martes, 23 de febrero de 2010




 

How to Get the Most Out of Your SEO

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 02:43 AM PST

Posted by willcritchlow

The good news is that tomorrow (Wednesday 24th Feb), at 8.30am PST (11.30am EST / 4.30pm GMT), I am going to be joined on the next Distilled conference call by Richard Baxter as we discuss "how to get the most from your SEO". The even better news is that it is totally free (as long as you register in time).

If you would like to join us on the call, simply register on the Distilled site and you will be sent instructions to join the conference (which will be handled by gotomeeting / gotowebinar).

Previous calls have been more technical and have been essentially presentations that I have delivered with a slide-deck. I did one on SEOmoz tools and one on how to be an Excel ninja - both videos are available on the Distilled site.

This one is going to be a little different. Rich should need little introduction. With a strong background in in-house travel SEO followed by founding his agency, SEOgadget, he is not only a true guru of keyword research and large site architecture, but also has experience on both sides of the client / agency relationship. He also spoke at the London PRO training seminar last October (thanks to foliovision for the photo):

Richard Baxter presenting at the London PRO training

Rich and I plan to let you into a relaxed chat. We might pull up the occasional website or slide but fundamentally, it'll be a little like sitting in on a live whiteboard Friday (on a Wednesday, without a whiteboard, or Rand!).

The conversation is likely to be pretty free-flowing - in many ways it will lead on from my WBF conversation with Rand about choosing an SEO consultant - but I can't guarantee exactly what we will talk about! We are intending to cover:

  • the best tasks to keep in-house vs. outsource
  • combining SEO effectively with PPC, PR and marketing
  • integrating SEO into other processes (e.g. development, business development)
  • how to get the most from your agency
  • how to keep an eye on your agency and avoid bans and penalties
  • how to be a great SEO client and get even more out of your agency

We hope to have you there. We will be taking questions - both on Twitter (hashtag: #optimalSEO) and via the chat interface in gotowebinar, but if you have anything you'd specifically like us to cover, feel free to use the comments below to chime in.


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SEO for Startups: Top 7 Lessons + A Trip to YCombinator

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 03:19 PM PST

Posted by randfish

Last week, while in London, I received an email from Paul Graham, whom I've long admired, possibly even idolized a bit. He asked if I was available to come speak at a YCombinator SEO event in Mountain View. Tonight, I presented at that evented and thought I'd share my experiences, recommendations and yes, my presentation. Not everything that was discussed is public, in fact, much of it is "classified" at YC's request. However, there's so much good material that it would be criminal not to share.

First up, my presentation from the YCombinator SEO for Startups event (naturally, hosted on YC company and prior SEOmoz consulting client, Scribd):

SEO for Startups: YCombinator February 2010

Next, since it's hard to do any slide deck justice with just the slides, a list of top advice and recommendations, not just from the slide deck, but from many years of interactions, consulting and Q+A help for startups:

  1. SEO as a Strategy, not a Tactic
    Yelp uses SEO as a strategy. When their community finds something new in the neighborhood, content is created. They are limited in scale only by the physical world's local businesses. Plus, it's only natural that local businesses with good rankings will want to share those via a badge and a link; it's only natural that their top contributors will want to share the reviews they've given. SEO is a strategy - it's part of what makes them the business they are. If you're just thinking in terms of keywords in the title and submitting to some directories, you're going to get lapped by someone who understands how to make content, links, sharing & search demand an integral part of how users interact with their website.
  2. Start SEO in the Concept Phase, Not After the Site is Built
    It's hard to do, particularly when you spend your first two years as a founder thinking SEO is a cross between black magic and BS, but SEO works best when it's architected alongside a businesses marketing plan. I've mentioned in the past that I think VCs and angel investors should be asking about SEO in the first meeting - startups should be three steps ahead of that.
  3. Build Accessibility First & Foremost
    I come back time and time again to the SEO Pyramid. It all starts with unique content that engines can find and users find valuable. I'm now the proud owner of a Y Combinator t-shirt bearing the tagline "Make Something People Want." All I'm asking is that you also make something Google (and Bing) can find, too. And, in concert with this advice, check out Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization to help solve that puzzle.
  4. SEO is NOT a One Time Event
    Fire and forget works with smartbombs (or maybe not - scroll to section 5), but it doesn't work with SEO. This is a constantly evolving field, and not so much because Google's algorithm is changing all the time, but more so because 300 (or 30,000) competitors are constantly trying to produce better content and market it more effectively while the engines are constantly experimenting with new kinds of results and information. No product is good enough to survive without marketing - even Google itself just ran a Super Bowl ad. SEO is marketing, and as such demands the same attention. Ignore it, and you will fall by the wayside.
  5. Analytics are a Religion
    An ad salesman comes to you and tells you that 20% of your exact target market is reading a particular magazine. By putting in a full-page ad every month for the next year, you can ensure that they'll all know your name and many will buy from you. But wait... How many saw it? How many took the desired action? How many heard about it from a friend or read a loaner copy on a flight? You'll never know. With SEO, it's the complete opposite - every action has a trackable reaction. If you ignore the data, use last-touch attribution or neglect to build serious models that track the value of your campaigns, you may as well blow the money on a giant billboard on the 101. Who knows? Maybe the right investor will drive by and decide to invest... Just don't count on it.
  6. Clever Tricks Aren't that Clever (or New)
    I promise that no hairbrained scheme to manipulate the search rankings by registering thousands of sites or scraping the web for open places to link or contacting 6,000 "friends" for a link exchange are either A) new or B) going to work. Apply your creativity in white hat ways and make sure it passes the Google web spam litmus test. And no, that doesn't just mean it passes Google's Quality Guidelines, it means you would happily show it to any engineer on the webspam team content in the knowledge that they'd actually WANT it to help your site rank better.
  7. Don't Let Search Dominate Your Traffic Sources
    If Google sends 90% of your traffic, your business has real danger associated with it. Why aren't people coming directly to your site, being passed links in email, getting Tweets and Facebook mentions that send traffic? Why is no one blogging about you, writing about you in the press, commenting in forums with links to your content? These "natural" signs tell a story of a real business providing real value. The 90-95% Google trafficked site says something strange is going on, and Google themselves are likely to figure that out sooner or later.

And last, but not least, I'd like to recognize some of the brilliant people and companies represented. It was humbling to receive such kind praise and attentitive ears from companies like:

Tragically, the following brief set of photos from the event were taken on my new Android camera phone (yes, I'm such a Hacker News/Paul Graham geek that I had to pull it out):

YCombinator Crew Eating Dinner
YCombinator Founders Eating Dinner (noticeably absent in the photo was the single female founder - but they do have one!)

Y Combinator Entrance & Beverages
Luckily, there was plenty of Coke to help keep me hydrated (and caffeinated) during the event

Y Combinator Rush for Pizza
The rush for pizza (apparently, The Flash is one of the founders they funded!)

Paul Graham & Rand
Paul and Rand in the Anybots lab - thanks again, Paul; it was a fantastic experience

There were more than 40 companies in attendance, so there's no way to name them all here, but the above represent some of the most active on the SEO panel and during the lengthy, but phenomenal Q+A. Later this week, SEOmoz's own Danny Dover will be attending the Y Combinator meetup in Seattle, and he'd love to say hi and chat with folks there, and hopefully help to bring a good name to SEO.

p.s. At the end of the presentation, Paul noted that the startups owed me a debt for sharing information about SEO. I disagree, but who am I to pass up such a wonderful opportunity. My only request to the attendees was that, if they should see SEO being badmouthed on Hacker News to kindly step in and help others realize the power and legitimacy of this marketing channel.


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