5 replies to this topic

[JenniferP]

I have helped one of my neighbors with several of his SEO tactics, and I am starting to promote my own site as well. Currently, I have been link building by just finding similar blogs and forums that I can contribute to while embedding links back to my original page. This seems slow and finite. I hear people talk about adding 1,000's of links back to their site. This seems improbable without hiring one of the riskier link builders...

So my question is this? Where should I spend my time promoting my site?

1. TrafficGeyser Mass Publishing Videos: This was one of my neighbors favorites, but I don't quite understand how it helps your organic ranking. All of youtubes links are nofollow with the exception of the one on your channel page which is domain only (no anchor text). Sure each video has a small "description area", but does that really count as a link in googles eyes?

2. Article Submission Sites: I understand that they allow you to link back to your page, but how much link juice are these articles sites receiving? Wouldn't the link juice be diluted by the time its divided by every article and then trickles back to your page? Wouldn't your nicely done new article be better as a page on your website instead?

3. Twitter Followers: This was another favorite of my neighbor. I just don't see the value since 1) nofollow links and 2) your followers will eventually get sick of your sales pitches. I just can't see the value in spending time here.

4. If these aren't the best way to spend time on marketing, feel free to suggest what I may be missing....

Thanks in advance! :flowers:
JenniferP

Edited by JenniferP, 19 July 2010 - 07:17 PM.

[A.N.Onym]

1. Submitting the site to strong site directories might get you some minimal value. If you have the budget, you can pay for review in top 10-20 oldest/strongest paid directories as well.

2. Only old and strong article directories might pass any weight, while others are waste of time both in terms of link wight and traffic.

3. It's best to write guest posts (articles) for topical blogs or online journals/other publications that you want to get targeted traffic from and link to your target landing pages from it, using your target keyphrases.

4. A shotgun approach would be to create very, very link-worthy material in your topic, something a vast majority of niche bloggers would like to link to, and promote it on social websites and mention it in conversations with those bloggers. While they would link to your article/tool/e-book download page, you can link to any other page on your site with any text you want (not to mention, the domain overall weight will rise, even if it only means the link weight spread waterfall-y over all site pages that your article links to).

5. I do have to remind you that while blog commenting can get you traffic, subscribers to your blog and possibly a mention in the blog, most blogs have nofollow in place. So it has strong indirect value, but minimal direct link value.

Usually, creating great content for your site and promoting it yields good results, than other methods.

Edited by A.N.Onym, 19 July 2010 - 08:42 PM.

[RisaBB]

Hi Jennifer,

Welcome to Cre8asite! You have asked the age-old question.

Although I am no social media wiz - far from it - I think social media is a big component of getting there. I just virtually attended a Social Media Summit by Michael Stelzner and there were about 20 classes all about facebook, twitter, linked in, youtube, and blogs.

I was perplexed about how to use Twitter as well, so you don't come off giving only sales pitches. Guy Kawasaki did a great session, "How to Use Twitter as a marketing Weapon," and there were other sessions about this. They gave a ratio of about 12 to 1 - 12 informational tweets linking to interesting articles, blogs, facts, etc. to 1 salesy tweet - promoting a new blog post, or a new product, etc. Guy recommended these 2 sites (All Top is his), which are like information aggregator sites, which collect the most popular/interesting articles/blogs in your niche, and you tweet them:
Smart Brief and All Top.

I'm finding getting links from extensive articles I've written slow, but I get good links out of it, like from About.com. I write an article, then contact the appropriate editor and I usually get the link.

I was also amazed at how quickly I ranked #3 for a search term around the holidays. I wrote an article, then I saw a blog post on a newspaper site, with a high PR - I think 7 - discussing the same issue, so I commented and linked to my article, which backed up what I was commenting about. I think, because of this comment and link, not only did I rank high for the keyword, but that brand-new page got a PR of 4 with days of me publishing it. I've had other pages on my site that have been there for years that have a lower PR.

So, it's a lot of things.

Hope this helps a bit.

Risa

[glyn]

Yes, all things work.

The important thing is to know the value.

Social Bookmarking will not put you at position 1. It's more likely that good content, and a well orgnized site that actually makes a user say to a friend - hey I found a great site - WILL.

So if you are spending all your time setting up tools to do social bookmarking, you're wasting your time.

Most people forget this evaluting matrix, using it also means you also need to evaluate what you're doing to arrive at an understanding that allows you to prioritize which are the most significant drivers of traffic.

Basically test, don't share, keep your secrets close and take the first page

Glyn

[Jonashastings]

Since SEO is not an exact science you should do a combination of various tactics in a constant velocity. Google's algorithm changes very often too there is a need to do a lot of link building over time.

[JenniferP]

Thank you all for the insight. It seems so overwhelming the amount of work and the different directions one can spend while trying to market a website.

I do have an odd SEO peculiarity going on. I did a wordpress blog with 2 pages and 8 posts. The main domain landing page is going to one of the static pages instead of the rolling post page. In essence, I am trying to make it a static site. I am just using the posts because it fit the layout I am working for.

I posted the sites about 2 weeks ago and now I can find all my pages and posts via a google site:mydomain.com

The problem is this, if I do a search for my keywords that I targeted on post 3, my root domain page shows up instead of the post page that holds the relevancy... Even though all my pages are being shown via the site:mydomain.com command. The posts aren't being shown in the rankings. Is this a time thing? Does it start out with just your domain name and start ranking the other pages later? Or do I perhaps have something set in wordpress wrong.

I have double checked and ensured the posts are not "noindex"....and that they are very reachable for the crawlers...

Thanks in advance....

Edited by JenniferP, 21 July 2010 - 02:01 PM.