Posts Tagged seo
Offshore SEO Review
Posted by in SEO Providers on August 10, 2009
One of the most common questions I get asked in the realm of SEO/SEM and PPC is this:
"Is hiring offshore SEO worth it? It seems to much cheaper than domestic providers."
My answer is a very qualified - yes - certainly, there must be many competent SEO shops offshore. However, I haven't had the pleasure of working with them. (Full disclaimer: I sell offshore SEO management services and help organizations build and manage competent offshore SEO teams) Almost every offshore SEO firm or service provider I come acrosss appear to missing the mark by a long margin. Their traditional marketing expertise is minimal. Often, it is not clear who is actually doing your work. Little attention is given to actually convert the traffic into sales or leads.
I think this state of affairs is really due to the fact that traffic and rankings are not necessarily factors that will drive success for your business online. Certainly, qualified traffic that is likely to convert is more valuable than mere traffic. In the same vein, rankings for keywords that will drive qualified traffic are more valuable that ranking high for esoteric (or too broad) non-conversion prone keywords.
Herein, in my experience, lies the difference between onshore and offshore SEO. Well managed offshore resources can make a difference in your core rankings. They just need to be pursuing the right tasks and focusing on the correct, most conversion prone keywords. Typically, inferior SEO shops spend the majority of their time in activities that will never drive a business result by chasing things like never ending directory submissions, search engine submission and an obsession with social media. Instead, SEO's should focus on building the absolute best site in the respective niche possible - or even working closely to improve conversions.
Beyond some very basic SEO strategies that repesent the foundation of search marketing there are few one sized fits all solutions. Thus, when you approach SEO providers the two biggest factors to consider are : 1) understanding where to find qualified traffic and 2) working tirelessly to obtain a piece of that traffic and 3) working tireslessly to convert those visitors when they arrive on your website. If offshore SEO providers don't address these concers early and often - they are probably not geared towards effective, white hat on-page optimization.
Content is King? More Like the Crown Prince
Posted by in Content Generation on June 12, 2009
In the five years that I have been doing internet marketing I often heard, and continue to hear, the phrase that "content is king" when it comes to successful search engine optimization and internet marketing.
I certainly agree that good authoritative, content is vitally important when it comes to generating inbound traffic to your web assets.
However, I would contend that content isn't truly king. It is more like the crown prince (or princess).. The real holy grail is to get your website in front of steady, natural link growth. Obviously, there are many paths to steady, natural link growth and continuous content generation is just one of these paths.
On one hand, I've seen sites create great, one of a kind, heavily trafficked content that generates zero back links. On the other hand, I've seen three year old widgets, calculators, quizzes, discussion posts etc. generate steady streams of links across huge periods of time.
I think this idea of steady, natural link growth really transcends the idea of "link bait" - to me, link bait has always seemed more temporal, and fleeting. With this philosophy, you're creating content that is meant to generate back links. SEO gurus and webmasters spend time thinking about what might grab people's attention and compel them to link to your site. Of course, this works well for the will it blendpeople and others but for a telecom or pharma player it might be a whole harder to create attractive link bait.
Instead, I think one practical take away here is that those SEOs and webmasters trying to create authoritative, important websites spend the time and money to generate not only great, fresh authoritative content and link bait but also spend time creating the tools, ROI calculators, quizzes, etc. that aren't easily duplicated and/or that require serious inputs of time and money to create. The differentiator here is that this content has lasting value and is useful to your visitor and is much more likely to create that steady stream of back links needed to be competitive against major brands and major sites that often have hundreds of thousands of indexed pages and backlinks.