omg seo wtf

Trav

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Whenever I think I have something figured out with seo then I read another blog about saying the exact opposite and that everything I just read is propaganda. How am I supposed to distinguish between
  • The people who know what they are talking about.
  • The people putting out propaganda.
  • The people who just don't know what they're talking about.
I was raised in the country and taught to spot bullshit from an early age but my skills are failing me. I've been reading all week and trying to figure out where to start but if I believe the wrong person then my site is going to be ruined. It seems like the only way to know is to try it for myself because it seems like everyone is at least partically full of shit and trying to sell me shit.
I want search engine traffic for my small business but I don't want to screw up and believe the wrong person and have it ruined. I saw people on another forum selling "white hat links" but based on what I've read it looks like they're just boldfaced liars.
Maybe I need to make a new site and try SEO on that first instead of on my main site?
Or just stop wasting time on this altogether and go back to building my business the good old fashioned way.
 
Okay looking back on my posts I'm showing my true colors as a cranky old man I guess LOL
 
@Trav What kind of business do you have? I certainly can provide you some tips, with some more information.
 
This forum is pretty bullshit free, CCarters posts on wicked fire are very good as well.
 
Easy on the seo blogs, cowboy. They're not there to help you do anything other than open your wallet so they can collect a commission. They don't give a shit about your small business any more than G does.

I would start with parasites. Much more margin for error and they'll still allow you to promote your business.

From there go to feeder sites that are built to bring traffic to your site.

And once you know how to rank those you can build links to your own sites.
 
There's many different ways to rank a site, or drive traffic. There's often no right or wrong answer as far as strategies to rank. Some guys will rank with Spam/Sape and do great, while others will take a safer approach and prefer a more whitehat approach. Both methods can work, and both crowds will have decent arguments against the other's approach.

Many ways to skin a cat. And when it comes to SEO, a lot of "theory" out there in the SEO community. The best way to learn is to TEST, and analyze the sites ranking for the keywords that you want to rank for. The answers are right there in plain sight for anyone to see.
 
Lay off the blogs. They are mostly for complete newbies. 99% of readers never employ a single method or drive significant traffic to their website. If you want more in-depth information, get yourself into one of the several good skype groups out there. Once you know the basics there isn't much else you can learn without testing. Test your own ideas out. Offer value.

My SEO strategy boils down to 3 things;

1) Value (on-site).
2) Solid copy and marketing tactics (on-site).
3) Great links.

The discrepancy comes from #3. Not even what a great link consists of but how to obtain them. In general Good sites with plenty of inbound links and consistent traffic = a link worth having. The level of blackhatness (risk) that you are willing to take on in order to obtain those links is really up to you. Create some feeder sites for testing purposes. Don't just throw automated links at your money site when you're starting out.
 
Trav said:
and go back to building my business the good old fashioned way.
Click to expand...
This. SEO is just ONE form of traffic generation. It is not a business.
I'm not some noob. I own a large SEO agency, and own a few hundred of my own sites for ranking. And I'm still telling you that SEO is not a business.

I would also argue that if you're not already neck deep in the advanced SEO game then it's probably not the best thing to get into. Too many changes now, and too much grandfathered content still floating around killing peoples SEO campaigns. Learn and utilize the SEO basics in everything, but focus on building an actual business and the rest will take care of itself or at least be exponentially easier.
 
@Trav- Build your business bro. Nothing old fashioned about growing a business and your bank account.

Think like your customer, act like your customer, see through your customers eyes, follow your customer around online and offline. Know your customer. Be the ball.

Build your lists. Email, SMS, Snail Mail, Morse Code- Any List!
Then use them wisely- deliver something of value 100% of the time, ask for something only 10% of the time.

Everyone wants the fastest path to more, more, more. That is through your existing client base almost always if you have a small business in place. Ask for reviews. Send Polls, Questionnaires, Surveys. Ask for Referrals based upon the results.

Pick up the phone! YES! As long as you don’t harass the shit out of them, they will appreciate your direct approach. Offer assistance, solutions- make it about them. That they will remember- for years and years.

There are so many ways to engage the folks who already spend with you- ask them their opinions. There’s gold there, pure gold. The links will come from them along with more business.

If you’re unsure about SEO start there first. Do the basics, create killer content. Give those existing and new clients a reason to seek you out. Give them reasons to share you with the world online and off.

Don’t get caught up in some short term guru cool-aid bullshit. Unless of course that IS your business...
 
SEO has become harder over the years, and at the same time, it has become a lot more straightforward. All you need to worry about is getting contextual links from related authority websites in your niche. The better your website, the easier this process will be. That's pretty much 80% of SEO in a nutshell.
 
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NormCharlton said:
Lay off the blogs. They are mostly for complete newbies. 99% of readers never employ a single method or drive significant traffic to their website. If you want more in-depth information, get yourself into one of the several good skype groups out there. Once you know the basics there isn't much else you can learn without testing. Test your own ideas out. Offer value.

My SEO strategy boils down to 3 things;

1) Value (on-site).
2) Solid copy and marketing tactics (on-site).
3) Great links.

The discrepancy comes from #3. Not even what a great link consists of but how to obtain them. In general Good sites with plenty of inbound links and consistent traffic = a link worth having. The level of blackhatness (risk) that you are willing to take on in order to obtain those links is really up to you. Create some feeder sites for testing purposes. Don't just throw automated links at your money site when you're starting out.
Click to expand...
I think this one is enough ! :smile:
 
-0o0- said:
SEO has become harder over the years, and at the same time, it has become a lot more straightforward. All you need to worry about is getting contextual links from related authority websites in your niche. The better your website, the easier this process will be. That's pretty much 80% of SEO in a nutshell.
Click to expand...

I'll add to this. Spend 95% of your link building efforts on this. Not on other spammy crap. The other 5% should be legit outreach that sends traffic your way, like blog comments and forum posts. But you should never ever use your own anchor choice anymore. Use a name for a blog comment and a URL anchor on forums. And when you get nice contextuals from big sites, don't bother asking for an anchor. Just let them choose. Google is getting stupid about every little detail, and you never know how its going to be tweaked in the future. Keep it as natural as possible and stay the course.
 
Spend a week finding quality blogs, ran by real people, inside of your niche and build a relationship with them. If your site has the content to justify a link, reach out and ask for one. Most old school bloggers still keep up a "friends sites" list on their blogspot, and if you can get on the blogroll its a hardcore sitewide that will give you instant SEO payback.
 
Opens a couple threads, disappears... I hope Trav comes back to read this because there's some really helpful advice here.
 
Don't over invest your time in SEO, use pareto principle. There are plenty of other channels to generate traffic.
 
Service based business? Tons of parasite options for local if so. You could pretty much leave your main website alone completely, and still gain market share/fuck around with SEO.
 
My biggest issue, like everyone I guess, with SEO is getting the damn links. I've got GSA SER and it used to work awesome but obviously most of the links its targeting are severely devalued now. I'm finding that blackhat has become bloody hard because just slinging links doesnt seem to do it anymore.

So my question is where the hell do I go for links now without having to actually buy them.
 
aussiefly said:
So my question is where the hell do I go for links now without having to actually buy them.
Click to expand...
You don't go for them, unless you have a proper budget. You simply BUILD them.
Get yourself a few cheap hosting accounts from http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ (first read about PBNs!). Then setup your own properties on those sites and experience magic :wink:

Seriously, you don't need to buy links. Just create them on sites that are under your control. Additionally you can use AutofillMagic (cheap but GOOD solution) plugin to create few extra WEB2.0 sites.Besides that use any means to get your links on sites that are of any value to you (guest blogs, articles, blog posts, forum links etc.)
Yes, it takes more time but once it's done you have a gun in your hand.

BTW, I think we need here (on BUSO) a proper basic SEO tutorial.
 
Okay, so thats a pretty simplistic approach you have described. On the face of it ..building a PBN sounds fine BUT the reality is that the number of "sites" that you need to make a difference is quite large unless of course you are talking high PR sites. The reality is the cost and time involved in maintainining even just 50 sites/month is quite high with no guarantee they will make enough of a difference to get you ranking in a moderate competition niche. So...PBN's clearly arnt that simple otherwise everyone would be doing them and ranking.

BTW...I think you need a dose of humility hence your "basic" seo tutorial comment.
 
@Andrewkar @aussiefly Yeah and if you're going the PBN route you have to make the PBN be as high quality as possible, and niche relevant. That means basic branding signals, good quality, etc. Which takes alot of effort to do RIGHT. Then you have to make sure the sites in your PBN don't have a footprint suggesting that one person owns them all. You can bet your ass that Google will find your PBN and penalize you. Possibly the best way (I think) is to just network with other people in your niche, or on a forum like this, you could try to form a private alliance with people you trust, and exchange links in the most natural way possible...
 
Calamari said:
Easy on the seo blogs, cowboy. They're not there to help you do anything other than open your wallet so they can collect a commission. They don't give a shit about your small business any more than G does.
Click to expand...

Agree, to a point. Looking at the content a blog provides vs. the offers it makes is a good way to determine how helpful they are trying to actually be.

I might be a bit biased here, because I run an SEO blog, but my bullshit meter starts going off when blogs that try and teach you about SEO/Marketing use a lot of affiliate offers. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of solid blogs that offer great info and have affiliate offers to what they write about, but I just can't really take content seriously when someone is saying "No really, this tool is the BOMB (please click my affiliate link because I get money for it)." But you know, it's an accepted way of doing things, that's just a personal preference and a guideline I try to follow for my own site.
 
There is work involved in creating PBNs but, that's the only way in my opinion to have a good links without buying them (and still have 100% control over them, unless you do some seriously BH stuff).
If PBN is done properly it will work just fine and Google won't find out. It's really not that difficult to get it done the right way. You don't even need to buy high PR domains because you can go with PR0-2 and build upon them. It gets expensive if you want to have PBNs for many niches but even then you could still create more general websites. PBNs are simple but, not everyone is doing it because most people are lazy and expect to get results overnight. Others just somehow don't understand the whole idea and got it wrong. I would say just get 5 sites and build and then test.
1) Buy them over period of two months.
2) Each on different host
3) Different design for each website (themes, plugins etc.)
4) Different subniches
5) Build links to them from whatever you can
6) Once they start ranking link them to your site (and other sites also!)
7) Measure results
Again, that's simplified but more or less this is how it looks. My point is that without the money there must be some other currency involved, that is time and a bit of sweat.
 
The thing with PBNs is not so much that they inevitably get "found and penalized" (practice shows they don't), but the fact that it's also just one type of link and you will usually need more than that to rank.

You can't expect to bring a new site into a niche that already has its' own authority players and trust hubs and rank it with 50 contextual links from 50 domains that are also 'newbies in the niche'. Sure, PBN links do give you a very good boost, but you will hit a plateau if you use only them.

That is why you need to reach out and look for link placements closer to the 'niche trust hubs', and yes it does not have to cost money but it will take time.
 
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