by Lyn Lomasi; Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

As a website domain owner, it's important to stay informed on the most current ways to keep it in front of the most people at all times. Part of that involves using measurement tools to see what your website looks like to outside sources that may be used to find you. Therefore, you may be wondering what is my domain authority? Learn how to find your domain authority, learn what is domain authority and page authority,  what is a good domain authority, and more.

Ranking on or near the first page with the biggest search engines is essential to getting your website seen. Domain authority is a score developed by Moz that measures your ability to rank on the search engine result pages (SERPs). This score ranged from 1 to 100, with 100 being the best score possible and 1 being the lowest.

To check domain authority, you'll need to use a domain rating checker. The Moz Link Explorer is the best place to find your domain authority or the page authority of any given page on your website. Many online marketing platforms and SEO tools will quote your website’s domain authority. This useful tool will provide the domain authority ranking, which will be a number between 1 and 100. 

New websites always begin with a DA score of 1. As a website gains high-quality backlinks to it over time, this score will gradually increase. Keep in mind that because it’s figured on a logarithmic scale, it’s much easier to get to 10 than it is to 20, and so on. In order to track your progress, you’ll want to check domain authority history and use a domain rating checker periodically to check and log your current score.

What is a good domain authority? A “good” DA score for a website is one that is higher than that website’s competitors in search. It all depends on what the website you’re trying to rank is about. In some niches, a 20 or 30 is a good score if your competitors in search rank below 20. Other niches will require that you have a DA of over 70 to even have a good chance to appear on the first page of Google.

Domain authority is a predictive metric. It should be used to compare competing websites or tracking the ranking of a certain site over time. It’s not an absolute metric. Also, while DA is not an official metric used by Google itself, it is recognized as a benchmark that other SEO tools refer to all the time.

What is domain authority and page authority and how do each of these relate to each other? Page authority looks at the ranking strength of individual pages on a website. It’s ranked the same way, but compares individual pages in search results instead. So, you could have a website with a low DA but have individual pages with much higher PA (page authority).

Because DA is an approximation based on many different factors that Google uses in ranking websites, it’s difficult to influence it directly. As a general rule, you should focus on building high-quality backlinks. Track and log your domain authority ranking often. Then, check domain authority history periodically to see how you're doing. This will help you find patterns in what is increasing your score.

There could be many reasons your DA would change, some of which are out of your control. The first and most common reason for it to change is that Moz recently crawled more or fewer domains that were linking back to your domain. It can change based on the number of links, as well as the quality of said backlinks. The DA also may have changed because of a higher authority domain having its score raised or reduced. This can change the ranking of other indexed domains in the category, including yours. 

The easiest way to improve your domain authority is to create content that people want to link to. Also, making sure backlinks use keyword rich anchor text is important. Keeping track of your link profile and disallowing poor quality links with Google’s Disavow Tool also helps. DA is not something you can change overnight, so you have to continue to work on it.

In short, your domain authority ranking will tell you where you are in relation to competitors. Tracking it frequently will help you learn how much you are improving or of your score drops. To search for your domain authority score, use a domain checker, such as Moz Link Explorer. Improve your score by gaining quality backlinks from reputable sources.

Need help with proper SEO for search and/or increasing DA or PA? Hire Us!

When working on search engine optimization (SEO) for your website, it's important to consider not only your on-page content. Search engines don't only look at the content on your pages. They also consider off-page backlinks and mentions. The difference between these search ranking factors are grouped into on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

Content and metadata - such as keyword phrases in page text, title tags, and meta descriptions - on your website are what are known as "on-page SEO." Also included in on-page SEO are any links to internal pages and the anchor text used on them.

Links coming to your website from other places, as well as mentions of your website, are part of what is known as "off-page SEO." In fact, off-page SEO counts far more towards your search engine ranking than what is actually on your own pages.

There are many examples of sites that don't necessarily have the best search optimized content. Yet, some websites rank well in search results due to excellent off-page SEO. These rankings become based on lots of well-optimized back-links on other higher-ranked websites.

Many people think that off-page SEO is out of their control and that on-page SEO is all you can really do. However, there are cases where you can easily do something about it. Off-page optimization is quite a broad topic that can span dozens of articles. So, for now, let’s get you started with some quick and easy ways to optimize both your on-page SEO and off-page SEO.


On-Page SEO Needs Search Optimized Page Titles

First and foremost, your website's page titles should be concise as possible. Keyword stuffing is a big no-no, yet people still do it. It's harder today to get away with it and rank well in search. That's because  Google and Bing in particular are constantly working on fighting keyword stuffing. Other search engines are adjusting their own algorithms, as well.

In any case, you want the keywords most relevant to the page's content in the first two or three words of the page's title. Oftentimes, you don't even really need your own organization's name upfront. You'll likely rank highly for your site’s name anyhow on account of your domain name, plus the fact that your name should certainly be included on every page of your site.


What's the Best Home Page Title for SEO?

Of course, the most important page title on your website is that of your home page. Firstly, the worst possible thing for any website – and it happens far too often - is to have “Home” or “Home Page” then your site name as your page titles. That doesn't help the search engines at all, so that’s the first thing you want to avoid.

So, your home page title needs to say what you do and what you need to be found for by searchers. These terms need to beright up front for search engines to work for you. It’s a simple change that can work wonders, especially if no one has optimized well for certain keyword phrases related to your blog or business.

Say you’re a Used Car Dealer in Walla Walla, Washington. You’d want your home page title to be something like "Used Car Dealer in Walla Walla, Washington, Bob's Autos" or something to that effect. Especially with local search, using a location if you happen to be dealing with a particular geographical area is huge for showing up in the top few results of a given search.

But, if you aren't a local business, it becomes very important to identify the niche you can most easily reach online. You can do some simple keyword research with a free tool such as Ubersuggest, which will give you some ideas for terms you may want to use.

The highest volume search terms are typically the hardest to compete for, so if you can, find keyword phrases that most other similar sites to your haven't used. Just make sure that it's still super relevant and that you actually then include the terms from your home page title in the page's content.



How Often Should I Use My Keywords in My Home Page Copy?

Once you've decided on one or two keyword phrases to focus on with your home page title, mention them at least a couple of times on your home page. However, you do not want them so blatantly featured that it's downright obvious that you're just trying to rank for it.

There doesn't seem to be a "magic number" of times that you need to mention your keywords. But, mentioning your most important keyword phrases in at least a few instances on your home page is a good idea. While there isn't a magic number, SEO experts suggest you shouldn't use any one keyword phrase in more than one to three percent of your page copy.

In your home page copy, you want to have a couple of paragraphs to introduce the site to both visitors and search engines, but nothing too lengthy. Remember, you always need to write for your visitors first and the search engines second. Your website copy needs to read naturally, and search engine algorithms are continuously getting better at understanding when keywords are being unnaturally used.


Internal Links Are Vital For Good On-Page SEO

One very important SEO tip to keep in mind is to make sure to not use "Click Here" when linking to an internal page. Years ago, people felt it was necessary to say Click Here as a call to action. Today, you will see Call to Action images using this phrase, but the actual link will not include those words.

Here's why it's important to focus your link's text. Say that you have a lot of used Dodge mini-vans. You want that link to say "Find great deals on Dodge Mini-Vans here!” That way, you let search engine spiders that crawl your website to know that the page is relevant for "Dodge" and "mini-vans." But, it also includes the word "deals" which is often used when people are searching for great deals.

Ideally, you'd only want the text link to say "Dodge Mini-Van Deals" but having a call-to-action on the link makes visitors far more likely to actually follow it. You could just put the link on the "deals on Dodge Mini-Vans"  and bold that part, but in either case, it still includes the keywords.

Also, it's important to limit the number of internal links you use on any given page outside of your navigation. Only link to the most relevant pages, and make sure you let the search engines know what those links are about.

Now that we've covered some off-page SEO basics, let's look into ways you can identify good off-page SEO.


Off-Page SEO Needs Good and Relevant Backlink Anchor Text

Having hyperlink text tell search engines what the page it's linking to is about, is even more important in off-page SEO. If you use a tool like Google Webmaster Tools or other free tools out there that tell you about the domains that link to your site, take a look at a few of your off-site links. See how they link to your website and what text they use on the hyperlink itself.

It may be that many of those backlinks will either just have your homepage URL or say "Website". Yes, the link is nice to have, but for search engine optimization purposes it's more useless than it first appears. Technically, these are good links to have if you're getting a lot of click-throughs from them. But, those links are not doing as much work as they could be. After all, you want the search engines to give your site credit for certain keywords, not just your own name, your URL, or "website."

Say you're have a lumber company – we’ll call it "Dad's Building Supply." Many current links to Dad’s website probably use the text of the company name, instead of simply the site URL. At least search engines will recognize that this site is relevant for the words "building" and "supply," which are perfectly good keywords people will use in search.  

Unfortunately, many of those links could well simply say "WEBSITE" or "CLICK HERE." These links won’t help you one bit as far as keyword strategies are concerned. In many cases, it can be difficult to get websites  to change how they link to things. However, there are plenty of ways to gain new link “juice” with minimal effort.

Say that “Dad’s Building Supply” has some key customers that link to your website from their website. Make sure that they at least put your company name in any hyperlink text, at the very least. You want to make sure they don’t only use your logo to link to you – as many have tended to do in the past when mentioning partners. If they do use images, be sure that the image's anchor text has the desired keywords - which works much the same way as the hyperlink text.

Better yet, it can't hurt to ask if you could have them say something like "Building materials supplied by Dad's Building Supply in Somewhere, USA" on their Suppliers page. That helps you most for "building materials" while also having "Somewhere, USA" in there, which is fantastic for local search optimization. It's very possible to take links you already have and make them actually work better for you. Also, believe it or not, even if no one ever clicks on that link, the search engines will still find it relevant and give you credit for it.


Make Sure Off-Page Links Are Relevant to Your Website

The most important thing to consider, however, is to not just stick hyperlinks wherever you can put them. You want to make sure that you seek out links on sites similar to yours or in related industries. It's OK if someone outside of your industry is offering to link to you on occasion, especially if it's some partnership or sponsorship opportunity.  But, be sure about the quality of those organization's websites before you bother accepting those links. You want to build links naturally.

Sometimes, some SEO specialists will ask you to hunt down every possible link you can get, and this is not always the soundest strategy. Most search engines, especially Google, frown on building lots of irrelevant links and can penalize your site quite harshly depending on the severity of the offense. This is why many off-page links have become tagged with the "nofollow" term. This means that search engines will still follow the links, but not pass on "link juice" to your site.

Keeping such penalties in mind, it’s extremely important to find out who links to you without the "nofollow" tags. If there is someone to contact at those websites, it can't hurt to politely ask them to alter the hyperlink text slightly. Or, if they're highly irrelevant, ask for the link to be removed.

What some SEO experts may call "link pruning" is a relatively simple way to increase your SEO without much work on your part. It's essentially addition by subtraction. You won’t always get responses, but even if just a few make the changes, those newly optimized links (or even removed links on poor quality websites) can go a long way toward helping your own search rankings.

While SEO is not always quality over quantity when it comes to links, having 1,000 links with "Website" and 100 links with "your keywords here" is quite different. You most certainly want to have more of the latter.


“No-Follow” Tagged Links VS "Dofollow" Links

Now that we know about the "nofollow" links, we know where to focus our link building efforts. Does this mean that it’s not worth seeking out links in directories that use "nofollow" tags? Believe it or not, it's perfectly fine to use directories. That's even true if the hyperlinks that point to you are direct links without "nofollow" tags.  However, your only real benefit is potentially getting new visitors from the directory's own audience. There isn't a direct SEO benefit, even if they do help you get found on occasion.

So, while links with "nofollow" tags still count as links to your site, they don’t give you the SEO boost outside of new potential visitors from the linking website. That being said, if the hyperlinks can give you the ability to gain keyword traction, the relevancy still helps your efforts on a strategic level. Just having your business name mentioned, and not a generic “Website” or URL link, can help the reach of your name. While mentions aren't nearly as quantifiable from a technical SEO standpoint, they do seem to help over time organically as people stumble across these mentions.

There's a great free tool to check if a page has nofollow tags on their links: No-Follow Finder from Get Rank. This can help you determine whether it's worth pursuing somewhere you don't already have a link. If they do, and they categorize their listings well enough, a free listing, even with less than perfect hyperlink text, is OK to get. But ideally, you want websites that let you use hyperlink text in your company description without "nofollow" tags being attached. 

In 2020, those sites who offer 'dofollow' backlinks have become few and far between, but they do still exist. Your best bet are working with the websites of vendors and clients you already deal with and trust. They will likely be more relevant to your business anyway and are easier to find. While it's important to not simply reciprocate links on a regular basis - as this is against Google's Terms of Service - it's not explicitly forbidden to do so if the links make sense and are done naturally over time.


Are Online Directories That Charge for "DoFollow" Links Worth the Investment for Off-Page SEO?

There are some online directories charge you to have their links changed to “dofollow” links. Some even will allow you to put your own optimized hyperlinks in your profile. It's up to you whether  you decide to pay them or not.

My personal advice is to go just with what's free first. However, if you're also convinced that said listing will get you a lot of click-through traffic that sticks around and converts, and it does so, a tiny investment may be worth it in the long term. However, do some research about these sites first. Find out if these directories are just taking people's money with the promise of new traffic, but not really delivering on that promise.


On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO Are Equally Important

In any case, on-page SEO is important. But, unless you have the outside links that tell the search engines to give you authority on given keywords, it’s likely you won't get found enough for search to work for you. Your off-page and on-page content optimization efforts must be in sync. 
Just focusing on a strategy to rank for high traffic keywords with on-page content alone is rarely going to be enough. Even if you could rank with on-page SEO alone, having the links helps authority with the search engines and makes you more trusted.


The more good and valuable links that you have out on the web, the more likely it is you’ll get far more quality traffic. While on-page SEO can work well for your search rankings in some niches, the former plan is a smarter route and long-term should be the way to go.

If you need copywriting for SEO and/or SEO editing for your blog or website, see what the Denver branding agency Brand Shamans and their SEO Consultants can do for you today!

by  R.A. Rowell; SEO Professional

In recent years, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has experienced a slow, but steady transition from focusing on simply optimizing websites for search engines to the actual user experience. It's a good trend, honestly, because search engine rankings are certainly not everything. What good is a search engine ranking if people click through to your site and don't bother to read your content?

Of course, you're not only looking to get visitors to read content. You're hopefully looking to convert some into subscribers. This is why it's so important to have the very best searcher experience possible.


Understand How Your Audience Finds Your Website

The best way to know how to get visitors to your sites is by understanding the many different ways that potential readers and subscribers will find your website. These days, you have social media accounting for a great deal of website referral traffic. This is why it has become so paramount to have a Facebook fan page and a Twitter profile (at the very least) to get your message out there. 

By seeing what sort of people regularly follow your blog on Facebook and Twitter, you get more of an idea of what sort of content they are looking for. Knowing your audience is a key part of any SEO strategy. Ranking on the first page of Google search results for some high search volume keywords is great, but not if those aren’t the keywords that your target audience uses to find solutions to their problems.


The Importance of Having Your Own Domain for SEO and Brand Authority

Back when I started in SEO around 2010, many people, even small businesses, commonly used free Wordpress blogs. While it's okay to have your blog on a free platform, especially now in 2020, it's far better to put it on your own domain. Many web-hosts allow people to install Wordpress for free on their own websites, and it’s easy enough to import an existing free WordPress site - if you already had one.

There’s also Weebly who offers free to extremely reasonably priced web hosting with one of the best do-it-yourself website builders out there.  Wix and Squarespace also have free options which you can later upgrade. While you can certainly get organic traffic with a free website - thanks to the authority of the wordpress, weebly, wixsite, etc. domains -  it’s not often going to get you to rank for the same quality of keywords you really want to optimize for in the long run.

Having your own domain not only helps your authority with search engines, but it also makes you look better to users. If you have a company blog that’s not on your own domain, it might make people wonder why you couldn’t integrate it into your existing domain. 

In 2020, offering the best user experience means having your own domain, because literally anyone with an internet connection and an email account can create a free website! Showing that you’re willing to at least in a domain name is always a good idea.


What is Relevant Content for Both Your Users and Search Engines?

In the old days, all you had to do was post content regularly – at the very least once per week - around the keywords you wanted to be found for in search. But, it’s not just about writing and sharing content that people want. You want to make sure that your incoming search traffic – and social media traffic – is really getting what they’re looking for.

So, what do you post to your blog? You need to make your site more relevant in the eyes (or rather, to the spiders) of search engines. But you also need to make it more relevant in the eyes of those who may end up clicking on your website link in the search engine results pages.

The first part is easy: Do you answer their questions and/or do you fulfill their needs? Here's the part that isn't quite so easy: how do you make them feel? It's a proven fact that if you make people feel better by easing their concerns or solving a nagging problem that they may have, they're a lot more likely to remember you for that. Emotional value is everything for human beings. Since 99% of your readers will likely be human beings, that’s who you have to write for.


Keyword Strategies are Important, But They Are Only the Beginning

Obviously, keyword strategies are still incredibly important. But, you have to constantly build content on your website not only surrounding these keywords, but establishing a presence of authority and trust around them. You need to become a trustworthy personality who is knowledgeable about your site’s subjects. This is known as becoming a "thought leader."

You may not think of yourself as a thought leader in your chosen field, but you may be surprised how much you can be once you start answering the questions that you may get every day on your blog. It may sound simple, but if there's a need, and you fulfill that need, you might just find that a blog post a day keeps the searchers coming your way. Even if you can't blog every day, it's important to at least remain consistent, and keep an open dialogue with your audience.

Yes, it’s important to have a keyword strategy to fall back on. After all, that’s what helps you write a catchy title tag and meta description that’s also keyword-rich. But, when you get people to click through from Google, social media, or elsewhere, you want them to read all the way through AND get people to want to read more.


Being Consistent with Your Content is Key, But It's OK to Switch Things Up

While it’s important to be consistent in the type of content that you post to your website, if your strategy isn’t working, be sure to switch things up. You don’t want to look like a robot – even when things are working, switch things up for variety. People love surprises. 

Even a successful website will introduce a guest blogger or take a very new direction for a day or two just to offer some new perspective. Recycling old content by taking a completely different angle does this well. It’s fine to repurpose and recycle content, and people will appreciate your innovativeness often without really realizing it.

The purpose of any website is to provide information, advice and assistance to those people who are interested in what you have to share. Every site should strive to eventually build a community. You want people from all walks of life and many different fields and industries who can share common interests and experiences around your content. 

Building community around your content, both on social media and in comments, makes it clear to searchers and social media surfers that you are doing your best to offer a great user experience. Content creation doesn't always have to be cut and dry, and most of the time, you simply can't be. You've got to be there for people. It's the only way to win the minds (and hopefully the hearts) of your potential fans. 

So, while throwing bait for the search engine spiders to crawl is great, in the end it’s all about serving up a great user experience. Google especially likes content that’s shared often on social media. But, most importantly, search engines most appreciate sites that don’t create quick bounces from search queries. Keep people on your website by providing a great user experience and you will be rewarded!

by Phoenix Desertsong, SEO Expert

Search marketing experts love to mention "chasing the long tail" as one of the most cost-effective ways to improve your search engine optimization (SEO). "Chasing the long tail" just means finding keyword phrases that are specific enough to be relevant to your specific product or service. Still, you also want them to be just broad enough to get enough of an audience to get your voice heard. This is, obviously, much more easily said than done.

Longer keyword phrases are going to be often much less expensive to bid on when it comes to advertising, as they come with lower search volume, too. But, it's just as important in organic search to chase the long tail keyword phrases. While you may get less traffic from them, that traffic will be a lot more valuable to you. Let's learn why "chasing the long tail" keywords is a good idea.


Why Are Long-Tail Keywords Useful in SEO?
 
One of the most common examples used to illustrate chasing "long-tail keywords" is by adding a color to a certain phrase. For example, if you sell linens, "blankets" is a ridiculously broad term that gets hundreds of thousands, if not millions of searches a day. "Baby blankets" is obviously a lot more specific and has considerably more refined search traffic. But to "chase the long tail" so to speak, you need to find three or four word keyword phrases (or perhaps longer) that are more specific to what your customers are looking for.
 
For example, think of "blue baby blankets." That's a fairly common color for baby blankets. So it's not surprising that it's a search phrase that actually gets about 900 searches a month on Google alone. So, you might want to write some content about "Why Are Blue Baby Blankets So Popular?" 
 
Now, why would you limit yourself to a specific color in your content? Preferably, you would have content around red or green baby blankets, as well. The concept of chasing the long-tail is more about zoning in on the types of people that are closer to ready to buying a product.
 
However, chasing the long-tail keywords must also consider the variations on a keyword phrase. I have mentioned "red baby blankets" and "green baby blankets" as possible options for content surrounding "baby blanket" searches. However, per Google's Keyword Planner, "green baby blankets" get about only 400 monthly searches, less than half of "blue baby blankets." On the other hand, "red baby blankets" , gets about 500 monthly searches, which is very close to "blue baby blankets" at about 900.
 
What does this research show exactly? If you have a section of your business devoted to baby blankets, this is rather important information to consider. It means that your blue and red baby blankets have twice the Google search audience as your green blankets. This is pretty powerful information.


Watch the Monthly Trends of Long-Tail Keywords to Optimize Your Online Marketing Efforts

If you are actually selling baby blankets, or any product or service, you want to be sure you know about the monthly search volume. But, don't just pay attention to the average search volume. You also want to know the trends for those keywords. Plug in these keyword phrases into a keyword tool like Ubersuggest, and you'll see that those averages can sometimes be misleading.

For example, "blue baby blankets" peaks at about 1,000 monthly searches in June-July, then December through early February. But from March to late May, those numbers drop to between 600-700 monthly searches. Meanwhile "red baby blankets" drop close to 200 monthly searches in April and May. Green baby blankets dip only in April and June, but are up in May.

These trends are important for a couple of reasons. On one hand, these trends tell you the relative search demand for particular colors of blankets. It also means that you should aim to be more aggressive with marketing certain colors of blankets when search volume is up. On the other hand, when traffic is down, it's likely more competitive, meaning content and product pages based around those keywords will be harder to rank. That's because your competitors are fighting for more of the searches. This is important to keep in mind so that you have other keywords to make up for those that decline during certain times of the year.


Why Not Just Optimize for "Baby Blankets?"
 
If you were to optimize for simply "baby blankets," which is a term that gets 40,000 monthly searches, you're going to be lost in the noise of all the other companies out there trying to rank on Page One of Google for that product. Focus in on the specific products people are looking to purchase, especially in a particular color. As the longer keyword phrases often don't have the same amount of competition, you can rank much more easily for the long-tail phrases. Then, you're much more likely to get someone's attention.
 
Think of some basic ways you can help focus your content on specific permutations of your product or service. WIth products, it can be basic as color, size, or model. For services, it can be services tailored to specific industries, niches, or needs. Just make sure that people are searching for that specific thing on a regular basis. It can be just a few hundred searches per month, if it's specific enough.

No matter what product or service you have to offer, there are still certain ways that people interested in what you have to offer will search for it that you can also rank well for and be found. The free Google Adwords Keyword Planner (with sign-up for a free Adwords account) is great for doing this sort of research. It can also give you other keyword ideas for content you should be producing surrounding your content.
 
Keep in mind that search traffic alone isn't everything. You need to be getting the right traffic, too. By focusing on the power of specific keywords, you get more targeted, more relevant traffic. Keyword research really can be your best friend,. While it takes some time, the basic info that you need is free to get and can lead to powerful results.

Need some long-tail keyword phrase suggestions for your own site? Leave a comment below, so we can check it out and give you some quick suggestions!

Why do content marketers and web design experts constantly have to fix the mistakes of supposedly professional marketing firms? Not that we mind. It’s more business for us! Still, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen businesses pay marketing firms that clearly didn’t know what they were doing.

This is definitely not to disparage those that are trying to earn an honest living doing good SEO and content work for businesses. Anyone can make honest mistakes. Who gives us all a bad name are those that call themselves "experts" and do such a deplorable job - even under contract. Then, others have to come in just to fix those mistakes. Sometimes, it's at a fraction of the original cost, since the marketing budget was blown on low-quality work. Learn how to spot poor marketing firms, so you can save your hard earned money for quality work instead!



Beware of Marketing Firms Who Promise Too Much!

Before I was self-employed, one of my employer’s affiliate companies brought in a marketing firm to overhaul their website. The website, as it was, actually was not ranking too badly in the search engines. The SEO was good enough that it was bringing a fair amount of local organic traffic. But the director of the affiliate wanted more leads from online traffic.

So, a company came in and overhauled the website design to the point that it looked nice, at first. But then, most of the important text was stuck in images or in weird I-frames that the search engines had difficulty reading. The search engines were puzzled and started looking away. There was nothing to keep the creepy-crawly search spiders interested. Then, the site's existing SEO was ruined and content that might have been OK if properly optimized simply wasn't doing its job.

Previously, I had done considerable SEO work on this website. The original design had been clean and simple. The logo was crisp and well-designed – also made in-house. This company threw everything out, and even changed all the page names from .htm to .html. Changing page name extensions in this way without proper redirects is a major no-no in SEO. As you might expect, traffic plummeted. The website dropped off the front page of search results across the board. My boss was furious.


The Website Had to Be Fixed In-House!

So guess what? We tore down the site in-house and rebuilt it from the old version we had. Within a few months, the rankings were back to where they had been before. Of course, the traffic still wasn’t enough for our affiliate. So, they brought in a pair of online marketing “experts.” I was there for the interview with them and found that I knew more than they did. I made the suggestion to not hire them. I could do everything they could already. But, my suggestion went unheard.

I had been absolutely correct. We had no intention of giving them direct access to the site, and it’s a good thing they didn’t get it. They sent me “fixed” HTML pages in emails. Sadly, they were a mess. I would continuously fix the stupid mistakes they had made in both the HTML and the title tags. It seemed as if we were paying them just to annoy me.

The final straw came when they asked me to go out and research inbound links. As the “webmaster,” it was apparently my duty to go and ask for links. Wasn’t that supposed to be part of their job? They didn’t make any good suggestions, either, except for spammy directories which would have actually hurt the rankings rather than helped them. They just told me to go and do it as if I were working for them. I told my boss about this, and fortunately, I was heard this time. They were subsequently fired. Unfortunately, it was only after they were already paid too much to begin with.


The Poor Quality SEO Marketing Firm Still Got Paid Upfront!

In the end, they were paid rather well for such lousy “work.” I ended up undoing everything they did, anyway, besides a couple of useful keyword phrases I was able to use. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses get duped all the time by people acting like they know what they’re doing. Then they simply turn to in-house staff, who are often making a fraction of what they had just paid out, to fix the mistakes.

Businesses need to stop doing this and actually make those doing outside work for them prove their mettle before paying them the big bucks. Otherwise, pay your in-house staff better. You’ll attract much better content writers and web designers into your fold. Then you'll better motivate those that you already have.

Just some friendly advice from someone who's been there and done that as an SEO Consultant!

If you're looking for quality copywriting and SEO services, see what the Brand Shamans can do for you!

For many years, SEO experts would tell you that the Yahoo! Web Directory was one of the best backlinks you can possibly have for your business. For a $299 a year, it was yours. Well, that will be no longer. Yahoo! announced in late September 2014 that the very directory that founded the company’s very existence will be closing after 20 years. Search Engine Land had a great piece about the Yahoo! Directory's closing.

For years, a backlink from Yahoo for $299 a year was worth the investment. It was something you could write off as a business expense on your tax return. It could also get a stray click-through or two here and there. Also, because of the fact that the directory had existed since 1994, it continued to be a fairly valuable link depending on the category that you chose - especially if you were in a particular niche. There was a time that it may have well been worth the money if you could afford to have it as a part of your SEO budget. Those times have now ended.

Is the Alive Web Directory Worth It for SEO?

There are still other directories out there, of course. For example, there is the Alive Web Directory. They have several listing options, most of which are far less expensive on a per-year basis. However, they also have an option that costs $299.95 for a permanent featured listing, which can get you visibility with 5 additional deep links. Another option is $209.95 for a permanent regular listing that will get somewhat less visibility (be listed under the Featured Listings) with only 3 additional deep links.

Alive Web Directory also has several more listing options. For example, you can get a permanent featured listing without the additional deep links for $224.95 and a regular permanent listing for only $149.95. I would suggest, however, that those additional deep links could help depending on the situation and what you're trying to get those particular links to rank for. In any case, it cost a lot less than Yahoo Web Directory did. It will be interesting to see how the pricing structure changes now that the “king” of directories is gone.

Best of the Web and SEO

Another option is Best of the Web. This one is a little more familiar to me than Alive Web Directory, as I've personally used it to post free business listings for past employers on their local directory side. It costs a one-time fee of $149.95 to submit your site for the directory, and $199.95 to submit for their directory plus a local listing. They also now have a lifetime listing for a one-time fee of $299.95. This directory gets a lot more traffic, as far as I know, than either the Yahoo or Alive Web Directory because their directory listings have popped up all over Google and Bing.

The only thing that is a bit scary about Best of the Web (BOTW) is that the submission fee is non-refundable. If for whatever reason the moderator doesn't feel that your site is worthy of being listed (unusual, but possible) that money is gone. Just keep that in mind. But, most likely as long as your site looks good and is useful to visitors, you should be fine. It’s obviously to cut down on spam submissions and deter people whose sites aren’t top quality which would waste the time of their editors.

Overall Benefits of Online Directories for SEO

If you’re going to use directories, you definitely want to first go for the permanent listings rather than the yearly recurring listings. The permanent directory listings are far less expensive now than they were, but of course, even Alive Web Directory and Best of the Web aren't ever going to have the same SEO value as Yahoo!

Of course, there are many other more niche-related directories out there. Some are even free. Whenever you are submitting your website link to an online directory, be sure they are reputable directories that you think people would actually use. There are plenty of spammy ones out there happy to take your money with little return value.

If a directory doesn’t look like a site you would use yourself to find something, then don’t think about getting a listing there. The click-throughs from any directories are gravy. But the backlinks themselves from more trusted directories, no matter how many clicks you get from there, can provide you with authority in the search engines for those categories.

Of course, there are a lot of places where you can get a free link just by sending an email or submitting to a free directory. While these are often “no-follow” links that don’t really provide direct engine optimization value, they’re still worth at least submitting in order to get your website more mentions, which can help you indirectly.

The major issue with online directories is the question of how much longer they will actually remain relevant in the eyes of search engine relevance. If you have a brick-and-mortar business, they do give a sense of permanence to your brand related to certain keywords that the search engines still appreciate. If you have a blog, then it’s perhaps better to focus on being listed on authority sites in your niches than to bother investing in a directory listing. But if you have the budget to do so, it’s something to consider, especially if that listing is found among other highly relevant links to your niche or field.

If there are any online directories you are currently listed in, or are thinking of being listed in, feel free to contact our online marketing experts about them. We can check them out and can let you know our thoughts on how useful those directories are for your SEO efforts and if they’re worth your hard-earned money.

A better option for you and your website may be a sponsored guest post. With a quality article written about a topic you're passionate about and quality backlinks for much less than the cost of a directory listing, you can reap far greater SEO benefits than a basic directory listing. If you're interested, contact the SEO experts at Brand Shamans today!

Photo credit: Pixabay, Public Domain

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner ofIntent-sive Nature & theBrand Shamans network

We've all heard about how you can over-optimize for the almighty search engines in the name of SEO. How much SEO is enough? Some people have said that you really can't optimize too much for search engines. As it turns out, too much SEO is bad for your SEO.

Many people won't even touch optimizing for search engines. Oftentimes, this is from a fear of putting a bunch of content out there which doesn't get a lot of traffic or any leads that convert. Some people feel it’s too stressful to consistently put out useful content. Many people start and give up after a bit if it goes nowhere. So, you want to have some SEO. But, it is possible to go too far.

Believe it or not, you have to consider the possibility of taking on far too much traffic or leads. In fact, it's possible to over-commit to a content strategy. Even if the leads flow in like honey, that new traffic doesn’t always actually help your business.  How can that be? Consider the following example.


Biting Off More Than You Can Chew!

One of the worst case scenarios of biting off more than one can chew in SEO is something that a LinkedIn connection of mine once shared. It's an interesting story of how one CEO cut ties with an SEO firm and decided to do the SEO himself instead. Interestingly enough, he did wonderfully on his own and website traffic boomed. So did the amount of incoming leads. However, he became so addicted to his success that the rest of his business suffered as a result.

His company’s customer service badly declined because of the lack of ability to handle all of the incoming traffic. In response, he took down about 150 pages off of his website. This action cut the amount of incoming leads in half. After rededicating himself and his company to customer service, so they could actually focus more effectively on the leads they received, they righted the ship.

So, you have to put customer service before bringing in new business. You need to pick your clients carefully, and you’re your leads are potential and actual customers, and not to be treated as commodities. These are all fantastic points, and so you should not let this article discourage you from doing SEO at all. You should just take into consideration the fact that you can go way overboard.

So, I decided to create the ABC's of How to Avoid SEO Over-Optimization: Authenticity, Being Ready, and Customer Service.


Authenticity

The number one thing to consider about Search Engine Optimization is being authentic. Don't simply post a ton of content to make you sound like the best thing in the whole world. It's important to be personal and aim to make one-on-one connections with people is far more effective.

You don't want to go out there with an SEO campaign that makes you sound like you're just trying to rank for keywords and come up number one on Google. Chances are with this strategy that you'll turn off some of the people you're looking for. Most of the leads you may end up with could be mostly unqualified and are just pinging your site out of simple curiosity. Not all organic search traffic is created equal.

When it comes to SEO over-optimization, Google and other search engines could penalize your website quite harshly for overusing keyword phrases that don't flow naturally. You need to create authentic content, first and foremost, before anything else. You also want to show personality and style in your writing, on top of giving some useful tidbits of information.

Good SEO might help you get visitors. But people are far more willing to actually engage with your content and contact you if you offered them some piece of useful information. Searchers really like when they can find an answer to a question that they were researching the answer for and found you. They also want to feel like it was a real person giving them that information in a friendly and straightforward manner.


Being Ready

This goes back to the point of leads being customers, not commodities. While obviously you want that conversion rate to be high, it's very, very possible to become overzealous and take on far more than you can chew. It's easy to become too focused on the raw number of leads from SEO versus the number of visitors to a given page. If you find yourself getting a ton of leads, you have to be sure you can qualify them and convert them into sales without taking away too much from your current customers.

While being aggressive with content can be OK if you know you're ready to take on the new business, you have to be 100% certain that you're ready for a potential barrage of leads. In some cases, you may be able to grow with it. But you may not be ready to nurture 1,000 incoming leads. It takes time to be able to serve the 5 or 10 percent or so of those that are qualified, while also serving your existing customer base as well as you have in the past.

Take it slowly and be sure you're only getting the most qualified leads that you possibly can. In any case, be ready to take on new business at all times. You never know just what piece of content will serve you hundreds or even thousands of potential new customers.

It's also important to understand that with ranking highly on search engines through SEO, you'll get noticeably more spam. You need to be ready to accept that just because you have a high conversion rate on the web stat side of things, that it's the real customers that you get giving you the real value. In the end it's who you connect with that matters. Good content marketers and SEO specialists will tell you that, not just that you're all set ranking 1st, 2nd, or 3rd on Google for high-volume searches.


Customer Service

Every business is in the customer service business, and it is true today more than ever. This actually works hand-in-hand with Being Ready. If you spend all of your time chasing down new leads, chances are that could alienate some of your existing customers if they feel that their loyalty to you is less important than your incoming traffic. That's what happened to that law firm in the article mentioned earlier. If customer service begins to suffer, you have to consider why that is.

You have to be ready and able to handle what leads you get while still giving your current customer base the same attention that they expect and deserve. Of course, there are considerations that you can make to hire extra help if the need arises. But as with anything, you can get carried away. I'm glad that CEO learned from his mistakes, even if it was unfortunately the hard way.

The best kind of content to create is content that is not only aimed at new prospects, but also created for your current customer base. Your current customers are quite a valuable resource for content. It's actually a great idea to ask your customers what questions they would like answered. Chances are people looking for your services will want those same answers, and you'll possibly get more sales out of your current customers, or generate referrals from offering those answers.

Providing offers at the end of blog posts is fine, as long as you don't make them only for new customers. It's fine to have offers on your website, but also make an offer that can work for anyone. This way if an offer is being used, it means those using it had to find out about it on your website, meaning your content is being read and is effective.


Takeaways

It's important to put out great content on a regular basis, but be authentic and be wary of going overboard. If you're careful with your keyword strategy and focus only on your ideal customers and what they're looking for, chances are you'll be okay. Just don't go looking for exposure simply for the sake of exposure. You may get it, and it might be overwhelming in a good way.

As with anything, moderate your content and schedule it out. Definitely don't overdo your SEO, either. While this might spike your website traffic in the short term, it will hurt you more than it will help your future lead generation from your site.

While spikes in growth do happen, if you're going to encourage it, be authentic. If you get a barrage of leads and you can't provide top-notch customer service, then take a step back for a moment and consider your options. The worst thing is to get lots of growth and then panic and cut out a huge chunk of your content. While it can help you rebound, if you were getting all that traffic, you need to consider simply how to manage that great content better.

Here's something for CEO’s and marketing managers out there to consider: it's not often a bad idea to let someone else handle your SEO work for you. Focus on your customers first. After all, that's the whole point of search engine optimization, making new and loyal customers. Make sure you're ready for them. Whatever you do, make sure whoever helps you understands the difference between creating great SEO content and simply doing SEO just for the hope of high search rankings.



If you need copywriting for SEO and/or SEO editing for your blog or website, see what the Brand Shamans can do for you today!

Image credit:www.seofreelancer.pt