

What You Need to Know about SEO - MMcCreery
http://www.thedailymuse.com/entrepreneurship/what-you-need-to-know-about-seo/

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sanswork
I think the first thing any startup should know about SEO is that due to the
ease with which someone can add SEO to their qualifications we currently have
a world where every second person is an SEO expect. If your going to outsource
your SEO(and its probably not a core competency so you probably should) make
sure you spend a fair bit of time investigating any potential consultants.
Also speak with them, discuss and then research potential strategies they
suggest. If it sounds dodgy, Google probably agrees and you will be risking a
lot for a small chance of gain.

~~~
AznHisoka
I would not outsource something that could account for 70 percent of my
traffic. SEO is hard and there are few companies that can help you rise above
the competition.

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staunch
Another one: if you're writing a bunch of beautiful linkbait articles like
Priceonomics make sure to host your blog at priceonomics.com/blog not
blog.priceonomics.com so your primary domain (that has all the real content)
benefits from the linkjuice. Google treats subdomains as essentially entirely
different domains.

~~~
iaskwhy
This is incorrect. Google treats each page as a different page (even on the
same subdomain). PageRank is per page and not per subdomain.

If anyone wants to learn most things about SEO, I highly recommend "Getting to
Know SEO" by Andre Kibbe, it's the best book I've read so far on the matter:
<http://rockablepress.com/books/getting-to-know-seo>

~~~
patio11
The published PageRank algorithm is not the last word on Google rankings. GP
is correct. If you do not know this after reading a book on SEO, strongly
reconsider whether that book was adequate to your needs.

~~~
iaskwhy
GP said: "Google treats subdomains as essentially entirely different domains."
This is false. If a domain has a small number of subdomains then their
authority is shared thus making it false that priceonomics.com would benefit
from using a folder instead of a subdomain for their blog, their only
subdomain. Fell free to recommend me a book that says and proves otherwise.

You could argue it would make sense to keep their blog as a folder like they
do for /jobs and /about for coherency. I would agree.

~~~
thenomad
I can't provide a cite for this right now, but I'm reasonably sure I've seen
SEOMoz staff suggesting that it's a bad idea to keep your blog on a subdomain,
for exactly the reasons Patio11 suggests.

(Also, whilst he's being modest here, Patio11 is something of an authority on
SEO himself.)

Edit - yep, here: <http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain>

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ssharp
Here is a Matt Cutts article saying that it doesn't really matter:

<http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/>

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ckluis
So I moved my blog.mintek.com to mintek.com/blog after using HubSpot and
switching to a custom wordpress install.

I can't tell you that all the advantage was from the url restructuring, but it
had a marked impact. Having tried similar things on test sites, I do think it
makes a difference.

And that is what SEO is about… testing assumptions because there is no
definitive answer. Even Matt Cutts isn't going to tell you everything 100%.

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sixQuarks
There's some matrix-style SEO going on in this post. Not only did
Priceconomics.com get great keyword-rich anchor text links from that guest-
post article, but they are also driving links to the article, creating more
SEO value for the links that they got. Nice work! Watch and learn people...

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prawn
"So how do you get good inbound links? Well, the key to really nailing SEO is
producing such great content that other sites on the web can’t help but link
to you."

And if you're a local plumber who, other than a lack of incoming links,
provides great service? Social mentions of that great service (nofollowed on
Twitter, for example) aren't going to help the ranking.

With startups and side projects, isn't the end result of this sort of thing
that people have to create blogs/guides/content that is outside their core
focus?

~~~
_k
My impression is local plumbers don't care about SEO. They don't care about
scale. They care about making money. They don't need SEO for it, they need to
offer a good service. Links with a no follow attribute do have some value, it
won't do anything for PageRank but it's social proof. I haven't done the test
but others did; it pushes someone higher in the search rankings. Hundreds of
no follow links were needed. I'm not sure that's always the case. Let's hope
not because my local plumber is never going to get that. Nor does he care.
That being said, I think Google has its own internal Klout system.

"With startups and side projects, isn't the end result of this sort of thing
that people have to create blogs/guides/content that is outside their core
focus?"

You're right. But it has to somehow relate to what your start up is doing,
otherwise it won't get you a lot of traffic, nor will it do a lot to push you
higher in the search rankings.

Edit: spelling The -> They

~~~
prawn
My point with that last line was that it can just distract from what we should
all be working on. For small clients of mine, it's not a successful pitch
(spend hours writing a blog, it might help with Google) and can often favour
directories and so on.

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SethMurphy
The author lays out the basics well and anyone building a business on the
internet should know at least this much. With these practices in place when
you need to hire a professional for SEO optimization you will already be half
way there.

I find the hardest thing about outsourcing SEO is that it really does start
with the content, and you shouldn't outsource that. It is important to
identify your keywords and focus on using them properly when writing this
content. Good content, with a fine balance of writing for bots and humans, is
very important. Good SEO copy is not the same as how we were taught to write
an essay in college (or High School.) It should not be as verbose and takes a
little getting used to writing in that style. Use keywords like you would
salt, enough but not too much, and in everything.

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sparknlaunch12
The author makes some easy to implement suggestions. However perfecting these
methods takes time and skill. Growing traffic organically through SEO alone is
tough. Kudos to those that do it well. However search engines are unforgiving
on seo abuses.

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AznHisoka
Though these are solid points I disagree writing compelling content is enough
to garner links. First for some niches its rare for people to link to you,
second by default you are a nobody.. Unless you already got tons of
influencers who are subscribers or followers, most compelling content end up
in a black hole.

I know google tells you differently but in most cases you have to be active
and pimp your content. Like what Priconomics is doing here.

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SquareWheel
This article was written for bots just as much as it was for humans. Check out
the relationship of the links and keywords. The string "price guide" is found
10 times, and always as a direct anchor text or near a link to the author's
site.

That's not a bad thing, these guys are doing it right. Listen to their advice.

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xpose2000
Curious how this generic SEO article got any traction whatsoever. Pure
garbage.

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wilfra
"The secret to SEO is there is no secret to SEO."

Use descriptive URL's, title tags, meta tags and headlines - and consistently
get high quality relevant inbound links - and you'll be in good shape.

~~~
SquareWheel
A lot of SEO knowledge is about knowing what not to do. Don't create copies of
the same content across multiple pages, and if you do, choose a canonical
version. Don't exclude important directories in robots.txt, but do exclude
wasteful pages like calendar pages (often there is a new page every day from
Jan 1, 1970 forward).

If you're a Jim's Plumbing site, you should be okay following your advice. If
you're a giant site with many pages to index, you need to focus on structure.
The flow of pages is important, and it's more than setting up breadcrumbs and
pretty URLs. This kind of problem needs to be looked at when building a site,
you can't just drop some code in after you've launched.

