Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I was just contacted by BBC and asked to appear on a breakfast program talking about psychotherapy.  It is not certain that it is going ahead but more likely than not.  Assuming it does what would you say would be the best way to utilise this opportunity through marketing (particularly internet marketing) afterwards?

If this goes ahead I would be at the studio for 7am or so and be gone by 9am or so.  My website only gets a few hundred visitors through organic traffic and my Twitter and other social media accounts were only started recently so have fairly low levels of followings.

Bit confused whether you are looking for connections with UK charities to offer free services for charities that would need it or SEO/SEM related advice.  If it is connections with charities I am pretty well connected with a range of charities as I have worked most of the last 6 years in the third sector, particularly with disability charities.  There are over a dozen charities (many of them Manchester Based but not exclusively) with whom I have very strong relationships/ connections including Body Positive North West, Breakthrough UK and Manchester Mind.  I am also well connected with lots of very worthwhile social enterprises that whilst not charities as such are an important part of the third sector and may have similar PR benefits.

One of the problems with social media and charities is that with their board structures it can take quite a lot of time and pressure to get an effective social media strategy developed and approved, particularly in the context of many boards having to deal at the moment with severe financial pressures brought about through direct and indirect funding cuts.  This is not true across the board but is the case with many charities.

To my mind you already have "sponsored" articles, they are just for one of your owner/contributors

e.g. http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/gastric-hypno-band/the-secret-to-weight-loss-is-inside-you-says-gastric-hypno-band-expert#.UEd-5cHN9X8

Adding other sponsored links would only diversify the content, potentially get more quality content on the site and make it a better user experience.

To me you could manage the relationship with the readers and outside businesses your team are involve with in ways that visitors will gell with more.  This covers the top banner (which looks like an external paid banner when someone is on the home page rather than something a regular contributor is involved with.  There are loads of spammy looking gastric band promotions out there and you have real potential to both improve this site and generate more trust with potential gastric band purchasers by showing the relationship differently so they see the person behind the product and banner.  Also I see it is a Liverpool number that is given, I do not know whether Gastric band some of the other services that those involved in the site provide are local and the extent that they are fine to be purchased by people across the UK and beyond - If services are localised around Liverpool then having the ads in such a dominant place may not be optimising your ad revenue (which could always be put on Adwords Display Network and optimised around Liverpool if that is the case.  I tried to click on the banner too for more information and it did not lead to more information.  I wanted to know enough in answering this question to click on in and not being able to annoyed me (only a tiny bit) but would add to user experience and improve conversions.

Also whether you think you do or not, you do sponsored posting and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that from a user experience perspective as long as you convey it in a way that meets both the needs of advertisers AND viewers.

I think you have been given the right advice in terms of optimising conversion from an individual visit but the wrong advice more generally.  As well as a new visitors clicks you also want to engage with them so they dont hit the back button, facilitate social sharing and provide a quality user experience so that they are going to engage more with the site then you want to have less banners in different places than you do currently.  You want to make it easy for people to share the articles with others and enable your readership to grow which can make all your advertising perform better.

Others have mentioned that there was some slightly dated content that was still high profile, this is obviously bad for the type of site you are doing.  You also mentioned in a positive sounding way that it was all your own group of people that were writing content which is actually a bad thing  and the two points are connected.  Would I keep coming back to reading posts at SEOmoz (before I became pro and come to use the tools) if it was just Rand and other staff posting?  Perhaps but no where near as often.  I have welcomed the whiteboard fridays with different perspectives and different expertise, I like the fact that I get access to hundreds of experts here with different perspectives and this would not happen without guest contributions.  Also it means you can have much more content without having to write it all.  Ok you might give a link away but as long as you ensure that the articles are of high quality and only a minor proportion are clearly sponsored (and do not make this too deceptive) then all you are doing is making your site better with more varied content and sponsored posts are less damaging to user experiences than big banners.

I will stress that I am completely not the demographic for your site.  If I had my way google would give out moderate penalties for articles less than 1500 words and bigger penalties for articles less than 1000 words and gossipy type topics would also get google penalties unless searched for explicitly so "news" would not give xfactor or celeb stories in the SERP results.

Also the most relevant people for you to get views from is your users and it does not look like you have all that many links to your site at present which will be harming your SEO.  You may want to look at getting some sponsored articles and enhancing SEO as well as addressing some of the user experience issues.

But it is a pretty good site considering it is no-ones main concern.

I think it is very difficult to judge your own site objectively.  I tend to snap at my wife when she is critical of something on my website (although I am more tolerable with other people weirdly).  It sounds like you need fresh eyes on the situation.  I am no expert at SEO although I know enough to know when something is not right.  I am pretty new to SEOmoz so I am not sure what the rules area about sharing sites etc but if I have your web address I would be happy to give you feedback on your campaign at no charge (if this is allowed) and whether there are any obvious steps that could improve it.  I am not looking for SEO business so this is in no way going to lead to me selling you anything.  From what you are saying though it sounds like you need to divert some of your time from content creation and syndication to developing relationships with authoritative sites so that they link to you although without looking at your site etc it is hard to make any solid recommendations.

It sounds like you are in a situation where you could really benefit from a professional SEO but do not have the resources to fund one and I really feel for you with this.  If your assumptions are correct it is very easy to see how in as little as two months getting the right SEO expertise to add value to your efforts could really pay for itself many times over as if $1000 or $2000 a month makes you an extra $200 plus a day it very quickly pays for itself.

An issue that I do not see discussed about much in Internet Marketing circles is the importance of establishing and developing a presence on third party sites other than through guest posting and I was wondering how much other internet marketers focus on this area and recommend this to clients.

I see many people wanting hiring internet marketers basically for SEO and the KPI's on which they are judged are SEO based outcomes (higher alexa rank, number of page 1 keywords, number of top 1, top 3 keywords etc).  I recently gave advice to someone who had very little time, very little money and very little SEO skills who wanted to rank in number 1 positions for their band for wedding and corporate bookings.  I basically showed them sites that were highly positioned in the SERPs where they could get develop a strong online profile and how this would work better than investing 3 hours a month badly into SEO.

Ultimately what businesses want is strong convertible leads and sales.  For many businesses that might be better established particularly where budgets are tight through other elements whether it is Tripadvisor rankings, presence in other 3rd party sites or in an Ebay store than through SEO for their own site.  Obviously for big brands with big budgets SEO is essential but as many keyword terms become increasingly competitive how important should referrals from 3rd party sites be in businesses internet marketing strategy and to what extent do you feel current internet marketing businesses identify and promote this need rather than simply working on improving ranking performance for keywords?

With my business I had always intended kicking social media into gear much sooner but various other pressures put this back somewhat.

Counselling is quite sensitive for a variety of reasons:-

We want to disassociate ourselves from the masses of non- professional folksy type "advice" that dominates the net,

People, particularly in the UK often do not talk about mental health issues nor would we always want people to if they had not protected their privacy enough.

Key marketing messages such as "get the first class service you deserve" (in UK people are more likely to wait 6 months to be seen by a trainee with no choice of who they see or when they see it than pay for counselling, "there are no quick fixes for mental health and counselling can make a real difference to your life if you invest time, energy and cost into it" (in a market where read this 300 word article to never feel stressed again dominates) and "what help choosing the counsellor who is best suited to you" - are not the sort of thing many people are likely to "like" or share with friends.

At the moment I am looking to focus on LinkedIn (for corporate work), Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.  I have a blog which is going to be producing excellent daily content including people's positive experiences of counselling, comprehensive self help tips, counsellor advice etc.

On Google+ and Facebook I am looking to autopublish some of the blog posts and there are probably some other channels I will autopublish to but I do not yet know which to go for.  Initially I am going to do little else on Google+ to focus time and energy developing Facebook and Twitter.

I am trying to achieve the following:-

Social Legitimacy - having  decent number of engaged fans will make us seem more legitimate in an industry where trust is important (only 14 FB likes so far is not a good start)

Engaging with Potential Content Creators - Reaching out to people who have experienced mental health issues so that this content can be used to provide peer support to others and enable them to see benefits of counselling

Creating relationships with people and organisations where we can cross promote each other's initiatives, potentially co-deliver services in the future (community counselling work etc)

Bring traffic to my site that will potentially convert into counselling clients in several cities in the UK through both people finding

Promote my content more widely than is happening with organic search, reach different audiences, engage with potential customers, generate links to quality content I create

Develop the social infrastructure to be able to leverage it for future goals, whether promoting an article, raising awareness for good mental health initiatives (that may have no financial benefit to the business but will help people) etc.

Sorry this is so long but any comments, ideas, suggested tactics etc would be appreciated.

I actually feel that quality tools are essential to learn SEO properly without spending masses of time gathering the information in other ways.  I was thinking that there is good scope for SEOmoz to do some sort of deal with Distilled's Learn SEO program so that you could get some sort of combined membership for people at the early stages in their SEO career.

For SEOmoz aspiring professionals get comfortable with your tools and are more likely to use them and advocate them than your competitors.  Also these are people who otherwise it may be several months before they would be thinking of taking out professional SEO tools.  If you combine this with some sort of deal on hosting (so people can test the theories that they are learning), it is easy to see that for 100-130$ a month for a few months someone would have all they need to learn SEO.  This is really cheap when you compare it with what it cost me to study counselling (my day job), or what it costs to learn most disciplines.

My skills really lie (much as I have them) in a broader internet marketing strategy rather than in the nuts and bolts of technical SEO and I hired an SEO firm to carry out my SEO but I have found the tools invaluable (even if they did not pay for themselves in the consulting work I do) as a way of both auditing their work and being able to play a key role in ensuring the SEO firm I use fits within my broader marketing strategy.

How many SEO Firms are there that charge a lot but ultimately deliver little?

How many provide reports that are useful enough for decision makers in a business to ensure SEO fits within the strategic objectives of an organisation?  Many SEO professionals want to be left alone to do their work even if it will not provide the business with the best ROI.  Digital marketing is a huge source of referrals for my counselling business and UK expansion is intrinsically linked with the success and the strategy used in the campaign.  Without access to SEOmoz I would be far less able to ensure that the SEO works within my business goals and judge when the business is ready to expand into new cities.

If weekly crawl reports do not show improvement, if keywords are not rising up the rankings?, if links are not being added or if they are they are from spammy sites it would take much longer to track and find this out without the SEOmoz tools.  100$ a month to ensure easy to understand data that is independent of your SEO firm that has the depth for you to use to make business decisions without massive time investment will be worth many businesses investing in even if they do not actively get involved in SEO themselves.

I know a lot of businesses judge their SEO outsourcing based on very crude indicators such as short term SERP position or Alexa rank rather than the foundations on which they are based.  I am sure the industry can only be stronger if managers and business owners have access themselves to the tools to effectively assess and participate in the strategy and execution of their digital strategy.

I came across this whilst reaching out to people on my new google plus account and I came across a counsellor using it in Canada.  I loved the way that it looked and I can totally see how people it might be great for usability but not sure about wanting duplicate content readouts etc.  Would there be a way of having a Twylah account but setting the content so Google would not index it?  That way no showings for duplicate content and people who like using the platform to view twitter interactions get the great experience?

I think it is very difficult to judge your own site objectively.  I tend to snap at my wife when she is critical of something on my website (although I am more tolerable with other people weirdly).  It sounds like you need fresh eyes on the situation.  I am no expert at SEO although I know enough to know when something is not right.  I am pretty new to SEOmoz so I am not sure what the rules area about sharing sites etc but if I have your web address I would be happy to give you feedback on your campaign at no charge (if this is allowed) and whether there are any obvious steps that could improve it.  I am not looking for SEO business so this is in no way going to lead to me selling you anything.  From what you are saying though it sounds like you need to divert some of your time from content creation and syndication to developing relationships with authoritative sites so that they link to you although without looking at your site etc it is hard to make any solid recommendations.

It sounds like you are in a situation where you could really benefit from a professional SEO but do not have the resources to fund one and I really feel for you with this.  If your assumptions are correct it is very easy to see how in as little as two months getting the right SEO expertise to add value to your efforts could really pay for itself many times over as if $1000 or $2000 a month makes you an extra $200 plus a day it very quickly pays for itself.

To my mind you already have "sponsored" articles, they are just for one of your owner/contributors

e.g. http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/gastric-hypno-band/the-secret-to-weight-loss-is-inside-you-says-gastric-hypno-band-expert#.UEd-5cHN9X8

Adding other sponsored links would only diversify the content, potentially get more quality content on the site and make it a better user experience.

To me you could manage the relationship with the readers and outside businesses your team are involve with in ways that visitors will gell with more.  This covers the top banner (which looks like an external paid banner when someone is on the home page rather than something a regular contributor is involved with.  There are loads of spammy looking gastric band promotions out there and you have real potential to both improve this site and generate more trust with potential gastric band purchasers by showing the relationship differently so they see the person behind the product and banner.  Also I see it is a Liverpool number that is given, I do not know whether Gastric band some of the other services that those involved in the site provide are local and the extent that they are fine to be purchased by people across the UK and beyond - If services are localised around Liverpool then having the ads in such a dominant place may not be optimising your ad revenue (which could always be put on Adwords Display Network and optimised around Liverpool if that is the case.  I tried to click on the banner too for more information and it did not lead to more information.  I wanted to know enough in answering this question to click on in and not being able to annoyed me (only a tiny bit) but would add to user experience and improve conversions.

Also whether you think you do or not, you do sponsored posting and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that from a user experience perspective as long as you convey it in a way that meets both the needs of advertisers AND viewers.

I think you have been given the right advice in terms of optimising conversion from an individual visit but the wrong advice more generally.  As well as a new visitors clicks you also want to engage with them so they dont hit the back button, facilitate social sharing and provide a quality user experience so that they are going to engage more with the site then you want to have less banners in different places than you do currently.  You want to make it easy for people to share the articles with others and enable your readership to grow which can make all your advertising perform better.

Others have mentioned that there was some slightly dated content that was still high profile, this is obviously bad for the type of site you are doing.  You also mentioned in a positive sounding way that it was all your own group of people that were writing content which is actually a bad thing  and the two points are connected.  Would I keep coming back to reading posts at SEOmoz (before I became pro and come to use the tools) if it was just Rand and other staff posting?  Perhaps but no where near as often.  I have welcomed the whiteboard fridays with different perspectives and different expertise, I like the fact that I get access to hundreds of experts here with different perspectives and this would not happen without guest contributions.  Also it means you can have much more content without having to write it all.  Ok you might give a link away but as long as you ensure that the articles are of high quality and only a minor proportion are clearly sponsored (and do not make this too deceptive) then all you are doing is making your site better with more varied content and sponsored posts are less damaging to user experiences than big banners.

I will stress that I am completely not the demographic for your site.  If I had my way google would give out moderate penalties for articles less than 1500 words and bigger penalties for articles less than 1000 words and gossipy type topics would also get google penalties unless searched for explicitly so "news" would not give xfactor or celeb stories in the SERP results.

Also the most relevant people for you to get views from is your users and it does not look like you have all that many links to your site at present which will be harming your SEO.  You may want to look at getting some sponsored articles and enhancing SEO as well as addressing some of the user experience issues.

But it is a pretty good site considering it is no-ones main concern.