Despite my love for SEO and my presence in the industry for almost 5 years, I have to admit that I barely followed the latest trends over the last 12 months. 95% of SEO related feeds disappeared from my Google Reader account and I stopped manually checking some of the biggest resources in this niche.
The main reason for this is that I no longer work with clients so new tactics and many advanced SEO methods didn't matter to me that much. I was also at the point where I felt I was getting overloaded with the same information or bad advice, instead of sticking with the basics and going with what I know.
Instead of reading 30+ SEO feeds per day and watching every Matt Cutts video like it was a direct message from God, I shut out all the noise and just started building websites around things I love. In the 12 months since going solo I've had more success than the previous four years and I've gained rankings for a large number of very competitive keyphrases.
I'm not suggesting that you ignore the industry and try everything yourself, as there is a lot of good information out there (especially from the likes of SEOmoz, Aaron, Sebastian, Rishi and David).
What I do suggest is that you go with what works and stick to it consistently, rather than constantly looking for magic-bullets to increase your rankings. Today I want to share four things that have been working very well for me in increasing my own rankings.
1. Get People "Googling" Your Brand
Many people may disagree that this is useful in improving your rankings, but I've seen far too many examples of this tactic working well to dismiss it. I stumbled upon this idea when I released a free eBook which received thousands of downloads, and mentioned a website of mine while mistakenly forgetting to link to it.
Because the site in question was an integral part of the guide, people started "Googling" the phrase. Within the first 30 days of launching the site there had already been 500 people searching for it in Google and landing on the domain.
The reason I say this is because this website ranked 2nd in Google for its main keyphrase very, very quickly, without the link juice to usually grant such a high ranking. The site literally had 5 links compared to the hundreds that competing websites had which were also much older.
Thinking about this logically, it makes sense that Google and other search engines would want to rank a page highly when people are searching for the brand name directly. I believe that because so many people were looking for the site and having to go to page 3 or 4 to find it, the rankings improved because Google want to show the best results to their users.
Google have said that this does play a part in the algorithm, but I was surprised at how big an effect it had. I don't recommend you do this for all sites, but if you release something or mention a product, try just mentioning the name and not linking to the site (not always, of course). Get people searching for your brand / domain directly and see what that does to your rankings.
2. Monitor Repeat Sellers on Flippa.com
I was contemplating whether or not to reveal this as it has given me some ridiculously awesome link ideas, but I try to provide as much value as I can, so here goes. If you head on over to Flippa you can find people buying and selling a lot of successful and high ranking websites.
What I've noticed is that some people are selling a lot of content websites that are ranking for great phrases very quickly and very easily. If you look hard enough you can find sites making $5,000+ per month from rankings they've achieved in just 2-3 months.
Instead of buying these sites in all cases, I've simply looked at where the backlinks are coming from and figured out how the seller is able to duplicate them so easily. I've seen sites ranking with nothing but spammy chinese blog links and other sites ranking with freely available link sources and making a lot of money.
If you have the time to look around, there are some real link gems to be found.
3. Utilise Guest Blogging in Your Niche
In 2009 I wrote more personal development related guest posts than anybody else and in return built a blog with over 6,000 subscribers. I recently sold the site for a mid five-figure fee, but still use this tactic for a number of other sites. (I know Youmoz links are nofollow, so I'm not using this as an example).
Apart from ranking number one in Google for "Guest Blogging" (;)), the tactic allowed me to rank on the first page of Google for two phrases which each get over 30,000 exact searches per month. One of which, was the phrase personal development.
I've wrote a 2,000+ word post on guest blogging over here so I'm not going repeat everything I said there, but utilising this method is very simple:
- Find the top blogs in your niche and see if they have clear opportunities for guest posting. If not, contact them. If so, contact them.
- Perform Google searches like niche "guest post" or niche "write for us" to find more sources for your content
- Once you get an opportunity, write an excellent article and send it off to the editor / site owner. I prefer to send my posts as text files with HTML inside so it's easy for them to paste into Wordpress and keeps your links intact.
- Put a non-spammy, anchor text link in the bottom of the guest post which will not only be great for rankings but also send traffic to your site
- You get links and traffic, and the site owner gets excellent, free content for their community
I have noticed a few big name SEO's abusing this already (I won't say who) so I don't know how long this tactic will remain effective, but it's working well for now and is probably hard to algorithmically block in all cases.
4. Dirty Bookmarking Links
I don't know why, but social bookmarking links (even automated ones) are helping some of my sites massively. I don't love using this tactic as it feels kind of dirty but I can't deny that it is working well.
The two instances I find it working best are:
- 1. On authority sites that have tons of links but need links with more specific anchor text
- 2. On new sites in small, fairly uncompetitive niches
Trying this for competitive phrases on sites that are either new or don't have many links doesn't seem to be doing much, but for the two examples above I'm amazed at how useful this has been.
I know this won't be for everyone and I would not recommend doing it on a high-profile client site, but definitely test it for yourself. You can buy software that automates the process or you can find people on Digitalpoint who are willing to do it for a small fee.
Now I'm going to spend the next month catching up on the major changes in the SEO industry, so if you have any recommended links, please do share them in the comments.
Glen Allsopp writes for ViperChill which is a blog about viral marketing. He helps people build websites that others naturally want to talk about.
Glen, I wanted to make a point of thanking you for the post.
Believe it or not, I think the readers here, for the most part are going to appreciate your "keeping it real."
On a personal note I have started a new direction for our business that sounds very similar. I would enjoy picking your brain further and sharing information.
Please don't be shy about coming back from time to time and sharing more.
And if I could give more than one I would but an enthusiastic thumb up!
I would recommend this get promoted to the main blog, except I think this kind of gem should be left here and found only by the faithful. ;)
Hey,Thanks a lot for the the kind words. It's nice to know that people received some value here :)I do visit SEOmoz quite a lot (I've been a member since 2006) so I won't be disappearing ;).
I just came up with a way to give him more thumbs up. I've thumbed all his comments up!
And I'm glad you said it sly-grr. This is definitely main blog material.
It's not the number of thumbs he has, but the number of thumbs the post has :P
Ask and ye shall receive. :)
I'm asking for a million dollars, when is it coming?!?
Thanks for posting this!Just a heads up that the last time I wrote an article like this I was called out for using the phrase "this is what works for me." Well, this is really what works for me.Obviously, try what you think might be beneficial for you (or your clients) and ignore the rest. I'm happy to answer any Q's.
I am sure glad he shared what works for him. I love idea number two as finding easy places for links is always helpful. Your idea is genious, thanks for sharing it.
I am replying to myself with a quick question! Does anyone have a few top sellers at flippa.com that we should check out? (trying to save some time so I can study calculus eww.)
Hi Matt,
Click on 'buy website' on the Flippa homepage then alter the criteria to the left. I suggest you pick sites that are fairly new (Domain Age) and are already making quite a lot of money (Net profit).
That should help
you rock, you know that? :)
When you say it out loud that it "Worked for me" then obviously it is a sign that it is tested. People like that stuff.
I wanted to add regarding #1 that Rand recently wrote an article about this. It's interesting to see that it's working so well for you!
And as for your links, they're all followed. ;)
Thanks. I see that has changed from the last time I was here.Checking out Rand's article now :)
Not convinced (yet) that 'googling' a term will effect it's rankings, unless you had a huge volume doing it, and clicking through to your site. Are you suggesting Google is using search volume as a ranking factor?
I think it may effect the likelihood of that term popping up in the search box auto suggest...
Hey David,
I'm suggesting that Google alter rankings based on click data. For example, if users are constantly clicking on the 11th result for a search term, Google aren't doing the job that they want to do.
Thus, it's possible (and they have clearly stated they use this data to alter results) that a lot of clicks on a result lower down will help increase its rankings.
I entirely agree to this suggestion!
And search volume is not SERPs click-thrus...
As Jen noticed, Rand already discussed this opportunity; If you look carefully you'll see I've commented this blog post also.
I've put what I described in my comment in practice, and I can tell you that my ranking started to increase for 2 specific keywords I targeted. Truth or fiction? Who knows (Google!)?
One thing is sure; The only thing that changed on my website since then are news...
Glen, thank you so much for sharing this awesome information! I found enough content here to justify starting my own blog in my niche... No kidding...! I'm buying the domain name (keyword-rich) right away!! :)
Thanks for the clarification guys, and I totally agree with that - click data is likely to be a ranking factor (as apposed to just search volume).
Nicely put!
Nice tips! Really great info Glen. Thanks :)
In all honesty Glen, this is one of the BEST posts I've seen on SEOMoz. It paints a picture of what others are up against in the SEO industry and the tactics used to exploit search engines - all is far in seo and war.
Wow, thanks a lot!I'm glad people are getting so much out of it.
Great article. Scrappy. From the trenches. Nice.
I guess giving authority based on brand related searches does make sense and it definately is intresting to read your experience with this.
I dosen't seem logical that it would boost rankings on generic keywords though. Populairty for brand names doesent necessarily mean relevance to keyword queries. I realise domain authority is a factor in seo best practices but anchor text relevance still seem the logical way to build relevance and difficult-to-duplicate tactics...
I would like to say thank you personally for taking time out, and sharing this with the community, i have read it numerous times to soak up the valuable knowledge. I would rather not say which one i have focused on using but it seems to have brought some positive results. thanks again .. Anthony
Thanks for the idea re. Flippa. And I am glad you have had success with social bookmarks. I did not notice an increase in ranking when I tried the same tactic.
Glenn,
Great article! But how do you go about finding where backlinks are coming from?
Doug
Doug,
I agree - great post from Glen!
The post has inspired me with all kinds of link building ideas. I've now taken the post one step further to follow the backlinks - you can see what I've found here:
Proven Method For Easy And Free High PR Backlinks
I've found that once you start exploring the sites in Flippa, you end up with a long list of link candidates - a lot of which are high PR.
Nick
Good post... and, just to add an alternative to Flippa, I'd suggest also SEDO.com
Its main business core is the domains buy&sell, but you can find there also a quite good websites market. Not so "User generated" as Flippa but it can be used for the same purpose.
"Instead of reading 30+ SEO feeds per day and watching every Matt Cutts video like it was a direct message from God, I shut out all the noise and just started building websites around things I love.". This is the best advice you could give us. People often think that just by following tips from SEO guru their website will done great, but at the end there are no golden rules, except this "do what you like, with passion, and you'll be rewarded". My two cents. Nice weekend to everyone. :)
Thank you so much for this great post Glen. I needed to hear "go back to basics". I am pretty new to seo and been doing a lot of reading lately that got me really overwhelmed, a bit lost, and not getting any rankings. Although in the past I had success getting a website on Google’s first page with basic knowledge of seo but now ironically the more I read the less success I'm having. With regards to #1, I totally agree with you. I think that whatever indicates that a website is popular is taken into consideration by search engines. I wonder if number of visitors who directly type in the url has any effect as well??
I feel you :)
Just a thought..
Maybe we shouldn't be SEO specialists but more of online marketers, or coming with ideas for new sites - is there a job where you can do this I wonder?
If we were able to bring sites to top positions with basic seo knowledge, just following our natural online marketing abilities, maybe SEO is the wrong whole to dig in..
Today I am starting to question if I want to keep doing SEO. What other related jobs are out there?
Wow! These are all great suggestions and I'm sure the usefulness will vary depending on our niche and website vertical. Personally, I love suggestions #2 & #3 and plan to try to work on those this next month. Thanks so much for the tips and advice! Always good to hear interesting perspectives.
You're very welcome. Thanks for the kind words :)
I'm a bit of a latecomer to this post as I'm catching up on a backlog of articles in my ReadItLater :-(.
Anyway, fantastic article! I'm a great believer in the 'do what works' strategy rather than the 'do everything you can' strategy.
Thanks for coming back to share these tips Glen. This was a GREAT post and I hope you get a ton of thumbs up on it.
Thanks a lot for the post Glen.
I read the guest blogging post previously and I must say I found it very interesting back and have actually tried a bit of it since then, so I was more than happy to read this post when you mentioned it.
Secondly, I can see the reason for your initial reservation on talking about #2! Wish I could give you more thumbs up for sharing that idea with us. I know I'm gonna go there right now and spend hours going through their backlinks!
#1 and #4 for me is a bit iffy cos I'm not sure if it would work for the current websites I'm working on as they are quite niche. That said, it is definitely another strategy to consider for bigger website which stand the chance of attracting more customers.
Thanks--nice post. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for guest posting opportunities.
I do have a question, though. In your post, you mention finding the best niche blogs to write for...how would you suggest to find the "top" blogs? Am I looking for the typical stats like PageRank, backlinks, etc., or the number of readers, how trustworthy and reputable the site is, etc.?
Also, I recently wrote an article for our website and had it picked up by another website that published it on their site. It wasn't *exactly the same word-for-word, but pretty similar. What's the SEO take on getting articles published on multiple websites? Good? Bad? Gray Hat? Is it considered spammy to the search engines?
:)
Hey Summer!Thanks :)Generally I try to find 'top lists' of blogs which most industries tend to have. The ones that can get you the most traffic generally have the most subscribers. If a site has a lot of subscribers then you can usually always expect to find that they have a lot of links, as well.I wouldn't worry about people using your content like that, unless you care about them stealing your copyright. As far as search engines go, don't let it concern you. They're generally smart enough to work out the original source.
Thanks! :)
That's pretty good. I thought it would be the basic typical ramble of "get links on pages, link to pages" man really, you can not game search engines forever. Unless you are some pump and dump scum.
So hat off to you
Awesome article.Got pointed here from your link club webinar.
Good write up... As for band name search giving better ranking, that is only somewhat true in my experience. For example I have a site right now with 30,000 active members, more than 100,000 uniques per month. Our traffic breaks down into 41% Direct, 28% Referring Sites, 10% of search terms are our band name.
When the site launched; for the first 3 moths all the brand searching really helped. At the time with all our launch marketing we could see traffic spikes as high as 1 million uniques a day searching our brand name. However, now that it is almost 3 years later we still get plenty of searches for our band, but it no longer helps our ranking.
I think Google looks for the brand name, or lets call it site social buzz, and when they see a spike in SSB they move you up so that they can keep real time results, but if your SSB becomes your normal level of of buzz your ranking will not improve until your SSB moves higher than it currently is. Only when I see a spike in our band name do I see our ranking bounce around or climb in the serps.
Great post. I hadn't heard of Flippa before. Looks like a great resource to identify sites that are getting strong rankings quickly.
Good point about getting people to "google" your brand! This is one of Rand' posts about personalised search: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/personalization-of-google-results-creates-a-huge-advertising-opportunity
Great advice, establishing brand awareness can play a massive part of creating a successful online business.
Great post! As others have said - sharing actual experience and real tips are the most valuable in this industry, as they are often like gold dust.
Thanks for posting, gave me some interesting things to think about.
Hey Glen , very good read. I myself already inplemented you number 1 method with high success about 3-4 years ago asking my new registered users to google my site instead of going there directly .Nobody would listen to me back then, Thanks for the reminder , This stuff really works!
Thank you Glen. You legend preceeds you and you've delivered again. I echo the thoughts of those who appreciate the 'works for me' down to earth practical info.
I also want to thank everyone for the active discussion in the comments. I've been a member for just two weeks, and I am soaking up so much. I should've done this years ago.
In the spirit of giving back, I do want to add something in the same 'it works for me' spirit. Two weeks ago I read an article of Rand's that inspired me to set up a LinkedIn Company profile. (I couldn't find the article to link to). Anyway I added our blog feed to the page as well. Not only am I now generating traffic from LinkedIn, but I have noticed an uptick in many rankings. Other than posting content, I have not done much else to account for this increase.
I wonder if anyone else has tried this or seen results.
WOW thanks for this article, it's nice to see a really in-depth how to SEO article instead of one that just says "build links, build links, build links".
I really like #1 and it got me thinking does anyone have any techniques in mind for how to get people to Goolge for your brand? Perhaps running a promotion of some kind through Google Adwords?
Also one thing that no one really seems to talk about that this article made me think of is tying into Google services. We all know the webmasters tool is important but what about just tying into the Google maps API instead of just copying their embed code? Has anyone noticed that this makes a difference in their search engine rankings?
- Holli Elizabeth -
nice tips
Hope it works with me
thanks
One way I've found to capitalize on Google giving credit to many people googling the phrase is by utilizing my customers e-mail list.
If there's a term they're ranking ok for (position 5-15) I'll consider adding an e-mail into their autoresponder sequence that talks a little about what's on the page and then says "If you want more info on that subject just google "enter keyword here" and click on our site which is just a little way down on the page.
Depending on your number of new leads I think this is a great way to keep up the practice of influencing your rankings in the results little by little over time in your favor. Did my hat just get a little darker?
thanks glen
but how social bookmarking help that much
I feel almost guilty for receiving such great ideas without giving you anything back (besides the thumbs up)
I think the greatest thing about this post is that it speaks about using your head and doing a passionate online marketing work. And you shared such clever ideas in the post and in the comments :)
From my experience, the greatest success I had with websites came from a continuous study of where I can find the site's niche, offline or online and making sure as many of those people, or people that interact with those people, know what goodies can be found on the site.
I think is getting one of the prebuilt sites with a good page rank as you suggested. But there are many sites to get this type of site. The less work the better and getting an aged site is the key to doing less of that work. Check out not only flippa but https://webdealer.co
Definately great, Flippa is pretty neat, actually did not know about that site till now!
Hey Glen,
Some great ideas - thanks for sharing!
Quick question, and apologies in advance if I'm missing the point here, but why do you consider social bookmarking 'dirty'?
Cheers,
Lara
It's mostly when you're not adding much value to the site. If you want your links to get the best weight then they have to be on the first page of your profile. So you either bookmark a lot of natural links before them or you just bookmark your site.
And in general I'm talking about doing this on a larger scale (20+ sites).
When you say social bookmarketing, are you talking about leaving your bookmark on site like delicious.com or what exactly are you talking about, can you give a little more detail?
Thanks again for the great article.
I have the same question. Looking forward to a reply soon!
Yes, that's exactly it. There are lots more that have great PR (and followed links) though, other than Delicious.
Great post Glen, and I love your Viper Chill blog. One of my "five best" reads.
I'm glad that attention in the comments has touched on # 4, social bookmarking. What concerns me about large scale social bookmarking is two things:
1. Best Practices.
2. How to avoic potential penalties.
I have not answered these yet to my satisfaction, so I have done very little of it.
Let's say I have 5 client sites I want to promote via social bookmarking. I want to bookmark each one on 20 social sites. Do I:
a. Use a separate "persona" for each client site, and use that persona accross 20 social sites?
b. Use the same persona for all the client sites across all social sites?
c. Use a different persona on each social site, and bookmark all my client sites under that one persona on each social site?
d. Some other tactic?
(I know on some social sites you must create a different persona for each client, because only the profile link is "do follow", but for argument's sake, let's say that one account on a social site can bookmark as many do follows as needed.)
It may seem like I am getting pedantic, but it seems to me that the best technique for social bookmarking SEO is rarely spelled out. I'd like to see your take on it.
Why do I lose sleep over issues like this? Well, because the Google penalty hammer is always overhead! Consider this: I bet 90% or more of the social bookmarking sites are running Google Analytics. The first one I checked yesterday certainly was. Consider all the data Google has about users of social sites.
Even if G. is not using GA to spy for SEO tricks, what other patterns may emerge from my social bookmarking tactics that my tip off Google? Will it not show up as a pattern if my 5 or 10 clients all show up on social sites from the same set of personas? Can Google track the email accounts of users on Social sites? The IP addresses? Are they tracking them?
Getting links from social sites is easy enough for a 5 year old to do. It's pretty much spam -- let's be honest. But I'm not judging it here -- I'm just asking what the best tactics -- and the pitfalls -- are.
Thanks.
Hi Glen, thanks for a really useful post!
It's rather refreshing what you have to say about not following the latest trends & fads. This seems to be a massive issue in terms of the information overload that the SEO industry puts out there.
There always is the tendency to think if you just do a little more research/reading you'll find the 'golden bullet/nugget' that you have been looking for BUT nothing will EVER replace solid, consistent SEO work on the basics that we all know produce solid ranking results!
A lesson for all of us - THANKS!
Conrad
Wow this is a really great post, I appriciate the time you put into it and the information you shared. Thank you again and keep up the good work.
That flippa.com idea is brilliant! Thanks for the tip.
Hi Glen, Thanks for this post. It's really getting me excited! Lot's of crazy ideas popping in my head at the moment. Thanks! Jurgen
I hate to ask a dumb question but why is #3 so bad and now being absued?
There are no dumb questions, only dumb answers. So go easy on me if this doesn't make sense ;)
I've noticed a lot of big SEO's writing articles for other blogs (sometimes with their real names) and then ending with "X Wrote this article for his client [kanye west ringtones]"
Kanye West Ringtones is not an actual example, but it may as well be as the examples I've seen are so irrelevant to the site that they're on.
Dude, thank you so much for this post, sharing learnings from actual experience from what is working - pure gold and is rarely shared amongst all the theoretical regurgitation. I honestly think you cant be a useful SEO blogger if you're not talking from experience of what has and hasn't worked. Really like some of the ideas here and will definitely be making use of this stuff.
Thanks very much for sharing! Particularly the Flippa trick... I can definitely appreciate why this one might be something you'd keep to yourself. Here's to hoping the internet gods look favourably upon you and shower you with good link Karma :)
Haha, I like it.The internet gods have been quite nice to me lately so I hope it continues ;)
Great post Glen!
I especially like points 1 and 2. It'd be interesting to see some research into how much Google traffic results in ranking improvements - and I agree, from Google's perspective it make a lot of sense. From what you've seen it looks to be a major factor?
And thanks for sharing the Flippa.com advice - I've browsed around on this before but never considered it from an SEO perspective.
nice article, and agreed sometimes you just have to block out the noise and focus on your clients. The big reason why that seems to work is that most of the so called breaking news from Matt Cutts may take years to be enforced or released such as the Caffeine update...
The other point is that if you have a few methods that work you will likely not write a blog post or do an article until a fair time later after you have discovered it... so most of the RSS feeds are fairly mainstream ideas or social media news
Hey Lost, your avitar keeps getting better and better. Are you using your little brother's picture now?
Really useful tips. The second one is great.
I have started using myblogguest.com for guest posting opportunities. It was started by Anne Smarty and I have gotten some real value out of it.
Interesting post Glen. Is it me or does number 2 seem very black hat? I'm a little newer to the game, is this a common tactic?
It's a good way to find valuable backlinks, and I guess which ones you are comfortable utilizing is a personal choice. Some of the sources Glen mentioned (like the spammy chinese blog links) seem pretty iffy (although they apparently work now), but from a quick scan there does seem to be some good non-spammy sources to get links from.
I've been reading through Glen's blog recently as well - and he gives some great advice - just in general.
And I like the fact that he shares his experience so openly with the rest of us as well.
A refreshing blog full of new ideas to increase link juice from a diffferent sources. I'll be making some time to visit Flippa and follow your advise.
Thanks
Chris (TOP PAGE)
Thanks for sharing the fresh ideas, especially 2 and 3.
(as we all go hopping over to Flippa :) ...)
Thanks for the Flippa - I've not even heard of the site, so I'll try and find some gems on there and see how that goes. Great tip, thanks for sharing it!
Great post, really enjoy reading hands on tips, that people are getting results with, i have been on your blog today reading away :)
I always love the new tips. Thanks for the post. I have some opportunities to guest blog coming up here. Looks like I'm going to have to strike while the iron is hot.
#3 is the only one I have not tried :-)
Added to the toolbelt!
I would say that guest blogging works well for us, though it sometimes is tiresome to find blog owners willing to publish our articles. Social media works good as well, especially Twitter: https://www.seomoz.org/ugc/using-twitter-as-a-sitemap , which improves the indexation very much.
Great post, I like short and to the point tactics
written wonderfully.
Great post, thanks for sharing the information about flippa.
Cheers
Thank you Glen,
I found already interesting links in flippa.com.
Please keep posting :-)
Thank you Glen for sharing your ideas!
Thanks Glen! Great article!