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Nice!  These are good ideas.  The donut business is just an example (i dont really promote one... but maybe I will now..)

I love soaking up as much knowledge as I can!

Ok because you mentioned the dreaded writing topic how do you handle managing multiple clients?

I've read this before somewhere, but it basically mentioned that are we doing SEO? Or are we just writers?  If what is MOST important is good content, then writing > everything else.  Sure, finding what to write and all the other technical details of SEO are important.  But, I've seen on here time and time again.  Content, content content.  The word is getting beat to death.  "Make quality content and users will come".  "If you just have quality content, you can spend less time on SEO".

Ok...So if you are an SEO company and you have multiple clients across different industries, how do you handle this?  If you are doing SEO for a donut company, with a rather small budget, do you plan on becoming an expert in all things donuts?  Or do you talk to the owner and get his advice?   Sure, the owner knows a ton of information on his topic.  But he has a hard time explaining it to you, or putting it into words.  This has happened to me with just about everyone (the few) people I have worked on SEO for.

So, I am expected to research your field (donuts) in depth, find good websites, then start pumping out relevant quality articles.  Correct me if I am wrong, but, once again (quoting the SEOmoz community), this is hmm, I dont know, 90% research/writing.  Maybe you do a video, so you need to be handy with a camera.

If you are a one man band (like myself), it is quite a lot of work.  Especially if you are working on the donut industry, then plastic widgets, then a doctors office, then a law firm.  It gets incredibily overwhelming.  So what do you do?  Stick to a particular industry and start from there?

Say you do that.  Say you have 1 donut shop in Houston, 1 in Dallas, 1 in Seattle.  Locally, the marketing strategies are going to differ.  BUT, as mentioned here, you need to go to food communities and guest blog, etc.  The topic stays the same, but you need to promote 3 businesses.  Well now you have to write 3 articles in the same industry, but keep the topics different.  White hat is all about "good content on the net" if I am not mistaken.  This is really good and I agree.  But, honestly, there is only so much you can say about donuts (or any topic for that matter).  So you log on to the food community as the dallas user (post something), logout, login as the houston user, post something different...  You see how this gets pretty wild pretty quick?  Now it makes more sense to go serve completely different industries because you are not competing with yourself.  You can try to dominate donuts for the highest paying customer. However, you have to be an expert in so many fields....because now you have to do this for lawyers, doctors, etc.

So, is the majority of this WRITING or is it actually technical.  Because the technical aspect doesnt seem to be so complicated.  As a bigger firm do you just hire writers to work for you?  Perhaps outsource it on the net?  Maybe you hire a virtual assistant?

The normal "content" part seems to take the most time...which is writing/research.  You can learn strategies to promote on facebook, youtube, google, etc.  But if you don't have anything to promote (content) then where are you left?

So, the majority of what you need is content... then I need to take some courses at my local community college on writing and start reading through my longman writer?

It just seems ridiculous that you have to do 'press releases', guest blogging, and beg for backlinks...especially when you have more than a handful of companies to promote.  People bash 'black hat' SEO and claim that the results are temporary.  Ok, granted.  Perhaps they ARE temporary.   But, if you are promoting a brick/mortar business and you get them to #1 , even if it is for a few months, and the business sees a REAL increase in sales from REAL people that come in to their store... then REAL money was made for that business.  So maybe they will lose their rankings one day.  But the people that came during the 'black hat' time period tasted the donuts and like them.  Just because the donut store falls out of rankings doesn't mean that person won't return to eat donuts.

I am not promoting black hat... I don't even know any techniques.  I am just saying... food for thought?

Sorry for the ranting.  This just gets a little overwhelming.  There is a goal to achieve.  I want my client to have more sales.  Period.  Marketing and business is a dog eat dog world.  If someone else does something better, they could put you out of business.

I see tons of 'push quality content'... push quality content..  Ok Ok.  However, I am a little confused about this.  Maybe I am understanding it wrong.  Say I have a website about donuts.  I am going to try to promote my donut website so people can see all my latest donuts and hopefully they will come into my local store and purchase them.

I interpret quality content as writing about the topic of donuts.  However, people who eat donuts probably don't care about the history of donuts, or the different types of dough used.  They probably could care less about statistical facts that explain how my fictional donut company uses a whole wheat dough which will lower their cholesterol.

What they want to see is a fat donut with icing on it.  They want to see someone biting into it and enjoying it.

How does a local donut company go about becoming #1 on the serps if they do not want to write constantly about all things donuts?  A video would be nice for them perhaps?

Like I said, perhaps I am overthinking this.  But I have understood the best way to write quality content is to identify a problem that people are having, then find the solution, then write about it (or video).

But sometimes people just need to be TEMPTED.  Coca-Cola uses awesome commercials to promote their business.   They are not writing articles about high fructose corn syrup.

How does this so called 'temptation' factor play into SEO?  I want to sell the sizzle not the sausage.  Ultimately marketing is about getting more sales which means more money for the business.  Being high on the SERPs helps get more sales (hopefully).

Writing quality content is great and I am sure it works in plenty of areas.  But I am not sure how to apply it to certain industries.  Creative marketing ideas have to come into play to market the fake donut business.

How do you tie these other strategies in so they help you with SEO?

All I can think about is posting a 'cool' video on youtube/facebook and trying to get people to like it.  Cross your fingers and hope it goes somewhat viral?

Thanks!

Well i have a variety of keywords I am targeting.  I don't try to hit more than 2 per page (i think that is correct).  As of today, even my 2nd post has fallen out of the rankings with yahoo.  I know I can get on there, but it appears I cannot maintain it without continually posting (using my keyword).  I want to get there and stay, at least for the most part.  This business it not a "highly SEOd" business.  Most of my customers competitors are there because they have been there for years.  They only occasionally change their website.

Well, I have the keyword on my homepage.  This page however has never been in the SERPS.  So randomly last week I wrote a post that was basically just an advertisement.  Most of the posts actually contain some content and pictures.  This one however was written just to "promote" the business.  It was loaded with the keyword (and others).  That page is the one that showed up on Yahoo.

However, a few days later I wrote another article using the same keyword.  This article had content in it.  This article replaced the original "promotion" post.

The page I want them to visit is the homepage.  This has all the goods on it.  When I write posts new content is displayed on the homepage (so it is updated).  But Yahoo is not taking that page.  Perhaps I would have less bounce if I could get my main page ranked.

But having ANY page in the SERPs is good at the moment, I am just confused as to why Yahoo is taking my posts and not my main page.  They are viewing the post as new content (which it is) and not regarding my home page!

Thanks,

I recently ranked on yahoo, #4 for my keyword!  It has taken 2 months and finally, out of the blue, there I am.  This is my first time actually attempting an SEO campaign.  At first I was listed for my keyword, then i started dropping after a few days.  Then I made a new post, included those keywords, and I got back up to rank #4 again (for the new post).   Why is this happening?  Do I have to make a new post every 4-5 days to keep myself listed on the yahoo first page serps?

Alright I can try that.  Is there a web resource that you or anyone recommends that talks specifically about this issue in depth?  Specifically even wordpress since it seems alot of sites use wordpress now.

I use Swanson Vitamins by the way!

Jared

Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical.

It is a crawl notice on my campaign.  It is happening on about 13 pages?  I have SEO Ultimate and have the Canonicalizer options checked, but still receive the error.  I don't want to be punished for duplicate content, but with wordpress that seems pretty hard.  I guess I need some direction on best practices for removing duplicate content also.

There are blog posts which hold the original good content, but then the blog "page" that pulls in all the blog posts and displays them on one screen.  Also on the front page I am pulling in the new posts and showing an excerpt or a 200~ character limit excerpt.  Already there is 3 copies of the same content.  I am sure their is more if i looked around.

I guess that is what I mean.  1) Clear up the issue on my crawl diagnostics with SEOmoz.  2) Get this figured out so I can create new content in the future without it happening again

Thanks

How do you fix the rel canonical issue on a wordpress site?  Is there a quick fix?   I have a few notices on my site and am a little confused.

Thanks,

Jared