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.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
SEO for a Product Domain
Hello there, I wanted to thank you all in advance, you have been very helpful with your insights so far. One of our clients is starting a new domain for a specific product he has. The client is providing his products in canada/usa. (For exemple, let's stay "nike.com"(company) just launched "jordan.com"(line of product) and wanted to rank "jordan.com" higher. I was thinking about starting with citations for the new domain/product. The thing is, since its a product, it feels wierd to do citations as usual and start a GMB account. In your opinion, what is the best way to start SEO with a product specific domain? Is citation or GMB still a good idea?
Link Building | | H.M.N.0 -
Starting SEO For My E-commerce Site?
Hey guys, So I'm starting SEO for my e-commerce furniture store and I'm a little confused. Right now the only links I have are from sponsored posts. How do I get links from other sources? What other sources are there besides sponsored posts? I submitted my site to Dmoz.org and I was also going to submit it to the Yahoo directory. I have contacted a few personal home decor blogs but have not heard back from those people. Could someone steer me in the right direction. Thanks a ton!
Link Building | | The_Kiwi_Man0 -
SEO companies, Backlinks and Trade Secrets
I have spent so much time investigating what it takes to move my domain up the ladder. I have so far determined good quality optimized website and I am almost done with that. MOZ Rules! If I look at Open Site Explorer at my competitors it gives me some of their backlinks... Some people say backlinks are not as important anymore. But If I am in a Vacation Rental business and I can get other websites/blogs with high PA to post some good content that I write to link back to my website this should raise my SEO? Correct. I am fortunate that online media assets always seem to have articles such as "The best destinations this Fall", "Getting away for a long weekend", etc...... In the past I have been contacted by writers/bloggers that wanted to trade free stays at my homes for an article.... back then I had no idea what a PA was, but now I can at least point MOZ at their website to see if it is worth it. I was also thinking about hiring somebody to do this.....My question is two part... Am I on the right track about building good quality backlinks from high PA with truly good content. I have been writing articles now for 30 days along with this other stuff and have probably 10 unique pieces plus another 20 in our recent blog... When SEO companies call me weekly they all say "we can get you to the top 3 placements in 60 days or other say 3 to 5 months or others say 6 to 7 months." Being a business person I ask, "How do you do it? and what tools do you use?" I never get a straight answer, because they say it is trade secrets..... or they say they use internal tools.... This kills me! I do not want to do this myself, be an SEO company I just want to know the process a vendor will use to raise my SEO. If they were to say I have contacts at these 5 major websites and I am going to get your content listed on these websites... I would say great. 4 years ago I paid a company monthly for a year who moved my domain name from 70 to 35 but that happened in the first 3 months and then nothing. And he would never tell me what they were doing... plus now I realize my site optimization was crap. Out of 10 keyword phrases, the highest I got right now is 32 and a new guy on the block is less than 10 and has less content and backlinks... I wonder once my site optimization is done will that really really help me. Is it too much for a SEO to tell me specifics! I have purchased MOZ, Authority Labs, Buzz Stream, SEO tracker, I am committed to this... I have 15,000 facebook page likes and 80 you tube videos, pinterest and twitter too... M
Link Building | | nickcargill0 -
Listly and SEO
We use listly quite a lot. A few of our lists get embedded in other sites. A lot of the embedded lists have links back to us. Is there any seo benefit on this, or will just one of the sites count ? Isn't this just duplicate content ? Wondering what your thoughts are.
Link Building | | MarkQJones0 -
Should I become a regular contributor to help my SEO link building?
I've been offered the opportunity to contribute to a blog as often as I want and have a link included at the bottom of each post. Will this be much help to me in my link building SEO campaign? As I understand it more links from different root domains are what really count? So 20 links each from a different site is more valuable that 20 links from one site? Should I take up this opportunity or are my efforts best spent elsewhere?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Does anyone do seo on their twitter pages
Hi, i am just wondering if anyone does any seo or anything with their twitter page to gain more followers. I have justover 19,000 followers and since launching the twitter account we are getting about 500 followers per week and i am just wondering if there is anything we should do to improve this. I am not sure if we should be putting keywords into our twitter page or anything else to let people know about our twitter page. any advice would be great. also, when we set up our twitter page we decided to use the following twitter name @2celebritynews just wondering if you are allowed to change this at any stage as we should really have got the twitter page of @in2town if it is not possible to change it then maybe we will need to start over again
Link Building | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Your recommendation for a SEO friendly bulletin board software?
Hi there, if you set up a public bulletin board in the context of a SEO project, what product can you recommend? phpBB? A great plugin for Wordpress? ...? My requirements are complete configuration options of the relevant onsite elements, editing/moderation capability of all posts, authentication. Thanks!
Link Building | | kqkq0 -
What does SEO Moz think about http://www.layeredlinks.com/ ?
Just curious, if anyone has any experience working with this company, and if you think it is a good/bad idea. Thanks!
Link Building | | adriandg0