually have any quality.
One of the best ways to judge whether your blog and your content are interesting, is to look at your referral traffic. Referral traffic comes from real links i.e. links that are not bought, but spread by people who found your site worth while. That in tern means that those links are posted in places that your target audience is likely to visit. That in turn means that Google will like those links more than bought links because they are bound to be surrounded by relevant anchor text from relevant linking sites.

The Apprentice

Guest posting/blogging will i think always be effective, as benbob kindly pointed out its more or less referrel traffic albeit wrote by you and not some other dude. Just as long as the post is providing information to the enduser and not just spammed out with little or no consideration to what your spewing out onto the page i think you will be fine.

I mean, those pretty bad links you dont want showing up on your site, you could always send em to one of your magnificently wrote posts on the mentioned referral blogs :P

seachto7

interesting (about the referral traffic...)....

HobbyMan

I am also looking to increase traffic & conversions and have realised that I need to work on my SEO knowledge in a BIG way. Therefore I have ordered SEO: One hour a day.

I'll let you know what I think of it and how my site fares in about 6 months after implementation of the books content.

link8r

seachto7 wrote: »

Just looking for some advice. I have been doing some low level SEO over the last year or so, as I mentioned on here before (I am like a broken record at this stage). Some of what I was doing was ok, some of what I was doing would not be best practice. Not saying it was all black hat, but buying links is something I want to avoid at all costs (no pun intended....).

So, from my research here, I know I would have to do A, B, C, and D in order to get results. My problem is how do I know at the start whether I should do A, and B, or whether I should be doing A, C, and D, or all together, or just A.

Sounds like a check-box SEO/Critical thinking approach. You need to grow experience to learn to develop a strategy. A strategy will then drive an approach, which will give you your to-do list.

(You can read more about Critical Thinking here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats)

seachto7 wrote: »

One question, is there training there? Is there someone who would sit with me for a day who could go through some stuff with me? Or is it all trial and error. There is no set answer to this I realise, but I am chasing my tail I think at the moment. If someone came to me now and said "I need some SEO done on my site, on these 10 keywords", I wouldn't really know what to say. I could say "ok, do A, B, C and D", and it should work. But maybe it's a case of doing A, and B, for this client? This is my problem....

Any advice? I do think a day sitting with an advanced SEO person would do the world of good for me. If anyone wants to for $$$....I'd be open to it....:o

Not sure it could be done in a day. I'm certain a lot of people could give you 50 things to do but you can read those online...

If someone came to you for an SEO strategy and you weren't able to produce one, I don't think you'd get in trouble for admitting it?

I think you can take two paths: Develop/learn/train to understand SEO via an apprenticeship, owning your own site, trial+error or you go down the other route and just be an SEO and charge to learn?

bceltic

seachto7 wrote: »

Hi all,

Just looking for some advice. I have been doing some low level SEO over the last year or so, as I mentioned on here before (I am like a broken record at this stage). Some of what I was doing was ok, some of what I was doing would not be best practice. Not saying it was all black hat, but buying links is something I want to avoid at all costs (no pun intended....).

So, from my research here, I know I would have to do A, B, C, and D in order to get results. My problem is how do I know at the start whether I should do A, and B, or whether I should be doing A, C, and D, or all together, or just A.

I know it all depends on the client I suppose, but I have no idea where to start on strategy, on what must be done for certain types of clients.

One question, is there training there? Is there someone who would sit with me for a day who could go through some stuff with me? Or is it all trial and error. There is no set answer to this I realise, but I am chasing my tail I think at the moment. If someone came to me now and said "I need some SEO done on my site, on these 10 keywords", I wouldn't really know what to say. I could say "ok, do A, B, C and D", and it should work. But maybe it's a case of doing A, and B, for this client? This is my problem....

Any advice? I do think a day sitting with an advanced SEO person would do the world of good for me. If anyone wants to for $$$....I'd be open to it....:o

Go back to basics:
1. Research your keywords
2. Organise a logical site architecture - match your target keywords to target pages (one tip is to not create a page for each variation on a keyword otherwise they'll cannibalise the strength of each other).
3. Optimise all on-page code meta tags, XML sitemap, HTML sitemap etc.
4. Produce really good content on your site
5. Build links to your site & this great content you've produced (think like a PR agency)

Rinse & repeat.

There's obviously a lot of complexity within each task but this is the jist of any SEO strategy. Pick out your weaknesses and outsource these if your time is better spent elsewhere.

If you really want to take on SEO yourself I'd say it is worth the training for a day that could get you weeks/months ahead of reading things for yourself. Also it would be well worth getting an audit done on your site. There could be major issues preventing it from ranking well that you might not be aware of. Then at least if you do want a company to do SEO for you, companies can price the work for you after reading the audit to understand what sort of shape your site is in and how it fares against the competition.

Brian

seachto7

Yeah, I have a few weak points, such as making any design changes to a site.

My own site needs an overhaul in the message it gives out, which is too limited.

I would love to be able to go to someone with an SEO strategy. Rather than just saying "Yeah, I can look at your meta tags, content etc", I would love to be able to got to someone with a 3 month or 6 month SEO strategy based on what I have tried and thinks could work for them.

My thinking with sitting down with an expert for a day is that they could point me in the right direction, then it's up to me to research in depth what to do.

Obviously once my own site is overhauled I will use it as a guinea pig..

*Pexus1976*

Hi,

If you visit any seo related forum you will be told the following techniques will increase your serps:

• Social Media
• Content
• HTML
• Press articles
• Backlinks
• Anchor Text

When you think about it every SEO company around the World are using the same techniques and some of the large corporates Ford, Exxon Mobil, Vodafone are surprisingly spending 1'000's of Euro every month.

I specialise in the UK consumer product market and some of my sites have no anchor text, content or social media. To prove my point select some of the largest corporate websites you know and run an analysis you will be surprised at your findings, despite having very little of the above elements they are ranking considerably well.

In my opinion the trick is to think outside the box, some of the best SEO Companies out their are doing extremely well as they do a lot of backend SEO programming in the initial stages. I'm not an SEO professional and dont work in the industry.

I will be launching my first Irish related website next month and hope to share with you its progress.

link8r

I can't see how SoMe is any good for SEO - most of it is badly buried (like twitter), inaccessible and fired through internal redirectors (LinkedIn, FB, Twitter). Also, its almost all strictly nofollow.

The Apprentice

It's predominantly (social Media) for brand awareness, we see great traffic going to the site from social media but although a real ****ty conversion to anything you want to sell..

Although linked in seems to be the best converter as regards leads, really depends what niche your in.

seachto7

pretty much brand awareness is the aim.....