What's your best hidden SEO secret?

[WillyF]

I run a site with a daily e-mail list. Every day I get a few out of office replies from people who subscribe to the list.These are typically college employees, and their auto-response gives me their name, e-mail address, and job title. Since I know they already use my site and I now know who they are, I can target people to make link requests with a much more personal approach. It's probably unique to my specific niche, but it actually works really well.

[petrakraft]

Thank you for your response - great suggestion!

[KrisRoadruck]

Oh man this is me to a T. Its hard to explain to others that the rest of the time spent farting around online is really a primer for this. If I just tried to come in for an hour and leave It would never be an in the zone hour.

[rmteamseo]

I think one of the most overlooked aspects of good SEO is semantic markup and good onpage optimisation, and no it is not just getting those h1s and h2s sorted.

And i totally agree with Dejan Petrovic, that one hour of "getting in the zone" makes all the difference!

[MarcinKowalik-195750]

Before creating costly, but usefull content - doing heavy topic research within the target group...

[DanDeceuster]

The secret to good SEO is to stop wasting time with automation tools. SEO simply cannot be automated and left to a robot. If it could, none of us would have jobs

If it automates directory submissions, bookmarks, articles, blog comments or anything else, it's useless and should be left alone. Far too many SEO folks waste far too much time tinkering around with them...only to figure out they are useless and that they wasted a lot of time. The Onion comically gives us another great way to stop wasting time:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/openminded-man-grimly-realizes-how-much-life-hes-w,19273/

[TheARKlady]

Hmm, secrets? First, I do seo writing so I tend to look at things from that angle but have gotten into more seo itself as I work with more businesses and web designers. I agree that working and then taking a break is a great idea because sometimes the research can blind you. LOL

But I think making sure you get the best info from the client or on the project prior to starting is essential and can help cut down the time spent in further research or is critical in targeting terms within a highly competitive category.

I also use research tools to help condense the process while I ponder competition and their optimization prior to starting.

[petrakraft]

Thank's for the reply

[MarkHodson]

My best tip: get to know the sales team. I think a lot of SEOs fail to look up from their screens and recognise they are working for a real business - and that it's the sales team that have first-hand, all-day access to your paying customers.

I've just started working for a small travel business with a sales team of three who answer phones all day from clients. I spent a session with them, explained briefly what I'm doing and asked them a slew of questions such as:

• How do people describe the products? How do they categorise types of product. This feeds directly into KW research.

• What do people ask for that isn't on the site? Great for content development ideas / usability.

• What questions do people ask about the company? For instance, if lots of people seem unsure about whether this is a real company or just a website, create a prominent "about us" section.

• At which points in the booking funnel do customers call to say they are stuck ? This is a great way of identifying usability issues. Users don't call the UX guys, they call the sales team.

It's important to remember that sales people don't give a stuff about SEO, so your first task is to explain to them that your job is to send them more leads. At this point you'll see their indifference slowly turn to interest.

Give it a try, it's incredibly valuable. Perhaps a subject for a future YouMoz post?

[petrakraft]

Great suggestions - thank's

[TheARKlady]

@Mark Hodson bought to mind something we do as a B2B service. We structured a questionaire that asks for industry terms and customer terms along with geotargeting information for local search. In many cases, the terms that the company or staff think are appropriate actually are very far from it. In addition certifications and awards often come in handy as well as professional memberships because they help us identify terms and other opportunities for SEO.

[danbocain]

Guest blogging. It's nothing new, it's nothing that requires a lot of talent, but my god! It does the trick for most clients I manage. Helps me acquires custom anchor text dofollow links from themed sites and the long term relationship with these blog owners are worth their "weight" in gold!  You get a great link, you get some referral traffic, and you expand your network. Triple win!

[RedScooter]

I have a whole list. Patience and consistency. SEO is easy, but you have to constantly keep learning and trying new things. It often takes awhile to see results. Keep working and don't give up. As long as you create quality content and links that are relevant, eventually your hard work will pay off. Constantly learning is another key. Search engines change their algorithms over time, and your competitors are always changing, so you'll never be done. I like to set my homepage to an rss feed reader, where I've subscribed to about 10 blogs ranging from SEO to marketing to copywriting. That way new information is always the first thing I see, and I'm less likely to waste time on games or random browsing. Finally, having a network of people to help and encourage you can make the difference between giving up and sticking with it. You can learn from each other and provide sympathy and sometimes a little healthy competition.

[UPform5]

Paid tools... you really have to invest in order for you to conquer, I can share some but I personally think SEOmoz has all of them but you can still find good ones outside which SEOmoz also mentions hehehe

[BlooFusion38]

SEO Metrics: Focus on juicy analytics instead of shallow ranking reports. And get your company (or your clients) to follow you down that path.

[alfredopalconit]

Here's my secret:

Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.
~ Proverbs 16:3

The rest, I'll never tell 

[NicoleMunoz]

I agree... great answer and very helpful!

[semvibe]

My hidden secret is - a) build the website for the visitor b) be honest on your keyword choices c) follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines and Search comes your way.

[tclendaniel]

Almost identical to Francis, with a twist.  I make almost all my revenue from AdSense (weird, I know).  It took me a while to learn to do things in keyword research- 1) focus on high revenue per 1000 visitors stats for sellecting priority keywords by linking AdSense and Googgle Analytics, and 2) looking for the highest CPC keywords in the GoogleExternal Keyword Tool and then sorting on difficulty- oddly, in my space, a few lower-competition terms have extremely high CPC,making them prime targets for new pages onmy site andSEO efforts behind them.

[spnet]

My best experience to track the competitors, review their strategy and then choose best point from each of competitors and make a strong strategy for project.  I use to analysis strategy on weekly basis. Also used some tools for competitor tracking.

Your competitor give you a lot of new ideas........