SEO is changing - how has your day to day changed?
-
I'm sure we all read on our alternatives to Google Reader that SEO is changing - "here's what we must do to be relevant in 2014". I find these articles boring and uninformative. I suspect I'm not alone.
The reason I'm not their biggest fan is because I feel like I've invested 10 minutes into an article that I have no actual guidance from. Therefore, I thought I'd ask the real SEO's, you guys, what has actually changed for you?
Are you now not creating content with the aim of getting links? If you run a commercial website, what are you doing different to rank your product pages - directly or indirectly? Please share with the group.
I'm sure many like me are still brainstorming and creating content they think will grab people's attention and gain them links, whilst also pushing their Facebook, Twitter, Youtube profiles, etc etc. What has changed about this?
-
Hi Purple Indigo,
If I can, I'll try and actually telephone the person I want the link from - this way they can't bin my enquiry out-of-hand without reading it! It is much, much easier to get the link you want if you can speak to the person (if the person runs a business local to me, I'll try and meet them for coffee to ask!) If I can't speak to a link prospect, I will email them. These have a lower success rate than the ones initiated by phone.
We haven't created any link bait for our sites. This is mostly down to a lack of resource. I can't ask for a designer/writer's time for something that may not work. But, having said that, we do create a ton of regular advice articles (I work for a mortgage broker specialising in landlord mortgages) and these get linked to naturally (but there is no control over these links, but they are still very nice to have!!!)
What are your preferred methods?
Amelia
-
I'm wondering if my English sense of sarcasm didn't come through as strongly as I'd hoped from my original post! My general point was that as far as I'm concerned, doing what we do hasn't changed that much. The articles telling us otherwise, screaming as us to look out for "these top 10 tips for 2014" are doing more harm than good.
You've mentioned there that "it's all changing on an everyday basis" - I'd have to ask, really? My day to day is the same. What does the "change" really mean to you?
-
I do similarly. I have various lists that I work from, ones that I send content through to when we do a content piece and another list of "targets" - sites we'd like to create some sort of affiliate partnership with or reach out to from time to time because we feel it is more of a direct cross over of our targets.
I'm interested to read what you do with the people on your list. Are you just dropping them emails in an attempt to get a link or are you sending through "linkbait" when you have it? Hearing your method would be cool.
-
I agree with ameli, SEO has not changed that much from the early days it's more that the tools have changed. Twitter has turned into Buffer and Hootsuite, G. Analytics has changed into some weird combination of Analytics, Raventools, and Moz, and so on.
It's all changing on an everyday basis but the basics still remain the same. Create an awesome website, engage with your customers online, and care.
-
I honestly don't think the fundamentals have changed that much from when I started out in SEO about 10 years ago. Yes, some link building techniques have become toxic and some onsite practices too, but SEO in it's most basic form has not changed. We are still trying to make sure our site is the best match for the search queries we want to rank for. And, the way we get there is still the same - on-page techniques backed-up by quality links from relevant sources.
No black and white animal ever spoiled my rankings and I believe it is because I have always erred on the side of caution. Sometimes, I've been desperate for links and come close to making poor decisions though! I always compile a list of links before I start actually trying to build them and I always look at the list afresh the next day. If something gets in due to me feeling a little desperate, I can always take it out the next day when I'm thinking more clearly!
To be relevant in 2014, you must do the same as you should have been doing in 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010.... etc. That is to say,. you should be reading Google's webmaster guidelines and make sure you don't do anything against the 'rules'. You should be creating content that people actually want to read, to watch, to listen to, to gaze at.... It's not easy getting this right but I've found a good way of making sure my content resonates with my target audience is to read forums to get an idea of the sorts of things people are worried about/interested in or talking about online.
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
-
Content change and variations in ranking
Hello, I have create a new webpage and asked google in the webmaster tool to crawl it. Within minutes it is ranked at a certain spot. I did make changes to it to increase the ranking and right away I could see variations in ranking either up or down ? I have done the same same thing for a page that has been existing on my website for many years. I changed the content, asked the webmaster tool to re-crawl it. It got the new content within minutes but the ranking doesn't seem to change. Maybe my content isn't good enough but I doubt. Could it be that on old pages it takes a couple weeks to see ranking changes whereas on new page it is instantaneous. Has anyone experienced something similar ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
How do I optimize dynamic content for SEO?
Hello, folks! I'm wondering how I optimize a site if it is built on a platform that works based on dynamic content. For example, the page pulls in certain information based on the information it has about the user. Not every user will see the same page. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Geonetric
Lindsey0 -
Video seo stats
I've come across various places that give statistics for things like "Video search results have a higher click-through than plain text results. " and
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordon_Hall
"Video is 50 times more likely to get organic page ranks in Google than plain text results" How true are these and does anyone have a definitive guide to video SEO?0 -
SEO for an exponentially growing site?
Hey Mozers! I was having a quick chat with a friend the other day on doing SEO for a site that grows in page size at an exponential rate and was just wondering how you would go about optimizing it? The example that we used would be a site that allowed users to upload videos and then have people vote on two videos against each other. So, if there are 100 uploaded videos and each of them are pared up with the other 99 to create a unique voting/battle page which has it's own unique URL, the site can get very large, VERY quickly. Meaning if just one more video is uploaded there would be How exactly would you go about optimizing the site? My biggest area of confusion would be generating sitemaps. I'm aware of best practices with large sitemaps (i.e. having a sitemap of sitemaps, not going over 50k in entries per sitemap etc..) But, how would you go about creating the sitemaps for this website if it's growing at an exponential rate, if at all? If you have any other questions feel free to ask and I'll clarify it. Thanks! 😃 **TL;DR How would you optimize a site that grows at an exponential rate? **
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanChoo0 -
What is the best way to learn SEO?
I was wondering if it's worth taking an SEO Training course. If so is it better to take a live class or Online class. Or is better to just read all the SEO Books out there? Or is there a good video series anyone can recommend? What is the best way to learn SEO? I have a good understanding of SEO but I'm not a Pro ( Yet ). Obviously SEO is always evolving so even the Pro's are constantly updating their skill set but I want to make sure my foundation is solid and complete. Advice Please. Thank you all.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Changing website providers
After increasing suffering down time from my current website provider, I am seriously considering finding a new one. My only concern is the effect on SERP. Does anyone have any experience with this and what to do and avoid?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
SEO-friendly WordPress Templates
Hi, I usually build WordPress sites and I was thinking about buying one of those ready-made Wordpress templates I found on a site that sells them to the public. FYI, the site at issue is: yootheme.com. I'd like to make sure that building sites using ready-made templates is NOT a bad thing. Could you please confirm? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
What are the most underrated SEO tactics?
Looking over the discussion of underrated SEO tactics at http://sphinn.com/story/178993/ , I'm curious if folks here have any favorite SEO tactics that they feel are ignored, underrated, or somehow not appreciated by the community at large. Any thoughts? Among the tactics listed in the Sphinn post: Blog commenting Analytics to identify low-hanging keyword fruit Getting your site set up properly at the server level Unique and relevant imagery Internal links Google Place page optimization Several more... Any others that should be included? I'd personally add segmenting your keyword traffic into trademark (those that mention your brand name) versus non-trademark segments for more thorough analysis.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcolman2