Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
SEO Triage - What matters most?
-
If you only had 8 hours to work on an SEO project...
How would you spend your time to get the fastest results?
On-page optimization, or link-building?
Context:
On-Page Optimization: "A" grade (SEOMOZ On-Page Report Card)
Keywords: "moderately competitive" (SEOMOZ Keyword Difficulty Tool)
Domain Authority: 33 (SEOMOZ Competitive Link Analysis)
-
Thank you everyone! Appreciate the focused advice and insights.
-
If it is a small local business I'd definitely invest a few of those hours in getting local profiles set up. Taking the time to do consistent, quality listings can prove invaluable for a local business. Here is a great list of local business directories:
http://websuccessdiva.com/blog/local-business-directories/
Other than that I agree with Ryan that project mapping is very important. But that is assuming you will eventually have more than 8 hours to work on the project.
-
I would check the quality of the content (human readability and usefulness) and then, so long as all is good with the on-page SEO as you say it is, I would ensure I have social bookmarking buttons in prominant places, and open accounts on the major social sites (twitter, Facebook etc) and try to make it as easy as possible for folks to bookmark the content.
I would spend just 30mins initially following a few people that appear interested in the industry.
Then:
If it is an ecommerce site, take a feed from the mysql database, and modify it for Google Base (quick once you know how). If the site used an open source shopping cart/CMS, then there is likely a plugin/modification for free or cheap to do this instead of going into the database directly, as so this could be automated.
Also if it is an ecommerce store, I would ensure the h1's are showing correctly on every product page, and that there is GREAT (and I mean GREAT) navigation throughout the site (in fact, this goes for most sites, not just Ecommerce ones).
If it is a site that's based on a blogging platform (wordpress etc) then I would check the RSS feeds, and submit them to decent RSS sites, to aid indexing.
Follow that by looking for some guest post availability, write and submit a decent press release about the new site launch (be sure to submit to Google News sources!) and finish off by doing an hours extra work over a coffee, drawing up some flow diagrams of the next steps. Part of this final step would be working out how much time I could realistically spend each week or month on tasks for this website.
Phew, that's a fair bit for 8 hrs, but it is realistic if you get your head down, and keep the coffee flowing.
I hope this helps, but I bet some guys and gals will disagree with what I have said! Still, each to their own!
-
On-page optimization, or link-building?
If this is a content site.... neither.... Spend the time to make social sharing very easy. Any left-over time trying to get links from hub sites in that niche.
If this is a retail site... would go for links from the easy industry and community resource sites.
For both sites would ask for 8 more hours to brainstorm highly linkable content that the site owners will produce.
-
If I was only giving 8 hours I'd spend it all on project mapping. The work a site requires to be effective is way more than 8 hours but you could construct a broad project road map that would lead you consistently in the right direction for a year or more.
With the above context I'd be working on increasing domain authority and auditing site architecture to get the most bang for the buck. Steve's suggestions are spot on.
-
A bit of each if you're limited like that... if you've already got the A grade for the keywords then I'd focus on link building mostly. Maybe an hour on the on-page (as long as your content is right already) and the other seven on links?
You'll still need to do more later though.
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
-
Are long URLs bad for SEO?
Hi, I would like to know how bad is the long URLs that I have on my website. At the moment we have 543 long urls and I was wondering how big is the impact in my SEO. Thank you
Link Building | | Blind_Foundation3 -
What are the SEO implications of high quality backlinks from US-based websites to UK-based websites?
Hi everyone, quick question I hope someone could help me with: We're representing a client based in the UK. As part of their overall strategy we've been linkbuilding. At the moment, about 80/90% of the links we've gained come from UK-based sites, with 10/20% coming from US-based websites. The US based websites are very good (think New York Times and genuine, relevant blogs with good readerships). An external search analyst/consultant has contacted the client to say that the US links will be harming the site, because the links are from websites in the US and not the UK. We believe that if 80/90% of the links were from the US this could indeed cause harm as it could indicate to search engines that our client is in the US when it's not (which might compromise their chance of ranking in .co.uk versions of search engines) however because it's only 10/20%, and because the linking sites are very good, we believe that they will getting all of the benefits of the positive metrics without any meaningful negatives. We just wanted to get a few opinions on this to see if people think that we're mistaken, and would be glad to hear any opinions contrary to our own.
Link Building | | GoUp0 -
Does embedded content (from my site) help seo
hi i am creating a new accommodation site and will have some great videos on it (fly bys of local beaches and virtual tours of hotels etc). from an seo perspective i have two questions: 1. should i host on my own site or youtube/vimeo - its a new site but in the long run i want my site to get the credit 2. i will be giving the hotels the chance to embed and video content i have on their own sites. does this help my own seo juice and if so is there a particular way it should be done. there will be around 90 well established local hotels in total so figured it should add up.
Link Building | | neilhenderson0 -
Creating A Scholarship For SEO
My client is a Law Firm just outside of Tampa, and I am trying to get her keyword phrase: "Tampa Car Accident Attorney" in the top 3. One of the strategies I want to use is to create a scholarship for "Tampa Area Students and how a car accident impacted their life" or "Tampa Area Students and how they think they can decrease car accidents." (that's still be worked on). Once the scholarship is created, I want to put it on our Tampa Car Accident Attorney page, and get other companies to link to that page. My question is what links should we go after? Because that will tailor it to who we give the scholarship to. We could give it to a University of South Florida student, and get one .edu link. We could do the same thing for the University of Tampa, or Stetson Law School, but we'd only be getting one link from each of them. If we set it up for high schoolers, we can get more links from the community and schools, but I'm not sure high school .edu links matter all that much. Is 10 high school .edu links as important as 1 college .edu link? I don't know. If anyone has had an experience with this or any insights, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
Link Building | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Article submission web-sites and SEO
Does article submission web-sites have any impact to SEO in these days? There are a lot of good/not so good article submission databases, but does it really matter if you spend a time to write unique articles for them? I mean, is it a good way for link-building, or should I spend more time for other parts of SEO? There are also a special websites (for example SubmitYourArticle) which automate this process, does it make sense to use this services? Alternates? Lots of questions… Update Sorry, I found some good answers only after that I posted this question.
Link Building | | ditoroin0 -
Web Designers and SEOs using backlinks from client sites
What are your thoughts on SEOs and web designers putting their own links in the footers of client sites. For the sake of argument, lets assume that the client is happy for the link to be there. I'm referring to the SEO merits of the link being there from an 'irrelevant' website. My belief is that this goes against what Google is looking for and that these are irrelevant links and likely to be picked up and penalised. That's what I believe! However, I see lots of sites offering SEO services that have dofollow links from their client sites, using exact match anchor text and they are all ranking highly. Is it just a matter of time before Google sniffs them out and penalises them for it? Or should I be going through my client sites and adding myself a dofollow link in the footer? (with their permission of course). The highest ranking sites in any UK city do this. If you search SEO Manchester, SEO Leeds etc and find the top ranking sites and check them out on opensite explorer, they are all using a disproportionate amount of dofollow backlinks form client sites.
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
Backlink from foreign language websites good for SEO
I was wondering if backlinks from foreign language webistes can help me in ranking? For example: I ve got website in slovak language and I would place article with backlink on the foreign language website. In which language should be the text surrounding the keyword?
Link Building | | joeko1 -
Does the ratio of external nofollow links to external "do follow" links matter in terms of SERPs ranking?
My site has an external link nofollow:dofollow ratio of approximately 1:1 That is, there are about as many nofollow external links as "do follow" external links. I have an impression that the ratio of no-follow to "do follow" links is a factor in the way that our website shows up in SERPs. I have the impression from reading a variety of sources, and from looking at Seomoz, that calculate "trust" factors as if they mattered (in SERPs), that seem to value a relatively low nofollow:dofollow ratio. Am I correct about that? Thanks,
Link Building | | tcolling
Tim PS - I don't know whether or not this matters, but our website is at: www.trustworthycare.com - Tim0
