Entries Tagged 'SEO' ↓

On the heels of some other guy’s, I give you my own…

• Linkbaiting will not jump the shark. It’s here to stay. Online and Off-. Forever. Naysayers, please fast forward to 2026 — will Cosmopolitan publish “Collected Thoughts from a Writer on How to Have Sex Better” or “33 Ways to Drive Him Wild and Make Your Bedroom Sizzle?” Now, linkbaiting may get a bit more refined–no more publishing “The Geek’s Guide to Losing Weight” on your spammy dental plans affiliate site (*ahem*)–but good, baity content is the foundation of successful publishing, and that ain’t gonna change in 100 years.
• Premium content will gain more momentum. OK, I already made this prediction six months ago, but I’m sticking with it. Aaron Wall’s switch to a premium model seems to be going well, SEOmoz’s “PRO” is gaining steam, and, outside our little SEO-sphere, I’m still addicted to the paid content at Browns.Scout.com.
• Tropical SEO will post a total of 9 times. Hey, I’m just being honest. Besides, my not posting is really my way of sending you the message that working on non-revenue-producing activites is overrated.
• Niche social media sites will reach critical mass. It’s already happening, of course. Once these guys start sending 500 referrals instead of 80, SEOs will start spamming en masse.

I’ll admit my predictions are pretty much gimme’s… what can I say, I’m conservative by nature. But feel free to rip any or all in the comments.

I’m 10 weeks in here in Houston, and I’ve found myself referring to CitySearch again and again. I check there first for everything: from delicious Thai restaurants, to reputable Thai massage parlors (Side note: who knew come to this place for “a good time”!!! was a common euphemism?). The point is, I’m not checking any local business’ official Web site, but instead, I’m checking other platforms for third party information. Any business that’s been around for a while will have several reviews.

As users embrace local search in droves, having this “distributed presence” is becoming increasingly important for any local business. The distributed presence is important for national and global businesses, too, but even more so for a firm that gets half its online customer referrals from Google Maps.

Which brings me to the fake reviews. I first began to notice these on hotel reviews at Travelocity:

“I don’t know what the other reviewers are talking about!!! My room was spotless and the decor was beautiful. The management was extremely helpful and gave me everything I could have possibly needed. The nice owner, Lisa, even gave me tips on sightseeing. I can’t believe how cheap their rates are!! Stay here and you won’t regret it!!!!”

*gag*

The fake self-reviews are here, whether you like it or not, and they’re surprisingly pervasive. It’s gotten to the point where half the businesses I check have at least one obviously fake self-review. Generally the only ones I can trust are:

• Negative reviews (these are extremely helpful)
• Mixed reviews (here’s something positive, here’s something negative)
• Tons of reviews (generally the managers only do two or three fake self-reviews, so if I see 47 reviews for a business, I allow myself to trust the “aggregate opinion”)

So, local business owners, if you’re going to do fake reviews (and, let’s be honest, if you own a local business, you probably will), please keep the following tips in mind:

• Don’t end sentences with multiple exclamation points.
• Don’t begin with “I don’t know what those other reviewers were talking about!”
• Don’t refer to the owner or manager by name. I don’t think I’ve EVER seen this happen when it wasn’t a fake review.
• Include a negative or two. They can even be “gentle negatives”. The following does NOT count as a negative: “The only negative I found was the price: it was too cheap!”
• Don’t rate yourself 5 out of 5, or 9-or-10 out of 10. Instead, stick with 4 out of 5 or 8 out of 10.

Instead of:

Mai Thai is my favorite Thai restaurant in Houston! Everything from the chicken pad thai, to the hot and sour soup, to the chef’s specialty “Chicken Curry No Hurry” is absolutely delicious! The decor is wonderful, there are authentic Thai paintings on the wall. I go there at least twice a week, and the owner, Lewis, always says Hi to me and we chat pleasantly for a while. It is a great place to go for a business lunch or even a Friday night date!! Oh, and don’t forget to try the green tea ice cream!!!!! 10/10

Try:

Mai Thai is a pretty decent Thai resaurant for the price. I’ve tried the Pad Thai (good) and the hot and sour soup (average). The lunch crowd is busy but they get you seated fairly quickly. 8/10

The second review will get me in there. The first, not so much. Oh, and for the record, I’m not actually trying to coin FRO as an acronym. I think we have enough silly acronyms, don’t you?

Today, let’s skip past SEO tactics and get right to the green. As I’ve blabbered about before, many SEOs lack common business sense. In no particular order, here are some tips I think are important for any SEO who is trying to be a better CEO.

1. Decide to make more money.

OK I don’t mean to sound like a speaker at a pyramid scheme “success seminar”, but goals are very important. As soon as your goal becomes “make $XX,000 per month”–as opposed to a goal of say, ranking #1 for a certain keyword, or getting 350 bloglines subscribers to your blog–you’re on a more focused track, and likely to make more money. Smart people tend to achieve their goals, the issue is picking the right goals in the first place.

2. Get a damn accountant.

Having an accountant do your taxes can be surprisingly cheap ($500?), but it is also surprising that a really good accountant can be hired for only a marginally more expensive price. Spend $1000 on a smart accountant who handles a lot of other entrepreneurs, and chances are he’s going to save you a multiple of the $1000 you spend. And a penny saved is a penny earned right? (Did I really just write that? Am I getting old or something?)

3. Depreciate asset purchases as aggressively as you legally can.

A lot of accountants don’t know how to handle depreciation on online assets such as premium domain names, and tend to be over-conservative when depreciating them. So if you’re investing in a lot of online assets, you may want to get an accountant who specializes in Internet business. But even if you have a “regular” accountant, find out how they’re treating depreciation of Web sites and premium domains that you purchase. According to this article, you may be able to depreciate over a 5 year schedule. One single premium domain could wipe out nearly all of your tax liability for the year. (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer or accountant, do not take this as legal advice, consult your own accountant and lawyer before depreciating anything.) Just be aware of this issue, and use tax law–legally–to your advantage.

4. Raise your prices aggressively and periodically.

OK you may raise your eyebrows at this one, but the truth is a lot of people get “used” to earning a certain amount and then more or less live with that indefinitely. The reality is, online you can go from novice to expert in a specialty pretty quickly (i.e., you can go from novice SEO to pro in 12 months, and you can go from n00b affiliate to super affiliate in 12 months). So make sure to take stock of yourself periodically and try to figure out if you provide more value than you did before (and if so, how much).

Last month I had my business partner call all of the merchants we’re an affiliate for, and ask them if they can pay us a better rate. Guess what? Every single one said yes. Our largest merchant partner gave us a 10% across the board increase. (We’re doing good volume, so they want to keep us happy.) It was probably the most profitable 5 minutes in our company’s history, a short, painless phone call made us an extra five figures this year.

If you perform a service, I think this tip is even more important. Are your prices the same as they were last year? Do you have more clients this year? If so, demand has increased and you should raise your prices. Are you better known this year? If so, your reputation has increased, and you should raise your prices. When a client knows you and likes you they won’t be angry that you’re asking them for more money. They will simply look at the new price and ask themselves if the value is still there, and if it is, they will pay you the new amount. Trust me, they would rather pay you marginally more than go to the bother of finding another provider, who may or may not be a scam/idiot. Another interesting thing is that increased pricing generally leads to increased value perception; you may find that you actually attract more–and better–clients with higher pricing.

If you’re an employee, you should also be aggressively (but politely, and intelligently) asking for a large raise periodically. The difference in the value created between a first year SEO and a second year SEO is huge–as should be your pay raise. If the value you create has doubled (and your boss is smart enough to recognize that), you’ll be able to negotiate for a lot more pay. So do it. Disclaimer: a lot of bosses are stupid, and won’t recognize value. In my experience, most employees also fall into two camps–those who wildly underestimate their value, and those who wildly overestimate their value. Make sure you fall into the third camp.

5. Get a personal assistant.

If you’re creating a lot of value, at some point you have to do what you can to remove low-value activities from your daily work. The best way to do this is to a) outsource what you can (design, programming, etc.), and b) get a personal assistant for other sorts of tasks (research, pick up dry cleaning, etc.) Bonus points if the assistant is hot and wears skimpy clothing. I actually have a “virtual assistant” who lives in another country and would pretty much hate my life if I didn’t have him (and I would get less done and make less money).

Anyone with other good business tips for SEOs, feel free to comment!

[after 5 burials in a row…]

chowyunfatND: just give up on digg

chowyunfatND: write your alternative traffic building plan, and you will feel better

badassSEOfriend: fuck that…

badassSEOfriend: digg was the alt plan

badassSEOfriend: i dont want to grind shit out anymore

chowyunfatND: its the path of purification

chowyunfatND: Chop wood, carry water

It’s back to the grind, kids… if you’re feeling depressed from the hostility lately, walk away from Digg for a month: try playing with the niche social media sites or old fashioned linkbaiting hooks instead. Meanwhile figure out how to tweak placement of the signup box to double your newsletter subscription rate, so a third party won’t have the power to depress you so much. Defensible webmasters weather any storm!

Stay with me, I’m not just pulling your leg. If you would like to write a reasoned rebuttal, by all means do so via the comments or trackback!

Anyone who’s been on the ‘Net for any length of time knows that SEOs have a bad reputation. The reasons ‘everyone else’ (Web designers, Diggers, everyday Web users) don’t like us are valid, and many:

• Irrelevant or low-quality search results are often the work of SEOs
• Blog comment spam and trackback spam is often the work of SEOs
• Spam on social media sites such as Digg or Del.icio.us is often the work of SEOs

Now, I hear some white hat SEOs whining: but it wasn’t us! It was our black hat SEO cousins! To that I say: bugger off. Yes, we come in different shades and colors and types, but none of us wants to rank ‘correctly’, we all want to rank ‘as high as possible’, so stop pretending you’re on Google’s ’side’. We are a (highly dysfunctional) family. And even if you disown your ornery, toothless, black hat country cousin, everyone on the outside is going to associate you with him. Bottom line: we SEOs are in it together.

Anyway, it’s pretty clear that there are a lot of inconveniences and annoyances that everyday web users have to put up with because of us SEOs, and, in general, those everyday users don’t differentiate between white hats, black hats, gray hats or green hats. Thus we SEOs, in the aggregate, have a bad reputation among the Internet plebs (and patricians).

I would like to point out, however, that SEOs have actually done a lot of good for everyday users on the Web.

• SEOs have helped along the march to higher accessibility. Now, very few SEOs have preached about the overlap of accessibility and SEO (ahem). But even if most SEOs aren’t aware of it, many “on page” SEO best practices overlap heavily with accessibility. In many instances, it is hard to make the business case for high accessibility to the site owner. (”How many blind people even want to use our site, anyhow?”) Good thing SEOs have their own reasons for using alt attributes on images! Any SEO who reads and understands Google’s Guidelines and the like can’t help but further accessibility on the Web. And every little bit helps.
• SEOs often make search results more relevant. OK, for instance: if there is one single tactic that every single SEO nearly always pays attention to, it is writing a unique, relevant title tag. In many cases the designer, webmaster or site owner would have otherwise ignored the issue were it not for the SEO’s insistence. Now, SEOs care about the title tag because it can help rankings, but unique and relevant titles are also a huge usability boon. Without us, many more pages in the SERPs would have irrelevant or non-unique titles, and the search results would be less relevant and useful to everyday users in this respect. This is just one example; SEOs also ensure that Google includes many high quality Web pages which otherwise wouldn’t have been included, by tweaking site architecture and correcting indexing issues. In both of these cases (and with many similar website elements), SEO has made it profitable to improve the usability, spiderability, and quality of Web pages. We may not have done it altruistically, but the end result is countless Web pages (and SERPs) which are more usable, high quality and relevant as a side effect to our work.
• SEOs have helped revolutionary Web applications such as Google and Digg reach the tipping point. SEOs tend to be early adopters and have wide online social circles, so when we seize onto something, we can help it spread faster than it otherwise would have. In the case of Google, the search engine’s administrators arguably purposefully appealed to SEOs by showing PageRank in the toolbar, which of course couldn’t help but fascinate every SEO. This led to a (perhaps unhealthy) obsession in the SEO industry; this obsession led to branding, coverage, and more user adoption. In the case of Digg, I admit that it had hit it big before SEOs infiltrated, but certainly a lot of the mainstream media and blogosphere attention centered on the SEO issues: power users, ‘the big Digg rig’, link baiting, etc. The ‘friction’ that SEOs cause brings attention, coverage and new users to the application. Now, the flipside of this is that once SEOs latch onto something, they often–initially–pollute it profusely, and lower its usefulness to everyday users. (This happened with both Google and Digg.) But I would argue this is a natural growing pain for any Web ecosystem, and when the administrators deal with the pollution the system usually ends up stronger and better as a result. Meanwhile, having helped solidify the application’s staying power, many SEOs stick around and become very productive users in the system.

Now, believe me I am not looking for a Nobel peace prize here. I just wanted to point out that SEOs have done a lot of good, as a group, for the Web. So, designers, Diggers, searchers: the next time you want to bash SEOs for all the Web’s woes… don’t.

Well it feels pretty weird, but as of last Friday, I am no longer doing link building / link baiting / social media consulting for anyone else. I’m not sure what I’ll do with my client services site, I will keep it up and indexed for now and maybe make it a personal homepage in the future.

Now, for the record, let me say I don’t regret working for my clients for the past four years one single bit. I made a lot of friends, learned a ton, helped many sites rank in Google, paid the rent, and built up a bankroll to finance other projects. So I am definitely thankful to all my past clients for those reasons, and for putting up with me of course

But at the end of the day, economics won out–doing SEO for clients simply isn’t a business model (as others have said before). And honestly with the link baiting service, I began to hate the lifestyle (I think every bury at Digg moved my heart attack up a year, at this rate I’m due for my first at age 26.)

So in fulfillment of my manifesto I’m now 100% affiliate marketer slash competitive webmaster, and a little bit closer to living the dream… still no sign of cutting back on hours though!

When you’re an SEO you have to roll with the punches, but I have to admit I sometimes get nostalgic for the “good ol’ days”… you know, back when there was a Google dance once a month (no, not that dance), and when PageRank (then often-updated) was easy to game and a great predictor of rankings.

Of course many bloggers and prominent people in the industry rejoiced around 2004-2005 exclaiming ‘PageRank is Dead’, ’sitewide links will get you penalized’ and ‘only dumb SEOs bother with META tags’.

Well guess what? They’re ba-aack…

PageRank, Sitewide Links and META tags are not important for the same reasons they used to be (ranking, ranking, and ranking, respectively); now that Google has a two-tiered Sandbox, they matter because of the indexing portion of that Sandbox.

As I posted eight months ago at LinkBuildingBlog, these days your initial worry is getting everything indexed (and in the main index, not Supplemental). Only then can you even worry about rankings, because until you’re indexed you don’t even have a chance to rank… and staying out of Supplemental is not as easy as you might think.

I wrote a short How to: Escape Google’s Supplemental Index which got featured on Digg (and happens to be my most popular post traffic-wise, it seems a lot of people are having that problem ), and I think the advice I gave there still holds true a few months later. I just want to point out three specific “old-school” factors, which, despite what the SEO Hotshot may tell you, are not “dead”!

• PageRank: Right now the biggest determinant on how a page gets indexed (whether it gets indexed at all, how often, and whether or not in ends up in Supplemental) is its PageRank. How do you like that? Don’t believe me? Here it is from the man Matt Cutts himself (and that’s just two weeks ago). Now, I still believe that trusted links are the key to rankings, but I think brute PageRank is your primary worry if you end up in Supplemental (though gaining more trust certainly won’t hurt). *Please note that what you see in the toolbar does not necessary represent real PageRank.
• Sitewide Links: Well I was never a believer that sitewide links could hurt you (after all, what is more ‘natural’ and ‘editorial’ than being placed on someone’s blogroll?), but I do admit that once you have a link from one well-linked page on a site, you don’t gain a whole lot more trust juice from being linked to from every page. If however you throw indexing into the mix its a whole different ballgame; now that PageRank matters, the overall ‘weight’ of sitewide links from PR4, PR5, and PR6 sites is going to help you get that larger (100 or 1000+ page) site fully and consistently indexed.
• META Tags: Aaron Wall explained it well here, but the short version is: if you have a unique title tag and META description on each page, you have a better shot of staying out of Supplemental.

For the record I practice what I preach–I’ve launched several 100+ page sites in the past 4 months and, despite getting some high-quality editorial (”trusted”) citations (via link baiting of course), they had issues getting fully-indexed (non-Supplemental). But getting a few mid/high-PR sitewide links, and giving each page a unique META description solved all of their indexing problems right-quick. Makes me pine a bit for the good ol’ days… long live PageRank!

I was browsing through WMW today and came across New Link Building Strategies Needed in the link development forum. Basically, the post author is having trouble building links and ranking. Specifically, he asks: How can I compete against older sites who have been building links for years? And how can I compete against huge brands that get a ton of links by virtue of their offline presence?

These companies have incredible power, massive hoards of cash, networks, affiliates, branding and reach - while the poor ole webmaster has naff all in real terms. I mean let’s admit it to ourselves, we are small time in comparison and it will take us years to make a dent in cyberspace compared to major brands out there, so our problem isn’t about getting links - more the speed at which those links are obtained, indexed by the engines and out there working for us - and yes, the ease of how links are working.

The way I see it, if you’re trying to build links for a new commercial or affiliate site, you have 3 major things working against you:

1. It’s hard to get people to link to a commercial or affiliate site (relatively speaking).
2. Many of your competitors are old. They have a huge head start and even if you build links regularly the gap may be widening, since the rich get richer.
3. If you have any ‘brands’ in your niche, they will get a lot of links naturally due to their offline presence.

Now I’m not saying you should feel sorry for anyone, hey it’s just business and it isn’t supposed to be easy. But I think there’s another thing working against new webmasters, and that’s that the fact that in general people are now more miserly when it comes to link love. I believe there used to be a more generous linking spirit on the web–before PageRank came along, before selling links for SEO purposes came along, and certainly before nofollow came along. A lot of times I’ll check out the backlinks from a ‘97 or ‘99 site and am just amazed all the weird links it has: people linking to them ‘just because’, people including favorite sites on their personal homepages, or people writing content about a subject and not afraid to link liberally to commercial sites in that content.

So these really old sites have an extra advantage (besides just being older and having more time to accumulate links), in that it was easier to get links back in the good ol’ days. (And nevermind the TrustRank/sandbox thing, we won’t even get into that!)

Now the good news is social media can help you catch up with old or branded sites. When a competitor shows 100,000 links in a Yahoo! backlink search, well that is a pretty daunting lead if you trying to catch up by building one link at a time. If you can get on Digg or Delicious/Popular regularly you can pick up 1,000 or 5,000 links a shot, in that case you might only be 30 link baits away from competing with them. That’s still a year’s worth of hard work, but it’s no longer so daunting (and at least it’s possible).

Now what sucks is that some people (like a lot of you Tropical SEO readers) have the talents and resources to link bait consistently, and to you, ranking is easy (with a lot of effort put into link baiting). Realistically, many (most?) webmasters do not have what it takes (creativity, subtlety, power account) to land on the Digg or Reddit homepage. Which means they will be building their links one at a time, and let’s be honest, they don’t have a prayer unless they’re in a Basket Weaving in Boise, Idaho type niche.

I wish I had some inspirational axiom to end on–but I don’t. The bottom line is the internet is more mature and competitive now. More websites compete for the same 10 spots, and many of those that do have had a several year head start. The talented newer guys entering the competitive niches are managing to pick up natural links in batches of hundreds or thousands. So if you’re not old, or a link baiting/social media nut, you’re (more often than not)… fucked.

Link building (and ranking) is ‘Just Harder’ now.

I sidestep the whole “issue” of paid links, taking the do what works philosophy, so rest assured this post isn’t about that. Anyway, the text link ad product market is pretty slow moving, but there are a few new products on the market that I believe are very forward looking (hint: I think they will work in 2008), so I thought I’d mention them:

• Post-level Text Link Ads: This is a feature a lot of link buyers have wanted for a long time; the way I would leverage it, is to buy the post-level link on blog posts which have been Dugg or otherwise received a ton of links (I know Jim Boykin is a big believer in the trust of well-linked internal pages). I used to work at Text Link Ads and I can vouch that they have a lot of publishers in their program who are dugg all the time, so it may be something you want to watch for (and jump on).
• ReviewMe Subscriptions: Among the ‘pay for blog post’ offerings, ReviewMe has positioned itself as the highest quality, but it also demands more “upkeep” from the advertiser’s point of view. This new ReviewMe feature allows you to “set it and forget it” with a monthly budget for reviews from new blogs in whatever category you select. Pretty sweet.

I wouldn’t recommend you make link buying your sole link acquisition strategy, but if you’re in a competitive market and you’re not doing some link buying (especially the intelligent post-level kind), you’re losing money.

Ok, in case you didn’t figure it out yet, the post title is a tad bit baity–the world’s greatest investor didn’t specifically speak about SEO

But then again, he did. My favorite Buffet quote of all time is a reminder that highly profitable industries can make average managers seem like geniuses, whereas industries with poor underlying economics can make even genius managers seem average (or worse).

“Managing your career is like investing–the degree of difficulty does not count. So you can save yourself money and pain by getting on the right train.”

OK, that’s pretty generic. But let’s get specific and apply it to SEO. Quick quiz: you are a 4 year SEO veteran, skilled in high-value-added tactics like link baiting, internal linking, conversion optimization, etc., and you have a wide, trusted network of professionals (designers, content writers, programmers) who can help you implement pretty much any idea you can think of and outline. Do you:

1. Spend your time posting on forums
2. Spend your time blogging
3. Work for an SEO firm on salary
4. Spend your time consulting
5. Launch a site you own in a niche you’re passionate about
6. Launch a site you own in a highly profitable niche

Here’s a hint: those options are listed in ascending order of long-term profitability The guys who do 1, 2 and 3 are the ones with the “names” and who we all love to hear speak at PubCon. The guy who does #6 might get ignored at PubCon, but on the other hand if he sticks with it for 36 months he’s paying cash for a Ferrari and a beach house.

One thing that isn’t always clear to n00bs who enter the industry the same way we all do–via blogs, forums, conferences–is that good SEOs aren’t necessarily good businesspeople. A lot of the most talented SEOs I know are tactical geniuses, but strategic idiots (and I include myself in that group–but hopefully I won’t in 2008).

I have created a lot of websites over the years, and put a ton of creativity and elbow grease into them. Boy, what I wouldn’t give to go back in time and tell my past self to go all-in in the most competitive (and high margin) industries I knew–mortgages, online dating, insurance, etc. Because even an average 2003-launched site in one of those industries (given some consistent TLC) is now pulling in six figures (if not seven), which is a lot more than I can say for most of my 2003-launched bullcrap!

Again, let me be specific (because boy do I hate generic advice)!

• Running an SEO service firm is a model with poor underlying economics (very hard to scale while staying ethical and providing value)
• Being an SEO consultant is a model with poor underlying economics (even with a high hourly rate, you will have a hard time billing more than 24 hours a day; your potential profits are capped)
• Blogging fulltime is a model with poor underlying economics (yes, there are “lifestyle benefits”, which I clearly believe are important, but we’re talking business here people!)

Now, are there businesses making a ton of money doing the above? Sure there are. I would argue that they either got into their niches when the underlying economics were good (windfall profits, first mover advantage, etc), or that they are run by very talented managers who are managing to squeeze out above-average profits even as external factors chip away at their margins from many different angles. Just think, what if those same talented managers were in industries with good underlying economics (for instance, running specialty insurance lead-generation sites with premium domain names)!

The richest SEO whom I personally know is someone I guarantee you’ve never heard of–he doesn’t blog, he doesn’t speak at conferences, and he only rarely bothers posting at forums. He’s got a site in a competitive, profitable lead-gen niche, and he’s promoted it consistently over the past 4 years with boring, plain-jane SEO and link building tactics. Who knew? Being an average player in a highly profitable niche is, well, highly profitable.

So forget about being the best SEO–be a good CEO, instead. Bop on over to CJ, find a category with a lot of high-EPC offers, acquire a semi-premium or premium domain name, and get cracking… your 2010 self will thank you, I promise.

Update 2:00 PM: I forgot to credit Mr. Provost for the inspiration to this post: Why SEO Consulting Is a Terrible Business Model And You Are An Idiot For Doing It