"Iffy" Question
-
Hi Guys and Girls,
I have been studying SEO for a few years now. I have learned quite a bit along the way. One thing that I have had BEAT in my head is "Create Quality Content". When I used to ask "What Should I do to get more visits?" I was told, "Create QUALITY CONTENT". That was great advice, and I have done that. I have created over 600 pages since then. I went from 200 visits per month to now just over 5,000. Even more importantly, I have increased my lead conversions.
I say all of this because, about two years ago I told a competitor basically how you rise up in the search engines. He turned around and bought a domain that was 3 years older than mine and had a main keyword in the domain. He then just started building links with a bunch of blog comments and forum posts (The blog comments have like 2,000 comments on them). In other words, he did what I would NOT do yet he is #5 for this keyword and I am #9. (Although, I turned around and built another site and now I am at #13 for that and it has been up for a year now.
I say all this, not to bore you but to tell ask you, DOES IT WORK IF YOU DO BLOG COMMENTING, FORUM POSTING, LINK WHEELS, ETC. Do you obtain higher rankings?
Should I be doing a bit of video marketing?
I know a lot of people will say, "Why would you spend your time on things that may slightly impact your rankings, but obviously it did something for this guy. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.
-
I wrote about this topic a bunch here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-12421 but basically, I ask myself a number of questions:
-
What are my goals in web marketing? Is it purely to make the most money possible? Am I trying to build something bigger than myself? Something that will make people happy? Something that can last even if I'm not around?
-
Do I want to prioritize the short term or the long term? Can I afford to make more revenue, get more traffic in the next 6 months, if it means the 5 years after that might suffer?
-
Do I want to work on building a brand and a company and a product or just a website that gets traffic?
-
How much stock do I put in Google's webspam team vs. my ability to outthink them? Do I have the mental discipline to withstand the nervousness, doubt and fear that comes with spamming/manipulation the engines?
-
Do I think that spam and low quality sites can convert at the same rate as a high quality brand? If not, does the delta make spamming non-viable, even if my only goal is revenue?
The answers to those questions for me are clear, and they're what's led me to always pick white hat for the projects I do.
Hope that helps!
-
-
I agree with Yannick here. Even though I always run into various competitors who are successful with shady techniques, I don't believe that this makes sense in the long run. Sometimes it can take incredibly long until these spammers get detected, but eventually they do go down the drain. Be patient and don't worry. Linkspam will go away, good content is here to stay:)
-
It won't be today, it won't be tomorrow, but someday his rankings will plummet like a rock dropping to the bottom of the ocean. SE's are getting smarter and smarter and they will find out how to compute for this lousy way of doing SEO. You on the other hand, have absolutely nothing to fear. I say, stick to your strategy, but try to turn your pages into more link magnets. Involve people in the content creation so other people can endorse your content. (By tweeting, blogging or liking your content). You will be the winner in the long run.
Should you be doing video marketing? Like Yeeees?
Video results in the SERP's get higher ctr's compared to results that are higher up the SERP's, so that would be perfect for you to screw with your competitor.
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
-
Why are "noindex" pages access denied errors in GWT and should I worry about it?
GWT calls pages that have "noindex, follow" tags "access denied errors." How is it an "error" to say, "hey, don't include these in your index, but go ahead and crawl them." These pages are thin content/duplicate content/overly templated pages I inherited and the noindex, follow tags are an effort to not crap up Google's view of this site. The reason I ask is that GWT's detection of a rash of these access restricted errors coincides with a drop in organic traffic. Of course, coincidence is not necessarily cause. Should I worry about it and do something or not? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Specific KW question...
Hi, I have this site: http://www.aerlawgroup.com. It's ranking very well overall for all targeted KWs. However, I have seen a drop for one main KW: "Los Angeles criminal defense attorney." It currently ranks #8 (it used to be as high as #2). What's interesting is that for similar (yet slightly less competitive KWs, he ranks much better - "Los Angeles Criminal Defense Lawyer." I'm not trying to be greedy with rankings, but I would love feedback and/or tips regarding any issues that could be contributing to this drop. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Should pages with rel="canonical" be put in a sitemap?
I am working on an ecommerce site and I am going to add different views to the category pages. The views will all have different urls so I would like to add the rel="canonical" tag to them. Should I still add these pages to the sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Building "keyword" backlinks
Looking for some opinions here please. Been involved in seo for a couple of years mainly working on my websites and picking up the odd client here and there through word of mouth. I must admit that up until a few months back I was guilty of using some grey methods of link building - linkvana, unique article wizard and the such. While no penalties were handed out to my domains and some decent rankings gained, I got tired of always being on the lookout for what the next Google update will do to my results and which networks were being hit, and so I moved a lot more into the 'proper' way of seoing. These days my primary sources for backlinks are much more respectable... myblogguest bloggerlinkup postjoint Guest Blog Finder http://ultramarketer.com/guest-blogger-finder/ - not sure where i came across this resource but it's very handy I use these sources alongside industry only directories and general word of mouth. Ironically I have found that doing the word by hand not only leads to results I can happyily show people (content wise) but also it's much quicker and cheaper. The increased authority of the sites means far fewer links are needed. The one area I still am having a little issue with is that of building keyword based backlinks. I now find it fairly easy to get my content on a reasonable quality site - DA to 40 and above, however the vast majority of these sites will allow the backlink only as the company name or as a generic read more type thing. This is fine and it is improving my website performance and authority. The trouble I am finding is that while i am ranking for the title tag and some keywords in the page, I am struggling to get backlinks for other keywords. In an ideal world every page on the site would be optimised for a different keyword and you could then just the site name as anchor text to build the authority of that page and make it rank for it's content, but what about when you (or the client) wants to rank the home for a number of different keywords, some not featured on the page. The keywords are too similar to go to the trouble of making unique pages for, and that would also add no value to the site. My question really then, after a very long winded way of getting there, is are others finding it much more difficult to gain keyword based backlinks these days? The great thing about the grey seo tools, as mentioned above, is that it was super easy to get the backlinks with whatever anchor text you wanted - even if you needed hundreds of the thing to compensate for the low value of each!! Thanks Carl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrumpyCarl0 -
Infographic question
I am about to post my first Infographic and have a question. The graphic is fairly long and was wondering, is it better to split this graphic up in to chunks? So that it loads in stages? I am new to this and would be great if someone could point me to the latest and best practices for infographics. I have seen a few articles but they appear to be old. Thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
On page report card for the keyword "computers"
I was looking at which websites ranks in the TOP 3 for the keyword "computers"... I noticed that first is wikipedia and then there are Dell and Apple... I then did an on page report card and I noticed that wikipedia has a grade A (which is great ) However, Apple has an F ( which sucks !! ) but there still rank out there. My question is why is Apple ranking for the keyword computers with no tiitle, no URL, no H1, no body, no B/Strong... when wikipedia has all of that and the term " computers " occurs 290 times on its page... Is is due to the fact that apple has millions of external links and is that enough to rank even with an " irrelevant " page ? By the way I have noticed that on other keywords such as " bicycle ". Wikipedia is ranking 1 st and then sites like www.trekbikes.com are out there but they shouldn't based on their homepage "optimization ". I know there are other factors but I am just trying to figure why such sites ( like apple or trek bikes ) rank out there. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
How to remove "Results 1 - 20 of 47" from Google SERP Snippet
We are trying to optimise our SERP snippet in Google to increase CTR, but we have this horrid "Results 1 - 20 of 47" in the description. We feel this gets in the way of the message and so wish to remove it, but how?? Any ideas apart from removing the paging from the page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | speedyseo0 -
How to handle "2" homepages?
Came across an interesting problem. A site has the traditional homepage of site.com and ranks okay. Later I found that another "homepage", site.com/home.html that ranks well for several terms but actually has old branding and semi-up-to-date content. Site.com/home.html has a solid linking profile but not as strong as the current homepage (site.com). The question I have is should I try to salvage the page or 301 redirect to site.com? Thank for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2comarketing0