Where should I be focusing SEO efforts first?
-
Hi everyone,
I am a digital marketing intern at a small marketing business. They have a really horrible, 1990's ish website which I am currently working with them on a plan to completely redo within a few months. Until then I am fixing some issues on their current site which includes SEOing their current content that will be moved to the new site. They have a ton of issues which include, but are not limited to, missing meta descriptions and title tags, no official keywords incorporated into their content, no analytics or tracking of keywords, a poor use of social media, and duplicate content. My plan was to fix all these issues first, then when the site relaunches really start focusing on the more advanced bits (which include link building).
The previous intern spent 99% of his time posting on forums building "backlinks". I've been going through his posts and saw he posted on mainly marketing forums on topics but never included any type of link back to the site in his posts or on his forum profile (his reasoning was he wanted to gain a reputation with the forum first so the admin would not delete his posts or so he'd be able to put a link in his signature). He and the owner of the business say that this is the best and most effective way to help SEO and the owner is questioning whether or not I concentrate on that instead of the other issues.
So what do you think? Do you think I should be fixing all these issues first and waiting until the site relaunches to concentrate on forum backlinking? Or do you think it would be more effective to just focus on my energies on forum backlinking?
Also - the previous intern also told the owner that Wordtracker was a poor investment and is not useful. I have always thought that was sort of an industry standard. Do you think he's right? If so could you recommend something else?
Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks
-
hmmm... this is a marketing company? They need a kick in the pants.
It sounds like as an intern you will be with them for a limited amount of time. If that is the case then follow the advice given by others.
However, the folks at this company really need to go waaaay back to the basics.
If I was an intern there I would try to do something else - instead of attempting hatchet surgery on a sow's ear.
(This can be risky because you don't know who conceived the original site and what the company thinks of it.... however they must not think much of it if they are willing to turn it over to a stream of interns. Also your comments that the owner of the business thinks that forum spamming is good advertising shows that they don't understand the web.)
However, the truth is... this website should go back to the planning stages.... this company needs to determine:
-
the objectives of the website,
-
what they expect visitors to do, learn, buy, contact, etc. when they arrive at the site
-
plan a pathway through the site for each type of visitor that will lead to both visitor and company goals
-
and then storyboard a website that accomplishes both visitor goals and company goals
-
determine how people interested in the services of the company might search for the site
-
determine a cluster of keywords that will market your services in the geographic area that is served
-
plan content for the site that will position it in front of those keywords
Should you do this? Hard to say. It depends if the company is serious about making a good web presence or if they are satisfied with their current farting around.
I don't recommend posting their URL here... would be bad marketing.
-
-
After following what the others have said on here about sorting the site out first, when you move on to link building, don't go crazy with keyworded anchor text on spammy sites. Go for branded anchor text first then move on to partial and phrase match as well, then mix in some exact match... all from decent sites. That's if you build the links yourself, but it's always preferable to have content that good that you just attract links naturally anyway... go for both approaches
-
Obviously link building is important but I am always of the belief that if you have the opportunity to fix the on site issues (from an SEO, design and conversion perspective) first your efforts would be better concentrated there to start with.
This is because without the technical and on page corrections needed the efforts of your link building will be diluted and if your site does not convert well then your new traffic will not bring you the results it should.
-
If the site is as horrible as you say, all the traffic in the world is not going to help out and if the only link building strategy is essentially lightweight forum spamming then... that is almost a complete waste of your time.
Your time would be better spent looking at a long term marketing strategy for the site, determine what your goals are and what you need to do to achieve them.
If I was you I would start at the beginning, do keyword research to determine demand, audit the whole site and see what assets you currently have in place and start planning a new site that capitalises on what is there and improves the hell out of it.
If your boss insists on quick and easy traffic fix then look at some PPC ads to drive traffic and factor the experience gained here into your overall marketing strategy.
If the site is plagued with problems, light weight fixing of these problems may well result in increased conversions from the existing traffic. If the site is a train wreck then focusing on the rebuild and promotion is the best plan of action.
It's not my quote but if you can get your boss to realise that 'SEO is a marathon & not a sprint' and that he has to dig in for the long game then you should be able to concentrate on areas that will bring long term results that outstrip any such simple link building efforts.
Hope it helps & happy to feedback if you want to drop or PM a link
Cheers
Marcus
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
-
How to create good SEO content for an essentially thin ecommerce site?
I have a retail website that in the past has been hit by a manual action for crappy backlinks (these were all done by a previous agency and up until the penalty providing very good results). We have since removed all of the rubbish backlinks and have come out of manual penalty and are looking in to our long term strategy in terms of content and link building. We have a blog within our site that does well with traffic and with an OK conversion to the products that feature within the posts, we are also putting together a strategy in terms of long term content plans and while this is all very good for the blog, the ecommerce part of the domain continues to suffer. I know that part of this is because we did remove all of these links that were giving it juice, but where do you start with SEO when what you are dealing with is essentially thin content? With around 7000 products, every page has unique descriptions and titles that have been updated to remove keyword stuffing and over optimisation that has occured in the past. We don't want to go down the route of getting an agency that is going to put us back in Googles bad books, but how do you go about getting a retail page juice without firing backlinks at it? Not looking for the holy grail here but just looking for some advice, I want a clear idea of a direction to go in before recruiting an agency to do this.
Link Building | | timsilver0 -
Negative SEO
I have a client who is being spammed really bad with links. Using porn keywords and keyword with porn in anchor text with the site URL. Anyone had experience with this?
Link Building | | ToddFosterSEO0 -
SEO Consultant Wants to Disavow Organic Links
Hi, We're working with a SEO consultant. They made a second check of our inbound links and want to disavow some of the links that seems organic to me. They claim they're bad by their characteristics. Should we act as they suggest or not? Or should we run from them?;-) Here are some links in question:
Link Building | | nikitin.i
http://www.wowresource.eu/index.php?showtopic=14942 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080208070036AAE1ePo https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/39144/visual-watermark All point to http://www.visualwatermark.com0 -
What's the best seo link building company after May 2013?
Which is the best and most trustworthy seo company if I want to outsource my link building after being severely hit by the google penguin 4 update?
Link Building | | naimelhajj0 -
Is commenting on other peoples blogs / articles good for seo?
Hello everyone, Just a quick question, say if I find some websites which are relevant to my service and they have articles I can comment on and include my URL , will these help for SEO? The websites also have a good PR rating higher than 3 does this count towards anything? Would these links be classed 'follow' or 'nofollow' links - could something please explain what this means aswell. Thanks very much!
Link Building | | vanplus0 -
SEO Agencies
I'm eager to hear peoples experiences both good and bad with SEO Agencies. I have tried many. I'm particularly interested in hearing experiences of types of link building. In my experience many SEO agencies build low quality links, that at least in my view are unlikely to stand the test of time, with one or two expections.
Link Building | | PeterM220 -
Question to SEO experts about backlink tracking
Hi, could you recommend the best tool that you use to keep track of all the backlinks you have. I'd imaging there is a good software or website which lists all your backlinks with all relevant info for each link (PR of the linking site, authority level etc) thanks in advance for sharing.
Link Building | | limens0 -
Widget SEO friendly
Hello, i'm looking for widget SEO friendly. Do you have any examples ? Thanks for answering. A.
Link Building | | android_lyon0