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 Site or Place to Hire Mid Level SEO Specialists
Hello Mozzers, Our digital agency has been continuously growing which is a good thing BUT recruiting for Junior or Mid Level SEO Specialists is getting harder in our area (we are in Orlando Florida). We post on Indeed.com but the level of knowledge and also the amount of candidates is not a lot. Do you know any other site that only pertains to our industry? Any suggestions? In fact, its been hard , we are even thinking of developing a job board site just for our niche. Your recommendation and thoughts?
Industry News | | ChatterBuzzMedia0 -
Best SEO agency
What are peoples thoughts and ratings on SEO agencies in London. There are so many of them it is hard to understand which are the best.
Industry News | | S_Curtis1 -
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 way to charge my clients...........I think I finally decided
I have struggled with the best way to charge my clients FOREVER it seems and I think I finally have decided on how to proceed! ANY suggestions would be greatly appreciated! (I have read the seomoz blog posts about the subject, the Art of SEO and Search Engine Optimization Secrets book and tons of blogs, etc). I got into this business because of what I was able to accomplish with my party rental companies website and what I had studied and read for months and months. Without knowing any better I tried to get into SEO and online marketing and fell straight into designing websites and subcontractors and hosting and everything EXCEPT seo work! sound familiar? I CAN'T be the only one this happened to 🙂 I have regrouped and finally gotten my FIRST pure SEO client. They agreed to pay me $3,000 over 6 months for JUST recommendations with monthly reporting on traffic, # of links, etc. My plan is to charge clients X amount of dollars broken up over 6 months - $2-5k. (that will include monthly reporting) for a list of recommendations. (on page, link opportunities, design suggestions, kw suggestions, email campaign, on and on). NO MORE $400-500 FOR A WHOLE WEBSITE - INCLUDING CONTENT CREATION! (I was stupid enough to do this - TWICE! I like doing it this way so I can focus on giving them maximum value right from the get go and not slowing spoon feeding my knowledge out to them or them getting burned out after 2 months and not wanting to continue because they haven't seen a miracle yet. I will justify the clients investment by dividing that lump sum by $75 an hour (low for some of you I know) and track the time I spend researching links, their competitors, their on page, etc. and include it in my monthly report. I plan to give my first client their report in a few weeks and it will be pretty comprehensive but not EVERY thing I can think of but enough to impress. They are welcome to pursue the links I found, make the site changes, etc themselves OR I will be happy to have ALL my recommendations implemented for them for a reasonable, fair amount. If they want me to do it I will explain my staff will be doing the work and it will be $25 +/- an hour vs. $75 Sorry for the long post and thanks for hanging in there if you read this far! 🙂 I would love any suggestions or flaws with my plan! Thanks in advance and have an AWESOME week! Matthew
Industry News | | Mrupp441 -
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 -
I'm looking for a freelance SEO ninja who I can pull into client projects from time to time. Any advice?
My company helps health care providers with internet and social strategy and solutions. At times, my clients need SEO services and I need a trusted and skilled pro to turn to who I can collaborate with on behalf of my clients. I may even be interested in putting together an SEO package for my clients if I can find the right person/agency to work with. Thanks for any help/advice you can offer.
Industry News | | bgeyser0 -
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