Unrealistic White Hat philosphy
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Building a great sites is good, but no good unless youy have as i mentioned, have what people want.
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right, under promise/over-deliver
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Why should a client fire you if you set the right expectations? There are several ways to do SEO and get traffic to your site, local and mobile SEO is just one of them. Local search if done well can get lots of links, gradually followed by regional links. Clients are happy as along as they have targeted leads coming through their website. Most clients understand that SEO is long term; try sending them referral traffic while you are working at link building.
As Alan Mosley mentioned, having a technically good website is the best way to begin.
Great content is always appreciated. Its tough for a new website but there is no need to resort to other methods.
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If you just have great original content all will be right with the world. The truth of the matter is that it is impossible to remain competitive in difficult search verticals without SOME use of link purchasing or SEO aimed link campaigns.
These methods do work, however, they require a long and dedicated effort - often lasting for a few years before payday arrives. And, they only work if your content is exceptional and best-on-the-web in your niche or close to it.
The risk of the white hat method is that if you fail either in your dedication or your content quality (or as Alan says "your technicals suck"). Then you will fail.
If you simply make a great site and wait for people to link to you naturally, your client will fire you before you get link #1.
I agree with this for three reasons.....
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the amount of time required for content to win is far longer than the patience of almost any client
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the cost of the content attack is an enormous investment in time that is backed by subject-area expertise
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most of what people call quality content is crap. It sucks and it is not competitive.
It is what it is, if I'm wrong tell me how.
I agree with you.
The problem with the SEO model as it applies to the "content attack" is that the SEO tells the business... I am going to take you to the top. Unfortunately the business owner buys into that and thinks that the SEO will take care of everything.
In reality the business needs to dedicate significant talent and time into producing the content needed for the attack and the SEO will need the sense to recognize and the courage to say when it isn't good enough. Most people don't have what it takes to win the content attack. Remember, there are only ten positions on the first page of google and any piece of good content is not going to be excellent enough to earn a position.
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The focus on content creation is frustrating to me, too. If you are working for a large client or business with lots of time and money to develop unique content, than this model may be effective.
I'd really like to see an example of a small to medium sized business website (non-SEO related) that has naturally developed all the links it needs through link bait.
It's important to measure your bounce rate on your content, too. On my ecommerce site we add articles of interest to our market and these articles attract a lot of traffic. They also bounce at a very high level - so we attract the customer, they spend a good amount of time on the page, then bounce off. We've beefed up our on page promotion with coupons and in-content links to products to see if that helps.
Our most effective link building is all the standard stuff - relevant directories, product reviews (sites that have a reason to link to you - is this really "natural"), comment links and article postings.
Theoretically pure white contends that you build great content and folks suddenly start linking to you. In reality, we all work hard to find other sites that will benefit in some way by linking to our sites.
Of course, you can gain a lot of niche traffic by doing your research, making sure your on-page is solid and if your keyword phrase isn't terribly competitive you'll rise in the rankings and gain some traffic.
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The most annoying thing is how Google is, in a way, controlling us like marionettes. Ever since they said that authority of a site is determined by how many links are pointing to it, we went out and built links like crazy. Next, they said to create awesome content that people will want to link to--we've since been bending over backward doing it (I'm not saying that creating good content is a baD thing, of course). Whatever they come out with next, we'll do too
I know it just comes down to the fact that it's necessary to rank, but when I really stop and dwell on it, it's like they have the entire population of Internet marketers under their thumb. We all like to say there are other sites out the besides Google and we don't have to do what they tell us, but are we just kidding ourselves? Would we be happy being #1 on Yahoo and Bing but nowhere on Google? Absolutely not! Would we be OK with being #1 on Google and nowhere on Yahoo and Bing? I'm sure we could think of worse things.
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My community is my link bait...
My value to my community is my link bait...
I'm just one person with a tiny little 12 page site...
My friends who run art sites link to me & review when I have a gallery show.
Many times the galleries link to me.
I just got a front page mention in local newspaper.
That got a local photography marketing blogger to invite me to write for him.
I also have had clients submit images to other art blogs and then I used those new connections as guest blogs.
I work with local news outlets.
Local art blogs.
Local vendors who hire me for photography events.
Marketing in person as well as online is how I gain most of my links, many times it is as easy as just asking.
"Hey local collaborative friend of mine, can I has link please?"
I write great content, create great images, sell a great service.
THEN I follow up with marketing that to others.
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Nice work.
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I won't argue with your general point - you're right that "great" content isn't enough by itself. If you build the most beautiful house that ever existed on an island no one visits, you'll never win any architectural awards.
That said, I don't think there are many verticals where paid links are essential. In fact, I think chasing your competitor's tactics is often a good way to shoot for 2nd. In many cases, people are ranking in spite of low-value tactics, and finding the tactics the competition isn't targeting can give you a lot more leverage.
It's absolutely true, though, that even content marketing has to be marketed. I think you have to look outside of SEO. When I had content marketing successes on new sites, it came from relationship building. I pounded the virtual pavement (whether it be blogs, forums, social, etc.) - NOT for links, but to build relationships. I brought the eyeballs in, and when that hit critical mass, the links started to come. Even better - the links KEPT coming with little or no effort. Some posts generate new links 2 years after I wrote them.
The worst part about low-value SEO tactics isn't the risk of a penalty - the worst part is that you have to keep doing it every day. You haven't built anything but what you scrounged for that day. Strong content marketing takes a lot more up-front - no question - but it lasts and it builds on itself.
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Clients fire you because no matter what you tell them when they sign up, they do not understand what is truly involved, get impatient and do not want a 6 month+ campaign with no guarantees. It is not because I fail to inform and educate them about the process but mostly it is like explaining Algebra to an ANT. In the rare cases I get clients that TRUST me and DO understand the process have the budget and patience for it, they ALL have success and are my long term clients who know I get results. This is why I get so much referral business.
They way I mitigate the problem is by reinforcing at the outset that if they want targeted qualified traffic NOW, we must invest in a PPC campaign. Basically this has solved most of the issues with patience but there is always one or two.
Also "Most clients understand that SEO is long term; try sending them referral traffic while you are working at link building."
They SAY they understand this but when month 3 rolls around they are clenching their teeth even when I show 40% increase in traffic they want to be one space above their competitor or some dumb thing like that.
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Man, and you're writing about US websites... Here in Europe (non-UK) is practically impossible to get quality links just because of the content.
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