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No hard evidence of social influencing search rankings - and I've been looking hard. So the best thing to optimize for is usefulness of content (and the good news is that this boosts social signals as well)

In web design word of mouth is key, just like Host 1 said above. If you deliver excellent work for your clients, referrals/leads will come. Instead of social media marketing or emails, I would suggest to use this time to volunteer free design work for charities or startups and let them promote you (happy to point you to a couple or them if you don't know many at this stage).

KLLC, please share what business you are in. For example, if you're selling military drones to governments, none of the things mentioned on SEOMOZ will help you..

Happy to give my two cents if you can be a little more specific

Gotcha. I would just state the same arguments, that building 500 followers oneself is a worthwhile excercise, doesn't take that long and there's no "feeding the spam monster".

Many good points already made. I would just add that getting to first 500 followers, using 'organic' methods like following influencers, sharing their content and producing own content is easy and doesn't take too long. Plus you'll learn a great deal about the market in the process.

And somehow, it also feels wrong to pay for zero-value-add things like fake Twitter accounts, this just feeds the monster.

Thanks Nikele! Any chance you have a link to thay post? I couldn't find it by googling..

Thanks Chenso! The URL is 6 weeks old now. If I understand you correctly, you're saying is that it's to be expected that getting initial rankings takes a bit of time, and that I should focus on great content, not link building, right?

Forgot to add it is a brand new domain with PR 0

I launched a niche site to go through the whole process, for fun and profit. Started with keyword research (3-6 word long tail keywords), have done first 3 posts and done minimal amount of link building. Have gotten about a dozen visitors in the first 5 weeks and ranking on page 2. Is this ok or should I be more aggressive with link building (assuming my keyword research is done ok)?

I've got all boxed ticked - I'm inhouse a couple of days a week, I occasionally freelance and I've also started on my first serious niche site effort to learn faster and make an extra buck. Wonder how many more multi-role people are here?

I've got all boxed ticked - I'm inhouse a couple of days a week, I occasionally freelance and I've also started on my first serious niche site effort to learn faster and make an extra buck. Wonder how many more multi-role people are here?

I launched a niche site to go through the whole process, for fun and profit. Started with keyword research (3-6 word long tail keywords), have done first 3 posts and done minimal amount of link building. Have gotten about a dozen visitors in the first 5 weeks and ranking on page 2. Is this ok or should I be more aggressive with link building (assuming my keyword research is done ok)?

Forgot to add it is a brand new domain with PR 0