Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
SEO Triage - What matters most?
-
If you only had 8 hours to work on an SEO project...
How would you spend your time to get the fastest results?
On-page optimization, or link-building?
Context:
On-Page Optimization: "A" grade (SEOMOZ On-Page Report Card)
Keywords: "moderately competitive" (SEOMOZ Keyword Difficulty Tool)
Domain Authority: 33 (SEOMOZ Competitive Link Analysis)
-
Thank you everyone! Appreciate the focused advice and insights.
-
If it is a small local business I'd definitely invest a few of those hours in getting local profiles set up. Taking the time to do consistent, quality listings can prove invaluable for a local business. Here is a great list of local business directories:
http://websuccessdiva.com/blog/local-business-directories/
Other than that I agree with Ryan that project mapping is very important. But that is assuming you will eventually have more than 8 hours to work on the project.
-
I would check the quality of the content (human readability and usefulness) and then, so long as all is good with the on-page SEO as you say it is, I would ensure I have social bookmarking buttons in prominant places, and open accounts on the major social sites (twitter, Facebook etc) and try to make it as easy as possible for folks to bookmark the content.
I would spend just 30mins initially following a few people that appear interested in the industry.
Then:
If it is an ecommerce site, take a feed from the mysql database, and modify it for Google Base (quick once you know how). If the site used an open source shopping cart/CMS, then there is likely a plugin/modification for free or cheap to do this instead of going into the database directly, as so this could be automated.
Also if it is an ecommerce store, I would ensure the h1's are showing correctly on every product page, and that there is GREAT (and I mean GREAT) navigation throughout the site (in fact, this goes for most sites, not just Ecommerce ones).
If it is a site that's based on a blogging platform (wordpress etc) then I would check the RSS feeds, and submit them to decent RSS sites, to aid indexing.
Follow that by looking for some guest post availability, write and submit a decent press release about the new site launch (be sure to submit to Google News sources!) and finish off by doing an hours extra work over a coffee, drawing up some flow diagrams of the next steps. Part of this final step would be working out how much time I could realistically spend each week or month on tasks for this website.
Phew, that's a fair bit for 8 hrs, but it is realistic if you get your head down, and keep the coffee flowing.
I hope this helps, but I bet some guys and gals will disagree with what I have said! Still, each to their own!
-
On-page optimization, or link-building?
If this is a content site.... neither.... Spend the time to make social sharing very easy. Any left-over time trying to get links from hub sites in that niche.
If this is a retail site... would go for links from the easy industry and community resource sites.
For both sites would ask for 8 more hours to brainstorm highly linkable content that the site owners will produce.
-
If I was only giving 8 hours I'd spend it all on project mapping. The work a site requires to be effective is way more than 8 hours but you could construct a broad project road map that would lead you consistently in the right direction for a year or more.
With the above context I'd be working on increasing domain authority and auditing site architecture to get the most bang for the buck. Steve's suggestions are spot on.
-
A bit of each if you're limited like that... if you've already got the A grade for the keywords then I'd focus on link building mostly. Maybe an hour on the on-page (as long as your content is right already) and the other seven on links?
You'll still need to do more later though.
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
-
my website seo
my web site is : sahraii and my category products descriptions are very long but not getting any results from google
Link Building | | arashsahraii
any suggest?0 -
Empty href damages SEO? (href="#")
Hello, I'm analyzing a website with thousands of pages.
Link Building | | prozis
I realized that on many of them they have empty links such href="#". I wonder if that will cause any SEO damage, or if Google will just ignore it as there isn't any link? I was reading about it and people seems to not be sure, although they recommend on forums to user the CSS pointer clickable instead of empty link. Let me know your opinion on this please! Thank you in advance!0 -
Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
Sorry if this is a basic question I should know the answer for. We have just acquired the .org for a moderately well searched keyword set. Our objective is to fight for rank specifically on this one set of two keywords. We want make sure our site is setup and business named optimally for this. Here is my question. What is the best business name for SEO and keyword rich backlinks, or anything else I'm not thinking of? KEYWORDS: Blue Widget DOMAIN: BlueWidget.org BUSINESS NAME OPTIONS: A) simply BlueWidget.org. We like this but do we lose some benefit of "Blue Widget" with a space on backlinks? **B) Blue Widget Foundation. Is this better because people will reference us by the keywords with a space "The Blue Widget Foundation", instead of "from the people at BLUEWIDGET.org"? ** Am I missing anything important here in the name? We just want to start everything off on the right foot. Thank you Moz. Just joined and my first post.
Link Building | | RetBit0 -
Toxic Link Removal-Better to Pay an SEO Firm or Can I Do It Myself?
Hi Jen: Recently an SEO audit from a reputable SEO firm identified almost 50% of the incoming links to my site as toxic, 40% suspicious and 5% of good quality. They are of the opinion that it is imperative to remove the toxic domains. The fee for toxic link removal is about $3,000.I would prefer to save the $3,000 but would prefer not to take the risk of screwing up my ranking if this is a complex procedure best left to SEO professionals. My assumption is that link removal will involve identifying the toxic domains, requesting removal and eventually submitting a Google disavow request. Can I do this myself or is there a big risk of screwing it up? Assuming it is safe for me to remove toxic links, would anyone suggest software of tools for doing so? Thanks so much.
Link Building | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
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 -
Mat Release SEO Impact
How do Mat Releases affect SEO? Does google recognize that your are syndicating duplicate content even if the content is being syndicated across top media outlets? Do these back links still carry any authority or can we even be penalized for the duplicate content? I came across mat releases here: http://matrelease.com/ An example of article syndication outlets: Guaranteed Placement on 800+ Media Sites. Generate guaranteed article placement on more than 800 respected online media outlets. Our digital distribution network includes: The LA Times; The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (JS Online); Las Vegas Review Journal; Hearst media sites for the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle and Connecticut Post and others; local TV news affiliate sites from ABC, CBS, FOX and others; and hundreds more trusted sites.
Link Building | | bloomnation0 -
Web Designers and SEOs using backlinks from client sites
What are your thoughts on SEOs and web designers putting their own links in the footers of client sites. For the sake of argument, lets assume that the client is happy for the link to be there. I'm referring to the SEO merits of the link being there from an 'irrelevant' website. My belief is that this goes against what Google is looking for and that these are irrelevant links and likely to be picked up and penalised. That's what I believe! However, I see lots of sites offering SEO services that have dofollow links from their client sites, using exact match anchor text and they are all ranking highly. Is it just a matter of time before Google sniffs them out and penalises them for it? Or should I be going through my client sites and adding myself a dofollow link in the footer? (with their permission of course). The highest ranking sites in any UK city do this. If you search SEO Manchester, SEO Leeds etc and find the top ranking sites and check them out on opensite explorer, they are all using a disproportionate amount of dofollow backlinks form client sites.
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
Does MerchantCircle.com have any SEO benefit?
We have created accounts for several of our clients at www.MerchantCircle.com directory and created blogs, coupons, etc for them but we did not get any single click or benefit from merchantcircle.com at all. We wasted a lot of time and also monthly membership fees. I really would like to hear your experiences. Did you have any positive results from merchantcircle.com ? Did they lose their importance after Panda update? Their MOZrank also shows ZERO and we are considering cancelling our accounts with them. Thanks for your advice and help, Lewis
Link Building | | CertifiedSEO0