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
-
Unsolved Are links from staff profile pages no longer good for SEO?
Hey there, We run a small site that lists lawyers and we have an opportunity to ask the lawyers to display a 'badge' on their own website's staff page, linked back to the page on our site that they are listed on. Initially I thought this would be good link building (i.e. the lawyer's own staff/profile pages on their website linking to our site where they are listed = a highly relevant link). I was less concerned about the authority of the law firm's sites, though these will range from sometimes low-ish to medium. I just assumed that Google would see the value in the lawyer wanting to link to our site where they are listed. However, our SEO has said that these days Google doesn't give much/any value to these types of links from individual staff pages. His advice was to try and get the badge added to one of their service pages (or their About page) which will be unlikely as the badge is person-specific. I thought I'd ask if this was everyone else's experience regarding Google not valuing links from individual staff pages? Thanks for you help 🙂
Link Building | Feb 15, 2022, 2:26 PM | Andy-H0 -
Are long URLs bad for SEO?
Hi, I would like to know how bad is the long URLs that I have on my website. At the moment we have 543 long urls and I was wondering how big is the impact in my SEO. Thank you
Link Building | Nov 17, 2019, 8:18 PM | Blind_Foundation3 -
What are the SEO implications of high quality backlinks from US-based websites to UK-based websites?
Hi everyone, quick question I hope someone could help me with: We're representing a client based in the UK. As part of their overall strategy we've been linkbuilding. At the moment, about 80/90% of the links we've gained come from UK-based sites, with 10/20% coming from US-based websites. The US based websites are very good (think New York Times and genuine, relevant blogs with good readerships). An external search analyst/consultant has contacted the client to say that the US links will be harming the site, because the links are from websites in the US and not the UK. We believe that if 80/90% of the links were from the US this could indeed cause harm as it could indicate to search engines that our client is in the US when it's not (which might compromise their chance of ranking in .co.uk versions of search engines) however because it's only 10/20%, and because the linking sites are very good, we believe that they will getting all of the benefits of the positive metrics without any meaningful negatives. We just wanted to get a few opinions on this to see if people think that we're mistaken, and would be glad to hear any opinions contrary to our own.
Link Building | Apr 10, 2017, 9:29 PM | GoUp0 -
Do links from such sites as TripAdvisor give any weight or support for SEO
And what about other sites like quora or other niche forums/blogs where one might leave answers, with a link to their profile, which has a link back to the owner's website? _Cindy
Link Building | Mar 31, 2017, 12:14 PM | cceebar1 -
Does embedded content (from my site) help seo
hi i am creating a new accommodation site and will have some great videos on it (fly bys of local beaches and virtual tours of hotels etc). from an seo perspective i have two questions: 1. should i host on my own site or youtube/vimeo - its a new site but in the long run i want my site to get the credit 2. i will be giving the hotels the chance to embed and video content i have on their own sites. does this help my own seo juice and if so is there a particular way it should be done. there will be around 90 well established local hotels in total so figured it should add up.
Link Building | Jan 8, 2016, 10:07 AM | neilhenderson0 -
Does link from a blog in Blogger.com helps in SEO ?
Do you guys think that adding good quality blogs to blogger.com and then getting a link from those blogs will help ?
Link Building | Nov 8, 2012, 9:36 PM | Personnel_Concept0 -
Content toggle, tabs ad accordion for seo text
Hello there, I have two questions. 1. I want to ad seo text in content toggles, tabs and accordions. does Google robots view as seo text , eg, H1 text as it would be written direct on the page? 2. About Pinguin and link building. I am seeing up an onlineprintshop, where any industry can become a client. Lets say a medical company will be our client for prints. If they link back to our onlineprint page does Goole evaluates the link as a link from a related industry. Thanks for your kind answer. Kind Regards Mike 8bMCt
Link Building | May 30, 2012, 10:42 PM | niceguyseo0 -
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 | Aug 10, 2011, 10:55 PM | CertifiedSEO0