Best Way to Promote Other Authors SEO?
-
Wanted to get the communities feedback on this.
WDAC is designing a new section of our site. This new section is aimed at helping small businesses that want to get SEO help, but are not in a position financially/do not want to pay an agency for help. The page can be viewed here: http://www.webdesignandcompany.com/expert-seo-tips
The page is called "Expert SEO Tips" and we are going to promote other authors content that focuses on high quality articles around SEO tactics, methods, tips, tricks, etc. There are a few articles listed on the page based around what we have shared in the past, but you can see that the page/section is still in its infancy and may change to a new layout/design in the near future. The section will summarize the article we are linking to , and provide a link to the authors Twitter/G+ profile, depending upon what they have setup.
We have reached out to a few places in the Google+ communities asking for articles and submissions, but have had little success. Strange due to the fact that we are providing outgoing links without requesting one back...hmmm. Anyway, what do any of you think would be the best way to get people to respond?
Also, does anyone see any issues with adding this type of content to our site using followed links, specifically since we are linking out to relevant articles related to our own services? Does anyone see any potential pitfalls? Does anyone have any articles they think would be a great addition or provide help to business owners? All input and insight is appreciated! Looking forward to hearing your input.
-
What you have produced has a fantastic appearance. What isn't obvious to me when I land on this page are....
**1) Who Should Care? **
Tell visitors who will constitute your audience? ...who should read your stuff? is it experienced SEO, small biz owner, somebody new to SEO who wants to know what an experienced person like you thinks they should know about and what they should be reading.
If you intend to use this page as a way to keep clients and potential clients up-to-date with changes in search and internet marketing (or whatever subject) then stating that very clearly at the top - even as the big bold text at the top of the page, then I think you would get a better following.
2) Your commitment and a way to subscribe.
The people who visit my page have the opportunity to sign up to receive it by email or rss feed through FeedBurner. I have a very obvious announcement there... GET OUR UPDATES FIVE TIMES PER WEEK. That's my commitment. They can see each daily post has a date at the top and six to ten entries and maybe a video. They see I am running an active daily service.
Over ten years I have accumulated thousands of subscribers because they know I am going to feed them the news. About 1/2 subscribe by RSS and about 1/2 by email. When I mention an article in my news the website with the content can get hundreds to a thousand visitors immediately. It is a great way to launch my own content.
**3) Who you are gonna be. **
In the blurb that you use with each entry you can step into a pulpit and show your voice. You can give guidance. "Every small biz person competing for organic traffic should read this."...... "Remarketing is a way to give repeated calls to action for the folks who have visited your website."..... "Don't make this mistake on your blog".... etc. "Lots of people are doing this but it sets off my BS meter"
You can be the guy to recommend, diss, endorse, suggest. If you assume that role, I think that it might help build a following.
-
Egol,
Glad that you decided to comment, as I value your experience. I have followed you on MOZ and your posts are always full in knowledge.
The page (or however the final design turns out to be) is in place for a variety of reasons. In a way we are helping people that want to optimize their site to find valuable information all in one place. Once we have enough articles, we are going to place them in specific categories such as Local SEO, Content marketing, On Page SEO, etc etc.
We post blogs, but not that often as we are busy pretty much non-stop. So we thought of making this page to help other authors of SEO articles get some exposure, while giving people interested in SEO a hub for the best SEO articles from around the web. I think there is a mutual benefit as they get a link to their published article and social profile, and our site is linking to a relevant topic related to the services that we provide.
If you can think of a way to implement this better, or have some articles of your own that we can highlight, I would appreciate the advice. Also looking for a way to promote the fact that we are doing this for people, as we have not had much success so far. Hard to tell if people do not trust what we are doing, or what the issue is. It's almost like everyone is scared of back links from a website they are not familiar with.
-
I publish an "industry news" that links out to six to ten pieces of content on other websites several times per week. I have been doing this for about ten years and the service has accumulated a lot of followers by email, RSS and direct visits to my site.
At first I composed lots of unique text for each entry with a great image, then I dropped down to a sentence or two and a thumbnail, now I just use link text like you see on the major news sites. People still want it. It now takes me minutes per day instead of hours. The followers seem to value the recommendations highly and the work that I was putting into it was not a factor.
So, what are you offering. Are you offering recommended guidance from an experienced person? Or are you offering a pretty page that does the same thing? If I would have started out with a list of links, I might not have gotten traction, but now that the traction is there I the pretty stuff seems to be superfluous.
-
Thank you for your comment, and your kind words.
Yes, this links to an article that the author has already listed on their site. Addressing the duplication, we never list the full article. If you look at the existing format, we only quote a few words (usually the best statement) from the article. The rest of the surrounding text explains what the article is about rather than duplicating their content. We dont want to risk hurting any site that we link to, or damage our own ranking by having this in place.
-
Is this content that the author has already posted on their site? If that is the case I would be worried about duplicate content. If it is not it looks like guest posting and Google has recently said they aren't a big fan of that. Those would be my two big concerns.
If your are looking at helping true beginners I think some of this might be too advanced. Your first article "The Un-Checkbox Approach to Content Marketing" might be too advanced. I would try to point them to something like the Moz beginners guide.
Great website design btw
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
-
Community Discussion - How can we apply the skills we have as marketers in new, creative ways?
Hi everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful week! This week's discussion question comes from Tuesday's (December 😎 blog post by John-Henry Scherck, The Step-by-Step Guide to Turning Link Prospectors into Lead Generators. From the post: "Digital marketing is a pretty introverted industry. This tends to make us a bit hesitant to embrace sales and outbound selling. There’s no beating around the bush: Sales can be difficult, scary, uncomfortable, and awkward — but if you want to grow your client base, it may require getting out of your comfort zone." John-Henry shows us the opportunity for people who are good at link prospecting to apply those skills to lead generation, improving business opportunities by creatively using the skills they already have. SEOs and marketers wear many hats, and have a diverse skill set at their disposal—how else can we apply the skills we already have in creative ways?
Industry News | | MattRoney5 -
Is it reasonable to not give an SEO access to our CMS?
A client (we designed their website) recently employed an SEO who required FTP access or access to the CMS. We told the client they would need to take full responsibility for any updates the SEO carried out, otherwise, the SEO could send over the changes and we would put them in at no extra cost to the client. The client didn't want to take responsibility and denied the SEO access to the CMS, and told the SEO to send over the completed work for us to put into the site. The SEO was not happy with this arrangement, and didn't seem to understand that we needed to trust him before access was would be given at a future date. Other SEO's have never had a problem with this arrangement, but this SEO claimed what they do is secret and for no one else to see. SEO want's to proceed, client doesn't want to proceed, we are happy to update the website with the client's approval. This particular client has a reputation for backing out of things. Also from the initial client, SEO contact the SEO was ready to update the website within 24 hours. Are we being unreasonable?
Industry News | | ChristinaRadisic1 -
Is there a Step by Step Online Tutorial for SEOing?
Hi People I know this sounds like a real dumb question, but hey! I thought I would ask. I am a newbie, and after continuously spending $165.00/day for my PPC adwords campaign for the last 5 years, I MUST get my site naturally ranked higher. So as a newbie; yet understanding the basic principles about SEOing, I searched High and Low for an accredited course, an educational programme or anything that looked structured, and had a distinct step by step structure, and to my amazement I couldn't find much. I did find Dan Thiess' online guide, the SEOMOZ guide, and a few other bits n pieces. It appears that SEO learning is all over the place. I couldn't find any courses at the local universities either! So I thought...well what does it take to become an SEO consultant if there's no real formal qualification as such? And my answer was...Experience and proof of experience! That is, a consultant of who has been around for quite a few years and can prove to potential customers that ... hey you see this website www.????.com notice how it's ranked #1 ? That's because of me! So I thought, I would post this question to the forum and 1. See if there is some formidable training course with a valued and recognised qualification upon completion? 2. If I am able to work for a consultant at no charge to them at all in exchange for their knowledge. I have a wealth of experience in business and people management, and Yes I do have some Web Development and IT experience. But I know to some consultants this is a big ask, so I thought I would put it out there! (you never know until you ask.) In the meantime if anyone could possibly guide for a step by step program...that would be greatly appreciated. Cheers George
Industry News | | Giorgio680 -
Redirecting International ccTLD affect SEO?
I've watched Rand's Whiteboard Friday video on How to Host and Where to Host for International Websites and read Gianluca's article on International SEO; however, I am still unable to find an answer or solution to this. ABC Company is a US based company with the website www.abcexample.com and plans to target people in Hong Kong. Therefore, they purchase .hk ccTLD. However, with the time restraint and budget limit, ABC Company is unable to create a completely new website under .hk ccTLD. Scenario 1: ABC Company plans to create different pages for each service offered in HK and 302 redirect .hk ccTLD blank service page to www.abcexample.com's same service page. Quesiton 1: Will this have the same benefit of creating a .hk website? Although ABC Company is redirecting, does the .hk ccTLD still tell Serach Engines that we are targeting people in Hong Kong? Will this solution harm or help with SEO with other search engines in Hong Kong? Scenario 2: ABC creates a /hk subdirectory under www.abcexample.com and have exactly same content in the same language as www.abcexample.com but use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" and use Webmaster to Geotarget Hong Kong. Question 2: By using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" and geotarget, will this avoid duplicate content if ABC Company has exact content in the /hk folder? Please let me know if my questions and scenarios are unclear. I understand that these are not best practices. Please advise the best way to work around this. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
Industry News | | TommyTan0 -
Local SEO Agency Suggestions
I've looked under the "recommended companies" tab of seomoz, but all of the SEO Agencies listed seem to be geared towards big businesses. Most of their contact pages have starting budgets that are way out of my league. I do my own web-development and on-site SEO, but due to the demands of my job, I do not have the time needed to focus on link-building, and any other kind of content marketing (other than occasional guest blogging). Can anyone recommend an individual or agency that can start with a $500 - $600 monthly budget and move up from there? My search terms are local to my city, and not all that competitive, just looking for someone who can help. Thanks in advance for any recommendations.
Industry News | | ChaseH0 -
When will Rand put out "Art of SEO 2nd Edition"? (ANSWER: IN ABOUT 2 WEEKS)
First edition was printed in the end of 2009. Great Book. Needs updating of course. I would buy the next edition if it was updated in an awesome way that I know Rand and the others would do.
Industry News | | stubby0 -
How do I "link" up with USA based SEO's
After 28 long years of wait this year I finally made it to the United States of America. I grew up on "The A Team" , "Knight Rider" and Mcdonalds cheese burgers from 2 years onwards. I am as American as a English person could possibly be. It wasn't until I arrived in Florida and spent two weeks in the great country that I understood the difference in the minds and mentality of people. People were nicer ! People on the whole had a can do mentaily. If your a success people congratulate you for it . Unlike the UK.... Plus people were not scared to make a fool of themselves... (People jumping up and down at traffic lights with advertising boards) Now to my question - I loved it so much I want to go back and I figured me and my wife and 3 year old may have a extended break next time where I can work on vacation maybe over a month or so. I would love to get to know as many SEO's and people based in the USA as possible please and introduce myself etc. Hey who knows maybe SEO Moz can change my future (fingers crossed) Thanks to all the people that get in touch !
Industry News | | onlinemediadirect0 -
Managing SEO Partners
Hi, Up until yesterday my main role was to implement & create SEO strategies and analytics for varying clients, and our own agency. Going forward I have been tasked with sourcing and managing SEO partners for our existing and future clients. This is totally a new concept for me, and I was wondering if any mozzers out there have been tasked with similar roles and could give me some ideas on what questions I should be asking, or maybe have an SEO matrix to rank agencies to help match to clients? Your help as always is greatly appreciated. Many thanks Sean
Industry News | | Yozzer0