You're a SEO manager for a new company working on a new site. Where to?
-
So, you've recently begun as a SEO manager for a new company who's just launched a lovely, gleaming corporate site to boot. The onsite stuff is taken care of and your attention turns to link building.
Now you've been in the game for a few years. You've seen things change in that time. Directories are out. Link networks are done. You're not going to embark on reciprocal linking either because it's bad and looks horribly tacky. Black Hat, White Hat - you know the score.
You're lucky that the company produces a page or two of news a day - it's original, informative, is great for keeping your clients informed and you punt this on Twitter and FB. A bit of link bait, eh?
But there's a rub: your competitors, with their bigger budgets, and industry clout, have been around for a some time longer than your company has been. They've snapped up all the good (industry-related) sites to get links from. You've approached all potential targets with the offer of good, relevant content and affiliate partnerships but they aren't having any of it. You're simply out-sized by the big boys next door - you can't compete. They're rich kids.
There just seems nowhere to get links from. Do you just go the route of press releases and articles? Do you use paid blogging services? Grovel at doorsteps. The industry you're in is incredibly commercial - no meek altruist is going to take pity and give you a couple backlinks out of kindness.
What do you do? What indeed...?
-
Thanks.
I see how my sentence allowed longtail to be merged with PPC. I actually wanted that to mean going after long tail with SEO efforts.
This is a good strategy, but to recommend looking for a new job in a less developed industry is almost like saying just give up and try something easy.
Some people can interpret it that way.
I think that it is a mistake for an SEO to accept jobs that are above his ability level or jobs where the resources that the company plans to put into an effort are not adequate to become competitive.
A lot of SEOs are selling the $500/month package to business owners who really should be spending the $5000/month needed to compete in their industry.
One of my favorite quotes is... "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog."
But even with that powerful attitude a smart chihuahua will stay in his weight class.
-
I saw "look for a job in an industry that is not as developed", I agree totally with you point regarding attacking long tails on PPC. This is a good strategy, but to recommend looking for a new job in a less developed industry is almost like saying just give up and try something easy.
-
Wow, you saw PPC and didn't read any further.
-
I don't think that is good advice at all, those that think that SEO is not worth doing or impossible in certain sectors either are too lazy or do not know how. Simply throwing money at PPC is an option, and does provide short term benefit, but it's not a long-term solution for continued ROI.
-
Ye, I've made the plea but when resources are limited there's only so much you can you I suppose. I'm also going to see what the useless PPC man is up to - perhaps throw more of my 2¢ into the fray.
Being selective as at which industry I go into next has become more and more apparent. Probably good advice for any SEO with enough experience who can afford to be selective.
-
What do you do? What indeed...?
Become an expert at PPC and attack ALL of the long tail keywords.
Make a case to the boss for the resources needed to wage war at the level needed to become competitive.
You can also look for a job doing SEO in an industry that is not as highly developed or as cut-throat. I know of a lot of industries where I would not want to be an inhouse SEO.
-
This is one of those scenarios where you just have to be creative, tgood content, linkbait and social connection will be key here. Build up a good social following through twitter, facebook, google+ etc.. where you can reach out to users, follow industry specific blogs and become part of the conversation.
Once that following is built you can start syndicating creative linkbait - think of original content for your industry that your followers will appreciate and want to share themselves - think infographics, Whitepapers, video, unique captivating content. This is the kind of stuff that people will start to talk about, link and share themselves on the social and blogospheres building you natural links. It may be hard to achieve, but without a big budget it may be your best option.
Article and PR syndication rarely works, usually it results in low quality, spammy articles with 1 exact anchor link per 250 words. Looks tacky and spammy, and I am sure it looks the same to Google.
-
Hi TCE,
Best of Luck For New Role in New Company.
Start with a company blog, find a particular niche in what your company is doing and start writing things about that.
Invite one or two good industry writers for writing on your blog. So if you cant write they can help you.
Start following good blogs, twitter accounts of your competitors, industry vertical and other influential of your business area, so you can have the idea and news about the new and current things which is shaping your industry. It also become a thought for your blog post.
Do some local, participate in some events which relates to your business, help them to promote by mentioning in your blogs.
Dont search for where to get links, strive for the good content from your industry. Ask your offline marketing department give you some hint about core value of your company and product so you can write it down.
Create a video interview of your owners, customers publish them.
Gather a data of industry and try if you can make a good infograph.
There are a lot more things you can do with new companies, ask others to share their experience why they join this new company and so on..
I hope this will help to you.
Thanks
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
-
What is the best strategy to SEO Discontinued Products on Ecommerce Sites?
RebelsMarket.com is a marketplace for alternative fashion. We have hundreds of sellers who have listed thousands of products. Over 90% of the items do not generate any sales; and about 40% of the products have been on the website for over 3+ years. We want to cleanup the catalog and remove all the old listings that older than 2years that do not generate any sales. What is the best practice for removing thousands of listings an Ecommerce site? do we 404 these products and show similar items? Your help and thoughts is much appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JimJ3 -
Negative SEO Click Bot Lowering My CTR?
I am questioning whether one of our competitors is using a click bot to do negative SEO on our CTR for our industry's main term. Is there any way to detect this activity? Background: We've previously been hit by DoS attacks from this competitor, so I'm sure their ethics/morals wouldn't prevent them from doing negative SEO. We sell an insurance product that is only offered through broker networks (insurance agents) not directly by the insurance carriers themselves. However, our suspect competitor (another agency) and insurance carriers are the only ones who rank on the 1st page for our biggest term. I don't think the carrier sites would do very well since they don't even sell the product directly (they have pages w/ info only) Our site and one other agency site pops onto the bottom of page one periodically, only to be bumped back to page 2. I fear they are using a click bot that continuously bounces us out of page 1...then we do well relatively to the other pages on page 2 and naturally earn our way back to page 1, only to be pushed back to page 2 by the negative click seo...is my theory. Is there anything I can do to research whether my theory is right or if I'm just being paranoid?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheDude0 -
Redirect from old domain to a new domain
Hi, assuming i have an old domain that i would like to redirect it to the new domain because the old domain contain good links on it and been ranking for its keywords. Would it be a wise choice? and can i redirect my sub domain into my new one too? for example website1.com/life > website2.com/life and how do i do so? can i do that by hosting the old domain in my new domain hosting and do all those redirect include sub domain redirect?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Have just submitted Disavow file to Google: Shall I wait until after they have removed bad links to start new content lead SEO campaign?
Hi guys, I am currently conducting some SEO work for a client. Their previous SEO company had built a lot of low quality/spam links to their site and as a result their rankings and traffic have dropped dramatically. I have analysed their current link profile, and have submitted the spammiest domains to Google via the Disavow tool. The question I had was.. Do I wait until Google removes the spam links that I have submitted, and then start the new content based SEO campaign. Or would it be okay to start the content based SEO campaign now, even though the current spam links havent been removed yet.. Look forward to your replies on this...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sanj50500 -
Negative SEO and when to use to Dissavow tool?
Hi guys I was hoping someone could help me on a problem that has arisen on the site I look after. This is my first SEO job and I’ve had it about 6 months now. I think I’ve been doing the right things so far building quality links from reputable sites with good DA and working with bloggers to push our products as well as only signing up to directories in our niche. So our backlink profile is very specific with few spammy links. Over the last week however we have received a huge increase in backlinks which has almost doubled our linking domains total. I’ve checked the links out from webmaster tools and they are mainly directories or webstat websites like the ones below | siteinfo.org.uk deperu.com alestat.com domaintools.com detroitwebdirectory.com ukdata.com stuffgate.com | We’ve also just launched a new initiative where we will be producing totally new and good quality content 4-5 times a week and many of these new links are pointing to that page which looks very suspicious to me. Does this look like negative Seo to anyone? I’ve read a lot about the disavow tool and it seems people’s opinions are split on when to use it so I was wondering if anyone had any advice on whether to use it or not? It’s easy for me to identify what these new links are, yet some of them have decent DA so will they do any harm anyway? I’ve also checked the referring anchors on Ahrefs and now over 50% of my anchor term cloud are totally unrelated terms to my site and this has happened over the last week which also worries me. I haven’t seen any negative impact on rankings yet but if this carries on it will destroy my link profile. So would it be wise to disavow all these links as they come through or wait to see if they actually have an impact? It should be obvious to Google that there has been a huge spike in links so then the question is would they be ignored or will I be penalised. Any ideas? Thanks in advance Richard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Rich_9950 -
Explain To Me How Negative SEO ISNT Real?
I'm seeing lots of "offers" springing up to do negative SEO on your competitors. I know people keep insisting this sort of thing is just a bogeyman, but follow my logic here: We know the Penguin update PENALIZED, and not just devalued "over optimization." Read: exact match keyword links. We know that if your link profile is too "unnaturally" keyword heavy, (it should be majority your brand or your domain or your company name, etc) you get penalized. Again, not devalued, PENALIZED. Ok. So what is to stop a blackhatter from using one of those software bots to just kill a competitor? Knowing the above two points, lets say a website is ranking for "cool widgets". Why not just create a bunch of exact match keyword spam links for "cool widgets" targeting that website. In a while, the Penguin penalty kicks in and bammo. The thing that scares me about the post Penguin landscape is that google has specifically named an activity ("over optimization") that will get you PENALIZED. So, don't do that, right? Except, that means they've explicitly outlined an activity that will be penalized, and is easy for others to do to you, and that you would be powerless to prevent. I await the usual "this is an age old worry that has never come true" replies. But if you reply that way, ask yourself, can you refute the logic of the points above? And also... oh no... It's happening. I'm seeing it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brianmcc1 -
Big Rank Drop - Is My Site Spammy?
Like many others one of our niche sites - aluminumeyewear.com got slammed in the recent algo updates (4/18). All of our pages dropped at least 40/50 places which seems like a penalty to me. The site still ranks for its name thankfully. I'm trying to figure out if this is an over-optimization penalty, or a devaluing of back links or both. I would be grateful if I could get some feedback as to whether you feel the site is over optimized and how I could check if sources of back links have been penalized which in turn has effected us? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smckenzie750 -
New website :301 redirection of a established domain
Hello , I am launching a new website which would host user generated content . Based on my brandname i have purchased a new domain . In order to improve SEO rankings i was considering to purchase a good quality domain (have gr8 link backs) and then perform 301 redirection of the domain to the new brandname.co.in domain . Does this work ? Is there any harm in doing this ? . Does the Link juice pass naturally ? Warm Rgd
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ShoutOut0