Where is my time best spent ?
-
Greetings,
I am a new aspiring SEO for a niche market company I helped create. Both the company and website launched in 2007. From 2007 till mid March 2012, the website was amateur hour with no SEO whatsoever. I have spent years building social media profiles. In doing so I have built quite an online presence and created brand awareness. Therefore our domain has some authority and some inbound links.
Since I started my first campaign on SEOMoz my organic search traffic has gone from around 0-5 hits to 35-50 hits a day in around 4 weeks. I have been submitting to directories that are targeted toward our niche market. I have contributed to community forum posts as well as talking to blog authors to write about our company and products, none of which seem to have any impact on our page or domain authority.
If I am already ranking for 50% of my targeted keywords in one of the most competitive markets there is, with only very few links compared to my competition, would my time be best spent starting to work on inbound marketing strategies/link building (to build my domain and page authority) as opposed to outbound marketing, content building and UX? I know all is necessary, but the company really needs to start making some ROI. (So my position as a SEO doesn't get shelved and I can continue using tools like SEOMoz.)
There are still some UX details we need to improve on the site (e.g., there are only product descriptions on half of our products on the new version of the site) but the product pages or categories the search traffic is landing on are all described (mostly)
I guess my question to the community is, if you were in my shoes (the only person in the company who is somewhat savvy to any of this), on what would you focus your time?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Warmest regards,
Site contains adult content (NSFW)
-
First improve UX, if the site is supposed to be about the user, then improve that. While improving that you can also improve any on-page SEO factors that will also improve your rankings. Better descriptions and optimized tags will improve your rankings. That will make your efforts down the road easier. From what I've seen, it takes 3-6 months for a new site to settle in so you have some time. If you were in a different industry I might say spend more time on building links and stuff, but I think you'll probably have to rely more on trying to get return customers or industry specific forums, etc. Maybe it's just me, but social media will probably be pretty difficult to get solid traction from(outside of industry specifics).
-
Thank you MCarle, I appreciate it.
-
You need to find out WHERE the ROI comes from in your site.
Example:
10 hits a day from people searching purple anodized floggers & sell 3 of them.
VS
100 hits a day from people searching Extreme Restraints & sell nothing.
Once you can narrow that down, that will help drill down where to improve.
I have heard with many commerce sites the more narrow the search string, teh more your buyer knows about that product and is ready to buy.
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
-
Best Educational track for internet marketing
My son has a degree in Marine Bio. Has developed a keen interest in SEO and internet marketing. He wants to make a career change. He does not want to go back for a 4 year degree in computer science. Are there graduate programs/degrees that will admit someone with a biological science degree? He wants to have a career in Internet marketing.
Industry News | | wianno1681 -
Is this a violation of Google guidelines and current industry best practices correct? Regarding Iran Facts
I have read Moz for a good deal of time but I have never been gotten involved, until now... While watching a YouTube video in the app on my smartphone an Advertisement came on Still screen shots located on my website www.dleichtweis.com This is a video of the advertisement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCQFm7PjWb8 I have reason to believing this is a violation of numerous polices, procedures, conditions and or best practices. I value Moz as a communities opinion. Google has been contacted in regards to this https://www.en.adwords-community.com/t5/Ad-Approvals-and-Advertising/I-want-answers-to-issue-Re-3-8187000002180/m-p/278355#M14740 I value your response. D Leichtweis
Industry News | | dleichtweis0 -
Best Tools for Invoicing, Accepting Payments, Sending Receipts
Hey All! I recently started my business about 1.5 years ago and am loving it, doing well, and learning new things every day! I am very curious what others in the industry use for proposals, invoicing, accepting payments and sending receipts. What we are doing now seems like a lot of trouble and we are using different platforms for almost all of it. Since starting, my goal has been to use as little paper as possible, so I do almost everything over the computer. We send out proposals using Quoteroller and that has been very useful because clients can click to the proposal from their email and they can also accept proposals through that link. We invoice clients from Quickbooks Online (QBO) and can have those sent directly to clients' email inbox. We have to manually create a payment link through one of Bluefin's payment platforms. We can send this link through email or add it to the proposal email sent from Quoteroller. After they accept proposals (hopefully!), and make payment, we have to go back into QBO and "receive payment" and this does not send out a receipt to the client. Maybe someone knows a way to fix it to where it does send an automatic receipt when we "receive payment?" If client requests a receipt, we must go into QBO and generate a "sales receipt." So, now that you know our process, are we making ourself work too much? Is there a more simple approach?
Industry News | | BWrightTLM0 -
Best ranking Magento sites?
What would be your top 10 Magento sites in terms of SEO and ranking? I'm looking for examples of Magneto sites that have been set up correctly and are ranking well. Especially recently launched sites that have managed to get themselves ranking well in competitive markets! Cheers
Industry News | | OnlineAssetPartners0 -
So, Google is the best site on the internet.. Right? Or is that just what most people tend to think off-face?
LOL woah, put the guns away. I'm not about to rant, I just have a question and wanted to present it well. Then again, I might have actually found some easy fixes to some of Google's tools that they could make. So here's the thing. I noticed how annoyed I always getting when I have to sign in every time I go to the adwords keyword tool, or analytics. Why do you have to sign in a million times? I think it is a problem that can be fixed because if you go to check your webmaster tools, you go straight into your account, where you can then select which site you want to explore. It knows that I am already signed in to Google Accounts when I go to webmaster tools, but it doesn't recognize that fact when I go to my Analytics account, or to use the Adwords Keyword Tool. Now, every site has things that they need to work on, but not necessarily that need to be 'fixed'. Google being so commonly accepted as the best site on the net, I thought it was funny/interesting at the least to point out the problem. Even funnier is the fact that I could submit it as a problem to see if they could fix it or not, but they do such a good job of making it hard for people to contact them, that A) I don't feel like wasting my time trying B) I don't even really know if it is possible to do that. Also, why is there no official Google Analytics App / Mobile site?? Google has been pushing how important mobile is to us webmasters, but then it doesn't seem to be very high on their priority list for the tools that we use. I mean you can't view graphs on phones / tablets (mine at least), in webmaster tools, OR google analytics. Also, its a pain in the but to click the sign in button on Google Analytics when using my phone / tablet, it disapears really fast for me (needs more research from others to see if everyone has the same problem) Thanks for the interest / answers everybody. Look forward to hearing from you guys. Also, tips and help would be nice if anybody knows a solution to my sign in issue
Industry News | | TylerAbernethy0 -
What is the best method for getting pure Javascript/Ajax pages Indeded by Google for SEO?
I am in the process of researching this further, and wanted to share some of what I have found below. Anyone who can confirm or deny these assumptions or add some insight would be appreciated. Option: 1 If you're starting from scratch, a good approach is to build your site's structure and navigation using only HTML. Then, once you have the site's pages, links, and content in place, you can spice up the appearance and interface with AJAX. Googlebot will be happy looking at the HTML, while users with modern browsers can enjoy your AJAX bonuses. You can use Hijax to help ajax and html links coexist. You can use Meta NoFollow tags etc to prevent the crawlers from accessing the javascript versions of the page. Currently, webmasters create a "parallel universe" of content. Users of JavaScript-enabled browsers will see content that is created dynamically, whereas users of non-JavaScript-enabled browsers as well as crawlers will see content that is static and created offline. In current practice, "progressive enhancement" in the form of Hijax-links are often used. Option: 2
Industry News | | webbroi
In order to make your AJAX application crawlable, your site needs to abide by a new agreement. This agreement rests on the following: The site adopts the AJAX crawling scheme. For each URL that has dynamically produced content, your server provides an HTML snapshot, which is the content a user (with a browser) sees. Often, such URLs will be AJAX URLs, that is, URLs containing a hash fragment, for example www.example.com/index.html#key=value, where #key=value is the hash fragment. An HTML snapshot is all the content that appears on the page after the JavaScript has been executed. The search engine indexes the HTML snapshot and serves your original AJAX URLs in search results. In order to make this work, the application must use a specific syntax in the AJAX URLs (let's call them "pretty URLs;" you'll see why in the following sections). The search engine crawler will temporarily modify these "pretty URLs" into "ugly URLs" and request those from your server. This request of an "ugly URL" indicates to the server that it should not return the regular web page it would give to a browser, but instead an HTML snapshot. When the crawler has obtained the content for the modified ugly URL, it indexes its content, then displays the original pretty URL in the search results. In other words, end users will always see the pretty URL containing a hash fragment. The following diagram summarizes the agreement:
See more in the....... Getting Started Guide. Make sure you avoid this:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355
Here is a few example Pages that have mostly Javascrip/AJAX : http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab https://www.pivotaltracker.com/public_projects This is what the spiders see: view-source:http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab This is the best resources I have found regarding Google and Javascript http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/ - This is step by step instructions.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=81766
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
Some additional Resources: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposal-for-making-ajax-crawlable.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=357690 -
Which one is THE BEST seo book
For you guys which one is the best SEO BOOK?? Maybe this one? http://www.amazon.com/Ranking-Number-One-Essential-Results/dp/1452849900/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1309247497&sr=8-4 Thanks in advance!
Industry News | | augustos1